She was the solitary cicerone of the place.

She had lived there, a lone and childless widow, for thirty years; and, of all the persons I have ever seen, would furnish forth the best heroine to one of those pictures of homely life which Wordsworth has dignified with the partriarchal tenderness of his genius.
They wound a narrow passage, and came to the ruins of the great hall.
Its gothic arches still sprang lightly upward on either side; and, opening a large stone box that stood in a recess, the old woman showed them the gloves, and the helmet, and the tattered banners, which had belonged to that Godolphin who had fought side by side with Sidney, when he, whose life--as the noblest of British lyrists hath somewhere said--was "poetry put into action,"(1) received his death-wound in the field of Zutphen.
Thence they ascended by the dilapidated and crumbling staircase, to a small room, in which the visitors were always expected to rest themselves, and enjoy the scene in the garden below.

A large chasm yawned where the casement once was; and round this aperture the ivy wreathed itself in fantastic luxuriance.

A sort of ladder, suspended from this chasm to the ground, afforded a convenience for those who were tempted to a short excursion by the view without.
And the view _was_ tempting! A smooth green lawn, surrounded by shrubs and flowers, was ornamented in the centre by a fountain.

The waters were, it is true, dried up; but the basin, and the "Triton with his wreathed shell," still remained.