The next morning I began to ramble about, and so day after day, till every stately chamber, every haunted nook, every secret door, curtained with heavy arras, and every winding stair, became familiar to me. What a passion our ancestors must have had for space and light! and what an ignorance of comfort! Here are no ottomans of eider down, no spring cushions, no "boudoirs etroits, où l'on ne boude point," no "demijour de rendezvous;" but what vast chambers! what interminable galleries! what huge windows pouring in floods of sunshine! what great carved oak-chests, such as Iachimo hid himself in! now stuffed full of rich tattered hangings, tarnished gold fringes, and remnants of embroidered quilts! what acres--not yards--of tapestries, once of "sky-tinctured woof," now faded and moth-eaten! what massy chairs and immovable tables! what heaps of portraits, the men looking so grim and magnificent, and the women so formal and faded! Before I left the place I had them all by heart; there was not one among them who would not have bowed or curtsied to me out of their frames. But there were three rooms in which I especially delighted, and passed most of my time. The first was the council-chamber described by Walpole: it is sixty-five feet in length, by thirty-three in width, and twenty-six feet high. Rich tapestry, representing the story of Ulysses, runs round the room to the height of fifteen or sixteen feet, and above it the stag-hunt in ugly relief. On one side of this room there is a spacious recess, at least eighteen or twenty feet square; and across this, from side to side, to divide it from the body of the room, was suspended a magnificent piece of tapestry, (real Gobelin's,) of the time of Louis Quatorze, still fresh and even vivid in tint, which from its weight hung in immense wavy folds; above it we could just discern the canopy of a lofty state-bed, with nodding ostrich plumes, which had been placed there out of the way. The effect of the whole, as I have seen it, when the red western light streamed through the enormous windows, was, in its shadowy beauty and depth of colour, that of a "realized Rembrandt"--if, indeed, even Rembrandt ever painted any thing at once so elegant, so fanciful, so gorgeous, and so gloomy. From this chamber, by a folding-door, beautifully inlaid with ebony, but opening with a common latch, we pass into the library, as it is called. Here the Duke of Devonshire generally sits when he visits Hardwicke, perhaps on account of the glorious prospect from the windows. It contains a grand piano, a sofa, and a range of book-shelves, on which I found some curious old books. Here I used to sit and read the voluminous works of that dear, half-mad, absurd, but clever and good-natured Duchess of Newcastle,[58] and yawn and laugh alternately; or pore over Guillim on Heraldry;--fit studies for the place!