Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 1.djvu/123

 while the arch, which appeared to spring from these capitals, had, for a keystone, heads more monstrous than those of the fabled animals of Ctesias; or so ludicrous, that you forgot the classic Griffin in the grotesque conception of the Italian artist. Here was a gibbering monkey, there a grinning Pulcinello; now you viewed a chattering devil, which might have figured in the Temptation of St. Anthony; and now a mournful, mystic, bearded countenance, which might have flitted in the back scene of a Witches' Sabbath.

A long Gallery wound through the upper story of two other sides of the quadrangle, and beneath were the show suite of apartments, with a sight of which the admiring eyes of curious tourists were occasionally delighted.

The grey stone walls of this antique edifice were, in many places, thickly covered with ivy, and other parasitical plants, the deep green of