When I first entered the hospitable door of Fryston, I suffered from a distinct feeling of trepidation. It was new to me to meet men of Lord Houghton's social rank and fame on terms of friendly intimacy, and I confess that I was miserably shy when I made my first appearance among the company assembled in that pleasant morning room, where, long years before, Thomas Carlyle had been first introduced to the amenities of English country-house life. Carlyle has told the world, in a letter written to his wife, how much he was confounded by what seemed to him to be the splendours of a society that he had hitherto viewed only from the outside. His description of his bedroom--it was much larger and grander in the letter than any bedroom that really existed at Fryston--of the servants in livery, the menu of the dinner-table, and of the valet who made unlawful and undesired investigation of the contents of his pockets when he intruded himself upon him in the morning, all bespoke the absolute novice. I do not think, however, that he was a greater novice in 1842 than I was in 1870. A very brief experience enables any person of ordinary intelligence to grasp the essential details of country-house life; but many persons--including Carlyle and myself--would have been spared a certain spell of nervous discomfort if there had existed some simple written code explaining those usages and customs in which country-house life differs from the ordinary life of the English middle-classes. But kindness puts an end to all difficulties of the shy guest, and certainly there never was a kinder hostess than Lady Houghton.