for the body may be housed with ease and comfort in a little space; but what human hands can erect a dwelling commensurate with the unlimited conceptions of genius? Men of contracted minds, therefore, prefer large habitations; but those who are occupied with views truly great, are contented with giving the body all that is reasonable. No schemes of ambition were more vast, and few minds were ever formed on a scale more capacious, than that of Bonaparte; yet he preferred his small abode at Malmaison to the Thuilleries or Versailles; the latter, indeed, he never deigned to inhabit. Just before his return from Egypt, he wrote to his brother Joseph-" Secure me a small house in the country, near Paris, or in Burgundy, where I hope to pass the winter." The rooms at Malmaison, his favourite residence, were little, and bore no proportion to the gigantic intellect of its inhabitant; and yet he, no doubt, planned in them the most daring of his schemes of future aggrandizement. Rousseau was remarkable for his love of secluded scenery in the country, his eloquent and delusive writings were generally composed in such situations. But a thousand such examples might be cited from among the sons of Genius. There is a tranquillity and a feeling of security about some spots in England which no native ever feels abroad. In such places, thought seems to multiply thought, and all the stores of intellect appear to come forth at our command. There is no crossing and jostling among our ideas, but they arrange themselves spontaneously. What is so delightful as the room that opens into a garden enclosed with dense foliage, from which nothing of artificial life can be seen, save the grey smoke rising perpendicularly from some concealed cottage chimney? English rural scenery is not artificial, as the term was once understood; we do not crop our yew hedges into fantastical figures, or shape our box trees into dragons, at least in modern days, and yet it commonly owes its most delightful charm to the hand of the planter. The infinite variety of irregular images constantly before us, prevents our being fatigued by the sameness of our secluded views, while the dark green water, deep and cool, refreshes and braces the mind, for green is the most exhilarating of colours. English landscape, in the rich and cultivated parts of the island, to which I now more particularly allude, consists of little more than a succession of green fields and embowered habitations; yet the variety of these is endless, and though the picture may possess no strong features, and be of its usual confined character, it always breathes a beautiful tranquillity, and the sensation of a comfortable home, in a way understood in no country but this. One of the most delicious retreats of the foregoing description that I have ever seen, is Guy's Cliff, the residence of Mr. Greatheed. The house is old, and has been built at different times; but it appears to harmonize so well with the wood and water around, that they all seem to have been created at the same moment. It has the most perfect character of peace and retirement of the "lodge in some vast wilderness," where "rumour of oppression and deceit" can never reach us. There are, it is true, some circumstances connected with it, which enhance its interest. Tradition makes it the residence of the famous Sir Guy of Warwick, and he is said to have been buried in a cave near the house. It was at Guy's Cliff that, after having left his beautiful Phyllis to seek "hair-breadth 'scapes in th' imminent deadly breach”—after performing a number of knight-errant-like adventures in Palestine, and combatting" dun cows" and fiery dragons-he put on the habit of a hermit, and took up his residence in the cave shown as his at the present day; his fair Phyllis, residing all the time at Warwick Castle, no great way off, little dreaming that her liege lord was so near her. The love of Sir Guy seems to have been thoroughly obedient to his sentiments of devotion, or else he imagined that the mortification and self-denial he put upon himself in not returning to the fair dame after the close of his perilous adventures, might give him a claim to a shorter residence in purgatory. However this might have been, when he was expiring, he sent for his loving Phyllis, and making himself known to her, she closed his dying eyes. The walk by the cave is still called Phyllis's Walk." This obscure, or it may be fabulous legend, produces an interest, and breathes that hallowed charm over the spot which is always experienced in contemplating a place consecrated to remembrance by traditional lore. We are content respecting such things to take leave of reason and matter of fact, if they either of them interfere with the faith, on which hangs the spell of our enjoymentand are not most of our enjoyments erected upon foundations as untenable? Honest old Rous, the antiquary, lived at Guy's Cliff; and the Queen of modern tragedy, the British Thalia, she who trod the stage without a rival-who harrowed up our souls in Lady Macbeth, and appeared, when personifying royalty, far superior in dignity to any thing we have ever seen in royalty itself-for hers was the poetry of acting, and accommodated the "shews of things to the desires of the mind," this lady was once an inhabitant of Guy's Cliff in a humble capacity, from the shades of which she emerged "to delight all hearts and to charm all eyes." It will hardly be thought fair, after these observations, to cite Guy's Cliff as a specimen of an English rural retreat, because a portion of our admiration might be attributed to associations unconnected with situation and natural beauty. But those who have visited it, unknowing the circumstances attached to its history, have confessed its claims to attraction. My first visit to it was on a fine summer evening, and it brought forcibly to my recollection, at the first glimpse of it, the lines of Virgil: Hic secura quies, et nescia fallere vita, Mugitusque bôum, mollesque sub arbore somni.