In spite of this, the 'nimbus' of a firmly anchored aristocracy and vast
wealth, (combined with admirable taste in spending it, which no one can
deny them,) has stamped the Great World of this country as that 'par
excellence,' of Europe, to which all other nations must more or less
give way. But that foreigners individually and personally do not find it
agreeable, is evident by their rarity in England, and by the still
greater rarity of their desire to stay long. Every one of them at the
bottom of his heart thanks God when he is out of English society; though
personal vanity afterwards, leads him to extol that uninspiring foggy
sun, whose beams assuredly gave him but little 'comfort' when he lived
in them.

Far more loveable, because far more loving, do the English appear in
their domestic and most intimate relations; though even here some
'baroque' customs;--for instance, that sons in the highest ranks, as
soon as they are fledged, leave the paternal roof and live alone; nay
actually do not present themselves at their fathers' dinner-table
without a formal invitation. I lately read a moving instance of conjugal
affection in the newspaper: The Marquis of Hastings died in Malta;
shortly before his death he ordered that his right hand should be cut
off immediately after his death, and sent to his wife. A gentleman of my
acquaintance, out of real tenderness, and with her previously obtained
permission, cut off his mother's head, that he might keep the skull as
long as he lived; while other Englishmen, I really believe, would
rather endure eternal torments than permit the scalpel to come near
their bodies. The laws enjoin the most scrupulous fulfilment of such
dispositions of a deceased person; however extravagant they may be, they
must be executed. I am told there is a country-house in England where a
corpse, fully dressed, has been standing at a window for the last
half-century, and still overlooks its former property.

Just as I was going to entertain you with more English originalities, my
long-desired head-gardener entered my room, bringing your letters. What
a pity that you could not put yourself into the large packet, (of course
in all your 'fraicheur,' and not like Lord Hastings' hand,) or inhabit a
pretty box, like Göthe's delightful Gnome, so that I might call you out
and share with you every enjoyment, fresh as it arises, without this
long interval! As it is, you are melancholy, because I was so a
fortnight before; or your sympathizing answer to a cheerful letter of
mine arrives just as I am labouring under a fresh attack of 'spleen.' As
you say, such an old letter is often like a dead body which, after being
forgotten, is fished up out of the sea.

I must laugh at you, and scold you for one thing--that you write me, as
is your way, scarcely any details about what is passing at my beloved
M----, and send me, instead, long extracts out of a book of Travels in
Africa, which I have read here ages ago in the original. I will
certainly pay you in your own coin the next time you do so. I am just
studying a very interesting work, _Dass Preussische Exercier-Reglement
von 1805_, out of which, when other matter fails me, I shall send you
the cleverest and most entertaining extracts. O you gentle lamb! you
shall often be 'shorn' with these African novelties of yours; the more
so, as the last shearing took place a long time ago, and you must be
sitting as deeply imbedded in your wool as the Knights of St. John in
B----, when, displaying their double crosses, they await the highest
bidder on their Woolsacks. The seat of the Lord Chancellor here is also
a Woolsack, but of rather a more aristocratical sort, more nearly allied
to the Golden Fleece.

I now make almost daily park-excursions with R----, to render his visit
to England as useful as possible; for a good gardener will learn more
here in his profession during a short stay, than in a study of ten years
at home. There are indeed in the immediate neighbourhood of London a
great number of very interesting seats, all of them situated on very
pleasant and animated roads. Amongst these may particularly be mentioned
a villa of Lord Mansfield's, the decorations of which do much honour to
the taste of his lady. Sion House, belonging to the Duke of
Northumberland, and laid out by Brown, is also extremely worth seeing,
on account of its remarkable green-houses, and the multitude of gigantic
exotic trees in the open air, none of which would bear our climate. Here
are also to be seen whole groves of rhododendrons, camellias, &c., which
are but partially covered in winter; and all kinds of beautiful
evergreens thrive luxuriantly in every season.

The green and hot-houses, which form a front of three hundred feet,
consist only of stone, iron and glass; a style of building which has
here the additional advantage of being cheaper than that with wood.

I was interested by a kind of chain, the links of which consisted of
scythes, for the purpose of clearing the large standing waters (a defect
in most English parks): by merely drawing it, like a drag-net, along the
bottom, it entirely removes the weeds. In the vast pleasure-ground
twelve men are daily mowing from five till nine o'clock. By this means
high grass is never to be seen there, and at the same time the
disagreeable general mowing is avoided, which destroys the neatness of
the garden for some days. It is true that they can do only a part daily;
but it is so managed that they finish a certain allotted portion, and
they come round so often that the difference in the turf is not
perceptible. This short grass is, indeed, quite lost to economy; but
beauty and utility cannot always be combined, and the latter must
certainly be subordinate in a pleasure-ground, or it is better to
relinquish all pretensions to one. Kew, which is on the opposite bank of
the river, unquestionably possesses the most complete collection of
exotic plants in Europe. The park has also a great advantage in its
beautiful situation on the Thames, but is in general rather neglected.
Yew trees are found here of the height of our firs, and very fine
specimens of holly and evergreen oak; in other respects the old Queen's
plantations are not very tasteful.

Wimbledon Park, stretching over several hills and full of beautiful
groups of trees, present fine views, but the effect of the whole is
spoiled by some degree of monotony.

---- House is very near, and almost in the suburbs of London: its
architecture is not without interest.

I tell you nothing of the enchanting valley of Richmond. Every traveller
falls into an ecstacy about it, and with justice; but he does not always
excite a similar feeling in the reader by his descriptions. I therefore
avoid them, and remark only that the excellent aristocratic inn (the
Star and Garter,) from which one overlooks this paradise, whilst one's
corporeal wants are admirably provided for, enhances the pleasure.
Solitude and tranquillity joined to every comfort of life, in a country
beautiful above all expression, powerfully invite to enjoyment.

In the evening I took R---- to the Adelphi Theatre. It is small and
neat, and distinguished for the goodness of its machinery; just now,
too, it possesses several excellent actors. One of them played the
drunkard more naturally than I ever saw it. It is true that he has more
facilities here for the study of that state of mind,--for the same
reason that the ancients represented the naked figure better than our
artists,--namely, because they saw it more frequently. An excellent
trait of real life was, that the drunkard, who cherished a tender
passion for a young and poor girl in the house where he lodged, when
sober formed other projects, but in his drunken fits invariably returned
with tears 'à ses anciennes amours,' and in that state of mind was at
length happily brought to marry her.

_December 23d._

Many thanks for the news from B----. I am particularly pleased that
Alexander Von Humboldt is employed by Government. It must give pleasure
to every patriot to see a man like him at length fixed in his native
country, which is so justly proud of his fame in all parts of the world.
It must be a happy occurrence too for many circles there, in which the
salt will at length be mingled, the want of which has so long rendered
them quite unpalatable.

How much I lament the accident which has befallen our good and noble
King, (and I had already learned it from L----,) you can easily imagine,
as you know my feelings on that subject; but I hope to God that his
strong constitution, and the help of such skilful men, will remove every
remaining evil. How rare, and how beautiful, to hear a whole nation
exclaim with one heart and mind, "May heaven preserve to us our beloved
Monarch!"[33]

My own state of spirits is, 'au reste,' somewhat of the same melancholy
cast, probably from the everlasting fogs, which are often so bad that
one is obliged to light candles in the middle of the day, and yet cannot
see. 'Le pire est, que je suis tantôt trop, et tantôt trop peu sensible
á l'opinion et aux procédés des autres.' In the former disposition, (and
dispositions unfortunately govern me with despotic power,) they not only
make me sad or cheerful, but, what is worse, wise or foolish. I
sometimes appear to myself like a person who has climbed up a ladder of
ropes, where his hands have grown benumbed; and after hanging for a long
time near the top, and endeavouring to get still higher, is now on the
point of being obliged to let go, and fall down again to the bottom. And
yet, perhaps, when once arrived on the level plain of common-place and
obscurity, he may be more tranquil than in the stormy breezes; and
though his hopes be less, he may be surrounded by a happier, though a
more simple reality. But a truce to such vain speculations. They are
unprofitable, and even fears of a threatening real misfortune ought
always to be forcibly banished; for why torment ourself with anxieties
about that which _may_ come, and yet perhaps never _does_ come; yet, as
a mere dreamy phantom, has embittered so much of a present which might
otherwise have been cheerful?

In all such states of mind, your image is my best comfort; and to you,
my only and unchanging friend, I turn at length with tearful eyes, and
tender gratitude for all your manifold love, kindness and indulgence. In
your faithful bosom I deposit my grief as well as my joy, and all my
hopes; the most brilliant fulfilment of which would, without you, lose
all value for me.

But now I must leave you, as my duty requires, (for otherwise I would
not,) to go to a large party; where I am destined, as in life, to lose
myself in the multitude. It is, I think, my last visit to the gay world,
as I am preparing to set out on a park-and-garden journey with B----,
which probably will take us a month. The present season is indeed just
the best for him who wishes to make landscape-gardening a study, for the
leafless trees afford a clear and free view in all directions; one can
thus see the whole artificial landscape in a single tour, understand the
effects produced, and judge of the whole like a plan on paper; as well
as distinguish the parts of every plantation in their intended order.

Yesterday we visited, 'en attendant,' the parks in town,--Kensington
Gardens;--Regent's park, 'en détail,' &c., on which occasion we did not
omit to look in at the Diorama exhibited there. This far surpassed my
expectations, and all that I had formerly seen of the same kind. It is
certainly impossible to deceive the senses more effectually; even with
the certitude of illusion one can hardly persuade himself it exists. The
picture represented the interior of a large abbey-church, appearing
perfectly in its real dimensions. A side door is open, ivy climbs
through the windows, and the sun occasionally shines through the door,
and lightens with a cheering beam the remains of coloured windows,
glittering through cobwebs. Through the opposite window at the end you
see the neglected garden of the monastery, and above it, single clouds
in the sky, which, flitting stormily across, occasionally obscure the
sunlight, and throw deep shadows over the church--tranquil as death;
where the crumbled but magnificent remains of an ancient knight reposes
in gloomy majesty.

As our departure is fixed for to-morrow, I send off this letter,
although it has not yet grown to the usual corpulence. How slender are
yours in comparison! Certainly, whenever our descendants find the dusty
correspondence of their ancestors in a corner of the old library, they
will be equally astonished at my prodigality and at your avarice, 'A
propos,' do not be too dissipated in B----, and forget not, even for the
shortest time,

The most faithful of your friends, L.

LETTER VIII.

_Watford, December 25, 1826._

DEAR FRIEND,

This morning we started,--unluckily in bad rainy weather. Ten miles from
London we commenced operations with the inspection of two villas and a
large park, near the pretty little village of Stanmore. The first villa
was thoroughly in the rural Gothic style, with ornamented pointed
gables; a 'genre' in which English architects are peculiarly happy. The
interior was also most prettily fitted up in the same style, and at the
same time extremely comfortable and inviting. Even the doors in the
walls surrounding the kitchen-garden were adorned with windows of
coloured glass at the top, which had a singular and beautiful brilliancy
among the foliage. The little flower-garden, too, was laid out in beds
of Gothic forms surrounded by gravel walks, and the fancy had not a bad
effect.

Very different was the aspect of the other villa, in the Italian taste,
with large vases before it, filled not with flowers but with green and
yellow gourds and pumpkins. A superabundance of wooden statues, painted
white, decorated, or rather deformed, the gardens. Among them a roaring
rampant lion vainly sought to inspire terror, and a Cupid hanging in a
bush threatened, as abortively, the passengers with his darts.

The Priory, formerly a religious house, now the seat of Lord Aberdeen,
has many beauties. The number of magnificent firs and pines in the park
give it a singularly foreign air. The simple beautiful house is almost
concealed amid trees of every size and form, so that one catches only
glimpses of it glancing between the shrubs, or overtopping the high
trees. This is always very advantageous to buildings, especially those
of an antique character. One seldom sees here those unbroken views over
a long and narrow strip of level grass, but which have no other effect
than that of making distance appear less than it really is. We walked
about the grounds for a considerable time, while a bevy of young ladies
and gentlemen of the family came around us, mounted on small Scotch
poneys; and one of the latter, a pretty boy, attached himself to us as
guide, and showed us the interior of the house, whose dark walls were
most luxuriantly clothed, up to the very roof, with ivy, pomegranate and
China-rose. It was twilight before we quitted the park, and in half an
hour we reached the little town of Watford, where I am now reposing in a
good inn. R---- takes this opportunity of commending himself most
respectfully to you, and is writing very busily in his journal, which
makes me laugh.

I must just remark, that at Stanmore Priory we saw (I steal it out of
the fore-named journal) a single rhododendron standing abroad, fifteen
feet high, and covering a circumference of at least twenty-five feet
with its thick branches. Such vegetation is more inviting to
'parkomanie' than ours.

_Woburn, December 26th._

We have made a calculation, dear Julia, that if you were with us (a wish
ever present to the minds of your faithful servants) you could not, with
your aversion to foot-exercise, see above a quarter of a park a-day; and
that it would take you at least four hundred and twenty years to see all
the parks in England, of which there are doubtless at least a hundred
thousand, for they swarm whichever way you turn your steps. Of course we
visit only the great ones, or look, 'en passant,' at any little villa
that particularly strikes and pleases us. Notwithstanding this, we have
seen so many proud and magnificent seats to-day, that we are still in
perfect rapture at them. For I, you know, never could subscribe to the
rule of the 'nil admirari,' which cramps and destroys our best
enjoyments.

