despatch it soon, and am always impatient to be back with my own Woden and Thor, my own Gothic Lares. While the lords and ladies are at skittles, I just found a moment to write you a line. Adieu!

Arlington Street, Sept. 1.

I had no opportunity of sending my letter to the secretary's office, so brought it myself. You will see in the Gazette another little victory of a Captain Byron over a whole diminutive French squadron. Stosch has had a fever. He is now going to establish himself at Salisbury.

I WAS disappointed at your not being at home as I returned from my expedition; and now I fear it must be another year before I see Greatworth, as I have two or three more engagements on my books for the residue of this season. I go next week to Lord Waldegrave, and afterwards to George Selwyn, and shall return by Bath, which I have never yet seen. Will not you and the general come to Strawberry in October?

Thank you for your lamentations on my gout; it was, in proportion to my size, very slender-my feet are again as small as ever they were. When I had what I called big shoes, I could have danced a minuet on a silver penny.

My tour has been extremely agreeable. I set out with winning a good deal at loo at Ragley; the Duke of Grafton was not so successful, and had some high words with Pam. I went from thence to Offley's at Whichnovre, the individual manor of the flitch of bacon, which has been growing rusty for these thirty years in his hall. I don't wonder; I have no notion that one could keep in good humour with one's wife for a year and a day, unless one was to live on the very spot, which is one of the sweetest scenes I ever saw. It is the brink of a high hill; the Trent wriggles through at the foot; Litchfield and twenty other churches and mansions decorate the view. Mr. Anson has bought an estate close by, whence my lord used to cast many a wishful eye, though without the least pretensions even to a bit of lard.

I saw Litchfield cathedral, which has been rich, but my friend Lord Brook and his soldiery treated poor St. Chadd' with so little ceremony, that it is in a most naked condition. In a niche at the very summit they have crowded a statue of Charles the Second, with a special pair of shoe-strings, big enough for a weathercock. As I

The patron saint of the town. The imagery and carved work on the front of the cathedral was much injured in 1641. The cross upon the west window is said to have been frequently aimed at by Cromwell's soldiery.-E.

went to Lord Strafford's I passed through Sheffield, which is one of the foulest towns in England in the most charming situation: there are two-and-twenty thousand inhabitants making knives and scissors; they remit eleven thousand pounds a week to London. One man there has discovered the art of plating copper with silver; I bought a pair of candlesticks for two guineas that are quite pretty. Lord Strafford has erected the little Gothic building, which I got Mr. Bentley to draw; I took the idea from Chichester-cross. It stands on a high bank in the menagerie, between a pond and a vale, totally bowered over with oaks. I went with the Straffords to Chatsworth, and stayed there four days; there were Lady Mary Coke, Lord Besborough and his daughters, Lord Thomond, Mr. Boufoy, the Duke, the old Duchess, and two of his brothers. Would you believe that nothing was ever better humoured than the ancient grace? She stayed every evening till it was dark in the skittle-ground, keeping the score and one night, that the servants had a ball for Lady Dorothy's birthday, we fetched the fiddler into the drawing-room, and the dowager herself danced with us! I never was more disappointed than at Chatsworth, which, ever since I was born, I have condemned. It is a glorious situation; the vale rich in corn and verdure, vast woods hang down the hills, which are green to the top, and the immense rocks only serve to dignify the prospect. The river runs before the door, and serpentizes more than you can conceive in the vale. The duke is widening it, and will make it the middle of his park; but I don't approve an idea they are going to execute, of a fine bridge with statues under a noble cliff. If they will have a bridge (which by the way will crowd the scene), it should be composed of rude fragments, such as the giant of the Peak would step upon, that he might not be wet-shod. The expense of the works now carrying on will amount to forty thousand pounds. A heavy quadrangle of stables is part of the plan, is very cumbrous, and standing higher than the house, is ready to overwhelm it. The principal front of the house is beautiful, and executed with the neatness of wrought-plate; the inside is most sumptuous, but did not please me; the heathen gods, goddesses, Christian virtues, and allegoric gentlefolks, are crowded into every room, as if Mrs. Holman had been in heaven and invited every body she saw. The great apartment is first; painted ceilings, inlaid floors, and unpainted wainscots make every room sombre. The tapestries are fine, but not fine enough, and there are few portraits. The chapel is charming. The great jet d'eau I like, nor would I remove it; whatever is magnificent of the kind in the time it was done, I would retain, else all gardens and houses wear a tiresome resemblance. I except that absurdity of a cascade tumbling down marble steps, which reduces the steps to be of no use at all. I saw Haddon, Daughter of John Hoskins, Esq. and widow of William the third Duke of Devon

a

shire.

