%wa s fLtt LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.] Chap. J(?J?4k&k*:_. Shelf —j-p£ ,;• *>•• rMM • . §rt \,y /. "•?• RAMBLES BY PATEICIUS WALKEE v. \\>^s^ QUEEX'S BOWER. LONDON : LONGMANS, GEE EN, AND CO. 1873. All rights reserved. TO ME, & MES. W. H. FOEBES (IN RECOLLECTION OF A PILGRIMAGE TO ' THE TABARD ' ) AND OTHER AMERICAN FRIENDS, TO WHOM THESE SKETCHES OF THE OLD COUNTRY WILL PERHAPS BE MORE INTERESTING THAN TO PEOPLE ON THIS SIDE THE ATLANTIC, THE RAMBLER RESPECTFULLY AND CORDIALLY VENTURES TO INSCRIBE THIS LITTLE BOOK. London : December 1872. PEEFACE. These little Sketches (first printed, or the substance of them, in Fraser's Magazine) are, as the title ex- presses, of a rambling kind ; yet, though discursive, not disconnected, if the thread of the writer's individu- ality can be traced running through them. The basis is topographical, — Mr. Walker being fond of seeing new places, both as delightful and refreshing, many of them, to the eye and spirit, and chiefly as giving food for meditation, to which he seems to have a somewhat Jacques-like tendency ; he has noted down some of the pictures and associations that passed through his mind, for his own pleasure, and, if perchance he can find any sympathetic readers, for theirs. He does not carry them to Japan or Central Africa, but to nooks and corners close at hand, towns of familiar names, old villages, country landscapes, and bits of coast. No one need read the book through, and any chapter will do for chapter first. This reader may like to be re- minded of the New Forest — that, of Canterbury Cathedral, or of Clovelly. Someone intending to fish or tour in the Green Island next vacation, may have viii PREFACE. an appetite for the salmon-fishery, and the flavours of Irish history and character, in chapters five and six ; and people who desire a familiar notion or reminder of a meeting of the British Association, scientifically and socially, may find something to help them in chapters seven and eleven. Those who do not care for a portrait of Cobbett, may look at one of the less known William Gilpin, or of the poets Herrick and Herbert. There is a good deal of talk and criticism on poetry up and down the pages, and the Rambler has evidently a leaning that way ; as well as a great objection to the demolishers and defacers of beautiful old buildings. Science, and its relations to religion, are discussed; and many features of modern life and thought glanced at. For the rest, the little book is very slight, very im- perfect, very sincere; and the Rambler will think himself extremely lucky if it be found readable, and here and there suggestive. He has taken no pains either to please or avoid displeasing anyone, but trusts he will nowhere be found to give unreasonable offence to any frank or gentle mind; and that those sensitive folk, the Kelts, will not be exasperated at having their collective name, from the Greek, spelt with a K, espe- cially as they use no C, great or small, in their own languages. Should this volume be fortunate, a second series is intended to follow soon. CONTENTS, CHAPTER L IN THE NEW FOREST. PAGE Fox-hunting — William the Conqueror — Brockenhurst Church. — Swineherds — Mark Ash — Gilpin's Forest Scenery — Oaks — Queen's Bower — Insect Life— Science and Imagination — Birds and Squirrels . . . . . .1 CHAPTER II. STILL IN THE FOREST. Gypsies — Foresters — The local Dialect — Rev. "William Gilpin — Three notable Trees — Boldre Churchyard — Lyndhurst — ■ Flowers, Plaats, and Animals — Forest Frontiers — Christchurch 21 CHAPTER III. AT WINCHESTER. St. Giles's Hill— College— Cathedral— Destruction of Old Things — St. Swithin — Keats — Rev. Thomas Warton — Culture . 48 CHAPTER IV. AT FARNHAM. High Street — Bishop's Palace — 'The Jolly Farmer' — Sketch of William Cobbett's Life and Writings — His Grave — Crooksbury Hill ....... 62 x CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. rs THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. » PAGE Well of the Calf — Upper Lough — Irish Peers— Annals of Ulster — Enniskillen — Devenish — Lower Lough — fully Castle — Bel- leek — The Cataract of Asaroe . . . . .95 CHAPTER VI. AT BALLYSHANNON. Place and People— The Waterfall— King Hugh— The Salmon- Pishery — Angling — Legend of Parthalon — Abbey of Asaroe — The Harbour . . . .. . . . 118 CHAPTER VII. AT EXETER, WITH THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. The City and Cathedral — Public Statues, &c. — Surrounding Landscape — The ' Philosophers ' — Scientific Truth and Spiritual Truth ......... 141 CHAPTER VIII. AT TORQUAY, AND ELSEWHERE. Torquay — Modern Builders — Babbicombe — Kent's Cavern — Entozoa — Modern Science — On Dartmoor — Totnes — The Gharm of Old Houses . . . . . .158 CHAPTER IX. TO DEAN PRIOR. Devonshire Lanes— Herrick's Poetry — Dean Prior-^Sketch of the Poet's Life— Herrick and Martial . . . 173 CHAPTER X. AT BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. Exeter again — A Cathedral Service — Bideford — Westward Ho I — Bathing — Ebenezer Jones — Clovelly . . . .191 CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER XL AT LIVERPOOL, WITH THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. PAGK The Mersey — Irishism — Americanism — The Docks — Commerce and Credit — The British Association — Mr. Huxley on- Vital Grerms — Mr. Tyndall on Scientific Imagination — Physical and Moral Philosophy — Science and Eeligion — Liverpool Architec- ture — Corn Stores — An Emigrant Ship — Poor Streets — Birken- head Park— In the Train ..... 206 CHAPTER XII. UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. Wimborne — River Stour — Blandford — Sam Cowell — Popular Songs — Sturminster Newton — Barnes's Poems — The Dorset Dialect— The Peasantry . . . . .246 CHAPTER XIII. AT SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. Salisbury — Old Sarum — Stonehenge — Wilton House — Bemerton — George Herbert's Life and Poems — His Brother, Lord Herbert 269 CHAPTER XIV. AT CANTERBURY. St. Mary Overies — Tomb of Grower — The Tabard — Chaucer and the Pilgrims — Sketch of Chaucer's Life — Canterbury — Outside the Cathedral — Erasmus — Modern Statues — Augustine — Satur- day Night — Inside the Cathedral— Harbledown — The Nightin- gale — New Spring and Old Poetry — The Martyrs' Pield — Charles the First— The River-side . . . .301 RAMBLES BY PATEICIUS WALKER. CHAPTER I. IN THE NEW FOREST. Fox-hunting — William the Conqueror — Brockenhurst Church— Swine- herds — Mark Ash — Gilpin's Forest Scenery — Oaks — Queen's Bower — Insect Life — Science and Imagination — Birds and Squirrels. A meet of foxhounds in the New Forest on a fine open winter morning is a pretty enough sight, even to one who is no sportsman. On some lawn or rising ground, encircled by far-spreading russet or leafless woods, you see the mounted groups of red-coated gentlemen, with a sprinkling of ladies, graceful in flowing dark skirts; lively boys on their ponies, and pretty little long- haired girls ; black or brown-coated riders too, lawyer or doctor, tradesman or farmer ; whosoever, in short, chooses to come on the outside of a horse to share in this peculiar aristo-democratic amusement. B 2 IN THE NEW IOREST. The little old whipper-in (we have no huntsman), with ruddy face and lively eyes, sitting his big horse as though he lived there, and in fact the most and best of his life is in the saddle, calls now and again or cracks his whip at the hounds if restless ; but usually they are standing about, or stretched on the sward, or nosing and questing quietly round within a small area. The master bides somewhat aloof, the cares of sove- reignty visible on his brow; now and a^ain doffing his hat to a fair equestrian, or exchanging a grave word with some personage of importance. Carriages drive up on the road, and gentlemen go over to greet their friends. Other spectators there are, but not many; by no means like the enthusiastic crowd of miscellaneous pedestrians that come out to see the hounds in Ireland, and often follow them, too, for the best part of the day : here are only a few foresters and boys, smock-frocked, apathetic, and perhaps half a dozen young women and children from the nearest cottages. Now we move to the cover ; in go the hounds, i fea- thering ' (waving their feathery tails) among the gorse and rusty bracken. ( Ho, Rallywood ! — ho Trojan ! ' — a hound gives tongue — f challenges.' — ' There goes Dia- mond — hark to Diamond ! ' Forty canine voices make the wood resound : reynard darts across one of the forest rides — e Tally-ho-o ! ' — he bursts into the open, the whole pack at his heels, and away we go. But 'tis not mine to attempt the description of f a run ; ' it has HUNTING. 3 "been clone a thousand tinies, and done well. The New Forest is a good place for f seeing the hounds work,' as they stream together over the open moorlands, or come to a check in some gorse-brake or plantation. The riding is the easiest possible, no jumping of any sort unless you like : much of the ground is open moor (you have very seldom to go over crop), and through the woods run numerous grassy avenues, called i rides/ where you may gallop as on a lawn. Two things a stranger has to guard against — getting into a swamp and losing his way : let him turn and twist about a little, and then find himself all alone among the trees and underwood, at some point where three or more forest ways diverge, and it may prove no easy matter to choose aright. As to the swamps, if you are so am- bitious as to keep well forward without knowing the ground, you may be galloping along comfortably this moment, and the next floundering in a treacherous muddy abyss, firm to the inexperienced eye. You plunge from your saddle; alas for the shining white breeches ! but all is a trifle if you can safely land your struggling and frightened horse, without recourse to spades and ropes. These swamps, clogging and chilling the legs of the hounds with wet mud, are the cause, as some think, of that lameness to which the Forest hounds are peculiarly liable. Others attribute it to the prickles of the abundant dwarf furze ( Ulex nanus). The winter in this region is commonly so mild and open, that the sport often goes on when frozen-up B 2 4 IN THE NEW FOREST. elsewhere, so it is naturally a favourite habitat of hunting men. A French lady detested war f because it spoiled conversation ' — people could talk of nothing else. If you are fond of hunting-talk after dinner, you can enjoy plenty of it in society here ; and there might be worse — it smacks of open air and living nature; but to a stranger, who is not an enthusiastic sportsman, a little of it suffices. He knows nothing of such a gentleman's bay mare, or of Captain So-and-so's * brother to Rattler ; ' the copses, gorses, farms, roads, spinneys, hills, bottoms, brooks, enclosures, &c, are mere names, not in his mind's geography. The Conqueror and his sons were mighty hunters — not of fox and hare ; but the oft-told tale of the de- struction of many villages, churches, and houses in making this Xew Forest, is like so much other ( His- tory.' Mr. Pope too, with better rhyme than reason, :says in his ( Windsor Forest ' (but speaking of this) — Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began, A mighty hunter, and his prey was man : Our haughty Norman boasts that barb'rous name, And makes his trembling slaves the royal game. The fields are ravish'd from the industrious swains, From men their cities and from gods their fanes ; The levell'd towns with weeds lie covered o'er ; And hollow winds through naked temples roar ; Round broken columns clasping ivy twined ; O'er heaps of ruin stalks the stately hind. The poor chalk-gravel soil of the district (Middle DOOMSDAY BOOK. 5 Eocene of the geologists), could never have supported many inhabitants. Ytene ( i Furzy ' — f the Furze-land' ?) was clearly a wild, moory, woody district in William's day, with a small scattered population. He made it a Royal Forest, and increased the severity of the old forest laws of the Danish and Saxon kings. The inha- bitants naturally disliked the afForestment, and stories of the new king's inhumanity were told and retold, gaining in bulk and definition as the facts retired into the past, till the First William became in monkish chronicles (subsequent, not contemporary : there is nothing of it in the Saxon chronicle) a royal Dragon of Wantley — houses and churches were to him geese and turkeys. He destroyed i twenty-two ' — f thirty-six ' — c fifty -two parish churches,' and when his two sons in succession lost their lives in this wicked New Forest, it was clearly by vengeance of Heaven. Of the buildings named in the Norman Great Roll, which the Saxons called e Doom-Book ' (Judgment- Book), and sometimes, to express their fears, ' Dooms- day Book ' (a title absurdly kept up, and officialised), two kinds are commonly found to this day, whether the same walls or not, in the places indicated — churches and mills. Here at Brockenhurst (is it e Badger-wood,' or ( Brook-wood,' or 'Broken- wood'?) is one of the Doom- Book churches. Looking southward from the railway platform you may see its weathercock just clearing the tree-tops of a wooded hill, and five minutes' walk 6 IN THE NEW FOREST. will bring you to the circular graveyard surrounded by shady roads., with its elephantine oak-bole, A care Of touchwood, with a single flourishing spray, and the stately pillared yew-tree, iron-red, whose dark boughs almost brush the spire. Both these trees, very likely, were here when the Norman commissioners wrote in their list, e Aluric tenet in Broceste imam hidam . . . Ibi ecclesia. Silva de 20 porcis. Tempore Regis Edwardi valebat 40 solidos, et post et modo 4 libras.' l Their spelling of the names of places, by- the-bye, gives little guidance; they knew the views of Rex Willelmus to be practical, not antiquarian : yet the antiquarian facts now are of the greater interest. The southern portal, with some other parts of the church, also its font, appear to be of the original Saxon building, some 800 years old or more. Build not, good squire, worthy parishioners, a new church, high or low ! repair the old with loving care and reverent anxiety : there is a charm, there is a value inexpressibly precious in ancientness and continuity cf remembrance. The world is poorer and smaller by the loss of any old thing visibly connecting us, poor fleet- ing mortals, with the sacred bygone years ; leaving a door open, as it were, into the Land of the Past. Build us not in, beseech you, on that side, enjail not our imagination (which is no foolish or trivial part of us) with new Lymington bricks, or even from the 1 Domesday Boole, Hampshire, Ordnance Survey Office. RELICS OF THE PAST. 7 fresh cut quarries of Portland or Caen. Is every town and village in England to be made like a Mel- bourne, a Farragutville, a Cubittopolis ? It is deeper than a question of taste, this of blotting out traces of the great Past from our visible world, blotting them out for ever, with all their softened beauty, and mystery, and tender sadness. The worst thing is to erase the venerable relic from the earth. The next worst thing (often almost as bad as the first) is to ' restore ' it. Sometimes, as here, we are told that though a new edifice is neces- sary (a statement more readily made than proved) the old building is not to be pulled down. But who ever saw a forsaken edifice of the humbler sort that did not quickly fall into neglect ? Besides, the mystic charm of an ancient thing in use is enhanced a thousandfold. What interest have antiquities in the glass cases of museums, compared with those that meet you in daily life, in streets or rural landscapes ? Keep, Old Eng- land, thy old churches (albeit old forms of worship have changed, and will change), and old manor-houses too, and town-halls, and ivied walls, and shady winding roads ; these things, believe it, tend to nourish all that is wholesome and beautiful in conservatism, and to foster a love of the country of our ancestors, which is also our own, and will, we hope, be our children's. From the churchyard, through a veil of boughs, you look down the slope of Brockenhurst Park, and away 8 J3 T THE NEW FOFEST. to a wide semicirque of woods, sweeping round the northern horizon from east to west. 'Within the forty miles' circuit of the Forest is many an open heath, many a thick wood of oak and beech, many a green avenue and shadowy glade. Main roads, smooth as in a park, run through it to Southampton, to Lymington, to Christchurch, to Sarum — for this ancient name holds its place on the milestones and fingerposts. In most parts you may turn off where you will, without fence or other hindrance, into heath or hurst. There are many new plantations of oaks, with alternate fir-trees to nurse them ; but through these also, lifting the gate-latch, you may pass unchallenged. This wild liberty is the great charm of the region. No longer under fierce forest-law are you liable to be seized for wandering in the King's Forest, perhaps to undergo ordeal of fire to prove your innocence of poaching, perhaps to lose your eyes on the charge of slaying venison or wild boar. You may wander for hours and meet no one but a chance woodman or earth-stopper, or a swineherd in acorn-time ; or, more rarely still, a truffle-seeker with his little doo;s. The foresters' have an old privilege of turning their swine into the forest for six weeks in autumn. One man undertakes the care of a herd of several hundred hogs. Having fixed on a sleeping place, at first he feeds them a few times and teaches them to attend his horn. Signor Gryll, though shy and reserved, is not stupid, and knows what is good for him. On the second THE SWINEHERD. 9 or third evening, when the horn sounds through long glades and tangled underwood, gilded perhaps with last sunlight, the hogs come trotting into the rendezvous by twos and threes, by dozens and scores, and soon lie stretched heads and tails, acorn-glutted, under dim forest boughs, only a grunt heard now and again, not unlike the human snore ; while, in little wigwam close by, snores humanly their temporary lord and master, his magic horn by his side. Such a group as this, by sunset or moonlight, may the autumnal forest-wanderer, musing haply of dryads and hamadryads, of fairies and wood-sprites, chance upon under a spreading oak. The oaks of the New Forest (chiefly Quercus robur), slow-growing on a gravelly soil, are not lofty nor thick- leaved ; they are gnarly and close-grained, with boughs much twisted and writhen. But here and there rises a kingly tree, like that of Knightwood, a huge straight lofty bole, with mighty spreading branches, each a tree in bulk. Some three miles or so from Lyndhurst, near the road to Christchurch, stands this Knightwood Oak, and may stand for many a century to come, for it is like a powerful man in the full vigour of his life. 1 Hot was the summer day, and shoulder deep the eagle-fern that clothed hill and hollow, and muffled up all paths, when my friend and I pushed through from Knightwood to Mark Ash, the greatest beechen shade in the forest. Huge and weird are its brindled beech- trees. Underneath, dim at noonday, our feet rustled * On an after visit I think I observed a main limb to be decaying. 10 IN THE NEW FOREST. in the withered relics of a former summer : we paused, and the lonely wood was silent. The mighty growths stood well apart, each trunk rising into many great stems that lifted high overhead their canopy of inter- woven green. Amid this company of vast and ancient trees, arrived at through a labyrinth of tangled wood- land, we seemed to be at the core of some boundless primaeval forest. The sunlight striking through its lofty branches on the floor of brown fallen leaves could not enliven it. There was something ominous and awful in the place. One half-expected at every turn to encounter some unexampled sight. Even the hogs, if they came hither, could scarcely disenchant it — would seem to be of the crew of Comus, or his mother Circe. The name i Mark Ash,' like Bound Oak (Boundary Oak), indicates some special tree once used for a mark. We saw no ash in this beech wood, and ash-trees in the forest are very few. Mr. Gilpin, in his e Forest Scenery,' is hard upon the beech — calls it an f unpleasing ' tree, Q an object of disapprobation.' l To the worthy vicar of Boldre be- longs the merit of having loved and sought after land- scape beauty at a time when few had any eyes for it ; but he always criticised nature with reference to his own little drawings in brown ink, and to what could be agreeably expressed by such means. A quality called 1 Vol. i. p. 46. GILPIN'S 'FOREST SCENERY: 11 Picturesqueness, defined according to certain limita- tions of his own, was what he looked for, and found or missed in every visible object or scene. The horse- chestnut is ( a heavy disagreeable tree,' — f the whole tree together in flower is a glaring object, totally in- harmonious and unpicturesque.' ] He is severe on the willows — ( the weeping willow is the only one of its tribe that is beautiful.' 2 The cedar is interesting, the more so on account of e the respectable mention which is everywhere made of it in Scripture ; ' 3 but the haw- thorn ' has little claim to picturesque beauty,' 4 nay, it is c sometimes offensive ; ' 5 while the poor bramble (whose sweeping curves tufted with leaf-sprouts, ap- pear to some eyes the perfection of elegance) is de- nounced as c the most insignificant of all vegetable reptiles.' But all this is natural enough in one who looked up to Horace Walpole and Reverend Mr. Mason as his arbiters of taste ; it is on a level with the former's gothic architecture, and the latter's poetry ■ — poetry which the writer of it so honestly believed to be immortal. Yet I am giving a false impression of Gilpin by thus putting foremost his absurdities. His little books on scenery may still be looked into with interest, for his love of nature was genuine ; he ex- presses himself in pure and accurate language of its kind, and the brown sketches are often clever and pleasing. I observe that Henry Thoreau, of Massa- 1 Gilpin's Forest Scenery, vol. i. p. 61. 2 Ibid. p. 68. 3 Ibid. p. 72. * Ibid. p. 99. 5 Ibid. p. 219. 12 IN THE NEW FOREST. chusetts, whose notes upon nature in his own region are so fresh and vivid (see i Life in the Woods/ and ' A Week on the Merrimac,' reader, and you will not repent it), took much interest in old Mr. Gilpin's writings and sketches. In pictures queue ss Gilpin ranks the oak highest, and here, no doubt, most will agree with him. That is to say, the oak in maturity and in old age ; as a strip- ling (like many things that advance slowly to their perfection) it is ungainly. JSfot far from the stalwart Knightwood Oak, stand his famous elder brethren, named ( The Twelve Apostles,' reckoned to be the oldest trees in the forest. Their situation is not im- pressive ; they grow scattered about a space of flat open ground, cultivated as a farm. Their heads are gone ; they are shattered stumps, though still alive ; forlorn and decayed giants. The new crop of winter wheat springs green round one, whose gnarly roots clutch the soil as with monstrous claws ; the farmer's cows scratch their sides against the rhinoceros-like bark of another; this one is a hollow tower; that a pillar of ivy. The handsomest oak in the New Forest, they say, is one that I have not yet seen, near its western boundary, at Moyle's Court. That which as yet holds first place in my regard stands in the beautiful wood with a beautiful name — Queen's Bower ' — stretching downward one great arm across the clear brook (a rare and precious thing in the Forest), that plays over gravel, and ( winds about and Q VEEN'S BOWER. 13 in and out ' among alder and hazel. This oak, though not hollow, is evidently very aged. Its short bole, massive as the pillar of some rock temple, is tinted with delicate gray lichens and embroidered with creeping lines of ivy. Tufts of polypody flourish in the ample space whence the heavy branches diverge all at once • — an enviable reclining place, but not so easy to mount to as you may think it. Profane not the lichened and ivied bark by such an attempt, but lie down on the sward, under these wide-stretching twisted boughs, with the brook at your feet, and watch, if day and season allow, the trembling sunlights and cool trans- lucent shadows, the dancing parties of whirligig-beetles ( Gyrinus natator), the troops of i water-measurers ' (Ilydrometrd) jerking themselves on the glassy surface, the little fish coming and vanishing, the jewelly dragon- flies, some azure-bodied, some green, darting up and down the streamlet's course — veritable flying dragons to the insects which they seize and devour. It is c the Struggle for Life.' One will sometimes even pounce on a passing butterfly, carry it to some twig, tear off its wings and gobble up its body in a minute. These fair ferocious creatures, blue or emerald, borne on wings of violet gauze or silver netted with black, the French (is it partly satiric or moral ?) name demoiselles ; and our own poets have sometimes called them f damsel flies.' The abundance of insect life in the Forest in summer- time, interesting as it is, proves now and again incon- 14 IN THE NEW FOREST. venient : clouds of gnats in the air., armies of ants and ticks in the grass, corsair wasps and hornets, gadflies as bis: as humble-bees, crawling ' forest flies ' to set vour horse wild — of these there are enough and to spare. The special ( forest fly ' (Hippobosca) is of a dirty reddish colour, about as big as a middle-sized house- fly, very abundant, hard to hit, and, even when hit, hard to kill. They are said to prefer white and gray horses, and swarm on them by hundreds. They bite, but that is not the worst; they crawl — equally, it is said, forward, backward, or sideways — and tickle as they crawl. Olive oil defeats them when it can be ap- plied. A strange horse coming to Lyndhurst races will probably have some of his running taken out of him by the fret caused by these troublesome natives. Horses bred in the Forest don't seem to mind them ; and you will see many a herd of forest ponies, many a- grave mare and frisking foal on the wood-lawns, feeding and moving about as comfortably, to all appearance, as if they had never heard of a Hippohosca or an GEstrus- eqiri. The horse-gadfly lays her eggs on the horse's- hairs, loithin reach of his tongue ; he licks off the sticky stuff and swallows it ; out come the grubs, and fasten and feed on the coat of his stomach till they are an inch long, and of an age to drop off and be carried abroad ; falling on the ground, they burrow awhile, then rise into the air as gadflies, continue their species^ and die. The sheep gadfly punctures the sheep's nos- tril and lays her eggs there. The worms creep up into INSECTS. 15 the cavities of the skull, and feed, descending in due time for a short open-air life. While these creatures are crawling up or clown its nostrils, the sheep jumps about and sneezes violently. The cow-gadfly is the big bee-like one ; it lays its eggs under the skin, making a puncture which sends the cow galloping with tail up. "While a cow is thus disturbed by the pricking of her hide, it is remarkable that a number of large grubs feeding on the inside surface of a horse's stomach don't appear to do him the least harm or annoyance in the ordinary course. When they go astray, in their fleshy pasturage, fasten in a wrong place, then they do harm, and may give their host the c bots.' Possibly the human entozoa are countless, and only do harm in exceptional cases — when they go astray. Is not the multiplicity and variety of animal life as astounding to think of as the starry universe overhead? Yet we ought not to be overpowered; for, surely man's mind is incomparably greater and more wonder- ful than all the phenomena of which it takes cognisance. And to this mind — soul — intelligent self — does Science (great and valuable as it is) add any power essentially new, for penetrating into the nature of things ? Science widens and clears the prospect of the phenomenal world, proving or disproving guesses, rectifying mis- takes, accumulating, classifying, generalising, simplify- ing knowledge. As to the principles of Nature (so to speak), it seems to me they rest, and will rest, for ever inscrutable to man in this world ; but that a sound and 16 IN THE NEW FOREST. vigorous imagination catches deeper glimpses, sees, in good moments, further and truer, than the reasoning faculty can through microscope and telescope. I love books of natural science, and their boldness now-a-days, but when they venture to proclaim, even speculatively, anything like a final generalisation of phenomena, that seems far too daring. ( Be bold, be bold, be not too bold.' Books of science written in support of a special conjecture have, when ably done, a force and clearness of their own, and bring many memorable facts into order ; but when, after supplying their contributions of less or more to the sum of knowledge, they make a sweep over some great region and catch all the stars of the heavens in the net of their theory, or all the organic creatures of the earth, my gratitude turns to vexation : 6 Quietly,' I would fain say ; e you are going much too fast and too far : a profound and awful reverence be- comes us, if we at all venture our thoughts over these boundaries.' I am charmed to hear from Mr. Darwin how the cottagers' cats promote the growth of red clover and wild pansies. These plants have long-tubed corollce, and the humble-bee, while seeking their nectar, carries-in the pollen for their fructification on his long pucker; field-mice destroy the nests of the humble- bees , cats eat the field-mice ; and so the humble-bees multiply, and fertilise the flowers. Also I listen with delight when he argues on the larger topic of the Geological Record, and how fragmentary are its remains ; but I confess to feeling timid and uneasy LIMITS OF SCIENCE. 17 (my scientific friend B. laughs with mild contempt) when our naturalist announces the view to which argument and analogy conduct him, namely, that e all the organic beings ' — plants and animals together, in- eluding man — ( which have ever lived upon this earth may have descended from one primordial form.' * In all, as far as at present known, the germinal vesicle is the same. So that every being starts from a common origin.' l Not alone does our imagination revolt, but our logical understanding at once detects the base- lessness of the positive assertion — e So that every being starts from a common origin,' in which that important qualifying clause in the previous sentence — e as far as at present linown ' — is left out of sight. tf Germinal vesicle ' — i simple cell ' — Gracious heavens ! what is ' at present known ' of this human life, this human spirit of ours ? Again, is there any life in the stars ? An unan- swerable question, whatever we may surmise. An able and learned man writes his book on the nega- tive side : without committing himself, he does all he can against the affirmative, and puts before us on the way many wonderful views. The logical un- derstanding, working unbiassed and not in defence or attack of any theory, can, I venture to assert, find many a flaw in the great Professor's reasoning ; but in advance of the process, with lightning flash indeed, the faculty of imagination (if it be not rather the sum and flower of the faculties) gives its high verdict. 1 Origin cf Spates, 3rd ed. p. 519. C 13 IN THE NEW FOREST. Remove yourself from the earth's surface to another station in space. Countless suns and planets — bright- scattered, bright-clustered — revolve around you. You are able, let us say, to single out yonder shining dot among the multitude, larger than some, smaller than others, and to know it as your old home — what you called Earth. You know it to be inhabited by a mul- titude of living creatures. All the other shining dots that you see, whirling globes, millions of vast orbs, all of these are travelling waste and empty in their mighty courses. They are but as huge balls of fog. Nay, you do not believe this ; the thought could not in any way gain a moment's lodgment in your mind. And here, observe, imagination presents nothing fan- tastic, but is resting on a strictly scientific basis. Imagination, looking abroad from the pinnacles of science, can alone give any true glimpse of the secrets of even the physical universe. Healthy imagination, moreover, is moral and religious, and its insight goes infinitely deeper than all physical knowledge. In brief, it is well that science, using her utmost care of investigation and subtlety of insight, should reve- rently acknowledge her existing limits, and be chary of theorising beyond them. But let us change into an easier key, for our own part, and enjoy the hour and scene — i fleet the time as in the golden age.' Here, on a summer's day, under the Oak of Queen's Bower, its cool brook running by, the sunshine tempered with curtains of foliage, is the SQUIRRELS. 19 place to read ' As you like it : ' see the little finger-long volume. In Mark Ash the shade of melancholy boughs was too real and oppressive. There are no ants or ticks in this close sward ; the merry wild bees hum past on their errands ; from afar comes the soft voice of the cuckoo. And now let us rise and wander through the close beeches of Liney Hill and the grace- ful glades and lawns of Whitley Wood. Perhaps that sluggish hawk, the honey-buzzard, may be seen slowly skimming round ; he rifles the nest of the wild bee in some hollow bole or high fork, not eating the honey but the bee-grubs. The human forester, when he can find it, takes the honey for his share. Here are fir- trees; at a dropping cone I look up and see the squirrel that has thus betrayed himself, climbing from branch to branch, and keeping as much as he can on the further side of his tree, but the bushy tail (his helm in leaping) is not easily hid. When unalarmed he ascends his tree in spirals, by an easy inclined- plane ; if pressed, he jumps rapidly from tree to tree, uttering a creaking little cry of fright. That loosish bundle of sticks in the larch-top is one of the nests or c cages.' The Forest-boy often wears a squirrel-skin cap, with the tail set as feather ; and about Christmas- time these rough young sylvans go squirrel-hunting with i squoyles J — short sticks knobbed with lead — and knock down scores of the bright-eyed little red creatures. Verily, man is the fiercest of animals ; he spares nothing. The gypsies bake the squirrel whole c 2 20 % IN THE NEW FOREST. in a ball of clay among their wood embers, and do the hedgehog same fashion, a way of cooking common to wild ^-housekeepers in various parts of the world, and said to give a better result (keeping in the juices and flavour) than all the elaborate processes of Ude and Soyer. The fallow-deer of the Forest were killed off, save a few stragglers, some twelve years ago, to the advantage of the young oaks, and of the hollies too, which now grow tali and strong and enrich the woods in winter. tj=<^a»». 21 CHAPTER II. STILL IN THE FOREST. Gypsies — Foresters — The Local Dialect — Eev. William Gilpin — Tlire notable Trees — Boldre Churchyard— Lyndhurst — Flowers, Plants, and Animals — Forest Frontiers — Christchurch. There are yet some Gypsies, or e Egyptians,' as old Acts of Parliament call them, in the Forest ; for the most part, of the tribes calling themselves e Lee ' and ' Stanley.' When I say e in the Forest,' I mean tra- versing and flitting about the district, and camping therein oftener than elsewhere. You may suddenly light, even in the depth of winter, on their squalid encampment on some sheltered piece of sward, or anions; the o'orse and underwood on the fringe of a common ; low, savage-like tents, mere cross-sticks and patchwork ; with a population no less uncouth — weird old women, naked children, young women, boys and men, brown-faced, black-eyed, black-haired, dirty; not fierce but wild-looking, like untamed animals as they are ; their attire, however old, brightened with some gaudy-coloured kerchief. With the tents is probably found a covered cart like a Cheap Jack's ; three or four asses and a rough pony or two tethered 22 STILL IN THE FOREST. close by ; while a wood fire, with a large pot slung over it, sends up its blue fume. At first glance, these people much resemble those dark-complexioned natives of the West and South of Ireland who are said to be of part Spanish breed ; more closely viewed, they have often, I think, a strikingly Hindoo appearance, carried safe across the four centuries or so since they started westward from upper India, urged perhaps by famine or war, and became a wandering tribe. It seems likely that towards the confines of Asia and Europe they split into at least two streams of vagabondage, the northern one creeping into South Russia, Bohemia, and so westward ; the southern stream making its way to Egypt and on into Spain. In Bohemia and Egypt they first came particularly under the notice of Westerns, — were probably numerous there ; hence the terms ( Bohemian ' and ' Egyptian ' or e Gypsy,' applied to them in ignorance of their real history. A learned indefatigable Teuton, Dr. Pott, has packed into his thick volume, Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien (Halle, 1844), a huge mass of information about these folk and their speech. A wonderful little people ! keeping its oriental race and manners so long unmixed with the surrounding European millions, and using, however largely corrupted, a real language of its own. The gypsies who chiefly frequent the New Forest, probably but a few scores in count, possibly a couple GYPSIES. 23 of hundred, seem to be steadily diminishing in number. In their struggle for life the new element of rural police bears hard on them ; they must c move on/ and are, nominally, only allowed to stay one night in a spot; but this rule is often evaded. Tired of moving on (involuntarily), many English gypsies have moved off, of late years, to America and Australia. The ' Stanleys ' and 6 Lees ' of the Forest keep mainly to the traditional businesses of making baskets, brooms, clothes-pegs ; some go round mend- ing rush-bottom chairs, some play the fiddle in taverns. The men are to be seen at fairs with donkeys and forest ponies for sale, while the women and lads do the honours of * Aunt Sally,' or some other popular game. The local magistrates and rural po- licemen give no unkindly report of the gypsy people ; consider them no way dangerous, and moderately honest. They are seldom 6 pulled up,' and then but for minor offences, and when they are fined the money is always forthcoming. A gypsy is seldom without ready money, and they help one another freely in case of need ; nor are their old or sick ever thrown upon parish relief. They keep no pigs, and have no forest privileges ; they steal wood, but are not suspected much of poaching ; now and again, however, a clever greyhound is seen in their company. Their horse- stealing notoriety has faded away. Within the last tAventy years, I am told, many of the New Forest gypsies have become much less peculiar and exclusive 24 STILL IN THE FOREST. in their habits ; their men and women marry non gypsy mates, and half-gypsies are growing commoner than the true breed. People unmistakeably of the dark strain are to be seen at work in the harvest gangs ; and now and again, not often, you find one of them a sailor in a yacht or merchant ship. But there are still some who pride themselves on keeping unmixed their ancient blood ; and a few years ago, I am informed, a gypsy girl of remarkable beauty, one of the Stanleys, refused, on that ground, to marry a well-to-do farmer of the parish of Fawley. It is extremely hard to get any trustworthy account of their more intimate life — for they never apply to the law, and seldom quarrel seriously. What is their education ? Does one now and again rise in social rank ? Is there any lady, for example, in our day (I have heard rumour of such things), in whose cheek, as in the little Duchess's in that wonderful poem, might be recognised The tinge As when of the costly scarlet wine They drip so much as will impinge And spread in a thinnest scale afloat. One thick gold drop from the olive's coat, Over a silver plate whose sheen Still through the mixtnre shall be seen ? In addition to other good authorities I have con- sulted an experienced rural postman of the Forest, who is also a gamekeeper; he still, he says, comes pretty often on a gypsy camp ; they sometimes, though rarely, get letters ; he thinks that very few of them GYPSIES. 25 can read or write. He believes they have no religion. The old and young go begging ; some of the old women tell fortunes. What puzzles him most is what they do with their dead; he never saw or heard of a gypsy's funeral. He has often met five or six of them in a public-house talking to each other in their own lingo, and sometimes quarrelling in their drink ; but they very seldom get taken up. The regular gypsies never sleep in a house winter or summer. As to creed, marrying, &c, my own impression is that they have certain traditional tenets, unknown in their case to the exoteric world, and most likely not very important in any sense; while as to outward observances they take the easiest way that serves, ac- cording to time and place, and glide along like a snake through a coppice, with eyes constant to the practical objects of getting what they want, and of shunning danger. Here they always profess to belong to the Church of England, and sometimes use its forms of baptism, marriage, and burial, but I think never attend service. One Sunday evening in late autumn, I was roving, lonely and moody enough, under a gray sky and thinning yellow leaves, and found myself about sun- down in Whitley Wood. Turning a clump of hollies, I came suddenly on two gypsy tents. There was an old woman, over seventy she said, with cunning mahogany face, and hair still black ; her son a good- looking man of five-and-thirty ; his wife, who was 26 STILL IN THE FOREST. nursing her tenth child ; and the other nine children, all living and well, were swarming about, or not far away. There were also an elder married pair, who, I found, had no children. The father of the ten, Tom by name, happened to be an old acquaintance of mine. I had found him, some years before, lying ill and all but speechless with quinsy, and had done him some service. It had struck me then, how miserable the case of a sick gypsy ; but further reflection suggested that probably, in most cases of illness, a ragged tent would be better than Guy's or Bartholomew's, and no treatment than too much. Great hospitals are good means of training doctors, rather than of curing patients. Still, Tom in his quinsy seemed in need of medical aid, and I had sent him some. The older married woman had a closed book in her hand. ' It's a Bible, your good honour ; parson in north parts o' the Forest giv' it us t'other day ; and we was a-readin' till the daylight failed.' They had begun at the beginning, and had found some things that puzzled them, and which they were discussing when I came up. ( Who was Cain's wife, your honour? ' I could not tell them. ' And who was Cain afraid of, when he asked to have a mark put on him lest people should kill him? The world was empty.' Answer: f We are to suppose that Cain had a long life before him, and people quickly increased in numbers.' Elder Gypsy man (tentatively) : e Your honour, I was in a shop in Southampton last week, and I heard a NOTIONS OF GIVING AND RECEIVING. 27 gentleman say, " The Bible's a bad book/' says he.' P. Walker : f It was not a wise thing to say.' Younger Gypsy woman (trimming sail) : tf Maybe he'll find his mistake when his last hour comes.' And so we talked awhile — a conversation in itself extremely unimportant, but it was curious to find these vagrants, too, amusing themselves with a discussion of Biblical difficulties. My good offices to Tom's quinsy were remembered, and made a new gift on my part inevitable ; so, shutting it into the baby's hand, and receiving a number of bless- ings in return, I took my departure through the dark alleys of the wood. In any case, you must not hold converse with a gypsy without having a coin ready as tag to the inter- view. It would be entirely against good manners to omit it. In their mixture of independence of bearing and freedom in conversation, with readiness to accept a gift, they are very like Irish folk, who in this, as in so many characteristics, are curiously unlike their Saxon co-mates. This Irish readiness to accept a gift, is not mean or greedy. You, with whom they have entered into friendly human intercourse, have evidently much more money than they ; and it is but natural, and for the pleasure of both parties, that there should be some overflow from the plenum to the vacuum. They accept it freely and avowedly as a gift, and with a fully- implied understanding that in the case of contact with an emptier than themselves, they are in turn 28 STILL IN THE FOREST. ready to play donor. And so they are. If you give nothing, no insult follows ; at most, if ex- pectation rose high, there may be some cunning little touch of satire. If they have done you some actual service, they are by no means anxious to be paid for it, in the hard shape of an equivalent. They wish the transaction to be gift for gift, and are usually quite willing that you should be the obliged party if you prefer it. This is entirely a distinct feeling from the universal English love of a fee, ( a tip,' which so -disagreeably astonishes American visitors to the old country. The Saxon by no means looks for a pure gift in any case. That, to his habit of mind, would mean beggary. But he thinks ' nothing for nothing ' an obviously just principle. ' If I do anything for you, what will you pay me ?' — and if you withhold the pay, he growls and threatens. Indisputable and priceless are the sturdy qualities of the Saxon ; those of the Kelt are tenderer and finer. To this day exists an astonishing incompatibility be- tween them, who have lived together so long, and a deep-seated difficulty of mutual understanding. People easily misconceive and dislike the very virtues of those who are of temperament and habits unlike their own. The Gypsies, for their part, try to pick up a penny or a shilling howsoever they can without much risk, and to secure such creature-comforts as their shifting and shifty manner of life allows. Though now, perhaps, slowly merging into the general mass of the popu- LOCAL DIALECT. 29 lation, they still may be counted a strange little tribe in our midst, with a very curious wild flavour. Among the most usual places in this district for gypsy encampments are Norley Wood, and Shirley Holmes, near Lymington ; The Nodes, near Hythe ; Bartley Regis, in Ealing parish ; Crow's ISTest Bottom, near Bramshaw ; Minstead-manor-bounds on the west side; Marbro' Deep, near Holmsley. Several large parties were seen encamped, during the icy weather of a recent cold January. The Foresters of the humbler class are on familiar terms with the f Gyps,' or ( Gypos,' but can tell you little about them, having (like perhaps most poor people) but little observation or curiosity, still less reflection or speculation ; and when they do receive impressions, lacking words to convey them. The Foresters are not distinguished for mental gifts or for excellence of manners; and indeed the same might be said of the inhabitants of some of the adjacent towns, who now and again recall to the stranger's mind that alliterative epithet which is sometimes applied to Hampshire people. Would it be fanciful, or a too hasty induction from limited experience, to set down the Wilts and Dorset folk as gentler and more kindly ? Though it is a good while since Cerdic landed on its coast, Hants (the fair Isle of Wight included) is still very Saxon in manners and temperament. ; and the word Saxon has in these respects carried one consistent reputation from the earliest times ; till that absurd SO STILL IN THE FOREST. modern phrase e the Anglo-Saxon race ' came into fashion in newspapers and stump-oratory. The Angles and the Saxons were much of a muchness ; and what of the Scandinavians, and the Normans, and the Britons themselves ? The dialect of the Forest and its vicinity is ungainly in sound, harsh and drawling, with no tone in it, and spoken mainly with the teeth shut: — c Hev'ee zeen t' fox, Jurge ? they'se lost he, I bet ! ' e Na-a-a ! I zeed 'en goo into vuzz at t' earner o' thic 'ood ' — ( Big un?' — c Ya-a-as!' — '"Where bist gwine now then?' — 6 Whoam.' — 6 Thee's betterr come with I.' The c r ' has not a burr, but a thin slurring sound. They have a good many words not usual in book English, and some of them expressive ; for example — e flisky,' small, like small rain ; i louster,' noise, confusion ; f slummakin,' slouchy, careless, untidy ; ( wivvery,' giddy, as when the head swims ; ( mokins ' are coarse gaiters ; e hum- water ' is a cordial with mint in it. They call the bog- myrtle or sw T eet-gale the c gold-withy,' and the white- beam ( hoar-withy.' The w^ord i idle ' always means light-minded, careless, flippant, which is traceable to the Ano-lo-Saxon meaning. o When Mr. Gilpin (of the ( Forest Scenery,' &c.) came to this locality in 1777 as vicar of Boldre parish, including a large slice of the southern part of the Forest, he found the people rude and semi-savage, a wild flock, poachers, smugglers, despisers of laws and WILLIAM • GILPIN. 31 morals ; and during his stay among them of twenty- seven years he faithfully sought to improve them, not without effect. William Gilpin, a lineal descendant of Bernard Gilpin, called e The Apostle of the North,' was born in 1724 at Scaleby Castle, near Carlisle, the house of his grandfather, e a counsellor of note,' 1 whose eldest son, being a bad manager, ran into debt, and was at last obliged to sell the family place. The second son, John Bernard, entered the army, and when a captain of foot got command of a company of In- valids at Carlisle, where he settled. He had married at the age of twenty, his wife being eighteen, and they ' lived together in conjugal felicity fifty years,' says the tombstone at Carlisle. Their son William entered Queen's College, Oxford, January 1740 (N.S.); B.A. 1744 ; ordained 1746, and made curate of Irthington ; M.A. 1748. In 1752, age twenty-nine, he became principal assistant at the school of the Rev. Daniel Sanxay, Cheam, Surrey, who in a year retired in Gilpin's favour. He now married. His own account, dated thirty years later, is simple and pleasing : — c When my uncle was in possession of Scaleby Castle, before his affairs went wrong, he took a little niece, a atherless child, to bring up. He had no children of his own, and his wife and he considered her as such, nor were any father or mother fonder of any of their own children than they were of her. She used often 1 From letter of Eev. "W. G., quoted 'hj Eev. Kichard Warner in Literary Recollections, London, L830, vol. i. p. 316, &c. 82 STILL IN THE FOREST. to be at Carlisle to play with her cousins, and her cousins were as often at Scaleby to play with her. She was a pretty little girl ; aud everybody said she was a very good little girl. In- short, one of her cousins, though only a schoolboy, took a particular fancy to her. He soon after made his father and mother his confidants ; and they were far from dis- couraging him. They probably thought (as I do now) that early attachments, though not favourable to am- bition and worldly schemes, are far from being un- favourable to virtue ; and my father, good man (which alone would endear his memory to me), painted her picture and sent it me to Oxford; though the poor o-irl herself was then ignorant of the occasion. In process of time, however, the plot began to open. The two cousins became acquainted with each other's sen- timents ; and though (as neither of them had anything to depend on but themselves) it was several years before the drama was concluded by a marriage, yet at length this step was thought prudent by aU their friends; and they have now (1791) lived together about thirty years, without having been almost as many days separated. No marriage could be more happy. All their schemes succeeded ; and they are now, in their old age, in affluent circumstances, and have six fine grandchildren to bear their name after them. They have often said to each other, they never knew what could be called an affliction : and only have to hope that God will be pleased to work with WILLIAM GILPIX. 