Nothing else! Monsieur Traveller?--certes, this is one way of seeing things! Yet, perhaps, if I had only visited Hardwicke as a casual object of curiosity--had merely walked over the place--I had left it, like Gray, with some vague impression of pleasure, or like Walpole, with some flippant criticisms, according to the mood of the moment; or, at the most, I had quitted it as we generally leave show-places, with some confused recollections of state-rooms, and blue-rooms, and yellow-rooms, and storied tapestries, and nameless, or mis-named pictures, floating through the muddled brain; but it was far otherwise: I was ten days at Hardwicke--ten delightful days--time enough to get it by heart; aye, and what is more, ten _nights_; and I am convinced that to feel all the interest of such a place one should sleep in it. There is much, too, in first impressions, and the circumstances under which we approached Hardwicke were sufficiently striking. It was on a gusty, dark autumnal evening; and as our carriage wound slowly up the hill, we could but just discern an isolated building, standing above us on the edge of the eminence, a black mass against the darkening sky. No light was to be seen, and when we drove clattering under the old gateway, and up the paved court, the hollow echoes broke a silence which was almost awful. Then we were ushered into a hall so spacious and lofty that I could not at the moment discern its bounds; but I had glimpses of huge escutcheons, and antlers of deer, and great carved human arms projecting from the walls, intended to sustain lamps or torches, but looking as if they were stretched out to clutch one. Thence up a stone staircase, vast, and grand, and gloomy--leading we knew not where, and hung with pictures of we knew not what--and conducted into a chamber fitted up as a dining-room, in which the remnants of antique grandeur, the rich carved oak wainscoting, the tapestry above it, the embroidered chairs, the collossal armorial bearings above the chimney and the huge recessed windows, formed a curious contrast with the comfortable modern sofas and easy chairs, the blazing fire, and table hospitably spread in expectation of our arrival. Then I was sent to repose in a room hung with rich faded tapestry. On one side of my bed I had king David dancing before the ark, and on the other, the judgment of Solomon. The executioner in the latter piece, a grisly giant, seven or eight feet high, seemed to me, as the arras stirred with the wind, to wave his sword, and looked as if he were going to eat up the poor child, which he flourished by one leg; and for some time I lay awake, unable to take my eyes from the figure. At length fatigue overcame this unpleasant fascination, and I fell asleep.