CHAPTER IV.OLD ENGLISH HOUSES.

Willie O’Middlebrough’s tumble-car,Many were better, and none waur.

With a carriage so antique, one is not surprised to find gears of corresponding character. Consequently, as in Cornwall, so here, collars of straw and a few ropes often serve to harness out the team.

As might be supposed, the inhabitants of one dale form a little community or clan where every one is known to the rest, and where a great degree of sociality and familiarity prevails; but the whole dale sub-divides itself again into neighbourhoods, where astrongeresprit du corpsexists. The dales are singularly marked by lines of ravines and streams, which run down the sides of the fells from the bogs and springs on the heights. These lines are commonly fringed on the lower slopes by alders and other water-loving trees. The smaller streams are called sikes, the larger gills, and the largest, being generally those which run along the dale, becks. The space from gill to gill generally constitutes a neighbourhood, or if that space is small, it may include two or three gills. Within this boundary they feel it a duty, established by time and immemorial usage, to perform all offices of good neighbourhood, and especially that of associating together. For instance, when a birth is about to take place, they have what is called a Shout. The nearest neighbour undertakes the office of herald. She runs from house to house, through the neighbourhood, though it be dead of night, summoning all the wives with this cry—“Run, neighbour, run, for neighbour such-a-one wants thy help—and take thy warming-pan with thee!” The consequence is, that the house is speedily filled with women and warming-pans; a scene ludicrous, and, one would imagine, inconvenient enough too; but which the women of the dale all protest is a great comfort. When the child is born, there is a great ceremony of washing its head with brandy, which is performed by the father and his male friends, who are assembled for the occasion; and who then fall to, and make merry over their glasses.

The assembled women regale themselves with a feast of their own kind, being a particular species of bread made for the occasion, and sweet-butter; that is, butter mixed with rum and sugar, and having in truth no despicable flavour. Then comes the Wife-day, generally the second Sunday after the birth, when all the women of the neighbourhood who have attended at the Shout, go dressed in their best, to take tea, and hold a regular gossip, each carrying with her a shilling and the news of the neighbourhood. The highest possible offence that can be given, is to pass over a person within the understood limits of the neighbourhood—it is the dead-cut. Sometimes there occurs a false Shout, either through the wantonness or malice of some ne’er-do-weel. In the night, the mischievous wag runs from house to house, and calls all the good wives to the dwelling whence they are hourly expecting such asummons. When they get there, they find it a hoax, and come under the name of May-goslings,—the term applied to this species of dupe. The joke, however, is no venial one, for it is perhaps played off on a severe and tempestuous night, and the good dames muffled up in their cloaks, and lantern and warming-pan in hand, have to steer their way down the sides of hills, and across becks hidden by the drifts of snow. Similar assemblages take place at deaths, called Passings; and at Christmas, when they eat yule bread and yule cheese, made after a particular formula.

But perhaps the most characteristic custom of the Dales, is what is called their Sitting, or going-a-sitting. Knitting is a great practice in the dales. Men, women, and children, all knit. Formerly you might have met the wagoners knitting as they went along with their teams; but this is now rare; for the greater influx of visiters, and their wonder expressed at this and other practices, has made them rather ashamed of some of them, and shy of strangers observing them. But the men still knit a great deal in the houses; and the women knit incessantly. They have knitting schools, where the children are taught; and where they sing in chorus knitting songs, some of which appear as childish as the nursery stories of the last generation. Yet all of them bear some reference to their employment and mode of life; and the chorus, which maintains regularity of action and keeps up the attention, is of more importance than the words. Here is a specimen.

Bell-wether o’ Barking,[8]cries baa, baa,How many sheep have we lost to-day?Nineteen have we lost, one have we fun,Run Rockie,[9]run Rockie, run, run, run.

This is sung while they knit one round of the stocking; when the second round commences they beginagain—

Bell-wether o’ Barking, cries baa, baa,How many sheep have we lost to-day?Eighteen have we lost, two have we fun,Run Rockie, run Rockie, run, run, run;

and so on till they have knit twenty rounds, decreasing the numbers on the one hand, and increasing them on the other.These songs are sung not only by the children in the schools, but also by the people at their sittings, which are social assemblies of the neighbourhood, not for eating and drinking, but merely for society. As soon as it becomes dark, and the usual business of the day is over, and the young children are put to bed, they rake or put out the fire; take their cloaks and lanterns, and set out with their knitting to the house of the neighbour where the sitting falls in rotation, for it is a regularly circulating assembly from house to house through the particular neighbourhood. The whole troop of neighbours being collected, they sit and knit, sing knitting-songs, and tell knitting-stories. Here all the old stories and traditions of the dale come up, and they often get so excited that they say, “Neighbours, we’ll not part to night,” that is, till after twelve o’clock. All this time their knitting goes on with unremitting speed. They sit rocking to and fro like so many weird wizards. They burn no candle, but knit by the light of the peat fire. And this rocking motion is connected with a mode of knitting peculiar to the place, called swaving, which is difficult to describe. Ordinary knitting is performed by a variety of little motions, but this is a single uniform tossing motion of both the hands at once, and the body often accompanying it with a sort of sympathetic action. The knitting produced is just the same as by the ordinary method. They knit with crooked pins called pricks; and use a knitting-sheath consisting commonly of a hollow piece of wood, as large as the sheath of a dagger, curved to the side, and fixed in a belt called the cowband. The women of the north, in fact, often sport very curious knitting sheaths. We have seen a wisp of straw tied up pretty tightly, into which they stick their needles; and sometimes a bunch of quills of at least half-a-hundred in number. These sheaths and cowbands are often presents from their lovers to the young women. Upon the band there is a hook, upon which the long end of the knitting is suspended that it may not dangle. In this manner they knit for the Kendal market, stockings, jackets, nightcaps, and a kind of caps worn by the negroes, called bump-caps. These are made of very coarse worsted, and knit a yard in length, one half of which is turned into the other, before it has the appearance of a cap.

[8]A mountain over-looking Dent Dale.[9]The shepherd’s dog.

[8]A mountain over-looking Dent Dale.

[9]The shepherd’s dog.

