Sept. 13. - Mount Edgecumbe; the Earl of Mount Edgecumbe. We first walked through the separate gardens and all the scenes through which we could not drive; and next, in consequence of permission kindly obtained for us by Mr. Pontey, we drove through every part of the park, so that we had the great satisfaction of seeing Mount Edgecumbe deliberately and thoroughly. High as were our expectations from the published descriptions and the long celebrity of the place, we were not disappointed. We never before looked down on the sea, on shipping, and on a large town, all at our feet, from such a stupendous height. The effect on the mind is sublime in the highest degree, but yet blended with the beautiful. There was something to us quite unearthly in the feeling it created. The separate gardens, as may readily be supposed, are overgrown, and the magnolias and other fine trees greatly injured, by the elms and other common trees and shrubs. One garden, in imitation of an ancient Roman burying-ground, which contains a great many altars and urns, is so covered with evergreens, that it is not oven mentioned in the guide-book. The only garden worth notice is what is called the Italian garden, though there is nothing Italian in it but the orange trees and a few white painted leaden statues; the former disfigured by the ugly unarchitectural tubs, and the latter, with the exception of a few on the parapets of a flight of steps, unartistically placed. We were sorry to see some alterations going on at the house, the object of which, as it appeared to us, was to change the entrance from the back, where it is at present, to the front, where it will display the finest views from the place before entering the house. Among the plants we noted down were, orange trees in tubs with stems 13 ft. high and 12 in. in diameter at the surface of the tub, the heads also being 12 ft. in diameter; various magnolias, from 30 to 36 ft. high; numerous cork trees, 50 ft. high; many immense flexes, some 100 ft. high; remarkable red cedars, one with a trunk 5 ft. in diameter; pittosporum, 6 ft. high and 6 ft. in diameter; hydrangeas, 12 ft. high; Chinese privets, 14 ft. high; eriobotrya, 12 ft. high; catalpa, with a trunk 2 ft. in diameter; several Portugal laurels above 30 ft. high, with clean erect trunks 8 ft. high and 2 ft. in diameter, splendid trees; arbutus, 40 feet high; Abies Douglasii, 20 ft. high; Chimonanthus fragrans, 12 ft. high and 16 ft. in diameter. There is said to be a large Bermudan cedar here, but that we do not recollect to have seen.
