this hall is the lord's private dining-room, a handsome chamber containing several shields of arms, and in the oriel recess a portrait of Henry VII, another of his queen, and a third of the court jester, Will Somers. Over the fireplace and beneath the Tudor arms is the legend, "Drede God and honor the Kyng." There is some good carved oak wainscoting.

A long gloomy passage, into which the sun-rays never could have penetrated, leads from the great hall to the kitchen. This place is of generous, if not enormous, proportions. Here are the huge fire places, the fuel box, the dressers, the chopping blocks, the salting trough, and the several appurtenances required in such a department, and for the preparation of feasts of the kind our fathers delighted in. The servitors here must have rejoiced when a fast day came around. It looked as though the tenants had lately left the place, though 200 years have gone by since here the cooks made mincemeat, and the boys turned the spits before the blazing logs. But it is as it was: time has not changed it. There by the chimney is the bench on which sat the bulky, broad-faced master-cook, superintending his helpers, and ever and anon cracking his joke, and kicking either the cur that lay at his feet, or the lad that slackened his hand at the basting of the venison. And there is the half-door over which the dishes were handed to the servitors, who should bear them to the dining-hall. Was that the voice of the major domo hurrying along the tardy waiting-men? The fires are out now, and the place is dark and cold. Yonder is the larder; and there is the wine-cellar. In the kitchen was a well. Perhaps in the offices running from the kitchen along the northern side of the upper courtyard was the laundry-though, to be sure, clean linen was not in old time as common as it is now. There, however, early in the week, before the sun had risen, might be heard the cry of the steward, "Come, come, girls! Up! up! Here it is Monday morning, and to-morrow's Tuesday, and the next day Wednesday; half the week gone, and the clothes not a soak yet."

We cross the lower end of the second quadrangle and enter a passage way where are some steps, cut out of the solid trunk of a giant oak, leading up into the Ball-room or Long Gallery. This chamber is nearly 110 feet long, 18 feet wide and 15 feet high, but its great length is broken by three deep and large windows which overlook the garden. A fine view of the outside of this room, and, indeed, of the whole southern exposure of the Hall, may be had from the terrace which runs along part of the eastern end of the building, and from which steps go down into

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the gardens. Once a year, even now, the hospitable owner of the place, the Duke of Rutland, allows a ball to be given here. I have never danced -for no other reason except inability,-but I think I should like to try a step in a room where once paced sweet Dorothy and many another fair damosel, with their brave gallants, long since gone to their fathers. From the little ante-room leading into the far end of the ball-room, Dorothy is said to have run away to her lover, John Manners. She was a comely maiden, with large eyes and auburn hair; sprightly, gay and with a mind and will of her own. When I am at Haddon I do my best to forget the monument in Bakewell Church, for I love the romance better than the stone-cutter. It is said that her friends did not wish her to marry John Manners. But love, which ever finds a way for itself, having bound her heart to his, and he, in the guise of a forester, having stolen into the walk beyond the winter-garden, higher up the slope, frequently whispered sweet words to her, and at last planned the escape. One night a ball was given in honor of her sister's marriage, and in the thick gloom, when the dancing was at its merriest and best, Dorothy slipped out of the room, down the steps to the terrace, from there through the garden, till at last, on the other side of the bridge over the Wye, she met her lover, and went with him far away to a priest. Some iconoclasts dispute the story, and it is next to certain that at that time this part of Haddon Hall was not built, and the door by which she fled had no existence; but no evidence of this sort will compel any one who delights in the charming episode to give it up. By Dorothy's marriage to John Manners, the two families and their estates were united, and eventually the latter passed to their present possessors, Dorothy's lineal descendants.

In the state-room beyond this small apartment, and on the east side of the upper courtyard, is a bed of considerable dimensions. Its hangings were wrought in the reign of Henry VI. Possibly Queen Elizabeth slept in it, on the occasion of her visit to Haddon : some say it was last occupied by George IV. The looking-glass is also claimed to have belonged to the Virgin Queen. There is an old wooden cradle, said to be that of the first earl of Rutland. Much of the tapestry about the Hall must be very old; and when it was fresh, it undoubtedly added much to the appearance of the now desolate rooms.