The smallness of their earnings may be inferred from the pricefor the knitting of one of these caps being three-pence. But all knit, and knitting is not so much their sole labour as an auxiliary gain. The woman knits when her household work is done; the man when his out-of-door work is done; as they walk about their garden, or go from one village to another, the process is going on. We saw a stout rosy girl driving some cows to the field. She had all the character of a farmer’s servant. Without any thing on her head, in her short bedgown, and wooden clogs, she went on after them with a great stick in her hand. A lot of calves which were in the field, as she opened the gate, seemed determined to rush out, but the damsel laid lustily about them with her cudgel, and made them decamp. As we observed her proceedings from a house opposite, and, amused at the contest between her and the calves, said, “well done! dairymaid!” “O,” said the woman of the house, “that is no dairymaid: she is the farmer’s only daughter, and will have quite a fortune. She is the best knitter in the dale, and makes four bump-caps a day;” that is, the young lady of fortune earned a shilling a day.

The neighbouring dale, Garsdale, which is a narrower and more secluded one than Dent, is a great knitting dale. The old men sit there in companies round the fire, and so intent are they on their occupation and stories, that they pin cloths on their shins to prevent their being burnt; and sometimes they may be seen on a bench at the house-front, and where they have come out to cool themselves, sitting in a row knitting with their shin-cloths on, making the oddest appearance imaginable.

It may be supposed that eccentricity of character is the growth of such a place. A spirit of avarice is one of the most besetting evils. Many of the people are proprietors of their little homesteads; but there is no manufacturing beyond that of knitting, and money therefore is scarce. As it is not to be got very easily, the disposition to hold and save it becomes proportionably strong. They are extremely averse to suffer any money to go out of the dale; and will buy nothing, if they can avoid it, of people who travel the country with articles to sell; that would be sending money out of the dale; but they will go to a shop in the dale, and buy the same thing, not reflecting that the shopkeeper must first purchase it out of the dale, and therefore send money out of thedale to pay for it; and that what goes out of the dale for such articles comes back again by the sale of their horses, cattle, and sheep. A person who had been collector of the taxes in one of these dales, described to us the excessive difficulty he had to collect the money, even from those whom he knew always had it. They would put off payments as long as possible, and when he went and told them it was positively the last time he could call, they would sit doggedly, and declare that Samson was strong and Solomon was wise, but neither could pay money when they had not it. When they saw he would not depart, they would at length get up, go up stairs, where they always kept their cash. There he could hear them slowly open their chest, let down the lid again; open it again in awhile; then shut it again, and walk about the room as if unable to part with it. Then they would come to the top of the stairs, and shout down, saying they would not pay it. Finding him still immovable, they would come slowly down, but still persist—“I’ll nae gie it thee!” Then perhaps soon after, as if relenting, they would come towards him, open their hand with the money in it, extending it towards him; but when he offered to take it, snatch it away, saying—“Nay; tou’st niver hae it!” Finally, they would throw it to him, and with it abundance of angry words.

We met a man of a most gaunt and miserable appearance. A young man not more than thirty years of age. He had all the aspect of a penurious fellow. Dirty, unshaven, with soiled clothes and unwashed linen. He was coming along the lane with a rude tumbrel. This man was a thorough miser as ever existed. He lived totally alone. He suffered no woman to come about his house. If his clothes ever were washed they were done by himself, but he never bought an ounce of soap. He had bought a small property; a house and some adjoining crofts, where he lived. From this place he was called Tony of Todcrofts. This man was never known to part with money except to the tax-gatherer. If he wanted a board put on his cart, or a nail to keep it together, he bargained with the wheelwright or the blacksmith to pay them in peat. He baked his own oatcake, and paid the miller in peat for grinding his oats. He drank milk from his own cow, and made his own clogs, cut from his own alder. He contrived topurchase little, and what he did purchase he still paid for in peat. On the fells he cut peat all summer, making days of uncommon length; and in the autumn he drew it down with a sledge, and on one occasion, having no horse, he carried the sledge, every time he re-ascended the hills, upon his back.

In a neighbouring dale we passed the farm called Barben-park, which we were informed had been held by the family occupying it, on a lease for three lives, now being in the last life; of which the rent is so low that the tenant has oftener, on the rent-day, to receive money, on account of taxes and rates, than to pay any away. The house struck us as one of the most wild and solitary places of abode we had ever seen. It stood on the fell side, and for many miles there appeared no other house, nor any trace of human workmanship, but a few ruinous limekilns. The inhabitants were represented as wild and rude as their location, yet rich, the hills all round being covered with their sheep, ponies, cattle, and geese, which seemed in a great measure to run wild, and increase in a state of complete nature. There were said to be bulls of great savageness amongst them—the bulls of Barben being as awfully famous here as the bulls of Bashan of old; and foxes which the farmers often turned out, and chased with all their men for miles along the hills. A gentleman who had been at this house described the people as living like ancient kings in the rude abundance of earthly plenty. In Wensleydale there is a large farmer who keeps up the primitive custom of two meals a day, from Candlemas to Martinmas, which is the depth of winter. They breakfast at ten o’clock on cold meat, ale, cheese, etc.; and do not go into the house again till six in the evening, by which time they have not only returned from the fields, but have seen all their cattle served for the night, and a hot dinner of meat, puddings, and other good things, awaits them and their servants, who sit eating and drinking till bed-time.

In such a place a man’s appearance is no indication of his actual condition as respects property. Men who have good estates will be seen in a dress not worth three farthings altogether, except it were as a curiosity. They tell a story with great glee, of an old Friend, John Wilkinson, who sate in a patched coat on a large stone by the road-side, knitting, when a gentleman riding by,stopped and fixed his eyes on him as in compassion, and then threw him half-a-crown. He picked it up, told him he was much obliged to him, but added—“May be I’se richer na tou,” and returned him the money, desiring him to give it to some one who had greater need of it. In fact, the old Friend was wealthy; and in this case his pride overcame his acquisitive propensity; but that propensity is unquestionably very powerful here, and another instance may be mentioned which occasioned a good deal of laughter in the dale. An old man of some property having a colt which he wanted breaking, instead of putting it into the hands of the horsebreaker, thought he would break it himself, and save the cost. Having brought it to carry him pretty well, he was desirous of making it proof against starting at sudden alarms. He therefore concerted with his wife that she should stand concealed behind the yard gate, with her cloak thrown over her head, and as he entered on the back of his colt, should pop out, and cry—Boh! Accordingly, in he rode, out popped the good-wife, and cried Boh! so effectually, that the horse made a desperate leap, and flung the old man with a terrible shock upon the pavement. Recovering himself, however, without any broken bones, though sorely bruised and shaken, he said, as he limped into the house—“Ah, Mally! Mally! that was too big a boh! for an old man and a young colt!”

