UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES
GIFT OF
MRS.MATTIE H.MERRILL
GKAY DAYS AND GOLD
B r THE SAME A UTHOR.
SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND.
In one vol. 32mo. Is.
WANDERERS.
In one vol. 32mo. Is.
Edi>-burgh : David Douglas.
GRAY DAYS AND
GOLD
WILLIAM WINTER
AUTHOR OF "Shakespeare's England'
"wanderers," etc.
NEW YORK
M A C M I L L A N c\; CO.
1891
Copyright
1890
By WILLIAM WINTER
WT3g
^
TO
AUGUSTIN DALY,
I
REMEMBERIXG A FRIENDSHIP
\
^
OF MANY TEAKS,
K
>
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK.
^ " Est animus tibi
Benimque prudens, et secundis
--• Temporibus duhiisque rectus."
213673
' ' Whatever withdraws us from the power of
our senses, "whatever makes the past, the distant,
or the ficiiire predomiiutte over the present, ad-
z'ances us in the dignity of fhijikitig beings. . . .
A II travel has its advantages. If the passenger
visits better countries he may learti to improrcx
his own, and if fortune carries him to ivorse
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,
Forzuhich the palace of the present hour
Mzist yield its pom.p, and wait till ages are its
dower."
Eyron.
PREFACE.
This book, ivhich is intended as a com-
panion to " Shakespeare's England," relates
to the gray days of an American wanderer
in the British Islands, and to the gold oj
thought and fancy that can he found there.
In "Shakespeare's England" an attempt
was made to depict, in an unconventional
manner, those lovely scenes which are for ever
intertwined with the name and the memory of
Shakespeare, and also to reflect the spirit of
that English scenery in general ivhich, to an
imaginative mind, must always he venerable
with historic antiquity and tenderly hal-
lowed with poetic and romantic association.
The present booh continues the same treat-
ment of kindred themes, — referring not only
to the land of Shakespeare hut 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 pre-
sent loriter 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 suffi-
ciently 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 shoidd help to impress his country-
men, so many of whom annually travel in
Britain, with the superlative importance of
adorning the physical aspect and of refining
the material civilisation of America by a re-
production within its borders of tvhatever is
valuable in the long experience and wliatever
is noble and beautiful in the domestic and reli-
gious spirit of the British Islands, — his labour
loill 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 hut in spiritual advance-
ment. Utility has long been exclusively ivor-
shipped. The welfare of the future lies in
the loorship 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.
Most of the sketches here assembled ivere
originally printed in the ' ' New York
Tribune," with which journal their author
has been continuously associated as a con-
tributor since 1865, They have been revised
for publication in this form. Most of the
paper on Sir Walter Scott first appeared in
"Harper's Weekly," /or lohich periodical
also the author has icritten many things. The
paper on the Wordsworth country tvas con-
tributed to the "New York Mirror." Seve-
ral poems, of recent date, are added, which
may find favour with readers who have ap-
proved their author^s companion volume of
" Wanderers." The alluring field of Scottish
antiquity and romance, ivhich lie has dared
X PREFACE.
hut Slightly to toiicli, may perhaps he exj)lored
hereafter, for treasures of contemplation that
earlier seekers have left ungathered. The
author would state that several months after
the publication of his hook called " Shake-
speare's England " he was told that there is in
existence a work, published many years ago,
hearing a similar title, though relating to
a different theme — the state of England in
Shakespeare's time. He had never heard of
it and has never seen it. The fact is re-
corded that an important recent book called
"Shakespeare's True Life," written by James
Walter, incorporates into its text, without
credit, several passages of original descrip-
tion and reflection taken from the present
ivriter's sketches of the Shakespeare country,
and also quotes, as his ivork, an elaborate
narrative of a nocturnal visit to Anne Hatha-
way' s cottage, which he never wrote and never
claimed to have written. This statement is
made as a safeguard against future injustice.
W. W.
Fort Hill, Xew Brighton,
Staten Island, New York,
December 19, 1890.
CONTENTS.
I. CLASSIC SHRINES,
II. HAUNTED GLENS AND HOUSES, .
III. OLD YORK, ....
IV. THE HAUNT.5 OK MOORE, .
V, BEAUTIFUL BATH, .
Vr. THE LAKES AND FELLS OF WORDS
WORTH
VIL SHAKESPEARE RELICS AT WORCESTER
VHI. BYRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKARD
IX. HISTORIC NOOKS AND CORNERS,
X. Shakespeare's town, ,
XL IT AND DOWN THE AVON,
Xir. RAMBLES IN ARDEN,
XII t. THE STRATFORD FOUNTAIN,
XIV. BOSWORTH FIELD, .
XV. THE HOME OF DR. JOHNSON
XVI. FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH,
PACK
13
25
38
53
70
78
i>6
107
131
140
1G5
173
ISl
193
207
2'2-2
xii
COXTEXTS.
XVII.
IXTO THE HIGHLAXDS, .
XVIII.
HIGHLAXD BEAUTIES,
XIX.
THE HEART OF SCOTLAXD,
XX.
SIR WAiTER SCOTT,
XXI.
ELEGIAC MEMORIALS,
xxn.
SCOTTISH PICTURES,
XXIII.
IMPERIAL RUINS, ....
XXIV.
THE LAND OF M.VRMIOX,
AT VESPER TIME—
THE SHIP THAT SAILED,
ASHES,
THE PASSING BELL AT STRATFORD,
heaven's HOUR,
THE STATUE, ....
IN MEMORY OF WILKIE COLLINS,
RAYMOND,
D. D. L.,
SYMBOLS,
honour's PEARL,
THE BROKEN HARP, .
NOW,
UNWRITTEN POEMS, .
GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
CLASSIC SHRINES.
IOXDON, JuxE 29, 1888. — The poet
J Emerson's injunction, " Set not thy
foot on graves," is wise and right; and
l)eing 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
14 GRAY DAYS AN'D GOLD.
that once was occupied by Nell Gwyn, and
as I glance into the garden I see a venerable
acacia that was planted by her own 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 Gun-
powder 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. Surely it is not un-
natural that some of us should live in the
past, and often should find ourselves musing
over its legacies.
One of the most sacred spots in England
is the churchyard of Stoke-Pogis. I re-
visited that place on June 13, and once
again rambled and meditated in that hal-
lowed place. Not many mouths ago it
seemed likely that Stoke Park would pass
into the possession of a sporting ring, and be
turned into a racecourse 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
CLASSIC SHRINES 15
the reverent pilgrim must always be the
dearest. The churchj-ard has been length-
ened a little in front, and a solid, shapely
wall of flint, pierced by an oak porch, richly
carved, has replaced the plain fence, with
its simple turnstile, that formerly enclosed
this rural cemetery. The additional land
was given by the new proprietor of Stoke
Park, who wished that his own burial-vault
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 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 con-
tinue 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."
1 6 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
It would still be a lovely church, even if
it were not associated with the great name
of the author of the immortal Elegj^. I
stood for a long time beside the tomb of
that 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 seve-
ral 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 ladies,
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 surely no
CLASSIC SHRINES. l^
visitor to the old world, who knows how to
value what is best in its treasures, will omit
this act of reverence. The journey is an
easy one to make. 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 sub-
jects 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 church-
yard 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 falter-
ing accents, and fallen asleep with their
heavenly music in his heart. Well may we
1 8 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
pause and ponder at the grave of this divine
poet ! Every noble mind is made nobler,
every good heart is made better, for the ex-
perience 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.
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 bom. 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. Lale-
ham 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
CLASSIC SHRINES. 1 9
trees, and everywhere made beautiful with
flowers, and it is one of those fortunate and
happy places to which access cannot be ob-
tained by railway. There is a great 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 Caesar. The church,
All Saints', is of great antiquity. It has
been in part restored, but its venerable as-
pect is not impaired. The large low tower
is of brick, and this and the church walls
are thickly covered Mith 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
large 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
20 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
at once venerable and romantic, while a
bold, spirited, beautiful painting of Christ
and Peter upon the sea imparts to it an ad-
ditional sentiment of sanctity and solemn
pomp. This remarkable work is by Harlow,
and it is placed back of the altar, where
once there would have been, in the Gothic
daj'S, 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 Protes-
tant worship.
The churchyard of All Saints' is worthy
of the church — a little enclosure, irregular
in shape, surface, shrubbery, and tomb-
stones, 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. 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 sex-
ton'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
CLASSIC SHRINES. 21
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 remem-
brance and sorrowing love, but already
beginning to wither. A small square of
turf, bordered with white marble, covers
the tomb of the poet and of three of his chil-
dren.^ 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
Frances Arnold, youngest child of Matthew
and Frances Lucy Arnold. Born August 19,
1866. Died January 4, 1868. Sufi'er 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 : " Trevener William
1 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 tnie-hearted.'"
22 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 %vTote those memorable words of
imperishable nobility and meaning, "Thou,
my father, wouldst not be saved alone."
j>Iatthew Arnold himself 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."
Every man will think 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 intel-
lect and genius will seek to gather strength
and patience to endure them well. Matthew
CLASSIC SHRINES. 23
Arnold taught many lessons of immense
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 happi-
ness 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 mes-
sage, not of gloom and despair, but of spiri-
tual 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 cobweb 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
not the flesh ; and in that spirit, pure,
tender, fearless, strong to bear and patient
to sufiFer, 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,
24 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 shall 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."
11.
HAUNTED GLF.NS AND HOUSES.
WARWICK, July 6, 1888. -One night
about fifty years ago a brutal murder
was done at a lonely place on the highroad
between Hampton Lucy 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,
tvo in number, were shortly afterward
discovered, and they were hanged at War-
wick. From that day to this the hole where-
in the dead man's head reposed remains un-
changed. No matter how often it may be
filled, whether by the wash of hea\y 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 night-
fall and you will find it empty in the mom-
intf. That is the local belief and affirma-
25 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
tion. This spot is about two miles north
of Stratford, and not distant from the gates
of Charlcote 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 that strong line in Tom Hood's
poem of *' Eugene Aram " — " And a mighty
wind had swept the leaves, and still the
corse was bare."
There are many haunted spots in War-
wickshire. The benighted peasant never
lingers on Ganerslie Heath — for there, at
midnight, dismal bells have been heard to
toll from Blacklow Hill, the place wdiere
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 his-
toric incident, but no one can so completely
realise it as when standing on the place.
The scene of the execution is marked by a
simple cross, bearing this inscription : "In
the hollow of this rock was beheaded, on
HAFNTED GLEXS AND HOUSES. 27
the first day of July 1312, by Barons law-
less as himself, Piers Gaveston, Earl of
Cornwall. In life and death a memorable
instance of misrule." 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 great
personal beauty and some talent, and only
twenty -nine years old. It was a melan-
choly sacrifice, and horrible in the circum-
stances 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 vii.
this Avas the manor of Sir Hugh Clopton,
Lord Mayor of London, he who built the
bridge over the Avon — across which, many
a time, ^Yilliam Shakespeare must have
ridden on his way to Oxford and the capi-
tal. The dust of Sir Hugh Clopton rests
in Stratford Church, and his aaansion has
passed through many hands. In our time
it is the residence of Sir Arthur Hodgson,
by whom it was purchased in 187L It was
my privilege to see Clopton under the guid-
28 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD,
ance of its lord, and a charming and impres-
sive old house it is — full of quaint objects
and fraught with singular associations. They
show you there, among many fine paintings,
the portrait of a wild -eyed lady with thin
figure, delicate features, long light hair,
and sensitive countenance, who in the far-
off Tudor time drowned herself in a dismal
black well, back of the mansion — one of the
many victims, doubtless, of unhappy love.
And they show you the portrait of still an-
other Clopton girl, of ancient times, 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 corpse was found to be
turned over in its coffin and to present in-
dications that the wretched victim of pre-
mature burial had, in her agonised frenzy,
gnawed her own flesh.
It is the blood-stained corridor of Clop-
ton, however, that most impresses imagina-
tion. 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, it is said,
a man was murdered in a little bedroom
near the top of this staircase, and his body
HAUNTED GLEXS AND HOUSES. 29
was dragged along the corridor to be
secreted. 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 eradicated. Opening from
this corridor, opposite to the murder-room,
is an odd apartment, which in the remote
days of a Catholic occupant was used as an
oratory.^ In the early part of the reign of
Henry vi. John Carpenter obtained from the
Bishop of Worcester permission to establish
this chapel. In 1885 the walls of this
chamber were committed to the tender
mercies of a paper-hanger, who presently
discovered on them several inscriptions in
black letter, and who fortunately mentioned
his discoveries before they were obliter-
ated. Richard Savage, the antiquary, was
called to examine them, and by him they
were restored. The effect of these little
patches of letters — isles of significance in
a barren sea of wall-paper — is that of ex-
treme singularity. Most of them are sen-
tences from the Bible. All of them are
devout. One imparts the solemn injunc-
1 An entry in the Diocesan Register of Worcester
states that in 1374 John Clopton of Stretforde cb-
trained letters dimissory to the order of priest.
30 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
tion : " 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 the fact that for about ten
months, in the year 1605, it was occupied
hy Ambrose Rokewood, of Coldham Hall,
Suffolk, a breeder of race-horses, whom
Robert Catesby brought into the ghastly
Gunpowder Plot, in the reign of James
I. Hither came Sir Everard Digby, and
Tom and Robert Winter, and the spe-
cious Jesuit, Father Garnet, chief hatcher
of the conspiracy'', with his vile train of
sentimental fanatics, on that pilgrimage of
sanctification with which he formally pre-
pared 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 ora-
tory of Clopton was in Catholic use. Not
many years since it was a bedroom ; but
one of Sir Arthur Hodgson's guests, who
undertook to sleep in it, was afterward
heard to declare that he wished not ever
again to experience the hospitality of that
chamber, because the sounds that he had
HAUNTED GLENS AND HOUSES. 3 1
lieard all around the place throughout that
night were of a most infernal description-
A house containing many rooms and stair-
cases, a house full of long corridors and
winding ways, a house so large that you
may readily 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 incredu-
lity. 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. "
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
32 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 " was 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 neighbour-
hood, 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 con-
spiracy.
Since Irish ruffians began to toss dyna-
mite 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, West-
minster 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 with-
out a special permit you will be restricted
HAUNTED GLENS AND HOUSES. 33
to a few sights and places. I was fortu-
nately the bearer of the card of the Lord
Chamberlain, on a recent prowl through
the Tower, and therefore was favoured by
the beefeaters who pervade that structure.
Those damp and gloomy dungeons were
displayed wherein so many Jews perished
miserably in the reign of Edward i. ; and
"Little Ease" was shown — the cell in
which for several months Guy Fawkes was
incarcerated, during Cecil's wily investiga-
tion 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
bj' 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 Charles Edward Stuart, the
c
34 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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, just over against
the spot where those unfortunate gentlemen
were buried,^ 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.
St. Mary's Church at Warwick has been
restored since 1885, and now it is made
a show-place. You 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, Lsetitia,
1 The remains of Lord. Lovat were removed shortly
after his death and buried at his home near Inverness ;
and it is said that the head was sewed to the body.
HAUNTED GLENS AND HOUSES 35
daughter of Fi'ancis Knolles, through a
sense of conjugal love and fidelity, hath put
up this monument to the best and dearest
of husbands " ; 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 this 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 libera-
lity. . . , He Mas 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 own lifetime,
modestly describes him as " a most miser-
able sinner." Sin is always miserable when
it knows itself. Still another, and this in
good verse, by Gervas Clifton, gives a tender
tribute to Lsetitia ("the excellent and pious
Lady Lettice"), Countess of Leicester, who
died on Christmas morning 1634 : —
36 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
" 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 favor for her favorite. . . .
While she lived she lived thus,
Till that God, displeased with us,
Suffered her at last to fall,
Not from Him, but from us all."
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
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, one is forcibly and
pleasantly reminded of the attribute of sweet
and gentle reverence in the English char-
acter 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 Hos-
HACNTED GLENS AND HOUSES. 37
pital, or to see as much as he can of the
Castle. This 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 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 Straf-
ford, when a young man — a face prophetic
of stormy life and 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.
The finest portraits of King Charles i.
that exist in this kingdom are shown at
Warwick Castle,
213673
III.
OLD YORK.
YORK, August 12, 188S.— All summer
long the sorrowful skies have been
weeping over England, and my first pro-
spect 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 build-
ings are of low stature, built of brick, and
roofed with red tiles. Here and there you
find a house of Queen Elizabeth's time, pic-
turesque 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. Iliere is
a wide area in the centre of the town called
Parliament Street, where the Market is
38
OLD YORK. 39
opened by torchlight on certain evenings of
every week. It was market-time last even-
ing, 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 which here
broods so sweetly over the venerable relics
of a wild and stormy past.
Four sections of the old wall of York are
still extant, and the observer is amused to
perceive the ingenuity with which these
grey 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 south-east 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
40 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
occasional bit of iron fence. The base of
the wall, for a considerable part of its ex-
tent, 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 twenty
years. At one point the Great Northern
Railway enters through an arch in the an-
cient 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 drawbridge, 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 — Cowper's "Ouse, slow
winding through its level plain" — 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
OLD YORK. 41
cross the Ouse either at Skeldergate or
Lendal, paying a halfpenny 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 con-
jure 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 benedic-
tion.
The pilgrim to York stands in the centre
of the largest shire in England, and is sur-
rounded with castles and monasteries, now
mostly in ruins, but teeming with those
associations of history and literature which
are the glory of this delightful land. From
the summit of the great central tower of
42 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
the Minster, which is reached by two hun-
dred 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 every-
where the green lines of the flowering
hedge. The prospect is finer here than
even it is from the 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
OLD YORK. 43
lakes and mountains of Cumberland and
Westmoreland. No city can excel Edin-
burgh in stately solidity of character, or
tranquil grandeur, or in 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, 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 !
44 or. AY DAYS AND GOLD.
All the ground that you survey from the
top of York Minster is classic ground —
at least to those persons whose imagina-
tions are kindled by associations with the
stately and storied past. In the city that
lies at your feet stood once the great Con-
stantino, to be proclaimed Emperor and to
be invested 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
vtime at length was ripe for the ruin of
Glamis and Cawdor, Close by is the field
of .Stamford Bridge, where Harold defeated
the Danes with terrible slaughter, only nine
days before he himself was 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 de-
stroyed by the explosion of its powder
magazine in 1684. Not far away is the
battlefield of Towton, where the great War-
wick slew his horse that he might fight
on foot and possess no advantage over the
common soldiers of his force. Henry vi.
OLD YORK. 45
and Margaret were waiting in York for
news of the event of that fatal battle —
which, in its efifect, made them exiles, and
bore to an assured supremacy the rightful
standard of the White Rose. In this church
Edward iv. was crowned, and Richard iii.
was proclaimed king and had his second
coronation. Southward you may see the
open space called The Pavement, connect-
ing 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
wellnigh lost the cause of Charles i. in
1644; and as you look toward that fatal
spot you can almost hear, in the chamber of
your fancy, the paeans 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 Xormandy to Henry
40 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
of Windsor, whose sculptured efiSgies appear
upon the chancel screen in York Minster,
there is scarcely one who has not -worshipped
in this cathedral.
York ^linster has often been described,
but no description can convey an adequate
impression of its grandeur. Canterbury is
the lovelier cathedi-al of the two, and Canter-
bury 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 demo-
cratic era. The walls, which ought to be
cherished with scrupulous care, are found
in many places to be defiled. At intervals
along the walks upon the banks of the Ouse
you behold placards requesting the co-opera-
tion 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 whilst divine service is proceeding
OLD YORK. 47
in the choir. These things imply a rough
element in the population, and in such a
place as York such an element is exception-
ally offensive and deplorable.
