Datasets:

NicholasSynovic
/

Modified-VEAA

Dataset card Data Studio Files Files and versions Community

Split (2)

train · 42.9k rows

text stringlengths 1.96k 5.76k	author int64 1 50
nose he made no complaint of his ill fortune but only repeated in a quiet voice with a pathos of which he was himself evidently unconscious i want to get home to ninety second street philadelphia he described himself as a by trade and said that he had come over when he was a young man in the hope of himself and for the sake of seeing the old country but had never since been rich enough to pay his homeward passage his manner and accent did not quite convince me that he was an american and i told him so but he affirmed sir i was bom and have lived in ninety second street philadelphia and then went on to describe some public and other local objects with which he used to be familiar adding with a simplicity that touched me very closely sir i had rather be there than here though i still manifested a lingering doubt he took no offence replying with the same mild depression as at first and again and again on ninety second street up to the time when i saw him he still got a little occasional job work at his trade but mainly on such charity as he met with in his wanderings shifting from place to place continually and asking assistance to convey him to his native land possibly he was an one of the shapes of english and told his falsehood with such powerful simplicity because by many he had convinced himself of its truth but if as i believe the tale was fact how very strange and sad was this old man s fate on a foreign shore looking always towards his country coming again and again to the point whence so many were setting sail for it so many who would soon tread in ninety second street losing in this long series of years some of the characteristics of an american and at last dying and his clay to be a portion of the soil whence he could not escape in his lifetime he appeared to see that he had moved me bnt did not attempt to press his advantage with any new argument or any varied form of entreaty he had bnt scanty and scattered thoughts in his grey head and in the intervals of those like the re ain of an old ballad came in the monotonous burden of his appeal if i could only find myself in ninety second street philadelphia but even his desire of getting home had ceased to be an ardent one if indeed it had not always of the dreamy of his character although it remained his only impulse and perhaps the sole principle of life that kept his blood from actual the poor old fellow s story seemed to me almost as worthy of being in immortal song as that of or i took his case into deep consideration but dared not the moral responsibility of sending him across the sea at his age after so many years of exile when the very tradition of him had passed away to find his friends dead or forgetful or vanished and the whole country become more truly a foreign land to him than england was now and even ninety second street in the decay and growth of our made over anew and grown by his old eyes that street so patiently longed for had transferred itself to the new and he must seek it there his slow heart meanwhile with the smoke of english towns or the green country lanes and by paths with which his wanderings had made him familiar for doubtless he had a beaten track and was the long remembered beggar now with food and a roughly hospitable greeting ready for him at many a door and his choice of lodging under a score of in america nothing awaited him but that worst form of disappointment which comes under the of a and late accomplished purpose and then a year or two of dry and barren in an and death among strangers at last where he had imagined a circle of faces so i contented myself with giving him which he accepted and went away with bent old home and an aspect of gentle returning upon his however after a few months to tell the same sad and quiet story of his abode in england for more than years in all which time he had been endeavouring and still endeavoured as patiently as ever to find his way home to ninety second street philadelphia i recollect another case of a more ridiculous order but still with a foolish kind of pathos entangled in it which me now more forcibly than it did at the moment one day a queer stupid good natured fat faced individual came into my private room dressed in a sky blue cut away coat and mixed trousers both garments worn and shabby and rather too small for his overgrown bulk after a little preliminary talk he turned out to be a country om i think who had left a flourishing business and come over to england purposely and solely to have an interview with the queen some years before he had named his two children one for her majesty and the other for prince and had photographs of the little people as well as of his wife and of himself to the illustrious the queen had gratefully acknowledged the favour in a letter under the hand of her private secretary now the like a great many other americans had long cherished a fantastic notion that he was one of the of a rich english estate and on the strength of her majesty s letter and the hopes of royal patronage which it inspired he had shut up his little country store and come over to claim his inheritance on the voyage a german fellow passenger had relieved him of	35
lowest general traits in his own race with what was highest in these abominable monsters he found a ghastly that half compelled him to recognize them as human brethren after these my agreeable acquaintance had fallen under the ban of the dutch government and had suffered this at least being matter of fact nearly two years imprisonment with of a large amount of property for which mr our minister at the had just made a demand of and meanwhile since arriving in england on his way to the united states he had been led to inquire into the circumstances of his birth on and had discovered that not himself alone but another baby had come into the world during the same voyage of the vessel and that there were almost reasons for believing that these two children had been assigned to the wrong mothers many reminiscences of his early days confirmed him in the idea that his parents were aware of the exchange the family to which he felt to attribute his was that of a nobleman in the of whose country seat whence if i mistake not our adventurous friend had just returned he had discovered a portrait bearing a striking resemblance to himself as soon as he should have reported the outrageous action of the dutch government to president pierce and the secretary of state and recovered the property he to return to england and establish his claim to the nobleman s title and estate i had accepted his oriental which indeed to do him justice have been recorded by scientific societies among the genuine phenomena of natural history not as matters of but as specimens of an imaginative traveller s vivid colouring and rich on the coarse texture and dull tints of truth the english romance was among the latest communications that he to my private ear and as soon as i heard the first chapter so wonderfully akin to what i might have wrought out of my own head not in such i began to repent having made myself responsible for the future nobleman s passage homeward in the next steamer nevertheless should his english rent roll fall a little his dutch claim for a hundred thousand dollars was certainly in the hands of our government and might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty pounds which i had engaged to pay on his behalf but i have reason to fear that his dutch riches turned out to be dutch gilt or fairy gold and his english country seat a mere castle in the air which i exceedingly regret for he was a delightful companion and a very gentlemanly man a in his position of universal responsibility the old home general adviser and sometimes finds himself compelled to assume the of personages who in their own sphere are supposed of the highest interests of whole an elderly a citizen once put the desire and expectation of all our into a very suitable phrase by me to be a father to him and simple as i sit here i have acted a father s part not only by scores of such old children as himself but by a of far pretensions it may be well for persons who are conscious of any radical weakness in their character any sin any any impulse which while surrounded with the manifold that protect a man from that treacherous and enemy his lower self in the circle of society where he is at home they may have succeeded in keeping under the lock and key of propriety it may be well for them before seeking the perilous freedom of a distant land released from the watchful eyes of and lightened of that wearisome burden an name and obscure after years of local it may be well for such individuals to know that when they set foot on a foreign shore the long imprisoned evil a wild in the atmosphere is apt to grow in its iron cage it the rusty with gigantic and if there be an joint anywhere in the it breaks madly forth the mischief of a lifetime into a little space a parcel of letters had been at the for two or three weeks directed to a certain doctor of divinity who had left america by a sailing packet and was still upon the sea in due time the vessel arrived d the reverend doctor paid me a visit he was a fine looking middle aged gentleman a perfect model of propriety scholar lie yet with the air of a man of the world rather than a student though with the graceful of a popular divine a part of whose duty it might be to experiences the natural accordance between christianity and good breeding he seemed a little excited as an american is apt to be on first arriving in england but conversed with intelligence as well as animation making himself so agreeable that his visit stood out in considerable relief from the monotony of my daily common place as i learned from sources he was somewhat distinguished in his own region for and eloquence in the pulpit but was now compelled to it temporarily for the purpose of his health by an extensive tour in europe promising to dine with me he took up his bundle of letters and went away the doctor however failed to make his appearance at dinner time or to the next day for his absence and in the course of a day or two more i forgot all about him concluding that he must have set forth on his continental travels the plan of which he had out at our interview but by and by i received a call from the master of the vessel in which he had arrived he was in some alarm about his passenger whose luggage remained on but of whom nothing had been heard or seen since the moment of	35
his departure from the we conferred together the captain and i about the of setting the police on the traces if any were to be found of our vanished friend but it struck me that the good captain was singularly and that there was something a httle mysterious in a few points that he hinted at rather than expressed so that the ir carefully i that the intimacy of life on might have taught him more about the reverend gentleman than for some reason or other he deemed it prudent to reveal at home in our native country i would have looked to the doctor s personal safety and left his reputation to take care of itself knowing that the good fame of a thousand would amply out any lamentable spot on a single brother s character but in scornful and england on the idea that the credit of the sacred office was to my discretion i could not endure for the sake of american doctors of divinity generally that this our old home particular doctor should cut an figure in the police reports of the english newspapers except at the last necessity the body i flatter myself will acknowledge that i acted on their own principle besides it was now too late the mischief and violence if any had been impending were not of a kind which it requires the better part of a week to and to sum up the entire matter i felt certain from a good deal of somewhat similar experience that if the missing doctor still breathed this vital air he would turn up at the as soon as his money should be stolen or spent precisely a week after this reverend person s disappearance there came to my office a tall middle aged gentleman in a blue military at the but out at elbows and as shabby as if the had been in it throughout a campaign it was up to the very chin except where three or four of the buttons were lost nor was there any glimpse of a white shirt collar the rusty black a moustache was just beginning to the stranger s upper lip he looked to the last degree but still had a ruined air of good society glimmering about him like a few of polish on a sword blade that has lain in a mud i took him to be some american marine officer of dissipated habits or perhaps a british major stumbling into the wrong quarters through the bewilderment of last night s he greeted me however with polite familiarity as though we had been previously acquainted whereupon i drew coldly back as sensible people naturally do whether from strangers or former friends when too evidently at odds with fortune and requested to know who my visitor might be and what was his business at the am i then so changed he exclaimed with a vast depth of tragic and after a little blind and bewildered talk behold i the flashed upon me it was the doctor of divinity if i had meditated a scene or a de i could not have contrived a more effectual one than by this simple and genuine difficulty of recognition the poor divine must have felt that he had lost his personal identity through the of one little week and to say the truth he did look as if like on account of his especial he had been delivered over to the temptations of satan and proving weaker than the man of the arch enemy had been to drag him through him in the process from the most of into the and of officers i never the mystery oi his military costume but that a lurking sense oi fitness had induced him to exchange his garments for this habit of a sinner nor can i tell precisely into what not more of vice than terrible calamity he had himself being more than satisfied to know that the of society can sink no lower than this poor wretch had sunk the opportunity i presume does not often happen to a of moral and religious reproof to a doctor of divinity but finding the occasion thrust upon me and the hereditary strong in my breast i deemed it a matter of conscience not to let it pass entirely the truth is i was shocked and disgusted not however that i was then to learn that are made of the same and blood as other people and perhaps lack one small which the rest of us possess because they are aware of their own and therefore cannot look up to the class for the proof of the possibility of a pure life on earth with such confidence as we are prone to do but i remembered the innocent faith of my boyhood and the good old silver headed clergyman who seemed to me as much a saint then on earth as he is now in heaven and partly for whose sake through all these darkening years i retain a devout though not nor respect for the entire what a hideous wrong therefore had the inflicted on his brethren and still more on me who much needed whatever fragments of broken reverence broken not as concerned religion but its earthly institutions and professors it might yet be possible to patch old home into a sacred image i should all and communion tables have a stain upon them and the guilty one go for it so i spoke to the unhappy man as i never thought myself in speaking to any other mortal him hard doing my utmost to find out his part and him into the depths of it and not without more effect than i had dreamed of or desired no doubt the novelty of the doctor s reversed position thus standing up to receive such a as the clergy have heretofore the exclusive right of might give additional weight and sting to	35
by the conduct of the crew who moreover had themselves slain their comrade in the drunken riot and confusion of the first day or two after they were looked at there appeared to be no right side to the matter nor any right side possible in so thoroughly vicious a system as that of the american marine the could do little except to take hold forth the greasy testament to be anew with kisses and in a few instances of murder or carry the case before an english magistrate who generally decided that the evidence was too contradictory to the of the accused for trial in america the newspapers all over england contained against the of american the british parliament took up the matter for nobody is so humane as john bull when his benevolent are to be gratified by finding fault with his neighbour and caused lord john to with our government on the for which it was responsible before the world and which it failed to prevent or punish the american secretary of state old general responded with perfectly ignorance of the subject to the effect that the statements of had probably been exaggerated that the present laws of the united states were quite adequate to deal with them and that the interference of the british minister was for the truth is that the state of affairs was really very horrible and could be met by no laws at that time or i presume now in existence i once thought of writing a on the subject but quitted the before finding time to effect my purpose and all that phase of my life immediately assumed so a that i of making it seem solid or to the public and now it looks distant and dim like troubles of a century ago the origin of the evil lay in the character of the scarcely any of whom were american but the and refuse of all the old home of the world such stuff as is made of together with a considerable of returning and a of absolutely american citizens even with such material the ships were very the found himself upon the deep with a vast responsibility of property and human life upon his hands and no means of salvation except by compelling his and crew to heavier exertions than could reasonably be required of the same number of able by law he had been with no discretion of judicious punishment he therefore habitually left the whole matter of discipline to his mates men often of scarcely a superior quality to the crew hence ensued a great mass of petty and nameless cruelty alike to the and the these fell into the ocean between the two countries and could be punished in neither many miserable stories come back upon my memory as i write wrongs that were immense but for which nobody could be held responsible and which indeed the closer you looked into them the more they lost the aspect of wilful and assumed that of an inevitable calamity it was the fault of a system the misfortune of an individual be that as it may however there will be no possibility of dealing effectually with these troubles as long as we deem it inconsistent with our national dignity or interests to allow the english courts under such as may seem fit a over on board our vessels in mid ocean in such a life as this the american himself into a man of iron energies courage and inexhaustible resource at the expense it must be acknowledged of some of the higher and traits which might do him excellent service in maintaining his authority the class has of late years on account of the field of selection owing chiefly to the of that excellent body of educated new england from the flower of whom the officers used to be experiences yet i found them in many cases very agreeable and intelligent companions with less nonsense them than have of fine spun theories in square and ideas but occasionally with prejudices that stuck to their brains like to a ship s bottom i never could flatter myself that i was a general favourite with them one or two perhaps even now would scarcely meet me on terms endowed universally with a great of will they especially disliked the interference of a with their management on notwithstanding which i thrust in my very limited authority at every available opening and did the utmost that lay in my power though with small effect towards a better kind of discipline they thought no doubt and on plausible grounds enough but scarcely just that one little grain of hard new england sense oddly thrown in among the composition of the s character that he a a and as people said of him a could not possibly understand anything of the difficulties or the necessities of a s position but their cold regards were rather acceptable than otherwise for it is exceedingly awkward to assume a in the morning towards a man with whom you have been over night with the details of the business of that great for great it then was though now i fear fallen off and perhaps never to be revived in anything like its former extent i did not much interfere they could safely be left to the treatment of two as faithful upright and competent both englishmen as ever a man was fortunate enough to meet with in a line of life altogether new and strange to him i had come over with instructions to supply both their places with americans but possessing a happy faculty of knowing my own interest and the public s i quietly kept hold of them being little inclined to open the doors to a spy of the state department or an for my own office the venerable vice our old home mr had witnessed the of a score o newly appointed shadowy	35
whom they call a but a sort of double who had been permitted to assume my aspect under which he went through his shadowy duties with a tolerable show of while my real self had lain as regarded my proper mode of being and acting in a state of suspended animation the same sense of illusion still me there is some experiences mistake in this matter i have been writing about another man s experiences with which through some mysterious medium of ideas i find myself intimately acquainted but in which i cannot possibly have had a personal interest it it not a dream altogether the figure of that poor doctor of divinity looks wonderfully so do those of the oriental adventurer with the visionary above his brow and the moon struck visitor of the and the poor old wanderer seeking his native country through english and by ways for almost thirty years and so would a hundred others that i might summon up with similar distinctness but were they more than shadows surely i think not nor are these present pages a bit of let not the reader wrong me by supposing it i never should have written with half such had it been a portion of this life congenial with my nature which i am living now instead of a series of incidents and characters entirely apart from my own concerns and on which the qualities personally proper to me could have had no bearing almost the only real incidents as i see them now were the visits of a young english friend a scholar and a literary amateur between whom and myself there sprung up an affectionate and i trust not regard he used to come and sit or stand by my fireside talking and with me about literature and life his own national characteristics and mine with such kindly endurance of the many rough wherewith i assailed him and such frank and amiable assertion of all sorts of english prejudices and mistakes that i understood his countrymen infinitely the better for him and was almost prepared to love the englishman of them all for his sake it would gratify my cherished remembrance of this dear friend if i could manage without offending him or letting the public know it tt introduce his name upon my page bright was the illumination of my dusky little apartment as often as he made his appearance there i the english sketches which i have been offering to the old home public a few of the more external and therefore more readily things that i took note of in many escapes from the imprisonment of my liverpool though not very delightful as a place of residence is a most convenient and admirable point to get away from london is only five hours off by the fast train the most curious town in england with its wall its ancient rows and its venerable cathedral is close at hand north wales with all its hills and its noble sea scenery its multitude of gray castles and strange old villages may be glanced at in a summer day or two the lakes and mountains of and may be reached before dinner time the haunted and isle of man a little kingdom by itself lies within the scope of an afternoon s voyage or are over night and in the morning visiting these famous and a great many others i hope that i do not compromise my american patriotism by acknowledging that i was often conscious of a fervent hereditary attachment to the native soil of our forefathers and felt it to be our own old home in the of several visits and stays of considerable length we acquired a feeling towards and came back thither again and again chiefly because we had been there before wandering and people such as we had long since become retain a few of the instincts that belong to a more settled way of life and often prefer familiar and common place objects for the very reason that they are so to the dreary strangeness of scenes that might be thought much better worth the seeing there is a small nest of a place in at no upon which to this day my reminiscences are apt to settle as one of the in england or in the world not that it had any special charm of its own but only that we stayed long enough to know it well and even to grow a little tired of it li my opinion the very of home and friends makes a part of what we love them for if it be not mixed in sufficiently with the other elements of life there may be mad enjoyment but no happiness the modest abode to which i have alluded forms one of a circular range of pretty moderate sized two story houses all built on nearly the same plan and each provided with its little grass plot its flowers its of box trimmed into and other fantastic shapes and its hedges shutting the house in from the common drive and dividing it from its equally neighbours coming out of the door and taking a turn round the circle of sister dwellings it is to find your way back by any individuality of your own habitation li the centre of the is a space in with iron railing a small play place and retreat for the old home children of the by brief paths through the fresh english grass and by amid which if you like you may fancy yourself in a deep seclusion though probably the mark of eye shot from the windows of all the surrounding houses but in truth with regard to the rest of the town and the world at large an abode here is a genuine seclusion for the ordinary stream of life does not nm through this little quiet pool and few or none of	35
the inhabitants seem to be troubled with any business or outside i used to set them down as half pay officers of narrow income elderly maiden ladies and other people of respectability but small account such as hang on the world s skirts rather than actually belong to it the quiet of the place was seldom disturbed except by the and butcher who came to receive orders or by the and bath chairs in which the ladies took an in or the livery which the retired captain sometimes for a morning ride or by the red who went his rounds twice a day to deliver letters and again in the evening ringing a hand bell to take letters for the mail in merely mentioning these slight of its stillness i seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of quiet that over the spot whereas its impression upon me was that the world had never found the way hither or had forgotten it and that the fortunate inhabitants were the only ones who possessed the of nothing could have suited me better at the time for i had been holding a position of public which imposed upon me among a great many lighter duties the ponderous necessity of being universally civil and nevertheless if a man were seeking the bustle of society he might find it more readily in than in most other english towns it is a permanent watering place a sort of institution to which i do not know any close parallel in american life for such places as bloom only for the summer season and a thousand even then while seems to be always in flower and serves as a home to the all the year round its original the plausible excuse for the town s coming into prosperous existence lies in the fiction of a weu which indeed is so far a reality that out of its depths have streets groves gardens shops and churches and spread along the banks of the little river this miracle accomplished the beneficent fountain has retired beneath a pump room and appears to have given up all pretensions to the virtues formerly attributed to it i know not whether its waters are ever tasted nowadays but not the less does in pleasant at the very point of england in a good hunting neighbourhood and surrounded by country seats and castles continue to be a resort of transient visitors and the more permanent abode of a class of genteel do but not very wealthy people such as are hardly known among ourselves persons who have no country houses and whose fortunes are inadequate to a london expenditure find here i suppose a sort of town and country life in one li its present aspect the town is of no great age in contrast with the antiquity of many places in its neighbourhood it has a bright new face and seems almost to smile even amid the of an english autumn nevertheless it is hundreds upon hundreds of years old if we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time during which it existed as a small village of houses clustered round a and it would still have been precisely such a rural village but for a certain doctor who lived within the memory of man and who found out the magic weu and foresaw what fairy wealth might be made to flow from it a public garden has been laid out along the margin of the and called the garden in honour of him who created the prosperity of his native spot a little way within the garden gate there is a circular temple of architecture beneath the dome of which stands a marble statue of the good doctor very well executed and representing him with a face of activity and benevolence just the kind of man if luck favoured him old home to build up the fortunes of those about him or quite as probably to his whole neighbourhood by some disastrous speculation the garden is very like most other english pleasure grounds for aided by their moist climate and not too sun the landscape in flat or tame into attractive scenery chiefly through the arrangement of trees and an englishman aims at this even in the little patches under the windows of a villa and it on a larger scale in a tract of many acres the garden is with trees of a fine growth standing alone or in dusky groves and dense pervaded by paths and emerging from these pleasant we come upon a breadth of sunshine where the so vividly green that it has a kind of lustre in it is spotted with beds of flowers chairs and benches are scattered about some of them fashioned out of the of trees and others more made with branches or perhaps an imitation of such frail in iron in a central part of the garden is an ground where laughing maidens practise at the generally missing their mark but by the mere grace of their action sending an unseen shaft into some young man s heart there is space moreover within these for an artificial lake with a little green island in the midst of it both lake and island being the haunt of whose aspect and movement in the water are most beautiful and stately most and when they see fit to and try to walk upon dry land in the latter case they look like a breed of uncommonly ill contrived and i record the matter here for the sake of the moral that we should never pass judgment on the merits of any person or thing unless we behold them in the sphere and circumstances to which they are specially adapted in still another part of the garden there is a formed of an of bordered walks himself in wliich a man might wander for hours within a circuit of	35
only a few yards it seemed to me a sad emblem of the mental and moral in which we sometimes go astray petty in scope yet large enough to a lifetime and us with a weary movement but no genuine progress the the high as calls it after across the principal street of the town beneath a handsome bridge skirts along the margin of the garden without any perceptible flow heretofore i had fancied the the in the world but now that amiable distinction to the little english stream its water is by no means transparent but has a goose hue which however well with the other colouring and characteristics of the scene and is disagreeable neither to sight nor smell certainly this river is a perfect feature of that gentle in which england is so rich sleeping as it does beneath a margin of that into its bosom and other trees of deeper than our own country can boast lovingly over it on the it is bordered by a shadowy secluded grove with winding paths among its affording many a peep at the river s lapse and tranquil gleam and on the opposite shore stands the church with its churchyard full of and the business portion of the town clusters about the banks of the aud is naturally around the well to which the modem settlement owes its existence here are the commercial the post office the furniture the and all the heavy and homely that connect themselves even with the modes of human life while upward from the river by a long and gentle ascent rises the principal street which is very bright and cheerful in its and adorned with shop fronts almost as splendid as those of london though on a scale there are likewise side streets and cross streets many of which are bordered with the beautiful elm a our old home most kind of for an english town and spacious wide enough to afford room for stately groves with foot paths running beneath the lofty shade and and chattering so high in the tree tops that their voices get musical before reaching the earth the houses are mostly built in blocks and in which every separate is a repetition of its fellow though the architecture of the different is sufficiently various some of them are almost in size and of arrangement then on the outskirts of the town there are detached enclosed within that separate domain of high stone fence and which an englishman so loves to build and plant around his abode presenting to the public only an iron gate with a carriage drive winding away towards the half hidden mansion whether in street or may fairly be called beautiful and at some points magnificent but by and by you become doubtfully suspicious of a somewhat unreal finery it is though not so it has been built with malice as a place of and enjoyment moreover splendid as the houses look and comfortable as they are there is a nameless something about them that they have not grown out of human hearts but are the of a applied human intellect no man has reared any one of them whether stately or humble to be his residence wherein to bring up his children who are to inherit it as a home they are nicely contrived lodging houses one and ail the best as well as the of them and therefore inevitably lack some nameless ty that a home should have this was the case with our own little in as with all the rest it had not grown out of anybody s individual need but was built to let or sell and was therefore like a ready made garment a tolerable fit but only tolerable all these blocks and detached are adorned with the finest and most aristocratic names that i have found anywhere in england except perhaps in bath which is the great metropolis of that second class with which watering places are chiefly terrace street street street the upper and lower parade such are a few of the parade indeed is a well chosen name for the principal street along which the population of the idle town draws itself out for daily review and display i only wish that my descriptive powers would me to throw off a picture of the scene at a sunny each character with a touch the great people from their carriages at the principal the elderly ladies and indian officers drawn along in bath chairs the comely rather than pretty english girls with their deep healthy which an american taste is apt to deem for a than for a lady the gentlemen with and a military air the and children but no than our own and on legs the figure of john bull in all varieties and of all ages but ever with the stamp of somewhere about him to say the truth i have been holding the pen over my paper to write a descriptive paragraph or two about the throng on the principal parade of so arranging it as to present a sketch of the british out of door aspect on a morning walk of but i find no personages quite sufficiently distinct and individual in my memory to supply the materials of such a oddly enough the only e that comes fairly forth to my mind s eye is that of a of hundreds whom i used to marvel at all over england but who have scarcely a representative among our own ladies of life so thin and frail as age usually makes the latter i have heard a good deal of the with which english ladies retain their personal beauty to a late period of life but not to suggest that an american eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite appreciate the charm of english beauty at any age it strikes me that an english lady of	35
fifty is apt to old home become a creature less refined and delicate so far as ber goes than anything that we western people class under the name of woman she has an awful of frame not like the development of our few fat women but massive with solid beef and so that though struggling against the idea you inevitably think of her as made up of and when she walks her advance is when she sits down it is on a great round space of her maker s where she looks as if nothing could ever move her she awe and respect by the of her personality to such a degree that you probably credit her with greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim her is usually grim and stem seldom positively forbidding yet calmly terrible not merely by its breadth and weight of feature but because it seems to express so much self reliance such acquaintance with the world its toils troubles and dangers and such sturdy capacity for down a foe without anything positively or or indeed formidable to her neighbours she has the of a seventy four gun ship in time of peace for while you assure yourself that there is no real danger you cannot help thinking how tremendous would be her if inclined and how futile the effort to inflict any counter injury she certainly looks nay a better able to take care of herself than our slender framed and haggard but i have not found reason to suppose that the english of fifty has actually greater courage fortitude and strength of character than our women of similar age or even a physical endurance than they morally she is strong i suspect only in society and in the common routine of social affairs and would be found powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might call for energy outside of the amid which she has grown up you can meet this figure in the street and live and even smile at the recollection but conceive of her in a ball room with the bare arms that she there and all the other corresponding development as is in the maiden blossom but a spectacle to howl at in an rose as this yet somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest slender violet nature of a girl whom an alien mass of has overgrown for an english maiden in her though very seldom so pretty as our own possesses to say the truth a certain charm of and delicately folded leaves and tender womanhood by with which somehow or other our american girls often fail to adorn themselves during an moment it is a pity that the english violet should grow into such an developed as i have attempted to describe i wonder whether a middle aged husband ought to be considered as married to all the that have overgrown the of his bride since he led her to the altar and which make her so much more than he ever for is it not a view of the case that the matrimonial bond cannot be held to include the three of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed and as a matter of conscience and good morals ought not an english married pair to insist upon the of a silver wedding at the end of twenty five years in order to and appropriate that growth of which both parties have come into possession since they were pronounced one flesh the chief enjoyment of my several visits to lay in rural walks about the neighbourhood and in to places of note and interest which are particularly abundant in that region the high roads are made pleasant to the traveller by a border of trees and often afford him the hospitality of a bench beneath a comfortable shade but a delight is to be found in the foot paths which go wandering away from to along hedges and across broad fields and through wooded leading you to little of cottages ancient solitary farm houses picturesque old home old mills pools and all those secret unexpected yet strangely familiar of english scenery that shows us in his and these by paths admit the into the very heart of rural life and yet do not burden him with a sense of he has a right to go they lead him for with all their shaded privacy they are as much the property of the public as the dusty high road itself and even by an older their antiquity probably that of the ways the footsteps of the first wore away the grass and the natural flow of intercourse between village and village has kept the track bare ever since an american farmer would plough across any such path and it with his hills of potatoes and indian corn but here it is protected by law and still more by the that inevitably springs up in this soil along the well defined of centuries old associations are sure to be fi in english nostrils we pull them up as weeds i remember such a path the access to which is firom lovers grove a range of tall old oaks and elms on a high hill top whence there is a view of castle and a wide extent of landscape beautiful though with english mist this particular foot path however is not a remarkably good specimen of its kind since it leads into no hollows and and soon in a high road it by a short cut with the small neighbouring village of a place which an american observer with its many points of contrast to the rural aspects of his own country the village consists chiefly of one row of dwellings separated only by party walls but among themselves being of heights and apparently of various ages though all are of an antiquity which we should	35
quite the takes the useless away and perhaps makes a of it and up the bones which it tried to and gives the bed to another in the street burial ground at and old home in the old on the hill at i have seen more ancient with on them than in any english churchyard and yet this same climate hostile as it generally is to the long remembrance of departed people has sometimes a lovely way of dealing with the records on certain monuments that lie in the open air the rain falls into the deep of the letters and has scarcely time to be dried away before another shower the flat stone again and those little the unseen mysterious seeds of and their way into the and are made to by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of the english sky and by and by in a year or two years or many years behold the complete inscription and all the rest of the tender falsehood beautifully in raised letters of living green a relief of velvet moss on the marble i it becomes more under the influences after the world has forgotten the deceased than when it was fresh from the stone s hands it the grief of friends i first saw an example of this in churchyard in and thought that nature must needs have had a special tenderness for the person no noted man however in the world s history so long ago laid beneath that stone since she took such wonderful pains to keep his memory green perhaps the phrase just quoted may have had its origin in the natural phenomenon here described while we rested ourselves on a monument which was elevated just high enough to be a convenient seat i observed that one of the lay very close to the church so close that the of the would m upon it it seemed as if the of that grave had desired to creep under the church wall on closer inspection we an almost on the stone and with made out this forlorn verse poorly lived and poorly died poorly buried and no one cried be hard to the story of a cold and death and burial into fewer words or more ones at least we found them impressive perhaps we had to the inscription by away from the faintly traced letters the grave was on and damp side of the church towards it lead stone being within about three feet of the foundation so that unless the poor man was a dwarf he must have doubled up to fit him into his final resting place no that his murmured against so poor a burial bis his name as well as i could make it out was of john i think and he died in at the of seventy four the is so overgrown with and weeds so covered with and so with time and foul weather that it is questionable lier anybody will ever be at the trouble of ain but there is a quaint and sad kind of enjoyment to such slight degree as my pen may do it the abilities of oblivion for poor john and asking a sympathy for him half a century after his death and ing him better and more widely known at least than other in churchyard he having i as appearances go the outcast of them all ou find similar old churches and villages in all the country at the distance of every two or three miles i describe them not as being rare but because they are and characteristic the village of in twenty minutes walk of looks as secluded and as little disturbed by the fashions of to day as if had never developed all those and old home out of his magic well i to wonder whether the inhabitants had ever yet heard of or at their slow rate of progress had even reached the epoch of as you approach the village while it is yet unseen you observe a tall of elm tree tops beneath which you almost hesitate to follow the public road on account of the that seems to exist between the of this old world community and the thronged modem street out of which you have so recently emerged venturing onward however you soon find yourself in the heart of and see an irregular ring of ancient rustic dwellings surrounding the village green on one side of which stands the church with its square tower and while close adjoining is the made picturesque by peaks and at first glimpse none of the houses appear to be less than two or three centuries old and they are of the ancient wooden framed fashion with roofs which give them the air of birds nests thereby them closely to the simplicity of nature the church tower is and much by time it has narrow up and down its front and sides and an arched window over the low set with small panes of glass cracked dim and irregular through which a age is peeping out into the daylight some of those old grotesque faces called are seen on the of the architecture the churchyard is very small and is by a gray stone fence that looks as ancient as the church itself in front of the tower on the is a tree of age with a vast of trunk but a very scanty head of foliage its boughs still keep some of the vitality which perhaps was in its early prime when the saxon founded a thousand years is no extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime of a we were pleasantly startled however by discovering an of more youthful life than we had thought possible in so old a tree for the faces of two children laughed at us out of an opening in the trunk which had become hollow with long decay on one of	35
the stood a fi of worm eaten timber the and meaning of which me exceedingly till i made it out to bo the a institution that in its day had doubtless many a pair of bones now crumbling in the adjacent churchyard it is not to be supposed however that this old fashioned mode of punishment is still in among the good people of the of the parish has and had probably dragged the stocks out of some dusty hiding place and set them up on their former site as a curiosity i myself in vain with the effort to hit upon some characteristic feature or assemblage of features that shall convey to the reader the influence of antiquity lingering into the present daylight as i so often felt it in these old english scenes it is only an american who can feel it and even he begins to and himself growing insensible to its effect after a long residence in england but while you are still new in the old country it you with strange emotion to think that this little church of humble as it seems stood for ages under the catholic faith and has not materially changed since s days and that it looked as gray as now in bloody mary s time and that s broke off the stone noses of those same that are now grinning in your face so too with the tree you see its great roots grasping hold of the earth like gigantic claws clinging so that no effort of time can them away and there being life in the old tree you feel all the more as if a contemporary witness were telling you of the things that have been it has lived among men and been a familiar object to them and seen them brought to be and married and buried in the neighbouring church and churchyard through so many centuries that it knows all about our race so far as fifty generations of the people can supply such knowledge and after all what a weary life it must have been for the old tree i tedious beyond imagination such i think is the final our old home impression on the mind of an american visitor when his delight at finding something permanent begins to yield to his western love of change and he becomes sensible of the heavy air of a spot where the forefathers and have grown up together and died through a long succession of lives without any of new elements till family features and character are all run in the same inevitable mould life is there in its leaf the man who died yesterday or ever so long ago walks the village street to day and chooses the same wife that he married a hundred years since and must be buried again to morrow under the same kindred dust that has already covered him half a score of times the stone threshold of his cottage is worn away with his footsteps g over it from the reign of the first to that of victoria better than this is the lot of our restless countrymen whose modem instinct bids them tend always towards fresh woods and pastures new than such monotony of ages on a village green toiling in hereditary fields listening to the parson s lengthened through centuries in the gray church let us welcome whatever change may come change of place social customs political institutions modes of worship trusting that if all present things shall vanish they will but make room for better systems and for a higher type of man to clothe his life in them and to them off in turn nevertheless while an american willingly growth and change as the law of his own national and private existence he has a singular tenderness for the stone institutions of the mother country the reason may be though i should prefer a more generous explanation that he the tendency of these hardened forms to her joints and her ankles in the race and of improvement i hated to see so much as a of ivy away from an old wall in england yet change is at work even in such a village as at a subsequent visit looking more at the irregular circle of dwellings that surround the tree and the church i perceived that some of the houses have been built within no long time although the the quaint and the old of the others diffused an air of antiquity over the whole assemblage the church itself was repair and restoration which is but another name for change were making on the front of the tower and were a of stone and up bricks to strengthen the side wall or possibly to the ancient edifice by an additional aisle moreover they had dug an immense pit in the churchyard long and broad and fifteen feet deep two thirds of which were by human decay and mixed up with bones what this was intended for i could imagine unless it were the very pit in which bids the dead past bury its dead and of all places in the world were going to avail itself of our poet s suggestion if so it must needs be confessed that many picturesque and delightful things would be thrown into the hole and covered out of sight for ever the article which i am writing has taken its own course and occupied itself almost wholly with country churches whereas i had to attempt a description of some of the many old towns which lie within an easy scope of and still another church presents itself to my remembrance it is that of on which i stumbled in the course of a s and paused a little while to look at it for the sake of old dr who was once its so far as i could discover has no public house no shop	35
old indeed that the front forth as if the timber were a little weary at last of standing erect so long but the state of repair is so perfect and there is such an indescribable aspect of continuous vitality within the system of this aged house that you feel confident that there may be safe shelter yet and perhaps for centuries to come under its time honoured roof and on a bench enjoying the sunshine and looking into the street of as from a life apart a few old men are generally to be seen wrapped in long on which you may detect the glistening of a silver representing the bear and ragged staff these decorated are some of the twelve brethren of s hospital a community which to day under the identical modes that were established for it in the reign of queen elizabeth and of course many features of a social life that has vanished almost everywhere else the edifice itself dates from a much older period than the charitable institution of which it is now the home it was the about seat of a far back in the middle ages and continued so till henry tamed all the of england out of doors and put the most of his into their vacant in many instances the old had chosen the of their so well and built them on such a broad system of beauty and convenience that their lay occupants found it easy to convert them into stately and comfortable homes and as such they still exist with something of the antique reverence lingering about them the structure now before us seems to have been first granted to sir who perhaps intended like other men to establish his household gods in the whence he had thrown down the images of saints and to lay his hearth where an altar had stood but there was probably a natural reluctance in those days when so lately must needs have retained an influence over all but the most characters to bring one s hopes of domestic prosperity and a fortunate into direct hostility with the awful claims of the ancient religion at all events there is still a superstitious idea a and a belief that the possession of former church property has drawn a curse along with it not only among the posterity of those to whom it was originally granted but wherever it has subsequently been transferred even if honestly bought and paid for there are now some of the old who appear to indulge a species of pride in the strange deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that have occurred among their and may be supposed likely to dog their own pathway down the ages of whether sir in the beef eating days of old harry and elizabeth was a nervous man and subject to apprehensions of this kind i cannot tell but it is certain that he speedily rid himself of the spoils of the church and that within twenty years afterwards the edifice became the property of the famous earl of brother of the earl of he devoted the ancient religious to a charitable use it with an ample old home and making it the home of twelve poor honest and war broken soldiers mostly his own and natives either of or these or others like them still occupy their and haunt the time darkened and galleries of the hospital leading a life of old fashioned comfort wearing the old fashioned and the identical silver which the earl of gave to the original twelve he is said to have been a bad man in his day but he has succeeded in one good deed into what was to him a distant future on the projecting story over the arched entrance there is the date and several coats of arms either the or those of his kindred and immediately above the doorway a stone of the bear and staff passing through the arch we find ourselves in a or enclosed court such as always formed the central part of a great family residence in queen elizabeth s time and earlier there can hardly be a more perfect specimen of such an establishment than s hospital the is a sort of sky hall to which there is convenient access from all parts of the house the four inner fronts with their high steep roofs and sharp look into it from antique windows and through open and galleries along the sides and there seems to be a richer display of devices and ornaments in oak and more fantastic shapes of the timber than on the side toward the street on the wall opposite the arched entrance are the following such moral rules i presume as were deemed most essential for the daily of the community all and again as if this latter needed emphasis and repetition among a household of aged people with the hard fortune of their previous lives be one to one sentence over a door communicating with the master s side of the house is addressed to that l e tl at men must tt about all these are in old english letters and form part of the elaborate of the house everywhere on the walls over windows and doors and at all points where there is room to place them appear of arms and in their proper colours and the ancient with their splendour one of these is a large image of a on an wreath being the crest of the lords de but especially is the of the bear and staff repeated over and over and over again and again in a great variety of attitudes at full length and in paint and in in relief and rounded image the founder of the hospital was certainly disposed to reckon his own as among the hereditary glories of his race and had he lived and died	35
a half century earlier he would have kept up an old catholic custom by the twelve to pray for the welfare of his soul at my first visit some of the brethren were seated on the bench outside of the edifice looking down into the street but they did not me a word and seemed so from modem life so enveloped in antique customs and old fashioned that to converse with them would have been like shouting across the gulf between our age and queen elizabeth s so i passed into the and found it quite solitary except that a plain and neat old woman happened to be crossing it with an aspect of business and that her a woman of this world and not merely a shadow of the past asking her if i could come in she answered very readily and that i might and said that i was free to look about me a hope however that i would not open the private doors of the brotherhood as some visitors were in the habit of doing under her guidance i went into what was formerly the great hall of the establishment where king james i had once been by an earl of as is by an inscription on the and dingy wall it is a very spacious and bam like apartment with a brick floor and a roof the of which are old home beams carved bnt hardly visible in the that aloft the hall may have made a splendid appearance when it was decorated with rich and illuminated with and glistening npon dishes when king james sat at among his dressed but it has come to base uses in these latter days being improved in yankee phrase as a and wash room and as a cellar for the brethren s separate of coal the old lady here left me to myself and i returned into the it was very quiet very handsome in its own style and must be an exceedingly comfortable place for the old people to in when the render it to walk abroad there are against the wall on one side and on another is a walk adorned with heads and and running beneath a covered gallery up to which a staircase in the portion of the edifice opposite the entrance arch are the apartments of the master and looking into the window as the old woman at no request of mine had specially informed me that i might i saw a low but vastly comfortable parlour very handsomely furnished and altogether a luxurious place it had a fireplace with an immense arch the antique breadth of which extended almost from wall to wall of the room though now fitted up in such a way that the modem coal grate looked very in the midst gazing into this pleasant interior it seemed to me that among these venerable surroundings himself of whatever was good in former things and out their with the results of modem ingenuity the master might lead a not life on the side of the where the dark oak made the enclosed space dusky i beheld a window by a great blaze from within and heard the and of something doubtless very nice and that was being cooked at the kitchen fire i think indeed that a or two of the fragrance reached my nostrils at all events the about on grew upon me that s hospital is one of the old in england i was about to depart when another old woman very plainly dressed but fat comfortable and with a cheerful twinkle in eyes came in through the arch and looked curiously at me this repeated apparition of the gentle sex though by no means under its loveliest guise had still an agreeable effect in my ideas of an institution which i had supposed to be of a stern and character she asked whether i wished to see the hospital and said that the porter whose office it was to attend to visitors was dead and would be buried that very day so that the whole establishment could not conveniently be shown me she kindly invited me however to visit the apartment occupied by her husband and herself so i followed her up the antique staircase along the gallery and into a small oak parlour where sat an old man in a long blue garment who arose and saluted me with much courtesy he seemed a very quiet person and yet had a look of travel and adventure and gray experience such as i could have fancied in a of ancient times who might likewise have worn a similar costume the little room was and neatly furnished a portrait of its was hanging on the wall and on a table were two swords crossed one probably his own battle weapon and the other which i drew half out of the had an inscription on the blade that it had been taken om the field of my kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit all the particulars of their housekeeping and led me into the bedroom which was in the order with a snow white upon the bed and in a little intervening room was a washing and bathing apparatus a convenience judging from the personal aspect and atmosphere of such parties seldom to be met with in the ranks of british life the old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of somebody to talk with but the good woman availed herself of the privilege far more than the himself that he felt it expedient to give her an occasional with old home his elbow in her well ribs don t you be so lie and indeed he could hardly find space for a word and quite as little after his as before her tongue ran over the whole system of life in the hospital the brethren she said had a yearly the	35
