We will not lightly despise the influence of these associations. The house in which Hooker wrote his Ecclesiastical Polity can never become common ground. Whatever, we have been told by Johnson, abstracts our minds from the present into the past, cannot fail to improve and elevate our moral nature. Adam Clarke wore a piece of the rock of Horeb about his neck, suspended by a silver chain. The telescope of Newton, in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, is appeal in behalf of sacred science. The chair in which Wicliffe was carried home in his last sickness, and the table on which he probably completed his translation of the Bible, are preserved at Lutterworth, and stimulate the heart of every thoughtful beholder to follow the good example of the great reformer. The sight of a place in which we have been happy or unhappy, says Beattie, renews the thoughts and the feelings that we formerly experienced there. With what rapture, after long absence, do we visit the haunts of our childhood and early youth! A thousand ideas, which had been for many years forgotten, now crowd upon the imagination, and revive within us the gay passions of that romantic period. An old room is full of the pleasures of memory

"Nor can the muse the gallant Sydney

pass,

The plume of war! with early laurels crown'd,

The lover's myrtle, and the poet's bay."

These were the sentiments of Thomson. We love to brush the dew from the grassy haunts of Chaucer at Woodstock; to wander along the glimmering lanes of Horton, where Milton walked with Contemplation; to suspend the dashing oar, as we glide in the moonlight by the tomb of Thomson; to meditate in the house in Huntingdonshire-in fancy, for it is now destroyed-where Dryden inscribed with a diamond upon a pane of glass the first lines of his Virgil; or to muse down the which tradition has given his name. summer sun in that shady grove to The stately beeches and spreading oaks of Knowle, that overhung the sublime visions of Sackville, are not visited without a thrill of gloomy terror. The graves of Stoke, that dimmed the eyes of Gray, continue to bring the tears into ours. The banks of the Jed derive a fresher bloom from the early footsteps of Thomson; and Ruberslaw recalls the magnificence of his winter storm.* Pope saunters before us down the verdant alleys of his own forest. The garden of Shenstone blooms to the eye of Memory in the fields of Hales Owen

Through the gloom of Shenstone's fairy

+ Rogers.

We live with Wordsworth amid the scenery of Ruydal, and hear the clear stream of the Greta tinkling over pebbles, while we recline under the palm-trees in Thalaba. "My father's residence in Hampshire,' writes Gibbon, in his Memoirs, p. 82, "where I have passed many light and some heavy hours, was at Buriton, near Petersfield, one mile from the Portsmouth road, and at the easy distance of fifty-eight miles from London." Can the traveller pass it without a sigh? Or will he not turn aside into that little quiet valley, eight miles to the east of Canterbury, on the skirts of Barham Down, where Gray passed the May and June of 1766; and accompany the poet in his excursions amid the orchards, cherrygrounds, corn-fields, green villages, and hilly woodlands of the neighbourhood, the Thames and Medway, with all their sails, glittering through the trees? Or walk with him among the verdurous ruins of Netley? Or gaze, by his side, in silent awe and wonder, upon an autumnal sunrise over the Southampton river, while theclouds and dark vapours open gradually right and left, rolling over one another in great smoky wreaths, and the tide (as it flowed gently in upon the sands) first whitening, and then slightly tinged with gold and blue ?"

The charm, belonging to the scenery which Genius has visited, is associated also with its abode. Even an old ruin has its voice of eloquent remembrance,

"And more than echoes talk along the walls.'

