single exception of the great proprietor, deservedly far more honoured in this generation than was his apostate time-serving ancestor, the Lord Sunderland of Evelyn's day.[70] When the Spencers were divided, the eldest branch of the family becoming Dukes of Marlborough and the youngest Earls Spencer--if the former inherited glory, Blenheim, and poverty--to the latter have belonged more true and more substantial distinctions: for the last three generations the Spencers have been remarked for talents, for benevolence, for constancy, for love of literature, and patronage of the fine arts. The house retains the form described by Evelyn--that of a half H: a slight irregularity is caused by the new gothic room, built by the present earl, to contain part of his magnificent library, which, like the statue in the Castle of Otranto, had grown "too big for what contained it." We entered by a central door the large and lofty hall, or vestibule, hung round with pictures of fox-chases and those who figured in them, famous hunters, quadruped and biped, all as large as life, spread over as much canvass as would make a mainsail for a man-of-war. These huge perpetrations are of the time of Jack Spencer, a noted Nimrod in his day; and are very fine, as we were told, but they did not interest me. I had caught a glimpse of the superb staircase, hung round with pictures above and below, and not the less interesting as having been erected by Sacharissa herself during the few years she was mistress of Althorpe. A face looked at us from over an opposite door, which there was no resisting. Does the reader remember Horace Walpole's pleasant description of a party of _seers_ posting through the apartments of a show-place? "They come; ask what such a room is called?--write it down; admire a lobster or cabbage in a Dutch market piece; dispute whether the last room was green or purple; and then hurry to the inn, for fear the fish should be over-dressed."[71] We were not such a party; but with imaginations ready primed to take fire, and memories enriched with all the associations the place could suggest, to us every portrait was a history. The orthodox style of seeing the house is to turn to the left, and view the ground-floor apartments first; but the face I have mentioned seemed to beckon me straight-forward, and I could not choose but obey the invitation: it was that of Lady Bridgewater, the loveliest of the four lovely daughters of the Duke of Marlborough: she had the misfortune to be painted by Jervas, and the good fortune to be celebrated by Pope as the "tender sister, daughter, friend, and wife;" and again-- "Thence Beauty, waking, all her forms supplies-- An angel's sweetness--or Bridgewater's eyes."