till within almost every one's memory, spent no inconsiderable part of their vacant nours, residing more at home than we do, and having fewer resources of elegant amusement. At one period at least, this room was thought to be the scene of wit; for in 1688, Mr. Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, in a letter to Mr. Thomas Cullum, desires to be remembered by the witty smokers at Hausted." Adjoining to this was a large wood-closet, and a passage that led to the dining-room, of moderate dimensions, with a large buffet. These occupied half the south front. At the end of the dining-room was originally a cloister, or arcade, about forty-five feet long, fronting the east, and looking into a flower garden within the walls of the moat. The arches were afterwards closed up and glazed, and a parlour made at one end. There are few old mansions without one or more of these sheltered walking places; and they certainly had their use: but this age of list, sandbags and carpets, that dreads every breath of air as if it were a pestilence, shudders at the idea of such a body of the element being admitted into any part of a dwelling. This cloister was terminated by the spacious and lofty kitchen, still standing, and well supplied with long oaken tables.

On the left hand of the entrance, and opposite the smoking-room, was the chapel, a room of state, much affected by the whole manorial lords, who seem to have disdained attending the parochial church. The last sacred office performed in it was the christening of the author of this compilation, in July 1733. Through this was a door into the drawing-room or largest parlour, which, with the chapel, occupied the other half of the south front. Adjoining to the parlour was a large gloomy hall at one end of which was a screen of brown wainscot, in which was a door that led to the buttery, &c. These formed the west side of the square. Beneath these apartments, and those on the south side, were the cellars, well vaulted with brick. The north side was occupied by the kitchen, and at the back of it was a drawbridge. These were the apartments on the ground floor, which was raised twelve feet above the surface of the moat. Over the gateway, chapel, and largest parlour were the royal apartments, which were approached by a staircase out of the hall. On this staircase, against the wall, stood some painted boards, representing various domestic servants: I have one of them, a very pretty well-painted female, said to be for a housekeeper. I know not whether this fancy be as old as the house; the portrait I have is certainly, from the dress, not more than a century old. Several bedchambers, of common proportions, occupied the chief part of the rest of the first story. Among the rooms on that floor was one called the still-room, an apartment where the ladies of old much amused themselves in distilling waters and cordials, as well for the use of themselves, and of their poor neighbours, as for several purposes of cookery. In this room stood a death's head; no improper emblem of the effects of the operations carried on within it.

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Contiguous to one of the bedchambers was a wainscoted closet, about seven feet square; the panels painted with various sentences, emblems, and mottoes. It was called the painted closet; at first probably designed for an oratory, and, from one of the sentences, for the use of a lady. The dresses of the figures are of the age of James I. This closet was therefore fitted up for the last Lady Drury, and, perhaps, under her direction. The paintings are well executed, and now put up in a small apartment at Hardwick House. The windows, in general, were spacious, but high above the floors. In still earlier times they were very narrow as well as high, that they might be more difficult marks for the arrows of an enemy; and that, if the arrows did enter, they might pass over the heads of those that were sitting. After this precaution was needless, the windows, though enlarged, continued to be made high, even till modern days. The beauty of landscape, so much studied now, was then but little or not at all re

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garded; and high windows, when opened, ventilated the apartments better than low ones, and when shut, the air they admitted was less felt. The walls of the house were chiefly built of timber and plaster. The plaster in the front was thickly stuck with fragments of glass, which made a brilliant appearance when the sun shone, and even by moonlight. Much of it still remains, and appears to be but little injured by two centuries; perhaps will survive the boasted stucco of modern artists. I wish I could give the receipt for this excellent composition; I can only say, it contains plenty of hair, and was made of coarse sand, abounding with stones almost as big as horse beans. And in some of the old walls round the house, where the bricks have crumbled away, the layers of mortar continue sound, and support themselves by their own compactness. The art was not lost even in the last century; for some plaster on an outhouse, which bears the date 1661, still remains perfectly firm.

