llans, encountered in long galleries or at
the very door of their bedrooms, looked as alien to the house as the
Barbarian himself.

For the rest it may be found described in the local guide-books, with a
view of its "South Front," "West Front," and "Great Quadrangle." It
was alleged to be based on an encampment of the Romans--that highly
apocryphal race who seemed to have spent their time in getting up
picnics on tessellated pavements, where, after hilariously emptying
their pockets of their loose coin and throwing round their dishes, they
instantly built a road to escape by, leaving no other record of their
existence. Stow and Dugdale had recorded the date when a Norman favorite
obtained the royal license to "embattle it;" it had done duty on
Christmas cards with the questionable snow already referred to laid
on thickly in crystal; it had been lovingly portrayed by a fair
countrywoman--the vivacious correspondent of the "East Machias
Sentinel"--in a combination of the most delightful feminine disregard
of facts with the highest feminine respect for titles. It was rich in a
real and spiritual estate of tapestries, paintings, armor, legends, and
ghosts. Everything the poet could wish for, and indeed some things that
decent prose might have possibly wished out of it, were there.

Yet, from the day that it had been forcibly seized by a Parliamentary
General, until more recently, when it had passed by the no less
desperate conveyance of marriage into the hands of a Friendly Nobleman
known to the Western Barbarian, it had been supposed to suggest
something or other more remarkable than itself. "Few spectators," said
the guide-book, "even the most unimpassioned, can stand in the courtyard
and gaze upon those historic walls without feeling a thrill of awe,"
etc. The Western Barbarian had stood there, gazed, and felt no thrill.
"The privileged guest," said the grave historian, "passing in review the
lineaments of the illustrious owners of Stukeley, as he slowly paces the
sombre gallery, must be conscious of emotions of no ordinary character,"
etc., etc. The Barbarian had been conscious of no such emotions. And
it was for this reason, and believing he MIGHT experience them if left
there in solitude, with no distracting or extraneous humanity around
him, it had been agreed between him and the Friendly Nobleman, who had
fine Barbarian instincts, that as he--the Friendly Nobleman--and his
family were to spend their holidays abroad