It was said by the late 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 con-
tributes an element of beauty ; but if so I
have not seen them. Wherever there is
Ijeauty there is the living force of tradition
to account for it. The most that a con-
servative force in society can accomplish, for
the preservation of an instinct in favour of
whatever is beautiful and impressive, is to
l)rotect what remains liom the past. Modern
Edinburgh, for example, has contributed no
building that is comparable with its glorious
old castle, or with IJoslin, or with what we
know to have been Melrose and Dry burgh ;
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.
48 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
One finds it difficult to understand how
anybody, however lowly born or poorly en-
dowed or meanly nurtured, can live within
the presence of this heavenly building, and
not be purified and exalted by the con-
templation of so much majesty, and by its
constantly irradiative force of religious sen-
timent and power. But the spirit which in
the past created objects of beauty and
adorned common life with visible manifes-
tations 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 com-
bat the hard materialism and gross animal
proclivities of the new age.
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 sym-
bolising, 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 and conduct and experience
OLD YORK. 49
of those who dwell around it. The beaviti-
fiil 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
D
50 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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, re-
freshed 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 second in length
— Winchester being thirty feet longer. The
present structure is 600 years old, and 200
years were occupied in the building of it.
They show you, in the crypt, some fine
remains of the Norman church that pre-
ceded 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 stair-
case and a piece of wall built in the ancient
"herring-bone" fashion. The Norman re-
mains are four clustered columns, embel-
lished in the dog-tooth style. There is not
much of commemorative statuary at York
Minster, and what there is of it was placed
chiefly in the chancel. Archbishop Scrope,
who figures in Shakespeare's historical play
OLD YORK. 51
of Henry IV., was buried in tiie Lady
Chapel. Lawrence Sterne's grandfather,
who was chaplain to Laud, is repre.'sented
there, in his ecclesiastic dress, reclining
npon a couch and supporting his mitred
head upon his hand — a squat figure uncom-
fortably posed, but sculptured with delicate
skill. Many historic names occur in the
inscriptions — Weutworth, Finch, Fenwick,
Carlisle, and Heneage, — and in the north
aisle of the chancel is the tomb of William
of Hatfield^ second son of Edward iii,,
who died in 134.3-44, in the eighth year of
his age. An alabaster statue of the royal
boy reclines upon his tomb. In the Cathe-
dral library, which contains 8000 volumes
and is kept at the Deanery, is the Princess
Elizabeth's prayer-book, containing her auto-
graph. In one of the chapels is the original
throne-chair of Edward iii.
In St. Leonard's Place still stands the
York Theatre, erected by Tate Wilkinson
in 1765. In York Castle Eugene Aram \\'as
imprisoned and suflFered. Knaresborough,
the scene of his crime, is but a few mile
distant. The poet Porteous, the sculptor
Flaxman, and the fanatic Guy Fawkes, were
natives of York, and have often walked its
streets. Standing on Skeldergate Bridge
52 • GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 embel-
lished with touches of green and crimson
and blue. There is no end to the associa-
tions and suggestions of the storied city.
But you are weary of them by this time.
Let me respect the admonition of the mid-
night 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.
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 this 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
this 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
54 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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.
When Moore first went up to London, a
young poet 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 De^^zes ; and, as he crossed seve-
ral times, he must soon have gained famili-
arity 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
vSquare. 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 soop
returned to England. One of his homes,
shortly after his marriage with Elizabeth
Dyke ("Bessie," the sister of the great
THE HAUNTS OF MOORE. 55
actress Mary Duff) was in Brompton, In
the spring of 1812 he settled at Kegworth,
but a year later he is found at May field
('ottage, 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 Homsey, 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 they
removed to vSloperton Cottage, at Bromham,
near Devizes (November 19, 1817), and their
permanent residence was established in that
place. Lord Lansdowne, one of the poet's
earliest and best friends, was the owner of
this estate, and doubtless he was the impulse
of Moore's resort to it. The present Lord
Lansdowne still owns Bowood Park, about
four miles away.
Devizes impresses you with the singular
sense of being a place in which something is
always about to happen ; but nothing ever
does happen in it, or ever will. Quieter it
56 GRAY DAYS AXD GOLD.
could not be unless it were dead. The
principal street in it runs nearly north-west
and south-east. There is a "Northgate"
at one end of it and a " Southgate " at the
other. Most of the streets are narrow and
crooked. The houses are low, and built of
brick. Few buildings are pretentious. A
canal intersects the place, but in such a sub-
terranean and furtive manner as scarcely to
attract even casual notice. Public-houses
are sufficiently numerous, and they appear
to be sufficiently prosperous. Even while
I write, the voice of song, issuing somewhat
discordantly from one of them in this imme-
diate neighbourhood, declares, with beery
emphasis, that " Britons never, never, never
will be slaves." Close by stands a castle
— a new one, built, however, upon the basis
and plan of an ancient structure that was
long included in the dowry settled upon
successive Queens of England. In the centre
of the town is a large square, which only
needs a fringe of well-grown trees to make
it exceedingly pleasant — for its commodious
expanse is seldom invaded by a vehicle or a
human being. Pilgrims in quest of peace
could not do better than to tarry here.
Nobody is in a hurry about anything, and
manners are primitive and frank. At break-
THE HAUNTS OF MOORE. 57
fast yesterday, in the coffee-room of the
Bear, one sedate and ruminant personage,
a farmer on his travels and arrayed in his
Sunday clothes, calmly removed his coat
and draped his chest in a prodigious hand-
kerchief — an amusing spectacle of bovine
simplicity.
The city bell which ofl&cially strikes the
hours in Devizes is subdued and thoughtful,
and although furnished with chimes it al-
ways speaks under its breath. The church -
bell, however, rings long and heartily, and
with a melodious clangour — as though the
local sinners were more than commonly
hard of hearing. In the great public square
there are two works of art — one a fountain,
the other a market cross. The latter, a
good specimen of the perpendicular Gothic,
has thirteen spires, rising above an arched
canopy for a statue. One face of it is in-
scribed as follows : "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 representa-
tive in Parliament. Anno Domini 1814."
Upon the other face appears a record vastly
more significant — being indicative, as to the
58 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
city fathers, equally of credulity and a
frugal mind, and being in itself 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 multi-
tude, she instantly fell down and expired, having
the monev concealed in her hand."
THE HAUNTS OF MOORE. 59
Aa interesting church in Devizes is that
of St. John, tlie Norman tower of which is
a relic of the days of King Henry 11., 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, remark-
able 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 church-
yard 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 remem-
ber 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 Sun-
day 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, sensible, touching, and ad-
monitory : "In Memoriam — Robert Samuel
60 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
Thomley. 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 :
Eeader, reflect, and copy if you can
The simple virtues of this honest man."
As I was gazing at one of the old churches,
surrounded with many ponderous tomb-
stones and looking gray and cheerless in the
gloaming, last night, an old man approached
me and civilly began a conversation about the
antiquity of the church 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
]\Ioore, 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
THE HAUNTS OF MOORE. 6 1
poet, I believe. He was very much liked
here. No, I never heard a word against
him. I am seventy -nine years old the 13th
of December, and that '11 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
regard. "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 poor
people hereabout, the farmers, admired him
chiefly because they thought that he wrote
Moore's Almanac. They often 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
62 GRAY DAYS AXD GOLD.
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 north-west, this road makes
a deep cut in the chalk-stone, and so winds
down hill into the level plain. At intervals
you come upon sweetly pretty specimens of
the old English thatch-roof cottage. Hay-
fields, pastures, and market -gardens extend
on every hand. Eastward, far off, are visible
the hills of \Yestbury, upon which, here and
there, the copses are lovely, and upon one
of which, cut in the rock, is the figure of a
colossal white horse — said to have been put
there by the Saxons to commemorate the
victories of King Alfred. 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 sweetest 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 sweetly and tenderly
touched with the scarlet of the poppy and
THE HAUNTS OF MOORE. 63
with h^^es of other wild-flowers — making
you think of Shakespeare's
" 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, w^hite and gold and crim-
son and purple and blue, upon a growth of
vivid green, so that to look upon it was
almost to be dazzled, w^hile the air that
floated over it was scented as if with honey-
suckles. 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 over-
64 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
looking a valley. Amid these 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 large
chancel-window faces eastward, and the large
window at the end of the nave looks toward
the west — the latter being a memorial to
Moore. At the south-east corner of the
building is the Lady Chapel, 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. Other tombs are adjacent, \\4th in-
scriptions 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 win-
dow at the end of the nave is a simple but
striking composition, in stained glass, richer
and nobler than is commonly seen in a coun-
try church. It consists of twenty-one lights,
THE HAUNTS OF MOORE. 65
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 comer
of the church, that the present writer joined
in the service, and meditated, throughout
a long sermon, on the lovely life and char-
acter, and the gentle, noble, and abiding
influence, of the poet whose hallowed grave
and beloved memory make this place a per-
petual 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
E
66 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 strag-
gling masses of fleecy and slate-coloured
cloud. Not a human creature was any-
where 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 guilt 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 dema-
gogue 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 meek-
ness in aflaiction ; of the devout spirit that
made him murmur on his deathbed,
"Bessie, trust in God"; of the many
beautiful songs that he added to our litera-
ture, — every one of which is the perfectly
THE HAUNTS OF MOORE. 67
melodious and absolutely final expression
of one or another of the elemental feel-
ings of human nature ; and of the obli-
gation of endless gratitude that the world
owes to his fine and 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.
Ou the long, low, fiat 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 25, 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 Lans-
downe Parr Moore. Born 24th October
1818. Died in Africa, January 1846."
Moore's little daughter, Bai'bara, is buried
at Hornsey, near London, in the same
churchyard where rest the bones of the poet
Samuel Rogers. On the stone that marks
that spot is written, " Anne Jane Barbara
68 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
Moore. Born January the 4th, 1812. Died
September the 18th, 1817."
North-west from Bromham Chiirch, and
about one mile away, stands Sloperton Cot-
tage, the last home of the poet, and the
house in -which he died. A deep valley
intervenes between the church and the cot-
tage, but, as each is built upon a ridge, j^ou
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 com-
pletely 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 diversi-
iied with large trees. Sloperton Cottage i?
THE HAUNTS OF MOORE. 69
almost alone, but there are a few ueigh-
l)our.s, and there is a little rustic village
about half a mile westward. Westward
was the poet's favourite prospect. He loved
the sunset, and from a certain terrace in his
garden he rarely failed to watch 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 which 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 in-
cessant labour and by many sorrows — the
bitter fruit of domestic bereavement and
disappointment. The sun was sinking as I
turned away from this hallowed haunt of
genius and virtue, and, through green pas-
tures 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 ! "
V.
BEAUTIFUL BATH.
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 — in
which the Saxon King Edgar was crowned,
A.D. 973 — nevertheless retains many inter-
esting 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 Warwick-
shire and that of Yorkshire) is spanned by
bridges that Smollett never dreamed 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
BEAUTIFUL BATH. 7 1
traiiicar rattles through the principal street ;
the boot-black and the newsvendor 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 morn-
ing papers and with passengers, three hours
from town. This, indeed, is not " the
season " (August 21, 1888), and of late it
has rained with zealous persistence, so that
Bath is not in her splendour. Much how-
ever 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
modem streets, the gay and quaint things
described in Humjjhry Clinker or indi-
cated in The Rivals. The Bath chairs,
sometimes pulled by donkeys, and some-
times trundled by men, are among the
most representative relics now to be seen.
Next to the Theatre-Royal (where it
was my privilege to enjoy and admire Mr.
Toole's richly humorous peiformance of
72 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
The Don) stands a building, just 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 his-
toric 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,
a-id 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 epigi'am which was suggested by this
singular group : —
" This statue placed these busts between
Gives satire all its strength ;
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length."
BEAUTIFUL BATH. 73
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.
Quin Mas buried in Bath Abbey, and
Bath is the scene of 2Vie Rivals. It would
be pleasant to fancy the trim figure of the
truculent Sir Lucius 0' Trigger strutting
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
\\\\h her sentimental novels ; and Mrs.
Mcdaprop, rigid with decorum, in her Bath
chair. The Abbey, begun in 1405 and com-
pleted 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
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
74 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
is snug lying in the Abbey." Almost every
foot of the walls is covered with monu-
mental slabs, and like Captain Cuttle, after
the wedding of Mr. Domhey and Edith
Granger, I " pervaded 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 northern 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.
Aetat Lxxiii.," and his epitaph, written
by David Garrick. At the base are dra-
matic emblems — the mask and the dagger.
As a portrait this medallion of Quin bears
internal 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 hand-
some — the upper lip being a perfect Cupid's
bow. The face is serious, expressive, and
fraught with intellect and power. This was
nEAUTIFrL BATn. 75
the last great declaimer of the old school
of acting, discomfited and almost obliter-
ated by Garrick ; and here are the words
that Garrick wrote upon his tomb : —
"That tongu-? vhich 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 Shake-
speare writ ; [forth,
Cold is that hand which, living, was stretched
At friendship's call, to succour modest worth.
Herp 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."
A printed reminder of mortality is super-
fluous in Bath, for you almost continually
behold afflicted and deformed persons who
have come hero 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
76 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
the Abbe J', without and withm — 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 swim-
ming 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 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.
Haynes Bayly, the song-writer, 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 citj'
of Bristol. Chatterton, Southey, Hannah
More, Mary Robinson — the actress, the
lovely and unfortunate " Perdita," — all
BEAUTIFUL BATH. 77
these 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 Redclyfte
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. That
famous preacher, the Rev. Robert Hall
(1764-1831), had a church in Bristol. Sou-
they and Coleridge married sisters, of the
name of Fricker, who resided there, and the
house once occupied by Coleridge is still ex-
tant in the contiguous village of Clevedon
— one of the loveliest places on the English
coast. Jane and Anna Maria Porter both
lived in Bristol, and Maria died at Mont-
pelier near by. These notes indicate but
a tithe of what may be seen and studied and
enjoyed in and about Bristol, the city to
which poor Chatterton left his curse ; the
region hallowed by the dust of Arthur
Hallam — the 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 divine hand of Byron.
VI.
THE LAKES AND FELLS 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 UUswater, or sail upon its crystal
bosom, to the blooming solitude of Patter-
dale. Penrith lies at the eastern slope of
the mountains of Westmoreland, and you
may there 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 wei-e forfeited by the great Earl
of Warwick, and King Edward rv". gave it
to his brother Richard in 1471. Not much
remains of this 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
LAKES AND FELLS OF WORDSWORTH. ']-■:)
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 dreari-
ness of a month of rain. Beside, even the
darkest days may be brightened by gentle
companionship. Henr}^ Irving and Ernest
Bendall, two of the most intellectual and
genial men in England, were my associates
ill this expedition. We came 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 expe-
rience ; and I often close my eyes and dream
of it — as I am dreaming now.
In the drive between Penrith and Patter-
dale 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 imaginatieu. The grave
is said to be that of Owen Ci^esarius, a
8o GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
gigantic indi\ndual who reigned over Cum-
berland in remote Saxon times. The Thumb
is a rough stone, about seven feet high, pre-
senting a clumsy cross, and doubtless com-
memorative 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
these 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 Ulls-
water, and hereabout 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, "On lonely Threl-
keld's solemn waste," at the foot of craggy
Blencathara, you pause at a railway sta-
tion with " Threlkeld ' in large letters on
the official signboard. Another strange
thing that is passed on the road between
Penrith and Patterdale is " Arthur's Round
Table " — a circle of lawn slightly raised
above the surrounding level, and certainly
remarkable, whatever may be its historic or
antiquarian merit, for the fine texture of
its sod and the lovely green of its grass.
Scholars think it was used for tournaments
in the days of chivalry, but no one rightly
LAKES AND FELLS OF WORDSWORTH. SI
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 unfor-
tunate young man, Charles Gough, who
lost his life by falling from the Striding
Edge of Helvellyn in I8O0, and whose
memory is hallowed by Wordsworth and
Scott, in poems that almost every school-
boy has read, and could never forget — asso-
ciated as they are with the story of the
faithful dog for three months in that lone-
some 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 miscel-
laneous, desultory visitors whose pleasure
it is to rush wildly over the land. And
these 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
F
82 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
Hotel) still exists at the head of Ullswater,
to which fashion has not resorted, and where
kindness presides over the traveller's com-
fort. Close by also is a sweet 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
had 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 through-
out Westmoreland and Cumberland. As
you drive along the lonely roads your way
will sometimes be, for many miles, between
hedges that are bespangled -s^dth wild roses
and with the silver globes of the laurel
blossom, while all 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 per-
vading spii'it of refinement over it all —
as if Nature had here wrought her wonder.-^
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 not
more than fifty miles square ; yet within
LAKES AND TELLS OF WORDSWORTH. 83
this limit, comparatively narrow, are com-
prised all possible beauties of land and
water that the most passionate devotee 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. ToiTents 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 hea-vily and fell in floods."
The next morning was sweet with sun-
shine and gay with birds and flowers, and
all semblance of storm and trouble seemed
banished for ever.
"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 these lovely lakes and mighty hills,
and no writer can hope to tread, save re-
84 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
motely and M'ith reverent humility, in the
footsteps of that magician. You understand
Wordsworth better, however, and you love
him more dearly, for having rambled over
his own consecrated ground. There was
not a day when I did not, in some shape or
another, meet with his presence. When-
ever I was alone his influence came upon
me as something unspeakablj' majestic and
solemn. Once, on a Sunday afternoon, I
climbed to the topmost height of Place Fell
(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 rain-
storms from all view of the world beneath.
Xot 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
li\dng creature was visible, save now and
then a lonely sheep, who stared at me for a
moment and then scurried away. But when
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
LAKES AND FELLS OF WOKDSWORTU. 55
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 ue'er shall know
How beautiful the world below."
Yet somehow it happened that whenever
friends joined in these 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 Ullswaterand the Kirk-
stone Pass, some one recalled that Words-
worth 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 everj' one of that 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,
85 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
not much given to enthusiasm about Words-
worth, 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
■•.vrote "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 danc-
ing 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."
The third and fourth lines were written by
LAKES AND FELLS OF WORDSWORTH. 87
the poet's wife — and they shew that she A\as
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," Frank Marshall^ said (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 j'ou.' 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 wait-
ing in the old inn called ' ' The Travellers'
Rest," which incorrectly proclaims itself the
1 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.
88 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
highest inhabited house in England — it is
1481 feet above the sea-level — 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. They all know
him in that region. "Well,"' he said,
" people are always talking about Words-
worth, 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.
Mementos of Wordsworth are frequenth''
encountered by the traveller among these
lakes and fells. One of these, situated at
the foot of Place Fell, is a rustic cottage
that the poet once selected for his residence,
and partly purchased. It somewhat re-
sembles the Shakespeare cottage at Strat-
ford — 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 cup-
board, dark with age, inscribed with the
date of the Merry Monarch, 1660.
What were the sights of those sweet days
that linger still, and will alwaj's linger, in
my remembrance ? A ramble in the old
LAKES AND FELLS OF WORDSWORTH. 89
park of Patterdale Hall, which is full of
American trees ; a golden morning in Dove-
dale, with Henry Irving, much like Jaques,
reclined upon a shaded rock, half-way up
the mountain, musmg 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 pic-
tures seen in dreams ; the glimpse of stately
Rydal Hall and of the sequestered Rydal
Moimt, 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 glowang in the
afternoon sun, till we stood by Crosthwaite
Church and read the words of commemoration
that grace the tomb of Robert Southey ; the
90 GRAY DAYS A>-I) GOLD.
divine circuit of Derwent — surely the love-
liest sheet of -water in England ; the descent
into the vale of Keswick, with sunset on the
rippUng 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 —
-larshall, 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 for ever.
