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down a green lane out of the road from Tewkesbury to Worcester, was crossing the fields to the town of Upton on Severn, situated on the very brink of the river. The victorious genius of Cromwell directed him to force Upton Bridge, that he might proceed along the southern bank, and, preventing the profligate Charles from escaping him, add another trophy to his fame in "Worcester's Laureate Wreath." It was the afternoon of a cool cloudy day; a slight mist hung over the distant objects in the landscape, and a melancholy stillness, common in such a state of the atmosphere, pervaded every thing as if nature was in universal repose. I crossed the Severn, and leaving the little church of Upton on my left, walked towards the Malvern Hills, that are such beautiful objects from the bridge, and, combined with the view in the foreground, where the majestic Severn rolls along without a ripple, present a picture rarely exceeded in richness and beauty. The deep purple colour of the Malvern Hills formed the back ground to a vale several miles broad, filled with meadows, orchards, gardens, and corn fields, well wooded, and having somewhat of the character of an Italian landscape, rather than of one in our own island. The abruptness with which these hills" look out," as Leigh Hunt would say, and the clearness of the atmosphere around their summits, give them a character very different from that of our hills in general. By an ascending and varying road, therefore never tedious, I reached the fine old church of Great Malvern, a favorite resort of Henry VII. who must have possessed a taste highly refined for the time in which he lived, as the architecture of the church testifies, which is similar to other Gothic buildings erected by him. Like his own chapel at West'minster, it is of very superior workmanship, airy and lofty. I drew near it with that feeling of delight which is generally experienced at the view of similar erections, venerable, light in architecture, grand in size, grey with age, and imposing from situation. Its mutilated windows, which had contained much painted glass, its pointed arches, and the dark shade of the hill that enveloped it, added to its naturally impressive

character. Alas! the ivy that I remembered to have seen formerly running up the walls, overhanging the great window, penetrating the fractures, and encroaching on the roof within, had been cut down by sacrilegious hands. Ivy with me holds the same situation in architectural old age that grey hair does in that of man, and I cannot bear to see either cut away, no, nor even clipped. Clustering about the tracery of Gothic work, and circling the mul lions in fantastic wreaths of green, it sometimes looks like a garland of laurel round a death's head, speaking inore forcibly of mortality and decay by contrast. This was now all gone, for the church had been repaired, which was indeed necessary

it had also been beautified, which was unnecessary and absurd. Parish officials, particularly those who deal in brick and whitewash, are generally absolute at such times. Here the roof had been whitened, and the windows patched, till they were like Joseph's coat of many colours. When I was last there, the wind, entering through broken panes, moaned along the aisles with sounds that seemed to be unearthly. Antiquity and decay are the sources of delicious feeling, and the food of genius; for man is himself a ruin, and his sympathy is with desolation, because he feels forcibly his intimate connexion with it. Continuing my walk up the hill, enjoying the prospect that seemed to extend itself more and more every step, innumerable reflections on past times crossed my mind. When viewing a fine landscape, or any grand natural object, our ideas are rarely of the present, never of the future, but almost always of the past; to this we are insensibly led by things that seem to have little immediate alliance with it. Our meditations on viewing a romantic scene we never saw before are not prospective, but are fixed upon departed time; so dear to us is age and antiquity, or so unconsciously sensible are we that the shadows of the past are all we can call our own property. As long as I can trace back, my family had lived near these hills; whence my father was the first wanderer forty years ago. It was not surprising therefore that fancy attempted to call up the shadowy forms of those who

had toiled, taken pleasure, feasted, fasted, and then slept the sleep of death on the plain below me-I wished to see them pass like the race of Banquo before my eyes. I thought of the revolutions time had effected in their costumes, and the variety of appearances the smiling plain must have assumed at different periods. Now covered with primeval woods, now a scene of war, now a waste heath or common over which the hunter was toiling, and the speckled hound sweeping away the early dew in the chace-what would I not have given to see my progenitors thus marshalled before me, living and breathing as I lived and breathed! but of this enough.