This house was no bad specimen of the skill of former artists in erecting what should last. Part has been taken down, not from decay, but because it was become useless. What is left promises to stand many years. The mode of its construction contributed to its durability; for the tiles projected considerably over the first story, and that over the ground floor; so that the walls and sills were scarcely ever wetted. In the year 1685 this house paid taxes for thirty-four fire hearths; two shillings each hearth.

The banks of the moat were planted with yews and variegated hollies; and, at a little distance, surrounded by a terrace that commanded a fine woodland prospect. Here were orchards and gardens in abundance, and a bowling-yard, as it was called, which always used to be esteemed a necessary appendage of a gentleman's seat.

This place was well furnished with fish-ponds. There is near it a series of five large ones, on the gentle declivity of a hill, running into one another; the upper one being fed with a perennial spring. There is another similar series of small ones that served as stews. These must have been made at a very heavy expense; but they were necessary when fish made so considerable a part of our diet as it did before the Reformation, and when bad roads made sea fish not so easily procured as at present.

There was also a rabbit warren in the park, a spot that would have borne good wheat. But it was, like a pigeon-house, a constant appendage to a manorial dwelling. Eighth of James I., a stable near the coney warren was let with the dairy farm and even in the next year we hear of the warrener's lodge.

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One principal reason of the number of warrens formerly was the great use our ancestors made of fur in their clothing. "I judge warrens of coneys," says Harrison, "to be almost innumerable, and daily like to encrease, by reason that the black skins of those beasts are thought to countervail the prices of their naked carcasses." The latter were worth 24d a piece, and the former 6d. 17 Henry VIII.

104.-HYMN OF HEAVENLY BEAUTY.

SPENSER.

[THE inscription on his monument designates Edmund Spenser as "the prince of poets." Few have had a better claim to so eminent a title. Mr. Craik, in his excellent little work, Spenser and his Poetry,' has truly said, "Our only poets before Shakspere who have given to the language any thing that in its kind has not been surpassed, and in some sort superseded, are Chaucer and Spenser--Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, Spenser in his Faerie Queen." Very little is known accurately of Spenser's life, beyond the facts that he was admitted as a sizer of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in 1569; in 1580 became Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Grey of Wilton, and for his services was rewarded by a large grant of land in the county of Cork; in 1598 was driven from Ireland by a savage outbreak, in which his house was burned, with one of his children; and that he died in January,

1599, "for lack of bread," as Ben Jonson records. Three books of 'The Faerie Queen' were published in 1590; and three others in 1591. The Two Cantos of Mutability' appeared after his death.]

Rapt with the rage of mine own ravished thought,
Through contemplation of those goodly sights
And glorious images in heaven wrought,
Whose wondrous beauty, breathing sweet delights,
Do kindle love in high-conceited sprites,

I fain to tell the things that I behold,
But feel my wits to fail, and tongue to fold.

Vouchsafe then, O thou most Almighty Sprite!
From whom all gifts of wit, and knowledge flow,
To shed into my breast some sparkling light
Of thine eternal truth, that I may show
Some little beams to mortal eyes below
Of that immortal beauty there with thee,
Which in my weak distraughted mind I sec;

That with the glory of so goodly sight
The hearts of men, which fondly here admire
Fair-seeming shews, and feed on vain delight,
Transported with celestial desire

Of those fair forms, may lift themselves up higher,

And learn to love, with zealous humble duty,

The eternal fountain of that Heavenly Beauty.

[The Poet then proceeds to look around "on the frame of this wide universe"-the earth, the sky, the stars; and, finally, the spiritual heavens. He then takes up the more immediate subject of his poem:

Cease then, my tongue! and lend unto my mind
Leave to bethink how great that beauty is
Whose utmost parts so beautiful I find;
How much more these essential parts of his,
His truth, his love, his wisdom, and his bliss,
His grace, his doom, his mercy, and his might,
By which he lends us of himself a sight!

Those unto all he daily does display,
And shew himself in the image of his grace,
As in a looking-glass, through which he may
Be seen of all his creatures vile and base,
That are unable else to see his face,

His glorious face, which glistereth else so bright
That th' angels selves cannot endure his sight.