Before I begin my description, I must, however, give the excellent inns
their meed of praise. In the country, even in small villages, you find
them equally neat and well attended. Cleanliness, great convenience, and
even elegance, are always combined in them; and a stranger is never
invited to eat, sit and sleep in the same room, as in the German inns,
in which there are generally only ball-rooms and bed-chambers.

The table-service generally consists of silver and porcelain: the
furniture is well contrived; the beds always excellent; and the
friendly, flickering fire never fails to greet you.

A detailed description of this morning's breakfast will give you the
best idea of the wants and the comfortable living of English travellers.

N. B. I had ordered nothing but tea. The following is what I found set
out when I quitted my bed-room,--in a little town scarcely so extensive
as one of our villages. In the middle of the table smoked a large
tea-urn, prettily surrounded by silver tea-canisters, a slop-basin, and
a milk-jug. There were three small Wedgwood plates, with as many knives
and forks, and two large cups of beautiful porcelain: by them stood an
inviting plate of boiled eggs, another 'ditto' of broiled 'oreilles de
cochon à la Sainte Ménéhould;' a plate of muffins, kept warm by a hot
water-plate; another with cold ham; flaky white bread, 'dry and buttered
toast,' the best fresh butter in an elegant glass vessel; convenient
receptacles for salt and pepper, English mustard and 'moutarde de
maille;' lastly, a silver tea-caddy, with very good green and black tea.

This most luxurious meal,--which I hope you will think I have described
as picturesquely as a landscape,--is, moreover, in proportion very
cheap; for it was charged in the bill only two shillings (16 Gr.).
Travelling is however, on the whole, very expensive,--especially the
posting (which is exactly four times as much as with us,) and the fees
which you are expected to be giving all day long, in all directions, to
every species of servant and attendant.

At ten o'clock we reached Cashiobury Park, the seat of the Earl of
Essex. I sent in my name to him; upon which his son-in-law, Mr. F----,
(whom I had formerly known in Dresden, and with whom I was happy to
renew my acquaintance,) came to conduct me about. The house is modern
Gothic, and magnificently furnished. You enter a hall with coloured
windows, which afford a view into an inner court laid out as a
flower-garden: leaving the hall, you go through a long gallery on the
side, hung with armour, to the rich carved oak staircase leading to the
library, which here generally serves as principal drawing-room. The
library has two small cabinets looking on the garden, and filled with
rarities. Among these I was particularly pleased with two numerous
sketches by Denon, representing the levée of Cardinal Bernis at Rome,
and a dinner at Voltaire's, with the Abbé Maury, Diderot, Helvetius,
d'Alembert, and other philosophers,--all portraits.

I was much interested too by a complete toilet of Marie Antoinette's, on
which the portraits of her husband and of Henry the Fourth were painted
in several places. From the library you go into an equally rich second
drawing-room; and from thence into the dining-room. Near to both these
rooms was a green-house, in the form of a chapel; and in every apartment
windows down to the ground afforded a view of the noble park and the
river flowing through it. On a distant rising ground you look along a
very broad avenue of limes, exactly at the end of which, during a part
of the summer, the sun sets: its horizontal rays passing along the whole
length of the green-house must afford the most splendid natural
decoration, heightened by the reflection of its beams from a large
mirror at the end. The walls of the dining-room are covered with oaken
'boiserie,' with beautiful cornices and carving; the furniture is of
rose-wood, silk and velvet; and valuable pictures in antique gilded
frames adorn the walls. The proportions of the room may be called
hall-like, and the whole is regularly heated to a temperature of
fourteen degrees of Reaumur.

The somewhat remote stables and all the domestic offices, &c., are on
the left, connected with the house by an embattled wall; so that the
building extends along an uninterrupted length of a thousand feet.

The flower-gardens occupy a very considerable space. Part of them are
laid out in the usual style; that is, a long green-house at the bottom,
in front of which are several 'berceaux' and shady walks around a large
grass-plat, which is broken with beds of all forms, and dotted with rare
trees and shrubs. But here was also something new;--a deep secluded
valley of oval form, around which is a thick belt of evergreens, and
rock-plants planted impenetrably thick on artificial rockeries; a
background of lofty fir-trees and oak, with their tops waving in the
wind; and, at one end of the grass-plat, a single magnificent lime-tree
surrounded by a bench. From this point the whole of the little valley
was covered with an embroidered parterre of the prettiest forms,
although perfectly regular. The egress from this enclosure lay through a
grotto overgrown with ivy, and lined with beautiful stones and shells,
into a square rose-garden surrounded with laurel hedges, in the centre
of which is a temple, and opposite to the entrance a conservatory for
aquatic plants. The rose-beds are cut in various figures, which
intersect each other. A walk, overarched with thick beeches neatly
trimmed with the shears, winds in a sinuous line from this point to the
Chinese garden, which is likewise enclosed by high trees and walls, and
contains a number of vases, benches, fountains, and a third
green-house,--all in the genuine Chinese style. Here were beds
surrounded by circles of white, blue, and red sand, fantastic dwarf
plants, and many dozens of large China vases placed on pedestals,
thickly overgrown with trailing evergreens and exotics. The windows of
the house were painted like Chinese hangings, and convex mirrors placed
in the interior, which reflected us as in a 'camera obscura.' I say
nothing of the endless rows of rich hot-houses and forcing-beds, nor of
the kitchen-gardens. You may estimate the thing for yourself, when I
repeat to you Mr. F----'s assurance that the park, gardens, and house
cost ten thousand a-year to keep up. The Earl has his own workmen in
every department; masons, carpenters, cabinet-makers, &c., each of whom
has his prescribed province. One has, for instance, only to keep the
fences in order, another the rooms, a third the furniture, &c.; a plan
well worthy of imitation in the country.

I paid my visit to the venerable Earl, who kept his chamber with the
gout, and received from the kind friendly old man the best information,
and some (highly necessary) cards of admittance for my further journey.

Our road lay for a long time through the park, till we reached one of
the principal features in it, called the Swiss Cottage, which stands in
a lovely secluded spot in the midst of a grove on the bank of the river.
We drove over the turf; for, as I have told you, many parks here are
quite like free uncultivated ground, and have often only one road, which
leads up to the house and out on the other side. Having regained the
high road, we drove along twenty miles of country, all equally
beautiful, equally luxuriant in fertility and vegetation, and at five
o'clock reached Ashridge Park, the seat of the Earl of Bridgewater. Here
you can follow me better, dear Julia, if you open Repton's book, in
which you will find several views, and the ground-plan of this charming
garden, which old Repton himself laid out. Remember the 'Rosary,' and
you will immediately know where to look for it. This park is one of the
largest in England, for it is nearly three German miles in
circumference; and the house which, like Cashiobury, is modern Gothic,
is almost endless, with all its walls, towers, and courts. I must,
however, frankly confess, that this modern Gothic ('castellated') style,
which looks so fairy-like on paper, in reality often strikes one not
only as tasteless, but even somewhat absurd, from its overloaded and
incongruous air.

If in the midst of the most cultivated, peaceful fields, amid the
mingled beauties of countless flowers, you see a sort of fortress, with
turrets, loopholes, and battlements, not one of which has the slightest
purpose or utility, and, moreover, many of them standing on no firmer
basis than glass walls (the green-houses and conservatories connected
with the apartments,)--it is just as ridiculous and incongruous, as if
you were to meet the possessor of these pretty flower-gardens walking
about in them in helm and harness. The antique, the old Italian, or
merely romantic[34] style, adapted to our times, harmonizes infinitely
better with such surrounding objects, has a more cheerful character, and
even, with smaller masses, a much grander and more majestic air.

The interior of this house has certainly the most striking effect, and
may truly be called princely. The possessor has very wisely limited
himself to few, but large, entertaining-rooms. You enter the hall, which
is hung with armour and adorned with antique furniture. You then come to
the staircase, the most magnificent in its kind that can be imagined.
Running up three lofty stories, with the same number of galleries, it
almost equals the tower of a church in height and size: the walls are of
polished stone, the railings of bright brass, the ceiling of wood
beautifully carved in panels and adorned with paintings, and around each
landing-place or gallery are niches with statues of the Kings of England
in stone. Ascending this staircase we reached a drawing-room decorated
with crimson velvet and gilded furniture, lighted in front by enormous
windows which occupy nearly the whole side of the room, and disclose the
view of the 'pleasure-ground' and park. Sidewards, on the left, is
another room as large, in which are a billiard-table and the library. On
the other side, in the same suite, is the dining-room; and behind it a
noble green-house and orangery, through which you pass into the chapel,
which is adorned with ten windows of genuine antique painted glass, and
with admirable carvings in wood. All the benches are of walnut-tree,
covered with crimson velvet.

In the rooms are some fine and interesting pictures, but most of them by
modern artists. The pleasure-grounds and gardens are still larger than
those at Cashiobury. You will find a part of them in Repton, viz. the
American garden, the Monk's garden, and the Rosary; to which I must add,
first, the very elegant French garden, with a covered gallery, on one
side; a porcelain-like ornament with flower-pots in the centre; and a
large parterre, every bed of which is filled with a different sort of
flower: secondly, the Rockery, in which are to be found every kind of
rock and creeping plant. Nothing but the long habit of great luxury
could enable people even to conceive a whole so manifold, so equally
exemplary in all its parts, and in such perfect order and condition; for
we must confess that even our sovereigns possess only fragments of what
is here found united. Some thousand head of deer, and countless groups
of giant trees, animate and adorn the park, which with the exception of
the road leading through it, is left wholly to nature, and to its
numerous grazing herds.

Accept it as a small sacrifice, dear Julia, that I send you all these
minute details. They may not be useless in our own plans and buildings,
and are at least more tedious to write than to read.[35]

For better illustration, I take sketches of everything interesting,
which will stand us in good stead, as furnishing new ideas. In the
morning we are going to see Woburn Abbey, the seat of the Duke of
Bedford, one of the richest peers of England, which is said to exceed
Ashbridge in extent and grandeur, as much as that does Cashiobury; a
very agreeable climax.

The inn whence I write is again very good, and I purpose, after all my
fatigues, to do as much honour to my principal meal as I did to my
breakfast; though the former is here far more simple, and consists of
the same dishes day after day. The eternal 'mutton chops' and a roast
fowl with 'bread sauce,' with vegetables boiled in water, and the
national sauce, melted butter with flour, always play the principal
part.

_Leamington, Dec. 21st._

I am now in a large watering-place, of which, however, I have as yet
seen but little, as I only arrived at eleven o'clock last night. The
greater part of the day was spent in seeing Woburn Abbey. This beautiful
palace is in the Italian taste; the design simple and noble, and
infinitely more satisfactory than the colossal would-be-Gothic
'nonsense.'

Its stables, riding-school, ball-rooms, statue and picture galleries,
conservatories and gardens, form a little town. For three centuries this
estate has been transmitted in a direct line in this family,--even in
England a rare instance;--so that it is not to be wondered at, if, with
an income of a million of our money, an accumulation of luxury and
magnificence has been formed here, far exceeding the powers of any
private person in our country: and indeed even were money here and there
forthcoming in like profusion, yet the state of society adapted for
centuries to the providing of the materials for a luxury so refined, and
so complete in all its parts, exists not among us.

The house, properly speaking, is a regular quadrangle; and the 'bel
étage,' which is always 'de plein pied' in country-houses, forms an
unbroken suite of rooms, occupying the whole superficial extent. These
rooms are hung with valuable pictures, and richly furnished with massive
and magnificent stuffs; the ceilings and the 'embrasures' of the doors
are of white plaster with gold ornaments, or of rare carved wood,--all
equally simple and massy. In one room was a remarkable collection of
miniature portraits of the family, from the first Russell (the name of
the Dukes of Bedford) to the present Duke, in an unbroken line. Under
such circumstances, a man may be permitted to be a little proud of his
family and his noble blood.[36] These miniatures were arranged in a
very tasteful manner on crimson velvet, in a long narrow gold frame, and
set like medallions. The stoves are mostly of gilt metal, with high
marble chimney-pieces; the chandeliers of bronze, richly-gilded;
everywhere the same magnificence, yet nowhere overloaded. The library is
at the end, divided into two rooms, and opening immediately on the
delightful garden with wide glass doors.

The gardens appear to me peculiarly charming, so admirably interwoven
with the buildings and so varied that it is difficult to describe them
adequately.

