ing through the inferior chains and valleys constituting the provinces of Gûrwal and Kamaon, ultimately debouch into the plains of Rohilcund, are well-stocked with fish, of which two kinds, the trout and the mahaseeah, rise to the fly freely, and afford excellent amusement. The trout of the Himalaya differs considerably in appearance from our own; the head is sharper, the body flatter, and the general colour unlike: still he is a trout, and no mistake; and as such, to one who has been long an exile from Europe, and to whom the scenes of boyhood, though dim, are still dear, the first sight of him, with his bonny red spots, as he comes curvetting from his native element, is very exhilarating, and revives many a pleasant recollection of times gone by. The mahaseeah is a fish whose mouth, assisted by a sort of folding membrane, is capable of great expansion, showing that it is intended to live upon flies; it is a species of barbel, I think, and attains to a very large size, though none of those our party caught exceeded two or three pounds. Having occasion to visit Almooah in Kamaon, partly on account of health, and partly to perform some duties connected with the department to which I belonged (the commissariat), I started one fine morning from the handsome old Pattan town of Moradabad in Rohilcund for Bamourie, a Godown and post at the entrance of the pass leading through the first range of hills. My equipment consisted of a small hill-tent and a few boxes carried on mules, these animals being generally used in the mountains, a fair batterie de cuisine, and a few bottles of wine. I had also a trusty doublebarrelled Joe Manton, and a rifle approaching in size to a bone-breaker,' the name by which in India the large buffalo and tiger-pieces are sometimes known. Moreover, I had a rod or two, and a fairish book of hooks and flies; in short, was pretty well equipped for a campaign against the denizens of the woods and waters. I was accompanied by a friend, Captain S, a pleasant companion, and a keen sportsman-now, poor fellow, gathered to his fathers. On our way to Bamourie we passed through Rampore, the residence of a Pattan nawaub, and celebrated for its manufacture of swords, which are cheap, and highly-tempered. The general aspect of this town, with its courts, bazaars, and superior residences, amongst which is the palace of the nawaub, struck me, on a hasty inspection, as indicative of a nearer approach to European civilisation and wealth than is usually to be found in the small capitals of petty native princes. The plains of Rohilcund here. abouts, and as we approached the skirts of the jungle, were beautifully open, studded with towns, groves, and villages, and traversed by clear and rushing streams, whilst in the distance, their bases separated from the cultivated lands by a broad belt of forest and grass jungle, towered the mountains of Kamaon and Gûrwal, the snowy peaks of the Himalaya peering in white splintered cones, like gigantic sugar loaves, above the dark blue outline of the first range. The belt of grass and jungle to be traversed before reaching the pass was, if I recollect correctly, some twenty miles across; first we had to traverse a long expanse of verdure, and then commenced a scrubby tree jungle, till we reached Bamourie. At a village where the cultivation terminated and the grass jungle commenced, my friend and I had a splendid day's shooting; three antelopes, one a noble black buck with high spiral horns, besides black and gray partridges, hares, and a florikin or two, if I remember rightly, having rewarded our exertions. My companion shot two of the antelopes, which we started from fields of grain bordering on the long grass, and I broke the leg of my animal close to the shoulder; but he made such good use of the other three, that it was with some difficulty we secured him. We roused several wild hogs, but did not kill any. Our next day's march brought us to the confines of the tree jungle, which continued unbroken to the base of the mountains, excepting by a few cultivated fields about Bamourie. At this spot, where the tree jungle commenced, and Our where there were a few huts, we pitched our tents close to those of another small party of officers, Nimrods like ourselves. After breakfast, Captain S-, myself, and two other officers, old friends, likewise bound for Kamaon, who had joined us, sallied out with our guns. We were on foot, and the grass in some places, which grew to an amazing height, was traversed by small well-trodden paths, evidently made by tigers and other wild beasts, the prints of whose feet, indeed, we saw. I never felt more nervous and uncomfortable in my life, fully expecting at every step to hear the roar of a tiger, and to find myself sprawling in his clutches. This feeling was shared by my companions; and we therefore determined to draw off to a place where the jungle was more open and scanty. sport this day by no means equalled that of the preceding one; indeed it was very bad; but our neighbours were more successful, as, besides other game, they killed a noble tiger, which they were bringing up dangling from an elephant at the very moment we reached our encampment. He was soon stretched out before one of the tents; and I think I now see the circle of sportsmen around examining him as he lay on the grass in the grim repose of death, The tents, the tree jungle, the groups of servants and beaters, an elephant or two in majestic quiescence, the howdahs and guns on their backs close by, and the purple mountains of Kamaon