na, glass, and paintings. Much of the collection came
from the Orleans Gallery. There are also many portraits in black and red
chalk by Janet, a French artist who flourished in the sixteenth century.
Some of the paintings are of great value, and are by Rubens, Caracci,
Canaletti, Tintoretto, Titian, Hogarth, Bellini, Mabuse, Holbein, Lely,
Vandyke, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and others. The Castle Howard
collection is exceptionally valuable in historical portraits. The
windows of the drawing-room look out upon extensive flower-gardens,
laid out in rather formal style with antique vases and statues. Beyond
these gardens is seen a circular temple placed upon a knoll, the
"mausoleum" which so moved Walpole. Here the former owners of the castle
are buried, a constant _memento mori_ to the tenants of the house,
though the taste certainly seems peculiar that has made the family tomb
the most prominent object in the view from the drawing-room windows.

[Illustration: GATEWAY, KIRKHAM PRIORY.]

Not far from Castle Howard are the ruins of Kirkham Priory. A charming
fragment of this noble church remains in a grassy valley on the margin
of the Derwent. Here, nearly eight hundred years ago, the Augustinians
established the priory, the founder being Sir Walter l'Espec, one of the
leaders of the English who drove back King David's Scottish invasion at
the battle of the Standard, near Durham. Sir Walter had an only son, who
was one day riding near the site of Kirkham when a wild boar suddenly
rushed across his path. The horse plunged and threw his rider, who,
striking head-foremost against a projecting stone, was killed. Sir
Walter, being childless, determined to devote his wealth to the service
of God, and founded three religious houses--one in Bedfordshire, another
at Rievaulx, where he sought refuge from his sorrows, and the third at
the place of his son's death at Kirkham. Legend says that the youth was
caught by his foot in the stirrup when thrown, and was dragged by his
runaway horse to the spot where the high altar was afterwards located.
Sir Walter's sister married into the family of De Ros, among the
ancestors of the Dukes of Rutland, and they were patrons of Kirkham
until the dissolution of the monasteries. Little remains of it: the
gate-house still stands, and in front is the base of a cross said to
have been made from the stone against which the boy was thrown.
Alongside this stone they hold a "bird-fair" every summer, where