Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/812

 7^8 COTTAGE, FARM, AND VILLA ARCHITECTURE. temples excavated in it, covered with hieroglyphics ; and in another, a projecting rock is formed into a huge serpent, with a spear-shaped iron tongue and glass eyes. There is a rustic prospect-tower over an Indian temple, cut out of solid rock, on the highest point of the north bank ; and in the lowest part of the valley there are the foundation and two stories (executed before the death of the late earl) of an octagon pagoda. This pagoda was intended to be eighty-eight feet high. It is placed on an island, in the centre of a small pond, and w.as to have been approached by a Chinese bridge richly ornamented. The diameter of the base of the pagoda is forty feet, and there ■were to have been six stories, the lower one of stone, and the others of cast iron. From the angles were to have been suspended forty highly enriched Chinese lamps, and these were to be lighted by a gasometer fixed in the lower story. Besides the lamps, there were to have been grotesque figures of monsters projecting over the angles of the canopies, which were to spout water from their eyes, nostrils, fins, tails, &c. ; a column of water v/as also to have been projected perpendicularly from the terminating ornament on the summit of the structure, which, from the loftiness of the source of supply, would have risen to the height of seventy or eighty feet. This fountain was designed by Mr. Abraham ; but only the lower story has been executed. The pagoda, the Gothic temple (seen to the right of fig. 1429), the range of gilt conservatories, and the imitation of Stonehenge, fig. 1433, form the leading artificial features of the valley. The valley 0%2>~-> itself is upwards of a mile in length : it gradually widens from its commencement at the stone bridge, with the pond above it, till it terminates by opening into the wide valley containing the Chumet (there a considerable stream) and a navigable canal. This immense valley, it is said, the late earl intended to cover entirely with water ; and, as it would have saved the canal company several miles of canal, they offered to form the dam, or head, at their own expense. This lake, of some thousands of acres, would have been as easily produced as that of Blenheim was by Brown. 1671. In approaching from Cheadle, we arrive in front of the castellated stables, and see the abbey, fig. 1 434, across the pond above the level of the bridge. Proceeding a little farther towards the dry bridge, Stonehenge appears in the foreground, and the tops of the seven gilt glass domes of the main range of conservatories below (as ia fig. 1433.). Raising the eyes, the lofty Gothic temple appears on the left of the picture ; and on the right, across the valley, the harper's cottage. In the centre of the picture over the domes in the foreground, the valley loses itself in a winding bank oi wood, in a style of great grandeur and seclusion. None of the details of the valley liere obtrude themselves ; and the effect, after passing through a wild country exhiliiting no marks of refinement, is singularly impressive. It fills the mind with astonishment and delight, to find so much of the magnificence of art and the appearance of refined enjoyment, amidst so much of the wildness and solitary grandeur of nature. The imitation of Stonehenge, too, is a feature in artificial landscape which we have not elsewhere seen ;