“Colonel Wildman was a schoolfellow in the same form as Lord Byron at Harrow School. In adolescence they were separated at college, and in manhood by their pursuits; but they lived in friendship. If Lord Byron was constrained by circumstances to allow Newstead to be sold, the fittest person living to become its proprietor was his friend Colonel Wildman. He was not a cold and formal possessor of Newstead, but, animated even with the feelings of Byron, he took possession of it as a place consecrated by many circumstances of times and persons, and above all, by the attachment of his friend Byron. The high spirited poet, however, ill brooked the necessity of selling an estate entailed in his family since the Reformation (but lost to him and the family by the improvidence of a predecessor), and retiring into Tuscany, there indulged in those splenetic feelings which mark his later writings.” No more vivid picture of Newstead has been penned than that of Byron’s in the 13th canto of _Don Juan_-- “To Norman Abbey whirl’d the noble pair, An old, old monastery once, and now Still older mansion,--of a rich and rare Mix’d Gothic, such as artists all allow Few specimens yet left us can compare Withal; it lies perhaps a little low, Because the monks preferred a hill behind, To shelter their devotion from the wind. “It stood embosom’d in a happy valley, Crown’d by high woodlands, where the Druid oak Stood like Caractacus in act to rally His host, with broad arms ’gainst the thunder-stroke; And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally The dappled foresters; as day awoke, The branching stag swept down with all his herd To quaff a brook which murmur’d like a bird. “Before the mansion lay a lucid lake, Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed By a river, which its soften’d way did take In currents through the calmer water spread Around: the wild fowl nestled in the brake And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed; The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood With their green faces fix’d upon the flood. “Its outlet dash’d into a deep cascade, Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding Its shriller echoes--like an infant made Quiet--sank into softer ripples, gliding Into a rivulet; and thus allay’d, Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw.