PICTURES AT BURLEIGH HOUSE. BURLEIGH! thy groves are leafless, thy are naked "And dull, cold winter does inhabit here." wall! The yellow evening rays gleam through thy fretted Gothic windows; but I only feel the rustling of withered branches strike chill to my breast; it was not so twenty years ago. Thy groves were leafless then as now: it was the middle of winter twice that I visited thee before; but the lark mounted in the sky, and the sun smote my youthful blood with its slant ray, and the ploughman whistled as he drove his team afield; Hope spread out its glad vista through thy fair domains, oh, Burleigh! Fancy decked thy walls with works of sovereign art, and it was spring, not winter, in my breast. All is still the same, like a petrifaction of the mindthe same thing in the same places; but their effect is not the same upon me. I am twenty years the worse for wear and tear. What is become of the never-ending studious thoughts that brought their own reward or promised good to mankind? of the tears that started welcome and unbidden? of the sighs that whispered future peace? of the smiles that shone, not in my face indeed, but that cheered my heart, and made a sunshine there when all was gloom around? That fairy vision—that invisible glory, by which I was once attended-ushered into life, has left my side, and "faded to the light of common day," and I now see what is, or has been-not what may lie hid in Time's bright circle and golden chaplet! Perhaps this is the characteristic difference between youth and a later period of life-that we, by degrees, learn to take things more as we find them, call them more by their right names; that we feel the warmth of summer, but the winter's cold as well; that we see beauties, but can spy defects in the fairest face; and no longer look at every thing through the genial atmosphere of our own existence. We grow more literal and less credulous every day, lose much enjoyment, and gain some useful, and more useless, knowledge. The second time I passed along the road that skirts Burleigh Park, the morning was dank and "ways were mire." I saw and felt it not my mind was otherwise engaged. Ah! thought I, there is that fine old head by Rembrandt; there, within those cold grey walls, the painter of old age is enshrined, immortalized in some of his inimitable works! The name of Rembrandt lives in the fame of him who stamped it with renown, while the name of Burleigh is kept up by the present owner. An artist survives in the issue of his brain to all posterity-a lord is nothing without the issue of his body lawfully begotten, and is lost in a long line of illustrious ancestors. So much higher is genius than rank-such is the difference between fame and title! A great name in art lasts for centuries-it requires twenty generations of a noble house to keep alive the memory of the first founder for the same length of time. So I reasoned, and was not a little proud of my discovery. In this dreaming mood, dreaming of deathless works and deathless names, I went on to Peterborough, passing, as it were, under an arch-way of Fame, and, still walking under, Found some new matter to look up and wonder." I had business there: I will not say what. I could at this time do nothing. I could not write a line-I could not draw a stroke. "I was brutish;" though not "like warlike as the wolf, nor subtle as the fox for prey." In words, in looks, in deeds, I was no better than a changeling. Why then do I set so much value on my existence formerly? Oh God! that I could but be for one day, one hour, but for an instant, (to feel it in all the plenitude of unconscious bliss, and take one long, last, lingering draught of that full brimming cup of thoughtless freedom,) what then I was-that I might, as in a trance, a waking dream, hear the hoarse murmur of the bargemen, as the Minster tower appeared in the dim twilight, come up from the willowy stream, sounding low and underground like the voice of the bittern;-that I might paint that field opposite the window where I lived, and feel that there was a green, dewy moisture in the tone, beyond my pencil's reach, but thus gaining almost a new sense, and watching the birth of new objects without me—that I might stroll down Peterborough bank (a winter's day), and see the fresh marshes stretching out in endless level perspective (as if Paul Potter had painted them), with the cattle, the windmills, and the red-tiled cottages, gleaming in the sun to the very verge of the horizon; and watch the fieldfares in innumerable flocks, ganboling in the air, and sporting in the sun, and racing before the clouds, making summersaults, and dazzling the eye by throwing themselves into a thousand figures and movements; that I might go, as then, a pilgrimage to the town where my mother was born, and visit the poor farm-house where she was brought up, and lean upon the gate where she told me she used to stand when a child of ten years old and look at the setting sun!-I could do all this still; but with different feelings. As our hopes leave us, we lose even our interest and regrets for the past. I had at this time, simple as I seemed, many resources. I could in some sort "play at bowls with the sun and moon;" or, at any rate, there was no question in metaphysics that I could not bandy to and fro, as one might play at cup-and-ball, for twenty, thirty, forty miles of the great North Road, and at it again, the next day, as fresh as ever. I soon get tired of this now, and wonder how I managed formerly. I knew Tom Jones by heart, and was deep in Peregrine Pickle. I was intimately acquainted with all the heroes and heroines of Richardson's romances, and could turn from one to the other as I pleased. I could con over that single passage in Pamela about "her lumpish heart," and never have done admiring the skill of the author and the truth of nature. I had my sports and recreations too, some such as these following: "To see the sun to bed, and to arise, Like some hot amourist, with glowing eyes |