Note (return) — POPE'S TEMPLE, AT HAGLEY

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 Thomson3 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.