azlitt--not the living son
but the dead father. Would that he were still in the land of the living
by the side of his friend Leigh Hunt, who has been pensioned by the
Government for his support of that cause for which they were both so
bitterly persecuted by the ruling powers in days gone by. I flattered
myself into the belief that Hazlitt was interested in some of my
descriptions of Oriental scenes. What moved him most was an account of
the dry, dusty, burning, grassless plains of Bundelcund in the hot
season. I told him how once while gasping for breath in a hot verandah
and leaning over the rails I looked down upon the sun-baked ground.

"A change came o'er the spirit of my dream."

I suddenly beheld with all the distinctness of reality the rich, cool,
green, unrivalled meads of England. But the vision soon melted away, and
I was again in exile. I wept like a child. It was like a beautiful
mirage of the desert, or one of those waking dreams of home which have
sometimes driven the long-voyaging seaman to distraction and urged him
by an irresistible impulse to plunge headlong into the ocean.

When I had once more crossed the wide Atlantic--and (not by the
necromancy of imagination but by a longer and more tedious transit)
found myself in an English meadow,--I exclaimed with the poet,

Thou art free
My country! and 'tis joy enough and pride
For one hour's perfect bliss, _to tread the grass
Of England once again_.

I felt my childhood for a time renewed, and was by no means disposed to
second the assertion that

"Nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower."

I have never beheld any thing more lovely than scenery
characteristically English; and Goldsmith, who was something of a
traveller, and had gazed on several beautiful countries, was justified
in speaking with such affectionate admiration of our still more
beautiful England,

Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride.

It is impossible to put into any form of words the faintest
representation of that delightful summer feeling which, is excited in
fine weather by the sight of the mossy turf of our country. It is sweet
indeed to go,

Musing through the _lawny_ vale:

alluded to by Warton, or over Milton's "level downs," or to climb up
Thomson's

Stupendous rocks
That from the sun-redoubling valley lift
Cool to th