RICHMOND. GOD made the country, and man made the town:" I wonder in which of the two divisions Cowper would have placed Richmond. Every Londoner would laugh at the rustic that should call it town; and yet it is no more like the country, the real, untrimmed, genuine country, than a garden is like a field. I do not say this in disparagement. Richmond is nature in a court dress, but still nature-aye, and very lovely nature too; gay, and happy, and elegant, as one of Charles the Second's beauties, and with as little to remind us of the penalty of the original Adam, of labour or poverty, or grief, or crime. Since no place on the globe is quite exempt from their influence, I suppose that care and vice may exist even there; they are, however, well hidden: the inhabitants may find them, or they may find the inhabitants; but to the casual visitor Richmond appears a sort of fairy-land--a piece of the old Arcadia, a holiday-spot for ladies and gentlemen, where they lead a happy out-of-door life, like the gay folks in Watteau's pictures, and have nothing to do with the work-a-day world. The principal ingredient in this powerful charm is the river, the beautiful river, for the hill seems to me over-rated. The prospect is too woody, too leafy, too green. There is a monotony of vegetation, a heaviness. The view was finer as I first saw it in February, when the bare branches admitted frequent glimpses of houses and villages, and the colouring was left to the fancy, than when I last beheld it, all pomp and garniture," in the leafy month of June." Canova said it only wanted crags; I rather incline to the old American criticism, and think that it wants clearing. But the river, the beautiful river, there is no over-rating that. Brimming to its very banks of meadow or garden, clear, pure, and calm as the bright summer sky which smiles down into its bosom. How gracefully it glides through the bridge, and how the boats become it! and how pretty those boats are, from the light green pleasure-vessel, with its white awning and its gay freight of beaux and belles, to the heavy steam-boat, which comes walloping along with a regular mechanical motion, rumpling the waters, and leaving a track of tiny waves on their glassy surface. Certainly the Thames is the pleasantest highway in his Majesty's dominions. The happiest hours I ever passed in my life were spent on its bosom one sweet June morning, when the light clouds seemed following and folding the sun in a thousand veils of shadowy alabaster, and the soft air was loaded with fragrance from gardens which were one flush of roses and honeysuckles. I shall never forget that morning. How delightful it was to glide along through those beautiful scenes with those dear companions, sunk in that silence of deep enjoyment which looks so like thought, though, in reality, a much wiser and happier thing; listening, half unconsciously, to Emily I.'s sweet snatches of Venetian songs; muttering almost as unconsciously as we met the queen birds, "The swans on still St. Mary's lake float double, swan and shadow;" just roused as we passed Pope's grotto, or the arch over Strawberry Hill; then landing at Hampton Court, the palace of the Cartoons, and coming home with my whole mind full of the divine Raphael, and of that glorious portrait of Titian by himself, which almost divided my admiration. I shall never forget that morning. How pleasant it is, on the other hand, to go down the river towards Kew, amongst all sorts of royal recollections, from the ruined house of Anne of Cleves, to the lime-trees, fragrant with blossom and "musical with bees," under which the late King and Queen used to sit on a summer evening, whilst their children were playing round them on the grass. Kew Palace is in fine harmony with this pretty family-piece. It is quite refreshing to think of royalty so comfortable, and homely, and unconstrained, as it must have been in that small, ugly, old-fashioned house. Princes are the "born thralls" of splendour; and to see them eased of their cumbrous magnificence, gives such a pleasure as one feels in reading " Ivanhoe," when the collar is taken from the neck of Gurth, and he leaps up a free man. Kew, too, in those confined and ill-furnished apartments, they were not without better luxuries; books accessible and readable, and looking as if they had been read, and a fine collection of cabinet pictures; superb Canaletti's; the famous dropsical woman, on which the Queen is said to have fixed her eyes, during her last illness, with such an intense expression of self-pity; and a portrait of Vandyke, which rivals the Titian---the elegant Vandyke, with his head over his shoulder, which has been so often engraved. What an interesting thing is the portrait of a great artist! Amongst the many superb villas round Richmond, none attracted me so much as Ham House, a stately old place, retired from the river, and concealed and divided from it by rows of large trees. Ham House is quite a model of the mansion of the last century, with its dark shadowy front, its steps and terraces, its marble basons, and its deep, silent court, whose iron gate, as Horace Walpole complains, is never opened. The keeping is perfect. The very flowers are old-fashioned. No American borders! No Kalmias, or Azelias, or Magnolias, or such heathen shrubs! No flimsy China roses! Nothing new-fangled! none but flowers of the olden time---gay, formal knots of pinks and sweet-peas, and larkspurs, and lilies, and hollyhocks, mixed with solid cabbage roses, and round Dutch honey suckles. I reverence such a garden. Every thing about it belongs to the time of hoops and periwigs. Harlowe Place must have been such another abode of stateliness and seclusion. Those iron gates seem to have been erected for no other pur than to divide Lovelace from Clarissa. We almost expect to see her through them, sweeping slowly along the terracewalk, in the