say after this
that glass is frail, when it is not half so perishable as human beauty
or glory? For in another pane you see the memory of a knight
preserved, whose marble nose is moldered from his monument in the
church adjoining. And yet, must not one sigh to reflect, that the
most authentic record of so ancient a family should lie at the mercy
of every boy that throws a stone? In this hall, in former days, have
dined gartered knights and courtly dames, with ushers, sewers, and
seneschals; and yet it was but the other night that an owl flew in
hither, and mistook it for a barn.

This hall lets you up (and down) over a very high threshold, into the
parlor. It is furnished with historical tapestry, whose marginal
fringes do confess the moisture of the air. The other contents of this
room are a broken-bellied virginal, a couple of crippled velvet
chairs, with two or three mildewed pictures of moldy ancestors, who
look as dismally as if they came fresh from hell with all their
brimstone about 'em. These are carefully set at the further corner:
for the windows being everywhere broken, make it so convenient a place
to dry poppies and mustard-seed in, that the room is appropriated to
that use.

Next this parlor lies, as I said before, the pigeon-house, by the side
of which runs an entry that leads, on one hand and t'other, into a
bed-chamber, a buttery, and a small hole called the chaplain's study.
Then follow a brew-house, a little green and gilt parlor, and the
great stairs, under which is the dairy. A little further on the right,
the servants' hall; and by the side of it, up six steps, the old
lady's closet, which has a lattice into the said hall, that, while she
said her prayers, she might cast an eye on the men and maids. There
are upon this ground floor in all twenty-four apartments, hard to be
distinguished by particular names; among which I must not forget a
chamber that has in it a large antiquity of timber, which seems to
have been either a bedstead or a cider-press.

Our best room above is very long and low, of the exact proportion of a
bandbox; it has hangings of the finest work in the world; those, I
mean, which Arachne spins out of her own bowels: indeed, the roof is
so decayed, that after a favorable shower of rain, we may, with God's
blessing, expect a crop of mushrooms between the chinks of the floors.

All this upper story has for many years had no other inhabitants than
certain rats, whose very age re