midnight
It was this . `` The whole period of the Middle Ages seems very strange to me . At times I can not persuade myself that such things could have been , as history tells us ; that such a strange world was a part of our world , -- that such a strange life was a part of the life , which seems to us who are living it now , so passionless and commonplace . It is only when I stand amid ruined castles , that look at me so mournfully , and behold the heavy armour of old knights , hanging upon the wainscot of Gothic chambers ; or when I walk amid the aisles of some dusky minster , whose walls are narrative ofhoar antiquity , and whose very bells have been baptized , and see the carved oaken stalls in the choir , where so many generations of monks have sat and sung , and the tombs , where now they sleep in silence , to awake no more to their midnight psalms ; -- it is only at such times , that the history of the Middle Ages is a reality to me , and not a passage in romance . `` Likewise the illuminated manuscripts of those ages have something of this power of making the dead Past a living Present in my mind . What curious figures are emblazoned on the creaking parchment , making its yellow leaves laugh with gay colors ! You seem to come upon them unawares .