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Passages from the English Notebooks, Volume 2.

by Nathaniel Hawthorne · English · Gutenberg #7877 · 665,281 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Passages from the English Notebooks, Volume 2.

Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne


        
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7877]
                Most recently updated: December 17, 2011

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7877

Credits: Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASSAGES FROM THE ENGLISH NOTEBOOKS, VOLUME 2. ***




Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger







PASSAGES FROM THE ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS

By Nathaniel Hawthorne


VOL. II.






PASSAGES FROM HAWTHORNE'S ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS.



LONDON.--MILTON-CLUB DINNER.


April 4th, 1856.--On Tuesday I went to No. 14 Ludgate Hill, to dine with
Bennoch at the Milton Club; a club recently founded for dissenters,
nonconformists, and people whose ideas, religious or political, are not
precisely in train with the establishment in church and state.  I was
shown into a large reading-room, well provided with periodicals and
newspapers, and found two or three persons there; but Bennoch had not yet
arrived.  In a few moments, a tall gentleman with white hair came in,--a
fine and intelligent-looking man, whom I guessed to be one of those who
were to meet me.  He walked about, glancing at the periodicals; and soon
entered Mr. Tupper, and, without seeing me, exchanged warm greetings with
the white-haired gentleman.  "I suppose," began Mr. Tupper, "you have
come to meet--"  Now, conscious that my name was going to be spoken, and
not knowing but the excellent Mr. Tupper might say something which he
would not, quite like me to overhear, I advanced at once, with
outstretched hand, and saluted him.  He expressed great joy at the
recognition, and immediately introduced me to Mr. Hall.

The dining-room was pretty large and lofty, and there were sixteen guests
at table, most of them authors, or people connected with the press; so
that the party represented a great deal of the working intellect of
London at this present day and moment,--the men whose plays, whose songs,
whose articles, are just now in vogue.  Mr. Tom Taylor was one of the
very few whose writings I had known anything about.  He is a tall,
slender, dark young man, not English-looking, and wearing colored
spectacles, so that I should readily have taken him for an American
literary man.  I did not have much opportunity of talking with him, nor
with anybody else, except Dr. ------, who seemed a shrewd, sensible man,
with a certain slight acerbity of thought.  Mr. Herbert Ingram, recently
elected member of Parliament, was likewise present, and sat on Bennoch's
left.

It was a very good dinner, with an abundance of wine, which Bennoch sent
round faster than was for the next day's comfort of his guests.  It is
singular that I should thus far have quite forgotten W------ H--------,
whose books I know better than those of any other person there.  He is a
white-headed, stout, firm-looking, and rather wrinkled-faced old
gentleman, whose temper, I should imagine, was not the very sweetest in
the world.  There is all abruptness, a kind of sub-acidity, if not
bitterness, in his address; he seemed not to be, in short, so genial as I
should have anticipated from his books.

As soon as the cloth was removed, Bennoch, without rising from his chair,
made a speech in honor of his eminent and distinguished guest, which
illustrious person happened to be sitting in the selfsame chair that I
myself occupied.  I have no recollection of what he said, nor of what I
said in reply, but I remember that both of us were cheered and applauded
much more than the occasion deserved.  Then followed about fifty other
speeches; for every single individual at table was called up (as Tupper
said, "toasted and roasted"), and, for my part, I was done entirely brown
(to continue T-----'s figure).  Everybody said something kind, not a word
or idea of which can I find in my memory.  Certainly, if I never get any
more praise in my life, I have had enough of it for once.  I made another
little bit of a speech, too, in response to something that was said in
reference to the present difficulties between England and America, and
ended, as a proof that I deemed war impossible, with drinking success to
the British army, and calling on Lieutenant Shaw, of the Aldershott Camp,
to reply.  I am afraid I must have said something very wrong, for the
applause was vociferous, and I could hear the gentlemen whispering about
the table, "Good!" "Good!" "Yes, he is a fine fellow,"--and other such
ill-earned praises; and I took shame to myself, and held my tongue
(publicly) the rest of the evening.  But in such cases something must be
allowed to the excitement of the moment, and to the effect of kindness
and goodwill, so broadly and warmly displayed; and even a sincere man
must not be held to speak as if he were under oath.

We separated, in a blessed state of contentment with one another, at
about eleven; and (lest I should starve before morning) I went with Mr.
D------ to take supper at his house in Park Lane.  Mr. D------ is a pale
young gentleman, of American aspect, being a West-Indian by birth.  He is
one of the principal writers of editorials for the Times.  We were
accompanied in the carriage by another gentleman, Mr. M------, who is
connected with the management of the same paper.  He wrote the letters
from Scutari, which drew so much attention to the state of the hospitals.
Mr. D------ is the husband of the former Miss ------, the actress, and
when we reached his house, we found that she had just come home from the
theatre, and was taking off her stage-dress.  Anon she came down to the
drawing-room,--a seemingly good, simple, and intelligent lady, not at all
pretty, and, I should think, older than her husband.  She was very kind
to me, and told me that she had read one of my books--The House of the
Seven Gables--thirteen years ago; which I thought remarkable, because I
did not write it till eight or nine years afterwards.

The principal talk during supper (which consisted of Welsh-rabbit and
biscuits, with champagne and sodawater) was about the Times, and the two
contributors expressed vast admiration of Mr. ------, who has the chief
editorial management of the paper.  It is odd to find how little we
outsiders know of men who really exercise a vast influence on affairs,
for this Mr. ------ is certainly of far more importance in the world than
a minister of state.  He writes nothing himself; but the character of the
Times seems to depend upon his intuitive, unerring judgment; and if ever
he is absent from his post, even for a day or two, they say that the
paper immediately shows it.  In reply to my questions, they appeared to
acknowledge that he was a man of expediency, but of a very high
expediency, and that he gave the public the very best principles which it
was capable of receiving.  Perhaps it may be so: the Times's articles are
certainly not written in so high a moral vein as might be wished; but
what they lack in height they gain in breadth.  Every sensible man in
England finds his own best common-sense there; and, in effect, I think
its influence is wholesome.

Apropos of public speaking, Dr. ------ said that Sir Lytton Bulwer asked
him (I think the anecdote was personal to himself) whether he felt his
heart beat when he was going to speak.  "Yes."  "Does your voice frighten
you?"  "Yes."  "Do all your ideas forsake you?"  "Yes."  "Do you wish the
floor to open and swallow you?"  "Yes."  "Why, then, you'll make an
orator!"  Dr. ------  told of Canning, too, how once, before rising to
speak in the House of Commons, he bade his friend feel his pulse, which
was throbbing terrifically.  "I know I shall make one of my best
speeches," said Canning, "because I'm in such an awful funk!"  President
Pierce, who has a great deal of oratorical power, is subject to a similar
horror and reluctance.



REFORM-CLUB DINNER.


April 5th.--On Thursday, at eight o'clock, I went to the Reform Club, to
dine with Dr. ------.  The waiter admitted me into a great basement hall,
with a tessellated or mosaic or somehow figured floor of stone, and
lighted from a dome of lofty height.  In a few minutes Dr. ------
appeared, and showed me about the edifice, which is very noble and of a
substantial magnificence that was most satisfactory to behold,--no
wood-work imitating better materials, but pillars and balustrades of
marble, and everything what it purports to be.  The reading-room is very
large, and luxuriously comfortable, and contains an admirable library:
there are rooms and conveniences for every possible purpose; and whatever
material for enjoyment a bachelor may need, or ought to have, he can
surely find it here, and on such reasonable terms that a small income
will do as much for him as a far greater one on any other system.

In a colonnade, on the first floor, surrounding the great basement hall,
there are portraits of distinguished reformers, and black niches for
others yet to come.  Joseph Hume, I believe, is destined to fill one of
these blanks; but I remarked that the larger part of the portraits,
already hung up, are of men of high rank,--the Duke of Sussex, for
instance; Lord Durham, Lord Grey; and, indeed, I remember no commoner.
In one room, I saw on the wall the fac-simile, so common in the United
States, of our Declaration of Independence.

Descending again to the basement hall, an elderly gentleman came in, and
was warmly welcomed by Dr. ------.  He was a very short man, but with
breadth enough, and a back excessively bent,--bowed almost to deformity;
very gray hair, and a face and expression of remarkable briskness and
intelligence.  His profile came out pretty boldly, and his eyes had the
prominence that indicates, I believe, volubility of speech, nor did he
fail to talk from the instant of his appearance; and in the tone of his
voice, and in his glance, and in the whole man, there was something
racy,--a flavor of the humorist.  His step was that of an aged man, and
he put his stick down very decidedly at every footfall; though as he
afterwards told me that he was only fifty-two, he need not yet have been
infirm.  But perhaps he has had the gout; his feet, however, are by no
means swollen, but unusually small.  Dr. ------ introduced him as Mr.
Douglas Jerrold, and we went into the coffee-room to dine.

The coffee-room occupies one whole side of the edifice, and is provided
with a great many tables, calculated for three or four persons to dine
at; and we sat down at one of these, and Dr. ------ ordered some
mulligatawny soup, and a bottle of white French wine.  The waiters in the
coffee-room are very numerous, and most of them dressed in the livery of
the Club, comprising plush breeches and white-silk stockings; for these
English Reformers do not seem to include Republican simplicity of manners
in their system.  Neither, perhaps, is it anywise essential.

After the soup, we had turbot, and by and by a bottle of Chateau Margaux,
very delectable; and then some lambs' feet, delicately done, and some
cutlets of I know not what peculiar type; and finally a ptarmigan, which
is of the same race of birds as the grouse, but feeds high up towards the
summits of the Scotch mountains.  Then some cheese, and a bottle of
Chambertin.  It was a very pleasant dinner, and my companions were both
very agreeable men; both taking a shrewd, satirical, yet not ill-natured,
view of life and people, and as for Mr. Douglas Jerrold, he often
reminded me of E---- C------, in the richer veins of the latter, both by
his face and expression, and by a tincture of something at once wise and
humorously absurd in what he said.  But I think he has a kinder, more
genial, wholesomer nature than E----, and under a very thin crust of
outward acerbity I grew sensible of a very warm heart, and even of much
simplicity of character in this man, born in London, and accustomed
always to London life.

I wish I had any faculty whatever of remembering what people say; but,
though I appreciate anything good at the moment, it never stays in my
memory; nor do I think, in fact, that anything definite, rounded,
pointed, separable, and transferable from the general lump of
conversation was said by anybody.  I recollect that they laughed at
Mr. ------, and at his shedding a tear into a Scottish river, on occasion
of some literary festival. . . . They spoke approvingly of Bulwer, as
valuing his literary position, and holding himself one of the brotherhood
of authors; and not so approvingly of Charles Dickens, who, born a
plebeian, aspires to aristocratic society.  But I said that it was easy
to condescend, and that Bulwer knew he could not put off his rank, and
that he would have all the advantages of it in spite of his authorship.
We talked about the position of men of letters in England, and they said
that the aristocracy hated and despised and feared them; and I asked why
it was that literary men, having really so much power in their hands,
were content to live unrecognized in the State.

Douglas Jerrold talked of Thackeray and his success in America, and said
that he himself purposed going and had been invited thither to lecture.
I asked him whether it was pleasant to a writer of plays to see them
performed; and he said it was intolerable, the presentation of the
author's idea being so imperfect; and Dr. ------ observed that it was
excruciating to hear one of his own songs sung.  Jerrold spoke of the
Duke of Devonshire with great warmth, as a true, honest, simple, most
kind-hearted man, from whom he himself had received great courtesies and
kindnesses (not, as I understood, in the way of patronage or essential
favors); and I (Heaven forgive me!) queried within myself whether this
English reforming author would have been quite so sensible of the Duke's
excellence if his Grace had not been a duke.  But indeed, a nobleman, who
is at the same time a true and whole-hearted man, feeling his brotherhood
with men, does really deserve some credit for it.

In the course of the evening, Jerrold spoke with high appreciation of
Emerson; and of Longfellow, whose Hiawatha he considered a wonderful
performance; and of Lowell, whose Fable for Critics he especially
admired.  I mentioned Thoreau, and proposed to send his works to Dr.
------, who, being connected with the Illustrated News, and otherwise a
writer, might be inclined to draw attention to then.  Douglas Jerrold
asked why he should not have them too.  I hesitated a little, but as he
pressed me, and would have an answer, I said that I did not feel quite so
sure of his kindly judgment on Thoreau's books; and it so chanced that I
used the word "acrid" for lack of a better, in endeavoring to express my
idea of Jerrold's way of looking at men and books.  It was not quite what
I meant; but, in fact, he often is acrid, and has written pages and
volumes of acridity, though, no doubt, with an honest purpose, and from a
manly disgust at the cant and humbug of the world.  Jerrold said no more,
and I went on talking with Dr. ------; but, in a minute or two, I became
aware that something had gone wrong, and, looking at Douglas Jerrold,
there was an expression of pain and emotion on his face.  By this time a
second bottle of Burgundy had been opened (Clos Vougeot, the best the
Club could produce, and far richer than the Chambertin), and that warm
and potent wine may have had something to do with the depth and vivacity
of Mr. Jerrold's feelings.  But he was indeed greatly hurt by that little
word "acrid."  "He knew," he said, "that the world considered him a sour,
bitter, ill-natured man; but that such a man as I should have the sane
opinion was almost more than he could bear."  As he spoke, he threw out
his arms, sank back in his seat, and I was really a little apprehensive
of his actual dissolution into tears.  Hereupon I spoke, as was good
need, and though, as usual, I have forgotten everything I said, I am
quite sure it was to the purpose, and went to this good fellow's heart,
as it came warmly from my own.  I do remember saying that I felt him to
be as genial as the glass of Burgundy which I held in my hand; and I
think that touched the very right spot; for he smiled, and said he was
afraid the Burgundy was better than he, but yet he was comforted.  Dr.
------ said that he likewise had a reputation for bitterness; and I
assured him, if I might venture to join myself to the brotherhood of two
such men, that I was considered a very ill-natured person by many people
in my own country.  Douglas Jerrold said he was glad of it.

We were now in sweetest harmony, and Jerrold spoke more than it would
become me to repeat in praise of my own books, which he said he admired,
and he found the man more admirable than his books!  I hope so,
certainly.

We now went to the Haymarket Theatre, where Douglas Jerrold is on the
free list; and after seeing a ballet by some Spanish dancers, we
separated, and betook ourselves to our several homes.  I like Douglas
Jerrold very much.


April 8th.--On Saturday evening, at ten o'clock, I went to a supper-party
at Mr. D------'s, and there met five or six people,--Mr. Faed, a young
and distinguished artist; Dr. Eliotson, a dark, sombre, taciturn,
powerful-looking man, with coal-black hair, and a beard as black,
fringing round his face; Mr. Charles Reade, author of Christie Johnstone
and other novels, and many plays,--a tall man, more than thirty,
fair-haired, and of agreeable talk and demeanor.

On April 6th, I went to the Waterloo station, and there meeting Bennoch
and Dr. ------, took the rail for Woking, where we found Mr. Hall's
carriage waiting to convey us to Addlestone, about five miles off.  On
arriving we found that Mr. and Mrs. Hall had not yet returned from
church.  Their place is an exceedingly pretty one, and arranged in very
good taste.  The house is not large; but is filled, in every room, with
fine engravings, statuettes, ingenious prettinesses or beautifulnesses in
the way of flower-stands, cabinets, and things that seem to have bloomed
naturally out of the characters of its occupants.  There is a
conservatory connected with the drawing-room, and enriched with lovely
plants, one of which has a certain interest as being the plant on which
Coleridge's eyes were fixed when he died.  This conservatory is likewise
beautified with several very fine casts of statues by modern sculptors,
among which was the Greek Slave of Powers, which my English friends
criticised as being too thin and meagre; but I defended it as in
accordance with American ideas of feminine beauty.  From the conservatory
we passed into the garden, but did not minutely examine it, knowing that
Mr. Hall would wish to lead us through it in person.  So, in the mean
time, we took a walk in the neighborhood, over stiles and along by-paths,
for two or three miles, till we reached the old village of Chertsey.  In
one of its streets stands an ancient house, gabled, and with the second
story projecting over the first, and bearing an inscription to the
purport that the poet Cowley had once resided, and, I think, died there.
Thence we passed on till we reached a bridge over the Thames, which at
this point, about twenty-five miles from London, is a narrow river, but
looks clean and pure, and unconscious what abominations the city sewers
will pour into it anon.  We were caught in two or three showers in the
course of our walk; but got back to Firfield without being very much
wetted.

Our host and hostess had by this time returned from church, and Mrs. Hall
came frankly and heartily to the door to greet us, scolding us (kindly)
for having got wet. . . . I liked her simple, easy, gentle, quiet
manners, and I liked her husband too.

He has a wide and quick sympathy, and expresses it freely. . . . The
world is the better for him.

The shower being now over, we went out upon the beautiful lawn before his
house, where there were a good many trees of various kinds, many of which
have been set out by persons of great or small distinction, and are
labelled with their names.  Thomas Moore's name was appended to one;
Maria Edgeworth's to another; likewise Fredrika Bremer's, Jenny Lind's;
also Grace Greenwood's, and I know not whose besides.  This is really a
pleasant method of enriching one's grounds with memorials of friends, nor
is there any harm in making a shrubbery of celebrities.  Three holes were
already dug, and three new trees lay ready to be planted, and for me
there was a sumach to plant,--a tree I never liked; but Mr. Hall said
that they had tried to dig up a hawthorn, but found it clung too fast to
the soil.  So, since better might not be, and telling Mr. Hall that I
supposed I should have a right to hang myself on this tree whenever I
chose, I seized a spade, and speedily shovelled in a great deal of dirt;
and there stands my sumach, an object of interest to posterity!  Bennoch
also and Dr. ------ set out their trees, and indeed, it was in some sense
a joint affair, for the rest of the party held up each tree, while its
godfather shovelled in the earth; but, after all, the gardener had more
to do with it than we.  After this important business was over, Mr. Hall
led us about his rounds, which are very nicely planned and ordered; and
all this he has bought, and built, and laid out, from the profits of his
own and his wife's literary exertions.

We dined early, and had a very pleasant dinner, and, after the cloth was
removed, Mr. Hall was graciously pleased to drink my health, following it
with a long tribute to my genius.  I answered briefly; and one half of my
short speech was in all probability very foolish. . . .

After the ladies (there were three, one being a girl of seventeen, with
rich auburn hair, the adopted daughter of the Halls) had retired, Dr.
------ having been toasted himself, proposed Mrs. Hall's health.

I did not have a great deal of conversation with Mrs. Hall; but enough to
make me think her a genuine and good woman, unspoilt by a literary
career, and retaining more sentiment than even most girls keep beyond
seventeen.  She told me that it had been the dream of her life to see
Longfellow and myself! . . . . Her dream is half accomplished now, and,
as they say Longfellow is coming over this summer, the remainder may soon
be rounded out.  On taking leave, our kind hosts presented me with some
beautiful flowers, and with three volumes of a work, by themselves, on
Ireland; and Dr. ------ was favored also with some flowers, and a plant
in a pot, and Bennoch too had his hands full, . . . . and we went on our
way rejoicing.

[Here follows an account of the Lord Mayor's dinner, taken mostly for Our
Old Home; but I think I will copy this more exact description of the lady
mentioned in "Civic Banquets."--ED.]

. . . . My eyes were mostly drawn to a young lady, who sat nearly
opposite me, across the table.  She was, I suppose, dark, and yet not
dark, but rather seemed to be of pure white marble, yet not white; but
the purest and finest complexion, without a shade of color in it, yet
anything but sallow or sickly.  Her hair was a wonderful deep
raven-black, black as night, black as death; not raven-black, for that
has a shiny gloss, and hers had not, but it was hair never to be painted
nor described,--wonderful hair, Jewish hair.  Her nose had a beautiful
outline, though I could see that it was Jewish too; and that, and all her
features, were so fine that sculpture seemed a despicable art beside her,
and certainly my pen is good for nothing.  If any likeness could be
given, however; it must be by sculpture, not painting.  She was slender
and youthful, and yet had a stately and cold, though soft and womanly
grace; and, looking at her, I saw what were the wives of the old
patriarchs in their maiden or early-married days,--what Judith was, for,
womanly as she looked, I doubt, not she could have slain a man in a just
cause,--what Bathsheba was, only she seemed to have no sin in her,--
perhaps what Eve was, though one could hardly think her weak enough to
eat the apple. . . . Whether owing to distinctness of race, my sense
that she was a Jewess, or whatever else, I felt a sort of repugnance,
simultaneously with my perception that she was an admirable creature.



THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.


