WILLIAM BECKFORD 223 



and abrupt walls of poplar, which unite the open landscape with 

 Hohenheim and arouse expectation by their well-balanced form. 

 This solemn impression rises to an almost painful intensity, as you 

 roam through the chambers of the ducal palace, which for 

 splendour and elegance has few peers, and in a certain rare 

 manner combines taste with profusion. By the brilliance which 

 here strikes the eye from every side, and by the exquisite architec- 

 ture of the rooms and furniture, the craving for simplicity is 

 wrought to the highest pitch, and the most conspicuous triumph 

 is in waiting for rural Nature, which all at once welcomes the 

 traveller into the so-called English Park. 



Meantime the monuments of sunken splendour, against whose 

 decaying walls the gardener leans his peaceful hut, make a quite 

 peculiar impression upon the heart, and it is with a secret joy that 

 in these mouldering ruins we see ourselves revenged upon the 

 art, which in the gorgeous building hard by had wielded its 

 power over us to excess. But the Nature we meet in this English 

 Park is no more the same as that we have issued from. It is a 

 Nature quickened with soul and exalted by art, which satisfies 

 not only the man of simple taste, but also the spoiled child of 

 culture, charming the one into reflection, and leading back the 

 other to emotion. Miscellaneous Writings: On the Garden- 

 Calendar for the Year 1795. 



Son of a Lord Mayor, he began lije -with unusual material, physical and WILLIAM 

 intellectual advantages. He did many extraordinary things, writing ' Vathek ' BECKFORD 

 in a few hours, bidlding the fabulous Font hill, and shtitting himself up in it 

 alone with dogs and a magnificent library ; but perhaps the most extraordinary 

 thing was his declaration, at the close of a lortg luxurious life, that he had never 

 known an hour's ennui. 



T RETURNED towards the Hague, and looked into a country- 

 * house of the late Count Bentinck, with parterres and bosquets 

 by no means resembling, one should conjecture, the gardens of 

 the Hesperides. But, considering that the whole group of trees, 

 terraces, and verdure were in a manner created out of hills of 



