and all his great kindred; particularly his sister-in-law, with a vast lute, and Sacharissa, charmingly handsome. But there are really four very great curiosities, I believe as old portraits as any extant in England: they are, Fitzallen, Archbishop of Canterbury; Humphry Stafford, the first Duke of Buckingham; T. Wentworth, and John Foxle; all four with the dates of their commissions as constables of Queenborough Castle, from whence I suppose they were brought. The last is actually receiving his investiture from Edward the Third, and Wentworth is in the dress of Richard the Third's time. They are really not very ill done.' There are six more, only heads; and we have found since we came home that Penshurst belonged for a time to that Duke of Buckingham. There are some good tombs in the church, and a very Vandal one, called Sir Stephen of Penchester. When we had seen Penshurst, we borrowed saddles, and, bestriding the horses of our post-chaise, set out for Hever, to visit a tomb of Sir Thomas Bullen, Earl of Wiltshire, partly with a view to talk of it in Anna Bullen's walk at Strawberry Hill. But the measure of our woes was not full, we could not find our way, and were forced to return; and again lost ourselves in coming from Penshurst, having been directed to what they call a better road than the execrable one we had gone. Since dinner, we have been to Lord Westmorland's at Mereworth, which is so perfect in a Palladian taste, that I must own it has recovered me a little from Gothic. It is better situated than I had expected from the bad reputation it bears, and has some prospect, though it is in a moat, and mightily besprinkled with small ponds. The design, you on account of his religion, and attached himself to the Prince of Orange. He died in 1581.-E. 1 In Harris's History of Kent, he gives from Philpot a list of the constables of Queenborough Castle, p. 376; the last but one of whom, Sir Edward Hobby, is said to have collected all their portraits, of which number most probably were these ten. 2 Hever Castle was built in the reign of Edward III, by William de Hevre, and subsequently became the property of the Boleyn family. In this castle Henry VIII. passed the time of his courtship to the unfortunate Anne Boleyn; whose father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, was created Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, 1529 and 1538.-E. 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 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. Mary, Duchess of Buckingham, only daughter of Thomas, Lord Fairfax.-E. * 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 |