several feet wide, black and smooth as ebony.  Some of the bark still clings to the under side.  The dancing hall is the great room of the building.  All that the taste, art and wealth of that day could do, was done to make it a splendid apartment, and it would pass muster still as a comfortable and respectable salon.  As we pass out, you may decipher the short prayer cut in the wasting stone of a side portal, “GOD SAVE THE VERNONS!” I hope this prayer has been favorably answered; for history records much virtue in the family, mingled with some romantic escapades, which have contributed, I believe, to the entertainment of many novel readers.

Just what Haddon Hall was to the baronial life and society of England five hundred years ago, is Chatsworth to the full stature of modern civilization and aristocratic wealth, taste and position.  Of this it is probably the best measure and representative in the kingdom; and as such it possesses a special value and interest to the world at large.  Were it not for here and there such an establishment, we should lack waymarks in the progress of the arts, sciences and tastes of advancing civilization.  Governments and joint-stock companies may erect and fill, with a world of utilities and curiosities of ancient and modern times, British Museums, National Galleries, Crystal Palaces and Polytechnic Institutions; but not one of these, nor the Louvre, nor Versailles, nor the Tuileries can compete with one private mind, taste and will concentrated upon one great work for a lifetime, when endowed with the requisite perceptions and means competent to carry that work to the highest perfection of science, genius and art.  Museums, galleries and public institutions of art are exclusively visiting places.  The elegancies of home life are all shut out of their attractions.  You see in them the work and presence of a committee, or corporation, often in discrepant layers of taste and plan.  One mind does not stand out or above the whole, fashioning the tout-ensemble to the symmetrical lines of one governing, all-pervading and shaping thought.  You see no exquisite artistry of drawing-room or boudoir elegance and luxury running through living apartments of home, out into the conservatories, lawns, gardens, park and all its surroundings and embellishments, making the whole like a great illuminated volume of family life, which you may peruse page by page, and trace the same pen and the same story from beginning to end.  Even the grandest royal residences lack, in this quality, what you will find at Chatsworth.  They all show the sharp-edged strata of unaffiliated tastes and styles of different ages and artists.  They lack the oneness of a single individuality, of one great symmetrical conception.