'It was indeed," he

liarly favorable for this purpose. observes, in the preface to his eighth volume, "to the secluded life I led during the years 1813–1816, in a lone cottage in the fields of Derbyshire, that I owed the inspiration, whatever may have been its value, of some of the best and most popular portions of Lalla Rookh. It was amid the snows of two or three Derbyshire winters that I found myself enabled, by that concentration of thought which retirement alone gives, to call up around me some of the sunniest of those Eastern scenes which have since been welcomed in India itself as almost native to its clime." It is, he says, a peculiarity of his imagination that it is easily broken in upon and diverted by striking external objects. "I am," said he to me, "at once very imaginative, and very matter-of-fact. The matter-of-fact can at any moment put to flight all the operations of the imagination. It was, therefore, necessary for me to exclude matterof-fact, and all very striking or attractive objects, and to concenter all my imagination on the objects I wished to portray. My story lay in the East, and I must imbue and saturate my imagination entirely with Eastern ideas, and Eastern imagery. I must create, and place, and keep before me a peculiar world, with all its people and characteristics. No place could be more favorable for this than Mayfield, because it had nothing prominent or seducing enough to rush through and force itself into the world which I had evoked, created, and was walking and working in. The result was most complete. Never having been into the East myself, yet every one who has been there declares that nothing can be more perfect than my representations of it, its people, and life, in Lalla

Rookh."

But though living in the country, Moore was always in the pretty regular habit of visiting town during the season. Here he was the charm of the circles of the Whig nobility, especially at Lansdowne and Holland houses. At

these places, and especially the latter, he met all the distinguished men of the time. Byron, Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, Campbell, Brougham, and the like. Even in the country he has lived much at times in the houses of his great friends. In particular he records his visit at Chatsworth, and at Donnington-park, the seat of Lord Moira, where he describes himself as passing whole weeks in the library there, even when the family was absent, "indulging in all the freest airy castle-building of authorship." Here he met, oddly enough, with the rival princes of France, poor Charles X. and his brother, the Duc de Montpc.sier, and the Comte Beaujolais, at the same time with the Duke of Orleans, the present Louis Philippe, who in the library at the same house would be deep in a volume of Clarendon, "unconsciously preparing himself by such studies. for the high and arduous destiny which not only the good genius of France, but his own sagacious and intrepid spirit had early marked out for him." Rogers and Moore have been for many years very intimate friends, and of course Moore has for years been much at home in the classic abole of the latter poet. During Byron's residence in Italy, Moore visited him there, and received the unlucky gift of the Memoirs, out of which, and his two thousand guincas, he was so shamefully wheedled by those who could so very well afford to pay the price of that burnt offering, to him a serious sacrifice.

But Lord Lansdowne was anxious to get the wit and poet down into his own neighborhood, and pressed him to come and live near Bowood. "Tommy, who dearly loves a lord," was the designation given to Moore by his dear friend, LORD Byron. As he obliged the relatives of Byron by burning the horror-creating Memoirs, so he was willing to oblige Lord Lansdowne by living near him. His lordship sent him word that there was a house just the thing for him, at Bromham, not far from Bowood. Moore went to it, but found it far too large and expensive for a poet's VOL. II.-U

income. He, however, told Mrs. Moore on his return that he had seen a cottage on the road that was every thing that he desired, with a most delicious garden, and in a sweet situation. With her usual energy, Mrs. Moore at once took coach, hastened to the cottage, liked it as well as her husband did, and took it at once. This was Sloperton cottage, and here they have resided nearly thirty years.

It is Sloperton cottage which hereafter will be regarded with the chief interest as the residence of the poet. It stands in the midst of a delightful country, and though itself buried, as it were, in an ordinary thickly wooded lane, branching off to the left from the high-road, about two miles from Devizes, on the way to Chippenham, yet from its upper windows, as well as from its garden, enjoys peeps through the trees into lovely scenes. Down southward from the far end of the house opens the broad and noble vale toward Trowbridge; in front to the right, across a little valley, stands on a fine mount, amid nobly grown trees, the village of Bromham, with a gentleman's house standing, boldly backed and flanked by the masses of wood, and the church spire peering above it. More to the left, in front, you look across some miles of country, and see the historical foreland of Roundaway hill, the termination of the chalkhills of the White-house-vale, proudly overlooking Devizes. This hill, my driver gravely assured me, was Roundaway hill, where King John signed the charter! Behind the cottage, across some rich fields, are the wooded slopes of Spypark, once the property of Sir Andrew Baynton.

