“After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.”

At the end of the same corridor is a splendid picture of Charles I. on horseback, by Vandyke, a most masterly performance, and appearing in its position almost like a reality.  Poor Charles had rather hard measure, it always seemed to me.  He simply did as all other princes had done before him; that is to say, he lied steadily, invariably, and conscientiously, in every instance where he thought he could gain any thing by it, just as Charles V., and Francis IV., and Catharine de Medicis, and Henry VIII., and Elizabeth, and James, and all good royal folks had always done; and lo! he must lose his head for it.  His was altogether a more gentlemanly and respectable performance than that of Henry, not wanting in a sort of ideal magnificence, which his brutal predecessor, or even his shambling old father never dreamed of.  But so it is; it is not always on those who are sinners above all men that the tower of Siloam falls, but only on those who happen to be under it when its time comes.  So I intend to cherish a little partiality for gentlemanly, magnificent Charles I.; and certainly one could get no more splendid idea of him than by seeing him stately, silent, and melancholy on his white horse, at the end of this long corridor.  There he sits, facing the calm, stony, sleeping face of Oliver, and neither question or reply passes between them.

From this corridor we went into the chapel, whose Gothic windows, filled with rich, old painted glass, cast a many-colored light over the oak-carved walls and altar-piece.  The ceiling is of fine, old oak, wrought with the arms of the family.  The window over the altar is the gift of the Earl of Essex.  This room is devoted to the daily religious worship of the family.  It has been the custom of the present earl in former years to conduct the devotions of the family here himself.

About this time my head and eyes came to that point which Solomon intimates to be not commonly arrived at by mortals—­when the eye is satisfied with seeing.  I remember a confused ramble through apartment after apartment, but not a single thing in them, except two pictures of Salvator Rosa’s, which I thought extremely ugly, and was told, as people always are when they make such declarations, that the difficulty was entirely in myself, and that if I would study them two or three months in faith, I should perceive something very astonishing.  This may be, but it holds equally good of the coals of an evening fire, or the sparks on a chimney back; in either of which, by resolute looking, and some imagination, one can see any thing he chooses.  I utterly distrust this process, by which old black pictures are looked into shape; but then I have nothing to lose, being in the court of the Gentiles in these matters, and obstinately determined not to believe in any real presence in art which I cannot perceive by my senses.

After having examined all the upper stories, we went down into the vaults underneath—­vaults once grim and hoary, terrible to captives and feudal enemies, now devoted to no purpose more grim than that of coal cellars and wine vaults.  In Oliver’s time, a regiment was quartered there:  they are extensive enough, apparently, for an army.