great park; the romantic environs of Runymede, the sacred theatre of vindicated rights; the pastoral scenery of Frogmore; the rich fertility of the northern view long level, by its mantling corns that had now assumed their ripened yellow hue, diversifying the verdure of the southern prospect; fringed with distant woods, and bounded by acclivities, which, without lessening the interest of the nearer scenery, served to limit contemplation to definite objects. Immediately under the eye occupied in that direction, the nurse of British learning raised her venerable head; the Thames, meandring through those woods and dales and lawns, and washing the glittering towers and hills with its gilded streams, beautiful itself, and enhanced every other beauty, and, like the poet’s magic pen, whatever it touched adorned. To a spectator of genius, a prospect does not merely present the objects that assail his eyes; its chief effect is often by association. Destitute of sensibility and fancy a beholder must be, who reaching the top of Portsdown hill, and descrying the distant Isle of Wight, or the Fareham forest, the former a more prominent, and the latter a more beautiful object, than the flat environs of Portsmouth, would not chiefly regard the town he was approaching, not as a place containing a certain number of buildings, but as the grand receptacle of English strength. Hamilton viewing Windsor transcending every place that he had beheld in the various excellencies of external nature, cultivated, but not overwhelmed by art, now regarded it in a different light; as the seat of royalty, subjecting to the survey of its owner almost every different characteristic of English rural beauty. In its agricultural and pastoral objects it involves the grand inlet of transcending commerce; there its benignant possessor can, with the exultation of conscious patriotism, happy in the accomplishment of its benevolent purposes, say--“these are the pastures and farms of ability, enterprize, and industry, fostered by freedom that is regulated by order, and which having produced opulence, with skilful taste employs part of it in super-adding ornament to utility, and an opulence diffused through various ranks, giving to the mechanic and the peasant those neat and comfortable houses which constitute the many flourishing hamlets and villages that present themselves to the gladdened eye. Before us glides the Thames, wafting merchandize between my inland country and my metropolis, and, even here, long before it imbibes the ocean, it presents a growing scene of the industry and traffic which so eminently distinguish its matured course beyond all other rivers.” “Here,” said our hero, pointing to the chapel, “our Sovereign seeks, in religion, the best support of moderate and virtuous royalty. There learning employs her stores in inuring youth to sound knowledge, just principles, and sentiments which must ever support mingled loyalty and freedom.”