At a few hundred yards' distance, on the left-hand side of the lane as you advance from the Devizes road, there stands the old manor-house of Nonsuch, which has gone through many hands, and has, I believe, lately been sold, and is now refitting for a modern mansion. A narrow footlane descends past its grounds down through the valley, between tall hedges and embowering alders, to the village of Bromham, which gives you a view of the ancient knolls of

the parklike environs of Nonsuch. Old sturdy oaks are standing here and there on these knolls, and every thing presents an air of great antiquity. A footpath runs through these grounds, by which you are admitted to loiter at your leisure amid the retired slopes and woodland hollows of this old English scenery. The footway which, I have said, leads also down past it, to Bromham, is peculiarly rural. It is paved, as the bottom abounds in water, where a beautiful spring gushes up from the foot of the ascent toward the village; and in passing along it, you feel yourself to be shrouded amid a luxuriant growth of water-loving trees, and surrounded by the quietness of woodland banks, and rustic farm lands. The village is purely agricultural, and has a fine church, with a singularly richly ornamented battlement.

Such is the immediate situation of Moore's cottage. Views of it every one has seen; but it is only when you stand actually before it, see it covered with clematis, its two porches hung with roses, and the lawn and garden which surround it kept in the most exquisite order, and fragrant with every flower of the season, that you are fully sensible of what a genuine poet's nest it is.

The house was originally quite a common cottage. This part forms still the end next to the Devizes road, which road, however, is three quarters of a mile distant; but fresh erections have been added, so that now it is not a very large, but a very goodly and commodious dwelling. The old entrance has been left, as well as a new one made in the new part, so that no unnecessary interruption may be occasioned to the family by visitors. The old entrance leads to the little drawing-room, the newer one to the family sitting-room. The poet's study is up stairs. In the garden there is a raised walk running its whole length, bounded by a hedge of laurel. This gives, you the view over the fields of Spy-park, and its finely wooded slopes.

This is a favorite walk of the poet; and it was, indeed, the

fascination of this garden which originally took his fancy, and occasioned him to think of securing it.

At present Thomas Moore is suffering one of the afflictions to which all men are liable, but which press, perhaps, most sensibly on the poetic temperament-the loss of a son, an officer in foreign service. What is worthy of remark, and is an evidence of his independent and unselfish disposition, is that, I believe, with the exception of his Bermuda appointment, which turned out a loss, through the dishonesty of an agent, he has never received any other appointment, or any pension, though he has been so thoroughly identified with, and caressed by the Whigs. He can say, and does say, with a just pride,-What I am, I have made myself—what I have, I have won by my own hand. He has been careful to tell us himself, in his preface to his third volume, the actual amount of royal patronage which he had been said to have received, and unworthily repaid, by quizzing the modern Heliogabalus. It is this, and is worth reading: "Luckily, the list of benefits showered upon me from that high quarter may be dispatched in a few sentences. At the request of the Earl of Moira, one of my earliest and best friends, his royal highness graciously permitted me to dedicate to him my Translation of the Odes of Anacreon. I was twice, I think, admitted to the honor of dining at Carlton-house; and when the prince, on his being made regent, in 1811, gave his memorable fête, I was one of the envied—about fifteen hundred, I believe, in number-who enjoyed the privilege of being his guests on the occasion." The obligation was certainly not overpowering, especially when the country had to pay for it. Moore adds, that history has now pretty well settled the character of this royal patron. The obligation to nobility is not much more onerous. This, to the poet himself, is highly honorable; but to the party, and the noblemen of that party-the Lansdownes, Hollands, and Russells-what is it? The cause of these men the warm