Ye virgins then your cleanly rooms prepare,
And let the windows bays and laurels wear;
Your _Rosemary_ preserve to dress your _Beef_,
Not forget me, which I advise in chief."

[Illustration]

CHRISTMAS, AT HADDON HALL,

was magnificently kept in the early part of the eighteenth century.
The amount of good cheer that was required for the table may be
readily imagined from the magnitude of the culinary furniture in the
kitchen--two vast fireplaces, with irons for sustaining a surprising
number of spits, and several enormous chopping-blocks--which survived
to the nineteenth century. John, the ninth Earl and first Duke of
Rutland (created Marquis of Granby and Duke of Rutland in 1703),
revived in the ancient spirit the hospitality of Christmastide. He
kept sevenscore servants, and his twelve days' feasts at Christmas
recalled the bountiful celebrations of the "King of the Peak," Sir
George Vernon--the last male heir of the Vernon family in Derbyshire
who inherited the manor of Haddon, and who died in the seventh year of
Queen Elizabeth's reign. "The King of the Peak" was the father of the
charming Dorothy Vernon, the fair heiress, whose romantic elopement is
thus depicted in "Picturesque Europe":--"In the fullness of time
Dorothy loved, but her father did not approve. She determined to
elope; and now we must fill, in fancy, the Long Gallery with the
splendour of a revel and the stately joy of a great ball in the time
of Elizabeth. In the midst of the noise and excitement the fair young
daughter of the house steals unobserved away. She issues from _her_
door, and her light feet fly with tremulous speed along the darkling
Terrace, flecked with light from the blazing ball-room, till they
reach a postern in the wall, which opens upon the void of the night
outside dancing Haddon. At that postern some one is waiting eagerly
for her; waiting with swift horses. That some one is young Sir John
Manners, second son of the House of Rutland, and her own true love.
The anxious lovers mount, and ride rapidly and silently away; and so
Dorothy Vernon transfers Haddon to the owners of Belvoir; and the
boar's head of Vernon becomes mingled, at Haddon, with the peacock of
Manners. We fancy with sympathetic pleasure that night-ride and the
hurried marriage; and--forgetting that the thing happened 'ages long
agone'--we wish, with full hearts, all happiness to the dear and
charming Dorothy!"

From the boar's head of Vernon and the