REPORT. XXV 
wherever it was necessary for them to look abroad, instead of 
being contrived for symmetry, or to illuminate the chambers. 
To that style succeeded the richness and delicacy of the Gothic. 
As that declined, before Grecian taste was established, space and 
vastness seem to have made up their whole ideas of grandeur. 
This house, erected in the reign of Elizabeth by the memorable 
Countess of Shrewsbury, is exactly in this style. The apartments, 
especially the entrance hall, the presence chamber, and the great 
gallery—the latter extending nearly the whole length of the 
house—are, as you will see, large and lofty. ‘The windows, 
filled with small diamond-shaped panes of glass, letting in floods 
of light, so that, as Lord Bacon remarked, when speaking of this 
peculiarity, ‘‘one cannot tell where to become to be out of the 
sun or cold,” are so numerous, that the old saying in the neigh- 
bourhood, 
Hardwick Hall, 
More glass than wall, 
is literally true ; and nothing can present a more fairy-like 
appearance than Hardwick does when the setting sun throws its — 
last rays upon it and lights it up with splendour. To identify 
the name of the architect who designed the plan and super- 
intended the building of this house is, in the absence of positive 
proof, no easy matter; but Huntingdon Smithson, who was 
afterwards engaged as the architect of Bolsover Castle, as well as 
of Wollaton Hall, has a probable claim to it. In going through 
the house, you will observe that the chimney-pieces in almost 
every rooin, as at Bolsover Castle, are very fine, being larger, as 
arule, and of better execution than those in the old hall. The 
one in the dining-room is much decorated ; and in letters of gold 
you are admonished that the ‘“ Conclvsion of all Thinges is to 
_feare God and Keepe His Commandementes.” In the Presence 
Chamber are the Royal arms, which seem to indicate that when 
the house was built the Countess intended to receive the Queen 
in one of her royal progresses. Above the fire-place in the 
Library is a piece of sculpture representing Apollo and the Nine 
Muses. On one side are the arms of Queen Elizabeth, and on 