amount of which she did not mention and such decent lodgings as i saw and some other advantages free and instead of being with a great many rules and made to dine together at a great table they could manage their little household matters as they liked buying their own dinners and having them cooked in the general kitchen and eating them in their own and added she rightly this the crowning privilege with the master s permission they can have their wives to take care of them and no harm comes of it and what more can an old man desire it was evident enough that the good dame found herself in what she considered very rich and moreover had plenty of small occupations to keep her from getting rusty and dull but the impressed me as far less enjoyment from the monotonous ease without fear of change or hope of improvement that had followed upon thirty years of peril and i fancied too that while pleased with the novelty of a stranger s visit he was still a little shy of becoming a spectacle for the stranger s curiosity for if he chose to be morbid about the matter the establishment was but an in spite of its old magnificence and his fine blue cloak only a s garment with a silver on it that perhaps his shoulder in truth the and the peculiar garb though quite in accordance with the manners of the earl of s age are to modem prejudices and might and be a year or two afterwards i paid another visit to the hospital and found a new porter established in office and already capable of talking like a guide book about the history and present condition of the charity he informed me that the twelve brethren are selected from among old about soldiers of good character whose other resources must not exceed an income of five pounds thus all officers whose half pay would of course be more than that amount they receive from the hospital an of eighty pounds each besides their apartments a garment of fine blue cloth an annual abundance of ale and a privilege at the kitchen fire so that considering the class from which they are taken they may well reckon themselves among the fortunate of the earth they are invested with political rights acquiring a vote for member of parliament in virtue either of their income or brotherhood on the other hand as regards their personal freedom or conduct they are subject to a which the master of the hospital might render extremely were he so inclined but the military restraint under which they have spent the active portion of their lives makes it easier for them to endure the domestic discipline here imposed upon their age the porter bore his testimony whatever were its value to their being as contented and happy as such a set of old people could possibly be and affirmed that they spent much time in their silver and were as proud of them as a nobleman of his star these by the by except one that was stolen and replaced in queen anne s time are the very same that decorated the original twelve brethren i have seldom met with a better guide than my friend the porter he appeared to take a genuine interest in the peculiarities of the establishment and yet had an existence apart from them so that he could the better estimate what those peculiarities were to be sure his knowledge and observation were confined to external things but so far had a sufficiently extensive scope he led me up the staircase and exhibited portions of the timber of the edifice that are reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old and are still neither worm eaten nor decayed and traced out what had been a great hall in the days of the catholic though its area is now filled up with the apartments of the twelve brethren and pointed to ornaments of oak old home done in an ancient style of art bnt hardly visible amid the of the roof thence we went to the chapel the church which i noted several pages back the that stretches half across the street here the brethren attend daily prayer and have each a of the finest paper with a fair large type for their old eyes the interior of the chapel is very plain with a picture of no merit for an altar piece and a single old pane of painted glass in the great eastern window representing no saint nor angel as is customary in such cases but that grim sinner the earl of nevertheless amid so many proofs of his human sympathy one comes to doubt whether the earl could have been such a hardened after all we ascended the tower of the chapel and looked down between its into the street a hundred feet below us while half way up were flowers weeds small shrubs and of grass that had rooted themselves into the of the stone foundation far around us lay a rich and lovely english landscape with many a church spire and noble country seat and several objects of high historic interest edge hill where the defeated charles i is in sight on the edge of the horizon and much nearer stands the house where lodged on the night before the battle right under our eyes and half the town with its high wall so that all the closely streets seemed but a of the estate was the earl of s delightful park a wide extent of sunny with broad of forest shade some of the of were there a growth of trees in which the family take an hereditary pride the two highest towers of the castle heave themselves up out of a mass of foliage and look down in a manner upon the roofs	35
of the town a part of which are these are the modem houses and a part are with old red the more ancient a hundred and sixty or seventy years ago a great fire de about a considerable portion of the town and doubtless many of a remote antiquity at least there was a possibility of very old houses in the long past of which king is said to have founded in the year one of the christian era and this historic fact or poetic fiction whichever it may be brings to mind a more reality than anything else that has occurred within the present field of our vision though this the scene of of s exploits and some of those of the bound table to say nothing of the battle of edge hill for perhaps it was in the landscape now under our eyes that wandered with the king s daughter the sweet faithful and courageous the tenderest and woman that ever made immortal in the world the silver which we see flowing so quietly by the gray castle may have held their images in its bosom the day though it began brightly had long been and the clouds now down a few drops upon us besides that the east wind was very chill so we descended the winding tower stair and went next into the garden one side of which is shut in by almost the only remaining portion of the old city wall a part of the garden ground is devoted to grass and and by gravel walks in the centre of one of which is a beautiful stone of egyptian that formerly stood on the top of a or pillar for measuring the rise and fall of the river on the is a latin inscription by dr who his of being so close at hand was probably often the master s guest and smoked his interminable pipe along these garden walks of the vegetable garden which lies adjacent the lion s share is appropriated to the master and twelve small separate patches to the individual brethren who cultivate them at their own judgment and by their own labour and their beans and have a better i doubt not than if they had received them directly from the dead hand of the earl of like the our old home rest of their food in the farther part of the garden is an for the old men s pleasure and convenience and i should like well to sit down among them there and find out what is really the bitter and the sweet of such a sort of life as for the old gentlemen themselves they put me in mind of the custom house and the venerable personages whom i found so quietly at anchor there the master s residence forming one entire side of the fronts on the garden and wears an aspect at once stately and homely it can hardly have undergone any perceptible change within three centuries but the garden into which its old windows look has probably put off a great many and in the way of since the gardener of queen elizabeth s reign threw down his rusty and took his departure the present master s name is he is a of the founder s family a gentleman of independent fortune and a clergyman of the established church as the of the hospital require him to be i know not what are his official but according to all english precedent an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held directly for the of those who administer it and perhaps incidentally in a moderate way for the and in the case before us the twelve brethren being so comfortably provided for the master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all the twelve together yet i ought not even in a distant land to fling an idle against a gentleman of whom i really know nothing except that the people under his charge bear all possible tokens of being tended and cared for as as if each of them sat by a warm fireside of his own with a daughter bustling round the hearth to make ready his and his it is delightful to think of the good life which a suitable man in the master s position has an opportunity to lead linked to time honoured customs in with an ancient system never dreaming of radical change and bringing all the and richness of the past down into these railway days which do not compel him about or his to move a whit quicker than of everybody can appreciate the advantages of going ahead it might be sometimes to think whether there is not a word or two to be said in of standing still or going to sleep from the garden we went into the kitchen where the fire was burning and diffused a genial warmth far and wide together with the fragrance of some old english roast beef which i think must at that moment have been done nearly to a turn the kitchen is a lofty spacious and noble room off round the fire place by a sort of screen or rather an arrangement of heavy and high backed settles with an ever open entrance between them on either side of which is the image of the bear and staff three feet high and carved in oak now black with time and kitchen smoke the ponderous mantel piece likewise of carved oak towers high towards the dusky ceiling and extends its mighty breadth to take in a vast area of hearth the arch of the fire place being positively so immense that i could compare it to nothing but the city above its opening were crossed two ancient the weapons possibly of soldiers who had fought under in the low countries and elsewhere on the walls were displayed several which some of the present inmates of the	35
hospital may have against the french another ornament of the was a square of silken needle work or faded nearly white but dimly representing that wearisome bear and ragged staff which we should hardly look twice at only that it was wrought by the fair fingers of poor and beautifully framed in oak from castle at the expense of a mr a of our own certainly no englishman would be capable of this little bit of enthusiasm finally the kitchen on a splendid display of copper all of generous capacity and one of them about as big as a half barrel the smaller vessels contain the customary allowance of ale and the larger one is filled with that foaming liquor on four occasions old home of the year and emptied by the jolly brotherhood i should be glad to see them do it bat it would be an for queen elizabeth s age than these times the kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren in the they bring their little to be cooked here and eat them in their own but after a hour the great hearth is cleared and swept and the old men round its blaze each with his and his pipe and hold high converse through the evening if the master be a fit man for his office he will sometimes sit down among them for there is an elbow chair by the fireside which it would not his dignity to fill since it was occupied by king james at the great festival of nearly three centuries ago a of the ale and a of the tobacco pipe would put him in friendly relations with his venerable household and then we can fancy him them by and religious which were first uttered here by some catholic priest and have the atmosphere ever since if a joke goes round it shall be of an elder than joe miller s as old as lord bacon s collection or as the jest book that master slender asked for when he lacked small talk for sweet anne page no news shall be spoken of later than the drifting ashore on the northern coast of some stem post or figure head a fragment of one of the great of the spanish what a would pass through the antique group if a damp newspaper should suddenly be spread to dry before the fire they would feel as if either that printed sheet or they themselves must be an what a mysterious awe if the shriek of the railway train as it reaches the station should ever so their ears movement of any kind seems inconsistent with the of such an institution nevertheless i trust that the ages will carry it along with them because it is such a pleasant kind of dream for an american to find his way thither and behold a piece of the sixteenth set into our times and then to about depart and think of its arched doorway as a spell entrance which will never be accessible or visible to him any more not far from the market place of stands the great of st mary s a vast edifice indeed and almost worthy to be a cathedral people who pretend to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor style of architecture though designed or at least restored by sir but i thought it very striking with its wide high and elaborate windows its tall towers its immense length and for it was long before i this the love of an old thing merely for the sake of its age the tinge of gray antiquity over the whole once while i stood gazing up at the tower the clock struck twelve with a very deep and immediately some began to play and kept up their music for five minutes as measured by the hand upon the dial it was a very delightful harmony as airy as the notes of birds and seemed a not of half fancy in the huge ancient and solemn church although i have seen an old fashioned parlour clock that did precisely the same thing in its small way the great attraction of this edifice is the or as the english who delight in their fine old names call it the chapel where the of and their kindred have been buried from four hundred years back till within a recent period it is a stately and very elaborate chapel with a large window of ancient painted glass as perfectly preserved as any that i remember seeing in england and remarkably vivid in its colours here are several monuments with marble figures upon them representing the in their and their in the and court finery of their day looking hardly in stone than they must needs have been in their linen and the renowned earl of of queen elizabeth s time the benefactor of the hospital at full length on the of one of these side by side with his not but a lady who unless i old h ie have confused the story with some other scandal is said to have poor s murder by the himself be that as it may both figures and especially the earl look like the very types of ancient honour and faith in consideration of his long enduring kindness to the twelve brethren i cannot consent to believe him as wicked as he is usually depicted and it seems a marvel now that so many well established historical have been reversed why some writer does not make out to have been the pattern nobleman of his age in the centre of the chapel is the magnificent memorial of its founder earl of in the time of henry vi on a richly ornamented altar tomb of gray marble lies the bronze figure of a knight in gilded most admirably executed for the of those days had wonderful skill in their own style and	35
dagger that killed the duke of all of which i have seen or any other almost incredible thing might make its appearance gold boxes antique gems wine glasses which burst when poison is poured into them and therefore must not be used for modem wine drinking handled knives painted tea cups in short there are all sorts of things that a the world to discover it would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in mr s shop than to keep the money in one s pocket but for my part i contented myself with buying a little old spoon of silver gilt and shaped and got it at all the more reasonable rate because there happened to be no legend attached to it i could supply any deficiency of that kind at much less expense than the spoon old home op a gifted woman to on the distance is eight or nine miles over a road that seemed to me most not that i can recall any memorable peculiarities for the country most of the way is a succession of the and affording wide and far glimpses of scenery here and there and sinking almost to a dead level as we draw near any landscape in new england even the has a more striking outline and besides would have its blue eyes open in those that we encounter almost om mile to mile at home but of which the old country is utterly destitute or it would smile in our faces through the medium of the that vanish under a low stone arch on one side of the road and sparkle out again on the other neither of these pretty features is often to be found in an english scene the charm of the latter consists in the rich of the fields in the stately trees and carefully kept of wood and in the old and high cultivation that has the very by mingling so much of man s toil and care among them to an american there is a kind of even in an english field when he thinks how long that small square of ground has been known and recognized as a possession firom father to son trodden often by memorable feet and utterly om by old with civilized eyes the wildest things in england are more than half tame the trees for instance whether in hedge n op a gifted woman row park or what they call forest have nothing wild about them they are never ragged there is a certain in the of their hi though they spread wider than any self tree they are tall vigorous with a look of age long life and a promise of more years to come all of which will bring them into closer with the race of man somebody or other has known them from the upward and if they endure long enough they grow to be observed and honoured and connected with the fortunes of old till like s talking oak they with a thousand leafy tongues to ears that can understand them an american tree however if it could grow in fair competition with an english one of similar species would probably be the more picturesque object of the two the elm has not so beautiful a shape as those that our village street and as for the english oak there is a certain john in its figure a compact of foliage a lack of irregular and various outline that make it look wonderfully like a gigantic its leaf too is much smaller than that of most varieties of american oak nor do i mean to doubt that the latter with free leave to grow care and cultivation and from the axe would live out its centuries as as its english brother and prove r the nobler and more majestic specimen of a tree at the end of them still however one s yankee patriotism may struggle against the admission it must be owned that the trees and other objects of an english landscape take hold of the observer by minute as it were which look as closely as we choose we never find in an american scene the growth is so luxuriant that the trunk of the tree so gray and dry in our climate is better worth observing than the boughs and foliage a coats it all over bo that it looks almost as green as the leaves and often moreover the stately stem is clustered about high upward with creeping and shrubs the ivy and sometimes the close clinging friends our old home by the moisture and never too sunshine and supporting themselves by the old tree s abundant strength we call it a vegetation but if the phrase imply any reproach it is unkind to bestow it on this beautiful affection and relationship which exist in england between one order of plants and another the strong tree being always ready to give support to the trailing lift it to the sun j and feed it out of its own heart if it such food and the on its part its foster father with an ample of beauty and adding grace to the tree s lofty strength no bitter winter these tender little sympathies no hot sun the life out of them and therefore they the of the oak and if the permitted would bury it in a green grave when all is over should there be nothing else along the road to look at an english hedge might well suffice to occupy the eyes and to a depth beyond what he would suppose the heart of an american we often set out hedges in our own soil but might as well set out or pine apples and expect to gather fruit of them something grows to be sure which we choose to call a hedge but it the dense luxuriant variety of vegetation that is accumulated into the english original in	35
which a would find a thousand shrubs and gracious that the hedge maker never thought of planting there among them growing wild are many of the kindred blossoms of the very flowers which our pilgrim fathers brought from england for the sake of their simple beauty and home like associations and which we have ever since been in gardens there is not a softer trait to be found in the character of those stem men than that they should have been sensible of these flower roots clinging among the of their rugged hearts and have felt the necessity of bringing them over sea and making them hereditary in the new land instead of trusting to what beauty the wilderness might have in store for them or if the roadside has no hedge the stone fence op a gifted woman in america would keep itself bare and till the end of time is sure to be covered with the small of nature that mother lets nothing go naked there and if she cannot provide clothing gives at least no sooner is the fence built than she and it as a part of her original plan treating the hard construction as if it had all along been a idea of her own a little of ivy may be seen creeping up the side of the low wall and clinging st with its many to the rough a of grass roots itself between two of the stones where a pinch or two of dust has been into soil for it a small bunch of grows in another a deep soft moss itself along the top and over all the available of the fence and where nothing else will grow stick to the bare stones and the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and red finally a great deal of clusters along the base of the stone wall and takes away the hardness of its outline and in due time as the of these apparently or touches we recognize that the beneficent creator of all things working through his whom we call nature has to mingle a charm of divine even with earthly an institution as a boundary fence the who wrought at it little dreamed what fellow he had the english should send us photographs of portions of the of trees the tangled and various of a hedge and a square foot of an old wall they can hardly send anything else so characteristic their artists especially of the later school sometimes toil to such subjects but are apt to the in the process the poets succeed better with at their head and often produce effects by dint of a tender of touch to which he genius of the soil and climate them for regards grandeur there are scenes in many countries han the best that england can show but for the picturesque old ness of the smallest object that lies its gentle gloom and sunshine there is no scenery like it anywhere in the foregoing i have strayed away to a long distance from the road to on for i remember no such stone fences as i have been speaking of in nor elsewhere in england except among the lakes or in and the rough and countries to the north oi it hedges there were along my road however and broad level fields rustic and cottages of ancient date from the roof of one of which the was tearing away the and showing what an of dust dirt roots of weeds families of nests and of insects had been deposited there since that old straw was new its antiquity from these tokens himself in one of his morning out of his native town might have seen the laid on at all events the cottage walls were old enough to have known him as a j guest a few modem were also to be seen and perhaps there were of old at no great distance but hidden among trees for it is a point of english pride that such houses seldom allow themselves to be visible from the high road in short i recollect nothing specially remarkable along the way nor in the immediate approach to and yet the picture of that june morning has a glory in my memory owing chiefly i believe to the charm of the english summer weather the really good days of which are the most that mortal man can ever hope to be favoured with such a genial warmth a little too warm it might be yet only to such a degree as to assure an american a certainty to which he seldom till to the of an english summer day that he was quite warm enough and after all there was an freshness in the atmosphere which every little movement of a breeze shook over me like a dash of the ocean spray such days need bring us no other happiness than their own light and temperature no doubt i could not have enjoyed it so exquisitely except that there must be still latent in us western i n of a gifted woman even after an absence of two centuries and more an to the english climate which makes us sensible of a kindness in its sunshine and us with delight at its more lavish smiles the spire of s church the church of the holy begins to show itself among the trees at a little distance from next we see the shabby old dwellings with mean looking houses of modem date and the streets being quite level you are struck and surprised by nothing so much as the of the general scene as if s genius were vivid enough to have wrought in the town where he was bom here and there however a queer edifice meets your eye endowed with the individuality that belongs only to the domestic architecture of times gone by the house seems to have grown out of	35
some odd quality in its as a sea shell is from within by the character of its and having been built in a strange fashion generations ago it has ever since been growing stranger and as old are apt to do here too as so often impressed me in decayed english towns there appeared to be a greater abundance of aged people wearing small clothes and leaning on sticks than you could on our side of the water by sounding a trumpet and a reward for the most venerable i tried to account for this phenomenon by several theories as for example that our new towns are for age and kill it off or that our old men have a subtle sense of fitness and die of their own accord rather than live in an contrast with youth and novelty but the secret may be after all that hair false teeth modem arts of dress and other of a skin deep have not crept into these english towns and so people grow old without the weary necessity of seeming younger than they are after wandering through two or three streets i found my way to s which is almost a smaller and house than any description can prepare the visitor to old home expect so inevitably does an make his abode to onr receiving his guests indeed in a castle in the air we insist on meeting him among the sordid lanes and of lower earth the portion of the edifice with which had anything to do is hardly large enough in the to contain the butcher s stall that one of his descendants kept and that still remains there with the cuts in its counter which projects into the street under a little roof as if waiting for a new the upper half of the door was open and on my at it a young person in black made her appearance and admitted me she was not a but remarkably genteel an american characteristic for an english girl and was probably the daughter of the old who takes care of the house this lower room has a pavement of gray of stone which may have been rudely when the house was new but are now all cracked broken and in a most unaccountable way one does not see how any ordinary usage for whatever length of time should have so smashed these heavy stones it is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor which afterwards had been imperfectly trodden down again the room is and very clean but shabby and dingy built and such as the most poetical imagination would find it difficult to in the rear of this apartment is the kitchen a still smaller room of a similar rude aspect it has a great rough fireplace with space for a large family under the blackened opening of the chimney and an immense passage way for the smoke through which may have seen the blue sky by day and the stars glimmering down at him by night it is now a dreary spot where the long extinguished embers used to be a glowing fire even if it covered only a quarter part of the hearth might still do much towards making the old kitchen cheerful but we get a idea of the stifled poor sombre kind of life that could have been lived in such a dwelling where this room seems to have been the gathering place i of a gifted woman of the with no or scope no good retirement but old and together cheek by what a hardy plant was s genius how fatal its development since it could not be in such an atmosphere it only brought human nature the closer to him and put more earth about his roots thence i was ushered up stairs to the room in which is supposed to have been bom though if you peep too curiously into the matter you may find the shadow of an ugly doubt on this as well as most other points of his mysterious life it is the chamber over the butcher s shop and is lighted by one broad window containing a great many small irregular panes of glass the floor is made of very rudely and fitting together with little neatness the naked beams and at the sides of the room and overhead bear the original marks of the s broad axe with no evidence of an attempt to smooth off the job again we have to reconcile ourselves to the of the space enclosed by these illustrious walls a circumstance more difficult to accept as regards places that we have heard read and dreamed much about than any other particular of a mistaken ideal a few paces perhaps seven or eight take us from end to end of it so low it is that i could easily touch the ceiling and might have done so without a stretch had it been a good deal higher and this humility of the chamber has tempted a vast multitude of people to write names overhead in pencil every inch of the side walls even into the and comers is covered with a similar record au the window panes moreover are with diamond among which is said to be that of walter scott but so many persons have sought to themselves in close vicinity to his name that i really could not trace him out it is strange that people do not strive to forget their forlorn little in such situations instead of thrusting them forward into the of a great renown where if noticed they cannot but be deemed impertinent old home this room and the entire house so far as i saw it are and exceedingly clean nor is there the aged smell with which old first made me acquainted and which goes far to cure an american of his excessive for antique an old	35
lady who took charge of me up stairs had the manners and aspect of a and talked with somewhat knowledge and intelligence arranged on a and in chairs were various prints views of houses and scenes connected with s memory together with of his works and local his home and haunts from the sale of which this lady perhaps a handsome profit at any rate i a good many of them that it might he the way of her for her instructive conversation and the trouble she took in showing me the house it cost me a pang not a hut a gentlemanly one to offer a downright fee to the lady like girl who had admitted me but i swallowed my delicate scruples with some little difficulty and she hers so far as i could observe with no difficulty at all in fact nobody need fear to hold out half a crown to any person with whom he has occasion to speak a word in england i should consider it unfair to quit s house without the frank acknowledgment that i was conscious of not the slightest emotion while it nor any of the imagination this has often happened to me in my visits to memorable places whatever pretty and reflections i may have made upon the subject had either occurred to me before i ever saw or have been since it is pleasant nevertheless to think that i have seen the place and i believe that i can form a more sensible and vivid idea of as a and blood individual now that i have stood on the kitchen hearth and in the birth chamber but i am not quite certain that this power of is altogether desirable in reference to a great poet the whom i met there took various but had not his laurel on he was the boy the youthful deer of a gifted woman the comrade of players the too friend of s mother the careful man of property who came back from london to lend money on bond and occupy the best house in the mellow boon companion of john a and finally or else the him the victim of habits who met his death by tumbling into a ditch on his way home from a drinking bout and left his second best bed to his poor wife i feel as sensibly as the reader can what horrible it is to remember these things be they true or false in either they ought to vanish out of sight on the distant ocean line of the past leaving a pure white memory even as a sail perhaps darkened with many looks snowy white on the far horizon but i draw a moral from these unworthy reminiscences and this of the poet as suggested by some of the of his life it is for the high interests of the world not to insist upon finding out that its greatest men are in a certain lower sense very much the same kind of men as the rest of us and often a little worse because a common mind cannot properly such a dis nor ever know the true proportion of the great man s good and evil nor how small a part of him it was that touched our muddy or dusty earth thence comes moral bewilderment and even intellectual loss in regard to what is best of him when a curse on the man who should stir his bones he perhaps meant the larger share of it for him or them who should into his the defects or even the merits of the character that he wore in when he had left mankind so much to muse upon that was and divine heaven keep me from any part of the in for the sentences above written i from s house the next step of course is to visit his burial place the appearance of the church is most venerable and standing amid a great green shadow of lime trees above which rises the spire while the old home and and vast windows are seen the the past the churchyard an exceedingly river which might seem to have been considering which way it should flow ever since left off in it and gathering the large forget me that grow among its flags and an old man in small clothes was waiting at the gate inquiring whether i wished to go in he preceded to the church porch and i could have done it quite as effectually for myself but it seems the old people of the neighbourhood haunt about the churchyard in spite of the and of the who them the half sixpence which they sometimes get from visitors i was admitted into the church by a and intelligent man in black the parish clerk i suppose and probably holding a richer than his if all the which he handles remain in his own pocket he was already exhibiting the monuments to two or three visitors and several other parties came in while i was there the poet and his family are in possession of what may be considered the very best burial places that the church affords they lie in a row right across the breadth of the the foot of each being close to the elevated floor on which the altar stands nearest to the side wall beneath s bust is a bearing a latin inscription addressed to his wife and covering her remains then his own with the old upon it then that of thomas who married his then that of dr hall the husband of his daughter and lastly s own s is the commonest looking of all being just such a flag stone as street in used to be paved with when i was a boy moreover unless my eyes or recollection deceive me there is a crack across it as if it had already	35
undergone some such violence as the inscription unlike the other monuments of the of a gifted woman it bears no name nor am i acquainted with the or on which it is absolutely determined to be s although being in a range with those of his wife and children it might naturally be attributed to him but then why does his wife who died afterwards take of him and occupy the place next his bust and where are the graves of another daughter and a son who have a better right in the row than thomas his might not one or both of them have been laid under the nameless stone but it is dangerous trifling with s dust so i forbear to further with the grave though the makes it tempting and shall let whatever bones be in it rest in peace yet i must needs add that the inscription on the bust seems to imply that s grave was directly underneath it the poet s bust is to the northern wall of the church the base of it being about a man s height or rather more above the floor of the the features of this piece of are entirely unlike any portrait of that i have ever seen and compel me to take down the beautiful lofty and noble picture of him which has hitherto hung in my mental portrait gallery the bust cannot be said to represent a beautiful face or an eminently noble head but it firmly hold of one s sense of reality and upon your accepting it if not as the poet yet as the wealthy of the mend of john a who lies yonder in the comer i know not what the say to the bust the forehead is but developed and somewhat the upper part of the skull rising the eyes are prominent almost beyond the of the brow the upper lip is so long that it must have been almost a unless the exaggerated its length in consideration that on the it must be by being looked at from below on the whole must have had a singular rather than a face and it is wonderful how with this bust before its eyes the world has persisted in maintaining an old home notion of his appearance allowing painters and to their nonsense on ns all instead of the genuine man for my part the of my mind s eye is henceforth to he a personage of a ruddy english complexion with a intelligent and quickly eyes a nose curved slightly outward a long queer upper lip with the mouth a little beneath it and cheeks considerably developed in the lower part and beneath the chin but when was himself for nine of the time according to all appearances he was but the of he doubtless shone through this dull mask and it into the of an angel fifteen or twenty feet behind the row of is the great east window of the church now brilliant with stained glass of recent manufacture on one side of this window under a arch of marble lies a full length marble figure of john a clad in what i take to be a robe of dignity and holding its hands devoutly clasped it is a sturdy english figure with coarse features a type of ordinary man whom we smile to see in the material of poets and heroes but the attitude us to believe that the old may not after all have had that grim reception in the other world which s for him y the by till i grew somewhat familiar with i never understood that the point of those ill natured lines was a the devil t is my john a that is my john has come i close to the poet s bust is a nameless tomb supposed to be that of a of the century the church has other monuments and altar one or two of the latter the figures of knights in and their very eminent and personages in their day no doubt but doomed to appear for ever and impertinent within the which has made his own his renown is and suffers nothing else to be recognized within the scope of of a gifted woman its material presence illuminated by some side ray from himself the clerk informed me that no longer take place in any part of the church and it is better so for a person of delicate about his burial place and desirous of six feet of earth for himself alone could never endure to lie buried near but would rise up at midnight and his way out of the rather than sleep in the shadow of so a memory i should hardly have dared to add another to the innumerable descriptions of on if it had not seemed to me that this would form a fitting to some reminiscences of a very remarkable woman her labour while she lived was of a nature and purpose outwardly to the name of yet by its actual tendency her to the distinction of being that one of all his who sought though she knew it not to place the richest and upon his brow we americans at least in the scanty annals of our literature cannot afford to forget her high and conscientious exercise of noble faculties which indeed if you look at the matter in one way only a miserable error but more fairly considered produced a result worth almost what it cost her her faith in her own ideas was so genuine that as they were it them to gold or at all events a large proportion of that precious and substance among the waste material from which it can readily be the only time i ever saw miss bacon was in london where she ha lodgings in spring street at the house of a a middle aged civil and friendly man who	35
as well as his wife appeared to feel a personal kindness towards their i was ushered up two and i rather believe three pair of stairs into a parlour somewhat humbly furnished and told that miss bacon would come soon there were a number of books on the table and looking into them i found that every one had some reference more or less immediate to her theory a volume old home of s history of the world a volume of a volume of lord bacon s letters a volume of s plays and on another lay a large roll of manuscript which i presume to have heen a portion of her work to be sure there was a pocket bible among the books but else referred to the one idea that had got possession of her mind and as it had engrossed her whole soul as well as her intellect i have no doubt that she had established connections between it and the bible likewise as is apt to be the case with solitary students miss bacon probably read late and rose late for i took up it was s translation and had been reading his journey to italy a good while before she appeared i had expected the more shame for me having no other ground of such expectation than that she was a literary woman to see a very homely uncouth elderly personage and was quite agreeably disappointed by her aspect she was rather tall and had a striking and expressive dark hair dark eyes which shone with an inward light as soon as she began to speak and by and by a colour came into her cheeks and made her look almost young not that she really was so she must have been beyond middle age and there was no in coming to that conclusion because making for years and ill health i could suppose her to have been handsome and exceedingly attractive once though wholly from society there was little or no restraint or embarrassment in her manner lonely people are generally glad to give utterance to their pent up ideas and often over with them as freely as children with their new found i cannot tell how it came about but we immediately found ourselves taking a friendly and familiar tone together and began to talk as if we had known one another a very long while a little preliminary correspondence had indeed smoothed the way and we had a definite topic in the contemplated publication of her book she was very about her theory and would have been much more so had i desired it but being conscious of a gifted woman within myself of a sturdy i deemed it fair and honest rather to repress than draw her ont npon the subject unquestionably she was a these ideas about the of s plays and the deep political philosophy concealed beneath the of them had completely thrown her off her balance but at the same time they had wonderfully developed her intellect and made her what she would not otherwise have become it was a very singular phenomenon a system of philosophy growing up in this woman s mind without her contrary in to the determined resistance of her and itself in the place of everything that originally grew there to have based such a system on fancy and unconsciously it for herself was almost as wonderful as really to have found it in the plays but in a certain sense she did actually find it there has surface beneath to an depth adapted to the line of every reader his works present many phases of truth each with scope large enough to fill a mind whatever you seek in him you will surely discover provided you seek truth there is no the various interpretation of his and a thousand years hence a world of new readers will possess a whole library of new books as we ourselves do in these volumes old already i had half a mind to suggest to miss bacon this explanation of her theory but because as i could readily perceive she had as a spirit as queen elizabeth herself and would at once have me from the room i had heard long ago that she believed that the material evidences of her as to the together with the key of the new philosophy would be found buried in s grave recently as i understood her this notion had been somewhat modified and was now accurately defined and fully developed in her mind with a result of perfect certainty in lord bacon s letters on which she laid her finger as she spoke she had discovered the key and clue to the whole mystery there were definite and minute instructions our old home how to find a will and other documents relating to the of philosophers which were concealed when and hy whom she did not inform me in a hollow space in the under surface of s thus the terrible to remove the stone was accounted for the directions she intimated went completely and precisely to the point all difficulties in the way of coming at the treasure and even if i remember right were so contrived as to ward off any troublesome consequences likely to firom the interference of the parish officers all that miss bacon now remained in england for indeed the object for which she had come hither and which had kept her here for three years past was to obtain possession of these material and proofs of the of her theory she communicated all this strange matter in a low quiet tone while on my part i listened as quietly and any expression of against a faith so settled would have shut her up at once and that too in the least her belief in the existence of those treasures of the tomb and had it been possible	35
to convince her of their nature i apprehend that there would have been nothing left for the poor save to and die she frankly confessed that she could no longer bear the society of those who did not at least lend a certain sympathy to her views if not fully share in them and meeting little sympathy or none she had now entirely secluded herself from the world in all these years she had seen mrs a few times but had long ago given her up once or twice but not of late although he had received her kindly mr while minister in england had once called on her and general our in london had met her two or three times on business with these exceptions which she marked so that it was perceptible what they were in the monotonous passage of her days she had lived in the solitude she never walked out she suffered much from ill health and yet she assured me she was perfectly happy of a gifted woman i could well conceive it for miss bacon imagined herself to haye received what is certainly the greatest ever assigned to mortals a high mission in the world with adequate powers for its accomplishment and lest even these prove insufficient she had that special of providence were her human efforts this idea was continually coming to the surface during our interview she for example that she had heen led to her lodging house and put in relations with the good natured and his family and to say the truth considering what a savage and stealthy the london lodging house usually are the honest kindness of this man and his household appeared to have heen little less than miraculous evidently too she thought that providence had me forward a man somewhat connected with literature at the critical juncture when she needed a with the and on my part though little accustomed to regard myself as a divine minister and though i might even have preferred that providence should select some other instrument i had no scruple in undertaking to do what i could for her her hook as i could see by turning it over was a very remarkable one and worthy of being offered to the public which if wise enough to appreciate it would be thankful for what was good in it and to its faults it was founded on a prodigious error but was built up from that foundation with a good many prodigious truths and at all events whether i could aid her literary views or no it would have been both rash and impertinent in me to attempt drawing poor miss bacon out of her which were the condition on which she lived in comfort and joy and in the exercise of great intellectual power so i left her to dream as she pleased about the treasures of s and to form whatever designs might seem good to herself for obtaining possession of them i was sensible of a lady like feeling of propriety in miss bacon and a new england in her character and in spite of her bewilderment a sturdy common sense which i trusted would begin to operate at the right time and keep her from any actual old home and as regarded this matter of the so it proved the interview lasted above an daring which she flowed out freely as to the sole capable of any degree of intelligent sympathy whom she had met with in a very long while her conversation was remarkably suggestive forth one s own ideas and from the shy places where they usually haunt she was indeed an admirable considering how long she had held her tongue for lack of a listener pleasant sunny and shadowy often and giving glimpses of all a woman s various and readily moods and and beneath them all there ran a deep and powerful under current of earnestness which did not fail to produce in the listener s mind something like a temporary faith in what she herself believed so fervently but the streets of london are not favourable to of this kind nor in are they likely to flourish anywhere in the english atmosphere so that long before reaching bow i felt that it would be a difficult and doubtful matter to advocate the publication of bacon s book nevertheless it did get published months before that happened however miss bacon had taken up her residence at on drawn thither by the of those rich which she supposed to have been hidden by or bacon or i know not whom in s grave and protected there by a curse as used to bury their gold in the of a she took a humble lodging and began to haunt the church like a ghost but she did not condescend to any or attempt to the grave which had she been capable of admitting such an idea might possibly have been accomplished by the aid of a man as her first step she made acquaintance with the clerk and began to sound him as to the of her enterprise and his own to engage in it the clerk apparently listened with not ears but as his situation which the of more numerous than at any catholic shrine op a gifted woman render have been by any in office be for liberty to consult tbe miss bacon requested to tell ber own story to tbe reverend gentleman and seems to been received by him witb tbe utmost kindness and even to succeeded in making a certain impression on bis mind as to tbe of tbe search as their interview had been under tbe seal of secrecy be asked permission to consult a friend who as miss bacon either found out or was a of tbe law what the legal friend advised she did not learn but tbe continued and certainly was never broken off by	35
an absolute refusal on tbe s part he perhaps was kindly witb our poor whom an englishman of ordinary mould would have sent to a lunatic asylum at once i cannot help however that ber familiarity witb tbe events of s life and of his death and burial of which she would speak as if she had been present at the edge of the grave and all the history literature and of the age together with tbe prevailing power of ber own belief and tbe eloquence with which she knew how to enforce it had really gone some little way toward making a convert of the good clergyman if so i honour him above all the of england the affair certainly looked very hopeful however miss bacon had understood from tbe that no obstacles would be interposed to the investigation and that he himself would sanction it witb his presence it was to take place after nightfall and all preliminary arrangements being made the and clerk professed to wait only her word in order to set about tbe awful stone from tbe so at least miss bacon believed and as her bewilderment was entirely in ber own thoughts and never disturbed her perception or accurate remembrance of external things i see no reason to doubt it except it be the tinge of absurdity in tbe but in this apparently prosperous state of things her own convictions began to a doubt stole into her mind whether she might not have mistaken the and mode our old home of concealment of those historic and after once admitting the she was afraid to hazard the shock of the stone and finding nothing she examined the surface of the and without stirring it to estimate whether it were of such thickness as to be capable of containing the of the she went over anew the proofs the the the sentences which she had discovered in bacon s letters and elsewhere and now was frightened to perceive that they did not point so definitely to s tomb as she had heretofore supposed there was an distinct reference to a tomb but it might be bacon s or s or and instead of the old player as she called him it might be either of those three illustrious dead poet warrior or whose ashes in westminster abbey or the tower burial ground or wherever they sleep it was her mission to disturb it is very possible moreover that her acute mind may always have had a lurking and deeply latent distrust of its own and that this now became strong enough to restrain her from a decisive step but she continued to around the church and seems to have had freedom of entrance in the and special on one occasion at least at a late hour of the night she went thither with a dark lantern which could but twinkle like a glow worm through the volume of obscurity that filled the great dusky edifice groping her way up the aisle and towards the she sat down on the elevated part of the pavement above s grave if the divine poet really wrote the inscription there and cared as much about the quiet of his bones as its earnestness would imply it was time for those crumbling relics to themselves under her feet but they were safe she made no attempt to disturb them though i believe she looked narrowly into the between s and the two adjacent stones and in some way satisfied herself that her single strength would suffice to lift the former in case of need she threw the feeble ray of her lantern up towards the bust but could op a gifted woman not make it visible beneath the darkness of the roof had she been subject to superstitious terrors it is impossible to conceive of a situation that could better her to feel them for if s ghost would rise at any provocation it must have shown itself then but it is my sincere belief that if his figure had appeared within the scope of her dark lantern in his and gown and with his eyes bent on her beneath the high bald forehead just as we see him in the bust she would have met him and his claims to the of the plays to his very face she had taught herself to lord s groom it was one of her for the world s poet so thoroughly that even his spirit would hardly have found civil treatment at miss bacon s hands her though it appears to have had no definite object continued far into the night several times she heard a low movement in the a stealthy foot fell about in the darkness now here now there among the pillars and ancient as if some restless inhabitants of the latter had crept forth to peep at the intruder by and by the clerk made his appearance and confessed that he had been watching her ever since she entered the church about this time it was that a strange sort of weariness seems to have fallen upon her her toil was all but done her great purpose as she believed on the very point of accomplishment when she began to regret that so a mission had been imposed on the of a woman her faith in the new philosophy was as mighty as ever and so was her confidence in her own adequate development of it now about to be given to the world yet she wished or fancied so that it might never have been her duty to achieve this task and to feebly forward under her immense burden of responsibility and renown so far as her personal concern in the matter went she would gladly have the reward of her patient study and labour for so many years her exile from her and from old home her family and friends her sacrifice of health and all	35
other interest to this one pursuit if she could only find herself free to dwell in and he forgotten she liked the old town and the only praise that ever i knew her to on the individual man by acknowledging that his taste in a residence was good and that he knew how to choose a suitable retirement for a person of shy but genial temperament and at this point i cease to possess the means of tracing her of feeling any farther in consequence of some advice which i fancied it my duty to tender as being the only whom she now had in the world i fell under miss bacon s most severe and passionate displeasure and was cast off by her in the twinkling of an eye it was a misfortune to which her friends were always particularly liable but i think that none of them ver loved or even respected her most and noble but likewise most sensitive and tumultuous character the less for it at that time her book was passing through the press without prejudice to her literary ability it must be allowed that miss bacon was wholly unfit to prepare her own work for publication because among many other reasons she was too thoroughly in earnest to know what to leave out every leaf and line was sacred for all had been written under so deep a conviction of truth as to assume in her eyes the aspect of inspiration a practised book maker with entire control of her materials would have shaped out a volume fall of eloquent and ingenious which quite take the colour and out of other people s critical remarks on philosophic truths which she imagined herself to have found at the roots of his and which certainly come from no depth somewhere there was a great amount of rubbish which any competent editor would have out of the way but miss bacon thrust the whole bulk of inspiration and nonsense into the press in a lump and there tumbled out a ponderous volume which fell with a dead at the feet of the public and has never been picked up a few persons tamed over one of a gifted woman or two of the leaves as it lay there and to kick the volume deeper in the for they were the hack critics of the minor press in london than whom i suppose though excellent fellows in their way there are no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any in a book or less likely to recognize an author s heart in it or more utterly careless about if they do recognize it it is their trade they could not do otherwise i never thought of them it was not for such an englishman as one of these to get beyond the idea that an assault was meditated on england s greatest poet from the scholars and critics of her own country indeed miss bacon might have looked for a appreciation because many of the best of them have higher cultivation and finer and deeper literary than all but the very and brightest of englishmen but they are not a courageous body of men they dare not think a truth that has an of absurdity lest they should feel themselves bound to speak it out if any american ever wrote a word in her behalf miss bacon never knew it nor did i our at once some of the most brutal of the english press thus their poor with stolen mud without even waiting to know whether the was deserved and they never have known it to this day nor ever will the next intelligence i had of miss bacon was by a letter from the mayor of on he was a medical man and wrote both in his official and professional character telling me that an american lady who had recently published what the mayor called a book was afflicted with insanity in a interval she had referred to me as a person who had some knowledge of her family and affairs what she may have suffered before her intellect gave way we had better not try to imagine no author had ever hoped so confidently as she none ever failed more utterly a superstitious fancy might suggest that the on s had fallen heavily on her head in of even the ed purpose of disturbing the dust beneath old home and that the old player had kept so quietly in his grave on the night of her he foresaw how soon and he would he but if that spirit takes any care or of such things now he has surely the injustice that she sought to do him the high justice that she really did hy a tenderness of love and pity of which only he could he what matters it though she called him hy some other name he had vn ought a greater miracle on her than on all the world besides this bewildered had recognized a depth in the man whom she which scholars critics and learned societies devoted to the of his scenes had never imagined to exist there she had paid him the that all these ages of renown have been able to upon his memory and when not many months after the outward failure of her object she passed into the better world i know not why we should hesitate to believe that the immortal poet may have met her on the threshold and led her in re assuring her with friendly and comfortable words and thanking her yet with a smile of gentle humour in his eyes at the thought of certain mistaken speculations for having interpreted him to mankind so well i believe that it has been the fate of this remarkable book never to have had more than a single reader i myself am acquainted with it only in chapters and scattered	35
pages and but since my return to america a young man of genius and enthusiasm has assured me that he has positively read the book from beginning to end and is completely a convert to its doctrines it belongs to him therefore and not to me whom in almost the last letter that i received from her she declared unworthy to with her work it belongs surely to this one individual who has done her so much justice as to know what she vn to place miss bacon in her due position before the public and posterity this has been too sad a story to the recollection of it i will think of my stroll past park op a gifted woman where i beheld the most stately elms singly in and in groves scattered all about in the fashion so that i could not but believe in a lengthened drowsy enjoyment which these trees must have in their existence over slow paced centuries it need not be keen nor into and like the momentary delights of short lived human beings they were civilized trees known to man and by him for ages past there is an indescribable di as i believe i have heretofore endeavoured to express between the tamed but by no means on the contrary the richer and more luxuriant nature of england and the rude shaggy barbarous nature which offers us its companionship in america no less a change has been wrought among the wildest creatures that what the english call their forests by and by among those refined and venerable trees i saw a large herd of deer mostly but some standing in picturesque groups while the threw their large aloft as if they had been taught to make themselves to the effect some were running about vanishing from light into shadow and glancing forth again with here and there a little at its mother s heels these deer are almost in the same relation to the wild natural state of their kind that the trees of an english park hold to the rugged growth of an american forest they have held a certain intercourse with man for years and most probably the that killed was one of the of this very herd and may himself have been a partly civilized and deer though in a less degree than these remote posterity they are a little than sheep but they do not the air at the approach of human beings much alarm at their pretty close although if you continue to advance they toss their heads and take to their heels in a kind of terror or something akin to feminine with a dim remembrance or tradition as it were of their having come of a wild stock they have so long been fed and protected by man that they must have lost many of their old home native instincts and i suppose not live comfortably through even an english winter without human help one is sensible of a gentle scorn at them for such but feels none the less kindly disposed towards the half race and it may have been his observation of these ti characteristics in the herd that suggested to e the tender and pitiful description of a wounded t in as you like it at a distance of some hundreds of yards from hall and almost hidden by the trees between it and the roadside is an old brick and porter s lodge in connection with this entrance there appeared to have been a wall and an ancient moat the latter of which is still visible a shallow grassy along the base of an of the lawn about yards within the stands the house forming three sides of a square with three in a row on the front and on each of the two wings and there are several towers and at the angles together with projecting windows antique and other quaint ornaments suitable to the half taste in which the edifice was built over the is the coat of arms in its proper colours the mansion dates from the early days of elizabeth and probably looked very much the same as now when was brought before sir thomas for among his deer the impression is not that of gray antiquity but of stable and time honoured still as vital as ever it is a most delightful place all about the house and domain there is a perfection of comfort and domestic taste an of convenience which could have been brought about only by the sl w ingenuity and labour of many successive generations intent upon adding all possible improvement to the home where years gone by and years to come give a sort of to the present an american is sometimes tempted to fancy that only by this long process can real homes be produced one man s lifetime is not enough for the accomplishment of such a work of art and nature op a gifted woman almost the greatest merely temporary one that is confided to him too little at any rate yet perhaps too long when he is discouraged hy the idea that he must make his house warm and delightful for a miscellaneous race of of whom the one thing certain is that his own will not he among them such as are here suggested however come only from the fact that in english of thought as most of us are we have not yet modified our instincts to the necessities of our new forms of life a lodging in a or under a tent has really as many advantages when we come to know them as a home the roof tree of hall but alas our philosophers have not yet taught us what is nor have our poets sung us what is in the kind of life that we must lead and therefore we still read the old english wisdom	35
