It was at Burghley that I first made acquaintance with Mr Stafford O’Brien, who afterwards became my colleague and fellow-actor in many a joyous revel and dramatic entertainment at Rockingham, Drayton and Farming Woods, names, each of which recall many a fond memory and tender regret. A housekeeper whom I knew at Burghley, and who was what is ambiguously termed a retired gentlewoman, and was constantly referring to better days, told me once, that she found a real consolation for all her troubles when gazing on that magnificent building “especially, Miss Boyle, the quadrangle by moonlight”; and certainly it was a “sight for sair e’en,” as it recurs most frequently to my mind one brilliant winter’s day, rising out of a plain of snow, with its golden gates resplendent in the sunshine.
I usually occupied the very small apartment called “Queen Elizabeth’s China Closet,” in which was a portrait by Domenichino far more lovely in my sight than that of the renowned Cenci, which in some measure it resembled. To my mother was allotted a room close at hand, and I used to laugh at her nightly search in manifold hidingplaces, behind the tapestry, in the turret, etc., lest some one should lie there concealed.
A picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence—one of his earliest, while still imbued with admiration for the works of Sir Joshua—represents the heroine of the Laureate’s beautiful ballad,[[54]] with her husband and “three fair children,”-“the village maiden” who, in her unexpected transition from obscurity to splendour—
“Shaped her heart with woman’s meekness
To all duties of her rank—”
was such—
“That she grew a noble lady
And the people loved her much.”
[54]. Henry, tenth Earl and first Marquess of Exeter, married, en secondes noces, Sarah, daughter of Mr Thomas Hoggins of Bolas, in Shropshire. He was raised to the Marquisate in 1801, and married, as third wife, Elizabeth, Dowager Duchess of Hamilton. The phrase
“Not a lord in all the county