at Charing Cross. If we must see trees, we have them in the parks, and our rooms are filled with exotic plants, to which both "Perse and Ind" have contributed their share. London, excellent as it is, cannot give every thing, we cannot have town and country too; but we have almanacks to inform us how the year passes on, and, if we do not choose to consult these, "Successive cries the season's change prepare, And mark the monthly progress of the year:- In the country, it is true, a man may be intellectually busy. Having first stored his mind in London, he may go into the country and rest quiet till he has digested, like a gorged serpent, what he has swallowed; but cannot he do this as well in London? The seclusion of a chamber in the Temple, or a back room up two pair of stairs in a peaceable street, has the advantage of a vicinity to life and bustle, and to the lively scenes of fashion, without going fifty miles to relax among them. There are hermits in London, who, for twenty years together, have scarcely looked out of their front doors, and have had little reason to complain of interruption. The charities of life are no where exhibited to such perfection as in London; there they go hand in hand with the refinements of luxury. There is more good done in London in the space of a year, and done, too, from praiseworthy motives, than in all the rest of the kingdom besides in double that space of time. While the country housewife is doling out farthings to the poor," the town lady is giving away pounds, and that, too, where the value of money is most sensibly experienced. Close living and hoarding are the bane of benevolence: the prodigal is always charitable, the miser cruel: generosity is most rife where all is on the largest scale, and the mind accustomed to contemplate things of magnitude scorns to be little only in its measures of beneficence. Thus great good is done in London with far less effort than accompanies the microcosmic charities of the country. To the disciple of literature, London is the great focus of enjoyment. The student may, as before observed, go into the country to digest what he has taken of intellectual food, but he can enjoy the feast no where but there. Men and books in all possible variety may be there contemplated, and that knowledge acquired, which alone leads to literary excellence. The greatest men the schools have sent forth were unknown to the public until they had unlearned much of what they had learned in them, discarded the stiffness of pedantic rules, and caught, almost by intuition, that knowledge which London and its society affords, re-modelling also their opinions before they could attain celebrity. Many who were only thought dunces at Oxford or Cambridge, or were scarcely noted for parts there, have been drawn forth by the inspiring effect of London, and attained immortal eminence. Thus London has matriculated all in her more liberal circle, and without her genial power many a man, now great, would have remained "unknowing and unknown." Her institutious, libraries, lectures, museums, her bookseller's shops and rendezvous of talented men, are advantages which the country cannot afford, and must ever confer upon her the pre-eminence in the eyes of literary men. In the country, except among the better class of persons, the ignorance of the people respecting all that they do not see, and even some part of what they do, is surprising. In London, every class is comparatively wise. Burke said, that one of the best speakers and plain sensible men he had ever heard was a journeyman carpenter, at a debating society which he had himself attended in London. A man is more independent in London than he can ever be in the country. He may utter his opinions in the public coffee-room without fearing the revenge of the parson, the attorney, or the excisemanthose tyrants of the village,-in case he presume to oppose their dicta in matters of religion or politics. In London, people mind their own affairs, and are liberal and tolerant towards such as differ from them in opinion-the sure sign of superior mental cultivation. Scandal is not propagated there, as it is in the country, for the actions and conduct of next-door-neighbours raise little curiosity. London is adapted to all pursuits, and every man finds his own followed up to a pitch of excellence of which he had little idea till he witnessed it. The politician may there study politics, and observe the vox populi of the most discriminating multitude in the world; the merchant find himself in the first of commercial cities; the lover of the drama in the best field for dramatic excellence; the man of pleasure in the best scene of enjoyment; the philosopher on the spot where every subject for observation is congregated, upon which he may meditate undisturbed; and the philanthropist at the place of all others where there is the widest field for the exercise of his benevolence. Can all these things be said of the country? Shades of Johnson and of De Staël! names not easily forgotten, how wisely ye preferred the advantages of city life! The "literary colossus" has left testimonies to his conviction of the superiority of London not easily overturned. Hail to thee, mighty city of Cockaigne! they who impudently jeer thee, whether the insidious fry of northern libellers, or the ill-judging race who assert the superiority over thee of spring hedge-rows, green-mantled pools, mud cottages made for poverty and love, cawing