This propensity extends too amongst the women as well as the men: one woman declared she would as lieve part with the skin off her back as with her money. And yet there are things which they will not do for money, as thousands of the poor in other districts do,—they won’t work in a factory. The experiment was tried in this dale; but the people, like the French, would only work just when they pleased, and soon would not work at all. One would have thought that the strong love of gain amongst them, and their industrious habits, would have insured success to such an experiment; but they had too much love for their own firesides, and the enjoyment of the fresh mountain air; the parents had too much love for their children to subject them to the daily incarceration amid heat, and dust, and flue from the cotton. The scheme failed; the factory stands a ruinous monument of the attempt, and these beautiful dales are yet free from the factory system. And yet, peaceful, and far removed as they are from theacts and oppressions by which the strong build their houses, and add field to field out of the toils of the weak, they are not unacquainted with occasional instances of the evils done with impunity in the nooks of the world. I do not mean to represent such spots as Arcadias of purity and perfection. In the former chapter, and in this, I have indicated the vices which flourish, and the depravity which spreads in the shade of secluded life. The worst feature of these dales is the penurious spirit which little opportunity of profit produces; but I do not know that this spirit is a more sordid one than pervades the lower streets and alleys of large towns. There is along with it a strong sense of meum and tuum; a strong and uncorrupted moral principle; and no man is in danger of either being filched of his purse, or if he chanced to lose it by accident, of not regaining it. As the pressure of poverty is not so tremendous, so the extinction of the moral sense is by no means so great as in large towns; and, on the other hand, how much more delightful a view of the social life of these people we have, than of those of similar rank in our large manufacturing towns, and especially amongst the lower classes of the metropolis, where they tread on each other from their multitudes, and yet, from the same cause, pass through life strangers to each other. Here the social sympathies are strongly called forth; a sort of kinship seems to pervade the whole neighbourhood; and they pass their lives, if in a good deal of poverty, yet in mutual confidence, and very pleasant habits of association. Every man and every spot has a name and share of distinction. Every gill and beck have their appellation, as Hacker-gill; Arten-gill; How-gill; Cow-gill; Spice-gill; Thomas O’Harbour-gill; Backstone-gill; Kale-beck; Monkey-beck. Every house has its name;—as Tinkler’s Budget; Clint; Henthwaite-Hall; Coat-Fall; The Birchen Tree; Lile-Town; Riveling; Broad Mere; Hollins; Ellen-ha; Scale-gill-foot; Clinter-Bank; Hollow-Mill,—all names in Dent. Their names for one another are the most familiar possible; and they use the christian names, and attach the christian names of their fathers and mothers in such a manner, that it is difficult to get at many people’s surnames. They themselves know very well John o’ Davits Fletcher, Kit o’ Willie, or Willie o’ Kit o’ Willie; when if the real name of these people were John Davis, Catherine Broadbent, or William Thistlethwaite,they would have to consider awhile who was meant, if asked for by these names.

The dales-people have, therefore, evidently good elements; a strong social feeling; great simplicity of life and character; great honesty;—and the extension of the facility of voting in elections by dividing the counties, and appointing local polling places, has demonstrated that they have a strong love of liberal principles. All that appears wanting is exactly what is wanting in all these nooks, the introduction of more knowledge by the diffusion of sound and cheap publications, which would at once raise the moral tone, and inspire a more adventurous disposition, as is the case with the Scotch; so that those who do not find profitable employment in these pastoral dales, should set out in quest of more promising fields of action. As to crimes of magnitude, if you hear of them here, they are perpetrated by those in a higher class. There was a story ringing through one of the dales when we were there, which if half of it were true, was bad enough; and that we might arrive at as much truth as possible, we visited and conversed with those who were apparently likeliest to know it. It was said, and this too by those who had been in daily intercourse with the parties—that a very wealthy widow lady, who seemed to have been of weak intellect, or at least so unaccustomed to the world, and matters of business, as to become an easy prey to any clever and designing fellow, had entrusted the management of her affairs to a lawyer of a neighbouring town. That this lawyer twenty years ago made her will, in which he had appointed himself one of the executors, and a gentleman of high character, living at a great distance, the other. That he had left in the will ten per cent. on the accumulations of her income to the executors, besides 500l.each, for the trouble of their office. That a man brought up in the house of the lady was left 5000l.That from the original making of the will, it appeared never to have been read over again at any time to the lady; but that she had frequently dictated or written in pencil her instructions for its alteration in many particulars, which instructions or alterations at the final reading of the will after her decease nowhere appeared. That from the time the will was made till that of her death, twenty years, her lawyer-executor had continually tormented her with the fear of poverty. He had told her that her incomedid not meet her expenses; and through these representations had induced her to curtail her charities, and to lay down her carriage. This, however, did not suffice, and his representations made the poor lady miserable with the constant fear of coming poverty. In an agony of feeling on this subject, she one day sent her confidential servant to the lawyer to order him to sell her West Indian property. The lawyer said, “tell your mistress from me, that her West Indian property is not worth one farthing.” This the servant, whom we took the trouble of seeing, confirmed to us. The poor woman, haunted with the fear of poverty, at length took to her bed, and a few days before her death, when, indeed, her recovery was hopeless, her lawyer appeared at her bedside, and astounded her with the news, that so far from poverty, her West Indian property was very large, and her surplus income had actually accumulated in the funds to the sum of 80,000l.! and the hypocritical monster, with a refinement of cruelty perhaps never paralleled, humbly asked her, “how she would wish it disposed of?” The previous progress of the poor lady’s illness, and this overwhelming intelligence, rendered any present disposal impossible. She was thrown into the most fearful distress of mind,—and continually exclaiming, “O! please God that I might recover, how different things should be!” died on the third day.

When the will was read, the man who had 5000l.left him twenty years ago, found it left him still; and yet this man had for years lost the good opinion of the lady by his misconduct, and had not been permitted to come into her presence for two years. This was a striking proof that her will had not of late years been adapted to her altered mind. This man, who first came into the lady’s house as a shoeblack, or some such thing, and had on one occasion for his misconduct, the alternative offered him either to quit her service, or be carried up to the top of the neighbouring fell, on the back of one man and down again, while he was flogged by another, and was of so base a nature that he had chosen the flagellation, and continuance in a family where he was regarded with contempt—this man had now actually purchased the lady’s house of the executors, and lived in it! We walked past it, and naturally regarding it with a good deal of curiosity, a ludicrous scene occurred. I suppose, being strangers, and I having a moreen bag in my hand, it wasinferred from our particular observation of the place, that I was a lawyer, come down on the behalf of some dissatisfied expectant, to inquire into the case. However that might be, we presently saw the man’s wife, a very common-looking person, and appearing wonderfully out of place as the mistress of such a house, peeping at us from the windows, first on one side of the house, and then on the other, and at the same time attempting to screen herself from view by partly unclosing the shutters, and placing herself behind them. Soon after, her daughter too came with stealthy steps, out of the back door, crept cautiously round the house, and posted herself behind a bush to watch us; nor had we advanced far from the place, when the man himself came hurrying along, and went past us with very black and inquisitive looks.