33 them by felicity, as He often does with others by calamity.' ] In his school he seems to have been a sort of minor Arnold ; took great pains with the morals and religion of his pupils, had a constitutional code, and in certain cases tried a culprit by a jury of his fellows, e bound by honour.' ' I never knew,' he says, f an improper verdict given.' Two daughters were born to him, who died young, and two sons, of whom the elder went to America, married, and grew rich, settling at Philadel- phia. The second son, another William, went into the Church, and succeeded his father as master of Cheam School in 1777. The father, 54 years old by this time, had kept the school for twenty-five years, and now re- tired with about 10,000£. saved. His many excellent qualities, both as man and teacher, made many of his old pupils friends of his for life, and one of these, William Mitford, Esq., now presented him to the vicar- age of Boldre. He had thus, altogether, an income of perhaps 7001. a year. In his large parish, fifteen to eighteen miles in circuit, Mr. Grilpin went about actively, visiting the poor cottagers and helping them as well as he knew how. As a preacher, he had an impressive earnestness and simplicity ; and it is re- lated that he once compelled a certain rich married farmer to give up a mistress whom he kept, to the general scandal, and, moreover, to appear in church, led in by the two churchwardens, and to repeat after the 1 Same authority. D -34 STILL IN THE FOREST. curate a paper of confession and contrition, after which the vicar preached a grave, appropriate sermon. Mr. Gilpin was large-built and rather corpulent, with a good voice and dignified presence, fit for a head mas- ter, fit for a vicar. His face, somewhat fat, with a roundish bald head (I have seen his likeness in crayons, lianodno* in Walhampton Park, a house which he often frequented), chiefly expresses a grave and cheerful benevolence, spiced with some hint of mental alacrity. Before coming to Boldre he had published a book, < Lives of the Reformers,' including an account of his ancestor Bernard. After being released from the school, he indulged his love of scenery and sketching by making frequent tours, generally, or perhaps always, accompanied by his wife, in some of the most beautiful parts of England and Scotland, a very uncommon kind of amusement in those days ; and produced in succes- sion the following publications, which soon gave him a considerable reputation, and are still sought after and valued: ( On Picturesque Beauty' [Scottish High- lands] ; Ditto [English Lake District] ; f Forest Scenery ' ; c Essays on Picturesque Beauty ' ; ' Pic- turesque Travels and the Art of Sketching Landscape '; ' On Prints ' ; ( The Wye ; ' ( Picturesque Remarks on the West of England ' ; all embellished with acquatinta engravings after the author's drawings. He also pub- lished ' Sermons ' ; c An Exposition of the New Testa- ment ' ; ( Moral Contrasts ' ; ( Amusements of Clergy- men ' ; ( Life of John Trueman and Richard Atkins, GILPIN' 8 DRAWINGS. 35 for the use of Servants' Halls, Farmhouses, and Cot- tages ' ; and an c Account of William Baker/ one of his humble parishioners. He was very careful and deli- berate in the production of most of his books, keeping them in MS. beyond the Horatia.n period, and mean- while submitting them to private critics, and often re- touching. His life at home was simple, pure, and economical ; he seldom dined out. ' I never was fond,' he says, 1 ( of eating and drinking ; but, from habit, I have now taken a thorough dislike to them both, and never dine pleasantly but on my own bit of mutton, and a draught of small beer after it (for I never drink wine), and so the job is over.' His delight was to stroll after breakfast into the grove behind his vicarage, note-book in hand ; to im- prove his little grounds and garden ; to visit in turn his parishioners, rich and poor, especially the latter (not forgetting their bodily wants) ; to address kind words of greeting, inquiry, admonition, or encourage- ment to every one he met in his walks ; to come home to his bit of mutton, his dear good wife and family, and his pen and ink drawings in the evening. His style of art was not the exact and realistic, but the bold and generalising — verging often on what Mr. Buskin calls the Blottesque; his illustrations of the Highland and other scenery only possessed — and ac- cording to his convictions were right, inasmuch as they 1 Letter of his, quoted by "Warner, i. 359. 36 STILL IN THE FOREST. only possessed — a kind of broad and sweeping resem- blance to real scenes; and his very numerous later drawings were nearly all fancy sketches, exemplifying the true rules of e picturesque beauty,' as he conceived them. These sketches — made with a reed pen and a brownish ( iron-water ' ink, and afterwards ( toned ' with a yellow wash — he used to give away freely to his friends, until it came into his mind that he might in this way make some money for the benefit of his poorer parishioners. He had already, out of the profits of his books, built and opened a school at Boldre for the children of day labourers — twenty boys to be taught reading, writing, and ciphering ; twenty girls, reading, sewing, and spinning. To this school he wished to leave a permanent endowment, and also an aid to the school at Brockenhurst, and sold for these ends a collection of his drawings, received 1,200?. for them, and placed it in the Three per Cents. The sum being still insufficient to carry out all his intentions, he went to work again with his reed- pen, at the age of 78, and in two years produced a large number of draw- ings. These, e the last effort of my eyes,' were sold by auction at Christie's, and produced no less than 1,625?. The schools were endowed accordingly, and the Boldre children, in addition to being taught free of all charge, receive yearly — the boys a jacket, pair of breeches, and a green vest ; the girls a green frock and black petti- coat. The school-house, shadowed by a pair of tall lindens, stands on the road-side, between the church THE GREEN SCHOOL. 37 and the vicarage, and the school, locally called ( The Green School,' is still alive, but not flourishing. The true causes of this unhealthy condition are not easy to get at, but certainly the lamp which old Mr. Gilpin left trimmed, with a careful provision for keeping it alight, now burns but languidly. 1 Make his icill as he may, the possibility of a man's extending his power, accor- ding to any formal plan, into future generations, is always very problematic. There are three notable trees, now nourishing in Boldre parish, which are connected with this good old vicar's memory. You may see them in the course of a moderate walk. About a mile from Lymington, well sheltered among soft woody slopes, stands the comfortable vicarage of gray and red bricks, with trim flowery lawn guarded by Scotch firs, and slanting little meadow, beyond which rises the grovy hill in whose wood-walks Mr. Gilpin used to stray. Near the south- west corner of the house stands conspicuous an un- usually fine Occidental Plane-tree, tall, shapely, healthy, which the vicar used to admire more than seventy years ago, and has celebrated in the 6 Forest Scenery.' This Plane was the vicar's favourite home- tree. In his walks, he was fond of visiting a Yew, some two miles distant, — f A tree,' he says, c of peculiar beauty ... It stands not far from the banks of Lymington River, 1 Measures are now (December 1872) being taken to revive it. 38 STILL IN THE FOREST. on the left bank as you look towards the sea, between Boydon Farm and Boldre Church. It occupies a small knoll, surrounded with other trees, some of which are yews, but of inferior beauty. A little stream washes the base of the knoll, and winding round, forms it into a peninsula. If any one should have curiosity to visit it from this description, and by the help of these land- marks, I doubt not but he may find it at any time within the space of these two or three centuries in great perfection, if it suffer no external injury.' 1 There it stands at this day ; now, in winter-time, sombrely conspicuous as you approach it among the naked gray boughs of the oak-coppice. The third tree connected with Mr. Gilpin's memory is a Maple. ' One of the largest maples I have seen,' he wrote, e stands in the churchyard of Boldre in the New Forest.' 2 This churchyard is beautifully situ- ated on a hill about half-way between Brockenhurst and Lymington, and so thickly surrounded by large elms that the square embattled church-tower is not visible in the summer landscape, and scarcely in the winter. But from the churchyard you have glimpses through leafy screens, or thinner network of bough and twig, of the wide stretching woodland in which it stands. The church, the oldest part (they say) Saxon, another part thirteenth century, patchwork as it now is, retains on the whole a quaint and pleasant rusticity. A year ago it still owned an ancient window, but that 1 Forest Scenery, vol. i. p. 95. 2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 57. BOLDRE CHURCH. 39 has now been gutted! — filled up with clean handsome new stone (och hone !), and the gayest of bright Lon- don glass (alas ! ). There is something that deserves philosophical investigation in the attitude of John Bull's mind to his national relics of antiquity. He holds hard to the customary and familiar, and is thus inclined — not aesthetically or sentimentally, but in a cat-like manner as it were — to keep old things as they are ; but he has also a passion for trimness and tidiness, a practicality of mind that is vexed by any appearance (however beautiful or in itself harmless) which is at all connected with notions of disrepair, neglect, poverty ; and against this love of comfortable trimness, no matter how ugly, the feeling of cat-like conservatism counts for nothing almost, if they come into competi- tion — is daffed aside (if any one appeals to it) as a whim and folly. It cannot be too often repeated, until it is generally felt and acknowledged, that all the significant public relics and traces of the past, great and little, are sacred things, not ours to de- stroy (whether by demolition or ( restoration ? ), but ours to preserve for those who now walk the earth, and for those who are to come after us. Absolute, in- evitable necessity can alone justify our laying one vio- lating finger upon any such connecting link in the life of a nation and of mankind. But to return to our churchyard Maple. Maples in England are seldom more than bushes ; this is a good-sized tree, about six or seven feet round, and something like a dwarfish ol 40 STILL IN THE FOREST. oak. Under its brandies is the plain square-cornered tomb of William Gilpin and his wife, with this inscrip- tion : — s In a quiet mansion beneath this stone, secure from the afflictions, and still more dangerous enjoyments of life, lye the remains of William Gilpin, sometime vicar of this parish, together with the remains of Margaret, his wife. After living above fifty years in happy union, they hope to be raised in God's good time, through the atonement of a blessed Redeemer for their repented transgressions, to a state of joyful immortality ; there it will be a new joy to meet several of their o-ood neighbours who lye scattered in these sacred precincts around them. He died April 5 th, 1804, at the age of 80. She died April 14th, 1807, at the age of 82.' His last illness was very short, and his healthy, virtuous, and happy life closed in peace. It is whole- some and pleasant to reflect on such lives, of which there are always a great many in the world, most of them undistinguished by anything publicly memorable. Mr. Gilpin, in one of his letters, speaking of a visit which he received from his son from America, says : 6 His chief employment while he was here, was tran- scribing a family record, which I drew up some time ago, of my great grandfather, my grandfather, and father, who were all very valuable men ; and I en- couraged him in it for the sake of William, Bernard, and Edwin, whom it may hereafter have a tendency A GOOD CLERGYMAN. 41 to excite to honourable deeds. Indeed I have often thought such little records might be very useful in families, whether the subjects of them were good or bad. A lighthouse may serve equally the purpose of leading you into a haven, or deterring you from a rock. I have the pleasure, however, to reflect that my three ancestors (beyond whom I can obtain no family anec- dotes) were all beacons of the former kind.' One can fancy Mr. Gilpin going benevolently about, (his mind and note-book at the same time busied a good deal with his next work on ' Picturesque Beauty ') now stopping a farmer or a schoolchild with friendly smile and word, now carrying good advice and coin of the realm into some poor cottage, distributing orders for coals and blankets in the winter, consoling the sick, admonishing the lawless, &c, &c. — he also (no way disgracing his ancestors) a i valuable ' man and most kindly. Yet, with all his benevolent and pious activity, it may perhaps be doubted whether our good friend had much real insight into human character, or much real intercourse of mind (rare between those of different grades) with his humbler parishioners. There is not seldom found an amiable blindness in such men as he — amiable perhaps, yet not commendable ; for that course which is sure of applause as ' practical benevolence ' may often (from defect of clear perceptions, and con- sequent sound conclusions) do injustice, and on the w r hole be harmful to society. Some twenty paces westward from the vicar's tomb 42 STILL IN THE FOREST. (I have paid it many a visit) stands a headstone with the following inscription! — the vicar's composition : c Here rests from his Labour William Bakee, whose In- dustry and Frugality, whose Honesty and Piety, were long an Example to this Parish. He was born in 17 10, and died in 1791.' This is the Baker of whom Mr. Gilpin also published an ' account/ for the wider dis- semination of that old peasant's good example ; but Mr. Warner, the admiring friend and sometime the curate of Mr. Gilpin, conscientiously makes the follow- ing mortifying disclosure : *■ — 6 William Baker was an old rustic, resident in a wild part of the parish of Boldre. In one of his walks Mr. Gilpin had lighted upon his cottage. On entering it he found its inhabitant, an aged, but stout and athletic man, eating his humble dinner. All within was neat and clean, and something indicative of strong sense and a cheerful mind appeared in the countenance of the old peasant. In conversation he proved himself well versed in the Bible ; full of maxims of prudence and economy ; and apparently of the most open, blunt, and independent character. Highly interested by his visit, Mr. Gilpin frequently repeated it ; and from the con- versations which passed during this intercourse, he drew up that beautiful account which he published in the work above-mentioned. The misapprehension of Baker's real character was not done away till some time after the death of the old man ; and, considering 1 Literary Recollections, vol. i. p. 343. OLD WILLIAM BAKER. 43 it as exemplary at the time of his decease, Mr. Gilpin wrote a short epitaph, and had it engraven on Baker's tombstone, as a salutary monition to the parishioners of Boldre [sly, stolid rustics with thoughts of their own !], who were in the same humble class of life with the deceased. At length, however, he was undeceived ; and had the sorrow rather than the mortification to find that Baker had been, through life, a worthless and flagitious character ; that age, instead of curing, had only altered the nature of his vices ; and that by all, except the pastor, he had ever been known and despised as a consummate rogue, an oppressive extortioner, and a base hypocrite.' That headstone must have weighed more or less on Mr. Gilpin's mind after the discovery. Could he — ought he to have added a postscript? Requiescas, if thou canst, old William Baker ! thy pastor did not, I suspect, mean to include thee in that friendly hope on his tomb- stone of meeting ' several ' of his good neighbours who lie near him. Living and dead thou hast cheated the good vicar ; and by means of this graven testimony dost perennially cheat the churchyard moraliser. I have no doubt that Mr. Warner is substantially ac- curate in the matter, but I should like to hear some more particulars of this cunning old William. In Boldre church is preached every 18th of March, 6 the Wild-beast Sermon,' founded many years ago to commemorate e for ever ' the escape of a Mr. Worsley from the jaws of a lion in Africa. In Boldre church 44 STILL IN THE FOREST. Robert Southey married for his second wife Miss Caroline Bowles, of Lymington — a literary marriage. He was then a worn-out man. Over-industry in literary labour is apt to tell dismally both on the man and on his work. How much too much Southey read and wrote ! How sure he was of literary immortality ! How faded already are his name and influence ! Yet one is grateful to him for Q Kehama ' and ( Thalaba ' — Sail on, sail on, said Thalaba, Sail o", in the name of Allah ! — not as poetry but as wild stories. This church stands near the middle point of the southern boundary of the Forest. Northward for fif- teen miles or so, stretch the old woods, the moorlands, the new plantations, with a few farms and domains interspersed — some 70,000 acres in all, producing to the Crown a profit of about 10,000/. a year. It is a free and pleasant space to ramble in, although (to be accurate) the New Forest has no very remarkable beauties. There are no romantic hills or glens, only two or three brooks, and those not of the best, no ponds, no rocks (a great want). But whoever shall chance to be invited to one of those country houses that pleasantly dot the neighbourhood of Lyndhurst, most urbanely rural of villages, let him not be in a hurry to refuse. Over and above the delights of a cultivated and friendly society, there is plenty to interest the sports- LYNDHURST. 45 man, the naturalist, or the general rambler and in- quisitive person. In e Rufus's Hall,' at the Queen's House (built in the reign of James or Charles ), he may attend a forest court, and hear the trial of some poacher or wooclstealer, no longer liable to lose life or eyes ; and may, perhaps, learn a new meaning to him of the word mote, namely, stump or stool of a felled tree. In the showy new church hard-by he may see Mr. Leighton's fresco of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, and some glass designed by Mr. Burne Jones. An easy walk will carry him to the beechen shade of Mark Ash, or the mossy lawns and winding paths of Whitley Wood, or to the vale which tradition points out as the scene of the Red King's death. From certain parts of the higher ground he may look southward over seven or eight successive ridges of woodland to the wavy soft blue hills of the Isle of Wight. He may gather in their seasons many a fern and flower — sundew, and great trefoil, and deep blue gentian, on the marsh ; ( tutsan,' a St. John's wort, on open ground, whose berries, the people say, are coloured with Danes' blood; the lung-wort or c snake-flower,' rose-blossomed wild-balm, and among the bracken of Knightwood the tall gladiolus ; may hear the tap of the woodpecker, the rustle of the harm- less snake, perhaps the warning hiss of the viper ; the fern-owl at dusk e whirring in the copse ' ; the hoo ! hoo ! of the brown owls somewhere amid the branchy wilder- ness ; and (suppose it spring) the songs of the rival 46 STILL IN THE FOREST nightingales with their deep trills, their tio-tio-tio-tix, and their e one low piping sound more sweet than all.' He may visit the heronry on Vinney Ridge, and watch the wide-winged parents floating round the tree-tops as they feed their young with eels carried from the mudflats of the Solent ; may with good luck see the honey-buzzard, the crossbill, the kingfisher, in their haunts, and Epops himself, once King of the Birds. Or, some long summer afternoon, and far into the weird twilight — the moon perchance beginning to rise — he may pursue through many a glade and vista the shadowy vision of a beauty imagined but never wholly realised on earth. Beautiful, beautiful Queen of the Forest, How art thou hidden so wondrous deep ? Bird never sung there, fay never morriced, All the trees are asleep. Now her flitting fading gleam Haunts the woodlands wide and lonely ; Now a half-rememher'd dream, Por his comrade only, He shall stray the livelong day Through the forest, far away. Xear the north-eastern corner of the district lies Romsey, with its massive Norman church and adjacent park of Broadlands, where Lord Palmerston was lately master; near the south-eastern corner is the old-new town of Southampton (water-gate to Egypt and India), its suburban houses visible from some points, in front of the chalk downs that overlook Win- ITS BORDERS. 47 Chester. Beaulieu Heath stretches south, to ruined Beaulieu Abbey, of John's and Henry III.'s time, its prior's house now the Duke of Buccleuch's. Else- where, looking northward, one may see the slender far-off signal of Sarum, a stone flower, graceful, to use Emerson's image, as the great-mullein stalk — the highest spire in England. Kingwood is on the western boundary, and the beautiful pastoral vale of the river Avon running down to Christchurch and its venerable priory church, I was in that church one evening, near Christmas time, and stood listening in its huge dusky nave while the singers practised their anthem in the dim-lit organ loft. Beside me glimmered a white marble cenotaph, like a Pieta, a woman bending over a dead youth. There was not light to read the in- scription, but I knew it well enough, and that it commemorated a certain poet drowned in the Bay of Spezia : the inscription partly in his own words — He lias outsoar'd the shadow of our night, Envy and calumny, and hate and pain ; And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again. The house of his son, the Baronet, is not far off: and in Bournemouth churchyard is the grave of Sir Percy's grandfather, William Godwin, whose dust came hither by strange adventure, and now lies quiet amid a crowd of more orthodox tombstones. 48 AT WINCHESTER. CHAPTER III. AT WINCHESTEB. St. Giles's Hill— College— Cathedral— Destruction of Old Things- Saint Swithin — Keats — Eev. Thomas Warton — Culture. Fkom St. Giles's Hill one looks down on the famous old city. Its cathedral among lofty trees, Wykeham's College with the lads at cricket, the water-meadows leading to Saint Cross, the swelling green downs with one grove, a e peculiar coronet,' on St. Catherine's Hill, show fair in the May sunlight. Methinks a flagstaff would stand well at one angle of the low cathedral tower. Brisk and clear runs the shallow river below, by small gray and red houses and their gardens, mill- sluices, the quaint little flint-built church of St. Peter's Chesil, and a vine-clad remnant of the city wall. I pass under the college archway and courts gray with time, green with new foliage, and see, with a na- tural sigh, the fine lads strolling careless in cap and gown. But, surely, regrets for the past, if natural, are vain — if vain, not to be dwelt on ; if dwelt on, foolish. Are these boys all happy, too ? Many a ' fag ' (the fagging is severe, and often cruel) is longing for man- SCHOOLBOYS. 49 hood and freedom. Even in play hours he must sub- mit to the will and caprice of an oldster. ( Grood for him on the whole — prepares him for the battle of life.' Perhaps so ; but perhaps (along with ( cram,' chapel, and other things) it prepares him to make life a battle — a scene of fierce unscrupulous rivalry, instead of peaceful effort and mutual help. Life must have its battles, to be well fought out when each crisis comes ; but life ought not to be a battle. Very far from it. The book-shop outside the gate is full of college boys ; at the next-door pastry-cook's the younger ones swarm like bees. Up those steps, the dining-hall still sets its tables with the old-world square wooden trencher, but also now-a-days with knife and fork ; and tea flows morn and even, where, beer in their fathers' time was the only lawful liquor. A famous novelist of our day (who deals much in cathedrals) said to me, ( We had no tea or coffee ;' — he was a Wykhamist— f but beer, as much beer as you liked — beer at breakfast, beer at dinner, beer at supper, beer under your bed.' Beer sounds barbarous ; but clean home-brewed is a good thing. Our novelist is a burly man, and so was Cobbett, who detested ' slops.' Some of the big lads are at cricket, and with a will. Terribly swift the athletic bowler swings in his heavy ball overhand ; the well-greaved warrior, his opponent, sends it whizzing off the bat. The sport is now made a serious business. It takes money to rig out a cricketer; he goes forth as to a field of battle, E 50 AT WINCHESTER. emulates c professionals ' in his style of play, and in public matches calls in their aid — these professional gentlemen, by the bye, being much akin to horse- jockeys and pugilists. To-day in our railway carriage was a gentleman summoned by telegraph to his son at this school ; a cricket-ball had broken the boy's nose, and his father meant to take him to a London doctor by the evening train. Full-clothed in freshest verdure tremble the lofty lindens of the Close ; firm as a rock stands the gray fortress-like Cathedral, its oldest stonework undecayed as though built yesterday. A side-wicket admits to the vast interior, with massy clustered pillars, and roof high-embowed over the coffins of old kings : solemn and monumental the weighty transept arches and plain thick pillars of Norman work. Noble, too, are the clustered columns of the nave. Yet I wish, on the whole, that Bishop William and others had with- held their hands from perpendicularity. The nave windows are to me of ugly form, the tracery of the great west window stands an offence, which its fine glass hardly condones. And this glass is but a patch- work. Upon Cheriton Down, one March day of 1644, the Roundheads smote the Cavaliers, and, leaving many brave men dead and dying on the hill, came grimly down into Winchester, and smashed the cathedra] windows and monuments. The gathered bits of glass, disjecta membra of saints, kings, queens, bishops, warriors, a fragment of a motto, a corner of a CHUR CH-AR CHITECTURJE. 51 device, broken as they are, make splendid this tall greenish-bluish west window. The outside of a great old cathedral, seen from dif- ferent points of view, with various relations of parts and various groupings with surrounding objects and the landscape, I ' always find both impressive and entertaining, the interior nearly always disappoint- ing. English cathedrals particularly, differing as they do in details, are much alike in the general inte- rior effect, and that effect is monotonous. In magnifi- cence of space, one's imagination is never fulfilled; and in that other kind of impressiveness which we desire of a great building, mystery, they are usually wanting. The baldness of the empty nave, after the first glance, is chilling and disheartening ; the choir, on the other hand, has a petty parochial look. Often the finest thing is some oblique glimpse across the angle of a transept. Considering the money, time, earnestness, and architectural skill employed in raising so many huge perennial structures, one wishes there had been more variety of plan, more invention. I picture to myself, for one example (in the architecture of dreams), a church of long low arcades, converging to a great central space of loftiness almost immeasurable to the eye. In architecture, methinks, the delight of small- ness, in porches, pillars, doors, windows, stairs, arches, &c, is not enough considered. I found at Venice (and Mr. Ruskin, I remember, approved the observa- tion), in the Doge's Palace, in Saint Mark's itself, and E 2 52 AT WINCHESTER. throughout the city, the delight of smallness often emphasised. But whatever we may desire, it were unreasonable to look for much originality in the plan of this or that building among many, all the produce of one spirit, that of Papal Christianity, which of all the virtues cultivated conformity, submission, imitation, as the most necessary, or rather as the groundwork of the rest, and which in every plan (architectural or other) started with certain data — inevitable fixed points. One should rather wonder, perhaps, to find in papal archi- tecture so much variety. The art of painting has fared much worse ; witness those leagues of Madonnas, Holy Families, and great and little saints, that weary our soul in the galleries. Passing strange are these great Papal temples, so alien to modern thought, so unfit for Protestant wor- ship, maintained under such singular conditions — beau- tiful anachronisms, venerably incongruous with the life around them, standing whole and massive, with gray tower and shapely pinnacle, among the landscapes of England. The western porches of the cathedral have been done-up, and look as pretty as a wedding-cake ; the college chapel has been done-up ; old Saint Cross is partly done-up — well or ill I say not, but done-up they are ; and whoever likes clean white stone-work, like a door-step on Sunday morning, and fresh painty and the OLD BUILDINGS. 53 brightest coloured glass that an eminent London firm can manufacture, and no trace left that can be obliter- ated of Time's finger, in tint or line, must be pleased with what he finds going on in nearly every old place in the island. Yet what boots grieving ? The use and sig- nificance of a structure gone, how should the thing escape ruin of one kind or another ? The piety and humanity that founded Saint Cross — church, almshouses, dole of food to the wayfarer — sad ghosts of these haunt their ancient cloister. The realities have fled away, and found (we hope so) new and fitter mansions. *Tis no visible ruin as yet, for this endow T - ment remains a legal and arithmetical fact, with some significance to the thirteen old men, much to the wealthy nobleman, their ( master.' Of antique faith and bounty, many costly relics crowd this land — structures made for perpetual homes of living worship and beneficence, and secondarily as hints to men un- born to remember now and again their brother's name, the founder, with a little prayer breathed to heaven ; but now become rather as tombs of old good intentions and pious plans, fallen into neglect and well-nigh for- getfulness, along with the men in wdiose minds they were once warm and potent. Nor even as tombs (under costly guardianship) can they escape disfigure- ment — preserve the venerableness and beauty of aspect so precious in many ways, and so touching. 54 AT WINCHESTER. When everything old has been thoroughly destroyed or restored (that is defaced), what a pretty world it will be ! There are few old4ooking towns left now in England ; some years hence there will be fewer, or none ; though some old houses, perhaps even a few old back streets may linger. The busy builder and contractor, with his bricken Smug Street, and stuccoed Victoria Ter- race, his elegant modern residences in the outskirts, and splendid business frontages in the High Street, is taking good care of this, in co-operation with the pullers-down and doers-up (corporate and individual) of every old public edifice. Villages retain and will retain more of the crust of antiquity, where the modern spirit does not think it worth while to set up its plate- glass and stucco, where gain . and display, both in their ugliest forms, do not rule everything. Yet even the villages can't always escape, nor the village churches. I know two village churches in Hampshire near one another, each of which has lately been disfigured by the substitution of an ugly modern window for a beautiful ancient one. These new win- dows, filled with gaudiest glass, are both put up in memory of one deceased lady, whose wealthy husband, in consultation of course with the legal guardians of those edifices, could discover no better manner of displaying at once the strength of his grief and of his purse, than by the destruction of two delightful bits of architectural skill, tenderly tinted by the slow hand of time, hallowed SAINT S WITHIN. 55 by the associations of centuries, linking the living to their fathers and predecessors ; and the setting-up in permanence of two pieces of vulgar and pretentious ugliness. Supposing these latter windows perfection in their kind, it were monstrous to substitute them for the antique. I could not find that anybody, of any class, was pleased or satisfied with the alteration. Vanity and purse-pride, ignorance and bad taste, met by apathetic complaisance in those who might have known better, and egged on, doubtless, by the mercan- tile cunning of the tradesman who profited by the affair — these were the motives, and here is the result. I speak of this, and sharply, with some hope of inducing those who have influence and right judgment, not to forego, in similar cases, their duty to themselves and their neighbours ; and to the world, present and future. By an archway, where the little church of St. Law- rence lurks behind the houses, we pass into the High Street of the White City (taking the old British name to have been Caer Gwent), and see its Gothic market- cross in a corner, beside the shop of the serious book- seller who is always to be found in ecclesiastical precincts. Saint Swithin, the weather- famous, besides his share of patronage in the cathedral, has a little parish-church of his own, built by King John over the postern of St. Michael. Swithin, Bishop of Winchester, dying circa 865, his body (as the story goes) was buried at his own request, out of humility perhaps, not in the cathedral 5Q AT WINCHESTER. as usual with bishops, hut in the churchyard, where the drops of rain might wet his grave; afterwards, when he was canonised, the monks resolved to move his bones into the cathedral, and the 15th of July was fixed upon for the ceremony ; but on that day, and for forty days in succession, it rained so violently that the plan was given up as displeasing to the saint, and they built, instead, a chapel at his grave, where many miracles were wrought. Such the tradition, and we all know the popular saying, of which one form runs thus : — Saint Swithin's day if thou dost rain, For forty days it will remain ; Saint Swithin's day if thou be fair, For forty days 'twill rain na mair. Many people, by the bye, forget certain effects of the great change in the English calendar made in 1752 by cutting out eleven whole days, in acceptance of the i New Style,' introduced by authority of Pope Gregory XIII. in 1582, and adopted by all Catholic nations ; but, though it had not merely the Pope but the sun on its side, resisted till 1752 by Protestant England, as it still is by Russia. That day of the year which we now call 26th July is that which belonged to St. Swithin by the old way of reckoning, and to which reference must be made if we go about to inquire, is there any meteorological foundation for this adage ? So also that point in the earth's annual voyage which about a century ago was called Christmas Day in England, is now called the 5th of January. Instead THE OLD CALENDAR. 57 of being but four days from the shortest day, the festival was fifteen, falling thus at a time of year when the weather is on an average colder : i As the day lengthens, the cold strengthens.' We keep the tradi- tion of a snowy Christmas, which is the seldomer realised because we have changed our almanac. May- day, again, Milton's and Herrick's Mayday, is towards the middle of the month, not at its beainnino*. How needful it is to be on one's guard against words — continually tending to slip away from facts and as- sume power and authority as in their own right. The Irish (a people of most conservative temper in many things) still have a high respect for certain holy days as reckoned by the Old Style — i Old Christmas,' &c. An Irish peasant hardly ever dates by months and days in his talk, but by ' set times,' saying, So long before or after Christmas, Candlemas, Patrick's Day, Corpus Christi, Lammas, Michaelmas, e Holiday ' (All Hallows) and so on ; and he keeps reckoning of some, if not all, by the Old Style as well as, perforce, the Kew. Looking down from this old West Gate a-top of the High Street, 'tis pleasant to see at the street's end a green hill rising bold and steep. Many a pleasant country walk stretches out from this ancient city ; through the meadows, with clear streams full of gliding fish and waving weeds, across little bridges, by willows and mills ; over the breezy chalk-downs, wide-viewing, 58 AT WINCHESTER. with farms and hamlets in their vales ; by shady roads and field-paths through the corn and clover. Here wandered once on a time, solitary and somewhat sad, a certain young poet (now for ever young). In these fields, one Sunday, among the corn-stacks and orchards, he felt and sung the rich sadness of antumn : — Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ! Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue. Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourne ; Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. Thou couldst not on this earth, dear Poet, reach the autumn, nor the summer of thy life ; yet enough re- mains of thine ethereal musings to enrich the world and deserve our eternal love. One day, perhaps, I shall touch thy very hand, no more fevered with sick- ness and care. How delightful are Keats's letters, carelessly scrib- bled off, simple, kindly, picturesque, with views of life and literature at once broad and subtle. No politics or gossip of the day, e echoes of the clubs,' personal trivialities — merely the intimate chat of a poet, think- ing of nature, humanity, and poetry. After all, it is permissible to believe, the poet draws the best lot from POETS. 59 Fortune's urn. Whom could lie envy ? Not alone is his delight in life the keenest, but his insight the most veracious. Yet, ah me, how thin-skinned he is — how open to suffering — how sure to suffer, in a world such as this ? Is it partly the world's fault, for being such a world ? Was Keats, pensive amid the sheaves, a happier man than Hodge, who reaped them, and quaffed his ale-cup at the harvest-home ? 6 Happier ' — what is happiness ? Would any man deliberately give up a grain of his intellect or sensi- bility to win a lower kind of happiness than he was born capable of? — escape suffering by virtue of stupidity? Here, truly, is a whole catechism of questions ; and food for meditation. In these Wintonian fields roved another son of the Muses, whose e shade ' (as he himself might have ex- pressed it) would no doubt disdain association with that of the author of Endymion ; I mean the Rev. Thomas Warton, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, Professor of Poetry, and Poet Laureate, which famous and prosperous man of letters came often on a visit to his brother, the Rev. Dr. Joseph, master of Winchester School, himself a bard of note. Where shall the muse, that on the sacred shell, Of men in arms and arts renown'd, The solemn strain delights to swell ; Oh where shall Clio choose a race Whom Fame with every laurel, every grace, Like those of Albion's envied isle has crown' d ? Hush, Reverend Shade ! — yet for thy diligent an- 60 AT WINCHESTER. notation, Tom, of Spenser and of Milton, pass not unkindly remembered. Strange, that along with in- tense study of these masters thou couldst pursue thine own scrannel pipings undismayed. Probably it is rather fame than merit, in every de- partment, that attracts nine in ten of even the cognos- centi. But how comes the fame ? — from the consistent and accumulative judgment of a few in each generation, in whom the divine light of intelligence burns clearest. Therefore the cultivated (who know what has been said) generally take, on the whole, sound views of past work ; while as to contemporary doings they are at sea, and sailing every w r ay with the various winds of criticism. One hears a good deal now-a-days, in England, of 4 culture ' and ' philistinism,' — a generation or two after the Germans have tired of the subject. That culture is a good thing hardly admits of contradiction, any more than that food and sleep are good things. What our literary friends, A, B, and C, mean exactly by the word, is rather obscure. It is very certain, at any rate, that English University Education and culture are not, and never have been, interchangeable terms. The Cultured Philistine (if that phrase may be coined) hath ever been the favoured son of Alma Mater. Had John Keats gone to Oxford, is it likely that he would have risen to college honours, wealth, and power, like Thomas TVarton ? Methinks the Cultured Philistine CULTURE. 61 is the very Goliath of his people. Who is not daily afflicted by the tongue and pen of the over-educated man, so fluent and well-worded, so vague and unreal, so haughty and so hollow ? He bullies us, and, usually, we knock under for a time. But the roll of literary heroes is not made up of names such as his. Perhaps the time is coming when England (whether under the term of i cul- ture ' or some other term) will recognise a set of new ideas on education — a faith clear and high, and in application as broad as English citizenship. The atmo- sphere of our generation is electrical with new thoughts, and neither Oxford nor Canterbury, Westminster, Winchester, Manchester, nor Little Pedlington, can escape the subtle and potent influence. Upper Winchester, near the station, is becoming thoroughly villafied, as cockney-suburban in appearance as Haverstock Hill. But the entrance to a town from the railway-station is almost always ugly. How plea- santly Winchester must have greeted the coach-tra- veller, whirling up the green valley, seeing the great cathedral grow larger through its elms, then turning a corner of the Close, a corner of the High Street, into the court-yard of the f George/ J^ 62 AT FARNHAM. CHAPTER IV. AT FAKNHAM. High Street — Bishop's Palace — ' The Jolly Farmer' — Sketch of William Cobbett's Life and Vfritings — His Grave — Crooksbury Hill. When you are in the long, flat, well-to-do and modern- ish High Street of Farnham (Fern-ham?) you see only the High Street, and there is not much to see there ; emerging at either end you are among hopgrounds — myriads of brown poles in spring, multitudinous bowerage in summer; and the hops here grow the highest and make the most delicate beer (so the Farn- ham folk say) of any hops in England. Farnham High Street, running east and west along a hollow, is built on either side of a main road : and this never gives the proper town effect, for the road is thus the chief thing, the street subordinate. The smallest town, or even hamlet, wears a certain civic importance when it looks like a goal or finish in itself, mistress of all the roads that approach it, and older than they ; not an accident or afterthought, but an THE PALACE. 63 ancient centre and biding-place of humanity, a heart or at least ganglion in the general circulation. A town with gates is most complete ; but such towns now (to fall into rhyme) are obsolete. At back of the houses on the north side of this High Street, hop-fields slope upwards to a crowd of great trees stretching along; the summit of the hill. Those are the Bishop of Winchester's elms ; his palace-tower rises proudly amiclstthe circling ruins and the moat (now ahaw- thorn dell) of the old castle of Henry III.'s time ; those are the Bishop's fallow-deer that troop in scores down the richly-shadowed park ; and from his flower and fruit garden, made artfully atop of the ancient keep, the bishop can comfortably overlook no small piece of his diocese in a bird's-eye view. To the left, over the wooded vale of Moor Park (Sir W. Temple's and Swift's), rises Cobbett's Crooksbury Hill, like a lion couchant, heading northwards, shagged with dark fir- trees : at our feet are the town and tall square church- tower of Farnham. Our bishop, a handsome and courteous old gentleman, is rather i Low ' than c High,' nor puts forward any such haughty and awful claims as his Brother of Salisbury; 1 indeed, they could hardly be suggested (at least in the simpler day of his pro- motion) by a mitre coming from the Fourth George through the fair hands of the Marchioness of Conyng- ham. The story of this mitre is perhaps well enough 1 Questions of ritual and doctrine now little concern Bishops Sumner and Hamilton ; both having undergone translation, effectual and final. 64 AT FARNHAM. known. At all events I am not goin^ to tell it. Lord may if he likes. Down the hill, under those huge episcopal trees; across the High Street and the bridge over the little river Wey, slow winding through poplars and willow- fringed meads ; and so to a high bank bearing a grove on its shoulder ; we come to where the road bends upwards left to the railway station. Facing the bridge stands a public-house, a little back from the road, built close at foot of the steep bank, and partly in a quarry scooped in its sandy front. William Cobbett was born in this house in 1762. It was then the residence of his father, a small farmer, and does not seem to have been much altered in ap- pearance. It is a decent-looking brown-roofed house, with two small windows on each side of the open door, and five on the second floor ; the sign of i The Jolly Farmer ' set on a pole in front, and the thick grove shading it on each flank and risino- hiffh above the chimneys. In my own home in a distant part of the kingdom, Cobbett 's name chanced to mix with some of the earliest circumstances of my childhood. My father, who was then a kind of Tory, had in his younger days been a Radical reformer, and subscriber to the Political Register, of which paper a long row of volumes bound in red stood on a shelf in his bedroom. Always curious about books, I did not fail to turn these over, and to ask the meaning of the Gridiron picture, and COBBETT' S GRANDMOTHER. 65 who Cobbett was, though I could not make much of what I was told, or enjoy, until long afterwards, the variety, vigour, and amusing unreasonableness of that famous agitator. Cobbett has left, dispersed through a hundred volumes or more, many pleasing touches of autobio- graphy, which are now the best parts of his writing, and which might easily enough be combined into a distinct picture. e With respect to my ancestors [he says], I shall go no further back than my grandfather, and for this plain reason — that I never heard talk of any prior to him. He was a day-labourer ; and I have heard my father say that he worked for one farmer from the day of his marriage to that of his death, upwards of forty years. He died before I was born ; but I have often slept beneath the same roof that sheltered him, and where his widow dwelt for many years after his death. It was a little thatched cottage, with a garden before the door. It had but two windows ; a damson-tree shaded one, and a clump of filberts the other, Here I and my brothers went every Christmas and Whitsuntide to spend a week or two, and torment the poor old woman with our noise and dilapidations. She used to give us milk and bread for breakfast, an apple-pudding for dinner, and a piece of bread and cheese for our supper. Her fire was made of turf cut from the neighbouring heath ; and her evening light was a rush dipped in grease.' F 66 AT FARNHAM. George Cobbett, this old cottager's son, who out of earning twopence a day as ploughboy had been able to attend evening school, was e learned for a man in his rank of life,' understood land-surveying, and had a reputation among his country neighbours for experience and understanding. ( He was honest, industrious, and frugal,' and ' happy in a wife of his own rank, liked, beloved, and respected.' He became tenant of a farm, on which he and his sons laboured vigorously : — ' My father used to boast that he had four boys, the eldest of whom was but fifteen years old, who did as much work as any three men in the parish of Famham. I do not remember the time [says William, the third (?) of these boys] when I did not earn my own living. My first occupation was driving the small birds from the turnip- seed and the rooks from the pease. When I first trudged afield, with my wooden bottle and my satchel swung over my shoulders, I was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles ; and at the close of the day, to reach home was a task of infi- nite difficulty. My next employment was weeding wheat, and leading a single horse at harrowing barley. Hoeing pease followed ; and hence I arrived at the honour of joining the reapers in harvest, driving the team, and holding the plough.' William's love of gardening, which remained with him through life, showed itself early. When six years old— ( I climbed up the side of a steep sand-rock [doubt- COBBETT' S CHILDHOOD. 67 less this one behind the house], and there scooped me out a plot of four feet square to make me a garden, and the soil for which I carried up in the bosom of my little blue smock-frock.' One sees clearly the sturdy, ruddy, whitish-haired little rustic, with twinkling grey eyes, in his blue smock and hob-nailed shoes, hoeing pease, scaring the rooks, rolling down a sand-bank with his brothers, now and again running away from his work to follow the hounds, with the certainty of losing his dinner, and the proba- bility of being f basted ' on his return ; and on winter evenings learning from his father the arts of readino; and writing. ' 1 have some faint recollection of ^oiiis; to school to an old woman, who, I believe, did not succeed in learn- ing me my letters. . . . [Cobbett sticks to the old form — learning me my letters.] As to politics, Ave were like the rest of the country people in England ; that is to say, we neither knew nor thought anything about the matter. The shouts of victory or the murmurs of a defeat would now and then break in upon our tranquillity for a moment ; but I do not ever remember having seen a newspaper in my father's house.' The American war, however, gradually took hold of the attention even of country-folk. George Cobbett was a partisan of the Americans, and had many a dis- pute on the subject, over a pot of good ale, with a shrewd old Scotchman, the gardener of a nobleman in F 2 68 AT FAUN HAM. the neighbourhood. The boys, who were sometimes listeners to these discussions, always thought their father right — e There was but one wise man in the world, and that one was our father. 5 Let us now into the c Jolly Farmer/ and drink a glass of the famous Farnham ale. It would seem that Cobbett's father not only farmed, but also kept a public-house here, but of this I am not quite sure. William, who is never tired of bragging of his father as a working farmer, is silent, so far as I know, as to the selling of ale. Alas ! they give us Windsor ale — have no Farnham. Why at so many places, even some that are widely noted for brewing, do they give you beer of some other town ? Intervention between producer and consumer (which Cobbett used to rail against, and which is vastly increased in our day) is at work in this matter too ; supporting at the cost of the community a far too numerous class of mere transmitters. One can hardly buy a fish, now-a-days, on the seashore, or a pound of butter in a country village, direct from a dairy. Before the article is allowed to reach your hands, several people, in addition to the producer, are determined to squeeze a profit out of it. ( Yes,' the man said, i Cobbett was born in this house, in the room above the parlour.' The front part of the house remains nearly unaltered, but another set of rooms has been added at the back. The parlour, a low room with a beam across the ceiling, has an engrav- COBBETT'S BOYHOOD. 69 ing of William Cobbett, Esq., M. P., over the fireplace. A corporal of the Military Train, from Aldershot camp, who was drinking beer, knew something of Cobbett's history, and was clear as to the number of his regiment (54th), which I had forgotten. Diligent a boy as William Cobbett was, and dutiful to his parents, he was always determined to see some- thing of the world outside of his parish. He ran away from home three times — to Kew, to Portsmouth, to London. The first escapade he described, fifty years after, in an address to Reformers, when he was candi- date for the city of Coventry in 1820 : — ( At eleven years of age my employment was clipping of box-edsjinffs and weeding beds of flowers, in the garden of the Bishop of Winchester, at the castle of Farnham, my native town. I had always been fond of beautiful gardens ; and a gardener who had just come from the king's gardens at Kew, gave such a description of them as made me instantly resolve to work in these gardens.' Next morning, accordingly, the boy walked off, and towards the evening of a day in June reached Rich- mond with threepence in his pocket. 6 1 was trudging through Richmond, in my blue smock-frock and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eyes fell upon a little book in a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was written e Tale of a Tub — price threepence.' The title was so odd that my curiosity was excited.' 70 AT FARNHAM. Instead of supper, he bought the little book, and carried it off to the shady side of a haystack: — ( It was something so new to my mind, that though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me beyond description ; and it produced what I have always considered a sort of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark without any thought about supper or bed. When I could see no longer, I put my little book in my pocket, and tumbled down by the side of the stack, where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me in the morning ; when off I started to Kew, reading my little book. The singularity of my dress, the simplicity of my manners, my confident and lively air, and doubtless his own compassion besides, induced the gardener, who was a Scotsman, I remember, to give me victuals, find me lodging, and set me to work.' One day — ' The present king [George IV., then a boy of about the same age as little Cobbett] and two of his brothers laughed at the oddness of my dress, while I was sweep- ing the grass-plot around the foot of the pagoda.' This queer little book, < The Tale of a Tub,' was mainly composed within a couple of miles of Farnham, some eighty years before little William walked to Kew. At the age of 20, Cobbett went on board the Pegasus man-of-war, at Spithead, and offered himself for the navy, but Captain Berkeley thought fit to refuse his request. Next year, one May-day, the young SERGEANT-MAJOR COBBETT. 