and harp upon the ancient strings and thence it happens that when we look at a time honoured hall it seems more for men who inherit such a home than for ourselves to lead and graceful lives quietly doing good and lovely things as their daily work and deeds of simple greatness when circumstances require them i sometimes apprehend that our institutions may perish we shall have discovered the most precious of the which they involve old home and after my first visit to i went by an route to and put up at the black swan had i known where to find it i would much rather have established myself at the inn formerly kept by the worthy mr so famous for his ale in s time the black swan is an old fashioned hotel its street front being penetrated by an arched passage in either side of which is an entrance door to the different parts of the house and through which and over the large stones of its pavement all and and clatter into an enclosed court yard with a uproar among the rooms and chambers i appeared to be the only guest of the spacious establishment but may have had a few fellow hidden in their separate and utterly that community of interests which is the characteristic feature of life in an american hotel at any rate i had the great dull dingy and dreary with its heavy old mahogany chairs and tables all to myself and not a soul to exchange a word with except the waiter who like most of his class in england had evidently left his abilities no former practice of solitary living nor habits of nor well tested self dependence for occupation of mind and amusement can quite avail as i now proved to the ponderous gloom of an english coffee room under such circumstances as these with no book at hand save the county nor any newspaper but a torn local journal of five days ago so i buried myself in a huge heap of ancient feathers there is and no other kind of bed in these old let my head sink into an pillow and slept a stifled sleep with such a confusion of dreams that i took them to be a of the night troubles of all my in that same couch and when i awoke the of a century was in my nostrils a smell of which i never had any conception before crossing the atlantic in the morning after a mutton chop and a cup of in the dusky coffee room i went forth and bewildered myself a little while among the crooked streets in quest of one or two objects that had chiefly attracted me to the spot the city is of very ancient date and its name in the old saxon tongue has a dismal import that would apply well in these days and for ever to many an unhappy locality in our native land the field of the dead bodies an epithet however which the town did not assume in remembrance of a battle but which probably sprung up by a natural process like a of or other weed out of the graves of two brothers sons of a pagan king of who were converted by saint and afterwards for their christian faith nevertheless i was but little interested in the legends of the remote antiquity of being drawn thither partly to see its beautiful cathedral and still more i believe because it was the of dr johnson with whose sturdy english character i became acquainted at a very early period of my life through the good offices of mr li truth he seems as familiar to my recollection and almost as vivid in his personal aspect to my mind s eye as the kindly figure of my own grandfather it is only a solitary child left much to such wild modes of culture as he chooses for himself while yet ignorant what culture means standing on to pull down books from no very lofty shelf and then shutting himself up as it were between the leaves going astray through the volume at his own pleasure and it rather by his and affections than his intellect that child is the only student that ever gets the sort old home of intimacy which i am now thinking of with a literary personage i do not remember indeed ever caring about any of the doctor s productions except his two stem and masculine poems london and the vanity of human wishes it was as a man a and a that i knew and loved him many of his qualities perhaps more thoroughly than i do now though never seeking to put my instinctive perception of his character into language beyond all question i might have had a wiser friend than he the atmosphere in which alone he breathed was dense his awful dread of death showed how much muddy was to be out of him before he could be capable of spiritual existence he only with the surface of life and never cared to penetrate farther than to depth his very sense and sagacity were but a one eyed i laughed at him sometimes standing beside his knee and yet considering that my native were towards fairy land and also how much is generally mixed up with the mental of a new it may not have been altogether amiss in those childish and boyish days to keep pace with this heavy footed traveller and feed on the gross diet that he carried in his it is wholesome food even now and then how english many of the latent sympathies that enabled me to enjoy the old country so well and that so readily themselves with the american ideas that seemed most adverse to them may have been derived from or and kept alive by the great english never was a descriptive	35
epithet more nicely appropriate than that dr johnson s morality was as english an article as a the city of only the cathedral towns are called cities in england stands on an ascending site it has not so many old houses as for example but still enough to gratify an american appetite for the of domestic architecture the people too have an way with them and stare at the passing visitor as if the railway had not yet quite accustomed them to the and novelty of strange faces moving along their ancient the old women whom i met in several instances me a and as they were of decent and comfortable exterior and kept quietly on their way without pause or farther greeting it certainly was not to interpret their little act of respect as a modest method of asking for sixpence so that i had the pleasure of considering it a remnant of the and hospitable manners of elder times when the rare presence of a stranger might be deemed worth a general acknowledgment positively coming from such humble sources i took it all the more as a welcome on behalf of the inhabitants and would not have exchanged it for an invitation from the mayor and to a public dinner yet i wish merely for the experiment s sake that i could have myself to hold out the sixpence to at least one of the old ladies in my wanderings about town i came to an artificial piece of water called the pool it fills the immense in a ledge of rock whence the building materials of the cathedral were out a great many centuries ago i should never have guessed the little lake to be of man s creation so very pretty and quietly picturesque an object has it grown to be with its green banks and the old trees hanging over its surface in which you may see reflected some of the of the majestic structure that once lay here in stone some little children stood on the edge of the pool with pin hooks and the scene reminded me though really to be quite fair with the reader the of the has now escaped me of that mysterious lake in the nights which had once been a palace and a city and where a used to pull out the former inhabitants in the guise of enchanted fishes there is no need of associations to make the spot interesting it was in the porch of one of the houses in the street that runs beside the pool that lord was slain in the time of the war by a shot from the of the cathedral which was then held by the as a fortress the old home is by an inscription on a stone into the of the house i know not what rank the cathedral of holds n among its sister in england as a piece of magnificent architecture except that of the grim and simple of which stands yet in my memory and one or two small ones in north wales hardly worthy of the name of it was the first that i had seen to my vision it seemed the object best worth gazing at in the whole world and now after beholding a great many more i remember it with less prodigal admiration only because others are as magnificent as itself the traces remaining in my memory represent it as airy rather than massive a multitude of beautiful shapes appeared to be comprehended within its single outline it was a kind of mystery so rich a variety of aspects did it assume from each altered point of view through the of a different face and the re i arrangement of its peaks and and the three battle towers with the that shot from all three but one than its fellows thus it impressed yon at every change as a newly created structure of the passing moment in which yet you lovingly recognized the half vanished structure of the instant before and felt moreover a joyful faith in the existence of all this a cathedral is surely the most wonderful work which mortal man has yet achieved so vast so intricate and so profoundly simple with such strange delightful recesses in its grand figure so difficult to comprehend within one idea and yet all so that it ultimately draws the and his universe into its harmony it is the only thing in the world that is vast enough and rich enough not that i felt or was worthy to feel an enjoyment in gazing at this wonder i could not myself to its spiritual height any more than i could have climbed from the ground to the summit of one of its ascending but a little way i continually fell back and lay in a kind of despair conscious that a flood of and ill was pouring down upon me of which i could appropriate only the portion after a hundred years as my higher sympathies might be by so divine an employment i should still be a from below and at an awful distance as yet excluded from the interior mystery but it was something gained even to have that painful sense of my own and that yearning to beyond them the cathedral showed me how earthly i was but yet whispered deeply of immortality after all this was probably the best lesson that it could bestow and taking it as thoroughly as possible home to my heart i was fain to be content if the truth must be told my ill trained enthusiasm soon and i began to lose the vision of a spiritual or ideal edifice behind the and weather stained front of the actual structure whenever that is the case it is most to look another way but the mood one to minute investigation and i took advantage of it to examine the intricate and that was on	35
the exterior wall of this great church everywhere there were empty where statues had been thrown down and here and there a statue still lingered in its and over the chief entrance and extending across the whole breadth of the building was a row of angels personages and kings in stone being much by the moist english atmosphere during four or five hundred that they had stood there these and majestic figures put me in mind of the appearance of a sugar image a child has been holding it in his mouth the venerable infant time has evidently found them sweet inside of the there is a long and of the same height and side and dim of where in catholic times the lamps were continually burning before the richly decorated of saints in the audacity of my ignorance as i humbly acknowledge it to have been i this great interior as too much broken into and of half its old home by the of a screen the and it did not spread itself in breadth ascended to the roof in lofty one large body ci might have knelt down in the others in each of the and smaller ones in the side besides an indefinite of in the beyond the screen thus it seemed to t the of rather than the world wide hospitality of religion i had imagined a cathedral with a scope more vast these with their arches overhead supported by clustered pillars in long up and down were venerable and magnificent but included too much of the twilight of that gloom out of which they grew it is no matter whether i ever came to a more appreciation of this kind of architecture the only value of my being to show the folly of looking at noble objects in the wrong mood and the absurdity of a new pretending to hold any opinion whatever on such subjects instead of himself to the old s influence with simplicity a great deal of white marble the old stone work of the in the shape of and most of these are of people distinguished especially the and of the cathedral with their relatives and families and i found but two monuments of personages whom i had ever heard of one being and the other lady mary a literary acquaintance of my boyhood it was really pleasant to meet her there for after a friend has lain in the grave far into the second century she would be unreasonable to require any melancholy emotions in a chance interview at her it adds a rich charm to sacred this time honoured custom of burial in churches after a few years at least when the mortal remains have turned to dust beneath the pavement and the quaint devices and still speak to you above the statues that stood or in several recesses of the cathedral had and a kind of life and i regarded them with an odd sort of deference as if they were privileged of the it was singular too how the memorial of the latest buried person the man whose features were familiar in the streets of only yesterday seemed precisely as much at home as his he belonged to the cathedral like one of its original pillars this impression in my fancy might be the shadow of a spiritual fact the dying melt into the great multitude of the departed as quietly as a drop of water into the ocean and it may be are conscious of no with their new circumstances but immediately become aware of an strangeness in the world which they have quitted death has not taken them away but brought them home the and of affairs however have not ceased to attend upon these marble inhabitants for i saw the upper fragment of a lady in a very old fashioned garb the lower half of whom had doubtless been by s soldiers when they took the hj storm and there lies the remnant of this devout lady on her ever since the outrage as for centuries before with a countenance of divine serenity and her hands clasped in prayer a depth of religious faith which no earthly turmoil or calamity could disturb another piece of apparently a favourite subject in the middle ages for i have seen several like it in other was a skeleton as representing an open of bones as could well be expected in a solid block of marble and at a period moreover when the mysteries of the human frame were rather to be guessed at than revealed whatever the defects of its production the old had succeeded in making it ghastly beyond measure how much mischief has been wrought upon us by this invariable gloom of the imagination flinging itself like a death scented pall over our of the future state our hopes hiding our sky and dismal efforts to raise the harvest of immortality out of what is most opposite to it the grave i old home the cathedral service is performed twice every day at ten o clock and at four when i first entered the young and old but mostly i think boys with voices j sweet and clear and as fresh as bird notes were winding up their harmonious labours and soon came through a side door from the into the they were all dressed in long white robes and looked like a peculiar order of beings created on purpose to between the roof and pavement of that dim consecrated edifice and it with divine themselves meanwhile on the heavy grandeur of the organ tones like on a golden cloud all at once however one of the multitude pulled off his white gown thus himself before my very eyes into a commonplace youth of the day in modem frock coat and trousers of a decidedly provincial cut this absurd little incident i verily believe had a sinister effect in putting me at odds	35
with the proper influences of the cathedral nor could i quite recover a suitable frame of mind during my stay there but emerging into the open air i began to be sensible that i had left a magnificent interior behind me and i have never quite lost the perception and enjoyment of it in these intervening years a large space in the immediate neighbourhood of the cathedral is called the close and kept and a shadowy walk bordered by the dwellings of the of the all this row of and has an air of the deepest quiet repose and well protected though not inaccessible seclusion they seemed capable of including everything that a saint could desire and a great many more things than most of us generally succeed in acquiring their most marked feature is a dignified comfort looking as if no disturbance or vulgar could ever cross their upon their ornamented or into the beautiful gardens that surround them with flower beds and rich of the palace is a stately mansion of stone built somewhat in tiie italian style and bearing on its front the figures as the date of its a large edifice of brick which if i remember stood next to the palace i took to be the residence of the second of the cathedral and in that case it have been the home of whose father was dean of i tried to his figure on the walk that extends in front of those from which and the interior it is separated by an iron fence lined with rich old and by a aisle of venerable trees this path is haunted by the shades of famous personages who have formerly trodden it johnson must have been with it both as a boy and in his subsequent visits to an illustrious old man miss connected with so many literary reminiscences lived in one of the a houses tradition says that it was a favourite spot of major who used to pace to and fro under these trees waiting perhaps to catch a last angel glimpse of before he crossed the ocean to encounter his dismal doom from an american david no doubt along the path in his boyish days and if he was an early student of the drama must often have thought of those two airy characters of the and who on this very ground attending service at the cathedral contrive to make acquaintance with the ladies of the comedy these creatures of mere fiction have as positive a substance now as the sturdy old figure of johnson himself they live while realities have died the shadowy walk still with their gold embroidered memories seeking for johnson s i found it in st s square which is not so much a square as the mere of a street the house is tall and thin of three stories with a square front and a roof rising steep and high on a side view the building looks as if it had been cut in two in the midst there being no slope of the roof on that side a ladder against the wall and a painter was giving a hue to the plaster in a comer room of the i old home where old michael may he supposed to have sold hooks is now what we should call a dry goods store or according to the english phrase a s and s shop the house has a private entrance on a cross street the door being accessible by several much worn stone steps which are bordered by an iron i set my foot on the steps and laid my hand on the where johnson s i hand and foot must many a time have been and ascending to the door i knocked once and again and again and got no going round to the shop entrance i tried to open it but found it as bolted as the gate of paradise it is to be so in one s little bnt looking round in quest of somebody to make inquiries of i was a good deal consoled by the sight of dr johnson who happened just at that moment to be sitting at his ease nearly in the middle of st mary s square with his ce turned towards his father s house of course it being almost years since the doctor laid aside his weary bulk of flesh together with the melancholy that had so long weighed him down the intelligent reader will at once comprehend that he was marble in his substance and seated in a marble chair on an elevated stone in short it was a statue by and placed here in at the expense of dr law the reverend of the the figure is colossal though perhaps not much more so than the doctor himself and looks down upon the spectator from its of ten or twelve feet high with a broad and heavy of aspect very like in feature to sir s portrait of johnson but calmer and sweeter in expression several big books are piled up beneath his chair and if i mistake not he holds a volume in his hand thus forth at the world out of his learned abstraction owl like yet benevolent at heart the statue is immensely massive a vast of stone not finely nor indeed but rather resembling a great stone than a man you must look and with the eyes of faith and sympathy or possibly you might lose the human being altogether and find only a big stone within your mental grasp on the are three in the first johnson is represented as hardly more than a baby an old man s shoulders resting his chin on the bald head which he embraces with his little arms and earnestly to the high church eloquence of dr in the second he is seen riding to school on the shoulders of two of his comrades while	35
another boy him in the rear the third relief possesses to my mind a great deal of pathos to which my faculty is probably the more alive because i have always been profoundly impressed by the incident here and long ago tried to tell it for the of childish readers it shows johnson in the market place of doing penance for an act of to his father committed fifty years before he stands bare headed a venerable figure and a countenance extremely sad and with the wind and rain driving hard against him and thus helping to suggest to the spectator the gloom of his inward state some market people and children gaze awe stricken into his face and an aged man and woman with clasped and uplifted hands seem to be praying for him these latter personages whose introduction by the artist is none the less effective because in queer there are some of market day in the shape of living ducks and dead poultry i interpreted to represent the spirits of johnson s father and mother what aid they could to his half century s burden of remorse i had never heard of the above described piece of before it appears to have no reputation as a work of art nor am i at all positive that it deserves any for me however it did as much as could under the circumstances even if the artist of the had wrought it by my interest in the sturdy old englishman and particularly by my perception of a wonderful beauty and pathetic tenderness in the incident of the penance so the next day i old home left for on one of the few purely sentimental that i ever undertook to see the veiy spot where johnson had stood i think speaks of the town its name is pronounced as being about nine miles off from but the county map indicate a greater distance and by rail passing from one line to another it is as much as eighteen miles i have always had an idea of old michael johnson sending his literary by s to a foot on market day morning selling books through the busy hours and returning to at night this could not possibly have been the case arriving at the station the first objects that i saw with a green field or two between them and me were the tower and gray of a church rising among red roofs and a few scattered trees a very short walk takes you fix m the station up into the town it had been my previous impression that the market place of lay immediately round about the church and if i remember the narrative aright johnson or in his behalf describes his father s book stall as standing in the market place close behind the sacred edifice it is impossible for me to say what changes may have occurred in the of the town during almost a century and a half since michael johnson retired from business and ninety years at least since his son s penance was performed but the church has now merely a street of ordinary width passing around it while the market place though near at hand neither forms a part of it nor is really nor would its throng and bustle be apt to their boundaries and against the churchyard and the old gray tower nevertheless a walk of a minute or two brings a person from the centre of the market place to the church door and michael johnson might very conveniently have his stall and laid out his literary ware in the comer at the tower s base better there indeed than in the busy centre of an agricultural market but the arrangement and full of the story absolutely and require that johnson shall not have done his penance in a comer ever so little retired but shall have been the very of the crowd the man of the market place a central image of memory and with and overpowering the petty around him he himself having the force to throw vitality and truth into what persons differently constituted might reckon a mere external ceremony and an absurd one could not have failed to see this necessity i am resolved therefore that the true sight of dr johnson s penance was in the middle of the market place that important portion of the town is a rather spacious and shaped surrounded by houses and shops some of them old with red roofs others wearing a pretence of but probably as old in their inner substance as the rest the people of seemed very idle in the warm summer day and were scattered in little groups along the side walks leisurely with one another and often turning about to take a deliberate stare at my humble self that i felt as if my genuine sympathy for the illustrious penitent and my many reflections about him must have me with some of his own of mien if their great were such in the doctor s day his penance was no light one this curiosity a of visitors to the little town except for market purposes and i question if ever saw an american before the only other thing that greatly impressed me was the abundance of public houses one at every step or two bed lions white heads cross keys and i know not what besides these are probably for the accommodation of the farmers and of the neighbourhood on market day and content themselves with a very meagre business on other days of the week at any rate i was the only guest in at the period of my visit and had but an portion of patronage to among such a multitude of the reader however will possibly be to learn what was the first and indeed the only important that i attended to after coming so old home far to indulge	35
a solemn and emotion and standing now on the very spot where my pious errand should have been i stepped into one of the rustic and got my dinner bacon and some mutton and more than all america could serve up at the president s table and a a sufficient meal for six and good enough for a prince besides a of foaming ale the whole at the pitiful small charge of dr johnson would have forgiven me for nobody had a faith in beef and mutton than himself and as regards my lack of sentiment in eating my dinner it was the wisest thing i had done that day a sensible man had better not let himself be betrayed into these attempts to realize the things which he has dreamed about and which when they cease to be purely ideal in his mind will have lost the truest of their truth the and part of their power over his sympathies facts as we really find them whatever poetry they may involve are covered with a stony of prose resembling the crust on a beautiful sea shell and they never show their most delicate and colours until we shall have dissolved away their by them long in a power l of thought and seeking to them again we do but renew the crust if this were otherwise if the moral of a great fact depended in any degree on its garb of external circumstances things which change and decay it could not itself be immortal and and only a brief point of time and a little neighbourhood would be nourished by its grandeur and beauty such were a few of the reflections which i mingled with my ale as i remember to have seen an old of that excellent liquor stir up his cup with a of some bitter and fragrant meanwhile i found myself still haunted by a desire to get a definite result out of my visit to the hospitable inn was called the s head and standing beside the market was as likely as any other to have entertained and old michael johnson in the days when he used to come hither to sell hooks he perhaps had dined on and and drunk his ale and smoked his pipe in the very room where i now sat which was a low ancient room certainly much older than queen anne s time with a red floor and a ceiling traversed hy hare rough the whole in the fashion hut extremely neat neither did it lack ornament the walls hung with coloured of prize oxen and other pretty prints and the mantel piece adorned with figures of in the taste of long ago michael johnson s eyes might have rested on that self same image to examine which more closely i had just crossed the brick pavement of the room and sitting down again still as i my ale i glanced through the open window into the sunny and wished that i could honestly fix on one spot rather than another as likely to have heen the holy site where johnson stood to do his penance how strange and stupid it is that tradition should not have marked and kept in mind the very place i how shameful nothing less than that that there should he no local memorial of this incident as and touching a passage as can he out of any human life i no inscription of it almost as sacred as a verse of scripture on the wall of the church no statue of the and illustrious penitent in the market place to throw a wholesome awe over its its and petty wrongs of which the fingers of conscience can make no record its selfish competition of each man with his or his its traffic of for a little worldly gain such a statue if the piety of the people did not raise it might almost have heen expected to grow up out of the pavement of its own accord on the spot that had heen watered hy the rain that from johnson s garments mingled with his tears long after my visit to i was told that there were individuals in the town who could have shown me the exact spot where johnson performed his penance old home i was moreover that sufficient interest was felt in the subject to have induced certain local as to the of a memorial with all deference to my polite i that there is a mistake and decline without further and precise evidence giving credit to either of the above statements the inhabitants know nothing as a matter of general interest about the penance and care nothing for the scene of it if the clergyman of the parish for example had ever heard of it would he not have used the theme time and again wherewith to work tenderly and profoundly on the souls committed to his charge if parents were with it would they not teach it to their young ones at the fireside both to reverence to their own gray hairs and to protect the children from such regrets as johnson bore upon his heart for fifty years if the site were ascertained would not the pavement be worn with footsteps would not every town bom child be able to direct the pilgrim thither while waiting at the station before my departure i asked a boy who stood near me an intelligent and gentlemanly lad twelve or thirteen years old whom i should take to be a clergyman s son i asked him if he had ever heard the story of dr johnson how he stood an hour doing penance near that church the spire of which rose before us the boy stared and answered no i were you bom in i inquired if no circumstance such as i had mentioned was known or talked about among the inhabitants no said	35
the boy not that i ever heard of just think of the absurd little town knowing nothing of the only memorable incident which ever happened within its boundaries since the old built it this sad and lovely which the spot for i found it holy to my contemplation again as soon as it lay behind me in the heart of a stranger from three thousand miles over the sea it but what i have been saying that sublime and facts are best understood when by distance to old boston we set out at a little past and made onr first stage to we were by this time sufficiently to reckon the morning a bright and one although the may was mingled with water as it were and with a very bitter east wind is a dreary all at least except its portions and i have never passed through it without wishing myself anywhere bnt in that particular spot where i then happened to be a few places along our route were interesting as for example which was the scene of many remarkable events in the war and in the market square of which one of the of was we saw along the the never failing green fields hedges and other monotonous features of an ordinary english landscape there were little factory villages too or larger towns with their tall chimneys and their of black smoke their of and their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace which seems to be the only kind of stuff which nature cannot take back to herself and resolve into the elements when man has thrown it aside these of waste and always the neighbourhood of towns and even after a considerable antiquity are hardly made decent with a little grass at a quarter to two we left by the and railway the scenery grew rather better than that through which we had hitherto passed though still by no old means very striking for except in the show districts such as the lake country or english scenery is not particularly well worth looking at considered as a spectacle or a picture it has a real homely charm of its own no doubt and the rich and the thorough finish added by human art are perhaps as attractive to an american eye as any stronger feature could be our journey however between and was not through a rich tract of country but along a valley walled in by bleak hills extending straight as a and across black with here and there a plantation of trees sometimes there were long and gradual bleak windy and desolate conveying the very impression which the reader gets from many passages of miss s novels and still more from those of her two sisters old stone or brick farm houses and once in a while an old church tower were visible but these are almost too common objects to be noticed in an english landscape on a railway i suspect what little we do see of the country is seen quite amiss because it was never intended to be looked at from any point of view in that straight line so that it is like looking at the wrong side of a piece of the old and were as natural as and and adapted themselves by an inevitable impulse to the of the country and every object within view of them had some reference to their curves and but the line of a railway is perfectly artificial and puts all precedent things at and at any rate be the cause what it may there is seldom anything worth seeing within the scope of a railway traveller s eye and if there were it requires an alert to take a flying shot at the picturesque at one of the stations it was near a village of ancient aspect round a church on a wide i saw a tall old lady in black who seemed to have just alighted from the train she caught my attention by a singular movement of the head not once only but continually repeated and to old boston at regular intervals as if she were making a stem and solemn protest against some action that developed itself before her and were terrible disaster if it should be persisted in of coarse it was nothing more than a or affection yet one might fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable wrong half a lifetime ago in this old s presence either against herself or somebody whom she loved still better her features had a wonderful which i presume was caused by her habitual effort to compose and keep them quiet and thereby the tendency to movement the slow regular and inexorable character of the motion her look of force and self control which had the appearance of rendering it voluntary while yet it was so have stamped this poor lady s face and gesture into my memory so that some dark day or other i am afraid she will herself in a dismal romance the train stopped a minute or two to allow the tickets to be taken just before entering the station and thence i had a glimpse of the famous town of and enveloped in a cloud of its own my impressions of it are extremely vague and misty or rather smoky for seems to me than liverpool or than all england besides unless be the exception it might have been s own metropolis in and indeed our approach to it had been by the valley of the shadow of death through a three miles in length quite the breadth and depth of a hill after passing the scenery became softer yet more picturesque at one point we saw what i believe to be the utmost northern verge of forest not consisting however of thousand year oaks from hood s days but of young and which will require a century	35
or two of slow english growth to give them much breadth of shade earl s lies in this neighbourhood and probably his castle was hidden among old home some soft depth of foliage not far off farther onward the country grew quite level around us whereby i judged that we must now be in and shortly after six o clock we caught the first glimpse of the cathedral towers though they loomed scarcely hu e enough for our idea of them but as we drew nearer the great edifice began to assert itself making us acknowledge it to be larger than our could take in at the railway station we found no cab it being an unknown vehicle in but only an belonging to the s head which the driver recommended as the best hotel in the city and took us thither accordingly it received us and looked comfortable enough though like the hotels of most old english towns it had a fragrance of antiquity such as i have smelt in a seldom opened london church where the broad aisle is paved with the house was of an ancient fashion the entrance into its interior court yard being through an arch in the side of which is the door of the hotel there are long an intricate arrangement of passages and an up and down of amid which it would be no marvel to encounter some forgotten guest who had gone astray a hundred years ago and was still seeking for his bedroom while the rest of his generation were in their graves there is no the confusion of mind that upon a stranger in the bewildering geography of a great old fashioned english inn this hotel stands in the principal street of and within a very short distance of one of the ancient city gates which is arched across the public way with a smaller arch for foot passengers on either side the whole a gray ponderous shadowy structure through the dark vista of which you look into the middle ages the street is narrow and many antique peculiarities though unquestionably english domestic architecture has lost its most impressive features in the course of the last century li this respect there are finer old towns than for instance and which last is unusually rich in those quaint to old boston and stately where the gentry of the used to make their winter in a provincial metropolis almost everywhere now a days there is a monotony of modem or fronts hiding houses that are older than ever but the picturesque antiquity of the street between seven and eight o clock it being still broad daylight in these long english days we set out to pay a preliminary visit to the exterior of the cathedral passing through the stone bow as the city gate close by is called we ascended a street which grew and as we advanced till at last it got to be the street i ever climbed so steep that any carriage if left to itself would rattle downward much than it could possibly be drawn up being almost the only hill in the inhabitants seem disposed to make the most of it the houses on each side had no very remarkable aspect except one with a stone and carved ornaments which is now a dwelling place for poverty stricken people but may have been an aristocratic abode in the days of the kings to whom its style of architecture dates back this is called the s house having been inhabited by a woman of that faith who was hanged six hundred years ago and still the street grew and certainly the bishop and clergy of ought not to be fat men but of very spiritual saint like almost habit if it be a frequent part of their duty to climb this hill for it is a real penance and was probably performed as such and groaned over accordingly in times formerly on the day of his the bishop used to ascend the hill and was doubtless cheered and by looking upward to the grandeur that was to console him for the humility of his approach we likewise were beckoned onward by glimpses of the cathedral towers and finally an open square on the summit we saw an old to the left hand and another to the right the latter had apparently been a part of the exterior of the cathedral at a time when the edifice was fortified the west front rose behind we passed through one of the side arches of the old and ourselves in the cathedral close a wide level space where the great old has fair room to sit looking down on the ancient that surround it all of which in former days were the of its and officers some of them are still occupied as such though others are in too neglected and a state to seem worthy of so splendid an establishment unless it be close however which is rich as regards the old that belong to it i remember no more comfortably picturesque round any other cathedral but in truth almost every cathedral close in turn has seemed to me the loveliest safest least wind shaken most and most shelter that ever the and selfishness of mortal man contrived for himself how delightful to combine all this with the service of the temple t cathedral is built of a brown stone which appears either to have been largely restored or else does not assume the surface that gives such a venerable aspect to most of the ancient churches and castles in england in many parts the recent are quite evident but other and much the larger portions can scarcely have been touched for centuries for there are still the perfect or with broken noses as the case may be but showing that variety and of grotesque extravagance which no modem imitation can effect there are innumerable too	35
up the whole height of the towers above and around the ance and all over the walls most of them empty but a few containing the lamentable of saints and angels it is singular what a native lives in the human heart against carved images that whether they represent christian saint or pagan deity all men seize the first safe opportunity to knock off their heads in spite of all however the effect of the west of the cathedral is still exceedingly rich being covered from massive base to airy summit with the details of and carving at least it was so once and even now the spiritual impression of its beauty to old boston so strong that we have to look twice to see that f it has been i have seen a cherry stone carved over by a so that it mast have cost him a lifetime of labour and this cathedral front seems to aye been in a spirit like that not that the result is in the least petty but grand and all the more so for the faithful beauty f the smallest details an elderly man seeing us looking up at the west front to the door of an adjacent house and called to inquire if re wished to go into the cathedral but as there would have een a dusky twilight beneath its roof like the antiquity that as sheltered itself within we declined for the present so we walked round the exterior and thought it more beautiful that of york though on recollection i hardly deem it so and mighty as that it is vain to attempt a or seek even to record the feeling which the edifice it does not impress the as an but as something that has a vast quiet long enduring fe of its own a creation which man did not build though in me way or other it is connected with him and kindred to nature in short i straightway to talking when i try to express my inner sense of this and other while we stood in the close at the eastern end of the the clock the quarters and then great tom ho hangs in the tower told us it was eight o clock in ir the sweetest and accents that i ever heard from ay bell slow and solemn and allowing the profound of each stroke to die away before the next one fell b was still broad daylight in that upper region of the town ad would be so for some time longer but the evening was getting sharp and cool we therefore descended le steep street our younger companion running before us ad gathering such that i fully expected him to break is head against some projecting wall in the morning we took a fly an english term for an old home exceedingly vehicle and drove up to the by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed we alighted before the west front and sent our in quest of the but as he was not immediately to be found a young girl let us into the we found it very grand it is needless to say but not so grand as the vast of york cathedral especially beneath the great central tower of the latter unless a writer a description there is but one set of phrases in which to talk of all the in england and elsewhere they are alike in their great features an acre or two of stone flags for a pavement rows of vast columns supporting a roof at a dusky height great windows sometimes richly with ancient or modem stained glass and an carved screen between the and breaking the vista that might else be of such glorious length and which is further choked up by a massive organ in spite of which you catch the broad glimmer of the painted east window where a hundred saints wear their robes of behind the screen are the carved of the chapter and the bishop s throne the pulpit the altar and whatever else may furnish out the holy of nor must we forget the range i of once to catholic saints but which ha e now lost their individual nor the old monuments of kings warriors and in the side of the in close to the main body of the cathedral is the chapter house which here at as at is supported by one central pillar rising from the floor and putting forth branches like a tree to hold up the roof adjacent to the chapter house are the extending round a and paved with the more antique of which have had their half by the feet of taking their exercise in these sheltered walks five hundred years ago some of these old burial stones although with ancient crosses engraved upon them have been made to serve as to dead people of very recent date to old boston in the among the of forgotten and knights we saw an immense of stone to be the of wife of john of gaunt also here was the shrine of the little saint that christian child who was to have been by the jews of the cathedral is not particularly rich in monuments for it suffered grievous outrage and both at the and in s time this latter is in especially bad with the and of most of the old churches which i have visited his soldiers their in the of cathedral and and the and the of great families quite at their wicked and pleasure nevertheless there are some most exquisite and marvellous specimens of flowers foliage and vines and miracles of stone work about arches as if the material had been as as wax in the cunning s hands the leaves being represented with all their veins so that you would almost think it nature for which he	35
sought to steal the praise of art here too were those grotesque faces which always grin at you from the of architecture as if the had gone mad with their own deep solemnity or dreaded such a catastrophe permitted to throw in something absurd originally it is supposed all the pillars of this great edifice and all these magic were polished to the utmost degree of lustre nor is it unreasonable to think that the artists would have taken these further pains when they had already bestowed so much labour in working out their to the point but at present the whole interior of the cathedral is over with a wash the very meanest hue imaginable and for which somebody s soul has a bitter reckoning to undergo li the centre of the grassy about which the is a small mean brick with a locked door our guide i forgot to say that we had been captured by a in black and with a white tie but of a old and jolly aspect our guide unlocked this door and disclosed a flight of steps at the appeared what i have taken to be a large square of dim worn and faded which might originally have been painted of a rather gaudy pattern this was a pavement made of small coloured bricks or pieces of burnt clay it was accidentally discovered here and has not been with further than by removing the earth and rubbish nothing else occurs to me just now to be recorded about the interior of the cathedral except that we saw a place where the stone pavement had been worn away by the feet of ancient upon it as they knelt down before a shrine of the virgin leaving the we now went along a street of more venerable appearance than we had heretofore seen bordered with houses the high roofs of which were covered with red it led us to a arch which was once the of a and has been across the english street ever since the latter was a faint village path and for centuries before the arch is about four hundred yards from the cathedral and it is to be noticed that there are remains in all this neighbourhood some above ground and doubtless more beneath it for as in ancient itself an of accumulated soil seems to have swept over what was the of that earlier day the which i am speaking about is probably buried to a d of its height and perhaps has as perfect a pavement if sought for at the original depth as that which runs beneath the arch of it is a rude and massive structure and seems as now as it could have been two thousand years ago and though time has it he has made what amends he could by crowning its rough and broken summit with grass and weeds and planting of yellow flowers on the up and down the sides there are the ruins of a castle built by the conqueror in pretty close to the cathedral but the pilgrimage to old boston old is by a modern door of wood and we were denied because some part of the are as a prison we now about on the broad back of the hill which besides the and ruined castle is the site of some stately and queer old houses and of many mean little hotels i suspect that all or most of the life of the present day has subsided into the lower town and that only priests poor people and prisoners dwell in these upper regions in the wide dry moat at the base of the castle wall are clustered whole colonies of small houses some of brick but the larger portion built of old stones which once made part of the keep or of that existed before the conqueror s castle was ever dreamed about they are like that spring up from the mould of a tree ugly as they are they add wonderfully to the of tiie scene being quite as valuable in that respect as the great broad ponderous ruin of the castle keep which rose high above our heads heaving its huge gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and ornamental such as and other plants in which its foundations were completely hidden after walking quite round the castle i made an excursion through the along a pleasant and level road bordered with dwellings of various character one or two were houses of with delightful and shadowy before them many had those high red roofs ascending into pointed which seem to belong to the same epoch as some of the in our own earlier towns and there were pleasant looking cottages very and rural with hedges so dense and high them in as almost to hide them up to the of their roofs in front of one of these i saw various images crosses and relics of antiquity among which were fragments of old catholic disposed by way of ornament we now went home to the s head and as the weather was very and it sprinkled a little now and then i would gladly have felt myself released from further old to the cathedral but it had taken possession of me and would not let me be at rest so at length i found myself compelled to climb the hill again between daylight and a mist was now hovering about the upper height of the great central tower so as to dim and half its and even while i stood in the close beneath it it was the most impressive view that i had had the whole lower part of the structure was seen with perfect distinctness but at the very summit the mist was so dense as to form an actual cloud as well defined as ever i saw resting on a mountain top and literally here was a cloud tower	35
the entire cathedral too itself into a richer beauty and more imposing majesty than ever the longer i looked the better i loved it its exterior is certainly far more beautiful than that of york and its finer effect is due i think to the many peaks in which the structure and to the which as it were repeat and re echo them into the sky york cathedral is comparatively square and in its general effect but in this at there is a continual mystery of variety so that at every glance you are aware of a change and a disclosure of something new yet working an harmonious of what you have heretofore seen the west front is grand and may be read over and over again for ever and still show like a great broad page of marvellous writing in black letter so many ornaments there are out before your eyes and gray statues that have grown there since you looked last and empty and a hundred airy beneath which carved images used to be and where they will show themselves again if you gaze long enough but i will not say another word about the cathedral we spent the rest of the day within the sombre of the s head reading yesterday s the book of and the of the eastern dismal as the weather was the street beneath our window was with a great bustle and turmoil of people all the evening because it was saturday night and they had to old boston their week s toil received their wages and were making their small purchases against sunday and enjoying themselves as well as they knew how a band of music passed to and fro several times with the rain drops falling into the mouth of the brazen trumpet and on the a spirit shop opposite the hotel had a vast run of custom and a coffee dealer in the open air found occasional vent for his in spite of the cold water that into the cups the whole breadth of the street between the stone bow and the bridge across the was thronged to overflowing and humming with human life observing in the book that a steamer runs on the river between and boston i inquired of the waiter and learned that she was to start on monday at ten o clock thinking it might be an interesting trip and a pleasant of our customary mode of travel we determined to make the voyage the flows through crossing the main street under an arched bridge of construction a little below the s head it has more the appearance of a canal than of a river in its passage through the town being bordered with stone on each side and provided with one or two locks the steamer proved to be small dirty and altogether inconvenient the early morning had been bright but the sky now lowered upon us with a sulky english temper and we had not long put off before we felt an ugly wind from the german ocean blowing right in our teeth there were a number of passengers on board country people such as travel by third class on the railway for i suppose nobody but ourselves ever of by the steamer for the sake of what he might happen upon in the way of river scenery we a good while about getting through a preliminary lock nor when under way did we ever accomplish i think six miles an hour constant were caused moreover by stopping to take up passengers and freight not at regular landing places but anywhere along the green banks the scenery was identical with that of the railway because the old home latter along by the river side through the whole distance or nowhere from it except to make a short cut across some so that our only advantage lay in the like of our progress which allowed us time enough and to spare for the objects along the shore unfortunately there was nothing or next to nothing to be seen the country being one level over the whole thirty miles of our voyage not a hill in sight either near or far except that solitary one on the summit of which we had left cathedral and the cathedral was our for four hours or more and at last rather faded out than was hidden by any intervening object it would have been a pleasantly lazy day enough if the rough and bitter wind had not blown directly in our faces and chilled us through in spite of the sunshine that soon succeeded a or two of rain these english east winds which prevail from february till june are greater than the east wind of our own atlantic coast although they do not bring mist and storm as with us but some of the weather that england sees under their influence the sky smiles and is the landscape was tame to the last degree but had an english character that was abundantly worth our looking at a green of early grass old high surrounded by their stone and of hay and grain ancient villages with the square gray tower of a church seen afar over the level country amid the cluster of red roofs here and there a shadowy grove of venerable trees surrounding what was perhaps an hall though it looked more like the abode of some rich once too we saw the tower of a castle that of built by a but whether of the protector s family i cannot tell but the gentry do not appear to have settled in this tract of country nor is it to be wondered at since a lover of the picturesque would as soon think of settling in holland the river its canal like aspect all along and only in the latter part of its course does it to old boston become more	35
than wide enough for the little steamer to torn itself round at not more than twice that width the only memorable incident of our voyage happened when a mother duck was leading her little fleet of ave across the river just as our steamer went by stirring the quiet stream into great waves that lashed the banks on either side i saw the of the catastrophe and hurried to the stem of the boat to witness its since i could not possibly it the poor had uttered their baby and with all their tiny might to escape four of them i believe were washed aside and thrown off from the steamer s but the fifth must have gone under the whole length of the and never could have come up alive at last in mid we beheld the tall tower of saint s church three hundred feet high the same elevation as the tower of cathedral in the distance at about half past four we reached boston which name has been in the course of ages by the quick and english from s town and were taken by a cab to the in the market place it was the best hotel in town though a poor one enough and we were shown into a small stifled parlour dingy and scented with stale tobacco smoke tobacco smoke two days old for the waiter assured us that the room had not more recently been an exceedingly grim waiter he was apparently a genuine of the old of this english boston and quite as sour as those who people the daughter city in new england our parlour had the one recommendation of looking into the market place and affording a glimpse of the tall spire and noble old church in my first about the town chance led me to the river side at that quarter where the port is situated here were long buildings of an old fashioned aspect seemingly with windows in the high steep roofs the custom house found ample accommodation within an ordinary dwelling house two or three large were old home along the s brink which had here a stone margin another large and handsome was evidently finished and equipped for her first voyage the of another were on the stocks in a on the river still another while i was looking on came np the stream and lowered her from a foreign voyage an old man on the bank hailed her and inquired about her cargo but the people have such a queer way of talking english that i could not understand the reply farther down the river i saw a approaching rapidly under sail the whole scene made an odd impression of bustle and and decay and a remnant of wholesome life and i could not but contrast it with the mighty and activity of our own boston which was once the feeble infant of this old english town the latter perhaps almost stationary ever since that day as if the birth of such an offspring had taken away its own principle of growth i thought of long wharf and hall and washington street and the great elm and the state house and but yet began to feel at home in this good old town for its very name s sake as i never had before felt in england the next morning we came out in the early sunshine the sun must have been shining nearly four hours however for it was after eight o clock and strolled about the streets like people who had a right to be there the market place of boston is an irregular square into one end of which the of the church slightly projects the gates of the churchyard were open and free to all passengers and the common of the seems to lie to and fro across it it is paved according to english custom with flat and there are also raised or altar some of which have bearings on them one clergyman has caused himself and his wife to be buried right in the middle of the stone bordered path that the churchyard so that not an individual of the thousands who pass along this public way can help over him or her the scene to old boston was very in the morning san people going about their business in the day s freshness which was just as fresh here as in younger villages children with milk over the burial stones school boys playing leap with the altar the simple old town preparing itself for the day which would be like of other days that had passed over it but yet would be worth living through and down on the churchyard where were buried many generations whom it remembered in their time looked the stately tower of saint and it was good to see and think of such an age long giant the present epoch with a distant past and getting quite with human nature by being so connected with men s familiar knowledge and homely interests it is a noble tower and the evidently have pleasant homes in their hereditary nests among its windows and live lives flitting and about its and flying i should almost like to be a myself for the sake of living up there in front of the church not more than twenty yards off and with a low brick wall between flows the river on the hither bank a was washing his boat and another with her sail lazily half twisted lay on the opposite strand the stream at this point is about of such width that if the tall tower were to tumble over the flat on its face its top stone might perhaps reach the middle of the channel on the ther shore there is a line of antique looking houses with roofs of red tile and windows opening out of them some of these dwellings being	35