soaring up in the distance, all combined to form a noble picture. This is sport-all grand and in keeping; and after it, pheasant-shooting in a preserve, and similar domestic amusements, hardly deserve the name. I felt the fore-arm of the defunct tiger, and was not prepared, under so loose and velvety a skin as that which covered it, to find muscle and sinew as hardly compacted as a deal board. I could then for the first time conceive how it is that this formidable brute can fell an ox and crush in his skull with a single blow of his paw. Tigers hereabouts are pretty numerous. They follow the herds of the Kussiah mountaineers, picking off a bullock as they feel inclined; and when at particular seasons the herdsmen and cattle retire up into the mountains, they are said to be so obliging as still to keep them company. Bamourie is simply a halting-place for travellers at the commencement of the ascent of the mountains, and at the period to which I refer, there were no buildings there (though several villages and some cultivation are to be found in the vicinity) saving a plain oblong structure called the 'Godown,' or store, and a few sheds for cattle, constructed of timber, and resembling American log-houses. The Godown was divided into three compartments, each having its door: two of these contained attah (flour), ghee, turmeric, and other supplies requisite for native travellers; and the third was set apart for the accommodation of English officers journeying to and from Kamaon. In this last, which was of very confined dimensions, was a fireplace, and the furniture, of a rude and primitive character, consisted of a clumsy table and two or three rickety chairs, exhibiting sundry simple and compound fractures: such was our temporary abode at Bamourie. The belt of forest between this place and Rooderpoor is a hotbed of malaria, from the commencement of the rains in May and June, till the setting in of the cold season in October and November. These pestiferous exhalations, produced by the joint action of sun and moisture on decayed vegetation, are called the 'oul' by the natives; and when once they begin to arise, the Kussiah herdsmen withdraw with their cattle to the mountains out of the reach of their influence. The petty establishments from such places as Bamourie and Tandah are usually removed (they are under the commissariat department), and the European residents in the hills become pretty effectually cut off from intercourse with the plains, for even then a rapid transit through this pestiferous cincture is attended with the most imminent risk. The period of our visit was the fine season, and the absence of all danger from the above source, and the coolness and purity of the The Dauli, the river which issues from the mountains · 99 the hepatic region, and other circumstances, prevented my indulging in field-sports so much as I otherwise should. The weight of my mahaseeah-for he was a small one-was considerably under two pounds, but his strength and vivacity gave me a lively idea of what one of his species would effect in the way of resistance if of forty or fifty pounds weight; for to this, and I was told a still larger size, they attain in the rivers of the low which I saw in my next day's excursion waving his Himalaya. Indeed I am pretty sure that a huge felbroad tail in a deep and glassy pool, and whom I vainly coaxed to do me the honour of tasting my fly and paste, must have been little short of that size. Tackled to a fish of that bulk, his struggles for liberty, aided by a rushing torrent, loose stones for your footing, and a tiger perhaps not far off, considering what might be the most judicious mode of intercepting your further progress, it to be sure; but, knowing myself to be where they abound, is necessary to have your wits about you. I saw no tigers, I made one of my servants carry my double-barrelled prepared in case one should make his appearance; and I always, whilst fishing, took especial care to give progun close behind me, loaded with ball, so that I might be jecting knolls and long grass or brushwood as wide a berth as possible. I was told of more than one rencontre which English anglers had had with them, and the precaution was consequently by no means superfluous. found my brother angler returned with a fair basket of On returning to the Godown on this my first day, I had I the luck to catch) struck me, as I have before trout and mahaseeah: the former (not one of which kind observed, as differing materially from our English fish of the name, though unquestionably of the same family. This I found to be the case with respect to all the productions of the mountains of which we possess the counterparts in Europe: the jays were jays, it is true, birds, pheasants, blackberries, violets; and so on through the whole range of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. but not quite the jays of our woods; ditto the blackAs far as my limited observation went, the birds resem. bling our songsters in plumage were voiceless, and the flowers, like those which enamel our lanes and meads, without scent; still it is pleasant to have even one sense gratified by objects blended with our early associations, and this the English traveller from the plains, if long Kamaon. an exile from Europe, feels most strongly on entering provinces to come well supplied with tackling, particularly flies; for, in the first place, the mahaseeah I would recommend to all fly-fishers in the Himalaya is strong, and as he darts down the rapid current, the least knot or momentary