71 man, drest in his holiday clothes, was on his way to Guildford fair. He was at foot of a hill, and the London stage-coach came down towards him at a merry rate. 6 The notion of going to London never entered my mind till this very moment, yet the step was completely determined on before the coach came to the spot where I stood. Up I got, and was in London about nine o'clock in the evening.' He had but half a crown left. One of the passen- gers who knew the lad's father, after vainly trying to persuade young Cobbett to return to Farnham, pro- cured him employment in a lawyer's office at Gray's Inn — a detestable dungeon, in which he worked at 6 quill-driving ' for about eight months. Walking one Sunday in St. James' Park, he saw an advertisement, e To Spirited Young Men,' went down to Chatham, enlisted, remained a year in garrison, giving his leisure-time to reading, and was then shipped off to Nova Scotia to join his regiment ; where, being intelligent, well-conducted, and indefatigably hard- working, he rose with unusual speed to the rank of sergeant-major. In person, he was tall, burly, ruddy, with obstinate mouth and jaw, and shrewd small grey eyes ; on the whole, with a true, downright, positive, good-humoured John Bull aspect. When he first saw his wife, she was only thirteen years old. She was the daughter of a sergeant-major 72 AT FARNHAM. in the artillery, and William Cobbett was sergeant- major (perhaps the youngest in the army) of a regiment of foot, both stationed in forts near the city of St. John, New Brunswick. f I sat in the same room with her for about an hour, in company with others, and I made up my mind that she was the very girl for me. That I thought her beautiful is certain, for that I had always said should be an indispensable qualification; but I saw in her what I deemed marks of that sobriety of conduct of which I have said so much, and which has been by far the greatest blessing of my life. It was now dead of winter, and, of course, the snow several feet deep on the ground, and the weather piercing cold. It was my habit, when I had done my morning's writing [he rose at four o'clock], to go out at break of day to take a walk on a hill, at the foot of which our barracks lay. In about three mornings after I had first seen her, I liad, by an invitation to breakfast with me, got up two young men to join me in my walk ; and our road lay by the house of her father and mother. It was hardly light, but she was out on the snow scrubbing out a washing-tub. " That's the girl for me," said I, when we had got out of her hearing.' They were engaged ; but, after a time, the artillery went to England, and she along with them. Cobbett had saved 150/., and this he sent to his * little brunette ' before she sailed, desiring her not to spare the money, but buy herself good clothes and live COBBETT 'S MARRIAGE. 73 without hard work. It was four long years after this when Cobbett's regiment returned to England, and 6 I found,' he says, ( my little girl a servant of all work (and hard work it was) at five pounds a year, in the house of a Captain Brissac; and, without hardly saying a word about the matter, she put into my hands the whole of my hundred and fifty pounds unbroken.' Cobbett on his part had been equally faithful ; though with an episode — of friendship on his side, and a be- ginning of love on the other — between him and a farmer's beautiful daughter in JSTew Brunswick, which would have been dangerous to a man of weaker will and principle. He tells this story delightfully in the e Advice to Youno; Men.' The sergeant-major, now thirty years old, obtained his discharge (this was in 1792) and immediately ac- cused four officers of his regiment of embezzlement and keeping false accounts. A court-martial was granted, but on the day of trial no accuser appeared. Cobbett had gone to France with his new-married wife. Thence, after six months, they sailed to America. His heat of temper, I should guess, along with a real conviction of being in the right, made him put in the accusation ; and his shrewdness showed him, after- wards, the difficulty of sustaining it ; and so, being but a retired sergeant-major without advisers or backers, or any confidence in the powers that were, he thought the best plan was to remove himself. In 1794, Cobbett, then in Philadelphia, began authorship by writing 74 AT FARNIIAM. certain pamphlets under the signature of Peter Por- cupine. These were violently anti-democratic, opposed to all the views then popular in France and America, and made a great noise. Then, as all through his career, he delighted in opposing and attacking ; and the title of one of these pamphlets, ' A Kick for a Bite' (by no means i A Kiss for a Blow '), truly indicates his manner of carrying on a controversy. Cobbett after- wards opened a bookseller's shop in Second Street. He was recommended not to expose anything in his window that might provoke the populace. i I saw the danger ; but also saw that I must, at once, set all danger at defiance, or live in everlasting subjection to the prejudices and caprice of the demo- cratical mob.' When he took down his shutters, the window of the new shop was seen to be filled with portraits of royal and aristocratic personages, George III. in a prominent position and ' every picture that I thought likely to excite rage in the enemies of Great Britain.' The bold bookseller was attacked in newspapers and pam- phlets, and by threatening letters, but his shop and person remained without scathe. At this time, the first of many suits for libel was brought against Cobbett by the Spanish minister for an attack upon himself and his royal master in Por- cupine } s Gazette ; this was followed by an action on the part of one Dr. Rush, who treated yellow fever COBBETT AS JOURNALIST. 75- by bleeding, and whom Porcupine called e Sangrado ' and ( quack ' — probably with truth. But in this case Cobbett was fined 5,000 dollars and costs, and ( sold up ' by the sheriff. Soon after, he returned to England, already noted as a journalist, and set up in London a daily paper,. The Porcupine. This soon came to a stop ; and then began in 1802 the famous Political Register, which appeared, first fortnightly, then weekly, and continued, almost without a break, during more than thirty years. At first, Cobbett was a warm anti-Napoleonist, partisan of Pitt, and defender of aristocratic institu- tions. At the Peace of Amiens he refused to light up his windows in Pall Mall (where his shop was), and had them smashed by the mob. Six persons were con- victed for taking share in this outrage ; the jury recommended them to mercy, and the prisoners' coun- sel asked Mr. Cobbett if he would join in the recom- mendation ? ( Certainly not, sir,' was the reply, ( I came here to ask for justice, and not for mercy.' In the early volumes of the ' Register ' some of the most amusing things are Cobbett's violent attacks on Sheridan, and also his denunciations of the study of Greek and Latin as f worse than useless,' his ire having been roused by the frequent employment of the phrase uti possidetis in some of the parliamentary debates. Cobbett had his own notions of ' culture ; ' he never regretted the early narrowness of his education as a. 76 AT FARNHAM. farmer's boy, but vaunted it to be the very best in the world. Without this kind of education, or something very much like it, — ( I should have been at this day ' (he says in c Rural Rides ') i as great a fool, as inefficient a mortal, as any of those frivolous idiots that are turned out from Win- chester and Westminster schools, or from any of those dens of dunces called colleges and universities.' Here, after Warton and Keats, we have a distinct third variety of the writing man. As to poetry and philosophy and art, Cobbett sincerely despised them. His ignorance of all that is highest in literature was immense, and he was immensely proud of it. The broad-shouldered, beetle-browed, shrewd, indefatigable, self-esteeming, pugnacious, obstinate man, unlearned and unimaginative, crammed with prejudices and per- sonal likings and dislikings, looked upon his own practical common sense as the final standard of every- thing in heaven and earth. He was in a good many ways like Walter Savage Landor, minus the culture. When he set up the 'Register,' Cobbett was about forty years old, and he soon became a political power in the kingdom, and a thorn, or a whole bush of thorns, in the side of the ministry — of every ministry in turn. Pie was never quiet for a day, always fighting twenty people at a time, and knocking them down in succession with his cudgel, like Master Punch. In 1803 he came under two fines of 5001. THE POLITICAL REGISTER. 77 each for libels on members of the Irish Government. Having begun as a partisan of Pitt, he changed round (it was said under the effect of a personal slight), at- tacked Pitt violently, and his funding system ; backed Sir Francis Burdett, and became recognised as one of the leading i Radicals.' In 1810, for an article on the flogging of two militiamen at Ely, he was prosecuted by the Crown, fined 1,0007., and sent to prison for two years. The 'Register' for July 14th is dated from f Newgate ; ' and the sturdy man is as full of courage and fight as ever. * This work' (he says), e of which I now begin the Eighteenth Volume, has had nothing to support it but its own merits. Not a pound, not even a pound in paper money, was ever expended in advertising it. It came up like a grain of mustard, and like a grain of mustard-seed it has spread over the whole civilised world. And why has it spread more than other pub- lications of the same kind ? There have not been wanting imitations of it. There have been some dozens of them, I believe : same size, same form, same type, same heads of matter, same title — all but the word expressing my name. How many efforts have been made to tempt the public away from me, while not one attempt has been made by me to prevent it ! Yet all have failed. The changeling has been discovered, and the wretched adventurers have then endeavoured to wreak their vengeance on me. They have sworn that I write badly ; that I publish nothing 78 AT FARNHAM. but trash ; that I am both fool and knave. But still the readers hang on to me. One would think, as FalstafF says, that I had given them love powder. No ; but I have given them as great a rarity, and something full as attractive — namely, truth in clear language.' After his two years in prison, Cobbett emerged again, pugnacious and undaunted, though now fifty years old. He had a strong frame, perfect health, and a cheerful temperament. He rose early, took plenty of exercise, was very moderate in diet, eschewing wine and spirits, tea and coffee, and also vegetables (which he called e garden stuff'), and eating as little meat and bread as he could prevail on his teeth to be satis- fied with ; his drink beer, milk, and water. He was very fond of farming, which he understood well, and also of field sports, especially hunting. During the middle part of his life he occupied for some time a farm at Botley, in Hampshire. In his family life he was one of the most fortunate of men. c I have seven children ' (he wrote), ' the greater part of whom are fast approaching the state of young men and young women. I never struck one of them in anger in my life ; and I recollect only one single instance in which I have ever spoken to one of them in a really angry tone and manner. And when I had so done, it appeared as if my heart was gone out of my body. It was but once, and I hope it will never DOMESTIC HAPPINESS. 79 be again. ... In my whole life I never spent one evening away from my own home, and without some part, at least, of my family, if I was not at a distance from that home.' His wife he never tired of praising. Some one lately told me, P. Walker, a little anecdote, belonging doubtless to the Botley time. A gentleman, who told the thing to my informant, was travelling to London inside the Southampton coach. There were four passengers, one a lady. Cobbett, whose name was in everybody's mouth, became the topic of con- versation, and was severely handled by the three gentlemen, probably Tories. ' I hear,' says one, ' that he is a tyrant at home, and beats his wife.' On which the lady, hitherto silent in her corner, said : ( Pardon me, sir, a kinder husband and father never breathed ; and I ought to know, for I'm his wife.' How far (if at all) can the domestic life of any public man be usefully considered in connection with his public life, as throwing light on the latter ? The domestic life seems to belong to the department of biography, as distinguishable from history. The fact of a man being in the common meaning a good husband, father, friend, or not good, seems in many cases to throw no light at all upon his character as a politician a soldier, an author. To sum up the total of a man, tracing the connection between his public and private life, is a task which, if at all fit to be attempted, it 80 AT FARNHAM. would be vain to attempt without an extremely unusual command of all the facts. The rule that public men, as such, are to be judged by their public work, seems broadly, the sound one. But here is matter for an essay. Cobbett, in his political writings, continually praised his own domestic virtues. Whether or no this added much weight to his arguments on paper currency and rotten boroughs, it certainly made his writings more vivacious and readable. In 1816, Napoleon being finally settled, the British public began to talk loudly of Parliamentary Reform ; ( Hampden Clubs ' were established in every part of the kingdom, muttering of i universal suffrage ' and ( annual parliaments.' ' Cobbett's Register' had hitherto been a stamped paper, price a shilling and a half- penny ; he now published it unstamped and at the price of twopence. The circulation became enormous, and so in proportion did Cobbett's fame and influence. He had now the largest audience of any living writer, and by unfailing warmth and vigour of style, and reckless personality in abuse of his opponents, kept his public always attentive and amused. Next year the Government, alarmed by the state of the country, passed ( Six Acts ' of a repressive character, and sus- pended the right of habeas corpus. Cobbett, not wishing to be clapped in gaol without trial, suddenly moved off to America, where he remained till Novem- ber 1819. He resided most of the time in Long TOM PAINE'S BONES. 81 Island, and he also travelled to acquire a knowledge of transatlantic farming. In the meantime he kept on sending over his e Register' for publication in England. When the repeal of the obnoxious law enabled him to return, he published e A Year's Residence in America.' He arrived at Liverpool in November 1819. When the custom-house officers examined his luggage, they opened a certain box, and to their surprise found that it contained human bones. i These, gentlemen,' said Cobbett, ( are the mortal remains of the immortal Thomas Paine ! ' This business of Paine's bones (in the earlier numbers of the ' Register ' he was f that miscreant Paine ') was a truly comical attempt on the part of an unimaginative elderly man to produce a dramatic effect in real life. It was an attempt in the French style, and it utterly failed in England. Cobbett made a kind of progress through the provincial towns up to London, where he was banqueted by his reform friends at the Crown and Anchor tavern. As to Paine's bones, he kept on speaking and writing about them for a time as a treasure of immense value. He proposed a public funeral, with e twenty waggon-loads of flowers ' to strew the way. A splendid monument was to be erected. Locks of the deceased patriot's hair were to be soldered into gold rings in Cobbett's own presence, and sold at a guinea each beyond the value of the ring. But the public only laughed, and some reported that Mr. Cobbett had been taken in by the Yankees, and had brought away the bones of an G 82 AT FARNHAM. old nigger instead of those of his hero. Cobbett gave up talking of his anatomical treasure, and what became of it nobody knew. Cobbett at this time, and probably more or less all through his career, was embarrassed in his money matters. Insolvency was one cause of his flight to America, and he seems at that time to have repudiated ;his debts on the ground of his having been unjustly treated by i society as a whole.' He was then made a bankrupt. He had not long returned, before, in a new action for libel, he was cast in 1,0007. damages. But neither debt nor obloquy, nor any of the numerous difficulties of his life, had any perceptible effect on the spirits and industry of this indomitable man. He seems to have borrowed money largely, and raised it by hook or by crook in ways utterly mysterious to ordinary men, who fear their butcher and baker. He blazed away in his c Register ' weekly (at this time violently attacking his former dlly, Burdett), and in the beginning of the year 1820 he offered himself as a candidate for the borough of Coventry, but was defeated. In Queen Caroline's case he took the queen's side with his usual vehemence. In 1822, his 'Register' for August 17th is addressed to Joseph Swan (a prisoner in Chester jail for some political offence), and begins — ' Castlereagh has cut his own throat, and is dead. X*et the sound reach you in the depth of your dungeon, and let it convey consolation to your suffering soul.' Canning/ Property Robinson,' and e Parson Malthus,' COBBETTS OPINIONS. 83 were, among many other public characters, objects of constant abuse in ' Cobbett's. Register ' at this time. He was incessant in vituperation of the borough-mongers and f tax-eaters ; ' they were the ( basest of mankind,' e vermin,' and even e devils.' He was against standing •armies, paper-money, and national debt ; modern shop- keeping and locomotion, modern London ( f the Wen ') and other overpeopled centres ; he abhorred Jews, Methodists, Quakers, Bishops, and Malthusians. His opinions usually stood on a rational foundation, but were built up into ill-balanced and grotesque edifices, lop- sided and uninhabitable. Take a specimen of his manner : — ' There is an c< Emigration Committee " sitting to devise the means of getting rid, not of the idlers, not of the pensioners, not of the dead-weight, not of the parsons (to " relieve " whom we have seen the poor labourers taxed to the tune of a million and a half of money), not of the soldiers : but to devise means of getting rid of these ivorking people, who are grudged even the miserable morsel that they get ! There is in the men calling themselves " English country gentle- men ' r something superlatively base. They are, I sincerely believe, the most cruel, the most unfeeling, the most brutally insolent; but I know, I can prove, I can safely take my oath, that they are the most base of all the creatures that God ever suffered to disgrace the human shape. The base wretches know well that the taxes amount to more than sixty millions a year, G 2 84 AT FARNHAM. and that the poor-rates amount to about seven millions ; yet, while the cowardly reptiles never utter a word against the taxes, they are incessantly railing against the poor-rates, though it is (and they know it) the taxes that make the paupers.' The best thing in Cobbett (for which one must love him, amidst all his faults) is his hearty compassion and kindness for the working classes and the poor, and his unwearied efforts to improve their condition. His ' Cottage Economy ' is an excellent book, containing,, among many other useful things, an explanation of how to prepare and use English wheaten straw for the ma- nufacture of hats, bonnets, &c., which has helped many a poor cottager in the struggle for a • living. One of his periodical publications is called ' The Poor Man's Friend,' and this phrase ought to be inscribed on his monument. Nothing made him more indignant than to see a rich tract of country, here tilled like a garden, there grazed by herds of fat oxen, the downs covered with sheep, the valleys yellow with corn, and to find on this teeming soil the labourers, and the labourers' wives and children, living from year's end to year's end on the barest subsistence, with no prospect to- wards the close of their hard life but the workhouse. It was Cobbett's fixed belief that all the country parts of England, including the villages and small towns, were far more populous some centuries ago, that is, in the times called ( medieval,' than they are to-day ; and as one evidence of this he points to the vast numbers COBBETT AS A SPEAKER. 85 of cathedrals and churches, built in those good old times, which still exist all over the land. The English 6 Reformation' was one of Cobbett's numerous objects of attack, and he wrote a ( History ' of it, in which, as usual, his statements (seldom without a vein of strong sense and originality) were vitiated by ignor- ance and violence. In 1829-30, Cobbett, now approaching his 70th year, but as hale and vigorous as ever, went through a great part of England, chiefly on horseback, and gave political lectures in many towns and villages. His main topics were the villany of existing methods of taxation, and of the funding principle, and the effect of these on the farming interest ; also the ' ac- cursed' rotten boroughs, and the necessity of Parlia- mentary Reform. He was an easy and fluent speaker, self-possessed, shrewd and humorous, and spiced his discourses with plenty of amusing egotism and personal allusions to the men of the day. 6 Though I never attempt,' he says, i to put forth that sort of stuff which the " intense " people on the other side of St. George's Channel call " eloquence," I bring out strings of very interesting facts ; I use pretty powerful arguments, and I hammer them down so closely upon the mind, that they seldom fail to pro- duce a lasting impression.' At last ( Reform ' was actually carried ; a reform which most of the peers, and all the bishops but one, thought almost equivalent to the downfall of the Eng- 86 AT FARNHAM. lisli Constitution — a reform which now is so antiquated, superseded, and surpassed. And in the first Reform parliament, in 1832, William Cobbett, seventy years old, took his seat for Oldham. After this he made a political tour in Ireland, and was well received. In Parliament he was regular in attendance, and spoke not unfrequently, for the most part on agricultural questions, and with good sense and moderation. But his rat-like instinct of usino- his teeth on something or somebody, brought him again into trouble. Differing from Peel on the currency question, Cobbett took the violent and absurd step of moving for an address to the King, praying him to dismiss Sir Robert Peel from the Privy Council. Only three members voted in favour of Cobbett's motion, and his influence in the House was ruined. In these years Cobbett rented a place called Nor- mandy Farm, within a couple of miles of his native town of Farnham. When he could get away from ( the Wen,' he lived with his wife and children in this plain farm-house among his barns and fields, in daily sight of the scenes of his infancy, and engaged in those rural occupations which he delighted in, as much as in his alternate business of fierce political controversy. In the middle of May 1835, Cobbett, though suffer- ing from sore throat, attended the House and spoke, almost inaudibly, in favour of a motion for the repeal of the malt-tax ; he grew worse, but again came to the House on the 25th, and spoke and voted on a motion DEATH OF COBBETT. 8 on agricultural distress. Next morning (Tuesday) he went down to his farm, and felt better at first, but relapsed. 6 On Sunday/ writes his son in the i Register ' of June 20th, ( he revived again, and on Monday gave us hope that he would yet be well. He talked feebly, but in the most collected and sprightly manner, upon poli- tics and farming ; wished for " four days' rain " for the Cobbett corn and the root crops ; and on Wednesday he could remain no longer shut up from fields, but de- sired to be carried round the farm, which being done,, he criticised the work that had been going on in his absence, and detected some little deviation from his- orders, with all the quickness that was so remarkable in him. On Wednesday night he grew more and more feeble, and was evidently sinking ; but he continued to answer with perfect clearness every qjiestion that was put to him. In the last half-hour his eyes became dim ; and at ten minutes after one p.m. he leaned back, closed them as if to sleep, and died without a gasp. He was seventy-three years old.' A portrait of the sturdy man's personal appearance in his later days, drawn by William Hazlitt, is life- like :— 6 Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The only time I ever saw him he seemed to me a very pleasant man, easy of access, affable, clear-headed, sim- ple and mild in his manner, deliberate and unruffled in his speech, though some of his expressions were not 88 AT FARNHAM. very qualified. His figure is tall and portly. He has a good, sensible face, rather full, with little grey eyes, a hard square forehead, a ruddy complexion, with hair grey or powdered; and had on a scarlet broadcloth waistcoat with the flaps of the pockets hanging down, as was the custom for gentlemen-farmers in the last century, or as we see it in the pictures of members of parliament in the reign of George I. I certainly did not think less favourably of him for seeing him.' The e Bush,' extending from the High Street towards the river-meadows, is a fine large old-fashioned inn, with modern comforts added. I was rather afraid of the waiter at first ; for his smart dress-coat, white necktie, handsomely arranged head of hair, and elegant manners, made him lit apparently to wait upon no one with less than 2,0007. a-year. But my dread wore off; he proved very civil, and the bill moderate. When I looked from my bedroom window in the morning, it was through a fringe of ivy leaves, on the bloom ot three great hawthorns, two pink, one white, the latter with an upright but spirally-twisted stem like a Lom- bardic pillar ; and a pretty garden of sward, flower- beds and shrubberies, where the landlord was lovingly at work with his hoe. He told me something of Cobbett, whom he had often seen. When Cobbett was a member of parlia- ment, and living at Normandy Farm (two or three miles from this town), did he mix with the neighbour- ing gentry ? Hardly at all, the landlord thought — he .ANECDOTES. 89 went about his own affairs in his own way. He used to drive into Farnham in a carriage that looked as if the fowls had been roosting on it, and with a couple of farm-horses. Mr. Mcholls, formerly post-master, has some letters of Cobbett to him, which he shows to the curious. Cobbett was dissatisfied with the mode of delivery of his letters by the post-office, and insisted upon an alteration with his usual vehemence ; but find- ing that he was in the wrong, apologised to Mr. Nicholls, and used afterwards to send him frequent presents of fruit and vegetables from the farm. My landlord was at Cobbett's funeral, and saw Daniel O'Connell there. The funeral took place on the 27th of June, 1835, between two and three in the afternoon. The great Irish agitator did not follow the coffin into the church, but stood in the churchyard the while, amidst a circle of observers, to whom he put questions about the land, hops, wages. O'Connell and Cobbett were not unlike ; big, burly, blustering, able, noisy fellows, who made themselves heard far and wide. Each was fond of field sports ; fonder still of the turbulent excitement of political con- test. Each was powerful in vituperation, great in giving nicknames, full of ready coarse humour of a popular sort, merciless in antagonism, unscrupulous in invective ; and, moreover, they had more than once or twice exercised these gifts against each other. Each of the men in his family circle was respected and be- loved. In public life they were more like prizefighters 90 AT FARNHAM. than anything else. They were pugnacious and power- ful, and found their arena in politics. After my conversation with the landlord, I went over to the church, a building of rubble-masonry, done-up of course, with some remains of good early work in the windows of the tower, which is high, square, and mas- sive. Close to the north porch, enclosed with iron railings, is Cobbett's tombstone, an ugly lump. The leading facts of his life are given in a simply-worded inscription on one side ; the other side bears record of his wife, Anne Cobbett, born at Woolwich, 1775, died in London, 1848. So wretchedly has the stonemason (or, as he calls himself, ' Thos. Milner, Sculptor, Lon- don, 1856') done his work, that the inscriptions are already almost illegible in parts. A headstone close by, within the railings, is inscribed with f George Cob- bett, died 1762,' — this was the old grandfather, the farm-labourer. While I was looking, an old farm- labourer came through the churchyard and paused beside me, — e Ay, that's Cobbett's grave, is that. I was at his funeral, myself, that I was : I saw O'Connell, he was an Irishman, he was : he stood just here, he did : I saw him myself, I could swear I did : ' a very stupid poor man, and not like George Cobbett, I fancy, though in the same rank of life. William Cobbett, the whitish-haired, ruddy-faced little grandson, in smock-frock, scaring birds, weeding, &c, who became a stalwart young sergeant-major,'a poli- tical writer, farmer, good family man, indefatigable and COBJBETTS GRAVE. 91 world-famous journalist and public speaker, member of the House of Commons, was born in that brown-roofed low house just across the river ; and here, alongside the graves that he often ran amongst in his childhood, his own bones are now laid to rest. Leaving the churchyard, I walked past the ( Jolly Farmer,' and eastward from the town, in the direction of Crooksbury Hill, which I had seen from the Bishop's Park, like a lion couchant, with dark fir-trees for mane; and recalled that passage in Cobbett (one of the many which give us a tenderer feeling for his memory), where he describes his visit to Farnham in 1800, after returning from America. He was then thirty-eight years old. ( When in about a month after my arrival in London I went to Farnham, the place of my birth, what was my surprise ! everything was become so pitifully small !' I had to cross in my post-chaise the long and dreary heath of Bagshot. Then, at the end of it, to mount a hill called Hungary Hill ; and from that hill I knew that I should look down into the beautiful and fertile vale of Farnham. My heart fluttered with impa- tience, mixed with a sort of fear, to see all the scenes of my childhood ; for I had learnt before the death of my father and mother. There is a hill not far from the town, called Crooksbury Hill, which rises up out of a flat in the form of a cone, and is planted with Scotch fir-trees. Here I used to take the eggs and young ones of crows and magpies. 92 AT FARNHAM. This hill was a famous object in the neighbourhood. ..." As high as Crooksbury Hill " meant, with us, the utmost degree of height. Therefore the first object that my eyes sought was this hill. I could not believe my eyes. Literally speaking, I for a moment thought the famous hill removed, and a little heap put in its stead ; for I had seen in New Bruns- wick a single rock, or hill of solid rock, ten times as big and four or five times as high ! The post-boy, going down-hill, and not a bad road, whisked me in a few minutes to the Bush Inn, from the garden of which I could see the prodigious sandhill where I had begun my gardening works. What a nothing ! But now came rushing into my mind, all at once, my pretty little garden, my little blue smock frock, my little nailed shoes, my pretty pigeons, that I used to feed out of my hands, the last kind words and tears of my gentle and tender-hearted and affectionate mother ! I has- tened back into the room. If I had looked a moment longer, I should have dropped.' However we may estimate Cobbett, his life was cer- tainly a happy one. How different from that of Robert Burns ! Peasants, both of them, born and bred ; vigorous in body and mind ; enjoying rural scenery ; sworn admirers of the fair sex ; eloquent, humorous, vehement, eagerly sympathetic with working people, especially the agriculturists ; yet utterly unlike in their aims, in their careers, and, as we must believe, in their inmost nature. The finest sensibility to impres- THE SURREY PLOUGHBOY. 93 sions, that is the quality of a poet. Sensibility to pleasurable impressions, but also to painful, — which are apt to be most frequent in this work-a-clay world ; and the poetic nature feeling both in extreme is specially fain to shun these and to seek those. Hence temptations ; and, if there be a flaw in the will (whether the will be faculty or function) alas for the poet's chance of happiness ! I fear the New Brunswick farmer's daughter would have fared differently had her peace of mind been at Robert's mercy. The Surrey Plough- boy had constant good health and good spirits, a strong will (which the other sadly lacked), plenty of work and plenty of amusement, both such as he liked best. He never had, and never missed, the thrilling delights of his poor Ayrshire brother, wandering lonely by Mth- side, with murmured song, or crossing the moor to " Nannie, O," or feeling his heart swell on the field of Bannockburn. But Cobbett believed in himself, and produced visible effects on the world. He was thoroughly fortunate in his family circle. ( Cares ! ' he exclaims ( c Advice to Young Men' ) — i what have I.had worthy of the name of cares ? ' He ended his career tranquilly at a full age, vigorous to the last, and after having attained the chief object of his ambition, a seat in a Reformed Parliament. As to his writings, their style is sturdy, straightfor- ward, clear, emphatic, but often clumsy, and almost always verbose. The violence, personality, and self- conceit sometimes pass all bounds. In spite of the perspicuity, vigour, and raciness of his pages, the 94 AT FARNHAM. general effect upon the mind is very unsatisfactory. Strength and narrowness combined give one a peculiarly uncomfortable feeling, as of mental incarceration. Still, his f Rural Rides/ 'Cottage Economy/ ' Advice to Young Men/ are, in the main, thoroughly wholesome reading, manly and pure, with much sweetness ; often reminding one of the smell of new-turned earth mino-led with that of spring flowers. Many of his leading opinions — for example, those on Malthus, Public Credit, Taxation — appear to me perfectly sound. A favourite conviction of his was that ( England was at her zenith in the reign of Edward the Third ; ' and it is rather curious to find so different a man from Cobbett as Mr. Ruskin, telling us that in many respects f we have steadily declined' since about that time. 1 Much work William Cobbett certainly did do, and with great effect on the e public opinion ' of England ; shoving on England with his bis; shoulder through thick and thin, more than perhaps any other one man, into what is called Reform. He was a Radical of the best type, in so far as he insisted upon truth, industry, frugality, obedience, love of goodness and simplicity, as the first things necessary, without which all politics are moonshine ; and, on the whole, he fairly carried his own doctrines into practice. The sun shone on flowery hedgerows as I turned down a byway leading to Moor Park, the Moor Park of Sir William Temple and Jonathan Swift. 1 See Eagle's Nest, p. 230. 95 CHAPTER V. THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. The "Well of the Calf — Upper Lough — Irish Peers — Annals of Ulster— Enniskillen — Devenish — Lower Lough — Tully Castle — Belleek — The Cataract of Asaroe. Ehne has been defrauded of its just rank among rivers by the accidental prevalence of one word rather than another in speaking of it. Shannon, for all its chain of lakes, is still and everywhere called river ; Erne, though its waters run continuously and cease- lessly from source to sea, bears for the greater part of its journey the name of lough ; and lough or lake, thrice famous as some are, is a far lower title than river. The River Erne (for I would fain call it so as a whole) has a course of some seventy miles, from Lough Growna to Donegal Bay, and pours more fresh water into the sea than any other Irish stream except the Shannon. Lough Gowna, a lake of many creeks and twisted arms, greatest length some four miles, breadth perhaps half a mile, lies (something like a cuttle-fish on the map) not very far from the middle of Ireland, spread- ing and turning hither and thither among quiet fields 96 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. and pastoral slopes, the boundary line of the counties Longford and Cavan invisibly dividing its clear water. Into this lake at one point of its shore, there belonging to the parish of Abbeylara, runs a rill or water-vein out of the old and famous well named Tubber Gowna (Tobar na Gamhnaigh), ( The Well of the Calf;' 1 for out of this well, saith the legend, arose one day in ancient time a marvellous magical Calf, and as it gal- loped down the field the waters followed it, nor ceased to pursue until Calf and torrent plunged into the tide at Ballyshannon. The rising of a lake out of a well, usually with miraculous circumstances attending, is one of the commonest events in Irish legendary history. The lakes and rivers of the country were very important objects to the earliest dwellers in the island, affording the safest and pleasantest dwelling- places, in islands and lake-huts (cra?z?20^es), the readiest ways of moving, and an abundance of fish and fowl. Perennial spring-wells, too, were notable things in the rude and simple life of hunter and herd and savage- cottager, and easily acquired a character of sacredness. The natural my steriousness and beauty of living water, ever stimulating to the fancy, added to these associa- tions, and, with perhaps the memory of some remarkable inundations to help, soon produced stories enough of marvellous animals, wells that the sun should never be let shine upon, submerged cities, and imaginary origins 1 Young cow, perhaps. THE UPPER LAKE. 97 for lake and river. There is scarcely a noted lake in Ireland which has not some such legend. Out of the north-east corner of the Lake of the Calf runs a brisk stream, which is, and is called, the River Erne ; this flows some ten miles among the swelling green hills of Cavan, expands, inter- twining among islands and promontories, into Lough Oughter (Upper Lake), contracts again to ' River Erne' for another ten miles or twelve, carrying at Belturbet the dignity of an important stream, clear, rapid, and of good width ; and then, once more break- ing bounds, forms a watery labyrinth of countless creeks and winding channels, called Upper Lough Erne. From Belturbet to Belleek, which is four miles from Ballyshannon Harbour, the Erne is navigable by vessels of light draught. A canal eastward connects it with Lough Neagh, and thus with the Lagan and the Bann ; a canal westward links it to the Shannon. Ireland has extensive lines of internal communication by water ; but these liquid ways are little used, such work as they had to do in a poor country being now chiefly done by the roads of iron. Rich woods adorn the Earl of Erne's promontory and castle of Crum, nearly encircled by the beautiful windings of Upper Lough Erne. Near the more modern mansion are the ruins of the famous old castle of Crum, ' frontier fortress of the Protestants ' in the war of William and James. In the summer of 1689, while Derry was undergoing its 105 days' siege, the H 98 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. Enniskilleners, under Gustavus Hamilton, held their own little town for William and Mary, and embar- rassed the Jacob eans as much as they could ; while at Crum, David Creighton (our Earl's ancestor), with his servants, tenants, and neighbours, stood stoutly to his defences. Lord Galmoy appeared before Crum ; having no cannon ready, he got two mock pieces made of tin and painted brown, caused them to be dragged up and placed in position with great show of labour, and then summoned the garrison to surrender. But he mistook the temper of the Fermanagh men, who soon made a sally, beat off his lordship's troops, and captured the pair of tin cannon. General Macarthy, lately made ( Lord Mountcashel ' by James, now marched from Bel- turbet on Enniskillen with a force of several thousand men, and invested Crum on his way. After some skirmishes, the main body of Enniskilleners, under Worseley, went out against Macarthy (two thousand against five, it is said), who, leaving Crum, met them at Newtown-Butler. The Jacobeanswere entirely smashed to pieces, and some 2,000 of them slain, of whom about 500 were pursued into the lake and there drowned, all but one man, who escaped by strong swimming, though many shots were fired at him. The General, fighting at the head of a few horsemen, was captured and carried into Enniskillen, severely wounded. This was on the 31st of July (O. S.), 1689. During the night following this day, the besiegers of Deny broke up their camp, and marched away disorderly, hearing pro- IRISH REPRESENTATIVE PEERS. 99 bably next day of this new defeat of their side. The Enniskilleners had but twenty men killed. These English and Scottish { Undertakers ' (ancestors of most of the present leading and wealthy families of Ulster) were certainly a tough set of fellows, not ready to lightly relinquish their undertakings. The present Lord Erne is an active man of business, has extensive landed estates which he manages with care and skill, and is a large shareholder in Irish rail- ways ; he is moreover one of the twenty-eight repre- sentative peers of Ireland. The House of Lords (which is getting talked of nowadays — a dangerous position !) is already less of a purely ( hereditary ' institution than many people loosely take for granted, with its twenty-eight Irish and sixteen Scottish Peers elected for life, and its thirty-one Bishops ; not to speak of the legal, political, military, and other members raised for personal merit — for these also are not ( hereditary ' legislators, and it may be added that their titles more frequently than others die with the original recipient : and these four classes of Peers make up perhaps a fourth, and the most active fourth, of the whole House of Lords. The principle of electing representative Peers for life seems at first sight very reasonable. While still entrusting a very high special privilege to the hands of a class of the commonwealth, it appears to connect therewith opportunities for the exercise of sound judgment and conscientious choice. And doubtless those men of rank, and they are not a H 2 100 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. few, who have no fitness whatever for the duties of such a House, those who are likely to neglect them systematically, those also who bring positive discredit on their order, seldom seek, and let us hope, still seldomer obtain, an elective seat in that exalted Assembly. At the same time, it must be confessed that the practical result of the election of Irish Peers by members of their own order is that no Irish Peer, however dis- tinguished, experienced, influential, or capable, has the slightest chance of an elective seat in the House of Lords unless his politics be avowedly and indubitably of the least progressive, or rather the most anti-pro- gressive, type ; and in Scotland the case is very nearly the same. There is now, however, one Scottish Elected Peer of Liberal ideas. Might it not be better if the Crown had some part in the choice ? Thus, and by an infusion of 6 Life Peers,' in such manner and proportion a smight seem judicious, and a relegation of the Bishops to their dioceses and matters ecclesiastic (though it might perhaps be advisable for the present to leave one, say the Archbishop of Canterbury, to represent the Church in Parliament), a reformed Upper House might possibly be constituted without rupture or violence. But we are on Upper Lough Erne, and a score of grassy woody isles and green promontories with the blue mountain-tops that peer above them, glide and shift scarce noticed while our eye rests on this im- aginary House of Lords, vaguer than any cloud of the CHIEFTAINS AND PEERS. 101 summer sky. A few miles below Crum we reach an island whose ancient name is Seanadh-Mic-Manus (pronounced i Shanat '), now by old-fashioned folk usually called Ballymacmanus, while others use the modern fancy name of c Belle-isle.' This ' Belle-isle/ by the way, is one of those names that indicate the perfect disregard and contempt of Irish archaeology and history which has always characterised the wealthier classes of Ireland. Old Catholic families, and here and there a liberal-minded Protestant, form the rare exceptions. In this island were written and compiled the l Annals of Ulster,' by Cathal Maguire, whose clan-name was Mac-Manus. He was sixth in descent from Manus, second son of Donn Maguire, who died 1302, first chief of Fermanagh of that family. From Bonn's eldest son, Gilla-Isa, descended Conor Maguire, second tf Baron of Enniskillen ' under the English regime, beheaded at Whitehall in 1642 for his part in the Irish insurrection of the preceding year. The senior representative of this chieftain family was in 1856 ' a common sailor.' 1 Several attempts of the English Government to transform the chieftains of Ulster into f Barons ' and tf Earls ' proved failures : the Saxonised nobles hankered after their old Keltic titles and rude supremacy ; English officials, courtiers, and adven- turers hankered after the lands of these absurd Irish- 1 Note in the so-called Annals of the Four Masters (O'Donovan), iv. p. 1242. 102 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. men, were not sorry when some neAv piece of f treason ' came to light, and took care to make the most of it. The new Kelto- Saxon titles quickly fell extinct, and various English and Scottish settlers became esta- blished as the territorial Lords of Ulster. Their titles of nobility mostly date from the last century, great number of them being traceable to the political exigencies of the latter years of the Irish Parliament. These are not ( Union Peers ' (a well- known phrase in Ireland), but penultimate and ante- penultimate, so to speak. Most of them have mounted rather rapidly to this or that higher step from the lowest one of Baron; for example, ' Baron Erne 1768, Yiscount Erne 1781, Earl of Erne 1789.' There used to be much promotion in the peerage ; nor could one object to this in principle, when properly managed, provided that a peer could be moved down as well as up ; but when the successor of the meritorious new Duke or Marquis proves to be a fop, a fool, a gambler, a knave, there appear to be no means of reducing him to the rank of Earl or Yiscount by way of punishment. To return to Cathal Maguire, cousin to The Maguire, then Chieftain of Fermanagh. He was born in 1438, resided in his island of Shanat, was a Biatach, i.e., official keeper of a House of Hospitality, to which purpose a portion of the tribe-lands was appropriated, a Canon-chorister of Armagh, Dean of Lough Erne, Parson of Inis-Caein in Lough Erne, and the repre- sentative of a bishop for fifteen years before his death. THE AXXALS OF ULSTER. 103 We are told that ' he had several legitimate sons, though apparently in Holy Orders, 1 — a remark which opens up several curious questions. His annals (sometimes called f Annales Senatenses 5 ), written in mixed Irish and Latin, begin with Saint Patrick, and come down to the year of the writer's death ; thence continued by other hands to 1604. There are five MS. copies known, and the work is printed in Dr. O'Conor's ( Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres.' The Annals were continued by Rury O'Cassidy, who thus entered the death of his predecessor at the pen {translation) : — ( Anno Domini 1498. A great mournful news throughout all Erin this year, namely, the following : MacManus Maguire died this year, i.e., Cathal og \_ e( Cathal the younger "], the son of Cathal, &c. He was a Biatach, &c, [as stated] . . . He was a precious stone, a bright gem, a luminous star, a casket of wisdom ; a purified branch of the canons, and a foun- tain of charity, meekness, and mildness, a dove in purity of heart, and a turtledove in chastity ; the person to whom the learned, the poor, and the desti- tute of Erin were most thankful ; one who was full of grace and of wisdom in every science to the time of his death, in law, divinity, physic, and philosophy, and in all the Gaelic sciences ; and one who made, 1 Dr. O'Donovan (a Catholic), in note to Annals of the Four Masters, a.d. 1498. 104 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. gathered^ and collected this book from many other books. He died of the Galar breac [" spotted disease/' small-pox] on the tenth of the calends of the month of April, being Friday, in the sixtieth year of his age. And let every person who shall read and profit by this book pray for a blessing on the soul of MacManus.' 1 These obituary notices, severally touching, but found vague when you read many of them, being cut upon a pattern, are extremely frequent in the Irish Annals. c Upper Lough Erne ' is some twelve miles long, and perhaps four wide at widest, measured into opposite bays : the scenery everywhere of nearly the same character — broken ranges of mountains forming the distant horizon to the westward, between which and the shore lie meadows, woods, and sylvan lawns ; on the other hand, a tract of cultivated country, with numerous mansions of gentry. Among soft islands, over ninety in count, the water winds through many intricate channels. Below Shanat the Erne again narrows to a definite river, makes several loops, gathers them together to glide by Lord Belmore's domain of Castle- Coole with its stately porticoed mansion of Portland stone and great beech-trees, then embraces with two liquid arms the fish-shaped island of Enniskillen, entirely built over with the town of that name ; beyond it, flowing 1 O'Curry's Lectures, i. 85. ENNISKILLEN. 105 single by the hill and ruined castle of Portora, and expanding into f Lower Lough Erne.' The town of Enniskillen, stretching from bridge to bridge and a little beyond each bridge, mainly in one long street of fair width which bends in. two or three places, dips into a hollow and rises again, is neatly built for an Irish town, and has a brisk and bustling look. It used in former years to be alive with mail-coaches ; now you travel by rail to or from Dublin, Belfast, Deny, or Buncloran, and on the Lower Lake there is a pretty and comfortable steamboat. In the eyes of all Ennis- killeners, Enniskillen is, next to Dublin, the most important place in Ireland. It is par excellence ( the Protestant Town,' inhabited and supported by a sturdy, downright, practical, and blunt-mannered race. You find much the same kind of folk northwards all the way to Derry, but it is in the farmers of Fermanagh that you have their characteristics in the strongest development. It is worth while to see a gathering of them at a cattle-fair, or after- wards at the market-inn, or railway-station, big, burly, surly, broad-shouldered, deep-voiced, large-handed men, who drink deep draughts, swear great oaths, and relish a strong-flavoured joke, laughing hugely and calling each other by their Christian names. Neither roses nor toads seem to drop from their lips, but loads of hay, fat oxen, and cart-wheels. Much of Ulster is Scoto-Hibernian ; these people are more English than Scotch, and might be called the Yorkshiremen of 106 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. Ulster. They are all Protestants, and most of them Orangemen. They are as tolerant of i a papist ' (any papist whomsoever) as a dog is of a rat. The Pro- testant landowners, millers, tradesmen, &c, of the region are of the same stuff, with class modifications; the descendants of the men who held Crum, and won the battle of Newtown-Butler. 6 Enniskillen' is the English form of Innis-Kethleann, the Island of Kethlenn, wife of the famous gigantic warrior Balor, of the legendary period of Irish history. Whether Feara-Manach means Men of the Monks (from the sanctity of Devenish ?) or Men of the Marshes, or something else, appears doubtful. Erne received that name, say some in place of the older one Saimer, when Erna, the favourite waiting-woman of Meav, Queen of Connaught, was drowned therein ; while others derive it from the Ernai, who dwelt here- abouts, a sept of the Fir-Bolgs. The Chieftainship of Fermanagh rested in the Maguire family from the thirteenth century down to its extinction under English rule. We find in the Donegal Annals (usually but wrongly named 6 of the Four Masters') the death of ' Donn Car- ragh Maguire, first lord of the Sil Uidhir in Fer- managh,' recorded under the year 1302. Of the Sil Uidhir, i. e., seed or progeny of Ivir, an ancient chief, there were several branch-families, of which the Mac Uidhers ( f Macivers ' — f Maguires ') thus took the lead. This first Chieftain Maguire is described as THE MAG U IRES OF FERMANAGH. 