journey compared to that I so often thought at least of undertaking,
rather than die without seeing you again. Tho the place I am in is
such as I would not quit for the town, if I did not value you more
than any, nay everybody else there; and you will be convinced how
little the town has engaged my affections in your absence from it,
when you know what a place this is which I prefer to it; I shall
therefore describe it to you at large, as the true picture of a
genuine ancient country-seat.

You must expect nothing regular in my description of a house that
seems to be built before rules were in fashion: the whole is so
disjointed, and the parts so detached from each other, and yet so
joining again, one can not tell how, that--in a poetical fit--you
would imagine it had been a village in Amphion's time, where twenty
cottages had taken a dance together, were all out, and stood still in
amazement ever since. A stranger would be grievously disappointed who
should ever think to get into this house the right way. One would
expect, after entering through the porch, to be let into the hall;
alas! nothing less, you find yourself in a brew-house. From the
parlor you think to step into the drawing-room; but, upon opening the
iron-nailed door, you are convinced, by a flight of birds about your
ears, and a cloud of dust in your eyes, that it is the pigeon-house.
On each side our porch are two chimneys, that wear their greens on the
outside, which would do as well within, for whenever we make a fire,
we let the smoke out of the windows. Over the parlor window hangs a
sloping balcony, which, time has turned to a very convenient
penthouse. The top is crowned with a very venerable tower, so like
that of the church just by, that the jackdaws build in it as if it
were the true steeple.

The great hall is high and spacious, flanked with long tables, images
of ancient hospitality; ornamented with monstrous horns, about twenty
broken pikes, and a matchlock musket or two, which they say were used
in the civil wars. Here is one vast arched window, beautifully
darkened with divers scutcheons of painted glass. There seems to be
great propriety in this old manner of blazoning upon glass, ancient
families being like ancient windows, in the course of generations
seldom free from cracks. One shining pane bears date 1286. The
youthful face of Dame Elinor owes more to this single piece than to
all the glasses she ever consulted in her life. Who can