To give you at least a general idea of them, let me tell you, that all
along the various buildings, which sometimes project, sometimes retreat,
form now straight and now curved lines, runs an unbroken arcade clothed
with roses and climbing plants. Following this, you come to a succession
of different and beautiful gardens. Over the arcade are partly chambers,
partly the prettiest little green-houses. One of them contains nothing
but heaths, hundreds of which, in full blow, present the loveliest
picture, endlessly multiplied by walls of mirror. Immediately under
this, Erica-house was the garden for the same tribe of plants; a
glass-plat with beds of various forms, all filled with the larger and
hardier sorts of heath. In one place the bowery-walk leads quite through
a lofty Palm-house, before which lie the most beautiful embroidered
parterres, intersected with gravel walks. Adjoining this house is the
statue-gallery, the walls of which are covered with various sorts of
marble; there are also very beautiful pillars from Italy. It contains a
number of antique sculptures, and is terminated at either end by a
temple, the one dedicated to Freedom, and adorned with busts of Fox,
&c., the other to the Graces, with Canova's exquisite group of the
tutelary goddesses. From this point the arcade leads along an
interminable plantation, on a sloping bank entirely filled with azaleas
and rhododendrous, till you reach the Chinese garden, in which 'the
Dairy' is a prominent and beautiful object. It is a sort of Chinese
temple, decorated with a profusion of white marble and coloured glasses;
in the centre is a fountain, and round the walls hundreds of large
dishes and bowls of Chinese and Japan porcelain of every form and
colour, filled with new milk and cream. The 'consoles' upon which these
vessels stand are perfect models for Chinese furniture. The windows are
of ground glass, with Chinese painting, which shows fantastically enough
by the dim light.

A further pleasure-ground, with the finest trees and many beautiful
surprises,--among others pretty children's gardens, and a grass garden
in which all sorts of gramineous plants were cultivated in little beds,
forming a sort of chequer-work,--led to the Aviary. This consists of a
large place fenced in, and a cottage, with a small pond in the centre,
all dedicated to the feathered race. Here the fourth or fifth attendant
awaited us, (each of whom expects a fee, so that you cannot see such an
establishment under some pounds sterling,) and showed us first several
gay-plumed parrots and other rare birds, each of whom had his own
dwelling and little garden. These birds' houses were made of twigs
interwoven with wire, the roof also of wire, the shrubs around
evergreen, as were almost all the other plants in this enclosure. As we
walked out upon the open space which occupies the centre, our Papageno
whistled, and in an instant the air was literally darkened around us by
flights of pigeons, chickens, and heaven knows what birds. Out of every
bush started gold and silver, pied and common, pheasants; and from the
little lake a black swan galloped heavily forward, expressing his strong
desire for food in tones like those of a fretful child. This beautiful
bird, raven black with red feet and bill, was exceedingly tame, ate his
food 'chemin faisant' out of the keeper's pocket, and did not leave us
for a moment while we were sauntering about the birds' paradise, only
now and then pushing away an intrusive duck or other of the vulgar herd,
or giving a noble gold pheasant a dig in the side. A second interesting
but imprisoned inhabitant of this place was Hero, an African crane, a
creature that looks as if it were made of porcelain, and frequently
reminded me in his movements of our departed dancing Ballerino. The
incident of his history which had gained him his lofty name was unknown
to the keeper.

The park, which is four German miles in circuit, does not consist merely
of heath or meadow-land and trees, but has a fine wood, and also a very
beautiful part fenced in, called the 'Thornery,' a wild sort of copse
intersected with walks and overgrown with thorns and brushwood; in the
midst of which stands a little cottage with the loveliest flower-garden.

Here terminate the splendours of Woburn Abbey. But no--two things I must
still mention. In the house, the decorations of which I have described
to you 'en gros,' I found a very ingenious contrivance. Round all the
apartments of the great quadrangle runs an inner wide gallery, on which
several doors open; and a variety of collections, some open, some in
glass cases, and here and there interspersed with stands of flowers, are
set out. This affords a walk as instructive as it is agreeable in winter
or bad weather, and is rendered perfectly comfortable by the 'conduits
de chaleur,' which heat the whole house.--The second remarkable thing is
a picture of the Earl of Essex as large as life. He is represented as of
a fine and slender person, but not a very distinguished face; small
features without much expression, small eyes, and a large red beard with
dark hair.

But I have written off a quarter of an inch of my finger, and must
conclude. To-morrow another step in the ascending scale, for I must see
Warwick Castle, which is spoken of as England's pride. I am curious to
see if we can really mount higher; hitherto we have certainly ascended
from beautiful to more beautiful.

As the mail is just going off I enclose this to L----, who will have the
kindness to forward it to you more quickly than it would otherwise go.

Think of the wanderer in your tranquil solitude, and believe that if
fate drove him to the antipodes, his heart would ever be near you.

Your L----.

LETTER IX.

_Warwick, Dec. 26th, 1826._

DEAR JULIA,

Now, indeed, for the first time, I am filled with real and unbounded
enthusiasm. What I have hitherto described was a smiling country,
combined with everything that art and money could produce. I left it
with a feeling of satisfaction; and, although I have seen things like
it,--nay, even possess them,--not without admiration. But what I saw
to-day was more than that,--it was an enchanted palace decked in the
most charming garb of poetry, and surrounded by all the majesty of
history, the sight of which still fills me with delighted astonishment.

You, accomplished reader of history and memoirs, know better than I that
the Earls of Warwick were once the mightiest vassals of England, and
that the great Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, boasted of having deposed
three kings, and placed as many on the vacant throne. This was his
castle, standing ever since the ninth century, and in the possession of
the same family since the reign of Elizabeth. A tower of the castle,
said to have been built by Beauchamp himself, remains unaltered; and the
whole stands colossal and mighty, like an embodied vision of former
times.

From a considerable distance you see the dark mass of stone towering
above the primæval cedars, chestnuts, oaks and limes. It stands on the
rocks on the shore of the Avon, and rises to a perpendicular height of
two hundred feet above the level of the water. Two towers of different
forms overtop the building itself almost in an equal degree. A ruined
pier of a bridge, overhung with trees, stands in the middle of the
river, which becoming deeper just at the point where the building
begins, forms a foaming waterfall, and turns a mill, which appears only
like a low abutment of the castle. Going on, you lose sight of the
castle for awhile, and soon find yourself before a high embattled wall,
built of large blocks of stone covered by Time with moss and creeping
plants. Lofty iron gates slowly unfold to admit you to a deep hollow way
blasted in the rock, the stone walls of which are tapestried with the
most luxuriant vegetation. The carriage rolled with a heavy dull sound
along the smooth rock, which old oaks darkly overshadow. Suddenly, at a
turn of the way, the castle starts from the wood into broad open
daylight, resting on a soft grassy slope; and the large arch of the
entrance dwindles to the size of an insignificant doorway between the
two enormous towers, at the foot of which you now stand. A still greater
surprise now awaits you when you pass through the second iron gate into
the court-yard: it is almost impossible to imagine anything more
picturesque, and at the same time more imposing.

Let your fancy conjure up a space about twice as large as the interior
of the Colosseum at Rome, and let it transport you into a forest of
romantic luxuriance. You now overlook the large court, surrounded by
mossy trees and majestic buildings, which, though of every variety of
form, combine to create one sublime and connected whole, whose lines now
shooting upwards, now falling off into the blue air, with the
continually changing beauty of the green earth beneath, produce, not
symmetry indeed, but that _higher harmony_, elsewhere proper to Nature's
own works alone. The first glance at your feet falls on a broad simple
carpet of turf, around which a softly winding gravel-walk leads to the
entrance and exit of the gigantic edifice. Looking backwards, your eye
rests on the two black towers, of which the oldest, called Guy's Tower,
rears its head aloft in solitary threatening majesty, high above all the
surrounding foliage, and looks as if cast in one mass of solid
iron;--the other, built by Beauchamp, is half hidden by a pine and a
chestnut, the noble growth of centuries. Broad-leaved ivy and vines
climb along the walls, here twining around the tower, there shooting up
to its very summit. On your left lie the inhabited part of the castle,
and the chapel, ornamented with many lofty windows of various size and
form; while the opposite side of the vast quadrangle, almost entirely
without windows, presents only a mighty mass of embattled stone, broken
by a few larches of colossal height, and huge arbutuses which have grown
to a surprizing size in the shelter they have so long enjoyed. But the
sublimest spectacle yet awaits you, when you raise your eyes straight
before you. On this fourth side, the ground, which has sunk into a low
bushy basin forming the court, and with which the buildings also descend
for a considerable space, rises again in the form of a steep conical
hill, along the sides of which climb the rugged walls of the castle.
This hill, and the keep which crowns it, are thickly overgrown at the
top with underwood, which only creeps round the foot of the towers and
walls. Behind it, however, rise gigantic venerable trees, towering above
all the rock-like structure. Their bare stems seem to float in upper
air; while at the very summit of the building rises a daring bridge,
set, as it were, on either side within trees; and as the clouds drift
across the blue sky, the broadest and most brilliant masses of light
break magically from under the towering arch and the dark coronet of
trees.

Figure this to yourself;--behold the whole of this magical scene at one
glance;--connect with it all its associations;--think that here nine
centuries of haughty power, of triumphant victory and destructive
overthrow, of bloody deeds and wild greatness,--perhaps too of gentle
love and noble magnanimity,--have left, in part, their visible traces,
and where _they_ are not, their vague romantic memory;--and then judge
with what feelings I could place myself in the situation of the man to
whom such recollections are daily suggested by these
objects,--recollections which, to him, have all the sanctity of kindred
and blood;--the man who still inhabits the very dwelling of that first
possessor of the fortress of Warwick, that half-fabulous Guy, who lived
a thousand years ago, and whose corroded armour, together with a hundred
weapons of renowned ancestors, is preserved in the antique hall. Is
there a human being so unpoetical as not to feel that the glories of
such memorials, even to this very day, throw a lustre around the
feeblest representative of such a race?

To make my description in some degree clear, I annex a ground-plan,
which may help your imagination. You must imagine the river at a great
depth below the castle-plain, and not visible from the point I have been
describing. The first sight of it you catch is from the castle windows,
together with the noble park, whose lines of wood blend on every side
with the horizon.

You ascend from the court to the dwelling-rooms by only a few steps,
first through a passage, and thence into the hall, on each side of which
extend the entertaining-rooms in an unbroken line of three hundred and
forty feet. Although almost 'de plein-pied' with the court, these rooms
are more than fifty feet above the Avon, which flows on the other side.
From eight to fourteen feet thickness of wall forms, in each
window-recess, a complete closet, with the most beautiful varied view
over the river, wildly foaming below, and further on flowing through the
park in soft windings, till lost in the dim distance. Had I till now,
from the first sight of the castle, advanced from surprise to
surprise,--all this was surpassed, though in another way, by what
awaited me in the interior. I fancied myself transported back into
by-gone ages as I entered the gigantic baronial hall,--a perfect picture
of Walter Scott's;--the walls panelled with carved cedar; hung with
every kind of knightly accoutrement; spacious enough to feast trains of
vassals,--and saw before me a marble chimney-piece under which I could
perfectly well walk with my hat on, and stand by the fire, which blazed
like a funeral pile from a strange antique iron grate in the form of a
basket, three hundred years old. On the side, true to ancient custom,
was a stack of oak logs piled up upon a stand of cedar, which was placed
on the stone floor partially covered by 'hautelisse' carpets. A
man-servant dressed in brown, whose dress, with his gold knee-bands,
epaulets and trimmings, had a very antique air, fed the mighty fire from
time to time with an enormous block. Here, in every circumstance, the
difference between the genuine old feudal greatness and the modern
imitations was as striking, as that between the moss-grown remains of
the weather-beaten fortress and the ruins built yesterday in the garden
of some rich contractor. Almost everything in the room was old, stately,
and original; nothing tasteless or incongruous, and all preserved with
the greatest care and affection. Among them were many rich and rare
articles which could no longer be procured,--silk, velvet, gold and
silver blended and interwoven. The furniture consists almost entirely
either of uncommonly rich gilding, of dark brown carved walnut or oak,
or of those antique French 'commodes' and cabinets inlaid with brass,
the proper name of which I have forgotten. There were also many fine
specimens of mosaic, as well as of beautiful marquetry. A fire-screen,
with a massy gold frame, consisted of a plate of glass so transparent
that it was scarcely distinguishable from the air. To those who love to
see the cheerful blaze without being scorched, such a screen is a great
luxury. In one of the chambers stands a state bed, presented to one of
the Earls of Warwick by Queen Anne; it is of red velvet embroidered, and
is still in good preservation. The treasures of art are countless. Among
the pictures, there was not one 'mediocre;' they are almost all by the
first masters: but, beyond this, many of them have a peculiar family
interest. There are a great many ancestral portraits by Titian, Van Dyk,
and Rubens. The gem of the collection is one of Raphael's most
enchanting pictures, the beautiful Joan of Arragon,--of whom, strangely
enough, there are four portraits, each of which is declared to be
genuine. Three of them must of course be copies, but are no longer
distinguishable from the original. One is at Paris, one at Rome, one at
Vienna, and the fourth here. I know them all, and must give unqualified
preference to this. There is an enchantment about this splendid woman
which is wholly indescribable. An eye leading to the very depths of the
soul; queenlike majesty united with the most feminine sensibility;
intense passion blended with the sweetest melancholy; and withal, a
beauty of form, a transparent delicacy of skin, and a truth, brilliancy
and grace of the drapery and ornaments, such as only a divine genius
could call into perfect being.

Among the most interesting portraits, both for the subject and the
handling, are the following.

First, Machiavelli, by Titian.--Precisely as I should imagine him. A
face of great acuteness and prudence, and of suffering,--as if lamenting
over the profoundly-studied worthless side of human nature; that
hound-like character which loves where it is spurned, follows where it
fears, and is faithful where it is fed. A trace of compassionate scorn
plays round the thin lips, while the dark eye appears turned
reflectingly inward.

