tended (as we imagine) that at the fame time as the might have an eye on the men and mails. There are upon the ground-floor, in all, twenty-x apartments; among which I muft not forget a chamber which has in it a large antiquity of timber, that feems to have been either a bedfead, or a cyder-prefs.

The kitchen is built in form of the Rotunda being one vaft vault to the top of the house; where one aperture ferves to let out the smoke, and let in the light. By the blackness of the walls, the circular fires, vaft cauldrons, yawning mouths of ovens and furnaces, you would think it either the forge of Vulcan, the cave of Polypheme, or the temple of Moloch. The horror of this place has made fuch an impreffion on the country people, that they believe the Witches keep their Sabbath here, and that once a year the Devil treats them with infernal venifon, a roafted tiger stuffed with ten-penny nails.

Above ftairs we have a number of rooms; you never pass out of one into another but by the afcent or defcent of two or three ftairs. Our best room is very long and low, of the exact proportion of a bandbox. In most of these rooms there are hangings of the finest work in the world, that is to fay, those which Arachne spins from her own bowels. Were it not for this only furniture, the whole would be a miferable scene of naked walls, flaw'd

cielings,

cielings, broken windows, and rufty locks. The roof is fo decayed, that after a favourable fhower we may expect a crop of mushrooms between the chinks of our floors. All the doors are as little and low as thofe to the cabbins of packet-boats. These rooms have for many years had no other inhabitants than certain rats, whose very age renders them worthy of this feat, for the very rats of this venerable houfe are grey: fince thefe have not yet quitted it, we hope at least that this ancient manfion may not fall during the fmall remnant these poor animals have to live, who are now too infirm to remove to another. There is yet a fmall fubfiftence left them in the few remaining books of the library.

We had never seen half what I had described, but for a starch'd grey-headed Steward, who is as much an antiquity as any in this place, and looks like an old family picture walked out of its frame. He entertained us as we paffed from room to room with feveral relations of the family; but his obfervations were particularly curious when we came to the cellar he informed us where ftood the triple rows of butts of fack, and where were ranged the bottles of tent, for toafts in a morning; he pointed to the ftands that fupported the iron-hoop'd hogfheads of ftrong beer; then stepping to a corner, he lugged out the tattered fragments of an unframed picture: "This (fays he, with tears) was

" poor Sir Thomas! once mafter of all this drink. "He had two fons, poor young mafters! whe "never arrived to the age of his beer; they both "fell ill in this very room, and never went out " on their own legs." He could not pass by a heap of broken bottles without taking up a piece, to fhew us the Arms of the family upon it. He then led us up the tower by dark winding ftone fteps, which landed us into feveral little rooms one above another. One of these was nailed up, and our guide whispered to us as a fecret the occafion of it: It seems the course of this noble blood was a little interrupted about two centuries ago, by a freak of the Lady Frances, who was here taken in the fact with a neighbouring Prior, ever fince which the room has been nailed up, and branded with the name of the Adultery-Chamber. The ghost of lady Frances is fsupposed to walk there, and fome prying maids of the family report that they have feen a Lady in a fardingale through the key-hole; but this matter is husht up, and the fervants are forbid to talk of it.

I must needs have tired you by this long defcription: but what engaged me in it, was a generous principle to preserve the memory of that, which itself muft foon fall into duft, nay, perhaps part of it, before this letter reaches your hands.

Indeed we owe this old house the fame kind of gratitude that we do to an old friend, who harbours

Bours us in his declining condition, nay even in his laft extremities. How fit is this retreat for uninterrupted study, where no one that paffes by can dream there is an inhabitant, and even those who would dine with us dare not stay under our roof! Any one that fees it, will own I could not have chosen a more likely place to converse with the dead in. I had been mad indeed if I had left. your Grace for any one but Homer. But when I return to the living, I fhall have the fenfe to endeavour to converse with the best of them, and fhall therefore as foon as poffible tell you in perfon how much I am, &c.

IBID. P. 247.

APOLOGY FOR HIS RELIGIOUS

MY LORD,

TENETS.

I AM truly obliged by your kind com dolence on my Father's death, and the defire you. exprefs that I should improve this incident to my advantage. I know your Lordship's friendship to me is fo extenfive, that you include in that wish both my spiritual and my temporal advantage; and it is what I owe to that friendship, to open my mind unrefervedly to you on this head. It is true I have loft a parent, for whom no gains I could make would be any equivalent. But that was not my only tye; I thank God another ftill remains (and long may it remain) of the fame tender nature; Genitrix est mihi-and excufe me if I fay with Euryalus,

Nequeam lachrymas perferre parentis.

A rigid divine may call it a carnal tye, but fure it is a virtuous one: at least I am more certain that it is a duty of nature to preserve a good parent's life and happiness, than I am of any fpeculative point whatever.

Ignaram hujus quodcunque pericli

Hanc ego, nunc, linquam?

For fhe, my Lord, would think this feparation more grievous than any other; and I, for my part, know as little as poor Euryalus did, of the fuccefs of fuch an adventure (for an adventure it is, and no fmall one, in spite of the moft pofitive divinity). Whether the change would be to my fpiritual advantage, God only knows; this I know, that I mean as well in the religion I now profess, as I can poffibly ever do in another. Can a man who thinks fo, justify a change, even if he thought both equally good? To fuch an one, the part of Joining with any one body of Christians might perhaps be eafy, but I think it would not be so, to Renounce the other.

Your Lordship has formerly advised me to read the best Controverfies between the Churches. Shall I tell you a fecret? I did fo at fourteen years old, (for I loved reading, and my father had no other books) there was a collection of all that had been written on both fides in the reign of King James the Second: I warmed my head with them; and the confequence was, that I found myself a Papist and a Proteftant by turns, according to the last book I read. I am afraid most Seekers are in the fame cafe,