Why, once so loved, whene'er thy bower appears,
O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears?
How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair,
Thy sloping walks and unpolluted air?
How sweet the glooms beneath thine aged trees,
Thy noon-tide shadow and thine evening breeze!
His image thy forsaken bowers restore;
Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more;
No more the summer in thy glooms allayed,
Thine evening breezes, and thy noon-day shade."
Yet a few years, and the shades and structures may follow their
illustrious masters. The wonderful city which, ancient and gigantic as
it is, still continues to grow as fast as a young town of logwood by a
water-privilege in Michigan, may soon displace those turrets and gardens
which are associated with so much that is interesting and noble, with
the courtly magnificence of Rich, with the loves of Ormond, with the
counsels of Cromwell, with the death of Addison. The time is coming
when, perhaps, a few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will
in vain seek, amidst new streets, and squares, and railway stations, for
the site of that dwelling which was in their youth the favorite resort
of wits and beauties, of painters and poets, of scholars, philosophers,
and statesmen. They will then remember, with strange tenderness, many
objects once familiar to them, the avenue and the terrace, the busts and
the paintings, the carving, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical
mottoes. With peculiar fondness they will recall that venerable chamber,
in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly
blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a
drawing-room. They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded
with the varied learning of many lands and many ages, and those
portraits in which were preserved the features of the best and wisest
Englishmen of two generations. They will recollect how many men who have
guided the politics of Europe, who have moved great assemblies by reason
and eloquence, who have put life into bronze and canvas, or who have
left to posterity things so written as it shall not willingly let them
die, were there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the
society of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember the
peculiar character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent
and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They will
remember
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