was still standing-even to the tarnish- thing beyond; and to have taken ed gilt leather battledores, and crum- if but a peep, in childhood, at the bling feathers of shuttlecocks, in the contrasting accidents of a great fornursery, which told that children had tune. once played there. But I was a lonely child, and had the range at will of every apartment, knew every nook and corner, wondered and worshipped everywhere. The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother of thought, as it is the feeder of love, and silence, and admiration. So strange a passionfor the place possessed ine in those years, that, though there lay-I shame to say how few rods distant from the mansion-half hid by trees, what I judged some romantic lake-such was the spell which bound me to the house, and such my carefulness not to pass its strict and proper precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for me; and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder devotion, I found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawling brook had been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. Variegated views, extensive prospects-and those at no great distance from the house-I was told of such-what were they to me, being out the boundaries of my Eden? -So far from a wish to roam, I would have drawn, methought, still closer the fences of my chosen prison; and have been hemmed in by a yet securer cinc ture of those excluding garden walls. I could have exclaimed with that garden-lɔving poet — your twines; Bind me, ye woodbines, in I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides-the low-built roofparlours ten feet by ten-frugal boards, and all the homeliness of home -these were the condition of my birth -the wholesome soil which I was planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of some * Marvell, on Appleton House, to the Lord Fair fas. To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be had on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an importunate race of ancestors; and the coat-less antiquary, in his unemblazoned cell, revolving the long long line of a Mowbray's or De Clifford's pedigree-at those sounding names may warm himself into as gay a vanity as those who do inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal merely: and what herald shall go about to strip me of an idea? It is trenchant to their swords? can it be hacked off as a spur can? or torn away like a tarnished garter? What, else, were the families of the great to us? what pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or their capitulatory brass monuments? What to us the uninterrupted current of their bloods, if our own did not answer within us to a cognate and correspondent elevation? Or wherefore, else, O tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon-that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, BLAKESMOOR!-have I in childhood so oft stood poring upon thy mystic characters-thy cmblematic supporters, with their prophetic "Resurgam"-till, every dreg of peasantry purging off, I received into myself Very Gentility?-Thou wert first in my morning eyes: and, of nights, hast detained my steps from bedward, till it was but a step from gazing at thee to dreaming on thee. This is the only true gentry by adoption; the veritable change of blood, and not, as empirics have fabled, by transfusion. Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid trophy, I know not, I inquired not; but its fading rags, and colours cobweb-stained, told, that its subject was of two centuries back. date was ng by a backward triumph the insults he might possibly have heaped in his life-time upon my poor pastoral progenitor. If it were presumptuous so to speculate, the present owners of the mansion had least reason to complain. They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers for a newer trifle; and I was left to appropriate to myself what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy, or to soothe my vanity. I was the true descendant of those old W-s; and not the present family of that name, who had fled the old waste places. Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, which as I have traversed, giving them in fancy my own family name, one-and then another -would seem to smile, reaching forward from the canvass, to recognize the new relationship; while the rest looked grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, and thoughts of fled posterity. That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, and a lamb-that hung next the great bay window-with the bright yellow H-shire hair, and sye of watchet hue-so like my Alice! -I am persuaded, she was a true Elia -Mildred Elia, I take it. From her, and from my passion for her for I first learned love from a picture-Bridget took the hint of those pretty whimsical lines, which thou mayst see, if haply thou hast seen them, Reader, in the margin.* never But my Mildred grew not old, like the imaginary Helen. Mine too, BLAKESMOOR, was thy noble Marble Hall, with its mosaic pavements, and its twelve Cæsarsstately busts in marble-ranged round: of whose countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my wonder, but the mild Galba had my love. There they stood in the coldness of death, yet freshness of immortality. Mine too thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair of authority, high-backed, and wickered, once the terror of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden so common since, that bats have roosted in it. Mine too-whose else?-thy costly fruit garden, with its sun-baked southern wall; the ampler pleasure-garden, rising backwards from the house, in triple terraces, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save that a speck here and there, saved from the elements, bespake their pristine state to have been gilt and glittering; the verdant quarters backwarder still; and, stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry wilderness, the haunt of squirrel, and the day-long murmuring woodpigeon-with that antique image in the centre, God or Goddess I wist not; but child of Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to Pan or to Sylvanus in their native groves, than I to that fragmental mystery. Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too fervently in your idol worship, walks and windings of BLAKESMOOR! for this, or what sin of mine, has the plough passed over your pleasant places? I sometimes think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of their extinguished habitations there may be a hope-a germ to be revivified. ELIA. In stately pride, by my bed-side, To that I weep, nor ever sleep, Said "you to all men I prefer." SIGHTS OF LONDON. THE ORAMAS. I PERAMBULATE the streets every morning, as you well know, for the exercise of my body and eye-sight, with my hands in my breeches pockets, and my legs in a pair of inexpressibles, popping my poll into every curiosityshop that hangs out a good bill of fare for a hungry inquisitor. These places, you know likewise, are at present generally dignified with heathen-Greek compound names, which puzzle a plain Englishman to pronounce,--jawbreakers, as we term them,-all ending in the same word, orama, and all meaning as much as this-Here is a great sight, good people! tell out and ye shall see it. Shillings are not half so plentiful with me as shop-keepers' bills, but I have nevertheless spent some in this way lately, and you shall have the benefit of my experience. Though too mad a fellow to mind any thing past or independent, I am the more inclined to do this as you sent me a letter-full of compliments, and five guineas, (by no means the least agreeable part of your correspondence) for my the Piccadilly Museum." Peep into So much by way of preamble. 66 The Panorama of Pompeii, in the Strand, is not worth climbing up Bow Steeple to see, but that in Leicester Fields is. They belong to the same pair of proprietors, were drawn by the same draughtsman, I believe, and may have been painted by the same paint er, provided he was not the same man at the two different performances. This might have been easily managed. For instance, I am the same man that I was when I wrote my "Fugitive Poems," ," which were published by the present Sheriff Whittaker, of Avemary, and had vast circulation through all the pastry cooks in the city, to the great emolument of no one. The first of the aforesaid Oramas is, as I hinted, pretty enough there is, indeed, a group of dancers on the foreground, designed I suppose to enliven the dead imagery around them, which put me in mind of the figures on my grandmother's bed : hangings, where a flock of shepherds and shepherdesses are kicking up their heels to the edification and amusement of several bullfinches, who are piping open mouthed within arm's length amidst the chintz evergreens of the pattern. Many a time I gazed at these mute "tuneful warblers," and the figurantes before them, when I was (being always a mischievous ill-cona little chubby snubby fellow, ditioned whelp, I was idolized by my grandmother, and indeed by all the pious old people in the parish,-and group in the Panorama with equal now that I am a man I gazed at the astonishment if not admiration. The scenery however may be put into the other scale; there is something (as One likes also to see the relative apwe Reviewers say)-redeeming in it. pearance of the volcanic and ante-volcanic places: a forest of modern trees growing on the top of an ancient city! The hanging gardens of Babylon were nothing to this. peii now at the Strand there is not In that part of Pom much excavation to be seen, and what ing. A Temple of Venus and Bac is to be seen is not much worth seechus appears in comparative shape know will stand as long as men are and preservation (Love and Wine we mortal.) The twin Panorama in the Fields is better worth money and seeing. Here are the remains of build a city with cock-tail mice (coc more old Roman houses than would tilibus muris) for all the Lazzaroni in Naples. There is the groundwork of a huge Theatre remaining in fine form and dimensions: Covent Garden and Old Drury might serve as vomitoria, or entrances to it. luxurious, ferocious, refined, brutal, onWhat a barbarous, nipotent people were those descendants of the shepherd-robbers! Who would think that Cicero could write, and a gladiator fight within a brick wall of each other? The Fives-Court is a place of elegant amusement compared to a Roman arena. Some of the moun tain-scenery in this orama reminds me of another orama which I will treat of presently-the Diorama: it is beautiful. The next curiosity-shop I popped into was a Glass Exhibition within a handful of doors of the Strand Pompeiiorama. I saw a glass-case full of poodle-dogs, seventy-fours, landaus, handbaskets, and several other gimcracks, nailed to a door-post with "only a shilling," on the board beside it. Walked in, up, on, round, out. By the bye, this is not a fair account of my peregrinations through the glassery. I staid there poring over the brittle machinery till I was almost cracked myself, and like Locke's lunatic was afraid to sit down lest I might break myself in pieces. Along with a parcel of very well-behaved gentlemanly old ladies I beheld the whole operation of glass-blowing; and I assure you, Editor, in that brief space of time I learned more of this noble art than I shall ever attempt to practise. Seriously; it is an exhibition very well worth a wise man's fooling away a few hours in seeing. The proprietor, who presides at the furnace, blew us up several times—minikin decanters, wine-glasses, goblets, and tin cans, in a much shorter time than any one could empty them, besides several flower-baskets and false curls for the ladies. There was also a glass-wig in a glass-case there (and a balloon in a bottle,) which I contemplated with much satisfaction; every hair of it is as fine and elastic as hair itself. Baldness will no doubt in a few ages be universally propagated, it being for the most part an hereditary disease; and there is some consolation in knowing that, in such a deficiency of hair, we can have glass-wigs and frontlets for the price of them. The curls are drawn off from the vitreous fluid on a wheel,-seven hundred yards (I think) of glass hair being wound off in a minute. One great advantage in a wig of this material would be that it could be melted up into a fresh wig whenever one chose it, and moreover could not be easily blown off the head, except when it was actually blowing. A word from the THE LONDON 20 ATHENEUM VOL. 2. 