I went up in the evening to view the solitary ruins by moonlight, and sat upon the green sward of the old esplanade near the magazine. All was hushed, and association, with its busy pencil, wrought many a startling picture. The broken ruins around me, the lofty hills adjacent, the quiet lake at my feet, all fading into chaos as the evening shadows came on, were in consonance with the gravity of thought induced by the place and its traditions.
"The darkening woods, the fading trees,
The grasshopper's last feeble sound,
The flowers just waken'd by the breeze,
All leave the stillness more profound.
The twilight takes a deeper shade,
The dusky pathways blacker grow,
And silence reigns in glen and glade—
All, all is mute below."
Miller's Evening Hymn.