88 THE NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE HOUNDS. 



to the densely packed population that live in the Potteries such a park as that 

 at Trentham must be, for the park is open to the public. One can easily under- 

 stand that among the old ancestral trees and gi'een drives a little of the dull 

 cares and struggles of an English artisan's hard-won life may occasionally be 

 forgotten, . . . The house is more remarkable for comfort than for any internal 

 magnificence. The principal rooms are rather low and narrow, but admirably 

 installed and cheerful, facing the south, looking out on that matchless view of 

 garden, wood, and lake." 



Before the time of Duchess Harriet (grandmother of 

 the present Duke) it appears that the present garden was 

 only an ordinary expanse of meadow land, watered by a 

 stream. The combination of high artistic taste and 

 abundant means has produced as a result a scene that, as 

 Lord K. Gower says, " has no rival out of Italy." 

 Trentham has on several occasions been honoured with 

 visits from royal guests. The Duke of Cumberland, the 

 hero of Culloden, was there in the eighteenth century. 

 Some fifty years afterwards the Prince Kegent (afterwards 

 George IV.) paid Trentham a visit ; there is a tradition 

 that he was placed in what was then the principal guest- 

 chamber looking out on the old churchyard, and that 

 His Royal Highness, disliking the view of the ghostly 

 and silent tombs, ordered the shutters to be closed, the 

 curtains drawn, and the candles lighted, although it was 

 a bright summer's day, and broad daylight at the time. 

 There is still, we believe, at Trentham a reminiscence of 

 this royal visit in the shape of a very ghostly but 

 majestic four-poster, gorgeous with crimson velvet cur- 

 tains. In more modern times the Prince and Princess of 

 Wales (now our gracious King Edward VII. and Queen 

 Alexandra) have paid several visits to Trentham ; and, 

 somewhere in the sixties or seventies, the Shah of Persia 

 also visited Trentham, and has told the world of his visit, 

 and of his English experiences generally, in a diary of his 

 travels which he shortly afterwards published. Prescott, 

 the American historian, gives a graphic account of his 

 visit to Trentham in 1850, which is well worth quoting — 



" From Castle Howard," he says (in a letter to his wife, published in Ticknor's 

 "Life of Prescott"), " we proceeded to Trentham, in Staffordshire, the Duchess 

 of Sutherland's favourite seat, and a splendid place it is. We met her at 



