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BLAKESMOOR.

Do not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better passion than envy; and contemplations on the great and good, whom we fancy in succession to have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions, incompatible with the bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish present aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, attends us between entering an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty-an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory, or a trait of affectation, or worse, vainglory, on that of the preacher-puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness?-go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country church-think of the piety that has kneeled there-the congregations, old and young, that have found consolation there-the meek pastorthe docile parishioner-with no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons-drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee. Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few miles out of my road, to look upon the remains of an old great housewith which I had been impressed in this way in infancy. I was apprized that the owner of it had lately pulled it down; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished, that so much solidity with magnificence could not have been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it.

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to-an antiquity.

I was astonished at the indistinction of every thing. Where had stood the

great gates? What bounded the courtyard? Whereabout did the out-houses commence ? a few bricks only lay as representatives of that which was so stately and so spacious.

Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion.

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of destruction, at the plucking of every pannel I should have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful store-room, in whose hot windowseat I used to sit, and read Cowley, with the grass-plat before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it, about me— -it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns-or a pannel of the yellow room.

Why, every plank and pannel of that house for me had magic in it. The tapestried bed-rooms-tapestry so much better than painting-not adorning merely, but peopling the wainscots-at which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally-all Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider than his descriptions. Acteon in mid sprout, with the unappeasable prudery of Diana; and the still more provoking, and almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of Marsyas.

Then, that haunted room--in which old Mrs. Battle died-whereinto I have crept, but always in the day-time, with a passion of fear; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold communication with the past.How shall they build it up again?

It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but that traces of the splendour of past inmates were everywhere apparent. Its furniture

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 curiosity shop 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 Peep into the Piccadilly Museum." So much by way of preamble.

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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 painter, 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 a little chubby snubby fellow, (being always a mischievous ill-conditioned whelp, I was idolized by my grandmother, and indeed by all the pious old people in the parish,)-and now that I am a man I gazed at the group in the Panorama with equal astonishment if not admiration. The scenery however may be put into the other scale; there is something (as we Reviewers say)-redeeming in it. One likes also to see the relative appearance 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. In that part of Pompeii now at the Strand there is not much excavation to be seen, and what is to be seen is not much worth seeing. A Temple of Venus and Bacchus appears in comparative shape and preservation (Love and Wine we know will stand as long as men are mortal.) The twin Panorama in the Fields is better worth money and seeing. Here are the remains of more old Roman houses than would build a city with cock-tail mice (coctilibus 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. What a barbarous, luxurious, ferocious, refined, brutal, omnipotent 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 beauti

ful.

into was

The next curiosity-shop I popped 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

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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. stead 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.

In

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 cacopho nous to the common ear, and how su per-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 neigh bouring 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 somewhat 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, painted 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 quanti-, ty, 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

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shop which has the hue of a humbug. the artist had befooled me. This is I advise the proprietor of the Diora- real praise. ma (which appears to intend itself for a permanent exhibition) to divert the enthusiasm of his steam-engine, or whatever" old mole" it is that works beneath his platform, from disarranging the stomach of his visiters, to the less ambitious purpose of moving his scenery around them.

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Trinity Chapel and the Valley of Sarnen have been carried about the town these two months by the billstickers, proclaiming every week to be the last week" of their existence. I don't know if they are dead yet; but it is no harm to afford them a little posthumous praise if they are so. The first of these scenes was a complete deception; I expected every moment the dean and chapter to make their appearance. In this respect it is the best of the two, which however is more owing to the nature of the subject than the felicity of the painter; it is much easier to represent in successful perspective a chapel, however large, on a sheet of canvas, than a whole country like the Valley of Sarnen. The imagination can readily allow the one, but the reason strongly rejects the other. At all events I confess Trinity Chapel fairly took me in. In my golden simplicity of mind I thought, when I saw it, that "the play hadn't begun," and that I was merely contemplating one of those multitudinous specimens of plasterwork and architectury which are scattered over the West End and Regent's Park, to the utter discountenance of brown brick and comfortability. The beauty of the structure was the first thing that brought back my senses, this being a quality which seldom obtrudes itself upon the eye of the western itinerant.* By narrowly watching the direction of the shadows and finding them to be permanent I was at length convinced that

* I beg leave to direct the attention of all admirers of genuine gothic to a string of towers in wooden bonnets, at the other side of the park from the Diorama. They may afford to the romantic and imaginative a tolerable idea of a row of giants standing asleep in their bedgowns and white cotton night-caps.

The view of the Valley of Sarnen was, however, the chief attraction. The felicity of the execution surprised less, but the beauty of its scenery gratified more. The interior of a chapel, unless of the very richest order of magnificence, cannot be as interesting to the spectator as a green woodland, a mountain prospect, or a pastoral vale. He may happen also to be one of those sad dogs like myself who have been compelled by their follies to exchange a romantic home for the close squares and crooked alleys of this populous wilderness

London: if so, the Valley would possess in his mind a double advantage over its competitor. He would see his native hills in the misty pinnacles, and the green dwelling of his fathers in the deep-bosomed glen of the Alpine illusion before him. He would, moreover, perhaps acknowledge himself largely indebted to the faithful transcriber of the Valley of Sarnen for the sight of a phenomenon which he had never the good fortune to witness in his own country. Two lofty hills rise on the back ground, one immediately behind the other. The hindermost is a sugar-loaf piercing into the skies far above the penetration of his round-shouldered broth

er.

Now the phenomenon in the picture (and, of course in the living scene) is this: the lower and nearer of these hills is covered with snow, whilst the higher and more distant is green to the apex. I am not sufficiently natural philosopher to account for this extraordinary appearance, but suppose it to arise from a different mode of snowing they have amongst the Alps from what we ususally see here amidst our humble hillocks. To accomplish the aforesaid phenomenon it is only necessary that it snow horizontally in Switzerland, by which means a mountain may with every facility be snowed up as far as the shoulders, and yet preserve his head as green and as flourishing as ever. Notwithstanding the strangeness to a plain-going English eye of the above stroke of nature, the view

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