University of Virginia Library

MY CHATEAUX.

MY CHATEAUX.

I AM the owner of great estates. Many of them
lie in the West; but the greater part are in Spain.
You may see my western possessions any evening
at sunset when their spires and battlements flash
against the horizon.

It gives me a feeling of pardonable importance,
as a proprietor, that they are visible, to my eyes at
least, from any part of the world in which I chance
to be. In my long voyage around the Cape of Good
Hope to India (the only voyage I ever made, when
I was a boy and a supercargo), if I fell home-sick,
or sank into a reverie of all the pleasant homes I
had left behind, I had but to wait until sunset, and
then looking toward the west, I beheld my clustering
pinnacles and towers brightly burnished as if
to salute and welcome me.

So, in the city, if I get vexed and wearied, and
cannot find my wonted solace in sallying forth at

dinner-time to contemplate the gay world of youth
and beauty hurrying to the congress of fashion,—or
if I observe that years are deepening their tracks
around the eyes of my wife, Prue, I go quietly up
to the housetop, toward evening, and refresh myself
with a distant prospect of my estates. It is as
dear to me as that of Eton to the poet Gray; and,
if I sometimes wonder at such moments whether I
shall find those realms as fair as they appear, I am
suddenly reminded that the night air may be noxious,
and descending, I enter the little parlor where
Prue sits stitching, and surprise that precious woman
by exclaiming with the poet's pensive enthusiasm;

Columbus, also, had possessions in the West; and
as I read aloud the romantic story of his life, my
voice quivers when I come to the point in which it
is related that sweet odors of the land mingled with
the sea-air, as the admiral's fleet approached the
shores; that tropical birds flew out and fluttered
around the ships, glittering in the sun, the gorgeous
promises of the new country; that boughs, perhaps
with blossoms not all decayed, floated out to
welcome the strange wood from which the craft

were hollowed. Then I cannot restrain myself.
I think of the gorgeous visions I have seen before
I have even undertaken the journey to the West,
and I cry aloud to Prue:

“What sun-bright birds, and gorgeous blossoms,
and celestial odors will float out to us, my Prue, as
we approach our western possessions!”

The placid Prue raises her eyes to mine with a
reproof so delicate that it could not be trusted to
words; and, after a moment, she resumes her knitting
and I proceed.

These are my western estates, but my finest castles
are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic,
and my castles are all of perfect proportions,
and appropriately set in the most picturesque situations.
I have never been to Spain myself, but I
have naturally conversed much with travellers to
that country; although, I must allow, without deriving
from them much substantial information
about my property there. The wisest of them told
me that there were more holders of real estate in
Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of,
and they are all great proprietors. Every one of
them possesses a multitude of the stateliest castles.
From conversation with them you easily gather
that each one considers his own castles much the
largest and in the loveliest positions. And, after I

had heard this said, I verified it, by discovering that
all my immediate neighbors in the city were great
Spanish proprietors.

One day as I raised my head from entering some
long and tedious accounts in my books, and began
to reflect that the quarter was expiring, and that I
must begin to prepare the balance-sheet, I observed
my subordinate, in office but not in years, (for poor
old Titbottom will never see sixty again!) leaning
on his hand, and much abstracted.

“Are you not well, Titbottom!” asked I.

“Perfectly, but I was just building a castle in
Spain,” said he.

I looked at his rusty coat, his faded hands, his sad
eye, and white hair, for a moment, in great surprise,
and then inquired,

“Is it possible that you own property there
too?”

He shook his head silently; and still leaning on
his hand, and with an expression in his eye, as if he
were looking upon the most fertile estate of Andalusia,
he went on making his plans; laying out his
gardens, I suppose, building terraces for the vines,
determining a library with a southern exposure, and
resolving which should be the tapestried chamber.

“What a singular whim,” thought I, as I watched
Titbottom and filled up a cheque for four hundred

dollars, my quarterly salary, “that a man who owns
castles in Spain should be deputy book-keeper at
nine hundred dollars a year!”

When I went home I ate my dinner silently, and
afterward sat for a long time upon the roof of the
house, looking at my western property, and thinking
of Titbottom.

It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have
ever been to Spain to take possession and report to
the rest of us the state of our property there. I, of
course, cannot go, I am too much engaged. So is Titbottom.
And I find it is the case with all the proprietors.
We have so much to detain us at home that we
cannot get away. But it is always so with rich men.
Prue sighed once as she sat at the window and saw
Bourne, the millionaire, the President of innumerable
companies, and manager and director of all the
charitable societies in town, going by with wrinkled
brow and hurried step. I asked her why she sighed.