b Afterwards Duchess of Portland.

c Anciently the seat of the Vernons. Sir George Vernon, in Queen Elizabeth's time, was styled "King of the Peak," and the property came into the Manners family by his daughter marrying Thomas, son of the first Earl of Rutland.-E.

an abandoned old castle of the Rutlands, in a romantic situation, but which never could have composed a tolerable dwelling. The Duke sent Lord John with me to Hardwicke, where I was again disappointed; but I will not take relations from others; they either don't see for themselves, or can't see for me. How I had been promised that I should be charmed with Hardwicke, and told that the Devonshires ought to have established there! never was I less charmed in my life. The house is not Gothic, but of that betweenity, that intervened when Gothic declined and Palladian was creeping in-rather, this is totally naked of either. It has vast chambers-aye, vast, such as the nobility of that time delighted in, and did not know how to furnish. The great apartment is exactly what it was when the Queen of Scots was kept there. Her council-chamber, the council-chamber of a poor woman, who had only two secretaries, a gentleman usher, an apothecary, a confessor, and three maids, is so outrageously spacious, that you would take it for King David's, who thought, contrary to all modern experience, that in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom. At the upper end is the state, with a long table, covered with a sumptuous cloth, embroidered and embossed with gold, -at least what was gold: so are all the tables. Round the top of the chamber runs a monstrous frieze, ten or twelve feet deep, representing stag-hunting in miserable plastered relief. The next is her dressing-room, hung with patchwork on black velvet; then her state bedchamber. The bed has been rich beyond description, and now hangs in costly golden tatters. The hangings, part of which they say her Majesty worked, are composed of figures as large as life, sewed and embroidered on black velvet, white satin, &c. and represent the virtues that were necessary for her, or that she was forced to have, as patience and temperance, &c. The fire-screens are particular; pieces of yellow velvet, fringed with gold, hang on a cross-bar of wood, which is fixed on the top of a single stick, that rises from the foot. The only furniture which has any appearance of taste are the table and cabinets, which are all of oak, richly carved. There is a private chamber within, where she lay, her arms and style over the door; the arras hangs over all the doors; the gallery is sixty yards long, covered with bad tapestry, and wretched pictures of Mary herself, Elizabeth in a gown of sea-monsters, Lord Darnley, James the Fifth and his Queen, curious, and a whole history of Kings of England, not worth sixpence apiece. There is an original of old Bess of Hardwicke herself, who built the house. Her estates were then reckoned at sixty thousand pounds a-year, and now let for two hundred thousand pounds. Lord John Cavendish told me, that the tradition in the family is, that it had been prophesied to her that she should never die as long as she was building; and that at last she

She was daughter of John Hardwicke, of Hardwicke in Derbyshire. Her first husband was Robert Barley, Esq. who settled his large estate on her and her heirs. She married, secondly, Sir William Cavendish; her third husband was Sir William St. Lo; and her fourth was George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, whose daughter, Lady Grace, married her son by Sir William Cavendish. 8

VOL. III.

died in a hard frost, when the labourers could not work. There is a fine bank of old oaks in the park over a lake; nothing else pleased me there. However, I was so diverted with this old beldam and her magnificence, that I made this epitaph for her:

Four times the nuptial bed she warm'd,

And every time so well perform'd,

That when death spoil'd each husband's billing,

He left the widow every shilling.

Fond was the dame, but not dejected;

Five stately mansions she erected

With more than royal pomp, to vary

The prison of her captive Mary.

