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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56429 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ [Transcriber's Notes: All footnotes have been moved to the end of the
+ text. Italics in the original are represented by _underscores_. The
+ original is richly illustrated; the illustration captions have been
+ preserved in this text version. To view the full illustrations,
+ please see the HTML version.]
+
+
+
+
+ GRAY DAYS AND GOLD
+
+
+ [Illustration: The MM Co.]
+
+
+ [Illustration: YORK CATHEDRAL]
+
+
+
+
+ GRAY DAYS AND GOLD
+
+ _IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND_
+
+ BY
+
+ WILLIAM WINTER
+
+ [Illustration]
+
+ New Edition, Revised, with Illustrations
+
+ New York
+
+ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+ LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
+ 1896
+
+ _All rights reserved_
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1892,
+ BY MACMILLAN AND CO.
+
+ _Illustrated Edition_,
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1896,
+ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+
+Set up and electrotyped June, 1892. Reprinted November, 1892; January,
+June, August, 1893; April, 1894.
+
+Illustrated edition, revised throughout, in crown 8vo, set up and
+electrotyped June, 1896.
+
+ Norwood Press
+ J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
+ Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
+
+
+ TO
+
+ Augustin Daly
+
+ REMEMBERING A FRIENDSHIP
+
+ OF MANY YEARS
+
+ I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
+
+
+ "_Est animus tibi
+ Rerumque prudens, et secundis
+ Temporibus dubiisque rectus_"[1]
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF GRAY DAYS AND GOLD
+
+
+_This book, containing description of my Gray Days in England and
+Scotland, has, in a miniature form, passed through several editions,
+and it has been received by the public with exceptional sympathy and
+abundant practical favour. Its publishers are, therefore, encouraged
+to present it in a more opulent style, and with the embellishment of
+pictorial illustrations. Its success,--and indeed the success which
+has attended all my books,--is deeply gratifying to me, the more so
+that I did not expect it. My sketches of travel were the unpremeditated
+creations of genial impulse, and I did not suppose that they would
+endure beyond the hour. If I had anticipated the remarkably cordial
+approbation which has been accorded to my humble studies of British
+scenery and life, I should have tried to make them better, and,
+especially, I should have taken scrupulous care to verify every date
+and every historic statement set forth in my text. That precaution,
+at first, I did not invariably take, but as my mood was that of
+contemplation and reverie, so my method was that of the dreamer, who
+drifts carelessly from one beautiful thing to another, uttering
+simply whatever comes into his thoughts. In preparing the text for
+this edition of _Gray Days_, however, and also in preparing the text
+of _Shakespeare's England_ for the pictorial edition, I have carefully
+revised my sketches, and have made a studious and conscientious
+endeavour to correct every mistake and to remove every defect. The
+chapters on Clopton and Devizes have been considerably augmented,
+and the record of Shakespearean affairs at Stratford-upon-Avon has
+been continued to the present time. A heedless error in my chapter
+on Worcester, respecting the Shakespeare marriage bond, has been
+rectified, and in various ways the narrative has been made more
+authentic, the historical embellishment more complete, and, perhaps,
+the style more flexible and more concise._
+
+_Eight of the papers in this volume relate to Scotland. My first
+visit to that romantic country was made in 1888, and was limited to
+the lowlands, but since that time I have had the privilege of making
+several highland rambles, and, in particular, of passing thoughtful
+days in the lovely island of Iona,--one of the most interesting places
+in Europe,--and those readers who may care to keep me company beyond
+the limits of this work will find memorials of those wanderings and
+that experience in my later books, called _Old Shrines and Ivy_ and
+_Brown Heath and Blue Bells_._
+
+ _W. W._
+
+JULY 15, 1896.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+_This book, a companion to _Shakespeare's England_, relates to the
+gray days of an American wanderer in the British islands, and to the
+gold of thought and fancy that can be found there. In _Shakespeare's
+England_ an attempt was made to depict, in an unconventional manner,
+those lovely scenes that are intertwined with the name and the memory
+of Shakespeare, and also to reflect the spirit of that English scenery
+in general which, to an imaginative mind, must always be venerable
+with historic antiquity and tenderly hallowed with poetic and romantic
+association. The present book continues the same treatment of kindred
+themes, referring not only to the land of Shakespeare, but to the land
+of Burns and Scott._
+
+_After so much had been done, and superbly done, by Washington Irving
+and by other authors, to celebrate the beauties of our ancestral
+home, it was perhaps an act of presumption on the part of the present
+writer to touch those subjects. He can only plead, in extenuation
+of his boldness, an irresistible impulse of reverence and affection
+for them. His presentment of them can give no offence, and perhaps it
+may be found sufficiently sympathetic and diversified to awaken and
+sustain at least a momentary interest in the minds of those readers who
+love to muse and dream over the relics of a storied past. If by happy
+fortune it should do more than that,--if it should help to impress his
+countrymen, so many of whom annually travel in Great Britain, with the
+superlative importance of adorning the physical aspect and of refining
+the material civilisation of America by a reproduction within its
+borders of whatever is valuable in the long experience and whatever is
+noble and beautiful in the domestic and religious spirit of the British
+islands,--his labour will not have been in vain. The supreme need of
+this age in America is a practical conviction that progress does not
+consist in material prosperity but in spiritual advancement. Utility
+has long been exclusively worshipped. The welfare of the future lies in
+the worship of beauty. To that worship these pages are devoted, with
+all that it implies of sympathy with the higher instincts and faith in
+the divine destiny of the human race._
+
+_Many of the sketches here assembled were originally printed in the New
+York Tribune, with which journal their author has been continuously
+associated, as dramatic reviewer and as an editorial contributor,
+since August, 1865. They have been revised for publication in this
+form. Part of the paper on Sir Walter Scott first appeared in Harper's
+Weekly, for which periodical the author has occasionally written.
+The paper on the Wordsworth country was contributed to the New York
+Mirror. The alluring field of Scottish antiquity and romance, which
+the author has ventured but slightly to touch, may perhaps be explored
+hereafter, for treasures of contemplation that earlier seekers have
+left ungathered. [This implied promise has since been fulfilled, in
+_Brown Heath and Blue Bells_, 1895.]_
+
+_The fact is recorded that an important recent book, 1890, called
+_Shakespeare's True Life_, written by James Walter, incorporates into
+its text, without credit, several passages of original description and
+reflection taken from the present writer's sketches of the Shakespeare
+country, published in _Shakespeare's England_, and also quotes, as his
+work, an elaborate narrative of a nocturnal visit to Anne Hathaway's
+cottage, which he never wrote and never claimed to have written. This
+statement is made as a safeguard against future injustice._
+
+ _W. W._
+
+1892.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ PAGE
+
+ PREFACE TO ILLUSTRATED EDITION 9
+
+ PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION 11
+
+
+ CHAPTER I
+
+ CLASSIC SHRINES OF ENGLAND 25
+
+
+ CHAPTER II
+
+ HAUNTED GLENS AND HOUSES 36
+
+
+ CHAPTER III
+
+ OLD YORK 53
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV
+
+ THE HAUNTS OF MOORE 66
+
+
+ CHAPTER V
+
+ THE BEAUTIFUL CITY OF BATH 84
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI
+
+ THE LAND OF WORDSWORTH 94
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII
+
+ SHAKESPEARE RELICS AT WORCESTER 112
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII
+
+ BYRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH 122
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX
+
+ HISTORIC NOOKS OF WARWICKSHIRE 141
+
+
+ CHAPTER X
+
+ SHAKESPEARE'S TOWN 150
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI
+
+ UP AND DOWN THE AVON 172
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII
+
+ RAMBLES IN ARDEN 181
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII
+
+ THE STRATFORD FOUNTAIN 188
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV
+
+ BOSWORTH FIELD 198
+
+
+ CHAPTER XV
+
+ THE HOME OF DR. JOHNSON 209
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI
+
+ FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH 223
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII
+
+ INTO THE HIGHLANDS 230
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII
+
+ HIGHLAND BEAUTIES 238
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX
+
+ THE HEART OF SCOTLAND 248
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX
+
+ SIR WALTER SCOTT 265
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI
+
+ ELEGIAC MEMORIALS IN EDINBURGH 287
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXII
+
+ SCOTTISH PICTURES 297
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ IMPERIAL RUINS 305
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIV
+
+ THE LAND OF MARMION 314
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+ PAGE
+
+ York Cathedral _Photogravure_ _Frontispiece_
+
+ Edinburgh Castle _Vignette_ _Title-page_
+
+ Stoke-Pogis Churchyard 26
+
+ Gray's Monument 28
+
+ Portrait of Thomas Gray 29
+
+ All Saints' Church, Laleham 31
+
+ Arnold's Grave _Photogravure_ face 33
+
+ Portrait of Matthew Arnold 34
+
+ Hampton Lucy 37
+
+ Old Porch of Clopton 39
+
+ Clopton House _Photogravure_ face 44
+
+ Warwick Castle, from the Mound 46
+
+ Warwick Castle, from the River 48
+
+ Leicester's Hospital 51
+
+ From the Warwick Shield _Tailpiece_ 52
+
+ Bootham Bar 54
+
+ York Cathedral--West Front 57
+
+ York Cathedral--South Side 60
+
+ York Cathedral--East Front 62
+
+ Portrait of Thomas Moore 67
+
+ The Bear--Devizes 70
+
+ St. John's Church--Devizes 73
+
+ Hungerford Chapel--Devizes 75
+
+ The Avon and Bridge--Bath 85
+
+ Portrait of Beau Nash 86
+
+ Bath Abbey 88
+
+ High Street--Bath 91
+
+ A Fragment from an Old Roman Bath 92
+
+ Remains of the Old Roman Bath _Tailpiece_ 93
+
+ Penrith Castle _Photogravure_ face 94
+
+ Ullswater 95
+
+ Lyulph's Tower--Ullswater 101
+
+ Portrait of William Wordsworth 103
+
+ Approach to Ambleside 104
+
+ Grasmere Church 106
+
+ Rydal Mount--Wordsworth's Seat 108
+
+ An Old Lich Gate _Tailpiece_ 111
+
+ Worcester Cathedral, from the Edgar Tower 113
+
+ The Edgar Tower 117
+
+ Portrait of Lord Byron 123
+
+ Hucknall-Torkard Church _Photogravure_ face 128
+
+ Hucknall-Torkard Church 131
+
+ Hucknall-Torkard Church--Interior 135
+
+ The Red Horse Hotel 142
+
+ The Grammar School, Stratford 146
+
+ Interior of the Grammar School 147
+
+ Trinity Church 152
+
+ The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre 154
+
+ An Old Stratford Character: George Robbins 158
+
+ Anne Hathaway's Cottage 165
+
+ The Gower Statue _Photogravure_ face 168
+
+ Tailpiece 171
+
+ Evesham 173
+
+ Clopton Bridge 174
+
+ Charlecote, from the Terrace 176
+
+ The Abbey Mills, Tewkesbury 179
+
+ Wootton-Wawen Church _Photogravure_ face 183
+
+ Beaudesert Cross 186
+
+ Tailpiece 187
+
+ Portrait of Henry Irving, 1888 191
+
+ The Stratford Fountain _Photogravure_ face 193
+
+ Mary Arden's Cottage 196
+
+ Tailpiece 197
+
+ Bosworth Field _Photogravure_ face 200
+
+ Higham-on-the-Hill 207
+
+ Tailpiece 208
+
+ Dr. Johnson 210
+
+ Lichfield Cathedral--West Front 211
+
+ Lichfield Cathedral--West Front, Central Doorway 213
+
+ House in which Johnson was born 217
+
+ The Spires of Lichfield 220
+
+ Peterborough Cathedral _Photogravure_ face 224
+
+ Berwick Castle 228
+
+ Stirling Castle 231
+
+ Loch Achray 234
+
+ Loch Katrine 235
+
+ Tailpiece 237
+
+ Oban 240
+
+ Loch Awe _Photogravure_ face 246
+
+ Corbel from St. Giles _Tailpiece_ 247
+
+ The Crown of St. Giles's 249
+
+ Scott's House in Edinburgh 252
+
+ The Maiden 255
+
+ Grayfriars Church 256
+
+ High Street--Allan Ramsay's Shop 257
+
+ The Canongate 260
+
+ Holyrood Castle, and Arthur's Seat _Photogravure_ face 262
+
+ St. Giles's, from the Lawn Market 263
+
+ Portrait of Sir Walter Scott 266
+
+ Edinburgh Castle 271
+
+ The Canongate Tolbooth 277
+
+ Grayfriars Churchyard 292
+
+ The Forth Bridge 298
+
+ Dunfermline Abbey 300
+
+ Northwest Corner of Dunfermline Abbey 303
+
+ The Nave--Looking West--Dunfermline Abbey 304
+
+ Loch Lomond 306
+
+ Loch Lomond 308
+
+ Dunstaffnage 312
+
+ Tantallon Castle 316
+
+ Norham Castle, in the Time of Marmion 321
+
+
+
+
+ "_Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes
+ the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present,
+ advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.... All travel has its
+ advantages. If the passenger visits better countries he may learn to
+ improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse he may learn to
+ enjoy it._"
+
+ DR. JOHNSON.
+
+
+ "_There is given,
+ Unto the things of earth which time hath bent,
+ A spirit's feeling; and where he hath leant
+ His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
+ And magic in the ruined battlement,
+ For which the palace of the present hour
+ Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower._"
+
+ BYRON.
+
+
+ "_The charming, friendly English landscape! Is there any in the world
+ like it? To a traveller returning home it looks so kind,--it seems to
+ shake hands with you as you pass through it._"
+
+ THACKERAY.
+
+
+
+
+GRAY DAYS AND GOLD
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CLASSIC SHRINES OF ENGLAND
+
+
+London, June 29, 1888.--The poet Emerson's injunction, "Set not thy
+foot on graves," is wise and right; and being in merry England in the
+month of June it certainly is your own fault if you do not fulfil the
+rest of the philosophical commandment and "Hear what wine and roses
+say." Yet the history of England is largely written in her ancient
+churches and crumbling ruins, and the pilgrim to historic and literary
+shrines in this country will find it difficult to avoid setting his
+foot on graves. It is possible here, as elsewhere, to live entirely
+in the present; but to certain temperaments and in certain moods the
+temptation is irresistible to live mostly in the past. I write these
+words in a house which, according to local tradition, was once occupied
+by Nell Gwynn, and as I glance into the garden I see a venerable acacia
+that was planted by her fair hands, in the far-off time of the Merry
+Monarch. Within a few days I have stood in the dungeon of Guy Fawkes,
+in the Tower, and sat at luncheon in a manor-house of Warwickshire
+wherein were once convened the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot. The
+newspapers of this morning announce that a monument will be dedicated
+on July 19 to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, three
+hundred years ago. It is not unnatural that the wanderer should live in
+the past, and often should find himself musing over its legacies.
+
+[Illustration: _Stoke-Pogis Churchyard._]
+
+One of the most sacred spots in England is the churchyard of
+Stoke-Pogis. I revisited that place on June 13 and once again
+rambled and meditated in that hallowed haunt. Not many months ago it
+seemed likely that Stoke Park would pass into the possession of a
+sporting club, and be turned into a race-course and kennel. A track
+had already been laid there. Fate was kind, however, and averted the
+final disaster. Only a few changes are to be noted in that part of the
+park which to the reverent pilgrim must always be dear. The churchyard
+has been extended in front, and a solid wall of flint, pierced with a
+lych-gate, richly carved, has replaced the plain fence, with its simple
+turnstile, that formerly enclosed that rural cemetery. The additional
+land was given by the new proprietor of Stoke Park, who wished that
+his tomb might be made in it; and this has been built, beneath a large
+tree not far from the entrance. The avenue from the gate to the church
+has been widened, and it is now fringed with thin lines of twisted
+stone; and where once stood only two or three rose-trees there are now
+sixty-two,--set in lines on either side of the path. But the older part
+of the graveyard remains unchanged. The yew-trees cast their dense
+shade, as of old. The quaint porch of the sacred building has not
+suffered under the hand of restoration. The ancient wooden memorials of
+the dead continue to moulder above their ashes. And still the abundant
+ivy gleams and trembles in the sunshine and in the summer wind that
+plays so sweetly over the spired tower and dusky walls of this lovely
+temple--
+
+ "All green and wildly fresh without,
+ but worn and gray beneath."
+
+[Illustration: _Gray's Monument._]
+
+[Illustration: _Thomas Gray._]
+
+It would still be a lovely church, even if it were not associated with
+the immortal Elegy. I stood for a long time beside the tomb of the
+noble and tender poet and looked with deep emotion on the surrounding
+scene of pensive, dream-like beauty,--the great elms, so dense of
+foliage, so stately and graceful; the fields of deep, waving grass,
+golden with buttercups and white with daisies; the many unmarked
+mounds; the many mouldering tombstones; the rooks sailing and cawing
+around the tree-tops; and over all the blue sky flecked with floating
+fleece. Within the church nothing has been changed. The memorial window
+to Gray, for which contributions have been taken during several years,
+has not yet been placed. As I cast a farewell look at Gray's tomb,
+on turning to leave the churchyard, it rejoiced my heart to see that
+two American girls, who had then just come in, were placing fresh
+flowers over the poet's dust. He has been buried more than a hundred
+years,--but his memory is as bright and green as the ivy on the tower
+within whose shadow he sleeps, and as fragrant as the roses that
+bloom at its base. Many Americans visit Stoke-Pogis churchyard, and
+no visitor to the old world, who knows how to value what is best in
+its treasures, will omit that act of reverence. The journey is easy. A
+brief run by railway from Paddington takes you to Slough, which is near
+to Windsor, and thence it is a charming drive, or a still more charming
+walk, mostly through green, embowered lanes, to the "ivy-mantled
+tower," the "yew-trees' shade," and the simple tomb of Gray. What a gap
+there would be in the poetry of our language if the _Elegy in a Country
+Churchyard_ were absent from it! By that sublime and tender reverie
+upon the most important of all subjects that can engage the attention
+of the human mind Thomas Gray became one of the chief benefactors of
+his race. Those lines have been murmured by the lips of sorrowing
+affection beside many a shrine of buried love and hope, in many a
+churchyard, all round the world. The sick have remembered them with
+comfort. The great soldier, going into battle, has said them for his
+solace and cheer. The dying statesman, closing his weary eyes upon
+this empty world, has spoken them with his last faltering accents,
+and fallen asleep with their heavenly music in his heart. Well may we
+pause and ponder at the grave of that divine poet! Every noble mind is
+made nobler, every good heart is made better, for the experience of
+such a pilgrimage. In such places as these pride is rebuked, vanity is
+dispelled, and the revolt of the passionate human heart is humbled into
+meekness and submission.
+
+[Illustration: _All Saints' Church, Laleham._]
+
+There is a place kindred with Stoke-Pogis churchyard, a place destined
+to become, after a few years, as famous and as dear to the heart of the
+reverent pilgrim in the footsteps of genius and pure renown. On Sunday
+afternoon, June 17, I sat for a long time beside the grave of Matthew
+Arnold. It is in a little churchyard at Laleham, in Surrey, where he
+was born. The day was chill, sombre, and, except for an occasional low
+twitter of birds and the melancholy cawing of distant rooks, soundless
+and sadly calm. So dark a sky might mean November rather than June;
+but it fitted well with the scene and with the pensive thoughts and
+feelings of the hour. Laleham is a village on the south bank of the
+Thames, about thirty miles from London and nearly midway between
+Staines and Chertsey. It consists of a few devious lanes and a cluster
+of houses, shaded with large trees and everywhere made beautiful with
+flowers, and it is one of those fortunate and happy places to which
+access cannot be obtained by railway. There is a manor-house in
+the centre of it, secluded in a walled garden, fronting the square
+immediately opposite to the village church. The rest of the houses
+are mostly cottages, made of red brick and roofed with red tiles. Ivy
+flourishes, and many of the cottages are overrun with climbing roses.
+Roman relics are found in the neighbourhood,--a camp near the ford,
+and other indications of the military activity of Cæsar. The church,
+All Saints', is of great antiquity. It has been in part restored, but
+its venerable aspect is not impaired. The large low tower is of brick,
+and this and the church walls are thickly covered with glistening ivy.
+A double-peaked roof of red tiles, sunken here and there, contributes
+to the picturesque beauty of this building, and its charm is further
+heightened by the contiguity of trees, in which the old church seems
+to nestle. Within there are low, massive pillars and plain, symmetrical
+arches,--the remains of Norman architecture. Great rafters of dark oak
+augment, in this quaint structure, the air of solidity and of an age at
+once venerable and romantic, while a bold, spirited, beautiful painting
+of Christ and Peter upon the sea imparts to it an additional sentiment
+of sanctity and solemn pomp. That remarkable work is by George Henry
+Harlow, and it is placed back of the altar, where once there would have
+been, in the Gothic days, a stained window. The explorer does not often
+come upon such a gem of a church, even in England,--so rich in remains
+of the old Catholic zeal and devotion; remains now mostly converted to
+the use of Protestant worship.
+
+[Illustration: ARNOLD'S GRAVE]
+
+The churchyard of All Saints' is worthy of the church,--a little
+enclosure, irregular in shape, surface, shrubbery, and tombstones,
+bordered on two sides by the village square and on one by a farmyard,
+and shaded by many trees, some of them yews, and some of great size
+and age. Almost every house that is visible near by is bowered with
+trees and adorned with flowers. No person was anywhere to be seen,
+and it was only after inquiry at various dwellings that the sexton's
+abode could be discovered and access to the church obtained. The poet's
+grave is not within the church, but in a secluded spot at the side of
+it, a little removed from the highway, and screened from immediate
+view by an ancient, dusky yew-tree. I readily found it, perceiving a
+large wreath of roses and a bunch of white flowers that were lying
+upon it,--recent offerings of tender remembrance and sorrowing love,
+but already beginning to wither. A small square of turf, bordered
+with white marble, covers the vaulted tomb of the poet and of three
+of his children.[2] At the head are three crosses of white marble,
+alike in shape and equal in size, except that the first is set upon a
+pedestal a little lower than those of the others. On the first cross is
+written: "Basil Francis Arnold, youngest child of Matthew and Frances
+Lucy Arnold. Born August 19, 1866. Died January 4, 1868. Suffer little
+children to come unto me." On the second: "Thomas Arnold, eldest child
+of Matthew and Frances Lucy Arnold. Born July 6, 1852. Died November
+23, 1868. Awake, thou, Lute and Harp! I will awake right early." On the
+third: "Trevenen William Arnold, second child of Matthew and Frances
+Lucy Arnold. Born October 15, 1853. Died February 16, 1872. In the
+morning it is green and groweth up." Near by are other tombstones,
+bearing the name of Arnold,--the dates inscribed on them referring to
+about the beginning of this century. These mark the resting-place of
+some of the poet's kindred. His father, the famous Dr. Arnold of Rugby,
+rests in Rugby chapel,--that noble father, that true friend and servant
+of humanity, of whom the son wrote those words of imperishable nobility
+and meaning, "Thou, my father, wouldst not be saved alone." Matthew
+Arnold is buried in the same grave with his eldest son and side by side
+with his little children. He who was himself as a little child, in his
+innocence, goodness, and truth,--where else and how else could he so
+fitly rest? "Awake, thou, Lute and Harp! I will awake right early."
+
+[Illustration: _Matthew Arnold._]
+
+Every man will have his own thoughts in such a place as this; will
+reflect upon his own afflictions, and from knowledge of the manner
+and spirit in which kindred griefs have been borne by the great heart
+of intellect and genius will seek to gather strength and patience to
+endure them well. Matthew Arnold taught many lessons of great value to
+those who are able to think. He did not believe that happiness is the
+destiny of the human race on earth, or that there is a visible ground
+for assuming that happiness in this mortal condition is one of the
+inherent rights of humanity. He did not think that this world is made
+an abode of delight by the mere jocular affirmation that everything
+in it is well and lovely. He knew better than that. But his message,
+delivered in poetic strains that will endure as long as our language
+exists, is the message, not of gloom and despair, but of spiritual
+purity and sweet and gentle patience. The man who heeds Matthew
+Arnold's teaching will put no trust in creeds and superstitions, will
+place no reliance upon the transient structures of theology, will take
+no guidance from the animal and unthinking multitude; but he will "keep
+the whiteness of his soul"; he will be simple, unselfish, and sweet; he
+will live for the spirit; and in that spirit, pure, tender, fearless,
+strong to bear and patient to suffer, he will find composure to meet
+the inevitable disasters of life and the awful mystery of death. Such
+was the burden of my thought, sitting there, in the gloaming, beside
+the lifeless dust of him whose hand had once, with kindly greeting,
+been clasped in mine. And such will be the thought of many and many a
+pilgrim who will stand in that sacred place, on many a summer evening
+of the long future--
+
+ "While the stars come out and the night wind
+ Brings, up the stream,
+ Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+HAUNTED GLENS AND HOUSES
+
+
+Warwick, July 6, 1888.--One night, many years ago[3] a brutal murder
+was done, at a lonely place on the highroad between Charlecote Park
+and Stratford-upon-Avon. The next morning the murdered man was found
+lying by the roadside, his mangled head resting in a small hole. The
+assassins were shortly afterward discovered, and they were hanged at
+Warwick. From that day to this the hole wherein the dead man's head
+reposed remains unchanged. No matter how often it may be filled,
+whether by the wash of heavy rains or by stones and leaves that
+wayfarers may happen to cast into it as they pass, it is soon found to
+be again empty. No one takes care of it. No one knows whether or by
+whom it is guarded. Fill it at nightfall and you will find it empty
+in the morning. That is the local belief and affirmation. This spot is
+two miles and a half north of Stratford and three-quarters of a mile
+from the gates of Charlecote Park. I looked at this hole one bright day
+in June and saw that it was empty. Nature, it is thought by the poets,
+abhors complicity with the concealment of crime, and brands with her
+curse the places that are linked with the shedding of blood. Hence the
+strong lines in Hood's poem of _Eugene Aram_:
+
+ "And a mighty wind had swept the leaves,
+ And still the corse was bare."
+
+[Illustration: _Hampton Lucy._]
+
+There are many haunted spots in Warwickshire. The benighted peasant
+never lingers on Ganerslie Heath,--for there, at midnight, dismal bells
+have been heard to toll, from Blacklow Hill, the place where Sir Piers
+Gaveston, the corrupt, handsome, foreign favourite of King Edward the
+Second, was beheaded, by order of the grim barons whom he had insulted
+and opposed. The Earl of Warwick led them, whom Gaveston had called the
+Black Dog of Arden. This was long ago. Everybody knows the historic
+incident, but no one can so completely realise it as when standing on
+the place. The scene of the execution is marked by a cross, erected
+by Mr. Bertie Greathead, bearing this inscription: "In the hollow
+of this rock was beheaded, on the first day of July 1312, by Barons
+lawless as himself, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall. In life and death
+a memorable instance of misrule." [Hollinshed says that the execution
+occurred on Tuesday, June 20.] No doubt the birds were singing and the
+green branches of the trees were waving in the summer wind, on that
+fatal day, just as they are at this moment. Gaveston was a man of much
+personal beauty and some talent, and only twenty-nine years old. It was
+a melancholy sacrifice and horrible in the circumstances that attended
+it. No wonder that doleful thoughts and blood-curdling sounds should
+come to such as walk on Ganerslie Heath in the lonely hours of the
+night.
+
+Another haunted place is Clopton--haunted certainly with memories if
+not with ghosts. In the reign of Henry the Seventh this was the manor
+of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London, in 1492, he who built the
+bridge over the Avon,--across which, many a time, William Shakespeare
+must have ridden, on his way to Oxford and the capital. The dust of Sir
+Hugh rests in Stratford church and his mansion has passed through many
+hands. In our time, it is the residence of Sir Arthur Hodgson,[4] by
+whom it was purchased in July, 1873. It was my privilege to see Clopton
+under the guidance of its lord, and a charming and impressive old house
+it is,--full of quaint objects and fraught with singular associations.
+They show to you there, among many interesting paintings, the portrait
+of a lady, with thin figure, delicate features, long light hair, and
+sensitive countenance, said to be that of Lady Margaret Clopton, who,
+in the Stuart time, drowned herself, in a dismal well, behind the
+mansion,--being crazed with grief at the death of her lover, killed
+in the Civil War. And they show to you the portrait of still another
+Clopton girl, Lady Charlotte, who is thought to have been accidentally
+buried alive,--because when it chanced that the family tomb was opened,
+a few days after her interment, the corse was found to be turned over
+in its coffin and to present indications that the wretched victim of
+premature burial had, in her agonized frenzy, gnawed her flesh. Her
+death was attributed to the plague, and it occurred on the eve of her
+prospective marriage.
+
+[Illustration: _Old Porch of Clopton._]
+
+It is the blood-stained corridor of Clopton, however, that most
+impresses imagination. This is at the top of the house, and access
+to it is gained by a winding stair of oak boards, uncarpeted, solid,
+simple, and consonant with the times and manners that it represents.
+Many years ago a squire of Clopton murdered his butler, in a little
+bedroom near the top of that staircase, and dragged the body along
+the corridor, to secrete it. A thin dark stain, seemingly a streak of
+blood, runs from the door of that bedroom, in the direction of the
+stairhead, and this is so deeply imprinted in the wood that it cannot
+be removed. Opening from this corridor, opposite to the room of the
+murder, is an angular apartment, which in the remote days of Catholic
+occupancy was used as an oratory.[5] In the early part of the reign of
+Henry the Sixth, John Carpenter obtained from the Bishop of Worcester
+permission to establish a chapel at Clopton. In 1885 the walls of that
+attic chamber were committed to the tender mercies of a paper-hanger,
+who presently discovered on them several inscriptions, in black
+letter, but who fortunately mentioned his discoveries before they were
+obliterated. Richard Savage, the antiquary, was called to examine them,
+and by him they were restored. The effect of those little patches of
+letters,--isles of significance in a barren sea of wall-paper,--is
+that of extreme singularity. Most of them are sentences from the
+Bible. All of them are devout. One imparts the solemn injunction:
+"Whether you rise yearlye or goe to bed late, Remember Christ Jesus
+who died for your sake." [This may be found in John Weever's _Funeral
+Monuments: 1631_.] Clopton has a long and various history. One of the
+most significant facts in its record is that, for about three months,
+in the year 1605, it was occupied by Ambrose Rokewood, of Coldham Hall,
+Suffolk, a breeder of race-horses, whom Robert Catesby brought into
+the ghastly Gunpowder Plot, which so startled the reign of James the
+First. Hither came Sir Everard Digby, and Thomas and Robert Winter, and
+the specious Jesuit, Father Garnet, chief hatcher of the conspiracy,
+with his vile train of sentimental fanatics, on that pilgrimage of
+sanctification with which he formally prepared for an act of such
+hideous treachery and wholesale murder as only a religious zealot
+could ever have conceived. That may have been a time when the little
+oratory of Clopton was in active use. Things belonging to Rokewood,
+who was captured at Hewel Grange, and was executed on January 31,
+1606, were found in that room, and were seized by the government. Mr.
+Fisher Tomes, resident proprietor of Clopton from 1825 to 1830, well
+remembered the inscriptions in the oratory, which in his time were
+still uncovered. Not many years since it was a bedroom; but one of Sir
+Arthur Hodgson's guests, who undertook to sleep in it, was, it is said,
+afterward heard to declare that he wished not ever again to experience
+the hospitality of that chamber, because the sounds that he had heard,
+all around the place, throughout that night, were of a most startling
+description. A house containing many rooms and staircases, a house
+full of long corridors and winding ways, a house so large that you may
+get lost in it,--such is Clopton; and it stands in its own large park,
+removed from other buildings and bowered in trees. To sit in the great
+hall of that mansion, on a winter midnight, when the snow-laden wind is
+howling around it, and then to think of the bleak, sinister oratory,
+and the stealthy, gliding shapes upstairs, invisible to mortal eye, but
+felt, with a shuddering sense of some unseen presence watching in the
+dark,--this would be to have quite a sufficient experience of a haunted
+house. Sir Arthur Hodgson talked of the legends of Clopton with that
+merry twinkle of the eye which suits well with kindly incredulity. All
+the same, I thought of Milton's lines--
+
+ "Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
+ Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep."
+
+The manor of Clopton was granted to John de Clopton by Peter de
+Montfort, in 1236, while Henry the Third was king, and the family of
+Clopton dwelt there for more than five hundred years. The Cloptons of
+Warwickshire and those of Suffolk are of the same family, and at Long
+Melford, in Suffolk, may be found many memorials of it. The famous Sir
+Hugh,--who built New Place in 1490, restored the Guild chapel, glazed
+the chancel of Stratford church, reared much of Clopton House, where he
+was visited by Henry the Seventh, and placed the bridge across the Avon
+at Stratford, where it still stands,--died in London, in 1496, and was
+buried at St. Margaret's, Lothbury. Joyce, or Jocasa, Clopton, born
+in 1558, became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, and afterwards
+to Queen Anne, wife of James the First, and ultimately married George
+Carew, created Earl of Totnes and Baron of Clopton. Carew, born in
+1557, was the son of a Dean of Exeter, and he became the English
+commander-in-chief in Ireland, in the time of Elizabeth. King James
+ennobled him, with the title of Baron Clopton, in 1605, and Charles
+the First made him Earl of Totnes, in 1625. The Earl and his Countess
+are buried in Stratford church, where their marble effigies, recumbent
+in the Clopton pew, are among the finest monuments of that hallowed
+place. The Countess died in 1636, leaving no children, and the Earl
+thereupon caused all the estates that he had acquired by marriage with
+her to be restored to the Clopton family. Sir John Clopton, born in
+1638, married the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Edward Walker, owner
+of Clopton in the time of Charles the Second, and it is interesting
+to remember that by him was built the well-known house at Stratford,
+formerly called the Shoulder of Mutton,[6] but more recently designated
+the Swan's Nest. Mention is made of a Sir John Clopton by whom the well
+in which Lady Margaret drowned herself was enclosed; it is still called
+Lady Margaret's Well; a stone, at the back of it, is inscribed "S. J.
+C. 1686." Sir John died in 1692, leaving a son, Sir Hugh, who died in
+1751, aged eighty. The last Clopton in the direct line was Frances,
+born in 1718, who married Mr. Parthenwicke, and died in 1792.
+
+[Illustration: CLOPTON HOUSE]
+
+Clopton House is of much antiquity, but it has undergone many changes.
+The north and west sides of the present edifice were built in the time
+of Henry the Seventh. The building was originally surrounded with a
+moat.[7] A part of the original structure remains at the back,--a
+porchway entrance, once accessible across the moat, and an oriel window
+at the right of that entrance. Over the front window are displayed
+the arms of Clopton,--an eagle, perched upon a tun, bearing a shield;
+and in the gable appear the arms of Walker, with the motto, Loyauté
+mon honneur. Sir Edward Walker was Lord of Clopton soon after the
+Restoration, and by him the entrance to the house, which used to be
+where the dining-room now is, was transferred to its present position.
+It was Walker who carried to Charles the Second, in Holland, in 1649,
+the news of the execution of his father. A portrait of the knight, by
+Dobson, hangs on the staircase wall at Clopton, where he died in 1677,
+aged sixty-five. He was Garter-king-at-arms. His remains are buried in
+Stratford church, with an epitaph over them by Dugdale. Mr. Ward owned
+the estate about 1840, and under his direction many changes were made
+in the old building,--sixty workmen having been employed upon it for
+six months. The present drawing-room and conservatory were built by
+Mr. Ward, and by him the whole structure was "modernised." There
+are wild stories that autographs and other relics of Shakespeare once
+existed at Clopton, and were consumed there, in a bon-fire. A stone
+in the grounds marks the grave of a silver eagle, that was starved to
+death, through the negligence of a gamekeeper, November 25, 1795. There
+are twenty-six notable portraits in the main hall of Clopton, one of
+them being that of Oliver Cromwell's mother, and another probably that
+of the unfortunate and unhappy Arabella Stuart,--only child of the
+fifth Earl of Lennox,--who died, at the Tower of London, in 1615.
+
+Warwickshire swarmed with conspirators while the Gunpowder Plot was in
+progress. The Lion Inn at Dunchurch was the chief tryst of the captains
+who were to lead their forces and capture the Princess Elizabeth and
+seize the throne and the country, after the expected explosion,--which
+never came. And when the game was up and Fawkes in captivity, it was
+through Warwickshire that the "racing and chasing" were fleetest and
+wildest, till the desperate scramble for life and safety went down in
+blood at Hewel Grange. Various houses associated with that plot are
+still extant in this neighbourhood, and when the scene shifts to London
+and to Garnet's Tyburn gallows, it is easily possible for the patient
+antiquarian to tread in almost every footprint of that great conspiracy.
+
+[Illustration: _Warwick Castle, from the Mound._]
+
+Since Irish ruffians began to toss dynamite about in public buildings
+it has been deemed essential to take especial precaution against
+the danger of explosion in such places as the Houses of Parliament,
+Westminster Abbey, and the Tower of London. Much more damage than the
+newspapers recorded was done by the explosions that occurred some time
+ago in the Tower and the Palace. At present you cannot enter even into
+Palace Yard unless connected with the public business or authorised
+by an order; and if you visit the Tower without a special permit you
+will be restricted to a few sights and places. I was fortunately the
+bearer of the card of the Lord Chamberlain, on a recent prowl through
+the Tower, and therefore was favoured by the beef-eaters who pervade
+that structure. Those damp and gloomy dungeons were displayed wherein
+so many Jews perished miserably in the reign of Edward the First; and
+Little Ease was shown,--the cell in which for several months Guy Fawkes
+was incarcerated, during Cecil's wily investigation of the Gunpowder
+Plot. A part of the rear wall has been removed, affording access to the
+adjacent dungeon; but originally the cell did not give room for a man
+to lie down in it, and scarce gave room for him to stand upright. The
+massive door, of ribbed and iron-bound oak, still solid, though worn,
+would make an impressive picture. A poor, stealthy cat was crawling
+about in those subterranean dens of darkness and horror, and was left
+locked in there when we emerged. In St. Peter's, on the green,--that
+little cemetery so eloquently described by Macaulay,--they came, some
+time ago, upon the coffins of Lovat, Kilmarnock, and Balmerino, the
+Scotch lords who perished upon the block for their complicity with the
+rising for the Pretender, in 1745-47. The coffins were much decayed.
+The plates were removed, and these may now be viewed, in a glass case
+on the church wall, over against the spot where those unfortunate
+gentlemen were buried.[8] One is of lead and is in the form of a
+large open scroll. The other two are oval in shape, large, and made
+of pewter. Much royal and noble dust is heaped together beneath the
+stones of the chancel,--Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey,
+Margaret, Duchess of Salisbury, the Duke of Monmouth, the Earl of
+Northumberland, Essex, Overbury, Thomas Cromwell, and many more. The
+body of the infamous and execrable Jeffreys was once buried there, but
+it has been removed.
+
+[Illustration: _Warwick Castle, from the River._]
+
+St. Mary's church at Warwick has been restored since 1885, and now it
+is made a show place. The pilgrim may see the Beauchamp chapel, in
+which are entombed Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, the founder of
+the church; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in whose Latin epitaph
+it is stated that "his sorrowful wife, Lætitia, daughter of Francis
+Knolles, through a sense of conjugal love and fidelity, hath put up
+this monument to the best and dearest of husbands";[9] Ambrose Dudley,
+elder brother to Elizabeth's favourite, and known as the Good Earl
+[he relinquished his title and possessions to Robert]; and that Fulke
+Greville, Lord Brooke, who lives in fame as "the friend of Sir Philip
+Sidney." There are other notable sleepers in that chapel, but these
+perhaps are the most famous and considerable. One odd epitaph records
+of William Viner, steward to Lord Brooke, that "he was a man entirely
+of ancient manners, and to whom you will scarcely find an equal,
+particularly in point of liberality.... He was added to the number of
+the heavenly inhabitants maturely for himself, but prematurely for his
+friends, in his 70th year, on the 28th of April, A.D. 1639." Another,
+placed for himself by Thomas Hewett during his lifetime, modestly
+describes him as "a most miserable sinner." Sin is always miserable
+when it knows itself. Still another, and this in good verse, by Gervas
+Clifton, gives a tender tribute to Lætitia, "the excellent and pious
+Lady Lettice," Countess of Leicester, who died on Christmas morning,
+1634:
+
+ "She that in her younger years
+ Matched with two great English peers;
+ She that did supply the wars
+ With thunder, and the Court with stars;
+ She that in her youth had been
+ Darling to the maiden Queene,
+ Till she was content to quit
+ Her favour for her favourite....
+ While she lived she livéd thus,
+ Till that God, displeased with us,
+ Suffered her at last to fall,
+ Not from Him but from us all."
+
+[Illustration: _Leicester's Hospital._]
+
+A noble bust of that fine thinker and exquisite poet Walter Savage
+Landor has been placed on the west wall of St. Mary's church. He was
+a native of Warwick and he is fitly commemorated in that place. The
+bust is of alabaster and is set in an alabaster arch with carved
+environment, and with the family arms displayed above. The head of
+Landor shows great intellectual power, rugged yet gentle. Coming
+suddenly upon the bust, in this church, the pilgrim is forcibly and
+pleasantly reminded of the attribute of sweet and gentle reverence
+in the English character, which so invariably expresses itself, all
+over this land, in honourable memorials to the honourable dead. No
+rambler in Warwick omits to explore Leicester's hospital, or to see as
+much as he can of the Castle. That glorious old place has long been
+kept closed, for fear of the dynamite fiend; but now it is once more
+accessible. I walked again beneath the stately cedars[10] and along the
+bloom-bordered avenues where once Joseph Addison used to wander and
+meditate, and traversed again those opulent state apartments wherein
+so many royal, noble, and beautiful faces look forth from the radiant
+canvas of Holbein and Vandyke. There is a wonderful picture, in one
+of those rooms, of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, when a young
+man,--a face prophetic of stormy life, baleful struggles, and a hard
+and miserable fate. You may see the helmet that was worn by Oliver
+Cromwell, and also a striking death-mask of his face; and some of the
+finest portraits of Charles the First that exist in this kingdom are
+shown at Warwick Castle.
+
+[Illustration: _From the Warwick Shield._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+OLD YORK
+
+
+York, August 12, 1888.--All summer long the sorrowful skies have been
+weeping over England, and my first prospect of this ancient city was
+a prospect through drizzle and mist. Yet even so it was impressive.
+York is one of the quaintest cities in the kingdom. Many of the
+streets are narrow and crooked. Most of the buildings are of low
+stature, built of brick, and roofed with red tiles. Here and there you
+find a house of Queen Elizabeth's time, picturesque with overhanging
+timber-crossed fronts and peaked gables. One such house, in Stonegate,
+is conspicuously marked with its date, 1574. Another, in College
+street, enclosing a quadrangular court and lovely with old timber and
+carved gateway, was built by the Neville family in 1460. There is a
+wide area in the centre of the town called Parliament street, where
+the market is opened, by torchlight, on certain evenings of every
+week. It was market-time last evening, and, wandering through the
+motley and merry crowd that filled the square, about nine o'clock, I
+bought, at a flower-stall, the white rose of York and the red rose of
+Lancaster,--twining them together as an emblem of the settled peace
+that here broods so sweetly over the venerable relics of a wild and
+stormy past.
+
+[Illustration: _Bootham Bar._]
+
+Four sections of the old wall of York are still extant and the
+observer is amused to perceive the ingenuity with which those gray and
+mouldering remnants of the feudal age are blended into the structures
+of the democratic present. From Bootham to Monk Gate,--so named in
+honour of General Monk, at the Restoration,--a distance of about half
+a mile, the wall is absorbed by the adjacent buildings. But you may
+walk upon it from Monk Gate to Jewbury, about a quarter of a mile, and
+afterward, crossing the Foss, you may find it again on the southeast
+of the city, and walk upon it from Red Tower to old Fishergate,
+descending near York Castle. There are houses both within the walls and
+without. The walk is about eight feet wide, protected on one hand by a
+fretted battlement and on the other by an occasional bit of iron fence.
+The base of the wall, for a considerable part of its extent, is fringed
+with market gardens or with grassy banks. In one of its towers there is
+a gate-house, still occupied as a dwelling; and a comfortable dwelling
+no doubt it is. In another, of which nothing now remains but the walls,
+four large trees are rooted; and, as they are already tall enough to
+wave their leafy tops above the battlement, they must have been growing
+there for at least twenty years. At one point the Great Northern
+Railway enters through an arch in the ancient wall, and as you look
+down from the battlements your gaze rests upon long lines of rail and
+a spacious station, together with its adjacent hotel,--objects which
+consort but strangely with what your fancy knows of York; a city of
+donjons and barbicans, the moat, the draw-bridge, the portcullis, the
+citadel, the man-at-arms, and the knight in armour, with the banners of
+William the Norman flowing over all.
+
+The river Ouse divides the city of York, which lies mostly upon its
+east bank, and in order to reach the longest and most attractive
+portion of the wall that is now available to the pedestrian you must
+cross the Ouse, either at Skeldergate or Lendal, paying a half-penny
+as toll, both when you go and when you return. The walk here is
+three-quarters of a mile long, and from an angle of this wall, just
+above the railway arch, may be obtained the best view of the mighty
+cathedral,--one of the most stupendous and sublime works that ever
+were erected by the inspired brain and loving labour of man. While I
+walked there last night, and mused upon the story of the Wars of the
+Roses, and strove to conjure up the pageants and the horrors that
+must have been presented, all about this region, in that remote and
+turbulent past, the glorious bells of the minster were chiming from its
+towers, while the fresh evening breeze, sweet with the fragrance of wet
+flowers and foliage, seemed to flood this ancient, venerable city with
+the golden music of a celestial benediction.