“Because I was remembering that my mother
used to tell me not to desire great riches, for they
occasioned great cares,” said she.

“They do indeed,” answered I, with emphasis,
remembering Titbottom, and the impossibility of
looking after my Spanish estates.

Prue turned and looked at me with mild surprise;
but I saw that her mind had gone down the street

with Bourne. I could never discover if he held
much Spanish stock. But I think he does. All
the Spanish proprietors have a certain expression.
Bourne has it to a remarkable degree. It is a kind
of look, as if, in fact, a man's mind were in Spain.
Bourne was an old lover of Prue's, and he is not
married, which is stranger for a man in his position.

It is not easy for me to say how I know so much,
as I certainly do, about my castles in Spain. The
sun always shines upon them. They stand lofty
and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little
hazy and dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer,
but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests.
All the sublime mountains, and beautiful
valleys, and soft landscape, that I have not yet seen,
are to be found in the grounds. They command a
noble view of the Alps; so fine, indeed, that I
should be quite content with the prospect of them
from the highest tower of my castle, and not care
to go to Switzerland.

The neighboring ruins, too, are as picturesque as
those of Italy, and my desire of standing in the
Coliseum, and of seeing the shattered arches of the
Aqueducts stretching along the Campagna and
melting into the Alban Mount, is entirely quenched.
The rich gloom of my orange groves is gilded by
fruit as brilliant of complexion and exquisite of

flavor as any that ever dark-eyed Sorrento girls,
looking over the high plastered walls of southern
Italy, hand to the youthful travellers, climbing on
donkeys up the narrow lane beneath.

The Nile flows through my grounds. The Desert
lies upon their edge, and Damascus stands in my
garden. I am given to understand, also, that the
Parthenon has been removed to my Spanish possessions.
The Golden-Horn is my fish-preserve; my
flocks of golden fleece are pastured on the plain of
Marathon, and the honey of Hymettus is distilled
from the flowers that grow in the vale of Enna—
all in my Spanish domains.

From the windows of those castles look the beautiful
women whom I have never seen, whose portraits
the poets have painted. They wait for me
there, and chiefly the fair-haired child, lost to my
eyes so long ago, now bloomed into an impossible
beauty. The lights that never shone, glance at
evening in the vaulted halls, upon banquets that
were never spread. The bands I have never collected,
play all night long, and enchant the brilliant
company, that was never assembled, into silence.

In the long summer mornings the children that I
never had, play in the gardens that I never planted.
I hear their sweet voices sounding low and far away,
calling, “Father! Father!” I see the lost fair-haired

girl, grown now into a woman, descending
the stately stairs of my castle in Spain, stepping
out upon the lawn, and playing with those children.
They bound away together down the garden; but
those voices linger, this time airily calling, “Mother!
mother!”

But there is a stranger magic than this in my
Spanish estates. The lawny slopes on which, when
a child, I played, in my father's old country place,
which was sold when he failed, are all there, and
not a flower faded, nor a blade of grass sere. The
green leaves have not fallen from the spring woods
of half a century ago, and a gorgeous autumn has
blazed undimmed for fifty years, among the trees I
remember.

Chestnuts are not especially sweet to my palate
now, but those with which I used to prick my
fingers when gathering them in New Hampshire
woods are exquisite as ever to my taste, when I
think of eating them in Spain. I never ride horseback
now at home; but in Spain, when I think of
it, I bound over all the fences in the country, barebacked
upon the wildest horses. Sermons I am apt
to find a little soporific in this country; but in Spain
I should listen as reverently as ever, for proprietors
must set a good example on their estates.

Plays are insufferable to me here—Prue and I never

go. Prue, indeed, is not quite sure it is moral; but
the theatres in my Spanish castles are of a prodigious
splendor, and when I think of going there,
Prue sits in a front box with me—a kind of royal
box—the good woman, attired in such wise as I
have never seen her here, while I wear my white
waistcoat, which in Spain has no appearance of
mending, but dazzles with immortal newness, and
is a miraculous fit.

