"
This description of an Italian landscape can hardly fail to charm the
imagination of the coldest reader; but after all, I cannot help
confessing to so inveterate a partiality for dear old England as to be
delighted with the compliment which Gray, the poet, pays to English
scenery when he prefers it to the scenery of Italy. "Mr. Walpole,"
writes the poet from Italy, "says, our _memory_ sees more than our eyes
in this country. This is extremely true, since for _realities_ WINDSOR
or RICHMOND HILL is infinitely preferable to ALBANO or FRESCATI."
Sir Walter Scott, with all his patriotic love for his own romantic land,
could not withhold his tribute to the loveliness of Richmond Hill,--its
"_unrivalled landscape_" its "_sea of verdure_."
"They" (The Duke of Argyle and Jeanie Deans) "paused for a
moment on the brow of a hill, to gaze on the unrivalled
landscape it presented. A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and
intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves was
tenanted by numberless flocks and herds which seemed to wander
unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The
Thames, here turreted with villas, and there garlanded with
forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch
of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but
accessaries, and bore on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs
whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the
whole.
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