THE vicissitudes in the occupation of houses are curious. The first tenant we meet with in Gore House, (we forget his name,) is a government contractor, who was so stingy, that he would not lay out a penny to keep his garden in order. To him succeeded Mr. Wilberforce, famous in the annals

Wilberforce, whose head was not strong enough to keep him out of the pale of religious bigotry, but whose heart was kindly, and his temperament happy, contrived (though it is difficult to conceive how even the merriest of such theologians manage it,) to combine the most terrific ideas of the next world (for others) with the most comfortable enjoyment of this world in his own person. He was a little plainfaced man, radiant by nature with glee and

"About a year and three-quarters ago," says this worthy, ultra-serio-comic person, "I changed my residence, and found myself in the habitation which my family now occupies, and which we find more salubrious than Clapham Common. We are just one mile from the turnpike-gate at Hyde Park Corner,

This is excellent, and would have been more so, if Mr. Wilberforce could have allowed others, not quite of the same creed, to have the same right to a comfortable enjoyment of nature, and the same reputation for piety. He was of opinion that you must be continually thinking of God, otherwise God would be very angry. As

His meditations down -road were certainly very different from those of Mr. Wilkes.

" Walked," he says, in his Diary, "from Hyde Park Corner, repeating the 119th psalm, in great comfort."

This is the longest of the psalms, extending to a hundred and seventy-six verses, full of pious self-congratulation, and of rebukes of its deriders.

An anecdote of Wilberforce in connexion with the present royal family, we reserve for our notices of the palace.

Of the successors of this devout person in the occupancy of Gore House so much has been said of late, in consequence of the appearance of a book in three large octavo volumes, entitled "The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington," that readers of a work like the present will probably expect us to give our opinion on the subject at greater length, than would otherwise have been the case. [1] 

Marguerite Gardiner (not Blessington, as the author has it, misled by the way in which peeresses sign their names) was the daughter of Edmund Power, Esq., a country gentleman of small property in , and was born at Knockbril, near Clonmel, in the county of Tipperary, on the 1st of September, . Her father appears to have been a man half mad with brutality. At the age of fourteen and a half, she was married to a captain in the army, of the name of Farmer, whose temper is said to have resembled her father's, and from whom she separated; and, in her eight-and-twentieth year, she took for her second husband, Charles John (Gardiner) Earl of Blessington, who was a man equally half

During a space of eight years, Lord and Lady Blessington travelled and resided on the continent-chiefly in -accompanied by a niece of her ladyship's, and by Count Alfred d'Orsay, son of General Count d'Orsay, one of the old French noblesse. The young Count was invited to be of the party by Lord Blessington, who became so extremely attached to him, that nothing would content him but Alfred must marry one of his daughters by a former wife, (he did not care which) and so become possessed of a portion of his estates. His lordship, also, after the death of his only legitimate son, made him guardian of the son's brother. Alfred, in the year , at Naples, married

The house soon became a point of attraction, particularly in the world of letters, her Ladyship, besides giving such dinners as

We do not hear of ladies among the visitors, though the Countess appears to

These parties at Gore House have been compared with those of , and with the companies that assembled at the mansion of Lady Charleville. Of the latter, no memorialist has enabled us to speak; but, with the former, they appear to have had little in common, except the power on the part of some of the visitors to have furnished it, had the hostess so desired. It is stated that she latterly assumed too dictatorial a manner, and that the parties were not so natural and so lively as they had been in Seamore Place. This may have been owing, partly to her pursuit of literature, and partly to a sense of the coming difficulties; and there was one drawback on the agreeableness of the society, and even on the benevolence of purpose above mentioned, in bringing

The establishment broke down in under a load of debt for party-giving, for dress, for jewellery, for play (on the part of the Count), and even for charity's self and

The downfall was unlooked for by the public, but not by acquaintances. Four years previous to it the Count was so embarrassed,

The secret of the unlooked for deaths of these two remarkable persons will still be a subject for discussion; nor do we profess to be in the least degree acquainted with it,