so ancient that the mr cotton subsequently our boston minister must have seen them with his own bodily eyes when he used to issue from the front after service indeed there must be very many houses here and even some streets that bear much the aspect that they did when the divine paced solemnly among them in our about town we went into a s shop to inquire if he had any description of boston for sale our old home he offered me or rather produced for inspection not supposing that i would buy it a history of the published by nearly forty years ago the showed himself a well informed and man and a local to whom a party of inquisitive strangers were a he had met with several americans who at various times had come on to this place and he had been in correspondence with others happening to have heard the name of one member of our party he showed us great courtesy and kindness and invited us into his inner where as he modestly intimated he kept a few articles which it might interest us to see so we went with him through the shop up stairs into the private part of his establishment and really it was one of the adventures i ever met with to upon this treasure of a man with his treasury of and veiled behind the front of a s shop in a very moderate line of village business the two rooms into which he introduced us were so crowded with articles that we were almost afraid to stir for fear of breaking some fragile thing that had been value for unknown centuries the apartment was hung round with pictures and old many of which were extremely rare that he was going to show us something very curious mr porter went into the next room and returned with a of fine linen embroidered with silk which so covered the linen that the general effect was as if the main texture were silken it was stained and seemed very old and had an ancient fragrance it was wrought all over with birds and flowers in a most delicate style of and among other devices more than once repeated was the m s being the of one of the most unhappy names that ever a woman bore this was embroidered by the hands of mary queen of during her imprisonment at castle and having evidently been a work of years she had doubtless shed many to old boston tears over it and wrought many thoughts and schemes into its texture along with the and flowers as a to this most precious our friend produced some of the of a former queen of presented hy her to captain cook it was a made of some delicate stuff and ornamented with feathers next he out a green silk waistcoat of very antique fashion trimmed the edges and pocket holes with a rich and delicate of gold and silver this as the possessor of the treasure proved hy tracing its till it came into his hands was once the of queen s lord hut that great must have heen a person of very moderate in the chest and waist for the garment was hardly more than a fit for a of eleven the smallest american of our party who tried on the gorgeous waistcoat then mr porter produced some curiously engraved drinking glasses with a view of saint s on one of them and other boston or domestic on the remaining two very done these crystal had heen a present long ago to an old master of the free school from his pupils and it is very rarely i imagine that a retired can exhibit such of gratitude and affection won from the victims of his rod our kind friend kept bringing out one unexpected and wholly thing after another as if he were a and had only to fling a private signal into the air and some attendant would hand forth any strange we might choose to ask for he was especially rich in drawings by the old masters producing two or three of exquisite delicacy by one by a head of and others in chalk or pen and ink by and hands almost as famous and besides what were shown us there seemed to be an endless supply of these art treasures in reserve on the wall hung a of never engraved representing him as a rather young man blooming and not it was the old home worldly face of a man fond of pleasure but that ugly keen sarcastic odd expression that we see in his only engraved portrait the picture is an original and must needs be very valuable and we wish it might be to some new and biography of a writer whose character the world has always treated with singular considering how much it owes to him there was likewise a portrait of s wife looking so haughty and that the wonder is not that he ultimately left her but how he ever contrived to live a week with such an awful woman after looking at these and a great many more things than i can remember above stairs we went down to a parlour where this wonderful opened an old cabinet containing drawers and looking just fit to be the of such as were stored np in it he appeared to possess more treasures than he himself knew of or knew where to find but here and there he brought forth things new and old rose victoria crowns gold angels double sovereigns of george iv two guinea pieces of george ie a marriage of the first napoleon only forty five of which were ever struck off and of which even the british museum does not contain a specimen like this in gold a brass three or inches in of a emperor together with and i know not what	35
besides there was a green silk from the of queen mary s bed at palace there were illuminated antique latin and what may seem of especial interest to the historian a secret book of queen elizabeth in manuscript written for aught i know by her own hand on examination however it proved to contain not secrets of state but for dishes drinks and all such matters of the toilet and domestic among which we were by the title of one of the how to kill a fellow quickly we never doubted that bloody queen might often have had occasion for such a but wondered at her to old boston and at attending to these necessities in such a way the is we had read amiss and the queen had amiss the word was a sort of not fellow oar hospitable friend now made us drink a glass of wine as old and genuine as the of his cabinet and while it we tried to excite his envy by telling of various things interesting to an and which we had seen in the course of our travels about england we spoke for instance of a bound in solid gold and set around with jewels but of such value as no setting could for it was exquisitely illuminated throughout by the hand of himself we mentioned a little silver case which once contained a portion of the heart of louis xiv nicely done up in but to the owner s horror and astonishment dean the morsel into his mouth and swallowed it we told about the black letter prayer book of king charles the used by him upon the taking which into our hands it opened of itself at the communion service and there on the left hand page appeared a spot about as large as a sixpence of a or hue a drop of the king s blood had fallen there mr porter now accompanied us to the church but first leading us to a vacant spot of ground where old john cotton s had stood till a very short time since according to our friend s description it was a humble habitation of the cottage order built of brick with a roof the site is now rudely in and cultivated as a vegetable garden in the right hand aisle of the church there is an ancient chapel which at the time of our visit was in process of restoration and was to be to mr cotton whom these english people consider as the founder of our american boston it would contain a painted memorial window in honour of the old minister a festival in of the event was to take place in the july to which i had myself received an invitation but i knew old home too well the pains and incurred by an invited at public in england to accept it it ought to be recorded and it seems to have made a very kindly impression on our here that five hundred pounds had been contributed by persons in the united states principally in boston towards the cost of the memorial window and the repair and restoration of the chapel we emerged from the chapel mr porter approached us with the to whom he kindly introduced us and then took his leave may a stranger s rest upon him he is a most pleasant man rather i imagine a than an for he seemed to value the queen of s bag as highly as queen mary s embroidered and to have an appetite for everything strange and rare would that we could fill up his shelves and drawers if there are any vacant spaces left with the trifles that have dropped out of time s carpet bag or give him the itself to take out what he will the looked about thirty years old a gentleman evidently assured of his position as of the established church invariably are comfortable and well to do a scholar and a christian and fit to be a bishop knowing how to make the most of life without prejudice to the life to come i was glad to see such a model english priest so with an old english church he kindly and courteously did the honours showing us quite round the interior giving us all the information that we required and then leaving us to the quiet enjoyment of what we came to see the interior of saint s is very fine and satisfactory as stately almost as a cathedral and has been repaired so far as were necessary in a and noble style the great eastern window is of modem painted glass but is the richest and tenderest modem window that have ever seen the art of painting these glowing in perfection being one that the world has lost the vast clear space of the interior church delighted me there was no screen nothing between the to old boston id the altar to break the long even the organ stood though it by and by made us aware of its presence y a melodious roar around the walls there were old and a stone coffin and an knight f st john and an lady each at full as large as life and in perfect preservation except or a slight modern touch at the tips of their noses in the we saw a great deal of work and carved especially about the seats formerly appropriated to the which were so contrived as to tumble own with a tremendous crash if the happened to all asleep we now to climb into the upper regions up we winding and still winding round the circular stairs till ve came to the gallery beneath the stone roof of the tower whence we could look down and see the raised and my lying on one of the steps and looking about as big as i pocket handkerchief then up again up	35
on a fine morning in september we set out on an excursion to the and myself being seated on the box of onr horse carriage two more of the party in the and the others less agreeably inside we had no coachman bnt two in short scarlet and leather breeches with top boots each of a horse so that all the way along when not otherwise attracted we had the interesting spectacle of their np and down in the saddle it was a sunny and beautiful day a specimen of the perfect english weather just warm enough for comfort indeed a little too warm perhaps in the sun yet retaining a mere or suspicion of which made it all the more the country between oxford and is not particularly interesting being almost level or very slightly nor is a rich part of england we saw one or two and i especially remember a picturesque old house at a gate and altogether the scenery had an aspect of english life but there was nothing very memorable till we reached and stopped to water our horses at the black bear this neighbourhood is called new but has by no means the brand new appearance of an american town being a large village of stone houses most of them pretty well time worn and weather stained the black bear is an ancient inn large and respectable with old home and intricate passages and and old pictures and hanging in the and apartments we ordered a lunch the most delightful of english institutions next to dinner to he ready against our and then resumed our drive to the park gate of stands close to the end of the village street of immediately on passing through its we saw the stately palace in the distance hut made a wide circuit of the park approaching it this noble park contains three thousand acres of land and is fourteen miles in having heen in part a royal domain it was granted to the family it contains many trees of antiquity and has heen the haunt of game and deer for centuries we saw in feeding in the open and and the tossed their and away not hut only shy and as we drove hy it is a magnificent pleasure ground not too kept nor within rule hut vast enough to have hack into nature again after all the pains that the landscape of queen anne s time on it when the domain of was laid out the great knotted trunks of the old oaks do not now look as if man had much with their growth and the trees of later date that were set out in the great duke s time are arranged on the plan of the order of in which the illustrious commander his troops at hut the ground covered is so extensive and the trees now so luxuriant that the spectator is not conscious of their standing in military array as if had summoned them together hy heat of drum the effect must have heen very formal a hundred and fifty years ago hut has ceased to he so although the trees i presume have kept their ranks with even more fidelity than s did one of the park on rode our carriage pointing out the choice views and glimpses at the palace as we drove through the domain there is a very near oxford large artificial lake to say the truth it seemed to me worthy of being compared with the lakes at least if not with those of which was created by brown and the basin that he for it just as if nature had poured these broad waters into one of her own valleys it is a most beautiful object at a distance and not less so on its immediate banks for the water is very pure being supplied by a small river of the which was turned for the purpose and owes not merely this water scenery but almost all its other beauties to the contrivance of man its natural features are not striking but art has effected such wonderful things that the visitor would never guess that nearly the whole scene was but the embodied thought of a human mind a skilful painter hardly does more for his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape gardener the the of trees has done for the monotonous surface of making the most of every flinging down a a big lump of earth out of a giant s hand wherever it was needed putting in beauty as often as there was a for it opening to every point that deserved to be seen and throwing a veil of impenetrable foliage around what ought to be hidden and then to be sure the lapse of a century has softened the harsh outline of man s labours and has given the place back to nature again with the addition of what science could achieve after driving a good way we came to a tower and adjoining house which used to be the residence of the of park who held charge of the property for the king before the duke of possessed it the keeper opened the door for us and in the entrance hall we found various things that had to do with the chase and sports we mounted the staircase through several stories up to the top of the tower whence there was a view of the of oxford and of points much farther off very seen however as is usually the case with the misty distances of england to the ground floor old home we were ushered into the room in which died the wicked earl of who was of the park in charles ii s time it is a low and bare little room with a window in front and a smaller one behind and in the entrance room there are the remains	35
of an old beneath the of which perhaps may have made the penitent end that bishop to him i hardly know what it is in this poor fellow s character which affects us with greater tenderness on his behalf than for all the other of his day who seem to have been neither better nor worse than himself i rather suspect that he had a human heart which never quite died out of him and the warmth of which is still faintly perceptible amid the which he left behind if such good fortune ever a man i should choose this lodge for my own residence with the room of the tower for a study and all the seclusion of cultivated beneath to in there being no such possibility we drove on catching glimpses of the palace in new points of view and by and by came to s well the particular tradition that fair with it is not now in my memory but if ever lived and loved and ever had her abode in the of it may weu be believed that she and henry sometimes sat beside this spring it out from a bank through some old stone work and its little about as abundant as one might turn out of a large into a pool whence it away towards the lake which is not far removed the water is exceedingly cold and as pure as the was not and is fancied to possess virtues like springs at which saints have their thirst there were two or three old women and some children in attendance with which they present to visitors of the consecrated water but most of us filled the for ourselves and drank thence we drove to the pillar which was erected in honour of the great duke and on the summit of which he near oxford stands in a garb holding a winged of victory ji his hand as an ordinary man might hold a bird the is i know not how many feet high but lofty enough any rate to r above the rest of the world and to be visible a long way off and it is so placed in reference to other objects that wherever the hero wandered about his grounds and especially as he issued from his mansion he must inevitably have been reminded of his glory in until i came to i never had so positive and material an idea of what fame really is of what the admiration of his country can do for a successful warrior as i carry away with me and shall always retain unless he had the moral force of a thousand men together his beholding himself everywhere the entire soil growing in the woods rippling and gleaming in the water and the very air with his greatness must have been swollen within him like the liver of a goose on the huge into the of the column the entire act of parliament on the duke of and his posterity is engraved in deep letters painted black on the marble ground the pillar stands exactly a mile from the principal front of the palace in a straight line with the precise centre of its entrance hall so that as already said it was the duke s principal object of contemplation we now proceeded to the palace gate which is a great of and state giving into a spacious a stout elderly and rather surly footman in livery appeared at the entrance and took possession of whatever and he could get hold of in order to claim sixpence on our departure this had a somewhat ludicrous effect there is much public against the meanness of the present duke in his arrangements for the admission of visitors chiefly of course his native countrymen to view the magnificent palace which their forefathers bestowed upon his own in many cases it seems hard that a private abode should be exposed to the intrusion of the public merely because the proprietor has in our old home or created a splendour which general that his home loses its and seclusion for the reason that it is than other men s houses but in the case of the have certainly an claim to admission both because the fame of its first is a national possession and because the mansion was a national gift one of the purposes of which was to be a token of gratitude and glory to the english people themselves if a man chooses to be illustrious he is very likely to some little himself and them on his posterity nevertheless his present grace of absolutely the public claim above suggested and with a thrill of which even the hero of himself did not set the example tickets admitting six persons at ten shillings if only one person enters the gate he must pay for six and if there are seven in company two tickets are required to admit them the attendants who meet you everywhere in the park and palace expect on their own private account their noble master the ten shillings but to be sure the visitor gets his money s worth since it him the right to speak just as freely of the duke of as if he were the keeper of the gardens passing through a on the opposite side of the we had before us the noble classic front of the palace with its two projecting wings we ascended the lofty steps of the and were admitted into the entrance hall the height of which from floor to ceiling is not much less than seventy feet being the entire elevation of the edifice the hall is lighted by windows in the upper story and it being a clear bright day was very radiant with lofty amid which a swallow was flitting to and fro the ceiling the above was written two or three years ago or more and the of that day	35
cannot have been than this private garden of it three hundred acres and by the artful of he paths and the and the interposed of trees is made to appear the of a whole country are compressed into this space as fields of roses go to the of an f precious the world within that garden fence is not he same weary and dusty world with which we outside mortals re it is a finer more harmonious nature old home and the great mother herself kindly to the gardener s will knowing that he will make evident the half traits of her and ideal and allow her to take all the credit and praise to herself i doubt whether there is ever any winter within that any clouds except the ones of summer the sunshine that i saw there rests upon my recollection of it as if it were eternal the and are like the memory of places where one has wandered when first in love what a good and happy life might be spent in a paradise like this and yet at that very moment the duke ah i have let out a secret which i meant to keep to myself but the ten shillings must pay for all was in that very garden for the guide told us so and our young people not to be and if in a condition for was thinking of nothing nobler than how many ten shilling tickets had that day been sold as i am i should still love to think that lead noble lives and that all this stately and beautiful may serve to them a little way above the rest of us fail to do so the disgrace falls equally upon the whole race of mortals as on themselves because it proves that no more favourable conditions of existence would our vices and weaknesses how sad if this be so i even a herd of swine eating the under those magnificent oaks of would be and of better habits than ordinary swine well all that i have written is meagre as a description of and i hate to leave it without some more adequate expression of the noble edifice with its rich domain all as i saw them in that beautiful sunshine for if a day had been chosen out of a hundred years it could not have been a finer one but i must give up the attempt only further remarking that the finest trees here were of which i saw one and there may have been many such immense in and not less than three centuries old i likewise saw a vast heap of laurel two hundred feet in all growing from one root and the gardener near oxford show ns another growth of twice that size if le great duke himself had heen in that spot his heroic could not have heen the seed of a more plentiful crop of we now went hack to the black bear and sat down to a old of which we ate and drank in the ood old english fashion a due proportion of various delightful a stranger in england in his to various of the country may learn little in regard to for the ordinary english taste is simple though sound in hat particular hut he makes acquaintance with more varieties f hop and liquor than he previously supposed to exist a sort of foaming stuff called hop champagne hich is very and appears to he a between lie and another excellent for warm is by mixing brown stout or bitter ale with beer the foam of which up the heavier liquor from ts depths forming a compound of singular vivacity and body but of all things ever from unless t be the ale of cambridge which i drank long and which has celebrated in immortal commend me to the as the oxford scholars it in honour of the jovial who first taught these how to their favourite john has given his very heart to this admirable liquor t is a superior kind of ale the prince of with a richer and a spirit than you can find elsewhere in his weary world much have we been strengthened and encouraged by the potent blood of the a few days after our excursion to the same party jet forth in two flies on a tour to some other places of interest n the neighbourhood of oxford it was again a lay and in truth every day of late had been so pleasant hat it seemed as if each must be the very last of such perfect and yet the long succession had given us confidence n as many more to come the climate of england has been its and are not old home nearly so offensive as englishmen tell as their climate the only attribute of their country which they and the really good summer weather is the very kindest sweetest that the world knows we first drove to the village of about six miles from oxford and alighted at the entrance of the here while waiting for the keys we looked at an old wall of the churchyard piled up of loose gray stones which are said to have once formed a portion of hall celebrated in s ballad and scott s romance the hall must have been in very close vicinity to the church not more than twenty yards off and i through the long grass of the churchyard and tried to peep over the wall in hopes to discover some and remains of the edifice but the wall was just too high to be overlooked and difficult p to over without tumbling down some of the stones so i took the word of one of our party who had been here before that there is nothing interesting on the other side the churchyard is in rather a neglected state and seems not to have	35
been for the benefit of the parson s cow it contains a good many of which i remember only some upright of slate to individuals of the name of soon a woman arrived with the key of the church door and we entered the simple old edifice which has the pavement of the sturdy pillars of low arches and other ordinary characteristics of an english country church one or two probably those of the of the neighbourhood were better furnished than the rest but all in a modest style near the high altar in the place there is an ponderous tomb of blue marble built against the wall and surmounted by a carved of the same material and over the tomb and beneath the are two such as we oftener see into a pavement on these are engraved the figures of a gentleman in and a lady in an antique each about a foot high devoutly kneeling in prayer and there is a near oxford long latin likewise cat into the brass the highest on the character of who with his dame lies beneath this his is the figure that above and if sir walter scott ever saw this tomb he must have had an greater than common in to venture on in such hues as black i in the romance for my part i read the inscription in fall faith and believe the poor deceased gentleman to be a wronged individual with good grounds for bringing an of in the courts above but the circumstance lightly as we treat it has its serious moral what nonsense it is this anxiety which so us about our good fame or our bad after death if it of the slightest real moment our would have l een placed by providence more in our own power and less in other people s than we now find them to be if poor happens to have met sir walter in the other i doubt whether he has ever thought it worth while to complain of the latter s we did not remain long in the church as it contains nothing else of interest and driving through the village we passed a pretty large and rather antique looking ion bearing the sign of the bear and staff it could not be so old however by at least a hundred years as s time nor is there any other object to remind the visitor of the age unless it be a few ancient cottages that are perhaps of still earlier date is not nearly so large a village nor a place of such mark as one om its romantic and fame but being still by railway it has retained more of a character than we often find in english country towns in this retired the road is narrow and bordered with grass and sometimes interrupted by gates the hedges grow in there is not that close shaven neatness that the ordinary english landscape the whole scene the idea of seclusion and old home we met no travellers whether on foot or otherwise i cannot very distinctly trace out this day but after leaving a few miles behind ns i think we came to a over the thames where an old woman served as and pulled a boat across by means of a rope stretching from shore to shore onr two being thus placed on the other side we resumed our drive first glancing however at the old woman s antique cottage with its stone floor and the circular settle round the kitchen fireplace which was quite in the english style we next stopped at where we were received at the with a hospitality which we take delight in describing if it were to make public acknowledgment of the private and personal which we never failed to find ready for our needs an american in an english house will soon adopt the opinion that the english are the very kindest people on earth and will retain that idea as long at least as he remains on the inner side of the threshold their is of a kind that strongly while yon keep beyond a certain limit but as forcibly if you get within the magic line it was at this place if i remember right that i heard a gentleman ask a friend of mine whether he was the author of the letter a and after some consideration for he did not seem to recognize his own book at first under this improved title our responded doubtfully that he believed so the gentleman proceeded to inquire whether our friend had spent much time in america evidently thinking that he must have been caught young and have had a of english breeding at least if not birth to speak the language so tolerably and appear so much like other people this is exceedingly queer and of very frequent occurrence and is quite as much a characteristic of men of education and culture as of is a very curious old place it was formerly the seat of the ancient family of which now has its principal abode at a few miles off the is a of the family mansion or castle other portions of which are close at hand for across the garden rise two gray towers both of them venerable and for more than their antiquity one of these towers in its entire capacity from height to depth constituted the kitchen of the ancient castle and is still used for domestic purposes although it has not nor ever had a chimney or we might rather say it is itself one vast chimney with a hearth of thirty feet square and a and of the same size there are two huge within and the interior walls of the tower are blackened with the smoke that for centuries used to forth from them and climb upward seeking an exit through some wide air holes in the roof full	35
seventy feet above these lofty were capable of being so arranged with reference to the wind that the are said to have been seldom troubled by the smoke and here no doubt they were accustomed to roast oxen whole with as little fuss and as a modem cook would roast a fowl the inside of the tower is very dim and sombre being nothing but rough stone walls lighted only from the above mentioned and has still a of smoke and the of the fires and of generations that have passed away the range of domestic economy lies between an american and the ancient kitchen seventy dizzy feet in height and all one fireplace of now the place being without a parallel in england and therefore necessarily beyond the experience of an american it is somewhat remarkable that while we stood gazing at this kitchen i was haunted and perplexed by an idea that somewhere or other i had seen just this strange spectacle before the height the blackness the dismal void before my eyes seemed as familiar as the neatness of my grandmother s kitchen only my unaccountable memory of the scene was lighted up with an image of lurid fires blazing all round the dim interior circuit of the tower i had never before had old home so an attack as i not but suppose it d that odd state of mind wherein we and some scene or incident of which the now passing appears to be bat the echo and though the explanation of the mystery did not for some time occur to me i may as well conclude the matter here letter of pope s addressed to the duke of there is an account of as i now find the name is not mentioned where he resided while a part of the it is one of the most pieces of description in the language playful and picturesque with fine touches of humorous pathos and as perfect a picture as ever was drawn of a decayed english house and among other rooms most of which have down and disappeared he off the grim aspect of this kitchen which moreover he with engaging satan himself as head cook who the that and over the fires this and others relative to his abode here were very to my earlier reading and remaining still at the bottom ef my memory caused the weird and ghostly sensation that came over me on beholding the real spectacle that had been made so vivid to my imagination our next visit was to the church which stands close by and is quite as ancient as the of the castle in chapel or side aisle to the are some very interesting family monuments and among them on a the figure of an armed knight of the party who was slain in the wars of the his features dress and are painted in still wonderfully and there still the symbol of the red the for which he fought and died his head rests on a marble or and on the tomb lies the veritable it is to be presumed which he wore in battle a ponderous iron case with the complete and of the that once covered it the crest is a large not of metal but of wood ery possibly this was but an of ms tomb and indeed it seems strange that it has not been stolen before now especially in s time when were little respected and when was in request however it is needless to dispute with the dead knight about the identity of his iron pot and we may as well allow it to be the very same that so often gave him the headache in his lifetime leaning against the wall at the foot of the tomb is the shaft of a spear with a tattered and utterly banner to it the banner beneath which he his followers in the field as it was absolutely to pieces i tore off one little bit no bigger than a finger nail and put it into my waistcoat pocket but seeking it subsequently it was not to be found on the opposite side of the little chapel two or three yards from this tomb is another monument on which lie side by side one of the same race of and his lady the tradition of the family is that this knight was the standard bearer of henry of in the battle of field and a banner supposed to be the same that he carried now over his it is just such a silk rag as the one already described the knight has the order of the on his knee and the lady wears it on her left arm an odd place enough for a but if worn in its proper locality it could not be visible the complete preservation and good condition of these statues even to the of the and their very noses the most part of a marble man as of a living one are miraculous except in westminster abbey among the of the kings i have seen none so well preserved perhaps they owe it to the loyalty of diffused throughout its neighbourhood by the influence of the university during the great civil war and the rule of the parliament it speaks well too for the upright and kindly character of this old that the among whom they had lived for ages did not their when it might have been done with g old home there are other and more recent of the ear courts one of which is the of the last lord who died a hundred years ago his figure like those of his i ancestors lies on the top of his clad not in bat u in his as a peer the title is now extinct bnt the family in a younger branch and still holds this estate	35
though they have long since quitted it as a residence we next went to see the ancient fish to the mansion and which used to be of vast importance to the family in catholic times and when fish was not otherwise there are two or three or more of these one of which is of very respectable size large enough indeed to be really a picturesque object with its grass green borders and the trees drooping over it and the towers of the castle and the church reflected within the depths of its smooth mirror a sweet fragrance as it were of ancient time and present quiet and seclusion was breathing all around the sunshine of to day had a mellow charm of antiquity in its brightness these are said still to breed abundance of such fish as love deep and quiet waters but i saw only some and one or two which were lying among the weeds on the top of the water and bathing themselves at once i mentioned that there were two towers remaining of the old castle the one containing the kitchen we have visited the other still more interesting is next to be described it is some seventy feet high gray and reverend but in excellent repair though i could not perceive that anything had been done to it the story was once the family chapel and is of course still a consecrated spot at one comer of the tower is a circular within which a narrow staircase with worn steps of stone winds round and round as it upward giving access to a chamber on each floor and finally emerging on the roof ascending this stair and arriving at the third story we entered a chamber not large though occupying the whole area of the tower and lighted by a window on each side it was rom floor to ceiling with dark oak and liad a little fireplace in ne of the comers the window panes were small and set in the of this room is that it was once the of pope and that he here wrote a part of he translation of and likewise no doubt the admirable to which i have referred above the room once contained a record by himself scratched with a diamond on one of tlie window panes since removed for to where it was shown me that he had here finished the fifth book of the on such a day a poet has a fragrance about him such as no other human being is gifted withal it is and for to everything that he has touched i was not impressed at with any sense that the mighty duke still haunted the palace that was created for him but here a century and a half we are still conscious of the presence of that little figure of queen anne s time although he was merely a casual guest in the old tower during one or two summer months however brief the time and slight the connection his spirit cannot be so long as the tower stands in my mind moreover pope or any other person with an available claim is right in to the spot dead or alive for i never saw a chamber that i should like better to so comfortably small in such a safe and inaccessible seclusion and with a varied landscape from each window one of them looks upon the church close at hand and down into the green churchyard extending almost to the foot of the tower the others have views and far over a gently tract of country if desirous of a elevation about a dozen more steps of the stair will bring the to the summit of the tower where pope used to come no doubt in the summer evenings and peep poor little that he was through the of the from we drove i forget how far to a point where a boat was waiting for us upon the thames or some other stream for i am ashamed to confess my ignorance our old home of the precise we were at my rate some miles above oxford and i should imagine pretty near one of the sources of england s mighty river it ms little more than wide enough for the boat with extended can to pass shallow too and bordered with and weeds which in some places quite the surface of the river from bank to bank the shores were flat and and sometimes the told us are bj the rise of the stream the water looked clean and pure but not particularly transparent though enough so to show us that the bottom is v much weed grown and i was told that the weed is an american production brought to england with of timber and now threatening to choke up the thames and other english rivers i wonder it does not try its powers upon the the or the not to speak of the st or the it was an open boat with seats comfortably our party the day continued sunny and warm and perfectly still the well trained to his business managed the oars and vigorously and ve went down the stream quite as swiftly as it was desirable to go the scene being so pleasant and the passing hours so thoroughly agreeable the river grew a little wider and deeper perhaps as we glided on but was still an stream hi it had a good deal more than a hundred miles to through before it should bear on its bosom and reflect palaces and towers and parliament houses and dingy and sordid piles of various structure as it rolled to and fro with the tide london asunder not in truth that i ever saw any edifice whatever reflected in its breast when the stream as we beheld it now is swollen into the thames at london	35
once on our voyage we had to land while the and some other persons drew our round some which we could not otherwise have passed another time the boat went through a lock we meanwhile stepped ashore to examine the of the old of where fair secluded herself after being separated from her royal lover there is a long line of wall and a shattered tower at one of the angles the whole much over indeed with which is rooted inside of the walls the is now i believe held in lease by the city of oxford which has converted its into a the gate was under lock and key so that we could merely look at the outside and soon resumed our places in the boat at three o clock or or sooner or later for i took little heed of time and only wished that these delightful wanderings might last for ever we reached folly bridge at oxford here we took possession of a spacious with a house in it and a comfortable dining room or drawing room within the house and a level roof on which we could sit at ease or dance if so inclined these are common at oxford some very splendid ones being owned by the students of the different or by clubs they are drawn by horses like canal boats and a horse being attached to our own he trotted off at a reasonable pace and we slipped through the water behind him with a gentle and pleasant motion which save for the constant of cultivated scenery was like no motion at all it was life without the trouble of living nothing was ever more quietly agreeable in this happy state of mind and body we gazed at christ church meadows as we passed and at the receding and towers of oxford and on a good deal of pleasant variety along the banks young men or fishing troops of naked boys bathing as if this were in uie simplicity of the golden age country houses cottages water side all with something fresh about them as not being sprinkled with the dust of the highway we were a large party now for a number of additional guests had joined us at folly bridge and we poets scholars painters men and women of renown dear friends genial open hearted englishmen all onward our old home together like the wise ones of in a bowl i remember not a single annoyance except indeed that a swarm of came aboard of ns and alighted on the head of one of our gentlemen attracted by the scent of the which he had been rubbing into his hair he was the only victim and his small trouble the one little flaw in our day s felicity to put us in mind that we were mortal meanwhile a table had been laid in the interior of our and spread with cold ham cold fowl cold pigeon pie cold beef and other substantial cheer such as the english love and too besides and cakes and and not forgetting of course a goodly provision of port and champagne and bitter ale which is like mother s milk to an englishman and soon grows equally acceptable to his american cousin by the time these matters had been properly attended to we had arrived at that part of the thames which passes by a estate belonging to the and the present residence of the family here we landed and climbing a steep slope from the river side paused a moment or two to look at an object called the the purport of which i do not well understand thence we proceeded onward through the loveliest park and scenery i ever saw and under as beautiful a declining sunshine as heaven ever shed over earth to the stately as we here cross a private threshold it is not to pursue my feeble narrative of this delightful day with the same freedom as heretofore so perhaps i may as well bring it to a close i may mention however that i saw the library a fine large apartment hung round with portraits of eminent literary men principally of the last century most of whom were familiar guests of the the house itself is about eighty years old and is built in the classic style as if the family had been anxious to as as possible from the of their old abode at the grounds were laid out in part by oxford brown and seemed to me even more than those of the poet a friend of the house gave the design of a portion of the garden of the whole place i will not be of my rude praise but be bold to say that it appeared to me as perfect as anything earthly can be utterly and entirely finished as if the years and generations had done all that the hearts and minds of the successive owners could contrive for a spot they dearly loved such homes as are among the splendid results of long hereditary possession and we whose melt away like new fallen snow in a spring morning must content ourselves with our many advantages for this one so apparently desirable to the fer projecting selfishness of our nature we are certain never to it must not be supposed nevertheless that is one of the great show places of england it is merely a fa ir specimen of the better class of country seats and has a hundred rivals and many in the features of beauty and manifold comfort which most impressed me a moderate man might be content with such a home that is all and now i take leave of oxford without even an attempt to describe it there being no literary faculty or conceivable by me which can avail to put it or even tolerably upon paper it must remain	35
its own sole expression and those whose sad fortune it may be never to behold it have no better resource than to dream about gray weather stained ivy grown wrought with quaint ornament and standing around grassy where walks have echoed to the quiet footsteps of twenty generations and gardens of luxurious repose with of foliage and lit up with sunny glimpses through of great boughs towers and each with its history and legend dimly magnificent with painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly hues creating an atmosphere of richest gloom old home vast college halls high and round with portraits of the men in every age whom the university has to be illustrious long of where the wisdom and learned folly of all time is we throw in this feature by way of and because it would not be english oxford without its beef and beer with huge capable of a hundred joints at once and where rows of piled up and with that mighty which is the true milk of make au these things vivid in your dream and you will never know nor believe how inadequate is the result to represent even the merest outside of oxford we feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this article without making our grateful by name to a gentleman whose overflowing kindness was the main condition of au our sight and as will always be our recollection of oxford and its neighbourhood we partly suspect that it owes much of its colouring to the genial medium through which the objects were presented to us to the kindly magic of a hospitality within our experience in the quality of making the guest contented with his host with himself and everything about him he has mingled his image with onr remembrance of the of oxford some op the haunts op burns we left at a little past eleven and within the were at green thence we rushed onward into scotland through a flat and dreary tract of country consisting mainly of desert and where probably the moss were accustomed to take refuge after their into england anon however the hills themselves up to view occasionally a height which might almost be called in about two hours we reached and alighted at the station there chill as the summer is to be we found it an awfully hot day not a whit less so than the day before but we through the burning sunshine up into the town inquiring our way to the residence of the street leading from the station is called street and at its farther extremity we read street on a comer house the avenue thus having been formerly known as hole it is a vile lane paved with small hard stones from side to side and bordered by cottages or mean houses of stone joining one to another along the whole length of the street with not a tree of course or a blade of grass between the stones the narrow lane was as hot as and with a genuine scotch being with children and altogether in a state of although some women seemed to be hopelessly the of their wretched dwellings i never saw an of a town less fit for a poet s residence or in which it would be more miserable for any man of to spend his days our old home we asked for s dwelling and a woman pointed across the street to a two story house of stone and like its neighbours but perhaps of a little more respectable aspect than most of them though i hesitate in saying so it was not a separate structure but under the same continuous roof with the next there was an inscription on the door bearing no reference to but indicating thai the house was now occupied by a ragged or school on knocking we were instantly admitted by a servant girl who smiled when we told our errand and showed us into a low and very plain parlour not more than twelve or fifteen feet square a young woman who seemed to be a teacher in the school soon appeared and told ns that this had been s usual sitting room and that he had written many of his songs here she then led us up a narrow staircase into a little over the parlour connecting with it there is a very small room or closet which used as a study and the bed chamber itself was the one where he slept in his later life time and in which he died at last altogether it is an exceedingly place for a pastoral and rural poet to live or die in even more unsatisfactory than s house which has a certain homely that with the of the abode before us the narrow lane the stones and the of wretched are to remember and the steam of them such is our human weakness might almost make the poet s memory less fragrant as already observed it was an hot day after leaving the house we found our way into the principal street of the town which it may be fair to say is of very different aspect from the wretched above described entering a hotel in which as a guide book assured us prince charles edward had once spent a night we rested and refreshed ourselves and then set forth in quest of the of coming to st church we saw a man digging a some of the of burns grave and out of the hole he let ns into the churchyard which was crowded full of monuments their general shape and construction are peculiar to scotland being a perpendicular of marble or other stone within a of the same material somewhat resembling the frame of a looking glass and all over the churchyard these rise to the height of ten fifteen or twenty feet forming quite	35
an imposing collection of monuments but inscribed with names of small general significance it was easy indeed to ascertain the rank of those who slept below for in scotland it is the custom to put the occupation of the buried personage as on his as another peculiarity wives are buried under their maiden names instead of those of their husbands thus giving a disagreeable impression that the married pair have each other an eternal farewell on the edge of the grave there was a through this crowded churchyard sufficiently well worn to guide us to the grave of but a woman followed behind us who it appeared kept the key of the and was privileged to show it to strangers the monument is a sort of temple with and a dome covering a space of about twenty feet square it was formerly open to all the of the scotch atmosphere but is now protected and shut in by large squares of rough glass each pane being of the size of one whole side of the structure the woman unlocked the door and admitted us into the interior into the floor of the is the of the very same that was laid over his grave by before this monument was built displayed against the surrounding wall is a marble statue of at the plough with the genius of the to turn poet it was not a very piece of work for the plough was better than the man and the man though heavy and was more effective than the goddess our guide informed us that an old man of ninety who knew this statue to be very like the original old the bones of the poet and of and of of their children lie in the vault over which we stood ou guide who was intelligent in her own plain way and agreeable to talk withal said that the vault was opened about three weeks ago on occasion of the burial of the eldest son d the poet s bones were disturbed and the dry skull once so over with powerful thought and bright and tender was taken away and kept for several by a doctor it has since been deposited in a new leaden coffin and restored to the vault we learned that there is a daughter of s eldest son daughters likewise of the two younger sons and besides these an posterity by the eldest son who appears to have been of life in his younger days he inherited his father s with some faint shadow i have also understood of the great qualities which have made the world tender of his father s vices and weaknesses we listened readily enough to this paltry gossip but found that it robbed the poet s memory of some of the reverence that was its due indeed this talk over his grave had very much the same tendency and effect as the home scene of his life which we had been visiting just previously beholding his poor mean dwelling and its surroundings and his outward life and earthly from these one does not so much wonder that the people of that day should have failed to recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a drunken clothed and man with associates of character and as his only occupation the which he too often tasted with as we needs must in his plea against the world let us try to do the world a justice too it is easier to know and honour a poet when his fame has taken shape in the of marble than when the actual man comes staggering before you with the sordid of his daily life for my part i chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned so brightly while he was stiu living there must have been something very grand in some op the haunts op ms immediate presence some strangely impressive characteristic in his natural to have him to like a so soon as we went back through the we saw a spot where nearly four hundred inhabitants of were buried during the year and also some curious old monuments with raised letters the on which were not sufficiently to induce us to puzzle them out but i they mark the resting places of old some of whom were killed by and his fellow st michael s church is of red and was built about a hundred years ago on an old catholic foundation our guide admitted us into it and showed us in the porch a very pretty little marble figure of a child asleep with a ever the lower part from beneath which appeared its two baby feet it was truly a sweet little statue and the woman told us that it represented a child of the and that the l here still in its marble infancy had died more than twenty six years ago many ladies she said especially as had ever lost a child had shed tears over it it was very pleasant to think of the the best of his genius and art to re create his tender child in stone and to make the representation as soft and sweet as the original but the conclusion of the story has something that with our awakened a gentleman from london had seen the statue and was so much delighted with it that he bought it of the father artist after it had lain above a quarter of a in the church porch so this was not the real tender image that came out of the father s heart he had sold thai truest one for a hundred guineas and this mere copy to replace it the first figure was entirely naked in its earthly and spiritual innocence the copy as i have said above has a over the lower limbs but after all if we come to the truth of the matter the sleeping baby may be as in the drawing	35
room of a as in a cold and dreary church porch we went into the church and found it very and old home naked without altar and having its floor quite covered with wooden the woman led us to a on one of the side and telling us that it used to he s family showed us his seat which is in the comer hy the aisle it is so situated that a sturdy pillar hid him from the pulpit and from the minister s eye for was no great friends with the ministers said she this touch his seat the pillar and himself nodding in sermon time or keenly observant of profane things brought him before us to the life in the comer seat of the next right before and not more than two feet off sat the young lady on whom the poet saw that which he has in song we were enough to ask the lady s name but the good woman could not tell it this was the last thing which we saw in worthy of record and it ought to be noted that our guide refused some money which my companion offered her because i had already paid her what she deemed sufficient at the railway station we spent more than a weary hour waiting for the train which at last came up and took us to we got into an the only conveyance to be had and drove about a mile to the village where we established ourselves at the hotel one of the country which we have found in great britain the town of a place more of than almost any other consists of a street or two of cottages mostly and with roofs it has nothing or rural in the immediate village and is as ugly a place as mortal man could contrive to make or to render through a succession of generations the fashion of the village street and one shabby house on the end of another quite out all and but i presume we are not likely to see a more genuine old scotch village such as they used to be in s time and long before than this of the church stands about up the street and is built of red of the haunts op burns simple in its architecture with a square tower and in this sacred edifice and its churchyard was the scene of one of s most characteristic productions the holy fair almost directly opposite its gate across the village street stands s inn where the jolly beggars the latter is a two story red stone house looking old hut hy no means like a drunken it has small old fashioned windows and may well have stood for centuries though seventy or eighty years ago when was with it i should fancy it might have heen something than a the whole town of looks rusty and time worn even the houses of which there are several and darkened hy the general aspect of the place when we arrived all the wretched little dwellings seemed to have forth their into the warm summer evening was with on the most familiar terms the bare legged children or quarrelled and came freely moreover and looked into the window of our parlour when we ventured out we were followed by the gaze of the old town people standing in their old women their heads from the chamber windows and men idle on saturday at e en after their week s hard labour at the street comers merely to stare at our selves except in some remote little town of italy where besides the inhabitants had the intelligible of i have never been honoured with nearly such an amount of public notice the next my companion put me to shame by attending church after vainly me to do the like and it being sunday and my poor friend being into the farther end of a closely filled he was forced to stay through the preaching of four several sermons and came back perfectly exhausted and desperate he was somewhat consoled however on finding that he had witnessed a spectacle of scotch manners identical with that of s old home i holy fair on the very spot where the poet that immortal description by way of farther to the customs of the country we ordered a sheep s head and the and did penance accordingly and at five o clock we took a fly and set ont for s of moss moss is not more than a mile from and the road extends over a high ridge of land with a view of r hills and green slopes on either side just we reached the farm the driver stopped to point out a growing hy the which he said was s thorn and i devoutly plucked a although i have really forgotten where or how this illustrious has been celebrated we then turned into a rude and almost immediately came to the farm house of moss standing some fifty yards removed from the high road behind a tall hedge of and considerably by trees the house is a white washed stone cottage like thousands of others in england and scotland with a roof on which grass and weeds have a picturesque though alien growth there is a door and one window in front besides another little window that out among the close by the cottage and extending back at right angles from it so as to the farm yard are two other buildings of the same size shape and general appearance as the house any one of the three looks just as for a human habitation as the two others and all three look still more suitable for donkey stables and as we drove into the farm yard bounded on three sides by these three a large dog began to bark at us and some women	35
charm of a woman in s eyes was always her womanhood and not the mixture which other poets find in her our driver pointed out the course taken by the of through the to a rock on the banks of the where it seems to be the tradition that her the song no such interview lovers of whatever condition high or low could desire no scene in which to breathe their vows the river flowing over its bed sometimes gleaming into the sunshine sometimes hidden deep in and here and there at the foot of high and s this estate of is still held by the family of to whom s song has given renown on cheaper terms than other set of people ever attained it how slight the seems t a young lady happened to walk out one summer and crossed the path of a neighbouring sir james is now dead old who celebrated the little incident in four or five rude at least not refined though rather td m somewhat like verses has written bim li of better things bat henceforth for centuries io maiden has free into the of women and she and all her race are famous i should ii like to know the present head of the family and what value if any the members of it put upon the thus won we passed through known as the clean village of scotland certainly as regards the point indicated it has greatly the advantage of whither we now returned without seeing anything else worth writing about there was a rain storm during the night and in the morning the rusty old sloping street of was glistening with wet while frequent showers came down the intense heat of many days past was exchanged for chilly atmosphere much more suitable to a stranger s idea of what scotch temperature ought to be we found after breakfast that the first train northward had already gone by and that we must wait till nearly two o clock for the next i merely ventured out once during the and took a brief walk through the village in which i have left little to describe its chief business appears to be the ture of snuff boxes there are perhaps five or six shops or more including those to sell only tea and tobacco the best of them have the characteristics of village stores in the united states dealing in a small way with an extensive variety of articles i peeped into the open of the churchyard and saw that the ground was absolutely stuffed with dead people and the surface crowded with both perpendicular and all s old acquaintance are doubtless there and the among them except who sleeps by her poet s side the of is now extinct in arriving at the railway station we found a tall elderly comely gentleman walking to and fro and waiting for the some of the haunts of burns train he proved to be a mr alexander it may fairly be presumed the alexander of a blood relation of the lovely wonderful of a poet s verse that could shed a glory from long ago on this old gentleman s white hair these by the by are not an old on the estate the father of the having made a fortune in trade and established himself as the first landed proprietor of his name in these parts the original a was named our ride to presented nothing very remarkable and indeed a cloudy and rainy day takes the off the scenery and causes a in the beauty and of everything we see much of our way lay along a flat sandy level in a direction we reached in the midst of hopeless rain and drove to the king s arms hotel in the intervals of showers i took at the town which appeared to have many modem or modem although there are likewise tall gray and quaint looking houses in the by streets here an ere an ancient place the town lies on both sides of the which is here broad and stately and bordered with dwellings that look from their windows directly down into the passing tide i crossed the river by a modem and handsome stone bridge and it at no great distance by a venerable of four y arches which must have the stream ever since the early days of history these are the two of whose midnight conversation was overheard by while other were aware only of the and of the wintry stream among the arches the ancient bridge is steep and narrow and paved like a street and defended by a of red except at the two ends where some mean old shops allow scanty room for the pathway to creep between nothing else impressed me unless i mention that during the rain the women and girls went about the streets of to save their shoes old the next morning wore a lowering aspect as if it felt itself destined to be one of many days of storm after a good scotch breakfast however of fresh and we took a fly and started at a little past ten for the banks of the boon on our way at two miles from we drew up at a roadside cottage on which was an inscription to the effect that was bom within its walls it is now a public house and of course we alighted and entered its little sitting room which as we at present see it is a neat apartment with the modem improvement of a ceiling the walls are much with names of visitors and the wooden door of a cupboard in the as well as all the other of the room is cut and carved with letters so likewise are two tables which having received a coat of over the form really curious and interesting articles of furniture i have seldom though i	35
