The house is built since these gardens have been finished. The
building is all of Portland stone in the front, which makes it look
extremely glorious and magnificent at a distance, it being the
particular property of that stone (except in the streets of London,
where it is tainted and tinged with the smoke of the city) to grow
whiter and whiter the longer it stands in the open air.
As the front of the house opens to a long row of trees, reaching to
the great road at Leightonstone, so the back face, or front (if
that be proper), respects the gardens, and, with an easy descent,
lands you upon the terrace, from whence is a most beautiful
prospect to the river, which is all formed into canals and openings
to answer the views from above and beyond the river; the walks and
wildernesses go on to such a distance, and in such a manner up the
hill, as they before went down, that the sight is lost in the woods
adjoining, and it looks all like one planted garden as far as the
eye can see.
I shall cover as much as possible the melancholy part of a story
which touches too sensibly many, if not most, of the great and
flourishing families in England. Pity and matter of grief is it to
think that families, by estate able to appear in such a glorious
posture as this, should ever be vulnerable by so mean a disaster as
that of stock-jobbing. But the general infatuation of the day is a
plea for it, so that men are not now blamed on that account.
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