hs rose from its kitchen chimney. The house is a huge block, rising
at intervals into towers, with a small court in the middle of it, across
which carriages drive, having passed through a tunnel of arches, and
deposit their occupants in a hall, from which stairs, at both ends of
it, lead to the various living rooms, among these being an upper hall
more than fifty yards in length. This whole block stands in a walled
area, entered by a castellated gateway and encircled by a moat, a
portion of which still holds water, and in which the towers reflect
themselves. When I stayed there as a guest of the Duke and Duchess of
Cleveland, an atmosphere of the past not only pervaded the castle, but
seemed to extend itself for some miles into the neighborhood. When I and
others who had arrived by the same train issued from the station doors,
the carriages awaiting us in the twilight comprised old yellow chariots,
with postilions, like that of my grandfather in which I had swung myself
when a child. I said to Augustus Hare, who happened to be one of the
party, "One would think that we all of us were going to Gretna Green."
When we approached the castle, whose towers were blots in the November
evening, I felt we were approaching a castle in a child's fairy tale. In
point of magnitude, combined with ancient and absolutely continuous
occupation, there is, so far as my own experience goes, no private
dwelling in the kingdom which excels, or even equals, Raby. The duchess
kept a great album in which each of her guests was asked to inscribe
some record of his or of her visit, which record was to take the form of
answers to certain printed questions, or of a sketch, or some original
verses. I preferred to take refuge in the last, my own metrical record
being this:

Some scoff at what was, and some shrink from what may be
Or is; but they all must be pleased with a place
Where even what was looks enchanting in Raby,
And where even what is is redeemed by Her Grace.

Apart from genuine castles of feudal type and origin, the greatest
houses I have known, if regarded as architectural structures, are
Blenheim, Trentham (the Brentham of Lord Beaconsfield's _Lothair_), and
Cliveden. In this class I should, perhaps, include also Sir Robert
Walpole's Houghton, where I have stayed as the guest of Cora, Lady
Strafford, who occupied it for many years as a tenant, and with singular
taste and knowledge so arranged the interior that every