WOBURN ABBEY. 533 



land. There is a fine park of three thousand acres. You enter the 

 approach through a singularly rich avenue of evergreens, composed 

 of a belt perhaps one hundred feet broad, sloping down like an am- 

 phitheatre of foliage, from tall Norway spruces and pines in the 

 background, to rich hollies and Portugal laurels in front. This 

 continues, perhaps, half a mile, and then you leave it and wind 

 through an open park, spacious and grand for a couple of miles 

 till you reach the Abbey. This is not a building in an antique 

 style, but a grand and massive pile in the classical manner, built 

 about the middle of the last century on the site of the old Abbey. 

 I have said this place seemed to me essentially English. The first 

 sight of the house is peculiarly so. It is built of Portland stone, 

 and has that mossy, discolored look which gathers about even mo- 

 dern buildings in this damp climate, and which we in America 

 know nothing of, under our pure and bright skies where the fresh- 

 ness of stone remains unsullied almost any length of time. 



Woburn Abbey is a large palace, and containing as it does the 

 accumulated luxuries, treasures of art, refinements, and comforts of 

 so old and wealthy a family (with an income of nearly a million 

 of our money), you will not be surprised when I say that we have 

 nothing with which to compare it. Indeed, I believe Woburn is 

 considered the most complete house in England, and that is saying 

 a good deal, when you remember that there are 20,000 private 

 houses in Great Britain, larger than our President's House. To get 

 an idea of it, you must imagine a square mass, about which, exter- 

 nally especially on the side fronting the park there is little to im- 

 press you ; only the appearance of large size and an air of simple 

 dignity. Imagine this quadrangular pile three stories high on the 

 park or entrance front, and two stories high on the garden or rear, 

 and over two hundred feet in length, on each side. The drawing- 

 room floor, though in the second story, is therefore exactly on a 

 level with the gardens and pleasure-grounds in the rear, and the 

 whole of this large floor is occupied with an unbroken suite of 

 superb apartments drawing-rooms, picture galleries, music-rooms, 

 library, etc. projecting and receding, and stealing out and in among 

 the delicious scenery of the pleasure-grounds, in the most agreeable 

 manner. There is a noble library with 20,000 volumes ; a gallery, 