At ten o'clock the next day [after the Lord Mayor's dinner] I went to
lunch with Bennoch, and afterwards accompanied him to one of the
government offices in Downing Street.  He went thither, not on official
business, but on a matter connected with a monument to Miss Mitford, in
which Mr. Harness, a clergyman and some sort of a government clerk, is
interested.  I gathered from this conversation that there is no great
enthusiasm about the monumental affair among the British public.  It
surprised me to hear allusions indicating that Miss Mitford was not the
invariably amiable person that her writings would suggest; but the whole
drift of what they said tended, nevertheless, towards the idea that she
was an excellent and generous person, loved most by those who knew her
best.

From Downing Street we crossed over and entered Westminster Hall, and
passed through it, and up the flight of steps at its farthest end, and
along the avenue of statues, into the vestibule of the House of Commons.
It was now somewhat past five, and we stood at the inner entrance of the
House, to see the members pass in, Bennoch pointing out to me the
distinguished ones.  I was not much impressed with the appearance of the
members generally; they seemed to me rather shabbier than English
gentlemen usually, and I saw or fancied in many of them a certain
self-importance, as they passed into the interior, betokening them to be
very full of their dignity.  Some of them looked more American--more like
American politicians--than most Englishmen do.  There was now and then a
gray-headed country gentleman, the very type of stupidity; and two or
three city members came up and spoke to Bennoch, and showed themselves
quite as dull, in their aldermanic way, as the country squires. . . .
Bennoch pointed out Lord John Russell, a small, very short, elderly
gentleman, in a brown coat, and so large a hat--not large of brim, but
large like a peck-measure--that I saw really no face beneath it.  By and
by came a rather tall, slender person, in a black frock-coat, buttoned
up, and black pantaloons, taking long steps, but I thought rather feebly
or listlessly.  His shoulders were round, or else he had a habitual stoop
in them.  He had a prominent nose, a thin face, and a sallow, very sallow
complexion; . . . . and had I seen him in America I should have taken him
for a hard-worked editor of a newspaper, weary and worn with night-labor
and want of exercise,--aged before his time.  It was Disraeli, and I
never saw any other Englishman look in the least like him; though, in
America, his appearance would not attract notice as being unusual.  I do
not remember any other noteworthy person whom we saw enter; in fact, the
House had already been some time in session, and most of the members were
in their places.

We were to dine at the Refectory of the House with the new member for
Boston; and, meanwhile, Bennoch obtained admittance for us into the
Speaker's gallery, where we had a view of the members, and could hear
what was going on.  A Mr. Muntz was speaking on the Income Tax, and he
was followed by Sir George Cornewall Lewis and others; but it was all
very uninteresting, without the slightest animation or attempt at
oratory,--which, indeed, would have been quite out of place.  We saw Lord
Palmerston; but at too great a distance to distinguish anything but a
gray head.  The House had daylight in it when we entered, and for some
time afterwards; but, by and by, the roof, which I had taken to be a
solid and opaque ceiling, suddenly brightened, and showed itself to be
transparent; a vast expanse of tinted and figured glass, through which
came down a great, mild radiance on the members below.

The character of the debate, however, did not grow more luminous or
vivacious; so we went down into the vestibule, and there waited for
Mr. ------, who soon came and led us into the Refectory.  It was very
much like the coffee-room of a club.  The strict rule forbids the
entrance of any but members of Parliament; but it seems to be winked at,
although there is another room, opening beyond this, where the law of
seclusion is strictly enforced.

The dinner was good, not remarkably so, but good enough,--a soup, some
turbot or salmon, cutlets, and I know not what else, and claret, sherry,
and port; for, as Mr. ------ said, "he did not wish to be stingy."
Mr. ------ is a self-made man, and a strong instance of the difference
between the Englishman and the American, when self-made, and without
early education.  He is no more a gentleman now than when he began life,
--not a whit more refined, either outwardly or inwardly; while the
American would have been, after the same experience, not distinguishable
outwardly, and perhaps as refined within, as nine tenths of the gentlemen
born, in the House of Commons.  And, besides, an American comes naturally
to any distinctions to which success in life may bring him; he takes them
as if they were his proper inheritance, and in no wise to be wondered at.
Mr. ------, on the other hand, took evidently a childish delight in his
position, and felt a childish wonder in having arrived at it; nor did it
seem real to him, after all. . . .

We again saw Disraeli, who has risen from the people by modes perhaps
somewhat like those of Mr. ------.  He came and stood near our table,
looking at the bill of fare, and then sat down on the opposite side of
the room with another gentleman, and ate his dinner.  The story of his
marriage does him much credit; and indeed I am inclined to like Disraeli,
as a man who has made his own place good among a hostile aristocracy, and
leads instead of following them.

From the House of Commons we went to Albert Smith's exhibition, or
lecture, of the ascent of Mont Blanc, to which Bennoch had orders.  It
was very amusing, and in some degree instructive.  We remained in the
saloon at the conclusion of the lecture; and when the audience had
dispersed, Mr. Albert Smith made his appearance. . . .

Nothing of moment happened the next day, at least, not till two o'clock,
when I went with Mr. Bowman to Birch's eating-house (it is not Birch's
now, but this was the name of the original founder, who became an
alderman, and has long been dead) for a basin of turtle-soup.  It was
very rich, very good, better than we had at the Lord Mayor's, and the
best I ever ate.

In the evening, Mr. J. B. Davis, formerly our Secretary of Legation,
called to take us to dine at Mr. ------'s in Camden Town.  Mr. ------
calls his residence Vermont House; but it hardly has a claim to any
separate title, being one of the centre houses of a block.  I forget
whether I mentioned his calling on me.  He is a Vermonter, a graduate of
Yale College, who has been here several years, and has established a sort
of book brokerage, buying libraries for those who want them, and rare
works and editions for American collectors.  His business naturally
brings him into relations with literary people; and he is himself a
kindly and pleasant man.  On our arrival we found Mr. D------ and one of
his sisters already there; and soon came a Mr. Peabody, who, if I mistake
not, is one of the Salem Peabodys, and has some connection with the
present eminent London Mr. Peabody.  At any rate, he is a very sensible,
well-instructed, and widely and long travelled man.  Mr. Tom Taylor was
also expected; but, owing to some accident or mistake, he did not come
for above an hour, all which time our host waited. . . . But Mr. Tom
Taylor, a wit, a satirist, and a famous diner out, is too formidable and
too valuable a personage to be treated cavalierly.

In the interim Mr. ------ showed us some rare old books, which he has in
his private collection, a black-letter edition of Chaucer, and other
specimens of the early English printers; and I was impressed, as I have
often been, with the idea that we have made few, if any, improvements in
the art of printing, though we have greatly facilitated the modes of it.
He showed us Dryden's translation of Virgil, with Dr. Johnson's autograph
in it and a large collection of Bibles, of all dates,--church Bibles,
family Bibles of the common translation, and older ones.  He says he has
written or is writing a history of the Bible (as a printed work, I
presume).  Many of these Bibles had, no doubt, been in actual and daily
use from generation to generation; but they were now all splendidly
bound, and were likewise very clean and smooth,--in fact, every leaf had
been cleansed by a delicate process, a part of which consisted in soaking
the whole book in a tub of water, during several days.  Mr. ------ is
likewise rich in manuscripts, having a Spanish document with the
signature of the son of Columbus; a whole little volume in Franklin's
handwriting, being the first specimen of it; and the original manuscripts
of many of the songs of Burns.  Among these I saw "Auld Lang Syne," and
"Bruce's Address to his Army."  We amused ourselves with these matters as
long as we could; but at last, as there was to be a party in the evening,
dinner could no longer be put off; so we took our seats at table, and
immediately afterwards Mr. Taylor made his appearance with his wife and
another lady.

Mr. Taylor is reckoned a brilliant conversationist; but I suppose he
requires somebody to draw him out and assist him; for I could hear
nothing that I thought very remarkable on this occasion.  He is not a
kind of man whom I can talk with, or greatly help to talk; so, though I
sat next to him, nothing came of it.  He told me some stories of his life
in the Temple,--little funny incidents, that he afterwards wrought into
his dramas; in short, a sensible, active-minded, clearly perceptive man,
with a humorous way of showing up men and matters. . . . I wish I could
know exactly what the English style good conversation.  Probably it is
something like plum-pudding,--as heavy, but seldom so rich.

After dinner Mr. Tom Taylor and Mr. D------, with their respective
ladies, took their leave; but when we returned to the drawing-room, we
found it thronged with a good many people.  Mr. S. C. Hall was there with
his wife, whom I was glad to see again, for this was the third time of
meeting her, and, in this whirl of new acquaintances, I felt quite as if
she were an old friend.  Mr. William Howitt was also there, and
introduced me to his wife,--a very natural, kind, and pleasant lady; and
she presented me to one or two daughters.  Mr. Marston, the dramatist,
was also introduced to me; and Mr. Helps, a thin, scholarly, cold sort of
a man.  Dr. Mackay and his wife were there, too; and a certain Mr. Jones,
a sculptor,--a jolly, large, elderly person, with a twinkle in his eye.
Also a Mr. Godwin, who impressed me as quite a superior person,
gentlemanly, cultivated, a man of sensibility; but it is quite impossible
to take a clear imprint from any one character, where so many are stamped
upon one's notice at once.  This Mr. Godwin, as we were discussing
Thackeray, said that he is most beautifully tender and devoted to his
wife, whenever she can be sensible of his attentions.  He says that
Thackeray, in his real self, is a sweet, sad man.  I grew weary of so
many people, especially of the ladies, who were rather superfluous in
their oblations, quite stifling me, indeed, with the incense that they
burnt under my nose.  So far as I could judge, they had all been invited
there to see me.  It is ungracious, even hoggish, not to be gratified
with the interest they expressed in me; but then it is really a bore, and
one does not know what to do or say.  I felt like the hippopotamus, or--
to use a more modest illustration--like some strange insect imprisoned
under a tumbler, with a dozen eyes watching whatever I did.  By and by,
Mr. Jones, the sculptor, relieved me by standing up against the
mantel-piece, and telling an Irish story, not to two or three auditors,
but to the whole drawing-room, all attentive as to a set exhibition.  It
was very funny.

The next day after this I went with Mr. Bowman to call on our minister,
and found that he, and four of the ladies of his family, with his son,
had gone to the Queen's Drawing-room.  We lunched at the Wellington; and
spent an hour or more in looking out of the window of that establishment
at the carriages, with their pompous coachmen and footmen, driving to and
from the Palace of St. James, and at the Horse Guards, with their bright
cuirasses, stationed along the street. . . . Then I took the rail for
Liverpool. . . . While I was still at breakfast at the Waterloo, J-----
came in, ruddy-cheeked, smiling, very glad to see me, and looking, I
thought, a good deal taller than when I left him.  And so ended my London
excursion, which has certainly been rich in incident and character,
though my account of it be but meagre.



SCOTLAND.--GLASGOW.


May 10th.--Last Friday, May 2d, I took the rail, with Mr. Bowman, from
the Lime Street station, for Glasgow.  There was nothing of much interest
along the road, except that, when we got beyond Penrith, we saw snow on
the tops of some of the hills.  Twilight came on as we were entering
Scotland; and I have only a recollection of bleak and bare hills and
villages dimly seen, until, nearing Glasgow, we saw the red blaze of
furnace-lights at frequent iron-founderies.  We put up at the Queen's
Hotel, where we arrived about ten o'clock; a better hotel than I have
anywhere found in England,--new, well arranged, and with brisk
attendance.

In the morning I rambled largely about Glasgow, and found it to be
chiefly a modern-built city, with streets mostly wide and regular, and
handsome houses and public edifices of a dark gray stone.  In front of
our hotel, in an enclosed green space, stands a tall column surmounted by
a statue of Sir Walter Scott,--a good statue, I should think, as
conveying the air and personal aspect of the man.  There is a bronze
equestrian statue of the Queen in one of the streets, and one or two more
equestrian or other statues of eminent persons.  I passed through the
Trongate and the Gallow-Gate, and visited the Salt-Market, and saw the
steeple of the Tolbooth, all of which Scott has made interesting; and I
went through the gate of the University, and penetrated into its enclosed
courts, round which the College edifices are built.  They are not Gothic,
but of the age, I suppose, of James I.,--with odd-looking, conical-roofed
towers, and here and there the bust of a benefactor in niches round the
courts, and heavy stone staircases ascending from the pavement, outside
the buildings, all of dark gray granite, cold, hard, and venerable.  The
University stands in High Street, in a dense part of the town, and a very
old and shabby part, too.  I think the poorer classes of Glasgow excel
even those in Liverpool in the bad eminence of filth, uncombed and
unwashed children, drunkenness, disorderly deportment, evil smell, and
all that makes city poverty disgusting.  In my opinion, however, they are
a better-looking people than the English (and this is true of all
classes), more intelligent of aspect, with more regular features.  I
looked for the high cheek-bones, which have been attributed, as a
characteristic feature, to the Scotch, but could not find them.  What
most distinguishes them front the English is the regularity of the nose,
which is straight, or sometimes a little curved inward; whereas the
English nose has no law whatever, but disports itself in all manner of
irregularity.  I very soon learned to recognize the Scotch face, and when
not too Scotch, it is a handsome one.

In another part of the High Street, up a pretty steep slope, and on one
side of a public green, near an edifice which I think is a medical
college, stands St. Mungo's Cathedral.  It is hardly of cathedral
dimensions, though a large and fine old church.  The price of a ticket of
admittance is twopence; so small that it might be as well to make the
entrance free.  The interior is in excellent repair, with the nave and
side aisles, and clustered pillars, and intersecting arches, that belong
to all these old churches; and a few monuments along the walls.  I was
going away without seeing any more than this; but the verger, a friendly
old gentleman, with a hearty Scotch way of speaking, told me that the
crypts were what chiefly interested strangers; and so he guided me down
into the foundation-story of the church, where there is an intricacy and
entanglement of immensely massive and heavy arches, supporting the
structure above.  The view through these arches, among the great shafts
of the columns, was very striking.  In the central part is a monument; a
recumbent figure, if I remember rightly, but it is not known whom it
commemorates.  There is also a monument to a Scotch prelate, which seems
to have been purposely defaced, probably in Covenant times.  These
intricate arches were the locality of one of the scenes in "Rob Roy,"
when Rob gives Frank Osbaldistone some message or warning, and then
escapes from him into the obscurity behind.  In one corner is St. Mungo's
well, secured with a wooden cover; but I should not care to drink water
that comes from among so many old graves.

After viewing the cathedral, I got back to the hotel just in time to go
from thence to the steamer wharf, and take passage up the Clyde.  There
was nothing very interesting in this little voyage.  We passed many
small iron steamers, and some large ones; and green fields along the
river-shores, villas, villages, and all such suburban objects; neither am
I quite sure of the name of the place we landed at, though I think it was
Bowling.  Here we took the railway for Balloch; and the only place or
thing I remember during this transit was a huge bluff or crag, rising
abruptly from a river-side, and looking, in connection with its vicinity
to the Highlands, just such a site as would be taken for the foundation
of a castle.  On inquiry it turned out that this abrupt and double-headed
hill (for it has two summits, with a cleft between) is the site of
Dumbarton Castle, for ages one of the strongest fortresses in Scotland,
and still kept up as a garrisoned place.  At the distance and point of
view at which we passed it, the castle made no show.

Arriving at Balloch, we found it a small village, with no marked
features, and a hotel, where we got some lunch, and then we took a stroll
over the bridge across the Levers, while waiting for the steamer to take
us up Loch Lomond.  It was a beautiful afternoon, warm and sunny; and
after walking about a mile, we had a fine view of Loch Lomond, and of the
mountains around and beyond it,--Ben Lomond among the rest.  It is vain,
at a week's distance, to try to remember the shapes of mountains; so I
shall attempt no description of them, and content myself with saying that
they did not quite come up to my anticipations.  In due time we returned
to our hotel, and found in the coffee-room a tall, white-haired,
venerable gentleman, and a pleasant-looking young lady, his daughter.
They had been eating lunch, and the young lady helped her father on with
his outside garment, and his comforter, and gave him his stick, just as
any other daughter might do,--all of which I mention because he was a
nobleman; and, moreover, had engaged all the post-horses at the inn, so
that we could not continue our travels by land, along the side of Loch
Lomond, as we had first intended.  At four o'clock the railway train
arrived again, with a very moderate number of passengers, who (and we
among them) immediately embarked on board a neat little steamer which was
waiting for us.

The day was bright and cloudless; but there was a strong, cold breeze
blowing down the lake, so that it was impossible, without vast
discomfort, to stand in the bow of the steamer and look at the scenery.
I looked at it, indeed, along the sides, as we passed, and on our track
behind; and no doubt it was very fine; but from all the experience I have
had, I do not think scenery can be well seen from the water.  At any
rate, the shores of Loch Lomond have faded completely out of my memory;
nor can I conceive that they really were very striking.  At a year's
interval, I can recollect the cluster of hills around the head of Lake
Windermere; at twenty years' interval, I remember the shores of Lake
Champlain; but of the shores of this Scottish lake I remember nothing
except some oddly shaped rocks, called "The Cobbler and his Daughter," on
a mountain-top, just before we landed.  But, indeed, we had very
imperfect glimpses of the hills along the latter part of the course,
because the wind had grown so very cold that we took shelter below, and
merely peeped at Loch Lomond's sublimities from the cabin-windows.

The whole voyage up Loch Lomond is, I think, about thirty-two miles; but
we landed at a place called Tarbet, much short of the ultimate point.
There is here a large hotel; but we passed it, and walked onward a mile
or two to Arroquhar, a secluded glen among the hills, where is a new
hotel, built in the old manor-house style, and occupying the site of what
was once a castle of the chief of the MacFarlanes.  Over the portal is a
stone taken from the former house, bearing the date 1697.  There is a
little lake near the house, and the hills shut in the whole visible scene
so closely that there appears no outlet nor communication with the
external world; but in reality this little lake is connected with Loch
Long, and Loch Long is an arm of the sea; so that there is water
communication between Arroquhar and Glasgow.  We found this a very
beautiful place; and being quite sheltered from all winds that blew, we
strolled about late into the prolonged twilight, and admired the outlines
of the surrounding hills, and fancied resemblances to various objects in
the shapes of the crags against the evening sky.  The sun had not set
till nearly, if not quite, eight o'clock; and before the daylight had
quite gone, the northern lights streamed out, and I do not think that
there was much darkness over the glen of Arroquhar that night.  At all
events, before the darkness came, we withdrew into the coffee-room.

We had excellent beds and sleeping-rooms in this new hotel, and I
remember nothing more till morning, when we were astir betimes, and had
some chops for breakfast.  Then our host, Mr. Macregor, who is also the
host of our hotel at Glasgow, and has many of the characteristics of an
American landlord, claiming to be a gentleman and the equal of his
guests, took us in a drosky, and drove us to the shore of Loch Lomond, at
a point about four miles from Arroquhar.  The lake is here a mile and a
half wide, and it was our object to cross to Inversnaid, on the opposite
shore; so first we waved a handkerchief, and then kindled some straw on
the beach, in order to attract the notice of the ferryman at Inversnaid.
It was half an hour before our signals and shoutings resulted in the
putting off of a boat, with two oarsmen, who made the transit pretty
speedily; and thus we got across Loch Lomond.  At Inversnaid there is a
small hotel, and over the rock on which it stands a little waterfall
tumbles into the lake,--a very little one, though I believe it is
reckoned among the other picturesque features of the scene.

We were now in Rob Roy's country, and at the distance of a mile or so,
along the shore of the lake, is Rob Roy's cave, where he and his
followers are supposed to have made their abode in troublous times.
While lunch was getting ready, we again took the boat, and went thither.
Landing beneath a precipitous, though not very lofty crag, we clambered
up a rude pathway, and came to the mouth of the cave, which is nothing
but a fissure or fissures among some great rocks that have tumbled
confusedly together.  There is hardly anywhere space enough for half a
dozen persons to crowd themselves together, nor room to stand upright.
On the whole, it is no cave at all, but only a crevice; and, in the
deepest and darkest part, you can look up and see the sky.  It may have
sheltered Rob Roy for a night, and might partially shelter any Christian
during a shower.

