Chapter 3

The show'r is past--the heath-bell, at our feet, Looks up, as with a smile, though the cold dew Hangs yet within its cup, like Pity's tear Upon the eye-lids of a village-child!

This is succeeded by a poetic panorama of views from the Severn to Bristol, introducing a solitary ship at sea--and the "solitary sand:"--

No sound was heard, Save of the sea-gull warping on the wind, Or of the surge that broke along the shore, Sad as the seas.

A picture of Bristol is succeeded by some scenes of great picturesque beauty--as Wrington, the birth-place of the immortal Locke; Blagdon, the rural rectory of

Langhorne, a pastor and a poet too;

and Barley-Wood, the seat of Mrs. Hannah More. Mr. Bowles also tells us that the music of "Auld Robin Gray" was composed by Mr. Leaver, rector of Wrington; and then adds a complimentary ballad to Miss Stephens on the above air--

Sung by a maiden of the South, whose look-- (Although her song be sweet)--whose look, whose life, Is sweeter than her song.

The last Part (IV.) contains some exquisite Sonnets, and the poem concludes with a "Vision of the Deluge," and the ascent of the Dove of the ark--in which are many sublime touches of the mastery of poetry. There are nearly forty pages of Notes, for whose "lightness" and garrulity Mr. Bowles apologizes.

Altogether, we have been much gratified with the present work. It contains poetry after our own heart--the poetry of nature and of truth--abounding with tasteful and fervid imagery, but never drawing too freely on the stores of fancy for embellishment. We could detach many passages that have charmed and fascinated us in out reading; but one must suffice for an epigrammatic exit:--

_--Hope's still light beyond the storms of Time._

* * * * *

SCENERY OF THE OHIO.

The heart must indeed be cold that would not glow among scenes like these. Rightly did the French call this stream _La Belle Rivière_, (the beautiful river.) The sprightly Canadian, plying his oar in cadence with the wild notes of the boat-song, could not fail to find his heart enlivened by the beautiful symmetry of the Ohio. Its current is always graceful, and its shores every where romantic. Every thing here is on a large scale. The eye of the traveller is continually regaled with magnificent scenes. Here are no pigmy mounds dignified with the name of mountains, no rivulets swelled into rivers. Nature has worked with a rapid but masterly hand; every touch is bold, and the whole is grand as well as beautiful; while room is left for art to embellish and fertilize that which nature has created with a thousand capabilities. There is much sameness in the character of the scenery; but that sameness is in itself delightful, as it consists in the recurrence of noble traits, which are too pleasing ever to be viewed with indifference; like the regular features which we sometimes find in the face of a lovely woman, their charm consists in their own intrinsic gracefulness, rather than in the variety of their expressions. The Ohio has not the sprightly, fanciful wildness of the Niagara, the St. Lawrence, or the Susquehanna, whose impetuous torrents, rushing over beds of rocks, or dashing against the jutting cliffs, arrest the ear by their murmurs, and delight the eye with their eccentric wanderings. Neither is it like the Hudson, margined at one spot by the meadow and the village, and overhung at another by threatening precipices and stupendous mountains. It has a wild, solemn, silent sweetness, peculiar to itself. The noble stream, clear, smooth, and unruffled, swept onward with regular majestic force. Continually changing its course, as it rolls from vale to vale, it always winds with dignity, and avoiding those acute angles, which are observable in less powerful streams, sweeps round in graceful bends, as if disdaining the opposition to which nature forces it to submit. On each side rise the romantic hills, piled on each other to a tremendous height; and between them are deep, abrupt, silent glens, which at a distance seem inaccessible to the human foot; while the whole is covered with timber of a gigantic size, and a luxuriant foliage of the deepest hues. Throughout this scene there is a pleasing solitariness, that speaks peace to the mind, and invites the fancy to soar abroad, among the tranquil haunts of meditation. Sometimes the splashing of the oar is heard, and the boatman's song awakens the surrounding echoes; but the most usual music is that of the native songsters, whose melody steals pleasingly on the ear, with every modulation, at all hours, and in every change of situation.--_Hon. Judge Hall's Letters from the West_.

* * * * *

SNOW-WOMAN'S STORY.

By Miss Edgeworth.

"Yes, madam, I bees an Englishwoman, though so low now and untidy like--it's a shame to think of it--a Manchester woman, ma'am--and my people was once in a bettermost sort of way--but sore pinched latterly." She sighed, and paused.

"I married an Irishman, madam," continued she, and sighed again.

"I hope he gave you no reason to sigh," said Gerald's father.