Ascending higher, and leaving the sequestered village of Great Malvern below, I arrived at one of the three medicinal springs for which the hills have been long celebrated. The water flows gently out of the earth, and is protected by a building. The elevation of the spot and rarity of the air produce a most exhilarating effect on the frame, and the pellucid water, equal to that of the fount of Blandusia, and worthy of its bard, seemed to me like a medicine that must cure "all sadness but despair." I then mounted to the highest point of the Worcestershire beacon, as it is called, a very steep ascent over turf and stunted heath, and soon found myself thirteen hundred feet above the level of the Severn, enjoying one of the most commanding and magnificent prospects I had ever be held. How shall I attempt a description of the scene that opened around me from the summit! On one side lay the whole county of Hereford, and a variety of objects in no less than eleven other counties might be seen around. Rich meads, fertile plains, woods, mountains, orchards, gardens, villages, towns, cities, a noble river, all that nature and nature and art combined can do, lay like a rich carpet at my feet, woven in a thousand hues, on a surface of great freshness and beauty, smiling and gorgeous, in plenitude of the most luxuriant vegetation. It seemed indeed to be an elevation

From whose top The hemisphere of earth, in clearest ken, Stretch'd out to the amplest reach of prospect lay.

The eye darted rapidly from object to object, for it could repose long on no single thing. Here the vale of Evesham, that tract "flowing with milk and honey," melted away into the grey hues of distance. There the orchards of Hereford, infinite in tints of green, and brown, and purple, loaded with the fruitage of the year, were scattered on a surface that. was full of gentle undulations or swelling hills, through the valleys of which flashed the light of many a sparkling stream. Farms and dwellings dotted the picture every where, and the rich harvest enamelled the ground, as yet untouched by the sickle. Towering in the distance, the dark mountains of Monmouth, Radnor, and Brecknock, among which the well known Black Mountain in the latter county was most conspicuous, formed a fine Alpine distance. The Clee hills in Shropshire, and the Wrekin, that social hill of the Salopians, remembered in their flowing bowls wherever they quaff them, rose over Ludlow's classic castle, a place rendered immortal in sweetest song. There Comus waved his magic wand, and Sabrina and her water-nymphs, with their "printless feet," and their "chaste palms moist and cold," after dispensing their spells hastened to the bowers of Amphitrite. Afar, scarcely distinguishable from the blue serene of the sky, might be discerned the sea in the Bristol channel. This part of the view possessed a certain wildness and ruggedness of character, and was more varied and picturesque than on the other, or Worcestershire side; the latter was a chaste picture in soft tranquillity, all was placid and beautiful, the former was grander. One was like the beautiful statue of Venus, all love and beauty, and smiles; the other stern and awful as the Minerva of the Parthenon. Associations of high interest were called up by a variety of spots within the reach of the eye on the side of Worcestershire, prodigal as it seemed in the wealth of soil, extending over an immense field of view, and studded with cities, towns, and villages. The Severn, owing to its high banks, was but little seen, though it wound its way through the whole extent of the landscape. Worcester, with its cathedral, and the ashes of the most worthless of kings, John Sans

terre; Gloucester, proud of ecclesiastical buildings, a dull and tame but neat city; Tewkesbury, with its fine old church and blood-stained associations with the house of Lancaster, whose last hope expired there in blood; peaceful Upton; Pershore; near the Shakspeare Avon; and Cheltenham, with its saline springs, were each distinguishable, together with nearly a hundred churches. The eye might there very truly be said to wander

O'er hill and dale,

masses of men from such a spot, they all seem to be so in unity; the various habits, features, and dispositions, which distinguish individuals, being lost in the view of the whole. To me all extensive views are dissipating to the thoughts; the variety of objects prevents the mind from retiring within itself; the eye wanders from tower to tower, and from hill to hill, with a buoyancy of spirit fatal to deep reflection or study, but favourable to mirthfulness. Milton in L'Allegro assembles a great variety

Forest, and field, and flood, temples and of natural images, in fact, almost all

towers,

Cut shorter many a league.