2d series. is, I know, enough to set all London afire; so I beg leave to recommend this Orama to all those who have eyes in their heads and shillings in their pockets. One powerful inducement to sight-seeing people to visit the Glass Exhibition is this,-every one gets at his or her final exit, besides the gape-seed and glass-blowing, the full value of his or her admittancemoney in the manufacture itself. The proprietor, at my departure, blew me a dog,-wrapping him up in cotton, and enclosing him in a shaving-box, all of which I conveyed into my waistcoatpocket. A young friend of mine, to whom I presented my new-found-glass dog, in teaching him to "give the paw," broke off one of his legs, but the gentleman aforesaid very politely blew it on again. He added, that he should be happy to blow on a leg for me whenever I wished it. Upon the whole, the only thing wanting to this exhibition is an impudent name; modest merit never did at any time, and its scarcity in the present age has not in any degree enhanced its reputation. Instead of calling his curiosity-shop merely what it is,-a Glass Exhibition, I should advise the proprietor to call it a Hyalorama (or a Hyalourgeiorama, which looks uglier and better): he would by this means infallibly seduce more people from the straight road of the Strand into his museum, than if he were to blow up a house for every customer that asked him. But the Peristrephic Panorama is that which pleased me best,-as well by the terrors of its name as of its subject. Peristrephic Panorama ! What a world of mysterious magnificence is contained in those two tremendous titles! how sublime and unintelligible! how agreeably cacophonous to the common ear, and how super-syllabically sonorous to the lugs of learning !-As I strolled one evening through the mazes of Spring Gardens, I heard the Peristrephic music shaking the tiles off the neighbouring houses; (there is a trumpeter in the band, by the bye, who would blow the cupola off St. Paul's if he exerted himself beneath it,―he almost blew the roof off my skull with a single blast of his buccina.) The uproar proceeding from this curiosityshop induced me to enter ;-when I was young and innocent I remember that I always broke my drum or humming-top to see what was inside of it that made such a noise. The same philosophical spirit attends me to this day. I went into the Peristrephic, where however I found some what more internal furniture than ever I heard of in a humming-top, unless this huge round world turning on its invisible spindle may be considered one. I saw the Battle of Waterloo: all he great men, Buonaparte, Wellington, Blucher, Brunswick, General Picton, and Corporal Shaw, paint ed to the life or death as it happened: cuirassiers, voltigeurs, Scotch sansculottes, Blues, Greys, Body-Guards, all in fine coats and confusion: charges of cavalry and discharges of infantry, great guns, thunder-bombs, flying artillery, lying troops, and dying soldiers: the Marquis of Anglesea up to his belt in blood-red trowsers, and the Duke down to his heels in a blue wrap-rascal. O'twas a glorious sight! Like Don Quixote and the puppets I longed to attack the peristrephic people sword in hand, and kill a few dozen Frenchmen on canvas. What would I now give to be the old woman who remained the whole time in the farm-house which stood in the very midst of the field of battle! What a sublime situation for an old woman to be in! How I should have felt had I been there! When heaven and earth were coming together, to sit smoking (as she did perhaps) amidst the war of elements, or to "stand secure amidst a falling world" with my hands in my pockets, as the drowned Dutchman was found after shipwreck! Only conceive her (blind of one eye possibly) looking out through a cranny with the other, and beholding two hundred thousand men engaged in mutual massacre, and two hundred pieces of cannon bellowing, bursting, and ball-playing around her! blood streaming, smoke wreathing, dust flying, the scream of agony, the cry of fear, the groan of death, and the shout of victory!- O, if poeta nascitur non fit be not a true maxim, that old woman ought to write a far better epic poem than blind Homer, blind Milton, or Bob Southey himself! But I am becoming too eloquent. The last of the Oramas which I swallowed was the Diorama.-The difference between the Ptolemic and the Copernican system of the world may serve to illustrate that between the Periorama (thus let us abridge the Peristrephic) and the Diorama. But the superiority of the Copernican system above the other is somewhat less problematical than that of the dioramatic principle above the perioramatic. The earth revolving on its own axis saves the sun, moon, and stars, a great deal of unnecessary trouble in performing their several diurnal circles according to the old system; but except the giddy delight of participating in the vertiginous motion of the dioramatic platform, a spectator posted there is not immediately aware that he reaps any peculiar advantage. Whether the scene perambulates about the spectator, or the spectator about the scene; whether the object moves past the eye, or the eye past the object, is, philosophically considered, quite insignificant. Except, indeed, the spectator have a fancy for orbicular progression,-if he have any inclination for a circular jaunt, I would strenuously recommend him a turn or so on the horizontal wheel of the Diorama. Indeed I have heard many people express their entire approbation of this new kind of merry-go-round and its unaccompanying scenery. The effect of this ingenious but hasty piece of mechanism however was-that throughout the whole "little world of man" there was propagated a species of awkward sensation which might be denominated by help of a solecisma terrestrial sea-sickness. This, though amounting to but a trifling quantity, detracted somewhat from the pleasure of my excursion round the inner wall of the Dioramatic establishment.-The wheel I speak of is the only thing about that curiosity |