"Ah, no, sir, never!" answered the Englishwoman, with a faint sweet smile. "Brian Dermody is a good man, and was always a koind husband to me, as far and as long as ever he could, I will say that--but my friends misliked him--no help for it. He is a soldier, sir,--of the forty-fifth. So I followed my husband's fortins, as nat'ral, through the world, till he was ordered to Ireland. Then he brought the children over, and settled us down there at Bogafin in a little shop with his mother--a widow. She was very koind too. But no need to tire you with telling all. She married again, ma'am, a man young enough to be her son--a nice man he was to look at too--a gentleman's servant he had been. Then they set up in a public-house. Then the whiskey, ma'am, that they bees all so fond of--he took to drinking it in the morning even, ma'am--and that was bad, to my thinking."

"Ay, indeed!" said Molly, with a groan of sympathy; "oh the whiskey! if men could keep from it!"

"And if women could!" said Mr. Crofton in a low voice.

The Englishwoman looked up at him, and then looked down, refraining from assent to his smile.

"My mother-in-law," continued she, "was very koind to me all along, as far as she could. But one thing she could not do; that was, to pay me back the money of husband's and mine that I lent her. I thought this odd of her--and hard. But then I did not know the ways of the country in regard to never paying debts."

"Sure it's not the ways of all Ireland, my dear," said Molly; "and it's only them that has not that can't pay--how can they?"

"I don't know--it's not for me to say," said the Englishwoman, reservedly; "I am a stranger. But I thought if they could not pay me, they need not have kept a jaunting-car."

"Is it a jaunting-car?" cried Molly. She pushed from her the chair on which she was leaning--"Jaunting-car bodies! and not to pay you!--I give them up intirely. Ill-used you were, my poor Mrs. Dermody--and a shame! and you a stranger! But them were Connaught people. I ask your pardon--finish your story."

"It is finished, ma'am. They were ruined, and all sold; and I could not stay with my children to be a burthen. I wrote to husband, and he wrote me word to make my way to Dublin, if I could, to a cousin of his in Pill-lane--here's the direction--and that if he can get leave from his colonel, who is a good gentleman, he will be over to settle me somewhere, to get my bread honest in a little shop, or some way. I am used to work and hardship; so I don't mind. Brian was very koind in his letter, and sent me all he had--a pound, ma'am--and I set out on my journey on foot, with the three children. The people on the road were very koind and hospitable indeed; I have nothing to say against the Irish for that; they are more hospitabler a deal than in England, though not always so honest. Stranger as I was, I got on very well till I came to the little village here hard by, where my poor boy that is gone first fell sick of the measles. His sickness, and the 'pot'ecary' stuff and all, and the lodging and living ran me very low. But I paid all, every farthing; and let none know how poor I was, for I was ashamed, you know, ma'am, or I am sure they would have helped me, for they are a koind people, I will say that for them, and ought so to do, I am sure. Well, I pawned some of my things, my cloak even, and my silk bonnet, to pay honest; and as I could not do no otherwise, I left them in pawn, and, with the little money I raised, I set out forwards on my road to Dublin again, so soon as I thought my boy was able to travel. I reckoned too much upon his strength. We had got but a few miles from the village when he dropped, and could not get on; and I was unwilling and ashamed to turn back, having so little to pay for lodgings. I saw a kind of hut, or shed, by the side of a hill. There was nobody in it. It was empty of every thing but some straw, and a few turf, the remains of a fire. I thought there would be no harm in taking shelter in it for my children and myself for the night. The people never came back to whom it belonged, and the next day my poor boy was worse; he had a fever this time. Then the snow came on. We had some little store of provisions that had been made up for us for the journey to Dublin, else we must have perished when we were snowed up. I am sure the people in the village never know'd that we were in that hut, or they would have come to help us, for they bees very koind people. There must have been a day and a night that passed, I think, of which I know nothing. It was all a dream. When I got up from my illness, I found my boy dead--and the others with famished looks. Then I had to see them faint with hunger."

The poor woman had told her story without any attempt to make it pathetic, and thus far without apparent emotion or change of voice; but when she came to this part, and spoke of her children, her voice changed and failed--she could only add, looking at Gerald, "You know the rest, master; Heaven bless you!"

_The Christmas Box_

* * * * *

THE COSMOPOLITE.

* * * * *

ENGLISH GARDENS.

We are veritable sticklers for old customs; and accordingly at this season of the year, have our room decorated with holly and other characteristic evergreens. For the last hour we have been seated before a fine bundle of these festive trophies; and, strange as it may seem, this circumstance gave rise to the following paper. The holly reminded us of the Czar Peter spoiling the garden-hedge at Sayes Court; this led us to John Evelyn, the father of English gardening: and the laurels drove us into shrubbery nooks, and all the retrospections of our early days, and above all to our early love of gardens. Our enthusiasm was then unaffected and uninfluenced by great examples; we had neither heard nor read of Lord Bacon nor Sir William Temple, nor any other illustrious writer on gardening; but this love was the pure offspring of our own mind and heart. Planting and transplanting were our delight; the seed which our tiny hands let fall into the bosom of the earth, we almost watched peeping through little clods, after the kind and quickening showers of spring; and we regarded the germinating of an upturned bean with all the surprise and curiosity of our nature. As we grew in mind and stature, we learned the loftier lessons of philosophy, and threw aside the "Pocket Gardener," for the sublime chapters of Bacon and Temple; and as the stream of life carried us into its vortex, we learned to contemplate their pages as the living parterres of a garden, and their bright imageries as fascinating flowers. As we journeyed onward through the busy herds of crowded cities, we learned the holier influences of gardens in reflecting that a garden has been the scene of man's birth--his fall--and proffered redemption.

