CHAPTER V. Richmond. Twickenham - Strawberry Hill. WE were glad to take refuge from the suffocating smoke, and incessant clatter of the streets of London, among the quiet shades of beautiful Richmond. There are many points here and in the immediate vicinity, interesting from their literary associations. The place itself was the home of the Poet Thompson, and he sleeps under a grey stone slab in its ancient church. At Rosedale House, where he resided, they show you the chair on which he sat, the table on which he wrote, and the peg on which he hung his hat. In the garden is still preserved with pious reverence, the poet's favorite seat, and there too is the table on which he "Sung the Seasons and their change." At Richmond, Collins too resided a considerable time, and here composed many of his most charming poems. Poor Collins his fate was a hard one. In his latter years mental depression obscured the brightness of his intellect, enchaining his faculties, without destroying them, and leaving reason the knowledge of right, without the power of pursuing it. He was for sometime confined in a lunatic asylum. Collins left Richmond after the death of his friend Thompson, whose loss he so pathetically bewails in those lines commencing, "In yonder grave a Druid lies, "Where slowly steals the winding wave; The year's best sweets shall duteous rise To deck its poet's sylvan grave.". It was from Richmond Hill that Thompson looked out with a poet's eye, and all a poet's appreciation upon that glorious landscape which there, in the bright summer time fills the heart to the full with its ravishing beauty. But the Poet of the Seasons has painted it, and the picture is complete: "Say, shall we ascend Thy hill, delightful Sheen? Here let us sweep Now to the sister hills that skirt her plain; To where the silver Thames first rural grows, Has of Achaia, or Hesperia sung." Richmond too, has historic memories reaching back to olden time. It was a royal residence from the days of the First Edward. The celebrated Edward III. closed a long and victorious reign at his palace here. In the latter part of the fifteenth century, this palace was consumed by fire; and Henry VII. caused it to be rebuilt, and called it after himself, Richmond. And, "the butcher's dogge did lie in the manor of Richmonde," when the celebrated Cardinal Wolsey retired here, after his compulsory donation of H Hampton to the bluff Harry. Here too, Queen Elizabeth spent a portion of the captivity she suffered by order of her sister Mary; and after she ascended the throne, it became one of her favorite residences. Within its walls occurred that terrible death-scene, when agony and remorse embittered her last moments, and exhibited the once proud and powerful Queen in a most humiliating condition. Among the most interesting places of resort in Richmond is its Great Park, eight miles in circumference. The Park is of a gently undulating character, adorned by artificial lakes, and noble trees. The vast expanse of its plains, its venerable trees, and the solitude and seclusion so near a great city, are its chief attractions. It was the enclosure of this Park, that so excited the indignation of the people against King Charles, and was one among the many charges of usurpation and tyranny, that conspired to bring him to the scaffold. Lord John Russel has a country seat here, a quiet unpretending mansion, embowered in roses and honeysuckles, and shaded by noble oaks, that are almost as old as the ancestral roll of the Bedfords. Richmond is the great resort of the wealthy and pleasure seeking portion of London during the summer; and well it may be, with its lofty site, and its delightful natural surroundings. Twickenham, nestling upon the verdant banks of Thames, among embowered shades is but a very short distance from Richmond. Here Pope's villa once stood; but now the site of that familiar home of the Muses, is desecrated by some Goth of a tea merchant, who has dared to erect thereon an architectural monstrosity, half pagoda, half teachest and, as if to add insult to injury, the fellow has raised a sign-board on the lot adjacent, where one may read in large staring characters, "Pope's Grove, in lots to suit purchasers―terms easy." The Spirit of Speculation has no soul for poetry, neither has "Thomas Young, Tea Merchant." One surely might suppose that the haunt of such an ornament of their literature, such a master of their language, would have been thought worthy by Englishmen, of a national tutelage, and a public consecration. This at least, should have been sacred ground-so hallowed by classic association, and so feelingly and beautifully alluded to, by the Poet himself in those admirable lines: "To virtue only, and her friends a friend, The world beside, may murmur and commend, In his private relations, there never existed a better man than Pope. The tender care and affection of parents, who had preserved him to the world, through a helpless infancy, and a valetudinarian childhood, he repaid through life, with the most filial respect, and untiring affection. The man who was admired and loved by Swift, Bolingbroke, Gray, Young, Arbuthnot-caressed by Bathurst, Oxford and Murray, whose friendships were as fervent as his thoughts, and lasting as his life, must have had no ordinary art, in enchaining the affections and preserving the fond regard of such as he honored with his intimacy. Here in his beautiful retreat, to use the heart language of one of his letters: "He grew fit for a better world, of which the light of the sun is but a shadow. God's works here, come nearest God's works there; and to my mind a true relish of the beauties of nature, is the most easy preparation, and quietest transition to those of Heaven." Of all that the Poet loved or delighted to cherish at Twickenham—the Grotto now alone remains, not as he left it, it is true; but as the speculator will have it. The House of the Poet has long since been pulled down, by Lady Howe, who was the first purchaser, to show, as some one expressed it, "how little of communion, sympathy, or feeling may subsist in the breast of some of the aristocracy of rank, for the abiding place of the aristocracy of Genius." "Strawberry Hill," once the favorite retreat of Horace Walpole, is but a very short distance from Twickenham. The queer old Gothic fabric, is now, fast falling into ruin. The plaster is peeling off, and the bare lath exposed in many places. The rooms are now all dismantled. The Picture Gallery gives little evidence of its former magnificence. Nothing remains of that curious collection, he. spent years in gathering: and which it required a twentyfive days' sale to dispose of-save only some antiquated stained glass in its little low windows, and some curious old hangings upon the walls of the round chamber, where Selwyn so often set the table in a roar. The old Library Chamber still exhibits richly painted figures on its low ceiling, while the shelves with their literary treasures gone, and the worm eaten library table, where his "Castle of Otranto" was written, give evidence of the desolation that now reigns in all the chambers where the old literary gossip once delighted to wander and to muse. It was of this house, writing to his friend Conway, and dating from the place, Walpole says, "you perceive I have got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything house that I have got, and is the prettiest bauble |