As to the other and more delicate secret, nothing perhaps is, or can be known of it, beyond the fact of their having lived in the same house; which, if considered a scandal in England, and of evil example, (and it undoubtedly was so considered, and very naturally) is to be judged at the same

The Count's high-born and respected kindred-his mother included - never ceased to express their esteem and affection for the Countess; female relations of hers, themselves esteemed by the estimable, lived with her, and were witnesses of her habits; and if it be asked us, whether we are still " green " enough to believe that there was nothing in the connexion beyond the ill-appearance of it, we answer, that we leave those to believe the worst, who choose it; that a brave man's tears, in his dying moments, go a great way with us; that Irish and French vivacity combined, in a grave country, might be tempted or provoked into hazarding an amount of misconstruction,

The worst thing known of Count d'Orsay, is his marriage with a girl of fifteen, without love on either side, in compliance with the wish of a half insane father, and for the purpose of obtaining a fortune. In an Englishman, this would have been very bad conduct indeed, and often is. At least, similar things are often done among us, if not precisely under the same circumstances. In a Frenchman, the conduct would be equally

But enough of these questions in a book not intended to moot them. It is creditable to Count d'Orsay and to his friends in general, that whatever fears he may have had of exceptions in particular instances, they retained a belief in his good qualities to the last, and this too not only in spite of his

In the interest occasioned by the rest of her story, we have forgotten to speak of the Countess as a writer; and much need not be said. She had an easy, elegant, and sometimes interesting pen; had the art of recommending liberal and amiable opinions without offending conventionality; and wrote better than any one else on the character of her acquaintance, Lord Byron. But her

The ground on which Gore House stands forms part of the district which is to be occupied by the new National Gallery, its schools of art and science, and its bowers for the exhibition of sculpture. A display of cabinet work and of studies from the schools of art has already commenced operations, and the public are re-admitted to the grounds. All this, it must be allowed, is a good absorption of the antecedent individualities, pleasant as some of them were; though it is to be doubted, whether Mr. Wilberforce's ghost will be quite easy at the sight of the Venuses and Apollos.[3] 

England, a teacher of nations in so many respects, is but now discovering, what has so long been known to and partially known to -that utility and beauty, instead of being antagonists, are friends; that the one without the other, besides being in danger of falling into the gross and the sordid, cannot thoroughly work out its purposes; form, and proportion, and adaptation of means to ends, being constituent qualities of the beautiful; and finally, that as Nature, far from disliking the beautiful, thought fit to be the cause of it, and loves it, and deals in it to profusion, often in the very humblest of her productions, so it becomes Art to imitate

"Such things as ensue upon what is well constituted by nature, have something graceful and attractive. Thus, some parts of a

With like pleasure, will his chaste eyes behold the maturity and grace of old age in man or woman, and the inviting charms of youth. Many such things will he experience, not credible to all, but only to those who have the genuine affection of soul to nature, and her works."[4] 

Yes, most excellent Emperor! and the same might have been said by thee, and probably was said, of the commonest objects of art round about thee, in thy home and thy goods and chattels, thy cabinets and caskets and chains; for art is nature's doing also, being the work of her workmanship, man, and all forms and graces being referable to her suggestion. The chair, as well as the plant, has its straight and its flowing lines; the casket and the cabinet its ornaments

Shall we not then observe, and, as much as possible, spiritualize them accordingly, giving them the grace and beauty which Nature suggests, and so rendering them assistants of our best perceptions against our worst? For effeminacy, the danger of delight, is not a consequence of enjoyments founded in truth and in the spirit of things, but of grovellings in the false and the gross; not a consequence, therefore, of good art, but of bad; of art lulling to sleep on the chair for the mere body's sake, and not of art awakening us to intellectual perceptions, and thus dividing the empire of body with that of mind.

Luther was not the less prepared to hazard martyrdom, because he was a player on the organ. Socrates was not the less an actual martyr, and one of the greatest of men, because he had been a sculptor, and wrought figures of the Graces.