It would be difficult to find a subject which has been more fervently treated by poets and philosophers, than the _love of gardens_. In old Rome, poets sung of their gardens. Ovid is so fond of flowers, that in his account of the Rape of Proserpine, in his Fasti, he devotes several lines to the enumeration of flowers gathered by her attendants. But the passion for gardening, which evidently came from the East, never prevailed much in Europe till the times of the religious orders, who greatly improved it.

Our anecdotical recollections of the taste for gardens must be but few, or they will carry us beyond our limits. Lord Bacon appears to have done more towards their encouragement than any other writer, and his essay on gardens is too well known to admit of quotation. Sir William Temple has, however, many eloquent passages in his writings, in one of which he calls _gardening_ the "inclination of kings, the choice of philosophers, and the common favourite of public and private men; a pleasure of the greatest, and the care of the meanest; and, indeed, an employment and a possession, for which no man is too high or too low." Perhaps John Evelyn did more than either of these philosophers. Temple's garden at Moor Park was one of the most beautiful of its kind; but at the time when Evelyn introduced ornamental gardening into England, there were no examples for imitation. All was devised by his own active mind; and in the political storms of his time, his garden and plantations became subjects of popular conversation; while the intervals of his secession from public life were filled up in writing several practical treatises on his favourite science. At Wotton, in Surrey, may be seen the large, enclosed flower-garden, which was to have formed one of the principal objects in his "Elysium Britannicum;" and this idea has been partly realized by one of his successors.

Andrew Marvell has, however, anathematized gardens with much severity, in some lines entitled "The Mower against Gardens;" and commencing thus:--

Luxurious man, to bring his vice in use, Did after him the world seduce, And from the fields the flowers and plants allure, Where nature was most plain and pure. He first enclos'd within the garden's square A dead and standing pool of air; And a more luscious earth from them did knead, Which stupify'd them while it fed, &c.,

On the other side, old Gerarde asks his courteous and well-willing readers--"Whither do all men walk for their honest recreation, but where the earth has most beneficially painted her face with flourishing colours? and what season of the year more longed for than the spring, whose gentle breath entices forth the kindly sweets, and makes them yield their fragrant smells." Lord Bacon, too, thus fondly dwells on part of its allurements:--"That flower, which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air, is the violet. Next to that is the musk-rose, then the strawberry leaves, dying with a most excellent cordial smell. Then sweet briars, then wall flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlour, or lower chamber window. But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three, that is burner, wild thyme, and water mints. Therefore, you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure where you walk or tread." Sir William Temple says Epicurus studied, exercised, and taught his philosophy in his garden. Milton, we know, passed many hours together in his garden at Chalfont; Cowley poured forth the greatness of his soul in his rural retreat at Chertsey; and Lord Shaftesbury wrote his "Characteristics," at a delightful spot near Reigate. Pope, in one of his letters, says, "I am in my garden, amused and easy; this is a scene where one finds no disappointment;"--and within the same neighbourhood, Thomson

"Sung the Seasons and their change."

England can likewise boast of very great names who have been attached to this art, though they have not written on the subject. Lord Burleigh, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Capell, William III--for Switzer tells us, that "in the least interval of ease, gardening took up a great part of his time, in which he was not only a delighter, but likewise a great judge,"--the Earl of Essex, whom Lord William Russell said "was the worthiest, the justest, the sincerest, and the most concerned for the public, of any man he ever knew;" Lord William Russell too, who, as Switzer tells us, "made Stratton, about seven miles from Winchester, his seat, and his gardens there were some of the best that were made in those early days, such indeed as have mocked some that have been done since, and the gardens at Southampton House, in Bloomsbury Square, were also of his making." Henry, Earl of Danby, the Earl of Gainsborough, "the _Maecenas_ of his age," the Earl of Halifax, the friend of Addison, Swift, Pope, and Steele; Lord Weymouth, of Longleate; Dr. Sherard, of Eltham; the Earl of Scarborough, an accomplished nobleman, immortalized by Pope, and by the fine pen of Chesterfield; and the Duke of Argyle, with numerous other men of rank and science, have highly assisted in elevating gardening to the station it has long since held.[6]

[6] "Portraits of English Authors on Gardening."