Wordsworth is buried in Grasmere church-
yard, 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
favourite 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."
LAKES AND FELLS OF WORDSWORTH. 9I
On the low gravestone that marks the
sepulchre of Wordsworth are written these
words: "William \Yordsworth, 1850. Marj-
Woi'dsworth, 1859." In the neighbouring
church a marble tablet on the wall presents
this inscription : —
"To the memory of Willicara Words-worth.
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
ap the heart to holy things, tired not of main-
taining 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."
A few steps from this memorable grovp
will bring you to the marble cross that
marks the resting-place of Hartley Cole-
ridge, son of the great author of "The An-
cient 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 own
tombstone, inscribed with these words : —
92 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
"In memory ot Artliur Hugli 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 bxu'ied 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 pedestal, which does no justice to his
great personal beauty. His grave is in the
ground, a little way from the church, marked
by a low flat tomb, on the end of which ap-
pears an inscription commemorative of an
old servant who had lived fifty years in his
family and is buried with him. There was
a pretty scene at this grave. When I came
near it Irving was already there, and was
speaking to a little girl who had guided him
LAKES AND FELLS OF WORDSWORTH. 93
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 con-
fused, 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 with it ? " She said she would
save it. " But Mhat if it were three shil-
lings ? " he went on, and every 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
speak of, but it was touching in its simpli-
city; and that amused group around the
grave of Southey, in the blaze of the golden
sun of a July afternoon, with Skiddaw loom-
ing vast and majestic over all, will linger
with me as long as anything lovely and ot
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
94 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
Irving, "was that sweet child." I do not
think the great actor was ever much im-
pressed with the beauties of the Lake
Poets.
Another picture glimmers across my
dream — a picture of peace and happiness
which may close this rambling remini-
scence of gentle days. We had driven up
the pass between Glen coin and Gowbarrow,
and had reached Matterdale, on our way
toward Troutbeck station — not the beauti-
ful Windermere Troutbeck, but the less
famous one. The road is lonelj^ but at
Matterdale one sees a few houses, and there
our gaze was attracted by a small gray
church nestled in a hollow of the hillside.
It stands sequestered in its little 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 softly en-
tered the church. A youth and a maiden,
apparently lovers, were sitting at the organ
— the young fellow playing and the girl
listening, and looking with tender trust and
innocent atfection into his face. He recog-
nised our presence with a kindly nod, but
LAKES AND FELLS OF WORDSWORTH. 95
went ou with his authem. 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.
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 Uni-
corn Hotel. This place is redolent of the
wars of the Stuai'ts, and the moment you
enter it your mind is filled with the pre-
sence of Charles the ^Martj^r, 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 fought and
lost (1651) the battle that made the merry
monarch a hunted fugitive and an exile.
With a stranger's interest I have rambled on
SHAKESPEARF "RELICS AT WORCESTER. 97
those heights ; traversed the battlefield ;
walked in every part of the cathedral ;
attended divine service there ; revelled
in the antiquities of 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 ^Yorks, for which Wor-
cester 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 ii. when he fled from Wor-
cester ; paced the dusty and empty Trinity
Hall, now abandoned and condemned to
demolition, where once Queen Elizabeth
was feasted; and visited the old " Com-
mandery " — a rare piece of antiquity, re-
piaining 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 direc-
tories and guide-books (the genial and
hospitable Mr. Littlebury), and here, as
everywhere else in storied Worcester, the
G
98 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
arts of peace prevail over all the scenes and
all the traces of
" Old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago."
In the Edgar Tower at Worcester they
keep the original of the marriage-bond that
was given as a preliminary to the marriage
of William Shakespeare and Anne Hatha-
way, by Fulk Sandells and John Richard-
son, of Shottery. 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, de-
pendent by strings, but these were removed
— apparently for the convenience of the
mechanic who put this relic into its present
frame. The handwriting is crabbed and
obscure. There are but few persons who
can read the handwriting in old documents
of this kind, and thousands of such docu-
ments exist in the church-archives, and
elsewhere in England, that have never
been examined. The name of Hathaway
in this marriage-bond resembles the name
of Whateley. The contract vouches that
there was no impediment, through con-
sancruinity or otherwise, to the marriage of
William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway.
SHAKESPEARE RELICS AT WORCESTER. 99
It was executed on November 28, 15S2, 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 in
those days prescribed that the marriage-
bond should designate three parishes within
the residential diocese, in any one of which
the marriage might be made ; but the
custom in those days permitted the con-
tracting parties, when they had complied
with this legal requirement, to be married
in whatever parish, within the diocese, they
might prefer. Three parishes were named
in the Shakespeare marriage-bond. The
registers of two of them have been searched^
and searched in vain. The register of the
third — that of Luddington, which is close by
Shottery — was destroyed long ago, in a fire
that burnt down Luddington Church ; and
conjecture therefore assumes that Shake-
speare was married at Luddington. It
may be so, but there is no certainty about
it, and until every old church register in
the ancient diocese of Worcester has been
examined, the quest of the registration of
lOO GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
his marriage ought not to be abandoned.
Pdchard 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. Mr. Wadley, another local antiquary
of great learning and incessant industry, has
also taken part in this labour. The long-de-
sired entry of the marriage of William and
Anne remains undiscovered, but one grati-
fying and valuable result of these investiga-
tions is the disclosure that many of the names
used in Shakespeare's works are the names of
persons who were residents ot 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 ot
the manner in which Shakespeare composed
his plays. EflProntery 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
SHAKESPEARE RELICS AT WORCESTER. 101
still a serious obstacle to surmount — an
obstacle which 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
Bacon knew it or ever was in it.
With reference to the Shakespeare Mar-
riage-Bond, and with reference to all the
records that are kept in the Edgar Tower
at Worcester, it should perhaps be said that
they are not preserved 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 — afifords an
appropriate receptacle for these 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 assuredly ought to be in the Shake-
speare 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 you may see on an ordinary school
I02 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
slate. From another dusty closet an atten-
dant extricated a Manuscript Diary kept by
Bishop Lloyd, of Worcester, and by his
manservant, 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 upon heaps of old parchment and
paper writings — a mass of antique registry
that it would need the labour of several
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 on this spot — where nobody has
expected to find it.
Worcester is rich also in a superb library,
which, by the kindness of Mr. Hooper, the
custodian, I was allowed to explore, high
xtp beneath the roof of the lovely cathedral.
This collection of books, numbering at least
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 stair-
case. In an anteroom to the library I saw
SHAKESPEARE RELICS AT WORCESTER. IO3
a part of the ancient north door of this
church, about half of it — 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 cathe-
dral 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 Wick-
lifi'e'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 Car-
penter in 1461, and originally 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 desig-
nated as " copies." This sort of pertness in
I04 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
the discussion of Shakespearean subjects
is not unnatural in days when fanatical
zealots 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 Shake-
speare's works. The facts about the Strat-
ford Registers, as here set down, are stated,
by one who has many times held them 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 occa-
sionally to be found in ancient parish
churches of England. In 1600 an order-in-
council was made commanding that those
entries should be copied into parchment vol-
umes, for their better preservation. This was
done. The parchment volumes, which have
been freely shown to me by my good friend
William Butcher, the parish clerk of Strat-
ford, 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
SHAKESPEARE RELICS AT WORCESTER. IO5
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 Sep-
tember 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 %vriter chose
to declare that Shakespeare's widow — seven
years his senior at the start, and therefore
fifty-nine years old when he died — subse-
quently contracted another marriage. Mrs.
Shakespeare survived her husband seven
years, dying at the age of sixty-six. The
entry in the Stratford register of burial
contains, against the date of 1623, August
28, the names of "Mrs. Shakespeare" and
" Anna uxor Richard James." These two
names, written one above the other, are
connected by a bracket on the left side ;
and this is supposed to be evidence that
I06 GEAY DAYS AND GOLD.
Shakespeare's Avidow married again. The
use of the bracket could not possibly mis-
lead anybody possessing the faculty of clear
vision. When two or more persons were
baptized, or buried, on the same day, the
parish clerk, in making the requisite entrj'
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.
VIII.
BYEON AND HUCKNALL-TORKARD.
ON a night in 1785, when Mrs. »Sicldons
was acting at Edinburgh, the play
being " The Fatal Marriage " and the char-
acter Isabella, a young lady of Aberdeen-
shire, 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 conster-
nation, grief, and rapture are sudden and
excessive. Mrs. Siddons, at that point,
always made a great effect. The words
are, " my Biron, my Biron ! " On this
night, at the moment when the wonderful
actress sent forth her wailing and 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 this incident she
107
I08 GPwAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 that
strange and melancholy story none is more
striking than the dramatic aspect of it — so
strangely prefigured in this event.
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 (January 22, 1888), and almost as
many since he died. 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 con-
duct 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
BYRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKARD. IO9
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 the sternest
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 en-
thusiasm and in every language of the
world, these triiths 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 every-
thing 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 any-
thing omits to read "Childe Harold."
To touch this complex and delicate sub-
ject 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
no GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 litera-
ture 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 ad-
monition, and infinitely pathetic. Byron
in poetrj-, 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 ac-
count 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
BYROX AXD HUCKNALL-TORKARD. Hi
a monomaniac, after long brooding over the
remembrance of a calamitous married life —
brief but unhappy, and terminated in separa-
tion — whispered against him, and against
his half-sister, a vile charge ; and this, to
the disgrace of American literature, was
subsequently brought forward by a distin-
guished female writer of America, much
noted for her works of fiction and especially
memorable for this one. The explanation
of the mental distress exhibited in the poet's
writings was thought to be effectually pro-
vided in that disclosure. But, as this re-
volting and inhuman story — desecrating
graves, insulting a wonderful genius, and
casting infamy upon the name of an affec-
tionate, faithful, virtuous woman — fell to
pieces the moment it was examined, the
student of Byron's grief-stricken nature re-
mained no wiser than before this figment of
a diseased imagination had been divulged.
Surely, however, it ought not to be con-
sidered 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 pro-
duction. "Macbeth ' and "King Lear'
do not commonly produce laughter. Shelley
and Keats sing as near to heaven's gate as
112 GRAY DAYS AXD GOLD.
anybody, and both of them are essentially
sad. Scott -was as brave, hopeful, and cheery
as any poet that ever lived, and Scott's
poetry is at its best in his dirges. The
" Elegy " and " The Ancient Mariner" cer-
tainly are great poems, but neither of them
is festive. Byron often wrote sadly because
he was a man of a melancholy temperament,
and because he deeply felt the pathos of
mortal life, the awful mystery M'ith 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 extin-
guished. And Byron was an unhappy man
for the reason that, possessing every ele-
mental natural quality in excess, his ex-
quisite goodness was constantly outraged
and tortured by his inordinate 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.
BYRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKAKD. II3
The true appreciation of Byron i,s 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
JEgesiXi Sea. Everybody knows that fami-
liar picture — with the wide, open collar,
the gi-eat 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 is really worth, and to feel the
tremendous power of his genius. Senti-
mental 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 pretty sailor-lad waiting for
a spark from heaven, while a big Newfound
H
114 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
land 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 re-
member of Byron only that he was the un-
compromising 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 elo-
quence, have seldom been equalled and have
never been excelled.
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 Huck-
nall-Torkard, on a pilgrimage to the grave
of Byron. The town is modern, common-
place, almost squalid in appearance — a little
straggling collection of low brick dwellings-.
BYRON AND HUCKXALL-TORKARD. II5
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 struc-
tures 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 mar-
ket-place, and to push aside the canvas
flaps of a peddler's stall which had been
placed close against it. Next to the church-
yard wall is a little cottage,^ with its bit of
garden, devoted in this instance to potatoes ;
and here, while waiting for the sexton, I
fell into talk with an aged man, who said
1 Siuce this paper was written the buildings that
flanked the church wall have been removed, the
street in front of it has been widened into a square,
and the church has been '• restored" and considerablv
altered.
Il6 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 j'-ou could see my
son ; he 's a clever lad, only he ought to
have more of the suaviter in modo." Thus
with the gari'ulity 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 Huck-
nall-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 aiiditor — the route
of the funeral train from Nottingham to
the church. " There were eleven car-
riages," he said. "They didn't go to the
Abbey " (meaning Kewstead), " but came
BYRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKARD. II7
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 church j'ard 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 pre-
cinct at Stratford-upon-Avon which en-
shrine the dust of Shakespeare !
The sexton of the Church of St. James
and the parish clerk of Hucknall-Torkard
is, or 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
visitors. The pilgrim to the literary shrines
of England does not always find the neigh-
bouring 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
Il8 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 in the
main it retains its fundamental structure
and its ancient peculiarities. The tower,
a fine specimen of Norman architecture,
strongly built, dark and grim, gives indica-
tion of great age. It is of a kind often met
with in ancient English towns : you may see
its own brothers at York, Shrewsbury, Can-
terbury, Woi-cester, Warwick, and in many
places sprinkled over the northern heights
of London : but amid its mean 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 win-
dows on each side of the church, and two on
each side of the chancel, which is beneath a
BYRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKARD. II9
roof somewhat lower than that of the main
building. Under the pavement of the chan-
cel, 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. ^
Nothing is written on the stone that covers
his sepulchre except the simple 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 remem-
bered it well, for I lowered the coffin of
1 Revisiting this place on September 10, 1890, 1 found
that the chancel has been lengtliened, that the altar and
the mural tablets have been moved backward from the
Byron vault, and that the gravestone is now outside
of the rail.
I20 GKAY DAYS A>"D GOLD.
the Countess of Lovelace into this vault,
and laid her by her fathers 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 : " 18o2, Died at
G9 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-aix
when she passed away. This name of Cur-
tis 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
crabbed 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
B\Ton'a 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
BYRON AND nUCKNALL-TORKARD. 121
and burn it. 1 did take it home, but I
<lidu'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 remem-
ber, 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 giving the in-
scription 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 ar-
rived 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 be-
side the corpse. " 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 friemls and have the
world at his feet ; but he sjooke wliat he
122 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
felt, and he spoke the truth, in that dark
room on that desolate night. Thoughts of
these things, and of many other strange yjas-
sages 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.
They have for many years kept a book at
the Church of Hucknall-Torkard (the first
one, an album given by Sir John Bowring,
and containing the record of visitations from
1825 to 1834, was stolen in the latter year)
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 worshipper of Byron — and to own
it. No day passes without bringing its
visitor to the vShakespeare cottage and the
Shakespeare tomb ; many days pass without
bringing a stranger to the Church of St,
BYRON AND HUCKXALL-TORKAED. 1 23
James. On tlie capital of a column near
Byron's tomb I saw two mouldering wreaths
of laurel, which had hung there for years ;
one brought by the Bishop of Norwich, the
other by the American poet J oaquin 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 wit-
ness 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 immor-
tality 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 West-
minster Abbey, and it can endure the neglect
and censure of the precinct of Nottingham.
That city rejoices in a stately castle throned
UDon a rock, and persons who admire the
124 GRA.Y DAYS AND GOLD.
Stuarts may exult in the recollection that
there the standard of Charles i. 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.
You 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 localities 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 church-
yard, 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 throu<j;h 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
I
BYRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKARD. 12 5
long time I stood near the chapel, just above
the outer wall of the Byron vault. And
here 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 an easy view of
the place of Byron's grave. " 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 impos-
sible to give his words, or to indicate his
earnest manner. In brief, this lady, whose
story no one knew, had taken up her resi-
dence in this cottage long subsequent to the
burial of Byron, and had remained there
until she died. She was pale, thin, hand-
some, 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 en-
abled to descend into that vault, and there-
from she obtained a skull, which she declared
to be Byron's, and which she scraped, pol-
ished, and made perfectly white, and kept
always beneath her pillow. It was her re-
riuest, often made to the sexton, that she
might be buried in the churchyard close to
126 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 blooming 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 even-
ing 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 Bow-
ring, to be used as a register of the names
BVRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKAKD. 1 27
of visitors to Byron's tomb, disappeared
from that church some time after the year
1834, aud it has not since been found. 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.'' These
initials stand for the name of Joseph Munt
Langford, who died in 1884. The dedica-
tion 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."
128 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
This register was used from 1825 till 1834.
It contains 815 names, with which are inter-
twined 28 inscriptions in verse and 36 in
prose. The first name is that of Count Pietro
Gamba, Avho 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 Bj^ron'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 re-
visit 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 chui'ch." Under
the date of January 8, 1832, are found the
names of " M. Van Buren, Minister Pleni-
potentiary from the United States ; Wash-
BYRON AND HUCKXALL-TORKARD. 129
ington Irving ; John Van Buren, New York,
U.S.A., and J. ^Yildman." The latter, no
doubt, was Colonel Wild man, the proprietor
of Xewstead 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 Bryon's
tomb, with a party." Edward F. Flower
and Selina Flower, of Stratfoi-d-upon-Avon,
record their presence, on September 15, 1832
— the parents of Charles Edward Flower
and Edgar Flower, now leading citizens 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
Xo 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.
130 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
Ah, say, art thou ambitious ? thy young
breast —
Oh does it paut 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 ! "
IX.
HISTORIC NOOKS AND CORNERS.
STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, August 20,
1889. — The traveller who hurries
through Warwickshire — and American tra-
vellers mostly do hurry through it — appre-
ciates 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 Hotel — which is one of the most
comfortable places in England — and thus to
enjoy the associations that are connected
Avith 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
132 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 its 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 this 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
HISTORIC NOOKS AND CORNERS. 1 33
of its venerable monuments, and by the
opulent, diversified splendours of its natural
and historical environment. On the con-
trary, the more you know of those charms
the more you will love the town, ami 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.
The occasion of a garden party at the
rectory of a clerical friend at Butler's Mars-
ton 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 eastward from Stratford-upon-
Avon about sixteen miles, 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
134 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 perfect specimen
of the ancient cross may be seen at Henley-
in-Arden, a few miles north-west of Strat-
ford, where it stands in mouldering majesty
at the junction of two roads in the centre of
the village — strangely inharmonious with
the petty shops and numerous inns of which
this long and stragding but characteristic
and attractive settlement is composed. The
tower of the church at Butler's Marston, a
gray, grim structure, "four-square to oppo-
sition," was built in the eleventh century —
a period of much ecclesiastical activity in
these islands. Within it I found a noble
pulpit of carved oak, dark with age, of
the time of James i. 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
HISTORIC NOOKS AND CORNERS. 1 35
in a wooded dell — is comparatively new :
for it has arisen since the time of the Puri-
tan 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
waged all along the country-side, and you
may still perceive here, in the inequalities
of the land, the sites on which houses for-
merly 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 here 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 : —
136 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
"' Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Tlieir sober wishes never learned to stray ;
Along the cool, sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."
"Unregarded age, in corners thrown."
Was that fine line suggested to Shake-
speare by the spectacle of the old almshouse
of the Holy Guild, which stood in his time,
just as it stands now, close to the spot
where he lived and died? New Place,
Shakespeare's home, stood on the north-east
corner of Chapel Street (a continuation of
High Street) and Chapel Lane. The Guild
Chapel stands on the south-east comer of
those streets, immediately opposite to what
was once the poet's home. Southward from
the chapel, and adjacent to it, extends the
long, low, sombre building that contains
the Free Grammar School and the alms-
house, founded by Thomas Jolyfife in 1482,
and refounded in 1553 by King Edward vi.