107 c the best of all Ireland for hospitality, liberality, and prowess,' 1 but this description is so often used that it goes for little. It was in dispute whether this Donn Maguire or Donnell Roe MacCarthy of Desmond was the more excellent in i bounties and hospitalities;' but f Donn Maguire by the judgment of a certain learned Irish poet (who remained for a long space in the houses of the said Donn and Donnell covertly, in the habit of a karrogh or common gamester, to know which of them surpassed the other), was counted to excell Donnell in all good parts, as by this verse, made by the said poet, you may know ' — a verse to this effect, that Donnell MacCarthy's lands are far wider, but that Donn Maguire has always twice as many folk in his house. 2 The Maguires were usually inaugurated as chieftains on the top of Cuilcagh, that conspicuous mountain with a long horizontal sky-line, as of a gigantic barn or turf stack, which we see south- wards from various points on the Erne. In the lime- stone bowels of that mountain are the perennial springs of the River Shannon, definitely rising to light in a very deep round pool among the meadows below, called 4 Shannon Pot,' whence flows the infant stream in a brisk clear little current. ( Maguire's country ' in- cluded the greater part of the shores and islands of the Upper and Lower Loughs Erne, and the chief- tain's main fortress was on Innis-Kethlenn, near the 1 Annals of Clonmacnor, &c, a.d. 1302, translated by Mageoghan. 2 Ibid. 108 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. south-western end of the island, where a more modern though still venerably gray castle now stands. Cheerfully in the summer sunshine do those green rounded hills about Enniskillen (the stately edifice of Portora Royal School conspicuous on one of them) watch the calm waters of the labyrinthine lake, bright- glittering, or spreading soft reflections of sky and green slope, cornfield or meadow, or clump of heavy foliage, and enlivened with gliding sail-boats and the measured beat of oars. The roads and lanes near Enniskillen are more like England than Ireland; the fields bor- dered with hedgerows and tall trees, the cottages trim and white, with flowery porches and neat gardens. But let us step on board a sailing-boat at the west bridge, and slip down the water with a light summer breeze. We pass Portora Hill, and the ruins of Portora Castle, that once guarded the narrow en- trance of the channel — Port Or a, ' Port of Lamenta- tion,' they say, since from hereabout started most of the boats conveying funerals to Devenish. And now we glide into opener water, steering for the tall Round Tower which rises before us a little to the right. Devenish (Daimli-inis, ( Ox-Isle ') is a bare grassy island of some 1 50 statute acres, oval-shaped, rising in two gentle swells, on the eastern of which stands the ruined Priory, a building finished in 1449, and the Round Tower, which is one of the oldest, most perfect, and most shapely buildings of its class in Ireland. In the sixth century of the Christian era, the holy man DEVENISH. 109 called Laisren, otherwise Molaise (mo, e my,' a prefix of endearment), the son of Nadfraech (for there was another Molaise, who died a.d. 638), established a monastery on this fertile Ox-Island — c Beatissimus Lasreanus ad aquilonalem partem Hibernise exivit, et construxit clarissimum monasterium in stagno Heme nomine Diamh-inis, quod sonat latine Bovis Insula.' l The abbot died, as recorded by the Donegal annalists on September 12, a.d. 563, and his body was buried on the island. This early Irish monastery was, in all probability, a rude collection of detached cells, each for one monk, with a church for common worship, and a round tower, serving at once for belfry, watch, and signal-tower, and place of refuge in case of sudden attack. Not many years ago among the ruins on Devenish stood some bits of ancient much-crumbled stonework, known as ( Molaise's House,' and looked upon as the oratory, and perhaps also the dwelling, of the saint himself; but through general neglect, and contempt in some, this relic is now obliterated. The establishment on Devenish was first an Augustinian Abbey ; subsequently it became a Priory of the Cul- dees, an obscure monastic order, which seems to have arisen in the eighth century, and to have been composed of secular canons, living in special communities ; their chief seat being Armagh. Five centuries later arose the Priory, whose pointed doorway and low square 1 Life of St. Aldan, quoted by O'Donovan, Annals of the Four Masters, . p. 203 note. 110 THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE. tower, shattered and ivied, stands solitary to-day among the weedy grass and tombstones old and recent, for the island is still a favourite burial-ground of the Catholics. Far over grass and water falls the shadow of the graceful Round Tower, built 1,300 years ago, if our antiquary 1 be right, and we trust him well. It tapers with fine proportion to the height of some seventy feet, perfect in every gray stone, and lifts its conical cap above a rich carved cornice (a decoration peculiar to this tower) dimly visible from below, with its four sculptured human faces, one looking to each cardinal point of the compass. Under each face is a window or opening ; and the several storeys of the tower, once floored across, are marked by other aper- tures, the lowest and largest being about twelve feet from the ground, into which the monks would scramble on occasion, and pull up the ladder after them. The stones are the brown sandstone of the neighbourhood, now hard and dark with time, cut nicely to the curve of the tower, and bonded with a very thin cement of fine mortar. A few years ago an elder-bush, planted by some bird, split and threatened to destroy the conical cap, built smoothly layer after layer till it diminishes to a single conical stone for pinnacle ; but the in- truding plant was at last removed, and the disturbed stones being replaced, the tower, save its floors and ladders, stands perfect now as on the first day that it 1 George Petrie. THE LOWER LAKE. Ill, looked across Lough Erne, and sent abroad the voice of its bell — a little square tongueless bell (such as those of the time which are preserved in museums) struck probably with a wooden mallet. These bits of mossy weedy wall near the tower's base may be fragments of Laisren's antique little church. That here, in this grassy island, he lived and prayed and ruled his monks, died and was buried, so many centuries ago, is certain sure, and not uninteresting — little or nothing as we can gather now to distinguish the old saint from many another. Leaving Devenish, we open one blue reach after another, sailing past woody island after island — Trasna, Carr, Ferny, White, and Long Islands, Big Paris, and Little Paris, Inisdacairn ( tf of the Two Cairns '), Inis- free, Inis Davon, Inis Daony, Inis Garru ( f rough '), Islenamanfin ( f of the Fair Woman '), Horse Island, Hay Island, Goat Island, Owl Island, and luismac- saint (properly Inis moy samh, ' Island of the Plain of Sorrel'), which has given name to the large parish extending to Buncloran. In this island, amidst a tangle of old thorns and elder-trees, are an old rude stone cross and the ruins of the little church of St. Nennid, from whom is named the Hill of Knock- Ninny on the Upper Lake. More than 100 islands are scattered among the clear waters of the Lower Lake — Rabbit, Heron, Gull, Duck, Eagle, Hare Islands, and many another, small and large, from the Otter Rock to Boa Island (perhaps Island of the Botha, i. In this castle-yard stands the County Assize Court, guarded by a statue of Earl Fortescue, thick-haired (or wigged ?), whiskered, aquiline, robed and gartered. He was 'Lord Lieutenant of Devon,' died 1861, and is here praised for a ( noble and generous character,' and ' unwearied diligence in the discharge of public duty ; ' conveying but little to a stranger's mind. On the grass-plot of Northernhay are two other modern statues, sightly enough : Thomas Dyke Ack- land (1861), a handsome man standing cloaked, motto 'Prcesenti tibi maturos largimur honor es ^ and John Dinham, old man in chair, with large book open on his lap, the inscription speaking of ' Piety, integrity, charity,' &c. I confess I never heard of John Dinham before, and would fain have had some particulars. A 1 King Bichard III., iv. 2. l 2 148 AT EXETER. man's monument should carry on it a biography, brief, accurate, and pregnant, addressed to all comers. The motto here was a text from the Bible — ' The book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt me- ditate thereon day and night, and then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.' What kind of prosperity and success did the citizens of Exeter suppose to be meant in this sentence ? Something very tangible, I suspect, of a kind which by no means ( passeth all understanding.' A wealthy, diligent, shrewd, respectable, and also benevolent man, is a good solid figure of great worth in his place. I was satisfied, if not exhilarated, to see this memorial, which I took to belong to some such person, but somehow misliked its motto. Each of these three statues, in white marble, stands on a British pedestal of gray granite. The British pedestal, in which a noble simplicity is no doubt aimed at, is bare and rectangular, with meagre mouldings — a thing ill-proportioned in every part, thoroughly un- comfortable and mean. A harsh spiky railing round the Ackland pedestal enhances its ungainly appearance. Now there is no reason on earth why sculptors, if they know how, should not put their statues on pedestals of varied design, each, whether simple or rich, being decorative and delightful. Even a plain, four-cornered block of stone may be well or ill-proportioned in rela- tion to that which it supports, and to the general TEE LANDSCAPE. 149 surroundings. It is true the sculptor does not always design the pedestal ; but he always ought to do so. Besides Northernhay there is a Southernhay, with good houses and shady trees, and also a Bonhay and a Shilhay in the suburbs. If you wish to see what the country round Exeter is like, go up the long narrow High Street, leaving the Castle-mound on your left hand, and the Cathedral- close on your right, and so along the wider street of St. Sidwell (properly Sativola, an obscure saint with an ugly church of Georgian architecture), till the road forks. Take the left-hand road, and again, at a turnpike, the left hand, and after a mile uphill a slope is reached, looking northward across the valley of the Exe, and a wide landscape of wonderful richness ; great hill-sides one behind another, loaded, when I saw them, with yellow harvest, dark with luxuriant groves and copses, the warm red ploughed fields here and there adding to the ripeness of the picture ; in front a white mansion (Sir Stafford Northcote's) in its woody park rising from the river ; granges and farmhouses scattered or clustered amid foliage ; the proud and wealthy vale stretching far away, crowned by a range of hills almost mountainous ; and, as we look, a running flag of white vapour shows where the North Devon railway has found its winding course. Retracing our steps to Exeter, we see the elms of Northernhay, a solid, straight- topped, and conspicuous grove, the two square towers of the Cathedral scarcely 150 AT EXETER. rising above the surrounding roofs ; then down a steep hill and up a moderate ascent, and here we stand again in the High Street, bustling with human mortals and hung with brilliant flags. But why these flags ? Because the old city is in these days entertaining a distinguished guest, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and on corners and doorposts you see mysterious printed placards, ' Section A,' ( Section D,' and so on. Exeter is overflowing with learned men and pretty girls, hearty wholesome-looking Devon lasses, well grown, with complexions that seem nourished on rosy apples and clouted cream. The mathematical and physical philosophers, labelled A, meet in the Grammar School in the High Street ; the chemists, marked B, in the Albert Museum in Queen Street ; geologists (C) in the Temperance Hall in the outskirts ; the terrible biologists (D), with their Huxley, in the Episcopal Schools, in the shadow of a new church ; the geographers (E) in the still unfinished Victoria Hall (built to receive the Association) ; the economists and statisticians (F) in the Athenaeum lecture-room; and the mechanicians (G) in the school- room of St. John's Hospital, a charity for boys off the High Street. So dotted over the city, are seven little scientific parliaments sitting at once, and the ladies and idlers like myself (' associates ' for the nonce by virtue of a twenty-shilling green card) keep running about from one place to another, wherever is most promise of THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 151 interest or amusement. For all the Athenians and strangers which were in Exeter spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Parliaments D and E especially swarmed with chignons, and when a representative of ( the Coming Woman ' appeared on the platform in the former to read her paper on stamens and pistils, the scene was like a fashionable morning concert. In the same Episcopal school-house on another day occurred a still more exciting piece of business, science and theology pitted against each other as avowed an- tagonists. Three clergymen read papers against i the Darwinian Theory,' and were answered by the champion of science, when some pretty hard verbal hits were ex- changed. On the whole perhaps neither the audience nor the world was much wiser for these discussions. But that such encounters are now publicly taking place everywhere is a fact of the utmost interest, containing in it, as some think, the germ of an almost unparalleled social revolution. Altogether, at this Exeter gathering, it seemed to me that I was present at a review of part of the army of the great modern power, Scientific Rationalism, the one antagonist ready to take the field against that ancient and powerful organisation which some call Catholicism and others Popery. At present it is an unequal contest. The old army is still the stronger. Not to speak of its elaborate lines, entrenchments, forts, and citadels, its discipline and watchfulness, it 152 AT EXETER. keeps on its side the most constant and powerful forces of the human soul, love and fear, awe and reverence, enthusiasm and devotion, sense of duty, of purity, of rapture, of mystery, of ignorance, of the infinite. Science, unallied with poetry and piety, will never rule over the human race, nor even subdue its old and by some despised antagonist. My own private hope, I might say faith, is, that the coming generations, our sons and our grandsons, will be under the dominion of neither Scientific Rationalism nor Dogmatic Theology, but of a better creed than either, of which the germs lie in every large and sincere soul. But, after all, this Exeter camp is only pitched, I hope, against ignorance, ' anarch old.' The leading soldiers of science, which is systematised knowledge, make no attack on theology or on moral philosophy ; the attack comes from the other side, from those who think (not to speak of pretenders or mercenaries) religion to be in danger, and rush forward with banners and watchwords. ( I confess,' says one of the shrewd- est of clergymen, f I confess I have some considerable dread of the indiscreet friends of religion. I shudder at the consequence of fixing the great proofs of reli- gion upon any other basis than that of the widest investigation and most honest statement of facts. I allow such nervous and timid friends to religion to be the best and most pious of men ; but a bad defender of religion is so much the most pernicious person in the whole community that I most humbly hope such SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 153 friends will evince their zeal for religion by ceasing to defend it.' * No (taking the good Canon's words in a wider sense than perhaps he wrote them), religion is in no danger ; although articles and creeds, which are but a language, a convenience, not absolute and eternal, by the mere advance of knowledge must become changed in their significance, and altered in form. But who is he that would therefore desire to check the progress of knowledge? The good, brave, unselfish man ? — the wise man ? I trow not. Much rubbish must be cleared away out of people's minds. Does the Man of Science in investigating and elucidating the phenomena of the material world tamper with my religion, my sense of duty and purity, and truth, my feelings of love, joy, and wonder and adoration, my passionate longing for the Spiritual Best and Highest? Just as much as a grammarian's inquiry into the com- ponents of language affects the influence of Shake- speare's or of Goethe's mind on mine. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Before we insist on finding a material basis for ( another world,' and on torturing or hardening ourselves if we cannot find it, let us consider how far we are able to trace any material basis for the present world — I mean the spiritual world — which does exist and in which we now are. It seems clear to me that the connection or rela- tion between the spiritual world in man's mind and the 1 Sydney Smith, Moral Philosophy, 2nd edit. p. 272. London : 1850. 154 AT EXETER. physical world, is at once true, truth itself, and yet altogether untraced by human wit, is probably for ever untraceable. The notion that a self-evident truth is not to be counted as a truth, unless you can discover how it is so, is a growing delusion now-a-days, — reac- tion, I suppose, from the opposite or superstitious state of mind that has so long been dominant, in which many self-evident falsehoods were passed current as truths by mere dint of assertion. Morals and religion are safe as the solar system ; nay, a million times more safe. But I am not so sure that we are not entering into a phase of human history in which the multitude blindly following a philosophy imperfect in itself, and by them not at all understood, will for a time abjure all morals and religion as matters of conscience, as matters of fact, and try to do with expediency and enlightened selfishness. But they will not find they can travel far on this path ; they must flounder into quagmires, and their feet stumble on the dark moun- tains. Then will their ancient and famous company of traditional guides, no doubt, try its best, and with fine opportunity, to reassume its old captainship, and to lead back to the old broad road going roundabout and roundabout. Plainly : those who are the teachers of the new generation (they are neither the parsons nor the school- masters) are themselves in need of more clearness, first in their minds, second in their words, as to the truths of human life. The deep questions which are UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS. 155 now agitating the minds of men are no longer (what- ever some may think or pretend to think) those of verbal inspiration, and historical incarnation, much less of apostolic succession and the power of popes and councils, but of the possibility of any religion what- ever, any awe, or trust, or obedience, or hope, anything to look up to, — whether Richter's bitterly sarcastic words ought not to be accepted as the best solution of the great enigma : f the universe, a machine ; God a force ; man's future, a coffin.' It is neither natural nor wholesome, surely, for the human mind to dwell upon these unanswerable questions ? The secret of the world is hid from man. How should it be otherwise ? But everywhere are posted people, a privileged and powerful class, in- cessantly repeating these questions, dinning them into our ears, insisting upon them, and then giving sham- answers, to the truth of which we are required to assent, nay to swear. Some of us really accept or try our best to accept the answers ; the vastly greater number for convenience pretend to accept them ; but there is a wide-spread and daily extending sense in the general mind that these regular answers are only sham-answers, and that we none of us really believe them, only make-believe. Meanwhile the unanswerable questions are continually kept before us in most un- natural prominence ; and, besides the regular sham- answers, all kinds of false and foolish answers, theories, guesses, and suppositions are put forward, leaving us 156 AT EXETER. no peace ; and now when any Man of Science, inves- tigator of the material world, brings forward his budget of connected facts, his contribution to knowledge, we shout at him, ( Well ! — but as to these inscrutable questions ? What say you to them ? ' A thoroughly wise man, I think, would reply that he had nothing whatever to say to them, and would proceed with his own business. In short, both the popular mind and the scien- tific mind are disturbed and diseased by the perpetual morbid action of dogmatic theology. The scientific mind is in process of releasing itself from the un- fortunate connection. The popular mind, compara- tively helpless, is in a sad condition which it can neither quite understand nor at all escape from — an ancient and privileged class of professional men plying it with the inscrutable questions and sham-answers (in which even they are far from unanimous), the men of accurate study of the physical world evidently not agreeing with the professional explainers, who mean- while go on filling by rote the minds of all children, and as many others as will listen, with the inscrutable questions and sham-answers, and twisting these up inextricably with all moral and religious ideas that the human mind is capable of; the usual result being that all these, if not at once rejected, for a time grow up together, and then wither together. Until the day when science and spiritual morality shall be wholly and finally separated from dogmatic theology, we must THE RIVER EXE. 157 live in a desperate muddle, suffering incalculable losses and miseries, and entailing them on our children and grandchildren. And so I leave this topic for the present, and step on a sunshiny morning into a railway carriage that speeds me along the right shore of the Exe ( Uisge, the Keltic for water ; Exeter, if in Ireland, would be named something like Cahirisky, say ' Water- fort,' — 6 Water-city '), quickly broadening from river to estuary, opening to sands, to merry sea-waves, and showing Exmouth town on its headland opposite, with a little crowd of masts below. The crags and pyra- mids of red sandstone, the bathers sporting in the bright sea, the old village-green of Dawlish and the new villas above it, are come and gone ; so is the estuary of the Teign among grovy hills, with long wooden bridge and vessels at anchor : and here is Torquay, famous Torquay — lovely scenery, Italian climate, William of Orange, Napoleon in the Bellero- phon, etcetera, — transformed from a name into a reality. 158 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. CHAPTER VIII. AT TOEQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. Torquay — Modern Builders — Babbicombe — Kent's Cavern — Entozoa — Modern Science — On Dartmoor — Totnes — The Charm of Old Houses. A friend of mine, an unimpeachable authority on such things, told me that, some thirty years ago, Torquay was the most beautiful place in England. Its wide- sweeping bay and richly wooded shores, crags garlanded with foliage and flowers from wave-washed basis to summit in the blue sky, rocky creeks that, while you sat musing, filled silently with crystal green of the rising tide; its old-fashioned cottages under shady rows of elms, peaceful neighbouring farmhouses and inland meadows, old field-paths and honeysuckle lanes, — these he recalled with a regretful delight in contrast with the Torquay of our own day, the rows of brick and stucco, felled trees, rocks blasted away, gaunt wide roads, cockney shops and churches, sunbaked esplanades and piers, the once clear tide polluted with torrents of feculence, so that bathing (as a medical man there told me) can hardly be ventured on. ( Vast improvements on the whole,' says and thinks MODERN B UILDERS. 159 the practical man, whose name is Legion ; ' investment of capital, — increase of business and employment — na- tional prosperity — greatest happiness even (if you like to bring that in) of the greatest number.' Well, the world must change, certainly, and in its changes some old and precious things must go. We must lose something, but we gain a great deal more, you say. How ? in happiness ? It seems to me, I confess, though a very expensive, not a very happy gene- ration, this of ours. I doubt if it really enjoys its stucco and its gravelled esplanades so very much. Are they necessary to its pleasure or even to its comfort, or are they rather the vulgar inventions of scheming builders, contractors, and engineers, and huckstering trades- people, like the large shop-fronts and staring placards of the period ? Moreover, — change is inevitable, often reasonable : admitted. But the changes that have overrun and disfigured many of the fairest spots in England during the last twenty years, were they all inevitable, allowable, and reasonable ? merely the natural result (whether pleasant or otherwise) of the course of prevalent ideas and manners ? or, on the contrary, were they in very many instances as much opposed to practical common sense and common honesty as to the sense of beauty and venerableness ? Is it not the notorious fact that most of these new-built pleasure-towns are, in commercial phrase, thoroughly rotten places, insolvent, staggering on from season to season under a burden of debt incurred in making 160 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. roads and rails, piers, villas, terraces, crescents, which were not really wanted — in crowding into five years the proper work of fifty ? Over and over again you find, on a little inquiry, that a great part of the splendid new town — the brilliant fashionable watering-place, is mortgaged to cunning builders and lawyers lying perdue. The names on the shops and lodging-houses seldom indicate a real ownership. Small wonder if these unhappy creatures seize the stranger with vora- city, suck his blood without mercy. And the showy houses are often ill built, soon begin to lose their one virtue of a smug tidiness, and fall into premature decay almost before they arrive at their teens. Three- fourths of them were not wanted, are 'bad invest- ments,' and likely to grow worse ; meanwhile they disfigure the world, and transmit, not improvements and conveniences, but eyesores and obstacles to the coming generations, who will certainly prefer to follow their own tastes, and be little grateful for these tawdry piles of ill-burnt brick and bad mortar. In short, from the mere business point of view, these 6 vast improvements ' mostly rest on a basis of greed, gambling, and unveracity : — The earth hath bubbles as the water has, And these are of them. Would they might vanish 'as breath into the wind; ' but unhappily they are ulcers, and will leave perma- nent scars on the fair face of nature. A steamer, coasting the bay, put me ashore at BABBICOMBE 161 Babbicombe, where I plunged ecstatically into the translucent water of a sea-cove walled with lofty rocks, and swimming round a corner faced the beau- tiful sunny shadowy coast sweeping off towards Lyme Regis, red crags crested with green slopes and woods, every steep rock and crevice hung with foliage and broidered with creeping verdure ; the little strand of Babbicombe, half-moon-shaped and white as the moon, receiving kiss after kiss from the purple sea ; and over all a pure blue sky. One great blot there was, one eyesore, a conspi- cuous headland hacked and torn away by quarrymen ; and at Anstey's Cove, across the hill, I found another headland undergoing the same treatment by the same wealthy lord-of-the-soil. One does not exactly cen- sure this ; still there are a few people who would rather not make money precisely thus, any more than by butchering or tavern-keeping. A walk over the hills brought me to a verge looking down into Anstey's Cove, where the red cliffs and tumbled fragments, crested and seamed with bright green sward, the firm sands, purple sea, sunny blue sky, seemed familiar as my birth-place, by reason of a little picture of the place by George Boyce on my wall at home. I was able at last to satisfy my curiosity as to the end of the headland, which lay outside the picture ; but I missed the man on horseback from the road, forgetting for an instant that he must have passed a long while ago. M 162 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. An elderly man and his pretty little grand-daughter were at the choice view-point where a block of stone lies on the bank by way of seat. They seemed to take little or no notice of the prospect ; were come to meet the child's mother who had gone down to the beach on some errand. The man lived only a mile or two away, but had not been here for I think he said ten years before to-day. He was a mason and had speculated in house-building, not to his gain, I understood ; but some one else whom he Darned, some contractor, had made a lot of money, and on this he would have talked for hours. His eyes were turned inwards and downwards : to his entrails as Sweclenbor^ would have said. This is the state of vast numbers around us, and held to be the right state for them too. I cannot think so. At all events these are some of the men, with their 200/. capital, their greediness and stupidity, who build Cockney ville-super- mare on every fair coast, with the co-operation of speculators, loan- societies, building-companies, cunning lawyers, quack- architects, gambling contractors, and swindling money- brokers. The little local men commonly lose their venture. There are some more rows of tawdry stucco, for the beau monde and its imitators, while the fashion lasts, to lounge and flirt and yawn away a part of its time in; while quieter folk, instead of a homely lodging, must pay three or four times as much for French varnish and gilt curtain rings, with a hundred times worse food KENT 'S HOLE. 163 and attendance than of old, and no kindness or grati- tude. After a delightful spell of solitary freedom in the midst of beautiful scenery, I joined a swarm of masters and scholars in science, and we all made together for Kent's Hole, a rather ugly slimy cavern burrowing and branching into the limestone bowels of a grovy hill. From hot sun and dusty hedgerows we stepped into an icy gloom dim-lit with numerous candles stuck against the dripping walls, on gluey stalagmites and heaps of quarried rubbish; heard a geologic lecture, then wandered off through narrow passages, and peeped into dark holes, and out again to the hot air and cheerful daylight world. In these unsunned re- cesses under the slow incrustations of many thousand years are found bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, cave- bears, and other monsters, and less deeply imbedded, tokens of the presence of human creatures like our- selves, bone needles, flint tools, and even some bones and skulls. Several men, I think three or four, dig and pick daily in this cavern, at the cost of the British Associa- tion, and under the superintendence of Mr. Pengelly of Torquay, who has now collected herefrom over 50,000 various bones, and kept account of the situa- tion and depth where each was found. I don't wonder that students of physical science are commonly long-lived, healthy, and cheerful. Their field of study, whatever the department may be, is M 2 164 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. practically boundless. They advance into it with sure and deliberate steps, adding particular experi- ence to experience, and at the same time gaining a wider interest in the general universe ; while the pur- suit in itself is amusing and full of expectation, and employs the senses along with the intellect. In the carriage for Exeter I fell in talk with a gentleman whose special study is entozoa, those queer little creatures that live and breed inside the bodies of beasts, birds, and fishes, and our own too, inha- biting the blood, muscles, liver, brain, &c, and there making out life in their own fashion, with- out, in the majority of cases, it would seem, the least inconvenience to their landlord. Each of us lodges crowds of these, and it is very rarely that one turns troublesome; they are by far more peaceable than an ordinary Irish tenantry. My scientific friend tells me that his experienced eyes never fail to see some entozoa in every dish of animal food that comes to table, and often a great many. ( When there are a great many, what do you do ? ' f Eat 'em, if the meat be properly cooked. The odds are millions to one that no harm will come of it.' Sometimes when he encoun- ters an extra-large Distoma, or Spiroptera, or Cysticer- cus, he sets it aside on his plate, and not long ago totally refused a dish of mutton because it swarmed with Echinococci ; for if a creature from the body of a sheep, cow, pig, be transferred alive into yours or mine, the consequences might be serious. Such ap ENTOZOA. 165 pearances at the dinner-table might make some people uncomfortable, but my friend proved no exception to the rule as to men of science, being a merry fresh- complexioned man whose food clearly agreed with him. The universality of entozootic life makes one cease to care much about it. But trichinosis is a real and dreadful disease for all that, like hydrophobia; and though one may see no risk in eating a rasher or patting a dog, there are certain precautions fit to be observed. My microscopical friend does not think the little beasts in the pig more dangerous than others ; but ham, sausages, &c, are often eaten with slight cooking, whence come evils. Science, it would seem, is in hopes of being able to trace all the steps between an Entozoon and a Goethe, but long before it arrives at Goethe's soul (pass me the old-fashioned phrase) science will find its instru- ments fail it, I imagine. Divide, combine, search, sift and pry ; Eetort and microscope apply ; Light, electricity, explain, The earth, the sun, the blood, the brain : All's thus and thus. But now declare Why things are right and things are fair ; "What's Duty ? Beauty ? tell us whence Are Love, Truth, Hope, and Beverence ? But stay ! — hast thou this last ? If not, Tho' thou couldst make the cold sea hot, In flying chariot Sirius reach, Full little couldst thou learn or teach. 166 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. I am far from thinking, however, that our leaders in science wish to teach that there is nothing but matter ; or that they suppose it possible for themselves, or for any man, to comprehend all phenomena physical and mental, or to know the innermost nature of any single thing. They say, as I take it, there are certain exact methods called scientific, of investigating any given subject ; to some subjects these methods are found to be more applicable, to others less; we will strictly apply these methods as far as we are able to every subject that presents itself. As soon as we clearly perceive them to be inapplicable in any case (a percep- tion which is an important element in the pursuit of truth) we will cease our attempts in that particular direction. On the other hand, so long as our methods of investigation show a real hold upon any subject and a fruitful relation to it, we will employ them with the utmost simplicity and fearlessness, — truth (which is multiform and yet one) being safely left to protect her own interests. This, au fond, is probably the attitude of the best scientific minds of our time. And yet there are, per- haps, some real dangers connected with the vastly increased activity of scientific investigation. First, a successful investigator is under the temptation of build- ing up theories, top-heavy for the basis on which they are raised ; of forgetting that the most learned of men is still but a young pupil in the great school of nature. Secondly, one set or combination of facts may be so DARTMOOR. 167 put forward as that they shall for a time take up a disproportionate share of attention, and throw out of balance many minds of thinking men, thus affecting, injuriously, the general health of public thought. Thirdly, the tone of scientific authority itself may be less reverent than it might be in presence of the won- ders and mysteries (so unfathomed, so unfathomable) of the universe, and man's life therein. The Man of Science — I mean the Master in Science — should be exact, fearless, and profoundly reverent. Reverence, you may tell me, is a moral not an intellectual quality, but I own that to me it appears that moral and in- tellectual qualities are inseparable, and that a masterly insight into nature is only possible to the reverent spirit. True Masters, indeed, are always rare ; but we have usually plenty of clever people, and a fair supply of able ones, and some of these are no more unwilling to wear the robe of ephemeral mastership, than the multitude is unwilling to confer it. From Exeter to Moreton-Hampstead, on the eastern edge of Dartmoor, is no more than twelve miles as the bird flies, but hills intervene, and our railway took us three times the distance round about, winding at last among deep vales. Moreton (Moor-town) a gray old village, sent us on in a gig to Chagford, a smaller and grayer old village, with rude stone cottages strag- gling up-hill, and a few new brick houses of the meanest ugliness. To east and north rise woody hills, 168 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. and westward the bare slopes and crest of Dartmoor, cheerful to-day in the sunshine, but in bad weather gloomy, dreary, and desolate. In summer, we are told, folk say, i Chaggiford, and what d'ye think o't ? ' in winter, e Chaggiford — Good Lord ! ' Climbing Fea- therbed Lane, the dry course of a mountain stream, its rocks bordered with ferns, shaded with hazel and holly, we emerged a-top on the heather, and made for Castor Rock, one of those huge heaps of grey granite which dominate like ancient castles the broad expanses of Dartmoor, its slopes and ridges of heather, and its huge morasses whence flow a dozen rivers to all points of the compass. It was sultry in the vale, but not on Castor Rock. A strong and steady southerly breeze swept over purple heath and green fern-brake, blowing health and freshness into our blood. Broad sunny lights and shadows rested on the wide-spread loneliness. Far below we could see, winding through the waste, an avenue or double row of rude stones, whose origin and purpose are lost in antiquity, and in a seam fledged with coppice the infant Teign was leaping, invisible, though not inaudible, from pool to pool. A large and pure contentment infused itself into our souls, and we found nothing better for the time than to lie on' Castor Rock, drinking in the solitude, the antique mystery, and the autumnal glory of the vast moorland. Descending, we failed not, as sworn hydro- philists, to visit the Teign, where tall trees, mossy TOTNES. 169 rocks, crystal pools brimmed with green shadows, drew us into a mood of more gay and lyrical delight. On our drive back to Moreton we heard some anec- dotes from a clergyman of the neighbourhood, of the people's belief, at this day, in pixies, witches, and supernatural cures. ( Seventh son of a seventh son,' is a not uncommon inscription, he said, on a herb- doctor's signboard, and the herb-doctor's patients are mainly treated by ' charms ' of various kinds. It was nightfall when I quitted the train at Totnes station, and walked off alone along a dark bit of road under the stars, to enter a strange town, — a special delight ; turned a corner into the long, narrow, roughly-paved High Street; downhill, to the poetic sign of The Seven Stars, a large old-fashioned hostel, with garden to the river ; then, after choosing bed- room, out again for the never-to-be-omitted-when- possible immediate and rapid survey, by any sort of light, of the place not seen before since I was born. Uphill goes the steep, narrow street, crossed, half- way up, by a deep arch bearing a house ; then the houses on each side jut over the side-path supported on stumpy stone pillars ; then I zigzag to the left, still upwards, and by-and-by come to the last house, and the last lamp, throwing its gleam on the hedge-rows and trees of a solitary country road. This last house is an old and sizable one, with mullioned windows, one of which is lighted, and on the blind falls a shadow from 170 AT TORQUAY AXD ELSEWHERE. within of a woman sewing. The slight and placid movements of this figure, at once so shadowy and so real, so close at hand and so remote, are suggestive of rural contentment, a life of security and quietude. Yet how different from this the facts may be ! Inexhaustibly interesting to the imagination is any old edifice ; and the nearest to my own sympathies, the most touching, is neither church nor castle, but a dwelling- house, not a grand one but such as generations of the stay-at-home sort of people have been born in, have lived in, and died in ; every particle of its wood and stone, as it were, imbued with human life. No vast antiquity is needed; a hundred years does as well as a thousand; long dates only confuse and baffle the imagination. Enough if the house be evidently before our time, if men before us have lived and died there. Death, the great mystery, is the dignifier of Human Life. Where Death has been, as formerly where lio'htnino; struck, the ground is sacred. Next morning I mounted to the castle-keep of Judael de Totnais, through a wildly-tangled shrub- bery, and from the mouldered battlements looked over Totnes's grey slate roofs and gables, and the silvery Dart winding amongst wooded hills. Opposite, stood the tall, square, red sandstone tower of the old church,, buttressed to the top, and with a secondary round turret running up from ground to sky near the centre of its north face, an unusual and picturesque feature. Then hied I to the churchyard, and beside it, in a THE OLD GUILDHALL. 171 rough back lane, saw an old low building, with an old low porch ; the old key was in the old iron-guarded door, and I entered, without question asked, the old Gruildhall of the old town. Over the bench hung a board painted with the arms of Edward VI., sup- ported by lion and wyvern, ( Anno Domini, 1553,' with motto, i Du et mond Droyit.' The latticed win- dows looked into an orchard whose apples almost touched the panes. It was a little hall Avith a little dark gallery at one end, for the mediaeval public, and under this the barred loopholes for the mediaeval pri- soners to peep through. But it is still in use, as testi- fied by two modern cards on the walls : ( This side, Plaintiff and Plaintiff's witnesses ; ' i This side, De- fendant and Defendant's witnesses.' On the Defen- dants' side I found roughly cut on the wood panel, 4 R. P., 1633,' but could not guess in what cause he appeared. No pleasanter change in travel from more or less fatiguing exercise, than the rest in motion of a river- steamboat, sliding from reach to reach of some easy- flowing stream, like that which bore us seven miles from the woody slopes of Totnes to the steeper hills of Dartmouth's almost land-locked harbour, and again, from broader to narrower reaches, back again to Totnes. Then, bidding adieu to The Seven Stars, off started the Rambler once more on his favourite vehicle, sometimes called Irish tandem — namely, one 172 AT TORQUAY AND ELSEWHERE. foot before another ; striking off by field, park, meadow, and millponcl for a certain hamlet obscurely lurking somewhere among the swelling hills and deep lanes — Dean Prior, the church and vicarage of old Eobin Herrick. 173 CHAPTER IX. TO DEAN PRIOR. Devonshire Lanes — Herrick's Poetry — Dean Prior — Sketch of the Poet's Life — Herrick and Martial. I started on foot from Totnes in search of a hamlet hidden among rounded hills of corn and coppice, and shady Devonshire lanes, deep, steep, solitary; often showing, where the tangled hedges opened at some gate, a wide and rich prospect over harvest fields and red ploughed lands. Long and sultry was the pil- grimage, the way often taken at haphazard, sometimes mistaken, in lack of people or houses ; but at last the scent grew hot, when, after climbing an endless lane, I found myself descending t'other side the hill with Dartmoor's uplands before me, dim in afternoon sun- light ; and, at foot, the square church tower of Dean Prior, of which Robert Herrick was a long while vicar, two centuries ago. Many a time he certainly trudged up and down this steep old lane — now lament- ing his banishment from London, now humming a lyric 174 TO DEAN PRIOR. fancy newly sprung somehow in that queer gross-fine brain of his. More discontents I never had Since I was born, than here ; Where I have been, and still am sad, In this dull Devonshire. Yet justly too, I must confesse, I ne'r invented such Ennobled numbers for the presse Than [As ?] where I loath'd so much. Saying these lines to a tune of their own making, I went down the long lane, its wide borders all a-tangle with leaves and flowers, mint, meadowsweet, golden fleabane, blackhead, hemp-agrimony, and red campion — simple as it grew there, the very Lychnis dioica of that learned lady at Exeter. It seemed no way puffed up by its new fame in the local newspapers. Then there were countless green tufts of hartstongue, male fern, and bracken, and a few late foxglove-bells. In front, at every step rose higher the bare purply slopes of Dartmoor, ridge over ridge, putting on, from this point of view and in this light, the aspect of a solemn mountain region. I was not prepared to find so grave a charm of landscape in Herrick's Devonshire, and it has left no trace in his verses, which carry the impression (I mean the best of them) of a quiet, sleepy, remote ruralism among flowery meadows, hay and corn-fields and old farm-houses, its winter season cheered with great wood fires, flowing cups, and old-world games. Of the larger aspects of nature and life, Herrick HERRICRS POETRY. 175 had no apprehension — at least, no habitual appre- hension ; if he caught a glimpse of these it was by effort and against his will. His flower-pieces have a flower-like delicacy and sweetness, as in the unfading little song — » Or this- Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-fiying, And this same flow'r that blooms to-day To-morrow will be dying, &c. Faire Daffodills, we weep to see You haste away so soone ; As yet the early rising sun Has not attain'd his noone. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the even-song ; And having pray'd together, we Will goe with you along, &c. His pages are full of roses, violets, primroses, daffodils, breathing a natural freshness : — I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, of July-flowers ; I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. Herrick has, I think, a particular charm of his own. In his style is a quality of elegant naivete, grown rare of late in English poetry. The French cultivate and excel in this. Our Thomas Hood has it. In his ( Matins, or Morning Prayer,' old Robin First wash thy heart in innocence, then bring Pure hands, pure habits, pure, pure everything. 176 TO DEAN PRIOR. How simple without flatness are such lines as these : — Here down my wearied limbs I'll lay ; My pilgrim's staffe, my weed of gray, My palmer's hat, my scallop-shell, My cross, and cord, and all farewell. For having now my journey done, Just at the setting of the sun, Here have I found a chamber fit, G-od and good friends be thankt for it, Where if I can a lodger be A little while from tramplers free, At my uprising next I shall, If not requite, yet thank ye all, &c. He abounds in happy turns of phrase, which sometimes carry a very pleasant tinge of humour. A quaint gravity sits well upon him, as in the lines ( Thus I, Passe by, And die,' &c, or these — ( Give me a cell, to dwell, Where no foot hath a path,' &c. Of delicate sense of metre, the most specially poetic of natural gifts (using the word poetic in its strict meaning), he has a larger share perhaps than any other English poet of his rank. As good in its manner as the pensive gaiety of i Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,' is the jollity of The May-pole is up, Now give me the cup ; I'll drink to the garlands around it ; But first unto those Whose hands did compose The glory of flowers that crown'd it. And the best of his longer pieces (yet not long), ( Co- rinna going a-Maying,' winds delightfully throughout its course. Verse, by the bye, like wine, acquires a ARS LOKGA. 177 special fine flavour by age. But to imitate this in new verse is like fabricating mock old-wine, and such concoctions are scarcely palatable or wholesome, though they often take the public taste for a while. I hardly know why Herrick seems interesting beyond other poets of a similar rank. There was not ' much in ' the man, and there is not much in his verses : and perhaps that's just it, inasmuch as the endurance of his little writings gives strong testimony to the value of art. His subject-matter is neither new nor remarkable. There is no interest of narrative or of characterisation ; very slight connection with the times he lived in, or with any set of opinions, national, social, or individual. That which has saved the verses and name of the obscure Devonshire vicar is simply and solely ars poetica. The material is nothing, the treatment everything. If good verse can preserve even trivialities, how potent a balsam is good verse, and how fit to entrust fine things to ! What does appear of the man himself disposes one to a mood of good-humoured slightly contemptuous toleration — usually a rather agreeable mood, We can't look up to him ; he is frail, faulty, sometimes rather scandalous, often absurd; but he confesses as much himself, and gives the world in general that sort of easy lazy toleration which he would fain receive. A Pagan he habitually is, though varnished with another creed. The ideas of home and fireside, of pleasure, of death, even (despite his parsonhood) of N 178 TO DEAN PRIOR. marriage, of prayer, of funeral-rites, present them- selves to his mind in the same light and commonly under the same forms as they did to Horace or Martial. It seems more than mere adoption of classic phraseo- logy and imagery, like that of Milton in e Lycidas ; ' it was his way of seeing things : — So when you and I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade ; All love, all liking, all delight, Lie drown'd with lis in endlesse night, &c. This is the felicity he truly aims at : I'll feare no earthly powers, But care for crowns of flowers. Anything for a quiet life : The Gods are easie, and condemne All such as are not soft like them. He loves good cheer, and is convinced that Cold and hunger never yet Co'd a noble verse beget. In his 6 Farewell to Sack,' i Welcome to Sack,' and elsewhere, are some admirable Bacchanalianisms. An easy-going, light-hearted man, he is not given to look below the surface of things. He has no narrative or dramatic power. His views of human life are general, coloured with perception of beauty, with gaiety and desire, with sense of the shortness of life. His attempts at individualising take the form of the rudest ill- drawn caricature. His amorous verse is frankly sen- suous and outward. His Julia, Electra, Corinna, LYRICAL POETS. 