We were told that on the will being read, the other executor being now present, was not more amazed at the fact of his becoming, unknown to himself, so greatly benefited by it, than he was at the general details of it. He inquired of the lawyer if the will had been read to the lady from time to time, in order to see whether it might require some alteration, and being told by him that it had not, he seemed filled with the utmost astonishment and indignation, and abruptly said to him—“Why, there is nothing but damnation for you!” and with that proceeded in such piercing terms to shew to the lawyer the cruelty and wickedness of his conduct, that the man trembled through every joint. It was added that the lawyer “never looked up afterwards,” but was in the greatest distress of mind, and daily wasted away. That when the tenants of the property, some time afterwards, went to pay their rents, they found him propped up in bed with bolsters and pillows, a most pitiable object; his inkhorn stitched into the bed-quilt by him, and yet his trembling hand scarcely able to direct his pen into it. That such was the effect of fear, and the visitings of conscience on his superstitious mind, that he drank the water which dropped from the church-roof in rainy weather, in the hope it would do him good!

This is a most extraordinary story, but we found one of these quiet dales ringing with it from end to end, and this was the account given by most trustworthy people, who knew the parties well, and one of whom was the lady’s confidential servant. Amongst the stories which we heard relating to the past state of these dales, wasone of the murder of a Highland drover, in its particulars bearing a striking resemblance to the story of Scott’s, told under that title. In Swale Dale is said to be a race of gipsies, a very fine set of people; and a remarkable account was given us of one of them, a singularly fine woman in her time, called Nance of Swaledale.

They have some singular customs in these dales, not yet mentioned. One is, when a sow litters, they allow her to champ oats out of a beehive to make the bees lucky; and salt is thrown into the fire, with the same object, when the bees swarm. Another of their customs arises out of their spirit of good neighbourhood, and mutual accommodation. In sheep-shearing time, instead of every one shearing his flock solitarily, they combine together in troops, and go from farm to farm, till they have completed the whole, and celebrate the end of their labours at each house, over a good supper given by the master; in which a sweet pie, that is, a huge pie of legs of mutton cut small and seasoned with currants, raisins, candied peel and sugar, and covered with a rich crust, figures on the board, accompanied by another favourite dish of fresh fried trout, and collops of ham, succeeded by gooseberry, or as they call them, berry pasties, and curd cheesecakes, and strong drink in plenty: a fiddle and a dance concluding the entertainment. The sheep-washing as well as the shearing is accompanied by this jollity.

In Deepdale, the farmers principally employ themselves at home in sorting and carding wool for knitting. They call itwelding; and the fine locks, selected for the legs of the stockings, they callleggin, whilst the coarser part goes by the name offooting. Two old people, Laurence and Peggy Hodgson o’ Dockensyke, were both upwards of seventy, when Peggy died. As she lay on her death-bed, she said to her husband, “Laury, promise me ya thing,—at tou’ill not wed again when I’se gane.” “Peggy, my lass,” answered Laurence, “do not mak me promise nae sic thing; tou knaws I’se but young yet.” The old fellow did wed again, and his brother, on returning from the wedding, made this report of the bride:—“Why-a, she’s a rough ane. I’se welded her owre and owre, an’ I canna find a lock o’ leggin in her; she’s a’ footing.”

Here then I close this second chapter of the nooks of the world, bearing grateful testimony that amongst the virtues of thedales-people, hospitality and attachment to their pleasant hills and valleys are pre-eminent. Wherever we went we found them only too happy to shew us all the beauties of their country, the winding becks, the scars and waterfalls, and prospects from the loftiest fells. When they had trudged with us for many a weary mile, through moss and moor, they would hang the girdle upon the peat-fire, and in a wonderfully short time have those delicious little kettle-cakes, or as they call them, sad-cakes, made of pastry, and thickly dotted with currants, smoking on the tea-table. And when you came in at a late hour, would bring you out those rural dainties, equally delicious, gooseberry tarts, with curds and cream. Long may the simple virtues of the Dales remain, while knowledge in its growth, roots out the more earthly traits of character, and implants a bolder spirit of enterprise, with the present moral integrity of mind.

Old Dalesman and traveller

Our country houses, and especially the older ones, are in themselves an inestimable national treasure. A thousand endearing associations gather about them. I cannot conceive a more deeply interesting work than a history of them which entered fully into the spirit of the times in which they were raised, and through which they have stood. Which should give us a view of the national changes which have passed over them; mighty revolutions, whether abrupt and violent, or slow and silent, in fortune, in manners, and in mind; and still more, which should, aided by family paintings, family documents and traditions, unfold their domestic annals. What an opening up of the human heart would be there! There is nothing more splendid, or surprising, or fearful, or pathetic, or happy and fanciful in romance, than would be there discovered. There is no success, no glory of life and action, no image of princely or baronial power, no strange freaks of fortune, none of the startling, or the moving incidents of humanity but have there enrolled themselves. What noble hearts; what great and pathetic spirits have dwelt at one time or other in those old places; and then what beautiful and bewitching creatures have cast through them the sunshine of their presence; have made them glad with their wit, and their gay fancies, and their strong affections; or have hallowed them with their sufferingsand their tears. O for the revelation of the fair forms; of the scenes of successful or sorrowful love; of the bridals and the burials; of the poetic dreams and pious aspirations, that have warmed or saddened these old halls through the flight of ages! Much of this is gone for ever; swept into the black and fathomless gulf of oblivion; but enough might be recovered to make us wonder at what has passed upon our ancestral soil, and to make us love it with a still deeper love. There is no portion of our national history, or point of our national character, but would be brought into the sweep of such narratives, and receive illustration from them. Our warriors, statesmen, philosophers, divines, poets, beauties and heroines more admirable than beauty could make them, would all figure there.[10]In the galleries of many of these houses, hang portraits to which traditions are attached that would freeze the blood, or make it dance with ardour and delight; that would chain up the listening spirit in breathless attention, in awe and curiosity. In the very writings by which the estates are secured, in old charters, wills, and other deeds, facts are traced and changes developed of the most singular character; and in the oral annals of the families exist correlative testimonies, which have been imprinted there by the intense interest of the circumstances themselves.