In that grammar school there is reason to
believe that Shakespeare was educated ; at
first by Walter Roche, afterward by Simon
Hunt — who doubtless birched the little
boys then, even as the headmaster does
now ; it being a cardinal principle with the
British educator that learning, like other
goods, should be delivered in the rear. In
HISTORIC NOOKS AND CORNEES. 1 37
that almshouse doubtless there were manj'
forlorn inmates, even as there are at present
— and Shakesjjeare 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 vanished life,
among the vegetable vines and the profuse
and rambling flowers in the sunny garden
behind the house ; and presently I went
into his humble room and sat by his fire-
side. 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 atom, 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 wor-
sted work, bearing the inscription " Blessed
be the Lord for His Unspeakable Gift."
138 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
The aged and 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.
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, close by the gate of
Warwick Castle. 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. And in our own
day Warwickshire has enriched the world
-vvith George Eliot and Ellen Terry. But it
is a chief characteristic of England that,
whichever way you turn in it, your foot-
steps fall on haunted ground. Everyday
life here is continually impressed by inci-
dents of historic association. In an old
HISTORIC NOOKS AND CORNERS. 1 39
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 v/hen a girl
she once entered the vaults beneath this
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, in " The
Beggars' Opera," who died in 1760, aged
fifty-two.^ " Lord Clive," the dame added,
"is buried in the same vaults." An im-
pressive 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.
1 Dr. Joseph Wharton, in a letter to the poet Gay,
described her as follows : "She was a very accom-
plished 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 w-hen
her conversation was much admired by the first char-
acters of the age, particularly old Lord Bathurst and
Lord Granville."
SHAKESPEARE S TOWN.
TO traverse Stratford-upon-Avon is to re-
turn upon old tracks, but no matter
how often you visit this 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 naore notice than perhaps at first he
did of its everyday life. In former days
the observer had no eyes except for the
Shakespearean shrines. The addition of a
new wing to the ancient Red Horse Inn,
the new gardens around the Memorial
Theatre, the new chimes of Trinity — these,
and matters like to these, attract atten-
tion now. And now, too, I have rambled,
in the gloaming, through scented fields
to Clifi'ord Church ; and strolled through
many a green lane to beautiful Preston ;
and climbed Borden Hill ; and stood by the
maypole on Welford Common ; and jour-
neyed along the battle-haunted crest of
140
SHAKESPEAEE S TOWN. I4I
Edgehill ; and rested at venerable Conipton-
Winyate ; and climbed the hills of Wel-
combe 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.
The building that forms the north-west
corner of High Street and Bridge Street in
Stratford was occupied in Shakespeare's
time by Richard Quiney, the 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. Ricliard 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 iiome of Shakespeare.
142 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
The Quiney pi'eraises are now occupied by
Edward Fox, a journalist, a printer, and a
dealer in souvenirs of Shakespeare and of
Stratford. This house, in old times, was ofl5-
cially styled "The Cage," because it had
been used as a prison. Standing in the cellar
of it you perceive that its walls are five 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, Richard Quiney. The shop now
owned by Edward Fox has been established
in Stratford more than a hundred years, and
as this tenant has a long lease of the build-
ing, and is of an energetic spirit in his busi-
ness, it bids fair to last as much longer.
One indication of his sagacity was revealed
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 re-
moved 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 16,000 visited Stratford in 1887, at
least one-fourth of that number (4482)
SHAKESPEARE S TOWN. I43
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 sur-
mounted, not as now with a tall and grace-
ful spire, but with a spire of timber covered
with lead. The oak frame to support the
bells, however, has been in the tower more
than three hundred years.
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 which was given in that build-
ing on August 29, 1885, by Miss Mary
Anderson, who then, for the first time in
her life, impersonated Shakespeare's Rosa-
lind. This actress, since her first visit to
Stratford— a private visit made in 1883 —
has shown a deep interest in the town,
and in consequence 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 " Kiug John,"
in which Prince Arthur melts the hard
and cruel purpose of Hubert to burn out
his eyes. Tragedy is represented by Uanilei
14^4 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
and the Gravedigger in their colloquy over
Yorick's skull. In the emblem of Comedy,
the figure of Rosalind is that of Miss Ander-
son, in a boy's dress — a figure that may
perhaps be deemed inadequate to the origi-
nal, but one which 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, ti-ees, flowers, and commodious path-
ways, and this lovely, park-like enclosure —
thus beautified through the liberality of
Charles Edward Flower, the original pro-
moter of the Memorial — is now free to the
people, "to walk abroad and recreate them-
selves " beside the Avon. The Picture
Gallery of the Memorial lacks many things
which are needed, and it contains several
things which it might better lack. 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 Shakespearean subject. It was
at one time purposed to set up a special
case, surmounted with the American em-
blem, for the reception of contributions from
Americans. The Library contains (March
1890) 5790 volumes, in various languages.
shakespeaee's town. 145
Of English editions of the complete -works
of Shakespeare it contains two hundred
and nine. A Russian translation of Shake-
speare, in nine volumes, appears in the
collection, together with three complete
editions in Dutch. An elaborate and beau-
tiful catalogue of these 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 to 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 has
succeeded him as Librarian, is a learned
man, an antiquary, and an excellent writer.
To him the readers of the Stratford-on-
Avon Herald are indebted for many in-
structive articles — notably for those giving
an account of the original Shakespeare
quartos acquired for the Memorial Library
at the sale of the effects of J. 0. Halliwell-
Phillips. These quartos are "The Merchant
of Venice," "The Meriy Wives of Windsor,"
and a first edition of "Pericles." A copy
of " Roger of Faversham " was also bought,
K
146 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
and a copy of two of the plays of Aphra
Behn. Charles Edward Flower purchased
at that sale a copy of the First Folio of
Shakespeare, and all four of the Shake-
speare Folios now stand side by side in his
private library at Avonbank. It never
before was my good fortune to see those
precious volumes (1623 - 1632 - 1663 - 1685)
together in one collection. Mr. Flower
intimated the intention of giving them to
the Shakespeare Memorial Library.
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 appren-
ticeship ; many of them receipts for money ;
no one of them especially important as bear-
ing 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 "present-
ing " 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 Englisli
SHAKESPEARE'S TOWN. I47
— the writer quaintly remarking that schools
for the teaching of Latin are numerous,
while no school for teaching English exists,
that he can discov^er. These 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
these papers are written in that "cramped
penmanship" which baffled Tony Lumpkin
— and which baffles much wiser people than
he was. Richard Savage, however, is skil-
ful in reading this crooked and queer cali-
graphy ; and the materials and the duty of
exploring them are in the right hands.
When the researches and conclusions of this
scholar are published they will augment
the mass of evidence already extant — much
of it well presented by Halliwell-Phillips —
that the writer of Shakespeare's plays ^ was
a man familiar with the neighbourhood, the
names, and the everyday life of Sti'atford-
upon-Avon ; a fact which is not without its
admonitory suggestiveness to those credu-
1 A cogent paper on this subject, the learned and
logical work of John Taylor, Esq., may be found in
the London Athenceum, February 9, 18S9.
148 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
lous persons who incline to heed the igno-
rant and idle theories and conjectures of
jSIr. Ignatius Donnelly. That dense person
visited Shakespeare's town in the summer
of 1888, and surveyed the scenes that are
usually viewed, and was entertained by the
vicar, the Rev. George Arbuthnot ; but he
attracted no attention other than the con-
tempt he deserves. " He did not address
himself to me," said Miss Chataway, 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.
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 537 visitors went there during the
year ending April 13, 1888. In repairing
the custodian's house at New Place the
crossed timbers in the one-remaining frag-
ment of the north wall of the original struc-
ture were found beneath plaster. These
have been left uncovered, and their dark
lines add to the picturesque effect of the
SHAKESPEARE'S TOWN. 1 49
place. The aspect of the old house prior
to 1742 is known but vaguely, even if it be
known 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, encircled by a wall,
the entrance to the garden being at some
distance do%vn the lane, toward the river.
The chief rooms in New Place were faced
\vith square, sunken panels of oak, which
covered the walls from floor to roof and
probably formed the ceilings. Some of
these panels — obtained when Mr. Gastrell
tore down this house in 1759 — may be seen
in a parlour of the Falcon Hotel. There is
nothing left of Xew Place but the old well
in the cellar, the fragments of the founda-
tion, 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, appx'eciative
man, always attentive and genial, died on
January 17, 1888, and his widow has suc-
ceeded him in office. Another conspicuous
and interesting Stratford figure, well known,
and for a long time, was John Marshall, the
150 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
antiquary, who died on June 25, 1887. Mr.
Marshall occupied the building near to New
Place, on the north side, and between the
keeper's house and the house once tenanted
by Julius Shaw, one of the 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 Strat-
ford. His kindness, his eccentric ways, his
elaborate forms of speech, and his love and
faculty for art connnended him to the re-
spect and sympathy of all who really knew
him. He was a character — and in such a
place as Stratford such quaint beings are ap-
propriate 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 in front
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 is a precious piece of wood
bearing this inscription, written by him :
" Old Oak from Shakespeare's Birth-place.
SHAKESPEARE S TOWN. 151
taken out of the building when it was Re-
stored in I808 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 exists in the possession
of Richard Savage, at the Birth-place — a fine
carved goblet, made from the wood of the
renowned mulberry-tree that was planted
by the poet in the garden of New Place, but
cut down by the Rev. Mr. Gastrell in 1756.
At the Shakespeare Birthplace you will
no longer meet with those gentle ladies — so
quaint, so characteristic, so harmonious
with the place — Miss ]\Iaria Chataway and
Miss Caroline Chataway. The former of
these was the official custodian of the cot-
tage, 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-eight,
the latter seventy -six ; 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 quiet
house in the Warwick Road, where their
friends are welcomed, and where venerable
and honoured acre will henceforth haunt
152 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
the chimney-corner, and " keep the flame
from wastmg by repose."^ The new guar-
dian of the Shakespeare Cottage is Joseph
Skipsey, 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 anthor 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 rhyth-
mical expression that does not savour of the
poetical schools. 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
line genius he manifested a deep, thoughtful,
and gratifying interest. Mr. Skipsey is
assisted at the Shakespeare Cottage by his
amiable wife. The visitor no longer hears
that earnest, formal, characteristic recital,
descriptive of the house, that was given
1 Miss Maria Chataway died on January 31, 1S91.
SHAKESPEARE S TOWN. I53
daily and repeatedly for so many years by
Miss Caroline Chataway, — that delightful
allusion to "the mighty dome" that was
the "fit place for the mighty brain " ; but
doubtless Mr. and Mrs. Skipsey will, in
time, concoct a narrative of sufficient quaint-
ness. The Birthplace acquires new treasures
from year to j^ear — 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 this library is preserved
the original manuscript of Wheler's History
of Stratford, together with his own anno-
tated and interleaved copy of the printed
book, which is thus enriched with much
new material relative to the antiquities of
tlae storied town.
In the Washington Irving parlour of the
Red Horse the American traveller will find
many objects that are specially calculated
to please his fancy and to deepen his interest
in the place. Among these 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 Long-
fellow ; a view of Irving's house of Sunny-
side ; and pictures of Junius Booth, Edwin
154 GEAY DAYS AND GOLD.
Booth, the elder and the present Jefferson,
Miss Mary Anderson, Miss Ada Rehan,
Elliston, Farren, Salvini, Henry Irving,
and Ellen Terry. To invest this storied
room with an atmosphere at once liter-
ary and dramatic was the intention of
its decorator, and this object has been
attained. "When AVashingtou 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 the late Mr. Gardner,
former proprietor of the Red Horse, and
she died at Tanworth 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 were levelled and obliterated in 1888,
by order of the present vicar. A few of
the older residents of the town might per
haps be able to indicate its situation ; but,
practically, this relic of the past is gone-
SHAKESPEARE S TOWN. 1 55
and with it Vcanishes an element of valuable
interest to the annual multitude of Shake-
spearean 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.
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
Inn, which, already hallowed by its associa-
tion with Garrick and the Jubilee of
September 7, 1769, has now become one of
the most picturesque, attractive, and repre-
sentative buildings in Stratford,
There is a resolute disposition among
Stratford people to save and perpetuate
everything that is associated, however re-
motely, ^\'ith the great name of Shakespeare.
Mr. C. F. Loggin, a chemist in the High
Street, possesses a lock and key that were
affixed to one of the doors in Xew 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
156 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 en-
closes 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 these
Shakespearean relics were derived. Shake-
speare's hand may have touched this lock,
and Shakespeare's eyes may have looked
upon this dial — perhaps on the day when
he made Jacqiits 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.
Another remote relic of Shakespeare is
the shape of the foundation of Bishopton
Church, which remains distinctly traced, by
ridges of the velvet sod, in a green field a
little to the north-west of Stratford, in the
SHAKESPEARE S TOWN. I57
direction of Wilmcote — the birthplace of
Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden. The
parish of Bishopton adjoins that of Shottery,
and Bishopton is one of the three places
mentioned in association with Shakespeare's
marriage with Anne Hathaway, Many
scholars, indeed, incline to think that the
wedding occurred there. The church was
demolished about eighty years ago. The
house in Wilmcote, in which, as tradition
declares, Mary Arden was bom, is seen at
the eastern entrance to the village, and is
conspicuous for its quaint gables 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 wdld and
bleak ; but the hedges are full of wild-
tlowers, and are haunted by many birds ;
and the wide, green, lonesome fields, especi-
ally 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 ^lary Arden
Cottage I saw nothing remarkable except
the massive old timbers. This house, and
also the Anne Hathaway cottage at Shot-
tery, ought to be purchased and added to
158 GEAY DAYS AND GOLD.
"the Amalgamated Trusts of Shakespeare's
Birthplace, the Museum, and New Place."
The Anne Hathaway cottage is falling into
decay ; it needs care ; and as an authentic
relic of Shakespeare and a charming bit of
rustic antiquity, its preservation is impor-
tant, as well to lovers of the poet, all the
world over, as to the town of Stratford,
which thrives by his renown. The beauti-
ful 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 masonrj'- and despoils the vener-
able grandeur of that gray tower on which
Shakespeare so often gazed from the windows
of his hallowed home. Whatever is done
here, 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.
De Courcy Laflfan, the headmaster of the
Grammar School, and therefore pastor of
the Guild. Liberal in thought, manly in
character, simple, sincere, and full of sensi-
bility and goodness, this preacher strongly
impresses all who approach him, and is one
of the most imposing figures in the pulpit
SHAKESPEARE S TOWN. 1 59
of his time. xVnd he is a reverent Shake-
spearean.
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.
This work is infelicitous in its site and not
fortunate in all of its details, hut in some
particulars it is fine. It consists of a huge
pedestal, on the top of which is the full-
length bronze figure of Shakespeare, seated
in a chair, while at the four comers 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 re-
cognised — an imxperial, powerful, tender,
gracious, but darkly introspective nature,
broken and subjugated by hopeless grief
and by vain brooding over the mystery of
life and death. Laxly Macbeth is depicted
in her sleep-walking, and, although the
figure is treated in a conventional manner,
it certainly conveys the idea of remorse and
of physical attenuation from sufi"ering, and
likewise the sense of being haunted and
accursed. Prince Henry is represented as
l6o GRAY DAYS AND GOLD,
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 pre-
dominant character of Falstaff are not indi-
cated. The figures are dwarfed, futhermore,
by the size of the stone which they surround
— a huge pillar, upon which appropriate lines
from Shakespeare, selected by Charles
Edward Flower, 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. Imagina-
tion 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 de-
signed to express an idea of eternal youth.
The man who had gained Shakespeare's
obvious experience must have risen to a
Shakespeare's towx. i6i
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.
A constant stream of American visitors
pours annually through the Red Horse Inn.
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 came
upon many familiar names of distinguished
Americans. Bayard Taylor came here on
July 23, 1856 ; James E. Murdoch (the
l62 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
on August 31, 1856 ; E.ev. 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 " Artemus
Ward" arrived on September IS, 1866 — only
a little while before his death, which oc-
curred in March 1867 at Southampton.
The Rev. Charles T. Brooks, translator of
' ' Faust, " registered his name here on Septem-
ber 20, 1866. Charles Dudley Warner came
on May 6, 1868 ; I\lr. 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 Tom Appleton,
arrived on June 23, 1868. These Red Horse
registers contain a unique and remarkable col-
lection of autographs. Within a few pages,
I observed the curiously contrasted signa-
tures of Cardinal Wiseman, Sam Co well, the
Due d'Aumale, Tom Thumb, ]\Iiss 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
iSIassey, Clarence A, Seward, Frederick
Shakespeare's to\\\n*. 163
Maccabe, M, D. Conway, the Prince of
Conde, and John L. Toole. That this re-
pository of autographs is appreciated may
be inferred from the fact that special vigil-
ance has to be exercised to prevent the
hotel registers from being carried off or
mutilated. The volume containing the sig-
nature 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 wi'i tings upon them, when she
was removed from her office in 1820), and this
is now in the possession of her granddaugh-
ter, Mrs. Smith, a resident in Stratford ; but
many valuable names have been taken from
it — among others that of Lord Byron, who
visited Stratford, probably in 1806, when
staying at Malv^ern. His visit is said to have
been made in August 1816, but that is mani-
festly an inaccux-ate statement, since he left
England on April 25, 1816, never to return —
till he was brought home dead. The mania
for obtaining relics of Stratford antiquity
is remarkable. Mention is made of an un-
164 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
known 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 senti-
ment, though not altogether a rational one,
that impels devotional persons to such con-
duct as this ; but the entire Shakespeare
cottage would soon disappear if such a pas-
sion for relics were practically gratified.
The elemental feeling is one of reverence,
and this is perhaps indicated in the follow-
ing lines with which the present writer be-
gan 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.
XI.
UP AND DOWN THE AVON.
STEATFORD-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
up^A'ard as Warwick ; but according to fact
it is passable only to the resolute navigator
who can surmount obstacles. From Tewkes-
bury up to Evesham there is plain sail-
ing. Above Evesham there are occasional
barriers. At Stratford there is an abrupt
pause at the Lucy MiU, and your boat
must be taken ashore and dragged a little
way over the meadow, and so launched
again. The Lucy Mill is just l)elow 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
1 66 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
the gardens of the Shakespeare Memorial,
glides past the lovely lawns of Avonbank —
the home of that noble public benefactor
and fine Shakespearean scholar, Charles
Edward Flower — and breaks upon the sus-
taining 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 the 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
and solemn and beautiful church are re-
flected deep in the lucid stream, is an ex-
perience of thoughtful pleasure that sinks
deep into the heart and will never be for-
gotten. You do not know Stratford till
you know the Avon.
From Clopton's Bridge upward the river
winds capriciously between banks that are
sometimes fringed with willows and some-
UP AND DOWN THE AVON. 1 67
times 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 here, 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 vigor-
ous 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 show-
ing 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
1 68 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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
wiugs and soars grandly away. Once, row-
ing 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 neigh-
bouring 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.
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 the stately, secluded homes
upon the Warwick Road. A great bed of
white water-lilies (hitherto they have all
been yellow) presently adorns it, and soon
there are glimpses of the deer that browse
or prance or slumber beneath the magnifi-
cent oaks and elms and limes and chestnuts
UP AND DOWN THE AVON. 169
of Charlecote Park. No view of Charlecote
can compare with the view of it that is
obtained from the river ; and if its pro-
prietor 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 colour, relieved against
bright green ivy, to which only the brush
of an artist 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-Winyate ;
but that is a marvel of loveliness, the gem
of Warwickshire, and surpasses all its
fellows. The towers of the main building of
Charlecote are octagon, and a happy alterna-
tion of thin and slender with stout and
stunted 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 water
side, and terminates in a broad flight of
stone steps, at the foot of which are moored
the barges of the house of Lucy. No spec-
tacle could suggest more of aristocratic
I70 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
state and aiistere magnificence than this
sequestered edifice does, standing there,
silent, antique, venerable, gorgeous, sur-
rounded 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 the deluge of rain descended
and beat upon it, a more romantic sight was
never seen.
