not disposed to see company. Those who, without due consideration, pay a first visit to the river on a chilly, gusty day, when the tide is low, and the bed of the stream partly exposed, may chance to be disappointed, and look wondering around for those charms poet after poet has delighted to sing. It is on a clear, sunny Mayday, or we may say, a bright day throughout the summer months, when the tide is flowing, and near the flood, that the noble expanse and silvery surface of this classic river is seen to most advantage.

While other streams owe much of their reputation to their banks-as men rise in the world by the interest of patrons-Father Thames owes everything to himself. His banks are nowhere sublime, and although in the greater part of his career beautiful, yet it is a quiet beauty. But it is the gently gliding character of the stream itself

"Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full;"

its transparent waters and silvery surface, its copiousness without profusionthese make the pretensions of the Thames. Then, how rich is it not in classic associations ;. and not merely in these, but in associations of national utility and glory! These last, however, belong to another portion of our subject. We are here at Richmond, metaphorically and literally, among the swans of Thames, and we must endeavour to catch somewhat of the inspiration of the place before inflicting more of our tediousness upon the indulgent reader who have borne with us so long.

may

Queen Anne, and George I. Sir Godfrey Kneller was knighted by King William, and created a baronet by King George I. in 1715. Among his most noted works are the Beauties at Hampton Court, the Admirals at the same place, and the Kit-Kat Club. There is a monument to the memory of this celebrated artist in Westminster Abbey, which has occasioned it to be supposed that he was buried there. Dame Susanna Kneller, his widow, was buried at Twickenham, December 11, 1729.

Mrs. Pritchard, the celebrated actress, lived at Ragman's Castle, a small but pretty box, hard by Twickenham Meads.

Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the witty and profligate Duke of Wharton, Secretary Craggs the friend of Pope, Hudson the painter, Dr. Batty an eminent physician, and Sir John Hawkins, author of a history of music and a life of Dr. Johnson, resided at Twickenham. Queen Anne, then Princess of Denmark, resided here, change of air being thought requisite for the Duke of Gloucester, who brought with him his regiment of boys, which he used to exercise on the island or ayte on the river opposite the village.

About a mile from Twickenham is the renowned villa of the author of the Castle of Otranto.

"The well-known villa of the late Horace Walpole (afterwards Earl of Orford), standing on a piece of ground called in old writings Strawberry-hill Shot, was originally a small tenement, built in 1698 by the Earl of Bradford's coachman, and let as a lodging-house. Colley Cibber was one of its first tenants, and wrote there his comedy called 'The Refusal, or the Lady's Philosophy.' The beauties of its situation afterwards tempted persons whose rank and establishments were such as seem to have demanded a large mansion,

to take it as a summer residence. Dr. Talbot, Bishop of Durham, lived in it eight years, and after him, Henry Marquis of Carnarvon. It was next hired by Mrs. Chevenix, the toy-woman, who let a part of it to the celebrated French divine, Père Courayer. Lord John Philip Sackville afterwards took the house of Mrs. Chevenix, and kept it about two years. In 1747 the late Earl of Orford (then the Hon. Horace Walpole) bought the remainder of Mrs. Chevenix's lease, and the next year purchased the fee-simple by act of parliament, it being then the property of three minors. Mr. Walpole, in one of his entertaining letters to Mr. (afterwards Marshal) Conway, gives the following description of this place about the time that he first took possession of it :-Twickenham, June 8, 1747.-You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs. Chevenix's shop, and is the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows, with fillagree hedges:

A small Euphrates through the place is roll'd,
And little fishes wave their wings of gold.

Two delightful roads that you would call dusty supply me continually with coaches and chaises; barges, as solemn as barons of the exchequer, move under my window. Richmond Hill and Ham-walks bound my prospects; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by a most poetical moonlight. The Chevenixes had tricked the cottage up for themselves. Up two pair of stairs is what they call Mr. Chevenix's library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton, and a lunar telescope without any glasses. Lord John Sackville predecessed me here, and instituted certain games called cricketalia, which have been celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow.'

