To add ‚clat to the event, it is arranged that the nuptial ceremony
shall take place in the spacious old mansion of General P--, in the
city. General P--is a distant relation of the Rovero family. His
mansion is one of those noble old edifices, met here and there in
the South--especially in South Carolina-which strongly mark the
grandeur of their ancient occupants. It is a massive pile of marble,
of mixed style of Grecian and Doric architecture, with three stories
divided by projecting trellised arbours, and ornamented with fluted
columns surmounted with ingeniously-worked and sculptured capitals,
set off with grotesque figures. The front is ornamented with tablets
of bas-relief, variegated and chaste. These are bordered with
scroll-work, chases of flowers, graces, and historical designs.
Around the lower story, palisades and curvatures project here and
there between the divisions, forming bowers shaded by vines and
sweet-scented blossoms. These are diffusing their fragrance through
the spacious halls and corridors beneath. The stately old pile wears
a romantic appearance; but it has grown brown with decay, and stands
in dumb testimony of that taste and feeling which prevailed among
its British founders. The garden in which it stands, once rich with
the choicest flowers of every clime, now presents an area overgrown
with rank weeds, decaying hedges, dilapidated walks, and sickly
shrubbery. The hand that once nurtured this pretty scene of buds and
blossoms with so much care has passed away.
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