and thence home. My next visit to Hardwick was in the autumn of 1834. My companions now were, my true associate for the last seventeen years, and one little boy and girl, who, as we advanced up the park, rambled on before us in eager delight. Twenty years had passed since that youthful party I have just mentioned was there;--twenty years to me of many sober experiences; of naturally extended knowledge; of observation of our old English houses in various parts of the kingdom: but as I once more approached Hardwick, I felt that it had lost none of its effect,--nay, that that effect was actually increased: it was more unworldly, more unlike any thing else, or any thing belonging to common life; more poetical, more crowned and overshadowed with beautiful and solemn associations, than it was when I first beheld it in my youth. The distance you have to advance, from the moment you emerge from amongst the trees of the park into a full view of the Hall, until you reach it, tends greatly to heighten its effect. There it stands, bold and alone, on a wide unobstructed plain. No trees crowd upon it, or break, for a moment, the view; it lifts itself up in all its solemn and unique grandeur to the blue heavens, like a fairy palace, in the days of old romance. It is a thing expressly of by-gone times--darkened indeed by age, but not injured. Unlike modern mansions, you see no bustle of human life about it; no gardens and shrubberies; but wings of grey, and not very high walls, extending to a considerable distance over the plain, from each end of the house, inclosing what gardens there are, and paddocks. You see no offices appended,--it seems a place freed from all mortal necessities,--inhabited by beings above them. All offices, in fact, that are not included within the regular walls of the house, are removed to a considerable distance with the farm-yard. As you draw near, its grave aspect strikes you more strongly; you become more sensible of its loftiness, of the vast size of its windows, and of that singular parapet which surmounts it. It is an oblong building, with three square towers at each end, both projecting from, and rising much higher than, the body of the building. The parapet surmounting these towers is a singular piece of open-work of sweeping lines of stone, displaying the initials of the builder, E. S.--Elizabeth Shrewsbury,--surmounted with the coronet of an earl. On all sides of the house these letters and crown strike your eye, and the whole parapet appears so unlike what is usually wrought in stone, that you cannot help thinking that its singular builder, old Bess of Hardwick, must have cut out the pattern in paper with her scissars. It is difficult to say, whether this remarkable woman had a greater genius for architecture or matrimony. She was the daughter of John Hardwick of Hardwick, and sole heiress of this estate. She married four times, always contriving to get the power over her