179 are names for the bodily sweetness of womanhood. There is just a modicum of sentimentality, itself superficial, or, as it were, subcutaneous. We find here no chivalrous strain like Lovelace's ( Tell me not, sweet ; ' no ingenious comfort in neglect like Wither's c Shall I, wasting in despair ; ' no heap of glittering clevernesses as in Donne's pages (with here and there a wonderful bit of old coloured- glass, as it were, worth keeping even as a fragment) ; no exaltation of mental and disparagement of external qualities as in Carew's f He that loves a rosie cheek.' Herrick sings of Electra's petticoat, of Julia's bosom, of bright eyes, trim ankles, fragrant breath. He is not, or very seldom, prurient, only pagan, bodily, ex- ternal. There is not the slightest hint of those modern schools — the sceptical, the scoffing, or the diabolic. His tone, too, entirely differs from the witty, ingenious immorality of the next generation, Rochester, Sedley, and other Merry-Monarchy men. Herrick's collected poems were published in 1648, when the author was about fifty-seven. But here is Dean Prior. What is it ? Church and churchyard on one side the road, vicarage on the other; three or four cottages, a brook, a farmyard, some soli- tary country lanes ; visible inhabitants, a man and a boy, to whom, afterwards, enter an old woman. The vicarage, though it has a grey old-fashioned look, is not of Herrick's time — a disappointment ; 'tis perhaps of Anne's reign, or one of the earlier Georges. But N 2 180 TO DEAN PRIOR. it probably stands on the site of the older edifice. The present vicar was unluckily from home, and the old woman who showed the church knew nothing beyond parish matters of her own day. The church, old, but- restored throughout, is now a trim ordinary edifice of stone, with a west tower. Inside you find three aisles (it is not a small church), and on the wall of the north aisle a brass plate, about 36 inches by 20, surrounded by a deep frame of white stone or marble, cut into Renaissance scrollwork, like what you see on title- pages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The inscription runs : f In this Churchyard lie the remains of Robert Herrick:, Author of the Hesperides, and Other Poems, Of an ancient family in Leicester- shire, and born in the year 1591. He was educated at St. John's College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Presented to this Living by King Charles I. in the year 1629, Ejected during the Commonwealth, and reinstated soon after the Restoration. This Tablet was erected to his Memory by his Kinsman, William Percy Herrick, of Beau Manor Park, Leicestershire, a.d. 1857. Our mortall parts may wrapt in seare-clothes lye, Great spirits never with their bodies die. Hesperides. Virtus Omnia Nobilitat. The churchyard has many old graves, among which the poet's lies perdue. Dean is a lonesome place, the old dame admits ; ' HESPERIDES: 181 so much so, it appears, that servants can hardly be o-ot to live at the vicarage. Think what it mast have been 200 years ago. No wonder if the lively young scamp who had left Cambridge in debt, and lived a gay life in London till both purse and credit were quite exhausted ; getting somehow ordained, as a pis-aller, and then presented to a living by his friends' influence (for such appears to be something like what the few known facts amount to) ; no wonder that this jovial, clever, petted, insolvent, amatory poei turned parson, finding himself stuck in the Devonshire clay, four days' journey from town, should sometimes grumble at his fate. He was about thirty-eight years old when he came to Dean, and remained there some twenty years, till Cromwell turned him out. It was in 1648, the last year of King Charles (and which that monarch spent mostly at Carisbrooke), that Her- rick's volume appeared, ( to be sold at the Crown and Marygold in Saint Paul's Churchyard.' It is dedicated f to the Most Illustrious and Most Hopefull Prince, Charles, Prince of Wales.' The political allusions are not many; all on the loyal side, of course. It is manifest that he had no notion of the dangerous con- dition of the king's affairs. Nor indeed had the king himself, even up to that day in January when he so unwillingly appeared in Westminster Hall, and at first ( laughed ' when the charges against him were read. 1648 was an odd year for the publication in London of a book of light lyrics, mingled with compliments to royalty. 182 TO DEAN PRIOR. See, this brook among the hazel-bushes is that very Dean-bourne to which friend Robin bade farewell in no very affectionate strain. Never could he wish to see it again, e were thy streames silver, or thy rocks all gold.' Rockie thou art ; and rockie we discover Thy men, and rockie are thy wayes all over. men, manners ; now, and ever knowDe To be a rockie generation ! A peeple currish, churlish as the seas, And rude almost as rudest salvages ! On his i Returne to London,' he writes : From the dull confines of the drooping west, To see the day spring in the fruitful east, Eavisht in spirit, I come, nay more, I flie To thee, blest place of my nativitie ! London my home is : though by hard fate sent Into a long and irksome banishment. Yet, by degrees, as old age crept on, and after expe- rience, probably, of how much worse it is to have no home than a dull one, he became reconciled to his rural life, and has left many pleasant pictures of it. Sweet country life, to such unknown Whose lives are others', not their own. His ( Grange, or Private Wealth,' is delightfully quaint ; in which, as often elsewhere, he praises A maid, my Frew, by good luck sent To save That little, Fates me gave or lent. When Charles II. was c restored.' Herrick came back to Dean, now a man of near seventy years of age, and 1 NOBLE NUMBERS: 183 there lie lived peaceably some fourteen years longer, and laid down his bones in the dull quiet churchyard through which he had passed so many thousand times from vicarage to church, and from church to vicarage. The Poet did not entirely forget his cassock. In deference thereto, he appended to his s Hesperides ' a set of quasi-religious poems under the title of e Noble Numbers,' but most of these are evidently no less arti- ficial than that one which is so arranged as to print in the figure of a cross. The best pieces, probably, in this division, are f A True Lent,' and the ( Litanie,' which has a serious naivete that is touching, though even here peeps out evidence that it is mainly the poet's fancy that is engaged. This is quaintly natural : "When the priest his last hath pray'd, And I nod to what is said, 'Cause my speech is now decay'd, Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! but this runs into the comic : When the artless doctor sees No one hope, hut of his fees, And his skill runs on the lees, Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! The true and habitual meditative glances of the man were turned to the shortness of life ; his philosophy was the wisdom of gathering rosebuds while you may. Moments of graver mood no doubt he also had, and he expresses here and there the sense of hurt or rather ruffled conscience in one whose love of pleasure is stronger than his will. He stumbles and hurts his 184 TO DEAN PRIOR. shin, recovers himself, walks carefully a few steps, grows careless, and trips again, never quite falls, but goes on his way stumbling and resolving not to stumble so much. A fat, sly, droll, good-humoured, lazy, smutty old parson was Robin Herrick, thick-necked, double- chinned, with a twinkle of humour in his eyes, fond of eating, drinking, and singing, part man-of-the-world, part homely and simple almost to childishness. He doesn't hate anybody, blames nothing but what teases him, longs for a quiet life, has no opinions, and is ready to conform to anything. He reads little, looks into a few favourite Latin poets, cares very slightly for con- temporary literature, saving the verses of two or three friends of his, and especially i Saint Ben ' (whose minor poems are a good deal like Robin's). There is no Saint Will in his calendar. Will, unhappily, though clever, was not an i educated ' man, like nous autres ; and this undoubtedly was the general feeling as to him among the lettered class. A century after the old vicar's funeral, it would have seemed that his verses (though not without some recognition in their own day) were no less lost in silence and oblivion than his bones. But they possessed an unsuspected vitality. Somebody rediscovered them, and made known the fact in the { Gentleman's Maga- zine ' in 1796 and 1797; the i Quarterly Review' followed suit, with due deliberation, in 1810. By that time a selection from Herrick's poems had appeared, HERRI CK AND MARTIAL. 185 edited by Dr. Nott. In 1823 a collective edition was published at Edinburgh, another by Pickering in 1846; f Selections' by Murray in 1839; 'Works' (but not complete) by H. Gr. Clarke & Co. in 1844 ; 1 Works ' by Reeves & Turner, edited by E. Walford, 1859 — from which my quotations are made. Lastly, a complete edition, including several pieces hitherto uncollected, was published in 1869 by J. Russell Smith, edited by W. C. Hazlitt. Whether or not it is necessary or desirable to resus- citate all the writings of such a writer as our old friend, is a question of no small importance. His Floralia, so to speak, are accompanied by a great deal of licence. He sets before his guests roast partridge, apricot tart, and clotted cream, but alas ! with these, rotten fish, and even dirt-pies. He is not only often sensual, but not seldom coarse and even filthy, in imi- tation for the most part of classical models. He has gleaned and translated from Anacreon and from Horace, but most I think from Martial. For example, i What kind of Mistresse he would have ' (329), has its parallel in the Roman poet's ' Qualem, Flacce, velim quseris, nolimve puellam,' &c. ; as have these lines Numbers ne'er tickle, or but lightly please, Unlesse they have some wanton carriages : (p. 414). in Martial's { Ad Cornelium' (i. 36). 4 On a Perfumed Lady' (155) conveys the ' non 186 TO DEAN PRIOR. bene olet, qui semper bene olet.' Herrick's epitaphs much resemble that pretty one on Erotion^ Hie festinata requiescit Erotion umbra (x. 61). Fat be my hinde ; unlearned be my wife ; Peacefull my night ; my day devoid of strife (420) is a translation of Sit mini verna satur : sit non doctissima conjux ; Sit nox cum somno : sit sine lite dies (ii. 90) ; and so is When the rose reigns, and locks with ointment shine Let rigid Cato read these lines of mine. of Cum regnat rosa, cum madent capilli, Tunc me vel rigidi legant Catones. (x. 19). 6 To my ill Reader/ agrees with l Ad Fidentinum ' (i. 39). He often echoes Martial's f Possum nil ego sobrius/ and his nturque rosis tempora sutilibus, Jam vicina jubent nos vivere Mausolea, as well as imitates the old writer's confidence in his verses' immortality — Casibus hie nullis ; nullis delebilis annis. Herrick's Let others to the printing presse run fast ; Since after death comes glory, He not haste (p. 450) is Martial's Vos tamen nostri ne festinate libelli: Si post fata venit gloria, non propero. (v. 10) and so on. LATIN POETRY. 187 In a crowd of short epigrams, if lie fails to match the unparalleled foulness of Domitian's flatterer, he outdoes the occasional pointlessness of his prototype : Upon Eeles. Epig. Eeles winds and turnes, and cheats and steales : yet Eeles Driving these sharking trades, is out of heels. Upon Pennie. Brown bread Tom Pennie eates, and must of right, Because his stock will not hold out of white. Upon Mttdge. Mudge every morning to the postern comes, His teeth all out, to rince and wash his gummes. Upon Ceoot. One silver spoon shines in the house of Croot, Who cannot buie or steale a second to't. Flatness in this degree becomes funny, but it seems scarcely worth while to go on making luxurious re- prints of matter like this. The question as to foul parts, unhappily too many, is more serious. Surely, mere filthy words, devoid of either literary or anti- quarian value — these, at least, need not be carefully resuscitated, be kept alive and in circulation, because the writer of them also wrote things worthy of pre- servation. Even in the case of ancient writers, and giving full weight to the venerableness of antiquity, should we really lose much by losing the intolerably disgusting passages of Catullus and Martial? At least let these literary coprolites (but not deodorised by time) rest as far as possible among the shadows of learned shelves. Are they thus treated ? Here is a subject which has received less consideration than per- 188 TO LEAN PRIOR. haps it deserves. Look at certain volumes of Boko's i Classical Library,' which has an immense circulation in England and America. Any bookseller will sell them ; any boy may have them as cribs. They translate literally into English all but the perfectly intolerable passages ; of these they give the original text in large type (so that they can be turned to one after another at a moment's notice), accompanied by a French or Italian translation, or both, and also in many cases by a veiled English version. Martial, with his worst passages imbedded in a jungle of close Latin pages, is bad enough. Martial, with all the worst passages set forth in distinctive type, and all the filthiest phrases of the Latin tongue supplemented by French or Italian equivalents, or both, is a public offence. Nothing more charming in their way than this poet's pieces on the villa of Julius Martial (iv. 64), or those addressed to the same Julius, ending Summum nee metuas diem, nee optes (x. 47), or those on his own i rus in urbe,' where a cucumber hasn't room to lie straight (xi. 18) ; nothing happier than many of his lines and phrases : yet there is in him a deep vein of blackguardism, a very different thing from sensuality. I believe him when he says he invented vile things deliberately to make his books sell. Strange, to find in his pages those solemn words (inscribed on a clock in Exeter Cathedral, and on the Temple sun-dial), e Pereunt et Imputantur.' But the phrase, I should think, is not applied in precisely LITERARY MORALS. 189 Martial's meaning — ' If you and I,' he says to his friend Julius (v. 20), ' were really to enjoy our lives, we should quit the halls of patrons and rich people and the cares of public life, and drive, walk, read, bathe, converse at leisure. But now neither of us can live in his own way, and sees his good days fly and vanish ' — Nunc vivit sibi neuter, heu, bonosque Soles effugere atque abire sentit ; Qui nobis pereunt, et imputantur, Quisquam vivere cum sciat, moratur ? ' Should any one that knows how to live (i.e., plea- santly) put off doing so ? ' By ( imputantur ' he seems to have merely meant e are reckoned up ' in our assigned number. Certainly the expectation of any reckoning in a deeper sense for his foul and deliberate treasons against human dignity might well have made the Spaniard shiver. If there be any right or wrong in these matters, he and such as he are damnably wrong. Several other volumes of i Bohn's Library ' are almost if not quite as bad. Nor is the indecency committed in a merely stolid and business-like manner; prurient leers and winks are not wanting in the notes, as any one may ascertain who will look into the 6 Catullus,' at pages 30 and 44. In the Plague of London, letters were sent to obnoxious people enclos- ing rags from a plague sore. These pages, steeped in foulest mental contagion, fly over all the world, and especially into the hands of the young. As regards the relation of the sexes, Latin poetry is the most 190 TO DEAN PRIOR. degraded in all literature. And now our girls are learning Latin. Some think all this of no conse- quence, but ( Rank thoughts of youth full easily run wild.' Dociles iraitandis Turpibus ac praxis omnes sumus. 1 External prudishness (England is notably prudish) and inner coarseness make a very bad combination. Herrick is nothing like so bad as Martial, or as Herrick would himself have been perhaps as a poet of the Roman Empire ; still there is much of his writing that were best allowed to fall into oblivion. The graceful fancy and lyric sweetness of his best verses will long preserve them in men's memory. So, Dean Prior, adieu ! — Robert Herrick, thy name echoes pleasantly after all, and I drink this cup of cider, in default of sack, to thy half-disreputable shade. How unlike to thy contemporary brother-poet and brother-clergyman, the almost too-respectable vicar of Fuo-gleston, near Salisbury, — George Herbert ! Various the tones, the skills, the instruments ; One Spirit of Music at the heart of all. I had several questions to ask at Dean, but found no one to put them to. It was Saturday evening ; it was some four miles to Brent station, with just time to catch the last train for Exeter ; I caught it by the tip of the tail, as it were, and was whiske:! away by that Fiery Dragon of our period. 1 Juvenal, xiv. 40. 191 CHAPTER X. AT BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. Exeter Again — A Cathedral Service — Bideford — "Westward Ho! — ■ Bathing — Ebenezer Jones — Clovelly. The tall-housed Exeter High Street, with its blazing shops and Saturday-night bustle, has a metropolitan air as I pass up. It was only yesterday morning that I passed down ; and a crowd of new images mean- while have taken lodgment in the mystic chambers of my brain, and swarms of thoughts have been busy. At the Guildhall is the police station, and with a constable's leave you can enter the spacious and stately old Gothic hall, dimly lit with gas throughout the night, see its lofty window with the emblazoned date c 1464,' and the full-length pictures of Henrietta, daughter of Charles L, of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, of King George II., of Chief Justice Pratt, the first two by Lely, the second two by Hudson, with several more. At one end is an old gallery, at the other the magis- trate's bench. Next morning I renewed and deepened my mind- picture of the beautiful Cathedral, and heard a Sunday afternoon choral service, worship without words or nearly, waves of solemn harmony, like the billows in a 192 AT BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. 2freat sea-cavern, rolling down those vaulted aisles : and also a sermon, which was as remarkable for earnest eloquence as cathedral sermons usually are. Modern Thought, that pushed itself in last week, is gone again, like a ship that touched at some enchanted island, and all is tranquil as of old. Last week there were sermons on f Science and Reli- gion,' even here ; but the disturbers are gone. The lotos reigns in its old territory. As the robed proces- sion moved along the aisle, between ancient carven pillars and coloured windows, I repeated to myself — Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far, far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores ; and if his fellow spake His voice was thin, as voices from the grave ; And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake, And music in his ears his beating heart did make. The congregation assembled in the nave, and nearly filled it. A cathedral is certainly a great resource on a British Sunday, and the usual sermon keeps it from appearing too pleasant, is a proper dismality to set off against the music and architecture. Surely an easy and most valuable reform in the Church of England would be the total abolition of sermons in connection with the ordinary service. Let there be sermons, lectures, expositions, discourses of whatever kind, ordinary or special, at times and in ways thereto appointed, close following a service of prayer and praise if you will ; SERMONS. 193 but enable us to join in such a service by itself, O bishops and archbishops ! and earn the gratitude of millions of distressed laymen, nay, I doubt not, of hundreds and of thousands of the clergy also. Pulpit- incubus ! vile impersonation of solemn ineptitude, of heartless and brainless routine, pretending to be an oracle, a prophet, an angel, how many souls hast thou numb'd — coming upon them perhaps all secretly a-trem ble with mystic joy of praise and prayer, social at once and profoundly personal. What unsuspected evils — but hold, Patricius, wilt thou thyself begin to preach, and without a licence of any sort ? Certainly, however, this is a great evil under the sun, and I hope I shall live to see the end of it. My thoughts wandered over hill and vale to the lonely church of Dean Prior. The old vicar in his 6 Hesperides' ventured to address one little piece 'To Jos. Lo. Bishop of Exeter : ' Whom sho'd I feare to write to, if I can Stand before you, my learn'd Diocesan ? for none of my poems, says he, are c so bad but you may pardon them.' I suppose the classicality excused a great deal; and indeed Herrick most likely would never have thought of soiling his pages as he has done, save through the childish superstition (only just dying out) of imitating classic models, not merely in style, but in matter. He made no independent reflections on the subject. It was easy and in a sense creditable to follow a classic lead, even into the mire. In our day o 194 AT BIDE FORD AND CLOVELLY. the Vicar of Dean would probably have been a contri- butor to ' Good Words,' perhaps a canon of the cathedral, and consumed his share of l sack,' or else port, in a fitting and undemonstrative manner. What would he have said to Darwin and Huxley ? Not much, I fancy, one way or another. He would have eaten his lotos and been thankful. One of my old landscape-longings was Bideford Bay, and though but a day and a half remained of my holi- day, I resolved to catch a glimpse of that North Devon coast which Charles Kingsley's pen and John Hook's pencil are so fond of. With a passing glimpse at neat- looking Barnstaple, set snugly in tall trees by its river- brink, I reached Bideford — By-th'-Ford — after sunset; and having pitched camp, established a fresh basis, founded a new little home for a day in the civil inn by the water-side, set off along the quay and up and down the steep lanes of the old town ; then crossed the famous bridge, and walked left way beyond the houses, to look back from a hillock on the broad dim river, and the lamps that marked the bridge, the quay, and the irregular cluster of buildings rising from the water. Next morning showed me the broad tidal stream, sweeping merrily round its grovy hills and corn-slopes, the sunshine dancing on its mingled currents. A silver salmon leapt up and disappeared with a splash. Two or three small vessels sailed in and came to anchor. Rowing-boats crossed. Windlasses rattled on the A BRIGHT MORNING. 195 quay. The first omnibus went off to the railway. Shops opened in lazy rural fashion. Whatever life belonged to little Bideford was awake and stirring. Bright morning, open window, cheerful prospect, break- fast, beginning with fresh salmon cutlet and ending with clotted cream and preserve, the offerings of Devonshire river, dairy, and garden — these (with temper and mood to taste them — how needful the postulate !) make no un- pleasant combination. I enjoyed it, and the main relish was the expectation of new scenes, of realising places hitherto but names, and converting them into solid memories. Our memory is ourself — e that immortal storehouse of the mind.' True, it may be said that material objects are little or nothing in themselves ; but the framework, the body of this world is material, and all its phenomena are abundantly significant in their varied relations to us. Moreover, even the wine of abstract thought is often presented to us in the cup of external cir- cumstance, and if that be of Cellini's gold the draught is more precious. A happy hour is good to remember, and can reflect its brightness upon dark seasons. I am in gloom : so have I been ere now, and said, f joy is no more,' yet after all came the free and happy hour, and I perceived that the clouds had been in me — of my own making most likely— not in life. With, health of body and soul (merely that !) nothing could daunt or depress me for a moment. Yet I know that the dark hours are fateful, they too are precious. o 2 196 AT BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. c All this about a good breakfast ! ' "Well, that was a part of the matter — but only a very little part, a touch of oil to the machinery. The morning's survey of Bideford added not much to the night's impressions. The ancient bridge has been widened by two side paths, supported on iron brackets, which, with the iron balustrade, give it the air of a railway bridge. The Bridge Hall, where the trustees meet, re-edified in 1758, was done up in 1859 ; but the old tapestries remain. The old Guildhall has been destroyed ; and the old church, too, except its tower. I peeped into the new church, spick and span Puginesque with gaudy glass 3 and found morning ser- vice going forward, with apparently one worshipper. The shops of Bideford are rustic and backward ; the one newsroom discoverable was very poor and rude. As to my waterside inn, it was civil, comfortable, and cheap. Two or three miles below Bideford is the bar, and the double river loses itself in the wide bay. On the right juts out a distant headland ; on the left run the long and level rabbit-burrows, faced with a barricade of shingles, and at the angle where the hilly south shore trends to Clovelly and Hartland Point stands the cluster of new houses — a big hotel and two or three score of bathing- villas — named ( Westward Ho ! ' from Mr. Kingsley's novel. f Kingsley Terrace ' and * Kingsley Hotel ' are also to be seen, an embodied WESTWARD HO! 197 fame. Pleasant traces from the said novel remained in my own memory : the author has a certain glow and entrainement irresistible to youthful readers. I like the name ' Westward Ho ' so far as it is a com- pliment to Charles Kingsley ; but, unluckily, as a topographical designation, it is a monument of bad taste. 'Hoe' is a common word in Devon, meaning ( Height ' (Haut), but in the title of the novel, bor- rowed from an old play, f Ho ! ' is an interjection, and the temptation to follow up Martinhoe and Morthoe with a Westward Ho ! ought to have been resisted. The new name is a kind of bad pun. From Westward Ho ! (since it must be so), I fol- lowed the south coast of the bay, on the edge of its clay and pebble escarpment, rough green hills one after another shutting out the inland prospect ; on the other hand a rough, rocky shore, summer waves rising, rolling in, breaking without tumult, and a blue sea- line stretched from the dim northern horn of the curve to its nearer southern limit, where the coast became almost precipitously steep, and was seen, though some seven miles off, to be clothed in rich verdure from top to base. Something in the distance that might be taken for the broken steps of a gigantic stair, at one point climbed from the shore and lost itself among the foliage, and this was the famous old fishing village of Clovelly — a rich name to ear and fancy. Meanwhile the bare green hills, and rocky shore beset with solitary surges, the wide blue bay with its guardian headlands, 198 AT BLDEFORD AND CLO FULLY. reminded me strongly of another bay by which I once rambled — that of Donegal in the north-west of Ireland. The two bays are much of a size, the Torridge with its bar and sandbanks stands for the Erne ; nor are the town and bridge of Bideford altogether unlike, at least in position, their ragged Irish cousins at Ballyshannon. Moreover, Lundy Island answers curiously to Innis- murray. The scenery of the English bay, as a whole, is much richer, in its foliaged shores and inland glimpses ; that of the Irish is wilder and grander, watched by blue mountain ranges and the great ocean cliff of Slieve-League, Six hundred yards in air aloft, six hundred in the deep. It struck me, too, that I had noticed some curious resemblances in the speech of North Devon to the somewhat peculiar accent of English (flat and drawl- ing) which is found in part of Donegal, and speculated whether a colony from this bay might not have settled on that other. Of some such thing as having hap- pened in Elizabeth's time I seem to have heard, but cannot for the present trace it out. The i say ' for sea, e tay ' for tea, and so on, now supposed to mark an Irish tongue, are ordinary Devonian. In Hibernian English are many old forms of English, and many provincial forms, and along with these a strong Keltic admixture of words (some translated, some not), phrases, and grammatical constructions : to these add mistakes and awkwardnesses in the use of BATHING. 199 a foreign tongue, and you have a strange compound, deserving perhaps a closer examination than it has yet received. An English-speaking Irish peasant, while expressing the same meaning, would shape almost any sentence whatever differently from a Londoner of a similar degree of intelligence and education. At Portledge the rocks yielded to a space of sand, over which I gladly ran, in Adam's dress, into the embrace of the folding waves. The afternoon sun sparkled on the wide sea; two merry fishing boats danced past under sail. As the embrace of Earth invigorated the old giant, so doth the sea renew her sons. First, the sense of individuality when you stand in the face of earth, sea, and sky, without one husk or lending, defenceless, undesignated. Rags or robes, purse and credentials, if you had them, are gone. Next, the ( reverential fear,' the profound awe of com- mitting your helpless self to the terrible and too often treacherous potency. A little prayer is never out of place. Then the thrilling flash of will — the self-aban- donment — the victorious recovery, the triumph over a new element — and the glow bodily and mental of one's emergence, not soon fading even when the livery of servitude, the trammels that remind us of f man's fall,' are resumed. Among my bookstall gleanings is a volume of poems l Studies of Sensation and Event,' by Ebenezer Jones, published in 1843. Through its incoherences 200 AT BIDEFORD AND CLOVELLY. it shows glimpses of true poetic power ; and how sad are such books, children of enthusiasm and hope, born to neglect, to oblivion ! The first piece in the volume is called ( The Naked Thinker.' Lord Apswern's will has a singular provision : Let there be lifted from the roof Of Apswern's house, a room, From every other room aloof, And bare as is the tomb ; And stripped of all the clothes we wear, To aid life's lying show, Naked from every influence, there Lord Apswern's heir must go. He must pass a tenth part of each day in this room : Straight into it the sunshine stept Stark naked from the sky. 'Twixt it and the revolving stars Did never aught arise ; And morning's earliest golden bars Its walls did first surprise. And here ' he broods, and writes, and raves,' scorning the make-believes of the world, but to what particular result does not well appear. Among the volumes on my foundling shelf, this of Ebenezer Jones's is cared for. Some one told me he was clerk in a tea warehouse in the City, and that he died poor and disappointed. His blank verse has sometimes a Shelleyan impetuosity of eloquence, but, like so many a writer, his work wants 6 backbone.' His mill had little or nothing to grind, and ground its own machinery to pieces. One little thing of his (preserved in Nightingale Valley), which begins ' When the world is burning,' is very striking. IN THE DUSK. 201 He was certainly not a common man. Of high human faculty born into this earth in each generation, how much is spilt, as it were on the ground — spilt milk or wine, for which, when spilt, there is no help. But might there not be better arrangements for saving our milk, our wine and oil, from this waste ? Meanwhile, I have left the shore, whose huddled rocks offer little convenience to the foot, and wind up a glen or 6 mouth ' to the high road, where I push on quickly for Clovelly, full of expectation. The long plain road between hedges was adorned and made important by my condition of expectancy, and there- fore I recall it clearly. I was on the edge of realising a place often thought about, never seen. The sun had almost set when I turned, on the right hand, through a gate and into a dark avenue of trees, winding downwards till the sea came through its branches, and running round one headland after another ; the purple bay on my right through foliage, and the great bank of trees on the left. At every turn I hoped to see Clovelly, but it was some three miles long, this winding way terraced among the slanting woods, and the golden clouds had sunk from western heaven, and a dark purple dome overhung the darker ocean, when two or three glimmering lights far below beckoned to me from cottages near the little harbour. Venturing a bye-path, it led me to a small opening in the woods. The trees, heap after heap, were piled 202 AT BIBEFORD AND CLOVELLY. into the stars. At my feet, between precipitous banks, a very steep and narrow glen dropped sheer to the sea, losing itself in foliage, and among the foliage were actually roofs and chimneys, cottages one below an- other, holding on somehow to the dangerous slope. Far down, the unseen surf was heard gently breaking on the beach, and the dim sea rose in front like a mighty and mysterious wall. I had been regretting the lack of daylight, but now felt glad to be entering Clovelly thus. Everything looked very remote and old-world, very quiet, very beautiful. A sense of soothing soli- tude, of largeness in the lofty woods and wide ocean, of pathos in the cluster of ancient cottages, and the little street, like a ladder, into which I was about to step down, a stranger seeking supper and bed ; all these feelings were harmonised and deepened by the dusky twilight sky, lit with some faint stars. I was afraid of finding Clovelly, famous in picture, spoilt, but it has as yet escaped the hand of i improve- ment : ' no villas here, no railway, nor even a coach ; the street is still only two to three yards wide ; the inn, while clean, is properly old-fashioned and rustical. I regret to add that I found a pert and careless handmaiden and a heavy bill. i There was a very nice lass at the inn,' I heard next day, i but she's married, and now it's the landlord's niece, and she's too proud for her place.' There are lodgings, I understood, where they would be glad to harbour you even for a single night. ' Clovelly Street ' is a very long flight of flag-stone CLOVELLY. 203 steps descending between two irregular rows of cottages, in one place passing under an archway house, and then dropping more steeply than ever to the little harbour, whose pier, built in Richard I.'s reign, puts its arm of gray stone round a little fleet of herring-smacks. The steep and lofty sea-bank is smothered in woods, from shingle-beach to sky. In my bed-room, to which I ascended by many stairs, I found a second door, open- ing on — the garden, and to this garden one did not descend but ascend, and above it were still other gar- dens, and above these a dark mass of trees. So like a cluster of shore-side nests is this ancient fishing-hamlet. Next morning, bright, breezy, and gay, I made some acquaintance with the villagers. A girl was scrubbing a doorstep, and her skirt (not a fashionable train) reached quite across the street. Under the archway sat a shoemaker at work with open door, and showed all the readiness of his craft for conversation. He must have quite a variety of visitors, and takes intel- lectual toll of all strangers. e Crazy Kate's House ' on the beach, well-known to photographers, has no right, he told me, to any such name, which has merely been stuck upon it by some idle tourist. From an old man who had lived here all his days, I learned that there is no doctor in or near Clovelly, ( he couldn't get a livin'. ' He himself c had never touched a dose of medi- cine.' ' Was Clovelly much altered since his youth?' ( Oh yes, very much ! the street was new-paved from top to bottom, and two new houses built nigh the foot 204 AT BIBEFORD AND CLOVELLY. of the hill.' An elderly woman who takes care of the Methodist Chapel (there are many Methodists among the nine hundred Clovellians) praised the beauty of the Clovelly children, their regularity at school, and the pride their mothers had in keeping them tidy. Mr. Hook, Mr. Naish, and other painters, were well known to the general population, and inquired after as friends. Half-way down the street is a sea-captain's house with a china bowl in the window, embellished with a ship under sail, and the legend f Success to the Mary Jane of Bideford,' and here is a favourite lodging for artists, and to all appearance a comfortable. The captain was at sea when I called, but passes the winter at home. It seemed it might be a good sort of life, with its alter- nation of adventure with deep home-repose. But I must say good-bye, for my part, to the beautiful old sea-hamlet. A cart bound for Bide- ford market helped me along the miles of road, first winding up a long hill; one of my fellow-tra- vellers being a girl with a touch of fashion in her dress, a Clovelly maiden, now at service in London ( ( a very black place,' she said), and sent home for a month to revive the faded roses in her cheeks. Three weeks were gone and had done her much good; in another she must return to the Great Smoke — •' A pity,' remarked an old woman beside us, { to miss the first of the herrin'.' But London sucks in people and things from every corner of the land. As courtly and inellectual centre, MAGNETISM OF LONDON. 20a Herrick's wishes pointed to it from Dean Prior, and these attractions still belong to it ; but its more widely- felt power nowadays is from mere magnitude, the mass of money and human needs packed within a fifty-mile circuit. Thither gravitate coarse things and fine, are sucked in and absorbed, some to their natural uses, many to waste and destruction. I came into Clovelly at nine yesterday evening, and leave it at eight this morning : I seem to have lived there about two years. In gliding out of Devon into Dorset the landscape grows evener and simpler. I leave behind me a peaceful region of rich swelling hills, loaded with corn and woodland, and deep fertile valleys, with a coast, north and south, of verdured cliff and leafy glen, and ' bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea ; ' old towns and old farmhouses ; an easy-going, good-natured population of stalwart men and comely lasses ; a state of life not yet broken up, though not unaffected, by that brute power of monstrous London, that Mountain of Loadstone. :>^t^£ 206 AT LIVERPOOL. CHAPTER XL AT LIVERPOOL, WITH THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. The Mersey — Irishism — Americanism — The Docks — Commerce and Credit — The British Association — Mr. Huxley on Vital G-erms — Mr. Tyndall on Scientific Imagination — Physical and Moral Philosophy — Science andKeligion — Liverpool Architecture — Corn Stores — An Emi- grant Ship — Poor Streets — Birkenhead Park — In the Train. The place where I first touched the shore of England was at Liverpool. Awake in my berth in the steamer, the perturbation, external and internal, at an end, it was delightful to look through the little round window, its bull's-eye open to a fresh morning breeze, and see, gliding past, the bank of a large river with numerous clusters of houses shining in the sunlight — first sight of English houses and English land. Seen from deck, the broad Mersey sparkled and danced, as though it had been a mere holiday river, between the terraces and villas of the Birkenhead shore on one hand, and on the other an endless line of huge warehouses with a forest of masts in front, and here and there a tower or a cupola rising from the dark mass of houses behind. This was Liverpool. Large ships lay at anchor in the stream ; others, of all sizes, sailing or steaming, moved every way across the picture. At the great landing- IRISHISM. 207 stage rows of steamships sent their hissing clouds aloft, porters and sailors bustled and shouted, and passengers kept landing and embarking among heaps of baggage, each intent on his own affairs, crossing gangways and shifting and shoving to and fro among boys and by- standers, while on the pavement above waited the jarvies, with uplifted whip, crying i Keb, sir, keb ! ' which I set down as my first experience of the true native English accent. Everything in Liverpool had the freshness of a foreign country (though I came no farther than from the Irish West), and I noted every point of English novelty, and found myself overflowing with a torrent of new experiences. This was a good many years ago. Revisiting Liverpool this autumn, having in the meantime lived much in London and the south of England, it is my first impression that Liverpool is rather more Irish than Dublin. The huge station, slovenly and ill-kept, swarms with frowsy interlopers. Porters, coachmen, little boys, policemen, accost or answer you, in nine cases out of ten, in a rich Emerald brogue. Milesian names cover the signboards of shops and market-booths — Murphy and Duffy, Donovan and Conellan. Ma- guire's l cars ' (even the word cab seems to be almost supplanted) are in chief request. The streets abound in barefooted, rao*aed children, wrinkled beldames with dudeens, stout wenches, loosely girt as Nora Creena, balancing baskets on their heads ; unshaven men in 203 AT LIVERPOOL. every variety of old hat lounge at corners ; and if you venture into one of those byways which lead out of the best business streets, the foul gutters, the flung- out refuse under foot, the dangling clothes hung out aloft to smoke- dry, the grimy houses, their broken panes stuffed with rags, the swarm of half-naked babes of dirt and poverty about the open doors, here suckled, there scolded by their intensely slatternly mothers, the universal squalor mixed with an indescribable devii-may-care-ishness, and the strong flavour of brogue that pervades the air, will all remind you forcibly (if you have ever been there) of that famous i Liberty ' which surrounds the cathedral of Saint Patrick. The Irishism of Liverpool is a strong (in every sense) and all-pervading element: its Americanism, though much less marked, is sufficiently noticeable. The bio- 'Washington Hotel,' the three-horse omni buses trundling and jingling along their tramways, the United States journals at the news vendors', the not unfrequent negroes, the unmistakable Transatlantic intonation which often strikes the ear in public rooms, the ' Oysters stewed in the American style,' with many other hints, remind one that here is a chief portal between Europe and the great West, and indeed the wide world. Placards abound of the starting of ships and steamers for New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, the West Indies, Valparaiso, Melbourne — wheresoever the salt wave washes ; and looking down street after street, the vista ends in a crowd of masts and rigging. THE GREAT SEA-PORT. 209 Thus, underlying the Irish and the American ele- ments, is everywhere visible the general seafaring character of the town, whereon rests the mighty line of docks and warehouses, and behind these the count- less outfitting shops and nautical instrument shops, shops of every kind, polyglot hotels and taverns, drinking bars (with a glass barrel for sign), lodging- houses, sailors' dancing- rooms ; and moreover the crowds of comfortable and luxurious villas that besprinkle the country for miles round Liverpool, inhabited by ship-owners, ship-insurers, corn mer- chants, cotton brokers, emigrant agents; &c, &c, men with i one foot on sea, and one on shore/ yet to one thing constant ever — namely, money-making — and therein duly successful ; with the thick fringe of hum- bler houses in the immediate suburbs wherein their clerks abide. Mostly in the filthy heart of Liverpool itself, the squalid byways and pestiferous alleys, dwell the dock labourers, carters, stevedores, all the grim, hard-handed men, white with flour, black with coals, yellow with guano, fluffy with cotton, dusty with maize, who are hoisting and lowering, heaving and shovelling, dragging and hauling, carrying and trundling great bales, boxes, bags, barrels, weights of iron bars and pigs of lead, mountains of coal, mountains of corn, amid creaking of windlasses, rattling of chain-cables, roll of heavy wheels, trampling of great slow horses, and busy turmoil of a throng of grim human creatures like themselves, in 210 AT LIVERPOOL. that endless range of waterside sheds, with endless range of tall stores looking clown across the long narrow street full of mud and noise, and over the prison-like line of the dock- wall. Prison-like and mortally oppressive is this region— the huge warehouses, the blank wall, the lumbering drays, the heavy weights swinging in mid air : What dreadful streets are these I tread ! Bales, hogsheads, hang above my head — boundless mud, smoke, stench, with perpetual grinding, rolling, clattering. Inside the dock gates is some little relief — not much : the water is usually foul, the ships lie jammed together like bullocks in a market pen ; the monotony of the long sheds and long walls and long paved causeways, crowded and dirty, the drays and horses and grim men and great burdens again at every step, the trap-like and ponderous bridges, the huge stonework of the docks and piers, the brutal and unfeeling bigness and ugliness of every trace of power, the uncertainty of getting out by any given route (for a bridge may be open or a gate locked), the certainty that you have no choice of direction, the stagnant water on this hand, the gray wall on that, and your sense of the dreary spaces which in any case you must traverse to escape — these oppressed me years ago, when I first walked in to see these famous things, and oppressed me this last time still more dis- mally. It was like a nightmare. The very memory of it is oppressive. COMMERCE AND CREDIT. 211 Such is part of the machinery of commerce on the large scale — a necessary detail in the grand scheme of modern civilisation — a department of life and work where a Rambler with tastes for the picturesque and sentimental cannot reasonably expect much pleasure. Would you have no dock for the ship, no wall for the dock, no store for the cargo, no hands to move it ? Or would you wish to find the long wall painted in fresco, and each stevedore with a bunch of violets in his buttonhole ? Well, I don't feel easy in my body among these grand docks, and will get out of the place as soon as I can ; but neither do I feel easy in my mind. Suppose our modern commerce, rich and mighty • as it appears, should prove some day to be based not on sound principles, but on unsound. Sup- pose the human race, or any community of it, to discover Credit, on which of late all trading trans- actions are built, to be not a rock, but a sandbank ; Credit, with all its bourses and banks and bills, to be in the long run of maleficent effect to men in general (while enabling a 'few lucky and astute persons to sweep enormous gains into their pockets) — to be on the whole a pernicious thing, diminishing happiness, increasing misery, a huge loss, not a grand gain, to mankind. Commerce now-a-days rests mainly on an artificial system of Credit, and is almost synonymous with i Speculation ; ' and Speculation in a vast number of cases is something very like Gambling. With all trading put on a different basis — say a tripod, of ready p 2 212 AT LIVERPOOL. money, real securities, personal (not legal) credit — I doubt if huge Liverpool and huge Manchester could concentrate so much ill-organised human labour within their melancholy walls, overdriven when speculation is lucky, left to idleness and starvation when speculation is out of luck — could gather round them so widespread and close-packed, so dark and ugly a multitude of ill-fed, ill-taught, filthy, diseased, vicious, helpless, hopeless human beings. And I also doubt if this concentrating process, as at present effected, be a blessing to England and the world. If I were Lord Chancellor to-morrow I would frame a Bill to abolish all laws for the Recovery of Debt. Besides the check upon huge, unwholesome, inorganic conglomerations as aforesaid, a vast swarm of useless and worse than useless intermediaries in commerce would be nipped and suppressed by the no-recovery prin- ciple, and honest buyers would get their things purer and cheaper. Now they pay for the rogues, and get bad things to boot. Half the shops in London would shut up — far more than half of the luxury-shops, finery-shops, bauble-shops; and those that remained would still perhaps be too many. It is a struggle for existence among the general body of shopkeepers now,, spun out in the individual cases by credit received and credit given (debts to come in by-and-by, bills that may be renewed for three months longer), and the strugglers clutching in their bitter anxiety at all possible l tricks of trade,' almost always including NO RECOVERY OF DEBT. 213 adulteration, and very often unjust charges and false weights and measures beside. Most of these are non- producers ; their sole business is transmission, and. for this, I repeat, there are far too many ; and they do it dishonestly and expensively — give us worse things at higher cost. I will here insert a poem I once addressed To an Egg-Merchant. What the deuce is your use ? You nothing produce. You never lay eggs. Oh, you're a transmitter. If A has an egg intended for me, He hands it to B, B to C, C to D, D to E, E to me — who pay, after A, B, C, D, and E, for stopping the way ; Eor surely 'twere fitter As egg and my penny Changed hands without paying a toll to so many, Which terribly docks Farmer A of his gain, While of eggs hardly fresh I often complain. I don't suppose that a ready-money system would reform all the evils of the mercantile and shopkeeping world ; but I do believe it would cut across many dishonesties, dry up a good deal of waste, and help to make life— national and individual — more wholesome. The inconveniencies would prove to be mainly imaginary. You do not go to a railway station without your fare in your pocket. If you have but a third-class fare, you do not ask for a second- or a first-class ticket. That is the natural and wholesome arrangement, and applicable to every affair of buying and selling. The number or magnitude of the transactions makes no real difference : if you are legitimately engaged in large transactions, you will 214 AT LIVERPOOL. find or soon make proportionate means and conve- niences for buying and paying as you go. Neither would trust {personal trust) fail, within proper limits, — which limits, however, would be something very different from the present undefined, almost boundless, area of ( Credit,' in whose soil and climate Specula- tions and Peculations, upas-trees and poison-fungi, do rankly grow and flourish, to the great moral and physical detriment of mankind. Contracts resting on real securities would be dealt with by the law as such ; and all bond fide business would soon adjust itself and go on without difficulty. Certainly mala fide business would be checked, and that large department of trade much discouraged which is only a kind of gambling ; which elbows fair trading out of the field; which produces so many compositions with creditors, and ever and anon culmi- nates in a ' commercial crisis,' in which multitudes of little people suffer who had no part in the ' speculations,' while the gamblers very usually set up again ; and then perhaps as i trade revives,' they have a run of luck, and all goes merrily forward — till the next crisis. Details I will leave to the Lord Chancellor of the future to work out. Meanwhile, here is the huge town — Hibernico- American-English Liverpool, seafaring, rough, busy, dirty, wealthy. Hither converge in ceaseless streams the cotton of America, India, Egypt, the wool of the THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 215 Australian plains, the elephants' tusks and palm oil of African forests, the spermaceti of Arctic seas, the grain from the shores of Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Elbe, Loire, Danube, Vistula, and many another stream, the hides of South America, the sugar, copper, tobacco, rice, timber, guano, &c, of every land the sun's eye looks upon. Hence radiate to all quarters of the globe, bales of cotton goods, linen, woollen, bulks of machinery, inexhaustible leather and hardware, salt and soap, coals and iron, copper and tin. Liverpool at this time, busy as she seems, complains of bad times. The docks are full of ships — post horses in stable, eating their heads off. Nevertheless, Liverpool, portal and caravanserai of the human race, is thronged with visitors and passers-through. Ameri- cans who have 'been seeing Europe, now homeward- bound in the fall, swarm at all hotels, waiting for their steam-packets ; and, moreover, the British Association is this year holding its seven-day congress in the Town of Ships. Its presence makes a gala week in such a town as Norwich or Bath. Exeter last year was like a house made ready for guests, and busied in entertaining them. But the Scientific Congress, with its sections and savants and skirmishers, hardly quickens the pulse of a big, busy place like Liverpool. Ask your way to the Reception Room, your answer may be a shake of the head. The President himself pushes unnoticed through the hasty crowds of Lime Street or Bold Street, and 216 AT LIVERPOOL. his likeness has not supplanted Bismarck or the fallen Emperor at the photograph shops. But this apathy by no means extended to the hospitalities of Liverpool, civic and private; and the Town itself gradually became aware, in some degree, of the Association, under the influence of the long daily reports and comments of the local newspapers, and the splendid soirees at St. George's Hall, the Free Library and Museum, the Philharmonic Rooms, and his Worship the Mayor's two receptions at the Town Hall, embellished with a great show of modern pictures, lent by people round about. I should not be surprised to hear that Lancashire buys more modern pictures than any three other counties. At the mayor's entertainments there were not only pictures, but a dancing-room and supper- room ; St. George's vast hall bristled with microscopes, and mechanical models, and electric machines ; at the Free Library and Museum costly books lay open on the tables, and the admirably arranged and labelled collections of natural history, of antiquities, of china and pottery, &c, showed well under the brilliant gaslights ; while at all these places Music lent her charm, and filled the pauses of conversation as count- less groups of the white-gloved, fair sex and brown, moved about and passed, looked and discussed, greeted and parted, and now and again gently indicated to each other some notability of the Sections. The first general assembly of officers, life-members, and associates pro hdc vice, was, as usual, to hear the PBOFJUSSOK HUXLEY. 