It appears strange, at first sight, that this great and classic writer
should so long have been misunderstood in the grossest manner. Either he
has been represented as a moral scarecrow (and how miserable is
Voltaire's refutation of that notion!); or the most fantastic hypothesis
is put forth, that his book is a satire. On more attentive observation,
we arrive at the conviction that it was reserved for modern times, in
which politics at length begin to be viewed and understood from a higher
and really humane point of view, to form a correct judgment of
Machiavel's Prince.

To all arbitrary princes--and under that name I class all those who
think themselves invested with power solely 'par la grace de Dieu' and
for their own advantage,--all conquerors, and children of fortune, whom
some chance has given to the people they regard as their property,--to
all such as these, this profound and acute writer shows the true and
only way to prosper; the exhaustive system they must of necessity
follow, in order to maintain a power radically sprung from the soil of
sin and error. His book is, and must ever be, the true, inimitable
gospel of such rulers; and we Prussians, especially, have reason to
congratulate ourselves that Napoleon had learned his Machiavel so
ill;--we should otherwise probably be still groaning under his yoke.

That Machiavel felt all the value and the power of freedom, is plain,
from many passages in his book. In one he says, "He who has conquered a
_free_ city, has no secure means of keeping it, but either to destroy
it, or to people it with new inhabitants; _for no benefit a sovereign
can confer will ever make it forget its lost freedom_."

By proving, as he incontestably does, that such a degree of arbitrary
power can be maintained only by the utter disregard of all morality, and
by seriously inculcating this doctrine upon princes, he also
demonstrates but too plainly, that the whole frame of society, in his
time, contained within itself a principle of demoralization; and that no
true happiness, no true civilization, was possible to any people till
that principle was detected and destroyed. The events of modern times,
and their consequences, have at length opened their eyes to this truth,
and they will not close them again!

The Duke of Alva, by Titian.--Full of expression, and, as I believe,
faithful;--for this man was by no means a caricature of cruelty and
gloom;--earnest, fantastical, proud, firm as iron; practically
exhibiting the Ideal of an inflexibly faithful servant, who, having once
undertaken a charge, looks neither to the right nor to the left in the
execution of it; is ready blindly to fulfil the will of his God and of
his master, and asks not whether thousands perish in torture; in a word,
a powerful mind, not base but contracted, which lets others think for
it, and works to establish their authority.

Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn, by Holbein.[37]--The King in a
splendid dress,--a fat, rather butcher-like man, in whom sensuality,
cunning, cruelty, and strength, rule in a frightfully complacent and
almost jovial physiognomy. You see that such a man might make you
tremble, and yet somehow attach you. Anne Boleyn is a good-natured,
unmeaning, almost stupid-looking, genuine English beauty, like many one
sees now, only in another dress.

Cromwell, by Van Dyk.--A magnificent head: somewhat of the bronze
gladiator-look of Napoleon; but with much coarser features, through
which, as behind a mask, is seen the light of a great soul: enthusiasm
is, however, too little perceptible in them. There is an expression of
cunning in the eye, combined with something of honesty, which renders it
the more deceptive; but not a trace of cruelty,--with that, indeed, the
Protector cannot be reproached. The execution of the King was a cruel
act, but one which appeared to Cromwell's mind in the light of a
necessary political operation, and in no degree sprang from a delight in
bloodshed. Under this picture hangs Cromwell's own helmet.

Prince Rupert, by Van Dyk.--Completely the bold soldier! Every inch a
cavalier! I do not mean in the exclusive sense of an adherent of the
King, but in that of an accomplished gentleman and knight: a handsome
face, as dangerous to women as to the enemy, and the picturesque garb
and port of a warrior.

Elizabeth, by Holbein.--The best and perhaps the most faithful picture I
have ever seen of her. She is represented in her prime, almost
disgustingly fair, or rather white, with pale red hair. The eyes
somewhat Albino-like, and almost without eyebrows. There is an
artificial good-nature, but a false expression. Vehement passions and a
furious temper seem to lie hidden under that pallid exterior, like a
volcano under snow; while the intense desire to please is betrayed by
the rich and over-ornamented dress. Quite different,--stern, hard, and
dangerous to approach,--does she appear in the pictures of her at an
advanced age, but even then extremely over-dressed.

Mary of Scotland.--Probably painted in prison, and shortly before her
death: it has the air of a matron of forty.--There is still the
faultless beauty; but it is no longer the light-minded Mary, full of the
enjoyment of life, and of her own resistless charms; but visibly
purified by misfortune,--with a sedate expression;--in short, Schiller's
Mary,--a noble nature, which has at length found itself again! It is one
of the rarest pictures of the unhappy Queen, whom one is accustomed to
see depicted in all the splendour of youth and beauty.

Ignatius Loyola, by Rubens.--A very beautifully painted and grand
picture; but which immediately strikes one as a fiction, and no
portrait. The sanctified expression, common to so many pictures of
saints and priests, is unmeaning. The colouring is by far the finest
thing about the picture.

But I should never have done, were I to attempt to go through this
gallery. I must take you for a minute into the furthest cabinet, which
contains a beautiful collection of enamels, chiefly after designs by
Raphael, and a marble bust of the Black Prince, a sturdy soldier both in
head and hand,--at a time when the latter alone sufficed to secure the
highest renown.

Many valuable Etruscan vases and other works of art, besides the
pictures and antiques, decorate the various apartments, and with great
good taste are arranged so as to appear as harmonious accessories,
instead of being heaped up in a gallery by themselves as dead masses.

It was pointed out to me as a proof of the perfect and solid
architecture of the castle,--that, in spite of its age, when all the
doors of the suite of rooms are shut, you see the bust placed exactly in
the centre of the furthest cabinet, through the keyholes, along a length
of three hundred and fifty feet;--a perfection, indeed, which our
present race of workmen would never think of approaching. Though, as I
told you, the walls of the hall are hung with a great quantity of
armour, there is also an armoury, which is extremely rich. Here is the
leathern collar, stained with blood blackened by time, in which Lord
Brook, an ancestor of the present Earl, was slain at the battle of
Litchfield. In one corner of the room lies a curious specimen of art,
very heterogeneous with the rest,--a monkey, cast in iron, of a
perfection and 'abandon' in the disposition of the limbs which rivals
Nature herself. I was sorry the 'châtellaine' could not tell me who had
made the model for this cast. He must be an eminent master who could
thus express all the monkey grace and suppleness with such perfect
fidelity, in an attitude of the most enjoying laziness.

Before I quitted the princely Warwick, I ascended one of the highest
towers, and enjoyed a rich and beautiful prospect on every side. The
weather was tolerably clear. Far more enchanting than this panorama,
however, was the long walk in the gardens which surround the castle on
two sides, whose character of serene grandeur is admirably adapted to
that of the building. The height and beauty of the trees, the luxuriance
of the vegetation and of the turf, cannot be exceeded; while a number of
gigantic cedars, and the ever-varying aspect of the majestic castle,
through whose lofty cruciform loop-holes the rays of light played, threw
such enchantment over the whole scene that I could hardly tear myself
away. We walked about till the moon rose; and her light, as we looked
through the darkening alleys, gave to all objects a more solemn and
gigantic character. We could therefore only see the celebrated colossal
Warwick Vase by lamplight. It holds several hundred gallons, and is
adorned with the most beautiful workmanship. We also saw some ancient
curiosities which are kept in the Porter's Lodge; particularly some
cows' horns and wild boar's tusks, ascribed to beasts which Guy,--a hero
of Saxon times, the fabulous ancestor of the first Earls of Warwick,--is
said to have destroyed. The dimensions of his arms, which are preserved
here, bespeak a man of such strength and stature as Nature no longer
produces.

Here at length I took a lingering farewell of Warwick Castle, and laid
the recollection, like a dream of the sublime and shadowy past, on my
heart. I felt, in the faint moonlight, like a child who sees a fantastic
giant head of far distant ages beckoning to it with friendly nod over
the summit of the wood.

With such fancies, dear Julia, I will go to sleep, and wake to meet them
again in the morning, for another scene of romance awaits me,--the ruins
of Kenilworth.

_Birmingham, Dec. 29th: Evening._

I must continue my narrative.--Leamington ('car il faut pourtant que
j'en dise quelque chose') was only a little village a few years ago, and
is now a rich and elegant town, containing ten or twelve palace-like
inns, four large bath-houses with colonnades and gardens, several
libraries, with which are connected card, billiard, concert and
ball-rooms (one for six hundred persons,) and a host of private houses,
which are almost entirely occupied by visitors, and spring out of the
earth like mushrooms. All here is on a vast scale, though the waters are
insignificant. The same are used for drinking as for bathing, and yet it
swarms with visitors. The baths are as spacious as the English beds, and
are lined throughout with earthenware tiles.

Not far from Leamington, and a league from Warwick, is a beautiful
enchanting spot called Guy's Cliff; part of the house is as old as
Warwick Castle. Under it is a deep cavern, in the picturesque rocky
shore of the Avon, into which, as tradition says, Guy of Warwick, after
many high deeds at home and abroad, secretly retired to close his life
in pious meditation. After two years of incessant search, his
inconsolable wife found him lying dead in his cave, and in despair threw
herself down from the rocks into the Avon. In later times a chapel was
built in the rock to commemorate this tragic event, and adorned by Henry
the Third with a statue of Sir Guy. This has unhappily been so mutilated
by Cromwell's troops, that it is now but a shapeless block. Opposite to
the chapel are twelve monks' cells hewn in the rock, now used as
stables. The chapel itself, which has been entirely renovated in the
interior, is connected with the dwelling of the proprietor, part of
which is Gothic some centuries old, part in the old Italian style, and
part quite new, built exactly to correspond with the most ancient part.
The whole is extremely picturesque, and the interior is fitted up with
equal attention to taste and comfort. The drawing-room, with its two
deep window-recesses, struck me as uncommonly cheerful. One of these
windows stands above a rock which rises fifty feet perpendicularly from
the river, in whose bosom lies a lovely little island, and behind it a
wide prospect of luxuriant meadows, beautiful trees, and, quite in the
background, a village half buried in wood. At a short distance on the
side is an extremely ancient mill, said to have been in existence before
the Norman invasion. A little further off, the picture was terminated by
a woody hill, also within the enclosure of the park, on which a high
cross marks the spot where Gavestone, the infamous favourite of Edward
the Second, was executed by the rebellious lords Warwick and Arundel.
All these recollections, united with so many natural beauties, make a
strong impression on the mind.--The other window afforded a perfect
contrast with this. It overlooks a level plain laid out as a very pretty
French garden, in which gay porcelain ornaments and coloured sand
mingled their hues with the flowers, and terminates in a beautiful alley
overshadowed with ivy cut into a pointed arch. In the room itself
sparkled a cheerful fire; choice pictures adorned the walls, and several
sofas of various forms, tables covered with curiosities, and furniture
standing about in agreeable disorder, gave it the most inviting and
home-like air.

I returned back to the town of Warwick to see the church, and the chapel
containing the monument of the great King-Maker, which he placed there
in his life-time, and now reposes under. His statue of metal lies on the
sarcophagus; an eagle and a bear at his feet. The head is very
expressive and natural. He does not fold his hands as is the case in
most statues of knights, but only raises them a little to heaven, as
though he would not pray, and could greet even his Maker only with a
gesture of courtesy: his head is slightly inclined, but with no air of
humility. Round his stone coffin are emblazoned the splendid bearings of
all his lordships, and an enormous sword lies threatening by his side.
The splendid painted windows, and the numerous well-preserved and richly
gilded ornaments give to the whole a stately, solemn character.

A family of the town most unfortunately got permission, about a hundred
and fifty years ago, to erect a monument to some country 'squire or
other, immediately under the large central window. It occupies the
entire wall, and destroys the beautiful simplicity of the whole by this
hideous, disgraceful modern excrescence.

By the side-wall lies another intruder carved in stone, but one of
better pretensions;--no less a man than the powerful earl of Leicester:
he is represented of middle age, a handsome, high-bred and haughty
looking man; but without the lofty genius in his features so strikingly
portrayed on the metal countenance of the great Warwick.

A few posts from Leamington, in a country which gradually becomes more
solitary and dreary, lies Kenilworth.

With Sir Walter Scott's captivating book in my hand I wandered amid
these ruins, which call up such varied feelings. They cover a space of
more than three-quarters of a mile in circumference, and exhibit,
although in rapid decay, many traces of great and singular magnificence.

The oldest part of the castle, built in 1120, still stands the firmest,
while the part added by Leicester is almost utterly destroyed. The wide
moat which formerly surrounded the castle, and around which stretched a
park of thirty English miles in circuit, was dried up in Cromwell's
time, in the hope of finding treasure in it. The park, too, has long
disappeared, and is now changed into fields, on which are some scattered
cottages. A part of the castle, standing isolated and almost hidden
under creeping plants, is transformed into a kind of out-work; and the
whole surrounding country has a more barren, deserted and melancholy
aspect than any part we have travelled through. But this harmonizes well
with the character of the principal object, and enhances the saddening
effect of greatness in such utter decay.

The balcony called Elizabeth's Bower is still standing; and the
tradition goes, that in moonlight nights a white figure is often seen
there looking fixedly and immovably into the depth below. The ruins of
the banqueting-hall, with the gigantic chimney-piece, the extensive
kitchen, and the wine-cellar beneath, are still clearly distinguishable;
and many a lonesome chamber may still be standing in the towers, to
which all access is cut off. The fancy delights in guessing the past by
what still remains; and I often dreamed, while climbing among the ruins,
that I had found the very spot where the infamous Vernon traitorously
plunged the truest and most unhappy of wives into eternal night. But
equally lost are the traces of the crimes and of the virtues which lived
within these walls; Time has long since thrown his all-concealing veil
over them; and gone are the eternally-repeated sorrows and joys, the
mouldering splendour, and the transient struggle.

