“The natural effect of the cause which produced it,” responded the professor. “Here all the horrors of war have been exhibited on the most comprehensive scale, and what warfare left untouched time has since destroyed. Nothing meets the eye but blackened buildings and tottering walls. The country is a wilderness—the town a desert. A little time since all was busy—all was fertile; and every nook and corner resounded with the stir of the artisan at his craft, and the mirth of the idler at his pleasure.”
“What part of the island was this called?” inquired Oriel.
“These are the shores of Kent, so called from the ancient word Kenned, known or famous,” replied Fortyfolios. “It was called the garden of England, and, if the accounts which describe it are to be depended on, well did it deserve the title. It was one continued field of fruit, and flowers, and grain. Forests of magnificent timber afforded materials for the carpenter and the ship-builder—plantations of hops gave employment to the cultivators, the merchants, and the brewers of malt liquors; and orchards of cherries were in constant demand from one end of the island to the other. Now the timber has either been cut down, or died of natural decay—the hop gardens have given place to crops of luxuriant weeds—and the sweet and luscious fruits have become wild and sour.”
“Here is an extensive collection of ruins on the left—and it seems once to have been an important place,” observed the young merchant.
“It was so,” said the professor. “There were the public dockyards, the arsenal, a college for the education of youth to the profession of war, manufactures on the most extensive scale of materials employed in fitting out ships for the war or merchant service, and conveniences for traffic or accumulation of all sorts of naval and military stores. There were foundries for cannon—manufactories of cordage, shot, nails, and ship biscuit—magazines for the safe deposit of gunpowder—yards for ship-building, and warehouses for apparel: now you see nothing but the bare walls rising up from the mass of ruins of which they are a portion. In solitude the wild dog howls where all was human life and industry; and with the boldness of long indulgence, the bats congregate in the chambers of the merchants.”
“Here are the remains of a more stately structure than any we have hitherto passed—was it a palace?” inquired Oriel Porphyry.
“It was nothing more than a hospital for poor sailors, such as had been maimed in the service of their country,” replied Fortyfolios.
“Indeed!” exclaimed the young merchant, with considerable surprise.
“Nothing else, I assure you,” added his tutor.
“The government were remarkably attentive to the wants of their seamen then—they must have valued their services very high to have lodged them in so sumptuous a building as this appears to have been,” observed Oriel.