Above Charlecote the Avon grows narrow
for a space, and after you pass under Hamp-
ton 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
UP AND DOWN THE AVON. I7I
little way beyond the village your further
progress upward is stopped b}^ 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 War-
wick, where the wonderful Castle, and
sweet St. Mary's tower, and Leicester's
Hospital, and the cosy Warwick Arms
await your coming— with mouldering Kenil-
worth and majestic Stoneleigh Abbey re-
served to lure j^ou 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,
quiet, lustrous, indifferent eyes. The water-
fall sings on, with its low and melancholy
172 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 wild-flowers, 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
the veritable place that Shakespeare had in
mind when he wrote his line of endless
melody —
"I know a bank where the wild thyme
blows. "
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 the least de-
lightful. Both these places are on the Bir-
mingham 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 slumber-
ous 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 Catholic abode, and which is
never rented to any but Catholic tenants.
173
174 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
A cosy, gabled house, standing among trees
and shrubs a little way from the roadside,
is the residence of the priest of this diocese
— 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 the white surface of plaster. Among
the trees, in another direction, appears
the great gray tower of Wootton-Wawen
Church, a venerable relic, and one in which,
by means of the varying orders of its archi-
tecture, you may trace the whole ecclesiasti-
cal history of England. The approach to this
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 luxuri-
ance and whispers softly in the summer
breeze. The place seems deserted. Not
a human creature is anywhere ^nsible, 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 neighbour-
ing elms. The actual life of all places,
when you come to know it well, proves to
be, for the most part, conventional, com-
EAMBLES IN ARDEX. 1 75
monplace, 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 dis-
contented grumbling, diversified with feed-
ing 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 dis-
covered a permanent haven of refuge from
the incessant platitude and triviality of
ordinar}' experience and the strife and din
of the world.
Wootton- Wawen Church is one of the
numerous Catholic buildings of about the
eleventh century that still survive in this
176 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 eflforts to in-
terest the public in the preservation of this
ancient moniiment, and these 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 eminent and honoured
in English literature — with Henry St. John,
Viscount Bolingbroke, whose sister reposes
in its ancient vaults, and with William
Somerville, 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 this old aiithor,
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, and
RAMBLES IN ARDEN, 1 77
the following excellent epitaph, written by
himself, is 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,
178 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
who was hurt in the huntmg-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 CORUEXTE
ET INTESTINIS GRAVITER COLLISIS
POST TRIDUUM DEPLORANDUS.
OBIIT
2S DIE JAN.,
ANNO DNI 1719.
AETAT 38.
The pilgrim who rambles as far as Woot-
fcon-Wawen will surely stroll onward to
Henley-in-Arden. The whole of this region
was originally covered by the Forest of
Arden^ — the woods that Shakespeare had
in mind when he was writing " As You
Like It," a comedy whereof the atmo-
sphere, foliage, flowers, scenery, and spirit
are purely those of his native War wick -
1 That learned antiquarian W. G. Fretton, Esq. , of
Ct >ventry, has shown that the Forest of Arden covered
a large tract of land extending many miles west and
north of tlie bank of the Avon, around Stratford.
RAMBLES IN ARDEN. 1 79
shire. 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. 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 zig-zag, which is more
ancient than the dog-tooth, and the round,
compact columns of the early English order.
Above the church rises a noble hill, 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, inter-
spersed with red-roofed villages from which
the smoke of the cottage-chimneys curls
up in thin blue spirals under the gray
l8o GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 members of the
parish of Beaudesert. I was privileged to
speak with the aged rector, the Rev. John
Anthony Peason 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.^ My walk
that night took me miles away — to Claver-
don 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 part-
ing and by grief. Nothing is said so often
as good-bye. But in the lovely words of
Cowper —
" The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."
1 This venerable clergyman died in the rectory of
Beaudesert in April 1890, and was buried within the
shadow of the church that he loved.
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 — Washing-
ton 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 Barnum — who
by suddenly proposing to buy the Shake-
speare 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
1 82 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
and fine 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 "War-
wickshire, and by men of all ranks through-
out 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. Bate-
man, and Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton
appear in the first list of its subscribers.
Miss Kate Field worked for its advance-
ment 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
gives in the speech of Jacques 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.
THE STRATFORD FOUNTAIN. 1 83
Wherever in Stratford you come upon
anything that was ever associated, even re-
motely, with the name and fame of Shake-
speare, 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 Inn, with its ram-
bling passages, its quaint rooms named after
Shakespeare's characters, its antique bar
parlour, and the rich collection of auto-
graphs and pictures that has been made
by Mrs. Justins ; the Grammar School in
which no doubt the poet, " with shining
morning face " of boj'hood, was once a
pupil ; John Marshall's antiquarian work-
shop, 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 por-
trait of Garrick, to which no engraving
does justice ; the Guild Chapel ; the Clop-
184 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
ton Bridge ; the old Lucy Mill ; the foot-
path across fields and roads to Shottery,
bosomed in great elms ; and the ancient
house of many gables, four miles away, at
Wilmcote, which was the home of Mary
Arden, Shakespeare's mother, — each and
every one of these storied places receives in
turn the tribute of the wandering Ameri-
can, 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 Inn, where Mr. Colboume
maintains the traditions of old-fashioned
English hosf'itality, 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
THE STRATFORD FOUNTAIN. 1 85
of Shakespeare, the treasure and the glory
of the English tongue.
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 Phila-
delphia. It never is a surprise to hear of
some new instance of that good man's con-
stant activity and splendid generosity in
good works ; it is only an accustomed plea-
sure. 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, West-
minster, 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 foun-
tain at Stratford was dedicated on October
17, 1887, with appropriate ceremonies con-
ducted by the city's Mayor, Sir Arthur
Hodgson of Clopton Hall, and amid general
rejoicing. Henry Irving, the leader of the
1 86 CRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 composed
for the occasion by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The countrymen of Mr. Childs are not less
interested in this structure than the com-
munity that it was intended to honour and
benefit. They observe with satisfaction
and pride tliat he has made this beneficent,
beautiful, and opulent offering to a town
which, for all of them, is hallowed by ex-
alted 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 satis-
fies a public want, at the same time that it
serves a purpose of ornamentation and be-
speaks and strengthens a bond of inter-
national sympathy. Rother Square, in
which the structure stands, is the most
considerable open tract in Stratford, and is
THE STRATFORD FOUNTAIN, 1 87
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 con-
venient clock-tower, a place of rest and re-
freshment for man, and commodious drink-
ing -troughs for horses, cattle, dogs, and
sheep, will soon become the agricultural
centre of the region.
The base of the monument is made of
Peterhead granite ; the superstructure is of
gray stone from Bolton, in Yorkshire. The
height of the tower is fifty feet. On the
north side a stream of water flowing con-
stantly from a bronze spout falls into a
polished granite basin. On the south side
a door opens into the interior. The deco-
rations 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 out-
ward faces of the third story appear four
dials. There are four turrets surrounding
a central spire, each surmounted with a
1 88 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
gilded vane. The inscriptions on the base
are these : —
I.
The gift of an American citizen, George W. Childs
of Philadelphia, to the toN\Ti 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 A thens, 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. — TFas7ii?2^^0H- Irving'' s
" Sir at ford-on- Avon.'
Stratford-upon-Avon, fortunate in many
things, is especially fortunate in being situ-
ated at a considerable distance from the
main line of any railway. Two railroads
indeed skirt the town, but both are
THE STRATFORD FOUNTAIX. 1 89
branches, and travel upon them has not
yet become too frequent. Stratford, there-
fore, still retains a measure of its ancient
isolation, and consequently a flavour of
quaintness. Antique customs are still pre-
valent there, and odd characters may still
bo 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 George W. Childs is
spoken with esteem and cherished with affec-
tion. The present writer has made many
visits to Stratford, and has passed much time
there, and he has observed on many occa-
sions the admiration and gratitude of the
Wanvickshire people for the American phil-
anthropist. In the library of Charles Ed-
ward Flow^er, at Avonbank ; in the opulent
gardens of Edgar Flower, on the Hill ; in the
I go GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
lovely home of Alderman Bird ; at the hos-
pitable table of Sir Arthur Hodgson, in
Clopton Hall ; and in many other represen-
tative 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 Warwick-
shire, guarding and maintaining their Strat-
ford 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 v.ith 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 Strat-
ford. 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
THE STRATFORD FOUNTAIN. I9I
of travel between Banbury, Shipton, Strat-
ford, and Birmingham, and man}^ weary men
and horses will pause beside it every day,
for a moment of refreshment and rest.
On festival days it v/ill be hung with gar-
lands, while all around it the air is glad
with music. And often in the long, sweet
gloaming of the summer times 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 this 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 com-
munities in the world.
Autumn in England— and all the country
ways of lovely AYarwickshire 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 hal-
lowed 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
192 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
make his jaunt to Charlecote Park and
Hampton Lucy, to Stoneleigh Abbey, to
\Varwick 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 Gave-
ston 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 cosy nooks and comfortable inns. But
neither now nor hereafter will it be other-
wise 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.
XIV.
BOSWORTH FIELD.
WARWICK, August 29, 18S9.— It has
long been the conviction of the pre-
sent writer that the character of Eichard
III. 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 accom-
plished 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 fol-
lowers he would have prevailed in the con-
test 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
N
194 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
his fortunes. He threw away his life in
the last mad charge upon Eichmond that
day, and when once the grave had closed
over him, and his usurping cousin had
seized the English cro-wn, it naturally nmst
have become the easy as well as the politic
business of history to blacken his char-
acter. England was never ruled by a more
severe monarch than the austere, crafty,
avaricious Henry vii., 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 safe for anybody to speak for
Richard and the House of York in the time
of Henry viii., the cruel Mary, or the illus-
trious Elizabeth. The drift, in fact, was
all the other way. The Life of Richard
III. 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 j'^outh had lived at Canterbury, in
the palace of Archbishop Morton, derived
his views of Richard from that prelate.
"Morton is fled to Richmond." He was
Bishop of Ely when he deserted the King,
and Henry vii. rewarded him by mak-
ing him Archbishop of Canterbury. No
man of the time was so little likely as
EOSWORTH FIELD. 1 95
Morton to take an unprejudiced view of
Richard iii. It is the Morton view that
has become history. The world still looks
at Richard through the eyes of his victo-
rious foe. Moreover, the Morton view
has been stamped indelibly upon the imagi-
nation and the credulity of mankind by
the overwhelming and irresistible genius
of Shakespeare — who wrote "Richard
III," in the reign of the granddaughter
of Henry vii., and who, aside from the
question of discretion, saw di-amatic pos-
sibilities in the man of dark passions and
deeds that he could not have seen in a
more human and a more virtuous mon-
arch. Goodness is generally monotonous.
" The low sun makes the colour." It is
not to be supposed that King 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 fascinat-
ing personalities that history and literature
have made immortal. It was with no com-
mon emotion, therefore, that I stood ui)on
the summit of Ambien Hill and looked
downward over the ]ilain where Richard
fought his last fight and went gloriously to
his death.
196 GRAY DAVS AND GOLD.
The battle of Bosworth Field was fought
on August 22, 1485. More than four hun-
dred 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 morn-
ing 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 Tam-
worth 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 south-east, and
King Richard's forces, facing north-westerly,
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 admira-
tion 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
EOS WORTH FIELD. 1 97
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 rebel-
lion and defiance. It is easy to imagine
the glowing emotions — the implacable re-
sentment, 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 struc-
ture of gray stones, suitably inscribed with
a few commemorative lines in Latin, a
spring of water at which R.ichard 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 Kiug's standard eai-ly in the day. It
was easy for them, posted as thev were, to
198 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
wheel their forces into the rear of the rebel
army at the right and 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 William Brandon — and to crush the
treason at its head. It must have been a
charge of tremendous impetuosity. It bove
the fiery king a long way forward on the
level plain. He struck down Brandon with
his own hand. 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
north-west to Shenton, one south-west to
Dadlington, and one bearing away easterly
toward Bos worth. 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 em-
bankment of a branch of the Midland Rail-
way, from Nuneaton to Leicester ; while
at about the same distance to the westward
BOSWORTH FIELD. 1 99
rises the similar embankment of a canal.
No monument has been erected to mark
the spot where Richard iii. 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 Fx-iars — 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 drift-
ing 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 pimous 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
2CX) GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
weeds. The inscription, which was written
by Dr. Samuel Parr, reads as follows : —
AQVA. EX. HOC. PVTEO. HAVSTA
SITIM. SEDAVIT
RICHARDVS. TERTIVS. REX. ANGLIAE
CVM HENRICO. COMITE DE RICHMONDIA
ACERRIME. ATQVE. IXGENTISSIME. 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 associ-
ated with that memorable battle. Ratclifie
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 perpen-
dicular stone font, an octagon in shape, and
much frayed by time. In three arches
of its chancel, on the south side, the sculp-
ture 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-
BOSWORTH FIELD. 20I
stone is much used in Leicestershire for
monuments to the dead. Most of these
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 archaeological 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 these 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 re-
cased, and, except for its old gatehouse and
semi-octagon bays, which are of the Tudor
style, it presents a modern aspect. Its
202 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
windows open towaid Radmore Plain and
Ambien Hill, the scene of the conflict
between the E.ed Rose and the White. The
church has been entirely rebuilt — a hand-
some ediiiee 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 Wool-
laston and his wife, once lord and lady of
the manor of Shenton. It M'as the rule, :n
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.
Dadlington was Richard's extreme left on
the day of the battle and Bosworth was his
extreme right. These positions were in-
trusted to the Stanleys, both of whom be-
trayed their King. Sir William Stanley's
headquarters were at Dadlington, and traces
of the earthworks then thrown up there,
BOSWORTH FIELD. 203
by Richard's command, are still visible.
Dadlington Church has almost crumbled to
pieces, and is to be restored. It is a little
low 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-be-
loved clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Bourne, was
buried, in 1881 ; and it is believed that
those are remains of men who fell at Bos-
worth Field. The only inn at this lonely
204 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
place bears the quaint name of " The Dog
and Hedgehog."
The following queer epitaph appears upon
a gravestone in Dadlington churchj-ard. 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 w\as 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 decorated 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
BOS WORTH FIELD. 205
been beautifully carved. One of the deco-
rative 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 the Holy Trinity at Strat-
ford-upon-Avon. There was formerly some
beautiful old stained glass in the east win-
dow of Stoke Golding Church, but this has
disappeared. A picturesque stone slab, set
upon the church wall outside, arrests at-
tention by its pleasing shape, its venerable
aspect, and its decayed lettering ; the date
is 1684. Many XJersons slain at Bosworth
206 GRAY DAYS A^^D GOLD.
Field were buried in Stoke Golding church-
yard, 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, withoutdistinguishing 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.
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 litera-
ture more interesting and significant than
the name of Samuel Johnson. It has been
truly said that no other man was ev^er sub-
jected to such a light as Boswell threw
upon Johnson, and that few other men
could have endured it so well. He was
many things that are noble, but for 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. You will not be surprised that one
of the humblest of his followers should
208 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
linger for a while in the ancient town
that is glorified by association with his
illustrious name, or should wish to send a
word of fealty and homage from the birth-
place of Dr. Johnson.
Lichfield is a cluster of rather dingy
streets and of red-brick and stucco build-
ings, 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 ;
with its church it is everything. Lichfield
Cathedral, although an ancient structure --
dating back, indeed, to the early part of
the twelfth century — has been so sorely
battered first and last, and so considerably
"restored," that it presents the aspect
of a building almost modern. The denote-
ments of antiquity, however, are not en-
tirely absent from it, and altogether it is
not less venerable than majestic. No one
of the cathedrals of England presents a
more beautiful facade. 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 door-
ways on the north and west is of astonish-
THE HOME OF DR. JOHNSON. 209
ing variety and loveliness. The massive
doors of dark oak, fretted with ironwork of
rare delicacy, are impressive, and altogether
are suitable for such an edifice. Seven of
the large gothic windows in the chancel are
filled with genuine old glass — not, indeed,
the glass that they originally contained,
for that was smashed by the Puritan
fanatics and ruffians, but a great quantity
(no less than at least 340 pieces, each about
twenty-two inches square) made in Ger-
many 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 imi-
tated indeed, but it does not last. The sub-
jects 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 beinf,
Errard de la Marck, who was enthroned
Bishop of Liege in 1505, and who, toward
tlie end of his stormy life, adopted the old
o
2IO GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
Roman motto — comprehensive and final —
which, a little garbled, appears in the glass
beneath his heraldic arms : —
Decipimiis votis ; et tempore fallimur ;
Et Mors deridet curas ; anxia vita nihil.
The father of the illustrious Joseph
Addison was Dean of this Cathedral from
16S8 to 1703, and his remains are buried
in the ground, near the west door. 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 smallpox. 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 comme-
morated 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 Lich-
THE HOME OF DR. JOHNSON. 211
field, and one of Dr. Johnson's especial
friends. Of Chappel Woodhouse it is sig-
nificantly said, upon his memorial stone,
that he was " lamented most by those who
knew him best." Here one sees two of the
best works of Chantrey — one called "The
Sleeping Children," erected in 1817, in me-
mory of the two young daughters of the
Rev. William Robinson ; the other a kneel-
ing figure of Bishop Ryder, who died in
1836. The former was one of the earliest
triumphs of Chantrey — an exquisite sem-
blance of sleeping innocence and heavenly
purity — and the latter was his last. Near
by is placed one of the most sumptuous monu-
ments in England, a recumbent statue, done
by the master-hand of Watts, the painter,
presenting 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 Chan-
trey's statue of Bishop Ryder, which seems
no etHgy 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-on-
Avon, to whom was due the destruction
(1757) of the house of New Place in which
212 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
Shakespeare died. No mention occurs in
the epitaph of the Rev. Mr. Gastrell him-
self, but copious enlogium is lavished on his
widow, both in verse and prose, who 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, accom-
panied by Bos well, visited Lichfield, and
Boswell records that they dined with Mrs.
< iastrell and her sister Mrs. Aston. The
Rev. Mr. Gastrell was then dead. " I was
not informed till afterward," says Boswell,
"that Mrs. Gasti-ell'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 neigh-
bours. His lady, I have reason to believe,
on the same authority, participated in the
guilt of what the enthusiasts of our immor-
tal bard deem almost a species of saci'ilege.""
The destruction of the house followed close
upon that of the tree, and to both their
deaths the lady was doubtless accessary.
Upon the ledge of a casement on the east
THE HOME OF DR. JOHNSON. 213
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 tlieir 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 un-
common sweetness. The eyes are finely
shaped. The nose is prominent, long, and
slightly aquiline, with wide and sensitive
nostrils. The mouth is lai'ge, and the lips
are slightly parted, as if in speech. Pro-
digious perceptive faculties are shown in
the sculpture of the forehead — a feature
that is characteristic, in even a greatci-
degree, of the bust of Garrick. The total
expression of the countenance is benignant,
214 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
yet troubled and rueful. It is a thought-
ful 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 par-
ticle of it in his personal experience. It
was good to see these 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 amen of ev^ensong 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 vener-
able roof : and for one worshipper at least
the beams of the westering sun, that made a
solemn splendour through the church, illu-
mined visions no mortal eyes could see.
THE HOME OF DR. JOHNSON. 2l5
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 Gar-
rick is inscribed as follows : —
Eva Maria, relict of DAVID GARRICK, Esq.,
caused this monument to be erected to the me-
mory 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 veri-
fied 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
statement 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
21 b GRAY DAYS AXD GOLD.
in Lichfield Cathedral, with old battle-flags
— commemorative souvenirs of the SOth
Regiment, Staffordshire volunteers — hon-
ourable and interesting relics in their place,
but inappropriate to the effigies of Johnson
and Garrick.
