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vol.2 p.125
the top, being the simple boundary of their respective
limits. All the rest was waste: no other part of the house
is habitable. The chambers unwindowed, and almost unroofed,
fluttered with rags of ancient tapestry, were the haunts of
daws, and pigeons; which burst out in clouds of dust, when
the doors were opened: while the floors, yielding to the
tread, made curiosity dangerous. A few pictures, heir-looms
of the wall, which have long deserved oblivion, by I know
not what fate, were the only appendages of this dissolving
pile, which had triumphed over the injuries of time.
Shakespear's castle of Macbeth could not have been more the
haunt of swallows and martins, than this. You see them every
where about the ruins; either twittering on broken coins;
threading some fractured arch; or pursuing each other, in
screaming circles, round the walls of the castle *.
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