202 A Visit w Chutsworth. 



sorts of apples, pears, plums, damsons, and other fruits; but 

 I will not take you there, but walk across the park to the orna- 

 mental garden ; first taking a peep into the orchideous house 

 which contains, I believe, specimens of every Orchidaceous 

 plant known in England. The house is not ornamental, being 

 built so as to suit the plants, but it covers an immense space 

 of ground, and finer specimens, many in full blossom, I never 

 saw. Now we cross the magnificent park, which I might fill 

 a sheet by describing, as it is the most beautiful of parks by 

 nature, and is improved by art to its highest perfection. I will 

 only stop one moment to look at the mansion — or I ought 

 rather to say small town, for it is the largest house I ever saw 

 (Buckingham palace would be lost in it) and of the purest 

 Grecian architecture. Though splendid in the extreme, no 

 part of it is gaudy or tinsel-looking, but every thing is noble 

 and princely. The ornamental garden is a quarter of a mile 

 distant from the house, forming one of the vistas from the 

 windows, the beds of flowers cut out of the finest velvet car- 

 peting of turf you ever saw ; each flower having its own pecu- 

 liar bed, the formality of it broken by standard rose trees, 

 climbers, running up real antique pillars, baskets of flowers, or 

 broken ruins covered with the tribe of rock plants ; the garden 

 backed by a fine wood, in front of which is the green house, 

 filled with Camellias, five and six, and even ten feet in height; 

 Geraniums, Botany Bay trees, (for I cannot call them shrubs), 

 Mimosas, Ericas, Palms, Musas; in fact, a mixture of the pro- 

 ductions of all countries. An iron staircase leads from below 

 to a gallery, so that after admiring the plants, you may 

 go above and see their tops reaching ten or fifteen feet high. 

 Nothing can be finer than the condition of these plants. From 

 this we descended to the Italian garden, which is close under 

 the windows of the house ; stopping on our way to admire the 

 different vistas over lakes of water, which as if by magic throw 

 up. fountains on different sides, the jet of one of which reaches 

 sixty feet high in a single column. Arrived at the Italian gar- 

 den, we might fancy ourselves really in Italy. It is a level 

 plot of two or three acres, with marble divisions for the 

 flowers, some in form of immense baskets, others in that of 

 vases, others in that of immense sea-shells ; in fact, every 