* The weather had been hot during the day, and evening had arrived, when I turned down a short by-road, one side of which was bounded by the wall of the grounds, and the other by a quickset hedge, enclosing a flower-garden in full bloom and fragrance. A fine piece of water soon opened upon my view on the right hand, which I crossed by several rustic bridges, passing the front of a mill, where Camden reports that there has been one ever since the Conquest. The water was the Yet calm content, secure from guilty cares, WARTON "soft flowing Avon," which in this place, owing to a fall of two or three feet, differed in some degree from its usual placid appearance. It was no longer smooth, glassy, dark from depth, and reflecting, in motionless beauty, the willows, rushes, and noble oaks, that ornamented its banks. On the contrary, it was agitated and broken into whirls and eddies, until it nearly reached the house, about 400 yards off, where it resumed its mirror-like surface, and glided along "at its own sweet will," without a ripple, like the current of time stealing silently into eternity. Under the shade of some lofty trees, in a line with the front of the house from which I was separated by the river that almost washed the walls, I flung myself on the grass in pure idleness to enjoy the picture. No breeze stirred a leaf; a few white clouds were floating on the blue sky. Men like Dr. Johnson, or a citizen of Cheapside, might have preferred the filth of Fleet-street, or the exhalations of Smithfield, but to me the first few minutes in that situation were worth all London, or a dozen Londons. The mind in similar cases becomes intoxicated with delight, and for a time loses all power of forming definite ideas: it quaffs largely of the delicious draught which it does not taste until the first cravings of its thirst are satisfied. It is this intoxication of feeling-this excess of delight and admiration, that has disappointed the expectations of many in the effect produced upon genius by the view of a soul-stirring scene. Burns was once conducted to a cataract of great grandeur, which he surveyed in silent wonder. He did not write verses upon it, as his friends expected he would do, for he was overpowered by the scene; to have done so, he must have reflected; he could not, like a painter, do his work on the spot by the use of his eyes and hands. The mind was powerless, as to composition, being confused with admiration. No man can write his feelings at such moments; there must be an interval for reaction, that imagination may act and embody its ideas with order and symmetry. Willows The house was broken into angles; a part was erected upon arches, which were continued terrace-fashion beyond it on one side, and were covered with fine turf. A chapel with an antique tower of grey stone stood on the opposite side; the whole was backed with lofty trees and dense but varied foliage, rising "shade above shade," and reflected darkly in the water. A shrubbery and garden were situated close to the building; and at a little distance, surrounded by trees, was a green enclosure, in which a few sheep were feeding. Several swans floated proudly along the smooth part of the river, leaving in their track, on the dark water, a long stream of "dewy light." The fall near the mill threw its foam sparkling in the rays of the setting sun. and limes were quivering in reflection among the agitated water, while the shore on which the house stood was wrapped in that deep warm hue which distinguishes the shade at the hour of sunset. Retracing my steps across the Avon, I entered the shrubbery by a door in a low wall, which I found open, and soon reached the back part of the house, or what some might call the back front, looking down on an avenue of lofty fir and cedar trees towards the turnpike road, from which a stranger could have had no idea of the scenery next the water. The tout ensemble forcibly recalled the truly English picture of a pleasure-ground drawn by Sir P. Sidney in his Arcadia; though when be wrote it is to be presumed, that the ancient stiff unnatural style of gar dening was in full vogue. "The back side of the house was neither field nor garden, nor orchard; or rather, it was both field, garden, and orchard; for as soone as the descending of the staires had delivered them downe, they came into a place cunningly set with trees of the most taste-pleasing fruits; but scarcely they had taken that into their consideration, but they were sodainely stept into a delicate greene; of each side of the greene a thicket, and behind the thickets againe new beds of flowers, which being under, the trees were to them a pavilion, and they to the trees a mosaicall floore. So that it seemed that arte therein would needs be delightfull, by counterfeiting his enemie errour, and making order in confusion. In the middest of all the place was a faire pond, whose shaking chrystall was a perfect mirror to all the other beauties, so that it bare show of two gardens-one in deed, the other in shadows." After walking over the shrubbery, brimful of delight, as I found myself, I could not