tment, known to the readers
of the "Dream" as the "antique oratory." Leading from the old
entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy
childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat
beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the
piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated
the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her
memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young
companion: they now lie before us, carefully preserved, with some of
their gay tints yet unfaded,--memorials, not only of Mary Chaworth, who
lived and loved and suffered through all the varied experience of
woman's life, but also of her to whom the blossoms were given, the fair,
young girl, "who lived long enough on earth to learn its better lessons,
but passed from it upwards and onwards without a knowledge of sin except
the shadow it casts on the world."

Taking leave of our kind guide, to whom we were indebted for a visit of
deep interest, we paused a moment on the terrace ere we "passed the
massy gate of that old hall," to receive once more into our memory

"the old mansion and the accustomed hall
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade."

A holy stillness pervaded the venerable house and its surrounding
scenery, a peace which breathed of a purer sphere, where what is best on
earth finds its correspondence.

We wondered not, that, when the deep waters of the poet's soul, too
often ruffled by passion, polluted by vice, or made turbid by
selfishness, were calm and pure enough to mirror heaven, they ever
reflected the bright and morning star of Annesley.

The transition from Annesley Hall to Newstead Abbey is inevitable in
thought and rapid in fact,--the road, over which the young poet so often
passed, between the two estates, being only three miles in length. We
had lingered so long at Annesley that the day was nearly spent before we
reached the Abbey. How did the venerable pile, with its mysterious
memories, fateful histories, and poetical associations, flash out into
light and darken into shadow as the October sun sank behind the distant
hills!

The Abbey church is now only a ruin, but the airy span of its rich
Gothic window remains, as evidence of its original beauty. Through the
now vacant space, once the wide door of entrance, we saw the floor of
green gra