ter, and must be owned to be the properest habitation for a wife man, who fees all the world change every feafon without ever changing himself.

I have been reading the defcription of Pliny's house with an eye to yours, but finding they will bear no comparison, will try if it can be match'd by the large country feat I inhabit at present, and fee what figure it may make by the help of a florid defcription.

You must expect nothing regular in my defcrip tion, any more than in the houfe; the whole vaft edifice is fo disjointed, and the several parts of it fo detach'd one from the other, and yet fo joining again, one cannot tell how, that, in one of my poetical fits, I imagined it had been a village in Amphion's time, where the cottages having taken a country-dance together, had been all out, and ftood stone-ftill with amazement ever fince.

You must excufe me, if I fay nothing of the Front; indeed I don't know which it is. A ftranger would be grievously disappointed, who endeavour'd to get into this house the right way. One would reasonably expect after the entry through the Porch to be let into the hall: alas nothing lefs! you find yourfelf in the houfe of office. From the parlour you think to ftep into the drawing-room, but upon opening the iron-nail'd door, you are convinc'd by a flight of birds about your ears, and a cloud of duft in your eyes, that it is the Pigeon-houfe. If you come into the chapel, you find its altars, like thofe of the

Ancients, continually fmoaking, but it is with the fteams of the adjoining kitchin.

The great hall within is high and fpacious, flank'd on one fide with a very long table, a true image of ancient hospitality: the walls are all over ornamented with monstrous horns of animals, about twenty broken pikes, ten or a dozen blunderbuffes, and a rusty matchlock mufquet or two, which we were inform'd had ferv'd in the civil wars. Here is one vaft arch'd window beautifully darken'd with divers fcutcheons of painted glafs: one fhining pane in particular bears date 1286, which alone preferves the memory of a Knight whofe iron armour is long fince perish'd with ruft, and whofe alabafter nofe is moulder'd from his monument. The face of dame Eleanor in another piece owes more to that fingle pane than to all the glaffes fhe ever confulted in her life. After this, who can say that glass is frail, when it is not half fo frail as human beauty, or glory! and yet I can't but figh to think that the most authentic record of fo ancient a family fhould lie at the mercy of every infant who flings a ftone. In former days there have din'd in this hall garter'd Knights, and courtly Dames, attended by ufhers, fewers, and fenefchals; and yet it was but laft. night, that an owl flew hither and mistook it for a barn.

This hall lets you (up and down) over a very high threshold into the great parlour. Its contents are a broken-belly'd virginal, a couple of cripled velvet chairs, with two or three mill-dew'd pictures of

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mouldy ancestors, who look as difmally as if they came fresh from hell with all their brimftone about them; these are carefully fet at the farther corner, for the windows being every where broken, make it fo convenient a place to dry poppies and mustard feed, that the room is appropriated to that use.

Next this parlour, as I faid before, lies the pigeon house, by the fide of which runs an entry, which lets you on one hand and t'other into a bedchamber, a buttery, and a fmall hole call'd the chaplain's ftudy: then follow a brew-house, a little green and gilt parlour, and the great ftairs, under which is the dairy; a little farther on the right the fervant's hall, and by the fide of it up fix steps, the old lady's clofet for her private devotions; which has a lettice into the hall, intended (as we imagine) that at the fame time as fhe pray'd, fhe might have an eye on the men and maids. There are upon the ground floor in all twenty fix apartments, among which I must not forget a chamber which has in it a large Antiquity of timber, that feems to have been either a bedstead, or a cyder-prefs.

The kitchen is built in form of the Rotunda, being one vaft vault to the top of the House; where one aperture ferves to let out the smoke, and let in the light. By the blackness of the walls, the circular fires, vaft cauldrons, yawning mouths of ovens and furnaces, you would think it either the forge of Vulcan, the cave of Polypheme, or the temple of Moloch. The horror of this place has made fuch

an impreffion on the country people, that they believe the Witches keep their Sabbath here, and that once a year the Devil treats them with infernal venifon, a roafted Tiger ftuff'd with ten-penny nails.

Above stairs we have a number of rooms: you never país out of one into another but by the afcent or descent of two or three ftairs. Our beft room is very long and low, of the exact proportion of a Band-box. In most of these rooms there are hangings of the fineft work in the world, that is to fay, thofe which Arachne fpins from her own bowels. Were it not for this only furniture, the whole would be a miferable scene of naked walls, flaw'd cielings, broken windows, and rufty locks. The roof is fo decay'd, that after a favourable fhower we may expect a crop of mushrooms between the chinks of our floors. All the doors are as little and low as thofe to the cabbins of Packet boats. Thefe rooms have for many years had no other inhabitants than certain rats, whofe very age renders them worthy of this Seat, for the very rats of this venerable house are grey fince thefe have not yet quitted it, we hope at least that this ancient mansion may not fall during the fmall remnant thefe poor animals have to live, who are now too infirm to remove to another. There is yet a small fubfiftence left them in the few remaining books of the Library.'

We had never feen half what I had defcribed, but for a ftarch'd grey headed Steward, who is as much an antiquity as any in this place, and looks

like an old family picture walk'd out of its frame. He entertain'd us as we pafs'd from room to room with several relations of the family; but his obfervations were particularly curious when we came to the cellar: he inform'd us where ftood the triple rows of butts of fack, and where were ranged the bottles of tent, for toafts in a morning; he point. ed to the stands that fupported the iron-hoop'd hogfheads of ftrong beer; then ftepping to a corner, he lugg'd out the tatter'd fragments of an unframed picture; "This (fays he, with tears) was poor Sir

Thomas once mafter of all this drink. He had "two fons, poor young masters! who never arrived "to the age of his beer; they both fell ill in this

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very room, and never went out on their own legs." He could not pass by a heap of broken bottles without taking up a piece, to fhow us the Arms of the family upon it. He then led us up the Tower by dark winding ftone fteps, which landed us into feveral little rooms one above another. One of thefe was nail'd up, and our guide whisper'd to us as a fecret the occafion of it: It feems the courfe of this noble blood was a little interrupted about two centuries ago, by a freak of the lady Frances, who was here taken in the fact with a neighbouring Prior, ever fince which the room has been nailed up, and branded with the name of the Adultery Chamber. The ghoft of lady Frances is fuppofed to walk there, and fome prying maids of the family report that they have seen a lady in a fardingale through the key