together with the cloudy vault of the roof above, made a gloom which the richness only illuminated into more appreciable effect.  The tapestry is wrought with figures in the dress of Henry VI.’s time, (which is the date of the hall,) and is regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in history.  They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily into the old stitch-work of their substance, when you try to make them out.  Coats-of-arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but have been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against them, or by women with dish-clouts and scrubbing-brushes, obliterating hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and spiders’ webs.  Full-length portraits of several English kings, Charles II. being the earliest, hang on the walls; and on the dais, or elevated part of the floor, stands an antique chair of state, which more than one royal character is traditionally said to have occupied while feasting here with their loyal subjects of Coventry.  It is roomy enough for a person of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular and uncomfortable, reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen in old-fashioned New-England kitchens.

Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, without the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen.  At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern that they are carved with figures of angels, and doubtless many other devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness that has so long been brooding there.  Over the entrance of the hall, opposite the great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels; and a row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade.  It impresses me, too, (for, having gone so far, I would fain leave nothing untouched upon,) that I remember, somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady’s hair, that, if she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good people of Coventry to shut their eyes.  After all my pains, I fear that I have made but a poor hand at the description, as regards a transference of the scene from my own mind to the reader’s.  It gave me a most vivid idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with; insomuch that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the door-way, and a bearded and beruffed old figure had handed in a stately dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the mouldy tomb, yet stepping majestically to the trill of harp and viol from the minstrels’ gallery, while the rusty