tables, large
gardens, hothouses, lodges, and other apartments, are all underground.
They have glass roofs of magnificent design. They are approached from
and connected with the rest of the mansion by subterranean passages,
and, being lofty rooms, the cost of this deep digging and of the
necessary drainage and other adjuncts may be imagined. The new riding
house, the finest in existence, and also underground, but lighted by an
arched glass roof, is three hundred and seventy-nine by one hundred and
six feet, and fifty feet high. It is elaborately ornamented, and at
night is lighted by nearly eight thousand gas-jets. Near it are the
extensive hunting-stables, coach-houses, and that marked feature of
Welbeck, the covered "gallop," one thousand and seventy-two feet long,
with large "hanging rooms" at either end: these too are covered with
glass, so as to get their light from the top. The whole place abounds in
subterranean apartments and passages, while above ground are extensive
gardens and dairies. In the gardens are the peach-wall, one thousand
feet long, a similar range of pine-houses, a fruit-arcade of ornamental
iron arches stretching nearly a quarter of a mile, with apple trees
trained on one side and pear trees on the other, and extensive beds of
flowers and plants. To construct and maintain all this curious
magnificence there are workshops on a grand scale. This eccentric duke,
who practically denied himself to the world, and for years devoted his
time to carrying on these remarkable works at an enormous cost, employed
over two thousand persons in burrowing out the bowels of the earth and
making these grand yet strange apartments. When finished he alone could
enjoy them, for Welbeck was for a long time a sealed book to the outer
world. But the eccentric duke died, as all men must, and his successor
opened Welbeck to view and to the astonishment of all who saw it. A few
months ago the Prince of Wales and a noble company visited the strange
yet magnificent structure, and then for the first time the amazed
assemblage explored this underground palace in Sherwood Forest, and when
their wonder was satisfied they turned on the myriads of gas-jets, and
amid a blaze of artificial light indulged in a ball--an unwonted scene
for the weird old abbey of the eccentric and solitary duke. Like the
fairies and mermaids of old in their underground palaces, the prince and
his friends at Welbeck right merrily

"Held their courtly re