The room is a very handsome one, with a low and very richly carved roof
of dark oak again; a huge projecting bow window, and the dais elevated
_more majorum_; the ornaments of the roof, niches for lamps, &c.
&c. in short, all the minor details, are, I believe, fac similes after
Melrose. The walls are hung in crimson, but almost entirely covered with
pictures, of which the most remarkable are--the parliamentary general,
Lord Essex, a full length on horseback; the Duke of Monmouth, by Lely; a
capital Hogarth, by himself; Prior and Gay, both by Jervas; and the head
of Mary Queen of Scots, in a charger, painted by Amias Canrod, the day
after the decapitation at Fotheringay, and sent some years ago as a
present to Sir Walter from a Prussian nobleman, in whose family it had
been for more than two centuries. It is a most deathlike performance,
and the countenance answers well enough to the coins of the unfortunate
beauty, though not at all to any of the portraits I have happened to
see. I believe there is no doubt as to the authenticity of this most
curious picture. Among various family pictures, I noticed particularly
Sir Walter's great grandfather, the old cavalier mentioned in one of
the epistles in Marmion, who let his beard grow after the execution of
Charles I., and who here appears, accordingly, with a most venerable
appendage of silver whiteness, reaching even unto his girdle.

* * * * *

A narrower passage leads to a charming breakfast room, which looks to
the Tweed on one side, and towards Yarrow and Ettricke, famed in song,
on the other: a cheerful room, fitted up with novels, romances, and
poetry, I could perceive, at one end; and the other walls covered thick
and thicker with a most valuable and beautiful collection of watercolour
drawings, chiefly by Turner and Thomson of Duddingstone, the designs,
in short, for the magnificent work entitled "Provincial Antiquities of