rookeries, village Cinderellas, flailswinging Corydons, unsophisticate Delias, pickle-making aunts, "Demurest of the tabby kind," foxhunting 'squires, rural parsons, "much bemused in beer," and the whole race of thy traducers-may they, one and all, be condemned to slumber forever in the rust of dulness, and die fattened in the sties which they have erected for themselves in the "bliss" of their own "ignorance!" Whilst thy empire, dark-brown Augusta, shall extend on every hand, and over thousands of additional population. Highgate and Hampstead, Greenwich and Deptford, shall ere long be domiciliated with thee; and even Richmond Hill be within thy circuit, on which thou mayst erect thy capitol, so that the city of the seven hills can no more be said to have outshone thee in extent than in freshness of glory! V. THE DINNER. THUS to his mate Sir Richard spoke- "Agreed," his lady cries," and first "Who next?" "Sir James and Lady Dunn." That regular tormentor; A couple, with one child, are sure To bring three fools outside their door, Whene'er abroad they venture." "Who next?"—" John Yates."-" What! M. P. Yates; Who o'er the bottle, stale debates Drags forth ten times a minute?" "He's like the rest whoever fails, Out of St. Stephen's school tells tales "Well, have him if you will."-" The Grants." "My dear, remember, at your aunt's I view'd them with abhorrence." "Why so?"-" Why, since they 've come from Lisle, (Which they call Leel) they bore our isle With Brussels, Tours, and Florence. "Where could you meet them ?"-" At the Nore." "Who next?""The Lanes." "We want two more, Lieutenant General Dizzy." "He's deaf." "But then he 'll bring Tom White." "True! ask them both the boy's a bite ; We'll place him next to Lizzy." 'Tis seven-the Hursts, the Dunns, Jack Yates, In march the Lanes, the Gatties. Yates carves the turbot, Lane the lamb, His helpmate pats her darling boy, All trot their hobbies round the room; They talk of dances, operas, dress, So have I seen, at Drury-Lane, Scenes cut; parts shifted; songs displaced; JOURNAL OF A TOURIST.-NO. IV. -O qui me gelidis in vallibus Hæmi Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbrâ! LET every man, even if his imagination be "duller than the fat weed that rots itself at ease on Lethe's bank," rest contented with its creations, and not attempt to compare them with the realities which they anticipated; for he may be well assured that in the great majority of instances he will be bitterly disappointed. The tamest embodying of fancy generally surpasses the most brilliant matter-of-fact; and to have all one's rich but indefinite ideas dissipated by the rude assault of ocular demonstration, is like being awakened out of a delicious dream by the dustman's bell. He is a wise man who saves all the expense of travelling; performs the grand tour in his easy chair; sets his mind in motion instead of his limbs; and conjures before him, by an instantaneous process of his mind, all those celebrated towns, ruins, and landscapes, which tourists expend so much time and trouble in exploring, and, after all, never behold in half so magnificent or picturesque a point of view, as the fire-side visionary, whose eyes have never wandered from the poker or the rug. According to the old adage of " omne ignotum pro magnifico," the less a man knows, the more magnificent are his ideas; and let him repose upon this imaginary grandeur, for there is poetical authority for declaring, that where "ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise.".... The reader may well think me timid, but I really feel seriously alarmed at the daily increase of my information, for every step forward seems to be the demolition of some delightful conception; and every new sight seen by the bodily eye, destroys in a moment some beautiful vision on which the mind's eye had feasted for years. Such has been the effect of my visit to-day to the Hermitage of Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the woods of Montmorency. O what picturesque, what romantic associations did I connect with this spot! A hermitage in the midst of woods is abstractedly scenic and piquant to the fancy; but when I recollected the glowing and pastoral beauties with which this morbid enthusiast had invested it in his Confessions-when I called to mind that he had here composed some of his most touching effusions, and had attributed their fervour to the inspiration of these sylvan and sequestered haunts, my imagination was disposed to run riot in the luxuriance of its rural shadowings. I had determined, however, that the Hermitage itself was a kind of Swiss cottage, somewhat like those in the gardens of the little Trianon, the trellis-work of whose latticed windows was nearly hidden by clusters of roses, jessamin, and honeysuckle; while acacias, mountain ash, laburnum, and other flowering trees gracefully threw their varicoloured foliage over the roof, contrasting finely with the gigantic boughs and impenetrable shade of the forest in which the whole was embowered. Alas! this inauspicious day was but a tissue of disappointments. After toiling up the hill of Montmorency, I looked around me, and if its valley be in reality, what it is generally stated to be,-one of the most picturesque and romantic spots in France, I can only say, so much the worse for France. I agree with the Parisian, who pronounced that the view from Richmond Hill would he no great matter, if you took away the wood and water, for here they |