We went down the steps by which Dorothy Vernon fled, and hence along the terrace shaded by the limes and sycamores, down further steps to the main terrace, where grow the venerable yew-trees, and then through

the gardens. There are quaint, grotesque figures on the gables, and at the water-spouts. But the rain came on, and we could wait to see little outside. Only of this were we sure, that if the stranger from abroad saw nothing in Europe but Haddon Hall, he would be well repaid for his voyage across the sea. We did not mind the pelting, drenching rain through which we drove back to Rowsley. Though we could see little beyond the streams of water falling from our umbrellas, we had for our joy the memory of one of the most charming and most romantic of all the treasures of England.

What I have said about Chatsworth and Haddon Hall is far from doing justice to those remarkable places. A folio volume would not suffice for that which might be written of them. But, after all, everybody knows something about them, and, therefore, it is not necessary that I should go over ground which others, more competent than I, have gone over again and again. So I shall take my kind reader elsewhere, to a part of the country where few travellers go, and, before I leave Derbyshire, speak of a village scarcely known to the great world. And, as my thoughts turn thitherward, there comes to me a flood of recollections, rushing mightily and surging deeply, and I cannot help, sweet lector, telling you of them-of that country-life and its characters, which you may love as deeply as I do, though your boyhood was not like mine spent in and among such. This will serve, perhaps, to lead you up to an appreciation of the last place I shall speak of amid the woods and dales of Derbyshire.

It matters little where the early days were spent-whether amid the exquisite loveliness of the southern counties, in the fair fields and green woods of the Midlands, within sight of the rugged grandeur of the Pennine slopes, under the majesty of a Ben Lomond or a Ben Nevis, near to the sweet waters of Killarney, or in the calm, deep Cambrian glens; every recollection is beautiful and every picture is immortal. To thoughtful minds and loving souls, even as a brook singing and sobbing, playing with sunbeams and toying with lilies, as it flows between the pollards or the rushes, come associations which seem to have no end and which unite emotions of varied sort into a precious and lingering melancholy. Such hearts know the happy sorrow and the sorrowful happiness of the past. They bid the time that now is be still, and again they hear the chiming of bells, the rattling of mills, and the bleating of sheep. The old village lives once more-its winding lanes, its hives amidst the hollyhocks and

apple trees, its timber houses with their dark beams, red tiles and quaint gables, and its antique, gray-walled church in which on Sunday spiderwebs tremble at the roll of Te Deum, and through the windows children watch the buttercups growing on the graves. From yon elm-top comes the plaintive and familiar note, the recurrence of which bachelors and maids count so that they may know the number of years of single life. awaiting them, and which recalls the oldest bit existing of English melody:

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu.

From the clear morning sky lightly falls the wild, blithe song of the shrillthroated lark, and in the stilly eventide drift the bursts of harmony from the nightingale's haunt among the orchard trees. When the sunlight skims the ground and creeps through the low hedge-stumps, the shepherd and the herdsman plod heavily along the highway, their thick-nailed shoes wet with early dew, and their dog peering into ditch and bush to spy out rabbit, rat or bird. To the meadow wends the mower carrying in a wooden bick his cider, and in a flag basket his bread and bacon; and soon instead of the grass-rustle will be heard the swish of the scythe, and underfoot will lie the wild flowers-the daisy, with heart of gold and edge of blushing pink, the cowslip, which the pious loved to call "Our Lady's Keys," and the violet which, though hid in sward, rivals both the fragrance of the hawthorn and the charm of the snowdrop. And the simple housewife, watching now the crackling thorns upon the hearth and anon the sunflowers opening in the golden dawn, rejoices at the twitterings of swallows under the eaves, and at the crowing of proud chanticleer in the barnyard. Every season has its own glory: the winter, when the frost hardens the furrows and the snow covers roofs and trees, skirts the swart icy pond, and drives to the window-sills the chirping and hungry birds, when over field and through copse echoes the huntsman's cry, and within doors hospitality and cheer abound; the summer with its calm twilights, its boundless freedom, its ripening harvests and its blissful scenes; the autumn when the fruits are gathered in and the voice of thanksgiving is heard in the land; but best of all, as the ballad runs :

Whan shaws beene sheene and shraddes full fayre,

And leaves both large and longe,

Itt's merrye walkyng in the fayre forrèst

To heare the small birdes songe.