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LONDON-SIR FRANCIS BURDETI.

the House of Commons would probably impeach them. The debates on this question have been very animated, ingenious, and argumentative. I observed particularly the speeches of Lord Erskine in the upper house, Sir Samuel Romilly and Mr Ponsonby in the Commons. To a disinterested by-stander all this heat and jarring of contradictory authorities, the manifest exaggeration of all they say and do, appear out of all proportion to the importance of the case, and it is impossible not to feel surprise and disgust. On the other hand, it must be remembered, that it is only at the point of contact of the different powers, and on their mutual boundaries, that any collision can take place, and that the importance of the dispute is not to be estimated by its immediate object, but by its consequences. Soldiers defend, to the last drop of their blood, a breach which is only a heap of stones, for the sake of the place behind, which must fall if the enemy succeed in making a lodgement. The importance of constitutional forms, and the danger of their infraction in a government like this, are very happily illustrated in the following passage of an old English poem (Hudibras) :

As when the sea breaks o'er its bounds
And overflows the level grounds,
Those banks and dams that like a screen
Did keep it out, now keep it in:
So when tyrannic usurpation
Invades the freedom of the nation,
The laws o' the land that were intended
To keep it out, are made defend it.

May 25.-I wished much to see Strawberry Hill, the house of Lord Orfori, better known in France under the name of Horace Walpole, by his colloquial wit, and his letter of the King of Prus

STRAWBERRY HILL.

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sia to Jean Jaques,-so French, that the latter ascribed it to D'Alembert, in his factum against David Hume. I knew that Mr Walpole had the passion of minor antiquities, painted windows, snuff-boxes, and historical baubles of all sorts. He laughed at his own taste, but I had no idea it was with so much reason. Strawberry Hill is a Gothic baby-house; the windows chequered like Harlequin's coat, with all the colours of the rainbow narrow passages lead, through small doors, to rooms like closets. On the wall hung the coatof-mail of our Francis I. mentioned in the correspondence of Madame du Deffand, but looking too short for that Prince, who was a tall and stout knight. We were shewn the portraits of his favourite Madame de Sevigné, of Madame de Grignan, of Madame de la Fayette. The ink-stand of Madame de Sevigné was on the table. Cela donne à penser! Time, with its frightful rapidity, has already carried so far from us Walpole, Madame du Deffand, Voltaire, d'Alembert, and all that society of which the Duke and Duchess of Choiseul were the centre, that the period in which they lived seems now blended with the age of Louis XIV.; and their manners more like those described by Madame de Sevigné, than the manners of the present day. The last twenty years have covered, with their funeral crape and their blood, with their folly and their splendour, the space of centuries, in the memory of men. They have dug an abyss between the times that preceded and followed; and, forming a new era in history, future generations will say, before or after the French revolution, as before or after the fall of the Roman empire,—before or after the dark ages.

Strawberry Hill, notwithstanding its name, is

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STRAWBERRY HILL-RICHMOND.

quite flat, even low, and seems damp; the road, passing close by, is covered with a pointed gothic arch of elms, forming a very appropriate avenue. The aspect of the house is melancholy; the grounds are well carpeted with green, and shaded with large trees, the usual decoration here.

The King loves astronomy, and has an observatory in the little park of Richmond, called the King's Paddock. It is furnished with a large telescope of Herschell; a transit instrument of eight feet, through which we saw Venus crossing the meridian; a vertical instrument of twelve feet for zenith observations; a mural of eight feet of rays; an equatorial telescope, and several other instruments less considerable-a few models of machines; among them one to determine the lateral pressure of arches; a collection of German minerals; and a good apparatus for philosophical experiments. His majesty happened to be at the observatory some years ago to observe an occultation of a planet, when a deer pursued from Windsor crossed the river, leaped over the park palings, followed by the dogs, and was taken at the foot of the observatory, precisely at the moment of the occultation. We took the liberty of inquiring whether the attention of his Majesty had been proof against this interruption, and were answered that a cloud had unfortunately interposed just then, otherwise nothing could have taken off his Majesty's attention. The King's Paddock is a dead flat, without any other view than its own meadows and scattered trees, but that is really enough. English park trees have a character of picturesque magnificence, unequalled anywhere else, and a few of them on a lawn constitute alone a landscape. They form the principal charm of

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the view from Richmond Hill, so justly celebrated. From the brow of an inconsiderable hill, perhaps 300 feet, you see a vast plain, and the Thames winding through its rich pastures, where cattle and sheep graze at liberty. Dark masses of tufted trees project irregularly in the shape of bays and promontories over a sea of verdure, with detached shady islands. Here and there the eye distinguishes an oak stretching its vast horizontal limbs; oftener an elm rearing, in successive tiers, its rounded masses and plumy top. A few houses half hid among these groves, and paths slightly marked across the green, are the only perceivable traces of man; no ditches, no hedges, no inclosures of any sort,-no roads, no strait lines. As far as the eye can reach in an immense semicircle, the scenery, always the same, is ever varied. As the prospect recedes, every slight depression of the level sketches the nearest distance in a rich outline of edging tops of trees,-upon the farthest, fainter and bluer, till all is lost in the vague greyish haze of the horizon, with some indications of hills. If they were real hills, the prospect would leave nothing to wish for.

From a far greater heighth, whence the eye measured a plain far more extensive, torn and laid waste, rather than embellished by a broad and rapid stream, which disdains winding, I was accustomed, in the days of my infancy, to contemplate an horizon skirted by the Alps, with Mont Blanc in the centre. In autumn, a thick fog often fell during the night, on the vast plain below; and it was seen early in the morning like a sea; its surface perfectly calm and unruffled, and the margin exactly defined along the sides of the hill. The eastern glow of the morning witnessed no change; but no

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sooner had the rising sun darted its first level rays from between the deep black dentated summit of the Alps, than the sea of vapours began to heave its billows; the mighty waves rolled and tumbled furiously as in a tempest, till, losing their density, they rose, slow and majestic, in vast clouds, and, enveloping at last the spectator himself, hid the vision of glory from his sight.

It

Richmond Hill, without pretending to so much sublimity, has a stile of beauty more ornamented, mild, riant, and pleasing. It is not a forest, for there is nothing rude and neglected; not a garden, for their is no art; not a country, for cultivation and business are nowhere going on; the simplicity and unity of plan and means, trees and grass, and vast extent, give it an appearance of nature, but nature was never seen so select and chaste, and unmixed with offensive objects. is at least rich, elegant, and high-born nature, and something, at any rate, unique of its kind. Most of this magical effect is owing to the following circumstances: Some rich proprietors happen to occupy all the fore-ground of the picture in the plain below,-Lord Dysart, Mr Cambridge, &c.They have spread their lawns, planted their groves, and levelled their enclosures. Further on are the royal grounds. All the rest of the country is sufficiently planted to give it, when seen fore-shortened in the remote view, a very woody appearance, and make it an uninterrupted and boundless continuation of the near scene. The blue haze of distance finishes the front view. The fine old, forest trees of the park of Richmond, hanging on the left side of the hill, and on the right other trees, and good-looking houses, form the screens or frame of the picture. It is, however, a pity that

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