[In these two letters from her memoirs Mrs. Carter relates her visits to Northbourne Court. The footnotes denoted by * and ** are by the editor, her nephew, Rev. Montagu Pennington. The portrait below is from her memoirs published in 1807.] See overview and also letter written in 1782.
EXTRACTS FROM SOME OF
MRS. CARTER'S LETTERS ON SUBJECTS OF TASTE AND LITERATURE
REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED BY THE SIGHT OF RUINS August 1767
A THOUSAND thanks to you for wishing me with you in that solemn scene, which I should have enjoyed with true enthusiasm. Did you ever try to account for that astonishing mixture of deep awe, soft melancholy, and exquisite delight, which the imagination experiences from such views of ruin and desolation? Is it that the soul, while it is subdued by a sad proof of the weakness of all that is strong, and of the littleness of all that is great below; while it feels a tender sympathy in the overthrow of human art and magnificence, at the same moment exults and triumphs in its own superiority to all mortal things, and looks through the devastations of time to its own eternal prospects? I think there is something in this beyond mere refinement; at least I feel with regard to myself, that if I had any doubts of immortality, the sight of a ruin would affect me only with unmixed and insupportable gloom and horror.
I wished for you the other morning to share with me in a situation of this kind. After a pretty long walk, I sat down on the roots of an elm, and listened to music of a spring which bubbled at my feet, and formed a small lake, shaded by the hanging branches of some venerable trees which surround the ruins of an ancient seat. I just remember the death of the possessor. The house survived him long enough for me to have a much more perfect idea of it, as I have often walked over it with great delight in its untenanted state. The apartments, unfurnished and solitary, had a striking air of sombre greatness, particularly a cedar gallery, which was a noble room, and had two very magnificent chimney-pieces. There was a little gloomy chapel, which I was once so lucky to see solemnly gilded by the rays of the setting sun; a picture which, young as I was, and with a set of gay companions, made a very strong impression on my imagination. We drank tea in a kind of pavilion, fronted by a marble colonnade, which looked upon a garden, where one mount rising above another reminded me of the pensile groves of Babylon.
Such do I once remember the house of which I now sat and contemplated the melancholy ruins. The estate was divided, and the building was sold for the materials, and for the most part levelled with the ground. So little influence have the objects which form the pride and pleasure of one age upon the varying temper of the next*.
In the midst of my reflections on the desolation within my view, I surveyed the scenes of nature around me, and derived great comfort from the observation of one who made wiser reflections than I, that the earth abideth for ever, and rejoiced to think that the destructive folly of man has no power over the works of God. While all the laboured productions of human art sink by the neglect, or are demolished by the varying fancy of giddy mortals, the creations of Divine Wisdom are supported in their original perfection by an ever active and unchanging power. They charm equally and universally through every revolution of time, and amidst all the caprices of inconstant taste; and thus continue the only real standard and uncontested examples of the beautiful and the sublime.
* "Their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever,
and their dwelling-places to all generations; they call their lands after
their own names."
Psalm xlix. 11.
EXTRACTS FROM SOME OF
MRS. CARTER'S LETTERS ON SUBJECTS OF TASTE AND LITERATURE
REFLECTIONS SUGGESTED BY THE SIGHT OF RUINS August 1770
I ENDEAVOUR to derive all the profit I can from the present delightful weather, though I have not yet been able to reach many of my most favourite walks. However I have lately compassed one by the help of some repose, in sitting on the roots of some old trees by the side of a spring, where I contemplated the ruins of an ancient seat, once the abode of a flourishing family, and which I remember standing entire, but in melancholy dejected grandeur from the desertion of its inhabitants. It contained a hundred rooms, many of them wainscotted with cedar, and highly ornamented, particularly a gallery, in which I have often walked with much Gothic delight.
This noble structure might have subsisted for many generations in venerable decay; but the last heirs to the estate, for the sake of the materials, anticipated the depredations of time, and levelled it nearly to the ground. Such is the instability of mortal things, and so determined is that order of Providence, which forbids any perpetual residence upon earth. The obnoxious strength and magnificence of imperial cities, and the less exposed the humbler abodes of private life, are equally subject to the general law, which is carried into execution by the very nature of man. Thus Heaven directed the storms of ambition to level the proud walls of Nineveh, and of Tyre; but the mere caprice of changing fancy is a sufficient engine against the weaker establishment of domestic seats; and what constituted the comfort and pride of one generation, sinks into nothing, merely from neglect and contempt of the next**.
** The seat described in both the preceding letters is Northbourn Court, about three miles from Deal. It formerly belonged to the abbey of St. Augustine, at Canterbury and after the dissolution, passed through different hands, till it was granted by James I To Sir Edwin Sandys, Knight, second son of the Archbishop of York, and brother of the celebrated traveller. He is buried under a superb monument in Northbourn church, erected by himself. His descendant; Sir Richard Sandys, Bart: died in 1726, leaving only four daughters, his coheiresses. The mansion was taken down in 1750, but the walls of the chapel, mentioned by Mrs. Carter, are still remaining, beautifully overgrown with ivy. Of the mansion, etiam periere ruinæ, but the scenery still exists exactly as described by her. The Editor's present residence is in this parish; yet he trusts that he shall not be accused of vain and local partiality, in supposing that these letters may be interesting to those who have no connection with the place described.
Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, with a New Edition of Her Poems, Some of Which Have Never Appeared before; to Which Are Added Some Miscellaneous Essays in Prose, Together with Her Notes on the Bible, and Answers to Objections Concerning the Christian Religions. Rev. Montagu Pennington, M.A. pub. F C and J Rivington, 1st Edition, 1807. 466-9.