Yes, and in those castles in Spain, Prue is not the
placid, breeches-patching helpmate, with whom
you are acquainted, but her face has a bloom which
we both remember, and her movement a grace
which my Spanish swans emulate, and her voice a
music sweeter than those that orchestras discourse.
She is always there what she seemed to me when I
fell in love with her, many and many years ago.
The neighbors called her then a nice, capable girl;
and certainly she did knit and darn with a zeal and
success to which my feet and my legs have testified
for nearly half a century. But she could spin a finer
web than ever came from cotton, and in its subtle
meshes my heart was entangled, and there has
reposed softly and happily ever since. The neighbors
declared she could make pudding and cake
better than any girl of her age; but stale bread
from Prue's hand was ambrosia to my palate.

“She who makes every thing well, even to making
neighbors speak well of her, will surely make
a good wife,” said I to myself when I knew her;
and the echo of a half century answers, “a good
wife.”

So, when I meditate my Spanish castles, I see
Prue in them as my heart saw her standing by her
father's door. “Age cannot wither her.” There
is a magic in the Spanish air that paralyzes Time.
He glides by, unnoticed and unnoticing. I greatly
admire the Alps, which I see so distinctly from
my Spanish windows; I delight in the taste of the
southern fruit that ripens upon my terraces; I enjoy
the pensive shade of the Italian ruins in my
gardens; I like to shoot crocodiles, and talk with
the Sphinx upon the shores of the Nile, flowing
through my domain; I am glad to drink sherbet in
Damascus, and fleece my flocks on the plains of
Marathon; but I would resign all these for ever
rather than part with that Spanish portrait of Prue
for a day. Nay, have I not resigned them all for
ever, to live with that portrait's changing original?

I have often wondered how I should reach my
castles. The desire of going comes over me very
strongly sometimes, and I endeavor to see how I
can arrange my affairs, so as to get away. To tell

the truth, I am not quite sure of the route,—I
mean, to that particular part of Spain in which
my estates lie. I have inquired very particularly,
but nobody seems to know precisely. One morning
I met young Aspen, trembling with excitement.

“What's the matter?” asked I with interest, for
I knew that he held a great deal of Spanish stock.

“Oh!” said he, “I'm going out to take possession.
I have found the way to my castles in
Spain.”

“Dear me!” I answered, with the blood streaming
into my face; and, heedless of Prue, pulling
my glove until it ripped—“what is it?”

“The direct route is through California,” answered
he.

“But then you have the sea to cross afterward,”
said I, remembering the map.

“Not at all,” answered Aspen, “the road runs
along the shore of the Sacramento River.”

He darted away from me, and I did not meet him
again. I was very curious to know if he arrived
safely in Spain, and was expecting every day to
hear news from him of my property there, when,
one evening, I bought an extra, full of California
news, and the first thing upon which my eye fell
was this: “Died, in San Francisco, Edward Aspen,

Esq., aged 35.” There is a large body of the Spanish
stockholders who believe with Aspen, and sail
for California every week. I have not yet heard
of their arrival out at their castles, but I suppose
they are so busy with their own affairs there, that
they have no time to write to the rest of us about
the condition of our property.

There was my wife's cousin, too, Jonathan Bud,
who is a good, honest, youth from the country, and,
after a few weeks' absence, he burst into the office
one day, just as I was balancing my books, and
whispered to me, eagerly:

“I've found my castle in Spain.”

I put the blotting-paper in the leaf deliberately,
for I was wiser now than when Aspen had excited
me, and looked at my wife's cousin, Jonathan Bud,
inquiringly.

“Polly Bacon,” whispered he, winking.

I continued the interrogative glance.

“She's going to marry me, and she'll show me
the way to Spain,” said Jonathan Bud, hilariously.

“She'll make you walk Spanish, Jonathan Bud,”
said I.

And so she does. He makes no more hilarious
remarks. He never bursts into a room. He does
not ask us to dinner. He says that Mrs. Bud does
not like smoking. Mrs. Bud has nerves and babies.

She has a way of saying, “Mr. Bud!” which destroys
conversation, and casts a gloom upon society.

It occurred to me that Bourne, the millionaire,
must have ascertained the safest and most expeditious
route to Spain; so I stole a few minutes one
afternoon, and went into his office. He was sitting
at his desk, writing rapidly, and surrounded by files
of papers and patterns, specimens, boxes, everything
that covers the tables of a great merchant.
In the outer rooms clerks were writing. Upon high
shelves over their heads, were huge chests, covered
with dust, dingy with age, many of them, and all
marked with the name of the firm, in large black
letters—“Bourne & Dye.” They were all numbered
also with the proper year; some of them
with a single capital B, and dates extending back
into the last century, when old Bourne made the
great fortune, before he went into partnership with
Dye. Everything was indicative of immense and
increasing prosperity.

