permitted egress to the smoke. A stone Staircase (indicated in the appended print) leads from the Hall to the Picture Gallery and the State Apartments. They are filled with family Portraits, all of which possess considerable interest, although few are of much worth. Among them are several of Sir Philip and Algernon Sidney; one of Sir Philip’s sister, the Countess of Pembroke, to whom he addressed the “Arcadia,” and who is immortalised by Ben Jonson in his famous Epitaph to “the subject of all verse;” and one, by Lely, of the “Sacharissa” of the muse of Waller. A small Chamber in the Mansion contains, however, a few treasures of rarer value than all its copies of “fair women and brave men.” Among some curious family relics and records, is a lock of Sir Philip Sidney’s hair; it is of a pale auburn. A lock of the hair of the ill-fated Algernon is also with it; in tint it nearly resembles that of his illustrious great uncle. But “Penshurst Place” is interesting chiefly because of its associations; and these are indeed of a high order. Our history of the family is, necessarily, brief. Until the reign of Edward the Sixth, the Manor of Peneshurste[62] had received a rapid succession of lords. In the reign of Edward the First, it was in the possession of Sir Stephen de Peneshurste, or Pencestre--“a very learned man,” according to Harris, and a “famous warden of the Cinque Ports.” In that of Edward the Second, it was the property of Sir John de Pulteney, who “had licence to embattle it,”--and who was four times Lord Mayor of London. In that of Richard the Second, it was sold to the Regent Duke of Bedford. On his death, his brother, “the good Duke Humphrey,” inherited; and on his death--by murder, at Bury, in 1446--the estate reverted to the Crown, and was granted by Henry the Sixth to his kinsman, Humphrey de Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. In his family it remained until the reign of Henry the Eighth, when, by the attainder of Edward Duke of Buckingham, it fell again to the Crown. By Edward the Sixth, it was given to Sir Ralph Fane; but on his execution, as an accomplice of the Protector Somerset, it was by letters patent granted to Sir William Sidney (one of the heroes of Flodden Field) and his heirs--Sir William being lineally descended from Sir William Sidney, Knight, Chamberlain to the Second Henry, “With whom he came out of Anjou.” In 1553, his son, Sir Henry, inherited. Sir Henry was from infancy bred at Court, being “a companion, and many times a bedfellow,” to the young Prince, afterwards Edward the Sixth, by whom he was knighted. He was twice Lord Deputy of Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth--a period of trouble and continual danger; during which he discharged his duty as an energetic soldier, a sound practical reformer, and a merciful man. The Historians of his time describe him as “of a very public spirit, of great abilities, modest, pious, and patient; and in his younger years, for comeliness and beauty, the ornament of the Court.”