The Cotswold hills arose in the distance, so renowned for their sports in Shakspeare's time, and also the Bredon, on which there are ancient encampments. Near the Clee hills, Hagley-park was plainly discernible, once the seat of the elegant Lord Littleton, close by which are the neglected, but still beautiful Leasowes of Shenstone. Yet more to the right, lay Stratford-on-Avon, connected with a never dying name, and the Edgehills, where the first battle between Charles and the Parliament took place. Most of the distant objects were enveloped in a grey mist; but in the middle ground, the snatches of strong light, here and there broken by clumps and masses of dark green foliage, covered the whole with innumerable bright patches, producing a charming effect, which it would have puzzled a Claude or a Turner to represent in perfection. The foreground was the bare summit of the hill, thinly covered with stunted turf, and here and there the naked granite broke out in huge masses, contrasting well with the highly wrought cultivation in the remoter parts of the

scene.

The lofty solitude on which I stood seemed to impart to me a feeling of superiority as I gazed below on the inhabitants of the plain, diminished to the smallest specks by the long drawn perspective. We grasp myriads of men from such elevations like the population of an ant-hill, and imagine ourselves Brobdingnagians, compared with the bustling insects toiling in their petty pursuits beneath. It would appear to require but little effort of mind to direct

the prominent objects seen in an extensive landscape, and brings them before the reader in rapid succession, together with the "hum of men," and "pomp, and feast, and revelry," extinguishing thought by the crowd of objects seen at once, and disposing the soul to light-heartedness by the boundless field of sight over which the eye ranges. In Il Penseroso, on the contrary, the mind rests on a simple object at a time, favourable to reflection; the song of the nightingale, the "wandering moon," the "far off curfew," the « glowing embers" of an expiring fire, "secret shades," and prospects confined to "glimmering bowers and glades," are objects all occupying comparatively limited space. We should therefore dance on the summit of the mountain, and study in the bounded valley. Mountain scenery is, after all, that which most impresses the mind with the greatness of the works of the Creator, and the most virtuous part of mankind have been dwellers among the hills, as well as the most hardy and brave. Let a picturesque hill be covered with turf or heath, it is an object that speaks to the heart; we are delighted to climb its ridges, and gaze on its huge convexities, that want not the aid of foliage or cultivation to attract us, because they have what is superior to beauty,grandeur and sublimity. An immense plain undecorated with trees and herbage is always gazed upon with fatigue, but the summit of the mountain crowned with granite, and lifting its unadorned crest to the clouds, or perhaps above them, speaks to us in a majesty and glory derived from its severe boldness of outline, as well as magnitude of parts. Who can gaze upon a vast hill without

awe? As Burke justly observes, "there is something so overruling in whatever inspires us with awe in all things which belong ever so remotely to terror, that nothing else can stand in their presence." Hills are the great features of creation, its pride and glory, whether rising like the Alps or Andes, and impressing the beholder with a sublime terror, or pleasing him by a less mighty magnificence of aspect like Malvern, or sweetly charming him in the lesser eminences of our island, having summits crowned with cultivation and plenty.

Malvern was the spot first immortalized by the pen of the earliest British poet. It was the birthplace of the British muse, and well worthy of being so; the scene of the "Visions of William concerning Piers Plowman," of which Langlande is the reputed author, and which are supposed to have been written about the year 1352. John Malvern, a benedictine monk, has also been supposed the inditer of this curious poem. A wise man called William falls asleep among the bushes

In a summer season, when softe was the

sun,

I shope into shrubs, as I shepherd were;
In habit as a hermit unholy of works
That went forth in the world wonders to
hear,

And saw many cells, and selcouthe things;
As on a May morning, on Malvern hills

Me befel for to sleep, for weariness of wandering:

And in a laund as I lay, leaned I and slept.

He dreams that he beholds a magnificent tower which is the fortress of truth, &c. Thus Malvern was noticed in verse before the days of "righte merrie" Chaucer. It must therefore be henceforth the British Parnassus; its springs must be those of our Helicon, and Tempé could not have exceeded in fertility the rich vale of the Severn at its feet, the poetical Sabrina of Milton and Spenser:

The Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death.

