390 Getieral Results of a Gardening Tow : — 



labouring at them, and his labour never tells ; a little of it 

 bestowed on a flower-border or a shrubbery would produce 

 more satisfaction to a well regulated taste, than thousands of 

 pots in the state we have described. In the open country 

 the love of plants in pots, merely as such, is a disease con- 

 tracted by the poor from their contact with the rich ; in 

 towns it is justifiable, because there a sick plant is better 

 than none. 



Trentham has the merit of being kept in good order ; and 

 in the kitchen-garden are the best crops of pines, grapes, 

 figs, peaches, and wall-fruit that we have seen since leaving 

 London. The Marquess of Stafford, judging from Mr. Loch's 

 book on the improvements made on His Lordship's estates, 

 employs his immense wealth as he ought to do ; and, on this 

 account he has always ranked in our minds with the Dukes of 

 Bedford and Devonshire. The gardener here (Mr. Woolley) 

 is a very modest man, and of great worth in his profession. 



Alton Towers is a very singular place, both in its geology, 

 which is peculiarly adapted for grand and picturesque effects, 

 and in what has been done to it by the late Earl of Shrews- 

 bury. The house, or abbey, stands on a piece of table laud, 

 of 50 or 60 acres in extent; and this table land is bounded on 

 three sides by two valleys, which commence in a gentle hollow 

 near the abbey, and lose themselves in a third broad and 

 deep valley in an opposite direction. The surrounding country 

 is composed of similar valleys, among portions of table land 

 or hills. The surface of both hills and valleys is generally in 

 pasture, with very few human dwellings, or in plantations of 

 pines, and large firs, from ten to thirty years' growth. The 

 rock is every where red sandstone, often protruding from the 

 sides of the valleys in immense stratified masses, the exposed 

 parts occasionally worn by the weather into anomalous shapes, 

 but at a little depth under ground affording excellent stone 

 for building. The natural character of this part of the 

 country is grand and picturesque, with a solitary and wild air, 

 approaching to the savage. 



The lemains of a very old castle, belonging to the Shrews- 

 bury family, exist on a rock protruding into one of these val- 

 leys ; but the site of the present abbey was, twenty years ago, 

 nothing more than a farm house. Here the late Earl of 

 Shrewsbury commenced his operations, and employed hun- 

 dreds of labourers, mechanics, and artisans, from 1814 till 

 his death in 1827. 



This nobleman, abounding in wealth, always fond of archi- 

 tecture and gardening, but with much more fancy than sound 

 judgment, seems to have wished to jn'oduce something different 



