was without a ripple,--the air was
soft and fragrant, as it flowed from grove and garden; and the whole was
a scene of sylvan and summer beauty. The thought suddenly shot across my
mind, what a capital prize this would be, in a revolution! How
handsomely it would repay a patriot for his trouble in uprooting lords
and commons! What a philosophic consummation of a life of husting
harangues, and league itinerancy, it would be, to lie on the
drawing-room sofa of a mansion so perfectly Greek, railing at the
tyranny of thrones, the bigotry of bishops, and the avarice of
aristocracies; lamenting the privations of the poor, over a table of
three courses, and drinking confusion to all monopolies in _Vin de
Comete!_

But, who was the present possessor? I asked the name and heard it. But,
from the captain to the cabin-boy, not a soul could give me another
syllable of information. Like the gravedigger in Hamlet, they might
"cudgel their brains," but all came to the gravedigger's confession at
last,--"Mass, I cannot tell."

Such, thought I, are the chances of the world. The owner of this marine
palace,--of these gardens, groves, deer, and dovecotes,--cannot have
less than L10,000 a-year; yet his name has never reached the auricular
sensibilities of man, beyond the fence of his own park. Was he
philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, historian? inventor of
steam-engine, of spinning jenny, of gunpowder, or of gun-cotton? No, I
searched every cell of memory for some "trivial fond record" which might
justify his title to a mansion and grounds fit for Sophocles, Schiller,
or Shakspeare, the master of them all. I could not find, in all the
rolls of the court of reminiscences, a single scrape of the pen to
inform me; not so much as the commemorative smoke of a candle on the
ceiling of the alcove of Mnemosyne; not a vestige of the "light
fantastic toe," of those sylphs who treasure the flippancies of noble
pens, and live in the fragrance of albums, otto-perfumed. Still I was
driven to the confession, "Mass, I cannot tell."

I had brought a volume of poor Tom Campbell in my pocket, and had been
glancing over his _chef-d'oeuvre_, "Ye Mariners of England," when this
stately edifice first checked my inspiration. In the wrath of my spirit
I tossed the volume overboard. "Psha!" I involuntarily exclaimed, "what
is the use of being a genius? What is the gratitude of a country, where
a cotton-spinner can purchase the fee-simple of a province, whi