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attorney to claim the flitch in your names; and I will send it up by the coach, to be left at the Blue Boar, or wherever you will have it delivered. But you had better come in person; you will see one of the prettiest spots in the world; it is a little paradise, and the more like the antique one, as, by all I have said, the married couple seems to be driven out of it. The house is very indifferent: behind is a pretty park; the situation, a brow of a hill commanding sweet meadows, through which the Trent serpentises in numberless windings and branches. The spires of the cathedral of Lichfield are in front at a distance, with variety of other steeples, seats, and farms, .and the horizon bounded by rich hills covered with blue woods. If you love a prospect, or bacon, you will certainly come hither.

Wentworth Castle [Yorkshire], Sunday-night.

I had writ thus far yesterday, but had no opportunity of sending my letter. I arrived here last night, and found only the Duke of Devonshire, who went to Hardwicke [in Derbyshire] this morning: they were down at the menagerie, and there was a clean little pullet, with which I thought his grace looked as if he should be glad to eat a slice of Whichnovre bacon. We follow him to Chatsworth tomorrow, and make our entry to the public dinner, to the disagreeableness of which I fear even Lady Mary's company will not reconcile

me.

My Gothic building, which my Lord Strafford has executed in the menagerie, has a charming effect. There are two bridges built besides; but the new front is very little advanced. Adieu, Madam!

680. TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Chatsworth, August 28, 1760.

I AM a great way out of the world, and yet enough in the way of news to send you a good deal. I have been here but two or three days, and it has rained expresses. The most important intelligence I can give you is, that I was stopped from coming into the north for ten days by a fit of the gout in both feet, but as I have a tolerable quantity of resolution, I am now running about with the children and climbing hills—and I intend to have only just so much of this wholesome evil as shall carry me to a hundred. The next point of consequence is, that the Duke of Cumberland has had a stroke of the

palsy. As his courage is at least equal to mine, he makes nothing of it; but being above an inch more in the girth than I am, he is not yet arrived at skipping about the house. In truth, his case is melancholy the humours that have fallen upon the wound in his leg have kept him lately from all exercise; as he used much, and is so corpulent, this must have bad consequences. Can one but pity him? A hero, reduced by injustice to crowd all his fame into the supporting bodily ills, and to looking on the approach of a lingering death with fortitude, is a real object of compassion. How he must envy, what I am sure I don't, his cousin of Prussia risking his life every hour against Cossacks and Russians! Well! but this risker has scrambled another victory he has beat that pert pretender Laudon '-yet it looks to me as if he was but new gilding his coffin; the undertaker Daun will, I fear, still have the burying of him!

I received here your letter of the 9th, and am glad Dr. Perelli so far justifies Sisson as to disculpate me. I trust I shall execute Sophia's business better.

Stosch dined with me at Strawberry before I set out. He is a very rational creature. I return homewards to-morrow; my campaigns are never very long; I have great curiosity for seeing places, but I dispatch it soon, and am always impatient to be back with my own Woden and Thor, my own Gothic Lares. While the lords and ladies are at skittles, I just found a moment to write you a line. Adieu !

Arlington Street, Sept. 1.

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

681. TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Arlington Street, Sept. 1, 1760.

I WAS disappointed at your not being at home as I returned from my expedition; and now I fear it must be another year before I see Greatworth, as I have two or three more engagements on my

This was the battle of Liegnitz, fought on the 15th of August, 1760, and in which the King of Prussia signally defeated the Austrians under Marshal Laudon, and thereby saved Silesia.-DOVER.

books for the residue of this season. I go next week to Lord Waldegrave, and afterwards to George Selwyn, and shall return by Bath, which I have never yet seen. Will not you and the general come to Strawberry in October?

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

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

I saw Lichfield cathedral, which has been rich, but my friend Lord Brooke and his soldiery treated poor St. Chad' with so little ceremony, that it is in a most naked condition. In a niche at the very summit they have crowded a statue of Charles the Second, with a special pair of shoe-strings, big enough for a weathercock. As I went to Lord Strafford's I passed through Sheffield, which is one of the foulest towns in England in the most charming situation; there are two-and-twenty thousand inhabitants making knives and scissors; they remit eleven thousand pounds a week to London. One man there has discovered the art of plating copper with silver; I bought a pair of candlesticks for two guineas that are quite pretty. Lord Strafford has erected the little Gothic building, which I got

1 A tomb with Gothic sculpture fair,
Did long Lord Marmion's image bear,
(Now vainly for its sight you look;
'Twas levell'd when fanatic Brooke
The fair cathedral storm'd and took;

But thanks to Heaven and good St. Chad

A guerdon meet the spoiler had.)—Marmion, Canto 6.

Robert Greville, Lord Brooke, was killed (1642) by a shot fired from St. Chad's cathedral upon St. Chad's day. Compare Walpole's Works, i. 357.-CUNNINGHAM;

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

1 Daughter of John Hoskins, Esq., and widow of William the third Duke of Devonshire.-WALPOLE.

2 Afterwards Duchess of Portland.-WALPOLE.

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

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

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