by the hy i do not understand why satan and an of should hold their within a consecrated hut the weird scene has so itself in the world s imaginative faith that it must he accepted as an incident in spite of rule and reason to the contrary some minister some priest of pious aspect and hidden had the of the holy edifice hy his pretence of prayer and thus made it the resort of unhappy ghosts and and devils the interior of the even now is applied to quite as impertinent a purpose as when satan and the used it as a dancing hall for it is divided in the midst hy a wall of stone and each has heen converted into a family place the name on one of the monuments is the other no inscription it is not to feel that these good people whoever they may he had no business to thrust their bones into a spot that belongs to the world and where their presence with the emotions be they sad or gay which the pilgrim brings thither they shut us out fix m our own too fi om that possession which bestowed in free gift upon mankind by taking it from the actual earth and it to the domain of imagination and here these wretched have lain down to their long sleep after each of the two of the with an iron grate may their rest be troubled till they rise and let us in is small considering how large a space it fills in our imagination before we see it i paced old home its length outside of tlie wall and it only of my paces and not more than ten of them in breadth li seem to have been but very few windows all of which if i rightly remember are now blocked up with work of stone one window tall and narrow in the eastern might have been seen by o blazing with devilish light as he approached along the road from and there is a small and square one on the side nearest the road into which he might have peered as he sat on horseback indeed i could easily have looked through it standing on the ground had not the opening been walled up there is an odd kind of at the peak of one of the with the small bell still hanging in it and this is all that i remember of except that the stones of its material are gray and irregular the road from passes and crosses the boon by a modem bridge without much from a straight line to reach the old bridge it appears to have made a bend shortly after passing the and then to have turned sharply towards the river the new bridge is within a minute s walk of the monument and we went thither and leaned over its to admire the boon flowing wildly and sweetly between its deep and wooded banks i never saw a scene although this might have been even if a kindly sun had shone upon it the ivy grown ancient bridge with its high arch through which we had a picture of the river and the green banks beyond was absolutely the most picturesque object in a quiet and gentle way that ever blessed my eyes with its wooded banks and the boughs dipping into the water t the memory of them at this moment affects me like the song of birds and some verses simple and wild in accordance with their native melody it was impossible to depart without crossing the very bridge of s adventure so we went thither over a now portion of the road and standing on the centre of the arch gathered some ivy leaves from that sacred spot this done some of the haunts of burns we as speedily as might be tb whence taking the rail we soon beheld rising like a out of the sea drawing nearer to ben in sight with a dome like summit supported by a shoulder on each side but a man is better than a mountain and we had been holding intercourse if not with the reality at least with the ghost of one of earth s memorable sons amid the scenes where he lived and sang we shall appreciate him better as a poet hereafter for there is no writer whose hfe as a man has so much to do with his fame and throws such a necessary light upon whatever he has produced henceforth there will be a personal warmth for us in everything that he wrote and like his countrymen we shall know him in a kind of personal way as if we had shaken hands with him and felt the thrill of his actual voice old home a london one of onr english looks in the as if it had heen patched with more frequent sunshine than the sky of england ordinarily affords hut i that it may he only a moral effect a light that never was on sea nor land caused hy our having found a particularly delightful abode in the neighbourhood of london in order to enjoy it however i was compelled to solve the problem of living in two places at once an impossibility which i so far accomplished as to vanish at frequent intervals out of men s sight and knowledge on one side of england and take my place in a of familiar faces on the other so quietly that i seemed to have been there all along it was the easier to get accustomed to our new residence because it was not only rich in all the material properties of a home but had also the home like atmosphere the household element which is of too a character to be let even with the most thoroughly furnished lodging house a friend had given us his residence with all	35
its and its and library still warm and bright with the recollection of the genial that we had known there its chambers kitchen and even its wine cellar if we could have availed ourselves of so dear and delicate a trust its lawn and garden and whatever else makes up the idea of an english home he had transferred it all to us and dusty that we might rest and take our ease during his summer s absence on the a london e had long been dwelling in tents as it were and morally shivering by which heap the coal npon as we might no blaze could render i remember to this day the dreary feeling with which i sat by our st english fireside and watched the chill and rainy twilight f an autumn day darkening down upon the garden while the portrait of the preceding of the house a most personage in his lifetime above the as if indignant that an american try to make himself at home there possibly it may his sulky shade to know that i quitted his abode as a stranger as i entered it but now at last we were in a genuine british home where refined and warm hearted people had just been living their daily life and had left us a summer s inheritance of slowly days such as a stranger s hasty opportunities so seldom permit him to enjoy within so trifling a distance of the central spot of all the world which as americans have at present no centre of their own we may allow to be somewhere in the vicinity we will say of st paul s cathedral it might have seemed natural that i should be tossed about by the of the vast london but i had drifted into a still where conflicting movements made a repose and wearied with a good deal of activity i found the quiet of my temporary haven more attractive than anything that the great town could i already knew london well that is to say i had long ago satisfied so far as it was capable of satisfaction that mysterious yearning the of millions of hearts upon one which every man s individuality to mingle itself with the mass of human life within its scope day after day at an early period i had trodden the thronged thorough the broad lonely squares the lanes and strange courts the the gardens and of ancient societies so retired and silent amid the city uproar the the streets along the river side the bridges i had sought all parts of the metropolis in short with an and old home curiosity until few of the native inhabitants i fancy hi turned so many of its comers as myself these wanderings in which my prime purpose and achievement were to lose my way and so to find it the more surely had me at one time or another to the sight and actual presence of almost all the objects and renowned that i had read about and which had made london the dream city of my youth i had found it better than my dream for there is nothing else in life in that species of enjoyment i mean to the thick heavy oppressive sombre delight an american is sensible of hardly knowing whether to call it a pleasure or a pain in the atmosphere of london the result was that i acquired a home feeling there as nowhere else in the world though afterwards i c me to have a somewhat similar sentiment in regard to home and as long as either of those two great cities shall exist the cities of the past and of the present a man s native soil may beneath his feet without leaving him altogether upon earth thus having once fully yielded to its influence i was in a manner free of the city and could approach or keep away from it as i pleased hence it happened that living within a quarter of an hour s rush of the london bridge i was oftener tempted to spend a whole summer day in garden than to seek anything new or old wonderful or commonplace beyond its it was a delightful garden of no great extent but a good many for repose and enjoyment such as and garden seats flower beds rose bushes in a profusion of bloom sweet peas and a variety of other scarlet yellow blue and purple blossoms which i did not trouble myself to recognize yet had always a vague sense of their beauty about me the dim sky of england has a most happy effect on the colouring of flowers richness with delicacy in the same texture but in this garden as everywhere else the of english had a greater charm than any tropical splendour or of hue the hunger for natural beauty might be satisfied with grass a london i green leaves for ever conscious of the of in this respect and for the credit of my n country it gratified me to observe what trouble and pains english are fain to throw away in producing a n and and apples as for ample in this very garden where a row of unhappy trees re spread out perfectly flat against a brick wall looking as alive or with a cruel and of compelling them to produce rich fruit by torture or my part i never ate an english fruit raised in the open ty that could compare in with a yankee the garden included that prime feature of english domestic a lawn it had been carefully and into a green on which we sometimes practise the time honoured game of most yet not without a perception that it a very mixture of exercise and ease as is the case with most f the old english our little domain was shut in by he house on	35
one side and in other directions by a and a brick wall which last was concealed or softened by and the fruit trees already mentioned over l outer region beyond our immediate there vas an abundance of foliage tossed aloft from near or distant with which that agreeable is adorned the effect was wonderfully and rural that we might have ourselves in the depths of a wooded seclusion only that at brief intervals we could hear the galloping sweep of a railway train passing within a quarter of a mile and its by a uttle distance as it reached the station that harsh rough sound seeking me out so inevitably was the voice of the great world me forth i know not whether i was the more pained or pleased to be thus constantly put in mind of the neighbourhood of london for on the one hand my conscience stung me a little for reading a book or playing with children in the grass when there were so many better things for an enlightened traveller to do while at the same time it old home gave a deeper delight to my idleness to contrast it with the turmoil which escaped on the whole i do not repent of a single wasted hour and only wish thai could have spent twice as many in the same way for the impression on my memory is that i was as happy in that garden as the english day was long one chief condition of my enjoyment was the weather italy has nothing like it nor america there never was weather except in england where in of a vast of horrible east wind between february and june and a brown october and black november and a wet chill winter there are a few weeks of summer scattered through july and august and the earlier portion of september small in quantity but exquisite enough to for the whole year s after all the may have brought out those sunny intervals in high relief that i see them in my recollection brighter than they really were a little light makes a glory for people who habitually in a gray gloom the english however do not seem to know how the momentary of their summer are they call it weather and hurry to the with red faces in a state of and and i have observed that even their cattle have similar seeking the deepest shade or standing mid leg deep in pools and streams to cool themselves at which our own cows would little more than barely comfortable to myself after the summer of my native land had somewhat out of my blood and memory it was the weather of paradise itself it might be a httle too warm but it was that modest and which a of providence instead of just a enough during my first year in england in perhaps the most part of the kingdom i could never be quite comfortable without a fire on the hearth in the second beginning to get i became sensible of austere friendliness but sometimes almost tender in the veiled shadowy seldom a london summer and in the years whether that had renewed my fibre with english beef and my with english ale or whatever were the cause i grew with winter and especially in love with summer desiring more for happiness than merely to breathe and at he which we are now speaking of i must needs that the sun came down more fervently than i found tolerable so that i was fain to shift my position the shadow of the making myself the of a sun dial that reckoned up the hours of an almost day for each day seemed endless though never wearisome as as your actual experience is concerned the english summer lay has positively no beginning and no end when you awake any reasonable hour the sun is already shining through the you live through hours of sabbath with a calm variety of incident softly upon heir tranquil lapse and at length you become conscious that t is again while there is still enough daylight in the to make the pages of your book distinctly night f there be any such season hangs down a transparent veil through which the day its successor or if not true of the latitude of london it may be affirmed of the more northern parts of the island that to morrow is bom before its yesterday is dead they exist together in the golden twilight where the old day dimly the bee of the ominous infant and you though a mere mortal may simultaneously touch them both with one finger of recollection and another of prophecy i cared not how long the day might be nor how many of them i had earned this repose by a long course of irksome toil and and could have been content never to stray out of the limits of that villa and its garden if i lacked anything beyond it would have satisfied me well enough to dream about it instead of struggling for its actual possession at least this was the feeling of the moment although the flitting and character of my life there was perhaps the most old home element of all as allowing me of the of house and home without any sense of their weight npon my back the life has great advantages if we can find tents ready pitched for us at every stage so much for the interior of our abode a spot of deepest quiet within reach of the activity but even when we stepped beyond our own gate we were not shocked with any immediate presence of the great world we were dwelling in one of those that have grown up in comparatively recent years i believe on the wide waste of which otherwise offers a vast extent of ground in singular to the metropolis as a	35
general thing the of the soil seems to exist in everybody and nobody but exclusive rights have been obtained here and there chiefly by men whose daily concerns link them with london so that you find their or boxes standing along village streets which have often more of an american aspect than the elder english the scene is semi rural ornamental trees the side walks and grassy border the wheel tracks the houses to be sure have certain points of difference from those of an american village bearing tokens of design though seldom of individual taste and as far as possible they stand aloof from the street and separated each from its neighbour by hedge or fence in accordance with the of the english character which the moreover to cover the front of his dwelling with as much concealment of as his limits will allow through the you catch glimpses of generally ornamented with flowers and with what the english call rock work being heaps of ivy grown stones and designed for romantic effect in a small way two or three of such village streets as are here described take a name as for instance park and constitute a kind of community of with kept by a policeman and a semi privacy stepping beyond which you find yourself on the heath on this great bare dreary i often went astray as a london i afterwards did on the of borne and drew the air with london smoke though it might be into my lungs by deep with a strange and unexpected sense of desert freedom the misty atmosphere helps you to fancy a that perhaps does not quite exist during the little time that it lasts the solitude is as impressive as that of a western or forest but soon the railway shriek a mile or two away upon informing you of your or you recognize in the distance some that you may have known an villa perhaps with its garden wall around it or the street of a new settlement which is on this otherwise barren soil half a century ago the most frequent token of man s beneficent might have been a and the like a tavern sign of a murderer swinging to and fro in irons with its and was dangerous in those days and even now for aught i know the western may still compare with it as a safe region to go astray in when i was acquainted with the ingenious device of had recently come into fashion and i can remember while crossing those waste places at midnight and hearing footsteps behind me to have been sensibly encouraged by also hearing not far off the of one of the horse who do regular duty there about sunset or a little later was the time when the broad and somewhat desolate peculiarity of the heath seemed to me to put on its utmost at that hour finding myself on elevated ground i once had a view of immense london four or five miles off with the vast dome in the midst and the towers of the two houses of parliament rising up into the smoky the thinner substance of which obscured a mass of things and hovered about the objects that were most distinctly visible a glorious and sombre picture dusky awful but irresistibly attractive like a young man s dream of the great world at that distance a grandeur never to be realized while i lived in that neighbourhood the tents of two or old home i three sets of players were constantly pitched on and matches were going forward that seemed to the honour and credit of or exciting an interest in everybody but myself who cared not what part of england might itself at the expense of another it is necessary to be bom an englishman i believe in order to enjoy this great national game at any rate as a spectacle for an outside observer i found it lazy lingering tedious and utterly devoid of choice of other amusements was at hand for were established and bows and arrows were to be let at so many shots for a penny there being abundance of space for a further flight shot than any modem can lend to his shaft then there was an absurd game of throwing a stick at ware which i have witnessed a hundred times and personally engaged in once or twice without ever having the satisfaction to see a bit of broken in other spots you found for children to ride and of a very meek and patient spirit on which the pleasure of both sexes rode races and made wonderful of by way of refreshment there was but as a true i must pronounce it greatly inferior to our native dainty and beer and probably liquor among the s hidden stores the frequent railway trains as well as the numerous to have made the vacant portions of a and breathing place for the readily and very accessible so that in view of this broader use and enjoyment i a little the tracts that have been away so to speak and by citizens one sort of visitors especially interested me they were schools of little boys or girls under the of their charity schools as i often from their aspect collected among dark and courts and hither they were brought to spend a summer these pale little of the of london who had never known that the sky was any broader than that narrow and strip above their native a london ne i fancied that they took hat a pleasure at the wide empty space overhead and round bout them finding the air too little with smoke ot and to he with comfort ad feeling and lost because london their and mother had suffered them to stray nt of her arms passing among those holiday people we come to one of	35
the of park opening through an old brick v all it admits us om the bare heath into a scene of cultivation and ornament traversed in all by avenues of trees many of which bear tokens of i venerable age these broad and well kept rise and over the and along the of gentle hills the whole surface of the park the md most abrupt of them though but of very moderate height one of the earth s noted and may hold up its head with and as being the site of where if all nations will consent to say so the of our great globe begins i used to my watch by the broad dial plate against the wall and felt it pleasant to be standing at the very centre of time and space there are than this in the neighbourhood of london richer scenes of and cultivated trees and especially in a summer afternoon has seemed to me as delightful as any place can or ought to be in a world which some time or other we must quit but too is a spot where the art of man has with nature as if he and the great mother had taken counsel together how to make a pleasant scene and the longest liver of the two had carried out their mutual design it has likewise an additional charm of its own because to all appearance it is the people s property and in a much more genuine way than the aristocratic in closer vicinity to the metropolis it affords one of the instances in which the monarch s property is actually the people s and shows how much more natural is their relation to the sovereign than to old home the nobility which to hold the space between the two for a nobleman makes a paradise only for himself and fills it with his own pomp and pride whereas the people are sooner or later the legitimate of beauty kings and queens create as now of park on sundays when the sun shone and even on those grim and sombre days when if it do not actually rain the english persist in calling it fine weather it was too good to see how the trod under their own and what fulness of simple enjoyment they found there they were the people not the specimens of a class whose sunday clothes are a distinct kind of garb from their ones and this in england wholesome habits of life daily and a rank above the lowest i longed to be acquainted with them in order to investigate what manner of folks they were what sort of they kept their politics their religion their tastes and whether they were as narrow minded as their there can be very little doubt of it an englishman is english in whatever rank of life though no more intensely so i should imagine as an or petty than as a member of parliament the english character as i conceive it is by no means a very lofty one they seem to have a great deal of earth and j dust clinging about them as was probably the case witli i the and people who up out of the soil after had sown the teeth and yet though the individual englishman is sometimes g disagreeable an observer standing aloof has a sense of natural kindness towards them in the lump they closer to the original simplicity in which mankind was created than we i ourselves do they love quarrel laugh cry and turn their p actual selves inside out with greater freedom than any class of americans would consider it was often so with these holiday folks in park and ridiculous as it may sound i fancy to have caught very glimpses of life among the there hardly beyond the scope of bow bells in the grass on v a london on the broad slopes or in groups or by single pairs of youths and maidens along the sun avenues even the or park could not disturb the impression on my mind one feature at all events of the golden age was to be seen in the herds of deer that encountered you in the somewhat recesses of the park and were readily prevailed upon to a bit of bread out of your hand but though no wrong had ever been done them and no horn had sounded nor hound at the heels of themselves or their for centuries past there was still an lingering in their hearts so that a slight movement of the hand or a step too near would send a whole of them away just as a breath the winged seeds of a the aspect of park with all those people wandering through it resembled that of the gardens under the walls of rome n a sunday or saint s day but i am not ashamed to say it a little disturbed whatever grimly ghost of might be lingering in the sombre depths of a new england heart among severe and of the of childhood and pangs of remorse for ill gotten lessons in the and for or hardly suppressed laughter in the middle of long sermons occasionally i tried to take the long sting out of these by attending divine service in the open air on a cart outside of the park wall and if i mistake not at two or three comers and secluded spots within the park itself a preacher his voice and speedily a congregation his zeal for whose religious welfare the good man to such earnest and gesture that his face is quickly in a his inward flame with the too sun and makes a positive martyr of him even in the very exercise of his pious labour that he purchases every of spiritual to his hearers by loss of his own and should his discourse last long enough must finally old home before	35
their eyes if i smile at him be it it is not in scorn he his sacred of ce more than many a these services attract numbers who would not otherwise listen to prayer sermon or hymn from one year s end to another and who for that very reason are l the most likely to be moved by the preacher s eloquence yonder too in his costume of three hat and old fashioned brass blue coat with ample skirts which makes him look like a contemporary of admiral that tough old may hear a word or two which will go nearer his heart than anything that the of the hospital can be expected to deliver i always noticed moreover that a considerable proportion of the audience were soldiers who came hither with a day s leave from hardy in aspect some of whom wore as many as four or five or east indian on the breasts of their scarlet coats the miscellaneous congregation listen with every appearance of interest and for my own part i must frankly acknowledge that i never found it possible to give five minutes attention to any other english preaching so cold and common place are the that pass for such under the aged roofs of churches and as for the sermon is an exceedingly and unimportant part of the religious services if indeed it be considered a part among the ceremonies the and the and strains of the the magnificence of the setting voice quite out what we look upon as the jewel of the whole affair for i presume that it was our forefathers the in england and america who gave the sermon its present in the sabbath exercises the are probably the first and only englishmen who have worshipped in the open air since the ancient listened to the preaching of the and it reminded me of that old to see certain of their dusky epoch not religious however but warlike in the of the spot where the was holding forth a london these were some ancient beneath or within which are supposed to lie buried the slain of a forgotten or doubtfully remembered battle fought on the site of park as long ago as two or three centuries after the birth of christ whatever may once have been their height and magnitude they have now scarcely more in the actual scene than the battle of which they are the sole monuments in history being only a few side by side elevated a little above the surface of the ground ten or twelve feet in with a shallow depression in their when one of them was opened not long since no bones nor nor weapons were discovered nothing but some small jewels and a of hair perhaps from the head of a general who dying on the field of victory this lock together with his fame to after ages the hair and jewels are probably in the british museum where the and rubbish of innumerable generations make the visitor wish that each passing century could carry off all its fragments and relics along with it instead of adding them to the continually burden which human knowledge is compelled to upon its back as for the fame i know not what has become of it after the park we come into the neighbourhood of hospital and will pass through one of its spacious for the sake of glancing at an establishment which does more honour to the heart of england than anything else that i am acquainted with of a public nature it is very seldom that we can be sensible of anything like in the acts or relations of such an artificial thing as a national government our own government i should conceive is too much an abstraction ever to feel any sympathy for its sailors and soldiers though it will doubtless do them a severe kind of justice as as the touch of steel but it seemed to me that the are the children of the nation and that the government is their dry nurse and that the old men themselves have a consciousness of their position very likely a better sort of life might have our old home been arranged and a wiser care bestowed on them bat as it is it them to spend a careless old age growling as if all the weather of their past years were pent up within them yet not much more discontented than such weather beaten and fragments of human kind must inevitably be their home in its outward form is on a very magnificent plan its was a royal palace the fall of which has resulted in a series of more beautiful than any english palace that i have seen consisting of several of stately architecture united by and gravel walks and grassy squares with statues in the centre the whole extending along the thames it is built of marble or very light coloured stone in the classic style with pillars and which to my own taste and i to that of the old sailors produced but a cold and effect in the english climate had i been the i would have studied the characters habits and of people in and the neighbourhood of the tower places which i visited in affectionate remembrance of captain and other actual or and would have built the hospital in a kind of ethereal to the narrow dark ugly and inconvenient but snug and of the sailor boarding houses there there can be no question that all the above attributes or enough of them to satisfy an old sailor s heart might be reconciled with beauty and the wholesome of modem dwellings and thus a novel and genuine style of building be given to the world but their countrymen meant kindly by the old fellows in them the ancient royal site where elizabeth held her court	35
and charles began to build his palace so far as the locality went it was treating them like so many kings and with a discreet abundance of beer and tobacco there was perhaps little more to be accomplished in behalf of men whose whole previous lives have tended to unfit them for old age their chief discomfort is probably for lack of something a london o do or think but judging by the few whom i saw a habit seems to have crept over them a dim f mood in which they sit between asleep and awake and find he long day wearing towards without its having made distinct record of itself upon their consciousness sitting n stone benches in the sunshine they into slumber r nearly so and start at the approach of footsteps echoing the ashamed to be caught and in a hurry as formerly on the midnight at sea in their brightest moments they gather in and bore one another with endless sea about their under and about gale and calm and chase and all that class of incident that has its on the deck and in the hollow interior of a ship where heir world has been for other they among themselves comrade with comrade and perhaps fists in faces if inclined for a little they can their wooden legs on the long that borders by the thames the of passing and firing off of at the have made the sea another element than that they used o be acquainted with all this is but cold comfort for the of life yet may compare rather with the receding portions of it little save imprisonment m in the course of which they have been tossed all the world and caught hardly a glimpse of it forgetting grass and trees are and never finding out what woman is they may have encountered a painted which ihey took for her a country owes much to human beings bodies she has worn out and whose immortal part she left or as we find them here and laying wasted an idle paragraph upon them let me now suggest that old men have a kind of to moral impressions and up to an advanced period a of which often appears to come to them after the active time of life is past the might prove better subjects for true education now than in their school boy old home days but then where is the normal school that could for such a class there is a beautiful chapel for the in tbe classic style over the altar of which hangs a picture by west i never look at it long enough to make oat its design for this artist though it pains me to say it of so respectable a had a gift of a of grinding ice into his paint a power of the spectator s and his sympathy beyond any other that handled a brush in spite of many pangs of conscience i seize this opportunity to a upon the poor man for the sake of that dreary picture of an explosion of frosty that used to be a to me in the exhibition would fire bum it i wonder the principal thing that they have to show yon at hospital is the painted hall it is a splendid and spacious room at least a hundred feet long and half as high with a ceiling painted in by sir james as a work of art i presume this has little merit though it produces an exceedingly rich effect by its brilliant colouring and as a specimen of magnificent the walls of the grand apartment are entirely covered with pictures many of them representing battles and other naval incidents that were once in the world s memory than now but portraits of old the whole line of heroes who have trod the quarter decks of british ships for more than two hundred years back next to a tomb in westminster abbey which was s most elevated object of ambition it would seem to be the highest of a naval warrior to have his portrait hung up in the painted hall bat by dint of victory upon victory these illustrious personages have grown to be a mob and by no means a very one so far as regards the character of the here depicted they are generally commonplace and often singularly stolid and i have observed both in the painted hall and elsewhere f he bt in i n id and not only in portraits but in the actual presence of j a london renowned people as i have caught glimpses of that the countenances of heroes are not nearly so impressive as those of except of course in the rare instances where warlike ability has been but the one sided of a profound genius for managing the world s affairs nine of these distinguished for instance if their faces tell the truth must needs have been and might have served better one would imagine as wooden figure heads for their own ships than to direct any difficult and intricate scheme of action from the quarter deck it is doubtful whether the same kind of men will hereafter meet with a similar degree of success for they were victorious chiefly through the old english exercised in a field of which modem science had not yet got possession bough has lost something of its value since their days and must continue to sink lower and lower in the comparative estimate of warlike qualities in the next naval war as between england and france i would bet upon the frenchman s head it is remarkable however that the great naval hero of england the greatest therefore in the world and of all time had none of the stolid characteristics that belong to his class and cannot fairly be accepted as their representative man foremost in the of professions	35
he was as delicately organized as a woman and as painfully sensitive as a poet more than any other englishman he won the love and admiration of his country but won them through the of qualities that are not english or at all events were in his case and made and powerful by something morbid in the man which put him otherwise at cross purposes with life he was a man of genius and genius in an englishman not to the good old of a pearl in the is usually a symptom of a lack of balance in the general making up of the character as we may satisfy ourselves by running over the list of their poets for example and observing how many of them have been sickly or and how often their lives have been darkened by insanity an ordinary e is the and of old human beings an extraordinary one is almost always in one or another a sick man it was so with lord the wonderful contrast or relation between his personal qualities the position which he held and the life that he makes him as interesting a personage as all history has to show and it is a pity that s biography so good in its superficial way and yet so inadequate as regards any real of the man should h ye taken the subject out of the hands of some writer endowed with more delicate appreciation and deeper insight than that genuine englishman possessed but accomplished his own purpose which apparently was to present his hero as a pattern for england s young but the english capacity for hero worship is full to the brim with what they are able to comprehend of lord s character adjoining the painted hall is a smaller room the walls of which are completely and adorned with pictures of the great exploits we see the frail ardent man in all the most noted of his career from his encounter with a bear to his death at here and there about the room like a blue flame no enters that apartment feeling the and ale of his composition stirred to its depths and finding himself changed into a hero for the stolid his brain tough his heart his ordinary mood to confess the truth i myself though belonging to another parish haye been deeply sensible to the sublime recollections there aroused acknowledging that expressed his life in a kind of poetry which i had as much right to understand as these cool and critical as i sought to be i enjoyed their burst of honest indignation when a not an american i am glad to say thrust his walking stick almost into s face in one of the pictures by way of pointing a remark and the immediately glowed like so many hot coals and would probably haye consumed the in their had he not effected his retreat but the most sacred objects of all i a london st are two of s coats under separate glass cases one is that wliich he wore at the battle of the and it is now sadly injured by which will quite destroy it in a few years unless its preserve it as we do washington s military suit by occasionally it in an oven the other is the coat in which he received his death wound at on its breast are three or four stars and orders of now much by time and damp but which glittered brightly enough on the battle day to draw the fatal aim of a french the bullet hole is visible on the shoulder as well as a part of the golden of an the rest of which was shot away over the coat is laid a white waistcoat with a great blood stain on it out of which all the has utterly faded leaving it of a dingy yellow hue in the years since that blood out yet it was once the blood in england s blood the hospital stands close adjacent to the town of which will always retain a kind of aspect in my memory in consequence of my having first become acquainted with it on monday till a few years ago the first three days of were a season in this old town during which the idle and part of london poured itself into the streets like an of the thames as as that mixture of the of the vast city and overflowing with its whatever rural innocence if any might be found in the neighbourhood this was called fair the final one of which in an succession it was my fortune to behold if i had myself of going through the fair with a book and pencil down all the prominent objects i not that the result might have been a sketch of english quite as characteristic and worthy of historical preservation is an account of the having neglected to lo so i remember little more than a confusion of ind dressed people with some but on the whole presenting a appearance l old home such as we never see in own country it taught me to understand why in speaking of a crowd so often to its attribute of evil the common people rf england i am afraid have no daily familiarity with even so necessary a thing as a wash bowl not to mention a and it is one mighty difference between them and us that every man and woman on our side of the water has a working day suit and a holiday suit and is occasionally as fresh as a rose whereas in the good old country the of his labour or habits for ever to the individual and gets to be a part of his personal substance these are broad facts great and there are really if you stop to think about it few spectacles in the world than a	35
humming past our ears from the ground of neighbouring sometimes our sacred persons with an this was one of the privileged of the time and was to be resented except by returning the salute many persons were running races hand in hand down the especially that one on the summit of which stands the and as in the race of life the partners were usually male and female and caught a tumble together before reaching the bottom of the hill we were and haunted by two young girls the eldest not more than thirteen us to buy matches and finding no market for their the taller one suddenly turned a before our and rolled heels over head from top to bottom of the hill on which we stood then up the the offered us her matches again as as if she had never flung aside her so that a repetition of the feat we gave her sixpence and an and her never to do any more the most curious amusement that we witnessed here or anywhere else indeed was an ancient and hereditary called kissing in the king i shall describe the sport exactly as i saw it although an english friend me that there are certain ceremonies with a handkerchief which make it much more and graceful a handkerchief indeed there was no such thing in the crowd except it were the one which they had just out of my pocket it is one of the simplest kinds of games little or no practice to make the player altogether perfect and the manner of it is this a ring is formed in the present case it was of large and thickly around with faces mostly on the broad grin into the centre of which steps an adventurous youth old home and looking round the circle whatever maiden may most delight his eye he presents his hand which she is bound to accept leads her into the centre her on the lips and taking his stand in the expectant circle the girl in her turn throws a favourable regard on some fortunate young man offers her hand to lead forth makes him happy with a kiss and to hide her if any there be among the in the ring while the favoured loses no time in her salute to the prettiest and among the many mouths that are themselves in anticipation and thus the thing goes on till all the throng are and into an endless and chain of kisses though indeed it smote me with compassion to reflect that some forlorn pair of lips might be left out and never know the triumph of a salute after throwing aside so many delicate for the sake of winning it if the young men had any chivalry there was a fair chance to display it by kissing the in the circle to be frank however at the first glance and to my american eye they looked all homely alike and the that i suggest is more than i could have been capable of at any period of my life they seemed to be country of sturdy and wholesome aspect with coarse cheeks and i am willing to suppose a stout texture of moral principle such as would bear a good deal of rough usage without suffering much but how unlike the trim little of my native land i desire above all things to be courteous but since the plain truth must be told the soil and climate of england produce feminine beauty as rarely as they do delicate fruit and though admirable specimens of both are to be met with they are uie hot house of refined society and apt moreover to into the of the original stock the men are man like but the women are not beautiful though the female bull be well enough adapted to the male to return to the of fair their charms were few and their behaviour a london not altogether and yet it was not to feel a degree of faith in their innocent intentions such a half zest and entire simplicity did they up their part of the game it put the spectator in good to look at them because there was still something of lie old life the secure freedom of the antique age in way of their lips to strangers as if there ere no evil or in the world as for the young men were chiefly specimens of the vulgar of london fe often genteel pale wearing the coat linen and faces of aj as well as the of last night s in a in shop gathering their character from these tokens i wondered whether there were any reasonable prospect of their air partners returning to their rustic homes with as much whatever were its amount or quality as they wrought to fair in spite of the perilous familiarity established by kissing in the king the manifold from the ir at which a city was brought into intimate relations with a rural district have at length led to its this the very last of it and brought to a close the road mouthed merriment of many hundred years thus my sketch as its colours are may acquire some little in the reader s eyes from the consideration that no ob of the coming time will ever have an opportunity to give i better i should find it difficult to believe however that he queer just described or any moral mischief to that and other customs might the way can have ed to the overthrow of fair for it has often to me that englishmen of station and respectability of a peculiarly turn have neither any in the feminine purity of the lower orders of their nor the slightest value for it allowing its possible existence the distinction of ranks is so marked that the cottage holds a position somewhat to of the negro girl in our	35
southern states hence comes old home inevitable to the moral condition of those men themselves who forget that the woman has a right and a duty to hold herself in the same as the highest the subject cannot well be discussed in these pages but i offer it as a serious conviction from what i have been able to observe that the england of to day is the old england of tom jones and joseph and random and in our refined era just the same as at that more free spoken epoch this singular people has a certain contempt for any fine strained purity any special as they consider it on the part of an they appear to look upon it as a suspicious phenomenon in the masculine character nevertheless by no means take upon me to affirm that english morality as regards the phase here alluded to is really at a lower point than our own assuredly i hope so making a higher or at all events more hiding whatever may be amiss we are either better than thej or necessarily a great deal worse it impressed me that their open and recognition of served to throw the disease to the surface where it might be more effectually dealt with and leave a sacred interior not utterly instead of turning its poison back among the inner of the character at the imminent risk of them all be that as it may these englishmen are certainly a and people than ourselves from peer to peasant but if we can take it as on our part which i leave to be considered that they owe those noble and manly qualities to a grain in their nature and that with a finer one in ours we shall ultimately acquire a marble polish of which they are i believe that this may be the truth the thames the upper portion of where my last article left me is a cheerful comely old town the peculiarities of which if there be any have passed out of my remembrance as you descend towards the thames the streets get and the shabby and sunken houses one another for bear the sign boards of beer shops and eating rooms with especial promises of and other in the fishing line you observe also a frequent announcement of tea gardens in the rear although the capacity of the premises by their external compass the entire charm and shadowy seclusion of such must be limited within a small back yard these places of cheap and depend for support upon the innumerable pleasure parties who come from london bridge by steamer at a fare of a few pence and who get as a meal for a shilling a head as the ship hotel would afford a gentleman for a guinea the which are constantly smoking their pipes up and down the thames offer much the most agreeable mode of getting to london at least it might be exceedingly agreeable except for the floating of from the stove pipe and the heavy heat of sunshine on the deck or the chill misty air draught of a cloudy day and the little showers of rain that may down upon you at any moment whatever the promise of the sky besides which there is some slight inconvenience from old home the inexhaustible throng of passengers who scarcely allow yoa standing room nor so as a breath of air and never a chance to sit down if these difficulties added to ir the possibility of getting your pocket picked weigh little yon the along the shores of the memorable l and the incidents and shows of passing life npon its bosom i render the trip far to the brief yet tiresome shoot along the railway track on one such voyage a of past us and at once involved every soul on board our steamer in the tremendous excitement of the struggle the spectacle was but a moment within our view and presented nothing more than a few light in each of which sat a single bare armed and with little apparel save a shirt and drawers pale anxious with every muscle on the stretch and his oars in such fashion that the boat along with the of a swallow i wondered at myself for so immediately catching an interest in the affair which seemed to contain no very exalted of manhood but whatever the kind of battle or the prize of victory it one s sympathy immensely and is even awful to behold the rare sight of a man thoroughly in earnest doing his best putting forth all there is in him and his very soul as these appeared ng to do on the issue of the contest it was the seventy fourth annual of the free of and announced itself as under the patronage of the lord mayor and other distinguished individuals at whose expense i suppose a prize boat was offered to the conqueror and some small of money to the inferior the aspect of london along the thames below bridge as it is called is by no means so impressive as it ought to be considering what peculiar advantages are offered for the display of grand and stately architecture by the passage of a river through the midst of a great city it seems indeed as if the heart of london had been open for the mere purpose of showing how rotten and mean it had become the shore is lined with the and buildings up the thames that can be imagined decayed with blind windows and that look that had i known nothing more of the world s metropolis i might have fancied that it had already experienced the which i have heard commercial and financial for it within the century and the muddy tide of the thames reflecting nothing and hiding a million of secrets within its breast a sort of guilty conscience as it were with the of	35
sin that constantly flow into it is just the dismal stream to by such a city the surface to be sure no lack of activity being fretted by the passage of a hundred and covered with a good deal of shipping but mostly of a build than i had been accustomed to see in the a fact which i complacently attributed to the smaller number of american in the thames and the less influence of american example in away the broad capacity of the old dutch or english models about between and london bridge at a rude landing place on the left bank of the river the steamer rings its bell and makes a momentary pause in front of a large circular structure it may be worth our while to scramble ashore it the locality of one of those prodigious practical that would supply john bull with a topic of inexhaustible ridicule if his cousin had committed them but of which he himself ten to our one in the mere of wealth that better employment the circular building covers the entrance to the thames and is surmounted by a dome of glass so as to throw down into the great depth at which the passage of the river descending a wearisome succession of we at last find ourselves still in the broad noon standing before a closed door on opening which we behold the vista of an arched corridor that extends into everlasting midnight in these days when glass has been applied to so many new purposes it is a pity that the had not thought of portions of his with immense blocks old home of the substance over which the dusky thames would have flowed like a making the avenue only a little than a street of upper london at present it is illuminated at regular intervals by of gas not very brilliantly yet with lustre enough to show the damp plaster of the ceiling and walls and the massive stone pavement the of which are with moisture not from the incumbent river but from hidden springs in the earth s deeper heart there are two parallel with a wall between for the separate accommodation of the double throng of foot passengers and of all kinds which was expected to roll and continually through the on one of them has ever been opened and its echoes are hat feebly awakened by yet there seem to be people who spend their lives here and who probably like when once or twice a year perhaps they happen to climb into the sunshine all along the corridor which i believe to be a mile in extent we see or shops in little kept principally by women they were of a ripe age i was glad to observe and certainly robbed england of none of its very moderate supply of feminine loveliness by their deeper than tomb like as yon approach and they are so accustomed to the dusky that they read all your characteristics afar they yon with hungry entreaties to buy some of their holding forth views of the put up in cases of with a glass at one end to make the vista more effective they offer you besides cheap sunny and for sixpence and diamonds as big as the i at a not much heavier cost together with a which has died out of the upper world to in this that you may fancy yourself stiu in the of the living they urge you to partake of cakes beer and such small refreshment more suitable however for the shadowy appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy of englishmen the most of the shops contains a exhibition of up thb thames and scenes in the daylight world with a dreary glimmer f gas among them all so that they serve well enough to represent the dim that dead people night be supposed to retain from their past lives mixing them with the of their state i dwell more upon these trifles and do my best to give them a mockery of importance because if these are nothing then all this elaborate contrivance and mighty piece of work has been wrought in vain the englishman has under the l ed of his great river and set ships of two or three thousand tons a over his head only to provide new for a few old women to sell cakes and beer t yet the conception was a grand one and though it has proved an absolute an of toil and money with annual returns hardly sufficient to keep the pavement free from the of springs yet it needs i presume only an expenditure three or four or for aught i know twenty times as large to make the enterprise brilliantly successful the descent is so great from the bank of the river to its surface and the so profoundly under the river s bed that the approaches on either side must commence a long way off in order to render the entrance accessible to or so that the larger part of the cost of the whole affair should have been expended on its it has turned out a sublime piece of folly and when the new of distant ages shall have sufficiently among the ruins of london bridge he will himself that somewhere was the marvellous the very existence of which will seem to him as incredible as that of the hanging gardens of but the thames will long ago have broken through the massive arch and choked up the with mud and sand and with the large stones of the structure itself with of drowned people the rusty of sunken vessels and the great many such precious and curious things as a river always to hide in its bosom the ance will have been and its very site forgotten beyond the memory old home of twenty generations of men and the whole neighbourhood be e held a dangerous	35
spot on account of the tl that the traveller will make but a brief and careless for the traces of the old wonder and will stake his credit before b the public in some pacific monthly of that day that the c story of it is but a though enriched with a spiritual pro which he will proceed to yet it is impossible for a yankee at least to see so much magnificent ingenuity thrown away without trying to the unfortunate result with some kind of usefulness though perhaps widely different from the purpose of its original conception in former ages the mile long with their numerous might have been as a series of the of all possible for prisoners of state and fallen would not have needed to against a so spacious so deeply secluded from the world s scorn and so admirably in accordance with their fortunes an here might have suited sir walter better than that hiding place communicating with the great chamber in the tower pacing from end to end of which he meditated upon his history of the world his track would here have been straight and narrow indeed and would therefore have lacked somewhat of the freedom that his intellect demanded and yet the length to which his footsteps might have travelled forth and themselves partly have his physical movement with the grand curves and returns of his thought through of majestic periods having it in his mind to compose the world s history he could have asked no better retirement than such a as this from all the of mankind and deep beneath their mysteries and motives down into the heart of things full of personal reminiscences in order to the comprehensive and of historic records seeing into the secrets of human nature secrets that daylight never yet revealed to mortal but their whole scope and port with the up the thames yes of solitude and night and then the shades of he old mighty men might have risen from their still and joined him in the dim corridor treading beside an antique of mien telling him in melancholy tones grand but always melancholy of the greater ideas d purposes which their most renowned performances so im carried out that magnificent in the view of all posterity they were but failures to those who planned them as was a would have explained to him the peculiarities of construction that made the ark so as was a moses would have discussed with him the principles of laws and as was a soldier and would held debate in his presence with this martial student for their as was a poet david or whatever illustrious bard he might call up would have touched lis harp and made manifest all the true significance of the by means of song and the subtle of music meanwhile i had forgotten that sir walter s knew nothing of and that it would require a and expenditure of candles to the sufficiently to discern even a ghost on his account however it would be all the more suitable place f confinement for a to keep him from mankind with his shadowy speculations and being shut f from external converse the dark corridor would help him o make rich discoveries in those regions and by paths of the intellect which he had so long himself to explore but how would every successive rejoice in so secure a habitation for its and especially for each best and wisest that happened to be hen alive i he seeks to bum up our whole system of society pretence of it from its i away with into the and let him begin by setting the thames m fire if he is able i if not precisely these yet akin to these were some of the that haunted me as i passed under the river for the old home place is of idle and stuff bj its own character its lack of on upper or any solid foundation of realities could i have looked forward a few years i might have regretted that american enterprise had not provided a similar under the or the for the convenience of our national in times hardly yet gone by it would be delightful to clap up all the enemies of our peace and union in the dark together and there let them abide listening to the monotonous roll of the river above their heads or perhaps in a state of suspended animation until be it after months years or centuries when the turmoil shall be all over the wrong washed away in blood since that must needs be the and the rooted in the soil that blood will have enriched they might crawl forth again and catch a single glimpse at their country and feel it to be a better land than they deserve and die i was not sorry when the daylight reached me after a abode in the regions than i fear would await the troublesome personages just hinted at emerging on the side of the thames i found myself in a neighbourhood not to the readers of old books of adventure there being a hard by the month of the i the river in the primitive fashion of an open boat which the conflict of wind and tide together with the and swell of the passing tossed high and low rather this of our frail which indeed up and down like a cork so much alarmed an old lady the only other passenger that the to comfort her never fear mother grumbled one of them we ll make the river as smooth as we can for you we ll get a plane and plane down the waves i the joke may not read very brilliantly but i make bold to record it as the only specimen that reached my ears of the old rough water wit for which the thames	35
used to be so celebrated passing directly along the line of the sunken we landed in which i should have to up the thames l e the most and spot on earth with old and of warm coarse homely and life nevertheless it tamed out to he a cold and mean and as to its buildings and inhabitants the latter so as was visible to me not a single unmistakable sailor though plenty of land who get a half by business connected with the sea ale and spirit as petty drinking are in england pretending to contain vast full of liquor within the compass of ten feet square above ground were particularly abundant together with apples and the of and and shops where blue and duck trousers swung and before the doors everything was on the poorest scale and the place bore an aspect of decay from this remote point of london i strolled leisurely towards the heart of the city while the streets at first but occupied by man or vehicle got more and more thronged with foot passengers carts and the all and all but i lack courage and feel that i should lack perseverance as the reader would lack patience to undertake a descriptive stroll london streets more especially as there would be a volume ready for the before we could reach a resting place at cross it will be the easier course to step aboard another passing steamer and continue our trip up the thames the next notable group of objects is an assemblage of ancient walls and out of the midst of which rises one great square tower of a hue bordered with white stone and having a small at each comer of the roof this central is the white tower and the whole circuit of and enclosed what is known in english history and still more widely and in english poetry as the tower a crowd of river craft are generally in front of it but if we look sharply at the right moment under the base of the old home we may catch a glimpse of an arched water entrance half past which the thames as as if it were the mouth of a city nevertheless it is the traitor s gate a dreary kind of passage way now supposed to be shut up and barred for ever through which a multitude of noble and illustrious personages have entered the tower and found it a brief resting place on their way to heaven passing it many times i never observed that anybody glanced at this shadowy and ominous trap door save myself it is well that america exists if it were only that her children may be impressed and affected by the historical monuments of england in a degree of which the native inhabitants are evidently incapable these matters are too familiar too real and too hopelessly built in amongst id mixed up with the common objects and affairs of life to be easily of imaginative colouring in their minds and even their poets and feel it a toil and almost a delusion to extract poetic material out of what seems embodied poetry itself to an american an englishman cares nothing about the tower which to us is a haunted castle in that honest and excellent gentleman the late mr g p b james whose mechanical ability one might have supposed would itself by devouring every old stone of such a structure once assured me that he had never in his life set eyes upon the tower though for years an historic in london not to spend a whole summer s day upon the voyage we will suppose ourselves to have reached london bridge and thence to have taken another steamer for a farther passage up the river but here the memorable objects succeed each other so rapidly that i can spare but a single sentence even for the great dome though i deem it more picturesque in that atmosphere than st peter s in its clear blue sky i must mention however since everything with is especially interesting to my dear countrymen that i once saw a large and beautiful splendidly gilded and and with a rich covering lying at the pier nearest up the thames o st s cathedral it had the royal banner of great britain displayed besides being decorated with a number of other flags and many who are universally the and objects to be seen in england at this day and these were ones in a bright scarlet livery with gold lace and white silk stockings were in attendance i know not what or occasion may have drawn out this after all it might have been merely a city spectacle to the lord mayor but the sight had its value in bringing vividly before me the grand old times when the sovereign and were accustomed to use the thames as the high street of the metropolis and join in upon it whereas the of such customs now a days has caused the whole show of river life to consist in a multitude of smoke an change has taken place in the streets where and the have crowded out a rich variety of and thus e gets more monotonous in hue from age to age and appears to seize every opportunity to strip off a bit of its gold lace among the classes and to make itself decent in the lower ones yonder is the old now wearing as a face as any other portion of london and adjoining it the avenues and brick squares of the temple with that historic garden close upon the river side and still rich in and flowers where the of york and plucked the fatal roses and scattered their pale and bloody over so many english battle hard by we see the white front or rear of house and on rise the two new houses of parliament with a huge unfinished	35
