&7 3 (^> dlortiell HitiuEraity 2jibrarg 3tljaca. •Nem ^ork WORDSWORTH COLLECTION MADE BY CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN ITHACA, N. Y. THE GIFT OF VICTOR EMANUEL CLASS OF 1919 1925 A LEISURELY JOURNEY Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924102774084 Leisurely Journey BY WILLIAM LEONARD GAGE BOSTON D. LOTHROP AND COMPANY FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS -Do W^dtT*" f^ X'i ■'"% — €fT^ Copyright, iBSb, By William Leonard Gage. rv.^0 T AM divided in my desire to dedicate this little record to my beloved parish and the friends of nearly twenty years in Hartford, and those dear souls in Berlin, Leipzig, Barmouth, Croydon, Elberfeld, Worcester, York, London, and Canterbury who make their far-away homes seem so near. Perhaps in this divided mind L may still better dedicate it to the endeared companion who shared in all the privileges and vicissitudes of this " leisurely journey.^'' PREFACE. T^ROM June, 1884, to October, 1885, I was so happy as to be able to spend my time in England and on the Continent, — my seventh journey abroad, but the first in which I could go where I would and stay as long as I wished. My companion was my wife ; and it may be remarked that he who can take with him a congenial member of his own family more than doubles his own pleasure and advantage. Of many of the scenes where we passed whole weeks even, I have not a line of reminiscence; but I am glad that I forced myself to write a few letters, from which these pages have been culled. But of Nuremberg and Venice and Verona ; of Cadenabbia and Stresa ; of Pfaeffers and Ragatz ; of Interlaken and Thun and Tell's Platte ; of Zurich and Geneva and Vevey and viii PREFACE. Chamounix; of London and of Paris; of Basel and Schaffhausen; of Leyden and Delft and Rot- terdam ; of Durham and Lichfield and Matlock Bath and Malvern ; of Canterbury and Adding- ton Park ; of Munich and Innsbruck and Botzen and Trient and Lake Constance and the upper Rhine ; and of many, many other places I have no record. But it was a long and pleasant and leisurely way, and the recollection of it will make sunshine for the rest of our lives. CONTENTS. -♦o^- PAGE I. The English Lake Country ... i II. From Ambleside to Keswick . . 8 III. Beauties of York 14 IV. Lincoln and Boston 20 V. Days in Wales 27 VI. The Other Worcester 34 VII. Triennial Musical Festival ... 46 VIII. Worcester Ware 56 IX. A Noble House nobly used ... 63 X. The Isle of Wight 67 XI. Hertford and Olney 77 XII. A Week in Devon 82 XIII. A Transformed City 90 XIV. The New Year in Berlin . . . 99 XV. Music in the German Capital . . 109 X CONTENTS. PAGE XVI. American Students in Berlin . ii6 XVII. At Leipzig 120 XVIII. Religion in Germany 129 XIX. In Tyrol 134 XX. Lake Garda 145 XXI. Switzerland revisited .... 153 XXII. The Engadine 162 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. I. THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY. HERE has been a good deal written and printed about this lake country of England, — a little tract covering an area about as large as our own White Moun- tains occupy, — and I hesitate to go again over what has been so often described. But it has been my good fortune to see it in the finest of weather, day after day of clear, golden sunshine ; and that is an experience wellnigh unique. For as the lake country is the rainiest in all rainy England, a drought in it is something wonderful, and continuous fair weather never to be counted on. Yet I I 2 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. have had it day after day on the lakes, over the hills, through the vales, without a shower. And although that experience is now over, and I, sitting down to write in Wordsworth's own home, and even in the house where he lived and the room where he wrote, am enter- ing into the regular lake weather, — mist, rain, bursts of sunshine, but irregular and fitful, — yet the memory of two weeks of brightness cannot be taken away. I cannot tell, as I look back, whether my interest in the English lakes has been most largely literary or scenic. I think the blend- ing of the two has been their perfect charm ; for I do not think that, in all their beauty, they so far transcend our Lake George and Winipiseogee as to be worth crossing the Atlantic to see. But in this little tract, which you can traverse in a day's ride, lie the homes of Tennyson, Ruskin, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Faber, Prof. Wilson, Bishop Watson, De Quincey, Hartley Coleridge, Miss INIarti- neau. Dr. Arnold, and many others. Indeed, you cannot journey for an hour in any part of the lake country, but you pass either the home of some man equally known to English- men and Americans, or some scene which the pen of Southey or Wordsworth or De Quin- THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY. 3 cey has made famous. I have gone through nearly all the local poems of Wordsworth since being here, and they have been a reve- lation ; for it was he who, most of all, caught the beauty of these landscapes, and reflected it in his flowing and melodious lines. And then, again, I have now and then connected this region with our best American literature. I went one morning down to Newby Bridge, at the foot of Lake Windermere, and another morning to Lowood, on the eastern shore of the same lake ; for I remembered reading, long ago, in Hawthorne's " English Note Books," how he spent some most pleasant weeks with his wife and children at these dehghtful re- treats. I wish the book were before me now, that I might read again what he says, espe- cially about Newby Bridge. I supposed that the hotel where he enjoyed so much with his Julian and his Una and his wife must be one of those stylish palaces which are so often found on the fashionable routes. In fact it remains to-day what it was then, — an old- fashioned, cosey, rambling inn, the Swan, its charges less than two dollars a day, even in this " dear, dear England," as Shakspeare calls it, and in one of the most charming nooks in all the lake country. I have hardly 4 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. spent a more delightful hour than in the quaint little coffee-room of the hotel, thinking of our great writer enjoying the sunshine of his chil- dren's faces in that charming spot. These lakes are all small, even Windermere, the largest, being but about eleven miles long and one wide. But some of them, even those which make a great name in literature, are insignificant in size, — Grasmere, for example, being not three quarters of a mile long, and Rydal not half a mile. But placed as they are amid these Westmoreland hills, which rise to a height of about three thousand feet, wild and picturesque at the summits, most verdant and peaceful at their bases, the contrast is always beautiful. I hardly know what point is the one which I love the best, though I have no hesitation in saying that Southey's home is the most varied. But Grasmere has my heart. Its lovely httle mountain-girt lake ; its broad meadow; its hundreds of Wordsworthian mem- ories clustering about his cottage and his grave; its rude but most seemly and dignified church, built, it is thought, not far from the time of the Conquest, and having no floor, save one of earth, till the year 1840, — this place is the one which has gained my love. In the church- yard lie Wordsworth and all that dear family, THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY. 5 — wife, sister, children, brother, and the sister- in-law who was as a sister. Close by is the grave of Hartley Coleridge, graced by a stone far more distinguished than the extremely simple slabs of freestone which mark the spot where the Wordsworths lie. All through the day the place is thronged by tourists \ for Grasmere lies on the regular stage-road which passes north and south through the lake dis- trict, and many pause briefly to visit the old church and its precious churchyard. But to me perhaps dearest of all is this little Dove Cottage, where Wordsworth spent the early years of his married life, where he wrote many of his most famous poems, such as those universally admired lines on his wife, beginning — She was a phantom of delight, When first she burst upon my sight, and the still more celebrated " Intimations of Immortality." It remains much as it was when the Wordsworths were here : the garden with its seat, its rocky well, its gravelled walk, its terrace overlooking the lake, its profusion of flowers, the first seeds of which were planted by Mary and Dorothy Wordsworth. Multi- tudes flock to Rydal Mount, two miles away, 6 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. his later home ; few know of the even greater charms of the little Grasmere cottage, where Lamb and De Quincey and Southey and Cole- ridge used to visit, and where "plain living and high thinking " went hand in hand. By yonder fire they used to warm themselves and make their frugal pot of tea ; in yonder corner stood Wordsworth's scant library of ragged and uncared-for books ; across the little entry stands the room where William and Mary Wordsworth slept; close by is the guests' room j and a little way farther is the little room of Dorothy, the bright and inspiring sister. The plain deal shelf on which the basin and ewer stood in Wordsworth's chamber still remains, and the owner of the house is unwill- ing to allow it to be supplanted by an elegant toilet-stand of modern make. It is all simple, picturesque, unchanged ; and in all the pleas- ures of my life I have never enjoyed one greater than being permitted to live day after day in the house of so great a man, remaining, after all the years, so much unchanged from the time when his pure and high and sweetly resounding tones hallowed it. The beams over- head, the rough floors, the old-fashioned locks and hooks and doors, are an inspiration, they are a part of the antique charm of the place. THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY. 7 Southey's home in Keswick, Greta Hall by name, is now a young ladies' school, — a fitting use of a scholar's retreat. Hartley Coleridge's cottage, a mile and a half from Grasmere, is now rented for lodgings. But with these ex- ceptions, I think the residences of the great men of the lakes have to be looked at from the outside by the throngs of tourists who in July and August go trooping by. But many of those homes are beautiful, even to people who have no leisure for closer study and a longer stay. Harriet Martineau's at Ambleside, Dr. Arnold's at Fox How, near Ambleside, Mrs. Fletcher's at Grasmere, Bishop Watson's at Windermere, Words- worth's on Rydal Mount, are illustrations, — all ample homes, embowered with ivy, shaded with noble trees, girt with hedges, embosomed in the great breadth of English park-like fields, and sung to by the falls and pebbly brooks as they fling themselves into the beautiful lakes. But all this does but hint at the charms which are m *ius faii-est part of England. II. FROM AMBLESIDE TO KESWICK. OST of the people who visit this beau- tiful lake district descend upon it at Bowness, take a hurried steamer ride on Lake Windermere to Ambleside, five miles away, then, after a glance at this delightful vil- lage, either ride to Grasmere, four miles away up the beautiful valley which contains Rydal and Grasmere lakes, glancing at Wordsworth's home and his grave, and thence back to Ambleside and Bowness, or else pass rapidly on through Grasmere to Keswick, Southey's home, which some prefer in beauty to even Bowness, Ambleside, or Grasmere. And so out they go, after two or three delightful days, which, if the weather is good, will re- main to them an unforgettable memory. No one may speak with disrespect, even of merely FROM AMBLESIDE TO KESWICK. 9 photographic glimpses of beauty like that of the English lakes ; but if one can do as my wife and I have done, and have a full month of this scenery, it is a thing to be joyed in and over with an exceeding joy. This we have done. Coming into the lake country by way of old Kendal, we landed at Bowness, on the shore of Windermere, and made the most of a week, rowing, walking over the hills, looking up the haunts of Hawthorne, Prof. Wilson, Bishop Watson, and others who have either lived or sojourned in this region. Here, too, we had a premonition of the Wordsworth interest, which was soon to be so strong at Rydal and Grasmere. Wordsworth's boyhood was spent on Lake Windermere, and to it he gave some beautiful lines. It is a long, river- like body of water, about a mile wide and about eleven in length, dotted with exquisite islands. It is hemmed in at its northern end by bold and picturesque mountains, and at its southern end by soft and graceful hills. Its whole eastern margin rises slowly from the water side, and is studded with beautiful man- sions. The western shore exhibits but few houses ; and a great castle, not old, but in- deed quite modern, is its most striking archi- tectural object. lO A LEISURELY JOURNEY. But climb any of the slopes east or west or north of Windermere, and you look down on one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. There is every variety of scenery, — the wild, the smooth and finished, cottages of the old time garlanded with woodbine and honeysuckle, villas of our time overgrown with ivy, the long, river-like lake in the middle dis- tance, with its verdurous islands, the little steam- ers darting to and fro, with the tiny wreaths of steam and smoke curling up and floating away, great Enghsh woods stretching far on to the eastward quite beyond the eye, broad fields of grass and grain scattered here and there, the sun playing down upon all through the cloud-flecked sky, giving that witchery of color which comes in as the charm of the showery lake country : all this is the beauty of Winder- mere. This lake, of eleven miles in length, is the only one which can be called large ; yet Conistone and UUswater are both crossed by little steamers. Both of these are charming sheets, and so too is Derwentwater, — some thirteen miles to the north, — on which lies beautiful Keswick. In this town we spent five days, passed largely in rowing on the lake. " Did you visit the Falls of Lodore ? " Of FROM AMBLESIDE TO KESWICK. n course we did. They are easily reached by boat or carriage, for they he just on the mar- gin of the lake on the side over against Kes- wick. A row of an hour took us there • and stepping on shore, and passing through the garden of the great summer hotel, we saw the falls which Southey has made one of the most celebrated cataracts in the world. When we saw it there had been a drought of six weeks at the lake, and what we saw was how the water does not come down at Lodore. But when we sat on the big bowlders in the line of the stream, and looked up through the ravine, we could imagine without the least difficulty that after the winter rains the rush of water down the narrow cleft must be all that Southey conveys in his wonderful and in- imitable lines. Never have I seen a waterfall which seemed to have in itself greater capaci- ties for effect. This whole lake region is full of falls ; I have seen four or five of them, — the beautiful one at Ambleside, that at Dungeon Ghyll, celebrated by Wordsworth, that at Colwith, that at Easedale ; but none com- pare with Lodore in savage wildness, in the deep gashes which the torrents have made, in the huge rocks which they have torn down and strewed in the way, to become in their 12 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. turn fresh irritants for the cataract's noble rage. All these lakes, hills, dales, and falls have been commemorated by great pens, and you cannot traverse a mile without meeting an ob- ject which a Southey, a Wilson, a Wordsworth, a De Quincey, or a Coleridge has not de- scribed. Grasmere, where I write, Rydal, but two miles away, Ambleside, the home of Har- riet Martineau, Conistone, the home of Ruskin, are all full of delightful memories, and one who has been indebted to these great writers is glad to see where their homes have been. It is in some cases astonishing to what a height of renown their writings have carried little tracts of land or water which without them would not be thought so wonderful. I have no language to describe the beauty of Win- dermere, Grasmere, and Conistone lakes, nor can I overpraise the lovely Derwentwater ; but surely little Rydal, scarcely three quarters of a mile long, hedged in on all sides, reedy at both ends, and without one noble attribute, is not worthy of all its fame. But Wordsworth lived hard by it. Hartley Coleridge died in a litde cottage on its shore, it has a lovely name, — what more sweet than Rydal Water ? — and it has a ringing, world-wide fame. It is the FROM AMBLESIDE TO KESWICK. 13 only one of these lakes which does not seem to me quite worthy of its reputation. There are excellent hotels and comfortable lodging-houses everywhere ; one can live for two dollars a day with some comfort, and for three dollars a day with luxury. Yet if one stays a week or so in each place these rates may be greatly reduced, and brought down to about what we pay at the mountain boarding- houses. Yet even in these English lodging- houses there is a home sense which we do not have in our American way, and I must say that this paying three dollars a week for a sitting-room, and the same for a bedroom (for one or two), this sum covering all the service, cooking of food, serving it on your own table, leaving you to select your own viands accord- ing to your taste and purse, is a most com- fortable, homelike, and independent way. I might talk or write hour after hour on this beautiful English lake district ; but this is enough for to-day. I think it, on the whole, extremely beautiful, and worthy of its great fame, and I am deeply grateful for the privi- lege of spending a month in this charming region. III. BEAUTIES OF YORK. VERYBODY knows that York in Eng- land is as distinctly old York as its American namesake is New York ; but how old it is, how venerable to the eye, is and can only be known to one who visits it. York and Chester are the two quaintest and most picturesque cities in England ; the ones which do not mean to yield to the march of improve- ment, but whose unique glory is to remain much as they were built centuries ago. They are not alike. Chester is characterized by its so-called " rows," or long, piazza-like walks, extending through mile after mile, one storey high, and broken only by the intersection of the streets, — beautiful and picturesque ar- cades, which shelter from sun and rain and give BEAUTIES OF YORK. 15 the passers most ample facilities for looking in at the shop-windows. York has none of these ; but in their stead it has the oldest and most picturesque gables, the most beautiful vistas, broken by turret and tower and peaked roof and fantastic chimneys, that it is possible to conceive. Whichever way you look, the eye is greeted by some interesting architectural device, none of them modern, all from two to four hundred years old. The streets are not, it is true, solidly made up of these very old and picturesque houses, but they are in- terspaced with them every few rods, so that you pass with the eye from one to another with constant delight and amazement. I have been here more than a week, and yet I never go out and walk without passing into the feeling of a dream, as if this could not be reality and the nineteenth century, but unreality and the fifteenth. These old gabled houses are generally of a rich, warm hue, pale yellow, or cream, or brown, seldom black ; and their very dinginess is freshened by touches of color which keep them young while they are very old. A few days ago my wife and I tried to look in at a large and rough oak door leading through a very ancient building to a court in the rear, which we found to be a 1 6 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. hollow square, entirely shut in by three wings of the part fronting towards the street. We found it in very decent condition. It had once been a school, and still bears the name of " The College." It is four hundred and twenty-three years old, and was built in the reign of Richard III. In Shakspeare's time it could boast of an antiquity as great as any house in Hartford can now, and it was dwelt in years before Columbus discovered America. I suppose that my readers have gathered from books a pretty good idea of how these old houses look ; but I assure you that where they swarm with living old-fashioned people they make a picture which is not to be put on paper. And then the beautiful Gothic churches ! Everybody knows of the great minster, — one of the largest and noblest edifices in the world set apart for worship. In some respects it is the grandest of all the Gothic churches, not even Cologne surpassing it in the gloriously beautiful arches and noble fagade. But this by no means absorbs within itself all the eccle- siastical magnificence of York. There are some twenty-seven stone churches, all quaint and beautiful, each a gem in its way, and all of them sufificing for the wants of a city not BEAUTIES OF YORK. 17 larger than Hartford. And then there are the Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist, Ro- man Catholic, and Unitarian chapels besides, in addition to the great buildings appropri- ated by the noisy Salvation Army, who make two large sections of the town uncomfortable to live in by reason of their discordant music. Only think of it ! York, with its elaborate cathedral worship twice every day, choristers who pour forth angelic strains, and in the same city a great following of these noisy Salvationists, — a strong proof that the Eng- lish Church, with all its beauty and taste, has not touched the dregs of the people ! As I see these peaceful though noisy throngs pass by on their way to their " glorious meetings," singing, beating drums, playing accordions, with a rude cornet or trumpet to give the semblance of mihtary music ; as I see the ex- cited women who march in their ranks, and the rough and ill-dressed men who lead and follow the women, — I am filled at once with disgust and pity, yet, on the whole, with pleasure that they can be touched at some point with the religious impulse, that they are not too far down to be reached by that which is intended in some form to kindle every human soul. And when I learn that 1 8 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. they who fervidly exhort them are men and women who have sometimes been convicts, sometimes persons known to the police as once most disreputable, I can but be glad that the agency which seems to me so coarse and common and unworthy should be able to do a good work. It would be idle to try to give in one letter the beauties of this rich town of York.^ I have been here ten days, yet we are far from through. There are old Roman remains, for York was begun nearly a thousand years before Christ; later it was the Roman capital of Britain. Here the Emperor Severus died, and here two Roman emperors, one of them Con- stantine the Great, were born. Here have been enacted many of the most tragic scenes in English history, and all of them have left their mark. So I go from museum to museum, see the old walls, the old baths, the old groves, 1 About eight miles from Doncaster, near York, and on the direct rail to London, lie Bawtr}', Scrooby, and Austerfield, the three villages (Bawtry is the railroad-station) from which came Bradford and the early Plymouth settlers. At Scrooby are very slight remains of Bradford's house ; but at Austerfield is a small and most interesting church, hundreds of years old even when the Puritans lived. It is worth a visit to those interested in the Plymouth colonists. BEAUTIES OF YORK. 19 see the noble palaces, castles, and churches, see the crowds which come hourly into the great railway station, more than nine hundred feet long, and wonder at a past so rich as still to survive in all these monuments of grace and beauty. We find agreeable people here, too, — people whose kindly hospitality will long be remembered ; and, after all, there is the great charm, for the York of the past is a dead thing, but the York of newly found friends is a living and dear reality. IV. LINCOLN AND BOSTON. |INCE writing from the beautiful lake country in the north of England, and giving a glimpse of that loveliness, I have made a wide and leisurely round, embrac- ing no less than six cathedral towns and sev- eral places of historic interest. To attempt to speak of all would be useless. I will gather only a few things which seem the best worth telling. Perhaps the two most delightful places in this round have been Lincoln and Boston, — Lincoln partly by reason of its noble cathe- dral, perhaps on the whole the most satisfying that I have seen for position, age, beauty, and size all combined ; and Boston partly by rea- son of its relation to our Boston and the LINCOLN AND BOSTON. 