THE PANTHEON, STOURHEAD, WILTS. THE view that this Plate represents, is, perhaps, one of the richest and most beautiful in the whole grounds of Stourhead, as it involves not only wood and water finely disposed of, but likewise a very superb building on the model of the pantheon at Rome; and most happily placed on a gentle rising above the margin of the transparent mirror of the lake, here at its broadest expanse, and almost filling the area within the amphitheatre of hills that encircle it, whose sides display a most magnificent clothing of every species of growth the forest can yield. The building is of course a rotundo like that which it professes to imitate, thirty-six feet in diameter, and lighted from the dome; nor is it only its external that is so much to be admired, whether we regard its position or architecture; but, the internal and its contents are equally entitled to notice, its niches being replenished with some of the finest works of the sculptor's hand. Among the principal figures that adorn it, is a most elegant antique marble statue of Livia Augusta, in the character of Ceres, and a Flora and Hercules, from the chisel of Rysbrack, the most finished specimens of his art. A walk that is conducted above the sloping margin of THE PANTHEON, STOURHEAD. the lake, and continued all the way round, receives you at the foot of the hill which you descend from the upper grounds immediately about the house, and leads you to this magnificent object; or, if you wish to avoid such delightful circuity, a boat, always ready, ferries you over. When you arrive at this lovely spot, the opposite side presents scenes that amply repay you for shifting your ground. The temple of Flora, embosomed in a clump of lofty trees, exactly fronts it; an edifice that does great honour to the taste of the designer; through a little hollow, to the right of which, the eye, insinuating itself, catches a very picturesque, but partial, view of the church, the village, and the so justly admired cross, and sweeping round still in a northerly direction to the right, is arrested by another noble building on the brow of a hill, that forms the northern boundary of the lake, the temple of the sun, on the model of that at Balbec. ANCIENT PORCH, SALISBURY, WILTS. THIS elegant remnant of Gothic architecture is supposed, originally, to have been part of a cross erected in Old. Sarum, most probably of two or three stories, as was usual in structures of that description. After its removal from the old city, it seems to have been abridged of its upper works, and lowered to the basement story, for the purpose of adapting it as a porch to bishop Poer's new edifice. Thus miserably truncated, it was covered with a flat roof of lead; and in that state served as a north vestibule to the present cathedral upwards of 500 years; but when, in consequence of some modern arrangement in that venerable pile, it was thought necessary to shut up the entrance which it formed part of, this, then useless excrescence, was, with the consent of the dean and chapter, presented to H. P. Wyndham, esq. of the college in Salisbury, who, with that fine taste that knows how to appreciate such curious monuments of antiquity, has given it a place in his beautiful grounds, and, by that means, has preserved, from ruin, a most exquisite specimen of the purest early Gothic, which otherwise would inevitably have long since been overwhelmed with the rubbish, to which. ANCIENT POrch, salisbury. similar relics, too often wantonly in the rage for innovation, and almost always without any good reason, dismembered from our venerable cathedrals and monastic buildings, are most shamefully consigned. The spire it terminates in, as well as all the lesser ornaments, are of Mr. Wyndham's judicious addition, being fragments preserved, and happily selected from the wreck of such parts of the cathedral as were sacrificed to the style of reparation it underwent about fifty years ago, near the time when the present fortunate position was given to the excommunicated subject of the accompanying Plate, . |