help returning to the spot from whence I had first seen the house, which became enveloped in deeper shade as the twilight advanced. The hollow bleating of cattle came sullenly upon the ear at intervals, from the meadows and moors that lay northward along the banks of the river. These, and the sound of the gently dashing water, were all that disturbed the stillness: for no voice was heard. The bat too flitted across the shade, beneath the close and lofty trees, impatient for a darker hour. Several ladies came out of the house, and moving along among the trees and shrubs, disappeared behind the clumps of foliage, their white dresses rendering them indistinctly visible amid the gloom. It was one of those moments when a "pleasing fit of melancholy" comes over the mind, and we begin to recall "bygone" times and forms of those we once loved and reverenced that now live no more. I drew out my watch instinctively; its former possessor was in the grave. I gazed upon the monitor of time, and could not help reflecting of how little account in duration is the existence of a mortal, when even its most trifling appendages outlive it. I thought too upon her who gave me being, and almost fancied that she stood before me, smiling with all a mother's tenderness. I thought too -but here I must talk no more of my reverie. The charm of English scenery is predominant at Guy's Cliff; poor indeed is the pomp of palaces to such a retreat. The air of antiquity about it is, however, less impressive than around some buildings of a more recent date. But all the accompaniments of our best rural beauty are there-foaming water, and that which is dark and still; thick shades; a total exclusion of foreign objects;* depth of green colour in the verdure; the gothic tower; the inartificial appearance of every thing; the idea of seclusion and comfort, all that is truly English in character. There, indeed, one might expect to find a "Cynosure of neighbouring eyes;" for where is beauty so interesting as in such a retreat? surely not in court amour, Mixt dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball." Amid such scenery the heart is always on the lips, and female loveli Except Blacklow Hill close by, on which an inscription records, that Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, was beheaded in 1311, and which adds greatly to the interest of the view. ness, so "imparadised," allures in its most bewitching manner. Retirements like these are gems studding the green face of our island; and while other lands may boast of finer cities, more splendid temples, and palaces far nobler than ours, we outshine the world in the graceful, virtuous, comfortable character of our sequestered villas and country scenery. V. PLACE ON POPULATION.* ONE of the most important of the questions which now occupy the attention of all who interest themselves in the improvement and happiness of the human race, is the subject of population. Whether the human species has, or has not, a tendency to multiply faster than the means of subsistence will allow; and whether, in consequence of this superior rapidity, the population has not become so numerous, in most countries, as to press closely upon the means of subsistence, has formed an object of frequent inquiry. About the beginning of this century, however, the circumstances calculated to elucidate the subject were more thoroughly collected, and the result presented to the public, by Mr. Malthus, in his "Essay on Population." The principle of increase was there so ably supported, and so fairly reasoned upon, that the thinking part of the community became pretty generally impressed with the justness of Mr. Malthus's views; and among those who concurred in them, no one could do so more heartily than Mr. Godwin. This gentleman has, however, thought fit to alter his sentiments with regard to the principle of increase, and has now written and published a work expressly designed to controvert the doctrine he formerly upheld. As his present views of the subject are likely to prove more palatable and agreeable to the mass of readers than such as go to restrain individual freedom of conduct, it is exceedingly to be desired that the arguments of the two opposing parties should be arrayed and compared by a third, and the value and soundness of each calculation respectively certified. This process has, we are glad to find, been performed in a satisfactory manner, by Mr. Place, who has likewise superadded various documents, and ascertained a number of facts bearing upon the question in dispute, which materially tend to account for the discrepancy between Mr. G. and Mr. M.'s statements. Although Mr. Godwin enforced by his own pen the arguments of Mr. Malthus, three years subsequently to the appearance of the "Essay on Population; he now enters the lists as a determined opponent of them, without accounting in any way for his change of opinion; the unlicensed terms of contempt and insolent derision with which Mr. Godwin treats his departed sentiments, being the only evidence his present work contains of his having formerly harboured them. No one who simply differed from a set of opinions could entertain so virulent an animosity against the holders, as the consciousness of desertion without assignable grounds invariably inspires. * Illustrations and Proofs of the Principle of Population; including an examination of the proposed remedies of Mr. Malthus, and a Reply to the objections of Mr. Godwin and others. By Francis Place. 8vo. pp. 280. † Reply to Dr. Parr, Mr. M'Intosh, &c. pp. 57, 58. |