LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



WARWICK CASTLE: KENILWORTH: STRATFORD-ON- 

 AVON. 



July, 1850. 



MY DEAR SIR : As, after looking at some constellation in a 

 summer night, one remembers most vividly its largest and 

 most potent star, so, from amid a constellation of fine country-seats, 

 I can write you to-day only of my visit to one, but that one which, 

 for its peculiar extent, overtops all the rest WARWICK CASTLE. 



Warwick Castle, indeed, combines in itself perhaps more of ro- 

 mantic and feudal interest than any actual residence in Europe, and 

 for this very reason, because it unites in itself the miracle of exhib- 

 iting at the same moment hoar antiquity, and the actual vivid pre- 

 sent, having been held and maintained from first to last by the same 

 family. In most of the magnificent country-seats of England, it is 

 rather vast extent and enormous expense which impresses one. If 

 they are new, they are sometimes overloaded with elaborate details ;* 



* Like Eton Hall, near Liverpool, perhaps visited by more Americans 

 than any other seat though the architecture is meretricious, and the whole 

 place as wanting in genuine taste as it is abounding in evidences of immense 

 wealth. Warwick Castle bears, to an American, the same relation to all 

 modern castles that the veritable Noah's ark, if it could be found still in foil 

 oreeervation, would to a model made by an ingenious antiquarian. 