The day was gloomy; black clouds rolled across the heavens, and
occasionally a yellow tawny light broke from between them; the wind
whistled among the ivy, and piped shrilly through the vacant windows;
now and then a stone loosened itself from the crumbling building, and
rolled clattering down the outer wall. Not a human being was to be seen;
all was solitary, awful;--a gloomy but sublime memorial of destruction.

Such moments are really consolatory:--we feel more vividly than at any
other that it is not worth while to grieve and trouble ourselves about
earthly things, since sorrow, like joy, lasts but for a moment. As an
illustration of the eternal mutation of human affairs, I found myself
transported in the evening from the mute and lifeless ruins to the
prosaic tumult of a multitude, busied but in gain; in the reeking,
smoky, bustling manufacturing town of Birmingham. The last romantic
sight was the flames which at night-fall illuminated the town on all
sides from the tall chimneys of the iron-works. Here is an end to all
sport of the fancy till more fitting time and place.

_December 30th._

Birmingham is one of the most considerable and one of the ugliest towns
of England. It contains a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, of
whom two-thirds are doubtless workmen, and indeed, it presents only the
appearance of an immeasurable workshop.

Immediately after breakfast I went to the manufactory of Mr. Thomasson,
our consul here,--the second in extent. The first,--where a thousand
workmen are daily employed, and an eighty-horse power steam-engine is
applied to innumerable uses, even in the manufactory of livery buttons
and pins' heads,--has been hermetically sealed to all foreigners ever
since the visit of the Austrian princes, one of whose suite carried away
some important secret.

I passed several hours here with great interest, though in hideous,
dirty, and stinking holes, which serve as the various workshops; and
made a button, which R---- will deliver to you as a proof of my
industry.

In a better room below are set out all the productions of the
manufactory, in gold, silver, bronze, plated, and lackered wares, the
latter surpassing their Japan originals in beauty; steel wares of every
kind;--all in a profusion and elegance which really excite amazement.
Among other things, I saw the copy of the Warwick Vase, of the same size
as the original. It is cast in bronze, and cost four thousand pounds. I
saw also magnificent table-services in plated ware, brought to such
perfection that it is impossible to distinguish it from silver. The
great people here often mix it among their plate, as the Paris ladies
mix false stones and pearls with their real ones.

I made acquaintance with a multitude of new and agreeable inventions of
luxuries in great and small, and could not quite resist the temptation
to buy, which is here so powerful. The trifles I bought will soon reach
you in a well-packed box.

The iron-works, with their gigantic steam-engines, the needle
manufactory, the steel works,--where you find every article from the
most delicate scissars to the largest grate, polished like mirrors, with
all the intermediate 'nuances,'--afford agreeable occupation for a
day:--but pardon me any further description of them; 'Ce n'est pas mon
métier.'

_December 31st:--Sunday._

As the manufactories are at rest to-day, I made an excursion to Aston
Hall, the seat of Mr. Watt, where, indeed, there is little to be seen in
the way of gardening, but the old house contains many curious portraits.
Unfortunately an ignorant porter could give me but little information
about them.

There was an extremely fine picture of Gustavus Adolphus, as large as
life. The good-nature, dignity and prudence; the clear honest eyes,
which yet express much more than honesty; and the gentle, but not the
less firm, assurance in his whole aspect,--were in the highest degree
attractive. Near to it stood an excellent bust of Cromwell, which I
should think a better likeness than the picture at Warwick. It is more
consonant with his historic character;--coarse, and, if you will, vulgar
features; but a rocky nature in the whole countenance, clearly allied to
that dark enthusiasm and demoniac cunning which so truly characterize
the man. Two cannon-balls which Cromwell threw into the house, then
fortified, and which broke the banisters in two places, are carefully
left on the very spot where they fell, and the railing not
repaired,--though it has since most stupidly been painted white even in
the broken part.

Not to lose a day, as there is nothing to see here but workshops, I
intend to set off this evening and travel through the night to Chester.
There we shall spend to-morrow in seeing Eaton, Lord Grosvenor's
celebrated seat, of which I wrote you word that Bathiany gave me such a
magnificent description, and which, according to all I hear, contains
whatever gold can procure. The day after to-morrow I shall return
hither, visit some more manufactories, and then go back to Oxford, in
the neighbourhood of which are two of the largest parks in England,
Blenheim and Stowe.

_Chester, January 1st, 1827._

Another year gone! None of the worst to me, except for the separation
from you. I lighted the lamp in the carriage and read Lady Morgan's last
novel with great pleasure, while we rolled swiftly over the level road.
As soon as the hand reached twelve o'clock, R---- congratulated me on
the new year, for myself and for you. In twelve hours more we reached
Chester, an ancient 'baroque' city.

Though we had gone nineteen German miles in thirteen hours, I find that
in England, as well as in France, as you go further from the metropolis
you find a general deterioration;--the inns are less excellent, the
post-horses worse, the postilions more dirty, the dress of the people
generally less respectable, and the air of bustle and business less. At
the same time, the dearness increases, and you are subjected to many
extortions which, nearer to London, are prevented by the great
competition.

The new year set in with unfavourable weather. It rained the whole day.
As soon as we had made a little toilet, we hastened to see the wonders
of Eaton Hall, of which, however, my expectations were not very high.
Moderate as they were, they were scarcely realized. The park and the
gardens were, to my taste, the most unmeaning of any of their class I
had seen, although of vast extent; and the house excited just the same
feeling in me as Ashbridge, only with the difference that it is still
more overloaded, and internally far less beautiful, though furnished
still more expensively, in patches. You find all imaginable splendour
and ostentation which a man who has an income of a million of our money
can display; but taste not perhaps in the same profusion. In this chaos
of modern Gothic excrescences, I remarked ill-painted modern glass
windows, and shapeless tables and chairs, which most incongruously
affected to imitate architectural ornaments. I did not find one single
thing worth sketching; and it is perfectly inconceivable to me how M.
Lainé, (to whose merits in the embellishment of his country all must do
justice,) could, in the Annals of the Berlin Horticultural Society,
prefer this to any he had seen; at which indeed his English critics have
made merry not a little. M. Lainé imitated this garden in the one in
front of the palace at Potsdam. In his place I should, I confess, have
chosen another model; though this style is certainly far better suited
to the palace in question than to a Gothic castle. Treasures of art I
saw none: the best was a middling picture by West. All the magnificence
lay in the gorgeous materials, and the profuse display of money. The
drawing-room or library, would, for size, make a very good
riding-school. The large portraits of the possessor and his wife, in the
dining-room, have little interest, except for their acquaintances. A
number of 'affreux' little Gothic temples, deface the pleasure-ground,
which has, moreover, no fine trees: the soil is not very favourable, and
the whole seems laid out in comparatively recent times. The country is
rather pretty, though not picturesque, and too flat.

As we had time to spare, we visited the royal castle of Chester which is
now converted into an excellent county gaol. The whole arrangement of it
seemed to me most humane and perfect. The view from the terrace of the
'corps de logis,' in which are the Courts of Justice, down upon the
prisoners in their cells, is extremely curious and surprising.

Imagine a high terrace of rock, on which stands a castle with two wings.
The 'corps de logis' is, as I said, dedicated to the courts, which are
very spacious; and the wings, to the prisoners for debt. The court-yard
is laid out as a little garden, in which the debtors may walk. Under the
court are cells in which the criminals are confined; the further end on
the right is appropriated to the women. The cells are separate, and
radiate from a centre; the little piece of ground in front of each is a
garden for the use of the prisoner, in which he is permitted to walk;
before trial his dress is gray; after it, red and green. In each
division of the building behind the cells is a large common-room, with a
fire, in which the prisoners work. The cells are clean and airy; the
food varies with the degree of crime,--the lowest is bread, potatoes and
salt. To-day, being new-year's-day, all the prisoners had roast-beef,
plum-pudding, and ale. Most of them, especially the women, became very
animated, and made a horrible noise, with hurrahs to the health of the
Mayor who had given them this fête.

The view from the upper terrace, over the gardens, the prison, and a
noble country, with the river winding below, just behind the cells;--on
the side, the roofs and towers of the city in picturesque confusion; and
in the distance, the mountains of Wales,--is magnificent, and 'a tout
prendre' our country counsellors of justice (_Oberlandes gerichtsrathe_)
are seldom lodged so well as the rogues and thieves here.

Thank Heaven, we set out on our return to-morrow, for I am quite weary
of parks and sights. I am afraid you will be no less so, of my
monotonous letters; but as you have said A you must say B, and so
prepare for a dozen parks before we reach London.

Meanwhile I send my epistle thither, to afford you at least an interval,
and pray God to have you in his merciful and faithful keeping.

Your ever devoted L----.

LETTER X.

_Hawkestone Park, Jan. 2nd, 1827._

BELOVED FRIEND,

Though I felt perfectly 'blasé' of parks yesterday, and thought I could
never take any interest in them again, I am quite of another mind
to-day, and must in some respects give Hawkestone the preference over
all I have seen. It is not art, nor magnificence, nor aristocratical
splendour, but nature alone, to which it is indebted for this
pre-eminence, and in such a degree that were I gifted with the power of
adding to its beauty, I should ask, What can I add?

Turn your imagination to a spot of ground so commandingly placed, that
from its highest point you can let your eye wander over fifteen
counties. Three sides of this wide panorama rise and fall in constant
change of hill and dale, like the waves of an agitated sea, and are
bounded at the horizon by the strangely-formed jagged outline of the
Welsh mountains, which at either end descend to a fertile plain shaded
by thousands of lofty trees, and in the obscure distance where it blends
with the sky is edged with a white misty line--the ocean.

The Welsh mountains are partly covered with snow, and all the cultivated
country between so thickly intersected with hedge-rows and trees, that
at a distance it has rather the appearance of a thinly planted wood,
here and there broken by water or by numberless fields and meadows. You
stand directly in the centre of this scene, on the summit of a group of
hills, looking down over the tops of groves of oaks and beeches
alternating with the most luxuriant slopes of meadow-land, upon a wall
of rock five or six hundred feet high, which forms numerous steep
precipices and pretty valleys. In one of the gloomiest spots of this
wilderness arise the venerable ruins of 'the Red Castle,' a magnificent
memorial of the time of William the Conqueror.

Now imagine this whole romantic group of hills, which rises isolated
from the very plain, to be surrounded almost in a perfect circle by the
silver waves of the river Hawke. This naturally bounded spot is
Hawkestone Park, a spot whose beauties are so appreciated even in the
neighbourhood, that the brides and bridegrooms of Liverpool and
Shrewsbury come here to pass their honeymoon. The park seems indeed
rather the property of the public than of its possessor, who never
resides here, and whose ruinous and mean-looking house lies hidden in a
corner of the park, like a 'hors d'oeuvre.' There is, however, a
pretty inn, in which visitors find all that is needful to their comfort.
Here we passed the night, and after a good breakfast 'á la fourchette,'
set out on our long excursion on foot; for the roads are so bad that we
could not drive. Our scrambling walk, almost dangerous in winter, lasted
four hours.

We crossed a grassy plain, shaded by oaks and covered with grazing
cattle, to the rocks I have mentioned, in which the pale green veins
show the existence of copper. They rise out of a lofty hanging wood of
old beeches, and are crowned at their summits with black firs, the whole
effect of which is most striking. In this natural wall is a grotto,
which, after climbing wearily along a zig-zag path in the wood, you
reach through a dark covered way more than a hundred feet long, hewn in
the rock. The grotto consists of numerous caverns incrusted with all
sorts of minerals. There are small openings in which are set pieces of
coloured glass cut like brilliants; in the dark they gleam like the
precious stones of Aladdin's cave. An old woman was our guide, and
excited our wonder by her unwearied walking, and the dexterity with
which she climbed up and down the rocks in slippers. The irregular steps
of stone were as smooth as glass, and so difficult sometimes to pass
over, that our good R----, who had iron heels to his boots, complained
bitterly of the efforts he had to make to keep himself up. We reached a
summer-house, built of trunks and branches of trees and covered with
moss, which commanded a picturesque view of a fantastic hill called the
Temple of Patience. Our way then led us to the so-called Swiss Bridge,
which is boldly thrown from one rock to another. As the railing is
partly broken down and the passage rather a dizzy one, my good Julia, if
it were possible for her to have come thus far, would have found an end
to her expedition. How fortunate it is to have such an unwearied guide
through the regions of imagination--one who bears you in an instant
across the giddy bridge, and now places you before a black tower-like
rock projecting out of the glittering beeches, overgrown with thorns and
festooned with garlands of ivy! This was long the abode of a fox, who
lived secure from pursuit in his castle of Malapartus; it is still
called Reynard's House. We went on, up hill and down dale, and at
length, rather tired, reached the terrace, an open place with beautiful
peeps at the country cut in the wood. Not far from thence, behind very
high trees, stands a column a hundred-and-twenty feet high, dedicated to
the founder of the family,--a London merchant and Lord Mayor of London
in the time of Henry the Third,--whose statue crowns the pillar. A
convenient winding staircase in the inside leads to its summit, whence
you overlook the panorama of fifteen counties already mentioned. You
pass through still wider chasms between the rocks to a lovely cottage,
standing in complete seclusion at the end of a green valley, where
formerly various beasts and birds were kept, which are now preserved
stuffed in a room of the cottage. A young woman showed them to us, with
the strange announcement,--'All these animals that you see _used to
live_ formerly.' I spare you the green-house built of masses of rock and
branches of trees, and the Gothic tower--a sort of summer-house, and
lead you a long, long way through wood, then over green hills and
through a narrow defile to the magnificent ruin, the sublimely situated
Red Castle. The decayed walls and the hewn rocky sides are of great
extent. You can reach the interior only through a winding passage
blasted in the rock, so utterly dark that I found myself obliged to use
my guide's petticoat as an Ariadne's clue, for I literally could not see
my hand before my eyes. Out of this tunnel you emerge into a picturesque
alley of rock, with smooth high walls overarched with mountain-ashes. On
the side you perceive a cavern, the mouth of which is still closed with
a rusty iron gate. Climbing rude steps in the rock, you reach the upper
part of the ruin--a high roofless tower, in whose walls, fifteen feet
thick, many trees centuries old have struck their roots, and in the
interior of which is a well, which appears to sink down to the entrails
of the earth. The massy and unshaken barrier around it, the lofty tower
through which the sky appears above, and the bottomless depth beneath,
where reigns eternal night, produce an effect I never remember to have
experienced. You see Hope and Despair allegorically united in one
picture before you. The tower, and the rock on which it stands, look
down from a giddy height, in a perfectly perpendicular line, upon the
valley, in which the huge trees appear like copse-wood.

