George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[394] round it, and in different parts of the room. I was most warmly received, . . . . and introduced to the party stopping with them, among whom are the youngest son of Percival, the Minister who was shot; Professor Donkin, Mathematical Professor at Oxford,—great in music,—with his wife; and a daughter of the late Dr. Buckland: all, as I find, accomplished and intellectual people, but—as you will readily guess—not more so than my host and hostess. We made a pleasant evening of it . . . .

Sunday, August 16.—I find myself in the midst of a very rich and fine establishment. Sir Walter has twenty-three thousand acres of land here, some of it moors, but the greater part very valuable as a grazing country and fully stocked with cattle; while in Somersetshire he has another estate of twelve thousand acres, which comes to him from the elder branch of the Raleighs. . . . . Everything is in perfect order. . . . . His village, the school-house, the house of his agent, and the parsonage, are all as neat and as comfortable as anything in the kingdom; the two last having, besides, a little air of refinement and elegance. Everything, indeed, betokens knowledge and kindness. His own house is of stone, a hundred feet square, built in the Italian fashion round a court. But this court—as you will remember at Althorp—he has covered over, and made it into a superb music-room, running up through two stories, and about forty-five feet by thirty-five square, the walls of which he is now having painted with subjects from the local history of Northumberland, beginning with the building of the Roman wall. Lady Trevelyan is painting the spaces between the pictures with native plants, and doing it in oils and from nature. It is already a beautiful room.

One side of the house, looking out upon the lawn and flower-beds, has the dining-room, the saloon, and the library, all opening into each other; each above thirty feet long, with a good many pictures by Sir Joshua, and some by Italian artists, and the library filled with about six thousand volumes of books, after Sir Walter's own heart; many very curious, but all bought because he wanted them. His chief studies, as you may remember, were in botany, mineralogy, and geology, but he has done a good deal in Oriental literature, and is very rich in old English—having been one of the Bannatyne Club --and in the local literature and history of Northumberland. Indeed, it is a very precious library, and although I care nothing about one half of it, the other half interests me more than any similar collection of books that I have seen for a long time.

Besides this, he has up stairs a very extraordinary museum, containing