21 comicd contrast that it makes, — the English Boston but a little stranded, fussy collection of sixpenny shops, and with only its magnificent parish church of St. Botolph to give it any character whatever. Yet both of these are in that part of England whence our distinctively New England population chiefly emigrated ; and if one wishes to trace the inheritance of language, custotns, and modes of thought, he must seek it mainly in Lincolnshire. I was surprised, and even startled, to find many of the well-remembered provincialisms of our earlier years in full vogue in Lincolnshire, and I shall be pardoned if I refer to a few of them. Our American custom of calling the prong of a fork a " tyne " is a Lincolnshire peculiarity, and came over with our fathers. The more gen- eral word " prong " is indeed driving it out, but a tyne is understood in Lincolnshire alone. The older men here distinctly remember the pronunciation of nature and creature, " natur " and "critter," just as they were pronounced in New England fifty years ago. Perhaps the most amusing of these local peculiarities is the old-fashioned Lincolnshire way of calling a cucumber a "cowcumber," which my older readers will promptly recall as common in their childhood. So, too, that quaint archa- 2 2 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. ism which many of us so well remember of call- ing a cow a " caow," and a pound a " paound," remains in full force not only in Lincolnshire, but has extended throughout all England, and may be called the accepted pronunciation of the diphthong ou. I hear it not only in the cathedral pulpits, but on the lips of the shop- boys. It has survived in Philadelphia, and perhaps elsewhere, with us, but it has mainly been laughed out of New England. But to me the most interesting connection between Lincolnshire and New England pro- nunciation is the little word " been." It has long been a wonder to me how and why that word should be pronounced, not only in New England, but throughout the United States, so differently from what it is in England and in all her* many colonies. In England, Scot- land, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Nova Scotia, South Africa, it is made to rhyme with seen and between, whereas in our country it is made to rhyme with sin and din. It was all explained when I came to Lincolnshire and found that the old local usage there was to call it "bin," and that it is not yet entirely driven out to this day. I have not been able to trace that other old-fashioned pronunciation of the same word, " ben," but I could not find it in LINCOLN AND BOSTON. 23 Lincolnshire. Yet many words which the older people will remember as now mostly obsolete, — such as put with a short u, pretty pronounced " puhty " and " purty," heard pro- nounced " heerd," I find well remembered in Lincoln and Boston. In fact it is becoming rather hard to point out a true Americanism. Certainly the words and phrases which are generally called so are but survivals of local usage in England, and are no inventions of our own. Certain forms of slang, certain terms brought into use tJy new machinery and new inventions, may be called " Americanisms j " but, as Mr. Richard Grant White has abundantly shown, the list beyond these is a sufficiently short one. One great surprise — and perhaps I ought to say regret — I find in these old cathedral towns. We associate them with dulness, with stagna- tion, with all unthrift, — simply as placid, em- bowered, snug retreats, where, undisturbed by the bustle of this busy age, the great Church dignitaries can walk leisurely along the quiet streets and let their silken gowns float grace- fully on the breeze ; where, too, in the pres- ence of a dignified and sedate score or two of well-fed worshippers, a charming choir of boys and men can intone the beautiful Angli- 24 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. can service and sing great pealing anthems. But these cathedral towns are not what they were. Chester is a most stirring railway cen- tre, with thousands of sight-seers jostling each other on the walks or in the " rows ; " York is one of the busiest towns in England, its rail- way-station surpassed by few in the kingdom for movements of great crowds. Lincoln is the centre of the manufacturing of agricultural machinery, and the old cathedral part is but a small suburb to the new, brisk, and smart town. Peterborough too leaves its cathedral stranded on the shore of its great railway interests, and its bustling streets are an archa- ism to-day. Of course there are sleepy ex- ceptions, — Ripon and Lichfield are among them ; but all England is so rapidly bursting its old walls — putting off the antique, and putting on the modern and commonplace — that wherever one goes it is stir, movement, bustle, life. I have not yet found the place during the past two and a half months cor- responding to the old current idea of quiet- ness on this isle of England. Ancient towns like Shrewsbury and Ludlow and Durham teem with crowds, — people from the country coming to buy and sell, tourists, commercial travellers, a busy tide of life. Indeed I find LINCOLN AND BOSTON. 25 it much more striking here than in the busiest places tliat I know in the United States. The crowds are greater, they appear to penetrate to all places, they move like water, — flowing out everywhere. It is true one is not struck by great motive forces ; most of the people seem engaged in very small affairs ; it all seems like shopkeeping on a minute scale : but it makes and keeps a swarm of people busy everywhere. And this summer, with its great and almost unprecedented harvest, gives an uncommon cheer to all whom we meet. It is the uni- versal word of greeting, — " What noble harvest weather, what a grand harvest ! " All England feels it, from the peer to the peasant ; all Eng- land talks of it. It gives an impulse to the na- tional hope which was greatly needed. There is no doubt that the bad harvests of the last years had done much to make Englishmen think that their country had no bright future, that its best glories were passed. But with the immense impulse which the crops of this year give, all this talk has ceased, and hope comes to the fore again. And yet not even such a summer as this can coax out of the English soil the vegetables which are at once our pride and our comfort. An Englishman cannot possibly live as well as 26 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. an American ; for the whole flow and life of even those things which are the same in name with ours are unlike. Not only are the fruits and berries much more pale and watery, but even the peas, the beans, the squash (there known as marrow) , and all the other common vegetables taste quite Hfeless in comparison with ours. Of course an EngHshman does not know what he misses in this, but an American does not need to eat more than one dinner to see the difference. So, after giving all that is due to the English meats, to Eng- lish cheese, to English tea, the simple fact is that what is called " living " here is on a much lower key than in our prodigal land and un- der a more tropical sun. But enough of this. And now, after two months of this beautiful, verdant England, I have landed in a corner of picturesque Wales, and I write on the coast, with the note of the Atlantic in my ears by night and by day, and the bold rocks and green hills making an incomparable back- ground. Yet even in this fair spot I am a little homesick for Grasmere and the lakes whence I wrote you last. Ah ! that is indeed peerless ; I shall not see its like again. V. DAYS IN WALES. O almost all the world Wales is an out- of-the-way place, and few people have much more idea of it than that it is very hilly and very beautiful. I am here to testify that this is true ; and being in the number of the Americans who have been compelled to make the acquaintance of Great Britain through fear of the cholera on the Continent, I have taken the trouble to inspect this almost unknown principality, and now have the pleasure of reporting my observations. I have seen no Americans here, though a gentleman who carried a copy of " Harper's Weekly " in his hand did come under sus- picion this morning ; but it might, after all, not be conclusive evidence. Well, what of Wales ? 28 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. you ask. First, the wonder that it is a vital part of England, so to speak, and yet seems to be a foreign land, inhabited by a foreign people. I wondered, as I came into Wales a week ago, whether I should in the larger towns, such as Barmouth, for example, hear the Welsh language. I was certainly not pre- pared to hear scarcely any English spoken except by the English summer visitors and by the tradespeople in their dealings with them. In the town of Barmouth, a fashionable watering-place, Welsh is as common as French in Paris. You walk the streets, and the guttural sounds of the Welsh are heard on all sides ; you go into a church or school, the Welsh is the language almost sure to be in vogue. There are English services during the summer months ; but they are for the English visitors, not for the people themselves. And if one wanders out on the country roads, and has occasion to inquire his way at the little stone cottages which dot the pleasant green landscape, he will be surprised to find himself in a foreign country and under very close limitations of speech. The language seems a pleasant one ; it has its guttural tones, but to one who is acquainted with German, these are not strikingly offensive. DAYS IN WALES. 29 This hilly country is traversed in all direc- tions by small streams which carry the rain to the sea, and which allow roads and railways to reach all important points. These little river-courses from the vales constitute the chief beauty of Wales ; for the greenness of the meadows is very marked, and the con- trast between the sterile rocky heights, the rough pasture-lands of the lower hills, and the lush strong grass and dense grain of the lower tracts, makes a beautifal picture. And then, too, the Atlantic sets back in wide estu- aries which fill and empty themselves with the tide, and which are wondrously beautiful, whether as brimming lakes — or lochs, as they call them in Scotland — or a wide expanse of smooth, soft clean sand when the tide goes out, often a mile or two across, and reflecting the clouds and taking all the shadows that play over them, more beautiful than even the surface of a still lake reflecting the flitting fancies of the sky. Mountains there are, too, of more than respectable height. Snow- don, Cader-Idris, the Beacons, and others, be- tween two and three thousand feet in height, are to be seen from all the hills : fine old castles, some of them in splendid preser- vation, crest and crown the more isolated 30 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. hills ; in short, all forms of picturesqueness abound. Barmouth, where I write, is a place of varied attractions, and is so unlike one of our American sea-side places that I am tempted to describe it. First see it as Nature made and left it. An estuary opens here, on the western coast of Wales, filling and emptying with every tide ; and as you stand on the long bridge which spans it, and look inland, it is one of the most beautiful sights, not only in Wales, but in Europe. You can see the shores of the lake for miles, each with a background of stern mountains, indeed, but with a fore- ground of sweet green hills which come down to the very border of the tide-made lake, mak- ing one of the most pleasing and yet grand of combinations. A line of railing comes down by the side of the water, and far away you see the wreaths of steam as the engine flies along the level track. Little stone cottages dot the hillsides, and here and there is a villa of much elegance gracing the scene, and yet graced by it. Then outside of the bridge which crosses the estuary are the wide tracts of sand, which are covered at high tide, but which at low water give a reach a mile across, on which you may ride or walk at pleasure. Farther DAYS IN WALES. 31 along is the true coast, or beach, — a delightful place for bathing, or for children to dig in or run upon. Back of this line rises the great hill of slaty rock, — hard, grim, gray, almost without vegetation ; and were it not for other features of the landscape this great cliff, five hundred feet in height, would give Barmouth an even savage appearance. On shelves cut in this great ledge stand, terrace rising above terrace, the stone mansions which make the town, nearly all of these stately structures destitute of ivy or woodbine or sheltering trees, and therefore gaunt and drear. So it is a little hard to fall in love with Barmouth ; and only when you look at the green hills which over- top it, and the shining sands which confront it, and the great mountains which dominate all, do you do it justice. But by and by, when you have rejoiced with the hundreds of chil- dren playing on its clear and limitless sea- sands, have drunk its absolutely perfect water, and breathed its pure ocean air and seen how happy, free, and delighted are the hundreds who gather there and go off daily by train to the favorite hills and valley resorts of Wales, do you learn to appreciate it. There are four or five hotels, none of them large ; but nearly all the visitors live in the 32 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. regular English way, — that is, they take " lodg- ings." You have a living room and as many bedrooms as you require, paying three or four, or in the height of the season even five, dollars a week each. But this covers all ser- vice, including the cooking of food and the placing of it on your own table. So in the morning you wander forth and order the piece of meat and the vegetables, the butter, eggs, cheese, and fruit which you require for the day ; and thus selecting according to your taste and purse, you have only yourself to blame if your meals are not what you want them to be. It is an admirable way; and while I don't think that it could be intro- duced among us, it works perfectly in this country. You are entirely independent, and even while a stranger in a strange land you keep up the feeling of your own home. I can't tell you much about these Welsh people, save that they seem to be great work- ers, thrifty, orderly, and loyal. I see little or nothing to criticise in the streets, and I in- fer from the fact that they are doing away with their prisons that they must be a law abid- ing people, singularly free from the danger- ous classes. We are spending delightful days : this morning a visit to Harlech Castle, built DAYS IN WALES. zz by Edward I. of England, ten miles north of Barmouth, and one of the best-preserved feudal castles in Europe ; this afternoon, in company with the agreeable and cultivated Congregational minister, we climbed the great cliff back of the town, to see the striated rocks, still bearing most evident marks of the glacial period ; yesterday a walk to a Norman church six hundred years old, and had a view of the-long-talked-of Barmouth regatta. All these things, with reading and music and calls, make up delightful and memorable days. Wales is a perfect treasure-house of romantic and lovely objects, and dull must be the man who cannot pass halcyon days while in its charming and health-giving vales, and by the side of its sounding Atlantic surf, and on its shining strand. VI. THE OTHER WORCESTER. IVERYBODY knows about our Wor- cester, but not everybody knows about the other Worcester, in the very heart of England, surrounded by orchards and shadowed by the beautiful Malvern Hills.^ 1 A delightful journey, as one enters England by- Li verpool, is via Chester and Ruabon (from which last town one can take a run eastward into Wales, as far as Barmouth if one likes), on past Ludlow with its most interesting castle, Hereford with its cathedral and quaint market-town look and ways, to Ross and Monmouth, down the charming Wye to Raglan Castle celebrated by McDonald, and Tintern Abbey made doubly famous by Wordsworth. This is one of the most beautiful regions in England. One can go from Hereford to Worcester, passing the lovely Malvern, where Jenny Lind has her summer home. At Wor- cester one is not far from Warwick, Stratford, and Kcnil worth. THE OTHER WORCESTER. 35 And yet the other Worcester is as well worth knowing as our own, perhaps even more so ; for it has many of those bright, progressive ways of action and of thought which make the Worcester in the heart of New England and amid its orchards so attractive. I will not try to draw out the parallel in detail ; suffice it to suggest that a parallel is not hard to find. And it is because our Worcester is no common place, although not in the front rank of American cities as to numbers, that I ven- ture to speak in these columns of its mother across the sea. Mother, I say, for some good, loyal Worcester man of England brought the name over and gave it in filial reverence to the infant town which, even in my boyhood, was the farthest limit of the " Western Railroad." Think of it ! The one Western Railroad of America limited at a place but forty-four miles from Boston ! This Worcester — the older one of which I write — is a city of rather less than fifty thou- sand people, and is clean enough and fair enough for ordinary purposes, though these are not its strongest points. But it has cer- tain great centres of interest of which I pur- pose briefly to speak. The first of these is its cathedral. But the reader will remember 36 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. that there arc some twenty-eight cathedrals in England, and he will say that he has never heard Worcester pronounced in the same sen- tence with Lincoln, York, Canterbury, and Salisbury. No, very true. But it is a very beautiful and very ancient cathedral, notwith- standing ; a little too pretty, I may say, for my taste, — too smooth, too fine, almost too much like a face clean shaved. It is really old, no less than eight hundred years in parts ; but in the modern " restoration " it has been so polished within and without that it has a kind of American freshness and primness that I have not enjoyed. Yet its architecture is most lovely, — a grand central tower and a very pure style within. It is neither very large nor very small. After York it seems small ; after Hereford it seems large. But in point of size it is admirably adapted to the use to which it has been put the very week when I write these lines, in the service of the great yearly musical festival of the " Three Choirs." This is held in the cathedrals of Gloucester, Hereford, and Worcester in turn ; and this year, meeting at Worcester, it has been celebrated with great splendor and success. I have been looking forward to it for weeks, and, in truth, I feared lest it should not answer my exalted expecta- THE OTHER WORCESTER. Z1 tions. Yet it has more than done so ; and never in this world can I be placed in cir- cumstances more favorable to the highest and purest enjoyment. For if the Bible way of presenting the state of the glorified is based on the deepest and broadest facts of human nature, — the practice of music in its most exalted forms, the theme being Moses and the Lamb, and all the sur- roundings being at once most august and beau- tiful, — then the hearing of the " Redemption " of Gounod, the " St. Paul " and " Elijah " of Mendelssohn, the " Messiah " of Handel, in a glorious English cathedral, thronged with wor- shippers, every corner, even the most remote, filled to the last inch, the celebrants being not only the finest singers whom the world can af- ford, the orchestra the best that London can supply and the three cathedral choirs of Glou- cester, Hereford, and Worcester, reinforced to the number of some hundreds, and the daily service ushered in with prayers and all closed with prayers and the benediction, — this will in part suggest why the service may be fitly likened to a foretaste of the heavenly bliss. On Sunday last there was a great pre- paratory service, — open, of course, to all who would come. The cathedral was so crowded 38 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. that a friend of mine was four hours away from his home, in the delay of entering and leaving, besides the very long service proper. Then on Tuesday was given the " Redemp- tion," beginning at half-past eleven and closing about four, with an intermission of an hour, when the people went out into the air and briefly refreshed themselves. The same fea- ture was repeated Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Wednesday evening, in addition to the day services, the " Elijah " was sung, — naturally with only a brief intermission, as with us. On Tuesday and Thursday evenings a concert of secular music was given in the pubhc hall, — of course without religious ac- cessories ; and most grateful and refreshing was it after the strain of the day, with the great works of Cherubini, Spohr, Bach, Schubert, and Dvorak, who in person conducted his sublime " Stabat Mater." On Friday evening, at half-past six, all closed with a peculiarly beautiful devotional ser\'ice, after the usual manner in English cathedrals. This, like that of Sunday, was free to all, and, like all the rest, was thronged. I did not attend it, how- ever ; not, as the reader may imagine, because I was exhausted with the rest (I had attended every one), but because of the only difhculty THE OTHER WORCESTER. 39 connected with the whole affair, — that of renovating the air in the cathedral, which had been filled all day with listeners to Handel's " Messiah." The windows are generally fixed, and during one of these still autumn days it is almost impossible to ventilate quickly so vast a building. This has been the only drawback of the week, — a great one, but per- haps inevitable. Yet, with this exception, all has been the perfection of good taste and good judgment, — with much indeed learned from an experience of more than a century and a half of training in these festivals, which have grown from a simple annual meeting of the Three Choirs for the practice of anthems to this gathering of people from all parts of England. But some one will ask : " Do they connect this beautiful worship — the prayers, the great musical service, the benediction, and of course the kneehng, the rising at the great ascription passages — do they connect this with the sale of tickets, turning the cathedral into a colossal music-hall, and the service into a mercenary speculation?" They do sell tickets, and at high rates, ranging all the way from about four dollars down to sixty cents. On the Elijah evening it is made more popular, and the 40 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. scale is from two dollars and a half down to thirty-seven cents ; but the expenses are enor- mous, and the profits, together with the collec- tion, which is always taken, go for the ben'^fit of the widows and orphans of the clergy. The English are just as punctilious as we on the matter of religious proprieties ; but they take this just as we do the renting of pews, the taking up "of a subscription, or any other mercenary device for meeting the exigent expenses of any undertaking. That is just the whole of it ; and I venture to say that it has occurred to no one this week that the cathe- dral has not been put to perhaps the noblest uses of which it is capable. On Thursday my chair was placed where with my umbrella I could easily touch the tomb of King John, who is not buried at Windsor, or in Westminster Abbey, but here ; and turning in another direction, I could also easily touch the steps on which Frances Ridley Havergal knelt that Sunday morning, so beautifully de- scribed in her Life, to recei\'e confirmation at the hands of the Bishop of Worcester. And listening to the heart-searching strains of the " Stabat Mater," my mind ran out to the issues of those two lives, — the execrated name of the king of whom no one speaks with loving THE OTHER WORCESTER. 