pure dignity of her swan-like beauty, with her jealous sister watching her from a window; and we look for him round the corner of the wall, waiting to deposit a letter, and listening, with speaking eagerness, to the rustle of her silk gown. Richardson must certainly have seen Ham House. Another interesting part of Richmond is the Park, so celebrated in the Scotch novels. But, alas! it has been improved. The walk in which Jeanie Deans met Queen Caroline no longer exists and so completely do those engrossing and usurping books take possession of every place which they choose to mention, that the alteration is felt as a real disappointment. To make amends for this, on removing some old furniture lately from a house in the vicinity, three portraits were discovered in the wainscot, George the Second, a staring likeness, between Queen Caroline and Lady Suffolk. The paintings are the worst of that bad era; but the recollection of Jeanie Deans is ir resistible. I was still more forcibly reminded of another great poet, by a yew-tree near the river, worthy to have been joined with "those fraternal sons of Borrowdale "Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth Upcoiling and inveterately convolved." Richmond has been so accustomed to be praised in fine poetry, that to speak of it in humble prose seems like an affront. But the sincerest, and, perhaps, the highest compliment that has been paid to this celebrated spot, is the residence, in its near neighbourhood, of two of our greatest landscape-painters, Mr. Turner and Mr. Hofland. The pervading spirit of this soft and lovely scenery may often be traced in their works; more especially in those of the latter, whose sparkling delicacy and Claude-like sweetness of tone and colour, seem caught from the beauty which breathes like a perfume around him; whilst Mr. Turner's original and truly English genius is evidently derived from universal nature. A fine picture is the best description of Richmond, though some of its graces are too subtle and evanescent even for the pencil. But the finest charm of this elegant place is the pure and innocent pleasure which it affords to a large and meritorious class of people. They who love to contemplate happy faces, should go there on a fine Sunday afternoon, and regale themselves with a sight of the many family parties drinking tea in the meadows, recalling Madame Roland's delightful account of her Sunday evenings by the banks of the Seine, and inhaling fragrance and fresh air after a week's smoke and dust in smoky London. To a London citizen, Richmond is, undoubtedly, the country; and if we who come farther a-field, should be disposed to contest the point, we shall, at least, admit that it is something better. M. THOUGHTS AWAKENED BY CONTEMPLATING A PIECE OF THE PALM WHICH GROWS ON THE SUMMIT OF THE ACROPOLIS AT ATHENS. I GAZE upon thee-yet I will not weep Though to my lips this heart tumultuous swell—– My soul calls Freedom from her silent sleep, Then wildly breathes that last, lone word-Farewell! Why doth the music of the sweet-toned shell Break into sadness? now those soft notes flying Light as the musical airs-now Freedom's knell Upon the desolate winds abruptly sighing Like Ocean's whisp'ring gale, which seems most sweet when dying! Once it was thine to bid kings bow, worlds crash! This is the gloomy stillness of the soul!-- A sigh for what will be--what is, and what HAS BEEN? Land of the glorious-nation of the free! Oh! do my senses labour 'neath a spell, Gazing on THIS-which breathes of thine, and thee, Invisible, may even now be near, And bending from her kindred skies, may be Gazing, in silent sadness, mutely HERE And mingling with a smile the sweetness of a tear! E. B. B. FRAGMENTS FROM THE WOODS. "Lo, the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire, But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, POPE. HAPPENING, a few days ago, to take up a volume of Lord Erskine's speeches, I was peculiarly struck with the passage in which he either invents or relates the speech of an American chieftain, justifying his animosity to the invaders of his country, and avowing his determination to defend it. Whether the speech be Lord Erskine's own, or the genuine production which it purports to be, I have no means of ascertaining; but be it which it may, there is a soul-stirring energy about it which few can peruse without excitement-it is a short and splendid specimen of nature's eloquence, which has its fountain in the heart, and irresistibly returns to it. The labours of the lamp have produced nothing which more effectually answers the purpose for which it was intended. It appeals directly to the feelings; the simplicity of its sad complaint is overwhelming, and its wild, determined, but provoked avowal, is not, upon human principles, to be combated. There is something to me extremely interesting in (if I may so term it) the retrogradation of the American Indians upon their woods and wildernesses. Their remonstrances, their treaties, their talks, their conferences, their occasional denunciations, and the thousand plans and stratagems by which they hope to arrest the progress of the "white man upon their territory, are most curious. They exhibit, on the one hand, the matured device, and ingenious frauds of civilized rapacity; and, on the other, the natural alarm of a primitive people, too guileless to negotiate, too feeble to avert, but still too conscious of its injustice to submit, without a struggle, to the deprivation of their beloved inheritance. The perusal of this fragment of Lord Erskine's, set me upon the search after more. Fortunately, through the kindness of an American friend, I have been enabled not only to collect some Indian anecdotes, but also some specimens of their eloquence, which almost deserve, like the speech in question, to be improved by the recitation of the orator of England. The follow |