At the foot of this hill the tide, which flows from the sea above sixty miles up the Thames, takes its leave; its influence extending further up this stream, from its mouth, than in any other river in Europe. There are some good lines from an old poet on this subject, which are as under :

Oft as the changing moon the ocean wide

Impels, our Thames receives the changing tide;
When in mid Heaven fair Cynthia glorious rides,
By her directed, onward rush the tides;
When, on the other side, she wears in wane,
The tides, attendant, hasten back again,
By force acquired, the exulting river swell'd,
Rolls on, and cries "to me all rivers yield,”
Save the twin-brother floods of Elbe and Scheld.
With such true tides no river can be found

In all the realms that Europe's empire bound.

We will now take our leave of Richmond, of which we fear we have given but a very inadequate description, and once more wend our way alongside of the Thames, whose beautiful waters are not the least part of the fairy scene we leave in the rear; not, however, without some notice being taken of

TWICKENHAM, lying on the north side, the soil of which is classic ground-this favoured spot having been once the residence of Alexander Pope, whose name will be remembered as long as the language in which he wrote has being. The villa still exists, though not in the same form as in the poet's time, it having received the

D

addition of two wings.

The grotto, once its

chief ornament, is either destroyed altogether, or so altered from its former state as to convey no idea of the ingenuity and taste therein displayed by its projector. The following extract from a letter addressed by Pope himself to Edward Blount, Esq., will convey a pleasing notion of the effect which it must have produced when seen in its highest perfection.

"Let no access of any distrust make you think of me differently in a cloudy day from what you do in the most sunshiny weather. Let the young ladies be assured I make nothing new in my gardens without wishing to see the print of their fairy steps in every part of 'em. I have put the last hand to my works of this kind, in happily finishing the subterraneous way and grotto: I there found a spring of the clearest water, which falls in a perpetual rill that echoes through the cavern day and night. From the river Thames, you see through my arch, up a walk of the wilderness, to a kind of open temple, wholly composed of shells in the rustic manner; and from that distance under the temple you look down through a sloping arcade of trees, and see the sails on the river passing suddenly and vanishing, as through a perspective glass. When you shut the doors of this grotto, it becomes on the instant, from a luminous room, a camera obscura; on the walls of which all the objects of the river, hills, woods, and boats, are form

ing a moving picture in their visible radiations: and when you have a mind to light it up, it affords you a very different scene; it is finished with shells interspersed with pieces of lookingglass in angular forms; and in the ceiling is a star of the same material, at which, when a lamp (of an orbicular figure, of thin alabaster) is hung in the middle, a thousand pointed rays glitter and are reflected over the place. There are connected to this grotto by a narrower passage, two porches, one towards the river of smooth stones, full of light and open; the other towards the garden shadowed with trees, rough with shells, flints, and iron-ore: the bottom is paved with simple pebble, as is also the adjoining walk up the wilderness to the temple, in the natural taste, agreeing not ill with the little dripping murmur, and the aquatic idea of the whole place. It wants nothing to complete it but a good statue with an inscription, like that beautiful antique one which you know I am so fond of,

Hujus Nympha loci, sacri custodia fontis
Dormio, dum blandæ sentio murmur aquæ.

Parce meum, quisquis tangis cava marmora somnum

Rumpere, seu bibas, sive lavere, tace.

Nymph of the grot, those sacred springs I keep,

And to the murmur of these waters sleep;

Ah, spare my slumbers, gently tread the cave!
And drink in silence, or in silence lave!

"You'll think I have been very poetical in this description, but it is pretty near the truth. I wish

you were here to bear testimony how little it owes to art, either the place itself, or the image I give of it."

Upon the possession of this grotto Pope undoubtedly plumed himself; and as it attracted much notice, and was in his time the theme of conversation around, and an object of general curiosity, it gratified that vanity from the possession of which he, like other men, was not exempt. Dr. Johnson, who did not approve of any thing like an undue importance being attached to that which he considered as undeserving of it, in his life of the poet, has the following passage: "Being under the necessity of making a subterraneous passage to a garden on the opposite side of the road, he adorned it with fossile bodies and dignified it with the title of a Grotto. As some men try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage."

Pope was buried in the parish church of Twickenham, to whose memory his friend Warburton erected a monument, and wrote an inscription. Their intimacy had its origin in some critical notices that Warburton had written on the appearance of Pope's Essay on Man, in which he defended the poet, and by an ingenious course of argument attempted to prove that such essay was written according to true Christian principles and sound morality. It was in allusion

to this circumstance that George the Third, in a conversation which he had with Dr. Johnson, observed that Pope had made Warburton a bishop. "True, Sire," exclaimed the Doctor, "but Warburton did more for Pope, he made him a Christian."

Among the many seats of the nobility and gentry hereabout, is that of Strawberry Hill, once the residence of the celebrated Earl of Orford, better known as Horace Walpole. It was built in the year 1698, and at that time it was let out in lodgings. The noted Colley Cibber once had an apartment in it.

Marble Hill is another beautiful villa, from a design furnished by one of the Earls of Pembroke. It is at a convenient distance from the Thames, and takes its name from the colour of the soil on which it stands. It is now the residence of the Marquis of Wellesley, formerly it was that of the Earl of Buckinghamshire. Louis Philippe, the present King of the French, resided at Twickenham while in exile, and it is said that he still retains possession of the property on which he then lived. Perhaps he desires to keep it as a dernier resort.

The church is a fine building, in the Doric order, and was raised in the last century by a subscription among the inhabitants.

The village is without uniformity, long and straggling, but is very attractive from its natural