114 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



previously, next received the travellers at Wentworth House, 

 where they found agreeable feminine company. The size of the 

 mansion impressed de Saussure. He repeats a mot of Sir George 

 Savile, who, when Lady Rockingham hoped that the de Saussures 

 would visit them if they lay on their road, had cried, ' Oh, the 

 house is so large that if one end of it is not on your road, the 

 other must be.' Before supper at 9.30 there were evening 

 prayers in the chapel attached to the house, 'chose tres edifiante,' 

 de Saussure remarks. They saw Wentworth Castle before return- 

 ing to Sheffield, where the walls of their inn were hung with speci- 

 mens of Scarborough seaweed in place of pictures. The process 

 of manufacture of Sheffield plate was inspected, and then they 

 started for another great place, Chatsworth. Here they were 

 received by Lord John Cavendish, and found Horace Walpole and 

 his friend General Conway, ' both very unaffected and amiable.' 

 They talked of Rousseau and his imaginary fears of being pursued 

 in England and forbidden to leave the country, and how he had 

 begged General Conway to give him leave to depart, offering in 

 return to write nothing more about Hume. Horace Walpole, 

 whom de Saussure speaks of as ' the author of the letter of the 

 King of Prussia to Rousseau,' he thought somewhat Frenchified 

 and affected. But General Conway proved a most pleasant 

 companion. By his advice the de Saussures drove to Matlock, 

 where they admired the scenery and visited a lead-mine. The 

 marvels of Chatsworth surprised them ; the house is described as 

 ' a fairy palace in a beautiful wilderness.' Lord John Cavendish 

 gave de Saussure further light on the humours of a parliamentary 

 election ; his own seat for York, he said, cost him 1000 a year, 

 though his return was unopposed. Next day they drove on to the 

 marble quarries at Bakewell and, over hills showing nothing 

 but sheep and heather, to Castleton and the Peak Cavern, at that 

 day one of the sights of England. 



At Manchester, a market town of forty thousand inhabitants, 

 but not yet a city, a cotton manufactory was visited and an 

 excursion made on the Bridge water Canal. De Saussure called 

 on that strange collector, Sir Ashton Lever, who ruined himself 

 in making a most heterogeneous museum, which subsequently, 

 when shown at the Rotunda on the Surrey side, became one of 

 the sights of London. He was then living at Allerington Hall, 



