to the Honorable Spencer Cowper, that nobleman’s younger son, who married Lady Blessington’s stepdaughter, Lady Harriet Gardiner, after her divorce from Count d’Orsay.  When the prince of Wales was casting round for a country-seat, Sandringham was selected.  Lord Palmerston was then in office, and some ill-natured things were said as to the sale of his stepson’s place having been a much better thing for Mr. Cowper than for the prince of Wales.  Vast sums have since been spent here.

Where a deer-park has long existed on his paternal estate, it goes to an Englishman’s heart to give it up.  An incident in point occurred about twenty years ago.  In a secluded part of Devonshire, approached by the narrow, high-hedged, tortuous lanes characteristic of that part of the country, stands a magnificent old Tudor mansion known as Great Fulford Hall.  Here for upward of six hundred years have been seated the Fulfords, a family of Saxon origin, the rivals of the Tichbornes in antiquity.  The mansion of Fulford was garrisoned by Charles I., and taken by a detachment of Cromwell’s army in 1645.  The marks they left behind them may be seen to this day.  The Fulfords have supporters to their arms, a very rare circumstance in the case of commoners.  These supporters are two Saracens, and were granted in consideration of services in the Crusades.  “Sir Baldwin de Fulford fought a combat with a Saracen, for bulk and bigness an unequal match (as the representation of him cut in the wainscot at Fulford doth plainly shew), whom yet he vanquished, and rescued a lady.”  This gentleman’s granddaughter was the mother of Henry VIII.’s favorite, Russell, first earl of Bedford, and the Fulfords are connected with a hundred other ancient and honorable houses.  But for a long time the heads of the house have failed “to marry money;” and when this happens for two or three generations in the case of a country gentleman with a large family to portion off, the result must usually be impecuniosity.  Thus, when the late Mr. Fulford succeeded to the family property in 1847, he found himself the owner of a majestic old dilapidated mansion, surrounded by a deer-park, which had been gradually growing less until the portion of the park devoted to this purpose was little more than a big field.

Like his ancestor in the time of “the troubles,” Mr. Baldwin Fulford was a Conservative, and had been very useful to his party.  It was intended, therefore, to reward his services when the time came by a county office, which would have placed him at ease pecuniarily.  When this office fell vacant the Tories were “in,” and all seemed secure for Mr. Fulford’s interest.  But there’s many a slip ’twixt cup and lip.  A gentleman applied to the prime minister for the place for a friend of his, whose services to the party he duly dilated on.  “I understood,” said his lordship, “that Mr. Fulford’s claims are considered paramount.”  “Mr. Fulford!” was the rejoinder.  “I scarcely thought that such a place as this would be an object