Returning to the hotel, we started in a drosky (I do not know whether
this is the right name of the vehicle, or whether it has a right name,
but it is a carriage in which four persons sit back to back, two before
and two behind) for Aberfoyle.  The mountain-side ascends very steeply
from the inn door, and, not to damp the horse's courage in the outset, we
went up on foot.  The guide-book says that the prospect from the summit
of the ascent is very fine; but I really believe we forgot to turn round
and look at it.  All through our drive, however, we had mountain views in
plenty, especially of great Ben Lomond, with his snow-covered head, round
which, since our entrance into the Highlands, we had been making a
circuit.  Nothing can possibly be drearier than the mountains at this
season; bare, barren, and bleak, with black patches of withered heath
variegating the dead brown of the herbage on their sides; and as regards
trees the hills are perfectly naked.  There were no frightful precipices,
no boldly picturesque features, along our road; but high, weary slopes,
showing miles and miles of heavy solitude, with here and there a highland
hut, built of stone and thatched; and, in one place, an old gray, ruinous
fortress, a station of the English troops after the rebellion of 1715;
and once or twice a village of hills, the inhabitants of which, old and
young, ran to their doors to stare at us.  For several miles after we
left Inversnaid, the mountain-stream which makes the waterfall brawled
along the roadside.  All the hills are sheep-pastures, and I never saw
such wild, rough, ragged-looking creatures as the sheep, with their black
faces and tattered wool.  The little lambs were very numerous, poor
things, coming so early in the season into this inclement region; and it
was laughable to see how invariably, when startled by our approach, they
scampered to their mothers, and immediately began to suck.  It would seem
as if they sought a draught from the maternal udder, wherewith to fortify
and encourage their poor little hearts; but I suppose their instinct
merely drove them close to their dams, and, being there, they took
advantage of their opportunity.  These sheep must lead a hard life during
the winter; for they are never fed nor sheltered.

The day was sunless, and very uncomfortably cold; and we were not sorry
to walk whenever the steepness of the road gave us cause.  I do not
remember what o'clock it was, but not far into the afternoon, when we
reached the Baillie Nicol-Jarvie Inn at Aberfoyle; a scene which is much
more interesting in the pages of Rob Roy than we found it in reality.
Here we got into a sort of cart, and set out, over another hill-path, as
dreary as or drearier than the last, for the Trosachs.  On our way, we
saw Ben Venue, and a good many other famous Bens, and two or three lochs;
and when we reached the Trosachs, we should probably have been very much
enraptured if our eyes had not already been weary with other mountain
shapes.  But, in truth, I doubt if anybody ever does really see a
mountain, who goes for the set and sole purpose of seeing it.  Nature
will not let herself be seen in such cases.  You must patiently bide her
time; and by and by, at some unforeseen moment, she will quietly and
suddenly unveil herself, and for a brief space allow you to look right
into the heart of her mystery.  But if you call out to her peremptorily,
"Nature! unveil yourself this very moment!" she only draws her veil the
closer; and you may look with all your eyes, and imagine that you see all
that she can show, and yet see nothing.  Thus, I saw a wild and confused
assemblage of heights, crags, precipices, which they call the Trosachs,
but I saw them calmly and coldly, and was glad when the drosky was ready
to take us on to Callender.  The hotel at the Trosachs, by the by, is a
very splendid one, in the form of an old feudal castle, with towers and
turrets.  All among these wild hills there is set preparation for
enraptured visitants; and it seems strange that the savage features do
not subside of their own accord, and that there should still be cold
winds and snow on the top of Ben Lomond, and rocks and heather, and
ragged sheep, now that there are so many avenues by which the commonplace
world is sluiced in among the Highlands.  I think that this fashion of
the picturesque will pass away.

We drove along the shore of Lake Vennachar, and onward to Callender,
which I believe is either the first point in the Lowlands or the last in
the Highlands.  It is a large village on the river Teith.  We stopped
here to dine, and were some time in getting any warmth into our benumbed
bodies; for, as I said before, it was a very cold day.  Looking from the
window of the hotel, I saw a young man in Highland dress, with bare
thighs, marching through the village street towards the Lowlands, with a
martial and elastic step, as if he were going forth to conquer and occupy
the world.  I suppose he was a soldier who had been absent on leave,
returning to the garrison at Stirling.  I pitied his poor thighs, though
he certainly did not look uncomfortable.

After dinner, as dusk was coming on and we had still a long drive before
us (eighteen miles, I believe), we took a close carriage and two horses,
and set off for Stirling.  The twilight was too obscure to show many
things along the road, and by the time we drove into Stirling we could
but dimly see the houses in the long street in which stood our hotel.
There was a good fire in the coffee-room, which looked like a
drawing-room in a large old-fashioned mansion, and was hung round with
engravings of the portraits of the county members, and a master of
fox-hounds, and other pictures.  We made ourselves comfortable with some
tea, and retired early.

In the morning we were stirring betimes, and found Stirling to be a
pretty large town, of rather ancient aspect, with many gray stone houses,
the gables of which are notched on either side, like a flight of stairs.
The town stands on the slope of a hill, at the summit of which, crowning
a long ascent, up which the paved street reaches all the way to its gate,
is Stirling Castle.  Of course we went thither, and found free entrance,
although the castle is garrisoned by five or six hundred men, among whom
are barelegged Highlanders (I must say that this costume is very fine and
becoming, though their thighs did look blue and frost-bitten) and also
some soldiers of other Scotch regiments, with tartan trousers.  Almost
immediately on passing the gate, we found an old artillery-man, who
undertook to show us round the castle.  Only a small portion of it seems
to be of great antiquity.  The principal edifice within the castle wall
is a palace, that was either built or renewed by James VI.; and it is
ornamented with strange old statues, one of which is his own.  The old
Scottish Parliament House is also here.  The most ancient part of the
castle is the tower, where one of the Earls of Douglas was stabbed by a
king, and afterwards thrown out of the window.  In reading this story,
one imagines a lofty turret, and the dead man tumbling headlong from a
great height; but, in reality, the window is not more than fifteen or
twenty feet from the garden into which he fell.  This part of the castle
was burned last autumn; but is now under repair, and the wall of the
tower is still stanch and strong.  We went up into the chamber where the
murder took place, and looked through the historic window.

Then we mounted the castle wall, where it broods over a precipice of many
hundred feet perpendicular, looking down upon a level plain below, and
forth upon a landscape, every foot of which is richly studded with
historic events.  There is a small peep-hole in the wall, which Queen
Mary is said to have been in the habit of looking through.  It is a most
splendid view; in the distance, the blue Highlands, with a variety of
mountain outlines that I could have studied unweariably; and in another
direction, beginning almost at the foot of the Castle Hill, were the
Links of Forth, where, over a plain of miles in extent the river
meandered, and circled about, and returned upon itself again and again
and again, as if knotted into a silver chain, which it was difficult to
imagine to be all one stream.  The history of Scotland might be read from
this castle wall, as on a book of mighty page; for here, within the
compass of a few miles, we see the field where Wallace won the battle of
Stirling, and likewise the battle-field of Bannockburn, and that of
Falkirk, and Sheriffmuir, and I know not how many besides.

Around the Castle Hill there is a walk, with seats for old and infirm
persons, at points sheltered from the wind.  We followed it downward, and
I think we passed over the site where the games used to be held, and
where, this morning, some of the soldiers of the garrison were going
through their exercises.  I ought to have mentioned, that, passing
through the inner gateway of the castle, we saw the round tower, and
glanced into the dungeon, where the Roderic Dhu of Scott's poem was left
to die.  It is one of the two round towers, between which the portcullis
rose and fell.



EDINBURGH.--THE PALACE OF HOLYROOD.


At eleven o'clock we took the rail for Edinburgh, and I remember nothing
more, except that the cultivation and verdure of the country were very
agreeable, after our experience of Highland barrenness and desolation,
until we found the train passing close at the base of the rugged crag of
Edinburgh Castle.  We established ourselves at Queen's Hotel, in Prince's
Street, and then went out to view the city.  The monument to Sir Walter
Scott--a rather fantastic and not very impressive affair, I thought--
stands almost directly in front of a hotel.  We went along Prince's
Street, and thence, by what turns I know not, to the Palace of Holyrood,
which stands on a low and sheltered site, and is a venerable edifice.
Arthur's Seat rises behind it,--a high hill, with a plain between.  As we
drew near the Palace, Mr. Bowman, who has been here before, pointed out
the windows of Queen Mary's apartments, in a circular tower on the left
of the gateway.  On entering the enclosed quadrangle, we bought tickets
for sixpence each, admitting us to all parts of the Palace that are shown
to visitors; and first we went into a noble hall or gallery, a long and
stately room, hung with pictures of ancient Scottish kings; and though
the pictures were none of them authentic, they, at least, answer an
excellent purpose in the way of upholstery.  It was here that the young
Pretender gave the ball which makes one of the scenes in Waverley.

Thence we passed into the old historic rooms of the Palace,--Darnley's
and Queen Mary's apartments, which everybody has seen and described.
They are very dreary and shabby-looking rooms, with bare floors, and here
and there a piece of tapestry, faded into a neutral tint; and carved and
ornamented ceilings, looking shabbier than plain whitewash.  We saw Queen
Mary's old bedstead, low, with four tall posts,--and her looking-glass,
which she brought with her from France, and which has often reflected the
beauty that set everybody mad,--and some needlework and other womanly
matters of hers; and we went into the little closet where she was having
such a cosey supper-party with two or three friends, when the
conspirators broke in, and stabbed Rizzio before her face.  We saw, too,
the blood-stain at the threshold of the door in the next room, opening
upon the stairs.  The body of Rizzio was flung down here, and the
attendant told us that it lay in that spot all night.  The blood-stain
covers a large space,--much larger than I supposed,--and it gives the
impression that there must have been a great pool and sop of blood on all
the spot covered by Rizzio's body, staining the floor deeply enough never
to be washed out.  It is now of a dark brown hue; and I do not see why it
may not be the genuine, veritable stain.  The floor, thereabouts, appears
not to have been scrubbed much; for I touched it with my finger, and
found it slightly rough; but it is strange that the many footsteps should
not have smoothed it, in three hundred years.

One of the articles shown us in Queen Mary's apartments was the
breastplate supposed to have been worn by Lord Ruthven at the murder, a
heavy plate of iron, and doubtless a very uncomfortable waistcoat.



HOLYROOD ABBEY.


From the Palace, we passed into the contiguous ruin of Holyrood Abbey;
which is roofless, although the front, and some broken columns along the
nave, and fragments of architecture here and there, afford hints of a
magnificent Gothic church in bygone times.  It deserved to be
magnificent; for here have been stately ceremonials, marriages of kings,
coronations, investitures, before the high altar, which has now been
overthrown or crumbled away; and the floor--so far as there is any floor
--consists of tombstones of the old Scottish nobility.  There are
likewise monuments, bearing the names of illustrious Scotch families; and
inscriptions, in the Scotch dialect, on the walls.

In one of the front towers,--the only remaining one, indeed,--we saw the
marble tomb of a nobleman, Lord Belhaven, who is represented reclining on
the top,--with a bruised nose, of course.  Except in Westminster Abbey, I
do not remember ever to have seen an old monumental statue with the nose
entire.  In all political or religious outbreaks, the mob's first impulse
is to hit the illustrious dead on their noses.

At the other end of the Abbey, near the high altar, is the vault where
the old Scottish kings used to be buried; but, looking in through the
window, I saw only a vacant space,--no skull, nor bone, nor the least
fragment of a coffin.  In fact, I believe the royal dead were turned out
of their last home, on occasion of the Revolutionary movements, at the
accession of William III.



HIGH STREET AND THE GRASS-MARKET.


Quitting the Abbey and the Palace, we turned into the Canongate, and
passed thence into High Street, which, I think, is a continuation of the
Canongate; and being now in the old town of Edinburgh, we saw those
immensely tall houses, seven stories high, where the people live in
tiers, all the way from earth to middle air.  They were not so quaint and
strange looking as I expected; but there were some houses of very antique
individuality, and among them that of John Knox, which looks still in
good repair.  One thing did not in the least fall short of my
expectations,--the evil odor, for which Edinburgh has an immemorial
renown,--nor the dirt of the inhabitants, old and young.  The town, to
say the truth, when you are in the midst of it, has a very sordid, grimy,
shabby, upswept, unwashen aspect, grievously at variance with all poetic
and romantic associations.

From the High Street we turned aside into the Grass-Market, the scene of
the Porteous Mob; and we found in the pavement a cross on the site where
the execution of Porteous is supposed to have taken place.



THE CASTLE.


Returning thence to the High Street, we followed it up to the Castle,
which is nearer the town, and of more easy access from it, than I had
supposed.  There is a large court or parade before the castle gate, with
a parapet on the abrupt side of the hill, looking towards Arthur's Seat
and Salisbury Crags, mud overhanging a portion of the old town.  As we
leaned over this parapet, my nose was conscious of the bad odor of
Edinburgh, although the streets, whence it must have come, were hundreds
of feet below.  I have had some experience of this ugly smell in the poor
streets of Liverpool; but I think I never perceived it before crossing
the Atlantic.  It is the odor of an old system of life; the scent of the
pine forests is still too recent with us for it to be known in America.

The Castle of Edinburgh is free (as appears to be the case with all
garrisoned places in Great Britain) to the entrance of any peaceable
person.  So we went in, and found a large space enclosed within the
walls, and dwellings for officers, and accommodation for soldiers, who
were being drilled, or loitering about; and as the hill still ascends
within the external wall of the castle, we climbed to the summit, and
there found an old soldier whom we engaged to be our guide.  He showed us
Mons Meg, a great old cannon, broken at the breech, but still aimed
threateningly from the highest ramparts; and then he admitted us into an
old chapel, said to have been built by a Queen of Scotland, the sister of
Harold, King of England, and occupying the very highest part of the hill.
It is the smallest place of worship I ever saw, but of venerable
architecture, and of very solid construction.  The old soldier had not
much more to show us; but he pointed out the window whence one of the
kings of Scotland is said, when a baby, to have been lowered down, the
whole height of the castle, to the bottom of the precipice on which it
stands,--a distance of seven hundred feet.

After the soldier had shown us to the extent of his jurisdiction, we went
into a suite of rooms, in one of which I saw a portrait of Queen Mary,
which gave me, for the first time, an idea that she was really a very
beautiful woman.  In this picture she is wonderfully so,--a tender
womanly grace, which was none the less tender and graceful for being
equally imbued with queenly dignity and spirit.  It was too lovely a head
to be cut off.  I should be glad to know the authenticity of this
picture.

I do not know that we did anything else worthy of note, before leaving
Edinburgh.  There is matter enough, in and about the town, to interest
the visitor for a very long time; but when the visit is calculated on
such brevity as ours was, we get weary of the place, before even these
few hours come to an end.  Thus, for my part, I was not sorry when, in
the course of the afternoon, we took the rail for Melrose, where we duly
arrived, and put up at the George Inn.



MELROSE.


Melrose is a village of rather antique aspect, situated on the slope and
at the bottom of the Eildon Hills, which, from this point of view, appear
like one hill, with a double summit.  The village, as I said, has an old
look, though many of the houses have at least been refronted at some
recent date; but others are as ancient, I suppose, as the days when the
Abbey was in its splendor,--a rustic and peasant-like antiquity, however,
low-roofed, and straw-thatched.  There is an aged cross of stone in the
centre of the town.

Our first object, of course, was to see the Abbey, which stands just on
the outskirts of the village, and is attainable only by applying at a
neighboring house, the inhabitant of which probably supports himself, and
most comfortably, too, as a showman of the ruin.  He unlocked the wooden
gate, and admitted us into what is left of the Abbey, comprising only the
ruins of the church, although the refectory, the dormitories, and the
other parts of the establishment, formerly covered the space now occupied
by a dozen village houses.  Melrose Abbey is a very satisfactory ruin,
all carpeted along its nave and transepts with green grass; and there are
some well-grown trees within the walls.  We saw the window, now empty,
through which the tints of the painted glass fell on the tombstone of
Michael Scott, and the tombstone itself, broken in three pieces, but with
a cross engraven along its whole length.  It must have been the monument
of an old monk or abbot, rather than a wizard.  There, too, is still the
"marble stone" on which the monk and warrior sat them down, and which is
supposed to mark the resting-place of Alexander of Scotland.  There are
remains, both without and within the Abbey, of most curious and
wonderfully minute old sculpture,--foliage, in places where it is almost
impossible to see them, and where the sculptor could not have supposed
that they would be seen, but which yet are finished faithfully, to the
very veins of each leaf, in stone; and there is a continual variety of
this accurate toil.  On the exterior of the edifice there is equal
minuteness of finish, and a great many niches for statues; all of which,
I believe, are now gone, although there are carved faces at some points
and angles.  The graveyard around the Abbey is still the only one which
the village has, and is crowded with gravestones, among which I read the
inscription of one erected by Sir Walter Scott to the memory of Thomas
Pardy, one of his servants.  Some sable birds--either rooks or jackdaws--
were flitting about the ruins, inside and out.

Mr. Bowman and I talked about revisiting Melrose by moonlight; but,
luckily, there was to be no moon that evening.  I do not myself think
that daylight and sunshine make a ruin less effective than twilight or
moonshine.  In reference to Scott's description, I think he deplorably
diminishes the impressiveness of the scene by saying that the alternate
buttresses, seen by moonlight, look as if made of ebon and ivory.  It
suggests a small and very pretty piece of cabinet-work; not these gray,
rough walls, which Time has gnawed upon for a thousand years, without
eating them away.

Leaving the Abbey, we took a path or a road which led us to the river
Tweed, perhaps a quarter of a mile off; and we crossed it by a
foot-bridge,--a pretty wide stream, a dimpling breadth of transparent
water flowing between low banks, with a margin of pebbles.  We then
returned to our inn, and had tea, and passed a quiet evening by the
fireside.  This is a good, unpretentious inn; and its visitors' book
indicates that it affords general satisfaction to those who come here.

In the morning we breakfasted on broiled salmon, taken, no doubt, in the
neighboring Tweed.  There was a very coarse-looking man at table with us,
who informed us that he owned the best horse anywhere round the Eildon
Hills, and could make the best cast for a salmon, and catch a bigger fish
than anybody,--with other self-laudation of the same kind.  The waiter
afterwards told us that he was the son of an Admiral in the neighborhood;
and soon, his horse being brought to the door, we saw him mount and ride
away.  He sat on horseback with ease and grace, though I rather suspect,
early as it was, that he was already in his cups.  The Scotch seem to me
to get drunk at very unseasonable hours.  I have seen more drunken
people here than during all my residence in England, and, generally,
early in the day.  Their liquor, so far as I have observed, makes them
good-natured and sociable, imparting a perhaps needed geniality to their
cold natures.

After breakfast we took a drosky, or whatever these fore-and-aft-seated
vehicles are called, and set out for



DRYBURGH ABBEY,


three miles distant.  It was a cold though rather bright morning, with a
most shrewd and bitter wind, which blew directly in my face as I sat
beside the driver.  An English wind is bad enough, but methinks a Scotch
one, is rather worse; at any rate, I was half frozen, and wished Dryburgh
Abbey in Tophet, where it would have been warmer work to go and see it.
Some of the border hills were striking, especially the Cowden Knowe,
which ascends into a prominent and lofty peak.  Such villages as we
passed did not greatly differ from English villages.  By and by we came
to the banks of the Tweed, at a point where there is a ferry.  A carriage
was on the river-bank, the driver waiting beside it; for the people who
came in it had already been ferried across to see the Abbey.

The ferryman here is a young girl; and, stepping into the boat, she
shoved off, and so skilfully took advantage of the eddies of the stream,
which is here deep and rapid, that we were soon on the other side.  She
was by no means an uncomely maiden, with pleasant Scotch features, and a
quiet intelligence of aspect, gleaming into a smile when spoken to; much
tanned with all kinds of weather, and, though slender, yet so agile and
muscular that it was no shame for a man to let himself be rowed by her.

From the ferry we had a walk of half a mile, more or less, to a cottage,
where we found another young girl, whose business it is to show the
Abbey.  She was of another mould than the ferry-maiden,--a queer, shy,
plaintive sort of a body,--and answered all our questions in a low,
wailing tone.  Passing through an apple-orchard, we were not long in
reaching the Abbey, the ruins of which are much more extensive and more
picturesque than those of Melrose, being overrun with bushes and
shrubbery, and twined about with ivy, and all such vegetation as belongs,
naturally, to old walls.  There are the remains of the refectory, and
other domestic parts of the Abbey, as well as the church, and all in
delightful state of decay,--not so far gone but that we had bits of its
former grandeur in the columns and broken arches, and in some portions of
the edifice that still retain a roof.

In the chapter-house we saw a marble statue of Newton, wofully maltreated
by damps and weather; and though it had no sort of business there, it
fitted into the ruins picturesquely enough.  There is another statue,
equally unauthorized; both having been placed here by a former Earl of
Buchan, who seems to have been a little astray in his wits.

On one side of the church, within an arched recess, are the monuments of
Sir Walter Scott and his family,--three ponderous tombstones of Aberdeen
granite, polished, but already dimmed and dulled by the weather.  The
whole floor of the recess is covered by these monuments, that of Sir
Walter being the middle one, with Lady (or, as the inscription calls her,
Dame) Scott beyond him, next to the church wall, and some one of his sons
or daughters on the hither side.  The effect of his being buried here is
to make the whole of Dryburgh Abbey his monument.  There is another
arched recess, twin to the Scott burial-place, and contiguous to it, in
which are buried a Pringle family; it being their ancient place of
sepulture.  The spectator almost inevitably feels as if they were
intruders, although their rights here are of far older date than those of
Scott.