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 re-
cessed, so that the entrance is sheltered by
a pent. Its two doors — for the structure
now consists of two tenements — are ap-
proached 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 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, labori-
ous, sturdj', beneficent life drifts through
your mind as you stand at this threshold
THE HOME OF DR. JOHNSON. 21 7
and conjure up the pictures rif the past.
Opposite to the house, and facing it, is the
-tatue of Jolinson presented to Lichfield in
lbo8 by James Thomas Low, then Chan-
cellor of the diocese. On the sides of
its massive pedestal are sculptures, show-
ing first the boy, bonie on his father's
shoulders, listening to the preaching of Dr.
Sacheverell ; then the youth, victorious in
school, carried aloft in triumph by his ad-
miring comrades ; and, finally, the renowned
scholar and author, in the meridian of his
greatness, standing bareheaded in the mar-
ket-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 tlie humble birtli]) ace, points
the expressive moral of a splendid career.
No tablet has yet been placed on the house
2l8 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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. Johnson
was not a great creative poet ; neither a
Shakespeare, a Dryden, a Byron, or a
Tennyson ; but he was one of the most
massive and majestic characters in English
literature. A superb example of self-con-
quest and moral supremacy, a mine of
extensive and diversified learning, an intel-
lect remarkable for deep penetration and
broad and sure grasp of the greatest sub-
jects, 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.
One of the interesting features of Lich-
field 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 HOME OF DR. JOHNSON 219
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 death-
wound 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 Cathe-
dral, in an ancient room now used for the
Bishop's Consistory Court — these being two
cannon-balls ( fourteen-pound ers) and the
ragged and rusty 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 Avith a wall and fosse,
and thereafter whenever the wars came it
2 20 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 Parlia-
mentary victors, according to their ruthless
and brutal custom, straightway ravaged the
church, tearing the brasses from the tombs,
breaking the etfigies, 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 i. came to this place after the
fatal battle of Xaseby, and sad enough
that picturesque, vacillating, shortsighted,
beatific aristocrat must have been, gazing
over the green fields of Lichfield, to know —
THE HOME OF DR. JOHNSON. 221
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 hedge-
rows. 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 home-
ward to the great tree-tops not far away,
and heard their many querulous, sagacious,
humorous croakings, while over the dis-
tance, 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 for ever.
XVI.
FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH.
EDINBURGH, September 9, 1889. —
Scotland again, and never more beauti-
ful 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 roiled
out of King's Cross, London, at ten this morn-
ing, and it rolled into Waverley, Edinburgh,
about seven to-night. The trip by the Great
Northern Railway is one of the most inte-
resting 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,
and the old church and graveyard of Horn-
sey where Tom 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
FROM LONDOlSr TO EDINBURGH. 223
of Peterborough Cathedral, massive, dark,
and splendid, with its graceful cone-shaped
pinnacles, its vast square central tower, its
lofty spire, and the three great pointed and
recessed arches that adorn its west front.
This church contains the dust of Queen
Katherine, the Spanish wife of Henry viii. ,
who died at Kimbolton Castle, Hunting-
donshire, in 1535, and there the remains
of Mary Stuart were first buried (1587),
— resting there a long time before her son,
James I., conveyed them to Westminster
Abbey. Both those queens were buried
by one and the same gravedigger — that
famous sexton, Old Scarlett, whose portrait
is, or was, in the cathedral, and who died
July 2, 1591, aged ninety-eight.
The country is so level that the receding
towers of Peterborough remain 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 diversi-
fied 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
224 GRAY DATS AXD GOLD.
been gathered. Sheep are feeding in the
pastures, and cattle are coiiched under
fringes of woods. 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 wild-
flowers and of hay.
It is noon at Grantham, where there is
just time enough to see that this is a flourish-
ing city of red-brick houses and fine spa-
cious streets, with a lofty, spired church,
and far away eastward a high line of hills.
Historic Newark is presently reached and
passed — a busj^ 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 Cathe-
dral, to the south-east, and to the westward
Newstead Abbey, Annesley, Southwell, and
Hucknall-Torkard — places memorably asso-
ciated with the poet Byron, and dear to the
FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH. 225
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 brim-
ming Ouse shines as if it were a stream of
liquid ebony. The meadows around the
city glow like living emeralds, while the
P
226 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 difi"erent
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, and cherished in theatrical
annals as the place of the death and burial
of the distinguished founder of the Jefferson
family of actors. Bleak Haworth is not far
distant, and remembrance of it prompts many
reverent thoughts of the strange genius of
Charlotte Bronte. Darlington is the next
important place, a towTi 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 culti-
vated, 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
FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH. 227
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 monu-
ment 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 are seen, 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
228 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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.
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 by 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 pano-
rama is one of perfect and unbroken loveli-
ness. 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 buoj^ant with its
exultant vitality. At Warkworth Castle
the ocean view is especially magnificent —
FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH. 229
the brown and red sails of the ships and
various craft descried at sea contributing
to the prospect a lovely element of pictur-
esque character. Alnwick, with its storied
associations of "the Percy out of North-
umberland," is left to the westward, while
on the east the romantic village of Aln-
mouth wooes the traveller with an irresist-
ible 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
for ever a second sight of any spot where
you have once been happj''. 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 gi-aves. 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
230 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 con-
stantly 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.
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 Edin-
burgh, bound to 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, suri'ounded
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 sheaver;. 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
232 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 gro\\'th, 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 tliat 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 shi'ubs, is seen to skirt the city.
Carron river, wnth 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 liarvest-
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
INTO THE HIGHLANDS. 233
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 the 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. Speed-
ing onward now, along the southern bank
of the Forth, the traveller takes a westerly
course, past Gargunnock and Kippen, see-
ing little villages of gray stone cottages
nestled in the hill-gaps, distant mountain-
sides, clad with furze, dark jjatches of
woodland, and moors of purple heather com-
mingled with meadows of brilliant green.
The sun breaks out, for a few moments,
and the sombre hue of the gray sky is light-
ened with streaks of gold. At Bucklyvie
there is a second pause, and then the course
is north-west, through bauks and braes of
heather, to peaceful Aberfoyle and the
mountains of Menteith.
The characteristic glory of the Scottish
hills is the inlinite variety and beauty
of their shapes, and the loveliness of their
234 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 de-
clare 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 them-
selves over and over in my thought, and
were wholly and grandl}'- 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
iipward course, and during most part of the
way, winds through ti'eeless pastureland,
and in every direction, as your vision ranges,
j^ou behold other mountains equally bleak,
save for the bracken and the heather,
among which the sheep wander and the
INTO THE HIGHLANDS. 235
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 sus-
pense. 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 jjlace, 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."
Loch Katrine is another Lake Horicon,
with a gentler 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.
236 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD,
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 your-
self 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 Kat-
rine and Loch Lomond — to the port of In-
versnaid. This drive is through a wild and
INTO THE HIGHLANDS. 237
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 Inver-
snaid. From Inversnaid there is a short
sail upon the northern waters of Loch Lomond
— for ever 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 Inveraman and hold
a northern course to Crianlarich, travers-
ing 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 Glenorchy 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
238 GEAY DAYS AJsD GOLD.
that guard it stretch away into the myste-
rious 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.
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 expedi-
tious 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 wdld waters of the Firth of
Lorn, visible, south-westerly, 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
240 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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, con-
fronting the iron-ribbed Morven of Ossian.
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, Massa-
chusetts (although that once romantic place
has been spoiled by the Irish peasantry),
and at Mount Desert in Maine. The sur-
roundings, 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 and gloom and 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 every-
day life, nor any place more sweet and
dreamlike to the pensive mood of contem-
HIGHLAXD BEAUTIES. 24I
plation 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.
Kow and then a belated passenger came
wandering along the pavement and dis-
appeared 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 care-
less 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 this 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
Q
242 GRAY DAYS A^D GOLD
The Highland journe}^, from first to last,
is an experience altogether novel and pre-
cious, 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 anjthing 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 ofi" 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 moun-
tain-side the waters of Loch Awe are of such
crystal clearness that near some part of the
shore the white sands are visible in perfect
HIGHLAND BEAUTIES. 243
outline beneath them, while all the glorious
eiigirdliug 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 flood-
ing the mountain slopes with gold ; but
more often the skies kept their sombre hue,
darkening all beneath them with a lovely-
gloom. All around M^ere the beautiful hills
of Glenorchy, 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 pre-
sence 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
244 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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.
Tiiey speak of the south-western 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 w^ooded and some bare, and
all magnificent. A little after passing the
I
HIGHLAND BEAUTIES. 245
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 ^^sible 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 moor-
lands 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 out-
lined against the northern heavens, and
seemingly based upon a sea of rolling vapour.
The sail is past Innisdrynich, the island of
the Druids, past Inishail and Inis Fraoch,
and presently past the lovely ruin of Innis-
Chonnel 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 pictur-
esque decay, and a diminutive kirk, that
constitute the village of Ford. !My purpose
here was to view an estate close by this
246 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
village, now owned by Henry Bruce, Esq.,
but many years ago the domain of Alexander
Campbell, 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 aban-
doned now, is a thousand times more char-
acteristic and interesting than the new one.
Both are approached through a long, wind-
ing 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 chest-
nuts, birches, and yews, — winding under vast
dark boughs that bend like serpents com-
pletely 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 biiried among the
trees, and on its surface and on the tree-
HIGHLAND BEAUTIES. . 247
trunks around it the lichen and the yellow
moss have gathered in rank luxuriance. The
waters of the lake ripple upon a rocky land-
ing almost at its door. Here once lived as
proud a Campbell as ever breathed in Scot-
land, and here his liaughty 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 burial-ground/ such as
may often be found on ancient sequestered
estates in the Highlands — where the tall
trees wave above it and the weeds are grow-
ing 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
1 On the stone that marks this seimlchre are the
following inscriptions, which may suitably be pre-
served in this chronicle : —
Alexander Campbell Esquire, of Ederline. Died
2^ October, 1841. In his 76«i> year.
Matilda Campbell. Second daughter of William
Campbell Esq., of Ederline. Died on the 21=' Nov^
1S42. In her 6^^ year.
William Campbell, Esq. of Ederline. Died 15"»
January 1855, in his 42°^iyear.
Lachlan Aderson Campbell. His son. Died Jan-
uary 27'!', 1859. In his 5ti> year.
248 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 jour-
ney — to scrape the moss from his forgotten
gravestone and to think sometimes of his
ancient greatness and splendour, for ever
past away. We rowed around Loch Eder-
line 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.
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
HIGHLAND BEAUTIES. 249
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 ima-
gination, 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,
250 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
and that no influence can ever destroy or
ever 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."
XIX.
THE HEART OF SCOTLAND.
** The, Heart of Scotland, Britain's other
eyf\ " — Bex Joxsox.
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 man-
sions and spacious, cleanly streets sparkle
beneath it in a flood of summer sunshine.
It is the Lord's Day, and most of the high-
ways are deserted and quiet. From the top
of the Calton Hill you look down upon hun-
dreds 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 re-
252 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
splendent 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 figui-es of Long Ago. Yonder the
glorious Castle Crag looks steadfastly west-
ward, — its manifold, wonderful colours con-
tinuously 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 Ber-
wick 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 Inch-
keith 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 compi'eheud the pride and the
THE HEART OF SCOTLAND. 253
passion with which a Scotsman loves his
native land.
Dr. Johnson named Edinburgh as "a city
too well known to admit description." That
judgment was proclaimed more than a hun-
dred 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 maj-
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 it in a cab ;
for Edinburgh to be truly seen and com-
prehended must be seen and comprehended
as an exponent of the colossal individu-
ality of the Scottish character ; and there-
fore it must be observed with thought.
Here is no echo and no imitation. Many
another provincial city of Britam is a minia-
ture copy of London ; but the quality of
254 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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
IV, The democratic tendency of this
period — expressing itself here precisely as
it does everywhere else, in button-making
pettiness and vulgar commonplace — is like-
wise sufficient!}^ obvious. Xevertheless in
every important detail of Edinburgh, and
of its life, the reticent, resolute, formid-
able, 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 S^^dney Smith. Dignity has
been denied to it, and so has magnanimit}',
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 Scot-
land, the encroachment of utility upon the
domain of romance ; there is no people whose
history has excelled that of Scotland in the
THE HEART OF SCOTLAND. 255
display of heroic, intellectual, and moral pur-
pose, 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, pas-
sionate, authoritative, and magnificent.
The capital of Scotland is not only beauti-
ful 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 commem-
orated 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 com-
mentary 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-storj^, gray
stone house which is No. 39 Castle Street.
It has been my privilege to enter that
256 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 un-
marked 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 kept safely 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.
THE HEART OF SCOTLAND. 257
hearing meanwhile the moan of the winter
wirul, and conjuring up, in the blazing
brands, those figures of brave knights and
gentle ladies that were to live for ever in
the amber of his magical art. Next to the
study, on the same floor, is the larger apart-
ment 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
oflBces 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 own handwriting,
the last words that ever fell from his pen.
That Journal is in two quarto volumes
of unruled, faded paper, bound in vellum,
258 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
now yellowed with age, and each provided
with a lock. Sir "Walter kept this diary
from Kovember 20, 1S25, to April 16, 1S32,
and these are the famous "locked books*'
which were consulted by Lockhart when he
v.-as writing the Life. One of them is filled
vrith 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. He was on his tour in
Italy, from which so much was hoped — and
hoped in vain. 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 efi"ort of the nerveless
hand that once had been strong enough to
thrill the heart of all the world. The Jour-
nal has been lovingly and carefully edited
by David Douglas, whose fine taste and
great gentleness of nature, together with
his ample knowledge of Scottish litera-
ture and society, eminently qualify him
for the performance of this sacred duty ;
THE HEART OF SCOTLAND. 259
and the world will possess this treasure
and feel the charm of its beauty and pathos
— which is the charm of a great nature ex-
pressed in its perfect simplicity; but the
spell that is cast upon the heart and the
imagination by a prospect of the actual hand-
writing of Sir Walter Scott, in the last
words that he wrote, cannot be conveyed
in print.
From the house in Castle Street I went
to the rooms of the Eoyal Society, where
there is a portrait of Scott — by John
Graham Gilbert — more life-like — being re-
presentative 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, pre-
siding over the deliberations and literary
exercises of his comrades in scholarship and
art. In another hall I saw the pulpit in
which John Knox used to jDreach, in the
old days of what Dr. Johnson expressively
called "The raffians 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
260 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
the grim Regent Morton was slain in 15S1,
the Marquis of Argyle in 1661, and the gal-
lant, 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 grati-
fied 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 Magdalen, not
many steps 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 Earl of Argyle was laid,
in secret sanctuary, for several nights after
that scene of piteous sacrifice at the old
Market Cross ; and w^hen you walk in the
solemn enclosure of the Greyfriars Church,
—so fitly styled by Sir Walter "The West-
minster Abbey of Scotland," — your glance
will fall upon a sunken pillar, low down
upon the northern slope of that storied,
lamentable ground, which bears the letters
"I. M.," and which marks the grave of the
baleful ^Morton, whom the Maiden decapi-
tated for his share in the murder of Rizzio.
In these old cities there is no keeping away
THE HEART OF SCOTLAND. 261
from sepulchres. " The paths of glory," in
every sense, "lead but to the grave.'"'
George Buchanan and Allan E,amsay (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 Shep-
herd," 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 pious though lowly hands.
Of such a character, hallowed with asso-
ciations that pique the fancy and touch
the heart, are the places and the names that
an itinerant continually encounters in his
rambles in Edinburgh.
One could muse for many an hour over
the little Venetian mirror 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
262 GEAY DAYS A>'D GOLD.
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 Maiy 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 miirder of Eizzio
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 quiet tones of her
gentle voice, at such a moment as that.
"At the fireside tragedies are acted " — and
THE HEART OF SCOTLAND. 263
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 this 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.
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 east-
ward to the abbey, and then it veered to the
south. Much of this 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
II. The furniture in Mary Stuart's room
is mostly spurious, but the rooms are gen-
uine. 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 Canon gate, — once
clean and elegant, now squalid and noisome.
264 GEAY DAYS AND GOLD.
— 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 blythe 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 dissemi-
nation 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.
But the dark has come, and this Edin-
burgh ramble shall end with the picture
THE HEART OF SCOTLAXD. 265
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 sink-
ing, 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 in-
dented 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 out-
line of the Isle of May, — which was the
shrine of the martyred St. Adrian, — and the
lonely, wave-beaten Bass Eock, with its
millions of seagulls and solan geese. Busy
266 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 favour-
ite summer home of the Queen of Scots, now
open to sun and rain, mossgrown and deso-
late, and swept by every wind that blows.
More eastward the eye lingers upon Carberry
Hill, where Mary surrendered herseK 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 a gauzy
mist and hangs above the mountain like a
shield of gold upon the towered citadel of
night.
XX.
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
MORE than a century has passed since
\Yalter Scott was born — a poet des-
tined 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. Every-
body 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 kno-^Ti 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 livinc; — men and women
268 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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,
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
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?
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 imagina-
tion ; 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
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 269
his ever having done a wrong act, or ot 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-knowTi
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
270 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
influenced by imagination, taste, patriotism,
family pride, and a profound belief in estab-
lished 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 dis-
torted 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 con-
sciousness of reserve power ; habitual defer-
ence 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 quietly and
earnestly earned all. His means were the
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 27 1
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 wholesome. He was not ham-
pered 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 con-
ventions of society. His mind was neither
embittered by revolt nor sickened by delu-
sion. 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 poA\er3
subordinated to it, — he felt no impulse
toward revolution, no desire to regulate all
things anew ; and he did not suffer perturba-
tion from the feverish sense of being sur-
rounded 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
272 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
calm environment of a permanent civilisa-
tion 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 sagacit}^ 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 sufi"ered 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 intel-
lectual vision — moulded Sir Walter Scott's
ambition and stamped the practical results
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 273
of his career. A striking illustration of this
is seen in his first adventure in literature.
The poems originally sprang from the spon-
taneous action of the poetic impulse and
faculty ; but they were put forth modestly,
in order that the author might guide him-
self 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, achieve-
ments, and splendid honours of his man-
hood, 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, per-
haps, 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
coi'rupt no man's principles, and that I
have written nothing which, on my death-
bed, I should wish blotted." When at last
he lay upon that deathbed the same thought
274 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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.
And this view of him explains the affec-
tionate reverence with which the memory
of Sir Walter Scott is cherished. He was
pre-eminently a tj'^pe 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, represeiat 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 good-
ness of a great poet — the poet of natural
beauty, of romantic legend, of adventure,
SIR WAI.TER SCOTT. 275
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 sun-
rise 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 litera-
ture ; but no romance has hushed the voice
of the autlior of V/averley, 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 im-
portance. 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, fami-
liar in the early part of the present cen-
tury, 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
276 GRAY DAYS AXD GOLD.
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 undimin-
ished fervour. There are, of course, persons
to whom his works are not interesting, and
to whom his personality is not signifi-
cant. 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 peren-
nial. Caprices of taste will reveal them-
selves and will vanish ; fashions will rise and
will fall ; but these mutations touch nothing
that is elemental, and they will no more dis-
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 277
place Scott than they will displace Shake-
speare.
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 excep-
tionally noble, that his patience was beau-
tiful, that his endurance was heroic. These
pages disclose to his votaries that he sur-
passed even the highest ideal of him that
their affectionate partiality has formed. The
period that it covers was that of his adver-
sity 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 memo-
randa, and the perusal of those inspiriting
pages had revived in his mind the long-cher-
ished, often-deferred plan of keeping a diary.
