The English, though a proud people, are really very moderate in their appreciation of the manifold charms of their incomparable isle. When I surveyed the river-view from Richmond-hill, I recalled the glorious waters of my own dear country, and many a darling scene which is imperishably stamped in my mind’s eye, and asked myself whether, indeed, this was more delightful to the sight than those. I was slow to admit anything inferior in the scenery of the Hudson and Susquehanna, when I compared them with so diminutive a stream as the Thames, and I even reproved myself for bringing them into parallel; but over and over again was I forced to allow, that “earth has not anything to show more fair,” than the rich luxuriance of the panorama which I then surveyed. A river whose banks are old historic fields, and whose placid surface reflects, from league to league of its progress, the towers of palaces and of churches which, for centuries, have been hallowed by ennobling and holy associations; which flows by the favourite haunts of genius, or winds among the antique halls of consecrated learning; and which, after sweeping beneath the gigantic arches, domes and temples of a vast metropolis, gives itself to the burthen of fleets and navies, and bears them magnificently forth to the ocean; such an object must necessarily be one of the highest interest to any one capable of appreciating the mentally beautiful and sublime; but when natural glories invest the same objects with a thousand independent attractions, who need be ashamed of owning an overpowering enthusiasm in the actual survey, and something scarcely less thrilling in the recollection! When I afterward looked towards Rome, and descried the dome of St. Peter’s from Tivoli, I felt, as Gray has somewhere observed, that nothing but the intellect is delighted there, while on Richmond-hill, the soul and the sense alike are ravished with the view, and fail to conceive anything more satisfying of its kind. If ever, which God forbid, the barbarian should overrun this scene, and make ruins of its surrounding villas and churches, the contemplative visitor of a future generation will still linger on those heights with far more of complicated and harmonious satisfaction than can possibly refresh the eye that wanders over the dreary Campagna. Yet how few of the great and fashionable in England have ever allowed themselves to appreciate the glories of their own scenery after this sort! But whether on those lofty banks, or down by the river-side, or wherever I wandered amid their green retreats, I owned to myself one sad disappointment. I repeated over and over again those verses, learned in school-days, in which Collins bewails the poet of the Seasons:— “Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore, When Thames in summer wreaths is dressed, And oft suspend the dashing oar, To bid his gentle spirit rest.”