I rode from Rotherham to Wentworth House, the seat of Lord Fitzwilliam, another truly regal domain, for extent, richness, and splendour; but (like many English parks) melancholy and monotonous; the immense tracts of grass, with a few scattered trees, and the tame sheep-like deer grazing upon them, in time become intolerable. Certainly, it is a most tasteless custom to have these green deserts extend on one side up to the very houses; it makes them look like enchanted palaces, inhabited by deer instead of men. It is easier to give oneself up to this notion since there is seldom a human being to be seen outside the house, which is usually shut up, so that you are often obliged to ring at the door for a quarter of an hour before you can get admittance, or the Lady ‘Chátelaine’ appears to play the cicerone, and receive her fee. Wentworth House is adorned with many valuable statues and pictures. Amongst others, a beautiful picture by Vandyk, representing the builder of the castle, Lord Strafford, just as sentence of death has been announced to him: he is holding the fatal scroll in his hand, and dictating to his secretary his last will. Another picture represents his son, a beautiful boy of sixteen, in a most becoming mourning dress,—black, with rich lace, fawn-coloured boots, a tight enamelled collar, a short cloak, a rich sword, and a scarf ‘en bandoulière.’
The picture of a race-horse as large as life, painted on gray linen, and placed in a niche without a frame, really deceived me; I thought it alive. This horse won so much, that the former lord built a quadrangle of magnificent stables, the most complete I have seen in this country, with the money. In these stables, which contain also a riding-school, stand sixty beautiful and picked horses.
An excellent portrait of the vain and ambitious Cardinal Wolsey, and one of the fickle Duke of Buckingham, are very interesting. The housekeeper, pointing to the portrait of Harvey, said: “This is the man who invented the circulation of the blood.” One would like to make that man’s acquaintance.
In the flower-gardens I found some beautiful parts; amongst others, an enclosure made of wire-fence, running along the gay parterres, peopled with foreign birds, a clear brook flowing through it, and planted with evergreens, on which the feathered inhabitants could sport at pleasure.
Several black swans, which have already reared four young ones, were swimming on a small pond near it. They seem to be completely accustomed to this climate. I was struck by a common beech on the banks of the water, which, by early polling, had completely changed its character. It was very low, but its branches stretched out on all sides, so as to cover an immense space, and form a regularly leafy tent of unequalled beauty. A fir, polled in the same manner, had attained a beauty far greater than that of its natural growth.
I arrived in good time at Sheffield, where, from the quantity of smoke, the sun appeared shorn of his beams. I looked at the astonishing productions in cutlery; as, for instance, a knife with a hundred and eighty blades; scissors which cut perfectly and can be used, though hardly visible with the naked eye, &c. &c. In defiance of superstition, I bought you needles and scissors enough for your whole life, with some other newly-invented trifles, which I am sure will please you.
Nottingham, Oct. 4th.
I rode the whole night, and saw only from a distance, and by moonlight, Newstead Abbey, Lord Byron’s birth-place and family seat, now much neglected.
Besides the Gothic church (of which nearly every English town possesses one, more or less beautiful,) there is not much to be seen in Nottingham; a remarkable manufactory of net excepted, where the steam-engines do all the work, and only a single man stands by the machinery to take care that nothing goes wrong.
It is most strange to see the iron monsters begin to work, as if moved by invisible hands, and the most beautiful lace, stretched in a frame, comes slowly forth at the top, neat and finished; while the spindles, with the raw thread wound round them, keep on their perpetual motion below; the whole unaided, as I have said, by a single human hand.