"I have myself lost recollection," he says,
278 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
"of much that was interesting, and I have
deprived my family and the public of some
curious information by not carrying this re-
solution into effect." Having once begun
the work he steadily persevered in it, ar.d
evidently he found a comfort in its com-
panionship. He wrote directly, and there-
fore 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 ; some-
times an analytic sketch of character —
subtle, terse, clear, and obviously true ; some-
times 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
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 279
of mankind. There was no pretence of order,
and there was no consciousness of an
audience ; yet the Journal unconsciously as-
sumed a symmetrical form ; and largely be-
cause 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
mucli 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 vol-
ume is full of \\T.uting ; 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 reasonabh', but on the next morn-
28o GRAY DAYS AXD GOLD.
ing . " 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 im-
parted their inestimable treasure to the
world, they are restored to the ebony
cabinet at Abbotsford, there to be trea-
sured among the most precious relics of the
past. "It is the saddest house in Scot-
land," 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 quar-
ter of the earth, and it will be honoured
and cherished for ever.
The great fame of Scott had been acquired
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 28 1
by the time lie began to wTite his Journal,
and it rested upon a broad foundation of
solid achievement. He was fifty-four j^ears
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 Burger's
" Lenore," having appeared in 1796, the same
year that was darkened bj' 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 j'ears a baronet, hav-
ing received that rank from King George
IV., 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 WoodstocJc the
six tales called The Chronicles of the Canon-
gate, 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 Scot-
land. All these works, together with many
essays and reviews, were produced by
him between 1825 and 1832, while also
he was maintaining a considerable corre-
282 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
spondence, doing his official duties, writiDg
his Journal, and carrying a suddenly imposed
load of debt — which finally his herculean
laboui-s paid — amounting to £130,000. But
between 1S05 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 Roder-
ick," "Rokeby," "The Lord of the Isles,"
" The Field of Waterloo," and " Harold the
Dauntless," thus creating a great and diver-
sified body of poetry — then in a new school
and a new style, in which, although he has
often been imitated, he never has been
equrvUed. Between 1814 and 1825 he had
likewise produced Waverley, Guy Manner -
ing, The Antiquary, Old Mortality, The
Black Dwarf, Bob Roy, The Heart of Mid-
lothian, A Legend of Montrose, The Bride
of Lammermoor, Ivanhoe, The Monastery,
The Abbot, Kenihcorth, The Pirate, The
Fortunes of Nigel, Peveril of the Peak,
Quentin Durward, St. Bonan's Well, Red-
gauntlet, 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 Smol-
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 2S3
lett. That admirable author Miss Jane
Porter had, indeed, written the Scottish
Chiefs (1809), in which the note of imagi-
nation, as applied to the treatment of
historical fact and character, rings true
and clear ; and probably that beautiful 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 pub-
lication 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 pre-
sents scarce a comparable example of such
splendid industry sustained upon such a high
level of endeavour, animated by such a glori-
ous genius, and resultant in such a noble
and beneficent fruition. The life of Balzac,
whom his example inspired, and who may
284 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 Abbotaford and his
town-house in Edinburgh, and 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 viTiting 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 mo-
desty 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, 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 dis-
covered that he ought to have had a higher
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 2S5
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 iii., 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
in George Square (No. 25), then an aristo-
cratic 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 for-
tunes 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
286 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
a lad of fifteen, iu 17S6, he saw Burns, then
twenty-seven, and in the hej^day of fame ;
and he also saw Dugald Stewart, seventeen
years his senior. Lord Jefl&'ey was his eon-
temporary 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
the line of its
iw 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 efi"ec-
tive 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 Mathews, John Bannister, and Daniel
Terry. He knew Yates also, and he saw
Miss Foote, Fanny Kemble, and the Mathews
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 2S7
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 nine-
teen 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 wdth 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 pub-
lication 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 savage critic William Gifford.
His relations with Sir Humphry Davy,
seven years his senior, were those of kind-
255 GEAY DAYS AND GOLD.
ness. He had a great regard for Lord
Castlereagh and Lord Melville. He liked
Robert Sonthey, and he cherished a deep
aflfection 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 these
names Scott passed his life. The brilHant
days of the Cauongate indeed were gone,
when all those wynds and closes that fringe
the historic avenue from the Castle to Holy-
rood 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 Xew
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 ad-
mirers of the unknown author of Waverley,
was still a cleanly place. Alison Square,
George Square, Buccleuch Place, andkindred
quarters were still tenanted by the polished
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 289
classes of the stately old-time society of
Edinburgh, The movement northerly 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, and Pinkie House, and Blackford,
and Ravelstoue, and Craigcrook, and Caro-
line 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,
beneath his roof-tree in Castle Street and
his turrets of Abbotsford.
There came a time, however, when the
fabric of Scott's fortunes was to be shat-
tered 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 dis-
T
290 GRAY DATS AND GOLD.
cretion and taste, records his opinion that
"the three parties — printer, publisher,
and author — were equal sharers in the im-
prudences 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 con-
cerned 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 pro-
sperity, 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 you behold a spectacle of
indomitable will, calm resolution, inflexible
purpose, patient endurance, steadfast indus-
try, and productive genius that is simply
sublime. Many facts of living interest and
many gems of subtle thought and happy
SIE, WALTER SCOTT. 29 1
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 char-
acteristics, 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 I>Iay 1826. On the pages that im-
mediately follow his note of this bereave-
ment 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
292 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 aflfairs
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 threescore and ten,
and shall be summed up at a fliscount. 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 m the story), he wrought at
his task until it was finished. By Wo yd stock
he earned £8000 ; by the Life of Xajooleon
£18,000 ; by other writings still other sums.
The details of his toil appear day by day in
these quiet pages, tragic through all their
simplicity. He was a heart-broken man
from the hour when his wife died, but he sus-
tained himself by force of will and sense of
honour, and he endured and worked till the
end without a murmur ; and when he had
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 293
done his task he laid down his pen and
died.
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 condi-
tion 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 pass-
ing 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. What-
ever in literature will illustrate this doc-
trine, 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.
XXL
ELEGIAC MEMORIALS.
ONE denotement — among many — of a
genial change, a relaxation of the old
ecclesiastical austerity long prevalent in Scot-
land, 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 ex-
ponent of immitigable woe — may be found
in the old Greyfriars Churchyard in Edin-
burgh, and in that of the Canongate. But
the pilgrim to the Dean Cemetery and the
Warriston — both comparatively modem, and
beautifully situated at different points on the
ELEGIAC MEMORIALS. 295
north side of the Water of Leith — finds them
adorned with every gi'ace 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 yon 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 modem Scotland. It
was no common experience to muse beside
the tomb of Francis Jeffrey — the formidable
Lord Jeffrey of The Edinhuy^gh Review. He
29b GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
lies buried near the great wall on the
western side of the Dean Cemetery, with his
wife beside him. A flat, oblong stone tomb,
imposed upon a large stone platform 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 Jefirey, in
bronze. It is a profile, and it shows a
sj'mmetrical 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 Jefirey, a little to the south,
are buried Sir Archibald Alison, the his-
torian 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
1818-'49.
ELEGIAC MEMORIALS. 297
In another part of the ground a tall cross
commemorates David Scott, the painter
(1807-1849), 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 Blachicood' s Maga-
zine for thirty-three years : Died at Strath-
tyrum, 29th Oct. 1879. Aged 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 ceme-
tery. The grave of the great "Christopher
North " is marked by a simple monolith 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 monu-
ment — a square tomb, with carvings of re-
298 GRAY DAYS AST) GOLD.
cessed Gothic windows on its sides, support-
ing a tall cross — erected to the memory of
Aytoun and of his mfe, who was Wilson's
daughter. The inscriptions tell their suffi-
cient story: "Jane Emily Wilson, beloved
wife of William Edmondstoune Aytoun.
Obiit 15 April, 1859. " ' ' Here is laid to rest
William Edmondstoune 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 Black-
hills, 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 ; cer-
tainly it commands a more beautiful pro-
spect. You will visit Warriston for the
sake of Alexander Smith ; for you have not
forgotten the Life Drama, the City Poems,
Edwin of Deira, Alfred Hagart's Household,
and A Summer in Skye. He lies in the
north-east corner of the ground, at the foot
ELEGIAC MEMORIALS. 299
of a large lona 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 sensi-
bility than of rugged strength. The inscrip-
tion gives simply his name and dates : "Alex-
ander 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 so dearly loved. Near
him on the east wall appears a large slab of
Aberdeen ga^anite, to mark the grave of still
another Scottish worthy, "James Ballantine,
Poet. Born 11th Jime, 1808. Died 18th
Dec, 1877." And midway along the slope
of the northern terrace, a little eastward of
the chapel, under a freestone monolith bear-
303 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
ing the butterfly that is Nature's sj^mbol of
immortalit}', you will see the grave of " Sir
James Young Simpson, Bart., M.D., D.C.L.
Born 1811. Died 1870." And if you are
wearj'^ 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.
The oldest and the most venerable
and mysterious of the cemeteries of Edin-
burgh is that of the Greyfriars. Irregular
in shape and uneven in surface, it encircles
its famous old church, in the storied neigh-
bourhood 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 Greyfriars,
founded by James i. 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 (163S) by the
lords and by the people, and in this
doubly consecrated ground are laid the
ELEGIAC MEMORIALS. 3OI
remains of many of those heroic Covenanters
who subsequently suffered death for con-
science and their Church. There is a large
book of "The Epitaphs and Monumental
Inscriptions in Greyfriars Churchj^ard, ''
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 2271 persons
who are sepulchred in this place. Among
those sleepers are Duncan Forbes of Cul-
loden ; Robert Mylne, who built a part of
Holyrood Palace ; Sir George Mackenzie,
the persecutor of the Covenanters ; Car-
stares, the adviser of King William iii. ;
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 Edinbiirgh, on
the night of September 7, 1736, and whose
story is so vividly told in Tlie Heart ofMid-
lothian, was buried in the Greyfriars
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,
302 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
minister of the parish, \vho died in 1745,
we read that he "lyes near the tree next
Blackwood's ground." "Mr. Allan Ram-
say," says the same quaint chronicle, "lies
5 dble. paces southwest the blew stone :
A poet: old age: Buried 9th January 175S."
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
Greyfriars 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 — the 2d of June 1581 —
low down toward the northern wall. The
supiDosed gi'ave of the 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 commemo-
rate that illustrious author.
Hugh Miller and Dr. Chalmers were laid
ELEGIAC MEMORIALS. 303
in the Grange Cemetery, whicli is in the
southern part of the city, near Momingside.
Adam Smith is commemorated by a heavy
inece 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 Bui^ns
placed the stone, and on the back of it is
inscribed : "By special grant of the mana-
gers 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
304 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD,
his thoughts more precisely and cogently
upon great subjects than almost any meta-
physician of our English-speaking race. His
tomb is in the old Calton Cemetery, close
by the prison, a grim Roman tower, pre-
dominant 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 his-
torian'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,
177G. 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 ceme-
tery when I saw it, making its dismal aspect
still more dismal by that furtive aspect
which often marks the ecclesiastic of the
Roman Catholic Church.
Another great man, 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
ELEGIAC MEMORIALS. 305
Edinburgh Castle. I went to that spot on
a bright and lovely autumn evening. The
place was deserted, except for the pre-
sence of a gardener, to whom I made my
request that he would guide me to the
grave of De Quincey. It is an incon-
spicuous 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 wi-itten : "Sacred to the me-
mory of Thomas de Quincey, who was born
at Greenhay, near Manchester, August loth,
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 embodi-
ment of the best that death can teach.
XXII.
SCOTTISH PICTURES
STRONACHLACHER, Loch Katrine,
September 1, 1890. — Xo one needs to
be told that the Fortli Bridge is a wonder.
All the world knows it, and knows that the
art of the engineer has here achieved its
masterpiece. The bridge is not beautiful,
whether viewed from afar or close at hand.
You see it — or some part of it — from every
height to which you mount in Edinburgh.
It is visible from the Calton Hill, from the
Nelson Column, from the Scott Monument,
from the ramparts of the Castle, from Salis-
bury 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
SCOTTISH PICTURES. 307
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 like-
wise vrith. its pictorial effect. That effect is
no doubt due in part to its accessories. Both
waj's the broad expanse of the Forth was
visible for many miles. It was a still morn-
ing, overcast and mournful. There was a
light breeze from the south-east, — the air
at that elevation being as sweet as new milk.
Beneath, far down, the surface of the steel-
gray water was crinkled 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, — which are break-
waters to form a harbour, — and all the little
308 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
gray houses of Queensferry, Inverkeithing,
and the adjacent villages looked like the toy
buildings which are the playthings of chil-
dren. 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
storied land of Fife.
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 Nid-
dry Castle — one of the houses of her faithful
Lord Seton — at which she rested, on the ro-
mantic 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 Mal-
colm of whom we catch a glimpse when we
see a representation of Shakespeare's tragedy
of " Macbeth " had a royal castle there nine
SCOTTISH PICTURIL5, 309
hundred years ago, of which a fragment
still remains ; and on a slope of the Forth,
a few miles west from Dunfermline, the
vigilant antiquarian has fixed the site of
Macduff's castle, where Lady Macduff and
her children were slaughtered by the tyrant.
In the ancient church at Dunfermline, the
Church of the Holy Trinity — devastated at
the Reformation, but since restored — you
may see the great blue-grey stone which
covers the tomb of Malcolm and of Mar-
garet, his queen — an angel among women
when she lived, and worthy to be remem-
bered 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 Dun-
fermline, and there buried, — Edinburgh
Castle ("The Maiden Castle" it was then
called) being assailed by her husband's
brother, Donald Bane. The remains of this
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. Laurence in the
Escurial. I had often stood in the little
chapel that this good queen founded in
Edinburgh Castle, — a place which they
310 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
desecrate no^y, by using it as a shop for the
sale of pictures and memorial trinkets, —
and I was soon to stand in the ruins of
Saint Oran's Chapel in far lona, 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, al-
though that superb drive over the mountain
from Aberfoyle to Loch Katrine was marred
by the wet, I was well pleased to see the
Trosachs country in storm, which I had be-
fore 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 oflf, are like rivulets of silver frozen into
stillness on the mountain-sides ; the occa-
sional apparition of precipitous peaks, over
which presently are driven the white
streamers of the mist — all these are strik-
ing elements of a scene which blends into
the perfection of grace the qualities of
SCOTTISH PICTCP.ES, 3II
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 black sky the smooth
surface of "lovely Loch Achray" shone
like a liquid diamond. An occasional grouse
rose from the ferns and quickly winged its
way to cover. A few cows, wet but indiffe-
rent, composed, and contented, were now
and then visible, grazing in that desert ;
while high up on the crags appeared many
sure-footed sheep, the ineWtable inhabitants
of those solitudes. So onward, breathing
the sweet air that here was perfumed by
miles and miles of purple heather, I de-
scended 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 Dliu.
To-night the mists are on the mountains,
312 GRAY DAYS AXD GOLD.
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 ^Yake* !
XXIII.
IMPERIAL RUIXS.
OBAN, September 4, 1890. — Going west-
ward 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 morn-
ing 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 past — a peaceful re-
gion 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 copi^ice, reaches safety
at last in one of the wildest of Highland
314 GRAY DAYS AXD GOLD.
glens. This drive is a chief delight of High-
land 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 com-
pany 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 sus-
pended hostility and inevitable predomi-
nance. 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 magnifi-
cent waterfall — twin 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
IMPERIAL RUINS. 315
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
3l6 GRAY DAYS AST GCLD.
the exquisite loveliness of the Scottish High-
lands 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 rhey swarm. But no-
thing 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.
This day proved capricious, and by the
time the railway train from Crianlarich had
sped a little way into Glen Lochy the land-
scape 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 moun-
tain ash, which is in perfect bloom in Sep-
IMPERIAL E,UI>*S. 317
tember, bearing great pendent clusters of
scarlet berries, gave a frequent touch of
brilliant colour to this "vWld scenery. A
numerous herd of little Highland steers,
mostly brown and black, swept suddenly
into the picture as the express ilashed 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 wan-
ing day, I once more stood amid the ruins
of DunstaShage 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
3l8 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
been well-nigh impregnable. It stands
upon a broad, high, massive, precipitous
rock, looking seaward toward Lismore Is-
land. 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 courtj^^ard 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 stufied
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, show-
ing 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 em-
brasures, 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
IMPERIAL RUINS. 319
Scoue Abbey, thence to be borne to Lon-
don by Edward i., 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, am-
bition, 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, in-
trepid, constant, and noTale 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 in-
tolerable burden of hopeless age ; and as I
stood and pondered amid their gray de-
crepitude 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
320 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 experi-
ence and all the moods of man, even as man
passes through all the experience and all the
moods of nature .
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. 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 dis-
tinctive, and that have stamped their im-
press of stately thought and romantic senti-
ment upon its people. Amid such scenes
the Scottish national character has been
developed, and under their influence have
naturally been created the exquisite poetry,
IMPERIAL RUINS. 32 1
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 expedi-
tions that may be made from Oban compre-
hends a visit to Fingal's Cave, on the island
of Staffa, and to the ruined Cathedral of
Saint Columba, on the island of lona, and,
incidentally, a voj-age 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.
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 towTi of sombre gray houses capped with
red roofs ; of elaborate, old-fashioned, dis-
used 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, wind-
ing ways, many churches, quiet customs, and
ancient memories. The present, indeed, has
marred the past in this old town, dissi-
pating the element of romance and putting
no adequate substitute in its place. Yet the
element of romance is here, for such ob-
servers as can look on Berwick through the
eyes of the imagination ; and even those
who can imagine nothing must at least per-
ceive that its aspect is regal. Viewed, as I
THE LAND OF MAHMION. 323
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, \nsited
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 vic-
tories 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
324 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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, stately with
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
THE LAND OF MARMIOX. 325
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 wliirled away
to shipwreck and ruin, — as so many great
natures have been before and will be again,
— upon the black reefs of human passion.
This heedless train is skirting the hills of
Lammermoor now, and speeding through
plains of a fertile verdure that is brilliant and
beautiful dov/n 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 works, 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
326 GRAY DAYS AXD GOLD.
darkly on the white breakers at its surge-
beaten base. Edgar of Ravenswood is no
longer an image of fiction, when you look
upon this scene of gloomy grandeur and
mystery. But do not look upon it too
closely, nor for long — for of all scenes that
are conceived as distinctively weird it may
truly be said that they are more impressive
in the imagination than in the actual pro-
spect. 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 seaside pageantry, and the
sunlit ocean makes a silver setting for the
jewelled landscape, all the way to Berwick.
The profit of walking in the footsteps of
the past is that j'ou learn the value of the
privilege of life in the present. The men
and women of the past had their oppor
tunity, and each improved it after his kind.
These are the same plains in which Bruce
and Wallace fought for the honour and estab-
lished the supremacy of the Kingdom of Scot-
THE LAND OF MARMION. 327
land. 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, eras tibi " — as it was written on the
altar skulls in the ancient churches. Yester-
day 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 slaugh-
tered the people as if they were sheep,
and burnt the city— himself applying the
torch to the house in w^hich he had slept.
Hither came Edward i., 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 pro-
spered ; 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 sta-
tion), King Edward caused to be confined
328 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
in a wooden cage that intrepid Countess of
Buchan who had crowned Robert Bruce
at Scone. Hither came Edward iii., 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 iii.
doomed it to isolation, and Henry vii. de-
clared it a neutral state. By Elizabeth it
was fortified, — in that wise sovereign's
resolute and vigorous resistance to the
schemes of the Romish Church for the
subjugation of her Kingdom. John Knox
preached here, in a church on Hide Hill, be-
fore he went to Edinburgh to shake the
throne with his tremendous eloquence. The
picturesque, unhappy James iv. 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 afibrding
the only instance in which the first news of a
defeat had been brought by the vanquished
General himself. And almost within sight
of Berwick spire are those perilous Fame
Islands, where, at the wreck of the steamer
THE LAND OF MARMION. 329
"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 Barnborough 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 lias endeared to all the
world — and you come to it mainly for his
sake.
