. Visits to remarkable places : old halls, battle fields, and scenes illustrative of striking passages in English history and poetry . ilding. * Since the above was written the cupola and vases have been removed. VISIT TO PENSHURST. 21 The south side of the house has all the irregularity of anold castle, consisting of various towers, projections, buttresses,and gables. Some of the windows shew tracery of a superiororder, and others have huge common sashes, introduced by thetasteful Mr. Perry aforesaid. The court on this side is sur-rounded by battlemented walls, and has a massy square gate-hou
. Visits to remarkable places : old halls, battle fields, and scenes illustrative of striking passages in English history and poetry . ilding. * Since the above was written the cupola and vases have been removed. VISIT TO PENSHURST. 21 The south side of the house has all the irregularity of anold castle, consisting of various towers, projections, buttresses,and gables. Some of the windows shew tracery of a superiororder, and others have huge common sashes, introduced by thetasteful Mr. Perry aforesaid. The court on this side is sur-rounded by battlemented walls, and has a massy square gate-house, leading into the old garden, or pleasaunce, which slopedaway down towards the Medway, but is now merely a grassylawn, with the remains of one fine terrace running along itswestern side. In this court, opposite the door of the Banqueting Hall,hangs a large bell, on a \>ery simple frame of wood. The wholehas a genuine look of the ancient time when hunters camehungry from the forest, and needed no gilded belfry to summonthem to dinner. On the bell is inscribed, in raised letters: Robert Earl of Leicester, at Penshurst, 2% VISIT TO PENSHURST. The old banqueting hall is a noble specimen of the baronialhall of the reign of Edward III., when both house and tableexhibited the rudeness of a martial age, and both gentle andsimple revelled together, parted only by the salt. The flooris of brick. The raised platform, or dais, at the west-end,advances sixteen feet into the room. The width of the hall isabout forty feet, and the length of it about fifty-four feet. Oneach side are tall gothic windows, much of the tracery of whichhas been some time knocked out, and the openings plastered the east-end is a fine large window, with two smaller onesabove it; but the large window is, for the most part, hidden bythe front of the music gallery. In the centre of the floor anoctagon space is marked out with a rim of stone, and withinthis space stands a massy old dog, or brand-iron,
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