CHAPTER XIII

     They told me, by the sentence of the law,
     They had commission to seize all thy fortune. 
     Here stood a ruffian with a horrid face,
     Lording it o’er a pile of massy plate,
     Tumbled into a heap for public sale;
     There was another, making villainous jests
     At thy undoing; he had ta’en possession
     Of all thy ancient most domestic ornaments.

          Otway.

Early next morning Mannering mounted his horse and, accompanied by his servant, took the road to Ellangowan.  He had no need to inquire the way.  A sale in the country is a place of public resort and amusement, and people of various descriptions streamed to it from all quarters.

After a pleasant ride of about an hour, the old towers of the ruin presented themselves in the landscape.  The thoughts, with what different feelings he had lost sight of them so many years before, thronged upon the mind of the traveller.  The landscape was the same; but how changed the feelings, hopes, and views of the spectator!  Then life and love were new, and all the prospect was gilded by their rays.  And now, disappointed in affection, sated with fame and what the world calls success, his mind, goaded by bitter and repentant recollection, his best hope was to find a retirement in which he might nurse the melancholy that was to accompany him to his grave.  ’Yet why should an individual mourn over the instability of his hopes and the vanity of his prospects?  The ancient chiefs who erected these enormous and massive towers to be the fortress of their race and the seat of their power,—­ could they have dreamed the day was to come when the last of their descendants should be expelled, a ruined wanderer, from his possessions!  But Nature’s bounties are unaltered.  The sun will shine as fair on these ruins, whether the property of a stranger or of a sordid and obscure trickster of the abused law, as when the banners of the founder first waved upon their battlements.’

These reflections brought Mannering to the door of the house, which was that day open to all.  He entered among others, who traversed the apartments, some to select articles for purchase, others to gratify their curiosity.  There is something melancholy in such a scene, even under the most favourable circumstances.  The confused state of the furniture, displaced for the convenience of being easily viewed and carried off by the purchasers, is disagreeable to the eye.  Those articles which, properly and decently arranged, look creditable and handsome, have then a paltry and wretched appearance; and the apartments, stripped of all that render them commodious and comfortable, have an aspect of ruin and dilapidation.  It is disgusting also to see the scenes of domestic society and seclusion thrown open to the gaze of the curious and the vulgar, to hear their coarse speculations and brutal jests upon the fashions and furniture to which they are unaccustomed,—­a frolicsome humour much cherished by the whisky which in Scotland is always put in circulation on such occasions.  All these are ordinary effects of such a scene as Ellangowan now presented; but the moral feeling, that in this case they indicated the total ruin of an ancient and honourable family, gave them treble weight and poignancy.