There were several gentlemen in waiting to converse
with Bourne (we all call him so, familiarly,
down town), and I waited until they went out. But
others came in. There was no pause in the rush.
All kinds of inquiries were made and answered. At
length I stepped up.

“A moment, please, Mr. Bourne.”

He looked up hastily, wished me good morning,
which he had done to none of the others, and which
courtesy I attributed to Spanish sympathy.

“What is it, sir?” he asked, blandly, but with
wrinkled brow.

“Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in Spain?”
said I, without preface.

He looked at me for a few moments without
speaking, and without seeming to see me. His
brow gradually smoothed, and his eyes, apparently
looking into the street, were really, I have no doubt,
feasting upon the Spanish landscape.

“Too many, too many,” said he at length,
musingly, shaking his head, and without addressing
me.

I suppose he felt himself too much extended—
as we say in Wall Street. He feared, I thought,
that he had too much impracticable property elsewhere,
to own so much in Spain; so I asked,

“Will you tell me what you consider the shortest
and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne? for, of course,
a man who drives such an immense trade with all
parts of the world, will know all that I have come
to inquire.”

“My dear sir,” answered he wearily, “I have
been trying all my life to discover it; but none of

my ships have ever been there—none of my captains
have any report to make. They bring me, as
they brought my father, gold dust from Guinea;
ivory, pearls, and precious stones, from every part
of the earth; but not a fruit, not a solitary flower,
from one of my castles in Spain. I have sent clerks,
agents, and travellers of all kinds, philosophers,
pleasure-hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships,
to all sorts of places, but none of them ever saw or
heard of my castles, except one young poet, and he
died in a mad-house.”

“Mr. Bourne, will you take five thousand at
ninety-seven?” hastily demanded a man, whom, as
he entered, I recognized as a broker. “We'll make
a splendid thing of it.”

Bourne nodded assent, and the broker disappeared.

“Happy man!” muttered the merchant, as the
broker went out; “he has no castles in
Spain.”

“I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Bourne,”
said I, retiring.

“I am glad you came,” returned he; “but I
assure you, had I known the route you hoped to
ascertain from me, I should have sailed years and
years ago. People sail for the North-west Passage,
which is nothing when you have found it. Why

don't the English Admiralty fit out expeditions to
discover all our castles in Spain?”

He sat lost in thought.

“It's nearly post-time, sir,” said the clerk.

Mr. Bourne did not heed him. He was still
musing; and I turned to go, wishing him good
morning. When I had nearly reached the door,
he called me back, saying, as if continuing his
remarks—

“It is strange that you, of all men, should come
to ask me this question. If I envy any man, it is
you, for I sincerely assure you that I supposed you
lived altogether upon your Spanish estates. I once
thought I knew the way to mine. I gave directions
for furnishing them, and ordered bridal bouquets,
which were never used, but I suppose they
are there still.”

He paused a moment, then said slowly—“How
is your wife?”

I told him that Prue was well—that she was
always remarkably well. Mr. Bourne shook me
warmly by the hand.

“Thank you,” said he. “Good morning.”

I knew why he thanked me; I knew why he
thought that I lived altogether upon my Spanish
estates; I knew a little bit about those bridal bouquets.
Mr. Bourne, the millionaire, was an old

lover of Prue's. There is something very odd about
these Spanish castles. When I think of them, I
somehow see the fair-haired girl whom I knew
when I was not out of short jackets. When Bourne
meditates them, he sees Prue and me quietly at
home in their best chambers. It is a very singular
thing that my wife should live in another man's
castle in Spain.

At length I resolved to ask Titbottom if he had
ever heard of the best route to our estates. He
said that he owned castles, and sometimes there
was an expression in his face, as if he saw them. I
hope he did. I should long ago have asked him if
he had ever observed the turrets of my possessions
in the West, without alluding to Spain, if I had not
feared he would suppose I was mocking his poverty.
I hope his poverty has not turned his head, for he is
very forlorn.