[10]This was written four years ago. Since then the author has published the first volume of such a work, under the title of “Visits to Remarkable Places, Old Halls, Battle Fields, etc.”

How delightful it is to go through those hereditary abodes of ancient and distinguished families, and to see, in the very construction of them, images of the past times, and their modes of existence. Here you pass through ample courts, amid rambling and extensive offices that once were necessary to the jolly establishment of the age,—for hounds, horses, hawks, and all their attendants and dependences. Here you come into vast kitchens, with fireplaces at which three or four oxen might be roasted at once, with mantelpieces wide as the arch of a bridge, and chimneys as large as the steeple of a country church. Then you advance into great halls, where scores of rude revellers have feasted in returning from battle, or the chase, in the days of feudal running and riding, of foraying and pilgrimages; of hard knocks and hard lying: ere tea and coffee had supplanted beef and ale at breakfast; ere books hadcharmed away spears and targets, tennis-courts and tourneys, and political squabbles and parliamentary campaigning, the scouring of marches, and firing of neighbours’ castles. Then again, you advance into tapestried chambers, on whose walls mythological or scriptural histories wrought by the fingers of high-born dames, at once impress you with a sense of very still and leisurely and woodland times, when Crockford’s and Almack’s were not; nor the active spirit of civilization had raised up weavers, and spinners, and artificers of all kinds by thousands on thousands, by towns-full and cities-full. And now you come to the very closets and bowers of the ladies themselves—scenes of worn and faded splendour, but shewing enough of their original state to mark their wide difference from the silken boudoirs and luxurious dormitories of the fair dames of this age of swarming and busy artisans; of ample rents and city life; instead of hunting and fighting, of wars in the heart of France, or civil wars at home, to call out the heads of houses, or perhaps drive their families forth with fire and sword in their absence. Then there is the antique chapel, and the library; the one having, in most cases, been deserted by its ancient faith, the other still bearing testimony to the range of reading of our old squires and nobles, since reading became a part of their education, in a few grim folios,—a Bible, a Gwillim’s Heraldry, one or two of our Chroniclers, and a few Latin Classics or Fathers, for the enjoyment of the chaplain.

But the armoury and the great gallery—these are the places in which a flood of historic light pours in upon you, and the spirit of the past is made so palpable, that you forget your real existence in this utilitarian century; you forget reform in all its shapes—ballot, household suffrage, triennial parliaments; you forget the cry of the church and king; and the counter-cry from a million of eager voices, for liberty of hearth and faith; you forget that all around you, from the very walls that surround you to the distant sea, is nothing but fields cultivated like gardens, secured by gates and fences, and tenfold more costly and powerful parchment, to their particular owners; you forget that towns stand by hundreds, and villages by thousands, filled with a busy, an inquisitive, a reading, thinking, aspiring and irresistible population; and that all the institutions, the opinions, the loves and doings ofthe times when these things before you were matters of familiar life, are gone, or are going, for ever: that,

Another race has been, and other palms are won.

Yes, mighty and impressive as these things are; deeply as they visit your daily thought and nightly dreams; woven as they are with the thread of your existence, and your hopes and belief of the future ages,—yes, potent as they are, they vanish for a time. Here are swords, helmets, coats of mail, and plate-armour standing up in its own massiveness; shells from which the active bodies which moved them, have long ago disappeared. Here are buff-coats, ponderous boots, and huge spurs; broad hats, with sweeping feathers, and chains of gold, crosses and amulets, which make the past for ever in time, the past for ever in spirit, come back again with a vivid and intoxicating effect. You gaze upon arms and relics which figured in all the battles and pilgrimages, the desperate strifes and extravagant pageants of our ancestors; you behold things which link your fancies to all the romantic ages of European history. You forget the present; and exist amid forests, the stern strength of castles and the venerable quiet of convents. You are ready to listen to the distant bell of the abbey; for news of the crusaders; you expect as you ride through the woods, to stumble upon the abode of the hermit. These arms and fragments before you, were in the battles of Cressy and Poictiers; in the wars of the Roses; in the Tourney of the Field of Cloth-of-Gold; that mail, on the back of some stout knight, climbed over the ramparts of Ascalon, or of Jerusalem itself; and those, bringing you down the stream of events, are the equipments of Cavaliers and of Puritan leaders, when the spirit of feudalism and that of progression came so rudely into strife as to shake the kingdom like an earthquake. You step into the gallery, and there are the very men whose iron habiliments you have been contemplating; there are the rude portraitures of the warriors of an earlier day; and there are the Sidneys, the Howards, the Essexes and Leicesters, the Warwicks and Wiltons, of an after one; the men that set up and pulled down kings, that waded through the blood of others, or that poured out their own, for honour and liberty. You have read of some handsome and gallant knight who wrought some chivalricmiracle, who perhaps died in its performance—he is there! You have glowed over the accounts of arrogant and fascinating beauties, who turned the heads of kings and nobles—they are there! worthy of all their fame, their very shadows filling you with sighs and dreams of loveliness, which will haunt you in the open sunshine, and amid all the cheerful sounds of present life.

But it is not merely these great historic characters. There are family ones that constitute a history amongst themselves, most interesting and touching. There are the founders of those families. There is the great minister, who once rose to the favour of his sovereign, and swayed the destinies of the kingdom; there is the great churchman, that climbed up from plebeian obscurity to the primacy; there is the judge, who, from a younger brother of an ancient line, became the fortunate founder of a new one; there are admirals, generals, and nobles, who have figured in the campaigns of every reign. There are stern forms that were despots in their own sphere, or calm and smiling faces that have such blots and dark passages attached to them as confound all your physiognomical acuteness; and there are beautiful and gentle-looking creatures, that are most strangely tainted with blood; noble matrons, who knew sorrows for which neither their rank and affluence, no, nor the possessions of ten kingdoms could make recompense; and lastly, there are young boys and girls, that look on you with most innocent archness or open good-nature, which perished like blossoms ere fully opened, or lived to make you shudder over their remembrance.

Such are many of our older houses, to say nothing of later and more splendid ones; nothing of all the modern attractions that have been added to their ancient ones; nothing of those sumptuous places which our nobility have raised on their estates, and filled with all the luxurious adornments of modern life, and with the wealth of art. And then those houses stand scattered over all the kingdom, in fine old parks, in gardens of quaint alleys and topiary work; or in the freer beauty of modern lawns and shrubberies; objects of pleasure and pride to thousands beside their own possessors.