41 reverence, and the hallowed name of this saint of our time, whose father was rector of a church here in Worcester, and whose pure life and consecrated talent has made the world richer and better. It was a good sermon, — better, perhaps, than some preached from the pul- pit which almost overhung my head. But Worcester has other points of interest, one being no less than the factory where the finest porcelain now made in the world is pro- duced. Sevres itself must yield to-day to Wor- cester ; so must Berlin and Dresden. And even China, whose beautiful work gave the impulse to this industry a hundred and thirty years ago, has long been distanced. The works stand in the heart of the city, and give direct employment to about seven hundred persons. One would almost suppose it difficult to gain access to such a place as the Royal Worcester Porcelain Works, but it is not at all difficult. I had the great privilege of being escorted by Mr. Binns himself, the managing director, to whose experience, skill, and taste is so largely due the immense advance made in this beau- tiful department of work during the past twenty years, and I was made at once glad and proud to know that America is the best purchaser; the finest and costliest works go 42 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. to our shores. I was even glad to learn that my own beloved Hartford was known to Mr. Binns by name as a not inconsiderable source of demand. It would be impossible to give in the slightest manner all that is beautiful and interesting in the manufacturing of this delicate ware. I shall not attempt it. I will only say that here, as in so many other things, after due allowance is made for certain valua- ble patent rights held by the Royal Worcester Company, the great secret is the open one of the most painstaking care at every point. It would do a heedless boy good to take him over such works as these and teach him by such an object-lesson as this that there is no short road to the highest success, save through the most faithful care of all little things, the minutest as well as those which seem great and important. This was impressed upon me every moment I was making the round of the extensive works. I may perhaps add that they do not give away these beautiful wares even in the place where they are made. The Worcester goods are so exquisite that they are necessarily costly, even without the import duty in America. I was a guest at a breakfast given by the mayor to celebrate the festival, of which THE OTHER WORCESTER. 43 he was of course an active promoter, and it was interesting to note that, in all the lavish display of rich viands, there were almost no plates, cups, or platters of the " Royal Wor- cester." I spoke of this to the lady at my right, the wife of an alderman. •' No," she replied ; " that ware is too precious for such uses." One word I must add touching another Worcester industry. It will interest all read- ers to be told that here is where Dent's gloves are made. Those who have enjoyed the lux- ury of paying two dollars and a quarter for a pair of gloves made by Dent will be specially interested to know that they are made here ; that they are the best in the world ; that they sell on the street at a dollar for the very best. Some ladies will be interested to learn that they make a thirty-six-button glove, covering, of course, the whole arm, and a long one at that. Some gentlemen will be interested to know that nearly a thousand persons are em- ployed in this great industry, whose products go all over the world. The house is old, and there is no Mr, Dent to be seen now ; but the work goes on. They make all kinds of gloves, " without regard to age, sex, or previ- ous condition," only that all kinds are of the 44 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. very best. A Dent glove is a good glove ; hence the impression the Dent name has made. After this, it is idle to say that the Wor- cestershire Sauce is compounded here, — that pungent liquid demanded even wdth us, by the potent aid of which tasteless meats and fish become agreeable, at least to a vitiated palate. I never care for it j but it is made here, and it, too, has made the fortunes of its producers. At Great Malvern I saw the house — or palace, one might call it — which was erected on the foundation of Worcester- shire Sauce. But that house did not please me so much as one not far away from it, also at Malvern, where lives she whom I, for one, shall always think of and call Jenny Lind. Ah, how well do I remember her visit, a third of a century ago ! How well I recall her " I know that my Redeemer liveth," sung in the hall over the Fitchburg Railway-Station in Boston ! It has rung in my memory all these years, and I have never heard it approached, save yesterday alone, when Madame Albaal sang it as it would seem no mortal could sing it. Oh, what power these singers have ! And would they not be the greatest of all the moral and religious forces of the age if, with their THE OTHER WORCESTER. 45 immense advantages, they were all consecrated spirits, living only to glorify God and bring men to Him? Shall we ever see the time when this shall be? Then indeed will the kingdom of God be near. VII. TRIENNIAL MUSICAL FESTIVAL. HAVE all my life wondered what, in the ordering of Providence, is the precise use of a cathedral ; and that question has never been duly answered in my own mind till this week, when I have seen one of the most beautiful cathedrals in England put to a service which, one may almost say, adds a new dignity and consecration to the building itself. It is certainly one of the most natural associations connected with the uses, apart from the beauty, of such an edifice that it be adequately filled with living men, — not with dead men alone, left in vast, untraversed space, but with living men, sitting down in the solemn majesty of the grand arches and receiving a great spiritual uplift from the build- ing itself. This week in the Worcester musi- TRIENNIAL MUSICAL FESTIVAL. 47 cal festival I have seen it made a reality, and added thereto has been the grandeur of tones, not struggling with the vast distance and heights, but adequately filling all. No single voice can ever, certainly in preaching, overcome the reverberations, not to say the spaces, of these great cathedrals ; and even the small and very effective choirs which occupy the eastern division, often separated from the main building by a screen, are not meant to be heard to advantage in the nave, or cathe- dral proper, save in the smaller churches of this rank. But in the festival this great difficulty has been met ; the building has been thronged with worshippers, and the moral effects have been equal to all that both edifice and congre- gation demanded. And this has all been so fruitful of sugges- tions that as an American I have brought away many hints which I am glad to commu- nicate not to Connecticut people alone, but to a wider audience. It may be said that the festival of this week has been, in a religious sense, a great advance on any ever held here or elsewhere, and the good taste, judgment, and piety which have combined in its celebration have given it a deserved pre-eminence. I may premise that, 48 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. like all good things, it is a growth, — the earlier stages being the yearly association of the neighboring choirs of Gloucester, Hereford, and Worcester cathedrals, for the purpose of singing anthems and the words which they are using from day to day. This gradually took in more and more of scope, until at last it has assumed the range of a national affair. The services are still held in these three cities, passing from one to another in the successive years. It has been a natural source of some anxiety, especially to those who are most te- nacious of old usages and of seemly proprieties, that these buildings should not be placed be- fore the world in the attitude of concert-halls, and in some cases criticism was so sharp as to threaten to extinguish the undertaking; but the happy firmness of those who were most earnest in it, not only triumphed, but has re- sulted in the placing of the affair on a more solid and permanent basis than ever. And I am not certain but that the feature of this very festival which I have heard commented upon more unfavorably than any other, not in pri- vate circles alone, and not in art circles alone, but in the general and free talk of my neigh- bors in this vast congregation, may after all prove to be the most effective of all the ways TRIENNIAL MUSICAL FESTIVAL. 49 in which the festival has wrought devotionally upon the minds of men. The seats have, without exception, been placed sideways to the singers, absolutely precluding, except by constrained glances, a view of the artistes ; and this has been done, it is affirmed, at the "instance of the dean and chapter, who have been unwilling to allow any person to turn his back on the high altar at the east end of the building. This has been spoken of as puerile, or a triumph of sacramentarianism over taste, comfort, and good sense ; and I am not sure that I have not myself seen in it an ex- cess of what may be called the superstitious reverence for the externals of religion. But see how it has worked ! Taken in connection with another feature, to be mentioned pres- ently, it has caused the sense of the usual worship held in the place to be continually in the mind of the listeners. One never forgot that he was in a cathedral, seated in the usual way, conformable to the daily habit of the place. Now when I add to this that the dean and other resident clergy have always entered in their robes, and that the service has always begun and ended with brief but beautiful prayers, and has closed with the same and the benediction by the dean (officiating 4 50 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. in the place of the bishop, who was detained by his wife's illness), and when to this has been added the use of the Lord's prayer by the whole congregation, you can see that we have not been far away from the application of that beautiful verse: ''My house shall be called a house of prayer." If now to this be added the habitual reverence of the Eng- lish people in their places of worship, and then the silent but most eloquent appeal of the cathedral itself, its grandeur and its beauty uniting to give emphasis to the music, the reader will admit that to hear the " Redemp- tion," the " Stabat Mater," the " Elijah," the *'St. Paul," the "Messiah," and the other beautiful works of Bach, Spohr, Schubert, and Cherubini, thus rendered, is not only an artistic dehght, but a religious uplifting. And in keeping with the building and the music has been the artistic quality. The best that London could give was drawn upon, both for the orchestra and the vocal parts, in addi- tion to the solid strength and careful training of the Worcester, Hereford, and Gloucester choirs and the Birmingham chorus. I need only mention the names of Mesdames Albani and Patey and Mr. Santley, for these have a distinct fame even with us, the three being TRIENNIAL MUSICAL FESTIVAL. 51 incomparable in their respective parts as so- prano, alto, and baritone. Mr. Lloyd, the tenor, is less known to us, but is, I think, a very great singer. A cathedral tests a voice even more than the largest hall, — it requires breadth as well as strength and purity of tone ; and these all distinguish the really noble singers whom I have named. The other art- istes have been worthy of the occasion, some of them singularly fitted ; and of them I should like to speak with some particularity : but you are too far away in America to make it useful or needful. Suffice it to say that the treatment of all the great works attempted has been up to the highest mark ever reached in New York at Theodore Thomas's festivals, — nay, I think he would admit that while the chorus here was much weaker than many of his, not even he or Mr. Damrosch would claim to have had in oratorio such singers as Albani, Patey, Santley, and Lloyd. I ought to add that Mrs. Hutchinson, like Albani an Ameri- can lady, sang delightfully, — a voice light, pure, strong, flexible, and sympathetic. But Mr. Thomas has never had a cathedral for his use, and never, never can he, or any other, attain with us the results for religious music which come when thousands of people, of kindred 52 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. nationality and of uniform training in worship, sit down together in a great cathedral, — nave, choir, aisles, transepts all filled, — bowing in prayer at the beginning and at the close, ris- ing in solemn accord at those passages which, hke the Ter Sanctus in the " Elijah," give their ascriptions to God in his most august attri- butes, and then slowly going away as from a house of worship, making their offering at the door for a cause like that of the needy orphans and widows of clergymen. In one word, it has been a great act of worship ; and I ought to add that on the last Sunday it was heralded by a special and glorious service in the ca- thedral, all in keeping, song and sermon and the dignity of the attendance both in num- ber and rank, with what should follow on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I wrote on the morning of the last, "great" day, the day set apart for the perennially young and beautiful " Messiah." This even- ing, as the close of the festival, there will be a second religious service, with evening prayer, psalms, and special anthems, and then it will be over, — save in the memory, where, with me at least, it will remain unforgettable, I must not neglect to mention briefly some details which will add interest. Each day TRIENNIAL MUSICAL FESTIVAL. 53 there is given one great musical service, be- ginning at half-past eleven and ending about four, but most restfully broken with an hour's intermission. This is arranged with reference to the pieces which are given, — in the " Re- demption," between the first and second parts ; yesterday between the " Stabat Mater " of Dvorak and Mendelssohn's " St. Paul." And to this add the great comfort of the pure air m so vast a room, and also that all have good seats. These cost all the way from fifteen shillings (about four dollars) down to about thirty-seven cents for each performance ; but such are the acoustic properties of the building that all the tones are blended and distributed, and carried so evenly to all parts that it matters not much where one sits. I may say that there is scarcely a poor place in the house for hear- ing. And then, as those in the nave, as well as all the others, sit sideways to the singers, and as by reason of the immense pillars more than one half of all the seats do not command even a glimpse of the performers, it is a pretty good test of the Wagner idea that music must come from an invisible source, that the eye may not be distracted with the personalities of those who produce the tones that delight us. And as I have been of the number all 54 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. this week who have seen neither singers nor players, I can affirm that in my own case this has indeed proved to be true. I have simply listened to pure tones, not thinking of those who gave them forth, but only of the sacred words of which they were the vehicle to my heart. I ought to add that on Tuesday and Thurs- day evenings there have been concerts in the town-hall, the programmes being of light and tuneful character ; and these have been most restful and refreshing after the strain of the day under the grander themes of the cathe- dral. Yet let it be said that on Wednesday evening the " Elijah " was given in the great church itself, filled, as at the " Redemption," to its utmost capacity, lighted most agreea- bly by gas-jets around the lower line of the groined roof, and prefaced and closed with brief prayers, as had been the service of the morning and afternoon. I should like to add some personal matters, but I will not. Those who are specially mu- sical will find elsewhere comments on Mr. Dvorak's " Stabat Mater," conducted by the composer himself. To me, fresh from the rol- licking and almost bacchanal " Stabat Mater " of the jovial Rossini, so recently given in TRIENNIAL MUSICAL FESTIVAL. 55 Hartford, the tender, solemn strains of this Hungarian composer were very touching and satisfying. But I will not enter into this. I end as I began, that I have now learned the great, the highest function of a cathedral. And we shall put our largest and noblest churches into fitting use when in the same spirit, — that of real worship, — we give them over to the service of God in song, reverently led by consecrated artists, begun and ended with prayer, and all done in view of the uplift- ing of men, not in the appreciation of fine art alone, but in the culture of the whole spiritual nature. I have looked forward to this festival ever since the cholera changed my plans and de- tained me, with so many others, in this beau- tiful England. And this great event, looming up in the early days of September, has more than fulfilled all my hopes, — it has been grander, more inspiring, more satisfying than I ever dreamed anything on the earth could be. It has been a great financial, musical, and — last, but not least — spiritual success, helping a noble charity and dismissing us all in great blessedness and peace. VIII. WORCESTER WARE. |N the general and extraordinary revival of interest in the department of what is now called '' ceramics," or the art of making pottery, Worcester, England, holds the first place. While there has been no rapid development in the manufacture of certain standard brands, — such, for example, as the Wedgwood and the Crown Derby, — there has been an unexampled advance in that which for one hundred and thirty-three years has been known as the '' Royal Worcester." It is made in the smallish city of Worcester, about a hundred and twenty miles west of London, — a place known also as the site of a noble cathedral and as the source whence come Dent's gloves and Worcestershire sauce. It is a city of less than fifty thousand inhabitants, — WORCESTER WARE, 57 in fact, about the size of Hartford ; and, like Hartford, it has a great historic name. But its porcelain is now what is chiefly adding to its commerce, and hundreds come to this pleasant city to look at the works and to buy — sparingly — of the goods. " Sparingly " I am compelled to say, for even in England, where nearly all kinds of pottery are abundant and cheap, Worcester ware bears so high a price as to be quite disheartening. I do not mean that it is quite so bad as it seems to us when we drop into our shops and see at what a figure it must be sold, with the danger of breakage and the tariff, but not even in Worcester do they give it away, — indeed the cost seemed to me very high indeed. They are now able to get what they demand ; for the reputation of the Royal Worcester ware seems to me to be in advance of every por- celain made elsewhere, in England, Germany, France, China, or Japan. The works are free to all the world on the payment of sixpence ; but I had the honor of being conducted through the museum by Mr. Binns, the man- ager and directing genius of the works for many years, and through the manufactory by a person specially deputed by Mr. Binns. I cannot undertake to give the reader a com- 58 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. plete account of this interesting visit. Of course, in a general way, one who inspects the works on Front Street in Hartford sees the same thing done in a crude fashion which in an extreme fineness and thoroughness are effected at Worcester. But one thing sur- prised and grieved me at Worcester ; namely, that the old " potter's wheel," often men- tioned in the Bible, seen on the Egyptian monuments, and unchanged in Egypt to-day, has now been superseded by the process of casting all articles in moulds ; and although on entering the visitor sees a workman shap- ing with deft hand a cup or pitcher or bowl, yet he is told that this is only for his amuse- ment, that for practical purposes this method has quite passed away. The reader may inquire what are the main grounds of the pre-eminence of Worcester ware over that of Sevres, Dresden, and other famous places. I dare not think that it is entirely to be attributed to the extreme care which is taken in every department, for that might be contested in some quarters. The Company have certain " lines," such as the "ivory finish," which are secured to them by patent ; they are able to employ the highest skill in designing and embellishing their wares ; and. WORCESTER WARE. 59 more than all, they now have two men at the head of the house whose energy, taste, and general business intelligence are a guaranty of success. And there is everything in this. I asked how it is that the Worcester house is so rapidly distancing the Royal Works of Berlin. Mr. Binns answered at once : " Because that is a royal house. They have a subsidy from the Crown ; they are not compelled to declare a dividend ; and therefore in the competition of to-day they fall behind us who have to make profits for our stockholders." One feature in the museum interested me greatly. In a large room are gathered speci- mens of the Worcester ware from the origin, in 1 75 1, as well as of other great makers in Europe and Asia. I noted the extreme beauty of the blue porcelain made at the outset, and said to Mr. Binns : " How strong you were at the very start ; you did not even begin with rough, crude work, but with beautiful and finished wares." " Yes," he replied ; " we followed very closely on the Oriental lines." In truth the articles were so nearly like these of China that I could hardly dis- tinguish them as imitations. One thing he told me about Chinese porcelain which sur- prised me. In that empire, where the arts of 6o A LEISURELY JOURNEY. printing, of making gunpowder, etc., are so ancient, the art of making porcelain — that is, translucent pottery — is believed to be but three hundred years old. So that, in fact, it has been made in Worcester nearly one half as long as in China itself. Another thing interested me ; namely, that the great masters in all these wares are the Japanese, that in the highest lines of decora- tion the Japanese have a freedom, a fertility, and a delicacy of design which make them easily the masters. And now the object of the Worcester artists is to imitate these Orien- tals in the same qualities. At present what is called the " Persian " is the chief pattern ; cer- tain lines, such as of portrait and object paint- ing, are entirely gone by. Mr. Binns does not consider porcelain a medium at all suited to display scenery or faces or history ; and I admit that having looked at the wonderfully beautiful paintings executed some ten or fif- teen years ago on jars, vases, platters, and the like, and comparing them with the new con- ventional forms of our time, I was much more pleased with the latter. The eye lingers upon these unsuggesti\^e lines, charmed with the graceful play of color and the free and airy flow, and rests delightedly in the result. Yet WORCESTER WARE. 6 1 there are some compositions made even now, into whicli heads and figures and other intel- ligible forms are incorporated, and some of them are almost priceless. I saw one which had taken three years to design ; and the pathos of it was that directly after it was fin- ished the artist died. They refuse to part with it, and it will long grace the museum. There are some seven hundred persons at work here, and one can trace the work from the crushing of the quartz, lime, clay, flint, feldspar, and other materials, on through the process of mixing, moulding, baking, enamel- ling, ornamenting, burnishing, and packing up the splendid products. I hardly know what interested me most, — perhaps the making of the lovely statuettes which are one of the chief products of the Worcester works. These are cast, but not all at once, — an arm, a fin- ger, a head, a foot, a leg, etc. ; and these are all most skilfully formed. To make a statu- ette a foot high requires at least twenty pieces, and they look very droll thrown about hap- hazard before they are brought into place. One thing which was impressed upon my mind at every point was the extreme care which is exercised even in the minutest parts of the manufacture of the Worcester ware. 62 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. There is not a slack moment from the first to the last ; there is not a careless workman. The most loving, patient fidelity is perhaps the great secret. I am not sure, but at any rate this, with the qualities mentioned above, is a conspicuous reason why the Worcester goods stand as they do. The