But we, frail wights! whose sight cannot sustain

The sun's bright beams when he on us doth shine.

But that their points rebutted back again
Are dulled, how can we sce with feeble eyno
The glory of that majesty divine

In sight of whom both sun and moon are dark,
Compared to his least resplendent spark?

Fondly desire.

The means, therefore, which unto us is lent
Him to behold is on his works to look,
Which he hath made in beauty excellent,
And in the same, as in a brazen book,
To read enregistered in every nook

His goodness, which his beauty doth declare;
For all that's good is beautiful and fair.

Thence gathering plumes of perfect speculation,
To imp the wings of thy high-flying mind,
Mount up aloft through heavenly contemplation
From this dark world, whose damps the soul do blind,
And, like the native brood of eagles' kind,
On that bright Sun of Glory fix thine eyes,
Cleared from gross mists of frail infirmities.
Humbled with fear and awful reverence,
Before the footstool of his majesty
Throw thyself down with trembling innocence.
Ne dare look up with corruptible eye
On the drad face of that great Deity,

For fear lest, if he chance to look on thee,
Thou turn to nought and quite confounded be.
But lowly fall before his mercy-seat,
Close-covered with the Lamb's integrity
From the just wrath of this avengeful threat
That sits upon the righteous throne on high.
His throne is built upon eternity,

More firm and durable than steel or brass,

Or the hard diamond, which them both doth pass.

His sceptre is the rod of Righteousness,

With which he bruiseth all his foes to dust,
And the great Dragon strongly doth repress
Under the rigour of his judgment just;

His seat is Truth, to which the faithful trust,
From whence proceed her beams, so pure and bright,
That all about him sheddeth glorious light:
Light far exceeding that bright-blazing spark
Which darted is from Titan's flaming head,
That with his beams enlumineth the dark
And dampish air, whereby all things are read
Whose nature yet so much is marvelled
Of mortal wits that it doth much amaze
The greatest wizards which thereon do gaze.
But that immortal light which there doth shine
Is many thousand times more bright, more clear,
More excellent, more glorious, more divine,
Through which to God all mortal actions here,
And even the thoughts of men, do plain appear:
For from the Eternal Truth it doth proceed,
Through heavenly virtue which her beams do breed.

* Dread.

With the great glory of that wondrous light
His throne is all encompassed around,

And hid in his own brightness from the sight
Of all that look thereon with eyes unsound;
And underneath his feet are to be found
Thunder, and lightning, and tempestuous fire,
The instruments of his avenging ire.
There in his bosom Sapience doth sit,
The sovereign dearling of the Deity,
Clad like a queen in royal robes, most fit
For so great power and peerless majesty,
And all with gems and jewels gorgeously
Adorned, that brighter than the stars appear,
And make her native brightness seem more clear
And on her head a crown of purest gold
Is set, in sign of highest sovereignty;
And in her hand a sceptre she doth hold

With which she rules the house of God on high

And menageth the ever-moving sky,

And in the same these lower creatures all
Subjected to her power imperial.

Both heaven and earth obey unto her will,
And all the creatures which they both contain
For of her fulness, which the world doth fill,
They all partake, and do in state remain
As their great Maker did at first ordain,
Through observation of her high beheast,

By which they first were made and still increased.
The fairness of her face no tongue can tell,
For she the daughters of all women's race,
And angels eke, in beauty doth excel,
Sparkled on her from God's own glorious face,
And more increased by her own goodly grace,
That it doth far exceed all human thought,
Ne can on earth compared be to aught:

Ne could that painter, had he lived yet,
Which pictured Venus with so curious quill,
That all posterity admired it,

Have pourtrayed this, for all his maistering skil;
Ne she herself, had she remained still,

And were as fair as fabling wits do feign,

Could once come near this beauty sovereign.

But had those wits, the wonders of their days,
Or that sweet Teian poet which did spend
His plenteous vein in setting forth her praise,
Seen but a glimpse of this which I pretend *,
How wondrously would he her face commend,
Above that idol of his feigning thought,

That all the world should with his rhymes be fraugr.t

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