By a somewhat considerable leap of the imagination you reach a New
Zealander's hut on the banks of a little lake, built many years ago from
a drawing of Captain Cook's, and furnished with arrows, spears,
tomahawks, skulls of eaten enemies, and such-like pretty trifles, the
innocent luxuries of these children of nature.

Here we closed our walk, leaving unseen several devices which deform the
place, and which, as well as (alas!) the paths, are somewhat in decay.
But these defects are slight, in a whole so full of sublime and
wondrously-varied natural beauty.

_Newport, Jan. 3rd._

It is winter in good earnest;--the earth covered with ice and six inches
of snow, and the cold in the rooms, so insufficiently warmed by open
fires, almost insufferable. As I passed the greater part of the day in
the carriage, I have little to tell.

_Birmingham, Jan. 4th._

To-day too we saw nothing remarkable on our road but a newly laid out
park through which we drove, with a small but elegant garden, with very
pretty flower-stands of various sorts, and baskets, all of fine wire,
and clothed with creepers. R---- was obliged to draw them with stiff
fingers.

The inn at which we ate our luncheon bore the date 1603 carved in stone,
and is the prettiest specimen of a cottage in an antique style, with
brickwork in various patterns, I have met with. Towards evening we
reached Birmingham, where I am reposing comfortably after the excessive
cold.

_January 6th._

The whole day has been, as in my last visit, devoted to the
manufactories and warehouses. The poor workmen, however, have a bad time
of it. Their earnings are sufficient, it is true; but many of their
occupations are of such a kind that the slightest neglect or
carelessness may be productive of the most dreadful consequences. I saw
a man whose business it is to hold the piece of metal out of which
livery buttons are stamped. He has had his thumbs twice shattered, and
they are now only little formless lumps of flesh. Wo to those whose
clothes approach too near to the steam-engines or other hideous
machines! Many a one has this inexorable power seized and crushed, as
the boa crushes its helpless prey. Some occupations are as unhealthy as
those of the lead-works in Siberia; and in others there is a stench
which a stranger can scarcely endure for a minute.

Everything has its dark side,--this advanced state of manufacture among
the rest; but that is no reason for rejecting it.

Even virtue has its disadvantages when it oversteps the bounds of
moderation; while on the other hand the greatest evil, crime itself not
excepted, has its bright spots.

It is remarkable that, in spite of this wonderful progress in all
discoveries, the English have not yet been able, as Mr. Thomasson
assured me, to rival the iron-castings of Berlin. What I saw of this
kind were immeasurably inferior. I am sometimes tempted to think that we
are arrived at that point at which, far as the English now excel us,
they will begin to descend, and we to ascend. But as they have to fall
from such a height, and we to rise from such a depth, a long time may
elapse before we arrive at the meeting-point. However, as I said, I
think we have started on the road. _Deutschland, Gluck auff!_ if thy
sons obtain but freedom, their efforts will succeed.

_Stratford-on-Avon, Jan. 6th._

This day's journey was not long, but full of interest; for the place
whence my letter is dated is the birth-place of Shakspeare.

It is profoundly affecting to see the familiar trifles which centuries
ago stood in immediate and domestic contact with so great and beloved a
man; then to visit the place where his bones have long been mouldering;
and thus in a few moments to traverse the long way from his cradle to
his grave. The house in which he was born, and the very room hallowed by
this great event, still stand almost unchanged. The latter is perfectly
like a humble tradesman's room, such as we commonly find them in our
small towns; quite suited to the times when England stood on the same
step of civilization which the lower classes still occupy with us. The
walls are completely covered with the names of men of every country and
rank; and although I do not particularly like the parasitical appendages
on foreign greatness, like insects clinging to marble palaces, yet I
could not resist the impulse of gratitude and veneration, which led me
to add my name to the others.

The church on the Avon (the same river which washes the noble walls of
Warwick,) where Shakspeare lies buried, is a beautiful remnant of
antiquity, adorned with numerous remarkable monuments; among which, that
of the chief of poets is, of course, the most conspicuous. It was
formerly painted and gilded, as was the bust; but through the stupidity
of a certain Malone, was whitewashed over about a century ago, by which
it lost much of its singular character. The bust is far from having any
merit as a work of art: it is devoid of expression, and probably,
therefore, of resemblance. It was not without a considerable outlay of
trouble and money that I succeeded in getting a little engraving of the
monument in the original colours,--the last copy the clerk's wife had,
as she assured me. I send it with my letter.

I also bought in a bookseller's shop several views of the place, and of
the objects I have mentioned. In the town-house there is a large picture
of Shakspeare, painted in more recent times; and a still better one of
Garrick, which has some resemblance, not only in the features but the
'tournure' to Iffland.

_Oxford, Jan. 7th._

After having given the 'parkomanie' two days rest, we revived it to-day,
having visited no less than four great parks, the last of which was the
famous Blenheim. But in order:--'Exécutez vous.'

First we passed through Eastrop Park, remarkable in as far as it is of
the time in which the French style had just begun to decline; but at
this transition period the change was as yet so slight, that avenues of
clumps, of different but regularly alternating figures, replaced avenues
of single trees; and hedges were planted in serpentine lines. The whole
appeared in great decay.

Ditchley Park is more beautiful. Unfortunately, the English climate
played us a sad trick to-day. In the morning (for the second time since
we left London) the sun shone, and we were triumphing in our good luck,
when suddenly there fell such a fog that during the whole remaining day
we never could see a hundred steps before us,--often scarcely ten. In
the house we found a number of good pictures, especially very fine
portraits, but no creature could tell us whom they represented. We
learned nothing new in _our_ art, but we found a novelty in another
department. In the gamekeeper's lodge, in default of spoils of nobler
beasts, were about six dozen rats nailed up, their legs and tails
displayed with great taste.

Our third visit was to Blandford Park, belonging to Lord Churchill; very
inconsiderable as a park, but the house contains some noble pictures.
Two, I particularly envied the possessor. The first, a female figure,
attributed, no doubt falsely, to Michael Angelo. The drawing is
certainly bold, but there is a truth and elasticity in the flesh, a
Titian-like colouring, and a lovely archness of expression, which betray
no Michael Angelo,--even suppose the assertion to be false, that we
possess no oil-paintings of that great master.

The second riveted me still more;--a Judith ascribed to Cigoli, a
painter whose works I do not remember to have seen. The subject is
common enough: the triumphant virgin, with the trunkless head in her
hand, has always appeared to me rather disgusting than attractive; but
here the artist has diffused an expression over Judith's elevated and
captivating face, which appears to me to be conceived in the very spirit
of poetry.

I had rather possess good copies of such exquisite pictures, than less
interesting originals by great masters:--it is the poetical not the
technical part of a work of art that has charms for me. I pass over a
fine collection of drawings by Raphael, Claude, and Rubens, and many
interesting portraits.

The horrid fog was thicker and thicker, and we saw Blenheim as if by
twilight. In grandeur and magnificence it is doubtless extraordinary;
and I was much pleased with what I saw, or rather divined; for it was
all shrouded in a veil, behind which the sun appeared rayless, like the
moon. The house is very large and regular, built, unhappily, in the old
French style, and truly royal in magnificence. The park is five German
miles in circumference, and the piece of water, the finest work of its
kind existing, occupies alone eight hundred acres. The pleasure-grounds
are on an equally vast scale; forty men are daily employed in mowing.
Opposite to the house the water forms a cascade, so admirably
constructed of large masses of rock brought from a great distance, that
it is difficult to believe it artificial.

One cannot help admiring the grandeur of Brown's genius and conceptions,
as one wanders through these grounds: he is the Shakspeare of gardening.
The plantations have attained to such a height that we saw a single
Portugal laurel growing out of the turf, which measured two hundred feet
in circumference.

The present possessor, with an income of seventy thousand pounds, is so
much in debt that his property is administered for the benefit of his
creditors, and he receives five thousand a year for his life. It is a
grievous pity that he spends this little in pulling in pieces Brown's
imposing gardens, and modernizing them in a miserable taste;
transforming the rich draperies which Brown had thrown around Nature,
into a harlequin jacket of little clumps and beds. A large portion of
the old pleasure-ground is thus destroyed; as the old gardener, almost
with tears in his eyes, remarked to us. Many noble trees lay felled
around; and a black spot on the turf showed the place where a laurel,
nearly as large as the one I mentioned, lately stood in all its pride
and beauty. I thought with grief how vain it is to attempt to found
anything lasting, and saw in imagination those of my successors who will
destroy the plantations which we have designed and tended together with
so much fondness. Blenheim is chiefly situated on the spot where stood
the ancient royal park of Woodstock (which you remember from Walter
Scott's last novel). A great part of the oak wood which existed in the
time of the unhappy Rosamond is still alive, and dying in an agony of a
century's duration. There are perfect monsters of oaks and cedars, both
as to form and size. Many are so entirely enwreathed with ivy that it
has killed them, but at the same time clothed them with a new and more
beautiful evergreen foliage which enwraps the decayed trunk, like a
magnificent shroud, till it falls into dust.

Deer, pheasants and cattle, people the park, whose green plains seemed,
in the uncertain mist, boundless as the sea; in some places, bare as a
Steppe, in others thickly planted.

The interior of the house looks rather neglected, but contains a number
of valuable works of art. It must be confessed that never did a nation
bestow a richer reward on one of its great men than Blenheim, which is
princely even in its minutest details.[38]

As we entered, there was such a smoke that we thought we had to
encounter a second fog in the house. Some very dirty shabby servants--a
thing almost unheard-of here--ran past us to fetch the 'Chátelaine,'
who, wrapped in a Scotch plaid, with a staff in her hand and the air of
an enchantress, advanced with so majestic an air towards us, that one
might have taken her for the Duchess herself. The magic wand was for the
purpose of pointing more conveniently to the various curiosities. As a
preliminary measure, she required that we should inscribe our names in a
large book: unhappily, however, there was no ink in the inkstand, so
that this important ceremony was necessarily dispensed with. We passed
through many chill and faded rooms, decorated with numerous and fine
pictures, though among them are many inferior ones, on which the names
of Raphael, Guido, &c. are liberally bestowed. The gallery is extremely
rich in fine and genuine Rubens'; the most attractive among which, to
me, was his own frequently repeated but excellent portrait. I was also
much interested by a whole length portrait of the wild Duke of
Buckingham, by Van Dyk,--a roué of a very different sort, both in the
delicate turn of the features, the chivalrous dignity, and the tasteful
dress, from our modern ones. Further on is a beautiful Madonna, by Carlo
Dolce, less smooth and 'banale' than most of those by the same master;
and an excellent and most characteristic portrait of Catharine of
Medicis. She is very fair, with exquisitely beautiful hands, and a
singular expression of cold passion (if I may use the words) in her
features, which yet does not excite the feeling of repulsion one would
anticipate. Ruben's wife hangs opposite to her,--a handsome Flemish
housewife, somewhat vulgar, but beautifully painted and admirably
conceived. Philip the Second, by Titian, appeared to me unmeaning:--two
beggar boys, by Morillo, admirable. Lot and his daughters, by
Rubens;--the female figures somewhat less vulgar and coarse than most of
his beauties, who generally have too much in common with the chief
produce of his native country: Lot is admirably painted: the picture is
however a very unpleasing one. In the bedroom was hung, oddly enough, a
disgusting, fearful picture of Seneca's death in the bath,--Seneca
already a livid corpse.

The portrait of the Duke's mother by Sir Joshua Reynolds is extremely
pleasing. Her beauty and sweet child-like look were worthy of a Madonna;
and the little boy is a perfect Cupid, full of archness and grace.

