THE HALL 185 



the hall, which is of a size and comeliness, with its 

 quaint Jacobean wooden chimney-piece, its richly 

 finished cornices, and its elaborate plaster panellings, 

 such as you would hardly expect to find in a 

 country parsonage. During the years when it was 

 my home, it was crammed with pictures and with 

 china, with curios of every description, with old 

 oak chests filled with toys for children of all ages, 

 with oak chairs and tables, and most cherished 

 treasure, perhaps, of all with an old carved 

 writing-desk of oak, with the date 1630 upon it, at 

 which Wordsworth had written many of his poems. 

 On one wall was an ancestral chiming clock, and 

 near it an organ, which was also hereditary and of 

 rich tone for its kind. There was a rocking-horse 

 which had done good service with three generations 

 of children, and which, prancing as it did, in front 

 of a green iron chest with a double lock and a lid 

 of portentous weight, which contained the baptismal 

 and marriage and burial registers of the rude fore- 

 fathers of the hamlet from the sixteenth century 

 downwards, and bearing often the same names 

 throughout, seemed to bring the "spacious times of 

 great Elizabeth " into close juxtaposition with those 

 of Queen Victoria. The whole was a medley of 

 treasures which, in their number, their richness, 



