[200]
Quitting Rotherham, we mounted the hill on the north of the town, and throwing our eye back on the track we had lately passed through, beheld a picture of such richness and variety as, perhaps, no other part of England can afford. Before us, also an extremely grand country disclosed itself, undulating into broad hills and wide vallies, whose boundless fertility is assisted by an admirable system of agriculture. The prospect terminated with the majestic woods of Wentworth-park, within whose embrace stands the gorgeous mansion of Earl Fitzwilliam, about four miles from Rothertham, and half a mile from the turnpike-road. Its front stretches upwards of six hundred feet in a strait line, and consists of a centre and two wings. The portico (which measures sixty feet in length by twenty in the projection) is ascended by a double flight of steps, and supported by eight pillars of the Corinthian order. The arms of the family ornament the tympanum, and the following motto, so appropriate to the inflexible integrity and uncorruptible political virtue of the late Marquis of Rockingham, runs along the entablature, Mea Gloria Fides.
Our ciceroni led us into the house through the rustic story formed by a noble arcade, and a suite of rooms, in one of which is a very fine piece of