Dryburgh Abbey must be a most beautiful spot of a summer afternoon; and
it was beautiful even on this not very genial morning, especially when
the sun blinked out upon the ivy, and upon the shrubberied paths that
wound about the ruins.  I think I recollect the birds chirruping in this
neighborhood of it.  After viewing it sufficiently,--sufficiently for
this one time,--we went back to the ferry, and, being set across by the
same Undine, we drove back to Melrose.  No longer riding against the
wind, I found it not nearly so cold as before.  I now noticed that the
Eildon Hills, seen from this direction, rise from one base into three
distinct summits, ranged in a line.  According to "The Lay of the Last
Minstrel," they were cleft into this shape by the magic of Michael Scott.
Reaching Melrose . . . . without alighting, we set off for



ABBOTSFORD,


three miles off.  The neighborhood of Melrose, leading to Abbotsford, has
many handsome residences of modern build and very recent date,--suburban
villas, each with its little lawn and garden ground, such as we see in
the vicinity of Liverpool.  I noticed, too, one castellated house, of no
great size, but old, and looking as if its tower were built, not for
show, but for actual defence in the old border warfare.

We were not long in reaching Abbotsford.  The house, which is more
compact, and of considerably less extent than I anticipated, stands in
full view from the road, and at only a short distance from it, lower down
towards the river.  Its aspect disappointed me; but so does everything.
It is but a villa, after all; no castle, nor even a large manor-house,
and very unsatisfactory when you consider it in that light.  Indeed, it
impressed me, not as a real house, intended for the home of human
beings,--a house to die in or to be born in,--but as a plaything,--
something in the same category as Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill.  The
present owner seems to have found it insufficient for the actual purposes
of life; for he is adding a wing, which promises to be as extensive as
the original structure.

We rang at the front door (the family being now absent), and were
speedily admitted by a middle-aged or somewhat elderly man,--the butler,
I suppose, or some upper servant,--who at once acceded to our request to
be permitted to see the house.  We stepped from the porch immediately
into the entrance-hall; and having the great Hall of Battle Abbey in my
memory, and the ideal of a baronial hall in my mind, I was quite taken
aback at the smallness and narrowness and lowness of this; which,
however, is a very fine one, on its own little scale.  In truth, it is
not much more than a vestibule.  The ceiling is carved; and every inch of
the walls is covered with claymores, targets, and other weapons and
armor, or old-time curiosities, tastefully arranged, many of which, no
doubt, have a history attached to them,--or had, in Sir Walter's own
mind.  Our attendant was a very intelligent person, and pointed out much
that was interesting; but in such a multitudinous variety it was almost
impossible to fix the eye upon any one thing.  Probably the apartment
looked smaller than it really was, on account of being so wainscoted and
festooned with curiosities.  I remember nothing particularly, unless it
be the coal-grate in the fireplace, which was one formerly used by
Archbishop Sharpe, the prelate whom Balfour of Burley murdered.  Either
in this room or the next one, there was a glass case containing the suit
of clothes last worn by Scott,--a short green coat, somewhat worn, with
silvered buttons, a pair of gray tartan trousers, and a white hat.  It
was in the hall that we saw these things; for there too, I recollect,
were a good many walking-sticks that had been used by Scott, and the
hatchet with which he was in the habit of lopping branches from his
trees, as he walked among them.

From the hall we passed into the study;--a small room, lined with the
books which Sir Walter, no doubt, was most frequently accustomed to refer
to; and our guide pointed out some volumes of the Moniteur, which he used
while writing the history of Napoleon.  Probably these were the driest
and dullest volumes in his whole library.  About mid-height of the walls
of the study there is a gallery, with a short flight of steps for the
convenience of getting at the upper books.  A study-table occupied the
centre of the room, and at one end of the table stands an easy-chair,
covered with morocco, and with ample space to fling one's self back.  The
servant told me that I might sit down in this chair, for that Sir Walter
sat there while writing his romances, "and perhaps," quoth the man,
smiling, "you may catch some inspiration."  What a bitter word this would
have been if he had known me to be a romance-writer!  "No, I never shall
be inspired to write romances!" I answered, as if such an idea had never
occurred to me.  I sat down, however.  This study quite satisfied me,
being planned on principles of common-sense, and made to work in, and
without any fantastic adaptation of old forms to modern uses.

Next to the study is the library, an apartment of respectable size, and
containing as many books as it can hold, all protected by wire-work.  I
did not observe what or whose works were here; but the attendant showed
us one whole compartment full of volumes having reference to ghosts,
witchcraft, and the supernatural generally.  It is remarkable that Scott
should have felt interested in such subjects, being such a worldly and
earthly man as he was; but then, indeed, almost all forms of popular
superstition do clothe the ethereal with earthly attributes, and so make
it grossly perceptible.

The library, like the study, suited me well,--merely the fashion of the
apartment, I mean,--and I doubt not it contains as many curious volumes
as are anywhere to be met with within a similar space.  The drawing-room
adjoins it; and here we saw a beautiful ebony cabinet, which was
presented to Sir Walter by George IV.; and some pictures of much
interest,--one of Scott himself at thirty-five, rather portly, with a
heavy face, but shrewd eyes, which seem to observe you closely.  There is
a full-length of his eldest son, an officer of dragoons, leaning on his
charger; and a portrait of Lady Scott,--a brunette, with black hair and
eyes, very pretty, warm, vivacious, and un-English in her aspect.  I am
not quite sure whether I saw all these pictures in the drawing-room, or
some of them in the dining-room; but the one that struck me most--and
very much indeed--was the head of Mary, Queen of Scots, literally the
head cut off and lying on a dish.  It is said to have been painted by an
Italian or French artist, two days after her death.  The hair curls or
flows all about it; the face is of a death-like hue, but has an
expression of quiet, after much pain and trouble,--very beautiful, very
sweet and sad; and it affected me strongly with the horror and
strangeness of such a head being severed from its body.  Methinks I
should not like to have it always in the room with me.  I thought of the
lovely picture of Mary that I had seen at Edinburgh Castle, and reflected
what a symbol it would be,--how expressive of a human being having her
destiny in her own hands,--if that beautiful young Queen were painted as
carrying this dish, containing her own woful head, and perhaps casting a
curious and pitiful glance down upon it, as if it were not her own.

Also, in the drawing-room, there was a plaster cast of Sir Walter's face,
taken after death; the only one in existence, as our guide assured us.
It is not often that one sees a homelier set of features than this; no
elevation, no dignity, whether bestowed by nature or thrown over them by
age or death; sunken cheeks, the bridge of the nose depressed, and the
end turned up; the mouth puckered, and no chin whatever, or hardly any.
The expression was not calm and happy; but rather as if he were in a
perturbed slumber, perhaps nothing short of nightmare.  I wonder that the
family allow this cast to be shown,--the last record that there is of
Scott's personal reality, and conveying such a wretched and unworthy idea
of it.

Adjoining the drawing-room is the dining-room, in one corner of which,
between two windows, Scott died.  It was now a quarter of a century since
his death; but it seemed to me that we spoke with a sort of hush in our
voices, as if he were still dying here, or had but just departed.  I
remember nothing else in this room.  The next one is the armory, which is
the smallest of all that we had passed through; but its walls gleam with
the steel blades of swords, and the barrels of pistols, matchlocks,
firelocks, and all manner of deadly weapons, whether European or
Oriental; for there are many trophies here of East Indian warfare.  I saw
Rob Roy's gun, rifled and of very large bore; and a beautiful pistol,
formerly Claverhouse's; and the sword of Montrose, given him by King
Charles, the silver hilt of which I grasped.  There was also a superb
claymore, in an elaborately wrought silver sheath, made for Sir Walter
Scott, and presented to him by the Highland Society, for his services in
marshalling the clans when George IV. came to Scotland.  There were a
thousand other things, which I knew must be most curious, yet did not ask
nor care about them, because so many curiosities drive one crazy, and
fret one's heart to death.  On the whole, there is no simple and great
impression left by Abbotsford; and I felt angry and dissatisfied with
myself for not feeling something which I did not and could not feel.  But
it is just like going to a museum, if you look into particulars; and one
learns from it, too, that Scott could not have been really a wise man,
nor an earnest one, nor one that grasped the truth of life; he did but
play, and the play grew very sad toward its close.  In a certain way,
however, I understand his romances the better for having seen his house;
and his house the better for having read his romances.  They throw light
on one another.

We had now gone through all the show-rooms; and the next door admitted us
again into the entrance-hall, where we recorded our names in the
visitors' book.  It contains more names of Americans, I should judge,
from casting my eyes back over last year's record, than of all other
people in the world, including Great Britain.

Bidding farewell to Abbotsford, I cannot but confess a sentiment of
remorse for having visited the dwelling-place--as just before I visited
the grave of the mighty minstrel and romancer with so cold a heart and in
so critical a mood,--his dwelling-place and his grave whom I had so
admired and loved, and who had done so much for my happiness when I was
young.  But I, and the world generally, now look at him from a different
point of view; and, besides, these visits to the actual haunts of famous
people, though long dead, have the effect of making us sensible, in some
degree, of their human imperfections, as if we actually saw them alive.
I felt this effect, to a certain extent, even with respect to
Shakespeare, when I visited Stratford-on-Avon.  As for Scott, I still
cherish him in a warm place, and I do not know that I have any pleasanter
anticipation, as regards books, than that of reading all his novels over
again after we get back to the Wayside.

[This Mr. Hawthorne did, aloud to his family, the year following his
return to America.--ED.]

It was now one or two o'clock, and time for us to take the rail across
the borders.  Many a mile behind us, as we rushed onward, we could see
the threefold Eildon Hill, and probably every pant of the engine carried
us over some spot of ground which Scott has made fertile with poetry.
For Scotland--cold, cloudy, barren little bit of earth that it is--owes
all the interest that the world feels in it to him.  Few men have done so
much for their country as he.  However, having no guide-book, we were
none the wiser for what we saw out of the window of the rail-carriage;
but, now and then, a castle appeared, on a commanding height, visible for
miles round, and seemingly in good repair,--now, in some low and
sheltered spot, the gray walls of an abbey; now, on a little eminence,
the ruin of a border fortress, and near it the modern residence of the
laird, with its trim lawn and shrubbery.  We were not long in coming to


BERWICK,


a town which seems to belong both to England and Scotland, or perhaps is
a kingdom by itself, for it stands on both sides of the boundary river,
the Tweed, where it empties into the German Ocean.  From the railway
bridge we had a good view over the town, which looks ancient, with red
roofs on all the gabled houses; and it being a sunny afternoon, though
bleak and chill, the sea-view was very fine.  The Tweed is here broad,
and looks deep, flowing far beneath the bridge, between high banks.  This
is all that I can say of Berwick (pronounced Berrick), for though we
spent above an hour at the station waiting for the train, we were so long
in getting our dinner, that we had not time for anything else.  I
remember, however, some gray walls, that looked like the last remains of
an old castle, near the railway station.  We next took the train for

NEWCASTLE,

the way to which, for a considerable distance, lies within sight of the
sea; and in close vicinity to the shore we saw Holy Isle, on which are
the ruins of an abbey.  Norham Castle must be somewhere in this
neighborhood, on the English shore of the Tweed.  It was pretty late in
the afternoon--almost nightfall--when we reached Newcastle, over the
roofs of which, as over those of Berwick, we had a view from the railway,
and like Berwick, it was a congregation of mostly red roofs; but, unlike
Berwick (the atmosphere over which was clear and transparent), there came
a gush of smoke from every chimney, which made it the dimmest and
smokiest place I ever saw.  This is partly owing to the iron founderies
and furnaces; but each domestic chimney, too, was smoking on its own
account,--coal being so plentiful there, no doubt, that the fire is
always kept freshly heaped with it, reason or none.  Out of this
smoke-cloud rose tall steeples; and it was discernible that the town
stretched widely over an uneven surface, on the banks of the Tyne, which
is navigable up hither ten miles from the sea for pretty large vessels.

We established ourselves at the Station Hotel, and then walked out to see
something of the town; but I remember only a few streets of duskiness and
dinginess, with a glimpse of the turrets of a castle to which we could
not find our way.  So, as it was getting twilightish and very cold, we
went back to the hotel, which is a very good one, better than any one I
have seen in the South of England, and almost or quite as good as those
of Scotland.  The coffee-room is a spacious and handsome apartment,
adorned with a full-length portrait of Wellington, and other pictures,
and in the whole establishment there was a well-ordered alacrity and
liberal provision for the comfort of guests that one seldom sees in
English inns.  There are a good many American guests in Newcastle, and
through all the North.

An old Newcastle gentleman and his friend came into the smoking-room, and
drank three glasses of hot whiskey-toddy apiece, and were still going on
to drink more when we left them.  These respectable persons probably went
away drunk that night, yet thought none the worse of themselves or of one
another for it.  It is like returning to times twenty years gone by for a
New-Englander to witness such simplicity of manners.

The next morning, May 8th, I rose and breakfasted early, and took the
rail soon after eight o'clock, leaving Mr. Bowman behind; for he had
business in Newcastle, and would not follow till some hours afterwards.
There is no use in trying to make a narrative of anything that one sees
along an English railway.  All I remember of this tract of country is
that one of the stations at which we stopped for an instant is called
"Washington," and this is, no doubt, the old family place, where the De
Wessyngtons, afterwards the Washingtons, were first settled in England.
Before reaching York, first one old lady and then another (Quaker) lady
got into the carriage along with me; and they seemed to be going to York,
on occasion of some fair or celebration.  This was all the company I had,
and their advent the only incident.  It was about eleven o'clock when I
beheld York Cathedral rising huge above the old city, which stands on the
river Ouse, separated by it from the railway station, but communicating
by a ferry (or two) and a bridge.  I wandered forth, and found my way
over the latter into the ancient and irregular streets of

YORK,

crooked, narrow, or of unequal width, puzzling, and many of them bearing
the name of the particular gate in the old walls of the city to which
they lead.  There were no such fine, ancient, stately houses as some of
those in Shrewsbury were, nor such an aspect of antiquity as in Chester;
but still York is a quaint old place, and what looks most modern is
probably only something old, hiding itself behind a new front, as
elsewhere in England.

I found my way by a sort of instinct, as directly as possible, to



YORK MINSTER.


It stands in the midst of a small open space,--or a space that looks
small in comparison with the vast bulk of the cathedral.  I was not so
much impressed by its exterior as I have usually been by Gothic
buildings; because it is rectangular in its general outline and in its
towers, and seems to lack the complexity and mysterious plan which
perplexes and wonder-strikes me in most cathedrals.  Doubtless, however,
if I had known better how to admire it, I should have found it wholly
admirable.  At all events, it has a satisfactory hugeness.  Seeking my
way in, I at first intruded upon the Registry of Deeds, which occupies a
building patched up against the mighty side of the cathedral, and hardly
discernible, so small the one and so large the other.  I finally hit upon
the right door, and I felt no disappointment in my first glance around at
the immensity of enclosed space;--I see now in my mind's eye a dim length
of nave, a breadth in the transepts like a great plain, and such an airy
height beneath the central tower that a worshipper could certainly get a
good way towards heaven without rising above it.  I only wish that the
screen, or whatever they call it, between the choir and nave, could be
thrown down, so as to give us leave to take in the whole vastitude at
once.  I never could understand why, after building a great church, they
choose to sunder it in halves by this mid-partition.  But let me be
thankful for what I got, and especially for the height and massiveness of
the clustered pillars that support the arches on which rests the central
tower.  I remember at Furness Abbey I saw two tall pillars supporting a
broken arch, and thought it, the most majestic fragment of architecture
that could possibly be.  But these pillars have a nobler height, and
these arches a greater sweep.  What nonsense to try to write about a
cathedral!

There is a great, cold bareness and bleakness about the interior; for
there are very few monuments, and those seem chiefly to be of
ecclesiastical people.  I saw no armed knights, asleep on the tops of
their tombs; but there was a curious representation of a skeleton, at
full length, under the table-slab of one of the monuments.  The walls are
of a grayish hue, not so agreeable as the rich dark tint of the inside of
Westminster Abbey; but a great many of the windows are still filled with
ancient painted glass, the very small squares and pieces of which are
composed into splendid designs of saints and angels, and scenes from
Scripture.

There were a few watery blinks of sunshine out of doors, and whenever
these came through the old painted windows, some of the more vivid colors
were faintly thrown upon the pavement of the cathedral,--very faintly, it
is true; for, in the first place, the sunshine was not brilliant; and
painted glass, too, fades in the course of the ages, perhaps, like all
man's other works.  There were two or three windows of modern
manufacture, and far more magnificent, as to brightness of color and
material beauty, than the ancient ones; but yet they looked vulgar,
glaring, and impertinent in comparison, because such revivals or
imitations of a long-disused art cannot have the good faith and
earnestness of the originals.  Indeed, in the very coloring, I felt the
same difference as between heart's blood and a scarlet dye.  It is a
pity, however, that the old windows cannot be washed, both inside and
out, for now they have the dust of centuries upon them.

The screen or curtain between the nave and choir has eleven carved
figures, at full length, which appeared to represent kings, some of them
wearing crowns, and bearing sceptres or swords.  They were in wood, and
wrought by some Gothic hand.  These carvings, and the painted windows,
and the few monuments, are all the details that the mind can catch hold
of in the immensity of this cathedral; and I must say that it was a
dreary place on that cold, cloudy day.  I doubt whether a cathedral is a
sort of edifice suited to the English climate.  The first buildings of
the kind were probably erected by people who had bright and constant
sunshine, and who desired a shadowy awfulness--like that of a forest,
with its arched wood-paths--into which to retire in their religious
moments.

In America, on a hot summer's day, how delightful its cool and solemn
depths would be!  The painted windows, too, were evidently contrived, in
the first instance, by persons who saw how effective they would prove
when a vivid sun shone through them.  But in England, the interior of a
cathedral, nine days out of ten, is a vast sullenness, and as chill as
death and the tomb.  At any rate, it was so to-day, and so thought one of
the old vergers, who kept walking as briskly as he could along the width
of the transepts.  There were several of these old men when I first came
in, but they went off, all but this one, before I departed.  None of them
said a word to me, nor I to them; and admission to the Minster seems to
be entirely free.

After emerging from this great gloom, I wandered to and fro about York,
and contrived to go astray within no very wide space.  If its history be
authentic, it is an exceedingly old city, having been founded about a
thousand years before the Christian era.  There used to be a palace of
the Roman emperors here, and the Emperor Severus died here, as did some
of his successors; and Constantine the Great was born here.  I know not
what, if any, relics of those earlier times there may be; but York is
still partly surrounded with a wall, and has several gates, which the
city authorities take pains to keep in repair.  I grow weary in my
endeavor to find my way back to the railway, and inquired it of one of
the good people of York,--a respectable, courteous, gentlemanly person,--
and he told me to walk along the walls.  Then he went on a considerable
distance; but seemed to repent of not doing more for me; so he waited
till I came up, and, walking along by my side, pointed out the castle,
now the jail, and the place of execution, and directed me to the
principal gateway of the city, and instructed me how to reach the ferry.
The path along the wall leads, in one place, through a room over the arch
of a gateway,--a low, thick-walled, stone apartment, where doubtless the
gatekeeper used to lodge, and to parley with those who desired entrance.

I found my way to the ferry over the Ouse, according to this kind
Yorkist's instructions.  The ferryman told me that the fee for crossing
was a halfpenny, which seemed so ridiculously small that I offered him
more; but this unparalleled Englishman declined taking anything beyond
his rightful halfpenny.  This seems so wonderful to me that I can hardly
trust my own memory.

Reaching the station, I got some dinner, and at four o'clock, just as I
was starting, came Mr. Bowman, my very agreeable and sensible travelling
companion.  Our journeying together was ended here; for he was to keep on
to London, and I to return to Liverpool.  So we parted, and I took the
rail westward across England, through a very beautiful, and in some
degree picturesque, tract of country, diversified with hills, through the
valleys and vistas of which goes the railroad, with dells diverging from
it on either hand, and streams and arched bridges, and old villages, and
a hundred pleasant English sights.  After passing Rochdale, however, the
dreary monotony of Lancashire succeeded this variety.  Between nine and
ten o'clock I reached the Tithebarn station in Liverpool.  Ever since
until now, May 17th, I have employed my leisure moments in scribbling off
the journal of my tour; but it has greatly lost by not having been
written daily, as the scenes and occurrences were fresh.  The most
picturesque points can be seized in no other way, and the hues of the
affair fade as quickly as those of a dying dolphin; or as, according to
Audubon, the plumage of a dead bird.