+
+[Illustration: _York Cathedral--West Front._]
+
+The pilgrim to York stands in the centre of the largest shire
+in England and is surrounded with castles and monasteries, now
+mostly in ruins but teeming with those associations of history and
+literature that are the glory of this delightful land. From the
+summit of the great central tower of the cathedral, which is reached
+by two hundred and thirty-seven steps, I gazed out over the vale of
+York and beheld one of the loveliest spectacles that ever blessed
+the eyes of man. The wind was fierce, the sun brilliant, and the
+vanquished storm-clouds were streaming away before the northern
+blast. Far beneath lay the red-roofed city, its devious lanes and
+its many gray churches,--crumbling relics of ancient ecclesiastical
+power,--distinctly visible. Through the plain, and far away toward the
+south and east, ran the silver thread of the Ouse, while all around,
+as far as the eye could reach, stretched forth a smiling landscape of
+emerald meadow and cultivated field; here a patch of woodland, and
+there a silver gleam of wave; here a manor-house nestled amid stately
+trees, and there an ivy-covered fragment of ruined masonry; and
+everywhere the green lines of the flowering hedge. The prospect is even
+finer here than it is from the splendid summit of Strasburg cathedral;
+and indeed, when all is said that can be said about natural scenery
+and architectural sublimities, it seems amazing that any lover of the
+beautiful should deem it necessary to quit the infinite variety of the
+British islands. Earth cannot show you anything more softly fair than
+the lakes and mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland. No city can
+excel Edinburgh in stately solidity of character, or tranquil grandeur,
+or magnificence of position. The most exquisitely beautiful of churches
+is Roslin chapel. And though you search the wide world through you will
+never find such cathedrals,--so fraught with majesty, sublimity, the
+loveliness of human art, and the ecstatic sense of a divine element in
+human destiny,--as those of York, Canterbury, Gloucester, and Lincoln.
+While thus I lingered in wondering meditation upon the crag-like summit
+of York minster, the muffled thunder of its vast, sonorous organ rose,
+rolling and throbbing, from the mysterious depth below, and seemed
+to shake the great tower as with a mighty blast of jubilation and
+worship. At such moments, if ever, when the tones of human adoration
+are floating up to heaven, a man is lifted out of himself and made to
+forget his puny mortal existence and all the petty nothings that weary
+his spirit, darken his vision, and weigh him down to the level of the
+sordid, trivial world. Well did they know this,--those old monks who
+built the abbeys of Britain, laying their foundations not alone deeply
+in the earth but deeply in the human soul!
+
+All the ground that you survey from the top of York minster is classic
+ground,--at least to those persons whose imaginations are kindled
+by associations with the stately and storied past. In the city that
+lies at your feet once stood the potent Constantine, to be proclaimed
+emperor [A.D. 306] and to be vested with the imperial purple of Rome.
+In the original York minster,--for the present is the fourth church
+that has been erected upon this site,--was buried that valiant soldier
+"old Siward," whom "gracious England" lent to the Scottish cause,
+under Malcolm and Macduff, when time at length was ripe for the ruin
+of Glamis and Cawdor. Close by is the field of Stamford, where Harold
+defeated the Norwegians, with terrible slaughter, only nine days before
+he was himself defeated and slain at Hastings. Southward, following
+the line of the Ouse, you look down upon the ruins of Clifford's Tower,
+built by William the Conqueror, in 1068, and destroyed by the explosion
+of its powder magazine in 1684. Not far away is the battlefield of
+Towton, where the great Warwick slew his horse, that he might fight on
+foot and possess no advantage over the common soldiers of his force.
+Henry the Sixth and Margaret were waiting in York for news of the event
+of that fatal battle,--which, in its effect, made them exiles and bore
+to an assured supremacy the rightful standard of the White Rose. In
+this church Edward the Fourth was crowned [1464], and Richard the Third
+was proclaimed king and had his second coronation. Southward you may
+see the open space called the Pavement, connecting with Parliament
+street, and the red brick church of St. Crux. In the Pavement the Earl
+of Northumberland was beheaded, for treason against Queen Elizabeth, in
+1572, and in St. Crux [one of Wren's churches] his remains lie buried,
+beneath a dark blue slab, still shown to visitors. A few miles away,
+but easily within reach of your vision, is the field of Marston Moor,
+where the impetuous Prince Rupert imperilled and well-nigh lost the
+cause of Charles the First, in 1644; and as you look toward that fatal
+spot you can almost hear, in the chamber of your fancy, the pæans of
+thanksgiving for the victory that were uttered in the church beneath.
+Cromwell, then a subordinate officer in the Parliamentary army, was one
+of the worshippers. Charles also has knelt at this altar. Indeed, of
+the fifteen kings, from William of Normandy to Henry of Windsor, whose
+sculptured effigies appear upon the chancel screen in York minster,
+there is scarcely one who has not worshipped in this cathedral.
+
+[Illustration: _York Cathedral--South Side._]
+
+York minster has often been described, but no description can convey
+an adequate impression of its grandeur. Canterbury is the lovelier
+cathedral of the two, though not the grander, and Canterbury possesses
+the inestimable advantage of a spacious close. It must be said also,
+for the city of Canterbury, that the presence and influence of a great
+church are more distinctly and delightfully felt in that place than
+they are in York. There is a more spiritual tone at Canterbury, a tone
+of superior delicacy and refinement, a certain aristocratic coldness
+and repose. In York you perceive the coarse spirit of a democratic era.
+The walls, that ought to be cherished with scrupulous care, are found
+in many places to be ill-used. At intervals along the walks upon the
+banks of the Ouse you behold placards requesting the co-operation of
+the public in protecting from harm the swans that navigate the river.
+Even in the cathedral itself there is displayed a printed notice that
+the Dean and Chapter are amazed at disturbances which occur in the
+nave while divine service is proceeding in the choir. These things
+imply a rough element in the population, and in such a place as York
+such an element is exceptionally offensive and deplorable.
+
+It was said by the wise Lord Beaconsfield that progress in the
+nineteenth century is found to consist chiefly in a return to ancient
+ideas. There may be places to which the characteristic spirit of the
+present day contributes an element of beauty; but if so I have not seen
+them. Wherever there is beauty there is the living force of tradition
+to account for it. The most that a conservative force in society can
+accomplish, for the preservation of an instinct in favour of whatever
+is beautiful and impressive, is to protect what remains from the
+past. Modern Edinburgh, for example, has contributed no building that
+is comparable with its glorious old castle, or with Roslin, or with
+what we know to have been Melrose or Dryburgh; but its castle and its
+chapels are protected and preserved. York, in the present day, erects a
+commodious railway-station and a sumptuous hotel, and spans its ample
+river with two splendid bridges; but its modern architecture is puerile
+beside that of its ancient minster; and so its best work, after all, is
+the preservation of its cathedral. The observer finds it difficult to
+understand how anybody, however lowly born or poorly endowed or meanly
+nurtured, can live within the presence of that heavenly building, and
+not be purified and exalted by the contemplation of so much majesty,
+and by its constantly irradiative force of religious sentiment and
+power. But the spirit which in the past created objects of beauty
+and adorned common life with visible manifestations of the celestial
+aspiration in human nature had constantly to struggle against
+insensibility or violence; and just so the few who have inherited that
+spirit in the present day are compelled steadily to combat the hard
+materialism and gross animal proclivities of the new age.
+
+[Illustration: _York Cathedral--East Front._]
+
+What a comfort their souls must find in such an edifice as York
+minster! What a solace and what an inspiration! There it stands, dark
+and lonely to-night, but symbolising, as no other object upon earth
+can ever do, except one of its own great kindred, God's promise of
+immortal life to man, and man's unquenchable faith in the promise
+of God. Dark and lonely now, but during many hours of its daily and
+nightly life sentient, eloquent, vital, participating in all the
+thought, conduct, and experience of those who dwell around it. The
+beautiful peal of its bells that I heard last night was for Canon
+Baillie, one of the oldest and most beloved and venerated of its
+clergy. This morning, sitting in its choir, I heard the tender,
+thoughtful eulogy so simply and sweetly spoken by the aged Dean, and
+once again learned the essential lesson that an old age of grace,
+patience, and benignity means a pure heart, an unselfish spirit, and a
+good life passed in the service of others. This afternoon I had a place
+among the worshippers that thronged the nave to hear the special anthem
+chanted for the deceased Canon; and, as the organ pealed forth its
+mellow thunder, and the rich tones of the choristers swelled and rose
+and broke in golden waves of melody upon the groined arches and vaulted
+roof, my soul seemed borne away to a peace and rest that are not of
+this world. To-night the rising moon as she gleams through drifting
+clouds, will pour her silver rays upon that great east window,--at once
+the largest and the most beautiful in existence,--and all the Bible
+stories told there in such exquisite hues and forms will glow with
+heavenly lustre on the dark vista of chancel and nave. And when the
+morning comes the first beams of the rising sun will stream through
+the great casement and illumine the figures of saints and archbishops,
+and gild the old tattered battle-flags in the chancel aisle, and touch
+with blessing the marble effigies of the dead; and we who walk there,
+refreshed and comforted, shall feel that the vast cathedral is indeed
+the gateway to heaven.
+
+York minster is the loftiest of all the English cathedrals, and the
+third in length,[11]--both St. Albans and Winchester being longer.
+The present structure is six hundred years old, and more than two
+hundred years were occupied in the building of it. They show you, in
+the crypt, some fine remains of the Norman church that preceded it
+upon the same site, together with traces of the still older Saxon
+church that preceded the Norman. The first one was of wood and was
+totally destroyed. The Saxon remains are a fragment of stone staircase
+and a piece of wall built in the ancient herring-bone fashion. The
+Norman remains are four clustered columns, embellished in the zigzag
+style. There is not much of commemorative statuary at York minster,
+and what there is of it was placed chiefly in the chancel. Archbishop
+Richard Scrope, who figures in Shakespeare's historical play of _Henry
+the Fourth_, and who was beheaded for treason in 1405, was buried in
+the lady chapel. Laurence Sterne's grandfather, who was chaplain to
+Laud, is represented there, in his ecclesiastical dress, reclining
+upon a couch and supporting his mitred head upon his hand,--a squat
+figure uncomfortably posed, but sculptured with delicate skill. Many
+historic names occur in the inscriptions,--Wentworth, Finch, Fenwick,
+Carlisle, and Heneage,--and in the north aisle of the chancel is the
+tomb of William of Hatfield, second son of Edward the Third, who died
+in 1343-44, in the eighth year of his age. An alabaster statue of
+the royal boy reclines upon his tomb. In the cathedral library, which
+contains eight thousand volumes and is kept at the Deanery, is the
+Princess Elizabeth's prayer-book, containing her autograph. In one of
+the chapels is the original throne-chair of Edward the Third.
+
+In St. Leonard's Place still stands the York theatre, erected by
+Tate Wilkinson in 1765. In York Castle Eugene Aram was imprisoned
+and suffered death. The poet and bishop Beilby Porteus, the sculptor
+Flaxman, the grammarian Lindley Murray, and the fanatic Guy Fawkes
+were natives of York, and have often walked its streets. Standing on
+Skeldergate bridge, few readers of English fiction could fail to recall
+that exquisite description of the place, in the novel of _No Name_. In
+his artistic use of weather, atmosphere, and colour Wilkie Collins is
+always remarkable equally for his fidelity to nature and fact, and for
+the felicity and beauty of his language. His portrayal of York seems
+more than ever a gem of literary art, when you have seen the veritable
+spot of poor Magdalen's meeting with Captain Wragge. The name of Wragge
+is on one of the signboards in the city. The river, on which I did not
+omit to take a boat, was picturesque, with its many quaint barges,
+bearing masts and sails and embellished with touches of green and
+crimson and blue. There is no end to the associations and suggestions
+of the storied city. But lest my readers weary of them, let me respect
+the admonition of the midnight bell, and seek repose beneath the
+hospitable wing of the old Black Swan in Coney street, whence I send
+this humble memorial of ancient York.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE HAUNTS OF MOORE
+
+
+Devizes, Wiltshire, August 20, 1888.--The scarlet discs of the poppies
+and the red and white blooms of the clover, together with wild-flowers
+of many hues, bespangle now the emerald sod of England, while the air
+is rich with fragrance of lime-trees and of new-mown hay. The busy and
+sagacious rooks, fat and bold, wing their way in great clusters, bent
+on forage and mischief. There is almost a frosty chill in the autumnal
+air, and the brimming rivers, dark and deep and smoothly flowing
+through the opulent, cultivated, and park-like region of Wiltshire,
+look cold and bright. In many fields the hay is cut and stacked. In
+others the men, and often the women, armed with rakes, are tossing it
+to dry in the reluctant, intermittent, bleak sunshine of this rigorous
+August. Overhead the sky is now as blue as the deep sea and now grim
+and ominous with great drifting masses of slate-coloured cloud. There
+are moments of beautiful sunshine by day, and in some hours of the
+night the moon shines forth in all her pensive and melancholy glory. It
+is a time of exquisite loveliness, and it has seemed a fitting time for
+a visit to the last English home and the last resting-place of the poet
+of loveliness and love, the great Irish poet Thomas Moore.
+
+[Illustration: _Thomas Moore._]
+
+When Moore first went up to London, a young author seeking to launch
+his earliest writings upon the stream of contemporary literature, he
+crossed from Dublin to Bristol and then travelled to the capital by
+way of Bath and Devizes; and as he crossed several times he must soon
+have gained familiarity with this part of the country. He did not,
+however, settle in Wiltshire until some years afterward. His first
+lodging in London was a front room, up two pair of stairs, at No. 44
+George street, Portman square. He subsequently lived at No. 46 Wigmore
+street, Cavendish square, and at No. 27 Bury street, St. James's. This
+was in 1805. In 1810 he resided for a time at No. 22 Molesworth street,
+Dublin, but he soon returned to England. One of his homes, shortly
+after his marriage with Elizabeth Dyke ["Bessie," the sister of the
+great actress Mary Duff, 1794-1857] was in Brompton. In the spring of
+1812 he settled at Kegworth, but a year later he is found at Mayfield
+Cottage, near Ashbourne, Derbyshire. "I am now as you wished," he wrote
+to Mr. Power, the music-publisher, July 1, 1813, "within twenty-four
+hours' drive of town." In 1817 he occupied a cottage near the foot of
+Muswell Hill, at Hornsey, Middlesex, but after he lost his daughter
+Barbara, who died there, the place became distressful to him and he
+left it. In the latter part of September that year, the time of their
+affliction, Moore and his Bessie were the guests of Lady Donegal, at
+No. 56 Davies street, Berkeley square, London. Then [November 19, 1817]
+they removed to Sloperton Cottage, at Bromham, near Devizes, and their
+permanent residence was established in that place. Lord Landsdowne, one
+of the poet's earliest and best friends, was the owner of that estate,
+and doubtless he was the impulse of Moore's resort to it. The present
+Lord Landsdowne still owns Bowood Park, about four miles away.
+
+[Illustration: _The Bear--Devizes._]
+
+Devizes impresses a stranger with a singular and pleasant sense of
+suspended animation,--as of beauty fallen asleep,--the sense of
+something about to happen, which never occurs. More peaceful it could
+not be, unless it were dead,--and that is its most alluring charm.
+Two of its many streets are remarkably wide and spacious, while the
+others are narrow and often crooked. Most of its habitations are
+low houses, built of brick, and only a few of them, such as the old
+Town Hall and the Corn Exchange, are pretentious as architecture.
+The principal street runs nearly northwest and southeast. There is
+a north gate at one end of it, and a south gate at the other, but
+no remnant of the ancient town gates is left. The Kennet and Avon
+Canal, built in 1794-1805, skirts the northern side of the town, and
+thereafter descends the western slope, passing through twenty-seven
+magnificent locks, within a distance of about two miles,--one of
+the longest consecutive ranges of locks in England. The stateliest
+building in Devizes is its noble Castle, which, reared upon a massive
+hill, at once dominates the surrounding landscape and dignifies it.
+That splendid edifice, built about 1830, stands upon the site of
+the ancient Castle of Devizes, which was built by Roger, Bishop of
+Salisbury, in the reign of Henry the First, and it resembles that
+famous original,--long esteemed one of the most complete and admirable
+works of its kind in Europe. The old Castle was included in the dowry
+settled upon successive queens of England. Queen Margaret possessed
+it in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and Queen Katharine in that of
+Henry the Eighth. It figured in the Civil Wars, and it was deemed the
+strongest citadel in England. The poet-soldier, Edmund Waller, when
+in the service of the Parliament, bombarded it, in 1643, and finally
+it was destroyed by order of the Roundheads. Toward the close of the
+eighteenth century its ruins were, it is said, surmounted with a couple
+of snuff-mills. No part of the ancient fortress now survives, except
+the moat; but in its pleasant grounds fragmentary remnants may still be
+seen of its foundations and of the dungeons of a remote age. During the
+rebuilding of the Castle many relics were unearthed,--such as human
+bones and implements of war,--the significant tokens of dark days and
+fatal doings long since past and gone. In the centre of the town is a
+commodious public square, known as the Market-place,--a wide domain of
+repose, as I saw it, uninvaded by either vehicle or human being, but
+on each Thursday the scene of the weekly market for cattle and corn,
+and of the loquacious industry of the cheap-jack and the quack. On one
+side of it is the old Bear Hotel, an exceptionally comfortable house,
+memorable as the birthplace of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the famous artist
+[1769-1830]. In the centre are two works of art,--one a fountain,
+the other a cross. The latter, a fine fabric of Gothic architecture,
+is embellished with thirteen pinnacles, which rise above an arched
+canopy, the covering of a statue. One face of the cross bears this
+legend: "This Market Cross was erected by Henry Viscount Sidmouth,
+as a memorial of his grateful attachment to the Borough of Devizes,
+of which he has been Recorder thirty years, and of which he was six
+times unanimously chosen a representative in Parliament. Anno Domini
+1814." Upon the other face appears a record more significant,--being
+indicative equally of credulity and a frugal mind, and being freighted
+with tragic import unmatched since the Bible narrative of Ananias and
+Sapphira. It reads thus:
+
+ "The Mayor and Corporation of Devizes avail themselves of the
+ stability of this building to transmit to future times the record of
+ an awful event which occurred in this market-place in the year 1753,
+ hoping that such a record may serve as a salutary warning against the
+ danger of impiously invoking the Divine vengeance, or of calling on
+ the holy name of God to conceal the devices of falsehood and fraud.
+
+ "On Thursday, the 25th January 1753, Ruth Pierce, of Potterne, in this
+ county, agreed, with three other women, to buy a sack of wheat in the
+ market, each paying her due proportion toward the same.
+
+ "One of these women, in collecting the several quotas of money,
+ discovered a deficiency, and demanded of Ruth Pierce the sum which was
+ wanted to make good the amount.
+
+ "Ruth Pierce protested that she had paid her share, and said, 'She
+ wished she might drop down dead if she had not.'
+
+ "She rashly repeated this awful wish, when, to the consternation of
+ the surrounding multitude, she instantly fell down and expired, having
+ the money concealed in her hand."
+
+That is not the only grim incident in the history of the Market-place
+of Devizes; for in 1533 a poor tailor, named John Bent, of the
+neighbouring village of Urchfont was burnt at the stake, in that
+square, for his avowed disbelief of the doctrine of transubstantiation.
+
+An important and deeply interesting institution of Devizes is the
+Wilts County Museum, in Long street, devoted to the natural history
+and the archæology of Wiltshire. The library contains a priceless
+collection of Wiltshire books, and the museum is rich in geological
+specimens,--richer even than the excellent museum of Salisbury; for,
+in addition to other treasures, it includes the famous Stourhead
+collection, made by Sir Richard Colt Hoare,--being relics from the
+ancient British and Saxon barrows on the Wiltshire downs. The Stourhead
+collection is described by Sir Richard, in his book on "Antient Wilts."
+Its cinerary and culinary urns are fine and numerous. The Wilts County
+Museum is fortunate in its curator, B. Howard Cunnington, Esq., of
+Rowde--an indefatigable student, devoted to Wiltshire, and a thorough
+antiquarian.
+
+[Illustration: _St. John's Church--Devizes._]
+
+An interesting church in Devizes is that of St. John, the Norman tower
+of which is a relic of the days of Henry the Second, a vast, grim
+structure with a circular turret on one corner of it. Eastward of this
+church is a long and lovely avenue of trees, and around it lies a
+large burial-place, remarkable for the excellence of the sod and for
+the number visible of those heavy, gray, oblong masses of tombstone
+which appear to have obtained great public favour about the time of
+Cromwell. In the centre of the churchyard stands a monolith, inscribed
+with these words:
+
+ "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.--This monument, as a solemn
+ monitor to Young People to remember their Creator in the days of their
+ youth, was erected by subscription.--In memory of the sudden and awful
+ end of Robert Merrit and his wife, Eliz. Tiley, her sister, Martha
+ Carter, and Josiah Denham, who were drowned, in the flower of their
+ youth, in a pond, near this town, called Drews, on Sunday evening, the
+ 30th of June, 1751, and are together underneath entombed."
+
+In one corner of the churchyard I came upon a cross, bearing a simple
+legend far more solemn, touching, and admonitory: "In Memoriam--Robert
+Samuel Thornley. Died August 5, 1871. Aged 48 years. For fourteen years
+surgeon to the poor of Devizes. There shall be no more pain." And
+over still another sleeper was written, upon a flat stone, low in the
+ground--
+
+ "Loving, beloved, in all relations true,
+ Exposed to follies, but subdued by few:
+ Reader, reflect, and copy if you can
+ The simple virtues of this honest man."
+
+[Illustration: _Hungerford Chapel--Devizes._]
+
+Nobody is in haste in Devizes, and the pilgrim who seeks for
+peace could not do better than to tarry here. The city bell which
+officially strikes the hours is subdued and pensive, and although
+reinforced with chimes, it seems ever to speak under its breath. The
+church-bell, however, rings long and vigorously and with much melodious
+clangour,--as though the local sinners were more than commonly hard of
+hearing. Near to the church of St. John, are some quaint almshouses,
+but not much seems to be known of their history. One of them was
+founded as a hospital for lepers, before A.D. 1207, and it is thought
+that one of them was built of stone which remained after the erection
+of the church. Those almshouses are now governed by the Mayor and
+Corporation of Devizes, but perhaps formerly they were under the direct
+control of the Crown. [See Tanner's _Nolitia_.] There are seven
+endowments, one dating back to 1641, and the houses are to this day
+occupied by widows, recommended by the churchwardens of St. Mary's
+and St. John's. An old inhabitant of Devizes, named Bancroft, left a
+sum of money to insure for himself a singular memorial service,--that
+the bells of St. John's church should be solemnly tolled on the day
+of his birth, and rung merrily on that of his death; and that service
+is duly performed every year. Devizes is a fit place for the survival
+of ancient customs, and these serve very pleasantly to mark its
+peculiar and interesting character. The Town Crier, who is a member
+of the Corporation, walks abroad arrayed in a helmet and a uniform of
+brilliant scarlet,--glories that are worn by no other Crier in the
+kingdom, excepting that of York.
+
+As I was gazing at the old church, surrounded with many ponderous
+tombstones and gray and cheerless in the gloaming, an old man
+approached me and civilly began a conversation about the antiquity
+of the building and the eloquence of its rector. When I told him
+that I had walked to Bromham to attend the service there, and to see
+the cottage and grave of Moore, he presently furnished to me that
+little touch of personal testimony which is always so interesting and
+significant in such circumstances. "I remember Tom Moore," he said;
+"I saw him when he was alive. I worked for him once in his house, and
+I did some work once on his tomb. He was a little man. He spoke to us
+very pleasantly. I don't think he was a preacher. He never preached
+that I heard tell of. He was a poet, I believe. He was very much liked
+here. I never heard a word against him. I am seventy-nine years old
+the thirteenth of December, and that'll soon be here. I've had three
+wives in my time, and my third is still living. It's a fine old church,
+and there's figures in it of bishops, and kings, and queens."
+
+Most observers have remarked the odd way, garrulous, and sometimes
+unconsciously humorous, in which senile persons prattle their
+incongruous and sporadic recollections. But--"How pregnant sometimes
+his replies are!" Another resident of Devizes, with whom I conversed,
+likewise remembered the poet, and spoke of him with affectionate
+respect. "My sister, when she was a child," he said, "was often
+at Moore's house, and he was fond of her. Yes, his name is widely
+remembered and honoured here. But I think that many of the people
+hereabout, the farmers, admired him chiefly because they thought that
+he wrote Moore's Almanac. They used to say to him: 'Mister Moore,
+please tell us what the weather's going to be.'"
+
+From Devizes to the village of Bromham, a distance of about four miles,
+the walk is delightful. Much of the path is between green hedges and is
+embowered by elms. The exit from the town is by Northgate and along the
+Chippenham road--which, like all the roads in this neighbourhood, is
+smooth, hard, and white. A little way out of Devizes, going northwest,
+this road makes a deep cut in the chalk-stone and so winds downhill
+into the level plain. At intervals you come upon sweetly pretty
+specimens of the English thatch-roof cottage. Hay-fields, pastures, and
+market-gardens extend on every hand. Eastward, far off, are visible the
+hills of Westbury, upon which, here and there, the copses are lovely,
+and upon one of which, cut in the turf, is the figure of a colossal
+white horse, said to have been put there by the Saxons, to commemorate
+a victory by King Alfred.[12] Soon the road winds over a hill and you
+pass through the little red village of Rowde, with its gray church
+tower. The walk may be shortened by a cut across the fields, and this
+indeed is found the prettiest part of the journey,--for now the path
+lies through gardens, and through the centre or along the margin of
+the wheat, which waves in the strong wind and sparkles in the bright
+sunshine and is everywhere tenderly touched with the scarlet of
+the poppy and with hues of other wild-flowers, making you think of
+Shakespeare's
+
+ "Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,
+ With hemlock, harlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
+ Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
+ In our sustaining corn."
+
+There is one field through which I passed, just as the spire of Bromham
+church came into view, in which a surface more than three hundred yards
+square was blazing with wild-flowers, white and gold and crimson and
+purple and blue, upon a plain of vivid green, so that to look upon
+it was almost to be dazzled, while the air that floated over it was
+scented as if with honeysuckle. You may see the delicate spire and the
+low gray tower of Moore's church some time before you come to it,
+and in some respects the prospect is not unlike that of Shakespeare's
+church at Stratford. A sweeter spot for a poet's sepulchre it would be
+hard to find. No spot could be more harmonious than this one is with
+the gentle, romantic spirit of Moore's poetry, and with the purity,
+refinement, and serenity of his life. Bromham village consists of a
+few red brick buildings, scattered along a few irregular little lanes,
+on a ridge overlooking a valley. Amid those humble homes stands the
+gray church, like a shepherd keeping his flock. A part of it is very
+old, and all of it, richly weather-stained and delicately browned with
+fading moss, is beautiful. Upon the tower and along the south side
+the fantastic gargoyles are much decayed. The building is a cross.
+The chancel window faces eastward, and the window at the end of the
+nave looks toward the west,--the latter being a memorial to Moore. At
+the southeast corner of the building is the lady chapel, belonging to
+the Bayntun family, in which are suspended various fragments of old
+armour, and in the centre of which, recumbent on a great dark tomb, is
+a grim-visaged knight, clad from top to toe in his mail, beautifully
+sculptured in marble that looks like yellow ivory. Vandal visitors
+have disgracefully marred this superb work, by cutting and scratching
+their names upon it. Other tombs are adjacent, with inscriptions
+that implicate the names of Sir Edward Bayntun, 1679, and Lady Anne
+Wilmot, elder daughter and co-heiress of John, Earl of Rochester, who
+successively was the wife of Henry Bayntun and Francis Greville, and
+who died in 1703. The window at the end of the nave is a simple but
+striking composition, in stained glass, richer and nobler than is
+commonly seen in a country church. It consists of twenty-one lights,
+of which five are lancet shafts, side by side, these being surmounted
+with smaller lancets, forming a cluster at the top of the arch. In
+the centre is the figure of Jesus and around Him are the Apostles.
+The colouring is soft, true, and beautiful. Across the base of the
+window appear the words, in the glass: "This window is placed in this
+church by the combined subscriptions of two hundred persons who honour
+the memory of the poet of all circles and the idol of his own, Thomas
+Moore." It was beneath this window, in a little pew in the corner
+of the church, that the present writer joined in the service, and
+meditated, throughout a long sermon, on the lovely life and character
+and the gentle, noble, and abiding influence of the poet whose hallowed
+grave and beloved memory make this place a perpetual shrine.
+
+Moore was buried in the churchyard. An iron fence encloses his tomb,
+which is at the base of the church tower, in an angle formed by the
+tower and the chancel, on the north side of the building. Not more than
+twenty tombs are visible on this side of the church, and these appear
+upon a level lawn, as green and sparkling as an emerald and as soft as
+velvet. On three sides the churchyard is enclosed by a low wall, and on
+the fourth by a dense hedge of glistening holly. Great trees are all
+around the church, but not too near. A massive yew stands darkly at one
+corner. Chestnuts and elms blend their branches in fraternal embrace.
+Close by the poet's grave a vast beech uprears its dome of fruited
+boughs and rustling foliage. The sky was blue, except for a few
+straggling masses of fleecy, slate-coloured cloud. Not a human creature
+was anywhere to be seen while I stood in this sacred spot, and no sound
+disturbed the Sabbath stillness, save the faint whisper of the wind
+in the lofty tree-tops and the low twitter of birds in their hidden
+nests. I thought of his long life, unblemished by personal fault or
+public error; of his sweet devotion to parents and wife and children;
+of his pure patriotism, which scorned equally the blatant fustian of
+the demagogue and the frenzy of the revolutionist; of his unsurpassed
+fidelity in friendship; of his simplicity and purity in a corrupt
+time and amid many temptations; of his meekness in affliction; of the
+devout spirit that prompted his earnest exhortation to his wife, "Lean
+upon God, Bessie"; of the many beautiful songs that he added to our
+literature,--every one of which is the melodious and final expression
+of one or another of the elemental feelings of human nature; and of the
+obligation of endless gratitude that the world owes to his fine, high,
+and beneficent genius. And thus it seemed good to be in this place and
+to lay with reverent hands the white roses of honour and affection upon
+his tomb.
+
+On the long, low, flat stone that covers the poet's dust are inscribed
+the following words: "Anastatia Mary Moore. Born March 16, 1813. Died
+March 8, 1829. Also her brother, John Russell Moore, who died November
+23, 1842, aged 19 years. Also their father, Thomas Moore, tenderly
+beloved by all who knew the goodness of his heart. The Poet and Patriot
+of his Country, Ireland. Born May 28, 1779. Sank to rest February 26,
+1852. Aged 72. God is Love. Also his wife, Bessie Moore, who died 4th
+September 1865. And to the memory of their dear son, Thomas Lansdowne
+Parr Moore. Born 24th October 1818. Died in Africa, January 1846."
+Moore's daughter, Barbara, is buried at Hornsey, near London, in the
+same churchyard where rests the poet Samuel Rogers. On the stone that
+marks that spot is written, "Anne Jane Barbara Moore. Born January the
+4th, 1812. Died September the 18th, 1817."
+
+Northwest from Bromham church[13] and about one mile away stands
+Sloperton Cottage,[14] the last home of the poet and the house in which
+he died. A deep valley intervenes between the church and the cottage,
+but, as each is built upon a ridge, you may readily see the one from
+the other. There is a road across the valley, but the more pleasant
+walk is along a pathway through the meadows and over several stiles,
+ending almost in front of the storied house. It is an ideal home for a
+poet. The building is made of brick, but it is so completely enwrapped
+in ivy that scarcely a particle of its surface can be seen. It is a
+low building, with three gables on its main front and with a wing; it
+stands in the middle of a garden enclosed by walls and by hedges of
+ivy; and it is embowered by great trees, yet not so closely embowered
+as to be shorn of the prospect from its windows. Flowers and flowering
+vines were blooming around it. The hard, white road, flowing past its
+gateway, looked like a thread of silver between the green hedgerows
+which here for many miles are rooted in high, grassy banks, and at
+intervals are diversified with large trees. Sloperton Cottage is almost
+alone, but there are a few neighbours, and there is the little rustic
+village of Westbrook, about half a mile westward. Westward was the
+poet's favourite prospect. He loved the sunset, and from a terrace
+in his garden he habitually watched the pageant of the dying day.
+Here, for thirty-five years, was his peaceful and happy home. Here
+he meditated many of those gems of lyrical poetry that will live in
+the hearts of men as long as anything lives that ever was written by
+mortal hand. And here he "sank to rest," worn out at last by incessant
+labour and by many sorrows,--the bitter fruit of domestic bereavement
+and of disappointment. The sun was sinking as I turned away from this
+hallowed haunt of genius and virtue, and, through green pastures and
+flower-spangled fields of waving grain, set forth upon my homeward
+walk. Soon there was a lovely peal of chimes from Bromham church tower,
+answered far off by the bells of Rowde, and while I descended into the
+darkening valley, Moore's tender words came singing through my thought:
+
+ "And so 'twill be when I am gone--
+ That tuneful peal will still ring on,
+ While other bards shall walk these dells
+ And sing your praise, sweet evening bells!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE BEAUTIFUL CITY OF BATH
+
+
+[Illustration: _The Avon and Bridge--Bath._]
+
+August 21, 1888.--From Devizes the traveller naturally turns toward
+Bath, which is only a few miles distant. A beautiful city, marred
+somewhat by the feverish, disturbing spirit of the present day,
+this old place [so old that in it the Saxon King Edgar was crowned,
+A.D. 973] nevertheless retains many interesting characteristics of
+its former glory. More than a century has passed since the wigged,
+powdered, and jewelled days of Beau Nash. The Avon,--for there is
+another Avon here, distinct from that of Warwickshire and also from
+that of Yorkshire,--is spanned by bridges that Smollett never dreamt
+of and Sheridan never saw. The town has crept upward, along both
+the valley slopes, nearer and nearer to the hill-tops that used to
+look down upon it. Along the margins of the river many gray, stone
+structures are mouldering in neglect and decay; but a tramcar rattles
+through the principal street; the boot-black and the newsvender are
+active and vociferous; the causeways are crowded with a bustling
+throng, and carts and carriages dash and scramble over the pavement,
+while, where of old the horn used to sound a gay flourish and the
+coach to come spinning in from London, now is heard the shriek and
+clangour of the steam-engine dashing down the vale, with morning papers
+and with passengers, three hours from the town. This, indeed, is not
+"the season" and of late it has rained with zealous persistence, so
+that Bath is not in her splendour. Much however can be seen, and the
+essential fact that she is no longer the Gainsborough belle that she
+used to be is distinctly evident. You must yield your mind to fancy if
+you would conjure up, while walking in these modern streets, the gay
+and quaint things described in _Humphrey Clinker_ or indicated in _The
+Rivals_. The Bath chairs, sometimes pulled by donkeys, and sometimes
+trundled by men, are among the most representative relics now to be
+seen. Next to the theatre [where it was my privilege to enjoy and
+admire Mr. John L. Toole's quaint and richly humorous performance of
+_The Don_], stands a building, at the foot of Gascoigne place, before
+which the traveller pauses with interest, because upon its front he
+may read the legend, neatly engraved on a white marble slab, that "In
+this house lived the celebrated Beau Nash, and here he died, February
+1761." It is an odd structure, consisting of two stories and an attic,
+the front being of the monotonous stucco that came in with the Regent.
+Earlier no doubt the building was timbered. There are eleven windows in
+the front, four of them being painted on the wall. The house is used
+now by an auctioneer. In the historic Pump Room, dating back to 1797,
+raised aloft in an alcove at the east end, still stands the effigy
+of the Beau, even as it stood in the days when he set the fashions,
+regulated the customs, and gave the laws, and was the King of Bath; but
+the busts of Newton and Pope that formerly stood on either side of this
+statue stand there no more, save in the fancy of those who recall the
+epigram which was suggested by that singular group:
+
+ "This statue placed these busts between
+ Gives satire all its strength;
+ Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
+ But Folly at full length."
+
+[Illustration: _Beau Nash._]
+
+Folly, though, is a word that carries a different meaning to different
+ears. Douglas Jerrold made a play on the subject of Beau Nash, an
+ingenious, effective, brilliantly written play, in which he is depicted
+as anything but foolish. Much always depends on the point of view.
+
+[Illustration: _Bath Abbey._]
+
+Quin [1693-1766] was buried in Bath Abbey, and Bath is the scene of
+_The Rivals_. It would be pleasant to fancy the trim figure of the
+elegant Sir Lucius O'Trigger strolling along the parade; or bluff and
+choleric Sir Anthony Absolute gazing with imperious condescension
+upon the galaxy of the Pump Room; Acres in his absurd finery; Lydia
+with her sentimental novels; and Mrs. Malaprop, rigid with decorum, in
+her Bath chair. The Abbey, begun in 1405 and completed in 1606, has a
+noble west front and a magnificent door of carved oak, and certainly it
+is a superb church; but the eyes that have rested upon such cathedrals
+as those of Lincoln, Durham, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, such a heavenly
+jewel as Roslin, and such an astounding and overwhelming edifice as
+York minster, can dwell calmly on Bath Abbey. A surprising feature
+in it is its mural record of the dead that are entombed beneath or
+around it. Sir Lucius might well declare that "There is snug lying in
+the Abbey." Almost every foot of the walls is covered with monumental
+slabs, and like Captain Cuttle, after the wedding of Mr. Dombey and
+Edith Granger, I "pervaded the body of the church" and read the
+epitaphs,--solicitous to discover that of the renowned actor James
+Quin. His tablet was formerly to be found in the chancel, but now it
+is obscurely placed in a porch, on the north corner of the building,
+on what may be termed the outer wall of the sanctuary. It presents the
+face of the famous comedian, carved in white marble and set against
+a black slab. Beneath is the date of his death, "Ob. MDCCLXVI. Ætat.
+LXXIII.," and his epitaph, written by David Garrick. At the base
+are dramatic emblems,--the mask and the dagger. As a portrait this
+medallion of Quin gives convincing evidence of scrupulous fidelity to
+nature, and certainly it is a fine work of art. The head is dressed
+as it was in life, with the full wig of the period. The features are
+delicately cut and are indicative of austere beauty of countenance,
+impressive if not attractive. The mouth is especially handsome, the
+upper lip being a perfect Cupid's bow. The face is serious, expressive,
+and fraught with intellect and power. This was the last great declaimer
+of the old school of acting, discomfited and almost obliterated by
+Garrick; and here are the words that Garrick wrote upon his tomb:
+
+ "That tongue which set the table on a roar
+ And charmed the public ear is heard no more;
+ Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit,
+ Which spoke, before the tongue, what Shakespeare writ;
+ Cold is that hand which, living, was stretched forth,
+ At friendship's call, to succour modest worth.
+ Here lies JAMES QUIN. Deign, reader, to be taught
+ Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,
+ In nature's happiest mould however cast,
+ To this complexion thou must come at last."
+
+[Illustration: _High Street--Bath._]
+
+A printed reminder of mortality is superfluous in Bath, for you
+almost continually behold afflicted and deformed persons who have
+come here to "take the waters." For rheumatic sufferers this place
+is a paradise,--as, indeed, it is for all wealthy persons who love
+luxury. Walter Savage Landor said that the only two cities of Europe
+in which he could live were Bath and Florence; but that was long ago.
+When you have walked in Milsom street and Lansdowne Crescent, sailed
+upon the Avon, observed the Abbey, without and within,--for its dusky,
+weather-stained walls are extremely picturesque,--attended the theatre,
+climbed the hills for the view of the city and the Avon valley, and
+taken the baths, you will have had a satisfying experience of Bath.
+The greatest luxury in the place is a swimming-tank of mineral water,
+about forty feet long, by twenty broad, and five feet deep,--a tepid
+pool of most refreshing potency. And the chief curiosity is the ruin of
+a Roman bath which was discovered and laid bare in 1885. This is built
+in the form of a rectangular basin of stone, with steps around it,
+and originally it was environed with stone chambers that were used as
+dressing-rooms. The basin is nearly perfect. The work of restoration of
+this ancient bath is in progress, but the relic will be preserved only
+as an emblem of the past.
+
+[Illustration: _A Fragment from an Old Roman Bath._]
+
+Thomas Haynes Bayly, the song-writer, 1797-1839, was born in Bath,
+and there he melodiously recorded that "She wore a wreath of roses,"
+and there he dreamed of dwelling "in marble halls." But Bath is not
+nearly as rich in literary associations as its neighbour city of
+Bristol. Chatterton, Southey, Hannah More, and Mary Robinson,--the
+actress, the lovely and unfortunate "Perdita,"--were born in Bristol.
+Richard Savage, the poet, died there [1743], and so did John Hippesley,
+the comedian, manager, and farce-writer [1748]. St. Mary Redclyffe
+church, built in 1292, is still standing there, of which Chatterton's
+father was the sexton, and in the tower of which "the marvellous boy"
+discovered, according to his ingenious plan of literary imposture, the
+original Canynge and Rowley manuscripts. The ancient chests, which
+once were filled with black-letter parchments, remain in a loft in
+the church tower, but they are empty now. That famous preacher, the
+Rev. Robert Hall [1764-1831], had a church in Bristol. Southey and
+Coleridge married sisters, of the name of Fricker, who resided there,
+and a house called Myrtle Cottage, once occupied by Coleridge is still
+extant, in the contiguous village of Clevedon,--one of the loveliest
+places on the English coast. Jane Porter and Anna Maria Porter lived
+in Bristol, and Maria died at Montpelier, near by. These references
+indicate but a tithe of what may be seen, studied, and enjoyed in and
+about Bristol,--the city to which Chatterton left his curse; the region
+hallowed by the dust of Arthur Hallam,--inspiration of Tennyson's _In
+Memoriam_, the loftiest poem that has been created in the English
+language since the pen that wrote _Childe Harold_ fell from the magical
+hand of Byron.
+
+[Illustration: _Remains of The Old Roman Bath._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE LAND OF WORDSWORTH
+
+
+A good way by which to enter the Lake District of England is to travel
+to Penrith and thence to drive along the shore of Ullswater, or sail
+upon its crystal bosom, to the blooming solitude of Patterdale. Penrith
+lies at the eastern slope of the mountains of Westmoreland, and you may
+see the ruins of Penrith Castle, once the property and the abode of
+Richard, Duke of Gloucester, before he became King of England. Penrith
+Castle was one of the estates that were forfeited by the great Earl of
+Warwick, and King Edward the Fourth gave it to his brother Richard, in
+1471. It is recorded that Richard had lived there for five years, from
+1452 to 1457, when he was Sheriff of Cumberland. Not much remains of
+that ancient structure, and the remnant is now occupied by a florist.
+I saw it, as I saw almost everything else in Great Britain during the
+summer of 1888, under a tempest of rain; for it rained there, with a
+continuity almost ruinous, from the time of the lilac and apple-blossom
+till when the clematis began to show the splendour of its purple
+shield and the acacia to drop its milky blossoms on the autumnal grass.
+But travellers must not heed the weather. If there are dark days there
+are also bright ones,--and one bright day in such a paradise as the
+English Lakes atones for the dreariness of a month of rain. Besides,
+even the darkest days may be brightened by gentle companionship.
+Henry Irving[15] and Ernest Bendall, two of the most intellectual and
+genial men in England, were my associates, in that expedition. We went
+from London into Westmoreland on a mild, sweet day in July, and we
+rambled for several days in that enchanted region. It was a delicious
+experience, and I often close my eyes and dream of it--as I am dreaming
+now.
+
+[Illustration: PENRITH CASTLE]
+
+[Illustration: _Ullswater._]
+
+In the drive between Penrith and Patterdale you see many things that
+are worthy of regard. Among these are the parish church of Penrith, a
+building made of red stone, remarkable for a massive square tower of
+great age and formidable aspect. In the adjacent churchyard are The
+Giant's Grave and The Giant's Thumb, relics of a distant past that
+strongly and strangely affect the imagination. The grave is said to
+be that of Ewain Cæsarius,[16] a gigantic individual who reigned over
+Cumberland in remote Saxon times. The Thumb is a rough stone, about
+seven feet high, presenting a clumsy cross, and doubtless commemorative
+of another mighty warrior. Sir Walter Scott, who traversed Penrith
+on his journeys between Edinburgh and London, seldom omitted to pause
+for a view of those singular memorials, and Scott, like Wordsworth,
+has left upon this region the abiding impress of his splendid genius.
