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Memoirs of William Beckford of Fonthill, 2; Author of "vathek" in Two Volumes
Memoirs of William Beckford of Fonthill 2 Author of vathek in Two Volumes Author:William Beckford General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1859 Original Publisher: Charles J. Skeet Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you ca... more »n select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. SPAIN -- AANJTTEZ MADBID DTTKE OF ALCUDIA -- FONTHILL IMPBOVEMENTS MBS. BECKFOBD'S DEATH THIB1) VISIT TO POBTUGAL PBOGBESS OF THE ABBEY LOBD NELSON'S TISIT -- GBAND ENTEKTAIN- MENT. During his second visit, Mr. Beckford found considerable changes among his friends in Portugal. Death had removed several to whom he was strongly attached. His second visit was somewhat more prolonged than his first. He also visited Spain, and published an account of a trip he made to the gardens and palace of Aranjuez, in 1795. On his return, he spoke of the changes he observed in the growth of the trees and plantations there, after his visit in 1789. He found the elms of Charles V., in the island garden, in a state of rapid decay, and visited nine wretched stumps left, close to a brick-kiln. The fountains, too, were going to ruin, and some of the statues had lost limbs. There was still a charm about the spot; the air was mild, the sunbeams played on the Tagus, and the birds were flitting about. He explored the Calle de la Reyna on horseback, and found many of the elms with their heads dead since he saw them before, but on all sides there were new and thriving plantations of oak, elm, and plane. Acres of unmeaning shrubbery were encroaching upon the wild thickets on the banks of the river. A rage for false improvement was going forward, levelling ground, smoothing banks, and building rockwork, with pagodas and Chinese-railing. Even the natural course of the Tagus had been thwarted. They had trimmed the laburnums he had before admired into what the gardener called ge...« less