And what shall I say of the "color" of Wroxton Abbey, which we visited last in order, and which in the thickening twilight, as we approached its great ivy-muffled front, made an ineffaceable impression on my fancy? Wroxton Abbey as it stands is a house of about the same period as Compton Wyniates—the latter years, I suppose, of the sixteenth century. But it is quite another affair. This is one of the haunts of ancient peace that Tennyson talks of, if there ever was one. The place is inhabited, "kept up," and full of the most interesting and most splendid detail. Its happy occupants, however, were fortunately not actually staying there (happy occupants, in England, are almost always absent), and the house was exhibited with a civility worthy of its admirable beauty. Everything that in the material line can make life noble and charming has been gathered up into it with that profusion that one can find only in a great English "territorial" dwelling. As I wandered from one stately room to another, looking at these things, that ineffaceable impression upon my fancy that I just mentioned was delightfully deepened. But who can tell the pleasures of fancy when fancy takes her ease in an old English country house, while the twilight darkens the corners of picturesque chambers, and the appreciative intruder, pausing at the window, turns his glance from the mellow-toned portrait of a handsome ancestral face, and sees the great, soft billows of the lawn melt away into the park?
SLEEP AFTER DEATH.
If I were dead, and if the dead might crave
Some little grace to cheer their outcast state,
This I would ask: deep slumber long and late
And sure possession of my lonely grave!
Not to be haunted by the things that were,
And once were dear, nor even by a dream
To be disturbed, however glad and fair—
For perfect rest is dreamless. Lying there,
Deep hidden, safe from Life's wild rush and stir,
Not knowing that I slept—this bliss would seem
More dear to me than Heaven's own paradise!
So dear I would not care again to rise;
For eyes that wake must still have tears to weep:
And so "God giveth His beloved sleep!"
