Abandoned by its owners as a residence, it is nevertheless maintained in
sufficient repair to prevent its walls from crumbling or its beauty of
outline from being marred, and stands forth a living epic, written in
stone and oak, and meriting a place among the classics of the land.
The favorite of tourists, artists, and antiquaries, it can well dispense
with anything like an accurate description from a traveller who went
thither, not to study, but to muse; so, putting in a plea, beforehand,
for possible failures in observation and memory, I propose to myself
nothing more than a re-indulgence of the reverie which took possession
of me on my visit to Haddon Hall.
We had spent the middle hours of the day at Chatsworth, that palace and
museum of modern art, and, with senses bewildered and eyes dazzled by
the magnificence of a ducal residence unparalleled, perhaps, in the
world for its wealth and culture, we had set off, in the latter part of
the afternoon, to view its antipodes. The circumstances and the hour
were not inappropriate. Sated with the most perfect display of luxury
and taste which the present age can boast, and somewhat weary with the
toil of sight-seeing, a six-mile drive, the gradual decline of the
summer day, the shadows gathering over the landscape, all acted as a
gentle narcotic, and were a fit preparative for our approach to that
old, deserted homestead, the first glimpse of which set my fancy
roaming, and carried me away into a world of dreams.
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