the gardens or grounds, walking with her cousin, Miss Radford; her rustic hat thrown back upon her shoulders; her beautiful head turned aside; and her hand put forth to receive a letter from a page, kneeling on one knee,-a letter from her lover and subsequent husband.

Again, she is playing with a little child; and in all, her figure is full of exquisite grace and vivacity, and the profile of the face remarkably fine. It is impossible to say with what intense interest we examined these memorials of private life; these passages so full of vitality and character, incidental, but importantthe very essence of an autobiography.

From the drawing-room we passed to the one called the terrace-room, from its opening by a glass door upon the terrace, which runs along the top of the garden at right angles with the house, and level with this second story, descending to the garden by a double flight of broad stone steps, in the middle of its length, which is about eighty yards. This room formerly contained the billiard table, and in it Mary Chaworth and her noble lover passed much time. He was fond of the terrace, and used to pace backwards and forwards upon it, and amuse himself with shooting with a pistol at a door. It was here that she last saw him, with the exception of a dinner-visit, after his return from his travels. It was here that he took his last leave of Mary Chaworth, when

He went his way,

And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.

It was here, then, those ill-fated ones stood, and lingered, and conversed, for at least two hours. Mary

Chaworth was here all life and spirit, full of youth, and beauty, and hope. What a change fell upon her after-life! She now stood here, the last scion of a time-honoured race, with large possessions, with the fond belief of sharing them in joy with the chosen of her life. Never did human life present a sadder contrast! There are many reasons why we should draw a veil over this mournful history, much of which will never be known; suffice it to say, that it was not without most real, deep, and agonizing causes, that years after,

In her home, her native home,
She dwelt begirt with growing infancy,
Daughters and sons of beauty,—but behold!
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,

As if its lid was charged with unshed tears.

It was not without a fearful outraging of trusting affections, the desolation of a spirit trodden and crushed by that which should have shielded it, that

She was changed

As by the sickness of the soul: her mind

Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight, familiar were to hers.

There must have come a day, a soul-prostrating day, when she must have felt the grand mistake she had made, in casting away a heart that never ceased to love her and sorrow for her, and a mind that wrapt her, even severed as it was from her, in an imperishable halo of glory.

There is nothing in all the histories of broken affections and mortal sorrows, more striking and melancholy than the idea of this lady, so bright and joyoushearted in her youth, sitting in her latter years, for days and weeks, alone and secluded, uninterrupted by any one, in this old house, weeping over the poems which commented in burning words on the individual fortunes of herself and Lord Byron

The one

To end in madness-both in misery,

With this idea vividly impressed on our spirits, a darker shade seemed to settle down on those antiquated rooms; we passed out into the garden, at the door at which Byron passed; we trod that stately terrace, and gazed at the old vase placed in the centre of its massy balustrade, bearing the original escutcheon of the Lord Chaworth, and stands a brave object as seen from the garden, into which we descended, and wandered among its high-grown evergreens. But everything was tinged with the spirit and fate of that unhappy lady. The walks were overgrown with grass; and tufts of snowdrop leaves, now grown wild and shaggy, as they do after the flower is over, grew in them; and tufts of a beautiful and peculiar kind of fumitory, with its pink bloom, and the daffodils and primroses of early spring looked out from amongst the large forest trees that surround the garden. Everything, even the smallest, seemed in unison with that great spirit of silence and desolation which hovered over the place; and the gusty winds that swept the long wood-walk by which we came away, gave us a most fitting adieu.

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CHAPTER VII.

NEWSTEAD.

WE left Annesley, as we have said, by that long wood-walk which leads to the Mansfield road; and advancing on that road about a mile, then turned to the right through a deep defile down into the fields. Here we found ourselves in an extensive natural amphitheatre, surrounded by bold declivities-in some places bleak and barren, in others, richly embossed with furze and broom. Before us, at the distance of another mile, lay Newstead amid its woods, across a moory flat. The wind whistled and sighed amongst the dry, white, wiry grass of last year's growth, as we walked along; and a solitary heron, with slow strokes of its ample wings, flew athwart -not our path, for path we had none, having been tempted into the fields by the beauty of the scene. We followed the course of a little stream, clear as crystal, and swift as human life, and soon found ourselves at the tail of the lake so often referred to by Lord Byron.

Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,

Broad as transparent, deep and freshly fed
By a river, which its softened way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread

Around; the wild fowl nestled in the brake

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed :

The woods sloped downward to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fixed upon the flood.

It was a scene that would have delighted Bewick for its picturesque sedgyness. The streams that fed it came down a woody valley shaggy with sedge-the lake thereabout being bordered with tall masses of it. There was a little island all overgrown with it, and water-loving trees; and wild fowl in abundance were hastening to hide themselves in its covert, or arose and flew around with a varied clangour. Another moment, and we passed a green knoll, and were in front of the Abbey. John Evelyn, who once visited it, was much struck with the resemblance between its situation and that of Fontainbleau.

Here all was neat and habitable--had an air of human life and human attention about it, that formed a strong contrast to the scene of melancholy desolation we had left; and also to this same scene when I visited it years ago, at the time when it was sold, I believe, to a Mr. Claughton, who afterwards, for some cause or other, threw up the bargain. To give an idea of the impression this place made upon me, I shall merely refer to an account furnished by me many years ago to a periodical of the time, which account was partly quoted by Galt in his Life of Lord Byron, and made liberal use of by Moore, though without acknowledgment. I was a boy, rambling through the woods nutting, when suddenly, I came in front of the Abbey, which I had never seen before, and learned from a peasant who happened to be near, that I might get to see it for the value of an ounce of