GARRICK'S DEATH.

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racter was Richard the Third, and his fame was such, that Drury-lane and Covent-garden were soon deserted. Quin was jealous of his success; remarking, in his queer way, that "Garrick was a new religion; Whitfield was followed for a time, but they would all come to CHURCH again!" Garrick, who had a happy talent in pointing an epigram, gave this reply :

Pope QUIN, who damns all churches but his own,
Complains that Heresy corrupts the town;

Schism, he cries, has turn'd the nation's brain,
But

eyes will open and to Church again!

Thou GREAT INFALLIBLE, forbear to roar,
Thy bulls and errors are rever'd no more;
When Doctrines meet with general approbation,
It is not Heresy but-REFORMATION!

Garrick, after a long and unexampled career of success, died at his house in the Adelphi, January 20, 1779, in the sixty-fifth year of his age; his disorder gradually increasing and admitting of no remedy. His physicians knew not how to designate his illness. Observing many of them, the day before his death, in his apartment, he asked who they were; being told they were physicians, he shook his head, and repeated these lines of Horatio, in the Fair Penitent :

Another and another still succeeds,

And the last Fool is welcome as the former!

He wrote many small pieces for the stage, was unrivalled in the several departments of the histrionic

260

HAMPTON-COURT GREEN.

profession, and has a superb monument raised to his memory in Westminster Abbey

To paint fair Nature, by Divine command,
Her magic pencil in his glowing hand,

A SHAKESPEARE rose-then to expand his fame
Wide o'er the breathing world a GARRICK came!
Tho' sunk in death, the forms the Poet drew,
The ACTOR's genius bade them breathe anew;
Tho' like the Bard himself in night they lay
IMMORTAL GARRICK call'd them back to day.
And till Eternity, with power sublime,

Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary TIME,

SHAKESPEARE and GARRICK like twin-stars shall shine,
And Earth irradiate with a beam divine!

On the borders of a spacious area, termed HamptonCourt Green, in the vicinity of the palace, are many respectable houses; in one of which SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN resided during the latter part of his life. His architectural fame will perish only with the last general conflagration. This great man laid the first stone of ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, June 12, 1675, and in 1710 the building was completed:-thirty-five years erecting! It was begun and finished by one architect and under one prelate. But St. Peter's at Rome was one hundred and thirty-five years building, during the reigns of nineteen popes, and went through the hands of twelve architects.

Hampton Wick is a hamlet situated on the Thames, in the neighbourhood of Kingston Bridge. Sir Richard Steele built a handsome house here, which he

termed The Hovel, and hence is dated the Dedication of the fourth volume of the Tatler. Nor must we omit to mention an humble individual, Timothy Bennett, noted for his successful appeal to the laws of his country to secure a right of free passage through Bushy Park. I have seen a large mezzotinto print of him, with the following inscription:

"Timothy Bennett, of Hampton Wick, in Middlesex, Shoemaker, aged 75, 1752. This true Briton (unwilling to leave the world worse than he found it) by a vigorous application of the laws of his country, in behalf of liberty, obtained a free passage through Bushy Park, which had many years been withheld from the People!"

KINGSTON, on the opposite side of the river, is a principal town of Surry. The assizes are held alternately here and at Guildford. It was the occasional residence of many Anglo-Saxon kings, and in the reign of Edward the Third, sent representatives to Parliament. It contains seven hundred and fifty houses and upwards of four thousand inhabitants. The town, in the civil wars, was a post of importance; they fought for the king, and, of course, against the parliament. The church is a large structure, enriched by many monuments; one of which is devoted to the memory of the unfortunate Captain Pearce, of the Halsewell East Indiaman, lost off the Isle of Portland, in 1786, with circumstances of peculiar horror. Here are also several Dissenting places of worship. Over the Presbyterian congregation pre

sided for some time the late Dr. Moody, who conducted the department of Theology in the Monthly Review for several years with ability. Its principal trade is corn and malt. Its Grammar School had for one of its masters, the Rev. John Bauman, of Prague, in Bohemia, grand-father of the excellent Dr. Philip Doddridge, who, indeed, received part of his grammar learning at this place. For liberty of conscience, he withdrew, in 1626, from his own country, in the habit of a peasant on foot, carrying with him nothing but a hundred broad pieces of gold, plaited in a leathern girdle, and a BIBLE of Luther's translation. Such was the sacrifice made by this good man upon the altar of integrity.

In pursuing our course from Hampton to STAINES, the road lies across the upper part of a peninsula made by the river Thames. At the lower extremity is the small village of Shepperton, and, across the river, Oatlands, the pleasant seat of the Duke of York. And further on is CHERTSEY, an ancient market town, in a low, but not unhealthy situation. The church is of Saxon architecture, and has two small monuments to the Mawbey family. Its market is celebrated for poultry. There was formerly a large Abbey of Benedictine Monks in its vicinity, where the corpse of Henry the Sixth was deposited, but afterwards removed to Windsor. The bridge at Chertsey, built of Purbeck stone, has seven arches, and cost £13,000. It may be said to be both useful and ornamental to this part of the country. In 1773,

digging a vault, in the chancel of the church, a leaden coffin was discovered, containing the body of a woman in high preservation; though the face was fresh, and the lace of the linen sound, yet it is supposed that the corpse was deposited there before the conquest.

At Porch House, Chertsey, died, 1667, in the 47th year of his age, ABRAHAM COWLEY, the father of English Poets, and the most amiable of mankind. Hither he had retired a short time before to enjoy the pleasures of solitude. During the civil wars he exerted himself in behalf of the Royal Party, and along with many others he was left unrewarded at the Restoration. By the interest of the Earl of St. Albans and the Duke of Buckingham, he obtained a lease of the Queen's lands at Chertsey; and on his decease, Charles the Second said, that " MR. COWLEY had not left a better man behind him in England!" His Biographer, Dr. Sprat, says he died of an affection of the lungs; but Dr. Warton tells us, that Cowley and Sprat paid a visit on foot to a gentleman in the neighbourhood of Chertsey, which they prolonged in free conviviality till midnight, and missing their way, they lay under a hedge all night, which, by giving the Poet a severe cold and fever, terminated in his dissolution. He was buried near the remains of Chaucer and Spenser, with a most honourable attendance of persons of distinction, in Westminster Abbey.

At the time of his death, CoWLEY ranked as the first Poet in England, for Milton had not reached to his destined glory. Dr. Johnson commences his