grinding of a vat full of the materials is not a matter tossed off in an hour ; it lasts from seven to nine days, till the utmost possible fineness is gained. And so, when I followed the process of making even a saucer or a plate, and saw the devoted attention which it had from the first moment to the last, I did not wonder that the Royal Worcester mark (four W's making a ring) is a costly token. As an American I was pleased to learn that our nation is the best customer, the finest products going to us. IX. A NOBLE HOUSE NOBLY USED. |NGLAND is full of noble country- houses, which, though they differ from one another in the charms of situation, in costliness of structure, and in sumptuousness of decoration, are the wonder of tourists and the delight of Englishmen. They are so com- mon, and their palatial apartments have been so often described, that I should not ordinarily think of speaking at any length of one of the finest of them all, down in the South of Eng- land, in full view of the Isle of Wight and the Queen's palace of Osborn. But aside from its being the summer residence of a great Lon- don merchant, a man allied to the aristocracy by birth, his father being a baronet, it is devoted by the owner to a charity so useful and so winning that I venture, while not 64 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. mentioning his name, to speak of his house and the chief end to which he devotes it. I dechne to give his name, for I have been his guest, and am happy to be treated by him as his friend ; and had he not demonstrated the uses of a princely fortune in a way which must do •good if emulated by our great merchants, I certainly should not take the time to write, nor ask the time of others to read. This splendid residence, bearing the name of Holly Hill, is far beyond any ability of mine to describe. Its park, of about a thousand acres, with its scores of deer, its cas- cades and lakes, its multitude of rare birds, would be worth a long pilgrimage were it in America. The mansion itself is the most splen- did into which I have ever entered, save some of the palaces of royalty. What it is, that grand Elizabethan mansion, I cannot por- tray. It is no exaggeration to assert that the Vanderbilt mansion in West Hartford is in comparison with it but a wood-house. Two vases which stand in the inner hall are said to have cost twenty thousand dollars. The apart- ments are more splendid than those of the Ber- lin residence of the Emperor of Germany as they were twenty years ago. Having said this, I need not attempt a description; and now A NOBLE HOUSE NOBLY USED. 65 let me tell you of the main use of this noble mansion. During the tliree months of the owner's summer residence he receives from the workshops of London sixty young men week- ly, whom he entertains with free bed and board, giving them not only a home, but a ride daily in his yacht close by, the use of the park for cricket and other games, and all the out- door and indoor dehghts which can refresh these guests, whom he fondly calls his '' boys." An entire wing of the house has been set aside for their accommodation ; and he and his wife give themselves almost entirely to the pleasure of imparting to them refinement, happiness, rest, and health. They take most of their meals with the "boys," have a daily religious service with them, and make the summer un- forgettable to every one of them. The Congregational church in the village, a mile away, is the gift of the same man, who also pays the salary of the minister. One of his charities in the city of London, the fa- mous Polytechnic in Regent Street, in its new and Christian form, costs him five thousand pounds a year ; and besides these things no one knows or attempts to estimate the aggre- gate of his gifts. But no one of them seems to me quite so delightful as the devoting of 5 66 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. his summer palace to these men from their shops and factories, and making each one so happy. Had this man been not of aristo- cratic birth, an Etonian by education, and always an associate with gentlemen, it would have been less wonderful ; but for more than twenty years he has, in addition to a busi- ness whose scope would be rare even in New York or Chicago, been in the most intimate relation to ragged-schools, Sunday-schools, and other places where he could touch the poor and the spiritually destitute. I should like to speak more at length, for I might write pages about his work ; but these are busy times, and an outline must suffice. Oh, that our men of wealth would think of what a splendid use of life and its results is here ! It is Mr. Besant's book, " All Sorts and Conditions of Men," actualized ; it is the beginning of the good time that is sure to come. X. THE ISLE OF WIGHT. S one of a self-appointed committee of two, designated to the agreeable task of reporting as to the probability from internal evidence of the Isle of Wight being the site of the original Eden, I am pre- pared to give an affirmative answer. And the reasons for this opinion will be briefly set forth in the following paper, which I will make as unofficial in style as possible. All England is beautiful, save that dreadful part, given over to mines and to factories, which has received the appropriate designa- tion of the " Black Country." But after an inspection of England which has embraced even some of the lovehest scenery of Wales ; after seeing the beauties of Derbyshire, in- cluding Matlock, of which Hawthorne says 6S A LEISURELY JOURNEY. that he thinks it must be the lovehest place in all the world ; after viewing the beauty of the Wye, with Ross and Tintern Abbey included ; after spending a month by the English lakes, by the sides of Windermere and Grasmere ; after the lovely hills and valleys of Hampshire and Shropshire ; even after Malvern and its famous hills, — I must say that the Isle of Wight ^ sums them all up, and then eclipses them all. For what is there of beauty in the world that is not there ? I do not say of gran- deur or of subhmity, I say of beauty ; and yet there is also the touch of nobleness in its hills and cliffs and far-off ocean sublimities to make it even inspiring ; the word " beauty " does not comprise all that it offers. It is a little spot. It is shaped like a flat- iron, if you will accept so homely a figure, and is about eighteen miles in its longest length, and about tweh-e across. It is, there- fore, capable of being walked over and over 1 As one goes down from London to the Isle of Wight, one passes Farnborough, the residence of the Empress Eugtfnie, — to be seen from the train, — and Winchester, where is a cathedral well worth a visit. One ma)'easil3' diverge to Salisbury and Stonehenge, a few miles drive from Salisbury. Near Winchester, a short walk away, is Hursley, the scene of Keble's parish labors. THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 69 with the greatest ease. It is the paradise of pedestrians ; for while there are but a few lar- gish towns, such as Ryde and Cowes and Ventnor and Newport and Sandown, there is a multitude of hamlets and villages, each vvith some quaint inn, or noble mansion, or old and picturesque church, or thicket of trees and vines, or rugged chasm running steeply- down to the sea, making what they call a " chine." On the southern side of the island the cliff is grand. I know not how high it rises, but I should think that it must be not far from five hundred feet ; and beneath the cUff are Ventnor and Bonchurch, with their world- famous clumps and thickets and dense, flowing masses of ivy and honeysuckle and creeper, and blackberry and holly and laurel and bay. Here, sheltered from all cold winds, not only can the invalid prolong his hfe, but Vegetation, getti .ig the advantage of the same shelter, puts forth her fairest and best. I had a notion be- fore I came that in the frequent " views in the Isle of Wight " which artists give us, the tangle of shrubbery, those lanes which lead away so suggestively, with a dense mass of ver- dure, characterize the entire island ; but they do not. They are on the southern coast, and on that part of the southern coast where 70 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. alone, as at Ventnor and Bonchurch and Shank- lin, the cliff makes a grateful protection from the north wind, and gives an almost semi-trop- ical climate. When you climb to the uplands, when you ascend the high hills which make the Isle of Wight discernible far away, these luxuriant masses of verdure are exchanged for noble and broad sea and harbor and land views such as are worth a long journey to gain. Take, for example, Carisbrook Castle, about the middle point of the island, and but a mile away from Newport, the ancient capital of Wight. What a combination of interests cen- tre at the castle ! First of all, perhaps, the view from its sheltered keep. At the foot of the hill the litde village of Carisbrook, with its quaint houses, its trim mn, its winding streets ; a mile away Newport, old and faded, but very English, and keeping up the archaic type which elsewhere is so rapidly yielding to the commonplace and modern. Then the wide and rolling landscape, farms and copses and long lines of hedges, and the shining sea. Yonder is Arreton village, with its sunny little church ; and there, in the shadow of that church, lies the Dairyman's Daugliter, once " known and read of all men." A little way THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 71 beyond Arreton is Brading, and in the church- yard there Hes Jane, " the httle cottager," In Brading she Hved, her home pointed out even now, and in Brading Church the Rev. Legh Richmond preached some twenty years or more. I bought his stories at Newport, and read. them over again with more interest than ever, for I could see the beautiful scenery of the Isle of Wight faintly reflected on many a page. And yet as I read and compared those tales, once so famous and so widely read, with the best biographies and the best reli- gious reading of our time, I could not help thinking what an immense progress has been made since the " Little Cottager " and the " Dairyman's Daughter " were about the most edifying books that our people enjoyed. But we are looking at Carisbrook Castle. I spoke of the view ; now let me say of the castle itself that even if it had not a single interesting association, it is one of the most satisfactory in the kingdom. I have seen recently Ludlow and Harlech and Portchester, not to speak of the castles at Durham, York, and Lincoln, and surely Ludlow and Harlech and Portchester are among the noblest ; yet Carisbrook is quite their equal, and in some respects their superior. If one enjoys a noble 72 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. keep, a splendid entrance-tower, ivied walls, shattered traces of chapel and banquet-hall and kitchen, they are all here and at their best ; but Carisbrook has this advantage over even Ludlow, that it held within its walls that monarch, grandson of Mary Queen of Scots, who, like Mary, despite his great and glaring faults, has so fascinated men that they yet speak of him as " the martyr." For here it was that Charles I. was imprisoned ; and as the guide points out the window from which he asserts that Charles endeavored to escape, ycu forget all the sins of the misguided monarch — not sins against purity, but sins against human liberty and the rights of man, sins against truth and honesty — as you think of his noble bearing under suffering, and high-bred courtesy even in scenes of the grossest indignity. He was a gentleman born : no taint of his father's coarseness, no tinge of his grandmother's vol- uptuousness, but a kingly dignity and an inborn majesty of carriage which almost makes one weep when one thinks of him endungeoned and deprived of the sweets of life. Sadly Charles mounted that well-worn staircase which leads to the tower ; sadly his eye ranged over the beauties at his feet and to those on the mainland across the Solent ; sadly he came THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 73 down to his cell in the now ruined keep. Below in Newport, close by, he was deprived of the last vestiges of his courtly retinue ; here at Carisbrook he was a prisoner. But the genius of Millais has invested the castle with an interest more tender still, for here it was that Charles's daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, shared her father's fate, and here it was, in a room which I visited, that she drooped and died alone, her head resting on her little Bible. If, ray dear reader, you do not know the engraving, which I have often seen in the Boston and Hartford shops and in the homes of some dear friends, the " Prin- cess Elizabeth at St. James's Palace," I wish you would inquire for it. It adds to the in- terest that Millais — better known perhaps by his most interesting " Yes or No " — has taken his own daughter as the model of the Princess Elizabeth. We were permitted to visit the room where she died, as well as the other rooms where she lived, all in good preservation, very plain, according to our thinking to-day, but very rich and beautiful according to the stan- dard of that time. The remains of this beautiful girl have been brought unexpectedly to light within the past few years, and the good Victoria has caused 74 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. them to be interred in the old church of St. Lawrence at Newport and a marble bust of the princess to be set up within the church. In its virgin whiteness it gleams across the darksome edifice with a severe and beautiful brightness as one looks in at it from the open door. If I were writing for children I should tell them of the well two hundred and fifty feet deep, with its great wheel fifteen feet across, inside of which is a most knowing donkey, of a fabulous age, who, by incessantly treading, brings to your lips the same water which Charles and Elizabeth drank : and good and pure and cold it is. And I should tell, too, of the great bell at the castle gate, which used to ring when Charles was here, — aye, and for a hundred years before him. It is doing good service to-day, and looks as though it might for a hundred years to come. Is it not a deUghtful place to visit, this Carisbrook Casde? Then we drove away ; and passing again through Newport, we jogged on and on an hour more, till we came to the beautiful little modern church, planned by Prince Albert, where Queen Victoria worships when she is at Osborn. Near by are the gates of her palace grounds ; close by are the cottages and THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 75 almshouses which the Queen has built for the poor families, which she loves to visit. In them she is quite at home, and all the people love and revere her. On the Sundays when she is at Osborn hundreds drive from Ryde and Ventnor and Shanklin and Cowes to see her alight, and again depart when the service is over ; for of course the little church will not hold a tenth of those who want to see her. The Queen is almost never on view at London ; since Prince Albert died she has denied her- self the sight of almost all her subjects, and it is only at such places as this that she can be beheld, and then only in glances. Within the church her chair — a simple one, without arms or any special comfort — is so placed that only the preacher, her family and servants can see her, save for an instant as she comes in and goes out. Over her head is a marble medal- hon of her noble husband ; close by another of her beautiful Ahce. I cannot tell you how touching it was to see these and to read the sweet Bible verses beneath them, nor can I tell how deeply I felt the solemnity of the little church as my wife and I were permitted to sit in the Queen's chair and walk at leisure about and hear the loving and garrulous prattle of the keeper, — a good woman who is the object 76 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. of the Queen's care, and who delights in nothing better than to tell of the scores of visits the Queen has made her. " Do many Americans come here ? " I asked. " Very many," she replied. She told me that Ameri- cans seem to love the Queen quite as much as the English do, and to be more affected at the memorials of the Prince Consort and Princess Alice, and the simplicity of the church, and the goodness of " her Majesty," than even her subjects were. I told her that she might tell the Queen that Americans will never forget her kindness when Garfield died, and that we love and honor her as a woman, if not as a monarch. And so ended our visit to Whippingham Church, I should like to tell you of Ryde and its beauty, of the house in Ventnor where John Sterling, beloved of Hare and Carlyle and Caroline Fox, lived and died, and of his grave in beautiful Bonchurch yard ; I should like to tell you of Osborn, seen from the sea in its wealth of green ; of Cowes and its world-famous harbor and crowd of yachts. But I cannot, and must say good-bye to this paradise on earth, this little Eden of the North, this bit of beauty which it is worth crossing the Atlantic to see. XL HERTFORD AND OLNEY. FEW miles from London, going on the " Great Eastern," is the little town of Waltham, at which they do not make watches, but where they show you an abbey of much interest and an old bridge connected in some way with the Saxon King Harold. I heard the story, but it has a little gone from me. From Waltham Abbey I went the same day to Hertford, — about twelve or fourteen miles farther out from London, and yet only about twenty-five in all. Few turn aside to see this little market-town, from which our own Hartford derived its name, the gift of Samuel Stone, who came from Hertford, England. It is a little odd that although the place is spelled with an c, it is pronounced as if 78 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. with an a, and yet the t is not sounded, — just as my good deacon Turner still pro- nounces the name of our Hartford, and, as he tells me, it was always sounded when he came to the place. But Hertford in England, called Harford, is a little stranded place, with possibly eight or nine thousand inhabitants, but without a single fine building. It is the shire town of the county ; yet the county house is very ordi- nary indeed, the church of the place is neither old nor fine, the shops are small and insignifi- cant, and altogether the present town is quite overshadowed by its descendant, — not indeed as much as Boston, in Lincolnshire, which as a place is more contemptible than Hertford. But in the town which must be dear to every Hartford man are multitudes of houses much older than even the history of our city. You can judge of the interest with which I entered some of them, more than three hundred years old, and reflected that they were inhabited before Hooker and Stone had cut the first tree in the Connecticut valley. Some of these old houses are such good specimens -of former domestic architecture that they are worth visit- incf even as curiosities. I find no great industries in or about the HERTFORD AND OLNEY, 79 town, save the raising of water for the London market. For it is close by this town that the River Lea and the New River take their rise, — the latter an artificial stream fed largely from deep wells sunk in and near Hertford ; the former a small stream which issues from the Hertfordshire hills close by. And I was delighted to find that although the supply seemed small for North and East London, it was of so good a quality. I do not think that our own Hartford water is nearly so pure as that of the New River, and hardly better than that of the Lea. The whole neighborhood of this prosy little town is very pretty, full of pleasant walks and drives, and well worth a visit. Hertford does not amount to much, save from an ancestral point of view ; but Hertford surroundings are not to be overlooked even amid the beauties which everywhere meet one in England Some thirty miles north of Hertford is a group of villages which to the lovers of devout evangelical writings have an almost unique interest. They are Bedford, and Elstow ad- joining it, Bunyan's home ; Turveydrop, four miles from Bedford on a small branch road, a village where Legh Richmond was rector before he went to the Isle of Wight and wrote 8o A LEISURELY JOURNEY. the " Dairyman's Daughter " and the " Young Cottager ; " then, four miles farther, Olney, the home of Cowper and John Newton, and Weston, a walk of between two and three miles from Olney ; and about a mile from Olney in another direction, Emberton, where Scott wrote his once famous Commentary. Of these names Cowper's was the one which had the most interest ; for from my early school-da)^s, when I received his Letters and Poems as a prize, I have loved his gentle nature, his sym- pathy with suffering, his delight in pleasant scenery and in innocent pets, and most of all his enthusiastic capacity for friendship. Cow- per's life, too, apart from the dreadful malady which followed him relentlessly, is full of pathos ; the story of his disappointed love is one of the strangest and saddest in our litera- ture ; the story of his affection for the woman whose care was as a sister's, and who in her widowhood could not marry, if she would, the man whose brain was always in the peril of collapse : these things have all my hfe made Cowper's name especially dear and sacred to me. So I went to Olney and the other places I have mentioned, but to Olney chief of all, and saw the great old fashioned house where he lived, and the smaller and better-preserved HERTFORD AND OLNEY. 8 1 house at Weston, a short walk away, and the field where he composed " God moves in a mysterious way," and the garden-house where he tended his hares and wrote most of his poems, and the parsonage where his friend John Newton Hved, and the church where Newton preached and Cowper listened, — his most sympathetic hearer. It is even to-day a wholly unimportant village, small and poor, the home of simple lacemakers ; and to-day, as then, a man of Cowper's gentleness and cul- ture and shyness would be a phenomenon as marked as it was almost a hundred years ago. The scenery of the Ouse is tame ; even Wes- ton is a village not much above a low average of placid beauty : but Cowper's eye transfig- ured it all, and to him that flat and marshy tract was as glorious as Switzerland would be to a common observer. XII. A WEEK IN DEVON. MUST put on record one of the pleas- antest weeks of this whole stay abroad, — a trip to the West of England with a very dear English friend, a man whom fellow- travel, and common studies, and the inter- change of letters for a quarter of a century, and weeks spent under his roof, have made the most intimate perhaps of all the men I know. Leaving his home at Croydon, twelve miles southeast from London, we took a beau- tiful railway ride by the vale of Dorking, skirt- ing the great city and coming out on the Great Western at Reading. Reading is well enough, and without it how could we have Huntly and Palmer's biscuits, the manufactory of which covers five acres, and embraces five thousand varieties always in stock? They A WEEK IN DEVON. S^ and the London products of Peek and Frean go around the world, and will, I hope, drive the mongrel word " biscuit," which our care- less people apply to hot rolls, ignominiously out of the land. Well, on we fared westward over the only bit of broad-guage track left in England, the carriage eight feet wide, and rolled along at the rate of sixty miles an hour, with scarcely any motion, good company all the way, plenty of talk, and all of it pleas- ing to an American who loves his own country, and England next to it. I saw a lady at my side reading hour after hour ; and glancing at the book in some curiosity as to what could enchain her speechless while all the rest were so full of talk, I found that she was deep in " My Summer in a Garden." As her husband had been very free to address us, I said to the lady : " Perhaps, madam, you would allow me to interrupt you long enough to tell you that I am a townsman of the author in whom I notice that you are so much interested ; I might perhaps be pardoned for saying that we are on very friendly terms." She looked up in a moment, and I found enough to talk about in connection with him and the other illustrious names of Hartford. As a parting word, they asked me to send them a bit of 84 ^ LEISURELY JOURNEY. Mr. Warner's handwriting ; but alas ! I mis- placed their address, and they are still looking for it in vain. And so, working westward, we came at length to Bath, — that opulent old town of the last century, in which time seems to have stood still for more than a hundred years. For hours we wandered through its stately squares and crescents and streets, and talked of Smollett and Fielding and Beau Nash, and visited the Pump-Room and the Roman Baths (still in full activity, with water almost in- conveniently warm, right from the deep springs below), and saw where William Jay preached and lived, whose " Devotional Exercises " were the spiritual food on which I was brought up. We went to the old and faded Assembly Room and could in imagination see the Georges, the Beau known to all as King of Bath, and the gay parties of the old time. It was all like a brilliant picture out of the past, in that now quiet, yet still beautiful and restful, English town. Then on we went till hte in the day we came to Wells, — a little place of only about three thousand people, and with never more in the past ; and yet there, amid tliose small and even insignificant houses, rises one of those stately English cathedrals, as A WEEK IN DEVON. 