tower already hiding its imperfect summit in the smoky the whole vast and edifice a specimen of the best that modem architecture can effect the of those simple ages when men better than they knew close by it we have a glimpse of the roof and upper towers of the holy abbey while that gray pile on the opposite side of old home the river is palace a of halls and chiefly built of brick but with at least one large of stone in our course we have passed beneath half a dozen bridges and emerging out of the black heart of london shall soon reach a where old father thames if remember begins to put on an aspect of innocence and now we look back upon the mass of innumerable out of which rise towers columns and the great crowning dome look back in short upon that the world s city amid whidi a man so and to be not perhaps because it contains much that is admirable and but because at all the world has nothing better the cream of external li is there and whatever merely intellectual or material good we fi il to find perfect in london we may as well content to seek that thing no on this earth the steamer its trip at an old town endowed with a prodigious number of pot houses and some gardens called the for public amusement the most noticeable thing however is hospital which like that of was founded i believe by charles whose bronze statue in the guise of an old roman stands in the centre of the and appropriated as a home for aged and soldiers of the british army the are three stories with windows in the high and are built of dark sombre brick with stone ed and the effect is by no means that of grandeur which is somewhat an attribute of hospital but a quiet and venerable neatness at each extremity of the street front there is a spacious and open lounging about which i saw some gray in long scarlet coats of an antique fashion and the cocked hats of a ago or occasionally a modem cap almost all of them moved with a gait two or three on wooden legs and here and there an arm was missing inquiring of one of these heroes whether a stranger up the thames be admitted to see the he replied most cordially oh yes sir anywhere walk in and go where you please upstairs or anywhere i so i entered and passing along the inner side of the came to the door of the chapel which forms a part of the of next the street here another an old warrior of exceedingly and christian touched his three hat and asked if i wished to see the interior to which i he unlocked the door and we went in the chapel consists of a great hall with a roof and oyer the altar is a large painting in the subject of which i did not trouble myself to make out more appropriate of the place as well to reminiscences as religious worship are the long of dusty and tattered that hang om their all round the ceiling of the chapel they are of battles fought and won in every quarter of the world the captured flags of all the nations with whom the british lion has war since james s time french dutch east indian russian chinese and american collected together in this consecrated spot not to that there shall be no more discord upon earth but drooping over the aisle in sullen though humiliation yes i said american among the rest for the good old me for an englishman and failed not to point out and with an especial emphasis of triumph some flags that had been taken at and washington i fancied indeed that they hung a little higher and drooped a little lower than any of their companions in disgrace it is a comfort however that their proud devices are already or nearly so owing to dust and and the kind offices of the and that they will soon rot from the banner and be swept out in fragments from the chapel door it is a good method of teaching a man how imperfectly he is to show him his country s flag occupying a position of in a foreign land but in truth the old home whole system of a people over its military had far better be with both on account of the that it helps to keep among the nations and because it as an to generations to aim at a kind of glory the gain of which has generally proved more than its loss i heartily wish that every of victory might away and that every or tradition of a hero from the beginning of the world to this day could pass out of all men s memories at once and for ever i might feel very differently to be sure if we had anything especially valuable to lose by the fading of those illuminated names i gave the but i am afraid there may have been a little affectation in it a magnificent of all the i had in my pocket to him for having stirred up my patriotic he was a kindly old man with a humble freedom and of manner that made it pleasant to converse with him old soldiers i know not why seem to be more than old sailors one is apt to hear a growl beneath the courtesy of the latter the with his peaceful voice and gentle reverend aspect told me that he had fought at a cannon all through the battle of and escaped he had now been in the hospital four or five years and was married but necessarily a separation from his wife who lived outside of the gates to my	35
inquiry whether his fellow were comfortable and happy he answered with great alacrity oh yes sir i his evidence after a moment s consideration by saying in an under tone there are some people your honour knows who could not be comfortable anywhere i did know it and fear that the system of hospital allows too little of that wholesome care and of their own occupations and interests which might the sting of life to those naturally uncomfortable individuals by giving them something external to think about but my old friend here was happy in the hospital and by this time veiy likely is happy in heaven up the thames n spite of the that he may have caused by touching ff a cannon at crossing bridge in the neighbourhood of i remember seeing a distant gleam of the crystal palace glimmering afar in the afternoon sunshine like an imaginary structure an air castle by chance descended upon earth and resting there one instant before it vanished as we sometimes see a soap touch on the carpet a thing of only momentary and no substance destined to be and crushed down by the first cloud shadow that might fall upon that spot even as i looked it disappeared shall i attempt a picture of this of modem ingenuity or what else shall i try to paint everything in london and its vicinity has been depicted innumerable times but never once translated into intelligible images it is an old old never yet told nor to be told while writing these reminiscences i am continually impressed with the of the effort to give any truth to my sketch so that it might produce such pictures in the reader s mind as would cause the original scenes to appear familiar when afterwards beheld nor have other writers often been more successful in representing definite objects to my own mind in truth i believe that the chief delight and advantage of this kind of literature is not for any real information that it supplies to people but for the recollections and the emotions of persons already acquainted with the scenes described thus i found an exquisite pleasure the other day in reading mr s month in england a fine example of the way in which a refined and cultivated american looks at the old country the things that he naturally seeks there and the modes of feeling and reflection which they excite correct outlines avail little or nothing though truth of colouring may be somewhat more impressions however states of mind produced by interesting and remarkable objects these if and vividly recorded may work a genuine effect and though but the result of what we go farther towards representing the actual scene than any old home direct effort to paint it give the emotion that about it and without able to the spell by which it is summoned up you get something like a of the object in the midst of them from some of the above reflections i draw the comfortable that the longer and better known a thing may be so much the more eligible is it as the subject of a descriptive sketch on a sunday afternoon i passed through a side entrance in the time blackened wall of a place of worship and foimd myself among a congregation assembled in one of the and the immediately portion of the it was a vast old edifice spacious enough the extent bj its roof and by its stone pavement to accommodate the whole of church going london and with a far wider and than any human power of lungs could fill with audible prayer benches were arranged in the on one of which i seated myself and joined as well as i knew how in the sacred business that was going forward but when it came to the sermon the voice of the preacher was and so were his thoughts and both seemed impertinent at such a time and place where he and all of as were bodily included within a sublime act of religion which could be seen above and around us and felt beneath our feet the structure itself was the worship of the devout men of long ago preserved in stone without losing an of its fragrance and it was a kind of strain that they had sung and poured out of the organ in centuries gone by and being so grand and sweet the divine benevolence had willed it to be prolonged for the of i therefore came to the conclusion that in my individual case it would be better and more to let my eyes wander about the edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts on the evidently mortal who was venturing and felt it no venture at all to speak here above his breath the interior of westminster abbey for the reader recognized it no doubt the moment we entered is built of rich brown stone and the whole of it the lofty roof the tall a ur up thb thames clustered pillars and the pointed arches appears to be in repair at all points where decay has laid its finger the is with iron or otherwise protected and being thus watched over whether as a place of ancient a noble specimen of art or an object of national interest and pride it may reasonably be expected to for as many ages as have passed over it already it was sweet to feel its venerable its peace and yet to observe how kindly and even cheerfully it received the sunshine of to day which fell from the great windows into the fretted and arches that laid aside somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome it sunshine always seems friendly to old churches and castles kissing them as it were with a more affectionate though still familiarity than it to of later date a square of golden	35
light lay on the sombre pavement of the afar off falling through the grand western entrance the folding leaves of which were wide open and afforded glimpses of people passing to and fro in the outer world while we sat dimly enveloped in the solemnity of antique devotion in the south separated from us by the full breadth of the there were painted glass windows of which the uppermost appeared to be a great of many coloured radiance being indeed a cluster of saints and angels whose bodies formed the rays of an from a cross in the midst these windows are modem but combine softness with wonderful brilliancy of effect through the pillars and arches i saw that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were almost wholly with marble now grown yellow with time no blank but of such men as their respective generations deemed wisest and some of them were merely by on others by others once famous but now forgotten or these by ponderous that towards the roof of the aisle or partly the immense arch of a window these mountains of marble were peopled with the of our old home winged and classic in fall but it was strange to observe bow tbe old abbey melted all into tbe of its own grandeur itself by would elsewhere have been it is tbe test of to the ridiculous without to hide it and these grotesque monuments of the last century answer a purpose with the grinning faces which the old scattered among their most solemn from these distant wanderings it was my first visit to westminster abbey and i would gladly have taken it all in at a glance my eyes came back and began to investigate was about me in the close at my elbow was the of s statue next beyond it was a massive tomb on the spacious of which the full length figures of a marble lord and lady whom an inscription announced to be the duke and of the historic duke of charles i s time and the fantastic remembered by her poems and plays she was of a family as the record on her tomb proudly informed us of which all the brothers had been and all the sisters virtuous a recent statue of sir john the new marble as white as snow held the next place and near by was a monument and bust of sir peter the round of this old british admiral has a certain interest for a new because it was by no merit of his own though he took care to assume it as such but by the and warlike enterprise of our forefathers especially the stout men of that he won rank and renown and a tomb in westminster abbey lord a huge mass of marble done into the guise of a gown and wig ith a stem face in the midst of the latter sat on the other side of the and on the beside him was a figure of justice holding forth instead of the customary s scales an actual pair of brass it is an ancient and classic instrument undoubtedly but i had supposed that when s pound of flesh was to be up the thames weighed was the only judge that ever really called for it in a of justice and fox were in the same distinguished company and john in costume stood not far but strangely of the dignity that is said to have him like a mantle in his lifetime perhaps the majesty of the stage is with the long of marble and the solemn reality of the tomb though on the other hand almost every illustrious personage here represented has been invested with more or less by his in truth the artist unless there be a divine in his touch making evident a heretofore hidden dignity in the actual form feels it an imperious law to remove his subject as far from the aspect of ordinary life as may be possible without sacrificing every trace of resemblance the absurd effect of the contrary course is very remarkable in the statue of mr whose actual self save for the lack of colour i seemed to behold seated just across the aisle this excellent man appears to have sunk into himself in a sitting posture with a thin leg crossed over his knee a book in one hand and a finger of the other under his chin i believe or applied to the side of his nose or to some equally purpose while his exceedingly homely and wrinkled ace held a little on one side at you with the complacency as if he were looking right into your eyes and something there which you had half a mind to conceal from him he keeps this look so that yon feel it to be impertinent and yourself what common ground there may be between yourself and a stone image you to resent it i have no doubt that the statue is as like mr as one to another and you might fancy that at some ordinary moment when he least expected it and before he had time to smooth away his knowing of wrinkles he had seen the s head and into marble not only his personal self but his coat and small clothes down to a button and the of the cloth the ludicrous result marks the old home of the age long duration of marble npon small characteristic such as might come within the province of the should give to the figure of a great man in his mood of broad and grand composure which would all mean peculiarities for if the original were to such a mood or if his features were incapable of assuming the guise it seems questionable whether he could really have been entitled to a marble immortality in point of fact however the english face and form are seldom	35
however illustrious the individual it ill becomes me perhaps to have into this mood of half criticism in describing my first visit to westminster abbey a spot which i had dreamed about more from my childhood upward than any other in the world and which i then beheld and now look back upon with profound gratitude to the men who built it and a kindly interest i may add in the personage that has contributed his little all to its by his dust or his memory there but it is a characteristic of this grand edifice that it you to smile as freely under the roof of its central as if you stood beneath the yet of heaven break into laughter if you feel inclined provided the do not hear it echoing among the arches in an ordinary church you would keep your countenance for fear of disturbing the or of the place but yon need leave no honest and portion of your human nature outside of these and truly hospitable walls their mild will take care of itself thus it does no harm to the general impression when you come to be sensible that many of the monuments are ridiculous and a mob of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves and few of whom ever deserved any better boon from posterity you acknowledge the force of sir s objection to being buried in westminster abbey because they do bury fools there nevertheless these grotesque of marble that break out in dingy white on the old up the thames of the interior walls have come there hy as natural a process as might cause and ivy to cluster the external edifice for they are the historical and record of each successive age written with its own hand and all the truer for the inevitable mistakes and none the less solemn for the occasional absurdity though you entered the abbey expecting to see the only of the illustrious you are content at last to read many names both in literature and history that have now lost the reverence of mankind if indeed they ever really possessed it let these men rest in peace even if you miss a name or two that you hoped to find there they may well be spared it matters little a few more or less or whether westminster abbey contains or any one man s grave so long as the centuries each with the crowd of personages that it deemed memorable have chosen it as their place of honoured and laid themselves down under its pavement the and devices on the walls are rich with evidences of the tastes fashions manners opinions prejudices follies of the past and thus they combine into a more truthful memorial of their dead times than any individual maker ever meant to write when the services were over many of the audience seemed inclined to linger in the or wander away among the mysterious for there is nothing in this world so fascinating as a which always you deeper and deeper into its heart both by vast revelations and shadowy through the open work screen that the from the and choir we could discern the gleam of a marvellous window but were from entrance into that more sacred of the abbey by the these officials doing their duty all the more because no could be from sunday visitors flourished their and drove us towards the grand entrance like a flock of sheep lingering through one of the i happened to lock down and found my foot upon a stone inscribed with this familiar explanation old home rare ben and remembered the story of stout old ben s burial in that spot standing upright not i presume on account of any reluctance on his part to lie down in the dust like other men but because was all that could reasonably be demanded for a poet among the of his age it made me weary to think of it such a prodigious length of time to keep one s feet apart from the honour of the thing it would certainly have been better for ben to stretch himself at ease in some country churchyard to this day however i fancy that there is a contemptuous mixed up with the admiration which the higher classes of english society profess for their literary men another day in truth many other days i sought ont poets comer and found a sign board and pointed finger directing the visitor to it on the comer house of a little lane leading towards the rear of the abbey the entrance is at the south end of the south and it is used on ordinary occasions as the only free mode of access to the building it is no spacious arch but a small lowly door passing through which and pushing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an exceedingly chill wind you find yourself in a dim nook of the abbey with the of poets gazing at you from the otherwise bare of the walls great poets too for ben is right behind the door and s is next and butler s on the same side of the and milton s whose bust you know at once by its resemblance to one of his portraits though older more wrinkled and than that is close by and a of gray beneath it a window high aloft sheds down a dusky daylight on these and many other now as yellow as old that cover the three walls of the nook up to an elevation of about twenty feet above the pavement it seemed to me that i had always been familiar with the spot enjoying a humble intimacy and how much of my life had else been a dreary solitude with many of its inhabitants i could not feel myself a stranger up the thames there it was delightful to	35
some at all events true and tender poets moreover and deserving of the honour whose spirits i feel certain old home would linger a little while poets comer for the sake of witnessing their own among their kindred they have had a strong natural yearning not so much for applause as sympathy which the cold fortune of their lifetime did hut supply so that this appetite may make itself felt upon at once so delicate and even a step or two beyond the grave for example would be pleased even now if he could learn that his bust had been in the midst of the old poets whom he admired and loved though there is hardly a man among the authors of to day and yesterday whom the judgment of englishmen would be less likely to place there he deserves it however if not for his verse the value of which i do not estimate never having been able to read it yet for his delightful prose his poetry the inscrutable happiness of his touch working soft miracles by a life process like the growth of grass and flowers as with all such gentle writers his page sometimes betrayed a of affectation but the next moment a rich natural and buried it out of sight i knew him a little and since heaven be praised few english whom i chanced to meet have my pen by their and as i assume no liberties with living men i will conclude this rambling article by my first interview with hunt he was then at occupying a very plain and shabby little house in a range of others like it with no prospect but that of an ugly village street and certainly nothing to gratify his craving for a inside or out a maid servant opened the door for us and he himself stood in the entry a and venerable old man to the chin in a black dress coat tall and slender with a countenance quietly alive all over and the and most naturally courteous manner he ushered ns into his little study or parlour or both a very forlorn room with poor paper and carpet few books no pictures that i remember and an awful lack of i up th thames upon these external and this of not that they would be worth mentioning in a sketch f other remarkable persons but because hunt was bom ith such a faculty of enjoying all beautiful things that it as if fortune did him as much wrong in not supplying as in a of vital breath from men all kinds of mild magnificence tempered by is taste would have become him well but he had not the rim dignity that as the better robe i have said that he was a beautiful old man in truth i saw a finer countenance either as to the mould of or the expression nor any that showed the play of so perfectly without the slightest theatrical emphasis t was like a child s face in this respect at my first glimpse f him when he met us in the entry i discerned that he was lid his long hair being white and his wrinkles many it was a aged in short such as i had not at all expected to ee in spite of dates because his books talk to the reader with he tender of youth but when he began to speak nd as he grew more earnest in conversation i ceased to be of his age sometimes indeed its dusky shadow through the gleam which his thoughts about his face but then another flash of youth came ut of his eyes and made an illumination again i never such a wonderfully before or and to this day trusting only to my recollection i find it difficult to decide which was his genuine and table youth or age i have met no englishman manners seemed to me so agreeable soft rather than wholly the natural growth of a kindly nd sensitive disposition without any reference to rule or else to some rule so that the observer could lot detect the application of it his eyes were dark and very fine and his delightful voice their visible language like music he appeared o be exceedingly of whatever was passing among who surrounded him and especially of the old home in the of the person to whom he happened to be addressing himself at the moment i felt that no effect upon my mind of what he uttered no emotion however in myself escaped his notice though not from any positive vigilance on his part but because his faculty of observation was so and delicate and to say the truth it a little confused me to discern always a ripple on his ce to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner of my sentiments and seemed thence to extend to a similar within himself on matters of feeling and within a certain depth you might spare yourself the trouble of utterance because he already knew what you wanted to say j and perhaps a little more than you would have spoken his figure was full of gentle movement though somehow without disturbing its and as he talked he kept folding his hands nervously and in many ways a fine and immediate sensibility quick to feel pleasure or pain though scarcely capable i should imagine of a passionate experience in either direction there was not an english trait in him from head to foot morally or physically beef ale or stout brandy or port wine entered not at all into his composition in his earlier life he appears to have given evidences of courage and sturdy principle and of a tendency to fling himself into the rough struggle of humanity on the liberal side it would be taking too much upon myself to affirm that this was merely a of his fancy	35
world into the actual and that he never could have hit a downright blow and was altogether an person to receive one i beheld him not in his but in his robes nevertheless drawing my conclusion merely from what i saw it would have occurred to me that his main deficiency was a lack of though anything but a timid man the and elements were not developed in his character and could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts it was on this account and also because of the of his nature generally that the english appreciated him no better and left up the thames this sweet and delicate poet poor and with scanty in his declining age it was not i think from his american that derived either his or his peaceful inclinations at least i do not see how we can reasonably claim the former quality as a national characteristic though the latter might have been fairly inherited from his ancestors on the mother s side who were bnt the kind of excellence that distinguished him his and grace was that which the richest cultivation has heretofore tended to develop in the happier examples of american genius and which though i say it a little reluctantly is perhaps what onr future intellectual advancement may make general among us his person at all events was thoroughly american and of the best type as were likewise his manners for we are the best as well as the worst people in the world hunt loved dearly to be praised that is to say he desired sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine and perhaps by it as much in the richer depth of colouring that it imparted to his ideas in response to all that we ventured to express about his writings and for my part i went quite to extent of my conscience which was a long way and there left the matter to a lady and a young girl who happily were th me his face shone and he manifested great delight th a perfect and yet delicate frankness for which i loved liim he could not tell us he said the happiness that such gave him it always took him by surprise he marked for perhaps because he cleaned his own boots and performed other little ordinary offices for himself he never liad been conscious of anything wonderful in his own person and then he smiled making himself and all the poor little about him beautiful thereby it is usually the hardest in the world to praise a man to his face but hunt received the incense with such gracious satisfaction feeling it to be sympathy not vulgar praise that the only difficulty was to keep the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit of per old home opinion a storm had suddenly come up while we were talking the rain poured the lightning flashed and the thunder broke but i hope and have great pleasure in believing that it was a sunny hour for hunt nevertheless it was not to my voice that he most inclined his ear but to those of my companions women are the fit ministers at such a shrine he must have suffered keenly in his lifetime and enjoyed keenly keeping his emotions so much upon the surface as he seemed to do and convenient for everybody to play upon being of a cheerful temperament happiness had probably the upper hand his was a light mildly joyous nature gentle graceful yet seldom to that deepest grace which results from power for beauty like women its human representative with the gentle but its favour only to the strong i imagine that hunt may have been more beautiful when i met him both in person and character than in his earlier days as a young man i conceive of his being in certain moods but not now when the gravity of age shed a venerable grace about him i rejoice to hear him say that he was favoured with most confident and cheering in respect to a life and there were abundant proofs throughout our interview of an spirit resignation quiet of the worldly benefits that were denied him thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to enjoy and piety and hope shining onward into the dusk all of which gave a cast to the feeling with which we parted from him i wish that he could have had one draught of prosperity before he died as a matter of artistic propriety it would have been delightful to see him a beautiful house of his own in an italian climate with all sorts of elaborate and minute about him and a succession of tender and lovely women to praise his sweet poetry from morning to night i hardly know whether it is my fault or the effect of a weakness in hunt s character that i should be sensible of a regret of this nature when at the same time i sincerely up the thames that he has found an of better things in the rid whither he has gone at onr leave taking he grasped me warmly by both hands d seemed as much interested in onr whole party as if he had own ns for years all this was genuine feeling a quick growth out of his heart which was a soil for of rich and rare varieties not but a true heart several years afterwards i met him for the last ne at a london dinner party looking sadly broken down by fi and my final recollection of the beautiful old man him arm in arm with nay if i mistake not partly and supported by another beloved and honoured et whose name since he has a week day one for personal occasions i will venture to speak it was whose kind introduction had first made me known hunt old	35
home outside glimpses op english poverty an of a great english town i often turned aside from the prosperous where the the shops and the crowd differed not so much from scenes with which i was familiar in my own country and went astray among that reminded me of some of s pages there i caught glimpses of a people and a mode of life that were comparatively new to my observation a sort of sombre spectacle exceedingly to behold yet a singular interest and even in its dirt one would fancy is plenty enough all over the world being the accompaniment of the foul which began to settle over and all earthly things as soon as eve had bitten the apple ever since which epoch her daughters have chiefly been engaged in a desperate and struggle to get rid of it but the dirt of a poverty stricken english street is a unknown on our side of the atlantic it supreme within its own limits and is inconceivable everywhere beyond them we enjoy the great advantage that the brightness and of our atmosphere keep everything clean that the sun shines upon the larger portion of our into dust which the next wind can sweep away in contrast with the damp that itself with all unless continually and painfully in the chill outside of english poverty of the english air then the all smoke of e city abundantly with the snow coal hovering overhead descending and on and rich fronts on the snowy of the ladies and the gentlemen s and even the better streets in a half mourning it is beyond the resources of wealth to keep the n y from its premises or its own fingers ends and as for it itself to the dark influence without a along with disastrous circumstances need so lengthened out as to constitute the rule of life comes a certain chill depression of the spirits which seems specially to shudder at cold water in view of so wretched a of things we accept the ancient not merely as an isolated phenomenon but as a necessity and that nothing less than such a general washing day ould suffice to the old world of its moral and dirt gin shops or what the english call spirit are in the vicinity of these poor streets and are set off the magnificence of gilded door posts by contact the customers who haunt there children thither with old or broken r any such make shift to get a little poison or for their parents who deserve no better at hands for having them enter at noon day and stand at the counter among boon of both sexes stirring up misery and in a together and off the mixture with a relish is for the men they there continually drinking till are drunken drinking as long as they have a left and then as it seemed to me waiting for a to be wrought in their pockets so as to enable them to be drunken again most of these have a significant advertisement of beds doubtless for the of their customers in the interval between one and the next i never could find it in my heart old however utterly to condemn these sad and should certainly wait till i had some consolation to offer before i them of their of gin though death itself were in the glass for their poor souls needed such fiery to lift them a little way out of the of both their outward and interior life giving them glimpses and suggestions even if bewildering ones of a spiritual existence that limited their present misery the unquestionably derive their commission from the divine but have never been taken fully into its counsels all may not be lost though those good men distinguished hy the mystic symbol of the three golden balls were conveniently accessible though what personal property these wretched people could possess capable of being estimated in silver or copper so as to afford a basis for a loan was a problem that still me old likewise dwelt hard by and hung out ancient garments to in the wind there were shops too of a class adapted to the neighbourhood presenting no such generously as englishmen love to gaze at in the market no of mighty no dead or ornamented with carved of fat on their ribs and shoulders in a peculiarly british style of art not these but bits and of lean meat off from tough and bare bones smitten away from joints by the liver feet or whatever else was and into the smallest lots i am afraid that even such came to many of their tables hardly oftener than christmas in the windows of other little shops you saw half a dozen some eggs in a basket looking so antique that your imagination smelt them fly of a hungry cheese pipes and papers of tobacco now and then a sturdy milk woman passed by with a wooden yoke over her shoulders supporting a on either side filled with a the composition of which was water and chalk and the milk of a sickly cow who gave the best she had poor outside glimpses of english poverty but could scarcely make it rich or wholesome spending her life in some close city nook and on strange food i have seen once or twice a donkey coming into one of these streets with fall of vegetables and departing with a return cargo of what looked like rubbish and street no other commerce seemed to exist except possibly a girl might offer you a pair of stockings or a worked collar or a man whisper something mysterious about wonderfully cheap cigars aud yet i remember seeing female in those regions with their wares on the edge of the and their own seats right in the carriage way pretending to sell half decayed and apples to cakes and cheap the kind	35
of and little plates of knitting patiently all day long and removing their stock in trade at nightfall all indispensable from other quarters of the town were on a remarkably scale for example the inhabitants purchased their coal by the load and the poorer ones by the measure it was a curious and melancholy spectacle when an coal cart happened to pass through the street and drop a handful or two of its burden in the mud to see half a dozen women and children for the treasure like a flock of and chickens up some com in this connection i may as well mention a of boiled for such they appeared to me though probably a marine production which used to be from door to door hot as an article of cheap the population of these dismal appeared to consider the side walks and middle of the street as their common hall in a drama of low life the unity of place might be arranged rigidly according to the classic rule and the street be the one locality in which every scene and incident should occur courtship quarrels plot and for robbery and murder family difficulties or all such matters i doubt not are constantly discussed or in this saloon so hung with its sombre of whatever the of the english climate old home the only comfortable or wholesome part of life for the poor must be spent in the open air the stifled and rooms where they lie down at night whole families and together or elbow one another in the when a settled rain drives them within doors are horrors than it is worth while without a practical is view to admit into one s imagination no wonder that they creep forth from the foul mystery of their down from their or scramble up out of their oft the upper step of which you may see the before the shower is ended letting the rain drops down her while her children an of recesses below the common sphere of humanity swarm into the daylight and attain all that they know of personal in the nearest mud it might almost makes man doubt the existence of his own soul to observe how nature has flung these little wretches into the street and left them there so evidently regarding them as nothing worth and how all mankind in the great mother s estimate of her offspring for if they are to have no immortality what superior claim can i assert for mine and how difficult to believe that anything so precious as a of immortal can have been buried under this dirt heap plunged into this of misery and vice as often as i beheld the scene it affected me with surprise and interest resembling though in a far degree the feeling with which when a boy i used to turn over a plank or an old log that had long lain on the damp ground and found a multitude of and devilish looking insects to and fro beneath it without an infinite faith there seemed as much prospect of a blessed for those hideous and many footed worms as for these brethren of our humanity and co of all our heavenly inheritance ah what a mystery slowly slowly as after groping at the bottom of a deep pool my hope struggles upward to the bearing the half drowned body of a child along with it and heaving it aloft for its life and my own life and all outside glimpses op english our lives unless these nostrils can be made capable of celestial air i know not how the purest and most intellectual of us can reasonably expect ever to taste a breath of it the whole question of eternity is there if a single one of those helpless little ones be lost the world is lost the women and children greatly in such places the men probably wandering abroad in quest of that daily miracle a dinner and a drink or perhaps in the daylight that they may the better follow out their cat like through the dark here are women with young figures but old wrinkled yellow faces and with the smoke which they cannot spare from their scanty fires it being too precious for its warmth to be swallowed by the chimney some of them sit on the nursing their babies at which we will glance aside from for the sake of our mothers and all womanhood because the fairest spectacle is here the yet in these dark is strangely identical with what we have all known it to be in the happiest homes nothing as i remember smote me with more grief and pity all the more because entangled with an inclination to smile than to hear a gaunt and ragged mother herself on the pretty ways of her ragged and infant just as a young matron might when she her lady friends to admire her plump white darling in the nursery indeed no womanly characteristic seemed to have altogether perished out of these poor souls it was the very same creature whose tender make the rapture of our young days whom we love cherish and protect and rely upon in life and death and whom we delight to see her beauty with rich robes and set it off with jewels though now in a garb of wholly unfit for her to handle i recognized her over and over again in the groups round a door step or in the descent of a cellar with prodigious earnestness about trifles laughing for a little jest at almost the same instant with one neighbour s sunshine and old home another s shadow wise simple sly and patient yet easily and breaking into small feminine of wi and jealousy of a moment as the social atmosphere of her silken skirted sisters smothered into propriety by dint of a well bred habit not that there was	35
misery on the pavement will lay up a good day s profit besides more than the who gives him a shilling by and by the stranger their theory and begins to practise upon it much to his own temporary freedom from annoyance but not entirely without moral or sometimes a too late years afterwards it may be his memory is still haunted by some wretch whose cheeks were pale and hunger pinched whose rags fluttered in the east wind whose right arm was and his left leg our old home into a mere stick but whom he passed by because an englishman chose to say that fellow s misery looked too perfect was too got np to be genuine even allowing this to be true as a hundred chances to one it was it would still have been a clear case of economy to buy him off with a little loose silver so that his lamentable figure should not limp at the heels of your conscience all over the world to own the truth i provided myself with several such imaginary in england and their number with at least one sickly looking wretch whose acquaintance i first made at in italy and taking a dislike to something sinister in his aspect permitted him to beg early and late and all day long without getting a single at my latest glimpse of him the villain himself not by a of horrible curses as any other italian beggar would but by taking an expression so grief stricken want wrung hopeless and withal resigned that i could paint his life like portrait at this moment were i to go over the same ground again i would listen to no man s theories but buy the little luxury of at a cheap rate instead of doing myself a moral mischief by a stony over whatever natural sensibility i might possess on the other hand there were some whose utmost efforts i even now myself on having such was a phenomenon of his lower half who beset me for two or three years together and in spite of his deficiency of members had some method of himself simultaneously i believe to all quarters of the city he wore a sailor s jacket possibly because skirts would have been a to his figure and had a remarkably broad shouldered and muscular surmounted by a large fresh coloured face which was full of power and intelligence his dress and linen were of neatness once a day at least wherever i went i suddenly became aware of this trunk of a man on the path before me resting on his base and looking as if he had just outside glimpses op english poverty out of the pavement and would sink into it again and at some other spot the instant you left him behind the expression of his eye was perfectly respectful but fixed holding your own as by fascination never once never wavering from its point blank gaze right into your face till you were completely beyond the range of his battery of one immense cannon this was his mode of and he reminded me of the old beggar who appealed so to the charitable sympathies of bias taking aim at him from the roadside with a the and of his silent appeal his close and attack upon your respectful as it seemed was the very flower of insolence or if you give it a possibly truer interpretation it was the effort of a man endowed with great natural force of character to your reluctant will to his purpose apparently he had his salvation upon the ultimate success of a daily struggle between himself and me the triumph of which would compel me to become a to the hat that lay on the pavement beside him man or however there was a in his intended victim which this massive fragment of a mighty personality had not altogether reckoned upon and by its aid i was enabled to pass him at my customary pace hundreds of times over quietly meeting his terribly respectful eye and allowing him the fair chance which i felt to be his due to me if he really had the strength for it he never succeeded but on the other hand never gave up the contest and should i ever walk those streets again i am certain that the tyrant will up through the pavement and look me in the eye and perhaps get the victory i should think all the more highly of myself if i had shown equal heroism in resisting another class of who assailed me on my weaker side and won an easy spoil such was the clergyman with his white who visited me with a paper which he himself had drawn up in a case of our old home distress the respectable and ruined going from door to door shy and silent in his own person but accompanied by a friend who bore testimony to his integrity and stated the misfortunes that had crushed him down or the delicate and prettily dressed lady who had been bred in but was suddenly thrown upon the perilous of the world by the death of an indulgent but secretly father or the commercial catastrophe and suicide of the best of husbands or the gifted but unsuccessful author appealing to my sympathies generously rejoicing in some small which he was kind enough to term my own triumphs in the field of letters and claiming to have largely contributed to them by his notices in the public journals england is fall of such people and a hundred other varieties of higher than these and lower who act their parts tolerably well but seldom with an absolutely effect i knew at once raw yankee as i was that they were almost without an exception rats that at the honest bread and cheese of the community and grow fat by their petty	35
yet often gave them what they asked and privately owned myself a there is a decorum which you unless you happen to be a police from breaking through a crust of plausible respectability even when you are certain that there is a beneath it after making myself as familiar as i decently could with the poor streets i became curious to see what kind of a home was provided for the inhabitants at the public expense fearing that it must needs be a most one or else their choice if choice it were of so miserable a life outside was truly difficult to account for accordingly i visited a great and was glad to observe how all the parts of the establishment were carried on and what an orderly life sufficiently and undisturbed by the arbitrary exercise of authority seemed to be led there possibly in i outside glimpses of english poverty deed it was that very and the cruel necessity of being neat and clean and even the comfort from these and other christian like and that constituted the principal grievance on the part of the poor inmates accustomed to a life long luxury of dirt and the wild life of tlie streets has perhaps as a charm to those who have once thoroughly it as the life of the forest or the but i conceive rather that there must be difficulties for the majority of the poor in the way of getting to the than that a merely preference for the street would incline the class to fare and and expose their to the rain and snow when such a hospitable door stood wide open for their entrance it might be that the and darkest side of the matter was not shown me there being persons of eminent station and of both sexes in the party which i accompanied and of course a properly trained public would have deemed it a monstrous as well as a great shame to exhibit anything to people of rank that might too painfully shock their the women s ward was the portion of the establishment which we especially examined it could not be questioned that they were treated with kindness as well as care no doubt as has been already suggested some of them felt the of submission to general rules of orderly behaviour after being accustomed to that perfect freedom from the minor at least which is one of the of absolutely hopeless poverty or of any circumstances that set us fairly below the of life i asked the governor of the house whether he met with any difficulty in keeping peace and order among his inmates and he informed me that his troubles among the women were greater than with the men they were and apt to be incline to plague and one another in ways that it was impossible to lay hold of and to his own authority by the like methods he said this with the utmost old home good nature and quite won my regard by so placidly himself to the inevitable necessity of letting the women throw dust into his eyes they certainly looked and enough as i saw them though still it might be faintly perceptible that same of them were playing their parts before the governor and his distinguished visitors this governor seemed to me a man thoroughly fit for his position an american in an office of similar responsibility would doubtless be a much superior person better educated possessing a far wider range of thought more naturally acute with a quicker tact of external observation and a faculty of dealing with difficult cases the women would not succeed in throwing half so much dust into his eyes moreover his black coat and thin sallow would make him look like a scholar and his manners would to those of a gentleman but i cannot help questioning whether on the whole these higher would produce decidedly better results the englishman was thoroughly both in aspect and behaviour a bluff ruddy faced hearty kindly like personage with no refinement whatever nor any superfluous sensibility but gifted with a native of character which must have been a very element in the atmosphere of the he spoke to his family in loud good humoured cheerful tones and treated them with a healthy freedom that probably caused the forlorn wretches to feel as if they were free and healthy likewise if he had understood them a little better he would not have treated them half so wisely we are apt to make sickly people more morbid and unfortunate people more miserable by endeavouring to our to their especial and individual needs they eagerly accept our efforts but it is like returning their own sick breath back upon themselves to be breathed over and over again the inward mischief at every repetition the sympathy that would really do them good is of a kind that their sound and healthy parts and the part affected by disease which will under the eye of a too outside glimpses of english poverty g lose observer like a weed in the my good friend the governor had no tendencies in the latter direction and abundance of them in the former and was consequently as wholesome and as the west wind with a little of the north in it brightening the dreary that encountered us as if he had carried a in his band he expressed himself by his whole being and personality and by works more than words and had the not unusual english merit of knowing what to do much better than how to about it the women i imagine must have felt one in heir state however comfortable otherwise they were forbidden or at all events lacked the means to follow out their instinct of themselves all were dressed in ne homely uniform of blue checked gowns with such caps their heads as english servants wear generally too had one english	35
aspect and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to constitute we have few of these absolutely faces among our native american population individuals of must be singularly unfortunate if mixing as we do no of gentle blood has contributed to the element no gleam of hereditary intelligence has lighted up the stolid eyes which their forefathers brought from the old country even in this english however there at least one person who claimed to be intimately connected with rank and wealth the governor after suggesting that this person would probably be gratified by our visit ushered us into a small parlour which was furnished a little more like a room in a private than others that we entered and bad a row of religious books and fashionable novels on the piece an old lady sat at a bright coal fire reading a romance and rose to receive us with a certain pomp of manner and elaborate display of courtesy which in spite of myself made me inwardly question the of her aristocratic pretensions but at any rate she looked like a respectable old soul and was evidently to the very old home core of her frost bitten heart by the awful with which we responded to her gracious and hospitable though welcome after a little polite conversation we retired and the governor with a lowered voice and an air of deference told us that she had been a lady of quality and had ridden in her own not many years before and now lived in continual expectation that some of her rich relatives would drive up in their carriages to take her away meanwhile he added she was treated with great respect by her fellow i could not help thinking from a few peculiarities in her talk and manner that there might have been a mistake on the governor s part and perhaps a exaggeration on the old lady s concerning her former position in society but what struck me was the forcible instance of that most of english the to aristocratic connection on one side and the submission and reverence with which it was accepted by the governor and his household on the other among ourselves i think when wealth and eminent position have taken their departure they seldom leave a pallid ghost behind them or if it sometimes abroad few recognize it we went into several other rooms at the doors of which pausing on the outside we could hear the and sometimes the of the female inhabitants within but invariably found silence and peace when we stepped over the threshold the women were together in their sometimes three or four sometimes a larger number by their spontaneous i suppose and all busied so far as i can remember with the one occupation of knitting coarse stockings hardly any of them i am sorry to say had a brisk or cheerful air though it often stirred them up to a momentary vivacity to be by the governor and they seemed to like being noticed however slightly by the visitors the happiest person whom i saw there and running hastily through my experiences i hardly recollect to have seen a happier one in my life if you take a careless flow of spirits as happiness was an old woman that outside glimpses of english poverty g lay in bed among ten or twelve heavy looking females who plied their knitting work round her she laughed when we entered and immediately began to talk to us in a thin little spirited claiming to be more than a century old and the governor in whatever way he happened to be of the fact confirmed her age to be a hundred and four her and merriment were really wonderful it was as if she had got through with all her actual business in life two or three generations ago and now freed from every responsibility for herself or others had only to keep up a state of mind till the short time or long time and happy as she was she appeared not to care whether it were long or short before death who had her name in his list might remember to take her away she had gone quite round the circle of human existence and come back to the again and so she had grown to be a kind of miraculous old pet the of people seventy or eighty years younger than herself who talked and laughed with her as if she were a child finding great delight in her and strangely playful into some of which she conveyed a that caused their ears to a little she had done getting out of bed in this world and lay there to be waited upon like a queen or a baby in the same room sat a who had once been an of considerable but was compelled to give up her profession by a softening of the brain the disease seemed to have stolen the out of her life and disturbed all healthy relationship between the thoughts within her and the world without on our first entrance she looked cheerfully at us and showed herself ready to engage in conversation but suddenly while we were talking with the century old the poor began to weep her face with extravagant stage and wringing her hands for some inscrutable sorrow it might have been a of actual calamity in her past life or quite as probable it was but a dramatic woe beneath which she had staggered and shrieked and wrung her hands with old of in the sight of crowded theatres and been as often comforted by of applause but my idea of the mystery was that she had a sense of wrong in seeing the aged woman whose empty vivacity was like the rattling of dry peas in a chosen as the central object of interest to the visitors while she herself who had	35
them could be drowned to night by their best friends instead of being put tenderly to bed this heroic method of treating human moral and material is certainly beyond the scope of man s rights and probably will not be adopted by divine providence until the opportunity of shall have been offered us again and again through a series oi future ages it may be fair to acknowledge that the humane and excellent governor as well as other persons better acquainted with the subject than myself took a less gloomy view of it though still so dark a one as to involve scanty consolation they remarked that individuals of the male sex picked up in the streets and in the sometimes succeed tolerably well in life because they are taught trades before being turned into the world and by dint of behaviour and good luck are not unlikely to get employment and our old home earn a the case is different with the girls they can only go to service and are invariably rejected by families of respectability on account of their origin and for the better reason of their to satisfactorily even the meanest situations in a well ordered english household their resource is to take service with people only a step or two above the poorest class with whom they fare endure harsh treatment lead shifting and precarious lives and finally drop into the of evil through which in their best estate they do but pick their way on stepping stones from the schools we went to the and the for such cruelty is not in the heart of a true englishman as to deny a his daily allowance of beer and through the where we beheld an immense pot over the fire and with some kind of a that filled it up to its brim we also visited a tailor s shop and a s shop in both of which a number of men and pale were at work diligently enough though seemingly with small heart in the business finally the governor ushered us into a shed inside of which was piled up an immense quantity of new they were of the description made of pine boards probably oi american growth not very nicely smoothed by the plane neither painted nor stained with black but provided with a of rope at either end for the convenience of lifting the box and its into the cart that shall carry them to the burial ground there in holes ten feet deep the are buried one above another mingling their relics in another world may they resume their individuality and find it a happier one than here as we departed a character came under our notice which i have met with in all whether of the city or village or in england or america it was the familiar who across the his wooden shoes to greet us with a howl or a laugh i hardly know which holding out his hand for a penny and when it was given him all outside of poverty persons so far as my experience goes have this craving for copper coin and appear to estimate its value by a miraculous instinct which is one of the earliest of human intelligence while the nobler faculties are yet in there come a time even in this world when we shall all that our tendency to the individual f gold and broad acres fine houses and such good and t things as are equally by a multitude is but i trait of imperfectly developed intelligence like the s rapidity of a penny when that day and probably lot till then i imagine that there will be no more poor streets nor need of i was once present at the wedding of some poor english people and was deeply impressed by the spectacle though by means with such proud and delightful emotions as seem to liave all england on the recent occasion of the marriage of its prince it was in the cathedral at a particularly black and grim old structure into which i had stepped bo examine some ancient and curious wood within the choir the woman in attendance greeted me with a smile which always forth on the feminine i know not why when a wedding is in question and asked me to take a seat in the till some poor parties were married it being the holidays and a good time for them to many because no would be demanded by the clergyman i sat down accordingly and soon the parson and his clerk appeared at the altar and a considerable crowd of people made their entrance at a side door and ranged themselves in a long huddled line across the they were my acquaintances of the poor streets or persons in a precisely similar condition of life and were now come to their marriage ceremony in just such as i had always seen them wear the men in their coats out at elbows or their with toil the women drawing their shabby about their shoulders to hide the beneath all of them and wrinkled with and care nothing virgin like in the nor our old home or energetic in the they were in short the mere rags and of the race whom some of evil omen howling along the streets had chanced to sweep together into an heap each and all of them conscious of his or her individual misery had into the strange of supposing that they could lessen the sum of it by it into the misery of another person all the couples and it was difficult in such a confused crowd to exactly their number stood up at once and had execution done upon them in the lump the clergyman addressing only small parts of the service to each individual pair but so managing the larger portion as to include the whole company without the trouble of	35
