As every thing is to be found in England, I met with an Englishman of rank, to-day, who has endeavoured to introduce German habits, German domestic arrangements, and a German tone of society into his house. This is Earl S——, who lived in our fatherland for a long time in rather narrow circumstances, and suddenly came into a very large fortune. The only thing in the English taste was the crimson liveries of his people, with canary-coloured inexpressibles and stockings;—all the rest was German; even the hour of dining was an approach to ours. The length of the dinner was in the highest degree wearisome to me; I sat upon thorns, especially as I was expected elsewhere.
In spite of my ill-humour, however, I could not help laughing at the Wienerisch (Vienna dialect) of my Austrian neighbour.
May 16th.
I have been spending some days in the country at the Epsom races. The scene was very lively; all the roads full of swiftly-rolling equipages; and a large green hill in the middle of the plain, around which the races are held, so thickly covered with a thousand unharnessed carriages, and a motley crowd of horsemen and foot-passengers, that I never saw a more picturesque popular festival.—Now set this picture in the frame of a pretty cultivated landscape, with a sky full of dark clouds, much rain, and rare but hot gleams of sunshine.
I returned yesterday, that I might not miss a party at the King’s to-day, to which I was invited—an event here looked upon as an extraordinary ‘bonne fortune.’—You must not associate any idea of Court with it: but it is certain that the Ideal of a fashionable house cannot be more completely realized. Every comfort and every elegance of a private gentleman is united in the most tasteful and substantial manner with royal magnificence; and the monarch himself is, as is well known, prouder of nothing than of the title of “the first gentleman in England.”
May 30th.
Though the everlasting whirl leaves little leisure, (and once drawn into the vortex it is not easy to extricate one’s-self, even though one may find no pleasure in it,) I yet find a moment, from time to time, for more quiet and more durable enjoyment.
In one such, I lately visited a most interesting collection of pictures;—all portraits of persons eminent in English history. It was remarkable how frequently most of them corresponded in features and expression with the picture history has left us of them. The celebrated Lord Burleigh had moreover a striking resemblance to the great State Chancellor (Staats Kanzler) of Prussia, though he is greatly disguised by his head-dress, which is like an old wife’s cap. James the First was divertingly true to his character; as was also his ambassador, the eccentric knight who so delightfully declares in his memoirs, that wherever he went, he charmed both men and women; and that his nature was like that of no other man, for that both he and all descended from him sent forth an atmosphere of the most agreeable natural fragrance.
I then went to another collection, consisting of modern paintings in water-colours, in which branch of art the English have certainly attained to a singular perfection. One is astonished at the glow and depth of colouring they produce. The Scotch landscapes were remarkably fine: there was a Sunset in the Highlands which rivalled Claude in truth; and a twilight on Loch Lomond, a poem full of romantic beauty. I had still time for a long ride, in the course of which, committing myself as usual to the guidance of chance, I came upon a most enchanting park, such as only the climate of England can produce. The gardens lay, in all their indescribable glow of beauty, in a narrow and fertile green valley full of high trees, under which three silver springs gushed forth, and flowing away in meandering brooks, took their course in all directions amid impervious thickets of blooming rhododendrons and azaleas.
My delight in such scenes is ever saddened by the regret that you cannot behold them with me: your fine and accurate taste would draw from them a thousand ideas of new and lovelier creations; either by the skilful grouping of colours, or by graceful forms, or by the distribution of light, the effect of which may be so greatly enhanced by judicious thinning or massing of the foliage.