85 beautiful in some of its features as even Lin- coln or York, built by old Bishop Joscelyn (I think) "to the glory of God;" never in- tended to be filled with people, but to be a silent yet eloquent witness to the truth and stability of our holy faith. Close by in his de- lightful old palace lives Bishop Plumptre, the great scholar, so well known to us by his books ; and here he ought to be able to study and to write. A long, Hngering glance at the cathedral and its sweet surroundings (I must use this word, for " sweet " is the only word which just tells what they are), and we went on to Glastonbury, where we slept. I wonder if our Connecticut Glastonbury people generally know that the town from which they take their name contains one of the oldest, noblest, and most beautiful ruins in all England, — an abbey which grew to be the richest of all those which were plundered by Henry VIII., an abbey whose foundation goes back in the sacred tradition to the very days of our Saviour, and is the reputed place where the Holy Grail lay hid during its long search by King Arthur and the rest. Joseph of Arirnathaea is said to have founded it, and a thorn-tree growing in the grounds is claimed to be a direct descendant of a thorn 86 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. , which he brought hither. We may believe this or not ; but at least the legend is a pleas- ant one, and it is no more absurd than many another. I should like to write at length of these beautiful ruins in Glastonbury, for they are well worth a visit, — and in fact they are visited by many Englishmen and by an occa- sional American. I cannot tell of Exeter and its fine, but not especially impressive cathedral, for I hurry on to the region which was to us the most delight- ful of the trip. We were aiming for Devon- shire, and that part of it where Charles Kings- ley was a boy, and where he in his manhood paused long enough to write " Westward Ho ! " To my friend and to a great many people besides him this novel is the one book which seems the bravest, healthiest, and most inspir- ing of all that the soundest-hearted men of our time have written ; and so when we came to the Long Bridge of Bide ford (By-the-ford) and looked off to the right and saw the new town of Westward Ho, and then journeyed on by carriage over the gentle Devonshire hills to Clovelly, we felt that we were in the very presence of Kingsley himself, — the genial, rollicking, earnest, eloquent Kingsley. We in America don't often hear of Clovelly ; I hardly A WEEK IN DEVON. 87 knew its name : but in England it is well known as on the whole the most picturesque and striking place on the entire coast. As you approach it, coming from Bideford, you look along the bold, rock-walled sea-line, and from a fairy-like wooded park called by the fantastic name of the " Hobby " j^ou see Clovelly, a mile or two away, built on ledges or shelves, on the very side of the cliff; little cottages perched wherever a bit of escarpment would allow them to stand ; each house en- vironed by creepers and ivies and honey- suckles and all manner of pleasant vines, and a stairway cut in the solid face of the rock, leading from the topmost house down to the one nearest the water-side. There is a little harbor, about as large, I should think, as a good-sized garden, and in the harbor lie, packed together, the fishing-boats of the Clovelly people, defended from the sea by a good bit of encircling wall. Two donkeys serve as the only means of transportation from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top. The one street of Clovelly has no name : if you are ascending, you are said to be going " up 'long ; " if you are descending, it is " down 'long." In the summer time the village is thronged by artists, who beg for the 88 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. privilege of staying tliere and sketching ; and they pay the simple people well for a chance to sleep in the tiny cottages. In one of these I found the plain little room in which Kings- ley wrote a large part of ''Westward Ho!" The name of the place was Jessamine Cottage, and the same landlady who cared for him and his wife is there, and speaks enthusiastic words about her pleasant lodger. Kingsley's father used to be the rector of the parish, and so his boyhood was passed here ; and Kingsley's daughter, Mrs. Harrison, author of " Colonel Enderby's Wife " and other first-rate novels, is the wife of the present rector. In the little burying-ground close by the church (not on the rock wall, but up on the high plateau back) I saw a cluster of graves of people more than a hundred years old. I said to the sexton at work close by : " It seems to me that people live to a great age here." " Yes," he said, " this is the only place in all England where it is too healthy for the folks to die ; and so when they reach a hundred their friends ha^'e to take them to the next parish to give them a chance to go to heaven. Then they bring them back and bury them." We had to leave Clovelly and all its charms. But then comes Ilfracombe, with its recoUec- A WEEK IN DEVON. 89 tions of George Eliot and her loved walks over the hills and by the cliffs ; and then came Lynton, beloved of artists and authors ; and then the Lorna Doone country, on the edge of Somerset. What a week it was to us both, — how full as it passed, how delightful to remember now ! But in truth all England is full of similar scenes ; and although I have spent several months in passing from point to point, its beauties seem to be simply inex- haustible. England is of all countries the one most worthy of our attention ; and yet it is the one which our people skip the most hastily. So long as peaks, and casdes, and ruins, and Gothic churches, and verdant hills, and still pleasant rivers, and sweet valleys, and com- fortable manor-houses, and quaint village inns, and pretty cottages, and the homes of the men who are to us the greatest and best names in all European history remain dear and precious, so long shall we find the pleas- antest hours of our foreign travel those which we give to England. XIII. A TRANSFORMED CITY. |0 one who returns to this city after an absence of nearly twenty years, Berlin exhibits changes so wonderful that it may be called almost a new creation. I do not suppose that any city in the world, Chicago not excepted, shows more of transfor- mation in the direction of splendor. As one walks through these magnificent streets he sees at a glance what the milliards of francs wrested from France have done. I have been here three weeks now, yet only within the past few days have I become so wonted to the changes as to contemplate them save with wonder. And when I go back thirty years, to the first season which I passed in Berlin, then a city of but four hundred thousand souls, badly paved, badly lighted, badly drained, and supplied with no A TRANSFORMED CITY. 91 water save what the public pumps in the streets yielded, I am amazed. And the Berliners, too, how changed is their aspect ! Then they used to hang their heads, to look provincial, to act as if they had no right to be ; now they hold their heads as high as the highest, and each one looks as if he had a special right to wear a crown. They have lost the deferential manner, the old-fashioned simphcities of dress ; they have put on the smoothness, the sleek, gay manners of the nation they have con- quered ; and now Berlin seems little other than Paris. Which of the two cities is the more beautiful to-day it would be hard to deter- mine ; but it is not too much to say that the new public edifices in Berlin, the new streets of splendid mansions, and the new decoration and enhanced size which it has given to what existed before the war, makes the German capital but little, if any, inferior to that of the French. As for comparing it with New York, or any of our great American cities, that is quite out of the question. The revival of the classical style has now come to its height in Berlin, and the beauty of the place lies in the unity of the impression which it makes. It is no jumble of incoherent styles, each one of which may be excellent, but which produce 92 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. only discord in the general effect ; it is the regular lines, reaching out in the far distance, of a style not in itself to be compared in pic- turesqueness with the Gothic, but which for utility, graceful and gende beauty, and mutual harmony, has no equal, — the neo-classic, which has already made Munich famous, and which has pervaded many of the streets of Paris. Of course the old favorite features remain, — Ranch's wonderful equestrian statue of Fred- erick the Great, his beautiful Louise in the Park, and the other in the Mausoleum, the attractive street called Unter den Linden, the noble old Schloss, or palace, the graceful new museum, the great theatre and opera- house, and other features which all travellers will readily recall. The Emperor's Berlin resi- dence remains just what it was when he lived in it as simply the brother of the last King, and I sadly miss his noble face and figure, as I have seen them so often in my younger days, at the window, receiving the officers of the army and the ministers of State. One may meet him driving out every pleasant day, this finely preserved man of eighty-seven, who even in his old age retains much of that stately beauty which he received from his mother Louise, the revered Queen of Prussia, whose A TRANSFORMED CITY. 93 portrait has so many admirers even in far-off Hartford. He still goes out hunting, keeping in the saddle sometimes four hours at a time ; and besides this, the city papers tell us daily of his constant services in the cabinet on matters of the greatest moment. The only sign which the public has of his decline is in missing him from the favorite window where he used to stand so many hours in the day transacting public business, and also in the thin face, the tired eyes, the increasing bald- ness. Yet in buying a portrait of the Emperor a day or two ago, my wife and I both gave our preference to one taken only last year, to one years ago, when he was younger. His habits still remain those of the soldier that he is. About a week ago I was allowed to go through one of the palaces at Potsdam where the Kaiser spends some time every summer, and there I saw the little hard mat- tress bed with its leather pillow and its simple cover. On nothing more luxurious than this does he sleep even in his Berlin palace. All the habits of the man are as plain as were those of his father before him, the king conquered by the first Napoleon. And speaking of this, I am reminded of one of the most charming pictures that I have seen for a long time. It 94 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. is in the form of two panels placed side by side, the left one of which contains Napoleon refusing to Louisa and Frederick William III. favorable terms of peace at Tilsit, while the right contains the nephew of that Napo- leon receiving terms from the son of Louisa at Sedan. Over the one are the numbers 1807; over the other the numbers 1870. Camphausen, the famous painter, has studied all the portraits and given them with great care, — the first Napoleon in his arrogance, Louisa in her gende, womanly beauty, plead- ing for mercy, Frederick William, timid and overawed, standing in the background of the one ; Napoleon III. looking crushed and broken, William of Prussia in his glorious dignity receiving the vanquished sovereign, in the other. Yet the age of the Emperor is so great that any day may bring in the tidings of a break- down in his health and the speedy extinction of his life. He is greatly, tenderly loved, — more, I think, than Victoria in England. This feeling seems to be universal ; even the most rabid Socialists do not seem to have lost the sense that they are ruled by one of the most moderate, most fortunate and kindest of princes. And this feeling is felt with Httle, A TRANSFORMED CITY. 95 if any, diminution towards the Crown Prince, of whom the Liberal party cherish such great expectations.- Not so the Empress, however, and not so Victoria, wife of the Crown Prince and daughter of the Queen of England. Towards the first of these ladies there appears to be no great warmth of feehng ; towards the latter still less. Of the two, Victoria is much the stronger character ; but in her, intellect seems to bear such a sway over heart that, believed as she is to be in sympathy with the most extreme party of rationalists, and occu- pied mostly with artistic and scientific matters, she does not seem to rule over the affections of the people as do her husband and her husband's father. In her own family she is believed to be an uncomfortable woman, and many stories are current respecting her temper and severity which it is unpleasant to hear and to believe. Into those, however, I will not enter ; and had I not enjoyed rather ex- ceptional opportunities of knowing this to be true, I had refused to credit it at all of a child of Queen Victoria. Berhn has become an especially attractive place to Americans. The musical advantages here are of the highest sort, and it will seem almost an exaggeration if I tell you what we 96 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. can enjoy here for very little money. For ex- ample, on Monday last I attended a concert at the Philharmonic, conducted by no less a man than the great Rubinstein himself, and the programme made up of his own Ocean Symphony, the Mendelssohn " Midsummer Night's Dream " overture, and Beethoven's Seventh, — though not the grandest, to my taste the most beautiful of all his works. The hall was beautiful, the orchestra large and fine, and the price of tickets fifteen cents. The regular price is nineteen ; but in any con- siderable number they cost but fifteen. And such concerts are given almost daily, and one is only embarrassed by the number of them. Of course there are many with special vocal or instrumental talent which cost more, — seventy-five cents, a dollar, or even a dollar and a half; but in these cases what is given is the best music that the world affords. There are, therefore, some hundreds of Americans now in Berlin, — just how many I cannot say ; but two hundred and fifty sat down at the Thanksgiving Dinner yesterday. Mr. Kasson, our minister to the Court of Prussia, presided with great grace ; and after the banquet — which in excellence did not, I beg to say, come up to the plainest Thanks- A TRANSFORMED CITY. 97 giving dinner I ever ate in America — brief and appropriate addresses were made by the Hon. Mr. Sanford, our special minister in the Congo matters/ Mr. M. D. Conway, Prof. Wheeler, of Brown University, Mr. Kreiss- mann, American consul-general, and the re- nowned African traveller, Mr. H. M. Stanley. Time was wanting to hear Prof Boardman of Chicago, Prof. Mead of Andover, and others who would have spoken had the hour not worn late. Divine service had already been conducted in the American chapel by the pastor, my old friend the Rev. Dr. Stucken- berg. So, excepting for the rather ordinary dinner, it was a good Thanksgiving day, — if any such day can be good nearly four thou- sand miles away from those with whom it has always been celebrated. Ah ! we could have put up with underdone turkey, and no pie or pudding, if for the day we could have broken down the Atlantic barrier and let Berlin and Hartford be one city. It was a strange feeling, the great currents of life streaming on as usual in this vast and splendid capital, and this little handful of for- eigners coming together, first to worship God, and then to feast on his good cheer. But to those who were in it and felt it, it was a great 7 98 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. occasion, and we blessed God that we could all look at each other and rejoice in one great and noble and prosperous land. Two Thanks, givings I had celebrated in Berlin before, — in 1865 and in 1859 ; in each of these fewer persons, much more simplicity of dress, and much less of elegance in the external condi- tions of dress and music and the like, but perhaps never with a nobler and more glow- ing patriotism, or truer sense of the gratitude which as a nation we owe to the God of our fathers, the God who has securely led us all these years. XIV. THE NEW YEAR IN BERLIN. HE opening weeks of a new year offer in Berlin abundant objects of interest, and make it difficult to resist the de- sire to take some note of them for Hartford friends. Christmas, too, which is so much to us in America, is still more full of delight to the German people. The poets sing of it, the preachers fill their sermons with it weeks in advance ; not to speak of the shops with their burdened shelves, the streets with their crowded sidewalks, and the multitudes of booths which spring up in all the pubUc squares and line the most important avenues. The trade in trees is one of the greatest industries of the season, and the sale of them is enormous ; for every family has its tree, from the Emperor down to the humblest cab-driver. A friend 100 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. of mine estimated that no less than seven million of small firs are destroyed yearly to supply the Christmas need. But I will not go back to speak of that season ; it has been often described, and it is full of joy and sweet- ness. It is all that it is with us, and a great deal more ; for every one is remembered with gifts. And then it is the home-coming time, just as Thanksgiving is with us ; and it is a great religious festival too, — full of worship, all the churches crowded, and that not to hear fine music and see beautiful decorations (for these are very simple, and the music not much more elaborate than usual), but because it is the time when the people have a most dis- tinct sense of the place which the Christ-child has in the regeneration of the home and humanity. Christmas past, the next feature of the closing year is what is called " Sylvester Even- ing," the closing night of the year. It is, so far as street-noises are concerned, much such as that preceding the Fourth of July used to be, — a night made hideous by unseemly sounds. All Berlin seems to be abroad, — cer- tainly all " Young Berlin ; " and from ten o'clock to daylight there is little sleeping possible, at least in the street where I live. Shouting, THE NEW YEAR IN BERLIN. loi singing, all the staple sounds of half-intoxi- cated crowds, filled the air. It was not safe to step abroad, unless you were willing to risk the horseplay of these masses of people, to whom a decent hat is an especial object of interest, and with whom it is only a question of a few minutes as to its being reduced to a state unrecognizable by its best friends. There is some danger, too, of violence ; for it is not uncommon for men to march with drawn swords in their hands, freely swinging from side to side : and woe betide him who does not quickly step out of the way. Then, too, it is a favorite night for balls. Thousands of Berliners dance the old year out and the new year in. But, again, it is just as marked for religious services ; and in many of the churches there are sermons at midnight and a faithful review of the past. So, in one way or another, the " Sylvester Evening " is one of the most striking nights of the year, kept in all these various ways, decent and indecent, sacred and profane. The morning of the New Year breaks upon a city at rest ; the crowds have disappeared, and one wonders at the stillness after so much tumult. But about ten o'clock, as soon as the day is fairly upon us (for in this season of the 102 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. year it is not light in Berlin before nine, and the darkness shuts down again between three and four), we set forth for the sights of the day. Friends who meet exchange the word of the season, " Prosit Neujahr," whose equiva- lent in our tongue is of course A happy New Year. A stream of people is setting towards all the churches, which are always crowded on this day. I take my way to the mean and insignificant cathedral of Berlin, built by Frederick the Great, — the only building which is allowed to remain in its old squalor and ugliness. It is crowded, — indeed that is too poor a word to express the density of the mass of people who besiege its doors. By private intelligence I had learned of a rear entrance ; and taking advantage of it, I was soon in a place where I could look across and see in a line the Emperor, the Crown Prince, his wife, Victoria, their son William, who will be emperor in his turn, the second son, Henry, and others of the imperial family. It is a point of royal etiquette to attend ser- vice in full uniform on the New Year's Day. The Empress is not well enough to be present, else she would surely have been there. It is a sight which delights German eyes to have before them at once five persons decorated THE NEW YEAR IN BERLIN. 103 with the Black Eagle, as were the Emperor, his son, his grandsons, and his nephew. The Crown Princess, Victoria, is not much of a churchwoman, and during the whole service she had a careless and uninterested look. The Emperor gave the closest attention, stood during the Scripture reading, the long prayers, and the creed, an^ seemed well and strong, — a little bowed, indeed, under his eighty-seven years, but otherwise just as he looks in all the portraits of him. His son is a man of splendid presence, looking more commanding every year. He is about fifty, more or less. I think he promises to be as handsome a man as his father, of a nobler and stronger type of beauty, indeed. For William has not a little of the grace and delicacy of his mother, the beloved Louise, whose portrait Hartford people know, while the Crown Prince has a hardihood and rugged power which his father's face and fig- ure do not suggest. The service at the cathedral on such occa- sions is noteworthy for its music. It has been often claimed that the choir, of sixty boys and men, has no equal in the world ; and as they sing their anthems to the accompaniment of the organ and four or five trombones, the effect is almost electric. The hymns are not 104 ^ LEISURELY JOURNEY. sung by the choir, but by the congregation ; and the effect of an old German choral from the lips of three thousand people must be heard to be appreciated. When the people sing, the trombones do not play. The Ger- mans are very free in their use of all the musical accessories which aid in giving effec- tiveness to worship ; and there is no word of criticism uttered with regard to the introduc- tion of any instrument which can add richness and power. The employment of the viohn, the cornet, the trumpet, the trombone, is so common as not to be noticed. This service over, and the imperial family having retired in their splendid carriages, the next event of the day is the reception at the Emperor's palace. From eleven o'clock till two there is a constant succession of equi- pages at his door ; all the members of the Prussian cabinet, all the ambassadors from foreign States, all the chief generals of the army, all the members of the royal family, pay their respects to the aged monarch. The great street, Unter den Linden, is thronged with people, who eagerly watch the carriages as they come and go. The only sign of tu- multuous and general interest was when Bis- marck came and went ; then there was a rush THE NEW YEAR IN BERLIN. 