IV.

A TRIP TO WINDSOR.

FROM Waterloo bridge, the aerial perspective would have inspired Turner. The sunshine glimmered athwart a haze of coal-smoke and vapor, which made the bright tints saffron, and the dark umber; and through this veil, magnified and colored according to the refraction, were visible the drooping sails of the river-craft, the massive arches of the bridges, piles of buildings on either side; here the bright lines of the new houses of Parliament, and there the sombre walls of Lambeth palace. Quite scenic and picturesque, at that moment, appeared these objects as seen during our rapid transit to the station; it was one of those glimpses which coin the landscape more vividly than a long and meditative gaze, for Nature, the great and everworking artist, had momently created a memorable effect of light and shade. I could not but deem the

view propitious, for it harmonized my thoughts for the day's excursion, and seemed to drop an emblematic curtain between noisy London and the meadow-land we approached; and unlock, by an appeal to the imagination, the fetters of routine, and thus dispose the mind to expatiate in the sphere of the past. This mood, however, was interrupted by the engine-whistle, shrieking echo of a locomotive age, and those charts of English instincts-"Punch,” "Bell's Life," and "The Times." The humor, combativeness, and dogmatism, of these prints, however, had a sedative effect upon the company; and left me at liberty to gaze from the car-window, and invoke the associations of the landscape. I looked down, Asmodeus-like, upon the tiled roofs of Vauxhall, and the trees of its once-famous gardens, and thought of the gayeties identified with the name. A dense mist brooded over the housetops, above which the road is constructed; but when we emerged into the open country, a range of fields met the eye, some vividly green, others inundated; here dark with new furrows, and there laid out in vegetablegardens, where the cabbages and turnips flourished luxuriantly even in January.

This downward glimpse of a scene where Horace Walpole gossipped, Johnson moralized, and "little Burney" gleaned the material of her once-famous novels, revived the idea of that anecdotical and therefore best-remembered era of London life and

literature, which preceded the age of steam. It was refreshing, with the whirling sensation of a rail-car upon me, and the proofs at once of the fecundity and superficial character of the press before my eyes, to think of a time when people read with avidity the lay-sermons of Steele, and had leisure to hold long discussions about old authors and the manners of the day; when men of taste and fortune, like Walpole, took delight in jotting down the social events of the hour, in a style that insured their reaching posterity; and when the authors, statesmen, actors, and artists of the time, fraternized in frank and jovial cliques, with such men as Reynolds, Goldsmith, Burke, and Garrick, for central figures. I could readily imagine that these suburban resorts breathed a more genial inspiration to such brainworkers of feverish London, when approached by barge, and the transition from busy streets to rural avenues was more gradual. The comparatively quiet background of life then gave more relief to the individuals who thus represent it to our imaginations. They were neither so widely scattered, nor so lost in the mass, as the thinkers and votaries of art of to-day. There was space enough around each to secure a free recognition; and their pursuits so isolated them from the crowd as to make them a galaxy in the social firmament. In the retrospect of our times, the canvass will be too crowded to bring out, in just proportions, the leaders in art and letters;

culture has become more diffused, genius less individual.

Here and there, along the road, my gaze rested on the unequivocal signs of a manufacturing district a row of untidy brick cottages, and fen-like lands; but, at intervals, came the true features of rural lifegreen turf, a sportsman and his dog, oaks, poplars, and elms, which, although leafless, gave rich promise of vernal beauty; and, in one field, some mowers were cutting the barley; while an occasional clump of pines, cypresses, or cedars, added to the latent freshness of the landscape. Then came Putney; and again, as at almost every step around London, the human began to blend with the local, and yield to tame scenery the moral picturesqueness derived from the idea of original character. What varied phases of historical men does the name revive: here stern Cromwell kept his headquarters, elegant Gibbon was born, and noble Pitt expired. How impressively does the recollection of English civic and literary life thus identify itself with the view of her rural prosperity!

Here a venerable tree gnarled and mossed, there a tawny hay-rick of symmetrical proportions; now a lane with a footpath bordered by the most vivid grass, then a hedge impervious to the eye; and sometimes a meadow of cool emerald expands, like the plains of Lombardy, in early summer. The landscape was smooth, well-defined, and fresh, and re