■WARWICK CASTLE : KBNILWOETH : BTRATFOED-ON-AVON. 479 



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

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

 sitored. 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 

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

 were brought to England in the pahny days of the' Italian states. 

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

 hung with very choice pictures by Van Dyok, 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 powetful self-centred soul, and the latter by 

 the crushed a:nd broken-hearted pensiveness of the countenance — '■ 

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

 noble, but with the inarks 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, deepj 

 sunny windows which, lights liie 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 1 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 beautifiil the land- 

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

 froru the -level of the court-yard, yet on looking from these'.winddws 

 I found myself more than 60 feet above ' the Avon; which almost 

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

 the most graceflil 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. . A-s 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 scepe, and perhaps its quietness and serenity were 

 en.hanced by contrast with the sombre grandeur of the feudal-coiirt-. 

 yprd wh^re I first entered. . • . ' ■ 



■■. Passing tlirough a gate in the castle wall, I entered the plessure 