The library is a magnificent room, containing seventeen thousand
volumes, decorated on the one side with a marble statue of Queen Anne;
on the other, a strange pendant--a colossal antique bust of Alexander; a
model of youthful beauty, in my opinion excelling the Apollo Belvedere.
It is more human, and yet the god-like nature appears through the
human,--not indeed in the christian, but the pagan sense of the word.

It is but fair to notice the portrait of the great Duke of Marlborough,
to whom this whole splendid edifice owes its existence. His history is
remarkable in many points of view: I especially advise every man who
_wishes to make his fortune_ to study it attentively; he may learn much
from a character so formed to _get on_ in the world.--The following
anecdote has always appeared to me remarkable, insignificant as was the
incident.

The Duke was one day overtaken by a violent shower of rain while riding
with his suite. He asked his groom for his cloak; and not receiving it
at the instant, repeated his order in a rather hasty tone. This provoked
the man, and he replied with an impertinent air, "Well, I hope you will
wait just till I have unbuckled it." The Duke, without evincing the
slightest irritation, turned smiling to the person next him, and said,
"Now would I not for all the world be of that fellow's temper."

The more well-known story of the 'petulance' of the Duchess of
Castlemaine, which Churchill turned to such good account, and which in
the strangest way laid the basis of his great career, showed an entirely
similar 'disposition,' and power over himself.

In night and fog we reached Oxford, where I alighted at the Star, and
refreshed myself with an admirable dinner prepared by a French cook from
London. Though I do not, like the ancients, regard cooks as objects of
religious veneration, I cannot deny that I have singular respect for
their art: 'Il est beau au feu' may be said with as much justice of a
virtuoso of this kind, as of the most dashing soldier; and in the field
of politics and diplomacy, every minister knows how much he is indebted
to his cook.

My excursion draws to a close, and in three days I hope to send off
B---- with all the materials he has collected, like a bee laden with
honey.

_January 8th._

Oxford is a most singular city. Such a crowd of magnificent Gothic
buildings, from five hundred to a thousand years old, can nowhere else
be found collected in one place. There are spots in which you can
imagine yourself transported back to the fifteenth century. You see
nothing around you but monuments of that period, without a single
incongruous object. Many, nay almost all, of these old colleges and
churches are also very beautiful in detail, and all of a most
picturesque character. I have often wondered why we do not adopt many of
the details of this style of architecture; for instance, the broad
light windows in two or three divisions, sometimes diversified with
large bows and irregularly divided; only habit could make us endure the
uniform rows of square holes which we call windows.

I went first to the so-called Theatre, which was built by a bishop three
hundred years ago. The iron railing which surrounds it has, instead of
pillars, a sort of 'termini' with the heads of the Roman Emperors, a
strange fancy, but the effect is not bad. In this theatre--which, as
might be expected from its origin, is more like a church--the Emperor of
Russia, the King of Prussia, and the Prince Regent were made Doctors,
and were obliged to appear in scarlet robes. The portraits of all three
have since been placed here. The King of England in his coronation
robes--an admirable picture by Lawrence, worthy of ancient times--hangs
in the centre, in a most splendid frame; on either side, in far simpler
frames and simpler garb, hang the Emperor of Russia, and the King of
Prussia, also by Lawrence. The King is not like: of the Emperor
Alexander I never saw a better portrait.

At the University Stereotype Press, where the printing of a sheet on
both sides is accomplished in five minutes, I again displayed my
activity, and had the honour to print a sheet, which I send you as
companion to the Birmingham button: it contains some interesting
incidents concerning the Maccabees.

A great deal of the printing for the Bible Society is done here; and if
it goes on at this rate, the time will soon arrive concerning which a
periodical called 'The Catholic,' of the year 1824, prophesied in this
wise: "If it comes to that, that all read the Bible, the world will be a
fit abode only for wild beasts." If "the Catholic" means that all will
_understand_ it, he may be right, for then the whole human race will be
ripe for another world. Nevertheless I am so far of "the Catholic's"
mind, that I think the indiscriminate diffusion of the Bible among
all,--even the rudest savages,--is throwing pearls before swine.

I next went to the Museum, which contains a very heterogeneous mixture
of things. On the staircase as you enter is a picture of the battle of
Pavia, in which the principal figures are portraits painted at the time,
as is expressed on the canvass. It is precisely in the style of the old
miniatures, and very interesting for the accuracy of the dresses and
armour: under it is the inscription "Comen les gens de Lempereur
deffirent les francoys en lan 1525." Portraits of Cardinal Wolsey and
Cardinal Richelieu also adorn the staircase. Under them was that of
Tradescant, a noted gardener of Charles the First, from which it was
impossible to tear his colleague R---- away; he looked at the picture
with a sort of protecting air, and was specially delighted with a
garland of mulberries and cucumbers which picturesquely surrounded this
father of gardeners. The most interesting thing in the picture, to me,
was the portrait of a strange large bird; worthy of the Arabian Nights,
called Dodo, which belonged to the gardener when alive, and whose like
has never been seen in these parts since. As a proof that this is no
fable, they showed us the genuine head and beak--wonderfully odd.

In the collection of natural history were a great many rare parrots, and
a curious bird with spikes on its wings, with which it spears fish as
with a lance. The diminutive warrior, who is only six inches high, looks
uncommonly fierce and bold; he is like a miniature crane, only much more
cunning and pugnacious. Here is the duck-billed platypus, that strange
animal from New Holland. The productions of that part of the globe are
so unlike those of all the others, that they almost make one imagine it
belongs to another era of creation, or that it dropped on our earth from
some wandering star.

The colours of a picture made of humming-bird's feathers seemed
something unearthly. Equally curious was a bas-relief of a knight in
splendid gold-green armour made of beetles' wings. Our modern knights
might be very handsomely represented in steel-blue armour, made from the
wings of the dung-beetle. I cannot attempt to give you an inventory of
the cabinet of curiosities; I confined myself, as I always do, to what
struck me, which was not always the most celebrated;--a jewelled glove
of Henry the Eighth's;--an autograph letter of Queen Elizabeth's to Lord
Burleigh, beautifully written;--a pretty riding-cloak and shoe of the
Maiden Queen, which latter proves the extreme beauty of her foot;
lastly, her watch, with a tasteful chain consisting of five medallions
in a row, each containing hair of a different colour--probably of her
chief favourites. Far more curious and sacred is a medallion with a
portrait rudely executed in mosaic, and an inscription signifying that
it belonged to the great Alfred. This precious relic was found ten years
ago in ploughing a field in the island of Athelney, where Alfred lay
hidden from the Danes.

I must now conduct you to the picture-gallery built by Elizabeth, and
preserved exactly 'in statu quo.' The roof is of wainscot panelled, and
in each panel a coat-of-arms, which has a most antique and magnificent
effect. Very good models of the principal temples of antiquity stand in
the ante-room. There are some excellent pictures. The one which charmed
me the most was an authentic portrait of Mary of Scotland, by Zuccaro,
painted just after her arrival from France, and brilliant in all the
indescribable radiance and fascination of her youth and freshness. It is
easy to understand how it was that this woman had only passionate
adorers and devoted partisans, or furious enemies. A face more, in the
true sense of the word, _charming_,--seductive,--can scarcely be
imagined: with all its French graces, it however betrays the selfishness
of the beauty, the recklessness of unbridled passion; but of malignity
or vulgarity, such as we see, the former in Elizabeth, the latter in
Catharine of Medicis, not a trace;--in short, a perfectly womanlike, and
_therefore_ perfectly captivating character of countenance, with all the
virtues and all the weaknesses and vices of her sex in their fullest
proportions. I should think the possession of such a picture a real
happiness,--that of the original might give one too much trouble. The
same artist painted a portrait of Elizabeth, precisely like that at
Warwick. The Earl of Leicester, taken shortly before his death, is
extremely interesting. His face is as elegant and high-bred as it is
handsome; and though not indicative of genius, has the expression of a
sagacious, dignified, and powerful man. There are no remains of the
brilliancy of youth, but a proud complacent consciousness of secure
unalterable favour. In a copy of the School of Athens by Giulio Romano,
I admired once more the exquisite face of the young duke of
Urbino,--that ideal of soft youthful beauty:--the loveliest girl might
be more than satisfied with the possession of it. Garrick's portrait, by
Raphael Mengs, did not answer my idea of that great actor so perfectly
as the one at Stratford-on-Avon. I was delighted with a picture of
Charles the Twelfth, by Schröter,--every inch a grand Don Quixotte: and
with a very characteristic Charles the Second, by Sir Peter Lely.
Charles' aspect, like his age, seems to me entirely French, even to his
features, which are strikingly like those of Bussy Rabutin. His father
hangs near,--a more attractive picture than usual. He has
unquestionably a fine face, with very speaking eyes; but the soft,
melancholy, ideological expression too plainly shows that the bearer of
such features was little fitted to encounter such a man as Cromwell, or
such an age as that he lived in. It is the greatest calamity for a
prince to fall upon an ill-suited time, unless he be strong enough to
impress his own stamp upon it. The great Locke, by Gibson, is a pale
attenuated student. Near him is a handsome portly Luther, by
Holbein;--the stately Handel, by Hodson;--and Hugo Grotius, with his
acute, crafty, and yet high chivalrous face, more that of an energetic
man of the world than of a man of letters. These are the subjects that
struck me the most.

_January 9th._

To-day I have walked all over Oxford; and I cannot express with what
intense delight I wandered from cloister to cloister, and refreshed
myself at this living spring of antiquity.

There is a magnificent avenue of elms, which like the buildings around
it, dates from the year 1520. From this queen of avenues, in which not a
single tree is wanting, and which leads through a meadow to the river,
you see on one side a charming landscape, on the other a part of the
city, with five or six of the most beautiful Gothic towers,--ever a
noble view, but to-day rendered almost like a picture of fairy
enchantment: the sky was overcast, the wind drove the black fantastic
clouds, like a herd of wild beasts, across it; at length the most
beautiful rainbow, vaulting from one tower and descending on another,
spanned the whole city.

From this ancient seat of the Muses of England, from all its
colleges,--each different from the other,--each enclosing a spacious
court, and adorned with noble towers,--each with its own more or less
beautifully ornamented church, its library and picture-gallery, all in
their kind of new and varied interest,--I carry away the most agreeable
recollections. If you can bear to drink again and again from the old
cup, you shall accompany me in my rambles.

My first walk was to the Ratcliffe Library; a round and modern
building,--erected, that is, in the last century, at Dr. Ratcliffe's
cost,--nearly in the centre of the town. The interior is simply a
rotunda in three stages or stories, with a cupola and two open
galleries, whence side-rooms radiate from the inner, to the outer
circles. Below are casts of the best antiques. A small winding staircase
leads to a side tower, from the roof of which you have a splendid view
of the Gothic palaces pointing to heaven with their hundred spires. The
surrounding country is cheerful, fertile, and well wooded. There are
four-and-twenty colleges (a sort of cloister for education,) and
thirteen churches in this small town, containing only sixteen thousand
inhabitants.

From hence we proceeded to Henry the Eighth's Library, preserved,
externally and internally, in nearly its original state, and containing
not less than three hundred thousand volumes. The 'locale' is like no
other of the kind, and transports one completely into past ages. The
cruciform room; the strange shelves; the iron gratings, half blue, half
gilded, and of a form no longer seen; the enormous windows, as broad as
three church windows together and ornamented with beautiful coloured
glass; the gay gilded ceiling, with numberless panels, each containing
the picture of an open Bible with four crowns; even the Doctors sitting
at the tables in the dress of Luther, which they still wear,--how
strangely is the fancy excited by such a scene! A gallery runs round
midway of the high shelves, for the purpose of reaching the books
above. On the railing of this gallery are hung the portraits of the
various librarians, from the first to the last; some, unhappily, in
modern dresses, who look like apes among their venerable predecessors.
In the middle of the room the shelves are so arranged on either side,
that they form a long alley of enclosed closets, in which every man who
wishes to use the library can work completely undisturbed,--an old and
most exemplary arrangement. There are also books in the rooms which
occupy the whole ground-floor of this quadrangular edifice. Here are
some very curious manuscripts and specimens of early printing. I saw
with sorrow how large a tribute the poverty of Germany has been
compelled to pay to the wealth of England; among other things, a
magnificent copy of Faust's first Bible, of the year 1440, which I think
belonged to our Doctor Barth, and is inscribed with a number of notes in
his handwriting. I was delighted to find a manuscript so exactly like a
volume of Froissart in our library, (that with the miniatures in every
leaf,) embellished with the same arabesques of fruit and flowers on a
gold ground, the style and colouring of the figures so precisely the
same, that it is scarcely to be doubted they are by the same painter.
Unfortunately there is neither name nor date. The text is Quintus
Curtius,--all the figures exactly in the costume of the time of the
illuminator: Alexander, cased in iron from head to foot, breaks a lance
with Darius, and throws him from his saddle, just in the style of the
French and English Knights in Froissart.

