clude Titian's 'Rape of
Europa,' Rubens's 'Queen Tomyris dipping Cyrus's head into blood,'
Salvator Rosa's 'Death of Regulus,' Vandyck's 'Duke of Lennox,' Sir
Joshua Reynolds's 'The Call of Samuel,' and others. But the pictures in
which we are most interested are the portraits of literary, scientific,
and other worthies--an excellent collection, including Shakespeare, John
Locke, Hobbes, Sir Richard Steele, Sir William Temple, Dean Swift,
Dryden, Betterton, Pope, Gay, Thomson, Sir Hugh Middleton, Martin
Luther, and the ill-fated Lord George Gordon.

There is also an ornithological museum, with some very fine specimens of
the order of grallatores (or waders). In reply to a letter of inquiry,
the Earl of Darnley kindly informs us that the examples of ostrich
(_Struthio camelus_), cassowary (_Casuarius galeatus_), and common emu
(_Dromaius ater_), were once alive in the menagerie attached to the
hall, which was broken up about fifty years ago.

We are shown the music-room (which, by the bye, his late majesty King
George IV., is said to have remarked was the finest room in England), a
very handsome apartment facing the west, with a large organ, and capable
of containing several hundred persons. The decorations are very chaste,
being in white and gold; and, as the brilliant sun was setting in the
summer evening, a delicate rose-coloured hue was diffused over
everything in the room through the medium of the tinted blinds attached
to the windows. It had a most peculiar and pretty effect, strongly
recalling Mrs. Skewton and her "rose-coloured curtains for doctors."

[Illustration: Dickens's Chalet, now in Cobham Park.]

By the special permission of his lordship, we see the famous Swiss
chalet, which is now erected in the terrace flower-garden at the back of
Cobham Hall, having been removed to its present position some years ago
from another part of the grounds. It stands on an elevated open space
surrounded by beautiful trees--the rare Salisburia, tulip, cedar,
chestnut and others--and makes a handsome addition to the garden,
irrespective of its historical associations. The chalet is of dark wood
varnished, and has in the centre a large carving of Dickens's crest,
which in heraldic terms is described as: "a lion couchant 'or,' holding
in the gamb a cross patonce 'sable.'"

There are two rooms in the chalet, each about sixteen feet square, the
one below having four windows and a door, and the one above (approached
in the us