Gents Mag 1849 part 2 p.139

Gents Mag 1849 part 2 p.139




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	Gentleman's Magazine 1849 part 2 p.139 as they are; the world is sufficiently plain and homely of itself; let us guard at least the too rare vestiges of its ancient beauty, and hinder a senseless vandalism from continuing to obliterate the recollections of our history, and officially grub up and clear away those monuments that have been planted on the soil of our country by the strong hands of our forefathers." As it is vain, however, to grieve over the annihilation of the former aspect of the world, let the hope arise that the alterations wrought by the fashion of the times may have that in them which will reconcile to their introduction those who regret the extinction of the ancient character of a scene once so perfect of its kind. But to my story:- To whatever point the gaze is directed the scenery is soft and delicious, filling the mind with sensations of delight, yet combining with its serene beauty so many strikingly grand features as entirely to redeem it from any approach to tameness. Gentle eminences, scarcely higher than its tall chimneys, one one side thickly tufted with thriving copses of oak and hazel, mingled with timber of larger growth, and on the other sprinked with aged trees, legitimate relics of the times of its early lords, shelter the house on the north and south, whilst the bounding hills that partially encircle the smooth expanse on which it stands, rising in a fine and varied succession of wooded uplands, present a semi-circular landscape of great extent and grandeur. Looking to the west, where the Lake spreads out its blue mirror beneath the pine-clad heights of the overhanging Heald, a view is unfolded in which the promontory of Low Wreay, crowned by the dark grey masses of its feudal-looking castle, reposing on an appropriate back-ground of frowning mountains, likewise forms a noble picture, charming and diversified beyond description. The house, whose style of building was such as prevailed in these parts in the reign of Elizabeth and her father Henry VIII., at one time must have been a fine old place to behold. Though greatly injured, it is still picturesque; but it has known its troubles, having been for a long period in the possession of farmers, for whose accommodation the useful but in-elegant offices of a modern farmery have been erected with part of the materials, it has been despoiled of all its pride, and the integrity of its appearance lost in the additions and alterations of later days. So great indeed has been the curtailment of its original proportions, that it is impossible to make out what its precise form has been. It is said to have been designed somewhat after the manner of those venerable halls at Levens and Sizergh, which yet remain to gratify the antiquarian enthusiasm by the architectonic display and ornamental embellishments that so unequivocally illustrate the conceptions of medieval art. If this be true, the reduction of that has reduced an edifice, which, even so late as 1774. Dr. Burn the learned historiographer of Westmerland states was "a fair old building," to its present condition, has indeed been complete. What is now called the kitchen, and the room over it, are the only portions of the interior existing, from which a judgment may be formed of the care and finish applied to its internal decoration. In the former, which appears to have been one of the principal apartments, though now divided and associated with humble uses, the armorial achievements of the Philipsons, or Phillisons as the name seems sometimes to have been formerly spelled, crested with the fine ostrich plumes of their house, and surmounted with their motto, "FIDE NON FRAUDE," together with the bearings of Wyvill impaling Carus, into which families the owners of Calgarth intermarried, are represented in stucco over the fire-place, by the coarse skill of some provincial artificer of yore, and still serve to connect their names with the place itself, though the large old fire-place has made way for the most miserable of modern ones. The window likewise retains some fragments of its former display of heraldic honour; for, "glowing with gem-like radiancy in the light of the sun's brilliancy," the arms of the early lords of the place, impaling those of Wyvill, and the device of the Briggs, another Westmerland family, with whom the Philipsons were also matrimonially connected, yet appear in their proper blazon. Heretofore the windows were more richly dight with other armorial cognizances of the family and their alliances,

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