"In that little town there was,and I believe is,a school where the elements of human knowledge were communicated to me,for some hours of every day,during a considerable time.The path to it lay across the rivulet and past the mill;from which point we could either journey through the fields below the old castle,and the wood which surrounded it,or along a road at the other side of the ruin,close to the gateway of which it passed.The former track led through two or three beautiful fields,the sylvan domain of the keep on one hand,and the brook on the other;while an oak or two,like giant warders advanced from the wood,broke the sunshine of the green with a soft and graceful shadow.How often,on my way to school,have I stopped beneath the tree to collect the fallen acorns;how often run down to the stream to pluck a branch of the hawthorn which hung over the water!The road which passed the castle joined,beyond these fields,the path which traversed them.It took,I well remember,a certain solemn and mysterious interest from the ruin.The shadow of the archway,the discolorizations of time on all the walls,the dimness of the little thicket which encircled it,the traditions of its immeasurable age,made St.Quentin's Castle a wonderful and awful fabric in the imagination of a child;and long after I last saw its mouldering roughness,I never read of fortresses,or heights,or spectres,or banditti,without connecting them with the one ruin of my childhood.
第8章 SCHOOLS：LLANBLETHIANPARISLONDON(2)（3 / 3）