+Ulfo's Lake is Scott's name for Ullswater, and thereabout is laid
+the scene of his poem of _The Bridal of Triermain_. In Scott's day
+the traveller went by coach or on horseback, but now, "By lonely
+Threlkeld's waste and wood," at the foot of craggy Blencathara, you
+pause at a railway station having Threlkeld in large letters on its
+official signboard. Another strange thing that is passed on the
+road between Penrith and Patterdale is "Arthur's Round Table,"--a
+circular terrace of turf slightly raised above the surrounding
+level, and certainly remarkable, whatever may be its historic or
+antiquarian merit, for fine texture, symmetrical form, and lovely,
+luxuriant colour. Scholars think it was used for tournaments in the
+days of chivalry, but no one rightly knows anything about it, save
+that it is old. Not far from this bit of mysterious antiquity the
+road winds through a quaint village called Tirril, where, in the
+Quaker burial-ground, is the grave of an unfortunate young man,
+Charles Gough, who lost his life by falling from the Striding Edge
+of Helvellyn in 1805, and whose memory is hallowed by Wordsworth and
+Scott, in poems that almost every schoolboy has read, and could never
+forget,--associated as they are with the story of the faithful dog, for
+three months in that lonesome wilderness vigilant beside the dead body
+of his master,
+
+ "A lofty precipice in front,
+ A silent tarn below."
+
+Patterdale possesses this advantage over certain other towns and
+hamlets of the lake region, that it is not much frequented by tourists.
+The coach does indeed roll through it at intervals, laden with those
+miscellaneous, desultory visitors whose pleasure it is to rush wildly
+over the land. And those objects serve to remind you that now, even
+as in Wordsworth's time, and in a double sense, "the world is too
+much with us." But an old-fashioned inn, Kidd's Hotel, still exists,
+at the head of Ullswater, to which fashion has not resorted and where
+kindness presides over the traveller's comfort. Close by also is a cosy
+nook called Glenridding, where, if you are a lover of solitude and
+peace, you may find an ideal abode. One house wherein lodging may be
+obtained was literally embowered in roses on that summer evening when
+first I strolled by the fragrant hay-fields on the Patterdale shore of
+Ullswater. The rose flourishes in wonderful luxuriance and profusion
+throughout Westmoreland and Cumberland. As you drive along the lonely
+roads your way will sometimes be, for many miles, between hedges that
+are bespangled with wild roses and with the silver globes of the laurel
+blossom, while around you the lonely mountains, bare of foliage save
+for matted grass and a dense growth of low ferns, tower to meet the
+clouds. It is a wild place, and yet there is a pervading spirit of
+refinement over it all,--as if Nature had here wrought her wonders
+in the mood of the finest art. And at the same time it is a place
+of infinite variety. The whole territory occupied by the lakes and
+mountains of this famous district is scarcely more than thirty miles
+square; yet within this limit, comparatively narrow, are comprised
+all possible beauties of land and water that the most passionate
+worshipper of natural loveliness could desire.
+
+My first night in Patterdale was one of such tempest as sometimes rages
+in America about the time of the fall equinox. The wind shook the
+building. It was long after midnight when I went to rest, and the storm
+seemed to increase in fury as the night wore on. Torrents of rain were
+dashed against the windows. Great trees near by creaked and groaned
+beneath the strength of the gale. The cold was so severe that blankets
+were welcome. It was my first night in Wordsworth's country, and I
+thought of Wordsworth's lines:
+
+ "There was a roaring in the wind all night;
+ The rain came heavily and fell in floods."
+
+The next morning was sweet with sunshine and gay with birds and
+flowers, and all semblance of storm and trouble seemed banished forever.
+
+ "But now the sun is shining calm and bright,
+ And birds are singing in the distant woods."
+
+Wordsworth's poetry expresses the inmost soul of those lovely lakes and
+mighty hills, and no writer can hope to tread, save remotely and with
+reverent humility, in the footsteps of that magician. You understand
+Wordsworth better, however, and you love him more dearly, for having
+rambled over his consecrated ground. There was not a day when I did
+not, in some shape or another, meet with his presence. Whenever I was
+alone his influence came upon me as something unspeakably majestic and
+solemn. Once, on a Sunday, I climbed to the top of Place Fell[17]
+[which is 2154 feet above the sea-level, while Scawfell Pike is 3210,
+and Helvellyn is 3118], and there, in the short space of two hours, I
+was thrice cut off by rainstorms from all view of the world beneath.
+Not a tree could I find on that mountain-top, nor any place of shelter
+from the blast and the rain, except when crouching beside the mound
+of rock at its summit, which in that country they call a "man." Not
+a living creature was visible, save now and then a lonely sheep, who
+stared at me for a moment and then scurried away. But when the skies
+cleared and the cloudy squadrons of the storm went careering over
+Helvellyn, I looked down into no less than fifteen valleys beautifully
+coloured by the foliage and the patches of cultivated land, each vale
+being sparsely fringed with little gray stone dwellings that seemed
+no more than card-houses, in those appalling depths. You think of
+Wordsworth, in such a place as that,--if you know his poetry. You
+cannot choose but think of him.
+
+ "Who comes not hither ne'er shall know
+ How beautiful the world below."
+
+Yet somehow it happened that whenever friends joined in those rambles
+the great poet was sure to dawn upon us in a comic way. When we were
+resting on the bridge at the foot of Brothers Water, which is a little
+lake, scarcely more than a mountain tarn, lying between Ullswater and
+the Kirkstone Pass, some one recalled that Wordsworth had once rested
+there and written a poem about it. We were not all as devout admirers
+of the bard as I am, and certainly it is not every one of the great
+author's compositions that a lover of his genius would wish to hear
+quoted, under such circumstances. The Brothers Water poem is the one
+that begins "The cock is crowing, the stream is flowing," and I do
+not think that its insipidity is much relieved by its famous picture
+of the grazing cattle, "forty feeding like one." Henry Irving, not
+much given to enthusiasm about Wordsworth, heard those lines with
+undisguised merriment, and made a capital travesty of them on the
+spot. It is significant to remember, with reference to the inequality
+of Wordsworth, that on the day before he wrote "The cock is crowing,"
+and at a place but a short distance from the Brothers Water bridge,
+he had written that peerless lyric about the daffodils,--"I wandered
+lonely as a cloud." Gowbarrow Park is the scene of that poem,--a place
+of ferns and hawthorns, notable for containing Lyulph's Tower, a
+romantic, ivy-clad lodge owned by the Duke of Norfolk, and Aira Force,
+a waterfall much finer than Lodore. Upon the lake shore in Gowbarrow
+Park you may still see the daffodils as Wordsworth saw them, a golden
+host, "glittering and dancing in the breeze." No one but a true poet
+could have made that perfect lyric, with its delicious close:
+
+ "For oft, when on my couch I lie
+ In vacant or in pensive mood,
+ They flash upon that inward eye
+ Which is the bliss of solitude:
+ And then my heart with pleasure fills,
+ And dances with the daffodils."
+
+[Illustration: _Lyulph's Tower--Ullswater._]
+
+The third and fourth lines were written by the poet's wife, and they
+show that she was not a poet's wife in vain. It must have been in his
+"vacant mood" that he rested and wrote, on the bridge at Brothers
+Water. "I saw Wordsworth often when I was a child," said Frank
+Marshall[18] [who had joined us at Penrith]; "he used to come to my
+father's house, Patterdale Hall, and once I was sent to the garden by
+Mrs. Wordsworth to call him to supper. He was musing there, I suppose.
+He had a long, horse-like face. I don't think I liked him. I said,
+'Your wife wants you.' He looked down at me and he answered, 'My
+boy, you should say Mrs. Wordsworth, and not "your wife."' I looked
+up at him and I replied, 'She _is_ your wife, isn't she?' Whereupon
+he said no more. I don't think he liked me either." We were going up
+Kirkstone Pass when Marshall told this story,--which seemed to bring
+the pensive and homely poet plainly before us. An hour later, at the
+top of the pass, while waiting in the old inn called the Traveller's
+Rest, which incorrectly proclaims itself the highest inhabited house
+in England,[19] I spoke with an ancient, weather-beaten hostler, not
+wholly unfamiliar with the medicinal virtue of ardent spirits, and
+asked for his opinion of the great lake poet. "Well," he said, "people
+are always talking about Wordsworth, but I don't see much in it. I've
+read it, but I don't care for it. It's dry stuff--it don't chime."
+Truly there are all sorts of views, just as there are all sorts of
+people.
+
+[Illustration: _William Wordsworth._]
+
+Mementos of Wordsworth are frequently encountered by the traveller
+among these lakes and fells. One of them, situated at the foot of
+Place Fell, is a rustic cottage that the poet once selected for his
+residence: it was purchased for him by Lord Lonsdale, as a partial
+indemnity for losses caused by an ancestor of his to Wordsworth's
+father. The poet liked the place, but he never lived there. The
+house somewhat resembles the Shakespeare cottage at Stratford,--the
+living-room being floored with stone slabs, irregular in size and
+shape and mostly broken by hard use. In a corner of the kitchen stands
+a fine carved oak cupboard, dark with age, inscribed with the date of
+the Merry Monarch, 1660.
+
+[Illustration: _Approach to Ambleside._]
+
+What were the sights of those sweet days that linger still, and will
+always linger, in my remembrance? A ramble in the park of Patterdale
+Hall [the old name of the estate is Halsteads], which is full of
+American trees; a golden morning in Dovedale, with Irving, much like
+Jaques, reclined upon a shaded rock, half-way up the mountain, musing
+and moralising in his sweet, kind way, beside the brawling stream; the
+first prospect of Windermere, from above Ambleside,--a vision of heaven
+upon earth; the drive by Rydal Water, which has all the loveliness of
+celestial pictures seen in dreams; the glimpse of stately Rydal Hall
+and of the sequestered Rydal Mount, where Wordsworth so long lived and
+where he died; the Wishing Gate, where one of us, I know, wished in his
+heart that he could be young again and be wiser than to waste his youth
+in self-willed folly; the restful hours of observation and thought at
+delicious Grasmere, where we stood in silence at Wordsworth's grave
+and heard the murmur of Rotha singing at his feet; the lovely drive
+past Matterdale, across the moorlands, with only clouds and rooks for
+our chance companions, and mountains for sentinels along our way; the
+ramble through Keswick, all golden and glowing in the afternoon sun,
+till we stood by Crosthwaite church and read the words of commemoration
+that grace the tomb of Robert Southey; the divine circuit of
+Derwent,--surely the loveliest sheet of water in England; the descent
+into the vale of Keswick, with sunset on the rippling crystal of the
+lake and the perfume of countless wild roses on the evening wind. These
+things, and the midnight talk about these things,--Irving, so tranquil,
+so gentle, so full of keen and sweet appreciation of them,--Bendall, so
+bright and thoughtful,--Marshall, so quaint and jolly, and so full of
+knowledge equally of nature and of books!--can never be forgotten. In
+one heart they are cherished forever.
+
+[Illustration: _Grasmere Church._]
+
+Wordsworth is buried in Grasmere churchyard, close by the wall, on
+the bank of the little river Rotha. "Sing him thy best," said Matthew
+Arnold, in his lovely dirge for the great poet--
+
+ "Sing him thy best! for few or none
+ Hears thy voice right, now he is gone."
+
+In the same grave with Wordsworth sleeps his devoted wife. Beside them
+rest the poet's no less devoted sister Dorothy, who died at Rydal Mount
+in 1855, aged 83, and his daughter, Dora, together with her husband
+Edward Quillinan, of whom Arnold wrote so tenderly:
+
+ "Alive, we would have changed his lot,
+ We would not change it now."
+
+On the low gravestone that marks the sepulchre of Wordsworth are
+written these words: "William Wordsworth, 1850. Mary Wordsworth, 1859."
+In the neighbouring church a mural tablet presents this inscription:
+
+ "To the memory of William Wordsworth. A true poet and philosopher,
+ who by the special gift and calling of Almighty God, whether he
+ discoursed on man or nature, failed not to lift up the heart to holy
+ things, tired not of maintaining the cause of the poor and simple,
+ and so in perilous times was raised up to be a chief minister, not
+ only of noblest poetry, but of high and sacred truth. The memorial is
+ raised here by his friends and neighbours, in testimony of respect,
+ affection, and gratitude. Anno MDCCCLI."
+
+[Illustration: _Rydal Mount--Wordsworth's Seat._]
+
+A few steps from that memorable group will bring you to the marble
+cross that marks the resting-place of Hartley Coleridge, son of the
+great author of _The Ancient Mariner_, himself a poet of exquisite
+genius; and close by is a touching memorial to the gifted man who
+inspired Matthew Arnold's poems of _The Scholar-Gipsy_ and _Thyrsis_.
+This is a slab laid upon his mother's grave, at the foot of her
+tombstone, inscribed with these words:
+
+ "In memory of Arthur Hugh Clough, some time Fellow of Oriel College,
+ Oxford, the beloved son of James Butler and Anne Clough. This
+ remembrance in his own country is placed on his mother's grave by
+ those to whom life was made happy by his presence and his love. He is
+ buried in the Swiss cemetery at Florence, where he died, November 13,
+ 1861, aged 42.
+
+ "'So, dearest, now thy brows are cold
+ I see thee what thou art, and know
+ Thy likeness to the wise below,
+ Thy kindred with the great of old.'"
+
+Southey rests in Crosthwaite churchyard, about half a mile north of
+Keswick, where he died. They show you Greta Hall, a fine mansion, on a
+little hill, enclosed in tall trees, which for forty years, ending in
+1843, was the poet's home. In the church is a marble figure of Southey,
+recumbent on a large stone sarcophagus. His grave is in the ground, a
+little way from the church, marked by a low flat tomb, on the end of
+which appears an inscription commemorative of a servant who had lived
+fifty years in his family and is buried near him. There was a pretty
+scene at this grave. When I came to it Irving was already there, and
+was speaking to a little girl who had guided him to the spot. "If any
+one were to give you a shilling, my dear," he said, "what would you
+do with it?" The child was confused and she murmured softly, "I don't
+know, sir." "Well," he continued, "if any one were to give you two
+shillings, what would you do?" She said she would save it. "But what if
+it were three shillings?" he asked, and each time he spoke he dropped
+a silver coin into her hand, till he must have given her more than a
+dozen of them. "Four--five--six--seven--what would you do with the
+money?" "I would give it to my mother, sir," she answered at last, her
+little face all smiles, gazing up at the stately, sombre stranger,
+whose noble countenance never looked more radiant than it did then,
+with gentle kindness and pleasure. It is a trifle to mention, but it
+was touching in its simplicity; and that amused group, around the grave
+of Southey, in the blaze of the golden sun of a July afternoon, with
+Skiddaw looming vast and majestic over all, will linger with me as
+long as anything lovely and of good report is treasured in my memory.
+Long after we had left the place I chanced to speak of its peculiar
+interest. "The most interesting thing I saw there," said Irving,
+"was that sweet child." I do not think the great actor was ever much
+impressed with the beauties of the lake poets.
+
+Another picture glimmers across my dream,--a picture of peace and
+happiness which may close this rambling reminiscence of gentle days. We
+had driven up the pass between Glencoin and Gowbarrow, and had reached
+Matterdale, on our way toward Troutbeck station,--not the beautiful
+Windermere Troutbeck, but the less famous one. The road is lonely,
+but at Matterdale the traveller sees a few houses, and there our gaze
+was attracted by a gray church nestled in a hollow of the hillside.
+It stands sequestered in its place of graves, with bright greensward
+around it and a few trees. A faint sound of organ music floated from
+this sacred building and seemed to deepen the hush of the summer wind
+and shed a holier calm upon the lovely solitude. We dismounted and
+silently entered the church. A youth and a maiden, apparently lovers,
+were sitting at the organ,--the youth playing and the girl listening,
+and looking with tender trust and innocent affection into his face.
+He recognised our presence with a kindly nod, but went on with the
+music. I do not think she saw us at all. The place was full of soft,
+warm light streaming through the stained glass of Gothic windows and
+fragrant with perfume floating from the hay-fields and the dew-drenched
+roses of many a neighbouring hedge. Not a word was spoken, and after
+a few moments we departed, as silently as we had come. Those lovers
+will never know what eyes looked upon them that day, what hearts were
+comforted with the sight of their happiness, or how a careworn man,
+three thousand miles away, fanning upon his hearthstone the dying
+embers of hope, now thinks of them with tender sympathy, and murmurs a
+blessing on the gracious scene which their presence so much endeared.
+
+[Illustration: _An Old Lich Gate._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+SHAKESPEARE RELICS AT WORCESTER
+
+
+Worcester, July 23, 1889.--The present wanderer came lately to The
+Faithful City, and these words are written in a midnight hour at the
+Unicorn Hotel. This place is redolent of the wars of the Stuarts,
+and the moment you enter it your mind is filled with the presence
+of Charles the Martyr, Charles the Merry, Prince Rupert, and Oliver
+Cromwell. From the top of Red Hill and the margin of Perry wood,--now
+sleeping in the starlight or momentarily vocal with the rustle of
+leaves and the note of half-awakened birds,--Cromwell looked down over
+the ancient walled city which he had beleaguered. Upon the summit of
+the great tower of Worcester Cathedral Charles and Rupert held their
+last council of war. Here was lost, September 3, 1651, the battle
+that made the Merry Monarch a hunted fugitive and an exile. With a
+stranger's interest I have rambled on those heights; traversed the
+battlefield; walked in every part of the cathedral; attended divine
+service there; revelled in the antiquities of the Edgar Tower; roamed
+through most of the city streets; traced all that can be traced of the
+old wall [there is little remaining of it now, and no part that can be
+walked upon]; explored the royal porcelain works, for which Worcester
+is rightly famous; viewed several of its old churches and its one
+theatre, in Angel street; entered its Guildhall, where they preserve a
+fine piece of artillery and nine suits of black armour that were left
+by Charles the Second when he fled from Worcester; paced the dusty and
+empty Trinity Hall, now abandoned and condemned to demolition, where
+once Queen Elizabeth was feasted; and visited the old Commandery,--a
+rare piece of antiquity, remaining from the tenth century,--wherein
+the Duke of Hamilton died, of his wounds, after Cromwell's "crowning
+mercy," and beneath the floor of which he was laid in a temporary
+grave. The Commandery is now owned and occupied by a printer of
+directories and guide-books, the genial and hospitable Mr. Littlebury,
+and there, as everywhere else in storied Worcester, the arts of peace
+prevail over all the scenes and all the traces of
+
+ "Old, unhappy, far-off things
+ And battles long ago."
+
+[Illustration: _Worcester Cathedral, from the Edgar Tower._]
+
+In the Edgar Tower at Worcester they keep the original of the
+marriage-bond that was given by Fulk Sandells and John Richardson,
+of Shottery, as a preliminary to the marriage of William Shakespeare
+and Anne Hathaway. It is a long, narrow strip of parchment, and it
+has been glazed and framed. Two seals of light-coloured wax were
+originally attached to it, dependent by strings, but these have
+been removed,--apparently for the convenience of the mechanic who
+put the relic into its present frame. The handwriting is crabbéd and
+obscure. There are but few persons who can read the handwriting in
+old documents of this kind, and thousands of such documents exist in
+the church-archives, and elsewhere, in England, that have never been
+examined. The bond is for £40, and is a guarantee that there was no
+impediment to the marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.
+It is dated November 28, 1582; its text authorises the wedding after
+only once calling the banns in church; and it is supposed that the
+marriage took place immediately, since the first child of it, Susanna
+Shakespeare, was baptized in the Church of the Holy Trinity at
+Stratford on May 26, 1583. No registration of the marriage has been
+found, but that is no proof that it does not exist. The law is said to
+have prescribed that three parishes, within the residential diocese,
+should be designated, in any one of which the marriage might be made;
+but custom permitted the contracting parties, when they had complied
+with this requirement, to be married in whatever parish, within the
+diocese, they might prefer. The three parishes supposed to have been
+named are Stratford, Bishopton, and Luddington. The registers of two
+of them have been searched, and searched in vain. The register of
+the third,--that of Luddington, which is near Shottery, and about
+three miles southwest of Stratford,--was destroyed, long ago, in a
+fire that burnt down Luddington church; and conjecture assumes that
+Shakespeare was married at Luddington. It may be so, but until every
+old church register in the ancient diocese of Worcester has been
+examined, the quest of the registration of his marriage ought not
+to be abandoned. Richard Savage, the learned and diligent librarian
+of the Shakespeare Birthplace, has long been occupied with this
+inquiry, and has transcribed several of the old church registers in
+the vicinity of Stratford. The Rev. Thomas Procter Wadley,[20] another
+local antiquary, of great learning and incessant industry, has also
+taken part in this labour. The long-desired entry of the marriage
+of William and Anne remains undiscovered, but one gratifying and
+valuable result of these investigations is the disclosure that many
+of the names used in Shakespeare's works are the names of persons who
+were residents of Warwickshire in his time. It has pleased various
+crazy sensation-mongers to ascribe the authorship of Shakespeare's
+writings to Francis Bacon. This could only be done by ignoring positive
+evidence,--the evidence, namely, of Ben Jonson, who knew Shakespeare
+personally, and who has left a written description of the manner in
+which Shakespeare composed his plays. Effrontery was to be expected
+from the advocates of the preposterous Bacon theory; but when they
+have ignored the positive evidence, and the internal evidence, and the
+circumstantial evidence, and every other sort of evidence, they have
+still a serious obstacle to surmount,--an obstacle that the researches
+of such patient scholars as Mr. Savage and Mr. Wadley are strengthening
+day by day. The man who wrote Shakespeare's plays knew Warwickshire as
+it could only be known to a native of it; and there is no proof that
+Francis Bacon knew it or ever was in it.[21]
+
+[Illustration: _The Edgar Tower._]
+
+With reference to the Shakespeare marriage-bond, and the other records
+that are kept in the Edgar Tower at Worcester, it may perhaps justly
+be said that they are not protected with the scrupulous care to which
+such treasures are entitled. The Tower,--a gray and venerable relic,
+an ancient gate of the monastery, dating back to the time of King
+John,--affords an appropriate receptacle for those documents; but it
+would not withstand fire, and it does not contain either a fire-proof
+chamber or a safe. The Shakespeare marriage-bond,--which would be
+appropriately housed in the Shakespeare Birthplace, at Stratford,--was
+taken from the floor of a closet, where it had been lying, together
+with a number of dusty books, and I was kindly permitted to hold it
+in my hands and to examine it. The frame provided for this priceless
+relic is such as may be seen on an ordinary school slate. From another
+dusty closet an attendant extricated a manuscript diary kept by William
+Lloyd, Bishop of Worcester [1627-1717], and by his man-servant, for
+several years, about the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne; and in
+this are many quaint and humorous entries, valuable to the student of
+history and manners. In still another closet, having the appearance
+of a rubbish-bin, I saw heaps of old parchment and paper writings,--a
+mass of antique registry that it would need the labour of five or six
+years to examine, decipher, and classify. Worcester is especially rich
+in old records, and it is not impossible that the missing clew to
+Shakespeare's marriage may yet be found in that old cathedral city.
+
+Worcester is rich also in a superb library, which, by the kindness of
+Mr. Hooper, the custodian, I was allowed to explore, high up beneath
+the roof of the lovely cathedral. That collection of books, numbering
+about five thousand, consists mostly of folios, many of which were
+printed in France. They keep it in a long, low, oak-timbered room,
+the triforium of the south aisle of the nave. The approach is by a
+circular stone staircase. In an anteroom to the library I saw a part
+of the ancient north door of this church,--a fragment dating back to
+the time of Bishop Wakefield, 1386,--to which is still affixed a piece
+of the skin of a human being. The tradition is that a Dane committed
+sacrilege, by stealing the sanctus bell from the high altar, and was
+thereupon flayed alive for his crime, and the skin of him was fastened
+to the cathedral door. In the library are magnificent editions of
+Aristotle and other classics; the works of the fathers of the church; a
+beautiful illuminated manuscript of Wickliffe's New Testament, written
+on vellum in 1381; and several books, in splendid preservation, from
+the press of Caxton and that of Wynken de Worde. The world moves, but
+printing is not better done now than it was then. This library, which
+is for the use of the clergy of the diocese of Worcester, was founded
+by Bishop Carpenter, in 1461, and originally it was stored in the
+chapel of the charnel-house.
+
+Reverting to the subject of old documents, a useful word may
+perhaps be said here about the registers in Trinity church at
+Stratford,--documents which, in a spirit of disparagement, have
+sometimes been designated as "copies." That sort of levity in the
+discussion of Shakespearean subjects is not unnatural in days when
+"cranks" are allowed freely to besmirch the memory of Shakespeare, in
+their wildly foolish advocacy of what they call "the Bacon theory" of
+the authorship of Shakespeare's works. The present writer has often
+held the Stratford Registers in his hands and explored their quaint
+pages. Those records are contained in twenty-two volumes. They begin
+with the first year of Queen Elizabeth, 1558, and they end, as to the
+old parchment form, in 1812. From 1558 to 1600 the entries were made
+in a paper book, of the quarto form, still occasionally to be found in
+ancient parish churches of England. In 1599 an order-in-council was
+made, commanding that those entries should be copied into parchment
+volumes, for their better preservation. This was done. The parchment
+volumes,--which were freely shown to me by William Butcher,[22] the
+parish clerk of Stratford,--date back to 1600. The handwriting of the
+copied portion, covering the period from 1558 to 1600, is careful and
+uniform. Each page is certified, as to its accuracy, by the vicar and
+the churchwardens. After 1600 the handwritings vary. In the register
+of marriage a new handwriting appears on September 17 that year, and
+in the registers of Baptism and Burial it appears on September 20. The
+sequence of marriages is complete until 1756; that of baptisms and
+burials until 1812; when, in each case, a book of printed forms comes
+into use, and the expeditious march of the new age begins. The entry of
+Shakespeare's baptism, April 26, 1564, from which it is inferred that
+he was born on April 23, is extant as a certified copy from the earlier
+paper book. The entry of Shakespeare's burial is the original entry,
+made in the original register.
+
+Some time ago an American writer suggested that Shakespeare's
+widow,--seven years his senior at the start, and therefore fifty-nine
+years old when he died,--subsequently contracted another marriage.
+Mrs. Shakespeare survived her husband seven years, dying on August 6,
+1623, at the age of sixty-seven. The entry in the Stratford register of
+burial contains, against the date of August 8, 1623, the names of "Mrs.
+Shakespeare" and "Anna uxor Richard James." Those two names, written
+one above the other, are connected by a bracket on the left side; and
+this is supposed to be evidence that Shakespeare's widow married again.
+The use of the bracket could not possibly mislead anybody possessing
+the faculty of clear vision. When two or more persons were either
+baptized or buried on the same day, the parish clerk, in making the
+requisite entry in the register, connected their names with a bracket.
+Three instances of this practice occur upon a single page of the
+register, in the same handwriting, close to the page that records the
+burial, on the same day, of Mrs. Shakespeare, widow, and Anna the wife
+of Richard James. But folly needs only a slender hook on which to hang
+itself.
+
+John Baskerville, the famous printer [1706-1775], was born in
+Worcester, and his remains, the burial-place of which was long unknown,
+have lately been discovered there. Incledon, the famous singer, died
+there. Prince Arthur [1486-1502], eldest son of King Henry the Seventh,
+was buried in Worcester Cathedral, where a beautiful chantry was built
+over his remains in 1504. Bishop John Gauden [1605-1662], who wrote the
+_Eikon Basiliké_, long generally attributed to Charles the First, rests
+there. The Duke of Hamilton, who died of his wounds, after a Worcester
+fight, was transferred to that place, from his temporary grave in the
+Commandery. And in the centre of the sacrarium stands the tomb of that
+tyrant King John, who died on October 19, 1216, at Newark, and whose
+remains, when the tomb was opened,[23] July 17, 1797, presented a
+ghastly spectacle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BYRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH
+
+
+January 22, 1888.--On a night in 1785, when Mrs. Siddons was acting
+at Edinburgh, the play being _The Fatal Marriage_ and the character
+Isabella, a young lady of Aberdeenshire, Miss Catherine Gordon, of
+Gight, was among the audience. There is a point in that tragedy at
+which Isabella recognises her first husband, whom she had supposed to
+be dead, and in whose absence she had been married to another, and
+her consternation, grief, and rapture are sudden and excessive. Mrs.
+Siddons, at that point, always made a great effect. The words are, "O
+my Biron, my Biron!" On this night, at the moment when the wonderful
+actress sent forth her wailing, heart-piercing cry, as she uttered
+those words, Miss Gordon gave a frantic scream, fell into violent
+hysterics, and was borne out of the theatre, repeating "O my Biron, my
+Biron!" At the time of that incident she had not met the man by whom
+she was afterward wedded,--the Hon. John Byron, whose wife she became,
+about a year later. Their first-born and only child was George Gordon,
+afterward Lord Byron, the poet; and among the many aspects of his life
+which impress the thoughtful reader of its strange and melancholy story
+none is more striking than the dramatic aspect of it,--so strangely
+prefigured in this event.
+
+[Illustration: _Lord Byron._]
+
+Censure of Byron, whether as a man or as a writer, may be considered
+to have spent its force. It is a hundred years since he was born,
+and almost as many since he died.[24] Everybody who wished to say
+a word against him has had ample opportunity for saying it, and
+there is evidence that this opportunity has not been neglected. The
+record was long ago made up. Everybody knows that Byron's conduct
+was sometimes deformed with frenzy and stained with vice. Everybody
+knows that Byron's writings are occasionally marred with profanity and
+licentiousness, and that they contain a quantity of crude verse. If
+he had never been married, or if, being married, his domestic life had
+not ended in disaster and scandal, his personal reputation would stand
+higher than it does at present, in the esteem of virtuous society.
+If about one-third of what he wrote had never been published, his
+reputation as a man of letters would stand higher than it now does
+in the esteem of stern judges of literary art. After an exhaustive
+discussion of the subject in every aspect of it, after every variety of
+hostile assault, and after praise sounded in every key of enthusiasm
+and in every language of the world, these truths remain. It is a pity
+that Byron was not a virtuous man and a good husband. It is a pity
+that he was not invariably a scrupulous literary artist, that he wrote
+so much, and that almost everything he wrote was published. But, when
+all this has been said, it remains a solid and immovable truth that
+Byron was a great poet and that he continues to be a great power in the
+literature and life of the world. Nobody who pretends to read anything
+omits to read _Childe Harold_.
+
+To touch this complex and delicate subject in only a superficial
+manner it may not be amiss to say that the world is under obligation
+to Byron, if for nothing else, for the spectacle of a romantic,
+impressive, and instructive life. His agency in that spectacle no
+doubt was involuntary, but all the same he presented it. He was a
+great poet; a man of genius; his faculty of expression was colossal,
+and his conduct was absolutely genuine. No man in literature ever
+lived who lived himself more fully. His assumptions of disguise only
+made him more obvious and transparent. He kept nothing back. His heart
+was laid absolutely bare. We know even more about him than we know
+about Dr. Johnson,--and still his personality endures the test of our
+knowledge and remains unique, romantic, fascinating, prolific of moral
+admonition, and infinitely pathetic. Byron in poetry, like Edmund
+Kean in acting, is a figure that completely fills the imagination,
+profoundly stirs the heart, and never ceases to impress and charm, even
+while it afflicts, the sensitive mind. This consideration alone, viewed
+apart from the obligation that the world owes to the better part of his
+writings, is vastly significant of the great personal force that is
+inherent in the name and memory of Byron.
+
+It has been considered necessary to account for the sadness and gloom
+of Byron's poetry by representing him to have been a criminal afflicted
+with remorse for his many and hideous crimes. His widow, apparently a
+monomaniac, after long brooding over the remembrance of a calamitous
+married life,--brief, unhappy, and terminated in separation,--whispered
+against him, and against his half-sister, a vile and hideous charge;
+and this, to the disgrace of American literature, was subsequently
+brought forward by a distinguished female writer of America, much noted
+for her works of fiction and especially memorable for that one. The
+explanation of the mental distress exhibited in the poet's writings
+was thought to be effectually provided in that disclosure. But, as
+this revolting and inhuman story,--desecrating graves, insulting a
+wonderful genius, and casting infamy upon the name of an affectionate,
+faithful, virtuous woman,--fell to pieces the moment it was examined,
+the student of Byron's grief-stricken nature remained no wiser than
+before this figment of a diseased imagination had been divulged.
+Surely, however, it ought not to be considered mysterious that Byron's
+poetry is often sad. The best poetry of the best poets is touched with
+sadness. _Hamlet_ has never been mistaken for a merry production.
+_Macbeth_ and _King Lear_ do not commonly produce laughter. Shelley and
+Keats sing as near to heaven's gate as anybody, and both of them are
+essentially sad. Scott was as brave, hopeful, and cheerful as any poet
+that ever lived, and Scott's poetry is at its best in his dirges and
+in his ballads of love and loss. The _Elegy_ and _The Ancient Mariner_
+certainly are great poems, but neither of them is festive. Byron often
+wrote sadly because he was a man of melancholy temperament, and because
+he deeply felt the pathos of mortal life, the awful mystery with which
+it is surrounded, the pain with which it is usually attended, the
+tragedy with which it commonly is accompanied, the frail tenure with
+which its loves and hopes are held, and the inexorable death with
+which it is continually environed and at last extinguished. And Byron
+was an unhappy man for the reason that, possessing every elemental
+natural quality in excess, his goodness was constantly tortured by his
+evil. The tempest, the clangour, and the agony of his writings are
+denotements of the struggle between good and evil that was perpetually
+afflicting his soul. Had he been the wicked man depicted by his
+detractors, he would have lived a life of comfortable depravity and
+never would have written at all. Monsters do not suffer.
+
+The true appreciation of Byron is not that of youth but that of
+manhood. Youth is captured by his pictorial and sentimental attributes.
+Youth beholds him as a nautical Adonis, standing lonely upon a barren
+cliff and gazing at a stormy sunset over the Ægean sea. Everybody
+knows that familiar picture,--with the wide and open collar, the great
+eyes, the wild hair, and the ample neckcloth flowing in the breeze.
+It is pretty but it is not like the real man. If ever at any time he
+was that sentimental image he speedily outgrew that condition, just as
+those observers of him who truly understand Byron have long outgrown
+their juvenile sympathy with that frail and puny ideal of a great poet.
+Manhood perceives a different individual and is captured by a different
+attraction. It is only when the first extravagant and effusive
+enthusiasm has run its course, and perhaps ended in revulsion, that we
+come to know Byron for what he actually is, and to feel the tremendous
+power of his genius. Sentimental folly has commemorated him, in the
+margin of Hyde Park, as in the fancy of many a callow youth and green
+girl, with the statue of a sailor-lad waiting for a spark from heaven,
+while a Newfoundland dog dozes at his feet. It is a caricature. Byron
+was a man, and terribly in earnest; and it is only by earnest persons
+that his mind and works are understood. At this distance of time the
+scandals of a corrupt age, equally with the frailties of its most
+brilliant and most illustrious poetical genius, may well be left to
+rest in the oblivion of the grave. The generation that is living at the
+close of the nineteenth century will remember of Byron only that he was
+the uncompromising friend of liberty; that he did much to emancipate
+the human mind from every form of bigotry and tyranny; that he
+augmented, as no man had done since Dryden, the power and flexibility
+of the noble English tongue; and that he enriched literature with
+passages of poetry which, for sublimity, beauty, tenderness, and
+eloquence, have seldom been equalled and have never been excelled.
+
+[Illustration: HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH]
+
+It was near the close of a fragrant, golden summer day [August 8,
+1884], when, having driven out from Nottingham, I alighted in the
+market-place of the little town of Hucknall-Torkard, on a pilgrimage
+to the grave of Byron. The town is modern and commonplace in
+appearance,--a straggling collection of low brick dwellings, mostly
+occupied by colliers. On that day it appeared at its worst; for the
+widest part of its main street was filled with stalls, benches, wagons,
+and canvas-covered structures for the display of vegetables and other
+commodities, which were thus offered for sale; and it was thronged
+with rough, noisy, and dirty persons, intent on barter and traffic,
+and not indisposed to boisterous pranks and mirth, as they pushed and
+jostled each other, among the crowded booths. This main street ends
+at the wall of the graveyard in which stands the little gray church
+where Byron was buried. There is an iron gate in the centre of the
+wall, and in order to reach this it was necessary to thread the mazes
+of the market-place, and to push aside the canvas flaps of a peddler's
+stall which had been placed close against it. Next to the churchyard
+wall is a little cottage,[25] with its bit of garden, devoted in this
+instance to potatoes; and there, while waiting for the sexton, I talked
+with an aged man, who said that he remembered, as an eye-witness,
+the funeral of Byron. "The oldest man he seemed that ever wore gray
+hairs." He stated that he was eighty-two and that his name was William
+Callandyne. Pointing to the church, he indicated the place of the
+Byron vault. "I was the last man," he said, "that went down into it,
+before he was buried there. I was a young fellow then, and curious to
+see what was going on. The place was full of skulls and bones. I wish
+you could see my son; he's a clever lad, only he ought to have more of
+the _suaviter in modo_." Thus, with the garrulity of wandering age,
+he prattled on; but his mind was clear and his memory tenacious and
+positive. There is a good prospect from the region of Hucknall-Torkard
+church, and pointing into the distance, when his mind had been brought
+back to the subject of Byron, my venerable acquaintance now described,
+with minute specification of road and lane,--seeming to assume that
+the names and the turnings were familiar to his auditor,--the course
+of the funeral train from Nottingham to the church. "There were
+eleven carriages," he said. "They didn't go to the Abbey" (meaning
+Newstead), "but came directly here. There were many people to look
+at them. I remember all about it, and I'm an old man--eighty-two.
+You're an Italian, I should say," he added. By this time the sexton
+had come and unlocked the gate, and parting from Mr. Callandyne we
+presently made our way into the church of St. James, locking the
+churchyard gate behind us, to exclude rough and possibly mischievous
+followers. A strange and sad contrast, I thought, between this coarse
+and turbulent place, by a malign destiny ordained for the grave of
+Byron, and that peaceful, lovely, majestic church and precinct, at
+Stratford-upon-Avon, which enshrine the dust of Shakespeare!
+
+[Illustration: _Hucknall-Torkard Church._]
+
+The sexton of the church of St. James and the parish clerk of
+Hucknall-Torkard was Mr. John Brown, and a man of sympathetic
+intelligence, kind heart, and interesting character I found him to
+be,--large, dark, stalwart, but gentle alike in manner and feeling,
+and considerate of his visitor. The pilgrim to the literary shrines
+of England does not always find the neighbouring inhabitants either
+sympathetic with his reverence or conscious of especial sanctity or
+interest appertaining to the relics which they possess; but honest and
+manly John Brown of Hucknall-Torkard understood both the hallowing
+charm of the place and the sentiment, not to say the profound emotion,
+of the traveller who now beheld for the first time the tomb of Byron.
+This church has been restored and altered since Byron was buried in
+it, in 1824, yet it retains its fundamental structure and its ancient
+peculiarities. The tower, a fine specimen of Norman architecture,
+strongly built, dark and grim, gives indication of great age. It is
+of a kind often met with in ancient English towns: you may see its
+brothers at York, Shrewsbury, Canterbury, Worcester, Warwick, and in
+many places sprinkled over the northern heights of London: but amid
+its tame surroundings in this little colliery settlement it looms with
+a peculiar frowning majesty, a certain bleak loneliness, both unique
+and impressive. The church is of the customary crucial form,--a low
+stone structure, peak-roofed outside, but arched within, the roof being
+supported by four great pillars on either side of the centre aisle, and
+the ceiling being fashioned of heavy timbers forming almost a true
+arch above the nave. There are four large windows on each side of the
+church, and two on each side of the chancel, which is beneath a roof
+somewhat lower than that of the main building. Under the pavement of
+the chancel and back of the altar rail,--at which it was my privilege
+to kneel, while gazing upon this sacred spot,--is the grave of
+Byron.[26] Nothing is written on the stone that covers his sepulchre
+except the name of BYRON, with the dates of his birth and death, in
+brass letters, surrounded by a wreath of leaves, in brass, the gift
+of the King of Greece; and never did a name seem more stately or a
+place more hallowed. The dust of the poet reposes between that of his
+mother, on his right hand, and that of his Ada,--"sole daughter of my
+house and heart,"--on his left. The mother died on August 1, 1811; the
+daughter, who had by marriage become the Countess of Lovelace, in 1852.
+"I buried her with my own hands," said the sexton, John Brown, when,
+after a little time, he rejoined me at the altar rail. "I told them
+exactly where he was laid, when they wanted to put that brass on the
+stone; I remembered it well, for I lowered the coffin of the Countess
+of Lovelace into this vault, and laid her by her father's side." And
+when presently we went into a little vestry he produced the Register of
+Burials and displayed the record of that interment, in the following
+words: "1852. Died at 69 Cumberland Place, London. Buried December
+3. Aged thirty-six.--Curtis Jackson." The Byrons were a short-lived
+race. The poet himself had just turned thirty-six; his mother was
+only forty-six when she passed away. This name of Curtis Jackson in
+the register was that of the rector or curate then incumbent but now
+departed. The register is a long narrow book made of parchment and full
+of various crabbéd handwritings,--a record similar to those which are
+so carefully treasured at the church of the Holy Trinity at Stratford;
+but it is more dilapidated.
+
+Another relic shown by John Brown was a bit of embroidery, presenting
+the arms of the Byron family. It had been used at Byron's funeral, and
+thereafter was long kept in the church, though latterly with but little
+care. When the Rev. Curtis Jackson came there he beheld this frail
+memorial with pious disapprobation. "He told me," said the sexton, "to
+take it home and burn it. I did take it home, but I didn't burn it; and
+when the new rector came he heard of it and asked me to bring it back,
+and a lady gave the frame to put it in." Framed it is, and likely now
+to be always preserved in this interesting church; and earnestly do I
+wish that I could remember, in order that I might speak it with honour,
+the name of the clergyman who could thus rebuke bigotry, and welcome
+and treasure in his church that shred of silk which once rested on the
+coffin of Byron. Still another relic preserved by John Brown is a large
+piece of cardboard bearing the inscription which is upon the coffin of
+the poet's mother, and which bore some part in the obsequies of that
+singular woman,--a creature full of faults, but the parent of a mighty
+genius, and capable of inspiring deep love. On the night after Byron
+arrived at Newstead, whither he repaired from London, on receiving news
+of her illness, only to find her dead, he was found sitting in the dark
+and sobbing beside the corse. "I had but one friend in the world," he
+said, "and she is gone." He was soon to publish _Childe Harold_, and to
+gain hosts of friends and have the world at his feet; but he spoke what
+he felt, and he spoke the truth, in that dark room on that desolate
+night. Thoughts of these things, and of many other strange passages and
+incidents in his brief, checkered, glorious, lamentable life, thronged
+into my mind as I stood there, in presence of those relics and so near
+his dust, while the church grew dark and the silence seemed to deepen
+in the dusk of the gathering night.
+
+[Illustration: _Hucknall-Torkard Church--Interior._]
+
+They have for many years kept a book at the church of Hucknall-Torkard
+[the first one, an album given by Sir John Bowring, containing the
+record of visitations from 1825 to 1834, disappeared[27] in the latter
+year, or soon after], in which the visitors write their names; but the
+catalogue of pilgrims during the last fifty years is not a long one.
+The votaries of Byron are far less numerous than those of Shakespeare.
+Custom has made the visit to Stratford "a property of easiness," and
+Shakespeare is a safe no less than a rightful object of worship. The
+visit to Hucknall-Torkard is neither so easy nor so agreeable, and it
+requires some courage to be a votary of Byron,--and to own it. No day
+passes without bringing its visitor to the Shakespeare cottage and the
+Shakespeare tomb; many days pass without bringing a stranger to the
+church of St. James. On the capital of a column near Byron's tomb I
+saw two mouldering wreaths of laurel, which had hung there for several
+years; one brought by the Bishop of Norwich, the other by the American
+poet Joaquin Miller. It was good to see them, and especially to see
+them close by the tablet of white marble which was placed on that
+church wall to commemorate the poet, and to be her witness in death, by
+his loving and beloved sister Augusta Mary Leigh,--a name that is the
+synonym of noble fidelity, a name that in our day cruel detraction and
+hideous calumny have done their worst to tarnish. That tablet names
+him "The Author of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"; and if the conviction
+of thoughtful men and women throughout the world can be accepted as an
+authority, no name in the long annals of English literature is more
+certain of immortality than the name of Byron. People mention the
+poetry of Spenser and Cowley and Dryden and Cowper, but the poetry of
+Byron they read. His reputation can afford the absence of all memorial
+to him in Westminster Abbey, and it can endure the neglect and censure
+of the precinct of Nottingham. That city rejoices in a stately castle
+throned upon a rock, and persons who admire the Stuarts may exult in
+the recollection that there the standard of Charles the First was
+unfurled, in his fatal war with the Parliament of England; but all that
+really hallows it for the stranger of to-day and for posterity is its
+association with the name of Byron. The stranger will look in vain,
+however, for any adequate sign of his former association with that
+place. It is difficult even to find prints or photographs of the Byron
+shrines, in the shops of Nottingham. One dealer, from whom I bought
+all the Byron pictures that he possessed, was kind enough to explain
+the situation, in one expressive sentence: "Much more ought to be done
+here as to Lord Byron's memory, that is the truth; but the fact is, the
+first families of the county don't approve of him."
+
+When we came again into the churchyard, with its many scattered graves
+and its quaint stones and crosses leaning every way, and huddled in a
+strange kind of orderly confusion, the great dark tower stood out bold
+and solitary in the gloaming, and a chill wind of evening had begun to
+moan around its pinnacles, and through its mysterious belfry windows,
+and in the few trees near by, which gave forth a mournful whisper.
