For those who love to feel their feet pressing the turf, Whalley is the best point of departure also for Stonyhurst, and for the pretty villages of Great and Little Mitton, the former upon the opposite bank of the Ribble, which here separates Lancashire from Yorkshire. The announcement, when half-way over the bridge, comes with most curious unexpectedness. All of a sudden, while delighting in the sweet spectacle of the stream, silver-eddied like the immortal ones in the greatest of epics, an inscription upon the wall says we are in the county of the white rose! How can this be? Our faces are turned westwards! Yorkshire is not in front of us, but behind! Look at the map, and you will discover that Mitton stands upon an odd bit which darts away from all the rest, after traversing which we are in Lancashire again. Little Mitton Hall is accounted one of the finest specimens in England of the style of domestic architecture which prevailed at the commencement of the sixteenth century, or that of the building of Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster. The basement is stone, the upper portion timber, including the roof of the great hall, which is ceiled with oak in wrought compartments of singular beauty. Great Mitton Church (in Yorkshire) is no less interesting in respect of its antiquities and to the admirer of sculpture in the private chapel, near the altar, once belonging to the Shireburns, the very ancient and honourable family, long since extinct, by which Stonyhurst was founded and originally occupied. The marble monuments bear epitaphs of rare tenderness, though antiquated in phraseology, foremost among them being that which commemorates the last of the race, Richard Francis Shireburn, who died, poor boy, in 1702, at the age of only nine--poisoned, tradition says, by eating yew-berries, though as the time of his death is stated on the monument to have been June, and it is impossible for yew-berries to exist except in October and November, there is something in need of explanation. It is not, by the way, the yew-_berry_ that is poisonous, for that is perfectly innocuous, but the _seed_.
Stonyhurst needs at least half-a-day purely and entirely to itself. At present, as well known, it is the principal college maintained in this country by the Jesuits, a party of whom obtained possession of it in 1794, when driven from Liege by the terrors of the French Revolution. The site was occupied by a hall in exceedingly remote times, a Shireburn going hence in 1347 to attend Queen Philippa at Calais. The existing edifice was raised in the time of Elizabeth, by whom the head of the family was so highly esteemed, that although a Catholic, she allowed him to retain his private oratory and domestic priest. The lofty and battlemented centre and the noble cupolas give it a character among our Lancashire mansions quite unique. The interior is in perfect harmony with the external design. It is richly stored, moreover, with works of art, and with archæological and historical curiosities, the latter including various treasures brought from the continent at the time of the establishment of the college. The present refectory was the old state reception hall, left unfinished through the death of the builder of this splendid place, magnificent nevertheless in its incompleteness, especially in regard to the ceiling and the friezes. Of late years very considerable additions have been made to the building, so as to adapt it more thoroughly to educational use of the highest character, and these, happily, are all consistent with the original scheme of decoration as well of architectural plan. Visitors are allowed to go through on making previous and proper application.