are, it is needless to say, exceptions rather than types. Of the others which I may appropriately mention, a few may be taken as belonging to an exceptional class also, on account of their unusual size; and these I may again divide into genuine and ancient castles, as distinct from modern imitations on the one hand, and what are properly palatial villas of the classical type on the other; the remainder being smaller, though often of great magnitude, and commonly known by such names as "halls," "parks," or "manors."
Of more or less genuine castles I have known a considerable number, many of them much smaller than houses less ambitiously named; but, with the possible exception of Alnwick, the interior of which is undisguisedly modern, there is one which, in point of magnitude and continuity of occupation, forms a class by itself. This castle is Raby, which has never been uninhabited since the days of Stephen, when the first smoke wreaths rose from its kitchen chimney. The house is a huge block, rising at intervals into towers, with a small court in the middle of it, across which carriages drive, having passed through a tunnel of arches, and deposit their occupants in a hall, from which stairs, at both ends of it, lead to the various living rooms, among these being an upper hall more than fifty yards in length. This whole block stands in a walled area, entered by a castellated gateway and encircled by a moat, a portion of which still holds water, and in which the towers reflect themselves. When I stayed there as a guest of the Duke and Duchess of Cleveland, an atmosphere of the past not only pervaded the castle, but seemed to extend itself for some miles into the neighborhood. When I and others who had arrived by the same train issued from the station doors, the carriages awaiting us in the twilight comprised old yellow chariots, with postilions, like that of my grandfather in which I had swung myself when a child. I said to Augustus Hare, who happened to be one of the party, "One would think that we all of us were going to Gretna Green." When we approached the castle, whose towers were blots in the November evening, I felt we were approaching a castle in a child's fairy tale. In point of magnitude, combined with ancient and absolutely continuous occupation, there is, so far as my own experience goes, no private dwelling in the kingdom which excels, or even equals, Raby. The duchess kept a great album in which each of her guests was asked to inscribe some record of his or of her visit, which record was to take the form of answers to certain printed questions, or of a sketch, or some original verses. I preferred to take refuge in the last, my own metrical record being this:
Some scoff at what was, and some shrink from what may be
Or is; but they all must be pleased with a place
Where even what was looks enchanting in Raby,
And where even what is is redeemed by Her Grace.
Apart from genuine castles of feudal type and origin, the greatest houses I have known, if regarded as architectural structures, are Blenheim, Trentham (the Brentham of Lord Beaconsfield's Lothair), and Cliveden. In this class I should, perhaps, include also Sir Robert Walpole's Houghton, where I have stayed as the guest of Cora, Lady Strafford, who occupied it for many years as a tenant, and with singular taste and knowledge so arranged the interior that every chair, sideboard, and table then in common use had been Sir Robert Walpole's own. I wrote my letters one morning in his study, at his own writing table, and using his own inkstand. The walls were lined with books, most of them presents from his contemporaries, and some of them extremely curious. I may mention one in particular. It related to the South Sea Bubble, and contained what was practically a list of the largest commercial fortunes existing then in England.
Other houses which in point of magnitude belong to the same group are Stowe, with its frontage of more than a thousand feet, Hamilton Palace, Wentworth Wodehouse, and Eaton. By those whose knowledge is greater than mine, the list, in any case small, might, no doubt, be extended. I speak here only of those at which I have myself stayed. But, in any case, no one, however wealthy, would think of building on a similar scale now. Their magnitude was useful only in days other than ours, when visitors stayed for a month or six weeks at a time, and brought with them their own carriages and the necessary grooms and coachmen. It is only on very rare occasions that such houses could be even half filled to-day; and they dwarf, rather than subserve, the only possible life that a reasonable man could live in them. Blenheim impresses a visitor as though it were built for giants. Alfred Montgomery, when staying for the first time at Eaton, could not, on coming downstairs, find his way to the breakfast room till he encountered a friend who guided him. "Good God!" he exclaimed as he entered the desired apartment, "I don't want to eat my breakfast in a cathedral." Mere magnitude, indeed, beyond a certain point is not a luxury, but an oppression. The greatest private dwelling ever erected in England is said to have been Audley End, when its original builder completed it. James I said of it, "It is a house fit only for a king"; and before it could be rendered habitable three-fourths of it had to be pulled down. Such was the verdict of experience on overbuilding in the past; and though many conditions have changed, a similar practical criticism is occasionally being pronounced to-day. Trentham is practically gone. Hamilton Palace, it is said, will soon exist no longer.
When, however, we turn to genuine castles, pseudo-castles, or houses which, large though many of them are, are small as compared with these, my memory provides me with examples of them which are scattered all over the kingdom, but of which, since they are types rather than grandiose exceptions, it will for the moment be enough to describe a few, others being reserved for mention in connection with particular circumstances.
Of castles other than the greatest, were I asked to name the most romantic which has been known to me as a visitor, and the most agreeable in the way of an ancestral dwelling, I should, I think, begin with Powis, as it stands with its rose-red walls, an exhalation of the Middle Ages, on a steep declivity among the mountainous woods of Wales—woods full of deer and bracken. Much of its painted paneling had never been, when I stayed there, touched or renovated since the time of the battle of Worcester. In a bedroom which had once been occupied by Charles I there was hardly a piece of furniture which was not coeval with himself. The dining room, as I remember it, had been frescoed by a Dutch artist in the reign of William and Mary.
In respect of mere romantic situation, the English house which I remember as coming nearest to Powis is Glenthorne, the seat of the Hallidays, which not so very long ago was thirty miles from a railway on one side, and seventeen on another. It fronts the Bristol Channel on the confines of Devon and Somerset. I have described it accurately in my novel The Heart of Life. In its general aspect it resembles my own early home, Denbury, but in some ways it is quite peculiar. In front of it is an Italian garden, below which are breaking waves, and behind it precipitous woods rise like a wall to an altitude of more than twelve hundred feet. The only approach to the house is by a carriage drive three miles long, which descends to it in zigzags from the upper world of Exmoor.
Hardly less romantic is Ugbrooke, the seat of the Cliffords, about twelve miles from Torquay, associated with the name of Dryden, who was a frequent guest there, and haunted by the Catholicism of a long series of generations. The chapel is approached through, and transmits its incense to, a library which hardly contains a book more recent than the days of the nonjurors, and I have often spent long mornings there examining the files of journals belonging to the epoch of Queen Anne, of the first two Georges, and of Pope. I have kindred recollections of Lulworth Castle in Dorsetshire, where the old religious regime so casts its spell over everything that I should hardly have been surprised if a keeper, encountered in the twilight park, had turned out to be carrying, not a gun, but a crossbow.
Of other houses connected with Catholic memories I may mention two in Yorkshire—Everingham Park and Houghton, then the respective homes of the late Lord Herries and his kinsman, Mr. Charles Langdale. Both were hereditary and absolutely unquestioning Catholics; and, strange to say, a large part of their tenantry were hereditary Catholics also. Each of these houses has a great chapel attached to it, and every Sunday processions of farmers' dogcarts would deposit their occupants at doors the decorations of which plainly showed that for these stalwart Englishmen the Protestant Reformation was no more than a dream.