

London to John C? Groat's. 247 



splendid enough for the res dmce of an emperor and 

 his suite. Its towers, turrets and spires present a 

 picturesque grove of architecture of different ages, 

 and its windows, it is said, equal in number all the 

 days of the year. It was not open to the public 

 the day I was in Stamford, so I could only walk 

 around it and estimate its interior by its external 

 grandeur. 



But there was an outside world of architecture in 

 the park of sublimer features to me than even the 

 great palace itself, with all its ornate and elaborate 

 sculpture. It was the architecture of the majestic elms 

 and oaks that stood in long ranks and folded their 

 hands, high up in the blue sky, above the finely- 

 gravelled walks that radiated outward in different 

 directions. They all wore the angles and arches of the 

 Gothic order and the imperial belt of several centuries. 

 I walked down one long avenue and counted them on 

 either side. There were not sixty on both ; yet their 

 green and graceful roofage reached a full third of 

 a mile. Not sixty to pillar and turn such an arch 

 as that ! I sat down on a seat at the end to think 

 of it. There was a morning service going on in this 

 Cathedral of Nature. The dew-moistened, foliated 

 arches so lofty, so interwebbed with wavy, waky 

 spangles of sky, were all set to the music of the 