A very curious French manuscript, the subject of which is an heroic
poem, contains the name of the writer with the date 1340, (an extremely
rare occurrence,) and under it the name of the painter with the date
1346; this gives reason to conclude that the latter had spent six years
in the illuminating, which is almost all executed on a very unusual
design, in gold, blue and red in squares, like a carpet. This manuscript
is peculiarly interesting from the circumstance that the painter,
instead of enclosing the text within a border or arabesque, has
surrounded it with a representation of the trades, sports, and pastimes
of his time. A cursory glance showed me, together with many games and
occupations which we have lost, so many which are still so precisely the
same, that I was really surprised. For instance, a masked-ball;
_Kammerchen vermiethen_;[39] the _Handespiel_, or 'gioco di villano;'
the same with the feet, which we boys often used to play in winter to
warm ourselves; throwing at cocks, and cockfighting; rope-dancers and
conjurors; horse-riders and trained horses, whose feats are more
wonderful than ours; rifle-shooting at a man who ('mille pardons') turns
himself in unseemly wise to the company, like one still existing on a
gate at Lausitz; a smithy, where a horse is shoeing; a wagon, with three
large cart-horses harnessed out at length, with harness, &c. all in the
present form, even the driver's costume,--a blue slop--the very same;
and many other things which I have not time to notice,--showed that
though many things change, yet an infinite deal remains unaltered, and
perhaps, 'à tout prendre,' human life is more the same in different ages
than we generally imagine.

A Boccacio, with exquisitely beautiful miniatures, is one of the
show-pieces of the library. A copy of the Acts of the Apostles, of the
seventh century, in Greek and Latin, is shown as a great curiosity: each
line contains only one word in each language. Considering its great
antiquity, it is in very good preservation.

In the beautiful court of All Souls College--which moreover is carpeted
with the finest turf--there is a spot whence you have a most magnificent
view of spires, towers, and façades of ancient buildings, rising in
unbroken series, one behind another, without the least mixture of modern
houses. Here is another noble library. In the middle is an orrery, which
illustrates our solar system very clearly, and keeps equal course with
the sun and planets through the year.

Christ's College is a beautiful building of modern times; a part of it
only is very old. The church is of Saxon architecture; round and pointed
arches intermingle, but do not at all offend the eye. Here is the famous
shrine of St. Frisdewilde, a most magnificent and tasteful Gothic
monument of the beginning of the eighth century, and still in good
preservation. It was enriched with silver Apostles and other ornaments,
which were plundered in Cromwell's time. That unhappy religious war did
irreparable damage to the antiquities of England; till then, all these
sacred relics were in perfect preservation.

Attached to this college is that most charming walk I described to you
above. It leads us to Magdalen College, which has been in part newly
restored. The restoration is perfectly in the ancient style, and renders
this part of the building secure for five hundred years to come; it has
already cost forty thousand pounds, though but a small part is
completed:--it may be imagined what enormous sums the execution of such
works from the foundation would cost. Nothing great in art can be
executed now, for the money it would cost is absolutely unattainable.
The sum which formerly purchased a god-like work of Raphael's, would now
(even allowing for the difference in the value of money) scarcely buy a
moderate portrait by Lawrence. The Botanic Garden, which closed our
walk, contains nothing worth describing. I therefore release you for the
present, my dear Julia; 'mais c'est á y revenir demain.'

_Buckingham, Jan. 10th._

It is a sin how long my private journal has been neglected. The more my
letters to you swell, the more does my unhappy journal shrink. If you
were to burn these letters, I should have no trace of what had become of
me all this time. Imagine how unpleasant to vanish from one's own
memory!

My imagination is so 'montée' by the many vestiges and echoes of past
times, that I dream of a distant future, in which even ruins will be no
more,--in which we shall lose not only these shadows of humanity, but
human nature itself, and begin a new life in new spheres. For in
remembrance, say what you will, we entirely lose that which we actually
were;--even here, the old man nearly loses himself as a child. We may
indeed find ourselves again, my best friend, and then will the tie that
binds us necessarily re-unite. Let this satisfy us.

'Mais revenons à nos moutons;--c'est à dire, parlons de nouveau de
parcs.'

Dreadful weather--rain and darkness, detained me at Oxford till three in
the afternoon, when it cleared sufficiently for me to set out. The
postilion missed the road, which is not a main one, and drove us a long
way about, so that we arrived very late. While the fire was lighting in
my room, I sat down in mine host's, where I found a very pretty girl,
his niece, and two doctors of the place, with whom I talked away the
evening very pleasantly.

_Aylesbury, Jan. 11th._

Stowe is, like Blenheim, another specimen of English grandeur and
magnificence. The park embraces a large tract of undulating ground,
with fine trees; the house is a noble building in the Italian style. The
grounds were laid out long ago; and though in many respects beautiful,
and remarkable for fine lofty trees, are so overloaded with temples and
buildings of all sorts, that the greatest possible improvement to the
place would be the pulling down ten or a dozen of them. There is a
charming flower-garden, thickly surrounded with high trees, firs, cedars
and evergreens, and flowering shrubs. The parterre forms a regular
pattern like a carpet, in front of a crescent-formed house filled with
rare birds. In the middle of this carpet is a fountain, and on either
side are two pretty 'volières' of wire.

In the park stands a tower called the Bourbon Tower, from the circle of
limes around it which Louis the Eighteenth planted during his long
residence at Hartwell in this neighbourhood. The tower, though modern,
is half fallen in. I wish this be no ill omen for the Bourbons in
France, where even the sage Charter-giver could obtain no better titles
from his subjects than 'Louis l'Inévitable,' and 'Deux Fois Neuf.'

Here is a monument deserving of mention, dedicated to the great men and
women of England, with very appropriate inscriptions, and busts modelled
after the best pictures.

The façade of the building is four hundred and fifty feet long, and as
long is the unbroken 'enfilade' of rooms in the 'bel étage,' which you
enter from the garden by a fine flight of steps. You pass through a
bronze door into an oval marble hall with a beautiful dome, whence alone
it is lighted. A circle of twenty pillars of red scagliola marble
surrounds it, and in the niches between them are ten antique statues.
The floor is paved with real marble, and a gilded grating admits heated
air. I will not weary you with further description of the rooms;--they
are very rich, and all more or less decorated with pictures and
curiosities. The state bed-room, which is not used, is crowded with fine
porcelain, and contains a curious old bed of embroidered velvet with
gold fringe.

In a boudoir near were many other curiosities, which we were only
permitted to see through a grating. The loss of a ruby necklace formerly
belonging to Marie Antoinette, is the very sufficient reason for this
prohibition, which is never removed but in the Duke's presence.

The library is a long gallery covered from top to bottom with shelves,
with a light and elegant gallery in the middle. An adjoining room,
fitted up in the same way, contains nothing but maps and engravings,
probably one of the richest collections in the world. This seems the
peculiar taste of the present Duke.

The hall on the other side of the house, looking on the park, commands a
view which struck me as quite peculiar. You see a large open grassy
plain, skirted on either side by an oak wood, and in the middle and back
ground meadows and wood interspersed. In the centre of the plain, about
sixty or seventy paces from the house, stands, perfectly isolated, a
colossal snow-white equestrian statue, of admirable workmanship. The
pedestal is so high that the horseman seems to rest on the top of the
wood behind him. Not a building, nor any other object than trees, grass,
and sky, are visible; and the whole scene so utterly still and
inanimate, that the white spectral image rivets the attention:--no finer
decoration for Don Juan could be imagined. It happened, too, by a
fortunate chance, that the sky on that side of the house was perfectly
black with a threatening snow-storm, so that the dazzling white statue
stood out in almost fearful grandeur. At the moment, it looked alive,
and every muscle seemed to rise in the sharp lights.

Among the pictures is a treasure which seems to be unknown to our German
travellers, at least I never saw it noticed:--a genuine portrait of
Shakspeare, painted during his lifetime by Barnage. The hypercritics of
England will have it there is no genuine portrait of Shakspeare; but it
seems to me almost impossible to _invent_ a physiognomy carrying on it
such a triumphant air of truth, so fully expressing the grandeur and
originality of the man; furnished with all the intellectual elevation,
all the acuteness, wit, delicacy, all the genuine humour, whose
exhaustless treasures were never so lavished on any mortal. The
countenance is nowise what is vulgarly called handsome; but the sublime
beauty of the mind within beams from every part. Across the lofty
forehead gleam the bright flashes of that daring spirit; the large dark
brown eyes are penetrating, fiery, yet mild; around the lips play light
irony and good-natured archness, but wedded to a sweet benevolent smile,
which lends the highest, the most heart-winning charm to the lofty,
awful dignity of the intellectual parts of the face. Wondrously perfect
appears the structure of the skull and forehead; there are no single
prominences, but all the organs so capacious and complete that we stand
astonished before such a glorious pattern of perfect organization, and
feel a deep joy at finding the man in so beautiful a harmony with his
works.

Two excellent Albrecht Dürers--a pair of female saints in a fantastic
landscape--attracted me, particularly by their primitive German
character. They are two genuine Nürnberg housewives, dressed in their
fatherlandish caps, and taken from nature itself; good-natured, and
busied about their saintly affairs.--A picture of Luther, by Holbein, is
more intellectual and less fat than usual.

There is a remarkable picture, by Van Dyk, of the Duke of Vieuxville,
ambassador from the Court of France to Charles the First, who with
chivalrous devotion followed the King into the field and was killed at
Newbury. The dress is old, but picturesque;--a white 'juste-au-corps, à
la Henri Quatre,' with a black mantle thrown over it; full short black
breeches falling over the knee, with silver points; pale violet
stockings with gold clocks, and white shoes with gold roses. On the
mantle is embroidered the star of the Holy Ghost, four times as large as
it is now worn, the blue riband 'en sautoir,' but hanging down very low,
and the cross worn in the present fashion, on the side; it is narrower
and smaller than now, and hangs by the broad riband almost under the
arm.

The Duke de Guise was not such as I had pictured him to myself:--a pale
face with reddish beard and hair; with the expression rather of an
'intriguant' than of a great man.--A picture which corresponds better
with the character of the person it represents is Count Gondemar,
Spanish ambassador to the Court of James the First, by Velasquez; he
ingratiated himself with the King by his dog-Latin, in which burlesque
form he made free to say anything. He brought the gallant Sir Walter
Raleigh to the scaffold by his Jesuitical intrigues.

A picture of Cromwell, by his Court painter Richardson, has a double
interest for the family. It was painted expressly for one of the Duke's
ancestor's, who appears in the same picture as page, in the act of tying
the Protector's scarf. This portrait is not much like the others of the
same personage I have seen; it represents him as younger, and of a more
refined nature, and is therefore probably flattered. From the hand of a
Court painter this is to be expected.

I must only mention two fine and large Teniers', one of which represents
three wonderfully characteristic Dutch boors, meeting in a village and
gossiping with their pipes in their mouths; an excellent Ruysdael; six
famous Rembrandt's, and Titian's lovely mistress. I admired, too, a new
specimen of art,--two Sèvres cups with miniatures after Pétitot, by that
admirable porcelain-painter Madame Janquotot. The one represents Ninon
de l'Enclos, of whom I had never before seen a picture that answered to
my idea of her. This expressed her character fully, and is of the most
attractive beauty,--genuine French, lively as quicksilver, bold almost
to impudence, but too generous and too truly natural to leave any other
than an engaging impression on the mind. The other--a gentle, placid,
and voluptuous beauty--- was inscribed, Françoise d'Orleans de Valois.
As thoroughly initiated in French genealogies and memoirs, you will know
who she is. 'Je l'ignore.' Each cup cost a thousand francs.

In a beautiful moonlight we drove to Aylesbury, whence I now write.

_Uxbridge, Jan. 12th._

This evening I hope to be in London again. While the horses are
putting-to I write a few words. We saw Lord Carrington's park this
morning,--for your comfort be it said, the last, at present at least.
The garden is nothing remarkable: the house is in the beloved modern
Gothic style, but, being simple and unpretending, looks less affected.
It is built of stone, without ornament. A good portrait of Pitt hangs in
the library. This great man has anything but the face of a man of
genius,--and who knows whether posterity will think his deeds betray
more than his face?

One thing pretty I observed in the garden,--a thick massy wreath of ivy
planted on the turf. It looks as if negligently dropped there. Our
excursion was to be closed by the sight of Bulstrode, which Repton
describes at such length as the model of parks; but this drop is spared
you, my poor Julia, for the Duke of Portland has sold it, and the
present owner has felled the trees about which Repton is so
enthusiastic, ploughed up the park, and pulled down the house to sell
the stone. It was a miserable scene of desolation,--made more miserable
by the strange dress of the women at work; they were wrapped from top to
toe in blood-red cloaks, and looked like an ill-omened assemblage of
executioners.

_London, Jan. 13th._

By bright gas-light, which is always like a festal illumination here, we
drove into town, and as I wished to have an instant contrast with my
park-and-garden life, I alighted at Covent Garden to see my first
Christmas pantomime. This is a very favourite spectacle in England,
particularly with children; so that I was quite in my place. Playwrights
and scene-painters take great pains to make every year's wonders exceed
the last. Before I bid you good-night I must give you a rhapsodical
sketch of the performance. At the rising of the curtain a thick mist
covers the stage and gradually rolls off. This is remarkably well
managed by means of fine gauze. In the dim light you distinguish a
little cottage, the dwelling of a sorceress; in the back-ground a lake
surrounded by mountains, some of whose peaks are clothed with snow. All
as yet is misty and indistinct;--the sun then rises triumphantly, chases
the morning dews, and the hut, with the village in the distance, now
appear in perfect outline. And now you behold upon the roof a large
cock, who flaps his wings, plumes himself, stretches his neck, and