+It was hard to leave the place, and for a long time I stood near the
+chapel, just above the outer wall of the Byron vault. And there the
+sexton told me the story of the White Lady,--pointing, as he spoke, to
+a cottage abutting on the churchyard, one window in which commands a
+clear view of the place of Byron's grave. [That house has since been
+removed.] "There she lived," he said, "and there she died, and there,"
+pointing to an unmarked grave near the pathway, about thirty feet from
+the Byron vault, "I buried her." It is impossible to give his words
+or to indicate his earnest manner. In brief, this lady, whose past no
+one knew, had taken up her residence in this cottage long subsequent
+to the burial of Byron, and had remained there until she died. She was
+pale, thin, handsome, and she wore white garments. Her face was often
+to be seen at that window, whether by night or day, and she seemed to
+be watching the tomb. Once, when masons were repairing the church wall,
+she was enabled to descend into that vault, and therefrom she obtained
+a skull, which she declared to be Byron's, and which she scraped,
+polished, and made perfectly white, and kept always beneath her pillow.
+It was her request, often made to the sexton, that she might be buried
+in the churchyard, close to the wall of the poet's tomb. "When at last
+she died," said John Brown, "they brought that skull to me, and I
+buried it there in the ground. It was one of the loose skulls from the
+old vault. She thought it was Byron's, and it pleased her to think so.
+I might have laid her close to this wall. I don't know why I didn't."
+
+In those words the sexton's story ended. It was only one more of the
+myriad hints of that romance which the life and poetry of Byron have
+so widely created and diffused. I glanced around for some relic of the
+place that might properly be taken away: there was neither an ivy leaf
+shining upon the wall nor a flower growing in all that ground; but into
+a crevice of the rock, just above his tomb, the wind had at some time
+blown a little earth, and in this a few blades of grass were thinly
+rooted. These I gathered, and still possess, as a memento of an evening
+at Byron's grave.
+
+
+NOTE ON THE MISSING REGISTER OF HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH
+
+The Album that was given to Hucknall-Torkard church, in 1825, by Sir
+John Bowring, to be used as a register of the names of visitors to
+Byron's tomb, disappeared from that church in the year 1834, or soon
+after, and it is supposed to have been stolen. In 1834 its contents
+were printed,--from a manuscript copy of it, which had been obtained
+from the sexton,--in a book of selections from Byron's prose, edited by
+"J. M. L." Those initials stand for the name of Joseph Munt Langford,
+who died in 1884. The dedication of the register is in the following
+words: "To the immortal and illustrious fame of LORD BYRON, the first
+poet of the age in which he lived, these tributes, weak and unworthy
+of him, but in themselves sincere, are inscribed with the deepest
+reverence.--July 1825." At that time no memorial of any kind had
+been placed in the church to mark the poet's sepulchre: a fact which
+prompted Sir John Bowring to begin his Album with twenty-eight lines of
+verse, of which these are the best:
+
+ "A still, resistless influence,
+ Unseen but felt, binds up the sense ...
+ And though the master hand is cold,
+ And though the lyre it once controlled
+ Rests mute in death, yet from the gloom
+ Which dwells about this holy tomb
+ Silence breathes out more eloquent
+ Than epitaph or monument."
+
+This register was used from 1825 till 1834. It contains eight hundred
+and fifteen names, with which are intertwined twenty-eight inscriptions
+in verse and thirty-six in prose. The first name is that of Count
+Pietro Gamba, who visited his friend's grave on January 31, 1825: but
+this must have been a reminiscent memorandum, as the book was not
+opened till the following July. The next entry was made by Byron's old
+servant, the date being September 23, 1825: "William Fletcher visited
+his ever-to-be-lamented lord and master's tomb." On September 21, 1828,
+the following singular record was written: "Joseph Carr, engraver,
+Hound's Gate, Nottingham, visited this place for the first time to
+witness the funeral of Lady Byron [mother of the much lamented late
+Lord Byron], August 9th, 1811, whose coffin-plate I engraved, and now
+I once more revisit the spot to drop a tear as a tribute of unfeigned
+respect to the mortal remains of that noble British bard. 'Tho' lost to
+sight, to memory dear.'" The next notable entry is that of September
+3, 1829: "Lord Byron's sister, the Honourable Augusta Mary Leigh,
+visited this church." Under the date of January 8, 1832, are found
+the names of "M. Van Buren, Minister Plenipotentiary from the United
+States; Washington Irving; John Van Buren, New York, U.S.A., and J.
+Wildman." The latter was Colonel Wildman, the proprietor of Newstead
+Abbey, Byron's old home, now owned by Colonel Webb. On August 5, 1832,
+"Mr. Bunn, manager of Drury Lane theatre, honoured by the acquaintance
+of the illustrious poet, visited Lord Byron's tomb, with a party."
+Edward F. Flower and Selina Flower, of Stratford-upon-Avon, record
+their presence, on September 15, 1832,--the parents of Charles Edward
+Flower and Edgar Flower, of Stratford, the former being the founder of
+the Shakespeare Memorial. There are several eccentric tributes in the
+register, but the most of them are feeble. One of the better kind is
+this:
+
+ "Not in that palace where the dead repose
+ In splendid holiness, where Time has spread
+ His sombre shadows, and a halo glows
+ Around the ashes of the mighty dead,
+ Life's weary pilgrim rests his aching head.
+ This is his resting-place, and save his own
+ No light, no glory round his grave is shed:
+ But memory journeys to his shrine alone
+ To mark how sound he sleeps, beneath yon simple stone.
+
+ "Ah, say, art thou ambitious? thy young breast--
+ Oh, does it pant for honours? dost thou chase
+ The phantom Fame, in fairy colours drest,
+ Expecting all the while to win the race?
+ Oh, does the flush of youth adorn thy face
+ And dost thou deem it lasting? dost thou crave
+ The hero's wreath, the poet's meed of praise?
+ Learn that of this, these, all, not one can save
+ From the chill hand of death. Behold Childe Harold's grave!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+HISTORIC NOOKS OF WARWICKSHIRE
+
+
+Stratford-upon-Avon, August 20, 1889.--The traveller who hurries
+through Warwickshire,--and American travellers mostly do hurry through
+it,--appreciates but little the things that he sees, and does not
+understand how much he loses. The customary course is to lodge at the
+Red Horse, which is one of the most comfortable houses in England, and
+thus to enjoy the associations that are connected with the visits of
+Washington Irving. His parlour, his bedroom (number 15), his arm-chair,
+his poker, and the sexton's clock, mentioned by him in the _Sketch
+Book_, are all to be seen, if your lightning-express conductor will
+give you time enough to see them. From the Red Horse you are taken in
+a carriage, when you ought to be allowed to proceed on foot, and the
+usual round includes the Shakespeare Birthplace; the Grammar School
+and Guild chapel; the remains of New Place; Trinity church and the
+Shakespeare graves in its chancel; Anne Hathaway's cottage at Shottery;
+and, perhaps, the Shakespeare Memorial library and theatre. These are
+impressive sights to the lover of Shakespeare; but when you have seen
+all these you have only begun to see the riches of Stratford-upon-Avon.
+It is only by living in the town, by making yourself familiar with it
+in all its moods, by viewing it in storm as well as in sunshine, by
+roaming through its quaint, deserted streets in the lonely hours of
+the night, by sailing up and down the beautiful Avon, by driving and
+walking in the green lanes that twine about it for many miles in every
+direction, by becoming, in fact, a part of its actual being, that you
+obtain a genuine knowledge of that delightful place. Familiarity, in
+this case, does not breed contempt. The worst you will ever learn of
+Stratford is that gossip thrives in it; that its intellect is, with
+due exception, narrow and sleepy; and that it is heavily ridden by the
+ecclesiastical establishment. You will never find anything that can
+detract from the impression of beauty and repose made upon your mind by
+the sweet retirement of its situation, by the majesty of its venerable
+monuments, and by the opulent, diversified splendours of its natural
+and historical environment. On the contrary, the more you know of those
+charms the more you will love the town, and the greater will be the
+benefit of high thought and spiritual exaltation that you will derive
+from your knowledge of it; and hence it is important that the American
+traveller should be counselled for his own sake to live a little while
+in Stratford instead of treating it as an incident of his journey.
+
+[Illustration: _The Red Horse Hotel._]
+
+The occasion of a garden party at the rectory of a clerical friend at
+Butler's Marston gave opportunity to see one of the many picturesque
+and happy homes with which this region abounds. The lawns there are
+ample and sumptuous. The dwelling and the church, which are close to
+each other, are bowered in great trees. From the terraces a lovely
+view may be obtained of the richly coloured and finely cultivated
+fields, stretching away toward Edgehill, which lies southeast
+from Stratford-upon-Avon about sixteen miles away, and marks the
+beginning of the Vale of the Red Horse. In the churchyard are the
+gray, lichen-covered remains of one of those ancient crosses from the
+steps of which the monks preached, in the early days of the church.
+Relics of this class are deeply interesting for what they suggest of
+the people and the life of earlier times. A fine specimen of the
+ancient cross may be seen at Henley-in-Arden, a few miles northwest of
+Stratford, where it stands, in mouldering majesty in the centre of the
+village,--strangely inharmonious with the petty shops and numerous inns
+of which that long and straggling but characteristic and attractive
+settlement is composed. The tower of the church at Butler's Marston,
+a gray, grim structure, "four-square to opposition," was built in the
+eleventh century,--a period of much ecclesiastical activity in the
+British islands. Within it I found a noble pulpit, of carved oak, dark
+with age, of the time of James the First. There are many commemorative
+stones in the church, on one of which appears this lovely couplet,
+addressed to the shade of a young girl:
+
+ "Sleep, gentle soul, and wait thy Maker's will!
+ Then rise unchanged, and be an angel still."
+
+The present village of Butler's Marston,--a little group of cottages
+clustered upon the margin of a tiny stream and almost hidden in a
+wooded dell,--is comparatively new; for it has arisen since the time
+of the Puritan civil war. The old village was swept away by the
+Roundheads, when Essex and Hampden came down to fight King Charles at
+Edgehill, in 1642. That fierce strife raged all along the country-side,
+and you may still perceive there, in the inequalities of the land, the
+sites on which houses formerly stood. It is a sweet and peaceful place
+now, smiling with flowers and musical with the rustle of the leaves
+of giant elms. The clergyman farms his own glebe, and he has expended
+more than a thousand pounds in the renovation of his manse. The
+church "living" is not worth much more than a hundred pounds a year,
+and when he leaves the dwelling, if he should ever leave it, he loses
+the value of all the improvements that he has made. This he mentioned
+with a contented smile. The place, in fact, is a little paradise, and
+as I looked across the green and golden fields, and saw the herds at
+rest and the wheat waving in sun and shadow, and thought of the simple
+life of the handful of people congregated here, the words of Gray came
+murmuring into my mind:
+
+ "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
+ Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
+ Along the cool, sequestered vale of life
+ They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."
+
+[Illustration: _The Grammar School, Stratford._]
+
+"Unregarded age, in corners thrown." Was that fine line suggested to
+Shakespeare by the spectacle of the almshouses of the Guild, which
+stood in his time, just as they stand now, close to the spot where he
+lived and died? New Place, Shakespeare's home, stood on the northeast
+corner of Chapel street and Chapel lane. The Guild chapel stands on the
+southeast corner of those streets, immediately opposite to what was
+once the poet's home. Southward from the chapel, and adjoining to it,
+extends the long, low, sombre building that contains the Free Grammar
+School, founded by Thomas Jolyffe in 1482, and refounded in 1553 by
+King Edward the Sixth. In that grammar school, there is reason to
+believe, Shakespeare was educated; at first by Walter Roche, afterward
+by Simon Hunt,--who doubtless birched the little boys then, even as the
+head-master does now; it being a cardinal principle with the British
+educator that learning, like other goods, should be delivered in the
+rear. In those almshouses doubtless there were many forlorn inmates,
+even as there are at present,--and Shakespeare must often have seen
+them. On visiting one of the bedesmen I found him moving slowly, with
+that mild, aimless, inert manner and that bleak aspect peculiar to such
+remnants of vanishing life, among the vegetable vines and the profuse,
+rambling flowers in the sunny garden behind the house; and presently I
+went into his humble room and sat by his fireside. The scene was the
+perfect fulfilment of Shakespeare's line. A stone floor. A low ceiling
+crossed with dusky beams. Walls that had been whitewashed long ago. A
+small iron kettle, with water in it, simmering over a few smouldering
+coals. A rough bed, in a corner. A little table, on which were three
+conch-shells ranged in a row. An old arm-chair, on which were a few
+coarse wads of horsehair, as a cushion. A bench, whereon lay a torn,
+tattered, soiled copy of the prayer book of the church of England,
+beginning at the epiphany. This sumptuous place was lighted by a
+lattice of small leaded panes. And upon one of the walls hung a framed
+placard of worsted work, bearing the inscription, "Blessed be the Lord
+for His Unspeakable Gift." The aged, infirm pensioner doddered about
+the room, and when he was asked what had become of his wife his dull
+eyes filled with tears and he said simply that she was dead. "So runs
+the world away." The summons surely cannot be unwelcome that calls such
+an old and lonely pilgrim as that to his rest in yonder churchyard and
+to his lost wife who is waiting for him.
+
+[Illustration: _Interior of the Grammar School._]
+
+Warwickshire is hallowed by shining names of persons illustrious in
+the annals of art. Drayton, Greene, and Heminge, who belong to the
+Shakespeare period, were born there. Walter Savage Landor was a native
+of Warwick,--in which quaint and charming town you may see the house of
+his birth, duly marked. Croft, the composer, was born near Ettington,
+hard by Stratford: there is a tiny monument, commemorative of him, in
+the ruins of Ettington church, near the manor-house of Shirley. And in
+our own day Warwickshire has enriched the world with "George Eliot" and
+with that matchless actress,--the one Ophelia and the one Beatrice of
+our age--Ellen Terry. But it is a chief characteristic of England that
+whichever way you turn in it your footsteps fall on haunted ground.
+Everyday life here is continually impressed by incidents of historic
+association. In an old church at Greenwich I asked that I might be
+directed to the tomb of General Wolfe. "He is buried just beneath where
+you are now standing," the custodian said. It was an elderly woman who
+showed the place, and she presently stated that when a girl she once
+entered the vault beneath that church and stood beside the coffin of
+General Wolfe and took a piece of laurel from it, and also took a piece
+of the red velvet pall from the coffin of the old Duchess of Bolton,
+close by. That Duchess was Lavinia Fenton, the first representative
+of Polly Peachem, in _The Beggars' Opera_, who died in 1760, aged
+fifty-two.[28] "Lord Clive," the dame added, "is buried in the same
+vault with Wolfe." An impressive thought, that the ashes of the man who
+established Britain's power in America should at last mingle with the
+ashes of the man who gave India to England!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SHAKESPEARE'S TOWN
+
+
+To traverse Stratford-upon-Avon is to return upon old tracks, but
+no matter how often you visit that delightful place you will always
+see new sights in it and find new incidents. After repeated visits
+to Shakespeare's town the traveller begins to take more notice than
+perhaps at first he did of its everyday life. In former days the
+observer had no eyes except for the Shakespeare shrines. The addition
+of a new wing to the ancient, storied, home-like Red Horse, the new
+gardens around the Memorial theatre, the completed chime of Trinity
+bells,--these, and matters like to these, attract attention now. And
+now, too, I have rambled, in the gloaming, through scented fields to
+Clifford church; and strolled through many a green lane to beautiful
+Preston; and climbed Borden hill; and stood by the maypole on Welford
+common; and journeyed along the battle-haunted crest of Edgehill; and
+rested at venerable Compton-Wynyate;[29] and climbed the hills of
+Welcombe to peer into the darkening valleys of the Avon and hear the
+cuckoo-note echoed and re-echoed from rhododendron groves, and from the
+great, mysterious elms that embower this country-side for miles and
+miles around. This is the life of Stratford to-day,--the fertile farms,
+the garnished meadows, the avenues of white and coral hawthorn, masses
+of milky snow-ball, honeysuckle and syringa loading the soft air with
+fragrance, chestnuts dropping blooms of pink and white, and laburnums
+swinging their golden censers in the breeze.
+
+[Illustration: _Trinity Church--Stratford-upon-Avon._]
+
+The building that forms the southeast corner of High street and Bridge
+street in Stratford was once occupied by Thomas Quiney, a wine-dealer,
+who married the poet's youngest daughter, Judith, and an inscription
+appears upon it, stating that Judith lived in it for thirty-six years.
+Richard Savage, that competent, patient, diligent student of the church
+registers and other documentary treasures of Warwickshire, furnished
+the proof of this fact, from investigation of the town records--which
+is but one of many services that he has rendered to the old home of
+Shakespeare. The Quiney premises are now occupied by Edward Fox, a
+journalist, a printer, and a dealer in souvenirs of Shakespeare and of
+Stratford. That house, in old times, was officially styled The Cage,
+because it had been used as a prison. Standing in the cellar of it
+you perceive that its walls are four feet thick. There likewise are
+seen traces of the grooves down which the wine-casks were rolled, in
+the days of Shakespeare's son-in-law, Thomas Quiney. The business now
+carried on by Edward Fox has been established in Stratford more than
+a hundred years, and, as this tenant has a long lease of the building
+and is of an energetic spirit in his pursuits, it bids fair to last
+as much longer. An indication of Mr. Fox's sagacity was revealed to me
+in the cellar, where was heaped a quantity of old oak, taken, in 1887,
+from the belfry of Trinity church, in which Shakespeare is buried.
+This oak, which was there when Shakespeare lived, and which had to be
+removed because a stronger structure was required for sustaining an
+augmented chime of heavy bells, will be converted into various carved
+relics, such as must find favour with Shakespeare worshippers,--of
+whom more than sixteen thousand visited Stratford in 1887, at least
+one-fourth of that number [4482] being Americans. A cross made of the
+belfry wood is a pleasing souvenir of the hallowed Shakespeare church.
+When the poet saw that church the tower was surmounted, not as now with
+a graceful stone spire, but with a spire of timber, covered with lead.
+This was removed, and was replaced by the stone spire, in 1763. The oak
+frame to support the bells, however, had been in the tower more than
+three hundred years.
+
+[Illustration: _The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre._]
+
+The two sculptured groups, emblematic of Comedy and Tragedy, which have
+been placed upon the front of the Shakespeare Memorial theatre, are
+the gain of a benefit performance, given in that building on August
+29, 1885, by Miss Mary Anderson,[30] who then, for the first time in
+her life, impersonated Shakespeare's Rosalind. That actress, after her
+first visit to Stratford,--a private visit made in 1883,--manifested
+a deep interest in the town, and because of her services to the
+Shakespeare Memorial she is now one of its life-governors. Those
+services completed the exterior decorations of the building. The emblem
+of History had already been put in its place,--the scene in _King John_
+in which Prince Arthur melts the cruel purpose of Hubert to burn out
+his eyes. Tragedy is represented by Hamlet and the Gravedigger, in
+their colloquy over Yorick's skull. In the emblem of Comedy the figure
+of Rosalind is that of Miss Mary Anderson, in a boy's dress,--a figure
+that may be deemed inadequate to the original, but one that certainly
+is expressive of the ingenuous demeanour and artless grace of that
+gentle lady. The grounds south of the Memorial are diversified and
+adorned with lawns, trees, flowers, and commodious pathways, and that
+lovely, park-like enclosure,--thus beautified through the liberality
+of Charles Edward Flower [obiit, May 3, 1892], the original promoter of
+the Memorial,--is now free to the people, "to walk abroad and recreate
+themselves" beside the Avon. The picture gallery of the Memorial lacks
+many things that are needed. The library continues to grow, but the
+American department of it needs accessions. Every American edition
+of Shakespeare ought to be there, and every book of American origin,
+on a Shakespeare subject. It was at one time purposed to set up a
+special case, surmounted with the American ensign, for the reception of
+contributions from Americans. The library contained, in March, 1890,
+five thousand seven hundred and ninety volumes, in various languages.
+[Now, in 1896, it comprises about eight thousand volumes.] Of English
+editions of the complete works of Shakespeare it contains two hundred
+and nine. A Russian translation of Shakespeare, in nine volumes,
+appears in the collection, together with three complete editions in
+Dutch. An elaborate and beautiful catalogue of those treasures, made
+by Mr. Frederic Hawley, records them in an imperishable form. Mr.
+Hawley, long the librarian of the Memorial, died at Stratford on March
+13, 1889, aged sixty-two, and was buried at Kensal Green, in London,
+his wish being that his ashes should rest in that place. Mr. Hawley
+had been an actor, under the name of Haywell, and he was the author of
+more than one tragedy, in blank verse. Mr. A. H. Wall, who succeeded
+him as librarian,[31] is a learned antiquary and an admired writer.
+To him the readers of the _Stratford-upon-Avon Herald_ are indebted
+for instructive articles,--notably for those giving an account of the
+original Shakespeare quartos acquired for the Memorial library at the
+sale of the literary property of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps. Those
+quartos are the _Merchant of Venice_, the _Merry Wives of Windsor_,
+and a first edition of _Pericles_. A copy of _Roger of Faversham_ was
+also bought, together with two of the plays of Aphra Behn. Charles
+Edward Flower purchased, at that sale, a copy of the first folio of
+Shakespeare, and the four Shakespeare Folios, 1623, 1632, 1663, 1685,
+stand side by side in his private library at Avonbank. Mr. Flower
+intimated the intention of giving them to the Memorial library. [His
+death did not defeat that purpose. Those precious books are now in the
+Memorial collection.]
+
+A large collection of old writings was found in a room of the Grammar
+School, adjacent to the Guild chapel, in 1887. About five thousand
+separate papers were discovered, the old commingled with the new; many
+of them indentures of apprenticeship; many of them receipts for money;
+no one of them especially important, as bearing on the Shakespeare
+story. Several of them are in Latin. The earliest date is 1560,--four
+years before the poet was born. One document is a memorandum
+"presenting" a couple of the wives of Stratford for slander of certain
+other women, and quoting their bad language with startling fidelity.
+Another is a letter from a citizen of London, named Smart, establishing
+and endowing a free school in Stratford for teaching English,--the
+writer quaintly remarking that schools for the teaching of Latin are
+numerous, while no school for teaching English exists, that he can
+discover. Those papers have been classified and arranged by Richard
+Savage, but nothing directly pertinent to Shakespeare has been found in
+them. I saw a deed that bore the "mark" of Joan, sister of Mary Arden,
+Shakespeare's mother, but this may not be a recent discovery. All those
+papers are written in that "cramped penmanship" which baffled Tony
+Lumpkin, and which baffles wiser people than he was. Richard Savage,
+however, is skilful in reading this crooked and queer calligraphy; and
+the materials and the duty of exploring them are in the right hands.
+When the researches and conclusions of that scholar are published
+they will augment the mass of evidence already extant,--much of it
+well presented by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps,--that the writer of
+Shakespeare's plays was a man familiar with the neighbourhood, the
+names, and the everyday life of Stratford-upon-Avon; a fact which is
+not without its admonitory suggestiveness to those credulous persons
+who incline to heed the ignorant and idle theories and conjectures of
+Mr. Ignatius Donnelly. That mistaken and somewhat mischievous writer
+visited Shakespeare's town in the summer of 1888, and surveyed the
+scenes that are usually viewed. "He did not address himself to me,"
+said Miss Chattaway, who was then at the Birthplace, as its custodian;
+"had he done so I should have informed him that, in Stratford, Bacon is
+all gammon." She was right. So it is. And not alone in Stratford, but
+wherever men and women have eyes to see and brains to understand.
+
+[Illustration: _An Old Stratford Character: George Robbins. Died
+September 17, 1889, aged 78._]
+
+The spot on which Shakespeare died ought surely to be deemed as sacred
+as the spot on which he was born: yet New Place is not as much visited
+as the Birthplace,--perhaps because so little of it remains. Only
+five hundred and thirty-seven visitors went there during the year
+ending April 13, 1888.[32] In repairing the custodian's house at New
+Place the crossed timbers in the one remaining fragment of the north
+wall of the original structure were found, beneath plaster. Those
+have been left uncovered and their dark lines add to the picturesque
+effect of the place. The aspect of the old house prior to 1742 is
+known but vaguely, if at all. Shakespeare bought it in 1597, when he
+was thirty-three years old, and he kept it till his death, nineteen
+years later. The street, Chapel lane, that separates it from the
+Guild chapel was narrower than it is now, and the house stood in a
+grassy enclosure, encompassed by a wall, the entrance to the garden
+being at some distance eastward in the lane, toward the river. The
+chief rooms in New Place were lined with square, sunken panels of
+oak, which covered the walls from floor to roof and probably formed
+the ceilings. Some of those panels,--obtained when the Rev. Francis
+Gastrell tore down that house in 1759,--may be seen in a parlour of
+the Falcon hotel, at the corner of Scholar's lane and Chapel street.
+There is nothing left of New Place but the old well in the cellar,
+the fragments of the foundation, the lintel, the armorial stone, and
+the fragment of wall that forms part of the custodian's house. That
+custodian, Mr. Bower Bulmer, a pleasant, appreciative, and genial man,
+died on January 17, 1888, and his widow succeeded him in office.[33]
+Another conspicuous and interesting Stratford figure, well known and
+for a long time, was John Marshall, the antiquary, who died on June 26,
+1887. Mr. Marshall occupied the building next but one to the original
+New Place, on the north side,--the house once tenanted by Julius
+Shaw, one of the five witnesses to Shakespeare's will. Mr. Marshall
+sold Shakespeare souvenirs and quaint furniture. He had remarkable
+skill in carving, and his mind was full of knowledge of Shakespeare
+antiquities and the traditional lore of Stratford. His kindness,
+his eccentric ways, his elaborate forms of speech, and his love and
+faculty for art commended him to the respect and sympathy of all who
+knew him. He was a character,--and in such a place as Stratford such
+quaint beings are appropriate and uncommonly delightful. He will
+long be kindly remembered, long missed from his accustomed round. He
+rests now, in an unmarked grave, in Trinity churchyard, close to the
+bank of the Avon,--just east of the stone that marks the sepulchre
+of Mary Pickering; by which token the future pilgrim may know the
+spot. Marshall was well known to me, and we had many a talk about
+the antiquities of the town. Among my relics there was for some time
+[until at last I gave it to Edwin Booth], a precious piece of wood,
+bearing this inscription, written by him: "Old Oak from Shakespeare's
+Birth-place, taken out of the building when it was Restored in 1858 by
+Mr. William Holtom, the contractor for the restoration, who supplied
+it to John Marshall, carver, Stratford-on-Avon, and presented by
+him to W. Winter, August 27th, 1885, J. M." Another valued souvenir
+of this quaint person, given by his widow to Richard Savage, of the
+Birthplace,--a fine carved goblet, made from the wood of the renowned
+mulberry-tree planted by the poet in the garden of New Place, and cut
+down by the Rev. Francis Gastrell in 1756,--came into my possession, as
+a birthday gift from Mr. Savage, on July 15, 1891.
+
+At the Shakespeare Birthplace you will no longer meet with those
+gentle ladies,--so quaint, so characteristic, so harmonious with the
+place,--Miss Maria Chattaway and Miss Caroline Chattaway. The former
+was the official custodian of the cottage, and the latter assisted
+her in the work of its exposition. They retired from office in June,
+1889, after seventeen years of service, the former aged seventy-six,
+the latter seventy-eight; and now,--being infirm, and incapable of the
+active, incessant labour that was required of them by the multitude
+of visitors,--they dwell in a little house in the Warwick Road, where
+their friends are welcomed, and where venerable and honoured age
+may haunt the chimney-corner, and "keep the flame from wasting, by
+repose."[34] The new guardian of the Shakespeare cottage is Joseph
+Skipsey,[35] of Newcastle, the miner poet: for Mr. Skipsey was trained
+in the mines of Northumberland, was long a labourer in them, and his
+muse sings in the simple accents of nature. He is the author of an
+essay on Burns, and of various other essays and miscellaneous writings.
+An edition of his poems, under the title of _Carols, Songs, and
+Ballads_ has been published in London, by Walter Scott, and that book
+will be found interesting by those who enjoy the study of original
+character and of a rhythmical expression that does not savour of any
+poetical school. Mr. Skipsey is an elderly man, with grizzled hair,
+a benevolent countenance, and a simple, cordial manner. He spoke to
+me, with much animation, about American poets, and especially about
+Richard Henry Stoddard, in whose rare and fine genius he manifested
+a deep, thoughtful, and gratifying interest. The visitor no longer
+hears that earnest, formal, characteristic recital, descriptive of the
+house, that was given daily and repeatedly, for so many years, by Miss
+Caroline Chattaway,--that delightful allusion to "the mighty dome"
+that was the "fit place for the mighty brain." The Birthplace acquires
+new treasures from year to year,--mainly in its library, which is kept
+in perfect order by Richard Savage, that ideal antiquarian, who even
+collects and retains the bits of the stone floor of the Shakespeare
+room that become detached by age. In that library is preserved the
+original manuscript of Wheler's _History of Stratford_, together with
+his annotated and interleaved copy of the printed book, which is thus
+enriched with much new material relative to the antiquities of the
+storied town.
+
+In the Washington Irving parlour of the Red Horse the American
+traveller will find objects that are specially calculated to please
+his fancy and to deepen his interest in the place. Among them are the
+chair in which Irving sat; the sexton's clock to which he refers in
+the _Sketch Book_; an autograph letter by him; another by Longfellow;
+a view of Irving's house of Sunnyside; and pictures of Junius Booth,
+Edwin Booth, the elder and the present Jefferson, Miss Mary Anderson,
+Miss Ada Rehan, Elliston, Farren, Salvini, Henry Irving, and Miss Ellen
+Terry. To invest that valued room with an atmosphere at once literary
+and dramatic was the intention of its decorator, and this object has
+been attained. When Washington Irving visited Stratford and lodged
+at the Red Horse the "pretty chambermaid," to whom he alludes, in his
+gentle and genial account of that experience, was Sally Garner,--then,
+in fact, a middle-aged woman and plain rather than pretty. The head
+waiter was William Webb. Both those persons lived to an advanced
+age. Sally Garner was retired, on a pension, by Mr. Gardner, former
+proprietor of the Red Horse, and she died at Tanworth (not Tamworth,
+which is another place) and was buried there. Webb died at Stratford.
+He had been a waiter at the Red Horse for sixty years, and he was
+esteemed by all who knew him. His grave, in Stratford churchyard,
+remained unmarked, and it is one among the many that, unfortunately,
+were levelled and obliterated in 1888, under the rule of the present
+vicar. A few of the older residents of the town might perhaps be able
+to indicate its situation; but, practically, that relic of the past
+is gone,--and with it has vanished an element of valuable interest to
+the annual multitude of Shakespeare pilgrims upon whom the prosperity
+of Stratford is largely dependent, and for whom, if not for the
+inhabitants, every relic of its past should be perpetuated.[36] This
+sentiment is not without its practical influence. Among other good
+results of it is the restoration of the ancient timber front and the
+quaint gables of the Shakespeare hotel, which, already hallowed by its
+association with Garrick and the Jubilee of September 7, 1769, has now
+become one of the most picturesque, attractive, and representative
+buildings in Stratford.
+
+There is a resolute disposition among Stratford people to save and
+perpetuate everything that is associated, however remotely, with the
+name of Shakespeare. Mr. Charles Frederick Loggin,[37] a chemist in the
+High street, possesses a lock and key that were affixed to one of the
+doors in New Place, and also a sundial that reposed upon a pedestal
+in New Place garden, presumably in Shakespeare's time. The lock is
+made of brass; the key of iron, with an ornamented handle, of graceful
+design, but broken. On the lock appears an inscription stating that
+it was "taken from New Place in the year 1759, and preserved by John
+Lord, Esq." The sundial is made of copper, and upon its surface are
+Roman numerals distributed around the outer edge of the circle that
+encloses its rays. The corners of the plate are broken, and one side
+of it is bent. This injury was done to it by thieves, who wrenched it
+from its setting, on a night in 1759, and were just making away with it
+when they were captured and deprived of their plunder. The sundial also
+bears an inscription, certifying that it was preserved by Mr. Lord. New
+Place garden was at one time owned by one of Mr. Loggin's relatives,
+and from that former owner those Shakespeare relics were derived.
+Shakespeare's hand may have touched that lock, and Shakespeare's eyes
+may have looked upon that dial,--perhaps on the day when he made Jaques
+draw the immortal picture of Touchstone in the forest, moralising on
+the flight of time and the evanescence of earthly things. [_As You Like
+It_ was written in 1599-1600.]
+
+[Illustration: _Anne Hathaway's Cottage._]
+
+Another remote relic of Shakespeare is the shape of the foundation
+of Bishopton church, which remains traced, by ridges of the velvet
+sod, in a green field a little to the northwest of Stratford, in
+the direction of Wilmcote,--the birthplace of Shakespeare's mother,
+Mary Arden. The parish of Bishopton adjoins that of Shottery, and
+Bishopton is one of three places that have commonly been mentioned
+in association with Shakespeare's marriage with Anne Hathaway. Many
+scholars, indeed, incline to think that the wedding occurred there. The
+church was destroyed about eighty years ago. The house in Wilmcote,
+in which, as tradition declares, Mary Arden was born, is seen at the
+entrance to the village, and is conspicuous for its quaint dormer
+windows and for its mellow colours and impressive antiquity. Wilmcote
+is rougher in aspect than most of the villages of Warwickshire, and
+the country immediately around it is wild and bleak; but the hedges
+are full of wildflowers and are haunted by many birds; and the wide,
+green, lonesome fields, especially when you see them in the gloaming,
+possess that air of melancholy solitude,--vague, dream-like, and poetic
+rather than sad,--which always strongly sways the imaginative mind.
+Inside the Mary Arden cottage I saw nothing remarkable, except the
+massive old timbers. That house as well as the Anne Hathaway cottage
+at Shottery, will be purchased and added to the other several Trusts,
+of Shakespeare's Birthplace, the Museum, and New Place.[38] The Anne
+Hathaway cottage needs care, and as an authentic relic of Shakespeare
+and a charming bit of rustic antiquity its preservation is important,
+as well to lovers of the poet, all the world over, as to the town of
+Stratford, which thrives by his renown. The beautiful Guild chapel also
+needs care. The hand of restoration should, indeed, touch it lightly
+and reverently; but restored it must be, at no distant day, for every
+autumn storm shakes down fragments of its fretted masonry and despoils
+the venerable grandeur of that gray tower on which Shakespeare so
+often gazed from the windows of his hallowed home. Whatever is done
+there, fortunately for the Shakespearean world, will be done under the
+direction of a man of noble spirit, rare ability, sound scholarship,
+and fine taste,--the Rev. R. S. DeCourcy Laffan, head-master of the
+Grammar School and therefore pastor of the Guild.[39] Liberal in
+thought, manly in character, simple, sincere, and full of sensibility
+and goodness, that preacher strongly impresses all who approach him,
+and is one of the most imposing figures in the pulpit of his time. And
+he is a reverent Shakespearean.
+
+A modern feature of Stratford, interesting to the Shakespeare pilgrim,
+is Lord Ronald Gower's statue of the poet, erected in October, 1888,
+in the Memorial garden. That work is infelicitous in its site and
+not fortunate in all of its details, but in some particulars it is
+fine. Upon a huge pedestal appears the full-length bronze figure of
+Shakespeare, seated in a chair, while at the four corners of the base
+are bronze effigies of Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Henry the Fifth, and
+Falstaff. Hamlet is the expression of a noble ideal. The face and
+figure are wasted with misery, yet full of thought and strength. The
+type of man thus embodied will at once be recognised,--an imperial,
+powerful, tender, gracious, but darkly introspective nature, broken
+and subjugated by hopeless grief and by vain brooding over the mystery
+of life and death. Lady Macbeth is depicted in her sleep-walking, and,
+although the figure is treated in a conventional manner, it conveys
+the idea of remorse and of physical emaciation from suffering, and
+likewise the sense of being haunted and accursed. Prince Henry is
+represented as he may have appeared when putting on his dying father's
+kingly crown. The figure is lithe, graceful, and spirited; the pose
+is true and the action is natural; but the personality is deficient of
+identity and of royal distinction. Falstaff appears as a fat man who is
+a type of gross, chuckling humour; so that this image might stand for
+Gambrinus. The intellect and the predominant character of Falstaff are
+not indicated. The figures are dwarfed, furthermore, by the size of the
+stone that they surround,--a huge pillar, upon which appropriate lines
+from Shakespeare have been inscribed. The statue of Shakespeare shows
+a man of solid self-concentration and adamantine will; an observer,
+of universal view, and incessant vigilance. The chief feature of it
+is the piercing look of the eyes. This is a man who sees, ponders,
+and records. Imagination and sensibility, on the other hand, are not
+suggested. The face lacks modelling: it is as smooth as the face of
+a child; there is not one characteristic curve or wrinkle in all its
+placid expanse. Perhaps it was designed to express an idea of eternal
+youth. The man who had gained Shakespeare's obvious experience must
+have risen to a composure not to be ruffled by anything that this world
+can do, to bless or to ban a human life. But the record of his struggle
+must have been written in his face. This may be a fine statue of a
+practical thinker, but it is not the image of a poet and it is not an
+adequate presentment of Shakespeare. The structure stands on the south
+side of the Memorial building and within a few feet of it, so that it
+is almost swallowed up by what was intended for its background. It
+would show to better advantage if it were placed further to the south,
+looking down the long reach of the Avon toward Shakespeare's church.
+The form of the poet could then be seen from the spot on which he
+died, while his face would still look, as it does now, toward his tomb.
+
+[Illustration: THE GOWER STATUE]
+
+A constant stream of American visitors pours annually through the Red
+Horse. Within three days of July, 1889, more than a hundred American
+names appeared in the register. The spirit of Washington Irving is
+mighty yet. Looking through a few of the old registers of this house, I
+read many familiar names of distinguished Americans. Bayard Taylor came
+here on July 23, 1856; James E. Murdoch, the famous Hamlet and Mirabel
+of other days, on August 31, 1856; Rev. Francis Vinton on June 10,
+1857; Henry Ward Beecher on June 22, 1862; Elihu Burritt, "the learned
+blacksmith," on September 19, 1865; George Ripley on May 12, 1866.
+Poor Artemas Ward arrived on September 18, 1866,--only a little while
+before his death, which occurred in March, 1867, at Southampton. The
+Rev. Charles T. Brooks, translator of _Faust_, registered his name here
+on September 20, 1866. Charles Dudley Warner came on May 6, 1868; Mr.
+and Mrs. W. J. Florence on May 29, 1868; and S. R. Gifford and Jervis
+M'Entee on the same day. The poet Longfellow, accompanied by Thomas
+Appleton, arrived on June 23, 1868. Those Red Horse registers contain
+a unique and remarkable collection of autographs. Within a few pages,
+I observed the curiously contrasted signatures of Cardinal Wiseman,
+Sam Cowell, the Duc d'Aumale, Tom Thumb, Miss Burdett-Coutts (1861),
+Blanchard Jerrold, Edmund Yates, Charles Fechter, Andrew Carnegie,
+David Gray (of Buffalo), the Duchess of Coburg, Moses H. Grinnell,
+Lord Leigh, of Stoneleigh Abbey, J. M. Bellew, Samuel Longfellow,
+Charles and Henry Webb (the Dromios), Edna Dean Proctor, Gerald Massey,
+Clarence A. Seward, Frederick Maccabe, M. D. Conway, the Prince of
+Condé, and John L. Toole. That this repository of autographs is
+appreciated may be inferred from the fact that special vigilance has to
+be exercised to prevent the hotel registers from being carried off or
+mutilated. The volume containing the signature of Washington Irving was
+stolen years ago and it has been vaguely heard of as being in America.
+
+There is a collection of autographs of visitors to the Shakespeare
+Birthplace that was gathered many years since by Mary Hornby,
+custodian of that cottage [it was she who whitewashed the walls, in
+order to obliterate the writings upon them, when she was removed
+from her office, in 1820], and this is now in the possession of
+her granddaughter, Mrs. Smith,[40] a resident of Stratford; but
+many valuable names have been taken from it,--among others that of
+Lord Byron. The mania for obtaining relics of Stratford antiquity
+is remarkable. Mention is made of an unknown lady who came to the
+birth-room of Shakespeare, and after begging in vain for a piece of the
+woodwork or of the stone, presently knelt and wiped the floor with her
+glove, which then she carefully rolled up and secreted, declaring that
+she would, at least, possess some of the dust of that sacred chamber.
+It is a creditable sentiment, though not altogether a rational one,
+that impels devotional persons to such conduct as that; but the entire
+Shakespeare cottage would soon disappear if such a passion for relics
+were practically gratified. The elemental feeling is one of reverence,
+and this is perhaps indicated in the following lines with which the
+present writer began a new volume of the Red Horse register, on July
+21, 1889:--
+
+SHAKESPEARE.
+
+ While evening waits and hearkens,
+ While yet the song-bird calls,--
+ Before the last light darkens,
+ Before the last leaf falls,--
+ Once more with reverent feeling
+ This sacred shrine I seek,
+ By silent awe revealing
+ The love I cannot speak.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+UP AND DOWN THE AVON
+
+
+[Illustration: _Evesham._]
+
+Stratford-upon-Avon, August 22, 1889.--The river life of Stratford is
+one of the chief delights of this delightful town. The Avon, according
+to law, is navigable from its mouth, at Tewkesbury, where it empties
+into the Severn, as far upward as Warwick; but according to fact it is
+passable only to the resolute navigator who can surmount obstacles.
+From Tewkesbury up to Evesham there is plain sailing. Above Evesham
+there are occasional barriers. At Stratford there is an abrupt pause
+at Lucy's mill, and your boat must be taken ashore, dragged a little
+way over the meadow, and launched again. Lucy's mill is just south of
+the Shakespeare church, and from this point up to Clopton's bridge the
+river is broad. Here the boat-races are rowed, almost every year. Here
+the stream ripples against the pleasure-ground called the Bancroft,
+skirts the gardens of the Shakespeare Memorial, glides past the lovely
+lawns of Avonbank,--once the home of that noble public benefactor and
+fine Shakespearean scholar, Charles Edward Flower,--and breaks upon
+the retaining wall of the churchyard, crowned with the high and
+thick-leaved elms that nod and whisper over Shakespeare's dust. The
+town lies on the left or west bank of the Avon, as you ascend the river
+looking northward. On the right or east bank there is a wide stretch of
+meadow. To float along here in the gloaming, when the bats are winging
+their "cloistered flight," when great flocks of starlings are flying
+rapidly over, when "the crow makes wing to the rooky wood," when the
+water is as smooth as a mirror of burnished steel, and equally the
+grasses and flowers upon the banks and the stately trees and the gray,
+solemn, and beautiful church are reflected deep in the lucid stream, is
+an experience of thoughtful pleasure that sinks deep into the heart
+and will never be forgotten. You do not know Stratford till you know
+the Avon.
+
+[Illustration: _Clopton Bridge._]
+
+From Clopton's bridge upward the river winds capriciously between
+banks that are sometimes fringed with willows and sometimes bordered
+with grassy meadows or patches of woodland or cultivated lawns,
+enclosing villas that seem the chosen homes of all this world can
+give of loveliness and peace. The course is now entirely clear for
+several miles. Not till you pass the foot of Alveston village does any
+obstacle present itself; but there, as well as a little further on,
+by Hatton Rock, the stream runs shallow and the current becomes very
+swift, dashing over sandy banks and great masses of tangled grass and
+weeds. These are "the rapids," and through these the mariner must make
+his way by adroit steering and a vigorous and expert use of oars and
+boat-hooks. The Avon now is bowered by tall trees, and upon the height
+that it skirts you see the house of Ryon Hill,--celebrated in the novel
+of _Asphodel_, by Miss Braddon. This part of the river, closed in from
+the world and presenting in each direction twinkling vistas of sun and
+shadow, is especially lovely. Here, in a quiet hour, the creatures that
+live along these shores will freely show themselves and their busy
+ways. The water-rat comes out of his hole and nibbles at the reeds or
+swims sturdily across the stream. The moor-hen flutters out of her
+nest, among the long, green rushes, and skims from bank to bank. The
+nimble little wagtail flashes through the foliage. The squirrel leaps
+among the boughs, and the rabbit scampers into the thicket. Sometimes
+a kingfisher, with his shining azure shield, pauses for a moment
+among the gnarled roots upon the brink. Sometimes a heron, disturbed in
+her nest, rises suddenly upon her great wings and soars grandly away.
+Once, rowing down this river at nearly midnight, I surprised an otter
+and heard the splash of his precipitate retreat. The ghost of an old
+gypsy, who died by suicide upon this wooded shore, is said to haunt the
+neighbouring crag; but this, like all other ghosts that ever I came
+near, eluded equally my vision and my desire. But it is a weird spot at
+night.