One Sunday I went with him a few miles into
the country. It was a soft, bright day, the fields
and hills lay turned to the sky, as if every leaf and
blade of grass were nerves, bared to the touch of
the sun. I almost felt the ground warm under
my feet. The meadows waved and glittered, the
lights and shadows were exquisite, and the distant
hills seemed only to remove the horizon farther
away. As we strolled along, picking wild flowers,

for it was in summer, I was thinking what a fine
day it was for a trip to Spain, when Titbottom suddenly
exclaimed:

“Thank God! I own this landscape.”

“You,” returned I.

“Certainly,” said he.

“Why,” I answered, “I thought this was part
of Bourne's property?”

Titbottom smiled.

“Does Bourne own the sun and sky? Does
Bourne own that sailing shadow yonder? Does
Bourne own the golden lustre of the grain, or the
motion of the wood, or those ghosts of hills, that
glide pallid along the horizon? Bourne owns the
dirt and fences; I own the beauty that makes the
landscape, or otherwise how could I own castles in
Spain?”

That was very true. I respected Titbottom more
than ever.

“Do you know,” said he, after a long pause,
“that I fancy my castles lie just beyond those distant
hills. At all events, I can see them distinctly
from their summits.”

He smiled quietly as he spoke, and it was then I
asked:

“But, Titbottom, have you never discovered the
way to them?”

“Dear me! yes,” answered he, “I know the way
well enough; but it would do no good to follow it.
I should give out before I arrived. It is a long and
difficult journey for a man of my years and habits—
and income,” he added slowly.

As he spoke he seated himself upon the ground;
and while he pulled long blades of grass, and,
putting them between his thumbs, whistled shrilly,
he said:

“I have never known but two men who reached
their estates in Spain.”

“Indeed!” said I, “how did they go?”

“One went over the side of a ship, and the other
out of a third story window,” said Titbottom, fitting
a broad blade between his thumbs and blowing a
demoniacal blast.

“And I know one proprietor who resides upon
his estates constantly,” continued he.

“Who is that?”

“Our old friend Slug, whom you may see any
day at the asylum, just coming in from the hunt, or
going to call upon his friend the Grand Lama, or
dressing for the wedding of the Man in the Moon,
or receiving an ambassador from Timbuctoo. Whenever
I go to see him, Slug insists that I am the
Pope, disguised as a journeyman carpenter, and he
entertains me in the most distinguished manner.

He always insists upon kissing my foot, and I bestow
upon him, kneeling, the apostolic benediction.
This is the only Spanish proprietor in possession,
with whom I am acquainted.”

And, so saying, Titbottom lay back upon the
ground, and making a spy-glass of his hand, sur
veyed the landscape through it. This was a mar
vellous book-keeper of more than sixty!

“I know another man who lived in his Spanish
castle for two months, and then was tumbled out
head first. That was young Stunning who married
old Buhl's daughter. She was all smiles, and mamma
was all sugar, and Stunning was all bliss, for
two months. He carried his head in the clouds,
and felicity absolutely foamed at his eyes. He was
drowned in love; seeing, as usual, not what really
was, but what he fancied. He lived so exclusively
in his castle, that he forgot the office down town,
and one morning there came a fall, and Stunning
was smashed.”

Titbottom arose, and stooping over, contemplated
the landscape, with his head down between
his legs.

“It's quite a new effect, so,” said the nimble
book-keeper.

“Well,” said I, “Stunning failed?”

“Oh yes, smashed all up, and the castle in Spain

came down about his ears with a tremendous crash.
The family sugar was all dissolved into the original
cane in a moment. Fairy-times are over, are they?
Heigh-ho! the falling stones of Stunning's castle
have left their marks all over his face. I call them
his Spanish scars.”

“But, my dear Titbottom,” said I, “what is the
matter with you this morning, your usual sedateness
is quite gone?”

“It's only the exhilarating air of Spain,” he answered.
“My castles are so beautiful that I can
never think of them, nor speak of them, without
excitement; when I was younger I desired to reach
them even more ardently than now, because I heard
that the philosopher's stone was in the vault of one
of them.”

“Indeed,” said I, yielding to sympathy, “and I
have good reason to believe that the fountain of
eternal youth flows through the garden of one of
mine. Do you know whether there are any children
upon your grounds?”

“`The children of Alice call Bartrum father!”'
replied Titbottom, solemnly, and in a low voice, as
he folded his faded hands before him, and stood
erect, looking wistfully over the landscape. The
light wind played with his thin white hair, and his
sober, black suit was almost sombre in the sunshine.

