gustus by an epigram, beginning Nocte pluit tota an observation which probably he had not made, unless he had lain all night in the street.

Where Juvenal lived we cannot affirm; but in one of his satires he complains of the excessive price of lodgings; neither do I believe he would have talked so feelingly of Codrus's bed, if there had been room for a bedfellow in it.

I believe, with all the ostentation of Pliny, he would have been glad to have changed both his houses for your Grace's one; which is a country house in the summer, and a town-house in the winter, and must be owned to be the properest habitation for a wise man, who sees all the world change every season without ever changing himself.

I have been reading the description of Pliny's house with an eye to yours, but, finding they will bear no comparison, will try if it can be matched by the large country-seat I inhabit at present, and see what figure it may make by the help of a florid description.

You must expect nothing regular in my description, any more than in the house; the whole vast edifice is so disjointed, and the several parts of it so de

a design of his own, under the direction of the celebrated Palladio. And the chateau of Voltaire, at Ferney, has been visited by so many Englishmen, as to render a description of it superfluous. Mr. Harte related to me, that Pope, in one of their usual walks together, desired him to go with him to a house in the Hay-market, where he would shew him a curiosity. On being admitted by an old woman who kept a little shop, and going up three pair of stairs into a small room; "In this garret," said Pope, "Addison wrote his Campaign."

tached one from the other, and yet so joining again, one cannot tell how, that, in one of my poetical fits, I imagined it had been a village in Amphion's time, where the cottages having taken a country dance together, had been all out, and stood stone-still with amazement ever since.

You must excuse me, if I say nothing of the front; indeed I don't know which it is. A stranger would be grievously disappointed, who endeavoured to get into this house the right way. One would reasonably expect after the entry through the porch to be let into the hall: alas! nothing less! you find yourself in the house of office. From the parlour you think to step into the drawing-room, but upon opening the iron-nailed door, you are convinced by a flight of birds about your ears, and a cloud of dust in your eyes, that it is the pigeon house. If you come into the chapel, you find its altars, like those of the ancients, continually smoaking, but it is with the steams of the adjoining kitchen.

The great hall within is high and spacious, flanked on one side with a very long table, a true image of ancient hospitality: the walls are all over ornamented with monstrous horns of animals, about twenty broken pikes, ten or a dozen blunderbusses, and a rusty matchlock musquet or two, which we were informed had served in the civil wars. Here is one vast arched window beautifully darkened with divers scutcheons of painted glass: one shining pane in particular bears

This letter contains a most lively and picturesque account of an old Gothic seat or castle. All true Poets have a taste for antiquities.

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date 1286, which alone preserves the memory of a Knight whose iron armour is long since perished with rust, and whose alabaster nose is mouldered from his monument. The face of dame Eleanor in another piece owes more to that single pane than to all the glasses she ever consulted in her life. After this, who can say that glass is frail, when it is not half so frail as human beauty, or glory? and yet can't but sigh to think that the most authentic record of so ancient a family should lie at the mercy of every infant who flings a stone. In former days there have dined in this hall gartered Knights, and courtly Dames, attended by ushers, sewers, and seneschals; and yet it was but last night, that an owl flew hither, and mistook it for a barn.

This hall lets you (up and down) over a very high threshold into the great parlour. Its contents are a broken-bellied virginal, a couple of crippled velvet chairs, with two or three mildewed pictures of mouldy ancestors, who look as dismally as if they came fresh from hell with all their brimstone about them; these are carefully set at the further corner, for the windows being every where broken, make it so convenient a place to dry poppies and mustard seed, that the room is appropriated to that use.

In Britain's Isle, no matter where,
An ancient pile of building stands :
The Huntingdons, and Hattons there
Employ'd the power of Fairy Hands.
To raise the ceiling's fretted height,
Each pannel in achievements clothing,
Rich windows that exclude the light,
And passages that lead to nothing.

GRAY.

Next this parlour, as I said before, lies the pigeonhouse, by the side of which runs an entry, which lets you on one hand and t'other into a bed-chamber, a buttery, and a small hole called the chaplain's study: then follow a brew-house, a little green and gilt parlour, and the great stairs, under which is the dairy; a little further on the right the servants hall, and by the side of it up six steps, the old lady's closet for her private devotions; which has a lettice into the hall, intended (as we imagine) that at the same time as she prayed, she might have an eye on the men and maids. There are upon the ground floor in all twenty-six apartments, among which I must not forget a chamber which has in it a large antiquity of timber, that seems to have been either a bedstead, or a cyder-press.

The kitchen is built in form of the Rotunda, being one vast vault to the top of the house; where one aperture serves to let out the smoke, and let in the light. By the blackness of the walls, the circular fires, vast cauldrons, yawning mouths of ovens and furnaces, you would think it either the forge of Vulcan, the cave of Polypheme, or the temple of Moloch. The horror of this place has made such an impression on the country people, that they believe the Witches keep their sabbath here, and that once a year the Devil treats them with infernal venison, a roasted tiger stuffed with ten-penny nails.

Above stairs we have a number of rooms: you never pass out of one into another but by the ascent or descent of two or three stairs. Our best room is very long and low, of the exact proportion of a Band

box. In most of these rooms there are hangings of the finest work in the world, that is to say, those which Arachne spins from her own bowels. Were it not for this only furniture, the whole would be a miserable scene of naked walls, flawed ceilings, broken windows, and rusty locks. The roof is so decayed, that after a favourable shower we may expect a crop of mushrooms between the chinks of our floors. All the doors are as little and low as those to the cabins of Packet-boats. These rooms have for many years had no other inhabitants than certain rats, whose very age renders them worthy of this Seat, for the very rats of this venerable house are grey: since these have not yet quitted it, we hope at least that this ancient mansion may not fall during the small remnant these poor animals have to live, who are now too infirm to remove to another. There is yet a small subsistence left them in the few remaining books of the Library.

We had never seen half what I have described, but for a starched grey-headed Steward, who is as much an antiquity as any in this place, and looks like an old family picture walked out of its frame. He entertained us as we passed from room to room with several relations of the family; but his observations were particularly curious when he came to the cellar: he informed us where stood the triple rows of butts of sack, and where were ranged the bottles of tent, for toasts in a morning; he pointed to the stands that supported the iron-hooped hogsheads of

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Old Vellum; so naturally painted by Addison; who, in truth, always painted naturally.