"Mr. Walpole having formed a design of enlarging his villa, and fitting it up in the Gothic style, after a tour through various parts of the kingdom, during which he collected models from the principal cathedrals in which that species of architecture prevails, began his improvements in 1753, in which and the following year the library and great parlour were newly built; the Holbein chamber in 1759, the gallery, round tower, great cloister, and cabinet, were begun 1760 and 1761, the great north bed-chamber in 1770, and the Beauclerk tower and Hexagon closet in 1776."

Horace Walpole, author of the Castle of Otranto, and so well known in the fashionable, gossiping, and trifling world, and not altogether unworthy

Sir John Shorter, Mayor of London in 1688.

Horace was born in October, 1717, and received his education at Eton, and afterwards at King's College, Cambridge. Upon leaving the University, he set out on his travels in company with Gray the poet, with whom, being much too good company for Horace, the latter contrived to pick a quarrel: "The quarrel between Gray and me," he says, "arose from his being too serious a companion. I had just broke loose from the restraints of the University, with as much money as I could spend, and I was willing to indulge myself. Gray was for antiquities, &c., while I was for perpetual balls and plays: the fault was mine."

Dr. Johnson's account of this quarrel is valuable, inasmuch as it contains a moral which may perhaps be useful to men hereafter similarly circumstanced. "When he (Gray) had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole, whose friendship he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray's letters contain a very pleasing account of many parts of this journey. But unequal friendships are easily dissolved: at Florence they quarrelled and parted, and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told that it was by his fault. If we look, however, without prejudice on the world, we shall find that men, whose consciousness of their own merit sets them above the compliances of servility, are apt enough in their association with superiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independence to exact that attention which they refuse to pay.

Part they did, however, whatever was the quarrel; and the rest of their travels was, doubtless, more unpleasant to them both."

In Italy, Walpole's love of art, and taste for elegant and antiquarian literature, became more developed, and ultimately formed the ruling passion of his life, which circumstances happily enabled him to gratify to the utmost.

His fortune was already made-nothing remained for him but to enjoy life in whatever way he thought he could find the greatest sum of enjoyment: with the prevalent vanity among young men of rank and fortune at the present day, he was ambitious of playing at senators, and entered the House of Commons as representative of Callington, being then in his twenty-fourth year.

On a motion for an inquiry into the conduct of his father, Sir Robert, for the preceding ten years, he delivered his maiden speech, and had the honour of being complimented by no less a judge of oratory than the elder Pitt. He was merely a do-nothing member of Parliament: where he alone was active, in his exertions to save the unfortunate Admiral Byng, his humanity, at least, was laudable: soon, however, he relapsed into his constitutional indolence; his business in parliament was not to serve his country, nor even himself; his seat was a toy to play with, get tired of, and fling away. As he says himself, in a letter on his retirement, "What could I see but sons and grandsons playing over the same knaveries that I have seen their fathers and grandfathers act? Could I hear oratory beyond my Lord Chatham's? Will there ever be parts equal to Charles Townshend's? Will George Grenville ever cease to be the most tiresome of beings?"

And now, having nothing but trifling in view as the business of life, our Walpole resolved to trifle elegantly: bit by some Goth or Vandal, he devoted the best part of his life to the collection and arrangement of whatever was curiously worthless, and for this benevolent purpose he patched, lathed and plastered the ricketty, miserable, oyster-grotto-like profanation of Gothic, called Strawberry Hill.

A place intrinsically more paltry does not exist : dirty, dingy walls, roughcasted with mortar and pebbles, and surmounted by wooden battlements, of which the founder himself survived three generations: bounded on two sides by the high road with all its dust, noise, and publicity; the rooms low, dark, and, with the exception of the long gallery, devoid of proportion; the grounds limited to a very small space, and that limitation rendered still more conspicuous from the attempt to crowd into it temples, grottoes, and statuary; the only merit of Strawberry Hill is one which Horace Walpole had nothing