Sto*we, Warwick Castle. S89 



ing to the subject of Rural and Domestic Improvement, pro- 

 mised to be registered in our titlepage, as well as in our 

 original prospectus and in the introduction to our first Num- 

 ber, we shall subjoin a few remarks on plantations, agricul- 

 ture, roads and railroads, canals, towns, cottages, vegetable 

 markets, cemeteries, architecture, education, and condition of 

 the labouring or poorer classes of society. 



Palace Residences. — Among these we include Stowe, War- 

 wick Castle, Trentham, Alton Towers, and Chatsworth. 



Stowe, taking it altogether, and considering it as a work of 

 art, appears to us the most perfect of these residences : nature 

 has done little or nothing ; man a great deal, and time has 

 improved his labours. Stowe is disfigured, however, by one 

 of the worst kitchen-gardens in the country, which occupies 

 what is by nature the finest part of the grounds, and forms a 

 conspicuous deformity from the entrance front. It is difficult 

 to conceive why this garden was so placed, and not less so, 

 to account for its being permitted to remain. The extensive 

 pleasure-grounds have been greatly improved since we first 

 saw them in 1806, by the present gardener, Mr. Brown, who 

 may justly be said to have received the mantle of his great 

 namesake and predecessor in the same garden, our common 

 father in landscape-gardening. We were sorry to learn that 

 these gardens are not kept up as they used to be ; the number 

 of hands being yearly lessened. In new and rare plants, trees, 

 and shrubs, the grounds are not keeping pace with the nur- 

 series, as the furniture of the house, especially the grates of 

 the fireplaces, is falling behind the best fashions of the day. 

 Methley's grates (Vol. VI. p. 108.) are much wanted. 



Warwick Castle has little to recommend it but the house, 

 and the view from its windows. The approach road cut through 

 solid rock, with sides as formal and perpendicular as adrift-way 

 to a mine, or the sides of a canal, still remains in all its de- 

 formity, and confirmed the bad impression which it had made 

 on us twenty-five years ago. The rocks 'ought to be broken 

 and varied, so as to give the idea of a road through a par- 

 tially filled up natural chasm. The pleasure-grounds are worse 

 kept up than at Stowe ; and the opaque-roofed green-house, 

 containing the celebrated Warwick vase, is disfigured by 

 sickly pelargoniums, and other commonplace plants. Such 

 green-houses, if they are to have plants in them at all, ought 

 first to have glass roofs ; and, secondly, only very large plants 

 in large pots or boxes. In such houses no small plant can 

 ever thrive. In the whole world of gardening there is not a 

 sight more disagreeable to us, thd,n that of great numbers of 

 sickly little plants in pots. The gardener is continually 



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