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"Who calls the council, states the certain day.
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way."—Pope
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Two or three miles farther, and just past Hampton village, on the left bank, the traveller will notice a little rotunda with a Grecian portico with a mansion of some pretensions in the wooded back-ground. The house was Garrick's residence, and in the rotunda there originally stood Roubiliac's famous statue of Shakspere, now in the British Museum. Bushey Park and Hampton Court next tempt us to the shore. Great names of history again rise to memory—Wolsey, Cromwell, Williams. But the charm of Hampton Court is, that its palace and gardens are free of access to the people; a privilege which, all the summer through, is appreciated by eager, happy throngs. But let us cross the river to the comparative solitude of the two Dittons—"Thames," and "Long." An impromptu of poor Theodore Hook, lively and graceful, according to his wont, has led many a tourist in search of a holiday to this pretty neighbourhood, and the poet's memory is reverenced in the village accordingly. Here are the first and last verses:
"When sultry suns and dusty streets proclaim town's 'winter season,'
And rural scenes and cool retreats sound something like high treason—
I steal away to shades serene which yet no bard has hit on,
And change the bustling, heartless scene for quietude and Ditlon.
Here, in a placid waking dream, I'm free from worldly troubles,
Calm as the rippling silver stream that in the sunshine bubbles;
And when sweet Eden's blissful bowers, some abler bard has writ on.
Despairing to transcend his powers, I'll-ditto-say for Ditton."
Then comes trim Surbiton with its villas, and Kingston—once, as its name imports, a town of kings. Por here were crowned several Saxon monarchs; is there not the coronation-stone in the market-place, engraven with their names? Teddington Lock, a little lower down, is the last upon the Thames; and here too the anglers of the river put forth their chief and almost their final strength. The mile from Teddington to Eel-pie Island off Twickenham will be a quiet one indeed, if the voyager interfere not with the sport of one or other of these gentry, and draw down their resentment accordingly. Strawberry Hill reminds us of Horace Walpole, literary idleness, sham Gothic, and bric-à-brac. We glance and pass on. Pope's Villa no longer exists; only a relic of his famous grotto remains; but a monument to the poet is in Twickenham Church, with an inscription by Warburton, setting forth that Pope "would not be buried in Westminster Abbey."
Past wood-fringed meadows on either hand, the "Broadwater," now rightly named—sweeps on to Richmond, where we must ascend the far-famed hill, to gaze once more upon the finest river-view in Europe. A little farther down, on autumn days, off lsleworth, may be descried flights of swallows, preparing for their outward journey. "They arrive," writes the artist who has depicted the scene, "in a mass, at the same hour, without confusion, as it were in regiments, and in some of their oblique evolutions resemble a drift of black snow. At dusk they all sink down into the island or 'ait' opposite the church of Isleworth, where a large bed of osiers affords them in its slender wands a settling-place for the night."