obstruction to the passage of the line will lead to his disappearance with a portion of it; and secondly, the great round rocks and stones aptitude for taking off your flies. Repeatedly, in throwwhich in many places strew the banks, have a peculiar ing my line, did I hear a sort of snip behind me, and was gone, which, owing to the broken nature of the ground, I seldom if ever recovered. Perhaps this might on a consequent examination invariably found that a fly be otherwise accounted for, but I attributed it to the stones; for where they were not, it did not occur. left Bamourie, and proceeded to Bheemtal, the second gun,* though a mountaineer himself, was so terrified, that he crouched and shuddered, and I thought would have lain down on the bridge. I never saw terror in an animal so forcibly depicted as when he was making his transit, or the appearance of comfort and satisfaction more complete than when he once more trod on terra firma. Our engineers are said, I believe, to have derived their ideas of suspension-bridges from those of the mountain regions of India, where, in various forms, they have been in use from time immemorial. Some of the rude bridges thrown over chasms are very unsafe, a melancholy proof of which occurred some years since in the case of a fine young woman, a Miss S-, while travelling in the mountains with her parents, whom she had recently joined from England. The young lady, and a gentleman who formed one of the party, Major H-, a very large and heavy man, having preceded the rest, came suddenly upon one of these mountain bridges thrown across a deep chasm, at the bottom of which rushed a rapid torrent. A drove of cattle had just passed, and they followed without any apprehension of danger. Perhaps the weight of the cattle had brought the bridge to the breaking point, for when the officer and the hapless girl reached the centre, it suddenly gave way, and they were precipitated into the gulf below. Major H-'s endeavours to rescue his companion were fruitless; and it was with the greatest difficulty he managed to extricate himself. She was for a moment seen on a rock in the channel, her loosened locks, which she was endeavouring to part, clinging to her face and person, when a swell of the current swept her away, to be seen no more. Not far from the bridge of Bamourie I observed a land-slip a striking exemplification of the process continually going on by which the bulk of mountains undergoes a sensible diminution. The torrent, by beating on one point of the base of a hill, which rose sheer above it to a great elevation, had so worn it away, that its whole side, waving with forest, had sunk down into the vacant space, leaving, where the continuity of the slope had been broken, a clearly-marked and perpendicular precipice, the earthy face fresh and untinted, and resembling a colossal step. A few miles of continual ascent, the scenery at every turn increasing in grandeur and beauty, brought us to Bheemtal. Bheemtal, or the lake of Bheem, some three or four thousand feet above the level of the plains, occupies the centre of a small valley, above which the dark mountains shoot to a towering height, some cultivated in long successions of levels, rising like gigantic steps one above the other; others clothed with dark forest, and exhibiting on their peaked summits the spearlike forms of the pine and fir. Close to the little lake, deep, blue, and transparent, stood a large Banyan tree, and a curious old Hindoo temple of a conical or bee-hive shape; and hard by, another Godown similar to that at Bamourie, but which has since, I understand, been pulled down, and replaced by a superior place of accommodation, erected by the government on a neighbouring eminence. Here we halted for a day, which I devoted to shooting. I believe one of our party (amounting to four) tried the lake-profoundly deep, and in which we saw quantities of fish-but I forget with what success. In some cultivation which skirted one extremity of this mountain tarn, I found the black partridge pretty abundant, and killed several, as also two or three hill partridges. The black partridge is a beautiful bird, and shooting them an amusement highly enjoyed by the Anglo-Indian sportsman. The breast of the male bird is of a shining black, speckled with white; the head is also marked in a similar manner. He rises perpendicularly at first to a considerable height, and then goes off horizontally, and is by no means an easy shot. The black partridge is found in the long grass on the margin of rivers and swamps, from whence in the mornings and evenings he creeps out into the *Mountain ponies, so called. neighbouring cultivation; his note or call is very peculiar, resembling somewhat the creak of a wheel. A sight which greatly delighted me was the profusion of flowers and shrubs, resembling those common in England. Butter-cups, marshmallows, and cuckoo flowers, grew on the margin of the lake; violets and primroses peered from the mossy banks; and dog-roses hung in festoons from the trees and hedges: in fact I felt myself at home again, and the recollection of many a bird-nesting excursion and schoolboy-ranible rushed upon my mind. The next morning we continued our route, and a few miles brought us to the foot of the Goggar Pahar, one of the loftiest mountains of Kamaon.