From London to Land's End, Page 4

trophy of a great family, not the noble situation, not all the

  pleasures of the gardens, parks, fountains, hare-warren, or of

  whatever is rare either in art or nature, are equal to that yet

  more glorious sight of a noble princely palace constantly filled

  with its noble and proper inhabitants. The lord and proprietor,

  who is indeed a true patriarchal monarch, reigns here with an

  authority agreeable to all his subjects (family); and his reign is

  made agreeable, by his first practising the most exquisite

  government of himself, and then guiding all under him by the rules

  of honour and virtue, being also himself perfectly master of all

  the needful arts of family government--I mean, needful to make that

  government both easy and pleasant to those who are under it, and

  who therefore willingly, and by choice, conform to it.

  Here an exalted genius is the instructor, a glorious example the

  guide, and a gentle well-directed hand the governor and law-giver

  to the whole; and the family, like a well-governed city, appears

  happy, flourishing, and regular, groaning under no grievance,

  pleased with what they enjoy, and enjoying everything which they

  ought to be pleased with.

  Nor is the blessing of this noble resident extended to the family

  only, but even to all the country round, who in their degree feel

  the effects of the general beneficence, and where the neighbourhood

  (however poor) receive all the good they can expect, and are sure

  to have no injury or oppression.

  The canal before the house lies parallel with the road, and

  receives into it the whole river Willy, or at least is able to do

  so; it may, indeed, be said that the river is made into a canal.

  When we come into the courtyards before the house there are several

  pieces of antiquity to entertain the curious, as particularly a

  noble column of porphyry, with a marble statue of Venus on the top

  of it. In Italy, and especially at Rome and Naples, we see a great

  variety of fine columns, and some of them of excellent workmanship

  and antiquity; and at some of the courts of the princes of Italy

  the like is seen, as especially at the court of Florence; but in

  England I do not remember to have seen anything like this, which,

  as they told me, is two-and-thirty feet high, and of excellent

  workmanship, and that it came last from Candia, but formerly from

  Alexandria. What may belong to the history of it any further, I

  suppose is not known--at least, they could tell me no more of it

  who showed it me.

  On the left of the court was formerly a large grotto and curious

  water-works; and in a house, or shed, or part of the building,

  which opened with two folding-doors, like a coach-house, a large

  equestrian statue of one of the ancestors of the family in complete

  armour, as also another of a Roman Emperor in brass. But the last

  time I had the curiosity to see this house, I missed that part; so

  that I supposed they were removed.

  As the present Earl of Pembroke, the lord of this fine palace, is a

  nobleman of great personal merit many other ways, so he is a man of

  learning and reading beyond most men of his lordship's high rank in

  this nation, if not in the world; and as his reading has made him a

  master of antiquity, and judge of such pieces of antiquity as he

  has had opportunity to meet with in his own travels and otherwise

  in the world, so it has given him a love of the study, and made him

  a collector of valuable things, as well in painting as in

  sculpture, and other excellences of art, as also of nature;

  insomuch that Wilton House is now a mere museum or a chamber of

  rarities, and we meet with several things there which are to be

  found nowhere else in the world.

  As his lordship is a great collector of fine paintings, so I know

  no nobleman's house in England so prepared, as if built on purpose,

  to receive them; the largest and the finest pieces that can be

  imagined extant in the world might have found a place here capable

  to receive them. I say, they "might have found," as if they could

  not now, which is in part true; for at present the whole house is

  so completely filled that I see no room for any new piece to crowd

  in without displacing some other fine piece that hung there before.

  As for the value of the piece that might so offer to succeed the

  displaced, that the great judge of the whole collection, the earl

  himself, must determine; and as his judgment is perfectly good, the

  best picture would be sure to possess the place. In a word, here

  is without doubt the best, if not the greatest, collection of

  rarities and paintings that are to be seen together in any one

  nobleman's or gentleman's house in England. The piece of our

  Saviour washing His disciples' feet, which they show you in one of

  the first rooms you go into, must be spoken of by everybody that

  has any knowledge of painting, and is an admirable piece indeed.

  You ascend the great staircase at the upper end of the hall, which

  is very large; at the foot of the staircase you have a Bacchus as

  large as life, done in fine Peloponnesian marble, carrying a young

  Bacchus on his arm, the young one eating grapes, and letting you

  see by his countenance that he is pleased with the taste of them.

  Nothing can be done finer, or more lively represent the thing

  intended--namely, the gust of the appetite, which if it be not a

  passion, it is an affection which is as much seen in the

  countenance, perhaps more than any other. One ought to stop every

  two steps of this staircase, as we go up, to contemplate the vast

  variety of pictures that cover the walls, and of some of the best

  masters in Europe; and yet this is but an introduction to what is

  beyond them.

  When you are entered the apartments, such variety seizes you every

  way that you scarce know to which hand to turn yourself. First on

  one side you see several rooms filled with paintings as before, all

  so curious, and the variety such, that it is with reluctance that

  you can turn from them; while looking another way you are called

  off by a vast collection of busts and pieces of the greatest

  antiquity of the kind, both Greek and Romans; among these there is

  one of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in basso-relievo. I never

  saw anything like what appears here, except in the chamber of

  rarities at Munich in Bavaria.

