What hast thou to do with sorrow,
Or the injuries of to-morrow?”
You have ample time to linger there amid
“The gleams, the shadows, and the peace profound,”
and get your mind informed with quietness and beauty, and fed with thoughts of other years, and of her whose story, like Helen of Troy’s, will continue to move the hearts of men as long as the gray hills stand round about that gentle lake, and are mirrored at evening in its depths. You may do and enjoy all this, and be in Princes Street by nine P.M.; and we wish we were as sure of many things as of your saying, “Yes, this is a pleasure that has pleased, and will please again; this was something expected which did not disappoint.”
There is another garden of Queen Mary’s, which may still be seen, and which has been left to itself like that in the Isle of Rest. It is in the grounds at Chatsworth, and is moated, walled round, and raised about fifteen feet above the park. Here the Queen, when a prisoner under the charge of “Old Bess of Hardwake,” was allowed to walk without any guard. How different the two! and how different she who took her pleasure in them!
Lines written on the steps of a small moated garden at Chatsworth, called
“Queen Mary’s Bower.
“The moated bower is wild and drear,
And sad the dark yew’s shade;
The flowers which bloom in silence here,
In silence also fade.
“The woodbine and the light wild rose
Float o’er the broken wall;
And here the mournful nightshade blows,
To note the garden’s fall.
“Where once a princess wept her woes,
The bird of night complains;
And sighing trees the tale disclose
They learnt from Mary’s strains.
“A. H.”
PRESENCE OF MIND, AND HAPPY GUESSING.
“Depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck—there is always some talent in it.”—Miss Austen, in Emma.