know, is taken from the Villa del Capra by Vicenza, but on a larger scale; yet, though it has cost an hundred thousand pounds, it is still only a fine villa: the finishing of in and outside has been exceedingly expensive. A wood that runs up a hill behind the house is broke like an Albano landscape, with an octagon temple and a triumphal arch; but then there are some dismal clipt hedges, and a pyramid, which by a most unnatural copulation is at once a grotto and a greenhouse. Does it not put you in mind of the proposal for your drawing a garden-seat, Chinese on one side and Gothic on the other? The chimneys, which are collected to a centre, spoil the dome of the house, and the hall is a dark well. The gallery is eighty-two feet long, hung with green velvet and pictures, among which is a fine Rembrandt and a pretty La Hire. The ceilings are painted, and there is a fine bed of silk and gold tapestry. The attic is good, and the wings extremely pretty, with porticos formed on the style of the house. The Earl has built a new church, with a steeple which seems designed for the latitude of Cheapside, and is so tall that the poor church curtsies under it, like Mary Rich1 in a vast high-crown hat: it has a round portico, like St. Clement's, with vast Doric pillars supporting a thin shelf. The inside is the most abominable piece of tawdriness that ever was seen, stuffed with pillars painted in imitation of verd antique, as all the sides are like Sienna marble; but the greatest absurdity is a Doric frieze, between the triglyphs of which is the Jehovah, the I. H. S. and the Dove. There is a little chapel with Nevil tombs, particularly of the first Fane, Earl of Westmorland, and of the founder of the old church, and the heart of a knight who was killed in the wars. On the Fane tomb is a pedigree of brass in relief, and a genealogy of virtues to answer it. There is an entire window of paintedglass arms, chiefly modern, in the chapel, and another over the high altar. The hospitality of the house was truly Gothic; for they made our postillion drunk, and he overturned us close to a water, and the bank did but just save

1 Daughter of Sir Robert Rich, and elder sister of Elizabeth Rich, Lady Lyttelton.

us from being in the middle of it. Pray, whenever you travel in Kentish roads, take care of keeping your driver sober.

Rochester, Sunday.

:

We have finished our progress sadly! Yesterday, after twenty mishaps, we got to Sissinghurst to dinner. There is a park in ruins, and a house in ten times greater ruins, built by Sir John Baker, chancellor of the exchequer to Queen Mary. You go through an arch of the stables to the house, the court of which is perfect and very beautiful. The Duke of Bedford has a house at Cheneys, in Buckinghamshire, which seems to have been very like it, but is more ruined. This has a good apartment, and a fine gallery, a hundred and twenty feet by eighteen, which takes up one side the wainscot is pretty and entire; the ceiling vaulted, and painted in a light genteel grotesque. The whole is built for show; for the back of the house is nothing but lath and plaster. From thence we went to Bocton-Malherbe, where are remains of a house of the Wottons, and their tombs in the church; but the roads were so exceedingly bad that it was dark before we got thither, and still darker before we got to Maidstone : from thence we passed this morning to Leeds Castle.1 Never was such disappointment! There are small remains: the moat is the only handsome object, and is quite a lake, supplied by a cascade which tumbles through a bit of a romantic grove. The Fairfaxes have fitted up a pert, bad apartment in the fore-part of the castle, and have left the only tolerable rooms for offices. They had a gleam of Gothic in their eyes, but it soon passed off into some modern windows, and some

1 A very ancient and magnificent structure, built throughout of stone, at different periods, formerly belonging to the family of Crevequer. In the fifteenth of Edward II. Sir Thomas de Colepeper, who was castellan of the castle, was hanged on the drawbridge for having refused admittance to Isabel, the Queen-consort, in her progress when performing a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. The manor and castle were forfeited to the crown by his attainder, but restored to his son, Sir Thomas Colepeper. By his Diary of May 8, 1666, it appears to have been hired by Evelyn for a prison. Here," he says, "I flowed the dry moat, made a new drawbridge, brought spring-water into the court of the castle to an old fountain, and took order for the repairs."-E.

that never were ancient. The only thing that at all recompensed the fatigues we have undergone was the picture of the Duchess of Buckingham,1 la Ragotte, who is mentioned in Grammont I say us, for I trust that Mr. Chute is as true a bigot to Grammont as I am. Adieu! I hope you will be as weary with reading our history as we have been in travelling it. Yours ever.

TO GEORGE MONTAGU, ESQ.

Strawberry Hill, Aug. 28, 1752.

