lumnar chimneys, so much adorned as to make that a beauty which is generally a deformity; its fair halls, banqueting-rooms, galleries, and lodgings for interior accommodation,-it will afford no uncomfortable notion of the days of good Queen Bess. In immediate and close connection with the mansion lie its gardens, with their terraces, urns, statues, staircases, screens, alcoves, and summer-houses; its dry paved or turfed walks, leading through a succession of interesting objects, the whole line of architecture corresponding with that of the house, with its Gothic labels and entablature, but assuming gradually a plainer and more massive character, as the grounds extended and seemed to connect themselves with the open country. The inhabitants possessed the means, we must also suppose, of escaping from this display of ostentatious splendour to the sequestered paths of a lonely chase, dark enough and extensive enough to convey the idea of a natural forest, where, as in strong contrast with the scene we have quitted, the cooing of the woodpigeon is alone heard, where the streams find their way unconfined, and the trees spread their arms untortured by art; where all is solemn, grand, and untutored, and seems the work of unassisted nature.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S

FIRST INTERVIEW WITH QUEEN ELIZABETH.

THEY were soon launched on the princely bosom of the broad Thames, upon which the sun now shone forth in all its splendour.

"There are two things scarce matched in the universe," said Walter [Raleigh] to Blount "the sun in heaven, and the Thames on the earth."

"The one will light us to Greenwich well enough," said Blount," and the other would take us there a little faster, if it were ebb-tide."

"And this is all thou think'st-all thou carestall thou deem'st the use of the King of Elements, and the King of Rivers, to guide three such poor caitiffs as thyself, and me, and Tracy, upon an idle journey of courtly ceremony!"

for

"It is no errand of my seeking," replied Blount, "and I could excuse both the sun and the Thames the trouble of carrying me where I have no great mind to go, and where I expect but dog's wages my trouble—and by my honour," he added, looking out from the head of the boat, "it seems to me as if our message were a sort of labour in vain; for see, the Queen's barge lies at the stairs as if her Majesty were about to take water."

It was even so. The royal barge, manned with the Queen's watermen, richly attired in the regal liveries, and having the banner of England displayed, did in