I have bought a coal-black horse, a thing as wild as a roe, of my host's Arab breed; and to give him a longer trial, we rode over to pay a visit to Lady Cowper, who lives in the neighbourhood. The park and house of Pansanger are well worth seeing, especially the picture-gallery, which contains two of Raphael's early Madonnas; and a singularly fine portrait of Marshal Turenne on horseback, by Rembrandt. Lady Cowper received us in her boudoir, which led immediately into a beautiful garden, even now gay with flowers, on the other side of which are green-houses, and a dairy in the form of a temple. Pansanger is celebrated for the largest oak in England. It is nineteen feet and a half in circumference six feet from the ground, and is at the same time very straight and lofty, though its branches reach to a great extent on all sides. We have larger oaks than this in Germany. To reconnoitre the country still more fully, we afterwards made a second visit to Hatfield, which I viewed more accurately. The whole house, including kitchen and wash-house, is heated by one steam-engine. The Dowager Marchioness, the most active woman in England of her age, did the honours herself, and led us about into every hole and corner. The chapel contains some admirable old painted glass,--buried in Cromwell's time, to which it is indebted for its escape when the frantic iconoclasts destroyed all the church windows. In one of the rooms was a fine portrait of Charles the Twelfth,--that 'Don Quixote en grand,' who, but for Pultawa, would perhaps have become a second Alexander. In the present stables (formerly the house,) Elizabeth lived a captive during the reign of her sister Mary. The Queen ordered a very lofty pointed chimney, surmounted with an iron rod, to be built on a gable opposite to her sister's window, and caused it to be insinuated to her that this rod was destined to receive her head. So the Marchioness told us. The chimney is still standing, and is thickly overgrown with ivy; but Elizabeth, to feast on the delightful contrast in after years, when she could contemplate the threatening pinnacle with more agreeable feelings, built the new palace close to it. The house is poor in works of art, and the park rich only in large avenues of oaks and in rocks; otherwise dreary, and without water, except a nasty green standing pool near the house. _December 13th._