  Passing these, you come into several large rooms, as if contrived

  for the reception of the beautiful guests that take them up; one of

  these is near seventy feet long, and the ceiling twenty-six feet

  high, with another adjoining of the same height and breadth, but

  not so long. Those together might be called the Great Gallery of

  Wilton, and might vie for paintings with the Gallery of Luxembourg,

  in the Faubourg of Paris.

  These two rooms are filled with the family pieces of the house of

  Herbert, most of them by Lilly or Vandyke; and one in particular

  outdoes all that I ever met with, either at home or abroad; it is

  done, as was the mode of painting at th
at time, after the manner of

  a family piece of King Charles I., with his queen and children,

  which before the burning of Whitehall I remember to hang at the

  east end of the Long Gallery in the palace.

  This piece fills the farther end of the great room which I just now

  mentioned; it contains the Earl of Montgomery, ancestor of the

  house of Herbert (not then Earls of Pembroke) and his lady,

  sitting, and as big as life; there are about them their own five

  sons and one daughter, and their daughter-in-law, who was daughter

  of the Duke of Buckingham, married to the elder Lord Herbert, their

  eldest son. It is enough to say of this piece, it is worth the

  labour of any lover of art to go five hundred miles to see it; and

  I am informed several gentlemen of quality have come from France

  almost on purpose. It would be endless to describe the whole set

  of the family pictures which take up this room, unless we would

  enter into the roof-tree of the family, and set down a genealogical

  line of the whole house.

  After we have seen this fine range of beauties--for such, indeed,

  they are--far from being at an end of your surprise, you have three

  or four rooms still upon the same floor, filled with wonders as

  before. Nothing can be finer than the pictures themselves, nothing

  more surprising than the number of them. At length you descend the

  back stairs, which are in themselves large, though not like the

  other. However, not a hand's-breadth is left to crowd a picture in

  of the smallest size; and even the upper rooms, which might be

  called garrets, are not naked, but have some very good pieces in

  them.

  Upon the whole, the genius of the noble collector may be seen in

  this glorious collection, than which, take them together, there is

  not a finer in any private hand in Europe, and in no hand at all in

  Britain, private or public.

  The gardens are on the south of the house, and extend themselves

  beyond the river, a branch of which runs through one part of them,

  and still south of the gardens in the great park, which, extending

  beyond the vale, mounts the hill opening at the last to the great

  down, which is properly called, by way of distinction, Salisbury

  Plain, and leads from the city of Salisbury to Shaftesbury. Here

  also his lordship has a hare-warren, as it is called, though

  improperly. It has, indeed, been a sanctuary for the hares for

  many years; but the gentlemen complain that it mars their game, for

  that as soon as they put up a hare for their sport, if it be

  anywhere within two or three miles, away she runs for the warren,

  and there is an end of their pursuit; on the other hand, it makes

  all the countrymen turn poachers, and destroy the hares by what

  means they can. But this is a smaller matter, and of no great

  import one way or other.

  From this pleasant and agreeable day's work I returned to

  Clarendon, and the next day took another short tour to the hills to

  see that celebrated piece of antiquity, the wonderful Stonehenge,

  being six miles from Salisbury, north, and upon the side of the

  River Avon, near the town of Amesbury. It is needless that I

  should enter here into any part of the dispute about which our

  learned antiquaries have so puzzled themselves that several books

  (and one of them in folio) have been published about it; some

  alleging it to be a heathen or pagan temple and altar, or place of

  sacrifice, as Mr. Jones; others a monument or trophy of victory;

  others a monument for the dead, as Mr. Aubrey, and the like.

  Again, some will have it be British, some Danish, some Saxon, some

  Roman, and some, before them all, Phoenician.

  I shall suppose it, as the majority of all writers do, to be a

  monument for the dead, and the rather because men's bones have been

  frequently dug up in the ground near them. The common opinion that

  no man could ever count them, that a baker carried a basket of

  bread and laid a loaf upon every stone, and yet never could make

  out the same number twice, this I take as a mere country fiction,

  and a ridiculous one too. The reason why they cannot easily be

  told is that many of them lie half or part buried in the ground;

  and a piece here and a piece there only appearing above the grass,

  it cannot be known easily which belong to one stone and which to

  another, or which are separate stones, and which are joined

  underground to one another; otherwise, as to those which appear,

  they are easy to be told, and I have seen them told four times

  after one another, beginning every time at a different place, and

  every time they amounted to seventy-two in all; but then this was

  counting every piece of a stone of bulk which appeared above the

  surface of the earth, and was not evidently part of and adjoining

  to another, to be a distinct and separate body or stone by itself.

