Owing to its situation and prospects, the English guide-books style this castle the "Windsor of the North." The grounds are beautifully laid out—a broad lawn, bounded by a grove of old trees, with the rooks cawing and circling about them; the great paved court-yard of the castle, upon which the stables and servants' rooms looked out; a tower on the stables, with clock and bell. From this, a Gothic arched gateway opened into another square and more pretentious court-yard, upon which the inner windows of his lordship's family looked. On one side of this court-yard, the castle wall was completely covered with a thick, heavy mass of beautiful ivy, the window spaces and turrets all being cut out in shape, giving it a novel and picturesque appearance. In the centre of this court-yard was a pretty grass plat.
The other front of the castle looked out upon the estate, and the view from the windows upon this side was lovely. The fine lawn and trimly laid out grounds, the gradually sloping landscapes stretching down to the little River Eamont, winding on its tortuous way, and spanned, as usual, by the pretty arched bridges, and the hills of Ullswater for a background, made a charming prospect. There were so many novel and interesting things to see in the different apartments of the castle, that description will in some degree appear but tame.
We first went into the armor-room, used on great occasions as a dining-hall. The apartment was not very large, but the walls and niches were filled with rare and curious arms and armor of various periods, and that had been used by historic personages. Here we were shown the skull of one of Lord Brougham's ancestors, carefully preserved under a glass case—a Knight Templar, who fought in the first crusade; this skull was taken, together with a spur, from his coffin a few years ago, when the tomb was opened, where he was found lying with crossed feet, as a good Knight Templar should lie. At one end of this hall was a little raised gallery about five feet from the floor, separated from the room by a high Gothic screen, through which a view of the whole could be obtained. This platform led to an elegant little octagon chamber, a few steps higher up, occupied by Lord Brougham's son as a sort of lounging and writing room. In this apartment were a few choice and beautiful pictures; one of dogs fighting, presented to Lord Brougham by Louis Napoleon, some original Titians, Vandykes, Tintorettos, Hogarth, &c.
We next visited the drawing-room, which was hung all over with beautiful Gobelin tapestry, wrought to represent the four quarters of the globe in productions, fruit, flowers, vegetation, and inhabitants—a royal gift and an elegant sight. Here were also displayed a fine Sevres dessert service, the gift of Louis Philippe, the great purses of state presented to Lord Brougham when he was chancellor, as a sort of badge or insignia of office. These were rigged on fire-frame screens, and were heavily gold-embroidered affairs, twenty-four inches square or more, and worth over three hundred pounds each. Here also was a glass case filled with gifts made to Lord Brougham by different distinguished personages, such as gold snuff-boxes from different cities, watches, a miniature, taken from life, of the great Napoleon, presented by Joseph Bonaparte, &c.
The library, which was well stocked with choice books, was another elegant room, most artistically arranged. Here portraits of great writers, by great artists, occupied conspicuous positions; and among other noteworthy pictures in this room was one of Hogarth, painted by himself, a portrait of Voltaire and others.
The ceilings of these apartments were laid out in squares or diamond indentation, elegantly frescoed, or carved from the solid oak, the color formed to harmonize with the furniture and upholstery. The ceiling of the drawing-room was occupied by the different quarterings of the coat of arms of the Brougham family, in carved work of gold and colors, one to each panel, very elaborately finished.
When we were escorted to the sleeping apartments, new surprises awaited us. Here was one complete suite of rooms,—chambers, dressing-room, closet, &c.,—all built and furnished in the early Norman style; the old, carved, black, Norman bedstead, hundreds of years old; gilt leather tapestry on the walls, decorated with Norman figures of knights, horses and spearmen; huge Norman-looking chairs; great brass-bound oaken chests, black with age and polished by the hand of time; rude tables; chests of drawers; the doors and windows with semicircular arched head-pieces, the former of massive black oak, with huge brass chevron-shaped hinges, quaint door-handles, and bolts of the period represented, and the various ornaments of zigzag, billet, nail-head, &c., of Norman architecture appearing in every direction. Something of the same style is seen in some of our Episcopal churches in America, but it is more modernized. Here the Norman rooms were Norman in all details, the dark, old wood was polished smooth as steel, the brass work upon the doors and old chests gleamed like beaten gold, and the whole picture of quaint, old tracery of arches and narrow windows, tapestry, carving, and massive furniture, conveyed an impression of wealth, solidity, and substantial beauty.
From the Norman rooms we passed into the Norman gallery, a corridor of about fifty feet long and sixty feet wide, upon the sides of which are painted a complete copy of the wonderous Bayeaux tapestry, wrought by Matilda, queen of William I., and representing the conquest of England—the only perfect copy said to have been made. The different sleeping apartments were each furnished in different styles; in one was an elegantly carved bedstead, of antique design, which cost four hundred guineas, and was a present to Lord Brougham.
Lord Brougham's own study, and his favorite resort for reading, writing, and thinking, was one of the plainest, most unpretending rooms in the whole building; the furniture of the commonest kind, the pictures old impressions of Hogarth's, Marriage a la Mode, and the Industrious and Idle Apprentice, in cheap frames, and that familiar to Americans, of Humboldt in his study. Two battered hats, hung upon a wooden hat-tree in the corner,—hats that Punch has made almost historical, and certainly easily recognizable wherever seen,—completed the picture of the simple apartment where one of the greatest statesmen of the present generation was wont to muse upon the affairs of one of the mightiest nations of the world, at whose helm his was the guiding hand.
Returning on our way to the railway station, we lunched in the tap-room of a little wayside inn, "The White Hart," just one of those places that we Americans read of in English novels, and which are so unlike anything we have at home, that we sometimes wonder if the description of them is not also a part of the writer's creation. But here was one just as if it had stepped out of an English story book; the little room for guests had a clean tile floor ornamented with alternate red and white chalk stripes, a fireplace of immense height and width, round which the village gossips probably sipped their ale o' winter nights, the wooden chairs and benches and the wooden table in the centre of the room, spotlessly clean and white from repeated scrubbings; half a dozen long clay tobacco pipes were in a tray on the table for smokers, clustering vines and snowy curtains shaded the windows, and there was an air of quiet comfort and somnolency about the place quite attractive to one who was fatigued with a long and dusty walk.