When Hardwicke's towers shall bow their head,

Nor mass be more in Worksop said;

When Bolsover's fair fame shall tend,

Like Olcotes, to its mouldering end;

When Chatsworth tastes no Can'dish bounties,

Let fame forget this costly countess.

As I returned, I saw Newstead and Althorpe: I like both. The former is the very abbey. The great east window of the church. remains, and connects with the house; the hall entire, the refectory entire, the cloister untouched, with the ancient cistern of the convent, and their arms on it; a private chapel quite perfect. The park, which is still charming, has not been so much unprofaned; the present lord has lost large sums, and paid part in old oaks, five thousand pounds of which have been cut near the house. In recompense he has built two baby forts, to pay his country in castles for the damage done to the navy, and planted a handful of Scotch firs, that look like ploughboys dressed in old family liveries for a public day. In the hall is a very good collection of pictures, all animals; the refectory, now the great drawing-room, is full of Byrons; the vaulted roof remaining,

* Evelyn, who visited Newstead in 1654, says of it :-"It is situated much like Fontainbleau, in France, capable of being made a noble seat, accommodated as it is with brave woods and streams; it has yet remaining the front of a glorious abbey church." Lord Byron thus beautifully describes the family seat, in the thirteenth canto of Don Juan:

"An old, old monastery once, and now

Still older mansion-of a rich and rare
Mix'd Gothic, such as artists all allow
Few specimens yet left us can compare.

"Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,

Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its soften'd way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around: the wildfowl nestled in the brake

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed:
The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fix'd upon the flood."-E.

b"A mighty window, hollow in the centre,

Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,

Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter,
Streaming from off the sun like seraph's wings,
Now yawns all desolate."-E.

but the windows have new dresses making for them by a Venetian tailor. Althorpe has several very fine pictures by the best Italian hands, and a gallery of all one's acquaintance by Vandyke and Lely. I wonder you never saw it; it is but six miles from Northampton. Well, good night; I have writ you such a volume, that you see I am forced to page it. The Duke has had a stroke of the palsy, but is quite recovered, except in some letters, which he cannot pronounce; and it is still visible in the contraction of one side of his mouth. My compliments to your family.

MY DEAR LORD,

TO THE EARL OF STRAFFORD..

Strawberry Hill, Sept. 4, 1760.

You ordered me to tell you how I liked Hardwicke. To say the truth, not exceedingly. The bank of oaks over the ponds is fine, and the vast lawn behind the house: I saw nothing else that is superior to the common run of parks. For the house, it did not please me at all; there is no grace, no ornament, no Gothic in it. I was glad to see the style of furniture of that age; and my imagination helped me to like the apartment of the Queen of Scots. Had it been the chateau of a Duchess of Brunswick, on which they had exhausted the revenues of some centuries, I don't think I should have admired it at all. In short, Hardwicke disappointed me as much as Chatsworth surpassed my expectation. There is a richness and vivacity of prospect in the latter; in the former, nothing but triste grandeur.

Newstead delighted me. There is grace and Gothic indeed-good chambers and a comfortable house. The monks formerly were the only sensible people that had really good mansions. I saw Althorpe too, and liked it very well: the pictures are fine. In the gallery I found myself quite at home; and surprised the housekeeper by my familiarity with the portraits.

I hope you have read Prince Ferdinand's thanksgiving, where he has made out a victory by the excess of his praises. I supped at Mr. Conway's t'other night with Miss West, and we diverted ourselves with the encomiums on her Colonel Johnston. Lady Ailesbury told

The cloisters still were stable,
The cells, too, and refectory, I ween:
An exquisite small chapel had been able

Still unimpair'd to decorate the scene;

The rest had been reform'd, replaced, or sunk,

And spoke more of the baron than the monk."-E.

The seat of Earl Spencer.-E.

C 46

It lies perhaps a little low,

Because the monks preferred a hill behind

To shelter their devotion from the wind." Byron.-E.

d Lady Henrietta-Cecilia, eldest daughter of John, afterwards Lord de la Warr. In 1763, she was married to General James West.-E.