was of the greatest consequence-that some one of this highly loyal and Protestant family, the lord, or perhaps his lady, was of the ancient faith, and here practised its rites in the profoundest secresy. And, indeed, rare must have been the instances in which the subtlest skill and contrivance could prevent the fact of recusancy transpiring, when the richest rewards were offered by government to espionage. In Rushworth we find a list of no less than seven-and-thirty knights and baronets, besides the Earl of Rutland, Viscount Dunbar, William Lord Evre, Lord St. John, and Lord Scroop, as well as a long catalogue of esquires, which was presented by the servile parliament of James I. as of persons whom it was desirable to remove from the offices of lords lieutenant, magistrates, etc., as Popish recusants, and of many of these the simple offence was that their wives, and in some instances, even their children, did not go to church! In the third year of Charles I., we find the Commons again congratulating the Crown that it had driven all "the Papists and Jesuits, enemies of church and state, to lurk in dark corners like the sons of darkness;" and this was followed by a proclamation, ordering a levy upon their estates of two-thirds of their value, and for all priests and Jesuits not already banished, to be confined in the Castle of Wisbeach.

The eastern part of the house, which we have not yet mentioned, appears to have been the side on which lay the pleasaunce. The boundaries of its walls are yet visible, and the basin of a fountain, now dry. From the pleasaunce the hills rise steeply, scattered with trees; and in a glen to the left are

other old ponds, now choked up with mud and weeds, and wild with flags and the black spear-heads of the tall club-rush.

Of the seclusion and desertion of this old "moated grange" some idea may be formed from this fact:-I asked the woman which was the way from the house to Brailes, the next village on my route. She replied, she "really could not well direct me -for there once had been a road, but it was now grown up; but I must go directly out at the front gate, through the belt of wood opposite, and hold across the common, as well as I could, till I saw the tower of Brailes."

In following these encouraging directions to the best of my ability, I speedily found myself on a wild hilly moorland to the south-west of the house, rough with furze, old ant-hills of a yard in height and width, and bogs full of sedge, that would have delighted the eye of Bewick. But I could discern no trace of a path, either to Brailes or any other Christian village. I looked round in silence, and above me on a hill to the left I beheld an old grey pyramid of stone, which had once boasted a vane on its summit, but now exhibited only its iron rod, ruefully leaning as if to look down after its old companions—the weathercock and initials of the four quarters of the heavens. I ascended to this object, in hope that it was meant to mark the site of a prospect into some inhabited country. I walked round it to discern some inscription, explaining the cause of its erection, or some entrance into it; but there was neither entrance nor inscription. It was as mysterious a grey and ancient pyramid as any one could desire. Though not more

perhaps, than a furlong from the house, I turned and saw that the house was already hidden in its deep combe, and shrouded by its wooded hills, and I was sensibly impressed with the utter loneliness and silence of the scene. The caw of a rook, or the plaintive bleat of a sheep on the moor, were the only sounds that reached me; and the only moving objects were the sails of the old mill on the distant hill, and of slowly-progressing plough-teams far off in the heavy fields. I never, in the moors of Scotland or of Cornwall, felt such a brooding sense of a forlorn solitude. I need not have wondered, had I looked, as I have done since, and found, in the old maps of the county, this object laid down as Compton-Pike, and the place itself as the World's End!

There was nothing for it but to push on in the most probable direction of my route, and fortunately I soon spied-a man! an old man, heavily mounting a stile on the hill-side, which led into the fields. I ran up as fast as I could, leaped the stile and called to him. But by this time he had advanced a good way into the next field. I still ran and shouted, but the wind blew towards me-the man was very old, and, doubtless, deaf. He went stalking on, with a tall staff in one hand, and a bag on his back—a figure worth anything to a painter, but a most provoking one to me. Luckily at this moment I descried another man at a distance, actually advancing towards me. I waited his approach, and he soon pointed the direction of my Two such men in such a place were really little short

course.

of a miracle; and this was as tall, picturesque, and weather

beaten an old fellow as the other. He was a shepherd, who had been all his life thereabout, but could give no more information respecting the old house than what I had heard before-that it had been stripped of its furniture ninety years ago, and some sent to Ashby Castle, and the rest sold. And what was this done for? "O! elections, sir! elections! they did it that have brought the hammer into many a good old house!"

Pondering on the old man's words, I walked over the fields to Brailes, glad that the roof had been kept on the old house, and hopeful, if the wild solitude of its situation did not prevent it, that the rapidly increasing wealth and well-known taste of its present noble owner, may yet cause the refitting of Compton Winyates, and its restoration to all its ancient state.

DURING the whole time I had been wandering in Cornwall, the weather had been most glorious. Now and then, indeed, the southerly wind brought up from the sea one of those thick fogs that wrap up every thing in a moment, and make some of the dreary scenes of that wild country tenfold more dreary; every object being enlarged, and yet only dimly descried through it, while the close stifling heat of it is intense, -you seem to walk about in a vapour-bath at a high temperature, and your clothes