217 new President's address. It began at eight in the evening, and the Philharmonic Hall was crowded. It used, I believe, to be the custom to make this address a survey of the progress of science in the preceding twelvemonth ; but the tendency now is to make it deal mainly with the speaker's special line of study. Mr. Huxley's was the most special, pro- bably, that has yet been delivered ; its subject, vital germs — the visible beginnings of organic life in minute specks of matter, which can only be seen through powerful lenses. f The evidence,' sums up our Professor, c direct and indirect, in favour of Biogenesis— production of all living matter from previously existing living matter — for all known forms of life, must, I think, be admitted to be of great weight.' Still he is far from saying that such a thing as ( A- biogenesis ' — production of living from non-living matter — has never taken place or never will take place. ( With organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology yet in their infancy, and every day making prodigious strides, I think it would be the height of presumption for any man to say that the conditions under which matter assumes the properties we call " vital " may not, some day, be artificially brought together.' This form of words — conditions artificially brought together — sounds to me vague, and a little misleading. What would be i artificial ' here ? There is no mean, says Shakespeare, but nature makes that mean. Con- 218 AT LIVERPOOL. ditions are brought together every day under which the above result does take place. We trace the chain of causes up to a certain pointy and there our means of investigation fail us. That by improved appliances and closer search we may discover some higher links now invisible is possible, and even likely. But what then ? Suppose it were found that a certain chemical combination is always followed by the presence of vital germs, of which no previous trace could be detected, would that teach us what life is, or how it comes ? Yet by all means let investigation go on : the least particle added to the general store of human knowledge is inestimable. On the other hand let us remember that we have no absolute and final knowledge whatsoever ; that we do not know what any kind of substance really is ; that after all these centuries, and all our recent ( prodigious strides,' we have not begun to make the slightest approach to a knowledge of the absolute nature of things. The Professor went on to own himself i devoid of any means of forming a definite conclusion as to the conditions of its [life's] appearance,' but added that if it were given him to look back to the beginnings of things, he should expect to be a witness of the evolu- tion of living protoplasm from not living matter. 6 I should expect,' he said, { to see it appear under forms of great simplicity, endowed, like existing fungi, with the power of determining the formation of new proto- plasm from such matters as ammonium carbonates, THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 219 oxalates and tartrates, alkaline and earthy phosphates, and water, without the aid of light. That is the expectation to which analogical reasoning leads me 5 but I beg you once more to recollect that I have no right to call my opinion anything but an act of philo- sophical faith.' And what is the retrospective expec- tation even of a Huxley worth on a point like this ? So far as investigation has gone, every living thing is found to proceed from another living thing. But does the living thing always produce an offspring of its own kind (homogenesis), or is the offspring sometimes a creature i of a totally different character ' from its parent (xenogenesis) ? The tendency of all enquiries has been to support homogenesis. The apparently unlike forms, animal or plant, are only ( stages in the cycle of life of the species.' But here again Mr. Huxley has evidently an i expectation ' that xenogenesis, not yet demonstrated, will be some day ; that like may produce unlike when modifying conditions are present. He finds in diseased structures, from corns to cancers, ' some remarkable approximations ' to xenogenesis. 6 Under the influence of certain external conditions, elements of the body which should have developed in due subordination to its general plan set up for them- selves, and apply the nourishment which they receive to their own purposes.' l A. cancer,' he says, i is only morphologically [i.e. only in shape] distinguishable from the parasitic worm.' Here, again, I must own, my mental track diverges 220 AT LIVERPOOL. perforce from that of the Professor. ( If,' he goes on — ■ i if there were a kind of diseased structure, the his- tological elements of which were capable of maintaining a separate and independent existence out of the body [imagine a cancer crawling about by itself — horrible thought!], it seems to me that the shadowy boundary be- tween morbid growth and xenogenesis would be effaced.' Surely there is much virtue in this i if.' Several diseases (e.g. sheep-pox and glanders) 'are dependent,' he continues, f for their existence \jwii probation?'] and then- propagation upon extremely small living solid particles, to which the title of microzymes is applied.' Do these come by development of imported germs, or by modification of the tissues in which they are found ? The Professor considers it an open ques- tion, and that there are ' equally strong analogies ' in favour of either view. With all proper submission, I must say the analogies which he has put forward on both sides do not, to my mind, appear equally strong, but to preponderate very decidedly for the germ theory. The lecturer ended by describing the meeting as gathered together for e the advancement of the moiety of science which deals with those phenomena of Nature which we call physical' — a hint of grateful sound to those who still interest themselves in the metaphy- sical — mental — ethical — spiritual (how to phrase it ?) i moiety ' of natural phenomena, and who, with some . reason, have felt themselves slighted or ignored by the savants of the present day. THE IRISH GENTLEMAN. 221 The address of Mr. Clerk Maxwell in Section A (Mathematical and Physical Sciences), was imbued with a warmer human interest than usual. There was blood, too, running through the veins of Professor Sylvester's discourse last year at Exeter. The mathe- matical ghosts, mental formulae, astonished us with a friendly grasp of hand. But, indeed, humour is not absent from the works and ways of mathematicians. Pro- fessor De Morgan, in dealing with the circle-squarers, and Professor Sylvester, with the ' Laws of Verse,' have evolved much fun. Nor was Section A at Liver- pool without its droll side. The tall Irish gentleman (seen at many former meetings) did not fail to be pre- sent, who examines questions by no means in the dry light of reason. He was adorned with a neck-scarf of bright green hue, and a brogue of equal richness. He contradicted everybody, and handled questions of multiples and co-sines with a fiery eloquence that brought to mind the young man of genius (doubtless his fellow-countryman) who, in applying for the post of warehouse-clerk, stated among other qualifications that his style of letter- writing i combined scathing sarcasm with the wildest humour.' Mr. O.'s presence cer- tainly makes Section A much livelier and more amusing for the associated loungers who drop in, and ttoe British Association wishes, among other good works, to please this large portion of its company. So, long life to Mr. O., and may he speak in Section A at many a future meeting ! Mainly to please its general company, as aforesaid, 222 AT LIVERPOOL. the Association arranges to have two or three lectures of a popular or semi-popular character, hors-d'oeuvre, not connected with the regular business of the meeting. The chief of these was given by Professor Tyndall to a very large audience in the Philharmonic Hall. It was long and without experiments, and more fit to be read at home than listened to amid the difficulties of a large public assembly. Still it is always something to see a man of note in the flesh, and hear his living voice ; and this interest, over and above that of the topic and treatment, secured general attention for the best part of two hours. With clearness and originality, in an easy voice agreeing with his elastic bearing (he has lightness without levity — a kind of agile earnest- ness, so to say), the Professor threw forth hint after hint on the nature of scientific investigation and on the directions which it has taken in our own time (illus- trating mainly from the study of Light), and connected all into a firm chain of thought. The physical basis of light f lies entirely without the domain of the senses.' How, then, can we get any notion of it ? The phenomena of Sound are clearly explained by the theory of waves sent by a vibrating body through air, water, &c, to the air. In the time that sound takes to move one foot, light moves about one hundred and seventy miles. How account for this astounding velocity ? ( By boldly diffusing in space a medium of the requisite tenuity and elasticity.' We do so, and find, after the most PROFESSOR TYNDALL. ■ 223 careful investigations, that all phenomena of light agree with this hypothesis. In every luminous body there is an internal vibration of its atoms ; the atoms shake and send waves along the elastic aether which surrounds them. Well, the sether-waves made by the vibrating atoms of luminous bodies f are of different lengths and am- plitudes.' In water-waves, amplitude is the height of the crest over the trough ; length, the distance between one crest and the next. The length of the largest light-waves is about twice, and their amplitude about one hundred times, that of the smallest. e Turned into their equivalents of sensation, the different light-waves produce different colours ; the largest produces red, the smallest violet.' But the solar pulse sends, along the aether, waves of all sizes blended together, like the tones in a musical chord, and blended together they make the impression of whiteness. Sent through a glass prism all the waves are retarded, but the smallest ones most ; the waves are separated, and show as sepa- rate colours, the series of large and slow making red, of small and swift making violet ; and between these we can distinguish orange, yellow, green, blue, and indigo. When the blended waves, which are white, are transmitted or reflected in equal proportions, the effect is still of whiteness ; when in unequal propor- tions, one or another colour predominates. Now, why is the general sky blue ? The light of i the azure vault ' comes to us at once from all parts of the hemi- 224 AT LIVERPOOL. sphere. It is reflected light, and not reflected in the proportions that produce white. The smaller waves prevail. Why ? Suppose in our atmosphere a count- less number of minute particles. Light-waves of all sizes impinge upon these particles. Red waves to blue are as billows to ripples. A larger proportionate part of each smaller wave must be scattered — reflected — than of a larger ; l and as a consequence, in the scat- tered light, blue [is] the predominant colour.' The other colours are not absent, but deficient. The par- ticles of a cloud being much larger, send back all the waves equally, therefore whitely. Now as to f the light which passes unscattered among the particles.' Losing many of its short or blue-making waves, the direct transmitted light is yellowish. When the sun is near the horizon, the direct light-waves have a greater distance of air to go through — meet more and more of the particles which scatter their shorter waves. The particles c abstract in succession the violet, the indigo, the blue, and even disturb the proportions of green.' The transmitted light ( must pass from yellow through orange to red.' Thus by reason and imagina- tion combined we represent our atmosphere as ' a me- dium rendered slightly turbid by the mechanical sus- pension of exceedingly small foreign particles;' and the phenomena certainly occur as if this theory were true. [ f Turbid ' and i foreign,' however, seem scarcely happy terms.] Let us see (goes on the Professor — but I am not EXPERIMENTS IN LIGHT. 225 using his words save where the inverted commas ap- pear — let us see whether small particles can ' be really proved to act in the manner indicated.' Dissolve mastic in alcohol. Drop the solution into a glass vessel filled with clear water. Water cannot dissolve mastic, so the mastic separates into e an exceedingly fine precipitate/ a crowd of minute solid particles, and lo ! the clear water becomes sky-blue. The par- ticles of mastic are so small that the highest micro- scopic power shows nothing in the water, and if they were each y-ooVoo' °^ an ^ ncn * n diameter they could not escape detection. Another experiment : place in a dark room a glass vessel with sulphurous acid gas ( f two atoms of oxygen and one of sulphur constitute the molecule of sulphurous acid') ; pass a beam of sun- light through the gas ; ( the components of the mole- cules of sulphurous acid are shaken asunder by the sether-waves ; ' the atoms of sulphur float released. [We must remark that the Professor here speaks of * molecules ' as composite bodies made up of c atoms ; ' whereas he elsewhere uses ' atom ' and i molecule ' as convertible terms, with the meaning of ultimate par* tide.'] At first we see nothing in the vessel, but soon ( along the track of the beam a beautiful sky-blue is observed.' .... For a time the blue grows more intense; it then becomes whitish; and then white. At last the tube is filled with a dense cloud of sulphur particles, separately visible through a microscope. Thus, our asther-waves untie the bonds of chemical Q 226 AT LIVERPOOL. affinity. We have first the free atoms of sulphur, so minute as to have no visible effect on the light. ( But these atoms gradually coalesce and form particles which grow larger by continual accretion, until after a minute or two they appear as sky-matter. In this condition they are invisible themselves, but competent to send an amount of wave-motion to the retina suffi- cient to produce the fundamental blue.' But the particles continually grow larger, and pass by insensible gradations into the state of cloud, and then the microscope shows them. f Thus, without solution of continuity, we start with matter in the molecule [atom, Professor?] and end with matter in the mass, sky-matter being the middle term of the series of transformations.' Instead of sulphurous acid, other substances might be used with the same result. The skiey condition lasts fifteen or twenty minutes under the continual operation of the light, the par- ticles constantly growing larger, without ever exceed- ing the blue-making size. But as they grow larger, the blue becomes lighter. Professor Tyndall found the blue of a vapour after fifteen minutes to be ( a blue of distinctly smaller particles ' than those sought for in vain with a microscope in the mastic precipitate. Those mastic particles must have been less than TToWo" in diameter. e And now I want to submit to your imagination the following question : Here are particles which have been growing continually for fifteen minutes, and at the end of that time are de- THE BLUE OF THE SKY. 227 monstrably smaller than those which defied the micro- scope of Mr. Huxley. What must have been the size of these particles at the beginning of their growth ? . . . We are dealing with infinitesimals compared with which the test objects of the microscope are literally immense.' Take a comet with a tail a hundred millions of miles long and fifty thousand miles broad: it is probable that the whole stuff of this comet, if compressed, would not make one horse-load. As to the quantity of matter in the earth's atmosphere — of the particles that make to our eyes the deep blue firmament, the whole of it measuring say from the height of Mont Blanc upwards — all the particles swept up together — would probably go into a portmanteau, possibly into a snuff- box. All the blue of the round sky in a snuff-box ! And these astoundingly minute particles of matter, recollect, are by no means the smallest particles in nature, but actually bulky and massive compared with others which are proved to exist. This gives us a wonderful glimpse, at once imaginative and real, of the measureless minimism of matter. What is the nature of these particles ? A question. They defy the microscope and the balance. Many of them may be organic germs. Here the professor, with- out taking any side in the controversy on Spontaneous Generation (affirmed by Dr. Bastian and others), made an admirable application to the microscopist : ' edu- cated in the school of the senses,' the most minute q 2 228 AT LIVERPOOL. forms of life visible through his instrument appear f conterminous with the ultimate particles of matter ;' . . . . i with him there is but a step from the atom to the organism.' But the observer who has also scientific imagination, ( exercised in the conceptions of atoms and molecules/ discerns numberless gradations between the atom and the visible organism. i Compared with his atoms, the smallest vibrios and bacteria of the micro- scopic field are as behemoth and leviathan.' Some men of science ' seem to form an inadequate estimate of the distance which separates the microscopic from the molecular [atomic ?] limit.' e The microscope can have no voice in the real question of germ structure.' 6 Between the microscope limit and the true molecular [atomic ?] limit there is room for infinite permutations and combinations? And does not this seem (thought I) to indicate that we have about an equal chance of finding the positive beginnings of things in minimis, and the ultimate limits of the universe in extenso ? Then the lecturer spoke of the well-known nebular hypothesis — fiery mist condensing into suns, which throw off planets. When first detached from the sun, 6 life, as we understand it, could hardly have been present on the earth. How, then, did it come there ? ' And at this point our scientific instructor inter- calated a long semi-apologetic reference to the English clergy of our day, in London and elsewhere, and their attitude towards modern science, declaring (in effect) THE NATURE OF MAN. 229 that he found them personally a polite and even plastic body of men, who were not on the whole disposed to push their quarrel a outrance. All this kind of paren- thetic matter will soon, one may hope, be thought un- necessary in a scientific discourse. Life (he continued) was either f potentially present in matter when in the nebulous form, and was unfolded from it by way of natural development, or it is a prin- ciple inserted into matter at a later date.' In brief, the first is the scientific, the second the theologic view ; and those who hold the second call the first degrading, debasing, demoralising, destructive — all kinds of terrible names. Whether or not ( emotion, intellect, will ' were once ' latent in a fiery cloud,' I must own seems to me, P. Walker (whom it concerns as much as another) a ques- tion which, however interesting speculatively, is not of the slightest practical importance. Man is the highest being we know of. He is, somehow or other, what we term a spiritual being, but this we cannot explain or define. His understanding, imagination, judgment, aesthetic sense, moral instinct, will, personal conscious- ness, are thoroughly real and effective manifestations of his nature ; and it is by and in them that human life, in its truly comprehensive sense, really is. Its connec- tion with atoms or fiery clouds, whatever mental steps may be taken in the direction of establishing it (and the complete journey, judging by all experience and all intuition, is for ever impossible to us) — that seeming, 230 AT LIVERPOOL. and possibly real connection is, I repeat, of no practical importance in any way. Whether we think of man at first as moulded at once out of clay, like a sculptor's figure, or developed gradually from a fiery cloud, how can it make any difference as to our place in the universe, our powers, our duties, our prospects? People are curious just now about protoplasm, develop- ment, spontaneous generation, and so forth ; first, on account of the scientific novelty of some of the views put forth, and then, I suppose, because they vaguely expect some new light upon the nature of the universe and the duty and the destiny of man. They had better give up every shadow of such expectation for good and all. The Evolution hypothesis (our Man of Science con- fesses it) c does not solve — it does not profess to solve — the ultimate mystery of this universe. It leaves, in facf, that mystery untouched. Its really philosophical defenders best know that questions offer themselves to thought which science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency to solve.' Often, in the pauses of reflection, the scientific inves- tigator finds himself overshadowed with awe — is aware of e a power which gives fulness and tone to his exis- tence, but which he can neither analyse nor com- prehend.' So ended our Professor, rising for a moment into that region which Immanuel Kant declared to be WHAT IS 'A PHILOSOPHER' f 231 6 above all other spheres for the operations of reason,' and indeed the only philosophy deserving to be so called. The mathematician, the natural philosopher, and the logician (says Kant) are merely artists, en- gaged in formalising and arranging conceptions ; they cannot be termed philosophers. They but furnish means. In view of the complete systematic unity of reason, there can only be one ultimate end of all the operations of the mind. To this all other aims are subordinate, and nothing more than means for its attainment. This ultimate end is the destination of man, and the philosophy which relates to it is termed Moral Philosophy. The superior position (he adds) occupied by moral philosophy above all other spheres for the operations of reason, shows why the ancients always included the idea of moralist in that of philo- sopher. e Even still, we call a man who appears to have the power of self-government, even though his knowledge may be very limited, by the name of philo- sopher.' 1 These are practical and pregnant words of the old German, and worth meditating upon. The mysteries of man's spiritual life, science has e no tendency to solve.' Nay, far short of this our know- ledge stops — even her wings of imagination fail her in the inner region of physical nature's profounder subtle- ties. We can trace sound-waves and light-waves into the auditory and optic nerves ; but when we ask how this force is translated into the sensations of hearing 1 KritiJc der Beinen Vernunft. (Second edition, last chapter but one.) 232 AT LIVERPOOL. and of seeing, Imagination itself does nothing for us — gives no least hint of help. We examine in every case, not nature itself, but our conceptions of nature ; and the very link which connects us as thinkers with the world, as we conceive it in thought, is utterly be- yond our cognition. Physical science attempts to explain by formulas certain facts given by human con- sciousness, and the explanations are no more than a tracing of connections. The least approach to a discovery of origins has never been made. Endless curiosity and investigation are proper to man. So also are awe, and reverence, and humility. It was Newton who compared himself to a child picking up pebbles on the shore of the great sea of Truth; and in this he only referred, I think, to the extent of comprehensible truth, beyond which lie the measureless regions of truth incomprehensible to man. Theories of Atoms and Motion, Evolution, Natural Selection, &c. ; from these vantage points, carefully built up of observation and reasoning, we get wonder- ful glimpses into the workings of wide physical nature in its relations to our intellect. True conceptions of cause and effect we also glean here and there, some of them applicable most beneficially to the external condi- tions of our earthly existence. As to the nature of human life, all the accumulated science of mankind up to this hour lias not one word to say. Let us take heart, then, brethren — do our work, MODERN SCIENCE. 233 gather knowledge, tell truth, say our prayers, be kind and helpful to each other, enjoy landscapes and flowers, books and pictures, music and poetry, and fear no pro- toplasmic philosophies. For my parti believe neither Huxley nor Darwin will hurt a hair of our heads. Another discourse outside the ordinary business of the Association, was Sir John Lubbock's ' On Savages ' — a highly pleasant and amusing speaker, dealing with matter which he has carefully studied. His theory, which might be called an application of Darwinism to the history of civilisation, is that all races of men, including the most civilised, began, so far as they can be traced back, with low and brutish conditions of morals and manners ; and this he considers to be, not a dispiriting, but a hopeful and encouraging view, as showing the unprovability of the human race. The work of Modern Science as regards the mixture of moral philosophy and mythology which goes by the name of religion has been one with that of historical and literary criticism — demolition ; troublesome and vexatious but necessary work, already we hope almost complete. What remains is that the attained results be publicly and practically recognised, and that life, social and national, should adapt itself to admitted facts, getting rid of a huge lumber of individual and incor- porated obstructiveness. After this we may at length 234 AT LIVERPOOL. hope for some constructive work on a large scale. Obstruction — Destruction — Construction. May the era of Construction soon arrive ! We cannot roam for ever through a boundless uni- verse of vibrating atoms. The human soul (whatever the human soul may be — e soul ' is one of the faint efforts of language in the region of the inexpressible) is as little to be satisfied with ' a vibrating atom ' as with i a multiple proportion.' What boots it to send our thoughts wandering into the empty wilderness of a material world ? What wisdom or comfort bring we back into our inner life ? Socrates (as Aulus Gellius reports) used very frequently to repeat, with an application of his own, a certain line from the Odyssey : ' fori roi iv /JLeyvapoicri kolkov r a\aQ6v re rervKrai. The evil and the good that have "befallen in thy own house. Mankind must sooner or later, I am deeply con- vinced, come back to a simple faith and trust — personal trust in a personal Ruler of us and all things ; finding Him first within, not without. The meetings of the British Association bring to- gether on friendly terms many men who in different parts of our own kingdom and in foreign countries are seriously and steadily at work in various departments of scientific research. Their actual work is done at 1 iv. 392. ADVANTAGES OF THE MEETINGS. 235 home. But man is a gregarious and social creature, and the annual friendly meetings of minds with under- standing and sympathy for each other's pursuits must be cheerful, stimulating, and beneficial — in expectation, in realization, in recollection. Names long familiar on paper become animated into living faces and voices, with grasp of hand, brotherly greeting, quick exchange of thought, and all the magnetism of personal inter- course. Doubtless it not seldom happens that a few minutes' conversation suffices to clear up year-long questions and difficulties, and that many suggestions are exchanged, many seeds of thought sown, which bear good fruit afterwards. As to the numerous body of f Associates,' besides that the pounds are applied to useful purpose, it includes a large proportion of people of more than average intelligence and cultivation, and forms a good transmitting medium between the pro- fessional savants and the mass of the general public, It is more or less interested, stimulated, electrified (so to speak) by the statements and discussions, and by the atmosphere of scientific enquiry. The newspapers re- port the proceedings from day to day, and call attention to the salient features. The town and neighbourhood where the meeting is held, and beyond them the king- dom, are overspread with waves of influence propagated from that central force. They are thought-waves, coursing through a medium still finer than the elastic asther by which light is carried, and their effect is healthful and educative. 236 AT LIVERPOOL. Such is the general impression that remains on my mind ; though I confess that often, while the thing was going on, the i work ' of the Sections seemed little better than busy idleness, and the attitude of the audience to be that of loafers and loungers. Nothing so hard to judge of exactly as the importance of the passing time and what it carries : after a thousand experiences we continue to make wonderful mistakes, now of over, and now of under-rating. Out of the brilliant Hall we pass again into the dirty labyrinthine streets of this windy, tarry, briny Town of Ships, full everywhere of the indescribable seaport briskness and shabbiness on a great scale. In a moment of ill-humour I was inclined to describe it thus to a Londoner: Take Thames Street and the Docks, set Islington behind them, with here and there some huge gray stone building of brutal bulk ; put in a great deal of dirt and clatter and Irish brogue, and make the natives say ' oop ' for l up,' and you have some notion of Liverpool. Well, this would not be a fair descrip- tion, I admit. The Mersey with its shipping is grand in its own way. So in its way (ludicrously unsuitable as it is to the place, the purpose, and the climate) is that vast Greek temple called St. George's Hall. The region of the Exchange has a busy and wealthy aspect of civic importance, befitting one of the commercial centres of the globe. Considered architecturally, however, the Exchange buildings give little delight, ARCHITECTURE. 237 and perhaps the new part of the quadrangle is the very worst thing I have yet seen in modern architecture, the most pretentiously mean — true cork-cutter's Renais- sance. The old part is stately in comparison. The central monument wjth its black figures in chains, might once have well seemed an allegory of Liverpool Commerce supported by Negro Slavery. It used to be said that every brick in the town was cemented with human blood. To come back to our own day, what opportunities are thrown away, what sums of money misspent every year, in our modern architectural ex- ploits ! Look once more at this new Railway Station and Hotel in Lime Street, and wonder by what in- genuity of stupidity so huge an edifice, of such costly materials and workmanship — fine yellow stone cut and fitted to perfection — is contrived to look paltry and unsubstantial. After these pretentious failures, there is comfort to the eye in the great corn stores, based on iron pillars of Egyptian girth, rising in storey after storey of grain-lofts, broad, lofty, and airy, and enclosing three sides of the docks in which their ships lie quiet after thousands of miles of stormy water, sending grain, grown in California, Canada, or the shores of the Danube, up an c American lift,' from the hold to the top loft, whence it flows in rivers of maize, rivers of wheat, on endless horizontal bands, about eighteen inches wide, worked by hydraulic power, to every part 238 AT LIVERPOOL. of the stores. In this great corn warehouse, the greatest in the world they say, Liverpool commerce showed itself in its most pleasing aspect. It was deal- ing with the first of bodily necessaries, man's bread of life ; and though the processes (of unlading, cleaning, transferring, &c.) were on a great scale, they were managed with so much ingenuity and simplicity com- bined, worked so smoothly to these ends with a minimum of dust and noise, as to give one a comfortable and even pleasurable sense of perfect adaptation, such as one finds in Xature's own doings. Neither was there here any hint of cheating — a suspicion, alas ! which the known usages of commerce so often infuse. What the baker does, is outside these walls. If corn-dealers ever mix good corn with worse — avaunt ! Thou canst not say these do it ! JSTo : but it is done, not seldom. In another dock I found the i Great Britain,' at first unlucky in Dundrum Bay, lucky since in many voyages, and now preparing for another, to carry half across the globe her 750 passengers and 150 sailors, and hoping to come to anchor under the warm summer sky of Melbourne harbour a month at least before Christmas. Strange reading our ( Christmas books ' and picture-papers must be to an Anglo- Australian child. And then I had leave to go on board the 4 Holland,' at anchor in the river just starting for New York, and saw the mustering of her emigrants. She can carry 1,250 full-grown passengers, all of one class. AN EMIGRANT SHIP. 239 This time she had much cargo, and only 300 passengers, of whom many were Swedes and Norwegians, who reach England by way of Hull. The sturdy figures, and homely, honest, flaxen-haired faces of the Scandi- navians, were pleasant to see, telling of steady, un- ambitious industry and domestic faith. Yet here is the stout miner of Fahlun, or boatman of Saltenfiord, or farm-worker of Fossdal, in his big boots and fur cap, with his flaxen-haired wife, and flaxen-haired boys in woollen night-caps, and girls with long rat- tail plaits of flaxen hair, and not seldom with an old wrinkled grandmother whose once flaxen hair is now snow-white, all bound to the new hopes, new labours, and new fortunes of the Great Republic, where laud is as yet of less value than men and women. Now and again a slim Norse pige steps shyly up to the inspector, answering to her name, and hurries past with glad smile to join the crowd • for'ad ' who stand watching those ( aft ' that have still to pass muster. The Government doctor stops any one who has symptoms of fever, small-pox, measles, &c, and the master of the ship takes care to carry no one whom the American authorities might turn back to the Old World as obviously unable to earn a living. All on board to-day passed with little question, save a boy about four years old, who, with his parents and two younger children, was forced to wait till all the others were disposed of. The child was heavy-eyed, and suspected of measles. The poor father and mother — they were from South 240 AT LIVERPOOL. Wales, and seemed scarcely able to speak a word of English — sat very doleful in fear of being turned back on the threshold to which they had no doubt painfully struggled ; and it was a great relief at last when the doctor, after turning up the boy's eyelids with his thumb, said carelessly, f That'll do — pass on.' I hear there are no few Welsh in the United States, and they often live grouped together, and continue to speak their old Kymric in the New World. A strange conglomerate of nationalities — that Great Republic* with wonderful power of absorption and assimilation ! There were few Irish emigrants in the f Holland,' and Liverpool is no longer so much their transit port as it used to be, for many of the Liverpool passenger steamers to the States call either at Cork or Derry. The arrangements of the ship seemed very good as to berths, cooking, hospital accommodation, &c, except that unmarried women and married couples are placed in the same division of the ship — a plan, the Govern- ment inspector agreed with me, not free from objection. Away slid our steam tender, and soon I saw the big ship steadily following her busy puffing tug-boat down river, her deck crowded with gazing passengers. Less pleasant than the river experience was a walk of several hours through some of the worst and poorest parts of the town of Liverpool — Scotland Road, Vaux- hall Road, and their cross-ways. The names on the corners were suggestive of all pleasant things : the streets of Meadow, Rose, Arden, Faradise, and then FOUL STREETS. 241 of Chaucer, of Ben Jonson, of Addison (with its 6 Morning Star ' whisky shop) — irony of nomenclature I What foul vistas are these crowded streets ? The garments, guasi-washed, which dangle overhead on clothes-lines stretched across, draw one's eyes upward, and lo, far above the chimneys, through the veil of smoke, is evidence of a cloudless blue sky, filled with sunshine and sweet air. Below, all is squalor and stifle, rags and drunkenness, an atmosphere thick with fever. Many Irish are here. At one dirty corner I came on the Church of St. Joseph, and I have no doubt the priests do their appointed functions diligently and fearlessly. Let those thank them who please. Else- where was a dirty crowd round a dirty door, with two dirty women talking vehemently to a policeman, and another policeman bearing down leisurely on the scene of action. The shops were mostly for drink, cheap provisions, and cheap haberdashery, with here and there a petty newsvendor's, in which the f Flag of Ireland ' kept company with c Reynolds ' and sheets of comic songs. A great many police cases, another constable told me, come from this quarter, ( but nothing very bad mostly ' (he added with toleration) — i only drunkenness and assault.' The Hospitals and other charitable establishments of Liverpool are liberally and well managed, I believe. I visited the General In- firmary and the Nurses' Home connected with it, and found them apparently models in their kind* But alas I R 242 AT LIVERPOOL. here in Meadow Street and Paradise Street are the roots of the evils, ever germinating and spreading. After this one wants a little fresh air, so away again to the landing-stage and across the broad Mersey, and by a mile or two of tramway to Birkenhead Park, whose smooth-winding bowery walks and clear pools, and trees that now lattice a red and gold sunset — the seeming threshold of a purer world — have few this evening besides myself to enjoy their peaceful beauty. Re- turning after dusk, the ferry steamer shows a striking night-picture of the river, dotted with interminable lamps stretching eastward and westward, ships at anchor with their lights dimly reflected in the dark stream, and over Liverpool a lurid gleaming arch, Aurora Urbana, the gaseous halo crowning Modern Civilisation. Next day the triumphal car of that Power carried me away from the Great Sea Port. We move in th' elephantine row, The faces of onr friends retire, The roof withdraws, and quaintly flow The curtsying lines of magic wire ; With doubling, redoubling beat, Smoother and ever more fleet ; By flower-knots, shrubs, and slopes of grass, Cut walls of rock with ivy-stains, Through winking arches swift we pass, And flying meet the flying trains : Whirr gone ! We hurry, hurry on ; By orchards, kine in pleasant leas ; A hamlet-lane, or spire, or pond ; IN THE TRAIN. 243 Long hedgerows, counterchanging trees, With blue and steady hills beyond. House, platform, post, Mash and are lost. Smooth-edged canals, and mills on brooks ; And granges, busier than they seem, Rose-crusted, or of graver looks, Eich with old tile and motley beam ; Clay -cutting, slope, and ridge ; The hollow rumbling bridge ; Gray vapour-surges, whirl'd in the wind Of roaring tunnels dark and long, Then sky and landscape unconfined, Then streets again where workers throng, Come — go : the whistle shrill Controls us to its will. Broad vents, and chimneys tall as masts, With heavy flags of streaming smoke ; Brick mazes ; fiery furnace-blasts ; Walls, waggons, gritty heaps of coke ; Through these our ponderous rank Glides in with hiss and clank. And now again we speed our course Athwart a busy, peaceful land, Subdued by long and painful force Of plotting head and plodding hand. How much by labour can Poor feeble, timid man ! f A peaceful land,' I kept repeating to myself, and fell a-thinking once more, for every line of thought runs thither, of the sad, unpeaceful land within sight of our shores ; and of the many bright and amiable qualities of the French. Moreover from them began the Great Revolution which is still proceeding — to end who shall say when ? ( The Great Protest against B 2 244 AT LIVERPOOL. Shams.' But shams are not easy to subdue ; again and again they revive, and their latest shape has been a sham Napoleon. A dull, tenacious, greedy adven- turer, trading on a name not belonging to him, is allowed to take France, her forty millions of people, her money, her armies, and do as he will with these for more than half a generation. Was ever such a satire on mankind as the mere statement ? The Revo- lution was suppressed in favour of money-making, plea- sure, and priestcraft. Agriculturist, shopkeeper, con- tractor, gambler open or latent on the Bourse, soldier, fine lady, and (first and last) cleric, took their soi-disant Napoleon, used him, and now they are paying for him. Nations must pay, in some shape ; c no credit ' in the long run. So ran my thoughts .... But France is not killed, and cannot die. Her fine qualities will revive, purified, in new men and women, to help the world and embellish life in that Better Time which we all hope for — some day .... Alas ! she will attack Germany again, and — can a nation die? Have not many Nations died ? . . . . River, ships, docks, landing stages, the big, murky town with its struggling and striving, business and wealth, ignorance, disease, and vice, charities and hos- pitals and free libraries, vile and dark human swarms, noble and generous lives — all these, now that visible Liverpool also is gliding away from me into the dis- tance of space and time (as things are represented in our poor thoughts), shape themselves into one memo- MEDITATIONS. 245 rial impression, sombre and pathetic. Poor laborious generations of man, blindly working on from day to day ! Yet work they must, and leave to the future still vaster accumulations — mostly of rubbish, but not all. So farewell, Liverpool ! for whose present condition the lonely bird by the waterbrink, and ' Deus nobis haec otia fecit,' are by no means the most fitting crest and motto. Kind, hospitable friends by the Mersey, all thanks and good wishes. 246 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. CHAPTER XII. UP THE TALE OF BLACKMORE. "VVirahorne — River Stour — Blandford — Sam Cowell — Popular Songs — Sturminster Newton — Barnes's Poems— The Dorset Dialect — The Peasantry. In the spring time f longen folk to gone on pilgrimages/ and in that season also I turn often to the poetry shelves of my little library. So, stepping into Dorset for a two-day walk, I had for a companion a little volume of poems ; and many recollected snatches of verse, and thoughts about poetry and poets, mingled with the vernal delights of those i woods and pastures new,' and clear flowing waters. The map of Dorset seems peculiarly crowded with double-worded names, many of them quaint and enticing. Cerne Abbas, Bere Regis, Melcombe Horsey, Mil- borne St. Andrew, Winterborne St. Martin's, Stur- minster Marshal, Owre Moyne, Winfrith Newburgh, Iwerne Courtnay, Froom St. Quintin, Toller Fratrum, Wooton Glanville, Mintern Magna, Blandford Forum, and a host beside. Here I am at the railway station of "VVimborne Minster, viewing with expectation the two beautiful towers which dominate the little town. WIMBORNE MINSTER. 247 A long and crooked street, noway remarkable (yet it it is always a peculiar pleasure to icalk into a new place — you thus take possession of it), led me to the church- yard, where the pollard- lindens parallel to the street, with boughs interwoven overhead and forming a green arcade, yielded glimpses through their thin foliage of the central tower of red sand-stone, broad and short, with crooked pinnacles at the four corners; its rich look enhanced by a growth of ivy rooted high up on the south face, embroidering with verdure the inter- laced arches of the stonework. There was once a spire, which fell 250 years ago. The gray-coloured west tower is taller, and of perpendicular gothic. A little girl nursing a baby and two or three other children loitered in the light-leafy linden arcade ; the street was full of spring sunshine and empty of people ; one wondered Avhy the shops were kept open. It was the middle of the day, the townsfolk at dinner, the boys in Queen Elizabeth's grammar-school at their lessons. I found the north door of the Minster open, and entered ; the verger was showing the church to some rural acquaintances, and I followed a little way off, evading the vexations of a formal guidance. The oldest parts of the Church are some 800 years old. Steps over a pillared crypt ascend to the choir, and there lie hand-in-hand the well-carved alabaster figures of a Duke and Duchess of Somerset who left this earth 450 years ago. His helmet hangs above upon a nail. 248 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. He died some years after Joan of Arc was burned, and while the Duke of York was Regent of France. The lid of the tomb was raised not many years ago, and this verger looking in saw the two coffins apparently perfect, and some cords, supposed the cords by which they had been lowered. He showed in the wall aside the altar, the piscina, a thing not used by the present owners of this costly building. They have lately, however, got all the Minster repaired, and re-embel- lished, by means of a public subscription, and not merely or mainly on archaeologic claims, but in great part on religious. Our nobles of to-day wear no helmets ; our clergy dip their fingers in no piscina ; but we still have dukes and huge domains, bishops and great churches. We are living strangely in the end of a long period, among names and things gray with the crust of antiquity, delightful from an antiquarian point of view, and retaining, some of them, an aroma of that romance, a tinge of that picturesqueness, infused without conscious effort into men's doings in certain by-gone times. No wonder that these names and things, and the thoughts connected with them, should be dear and venerable to so many minds. Modern life, public and private, in its typical forms, is neither romantic nor picturesque. Those who love the ideal in man's life (body and spirit) are not well at home in this present time ; they belong more to the Past, and to the Future. At the other end of the church an old clock-face of THE RIVER STOUR. 249 large size on the wall inside, marked with twenty-four hours, showed correctly the passing hour of the new spring day by means of a gilt sun travelling round the circle. A ball represents the moon and her changes. The ancient carven font below was not dry like the piscina, but besprinkled from the baptism of two babes that morning ; and the brazen water-jug, replaced on its old shelf, stood ready to continue its share in the mysterious office for children yet unborn. To get out of any building, however beautiful or interesting, into the open air and free world, is to me a pleasant escape. Narrow streets hem in the Minster. I first reached the market-place, an irregular open ; and then, through bye-lanes, a pretty field-path on the west side of the town, where, amidst broad meadows, guarded north and south by heavily wooded slopes, winds the tranquil Stour, with deep pools, where, looking into the transparent water, I could see some of the inhabitants, little pike, at feed, who know nothing, I suspect, of Wimborne, or Dorset, or the South Western Railway, but have their own towns and districts and lines of travelling. Two young ladies came along the path from the town, sat down on the grassy margin close to an island or promontory shaded with tall green withies, and began to read unknown mysterious books ; it was poetry I felt sure, and finer than any I have yet seen in print. Yet could I have looked over their shoulder, it would doubtless have changed into . . . The damsels 250 UP THE VALE OF £ LAC KM ORE. themselves seemed, in that sunny spring meadow by the clear river, more than semi-celestial ; yet already their features have mingled irrecoverably with the cloudy past. I too had my companion book, the third series of Barnes's i Poems in the Dorset Dialect;' and the little river, winding down from the Vale of Blackmore to meet the waters of the Avon in Christ- church Harbour, flows also through the book ; where- fore every sunbeam in the real stream was brightened, and every shadow enriched. Strolling northward, I struck a road which went by a mill among trees and hedges, on a clear brook or bourne, the Wim, hurrying to join the Stour : and so returned to the town, the little market-place with the two old church-towers rising behind it, making a picture as one approached. At the inn (Laing's) were good refreshments and a civil landlady. The right-hand window of the railway-carriage showed the meadows, groves, and hamlets of Stour Yale, and Bradbury Rings (supposed an ancient British camp) conspicuous on a hill some miles away ; and so brought me to Blandford Forum — otherwise called, descending from classic to vernacular, Market Blandford. Entering on foot by back streets, I stood to admire a not large yet important-looking old square house of dark red brick, ivied, and shaded with, tall trees growing in a little court-yard. The bricken chimneys are of rich design, apparently octagonal, with a slender detached pillar at each angle, and a BLANDFORD. 251 double cornice a-top. These chimneys I saw after- wards, overtopping other roofs, and found them as pleasurable as a fine piece of landscape. This old house is the Mayor's, two children tell me, and he has often been mayor. Is he a properly quaint old gentleman, I wondered, — with an old library, old pic- tures, old furniture, old-fashioned hospitality ; loving his native town and townsfolk, full of fatherly care ot all their interests, lapt round in his age with honour and affection ? Might he not possibly send out an old servitor to greet the stranger, observed gazing at his picturesque dwelling with intelligent and respectful interest, and invite him — even me, Patricius Walker — to an inspection of the interior curiosities, and a glass of old port wine ? Dreams, dreams again ! I have already left the old house behind me, and turned into the High Street, which has a very different aspect. The town of Blandford Forum was burnt down, all but a few houses (of which the above-mentioned was one) on the 4th of June 1731, and rebuilt mainly by a general public subscription. The High Street, there- fore, with its solid bricken houses, and large lumpish church with urns on the cornice, square steeple, and heavy portico, is like a street in Hogarth's pictures. Blandford, thus built at a stroke, has more of a town look than most other places in this part of England. Wimborne, Fordingbridge, Ring wood, are like large villages ; and even Salisbury in great part has a vil- lage look — the appearance probably of all our towns 252 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. under the first class, some centuries ago. The Crown, a stately inn, and comfortable withal, fronting the west end of the High Street, commands a view of Lord Portman's rich park, a broad meadow bounded by the curving Stour, with lofty bank of trees beyond. This Bryanston Park has given name to a London square, not far from which are its cousins of Portman, Dorset, and Blandford. An uphill street led me northward out of the town and by a cemetery, and I turned down a little rustic lane, where I had never been before and would most likely never be again (a singular delight — I know not why). There were orchards, and a woody vale to the westward, and a gentle cloudy twilight coming on. Then I returned to supper at the Crown, in a room adorned with engraved portraits of famous musicians — composers, singers, instrumentalists, including one of a Hungarian violin-player with autograph, a gift from the original. What does this mean ? I learn from the conversable waitress, that mine host of the Crown is himself a professional musician of no small note ; is even now at Weymouth, taking part in a public con- cert. Having alluded to my stroll as far as the ceme- tery, I am asked, Did I see Sam Cowell's grave ? e No : who was Sam Cowell ? ' The celebrated comic singer, — yes, to be sure, — and how came he to lay his bones at Blandford ? The little story was not without interest. Among the many curious branches of industry which are to be found in the metropolis, is the produc - SOXGS OF ZOXBOX. 253 tion of those slang songs -which are so great an attrac- tion in the music-halls, f coal-holes,' i cider-cellars/ and other night-resorts of London. As the old ones get stale, new are put forward in their stead, jingling the topic of the hour in a quasi-comic fashion of their own, and hitching into rhyme the latest inventions of cockney jargon and buffoonery. Now and again one of them makes i a tremendous hit,' the Great So-and-So is re- engaged for another month, and soon you may hear the children in every rural hamlet throughout the king- dom yelling the new slang ditty, fragrant of gas and sewerage. The hayfield borrows its lyrics from the Haymarket, and on the sea shore if you hear a sailor sing, or a fisherman whistle, ten to one it is some melody of the Strand, W.C. Often the singers who bring these into vogue are the concoctors also ; and to be successful in their line they must of course possess special gifts ; non cuivis, it is not everybody who could make a hit at the Coal- Hole or the Alhambra, much less hope to be sent for to amuse lordly and princely personages in their palaces. The noted singers are generally skilful and telling, and sometimes show remarkable neatness and agility of vocalisation, along with some real power of comic expression, which could hardly be worse applied, for the words are always trashy and frequently base. A few years ago, the favourite name in the flaring bills of the music-halls and on the covers of comic song books was perhaps that of Sam Cowell. I have before me a ' Comic 254 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. Songster/ price twopence, with several of his famous ditties, one being s The Ratcatcher's Daughter,' of which here is a verse : They botli agreed to married be Upon next Easter Sunday, But ratcatcher's daughter she had a dream, That she wouldn't be alive on Monday. She vent vunce more to buy some sprats, And she tumbled into the vater ; And down to the bottom, all kiver'd with mud, Vent the putty little ratcatcher's daughter. Spoken : — Considering the state of the Thames at the present moment, what mustn't she have swallow'd ! Doodle dee, &c. Her lover, a man who sold ( lily vite sand,' said 6 Blow me if I live long arter ! ' So he cut 'is throat vith a pane of glass, And stabbed 'is donkey arter ; So 'ere is an end of Lily- vite Sand, Donkey and ratcatcher's daughter ! Doodle dee, &c. Spoken: — "Well, ladies and gentlemen, arter the two bodies was resusticated, they buried them both in one seminary, and the epigram which they writ upon the tombstone went as follows : Doodle dee ! doodle dum ! Di dum doodle da ! Let us shut up our song-book, with the remark that pain, murder, death and the grave, are very favourite ingredients in all these ( Comic Songsters.' But humorists of higher rank, the clever Barham and the true poet Hood, for example, are by no means guilt- less in this respect. A COMIC SINGER. 