such twaddle as this should ever have been considered poetry. We of this century are more difficult to please in the matter; and Master Hughes, had he lived among us, would not have been considered one of the second, but of the seventh-rate poets.

We are, however, approaching a part of the Thames that teems with reminiscences of true poets. For the next fifteen or twenty miles of our course, there is hardly a spot on either shore which is not associated with the names of Cowley, Denham, Pope, Gay, Collins, Thomson, or the predecessors and contemporaries of these writers. The very stones and trees on the Thames' banks "prate of their whereabouts," and whisper in the ear of the lover of song, "Here Cowley lived,"-" here Pope wrote, or here he took the air in a boat," -"here is Thomson buried," or, "here Denham stood when he imagined the beautiful eulogium upon the river, which has been so often quoted," and here King William "showed Swift how to cut asparagus in the Dutch way." We must not, however, digress, but mention all these things in their proper places.

As we draw near to the elegant suspension bridge of Hammersmith, we pass the site

of the once celebrated Brandenburg House, where the luckless consort of George the Fourth ended her unhappy life. Here, during the popular excitement occasioned by the trial in the House of Lords, thousands of persons proceeded daily to carry their addresses of confidence or of sympathy. Sometimes as many as thirty thousand people were known to set out from London on this errand, in carriages, on horseback, and on foot, preceded by bands of music, and bearing banners, or emblems of the various trades that formed the procession. After her death, the place, odious in the eyes

of George the Fourth, was purchased by that monarch, and razed to the ground. Some traces of the wall and a portion of the gate alone remain to mark the place where it stood. It was once the property of Prince Rupert, by whom it was given to the beautiful Mrs. Hughes, an actress, by whose charms his heart was captured. It was also inhabited at one time by the Margravine of Anspach.

Hammersmith is famous for a nunnery established in the seventeenth century. About fifteen years ago, the place was noted in London as the scene where an awful ghost played his antics, to the great alarm of many silly people, At the end of the last century, Loutherbourg the artist resided here, and drew great crowds to his house by an exhibition something akin to the mummeries of animal magnetism as now practised. He pretended to cure all diseases by the mere laying on of the hands, aided by prayer; and it is mentioned that as many as three thousand people at a time waited around his garden, expecting to be relieved of their infirmities by this wonderful artist. But of all the reminiscences attached to Hammersmith, the most interesting is, that Thomson the poet once made it his dwelling-place, and composed part of his "Seasons" there, in a tavern called

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the Dove Coffeehouse. Thomson, for the last twenty years of his life, was a constant haunter of the Thames; he lived, died, and was buried on the banks of his favourite river. It may be said, indeed, without any disparagement to the Thames, that it killed this sweet poet and amiable man; for he caught a severe cold upon the water, when sailing in an open boat from London to Kew, which, being neglected, proved fatal a short time afterwards.

Chiswick is the next place we arrive at,Chiswick, the burial place of Hogarth, and where a monument is raised to his memory, for which his friend Garrick wrote the following inscription:

"Farewell, great painter of mankind,

Who reached the noblest point of art;
Whose pictured morals charm the mind,
And through the eye correct the heart.

If genius fire thee, reader, stay;

If nature move thee, drop a tear;
If neither touch thee, turn away,

For Hogarth's honour'd dust lies here."

This epitaph has been very much admired, but it is by no means a favourable specimen of that. kind of composition. The first two lines are tame and prosaic, and the word "farewell" is inappropriately made use of. To say "fare

well" to the ashes of the dead is natural to those who look for the last time on the face of one they loved; but the object of an epitaph being merely to inform the reader of the great or the good man who moulders below, there is no necessity for the word of leave-taking. The thought in the last stanza is much better, and, were it not for the unreasonable request that we should weep over the spot, would be perfect. Men cannot weep that their predecessors have died. We may sigh that neither virtue nor genius can escape the common lot of humanity, but no more. We cannot weep. Admiration claims no such homage; and, if it did, we could not pay it.

In this churchyard are buried also, Mary, the daughter of Oliver Cromwell; Ugo Foscolo; Barbara Villiers Duchess of Cleveland; Judith, the wife of Sir James Thornhill, the painter; their daughter, married to the immortal Hogarth; Loutherbourg, the magnetiser and artist, already mentioned; and Kent, the famous architect and gardener.

A little further up the stream stands Chiswick House, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, almost hidden from the view by the tall trees amid which it is embowered. From this point upwards there is a constant succession of