The minster at Southwell is much finer than I had supposed. It has three square towers; two at the west end, and one, I think, near the east. It is Saxon; has fine, zigzag archway doors at the west, and also at the north and south porches. In the north porch, each side is lined with those crossed arches, which form pointed arches, and are supposed to have first discovered them to the builders. The outer walls have also zigzag bands. The windows have been inserted, many of them, since the minster was built. Some are early English; some of the Perpendicular Order; but there are also round-headed ones, and round-headed blank arches on the walls of the tower. All is in perfect taste, according to the time in which the work was done, and is kept in excellent preservation. The inside is particularly neat, and the reading-desk is a brass eagle, which, having been found at the bottom of the lake at Newstead, where it is supposed to have been thrown at the dissolution of the abbey by the monks, would be an object on which Lord Byron would look with great interest. It contained writings connected with the estate, which the angry monks might wish to destroy.

We looked into the ruins of the old palace adjoining the minster yard, where Cardinal Wolsey was entertained on his last journey to York, and found ourselves in a lovely garden, the walls of which were the gray and irregular ruins of this ancient fabric, and the house running along one side of it, evidently, though old, built partly up out of its material. Every one knows how charming such an old house looks. Its low range, its irregular windows, its front partly overhung with roses, jasmines, and figs; the open porch, and the peeps of goodly pictures, or rather the frames of the pictures, rich curtains, and furniture—the attributes of wealth; and the greensward of the court garden filling with its velvet the area between the old and rugged walls.

Under the obliging guidance of Dr. Calvert, I went round to see the people with whom Byron used to associate; unfortunately, Miss Pigott was in London. We had a glimpse of her entrance-hall, and that was all. The house is one of those old-fashioned, rather darkish houses, that one sees in such places, and in the hall were heaps of busts, apparently phrenological specimens, and so on.

We went then to the house where Byron's mother lived. It is at the opposite end of the town, or village. It is called Burgage Manor, and stands on the top of a sloping green, called Burgage Green, very pleasantly, and at the back looking over a pleasant stretch of country toward Farnsfield. The house is a good, large, and pleasant house, but has, it seems, been considerably enlarged since Mrs. Byron lived in it; in fact, another half built to it in front. Unluckily, the lady who now inhabits it was absent too, so that we could learn nothing particular about it. It was undergoing painting, and we entered it, and walked about the lower rooms, which are just good, pleasant, modern rooms. The hall has a number of middling portraits, apparently belonging to the lady's family. A Mary Childers; several ladies of the name of Mace, a Rev. Jackson, without a Mr., a John, or Thomas to his name; just thus—Rev. Jackson, a sandy-haired, schoolmaster-looking man, leaning on his elbow, and apparently trying to look very full of calculation. One picture was very funny. It was that of a little girl of about five or six years old, in an old-fashioned dress, and her hair dressed in a very wiggish fashion, and apparently powdered. She occupied the center of the picture, and stood facing you, and on each hand a white rabbit was partly rearing up and looking at her, and under the three figures stood their names—Mary Mace, Mary Burton, and Mary Beecher. No doubt there was some story connected with them. I suppose Mary Mace and Mary Beecher were play-fellows of the little girl, and that she had called her two white rabbits after them.

Near this house, but on the opposite side of the green, or, rather, of this corner of the green, is the house of Major Leacroft. This is the house where Byron used to join in private theatricals. The family which he was acquainted with is gone; the proprietor dead; and this Major Leacroft is another sort of man, a wealthy recluse, and collector of pictures.

In going from one place to another, we went round by the Greet, the stream in which Byron used to bathe, and where he dived for a lady's thimble, which he took from her work-box and threw in. The Greet is a mere brook, and for the most part so shallow that a man would much sooner crack his skull in it than dive very deep, unless it were above the mill, where the water is dammed up, or just below the mill-wheel by the bridge, but that is too public, being in the high road. Such is Southwell, in Nottinghamshire, which will always be livingly associated with one of the happiest periods of the life of Lord Byron.

Harrow being so near the metropolis, will naturally draw many visitors, as another of the happiest scenes of Byron's youthful life. Here he represents himself to have been eminently happy, and always looked back to this period of his youth with particular affection. The school-room where he studied, the tomb where he used to sit in the church-yard, and the spot where his natural daughter, Allegra, is buried, will always excite a lively interest. This tomb is still called by the boys at Harrow, "Byron's tomb," and its identity is very accurately fixed by himself in a letter to Mr. Murray, when giving direction for the interment of his daughter. "There is a spot in the churchyard, near the footpath, on the brow of the hill looking toward Windsor, and a tomb under a large tree, bearing the name of Peachie or Peachy, where I used to sit for hours and hours when a boy. This was my favorite spot; but as I wish to erect a tablet to her memory, the body had better be deposited in the church. Near the door, on the left hand as you enter, there is a monument, with a tablet containing these words:

'When Sorrow weeps o'er Virtue's sacred dust,
Our tears become us, and our grief is just:
Such were the tears she shed, who grateful pays
This last sad tribute of her love and praise.'

I recollect them after seventeen years, not from any thing remarkable in them, but because from my seat in the gallery I had generally my eyes toward that monument. As near as convenient I could wish Allegra to be buried, and on the wall a marble tablet placed, with these words:

In Memory of
Allegra,
Daughter of G. G. Lord Byron,
Who died at Bagna Cavallo,
In Italy, April 20th, 1822,
aged five years and three months.
'I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.'
2d Samuel, xii., 23."