+
+[Illustration: _Charlecote, from the Terrace._]
+
+Near Alveston mill you must drag your boat over a narrow strip of land
+and launch her again for Charlecote. Now once more this delicious
+water-way is broad and fine. As it sweeps past a stately, secluded
+home, once that of the ancient family of Peers, toward the Wellesbourne
+Road, a great bed of cultivated white water-lilies [hitherto they have
+all been yellow] adorns it, and soon there are glimpses of the deer
+that browse or prance or slumber beneath the magnificent oaks and elms
+and limes and chestnuts of Charlecote Park. No view of Charlecote can
+compare with the view of it that is obtained from the river; and if its
+proprietor values its reputation for beauty he ought to be glad that
+lovers of the beautiful sometimes have an opportunity to see it from
+this point. The older wing, with its oriel window and quaint belfry, is
+of a peculiar, mellow red, relieved against bright green ivy, to which
+only the brush of a painter could do justice. Nothing more delicious,
+in its way, is to be found; at least, the only piece of architecture
+in this region that excels it in beauty of colour is the ancient
+house of Compton-Wynyate; but that is a marvel of loveliness, the gem
+of Warwickshire, and, in romantic quaintness, it surpasses all its
+fellows. The towers of the main building of Charlecote are octagon, and
+a happy alternation of thin and slender with thick, truncated turrets
+much enhances the effect of quaintness in this grave and opulent
+edifice. A walled terrace, margined with urns and blazing with flowers
+of gold and crimson, extends from the river front to the waterside, and
+terminates in a broad flight of stone steps, at the foot of which are
+moored the barges of the house of Lucy. No spectacle could suggest more
+of aristocratic state and austere magnificence than this sequestered
+edifice does, standing there, silent, antique, venerable, gorgeous,
+surrounded by its vast, thick-wooded park, and musing, as it has done
+for hundreds of years, on the silver Avon that murmurs at its base.
+Close by there is a lovely waterfall, over which some little tributary
+of the river descends in a fivefold wave of shimmering crystal, wafting
+a music that is heard in every chamber of the house and in all the
+fields and woodlands round about. It needs the sun to bring out the
+rich colours of Charlecote, but once when I saw it from the river a
+storm was coming on, and vast masses of black and smoke-coloured cloud
+were driving over it, in shapeless blocks and jagged streamers, while
+countless frightened birds were whirling above it; and presently, when
+the fierce lightning flashed across the heavens and a deluge of rain
+descended and beat upon it, a more romantic sight was never seen.
+
+[Illustration: _The Abbey Mills, Tewkesbury._]
+
+Above Charlecote the Avon grows narrow for a space, and after you pass
+under Hampton Lucy bridge your boat is much entangled in river grass
+and much impeded by whirls and eddies of the shallowing stream. There
+is another mill at Hampton Lucy, and a little way beyond the village
+your further progress upward is stopped by a waterfall,--beyond which,
+however, and accessible by the usual expedient of dragging the boat
+over the land, a noble reach of the river is disclosed, stretching
+away toward Warwick, where the wonderful Castle, and sweet St. Mary's
+tower, and Leicester's hospital, and the cosy Warwick Arms await your
+coming,--with mouldering Kenilworth and majestic Stoneleigh Abbey
+reserved to lure you still further afield. But the scene around Hampton
+Lucy is not one to be quickly left. There the meadows are rich and
+green and fragrant. There the large trees give grateful shade and make
+sweet music in the summer wind. There, from the ruddy village, thin
+spires of blue smoke curl upward through the leaves and seem to tell
+of comfort and content beneath. At a little distance the gray tower of
+the noble church,--an edifice of peculiar and distinctive majesty, and
+one well worthy of the exceptional beauty enshrined within it,--rears
+itself among the elms. Close by the sleek and indolent cattle are
+couched upon the cool sod, looking at you with large, soft, lustrous,
+indifferent eyes. The waterfall sings on, with its low melancholy
+plaint, while sometimes the silver foam of it is caught up and whirled
+away by the breeze. The waves sparkle on the running stream, and the
+wildflowers, in gay myriads, glance and glimmer on the velvet shore.
+And so, as the sun is setting and the rooks begin to fly homeward, you
+breathe the fragrant air from Scarbank and look upon a veritable place
+that Shakespeare may have had in mind when he wrote his line of endless
+melody--
+
+ "I know a bank where the wild thyme blows."[41]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+RAMBLES IN ARDEN
+
+
+Stratford-upon-Avon, August 27, 1889.--Among the many charming rambles
+that may be enjoyed in the vicinity of Stratford, the ramble to
+Wootton-Wawen and Henley-in-Arden is not least delightful. Both those
+places are on the Birmingham road; the former six miles, the latter
+eight miles, from Stratford. When you stand upon the bridge at Wootton
+you are only one hundred miles from London, but you might be in a
+wilderness a thousand miles from any city, for in all the slumberous
+scene around you there is no hint of anything but solitude and peace.
+Close by a cataract tumbles over the rocks and fills the air with
+music. Not far distant rises the stately front of Wootton Hall, an old
+manor-house, surrounded with green lawns and bowered by majestic elms,
+which has always been a Roman Catholic abode, and which is never leased
+to any but Roman Catholic tenants. A cosy, gabled house, standing among
+trees and shrubs a little way from the roadside, is the residence of
+the priest of this hamlet,--an antiquarian and a scholar, of ample
+acquirements and fine talent. Across the meadows, in one direction,
+peers forth a fine specimen of the timbered cottage of ancient
+times,--the black beams conspicuous upon a white surface of plaster.
+Among the trees, in another direction, appears the great gray tower of
+Wootton-Wawen church, a venerable pile and one in which, by means of
+the varying orders of its architecture, you may, perhaps, trace the
+whole ecclesiastical history of England. The approach to that church
+is through a green lane and a wicket-gate, and when you come near to
+it you find that it is surrounded with many graves, some marked and
+some unmarked, on all of which the long grass waves in rank luxuriance
+and whispers softly in the summer breeze. The place seems deserted.
+Not a human creature is anywhere visible, and the only sound that
+breaks the stillness of this August afternoon is the cawing of a few
+rooks in the lofty tops of the neighbouring elms. The actual life of
+all places, when you come to know it well, proves to be, for the most
+part, conventional, commonplace, and petty. Human beings, with here and
+there an exception, are dull and tedious, each resembling the other,
+and each needlessly laborious to increase that resemblance. In this
+respect all parts of the world are alike,--and therefore the happiest
+traveller is he who keeps mostly alone, and uses his eyes, and communes
+with his own thoughts. The actual life of Wootton is, doubtless, much
+like that of other hamlets,--a "noiseless tenor" of church squabbles,
+village gossip, and discontented grumbling, diversified with feeding
+and drinking, lawn tennis, matrimony, birth, and death. But as I looked
+around upon this group of nestling cottages, these broad meadows,
+green and cool in the shadow of the densely mantled trees, and
+this ancient church, gray and faded with antiquity, slowly crumbling to
+pieces amid the fresh and everlasting vitality of nature, I felt that
+surely here might at last be discovered a permanent haven of refuge
+from the incessant platitude and triviality of ordinary experience and
+the strife and din of the world.
+
+[Illustration: WOOTTON-WAWEN CHURCH]
+
+Wootton-Wawen church is one of the numerous Roman Catholic buildings of
+about the eleventh century that still survive in this realm, devoted
+now to Protestant worship. It has been partly restored, but most of it
+is in a state of decay, and if this be not soon arrested the building
+will become a ruin. Its present vicar, the Rev. Francis T. Bramston,
+is making vigorous efforts to interest the public in the preservation
+of this ancient monument, and those efforts ought to succeed. A more
+valuable ecclesiastical relic it would be difficult to find, even
+in this rich region of antique treasures, the heart of England. Its
+sequestered situation and its sweetly rural surroundings invest it with
+peculiar beauty. It is associated, furthermore, with names that are
+stately in English history and honoured in English literature,--with
+Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, whose sister reposes in its
+ancient vaults, and with William Somerville [1692-1742], the poet who
+wrote _The Chase_. It was not until I actually stood upon his tombstone
+that my attention was directed to the name of that old author, and to
+the presence of his relics in this remote and lonely place. Somerville
+lived and died at Edston Hall, near Wootton-Wawen, and was famous in
+his day as a Warwickshire squire and huntsman. His grave is in the
+chancel of the church, the following excellent epitaph, written by
+himself, being inscribed upon the plain blue stone that covers it:--
+
+ H. S. E.
+ OBIIT 17. JULY. 1742.
+ GULIELMUS SOMERVILE. ARM.
+ SI QUID IN ME BONI COMPERTUM HABEAS,
+ IMITATE.
+ SI QUID MALI, TOTIS VIRIBUS EVITA.
+ CHRISTO CONFIDE,
+ ET SCIAS TE QUOQUE FRAGILEM ESSE
+ ET MORTALEM.
+
+Such words have a meaning that sinks deep into the heart when they are
+read upon the gravestone that covers the poet's dust. They came to me
+like a message from an old friend who had long been waiting for the
+opportunity of this solemn greeting and wise counsel. Another epitaph
+written by Somerville,--and one that shows equally the kindness of his
+heart and the quaintness of his character,--appears upon a little,
+low, lichen-covered stone in Wootton-Wawen churchyard, where it
+commemorates his huntsman and butler, Jacob Bocter, who was hurt in the
+hunting-field, and died of this accident:--
+
+ H. S. E.
+ JACOBUS BOCTER.
+ GULIELMO SOMERVILE ARMIGRO
+ PROMUS ET CANIBUS VENATICIS
+ PRAEPOSITOR
+ DOMI. FORISQUE FIDELIS
+ EQUO INTER VENANDUM CORUENTE
+ ET INTESTINIS GRAVITER COLLISIS
+ POST TRIDUUM DEPLORANDUS.
+ OBIIT
+ 28 DIE JAN.,
+ ANNO DNI 1719.
+ AETAT 38.
+
+[Illustration: _Beaudesert Cross._]
+
+The pilgrim who rambles as far as Wootton-Wawen will surely stroll
+onward to Henley-in-Arden. The whole of that region was originally
+covered by the Forest of Arden[42]--the woods that Shakespeare had
+in mind when he was writing _As You Like It_, a comedy whereof the
+atmosphere, foliage, flowers, scenery, and spirit are purely those
+of his native Warwickshire. Henley, if the observer may judge by the
+numerous inns that fringe its long, straggling, picturesque street,
+must once have been a favourite halting-place for the coaches that
+plied between London and Birmingham. They are mostly disused now, and
+the little town sleeps in the sun and seems forgotten.[43] There is a
+beautiful specimen of the ancient market-cross in its centre,--gray and
+sombre and much frayed by the tooth of time. Close beside Henley, and
+accessible in a walk of a few minutes, is the church of Beaudesert,
+which is one of the most precious of the ecclesiastic gems of England.
+Here you will see architecture of mingled Saxon and Norman,--the
+solid Norman buttress, the castellated tower, the Saxon arch moulded
+in zigzag, which is more ancient than the dog-tooth, and the round,
+compact columns of the early English order. Above the church rises a
+noble mound, upon which, in the middle ages, stood a castle,--probably
+that of Peter de Montfort,--and from which a comprehensive and superb
+view may be obtained, over many miles of verdant meadow and bosky
+dell, interspersed with red-roofed villages from which the smoke of
+the cottage chimneys curls up in thin blue spirals under the gray
+and golden sunset sky. An old graveyard encircles the church, and
+by its orderly disorder,--the quaint, graceful work of capricious
+time,--enhances the charm of its venerable and storied age. There are
+only one hundred and forty-six persons in the parish of Beaudesert. I
+was privileged to speak with the aged rector, the Rev. John Anthony
+Pearson Linskill, and to view the church under his kindly guidance. In
+the ordinary course of nature it is unlikely that we shall ever meet
+again, but his goodness, his benevolent mind, and the charm of his
+artless talk will not be forgotten.[44] My walk that night took me
+miles away,--to Claverdon, and home by Bearley; and all the time it was
+my thought that the best moments of our lives are those in which we are
+touched, chastened, and ennobled by parting and by regret. Nothing is
+said so often as good-by. But, in the lovely words of Cowper,
+
+ "The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
+ Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE STRATFORD FOUNTAIN
+
+
+American interest in Stratford-upon-Avon springs out of a love for the
+works of Shakespeare as profound and passionate as that of the most
+sensitive and reverent of the poet's countrymen. It was the father
+of American literature, Washington Irving, who in modern times made
+the first pilgrimage to that holy land, and set the good example,
+which since has been followed by thousands, of worship at the shrine
+of Shakespeare. It was an American, the alert and expeditious P. T.
+Barnum, who by suddenly proposing to buy the Shakespeare cottage
+and transfer it to America startled the English into buying it for
+the nation. It is, in part, to Americans that Stratford owes the
+Shakespeare Memorial; for while the land on which it stands was given
+by that public-spirited citizen of Stratford, Charles Edward Flower,--a
+sound and reverent Shakespeare scholar, as his acting edition of the
+plays may testify,--and while money to pay for the building of it was
+freely contributed by wealthy residents of Warwickshire, and by men of
+all ranks throughout the kingdom, the gifts and labours of Americans
+were not lacking to that good cause. Edwin Booth was one of the
+earliest contributors to the Memorial fund, and the names of Mr. Herman
+Vezin, Mr. M. D. Conway, Mr. W. H. Reynolds, Mrs. Bateman, and Mrs.
+Louise Chandler Moulton appear in the first list of its subscribers.
+Miss Kate Field worked for its advancement, with remarkable energy and
+practical success. Miss Mary Anderson acted for its benefit, on August
+29, 1885. In the church of the Holy Trinity, where Shakespeare's dust
+is buried, a beautiful stained window, illustrative, scripturally, of
+that solemn epitome of human life which the poet makes in the speech
+of Jaques on the seven ages of man, evinces the practical devotion of
+the American pilgrim; and many a heart has been thrilled with reverent
+joy to see the soft light that streams through its pictured panes fall
+gently on the poet's grave.
+
+Wherever in Stratford you come upon anything associated, even remotely,
+with the name and fame of Shakespeare, there you will find the gracious
+tokens of American homage. The libraries of the Birthplace and of the
+Memorial alike contain gifts of American books. New Place and Anne
+Hathaway's cottage are never omitted from the American traveller's
+round of visitations and duty of practical tribute. The Falcon, with
+its store of relics; the romantic Shakespeare Hotel, with its rambling
+passages, its quaint rooms named after Shakespeare's characters, its
+antique bar parlour, and the rich collection of autographs and pictures
+that has been made by Mrs. Justins; the Grammar School, in which no
+doubt the poet, "with shining morning face" of boyhood, was once a
+pupil; John Marshall's antiquarian workshop, from which so many of
+the best souvenirs of Stratford have proceeded,--a warm remembrance
+of his own quaintness, kindness, and originality being perhaps the
+most precious of them; the Town Hall, adorned with Gainsborough's
+eloquent portrait of Garrick, to which no engraving does justice; the
+Guild chapel; the Clopton bridge; Lucy's mill; the footpath across
+fields and roads to Shottery, bosomed in great elms; and the ancient
+picturesque building, four miles away, at Wilmcote, which was the
+home of Mary Arden, Shakespeare's mother,--each and every one of
+those storied places receives, in turn, the tribute of the wandering
+American, and each repays him a hundredfold in charming suggestiveness
+of association, in high thought, and in the lasting impulse of sweet
+and soothing poetic reverie. At the Red Horse, where Mr. William
+Gardner Colbourne maintains the traditions of old-fashioned English
+hospitality, he finds his home; well pleased to muse and dream in
+Washington Irving's parlour, while the night deepens and the clock in
+the distant tower murmurs drowsily in its sleep. Those who will may
+mock at his enthusiasm. He would not feel it but for the spell that
+Shakespeare's genius has cast upon the world. He ought to be glad and
+grateful that he can feel that spell; and, since he does feel it,
+nothing could be more natural than his desire to signify that he too,
+though born far away from the old home of his race, and separated from
+it by three thousand miles of stormy ocean, has still his part in the
+divine legacy of Shakespeare, the treasure and the glory of the English
+tongue.
+
+[Illustration: _Henry Irving. 1888._]
+
+A noble token of this American sentiment, and a permanent object of
+interest to the pilgrim in Stratford, is supplied by the Jubilee
+gift of a drinking-fountain made to that city by George W. Childs of
+Philadelphia. It never is a surprise to hear of some new instance
+of that good man's constant activity and splendid generosity in
+good works; it is only an accustomed pleasure.[45] With fine-art
+testimonials in the old world as well as at home his name will always
+be honourably associated. A few years ago he presented a superb
+window of stained glass to Westminster Abbey, to commemorate, in
+Poets' Corner, George Herbert and William Cowper. He has since given
+to St. Margaret's church, Westminster, where John Skelton and Sir
+James Harrington [1611-1677] were entombed, and where was buried the
+headless body of Sir Walter Raleigh, a pictorial window commemorative
+of John Milton. His fountain at Stratford was dedicated on October 17,
+1887, with appropriate ceremonies conducted by Sir Arthur Hodgson, of
+Clopton, then mayor, and amid general rejoicing. Henry Irving, the
+leader of the English stage and the most illustrious of English actors
+since the age of Garrick, delivered an address of singular felicity
+and eloquence, and also read a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes. The
+countrymen of Mr. Childs are not less interested in this structure
+than the community that it was intended to honour and benefit. They
+observe with satisfaction and pride that he has made this beneficent,
+beautiful, and opulent offering to a town which, for all of them, is
+hallowed by exalted associations, and for many of them is endeared by
+delightful memories. They sympathise also with the motive and feeling
+that prompted him to offer his gift as one among many memorials of the
+fiftieth year of the reign of Queen Victoria. It is not every man who
+knows how to give with grace, and the good deed is "done double" that
+is done at the right time. Stratford had long been in need of such a
+fountain as Mr. Childs has given, and therefore it satisfies a public
+want, at the same time that it serves a purpose of ornamentation and
+bespeaks and strengthens a bond of international sympathy. Rother
+street, in which the structure stands, is the most considerable open
+place in Stratford, and is situated near the centre of the town, on
+the west side. There, as also at the intersection of High and Bridge
+streets, which are the principal thoroughfares of the city, the
+farmers, at stated intervals, range their beasts and wagons and hold
+a market. It is easy to foresee that Rother, embellished with this
+monument, which combines a convenient clock tower, a place of rest
+and refreshment for man, and commodious drinking-troughs for horses,
+cattle, dogs, and sheep, will soon become the agricultural centre
+of the region.
+
+[Illustration: THE STRATFORD FOUNTAIN]
+
+The base of the monument is made of Peterhead granite; the
+superstructure is of gray stone, from Bolton, Yorkshire. The height of
+the tower is fifty feet. On the north side a stream of water, flowing
+constantly from a bronze spout, falls into a polished granite basin.
+On the south side a door opens into the interior. The decorations
+include sculptures of the arms of Great Britain alternated with the
+eagle and stripes of the American republic. In the second story of the
+tower, lighted by glazed arches, is placed a clock, and on the outward
+faces of the third story appear four dials. There are four turrets
+surrounding a central spire, each surmounted with a gilded vane. The
+inscriptions on the base were devised by Sir Arthur Hodgson, and are
+these:
+
+
+I
+
+ The gift of an American citizen, George W. Childs, of Philadelphia,
+ to the town of Shakespeare, in the Jubilee year
+ of Queen Victoria.
+
+
+II
+
+ In her days every man shall eat, in safety
+ Under his own vine, what he plants; and sing
+ The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.
+ God shall be truly known: and those about her
+ From her shall read the perfect ways of honour,
+ And by those claim their greatness, not by blood.
+
+ _Henry VIII._, ACT V. SCENE 4.
+
+
+III
+
+ Honest water, which ne'er left man i' the mire.
+
+ _Timon of Athens_, ACT I. SCENE 2.
+
+
+IV
+
+ Ten thousand honours and blessings on the bard who has thus gilded the
+ dull realities of life with innocent illusions.--_Washington Irving's
+ Stratford-on-Avon._
+
+Stratford-upon-Avon, fortunate in many things, is especially fortunate
+in being situated at a considerable distance from the main line of
+any railway. Two railroads skirt the town, but both are branches, and
+travel upon them has not yet become too frequent. Stratford, therefore,
+still retains a measure of its ancient isolation, and consequently a
+flavour of quaintness. Antique customs are still prevalent there, and
+odd characters may still be encountered. The current of village gossip
+flows with incessant vigour, and nothing happens in the place that is
+not thoroughly discussed by its inhabitants. An event so important as
+the establishment of the American Fountain would excite great interest
+throughout Warwickshire. It would be pleasant to hear the talk of
+those old cronies who drift into the bar parlour of the Red Horse on
+a Saturday evening, as they comment on the liberal American who has
+thus enriched and beautified their town. The Red Horse circle is but
+one of many in which the name of Childs is spoken with esteem and
+cherished with affection. The present writer has made many visits to
+Stratford and has passed much time there, and he has observed on many
+occasions the admiration and gratitude of the Warwickshire people for
+the American philanthropist. In the library of Charles Edward Flower,
+at Avonbank; in the opulent mansion of Edgar Flower, at the Hill; in
+the lovely home of Alderman Bird; at the hospitable table of Sir
+Arthur Hodgson, in Clopton; and in many other representative places
+he has heard that name spoken, and always with delight and honour.
+Time will only deepen and widen the loving respect with which it is
+hallowed. In England, more than anywhere else on earth, the record of
+good deeds is made permanent, not alone with imperishable symbols, but
+in the hearts of the people. The inhabitants of Warwickshire, guarding
+and maintaining their Stratford Fountain, will not forget by whom it
+was given. Wherever you go, in the British islands, you find memorials
+of the past and of individuals who have done good deeds in their time,
+and you also find that those memorials are respected and preserved.
+Warwickshire abounds with them. Many such emblems might be indicated.
+Each one of them takes its place in the regard and gradually becomes
+entwined with the experience of the whole community. So it will be
+with the Childs Fountain at Stratford. The children trooping home from
+school will drink of it and sport in its shadow, and, reading upon
+its base the name of its founder, will think with pleasure of a good
+man's gift. It stands in the track of travel between Banbury, Shipston,
+Stratford, and Birmingham, and many weary men and horses will pause
+beside it every day, for a moment of refreshment and rest. On festival
+days it will be hung with garlands, while around it the air is glad
+with music. And often in the long, sweet gloaming of the summertimes to
+come the rower on the limpid Avon, that murmurs by the ancient town of
+Shakespeare, will pause with suspended oar to hear its silver chimes.
+If the founder of that fountain had been capable of a selfish thought
+he could have taken no way better or more certain than this for the
+perpetuation of his name in the affectionate esteem of one of the
+loveliest places and one of the most sedate communities in the world.
+
+[Illustration: _Mary Arden's Cottage._]
+
+Autumn in England--and all the country ways of lovely Warwickshire are
+strewn with fallen leaves. But the cool winds are sweet and bracing,
+the dark waters of the Avon, shimmering in mellow sunlight and frequent
+shadow, flow softly past the hallowed church, and the reaped and
+gleaned and empty meadows invite to many a healthful ramble, far and
+wide over the country of Shakespeare. It is a good time to be there.
+Now will the robust pedestrian make his jaunt to Charlecote Park and
+Hampton Lucy, to Stoneleigh Abbey, to Warwick and Kenilworth, to Guy's
+Cliff, with its weird avenue of semi-blasted trees, to the Blacklow
+Hill,--where sometimes at still midnight the shuddering peasant hears
+the ghostly funeral bell of Sir Piers Gaveston sounding ruefully from
+out the black and gloomy woods,--and to many another historic haunt and
+high poetic shrine. All the country-side is full of storied resorts and
+cosey nooks and comfortable inns. But neither now nor hereafter will it
+be otherwise than grateful and touching to such an explorer of haunted
+Warwickshire to see, among the emblems of poetry and romance which are
+its chief glory, this new token of American sentiment and friendship,
+the Fountain of Stratford.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+BOSWORTH FIELD
+
+
+Warwick, August 29, 1889.--It has long been the conviction of the
+present writer that the character of King Richard the Third has been
+distorted and maligned by the old historians from whose authority
+the accepted view of it is derived. He was, it is certain, a superb
+soldier, a wise statesman, a judicious legislator, a natural ruler of
+men, and a prince most accomplished in music and the fine arts and in
+the graces of social life. Some of the best laws that ever were enacted
+in England were enacted during his reign. His title to the throne of
+England was absolutely clear, as against the Earl of Richmond, and but
+for the treachery of some among his followers he would have prevailed
+in the contest upon Bosworth Field, and would have vindicated and
+maintained that title over all opposition. He lost the battle, and he
+was too great a man to survive the ruin of his fortunes. He threw away
+his life in the last mad charge upon Richmond that day, and when once
+the grave had closed over him, and his usurping cousin had seized the
+English crown, it naturally must have become the easy as well as the
+politic business of history to blacken his character. England was never
+ruled by a more severe monarch than the austere, crafty, avaricious
+Henry the Seventh, and it is certain that no word in praise of his
+predecessor could have been publicly said in England during Henry's
+reign: neither would it have been wholly safe for anybody to speak for
+Richard and the House of York, in the time of Henry the Eighth, the
+cruel Mary, or the illustrious Elizabeth. The drift, in fact, was all
+the other way. The _Life of Richard the Third_, by Sir Thomas More,
+is the fountain-head of the other narratives of his career, and there
+can be no doubt that More, who as a youth had lived at Canterbury, in
+the palace of Archbishop Morton, derived his views of Richard from
+that prelate,--to whose hand indeed, the essential part of the _Life_
+has been attributed. "Morton is fled to Richmond." He was Bishop of
+Ely when he deserted the king, and Henry the Seventh rewarded him by
+making him Archbishop of Canterbury. No man of the time was so little
+likely as Morton to take an unprejudiced view of Richard the Third. It
+is the Morton view that has become history. The world still looks at
+Richard through the eyes of his victorious foe. Moreover, the Morton
+view has been stamped indelibly upon the imagination and the credulity
+of mankind by the overwhelming and irresistible genius of Shakespeare,
+who wrote _Richard the Third_ in the reign of the granddaughter of
+Henry the Seventh, and who, aside from the safeguard of discretion,
+saw dramatic possibilities in the man of dark passions and deeds that
+he could not have seen in a more human and a more virtuous monarch.
+Goodness is generally monotonous. "The low sun makes the colour." It
+is not to be supposed that Richard was a model man; but there are good
+reasons for thinking that he was not so black as his enemies painted
+him; and, good or bad, he is one of the most fascinating personalities
+that history and literature have made immortal. It was with no common
+emotion, therefore, that I stood upon the summit of Ambien Hill and
+looked downward over the plain where Richard fought his last fight and
+went gloriously to his death.
+
+[Illustration: BOSWORTH FIELD]
+
+The battle of Bosworth Field was fought on August 22, 1485. More
+than four hundred years have passed since then: yet except for the
+incursions of a canal and a railway the aspect of that plain is but
+little changed from what it was when Richard surveyed it, on that gray
+and sombre morning when he beheld the forces of Richmond advancing past
+the marsh and knew that the crisis of his life had come. The earl was
+pressing forward that day from Tamworth and Atherstone, which are in
+the northern part of Warwickshire,--the latter being close upon the
+Leicestershire border. His course was a little to the southeast, and
+Richard's forces, facing northwesterly, confronted their enemies from
+the summit of a long and gently sloping hill that extends for several
+miles, about east and west, from Market Bosworth on the right, to
+the vicinity of Dadlington on the left. The king's position had been
+chosen with an excellent judgment that has more than once, in modern
+times, elicited the admiration of accomplished soldiers. His right
+wing, commanded by Lord Stanley, rested on Bosworth. His left was
+protected by a marsh, impassable to the foe. Sir William Stanley
+commanded the left and had his headquarters in Dadlington. Richard
+rode in the centre. Far to the right he saw the clustered houses and
+the graceful spire of Bosworth, and far to the left his glance rested
+on the little church of Dadlington. Below and in front of him all was
+open field, and all across that field waved the banners and sounded the
+trumpets of rebellion and defiance. It is easy to imagine the glowing
+emotions,--the implacable resentment, the passionate fury, and the
+deadly purpose of slaughter and vengeance,--with which the imperious
+and terrible monarch gazed on his approaching foes. They show, in a
+meadow, a little way over the crest of the hill, where it is marked and
+partly covered now by a pyramidal structure of gray stones, suitably
+inscribed with a few commemorative lines in Latin, a spring of water
+at which Richard paused to quench his thirst, before he made that last
+desperate charge on Radmore heath, when at length he knew himself
+betrayed and abandoned, and felt that his only hope lay in killing
+the Earl of Richmond with his own hand. The fight at Bosworth was not
+a long one. Both the Stanleys deserted the king's standard early in
+the day. It was easy for them, posted as they were, to wheel their
+forces into the rear of the rebel army, at the right and at the left.
+Nothing then remained for Richard but to rush down upon the centre,
+where he saw the banner of Richmond,--borne, at that moment, by Sir
+John Cheyney,--and to crush the treason at its head. It must have been
+a charge of tremendous impetuosity. It bore the fiery king a long way
+forward on the level plain. He struck down Cheyney, a man of almost
+gigantic stature. He killed Sir William Brandon. He plainly saw the
+Earl of Richmond, and came almost near enough to encounter him, when
+a score of swords were buried in his body, and, hacked almost into
+pieces, he fell beneath heaps of the slain. The place of his death
+is now the junction of three country roads, one leading northwest to
+Shenton, one southwest to Dadlington, and one bearing away easterly
+toward Bosworth. A little brook, called Sandy Ford, flows underneath
+the road, and there is a considerable coppice in the field at the
+junction. Upon the peaceful sign-board appear the names of Dadlington
+and Hinckley. Not more than five hundred feet distant, to the eastward,
+rises the embankment of a branch of the Midland Railway, from Nuneaton
+to Leicester, while at about the same distance to the westward rises
+the similar embankment of a canal. No monument has been erected to
+mark the spot where Richard the Third was slain. They took up his
+mangled body, threw it across a horse, and carried it into the town
+of Leicester, and there it was buried, in the church of the Gray
+Friars,--also the sepulchre of Cardinal Wolsey,--now a ruin. The only
+commemorative mark upon the battlefield is the pyramid at the well, and
+that stands at a long distance from the place of the king's fall. I
+tried to picture the scene of his final charge and his frightful death,
+as I stood there upon the hillside. Many little slate-coloured clouds
+were drifting across a pale blue sky. A cool summer breeze was sighing
+in the branches of the neighbouring trees. The bright green sod was all
+alive with the sparkling yellow of the colt's-foot and the soft red of
+the clover. Birds were whistling from the coppice near by, and overhead
+the air was flecked with innumerable black pinions of fugitive rooks
+and starlings. It did not seem possible that a sound of war or a deed
+of violence could ever have intruded to break the Sabbath stillness of
+that scene of peace.
+
+The water of King Richard's Well is a shallow pool, choked now with
+moss and weeds. The inscription, which was written by Dr. Samuel Parr,
+of Hatton, reads as follows:
+
+ AQVA. EX. HOC. PVTEO. HAVSTA
+ SITIM. SEDAVIT.
+ RICHARDVS. TERTIVS. REX. ANGLIAE
+ CVM HENRICO. COMITE DE RICHMONDIA
+ ACERRIME. ATQVE. INGENTISSIME. PRAELIANS
+ ET. VITA. PARITER. AC. SCEPTRO
+ ANTE NOCTEM. CARITVRUS
+ II KAL. SEP. A.D. M.C.C.C.C.LXXXV.
+
+There are five churches in the immediate neighbourhood of Bosworth
+Field, all of which were in one way or another associated with that
+memorable battle. Ratcliffe Culey church has a low square tower and
+a short stone spire, and there is herbage growing upon its tower and
+its roof. It is a building of the fourteenth century, one mark of this
+period being its perpendicular stone font, an octagon in shape, and
+much frayed by time. In three arches of its chancel, on the south side,
+the sculpture shows tri-foliated forms, of exceptional beauty. In the
+east window there are fragments of old glass, rich in colour and quaint
+and singular. The churchyard is full of odd gravestones, various in
+shape and irregular in position. An ugly slate-stone is much used in
+Leicestershire for monuments to the dead. Most of those stones record
+modern burials, the older graves being unmarked. The grass grows thick
+and dense all over the churchyard. Upon the church walls are several
+fine specimens of those mysterious ray and circle marks which have long
+been a puzzle to the archæological explorer. Such marks are usually
+found in the last bay but one, on the south side of the nave, toward
+the west end of the church. On Ratcliffe Culey church they consist
+of central points with radial lines, like a star, but these are not
+enclosed, as often happens, with circle lines. Various theories have
+been advanced by antiquarians to account for these designs. Probably
+those marks were cut upon the churches, by the pious monks of old, as
+emblems of eternity and of the Sun of Righteousness.
+
+Shenton Hall (1629), long and still the seat of the Woollastons, stood
+directly in the path of the combatants at Bosworth Field, and the
+fury of the battle must have raged all around it. The Hall has been
+recased, and, except for its old gatehouse and semi-octagon bays, which
+are of the Tudor style, it presents a modern aspect. Its windows open
+toward Radmore heath and Ambien Hill, the scene of the conflict between
+the Red Rose and the White. The church has been entirely rebuilt,--a
+handsome edifice, of crucial form, containing costly pews of old
+oak, together with interesting brasses and busts, taken from the old
+church which it has replaced. The brasses commemorate Richard Coate
+and Joyce his wife, and Richard Everard and his wife, and are dated
+1556, 1597, and 1616. The busts are of white marble, dated 1666, and
+are commemorative of William Woollaston and his wife, once lord and
+lady of the manor of Shenton. It was the rule, in building churches,
+that one end should face to the east and the other to the west, but
+you frequently find an old church that is set at a slightly different
+angle,--that, namely, at which the sun arose on the birthday of the
+saint to whom the church was dedicated. The style of large east and
+west windows, with trefoil or other ornamentation in the heads of the
+arches, came into vogue about the time of Edward the First.
+
+Dadlington was Richard's extreme left on the day of the battle, and
+Bosworth was his extreme right. These positions were intrusted to the
+Stanleys, both of whom betrayed their king. Sir William Stanley's
+headquarters were at Dadlington, and traces of the earthworks then
+thrown up there, by Richard's command, are still visible. Dadlington
+church has almost crumbled to pieces, and it is to be restored. It
+is a diminutive structure, with a wooden tower, stuccoed walls, and
+a tiled roof, and it stands in a graveyard full of scattered mounds
+and slate-stone monuments. It was built in Norman times, and although
+still used it has long been little better than a ruin. One of the
+bells in its tower is marked "Thomas Arnold fecit, 1763,"--but this
+is comparatively a modern touch. The church contains two pointed
+arches, and across its roof are five massive oak beams, almost black
+with age. The plaster ceiling has fallen, in several places, so that
+patches of laths are visible in the roof. The pews are square, box-like
+structures, made of oak and very old. The altar is a plain oak table,
+supported on carved legs, covered with a cloth. On the west wall
+appears a tablet, inscribed "Thomas Eames, church-warden, 1773." Many
+human skeletons, arranged in regular tiers, were found in Dadlington
+churchyard, when a much-beloved clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Bourne, was
+buried, in 1881; and it is believed that those are remains of men who
+fell at Bosworth Field. The only inn at this lonely place bears the
+quaint name of The Dog and Hedgehog.
+
+The following queer epitaph appears upon a gravestone in Dadlington
+churchyard. It is Thomas Bolland, 1765, who thus expresses his mind, in
+mortuary reminiscence:
+
+ "I lov'd my Honour'd Parents dear,
+ I lov'd my Wife's and Children dear,
+ And hope in Heaven to meet them there.
+ I lov'd my Brothers & Sisters too,
+ And hope I shall them in Heaven view.
+ I lov'd my Vncle's, Aunt's, & Cousin's too
+ And I pray God to give my children grace the same to do."
+
+Stoke Golding church was built in the fourteenth century. It stands
+now, a gray and melancholy relic of other days, strange and forlorn yet
+august and stately, in a little brick village, the streets of which
+are paved, like those of a city, with blocks of stone. It is regarded
+as one of the best specimens extant of the decorative style of early
+English ecclesiastical architecture. It has a fine tower and spire, and
+it consists of nave, chantry, and south aisle. There is a perforated
+parapet on one side, but not on the other. The walls of the nave and
+the chancel are continuous. The pinnacles, though decayed, show that
+they must have been beautifully carved. One of the decorative pieces
+upon one of them is a rabbit with his ears laid back. Lichen and grass
+are growing on the tower and on the walls. The roof is of oak, the
+mouldings of the arches are exceptionally graceful, and the capitals of
+the five main columns present, in marked diversity, carvings of faces,
+flowers, and leaves. The tomb of the founder is on the north side, and
+the stone pavement is everywhere lettered with inscriptions of burial.
+There is a fine mural brass, bearing the name of Brokesley, 1633,
+and a superb "stocke chest," 1636; and there is a sculptured font,
+of exquisite symmetry. Some of the carving upon the oak roof is more
+grotesque than decorative,--but this is true of most other carving to
+be found in ancient churches; such, for example, as you may see under
+the miserere seats in the chancel of Trinity at Stratford-upon-Avon.
+There was formerly some beautiful old stained glass in the east window
+of Stoke Golding church, but this has disappeared. A picturesque stone
+slab, set upon the church wall outside, arrests attention by its
+pleasing shape, its venerable aspect, and its decayed lettering; the
+date is 1684. Many persons slain at Bosworth Field were buried in Stoke
+Golding churchyard, and over their nameless graves the long grass is
+waving, in indolent luxuriance and golden light. So Nature hides waste
+and forgets pain. Near to this village is Crown Hill, where the crown
+of England was taken from a hawthorn bush, whereon it had been cast,
+in the frenzied confusion of defeat, after the battle of Bosworth was
+over and the star of King Richard had been quenched in death. Crown
+Hill is a green meadow now, without distinguishing feature, except that
+two large trees, each having a double trunk, are growing in the middle
+of it. Not distant from this historic spot stands Higham-on-the-Hill,
+where there is a fine church, remarkable for its Norman tower. From
+this village the view is magnificent,--embracing all that section of
+Leicestershire which is thus haunted with memories of King Richard and
+of the carnage that marked the final conflict of the white and red
+roses.
+
+[Illustration: _Higham-on-the-Hill._]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE HOME OF DR. JOHNSON
+
+
+Lichfield, Staffordshire, July 31, 1890.--To a man of letters there is
+no name in the long annals of English literature more interesting and
+significant than the name of Samuel Johnson. It has been truly said
+that no other man was ever subjected to such a light as Boswell threw
+upon Johnson, and that few other men could have endured it so well.
+He was in many ways noble, but of all men of letters he is especially
+noble as the champion of literature. He vindicated the profession of
+letters. He lived by his pen, and he taught the great world, once
+for all, that it is honourable so to live. That lesson was needed in
+the England of his period; and from that period onward the literary
+vocation has steadily been held in higher esteem than it enjoyed up to
+that time. The reader will not be surprised that one of the humblest
+of his followers should linger for a while in the ancient town that is
+glorified by association with his illustrious name, or should write a
+word of fealty and homage in the birthplace of Dr. Johnson.
+
+[Illustration: _Dr. Johnson._]
+
+Lichfield is a cluster of rather dingy streets and of red-brick and
+stucco buildings, lying in a vale, a little northward from Birmingham,
+diversified by a couple of artificial lakes and glorified by one of
+the loveliest churches in Europe. Without its church the town would be
+nothing. Lichfield cathedral, although an ancient structure,--dating
+back, indeed, to the early part of the twelfth century,--has been so
+sorely battered, and so considerably "restored," that it presents the
+aspect of a building almost modern. The denotements of antiquity,
+however, are not entirely absent from it, and it is not less venerable
+than majestic. No one of the cathedrals of England presents a more
+beautiful front. The multitudinous statues of saints and kings that are
+upon it create an impression of royal opulence. The carving upon the
+recesses of the great doorways on the north and west is of astonishing
+variety and loveliness. The massive doors of dark oak, fretted with
+ironwork of rare delicacy, are impressive and are exceptionally
+suitable for such an edifice. Seven of the large gothic windows in the
+chancel are filled with genuine old glass,--not, indeed, the glass they
+originally contained, for that was smashed by the Puritan fanatics,
+but a great quantity [no less than at least three hundred and forty
+pieces, each about twenty-two inches square], made in Germany, in the
+early part of the sixteenth century, when the art of staining glass was
+at its summit of skill. This treasure was given to the cathedral by a
+liberal friend, Sir Brooke Boothby, who had obtained it by purchase, in
+1802, from the dissolved Abbey of Herckenrode. No such colour as that
+old glass presents can be seen in the glass that is manufactured now.
+It is imitated indeed, but it does not last. The subjects portrayed in
+those sumptuous windows are mostly scriptural, but the centre window on
+the north side of the chancel is devoted to portraits of noblemen, one
+of them being Errard de la Marck, who was enthroned Bishop of Liège in
+1505, and who, toward the end of his stormy life, adopted the old Roman
+motto, comprehensive and final, which, a little garbled, appears in the
+glass beneath his heraldic arms:
+
+ "Decipimus votis; et tempore fallimur;
+ Et Mors deridet curas; anxia vita nihil."
+
+[Illustration: _Lichfield Cathedral--West Front._]
+
+The father of the illustrious Joseph Addison was Dean of Lichfield from
+1688 to 1703, and his remains are buried in the ground, near the west
+door of the church. The stately Latin epitaph was written by his son.
+This and several other epitaphs here attract the interested attention
+of literary students. A tablet on the north wall, in the porch,
+commemorates the courage and sagacity of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who
+introduced into England the practice of inoculation for the small-pox.
+Anna Seward, the poet, who died in 1809, aged sixty-six, and who was
+one of the friends of Dr. Johnson, was buried and is commemorated
+here, and the fact that she placed a tablet here, in memory of her
+father, is celebrated in sixteen eloquent and felicitous lines by Sir
+Walter Scott. The father was a canon of Lichfield, and died in 1790.
+The reader of Boswell will not fail to remark the epitaph on Gilbert
+Walmesley, once registrar of the ecclesiastical court of Lichfield,
+and one of Dr. Johnson's especial friends. Of Chappel Woodhouse it is
+significantly said, upon his memorial stone, that he was "lamented
+most by those who knew him best." Here the pilgrim sees two of the
+best works of Sir Francis Chantrey,--one called The Sleeping Children,
+erected in 1817, in memory of two young daughters of the Rev. William
+Robinson; the other a kneeling figure of Bishop Ryder, who died in
+1836. The former was one of the earliest triumphs of Chantrey,--an
+exquisite semblance of innocence and heavenly purity,[46]--and the
+latter was his last. Near by is placed one of the most sumptuous
+monuments in England, a recumbent statue, done by the master-hand of
+Watts, the painter, representing Bishop Lonsdale, who died in 1867.
+This figure, in which the modelling is very beautiful and expressive,
+rests upon a bed of marble and alabaster. In Chantrey's statue of
+Bishop Ryder, which seems no effigy but indeed the living man, there
+is marvellous perfection of drapery,--the marble having the effect
+of flowing silk. Here also, in the south transept, is the urn of
+the Gastrells, formerly of Stratford-upon-Avon, to whom was due the
+destruction [1759] of the house of New Place in which Shakespeare died.
+No mention of the Rev. Gastrell occurs in the epitaph, but copious
+eulogium is lavished on his widow, both in verse and prose, and she
+must indeed have been a good woman, if the line is true which describes
+her as "A friend to want when each false friend withdrew." Her chief
+title to remembrance, however, like that of her husband, is an
+unhallowed association with one of the most sacred of literary shrines.
+In 1776 Johnson, accompanied by Boswell, visited Lichfield, and Boswell
+records that they dined with Mrs. Gastrell and her sister Mrs. Aston.
+The Rev. Gastrell was then dead. "I was not informed till afterward,"
+says Boswell, "that Mrs. Gastrell's husband was the clergyman who,
+while he lived at Stratford-upon-Avon, with Gothic barbarity cut down
+Shakespeare's mulberry-tree, and as Dr. Johnson told me, did it to
+vex his neighbours. His lady, I have reason to believe, on the same
+authority, participated in the guilt of what the enthusiasts of our
+immortal bard deem almost a species of sacrilege." The destruction
+of the house followed close upon that of the tree, and to both their
+deaths the lady was doubtless accessory.
+
+[Illustration: _Lichfield Cathedral--West Front, Central Doorway._]
+
+Upon the ledge of a casement on the east side of the chancel, separated
+by the central lancet of a threefold window, stand the marble busts of
+Samuel Johnson and David Garrick. Side by side they went through life;
+side by side their ashes repose in the great abbey at Westminster;
+and side by side they are commemorated here. Both the busts were made
+by Westmacott, and obviously each is a portrait. The head of Johnson
+appears without his customary wig. The colossal individuality of the
+man plainly declares itself, in form and pose, in every line of the
+eloquent face, and in the superb dignity of the figure and the action.
+This work was based on a cast taken after death, and this undoubtedly
+is Johnson's self. The head is massive yet graceful, denoting a
+compact brain and great natural refinement of intellect. The brow is
+indicative of uncommon sweetness. The eyes are finely shaped. The nose
+is prominent, long, and slightly aquiline, with wide and sensitive
+nostrils. The mouth is large, and the lips are slightly parted, as if
+in speech. Prodigious perceptive faculties are shown in the sculpture
+of the forehead,--a feature that is characteristic, in even a greater
+degree, of the bust of Garrick. The total expression of the countenance
+is benignant, yet troubled and rueful. It is a thoughtful and venerable
+face, and yet it is the passionate face of a man who has passed through
+many storms of self-conflict and been much ravaged by spiritual pain.
