Queenborough Castle, from whence I suppose they were brought.  The last is actually receiving his investiture from Edward the Third, and Wentworth is in the dress of Richard the Third’s time.  They are really not very ill done.(344) There are six more, only heads; and we have found since we came home that Penshurst belonged for a time to that Duke of Buckingham.  There are some good tombs in the church, and a very Vandal one. called Sir Stephen of Penchester.  When we had seen Penshurst, we borrowed saddles, and, bestriding the horses of our postchaise, set out for Hever,(345) to visit a tomb of Sir Thomas Bullen, Earl of Wiltshire, partly with a view to talk of it in Anna Bullen’s walk at Strawberry Hill.  But the measure of our woes was not full, we could not find our way.. and were forced to return; and again lost ourselves in coming from Penshurst, having been directed to what they call a better road than the execrable one we had gone.

Since dinner we have been to Lord Westmorland’s which is so perfect in a Palladian taste, that I must own it has recovered me a little from Gothic.  It is better situated than I had expected from the bad reputation it bears, and some prospect, though it is in a moat, and mightily besprinkled with small ponds.  The design, you know, is taken from the Villa del Capra by Vicenza, but on a larger scale:  yet, though it has cost an hundred thousand pounds, it is still only a fine villa:  the finishing of in and outside has been exceedingly Expensive.  A wood that runs up a hill behind the house is broke like an Albano landscape, with an octagon temple and a triumphal arch; But then there are some dismal clipt hedges, and a pyramid, which by a most unnatural copulation is at once a grotto and a greenhouse.  Does it not put you in mind of the proposal for your drawing a garden-seat, Chinese on one side and Gothic on the other?  The chimneys, which are collected to a centre, spoil the dome of the house, and the hall is a dark well.  The gallery is eighty-two feet long, hung with green velvet and pictures, among which is a fine Rembrandt and a pretty La Hire.  The ceilings are painted, and there is a fine bed of silk and gold tapestry.  The attic is good, and the wings extremely pretty, with porticoes formed on the style of the house.  The Earl has built a new church, with a steeple which seems designed for the latitude, of Cheapside, and is so tall that the poor church curtsies under it, like Mary Rich(346) in a vast high-crown hat:  it has a round portico, like St. Clement’s, with vast Doric pillars supporting a thin shelf.  The inside is the most abominable piece of tawdriness that ever was seen, stuffed with pillars painted in imitation of verd antique, as all the sides are like Sienna marble:  but the greatest absurdity is a Doric frieze, between the triglyphs of which is the Jehovah, the I. H. S. and the Dove.  There is a little chapel with Nevil tombs, particularly of the first Fane, Earl of Westmorland,