trast to the quaint and sombre apartments we had traversed. It was elegantly furnished,

and the walls hung with paintings, yet something of its original architecture had been preserved and blended with modern embellishments. There were the stone-shafted casements and the deep bow-window of former times. The carved and panelled wood-work of the lofty ceiling had likewise been carefully restored, and its Gothic and grotesque devices painted and gilded in their ancient style.

Here, too, were emblems of the former and latter days of the Abbey, in the effigies of the first and last of the Byron line that held sway over its destinies. At the upper end of the saloon, above the door, the dark Gothic portrait of Sir John Byron the Little with the great Beard," looking grimly down from his canvas, while, at the opposite end, a white marble bust of the genius loci, the noble poet, shone conspicuously from its pedestal.

The whole air and style of the apartment partook more of the palace than the monastery, and its windows looked forth on a suitable prospect, composed of beautiful groves, smooth verdant lawns, and silver sheets of water. Below the windows was a small flower-garden, enclosed by stone balustrades, on which were stately peacocks, sunning themselves and dis

playing their plumage. About the grass plots in front were gay cock-pheasants, and plump partridges, and nimble-footed water-hens, feeding almost in perfect security.

Such was the medley of objects presented to the eye on first visiting the Abbey, and I found the interior fully to answer the description of the poet-

"The mansion's self was vast and venerable,

With more of the monastic than has been
Elsewhere preserved: the cloisters still were stable,
The cells, too, and refectory, I ween;
An exquisite small chapel had been able,
Still unimpair'd, to decorate the scene;

The rest had been reformed, replaced, or sunk,
And spoke more of the friar than the monk.

"Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers, joined
By no quite lawful marriage of the arts,
Might shock a connoisseur; but when combined
Formed a whole, which, irregular in parts,

Yet left a grand impression on the mind,

At least of those whose eyes were in their hearts."

It is not my intention to lay open the scenes of domestic life at the Abbey, nor to describe the festivities of which I was a partaker during my sojourn within its hospitable walls. wish merely to present a picture of the edifice itself, and of those personages and circum

I

Newstead Abbey-West Front. From a photograph.