We have not space to describe, or rather to abridge from Whately’s beautiful description, a tithe of the classic embellishments of Hagley.  Shenstone as well as Pope has here his votive urn.  Ivied ruin, temple, grotto, statue, fountain, and bridge; the proud portico and the humble rustic seat, alternate amidst these ornamental charms, and never were Nature and art more delightfully blended than in the beauties of Hagley.  Here Pope, Shenstone, and Thomson[3] passed many hours of calm contemplation and poetic ease, amidst the hospitalities of the noble owner of Hagley.  To think of their kindred spirits haunting its groves, and their imaginative contrivances of votive temples, urns, and tablets, and to combine them with these enchanting scenes of Nature, is to realize all that Poets have sung of Arcadia of old.  Happy! happy life for the man of letters; what a retreat must your bowers have afforded from the common-place perplexities of every-day life:  Alas! the picture is almost too sunny for sober contemplation.

    [3] Thomson’s affectionate letter to his sister, (quoted by
    Johnson, who received it from Boswell,) is dated “Hagley, in
    Worcestershire, October the 4th, 1747.”

* * * * *

In part of the impression of our last Number, we stated the architect of the front of Apsley House, to be Sir Jeffrey Wyatville, instead of Mr. Benjamin Wyatt, by whom the design was furnished, and under whose superintendence this splendid improvement has been executed.  Mr. B. Wyatt is likewise the architect of the superb mansion built for the late Duke of York.

* * * * *

INGRATITUDE.

A dramatic sketch.

(For the Mirror.)

  Hence, faithless wretch! thou hast forgot the hand
  That sav’d thee from oppression—­from the grasp
  Of want.  I fed you once—­then you was poor: 
  Even as I am now.  Yet from the store
  Of your abundance, you refuse to grant
  The veriest trifle.  May the bounty
  Of that great God who gave you what you have
  Ne’er from you flow.  You have forgot me, sir,
  But I remember ere I left this land,
  By way of traffic for the western world,
  I had a favourite, faithful dog,
  Who for the kindnesses I pour’d upon him
  Would fawn upon me:  not in flattery,
  But in a sort that spoke his generous nature. 
  Lasting as memory,
  Faster than friendship—­deeper than the wave
  Is the affection of a mindless brute. 
  In a few hours (for I can almost see
  The cot wherein these travell’d bones were cradled,)
  I shall have ended an untoward enterprize,
  And if that honest creature I have told you of
  Still breathes this vital air, and will not know me,
  May hospitality keep closed her gates
  Against me, till I find a home within
  The grave.  CYMBELINE.