They were all of the best families of Shorthorn blood, and a better connoisseur of animal life than myself could not have enjoyed the sight of such well-made creatures more thoroughly than I did.  The prince of the blood, in my estimation, was “Lord Cobham,” a cream-colored bull, with which compared that famous animal in Greek mythology which played himself off as such an Adonis among the bovines, must have been a shabby, scraggy quadruped.  Poor Europa! it would have been bad enough if she had been run away with by a “Lord Cobham.”  But the like of him did not live in her day.

After going through the housings for cattle, the steward took me to the Hall, a grand old mansion full of English history, especially of the Commonwealth period.  Indeed, one large apartment was a museum of relics of that stirring and stormy time.  There, against the antique, carved wainscoting, hung the great broad-brim of Oliver Cromwell, with a circumference nearly as large as an opened umbrella, heavy, coarse and grim.  There hung a sword he wielded in the fiery rifts of battle.  There was Fairfax’s sword hanging by its side; and his famous war-drum lay beneath.  Its leather lungs, that once shouted the charge, were now still and frowsy, with no martial speech left in them.

Mr. Fawkes owns about 15,000 acres of land, including most of the valley of Otley, and extending back almost to Harrogate.  He farms about 450 acres, but grows no wheat.  Indeed, I did not see a field of it in a circle of five miles’ diameter.

I reached Harrogate in the dusk of the evening, and found the town alive with people mostly in the streets.  It is a snug and cozy little Saratoga among the hills of Yorkshire, away from the smoke, soot and savor of the great manufacturing centres.  It is a favorite resort for a mild class of invalids, and of persons who need the medicine of pure air and gentle exercise, blended with the quiet tonics of cheery mirth and recreation.  Superadded to all these stimulants, there is a mineral spring at which the visitors, young and old, drink most voluminously.  I went down to it in the morning before breakfast, and found it thronged by a multitude of men, women and children, who drank off great goblets of it with astonishing faith and facility.  The rotunda was so filled with the fumes of sulphur that I found it more easy to inhale than to imbibe, and preferred to satisfy that sense as to the merits of the water.

The next day I reached the brave old city of Ripon.  On the way I stopped an hour or two at Ripley and visited the castle.  The building itself is a good specimen of the baronial hall of the olden time.  But the gardens and grounds constitute its distinguishing feature.  I never saw before such an exquisite arrangement of flowers, even at Chatsworth or the Kew Gardens.  All forms imaginable were produced by them.  The most extensive and elaborate combination was a row of flower sofas reaching around the garden.