and St Augustine’s in another, a Fane of Pastoral Poetry elsewhere; there were monuments to people of more or less eminence, archways commemorative of royal visitors, artificial ruins, bridges over artificial waters, a Gothic temple, and a large tablet to a dead dog. [Illustration: FIG. 157.--STOWE, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. A VIEW FROM CAPTAIN GRENVILLE’S MONUMENT TO THE GRECIAN TEMPLE. From an Engraving by G. Bickham.] Most of these buildings were furnished with inscriptions on which were bestowed much ingenuity, scholarship, and neatness of versification. For thirty or forty years monuments were added as occasion arose, either to commemorate the death of a distinguished acquaintance, or the visit of some royal personages. Horace Walpole was half repelled, yet wholly attracted by this curious panorama. The modern visitor is filled with much the same emotions. The mere catalogue sounds inane, yet the whole idea is carried out with so much skill, the buildings themselves are so charming that, once we accept the artificial atmosphere of the place, we wander from point to point with unabated interest and admiration. Nowhere else can we gain so vivid an insight into the laborious elegance of the age. Walpole’s lively account of his visit to meet the Princess Amelia, in July 1770, gives an excellent idea of the impressions the place made upon him. The view through the archway, erected in honour of her royal highness, he describes as “a tall landscape framed by the arch and the embowering trees, and comprehending more beauties of light, shade, and buildings, than any picture of Albano I ever saw.”[68] “Twice a day we made a pilgrimage to almost every heathen temple in that province that they call a garden; and there is no sallying out of the house without descending a flight of steps as high as St Paul’s.” He describes an _al fresco_ supper, which they attended in state, in one of the grottoes on a cold evening. It reduces to very human dimensions the lordliness of the great scheme. A large concourse of people from Buckingham and the district came to behold the distinguished company at their revels. Before this crowd the house party descended the vast flight of steps leading from the house. “I could not help laughing as I surveyed our troop, which, instead of tripping lightly to such an Arcadian entertainment, were hobbling down by the balustrades, wrapped up in cloaks and great-coats for fear of catching cold. The earl, you know, is bent double, the countess very lame; I am a miserable walker, and the princess, though as strong as a Brunswick lion, makes no figure in going down fifty stone stairs.”