Hearts and Altars Author:Robert Bell General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1852 Original Publisher: Colburn Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select ... more »from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: II. My earliest recollections of my father do not extend to his form or lineaments. I remember nothing of him except his voice, the tone of which lingers as distinctly in my ear to this hour as if I had heard it yesterday. It was low and tremulous, and seemed to have a thrill in it of suffering or anger, I know not which. My childhood was passed under the guardianship of my mother, with whom I lived in a solitude which I cannot contemplate even at this distance of time without shuddering. Our house was situated on a lonely moor in the north of England, close upon the bleak border, -- a dismal neighbourhood, savage, cold, and desolate. The mansion was built so far back as the reign of Richard II., and, with its flanking walls, crumbling on all sides into ruin, and its paved court-yards, covered a considerable area. Most of the apartments were large and gloomy, and hung with arras, of so great an age, that the colours had grown dim, and the thread in many places appeared to be dropping into powder. Long corridors and low vaulted rooms ran round the quadrangle; and as the uses for which this huge pile was designed by its founders had long since passed away, with the bands of retainers and extravagant pomp that distinguished the days of feudal hospitality and royal progresses, only a small part of it was kept up in an inhabitable condition by my mother. Unfortunately for my after life, the part so preserved lay in the very centre of the mansion, approachable only by dark passages, utterly obscure at night, and barely lighted in the daytime by narrow latticed windows, such as w...« less