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.

Mrs. Jameson expresses strongly the effect of the huge escutcheons, the carved arms thrust out from the wall, intended to hold lights, and the great antlers, as she first entered this hall by night; but what would have been the effect of seeing Mary Stuart herself standing full opposite, as if to receive her to this place of her former captivity.* To her, and to every imaginative person, the effect must have been powerful, and solemnly impressive. Gray the poet, instead of thinking that the Queen of Scots had but just walked down into the park for half an hour, would have seen her visibly here. I have seen the portraits of Queen Mary, both here and in Holyrood, but none of them give me a thousandth part of the idea of what she must have been, compared with this statue.

With these two exceptions, both of which tend to strengthen the legitimate influence of the place, all besides is exactly as it was. You ascend the broad, easy oak stairs; you see the chapel by their side, with all its brocaded seats and cushions; you advance along chests filled with

vast passages, where stand huge

* I do not mean literally that this house was the place of her captivity, it was the old one.

coals, and having ample crypts in the walls for chips and fire-wood. Here are none of the modern contrivances to conceal these things: but they stand there before you, with an air of rude abundance, according well with the ancient mixture of baronial state and simplicity. You go on and on, through rooms all hung with rich old tapestry, glowing with pictorial scenes from scriptural or mythological history; all furnished with antique cabinets, massy tables, high chairs covered with crimson velvet, or ornamental satin. You behold the very furniture used by Queen Mary; the very bed she worked with her own fingers. But perhaps that spacious gallery, extending along the whole front of the house, gives the imagination a more feudal feeling than all. Its length, nearly two hundred feet; its great height; its stupendous windows, composing nearly the whole front, rattling and wailing as the wind sweeps along them. What a magnificent sough, and even thunder of sound must fill that wild old place in stormy weather. There you see arranged high and low, portraits of most of the characters belonging to the family or history of the place, of all degrees of execution. It is not my intention to give any details, either of those or of the furniture; that having been done by Mrs. Jameson with the accuracy and feeling that particularly distinguish her. I aim only at imparting the general effect. It is enough therefore to say that there are "many beautiful women and brave men:" portraits of bluff Harry VIII; those of the rival queens, Mary and Elizabeth; her keeper, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and his masculine wife, Elizabeth of Hardwick; and the philosophers, Boyle and Hobbs- One interesting particular

of Mrs. Jameson's statement, however, we could not verify-the tradition of the nocturnal meeting of the rival queens in the gallery. We never heard of it before; nor could we now find, by the most particular inquiries, even among the domestics, any knowledge of such a tradition. It was as new to them as to us; and we therefore set it down as a pleasant poetical tradition of the fair author's own planting.

The Duke was come hither from Chatsworth, to spend a week, and he seemed to have come in the spirit befitting the place; for there was scarcely more than its usual establishment; scarcely less than its usual quietness perceptible. The Duke himself we had met on the road, and in his absence were shown through the apartments which he uses on these occasions; and it had a curious effect amid all this staid and sombre antiquity, to find, on a plain oak table in the library, the newspapers of the day; the Athenæum, Court Journal, the Spectator, and Edinburgh Review; the works of Dr. Channing; and Hood's Tylney Hall, just then published. What an antithesis! what a mighty contrast between the spirit of the past and the present !—the life and stir of the politics and the passing literature of the day, in a place belonging in history, character, and all its appointments to an age so different, and so long gone by, with all its people and concerns.

Nothing, perhaps, could mark more vividly the vast changes in the manners and circumstances of different ages in England; the wonderful advance in luxury and refinement of the modern ones, than by passing from Hardwick to the old Hall of Haddon, built in 1427, when the feudal system was in its strength;

when the manor-house was but one remove from the castle; to visit this with its rude halls, its massive tables, its floors made from the planks of one mighty oak, its ancient arras and quaint stucco-work; and then pass over to Chatsworth, only a few miles distant, where to the past all the splendour of the present has been added; modern architecture, and all its contrivances for domestic convenience, comfort, and elegance; pictures, statuary, books, magnificent furniture, glowing carpets; everything that the art, wealth, and ingenuity of this great nation can bring together into one princely mansion. But as my limits. will not admit of this, I shall content myself with a survey of a more domestic kind, yet connected with the poetical history of our own day-Annesley and Newstead.

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CHAPTER VI.

ANNESLEY HALL AND HUCKNALL.

EARLY in the spring of 1834, we walked over from Nottingham to see Annesley Hall, the birth-place and patrimony of Mary Chaworth; a place made of immortal interest by the early attachment of Lord Byron to this lady, and by the graphic strength and deep passion with which he has recorded in his poems this most influential circumstance of his youth.

Annesley lies about nine miles north of Nottingham, itself—the scene of his first and most lasting attachment-Newstead, his patrimonial abode-and Hucknall, his burial-place; forming the three points of a triangle, each of whose sides may be about two miles in length. Yet although Newstead and Hucknall have been visited by shoals of admirers, this place, perhaps altogether the most interesting of the three, has been wholly neglected. Few, or none of them, have thought it worth while to go so little out of their way to see it; perhaps not one in a hundred has known that it was so near; probably to those who inquired about it, it might be replied, "you see that wooded ridge-there lies Annesley. You see all that