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

[441] to make a party for Sheffield to go with us, so that we altered our plan. . . . . After breakfast we went over some other parts of this vast pile of building, saw the state sleeping-apartments, which are magnificent, and many other suites of rooms that are very rich and comfortable. . . . The saloon fitted up by the present Lord Fitzwilliam is very rich and magnificent. On one side of it hangs the famous picture of Lord Rockingham's horse ‘Whistler,’ by Stubbs, nearly as large as life, and one of the most striking pictures of an animal I ever saw. It is nothing but a painting of a horse, no trappings, no background, no earth, yet it does not leave any feeling of deficiency. Lord Fitzwilliam told me that when the horse was painted Lord Rockingham intended to have put George III. upon him; ‘ but,’ said he, laughing, ‘the king misbehaved about that time, and so Lord Rockingham would not have him there. However,’ he added, ‘that is a story I do not often tell, and the people here know nothing about it. There is no use in having such things remembered.’. . . .

When I went into the gallery before dinner I found Montgomery talking with Mr. Lowe. He—Montgomery—is a small man, above sixty-five years old, rather feeble and sensitive, but good, kind, and benevolent, and greatly loved in Sheffield, where he has lived many years. He is a Moravian, and much interested in what relates to his sect and to Christianity. He dresses rather singularly,—but, I suspect, from some fancied benefit to his health,—with a large cravat and very high standing collar to his shirt, so that, as his head is small and sunk quite deeply into this projecting collar, the effect was by no means good at first. However, he is very agreeable in conversation, and much in earnest in whatever he says, so that I was quite glad to talk with him. He told me, among other things, that Chantrey was born near Sheffield; that he knew him as quite a young man before he went to London; that he began in the country as a portrait-painter, and showed great skill in drawing but no power of coloring; and that he—Montgomery-had a portrait of himself painted by Chantrey at this early period. He told me, too, a good deal about Elliott, the author of the Corn Law rhymes, who is in the iron-trade at Sheffield, and who, it seems, has been these thirty years trying to obtain notice as a poet, but never succeeding until lately. Montgomery represents him—as might have been anticipated—to be a person with much talent and tenderness, mixed up with great rudeness, passion, and prejudice.

After dinner the children danced and frolicked in the gallery, as usual, until prayer-time, when the service was read by Mr. Lowe in