WARWICK CASTLE I KENILWORTH *. STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 479 



right. Of course a good deal of the furniture has been removed 

 from time to time, and large portions of the interior have been re- 

 stored by the present earl. But this has been done with such admi- 

 rable taste that there is nothing which disturbs the unity of the whole. 

 The furniture is all of dark wood, old cabinets richly inlaid with 

 brass, old carved oaken couches, or those rich mosaic tables which 

 were brought to England in the palmy days of the Italian states. 

 Every thing looks old, genuine and original. The apartments were 

 hung with very choice pictures by Van Dyck, Titian and Rubens 

 among which I noticed a magnificent head of Cromwell, and 

 another of Queen Mary, that riveted my attention the former by 

 its expression of the powerful self-centred soul, and the latter by 

 the crushed and broken-hearted pensiveness of the countenance 

 for it was Mary at 40, just before her death still beautiful and 

 noble, but with the marks in her features of that suffering which 

 alone reveals to us the depth of the soul. 



Not to weary you with the interior of what is only the first floor 

 of the castle, let me take you to one of the range of large, deep, 

 sunny windows which lights the whole of this suite of apartments 

 on their southern side. Each window is arched overhead and wain- 

 scoted on the side, and as the walls of the castle are 10 to 1 2 feet thick, 

 and each window above 8 feet wide, it forms almost a little room 

 or closet by itself. And from these windows how beautiful the land- 

 scape ! Although we entered these apartments by only a few steps 

 from the level of the court-yard, yet on looking from these windows 

 T found myself more than 60 feet above the Avon, which almost 

 washes the base of the castle walls on this side, winding about in 

 A hie most graceful curve, and losing itself in the distance among 

 groups of aged elms. On this side of the castle, beyond the Avon, 

 stretches away the park of about a thousand acres. As far as the 

 eye reaches it is a beautiful English landscape, of fresh turf and fine 

 groups of trees and beyond it, for several miles, lie the rich farm 

 lands of the Warwick estate. There are few pictures more lovely 

 than such a rural scene, and perhaps its quietness and serenity were 

 enhanced by contrast with the sombre grandeur of the feudal court- 

 yard where I first entered. 



Passing through a gate in the castle wall, I entered the pleasure 



