500 LETTERS FROM ENGLAND. 



study as you will find in any of the architectural works, with the 

 advantage which the reality always has over its counterfeit. 



From this little village to Chatsworth House, or palace, is about 

 two miles, through a park, which is a broad valley, say a couple of 

 miles wide by half a dozen long. It is indeed just one of those 

 valleys which our own Durand loves to paint in his ideal landscapes, 

 backed by wooded hills and sylvan slopes, some three hundred or 

 four hundred feet high, with a lovely English river the Derwent 

 running like a silver cord through the emerald park, and grouped 

 with noble drooping limes, oaks, and elms, that are scattered over 

 its broad surface. After driving about a mile, the palace bursts upon 

 your view the broad valley park spread out below and before it 

 the richly wooded hill rising behind it the superb Italian gardens 

 lying around it the whole, a palace in Arcadia. On the crest of 

 the hill, from the top of a picturesque tower, floats the flag which 

 apprises you that the owner of all that you see on every side the 

 park of twelve miles circuit (filled with herds of the largest and most 

 beautiful deer I have yet seen), valley, hills, and the little world 

 which the horizon shuts in is at home in his castle. 



The palace is a superb pile, extending in all some eight hundred 

 feet. It is designed in the classical style, and is built of the finest 

 material, a stone of a rich golden brown tint, which harmonizes 

 well with the rich setting of foliage, out of which it rises. 



Cavendish is the family name of the Duke of Devonshire, and 

 this estate became the property of Sir W. Cavendish, in the time of 

 Elizabeth. The main building was erected by the first Duke in 1702, 

 and the stately wings, containing the picture and sculpture galleries, 

 by the present Duke. Every portion, however, is in the finest pos- 

 sible order and preservation ; and it would be difficult for the stran 

 ger to point out which part of the palace belongs to the eighteenth, 

 and which to the nineteenth centuries. 



You enter the gilded gates at the fine portal at one end of the 

 range, and drive along a court some distance, till you are set down 

 at the main entrance door of the palace. The middle of the court 

 is occupied by a marble statue of Orion, seated on the back of a 

 dolphin, about which the waters of a fountain are constantly play- 

 ing. From the chaste and beautiful entrance hall rises a broad 



