say to the waterman (this is his own account), “John, I am going to repeat some verses to you; take care and remember them the next time I go out.” When that time came, Pope would say: “John, where are the verses I told you of?”—“I have forgotten them, sir.”—“John, you are a blockhead—I must write them down for you.” John said that no one thought of saying, when speaking of him, Mr. Pope, but he was always called Mr. Alexander. In one of his poems, he, with considerable bitterness, attacks a Mr. Secretary Johnson, a neighbour of his, residing at a villa on the banks of the Thames, now called Orleans House, and refers with considerable spite to his “Dog and Bitch.” No commentator on Pope’s works has ever been able to discover what was meant by a reference to these animals. I have, however, been the means of making the discovery. On each side of the lawn of Orleans House there are walls covered with ivy. In the centre of each wall the ivy appeared much raised above the rest. A friend, residing near, at my request examined these portions of the walls, and, concealed in the raised ivy, he discovered on one wall a dog carved in stone, and on the other a stone bitch.[1] Now it is certain that when John punted the poet up and down the river, he could readily see these animals, and thence his satire.
On leaving Twickenham Reach, the closing scene is formed into a good river view. A point of land shoots out into the river, and on the left is adorned with lofty trees. On the right Lord Dysart’s park extends far into the landscape, and beyond it Richmond Hill rises into the distance. But amongst the numerous villas in this neighbourhood, Lady Suffolk’s, now General Peel’s, makes the best appearance from the river. It stands in a woody recess, with a fine lawn descending to the water. It has many historical associations.
We now come to Richmond, and here we quit our notice of the Thames, for it is full of impurities; like the Lake of Avernus, even swallows avoid it, and are never seen skimming over its polluted surface.
JAPANESE FRAGMENTS.
BY CAPTAIN SHERARD OSBORN, R.N.
CHAPTER II.
The English sailor, the English wanderer, in those remote regions where the blue Pacific rolls its vast proportions through frigid and burning climes, may be pardoned for naturally seeking amidst its isles and continents for some resemblance to the pleasant shores of Britain. He hails a country where the oak and pine-tree flourish, where the land is green with herbage, where the field throws forth its flowers, and the wheat will ripen, not scorch, under the glare of a noontide sun. Revelling in the recollection of his home, he loves the new land more, because it resembles the one from which he is an exile. It is this feeling which, in the olden days, when there were new countries for bold seamen to discover, led to the frequent naming of places after the land of the navigator’s birth. The Spaniard ever saw a New Spain, a New Grenada, in the regions of the Far West; and Dutchmen and Englishmen afterwards dotted the Great South Sea and the Indian Ocean with New Hollands, New Zealands, New Albions, and Caledonias. It is, perhaps, with somewhat of the same spirit that we would trace a strong similitude in more respects than one between the Islands of the British and Japanese empires,—a likeness to be traced in their geographical contour, in their relative position to adjacent continents and seas, in their climates, products, and, to a considerable extent, in the love of independence, combined with order and industry, which actuates their inhabitants. If the reader places a globe before him, he will observe, if he considers the great mass of land constituting Europe and Asia as an entire continent, that Britain on the one hand and Japan upon the other are detached portions of that great mass, remarkably alike in general outline, and although differing somewhat in latitude, approximate much in climatic condition. The isothermal lines upon meteorological maps attest that fact; and, even as our temperature is modified with respect to Europe by the action of a gulf-stream from the warm regions of the Atlantic Ocean, so in like manner is that of Japan regulated and rendered temperate as compared with the trying extremes of heat and cold in Northern China by the beneficent action of a gulf-stream from the tropical portion of the Pacific Ocean. The resemblance may still be traced in the products of Japan and the disposition of her inhabitants. We find her mineral wealth almost in excess of our own. Copper, coal, and iron, she has in almost unlimited quantity; and she yields what we could never boast of, much gold and some silver. The vegetable productions are far more varied than those of the British Isles; and they have within the last few centuries acclimatised the tea-plant and silk-worm. The waters which wash the coast are rich in wealth; indeed, the principal food of the inhabitants, with the exception of rice, are the fish which abound in its numerous bays and fiords.
Bold writers have computed the empire of Japan to compose about one hundred and sixty thousand square miles of superficial area. Recollecting how indented its shores are with arms of the sea, how its surface is broken up with lofty mountain ranges, and how little we as yet know of either, such an assertion must be considered a mere approximation; but we believe there are far better grounds for stating that the population now verges upon nearly forty million souls. The size of the empire may be in general terms likened to that of- ↑ Pope alludes to these figures in his “Imitations of Spenser:”
Such place hath Deptford, navy-building town,
Woolwich and Wapping, smelling strong of pitch;
Such Lambeth, envy of each band and gown,
And Twickenham such, which fairer scenes enrich;
Grots, statues, urns, and Jon’s dog and bitch,
Ne village is without on either side
All up the silver Thames, or all adown,
Ne Richmond’s self from whose tall front are eyed
Vales, spires, meandering streams, and Windsor’s towery pride.The Jon mentioned in the fifth line was Mr. Secretary Johnson, an official of some public note in the reign of Queen Anne.
