An old English family mansion is a fertile subject for study. It
abounds with illustrations of former times, and traces of the tastes,
and humours, and manners of successive generations. The alterations and
additions, in different styles of architecture; the furniture, plate,
pictures, hangings; the warlike and sporting implements of different
ages and fancies; all furnish food for curious and amusing speculation.
As the squire is very careful in collecting and preserving all family
reliques, the Hall is full of remembrances of this kind. In looking
about the establishment, I can picture to myself the characters and
habits that have prevailed at different eras of the family history. I
have mentioned on a former occasion the armour of the crusader which
hangs up in the Hall. There are also several jack-boots, with enormously
thick soles and high heels, that belonged to a set of cavaliers, who
filled the Hall with the din and stir of arms during the time of the
Covenanters. A number of enormous drinking vessels of antique fashion,
with huge Venice glasses, and green hock glasses, with the apostles in
relief on them, remain as monuments of a generation or two of
hard-livers, that led a life of roaring revelry, and first introduced
the gout into the family.

I shall pass over several more such indications of temporary tastes of
the squire's predecessors; but I cannot forbear to notice a pair of
antlers in the great hall, which is one of the trophies of a hard-riding
squire of former times, who was the Nimrod of these parts. There are
many traditions of his wonderful feats in hunting still existing, which
are related by old Christy, the huntsman, who gets exceedingly nettled
if they are in the least doubted. Indeed, there is a frightful chasm, a
few miles from the Hall, which goes by the name of the Squire's Leap,