HOLLAND HOUSE.

From The Quarterly Review. gallery at Chatsworth, to tell him where he was, as, after a week's stay in the house, he had lost his way. This could hardly happen at Holland House; although it is large enough to have a winter and summer set of sitting-rooms and (without counting the library) ten or eleven reception-rooms open to the guests.

As Henry Bulwer (Lord Dalling) was leaving Holland House one evening with a friend, after pausing at point after point till they reached the corridor, he said: "I have seen most of the palaces and palatial residences of Europe, and if I were to choose one to live in for the remainder of my life, I should choose this." His friend quietly added:

"And I said to myself if there's peace in the world,

A heart that is humble might hope for it here." All things considered, it is certainly the pearl of metropolitan or suburban houses. Take Northumberland House, Devonshire House, Chesterfield House, Cambridge House, Lansdowne House, Stafford House: extend the area so as

to comprise Sion House, Strawberry Hill, and Hatfield. Where have you such a continuous stream of historical, literary and political associations, reaching nearly three centuries back? Which of them calls up so many striking scenes, characters and incidents, or can be repeopled by no extraordinary effort of memory or imagination with so many brilliant groups of statesmen, orators, poets, artists, beauties, wits-with the notabilities of both hemispheres during six or seven generations, including (not, we hope, terminating with) our own?

eye,

Considering the variety of almost indispensable qualifications, it required no common courage and self-reliance in a young woman settled abroad to undertake the exhaustive treatment of such a subject Liechtenstein had gifts and opportunities in all its aspects. But Princess Marie Liechtenstein had gifts and opportunities which, used as she was capable of using them, went far towards counterbalancing her disadvantages. Quick-witted and highly-educated, observant, sympathizing, appreciating, she had been cradled in Holand imbued from infancy with the geland House, nurtured in its traditions, nius of the place. "Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j'ai vécu près d'elle." Although she had seen only a surviving relic or two of its celebrities, her impressions from constantly hearing about the

rest of them, were vivid and lifelike: she had a speaking acquaintance with their portraits: her knowledge, if secondhand or hearsay, came from the best sources: the family archives were open to her; and she must be supposed to have laid under contribution all the best informed friends and connections of the house.

66

Then, for what Henry Bulwer was thinking of at the moment, for what When Sir James Mackintosh was asked more peculiarly addresses itself to the sense of material enjoyment and the by a Frenchwoman what he had done for the combination of comfort with that people should think him so superior, space, splendour, luxury and refinement "I was obliged," he says, "as usual to in the interior arrangements Holland refer to my projects." Among these was House stands equally unmatched. There a history of Holland House, as well as a England. The is a real charm, an irresistible attraction, complete History of notes made for the in the proportions, harmony of colouring, more ambitious and disposition of the rooms — in the project were turned to good account by exquisite tone and keeping of the picLord Macaulay: those on Holland House tures, busts, decorations, hangings, have been equally well employed by the china, the Elizabethan staircase of dark oak, and the quaintly constructed hall. The late Lord de Mauley asked one of a party of excursionists whom he met in a

Holland House. By Princess Marie Liechtenstein. In 2 vols. London. 1873.

Princess.

This accomplished lady has a cultivated taste for the fine arts, along with a keen sense of natural beauty; and she writes about objects of virtù with the ease and confidence of a connoisseur. Her industry and discriminating research are

As for the ancient Manor House, even its

shown by the number and variety of scat-ter Cope, gentleman of the bedchamber tered facts and notices she has brought to James I., who (in 1607), before acquirtogether from every quarter; and al- ing the manor, had built the centre and though the amount of original matter is turrets of what was then Cope Castle. less than may have been anticipated and some of the moral reflections and sentimental touches might have been spared, she has produced a curious and valuable work; enabling us to do for almost every room in the mansion what the brilliant essayist has done for the gallery-make them the scenes of a succession of ta

site is unknown; and Sir Walter Cope not mentioning such a habitation in his will, we may conclude that it was destroyed before the present house was built; in the building of which, indeed, some of its materials were perhaps used.

