London to John OGroat's. 299 



civilization of this last, unfinished age in which we live 

 and the life of bygone centuries ; that is, if Haddon 

 Hall shows its face in it, or if you have the features of 

 that antiquity before your eyes when you look into the 

 Chatsworth mirror. The whole of this magnificent 

 establishment bears the impress of the nineteenth 

 century, inside and outside. The architecture, sculp- 

 ture, carving, paintings, engravings, furniture, libraries, 

 conservatories, flowers, shrubberies and rockeries all 

 bear and honor the finger-prints of modern taste and 

 art. In no casket in England, probably, have so many 

 jewels of this century's civilization been treasured for 

 posterity as in this mansion on the little meandering 

 Derwent. If England has no grand National Grallery 

 like the French Louvre, she has works of art that 

 would fill fifty Louvres, collected and treasured in these 

 quiet private halls, embosomed in green parks and 

 plantations, from one end of the land to the other. 

 And in no other country are the private treasure-houses 

 of genius so accessible to the public as in this. They 

 doubtless act as educational centres for refining the 

 habits of the nation ; exerting an influence that reaches 

 and elevates the homes of the people, cultivating in 

 them new perceptions of beauty and comfort ; diffusing 

 a taste for embowering even humble cottages in 

 shrubbery ; making little flower-fringed lawns, six feet 



