RAMBLES AMONG THE RIVERS.-No. IV.

THE THAMES AND HIS TRIBUTARIES.

BY CHARLES MACKAY.

Approach to Richmond.-The grave of Thomson.-Wit among the Tombstones. Richmond Palace. -The Battle of the Gnats. -View from Richmond Hill.-A Song by Mallet.-Gay, the poet.-Traditions of Ham House.-Eel-pie Island.The Poetical Sawyer.-Anecdote of Kean.

As we passed Kew-Bridge our mind was filled with a multitude of confused thoughts, reminiscences intricately blended, of poetry and the poets; of Jeanie Deans, and the Duke of Argyl; of Richmond Hill, and the charms of its far-famed lass; and of "maids of honour"-the chief delicacies of the place,-which, with a carnivorous appetite, we longed to devour. But, as we approached nearer our thoughts became more distinct, and finally fixed themselves upon the memory of James Thomson, the delightful bard of the Seasons, who is buried upon the spot. "O! yes," said we, quoting the ode of his friend Collins,

"Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore

When Thames in summer wreaths is drest,
And oft suspend the dashing oar,

To bid thy gentle spirit rest."

We were thus musing, when a merry strain now broke in upon our meditations. The band which had accompanied the steam-boat from London struck up the familiar air, "The lass of Richmond Hill;" a custom which has been observed ever since steam-boats have plied in this part of the river, to give us notice that we were at our journey's end.

Without stopping to ascend the hill, we struck at once into the lower parts of the town, and, by dint of inquiry, found ourselves in a few moments in front of the ancient, humble, but, in our eyes, beautiful church of Richmond. We forthwith strolled through the churchyard, in search of the sexton or door-keeper, that we might give him his fee, and be admitted inside. One of the first objects that caught our attention was a neat marble tablet upon the wall, with a medallion head sculptured upon it, and inscribed with the simple words, "To the memory of Edmund Kean: erected by his son, Charles Edmund Kean, 1839." We paused a moment, and took off our hat, for we are of the number of those who pay reverence to the inanimate sod, and the senseless ashes beneath it, if those ashes have ever been warmed by the soul of genius, or of goodness. We are also of the number of those who are critical in monumental inscriptions, and we considered this brief one for awhile, and, owning that it was enough, passed on. After inquiry at one of the cottages that skirt the churchyard, we were directed next door, to the pewopener, and that personage readily undertook to escort us over her little building; as important to her, and containing monuments as magnificent, and as well worth looking at, as either St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey. If we were pleased with the outside appearance of the church, we were still better pleased when we entered

within. It is an old-fashioned edifice, just large enough for a village, with a fine organ, neatly carved, and well-covered pews, and walls almost hidden by monumental tablets, and the whole looking as grand and modest as true piety itself.

Our cicerone, like one who was well accustomed to her task, was leading us round the church, beginning from the beginning, and showing us in due order the tombs of the worthies of Richmond, when we broke in upon her established practice, and requested her to point out at once the grave of Thomson. She led the way immediately to the darkest corner of the church, when, opening a pewdoor, she bade us enter. We had heard much talk of the munificence of the Earl of Buchan in erecting a memorial over the poet's ashes, and we looked around us accordingly for some handsome piece of monumental marble, which might be worthy of the donor, and sufficient for its avowed purpose,—the satisfaction of the bard's admirers. We could not conceal the expression of our disappointment, when the pew-opener, bidding us mount upon the seat of the pew, pointed out to us a piece of copper about eighteen inches square, so out of the reach of the ordinary observer,-so blackened by timeand so incrusted by the damp, that it was quite impossible to read one line of the inscription.

"Then you have not many visiters to this tomb?" said we to the pew-opener.

"O yes, we have," replied she; "but they are not so particular as you, sir: not one in a hundred cares to read the incription; they just look at it from below, and pass on."

We took out our pocket-handkerchief, and began to rub the damp verdigrise from the copper as the pew-opener spoke; which, she observing, mounted also upon the bench, and, taking her own handkerchief from her pocket, rubbed away with as much earnestness as we did. The dirt was an inch thick upon it; besides which, the letters were of the same colour as the plate on which they are engraven, so that, after all, we were afraid we should be obliged to give over the attempt as quite hopeless.

you

"There," she said, now I think will be able to read it," as the rust, by a vigorous application of her hands, was transferred from the tablet to her handkerchief. "I think you might manage to make it out, if you are particularly anxious about it."

