but I don’t approve an idea they are going to execute, of a fine bridge with statues under a noble cliff.  If they will have a bridge (which by the way will crowd the scene), it should be composed of rude fragments, such as the giant of the Peak would step upon, that he might not be wet-shod.  The expense of the works now carrying on will amount to forty thousand pounds.  A heavy quadrangle of stables is part of the plan,. is very cumbrous, and standing higher than the house, is ready to overwhelm it.  The principal front of the house is beautiful, and executed with the neatness of wrought-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 every body 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,(96) 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 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, 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 Palladian 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 patchwork on black velvet; then her state bedchamber.  The bed has been rich beyond description, and now hangs in costly golden tatters.  The hangings,