•MR. DOAVNING'S LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



farmers in England, and his father, the late Duke, was not only an enthusiastic agricultu- 

 rist, but the greatest arboriculturist and botanist of his day, whose works, both practi- 

 cal and literary, made their mark upon the age. 



The Woburn estate consists of about thirty thousand acres of land. There is a fine 

 park of three thousand acres. You enter the approach through a singularly rich avenue 

 of evergreens, composed of a belt pei-haps one hundred feet broad, sloping down like an 

 amphitheatre of foliage, from tall Norway spruces and pines in the back ground, to rich 

 hollies and Portugal laurels in front. This continues, perhaps half a mile, and then you 

 leave it and wind through an open park, spacious and grand — for a couple of miles — till 

 you reach the Abbey. This is not a building in an antique style, but a grand and mas- 

 sive pile in the classical manner, built about the middle of the last century on the site of the 

 old Abbey. I have said this place seemed to me essentially English. The first sight of 

 the house is peculiarly so. It is built of Portland stone, and has that mossy, discolored 

 look which gathers about even modern buildings in this damp climate, and which we in 

 America know nothing of, under our pure and bright skies — where the freshness of stone 

 remains unsullied almost any length of time. 



Woburn Abbey is a large palace, and containing as it does, the accumulated luxuries, 

 treasures of art, refinements, and comforts of so old and weathy a famil)'^ — (with an 

 income of nearly a million of our money,) you will not be surprised when I say that we 

 have nothing with which to compare it. Indeed, I believe Woburn is considered the most 

 complete house in England, and that is saying a good deal, when you remember that there 

 are 20,000 private houses in Great Britain, larger than our President's House. To get an 

 idea of it, you must imagine a square mass, about which, externally — especially on the side 

 fronting the park, there is little to impress you — only the appearance of large size and an 

 air of simple dignity. Imagine this quadrangular pile three stories high on the park or en- 

 trance front, and two stories high on the garden or rear, and over two hundred feet in 

 length, on each side. The drawing-room floor, though in the second story, is therefore 

 exactly on a level with the gardens and pleasure grounds in the rear, and the whole of 

 this large floor is occupied Avith an unbroken suite of superb apartments — drawing-rooms, 

 picture galleries, music-rooms, library, etc. — projecting and receding, and stealing out and 

 in among the delicious scenery of the pleasure grounds, in the most agreeable manner. 

 There is a noble library with 20,000 volumes; a gallery, one hundred and forty feet long, 

 filled with fine sculpture — (among other things the original group of the three graces, by 

 Canova,) and a sort of wide corridor running all around the quadrangule — filled with 

 cabinets of natural history, works of art, &c., and forming the most interesting in- 

 door walk in dull weather. Pictures by the great masters, especially portraits, these 

 rooms are very rich in, and among other things I noticed casts in plaster, of all the cele- 

 brated animals that were reared here by the late Duke. 



NoAV, imagine the quadrangule continued in the rear on one side next the sculpture 

 gallery, through a colonnade like side series of buildings, including riding house, tennis' 

 court, etc., a quarter of a mile, to the stables, which are of themselves larger than most 

 country houses; imagine hot houses and conservatories almost without number, con- 

 nected with the house by covered passages, so as to combine the utmost comfort and beau- 

 ty; imagine an aviary consisting of a cottage and the grounds about it fenced in and filled 

 with all manner of birds of brilliant and beautiful plumage; imagine a large dairy, fitted 

 up in the Chinese style with a fountain in the middle, and the richest porcelain vessels 

 Ik and butter; imagine a private garden of bowers and trellis work, embosomed 

 eepers, which belongs especially to the Duchess, and you have a kind of sketchy out 



