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TRENTHAI: 



THE SEAT OF HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF SUTHERLAND. 



UN the banks of the picturesque river Trent, just without the boundary line of the busy, black, and, by 

 night, fiery range of the Staffordshire Pottery and Mining Districts, — near enough to receive their advantages, 

 sufficiently far away to lose their unsocial character, stands Trentham, one of the seats of his Grace 

 the Duke of Sutherland. That it is beautiful all who have seen it well know ; but its beauty is not of that 

 grand or sublime order heaped up by nature in one of her mighty convulsions ; Art has assisted with a 

 lavish hand to give dignity to sweetness, order to fertility, and nobleness to rural simplicity and effect. 

 There are many positions more majestic, many more imposing; but few that can lay claim to the elaborate 

 finish and expressive character of the principal as well as the subordinate points of its construction. 

 The original design is not merely carried out, it is embellished ; Nature not only shows herself in her 

 richest garb, her rainbow-hues are beautified by the study and knowledge of her most effective relations 

 and the symmetry of style pervading all is but the rally ing-point of a poetical conception and adornment. 

 Even when the sternness of Winter seizes upon every leaf, and darkens the life of every tree, there is 

 as it were, a buoyancy of expression in the broad clear features of the place peculiarly striking; and 

 whether seen in the laughing winsome time of Spring, the beautiful sweet days of Summer, or during 

 the mellow and glorious range of Autumn, the rapturous exclamation of its numerous visitors could not 

 possibly be more apropos or deserved — " This is fairy-land indeed !" 



Well— the hours are passing onwards, the shadows of the sun are lengthening, the leaves of the 

 fine old trees in the park quiver in the dying breeze of a cloudless sky, and the beauty of day is 

 upon us. We will take our stand on the Terrace Garden above the Parterre (Plate 1), and contemplate 

 the scene that opens before us in this gliding and expressive hour. Is it beautiful ? is it poetical 1 

 There, on either side, as imaginative and diversified as their character, stand the life-like figures of a 

 classical age; an age that, although so rife with the destinies of mankind, and tortured and thrown 

 into convulsions by the overbalancing power of physical ambition, still retained within its bosom those 

 pure and elaborate characteristics of Art, to which, even at this distance of time, we turn for instruction 

 and behold with an unfading and a glowing interest. Statuary is a benevolent power in the busy carnival 

 of floral life. Look at those sweet roses, in raised beds of wrought stone- work, about the path and 

 clinging to the form of Atalanta; how they smile upon her eager, confident face! she has not even a 

 glance for them ; and yet how gracefully their shadows blend upon the marble-like pavement below ! 

 The golden apples bound before her— linger, Atalanta, the destiny of life and love is with thee, and why 

 should all be broken ! There are other beds of similar construction, containing massive white marble 

 vases and bronze figures, round which cluster a series of variegated plants ; and dividing the Terrace from 

 the Parterre is a stone balustrade, with descriptive and other vases containing flowers placed along 



* Trentham was originally called Trichingham, which signifies a hamlet situated at the confluence of three streams. 