It is astonishing that the summer flies of the metropolis have not made Malvern a more common resort. Fashion, however, is governed by caprice, and the dullness of a sandy plain, the sterility of Brighton, (though indeed the latter has the ocean to redeem its execrable land barrenness) the beautiful sameness of Cheltenham, or the wastes of Bagshot, are of equal excellence in her eyes. Only a few persons of taste visit Malvern in the season, beauties, render it superior to any though its springs, air, and natural place of public summer resort in the kingdom. For one I shall never forget the "blue steeps of Malvern," as Dyer terms them, and if there be a spot to which I wish above all others to "steal from the world," it is there. U.

A SKETCH FROM NATURE.

YON green hedge made me startle, for just now
A lively Thrush, which loves a still lone copse,

With speckled wings took flight-the May-flower'd boughs
On which he sat all joyous, tuning sweet

His love-raised ditty, on a sudden press'd,
Yielded elastic to his foot's blithe spring,.

And as they quick regain'd their amorous links,
Threw drops of radiant honey in my face:

O! 'tis the hour of twilight-the blue heavens
Ne'er wore a lovelier aspect-yon few clouds,

Which throw their small fringed patterns o'er its space,
Look like young Swans reposing on a lake;
The Sun too is declining-and he sinks,

Oh! glorious Orb-bathing Earth's sides with gold.

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Was born on the twenty-fourth of July, 1660, and had the high honour of being god-son to King Charles II. being the first child to whom his majesty became god-father after his restoration. The most remarkable passage in the life of this nobleman was his abjuring the religion of his ancestors, which he did upon the fullest conviction of the errors of the Roman Catholic faith, and of the purity of the Protestant religion. His Lordship's conversion was occasioned by his becoming acquainted with Dr., afterwards Archbishop, Tillotson, to whom, upon the discovery of the Popish plot, he was accustomed to carry the opinions and defences of the Catholic priests in favour of their creed, and in return receive Tillotson's replies; which, in the end, effectually reconciled him to the Church of England. This was in 1679, and sufficiently proves that his Lordship's conversion was the effect of conviction alone, since Popery was at that time beginning to prevail, in consequence of the countenance it received

at court.

After filling a variety of state employments with equal credit and ability, he was advanced to the dignity

of Duke of Shrewsbury, in 1694, being then principal secretary of state; and, as a proof of his political virtue, King William is reported to have said of him, that "the Duke of Shrewsbury was the only man of whom the Whigs and Tories both spoke well."

In 1700 his Grace found his health so much impaired, as to render a journey into Italy absolutely necessary, and he repaired to Rome; upon which it was industriously reported that his distemper was only feigned, and that the real object of his journey was to reconcile himself to the Romish church; a rumour entirely without foundation.

On this subject we are able to produce an original letter, which, as we believe it has never been made use of, may be considered as a great curiosity. It is replete with good sense and good principles, and fully acquits the Duke of any thing like dissimulation or inconsistency. The superscription has been lost, so that the person to whom it was addressed cannot be ascertained, but we suspect it was William Talbot, then Bishop of Oxford, afterwards of Salisbury and Durham.

Rome, 27 Sept. 1704. N. s.

My Lord, It is some time that I am indebted to your lordship for the favor of a letter: but having nothing to write but ill newes of my health, I was a weary of that subject. I am now, praised be God, much better, and in two or three months design for Venice, and so by little and little to get home against the spring, being willing when I return into England to have the summer before me, hoping by that means better to accustome my self to the change of the climate than if I arriv'd before the winter. I must desire you will give your self the trouble once again of distributing a little charity for me, as formerly. By this post I have directed Arden to pay one hundred pounds to your lordship's order.

In the letters of some of my friends, I have observed it hinted, as if my so long residence in this place had caused a jealousy, that I was better inclined to the Popish religion than I formerly was. After what I had done for the opinion I profess, and against that I left, I hoped I had been less lyable to that suspicion than any man alive. However, in my conduct and discourse, I have constantly here endeavoured to convince every body of my steddyness. I never go to any of the churches, unless it be sometimes for a moment, to look at a picture. In case I have been accidentally pre

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