I have made my visit at Hagley,(422) as I intended.  On my way I dined at Park-place, and lay at Oxford.  As I was quite alone, I did not care to see any thing; but as soon as it was dark I ventured out, and the moon rose as I was wandering among the colleges, and gave me a charming venerable Gothic scene, which was not lessened by the monkish appearance of the old fellows stealing to their pleasures.  Birmingham is large, and swarms with people and trade, but did not answer my expectation from any beauty in it:  yet, new as it is, I perceived how far I was got back from the London hegira; for every alehouse is here written mug-house, a name one has not heard of since the riots in the late King’s time.

As I got into Worcestershire, I opened upon a landscape of country which I prefer even to Kent, which I had reckoned the most beautiful county in England:  but this, with all the richness of Kent, is bounded with mountains.  Sir George Lyttelton’s house is immeasurably bad and old; one room at the top of the house, which was reckoned a conceit in those days, projects a vast way into the air.  There are two or three curious pictures, and some of them extremely agreeable to me for their relation to Grammont:  there is le s`erieux Lyttelton,(423) but too old for the date of that book; Mademoiselle Stuart,(424) Lord Brounker, and Lady Southesk;(425) besides, a portrait of Lord Clifford the treasurer(426) with his staff, but drawn in armour (though no soldier) out of flattery to Charles the Second, as he said the most glorious part of his life was attending the King at the battle of Worcester.  He might have said, that it was as glorious as any part of his Majesty’s life.  You might draw, but I can’t describe, the enchanting scenes of the park:  it is a hill of three miles, but broke into all manner of beauty; such lawns, such wood, rills, cascades, and a thickness of verdure quite to the summit of the hill, and commanding such a vale of towns, and meadows, and woods extending quite to the Black Mountain in Wales, that I quite forgot my favourite Thames!  Indeed, I prefer nothing to Hagley but Mount Edgecombe.  There is extreme taste in the park — the seats are not the best, but there is not one absurdity.  There is a ruined castle, built by Miller, that would get him his freedom even of Strawberry:  it has the true rust of the barons’ wars.  Then there is a scene of a small lake, with cascades falling down such a Parnassus 1 with a circular temple on the distant eminence; and there is such a fairy dale, with more cascades gushing out of rocks! and there- is a hermitage, so exactly like those in Sadeler’s prints, on the brow of a shady mountain, stealing peeps into the glorious world below; and there is such a pretty well under a wood, like the Samaritan woman’s in a picture of Nicol`o Poussin! and there is such a wood without the park, enjoying such a prospect! and there is such a mountain on t’other side of the park commanding all prospects, that I