The International Monthly Magazine | Page 8

of James the First, and what remains is sufficiently quaint to bear out the legend; the old and new are much mingled, and the modern part consists of one or two bed-rooms, a large dining-room, and a drawing-room, commanding a delicious garden view, the meanderings of the stream, and a long tract of luxuriant meadows, terminated by the high and richly timbered ground of St. Anne's Hill. A portion of the old stairway is preserved, the wood is not as has been stated oak, but sweet chestnut. One of the rooms is panelled with oak, and Cowley's study is a small closet-like chamber, the window looking towards St. Anne's Hill. It is never difficult to imagine a poet in a small chamber, particularly when his mind may imbibe inspiration from so rich and lovely a landscape. Beside the group of trees, beneath whose shadow the poet frequently sat, there is a horse chestnut of such exceeding size and beauty, that it is worthy a pilgrimage, and no lover of nature could look upon it without mingled feelings of reverence and affection.
Here then amid such tranquil scenes, and such placid beauty, the "melancholy Cowley," passed the later days of big anxious existence; here we may fancy him receiving Evelyn and Denham, the poets and men of letters of his troubled day, who found the disappointments of courtly life more than their philosophy could endure. Here his friendly biographer, Doctor Spratt, cheered his lonely hours.
Cowley was one of those fortunate bards who obtain fame and honor during life. His learning was deep, his reading extensive, his acquaintance with mankind large. "To him," says Denham in his famous elegy,
"To him no author was unknown, Yet what he wrote was all his own."
His biographer adds, "There was nothing affected or singular in his habit, or person, or gesture; he understood the forms of good breeding enough to practise them without burdening himself or others." This indeed is the perfection of good breeding and good sense.
Having obtained, as we have said, the Porch-house at Chertsey, his mind dwelt with pleasure--a philosophic pleasure--upon the hereafter, which he hoped for in this life of tranquillity, and the silent labor he so dearly loved; but he was destined to prove the reality of his own poesy:
"Oh life, thou Nothing's younger brother, So like that one might take one for the other."
The career of Abraham Cowley was never sullied by vice,(3) he was loyal without being servile, and at once modest, independent and sincere. His character is eloquently drawn by Doctor Spratt. "He governed his passions with great moderation, his virtues were never troublesome or uneasy to any, whatever he disliked in others he only corrected by the silent reproof of a better practice."
He died at Chertsey on the 28th of July, 1667, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. A throng of nobles followed him to his grave, and the worthless king who had deserted him is reported to have said, that Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England.
It is said the body of Cowley was removed from Chertsey by water, thus making the Thames he loved so well, the highway to his grave; there is something highly poetic in this idea of a funeral, so still and solemn, with the oars dropping noiselessly in the blue water. Pope in allusion to it, says:
"What tears the river shed, When the sad pomp along his banks was led;"
which rather inclines us to the belief, that in this, as in many other instances, the poetic reading is not the true one,
"The muses oft in lands of vision play:"
but the fact that he died at Chertsey, as much respected as a man, as he was admired as a poet, is certain, and his house is often visited by strangers, who are permitted to see his favorite haunts by the kindness of its proprietor, who honors the spot so hallowed by memories of "the melancholy Cowley:"--he who considered and described "business" as:
"The contradiction to his fate."
But we must postpone our farther rambles for the present.
[Illustration: TREES ON ST ANNE'S HILL.]
TREES ON ST ANNE'S HILL.

Chertsey loses half its romantic interest by the intrusion of the progressive agents of our time--our noisy time, of which the spirit willingly brooks no souvenirs of monastic repose. The old quaint quiet town has now its railroad, and the shades of its heroes have departed.

TRAUGOTT BROMME ON THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, TEXAS AND THE COLONIES.
We have at different times, by reviews or translations, endeavored to give our readers some idea of what people think of us, in continental Europe. But there are two sides to every thing--or there is an universal dualism, as Emerson declares--which is perfectly true as to the method which might be adopted in the execution of this self-imposed