48 NEWTON MANOR. 



established in the louvre turret in the centre of the hall. They 

 make their appearance every year to a day or two at the beginning 

 of September, and one of their amiable customs is to drop down on 

 the shoulders of our lady guests at dinner time. 



Now as to my doings and the sundry " bric-a-brac " got together 

 in the house. It has been a great amusement from year to year to 

 alter and build a little, plant a good deal, and generally improve 

 the house and its surroundings. I found that I could connect the 

 barn, a substantial old stone-built and stone-tiled structure, with 

 the rest of the house by means of a corridor, and convert it into a 

 dining-hall. The other inner works of the house have had no end 

 of choppings about, changes, and additions, all of which have pro- 

 vided most pleasant diversions after the more serious occupations 

 and fatigues of London residence. In short the place has been 

 entirely transformed within a comparatively short time. Now as 

 to the objects of interest, if there are any worthy of special notice. 

 The chimney piece, always the focus and centre of every habitable 

 room, is probably the most notable object in the dining-hall. This 

 is really a fine example of an ancient Italian-hooded mantelpiece, 

 carved in the Tuscan black stone called " Pietra serena." It is a 

 massive structure of considerable size : it dates about 1480, and 

 was brought from one of the palaces or villas in the neighbourhood 

 of Florence. An interesting peculiarity will be noticed in the two 

 niches, one on each side within the jambs, covered with shell- 

 shaped canopies ; these were the ingle nooks where the master of 

 the house and his wife could sit and warm themselves at the fire 

 in the cold winter evenings. In the frieze will be noticed the coat 

 of arms of the family for whom the work was constructed, an 

 inscription in finely-cut letters and carved festoons of leaves and 

 flowers pendant from vases with dolphin handles. The inscription 

 is in Latin much abbreviated ; it reads as follows : Ipsa dies 

 quandoque parens quandoque noverca est, which may be freely 

 rendered " the day is sometimes a mother and sometimes an 

 unkind step-mother." It is paraphrased from the Greek of the 

 "Works and Days" of Hesiod, and was in all probability furnished 



