But there is a house on the other side of the river that demands a brief notice; we may cross to it by the ferry. A strange gloomy atmosphere seems to surround the cheerless pile. It is not ruinous, nor has it passed into the hands of lowly occupants; yet you see at a glance that it has fallen from its high estate. It appears occupied, yet neglected; deserted, yet preserved. The untrimmed gardens- the grass-grown walks-the long, noble, uncared-for avenues-the lofty ornamental gates, unpainted, rusty, evidently seldom opened all proclaim that it belongs to some owner whose chief or only care is that it shall not quite fall to ruin. One who visits it and wanders on an autumn evening about the sombre purlieus, will hardly wonder that it should have suggested to a poet of highly imaginative genius the imagery of that exquisite poem The Elm-tree.'

It is perhaps now its chief claim to general regard, that it was here Thomas Hood wrote or conceived a poem of such singular beauty; and it will be acknowledged that he has faithfully drawn the scenery-not indeed with topographical accuracy, but as invested with those lofty attributes which only genius is privileged to behold and to represent. Well might he, with such thoughts resting on his mind, feel as he sings, in lines which, beautiful as they are, serve but to herald in others far more beautiful

"With wary eyes, and ears alert,
As one who walks afraid,

I wander'd down the dappled path
Of mingled light and shade.-
How sweetly gleamed that arch of blue
Beyond the green arcade!

How cheerly shone the glimpse of heav'n
Beyond that verdant isle !

All overarch'd with lofty elms,
That quench'd the light the while,
As dim and chill

As serves to fill

Some old cathedral pile !"

But the plain prose of the history of Ham House must be briefly told. It was built in 1610, by Sir Thomas Vavasour; in 1651 it passed into the possession of Sir Lionel Tollemache, in whose descendants, the earls of Dysart, it yet remains vested. His widow, famous in the history of that time, under the title of the Duchess of Lauderdale, greatly enlarged and altered the mansion; and Charles II. furnished it at a considerable expense. It was at Ham House that the Cabal held their meetings. It has a more honourable celebrity as the birth-place of the eminent statesman, John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich. Ham House was the place to which James II. was directed by the Prince of Orange to remove, after his unsuccessful attempt to escape from the kingdom; but the King objected to it, as being too damp for a winter residence he wished to be nearer the sea.

Ham House is a fine specimen of the somewhat fanciful style that was engrafted on the old Tudor domestic architecture. It is of red brick, with a slated roof of high pitch. The front is varied, and though quaint, not unpleasing in design. The most remarkable feature is a series of busts in

niches, which range along the entire frontage above the windows of the ground-floor, and are continued round the garden walls. From the mansion in various directions runs

In the grounds at the rear of the house may be seen those old contorted firs which stand out so grandly in the poem-" a forest Laocoon."

The interior is said to present an almost unchanged example of a Stuart mansion. Only a few of the apartments are inhabited, but the quaint and costly original furniture for the most part remains undisturbed. Various paintings cover the ceilings of the chief apartments. Vandyck's pictures hang on the walls. The old Duchess of Lauderdale's chamber remains as when she occupied it. Her cane rests against her great chair; her desk is as though ready for use.

We cannot turn aside to Petersham; rather let us at once ascend

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Thy hill, delightful Sheen :- there let us sweep
The boundless landscape.'

A short walk will bring us to Richmond Terrace, where suddenly the matchless prospect bursts upon the view. However the imagination may have been raised, the view will fully satisfy it, that is, supposing the visitor has not been led to expect the sterner or wilder features of nature. It is a purely beautiful landscape which is spread before us, holding to the rugged grandeur of other famous scenes the same relation as the soft grace of feminine loveliness does to the severer character of manly strength.

Of all that belongs to the beautiful in scenery, little is wanting. Wood and water, softly swelling hills and hazy distance, with village spires and lordly halls, are blended in beautiful harmony. From the gentle slope of the hill a vast expanse of

country stretches far away, till the distance is closed by the hills of Buckinghamshire on the north-west, and the Surrey downs on the south-east; and all the intermediate space is one wide valley of the most luxuriant fertility, but appearing to the eye a succession of densely wooded tracts, broken and diversified by a few undulations of barer uplands; while here and there a line of light vapoury smoke, with a tower or spire, marks the site of a goodly town or humble village. In the midst the broad placid river, studded with islets, and its surface alive with flocks of swans, and innumerable pleasure-skiffs, winds gracefully away till lost among the foliage, only to be occasionally tracked afterwards by a glittering thread of silver, seen, as the sun glances suddenly upon it, between the dark trunks of the trees. And to the exceeding loveliness something of majesty is added by Windsor's royal towers, which in clear weather loom out grandly on the distant horizon. Nothing, however, but poetry can properly describe the surpassing beauty of the prospect, and the poetry that does well describe it will at once recur to every one.

Familiar as Thomson's description is, it would be unpardonable to quote it here, though the best that has been given of the view, and of course infinitely better than I could hope to give. It is indeed a beautiful picture, admirable in taste and almost perfect in execution. Thomson probably has no other equal to it, and it would be very difficult to find its equal among the poets of his generation. In all material points, moreover, it is as true as it is beautiful.

The view from Richmond Hill has always been a chief favourite with English painters. Probably

almost every landscape-painter has in some way depicted the prospect, and almost every one has caught some new beauty of the ever new scene. But the hill has a special connexion with English art. The house at the end of the terrace, on the right of the road, was built by Sir Joshua Reynoldsthough it must be confessed he did not spend much of his time in it. Malone says that “in summer Sir Joshua spent a few days at his villa on Richmond Hill; but he had very little relish for a country life, and was always glad to return to London, to which he was not less attached than Dr. Johnson; with him, justly considering that metropolis as the head-quarters of intellectual society." (Malone's Reynolds, i. xl.) One of the very few landscapes which Reynolds ever painted, however and his biographer was able to discover but three-was the view from the window of his drawing-room. Gainsborough, Hofland, and other eminent landscape-painters, have been for awhile residents in Richmond.

The gates of Richmond Park are but a few steps from the Terrace.

Richmond Park was enclosed by Charles I., and was originally called the Great or New Park, to distinguish it from Old or Lower Park, near the palace. The formation of the park caused a considerable ferment at the time; and the particulars were thought of sufficient importance to be related at length in Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion' but they are not important enough to be repeated here. In the reign of George II., an attempt was made to exclude the public from using the footpaths across the park, as at Bushy; and similarly resisted. Here the "village Hamp