HAM HOUSE 193 



you think yourself an hundred miles off and an 

 hundred years back. The old furniture is so 

 magnificently ancient, dreary and decayed, that at 

 every step one's spirits sink, and all my passion 

 for antiquity could not keep them up. Every 

 minute I expected to see ghosts sweeping by ; 

 ghosts I would not give sixpence to see Lauder- 

 dales, Tollemaches, and Maitlands. ... In this 

 state of pomp and tatters my nephew intends 

 it shall remain ; and is so religious an observer 

 of the venerable rites of his house, that because 

 the gates never were opened by his father but 

 once for the late Lord Granville, you are locked 

 out and locked in, and after journeying all round 

 the house, as you do round an old French forti- 

 fied town, you are at last admitted through the 

 stable-yard to creep along a dark passage by 

 the housekeeper's room, and so by a back 

 door into the great hall. He seems as much 

 afraid of water as a cat ; for though you might 

 enjoy the Thames from every window of three 

 sides of the house, you may tumble into it before 

 you would guess it was there." 



To modern eyes the iron gates and red-brick 

 walls of Ham are beautiful, with their elaborate 

 brick coping, and tall piers crowned with large 

 urns wreathed and festooned with flowers. 



To twentieth-century ideas "to feel an hundred 

 miles off and an hundred years back " when only a 



