stick over the Christmas feast. They may tell tales, too, of Jons Lundsbracka, and Lunkenfus, and the great Riddar-Finke of Pingsdaga.* And now the glad leafy midsummer, full of blossoms and the song of nightingales, is come! Saint John has taken the flowers and festival of heathen Balder; and in every village there is a Maypole fifty feet high, with wreaths, and roses, and ribbons streaming in the wind, and a noisy weathercock on top, to tell the village whence the wind cometh and whither it goeth. The sun does not set till ten o'clock at night, and the children are at play in the streets an hour later. The windows and doors are all open and you may sit and read till midnight without a candle. O how beautiful is the summer night, which is not night, but a sunless, yet unclouded day, descending upon earth with dews, and shadows, and refreshing coolness! How beautiful the long mild twilight, which like a silver clasp, unites to-day with yesterday! How beautiful the silent hour, when morning and evening thus sit together, hand in hand, beneath the starless sky of midnight! From the church-tower in the public square the bell tolls the hour, with a soft musical chime; and the watchman, whose watchtower is the belfry, blows a blast on his horn for each stroke of the hammer, and four times, to the four corners of the heavens, in a sonorous voice he chants,— "Ho! watchman ho! Twelve is the clock!" From his swallow's nest in the belfry he can see the sun all night long; and farther north the priest stands at his door in the warm midnight, and lights his pipe with a common burning. glass. * These are names of popular stories. 124.-AN ELIZABETHAN COUNTRY-HOUSE. SIR JOHN CULLUM. [THERE is a quarto volume, little known to general readers, entitled "The History and Antiquities of Hawsted and Hardwick, in the County of Suffolk." Yet it is a book full of curious matter, and suggestive of valuable thought. What Gilbert White did for the Natural History of his own parish of Selborne, the Rev. Sir John Cullum, the author of this book, did for the domestic antiquities of his own parish of Hawsted. He looked with the eyes of a scholar and a general observer at the past history, and the existing state, of the various objects by which he was surrounded in the rural district of which he was the chief proprietor as well as the sacred instructor. He describes its natural features, its church, its manorial and other properties, its landed tenures and cultivation; and, by a minute investigation of every parochial record, he brings together a mass of facts that have a far higher interest than the common pedantries of antiquarianism. Sir John Cullum was born in 1733; was, in 1762, presented to the rectory of Hawsted by his father, whom he succeeded in the baronetcy and family estates in 1774; and died in 1785.] Its situation, as of many old seats in this neighborhood, is on an eminence, gently sloping towards the south. The whole formed a quadrangle, two hundred and two by two hundred and eleven feet within; an area formerly called the Base Court, afterwards the Court Yard. Three of the sides consisted of barns, stables, a mill-house, slaughter-house, blacksmith's shop, and various other offices, which Harrison, in his description of Britain, tells us, began in this reign to be thrown to a greater distance from the principal house than they were in the time of Henry VIII. The entrance was by a gate-house in the centre of the south side, over which were chambers for carters, &c. This was afterwards laid open, and fenced with iron palisades. The mansion-house, which was also a quadrangle, formed the fourth side, standing higher than the other buildings, and detached from them by a wide moat, faced on all its banks with bricks, and surrounded by a handsome terrace, a considerable part of which commanded a fine view of the surrounding country, and bespoke a taste superior to the artificial mount, which in many old gardens was to be clambered up for the sake of the prospect. The approach to the house was by a flight of steps, and a strong brick bridge of three arches, through a small jealous wicket, formed in the great well-timbered gate, that rarely grated on its hinges. Immediately upon your peeping through the wicket, the first object that unavoidably struck you was a stone figure of Hercules, as it was called, holding in one hand a club across his shoulders, the other resting on one hip, discharging a perennial stream of water into a carved stone basin. On the pedestal of the statue is preserved the date 1578, which was the year the queen graced this house with her presence; so that doubtless this was one of the embellishments bestowed upon the place against the royal visit. A fountain was generally (yet surely injudiciously in this climate) esteemed a proper ornament for the inner court of a great house. This, which still continues to flow, was supplied with water by leaden pipes, at no small expense, from a pond near half a mile off. This inner court, as it was called, in which this statue stood, and about which the house was built, was an area of fifty-eight feet square. The walls of the house within it were covered with the pyracantha (Mespilus pyracantha) of venerable growth, which, with its evergreen leaves, enlivened with clusters of scarlet berries, produced in