Beyond the smaller, or rather I should say, the narrower armoury, lies the dining parlour proper, however; and though there is nothing Udolphoish here, yet I can well believe that when lighted up and the curtains drawn at night, the place may give no bad notion of the private snuggery of some lofty lord abbot of the time of the Canterbury Tales. The room is a very handsome one, with a low and very richly carved roof of dark oak again; a huge projecting bow window, and the dais elevated _more majorum_; the ornaments of the roof, niches for lamps, &c. &c. in short, all the minor details, are, I believe, fac similes after Melrose. The walls are hung in crimson, but almost entirely covered with pictures, of which the most remarkable are--the parliamentary general, Lord Essex, a full length on horseback; the Duke of Monmouth, by Lely; a capital Hogarth, by himself; Prior and Gay, both by Jervas; and the head of Mary Queen of Scots, in a charger, painted by Amias Canrod, the day after the decapitation at Fotheringay, and sent some years ago as a present to Sir Walter from a Prussian nobleman, in whose family it had been for more than two centuries. It is a most deathlike performance, and the countenance answers well enough to the coins of the unfortunate beauty, though not at all to any of the portraits I have happened to see. I believe there is no doubt as to the authenticity of this most curious picture. Among various family pictures, I noticed particularly Sir Walter's great grandfather, the old cavalier mentioned in one of the epistles in Marmion, who let his beard grow after the execution of Charles I., and who here appears, accordingly, with a most venerable appendage of silver whiteness, reaching even unto his girdle. * * * * *