One thing that struck me as much as anything else in the Highlands I had
forgotten to put down.  In our walk at Balloch, along the road within
view of Loch Lomond and the neighboring hills, it was a brilliant
sunshiny afternoon, and I never saw any atmosphere so beautiful as that
among the mountains.  It was a clear, transparent, ethereal blue, as
distinct as a vapor, and yet by no means vaporous, but a pure,
crystalline medium.  I have witnessed nothing like this among the
Berkshire hills nor elsewhere.

York is full of old churches, some of them very antique in appearance,
the stones weather-worn, their edges rounded by time, blackened, and with
all the tokens of sturdy and age-long decay; and in some of them I
noticed windows quite full of old painted glass, a dreary kind of minute
patchwork, all of one dark and dusty hue, when seen from the outside.
Yet had I seen them from the interior of the church, there doubtless
would have been rich and varied apparitions of saints, with their glories
round their heads, and bright-winged angels, and perhaps even the
Almighty Father himself, so far as conceivable and representable by human
powers.  It requires light from heaven to make them visible.  If the
church were merely illuminated from the inside,--that is, by what light a
man can get from his own understanding,--the pictures would be invisible,
or wear at best but a miserable aspect.



LIVERPOOL.


May 24th.--Day before yesterday I had a call at the Consulate from one of
the Potentates of the Earth,--a woolly-haired negro, rather thin and
spare, between forty and fifty years of age, plainly dressed; at the
first glimpse of whom, I could readily have mistaken him for some ship's
steward, seeking to enter a complaint of his captain.  However, this was
President Roberts, of Liberia, introduced by a note from Mrs. O'Sullivan,
whom he has recently met in Madeira.  I was rather favorably impressed
with him; for his deportment was very simple, and without any of the
flourish and embroidery which a negro might be likely to assume on
finding himself elevated from slavery to power.  He is rather shy,
reserved, at least, and undemonstrative, yet not harshly so,--in fine,
with manners that offer no prominent points for notice or criticism;
although I felt, or thought I felt, that his color was continually before
his mind, and that he walks cautiously among men, as conscious that every
new introduction is a new experiment.  He is not in the slightest degree
an interesting man (so far as I discovered in a very brief interview),
apart from his position and history; his face is not striking, nor so
agreeable as if it were jet black; but there may be miles and miles of
depth in him which I know nothing of.  Our conversation was of the most
unimportant character; for he had called merely to deliver the note, and
sat only a few minutes, during which he merely responded to my
observations, and originated no remarks.  Intelligence, discretion,
tact--these are probably his traits; not force of character and
independence.

The same day I took the rail from the Little Street station for



MANCHESTER,


to meet Bennoch, who had asked me thither to dine with him.  I had never
visited Manchester before, though now so long resident within twenty
miles of it; neither is it particularly worth visiting, unless for the
sake of its factories, which I did not go to see.  It is a dingy and
heavy town, with very much the aspect of Liverpool, being, like the
latter, built almost entirely within the present century.  I stopped at
the Albion Hotel, and, as Bennoch was out, I walked forth to view the
city, and made only such observations as are recorded above.  Opposite
the hotel stands the Infirmary,--a very large edifice, which, when
erected, was on the outskirts, or perhaps in the rural suburbs, of the
town, but it is now almost in its centre.  In the enclosed space before
it stands the statue of Peel, and sits a statue of Dr. Dalton, the
celebrated chemist, who was a native of Manchester.

Returning to the hotel, I sat down in the room where we were to dine, and
in due time Bennoch made his appearance, with the same glow and friendly
warmth in his face that I had left burning there when we parted in
London.  If this man has not a heart, then no man ever had.  I like him
inexpressibly for his heart and for his intellect, and for his flesh and
blood; and if he has faults, I do not know them, nor care to know them,
nor value him the less if I did know them.  He went to his room to dress;
and in the mean time a middle-aged, dark man, of pleasant aspect, with
black hair, black eyebrows, and bright, dark eyes came in, limping a
little, but not much.  He seemed not quite a man of the world, a little
shy in manner, yet he addressed me kindly and sociably.  I guessed him to
be Mr. Charles Swain, the poet, whom Mr. Bennoch had invited to dinner.
Soon came another guest whom Mr. Swain introduced to me as Mr. ------,
editor of the Manchester Examiner.  Then came Bennoch, who made us all
regularly acquainted, or took for granted that we were so; and lastly
appeared a Mr. W------, a merchant in Manchester, and a very intelligent
man; and the party was then complete.  Mr. Swain, the poet, is not a man
of fluent conversation; he said, indeed, very little, but gave me the
impression of amiability and simplicity of character, with much feeling.

Mr. W------ is a very sensible man.  He has spent two or three years in
America, and seems to have formed juster conclusions about us than most
of his countrymen do.  He is the only Englishman, I think, whom I have
met, who fairly acknowledges that the English do cherish doubt, jealousy,
suspicion, in short, an unfriendly feeling, towards the Americans.  It is
wonderful how every American, whatever class of the English he mingles
with, is conscious of this feeling, and how no Englishman, except this
sole Mr. W------, will confess it.  He expressed some very good ideas,
too, about the English and American press, and the reasons why the Times
may fairly be taken as the exponent of British feeling towards us, while
the New York Herald, immense as its circulation is, can be considered, in
no similar degree or kind, the American exponent.

We sat late at table, and after the other guests had retired, Bennoch and
I had some very friendly talk, and he proposed that on my wife's return
we should take up our residence in his house at Blackheath, while Mrs.
Bennoch and himself were absent for two months on a trip to Germany.  If
his wife and mine ratify the idea, we will do so.

The next morning we went out to see the Exchange, and whatever was
noticeable about the town.  Time being brief, I did not visit the
cathedral, which, I believe, is a thousand years old.  There are many
handsome shops in Manchester; and we went into one establishment, devoted
to pictures, engravings, and decorative art generally, which is most
perfect and extensive.  The firm, if I remember, is that of the Messrs.
Agnew, and, though originating here, they have now a house in London.
Here I saw some interesting objects, purchased by them at the recent sale
of the Rogers collection; among other things, a slight pencil and
water-color sketch by Raphael.  An unfinished affair, done in a moment,
as this must have been, seems to bring us closer to the hand that did it
than the most elaborately painted picture can.  Were I to see the
Transfiguration, Raphael would still be at the distance of centuries.
Seeing this little sketch, I had him very near me.  I know not why,--
perhaps it might be fancied that he had only laid down the pencil for an
instant, and would take it up again in a moment more.  I likewise saw a
copy of a handsome, illustrated edition of Childe Harold, presented by
old John Murray to Mr. Rogers, with an inscription on the fly-leaf,
purporting that it was a token of gratitude from the publisher, because,
when everybody else thought him imprudent in giving four hundred guineas
for the poem, Mr. Rogers told him it would turn out the best bargain he
ever made.

There was a new picture by Millais, the distinguished Pre-Raphaelite
artist, representing a melancholy parting between two lovers.  The lady's
face had a great deal of sad and ominous expression; but an old brick
wall, overrun with foliage, was so exquisitely and elaborately wrought
that it was hardly possible to look at the personages of the picture.
Every separate leaf of the climbing and clustering shrubbery was
painfully made out; and the wall was reality itself, with the
weather-stains, and the moss, and the crumbling lime between the bricks.
It is not well to be so perfect in the inanimate, unless the artist can
likewise make man and woman as lifelike, and to as great a depth, too, as
the Creator does.

Bennoch left town for some place in Yorkshire, and I for Liverpool.  I
asked him to come and dine with me at the Adelphi, meaning to ask two or
three people to meet him; but he had other engagements, and could not
spare a day at present, though he promises to come before long.

Dining at Mr. Rathbone's one evening last week (May 21st), it was
mentioned that

BORROW,

author of the Bible in Spain, is supposed to be of gypsy descent by the
mother's side.  Hereupon Mr. Martineau mentioned that he had been a
schoolfellow of Borrow, and though he had never heard of his gypsy blood,
he thought it probable, from Borrow's traits of character.  He said that,
Borrow had once run away from school, and carried with him a party of
other boys, meaning to lead a wandering life.

If an Englishman were individually acquainted with all our twenty-five
millions of Americans, and liked every one of them, and believed that
each man of those millions was a Christian, honest, upright, and kind, he
would doubt, despise, and hate them in the aggregate, however he might
love and honor the individuals.

Captain ------ and his wife Oakum; they spent all evening at Mrs.
B------'s.  The Captain is a Marblehead man by birth, not far from sixty
years old; very talkative and anecdotic in regard to his adventures;
funny, good-humored, and full of various nautical experience.  Oakum (it
is a nickname which he gives his wife) is an inconceivably tall woman,--
taller than he,--six feet, at least, and with a well-proportioned
largeness in all respects, but looks kind and good, gentle, smiling,--and
almost any other woman might sit like a baby on her lap.  She does not
look at all awful and belligerent, like the massive English women one
often sees.  You at once feel her to be a benevolent giantess, and
apprehend no harm from her.  She is a lady, and perfectly well mannered,
but with a sort of naturalness and simplicity that becomes her; for any
the slightest affectation would be so magnified in her vast personality
that it would be absolutely the height of the ridiculous.  This wedded
pair have no children, and Oakum has so long accompanied her husband on
his voyages that I suppose by this time she could command a ship as well
as he.  They sat till pretty late, diffusing cheerfulness all about them,
and then, "Come, Oakum," cried the Captain, "we must hoist sail!" and up
rose Oakum to the ceiling, and moved tower-like to the door, looking down
with a benignant smile on the poor little pygmy women about her.  "Six
feet," did I say?  Why, she must be seven, eight, nine; and, whatever be
her size, she is as good as she is big.


June 11th.--Monday night (9th), just as I was retiring, I received a
telegraphic message announcing my wife's arrival at



SOUTHAMPTON.


So, the next day, I arranged the consular business for an absence of ten
days, and set forth with J-----, and reached Birmingham, between eight
and nine, evening.  We put up at the Queen's Hotel, a very large
establishment, contiguous to the railway.  Next morning we left
Birmingham, and made our first stage to Leamington, where we had to wait
nearly an hour, which we spent in wandering through some of the streets
that had been familiar to us last year.  Leamington is certainly a
beautiful town, new, bright, clean, and as unlike as possible to the
business towns of England.  However, the sun was burning hot, and I could
almost have fancied myself in America.  From Leamington we took tickets
for Oxford, where we were obliged to make another stop of two hours; and
these we employed to what advantage we could, driving up into town, and
straying hither and thither, till J-----'s weariness weighed upon me, and
I adjourned with him to a hotel.  Oxford is an ugly old town, of crooked
and irregular streets, gabled houses, mostly plastered of a buff or
yellow hue; some new fronts; and as for the buildings of the University,
they seem to be scattered at random, without any reference to one
another.  I passed through an old gateway of Christ Church, and looked at
its enclosed square, and that is, in truth, pretty much all I then saw of
the University of Oxford.  From Christ Church we rambled along a street
that led us to a bridge across the Isis; and we saw many row-boats lying
in the river,--the lightest craft imaginable, unless it were an Indian
canoe.  The Isis is but a narrow stream, and with a sluggish current.  I
believe the students of Oxford are famous for their skill in rowing.

To me as well as to J----- the hot streets were terribly oppressive; so
we went into the Roebuck Hotel, where we found a cool and pleasant
coffee-room.  The entrance to this hotel is through an arch, opening from
High Street, and giving admission into a paved court, the buildings all
around being part of the establishment,--old edifices with pointed gables
and old-fashioned projecting windows, but all in fine repair, and wearing
a most quiet, retired, and comfortable aspect.  The court was set all
round with flowers, growing in pots or large pedestalled vases; on one
side was the coffee-room, and all the other public apartments, and the
other side seemed to be taken up by the sleeping-chambers and parlors of
the guests.  This arrangement of an inn, I presume, is very ancient, and
it resembles what I have seen in the hospitals, free schools, and other
charitable establishments in the old English towns; and, indeed, all
large houses were arranged on somewhat the same principle.

By and by two or three young men came in, in wide-awake hats, and loose,
blouse-like, summerish garments; and from their talk I found them to be
students of the University, although their topics of conversation were
almost entirely horses and boats.  One of them sat down to cold beef and
a tankard of ale; the other two drank a tankard of ale together, and went
away without paying for it,--rather to the waiter's discontent.  Students
are very much alike, all the world over, and, I suppose, in all time; but
I doubt whether many of my fellows at college would have gone off without
paying for their beer.

We reached Southampton between seven and eight o'clock.  I cannot write
to-day.


June 15th.--The first day after we reached Southampton was sunny and
pleasant; but we made little use of the fine weather, except that S-----
and I walked once along the High Street, and J----- and I took a little
ramble about town in the afternoon.  The next day there was a high and
disagreeable wind, and I did not once stir out of the house.  The third
day, too, I kept entirely within doors, it being a storm of wind and
rain.  The Castle Hotel stands within fifty yards of the water-side; so
that this gusty day showed itself to the utmost advantage,--the vessels
pitching and tossing at their moorings, the waves breaking white out of a
tumultuous gray surface, the opposite shore glooming mistily at the
distance of a mile or two; and on the hither side boatmen and seafaring
people scudding about the pier in waterproof clothes; and in the street,
before the hotel door, a cabman or two, standing drearily beside his
horse.  But we were sunny within doors.

Yesterday it was breezy, sunny, shadowy, showery; and we ordered a cab to
take us to Clifton Villa, to call on Mrs. ------, a friend of B------'s,
who called on us the day after our arrival.  Just, as we were ready to
start, Mrs. ------ again called, and accompanied us back to her house.
It is in Shirley, about two miles from Southampton pier, and is a
pleasant suburban villa, with a pretty ornamented lawn and shrubbery
about it.  Mrs. ------ is an instructress of young ladies; and at
B------'s suggestion, she is willing to receive us for two or three
weeks, during the vacation, until we are ready to go to London.  She
seems to be a pleasant and sensible woman, and to-morrow we shall decide
whether to go there.  There was nothing very remarkable in this drive;
and, indeed, my stay hereabouts thus far has been very barren of sights
and incidents externally interesting, though the inner life has been
rich.

Southampton is a very pretty town, and has not the dinginess to which I
have been accustomed in many English towns.  The High Street reminds me
very much of American streets in its general effect; the houses being
mostly stuccoed white or light, and cheerful in aspect, though doubtless
they are centuries old at heart.  The old gateway, which I presume I have
mentioned in describing my former visit to Southampton, stands across
High Street, about in the centre of the town, and is almost the only
token of antiquity that presents itself to the eye.


June 17th.--Yesterday morning, June 16th, S-----, Mrs. ------, and I took
the rail for Salisbury, where we duly arrived without any accident or
anything noticeable, except the usual verdure and richness of an English
summer landscape.  From the railway station we walked up into Salisbury,
with the tall spire (four hundred feet high) of the cathedral before our
eyes.  Salisbury is an antique city, but with streets more regular than I
have seen in most old towns, and the houses have a more picturesque
aspect than those of Oxford, for instance, where almost all are
mean-looking alike,--though I could hardly judge of Oxford on that hot,
weary day.  Through one or more of the streets there runs a swift, clear
little stream, which, being close to the pavement, and bordered with
stone, may be called, I suppose, a kennel, though possessing the
transparent purity of a rustic rivulet.  It is a brook in city garb.  We
passed under the pointed arch of a gateway, which stands in one of the
principal streets, and soon came in front of



THE CATHEDRAL.


I do not remember any cathedral with so fine a site as this, rising up
out of the centre of a beautiful green, extensive enough to show its full
proportions, relieved and insulated from all other patchwork and
impertinence of rusty edifices.  It is of gray stone, and looks as
perfect as when just finished, and with the perfection, too, that could
not have come in less than six centuries of venerableness, with a view to
which these edifices seem to have been built.  A new cathedral would lack
the last touch to its beauty and grandeur.  It needs to be mellowed and
ripened, like some pictures; although I suppose this awfulness of
antiquity was supplied, in the minds of the generation that built
cathedrals, by the sanctity which they attributed to them.  Salisbury
Cathedral is far more beautiful than that of York, the exterior of which
was really disagreeable to my eye; but this mighty spire and these
multitudinous gray pinnacles and towers ascend towards heaven with a kind
of natural beauty, not as if man had contrived them.  They might be
fancied to have grown up, just as the spires of a tuft of grass do, at
the same time that they have a law of propriety and regularity among
themselves.  The tall spire is of such admirable proportion that it does
not seem gigantic; and indeed the effect of the whole edifice is of
beauty rather than weight and massiveness.  Perhaps the bright, balmy
sunshine in which we saw it contributed to give it a tender glory, and to
soften a little its majesty.

When we went in, we heard the organ, the forenoon service being near
conclusion.  If I had never seen the interior of York Cathedral, I should
have been quite satisfied, no doubt, with the spaciousness of this nave
and these side aisles, and the height of their arches, and the girth of
these pillars; but with that recollection in my mind they fell a little
short of grandeur.  The interior is seen to disadvantage, and in a way
the builder never meant it to be seen; because there is little or no
painted glass, nor any such mystery as it makes, but only a colorless,
common daylight, revealing everything without remorse.  There is a
general light hue, moreover, like that of whitewash, over the whole of
the roof and walls of the interior, pillars, monuments, and all; whereas,
originally, every pillar was polished, and the ceiling was ornamented in
brilliant colors, and the light came, many-hued, through the windows, on
all this elaborate beauty, in lieu of which there is nothing now but
space.

Between the pillars that separate the nave from the side aisles, there
are ancient tombs, most of which have recumbent statues on them.  One of
these is Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, son of Fair Rosamond, in chain
mail; and there are many other warriors and bishops, and one cross-legged
Crusader, and on one tombstone a recumbent skeleton, which I have
likewise seen in two or three other cathedrals.  The pavement of the
aisles and nave is laid in great part with flat tombstones, the
inscriptions on which are half obliterated, and on the walls, especially
in the transepts, there are tablets, among which I saw one to the poet
Bowles, who was a canon of this cathedral.  The ecclesiastical
dignitaries bury themselves and monument themselves to the exclusion of
almost everybody else, in these latter times; though still, as of old,
the warrior has his place.  A young officer, slain in the Indian wars,
was memorialized by a tablet, and may be remembered by it, six hundred
years hence, as we now remember the old Knights and Crusaders.  It
deserves to be mentioned that I saw one or two noses still unbroken among
these recumbent figures.  Most of the antique statues, on close
examination, proved to be almost, entirely covered with names and
initials, scratched over the once polished surface.  The cathedral and
its relics must have been far less carefully watched, at some former
period, than now.

Between the nave and the choir, as usual, there is a screen that half
destroys the majesty of the building, by abridging the spectator of the
long vista which he might otherwise have of the whole interior at a
glance.  We peeped through the barrier, and saw some elaborate monuments
in the chancel beyond; but the doors of the screen are kept locked, so
that the vergers may raise a revenue by showing strangers through the
richest part of the cathedral.  By and by one of these vergers came
through the screen, with a gentleman and lady whom he was taking round,
and we joined ourselves to the party.  He showed us into the cloisters,
which had long been neglected and ruinous, until the time of Bishop
Dennison, the last prelate, who has been but a few years dead.  This
Bishop has repaired and restored the cloisters in faithful adherence to
the original plan; and they now form a most delightful walk about a
pleasant and verdant enclosure, in the centre of which sleeps good Bishop
Dennison, with a wife on either side of him, all three beneath broad flat
stones.  Most cloisters are darksome and grim; but these have a broad
paved walk beneath the vista of arches, and are light, airy, and
cheerful; and from one corner you can get the best possible view of the
whole height and beautiful proportion of the cathedral spire.  One side
of this cloistered walk seems to be the length of the nave of the
cathedral.  There is a square of four such sides; and of places for
meditation, grave, yet not too sombre, it seemed to me one of the best.
While we stayed there, a jackdaw was walking to and fro across the grassy
enclosure, and haunting around the good Bishop's grave.  He was clad in
black, and looked like a feathered ecclesiastic; but I know not whether
it were Bishop Dennison's ghost, or that of some old monk.

On one side of the cloisters, and contiguous to the main body of the
cathedral, stands the chapter-house.  Bishop Dennison had it much at
heart to repair this part of the holy edifice; and, if I mistake not, did
begin the work; for it had been long ruinous, and in Cromwell's time his
dragoons stationed their horses there.  Little progress, however, had
been made in the repairs when the Bishop died; and it was decided to
restore the building in his honor, and by way of monument to him.  The
repairs are now nearly completed; and the interior of this chapter-house
gave me the first idea, anywise adequate, of the splendor of these Gothic
church edifices.  The roof is sustained by one great central pillar of
polished marble,--small pillars clustered about a great central column,
which rises to the ceiling, and there gushes out with various beauty,
that overflows all the walls; as if the fluid idea had sprung out of that
fountain, and grown solid in what we see.  The pavement is elaborately
ornamented; the ceiling is to be brilliantly gilded and painted, as it
was of yore, and the tracery and sculptures around the walls are to be
faithfully renewed from what remains of the original patterns.