* The ascent, up a zig-zag road overhung with magnificent forest trees, was toilsome in the extreme; but the labour was amply repaid by the inexpressible grandeur of the scenery which every turn disclosed. On our right, glens sunk to profound depths, from whence arose the murmur of the far-off torrent, blended with the sighing of the trees; whilst every now and then, from openings of the woods, we caught a view of the little lake of Bheemtal, studding like a sapphire the valley behind us; and beyond stretched out, till lost in the haze of the distance, the vast expanse of the plains of Rohilcund. At one moment we beheld almost perpendicularly above us a string of herdsmen and bullocks moving along with scenic effect, whilst directly below our feet we could perceive our mules and servants toiling up the ascent, the latter awaking the echoes of the mountain solitudes with their cheerful shouts and songs. Amidst such scenes, where nature exhibits her most sublime features, how strongly does the mind assimilate itself to their grand and elevated character! How soothing is their solitude, how touching their silent magnificence! We were now in the lofty region of the oak and fir, and on every side bloomed the bright scarlet flower of the rhododendron. Pheasants continually ran across the road, and I got a shot at some deer which I perceived feeding on a grassy knoll far below me, the report of my gun echoing from hill to hill. At length we gained the summit, and turning its woody brow, a prospect burst upon us to which I believe the world cannot furnish a parallel, and to which the feeble powers of words are incapable of doing justice. Range beyond range of dark blue mountains opened on the view, of which the sombre billows of a heaving ocean furnish the truest idea; some partially cultivated, with here and there villages perched like eagles' nests in almost inaccessible situations, and others clothed with waving forests; whilst bounding the distance, and stretching far and wide, shot up in calm magnificence the splintered and glittering peaks of the mighty Himalaya, white with eternal snows. We became riveted to the spot, indulging every moment in the delighted and passionate exclamations of wonderful! sublime! magnificent! Cold and insensible, indeed, must be that being who could gaze unmoved from the summit of the Goggar Pahar. A long and weary descent of many thousand feet brought us to our halting place in the little mountainlocked valley of Ramgar. Here a Kussiah peasant brought us some small black trout, strung through the gills on a willow withe; and these, with a pheasant shot by one of my companions, and a roaring fire in the Godown, repaid us for all our toils, and enabled me to enjoy one of the pleasantest evenings I ever spent in India. A small clear stream wound through the bare valley of Ramgar, on the other side of which was a miserable village inhabited by miners, who fuse the iron ore dug from the adjoining mountain. We visited this village, and observed the rude mode in which the dingy inhabitants cast and prepared the iron; this, when made into pigs, is conveyed on coolies to the plains, where a market for it is found. On the stream which flowed through this valley we observed several diminutive water-mills, just big enough to hold a single person, and in which a large wheel gave a rotatory * Eight or nine thousand feet. motion to a couple of ponderous stones. Ascending another lofty range by the same zig-zag process, we reached Peurah, the third halting-place on the opposite declivity. This part, unlike the Goggar, we found but little wooded, but exhibiting many large villages and much cultivation. region of the mountain and flood, I could not help As I gazed on this magnificent mentally picturing what it might, and perhaps will some day become, under the fostering influence of European science, industry, and civilisation. I fancied the now almost unimproved features of nature here on their grandest scale, embellished by the hand of art-cities or towns occupying every plateau and valley-farms and chateaux the woody nooks and wide-sweeping declivities-and the sound of the church-going bell,' connected with some simple and purer worship, floating softly over glen and vale. Whether European colonisation be practicable in these mountains in any form or degree, and, if practicable, politic and desirable, with reference to the welfare of our empire and the security of our rule, seems to be a question worthy of consideration. The Kussiahs, or inhabitants of Kamaon, are a simple and inoffensive people, originally from the plains, and possessed of few of the characteristics of mountaineers. The people of the adjoining province of Gûrwal are said to be a far stouter and finer race; but both are immeasurably inferior to the Goorkhas of Napaul, their former masters, who are bold and energetic in the extreme-regular little duodecimos of manhood and spirit. It is a pity we have not more of these indomitable little heroes in our native army. They strongly attach themselves to European officers, and like our service, though every obstacle is, I am told, raised by their own government to prevent their entering it. Though Tartar by race, they are, singularly enough, Hindoo by religion. Peurah consists of a few houses on a terrace occupying the brow of a mountain, and commanding a noble prospect of the ridge on which Almorah stands, and the background of snowy mountains. There was no fishing to be had here, at least that I could hear of, so we all sallied out after breakfast to make war on the birds and quadrupeds. Grouse-shooting, I imagine, from what little I have seen Most fatiguing work I found it. of the amusement, though trying to the wind and the capsular ligaments, is a joke to it. Lured