Of the beautiful country seats and villas which we now passed, I could only through the windows of our coach gain a partial and indistinct prospect, which led me to wish, as I soon most earnestly did, to be released from this movable prison.  Towards evening we arrived at Richmond.  In London, before I set out, I had paid one shilling; another was now demanded, so that upon the whole, from London to Richmond, the passage in the stage costs just two shillings.

As soon as I had alighted at an inn and had drunk my tea, I went out immediately to see the town and the circumjacent country.

Even this town, though hardly out of sight of London, is more countrified, pleasanter, and more cheerful than London, and the houses do not seem to be so much blackened by smoke.  The people also appeared to me here more sociable and more hospitable.  I saw several sitting on benches before their doors, to enjoy the cool breeze of the evening.  On a large green area in the middle of the town, a number of boys, and even young men, were enjoying themselves, and playing at trap-ball.  In the streets there reigned here, compared to London, a pleasing rural tranquillity, and I breathed a purer and fresher air.

I went now out of the town over a bridge, which lies across the Thames, and where you pay a penny as often as you pass over it.  The bridge is lofty and built in the form of an arch, and from it you enter immediately into a most charming valley, that winds all along the banks of the Thames.

It was evening.  The sun was just shedding her last parting rays on the valley; but such an evening, and such a valley!  Oh, it is impossible I should ever forget them.  The terrace at Richmond does assuredly afford one of the finest prospects in the world.  Whatever is charming in nature, or pleasing in art, is to be seen here.  Nothing I had ever seen, or ever can see elsewhere, is to be compared to it.  My feelings, during the few short enraptured minutes that I stood there, it is impossible for any pen to describe.

One of my first sensations was chagrin and sorrow for the days and hours I had wasted in London, and I had vented a thousand bitter reproaches on my irresolution, that I had not long ago quitted that huge dungeon to come here and pass my time in paradise.

Yes, my friend, whatever be your ideas of paradise, and how luxuriantly soever it may be depicted to your imagination, I venture to foretell that here you will be sure to find all those ideas realised.  In every point of view, Richmond is assuredly one of the first situations in the world.  Here it was that Thomson and Pope gleaned from nature all those beautiful passages with which their inimitable writings abound.

Instead of the incessant distressing noise in London, I saw here at a distance, sundry little family parties walking arm in arm along the banks of the Thames.  Everything breathed a soft and pleasing calm, which warmed my heart and filed it with some of the most pleasing sensations of which our nature is susceptible.