Ay, this summer-house which shelters us, and those noble balusters which protect the northern termination of the terrace, how many thoughts do they conjure up in the mind! [Picture: Fountain at Pryor’s Bank] These balusters belonged to the main staircase of Winchester House. Do you remember Winchester House in Broad Street, in the good city of London, the residence of “the loyal Paulets?” Perhaps not. There is, however, a print of its last appearance in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for April, 1839, and by which you will at once identify this summer-house as the bay-window of the principal apartment. Indeed the editor tells you that “the greater part of the remaining ornamental wood-work has been purchased by Thomas Baylis, Esq., F.S.A., who is fitting up with it the kitchen and some of the new rooms of his house, Pryor’s Bank, Fulham.” It is stated in the same magazine, that in 1828 the motto of the Paulets, AYMES LOYAULTE, was to be seen in the windows of the principal apartment on the first floor, in yellow letters, disposed in diagonal stripes; which motto, it is added, “was probably put there by the loyal Marquis of Winchester, in the time of Charles I., by whom the same sentence was inscribed in every window of his residence at Basing House, in Hants, which he so gallantly defended against the Parliamentarians.” {218} Now, is it not more probable that the recollection of this motto in the windows of his paternal mansion, conveyed through the medium of coloured glass, indelibly stamped by sunshine (or daguerreotyped, as we might term it) upon the youthful mind of the gallant marquis those feelings of devoted loyalty which influenced his after conduct, and led him to inscribe with the point of his diamond ring the same motto upon the windows of Basing House? [Picture: Turn Buckle] Be this as it may, it is gratifying to know that many of the panes of glass which bore that glorious yellow letter motto in Winchester House, at the period when it was doomed to be taken down, are preserved, having been with good taste presented to the present Marquis of Winchester; and two or three which were overlooked have come into the possession of Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence. But much of the diamond-shaped glass in this bay-window, as it stood upon the terrace of the Pryor’s Bank, was ancient, and very curious. You could not fail to remark the quaint window-latch, termed “a Turn Buckle.” Had we time to linger here, how amusing it might be to attempt to decipher the monograms, and names, and verses inscribed upon the various lozenge-shaped panes of glass, which practically exemplified the phrase of “diamond cut diamond.”