491 



florid Gothic architecture for this building. Certainly it looks like 

 throwing away such delicate details, to pile them up amid the 

 smoke of London, which is, indeed, already beginning to blacken and 

 deface them. But, on the other hand, the beauty and fitness of the 

 style for the interior seem to me unquestionable. The very com- 

 plexity appears in keeping with the intricate machinery of a gov- 

 ernment, that rules an empire almost extending over half the 

 globe. 



PICTURE OF A NOBLEMAN'S SEAT. I shall finish this letter with 

 a sketch of a nobleman's seat, where I am just now making a visit; 

 and can therefore give you the outlines in a better light than travel- 

 lers generally can do. The seat is called Wimpole the property 



of the Earl of H , and is situated in the fine agricultural district 



of Cambridgeshire. It is not a " show place ;" and though a resi- 

 dence of the first class, especially in extent, it is only a fair speci- 

 men of what you may find, with certain variations, in many counties 

 in England. 



The landed estate, then, amounts to more than thirty-seven thou- 

 sand acres a large part admirably cultivated. The mansion, which 

 stands in the midst of one of those immense and beautiful parks 

 which one only finds in England, is a spacious pile in the Roman 

 style, four hundred and fifty feet front ; rather plain and antique 

 without, but internally beautiful, and in the highest degree complete 

 both as regards arrangement and decoration. The library, for 

 example, is sixty feet long, quite filled with a rich collection of books. 

 The suite of drawing-rooms abounds with pictures by Van Dyck, 

 Rubens, and other great masters ; and there is a private chapel, in 

 which prayers are read every morning, capable of containing a 

 couple of hundred persons. 



In front of the house, a broad level surface of park stretches be- 

 fore the eye, and is finely taken advantage of as a position for one 

 of the noblest avenues of grand old elms that I have seen in Eng- 

 land ; an avenue three miles long, and very wide not cut in two 

 by a road,* but carpeted with grass, like a broad aisle of verdure. 

 Place at the end of this a distant hill, and let the avenue be the 



* The approach is at the side. 