The house occupied by Locke at Oates, near Harlow, is now destroyed; but the old trees yet remain, under whose branches the solemn thoughts of the Reasonableness of Christianity gradually grew up in his mind into an argument. Nor do we pass by the birthplace of the celebrated Selden, without many interesting reflections. He was born at Salvington, a small village about two miles from Worthing. The cottage still bears upon its front the date of 1611. The father of Selden is supposed to have combined the labours of a wheel

The intellect of Selden displayed itself at a very early age; and upon the lintel of the cottage-door, now obscured by whitewash, may be still deciphered a Latin epigram, which tradition ascribes to the scholar's childhood. The cottage is of a very humble character. One end abuts on the lane that leads to it. "Its decayed thatch, crazy inclosures, and ill-kept garden," awake unpleasing feelings in the mind of a visitor. "The wood-work, arranged with formal design in the wall of the end that faces the lane, is no longer to be seen. Vines and currant-trees are trained over the front. The back overlooks a barn-yard. The front-door is very low, opening at once into the only sitting-room of the cottage." This is the description of Selden's biographer, who visited Salvington in the autumn of 1834. If we go into Devonshire, we find at Budleigh, about fourteen miles east of Exeter, the old farm-house where Raleigh was born. The oaken pew in the church, in which the Raleigh family sat, bears the arms of Raleigh's grandfather on the exterior. The tenant, who lives in the farmhouse, points out the room in which the celebrated courtier and traveller opened his eyes upon day; but there is no reason to believe the designation correct. The affection of Raleigh for his birth-place is a pleasing feature in his character; the letter in which he expressed a desire to purchase the farm-house has been frequently printed. Tytler thinks that Raleigh may have acquired from the situation of Hayes-upon the seathat early passion for maritime enterprise which afterwards distinguished him.† There he might "On the lost vessel bend his eager eye."

coast

When we visit the old city of Canterbury and there is no place more endeared to the heart of poetry and religion-if we walk along the north side of the High Street into Mercery Lane, we come upon the inn made famous by Chaucer. His picturesque procession winds before our eyes in sun and shadow. There is not one city in the empire that does not awaken some associations of

possess some spot of ground where Genius has meditated, or Virtue combated, or Piety endured. London is one large volume of aids to reflection, and one more eloquent than Coleridge could produce. If we walk in St. James's Park in a summer evening, let us enter it through York Street, Westminster. In this street blind Milton lived. Here some, at least, of his great epic was composed. Here

"Iris, issuing from her cloudy shrine," appeared to illuminate, to his inward eye, the darkness of his melancholy fortune.

"Et dans l'air s'enflammant aux feux d'un soleil pur;"

the enchanted fountain of Spenser seemed

"Pleuvoir en gouttes d'or, d'émeraude, et d'azur."

The house at Binfield is scarcely less dear than the house in York Street, or the cottage at Chalfont. At Binfield Pope wrote his most beautiful poems, and invented his fairy machinery. While walking beneath the boughs of that magnificent forest, in an autumnal evening, when the grassy paths are chequered with the glimmering leaves,

Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,"t

we almost expect to meet Ariel, and to see the sylphs

"their insect wings unfold, Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold;"

while their garments float upon the air,

44

Dipp'd in the richest tincture of the skies."§

From Dennis, the critic and criticised of Pope, we obtain a pleasant hint for a country walk; and a walk, too, which every one may enjoy :

"The prospects which in Italy pleased me most were that of Valdarno, from the Pyrenees; that of Rome and the Mediterranean, from the mountain of Viterbo ; of Rome at forty, and that of the Mediterranean at fifty miles distance from it; and that of the Campagna of Rome, from Tivoli and Frescati. But from a hill in

Delille Les Jardines, chant. i. † Cowper.

Leith Hill is between five and six miles south-west of Dorking. The beauty of the prospect is now diminished by surrounding plantations. It formerly embraced a landscape, 240 miles in circumference. Glimpses of the sea were caught through a chasm; and the majestic cathedral of St. Paul was discerned in the blue distance. While standing at the foot of Leith Hill, one pleasing recollection presents itself. Pursuing the path from Dorking to Shire, the traveller passes the secluded church of Wotton. Here is the tomb of the Christian and philosopher, John Evelyn; and within a quarter of a mile rises the house where he was born in 1620. It is now much altered, but retains some memorials of its celebrated inhabitant. There was recently to be seen the green-house where he studied the nature of plants; his books and portrait are in the library, and traces of his taste and ingenuity may still be recognised in the garden. The house is surrounded by some of the finest beech-woods in England. The garden at Albury Park near Dorking was laid out by Evelyn, and was long considered one of the loveliest places in the county. Nor should we forget Cooper's Hill, which inspired the earliest descriptive poem in our language; in which, slight as it is in construction, Denham shewed succeeding poets how to combine moral reflection with scenic illustration. The following lines, for example, have the philosophic dignity of Johnson. Looking down upon London from his rural elevation, he says,

