rviving son,
John, by the Right Honorable Lady Juliana, his wife, fourth daughter
of the Earl of Pomfret.

In 1789, the ancient mansion of Stoke, appearing to Mr. Penn, after
some years absence in America, to demand very extensive repairs,
(chiefly from the destructive consequences of damp in the principal
rooms,) it was judged advisable to take it down.

The style of its architecture was not of a kind the most likely to
dissuade him from this undertaking. Most of the great buildings of
Queen Elizabeth's reign have a style peculiar to themselves, both in
form and finishing, where, though much of the old Gothic is retained,
and a great part of the new style is adopted, yet neither
predominates, while both, thus indiscriminately blended, compose a
fantastic species, hardly reducible to any class or name. One of its
characteristics is the affectation of _large_ and _lofty_ windows,
where, says Lord Bacon, "you shall have sometimes faire houses so full
of glass, that one cannot tell where to become to be out of the sun."
A perfect specimen of this fantastic style, in complete repair, may be
seen in Hardwick Hall, county of Derby, one of the many residences of
that princely and amiable nobleman, the Duke of Devonshire, and a
perfect _contrast_ to it, at his other noble residence not many miles
distant, in the same county, Chatsworth, "the Palace of the Peak."

It is true that high antiquity alone gives, in the eye of taste, a
continually increasing value to specimens of all such kinds of
architecture; but beside that, the superiority of the new site chosen
by Mr. Penn was manifest, the principal rooms of the old mansion at
Stoke, where the windows admitted light from _both_ the opposite
sides, were instances, peculiarly exemplifying the remark of Lord
Bacon, and countenancing the design to lessen the number of bad, and
increase that of the good examples of architecture. But a wing of the
ancient plan was preserved, and is still kept in repair, as a relic,
harmonizing with the surrounding scenery, and forms with the rustic
offices, and fruit-gardens annexed, the _villa rustica_ and
_fructuaria_ of the place.

The new buildings, or, more properly speaking, Palace of Stoke, was
begun by Mr. Penn immediately after his return from a long absence in
Pennsylvania, and was covered-in in December, 1790. It is scarcely
possible to conceive a finer site than that chosen by him for his new
mansion, being on a commanding eminence, t