The Althorp Picture Gallery: And Other Poetical Sketches

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Blackwood, 1836 - 163 pages

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Page 77 - There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more...
Page 152 - ... arts. The house retains the form described by Evelyn —that of a half H : a slight irregularity is caused by the new gothic room, built by the present earl, to contain part of his magnificent library, which, like the statue in the Castle of Otranto, had grown " too big for what contained it.
Page 143 - And — but for that sad, shrouded eye, That fires not, wins not, weeps not now ; And but for that chill, changeless brow, Whose touch thrills with mortality, And curdles to the gazer's heart...
Page 149 - Last night, her lord was all that's good and great ; A knave this morning, and his will a cheat. Strange ! by the means defeated of the ends, By spirit...
Page 143 - Her picture at Windsor is the most perfectly beautiful and impressive female portrait I ever saw. How have I longed, when gazing at it, to conjure her out of her frame, and bid her reveal the secret of her mysterious life and death ! — Nearly opposite to the dead Venitia, in strange contrast, hangs her husband, who loved her to madness, or was mad before he married her, in the very prime of life and youth. This picture, by Cornelius Jansen, is as fine as any thing of Vandyke's : the character expresses...
Page 144 - Could Nature then no private woman grace, Whom we might dare to love, with such a face, Such a complexion, and so radiant eyes, Such lovely motion, and such sharp replies?
Page 146 - ... and blooming; the second, far more interesting, was painted about the time of her marriage with the young Earl of Sunderland, or shor.tly after — very sweet and lady-like. I should say that the highbreeding of the face and air was more conspicuous than the beauty; the neck and hands exquisite. Both these are Vandyke's. A third picture represents her about the time of her second marriage : the expression wholly changed — cold, sad, faded, but pretty still: one might fancy her contemplating,...
Page 144 - Davenant styles her, very beautifully, " The richeyed darling of a monarch's breast." Lord Holland, in the description he sent from Paris, dwells on the charm of her eyes, her smile, and her graceful figure, though he admits her to be rather petite; and if the poet and the courtier be distrusted, we have the authority of the puritanic Sir Symond d'Ewes, who allows the influence of her " excellent and sparkling black eyes.

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