plate; the inside is most sumptuous, but did not please me; the heathen gods, goddesses, Christian virtues, and allegoric gentlefolks, are crowded into every room, as if Mrs. Holman had been in heaven and invited everybody she saw.  The great apartment is first; painted ceilings, inlaid floors, and unpainted wainscots make every room sombre.  The tapestries are fine, but not fine enough, and there are few portraits.  The chapel is charming.  The great jet d’eau I like, nor would I remove it; whatever is magnificent of the kind in the time it was done, I would retain, else all gardens and houses wear a tiresome resemblance.  I except that absurdity of a cascade tumbling down marble steps, which reduces the steps to be of no use at all.  I saw Haddon, an abandoned old castle of the Rutlands, in a romantic situation, but which never could have composed a tolerable dwelling.  The Duke sent Lord John [Cavendish] with me to Hardwicke, where I was again disappointed; but I will not take relations from others; they either don’t see for themselves, or can’t see for me.  How I had been promised that I should be charmed with Hardwicke,[3] and told that the Devonshires ought to have established there! never was I less charmed in my life.  The house is not Gothic, but of that betweenity, that intervened when Gothic declined and Paladian was creeping in—­rather, this is totally naked of either.  It has vast chambers—­aye, vast, such as the nobility of that time delighted in, and did not know how to furnish.  The great apartment is exactly what it was when the Queen of Scots was kept there.  Her council-chamber, the council-chamber of a poor woman, who had only two secretaries, a gentleman-usher, an apothecary, a confessor, and three maids, is so outrageously spacious, that you would take it for King David’s, who thought, contrary to all modern experience, that in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom.  At the upper end is the state, with a long table, covered with a sumptuous cloth, embroidered and embossed with gold,—­at least what was gold; so are all the tables.  Round the top of the chamber runs a monstrous frieze, ten or twelve feet deep, representing stag-hunting in miserable plastered relief.  The next is her dressing-room, hung with patch-work on black velvet; then her state bedchamber.  The bed has been rich beyond description, and now hangs in costly golden tatters.  The hangings, part of which they say her Majesty worked, are composed of figures as large as life, sewed and embroidered on black velvet, white satin, &c., and represent the virtues that were necessary for her, or that she was forced to have, as Patience and Temperance, &c.  The fire-screens are particular; pieces of yellow velvet, fringed with gold, hang on a cross-bar of wood, which is fixed on the top of a single stick, that rises from the foot.  The only furniture which has any appearance of taste are the table and cabinets, which are all of oak, richly carved.  There is