All good things, as well as all bad things, hold together; truth, strength, right perceptions in art; falsehood, weakness, bad taste. Truth, in any one respect, is good for truth in other respects; and it would be ridiculous to avoid cultivating anything which is right, for fear of its degenerating into what is wrong. Upon this principle, we might discommend the teaching of virtue itself, lest it turn sour, and become austerity or hypocrisy. Our duty is to do our best, and leave the rest to Providence.

The collection at Gore House, besides tapestry, mirrors, and a few other things,

You might imagine that the fortunes of half-a-dozen ancient houses had been suddenly ruined, and their goods and chattels despatched in haste to an auctioneer's, to be

The Government Commissioners, with great judgment, have drawn attention to these curiosities, not as models for indiscriminate imitation, but as illustrations of the taste of successive periods; as samples of merit on particular points, especially ornamentation; and in several instances, as warnings against inconsistencies and bad taste. Foreigners, they say, can teach the English

We cannot greatly admire such things as Buhlwork; elaborations of brass ornaments upon dark grounds. We prefer the inlayment of paintings, the additions of bas-reliefs, and the quaintest old carvings of human figures, fruits, &c., provided they have any truth of expression. Buhl is no company- has nothing to entertain us with, but its unnecessary flourishes.

Gilding is something, for it is a kind of

Many of these extraordinary pieces of furniture

Some interesting memories, also, are attached to these costly moveables. There is a magnificent writing table, ostentatiously

We have indulged ourselves at such length in these passing notices of art and manufacture, that we must dismiss, with a somewhat unpatriotic brevity, the other part of the Exhibition-the copies from originals and from Nature sent in by students of the various Government Schools of Art, established throughout the kingdom. Indeed, we could take no very long view of them, and therefore must not be understood as throwing any slur upon those on which we are silent, when we say that we were most struck with the "Flamingo" of Miss Olden (No. 10); the "Madre Dolorosa," (from Carlo Dolce ?) by Miss Gunthorp (No. 24); the "Magdalen," from Correggio, by Mr. Bowen (No. 27); the "Money-getter," (we know not from whom) by Mr. Collinson (No. 32);

Little need be said of the grounds belonging to Gore House. Turf and trees are good things, with or without flowers; and the grounds are of unexpected dimensions, considered as appurtenances to a suburban residence; but, as Johnson said of a dinner, that it was a good enough dinner, but " not a dinner to invite a man to," so it may be

[1] The feelings of the book, as far as the chief persons in it are concerned, are in the main correct; and the author might have attained the repute of moderate powers of reflection and an altogether laudable object. But the three volumes ought, at the utmost, to have been two; and the manufactured nature of the rest (to say nothing worse of it) should have rendered him cautious how he went out of his way to censure judgments which he does not understand.

[2] It is proper to observe, that the opinions here expressed regarding Louis Napoleon's behaviour to the Count and Countess originate in statements made by their friends, and that a counter-statement on his part might, of course,demand for them a new consideration. We are loth also to say anything against the ally of England and the guest of the Queen; and willing to believe, notwithstanding his antecedents, that he not only desires to promote the new cordiality between France and England out of motives better than merely selfish ones, but has objects, for a despot, in furtherance of the good of the poor and the general progress of the community. But those antecedents, and the melancholy doubts taught us by history, forbid the best-disposed of his observers to take promises for performance, or one set of extremes for another. The utmost which they find it possible to do, is to await the evidence of events, and to feel no wonder meantime at the incredulity of the consistent and the outraged.

[3] The observations which here follow on the cultivation of the Beautiful, are retained in the present book, though they were suggested by a transient exhibition, the observations on which are retained for the same reason; namely, because it is hoped they refer sufficiently to general principles to warrant the retention of the particulars. It is hoped, also, that they may be considered a foretast e of what the locality is intended to do for us in succeeding exhibitions.

[4] "Translation of the Meditations." Glasgow, 1749. VOL. I.