THE THAMES,

FROM RICHMOND HILL.

THE beautiful and highly polished scenery of this part of the river, is represented in such various views in this work, that little remains to be said on the subject. The annexed plate, however, embraces that part of the stream which rolls its silver volume between the verdant meads of Twickenham, and the embowered banks of Ham, till it is lost amid the gardens and villas of the former classic village.

This particular portion of the river is that which is seen with such an enchanting effect from the point of Richmond Hill, on which was seated the villa of Sir Joshua Reynolds; and though he rarely indulged his pencil in landscape, but as accessory to his portraits, he painted a very beautiful picture of this view from his house, in which he exercised his power of colour with the happiest effect, and appears to have had in his mind at the time of this amusement of his genius, the style and character of Francesco Mola.

42

THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUGH'S VILLA,

RICHMOND.

Our ancestors were content to employ artists to paint landscapes, but we create them and it is now become an actual profession, not only to improve but to compose scenery in our domains, parks, and gardens; so as to produce living pictures of rural nature, and to heighten them with the embellishments of art. The landscape gardener is now a flourishing and increasing profession, and may be said to rival the painter, by the study of whose works he has perhaps gained those principles on which he builds his fame. When Browne formed the water at Blenheim, and cloathed it with those accompaniments which at once enliven, enrich, and aggrandize that distinguished scene, he produced an original which any painter might be proud to copy. Art is now employed, not only to improve but to re-create nature; to remove all her disguises, and to give her that dress which, in her best humour, she is frequently disposed to give herself. But the great art, in all these improvements, has been communicated to us, not by a painter, but by a poet, which is to consult the genius of the place, whatever it may be; whether it stretches out into a forest, surrounding a stately castle, expands in a lawn before a country mansion, or consists of the lengthened, undulating bank of a river, bearing a villa on its slopes, such as that of the Duke of Buccleugh on the Richmond side of the Thames, and beneath the hill, whose proud point of view is so well known. It descended to him from his father-in-law, the late Duke of Montague, who made it, so long back as when he was Earl of Cardigan, the pretty place which we now see it. The variety of the surface, the brilliant verdure, the pendent willow, and trees of the most pleasing form and foliage, compose and heighten the bowery character of the house

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