+The face of Garrick, on the contrary, is eager, animated, triumphant,
+happy, showing a nature of absolute simplicity, a sanguine temperament,
+and a mind that tempests may have ruffled but never convulsed. Garrick
+kept his "storm and stress" for his tragic performances; there was no
+particle of it in his personal experience. It was good to see those
+old friends thus associated in the beautiful church that they knew
+and loved in the sweet days when their friendship had just begun and
+their labours and their honours were all before them. I placed myself
+where, during the service, I could look upon both the busts at once;
+and presently, in the deathlike silence, after the last response of
+evensong had died away, I could well believe that those familiar
+figures were kneeling beside me, as so often they must have knelt
+beneath this glorious and venerable roof: and for one worshipper the
+beams of the westering sun, that made a solemn splendour through the
+church, illumined visions no mortal eyes could see.
+
+Beneath the bust of Johnson, upon a stone slab affixed to the wall,
+appears this inscription:
+
+ The friends of SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D., a native of Lichfield, erected
+ this monument as a tribute of respect to the memory of a man of
+ extensive learning, a distinguished moral writer and a sincere
+ Christian. He died the 13th of December, 1784, aged 75 years.
+
+A similar stone beneath the bust of Garrick is inscribed as follows:
+
+ Eva Maria, relict of DAVID GARRICK, Esq., caused this monument to be
+ erected to the memory of her beloved husband, who died the 20th of
+ January 1779, aged 63 years. He had not only the amiable qualities
+ of private life, but such astonishing dramatick talents as too well
+ verified the observation of his friend: "His death eclipsed the gayety
+ of nations and impoverished the publick stock of harmless pleasure."
+
+This "observation" is the well-known eulogium of Johnson, who, however
+much he may have growled about Garrick, always loved him and deeply
+mourned for him. These memorials of an author and an actor are not
+rendered the more impressive by being surmounted, as at present they
+are, in Lichfield cathedral, with old battle-flags,--commemorative
+souvenirs of the 80th Regiment, Staffordshire volunteers,--honourable
+and interesting relics in their place, but inappropriate to the
+effigies of Johnson and Garrick.
+
+[Illustration: _House in which Johnson was born._]
+
+The house in which Johnson was born stands at the corner of Market
+street and Breadmarket street, facing the little market-place of
+Lichfield. It is an antiquated building, three stories in height,
+having a long, peaked roof. The lower story is recessed, so that the
+entrance is sheltered by a pent. Its two doors,--for the structure
+now consists of two tenements,--are approached by low stone steps,
+guarded by an iron rail. There are ten windows, five in each row, in
+the front of the upper stories. The pent-roof is supported by three
+sturdy pillars. The house has a front of stucco. A bill in one of
+the lower windows certifies that now [1890], this house is "To Let."
+Here old Michael Johnson kept his bookshop, in the days of good Queen
+Anne, and from this door young Samuel Johnson went forth to his school
+and his play. The whole various, pathetic, impressive story of his
+long, laborious, sturdy, beneficent life drifts through your mind
+as you stand at that threshold and conjure up the pictures of the
+past. Opposite to the house, and facing it, is the statue of Johnson,
+presented to Lichfield in 1838 by James Thomas Law, then Chancellor
+of the diocese. On the sides of its massive pedestal are sculptures,
+showing first the boy, borne on his father's shoulders, listening to
+the preaching of Dr. Sacheverell; then the youth, victorious in school,
+carried aloft in triumph by his admiring comrades; and, finally, the
+renowned scholar and author, in the meridian of his greatness, standing
+bareheaded in the market-place of Uttoxeter, doing penance for his
+undutiful refusal, when a lad, to relieve his weary, infirm father,
+in the work of tending the bookstall at that place. Every one knows
+that touching story, and no one who thinks of it when standing here
+will gaze with any feeling but that of reverence, commingled with the
+wish to lead a true and simple life, upon the noble, thoughtful face
+and figure of the great moralist, who now seems to look down with
+benediction upon the scenes of his innocent and happy youth. The
+statue, which is in striking contrast with the humble birthplace,
+points the expressive moral of a splendid career. No tablet has yet
+been placed on the house in which Johnson was born. Perhaps it is not
+needed. Yet surely this place, if any place on earth, ought to be
+preserved and protected as a literary shrine.[47] Johnson was not a
+great creative poet; neither a Shakespeare, a Dryden, a Byron, nor a
+Tennyson; but he was one of the most massive and majestic characters
+in English literature. A superb example of self-conquest and moral
+supremacy, a mine of extensive and diversified learning, an intellect
+remarkable for deep penetration and broad and generally sure grasp of
+the greatest subjects, he exerted, as few men have ever exerted, the
+original, elemental force of genius; and his immortal legacy to his
+fellow-men was an abiding influence for good. The world is better and
+happier because of him, and because of the many earnest characters
+and honest lives that his example has inspired; and this cradle of
+greatness ought to be saved and marked for every succeeding generation
+as long as time endures.
+
+[Illustration: _The Spires of Lichfield._]
+
+One of the interesting features of Lichfield is an inscription that
+vividly recalls the ancient strife of Roundhead and Cavalier, two
+centuries and a half ago. This is found upon a stone scutcheon, set
+in the wall over the door of the house that is No. 24 Dam street, and
+these are its words: "March 2d, 1643, Lord Brooke, a General of the
+Parliament Forces preparing to Besiege the Close of Lichfield, then
+garrisoned For King Charles the First, Received his deathwound on
+the spot Beneath this Inscription, By a shot in the forehead from
+Mr. Dyott, a gentleman who had placed himself on the Battlements of
+the great steeple, to annoy the Besiegers." One of them he must have
+"annoyed" seriously. It was "a long shot, Sir Lucius," for, standing
+on the place of that catastrophe and looking up to "the battlements
+of the great steeple," it seemed to have covered a distance of nearly
+four hundred feet. Other relics of those Roundhead wars were shown in
+the cathedral, in an ancient room now used for the bishop's consistory
+court,--these being two cannon-balls (fourteen-pounders), and the
+ragged and dusty fragments of a shell, that were dug out of the ground
+near the church a few years ago. Many of these practical tokens of
+Puritan zeal have been discovered. Lichfield cathedral close, in the
+time of Bishop Walter de Langton, who died in 1321, was surrounded with
+a wall and fosse, and thereafter, whenever the wars came, it was used
+as a fortification. In the Stuart times it was often besieged. Sir
+John Gell succeeded Lord Brooke, when the latter had been shot by Mr.
+Dyott,--who is said to have been "deaf and dumb," but who certainly was
+not blind. The close was surrendered on March 5, 1643, and thereupon
+the Parliamentary victors, according to their ruthless and brutal
+custom, straightway ravaged the church, tearing the brasses from the
+tombs, breaking the effigies, and utterly despoiling beauty which it
+had taken generations of pious zeal and loving devotion to create.
+The great spire was battered down by those vandals, and in falling
+it wrecked the chapter-house. The noble church, indeed, was made a
+ruin, and so it remained till 1661, when its munificent benefactor,
+Bishop Hackett, began its restoration, now happily almost complete.
+Prince Rupert captured Lichfield close, for the king, in April, 1643,
+and General Lothian recovered it for the Parliament, in the summer of
+1646, after which time it was completely dismantled. Charles the First
+came to this place after the fatal battle of Naseby, and sad enough
+that picturesque, vacillating, shortsighted, beatific aristocrat must
+have been, gazing over the green fields of Lichfield, to know,--as
+surely even he must then have known,--that his cause was doomed, if not
+entirely lost.
+
+It will not take you long to traverse Lichfield, and you may ramble all
+around it through little green lanes between hedgerows. This you will
+do if you are wise, for the walk, especially at evening, is peaceful
+and lovely. The wanderer never gets far away from the cathedral. Those
+three superb spires steadily dominate the scene, and each new view of
+them seems fairer than the last. All around this little city the fields
+are richly green, and many trees diversify the prospect. Pausing to
+rest awhile in the mouldering graveyard of old St. Chad's, I saw the
+rooks flocking homeward to the great tree-tops not far away, and heard
+their many querulous, sagacious, humorous croakings, while over the
+distance, borne upon the mild and fragrant evening breeze, floated the
+solemn note of a warning bell from the minster tower, as the shadows
+deepened and the night came down. Scenes like this sink deep into the
+heart, and memory keeps them forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH
+
+
+Edinburgh, September 9, 1889.--Scotland again, and never more beautiful
+than now! The harvest moon is shining upon the grim old castle, and
+the bagpipes are playing under my windows to-night. It has been a
+lovely day. The train rolled out of King's Cross, London, at ten this
+morning, and it rolled into Waverley, Edinburgh, about seven to-night.
+The trip by the Great Northern railway is one of the most interesting
+journeys that can be made in England. At first indeed the scenery
+is not striking; but even at first you are whirled past spots of
+exceptional historic and literary interest,--among them the battlefield
+of Barnet, the ancient and glorious abbey of St. Albans, and the old
+church and graveyard of Hornsey where Thomas Moore buried his little
+daughter Barbara, and where the venerable poet Samuel Rogers sleeps
+the last sleep. Soon these are gone, and presently, dashing through a
+flat country, you get a clear view of Peterborough cathedral, massive,
+dark, and splendid, with its graceful cone-shaped pinnacles, its vast
+square central tower, and the three great pointed and recessed arches
+that adorn its west front. That church contains the dust of Queen
+Catherine, the Spanish wife of Henry the Eighth, who died at Kimbolton
+Castle, Huntingdonshire, in 1535; and there, in 1587, the remains of
+Mary Stuart were first buried,--resting there a long time before her
+son, James the First, conveyed them to Westminster Abbey. Both those
+queens were buried by the same gravedigger,--that famous sexton, old
+Scarlett, whose portrait is in the cathedral, and who died July 2,
+1591, aged ninety-eight.
+
+[Illustration: PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL]
+
+The country is so level that the receding tower of Peterborough remains
+for a long time in sight, but soon,--as the train speeds through
+pastures of clover and through fields of green and red and yellow
+herbage, divided by glimmering hedges and diversified with red-roofed
+villages and gray church towers,--the land grows hilly, and long white
+roads are visible, stretching away like bands of silver over the lonely
+hill-tops. Figures of gleaners are seen, now and then, scattered
+through fields whence the harvest has lately been gathered. Sheep are
+feeding in the pastures, and cattle are couched under fringes of wood.
+The bright emerald of the sod sparkles with the golden yellow of the
+colt's-foot, and sometimes the scarlet waves of the poppy come tumbling
+into the plain, like a cataract of fire. Windmills spread their
+whirling sails upon the summits round about, and over the nestling
+ivy-clad cottages and over the stately trees there are great flights of
+rooks. A gray sky broods above, faintly suffused with sunshine,
+but there is no glare and no heat, and often the wind is laden with a
+fragrance of wildflowers and of hay.
+
+It is noon at Grantham, where there is just time enough to see that
+this is a flourishing city of red-brick houses and fine spacious
+streets, with a lofty, spired church, and far away eastward a high
+line of hills. Historic Newark is presently reached and passed,--a
+busy, contented town, smiling through the sunshine and mist, and as
+it fades in the distance I remember that we are leaving Lincoln, with
+its glorious cathedral, to the southeast, and to the west Newstead
+Abbey, Annesley, Southwell, and Hucknall-Torkard,--places memorably
+associated with the poet Byron and dear to the heart of every lover
+of poetic literature. At Markham the country is exceedingly pretty,
+with woods and hills over which multitudes of rooks and starlings are
+in full career, dark, rapid, and garrulous. About Bawtry the land is
+flat, and flat it continues to be until we have sped a considerable way
+beyond York. But in the meantime we flash through opulent Doncaster,
+famed for manufactories and for horse-races, rosy and active amid the
+bright green fields. There are not many trees in this region, and as
+we draw near Selby,--a large red-brick city, upon the banks of a broad
+river,--its massive old church tower looms conspicuous under smoky
+skies. In the outskirts of this town there are cosy houses clad with
+ivy, in which the pilgrim might well be pleased to linger. But there
+is no pause, and in a little while magnificent York bursts upon the
+view, stately and glorious, under a black sky that is full of driving
+clouds. The minster stands out like a mountain, and the giant towers
+rear themselves in solemn majesty,--the grandest piece of church
+architecture in England! The brimming Ouse shines as if it were a
+stream of liquid ebony. The meadows around the city glow like living
+emeralds, while the harvest-fields are stored and teeming with stacks
+of golden grain. Great flights of startled doves people the air,--as
+white as snow under the sable fleeces of the driving storm. I had seen
+York under different guises, but never before under a sky at once so
+sombre and so romantic.
+
+We bear toward Thirsk now, leaving behind us, westward of
+our track, old Ripon, in the distance, memorable for many
+associations,--especially the contiguity of that loveliest of
+ecclesiastical ruins, Fountains Abbey,--and cherished in theatrical
+annals as the place of the death and burial of the distinguished
+founder of the Jefferson family of actors.[48] Bleak Haworth is not
+far distant, and remembrance of it prompts many sympathetic thoughts
+of the strange genius of Charlotte Brontë. Darlington is the next
+important place, a town of manufacture, conspicuous for its tall,
+smoking chimneys and evidently prosperous. This is the land of stone
+walls and stone cottages,--the grim precinct of Durham. The country
+is cultivated, but rougher than the Midlands, and the essentially
+diversified character of this small island is once again impressed
+upon your mind. All through this region there are little white-walled
+houses with red roofs. At Ferry Hill the scenery changes again and
+becomes American,--a mass of rocky gorges and densely wooded ravines.
+All trace of storm has vanished by this time, and when, after a brief
+interval of eager expectation, the noble towers of Durham cathedral
+sweep into the prospect, that superb monument of ancient devotion,
+together with all the dark gray shapes of that pictorial city,--so
+magnificently placed, in an abrupt precipitous gorge, on both sides
+of the brimming Weir,--are seen under a sky of the softest Italian
+blue, dappled with white clouds of drifting fleece. Durham is all too
+quickly passed,--fading away in a landscape sweetly mellowed by a
+faint blue mist. Then stately rural mansions appear, half hidden among
+great trees. Wreaths of smoke curl upward from scattered dwellings
+all around the circle of the hills. Each distant summit is seen to
+be crowned with a tower or a town. A fine castle springs into view
+just before Birtley glances by, and we see that this is a place of
+woodlands, piquant with a little of the roughness of unsophisticated
+nature. But the scene changes suddenly, as in a theatre, and almost in
+a moment the broad and teeming Tyne blazes beneath the scorching summer
+sun, and the gray houses of Gateshead and Newcastle fill the picture
+with life and motion. The waves glance and sparkle,--a wide plain of
+shimmering silver. The stream is alive with shipping. There is movement
+everywhere, and smoke and industry and traffic,--and doubtless noise,
+though we are on a height and cannot hear it. A busier scene could not
+be found in all this land, nor one more strikingly representative of
+the industrial character and interests of England.
+
+[Illustration: _Berwick Castle._]
+
+After leaving Newcastle we glide past a gentle, winding ravine, thickly
+wooded on both its sides, with a bright stream glancing in its depth.
+The meadows all around are green, fresh, and smiling, and soon our
+road skirts beautiful Morpeth, bestriding a dark and lovely river and
+crouched in a bosky dell. At Widdrington the land shelves downward, the
+trees become sparse, and you catch a faint glimpse of the sea,--the
+broad blue wilderness of the Northern Ocean. From this point onward
+the panorama is one of perfect and unbroken loveliness. Around you are
+spacious meadows of fern, diversified with clumps of fir-trees, and
+the sweet wind that blows upon your face seems glad and buoyant with
+its exultant vitality. At Warkworth Castle, once the home of the noble
+Hotspur, the ocean view is especially magnificent,--the brown and red
+sails of the ships and various craft descried at sea contributing to
+the prospect a lovely element of picturesque character. Alnwick, with
+its storied associations of "the Percy out of Northumberland," is left
+to the westward, while on the east the romantic village of Alnmouth
+woos the traveller with an irresistible charm. No one who has once seen
+that exquisite place can ever be content without seeing it again,--and
+yet there is no greater wisdom in the conduct of life than to avoid
+forever a second sight of any spot where you have once been happy. This
+village, with its little lighthouse and graceful steeple, is built upon
+a promontory in the sea, and is approached over the sands by a long,
+isolated road across a bridge of four fine arches. All the country-side
+in this region is rich. At Long Houghton a grand church uprears its
+vast square tower, lonely and solemn in its place of graves. Royal
+Berwick comes next, stately and serene upon its ocean crag, with the
+white-crested waves curling on its beach and the glad waters of the
+Tweed kissing the fringes of its sovereign mantle, as they rush into
+the sea. The sun is sinking now, and over the many-coloured meadows,
+red and brown and golden and green, the long, thin shadows of the trees
+slope eastward and softly hint the death of day. The sweet breeze
+of evening stirs the long grasses, and on many a gray stone house
+shakes the late pink and yellow roses and makes the ivy tremble. It
+is Scotland now, and as we pass through the storied Border we keep
+the ocean almost constantly in view,--losing it for a little while at
+Dunbar, but finding it again at Drem,--till, past the battlefield of
+Prestonpans, and past the quaint villages of Cockenzie and Musselburgh
+and the villas of Portobello, we come slowly to a pause in the shadow
+of Arthur's Seat, where the great lion crouches over the glorious city
+of Edinburgh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+INTO THE HIGHLANDS
+
+
+Loch Awe, September 14, 1889.--Under a soft gray sky and through
+fields that still are slumbering in the early morning mist, the train
+rolls out of Edinburgh, bound for the north. The wind blows gently;
+the air is cool; strips of thin, fleecy cloud are driving over the
+distant hill-tops, and the birds are flying low. The track is by
+Queensferry, and in that region many little low stone cottages are
+seen, surrounded with simple gardens of flowers. For a long time the
+train runs through a deep ravine, with rocky banks on either hand,
+but presently it emerges into pastures where the sheep are grazing,
+and into fields in which the late harvest stands garnered in many
+graceful sheaves. Tall chimneys, vigorously smoking, are visible here
+and there in the distant landscape. The fat, black rooks are taking
+their morning flight, clamouring as they go. Stone houses with red
+roofs glide into the picture, and a graceful church-spire rises on a
+remote hill-top. In all directions there are trees, but they seem of
+recent growth, for no one of them is large. Soon the old cattle-market
+town of Falkirk springs up in the prospect, girt with fine hills and
+crested with masses of white and black smoke that is poured upward
+from the many tall chimneys of its busy ironworks. The houses here
+are made of gray stone and of red brick, and many of them are large,
+square buildings, seemingly commodious and opulent. A huge cemetery,
+hemmed in with trees and shrubs, is seen to skirt the city. Carron
+River, with its tiny but sounding cataract, is presently passed, and
+at Larbert your glance rests lovingly upon "the little gray church
+on the windy hill." North of this place, beyond the Forth, the
+country in the distance is mountainous, while all the intermediate
+region is rich with harvest-fields. Kinnaird lies to the eastward,
+while northward a little way is the famous field of Bannockburn. Two
+miles more and the train pauses in "gray Stirling," glorious with
+associations of historic splendour and ancient romance. The Castle
+of Stirling is not as ruggedly grand as that of Edinburgh, but it is
+a noble architectural pile, and it is nobly placed on a great crag
+fronting the vast mountains and the gloomy heavens of the north. The
+best view of it is obtained looking at it southward, and as I gazed
+upon it, under a cold and frowning sky, the air was populous with many
+birds that circled around its cone-shaped turrets, and hovered over the
+plain below, while across the distant mountain-tops, east, west, and
+north, dark and ragged masses of mist were driven, in wild, tempestuous
+flight. Speeding onward now, along the southern bank of the Forth,
+the traveller takes a westerly course, past Gargunnock and Kippen,
+seeing little villages of gray stone cottages nestled in the hill-gaps,
+distant mountain-sides, clad with furze, dark patches of woodland, and
+moors of purple heather commingled with meadows of brilliant green.
+The sun breaks out, for a few moments, and the sombre hue of the gray
+sky is lightened with streaks of gold. At Bucklyvie there is a second
+pause, and then the course is northwest, through banks and braes of
+heather, to peaceful Aberfoyle and the mountains of Menteith.
+
+[Illustration: _Stirling Castle._]
+
+The characteristic glory of the Scottish hills is the infinite variety
+and beauty of their shapes and the loveliness of their colour. The
+English mountains and lakes in Westmoreland and Cumberland possess a
+sweeter and softer grace, and are more calmly and wooingly beautiful;
+but the Scottish mountains and lakes excel them in grandeur, majesty,
+and romance. It would be presumption to undertake to describe the
+solemn austerity, the lofty and lonely magnificence, the bleak, weird,
+haunted isolation, and the fairy-like fantasy of this poetic realm;
+but a lover of it may declare his passion and speak his sense of its
+enthralling and bewitching charm. Sir Walter Scott's spirited and
+trenchant lines on the emotion of the patriot sang themselves over
+and over in my thought, and were wholly and grandly ratified, as the
+coach rolled up the mountain road, ever climbing height after height,
+while new and ever new prospects continually unrolled themselves
+before delighted eyes, on the familiar but always novel journey from
+Aberfoyle to the Trosachs. That mountain road, on its upward course,
+and during most part of the way, winds through treeless pastureland,
+and in every direction, as your vision ranges, you behold other
+mountains equally bleak, save for the bracken and the heather, among
+which the sheep wander, and the grouse nestle in concealment or whir
+away on frightened wings. Ben Lomond, wrapt in straggling mists, was
+dimly visible far to the west; Ben A'an towered conspicuous in the
+foreground; and further north Ben Ledi heaved its broad mass and rugged
+sides to heaven. Loch Vennacher, seen for a few moments, shone like a
+diamond set in emeralds, and as we gazed we seemed to see the bannered
+barges of Roderick Dhu and to hear the martial echoes of "Hail to the
+Chief." Loch Achray glimmered forth for an instant under the gray sky,
+as when "the small birds would not sing aloud" and the wrath equally
+of tempest and of war hung silently above it, in one awful moment of
+suspense. There was a sudden and dazzling vision of Loch Katrine, and
+then all prospect was broken, and, rolling down among the thickly
+wooded dwarf hills that give the name of Trosachs to this place, we
+were lost in the masses of fragrant foliage that girdle and adorn, in
+perennial verdure the hallowed scene of _The Lady of the Lake_.
+
+[Illustration: _Loch Achray._]
+
+[Illustration: _Loch Katrine._]
+
+Loch Katrine is another Lake Horicon, with a grander environment,
+and this, like all the Scottish lakes, has the advantage of a more
+evenly sharp and vigorous air and of leaden and frowning skies [in
+which, nevertheless, there is a peculiar, penetrating light,] that
+darken their waters and impart to them a dangerous aspect that yet is
+strangely beautiful. As we swept past Ellen's island and Fitz-James's
+silver strand I was grateful to see them in the mystery of this gray
+light and not in the garish sunshine. All around this sweet lake are
+the sentinel mountains,--Ben Venue rising in the south, Ben A'an in
+the east, and all the castellated ramparts that girdle Glen Finglas in
+the north. The eye dwells enraptured upon the circle of the hills; but
+by this time the imagination is so acutely stimulated, and the mind is
+so filled with glorious sights and exciting and ennobling reflections,
+that the sense of awe is tempered with a pensive sadness, and you feel
+yourself rebuked and humbled by the final and effectual lesson of man's
+insignificance that is taught by the implacable vitality of these
+eternal mountains. It is a relief to be brought back for a little to
+common life, and this relief you find in the landing at Stronachlachar
+and the ensuing drive,--across the narrow strip of the shire of
+Stirling that intervenes between Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond,--to
+the port of Inversnaid. That drive is through a wild and picturesque
+country, but after the mountain road from Aberfoyle to the Trosachs
+it could not well seem otherwise than calm,--at least till the final
+descent into the vale of Inversnaid. From Inversnaid there is a short
+sail upon the northern waters of Loch Lomond,--forever haunted by the
+shaggy presence of Rob Roy and the fierce and terrible image of Helen
+Macgregor,--and then, landing at Ardlui, you drive past Inverarnan
+and hold a northern course to Crianlarich, traversing the vale of the
+Falloch and skirting along the western slope of the grim and gloomy
+Grampians, on which for miles and miles no human habitation is seen,
+nor any living creature save the vacant, abject sheep. The mountains
+are everywhere now, brown with bracken and purple with heather, stony,
+rugged, endless, desolate, and still with a stillness that is awful in
+its pitiless sense of inhumanity and utter isolation. At Crianlarich
+the railway is found again, and thence you whirl onward through lands
+of Breadalbane and Argyle to the proud mountains of Glen Orchy and the
+foot of that loveliest of all the lovely waters of Scotland,--the ebony
+crystal of Loch Awe. The night is deepening over it as I write these
+words. The dark and solemn mountains that guard it stretch away into
+the mysterious distance and are lost in the shuddering gloom. The gray
+clouds have drifted by, and the cold, clear stars of autumnal heaven
+are reflected in its crystal depth, unmarred by even the faintest
+ripple upon its surface. A few small boats, moored to anchored buoys,
+float motionless upon it, a little way from shore. There, on its lonely
+island, dimly visible in the fading light, stands the gray ruin of
+Kilchurn. A faint whisper comes from the black woods that fringe the
+mountain base, and floating from far across this lonely, haunted water
+there is a drowsy bird-note that calls to silence and to sleep.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+HIGHLAND BEAUTIES
+
+
+Oban, September 17, 1889.--Seen in the twilight, as I first saw it,
+Oban is a pretty and picturesque seaside village, gay with glancing
+lights and busy with the movements of rapid vehicles and expeditious
+travellers. It is called the capital of the Western Highlands, and no
+doubt it deserves the name, for it is the common centre of all the
+trade and enterprise of this region, and all the threads of travel
+radiate from it. Built in a semicircle, along the margin of a lovely
+sheltered bay, it looks forth upon the wild waters of the Firth of
+Lorn, visible, southwesterly, through the sable sound of Kerrera,
+while behind and around it rises a bold range of rocky and sparsely
+wooded hills. On these are placed a few villas, and on a point toward
+the north stand the venerable, ivy-clad ruins of Dunolly Castle, in
+the ancestral domain of the ancient Highland family of Macdougall. The
+houses of Oban are built of gray stone and are mostly modern. There
+are many hotels fronting upon the Parade, which extends for a long
+distance upon the verge of the sea. The opposite shore is Kerrera, an
+island about a mile distant, and beyond that island, and beyond Lorn
+water, extends the beautiful island of Mull, confronting iron-ribbed
+Morven. In many ways Oban is suggestive of an American seaport upon the
+New England coast. Various characteristics mark it that may be seen
+at Gloucester, Massachusetts [although that once romantic place has
+been spoiled by the Irish peasantry], and at Mount Desert in Maine.
+The surroundings, indeed, are different; for the Scottish hills have
+a delicious colour and a wildness all their own; while the skies,
+unlike those of blue and brilliant America, lower, gloom, threaten,
+and tinge the whole world beneath them,--the moors, the mountains, the
+clustered gray villages, the lonely ruins, and the tumbling plains of
+the desolate sea,--with a melancholy, romantic, shadowy darkness, the
+perfect twilight of poetic vision. No place could be more practical
+than Oban is, in its everyday life, nor any place more sweet and
+dreamlike to the pensive mood of contemplation and the roving gaze of
+fancy. Viewed, as I viewed it, under the starlight and the drifting
+cloud, between two and three o'clock this morning, it was a picture
+of beauty, never to be forgotten. A few lights were twinkling here
+and there among the dwellings, or momentarily flaring on the deserted
+Parade. No sound was heard but the moaning of the night-wind and the
+plash of waters softly surging on the beach. Now and then a belated
+passenger came wandering along the pavement and disappeared in a turn
+of the road. The air was sweet with the mingled fragrance of the
+heathery hills and the salt odours of the sea. Upon the glassy bosom of
+the bay, dark, clear, and gently undulating with the pressure of the
+ocean tide, more than seventy small boats, each moored at a buoy and
+all veered in one direction, swung careless on the water; and mingled
+with them were upward of twenty schooners and little steamboats, all
+idle and all at peace. Many an hour of toil and sorrow is yet to come,
+before the long, strange journey of life is ended; but the memory of
+that wonderful midnight moment, alone with the majesty of Nature, will
+be a solace in the darkest of them.
+
+[Illustration: _Oban._]
+
+The Highland journey, from first to last, is an experience altogether
+novel and precious, and it is remembered with gratitude and delight.
+Before coming to Oban I gave two nights and days to Loch Awe,--a
+place so beautiful and so fraught with the means of happiness that
+time stands still in it, and even "the ceaseless vulture" of care
+and regret ceases for a while to vex the spirit with remembrance of
+anything that is sad. Looking down from the summit of one of the great
+mountains that are the rich and rugged setting of this jewel, I saw the
+crumbling ruin of Kilchurn upon its little island, gray relic first of
+the Macgregors and then of the Campbells, who dispossessed them and
+occupied their realm. It must have been an imperial residence once.
+Its situation,--cut off from the mainland and commanding a clear view,
+up the lake and down the valleys, southward and northward,--is superb.
+No enemy could approach it unawares, and doubtless the followers of
+the Macgregor occupied every adjacent pass and were ambushed in every
+thicket on the heights. Seen from the neighbouring mountain-side the
+waters of Loch Awe are of such crystal clearness that near some parts
+of the shore the white sands are visible in perfect outline beneath
+them, while all the glorious engirdling hills are reflected in their
+still and shining depth. Sometimes the sun flashed out and changed the
+waters to liquid silver, lighting up the gray ruin and flooding the
+mountain slopes with gold; but more often the skies kept their sombre
+hue, darkening all beneath them with a lovely gloom. All around were
+the beautiful hills of Glen Orchy, and far to the eastward great waves
+of white and leaden mist, slowly drifting in the upper ether, now hid
+and now disclosed the Olympian head of Ben Lui and the tangled hills
+of Glen Shirra and Glen Fyne. Close by, in its sweet vale of Sabbath
+stillness, was couched the little town of Dalmally, sole reminder of
+the presence of man in these remote solitudes, where Nature keeps
+the temple of her worship, and where words are needless to utter her
+glory and her praise. All day long the peaceful lake slumbered in
+placid beauty under the solemn sky,--a few tiny boats and two little
+steamers swinging at anchor on its bosom. All day long the shadows of
+the clouds, commingled with flecks of sunshine, went drifting over
+the mountain. At nightfall two great flocks of sheep, each attended
+by the pensive shepherd in his plaid, and each guided and managed by
+those wonderfully intelligent collies that are a never-failing delight
+in these mountain lands, came slowly along the vale and presently
+vanished in Glen Strae. Nothing then broke the stillness but the
+sharp cry of the shepherd's dog and the sound of many cataracts, some
+hidden and some seen, that lapse in music and fall in many a mass of
+shattered silver and flying spray, through deep, rocky rifts down the
+mountain-side. After sunset a cold wind came on to blow, and soon the
+heavens were clear and "all the number of the stars" were mirrored in
+beautiful Loch Awe.
+
+They speak of the southwestern extremity of this lake as the head of
+it. Loch Awe station, accordingly, is at its foot, near Kilchurn.
+Nevertheless, "where Macgregor sits is the head of the table," for
+the foot of the loch is lovelier than its head. And yet its head also
+is lovely, although in a less positive way. From Loch Awe station to
+Ford, a distance of twenty-six miles, you sail in a toy steamboat,
+sitting either on the open deck or in a cabin of glass and gazing at
+the panorama of the hills on either hand, some wooded and some bare,
+and all magnificent. A little after passing the mouth of the river
+Awe, which flows through the black Pass of Brander and unites with
+Loch Etive, I saw the double crest of great Ben Cruachan towering
+into the clouds and visible at intervals above them,--the higher
+peak magnificently bold. It is a wild country all about this region,
+but here and there you see a little hamlet or a lone farm-house, and
+among the moorlands the occasional figure of a sportsman, with his
+dog and gun. As the boat sped onward into the moorland district the
+mountains became great shapes of snowy crystal, under the sullen sky,
+and presently resolved into vast cloud-shadows, dimly outlined against
+the northern heavens, and seemingly based upon a sea of rolling vapour.
+The sail is past Inisdrynich, the island of the Druids, past Inishail
+and Inisfraoch, and presently past the lovely ruin of Inischonnel
+Castle, called also Ardchonnel, facing southward, at the end of an
+island promontory, and covered thick with ivy. The landing is at Ford
+Pier, and about one mile from that point you may see a little inn, a
+few cottages crumbling in picturesque decay, and a diminutive kirk,
+that constitute the village of Ford. My purpose here was to view an
+estate close by this village, now owned by Henry Bruce, Esq., but
+many years ago the domain of Alexander Campbell, Esq., an ancestor of
+my children, being their mother's grandsire; and not in all Scotland
+could be found a more romantic spot than the glen by the lochside that
+shelters the melancholy, decaying, haunted fabric of the old house
+of Ederline. Such a poet as Edgar Poe would have revelled in that
+place,--and well he might! There is a new and grand mansion, on higher
+ground, in the park; but the ancient house, almost abandoned now, is a
+thousand times more characteristic and interesting than the new one.
+Both are approached through a long, winding avenue, overhung with great
+trees that interlace their branches above it and make a cathedral
+aisle; but soon the pathway to the older house turns aside into a
+grove of chestnuts, birches, and yews,--winding under vast dark boughs
+that bend like serpents completely to the earth and then ascend once
+more,--and so goes onward, through sombre glades and through groves
+of rhododendron, to the levels of Loch Ederline and the front of the
+mansion, now desolate and half in ruins. It was an old house a hundred
+years ago. It is covered with ivy and buried among the trees, and on
+its surface and on the tree-trunks around it the lichen and the yellow
+moss have gathered, in rank luxuriance. The waters of the lake ripple
+upon a rocky landing almost at its door. Here once lived as proud a
+Campbell as ever breathed in Scotland, and here his haughty spirit
+wrought out for itself the doom of a lonely age and a broken heart. His
+grave is on a little island in the lake,--a family burying-ground,[49]
+such as may often be found on ancient, sequestered estates in the
+Highlands,--where the tall trees wave above it and the weeds are
+growing thick upon its surface, while over it the rooks caw and clamour
+and the idle winds career, in heedless indifference that is sadder even
+than neglect. So destiny vindicates its inexorable edict and the great
+law of retribution is fulfilled. A stranger sits in his seat and rules
+in his hall, and of all the followers that once waited on his lightest
+word there remains but a single one,--aged, infirm, and nearing the end
+of the long journey,--to scrape the moss from his forgotten gravestone
+and to think sometimes of his ancient greatness and splendour, forever
+passed away. We rowed around Loch Ederline and looked down into its
+black waters, that in some parts have never been sounded, and are
+fabled to reach through to the other side of the world, and, as our
+oars dipped and plashed, the timid moor-fowl scurried into the bushes
+and the white swans sailed away in haughty wrath, while, warned by
+gathering storm-clouds, multitudes of old rooks, that long have haunted
+the place, came flying overhead, with many a querulous croak, toward
+their nests in Ederline grove.
+
+[Illustration: LOCH AWE]
+
+Back to Loch Awe station, and presently onward past the Falls of
+Cruachan and through the grim Pass of Brander,--down which the waters
+of the Awe rush in a sable flood between jagged and precipitous cliffs
+for miles and miles,--and soon we see the bright waves of Loch Etive
+smiling under a sunset sky, and the many bleak, brown hills that fringe
+Glen Lonan and range along to Oban and the verge of the sea. There
+will be an hour for rest and thought. It seems wild and idle to write
+about these things. Life in Scotland is deeper, richer, stronger, and
+sweeter than any words could possibly be that any man could possibly
+expend upon it. The place is the natural home of imagination, romance,
+and poetry. Thought is grander here, and passion is wilder and more
+exuberant than on the velvet plains and among the chaste and stately
+elms of the South. The blood flows in a stormier torrent and the mind
+takes on something of the gloomy and savage majesty of those gaunt,
+barren, lonely hills. Even Sir Walter Scott, speaking of his own great
+works,--which are precious beyond words, and must always be loved
+and cherished by readers who know what beauty is,--said that all he
+had ever done was to polish the brasses that already were made. This
+is the soul of excellence in British literature, and this, likewise,
+is the basis of stability in British civilisation,--that the country
+is lovelier than the loveliest poetry that ever was written about
+it, or ever could be written about it, and that the land and the life
+possess an inherent fascination for the inhabitants, that nothing
+else could supply, and that no influence can ever destroy or even
+seriously disturb. Democracy is rife all over the world, but it will
+as soon impede the eternal courses of the stars as it will change the
+constitution or shake the social fabric of this realm. "Once more upon
+the waters--yet once more!" Soon upon the stormy billows of Lorn I
+shall see these lovely shores fade in the distance. Soon, merged again
+in the strife and tumult of the commonplace world, I shall murmur, with
+as deep a sorrow as the sad strain itself expresses, the tender words
+of Scott:
+
+ "Glenorchy's proud mountains,
+ Kilchurn and her towers,
+ Glenstrae and Glenlyon
+ No longer are ours."
+
+[Illustration: _Corbel from "St. Giles."_]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE HEART OF SCOTLAND
+
+"_The Heart of Scotland, Britain's other eye._"--BEN JONSON
+
+
+Edinburgh, August 24, 1890.--A bright blue sky, across which many
+masses of thin white cloud are borne swiftly on the cool western wind,
+bends over the stately city, and all her miles of gray mansions and
+spacious, cleanly streets sparkle beneath it in a flood of summer
+sunshine. It is the Lord's Day, and most of the highways are deserted
+and quiet. From the top of the Calton Hill you look down upon hundreds
+of blue smoke-wreaths curling upward from the chimneys of the resting
+and restful town, and in every direction the prospect is one of
+opulence and peace. A thousand years of history are here crystallised
+within the circuit of a single glance, and while you gaze upon one
+of the grandest emblems that the world contains of a storied and
+romantic past, you behold likewise a living and resplendent pageant
+of the beauty of to-day. Nowhere else are the Past and the Present so
+lovingly blended. There, in the centre, towers the great crown of St.
+Giles. Hard by are the quaint slopes of the Canongate,--teeming with
+illustrious, or picturesque, or terrible figures of Long Ago. Yonder
+the glorious Castle Crag looks steadfastly westward,--its manifold,
+wonderful colours continuously changing in the changeful daylight.
+Down in the valley Holyrood, haunted by a myriad of memories and by
+one resplendent face and entrancing presence, nestles at the foot of
+the giant Salisbury Crag; while the dark, rivened peak of Arthur's
+Seat rears itself supremely over the whole stupendous scene. Southward
+and westward, in the distance, extends the bleak range of the Pentland
+Hills; eastward the cone of Berwick Law and the desolate Bass Rock seem
+to cleave the sea; and northward, beyond the glistening crystal of the
+Forth,--with the white lines of embattled Inchkeith like a diamond on
+its bosom,--the lovely Lomonds, the virginal mountain breasts of Fife,
+are bared to the kiss of heaven. It is such a picture as words can but
+faintly suggest; but when you look upon it you readily comprehend the
+pride and the passion with which a Scotsman loves his native land.
+
+[Illustration: _The Crown of St. Giles's._]
+
+Dr. Johnson named Edinburgh as "a city too well known to admit
+description." That judgment was proclaimed more than a hundred years
+ago,--before yet Caledonia had bewitched the world's heart as the
+haunted land of Robert Burns and Walter Scott,--and if it were true
+then it is all the more true now. But while the reverent pilgrim along
+the ancient highways of history may not wisely attempt description,
+which would be superfluous, he perhaps may usefully indulge in brief
+chronicle and impression,--for these sometimes prove suggestive to
+minds that are kindred with his own. Hundreds of travellers visit
+Edinburgh, but it is one thing to visit and another thing to see; and
+every suggestion, surely, is of value that helps to clarify our vision.
+This capital is not learned by driving about in a cab; for Edinburgh
+to be truly seen and comprehended must be seen and comprehended as an
+exponent of the colossal individuality of the Scottish character; and
+therefore it must be observed with thought. Here is no echo and no
+imitation. Many another provincial city of Britain is a miniature copy
+of London; but the quality of Edinburgh is her own. Portions of her
+architecture do indeed denote a reverence for ancient Italian models,
+while certain other portions reveal the influence of the semi-classical
+taste that prevailed in the time of the Regent, afterwards George
+the Fourth. The democratic tendency of this period,--expressing
+itself here precisely as it does everywhere else, in button-making
+pettiness and vulgar commonplace,--is likewise sufficiently obvious.
+Nevertheless, in every important detail of Edinburgh and of its life,
+the reticent, resolute, formidable, impetuous, passionate character of
+the Scottish race is conspicuous and predominant. Much has been said
+against the Scottish spirit,--the tide of cavil purling on from Dr.
+Johnson to Sydney Smith. Dignity has been denied to it, and so has
+magnanimity, and so has humour; but there is no audience more quick
+than the Scottish audience to respond either to pathos or to mirth;
+there is no literature in the world so musically, tenderly, and weirdly
+poetical as the Scottish literature; there is no place on earth where
+the imaginative instinct of the national mind has resisted, as it has
+resisted in Scotland, the encroachment of utility upon the domain
+of romance; there is no people whose history has excelled that of
+Scotland in the display of heroic, intellectual, and moral purpose,
+combined with passionate sensibility; and no city could surpass the
+physical fact of Edinburgh as a manifestation of broad ideas, unstinted
+opulence, and grim and rugged grandeur. Whichever way you turn, and
+whatever object you behold, that consciousness is always present
+to your thought,--the consciousness of a race of beings intensely
+original, individual, passionate, authoritative, and magnificent.
+
+[Illustration: _Scott's House in Edinburgh._]
+
+The capital of Scotland is not only beautiful but eloquent. The
+present writer does not assume to describe it, or to instruct the
+reader concerning it, but only to declare that at every step the
+sensitive mind is impressed with the splendid intellect, the individual
+force, and the romantic charm of the Scottish character, as it is
+commemorated and displayed in this delightful place. What a wealth of
+significance it possesses may be indicated by even the most meagre
+record and the most superficial commentary upon the passing events of
+a traveller's ordinary day. The greatest name in the literature of
+Scotland is Walter Scott. He lived and laboured for twenty-four years
+in the modest three-story, gray stone house which is No. 39 Castle
+street. It has been my privilege to enter that house, and to stand in
+the room in which Scott began the novel of _Waverley_. Many years roll
+backward under the spell of such an experience, and the gray-haired
+man is a boy again, with all the delights of the Waverley Novels
+before him, health shining in his eyes, and joy beating in his heart,
+as he looks onward through vistas of golden light into a paradise of
+fadeless flowers and of happy dreams. The room that was Scott's study
+is a small one, on the first floor, at the back, and is lighted by one
+large window, opening eastward, through which you look upon the rear
+walls of sombre, gray buildings, and upon a small slope of green lawn,
+in which is the unmarked grave of one of Sir Walter's dogs. "The misery
+of keeping a dog," he once wrote, "is his dying so soon; but, to be
+sure, if he lived for fifty years and then died, what would become of
+me?" My attention was called to a peculiar fastening on the window of
+the study,--invented and placed there by Scott himself,--so arranged
+that the sash can be safely kept locked when raised a few inches from
+the sill. On the south side of the room is the fireplace, facing which
+he would sit as he wrote, and into which, of an evening, he has often
+gazed, hearing meanwhile the moan of the winter wind, and conjuring
+up, in the blazing brands, those figures of brave knights and gentle
+ladies that were to live forever in the amber of his magical art. Next
+to the study, on the same floor, is the larger apartment that was his
+dining-room, where his portrait of Claverhouse, now at Abbotsford,
+once hung above the mantel, and where so many of the famous people
+of the past enjoyed his hospitality and his talk. On the south wall
+of this room now hang two priceless autograph letters, one of them
+in the handwriting of Scott, the other in that of Burns. Both rooms
+are used for business offices now,--the house being tenanted by the
+agency of the New Zealand Mortgage Company,--and both are furnished
+with large presses, for the custody of deeds and family archives.
+Nevertheless these rooms remain much as they were when Scott lived
+in them, and his spirit seems to haunt the place. I was brought very
+near to him that day, for in the same hour was placed in my hands the
+original manuscript of his _Journal_, and I saw, in his handwriting,
+the last words that ever fell from his pen. That _Journal_ is in two
+quarto volumes. One of them is filled with writing; the other half
+filled; and the lines in both are of a fine, small character, crowded
+closely together. Toward the last the writing manifests only too well
+the growing infirmity of the broken Minstrel,--the forecast of the
+hallowed deathbed of Abbotsford and the venerable and glorious tomb
+of Dryburgh. These are his last words: "We slept reasonably, but on
+the next morning"--and so the _Journal_ abruptly ends. I can in no way
+express the emotion with which I looked upon those feebly scrawled
+syllables,--the last effort of the nerveless hand that once had been
+strong enough to thrill the heart of all the world. The _Journal_ has
+been lovingly and carefully edited by David Douglas, whose fine taste
+and great gentleness of nature, together with his ample knowledge
+of Scottish literature and society, eminently qualify him for the
+performance of this sacred duty; and the world will possess this
+treasure and feel the charm of its beauty and pathos,--which is the
+charm of a great nature expressed in its perfect simplicity; but the
+spell that is cast upon the heart and the imagination by a prospect of
+the actual handwriting of Sir Walter Scott, in the last words that he
+wrote, cannot be conveyed in print.