  The form of this monument is not only described but delineated in

  most authors, and, indeed, it is hard to know the first but by the

  last. The figure was at first circular, and there were at least

  four rows or circles within one another. The main stones were

  placed upright, and they were joined on the top by cross-stones,

  laid from one to another, and fastened with vast mortises and

  tenons. Length of time has so decayed them that not only most of

  the cross-stones which lay on the top are fallen down, but many of

  the upright also, notwithstanding the weight of them is so

  prodigious great. How they came thither, or from whence (no stones

  of that kind being now to be found in that part of England near it)

  is still the mystery, for they are of such immense bulk that no

  engines or carriages which we have in use in this age could stir

  them.

  Doubtless they had some method in former days in foreign countries,

  as well as here, to move heavier weights than we find practicable

  now. How else did Solomon's workmen build the battlement or

  additional wall to support the precipice of Mount Moriah, on which

  the Temple was built, which was all built of stones of Parian

  marble, each stone being forty cubits long and fourteen cubits

  broad, and eight cubits high or thick, which, reckoning each cubit

  at two feet and a half of our measure (as the learned agree to do),

  was one hundred feet long, thirty-five feet broad, and twenty feet

  thick?

  These stones at Stonehenge, as Mr. Camden describes them, and in

  which others agree, were very large, though not so large--the

  upright stones twenty-four feet high, seven feet broad, sixteen

  feet round, and weigh twelve tons each; and the cross-stones on the

  top, which he calls coronets, were six or seven tons. But this

  does not seem equal; for if the cross-stones weighed six or seven

  tons, the others, as they appear now, were at least five or six

  times as big, and must weigh in proportion; and therefore I must

  think their judgment much nearer the case who judge the upright

  stones at sixteen tons or thereabouts (supposing them to stand a

  great way into the earth, as it is no
t doubted but they do), and

  the coronets or cross-stones at about two tons, which is very large

  too, and as much as their bulk can be thought to allow.

  Upon the whole, we must take them as our ancestors have done--

  namely, for an erection or building so ancient that no history has

  handed down to us the original. As we find it, then, uncertain, we

  must leave it so. It is indeed a reverend piece of antiquity, and

  it is a great loss that the true history of it is not known. But

  since it is not, I think the making so many conjectures at the

  reality, when they know lots can but guess at it, and, above all,

  the insisting so long and warmly on their private opinions, is but

  amusing themselves and us with a doubt, which perhaps lies the

  deeper for their search into it.

  The downs and plains in this part of England being so open, and the

  surface so little subject to alteration, there are more remains of

  antiquity to be seen upon them than in other places. For example,

  I think they tell us there are three-and-fifty ancient encampments

  or fortifications to be seen in this one county--some whereof are

  exceeding plain to be seen; some of one form, some of another; some

  of one nation, some of another--British, Danish, Saxon, Roman--as

  at Ebb Down, Burywood, Oldburgh Hill, Cummerford, Roundway Down,

  St. Ann's Hill, Bratton Castle, Clay Hill, Stournton Park,

  Whitecole Hill, Battlebury, Scrathbury, Tanesbury, Frippsbury,

  Southbury Hill, Amesbury, Great Bodwin, Easterley, Merdon, Aubery,

  Martenscil Hill, Barbury Castle, and many more.

  Also the barrows, as we all agree to call them, are very many in

  number in this county, and very obvious, having suffered very

  little decay. These are large hillocks of earth cast up, as the

  ancients agree, by the soldiers over the bodies of their dead

  comrades slain in battle; several hundreds of these are to be seen,

  especially in the north part of this county, about Marlborough and

  the downs, from thence to St. Ann's Hill, and even every way the

  downs are full of them.

  I have done with matters of antiquity for this county, unless you

  will admit me to mention the famous Parliament in the reign of

  Henry II. held at Clarendon, where I am now writing, and another

  intended to be held there in Richard II.'s time, but prevented by

  the barons, being then up in arms against the king.

  Near this place, at Farlo, was the birthplace of the late Sir

  Stephen Fox, and where the town, sharing in his good fortune, shows

  several marks of his bounty, as particularly the building a new

  church from the foundation, and getting an Act of Parliament passed

  for making it parochial, it being but a chapel-of-ease before to an

  adjoining parish. Also Sir Stephen built and endowed an almshouse

  here for six poor women, with a master and a free school. The

  master is to be a clergyman, and to officiate in the church--that

  is to say, is to have the living, which, including the school, is

  very sufficient.

  I am now to pursue my first design, and shall take the west part of

  Wiltshire in my return, where are several things still to be taken

  notice of, and some very well worth our stay. In the meantime I

  went on to Langborough, a fine seat of my Lord Colerain, which is

  very well kept, though the family, it seems, is not much in this

  country, having another estate and dwelling at Tottenham High

  Cross, near London.

  From hence in my way to the seaside I came to New Forest, of which

  I have said something already with relation to the great extent of

  ground which lies waste, and in which there is so great a quantity

  of large timber, as I have spoken of already.

  This waste and wild part of the country was, as some record, laid

  open and waste for a forest and for game by that violent tyrant

  William the Conqueror, and for which purpose he unpeopled the

  country, pulled down the houses, and, which was worse, the churches

  of several parishes or towns, and of abundance of villages, turning

  the poor people out of their habitations and possessions, and