OCTOBER. 



461 



width ; then a gentle ascent, clothed with venerable beeches, 

 with a few oaks and other small trees. One very large beech 

 has its branches tied together by iron bands and bars at 

 twenty feet from the ground ; the body is considerably de- 

 cayed, and is about five feet in diameter — there are several 

 beeches four feet in diameter. Turkey oaks flourish here 

 very well indeed. 



On an eminence in rear of the carriage front is a temple, 

 or observatory, overlooking the country from five to ten miles 

 in several directions. Beyond the flower garden is a large 

 piece of woods, with rhododendrons, laurels, kalmias, ferns, 

 &c., forming the undergrowth, and looking as wild and prim- 

 itive in places as the sides of the Alleghany Mountains in 

 Penn. Between the woods and the flower garden is a small 

 lake, with an island in the centre, about thirty feet in diam- 

 eter, entirely covered with a single rhododendron. The 

 flower garden is tastefully arranged, but nothing remarkable 

 ill it. The hot houses are on a grand scale — well arranged 

 and kept. 



The Hall is in the Roman Corinthian style, and a very 

 creditable specimen for an old building. The conservatories 

 were in the same style, but are being rebuilt with all the 

 modern improvements. 



WORSELY HALL, THE SEAT OF THE EARL OF ELLE3MERE, 



is a modern Elizabethean mansion, erected about twelve 

 years since, from the design of Edward Blore, architect, of 

 London, and has all the peculiarities and some of the whim- 

 sicalities pertaining to that hybrid style. 



My first impressions from a distance were unfavorable. 

 There is a kind of monotony about it — a want of lights and 

 shadows, an indistinctness that is not pleasing. On a closer 

 inspection, all the details appear to better advantage ; the eye 

 wanders over the vast edifice, interested in every move by 

 some new or quaint device : in the unnatural mixture of the 

 Roman, Italian, and Gothic styles ; in scrolls, in imitation of 

 scraps, shell work, and crinkum crankums of many sorts, in- 

 serted by the fertile genius of Grinling Gibbons, a celebrated 



