The Royal Promenade, From the Secret of Ravelston, a Novel

Everything that Jane could see beyond the gate was dried up and dead, everything as far as she could see! The lofty trees had all their leaves, but they were black and withered. The once graceful branches were tangled and twisted. There was no living thing in sight, not even birds flew above the inert land. Only the wind was heard by Jane, and nothing else! And permeating all of it, was a foul odor of rot and death. “How can this be?” she asked herself, “Only a gate apart, a single wall away, there is such abundant life, and here all is dead.” “There is no incident of nature that could have caused this!” It couldn’t have been a drought, she thought, for it had rained the night before, nor could it have been a fire. The earth was dead below her feet and also all which was above it. Yet, she could not help but see, the beauty of the shape of the sprawling landscape— The carefully trimmed and winding bushes, the newly planted flower beds, the elegantly lined and soaring oaks and pines which once adorned the royal Promenade. They were all dead, though. As if a furious ghost had passed above this place at its full prime, and smothered in one instant all its life, and left it still and desolate.