My Aunt’s visits to Burghley extended over many years. Lord and Lady Exeter were extremely hospitable, and continued their hospitality until his death in January 1867. As an Oxford undergraduate, I was more than once invited to one of the younger parties, and the stately but courteous manners of the house impressed my mind indelibly. It was one of the last great houses in which ceremonial at breakfast was maintained. We were always expected to appear in frock-coats and faultless garb for the morning meal, to which we went in pairs as strictly arranged as for dinner. Smoking was absolutely taboo, and I was never sure whether the action of a younger son of the house in luring a few adventurous spirits after midnight to the depths of the servants’ hall was quite approved by his sire. We used to don our shooting things after having formally conducted the ladies from breakfast, and we were taken to the _rendez-vous_ on ponies with impossible mouths. I was always a bad rider, and was invariably run away with, but generally arrived at the meet somehow. But I well remember how a gallant guardsman, owner of a historic name, was taken by his incontrollable steed right through Stamford town, and with difficulty parried, on a not very triumphant return, a charge of furious riding. Our mishaps were the source of no little kindly chaff from the Lord Burghley of those days; but he, like his father and mother, seemed to have no other object whatever than to make the hospitality of the grand old place a source of unalloyed pleasure and enjoyment to the guests. [Illustration: BURGHLEY. ] [Sidenote: ISABELLA, LADY EXETER] One of the most interesting places which I frequented after my return to England was “Burghley[52] house by Stamford town.” Here lived one of the best and kindest of women, the daughter of that beloved uncle, Mr Poyntz[53] to whom I have so often alluded. Lady Exeter had been before her marriage one of the most admired and courted of London beauties, and the suitors for her hand were as numerous as those usually attributed to a princess of fairyland. Indeed it was a family jest at the morning meal, when the letters were laid on the breakfast table, “Where is Isabella’s proposal?” Rather a laughable tribute was once paid her in later times by a retainer of Burghley, which was called forth by my mother’s remark to the bailiff: “How noble and good is Lady Exeter!” “Yes,” returned the man with enthusiasm, “I never look at her ladyship without saying to myself, ‘that is a fallen angel!’” Footnote 52: Lord Tennyson writes of “Burleigh House by Stamford town,” but the spelling given in the text has been adopted by many generations. Footnote 53: Brownlow, second Marquess of Exeter; married, 1824, Isabella, daughter of William Stephen Poyntz, of Cowdray, and was consequently my aunt’s first cousin.