THE 



^^'^'a 



JOUMAL OF RURAL ART AND RURAL TASTE. 



Vol. I. 



JANUARY, 1S47. 



No. 7. 



What one would do if he were a duke, 



AND HAD HALF A MILLION A YEAR ? is a ques- 

 tion which, if it could be audibly put by a 

 magician or a fairy, as in the bygone days of 

 wands and enchantments, would set all the 

 restless and ambitious directly to air-castle- 

 building. Visions of the enjoyment of 

 great estates, grand palaces, galleries of 

 pictures, richly stored libraries, stately gar- 

 dens, and superb equipages, would no doubt 

 quickly crowd upon the flushed imaginations 

 of many even of our soberest readers. Each 

 person would give an unlimited scope, in the 

 ideal race of happiness, to his favorite hob- 

 by, which nothing but the actual trial would 

 convince him that he could not ride better 

 and more wisely than all the rest of his 

 fellow-men. 



We have had placed in our hands some 

 clever and graphic notes of a visit to Chats- 

 worth, the celebrated seat of the Duke of 

 Devonshire. This place, as a highly ar- 

 tistical country residence, is admitted to 

 stand alone even in England, and therefore 

 in the world. To save our readers the trou- 

 ble of perplexing their own wits to conjec- 

 ture what they would do, if they were bur- 

 dened or blessed with the expenditure of 

 38 



the best ducal revenue in Great Britain, we 

 beg leave to refer them to the notes which 

 follow. 



We may give a personal relish to the ac- 

 count, by observing that the Duke of De- 

 vonshire is a bachelor ; that it is a princi- 

 ple with him to expend the most of his 

 enormous income on his estate, and that 

 gardening is his passion. He is the Presi- 

 dent of the London Horticultural Society, 

 where he is, among enthusiastic amateurs, 

 the most enthusiastic of them all. He sends 

 botanical collectors to the most distant and 

 unexplored countries, in search of new 

 plants at his own cost. He travels, with 

 his head gardener, all over Europe, to exa- 

 mine the finest conservatories, and returns 

 home to build one larger and loftier than 

 them all. He goes to Italy, to study the 

 effect of a ruined aqueduct, that he may 

 copy it on a grand scale in the water-works 

 at his private country-place ; and he takes 

 down a whole village near the borders 

 of his park, in order to improve and rebuild 

 it in the niost tasteful, comfortable and pic- 

 turesque manner. 



But it is not only in gardening, that the 

 Duke of Devonshire displays his admirable 