on by the cluck of the mountain partridge, you mount up field after field formed in terraces like Brobdignag steps, till your mutinous supporters seem resolved upon a strike. Puffing and blowing, however, you at last spring your chikor; up he whirs; you perhaps miss him (I was guilty of that solecism occasionally), and if so, down he plumps like a stone into a valley some two or three thousand feet deep, or crosses to an opposite range, and it is half a day's march to get at him again. In spite, however, of these little difficulties, I bagged a few chikor, and had some other sport. pheasants; but from the novelty of the game, or some I got several shots at inscrutable reason, killed none. ties of the pheasant in Kamaon; one of a brilliant There are many variemetallic green colour, another pied, with an enormously long tail; but I saw none exactly resembling ours, the original of which is, I believe, from Persia. Never shall I forget the first sunrise and sunset at Peurah-the coucher and reveillé of those Titans of earth, the Himalayan peaks-how their vast forms melted away in the sombre tints of eve, and with what roseate hues, and in what beauteous lights, the morning again revealed them to my sight. As the dawn approached, the tips of the snowy peaks were suffused with a delicate, luminous, and roseate tint, which gave them (their connexion with earth being imperceptible, or but dimly visible) the appearance of a row of Chinese lamps suspended high along the horizon. Then, as the morning light became more confirmed, the giant forms of Jumootrie, Gungootrie, and other peaks slowly emerged, dyed with the reflected blushes of the reddening east, whilst some of the ranges immediately below the snowy chain appeared of the darkest blue, and 101 others nearer to us tipped with gold, and just catching the oblique rays of the rising luminary, started forth from this dark background in bold and splendid relief. Seen either in calm, in sunshine, or in storm, at the evening hour or in the morning light, these magnificent brethren must hide their diminished heads'-always Alps of the East-before which, however, their European present a different picture. On rising in the morning at Peurah, I found that during the night a leopard had endeavoured to carry off one of my mules; but this being resisted by the animal itself, as well as the drivers, who, according to their own account, belaboured the leopard with their cudgels most vigorously, he was obliged to content himself with a large bite out of the poor beast's shoulder, which certainly exhibited a frightful wound. The mule, however, seemed to bear his misfortune with much calmness, for when I went to examine his injuries, I found him quietly munching provender with his long-eared brethren. ing the ridge of a mountain, and the station of a small The next day's journey 'o'er hill and dale' brought body of troops; but here, for the present, I must close us to Almorah, the capital of the province, occupymy recollections. ENGLAND abounds in wonders, and amongst these not merchant, as might be presumed from his occupying Beckford was on intimate terms with the Earl of Chatham and his son, and other eminent persons on the liberal side. His first literary effort was a jeu d'esprit, entitled Memoirs of Extraordinary Painters. Having overheard the old housekeeper at Fonthill making the strangest blunders in describing the pictures to visitors, he thought of drawing up a sort of catalogue embodying, or rather exaggerating her absurdities, and this for the purpose of being used as a guide by strangers, not one of whom in a hundred had the slightest acquaintance with the names of real artists. To quote himself,* The book was soon on the tongues of all the domestics. Many were the quotations current upon the merits of Og of Basan and Watersouchy of Amsterdam. Before a picture of Rubens or Murillo, there was often a charming dissertation upon the pencil of the Herr Sucrewasser of Vienna, or that great Italian artist Blunderbussiana of Venice. I used to listen unobserved, until I was ready to kill myself with laughing at the authorities quoted to the squires and farmers of Wilts, who took all for gospel.' Fonthill, in Wiltshire. This estate had been purchased by his father, of whom it is told that, hearing one day of the conflagration of the mansion which stood upon it, he coolly said, 'Well, let it be rebuilt;' which was done at the enormous expense of L.240,000. The luxurious Vathek, dissatisfied with the site, which was low, determined to abandon it, and rebuild upon one more elevated. When this was effected, the mayor's costly mansion was sold for the value of the materials-nine thousand pounds. The construction of the new edifice was conducted by the solitary and self-absorbed enthusiast with an energy highly characteristic. At one time every cart and wagon in the district were pressed into the service, though all the agricultural labour of the country stood still. At another, even the royal works of St George's Chapel, Windsor, were abandoned, that 460 men might be employed night and day on Fonthill Abbey. These men were made to relieve each other by regular watches; and during the longest and darkest nights of winter, the astonished traveller might see the tower rising under their hands, the trowel and torch being associated for that purpose. This must have had a very extraordinary appearance; and we are told that it was another of those exhibitions which Mr Beckford was fond of contemplating. He is represented as surveying the work thus expedited, the busy levy of masons, the high and giddy dancing of the lights, and the strange effects produced upon the architecture and woods below, from one of the eminences in the walks, and wasting the coldest hours of December darkness in feasting his sense with this display of almost superhuman power."