Minchenden House, a seat of the Duke of Buckingham's, is now on sale. We were obligingly permitted to enter the grounds from Arno's Grove, which they adjoin. A fine broad gravel walk leads some distance along the margin of the New River, and thence ascends through a shrubbery plantation to the lawn front of the house. This is a most agreeable walk from the proximity of the river, and the picturesque grouping of the trees on both sides of it. Though the place has been evidently much neglected for many years, enough remains to snow that it was planted with more than common care, 40 or 50 years ago. The house is a plain brick building, in a situation equally elevated with the house in Arno's Grove, but with the view in front much more confined. The side scenery, however, consists of noble oak woods, and the distant view is so completely rural, that we do not recollect to have seen in it a single house or building. Altogether, it is a place of much natural and fortuitous beauty, but ruined by neglect, and by bad arrangements immediately in the vicinity of the house. Near the family chapel stands the famous Chandos oak, an engraving of which, with the dimensions as given by Strutt, will be found in our Arb. Brit., vol. iii. p. 1763. The tree continues to grow so luxuriantly, that our present estimate makes it about 80 ft. high, instead of 60 ft., which it was, when measured for Mr. Strutt about 20 years ago; and the diameter of the head we found to be 119 ft. The trunk we measured with a line, and found it 5 ft. in diameter at 4 ft. from the ground. This oak, like most of the others in this neighbourhood, is, as we have already observed, of the species Q. sessiliflora. Near it there are some other fine large trees of the same kind. The shrubbery here has evidently been planted with all the kinds of foreign trees and shrubs that could be procured in the best London nurseries in the latter end of the last century; but they have been so choked with common kinds that many of them are killed, and others are so much injured as scarcely to be recognised in the thickets of common bushes. We noticed some fine trees of American ash, several species of Acer, Quercus, Cratï¾µgus, and Pyrus; an Arbutus Andrachne 15 ft. high, greatly injured by the late severe winter, but not killed; a number of common arbutuses of large size, not injured in the least; one of them is 30 ft. high, with the trunk, at the surface of the ground, upwards of 2 ft. in diameter. There are, a Populus monilifera upwards of 100 ft. high; a great number of very large Portugal laurels (one 40 ft. high) and laurustinuses; a silver cedar 75 ft. high, with a head 72 ft. in diameter; a salisburia 35 ft. high; a spruce fir 80 ft. high, with its lower branches reclining on the ground, forming a splendid cone of verdure; some large and picturesque Scotch firs from 70 ft. to 80 ft. in height; and many large rhododendrons and azaleas. Some taste, and a very moderate expense, would render this a most delightful residence. [Minchendon House was in Enfield, near (and now within) London. The house was demolished in 1853 and the ground are now Minchenden Oak Gardens.]
