From the Mansfield road we entered the gateway and drove through the stretches of forest and meadow in the great park, halting the car at the very doorway of the ancient place. We paused to view the fine facade, with its square battlemented tower at one end and the ruins of the abbey church at the other. There is little left of this latter save the east wall, once pierced by three great windows, two of which have at some time been filled in. We were conducted by the rather aristocratic housekeeper to every part of the house save the private apartments of the family, and there was no effort to hurry us along--so often the fate of the tourist in such cases. One who is accustomed to think of Newstead Abbey as it lives, lonely and half ruinous, in the verse of Byron, who had such an intense affection for the home of his ancestors; or even one who reads Washington Irving's interesting account of his visit to the place when owned by Col. Wildman a few years later, is hardly prepared for the modern palace into which the abbey has been transformed. The paneled halls, with their rich furnishings and rare curios from all parts of the world, and the trim, beautifully kept gardens that greet one everywhere from the windows, have little in common with the Newstead of which Byron wrote in "Hours of Idleness:" "Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle, Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay; In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle Have choked up the rose which once bloomed in the way." Still, much is unaltered and there are many relics to bring memories of the one-time noble, though unfortunate, owner, whose recklessness quite as much as his necessities compelled the sale of his ancestral estate. [Illustration: NEWSTEAD ABBEY.] Of greatest interest are the apartments which Byron himself occupied, a suite of three medium-sized rooms, which have been religiously kept through all the years just as the poet left them. The simple blue and white toilet set was his own, the bed the one he slept in, and many other articles and furnishings vividly recall the noble occupant who never returned after the sale of the abbey. Probably no one has occupied the rooms since Washington Irving slept there during the visit we have referred to and was roused in the middle of the night by a ghostly footfall in the hall--but found only Boatswain II. outside the door.