* He was but twenty-two years of age when he composed his wondrous tale of Vathek, in French, at one sitting of three nights and two days.' The beauty of some of the descriptions in this tale, and the dreary grandeur of its close, in a hall of everlasting torment, stamp it as a production of the highest genius. It seems strange that one who could write so well, should have written no more in the same style. The work was, nevertheless, little known to the English public till a translation was published in London in 1815. We have the author's own authority that the composition of In 1807 the mansion was sufficiently far advanced Vathek, performed as it was without intervening sleep to accommodate its founder. Now it was that Engor rest, and productive, as it must have been, of extra-land's wealthiest son' seemed entitled to say, ordinary excitement, made him extremely ill. Mr Beckford was perhaps too much a student to be an active author. He gave himself almost entirely up for years to reading, and the cultivation of his taste for works of art. The effects of years devoted by a powerful mind to constant study, were most remarkable. He seemed to be acquainted with all the principal authors that ever wrote, and of his own vast collection of books, scarce one did not contain remarks written by him. At an early period of life, Mr Beckford married Lady Margaret Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Aboyne, by whom he was left a widower at twenty-six, with two daughters. He formed no other alliance. Much of this period of his life was spent in France, with most of whose contemporary great men he became acquainted. Italy, Spain, and Portugal, also shared in his affections. His observations on these countries were preserved in a series of letters which was published near the end of his life. At Cintra, in Portugal, he for some time established his residence, building in one of the loveliest spots of that beautiful region a fairy palace, the first of his wondrous creations in stone and lime. Byron alludes to this beautiful, but now ruined mansion, in his Childe Harold: There thou, too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son, Once formed thy paradise, as not aware When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done, Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun. Пere didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan Beneath yon mountain's ever-beauteous brow: But now, as if a thing unblest by man, Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou! Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow To halls deserted, portals gaping wide; Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied; Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide. During the troubles in the Peninsula, Mr Beckford abandoned this residence and returned to England, where he soon applied himself to the business which of all others he most loved, that of building, adorning, and furnishing. He was engaged for the better part of twenty years in rearing and fitting out his palace at *See an interesting paper by Mr Cyrus Redding, in the New Monthly Magazine for June. Yon palace, whose brave turret tops, Over the stately wood survey the copse, Promiseth, if sought, a wished place of rest. A palace it might not have been improperly called, for inside and out it was a structure of surpassing splendour; no bit of gingerbread, like Horace Walpole's villa at Twickenham, but a reproduction in solid stone of the beautiful proportions of the best times of Gothic architecture. The most striking feature was the principal tower, which, rising to an immense height from the centre, was visible, above the trees that embosomed the remainder of the abbey, at a distance of twenty miles. This Mr Beckford had been induced to build in consequence of the temptation presented by the elevated situation, and from a love he had for extensive prospects, the enjoyment of which was placed within his power by the favour of nature in bestowing upon him extraordinary eyesight. Four lines of building radiated from the tower, so as to form the outline of a Latin cross; but all monotony of effect was effectually precluded by the various heights of the four limbs, the mixture of turrets amongst pinnacles, and the contrast of round with square towers. The park and pleasure-grounds were laid out with consummate art, in order to constitute, either by themselves, or in connexion with the abbey, landscapes of the most delightful description. Proceeding to the interior, the visitor selected, as most worthy of notice amongst its hundred apartments, the Great Western Hall, the two galleries called St Michael's and King Edward's, which, being in a line with each other, could at any time be thrown into one grand vista; the two yellow drawing-rooms, the sanctuary, the oratory, the nunnery, &c. These rooms being hung with silks and damasks of the richest dye, adorned with choice pictures of the great masters, stored with the rarest objects of virtû, and filled with valuable books and furniture, formed a whole which was magnificent and indescribable. The mullioned windows were embellished with stained glass, All garlanded with carven imageries, * Literary Gazette, 1822. |