255 Sam Cowell had constant engagements, and was well paid. What more ? Only the common story — ( unbounded applause/ unwholesome living, drink, broken health. Said our host of the Crown one day (being up in London, and knowing all these celeb- rities) : ( You're not looking well, Sam ; come down to Blandford, and we'll set you right again.' Some months after which, a ghostly pale man arrived at the Crown in the railway omnibus, and this was the celebrated Mr. Cowell. The waiter and chambermaids regarded him with curiosity ; the stablemen talked of him over their beer ; his arrival made more or less sensation throughout the town. He was very ill ; grew worse and worse ; consumed a bottle of brandy per diem, when he could get it ; and was sometimes noisy. At length the Crown's hospitality being worn out, though not the host's kindness, a lodging was taken in the town, and the sick man's wife brought from London. He was carried downstairs in an arm-chair ; and next and lastly, before many days, his body was laid in the cemetery, among these Dorset fields and orchards. A little subscription was made for his wife and children, and a stone placed over his grave. Some well-meaning people had administered ghostly con- solation of the usual kind to the poor Grotesque, and his last words were, ( Safe ! safe ! ' On his tomb is engraved, ' Here lies all that is mortal of Sam Cowell. Born April 5, 1819. Died March 11, 1864;' with the words of a text — Hebrews vii. 25. 256 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. During the last seven years or so the most popular English songs, as well as I can remember, have been these : f The Ratcatcher's Daughter,' ( The Perfect Cure,' ( Bob Ridley,' e I'm a Young Man from the Country,' ' The Whole Hog or none,' i Paddle your own Canoe,' e Polly Perkins of Paddington Green,' ( A Motto for every Man,' ( Slap Bang,' 'Jessie at the Railway Bar,' ( Champagne Charley,' ' After the Opera is over,' e Not for Joseph.' This last has, like most of them, a catching bar or two in the tune ; the words set forth the same subject as ( The Young Man from the Country,' and many other ditties — a countryman in town who is too shrewd to be taken in, e.g. : Then a fellow near whisper' d in my ear — 'I would the bargain soon close if I'd got the cash, but haven't, so buy it for yourself; ' I in reply said, ' Not for Joseph ! ' The sixth and eighth in our list are vulgar-economic (a class by itself); while ( Champagne Charlie,' « Slap Bang,' and c After the Opera,' are songs of Haymarket life, as inane as they are ugly — unless, as a particle of salt, they may be thought to involve some coarse satire on the { Young Man about Town.' The country is the natural birthplace of lyric poetry ; the dwellers in the Big Smoke ought to be solaced with sweet songs of wholesome life and nature, and not the country contaminated by the ugly selfish- ness and. vulgar satire of the city. Town will have its slang and its sarcasm, no doubt ; but the preponderance OLD AND NEW. 257 now of ugly town elements in the popular songs of the kingdom is one of the unpromising signs of the times. { Popular song ' and e slang song ' are almost convertible expressions ; and the slang, too, is mean and witless. Looking into any old song-book, I fancy that I perceive a degeneracy in our own day. The standard of taste thirty years ago was not very noble ; but compared with that of the present time it seems sentimental, romantic, poetic. The influence of modern London upon English thought, character, and society — here is a fruitful subject for reflection. Whether that influence is to be on the whole, and in the long run, more for loss or gain, the ill effects are for the present more discernible than the good ; and, with the Popular Song, many things have become less sweet and wholesome than they used to be in more tranquil and deliberate times. People used to taste and digest their lives, as it were ; now they gulp and bolt them unwholesomely. Life individual has the same great interests as ever: life social is undergoing great changes, and is turbid and sour in its fermentation. Railways have acted wonderfully on London and England ; so have Continental ideas ; and so, much more, have American ideas. ' Old England' is rapidly becoming a tradition of the past — so rapidly that those chiefly interested cannot believe their eyes and ears. Will the transformation complete itself peacefully — at all events, without fierce convulsion ; or must things be worse, and much worse, s 258 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. before they are better ? If all the well-disposed — the lovers of good — would only abjure prejudice and pride and solemn nonsense and join heartily together, we might hope to see the gradual rise of an Anglia Restituta, without tedious agonies or violent throes of transition, a New Era formed by peaceful agencies of wisdom and love, like air and light doing their beneficent part on a soil, — not by the fury of volcanic action. My own impression is that great London (though many its victims) has on the whole a widening and liberalising effect on thought. Next morning I went by rail to Sturminster Newton, an old village with an old church, crooked lanes, small rustic shops, and civil people, who looked at the one stranger with a natural curiosity; its bye-nooks sheltering snug embowered houses, with flower-gardens and climbing roses. Passing out at the top of the street, I followed a country road ; on my left hand, fields sloping to the Stour, and a rich view under showery clouds of the vale, with the river winding along. Taking shelter from a dash of rain in a poor but neat enough cottage, where an old woman and a girl were sewing leather gloves — a common employ- ment in the district — I asked the old dame about Duncliffe Hill, showing her the woodcut of it in Mr. Barnes's volume, and trying to awaken some interest with regard to the i Poems in the Dorset Dialect." But it was impossible for her to conceive that a printed book of which she had never heard before could hold anything to concern her. I DORSET POEMS. 259 My next shelter was under a hedge, where I turned over the leaves of my pocket companion. The verses were much unlike those of the c Comic Songster.' Rural pictures, fresh and pure, their minute touches harmonised into a general tone, and their apparently artless simplicity concealing no slight mastery of execution; the suggested manner of life (sweetened by love and neighbourliness) among fields and flowers and wholesome country labours — the neat cottage, the home vale, the winding brook and bridge, the field- path to the church, the tidy wife and dear children ; dashes of country fun interspersed ; a sense of rustling leaves, flowing waters, lowing cattle, tinkling sheep- bells ; with this a gentle humanity towards all creatures, and an old-fashioned, homely piety — these delightful impressions were renewed as I turned over the pages of the little book, pausing here and there at sight of some special favourite — i Echo,' or ( The Snowy Night,' or i Zummer Winds,' or i The Rwose in the Dark.' The Kwose in the Da.kk. In zummer, leate at evenen-tide, I zot to spend a moonless hour 'Ithin the window, wi' the zide A-bound wi' rwoses out in flow'r, Bezide the bow'r, vorsook o' birds, Ah listen'd to my true-love's words. A-risen to her comely height, She push'd the swingen ceasement round ; And I could hear, beyond my zight The win'-blown beech-tree softly sound, On higher ground, a-swayen slow On drough my happy hour below. s 2 260 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. An' tho' the darkness then did hide The dewy rwose's blushen bloom, He still did cast sweet air inside To Jeane, a-chatten in the room ; And tho' the gloom did hide her feace, Her words did bind me to the pleace. An' there, while she, wi' runnen tongue, Did talk unzeen 'ithin the hall, I thought her like the rwose that flung .His sweetness vrom his darken'd ball, 'Ithout the wall ; an' sweet's the zight Ov her bright feace, by mornen light. But the general effect of Mr. Barnes's poetry is still more delightful than the expression, however charm- ing, made by any of the poems taken separately. It is like the effect remaining after a long and pleasant day of rambling by rustic ways through a country of groves and green flowery pastures, and clear brooks and happy cottages, where the wayfarer is regaled with home-made bread and sweet milk, and perhaps a leaf of strawberries or a plate of red-cheeked apples. To some palates, it is true, such simple diet and narrow scenes would be unsatisfactory, and few of us would choose to be confined to them ; but there are many, I hope, to whom a day so spent would yield large store of sweet and wholesome memories. Human nature is portrayed by our Dorset bard mainly with reference to the domestic affections in humble life — virtuous courtship, happy marriage, parenthood and childhood, filial piety, family bereavements, with the village church always in the background of MR. BARNES. 261 the picture, and sometimes in the foreground. The author (whose father and grandfather were farmers in this rich, soft, secluded Vale of Blackmore, where I sit reading his book), came to be, first, a schoolmaster; then, in mature life, a clergyman of the Church of England ; and is now vicar of the small parish of Winterbourne-Came, in his native county (close to Dorchester), dwelling in an appropriate cottage vicarage, with his little old church hid in lofty elms a mile away, among the green slopes of Came Park. A simple, cheerful, wholesome, and happy life is un- mistakably reflected in his poetry ; the childhood in the farmhouse, the manhood aiming at and at last attaining the quiet rural parsonage. With his love and practice of poetry he combines a considerable research in philology, and prides himself, no doubt justly, on using his native Dorset dialect with thorough accuracy and purity. c To write,' he says in the preface to this third col- lection of poems, ( in what some may deem a fast out- wearing speech-form, may seem as idle as the writing of one's name in snow of a spring day. I cannot help it. It is my mother-tongue, and is to my mind the only true speech of the life that I draw.' Whatever difference of opinion there may fairly be as to the propriety of clothing in a provincial dialect thoughts and images which belong to general literature, and are perfectly expressible in modern English, few, if any, will deny the fitness and success with which Mr. 262 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. Barnes has used the Dorset forms of speech in treating purely rustic subjects, like f Not goo hvvome to-night/ < The Humstrum/ f Don't ceare,' < What Dick and I done/ £ Christmas Invitation,' i The Farmer's woldest Daeter/ and especially in dialogues, such as SThe Waggon a-stooded/ i A bit o' sly Coorten/ ' Shodon Feair/ < The best Man in the Yield/ f A Witch/ and many more. For my own part, I am thankful for all these poems, just as they stand. In even those which are substantially least rural, come in verses and phrases that have a new and delightful flavour ; and we feel that, as the poet tells us, this is his natural mode of speech, in which he was born and bred, the ready instrument of his heart and tongue. The Dorset dialect, according to our author himself, 6 has come down by independent descent from the Saxon dialect, which our forefathers, who founded the kingdom of Wessex in Britain, brought from the south of Denmark; 1 it is e a broad and bold shape of the English language, as the Doric was of the Greek/ e rich in humour, strong in raillery and hyperbole/ e purer, and in some cases richer, than the dialect which is chosen as the national speech ;' e it retains many words of Saxon origin, for which the English substitutes others of Latin, Greek, or French deriva- tion/ and ( it has distinctive words for many things which book-English can hardly distinguish but by periphrasis.' As an example of niceties owned by the 1 Dissertation, in Poems of Bural Life, 2nd edition, 1848. DORSET DIALECT. 263 Dorset, take theas and thik ; these pronouns are not mere equivalents of this and that (which are also used), the former being applicable i only to individual nouns, not to quantities of matter ; ' so that if one Dorset man heard another mention ' theas cloth ' and ( thik glass,' he would know that a table-cloth and a drinking glass, or some such distinct things, were meant ; but ' this cloth ' and e that glass ' would convey the notion of a quantity of cloth, as in a bale, a quantity of glass, as in sheet or in broken pieces. To make use of such phrases as { theas milk,' € thik water,' is a common blunder of imitators of the dialect, which f is spoken in its greatest purity in the villages and hamlets of the secluded and beautiful vale of Blackmore.' Our poet has written from what he knows and feels. As to style, his verse has the essential quality of melodiousness, and many Dorset names come in with a sweetness that scarcely Val d'Arno could outvie— Lindenore and Paladore,Meldonley and Alderburnham. His manner of description is minute ; we see the mossy thatch, the shining grass-blades, the bubbles on the stream, the gypsy's shaggy-coated horse and the carter's sleek-haired team, { the cows below the shiady tree, wi' leafy bough a-swayen,' the girls' bonnets ' a lined wi' blue, and sashes tied behind,' grammer's gown pulled through her pocket-hole to keep it from the dirt, ' a gown wi' girt flowers like hollyhocks.' A thousand truthful touches bring his rustic scenes and people before our eyes. 264 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMOEE. Some of those critics who prove, if nothing else, their own narrow limitations by disparaging one style in art to the exaltation of another, or perhaps all others, can easily make objections here, complaining of elaboration of detail, triviality, want of breadth and loftiness ; too much of this, too little of that. But ought the works of all artists to be alike ? Do we wish to have every picture in a gallery done in one particular style ? The great principles of art, you say, are invariable. Yes ; but (supposing these to be fully discovered and settled) an infinite variety is possible and desirable in the application of them. What an artist ought to do, I conceive, is that which he finds himself fitted to do and delighted in doing. Nor does this imply neglect of work, lazy and careless handling : it implies real work, the closest, watchfullest, and most thorough execution of which the man is able ; ( labour of love ' is the effective kind of labour in the world of art. To every true-born artist (in words, musical tones, forms, colours) working in this spirit, the right attitude of the public and of the critics is one of respect. It is not that any artist whosoever is to be regarded as above criticism, but that we should always keep in mind that the true principles and rules of the critics can be derived from no other source than the genius of the executive artists. Abstract criticism on art is an absurdity. The true artist proves that beautiful things, otherwise impossible, can be done, by doing them; the intelligent critic may then, if he will, and so far as he can ART AND CRITICISM. 265 (thoroughly lie never can), point out the how and the why, and thus do service of its kind, helping us all to know good work when we see it. The artist, whatso- ever his medium of expression or his rank among others, is a miracle-worker, literally inspired from heaven, able to be an enricher and exalter of human life, and to deserve the gratitude of mankind. Happy are they whose power of enjoyment sympathises with good art of many different styles, with Van Eyck and Rembrandt, with Holbein and Titian, with Hogarth and Reynolds and Turner, with Greek architecture and Gothic, with Phidias and Cellini, with Bach, Mozart, Handel, Beethoven, Rossini, and the old harp and bagpipe tunes, with ^Eschylus and Theocritus, with Dante and Beranger, with Homer and Burns, with Spenser and Shakespeare and the Border Ballads. But to return to our Dorset friend — his little volume (the third of a series of three) was a pleasant pocket* companion up the soft, wide, woody-hilled, brook- watered Yale of Blackmore, with many a quiet gray village and. village-church, and many a snug old farmhouse in its 'home ground,' with garden and orchard, and rook-nested elms. I have compared a reading of these poems to a fine day's walk through such a district as this, and in each one sees mostly the pleasant side of things. Tinges of gentle melancholy are not wanting ; we see aged cottagers at their doors, and glance at the inscriptions in rural graveyards ; but the ugly pain and disappointment, the sins and struggles 266 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. of life, lie out of ken. All the better for the delight of our day's walk, and perhaps for our pleasure in the book also; yet — yet — one can't help sometimes glancing or perhaps even prying into the actual daily life that underlies these fair pictures. If the peasantry here- abouts, old and ycung (thought I), have so warm and intelligent a love for the Church and her clergy and her ceremonies as the poet indicates, and so pure a tone of morals, they must be much unlike any English peasantry that I have any acquaintance with ; but this reflection was partly of a speculative kind, and one that I did not wish to pursue. Presently I come to a swing-gate, across a charming shady fieldpath, leading towards the church and vicarage of Marnhull, on which gate is some pencil- writing, decidedly unfit for publi- cation, smacking of the slums of Drury Lane, wofully out of keeping with an innocent idyllic scene. And here let me recall another little incident which occurred to me later in this same county of Dorset, some twenty miles farther south. Taking shelter from heavy rain in a rather poor cottage, I found an elderly man and woman, two grown-up daughters, and two children. ( Were these grandchildren ? ' l Yes.' Each daughter owned one. ' Did they all live in that cottage ? ' ( Yes.' 6 The daughters' husbands too ? ' 6 They've a-got no husbands.' i What ! both widows, and so young ? ' 6 Na ! th'ant never bin married.' The questioner was the only person who showed any embarrassment at this answer; and I learned subsequently that there was nothing uncommon in the situation. THE STONE-BREAKER. s 267 From Marnhull Church and its noble yew-tree, I descended the other side of the hill, and finding a stone-breaker sitting at work on a heap of stones by the road-side, put some questions to him as to the localities. He was not old, but poor and sickly-looking, and answered in a slow, confused manner, for which he begged my pardon, saying that his head was wrong sometimes. I found he was subject to epilepsy, and had had a fit that day. He used to live a good way off, with his brother, but his brother married, and then there was no room for him. He came to this neigh- bourhood, and sometimes got a little work on a farm, sometimes on the roads. Some days he was not able to do any work. He got no parish relief, because this was not his parish. He had a place to sleep in at a cottage. This poor man uttered no tone of complaint, showed no desire to talk of his miseries, nor even any recognition of them as such : he had no expectation of anything in the world, not even of a chance sixpence ; he answered my questions, one by one, neither willingly nor unwillingly, but with a certain effort, sometimes looking vaguely at me without the least curiosity, and all the while chopped slowly and mechanically with his hammer. It was another bit of harsh reality. My lyrical, idyllic, artistic mood was rebuked and abashed. From the bitter weed of that poor man's condition, I tried to extract some drops of medicine for my own discontents. The mood was abashed in- deed, but not shamed ; and so it gradually recovered itself, as I walked on by bowery roads and green paths 3 268 UP THE VALE OF BLACKMORE. over Mil and dale, with the Stour, now a rushy, wil- lowy brook, twisting hither and thither in the meadows, through the villages of Stour Provost (pausing to admire an ancient house smothered in ivy), and East Stour ; till Duncliffe Hill, i the traveller's mark,' rose on my right hand, and a wide rich prospect, extending into Wiltshire, opened in front Again seeking shelter from a sudden shower, I tried to interest the people of the cottage in my volume of Dorset poems, and read a comic piece to them, but to little purpose ; the good wife at first thought my object was commercial, but finding I did not want to sell the book, she knew not what to think, and retired into herself. At Gillingham, a long straggling street, I dined, and stepped into the train for Salisbury. CHAPTER XIII. SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. Salisbury — Old Sarum — Stonehenge — Wilton House — Bemerton — - George Herbert's Life and Poems — His brother, Lord Herbert. Arrived at Salisbury, I left my bag at an inn, made straight for the Close, turned a corner, and there, from greensward carpet, behind a light veil of budding elm- boughs, the gracious old warm-gray Cathedral (with its long centre-line, two transepts, lancet-windows, lofty tower and spire) sprang light, perfect, musical. Evening sunshine glowed upon the grass and on the elm-tops, where high-church rooks were cawing by their nests, and on the warm old red-brick domiciles of the dignified clergy ranged round the sacred precinct, and spread lights and shadows over the great edifice, without disturbing its harmonious unity. More solemn buildings I have seen, more stately, more fantastic, more rich ; none so elegant. The verier who showed me round the interior next morning had the air of mild superiority and gentle dogmatism which characterises the higher specimens of his order, and delivered his routine information with a 270 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. very creditable air of impromptu. The building is all of one period, and in one style (called c Early English '), say 1220-50, except part of the tower and the spire, which were added some years later. The vast weight of these has pushed askew some of the sustaining pillars and arches. The great interior has a bare and cold aspect ; but the chapter-house, with its quaint bas- reliefs from Scripture, is newly done up in bright colours. Under the shadow of his cathedral, on its west side, stands the Bishop's palace in its pleasure- grounds, and the gray pile, with cloisters and chapter- house, takes new aspects of beauty rising between and above the flower-shrubs and foliage. Apart from this its jewel, the city of Salisbury is not to be ranked as a striking place ; yet it is quietly pleasant and interesting. It stands on a flat among trees, chiefly elms, with low sloping green hills on every side, between which wind the clear waters of the Avon and its tributaries, irrigating bright green pas- tures, full of sheep. The quiet, homely streets, with here and there an ancient gable-front, or gateway, have rather a village than a city aspect. There are two or three old churches, of ( perpendicular ' gothic, and an old market-cross, with buttressed arches, the whole in shape like an imperial crown. Nearly every street shows you a green hill or grove at its end, and here and there comes a glimpse of fresh-flowing waters, with a mill, a bridge, a group of willows or poplars. Footpaths lead through gardens and cottages into the THE CATHEDRAL. 271 open country ; and at every turn you see once more the tapering stem and spire with bands of stone diaper- work and airy cross. I recollected Mr. Pecksniff, who is said to have* lived hereabouts, and his views of Salisbury Cathedral tf from the north-east, north-west, south-south-east,' &c. ; and now, being at Salisbury, I perceived that the author of i Martin Chuzzlewit ' had never been there up to the time of his writing that novel; at least, the topography of the book (if it matters) is so far entirely wrong. In the wide market-square, whereto flows the pro- duce of many a Wiltshire and Hampshire farm (for the market, long an important one, has been much increased by the railways) stands the Court House, and in front of this the statue of Sidney Herbert — black, bareheaded, gigantic, in frock-coat and trousers, on a hideous light-gray granite pedestal of the modern British pattern, rectangular, with ill-proportioned cornice, lumpish and scraggy at once. Why are such things done? Who likes them? Could we not, in the matter of pedestals, at least follow some good model ? The garish, many-coloured tomb in the Cathedral to a late major of volunteers aims at richness, as the Herbert monument at simplicity, and equally, as it seemed, without success. I cannot help fancying that Wilts is a county of more gentle and kindly manners than its neighbour Hants. High people and low, at the railway and the inn, shopkeepers, children, rustics, all were good- 272 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. natured and obliging. I well remember, in my first days in Hampshire, how rude and insolent I thought most of the people. The South Wilts accent, too, sounded quiet and mild, and without that self-asserting drawl of { Ya-a-as ! ' and ' JSfau-au-o ! ' From the talk of the children in any place one can soonest catch the flavour of the local speech. Famous Old Sarum surpassed my expectations. I looked for a bare green mount, with half-obliterated entrenchments, a ' rath ' on large scale, scarce distin- guishable from the surrounding fields ; but the great terraced hill is a marked and grand object in the land- scape ; beautiful, too, in the unbroken sweeping curves of its grassy mounds, and the grovy crest of its inner foss — a dell of coppice wood mixed with larger trees. The outer foss you find to be huge and deep, a narrow vale between two steep grassy slopes ; and from this to the inner circle stretches a broad, green, level space. Here and there, too, remains in its old place some fragment of flint-built wall ; but the largest is so undermined by the picking of visitors and idlers that to all appearance it may tumble any day. A little modern masonry applied in time would preserve it. In the central space the grass is heaved and sunk in little mounds and hollows, where lie buried the foun- dations and low fragments of the castle, and of that ancient church whose proud successor in the valley lifts in view its lofty head ; one day, sooner or later, to come into the same condition — ( for nothing may remain.' OLD SARUM. 273 Sarum, Soi^biodimum, Latinised form of a Celtic name, is usually translated, ' The Dry Fortress ; ' but another, and perhaps better interpretation, is ' Service- tree Fort.' At all events, the wild service-tree, or sorb, still buds in the new spring sunshine on this hill — the stronghold in turn of Ancient Briton, Roman, Saxon, and the modern Boroughmonger — for, as every one knows, till some thirty years ago, two members represented in Parliament the blackbirds and fieldmice who had long been the only inhabitants of this green city. The words of another living poet (of firm worth, but unshowy, and whose voice is for the present drowned by the street-cries of pseudo-poetry and pseudo-criticism) came into my mind : I have stood on Old Sarum : the sun, "With a pensive regard from the west, Lit the beech-tops low down in the ditch of the Dun,. Lit the service-trees high on its crest : Biit the walls of the Eoman were shrunk Into morsels of ruin around, And palace of monarch, and minster of monk, Were effaced from the grassy-foss'd ground- Like hubbies on ocean they melt, Wilts, on thy long rolling plain ; And at last but the works of the hand of the Gelt, And the sweet hand of Nature remain. 1 Quitting with reluctance the lonely city, I walk northward by a long path from field to field, which leads me to the edge of a steep green slope, and see 1 Lays of the Western Gael, &c, by Samuel Ferguson. Bell and Daldy, 1865. 274 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. shining through the vale below a pure silvery river, called by the commonest of all Keltic names for flow- ins: water — f Avon.' I am now some thirtv miles west of the Stour, but the two rivers mingle under the old Norman tower of Chris tchurch. Below, as in a picture- map, the green Yale shows its villages and farm-houses, warm-brown, amid orchards and home-groves, its mills and willows and little islands, under the varying sky of spring. From river pastures and sloping hills comes the sound of the sheepbells, saying their name in German, glocke ! glocke ! glocke ! Then I drop into the valley, issuing at last upon huge solitary fields, the beginning of the Wiltshire Downs. I am approaching Stonehenge, one of those things that in childhood we hope to see before we die, like Niagara, Switzerland, Rome, the Pyramids, a volcano, &c. At Amesbury (mere straggling village now, whatever it may have been) I found shelter in the inn, where two great men once on a time got no milk to their tea (see ( English Traits '), and set off again between and through heavy spring showers : but these, I think, have some elec- tric and vitalising quality ; autumnal or wintry rain is an enemy to meet, but vernal rain (if one is in health) exhilarates. The road to my object was dis- appointingly trim and civil, leading past a park with big white mansion, on the site of the ancient abbey ; and other enclosed ground. A mile or two further on, I found a man, who proved to be on duty. He was placed there by the lord of the soil to look after Stone- STONEHENGE. 275 henge, and to see that the expected holiday visitors (for it was Easter Monday) did not carry it away — bits of it at least, as they were too prone to do. ( And how far to the Stones ? ' ' You'll see 'em when you turn the corner.' Sure enough there they were: but not, alas ! A cirque Of Druid-stones upon a forlorn moor. New macadamised roads cross the long slope of the Down, a newish farm-house crowns the ridge, a new and formal grove of fir-trees intrudes its wedge below. At the Stones I found only one visitor, essaying a pencil sketch from under his umbrella. He had long desired to see Stonehenge, he told me, had come down from London on purpose by an excursion train, and was going back early the next morning. He was a plain little man, apparently of the mechanic class, and disclosed no other interesting qualities ; but his having made this holiday-journey alone and with such an object was interesting, and I misliked the rain more for his sake than my own. I was not particularly impressed in any way by the famous Stones. Similar things I had seen elsewhere, smaller, but not a whit less charged with antique mys- tery. There was no new sensation here; and the immense notoriety of the place made one feel (as sometimes happens) rather sulky and captious. As tc* wondering at the size of the rudest ones, upright and athwart, that is childish. So it is to wonder even at T 2 276 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. the Great Pyramid considered as a bulk of building, a performance of which any commanded swarm of men are capable, with the aid of a few common tools and mechanical appliances. That man can impart beauty to his work — beauty from the same Divine source that fills every atom and veinlet of the universe with en- chantment — here, it seems to me, is something worthy of wonder and awe. If the sudden sight of Salisbuiy Cathedral sends a thrill through one's body and soul (as through mine it did) it is not because so many cut stones have been laboriously lifted into the sky. A sentence of Shakespeare, a strain of Mozart, carries the same effect — a celestial thrill, from the recognition of Beauty. The Great Pyramid has acquired respec- tability and even solemnity from its vast age; but surely it is but a stupid brutal bulk after all, and must weigh like a nightmare on the spirit of the gazer. Forgive me, Old Druidic Circle ! (if such thine origin) — think me not unfeeling. Fain would I wander again and often, by sun and moon, among thy tall gray stones, where they stand in rude pillars and por- tals, or lie confused upon the sward — at some fit hour perhaps to receive a vibration from the uncouth and solitary presence. The walk back to Salisbury, by path and road, and margin of willowy Avon, was wet and long. Next day I saw Wilton House, without much result; the housekeeper showed a large mansion with pictures and busts far too many to look at, a great room with Van- dyke portraits, and windows viewing the lawns and BEMERTON CHAPEL. 277 groves of a handsome park. Such places make one sad ; all the appliances of life in perfection and over- abundance, to such little purpose, great parks and pleasure-grounds and palaces kept up at huge cost, for the owners to yawn in and run away from. Not far oif rises the gaudy New- Anglican church, built a few years or months too soon, for it represents a phase of opinion (or pseudo-opinion) out of which the founders by-and-by took their departure. On my road back to Salisbury was a more interesting church, a little old ivied building, about the size of a cottage, with steep roof and small leaded panes ; and a plain old little rustic interior. This was Bemerton, George Herbert's chapel of ease, and familiar house of prayer ; and they brought me the key from the par- sonage across the road, which was his parsonage. This little old church, or chapel, is now shut up, but will not, let us hope, be destroyed. Barnes's poems are full of natural rustic piety, Her- bert's reflective and didactic. A simple attachment to Mother Church appears unobtrusively in the Dorset vicar's poetry — a spire peeping in a rural landscape. Our Wiltshire priest is loftily clerical. This clericalism, while it deprives Herbert of the wider influence which belongs to wider poetry, attaches to him a certain special class of admirers ; and some of his wise thoughts and terse admonitions are not easily forgotten by any reader ; for, as he himself says, ' A verse may find him who a sermon flies.' My own thoughts certainly run a good deal on 278 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. poetry and poets, especially in spring-time. No few people, 'as I know very well, think this a frivolous sub- ject ; perhaps they are right. All I can say for my part is, that I took to it very early in life (in infancy, I may say), out of pure love, and it still retains my affection. ( The holy incantation of a verse ' comes often into my mind ; many a verse, fitting many a mood, soothing or heightening it. I can remember, in a thousand cases, the ipsissima verba of the poets, which carry their own music, and waft besides an aroma of delightful associations. Many of the objects that occupy men, even the grave and dignified, seem to me, on the other hand (I must own it), frivolous enough. Not that I have not often had qualms about poetry, whether it were not a delusion ; but I have always come back to faith in it, and a firmer faith. George Herbert was no mighty man, yet his thoughts and moods, being embalmed in musical w T ords, do still live. Many are in my own and ether memories ; and whoso needs his book has but to ask for it in a shop. I saw in Salisbury yesterday in a second-hand bookseller's a good copy of another writer's folio, also connected with this place ; the volume containing the 6 Arcadia,' e Defence of Poesie,' and l Sonnets.' The preux chevalier, good at sword and pen, being at Wilton (but not in this present house, which Inigo Jones built), wrote his romance of ( Arcadia ' to please his sister, wife of Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and to fill up some of the hours of an exilement from Court. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 279 When Sir Philip Sidney, years later, and then only thirty-two years old, was fatally wounded at Zutphen, Edward Herbert, afterwards Lord Herbert of Cher- bury, was a child of three years, whose brother George did not come into the world until seven years after this. Of George Herbert, no important yet not an insignifi- cant or uninteresting human being, I have a clear little picture in my head, which has formed itself since I saw his parsonage and chapel. Men and events, I confess, are to me vague and shadowy, scarce half- believed, until I can place them distinctly. At Paris, Napoleon the First became real to me; at Weimar Goethe. The younger son of a high old family, always of delicate health, shy and studious, but lofty and hot- tempered, George Herbert was brought up and guarded with the most anxious care (even after he had attained to manhood) by a pious and prudent mother, his father having died when the boy was but four years old. He was born in Montgomery Castle in 1593, and spent his childhood f in sweet content ' under the watchful eyes of his mother and the tuition of a chaplain. When about twelve years old, he went to Westminster school, i commended to the care ' of Dr. Neale, Dean of Westminster, and by him to Mr. Ireland, the head master ; and by his ' pretty behaviour ' there seemed plainly to be f marked out for piety.' The words between inverted commas I cull from good Izaak Walton. 280 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. About his sixteenth year, being a king's scholar, he was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge ; and his mother procured Dr. Neville, Master of Trinity, to take the youth i into his particular care, and provide him a tutor.' She had before this time accompanied her eldest son Edward (afterwards Lord Herbert of Cherbury) to Oxford, and there taken up her abode during four years, ( to see and converse with him daily,' and so, by the methods of love and good example, prevent his falling into vice or ill company, in which she happily succeeded. In his first year at Cambridge we find George writing to his mother, s my poor abilities in poetry shall be all and ever consecrated to God's glory,' he finding the heathenism and lightness of the poets of the day very contrary to his mind. He encloses two sonnets : My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee Wherewith whole shoals of martyrs once did burn, Besides their other flames ? Doth Poetry Wear Venus' livery ? only serve her turn ? Why are not sonnets made of thee? and lays Upon thine altar burnt ? cannot thy love Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise As well as any she ? Cannot thy dove Outstrip their Cupid easily in flight ? . . . The second sonnet ends thus : Why should I women's eyes for crystal take? Such poor invention burns in their low mind Whose fire is wild, and doth not upward go To praise, and on thee, Lord, some ink bestow. Open the bones, and you shall nothing find In the best face but filth ; when, Lord, in thee The beauty lies in the discovery. GEORGE HERBERT. 281 These verses of the boy show in an unusual degree all the characteristics of his maturer writings : a decided talent for writing in verse, some imagery, a certain subtlety and vivacity of thought, a tendency to con- ceits ; and the whole pervaded by a genuine piety, but of that sort which feeds itself with contempt of all mere natural beauty and pleasantness, valuing them only as matter for a sermon or a hymn. In the same letter George speaks of his ( late ague; ' and he seems to have spent the most part of his life under sufferings from one or another kind of sickness. In person he was i inclining towards tallness,' ' very straight,' and ( lean to an extremity.' He was a strict student, and in 1615, being then in his twenty-second year, became M.A. and fellow of his college. ' The greatest diversion from his study was the practice of music, in which he became a great master.' If his friendly biographer can find in him any error, it is that e he kept himself too much retired, and at too great a distance with all his inferiors ; and his clothes seemed to prove that he put too great a value on his parts and parentage.' And here I must add a touch to the portrait, from his brother's autobiography i 1 ( He (George) was not exempt from passion and choler, being infirmities to which all our race is subject ; but, that excepted, without reproach in his actions.' This tendency, however, we may be sure, was well controlled 1 Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury, written by himself. London, 1770 ; p. 12. 282 SALISBURY AND BE MEET ON. and subdued, and only lived in him in later life as a warm, religious, and virtuous vehemency. In 1619, aged twenty-six, he was chosen Orator of the University, and held that office for eight years with high credit. He was not insensible, as his letters prove, to the glory of it, nor was the salary of 307. sl year unacceptable. Though of high family, his allowance was not large, and in an interesting letter to Sir John Danvers, his mother's second husband, written in 1617, more than a year after his gaining the fellowship, he writes : 1 1 want books extremely,' especially books of divinity, and wishes to raise a sum on security. i "What becomes of your annuity ? " Sir, if there be any truth in me, I find it little enough to keep me in health. You know I was sick last vacation, neither am I yet recovered ; so that I am fain ever and anon to buy somewhat tending towards my health, for infirmities are both painful and costly. ... I am scarce able with much ado to make one half-year's allowance shake hands with the other.' The Orator's first great opportunity was in writing a letter of thanks to King James {Serenissime Domine noster, Jacobe invictissime!) when that learned monarch enriched the University with a copy of his invaluable book entitled ( Basilicon Doron.' Our orator finished off thus : Quid Vaticanam Bodleiananique objicis, Hospes ? Unicus est nobis Bibliotheca Liber. Talk of the Vatican, Bodleian,— stuff ! Here in one Book we've library enough. GEORGE HERBERT AT CAMBRIDGE. 283 ( This letter was writ in such excellent Latin, was so full of conceits, and all expressions so suited to fehe genius of the king ' that he made inquiries regarding the Cambridge Orator and began to notice him ; whence George conceived great hopes of court favour, and trimmed his sails accordingly. After this, Herbert engaged in some pen-combats with one Andrew Melville (a good honest man, it appears) minister of the Scotch Church, and rector of St. Andrews, who f had scattered many malicious and bitter verses against our liturgy, our ceremonies, and our church-government.' Melville being summoned to a friendly conference of clergy at Hampton Court, so much offended the king, that he ^as deprived of his rectorship and shut up in the Tower of London, ' where (saith Izaak) he remained very angry for three years.' There were short methods in that day of dealing with too troublesome controversial- ists. Herbert wrote ex officio Latin epigrams against Melville, but not very bitterly. Among the memorials of this part of his life we have a very long letter of George's written from Cambridge to his mother, then lying in sickness ; from beginning to end a sermon-like composition and much too proper. When King James came a-hunting to Newmarket, he often visited Cambridge, ' where his entertainment was comedies suited to his pleasant humour ; and where Mr. George Herbert [though theoretically re- garding all these things as dust and ashes] was to welcome him with gratulations and the applauses of 284 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. an orator.' He was rewarded with a sinecure of 120/. a year, the prebend of Lay ton Ecclesia in the diocese of Lincoln, the same which Queen Elizabeth had formerly conferred on Sir Philip Sidney; and being thus richer, i he enjoyed his genteel humour for clothes, and courtlike company, and seldom looked toward Cambridge unless the king were there, but then he never failed.' He had often desired to leave the University, but continued, at his cautious and careful mother's wish. Finding the parish church of Layton Ecclesia in a ruinous condition, the conscientious pre- bendary (though warned by his mother, l George, it is not for your weak body and empty purse to undertake to build churches ') re-edified it, with the help of subscriptions from his kinsmen and friends. His mother, who after twelve years' widowhood had mar- ried a brother of the Earl of Danby, died in 1627. In 1629 George, suffering from ague, removed to the house of his brother, Sir Henry Herbert, at Woodford in Essex, where (according to Walton) he cured him- self of that disease by eating salt meat only, but brought on ( a supposed consumption ; ' and therefore he moved again to Dauntsey in Wiltshire, the house of Lord Danby. Here his health and spirits improved ; and he declared his resolution both to marry and to enter the priesthood. He was now about thirty-six years of age. Having resolved to marry, he had not long or far to seek for a wife. Mr. Charles Danvers of Bainton, Wilts, a near GEORGE HERBERTS MARRIAGE. 285 kinsman of Lord Danby, and an old and attached friend of George Herbert, had ( often publicly declared a desire that Mr. Herbert would marry any of his nine daughters — for he had so many — but rather his daughter Jane than any other, because Jane was his beloved daughter.' When George came to Dauntsey, Mr. Danvers was dead ; but George and Jane met, and each having heard much commendation of the other, they agreed without many words, and were married ' the third day after this first interview.' The true friends to both parties who brought them together e understood Mr. Herbert's and her temper of mind, and also their estates,' so well before their interview that the suddenness was justi- fiable by the strictest rules of prudence. Their short union was' a happy one; their ( mutual content and love and joy did receive a daily augmentation, by such daily obligingness to each other as still added such new affluences to the former fulness of these divine souls, as was only improvable in heaven where they now enjoy it.' About three months after this marriage the living of Bemerton became vacant, and was offered to Mr. Herbert. He, dreading the responsibility, now that it came close to him, considered on it for a month, fasting and praying often, and sometimes almost resolving to give up both priesthood and living. In the midst of these spiritual conflicts, Mr. Woodnot, an old friend, coming to visit Mr. Herbert, they went together to Wilton House, King Charles and the court being then at Wilton or Salisbury. Mr. Herbert thanked his 23G SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. kinsman the Earl of Pembroke for the offer of the living, at the same time declining it ; but Dr. Laud, Bishop of London, who was with the Court, came and reasoned with George on the subject, and did i so con- vince Mr. Herbert that the refusal of it was a sin, that a tailor was sent for to come speedily from Salisbury to Wilton to take measure, and make him canonical clothes against the next day; which the tailor did: and Mr. Herbert being so habited ' was immediately in- ducted (he was already a deacon) into the living of Bemerton and Fugglestone. When at his induction he was shut into the church, ( being left there alone to toll the bell, as the Jaw requires him,' he remained so long: that Mr. Woodnot looked in at a window and ( saw him lie down prostrate on the ground before the altar.' He was setting himself rules of life (as he afterwards told his friend) and vowing that he would labour to keep them. That same night he said to Mr. Woodnot, ' I now look upon my aspiring thoughts, and think myself more happy than if I had attained what I then so ambitiously thirsted for.' When King James looked so favourably on him, Herbert is thought to have aspired to be made a Secretary of State. He accepted at last the humble position of a country clergyman, not without effort, and carried all through a certain self-consciousness in his humility and piety, which however were very genuine. Having 'changed his sword and silk clotbes into a canonical coat,' and thus returned to THE NEW PARSON. 287 his wife at Bainton, he said to her, f You are now a minister's wife, and must now so far forget yonr father's house as not to claim a precedence of any of your parishioners,' &c, to which she cheerfully agreed. Going over one day to Bemerton about repairs of the church, the new rector met a poor old woman who began to tell him her troubles, as poor old women do, but through fear and shortness of breath her speech failed her, whereupon Mr. Herbert i was so humble that he took her by the hand, and said, " Speak, good mother ; be not afraid to speak to me; "' &c, and gave her both counsel and money. Telling this to his wife when he went home, Mrs. Herbert ( was so affected ' that she sent the poor old woman a pair of blankets with a kind message. All which was very kind and pretty, but scarcely enough to account for the rapturous manner in which it is narrated by friend Izaak, who remarks : e Thus worthy, and like David's blessed man, thus lowly, was Mr. George Herbert in his own eyes, and thus lovely in the eyes of others.' The rector repaired the parish church (which is not called Bemerton, but Fugglestone, and stands near Wilton), and almost rebuilt the parsonage at his own charge. He also improved the little chapel of ease of Bemerton (which I visited), just across the road from his parsonage ; and in this appeared twice every day at church prayers, f strictly at the canonical hours of ten and four,' with his wife and three nieces (the daughters of a deceased sister) and his whole household. 283, SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. I wish I knew what Mrs. Herbert was like : I can see the tall, thin, straight figure of the rector, with a long, mild, serious face, somewhat pale and hollow- cheeked ; and hear his grave tones, with a cough now and again, l which makes me sorry.' ( If he were at any time too zealous in his sermons,' it was in reprov- ing those worshippers, and those ministers too, who did their part in the divine service in an indecorous or hasty manner; and he took great pains to expound the meaning and value of all the appointed forms and ceremonies and set times of the Church. ' His constant public prayers did never make him to neglect his own private devotions,' nor family prayers, which were always a set form, and not long, ending with the collect of the day. Yet Mr. Herbert in these matters came much short of his friend and correspondent, Mr. Farrer, of Little Glidden, near Huntingdon (ex-fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge), who, besides all possible Church prayers, fasts, vigils, &c. &c, had an oratory in his house in which praying and reading or singing of psalms was kept up continuously, day and night, for many years, the members of his family keeping watch and watch ; and s in this continued serving of God, the Psalter or whole Book of Psalms was in every four and twenty hours sung or read over, from the first to the last verse.' l This Mr. Farrer, sometimes called the Protestant Monk,' died in 1639. 1 Walton. MUSIC AND CHARITY. 