After viewing the chapter-house, the verger--an elderly man of grave,
benign manner, clad in black and talking of the cathedral and the
monuments as if he loved them--led us again into the nave of the
cathedral, and thence within the screen of the choir.  The screen is as
poor as possible,--mere barren wood-work, without the least attempt at
beauty.  In the chancel there are some meagre patches of old glass, and
some of modern date, not very well worth looking at.  We saw several
interesting monuments in this part of the cathedral,--one belonging to
the ducal family of Somerset, and erected in the reign of James I.; it is
of marble, and extremely splendid and elaborate, with kneeling figures
and all manner of magnificence,--more than I have seen in any monument
except that of Mary of Scotland in Westminster Abbey.  The more ancient
tombs are also very numerous, and among them that of the Bishop who
founded the cathedral.  Within the screen, against the wall, is erected a
monument, by Chantrey, to the Earl of Malmesbury; a full-length statue of
the Earl in a half-recumbent position, holding an open volume and looking
upward,--a noble work,--a calm, wise, thoughtful, firm, and not
unbenignant face.  Beholding its expression, it really was impossible not
to have faith in the high character of the individual thus represented;
and I have seldom felt this effect from any monumental bust or statue,
though I presume it is always aimed at.

I am weary of trying to describe cathedrals.  It is utterly useless;
there is no possibility of giving the general effect, or any shadow of
it, and it is miserable to put down a few items of tombstones, and a bit
of glass from a painted window, as if the gloom and glory of the edifice
were thus to be reproduced.  Cathedrals are almost the only things (if
even those) that have quite filled out my ideal here in this old world;
and cathedrals often make me miserable from my inadequacy to take them
wholly in; and, above all, I despise myself when I sit down to describe
them.

We now walked around the Close, which is surrounded by some of the
quaintest and comfortablest ecclesiastical residences that can be
imagined.  These are the dwelling-houses of the Dean and the canons, and
whatever other high officers compose the Bishop's staff; and there was
one large brick mansion, old, but not so ancient as the rest, which we
took to be the Bishop's palace.  I never beheld anything--I must say
again so cosey, so indicative of domestic comfort for whole centuries
together,--houses so fit to live in or to die in, and where it would be
so pleasant to lead a young wife beneath the antique portal, and dwell
with her till husband and wife were patriarchal,--as these delectable old
houses.  They belong naturally to the cathedral, and have a necessary
relation to it, and its sanctity is somehow thrown over them all, so that
they do not quite belong to this world, though they look full to
overflowing of whatever earthly things are good for man.  These are
places, however, in which mankind makes no progress; the rushing tumult
of human life here subsides into a deep, quiet pool, with perhaps a
gentle circular eddy, but no onward movement.  The same identical
thought, I suppose, goes round in a slow whirl from one generation to
another, as I have seen a withered leaf do in the vortex of a brook.  In
the front of the cathedral there is a most stately and beautiful tree,
which flings its verdure upward to a very lofty height; but far above it
rises the tall spire, dwarfing the great tree by comparison.

When the cathedral had sufficiently oppressed us with its beauty, we
returned to sublunary matters, and went wandering about Salisbury in
search of a luncheon, which we finally took in a confectioner's shop.
Then we inquired hither and thither, at various livery-stables, for a
conveyance to Stonehenge, and at last took a fly from the Lamb Hotel.
The drive was over a turnpike for the first seven miles, over a bare,
ridgy country, showing little to interest us.  We passed a party of seven
or eight men, in a coarse uniform dress, resembling that worn by convicts
and apparently under the guardianship of a stout, authoritative, yet
rather kindly-looking man with a cane.  Our driver said that they were
lunatics from a neighboring asylum, out for a walk.

Seven miles from Salisbury, we turned aside from the turnpike, and drove
two miles across Salisbury Plain, which is an apparently boundless extent
of unenclosed land, treeless and houseless.  It is not exactly a plain,
but a green sea of long and gentle swells and subsidences, affording
views of miles upon miles to a very far horizon.  We passed large flocks
of sheep, with the shepherds watching them; but the dogs seemed to take
most of the care of the flocks upon their own shoulders, and would
scamper to turn the sheep when they inclined to stray whither they should
not; and then arose a thousand-fold bleating, not unpleasant to the ear;
for it did not apparently indicate any fear or discomfort on the part of
the flock.  The sheep and lambs are all black-faced, and have a very
funny expression.  As we drove over the plain (my seat was beside the
driver), I saw at a distance a cluster of large gray stones, mostly
standing upright, and some of them slightly inclined towards each other,
--very irregular, and so far off forming no very picturesque or
noteworthy spectacle.  Of course I knew at once that this was

STONEHENGE,

and also knew that the reality was going to dwindle wofully within my
ideal, as almost everything else does.  When we reached the spot, we
found a picnic-party just finishing their dinner, on one of the
overthrown stones of the druidical temple; and within the sacred circle
an artist was painting a wretched daub of the scene, and an old shepherd
--the very Shepherd of Salisbury Plain sat erect in the centre of the
ruin.

There never was a ruder thing than Stonehenge made by mortal hands.  It
is so very rude that it seems as if Nature and man had worked upon it
with one consent, and so it is all the stranger and more impressive from
its rudeness.  The spectator wonders to see art and contrivance, and a
regular and even somewhat intricate plan, beneath all the uncouth
simplicity of this arrangement of rough stones; and certainly, whatever
was the intellectual and scientific advancement of the people who built
Stonehenge, no succeeding architects will ever have a right to triumph
over them; for nobody's work in after times is likely to endure till it
becomes a mystery as to who built it, and how, and for what purpose.
Apart from the moral considerations suggested by it, Stonehenge is not
very well worth seeing.  Materially, it is one of the poorest of
spectacles, and when complete, it must have been even less picturesque
than now,--a few huge, rough stones, very imperfectly squared, standing
on end, and each group of two supporting a third large stone on their
tops; other stones of the same pattern overthrown and tumbled one upon
another; and the whole comprised within a circuit of about a hundred feet
diameter; the short, sheep-cropped grass of Salisbury Plain growing among
all these uncouth bowlders.  I am not sure that a misty, lowering day
would not have better suited Stonehenge, as the dreary midpoint of the
great, desolate, trackless plain; not literally trackless, however, for
the London and Exeter Road passes within fifty yards of the ruins, and
another road intersects it.

After we had been there about an hour, there came a horseman within the
Druid's circle,--evidently a clerical personage by his white neckcloth,
though his loose gray riding pantaloons were not quite in keeping.  He
looked at us rather earnestly, and at last addressed Mrs. ------, and
announced himself as Mr. Hinchman,--a clergyman whom she had been trying
to find in Salisbury, in order to avail herself of him as a cicerone; and
he had now ridden hither to meet us.  He told us that the artist whom we
found here could give us more information than anybody about Stonehenge;
for it seems he has spent a great many years here, painting and selling
his poor sketches to visitors, and also selling a book which his father
wrote about the remains.  This man showed, indeed, a pretty accurate,
acquaintance with these old stones, and pointed out, what is thought to
be the altar-stone, and told us of some relation between this stone and
two other stones, and the rising of the sun at midsummer, which might
indicate that Stonehenge was a temple of solar worship.  He pointed out,
too, to how little depth the stones were planted in the earth, insomuch
that I have no doubt the American frosts would overthrow Stonehenge in a
single winter; and it is wonderful that it should have stood so long,
even in England.  I have forgotten what else he said; but I bought one of
his books, and find it a very unsatisfactory performance, being chiefly
taken up with an attempt to prove these remains to be an antediluvian
work, constructed, I think the author says, under the superintendence of
Father Adam himself!  Before our departure we were requested to write our
names in the album which the artist keeps for the purpose; and he pointed
out Ex-President Fillmore's autograph, and those of one or two other
Americans who have been here within a short time.  It is a very curious
life that this artist leads, in this great solitude, and haunting
Stonehenge like the ghost of a Druid; but he is a brisk little man, and
very communicative on his one subject.

Mr. Hinchman rode with us over the plain, and pointed out Salisbury
spire, visible close to Stonehenge.  Under his guidance we returned by a
different road from that which brought us thither,--and a much more
delightful one.  I think I never saw such continued sylvan beauty as this
road showed us, passing through a good deal of woodland scenery,--fine
old trees, standing each within its own space, and thus having full
liberty to outspread itself, and wax strong and broad for ages, instead
of being crowded, and thus stifled and emaciated, as human beings are
here, and forest-trees are in America.  Hedges, too, and the rich, rich
verdure of England; and villages full of picturesque old houses,
thatched, and ivied, or perhaps overrun with roses,--and a stately
mansion in the Elizabethan style; and a quiet stream, gliding onward
without a ripple from its own motion, but rippled by a large fish darting
across it; and over all this scene a gentle, friendly sunshine, not
ardent enough to crisp a single leaf or blade of grass.  Nor must the
village church be forgotten, with its square, battlemented tower, dating
back to the epoch of the Normans.  We called at a house where one of Mrs.
------'s pupils was residing with her aunt,--a thatched house of two
stories high, built in what was originally a sand-pit, but which, in the
course of a good many years, has been transformed into the most
delightful and homelike little nook almost that can be found in England.
A thatched cottage suggests a very rude dwelling indeed; but this had a
pleasant parlor and drawing-room, and chambers with lattice-windows,
opening close beneath the thatched roof; and the thatch itself gives an
air to the place as if it were a bird's nest, or some such simple and
natural habitation.  The occupants are an elderly clergyman, retired from
professional duty, and his sister; and having nothing else to do, and
sufficient means, they employ themselves in beautifying this sweet little
retreat--planting new shrubbery, laying out new walks around it, and
helping Nature to add continually another charm; and Nature is certainly
a more genial playfellow in England than in my own country.  She is
always ready to lend her aid to any beautifying purpose.

Leaving these good people, who were very hospitable, giving tea and
offering wine, we reached Salisbury in time to take the train for
Southampton.


June 18th.--Yesterday we left the Castle Hotel, after paying a bill of
twenty pounds for a little more than a week's board.  In America we could
not very well have lived so simply, but we might have lived luxuriously
for half the money.  This Castle Hotel was once an old Roman castle, the
landlord says, and the circular sweep of the tower is still seen towards
the street, although, being painted white, and built up with modern
additions, it would not be taken for an ancient structure.  There is a
dungeon beneath it, in which the landlord keeps his wine.

J----- and I, quitting the hotel, walked towards Shinley along the
water-side, leaving the rest of the family to follow in a fly.  There are
many traces, along the shore, of the fortifications by which Southampton
was formerly defended towards the water, and very probably their
foundations may be as ancient as Roman times.  Our hotel was no doubt
connected with this chain of defences, which seems to have consisted of a
succession of round towers, with a wall extending from one to another.
We saw two or three of these towers still standing, and likely to stand,
though ivy-grown and ruinous at the summit, and intermixed and even
amalgamated with pot-houses and mean dwellings; and often, through an
antique arch, there was a narrow doorway, giving access to the house of
some sailor or laborer or artisan, and his wife gossiping at it with her
neighbor, or his children playing about it.

After getting beyond the precincts of Southampton our walk was not very
interesting, except to J-----, who kept running down to the verge of the
water, looking for shells and sea-insects.


June 29th.--Yesterday, 28th, I left Liverpool from the Lime Street
station; an exceedingly hot day for England, insomuch that the rail
carriages were really uncomfortable.  I have now passed over the London
and Northwestern Railway so often that the northern part of it is very
wearisome, especially as it has few features of interest even to a new
observer.  At Stafford--no, at Wolverhampton--we diverged to a track
which I have passed over only once before.  We stopped an hour and a
quarter at Wolverhampton, and I walked up into the town, which is large
and old,--old, at least, in its plan, or lack of plan,--the streets being
irregular, and straggling over an uneven surface.  Like many of the
English towns, it reminds me of Boston, though dingier.  The sun was so
hot that I actually sought the shady sides of the streets; and this, of
itself, is one long step towards establishing a resemblance between an
English town and an American one.

English railway carriages seem to me more tiresome than any other; and I
suppose it is owing to the greater motion, arising from their more
elastic springs.  A slow train, too, like that which I was now in, is
more tiresome than a quick one, at least to the spirits, whatever it may
be to the body.  We loitered along through afternoon and evening,
stopping at every little station, and nowhere getting to the top of our
speed, till at last, in the late dusk, we reached

GLOUCESTER,

and I put up at the Wellington Hotel, which is but a little way from the
station.  I took tea and a slice or two of ham in the coffee-room, and
had a little talk with two people there; one of whom, on learning that I
was an American, said, "But I suppose you have now been in England some
time?"  He meant, finding me not absolutely a savage, that I must have
been caught a good while ago. . . .

The next morning I went into the city, the hotel being on its outskirts,
and rambled along in search of the cathedral.  Some church-bells were
chiming and clashing for a wedding or other festal occasion, and I
followed the sound, supposing that it might proceed from the cathedral,
but this was not the case.  It was not till I had got to a bridge over
the Severn, quite out of the town, that I saw again its tower, and knew
how to shape my course towards it.

I did not see much that was strange or interesting in Gloucester.  It is
old, with a good many of those antique Elizabethan houses with two or
three peaked gables on a line together; several old churches, which
always cluster about a cathedral, like chickens round a hen; a hospital
for decayed tradesmen; another for bluecoat boys; a great many butcher's
shops, scattered in all parts of the town, open in front, with a counter
or dresser on which to display the meat, just in the old fashion of
Shakespeare's house.  It is a large town, and has a good deal of
liveliness and bustle, in a provincial way.  In short, judging by the
sheep, cattle, and horses, and the people of agricultural aspect that I
saw about the streets, I should think it must have been market-day.  I
looked here and there for the old Bell Inn, because, unless I
misremember, Fielding brings Tom Jones to this inn, while he and
Partridge were travelling together.  It is still extant; for, on my
arrival the night before, a runner from it had asked me to go thither;
but I forgot its celebrity at the moment.  I saw nothing of it in my
rambles about Gloucester, but at last I found

THE CATHEDRAL,

though I found no point from which a good view of the exterior can be
seen.

It has a very beautiful and rich outside, however, and a lofty tower,
very large and ponderous, but so finished off, and adorned with
pinnacles, and all manner of architectural devices,--wherewith these old
builders knew how to alleviate their massive structures,--that it seems
to sit lightly in the air.  The porch was open, and some workmen were
trundling barrows into the nave; so I followed, and found two young women
sitting just within the porch, one of whom offered to show me round the
cathedral.  There was a great dust in the nave, arising from the
operations of the workmen.  They had been laying a new pavement, and
scraping away the plaster, which had heretofore been laid over the
pillars and walls.  The pillars come out from the process as good as
new,--great, round, massive columns, not clustered like those of most
cathedrals; they are twenty-one feet in circumference, and support
semicircular arches.  I think there are seven of these columns, on each
side of the nave, which did not impress me as very spacious; and the dust
and racket of the work-people quite destroyed the effect which should
have been produced by the aisles and arches; so that I hardly stopped to
glance at this part, though I saw some mural monuments and recumbent
statues along the walls.

The choir is separated from the nave by the usual screen, and now by a
sail-cloth or something of that kind, drawn across, in order to keep out
the dust, while the repairs are going on.  When the young woman conducted
me hither, I was at once struck by the magnificent eastern window, the
largest in England, which fills, or looks vast enough to fill, all that
end of the cathedral,--a most splendid window, full of old painted glass,
which looked as bright as sunshine, though the sun was not really shining
through it.  The roof of the choir is of oak and very fine, and as much
as ninety feet high.  There are chapels opening from the choir, and
within them the monuments of the eminent people who built them, and of
benefactors or prelates, or of those otherwise illustrious in their day.
My recollection of what I saw here is very dim and confused; more so than
I anticipated.  I remember somewhere within the choir the tomb of Edward
II. with his effigy upon the top of it, in a long robe, with a crown on
his head, and a ball and sceptre in his hand; likewise, a statue of
Robert, son of the Conqueror, carved in Irish oak and painted.  He lolls
in an easy posture on his tomb, with one leg crossed lightly over the
other, to denote that he was a Crusader.  There are several monuments of
mitred abbots who formerly presided over the cathedral.  A Cavalier and
his wife, with the dress of the period elaborately represented, lie side
by side in excellent preservation; and it is remarkable that though their
noses are very prominent, they have come down from the past without any
wear and tear.  The date of the Cavalier's death is 1637, and I think his
statue could not have been sculptured until after the Restoration, else
he and his dame would hardly have come through Cromwell's time unscathed.
Here, as in all the other churches in England, Cromwell is said to have
stabled his horses, and broken the windows, and belabored the old
monuments.

There is one large and beautiful chapel, styled the Lady's Chapel, which
is, indeed, a church by itself, being ninety feet long, and comprising
everything that appertains to a place of worship.  Here, too, there are
monuments, and on the floor are many old bricks and tiles, with
inscriptions on them, or Gothic devices, and flat tombstones, with coats
of arms sculptured on them; as, indeed, there are everywhere else, except
in the nave, where the new pavement has obliterated them.  After viewing
the choir and the chapels, the young woman led me down into the crypts
below, where the dead persons who are commemorated in the upper regions
were buried.  The low ponderous pillars and arches of these crypts are
supposed to be older than the upper portions of the building.  They are
about as perfect, I suppose, as when new, but very damp, dreary, and
darksome; and the arches intersect one another so intricately, that, if
the girl had deserted me, I might easily have got lost there.  These are
chapels where masses used to be said for the souls of the deceased; and
my guide said that a great many skulls and bones had been dug up here.
No doubt a vast population has been deposited in the course of a thousand
years.  I saw two white skulls, in a niche, grinning as skulls always do,
though it is impossible to see the joke.  These crypts, or crypts like
these, are doubtless what Congreve calls the "aisles and monumental caves
of Death," in that passage which Dr. Johnson admired so much.  They are
very singular,--something like a dark shadow or dismal repetition of the
upper church below ground.

Ascending from the crypts, we went next to the cloisters, which are in a
very perfect state, and form an unbroken square about the green
grass-plot, enclosed within.  Here also it is said Cromwell stabled his
horses; but if so, they were remarkably quiet beasts, for tombstones,
which form the pavement, are not broken, nor cracked, nor bear any
hoof-marks.  All around the cloisters, too, the stone tracery that shuts
them in like a closed curtain, carefully drawn, remains as it was in the
days of the monks, insomuch that it is not easy to get a glimpse of the
green enclosure.  Probably there used to be painted glass in the larger
apertures of this stone-work; otherwise it is perfect.  These cloisters
are very different from the free, open, and airy ones of Salisbury; but
they are more in accordance with our notions of monkish habits; and even
at this day, if I were a canon of Gloucester, I would put that dim
ambulatory to a good use.  The library is adjacent to the cloisters, and
I saw some rows of folios and quartos.  I have nothing else to record
about the cathedral, though if I were to stay there a month, I suppose it
might then begin to be understood.  It is wicked to look at these solemn
old churches in a hurry.  By the by, it was not built in a hurry; but in
full three hundred years, having been begun in 1188 and only finished in
1498, not a great many years before Papistry began to go out of vogue in
England.

From Gloucester I took the rail for Basingstoke before noon.  The first
part of the journey was through an uncommonly beautiful tract of country,
hilly, but not wild; a tender and graceful picturesqueness,--fine, single
trees and clumps of trees, and sometimes wide woods, scattered over the
landscape, and filling the nooks of the hills with luxuriant foliage.
Old villages scattered frequently along our track, looking very peaceful,
with the peace of past ages lingering about them; and a rich, rural
verdure of antique cultivation everywhere.  Old country-seats--specimens
of the old English hall or manor-house--appeared on the hillsides, with
park-scenery surrounding the mansions; and the gray churches rose in the
midst of all the little towns.  The beauty of English scenery makes me
desperate, it is so impossible to describe it, or in any way to record
its impression, and such a pity to leave it undescribed; and, moreover, I
always feel that I do not get from it a hundredth or a millionth part of
the enjoyment that there really is in it, hurrying past it thus.  I was
really glad when we rumbled into a tunnel, piercing for a long distance
through a hill; and, emerging on the other side, we found ourselves in a
comparatively level and uninteresting tract of country, which lasted till
we reached Southampton.  English scenery, to be appreciated and to be
reproduced with pen and pencil, requires to be dwelt upon long, and to be
wrought out with the nicest touches.  A coarse and hasty brush is not the
instrument for such work.


