64:8 Notes and Reflections during a Tour : — 



the platform of the house, and the leading feature of this 

 declivity is formedby the ruins of an ancient castle or fortress, 

 and of its various outworks. These are exceedingly well 

 managed, and made the most of by walks leading to different 

 points of view, and by a chapel, hermitage, mausoleum, and 

 armoury. Another feature is a conservatory with some good 

 orange ti'ees, and perhaps 30 or 40 species of the common 

 green-house plants. There are a Temple of Fame, with a statue 

 in it of some prince or other person belonging to the court, who 

 had honoured Radepont by a visit ; various seats covered 

 and open, the former with rush mats or cushions, both for 

 sitting on and to place beneath the feet; an American 

 ground ; a hanging wood with a dark walk ; a bridge over 

 the stream which drives the cotton mills and passes through 

 a part of the low grounds ; a cascade ; an aviary and a menagery 

 with a lemur, turtle doves, pheasants, &c. ; English cottages ; 

 a dairy and very neat cow-houses ; with some similar objects of 

 amusement and interest. The walks are, for the most part, 

 ornamented with groups of showy annuals of the commoner 

 sorts, asters, marigolds, poppies, mallows, &c. The views 

 from the rising grounds are over the house and the low grounds, 

 to the naked down-like chalk hills on the other side of the valley; 

 and those from the low grounds are, in most places, limited by 

 a boundary of wood, and are chiefly from one object to another 

 within this boundary. The kitchen-garden may contain three 

 acres, surrounded by a mud wall trellised, and has a very good 

 gardener's house, a fruit-room, a hot-house, pits, and frames. 

 The hot-house contains some good old plants of general in- 

 terest, such as the sugar-cane, date palm, Indian-rubber tree. 

 The frames were shaded with straw mats, and contained, if we 

 recollect right, a few pine plants, cantaloup melons, and some 

 pots of cuttings. The walks, like all the others about this 

 residence, were laid with fine river gravel, which, as it does 

 not bind, is kept soft and even, by frequent raking. The 

 edgings in the kitchen-garden were of strawberries, sorrel, and 

 other culinary plants. The borders were planted with dwarfs, 

 and trees trained en jyramide, and in the compartments were 

 some standards. The whole, even to the melon ground, was 

 in the most perfect order, the walks newly raked, and scarcely 

 a weed to be seen. With no part of the grounds could we 

 find fault in this respect. On expressing our surprise and 

 admiration at this degree of order and neatness to the gardener, 

 a gay old man, who could read and write, with a stout healthy 

 wife of nearly the same age who looked out on us as we 

 passed the door of her dwelling-house, he said that his master 

 insisted that it should always be so, and therefore it could not 



