It was at Burghley that I first made acquaintance with Mr Stafford O’Brien, who afterwards became my colleague and fellow-actor in many a joyous revel and dramatic entertainment at Rockingham, Drayton and Farming Woods, names, each of which recall many a fond memory and tender regret. A housekeeper whom I knew at Burghley, and who was what is ambiguously termed a retired gentlewoman, and was constantly referring to better days, told me once, that she found a real consolation for all her troubles when gazing on that magnificent building “especially, Miss Boyle, the quadrangle by moonlight”; and certainly it was a “sight for sair e’en,” as it recurs most frequently to my mind one brilliant winter’s day, rising out of a plain of snow, with its golden gates resplendent in the sunshine. I usually occupied the very small apartment called “Queen Elizabeth’s China Closet,” in which was a portrait by Domenichino far more lovely in my sight than that of the renowned Cenci, which in some measure it resembled. To my mother was allotted a room close at hand, and I used to laugh at her nightly search in manifold hidingplaces, behind the tapestry, in the turret, etc., lest some one should lie there concealed. A picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence—one of his earliest, while still imbued with admiration for the works of Sir Joshua—represents the heroine of the Laureate’s beautiful ballad,[54] with her husband and “three fair children,”-“the village maiden” who, in her unexpected transition from obscurity to splendour— “Shaped her heart with woman’s meekness To all duties of her rank—” was such— “That she grew a noble lady And the people loved her much.” Footnote 54: Henry, tenth Earl and first Marquess of Exeter, married, _en secondes noces_, Sarah, daughter of Mr Thomas Hoggins of Bolas, in Shropshire. He was raised to the Marquisate in 1801, and married, as third wife, Elizabeth, Dowager Duchess of Hamilton. The phrase “Not a lord in all the county Is so great a lord as he,” is open to comment, save as a poetic licence. The fair children were 1, Brownlow, second Marquess, the husband of my cousin; 2, Lord Thomas, who married, in 1838, Lady Sophia Lennox; and 3, Lady Sophia, who married, in 1818, Right Honourable Henry Pierrepont. Lady Sophia Pierrepont was grandmother of the present Duke of Wellington. [Sidenote: LORD DERBY—THE CORN LAWS]