cessfully stood a siege of fourteen days when defend- | had never imagined could be found in this country. ing the Royalist causo in 1645. This second No amount of money, no industry, no research would building, spite of its historical associations, gave probably avail to get together at the present day such place towards the close of the seventeenth century another private collection, simply because the mateto a third, which was built from the designs of rials, if they indeed exist at all, are not purchasable Talman, said to have been revised by Sir Christopher by money. Wren, and was completed in 1706; it is the lofty square pile which forms the southern portion of the existing edifice. For more than a century no material addition was made to Chatsworth, but about fifty-five years ago the then Duke of Devonshire resolved to add a more stately range of apartments to the mansion, and, engaging Sir Jeffery Wyatville as architect, erected the north wing, which was an addition of nearly four hundred feet to the length of the building. These magnificent additions, begun in the year 1820, were finished, as we learn from a Latin inscription in the great hall, in the year 1840, a year which is touchingly described as "the year of his sorrow," in allusion to the death of the Countess of Burlington, wife of the Duke.

From the railway-station at Rowsley, a drive along a pleasant route which leads through the village of Beeley, and thence into a park of eleven miles in circumference, well stocked with deer, lands us in the course of some forty minutes at the porter's lodge of the ducal palace. Hence we are led into the lower hall, dimly lighted, but grand in its gloom, and thence through a corridor into the great hall, a noble and gorgeous apartment with floor of mosaic, and ceiling glowing with the colouring of Verrio and Laguerre, almost dazzling from its force and freshness. The subjects of the paintings are said to be the exploits of Julius Cæsar, a fact, if it be a fact, which is not likely to be verified by ordinary visitors. From the great hall we pass to the chapel; from the chapel through other rooms to a long gallery hung with drawings and sketches; thence to the state apartments, state bed-room, and state drawing-room, thence to the dining-room, thence to the sculpture-gallery, and thence through the orangery into the gardens. A large portion of the building we do not see at all, for there is of course much that is not shown to visitors; but we see vastly more than we can carry away, and more than it would take a stout volume fairly to describe. We have but space for a few general remarks, and shall therefore condense those as closely as we can.

First as to works of art. Chatsworth is rich in paintings, both ancient and modern; besides the ceiling and wall paintings, which rarely take a high rank, there are here many works by the great Italian and Dutch masters; some fine productions of Reynolds and other English painters of the last century; a few of the masterpieces of Landseer, Collins, Eastlake, and others of the existing British school. All these, however, are in a manner scattered about, so that the visitor gets but a glimpse of them, and has no time to reap the enjoyment they would afford. To us the most impressive of all the art treasures of Chatsworth is that long gallery, called we believe the Upper South Gallery, where there hang ranged almost on the sight line some thousand or so of the original drawings, sketches, and outlines by the greatest masters of the Flemish, Venetian, Spanish, French, and Italian schools. Here are drawings in pen and ink, or reed and colour, or chalk or crayon, by Raffaelle, Rembrandt, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Claude, and a crowd of other celebrities, forming altogether such a collection of valuable rarities as we

Other specimens of art, in which Chatsworth abounds more than any other place we know of, are the wood carvings which meet us at every turn, and nearly all of which are really admirable productions. These have been ascribed by Lord Orford, in his "Anecdotes of Painting" to the famous Grinling Gibbons, but there is no proof that Gibbons ever was employed at Chatsworth, or elsewhere in works intended for Chatsworth, while there is proof that other carvers of eminence, Lobb, Davies, and Watson, for instance, were so employed. Without at all detracting from the merit of the various works, which are really of a high order, we deem it safe to assert that Gibbons had nothing to do with the major part of them, and probably never wrought on those which meet the eye of the ordinary visitor. We are led to this conclusion from the general absence in the Chatsworth woodcarvings of that peculiar sharpness and crispness of outline which is characteristic of the work of Gibbons, and which tells us that he always knew when to leave off-a rare faculty among carvers, who are apt to be led too far by the fascinations of high finish. There is however one work, exhibited in a glass case as Gibbons's masterpiece, which he may really have executed; it is a reproduction in wood of a kind of lace frill or cravat, a woodcock and a medal, but it is hung too high to allow of close examination. Woodcarvers, it would seem, do not trouble themselves much as to the appropriateness of their decorations, thus we find the same subjects-dead game, flowers, fruit, and festoons-repeated everywhere, in drawing-room, bed-rooms, dining-room, and chapel, a state of things not at all peculiar to Chatsworth, and which is perhaps to be accounted for by the unavoidable limitations of the carver's art, which is necessarily confined to the literal imitation of material forms, of which he will naturally select those best calculated to display his skill. We are sorry to notice as we dwell upon one exquisite group after another of these too fragile productions, that not a few of them have suffered sadly, from the carelessness either of visitors or of servants, parts of the birds or foliage having been rudely snapped off; and there is another cause of irretrievable ruin at work in the ravages of insects, against which one would imagine effectual precautions might be taken.

