mansion in Europe. The Library, extending through the east side of the quadrangle, is one hundred and thirty feet by fourteen. The book-cases are formed in recesses in the wall, and receive the books so as to make them

richly adorned with paintings and ornaments, runs a series of large medallion paintings, exhibiting the portraits of all the Earls of Northumberland in succession, and other principal persons of the houses of Percy and Seymour, taken from original paintings in the possession of the families.

The Drawing-room has a carved ceiling, divided into two small compartments, richly gilt, and representing designs of many of the antique paintings that have been found in Europe, executed by the Italian masters. The sides are hung with a rich silk damask, the finest of the kind ever executed in England. The tables are two noble pieces of antique mosaic, found in the baths of Titus at Rome.

The Dining-room is ornamented with statues in marble, and paintings in chiaro-scuro after the antique.

From the east end of the Library are the private apartments, along which we return again to the Great Hall. Among the portraits that adorn the walls of this truly palatial edifice are those of Henry Percy, implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, for which he suffered a long imprisonment in the Tower; Lucy, Countess of Carlisle, daughter of His Grace, and one of the most admired beauties of her time; Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland; Charles I., and one of his sons, probably the Duke of Gloucester, by Sir

Peter Lely; Charles I., and Queen Henrietta Maria, by Vandyke; the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I.; and others.

The entrance to the mansion from the high road is through a noble gateway, having on each side an open colonnade, and on the top a lion passant, the crest of the noble house of Northumberland.

The gardens, although not boasting much diversity of surface, are very beautiful, rich in curious trees and shrubs, and adorned with a handsome piece of water; a gentle mound crowned with evergreens, and visible from the river, here winding round a verdant peninsula, whereon cattle and sheep browse tranquilly; the gardens of Kew on the opposite bank of the stream, the stately mansion, and the dense foliage, forming a back-ground to the whole, make altogether a coup-d'-œil of no ordinary pastoral beauty.

The attractions of a retirement, at once so near, and by its seclusion so distant from, the busy hum of men, as Sion House, must be complete. If there

is

any one charm wanting to the country, it is easy access to and from the town. There is a superadded pleasure in rambling through secluded glades, and over velvet lawns, with the hum of the neighbouring city in your ear, and the power of plunging into the vortex whenever meditation tends to melancholy, or solitude to satiety. There is another pleasurable idea the possessor of such a place as Sion must gratify himself with-the idea of power. Power cannot be shown in a more imposing shape than by inclosing within the immediate vicinity of a great city, where land is worth such enormous sums, a large tract, as a mere pleasaunce, without a view to any other interest for the money than that derivable from the enjoyment of absolute seclusion, where such seclusion is the most difficult of attainment, and purchased at what, to men of meaner fortunes, would be enormous pecuniary sacrifices. As far as purchase-money is concerned, a small demesne near London is a considerable estate at a distance from town: not only is there no return in rental, but there is a tremendous outlay, where labour is most expensive, in the preservation of the place and its adornment. Nothing can convey a better idea of the vast resources of our great aristocracy than the magnificence, beauty, and expensive establishments of their suburban retreats.

In contemplating-which is all we are permitted to do the outward glories of Sion House, it is pleasant to be able to console ourselves with all philosophers have said, and poets sung, of peace avoiding palaces to take up her abode in cottages, and the like. This cant of philosophy and poesy

