KENILWORTH CASTLE.
Reading edition
Willis, the American traveller, in his "Famous Persons and Famous Places," observes that, when visiting Kenilworth, he noticed with surprise that in one place the swelling root of a creeper had lifted one arch from its base, and the protruding branch of a chance spring tree (sown, perhaps, by a field-sparrow) had unseated the keystone of the next. And so perish castles and reputations—the masonry of the human hand, and the fabrics of human thought—not by the strength which they feared, but by the weakness of trifling things which they despised.
Little did John O'Gaunt think, when these rudely-hewn blocks were heaved into their seats by his herculean workmen, that, after resisting fire and foe, they would be sapped and overthrown at last by a vine-tendril and a sparrow!