repetition by this contrivance one would apprehend he came near making every man and woman the husband or wife of every other nor perhaps would he have much additional mischief by the mistake bnt after receiving a in common they themselves in their own fashion as they only knew how and departed to the or the or the street comers where their and subsequent lives were to be spent the parson smiled the clerk and the grinned the female attendant almost aloud and even the married parties seemed to see something exceedingly funny in the affair but for my part though generally apt enough to be by a joke i laid it away in my memory as one of the sights i ever looked upon not very long afterwards i happened to be passing the same venerable cathedral and heard a of jo bells and beheld a party coming down the steps towards a carriage and four horses with a coachman and two that waited at the gate one parson and one service had the wretchedness of a score of a bishop and three or four had combined their spiritual might to the golden links of this other marriage bond the bridegroom s mien had a sort of careless and outside glimpses op poverty kindly english pride the floated along in her white a creature so nice and delicate that it was a luxury to see her and a pity that her silk slippers should touch anything so as the old stones of the churchyard avenue the crowd of ragged people who always cluster to witness they may of an aristocratic wedding into audible admiration of the bride s beauty and the bridegroom s and uttered prayers and possibly paid for in for the happiness of both k the most favourable of earthly conditions could make them happy they had every prospect of it they were going to live on their abundance in one of those stately and delightful english homes such as no other people ever created or inherited a hall set far and safe within its own private grounds and surrounded with venerable trees shaven rich and the whole so contrived and tended that summer rendered it a paradise and even winter would hardly it of its beauty and all this fair property seemed more exclusively and their own because of its descent through many forefathers each of whom had added an improvement or a charm and thus it with a stronger stamp of possession to his heir and is it possible after all that there may be a flaw in the title deeds is or is not the system wrong that gives one married pair so immense a of luxurious home and out a million others from any home whatever one day or another safe as they deem themselves and safe as the hereditary temper of the people really to make them the gentlemen of england will be compelled to face this question old it has often perplexed me to imagine how an englishman will be able to reconcile himself to any state of existence from which the earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded even if he fail to take his appetite along with him which it seems to me hardly possible to believe since this is so essential to his composition the immortal day must still admit an of two or three hours during which he will be conscious of a slight at all events if not an absolute to merely spiritual the idea of dinner has so itself among his highest and deepest characteristics so illuminated itself with intellect and softened itself with the kindest emotions of his heart so linked itself with church and state and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and ceremonies that by taking it utterly away death instead of putting the final touch to his perfection would leave him infinitely less complete than we have already known him he could not be happy paradise among all its would lack one daily felicity which his sombre little island possessed perhaps it is not to conjecture that a provision may have been made in this particular for the englishman s exceptional necessities it strikes me that milton was of the opinion here suggested and may have intended to throw out a delightful and hope for his countrymen when he represents the genial as his part with such excellent appetite at adam s dinner table and himself to fruit and vegetables only because in those early days of her housekeeping eve had no more table to set before him milton indeed had a true english taste for the pleasures of the table though refined by the lofty and poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself it is delicately implied in the in paradise and more though still betrayed in the proposing to of virtuous father virtuous son a series of nice little dinners in mid winter and it fully out in that banquet which elaborate as it was satan tossed up in a from the kitchen of among this people indeed so wise in their generation dinner has a kind of quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon the table so that if it be only a mutton chop they treat it with due reverence and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such reckless as ourselves do not often find in our richest abundance it is good to see how they are after fifty or sixty years of heroic eating still upon their powers and indulging a vigorous appetite whereas an american has generally lost the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the earliest decline of life and he makes little account of his dinner and at his peril if at all i know not whether my countrymen will allow me to tell them though i think it scarcely too much to affirm that on this side of the water people	35
never dine at any rate abundantly as nature has provided us with most o the material the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in america it is the flower of civilization and refinement and our inability to produce it or to appreciate its admirable beauty if a happy inspiration should bring it into bloom marks the limit of culture which we have attained it is not to be supposed however that the mob of cultivated englishmen know how to dine in this elevated sense the of the national character is still an to them even in that particular line where they are best qualified to though often present at good men s i remember only a single dinner which le conscious that many of its higher were our old home thrown away upon me i yet feel to be a perfect work of art it could not without be a matter of animal enjoyment because out of the yery perfection of that lower bliss there had arisen a dream like development of spiritual happiness as in the of painting and poetry there was a something a final that only fluttered about your comprehension whenever you tried to detain it and compelling yon to recognize it by faith rather than sense it seemed as if a set of senses were requisite and had been partly supplied for the special of this banquet and that the guests around the table only eight in number were becoming so educated polished and softened by the delicate influences of what they ate and drank as to be now a little more than mortal for the and there was that gentle delicious sadness too which we and in the very summit of our most exquisite and feel it a charm beyond all the gaiety through which it keeps breathing its in the present case it was worth a heavier sigh to reflect that such a achievement the production of so much art skill fancy invention and perfect taste the growth of all the ages which appeared to have been for this hour since man first began to eat and to his food with wine must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment when other beautiful things can be made a joy for ever yet a dinner like this is no better than we can get any day at the house unless the whole man with soul intellect and stomach is ready to appreciate it and unless moreover there is such a harmony in all the circumstances and and especially such a pitch of accorded minds that nothing shall jar rudely against the guest s thoroughly the world and especially our part of it being the rough ill and tumultuous place we find it a beef is about as good as any other dinner the foregoing however has drawn me aside from the main object of my sketch in which i to give a slight idea of those public or partially public the of which so thoroughly among the english people that nothing is ever decided upon in matters of peace or war until they have upon it in the shape of and talked it fully over in their cups nor are these merely occasional but of stated in all considerable and associated bodies the most ancient times appear to have been as familiar with them as the englishmen of to day in many of the old english towns you find some stately hall or chamber in which the mayor and other authorities of the place have long held their and always in convenient there is a dusky kitchen with an immense fireplace where an ox might lie at his ease though the less gigantic scale of modem may now have permitted the to gather in its chimney st mary s hall in is so good a specimen of an room that perhaps i may devote a page or two to the description of it in a narrow street opposite to st michael s church one of the three famous of you behold a edifice in the of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as i have above alluded to and on the same level a cellar with low stone pillars and arches like the of a cathedral passing up a well worn staircase the of which is as black as you enter the fine old hall some sixty feet in length and broad and lofty in proportion it is lighted by six windows of modem stained glass on one side and by the immense and arch of another window at the farther end of the room its rich and ancient panes a genuine historical piece in which are represented some of the personages of old times with their notwithstanding the coloured light thus thrown into the hall and though it was when i last saw it the of black oak and some faded that hung round the walls together with the cloudy vault of the roof above made a gloom which the richness only illuminated into more effect the is wrought with figures in the dress of old home henry s s time which is the date of the hall and is regarded hy as evidence for the l costume of that epoch and i for the actual of men known in history they are as as ghosts however and vanish into the old work of their when you try to make them out coats were formerly all round the hall haye been almost rubbed out by people hanging their against them or by women with and hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and full length portraits of several english kings charles being the earliest hang on the walls and on the or elevated part of the floor stands an antique chair of state which several royal characters are said to have occupied while here with their loyal subjects of it is enough for a	35
person of bulk or even two such but and uncomfortable reminding me of the settles which used to be seen in old fashioned new england overhead supported by a self power without the aid of a single pillar is the original ceiling of oak precisely similar in shape to the roof of a bam with all the beams and plainly to be seen at the remote height of sixty feet you hardly discern that they are carved with figures of angels and doubtless many other devices of which the admirable art is wasted in the that has so long been brooding there over the entrance of the hall opposite the great arched window the radiance of which faintly through the interval is a gallery for and a row of ancient suits of is suspended from its it me too for having gone so far i would fain leave nothing untouched upon that i remember somewhere about these venerable a picture of the on horseback in which the artist has been so of that illustrious lady s hair that if she had no there was certainly much need for the good people of to shut their s after all my pains i fear that i have made bnt a poor id at the description as regards a of the scene n my own mind to the reader s it gave me a most vivid of antiquity that had been very little with that if a group of steel clad knights had come through the doorway and a bearded and old ire had handed in a stately dame rustling in gorgeous robes i long forgotten fashion a face of beauty some in the tomb yet stepping the of harp and from the gallery while rusty responded with a hollow ringing sound why i should have felt that these shadows once so with the spot had a better right in st mary s hall n i a stranger from a far country which has no past but moral of the foregoing description is to show how this love of dinners this reverence for dinner a sacred institution has caught hold of the english since from the earliest period we i them building their halls as their palaces or i know not whether the hall just described is now used for purposes but others of similar antiquity and splendour are for example there is hall in a very fine old room adorned with admirably carved d work on the ceiling and walls it is also enriched with s representing a grave assemblage of bars and all portraits with such extensive t one half of the company might have been occupied in the other kneeling before ig henry sir robert is said to have offered a pounds for the liberty of cutting out one of the heads m this picture he to have a perfect in the room has many other pictures of distinguished of the company in long past times and of some of the and of england all darkened with age darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could tow it is not my design to inflict any more specimens old of ancient hall painting on the reader but it may be worth while to touch upon other modes of that still in these time where there to be a singular assumption of dignity and pomp h respectable citizens who would never dream of claiming any privilege of rank outside of their own sphere thus i saw two caps of state for the and junior of the company caps of silver real or crowns indeed for these city wrought in open work and lined with crimson velvet in a strong closet opening from the hall there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet table hundreds of forks and a silver punch bowl the gift of some jolly king or other and besides a multitude of less noticeable vessels two loving cups very wrought in silver gilt one presented by henry the other by charles these cups including the covers and are very large and the bowl part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine which when the custom was first established each guest was probably expected to drink off at a draught in passing them from hand to hand a long table of there is a peculiar ceremony which i may hereafter have occasion to describe meanwhile if i might assume such a liberty i should be glad to invite the reader to the official dinner table of his worship the mayor at a large english where i spent several years the mayor s dinner parties occur as often as once a fortnight and inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time his worship probably at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished personages of the town and neighbourhood more than once during his year s and very much no doubt to the promotion of good feeling among individuals of opposite parties and pursuits in life a miscellaneous party of englishmen can always find more comfortable ground to meet upon than as many americans their differences of opinion being less radical than ours and it being the wish of all their hearts whether hey call themselves or what not that nothing in this shall ever be greatly altered from what it has been and b there is seldom such a of political hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter than with english taste the first dinner of this kind at which i had the honour to l e present took place during time and included among the guests the judges and the prominent members of the bar the town hall at seven o clock i communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed and he repeated it to another on the	35
first staircase by whom it was passed to a third and thence to a fourth at the door of the reception room losing all resemblance to the original sound in the course of these so that i had the advantage of making my entrance in the character of a stranger not only to the whole company but to myself as well his worship however kindly recognized me and put me on speaking terms with two or three gentlemen whom i found very and all the more attentive on the score of my it is very singular how kind an englishman will almost invariably be to an individual american without ever a of his prejudice against the american character in the lump my new acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease and in of their good nature i soon began to look round at the general company in a critical spirit making my crude observations apart and drawing silent of the of which i should not have been half well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment there were two judges present a good many lawyers and a few officers of the army in uniform the other guests seemed to he principally of the class and among them was a from with whom i a little inasmuch as we were bom with the same sky over our heads and an unbroken of soil between his abode and mine there was one old gentleman whose character i never made out with powdered hair clad in black breeches and silk old home stockings and wearing a at his side otherwise with the exception of the military there was little or no pretence of official costume it the j considerable assemblage of englishmen that i had seen my honest impression about them was that they were a heavy and homely set of people with a remarkable of aspect and not repulsive but beneath which it required more familiarity with the national character than i then possessed always to detect the good breeding of a gentleman being generally i middle aged or still further advanced they were by no means graceful in figure for the of the youthful english jf man rapidly with years his body appearing to grow i longer his legs to themselves and his to i assume the dignified which justly belongs to that metropolis of his system his face what with the of the atmosphere ale at lunch wine at dinner and a abundance of food gets red and and at least one additional chin with a promise of more so that finally a stranger his animal part at the most superficial glance but must take time and a little pains to discover the intellectual comparing him with an american i really thought that our national j and lean habit of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an point of view it seemed to me moreover that the tailor had not done so much as he might and for these heavy figures but had gone on their by the of their garments he had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit and was entirely out of his line but to be quite open with the reader i afterwards learned to think that this tailor has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves knowing how to dress his customers with such individual propriety that they look as if they were bom in their clothes the fit being to the character rather than the form if you make an englishman smart unless he be a very exceptional one of whom i have seen a few you make him a monster his best aspect is that of ponderous respectability to make an end of these first impressions i fancied that not merely the bar but the bar of any inland county in new england might show a set of thin men looking worn sallow deeply wrinkled across the forehead and grimly about the mouth with whom these heavy english lawyers slow paced and fat i as they must needs be would stand very little chance in a professional contest how that matter might turn out i am f to decide but i state these results of my earliest glimpses at englishmen not for what they are worth but i ultimately gave them up as worth little or nothing in course of time i came to the conclusion that englishmen of all ages are a rather good looking people dress in admirable taste from their own point of view and under a surface never silken to the touch have a refinement of manners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a separate that is to say if the individual himself be a man of station and has had gentlemen for his father and grandfather the sturdy saxon nature does not itself short of the third generation the too and all other classes have their own the only value of my therefore lay in their the of a traveller to measure one people by the characteristics of another as english writers invariably measure us and take upon themselves to be disgusted accordingly instead of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which we may be in in due time we were summoned to the table and went thither in no solemn procession but with a good deal of thrusting behind and for places when we reached our destination the legal gentlemen i suspect were responsible for this zeal which i never afterwards remarked in a similar party the dining hall was of noble size and like the other rooms of the was painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated there was a splendid table service and a noble array of some of them in plain clothes and others wearing the town livery old richly decorated with gold lace and themselves excellent specimens of the manhood of britain when we were fairly seated it was certainly	35
an spectacle to look np and down the long vista of earnest faces and them so resolute so conscious that there was an important in hand and so determined to he equal to the occasion indeed englishman or not i hardly know what can be prettier than a snow white table cloth a huge heap of flowers as a central bright silver rich china crystal glasses of at due intervals a french roll and an folded at each plate all that airy portion of a banquet in short that comes before the first the whole illuminated by a blaze of artificial light without which a dinner of made dishes looks and the simplest are the best printed bills of fare were distributed representing an abundant feast no part of which appeared on the table until called for in separate plates i have entirely forgotten what it was but deem it no great matter inasmuch as there is a commonplace and in the composition of extensive dinners on account of the impossibility of supplying a hundred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare it was suggested to me that certain old gentlemen had a private understanding what to call for and that it would be good policy in a stranger to follow in their footsteps through the least i did not care to do so however because like s dip out of s any sort of at such a table would be sure to suit my purpose so i chose a dish or two on my own judgment and getting through my labours had great pleasure is seeing the englishmen toil onward to the end they drank rather too though wisely for i observed that they seldom took and let the champagne slowly away out of the themselves witb but it before their final confidence their taste in however did not seem so exquisite and certainly was not so various as that to which many americans pretend this of an intimate ac with rare does not suit a sensible as lie is very much in earnest about his and one or two as his life long friends seldom exchanging em for any of a moment and the reward of liis constancy in an stomach and only so much as he wholesome and desirable knowing well the measure of his powers he is not apt to fill his glass too often society indeed would hardly habitual of that kind though in my opinion the englishmen now upon the stage could carry off their three bottles at need with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers it is not so very long since the three bottle heroes sank finally under the table it may be at least i should be glad if it were true that there was an sympathy between our reform now somewhat in and the almost disappearance of hard drinking among the respectable classes in england i remember a middle aged gentleman telling me in illustration of the very slight importance attached to of within the memory of men not yet old that he had seen a certain magistrate sir john or but i think the jolly old knight could hardly have staggered under so perverse a as this last while sitting on the bench pull out a crown piece and hand it to the clerk mr clerk said sir john as if it were the most indifferent ct in the world i was drunk last night there are my five shillings during the dinner i had a good deal of pleasant conversation with the gentlemen on either side of me one of them a lawyer with great on the social standing of the judges the dignity and authority of the crown they take during time of the highest military men in the kingdom of the lord lieutenant of the county of the of the royal and even of the prince of wales for the they are the greatest men in england with a glow of professional complacency that amounted to enthusiasm my friend assured me that in case of a royal dinner a judge if actually holding an old home would be expected to offer his arm and take the herself to the table happening to be in company with of these elevated personages on subsequent occasions it appeared to me that the judges are fully conscious of their claims to respect and take rather more pains to impress them on their than men of high hereditary rank are apt to do if it be not to say so are sometimes marked by a similar characteristic dignified position is so sweet to an englishman that he needs to be born in it and to feel it thoroughly with his nature i from its original in order to keep him from it in the faces of innocent my companion on the other side was a thick set man uncouth in manners and ugly where none were handsome with a dark roughly that looked grim in repose and seemed to hold within itself the machinery of a very terrific frown he ate with resolute appetite and let slip few opportunities of whatever happened to be passing by i was meditating in what way this table fellow might safely be when he turned to me with a surly sort of kindness and invited me to take a glass of wine we then began a conversation that on his part with sturdy sense and somehow or other brought me closer to him than i had yet stood to an englishman i should hardly have taken him to be an educated man certainly not a scholar of accurate training and yet he seemed to have all the resources of education and trained intellectual power at command my fresh and watchful observation of english characteristics appeared either to interest or amuse him or perhaps both under the influences of abundance of meat and drink he grew very gracious not that i	35
ought to use such a phrase to describe his evidently genuine good will and by and by expressed a wish for further acquaintance asking me to call at his rooms in london and inquire for throwing out i the name forcibly as if he had no occasion to be ashamed of it i remember dean swift s retort to on a similar announcement of what regiment pray sir and fancied that the same question might not have heen quite amiss if applied to the rugged individual at my side but i heard of him as one of the prominent men at the english a rough customer and a terribly strong champion in criminal cases and it caused me more regret than might been expected on so slight an when not long afterwards i saw his death announced in the newspapers not rich in attractive qualities he possessed i think the most attractive one of all thorough manhood after the cloth was removed a goodly group of were set before the mayor who sent them forth on their outward voyage full with port and of which excellent the latter found least acceptance among the guests when every man had filled his glass his worship stood up and proposed a toast it was of course our gracious sovereign or words to that effect and immediately a band of whose preliminary and i had already heard behind me struck up god save the queen and the whole company rose with one impulse to assist in singing that famous national it was the first time in my life that i had ever seen a body of men or ever a single man under the active influence of the sentiment of loyalty for though we call ourselves loyal to our country and institutions and prove it by our readiness to shed blood and sacrifice life in their behalf still the principle is as cold and hard in an american bosom as the steel spring that puts in motion a powerful machinery in the englishman s system a force similar to that of our steel spring is by the warm of human hearts he clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood at present in the flesh and blood of a woman and to combine love awe and intellectual reverence all in one emotion and to his mother his wife his children the whole idea of kindred in a single person and make her the representative of his country and its laws we americans smile superior as i did at the mayor s table and yet i old fancy we lose some very agreeable of the heart in consequence of our proud of caring no more our president than for a man of straw or a in a but to say the truth the spectacle struck me rather to see this party of stout middle aged and elderly gentlemen in the fulness of meat and drink their ample and ruddy faces glistening with wine perspiration and enthusiasm out those strange old from the very bottom of their hearts and which two organs in the english interior arrangement lie closer together than in ours the song seemed to me the old in the world bnt i could not wonder at its universal acceptance and popularity considering how it expresses the national faith and feeling as regards the inevitable of england the almighty s consequent respect and partiality for that little island and his presumed readiness to strengthen its against the wickedness and of all other or himself though evidently english to the very last prejudice could not write half so good a song for the purpose finding that the entire dinner table struck in with voices of every pitch between rolling thunder and the of a and that the strain was not of such delicacy as to be much hurt by the of them i determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the triumphant roar it seemed but a proper courtesy to the first lady in the land whose guest in the largest sense i might consider myself accordingly my first efforts and probably my last for i purpose not to sing any more unless it be hail on the restoration of the union were poured freely forth in honour of queen victoria the smiled like the carved head of a and the other gentlemen in my neighbourhood by and gestures evinced grave approbation of so suitable a tribute to english superiority and we finished our and sat down in an extremely happy frame of mind other followed in honour of the great institutions and interests of the country and speeches in response to each were made hy individuals whom the mayor or the company called for none of them impressed me with a very high idea of english it is indeed what ragged and most englishmen are satisfied to give vent to without attempting anything like artistic shape hut clapping on a patch here and another there and ultimately getting out what they want to say and generally with a result of sufficiently good sense hut in some such mass as if they had thrown it up rather than spoken it it seemed to me that this was almost as much hy choice as necessity an englishman of favour should not he too smooth if an orator is his countrymen distrust him they dislike the stronger and heavier his thoughts the provided there be an element of commonplace running through them and any rough yet never vulgar force of expression such as would knock an opponent down if it hit him only it must not be too personal is altogether to their taste but a studied neatness of language or other such superficial graces they cannot abide they do not often permit a man to make himself a fine orator of malice that is unless he be a nobleman as for example lord of the who as an hereditary and	35
necessarily a public speaker is bound to remedy a poor natural delivery in the best way he can on the whole i partly agree with them and if i cared for any whatever should be as likely to theirs as our own when an english speaker sits down you feel that you have been listening to a real man and not to an actor his sentiments have a wholesome in them though very likely this apparent is as much an art as what we in a sentence or a it is one good of this style that nobody in england seems to feel any shyness about the and ideas out of his mind for the old home benefit of an audience at least nobody did on the occasion now in hand except a poor little major of who responded for the army in a thin voice with a terribly hesitating of ideas and i question not would rather have been in front of his than to have said a word not his own mouth but the cannon s was this poor major s proper organ of utterance while i was thus occupied in my fellow guests the mayor had got up to propose another toast and listening rather to the first sentence or two i soon became sensible of a drift in his worship s remarks that made me glance towards yes grumbled that personage a of port towards me it is your turn next and seeing in my face i suppose the consternation of a wholly orator he kindly added it is nothing a mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose the less you say the better they will like it that being the case i suggested that perhaps they would like it best if i said nothing at all but the shook his head now on first receiving the mayor s invitation to dinner it had occurred to me that i might possibly be brought into my present bnt i had dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be entertained and moreover as so alien om my disposition and character that fate surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for me if nothing else prevented an earthquake or the crack of doom would certainly interfere before i need rise to speak yet here was the mayor getting on and indeed i heartily wished that he might get on and on for ever and of his wanderings find no end if the gentle reader my kindest friend and to desire it i can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker quite as indifferently as if it concerned another person indeed it does concern another or a mere phenomenon for it was not i in my proper and natural self that sat there at table or subsequently rose to speak at the moment then if the choice had been offered me whether the mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol i should have taken the latter alternative i had really nothing to say not an idea in my head nor which was a great deal worse any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out that empty nothing and give it a aspect of intelligence such as might last the poor the little time it had to live but time pressed the mayor his remarks affectionately of the united states and highly complimentary to their distinguished representative at that to a close amid a vast deal of cheering and the hand struck up hail i believe though it might have been old hundred or god save the queen over again for anything that i should have known or cared when the music ceased there was an intensely disagreeable instant during which i seemed to away and fling off the habit of a lifetime and rose still void of ideas but with composure to make a speech the guests rattled on the table and cried hear most as if now at length in this foolish and idly world had come the long expected moment when one golden word was to be spoken and in that imminent crisis i caught a glimpse of a little bit of an of sentiment which it might and must and should do to utter well it was nothing as the had said what surprised me most was the sound of my own voice which i had never before heard at a pitch and which impressed me as belonging to some other person who and not myself would be responsible for the speech a prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances i i went on without the slightest embarrassment and sat down amid great applause wholly by anything that i had spoken but well won from englishmen by the new development of pluck that alone had enabled me to speak at all it was handsomely done and i felt like a who had been for the first time under fire i would gladly have ended my career then and old home there for ever but was placed in a similar or worse position and compelled to meet it as i best might for this ms one of the necessities of an office which i had taken on my shoulders and beneath which i might be crushed by no moral on my own part but could not without cowardice and shame my subsequent fortune was various once though i felt it to be a kind of i got a speech by heart and doubtless it might have been a very one only i forgot every syllable at the moment of need and had to another as well as i could i found it a better method to pre arrange a few points in my mind and trust to the spur of the occasion and the kind aid of providence for me to bring them to bear the presence of any considerable proportion	35
of personal friends generally me i would rather have talked with an enemy in the gate invariably too i was much embarrassed by a small audience and succeeded better with a large one the sympathy of a multitude possessing a effect which lifts the speaker a little way out of his individuality and him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one again if i rose carelessly and confidently with an expectation of going through the business entirely at my ease i often that i had little or nothing to say whereas if i came to the charge in perfect despair and at a crisis when failure have been horrible it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expression to sentiments which an instant before looked as vague and off as the clouds in the atmosphere on the whole poor as my own success may have been i apprehend that any intelligent man with a possesses the chief requisite of power and may develop many of the others if he it worth while to bestow a great amount of labour and pains on an object which the most accomplished i suspect have not found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses at any rate it must be a remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated conception of truth when the lower feeling of a is his sympathies and who can speak oat frankly the best that there is in him when by it a little or a good deal he knows that he may make it ten times as acceptable to the audience this slight article on the of england would be too imperfect without an attempted description of a lord mayor s dinner at the mansion house in london i should have preferred the annual feast at but never had the good fortune to witness it once however i was honoured with an invitation to one of the regular dinners and gladly accepted it taking the precaution nevertheless though it hardly seemed necessary to inform the city king through a mutual friend that i was no fit representative of american eloquence and must humbly make it a condition that i should not be expected to open my mouth except for the reception of his s hospitality the reply was gracious and so that i presented myself in the great entrance hall of the mansion house at half past six o clock in a state of most freedom from the apprehensions that often tormented me at such times the mansion house was built in queen anne s days in the very heart of old london and is a palace worthy of its were he really as great a man as his state and pomp would seem to indicate times are changed however since the days of or even of s to whom the highest imaginable reward of life long integrity was a seat in the lord mayor s chair people nowadays say that the real dignity and importance have perished out of the office as they do sooner or later out of all earthly institutions leaving only a painted and gilded shell like that of an eastern egg and that it is only and third rate men who now condescend to be ambitious of the i felt a little at this for the original of new england had strong sympathies with the people of london who were mostly in religion and in politics in the early days of our old country so that the lord mayor was a of dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers and held to be hardly second to the prime minister of the throne the true great men of the city now appear to have aims beyond city greatness connecting themselves with national politics and seeking to be identified with the aristocracy of the country in the entrance hall i was received by a body of dressed in a livery of blue coats and breeches in which they looked wonderfully like american only with far more lace and than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing there were likewise two very imposing figures whom i should have taken to be military men of rank being arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver but they turned out to be officers of the lord mayor s household and were now employed in to the guests the places which they were to occupy at the dinner table our names for i had included myself in a little group of friends were announced and ascending the staircase we met his in the way of the first reception room where also we had the advantage of a to the lady as this distinguished couple retired into private life at the termination of their of office it is to make any remarks critical or on the manners and bearing of two personages suddenly emerging from a position of respectable into one of pre eminent dignity within their sphere such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to the full size of their office if it were desirable to write an essay on the latent of ordinary people for grandeur we have an in our own country and on a scale greater than that of the though invested with nothing like the outward magnificence that and the latter if i have been correctly informed the lord mayor s salary is exactly double that of the president of the united states and yet is found very inadequate to his necessary expenditure there were two reception rooms thrown into one by the opening of wide folding doors and though in an old style and not yet so old as to be venerable they are remarkably handsome apartments lofty as well as spacious with carved and walls and at either end a splendid fireplace of white marble ornamented with wreaths of	35
flowers and foliage the company were about three hundred many of them in politics war literature and science though i recollect none pre eminently distinguished in either department but it is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honour to men of literature for example who deserve well of the public yet do not often meet it face to face thus to bring them together under genial in connection with persons of note in other lines i know not what may be the lord mayor s mode or principle of selecting his guests nor whether during his official term he can his hospitality to every man of noticeable talent in the wide world of london nor in fine whether his s invitation is much sought for or valued but it seemed to me that this feast is one of the many sagacious methods which the english have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among different sorts of people like most other distinctions of society however i presume that the lord mayor s card does not often seek out modest merit but comes at last when the is conscious of the bore and doubtful about the honour one very pleasant characteristic which i never met with at any other public or partially public dinner was the presence of ladies no doubt they were principally the wives and daughters of city and if we may judge from the many sly allusions in old plays and poems the city of london has always been famous for the beauty of it women and the attractions between them and the men of quality be that as it might while hither and thither through those crowded apartments i saw much reason for certain opinions which i had in my and as regarded the delicate character and frequent occurrence of english beauty to state the entire truth being at this period some years old in old home english life my taste i fear had long to be by acquaintance other models of feminine loveliness than it was my happiness to know in america i often found or seemed to find if i may dare to confess it in the persons of such of my dear as i now occasionally met a certain forbid that i should call it a deficiency of physical a so to speak in the pattern of their material make a of complexion a of voice all of which characteristics only made me resolve so much the more to these fair creatures as angels because i was sometimes driven to a half acknowledgment that the english ladies looked at from a lower point of view were perhaps a little finer animals than they the advantages of the latter if any they could really be said to have were all in a few additional of clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures it would be a pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of american beauty in exchange for half a of human clay at a given signal we all found our way into an immense room called the egyptian hall i know not why except that the architecture was classic and as different as possible from the ponderous style of and the a powerful band played as we entered and a brilliant profusion of light shone down on two long tables extending the whole length of the hall and a cross table between them occupying nearly its entire breadth glass gleamed and silver on an acre or two of snowy over which were set out all the of a stately feast we found our places without difficulty and the lord mayor s implored a blessing on the food a ceremony which the english never omit at a great dinner or a small one yet consider i fear not so much a religious as a sort of preliminary relish before the soup the soup of course on this occasion was of which in accordance with custom each guest was allowed two in spite of the otherwise law of table decorum indeed judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me i that there was no practical limit except the appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup not being fond of this dainty i partook of it but once and then only in accordance with the wise always to taste a fruit a wine or a celebrated dish at its site and the very fountain head of soup i suppose is in the lord mayor s dinner pot it is one of those customs which people follow for half a century without knowing why to drink a of rum punch in a very small after the soup it was well and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for the sake of the punch the rest of the dinner was in a bill of fare printed on delicate white paper within an border of green and gold it looked very good not only in the english and french names of the numerous dishes bat also in the positive reality of the dishes themselves which were all set on the table to be carved and distributed by the guests this ancient and honest method is attended with a good deal of trouble and a lavish of yet by no means bestowed or in vain because you have thereby the absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your eyes instead of a shadowy promise in the bill of fare and such meagre fulfilment as a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate i wonder that englishmen who are fond of looking at prize oxen in the shape of butcher s meat do not generally better estimate the of devouring the whole dinner with their before proceeding to the comparatively few which after all the most heroic appetite and capacity of mere mortals can enable even an really to eat there fell to	35
my lot three things enough which i take pains to remember that the reader may not go away wholly from the feast to which i have him a red a plate of exquisitely and part of a a bird of the same family as the but feeding high up towards the summit of the scotch mountains whence old it gets a wild delicacy of very superior to tliat of the english game fowl all the other have vanished from my memory as completely as those of prosperous after had clapped his wings oyer it the band played at us to new efforts as did likewise the sparkling which the supplied from an inexhaustible cellar and which the guests with little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a to morrow morning after feast as long as that shall he the case a prudent man can haye full enjoyment of his dinner nearly opposite to me on the other side of the table sat a young lady in white whom i am sorely tempted to but dare not because not only the of her beauty but its peculiar character would cause the sketch to be recognized rudely it might be drawn i hardly thought that there existed such a woman outside of a or the of a romance not that i had met with her resemblance even there but being so distinct and singular an apparition she seemed to find her in poetry and picture than in real life let us away from her lest a touch too apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to gleam out upon my page with a strange and in tiie very spell that made her beautiful at her side and familiarly to her sat a gentleman of whom i remember only a hard outline of the nose and forehead and such a monstrous of a beard that you could no symptom of a mouth except when he opened it to speak or to put in a morsel of food then indeed you suddenly became aware of a hidden behind the and there could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were any child would haye recognized them at a glance it was and a new wife the of the series but with already a mysterious gloom her fair young brow in their and dining among other distinguished strangers at the lord mayor s table an hour or two of achievement with knife and fork came the and at the point of the festival where finger glasses are usually introduced a large silver was carried round to the guests containing rose water into which we dipped the ends of our and were conscious of a delightful fragrance instead of that heavy and weary the hateful ghost of a dinner this seems to he an ancient custom of the city not confined to the lord mayor s but never met with westward of temple bar during all the feast in accordance another ancient custom the origin or purport of which i do not remember to have heard there stood a man in a on his head behind his s chair when the after dinner wine was placed on the table still another official personage appeared behind the chair and proceeded to make a solemn and in which he the principal guests three or four several and plenty of members of parliament and other names of the illustrious one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears ending in some such style as this and other gentlemen and ladies here present the lord mayor drinks to you all in a loving cup giving a sort of sentimental to the two words and sends it round among you and forthwith the loving cup several of them indeed on each side of the table came slowly down with all the antique ceremony the of it is thus the lord mayor standing up and taking the covered cup in both hands presents it to the guest at his elbow who likewise rises and the cover for his to drink which being successfully accomplished the guest the cover and receives the cup into his own hands he then presents it to his next neighbour that the cover may be again removed for himself to take a draught after which the third person goes through a similar with a fourth and he with a until the whole company find themselves and entangled in one complicated chain of love when the cup came to my hands i old home examined it both inside and ont and perceived it to be an antique and richly ornamented silver capable of holding a of wine considering how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to our lips the guests appeared to content themselves with wonderfully moderate in truth nearly or quite the original of wine being still in the it seemed doubtful whether any of the company had more than barely touched the silver rim before passing it to their neighbours a degree of that might be accounted for by a to so many in one cup or possibly by a of the liquor being curious to know all about these important matters with a view of to my countrymen whatever they might adopt i drank an honest om the loving cup and had no occasion for another it to be of a poor original quality largely mingled with water and and it was good enough however for a merely or drink and could never have been intended for any better purpose the now began in the customary order attended with speeches neither more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of table eloquence which had heretofore delighted me as preparatory to each new display the herald or whatever he was behind the chair of state gave awful notice that the honourable the lord mayor was about to	35
propose a toast his being happily delivered thereof together with some accompanying remarks the band played an appropriate tune and the herald again issued a to the effect that such or such a nobleman or gentleman general dignified clergyman or what not was going to respond to the eight honourable the lord mayor s toast then if i mistake not there was another prodigious flourish of trumpets and of instruments and the doomed individual waiting all this while to be got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself a young earl tried his maiden on the good citizens of london and having evidently got every word by heart even including how ever he managed it the most seemingly of the moment he really spoke like a hook and made the speech i ever heard in england the weight and gravity of the not only on this occasion hut all similar ones was what impressed me as most extraordinary not to say why should people eat a good dinner and put their spirits into trim with champagne and afterwards mellow themselves into a most state of with copious of and old port and then the whole excellent result hy listening to speeches as heavy as an dinner nap and in no degree so refreshing if the champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of these or if the generous port had shone through their with a ruddy glow of the old english humour i might have seen a reason for honest gentlemen in their cups and should have heen glad to he a listener but there was no attempt nor impulse of the kind on the part of the nor apparent expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience in f ct i imagine that the latter were pleased when the speaker his ideas in the language of or struck upon any hard matter of or as a heavy laden hark upon a rock in mid ocean the sad severity the too earnest of modem life have wrought a radical and lamentable change i am afraid in this ancient and goodly institution of people used to come to them a few hundred years ago for the sake of being jolly they come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine hy way of and thus make such a mess of it that the wine and wisdom spoil one another possibly the foregoing sentiments have taken a of from a circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast and very much interrupted my own further enjoyment of it up to this time my condition had been exceedingly both on account of the brilliancy of the scene and because i was in close with three very pleasant old home english friends one of them was a lady whose name my readers recognize as a household word if i dared write it another a gentleman likewise well known to them whose fin kind heart and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such happy proportion as in him the third was the man to whom i owed most in england the warm of whose nature was never weary of doing me good who led me to many scenes of life in town camp and country which i never could have found out for myself who knew precisely the kind of help a stranger needs and gave it as freely as if he had not had a thousand more important things to live for thus i never felt safer or at anybody s fireside even my own than at the dinner table of the lord mayor out of this serene sky came a his got up and proceeded to make some very remarks upon the literary and commercial i question whether those two were ever before married by a and they certainly would not live together in intercourse of their own accord the literary and commercial of an eminent gentleman there present and then went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between great britain and the eminent gentleman s native country those bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great nations throughout all history and his felt assured that that whole honourable company would join him in the expression of a fervent wish that they might be held sacred on both sides of the atlantic now and for ever then came the same wearisome old toast dry and hard to upon as a sea which had been the text of nearly all the of my public career the herald announced that mr so and so would now respond to his right honourable s toast and speech the trumpets sounded the customary flourish for the there was a of applause and finally a deep silence sank upon the hall all this was a horrid piece of treachery on the lord mayor s part after me within his lines on a pledge of and it seemed very strange that he could not let an individual eat his dinner in peace drink a small of the mansion house wine and go away grateful at heart for the old english hospitality if his had sent me an of in the loving cup i should have taken it much more kindly at his hands but i suppose the secret of the matter to have been somewhat as follows all england just then was in one of those singular fits of panic excitement not fear though as sensitive and tremulous as that emotion which in consequence of the character of the people their intense patriotism and their dependence for their ideas in public affairs on other sources than their own examination and individual thought are more sudden and than any similar mood of our own public in truth i have never seen the american public in a state at all similar and believe that we are incapable of it our	35
by cambridge u s a printed by h sl d by passages s american note books his private letters farm oak hill m h here i am in a paradise i know not how to interpret this aspect of nature whether it be of good or evil omen to our enterprise but i reflect that the arrived in the midst of storm and stepped ashore upon mountain and nevertheless they and became a great people and doubtless it will be the same with us i my stars however that you will not have your first impressions of perhaps our future home from such a day as this through faith i persist in believing that spring and summer will come in their due season but the man within me and suggests a doubt whether i may not have wandered within the of the circle and chosen my among provide yourself with a by v ic american note books good stock of and if you can obtain the skin of a bear you will find it a very suitable summer dress for this region i have not yet t ken my first lesson in except that i went to see our cows yesterday afternoon we have eight of our own and the number is now increased by a belonging to miss margaret fuller she is very i believe and apt to kick over the milk i intend to convert myself into a this evening but i pray heaven that mr may be moved to me the cow in the herd otherwise i shall perform my duty with fear and trembling i like my brethren in very well and could you see us sitting round our table at meal times before the great kitchen fire you would call it a cheerful sight mrs b is a most comfortable woman to behold she looks as if her ample person were stuffed full of tenderness indeed as if she were all one great kind heart april m a m i did not milk the cows last night because mr was afraid to trust them to my hands or me to their horns i know not which but this morning i have done wonders before breakfast i went out to the bam and began to chop hay for the cattle and with such righteous vehemence as mr says did i labor that in the space of ten minutes i broke the machine then i brought wood and the fires and finally went down to breakfast and ate up a huge mound of cakes after break by v ic american note books fast mr put a four instrument into my hands which he gave me to understand was called a and he and mr being armed with similar weapons we all three commenced a gallant attack upon a heap of this office being concluded and i having myself i sit down to finish this letter miss fuller s cow hooks the other cows and has made herself ruler of the herd and in a very manner i shall make an excellent i feel the original adam within me april m since i last wrote there has been an addition to our community of four gentlemen in who promise to be among our most useful and respectable members they arrived yesterday about noon mr had proposed to them to join us no longer ago than that very morning i had some conversation with them in the afternoon and was glad to hear them express much satisfaction with their new abode and all the arrangements they do not appear to be very however or perhaps it may be merely an external reserve like my own to shield their delicacy several of their prominent characteristics as well as their black attire lead me to believe that thej are members of the profession but have yet ascertained from their own lips what l a the nature of their past lives i trust to have much pleasure in their society and sooner or later that we shall all of us derive great strength from our intercourse with them i cannot too highly the readiness with which by v ic american note books these four gentlemen in black have thrown aside all the and which have their origin in a false state of society when i last saw them they looked as regardless of the and incident to our profession as i did when i emerged from the gold mine i have a cow the herd has against the of miss fuller s and whenever they are turned out of the bam she is compelled to take refuge under our protection so much did she my labors by keeping close to me that i found it necessary to give her two or three gentle with a but still she preferred to trust herself to my tender rather than venture among the horns of the herd she is not an amiable cow but she has a very intelligent face and seems to be of a cast of character i doubt not that she will soon perceive the of being on good terms with the rest of the i have not yet been twenty yards from our house and bam but i begin to perceive that this is a beautiful place the scenery is of a mild and placid character with nothing bold in its aspect but i think its beauties will grow upon us and make us love it the more the longer we live here there is a brook so near the house that we shall be able to hear its ripple in the summer evenings but for agricultural purposes it has been made to flow in a straight and fashion which does it infinite damage as a picturesque object it was a moment or two before i could think whom by ic american note books you meant by mr dismal view why he b	35