The first stone is often lost sight of beneath what follows; so the name of Cope is superseded by that of Holland, and Cope Castle by Holland House. But it may be now time to say with Vidocq: Trouvez-moi la femme.. We

find her in Sir Walter Cope's daughter and heiress, Isabel, who married Sir Henry Rich, created in 1622 Baron Kensington, sent to Spain by James I. to assist in negotiating a marriage between Prince Charles and the Infanta, and made Earl of Holland in 1624. He it was who added to the building its wings and arcades; and, more than this, he employed the best artists of the time in decorating the in

terior.

bleaux vivants, in which words reproduce character and expression as vividly as the pencil or the brush. It is a work which will lie long on the drawing-table before it is promoted to the library, for the illustrations are numerous and choice. They consist of five steel engravings of portraits, and between sixty and seventy woodcuts. The quarto edition also contains forty Heliotype illustrations, which are really beautiful specimens of the art. The difficulty of writing a book, or even an essay, on an historic site, rises in exact proportion to the eminence of the This Earl of Holland, described by celebrities that have flung a halo round Clarendon as "a very handsome man of the spot. What is best worth telling is a lovely and winning presence, and genfamiliarly known already: if we venture tle conversation," played a busy and conon the slightest digression, the chances spicuous rather than a distinguished part are that we find ourselves on the beaten during the reign of Charles I. and the track of biography; and the utmost commencement of the Great Rebellion. we can hope is, that some traits or incidents may acquire an air of novelty by being, so to speak, localized. The safest course, therefore, is to keep as strictly as possible to the subject, and place the minor notabilities, the "associate forms" that have hitherto rested in comparative obscurity, in broad relief.

He stood so high in favour with the Court, especially with Queen Henrietta, whose marriage he had negotiated, that he was named General of the Horse in the army raised against the Scotch Covenanters in 1639. His retreat from Dunse having met with disapproval, he published, in 1643, "A Declaration made Despite of Pope's warning, when ladies to the kingdom," which has been called a get hold of a little learning, they experi- bad apology for bad conduct; and in ence no sense of danger. They are apt 1647, he fully justified the worst suspito think it new to others because it is cions entertained of his disloyalty, by new to them. In the course of her intro- lending Holland House for a meeting ductory account of Kensington, the Prin-between Fairfax and sundry disaffected cess discourses trippingly about Domes- Members of Parliament. day Book, Saxon derivations, allodial proprietors, hides and virgates of land, and the pedigree of the De Veres; who held the manor till 1526, when it passed through co-heiresses into the families of Neville, Wingfield, and Cornwallis. In 1610, we find it the property of Sir Wal

This morning the members of Parliament "Perfect Diurnal," Friday, August 6.which were driven away by tumults from Westminster met the Generall at the Earle of Hollands House at Kensington, and subscribed the Declaration of the Army, and a further Declaration of their approving and joyning

with the Army in their last proceedings, mak- | Bassompierre, who came over in 1626 ing null all acts passed by the Members at about some Court matter, thinks it worth Westminster since July the 26 last. After recording that he dined at the Earl of wards his Excellency with the Lords, the Holland's — “ à Stintinton." Speaker of the House of Commons, with the Members of the said house, and many other Gentry, marched towards Westminster, a Guard of souldiers 3 deep standing from that place to the Forts; . . .

on the 9th March 1648-9, meeting death to live once more in her own home; and with a firmness which had been wanting if devotion to a late husband can be in the leading passages of his life. War-proved by opposition to his enemies, Lady burton (in a note on Clarendon's " "History") says that he lived like a knave and died like a fool. He appeared on the

