has been a great traveller, as he says; perhaps
he met Sir Philip abroad."

"I must go and hear what he said to Mrs.
Gates; excuse me, sir, but I am so anxious about
Sir Philip."

"If it be not too great a favour, may I be
allowed the same privilege granted to Mr.
Margrave? To judge by the outside of the house,
the inside must be worth seeing; still, if it be
against Sir Philip's positive orders——"

"His orders were not to let the Court become
a show-house—to admit none without my
consent—but I should be ungrateful indeed, doctor,
if I refused that consent to you."

I tied my horse to the rusty gate of the terrace-walk,
and followed the steward up the broad stairs
of the terrace. The great doors were unlocked.
We entered a lofty hall with a domed ceiling; at
the back of the hall the grand staircase
ascended by a double flight. The design was
undoubtedly Vanbrugh's, an architect who, beyond
all others, sought the effect of grandeur less in
space than in proportion. But Vanbrugh's designs
need the relief of costume and movement, and the
forms of a more pompous generation, in the
bravery of velvets and laces, glancing amid those
gilded columns, or descending with stately tread
those broad palatial stairs. His halls and chambers
are so made for festival and throng, that they
become like deserted theatres, inexpressibly
desolate, as we miss the glitter of the lamps and
the movement of the actors.

The housekeeper had now appeared; a quiet,
timid old woman. She excused herself for admitting
Margrave—not very intelligibly. It was plain
to see that she had, in truth, been unable to resist
what the steward termed his "pleasant ways."

As if to escape from a scolding, she talked
volubly all the time, bustling nervously through
the rooms, along which I followed her guidance
with a hushed footstep. The principal apartments
were on the ground floor, or rather a floor
raised some ten or fifteen feet above the ground;
they had not been modernised since the date in
which they were built. Hangings of faded silk;
tables of rare marble, and mouldered gilding;
comfortless chairs at drill against the walls;
pictures, of which connoisseurs alone could
estimate the value, darkened by dust or blistered
by sun and damp, made a general character of
discomfort. On not one room, on not one nook,
still lingered some old smile of Home.

Meanwhile, I gathered from the housekeeper's
rambling answers to questions put to her by the
steward, as I moved on, glancing at the pictures,
that Margrave's visit that day was not his first.
He had been over the house twice before; his
ostensible excuse that he was an amateur in
pictures (though, as I have before observed,
for that department of art he had no taste);
but each time he had talked much of Sir Philip.
He said that though not personally known to
him, he had resided in the same towns abroad,
and had friends equally intimate with Sir Philip;
but when the steward inquired if the visitor had
given any information as to the absentee, it
became very clear that Margrave had been rather
asking questions, than volunteering intelligence.

We had now come to the end of the state apartments,
the last of which was a library. "And,"
said the old woman, "I don't wonder the gentleman
knew Sir Philip, for he seemed a scholar,
and looked very hard over the books, especially
those old ones by the fireplace, which Sir Philip,
Heaven bless him, was always poring over."

Mechanically I turned to the shelves by the
fireplace, and examined the volumes ranged in
that department. I found they contained the
works of those writers whom we may class
together under the title of mystics—Porphyry and
Plotinus; Swedenborg and Behmen; Sandivogius,
Van Helmont, Paracelsus, Cardan. Works,
too, were there, by writers less renowned, on
astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, &c. I began to
understand among what class of authors
Margrave had picked up the strange notions with
which he was apt to interpolate the doctrines of
practical philosophy.

"I suppose this library was Sir Philip's usual
sitting-room?" said I.

"No, sir; he seldom sat here. This was his
study;" and the old woman opened a small door,
masked by false book backs. I followed her into
a room of moderate size, and evidently of much
earlier date than the rest of the house. "It is
the only room left of an older mansion," said the
steward, in answer to my remark. "I have
heard it was spared on account of the chimneypiece.
But there is a Latin inscription which
will tell you all about it. I don't know Latin
myself."

The chimney-piece reached to the ceiling.
The frieze of the lower part rested on rude
stone caryatides; in the upper part were
oak panels very curiously carved in the
geometrical designs favoured by the taste
prevalent in the reigns of Elizabeth and James,
but different from any I had ever seen in
drawings of old houses. And I was not quite
unlearned in such matters, for my poor father
was a passionate antiquarian in all that relates
to mediæval art. The design in the oak panels
was composed of triangles interlaced with varied
ingenuity, and enclosed in circular bands
inscribed with the signs of the Zodiac.

On the stone frieze supported by the caryatides,
immediately under the woodwork, was inserted
a metal plate, on which was written, in Latin, a
few lines to the effect that "in this room, Simon
Forman, the seeker of hidden truth, taking refuge
from unjust persecution, made those discoveries
in nature which he committed, for the benefit of
a wiser age, to the charge of his protector and
patron, the worshipful Sir Miles Derval, knight."

Forman! The name was not quite unfamiliar
to me; but it was not without an effort that my
memory enabled me to assign it to one of the
most notorious of those astrologers or soothsayers
whom the superstition of an earlier age
alternately persecuted and honoured.