It is
now one of England's show places; one portion of its vast extent, with
the grounds, being thrown open to the public, the remainder given to
decayed nobility, or wandering, homeless representatives of royalty,--a
kind of royal almshouse, in fact. A curtained window, the flutter of a
white hand, were to us the only signs of inhabitation.

Through thirty or more narrow, dark, bare rooms,--bare but for the
pictures that crowded the walls,--we wandered. There were two or three
halls of stately proportions finely decorated with frescoes by Verrio,
and one or two royal stairways, up and down which slippered feet have
passed, silken skirts trailed, and heavy hearts been carried, in days
gone by. The pictures are mostly portraits of brave men and lovely
women, of kings and queens and royal favorites,--poor Nell Gwynne among
them, who began life by selling oranges in a theatre, and ended it by
selling virtue in a palace. The Vandyck faces are wonderfully beautiful.
They gaze upon you through a mist, a golden haze,--like that which hangs
over the hills in the Indian summer,--from out deep, spiritual eyes; a
dream of fair women they are.

There were one or two royal beds, where uneasy have lain the heads that
wore a crown, and half a dozen chairs worked in tapestry by royal
fingers,--whether preserved for their questionable beauty, or because of
the rarity of royal industry, I do not know. We wandered through the
shrubberies, paid a penny to see the largest grape vine in the
world,--and wished we had given it to the heathen, so like its less
distinguished sisters did the vine appear,--and at last lunched at the
King's Arms, a queer little inn just outside the gates, edging our way
with some difficulty through the noisy, guzzling crowd around the
door--the crowd that, having reached the acme of the day's felicity, was
fast degenerating into a quarrel. In the long, bare room at the head of
the narrow, winding stairs, we found comparative quiet. The tables were
covered with joints of beef, with loaves of bread, pitchers of ale, and
the ubiquitous cheese. A red-faced young man in tight new clothes--like
a strait-jacket--occupied one end of our table with his blushing
sweetheart. A band of wandering harpers harped upon their harps to the
crowd of wrangling men and blowsy women in the open court below;
strangely out of tune were the harps, out of time the measure, according
well with the spirit of the hour. A loud-voiced girl dec