Roger to his disdainful widow; and who, I am afraid, diverted herself often by playing with his passion. . . . His advances at first were certainly timorous, but grew bolder as his reputation and influence increased; till at last the lady was persuaded to marry him, on princess is espoused, to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, "Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave." The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be accredited, made no addition to his happiness. It neither found nor made them equal. She always remembered her own rank, and thought herself entitled to treat with very little ceremony the

terms much like those on which a Turkish

tutor of her son.

having sent for him, he implored his forgiveness - Gay never knew for what — and of the still more memorable one with the young Earl of Warwick, whom he summoned to his bedside to "see how a

Christian could die." Walpole cynically remarks, “Unluckily he died of brandy!" His complaints were asthma and dropsy; and he no more died of brandy than Pitt died of port, although his constitution equally required stimulants. There is a tradition that a bottle of wine was placed at each end of the gallery or dining-room when he paced up and down in the act of composition or meditation. The Princess says, a bottle of port at one end and a bottle of sherry at the other; in which case he might have been acting on the same principle as Sir Hercules Langrishe, who, on being asked, "Have you finished all that port (three bottles) without assistance?" made answer "Not quite: I had the assistance of a bottle of Madeira.”

Speaking of Addison's connection with Holland House, Macaulay says, “His portrait still hangs there. The features are pleasing; the complexion is remarkably fair; but in the expression we trace rather the gentleness of his disposition than the force and keenness of his intellect." This was written in 1848. In 1858 there appeared a pamphlet raising a strong presumption that it is not a portrait of Addison.*

That his advances were "certainly timorous" is mere matter of inference. So little is known of the courtship and the prior relative position of the couple, that it is a disputed point whether Addison had been the young Earl's tutor. Johnson's sole authority was Spence's Anecdotes. Two letters from Addison to Lord Warwick in 1708 prove that he was not his domestic tutor. These are dated from Sandy End, a hamlet of Fulham. Macaulay, referring to the marriage, says that Addison had for some years occupied at Chelsea a small dwelling, once the abode of Nell Gwynn; and that he and the Countess, being country neighbours, became intimate friends. The son of a dignified clergyman, and at the height of literary celebrity, he was guilty of no extraordinary presumption The young Earl of Warwick died in in aspiring to her hand. He was made 1721, and the estates of the Rich family Secretary of State in 1717, and the tradi- devolved on his cousin, William Edtions do not bear out the theory that he wardes, raised to the Irish peerage by quietly accepted the humble part as the title of Baron Kensington in 1776. signed him by the lexicographer. He is Between 1721 and 1749 Holland House reported to have asserted his indepen- was occupied by a succession of distindence to the extent of joining the little guished tenants: - Sir John Chardin, the senate to which he gave laws at Button's Persian traveller: William Penn: Shipor of taking his ease at a neighbouring | pen, the downright Shippen of Pope; and house of entertainment without her leave, Van Dyck, being those most known to and to have driven her, in her jealous or fame. Penn, according to the Mackinirritable moods, to the humiliating ex- tosh MS., writes that during his residence pedient of watching or keeping guard here in the reign of James II., "he could over him. The common belief that they hardly make his way down the front steps did not live a very comfortable life is of the house through the crowds of suitconveyed by the quaint remark, that their ors, who besought him to use his good house, though large, could not contain a offices with the King." It was during single guest-Peace. But he left her this affluence of visitors and inevitable the whole of his fortune, "a proof," (re-notoriety that Macaulay supposes him to marks Mackintosh) "either that they lived on friendly terms, or that he was too generous to remember their differences." He also confided his daughter to her affectionate care by his will.

He breathed his last in what is now the Dining Room. This was the scene of the parting interview with Gay, when,

have made a secret journey into Somersetshire to negotiate the pardons of the

"Joseph Addison and Sir Andrew Fountayne; or, the Romance of a Portrait." Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. Macaulay makes no allusion to an original por trait painted by Kneller in 1716; although an engraving of it forms the frontispiece of the "Life of Addison." by Lucy Aikin, the book he was reviewing.