Horace Walpole wished that they were all collected in London, and then should we have had such a capital as the world could not boast. Heaven forgive him for the wish! A splendid capital nodoubt we should have had, but we should not have had such a country, such a people, such a national strength and character as we have. It is by living scattered through the realm, amid their own people, their own lands and woods, that our gentry have retained such high independence of principle, and such healthy tastes as they have done. It is by this means that agriculture, and horticulture, and rural architecture, have been promoted to the extent they have reached; that the whole kingdom has become a paradise, and that the people have been linked to the interests of their superiors. We have only too many temptations already to a crowding into our capital. A city life to a wealthy aristocracy must become a life of luxury and splendour, a life of dissipation and rivalry. The enjoyments of society, of music, and of public spectacles, at intervals, might refine the taste; but when this species of life becomes almost perpetual, its certain consequence must be to deteriorate and effeminate character; to weaken the domestic attachments; to divert from, or disincline for that sober thought and those studies which lead to greatness, or leave behind solid satisfaction. We have already too much of this, and its effect will daily become more and more conspicuous, as it is of more and more vital importance. Now, while the people are struggling to acquire possession of rights that they long knew not their claim to; now that they are growing informed, and therefore quick to see and to feel—those on whom they look as their natural and powerful rivals, are living at a distance from them; taking no means to conciliate their good-will, or to retain their esteem. Their humble neighbours feel no effect from their estates except the withdrawal of their rents; and they ask themselves what claim these people, who are living in our great Babylon,

Minions of splendour, shrinking from distress,—

have upon their veneration or regard. Is it not in these noble ancestral houses, amid their ancestral woods and lands, that the spirit of our gentry is most likely to acquire a right tone? Here, where they are surrounded by objects and memories of worth, of greatness and renown, that the fire of a generous and glorious emulation is most likely to be kindled; and that all the best feelings of their nature are likely to be touched, and their bestaffections quickened? Even Horace Walpole himself furnishes an instance in proof. Little as he had of the pensive and poetical in him, his visit to the family place at Houghton called up such thoughts and emotions as, if encouraged instead of avoided, might have made him aware of higher qualities in himself than he was habitually accustomed to display. “Here am I,” says he in one of his letters, “at Houghton! and alone; in this spot where, except two hours last month, I have not been in sixteen years! Think what a crowd of reflections! No!—Gray and forty churchyards could not furnish so many; nay, I know one must feel them with greater indifference than I possess, to have patience to put them into verse. Here I am, probably for the last time in my life, though not for the last time; every clock that strikes tells me that I am one hour nearer to yonder church,—that church into which I have not yet had courage to enter; where lies the mother on whom I doated, and who doated on me! There are the two rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy it. There too lies he who founded its greatness; to contribute to whose fall, Europe was embroiled. There he sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe, rather his false ally and real enemy, Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets.

“The surprise the pictures gave me is again renewed. Accustomed for many years to see wretched daubs and varnished copies at auctions, I look at these as enchantment.... A party arrived just as I did, to see the house: a man and three women, in riding dresses, and they rode fast through the apartments. I could not hurry before them fast enough; they were not so long in seeing for the first time, as I could have been in one room, to examine what I knew by heart. I remember formerly being often diverted by this kind ofseers; they come, ask what such a room is called, in which Sir Robert lay: admire a lobster, or a cottage in a market-piece; dispute whether the last room was green or purple; and then hurry to the inn, for fear the fish should be overdressed. How different my situation! Not a picture here but recals a history; not one but I remember in Downing-street, or Chelsea, where queens and crowds admired them, though seeing them as little as these travellers.

“When I had drank tea I strolled into the garden. They told me it was now called thepleasure-ground. What a dissonant idea of pleasure! Those groves, thosealleys, where I have passed so many charming moments, are now stripped up, or overgrown; many fond paths I could not unravel, though with a very exact clue in my memory. I met two gamekeepers, and a thousand hares! In the days when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and vivacity, I hated Houghton and its solitude; yet I loved this garden; as now, with many regrets, I love Houghton;—Houghton, I know not what to call it: a monument of grandeur or ruin! How I wished this evening for Lord Bute! How I could preach to him!—The servants wanted to lay me in the great apartment—what! to make me pass the night as I had done my evening! It were like proposing to Margaret Roper to be a duchess in the court which cut off her father’s head, and imagining it could please her. I have chosen to sit in my father’s little dressing-room, and am now in his escritoire, where, in the height of his fortune, he used to receive the accounts of his farmers, and deceive himself, or us, with the thoughts of his economy. How wise a man, at once, and how weak! For what has he built Houghton? For his grandson to annihilate, or his son to mourn over.”

Horace Walpole’s Letters, vol. ii. pp. 227-8.

Having made these preliminary observations, I will now give a specimen or two from my native neighbourhood, because necessarily more familiar with them; let every reader throughout England look round him in his, and he will find others as interesting there.

Mrs. Jameson has lately given a very vivid and charming account of this fine old place. I am not going to tread in her steps, but to describe the impression it made upon myself at different times, in my own way, and with reference to my own object.

My first visit to it was when I was a youth of about seventeen. I had heard nothing at all of it, and had no idea that it was an object of any particular interest. I was at Mansfield, and casually heard that the present Duke of Devonshire, its proprietor, was come of age, and that there, as at his other houses, his birth-day was to be kept by his tenants and the neighbouring peasantry in the old English style. The house lies about five miles to the north of Mansfield, not far from the Chesterfield road. I set off, and learning that there was a footway, I passed through one or two quiet, old-fashioned villages, through solitary fields and deep woody valleys, a road that for its beauty and out-of-the-world air delighted me exceedingly. I at length found myself at the entrance of a large old park. The tall towers of the hall had been my landmarks all the way, and now that unique building, standing on the broad, level plain, surrounded at a distance by the old oaks of the park, burst upon me with an unexpected effect. It was unlike anything I had seen; but there were solemn halls in the regions of poetry and romance, that my imagination immediately classed it amongst. I advanced toward it with indescribable feelings of wonder and delight. I could have wished that it had been standing in itsordinary solitude, for that seemed to my mind its true and natural state; but it was not so: around it swarmed crowds of rustic revellers, and I determined to take things as I found them; to consider this very scene as a feature of the olden time; and to see how it went, about the baronial dwellings in the feudal ages, on occasions like that.

