his _Autobiographical Recollections_ of its noble
founder the third Earl, his generosity, courtesy, kindly thoughtfulness,
and extreme modesty of bearing. One story contains half his biography. I
give it in Leslie's words. After referring to his Lordship's
men-servants and their importance in the house, the painter continues:
"His own dress, in the morning, being very plain, he was sometimes by
strangers mistaken for one of them. This happened with a maid of one of
his lady guests, who had not been at Petworth before. She met him,
crossing the hall, as the bell was ringing for the servants' dinner, and
said: 'Come, old gentleman, you and I will go to dinner together, for I
can't find my way in this great house.' He gave her his arm, and led her
to the room where the other maids were assembled at their table, and
said: 'You dine here, I don't dine till seven o'clock.'"

[Sidenote: THE PETWORTH PICTURES]

On certain days in the week visitors are allowed to walk through the
galleries of Petworth House. The parties are shown by a venerable
servitor into the audit room, a long bare apartment furnished with a
statue and the heads of stags; and at the stroke of the hour a
commissionaire appears at the far door and leads the way to the office,
where a visitors' book is signed. Then the real work of the day begins,
and for fifty-five minutes one passes from Dutch painters to Italian,
from English to French: amid boors by Teniers, beauties by Lely,
landscapes by Turner, carvings by Grinling Gibbons. The commissionaire
knows them all. The collection is a fine one, but the lighting is bad,
and the conditions under which it is seen are not favourable to the
intimate appreciation of good art. One finds one's attention wandering
too often from the soldier with his little index rattan to the deer on
the vast lawn that extends from the windows to the lake--the lake that
Turner painted and fished in. Hobbemas, Vandycks, Murillos--what are
these when the sun shines and the ceaseless mutations of a herd of deer
render the middle distance fascinating? Among the more famous pictures
is a Peg Woffington by Hogarth, not here "dallying and dangerous," but
demure as a nun; also the "Modern Midnight Conversation" from the same
hand; three or four bewitching Romneys; a room full of beauties of the
Court of Queen Anne; Henry VIII by Holbein; a wonderful Claude Lorraine;
a head of Cervantes attributed to Velasquez; and four views of the
Thames by T