+
+[Illustration: _The Maiden._]
+
+From the house in Castle street I went to the rooms of the Royal
+Society, where there is a portrait of Scott, by John Graham Gilbert,
+more lifelike,--being representative of his soul as well as his face
+and person,--than any other that is known. It hangs there, in company
+with other paintings of former presidents of this institution,--notably
+one of Sir David Brewster and one of James Watt,--in the hall in which
+Sir Walter often sat, presiding over the deliberations and literary
+exercises of his comrades in scholarship and art. In another hall I
+saw a pulpit in which John Knox used to preach, in the old days of
+what Dr. Johnson expressively called "The ruffians of Reformation," and
+hard by was "The Maiden," the terrible Scottish guillotine, with its
+great square knife, set in a thick weight of lead, by which the grim
+Regent Morton was slain, in 1581, the Marquis of Argyle, in 1661, and
+the gallant, magnanimous, devoted Earl of Argyle, in 1685,--one more
+sacrifice to the insatiate House of Stuart. This monster has drunk
+the blood of many a noble gentleman, and there is a weird, sinister
+suggestion of gratified ferocity and furtive malignity in its rude,
+grisly, uncanny fabric of blackened timbers. You may see, in the
+quaint little panelled chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, in the Cowgate,
+not distant from the present abode of the sanguinary Maiden,--brooding
+over her hideous consummation of slaughter and misery,--the place
+where the mangled body of the heroic Argyle was laid, in secret
+sanctuary, for several nights after that scene of piteous sacrifice at
+the old Market Cross; and when you walk in the solemn enclosure of the
+Grayfriars church,--so fitly styled, by Sir Walter, The Westminster
+Abbey of Scotland,--your glance will fall upon a sunken pillar, low
+down upon the northern slope of that haunted, lamentable ground, which
+bears the letters "I. M.," and which marks the grave of the baleful
+Morton, whom the Maiden decapitated, for his share in the murder of
+Rizzio. In these old cities there is no keeping away from sepulchres.
+"The paths of glory," in every sense, "lead but to the grave." George
+Buchanan and Allan Ramsay, poets whom no literary pilgrim will neglect,
+rest in this churchyard, though the exact places of their interment are
+not positively denoted, and here, likewise, rest the elegant historian
+Robertson, and "the Addison of Scotland," Henry Mackenzie. The building
+in the High street in which Allan Ramsay once had his abode and his
+bookshop, and in which he wrote his pastoral of _The Gentle Shepherd_,
+is occupied now by a barber; but, since he is one that scorns not
+to proclaim over his door, in mighty letters, the poetic lineage of
+his dwelling, it seems not amiss that this haunt of the Muses should
+have fallen into such lowly hands. Of such a character, hallowed with
+associations that pique the fancy and touch the heart, are the places
+and the names that an itinerant continually encounters in his rambles
+in Edinburgh.
+
+[Illustration: _Grayfriars Church._]
+
+[Illustration: _High Street--Allan Ramsay's Shop._]
+
+The pilgrim could muse for many an hour over the little Venetian
+mirror[50] that hangs in the bedroom of Mary Stuart, in Holyrood
+Palace. What faces and what scenes it must have reflected! How often
+her own beautiful countenance and person,--the dazzling eyes, the
+snowy brow, the red gold hair, the alabaster bosom,--may have blazed
+in its crystal depths, now tarnished and dim, like the record of her
+own calamitous and wretched days! Did those lovely eyes look into
+this mirror, and was their glance scared and tremulous, or fixed and
+terrible, on that dismal February night, so many years ago, when the
+fatal explosion in the Kirk o' Field resounded with an echo that has
+never died away? Who can tell? This glass saw the gaunt and livid face
+of Ruthven, when he led his comrades of murder into that royal chamber,
+and it beheld Rizzio, screaming in mortal terror, as he was torn
+from the skirts of his mistress and savagely slain before her eyes.
+Perhaps, also, when that hideous episode was over and done with, it
+saw Queen Mary and her despicable husband the next time they met, and
+were alone together, in that ghastly room. "It shall be dear blood to
+some of you," the queen had said, while the murder of Rizzio was doing.
+Surely, having so injured a woman, any man with eyes to see might have
+divined his fate, in the perfect calm of her heavenly face and the
+smooth tones of her gentle voice, at such a moment as that. "At the
+fireside tragedies are acted,"--and tragic enough must have been the
+scene of that meeting, apart from human gaze, in the chamber of crime
+and death. No other relic of Mary Stuart stirs the imagination as that
+mirror does,--unless, perhaps, it be the little ebony crucifix, once
+owned and reverenced by Sir Walter Scott and now piously treasured at
+Abbotsford, which she held in her hands when she went to her death, in
+the hall of Fotheringay Castle.
+
+[Illustration: _The Canongate._]
+
+Holyrood Palace, in Mary Stuart's time, was not of its present shape.
+The tower containing her rooms was standing, and from that tower the
+building extended eastward to the abbey, and then it veered to the
+south. Much of the building was destroyed by fire in 1544, and again in
+Cromwell's time, but both church and palace were rebuilt. The entire
+south side, with its tower that looks directly towards the crag, was
+added in the later period of Charles the Second. The furniture in Mary
+Stuart's room is partly spurious, but the rooms are genuine. Musing
+thus, and much striving to reconstruct those strange scenes of the
+past, in which that beautiful, dangerous woman bore so great a part,
+the pilgrim strolls away into the Canongate,--once clean and elegant,
+now squalid and noisome,--and still the storied figures of history walk
+by his side or come to meet him at every close and wynd. John Knox,
+Robert Burns, Tobias Smollett, David Hume, Dugald Stuart, John Wilson,
+Hugh Miller, Gay, led onward by the blithe and gracious Duchess of
+Queensberry, and Dr. Johnson, escorted by the affectionate and faithful
+James Boswell, the best biographer that ever lived,--these and many
+more, the lettered worthies of long ago, throng into this haunted
+street and glorify it with the rekindled splendours of other days. You
+cannot be lonely here. This it is that makes the place so eloquent and
+so precious. For what did those men live and labour? To what were their
+shining talents and wonderful forces devoted? To the dissemination of
+learning; to the emancipation of the human mind from the bondage of
+error; to the ministry of the beautiful,--and thus to the advancement
+of the human race in material comfort, in gentleness of thought, in
+charity of conduct, in refinement of manners, and in that spiritual
+exaltation by which, and only by which, the true progress of mankind is
+at once accomplished and proclaimed.
+
+[Illustration: HOLYROOD CASTLE
+
+AND
+
+ARTHUR'S SEAT]
+
+But the dark has come, and this Edinburgh ramble shall end with the
+picture that closed its own magnificent day. You are standing on the
+rocky summit of Arthur's Seat. From that superb mountain peak your
+gaze takes in the whole capital, together with the country in every
+direction for many miles around. The evening is uncommonly clear. Only
+in the west dense masses of black cloud are thickly piled upon each
+other, through which the sun is sinking, red and sullen with menace of
+the storm. Elsewhere and overhead the sky is crystal, and of a pale,
+delicate blue. A cold wind blows briskly from the east and sweeps a
+million streamers of white smoke in turbulent panic over the darkening
+roofs of the city, far below. In the north the lovely Lomond Hills are
+distinctly visible across the dusky level of the Forth, which stretches
+away toward the ocean, one broad sheet of glimmering steel,--its margin
+indented with many a graceful bay, and the little islands that adorn
+it shining like stones of amethyst set in polished flint. A few brown
+sails are visible, dotting the waters, and far to the east appears
+the graceful outline of the Isle of May,--which was the shrine of the
+martyred St. Adrian,--and the lonely, wave-beaten Bass Rock, with
+its millions of seagulls and solan-geese. Busy Leith and picturesque
+Newhaven and every little village on the coast is sharply defined
+in the frosty light. At your feet is St. Leonards, with the tiny
+cottage of Jeanie Deans. Yonder, in the south, are the gray ruins of
+Craigmillar Castle, once the favourite summer home of the Queen of
+Scots, now open to sun and rain, moss-grown and desolate, and swept
+by every wind that blows. More eastward the eye lingers upon Carberry
+Hill, where Mary surrendered herself to her nobles, just before the
+romantic episode of Loch Leven Castle; and far beyond that height the
+sombre fields, intersected by green hawthorn hedges and many-coloured
+with the various hues of pasture and harvest, stretch away to the hills
+of Lammermoor and the valleys of Tweed and Esk. Darker and darker grow
+the gathering shadows of the gloaming. The lights begin to twinkle in
+the city streets. The echoes of the rifles die away in the Hunter's
+Bog. A piper far off is playing the plaintive music of _The Blue Bells
+of Scotland_. And as your steps descend the crag, the rising moon, now
+nearly at the full, shines through the gauzy mist and hangs above the
+mountain like a shield of gold upon the towered citadel of night.
+
+[Illustration: _St. Giles's, from the Lawn Market._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+
+More than a century has passed since Walter Scott was born--a poet
+destined to exercise a profound, far-reaching, permanent influence
+upon the feelings of the human race, and thus to act a conspicuous
+part in its moral and spiritual development and guidance. To the
+greatness of his mind, the nobility of his spirit, and the beauty of
+his life there is abundant testimony in his voluminous and diversified
+writings, and in his ample and honest biography. Everybody who reads
+has read something from the pen of Scott, or something commemorative
+of him, and in every mind to which his name is known it is known as
+the synonym of great faculties and wonderful achievement. There must
+have been enormous vitality of spirit, prodigious power of intellect,
+irresistible charm of personality, and lovable purity of moral nature
+in the man whom thousands that never saw him living,--men and women
+of a later age and different countries,--know and remember and love
+as Sir Walter Scott. Others have written greatly. Milton, Dryden,
+Addison, Pope, Cowper, Johnson, Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
+Landor,--these are only a few of the imperial names that cannot
+die. But these names live in the world's respect. The name of Scott
+lives also in its affection. What other name of the past in English
+literature,--unless it be that of Shakespeare,--arouses such a deep and
+sweet feeling of affectionate interest, gentle pleasure, gratitude, and
+reverential love?
+
+[Illustration: _Sir Walter Scott._]
+
+The causes of Sir Walter Scott's ascendency are to be found in the
+goodness of his heart; the integrity of his conduct; the romantic
+and picturesque accessories and atmosphere of his life; the fertile
+brilliancy of his literary execution; the charm that he exercises, both
+as man and artist, over the imagination; the serene, tranquillising
+spirit of his works; and, above all, the buoyancy, the happy freedom,
+of his genius. He was not simply an intellectual power; he was also
+a human and gentle comforter. He wielded an immense mental force,
+but he always wielded it for good, and always with tenderness. It
+is impossible to conceive of his ever having done a wrong act, or
+of any contact with his influence that would not inspire the wish
+to be virtuous and noble. The scope of his sympathy was as broad as
+the weakness and the need are of the human race. He understood the
+hardship, the dilemma, in the moral condition of mankind: he wished
+people to be patient and cheerful, and he tried to make them so. His
+writings are full of sweetness and cheer, and they contain nothing that
+is morbid,--nothing that tends toward surrender and misery. He did not
+sequester himself in mental pride, but simply and sturdily, through
+years of conscientious toil, he employed the faculties of a strong,
+tender, gracious genius for the good of his fellow-creatures. The
+world loves him because he is worthy to be loved, and because he has
+lightened the burden of its care and augmented the sum of its happiness.
+
+Certain differences and confusions of opinion have arisen from the
+consideration of his well-known views as to the literary art, together
+with his equally well-known ambition to take and to maintain the rank
+and estate of a country squire. As an artist he had ideals that he
+was never able to fulfil. As a man, and one who was influenced by
+imagination, taste, patriotism, family pride, and a profound belief
+in established monarchical institutions, it was natural that he
+should wish to found a grand and beautiful home for himself and his
+posterity. A poet is not the less a poet because he thinks modestly of
+his writings and practically knows and admits that there is something
+else in the world beside literature; or because he happens to want
+his dinner and a roof to cover him. In trying to comprehend a great
+man, a good method is to look at his life as a whole, and not to
+deduce petty inferences from the distorted interpretation of petty
+details. Sir Walter Scott's conduct of life, like the character out of
+which it sprang, was simple and natural. In all that he did you may
+perceive the influence of imagination acting upon the finest reason;
+the involuntary consciousness of reserve power; habitual deference
+to the voice of duty; an aspiring and picturesque plan of artistic
+achievement and personal distinction; and deep knowledge of the world.
+If ever there was a man who lived to be and not to seem, that man was
+Sir Walter Scott. He made no pretensions. He claimed nothing, but he
+simply and earnestly earned all. His means were the oldest and the
+best; self-respect, hard work, and fidelity to duty. The development
+of his nature was slow, but it was thorough and it was salutary. He
+was not hampered by precocity and he was not spoiled by conceit. He
+acted according to himself, honouring his individuality and obeying the
+inward monitor of his genius. But, combined with the delicate instinct
+of a gentleman, he had the wise insight, foresight, and patience of a
+philosopher; and therefore he respected the individuality of others,
+the established facts of life, and the settled conventions of society.
+His mind was neither embittered by revolt nor sickened by delusion.
+Having had the good fortune to be born in a country in which a right
+plan of government prevails,--the idea of the family, the idea of the
+strong central power at the head, with all other powers subordinated to
+it,--he felt no impulse toward revolution, no desire to regulate all
+things anew; and he did not suffer perturbation from the feverish sense
+of being surrounded with uncertainty and endangered by exposure to
+popular caprice. During the period of immaturity, and notwithstanding
+physical weakness and pain, his spirit was kept equable and cheerful,
+not less by the calm environment of a permanent civilisation than by
+the clearness of his perceptions and the sweetness of his temperament.
+In childhood and youth he endeared himself to all who came near him,
+winning affection by inherent goodness and charm. In riper years that
+sweetness was reinforced by great sagacity, which took broad views of
+individual and social life; so that both by knowledge and by impulse he
+was a serene and happy man.
+
+The quality that first impresses the student of the character and the
+writings of Sir Walter Scott is truthfulness. He was genuine. Although
+a poet, he suffered no torment from vague aspirations. Although once,
+and miserably, a disappointed lover, he permitted no morbid repining.
+Although the most successful author of his time, he displayed no
+egotism. To the end of his days he was frank and simple,--not indeed
+sacrificing the reticence of a dignified, self-reliant nature, but
+suffering no blight from success, and wearing illustrious honours with
+spontaneous, unconscious grace. This truthfulness, the consequence
+and the sign of integrity and of great breadth of intellectual
+vision, moulded Sir Walter Scott's ambition and stamped the practical
+results of his career. A striking illustration of this is seen in
+his first adventure in literature. The poems originally sprang from
+the spontaneous action of the poetic impulse and faculty; but they
+were put forth modestly, in order that the author might guide himself
+according to the response of the public mind. He knew that he might
+fail as an author, but for failure of that sort, although he was
+intensely ambitious, he had no dread. There would always remain to him
+the career of private duty and the life of a gentleman. This view of
+him gives the key to his character and explains his conduct. Neither
+amid the experimental vicissitudes of his youth, nor amid the labours,
+achievements, and splendid honours of his manhood, did he ever place
+the imagination above the conscience, or brilliant writing above
+virtuous living, or art and fame above morality and religion. "I have
+been, perhaps, the most voluminous author of the day," he said, toward
+the close of his life; "and it is a comfort to me to think that I have
+tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principles,
+and that I have written nothing which, on my deathbed, I should wish
+blotted." When at last he lay upon that deathbed the same thought
+animated and sustained him. "My dear," he said, to Lockhart, "be a
+good man, be virtuous, be religious--be a good man. Nothing else will
+give you any comfort when you come to lie here." The mind which thus
+habitually dwelt upon goodness as the proper object of human ambition
+and the chief merit of human life was not likely to vaunt itself on
+its labours or to indulge any save a modest and chastened pride in its
+achievements.
+
+[Illustration: _Edinburgh Castle._]
+
+And this view of him explains the affectionate reverence with which the
+memory of Sir Walter Scott is cherished. He was pre-eminently a type of
+the greatness that is associated with virtue. But his virtue was not
+decorum and it was not goodyism. He does not, with Addison, represent
+elegant austerity; and he does not, with Montgomery, represent amiable
+tameness. His goodness was not insipid. It does not humiliate; it
+gladdens. It is ardent with heart and passion. It is brilliant with
+imagination. It is fragrant with taste and grace. It is alert, active,
+and triumphant with splendid mental achievements and practical good
+deeds. And it is the goodness of a great poet,--the poet of natural
+beauty, of romantic legend, of adventure, of chivalry, of life in
+its heyday of action and its golden glow of pageantry and pleasure.
+It found expression, and it wields invincible and immortal power,
+through an art whereof the charm is the magic of sunrise and sunset,
+the sombre, holy silence of mountains, the pensive solitude of dusky
+woods, the pathos of ancient, ivy-mantled ruins, and ocean's solemn,
+everlasting chant. Great powers have arisen in English literature; but
+no romance has hushed the voice of the author of _Waverley_, and no
+harp has drowned the music of the Minstrel of the North.
+
+The publication of a new book by Sir Walter Scott is a literary event
+of great importance. The time has been when the announcement of such
+a novelty would have roused the reading public as with the sound of
+a trumpet. That sensation, familiar in the early part of the present
+century, is possible no more. Yet there are thousands of persons all
+over the world through whose hearts the thought of it sends a thrill
+of joy. The illustrious author of _Marmion_ and of _Waverley_ passed
+away in 1832: and now (1890), at the distance of fifty-eight years,
+his private _Journal_ is made a public possession. It is the bestowal
+of a great privilege and benefit. It is like hearing the voice of a
+deeply-loved and long-lamented friend, suddenly speaking from beyond
+the grave.
+
+In literary history the position of Scott is unique. A few other
+authors, indeed, might be named toward whom the general feeling was
+once exceedingly cordial, but in no other case has the feeling entirely
+lasted. In the case of Scott it endures in undiminished fervour. There
+are, of course, persons to whom his works are not interesting and to
+whom his personality is not significant. Those persons are the votaries
+of the photograph, who wish to see upon the printed page the same
+sights that greet their vision in the streets and in the houses to
+which they are accustomed. But those prosy persons constitute only a
+single class of the public. People in general are impressible through
+the romantic instinct that is a part of human nature. To that instinct
+Scott's writings were addressed, and also to the heart that commonly
+goes with it. The spirit that responds to his genius is universal and
+perennial. Caprices of taste will reveal themselves and will vanish;
+fashions will rise and will fall; but these mutations touch nothing
+that is elemental and they will no more displace Scott than they will
+displace Shakespeare.
+
+The _Journal_ of Sir Walter Scott, valuable for its copious variety of
+thought, humour, anecdote, and chronicle, is precious, most of all,
+for the confirmatory light that it casts upon the character of its
+writer. It has long been known that Scott's nature was exceptionally
+noble, that his patience was beautiful, that his endurance was
+heroic. These pages disclose to his votaries that he surpassed even
+the highest ideal of him that their affectionate partiality has
+formed. The period that it covers was that of his adversity and
+decline. He began it on November 20, 1825, in his town house, No.
+39 Castle street, Edinburgh, and he continued it, with almost daily
+entries,--except for various sadly significant breaks, after July
+1830,--until April 16, 1832. Five months later, on September 21, he
+was dead. He opened it with the expression of a regret that he had
+not kept a regular journal during the whole of his life. He had just
+seen some chapters of Byron's vigorous, breezy, off-hand memoranda,
+and the perusal of those inspiriting pages had revived in his mind
+the long-cherished, often-deferred plan of keeping a diary. "I have
+myself lost recollection," he says, "of much that was interesting, and
+I have deprived my family and the public of some curious information
+by not carrying this resolution into effect." Having once begun the
+work he steadily persevered in it, and evidently he found a comfort
+in its companionship. He wrote directly, and therefore fluently,
+setting down exactly what was in his mind, from day to day; but, as
+he had a well-stored and well-ordered mind, he wrote with reason and
+taste, seldom about petty matters, and never in the strain of insipid
+babble that egotistical scribblers mistake for the spontaneous flow
+of nature. The facts that he recorded were mostly material facts,
+and the reflections that he added, whether serious or humorous, were
+important. Sometimes a bit of history would glide into the current
+of the chronicle; sometimes a fragment of a ballad; sometimes an
+analytic sketch of character, subtle, terse, clear, and obviously true;
+sometimes a memory of the past; sometimes a portraiture of incidents
+in the present; sometimes a glimpse of political life, a word about
+painting, a reference to music or the stage, an anecdote, a tale of
+travel, a trait of social manners, a precept upon conduct, or a
+thought upon religion and the destiny of mankind. There was no pretence
+of order and there was no consciousness of an audience; yet the
+_Journal_ unconsciously assumed a symmetrical form; and largely because
+of the spontaneous operation of its author's fine literary instinct
+it became a composition worthy of the best readers. It is one of the
+saddest and one of the strongest books ever written.
+
+The original manuscript of this remarkable work is contained in two
+volumes, bound in vellum, each volume being furnished with a steel
+clasp that can be fastened. The covers are slightly tarnished by time.
+The paper is yellow with age. The handwriting is fine, cramped, and
+often obscure. "This hand of mine," writes Scott (vol. i. page 386),
+"gets to be like a kitten's scratch, and will require much deciphering,
+or, what may be as well for the writer, cannot be deciphered at all. I
+am sure I cannot read it myself." The first volume is full of writing;
+the second about half full. Toward the end the record is almost
+illegible. Scott was then at Rome, on that melancholy, mistaken journey
+whereby it had been hoped, but hoped in vain, that he would recover
+his health. The last entry that he made is this unfinished sentence:
+"We slept reasonably, but on the next morning----." It is not known
+that he ever wrote a word after that time. Lockhart, who had access to
+his papers, made some use of the _Journal_, in his _Life of Scott_,
+which is one of the best biographies in our language; but the greater
+part of it was withheld from publication till a more auspicious time
+for its perfect candour of speech. To hold those volumes and to look
+upon their pages,--so eloquent of the great author's industry, so
+significant of his character, so expressive of his inmost soul,--was
+almost to touch the hand of the Minstrel himself, to see his smile,
+and to hear his voice. Now that they have fulfilled their purpose, and
+imparted their inestimable treasure to the world, they are restored to
+the ebony cabinet at Abbotsford, there to be treasured among the most
+precious relics of the past. "It is the saddest house in Scotland,"
+their editor, David Douglas, said to me, when we were walking together
+upon the Braid Hills, "for to my fancy every stone in it is cemented
+with tears." Sad or glad, it is a shrine to which reverent pilgrims
+find their way from every quarter of the earth, and it will be honoured
+and cherished forever.
+
+[Illustration: _The Canongate Tolbooth._]
+
+The great fame of Scott had been acquired by the time he began to
+write his _Journal_, and it rested upon a broad foundation of solid
+achievement. He was fifty-four years old, having been born August 15,
+1771, the same year in which Smollett died. He had been an author for
+about thirty years,--his first publication, a translation of Bürger's
+_Lenore_, having appeared in 1796, the same year that was darkened
+by the death of Robert Burns. His social eminence also had been
+established. He had been sheriff of Selkirk for twenty-five years.
+He had been for twenty years a clerk of the Court of Session. He had
+been for five years a baronet, having received that rank from King
+George the Fourth, who always loved and admired him, in 1820. He had
+been for fourteen years the owner of Abbotsford, which he bought in
+1811, occupied in 1812, and completed in 1824. He was yet to write
+_Woodstock_, the six tales called _The Chronicles of the Canongate_,
+_The Fair Maid of Perth_, _Anne of Geierstein_, _Count Robert of
+Paris_, _Castle Dangerous_, the _Life of Napoleon_, and the lovely
+_Stories from the History of Scotland_. All those works, together with
+many essays and reviews, were produced by him between 1825 and 1832,
+while also he was maintaining a considerable correspondence, doing his
+official duties, writing his _Journal_, and carrying a suddenly imposed
+load of debt,--which finally his herculean labours paid,--amounting
+to £130,000. But between 1805 and 1817 he had written _The Lay of the
+Last Minstrel_, _Ballads and Lyrical Pieces_, _Marmion_, _The Lady of
+the Lake_, _The Vision of Don Roderick_, _Rokeby_, _The Lord of the
+Isles_, _The Field of Waterloo_, and _Harold the Dauntless_,--thus
+creating a great and diversified body of poetry, then in a new school
+and a new style, in which, although he has often been imitated, he
+never has been equalled. Between 1814 and 1825 he had likewise produced
+_Waverley_, _Guy Mannering_, _The Antiquary_, _Old Mortality_, _The
+Black Dwarf_, _Rob Roy_, _The Heart of Midlothian_, _A Legend of
+Montrose_, _The Bride of Lammermoor_, _Ivanhoe_, _The Monastery_, _The
+Abbot_, _Kenilworth_, _The Pirate_, _The Fortunes of Nigel_, _Peveril
+of the Peak_, _Quentin Durward_, _St. Ronan's Well_, _Redgauntlet_,
+_The Betrothed_, and _The Talisman_. This vast body of fiction was also
+a new creation in literature, for the English novel prior to Scott's
+time was the novel of manners, as chiefly represented by the works of
+Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. That admirable author, Miss Jane
+Porter, had, indeed, written the _Scottish Chiefs_ (1809), in which the
+note of imagination, as applied to the treatment of historical fact
+and character, rings true and clear; and probably that excellent book
+should be remembered as the beginning of English historical romance.
+Scott himself said that it was the parent, in his mind, of the Waverley
+Novels. But he surpassed it. Another and perhaps a deeper impulse to
+the composition of those novels was the consciousness, when Lord Byron,
+by the publication of _Childe Harold_ (the first and second cantos,
+in 1812), suddenly checked or eclipsed his immediate popularity as a
+poet, that it would be necessary for him to strike out a new path. He
+had begun _Waverley_ in 1805 and thrown the fragment aside. He took it
+up again in 1814, wrought upon it for three weeks and finished it, and
+so began the career of "the Great Unknown." The history of literature
+presents scarce a comparable example of such splendid industry
+sustained upon such a high level of endeavour, animated by such
+glorious genius, and resultant in such a noble and beneficent fruition.
+The life of Balzac, whom his example inspired, and who may be accounted
+the greatest of French writers since Voltaire, is perhaps the only life
+that drifts suggestively into the scholar's memory, as he thinks of the
+prodigious labours of Sir Walter Scott.
+
+During the days of his prosperity Scott maintained his manor at
+Abbotsford and his town-house in Edinburgh, and he frequently migrated
+from one to the other, dispensing a liberal hospitality at both. He was
+not one of those authors who think that there is nothing in the world
+but pen and ink. He esteemed living to be more important than writing
+about it, and the development of the soul to be a grander result
+than the production of a book. "I hate an author that's all author,"
+said Byron; and in this virtuous sentiment Scott participated. His
+character and conduct, his unaffected modesty as to his own works, his
+desire to found a great house and to maintain a stately rank among
+the land-owners of his country, and as a son of chivalry, have, for
+this reason, been greatly misunderstood by dull people. They never,
+indeed, would have found the least fault with him if he had not become
+a bankrupt; for the mouth of every dunce is stopped by practical
+success. When he got into debt, though, it was discovered that he ought
+to have had a higher ambition than the wish to maintain a place among
+the landed gentry of Scotland; and even though he ultimately paid
+his debts,--literally working himself to death to do it,--he was not
+forgiven by that class of censors; and to some extent their chatter
+of paltry disparagement still survives. While he was rich, however,
+his halls were thronged with fashion, rank, and renown. Edinburgh,
+still the stateliest city on which the sun looks down, must have been,
+in the last days of George the Third, a place of peculiar beauty,
+opulence, and social brilliancy. Scott, whose father was a Writer to
+the Signet, and who derived his descent from a good old Border family,
+the Scotts of Harden, had, from his youth, been accustomed to refined
+society and elegant surroundings. He was born and reared a gentleman,
+and a gentleman he never ceased to be. His father's house was No.
+25 George Square, then an aristocratic quarter, now somewhat fallen
+into the sere and yellow. In that house, as a boy, he saw some of the
+most distinguished men of the age. In after years, when his fortunes
+were ripe and his fame as a poet had been established, he drew around
+himself a kindred class of associates. The record of his life blazes
+with splendid names. As a lad of fifteen, in 1786, he saw Burns,
+then twenty-seven, and in the heyday of fame; and he also saw Dugald
+Stewart, seventeen years his senior. Lord Jeffrey was his contemporary
+and friend, only two years younger than himself. With Henry Mackenzie,
+"the Addison of Scotland,"--born in the first year of the last Jacobite
+rebellion, and therefore twenty-six years his senior,--he lived on
+terms of cordial friendship. David Hume, who died when Scott was but
+five years old, was one of the great celebrities of his early days;
+and doubtless Scott saw the Calton Hill when it was, as Jane Porter
+remembered it, "a vast green slope, with no other buildings breaking
+the line of its smooth and magnificent brow but Hume's monument on one
+part and the astronomical observatory on the other." He knew John Home,
+the author of _Douglas_, who was his senior by forty-seven years; and
+among his miscellaneous prose writings there is an effective review of
+Home's works, which was written for the _Quarterly_, in March 1827.
+Among the actors his especial friends were John Philip Kemble, Mrs.
+Siddons, the elder Charles Mathews, John Bannister, and Daniel Terry.
+He knew Yates also, and he saw Miss Foote, Fanny Kemble, and the
+Mathews of our day as "a clever, rather forward lad." Goethe was his
+correspondent. Byron was his friend and fervent admirer. Wordsworth
+and Moore were among his visitors and especial favourites. The aged
+Dr. Adam Ferguson was one of his intimates. Hogg, when in trouble,
+always sought him, and always was helped and comforted. He was the
+literary sponsor for Thomas Campbell. He met Madame D'Arblay, who was
+nineteen years his senior, when she was seventy-eight years old; and
+the author of _Evelina_ talked with him, in the presence of old Samuel
+Rogers, then sixty-three, about her father, Dr. Burney, and the days
+of Dr. Johnson. He was honoured with the cordial regard of the great
+Duke of Wellington, a contemporary, being only two years his senior.
+He knew Croker, Haydon, Chantrey, Landseer, Sydney Smith, and Theodore
+Hook. He read _Vivian Grey_ as a new publication and saw Disraeli as a
+beginner. Coleridge he met and marvelled at. Mrs. Coutts, who had been
+Harriet Mellon, the singer, and who became the Duchess of St. Albans,
+was a favourite with him. He knew and liked that caustic critic William
+Gifford. His relations with Sir Humphry Davy, seven years his senior,
+were those of kindness. He had a great regard for Lord Castlereagh
+and Lord Melville. He liked Robert Southey, and he cherished a deep
+affection for the poet Crabbe, who was twenty-three years older than
+himself, and who died in the same year. Of Sir George Beaumont, the
+fond friend and wise patron of Wordsworth, who died in February 1827,
+Scott wrote that he was "by far the most sensible and pleasing man I
+ever knew." Amid a society such as is indicated by those names Scott
+passed his life. The brilliant days of the Canongate indeed were gone,
+when all those wynds and closes that fringe the historic avenue from
+the Castle to Holyrood were as clean as wax, and when the loveliest
+ladies of Scotland dwelt amongst them, and were borne in their chairs
+from one house of festivity to another. But New street, once the home
+of Lord Kames, still retained some touch of its ancient finery. St.
+John street, where once lived Lord Monboddo and his beautiful daughter,
+Miss Burnet (immortalised by Burns), and where (at No. 10) Ballantyne
+often convoked admirers of the unknown author of _Waverley_, was still
+a cleanly place. Alison Square, George Square, Buccleuch Place, and
+kindred quarters were still tenanted by the polished classes of the
+stately, old-time society of Edinburgh. The movement northward had
+begun, but as yet it was inconsiderable. In those old drawing-rooms
+Scott was an habitual visitor, as also he was in many of the contiguous
+county manors,--in Seton House, Pinkie House, Blackford, Ravelstone,
+Craigcrook, and Caroline Park, and wherever else the intellect, beauty,
+rank, and fashion of the Scottish capital assembled; and it is certain
+that after his marriage, in December 1797, with Miss Charlotte Margaret
+Carpenter, the scenes of hospitality and of elegant festival were
+numerous and gay, and were peopled with all that was brightest in the
+ancient city, at first beneath his roof-tree in Castle street and later
+beneath his turrets of Abbotsford.
+
+There came a time, however, when the fabric of Scott's fortunes was to
+be shattered and his imperial genius bowed into the dust. He had long
+been a business associate with Constable, his publisher, and also with
+Ballantyne, his printer. The publishing business failed and they were
+ruined together. It has long been customary to place the blame for
+that catastrophe on Constable alone. Mr. Douglas, who has edited the
+_Journal_ with characteristic discretion and taste, records his opinion
+that "the three parties, printer, publisher, and author, were equal
+sharers in the imprudences that led to the disaster;" and he directs
+attention to the fact that the charge that Constable ruined Scott was
+not made during the lifetime of either. It matters little now in what
+way the ruin was induced. Mismanagement caused it, and not misdeed.
+There was a blunder, but there was no fraud. The honour of all the men
+concerned stands vindicated before the world. Moreover, the loss was
+retrieved and the debt was paid,--Scott's share of it in full: the
+other shares in part. It is to the period of this ordeal that Scott's
+_Journal_ mainly relates. Great though he had been in prosperity, he
+was to show himself greater amid the storms of disaster and affliction.
+The earlier pages of the diary are cheerful, vigorous, and confident.
+The mind of the writer is in no alarm. Presently the sky changes and
+the tempest breaks; and from that time onward the reader beholds a
+spectacle, of indomitable will, calm resolution, inflexible purpose,
+patient endurance, steadfast industry, and productive genius, that is
+sublime. Many facts of living interest and many gems of subtle thought
+and happy phrase are found in his daily record. The observations on
+immortality are in a fine strain. The remarks on music, on dramatic
+poetry, on the operation of the mental faculties, on painting, and on
+national characteristics, are freighted with suggestive thought. But
+the noble presence of the man overshadows even his best words. He lost
+his fortune in December 1825. His wife died in May 1826. On the pages
+that immediately follow his note of this bereavement Scott has written
+occasional words that no one can read unmoved, and that no one who has
+suffered can read without a pang that is deeper than tears.
+
+But his spirit was slow to break. "Duty to God and to my children,"
+he said, "must teach me patience." Once he speaks of "the loneliness
+of these watches of the night." Not until his debts were paid and his
+duties fulfilled would that great soul yield. "I may be bringing on
+some serious disease," he remarks, "by working thus hard; if I had once
+justice done to other folks, I do not much care, only I would not like
+to suffer long pain." A little later the old spirit shows itself: "I
+do not like to have it thought that there is any way in which I can be
+beaten.... Let us use the time and faculties which God has left us, and
+trust futurity to His guidance.... I want to finish my task, and then
+good-night. I will never relax my labour in these affairs either for
+fear of pain or love of life. I will die a free man, if hard working
+will do it.... My spirits are neither low nor high--grave, I think, and
+quiet--a complete twilight of the mind.... God help--but rather God
+bless--man must help himself.... The best is, the long halt will arrive
+at last and cure all.... It is my dogged humour to yield little to
+external circumstances.... I shall never see the three-score and ten,
+and shall be summed up at a discount. No help for it, and no matter
+either." In the mood of mingled submission and resolve denoted by these
+sentences (which occur at long intervals in the story), he wrought at
+his task until it was finished. By _Woodstock_ he earned £8000; by the
+_Life of Napoleon_ £18,000; by other writings still other sums. The
+details of his toil appear day by day in these simple pages, tragic
+through all their simplicity. He was a heart-broken man from the hour
+when his wife died, but he sustained himself by force of will and
+sense of honour, and he endured and worked till the last, without a
+murmur; and when he had done his task he laid down his pen and so ended.
+
+The lesson of Scott's _Journal_ is the most important lesson that
+experience can teach. It is taught in two words: honour and duty.
+Nothing is more obvious, from the nature and environment and the
+consequent condition of the human race, than the fact that this world
+is not, and was not intended to be, a place of settled happiness. All
+human beings have troubles, and as the years pass away those troubles
+become more numerous, more heavy, and more hard to bear. The ordeal
+through which humanity is passing is an ordeal of discipline for
+spiritual development. To live in honour, to labour with steadfast
+industry, and to endure with cheerful patience is to be victorious.
+Whatever in literature will illustrate this doctrine, and whatever in
+human example will commend and enforce it, is of transcendent value;
+and that value is inherent in the example of Sir Walter Scott.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+ELEGIAC MEMORIALS IN EDINBURGH
+
+
+One denotement, among many, of a genial change, a relaxation of the old
+ecclesiastical austerity long prevalent in Scotland, is perceptible
+in the lighter character of her modern sepulchral monuments. In the
+old churchyard of St. Michael, at Dumfries, the burial-place of Burns,
+there is a hideous, dismal mass of misshapen, weather-beaten masonry,
+the mere aspect of which, before any of its gruesome inscriptions
+are read, is a rebuke to hope and an alarm to despair. Thus the
+religionists of old tried to make death terrible. Much of this same
+order of abhorrent architecture, the ponderous exponent of immitigable
+woe, may be found in the old Grayfriars churchyard in Edinburgh, and
+in that of the Canongate. But the pilgrim to the Dean cemetery and
+the Warriston, both comparatively modern, and beautifully situated at
+different points on the north side of the Water of Leith, finds them
+adorned with every grace that can hallow the repose of the dead, or
+soothe the grief, or mitigate the fear, or soften the bitter resentment
+of the living. Hope, and not despair, is the spirit of the new epoch
+in religion, and it is hope not merely for a sect but for all mankind.
+
+The mere physical loveliness of those cemeteries may well tempt you
+to explore them, but no one will neglect them who cares for the
+storied associations of the past. Walking in the Dean, on an afternoon
+half-cloudy and half-bright, when the large trees that guard its
+western limit and all the masses of foliage in the dark ravine of the
+Leith were softly rustling in the balmy summer wind, while overhead
+and far around the solemn cawing of the rooks mingled sleepily with
+the twitter of the sparrows, I thought, as I paced the sunlit aisles,
+that Nature could nowhere show a scene of sweeter peace. In this
+gentle solitude has been laid to its everlasting rest all that could
+die of some of the greatest leaders of thought in modern Scotland. It
+was no common experience to muse beside the tomb of Francis Jeffrey,
+the once formidable Lord Jeffrey of _The Edinburgh Review_. He lies
+buried near the great wall on the west side of the Dean cemetery, with
+his wife beside him. A flat, oblong stone tomb, imposed upon a large
+stone pedestal and overshadowed with tall trees, marks the place,
+on one side of which is written that once-famous and dreaded name,
+now spoken with indifference or not spoken at all: "Francis Jeffrey.
+Born Oct. 23, 1773. Died Jan. 25, 1850." On the end of the tomb is
+a medallion portrait of Jeffrey, in bronze. It is a profile, and it
+shows a symmetrical head, a handsome face, severe, refined, frigid, and
+altogether it is the denotement of a personality remarkable for the
+faculty of taste and the instinct of decorum, though not for creative
+power. Close by Lord Jeffrey, a little to the south, are buried Sir
+Archibald Alison, the historian of Europe, and Henry Cockburn, the
+great jurist. Combe, the philosopher, rests near the south front of the
+wall that bisects this cemetery from east to west. Not far from the
+memorials of these famous persons is a shaft of honour to Lieutenant
+John Irving, who was one of the companions of Sir John Franklin, and
+who perished amid the Polar ice in King William's Land, in 1848-49.
+
+In another part of the ground a tall cross commemorates David Scott,
+the painter [1806-1849], presenting a superb effigy of his head, in
+one of the most animated pieces of bronze that have copied human life.
+Against the eastern wall, on the terrace overlooking the ravine and the
+rapid Water of Leith, stands the tombstone of John Blackwood, "Editor
+of _Blackwood's Magazine_ for thirty-three years: Died at Strathtyrum,
+29th Oct. 1879. Age 60." This inscription, cut upon a broad white
+marble, with scroll-work at the base, and set against the wall, is
+surmounted with a coat of arms, in gray stone, bearing the motto, "Per
+vias rectas." Many other eminent names may be read in this garden
+of death; but most interesting of all, and those that most of all I
+sought, are the names of Wilson and Aytoun. Those worthies were buried
+close together, almost in the centre of the cemetery. The grave of
+the great "Christopher North" is marked by a simple shaft of Aberdeen
+granite, beneath a tree, and it bears only this inscription: "John
+Wilson, Professor of Moral Philosophy. Born 18th of May, 1785. Died
+3d April, 1854." Far more elaborate is the white marble monument,--a
+square tomb, with carvings of recessed Gothic windows on its sides,
+supporting a tall cross,--erected to the memory of Aytoun and of his
+wife, who was Wilson's daughter. The inscriptions tell their sufficient
+story: "Jane Emily Wilson, beloved wife of William Edmonstoune Aytoun.
+Obiit 15 April, 1859." "Here is laid to rest William Edmonstoune
+Aytoun, D.C.L., Oxon., Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature
+in the University of Edinburgh. Sheriff of Orkney and Zetland. Born
+at Edinburgh, 21st June, 1813. Died at Blackhills, Elgin, 4th August,
+1865. 'Waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.' 1 Cor. i. 7."
+So they sleep, the poets, wits, and scholars that were once so bright
+in genius, so gay in spirit, so splendid in achievement, so vigorous in
+affluent and brilliant life! It is the old story, and it teaches the
+old moral.
+
+Warriston, not more beautiful than Dean, is perhaps more beautiful
+in situation; certainly it commands a more beautiful prospect.
+The traveller will visit Warriston for the sake of Alexander
+Smith,--remembering the _Life Drama_, the _City Poems_, _Edwin of
+Deira_, _Alfred Hagart's Household_, and _A Summer in Skye_. The poet
+lies in the northeast corner of the ground, at the foot of a large Iona
+cross, which is bowered by a chestnut-tree. Above him the green sod
+is like a carpet of satin. The cross is thickly carved with laurel,
+thistle, and holly, and it bears upon its front the face of the poet,
+in bronze, and the harp that betokens his art. It is a bearded face,
+having small, refined features, a slightly pouted, sensitive mouth, and
+being indicative more of nervous sensibility than of rugged strength.
+The inscription gives simply his name and dates: "Alexander Smith,
+Poet and Essayist. Born at Kilmarnock, 31st December, 1829. Died at
+Wardie, 5th January, 1867. Erected by some of his personal Friends."
+Standing by his grave, at the foot of this cross, you can gaze straight
+away southward to Arthur's Seat, and behold the whole line of imperial
+Edinburgh at a glance, from the Calton Hill to the Castle. It is such
+a spot as he would have chosen for his sepulchre,--face to face with
+the city that he dearly loved. Near him on the east wall appears a
+large slab of Aberdeen granite, to mark the grave of still another
+Scottish worthy, "James Ballantine, Poet. Born 11th June, 1808. Died
+18th Dec., 1877." And midway along the slope of the northern terrace,
+a little eastward of the chapel, under a freestone monument bearing
+the butterfly that is Nature's symbol of immortality, you will see the
+grave of "Sir James Young Simpson, Bart., M.D., D.C.L. Born 1811. Died
+1870." And if you are weary of thinking about the evanescence of the
+poets, you can reflect that there was no exemption from the common lot
+even for one of the greatest physical benefactors of the human race.
+
+[Illustration: _Grayfriars Churchyard._]
+
+The oldest and the most venerable and mysterious of the cemeteries of
+Edinburgh is that of the Grayfriars. Irregular in shape and uneven
+in surface, it encircles its famous old church, in the haunted
+neighbourhood of the West Bow, and is itself hemmed in with many
+buildings. More than four centuries ago this was the garden of the
+Monastery of the Grayfriars, founded by James the First, of Scotland,
+and thus it gets its name. The monastery disappeared long ago: the
+garden was turned into a graveyard in the time of Queen Mary Stuart,
+and by her order. The building, called the Old Church, dates back to
+1612, but it was burnt in 1845 and subsequently restored. Here the
+National Covenant was subscribed, 1638, by the lords and by the people,
+and in this doubly consecrated ground are laid the remains of many of
+those heroic Covenanters who subsequently suffered death for conscience
+and their creed. There is a large book of _The Epitaphs and Monumental
+Inscriptions in Grayfriars Churchyard_, made by James Brown, keeper of
+the grounds, and published in 1867. That record does not pretend to be
+complete, and yet it mentions no less than two thousand two hundred
+and seventy-one persons who are sepulchred in this place. Among those
+sleepers are Duncan Forbes, of Culloden; Robert Mylne, who built a
+part of Holyrood Palace; Sir George Mackenzie, the persecutor of the
+Covenanters; Carstairs, the adviser of King William the Third; Sir Adam
+Ferguson; Henry Mackenzie; Robertson and Tytler, the historians; Sir
+Walter Scott's father; and several of the relatives of Mrs. Siddons.