It was not long before I came upon a man lying on his face under the trees,—he was dead drunk. Soon I passed another, and another, and another: a little farther, and they lay about like the slain on the outskirts of a battle. When I came into the open plain before the hall, the sound of a band of music which had probably been some time silent through the musicians themselves dining, reached me; I heard drunken songs and wild outcries mingling with it. All about the lawn were scattered clustered throngs. I saw barrels standing; spigots running; men catching their hats full, and running here and there, while others were snatching at their prize, and often spilling the ale on the ground. Sometimes there were two or three trying to drink out of a hat at once; others were stooping down to drink at the spigots; there were fighting, scuffling, clamour, and confusion. All round the hall people swarmed like bees. At the doors and gates dense masses were trying to force their way in; while stout fellows were thumping away at their sculls with huge staves, with an energy that one would have thought enough to kill them by dozens, but which seemed to make little impression.

While this was going on, being a slim youth, I slipped beneath the uplifted arm of a stout yeoman, and made a safe ingress. I stood astonished at the place into which I had entered. Those ample and lofty rooms, in which stood huge pieces of roast-beef on huge pewter dishes, and great leathern jacks, tankards, and modern jugs of ale, at which scores of people were eating and drinking as voraciously as if they had been fasting all the one-and-twenty years to do due honour to this great birth-day; while the servants were running to and fro, filling up foaming measures, which were emptied again with wonderful rapidity. Those vast kitchens too, with their mighty fireplaces, and tongs, and pokers, and spits fit for the kitchen of Polyphemus; with broiling cooks and hurrying menials, called on by twenty voices at once. I made my way to the front court, where, under canvass awnings, long tableswere set out for the tenantry and yeomanry of the neighbourhood, admitted by ticket. O what a company of jolly, rosy, full-grown, well-fed fellows, was there, making no sham onset on the plum-pudding and roast-beef of Old England! The band kept up a triumphant din; but when it ceased for a moment, what a rattle of knives and forks, and a clatter of ale-cups, what a clamour of tongues and hearty laughter became perceptible! And all round the court, the walls were covered with swarms of men, that climbed up no trivial height to get a view of the jovial banquet, and many a cry was raised to throw up thither some of those good things. And sure enough, here went a piece of beef, and here a lump of pudding; and a score of hands caught at them; and a hundred voices joined in the roar of laughter as they were caught, or fell back again into the court, or flew over the wall amongst the scrambling crowd.

But suddenly there was in the midst of all this noise and jollity, a cry of horror; and it was soon seen that one of the pointed stones that stand at intervals on the top of the high wall all round the court, had disappeared. It had given way with a man who clung to it, had fallen upon him, and killed him on the spot. There was a momentary pause in the festivity; a great running together to the spot of the catastrophe; but the body was soon conveyed away to an outbuilding, and the tide of riot rolled on. It was doomed, however, to receive a second check; for another man, in the wild excitement of the time, and of the strong ale, sprang at one bound over a wall that stood on the edge of a precipice, and fell a shattered corpse into the hollow below. These were awful events, and cast over some of the revellers a gloom that would not disperse; but far the greater part were now too highly charged with birth-day ale to be capable of reflection. All around was Bacchanalian chaos. Singing, shouting, attempts at dancing, reeling, and tumbling. Bodies lay thickly strewn through court and hall, and far around on the lawn. Some gay sparks were, with mock respect, carried with much struggling and laughter, and laid in sheds and stables and under trees, and one especial dandy was deposited in a heap of soot. For myself, perhaps the only sober person there, I hastened away, resolving to revisit that fairy mansion in the time of its restored quiet.

And in what a far different aspect did it present itself when I next saw it; and with what a far different company did I witness it! It was on one of the most glorious days of a splendid summer that we passed under the shadow of its oaks, as happy and attached a company as ever met on earth. Ah! they are all dispersed now! Out of a dozen glad hearts, not more than three are living now. But let me forget that. We were a joyful band of tried friends then. All, except myself and a young Yorkshire damsel, light as a sylph, and lovely and frolic as a fairy, were in carriages; we were on horseback; and scarcely had we entered the park, when, as if the sight of its fine wide level had filled her with an irresistible desire to scour across it, the madcap gave her horse the rein, and darted away. Under the boughs of the oaks she stooped, and flew along with arrowy swiftness. Every moment I expected to see her caught by one of them, and dashed to the ground; but she was too practised a horsewoman for that: she cleared the trees; the deer bounded away as she came galloping towards them, and turned and gazed at her from a distance; the rooks and daws, and lapwings feeding on the turf, soared up and raised wild cries; but she sped on, and there was nothing for me to do but to follow. I spurred forwards, but it was only to see her rush, at the same reckless speed, down a deep descent, where one trip of her horse—and nothing was more likely—and she would have flown far over his head to certain death. Yet down she went, and down I followed; but ere I reached the bottom, she was urging her horse up as steep an ascent, on whose summit, as I approached it, I found her seated on her panting steed, laughing at her exploit and my face of wonder.

When we reached the Hall, there were all our friends in the court, and the kind-hearted old gentleman, the head of the party, standing at the great hall door, laughing heartily at the attempts of each of the youngsters in succession to walk blindfold up a single row of the flags that lead from the court-gates to the house. Every one began full of confidence; but the laughter and cries of the rest soon proclaimed the failure of the enterprise. When it came to the turn of our merry madcap, up she walked with a bold step, and course as strait as if guided by a clue, from gate to door. All at once exclaimed that she could see, and busyhands were soon at work to fasten the handkerchief so artfully round her head, that she could not possibly get a glimpse of daylight. Again she was led to the gate, and again she marched up to the door as quickly and directly as before. The wonder was great; but still it was asserted that shemustsee;—it was that fine Grecian nose of hers that permitted a glance down beside it, enough for the guidance of the spirited damsel; so handkerchief was bound on handkerchief, aslant and athwart, to exclude every possibility of seeing; and again she was set at the gate; and again went gaily and confidently to the door without one erring footstep. There was a general murmur of applause and wonder. I see that light and buoyant figure still advancing up the line of flags; I see those golden locks dancing in the sunshine as she went; I see that lovely countenance, those blue and laughing eyes, full of a merry triumph, as her friends unbound her beautiful head. I see the same glad creature, all vivacity and happiness, now sitting on the warm turf, now bounding up long flights of stairs; now standing, to the terror of her companions, on the jutting edge of a ruinous tower;—and can it be true, that that fairy creature has long been dead! the light of those lovely eyes extinguished! those lovely locks soiled with the damp churchyard earth! Alas! we know too well how readily such things come to pass. But no black presage came before us then. All around was summer sunshine; we explored every nook in that old ivied ruin, the older house of Hardwick, in which the Queen of Scots was confined; paced the celebrated banqueting-room, adorned with the figures of Gog and Magog, with an angel flying between them with a drawn sword. We rambled over the leaden roof, and in the happy folly of youth, marked each other’s foot upon it, with duly inscribed names and date. We went all through the present house; through its tapestried rooms, along its gallery, into its ancient chapel, and up to its armoury, a tower on the roof; and finally adjourned to the neat little inn at Glapwell, to a merry tea, and thence home.

