I walked to one of the windows of these lordly apartments, and while the company were examining buhl cabinets, and all other deliciousness of the place, I looked down the old gray walls into the amber waters of the Avon, which flows at their base, and thought that the most beautiful of all was without.  There is a tiny fall that crosses the river just above here, whose waters turn the wheels of an old mossy mill, where for centuries the family grain has been ground.  The river winds away through the beautiful parks and undulating foliage, its soft, grassy banks dotted here and there with sheep and cattle, and you catch farewell gleams and glitters of it as it loses itself among the trees.

Gray moss, wall flowers, ivy, and grass were growing here and there out of crevices in the castle walls, as I looked down, sometimes trailing their rippling tendrils in the river.  This vegetative propensity of walls is one of the chief graces of these old buildings.

In the state bed room were a bed and furnishings of rich, crimson velvet, once belonging to Queen Anne, and presented by George III. to the Warwick family.  The walls are hung with Brussels tapestry, representing the gardens of Versailles as they were at the time.  The chimney-piece, which is sculptured of verde antique and white marble, supports two black marble vases on its mantel.  Over the mantel-piece is a full-length portrait of Queen Anne, in a rich brocade dress, wearing the collar and jewels of the Garter, bearing in one hand a sceptre, and in the other a globe.  There are two splendid buhl cabinets in the room, and a table of costly stone from Italy; it is mounted on a richly carved and gilt stand.

The boudoir, which adjoins, is hung with pea-green satin and velvet.  In this room is one of the most authentic portraits of Henry VIII., by Holbein, in which that selfish, brutal, unfeeling tyrant is veritably set forth, with all the gold and gems which, in his day, blinded mankind; his fat, white hands were beautifully painted.  Men have found out Henry VIII. by this time; he is a dead sinner, and nothing more is to be expected of him, and so he gets a just award; but the disposition which bows down and worships any thing of any character in our day which is splendid and successful, and excuses all moral delinquencies, if they are only available, is not a whit better than that which cringed before Henry.

In the same room was a boar hunt, by Rubens, a disagreeable subject, but wrought with wonderful power.  There were several other pictures of Holbein’s in this room; one of Martin Luther.

We passed through a long corridor, whose sides were lined with pictures, statues, busts, &c.  Out of the multitude, three particularly interested me; one was a noble but melancholy bust of the Black Prince, beautifully chiselled in white marble; another was a plaster cast, said to have been taken of the face of Oliver Cromwell immediately after death.  The face had a homely strength amounting almost to coarseness.  The evidences of its genuineness appear in glancing at it; every thing is authentic, even to the wart on his lip; no one would have imagined such a one, but the expression was noble and peaceful, bringing to mind the oft-quoted words,—­