It is likely that the visitor who is fond of art will be more struck with the sculpture gallery than with any other portion of the edifice. This is a noble apartment above a hundred feet in length, proportionately lofty, and well lighted from the roof; the walls of uncoloured sandstone forming an admirable background for the magnificent productions they enclose. These are chiefly the works of the most eminent of the Italian, German, and English sculp tors. Among them are Thorwaldsen's celebrated statue of "Venus with the Apple,' a work of European reputation, which has yet been somewhat harshly judged by the learned critics; Tenerani's "Cupid extracting a thorn from the foot of Venus," one of the most fascinating of the Italian works of which this country can boast; and Schadow's "Filatrice," which is scarcely less a favourite. But it is the works of Canova that form the chief charm of

the gallery. The Endymion and the Hebe aro certainly the most beautiful, as they are, from the numerous copies in circulation, the most generally known. By far the most striking, however, is the colossal bust of the first Napoleon, a work of grandest conception, at once bold and massive, yet executed to the highest possible degree of finish. Near it stands, or rather sits, on a pedestal which can be turned in any direction, the statue of Napoleon's mother, a noble work worthy alike of the artist and the subject. English sculpture is best represented by Gibson, whose colossal figures of Mars and Cupid are the first to strike you on entering the gallery; although superb and admirable as is this group, it is far from illustrating the truth or the tenderness characteristic of Gibson's masterpieces. The centre of the gallery is occupied by a colossal vase of polished granite, executed at Berlin, and a present from the King of Prussia. At the farther end of the gallery are two enormous lions in white marble, one asleep, the other awake, and both terribly lifelike; they are copies by Italian artists from those on Canova's monument to Clement XIV, in St. Peter's at Rome. We may mention here that, independent of the sculpture gallery, there are many fine statues and busts scattered through the building, among which the connoisseur will recognise the works of Chantrey and Westmacott, some of them being superb specimens of portraiture in marble.

is on a smaller scale. The entire structure reclines on the slope of a hill; the volume of water descends from a classic temple adorned with dolphins, naiads, sealions, and other marine monsters, through the mouths and urns of which, as well as from other concealed vomitories, the fountain streams forth, and covering the broad surface of the channel, dashes headlong down the steep, disappears at the bottom among masses of rock, and flows thence by an underground route into the River Derwent. A very different kind of waterwork is an artificial tree which we come upon soon after quitting the cascade, and which is so contrived that, at a touch from the attendant it spouts forth from every branch and twig a shower of close rain upon persons who happen to be beneath it or too near it, and who must retreat pretty quickly if they would escape a thorough drenching. There are, however, in the grounds, waterworks of a far more important description; such are the jets and fountains, one of which sends its column of water near a hundred feet high, and another, which plays only on special festive occasions, and hurls its jet to more than double that height, or about as high as the monument in London. In connection with the waterworks should be mentioned the rockworks, with which in fact they are in a manner combined. These consist of rocky precipices of towering height, and picturesque ravines, all of them being artificially constructed (some of them even copied from actual natural scenes), and yet so natural in appearance that no one not informed of the fact could suppose them to be other than what they seem.

The great wonder of the gardens, however, is tho conservatory, erected by the late Sir Joseph Paxton, and which was the precursor of the Crystal Palaco of 1851. It is in the form of a parallelogram, and covers more than an acre of ground; it is a most superb object to look at, and vast though it is in size, one might almost imagine it a living creature just alighted on the spot from some far-off wonderland. For its construction were required 70,000 square feet of glass, and the sash-bars, if laid end on end, would extend for forty miles. We do not much relish the tropical heat within, though we can but linger over the spectacle of the magnificent exotics. it contains, and of which both hemispheres have furnished their proportions. For the convenience of royal visitors there is a carriage-drive round the interior.

It is quite impossible, within the limits of an article, to give the reader any adequate idea of the multitudinous wealth of this vast mansion. The spacious apartments are filled with treasures of all kinds, comprising works of the rarest art, the most consummate skill, and the richest material, all arranged with the most perfect taste, so as to surprise and charm the visitor at every turn. The libraries alone would require months of study barely to become acquainted with their contents. In one of them, the great library, which is near a hundred feet long, are near 30,000 volumes (among them some of the rarest works in existence), in addition to an unrivalled collection of illuminated manuscripts and other curious and elaborate productions of monkish industry in the monastic ages. In the cabinet library, as perhaps the reader may be aware, are those whimsical titles to sham books, supplied at the request of the Duke by the late Tom Hood. Among others one sees "Inigo on Secret Entrances," Cursory Remarks on Swearing," "Lambe on the In the course of our horticultural promenade we Death of Wolfe," Jack Ketch, with Cuts of his pass various other objects of interest, of which we own Execution," "Barrow on the Common Weal," can barely mention a few. One is the Emperor "Recollections of Bannister by Lord Stair," and so Fountain, a memorial of the Czar Nicholas, who on, innocent practical jokes these, and quite appro-visited Chatsworth in 1844; others are trees planted priate, seeing that they occur where there is not space for anything more.

On leaving the sculpture gallery, we pass into the orangery, where, scattered among the orange-trees, rhododendrons, and some magnificent exotics, are a number of fine statues and a singular curiosity in the shape of an enormous single crystal, weighing several hundredweights. From the orangery we enter the gardens, and make the tour of them under the guidance of one of the gardeners, of whom some threescore and ten are here in constant employment. A walk of a few minutes brings us to the front of the celebrated cascade, which at first view recalls to remembrance the grand cascade at St. Cloud as it existed before the late misfortunes of France. Like that, it consists of a series of flights of steps, though it

by royal personages, as an oak planted by Queen Victoria, when princess, in 1832; a chestnut planted by her mother, the Duchess of Kent; a sycamore planted by the late Prince Consort in 1843, etc., etc. With the Italian garden, which shows like a miniature park, and might serve for a living illustration of the scene of Boccaccio's Decameron, we close our hasty survey of the grounds.

It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast between any two possible residences of the aristocratic class than that existing between Haddon Hall and Chatsworth. If the question be asked, which is the more interesting, and better repays the trouble of a visit? the answer would depend almost entirely upon the character and pursuits of the