My next visit to Hardwick was in the autumn of 1834. My companions now were, my true associate for the last seventeen years, and one little boy and girl, who, as we advanced up the park, rambled on before us in eager delight. Twenty years had passed since thatyouthful party I have just mentioned was there;—twenty years to me of many sober experiences; of naturally extended knowledge; of observation of our old English houses in various parts of the kingdom: but as I once more approached Hardwick, I felt that it had lost none of its effect,—nay, that that effect was actually increased: it was more unworldly, more unlike any thing else, or any thing belonging to common life; more poetical, more crowned and overshadowed with beautiful and solemn associations, than it was when I first beheld it in my youth. The distance you have to advance, from the moment you emerge from amongst the trees of the park into a full view of the Hall, until you reach it, tends greatly to heighten its effect. There it stands, bold and alone, on a wide unobstructed plain.

No trees crowd upon it, or break, for a moment, the view; it lifts itself up in all its solemn and unique grandeur to the blue heavens, like a fairy palace, in the days of old romance. It is a thing expressly of by-gone times—darkened indeed by age, but not injured. Unlike modern mansions, you see no bustle of human life about it; no gardens and shrubberies; but wings of grey, and not very high walls, extending to a considerable distance over the plain, from each end of the house, inclosing what gardens there are, and paddocks. You see no offices appended,—it seems a place freed from all mortal necessities,—inhabited by beings above them. All offices, in fact, that are not included within the regular walls of the house, are removed to a considerable distance with the farm-yard. As you draw near, its grave aspect strikes you more strongly; you become more sensible of its loftiness, of the vast size of its windows, and of that singular parapet which surmounts it. It is an oblong building, with three square towers at each end, both projecting from, and rising much higher than, the body of the building. The parapet surmounting these towers is a singular piece of open-work of sweeping lines of stone, displaying the initials of the builder, E. S.—Elizabeth Shrewsbury,—surmounted with the coronet of an earl. On all sides of the house these letters and crown strike your eye, and the whole parapet appears so unlike what is usually wrought in stone, that you cannot help thinking that its singular builder, old Bess of Hardwick, must have cut out the pattern in paper with her scissars. It is difficult to say, whether this remarkable womanhad a greater genius for architecture or matrimony. She was the daughter of John Hardwick of Hardwick, and sole heiress of this estate. She married four times, always contriving to get the power over her husband’s estates, by direct demise, or by intermarrying the children of their former marriages with those of former husbands, so that she brought into the family immense estates, and laid the foundation of four dukedoms. Her genius for architecture is sufficiently conspicuous in this unique pile, and in the engraving of Worksop Manor in Thoroton’s Nottinghamshire, as erected by her, though since destroyed by fire,—a building full of the same peculiar character. It is said that it having been foretold her by some astrologer, that the moment she ceased to build would be the moment of her death, she was perpetually engaged in building. At length, as she was raising a set of almshouses at Derby, a severe frost set in. All measures were resorted to necessary to enable the men to continue their work: their mortar was dissolved with hot water, and when that failed, with hot ale; but the frost triumphed—the work ceased, and Bess of Hardwick expired! This noble building I trust will long continue to perpetuate her memory, lifting aloft on its parapet her conspicuous E. S.

All the lower walls surrounding the courts and paddocks, are finished with similar open-work of bands of curved and knotted stone. A colonnade runs along each side of the house between the projecting towers, and the entrance-front is enclosed by that court of which I have already spoken; having its walls mounted, at intervals, with quaint pyramidal stones. On this side of the house a fine valley opens itself, filled with noble woods, a large water, and displaying beyond a hilly and pleasant country.

At about a hundred yards from the Hall stand the remains of the old one. The progress of dilapidation upon this building, since my last visit, was striking. Then you could ascend to the leaden roof; but now means were adopted to prevent that, on account of its unsafe state; in fact, the stairs themselves have partly fallen in; many of the floors of the rooms have fallen through; the ceiling of the celebrated banqueting-room itself has given way by places, and in others is propped up by stout pieces of timber. The glory of Gog and Magog will soon be annihilated, or they will be left on the walls, exposed to the astonished gaze of the passer-by, as are somestucco alto-relievoes of stags under forest trees on the chamber walls, with ivy drooping over them from the top of the walls above, and tall trees that have sprung on the hearths of destroyed rooms below, waving before them. This is the outward aspect of those old halls where Mary Stuart, and the almost equally unfortunate Arabella Stuart, once dwelt. Within, the present hall is as perfect a specimen of an Elizabethan house, as can be wished. “The state apartments are lofty and spacious, with numerous transom windows admitting a profusion of light. The hall is hung with very curious tapestry, which appears to be as ancient as the fifteenth century. On one part of it, is a representation of boar-hunting, and on another of otter-hunting. In the chapel, which is on the first floor, is a very rich and curious altar-cloth, thirty feet long, hung round the rails of the altar, with figures of saints under canopies wrought in needlework. The great dining-room is on the same floor, over the chimney-piece of which are the arms of the Countess of Shrewsbury, with the date of 1597. The most remarkable apartments in this interesting edifice are the state room, or room of audience, as it is called, and the gallery. The former is sixty-four feet nine inches, by thirty-three feet, and twenty-six feet four inches high. At one end of it is a canopy of state, and in another part a bed, the hangings of which are very ancient. This room is hung with tapestry, in which is represented the story of Ulysses; over this are figures, rudely executed in plaster, in bas-relief, amongst which is a representation of Diana and her nymphs. The gallery is about 170 feet long and 26 wide, extending the whole length of the eastern side of the house; and hung with tapestry, on a part of which is the date of 1478.”[11]The house has not only been kept in repair, but exactly in the state in which its builder left it, as to furniture and fitting up, with a very few exceptions, and these in the most accordant taste. For instance, the Duke of Devonshire has brought hither his family pictures from Chatsworth, so as to make this fine gallery the family picture gallery. Not another painting has been suffered to enter. He has also now added a most appropriate feature to the entrance hall, a statue of the Queen of Scots, of the size of life, by Westmacott. It stands on a pedestal of the same stone, bearing an armorial escutcheon.

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