The half bitter expression, which I had remarked
upon his face during part of our conversation, had
passed away, and the old sadness had returned to
his eye. He stood, in the pleasant morning, the
very image of a great proprietor of castles in Spain.

“There is wonderful music there,” he said:
“sometimes I awake at night, and hear it. It is
full of the sweetness of youth, and love, and a new
world. I lie and listen, and I seem to arrive at the
great gates of my estates. They swing open upon
noiseless hinges, and the tropic of my dreams receives
me. Up the broad steps, whose marble
pavement mingled light and shadow print with
shifting mosaic, beneath the boughs of lustrous
oleanders, and palms, and trees of unimaginable
fragrance, I pass into the vestibule, warm with
summer odors, and into the presence-chamber
beyond, where my wife awaits me. But castle, and
wife, and odorous woods, and pictures, and statues,
and all the bright substance of my household, seem
to reel and glimmer in the splendor, as the music
fails.

“But when it swells again, I clasp the wife to
my heart, and we move on with a fair society,
beautiful women, noble men, before whom the
tropical luxuriance of that world bends and bows
in homage; and, through endless days and nights

of eternal summer, the stately revel of our life proceeds.
Then, suddenly, the music stops. I hear
my watch ticking under the pillow. I see dimly
the outline of my little upper room. Then I fall
asleep, and in the morning some one of the boarders
at the breakfast-table says:

“`Did you hear the serenade last night, Mr. Titbottom.”'

I doubted no longer that Titbottom was a very
extensive proprietor. The truth is, that he was so
constantly engaged in planning and arranging his
castles, that he conversed very little at the office,
and I had misinterpreted his silence. As we walked
homeward, that day, he was more than ever tender
and gentle. “We must all have something to do in
this world,” said he, “and I, who have so much
leisure—for you know I have no wife nor children
to work for—know not what I should do, if I had
not my castles in Spain to look after.”

When I reached home, my darling Prue was sitting
in the small parlor, reading. I felt a little guilty
for having been so long away, and upon my only
holiday, too. So I began to say that Titbottom invited
me to go to walk, and that I had no idea we
had gone so far, and that—

“Don't excuse yourself,” said Prue, smiling as
she laid down her book; “I am glad you have enjoyed

yourself. You ought to go out sometimes, and
breathe the fresh air, and run about the fields, which
I am not strong enough to do. Why did you not
bring home Mr. Titbottom to tea? He is so lonely,
and looks so sad. I am sure he has very little comfort
in this life,” said my thoughtful Prue, as she
called Jane to set the tea-table.

“But he has a good deal of comfort in Spain,
Prue,” answered I.

“When was Mr. Titbottom in Spain,” inquired
my wife.

“Why, he is there more than half the time,” I
replied.

Prue looked quietly at me and smiled. “I see it
has done you good to breathe the country air,” said
she. “Jane, get some of the blackberry jam, and
call Adoniram and the children.”

So we went in to tea. We eat in the back parlor,
for our little house and limited means do not allow
us to have things upon the Spanish scale. It is better
than a sermon to hear my wife Prue talk to the
children; and when she speaks to me it seems
sweeter than psalm singing; at least, such as we
have in our church. I am very happy.

Yet I dream my dreams, and attend to my castles
in Spain. I have so much property there, that I
could not, in conscience, neglect it. All the years

of my youth, and the hopes of my manhood, are
stored away, like precious stones, in the vaults;
and I know that I shall find everything convenient,
elegant, and beautiful, when I come into possession.

As the years go by, I am not conscious that my
interest diminishes. If I see that age is subtly sifting
his snow in the dark hair of my Prue, I smile,
contented, for her hair, dark and heavy as when I
first saw it, is all carefully treasured in my castles
in Spain. If I feel her arm more heavily leaning
upon mine, as we walk around the squares, I press
it closely to my side, for I know that the easy grace
of her youth's motion will be restored by the elixir
of that Spanish air. If her voice sometimes falls
less clearly from her lips, it is no less sweet to me,
for the music of her voice's prime fills, freshly as
ever, those Spanish halls. If the light I love fades
a little from her eyes, I know that the glances she
gave me, in our youth, are the eternal sunshine of
my castles in Spain.