105 and a shout and an eager waving of hats and kerchiefs, and one did not need to wait long to know who is the hero of the masses. Not so when the revered Moltke came. Perfect quiet, but absolute respect. But what a day for the Emperor ! The long service in the crowded church ; then the standing and re- ceiving of some hundreds of titled personages, to all of whom he must say the right word ; then the dinner with invited guests j and then the theatre in the evening, when he must show himself in the royal box to his delighted subjects. What a man he is ! Every day at as hard work in his study as though he were but fifty or sixty, sometimes even four hours in the saddle daily, he has the true Hohenzollern capacity for labor and love for business, in which only one of his ancestors has failed, from the time of the Great Elector down to the present day. And how this venerable man is loved ! I stood at the door of the cathedral after the service and saw all the family come out and take their carriages ; and it was touching to notice the loving and sub- dued and reverential tone with which the men who stood near me said, " The Emperor ! " when the monarch appeared. They could hardly have uttered the word with a more I06 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. devout and touching reverence had Frederick the Great risen from the dead and taken his place again in the streets of his loved Berlin. Touching as is the love for Victoria in Eng- land, it is not to be compared with that of these Germans for William, the man who has led them to unity, greatness, wealth, and un- exampled renown. Well, the first day of the year passed, with its pageantries, and we are in its stream ; the world is still moving on, the dark, cheer- less winter days of Berlin follow each other, with their rain and mist and gray skies and muddy streets, and we long for a burst of good American sunshine and snapping cold and real winter. Not unhealthy is this Berlin winter : few people have colds or sore throats, few have pneumonia, or even coughs ; but sloppy and disagreeable and dispiriting is it, to a high degree. And were it not for the pleasant society here, and the numberless con- certs and festivities, and the long, long even- ings, from four o'clock endlessly on, I know not what we should do. But with all these the days pass most pleasantly by, full of their own special occupations and delights. Two days ago, coming in from a long walk, I found a letter awaiting me from George von THE NEW YEAR IN BERLIN. 107 Bunsen, son of Baron and Mrs. Bunsen, of precious memory, asking me to hurry down to the parliament, of which he is a member, and assuring me that I should be repaid for the trouble. I lost no time, and in ten minutes was in the capital seat which he had reserved for me. It was the closing debate on the German colonial policy, the initiation of the new course of Bismarck and the Emperor regarding what is called the " struggle for the equator." I had the pleasure of hearing Bismarck, Windthorst, and Richter, besides other men, including Derichlet, Mendelssohn's nephew. The debate was happily destitute of those biting personalities which had charac- terized the discussions of the day before. At the close, when the vote was taken, there was a happy blending of all differences, and Con- servatives and Liberals stood up side by side in giving currency to the new policy of African territorial enlargement, in reaching out to that new field and taking an active part in opening it to the culture, and still more to the material products, of Germany. In the debate the German pride of place and power was plainly uttered, — a determination expressed to make Germany a power on the sea inferior only to England and France, and to hold no place Io8 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. inferior to even these in settling and holding the new lands which have been laid open by Stanley in Central Africa. Free criticism was offered on the foolish French methods of forcing colonial growths in regions where there is no natural call, and the German mind showed itself fully aware of the uselessness of attempting this, but equally aware that all the great nations of Europe are called to strike in when tracts are opened to commerce, the possession of which and the development of which must lead to wealth and power. Bismarck looked old (he is almost seventy) , but spoke with an easy flow of words, without excitement, and with a touch of humor which was greatly enjoyed. Windthorst and he seemed easily to have the eai- of the house, and were heard with gi-eat attention. Near Bismarck sat Moltke, quiet, collected, hearing all and saying nothing. The hall is a pleasant one, much like our House of Representatives in Washington. The assembly was orderly even in its most heated moments, and the speaker's bell always and easily commanded perfect order. XV. MUSIC IN THE GERMAN CAPITAL. ATTENDED three characteristic con- certs on three consecutive evenings last week ; and because they give, taken together, so good a picture of one of the attainable delights in Berhn, I take them as my theme, and will devote a part, at least, of this letter to them. First the Bilse — pronounced Bilzeh — con- cert. Bilse is one of the institutions of Berlin,^ and an evening with Bilse is a standing delight. Bilse is a man, however, not a thing, — a man who has trained one of the most perfect or- chestras in Germany, which he holds together 1 Since writing of Bilse, he has retired ; but with a change of name the same cheap and good concerts remain. no A LEIS UREL V JO URNE Y. by the charm of his personal qualities. I should think there must be rather more than fifty performers in all, and their leader, Bilse himself, is a man well on towards sixty, tall and broad and with white hair, — an imposing presence. The hall in which their concerts are given every evening in the week is large and beautiful, with a double gallery and with rich decoration, yet in perfect taste. The hall-floor is covered with small tables, each accommodating four persons ; and it is the usual habit of persons attending to order some slight refreshment, — generally not more than a cup of coffee or a glass of beer. Two even- ings every week are called " symphony nights," and the chief piece is a well-known symphony ; these are Wednesday and Saturday evenings. At other times the music is of a lighter order, but never trivial, — good, brilliant, taking mu- sic, such as all well-trained Germans love. The hall accommodates some hundreds, — I should think five or six, when full, and perfect quiet reigns. Smoking is allowed on all but the sym- phony evenings ; then it is tolerated only the last half hour of the concert. The regular price of admission is eighteen cents, though there are several well-known shops where tickets can be bought for fifteen, and at the university for MUSIC IN THE GERMAN CAPITAL. 1 1 1 twelve. Those who want to pay more can have reserved and numbered seats at the magnificent price of thirty-seven and a half cents ; higher than this it is not possible to go at Bilse's. There is in another part of the city an equally good orchestra, perhaps a shade better, — indeed I have heard it spoken of as unsurpassed in the world, — the Philhar- monic, which is led by men like Scharwenka, Rubinstein, and Joachim, but whose concerts are not dearer. I will copy my last programme as a curiosity, to show to my musical readers what a little money will secure in Berlin : 1. Brahms* Tragic Overture. 2. Andante from Beethoven's Trio, Opus 97. 3. "A Phantasy," by Urban. 4. Liszt's Tasso : " Lamento e trionfo " [a mag- nificent and overpowering workl- 5. Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. 6. Beethoven's Overture to " Fidelio." 7. " Procession of Women " in Wagner's " Lohengrin." 8. A Coronation March by Moszkowski. And this is not at all an exceptional pro- gramme, it is merely the last one which I happened to attend, — that of Wednesday of the past week. So much for the first concert. The second was on the following evening, and was given 112 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. in the so-called New Church, — a church that was new about two hundred years ago, and which has borne that name to this day. It has recently been restored, however, and is now a really beautiful edifice, within and without. It is one of Schluter's famous buildings, — the same architect who built the Old Palace and wrought the famous statue of the Great Elector both of which all Berliners greatly vaunt. I bought my ticket for a mark, — a quarter of a dollar, — and found myself in no crowd, but in a tolerably large and most decorous audience, ready to hear a rendering of the peculiarly beautiful old music of Bach and Franck, and the modern music in the same manner. Becker, a distinguished composer of Berlin, whose "Reformations Cantata" I heard three weeks ago, was the author most fully repre- sented : fine, quaint, and most devout. I should like to give the whole programme, but will not, for want of space. The three most lovely things to my taste I have secured to bring home, and hope to translate them and make them of use in our American churches. There were two lovely things from Bach played by one of the violinists of the Imperial Chamber quartette, and two difficult organ solos, which the initiated doubtless enjoyed. MUSIC IN THE GERMAN CAPITAL. 113 A week before, I attended a similar concert in the cathedral ; to-night there will be another in the church of the Twelve Apostles ; to- morrow another in the church of St. Mary. Now what I want to note is that the German Protestants, rigid Lutherans and most scru- pulous as to the use of their churches, see no impropriety in doing this, and that these concerts do as much for piety as for good taste and musical enjoyment. No German needs to be reminded not to laugh and whis- per in the church ; no German needs to be bidden not to applaud ; and I can truly say that under no sermon which I have heard in Berlin have I seen an audience so profoundly moved as during two at least of the pieces given last week. A large license is allowed as to the use of instruments, the bassoon, the trumpets, the violin, as well as the organ, playing leading parts. The third of the three concerts which I at- tended was also typical, — " Samson," Handel's great oratorio, which in his day divided honors with the " Messiah " and the " Judas Macca- bseus." We in America are not unfamiliar with the names of George Henschel and his wife, the Boston girl Lilian Henschel. Having won the highest honors of Boston and no 114 A LEIS UREL V JO URNEY. slight fame in London, they are now in Ger- many, Mr. Henschel's home. They both sang in "Samson," she with her fine, true, birdUke voice, he with his ringing bass and dramatic fire. The other parts were equally good ; the chorus perfectly in time and tune, the orchestra the well-praised Philharmonic of Berhn. This was attended by a large hallful of the best people, and was a good specimen of this kind of concert in the Prussian capital. Every few weeks there is a chance to hear something hke this, and there is a good pubhc for all. Then there is the opera daily, — that is, the grand opera, — always in the German lan- guage, and thronged. The prices there are rather high ; it costs about a dollar to get a really good seat. Then there are two houses for light opera, said to be crowded, at about half the prices of the royal institution. Then there are piano and violin concerts almost daily, at prices sometimes as high as a dollar and a quarter. These are among the first in the world, and at them men like Joachim and Sarasate and Rubinstein bring out their very best powers. But into this I will not go. What I wanted to tell you of was the strictly popular concerts of Berlin, patronized not by MUSIC IN THE GERMAN CAPITAL. 115 the Emperor, indeed, but by the great mass of educated, intelligent, and reputable people, the music of the best, the prices low, the accommodations equal to those of any city that I have ever seen. So with these delight- ful resting-places a man may find his evening's entertainment altogether to his mind, and in the company of a few friends he can be at his ease and cultivate his tastes and feel that he is where all that is best in him is having its freest play. May the time come when we can enjoy all this in America ! XVT. AMERICAN STUDENTS IN BERLIN. jjHE Berlin winter is at an end; and with the approach of March nearly all the American sojourners here prepare to emigrate to southern climes and to begin to taste the delights of spring. Some, it is true, remain here to prosecute special studies ; some because Berlin continues to present great social and musical attractions till well on in the summer. For us, we propose to join the southward-mo\ang caravan in a day or two ; yet before going, there is a matter of which I wish to speak. A large contingent of the American " colo- nies " in Berlin and Dresden is made up of young women who come abroad to study German and art, generally music. Now and then there is an aimless one among them ; and AMERICAN STUDENTS IN BERLIN. 1 1 7 of those who merely want to have a good time there are more at Dresden, I am told, than here. But most of them are hard students, and deserve great respect. I have in mind this modern fashion of com- ing abroad to study. Of those who are here, few, very few, have gone so far at home as to have exhausted, or nearly exhausted, the advan- tages offered not merely in Boston and New York, but in most of our cities and larger towns. With the majority of these students in music and in the other arts it is a mere affec- tation that causes them to pay the prices which teachers like Joachim and Scharwenka must demand. And then, so far as learning the German language is concerned, I see no special advantage in coming here. There are two ways of living open to an American : he must take rooms, and his meals in his rooms, — in which case he sees only the servant who waits upon him ; or he boards in a large " pen- sion," where he mingles with a crowd of other Americans, and always speaks English. This is the prevailing language of the tables in all the boarding-houses of which I hear, and the chances of entering a private family are very rare. We are as a nation so exacting in the matters of warmth and food that those who 1 1 8 A LEIS UREL Y JO URNE Y. know US best are the most shy of us. So that it comes at last to what one can learn through a teacher ; and teachers can be had in all our towns, without the expense of crossing the Adantic. I find here a not inconsiderable number of persons, very Hmited in means, obliged to deny themselves almost all that is enjoyable in this city, where music is not a very costly luxury in itself, and who starve along month after month, because it is " being abroad," and not in an American city. I confess that this seems to me a very stupid use of time and money. For a family not caring much about learning the language, and wishing to pass a quiet, restful, and most agreeable winter, this is a charming place. Such a muldtude of excellent concerts at low prices, so many social privileges, such reason- able rates for living, — about twenty-five dollars a month for board being the usual price, — and so really beautiful a city in which to walk, full of fine shops, splendid buildings, the lustre of a renowned capital, the home of a celebrated reigning family, the seat of a great university, the residence of the most distinguished Ger- man authors and artists, Berlin presents per- haps unsurpassed advantages for a winter's stay. The climate is trying, and is often dis- AMERICAN STUDENTS IN BERLIN. 119 agreeable ; much dark, dirty, wet weather ; some cold, if not very cold days ; and once in a while a passing visit of bright and beautiful ones. I do not think, taking this feature into account, as I have learned to do the past four months, that I should advise a winter residence in any European capital north of the Alps ; they are all subject to the infirmity of dark and disagreeable weather : but aside from this, no place can be named which, on the whole, can vie with Berlin. XVII. AT LEIPZIG. |T is a rather rare experience and a very pleasing sensation to be welcomed at such an hotel as Krafft's Hotel de Prusse, in this city, by an American lady, for- merly Miss Annie Beebe, of New Britain, Conn., and now for eleven years the wife of the urbane and efficient landlord. I had no stranger's welcome, but found myself imme- diately at home in a beautiful room looking out on the great square, the new museum, the university, the Church of St. Paul directly in front, and with the varied panorama constandy in motion before my eyes. As we had hved in one of the most quiet streets of Berlin, the change was very agreeable ; and for hours one can sit and look at the carts and carriages, and peasant-women laden with baskets of provisions, and shop-boys carrying AT LEIPZIG. 121 bundles, and fine ladies tripping by, while in full view is the stately "promenade" of the city, filled with noble trees, and proniising most grateful shade one or two months hence. A house better placed and better kept it would be hard to find. Mr. Krafft has the good for- tune to be widely known and highly esteemed in the German world of letters and art, and his house is the invariable halting-place for artists and authors of the first rank. At the present moment Frederick Haase, the Lester Wallack of the German stage, and Oscar Blumenthal, the most successful of German play-writers, are guests at the house, — the latter coming here to witness the first performance in Leipzig of his " Probepfeil," and the former to take the leading part in it. Wagner in past times was a guest in the house ; and if Mr. Klrafft should some time write out his " recollections," he might and would make a most entertaining volume. But I must not dwell further on this very satisfactory hotel, agreeable as it would be to do so, for Leipzig itself has its attractions, many and great. I but renew old thoughts when I say that personally, to me, Leipzig is the most delightful place of residence in central Europe. This I say knowing that in 122 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. winter it is foggy and smoky and sooty, and becoming more and more so every year, but because in thie summer and all the year through, in fact, it has resources which are rarely good. It has four separate grounds for distinction, — as a centre of trade, as a centre of manufactures, as a university city, and as a musical capital. Which of these shall be placed first depends on the taste of the person making the choice. It is not so very large a city, — certainly not compared with Berlin and Vienna, with London and Manchester, with Paris and Marseilles, with Rome and Naples ; but it is a perfect hive of industries and of busy hfe. Its book business is simply enor- mous ; book -publishers are as thick as flies in August, and some of their warehouses are larger than even those of the Harpers and Appletons. Then the city is canopied with a cloud of smoke which comes from the great chimneys which are seen just outside the city in all directions ; for, I rejoice to say, they are not found to any considerable extent in the city itself. The streets, too, are thronged with the youth who come not only from all parts of Germany, but from all parts of the world, to study in its university. And then, too, its conservatory of music, working for more AT LEIPZIG. 123 than fifty years, has made Leipzig one of the first, if not the very first, musical centres of the world. Men not very old can remember the time when Moscheles and Mendelssohn and David and Hauptmann founded their school ; and it is worth going some way to see the picturesque heap of old buildings which still, with great disadvantages, form the seat of the conservatory. Happily, a wealthy citi- zen of Leipzig has given a very large sum, — three hundred thousand marks, — towards building a new conservatory, to stand close by the new concert-hall, which is one of the most elegant buildings in this or any city. So that in ten years from this time the unsurpassed orchestra of Leipzig will not only have an un- surpassed hall in which to play, but the stu- dents of music, then probably to be numbered by thousands, will have adequate accommoda- tions for instruction. The coming of Mendelssohn to this city about fifty years ago was a turning-point in its musical development. True, the concerts in the Gewandhaus had been celebrated long before that, and there Hes before me, as I write, the programme of a concert given in 18 16, in which the famous Catalani sang, to which the price of admission was three thalers, — a sum t24 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. equivalent to at least five dollars at the present time. The history of those Gewandhaus con- certs will one day make a very entertaining volume, — the story how a large room, origi- nally intended for the trade in cloth, and hence called the " Gewand " house, became the most famous concert-room in Europe, in which the rights to seats grew to be a great source of family pride and wealth. In fact for years it has been difficult to purchase tickets, and the general community has had to be contented with the public rehearsal, to which the price of admission has been as high as to most concerts in Berlin and Vienna. Reinecke, the distinguished composer, is now the leader of the orchestra and the leading teacher of the conservatory. His artistes play four nights a week at the opera-house, besides giving the weekly concert at the Gewandhaus. I ought before leaving this subject to say that in building the extremely rich and beautiful music-hall, which has taken the place of the old one, the ancient name " Cloth-House," has been retained ; and, oddly enough, the Leip- zigers speak of this Temple of the Muses, over whose portal stand the words "Res severa rerum gaudium," the New Cloth-House ! Such is the power of habit and association ! AT LEIPZIG. 125 Leipzig, like Vienna, Hamburg, and many other old towns, owes a great portion of its beauty to the ancient wall, or rather to what takes the place of the wall. This has been razed since Napoleon's time, and the new " promenade " — a broad walk filled with trees, statues, and resting-places — has come to abide in its stead. War has made way for peace, and the old and picturesque town is girt by this charming barrier of shade, into which the merchant or his clerk can plunge in a five minutes' walk, and which the dweller in the suburbs must cross whenever he enters the old town. These suburban precincts are varied in character ; in some places monotonous and common-place, like most of the older streets of Berlin, in others stately, like the new streets of the Prussian capital. A noble park, the Rosenthal, lies not fifteen minutes' walk from the city, and charming restaurants with their gardens make an agreeable resting-place in the summer months. Near the city and connected by horse-cars are little villages, pleasant and semi-rural, in one of which I found the house wherein Schiller passed a large part of the year 1785, and in which he wrote " Don Carlos " and the " Ode to Joy," A house more simple, poverty-stricken, and 126 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. meagrely equipped, I never saw. His house in Weimar is plain enough and poor enough ; but it is luxurious compared with this at Gohlis. I hardly ever saw a room " set off" in a barn garret at home more rough and rude. His wash-stand and his table would not bring a dime apiece. And yet here, under these gaunt and naked rafters, and on these bare floors, he wrote that great ode which was the inspiration of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, — perhaps the grandest piece of music ever com- posed by man ! I never saw such great re- sults evolved amid such simple surroundings. I have been a week in this city, and every day has been full. It is the place of places for music, and in this week I have heard Handel's "Messiah," Bach's " Ein' Feste Burg," at one concert ; at another Beethoven's Third, or " Heroic " Symphony ; at another his immortal Fifth ; at another three of Handel's great pieces for choir and orchestra ; besides other and very choice entertainments. I have spent a forenoon with Mendelssohn's youngest daughter, and had the pleasure of looking over the great collection of her father's letters and drawings and the precious treasures connected with him. I found that she and her husband knew of my humble efforts in the translation AT LEIPZIG. 