This, too, was one of the thousands of old, stately dwellings you meet with here and there, which have no beginning nor end that you can get at.

Cowper lived and wrote in this, for instance; but who lived in it a century before he was born?
Who built it?
Which of the Two Roses did he mount on his arms?
Or did he live and build later, and dine his townsman, the great Oliver, or was he loyal to the last to Charles the First?
These are questions that come up, on going over such a building, but no one can answer them, and you are left to the wisdom of limping legends on the subject.

The present occupant has an antiquarian penchant; so, a short time after he took possession of the house, he began to make explorations in the walls and wainscotings, as men of the same mind have done at Nineveh and Pompeii.

Having penetrated a thick surface of white lava, or a layer of lime, put on with a brush "in an earlier age than ours," he came upon a gorgeous wall of tapestry, with inwoven figures and histories of great men and women, quite as large as life, and all of very florid complexion and luxurious costumes.

He has already exhumed a great many square yards of this picturesque fabric, wrought in by-gone ages, and is continuing the work with all the zest and success of a fortunate archaeologist.