winter a very agreeable effect. Having crept through the wicket before-mentioned, a door in the gateway on the right conducted you into a small apartment, called the smoking-room; a name it acquired probably soon after it was built, and which it retained, with good reason, as long as it stood. There is scarcely any old house without a room of this denomination. In these, our ancestors, from about the middle of the reign of Elizabeth till within almost every one's memory, spent no inconsiderable part of their vacant hours, residing more at home than we do, and having fewer resources of elegant amusement. At one period at least, this room was thought to be the scene of wit: for in 1688, Mr. Hervey, afterwards Earl of Bristol, in a letter to Mr. Thomas Cullum, desires "to be remembered by the witty smokers at Hausted." Adjoining to this was a large wood-closet, and a passage that led to the dining-room, of moderate dimensions, with a large buffet. These occupied half the south front. At the end of the dining-room was originally a cloister, or arcade, about forty-five feet long, fronting the east, and T looking into a flower-garden within the walls of the moat. The On the left hand of the entrance, and opposite the smoking-room, was the chapel, a room of state, much affected by the old manorial lords, who seem to have disdained attending the parochial church. The last sacred office performed in it was the christening of the author of this compilation, in July 1733. Through this was a door into the drawing-room or largest parlor, which, with the chapel, occupied the other half of the south front. Adjoining to the parlor was a large gloomy hall, at one end of which was a screen of brown wainscot, in which was a door that led to the buttery, &c. These formed the west side of the square. Beneath these apartments, and those on the south side, were the cellars, well vaulted with brick. The north side was occupied by the kitchen, and at the back of it was a drawbridge. These were the apartments on the ground floor, which was raised twelve feet above the surface of the moat. Over the gateway, chapel, and largest parlor were the royal apartments, which were approached by a staircase out of the hall. On this staircase, against the wall, stood some painted boards, representing various domestic servants: I have one of them, a very pretty well-painted female, said to be for a housekeeper. I know not whether this fancy be as old as the house; the portrait I have is certainly, from the dress, not more than a century old. Several bedchambers, of common proportions, occupied the chief part of the rest of the first story. Among the rooms on that floor was one called the still-room, an apartment where the ladies of old amused themselves in distilling waters and cordials, as well for the use of themselves, and of their poor neighbors, as for several purposes of cookery. In this room stood a death's head; no improper emblem of the effects of the operations carried on within it. Contiguous to one of the bedchambers was a wainscoted closet, about seven feet square; the panels painted with various sentences, emblems, and mottoes. It was called the painted closet; at first probably designed for an oratory, and, from one of the sentences, for the use of a lady. The dresses of the figures are of the age of James I. This closet was therefore fitted up for the last Lady Drury, and, perhaps, under her direction. The paintings are well executed, and now put up in a small apartment at Hardwick House. * * * * * The windows, in general, were spacious, but high above the floors. In still earlier times they were very narrow, as well as high, that they might be more difficult marks for the arrows of an enemy; and that, if the arrows did enter, they might pass over the heads of those that were sitting. After this precaution was needless, the windows, though enlarged, continued to be made high, even till modern days. The beauty of landscape, so much studied now, was then but little or not at all regarded; and high windows, when opened, ventilated the apartments better than low ones, and when shut, the air they admitted was less felt. * * The walls of the house were chiefly built of timber and plaster. The plaster in the front was thickly stuck with fragments of glass, which made a brilliant appearance when the sun shone, and even by moonlight. Much of it still remains, and appears to be but little injured by two centuries; perhaps will survive the boasted stucco of modern artists. I wish I could give the receipt for this excellent composition; I can only say, it contains plenty of hair, and was made of coarse sand, abounding with stones almost as big as horse-beans. And in some of the old walls round the house, where the bricks have crumbled away, the layers of mortar continue sound, and support themselves by their own compactness. The art was not lost even in the last century; for some plaster on an outhouse, which bears the date 1661, still remains perfectly firm. This house was no bad specimen of the skill of former artists in erecting what should last. Part has been taken down, not from decay, but because it was become useless. What is left promises to stand many years. The mode of its construction contributed to its durability; for the tiles projected considerably over the first |