Beauty and health are the attributes of gardening. In illustration of the former, we remember a passage from Gervase Markham, thus: "As in the composition of a delicate woman the grace of her cheeke is the mixture of red and white, the wonder of her eye blacke and white, and the beauty of her hand blew and white, any of which is not said to be beautifull if it consist of single or simple colours; and so in walkes or alleyes, the all greene, nor the all yellow, cannot be said to be most beautifull; but the greene and yellow, (that is to say the untroade grasse, and the well-knit gravelle) being equally mixt, give the eye both lustre and delight beyond comparison." Abercrombie lived to the age of _eighty_, when he died by a fall down stairs in the dark. He was present at the battle of Preston Pans, which was fought close to his father's garden walls. For the last twenty years he lived chiefly on tea, using it three times a-day; his pipe was his first companion in the morning, and last at night. He never remembered to have taken a dose of physic in his life; prior to his last fatal accident, nor of having a day's illness but once.

The association of gardening with pastoral poetry, was exemplified in Shenstone's design of the Leasowes--as Mr. Whately observes--a perfect picture of his mind, simple, elegant, and amiable, and which will always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verses, or whether in the scenes which he formed, he only realized the pastoral images which abound in his songs. That elegant trifler, Horace Walpole, was enthusiastically fond of gardening. One day telling his nurseryman that he would have his trees planted irregularly, he replied, "Yes, sir, I understand; you would have them hung down--somewhat _poetical_."

PHILO.

* * * * *

NOTES OF A READER.

* * * * *

PORTRAIT OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Appended to a fine portrait of Sir Walter Scott, in the _Literary Souvenir_ for 1829, is the following--by _Barry Cornwall_:--

We can scarcely imagine a thing much more pleasant indeed, to an artist, than to be brought face to face with some famous person, and permitted to examine and scrutinize his features, with that careful and intense curiosity, that seems necessary to the perfecting a likeness. It must have been to Raffaelle, at once a relaxation from his ordinary study, and a circumstance interesting in itself, thus to look into faces so full of meaning as those of Julius and Leo--and to say, "That look--that glance, which seems so transient, will I fix for ever. Thus shall he be seen, with that exact expression (although it lasted but for an instant) five hundred years after he shall be dust and ashes!"

This was probably the feeling of Raffaelle; and it must have been with a somewhat similar pride that our excellent artist, Mr. Leslie, accomplished his portrait of Sir Walter Scott, which the reader will have already admired in this volume. It is surely a perfect work. No one, who has once seen the great author, can forget that strange and peculiar look (so full of meaning, and shrewd and cautious observation--so entirely characteristic, in short, of the mind within) which Mr. Leslie has succeeded in catching. One may gaze on it for ever, and contemplate an exhaustless subject--all that the capacious imagination has produced and is producing,--the populous, endless world of fancy.

Let the reader look, and be assured that _there_ is the strange spirit that has discovered and wrought all the fine shapes that he has been accustomed to look upon with wonder--Claverhouse, and Burley, and Bothwell,--Meg Merrilies and Elspeth--the high and the low--the fierce and the fair--Cavaliers and Covenanters, and the rest--presenting an assemblage of character that is absolutely unequalled, except in the pages of Shakspeare alone. There is no other writer, be he Greek, or Goth, or Roman, who has ever astonished the world by creations so infinitely diversified. The mind of the author appears so free from egotism, so large and serene, so clear of all images of self, that it receives, as in a lucid mirror, all the varieties of nature.

* * * * *

ON A GIRL SLEEPING.

Thou liv'st! yet how profoundly deep The silence of thy tranquil sleep! Like death it almost seems: So all unbroke the sighs which flow From thy calm breast of spotless snow, Like music heard in dreams.

Thy soul is filled with gentle thought, Unto its shrine by angels brought From Heaven's supreme abode; Thy dreams are not of earthly things, But, borne upon Religion's wings, They lift thee up to God.

_Blackwood's Magazine._

* * * * *

A species of _fames canina_ is to be met with amongst schoolboys, which affects the _juveniles_ most when most in health. We remember a gentleman offering a wager, that a boy taken promiscuously from any of the public charity-schools, should, five minutes after his dinner, eat a pound of beef-steaks.--_Brande's Jour._

* * * * *

THE GIPSY'S MALISON.

Suck, baby, suck, mother's love grows by giving, Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting; Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting. Kiss, baby, kiss, mother's lips shine by kisses, Choke the warm breath that else would fail in blessings; Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses Tender thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. Hang, baby, hang, mother's love loves such forces, Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging: Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging.--

So sang a wither'd Sibyl energetical, And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical.

C. LAMB. _Blackwood's Magazine._

* * * * *

EPICURES.