TOUR IN ENGLAND.—NO. XV. 
329 
the palace-gate by a servant in handsome livery, 
and passing into the gallery of the court, a fine 
hearty girl made her appearance to conduct us 
over the building. The, front of the palace is 
350 feet, and one of the side wings about 400 feet 
long, and this whole area contains a series of 
apartments called the drawing-room suite. An 
entire number of this paper would hardly suffice 
to give the reader a complete description of these 
magnificent rooms, and the treasures of art they 
contain, we therefore pass them over in silence. 
From these we strolled into the orangery, which 
is about 30 feet wide, and 200 feet long. It is full 
of beautiful exotics, and among them were several 
specimens of the Rhododendron Arboreum, which 
bore, the preceding summer, over 2,000 flowers. 
We now walked out to the lawn in front of the 
palace, where one of the under-gardeners appear¬ 
ed to conduct us over the grounds. These are ex¬ 
tremely beautiful, with walled terraces in the 
Italian style, and fountains. One jet d’eau throws 
up a column 90 feet high. But the great show 
here in the way of water-works, is the cascade. 
It is entirely artificial, and must have been made 
at a great expense. The water rushes out from 
a series of lakes on top of the hill, and comes 
pouring down its side, taking a leap of about 80 
feet from one of the arches, and then falls for a 
length of 300 yards over a series of 24 ledges, and 
disappears amidst masses of rock, on the edge of 
the lawn. Here it finds a subterranean passage 
to the river Derwent. These water-works are 
looked upon by some critics with affected con¬ 
tempt ; not so with us, however, we greatly ad¬ 
mired them in their way; and yet we have seen 
Niagara a thousand times, and had a peep at most 
of the other water-falls worth looking at in the 
United States. We have no sympathy with such 
hypercritics as profess a distaste to the cascade at 
Chatsworth : as a work of art, it is a magnificent 
thing, and to our eye, in keeping with the palace 
and grounds ; and we viewed it with interest. A 
bronze tree a little farther on, excited still greater 
curiosity with us than the cascade, for it was 
made to act the part of a fountain, by throwing 
water from a thousand sprigs and leaves all around 
in a shower of spray. 
But leaving this and the exquisite scenery of the 
lawn, we passed on by a winding carriage-road to 
a short distance to the conservatory. This was 
350 feet long, 150 feet wide, and nearly 70 feet 
high; and when fully completed, is to have an ad- 
ditional length of 150 feet. The roof is an arch, 
and is covered with plate glass of the best kind, 
and so thick as to resist the heaviest hail. It is 
heated by iron tubes of hot water, and to these are 
added others for cold water, and the whole, if 
stretched out to a single length, we were informed 
would extend nearly six miles. The plants and 
trees here are distributed in open borders, each 
class being placed in the soil most proper for it, 
and the temperature so regulated as to suit their 
natural state as nearly as possible. Not far Irom 
the centre is an immense rockery rising about 50 
feet high, and from the fissures of the thick 
slabs of stone that compose it, the cactus and other 
plants grow out as in their natural state. Half 
way up this huge precipice is a little lake with 
islets, and in this, water-lilies and other aquatic 
plants of the rarest and most beautiful kinds. A 
wild goat path leads to the top of the rockery, and 
beneath it is a wide, deep cave. The variety of 
shrubs and plants in this immense conservatory is 
very great; some of the trees already reach nearly 
to the top of the roof, and others presented dimen¬ 
sions gigantic in the extreme for those within a 
green-house. There are wide folding-doors at 
each end of the conservatory, and any time he 
pleases, the Duke can have a drive with his coach 
and four horses through it. Taking it altogether, 
it is by far the most magnificent thing of the kind 
we have ever seen. The whole cost of it is not 
less than half a million of dollars, which is but a 
little over the present annual income of its wealthy 
possessor. 
After leaving the conservatory, we took a zig¬ 
zag road, and ascended through the forest to the 
crown of the hill by the octagonal tower. A peas¬ 
ant family was residing here, who permitted us 
to ascend it to the top. The view from this is no 
less extensive than beautiful, of Chatsworth and 
the wild broken country around. Descending from 
this high perch we had quite a chat with the peas¬ 
ant’s wife. She informed us that the tower was 
built by a predecessor of the present Duke, for the 
purpose of giving the ladies at the palace an op¬ 
portunity of seeing the fox-hunting which former¬ 
ly took place at Chatsworth. Upon taking leave, 
the good woman directed a little rosy-faced daugh¬ 
ter to show us the lakes on the hill, the sources 
of the cascade and fountains below. After some¬ 
thing of a stroll through the woods, we found two 
large expanses of water belted in by thick rows of 
the larch and fir, and apparently as isolated as if 
in a wild forest of our own country. The white 
swan and the black are kept here, and most other 
