and beyond this library. And here you may believe, was not to me the
least interesting, though by no means the most splendid, part of the
suite.

The lion's own den proper, then, is a room of about five-and-twenty
feet square by twenty feet high, containing of what is properly called
furniture nothing but a small writing-table in the centre, a plain
arm-chair covered with black leather--a very comfortable one though, for
I tried it--and a single chair besides, plain symptoms that this is no
place for company. On either side of the fireplace there are shelves
filled with duodecimos and books of reference, chiefly, of course,
folios; but except these there are no books save the contents of a light
gallery which runs round three sides of the room, and is reached by a
hanging stair of carved oak in one corner. You have been both at the
Elisée Bourbon and Malmaison, and remember the library at one or other
of those places, I forget which; this gallery is much in the same style.
There are only two portraits, an original of the beautiful and
melancholy head of Claverhouse, and a small full length of Rob Roy.
Various little antique cabinets stand round about, each having a bust
on it: Stothard's Canterbury Pilgrims are on the mantelpiece; and in
one corner I saw a collection of really useful weapons, those of the
forest-craft, to wit--axes and bills and so forth of every calibre.
There is only one window pierced in a very thick wall, so that the
place is rather sombre; the light tracery work of the gallery overhead
harmonizes with the books well. It is a very comfortable-looking room,
and very unlike any other I ever was in. I should not forget some
Highland claymores, clustered round a target over the Canterbury people,
nor a writing-box of carved wood, lined with crimson velvet, and
furnished with silver plate of right venerable aspect, which looked as
if it might have been the implement of old Chaucer himself, but which