Esser and the Maid of Honour. By Horace Smith, Esq. Author of Brambletye House, THE palace of Nonsuch, near Ewell, in Surrey, was intended by Henry the Eighth, as its proud title sufficiently, attests, to afford an unrivalled specimen of his magnificence and taste; but, while he was lavishing his treasures in this most unnecessary addition to his royal residences, Death was sharpening the dart which was to tumble down the ostentatious tyrant, and consign him to his last narrow palace the tomb. Nonsuch was left unfinished, an unfulfilled promise of splendour, a gorgeous and yet melancholy evidence of the uncertainty of human grandeur; and Queen Mary, shrinking from the cost of its completion, had it in contemplation to pull it down to save farther charges; when the Earl of Arundel, "for the love and honour he bore to his old master," purchased the place, and finished it according to the original design. Not a vestige of it now remains; it has passed away with the other elaborate gewgaws of mortal vanity, and the arrogant name which it has left behind it, sounds in our ears like a mournful echo, mocking the presumption of other times. And yet the proud structure was not deficient in solidity as well as stateliness. "It was built round two courts," says the accomplished authoress of Queen Elizabeth's Memoirs-" an outer and an inner one, both very spacious; and the entrance to each was by a square gate-house highly ornamented, embattled, and having turrets at the four corners. These gate-houses were of stone, as was the lower story of the palace itself; but the upper one was of wood, "richly adorned, and set forth and garnished with a variety of statues, pictures, and other antic forms of excellent art and workmanship, and of no small cost;" all which ornaments, it seems, were made of rye dough. In modern language the pictures would probably be called basso-relievos. From the eastern and western angles of the inner court rose two slender turrets, five stories high, with lanterns on the top, which were leaded and surrounded with wooden balustrades. These towers of observation, from which the two parks attached to the palace, and a wide expanse of champaign country beyond, might be surveyed as in a map, were celebrated as the peculiar boast of Nonsuch. It was the morning of Michaelmas Eve, the woodwork of the gaudy structure which was painted and lacquered, glistered in the light of a cloudless sun; the numerous gilt vanes, fashioned in the shapes of the various animals that figured in the armorial bearings of royalty, flashed from the top of every tower and pinnacle; while the royal banners displayed from the summits of the two lofty turrets, and flaunting proudly on the breeze, announced to all the circumjacent country that they floated over Queen Elizabeth and her Court, who were then residing in the palace. Although it was thus graced and honoured, the earliness of the hour, and the heat of the morning, had prevented any great appearance of bustle around the exterior of the building. A few halberdiers and yeomen of the guard, in their rich liveries, were lounging in front of the outer gate-house; along the roads that skirted the parks, horses and carriages, betraying their progress by the dust, were seen to converge towards the same point; but in other respects, the landscape was as still as it was lovely. The herds of deer in the park, only distinguishable by their horns, were crouching in the shade: the cows, that were usually pastured around the gatehouse, had not yet returned from the farm, whither they had been driven to be milked; and with the exception of a single stately stag which emerged from a thicket, as if to reconnoitre, and snuff up the morning air, nothing appeared to move within the wide chase that surrounded the mansion; while the absence of |