a chapel or side-aisle,
dedicated to the Harcourts, are found some very interesting
family-monuments,--and among them, recumbent on a tombstone, the figure
of an armed knight of the Lancastrian party, who was slain in the Wars
of the Roses. His features, dress, and armor are painted in colors,
still wonderfully fresh, and there still blushes the symbol of the Red
Rose, denoting the faction for which he fought and died. His head rests
on a marble or alabaster helmet; and on the tomb lies the veritable
helmet, it is to be presumed, which he wore in battle,--a ponderous iron
case, with the visor complete, and remnants of the gilding that once
covered it. The crest is a large peacock, not of metal, but of wood.
Very possibly, this helmet was but an heraldic adornment of his tomb;
and, indeed, it seems strange that it has not been stolen before
now, especially in Cromwell's time, when knightly tombs were little
respected, and when armor was in request. However, it is needless to
dispute with the dead knight about the identity of his iron pot, and
we may as well allow it to be the very same that so often gave him the
headache in his lifetime. Leaning against the wall, at the foot of the
tomb, is the shaft of a spear, with a wofully tattered and utterly faded
banner appended to it,--the knightly banner beneath which he marshalled
his followers in the field. As it was absolutely falling to pieces, I
tore off one little bit, no bigger than a finger-nail, and put it into
my waistcoat-pocket; but seeking it subsequently, it was not to be
found.

On the opposite side of the little chapel, two or three yards from this
tomb, is another, on which lie, side by side, one of the same knightly
race of Harcourts, and his lady. The tradition of the family is, that
this knight was the standard-bearer of Henry of Richmond in the Battle
of Bosworth Field; and a banner, supposed to be the same that he earned,
now droops over his effigy. It is just such a colorless silk rag as the
one already described. The knight has the order of the Garter on his
knee, and the lady wears it on her left arm,--an odd place enough for a
garter; but, if worn in its proper locality, it could not be decorously
visible. The complete preservation and good condition of these statues,
even to the minutest adornment of the sculpture, and their very
noses,--the most vulnerable part of a marble man, as of a living one,
are miraculous. Except in Westminster Abbey, among the