is the house, which is but just covered in, after so many years.  They have begun to inhabit the naked walls of the attic story; the great one is unfloored and unceited — the hall is magnificent, sixty by forty, and thirty-eight high.  I am going to pump Mr. Bentley for designs.  The other apartments are very lofty, and in quantity, though I had suspected that this leviathan hall must have devoured half the other chambers.

The Hertfords carried me to dine at Lord Archer’s,(267) an odious place.  On my return, I saw Warwick, a pretty old town, small, and thinly inhabited, in the form of a cross.  The castle is enchanting; the view pleased me more than I can express; the river Avon tumbles down a cascade at the foot of it.  It is well laid out by one Brown(268 who has set up on a few ideas of Kent and Mr. Southcote.  One sees what the prevalence of taste does; little Brooke, who would have chuckled to have been born in an age of clipt hedges and cockle-shell avenues, has submitted to let his garden and park be natural.  Where he has attempted Gothic in the castle, he has failed; and has indulged himself in a new apartment, that is paltry.  The chapel is very pretty, and smugged up with tiny pews, that look like `etuis for the Earl and his diminutive Countess.  I shall tell you nothing of the glorious chapel of the Beauchamps in St. Mary’s church, for you know it is in Dugdale; nor how ill the fierce bears and ragged staves are succeeded by puppets and corals.  As I came back another road, I saw Lord Pomfret’s,(269) by Towcester, where there are a few good pictures, and many masked statues; there is an exceeding fine Cicero, which has no fault, but the head being modern.  I saw a pretty lodge. just built by the Duke of Grafton, in Whittleberry-forest; the design is Kent’s, but, as was his manner, too heavy.  Iran through the gardens at Stowe, which I have seen before, and had only time to be charmed with the variety of scenes.  I do like that Albano glut of buildings, let them be ever so much condemned.

(260) The seat of the Earl of Hertford in Warwickshire.

(261) A sister of Mr. Montagu’s was married to Nathaniel Whetenhall, Esq.

(262) Claude Charlotte, Countess of Stafford, wife of Henry, Earl of Stafford, and daughter of Philibert, Count of Grammont, and Elizabeth Hamilton, his wife.

(263) Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

(264) Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.

(265) Miss Brooke, one of the beauties of the court of Charles ii., second wife of Sir John Denham the poet.  This second marriage brought upon him so much disquiet, as for a time to disorder his understanding, and Butler lampooned him for his lunacy.  In Grammont’s Memoirs many circumstances are related, both of his marriage and his frenzy, very little favourable to his character.-E.

(266) George Carew, Earl of Totness, died without heirs male in 1629, leaving an only daughter, married to Sir Allen Apsley.-E.