On my journey I visited Castle Howard, the seat of Lord Carlisle. It is one of the English 'show places,' but does not please me in the least. It was built by Vanbrugh, an architect of the time of Louis the Fourteenth, who built Blenheim in the same bad French taste. That, however, imposes by its mass, but Castle Howard neither imposes nor pleases. The whole park, too, has something to the last degree melancholy, stiff, and desolate. On a hill is a large temple, the burial-place of the family. The coffins are placed around in cells, most of which are still empty; so that the whole looks like a bee-hive, only indeed more silent and tranquil. In the castle are some fine pictures and antiques. Among the former, the celebrated Three Marys of Annibal Carracci is particularly remarkable. This picture represents the dead Christ, behind whom his mother has sunk fainting; the elder Mary hastens to her with a gesture of lamentation, while Mary Magdalene throws herself despairingly on the body. The gradation from actual death to fainting, thence to the subdued grief of age, and lastly, to the living despair of youth, is given with inimitable truth. Every limb in the body of Christ appears truly dead: you see that the vital spirit has utterly quitted this form, so motionless, cold, and stiff. On the contrary, all is life and motion in the beautiful Magdalene, even to the very hair; all is the vigour and fulness of life, excited by the bitterest grief.--Opposite hangs Annibal's portrait by himself. It has very striking features, but looks more like a 'highwayman' than an artist. You, dear Julia, would have been most attracted by a collection of drawings of the Lords and Ladies of the Court of Francis the First,--fifty or sixty portraits: they were painted memoirs. Among the antiques I was amused by a Goose of the Capitol in bronze, which you fancy you hear cackling with its outstretched wings and open bill. A picture of Henry the Eighth, by Holbein, in admirable preservation, is worth mention;--otherwise nothing particularly struck me. The well-known St. John by Domenichino is here, and given out to be an original. If I mistake not, the real one is in Germany. The park, planted in large stiff masses, is remarkably rich in archways: I passed through about seven before I reached the house. Over a muddy pond, not far from the Castle, is a stone bridge of five or six arches, and over this bridge--no passage. It is only an 'object;' and that it may answer this description thoroughly, there is not a tree or a bush near it or before it. It seems that the whole grounds are just as they were laid out a hundred and twenty years ago. Obelisks and pyramids are as thick as hops, and every view ends with one, as a staring termination. One pyramid is, however, of use, for it is an inn. _Sept. 22nd._