makes the consolation of the poor, but is contrary at once to probability and fact. We take it that the great, enjoying these little Edens about town, far removed from the wear and tear of working-day life, able to shut out at will every prospect, mental or physical, offensive to the eye or to the mind-to let in at pleasure all that unlimited resources can command of luxury, physical and intellectual; in close proximity at once to the companionship of nature and of man; wrapped up in comfort, the happiness of the body; and enjoying for without that all the rest is nothing—a tolerable constitution, and a conscience as times go, must, all other things being equal, be the happiest of mortals. If to contemplate, without entering their terrestrial paradises, be to us of the vulgar a pleasure; if to perambulate them, by earnest solicitation, and fees conferred upon the under-gardener or his deputy, be a privilege granted to the favoured few; if to behold the mirrored and tapestried glories of the interior be the result of humble application, and half-a-sovereign addressed to the housekeeper when his Lordship or his Grace is from home-who must not envy his Lordship, or his Grace, who calls these charming places, which we are glad to be permitted to be smuggled in only to look at, his own? The wretchedness of the great, and the comparative happiness of the little, are pleasing paradoxes, invented to cheat men of humble life into a belief in their practical equality with their superiors: we know that the great not only enjoy life more than we do, but that they live longer; and, taking an equal number of peers and artisans, you will find that the former lead long and merry lives, the latter live short and comparatively miserable. But, to conclude, if there need be any other proof that this popular fallacy of the misery that inhabits palaces be an affectation of philosophers and poets, who is there among them who would not jump at an exchange of the garret in the city for the palace at the end of the town; or the cracked tea-pot with the cowslip-root in it for the conservatory, redolent with the transplanted fruits and flowers of either Ind?

Men fall into the error of attributing an undue share of misery to the great, because of the vulgar trick of not applying the leading principles of human nature to great as to little men. Nature, abhorring the vacuity of idleness, fastens unhappiness upon him who is born into the world only to be idle; conscience, in like manner, makes miserable the man who perverts the purposes of his being: but the nearest approach to the imperfect happiness this world has to bestow is made by him who, with station,

leisure, and independence of the world, in a pecuniary point of view, finds or makes employment, by which he may connect his being with purposes of utility, and turn that to life, which otherwise would be but existence.

The historical associations connected with Sion House are worthy of a few moments' attention. At Twickenham, further up the river, King Henry V. founded a convent of Bridgetine nuns; and his successor, eighteen years after the foundation, permitted their removal to a more spacious house, which they had built upon their demesnes in the parish of Isleworth, called Sion. The convent of Sion was dedicated to Our Saviour, the Virgin Mary, and St. Bridget, and consisted, according to the rules of the foundress, of sixty nuns including the abbess, thirteen priests, four deacons, and eight lay brethren; making in the whole the number of the apostles, and seventy-two disciples of Christ. It must be observed that it was only in convents of Bridgetines and Gilbertines that monks and nuns were permitted to live under one roof. King Henry's charter incorporated the convent under the name of the Abbess and Convent of St. Saviour and St. Bridget, of the order of St. Augustine, whose rules St. Bridget observed, with some of her own institution.

A munificent endowment was provided for this convent, and in the meanwhile King Henry granted for its sustentation a thousand marks out of the revenues of the Exchequer, until other revenues should be provided. At the dissolution of monasteries, the revenues of Sion amounted to the then considerable sum of £1731 per annum.

After the Dissolution, Sir John Gates was appointed keeper of the conventual house for the king, in whose hands it continued during the remainder of his reign. Katha

rine Howard, one of

the unfortunate wives

of the brutal Henry, was imprisoned here from November till the February following, being kept very strict, but attended as queen. The corpse of King Henry VIII., whose

funeral procession is said to have exceeded in magnificence any ever seen in England before or since, rested a night at Sion on its way to Windsor. The

Protector Somerset had a grant of Sion from King Edward VI. From hence the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey was called to that dangerous eminence costing her life. Queen Mary re-established the convent, and it was finally suppressed by Queen Elizabeth. The successors of the nuns of Sion found an asylum at Lisbon so late as the year 1808, when, on the approach of the French, they were compelled to quit the convent, the greater part seeking shelter in England, where they were finally dispersed.

In 1604, Sion House and the manor of Isleworth were granted to Henry, Duke of Northumberland, who was imprisoned in the Tower and fined £30,000 for a supposed participation in the Gunpowder Plot. The children of Charles I. were in custody at Sion House, where the king was permitted to visit them, through the intercession of the Earl of Northumberland with the Parliament. Queen Anne, when Princess of Denmark, resided here for some time.

ISLEWORTH, with its handsome church and tower, is an attractive object from the river. Lord Baltimore, the original grantee of Maryland, resided

at Isleworth. Sion Hill, a seat of the Duke of Marlborough, is in this parish. The Duchess of Kendal, mistress of George I., resided here. After her death, the grounds were opened as a place of public amusement.

The Duke of Shrewsbury, a conspicuous character in the reigns of King