At the top of the staircase, as you enter, stand two enormous giraffes, in the character of stuffed guards, or emblems of English taste! There is, doubtless, much that is interesting in the various apartments. I confess, however, to my shame, that I must be in a peculiarly favourable state of mind not to have an attack of indigestion after such a surfeit of sights. Among the antediluvian remains I saw an enormous and remarkably perfect pair of stag's antlers, at least six times as large as the largest of those which friend C---- keeps in the stag-gallery of his castle. In a huge shed are deposited the noble Elgin Marbles, as they are here called. A bust of Hippocrates struck me as being so perfect a representation of the physician by profession, that here in England one can hardly look at it without putting one's hand in one's pocket.[11] I looked at the celebrated Portland Vase with all the enthusiasm it is calculated to excite. I send you two little works on the Vase and the Elgin Marbles, with very tolerable outline engravings. But I must now quit you to give orders about packing; for to-morrow I mean to start for Newmarket races. _Newmarket, Oct. 19th._ The beauty of the country, and the extraordinary neatness and elegance of every place through which my road lay to-day, struck me anew in the most agreeable manner. These fertile and well-cultivated fields; these thousands of comfortable and pretty farm-houses and cottages scattered over every part of the country; this incessant stream of elegant carriages, well-mounted horsemen, and well-dressed foot-passengers, are peculiar to England. The beautiful picture has but one fault,--it is all too cultivated, too perfect; thence always and everywhere the same, and consequently, in the long run, wearisome:--indeed I can even conceive that it must become distasteful in time, like a savoury dish of dainties to the stomach of a sated man. This may explain the great taste of the English for travelling on the Continent. It is just so in life,--the thing men can the least bear is undisturbed good fortune, and it may be doubted whether father Adam would not have died of ennui in paradise. To-day, however, a due proportion of shadows was provided for me. In consequence of the great resort to the races, I found at every stage only miserable overdriven horses, sometimes none at all, so that, according to the English standard, I travelled wretchedly, and did not reach Newmarket till late at night. There was no room in any of the inns; and I thought myself happy at last to get one small room in a private house, for which I paid five guineas a week. Fortunately I met an old acquaintance in the same house,--the son of a little Hungarian Magnate, who seems formed to please himself and others by his unpretending good-nature and joyous temper. I revere such natures, precisely because they have all that I want.