; also, two or three suits
of boys' armor, for the little princes of the House of Stuart. They
began to wear these burdens betimes, in order that their manhood might be
the more tolerant of them. We went through this gallery so hastily that
it would have been about as well not to have seen it at all.
Then we went up a winding stair to another room, containing armor and
weapons, and beautiful brass cannon, that appeared to have been for
ornament rather than use, some of them being quite covered with embossed
sculpture, marvellously well wrought. In this room was John of Gaunt's
suit, indicating a man seven feet high, and the armor seems to bear the
marks of much wear; but this may be owing to great scrubbing, throughout
the centuries since John of Gaunt died. There, too, we saw the cloak in
which Wolfe fell, on the Plains of Abraham,--a coarse, faded, threadbare,
light-colored garment, folded up under a glass case. Many other things
we might have seen, worthy of being attended to, had there been time to
look at them.
Following into still another room, we were told that this was Sir Walter
Raleigh's apartment, while confined in the Tower, so that it was within
these walls that he wrote the History of the World. The room was
formerly lighted by lancet windows, and must have been very gloomy; but,
if he had the whole length of it to himself, it was a good space to walk
and meditate in. On one side of the apartment is a low door, giving
admittance, we were told, to the cell where Raleigh slept; so we went in,
and found it destitute of any window, and so dark that we could not
estimate its small extent except by feeling about.
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