" Day set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone."
The village of Norham lies a few miles
westward of BerM'ick, upon the south bank
of the Tweed, and certainly the wanderer
seldom comes upon such a sequestered and
primitive settlement — wherein, neverthe-
less, the civilisation is ancient and immov-
ably established. Norham is a group of cot-
tages 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
330 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
wild upon the thatch. At one end of the main
highway is a market-cross, near to which is a
little inn. Beyond this, 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 church-
yard, in which many graves are marked with
tall, thick, perpendicular slabs, many with
dark, oblong tombs tumbling to ruin, and
many \vith short, stunted monoliths. The
church tower is low, square, and of enor-
mous strength. Upon the south side of
the chancel are five windows, beautifully
arched, — the dog-toothed casements being
uncommonly complete specimens of this
ancient architectural device ; and on the out
side surface of this chancel wall, in the first
bay, there are not less than thirty -two cup-
marks. This church has been "restored"
— the south aisle in 1846, by I. Bononi ; the
north aisle in 1852, by E. Gray. The west-
ern 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 and storied Castle of Xorham
— built by a Bishop of Durham in 1121, and
restored by another Prince of that See in
1174. It must once have been a place of
tremendous fortitude and of great extent.
THE LAND OF MARMION. 33 1
Xow it is wide open to the sky, and nothing
of it remains but roofless walls and crumb-
ling 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 M-as a day of uncommon beauty —
golden with sunshine and fresh with a per-
fumed air ; and nothing was wanting to the
perfection of solitude. Xear 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 occa-
sional 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 mould-
ering 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.
332 GRAY DAYS AND GOLD.
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 ser-
rated outline, relieved against the red and
gold of sunset, taking on the perfect sem-
blance of a colossal cathedral, like that of
lona, 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 re-
member 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.
AT VESPEE TIME
THE SHIP THAT SAILED.
WHITE sail upon the ocean verge,
Just crimsoned by the setting sun,
Thou hast thy port beyond the surge,
Thy happy homeward course to run.
And winged hope, with heart of fire,
To gain the bliss of thy desire.
I watch thee till the sombre sky
Has darkly veiled the lucent plain ;
My thoughts like homeless spirits, fly
Behind thee o'er the glimmering main :
Thy prow will kiss a golden strand,
But they can never come to land.
And if they could, the fanes are black
Where once I bent the reverent knee ;
No shrine would send an answer back,
No sacred altar blaze for me.
No holy bell, with silver toll.
Declare the ransom of my soul.
336 THE SHIP THAT SAILED.
Tis equal darkness, here or there ;
For nothing that this world can give
Could now the ravaged past repair,
Or win the precious dead to live !
Life's crumbling ashes quench its flame,
And every place is now the same.
Thou idol of my constant heart,
Thou child of perfect love and light.
That sudden from my side didst part,
And vanish in the sea of night.
Through whatsoever tempests blow
My weary soul with thine would go.
Say, if thy spirit yet have speech,
What port lies hid within the pall,
What shore death's gloomy billows reach,
Or if they reach no shore at all !
One word — one little word — to tell
That thou art safe and all is well !
The anchors of my earthly fate.
As they were cast so must they cling ;
And naught is now to do but wait
The sweet release that time will bring
When all these mortal moorings break,
For one last voyage I must make.
ASHES. 337
Say that across the shuddering dark —
And whisper that the hour is near —
Thy hand will guide my shattered bark
Till mercy's radiant coasts appear,
Where I shall clasp thee to my breast,
And know once more the name of rest.
ASHES.
[Written in the Shakespeare Church at Strat-
ford-upon-Avon. ]
IVrO eyes can see man's destiny completed
-Li Save His, who made and knows
th' eternal plan :
As shapes of cloud in mountains are repeated.
So thoughts of God accomplished are in
man.
Here the divinest of all thoughts descended ;
Here the sweet heavens their sweetest boon
let fall ;
Upon this hallowed ground begun and ended
The life that knew, and felt, and uttered all.
There is not anything of human trial
That ever love deplored or sorrow knew,
No glad fulfilment and no sad denial.
Beyond the pictured truth that Shake-
speare drew.
Y
338 THE PASSING BELL AT STRATFORD.
All things are said and done, and though
for ever
The streams dash onward and the great
winds blow,
There comes no new thing in the world, and
never
A voice like his, that seems to make it so.
Take then thy fate, or opulent or sordid,
Take it and bear it and esteem it blest ;
For of all crowns that ever were awarded
The crown of simple patience is the best.
THE PASSING BELL AT STRATFORD.
[It is a Tradition in Stratford-upon-Avon that
THE Bell of the Guild Chapel was tolled at
the Death and Funeral of Shakespeare.]
QWEET bell of Stratford, tolling slow,
In summer gloaming's golden glow,
1 hear and feel thy voice divine,
And all my soul responds to thine.
As now I hear thee, even so.
My Shakespeare heard thee long ago,
When lone by Avon's pensive stream
He wandered, in his haunted dream :
heaven's houk. 339
Heard thee — and far his fancy sped
Through spectral caverns cf the dead,
And strove — and strove in vain— to pierce
The secret of the universe.
As now thou mournest didst thou mourn
On that sad day when he was borne
Through the green aisle of honied limes,
To rest beneath the chambered chimes.
He heard thee not, nor cared to hear !
Another voice was in his ear.
And, freed from all the bonds of men,
He knew the awful secret then.
Sweet bell of Stratford, toll, and be
A sacred promise unto me
Of that great hour when I shall know
The path whereon his footsteps go.
HEAVEN'S HOUR.
[Wkittex on hearing Organ Music at Night in
Shakespeare's Church at Stratford.]
CAN I forget ? — no, never while my soul
Lives to remember — that imperial night
When through the spectral church I heard
them roll,
Those organ tones of glory, and my sight
Grew dim with tears, while ever new delight
340 THE STATUE.
Throbbed in my heart, and through the
shadowy dread
The pale ghosts wandered, and a deathly
chill
Froze all my being — the mysterious thrill
That tells the awful presence of the dead !
Yet not the dead, but, strayed from heavenly
bowers,
Pure souls that live with other life than ours:
For sure I am that ecstasy of sound
Lured One Sweet Spirit from his holy
ground,
Who dwells in God's perpetual land of
flowers.
THE STATUE.
[Spoken at the Dedication of a Monument to
THE Tragedian John M'Cullough, in Mount
MORIAH CEilETERY, PHILADELPHIA, NOVEMBER
28, 1S88.]
HOW different now, old friend, the meet-
ing !
Thy form, thy face, thy look the same —
But where is now the kindly greeting,
The voice of cheer, the heart of flame ?
There, in thy grandeur, calm and splendid, —
God's peace on that imperial brow, —
THE STATUE. 34I
Thou stand est, grief and trouble ended,
And yve are nothing to thee now.
II.
Yet once again the air is cloven
With joyous tumult of acclaim ;
Once more the golden wreaths are woven,
Of love and honour, for thy name ;
And round thee here, with tender longing.
As oft they did in days of old,
The comrades of thy soul come thronging.
Who never knew thee stern or cold.
Why waits, in frozen silence sleeping,
The smile that made our hearts rejoice ?
Why, dead to laughing and to weeping,
Is hushed the music of thy voice ?
By what strange mood of reverie haunted
Art thou, the gentle, grown austere ?
And do we live in dreams enchanted,
To know thee gone, yet think thee here ?
Ah, fond pretence ! ah, sweet beguiling !
Too well I know thy course is run.
There 's no more grief and no more smilinj
For thee henceforth beneath the sun.
342 THE STATUE.
In manhood's noon thy summons found thee,
In glory's blaze, on fortune's height,
Trailed the black robe of doom around thee,
And veiled thy radiant face in night.
This but the shadow of a vision
Our mourning souls aloue can see.
That pierce through death to realms elysian,
More hallowed now because of thee.
Yet, oh, what heart, with recollection
Of thy colossal trance of pain.
Were now so selfish in affection
To wish thee back from heaven again I
There must be, in those boundless spaces
Where thy great spirit wanders free.
Abodes of bliss, enchanted places.
That only love's white angels see !
And sure, if heavenly kindness showered
On every sufferer 'neath the sun
Shows any human spirit dowered
With love angelic, thou wert one !
VII.
There s no grand impulse, no revealing,
In all the glorious world of art,
THE STATUE. 343
There 's no sweet thought or noble feeling
That throbbed not in thy manly heart !
There 's no strong flight of aspiration,
No* reverent dream of realms divine,
No pulse, no thrill, no proud elation
Of god-like power that was not thine !
VIII.
So stand for ever, joyless, painless,
Supreme alike o'er smiles and tears,
Thou true man's image, strong and stainless,
Unchanged through all the changing
years —
While fame's blue crystal o'er thee bending
With honour's gems shall blaze and bum.
And rose and lily, round thee blending,
Adorn and bless thy hallowed urn !
While summer days are long and lonely.
While autumn sunshine seems to weep.
While midnight hours are bleak, and only
The stars and clouds their vigils keep,
All gentle things that live shall moan thee
All fond regrets for ever wake ;
For earth is happier having known thee.
And heaven is sweeter for thy sake !
344 IN MEMORY OF WILKIE COUSINS.
IN MEMORY OF WILKIE COLLINS.
[Died September 23, 1889.]
OFTEN and often, when the days were
dark
And, whether to remember or behold,
Life was a burden, and my heart, grown old
With sorrow, scarce was conscious, did I
mark
How from thy distant place across the sea,
Vibrant with hope and with emotion free,
Thy voice of cheer rose like the morning
lark—
And that was comfort if not joy to me !
For in the weakness of our human grief
The mind that does not break and will
not bend
Teaches Endurance as the one true friend.
The steadfast anchor and the sure relief.
That was thy word, and what thy precept
taught
Thy life made regnant in one living
thought.
IN MEMORY OF WILKIE COLLINS. 345
II.
Thy vision saw the halo of romance
Round every common thing that men
behold.
Thy lucid art could turn to precious gold, —
Like roseate motes that in the sunbeams
dance, —
Whatever object met thy kindling glance ;
And in that mirror life was never cold.
A gracious warmth suffused thy sparkling
page,
And woman's passionate heart by thee
was drawn,
With all the glorious colours of the dawn,
Against the background of this Pagan age —
Her need of love, her sacrifice, her trance
Of patient pain, her weary pilgrimage !
Thou knewest all of grief that can be known.
And didst portray all sorrovrs but thine own.
III.
Where shall I turn, now that thy lips are
dumb
And night is on those eyes that loved me
well?
What other voice, across thy dying knell,
With like triumphant notes of power will
come ?
Alas ! my ravaged heart is still and numb
346 RAYMOND.
With thinking of the blank that must
remain !
Yet be it mine, amid these wastes of pain,
Where all must falter and where many sink.
To stay the foot of misery on the brink
Of dark despair, to bid blind sorrow see —
Teaching that human will breaks every chain
When once Endurance sets the spirit free ;
And, living thus thy perfect faith, to think
I am to others what thou wert to me !
Steamship A^irania,
Mid-ocean, October 10, 1889.
EAYMOND.
An Epitaph.
HIS restless spirit, while on earth he
dwelt,
Wreathed with a smile whatever grief he
felt,—
And 'twas his lot, though crowned with
public praise.
Ample and warm, to walk in troubled ways.
1 John T. Raymond is buried at Evergreen Ceme-
tery, Brooklyn, N.Y., and his grave is marked with
a monument bearing these lines, preceded by the
following inscription :— " This monument, the gift of
many afifectipnate friends, is placed here in loving
memory of John T. Raymond, comedian. He was
RAYMOND. 347
Glad was his voice, that all men laughed to
hear,
While few surmised the pang, the secret tear.
Yet did that thrill of pathos flush the grace
Of playful humour in his speaking face,
Inform his fancy and inspire his art
To cheer the senses and to touch the heart.
Jocund and droll, incessant, buoyant, quaint,
His vigour fired the forms his skill could
ppvint,
Till, over-anxious lest effects were tame.
He left his picture, to adorn its frame.
A mind more serious never did engage
Through simulated mirth the comic stage,
Xor strong ambition conquer and control
A sturdier will and more aspiring soul.
If haply, much constrained, his purpose
bowed
To woo the fancy of the fickle crowd.
Yet did his judgment spurn the poor renown
Of shallow jester and of trivial clown.
A true comedian this, by Fate designed
To picture manners and to cheer mankind.
bom in Buffalo, New York, April 5, 1836. He died
in EvansvUle, Indiana, April 10, 1SS7.
' Hinc apicem rapax
Fortuna cum stridore acuto
Sustidit, hicposuisse gaudet.'"
34S D. D. L.
So Raymond lived — and naught remains to
tell,
Save that too soon the final curtain fell.
Peace to his dust, where Love and Honour
weep,
In endless sorrow o'er their comrade's
sleep.
D. D. L.
[Died September 5, 1889.]
EARLY, but not too early for thy fame.
The seal of silence on thy lips is laid,
While we, aghast, disheartened, and dis-
mayed,
Crush back our tears and softly speak
thy name.
To us it has one meaning and the same —
A brave and gentle soul, a noble mind,
Pure, constant, generous, modest and refined,
With simple duty for its only aim.
Dear are the days that thou hast left behind.
By sweet words hallowed, and by kindly
deeds ;
And thus the heart of sorrow moans and
bleeds.
And ever bleeds, and will not be resigned —
Knowing its hopeless hope is all in vain,
To see thy face or hear thy voice again.
SYMBOLS— HONOUR'S PEARL. 349
SYMBOLS.
1VT0T only to give light those urns
1.1 Of golden fire adorn the skies !
Not for her vision only burns
The glory of a woman's eyes !
But in those flames and that fine glance
Th' authentic flags of heaven advance.
In them we know our life divine,
For which th' unnumbered planets roll
Action and suff'ering are but sign ;
Within the shadow dwells the soul ;
And till we rend this earthly thrall
We do not truly live at all.
HONOUR'S PEARL.
[Read at a Feast given by the Editorial Staff
OF THE " New York Tribune" at Delmonico's,
New York, May 3, 1889, in compliment to the
Hon. Whitelaw Reid, on his appointment as
Minister of the United States to France.]
I.
BECAUSE in danger's darkest hour,
When heart and hope sank low,
She nerved our frail and faltering pov/er
To brave its mightiest foe ;
350 honour's pearl.
Because our fathers smiled to see
Her golden lilies dance
O'er the proud field that made us free,
We plight our faith to France !
Ah, grand and sweet the holy bond,
That who gives all is blest !
And Love can give no pledge beyond
The life she loves the best.
That pledge these hallowed rites declare,
Of choice and not of chance —
And he shall cross the sea to bear
Our loyal hearts to France !
Strong, tender, gentle, patient, wise.
Brave soul and constant mind,
True wit, that kindles as it flies
And leaves no grief behind, —
Be thine to wear the snowy plume
And poise the burnished lance —
Our rose of chivalry, to bloom
Among the knights of France !
Be thine the glorious task to speed
The conquering age of gold —
THE BROKEN HARP. ;
Till ravaged peace no more shall bleed,
Till History's muse behold
Borne in the vanward, fast and far,
Of the free world's advance,
Blent with Columbia's bannered star,
The triple stripes of France !
THE BROKEN HARP.
[Written in the Vale of the Dargle.]
IF this now silent harp could wake,
How pure, how strong, how true
The tender strain its chords would make
Of love and grief for you !
But, like my heart, though faithful long,
By you cast forth to pain,
This hushed and humbled voice of song
Must never stir again.
Yet haply when your fancy strays
O'er unregarded things.
And half in dream your gentle gaze
Falls on its shattered strings.
Some loving impulse may endear
Your memories of the past.
And if for me you shed one tear
I think 'twould wake at last :
552 NOW.
Wake with a note so glad, so clear,
So lovely, so complete
That birds on wing would pause to hear
Its music wild and sweet ;
And you would know— alas ! too late —
How tender and how true
Is this fond heart, that hugs its fate —
To die for love and you.
NOW.
WHEN you shall walk in pensive mood
The happy paths we used to know,
And sweet and gentle thoughts intrude,
And tender dreams of Long Ago,
How will your wakened spirit bear
Its bitter pang, its bleak despair ?
When in your heart, as now in mine,
Shall throb the pulse of sleepless grief —
Since nothing earthly or divine
In that dark hour can bring relief-
How will you mourn o'er wasted bliss
And that wild moment long for this !
The echo of a silent word,
An exhalation of the dew,
A lonely sigh at midnight heard
In depth of some funereal yew —
UNWRITTEN POEMS. 353
These shall be more, in that black day,
Than your true lover past away.
Then do not scorn the present hour,
Nor crush the roses while they bloom !
The best of time has only power
To hang a garland on a tomb ;
And all that lasts when years are sped
Is hopeless memory of the dead.
UNWRITTEN POEMS.
FAIRY spirits of the breeze —
Frailer nothing is than these.
Fancies born we know not where —
In the heart or in the air :
Wandering echoes blown unsought
From far crystal peaks of thought :
Shadows, fading at the dawn,
Ghosts of feeling dead and gone :
Alas ! Are all fair things that live
Still lovely and still fugitive ?
(ftiinburgtl SSnibtrsttg i^ress :
T. AND A. CONSTABLE. PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY.
THE WRITINGS OF
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IN
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In One Shilling Volumes.
I Volume, 2^0 pp. Price is.
SHAKESPEAKE'S ENGLAND
By WILLIAM WINTER.
CONTEMTS.
Up to London.
Old Churches of Loudon.
Literary Shrines of London.
A Haunt of Edmund Kean.
Stoke-Pogis and Thomas
Gray.
At the Grave of Coleridge.
On Eamet Battle-field.
A Glimpse of Caiiterbmy.
The Shrines of Warwick-
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A Borrower of the Night.
The Voyage.
The Beauty of England.
Great Historic Places.
Eambles in London.
A Visit to Windsor.
The Palace of Westminster.
Warwick and Kenilworth.
First View of Stratford-on-
Avon.
London Nooks and Comers.
Relics of Lord Byron.
Westminster Abbey.
The Home of Shakespeare.
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" Enthusiastic and yet keenly critical notes and
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It is indeed the noble, hospitable, merry, romance-
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we know of in song and story." — Scriinefs Monthly.
1 Volutue, IQ^ pp. Price \s.
WANDERERS
Being a Collection of the Poems of
WILLIAM WINTER.
"The verse of Mr. Winter is dedicated luaiuly to
love and wine, to flowers and birds and dreams,
to the hackneyed and never-to-be-exhausted reper-
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gentleness is the soul and simplicity the garruent.'"
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GKAY DAYS AND GOLD
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Contents.
Classic Slirinea.
Haunted Gleus and Houses.
Old York.
The Haunts of Moore.
Beautiful Bath.
The Lakes and Fells of
Wordsworth.
Shakespeare relics at Wor-
cester.
Byron and Hucknall Torkard.
Historic Nooks and Comers.
Shakespeare's To\vn.
Up and Down the Avon.
Kambles in Arden.
The Stratford Fountain.
Bosworth Field.
The Home of Dr. Johnson.
From London to Edin-
burgh.
Into the Highlands.
Highland Beauties.
The Heart of Scotland.
Sir Walter Scott.
Elegiac Memorials
Scottish Pictures.
Imperial Euins.
The Land of MarmiOB,
At Vesper Time.
This book, which is intended as 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.
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