[Illustration: Effigy in Marble]

In like manner I have followed some of the family great men, through a
series of pictures, from early boyhood to the robe of dignity, or
truncheon of command, and so on by degrees until they were gathered up
in the common repository, the neighbouring church.

There is one group that particularly interested me. It consisted of
four sisters of nearly the same age, who flourished about a century
since, and, if I may judge from their portraits, were extremely
beautiful. I can imagine what a scene of gaiety and romance this old
mansion must have been, when they were in the heyday of their charms;
when they passed like beautiful visions through its halls, or stepped
daintily to music in the revels and dances of the cedar gallery; or
printed, with delicate feet, the velvet verdure of these lawns. How must
they have been looked up to with mingled love, and pride, and reverence,
by the old family servants; and followed by almost painful admiration by
the aching eyes of rival admirers! How must melody, and song, and tender
serenade, have breathed about these courts, and their echoes whispered
to the loitering tread of lovers! How must these very turrets have made
the hearts of the young galliards thrill as they first discerned them
from afar, rising from among the trees, and pictured to themselves the
beauties casketed like gems within these walls! Indeed I have discovered
about the place several faint records of this reign of love and romance,
when the Hall was a kind of Court of Beauty. Several of the old romances
in the library have marginal notes expressing sympathy and approbation,
where there are long speeches extolling ladies' charms, or protesting
eternal fidelity, or bewailing the cruelty of some tyrannical fair one.
The interviews, and declarations, and parting scenes of tender lovers,