July 6th.--Monday, June 30th, was a warm and beautiful day, and my wife
and I took a cab from Southampton and drove to



NETLEY ABBEY,


about three or four miles.  The remains of the Abbey stand in a sheltered
place, but within view of Southampton Water; and it is a most picturesque
and perfect ruin, all ivy-grown, of course, and with great trees where
the pillars of the nave used to stand, and also in the refectory and the
cloister court; and so much soil on the summit of the broken walls, that
weeds flourish abundantly there, and grass too; and there was a wild
rosebush, in full bloom, as much as thirty or forty feet from the ground.
S----- and I ascended a winding stair, leading up within a round tower,
the steps much foot-worn; and, reaching the top, we came forth at the
height where a gallery had formerly run round the church, in the
thickness of the wall.  The upper portions of the edifice were now
chiefly thrown down; but I followed a foot-path, on the top of the
remaining wall, quite to the western entrance of the church.  Since the
time when the Abbey was taken from the monks, it has been private
property; and the possessor, in Henry VIII.'s days, or subsequently,
built a residence for himself within its precincts out of the old
materials.  This has now entirely disappeared, all but some unsightly old
masonry, patched into the original walls.  Large portions of the ruin
have been removed, likewise, to be used as building-materials elsewhere;
and this is the Abbey mentioned, I think, by Dr. Watts, concerning which
a Mr. William Taylor had a dream while he was contemplating pulling it
down.  He dreamed that a part of it fell upon his head; and, sure enough,
a piece of the wall did come down and crush him.  In the nave I saw a
large mass of conglomerated stone that had fallen from the wall between
the nave and cloisters, and thought that perhaps this was the very mass
that killed poor Mr. Taylor.

The ruins are extensive and very interesting; but I have put off
describing them too long, and cannot make a distinct picture of them now.
Moreover, except to a spectator skilled in architecture, all ruined
abbeys are pretty much alike.  As we came away, we noticed some women
making baskets at the entrance, and one of them urged us to buy some of
her handiwork; for that she was the gypsy of Netley Abbey, and had lived
among the ruins these thirty years.  So I bought one for a shilling.  She
was a woman with a prominent nose, and weather-tanned, but not very
picturesque or striking.



TO BLACKHEATH.


On the 6th July, we left the Villa, with our enormous luggage, and took
our departure from Southampton by the noon train.  The main street of
Southampton, though it looks pretty fresh and bright, must be really
antique, there being a great many projecting windows, in the old-time
style, and these make the vista of the street very picturesque.  I have
no doubt that I missed seeing many things more interesting than the few
that I saw.  Our journey to London was without any remarkable incident,
and at the Waterloo station we found one of Mr. Bennoch's clerks, under
whose guidance we took two cabs for the East Kent station at London
Bridge, and there railed to Blackheath, where we arrived in the
afternoon.

On Thursday I went into London by one of the morning trains, and wandered
about all day,--visiting the Exhibition of the Royal Academy, and
Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, the two latter of which I have already
written about in former journals.  On Friday, S-----, J-----, and I
walked over the heath, and through the Park to Greenwich, and spent some
hours in the Hospital.  The painted hall struck me much more than at my
first view of it; it is very beautiful indeed, and the effect of its
frescoed ceiling most rich and magnificent, the assemblage of glowing
hues producing a general result of splendor. . . .

In the evening I went with Mr. and Mrs. ------ to a conversazione at Mrs.
Newton Crosland's, who lives on Blackheath. . . . I met with one person
who interested me,--Mr. Bailey, the author of Festus; and I was surprised
to find myself already acquainted with him.  It is the same Mr. Bailey
whom I met a few months ago, when I first dined at Mr. -----'s,--a dark,
handsome, rather picturesque-looking man, with a gray beard, and dark
hair, a little dimmed with gray.  He is of quiet and very agreeable
deportment, and I liked him and believed in him. . . . There is sadness
glooming out of him, but no unkindness nor asperity.  Mrs. Crosland's
conversazione was enriched with a supper, and terminated with a dance, in
which Mr. ------ joined with heart and soul, but Mrs. ------ went to
sleep in her chair, and I would gladly have followed her example if I
could have found a chair to sit upon.  In the course of the evening I had
some talk with a pale, nervous young lady, who has been a noted spiritual
medium.

Yesterday I went into town by the steamboat from Greenwich to London
Bridge, with a nephew of Mr. ------'s, and, calling at his place of
business, he procured us an order from his wine-merchants, by means of
which we were admitted into



THE WINE-VAULTS OF THE LONDON DOCKS.


We there found parties, with an acquaintance, who was going, with two
French gentlemen, into the vaults.  It is a good deal like going down
into a mine, each visitor being provided with a lamp at the end of a
stick; and following the guide along dismal passages, running beneath the
streets, and extending away interminably,--roughly arched overhead with
stone, from which depend festoons of a sort of black fungus, caused by
the exhalations of the wine.  Nothing was ever uglier than this fungus.
It is strange that the most ethereal effervescence of rich wine can
produce nothing better.

The first series of vaults which we entered were filled with port-wine,
and occupied a space variously estimated at from eleven to sixteen
acres,--which I suppose would hold more port-wine than ever was made.  At
any rate, the pipes and butts were so thickly piled that in some places
we could hardly squeeze past them.  We drank from two or three vintages;
but I was not impressed with any especial excellence in the wine.  We
were not the only visitors, for, far in the depths of the vault, we
passed a gentleman and two young ladies, wandering about like the ghosts
of defunct wine-bibhers, in a Tophet specially prepared for then.  People
employed here sometimes go astray, and, their lamps being extinguished,
they remain long in this everlasting gloom.  We went likewise to the
vaults of sherry-wine, which have the same characteristics as those just
described, but are less extensive.

It is no guaranty for the excellence or even for the purity of the wine,
that it is kept in these cellars, under the lock and key of the
government; for the merchants are allowed to mix different vintages,
according to their own pleasure, and to adulterate it as they like.  Very
little of the wine probably comes out as it goes in, or is exactly what
it pretends to be.  I went back to Mr. ------'s office, and we drove
together to make some calls jointly and separately.  I went alone to Mrs.
Heywood's; afterwards with Mr. ------ to the American minister's, whom we
found at home; and I requested of him, on the part of the Americans at
Liverpool, to tell me the facts about the American gentleman being
refused admittance to the Levee.  The ambassador did not seem to me to
make his point good for having withdrawn with the rejected guest.


July 9th. (Our wedding-day.)--We were invited yesterday evening to Mrs.
S. C. Hall's, where Jenny Lind was to sing; so we left Blackheath at
about eight o'clock in a brougham, and reached Ashley Place, as the dusk
was gathering, after nine.  The Halls reside in a handsome suite of
apartments, arranged on the new system of flats, each story constituting
a separate tenement, and the various families having an entrance-hall in
common.  The plan is borrowed from the Continent, and seems rather alien
to the traditionary habits of the English; though, no doubt, a good
degree of seclusion is compatible with it.  Mr. Hall received us with the
greatest cordiality before we entered the drawing-room.  Mrs. Hall, too,
greeted us with most kindly warmth.  Jenny Lind had not yet arrived; but
I found Dr. Mackay there, and I was introduced to Miss Catherine
Sinclair, who is a literary lady, though none of her works happen to be
known to me.  Soon the servant announced Madam Goldschmidt, and this
famous lady made her appearance, looking quite different from what I
expected.  Mrs. Hall established her in the inner drawing-room, where was
a piano and a harp; and shortly after, our hostess came to me, and said
that Madam Goldschmidt wished to be introduced to me.  There was a gentle
peremptoriness in the summons, that made it something like being
commanded into the presence of a princess; a great favor, no doubt, but
yet a little humbling to the recipient.  However, I acquiesced with due
gratitude, and was presented accordingly.  She made room for me on the
sofa, and I sat down, and began to talk.

Jenny Lind is rather tall,--quite tall, for a woman,--certainly no
beauty, but with sense and self-reliance in her aspect and manners.  She
was suffering under a severe cold, and seemed worn down besides, so
probably I saw her under disadvantages.  Her conversation is quite
simple, and I should have great faith in her sincerity; and there is
about her the manner of a person who knows the world, and has conquered
it.  She said something or other about The Scarlet Letter; and, on my
part, I paid her such compliments as a man could pay who had never heard
her sing. . . . Her conversational voice is an agreeable one, rather
deep, and not particularly smooth.  She talked about America, and of our
unwholesome modes of life, as to eating and exercise, and of the
ill-health especially of our women; but I opposed this view as far as I
could with any truth, insinuating my opinion that we are about as healthy
as other people, and affirming for a certainty that we live longer.  In
good faith, so far as I have any knowledge of the matter, the women of
England are as generally out of health as those of America; always
something has gone wrong with them; and as for Jenny Lind, she looks wan
and worn enough to be an American herself.  This charge of ill-health is
almost universally brought forward against us nowadays,--and, taking the
whole country together, I do not believe the statistics will bear it out.

The rooms, which were respectably filled when we arrived, were now
getting quite full.  I saw Mr. Stevens, the American man of libraries,
and had some talk with him; and Durham, the sculptor; and Mr. and Mrs.
Hall introduced me to various people, some of whom were of note,--for
instance, Sir Emerson Tennent, a man of the world, of some parliamentary
distinction, wearing a star; Mr. Samuel Lover, a most good-natured,
pleasant Irishman, with a shining and twinkling visage; Miss Jewsbury,
whom I found very conversable.  She is known in literature, but not to
me.  We talked about Emerson, whom she seems to have been well acquainted
with while he was in England; and she mentioned that Miss Martineau had
given him a lock of hair; it was not her own hair, but a mummy's.

After our return, Mrs. ------ told us that Miss Jewsbury had written,
among other things, three histories, and as she asked me to introduce her
to S-----, and means to cultivate our acquaintance, it would be well to
know something of them.  We were told that she is now employed in some
literary undertaking of Lady Morgan's, who, at the age of ninety, is
still circulating in society, and is as brisk in faculties as ever.  I
should like to see her ladyship, that is, I should not be sorry to see
her; for distinguished people are so much on a par with others, socially,
that it would be foolish to be overjoyed at seeing anybody whomsoever.

Leaving out the illustrious Jenny Lind, I suspect that I was myself the
greatest lion of the evening; for a good many persons sought the felicity
of knowing me, and had little or nothing to say when that honor and
happiness was conferred on them.  It is surely very wrong and
ill-mannered in people to ask for an introduction unless they are
prepared to make talk; it throws too great an expense and trouble on the
wretched lion, who is compelled, on the spur of the moment, to convert a
conversable substance out of thin air, perhaps for the twentieth time
that evening.  I am sure I did not say--and I think I did not hear said--
one rememberable word in the course of this visit; though, nevertheless,
it was a rather agreeable one.  In due season ices and jellies were
handed about; and some ladies and gentlemen--professional, perhaps--were
kind enough to sing songs, and play on the piano and harp, while persons
in remote corners went on with whatever conversation they had in hand.
Then came supper; but there were so many people to go into the
supper-room that we could not all crowd thither together, and, coming
late, I got nothing but some sponge-cake and a glass of champagne,
neither of which I care for.  After supper, Mr. Lover sang some Irish
songs, his own in music and words, with rich, humorous effect, to which
the comicality of his face contributed almost as much as his voice and
words.  The Lord Mayor looked in for a little while, and though a
hard-featured Jew enough, was the most picturesque person there.


July 10th.--Mrs. Heywood had invited me to dinner last evening. . . .
Her house is very finely situated, overlooking Hyde Park, and not a great
way from where Tyburn tree used to stand.  When I arrived, there were no
guests but Mr. and Mrs. D------; but by and by came Mr. Monckton Milnes
and lady, the Bishop of Lichfield, Mr. Tom Taylor, Mr. Ewart, M. P., Sir
Somebody Somerville, Mr. and Mrs. Musgrave, and others.  Mr. Milnes, whom
I had not seen for more than a year, greeted me very cordially, and so
did Mr. Taylor.  I took Mrs. Musgrave in to dinner.  She is an Irish
lady, and Mrs. Heywood had recommended her to me as being very
conversable; but I had a good deal more talk with Mrs. M------, with whom
I was already acquainted, than with her.  Mrs. M------ is of noble blood,
and therefore not snobbish,--quite unaffected, gentle, sweet, and easy to
get on with, reminding me of the best-mannered American women.  But how
can anything characteristic be said or done among a dozen people sitting
at table in full dress?  Speaking of full dress, the Bishop wore
small-clothes and silk stockings, and entered the drawing-room with a
three-cornered hat, which he kept flattened out under his arm.  He asked
the briefest blessing possible, and, sitting at the ultra end of the
table, I heard nothing further from him till he officiated as briefly
before the cloth was withdrawn.  Mrs. M------ talked about Tennyson, with
whom her husband was at the University, and whom he continues to know
intimately.  She says that he considers Maud his best poem.  He now lives
in the Isle of Wight, spending all the year round there, and has recently
bought the place on which he resides.  She was of opinion that he would
have been gratified by my calling on him, which I had wished to do, while
we were at Southampton; but this is a liberty which I should hardly
venture upon with a shy man like Tennyson,--more especially as he might
perhaps suspect me of doing it on the score of my own literary character.

But I should like much to see him  Mr. Tom Taylor, during dinner, made
some fun for the benefit of the ladies on either side of him.  I liked
him very well this evening.

When the ladies had not long withdrawn, and after the wine had once gone
round, I asked Mr. Heywood to make my apologies to Mrs. Heywood, and took
leave; all London lying betwixt me and the London Bridge station, where I
was to take the rail homeward.  At the station I found Mr. Bennoch, who
had been dining with the Lord Mayor to meet Sir William Williams, and we
railed to Greenwich, and reached home by midnight.  Mr. and Mrs. Bennoch
have set out on their Continental journey to-day,--leaving us, for a
little space, in possession of what will be more like a home than
anything that we shall hereafter find in England.

This afternoon I had taken up the fourth volume of Jerdan's
Autobiography,--wretched twaddle, though it records such constant and
apparently intimate intercourse with distinguished people,--and was
reading it, between asleep and awake, on the sofa, when Mr. Jerdan
himself was announced.  I saw him, in company with Mr. Bennoch, nearly
three years ago, at Rock Park, and wondered then what there was in so
uncouth an individual to get him so freely into polished society.  He now
looks rougher than ever,--time-worn, but not reverend; a thatch of gray
hair on his head; an imperfect set of false teeth; a careless apparel,
checked trousers, and a stick, for he had walked a mile or two from his
own dwelling.

I suspect--and long practice at the Consulate has made me keen-sighted--
that Mr. Jerdan contemplated some benefit from my purse; and, to the
extent of a sovereign or so, I would not mind contributing to his
comfort.  He spoke of a secret purpose of Mr. ------ and himself to
obtain me a degree or diploma in some Literary Institution,--what one I
know not, and did not ask; but the honor cannot be a high one, if this
poor old fellow can do aught towards it.  I am afraid he is a very
disreputable senior, but certainly not the less to be pitied on that
account; and there was something very touching in his stiff and infirm
movement, as he resumed his stick and took leave, waving me a courteous
farewell, and turning upon me a smile, grim with age, as he went down the
steps.  In that gesture and smile I fancied some trace of the polished
man of society, such as he may have once been; though time and hard
weather have roughened him, as they have the once polished marble pillars
which I saw so rude in aspect at Netley Abbey.

Speaking of Dickens last evening, Mr. ------ mentioned his domestic
tastes,--how he preferred home enjoyments to all others, and did not
willingly go much into society.  Mrs. ------, too, the other day told us
of his taking on himself all possible trouble as regards his domestic
affairs. . . . There is a great variety of testimony, various and
varied, as to the character of Dickens.  I must see him before I finally
leave England.


July 13th.--On Friday morning (11th), at nine o'clock, I took the rail
into town to breakfast with Mr. Milnes.  As he had named a little after
ten as the hour, I could not immediately proceed to his house, and so
walked moderately over London Bridge and into the city, meaning to take a
cab from Charing Cross, or thereabouts.  Passing through some street or
other, contiguous to Cheapside, I saw in a court-yard the entrance to the
Guildhall, and stepped in to look at it.  It is a spacious hall, about
one hundred and fifty feet long, and perhaps half as broad, paved with
flagstones which look worn and some of them cracked across; the roof is
very lofty and was once vaulted, but has been shaped anew in modern
times.  There is a vast window partly filled with painted glass,
extending quite along each end of the hall, and a row of arched windows
on either side, throwing their light from far above downward upon the
pavement.  This fashion of high windows, not reaching within twenty or
thirty feet of the floor, serves to give great effect to the large
enclosed space of an antique hall.  Against the walls are several marble
monuments; one to the Earl of Chatham, a statue of white marble, with
various allegorical contrivances, fronting an obelisk or pyramid of dark
marble; and another to his son, William Pitt, of somewhat similar design
and of equal size; each of them occupying the whole space, I believe,
between pavement and ceiling.  There is likewise a statue of Beckford, a
famous Lord Mayor,--the most famous except Whittington, and that one who
killed Wat Tyler; and like those two, his fame is perhaps somewhat
mythological, though he lived and bustled within less than a century.  He
is said to have made a bold speech to the King; but this I will not
believe of any Englishman--at least, of any plebeian Englishman--until I
hear it.  But there stands his statue in the Guildhall in the act of
making his speech, as if the monstrous attempt had petrified him.

Lord Nelson, too, has a monument, and so, I think, has some other modern
worthy.  At one end of the hall, under one of the great painted windows,
stand three or four old statues of mediaeval kings, whose identities I
forget; and in the two corners of the opposite end are two gigantic
absurdities of painted wood, with grotesque visages, whom I quickly
recognized as Gog and Magog.  They stand each on a pillar, and seem to be
about fifteen feet high, and look like enormous playthings for the
children of giants; and it is strange to see them in this solemn old
hall, among the memorials of dead heroes and statesmen.  There is an
annual banquet in the Guildhall, given by the Lord Mayor and sheriffs,
and I believe it is the very acme of civic feasting.

After viewing the hall, as it still lacked something of ten, I continued
my walk through that entanglement of city streets, and quickly found
myself getting beyond my reckoning.  I cannot tell whither I went, but I
passed through a very dirty region, and I remember a long, narrow,
evil-odored street, cluttered up with stalls, in which were vegetables
and little bits of meat for sale; and there was a frowzy multitude of
buyers and sellers.  Still I blundered on, and was getting out of the
density of the city into broader streets, but still shabby ones, when,
looking at my watch, I found it to be past ten, and no cab-stand within
sight.  It was a quarter past when I finally got into one; and the driver
told me that it would take half an hour to go from thence to Upper Brook
Street; so that I was likely to exceed the license implied in Mr.
Milnes's invitation.  Whether I was quite beyond rule I cannot say; but
it did not lack more than ten minutes of eleven when I was ushered up
stairs, and I found all the company assembled.  However, it is of little
consequence, except that if I had come early, I should have been
introduced to many of the guests, whom now I could only know across the
table.  Mrs. Milnes greeted me very kindly, and Mr. Milnes came towards
me with an elderly gentleman in a blue coat and gray pantaloons,--with a
long, rather thin, homely visage, exceedingly shaggy eyebrows, though no
great weight of brow, and thin gray hair, and introduced me to the
Marquis of Lansdowne.  The Marquis had his right hand wrapped up in a
black-silk handkerchief; so he gave me his left, and, from some
awkwardness in meeting it, when I expected the right, I gave him only
three of my fingers,--a thing I never did before to any person, and it is
droll that I should have done it to a Marquis.  He addressed me with
great simplicity and natural kindness, complimenting me on my works, and
speaking about the society of Liverpool in former days.  Lord Lansdowne
was the friend of Moore, and has about him the aroma communicated by the
memories of many illustrious people with whom he has associated.

Mr. Ticknor, the Historian of Spanish Literature, now greeted me.  Mr.
Milnes introduced me to Mrs. Browning, and assigned her to me to conduct
into the breakfast-room.  She is a small, delicate woman, with ringlets
of dark hair, a pleasant, intelligent, and sensitive face, and a low,
agreeable voice.  She looks youthful and comely, and is very gentle and
lady-like.  And so we proceeded to the breakfast-room, which is hung
round with pictures; and in the middle of it stood a large round table,
worthy to have been King Arthur's, and here we seated ourselves without
any question of precedence or ceremony.  On one side of me was an elderly
lady, with a very fine countenance, and in the course of breakfast I
discovered her to be the mother of Florence Nightingale.  One of her
daughters (not Florence) was likewise present.  Mrs. Milnes, Mrs.
Browning, Mrs. Nightingale, and her daughter were the only ladies at
table; and I think there were as many as eight or ten gentlemen, whose
names--as I came so late--I was left to find out for myself, or to leave
unknown.