one of the best of the brotherhood so far as cheerfulness goes for if he do not laugh himself he makes the rest of us laugh continually he is the and personage you ever saw full of dry jokes the humor of which is so with the strange of his that his sayings ought to be written down accompanied with illustrations by then he keeps quoting innumerable scraps of latin and makes classical allusions while we are turning over the and the contrast between the nature of his employment and the character of his thoughts is irresistibly i have written this in the parlor while farmer and farmer and farmer dismal view were talking about their agricultural concerns so you will not wonder if it is not a classical piece of composition either in point of thought or expression mr has bought four black pigs april d what an abominable hand do i but i have been wood and a all the and such occupations are apt to disturb the of the muscles and it is an endless surprise to me how much work there is to be done in the world but thank i am able to do my share of it and my ability daily what a great broad shouldered personage i shall become by and by by american note books i two cows this morning and send you some of the milk only that it is mingled with that which was drawn forth by mr dismal view and the rest of the brethren april m i was caught by a cold during my visit to boston it has not affected my whole frame but took entire possession of my head as being the and most part never did anybody with such vehemence and and my poor brain has been in a thick fog or rather it seemed as if my head were stuffed with coarse wool sometimes i wanted to it off and give it a great kick like a this annoyance has made me endure the bad weather with even less than ordinary patience and my faith was far exhausted that when they told me yesterday that the sun was setting clear i would not even turn my eyes towards the west but this morning i am made all over anew and have no greater remnant of my cold than will serve as an excuse for doing no work to day the family has been dismal and throughout the storm the night before last william was stung by a on the whereupon the whole side of his face swelled to an enormous magnitude so that at the breakfast table one half of him looked like a blind giant the eye being closed and the other half had such a sorrowful and ludicrous aspect that i was constrained to laugh out of sheer pity the same day a colony of was discovered in my chamber where by v ic american note books they had remained throughout the winter and were now just themselves doubtless with the intention of me from head to foot a similar discovery was made in mr s room in short we seem to have taken up our abode in a nest thus you see a rural life is not one of unbroken quiet and serenity if the middle of the day prove warm and pleasant i promise myself to take a walk i have taken one walk with mr and i could not have believed that there was such seclusion at so short a distance from a great city many spots seem hardly to have been visited for ages not since john preached to the indians here if we were to travel a thousand miles we could not escape the world more completely than we can here i read no newspapers and hardly remember who is president and feel as if i had no more concern with what other people trouble themselves about than if i dwelt in another planet may ist every day of my life makes me feel more and more how seldom a fact is accurately stated how almost invariably when a story has passed through the mind of a third person it becomes so far as regards the impression that it makes in further little better than a falsehood and this too though the be the most truth seeking person in existence how marvellous the tendency is is truth a which we are to pursue forever and never grasp by v ic american note books my cold has almost entirely departed were it a sunny day i should consider myself quite fit for labor out of doors but as the ground is so damp and the atmosphere so chill and the sky so sullen i intend to keep myself on the sick list this one day longer more especially as i wish to read on heroes there has been but one flower found in this vicinity and that was an a poor pale shivering little flower that had crept under a stone wall for shelter mr found it while taking a walk with me this is may day alas what a difference between the ideal and the real may m my cold no longer troubles me and all the morning i have been at work under the clear blue sky on a sometimes it almost seemed as if i were at work in the sky itself though the material in which i wrought was the ore from our gold nevertheless there is so and disagreeable in this sort of toil as you could think it the hands indeed but not the soul this gold ore is a pure and wholesome else our mother nature would not it so readily and derive so much nourishment from it and return such a rich abundance of good grain and roots in of it the farm is growing very beautiful now not that we	35
more convinced that we must not lean upon this community whatever is to be done must be done by my own strength i shall not remain here through the winter unless with an absolute certainty that there will be a house ready for us in the spring i shall return to boston still however considering myself an associate of the community so tliat we may take advantage of any more favorable aspect of affairs how much depends on these little books if anything could draw out my whole strength it would be the motives that now press upon me yet after all i must keep these considerations out of my mind because an external pressure always instead of assisting september but really i should judge it to be twenty years since i left brook farm by v ic note books and i take this to be one proof that my life there was an unnatural and and therefore an unreal one it already looks like a dream behind me the real me was never an associate of the community there has been a appearance there sounding the horn at daybreak and the cows and potatoes and hay toiling in the sun and doing me the honor to assume my name but this was not myself nevertheless it is somewhat remarkable that my hands have during the past summer grown very brown and rough that many people persist in believing that i after all was the cow and hay but such people do not know a reality from a shadow enough of nonsense i know not exactly how soon i shall return to the farm perhaps not sooner than a fortnight from to morrow september m master is a very good subject for a sketch especially if he be in the very act of judgment on an the little may be laid across his knee and his arms and legs and whole person indeed should be flying all abroad in an agony of nervous excitement and smart the master on the other hand must be calm rigid without anger or pity the very of that law whereby suffering follows sm meantime the lion s head should have a sort of sly twist on one side of its mouth and a wink of one eye in order to give the impression that after all the crime and the punishment are neither of them by v ic american note books the most serious things in the world i could draw the sketch myself if i had but the use of s magic fingers then the will do very well for the second sketch they might be represented as just landing on the wharf or as presenting themselves before governor seated in the great chair another subject might be old cotton venerable in a three hat and other antique attire walking the streets of boston and lifting up his hands to bless the people while they all him an old dame should be seen flinging water or some of medicine on his head from the window of an old fashioned house and all around must be tokens of and mourning as a coffin borne along a woman or children weeping on a can the of the old south bell be painted p if not this then the military council at boston by the earl of and other captains and might be taken his in the great chair an old fashioned military figure with a star on his breast some of louis xv s will give the costume on the table and scattered about the room must be of warfare swords pistols hats a drum trumpet and rolled up banner in one heap it were not amiss to introduce the armed figure of an indian chief as taking part in the council or standing apart from the english erect and stem now for liberty tree there is an of that famous vegetable in snow s history of boston if represented i see not what scene can be beneath it save by v ic american note books poor mr the oath he must have on a bag wig ruffled sleeves embroidered coat and all such ornaments because he is the representative of aristocracy and an artificial system the people may be as rough and wild as the fancy can make them nevertheless there must be one or two grave figures in the midst such an one might sit in the great chair and be an emblem of that stem considerate spirit which brought about the revolution but this would be a hard subject but what a am i to my counsel september m i do not very well recollect du but as to mrs i give her up to the the story was written as a mere experiment in that style it did not come from any depth within me neither my heart nor mind anything to do with it i recollect that the man of seemed a fine idea to me when i looked at it but i failed in giving shape and substance to the vision which i saw i don t think it can be very good i cannot believe all these stories about because such a rascal never could be sustained and by respectable men i take him to be neither better nor worse than the average of his tribe however i intend to have all my taken out in my own name and if he cheat me once i will have nothing more to do with him but will straightway be cheated by some other that being of course the only alternative by v american note books governor s young french wife might be the subject of one of the cuts she should sit in the great chair perhaps with a dressing glass before her and arrayed in all manner of fantastic finery and with	35
have the chief direction of all the money affairs of the community the making of the of and etc etc etc my accession to these august offices does not at all decide the question of my remaining here permanently by v l c american note books i told mr that i could not spend the winter at the farm and that it was quite uncertain whether i returned in the spring take no part i you in these miracles i am unwilling that a power should be exercised on you of which we know neither the origin nor consequence and the phenomena of which seem rather calculated to us than to teach us any truths about the present or future state of being supposing that the power arises from the of one spirit into another it seems to me that the of an individual is by it there would be an into the holy of i have no faith whatever that people are raised to the seventh heaven or to any heaven at all or that they gain any insight into the mysteries of life beyond death by means of this strange science without that the phenomena have really occurred i think that they are to be accounted for as the result of a material and physical not of a spiritual influence has produced many a brighter vision of heaven i fancy and just as susceptible of proof as these they are dreams and what delusion can be more lamentable and mischievous than to mistake the physical and material for the spiritual p what so miserable as to lose the soul s true though hidden knowledge and consciousness of heaven in the mist of an earth bom vision if we would know what heaven is before we come thither let us retire into the depths of our own spirits and we shall find it there among holy thoughts and feelings but let us not high heaven and its inhabitants into any such and forms as miss by v ic american note books l describes do not let an earthly from mrs p s system and perhaps something spiritual and sacred i should as soon think of seeking revelations of the future state in the of the grave where so many do seek it the view which i take of this matter is caused by no want of faith in mysteries but from a deep reverence of the soul and of the mysteries which it knows within itself but never to the earthly eye and ear keep the imagination sane that is one of the conditions of communion with heaven brook farm september m a walk this morning along the road a clear morning after nearly a week of cloudy and weather the grass is much more fresh and vivid than it was last month and trees still retain much of their though here and there is a or a bough arrayed in scarlet and gold along the road in the midst of a beaten track i saw or which had sprung up probably during the night the houses in this vicinity are many of them quite antique with long sloping roofs at a few feet from the ground and ending in a lofty peak some of them have huge old elms the yard one may see the family near the door it having stood there all through the summer sunshine and perhaps with weeds through the of its bottom the growth of the months since snow departed old patched and supported by leaning vol by note books against the sides and stained with the of past ages in the i walked along the edge of the meadow towards cow island large trees almost a wood principally of pine with the green pasture and cattle feeding they cease when an intruder appears and look at him with long and wary observation then bend their heads to the pasture again where the firm ground of the pasture ceases the meadow begins loose yielding to the tread sometimes permitting the foot to sink into black mud or perhaps over ankles in water somewhat firmer than the general surface the dense which has overgrown the meadow this consists of small elders and other trees with here and there white pines of larger growth the whole is tangled and wild and thick set so that it is necessary to part the stems and branches and go crashing through there are creeping plants of various sorts which up the trees and some of them have changed color in the which already have befallen these low grounds so that one sees a wreath of scarlet leaves up to the top of a green tree its bright hues with their as if all were of one piece sometimes instead of scarlet the wreath is of a golden yellow within the verge of the meadow mostly near the firm shore of pasture ground i found several hung with an abundance of large purple grapes the vines had caught hold of and and climbed by v ic american note books to the summit curling round about and twisted folds in so intimate a manner that it was not easy to tell the from the supporting tree or sometimes the same vine had enveloped several shrubs and caused a strange tangled confusion all these poor plants to the purpose of its own support and their growing to their own benefit and convenience the broad vine leaves some of them yellow or tinged were seen apparently growing on the same stems with the silver leaves and those of the other shrubs thus married against their will by the and the purple clusters of grapes hung down from above and in the midst so that one might gather grapes if not of thorns yet of as alien bushes one vine had ascended almost to the tip of a large white pine spreading its leaves and hanging its purple clusters	35
among all its boughs still and as if it would not be content till it had crowned the very summit with a wreath of its own foliage and of grapes i mounted high into the tree and ate the fruit there while the vine still higher into the depths above my head the grapes were sour being not yet fully ripe some of them however were sweet and pleasant september i a a ride to yesterday morning it being the day of the weekly cattle fair william and myself went in a wagon carrying a calf to be sold at the fair the calf had not had his breakfast as hb mother had preceded him to and he kept by v ic american note books expressing his hunger and discomfort by loud especially when we passed any cattle in the fields or in the road the cows within hearing expressed great interest and some of them came galloping to the roadside to behold the calf little children also on their way to school stopped to laugh and point at poor little he was a prettily behaved and kept thrusting his hairy between william and myself apparently wishing to be and patted it was an ugly thought that his confidence in human nature and nature in general was to be so ill rewarded as by cutting his throat and selling him in quarters this i suppose has been his fate before now it was a beautiful morning clear as crystal with an but not disagreeable coolness the general aspect of the country was as green as summer indeed than mid or latter summer and there were occasional of the brilliant hues of autumn which made the scenery more beautiful both visibly and in sentiment we saw no absolutely mean nor along the road there were warm and comfortable farm houses ancient with the porch the sloping roof the antique peak the clustered chimney of old times and modem cottages smart and and with before them and dense shade and wooden on pillars and other such tokens of pleasant groves of oak and also there were sometimes stretching along valleys sometimes ascending a hill and it all round so as to make it a great of frequently we passed pie with cows oxen sheep or pigs for fair by v ic american note books on arriving at we found the village thronged with people horses and probably there is no place in new england where the character of an agricultural population may be so well studied almost all the farmers within a reasonable distance make it a point i suppose to attend fair pretty frequently if not on business yet as then there are all the cattle people and who supply the boston market and from far and near and every man who has a cow or a yoke of oxen whether to sell or buy goes to on monday there were a thousand or two of cattle in the extensive pens belonging to the besides many that were standing about one could hardly stir a step without running upon the horns of one or another in the shape of ox cow bull or ram the appeared to be more in their element than i have ever seen them anywhere else except indeed at labor more so than at and such of amusement and yet this was a sort of day as well as a day of business most of the people were of a make with much bone and muscle and some good store of fat as if they had lived on flesh diet with faces too hard and red like those of persons who to the old fashion of great round country were there too sitting under the porch of the tavern or about whip in hand discussing the points of the cattle there were also gentlemen farmers neatly and dressed in handsome and trousers under their boots too in their black or blue sunday suits cut by country by v ic american note books and awkwardly worn others like myself had on the blue which they wear in the fields the most comfortable garments that ever were invented country were among the throng men who looked wistfully at the in the bar and waited for some friend to invite them to drink poor shabby out at devils also from the city and who had come to see the of fair all these and other varieties of mankind either thronged the spacious bar room of the hotel drinking smoking talking or walked about among the cattle pens looking with knowing eyes at the people the owners of the cattle stood near at hand waiting for there was something indescribable in their aspect that showed them to be the owners though they mixed among the crowd the cattle brought from a hundred separate farms or rather from a thousand seemed to agree very well together not quarrelling in the least they almost all had a history no doubt if they could but have told it the cows had each given her milk to support families had the pastures and come home to the barn yard had been looked upon as a sort of member of the domestic circle and was known by a name as or cherry the oxen with their necks bent by the heavy yoke had toiled in the plough field and in time for many years and knew their master s stall as well as the master himself knew his own table even the young and the httle had something of domestic about them for children had watched their growth and them and played with them and here they all by v ic note books were old and young gathered from their thousand homes to fair whence the great chance was that they would go to the slaughter house and thence be in joints and such pieces to the tables	35
of the boston folk william had come to buy four little pigs to take the places of four who have now grown large at our farm and are to be and killed within a few weeks there were several hundreds in pens appropriated to their use and apparently in no very good humor with their companions or the world at large most or many of these pigs had been imported from the state of new york the set out with a large number and them along the road till they arrive at with the remainder william selected four and bought them at five cents per pound these poor little were forthwith seized by the tails their legs tied and they thrown into our wagon where they kept up a continual and till we got home two of them were or light gold color the other two were black and white and all four of very aspect and one of them snapped at william s finger most and bit it to the bone all the scene of the fair was very characteristic and peculiar cheerful and lively too in the bright warm sun i must see it again for it ought to be studied september m a party in the woods yesterday in honor of little frank s birthday he being years old i strolled out after dinner with mr by v ic american note books and in a we met the apparition of an indian dressed in appropriate costume of blanket feathers and paint and armed with a almost at the same time a young fortune came from among the trees and proposed to tell my fortune while she was doing this the goddess let fly an arrow and hit me in the hand the fortune and goddess were in fine contrast being a fair quiet with a moderate composure and the g a bright dark haired rich both of them very pretty at least pretty enough to make fifteen years accompanied by these of the wild wood we went onward and came to a company of fantastic figures arranged in a ring for a dance or a game there was a girl an indian a negro of the jim crow order one or two and several people in christian attire besides children of all ages then followed childish games in which the grown people took part with mirth enough while i whose nature it is to be a mere spectator both of sport and serious business lay under the trees and looked on meanwhile mr and miss fuller who arrived an hour or two before came forth into the little where we were assembled here followed much talk the ceremonies of the day concluded with a cold of cakes and fruit all was pleasant enough an excellent piece of work would t were done it has left a fantastic impression on my memory this of wild and characters with real and homely ones in the secluded nook of the woods i remember them with the sunlight breaking through by v ic note books branches and they appearing and disappearing perhaps starting out of the earth as if the every day laws of nature were suspended for this particular occasion there were the children too laughing and sporting about as if they were at home among such strange shapes and anon bursting into loud uproar of when the rude of the merry chanced to them and apart with a shrewd yankee observation of the scene stands our friend orange a thick set sturdy figure enjoying the fun well enough yet rather laughing with a perception of its than at all entering into the spirit of the thing this morning i have been helping to gather apples the principal farm labors at this time are for winter and breaking up the for next year s crop of potatoes gathering and not much else except such year round as the crop of to be sure is in process of being at odd intervals i ought to have mentioned among the and of the party our two spanish boys from with his heavy features and almost complexion and with rather a feminine face not a gay girlish one but grave reserved you sometimes with an earnest but secret expression and causing you to question what sort of person he is friday y october ist i have been looking at our four swine not of the last lot but those in process of d l american note books they lie among the clean straw in the close together for they seem to be beasts sensitive to the cold and this is a clear bright crystal morning with a cool wind so there lie these four black swine as deep among the straw as they can the very of ease and comfort they seem to be actually oppressed and with comfort they are quick to notice any one s approach and utter a low thereupon not drawing a breath for that particular purpose but with their ordinary breath at the same time turning an observant though dull and eye upon the visitor they seem to be involved and buried in their own substance and to look dimly forth at the outer world they breathe not easily and yet not with difficulty nor discomfort for the very and oppression with which their breath comes appears to make them sensible of the deep satisfaction which they feel the remnant of their last meal remains in the that their food is more abundant than even a can demand anon they fall asleep drawing short and heavy which heave their huge sides up and down but at the slightest noise they their eyes and give another gentle they also among themselves without any external cause but merely to express their sympathy i suppose it is the knowledge that these four are doomed to die within	35
two or three weeks that gives them a sort of in my conception it makes me contrast their present gross substance of life with by ic note books the speedily to come meantime the four newly bought pigs are running about the cow yard lean active shrewd everything as their nature is when i throw an apple among them they scramble with one another for the prize and the successful one away to eat it at leisure they thrust their into the mud and pick a grain of com out of the rubbish nothing within their sphere do they leave all the time with infinite variety of expression their language is the most copious of that of any and indeed there is something deeply and interesting in the race they appear the more a mystery the longer one at them it seems as if there were an important meaning to them if one could but find it out one interesting trait in them is their perfect independence of character they care not for man and will not themselves to his notions as other beasts do but are true to themselves and act out their nature october th since saturday last it being now thursday i have been in boston and and there has been a violent storm and rain during the whole time this morning shone as bright as if it meant to make up for all the of the past days our brook which in the summer was no longer a running stream but stood in pools along its course is now full from one grassy verge to the other and along with a murmuring rush it will continue to swell i suppose and in the winter and spring it will flood all the broad meadows through which it flows by v ic american note books i have taken a long walk this along the road and across the bridge thence pursuing a cross road through the woods parallel with the river which i crossed again at most of the road lay through a growth of young oaks principally they still retain their though looking closely in among them one the broken sunshine falling on a few or bright of in low spots on the verge of the meadows or along the river side there is a much more marked change whole of bushes are there painted with many hues not of the brightest tint but of a sober cheerfulness i suppose this is owing more to the late rains than to the frost for a heavy rain changes the foliage somewhat at this season the first marked frost was seen last saturday morning soon after sunrise it lay white as snow over all the grass and on the tops of the fences and in the yard on the heap of on sunday i think there was a fall of snow which however did not lie on the ground a moment there is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings as now in october the sunshine is peculiarly genial and in sheltered places as on the side of a bank or of a bam or house one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine it seems to be of a kindly and homely nature and the green grass strewn with a few withered leaves looks the more green and beautiful for them li summer or spring nature is farther from one s sympathies by v ic american note books october another gloomy day lowering with of close at hand i have walked np into the pastures this morning and looked about me a little the woods present a very appearance just now with perhaps more varieties of tint than they are destined to wear at a somewhat later period there are some strong yellow hues and some deep red there are innumerable shades of green some few having the depth of summer others partially changed towards yellow look with the delicate tinge of early summer or of may then there is the solemn and dark green of the pines the is that every tree in the wood and every bush among the has a separate existence since each wears its peculiar color instead of being lost in the universal of summer and yet there is a of effect likewise when we choose to look at a whole sweep of instead of its trees scattered over the pasture which the late rains have kept tolerably green there are spots or islands of dusky red a deep substantial hue very well fit to be close to the ground while the yellow and light fantastic shades of green upward to the sky these red spots are the and bushes the is changed mostly to but still its wild and delightful fragrance when pressed in the hand wild china are scattered about but beginning to a little while ago or were very numerous along the wood paths and by the especially after rain some were of white some yellow and some scarlet they are always by v ic american note mysteries and objects of interest to me springing as they do so suddenly from no root or seed and growing one wonders why i think too that some varieties are pretty objects little fairy tables centre tables standing on one leg but their growth appears to be checked now and they are of a brown tint and decayed the farm business to day is to dig potatoes i worked a little at it the process is to grasp all the stems of a hill and pull them up a great many of the potatoes are thus pulled clinging to the stems and to one another in curious shapes long red things and little round ones in the earth which to the roots these being plucked off the rest of the potatoes are dug out	35
indeed rather too warm in the sheltered hollows though it is to be too warm now after so much stormy o the beauty of grassy slopes and the hollow ways of paths winding between hills and tlie intervals between the road and wood lots where summer and sits down of gold and blue by v ic note books as her parting gifts and i went to a which i have already visited several times and found some clusters of grapes still remaining and now perfectly ripe coming within view of the river i saw several wild ducks under the shadow of the opposite shore which was high and covered with a grove of pines i should not have discovered the ducks had they not risen and the surface of the stream breaking its dark water with a bright streak and sweeping round gradually rose high enough to fly away i likewise started a just within the verge of the woods and in another place a large ran across the wood path from one shelter of trees to the other small birds in flocks were flitting about the fields seeking and finding i know not what sort of food there were little fish also darting in through the pools and depths of the which are now to their and rush towards the river with a swift current cow island is not an island at least at this season though i believe in the time of the charles floods the meadows all round about it and extends across its communication with the the path to it is a very secluded one a wood of pines and just wide enough to admit the loads of meadow hay which are drawn from the shore of the river the island has a growth of stately pines with tall and ponderous stems standing at distance enough to admit the eye to travel far among them and as there is no the effect is somewhat like looking among the pillars of a church by v ic american note books i returned home by the high road on my right separated from the road by a level field perhaps fifty yards across was a range of young forest trees dressed in their garb of glory the sun shone directly upon them and sunlight is like the breath of life to the pomp of autumn in its absence one doubts whether there be any truth in what poets have told about the splendor of an american autumn but when this charm is added one feels that the effect is beyond description as i beheld it to day there was nothing dazzling it was gentle and mild though brilliant and and had a most quiet and pensive influence and yet there were some trees that seemed really made of sunshine others were of a sunny red and the whole picture was painted with but little relief of hues only a few but there was nothing and on closer examination it appeared that all the tints had a relationship among themselves and this i suppose is the reason that while nature seems to scatter them so carelessly they still never shock the by their nor disturb but only soothe the brilliant scarlet and the brilliant yellow are different hues of the leaves and the first changes into the last i saw one tree its centre yellow as gold set in a of red the native have different shades of green towards yellow and are very cheerful in the sunshine most of the oak leaves have still the deep of summer but where a change has taken place it is into a red warm but sober these colors infinitely varied by the progress which different trees have made in their decay constitute almost by v ic american note books the whole glory of woods but it is impossible to conceive how much is done with such scanty materials in my whole walk i saw only one man and he was at a distance in the obscurity of the trees he had a horse and a wagon and was getting a load of dry sunday october v th r i visited my this afternoon and ate the last of its clusters this vine around a young tree which has now assumed the yellow leaf the leaves of the vine are more than those of the thence to cow island a solemn and thoughtful walk returned by another path of the width of a wagon passing through a grove of hard wood the hues of which make the walk more cheerful than among the pines the roots of oaks emerged from the soil and themselves across the path the sunlight also broke across in spots and the shadow was deep but still there was enough of bright hues to keep off the gloom from the whole path and pools have a peculiar aspect at this season one knows that the water must be cold and one a little at the sight of it and yet the grass about the pool may be of the deepest green and the sun may be shining into it the withered leaves which overhanging trees shed upon its surface contribute much to the effect insects have mostly vanished in the fields and woods i hear yet singing in the sunny hours and have not yet finished their song once in a while i see a this afternoon for instance a red hairy one with black head and tail they do not appear by ic american note books to be active and it makes one rather melancholy to look at them tuesday october vith the of the crow among the woods a is aware of your approach a great way off and gives the alarm to his comrades loudly and eagerly immediately the whole replies and you behold them rising above the trees flapping darkly and their way to deeper sometimes however they remain	35
till you come near enough to discern their gravity of aspect each occupying a separate bough or perhaps the tip top of a pine as you approach one after another with loud his wings and throws himself upon the air there is hardly a more striking feature in the landscape nowadays than the red patches of and bushes as seen on a sloping like islands among the grass with trees growing in them or crowning the summit of a bare brown hill with their somewhat or round the base of an earth rock at a distance this hue clothing spots and patches of the earth looks more uke a picture than anything else yet such a picture as i never saw painted the oaks are now beginning to look and their leaves have withered borders it is pleasant to notice the wide circle of grass beneath the of an oak passing an orchard one hears an uneasy rustling in the trees and not as if they were struggling with the wind scattered about by v ic american note books are barrels to contain the gathered apples and perhaps a great heap of golden or scarlet apples is collected in one place wednesday october a good view from an swell of our pasture across the valley of the river charles there is the meadow as level as a floor and with green perhaps two miles from the rising ground on this side of the river to that on the opposite side the stream winds through the midst of the flat space without any banks at all for it fills its bed almost to the brim and the meadow grass on either side a of at broken intervals is scattered along its border and thus it along without other life than what it gains from gleaming in the sun now into the broad smooth meadow as into a lake and put themselves forth and shores of firm border it covered witli foliage making the contrast so much the stronger of their height and rough outline with the even spread of the plain and beyond and far away rises a long gradual swell of country covered with an apparently dense growth of foliage for miles till the horizon it and here and there is a house or perhaps two among the of trees everywhere the trees wear their dress so that the whole landscape is red orange and yellow in the distance into a rich tint of brown orange or nearly that except the green expanse so definitely hemmed in by the higher ground i took a long walk this morning going first nearly to by v j american note books thence nearly to thence to plain and thence home it was a fine morning with a north west wind cool when facing the wind but warm and most pleasant in sheltered spots and warm enough everywhere while i was in motion i traversed most of the by ways which offered themselves to me and passing through one in which there was a double line of grass between the wheel tracks and that of the horses feet i came to where had once stood a which appeared to have been recently torn down most of the old timber and boards had been away a pile of it however remained the cellar of the house was uncovered and beside it stood the base and middle height of the chimney the oven in which household bread had been baked for daily food and and cake and jolly for opened its mouth being deprived of its iron door the fireplace was close at hand all round the site of the house was a pleasant sunny green space old in pretty fair condition though aged there was a bam also aged but in decent repair and a shed on the comer of which was nailed a boy s where it had probably been turning and for years together till now it was black with time and weather stain it was broken bat still it went round whenever the wind stirred the spot was entirely secluded there being no other house within a mile or two no language can give an idea of the beauty and glory of the trees just at this moment it would be easy by a process of word to set down a confused group by v ic american note books of colors like a bunch of tangled of bright silk bat there is nothing of the reality in the glare which would thus be produced and yet the splendor both of individual clusters and of whole scenes is the oaks are now far advanced in their change of hue and in certain positions to the sun they light up and gleam with a most magnificent deep gold varying according as portions of the foliage are in shadow or sunlight on the sides which receive the direct rays the effect is altogether rich and in other points of view it is equally beautiful if less brilliant this color of the oak is more superb than the lighter yellow of the and the whole landscape is now covered with thb indescribable pomp it is discerned on the afar off and blue hill in milton at the distance of several miles actually with rich dark light no not nor but perhaps to say will be a truer expression for it met few people this morning a grown girl in company with a little boy gathering in a secluded lane a gentleman wrapped in a who asked the way to mr joseph s and a fish cart from the city the driver of which sounded his horn along the way monday october th there has been a succession of days which were cold and bright in the and gray sullen and chill towards night the woods have now taken a tint than they wore at my last date many of	35
room large enough to contain forty or fifty guests two silver branches for candles the walls ornamented with paintings and the floors were daily rubbed with wax and shone like a mahogany table a domestic who said prayers every morning and evening in a small apartment called the chapel also a steward and butler the family attended the church at christmas and good friday and gave a grand entertainment once a year by v ic american note books madam at the last of these wore a black gown and with double lace velvet shoes blue silk stockings white and silver the daughter and in rich and yellow satin old in brown velvet with gold and a large wig the parson in his silk and his in brown old general in scarlet velvet and his wife and daughters in white the governor in black velvet and his lady in crimson trimmed with silver the ladies wore bell shoes silk stockings and high head dresses with of lace hanging thence to the waist among the a silver tub of the capacity of four holding a of powdered with white sugar the date assigned to all this about what is the price of a day s labor in where the sun never sets for six months miss a life generally of a grave hue may be said to be embroidered with occasional sports and a father his reflections on character and the contrast of the inward man with the outward as he looks around on his congregation all whose secret sins are known to him by v ic american note books a person with an ice cold hand his right hand which people ever afterwards remember when once they have grasped it a stove possessed by a devil june ty one of my chief amusements is to see the boys sail their miniature vessels on the pond there is a great variety of shipping owned among the young people and they appear to have a considerable knowledge of the art of managing vessels there is a full man of war with i believe every rope and sail that sometimes makes its appearance and when on a voyage across the pond it so a great ship except in size that it has the effect of a picture all its motions its tossing up and down on the small waves and its sinking and rising in a calm swell its to the breeze the whole effect in short is that of a real ship at sea while moreover there is something that the imagination more than the reality would do if we see a real great ship the mind and possesses within its real clutch all that there is of it while here the ship is the representation of an ideal one and so gives us a more imaginative pleasure there are many that to and fro on the pond and pilot boats all perfectly i saw a race the other day between the ship above mentioned and a pilot boat in which the latter came off conqueror the boys appear to be well acquainted with all the ropes and sails and can call them by their names one of the owners of the vessels remains on one by v ic american note books side of the pond and the other on the opposite side and so they send the little bark to and fro like merchants of different countries their vessels to one another when any vessel is on the pond there are full grown spectators who look on with as much interest as the boys themselves towards sunset this is especially the case for then are seen young girls and their lovers mothers with their little boys in hand beating round about and occasionally running to the side of the pond rough or perhaps masters or young mates of vessels who make remarks about the miniature shipping and occasionally give professional advice to the visitors from the country and young gentlemen in short everybody stops to take a look in the mean time dogs are continually plunging into the pond and swimming about with noses pointed upward and at floating then emerging they shake themselves scattering a shower on the clean gowns of ladies and trousers of gentlemen then to and fro on the grass with joyous some boys cast off lines of with pin hooks and perhaps pull out a that being i think the only kind of fish that the pond the ship of war above mentioned is about three feet from stem to stem or possibly a few inches more this if i mistake not was the size of a ship of the line in the navy of fancy pictures of familiar places which one has never been in as the green room of a theatre etc by v ic american note books the famous characters of history to imagine their spirits now on earth in the guise of various public or private personages the case quoted in s of a young man of great talents and profound knowledge of who had in view some new discovery of importance in order to put his mind into the highest possible activity he shut himself up for several successive days and used various methods of excitement he had a he drank spirits penetrating sprinkled water round the room etc etc eight days thus passed when he was seized with a fit of frenzy which terminated in flesh and blood a firm of miss syllable a mankind are with spirits in them a in one sense he has his money s worth by the purchase of large lots of repentance and other to moral or spiritual disease by disease of the body as thus when a person committed any sin it might appear in some form on the body this to be wrought out shrieking fish a strange idea of	35
hunt by v ic note books in my museum all the rings that have been thrown into the an association of literary men in the other world or of the dead or something of that kind diseases to be cured by impossible as a dose of the grand in the of a s egg the disease may be either moral or physical a physician for the cure of moral diseases to point out the moral slavery of one who himself a free man a stray leaf from the book of fate picked up in the street august a rainy day a rainy day i am commanded to take pen in hand and i am therefore banished to the little ten foot square apartment my study but perhaps the of the day and the of my solitude will be the prominent characteristics of what i write and what is there to write about happiness has no succession of events because it is a part of eternity and we have been living in eternity ever since we came to this old like we seem to have been translated to the other state of being without having passed through death our spirits must have flitted away unconsciously and we can only by american note books perceive that we have cast off our mortal part by the more real and earnest life of our souls our paradise has very much the aspect of a pleasant old on earth this antique house for it looks antique though it was created by providence expressly for our use and at the precise time when we wanted it stands behind a noble avenue of of trees and when we chance to observe a passing traveller through the sunshine and the shadow of this long avenue liis figure appears too dim and remote to disturb the sense of seclusion indeed are the mortals who venture within our sacred george who has not yet grown earthly enough i suppose to be from occasional visits to paradise comes daily to bring three of milk from some cow occasionally also he makes an offering of mortal flowers mr comes sometimes and has been on our and mr has twice listened to the music of the which for our private convenience we have packed into a musical box e h who is much more at home among spirits than among bodies came hither a few times merely to welcome us to the ethereal world but she has vanished into some other region of infinite space one rash mortal on the second sunday after our arrival himself upon us in a there have since been three or four who think that the of the lower world are to be responded to by people whose home is in paradise i must not forget to mention that the butcher comes twice or thrice a week and we have so far improved upon the custom of by v ic am note books adam and eve that we furnish forth our with portions of some delicate calf or lamb whose innocence them to the happiness of becoming our would that i were permitted to record the celestial that kind heaven provided for us on the first day of our arrival never surely was such food heard of on earth at not by me well the above mentioned persons are nearly all that have entered into the shade of our avenue except indeed a certain sinner who came to bargain for the grass in our orchard and another who came with a new for it is one of the upon our that it contains no water fit either to drink or to in so that the showers have become in good truth a i wonder why providence does not cause a clear cold fountain to up at our it would not be unreasonable to pray for such a favor at present we are under the ridiculous necessity of sending to the outer world for water only imagine adam out of paradise with a bucket in each hand to get water to drink or for eve to in intolerable though our stout really our water in other respects providence has treated us pretty tolerably well but here i shall expect something further to be done also in the way of future a would be very acceptable animals except perhaps a pig seem never out of place even in the most and by the way a young comes up our avenue now and then to crop the seldom trodden and so does a company of cows whose sweet breath well us for ti by american note books which they obtain there are likewise a few whose quiet is heard pleasantly about the house a black dog sometimes stands at the farther extremity of the avenue aud looks wistfully but when i whistle to him he puts his tail between his legs and away foolish dog if he had more faith he should have bones enough saturday i august th still a dull day threatening rain yet without energy of character to rain outright however yesterday there were showers enough to supply us well with their beneficent as to the new it seems to be for while the into it like a it still remains almost empty i wonder where mr got it perhaps from under the of whose palace it must formerly have stood for like his drinking cup in it has the property of filling itself forever and never being full after breakfast i took my fishing rod and went down through our orchard to the river side bnt as three or four boys were already in possession of the best spots along the shore i did not fish this river of ours is the most stream that i ever was acquainted with i had spent three weeks by its side and swam across it every day before i could determine which	35
way its current ran and then i was compelled to decide the question by the testimony of others and not by my own observation owing to this of the stream it has nowhere a bright shore nor is there so much as a narrow strip of glistening sand in any part of its course by v ic american note books but it along between broad meadows or kisses the tangled grass of fields and pastures or the overhanging boughs of elder bushes and other plants flags and rushes grow along its shallow margin the yellow water lily its broad flat leaves upon its surface and the fragrant white pond lily occurs in many favored spots generally selecting a situation just so far from the river s brink that it cannot be grasped except at the hazard of plunging in but thanks be to the beautiful flower for growing at any rate it is a marvel whence it its loveliness and perfume as it does from the black mud over which the river sleeps and from which the yellow lily likewise draws its life and so it is with many people in this world the same soil and circumstances may produce the good and beautiful and the wicked and ugly some have the faculty of to themselves only what is evil and so they become as as the yellow water lily some none but good influences and their emblem is the fragrant and pond whose very breath is a blessing to all the region round about among the productions of the river s margin i must not forget the weed which grows just on the edge of tlie water and shoots up a long stalk crowned with a blue spire from among large green leaves both the flower and the leaves look well in a with pond lilies and relieve the whiteness of the latter and being all alike children of the waters they are perfectly in keeping with one another i once and often twice a day in our river but by american note books dip into the salt sea would be worth more than a whole week s in such a lifeless tide i have read of a river somewhere whether it be in classic regions or among our western indians i know not which seemed to and steal away the vigor of those who bathed n it perhaps our stream will be found to have this property its water however is pleasant in its immediate effect being as soft as milk and always warmer than the air its hue has a slight tinge of gold and my limbs when i behold them through its medium look i am not aware that the inhabitants of resemble their native river in any of their moral characteristics their forefathers certainly seem to have had the energy and of a mountain torrent rather than the of this stream as it was proved by the blood with which they stained their river of peace it is said there are plenty of fish in it but my most important hitherto have been a mud and an enormous the former made his escape to his native element the latter we ate and truly he had the taste of the whole river in his flesh with a very prominent flavor of mud on the whole river is no great favorite of mine but i am glad to have any river at all so near at hand it being just at the bottom of our orchard neither is it without a degree and kind of both in its and in the distance when a blue gleam from its surface among the green meadows and woods seems like an open eye in earth s countenance pleasant it is too to behold a little flat gliding over its bosom which lazily to the stroke of the and allows the boat to go against its cur by v ic american note books rent almost as freely as with it pleasant too to watch an as he along the brink sometimes himself behind a of bushes and trailing his line along the water in hopes to catch a but taking the river for all in all i can find nothing more fit to compare it with than one of the half which i dig up for bait the worm is and so is the river the river is muddy and so is the worm you hardly know whether either of them be alive or dead but still in the course of time they both manage to creep away the best aspect of the is when there is a breeze curling its surface in a bright day it then a vivacity not its own moonlight also gives it beauty as it does to all scenery of earth or water sunday august th at sunset last evening i ascended the hill top opposite our house and looking downward at the long extent of the river it struck me that i had done it some injustice in my remarks perhaps like other gentle and quiet characters it will be better appreciated the longer i am acquainted with it certainly as i beheld it then it was one of the features in a scene of great rural beauty it was visible through a course of two or three miles sweeping in a round the hill on which stood and being the central line of a broad on either side at a distance it looked like a strip of sky set into the earth which it so and th t it seemed akin to the upper regions nearer the base of the hill i could discern the shadows of every tree and rock by v ic american note books with a distinctness that made them even more charming than the reality because knowing them to be they assumed the which the soul always in the contemplation of earthly beauty all the	35
of the and a larger bronze of graceful that the in size the room is just what it ought to be for i never could my thoughts sufficiently to write in a very spacious room it has three windows two of which are shaded by a large and beautiful willow tree which sweeps against the overhanging on this side we have a view into the orchard and beyond a glimpse of the river the other window is the one from which mr the of dr beheld the fight of by v ic american note books tlie revolution lie might well do as the british troops were drawn up within a hundred yards of the house and on looking forth just now i could still perceive the western of the old bridge the passage of which was the new monument is visible from base to summit notwithstanding all we have done to the old place we seem scarcely to have disturbed its air of antiquity it is evident that other wedded pairs have spent their here that children have been born here and people have grown old and died in these rooms although for our the same apartments have consented to look cheerful once again then there are dark and strange and comers where the ghosts of former occupants might hide themselves in the and stalk forth when night all our improvements we have seen no as yet but we hear strange noises especially in the kitchen and last night while sitting in the parlor we heard a and as of somebody at work in my study nay if i mistake not for i was half asleep there was a sound as of some person paper in his hand in our very this must have been old dr with one of his sermons there is a whole chest of them in the garret j but he need have no apprehensions of our disturbing them i never saw the old myself which i regret as i should have been glad to associate his venerable figure at ninety years of age with the house in which he dwelt the house presents the same appearance as in the doctor s day it had once a coat of white paint but by v ic american note books the storms and sunshine of many years have almost it and produced a sober hue which entirely suits the antique form of the structure to its reverend face would be a real it would look like old dr in a brown wig i hardly know why it is that our cheerful and and improvements in the interior of the house seem to be in perfectly good taste though the heavy old beams and high of the walls speak of ages gone by but so it is the cheerful paper have the air of belonging to the old walls and such as lamps gilded bottles silver stands and bronze and flower do not seem at all impertinent it is thus hat an aged man may keep his heart warm for new things and new friends and often furnish himself anew with ideas though it would not be graceful for him to attempt to suit his exterior to the passing fashions of the day august ta our orchard in its day has been a very productive and profitable one and we were told that in one year it returned dr a hundred dollars besides the expense of the house it is now long past its prime many of the trees are moss grown and have dead and rotten branches among the green and fruitful ones and it may well be so for i suppose some of the trees may have been set out by mr who died in the first year of the war neither will the fruit probably bear comparison with the delicate productions of modern most of the trees seem to have abundant burdens upon them by v ic american note books but they are homely apples fit only for and cooking but we are yet to have practical experience of our fruit justice s orchard with its choice and leather coats was doubtless much superior nevertheless it pleases me to think of the good minister walking in the shadows of these old shaped apples trees here some of the fruit to taste there away a too luxuriant branch and all the while how many barrels may be filled and how large a sum will be added to his by their sale and the same trees offer their fruit to me as freely as they did to him their old branches like withered hands and arms holding out apples of the same flavor as they held out to dr in liis lifetime thus the trees as living form a peculiar link between the dead and us my fancy has always found something very interesting in an orchard apple trees and all fruit trees have a domestic character which brings them into relationship with man they have lost in a great measure the wild nature of the forest tree and have grown by receiving the care of man and by to his wants they have become a part of the family and their individual characters are as well understood and appreciated as those of the human members one tree is harsh and another mild one is and another itself with its free hearted even the shapes of apple trees have great individuality into such strange do they put themselves and thrust their branches so in all directions and when have stood around a house for many years and held converse by v ic american note books with successive of occupants and hearts so often in the fruitful autumn then it would seem almost to cut them down besides the apple trees there are various other kinds of fruit in close vicinity to the house when we first arrived there were several trees of ripe but so	35
sour that we allowed them to upon the branches two long rows of bushes supplied us abundantly for nearly four weeks there are a good many but all of an old date their branches rotten and and their fruit fear will be of very inferior quality they produce most abundantly however the being almost as numerous as the leaves and even the and from the roots of the old trees have fruit upon them then three are trees of various kinds and one or two on the whole these fruit trees and the other and of the place convey a very agreeable idea of the outward comfort in which the good old doctor must have spent his life everything seems to have fallen to his lot that could possibly be supposed to render the life of a country clergyman easy and prosperous there is a bam which probably used to be filled with his hay and other agricultural there are sheds and a hen house and a pigeon house and an old stone the open portion of which is grown with tall weeds indicating that no has recently occupied it i have serious thoughts of a new incumbent in this part of the it is our duty to support a pig even if we have no design of upon him and for my own part i have by ic american note books a great sympathy and interest for the whole race of and have much amusement in studying the character of a pig perhaps i might try to bring out his moral and intellectual nature and cultivate his a cat too and perhaps a dog would be desirable additions to our household august the natural taste of man for the original adam s occupation is fast developing itself in me i find that i am a good deal interested in our garden although as it was planted before we came here i do not feel the same affection for the plants that i should if the seed had been sown by my own hands it is something like nursing and another person s children still it was a very pleasant moment when i gathered the first string beans which were the earliest that the garden contributed to our table and love to watch the successive development of each new vegetable and mark its daily growth which always affects me with surprise it is as if something were being created under my own inspection and partly by my own aid one day perchance i look at my and see only the green leaves up the poles again to morrow i give a second glance and there are the delicate blossoms and a third day on a somewhat closer observation i discover the tender young beans hiding among the foliage then each morning i watch the swelling of the and calculate how soon they will be ready to yield their treasures all this gives a pleasure and an hitherto of to the business of providing for by v ic note books my family i suppose adam felt it in paradise and of merely and earthly there are few purer and more harmless to be experienced speaking of beans by the way they are a classical food and their culture must have been the occupation of many ancient and heroes summer are a very pleasant vegetable to be acquainted with they grow in the forms of and some shallow others deeper and all with a beautifully edge almost any in our garden might be copied by a and would look lovely in marble or in china and if i could afford it i would have exact of the real vegetable as portions of my dining service they would be very appropriate dishes for holding garden vegetables besides the summer we have the winter which i always delight to look at when it turns up its big to in the autumn sun except a there is no vegetable production that such an idea of warmth and comfort to the our own crop however does not promise to be very abundant for the leaves formed such a superfluous shade over the young blossoms that most of them dropped off without producing the of fruit yesterday and to day i have cut off an immense number of leaves and have thus given the remaining blossoms a chance to profit by the air and sunshine but the season is too far advanced i am afraid for the to attain any great bulk and grow yellow in the sun we have and which promise to supply us with as many as we can eat after all the greatest interest of these vegetables b h note books consist in their being articles of food it is rather that we love to see something bom into the world and when a great or is produced it is a large and existence which the imagination can seize hold of and rejoice in love also to see my own works to the life and well being of nature it is pleasant to have the bees come and honey out of my blossoms though when they have laden themselves they fly away to some unknown hive which will give me back nothing in return for what my garden has given them but there is much more honey in the world and so i am content indian corn in the prime and glory of its is a very beautiful vegetable both considered in the separate plant and in a mass in a broad field rustling and waving and up and down in the breeze and sunshine of a summer afternoon we have as many as fifty hills i should think which will gives us an abundant supply pray heaven that we may be able to eat it all for it is not pleasant to think that anything which nature has been at the pains to produce should be thrown	35

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.