int statuary of the walls; and
round the garden walls and shading the wide lawn behind the house, the
trees as later, gentler souls saw them; Thomson, walking from his
Richmond cottage, and Hood, strolling under the long avenue of elms.

Petersham has riverside houses which would dignify Georgian aldermen;
square red houses set about with wistaria and high garden walls, worthy
to be neighbours of Richmond Park; worthy, too, of a handsomer neighbour
than Petersham church, an insignificant little building which yet was
thought sufficient for the dust of the Duchess of Lauderdale. Outside in
the churchyard lies the sailor who sought for the North-west passage and
named Vancouver's Island.

[Illustration: _The Thames from Richmond Hill._]

Of Richmond Park, and the view from Richmond Terrace, and the departed
glories of Richmond's palace which was the palace of Sheen, what should
be said? How should the beauty of the view from the Terrace be measured?
Scott has set it in the pages of _The Heart of Midlothian_, and Scott,
perhaps, thought it the loveliest and richest of English landscapes. It
was "a huge sea of verdure, with crossing and intersecting promontories
of massive and tufted groves." It was "tenanted by numberless flocks and
herds, which seemed to wander unrestrained and unbounded through the
rich pastures. The Thames, here turreted with villas and there garlanded
with forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of
the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but accessories, and bore
on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs, whose white sails and gaily
fluttering pennons gave life to the whole." That was the scene which was
shown to Jeanie Deans, arrived at Richmond to sue for pardon for her
sister, by the Duke of Argyle. "We have nothing like it in Scotland,"
said the Duke of Argyle. Is that the secret? Is it because it is all
that is typical of south country greenness and the peace of broad water
and deep woodlands that it made its appeal to the Scot used to grey
crags and barren moorland? Or is its chief appeal not to the Scot but to
the Londoner, and does the Londoner praise Sir Walter's taste because
Sir Walter has praised his? That is part of the story of the beauty of
the Richmond view, perhaps. It is so easily found from London. It has
all that the Londoner loves to look at. It is the country as he wishes
to see it. A glorious stretch of luxuriant woodland, a noble breadth of
shining