Great Britain -- Description and travel; Great Britain -- Rural conditions
After viewing the ruins, we had to return
into the turnpike road, and then enter another part of the park, which
we crossed, in order to go to Petworth. When you are in a part of this
road through the park you look down and see the house in the middle of a
very fine valley, the distant boundary of which, to the south and
south-west, is the South Down Hills. Some of the trees here are very
fine, particularly some most magnificent rows of the Spanish chestnut. I
asked the people at Midhurst where Mr. Poyntz himself lived; and they
told me at the _lodge_ in the park, which lodge was formerly the
residence of the head keeper. The land is very good about here. It is
fine rich loam at top, with clay further down. It is good for all sorts
of trees, and they seem to grow here very fast.
We got to Petworth pretty early in the day. On entering it you see the
house of Lord Egremont, which is close up against the park-wall, and
which wall bounds this little vale on two sides. There is a sort of
town-hall here, and on one side of it there is the bust of Charles the
Second, I should have thought; but they tell me it is that of Sir
William Wyndham, from whom Lord Egremont is descended. But there is
_another building_ much more capacious and magnificent than the
town-hall; namely, the Bridewell, which, from the modernness of its
structure, appears to be one of those "wauste improvements, Ma'am,"
which distinguish this _enlightened_ age. This structure vies, in point
of magnitude with the house of Lord Egremont itself, though that is one
of the largest mansions in the whole kingdom. The Bridewell has a wall
round it that I should suppose to be twenty feet high. This place was
not wanted, when the labourer got twice as much instead of half as much
as the common standing soldier. Here you see the true cause why the
young labouring man is "_content_" to exist upon 7_d._ a day, for six
days in the week, and nothing for Sunday. Oh! we are a most free and
enlightened people; our happy constitution in church and state has
supplanted Popery and slavery; but we go to a Bridewell unless we
quietly exist and work upon 7_d._ a day!
_Thursley, Sunday, 13th Nov._
To our great delight we found Richard's horse quite well this morning,
and off we set for this place. The first part of our road, for about
three miles and a half, was through Lord Egremont's Park. The morning
was very fine; the sun shining; a sharp frost after a foggy evening; the
grass all white, the twigs of the trees white, the ponds frozen over;
and everything looking exceedingly beautiful. The spot itself being one
of the very finest in the world, not excepting, I dare say, that of the
father of Saxe Cobourg itself, who has, doubtless, many such fine
places.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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