We tried again accordingly, and, with some trouble, read the following inscription.

"In the earth below this tablet are the remains of James Thomson, author of the beautiful poems, entitled, 'The Seasons,' ‹ The Castle of Indolence,' &c. who died at Richmond on the 22nd of August, and was buried there on the 29th, O.S. 1748. The Earl of Buchan, unwilling that so good a man, and sweet a poet, should be without a memorial, has denoted the place of his interment for the satisfaction of his admirers, in the year of our Lord 1792.

"Father of light and life! Thou good supreme!
Oh! teach me what is good! Teach me Thyself!

Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,

From every low pursuit, and feed my soul,

With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure,
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!”

"We wish," said we to ourselves, "that his lordship's taste had been as good as his intentions, and that, instead of this trumpery piece of brass,—which cannot have cost him much more than five pounds, he had put up a marble tablet, which one might have read without all this scrubbing. How much better, too, it would have been, if his lordship had not obtruded his own name upon it!" If we had continued our soliloquy much longer, we should have found fault not only with the taste and liberality, but with the motives of his lordship; but we were saved from the uncharitableness by the pew-opener, who broke in upon our meditation to remind us that immediately under the pew on which we stood lay the ashes of the poet.

said we.

'What, was he buried within the church? "No," replied the pew-opener, "on the outside, just against the wall; but the church has been enlarged since that day to make room for the organ; so that the wall passes right across his coffin, and cuts the body in two, as it were."

"Cuts the body in two!" repeated we, "and, did no charitable soul, when this thing was proposed, so much as hint that the church might have been made a little larger, so that the whole body might have been brought inside?"

"I never inquired," said the pew-opener; "but, surely, sir, you '11 go and see the grave of the great Mary Ann Yates? Lord bless you, sir, more people go to see that grave than any other in the church!"

"The great Mary Ann Yates!" said we in some perplexity; for, to our shame be it spoken, we had forgotten the name, and we did not like to expose our ignorance to the pew-opener. Oh, by all means," said we, making the best of the matter, and following our conductress to the other end of the church towards the communiontable.

There," said the pew-opener, removing a small mat with her foot, and directing our attention to a plain slab on the floor, "there lies the body. Of course you've heard of her?"

We said nothing, but made a feint of being so engrossed with the epitaph as not to have heard the inquiry.

"She was very celebrated, I've been told," added she, after a pause; "and, indeed, I've heard that Mrs. Siddons wasn't anything like equal to her."

This observation enlightened us; our ignorance was cleared up. We gazed upon the grave of the great Mary Ann Yates, the tragic actress, Mrs. Yates, so greatly admired in her day, and a woman of undoubted genius in the pursuit she had chosen. "And such," thought we, "is fame; a mere matter of circles and classes. Pilgrims come to the tomb of a person celebrated in one sphere, who are ignorant that in the next grave sleeps one who was just as celebrated in another, and who do not even know that such a person ever existed. The worshippers of poetry never heard of the actress; the admirers of the actress, in all probability, never heard of the poet, and so on, through all the various ranks and denominations of society." We were thus cogitating, when the pew-opener told us that she had some other very fine tombs to show us, and with such an emphasis upon the word fine, as impressed us with the notion that she would think we slighted her monuments, (and she was evidently proud of them,)

VOL. VI.

G

if we refused to look at them. We went round accordingly, and up into the galleries, where several tablets were pointed out to us, with warm eulogia upon the sculptured cherubim, or other ornaments that supported them. But one only struck us as remarkable, a plain blue stone, with a Latin inscription to the memory of Robert Lewes, a Cambro-Briton and a lawyer, who died in the year 1649, "and who," said the epitaph, was such a great lover of peace and quiet, that when a contention began in his body between life and death, he immediately gave up the ghost to end the dispute." There is wit and humour even in the grave. There is an entertaining French work, entitled "Des grands Hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant;" one as entertaining might be made upon the subject of "Wit among the tombstones." It would not be uninstructive either, and would afford numberless illustrations of that unaccountable propensity of many people to choose the most solemn things as the objects of their merriment. The richest comedy ever penned fails to excite more laughter than the lugubrious jokes of the grave-diggers in Hamlet; and sextons, mutes, and undertakers, are the legitimate butts of the jester and caricaturist all over the world.

