, and set down a genealogical
line of the whole house.

After we have seen this fine range of beauties--for such, indeed, they
are--far from being at an end of your surprise, you have three or four
rooms still upon the same floor, filled with wonders as before. Nothing
can be finer than the pictures themselves, nothing more surprising than
the number of them. At length you descend the back stairs, which are in
themselves large, though not like the other. However, not a
hand's-breadth is left to crowd a picture in of the smallest size; and
even the upper rooms, which might be called garrets, are not naked, but
have some very good pieces in them.

Upon the whole, the genius of the noble collector may be seen in this
glorious collection, than which, take them together, there is not a finer
in any private hand in Europe, and in no hand at all in Britain, private
or public.

The gardens are on the south of the house, and extend themselves beyond
the river, a branch of which runs through one part of them, and still
south of the gardens in the great park, which, extending beyond the vale,
mounts the hill opening at the last to the great down, which is properly
called, by way of distinction, Salisbury Plain, and leads from the city
of Salisbury to Shaftesbury. Here also his lordship has a hare-warren,
as it is called, though improperly. It has, indeed, been a sanctuary for
the hares for many years; but the gentlemen complain that it mars their
game, for that as soon as they put up a hare for their sport, if it be
anywhere within two or three miles, away she runs for the warren, and
there is an end of their pursuit; on the other hand, it makes all the
countrymen turn poachers, and destroy the hares by what means they can.
But this is a smaller matter, and of no great import one way or other.

From this pleasant and agreeable day's work I returned to Clarendon, and
the next day took another short tour to the hills to see that celebrated
piece of antiquity, the wonderful Stonehenge, being six miles from
Salisbury, north, and upon the side of the River Avon, near the town of
Amesbury. It is needless that I should enter here into any part of the
dispute about which our learned antiquaries have so puzzled themselves
that several books (and one of them in folio) have been published about
it; some alleging it to be a heathen or pagan temple and altar, or place
of sacrifice, as Mr. Jones; others a monument or trophy of victory;