gallery remains at Albury; a carver too, and
a constructor of cabinets,--whereof two fine specimens (inlaid with
brecciated jaspers, and made of ebony and cedar from his own
turning-lathe) decorate our large drawing-room; and the oldest folk in
our village still remember the good old gentleman who always had
gingerbread in his pockets for them as children, and who was known by
them as the "man mushroom," seeing he was the first who ever had an
umbrella in the place! There was, however, another and a better reason
for this name, inasmuch as he built for himself an outer painting-room
on a hilltop near which he called Mushroom Hall, because it was just
like one (as a picture in our drawing-room testifies), being a circular
turret surmounted by a flat broad dome, with overshadowing eaves all
round. This strange summer-house has long vanished.

Anthony came of a good old stock paternally, as the civic archives of
Preston, in Lancashire, testify; and his mother was Ann Blackburne, of
Marrick Abbey, Yorkshire,--the title-deeds whereof, old slip parchments
and maps from Henry II. to Henry VIII., I found in a chest at Albury,
and years after transmitted them to Lord Beaumont, the present owner;
albeit, as a boy, I had been allowed to cut off the seals and paste them
in a copy-book! All these deeds, and the history thereof, I had printed
in Nichols's Antiquariana.

* * * * *

The prominent feature of our village, so far as religion is concerned,
has for nearly fifty years been the fact of its being the headquarters
of the party originated by Edward Irving,--a full history whereof,
impartially and ably written by Mr. Miller of Bicester (whose
hospitality I have enjoyed for some days at Kineton), will be found at
Kegan Paul's, if any wish to read it. I have always lived on kindly
terms with my neighbours, though not quite of their faith; excellent
are many of them, and I am glad to number such among my friends,
specially as on neither side we meddle with each other's peculiar
opinions. I have known nearly all their twelve apostles, men of mark and
learning (especially John Tudor, a great Hebraist, and who was skilled
even in Sanscrit and the arrow-headed characters), and eleven of them
are among the dead, one only surviving in a vigorous old age to meet
(may it be so) the Lord at His coming.

CHAPTER XXXI.

AMERICAN BALLADS.

My American Ballads, perhaps after "Proverbial Philosophy,"