127 of the " Life of Mendelssohn," and in intro- ducing "The Mendelssohn Family " to Ameri- can readers ; and therefore, instead of treating me as a presuming and even impudent tourist, were most gracious and hospitable. She in- herits the great beauty both of her father and mother, her manners are gentle and suave, and it seemed as if through her I could look back into the very Mendelssohn home and time. Her husband is professor of law in the university, and a man of great social distinction. Mr. Lampadius, for forty-five years pastor of the Church of St. Nicholas, whose Hfe of Mendelssohn I translated more than a quarter of a century ago, was most kind, and with his family I have spent many unforgettable hours this week. And what shall I say of the visits to the antiquarian shops, and the little treasures picked up there ? What of the drive with the hospitable Mrs. Krafft, in which my wife and I were introduced to so many of the beauties of the Leipzig suburbs ? What of the rambles among the old gray buildings, the peeps into Auerbach's cellar, into dim old haunts of Goethe and Bach and Lessing? what of the friendly and intelligent American circle here, so busy, and yet so kind? If I forget this week in Leipzig, I shall lose one of the most 128 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. delightful seven days in my whole life. And yet I know of those who think the town dull and narrow and provincial and disagreeable. How true it is that the people whom one meets make the place what it is to us, — the hotel where one tarries, the friends whom one meets, this little by-play, so to speak, amid what seem the greater incidents and experi- ences which make up the body of one's jour- neyings ! And so it has been this winter with me. I love Berlin, because I have learned to love friends there ; I cleave to Leipzig be- cause I have found warm hearts there, — friends whom I hope to keep so long as they and I shall live. XVIII. RELIGION IN GERMANY. AM now just bringing seven months of residence in Germany to a close, — four and a half of them in Protestant, two and a half in Roman Catholic Germany. Of religious movements in this latter division I can report nothing, for I am not at all in a position to see and understand the religious workings of a Roman Catholic community. Here in Tyrol the people are called " very su- perstitious," or "very religious," according to the point of view taken. Certainly there is no end of the ringing of church and monastery bells, beginning, as far as from my observation I can determine, at two o'clock in the morning and continuing indefinitely all day, making a church or monastery a real trial of patience to those who happen to live in its neighborhood. 9 130 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. But aside from this I see and know nothing ; there are the usual spectacles of Roman Catholic countries, — much church-going, great and solemn processions, images of the Virgin and Child and of the Saviour along all the highways and streets of the towns and cities, and a great number of manifestly Roman Cathohc churches and monasteries. As to the observance of the Lord's Day, there does not seem to be any marked difference between Protestant and CathoUc Germany ; neither part of the land keep the day in what may be called the Scotch, English, and American man- ner. As respects the connection of religion with morality, too, it is hard for a man at the disadvantage I am in Catholic Germany to form a reliable judgment, and therefore I pass none. But in Protestant Germany, and especially in its great capital, Berlin, where I spent four months and a half, I had better advantages, and was able to make comparisons with the country as I had seen and known it years before. It is now just thirty years since I first visited Germany, and twice since that time I have spent several months in Protestant Ger- many again. The changes which I notice in what may be called the progress of religion RELIGION IN GERMANY. 131 are great. We are accustomed in America to connect attendance at church with religious life and prosperity. This matter has under- gone since my first visit so great a change as to amount to a revolution. I remember when the churches in Berlin were empty, save the Cathedral, which drew a crowd simply to hear its exquisite music and to see the royal family. Now the churches are filled, and many of them are crowded. It has been one of the discomforts of the past winter and spring that it has been hard to get even a comfortable standing place in some of the parish churches of Berlin and Leipzig. And the more evan- gelical the minister, the greater is sure to be the crowd. So great, too, is the desire to hear the decidedly evangelical ministers of Berlin that they are overworked with the constant draught on their powers, as much on week-day evenings as on the Lord's Day. Men like Dryander, Frommel, and Stocker are over- whelmed with applications to speak, and they must decline more than they accept. Then see the revival of what we in general call the home missionary activities ; especially as to the moral welfare of great cities. I sup- pose that in London, New York, and Chicago more is done in this way than in Berlin ; but I 132 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. have never been situated so as to see more. Through the whole wmter the circle of people amid whom I lived talked of little else than of the work going forward for the moral regenera- tion of Berlin. I heard of the really great and effective movement made for the brutal and degraded cab-drivers of the city, — a class of men notoriously intemperate and low. I saw something of the devoted people who are scattering the sermons of the most acceptable preachers. I was repeatedly observant of the activity of the Young Men's Christian Associa- tion, whose work in Berlin is certainly one of the wonders of the city, whose rooms on the leading 'business street are so attractive, and whose management is so effective and so wise. The more widely I looked, the more I saw : the institutions for training skilled deaconesses, or, as we may call them, " Protestant sisters of charity," to act as nurses both within and with- out the hospitals ; the great and growing work ot what is named the " Inner Mission," reaching out into all fields of what we term home mis- sionary activity, — this struck me more than anything else which I saw in Berlin last winter. A traveller finds what he goes for ; and I have no doubt that had I wished, and had I tried, I might have easily discovered a wicked side RELIGION IN GERMANY. "^ZZ to Berlin, — indeed an actively energetic work going on side by side with, and indeed partly accounting for, the brisk and prosperous labors of good men and women. But I must say that I did not see anything of this side of the city. Nay, more, I failed to detect by such indirect tokens as meet one in Brussels and many other cities — such as publicly displayed vile books, evil- suggestive pictures, and the like — that just beneath the surface there is the cause of so great corruption as exists at Naples, and perhaps at Vienna. One hears rumors of scandal among artists and court people : but one also hears these positively denied ; and it is notorious that the influence of the imperial household is at the present time more strongly in favor of purity than ever before in the history of Prussia, save in Louisa's day. Then there is the great influence of Von Schlummbach, the German Moody. He has, as Moody had in London, the backing of people of high social distinction, and his work is thorough, and very healthful. Li a word, the state of religion in Protestant Germany, judged by all the tokens which are applied to it in other lands, is most hopeful ; and were I to take time, I could, I think, fill you with much cheer in this regard. XIX. IN TYROL. IT is a great change from Berlin to this quaint town in the heart of Tyrol, from the stiff, rectangular caj^ital of Prussia to the rambling, mountain-girt old capital of this land of romance and song. The very name of this place was new to me a few months ago ; but to the people in Germany it is as familiar as the Riviera, Nice, and Men- tone are to the people of England and France. In a word, it is one of the two or three places to which the German doctors send their patients when they prescribe a change of cli- mate for the winter. What is there about Meran — pronounced Mayrahn — which has such suggestive and attractive excellence ? It is, that lying amid Alpine heights, overlooking IN TYROL. 135 it on all sides but one, through that one, as through a gate, the Italian south wind creeps up all winter long, while the sharp declivities on the north and east and west fend off all the cold blasts and shield the town from the severity of the season. Snow and frost are rare in Meran ; and from time immemorial it has been chosen as a winter residence. Some twenty- five old castles, once inhabited by war- like barons, nestle on the sides of the hills and mountains around the place, and one can hardly look in any direction without espying these picturesque strongholds, some of them still inhabited. Two of them in fact have been fitted up as winter boarding-houses for some of the hundreds who from September to June may be found in this valley town. Through the meadows roars the Adige, — or Etsch, as the Germans write the name, — and its music can be plainly heard in the stillness of the night. But not alone the Adige makes this wild and delightful music ; dozens of mountain- brooks rush into it from all directions, crossing one's path continually in his walks, pouring through all the streets, as in every village in Switzerland, and giving that sense of refresh- ment to eye and ear which all travellers enjoy so much in that land of mountains and of moun- 136 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. tain-brooks. A large side-stream, called the Passeyr, enters the Adige too at Meran, and along its side for about two miles a walk has been constructed, which, in my Umited experi- ence, is the most delightful promenade which I have ever enjoyed. I often sit down on one of the scores of seats which have been provided for visitors, and wonder what can be more beau- tiful in all the world. It would be vain for me to try to give you the details of these views, which indeed vary much according to the point selected ; but a mere statement of what is com- bined in them will show that I do not exag- gerate, — in all directions snow-clad mountains, ranging from five thousand to nine thousand feet in height, save where at the south one looks into Italy as through an open door. Nor are these mountains far away, they rise abrupdy from the valley ; and turn which way you will, there are the little chalets perched high in the air, amid patches of green, and then above them the great masses of dark forest, and then the glittering fields of snow. The town itself lies in a garden of trees, many of them the fruit-bearing ones which we know so well ; others, especially those along the prome- nade, the shade-trees of Italy, green for the whole year. IN TYROL. 137 To this you must add the castles on the hillsides, the numerous tasteful hotels and vil- las which have been placed on every eligible spot, the foaming brooks and rivers, whose voice is a perpetual song, the festive attire of the hundreds of visitors, the picturesque cos- tumes of the Tyrolese, who are everywhere to be seen ; and you will admit with me that no scenery in a theatre, brilliant as it may seem, can surpass what is constantly before our eyes. But you ask, Is there no other side to this? There is, — that other side which invariably appears in these " climatic resorts," like Arco and Cannes and Eaux Bonnes. It is the dreadful faces and forms of the doomed ones, often too weak to walk, rolled along the most frequented streets, and especially the great promenade, by the scores of men whose only occupation is to trundle the wheel-chairs pro- vided for consumptive invalids. Go where you will, and the faces of these sufferers meet you. From the time when the sun begins to be warm till he withdraws his beams in the late afternoon, these patient sufferers are moved to and fro to get the blessing of the light and warmth. Their attendant friends walk by their side, chatting with more or less animation, and these people make the society 138 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. of the place. People come here to get well ; they walk, they lounge, they read ; twice a day they listen to the excellent band which plays to the visitors, and look up the grand mountains and out upon the indescribably green and beautiful valley. And so the days go by, quietly, restfully, delightfully, and one wishes that life had nothing more severe than to dwell at Meran. And this too is Tyrol ; and every now and then in the hotel dining-room, or in the " Kurhaus " hall, the people of the land sing their songs and jodel and play the zither, and so beguile the evening away. And this place, too, was the scene of Andreas Hofer's most tragic life ; close by Meran, up in the Passeyr valley, reached only by a bridle-path, he hved, like our own Israel Putnam, an inn-keeper. From that inn he was called at the time when Napoleon had conquered the land and had occupied it with his armies. At Meran and at Innsbruck Hofer had what I may call his lit- tle court when he put himself at the head of the Tyrolese in their effort to throw off the French yoke ; and at Meran, in an inn not a gunshot from the room where I now write, Hofer was confined and heard his sentence of death. He was executed at Mantua in IN TYROL. 139 Italy, but he was buried in his own Tyrol. Since I have been here I have re-perused that thrilling book called "At Odds," by the Baroness Tautphoeus, — known, I hope, to all my Hartford readers, — in which she has told the story of Hofer's romantic career as she gathered it from the lips of an old lady whose youth was passed amid the exciting scenes of the Tyrolese struggles. Tell may be proved a myth ; one by one the legendary heroes of our youth are relegated to the pale land of fable j but Hofer is too near our own time for this. He was put to death in Mantua as re- cently as 18 10, — when one of my best friends in Hartford was still a lad of ten years, — and the story of his Hfe is fresh as of yesterday. He is the one man whom all the Tyrolese revere ; his portrait is in every bookseller's window; tablets adorn all the houses with which he had any connection ; everything which he possessed has its own special value, and is almost unpurchasable. As for the Tyrolese themselves, it is rather hard to say much, for it is difficult to learn much. They speak a dialect of the German so obscure that I journeyed yesterday for two hours up the valley of the Adige listening to the talk of the driver and a peasant without 140 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. getting the faintest idea even of the subject of their conversation. To one who speaks the German of Prussia and Hanover, it is suffi- ciently hard to understand the dialect of Bavaria and Wiirtemberg ; but that is easy as compared with the corrupted speech of Tyrol and of German Switzerland. Tauchnitz has published a little volume — which, I think, was reprinted in America, called "Tyrol and the Tyrolese " — written by an author whose father was English and whose mother was a native of these valleys ; but I think that the two Taut- phosus novels, " At Odds " and " Quits," contain the best accounts which are readily accessible as to this people. Contrary to all general opinion, they are not mirthful, but rather serious and taciturn. Nor are they all singers : only in the Ziller valley is music the natural and inevitable and constant utterance of feeling ; and although even in Meran and Innsbruck, and all the largish towns and vil- lages, the zither is played, one has to go to the little concerts given in the evening to hear the Tyrolese music. The zither is, in fact, the piano of this country, and to play the zither well is a very common accompHshment. Many of my readers have heard this instru- ment : perhaps in a large concert-room, in IN TYROL. 141 which it is entirely out of place, being thin and weak, and only good in a small room. It is a miniature harp, laid on the table instead of being placed upright, and yet very inferior even to a harp in sonorousness of tone. But in a little circle of friends it has its own spe- cial charms, — indeed, some of its effects are almost equal to the violin ; and to hear a Tyrolese girl play the airs of her country as I did for two hours last evening, in a small room and to a handful of listeners, is a real and a great delight. This place, so beautiful in the winter and the early spring, becomes unendurably hot in the summer ; and at the time when a hundred other places are full, Meran is empty. To remedy this for the Tyrolese inhabitants, the shops of the place all open into long arcades, like the bazaars of the East, leaving a dark, narrow street between. This is of course in the old town, — the historical Meran, the for- mer capital of Tyrol, and even to this day the seat of considerable trade with the villages for miles around. I like, even in these spring days, to leave the broad streets where the new villas stand and wander through the long line of arcades; to see the Tyrolese from the country, often looking, men and women 142 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. alike, hard worked and prematurely old, but picturesque in that national costume which you have seen in pictures or worn by the singers who go out from these hills and reap a golden harvest in every land. Nor is the dress as we see it in Hartford or New York any ex- aggeration of what may be seen in Meran or Innsbruck ; it is just the same, always pictu- resque, and even graceful, so that I imagine that a doll which lies before me, destined for a certain httle body in Hartford, would take a prize for beauty in any doll's fair that I have ever seen. But here I must stop ; but before I do I wish that I could place before the eyes of my friends at home just this panorama which meets my eyes as I look up. I sit on a sofa in a carpetless room, after the manner of the land. In the next room a lawyer from North Germany is playing a vioHn superbly ; he of- ten exercises his gifts in concerts, so great is his skill. On the balcony sits a Httle woman dear to many of my readers, book in hand, but with eyes directed, I notice, to the great cool afternoon shadows which play over the mountains, and I suspect much more intent on the color of those vast green fields half way up, and the snow-fields beyond, than even IN TYROL. 143 on the Tautphoeus novel in her lap. Beyond her, and framed in by the open door, lie the green fields outside of Meran town, filled with trees and vines and flowers ; a few handsome villas dot the landscape here and there ; in the distance, yet not far away, a little village, Marling by name, with its church and its white houses chmbing the base of a massive peak called the Marhng Mountain. Farther away is the lofty shoulder of Laugenspitze, nine thousand feet high, and by its side the great lion form, the " Mendel," looking like one of the hanging- cliffs of Meriden multiplied by ten. Between those peaks and my table the Adige rolls along ; with its song mingles that of the mountain-brook which foams through the garden at my feet. On the promenade I see the people coming and going ; the wheel- chairs rolling, each with its pale occupant ; now a carriage whirls by in which the brother of the Emperor of Austria is taking his after- noon airing, looking out upon a view which the Baroness Tautphoeus in her " Quits " pro- nounces one of the most beautiful in the world. All this is here taken in at a glance ; all this is seen from the sofa on which I sit and look out on the everlasting hills. I think of my friend Lucy Larcom and her inextin- 144 -^ LEISURELY JOURNEY. guishable love of mountain scenery, and wish that she could watch these glorious peaks, I think of other dear friends who have had such comfort at the White Hills of New Hamp- shire, and wish that they could see these gi-eat and solemn mountains of eastern Switzerland, amid which it is my privilege to pass these April weeks. May a like good fortune be in store for them ! Here the little woman aforesaid utters the words from the balcony : " Why will you sit there and write instead of coming out here? It is perfectly delicious ! " XX. LAKE GARDA. T is neither in my heart nor mind to inflict a letter on the reader touching such hackneyed themes as Venice or the Italian lakes as such, meaning by that term the oft-described Como and Maggiore. I will only say that since I wrote, six weeks ago, from that beautiful Meran, I have seen Trent, the scene of the great " Council," more celebrated than even the famous " advisory " Brooklyn council ; Verona, in northern Italy, where exists a Roman amphitheatre second in size and magnificence only to the Colosseum of Rome, and perhaps equally celebrated as the home of Romeo and Juliet, whose tomb is still pointed out to the weeping and credu- lous pilgrim who, Shakspeare in hand, reads that wonderful play in the very city where lived the Montagues and Capulets. And 10 146 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. Venice, too, has had a week, — one short dream-like week, full of precious memories, but quite beyond my reach to transcribe for Hartford friends. But I am now in my third week on the shores of an ItaUan lake quite unknown in America, and almost as little known even in Europe. Who of my readers has any thought of Lake Garda, save that it is the largest of the Italian lakes and the one least mentioned? When I have spoken of my plan of spending some two or three weeks on its shores, I have always been met with the words, "Why Lake Garda? That is the least pretty of all the lakes." But the simple fact is that it is the least known, — in truth it is quite unknown. I have found no description of it in any of the books ; no work of travels that treats it in any way save in neglectful silence. It was not so in the ancient times, in the days of Virgil and Catullus ; and from the win- dow where I now sit I can look off toward the peninsula of Sermione and almost see the ruins of the magnificent villa where Catullus wrote his poems, surrounded by the unrivalled gar- dens which he has so worthily described. Later still, Charlemagne built a castle there, of which far less remains than of Catullus' villa ; and still later one of the Scaligers of Verona — LAKE GAR DA. 147 whose tomb divides honors with that of Shaks- peare's Juliet in that fine city — built there a palace, now in splendid preservation. Along the western coast of the lake are still found Roman remains in abundance, and the only difficulty with Garda is that it has temporarily passed out of the sight and the knowledge of men. Yet in the very last year a new and delightful hotel ^ has been opened on the Riviera of the lake, kept by a gentleman who has been trained in Switzerland, which is destined to take a high rank and to cause the beauties of this lake to be better appreciated. And within the past week a celebrated physician, known throughout central Europe for his skill and experience in diseases of the chest, has purchased a house not a gunshot from this hotel, and has made up his mind to live here as in the place which he thinks the best of all in southern Europe for persons afflicted with 1 The hotel and pension at Gardona, on Lake Garda, has been much enlarged smce my letter was written, but it remains for those who speak German a most desirable spot in which to winter, if in deli- cate health. English is somewhat spoken there, but German is the chief language ; though of course Italian can be practised when one goes out into the country. It is reached by steamer daily from Desen- zano ; and this place is a regular station between Milan and Venice. 