To some persons this volume will always be interesting, in some libraries it will always preserve a place, to some families it will always be precious. My ambition is fully satisfied.
XIII. As this work is entitled "Tixall Poetry," and as the frontispiece is a representation of a part of the ruins of the ancient mansion of the Aston family, I shall conclude this preface with a short description of those ruins, and with a poem upon them, which I composed some years ago, and which, I hope, will not be found unworthy of a place among its companions in the Tixall Poetry.
The first story only of one side of the ancient mansion, but without a roof, is still standing, and was formerly almost hid by the most luxuriant growth of ivy which I ever saw. This of late years has been judiciously thinned, and lopped away, in order to shew the windows, with the form and architecture of the building. The south front terminated in a bow-window, richly decorated on the outside with roses, lozenges, and other Gothic ornaments. This bow-window, together with the east and west windows, and some part of the lofty, massy chimney-piece, are still in existence. The internal decoration of the great drawing-room was very singular; the lower part of the walls being wainscotted, while the upper part exhibited the naked stone, tastefully adorned with sculptured pannels, with the heraldic shields of the founders, and the initial letters of their names, all of stone, and rising in bas-relief from the sides of the room. Here, in particular, are the arms of Sir Edward Aston, impaling those of Bolles, with the motto, Laus Deo; and opposite, are the Aston arms impaling Sadler, which must have been added more than fifty years after the former. The east window is a kind of
oriel, and the ceiling is elegantly ornamented with barious emblem-
e