WILL you never have done jigging at Northampton with that old harlotry Major Compton? Peggy Trevor told me, she had sent you a mandate to go thither. Shall I tell you how I found Peggy, that is, not Peggy, but her sister Muscovy? I went, found a bandage upon the knocker, an old woman and child in the hall, and a black boy at the door. Lord! thinks I, this can't be Mrs. Boscawen's. However, Pompey let me up; above were fires blazing, and a good old gentlewoman, whose occupation easily spoke itself to be midwifery." Dear Madam, I fancy I should not have come up.”—“ Las-a-day! Sir, no, I believe not; but I'll step and ask." Immediately out came old Falmouth, looking like an ancient fairy, who had just been uttering a malediction over a new-born prince, and told me, forsooth, that Madame Muscovy was but just brought to bed, which Peggy Trevor soon came and confirmed. I told them I would write you my adventure. I have not thanked you for your travels, and the violent curiosity you have given me to see Welbeck. Mr. Chute and I have been a progress too; but it was in a land you know full well, the county of Kent. I will only tell you that we broke our necks twenty times to your health, and had a distant glimpse of Hawkhurst from that Sierra Morena, Silver Hill.

2

1 Mary, Duchess of Buckingham, only daughter of Thomas, Lord Fairfax.-E.

2 Charlotte, daughter and co-heiress of Colonel Godfrey, married in 1700 to Lord Falmouth.-E.

I have since been with Mr. Conway at Park-place, where I saw the individual Mr. Cooper, a banker, and lord of the manor of Henley, who had those two extraordinary forfeitures from the executions of the Misses Blandy and Jefferies, two fields from the former, and a malthouse from the latter. I had scarce credited the story, and was pleased to hear it confirmed by the very person; though it was not quite so remarkable as it was reported, for both forfeitures were in the

same manor.

Mr. Conway has brought Lady Ailesbury from Minorca, but originally from Africa, a Jeribo. To be sure you know what that is; if you don't, I will tell you, and then I believe you will scarce know any better. It is a composition of a squirrel, a hare, a rat, and a monkey, which altogether looks very like a bird. In short, it is about the size of the first, with much such a head, except that the tip of the nose seems shaved off, and the remains are like a human hare-lip; the ears and its timidity are like a real hare. It has two short little feet before like a rat, but which it never uses for walking, I believe never but to hold its food. The tail is naked like a monkey's, with a tuft of hair at the end; striped black and white in rings. The two hind-legs are as long as a Granville's, with feet more like a bird than any other animal, and upon these it hops so immensely fast and upright that at a distance you would take it for a large thrush. It lies in cotton, is brisk at night, eats wheat, and never drinks; it would, but drinking is fatal to them. Such is a jeribo!

Have you heard the particulars of the Speaker's quarrel with a young officer, who went to him, on his landlord refusing to give his servant the second best bed in the inn? He is a young man of eighteen hundred a year, and passionately fond of the army. The Speaker produced the Mutiny-bill to him. "Oh Sir," said the lad, "but there is another act of parliament which perhaps you don't know of." The " person of dignity," as the newspapers call him, then was so ingenious as to harangue on the dangers of a standing army. The boy broke out, "Don't tell me of your privileges: what would have become of you and your privileges in the year forty-five, if it

had not been for the army-and pray, why do you fancy I would betray my country? I have as much to lose as you have!" In short, this abominable young Hector treated the Speaker's oracular decisions with a familiarity that quite shocks me to think of!

The Poemata-Grayo-Bentleiana, or Gray's Odes, better illustrated than ever odes were by a Bentley, are in great forwardness, and I trust will appear this winter. I shall tell you one little anecdote about the authors, and conclude. Gray is in love to distraction with a figure of Melancholy, which Mr. Bentley has drawn for one of the Odes, and told him he must have something of his pencil: Mr. Bentley desired him to choose a subject. He chose Theodore and Honoria ! — don't mention this, for we are shocked. It is loving melancholy till it is not strong enough, and he grows to dram with Horror. Good night! my compliments to Miss Montagu; did you receive my recipes?

TO SIR HORACE MANN.

Strawberry Hill, Oct. 28, N. S. 1752.

I MUST certainly make you a visit, for I have nothing to say to you. Perhaps you will think this an odd reason; but as I cannot let our intimacy drop, and no event happens here for fuel to the correspondence, if we must be silent, it shall be like a matrimonial silence, tête-à-tête. Don't look upon this paragraph as a thing in the air, though I dare to say you will, upon my repeating that I have any thoughts of a trip to Florence: indeed, I have never quite given up that intention; and if I can possibly settle my affairs at all to my mind, I shall certainly execute my scheme towards the conclusion of this Parliament, that is, about next spring twelvemonth: I cannot bear elections; and still less, the hash of them over again in a first session. What vivacity such a reverberation may give to the blood of England, I don't know; at present it all stagnates. I am sometimes almost tempted to go and amuse myself at Paris with the bull Unigenitus. Our beau