I defy time and change. Each year laid upon
our heads, is a hand of blessing. I have no doubt
that I shall find the shortest route to my possessions
as soon as need be. Perhaps, when Adoniram is
married, we shall all go out to one of my castles to
pass the honey-moon.

Ah! if the true history of Spain could be written,

what a book were there! The most purely romantic
ruin in the world is the Alhambra. But of the
Spanish castles, more spacious and splendid than any
possible Alhambra, and for ever unruined, no towers
are visible, no pictures have been painted, and only
a few ecstatic songs have been sung. The pleasure-dome
of Kubla Khan, which Coleridge saw in Xanadu
(a province with which I am not familiar), and
a fine Castle of Indolence belonging to Thomson,
and the Palace of art which Tennyson built as
a “lordly pleasure-house” for his soul, are among
the best statistical accounts of those Spanish estates.
Turner, too, has done for them much the same service
that Owen Jones has done for the Alhambra.
In the vignette to Moore's Epicurean you will find
represented one of the most extensive castles in
Spain; and there are several exquisite studies from
others, by the same artists, published in Rogers's
Italy.

But I confess I do not recognize any of these as
mine, and that fact makes me prouder of my own
castles, for, if there be such boundless variety of
magnificence in their aspect and exterior, imagine
the life that is led there, a life not unworthy such
a setting.

If Adoniram should be married within a reasonable
time, and we should make up that little family party

to go out, I have considered already what society I
should ask to meet the bride. Jephthah's daughter
and the Chevalier Bayard, I should say—and fair
Rosamond with Dean Swift—King Solomon and the
Queen of Sheba would come over, I think, from his
famous castle—Shakespeare and his friend the Marquis
of Southampton might come in a galley with
Cleopatra; and, if any guest were offended by her
presence, he should devote himself to the Fair One
with Golden Locks. Mephistophiles is not personally
disagreeable, and is exceedingly well-bred in
society, I am told; and he should come tête-à-téte
with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. Spenser should escort
his Faerie Queen, who would preside at the tea-table.

Mr. Samuel Weller I should ask as Lord of Misrule,
and Dr. Johnson as the Abbot of Unreason. I would
suggest to Major Dobbin to accompany Mrs. Fry;
Alcibiades would bring Homer and Plato in his
purple-sailed galley; and I would have Aspasia,
Ninon de l'Enclos, and Mrs. Battle, to make up a
table of whist with Queen Elizabeth. I shall order
a seat placed in the oratory for Lady Jane Grey and
Joan of Arc. I shall invite General Washington to
bring some of the choicest cigars from his plantation
for Sir Walter Raleigh; and Chaucer, Browning,
and Walter Savage Landor, should talk with Goethe,

who is to bring Tasso on one arm and Iphigenia on
the other.

Dante and Mr. Carlyle would prefer, I suppose,
to go down into the dark vaults under the castle.
The Man in the Moon, the Old Harry, and William
of the Wisp would be valuable additions, and the
Laureate Tennyson might compose an official ode
upon the occasion: or I would ask “They” to say
all about it.

Of course there are many other guests whose
names I do not at the moment recall. But I should
invite, first of all, Miles Coverdale, who knows
every thing about these places and this society, for
he was at Blithedale, and he has described “a select
party” which he attended at a castle in the air.

Prue has not yet looked over the list. In fact I
am not quite sure that she knows my intention.
For I wish to surprise her, and I think it would be
generous to ask Bourne to lead her out in the bridal
quadrille. I think that I shall try the first waltz
with the girl I sometimes seem to see in my fairest
castle, but whom I very vaguely remember. Titbottom
will come with old Burton and Jaques.
But I have not prepared half my invitations. Do
you not guess it, seeing that I did not name, first of
all, Elia, who assisted at the “Rejoicings upon the
new year's coming of age”?

And yet, if Adoniram should never marry?—or if
we could not get to Spain?—or if the company
would not come?

What then? Shall I betray a secret? I have
already entertained this party in my humble little
parlor at home; and Prue presided as serenely as
Semiramis over her court. Have I not said that I
defy time, and shall space hope to daunt me? I
keep books by day, but by night books keep me.
They leave me to dreams and reveries. Shall I confess,
that sometimes when I have been sitting, reading
to my Prue, Cymbeline, perhaps, or a Canterbury
tale, I have seemed to see clearly before me the
broad highway to my castles in Spain; and as she
looked up from her work, and smiled in sympathy,
I have even fancied that I was already there.