Hath from the cunning workman's pencil flown,
These lips look fresh and lovely as her own.
False colours last after the true be dead.
Of all the roses grafted1 on her cheeks,
Of all the graces dancing in her eyes,
Of all the music set upon her tongue,
Of all that was past woman's excellence2
In her white bosom3; look, a painted board,
Circumscribes4 all!
DEKKER.
An old English family mansion5 is a fertile subject for study. It abounds6 with illustrations of former times, and traces of the tastes, and humours, and manners of successive generations. The alterations7 and additions, in different styles of architecture; the furniture, plate, pictures, hangings; the warlike and sporting implements8 of different ages and fancies; all furnish food for curious and amusing speculation10. As the squire11 is very careful in collecting and preserving all family reliques, the Hall is full of remembrances of this kind. In looking about the establishment, I can picture to myself the characters and habits that have prevailed at different eras of the family history. I have mentioned on a former occasion the armour12 of the crusader which hangs up in the Hall. There are also several jack-boots, with enormously thick soles and high heels, that belonged to a set of cavaliers, who filled the Hall with the din13 and stir of arms during the time of the Covenanters. A number of enormous drinking vessels14 of antique fashion, with huge Venice glasses, and green hock glasses, with the apostles in relief on them, remain as monuments of a generation or two of hard-livers, that led a life of roaring revelry, and first introduced the gout into the family.
I shall pass over several more such indications of temporary tastes of the squire's predecessors15; but I cannot forbear to notice a pair of antlers in the great hall, which is one of the trophies16 of a hard-riding squire of former times, who was the Nimrod of these parts. There are many traditions of his wonderful feats17 in hunting still existing, which are related by old Christy, the huntsman, who gets exceedingly nettled18 if they are in the least doubted. Indeed, there is a frightful19 chasm20, a few miles from the Hall, which goes by the name of the Squire's Leap, from his having cleared it in the ardour of the chase; there can be no doubt of the fact, for old Christy shows the very dints of the horse's hoofs21 on the rocks on each side of the chasm.
Master Simon holds the memory of this squire in great veneration22, and has a number of extraordinary stories to tell concerning him, which he repeats at all hunting dinners; and I am told that they wax more and more marvellous the older they grow. He has also a pair of Ripon spurs which belonged to this mighty23 hunter of yore, and which he only wears on particular occasions.
The place, however, which abounds most with mementoes of past times, is the picture-gallery; and there is something strangely pleasing, though melancholy24, in considering the long rows of portraits which compose the greater part of the collection. They furnish a kind of narrative25 of the lives of the family worthies26, which I am enabled to read with the assistance of the venerable housekeeper27, who is the family chronicler, prompted occasionally by Master Simon. There is the progress of a fine lady, for instance, through a variety of portraits. One represents her as a little girl, with a long waist and hoop28, holding a kitten in her arms, and ogling29 the spectator out of the corners of her eyes, as if she could not turn her head. In another we find her in the freshness of youthful beauty, when she was a celebrated30 belle31, and so hard-hearted as to cause several unfortunate gentlemen to run desperate and write bad poetry. In another she is depicted32 as a stately dame33, in the maturity34 of her charms; next to the portrait of her husband, a gallant35 colonel in full-bottomed wig36 and gold-laced hat, who was killed abroad; and, finally, her monument is in the church, the spire37 of which may be seen from the window, where her effigy38 is carved in marble, and represents her as a venerable dame of seventy-six.
In like manner I have followed some of the family great men, through a series of pictures, from early boyhood to the robe of dignity, or truncheon of command, and so on by degrees until they were gathered up in the common repository, the neighbouring church.
There is one group that particularly interested me. It consisted of four sisters of nearly the same age, who flourished about a century since, and, if I may judge from their portraits, were extremely beautiful. I can imagine what a scene of gaiety and romance this old mansion must have been, when they were in the heyday39 of their charms; when they passed like beautiful visions through its halls, or stepped daintily to music in the revels40 and dances of the cedar41 gallery; or printed, with delicate feet, the velvet42 verdure of these lawns. How must they have been looked up to with mingled43 love, and pride, and reverence44, by the old family servants; and followed by almost painful admiration45 by the aching eyes of rival admirers! How must melody, and song, and tender serenade, have breathed about these courts, and their echoes whispered to the loitering tread of lovers! How must these very turrets46 have made the hearts of the young galliards thrill as they first discerned them from afar, rising from among the trees, and pictured to themselves the beauties casketed like gems47 within these walls! Indeed I have discovered about the place several faint records of this reign48 of love and romance, when the Hall was a kind of Court of Beauty. Several of the old romances in the library have marginal notes expressing sympathy and approbation49, where there are long speeches extolling50 ladies' charms, or protesting eternal fidelity51, or bewailing the cruelty of some tyrannical fair one. The interviews, and declarations, and parting scenes of tender lovers, also bear the marks of having been frequently read, and are scored, and marked with notes of admiration, and have initials written on the margins52; most of which annotations53 have the day of the month and year annexed54 to them. Several of the windows, too, have scraps55 of poetry engraved56 on them with diamonds, taken from the writings of the fair Mrs. Phillips, the once celebrated Orinda. Some of these seem to have been inscribed57 by lovers; and others, in a delicate and unsteady hand, and a little inaccurate58 in the spelling, have evidently been written by the young ladies themselves, or by female friends, who had been on visits to the Hall. Mrs. Phillips seems to have been their favourite author, and they have distributed the names of her heroes and heroines among their circle of intimacy59. Sometimes, in a male hand, the verse bewails the cruelty of beauty and the sufferings of constant love; while in a female hand it prudishly confines itself to lamenting60 the parting of female friends. The bow-window of my bedroom, which has, doubtless, been inhabited by one of these beauties, has several of these inscriptions61. I have one at this moment before my eyes, called "Camilla parting with Leonora:"
"How perished is the joy that's past,
The present how unsteady!
What comfort can be great, and last,
When this is gone already!"
And close by it is another, written, perhaps, by some adventurous62 lover, who had stolen into the lady's chamber63 during her absence:
"THEODOSIUS TO CAMILLA.
"I'd rather in your favour live,
Than in a lasting64 name;
And much a greater rate would give
For happiness than fame.
"THEODOSIUS. 1700."
When I look at these faint records of gallantry and tenderness; when I contemplate65 the fading portraits of these beautiful girls, and think, too, that they have long since bloomed, reigned66, grown old, died, and passed away, and with them all their graces, their triumphs, their rivalries67, their admirers; the whole empire of love and pleasure in which they ruled—"all dead, all buried, all forgotten," I find a cloud of melancholy stealing over the present gaieties around me. I was gazing, in a musing9 mood, this very morning, at the portrait of the lady whose husband was killed abroad, when the fair Julia entered the gallery, leaning on the arm of the captain. The sun shone through the row of windows on her as she passed along, and she seemed to beam out each time into brightness, and relapse into shade, until the door at the bottom of the gallery closed after her. I felt a sadness of heart at the idea that this was an emblem68 of her lot: a few more years of sunshine and shade, and all this life, and loveliness, and enjoyment69, will have ceased, and nothing be left to commemorate70 this beautiful being but one more perishable71 portrait; to awaken72, perhaps, the trite73 speculations74 of some future loiterer, like myself, when I and my scribblings shall have lived through our brief existence, and been forgotten.
