The noble mansions which have been chosen to form the second series of our “Stately Homes of England” will, it gives us pleasure to know, be found to fully bear out what was said in the Introduction to the first volume, that England is emphatically a Kingdom of Homes, and that these and their associations, and the love which is felt for them, are its main source of happiness and true greatness. For assuredly those we have now selected, like those already illustrated, are noble in their plans, their proportions, and their architecture; stately and magnificent in their appointments and internal arrangements; stirring in the historical incidents with which they have been connected; interesting from the grand old families by whom they have been, and are still, inhabited; and more than passingly interesting from their antiquarian character, their architectural features, their romantic beauties, their picturesque surroundings, and the invaluable treasures of Art enshrined within their walls. No matter in what Shire they are situated—and we have selected them alike from east and west, from north and south, as well as from the “lovely midlands”—these “Homes” serve but as examples of innumerable others that, dotted over the surface of the country, form the glory of England, and, through their noble owners, add to the stability, the greatness, and the proud supremacy of

“Our own, our native land.”

England has, indeed, reason to be proud of her Homes, and it has been a pleasant and a loving task to describe and to illustrate some of them in these volumes; to give records of the historical incidents with which they have been associated; and to add the ample genealogical notices of the families to whom they belong.

Like those in the first volume, these notices were prepared for, and originally appeared in, the Art Journal, but they have been rearranged, here and there rewritten, and in every case materially added to. We shall hope to follow up the present volume—the second of the series—with two or three more of a similar character, in which other houses, equally beautiful, equally interesting, and equally “stately” with those we have described, will form the theme of our pen and the subject of our pencil.