Foliage carved in the stone, and emulating the mastery of Nature's hand, yet remained to tell how many times the leaves outside had come and gone, while it lived on unchanged.

The broken figures supporting the burden of the chimney-piece, though mutilated, were still distinguishable for what they had been--far different from the dust without--and showed sadly by the empty hearth, like creatures who had outlived their kind, and mourned their own too slow decay.
In some old time--for even change was old in that old place--a wooden partition had been constructed in one part of the chamber to form a sleeping-closet, into which the light was admitted at the same period by a rude window, or rather niche, cut in the solid wall.

This screen, together with two seats in the broad chimney, had at some forgotten date been part of the church or convent; for the oak, hastily appropriated to its present purpose, had been little altered from its former shape, and presented to the eye a pile of fragments of rich carving from old monkish stalls.
An open door leading to a small room or cell, dim with the light that came through leaves of ivy, completed the interior of this portion of the ruin.

It was not quite destitute of furniture.

A few strange chairs, whose arms and legs looked as though they had dwindled away with age; a table, the very spectre of its race: a great old chest that had once held records in the church, with other quaintly-fashioned domestic necessaries, and store of fire-wood for the winter, were scattered around, and gave evident tokens of its occupation as a dwelling-place at no very distant time.
The child looked around her, with that solemn feeling with which we contemplate the work of ages that have become but drops of water in the great ocean of eternity.