Glide gently, thus for ever glide,
O Thames, that other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now fair river! come to me;
O glide, fair stream for ever so,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.
Thomson's description of the scenery of Richmond Hill perhaps hardly does it justice, but the lines are too interesting to be omitted.
Say, shall we wind
Along the streams? or walk the smiling mead?
Or court the forest-glades? or wander wild
Among the waving harvests? or ascend,
While radiant Summer opens all its pride,
Thy hill, delightful Shene[026]? Here let us sweep
The boundless landscape now the raptur'd eye,
Exulting swift, to huge Augusta send,
Now to the sister hills[027] that skirt her plain,
To lofty Harrow now, and now to where
Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow
In lovely contrast to this glorious view
Calmly magnificent, then will we turn
To where the silver Thames first rural grows
There let the feasted eye unwearied stray,
Luxurious, there, rove through the pendent woods
That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat,
And stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks,
Beneath whose shades, in spotless peace retir'd,
With her the pleasing partner of his heart,
The worthy Queensbury yet laments his Gay,
And polish'd Cornbury woos the willing Muse
Slow let us trace the matchless vale of Thames
Fair winding up to where the Muses haunt
In Twit nam's bowers, and for their Pope implore
The healing god[028], to loyal Hampton's pile,
To Clermont's terrass'd height, and Esher's groves;
Where in the sweetest solitude, embrac'd
By the soft windings of the silent Mole,
From courts and senates Pelham finds repose
Enchanting vale! beyond whate'er the Muse
Has of Achaia or Hesperia sung!
O vale of bliss! O softly swelling hills!
On which the Power of Cultivation lies,
And joys to see the wonders of his toil.
The Revd. Thomas Maurice wrote a poem entitled Richmond Hill, but it contains nothing deserving of quotation after the above passage from Thomson. In the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers the labors of Maurice are compared to those of Sisyphus
So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond, heaves
Dull Maurice, all his granite weight of leaves.
Towards the latter part of the last century the Empress of Russia (Catherine the Second) expressed in a French letter to Voltaire her admiration of the style of English Gardening.[029] "I love to distraction," she writes, "the present English taste in gardening. Their curved lines, their gentle slopes, their pieces of water in the shape of lakes, their picturesque little islands. I have a great contempt for straight lines and parallel walks. I hate those fountains which torture water into forms unknown to nature. I have banished all the statues to the vestibules and to the galleries. In a word English taste predominates in my plantomanie."[030]
I omitted when alluding to those Englishmen in past times who anticipated the taste of the present day in respect to laying out grounds, to mention the ever respected name of John Evelyn, and as all other writers before me, I believe, who have treated upon gardening, have been guilty of the same oversight, I eagerly make his memory some slight amends by quoting the following passage from one of his letters to his friend Sir Thomas Browne.
"I might likewise hope to refine upon some particulars, especially concerning the ornaments of gardens, which I shall endeavor so to handle as that they may become useful and practicable, as well as magnificent, and that persons of all conditions and faculties, which delight in gardens, may therein encounter something for their owne advantage. The modell, which I perceive you have seene, will aboundantly testifie my abhorrency of those painted and formal projections of our cockney gardens and plotts, which appeare like gardens of past-board and marchpane, and smell more of paynt then of flowers and verdure; our drift is a noble, princely, and universal Elysium, capable of all the amoenities that can naturally be introduced into gardens of pleasure, and such as may stand in competition with all the august designes and stories of this nature, either of antient or moderne tymes; yet so as to become useful and significant to the least pretences and faculties. We will endeavour to shew how the air and genious of gardens operat upon humane spirits towards virtue and sanctitie: I mean in a remote, preparatory and instrumentall working. How caves, grotts, mounts, and irregular ornaments of gardens do contribute to contemplative and philosophicall enthusiasme; how elysium, antrum, nemus, paradysus, hortus, lucus, &c., signifie all of them rem sacram it divinam; for these expedients do influence the soule and spirits of men, and prepare them for converse with good angells; besides which, they contribute to the lesse abstracted pleasures, phylosophy naturall; and longevitie: and I would have not onely the elogies and effigie of the antient and famous garden heroes, but a society of the paradisi cultores persons of antient simplicity, Paradisean and Hortulan saints, to be a society of learned and ingenuous men, such as Dr. Browne, by whome we might hope to redeeme the tyme that has bin lost, in pursuing Vulgar Errours, and still propagating them, as so many bold men do yet presume to do."
The English style of landscape-gardening being founded on natural principles must be recognized by true taste in all countries. Even in Rome, when art was most allowed to predominate over nature, there were occasional instances of that correct feeling for rural beauty which the English during the last century and a half have exhibited more conspicuously than other nations. Atticus preferred Tully's villa at Arpinum to all his other villas; because at Arpinum, Nature predominated over art. Our Kents and Browns[031] never expressed a greater contempt, than was expressed by Atticus, for all formal and artificial decorations of natural scenery.
The spot where Cicero's villa stood, was, in the time of Middleton, possessed by a convent of monks and was called the Villa of St. Dominic. It was built, observes Mr. Dunlop, in the year 1030, from the fragments of the Arpine Villa!