1641. For upwards of one hundred years after the marriage, this was the
principal residence of the family; and so lately as the time of the first
Duke of Rutland, (so created by queen Anne,) _seven score_ servants were
maintained, and during twelve days after Christmas, the house was "kept
open."

A few years before the death of Mrs. Radcliffe, the writer of "The
Mysteries of Udolpho," and several other romances, a tourist, in noticing
Haddon Hall, (and probably supposing that Mrs. R. had killed heroes enough
in her time,) asserted that it was there that Mrs. R. acquired her taste
for castle and romance, and proceeded to lament that she had, for many
years, fallen into a state of insanity, and was under confinement in
Derbyshire. Nor was the above traveller unsupported in her statement, and
some sympathizing poet apostrophized Mrs. R. in an "Ode to Terror." But the
fair romance-writer smiled at their pity, and had good sense enough to
refrain from writing in the newspapers that she was not insane. The whole
was a fiction, (no new trick for a fireside tourist,) for Mrs. Radcliffe
had never _seen_ Haddon Hall.

In the "Bijou" for 1828, an elegant _annual_, on the plan of the German
pocket-books, (to which we are indebted for the present engraving,) are a
few stanzas to Haddon Hall, which merit a place in a future number of the
MIRROR.

* * * * *


POETICAL LOVE-LETTER.

_(For the Mirror.)_