Nunappleton House is in the Ainstey of York, a pleasant bit of country bounded by the rivers Ouse, Wharfe, and Nidd. The modern traveller, as his train rushes north, whilst shut up in his corridor-carriage with his rug, his pipe, and his novel, passes at no great distance from the house on the way between Selby and York. The old house, as it was in Marvell's time, is thus described by Captain Markham, who had a print to help him, in his delightful _Life of the Great Lord Fairfax_:-- "It was a picturesque brick mansion with stone copings and a high steep roof, and consisted of a centre and two wings at right angles, forming three sides of a square, facing to the north. The great hall or gallery occupied the centre between the two wings. It was fifty yards long, and was adorned with thirty shields in wood, painted with the arms of the family. In the three rooms there were chimney-pieces of delicate marble of various colours, and many fine portraits on the walls. The central part of the house was surrounded by a cupola, and clustering chimneys rose in the two wings. A noble park with splendid oak-trees, and containing 300 head of deer, stretched away to the north, while on the south side were the ruins of the old Nunnery, the flower-garden, and the low meadows called _ings_ extending to the banks of the Wharfe. In this flower-garden the General took especial delight. The flowers were planted in masses, tulips, pinks, and roses, each in separate beds, which were cut into the shape of forts with five bastions. General Lambert, whom Fairfax had reared as a soldier, also loved his flowers, and excelled both in cultivating them and in painting them from Nature. Lord Fairfax only went to Denton, the favourite seat of his grandfather, when the floods were out over the _ings_ at Nunappleton, and he also occasionally resorted to his house at Bishop Hill in York."[31:1] In this garden the muse of Andrew Marvell blossomed like the cherry-tree. Lord Fairfax, though furious in war, and badly wounded in many a fierce engagement, was, when otherwise occupied, a man of quiet literary tastes, and a good bit of a collector and _virtuoso_. Some of the rare books and manuscripts he had around him at Nunappleton are now in the Bodleian, the treasures of which he had protected in troubled times. He loved to handle medals and coins, and knew the points of old engravings. He wrote a history of the Christian Church down to our own ill-conducted Reformation, and composed a complete metrical version of the Psalms of David and of the Song of Solomon. These and many other productions, which he characterised as "The Employment of my Solitude," still remain in his own handwriting. Amongst them, Yorkshire men will hear with pleasure, is a "Treatise on the breeding of the Horse."