Having lingered in the church until we had satisfied our curiosity, we proceeded towards Rosedale House, where Thomson resided, and where the chair on which he sat, the table on which he wrote, and the peg on which he hung his hat, are religiously preserved, as relics of departed genius. Greatly to our sorrow, we were unable to procure admission. It was an inconvenient hour for the family, and we had not come properly provided with an introduction. There was no help for it, and we therefore walked on towards the Green. The house, after the poet's death, was purchased by a Mr. Ross, who had so much veneration for his memory that he forbore to pull it down, though small and inconvenient, but enlarged and repaired it, at an expense of nine thousand pounds. It was afterwards inhabited by the Honourable Mrs. Boscawen, the widow of the admiral, who participated in this feeling of her predecessor, and repaired the alcove in the garden, where the poet used to write in the fine weather. Within it she replaced his table, and inscribed over the entrance,

"Here Thomson sung the seasons, and their change."

Over the back seat at this table hangs a board, upon one side of which are the following words, "James Thomson died at this place, August 22nd, 1748;" and, upon the other a longer memorial, with a strange and unpleasing affectation of fine writing about it, which runs as follows:-"Within this pleasing retirement, allured by the music of the nightingale, which warbled in soft unison to the melody of his soul, in unaffected cheerfulness, and genial though simple elegance, lived James Thomson. Sensibly alive to all the beauties of nature, he painted their images as they rose in review, and poured the whole profusion of them into his inimitable 'Seasons.' Warmed with intense devotion to the Sovereign of the Universe, its flame glowing through all its compositions, animated with unbounded benevolence, with the tenderest social sensibility, he never gave one moment's pain to any of his fellow-creatures, save by his death, which happened at this place on the 22nd of August, 1748."

From Rosedale House, the present name of this dwelling, we strolled up Kew Foot-Lane, and soon arrived at the Green, a large open space, which does not belie its name, surrounded with many comfortable-looking houses, and rows of venerable trees.

The ancient palace of the Kings of England stood upon this spot. There is little of it left now except the gateway, and that little offers nothing to satisfy the gaze of any but the mere antiquary It does not look old and venerable enough for the lover of the picturesque, being so patched up by and wedged in between surrounding houses as to have almost lost its distinctive character. Several kings and queens of England lived and died upon this spot, Edward I. and II. resided here, and Edward III. died here, deserted in that last hour by all the flatterers and parasites who had fattened upon his bounty; even Alice Pierce, the mistress of his bosom, flying from his side, and leaving him to die with no more attendance than if he had been a beggar, giving up the ghost in a ditch. Richard II. the next king, passed much of his time at this manor; in whose days, at Sheen, as we are informed by that veracious chronicler, Stowe, "there was a great fighting among the gnats! They were so thick gathered," says he, "that the air was darkened with them, and they fought and made a great battle. Two parts of them being slain, fell down to the ground, the third part having got the victory, flew away, no man knew whither. The number of the dead was such that they might be swept up with besoms, and bushels filled with them." With what a gusto does the old historian describe this battle! how persuaded he seems of its truth! and, with what a relish for the marvellous, and expectation to find the same in his reader, does he note every circumstance! Many of the battles between the rival houses of York and Lancaster, are dismissed by him with hardly more notice.

Anne, the queen of Richard II. died in this building. She was so tenderly beloved by her husband, that he cursed the place where she died, and would never afterwards inhabit it. The very sight of the building so moved him to grief, that he gave directions that it should be pulled down. The order was only partially executed, but the building remained in a ruinous condition until the time of Henry V. who repaired it, and founded three religious houses near it. It was destroyed by fire in the reign of Henry VII, who built it up again more magnificently than before, and first altered the name of the village from Sheen to Richmond, which it has ever since borne. Henry VIII. also resided here in the early part of his reign, and once instituted a grand tournament on the Green, at which he fought in disguise. He afterwards exchanged it with Wolsey, for the more magnificent palace of Hampton Court; but, after the fall and death of that minister, the palace again reverted to the crown. Elizabeth was confined in it for a short time, during the reign of her sister, and here she died broken-hearted for the death of the Earl of Essex. During the dissensions of the revolution, this palace met some rough treatment from the hands of the republicans, and the greater part of it was pulled down. It has never since held up its head in the world, but has gradually pined away to its present condition.

There are few, and those few must be insensible to the charms of natural beauty, who ever pass Richmond without ascending its farfamed hill, and gazing upon the landscape which stretches beneath it. How beautiful is the oft-quoted exclamation of her poet.