+Captain John Porteous, who was hanged in the Grass-market, by riotous
+citizens of Edinburgh, on the night of September 7, 1736, and whose
+story is so vividly told in _The Heart of Midlothian_, was buried
+in the Grayfriars churchyard, "three dble. pace from the S. corner
+Chalmers' tomb"--1736. James Brown's record of the churchyard contains
+various particulars, quoted from the old church register. Of William
+Robertson, minister of the parish, who died in 1745, we read that he
+"lies near the tree next Blackwood's ground." "Mr. Allan Ramsay," says
+the same quaint chronicle, "lies 5 dble. paces southwest the blew
+stone: A poet: old age: Buried 9th January 1758." Christian Ross, his
+wife, who preceded the aged bard by fifteen years, lies in the same
+grave. Sir Walter Scott's father was laid there on April 18, 1799, and
+his daughter Anne was placed beside him in 1801. In a letter addressed
+to his brother Thomas, in 1819, Sir Walter wrote: "When poor Jack was
+buried in the Grayfriars churchyard, where my father and Anne lie, I
+thought their graves more encroached upon than I liked to witness."
+The remains of the Regent Morton were, it is said, wrapped in a cloak
+and secretly buried there, at night,--June 2, 1581, immediately after
+his execution, on that day,--low down toward the northern wall. The
+supposed grave of the scholar, historian, teacher, and superb Latin
+poet George Buchanan ["the elegant Buchanan," Dr. Johnson calls him],
+is not distant from this spot; and in the old church may be seen a
+beautiful window, a triple lancet, in the south aisle, placed there to
+commemorate that illustrious author.
+
+Hugh Miller and Dr. Chalmers were laid in the Grange cemetery, which
+is in the southern part of the city, near Morningside. Adam Smith is
+commemorated by a heavy piece of masonry, over his dust, at the south
+end of the Canongate churchyard, and Dugald Stewart by a ponderous tomb
+at the north end of it, where he was buried, as also by the monument on
+the Calton Hill. It is to see Ferguson's gravestone, however, that the
+pilgrim explores the Canongate churchyard,--and a dreary place it is
+for the last rest of a poet. Robert Burns placed the stone, and on the
+back of it is inscribed: "By special grant of the managers to Robert
+Burns, who erected this stone, this burial-place is to remain for ever
+sacred to Robert Ferguson." That poet was born September 5, 1751,
+and died October 16, 1774. These lines, written by Burns, with an
+intentional reminiscence of Gray, whose _Elegy_ he fervently admired,
+are his epitaph:
+
+ "No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,
+ No storied urn nor animated bust--
+ This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way
+ To pour her sorrows o'er her Poet's dust."
+
+One of the greatest minds of Scotland, and indeed of the world, was
+David Hume, who could think more clearly and express his thoughts
+more precisely and cogently upon great subjects than almost any
+metaphysician of our English-speaking race. His tomb is in the old
+Calton cemetery, close by the prison, a grim Roman tower, predominant
+over the Waverley Vale and visible from every part of it. This
+structure is open to the sky, and within it and close around its
+interior edge, nine melancholy bushes are making a forlorn effort to
+grow, in the stony soil that covers the great historian's dust. There
+is an urn above the door of this mausoleum and surmounting the urn
+is this inscription: "David Hume. Born April 26th, 1711. Died August
+25th, 1776. Erected in memory of him in 1778." In another part of this
+ground you may find the sepulchre of Sir Walter Scott's friend and
+publisher, Archibald Constable, "born 24th February 1774, died 21st
+July 1827." Several priests were roaming over the cemetery when I saw
+it, making its dismal aspect still more dismal by that rook-like,
+unctuous, furtive aspect which oftens marks the ecclesiastic of the
+Roman Catholic church.
+
+Another great writer, Thomas de Quincey, is buried in the old
+churchyard of the West church, that lies in the valley just beneath
+the west front of the crag of Edinburgh Castle. I went to that spot
+on a bright and lovely autumn evening. The place was deserted, except
+for the presence of a gardener, to whom I made my request that he
+would guide me to the grave of De Quincey. It is an inconspicuous
+place, marked by a simple slab of dark stone, set against the wall, in
+an angle of the enclosure, on a slight acclivity. As you look upward
+from this spot you see the grim, magnificent castle, frowning on its
+precipitous height. The grave was covered thick with grass, and in a
+narrow trench of earth, cut in the sod around it, many pansies and
+marigolds were in bloom. Upon the gravestone is written: "Sacred to the
+memory of Thomas de Quincey, who was born at Greenhay, near Manchester,
+August 15th, 1785, and died in Edinburgh, December 8th, 1859. And of
+Margaret, his wife, who died August 7, 1837." Just over the honoured
+head of the illustrious sleeper were two white daisies peeping through
+the green; one of which I thought it not a sin to take away, for it
+is the symbol at once of peace and hope, and therefore a sufficient
+embodiment of the best that death can teach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+SCOTTISH PICTURES
+
+
+Stronachlacher, Loch Katrine, September 1, 1890.--No one needs to be
+told that the Forth bridge is a wonder. All the world knows it, and
+knows that the art of the engineer has here achieved a masterpiece. The
+bridge is not beautiful, whether viewed from afar or close at hand. The
+gazer can see it, or some part of it, from every height in Edinburgh.
+It is visible from the Calton Hill, from the Nelson column, from the
+Scott monument, from the ramparts of the Castle, from Salisbury Crags,
+from the Braid Hills, and of course from the eminence of Arthur's
+Seat. Other objects of interest there are which seek the blissful
+shade, but the Forth bridge is an object of interest that insists upon
+being seen. The visitor to the shores of the Forth need not mount
+any height in order to perceive it, for all along those shores, from
+Dirleton to Leith and from Elie to Burntisland, it frequently comes
+into the picture. While, however, it is not beautiful, it impresses the
+observer with a sense of colossal magnificence. It is a more triumphant
+structure even than the Eiffel tower, and it predominates over the
+vision and the imagination by the same audacity of purpose and the
+same consummate fulfilment which mark that other marvel and establish
+it in universal admiration. Crossing the bridge early this morning,
+I deeply felt its superb potentiality, and was charmed likewise with
+its pictorial effect. That effect is no doubt due in part to its
+accessories. Both ways the broad expanse of the Forth was visible for
+many miles. It was a still morning, overcast and mournful. There was
+a light breeze from the southeast, the air at that elevation being as
+sweet as new milk. Beneath, far down, the surface of the steel-gray
+water was wrinkled like the scaly back of a fish. Midway a little
+island rears its spine of rock out of the stream. Westward at some
+distance rises a crag, on which is a tiny lighthouse-tower, painted
+red. The long, graceful stone piers that stretch into the Forth at this
+point,--breakwaters to form a harbour,--and all the little gray houses
+of Queensferry, Inverkeithing, and the adjacent villages looked like
+the toy buildings which are the playthings of children. A steamboat
+was making her way up the river, while near the shores were many small
+boats swinging at their moorings, for the business of the day was not
+yet begun. Over this scene the scarce risen sun, much obscured by dull
+clouds, cast a faint rosy light, and even while the picture was at its
+best we glided away from it into the pleasant land of Fife.
+
+[Illustration: _The Forth Bridge._]
+
+[Illustration: _Dunfermline Abbey._]
+
+In former days the traveller to Stirling commonly went by the way of
+Linlithgow, which is the place where Mary Stuart was born, and he was
+all the more prompted to think of that enchanting woman because he
+usually caught a glimpse of the ruins of Niddry Castle, one of the
+houses of her faithful Lord Seton, at which she rested, on the romantic
+and memorable occasion of her flight from Loch Leven. Now, since the
+Forth bridge has been opened, the most direct route to Stirling is by
+Dunfermline. And this is a gain, for Dunfermline is one of the most
+interesting places in Scotland. That Malcolm of whom we catch a glimpse
+when we see a representation of Shakespeare's tragedy of _Macbeth_
+had a royal castle there nine hundred years ago, of which a fragment
+still remains; and on a slope of the coast, a few miles west from
+Dunfermline, the vigilant antiquarian has fixed the sight of Macduff's
+castle, where Lady Macduff and her children were slaughtered by the
+tyrant. Behind the ancient church at Dunfermline, the church of the
+Holy Trinity,--devastated at the Reformation, but since restored,--you
+may see the tomb of Malcolm and of Margaret, his queen,--an angel
+among women when she lived, and worthy to be remembered now as the
+saint that her church has made her. The body of Margaret, who died at
+Edinburgh Castle, November 16, 1093, was secretly and hastily conveyed
+to Dunfermline, and there buried,--Edinburgh Castle, The Maiden Castle
+it was then called, being assailed by her husband's brother, Donald
+Bane. The remains of that noble and devoted woman, however, do not rest
+in that tomb, for long afterward, at the Reformation, they were taken
+away, and after various wanderings were enshrined at the church of
+St. Lawrence in the Escurial. I had often stood in the little chapel
+that this good queen founded in Edinburgh Castle,--a place which they
+desecrate now, by using it as a shop for the sale of pictures and
+memorial trinkets,--and I was soon to stand in the ruins of St. Oran's
+chapel, in far Iona, which also was built by her; and so it was with
+many reverent thoughts of an exalted soul and a beneficent life that I
+saw the great dark tower of Dunfermline church vanish in the distance.
+At Stirling, the rain, which had long been lowering, came down in
+floods, and after that for many hours there was genuine Scotch weather
+and a copious abundance of it. This also is an experience, and,
+although that superb drive over the mountain from Aberfoyle to Loch
+Katrine was marred by the wet, I was well pleased to see the Trosach
+country in storm, which I had before seen in sunshine. It is a land of
+infinite variety, and lovely even in tempest. The majesty of the rocky
+heights; the bleak and barren loneliness of the treeless hills; the
+many thread-like waterfalls which, seen afar off, are like rivulets
+of silver frozen into stillness on the mountain-sides; the occasional
+apparition of precipitous peaks, over which presently are driven the
+white streamers of the mist,--all these are striking elements of a
+scene which blends into the perfection of grace the qualities of gentle
+beauty and wild romance. Ben Lomond in the west and Ben Venue and Ben
+Ledi in the north were indistinct, and so was Ben A'an in its nearer
+cloud; but a brisk wind had swept the mists from Loch Drunkie, and
+under a bleak sky the smooth surface of "lovely Loch Achray" shone like
+a liquid diamond. An occasional grouse rose from the ferns and swiftly
+winged its way to cover. A few cows, wet but indifferent, composed and
+contented, were now and then visible, grazing in that desert; while
+high upon the crags appeared many sure-footed sheep, the inevitable
+inhabitants of those solitudes. So onward, breathing the sweet air that
+here was perfumed by miles and miles of purple heather, I descended
+through the dense coppice of birch and pine that fringes Loch Katrine,
+and all in a moment came out upon the levels of the lake. It was a
+long sail down Loch Katrine, for a pilgrim drenched and chilled by the
+steady fall of a penetrating rain; but Ellen's isle and Fitz-James's
+silver strand brought pleasant memories of one of the sweetest of
+stories, and all the lonesome waters seemed haunted with a ghostly
+pageant of the radiant standards of Roderick Dhu. To-night the mists
+are on the mountains, and upon this little pine-clad promontory of
+Stronachlacher the darkness comes down early and seems to close it in
+from all the world. The waters of Loch Katrine are black and gloomy,
+and no sound is heard but the rush of the rain and the sigh of the
+pines. It is a night for memory and for thought, and to them let it be
+devoted.
+
+ The night-wind that sobs in the trees--
+ Ah, would that my spirit could tell
+ What an infinite meaning it breathes,
+ What a sorrow and longing it wakes!
+
+[Illustration: _Northwest Corner of Dunfermline Abbey._]
+
+[Illustration: _The Nave--Looking West--Dunfermline Abbey._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+IMPERIAL RUINS
+
+
+[Illustration: _Loch Lomond._]
+
+Oban, September 4, 1890.--Going westward from Stronachlacher, a drive
+of several delicious miles, through the country of Rob Roy, ends at
+Inversnaid and the shore of Loch Lomond. The rain had passed, but
+under a dusky, lowering sky the dense white mists, driven by a fresh
+morning wind, were drifting along the heath-clad hills, like a pageant
+of angels trailing robes of light. Loch Arklet and the little shieling
+where was born Helen, the wife of the Macgregor, were soon passed,--a
+peaceful region smiling in the vale; and presently, along the northern
+bank of the Arklet, whose copious, dark, and rapid waters, broken
+into foam upon their rocky bed, make music all the way, I descended
+that precipitous road to Loch Lomond which, through many a devious
+turning and sudden peril in the fragrant coppice, reaches safety at
+last, in one of the wildest of Highland glens. This drive is a chief
+delight of Highland travel, and it appears to be one that "the march of
+improvement,"--meaning the extension of railways,--can never abolish;
+for, besides being solitary and beautiful, the way is difficult. You
+easily divine what a sanctuary that region must have been to the bandit
+chieftain, when no road traversed it save perhaps a sheep-track or a
+path for horses, and when it was darkly covered with the thick pines of
+the Caledonian forest. Scarce a living creature was anywhere visible.
+A few hardy sheep, indeed, were grazing on the mountain slopes; a few
+cattle were here and there couched among the tall ferns; and sometimes
+a sable company of rooks flitted by, cawing drearily overhead. Once I
+saw the slow-stepping, black-faced, puissant Highland bull, with his
+menacing head and his dark air of suspended hostility and inevitable
+predominance. All the cataracts in those mountain glens were at the
+flood, because of the continuous heavy rains of an uncommonly wet
+season, and at Inversnaid the magnificent waterfall,--sister to Lodore
+and Aira Force,--came down in great floods of black and silver, and
+with a long resounding roar that seemed to shake the forest. Soon the
+welcome sun began to pierce the mists; patches of soft blue sky became
+visible through rifts in the gray; and a glorious rainbow, suddenly
+cast upon a mountain-side of opposite Inveruglas, spanned the whole
+glittering fairy realm with its great arch of incommunicable splendour.
+The place of Rob Roy's cavern was seen, as the boat glided down Loch
+Lomond,--a snug nest in the wooded crag,--and, after all too brief a
+sail upon those placid ebon waters, I mounted the coach that plies
+between Ardlui and Crianlarich. Not much time will now elapse before
+this coach is displaced,--for they are building a railroad through
+Glen Falloch, which, running southerly from Crianlarich, will skirt
+the western shore of Loch Lomond and reach to Balloch and Helensburgh,
+and thus will make the railway communication complete, continuous, and
+direct between Glasgow and Oban. At intervals all along the glen were
+visible the railway embankments, the piles of "sleepers," the heaps
+of steel rails, the sheds of the builders, and the red flag of the
+dynamite blast. The new road will be a popular line of travel. No land
+"that the eye of heaven visits" is lovelier than this one. But it may
+perhaps be questioned whether the exquisite loveliness of the Scottish
+Highlands will not become vulgarised by over-easiness of accessibility.
+Sequestration is one of the elements of the beautiful, and numbers
+of people invariably make common everything upon which they swarm.
+But nothing can debase the unconquerable majesty of those encircling
+mountains. I saw "the skyish head" of Ben More, at one angle, and of
+Ben Lui at another, and the lonely slopes of the Grampian hills; and
+over the surrounding pasture-land, for miles and miles of solitary
+waste, the thick, ripe heather burnished the earth with brown and
+purple bloom and filled the air with dewy fragrance.
+
+[Illustration: _Loch Lomond._]
+
+This day proved capricious, and by the time the railway train from
+Crianlarich had sped a little way into Glen Lochy the landscape
+was once more drenched with wild blasts of rain. Loch-an-Beach,
+always gloomy, seemed black with desolation. Vast mists hung over
+the mountain-tops and partly hid them; yet down their fern-clad and
+heather-mantled sides the many snowy rivulets, seeming motionless in
+the impetuosity of their motion, streamed in countless ribands of
+silver lace. The mountain ash, which is in perfect bloom in September,
+bearing great pendent clusters of scarlet berries, gave a frequent
+touch of brilliant colour to this wild scenery. A numerous herd of
+little Highland steers, mostly brown and black, swept suddenly into
+the picture, as the express flashed along Glen Lochy, and at beautiful
+Dalmally the sun again came out, with sudden transient gleams of
+intermittent splendour; so that gray Kilchurn and the jewelled waters
+of sweet Loch Awe, and even the cold and grim grandeur of the rugged
+Pass of Brander, were momentarily clothed with tender, golden haze.
+It was afternoon when I alighted in the seaside haven of Oban; yet
+soon, beneath the solemn light of the waning day, I once more stood
+amid the ruins of Dunstaffnage Castle and looked upon one of the most
+representative, even as it is one of the most picturesque, relics of
+the feudal times of Scottish history. You have to journey about three
+miles out of the town in order to reach that place, which is upon
+a promontory where Loch Etive joins Loch Linnhe. The carriage was
+driven to it through a shallow water and across some sands which soon
+a returning tide would deeply submerge. The castle is so placed that,
+when it was fortified, it must have been well-nigh impregnable. It
+stands upon a broad, high, massive, precipitous rock, looking seaward
+toward Lismore island. Nothing of that old fortress now remains except
+the battlemented walls, upon the top of which there is a walk, and
+portions of its towers, of which originally there were but three. The
+roof and the floors are gone. The courtyard is turfed, and over the
+surface within its enclosure the grass grows thick and green, while
+weeds and wild-flowers fringe its slowly mouldering walls, upon which
+indeed several small trees have rooted themselves, in crevices stuffed
+with earth. One superb ivy-tree, of great age and size, covers much
+of the venerable ruin, upon its inner surface, with a wild luxuriance
+of brilliant foliage. There are the usual indications in the masonry,
+showing how the area of this castle was once subdivided into rooms
+of various shapes and sizes, some of them large, in which were ample
+fireplaces and deeply recessed embrasures, and no doubt arched
+casements opening on the inner court. Here dwelt the early kings of
+Scotland. Here the national story of Scotland began. Here for a long
+time was treasured the Stone of Destiny, Lia Fail, before it was taken
+to Scone Abbey, thence to be borne to London by Edward the First, in
+1296, and placed where it has ever since remained, and is visible now,
+in the old coronation chair in the chapel of Edward the Confessor,
+at Westminster. Here through the slow-moving centuries many a story
+of love, ambition, sorrow, and death has had its course and left its
+record. Here, in the stormy romantic period that followed 1745, was
+imprisoned for a while the beautiful, intrepid, constant, and noble
+Flora Macdonald, who had saved the person and the life of the fugitive
+Pretender, after the fatal defeat and hideous carnage of Culloden. What
+pageants, what festivals, what glories, and what horrors have those
+old walls beheld! Their stones seem agonised with ghastly memories
+and weary with the intolerable burden of hopeless age; and as I stood
+and pondered amid their gray decrepitude and arid desolation,--while
+the light grew dim and the evening wind sighed in the ivy and shook
+the tremulous wall-flowers and the rustling grass,--the ancient,
+worn-out pile seemed to have a voice, and to plead for the merciful
+death that should put an end to its long, consuming misery and dumb
+decay. Often before, when standing alone among ruins, have I felt this
+spirit of supplication, and seen this strange, beseechful look, in the
+silent, patient stones: never before had it appealed to my heart with
+such eloquence and such pathos. Truly nature passes through all the
+experience and all the moods of man, even as man passes through all the
+experience and all the moods of nature.
+
+[Illustration: _Dunstaffnage._]
+
+On the western side of the courtyard of Dunstaffnage stands a small
+stone building, accessible by a low flight of steps, which bears upon
+its front the sculptured date 1725, intertwined with the letters AE.
+C. and LC., and the words Laus Deo. This was the residence of the
+ancient family of Dunstaffnage, prior to 1810. From the battlements I
+had a wonderful view of adjacent lakes and engirdling mountains,--the
+jewels and their giant guardians of the lonely land of Lorn,--and saw
+the red sun go down over a great inland sea of purple heather and upon
+the wide waste of the desolate ocean. These and such as these are the
+scenes that make this country distinctive, and that have stamped their
+impress of stately thought and romantic sentiment upon its people. Amid
+such scenes the Scottish national character has been developed, and
+under their influence have naturally been created the exquisite poetry,
+the enchanting music, the noble art and architecture, and the austere
+civilisation of imperial Scotland.
+
+After dark the rain again came on, and all night long, through light
+and troubled slumber, I heard it beating on the window-panes. The
+morning dawned in gloom and drizzle, and there was no prophetic voice
+to speak a word of cheer. One of the expeditions that may be made from
+Oban comprises a visit to Fingal's Cave, on the island of Staffa,
+and to the ruined cathedral on Saint Columba's island of Iona, and,
+incidentally, a voyage around the great island of Mull. It is the most
+beautiful, romantic, diversified, and impressive sail that can be made
+in these waters. The expeditious itinerant in Scotland waits not upon
+the weather, and at an early hour this day I was speeding out of Oban,
+with the course set for Lismore Light and the Sound of Mull.[51]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE LAND OF MARMION
+
+
+Berwick-upon-Tweed, September 8, 1890.--It had long been my wish to
+see something of royal Berwick, and our acquaintance has at length
+begun. This is a town of sombre gray houses capped with red roofs;
+of elaborate, old-fashioned, disused fortifications; of dismantled
+military walls; of noble stone bridges and stalwart piers; of breezy
+battlement walks, fine sea-views, spacious beaches, castellated
+remains, steep streets, broad squares, narrow, winding ways, many
+churches, quaint customs, and ancient memories. The present, indeed,
+has marred the past in this old town, dissipating the element of
+romance and putting no adequate substitute in its place. Yet the
+element of romance is here, for such observers as can look on Berwick
+through the eyes of the imagination; and even those who can imagine
+nothing must at least perceive that its aspect is regal. Viewed, as I
+had often viewed it, from the great Border bridge between England and
+Scotland, it rises on its graceful promontory,--bathed in sunshine and
+darkly bright amid the sparkling silver of the sea,--a veritable ocean
+queen. To-day I have walked upon its walls, threaded its principal
+streets, crossed its ancient bridge, explored its suburbs, entered
+its municipal hall, visited its parish church, and taken long drives
+through the country that encircles it; and now at midnight, sitting
+in a lonely chamber of the King's Arms and musing upon the past, I
+hear not simply the roll of a carriage wheel or the footfall of a
+late traveller dying away in the distance, but the music with which
+warriors proclaimed their victories and kings and queens kept festival
+and state. This has been a pensive day, for in its course I have said
+farewell to many lovely and beloved scenes. Edinburgh was never more
+beautiful than when she faded in the yellow mist of this autumnal
+morning. On Preston battlefield the golden harvest stood in sheaves,
+and the meadows glimmered green in the soft sunshine, while over them
+the white clouds drifted and the peaceful rooks made wing in happy
+indolence and peace. Soon the ruined church of Seton came into view,
+with its singular stunted tower and its venerable gray walls couched
+deep in trees, and around it the cultivated, many-coloured fields and
+the breezy, emerald pastures stretching away to the verge of the sea.
+A glimpse, and it is gone. But one sweet picture no sooner vanishes
+than its place is filled with another. Yonder, on the hillside, is
+the manor-house, with stately battlement and tower, its antique
+aspect softened by great masses of clinging ivy. Here, nestled in the
+sunny valley, are the little stone cottages, roofed with red tiles
+and bright with the adornment of arbutus and hollyhock. All around
+are harvest-fields and market-gardens,--the abundant dark green of
+potato-patches being gorgeously lit with the intermingled lustre of
+millions of wild-flowers, white and gold, over which drift many flights
+of doves. Sometimes upon the yellow level of the hayfields a sudden
+wave of brilliant poppies seems to break,--dashing itself into scarlet
+foam. Timid, startled sheep scurry away into their pastures, as the
+swift train flashes by them. A woman standing at her cottage door looks
+at it with curious yet regardless gaze. Farms teeming with plenty are
+swiftly traversed, their many circular, cone-topped hayricks standing
+like towers of amber. Tall, smoking chimneys in the factory villages
+flit by and disappear. Everywhere are signs of industry and thrift,
+and everywhere also are denotements of the sentiment and taste that
+are spontaneous in the nature of this people. Tantallon lies in the
+near distance, and speeding toward ancient Dunbar I dream once more
+the dreams of boyhood, and can hear the trumpets, and see the pennons,
+and catch again the silver gleam of the spears of Marmion. Dunbar is
+left behind, and with it the sad memory of Mary Stuart, infatuated
+with barbaric Bothwell, and whirled away to shipwreck and ruin,--as so
+many great natures have been before and will be again,--upon the black
+reefs of human passion. The heedless train is skirting the hills of
+Lammermoor now, and speeding through plains of a fertile verdure that
+is brilliant and beautiful down to the margin of the ocean. Close by
+Cockburnspath is the long, lonely, melancholy beach that well may have
+been in Scott's remembrance when he fashioned that weird and tragic
+close of the most poetical and pathetic of his novels, while, near at
+hand, on its desolate headland, the grim ruin of Fast Castle,--which
+is deemed the original of his Wolf's Crag,--frowns darkly on the white
+breakers at its surge-beaten base. Edgar of Ravenswood is no longer an
+image of fiction, when you look upon that scene of gloomy grandeur and
+mystery. But do not look upon it too closely nor too long,--for of
+all scenes that are conceived as distinctly weird it may truly be said
+that they are more impressive in the imagination than in the actual
+prospect. This coast is full of dark ravines, stretching seaward and
+thickly shrouded with trees, but in them now and then a glimpse is
+caught of a snugly sheltered house, overgrown with flowers, securely
+protected from every blast of storm. The rest is open land, which
+many dark stone walls partition, and many hawthorn hedges, and many
+little white roads, winding away toward the shore: for this is Scottish
+sea-side pageantry, and the sunlit ocean makes a silver setting for the
+jewelled landscape, all the way to Berwick.
+
+[Illustration: _Tantallon Castle._]
+
+The profit of walking in the footsteps of the past is that you learn
+the value of the privilege of life in the present. The men and women
+of the past had their opportunity and each improved it after his kind.
+These are the same plains in which Wallace and Bruce fought for the
+honour, and established the supremacy, of the kingdom of Scotland. The
+same sun gilds these plains to-day, the same sweet wind blows over
+them, and the same sombre, majestic ocean breaks in solemn murmurs on
+their shore. "Hodie mihi, cras tibi,"--as it was written on the altar
+skulls in the ancient churches. Yesterday belonged to them; to-day
+belongs to us; and well will it be for us if we improve it. In such an
+historic town as Berwick the lesson is brought home to a thoughtful
+mind with convincing force and significance. So much has happened
+here,--and every actor in the great drama is long since dead and gone!
+Hither came King John, and slaughtered the people as if they were
+sheep, and burnt the city,--himself applying the torch to the house
+in which he had slept. Hither came Edward the First, and mercilessly
+butchered the inhabitants, men, women, and children, violating even the
+sanctuary of the churches. Here, in his victorious days, Sir William
+Wallace reigned and prospered; and here, when Menteith's treachery had
+wrought his ruin, a fragment of his mutilated body was long displayed
+upon the bridge. Here, in the castle, of which only a few fragments now
+remain (these being adjacent to the North British railway station),
+Edward the First caused to be confined in a wooden cage that intrepid
+Countess of Buchan who had crowned Robert Bruce, at Scone. Hither came
+Edward the Third, after the battle of Halidon Hill, which lies close
+by this place, had finally established the English power in Scotland.
+All the princes that fought in the wars of the Roses have been in
+Berwick and have wrangled over the possession of it. Richard the Third
+doomed it to isolation. Henry the Seventh declared it a neutral state.
+By Elizabeth it was fortified,--in that wise sovereign's resolute and
+vigorous resistance to the schemes of the Roman Catholic church for
+the dominance of her kingdom. John Knox preached here, in a church on
+Hide Hill, before he went to Edinburgh to shake the throne with his
+tremendous eloquence. The picturesque, unhappy James the Fourth went
+from this place to Ford Castle and Lady Heron, and thence to his death,
+at Flodden Field. Here it was that Sir John Cope first paused in his
+fugitive ride from the fatal field of Preston, and here he was greeted
+as affording the only instance in which the first news of a defeat had
+been brought by the vanquished General himself. And within sight of
+Berwick ramparts are those perilous Farne islands, where, at the wreck
+of the steamer Forfarshire, in 1838, the heroism of a woman wrote upon
+the historic page of her country, in letters of imperishable glory,
+the name of Grace Darling. (There is a monument to her memory, in
+Bamborough churchyard.) Imagination, however, has done for this region
+what history could never do. Each foot of this ground was known to Sir
+Walter Scott, and for every lover of that great author each foot of it
+is hallowed. It is the Border Land,--the land of chivalry and song, the
+land that he has endeared to all the world,--and you come to it mainly
+for his sake.
+
+ "Day set on Norhams castled steep,
+ And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,
+ And Cheviot's mountains lone."
+
+[Illustration: _Norham Castle--in the time of Marmion._]
+
+The village of Norham lies a few miles west of Berwick, upon the south
+bank of the Tweed,--a group of cottages clustered around a single long
+street. The buildings are low and are mostly roofed with dark slate or
+red tiles. Some of them are thatched, and grass and flowers grow wild
+upon the thatch. At one end of the main highway is a market-cross,
+near to which is a little inn. Beyond that and nearer to the Tweed,
+which flows close beside the place, is a church of great antiquity,
+set toward the western end of a long and ample churchyard, in which
+many graves are marked with tall, thick, perpendicular slabs, many with
+dark, oblong tombs, tumbling to ruin, and many with short, stunted
+monuments. The church tower is low, square, and of enormous strength.
+Upon the south side of the chancel are five windows, beautifully
+arched,--the dog-toothed casements being uncommonly complete specimens
+of that ancient architectural device. This church has been restored;
+the south aisle in 1846, by I. Bononi; the north aisle in 1852, by E.
+Gray. The western end of the churchyard is thickly masked in great
+trees, and looking directly east from this point your gaze falls upon
+all that is left of the stately Castle of Norham, formerly called
+Ublanford,--built by Flamberg, Bishop of Durham, in 1121, and restored
+by Hugh Pudsey, another Prince of that See, in 1164. It must once have
+been a place of tremendous fortitude and of great extent. Now it is
+wide open to the sky, and nothing of it remains but roofless walls
+and crumbling arches, on which the grass is growing and the pendent
+bluebells tremble in the breeze. Looking through the embrasures of
+the east wall you see the tops of large trees that are rooted in the
+vast trench below, where once were the dark waters of the moat. All
+the courtyards are covered now with sod, and quiet sheep nibble and
+lazy cattle couch where once the royal banners floated and plumed
+and belted knights stood round their king. It was a day of uncommon
+beauty,--golden with sunshine and fresh with a perfumed air; and
+nothing was wanting to the perfection of solitude. Near at hand a thin
+stream of pale blue smoke curled upward from a cottage chimney. At some
+distance the sweet voices of playing children mingled with the chirp
+of small birds and the occasional cawing of the rook. The long grasses
+that grow upon the ruin moved faintly, but made no sound. A few doves
+were seen, gliding in and out of crevices in the mouldering turret. And
+over all, and calmly and coldly speaking the survival of nature when
+the grandest works of man are dust, sounded the rustle of many branches
+in the heedless wind.
+
+The day was setting over Norham as I drove away,--the red sun slowly
+obscured in a great bank of slate-coloured cloud,--but to the last
+I bent my gaze upon it, and that picture of ruined magnificence can
+never fade out of my mind. The road eastward toward Berwick is a green
+lane, running between harvest-fields, which now were thickly piled with
+golden sheaves, while over them swept great flocks of sable rooks.
+There are but few trees in that landscape,--scattered groups of the ash
+and the plane,--to break the prospect. For a long time the stately
+ruin remained in view,--its huge bulk and serrated outline, relieved
+against the red and gold of sunset, taking on the perfect semblance
+of a colossal cathedral, like that of Iona, with vast square tower,
+and chancel, and nave: only, because of its jagged lines, it seems in
+this prospect as if shaken by a convulsion of nature and tottering to
+its momentary fall. Never was illusion more perfect. Yet as the vision
+faded I could remember only the illusion that will never fade,--the
+illusion that a magical poetic genius has cast over those crumbling
+battlements, rebuilding the shattered towers, and pouring through their
+ancient halls the glowing tide of life and love, of power and pageant,
+of beauty, light, and song.
+
+ THE END
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+[1] "_In thy mind thou conjoinest life's practical knowledge,
+ And a temper unmoved by the changes of fortune,
+ Whatsoever her smile or her frown,
+ Neither bowed nor elate,--but erect_"
+
+ LORD LYTTON'S TRANSLATION
+
+[2] Since these words were written a plain headstone of white marble
+has been placed on this spot, bearing the following inscription:--
+
+"Matthew Arnold, eldest son of the late Thomas Arnold, D.D., Head
+Master of Rugby School. Born December 24, 1822. Died April 15, 1888.
+There is sprung up a light for the righteous, and joyful gladness for
+such as are true-hearted."
+
+The _Letters of Matthew Arnold_, published in 1895, contain touching
+allusions to Laleham Churchyard. At Harrow, February 27, 1869, the poet
+wrote: "It is a wonderfully clear, bright day, with a cold wind, so I
+went to a field on the top of the hill, whence I can see the clump of
+Botleys and the misty line of the Thames, where Tommy lies at the foot
+of them. I often go for this view on a clear day." At London, August
+2, 1869, he wrote: "On Saturday Flu and I went together to Laleham. It
+was exactly a year since we had driven there with darling Tommy and
+the other two boys, to see Basil's grave; he enjoyed the drive, and
+Laleham, and the river, and Matt Buckland's garden, and often talked
+of them afterwards. And now we went to see _his_ grave, poor darling.
+The two graves are a perfect garden, and are evidently the sight of
+the churchyard, where there is nothing else like them; a path has been
+trodden over the grass to them by people coming and going. It was a
+soft, mild air, and we sat a long time by the graves."
+
+[3] The crime was committed on November 4, 1820. The victim was a
+farmer, named William Hirons. The assassins, four in number, named
+Quiney, Sidney, Hawtrey, and Adams, were hanged, at Warwick, in April,
+1821.
+
+[4] Arthur Hodgson, born in 1818, was educated at Eton and at
+Cambridge. He went to Australia in 1839, and made a fortune as a
+sheep-farmer. He served the State in various public offices, and
+was knighted by Queen Victoria. He has been five times Mayor of
+Stratford-upon-Avon.
+
+[5] An entry in the Diocesan Register of Worcester states that in 1374
+"John Clopton of Stretforde obtained letters dimissory to the order
+of priest."--In 1477 Pope Sixtus the Fourth authorized John Clopton
+to perform divine service in Clopton manor-house.--Mrs. Gaskell, then
+Miss Byerley, saw the attic chapel at Clopton, in 1820, and wrote a
+description of it at that time.
+
+[6] The original sign of the Shoulder of Mutton, which once hung before
+that house, was painted by Grubb, who also painted the remarkable
+portrait of the Corporation Cook, which now hangs in the town hall of
+Stratford,--given to the borough by the late Henry Graves, of London.
+
+[7] When the moat was disused three "jack bottles" were found in its
+bed, made of coarse glass, and bearing on the shoulder of each bottle
+the crest of John-a-Combe. These relics are in the collection of Sir
+Arthur Hodgson.
+
+[8] It is said that the remains of Lord Lovat were, soon after his
+execution, secretly removed, and buried at his home near Inverness, and
+that the head was sewed to the body.
+
+[9] Robert Dudley [1532-1588] seems not to have been an admirable
+man, but certain facts of his life appear to have been considerably
+misrepresented. He married Amy Robsart, daughter of Sir John Robsart,
+of Siderstern, Norfolk, on June 4, 1550, publicly, and in presence of
+King Edward the Sixth. Amy Robsart never became Countess of Leicester,
+but died, in 1560, four years before Dudley became Earl of Leicester,
+by a "mischance,"--namely, an accidental fall downstairs,--at Cumnor
+Hall, near Abingdon. She was not at Kenilworth, as represented in
+Scott's novel, at the time of the great festival in honour of Queen
+Elizabeth, in 1575, because at that time she had been dead fifteen
+years. Dudley secretly married Douglas Howard, Lady Sheffield, in
+1572-73, but would never acknowledge her. His third wife was the
+Lætitia whose affection deplores him, in the Beauchamp chapel.
+
+[10] Those cedars are ranked with the most superb trees in the British
+Islands. Two of the group were torn up by the roots during a terrific
+gale, which swept across England, leaving ruin in its track, on Sunday,
+March 24, 1895.
+
+[11] Length. Height of Tower.
+ Winchester 556 ft. 138 ft.
+ St. Albans 548 ft. 4 in. 144 ft.
+ York 524 ft. 6 in. 213 ft.
+
+[12] The White Horse upon the side of the hill at Westbury was made by
+removing the turf in such a way as to show the white chalk beneath, in
+the shape of a horse. The tradition is that this was done by command
+of Alfred, in Easter week, A.D. 878, to signalise his victory over the
+Danes, at Oetlandune, or Eddington, at the foot of the hill. Upon the
+top of that hill there is the outline of an ancient Roman camp.
+
+[13] The curfew bell is rung at Bromham church, at eight o'clock in the
+evening, on week days, from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and at the same
+hour on every Sunday throughout the year; and on Shrove Tuesday the
+bell is rung at one o'clock in the day.
+
+[14] Sloperton Cottage is now, 1896, the property of H. H. Ludlow
+Burgess, of Seend.
+
+[15] The famous actor was knighted, by Queen Victoria, in 1895, and
+became Sir Henry Irving.
+
+[16] "In our stage to Penrith I introduced Anne to the ancient
+Petreia, called Old Penrith, and also to the grave of Sir Ewain
+Cæsarius, that knight with the puzzling name, which has got more
+indistinct."--_Journal of Sir Walter Scott_, Vol. II., p. 151.
+
+[17] The poet Gray, who visited these mountains in 1769, wrote, in
+his Journal, October 1: "Place Fell, one of the bravest among them,
+pushes its bold broad breast into the midst of the lake, and forces it
+to alter its course, forming first a large bay to the left and then
+bending to the right."
+
+[18] F. A. Marshall, editor of _The Henry Irving Edition of
+Shakespeare_ and author of _A Study of Hamlet_, the comedy of _False
+Shame_, and many other works, died in London, December, 1889, much
+lamented. His widow,--the once distinguished actress, Miss Ada
+Cavendish,--died, at 34 Thurloe square, London, October 6, 1895.
+
+[19] The Traveller's Rest is 1481 feet above the sea-level, whereas
+the inn called The Cat and Fiddle,--a corruption of Caton le Fidèle,
+governor of Calais,--on Axe Edge, near Buxton, is 1700 feet above the
+level of the sea.
+
+[20] Mr. Wadley died at Pershore, April 4, 1895, and was buried in
+Bidford churchyard on April 10.
+
+[21] See in the _London Athenæum_, February 9, 1889, a valuable
+article, by Mr. John Taylor, on "Local Shakesperean Names" based upon,
+and incorporative of, some of the researches of Mr. Wadley.
+
+[22] William Butcher died on February 20, 1895, aged sixty-six, and was
+buried in the Stratford Cemetery.
+
+[23] See _An Account of the Discovery of the Body of King John, in the
+Cathedral Church of Worcester_. By Valentine Green, F.S.A., 1797.
+
+[24] Byron was born on January 22, 1788, and he died on April 19, 1824.
+
+[25] Since this paper was written the buildings that flanked the church
+wall have been removed, the street in front of it has been widened, and
+the church has been "restored" and considerably altered.
+
+[26] Revisiting this place on September 10, 1890, I found that the
+chancel has been lengthened, that the altar and the mural tablets have
+been moved back from the Byron vault, and that his gravestone is now
+outside of the rail.
+
+[27] It is now, 1896, said to be in the possession of a resident of one
+of our Southern cities, who says that he obtained it from one of his
+relatives, to whom it was given by the parish clerk, in 1834.
+
+[28] Dr. Joseph Wharton, in a letter to the poet Gay, described Lavinia
+Fenton as follows: "She was a very accomplished and most agreeable
+companion; had much wit, good strong sense, and a just taste in
+polite literature. Her person was agreeable and well made; though I
+think she could never be called a beauty. I have had the pleasure of
+being at table with her when her conversation was much admired by the
+first characters of the age, particularly old Lord Bathurst and Lord
+Granville."
+
+General James Wolfe, killed in battle, at the famous storming of
+Quebec, was born in 1726, and he died in 1759.
+
+Robert Clive, the famous soldier and the first Lord Clive, was born in
+1725, and he died, a suicide,--haunted, it was superstitiously said, by
+ghosts of slaughtered East Indians,--in 1774.
+
+[29] The romantic house of Compton Wynyate was built of material taken
+from a ruined castle at Fulbrooke, by Sir William Compton, in the reign
+of Henry the Eighth. Wynyate signifies a vineyard.
+
+[30] Miss Mary Anderson, the distinguished American actress, was
+married, on June 17, 1890, at Hampstead, to Mr. Antonio De Navarro. Her
+Autobiography, called _A Few Memories of My Life_, was published, in
+London, in March, 1896.
+
+[31] Mr. Wall retired from the office of librarian of the Shakespeare
+Memorial in June, 1895, and was succeeded by Mr. William Salt
+Brassington.
+
+[32] In 1894 the number of visitors to New Place was 809; in 1895 it
+was 716, while 13,028 visited the Memorial.
+
+[33] Mrs. Bulmer served as custodian of New Place until her death, on
+March 14, 1896. The office was then assigned to Richard Savage, in
+addition to his other offices.
+
+[34] Miss Maria Chattaway died on January 31, 1891. Miss Caroline
+Chattaway removed from Stratford on October 7, 1895, to Haslor.
+
+[35] Mr. Skipsey resigned his office, in October, 1891, and returned to
+Newcastle.
+
+[36] The grave of Charles Frederick Green, author of an account of
+Shakespeare and the Crab Tree,--an idle tradition set afloat by Samuel
+Ireland,--was made in the angle near the west door of Trinity church,
+but it has been covered, tombstone and all, with gravel.
+
+[37] Mr. Loggin was Mayor of Stratford in 1866 and 1867, and under
+his administration, in the latter year, was built the Mill Bridge,
+across the Avon, near Lucy's Mill, to replace an old and dilapidated
+structure. Mr. Loggin died on February 3, 1885, aged sixty-nine, and
+was buried at Long Marston.
+
+[38] The Anne Hathaway cottage was purchased for the nation, in April,
+1892.
+
+[39] Mr. Laffan resigned his office in June, 1895, and became President
+of Cheltenham College. Rev. E. J. W. Houghton is now head-master.
+
+[40] Mrs. Eliza Smith died at No. 56 Ely street, Stratford, on February
+24, 1893, aged 68, and the relics that she possessed passed to a
+relative, at Northampton. They were sold, in London, in June, 1896.
+
+[41] Modern editions, following Pope's alteration, say "whereon"
+instead of "where"; but "where" is the reading in the Folio of 1623.
+Mr. Savage contends that the bank that Shakespeare had in mind is
+Borden Hill, near Shottery, where the wild thyme is still abundant.
+
+[42] That learned antiquarian W. G. Fretton, Esq., of Coventry, has
+shown that the Forest of Arden covered a large tract of land extending
+many miles west and north of the bank of the Avon, around Stratford.
+
+[43] It has been awakened. A railway to Henley was opened in 1894.
+
+[44] The venerable Mr. Linskill died in the rectory of Beaudesert in
+February, 1890, and was buried within the shadow of the church that he
+loved. That picturesque rectory of Beaudesert was the birthplace of
+Richard Jago [1715-1781], the poet who wrote _Edgehill_.
+
+[45] Like many other pleasures it has now become only a memory. Mr.
+Childs died, in Philadelphia, February 3, 1894.
+
+[46] Chantrey had seen the beautiful sculpture of little Penelope
+Boothby, in Ashbourne church, Derbyshire, made by Thomas Banks, and he
+may have been inspired by that spectacle.
+
+[47] 1896. The building is, if possible, to be made a museum of relics
+of Johnson. It is now a lodging-house. Its exterior has recently been
+repaired. Johnson is the name of its present owner.
+
+[48] Thomas Jefferson, 1728-1807, was a contemporary and friend of
+Garrick, and a member of his company, at various times, at Drury Lane.
+He was the great-grandfather of Joseph Jefferson, famous in Rip Van
+Winkle.
+
+[49] On the stone that marks this sepulchre are inscriptions, which may
+suitably be preserved in this chronicle:
+
+"Alexander Campbell Esquire, of Ederline. Died 2^d October, 1841. In
+his 76^{th} year.
+
+Matilda Campbell. Second daughter of William Campbell Esq., of
+Ederline. Died on the 21^{st} Nov^r 1842. In her 6^{th} year.
+
+William Campbell Esq., of Ederline. Died 15^{th} January 1855, in his
+42^{nd} year.
+
+Lachlan Aderson Campbell. His son. Died January 27^{th}, 1859. In his
+5^{th} year."
+
+[John Campbell, the eldest son of Alexander, died February 26, 1855,
+aged 45, and was buried in the Necropolis, at Toronto, Canada. His
+widow, Janet Tulloch Campbell, a native of Wick, Caithness, died at
+Toronto, August 24, 1878, aged 65, and was buried beside him.]
+
+[50] It is a small oval glass, of which the rim is fashioned with
+crescents, twenty-two of them on each side.
+
+[51] Chapters on Iona, Staffa, Glencoe, and other beauties of Scotland
+may be found in my books, which are companions to this one, called _Old
+Shrines and Ivy_ and _Brown Heath and Blue Bells_.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained.
+
+"Corse" is an archaic form of "corpse". "Oftens" is an archaic adverb.
+
+ Page 121, added "a" (after a Worcester fight)
+ Page 311, changed "along" to "alone" (standing alone among ruins)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gray Days and Gold, by William Winter
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 56429 ***
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.25.1) at 2026-05-30 22:56:15 +0000