authority and influence. He is shrewd,
eccentric, and benevolent, and has always been munificent and
charitable in his own way; he patronises the arts and fosters
rising genius. Painters and sculptors find employment and welcome
in his house; he has built a gallery which is full of pictures
and statues, some of which are very fine, and the pictures
scattered through the house are interesting and curious. Lord
Egremont hates ceremony, and can't bear to be personally meddled
with; he likes people to come and go as it suits them, and say
nothing about it, never to take leave of him. The party here
consists of the Cowpers, his own family, a Lady E. Romney, two
nieces, Mrs. Tredcroft a neighbour, Ridsdale a parson, Wynne,
Turner, the great landscape painter, and a young artist of the
name of Lucas, whom Lord Egremont is bringing into notice, and
who will owe his fortune (if he makes it) to him. Lord Egremont
is enormously rich, and lives with an abundant though not very
refined hospitality. The house wants modern comforts, and the
servants are rustic and uncouth; but everything is good, and it
all bears an air of solid and aristocratic grandeur. The stud
groom told me there are 300 horses of different sorts here. His
course, however, is nearly run, and he has the mortification of
feeling that, though surrounded with children and grandchildren,
he is almost the last of his race, and that his family is about
to be extinct. Two old brothers and one childless nephew are all
that are left of the Wyndhams, and the latter has been many years
married. All his own children are illegitimate, but he has
everything in his power, though nobody has any notion of the
manner in which he will dispose of his property. It is impossible
not to reflect upon the prodigious wealth of the Earls of
Northumberland, and of the proud Duke of Somerset who married the
last heiress of that house, the betrothed of three husbands. All
that Lord Egremont has, all the Duke of Northumberland's
property, and the Duke of Rutland's Cambridgeshire estate
belonged to them, which together is probably equivalent to
between L200,000 and L300,000 a year. Banks told me that the
Northumberland property, when settled on Sir H. Smithson, was not
above L12,000 a year.[2]

[2] [The eleventh Earl of Northumberland, Joscelyn Percy,
died in 1670, leaving an only daughter, who married
Charles Seymour, ninth Duke of Somerset. This lady is
d