What has been truly called the "great Eliza's golden time" seems to have been the golden era of Lyme as it was the golden age of England. The Sir Peter Legh of that day was a scholar as well as a gentleman, a courtier as well as a soldier; brave and generous, graceful and gifted, with a knowledge of the world, and a large experience, united with consummate prudence. He was the friend of Essex and of Leicester, and the trusted counsellor of two successive Earls of Derby; a frequent visitor at Lathom, he was familiar with the semi-regal state and munificence there maintained, and in his own house at Lyme he observed a dignity and bounteous hospitality such as none of his predecessors had equalled. The age was one of growing refinement and general activity of intellect, resulting from the growing opulence of the country. England had recovered from the state of exhaustion in which the Wars of the Roses had left her, and men had more leisure for the cultivation of the elegances of life. While those daring spirits, Drake and Hawkins, and Howard, and Frobisher, were founding our naval supremacy, Sackville and Spencer, and Marlowe and Sidney were calling up a great native literature. Raleigh was in his teens, and in the yeoman's house at Stratford was budding into manhood he who was to Show, sustain, and nourish all the world. England had then become a true garden of the Hesperides; musical talent had spread from the Court to the people; literature was cultivated; and the drama, "which taught the unlearned the knowledge of many famous histories," was emerging from childishness into vigorous life, and producing its effect upon the national character. With the great diffusion of wealth men took pleasure and pride in adding to the stateliness and beauty of their permanent abodes. Architecture is said to mark the growth and development of human society, and to express the needs and ideas of changeful centuries. The age of Elizabeth was truly a building age; the day of the gloomy keep, the drawbridge, and the portcullis--the time When men built less against the elements Than their next neighbours was passed. Property was secure; and the fortified castle had given place to the stately mansion, and in almost every parish the country gentleman had taken the place of the feudal barons or the mitred abbots who had previously been the owners of vast territorial districts. As William Brown, in his "Pastorals," remarked-- Here on some mount a house of pleasure vaunted, Where once the warring cannon had been planted.