There is not a gallery, not a room, that does not teach to the present and the future the lessons that are to be learned from the past. Every step has its reminder of the great men who have flourished in times gone by, to leave their impress on their “hereafter”—
“Footprints on the sands of time.”
CASTLE HOWARD.
THIS princely seat of the Howards is distant about twenty miles from the venerable city of York, on the road from thence to Malton. The railway station, four miles from the mansion, on the borders of the Derwent, and not far from one of the most interesting of monastic ruins, the ancient abbey of Kirkham, is pretty and picturesque, and the drive from thence to the castle is by a road full of beauty—passing by tranquil villages and umbrageous woods, and commanding, here and there, glorious and extensive views of fertile country, far away from the active bustle of busy life. Castle Howard, one of the most perfect of the “dwellings” that succeeded the castles and “strong houses” of our forefathers, with its gardens, grounds, lawns, plantations, woods, and all the accessories of refined taste, is a model of that repose which speaks of happiness—and makes it; and it is pleasant to imagine there the good statesman, retiring from the political warfare in which he had so large a share, to leave earth, “after life’s fitful fever,” in the midst of the graces of the demesne, and the honourable and lofty associations connected with a numerous list of heroic ancestors.
The Earl of Carlisle, the owner of Castle Howard, is descended from a long line of noble and distinguished men whose services to their sovereigns and their country gained for them the highest honours and distinctions; yet the parts they took in the troublous times in which they lived brought no less than three of their brightest ornaments to the block under charges of high treason.
The House of Howard, although not of the oldest of English families, is one that claims precedence of rank over all others; for its head, the Duke of Norfolk, is Premier Duke and Earl, Hereditary Earl Marshal, and Chief Butler of England, and has, therefore, extraordinary importance attached to it.