Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1872-07-28
Letter From England.

| IIOIl hnOAVllleS SllIcu duInOTeSS, mlSI
Fannie Hodgson, who is enjoying Euro
pean tour. 1t was not written for publica-
ton, but is nevertheless interesting:
OswEsTRY, ENGLAND.
July Is, 1872.
Oswestry is completely surrounded with
places of interest, and the sole object of
our party seems to be to carry me from one
point to the other without giving me time
to recover the breath loose in my spasms
of admiration. | have not time even to
mention most of the places 1 have seen
but can not pass by
CHIRK CASTLE,
where we spent yesterday Just think of
Chirk Castle, built in 1913 and standing
vet with the ivy covering its gray old bat
Elements, frowning over the miles of park,
Just as they frowned when in CronWell's
time Sir Charles Middleton defended ii
against General Lambert and gave shelter
to King Charles in aye days of hys sore
neede,n as the chronicles say. Just think
of tapestry worked from generation to gen.
Grafton by the fair DANES of Middleton,
whose ancient portraits hang in the long
galleries, galleries with polished oaken
floors, so smooth that one can hardly stand
on them. and with carven ceilings and
carven Oaken chairs and tapeStried screens
and wonderful massive old cabinets hun,
dreds and hundreds of years old King
| Charles was the firm friend of the Myddle-
tons, it seems they were Royalists, of
course and they have an oil painting of
him and one of the second Charles favor
ties, the celebrated Nell Guyn, a blonde
with wonderful yellow hair and q pi-
quaint face. And then there is
CABINET OF EBONY AND SILVER,
valued at ten thousand pounds, and pre-
sented to Sir Thomas at the time of the
restoration, when, on his refusing the peer
age offered him for his services, King
Charles said to him: Then take the cab
met as proof of my lasting love-" Then
comes the room and the very bed in which
King Charles slept, all in a perfect state of
preservation, and still containing the curl
Gus old mirror and magnificent furniture
he used. From this, one goes into dress
ing room, cut out of the solid wall, which
is twenty-one feet thick in some parts.
Then there is
THE ARMoRY,
with halberds and breast plates and he'll
NETS and gloves of mail, and such quaint
matchlocks and daggers and broadswords,
&C., &C., with such quaint carvings and
appointments that one can only lose ones
self in wild day-dreams over them, wax
ing with start to find oneself young la
dy of the 18th century, in the panier and
Dolly Warden of the period, gazing amaz-
edly at the inconsistency of five hundred
year old weapon grasped in canary col
Ored glove of ou= own esteemed " JOu-
WINS 6est" The fact is, it is almost fam
tastically inconsistent from begin ming to
end-to me might say it seemed almost
sacreligious. How could one think in
peace and lose ones individuality COM
fortably in the midst of a modern picnic
party, who introduced cakes and sherry in
silver cupon the very battlements them
selves. OF course it was awfully jolly"
as they remark, and / laughed and drank
sherry with the rest, but 1 really think
one could do Chirk Castle to greater in.
tellectual advantage in a select party of
t,Uo. The winding stone staircase leading
up to the battlements is worn with the feet
of passing ages and their generation
worn into actual grooves and ridges, though
every step is massive block of granite.
We went down into
THE DUNGEON, a .r--r
Of course-a troop of awe-stricken, but &C.
static explorers with wax tapers-and we
reached the bottom with undislocated
necks. somewhat to my surprise, for the
steps of the subteranean staircase were the
merest foot hold at some points of it incom-
prehensible windings. / must confess to
some slight disappointment in that dun
geon; there was no skeleton there chained
round the waist to the wall, on which was
not carved an inscription. There ought to
have been a skeleton or at least few bones
any kind of bones would have done. /
am sure for my part, l would have taken
ANYTHING ossified on trust / felt my way
round 1.-THE darkness was SO thick that the
slender tapers only cast an awesome glare)
in all the horrible corners in the desperate
hope of fiuding something, but my search
was all in vain. We tried on the manacleS
and shuddered in the orthodox manner at
the sight of a suspicious iron instrument
with screws to it, which somebody in
stantly recognized as all instrument of tor
ture, but which we discovered upon making
inquiry was nothing more or less than a
photographic arrangement for holding peO-
ples heads still Such is the air of the place
that we can not help placing everything
on an equal footing of ancient horrors.
One little incidental mistake is worth re-
cording. On entering the armory, one
lady, who usually wears spectacles but had
unfortunately left them at home, drew my
attention to formidable array of indie
scribable article in one corner:
"You see, my love-" she said, "that these
are the ancient helmets. Isn't it interest
''Them, num-" interrupted the guide,
stolidly, lis the fire buckets"
can only touch upon few of the things
we saw, and can not forget
THE PICTURES,
so l will run over the principal ones.
There were actual miles of ancestors and
ancestresses, the latter attired principally in
shoulders and stiff trains. There was Sir
Thomas Myddleton and General Lambert,
defender and attacker of the castle In
Cromwel's days; King Charles, Nell
Gwynne, Fair Rosamond, Jane Shore.
Queen Mary Bloody Nary, Catharine OF
Brydon, who had seven husbands and
promised herself to her seventh at the
burial of her fifth, being already engaged
lily in Charles time, queer little mOrtals in
brocade dresses and with their hands full
OF solid looking evergreen flowers. Now
about the
OLD CHURCH.