It was a pleasant and sociable meal, and, thanks to my cold beef and
coffee at home, I had no occasion to trouble myself much about the fare;
so I just ate some delicate chicken, and a very small cutlet, and a slice
of dry toast, and thereupon surceased from my labors.  Mrs. Browning and
I talked a good deal during breakfast, for she is of that quickly
appreciative and responsive order of women with whom I can talk more
freely than with any man; and she has, besides, her own originality,
wherewith to help on conversation, though, I should say, not of a
loquacious tendency.  She introduced the subject of spiritualism, which,
she says, interests her very much; indeed, she seems to be a believer.
Mr. Browning, she told me, utterly rejects the subject, and will not
believe even in the outward manifestations, of which there is such
overwhelming evidence.  We also talked of Miss Bacon; and I developed
something of that lady's theory respecting Shakespeare, greatly to the
horror of Mrs. Browning, and that of her next neighbor,--a nobleman,
whose name I did not hear.  On the whole, I like her the better for
loving the man Shakespeare with a personal love.  We talked, too, of
Margaret Fuller, who spent her last night in Italy with the Brownings;
and of William Story, with whom they have been intimate, and who, Mrs.
Browning says, is much stirred about spiritualism.  Really, I cannot help
wondering that so fine a spirit as hers should not reject the matter,
till, at least, it is forced upon her.  I like her very much.

Mrs. Nightingale had been talking at first with Lord Lansdowne, who sat
next her, but by and by she turned to nee, and began to speak of London
smoke   Then, there being a discussion about Lord Byron on the other side
of the table, she spoke to me about Lady Byron, whom she knows
intimately, characterizing her as a most excellent and exemplary person,
high-principled, unselfish, and now devoting herself to the care of her
two grandchildren,--their mother, Byron's daughter, being dead.  Lady
Byron, she says, writes beautiful verses.  Somehow or other, all this
praise, and more of the same kind, gave me an idea of an intolerably
irreproachable person; and I asked Mrs. Nightingale if Lady Byron were
warm-hearted.  With some hesitation, or mental reservation,--at all
events, not quite outspokenly,--she answered that she was.

I was too much engaged with these personal talks to attend much to what
was going on elsewhere; but all through breakfast I had been more and
more impressed by the aspect of one of the guests, sitting next to
Milnes.  He was a man of large presence,--a portly personage,
gray-haired, but scarcely as yet aged; and his face had a remarkable
intelligence, not vivid nor sparkling, but conjoined with great
quietude,--and if it gleamed or brightened at one time more than another,
it was like the sheen over a broad surface of sea.  There was a somewhat
careless self-possession, large and broad enough to be called dignity;
and the more I looked at him, the more I knew that he was a distinguished
person, and wondered who.  He might have been a minister of state; only
there is not one of them who has any right to such a face and presence.
At last,--I do not know how the conviction came,--but I became aware that
it was Macaulay, and began to see some slight resemblance to his
portraits.  But I have never seen any that is not wretchedly unworthy of
the original.  As soon as I knew him, I began to listen to his
conversation, but he did not talk a great deal, contrary to his usual
custom; for I am told he is apt to engross all the talk to himself.
Probably he may have been restrained by the presence of Ticknor, and Mr.
Palfrey, who were among his auditors and interlocutors; and as the
conversation seemed to turn much on American subjects, he could not well
have assumed to talk them down.  I am glad to have seen him,--a face fit
for a scholar, a man of the world, a cultivated intelligence.

After we left the table, and went into the library, Mr. Browning
introduced himself to me,--a younger man than I expected to see,
handsome, with brown hair.  He is very simple and agreeable in manner,
gently impulsive, talking as if his heart were uppermost.  He spoke of
his pleasure in meeting me, and his appreciation of my books; and--which
has not often happened to me--mentioned that The Blithedale Romance was
the one he admired most.  I wonder why.  I hope I showed as much pleasure
at his praise as he did at mine; for I was glad to see how pleasantly it
moved him.  After this, I talked with Ticknor and Miles, and with Mr.
Palfrey, to whom I had been introduced very long ago by George Hillard,
and had never seen him since.  We looked at some autographs, of which Mr.
Milnes has two or three large volumes.  I recollect a leaf from Swift's
Journal to Stella; a letter from Addison; one from Chatterton, in a most
neat and legible hand; and a characteristic sentence or two and signature
of Oliver Cromwell, written in a religious book.  There were many curious
volumes in the library, but I had not time to look at them.

I liked greatly the manners of almost all,--yes, as far as I observed,--
all the people at this breakfast, and it was doubtless owing to their
being all people either of high rank or remarkable intellect, or both.
An Englishman can hardly be a gentleman, unless he enjoy one or other of
these advantages; and perhaps the surest way to give him good manners is
to make a lord of him, or rather of his grandfather or great-grandfather.
In the third generation, scarcely sooner, he will be polished into
simplicity and elegance, and his deportment will be all the better for
the homely material out of which it is wrought and refined.  The Marquis
of Lansdowne, for instance, would have been a very commonplace man in the
common ranks of life; but it has done him good to be a nobleman.  Not
that his tact is quite perfect.  In going up to breakfast, he made me
precede him; in returning to the library, he did the same, although I
drew back, till he impelled me up the first stair, with gentle
persistence.  By insisting upon it, he showed his sense of condescension
much more than if, when he saw me unwilling to take precedence, he had
passed forward, as if the point were not worth either asserting or
yielding.  Heaven knows, it was in no humility that I would have trodden
behind him.  But he is a kind old man; and I am willing to believe of the
English aristocracy generally that they are kind, and of beautiful
deportment; for certainly there never can have been mortals in a position
more advantageous for becoming so.  I hope there will come a time when we
shall be so; and I already know a few Americans, whose noble and delicate
manners may compare well with any I have seen.

I left the house with Mr. Palfrey.  He has cone to England to make some
researches in the State Paper Office, for the purposes of a work which he
has in hand.  He mentioned to me a letter which he had seen, written from
New England in the time of Charles II. and referring to the order sent by
the minister of that day for the appearance of Governor Bellingham and my
ancestor on this side of the water.  The signature of this letter is an
anagram of my ancestor's name.  The letter itself is a very bold and able
one, controverting the propriety of the measure above indicated; and Mr.
Palfrey feels certain that it was written by my aforesaid ancestor.  I
mentioned my wish to ascertain the place in England whence the family
emigrated; and Mr. Palfrey took me to the Record Office, and introduced
me to Mr. Joseph Hunter,--a venerable and courteous gentleman, of
antiquarian pursuits.  The office was odorous of musty parchments,
hundreds of years old.  Mr. Hunter received me with great kindness, and
gave me various old records and rolls of parchment, in which to seek for
my family name; but I was perplexed with the crabbed characters, and soon
grew weary and gave up the quest.  He says that it is very seldom that an
American family, springing from the early settlers, can be satisfactorily
traced back to their English ancestry.


July 16th.--Monday morning I took the rail from Blackheath to London.  It
is a very pleasant place, Blackheath, and far more rural than one would
expect, within five or six miles of London,--a great many trees, making
quite a mass of foliage in the distance; green enclosures; pretty villas,
with their nicely kept lawns, and gardens, with grass-plots and flower
borders; and village streets, set along the sidewalks with ornamental
trees; and the houses standing a little back, and separated one from
another,--all this within what is called the Park, which has its
gateways, and the sort of semi-privacy with which I first became
acquainted at Rock Park.

From the London Bridge station I took a cab for Paddington, and then had
to wait above two hours before a train started for Birkenhead.  Meanwhile
I walked a little about the neighborhood, which is very dull and
uninteresting; made up of crescents and terraces, and rows of houses that
have no individuality, and second-rate shops,--in short, the outskirts of
the vast city, when it begins to have a kind of village character but no
rurality or sylvan aspect, as at Blackheath.  My journey, when at last we
started, was quite unmarked by incident, and extremely tedious; it being
a slow train, which plods on without haste and without rest.  At about
ten o'clock we reached Birkenhead, and there crossed the familiar and
detestable Mersey, which, as usual, had a cloudy sky brooding over it.
Mrs. Blodgett received me most hospitably, but was impelled, by an
overflow of guests, to put me into a little back room, looking into
the court, and formerly occupied by my predecessor, General
Armstrong. . . . She expressed a hope that I might not see his
ghost,--nor have I, as yet.

Speaking of ghosts, Mr. H. A. B------ told me a singular story to-day of
an apparition that haunts the Times Office, in Printing-House Square.  A
Mr. W------ is the engineer of the establishment, and has his residence
in the edifice, which is built, I believe, on the site of Merchant
Taylor's school,--an old house that was no longer occupied for its
original purpose, and, being supposed haunted, was left untenanted.  The
father-in-law of Mr. W------, an old sea-captain, came on a visit to him
and his wife, and was put into their guest-chamber, where he passed the
night.  The next morning, assigning no very satisfactory reason, he cut
his visit short and went away.  Shortly afterwards, a young lady came to
visit the W------'s; but she too went away the next morning,--going first
to make a call, as she said, to a friend, and sending thence for her
trunks.  Mrs. W------ wrote to this young lady, asking an explanation.
The young lady replied, and gave a singular account of an apparition,--
how she was awakened in the night by a bright light shining through the
window, which was parallel to the bed; then, if I remember rightly, her
curtains were withdrawn, and a shape looked in upon her,--a woman's
shape, she called it; but it was a skeleton, with lambent flames playing
about its bones, and in and out among the ribs.  Other persons have since
slept in this chamber, and some have seen the shape, others not.  Mr.
W------ has slept there himself without seeing anything.  He has had
investigations by scientific people, apparently under the idea that the
phenomenon might have been caused by some of the Times's work-people,
playing tricks on the magic-lantern principle; but nothing satisfactory
has thus far been elucidated.  Mr. B------ had this story from Mrs.
Gaskell. . . . Supposing it a ghost, nothing else is so remarkable as
its choosing to haunt the precincts of the Times newspaper.


July 29th.--On Saturday, 26th, I took the rail from the Lime Street
station for London, via the Trent Valley, and reached Blackheath in the
evening. . . .

Sunday morning my wife and I, with J-----, railed into London, and drove
to the Essex Street Chapel, where Mr. Channing was to preach.  The Chapel
is the same where Priestley and Belsham used to preach,--one of the
plainest houses of worship I was ever in, as simple and undecorated as
the faith there inculcated.  They retain, however, all the form and
ceremonial of the English Established Church, though so modified as to
meet the doctrinal views of the Unitarians.  There may be good sense in
this, inasmuch as it greatly lessens the ministerial labor to have a
stated form of prayer, instead of a necessity for extempore outpourings;
but it must be, I should think, excessively tedious to the congregation,
especially as, having made alterations in these prayers, they cannot
attach much idea of sanctity to them.

[Here follows a long record of Mr. Hawthorne's visit to Miss Bacon,--
condensed in Our Old Hone, in the paper called "Recollections of a Gifted
Woman."]


August 2d.--On Wednesday (30th July) we went to Marlborough House to see
the Vernon gallery of pictures.  They are the works, almost entirely of
English artists of the last and present century, and comprise many famous
paintings; and I must acknowledge that I had more enjoyment of them than
of those portions of the National Gallery which I had before seen,--
including specimens of the grand old masters.  My comprehension has not
reached their height.  I think nothing pleased me more than a picture by
Sir David Wilkie,--The Parish Beadle, with a vagrant boy and a monkey in
custody; it is exceedingly good and true throughout, and especially the
monkey's face is a wonderful production of genius, condensing within
itself the whole moral and pathos of the picture.

Marlborough House was the residence of the Great Duke, and is to be that
of the Prince of Wales, when another place is found for the pictures.  It
adjoins St. James's Palace.  In its present state it is not a very
splendid mansion, the rooms being small, though handsomely shaped, with
vaulted ceilings, and carved white-marble fireplaces.  I left S----- here
after an hour or two, and walked forth into the hot and busy city with
J-----. . . . I called at Routledge's bookshop, in hopes to make an
arrangement with him about Miss Bacon's business.  But Routledge himself
is making a journey in the north, and neither of the partners was there,
so that I shall have to go thither some other day.  Then we stepped into
St. Paul's Cathedral to cool ourselves, and it was delightful so to
escape from the sunny, sultry turmoil of Fleet Street and Ludgate, and
find ourselves at once in this remote, solemn, shadowy seclusion,
marble-cool.  O that we had cathedrals in America, were it only for the
sensuous luxury!  We strolled round the cathedral, and I delighted
J----- much by pointing out the monuments of three British generals, who
were slain in America in the last war,--the naughty and bloodthirsty
little man!  We then went to Guildhall, where I thought J----- would like
to see Gog and Magog; but he had never heard of those illustrious
personages, and took no interest in them. . . . But truly I am grateful
to the piety of former times for raising this vast, cool canopy of marble
[St. Paul's] in the midst of the feverish city.  I wandered quite round
it, and saw, in a remote corner, a monument to the officers of the
Coldstream Guards, slain in the Crimea.  It was a mural tablet, with the
names of the officers on an escutcheon; and two privates of the Guards,
in marble bas-relief, were mourning over them.  Over the tablet hung two
silken banners, new and glossy, with the battles in which the regiment
has been engaged inscribed on them,--not merely Crimean but Peninsular
battles.  These banners will bang there till they drop away in tatters.

After thus refreshing myself in the cathedral, I went again to
Routledge's in Farrington Street, and saw one of the firm.  He expressed
great pleasure at seeing me, as indeed he might, having published and
sold, without any profit on my part, uncounted thousands of my books.  I
introduced the subject of Miss Bacon's work; and he expressed the utmost
willingness to do everything in his power towards bringing it before the
world, but thought that his firm--it being their business to publish for
the largest circle of readers--was not the most eligible for the
publication of such a book.  Very likely this may be so.  At all events,
however, I am to send him the manuscript, and he will at least give me
his advice and assistance in finding a publisher.  He was good enough to
express great regret that I had no work of my own to give him for
publication; and, truly, I regret it too, since, being a resident in
England, I could now have all the publishing privileges of a native
author.  He presented me with a copy of an illustrated edition of
Longfellow's Poems, and I took my leave.

Thence I went to the Picture Gallery at the British Institution, where
there are three rooms full of paintings by the first masters, the
property of private persons.  Every one of them, no doubt, was worth
studying for a long, long time; and I suppose I may have given, on an
average, a minute to each.  What an absurdity it would seem, to pretend
to read two or three hundred poems, of all degrees between an epic and a
ballad, in an hour or two!  And a picture is a poem, only requiring the
greater study to be felt and comprehended; because the spectator must
necessarily do much for himself towards that end.  I saw many beautiful
things,--among them some landscapes by Claude, which to the eye were like
the flavor of a rich, ripe melon to the palate.


August 7th.--Yesterday we took the rail for London, it being a fine,
sunny day, though not so very warm as many of the preceding days have
been. . . . We went along Piccadilly as far as the Egyptian Hall.  It
is quite remarkable how comparatively quiet the town has become, now that
the season is over.  One can see the difference in all the region west of
Temple Bar; and, indeed, either the hot weather or some other cause seems
to have operated in assuaging the turmoil in the city itself.  I never
saw London Bridge so little thronged as yesterday.  At the Egyptian Hall,
or in the same edifice, there is a gallery of pictures, the property of
Lord Ward, who allows the public to see them, five days of the week,
without any trouble or restriction,--a great kindness on his Lordship's
part, it must be owned.  It is a very valuable collection, I presume,
containing specimens of many famous old masters; some of the early and
hard pictures by Raphael and his master and fellow-pupils,--very curious,
and nowise beautiful; a perfect, sunny glimpse of Venice, by Canaletto;
and saints, and Scriptural, allegorical, and mythological people, by
Titian, Guido, Correggio, and many more names than I can remember.  There
is likewise a dead Magdalen by Canova, and a Venus by the same, very
pretty, and with a vivid light of joyous expression in her face; . . . .
also Powers's Greek Slave, in which I see little beauty or merit; and two
or three other statues.

We then drove to Ashley Place, to call on Mrs. S. C. Hall, whom we found
at home.  In fact, Wednesday is her reception-day; although, as now
everybody is out of town, we were the only callers.  She is an agreeable
and kindly woman.  She told us that her husband and herself propose going
to America next year, and I heartily wish they may meet with a warm and
friendly reception.  I have been seldom more assured of the existence of
a heart than in her; also a good deal of sentiment.  She had been
visiting Bessie, the widow of Moore, at Sloperton, and gave S----- a rose
from his cottage.  Such things are very true and unaffected in her.  The
only wonder is that she has not lost such girlish freshness of feeling as
prompts them.  We did not see Mr. Hall, he having gone to the Crystal
Palace.

Taking our leave, we returned along Victoria Street--a new street,
penetrating through what was recently one of the worst parts of the town,
and now bordered with large blocks of buildings, in a dreary,
half-finished state, and left so for want of funds--till we came to
Westminster Abbey.  We went in and spent an hour there, wandering all
round the nave and aisles, admiring the grand old edifice itself, but
finding more to smile at than to admire in the monuments. . . . The
interior view of the Abbey is better than can be described; the heart
aches, as one gazes at it, for lack of power and breadth enough to take
its beauty and grandeur in.  The effect was heightened by the sun shining
through the painted window in the western end, and by the bright sunshine
that came through the open portal, and lay on the pavement,--that space
so bright, the rest of the vast floor so solemn and sombre.  At the
western end, in a corner from which spectators are barred out, there is a
statue of Wordsworth, which I do not recollect seeing at any former
visit.  Its only companion in the same nook is Pope's friend, Secretary
Craggs.

Downing Street, that famous official precinct, took its name from Sir
George Downing, who was proprietor or lessee of property there.  He was a
native of my own old native town, and his descendants still reside
there,--collateral descendants, I suppose,--and follow the drygoods
business (drapers).


August 10th.--I journeyed to Liverpool via Chester. . . . One sees a
variety of climate, temperature, and season in a ride of two hundred
miles, north and south, through England.  Near London, for instance, the
grain was reaped, and stood in sheaves in the stubble-fields, over which
girls and children might be seen gleaning; farther north, the golden, or
greenish-golden, crops were waving in the wind.  In one part of our way
the atmosphere was hot and dry; at another point it had been cooled and
refreshed by a heavy thunder-shower, the pools of which still lay
along our track.  It seems to me that local varieties of weather are
more common in this island, and within narrower precincts, than in
America. . . . I never saw England of such a dusky and dusty green
before,--almost sunbrowned, indeed.  Sometimes the green hedges formed a
marked framework to a broad sheet of golden grain-field.  As we drew near
Oxford, just before reaching the station I had a good view of its domes,
towers, and spires,--better, I think, than when J----- and I rambled
through the town a month or two ago.

Mr. Frank Scott Haydon, of the Record Office, London, writes me that he
has found a "Henry Atte Hawthorne" on a roll which he is transcribing, of
the first Edward III.  He belonged to the Parish of Aldremeston, in the
hundred of Blakenhurste, Worcester County.


August 21st.--Yesterday, at twelve o'clock, I took the steamer for
Runcorn, from the pier-head.  In the streets, I had noticed that it was a
breezy day; but on the river there was a very stiff breeze from the
northeast, right ahead, blowing directly in our face the whole way; and
truly this river Mersey is never without a breeze, and generally in the
direction of its course,--an evil-tempered, unkindly, blustering wind,
that you cannot meet without being exasperated by it.  As it came
straight against us, it was impossible to find a shelter anywhere on
deck, except it were behind the stove-pipe; and, besides, the day was
overcast and threatening rain.

I have undergone very miserable hours on the Mersey, where, in the space
of two years, I voyaged thousands of miles,--and this trip to Runcorn
reminded me of them, though it was less disagreeable after more than a
twelvemonth's respite.  We had a good many passengers on board, most of
whom were of the second class, and congregated on the forward deck; more
women than men, I think, and some of them with their husbands and
children.  Several produced lunch and bottles, and refreshed themselves
very soon after we started.  By and by the wind became so disagreeable
that I went below, and sat in the cabin, only occasionally looking out,
to get a peep at the shores of the river, which I had never before seen
above Eastham.  However, they are not worth looking at; level and
monotonous, without trees or beauty of any kind,--here and there a
village, and a modern church, on the low ridge behind; perhaps, a
windmill, which the gusty day had set busily to work.  The river
continues very wide--no river indeed, but an estuary--during almost the
whole distance to Runcorn; and nearly at the end of our voyage we
approached some abrupt and prominent hills, which, many a time, I have
seen on my passages to Rock Ferry, looking blue and dim, and serving for
prophets of the weather; for when they can be distinctly seen adown the
river, it is a token of coming rain.  We met many vessels, and passed
many which were beating up against the wind, and which keeled over, so
that their decks must have dipped,--schooners and vessels that come from
the Bridgewater Canal.  We shipped a sea ourselves, which gave the
fore-deck passengers a wetting.

Before reaching Runcorn, we stopped to land some passengers at another
little port, where there was a pier and a lighthouse, and a church within
a few yards of the river-s

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