148 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. lung and throat troubles. This single fact, taken in connection with the admirable hotel accommodations already existing, and to be greatly extended this summer, will draw thous- ands here, not only from Germany, but also from Russia and Austria. The chmate is more even than at Nice and Mentone, or, in. a word, on the French Riviera; more than at Pau and Biarritz, — perhaps more so even than at Algiers and Sorrento. It js a curious fact that when one passes out of the little Italian village of Gardone and enters the courtyard of the hotel, one enters Germany : the servants are German, the language German, the news- papers German. The owner of the hotel is a German lady whose husband purchased estates on the shores of this lake about eight years ago, and who, seeing the great advantages of the spot, built for the future, and then suddenly died, leaving the work of developing the place to his energetic and accomplished widow. The future has looked a little uncertain till the advent of Dr. Roden on the scene a week ago, when, with his immediate appreciation of the value of the spot as a winter resort for in- valids and his prompt purchase of a house for himself, the future was placed immovably beyond contingency. Yet quietly, and with- LAKE GAR DA. 149 out any visibJe means of advertising, this place has already begun to be known ; and during the past two or three weeks we have had the pleasure of meeting here a Russian princess, an Austrian count, an Itahan marquis, a gen- eral in the Prussian army, and other persons of the highest social distinction, all of whom have come to but one conclusion regarding the Riviera of Lake Garda. The peculiar charms of these Italian lakes are of course known to all my readers, — namely, that their shores are green and beauti- ful and sunny ; a mass of gardens filled with orange and lemon and mulberry trees, with all manner of semi-tropical flowers, not to speak of roses, which in richness and variety surpass all possible conception ; while but a few miles away, in fact so near that the great shadows may be watched every pleasant afternoon, are the mighty Tyrolean Alps and the peaks of the Swiss Engadine, covered with their great banks of soft white snow. I can hardly tell you what a beautiful contrast this makes. I can sit at a certain place in my room, and out of one window can look across the placid lake, into which I can toss a pebble from my chair, and see the charming island on which the Marquis Scotti has erected one of the most 150 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. delightful of villas, and there seen for miles away, that beautiful isle rests upon the waters of the lake, never of the same color two suc- cessive hours, and like a dream in its placid and changing beauty. And then I turn a little in my chair and look out of another window northward, and there, about ten miles away, is the great Alpine chain, the huge snow-banks lying in the warm afternoon sun, not chilling or repellant, but looking refreshing and beau- tiful as the sight of our great fleecy afternoon cloud-masses in summer as we in Hartford see them lying over Talcott Mountain. And this view northward takes addidonal charms from the great lemon-garden close to the hotel, which in its intense greenness the eye must take in before it rises to the vast moun- tains northward, gray at the base, white and soft and fleecy at the top. And, oh the peace of the place — the rest, the refreshment after a winter in a great capital like Berlin ! We read German and ItaHan ; then we have a litde music ; then we climb the hills a hundred feet or so, and look out over the lake to see the tower on Solferino's battle-field, and the great broad expanse of the water, flashing in its ever-varying colors ; or we wander off to some litde Italian town on the shore and dip Lake garda. 151 for a half-hour into Italy ; and then emerge and return to our pleasant home and friends and books and music. A good table is in the Swiss inn, good beds by night, all pleasant delights by day. Do you wonder that we linger on the shores of Lake Garda? And then if we want larger towns, they are not far away. The steamer touches at nine in the morning, and will take us down to Desen- zano, ten miles away, at the foot of the lake, or we can easily walk to Salo, two miles away at the south, — both large Italian towns of about five thousand souls each, both entirely untouched by the modern spirit. The little shops, the old houses, the cobble-stone-paved streets, the dark entries, the long arcades, the people, men and women, hanging out of the windows, — the former smoking their long, slender pipes, the latter watching you closely out of their dark, pleasant eyes, — now and then a clumsy carriage or a more clumsy cart ratthng over the stones : all who have seen any Italian town will recall the scene. But one wearies soon of the abodes of men in Italy, whether cities, towns, or villages, and returns with fresh pleasure to the lake side, and sits hour after hour in the bright Italian sunshine, the unread book in hand. 152 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. and for employment only the dolce far nienfe. And oh ! the sweet, tranquil lake, broad and long, holding the soft clouds in its embrace and giving them all back again from the dreamy depths. And oh ! the green and gold and blue in its water shifting and flash- ing and reflecting the hills and houses and gardens and mountains. And oh ! the boats in the distance or near, floating lazily along, the sails painted old gold in the queer Italian manner, or the oars lifted sluggishly also in the slack and easy Italian manner. And so the pleasant days go by, — alas ! too soon to end, — and we must leave fair Garda behind us. But multitudes are to come after us ; and ere a few years this beautiful lake, now off the great lines of travel, must be known as Como and Lugano and Maggiore are known. And then when this Riviera shall be the rival of the French Riviera, and Gar- done and Salo and Maderno shall be the rivals of Mentone and Nice and Cannes, it will be a pleasure to remember that we were among the first to see it as one of the best places in the world in which to keep at bay that disease which is the dread of all Northerners, and in which to pass a pleasant, equable, and even a delightful winter. XXI. SWITZERLAND REVISITED. WROTE last, weeks and weeks ago, from the shores of that quite unknown Italian lake, Garda, so overshadowed by its sisters Como and Maggiore. Since writing that letter I have sailed not only on these and their younger sister, Lugano, but, crossing the Simplon, I have seen and traversed lakes Geneva, Thun, Brienz, and am now on the shores of the beautiful and varied sheet which we call by the name of the chief town of this region, but which the Germans know only as the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons. Of all these lakes, the four in Italy and the four in Switzerland, I cannot tell which is the most beautiful. Nature has lavished her ut- most charms upon them all. I am much in the condition of the English Hazlitt, who, when 154 ^ LEISURELY JOURNEY. asked which play of Shakspeare he admired most, said " always the one which I have read last." By this test, the Lake of the Four Cantons is the most beautiful of all this charm- ing series of eight. How many of my readers can recall it, — the placid view from Lucerne, with the Righi in the foreground, and stem, grand old Pilatus at the right, the green hills coming down to the water's side, and south- ward the great snow-capped mountains as far as the eye can reach ? And some of my friends, certainly the "Admiral " and the " General," will recall our ride down the lake fifteen years ago, and how one after another the great peaks came out, each nobler than the one be- fore. They are all here now, fixed and un- changing, like truth and a hallowed friendship. The proper way to enter Switzerland is as I entered it with my family twenty years ago, and again with my friend B. seventeen years ago, and not as we have done this time. If one takes the great mountains at Zermatt and Chamounix, first, and then passes via Thun and Interlaken to the Jungfrau, and stands on the Wengern Alp, right at the foot of this beautiful yet grand mountain, and hears hour after hour the thunder of her avalanches, and of the Monk and Eiger close by, it seems like SWITZERLAND REVISITED. 155 a fall in dignity to cross the Brunig and come to Lucerne, beautiful as it is. One should take Lucerne first, with its quiet and striking beauty, and then the Jungfrau and the other Bernese giants, and so pass to Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. And it has taken ten days for us to release ourselves from the commanding and almost oppressive influence of those colossal forms and come into sympathy with the sweet gentleness of this scene. Yet it has been done, and day after day we linger, remem- bering the greater monarchs of the Alps with a kind of awe, but none the less drawing nearer to the unsurpassable loveliness of this beautiful sheet. My friend B., were he with me now, would seek in vain to find that quiet little inn where we passed five days together in 1868, looking out upon the Queen of Eng- land's launch under our windows, and see- ing her Majesty come down almost daily from her villa on the hill back of the town, and with her son Arthur and her daughter Beatrice tak- ing their frequent rides upon the lake. Nor will my friend the " Admiral " forget how he joined us the fifth day, and after seeing the Queen for the first time broke out with, " What ! that ! that the queen of England ! That fat old red- faced woman the Queen of England ! Well, 156 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. . I wish I had never come ! " How often I have thought of his face at that moment — my good Hartford friend and neighbor, and wished that some kind artist could have caught it in its mingled chagrin, amazement, and perplexity. It seems quiet in Lucerne, and in Switzer- land too, in comparison with that busy sum- mer of 1868. There are a good many EngHsh people floating hither and thither, but almost no Americans. The fear of war and the dread of being quarantined by the cholera, and perhaps hard times too, have caused the Americans to be scarce ; and I miss the national accent ever)where, and the familiar words " I guess." There are, in fact, not quite Ameri- cans enough this year to keep one from feeling a little lonesome. All the more easy does it make it, however, to get good accommodation at the hotels, and Switzerland remains at once the smallest and the roomiest country in Europe. I thought last summer that it was a wise and good thing to devote four and a half months to England, and I still think that in all respects, taken historically, socially, as well as architecturally and eesthetically, England leaves all other lands behind ; yet when I find myself in Switzerland, this Httle tract of moun- tains and valleys seems to outweigh even Eng- SWITZERLAND REVISITED.- 157 land, and to be the true paradise. For despite English greenness, what can be more intense than the glowing verdure of these meadows and mountain sides, their pasturages often chalet-dotted and climbing up for two or three thousand feet? Away up there, on those green and vivid clearings, we see the little Swiss cottages, and in the evenings we can descry the cattle slowly coming home, and hear the sound of the deep-toned bells and the clear-voiced jodel ringing down the moun- tain sides as if for our sole delight. And then when one has climbed three, four, or five thou- sand feet, and stood on one of the minor eminences, and looked far over the great tract of snow-crested mountains, and the lakes large and little, and the long hnes of green valleys, and the multitudes of villages, and the great white roads binding them together, and all the signs of Ufe amid these beautiful green hills and placid lakes, he feels sure that there is and can be but one country of perfect beauty, and that is Switzerland. And then men have done so much to make this whole land agreeable. That mythical in- dividual of whom all Americans have often heard, " who, though he be never so clever, yet can't keep an hotel," is not known here. 158 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. The whole land is made up of trained hotel- keepers ; and whether you take up your home in such a palace as the Berner Hof in Berne, or the Schweizer Hof in Lucerne, or in one of the almost countless little " guest-houses " which dot the country, you can hardly go astray. There will be a great difference in the size of your bill, but you will find cleanli- ness and comfort in abundance in the simplest and smallest inns ; at least so Baedeker says, and he knows.-^ I think if I had a few hundred of my old Hartford friends together now, I might inter- est them in a rather detailed account of a visit to Zermatt, and another to Chamounix, and another to the familiar Wengern Alp ; but I shall attempt nothing of the kind now and 1 I wish to name — of course without any sugges- tion but my own good will and delightful recollec- tion — the hotel in Lucerne known as the Rhigi, that at the lower end of the lake on Tell's Platte, and that true "home" in Interlaken, Villa Bischofsberger. Other places in Switzerland which leave a specially winning place in the memory are the Hotel d'Angle- terre at Vevey and the Des Alpes at Chamounix. The rates at all of these do not vary much from seven francs a day, when one remains for a week or more. At such grand hotels as the Berner Hof at Berne or the Schweizer Hof at Lucerne, of course the rates are higher. SWITZERLAND REVISITED. 159 here. Switzerland is a land well known and much described ; and shall I open the book again to tell not the twentieth part as well what Mr. Warner and Mark Twain have told ? I have read the " Tramp Abroad " afresh in Switzerland, and I assure you it is a different book when one gets at the very " source and origin " of its broad and vigorous humor. But no accounts, whatever their value, can possibly make good the seeing for one's self. Take, for example, Thorwaldsen's famous Lion here in Lucerne. All the world comes to see it, and not a moment passes from morning to evening but a group of people stand before it in hushed amazement. You know what it commemorates, — the death of some hundreds of Swiss who in the tim'e of the first French Revolution guarded the palace of the king, and who fell, every man of them, in defending Louis XVL and Marie Antoinette from the assaults of the savage crowds. Paid foreigners though they were, they nobly upheld the glory of the Swiss name, and proved themselves "faithful unto death." Here in Lucerne they are buried, and close by this peaceful grave is a great lion cut in the face of a wall of sand- stone by no less distinguished hands than those of Thorwaldsen. You have probably l6o A LEISURELY JOURNEY. seen copies of it; no one leaves Lucerne without one in wood or ivory, or at least a photograph large or small. It is a wonderful work. The great creature, twenty-eight feet in length, lies wounded unto death, its huge paw relaxed in weakness, lying over the shield of France adorned with the Bourbon lilies, and even in its dying agony endeavoring to protect its sacred trust. The spear which has given it the fatal wound lies broken under it, and the shield of Switzerland, with its cross, is just by the head of the noble, suffering crea- ture. Seen even in photograph, it is so pa- thetic that one might almost weep over it ; but the best photograph falls so far short of the total impression which one gains at the visit that it is but a suggestion and a souvenir. The great rock-wall rising high amid the trees, which stand silent around its base in loving reverence, save where cleared away to allow men to approach, the vines and smaller trees which festoon the sides of the wall and even the top, some of them drooping so tenderly and so veiling the light that it falls softened upon the great dying lion ; the spring of water which bursts forth at the foot of the rock and flows out into a miniature lake on which swans glide to and fro, — this and the soft tone SWITZERLAND REVISITED. i6l of the rock color, so low and cool, and the hush which comes on all who enter this sanc- tuary of nature, are so unexpected that, as a friend said to me this morning, " no words can possibly describe the impression." The photograph of the mere lion in hard black and white gives not even a foreglimpse of the sweet reality. I think that, taken at once in its historic meaning and its artistic embodi- ment, Thorwaldsen's lion at Lucerne must be declared the most beautiful and grandest work of modern times. II XXII. THE ENGADINE. F it were suddenly asked of you, my good reader, what is your general idea of the Engadine, where it is, and what it is hke, what would be your answer? I assume that you have read some of the rose- colored accounts in which during the past few years the Press has been so prolific, and that you have caught so much at least of their bewildering and contagious ardor that the name " Engadine " is an enchanting word. Well, what is the Engadine like ? I will not try to guess what your answer would be, but I will venture to think that you would be a good way wide of the reality. Not to make a short story long, then, the Engadine is simply a narrow trough between two mountain-ranges, a trough about sixty miles long and about a mile wide. But of this long valley only one THE EN G AD IN E. 163 sixth is the part in vogue, — the so-called Upper Engadine, the eastern sixth of the whole, a little tract to make so much stir in the world, yet about the same size as the Yosemite, which makes more noise yet, and which is not greatly unlike it. Yet I would rather call it a miniature Utah, for it is high and dry and cool, and the physical conditions are not unlike those of Utah. In one word, then, in the extreme southeast corner of Switzer- land, touching Italy on one side and Austrian Tyrol on the other, is this valley, not low, like most of the Swiss valleys, but so high that to reach it you must cross lofty ice and rock- bound mountain passes, so high that nothing will grow there but grass and fir and pine trees. Little pale-green lakes lie in the valley, connected one with another by a tiny stream, which makes them seem like a string of pretty beads. As I came down from the Julier Pass I could count four of those lakelets, each about two miles long, and so near each other that a ten minutes' walk would span the in- terval. In this little valley, which is about six thousand feet above the level of the sea, or the height of Mount Washington, there are small villages of people speaking the Latin language, slightly modified by mixture with l64 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. the ancient native tongues, and forming what is called the " Romanic." It sounds so much like ItaHan, which is also a corrupted Latin, that the untrained ear does not mark the difference. The people are poor, of course, since pasturage is their only support, aside from the care of the thousands of visitors who flock to the Upper Engadine every summer and fill the huge boarding-houses and hotels. And so Pontresina and St. Maurice and Am- aden and other places have grown to be great resorts, and the vast buildings look as similar overgrown monstrosities do in all parts of the world. Grass in the valley, fir and pine trees on the mountain sides, are all that will grow. No, not exactly that either; for just as at Zermatt and Chamounix and all the high Alpine places, charming and wonderful little flowerets hide themselves, so here the bota- nist is rewarded by many rare specimens, which give the place a certain fame. But these the common eye does not see. Now to give you a sense of this valley, I must not fail to add that the two mountain ridges which hem it in rise to but a very moderate height ; and so, as one sees them from the basin of the Engadine, they do not look vast and imposing at all, — like mere - THE ENCjADINE. 165 third or fourth rate mountains such as you may see, not in Switzerland alone, but in any country. But this is the peculiarity of the mountains which edge the Engadine valley that being absolutely high, and only rela- tively low, as seen from the vale they are spotted with glaciers and snow-patches, — not tipped with snow, for it is rare even in Swit- zerland to find a snow-tipped mountain in July and August; only Mont Blanc and a few others present snow-covered summits all the year round. But in the Engadine you may see all along the mountain-line enough of snow patches and of small glaciers to make a pretty contrast between the grassy vale and the dark-green firs which climb the mountain bases for perhaps a thousand feet. And it is an easy walk, too, for an experienced climber to ascend to these patches of snow and ice ; the ladies delight to do it, and win their laurels thereby. Well, this is the Engadine ; and when I add that the air in this high region of grass and firs is crystal clear, I have given you all. The people say of it that it is winter nine months out of the year, and cold weather the rest of the time. But the other Swiss valleys are so hot that people are glad to get into the high and dry l66 ' A LEISURELY JOURNEY. little valley, and fashion is there, and folly is there, and wisdom is there too, and you may find anything you like ; or rather, you may find what you bring with you. But as we wound up the slow zigzag path yesterday morning over the mountain pass which should bring us out into the lower world again, and I looked down on the village-and- lake-besprinkled valley, with the infant Inn threading the scene, I said to a companion, as I contrasted it with the luxuriant beauty of Interlaken and Thun and Lucerne and Vevey : " Is there in the world another place where elements so simple collect an interest and secure a fame like this little Engadine valley? " Lakelets, grass, fir-trees, a fringe of ice-spotted mountains ; nothing lush, brilliant, broad, dreamy ; nothing tropical, nothing richly ver- durous, like England and Italy. I think that, after all, the clear, cool, dry air is the chief charm. It is the one spot which I have found where you can be comfortable even at midday. And this is the famous Engadine. But the way up and back, who shall describe it? Certainly I shall not attempt it. It was worth being disenchanted, when up in that rather prosaic valley, to have had the views which the climb up to it had afforded: I had THE EN GAD I NE. 167 come from the shores of beautiful Lucerne, traversed the smihng Lake of Zurich and the gem-Hke Wallen Lake, seen Ragatz^ and the world-famous Gorge of Pfaeffers, and arrived at Chur, the end of all railways in eastern Switz- erland, the end of all easy journeying by lake as well as by rail. And then the mountain climb, up the valley of the infant Rhine, no larger than the Farmington, to the wonderful Via Mala, where the whole of the Farther Rhine passes through a long cleft, only a yard and three inches wide. You stand on a bridge — which my readers have perhaps seen a hundred times in photographs — and 1 Should Johanna Spyri's books have the same vogue with us which they have in Germany and Switzerland, the reader of " Heidi " and of " Rico and Wiseli " will be glad to learn that Mayenfeld, near which is the village of Dorfli (Jenins), is not far from Ragatz, in the valley of the upper Rhine, and that the authoress wrote " Heidi " and found her characters while visiting in that neighborhood. Rico's home at Sils Maria, in the Upper Engadine, I also visited, — a few miles only from St. Moritz and Pontresina, and Peschiera on Lake Garda as well. The Spyri books seem to me wonderful in their grace, brightness, and purity, — as sound reading for the elders as for the little ones. I am told that Mrs. George Ticknor — perhaps the most cultivated lady in Boston of late years — had " Heidi " read aloud to her four times before her death. 1 68 A LEISURELY JOURNEY. look down to the river, nearly two hundred feet below you, and see the Rhine dashing through a sluiceway so tenuous that you could , easily step over it ! And then there is the Schyn Pass with its torrents, and the Julier Pass ; and then, coming out of the Engadine by another route, there is the terrific Albula Pass, so wild that when we were just amid the chaos of ice and rocks at the top a gentleman with us said one might almost think this was a bit of the moon ! It looked just like that mass of confusion that one descries on the surface of the moon when seen through a telescope. But passing that, shall I tell of the waterfalls by the score, abundant as silver was in Jerusa- lem in the time of Solomon ; and shall I tell of the rich, verdurous valleys and the old castles on the upper Rhine, and the chalets on the mountain-sides, and the view every now and then of some grand ice-covered mountain? In one word, shall I try to picture the glory and beauty of this wonderful Switzerland? No ; all this far outruns my simple pen. I must be content to carry it away in memory, and live it over in the years to come. THE END.