"So raised above the tumult and the crowd,

I see the city in a thicker cloud Of business than of smoke, where men, like ants,

Toil to prevent imaginary wants;

Rape of the Lock. § Ibid.

Yet all in vain, increasing with their store,

Their vast desires but make their wants the more.

Where, with like haste, through several ways they run,

Some to undo, and some to be undone."

The entire neighbourhood of Dorking is exquisitely rich and varied. Reader get up, if possible, a picknick to Mr. Denison's park; there you may eat strawberries, with Dorking at your feet, and a green amphitheatre of thirty miles encircling you.

Or take another direction, and look into the miserable cottage at Elstow, near Bedford, where the infant ears of Bunyan heard the rude sounds of his father's trade, and where he received the elements of religious instruction, with which he afterwards coloured his visions of fancy. There is a deeper interest, even than that of poetry, in the history of this Spenser of the people. "I know of no book," writes Coleridge, "the Bible excepted, as above all comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth, according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress." Without venturing to re-echo this panegyric, we may admire the beautiful allegory of Bunyan, through which, like some gorgeous cathedral window, the sun streams in with kindling lustre. How many of us may exclaim with Cowper, in the fervent recollections of early days,

"O thou whom, borne on fancy's eager wing

Back to the season of life's happy spring, I pleased remember; and, while mem'ry

vet

Holds fast her office here, can ne'er for

get;

Ingenious dreamer, in his well-told tale, Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail; 'Whose hum'rous vein, strong sense, and simple style,

May teach the gayest, make the gravest smile.

Witty and well-employ'd, and, like thy Lord,

Speaking in parables his slightest word, I name thee not, lest so despised a name Should move a sneer at thy deserved

Yet e'en in transitory life's late day, That mingles all my brown with sober grey, Revere the man, whose Pilgrim marks the road,

And guides the Progress of the soul to God."

Or turn your eye to a more distant spot in the horizon. In a small valley near Grantham, lies Woolstode, the birth-place of Newton. There we can follow him in his daily walks to school, with the satchel at his back. Dials, the rude workmanship of his boyish fingers, are scrawled upon the walls. The apple-tree, so famous in tradition, survives; and the pear-tree under which he loved to sit, was long pointed out to the admiring visitor.

"The brow engraven with the thoughts of years,"

is lost for awhile in the cheerful eye and ruddy cheek of childhood. It is very pleasing to trace the majestic intellect of Newton through the gradual and mysterious processes of its developement; from his first imperfect efforts at analysis, until that glorious hour when, in the full maturity of intellect, vigour, and beauty, he

"Untwisted all the shining robe of day."

The busy neighbourhood of Chelsea, now only a long London street, abounds with pleasant recollections. The residence of Lord Shaftesbury, though subsequently turned into a poor-house, recalls Addison, who wrote in it many of his Spectators; and the graver meditations of Locke, who sometimes passed an hour in a summer-house in the garden. For Shaftesbury I do not profess any regard or esteem. Pope told Warburton that the Characteristics had inflicted severer wounds upon re vealed religion in England, than all the works of infidelity put together. But if Christianity ever really seemed to stoop beneath the onslaught of Shaftesbury, it was only to rise with a more glorious effulgence, and in all the terror of her arms. The club of the Giant forced Prince Arthur to the ground for an instant, but

"In his fall his shield, that covered was, Did loose his vele by chaunce, and open