The Family.



"It was a vast and venerable pile."

"Oh, may'st thou ever be as now thou art,
Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring."


The mansion in which dwelt the Delmes was one of wide and extensive
range. Its centre slightly receded, leaving a wing on either side.
Fluted ledges, extending the whole length of the building, protruded
above each story. These were supported by quaint heads of satyr, martyr,
or laughing triton. The upper ledge, which concealed the roof from
casual observers, was of considerably greater projection. Placed above
it, at intervals, were balls of marble, which, once of pure white, had
now caught the time-worn hue of the edifice itself. At each corner of
the front and wings, the balls were surmounted by the family device--the
eagle with extended wing. One claw closed over the stone, and the bird
rode it proudly an' it had been the globe. The portico, of a pointed
Gothic, would have seemed heavy, had it not been lightened by glass
doors, the vivid colours of which were not of modern date. These
admitted to a capacious hall, where, reposing on the wide-spreading
antlers of some pristine tenant of the park, gleamed many a piece of
armour that in days of yore had not been worn ingloriously.

The Delme family was an old Norman one, on whose antiquity a peerage
could have conferred no new lustre. At the period when the aristocracy
of Great Britain lent themselves to their own diminution of