289 Mr. Herbert's chief recreation was music ; he com- posed many hymns and anthems, and sung them to his lute or viol. He usually attended twice a week the cathedral service at Salisbury, and afterwards went to a private music-meeting in the city, at which he was one of the performers. One day, in his walk to Salisbury, the rector saw a poor man's horse fallen under his load, and helped the man to unload, lift, and reload his beast : l at his coming to his musical friends at Salisbury, they began to wonder that Mr. George Herbert, which used to be so trim and neat, came into that company so soiled and discomposed ; but he told them the occasion.' One of them seeming to think that the rector ( had disparaged himself by so dirty an employment,' Mr. Herbert made a proper and somewhat elaborate little speech (unless Izaak has made it for him), saying that certainly it was not pleasant to do; but that he felt he had acted con- scientiously ; the thought of it ( would prove music to him at midnight,' and he praised God for the oppor- tunity — ( and now let us tune our instruments : ' an anecdote which has a certain comic colour not intended by good Mr. Walton. Both he and his wife were very bountiful to their poor parishioners ; and when a friend advised him to be more frugal, he made a speech (ac- cording to Izaak) ending thus: i Sir, my wife hath a competent maintenance secured to her after my death ; and therefore this my resolution shall, by God's grace, remain unalterable.' u 290 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. In fact, as to the external conditions of life, Mr. Herbert had an easy time of it all through, though at one period he found his allowance hardly enough to admit of his purchasing all the books of theology which he desired. This easy and secure life, from birth to death, a contemplative introspective habit of mind ( f he would often say he had too thoughtful a wit '), a sickly body, and a temperament that inclined him in all things, both physical and mental, to order- liness, punctuality, and primness, go far to explain his character and the form into which his religious aspira- tions were moulded. In addition, he had that melodious faculty which expressed itself both in music proper and in verse, and which makes him interesting. Nothing, I think, can be more erroneous than to look on poetical writings as mainly fantastic and trivial. They delight us by their happy and melodious forms ; but we are also attracted by their sincerity. In the works of a true poet, be his rank what it may, you find an expression — freer than he could elsewhere venture — of how he was impressed by life. In verse the poet (a choice kind of man) declares his best self: if you know how to look, you will find the essence of his love, his faith, his hope and fear, his strength and weakness. Herbert, in his prose ( Country Parson,' cannot write one free sentence, nor even in a letter to his friend or his mother; he is sophisticate to the marrow. In his poems, precisian as he still is, a larger wisdom shines out here and there ; c the glory VALUE OF POETRY. 291 of the sum of things ' declares itself ; he rises at moments out of formal into universal religion. The good rector held his parish less than three years. The seeds of early death were in him. One usually thinks of George Herbert as an elderly man, from his grave look and reputation ; but he was only forty when he died. When much weakened by con- sumption he continued to read prayers twice a day in the chapel close to his parsonage ; but at last was persuaded by his wife to allow his curate to take that duty, he himself attending as a hearer as long as he could. About a month before his death be was visited by a clergyman, one Mr. Duncon, bringing a brotherly religious message from Mr. Farrer, of Glidden Hall. Mr. Herbert lay on a pallet, weak and faint, and asked Mr. Duncon to pray with him, in e the prayers of my mother, the Church of England : no other prayers are equal to them;' and Mr. Duncon ( saw majesty and humility so reconciled in his looks and behaviour,' as begot i an awful reverence.' His old and dear friend Mr. Woodnot came from London to Bemerton, and never left him till the end. On the Sunday before his death he rose suddenly from his couch, called for one of his instruments, and having tuned it, played and sang a pious verse. ' Thus,' says Walton, ( he sang on earth such hymns and anthems as the angels, and he, and Mr. Farrer, now sing in heaven.' On the day of his death, his wife and nieces e weeping to an extremity,' he entreated v 2 292 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. them to withdraw to the next room and there pray for him. After murmuring some pious words he breathed his last, i without any apparent disturbance ;' and Mr. Woodnot and the curate, Mr. Bostock, closed his eyes. The quaint biographer remarks : ( If Andrew Mel- ville ' — he who was in the Tower for three years very angry — ( died before him, then George Herbert died without an enemy.' Izaak Walton, by the way, was a London tradesman, fond of reading, and his holiday amusement angling. His wife's brother, being a clergyman, rose to be Bishop of London. Izaak's social dignity thus came to him through the Church ; and his mind, loving literature, ran also continually on Church men and matters. After retiring from business he wrote ( The Complete Angler,' and the lives of Wotton, Donne, Hooker, Sanderson, and Herbert, and won himself a little niche. As to George Herbert's writings : he left behind him e The Country Parson ; or, Priest to the Temple,' containing his own rules, which at his death came in manuscript into the hands of his friend Mr. Woodnot ; and poems, under the title of ' The Temple,' which, being on his death-bed, he sent in manuscript to Mr. Fairer to be made public or not, according to that friend's opinion. In his college days he had written some Greek and Latin poems, not remarkable. The first words of i The Country Parson ' plainly HIGH CHURCH 293 indicate the author's point of view. ( A pastor is the deputy of Christ ;' and a few sentences down we find, ' Christ .... constituted deputies in his place, and these are priests.' In the divine services he hears the sins of the congregation. He i exacts of them all possible reverence ' and observance of the forms of worship. Those who do not attend church, or habi- tually come late, must be ' presented.' He must fast on Fridays. He is to give much to the poor, but chiefly to those who can say the Creed, &c. The church is to be carefully kept, and at times ( per- fumed with incense.' He must persuade the sick or otherwise afflicted f to particular confession, labouring to make them understand the great good use of this ancient and pious ordinance, and how necessary it is in some cases.' ( Those he meets on the way he blesseth audibly.' ' The Country Parson is in God's stead to his Parish, and dischargeth God what he can of his promises. Wherefore there is nothing done, either well or ill, whereof he is not the rewarder or punisher.' ( He exacts of all the doctrine of the Catechism ;' 6 that which nature is towards philosophy, the Catechism is towards divinity.' f The Country Parson being to administer the Sacraments, is at a stand with himself — how or what behaviour to assume for so holy things. Especially at Communion times he is in great confusion [or perturbation] as being not only to receive God, but to break and administer him.' The Churchwardens are 'to present [i.e. lodge 294 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. an information against] all who receive not thrice . a year ; ' and also ( to levy penalties for negligence in resorting to church/ &c. ( The Country Parson de- sires to be All to his Parish ; and not only a Pastor, but a Lawyer also, and a Physician. Therefore he endures not that any of his flock should go to law ; but in any controversy, that they should resort to him as their Judge.' i If there be any of his flock sick, he is their Physician, or at least his wife.' If he or his wife have not the skill he is to maintain relations with some practitioner, who is to act with and under the parson. ( If there be any of his parish that hold strange doctrines,' he e useth all possible diligence to reduce them to the common faith.' ( It is necessary that all Christians should pray twice a day every day of the week, and four times on Sunday, if they be well. This is so necessary and essential to a Christian that he cannot without this maintain himself in a Christian state.' Prayers beyond this are i additionary ;' and the Parson, in this and other matters, is to point out the distinction between i necessary ' and e addi- tionary ' duties. f Neither have the Ministers power of blessing only, but also of cursing.' Our excerpts sufficiently indicate the idea in Mr. Herbert's mind of a country parson's right position and duties in the world. That such notions are based on erroneous principles, and are impossible to carry into practice, it seems needless to point out. Yet we see that the vicar ofBemerton does to this day by no means HERBERTS POETRY. 295 lack successors in this line of thinking. With all this are mingled in his book many wise and subtle thoughts, and a continual inculcation of holiness of life, love and humility, as the parson's best weapons — weapons wherewith Mr. Herbert himself was nobly armed. And now let us turn to his poetry, without which his memory would have but a slight interest. George Herbert's little book is alive after two centuries. He wrote the verses from and for himself. They are religious musings. No human figures or incidents appear in them ; there is but himself and his God. The world of nature only serves to illustrate his spiritual relations. He has a l heart in pilgrimage,' and his life is a prayer ; all day long he feels the great Presence — ( If I but lift mine eyes, my suit is made.' When — such as all men must have — he has times of forgetfulness, or unfaith, he flies back into contrition : But as I raved, and grew more fierce and wild At every word, Methought I heard one calling ' Child ! ' And I replied, ' My Lord ! ' Many are his acknowledgments of sin ; not expressed with fear of punishment (he nevQr speaks of hell in the vulgar sense, and he says that ' devils are our sins in perspective '), but with deep awe and humble con- trition, and a pleading that he may not be deprived of his Father's love and care. Here is a very tender little religious poem : 296 SALISBURY AND BE MEET OK Love. Love Lade me welcome ; yet my soul drew back, G-uiltie of dust and sinne. But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me ; sweetly questioning If I lack'd anything. ' A guest,' I answered, ' worthy to be here — ' Love said, ' You shall be he.' ' I the unkinde, ungratefull ? Ah, my deare, I cannot look on thee.' Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, ' Who made the eyes but I ? ' ' Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them : let my shame Go where it doth deserve.' ' And know you not,' sayes Love, ' who bore the blame ? ' ' My deare, then I will serve.' ' You must sit down,' sayes Love, ' and taste ray meat : ' So I did sit and eat. Herbert has many a beautiful verse and stanza of universal religion, strains of meditation, aspiration, or holy tranquillity ; but his piety and poetry have clothed themselves for the most part in those special dogmatic forms by which he set so much store. He often runs into quaint conceits and oddities ; yet in his purer and simpler moods he sometimes attains an unusual happiness of expression, at once easy and terse : "What skills it, if a bag of stones or gold About thy neck do drown thee ? raise thy head Take starres for money ; starres not to be told By any art, yet to be purchased. Scorn no man's love, though of a mean degree ; Love is a present for a mighty king. CHOICE LINES. 297 There are frequent touches of practical wisdom, such as these : When thou dost purpose aught within thy power Be sure to doe it, though it he but small ; Constancie knits the bones, and makes us stowre, — ■ "Who breaks his own bond, forfeiteth himself. Envie not greatnesse : for thou mak'st thereby Thyself the worse, and so the distance greater. Be not thy own worm. Yet such jealousie As hurts not others, but may make thee better, Is a good spurre. Look not on pleasures as they come but go. His verses bloom out here and there in true and deli- cate beauties, like little flowers among grass : I made a posy while the day ran by : But Time did beckon to the flowers, and they By noon most cunningly did steal away, And wither d in my hand. I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains, The hillings and the relishes of it ; The propositions of hot blood and brains ; What mirth and music mean ; what love and wit Have done these twentie hundred years and more. Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and skie : The dew shall weep thy fall to-night ; For thou must die. But the three other verses of this poem are very inferior, save this one line : Sweet Spring, full of sweet days and roses. Among the best pieces are the allegorical — as 298 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. e Peace ' ( f Sweet Peace, where dost thou dwell ? '), and the f Pilgrimage,' — reminding one of Bunyan ; and the moral-meditative poems, as i Constancie,' c Employment,' ( Man ' ( f Man is one world and hath another to attend him'), f Mortification ' (' How soon doth man decay '), ' Miserie,' ' Providence.' Altogether, George Herbert's character, views, life, and writings are easy to understand. Of kind nature, shy temperament, and sickly body, refined fancy, meditative mind, and tender conscience, receiving careful and seclusive training — domestic and scholas- tic ; timidly conservative in all his ideas, seeing eveiy- thino- through the medium of his Church, and hearing (most characteristically) ' church bells beyond the stars,' such was the vicar of Bemerton. We seem to have seen the tall thin consumptive man, mildly grave and ceremonious, scarce middle-aged yet old- looking ; to have heard him reading the Church prayers in a hollow solemn tone, or repeating a few of his own verses in the parsonage garden, or playing some little sacred air upon his lute, by a window com- manding a distant view of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. There were doubtless few dry eyes among those parishioners who followed the coffin to the parish church of Fugglestone, when George Herbert's body was laid under the altar. Mr. Herbert had no children. ( His virtuous wife (says Izaak) continued his disconsolate widow about six years, bemoaning herself and complaining that she LORD HERBERT. 299 had lost the delight of her eyes,' &c. ( Thus she continued mourning till time and conversation had so moderated her sorrows that she became the happy wife of Sir Robert Cook, of Highnam, in the county of Gloucester, knight.' . . . ( Mrs. Herbert was the wife of Sir Robert eight years, and lived his widow about fifteen ; all which time she took a pleasure in men- tioning and commending the excellencies of Mr. George Herbert.' This, however, one can imagine to have now and then become tiresome. f Lady Cook had preserved many of Mr. Herbert's private writings, which she intended to make public, but they and Highnam House were burnt together by the late rebels.' George's eldest brother (Lord Herbert) says, in his autobiography, that i about Salisbury where he [George] lived beneficed for many years he was little less than sainted.' The time was only about four years, and this mistake perhaps indicates that there was no very close intimacy. Edward, equally or still better guarded by his care- ful mother, lived a very different life from George. He married at sixteen, had several children, was a chivalrous soldier, a learned student, a gallant courtier, a wise ambassador, fought duels, travelled and saw courts and varieties of life, and wrote philosophical treatises that drew the attention of the literati of Europe. Yet, different as they were, a family character is very perceptible in the brothers. 300 SALISBURY AND BEMERTON. In the small quarto edition of the autobiography (from Horace Walpole's press) is a large portrait of Edward Lord Herbert, lying meditative by a brook in a wood, a man in the background holding his horse ; be is in full dress of James I.'s time, and by him lies a shield inscribed f Magica Sympathia3 ' ( f By the magic of sympathy'), and emblazoned with a heart in flames. His notions of herbs, cures, and other natural things, were like George's. Edward was a theist (which is not the same as atheist), believing in God, in right and wrong as shown by the conscience, and in a future life. His treatise 6 De Veritate,' in defence of natural religion, excited much attention and some attacks. His two Latin poems — e Vita' and f De Vita Coelesti Conjectura ' — are in substance the most impressive modern Latin poems I have ever met. He seems to have cared little for English literature, and speaks rather slightingly of his brother George's English writings. From Salisbury I sped back south-eastward, after two pleasant spring days, full of fancies and thoughts. • 301 CHAPTEE XIV. AT CANTERBURY. St. Mary Overie's — Tomb of Grower — The Tabard — Chaucer and the Pilgrims — Sketch of Chaucer's Life — Canterbury — Outside the Cathedral — Erasmus — Modern Statues — Augustine — Saturday Night — Inside the Cathedral — Harbledown — The Nightingale — New Spring and Old Poetry — The Martyr's Pield — Charles the Pirst— The Eiverside. I carried a couple of American friends the other day to one of the most interesting parts of London, especially to natives of the new country, and yet a terra incognita to many thoroughbred cockneys : namely, certain old places on either side of London Bridge ; and first to that ancient church, Saint Saviour's, better known as Saint Mary Overie's. ( St. Mary O' the Ferry ' it is usually explained, but Stow says i St. Mary over the RieJ or Overy, that is, Over the Water, and adds that Mary was a maiden who (long before the Conquest) founded a House of Sisters here, and at her death bequeathed to it the care and profits of the ferry (no bridge being then built), as she had inherited the same from her parents. The House of Sisters was afterwards changed into a monastery, and in place of the ferry a bridge of wood 302 AT CANTERBURY. was built. f But lastly the same Bridge was builded of stone, and then, in the Year 1106, was this Church again founded for Canons Regular, by William Pont de le Arche, and William Dauncey, kts. Normans.' By Act of 32nd Henry VIII., the two parishes (says Strype) of St. Margaret's and St. Mary Magdalene's in Southwark were united, and the Church of the Monastery of St. Mary Overy made the Parish Church, and called by the name of St. Saviour's. 1 The choir and transepts are in a surprising state of neglect and disarray. The nave was re-built in 1 840, and is now an ugly parish church, with prim pews and pulpit ; and the fine old carved bosses of the ceiling, then taken down, are piled up in an arch or two of the choir like a mass of rejected building-materials. Everything is dingy and dismal. We found on a slab among the rude flagging the name of { John Fletcher,' and on another hard by (removed from the church- yard) that of ' Philip Massinger.' In a corner of the south transept, John Gower's richer tomb occupies a recess in the wall ; but it has lost much in interest by having been transplanted hither from the chapel on the north side where the poet himself had chosen the resting-place of his mortal body, and by reason also of the gaudy colours and modern Gothic lettering with which certain modern Goths have decorated it. How hollow our pretence of respecting the wishes of the 1 Survey of London, &c, by Stow, continued by Strype. London 1720, vol. ii. pp. 8, 9. ST. MARY OVERIE'S. 303 dead — even the illustrious dead ! Witness the recent burial of the body of Charles Dickens in Westminster Abbey, in opposition to his distinct and emphatic re- quest to have his grave made at Rochester, in the midst of the scenes of his childhood and of his last years — scenes for which he had ever a peculiar regard, In the latter place, too, the memorial stone would have been incomparably more interesting and affecting. Many people have a notion that Gower was a pre- decessor of Chaucer ; most, perhaps, that if contempo- rary, Gower was a good deal the senior. But, as far as the evidence goes, they seem to have enjoyed a friendship level in point of age and otherwise ; the different value of their genius waiting to be tested by Time's chemic hand. From the fine old church, dishonoured by modern hands both in what has been done and what left un- done, it is but a step to the Borough High Street, with its row of ancient inn-yards, all much alike in plan — a gateway leading into a wider space overhung with wooden galleries. There are the ( George,' the e White Hart,' the ( Queen's Head,' which is the trimmest ; but the most famous and the one we have come to see is ( The Talbot,' formerly, as the sign tells us, e The Tabard ' — the herald's coat having given way to the mastiff probably through mere corruption of the sound of the word. Befell that, in that season [April] on a day, In Southwark at The Tabard as I lay, 304 AT CANTERBURY. Ready to wenden on my pilgrimage To Canterbury with full devout courage.. At night was come into that hostlerie Well nine and twenty in a company Of sundry folk, by aventure i-fall In fellowship, and pilgrims were they all That toward Canterbury wolden ride. The chambers and the stables weren wide, And well we weren eased atte best. And shortly, when the sunne was to rest, So had I spoken with them everyone That I was of their fellowship anon. How pleasant and fresh sound the old, old lines ! And now see a new April day, and pilgrims, from a land that even Poet Chaucer never dreamed of, come to look, for his sake, at the old Inn ! My friends were provided with Murray's ' Hand- book to Modern London,' and found, at page 261, ( Tabard Inn, Southwark, &c. Pulled down.' My experience in Guide Books considerably surpasses my faith ; still this statement gave me a little qualm, and I approached the old gateway with some touch of anxiety, and, going through, saw with relief the tavern on the rip;ht hand, the old balconies and totter- in o- roofs on the left, the stables at the end, all remaining exactly as I first saw them, a young poetic pilgrim, some five-and-twenty years ago. Perhaps nothing in the present edifices can be proved to be of Chaucer's time ; but parts of them are several centuries old, and the inn in all probability holds the same site and the same general plan as in the reign of Edward III. Indeed, as far as I can see, we are not THE TABARD. 305 forbidden to suppose that portions may stili be here of the very i Tabard ' of Chaucer. The yard was full of the clatter and litter of a carrier's inn, and half blocked up with huge carts and elephantine horses. The balconied part rests upon stout oaken pillars, which show no sign of decay ; but from the empty and neglected state of the rooms one infers that the old edifice is awaiting the harlequin stroke of this motley Nineteenth Century of ours. A big, carter-like man, who was lounging against one of the pillars, handed me the key — 6 You can go up and take a look round.' There was nothing to see in the nest of little chambers — made, most of them, by parti- tions out of one large room, the very room, as some enthusiasts declare, in which the thirty pilgrims met — nothing save the squalid desolation of a long^forsaken house of the humbler sort. It was odd to find sc* much waste space within a bow-shot of London Bridge, and things can scarcely stay so much longer. When the e Talbot-Tabard ' — up to this moment remaining the same that it has always been within the limits of living memory (only more grimy, perhaps, than it was a generation or two back, and these empty rooms were then occupied) — shall be really pulled down, and Mr. Murray's anticipatory statement becomes correct, London will certainly be the poorer by an object of interest to readers of English poetry. Yet, after all, the supper at which Harry Bailey presided was never aught but a dream-supper — the x 306 AT CANTERBURY. lively picture of a company which no room ever held. Doubtless the ( Tabard ' was a usual starting-place for Canterbury pilgrims ; but those pilgrims for whose sake we still seek the dirty inn-yard in the Boro' are but children of a poet's brain. Out of true material indeed he shaped them ; but his the shaping and the bringing of them together, twenty-nine representative figures from the England of Edward III. Many million men and women have passed and left no dis- coverable trace, while these fine puppets remain. But one feels sure that Chaucer did come to the f Tabard/ and see the humours of the place. Our American friends, too, have an immense appetite for every ( famous thing of eld,' and are the reverse of sceptical or captious. No folk so charming to go about with in the Old World. Besides their habitual bon- hommie, frankness, and obligingness, their curiosity and appreciation open the eyes of a native to many things not seen because always seen. e Chaucer's Tabard,' that is enough ; and whether the old balcony is of the time of Edward, or Elizabeth, or the Second Charles, matters little, — it is crusted with antiquity and perfumed with poetic associations. Let us also take the wise part of making the most of our ( Tabard.' After all, though the great fire of Southwark, in 1676, most likely burned part of the ancient inn, it may have spared part. Would any such balcony have been newly put up at that time of day ? I fancy Chaucer sleeping here, and constructing — THE PILGRIMS AT SUPPER. 307 he, the English ( maker' — out of the dream-stuff of which the real pilgrims whom he met were composed, his own company of more durable phantoms. And thus remain alive for us to this day the honourable Knight, the gay young Squire, the sturdy Yeoman, the gentle Prioress (who had a nun and three priests with her), the lusty fat Monk, the merry Friar, the grave Merchant, the learned Clerk, the discreet Ser- jeant of Law, the dinner-loving Franklin, the Haber- dasher, the Carpenter, the Weaver, the Dyer, the Tapisser, the Cook, the Shipman (' with many a tem- pest had his beard been shake '), the Doctor of Physic, the naughty Widow from Bath, the poor and pious Parson, the sturdy Miller, the Ploughman, the Man- ciple, the Pardoner, the Reeve, e a slender, choleric man,' and the Summoner, with ( fire-red cherubyne's face.' They all met at supper, with abundant victuals and strong wine, the host of the inn, Harry Bailey, at the head, no doubt, of the table. He was a large man, a seemly, and a manly, bold of his speech and merry, but also wise and well-taught. Supper done, he makes a speech to his guests, in style at once familiar and respectful, proposing to accompany their party to Canterbury at his own cost, and to act as their guide, and further that, to make the journey pleasanter, each pilgrim shall agree to tell two stories going, and two more on the way back ; the x 2 308 AT CANTERBURY. best story-teller to sit free at another general supper here at the ' Tabard ' when all is finished. This was accepted ; and next morning, ( when that day began to spring/ they all arose, and, being gathered in a flock, rode forth at an easy pace, the miller playing them out of town with his bagpipe; and when they reached the watering place of Saint Thomas (at the second milestone, 'tis said, on the road to Can- terbury), the host made them all draw cuts, and it fell to the Knight to tell the first tale- Whilom, as olde stories tellen us, There was a duke that highte Theseus ; who wedded the Queen Hippolyta, And brought her home with him in his countre "With much glorie and great solemnite, And eke her young sister Emelye. And thus with victorie and with melodie Let I this noble Duke to Athens ride. So will we let the pilgrims ride forward. But that return- supper, ordered five centuries ago, has not yet been eaten ; indeed, the company never arrived at Canterbury, however near they came, and are still — men, and women, and horses, in all their fourteenth century array — somewhere on the road, ever riding forward and telling their tales in turn. Nay, this were to wrap the bright procession in too dark a cloud of fancy ! Rather let us hold for certain that they knelt at the shrine of i the holy blissful martyr,' rode prosperously back to London, telling many a fine tale on the homeward journey, and CHAUCER'S YOUTH. 309 sat down to a noble supper at the ( Tabard,' at which all drank to the best storyteller, by decision of their manly host and fellow pilgrim Harry Bailey. Who that best was, and what the stories told on the return, we shall never know ; inasmuch as the quiet pilgrim, rather short and fat, with mild, grave face — which, however, had somewhat f elvish ' in it — and who usually looked upon the ground, as though he would ' find a hare,' laid down his pen too soon, and no other man could repeat the sayings and doings of the company. The sum of all the accounts of Chaucer's early life is simple and complete as the O of Giotto. Nothing is known of Chaucer's early life. We cannot learn where or when he was born, or anything authentic as to his family or education. The name originally is French (spelt Chaucier, Chaussier, and other ways), and means shoemaker, or perhaps breeches-maker. It is guessed that he was born in London, about the year 1328. There are rumours, all baseless, of his having been a member of the University of Cam- bridge, of Oxford, of the Inner Temple, and beaten a friar in Fleet Street. That he somehow received a high cultivation, and came into Court favour, is certain ; and he appears to have gone to France with Edward the Third's army, in 1359, and to have been made prisoner ; but he got safe back to England, and within a few years took to his wife Philippa, daughter of Sir Payne E-oet, and maid of honour to the Queen. 310 AT CANTERBURY. Another daughter of Sir Payne, Katherine by name, was of the retinue of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, first wife of John of Gaunt. Katherine married Sir Hugh Swinford, a Lincolnshire knight, became a widow, returned to John of Gaunt's household as governess to his children ; he having meanwhile lost his Duchess Blanche, and married a Duchess Con- stance. After a time, this Duchess also died, and then John of Gaunt married the governess, his old friend Katherine ; and thus Poet Chaucer, of no family, became closely connected by marriage with the Royalty of England. He and his wife enjoyed various gifts and pensions ; and Chaucer was frequently employed in the King's service, on diplomatic missions ; for in those days kings thought a good brain a useful commodity, and were glad to find work for it. In Italy, at the same time, the learned Petrarch was busy in state affairs. But neither Chaucer nor Petrarch had a public and its publishers to depend upon, and little foresaw, with all their wit, into what a glorious thing Literature was one day to develop itself. If they could have been told prophetically of the books, magazines, news- papers, &c, that would be produced in London alone, in a single twelvemonth, the c capital invested ' therein (this phrase would have been a puzzle), and the re- venues accruing, it would certainly for a moment have surprised them. While on a mission in Lombardy, Chaucer is thought to have met Petrarch, that CHAUCER'S OLD AGE. 311 6 learned clerk/ at Padua; and perhaps lie did; but there is no proof of it. Chaucer filled, moreover, for a number of years the office of Comptroller of Customs for the Port of London, and was returned to Parliament in 1386, as knight of the shire for Kent ; the feeble Second Richard, aged 19, being King. Richard wished to govern through a clique of his personal favourites* Parliament met in October 1386, and impeached the King's ministers. At the end of a month of violent disputes, the King dissolved Parliament, and Chaucer, as one of the obnoxious members, and a connection and supporter of the Duke of Lancaster (who was in opposition), was dismissed from the Customs' service. This at least is the residuum of probability from a mixture of various statements. It has often been stated that, to avoid the enmity of the Government^ Chaucer retired to the Continent, and on coming back to England was imprisoned for three years in the Tower. There is no real ground for any such state- ment ; but it does seem certain that the Poet in his old age was ill-off for money, and in 1398 the King granted him a protection from arrest. Next year, Bolingbroke (son of John of Gaunt, Chaucer's friend and connection by marriage), took the crown, and immediately granted Chaucer a pension of £26 13s. 4c/. a year. On Christmas Eve, 1399, the Poet, some seventy years of age, and now, let us hope, at ease from 312 AT CANTERBURY. duns, went into a house situated in the garden of e the Chapel of the Blessed Mary ' (where Henry the Seventh's Chapel now stands), which house he took from the Abbot and monks of Westminster, on a lease of 53 years, at £2 135. 4td. a year. But he occupied it only ten months. He died October 25, 1400, and his body was laid in the adjacent Abbey. Soon after this visit to the e Tabard,' I enjoyed my first sight of the famous old city of Saint Augustine and Thomas a Becket. At a curve of the railway the three towers of the Cathedral rush into view not far off; and here is Canterbury Cathedral. Why, I wonder, are all the railway stations in this part of England — the rich and flowery Kent — so mean and uncared for ? The ( London, Chatham, and Dover ' has a blight upon it, which perhaps extends to the station-masters, and they are too dispirited to plant mignonette or train a rose-bush. The aspect of the stations on the London and Hastings line (to take one in the same part of England) is very different. Here is part of the gray city wall, with green hawthorns growing out of the bastions, and tall elm- trees rising within. That grassy mound at one angle bears the odd name of ' Dane John ' — corruption probably of donjon, which, by the way, is the same as dungeon, and means a strong place. The word is Keltic, and gives name to several places in Ireland, OLD STREETS. 313 including Dangan in Meath, the Duke of Wellington's birthplace. And now we turn into the High Street — long, level, narrowish, slightly bending, with many old gables and projecting windows ; the houses not lofty ; the general aspect rural and quiet. Up a narrow bye-way on the right is caught an exciting glimpse of a huge stone gateway covered with time-worn sculpture ; while in front, closing the street, stands the old West Gate of the city — a massive fortalice, through whose low-browed arch is seen the suburb of Saint Dunstan. Over the battlements rises to view a grovy hill, part of the sloping ridge that shelters the shallow vale of Canterbury on the west. The ' London, Chatham, and Dover ' brought us in behind time of course — about half an hour— and it was too late to get into the Cathedral; nevertheless, I hastened to that fine old gateway up Mercery Lane. At the left-hand corner of the lane was once a famous pilgrims' inn, in which, if you like, you can fancy Chaucer's company putting up. The Cathedral-yard is not a striking one. The south porch (the principal one in all Saxon-English churches) is finely propor- tioned ; but, ah me, how the restaurateur has been at work ! What raw and coarse recutting of the sculp- ture work ! What mean little new statues ! In good sculpture, I know things the size of half an orange as grand in their sort as the Parthenon. More of these statues are swarming in the lower 314 AT CANTERBURY. niches of the west towers — f b y Phyffers,' says Murray. f And who is the sculptor Phyffers ?' I asked a virger ( f rod-carrier/ — the spelling adopted here being perhaps the etymological Dean Alford's doing). ( I don't know, sir, more than he lives in the Walworth Road, London, and whoever subscribes 251. can have a statue put up.' Not, I suppose, one to himself. Surely, statues ought not to be cheap ? They ought to represent somebody worth recollecting. Now-a-days they are springing up, little and big, like mushrooms, or rather toad-stools. However, these statues are dear — dear at the money. Among the latest of Phyffers' performances are Erasmus and Dean Alford, side by side. Erasmus's claim to stand here in cheap stone is in kind no better than I may myself boast of by-and-by. He made a ramble to the Cathedral about 350 years ago, and wrote some account of it in his e Colloquia Familiaria,' under the title, f Peregrinatio Peligionis ergo.' Ogygius, devout believer in holy things, describes to his friend Menedemus three pilgrimages he has made — one to Saint James of Compostella, who gives his devotees a scallop-shell, e because he has plenty of them from the neighbouring sea,' and who of late has had fewer visitors i by reason of this new opinion that is spreading abroad in the world ;' another pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Mary at Walsingham, where he saw, among other relics, a vial of the Blessed Virgin's ERASMUS. 315 milk. After this, Ogygius went to Canterbury, ' one of the most religious pilgrimages in the world.' ( There are two monasteries in it,' he says, c almost contiguous, and both of Benedictines, Saint Augus- tine's being the elder. But the church sacred to the divine Thomas — divo Thomce — lifts itself to heaven with such majesty that even from a distance it strikes the gazers with religious awe. With its splendour it dims the neighbouring lights, and throws into obscurity that anciently thrice-renowned place of Saint Augus- tine. There are two great towers, saluting from afar all comers, and sounding with a wondrous boom of brazen bells through all the neighbouring regions far and wide.' This passage seems to describe the Cathedral before the great central tower, that beautiful model of the perpendicular style, was raised above the roof, or at least before it was finished. Professor Willis and others date this erection 1495 ; but the original authorities cited only say that it was raised by Prior Goldstone II. and two other ecclesiastics. Groldstone became prior in 1495, but this does not prove the tower to have been raised in that year, and indeed it could scarcely have been one year's work. Now Erasmus came to England in 1497, and then began his personal acquaintance with John Colet; (see Colet's letter, dated Oxford in f Eras. Op. Omn. Lugd. Bat.' 1703, Epist. XL) This Colet, afterwards famous Dean of St. Paul's and founder of the school, 316 AT CANTERBURY. was the very Gratianus Pullus, or Gratian Dark, who visited Canterbury along with Erasmus ; each being then — if I am right as to the time — about 30 years of age. That Gratianus is Colet is beyond question. Witness Erasmus himself, who in his ' Modus Orandi Deurn ' speaks again of the relics shown at Canterbury, adding, f To John Colet, who was with me, these things gave much offence ; but I thought it best to endure them till an opportunity should come to amend them quietly.' And elsewhere he says of Colet, 6 non nisi pullis vestibus utebatur, cum illic vulgo sacerdotes et theologi vestiuntur purpura ' — he wore nothing but black or dark robes, instead of the usual scarlet. But later in the Colloquy, Warham is named as Archbishop, whose rule began not till 1503. Probably Erasmus paid several or many visits to Canterbury during that wandering, poor-scholar life of his, and puts no exact description of its appearance at any particular date into the mouth of Ogygius in this ( Colloquium,' which was not completed till 1524 (witness the date of Virgin Mary's letter quoted therein). But I think it likely that he first saw the Cathedral before the great central tower had lifted its beautiful lines of stone into the sunshine and rainclouds of Kent. Let us go on with the Colloquy, which I translate in abbreviated manner. Among many similar wants (discreditably many), English literature has no good OGYGIUS AND MEXEDEMUS. 317 translation of any of the works of Erasmus. A trans- lated selection of the ' Epistolas/ well clone, with brief elucidations, would be valuable as well as amusing. tf In the south porch' (proceeds Ogygius) i stand three armed men sculptured in stone, who with their impious hands murdered the most holy man ; their names added, Tusci, Fusci, Berri,' [possibly meaning, it is guessed, Tracy, Fitz Urse, Brito.] 'Why this honour to such men ? ' (asks Menedemus.) e They have the same kind of honour done to them as is done to Judas, Pilate, Caiaphas ; and they are set there as a warning. For their crime drove them raging mad, and they recovered their senses only by the solicited favour of most holy Thomas.' ( O the perpetual clemency of martyrs ! ' ( When you enter, a certain spacious majesty unfolds itself; and to this part everyone has free access.' ( Is there nothing to be seen, then ? ' 6 Only the massiveness of the fabric, and some books fastened to the pillars, the Gospel of Nicodemus among them [a spurious gospel : they ought to have known better, hints the satirist], and also a sepulchre of I know not whom. Iron gratings prevent ingress to the choir, but allow of a view of the whole extent of it. You mount to this by many steps, under which a kind of vault admits to the north side, where they show a little wooden altar sacred to the Blessed Virgin, only notable as a monument of antiquity condemning the luxury of these times. Here the pious man is said to have uttered his last farewell to the Virgin when death 318 AT CANTERBURY. was imminent. On the altar is the point of a sword, wherewith was pierced the skull-top of that best prelate. We religiously kissed the sacred rust of the sword for love of the martyr. Thence we went to the crypt, which hath its mystagogues. And first we were shown the perforated skull of the martyr, covered with silver save the top of the cranium, which is left bare to be kissed. At the same is shown a leaden plate {lamina) with the name Thomce Acrensis insculpt upon it.' [ Corpus understood ? Such plates were placed inside coffins. It is not settled what Acrensis was meant to say; some think ' of Acre,' i.e., born there, and that his mother was a Saracen. One ingenious guesser sees in Acrensis the Latin equivalent of a Bee, of the beak, or point : a Beckett being diminutive.] f Here also hang up in darkness the hair-shirts, girdles, breeches, with which he used to subdue the flesh ; euough to make one shudder; and condemnatory truly of the softness and delicate living we now indulge in.' ' And the monks, too, perhaps.' ' That I will neither assert nor contradict ; 'tis no affair of mine.' i You say right.' £ We now returned to the choir, where various repo- sitories were opened, and O ! what a quantity of bones they brought forth — skulls, jaws, teeth, hands, fingers, whole arms — all of which, having first adored, we earnestly kissed. There would have been no end to it, I think, but for the indiscreet interruption made by one of my companions, an Englishman, by name Gratianus Pullus, and a man of learning and piety, RELICS. 319 but not so well-affected toward this part of religion as I could wish.' i I opine he was a Wicliffite.' e I think not ; but he may have read his books. This gentleman, when an arm was brought forth with some bloody flesh still sticking to it [this seems incredible ! ] shuddered at the notion of kissing it, and showed his disgust in his countenance. Whereupon the mysta- gogue shut up all his things. After this we saw the altar and its ornaments, the wealth of which would beggar Midas and Crcesus ; and in the sacristy a wonderful pomp of silken vestments and golden candle- sticks. There also we saw the foot of divine Thomas, plated with silver ; and a coarse gown of silk, without ornament, and a handkerchief retaining marks of sweat and blood. These were shown by special favour, because I was somewhat acquainted with the most reverend Archbishop William Warham, and had from him three words of recommendation.' ( I have heard he was a man of singular humanity.' i He was humanity itself: of such learning, such sincerity of manner, and piety of life, that no gift of a perfect prelate was wanting in him.' i Behind the high altar we ascended as into another church, and here saw the whole face of the best of men set in gold with many gems. Here Gratian got entirely out of the good graces of our attendant by suggesting that Saint Thomas, in his lifetime so kind to the poor, would be better pleased to see all this wealth applied to charitable uses rather than in a vain show. The 320 AT CANTERBURY. mystagogue frowned, pouted out his lips, and looked with the eyes of a Gorgon ; and I doubt not would have spat upon us and turned us out of the church, but that he knew we were recommended by the archbishop. I partly pacified him with gentle words, saying that Gratian spoke not seriously, but had a jesting way with him, and I also gave him a little money.' i I entirely approve your piety. Still it sometimes comes into my own mind that it is a very wrong thing to expend such vast sums in the building, adorning, and enriching of churches. I would have the sacred vest- ments and vessels of a proper dignity, and the structure of the edifice majestic ; but to what purpose so many fonts and candelabra and golden images ? Why this immense expense for organs, as they are called? Why this musical whinnying [musicus hinnitus — I fear Erasmus was not a lover of music], got up at such cost, when meanwhile our brothers and sisters, Christ's living temples, are pining with hunger and thirst ? ' To this Ogygius in reply agrees that moderation in these costlinesses is desirable, but thinks at the same time it is better for kings and great folks to spend their money on churches than in gambling or in war, and says he would rather of the two see a church luxurious than bare and mean. Then he goes on to tell how the Prior came, and showed them the shrine itself of the martyrs. They did not see the bones, which is not permitted, nor could it be done without a ladder ; but the outer THE SHRINE. 321 wooden case being lifted up by pulleys, gave the inner shrine to view. 6 The basest material in it was gold. Every part beamed, glittered, and flashed with precious stones, the hugest and rarest, some of them bigger than a goose-egg. Some of the monks stood round in attitudes of the deepest veneration ; and when the cover was lifted, we all adored. The Prior touched with a white rod the jewels one by one, telling its name in French, the value, and the donor ; the chief ones being the sifts of monarchs. ( Hence the Prior carried us back into a crypt, and showed us by candle-light a wonderfully rich altar of the Virgin, guarded with iron bars ; then again to the sacristy, where was brought out a box covered with black leather, and placed on the table ; it was opened, and all present fell on their knees and adored.' ( What was in it?' ' Torn pieces of linen, many' of them bearing marks of having been used to blow the nose with. Others, they told us, were used by the pious man to wipe the perspiration from his face and neck. Here again Gratian got out of favour. The Prior, knowing something of him as an Englishman of repu- tation and of no little authority, kindly offered to bestow upon him one of these bits of rag as a most valuable gift. But Gratian, far from being grateful, took it fastidiously on the point of one of his fingers, and laid it down, making a contemptuous movement of his lips, as though he said " Phew!" { I was both ashamed and alarmed by this ; but the Prior, who is Y 322 AT CANTERBURY. no stupid man, pretended not to notice it, and after giving us a glass of wine, kindly dismissed us ; and we w r ent back to London.' This touch about the Prior is delicious, and his urbane omission to take notice contrasts well with the anger of the inferior exhibitor of relics. The whole account is very curious, especially considering the point of time to which it refers. Erasmus little thought there was a boy then in England whose breath would by-and-by scatter these relics to the four winds. Yet the world moves slowly. Here, in the year 1872, stands this great edifice, not on the terms on which some rare shell is preserved in a museum, but as though it were still the habitation of the deepest and dearest- thoughts of living England. Erasmus's prior of 300 years ago is very like Emerson's bishop (see l English Traits'). — ' If a bishop meets an intelligent gentleman and reads fatal interrogatories in his eyes, he has no resource but to take wine with him.' Have we got no further, after all the satirists and reformers ? Civility costs nothing, it is said — nothing, that is, to him that shows it ; but it often costs the world very dear. It is not likely that friend Desiderius could possibly have foreseen that his own statue would ever decorate a niche of the famous edifice in right of his having written (an odd claim surely !) the sub-sarcastic account of his visit to the Cathedral which Ave have just been reading. But in our day some one has given 25/., and there stands Erasmus (a small copy of the Rotterdam ST. MARTIN'S. 323 statue) beside King Ethelbert and Dean Alford carved by Phidias of the Walworth Road. Is it possible that Patricius Walker may one day find an ecclesiastical pedestal somewhere ? One might take this Erasmus statue, if it meant anything, to have affinity to the Prior's glass of wine — one other example of how civil the Church is to everybody. But in truth it means nothing ; men have long since ceased to care about these things as questions of truth and error, right and wrong. The dilettantism of archaeology, and the more serious affairs hinted in the phrase i loaves and fishes,' are now the only two living interests connected with these old monuments. The raw statues and scraped south porch disheart- ened me ; the uniform west towers (one rebuilt) are just tolerable, rather pleasing, not beautiful, and the whole aspect of the Cathedral yard was disappointing. There was a cold sky too, and a chilly wind blowing, and I felt lonely and tired, and as if I had no business at Canterbury. Still there was enticement in the Norman transepts and towers of Andrew and Anselm, and the strange inbencling of the wall beyond. Out of the city I walked eastwards, under great trees, and mounted the hill to the little Church of Saint Martin, itself very old, and built, 'tis said, on the site, and partly on the walls, of an older church which stood here, already bearing St. Martin's name, when Augus- tine and his monks came to convert the pagan English; Y 2 &24 AT CANTEBBtrRY. for the Keltic British were Christians, but their con- querors remained heathen. Ethelbert — or, if you like, JEthelberht — King of Kent, Saxon and pagan, married the Christian Bertha, daughter of Charibert, King of Paris, and for her and her attendant bishop was the little Christian chapel set on the slope of this hill near the capital of the kingdom of Kent, earliest permanent settlement of the Teutons in Britain. Ethelbert, moreover, as at this time i Bret- walda,' exercised a supremacy, not exactly definable, over the other kings. There are three good reasons why Augustine came first to Canterbury : Queen Bertha's Christianity, King Ethelbert's authority, and the nighness of the city to Butupia?, the usual landing-place of visitors to Britain. At Butupiae, now * Bichborough,' between Bamsgate and Sandwich, where the great fragments of Boman fortification still look forth from their low cliffs — but the sea has receded from them, and level green pastures now stretch below — at Butupiae Augustine and his monks landed, and sent a message to the king. He ordered them to stay where they were for the pre- sent, and that meanwhile they should be supplied with all necessaries. Some days after, the King came into Thanet, and received the missionaries in the open air, where he would be less subject to magical arts than in a house. After conference he said, 'You speak very fairly. I cannot forsake my old worship ; but you are , AUGUSTINE. . 325 free to come to Canterbury, and teach whom you will. 5 1 A thousand years later, by the bye, there was (rightly or wrongly) much less toleration in England for new teaching. So the monks from Rome travelled along the Roman road and reached this very hill, whence they looked down on the wooden and wicker city of the Cantuarii, with its earthworks of defence and palisades, in the broad vale among trees and thickets. It cannot be doubted that they stopped to worship at the little shrine of their faith ; then lifting a tall silver cross they formed into a procession, and, with choristers chanting a Gregorian litany, descended into Canter- bury, and were well received. This little Church of St. Martin was handed over to Augustine, and some of these very stones . and bricks (Roman bricks) that I touch may be part of the walls within which the first English king was baptized into Christianity, an event commonly spoken of as one of the most momentous in the history of the human race ; and perhaps it may be allowable so to speak of it Mighty temples (like this of Canterbury), establish- ments, Church-and-state conjunctions and rivalries, persecutions, wars, reformations and revolutions, creeds, books and art-works, civic and family arrangements, — all modes wherein human life, public and private, can manifest itself and send on its influences — have they 1 Bede'§ Ecclesiastical History. 326 AT CANTERBURY. not taken form and colour for a thousand years and more from that mystic sprinkling ? Missionaries have usually been the bearers not only of a theological creed, but of a superior civilisation and culture i and monasteries were long the refuges and nurseries of learning. These are facts which go far to account for success and authority ; but also make more difficult the question (to which the answer has never yet perhaps been fairly sought), how much and in what ways any creed, as such, has modified human life and manners. What, for example, were Ethel- bert's life and character like, whilst he was a pagan, and what afterwards ? The English in general, from a.d. 500 to 1000, what were they as heathens, and what as Christians, say in the matters of truth, courage, humanity, purity, wise and happy life ? Certainly the new rules had no effect of making men leave off fighting ; that continued to be the main busi- ness of their lives ; and, indeed, promises of success in battle and extension of territory were among the usual bribes (in addition to eternal salvation) employed to persuade men of note to be converted. The monkish chroniclers often record instances where these promises were fulfilled ; but, after all, the pagan Jutes and Saxons and Angles beat the Christian British. The pagan Danes afterwards beat the Christian Saxons, who by that time had fallen as a people into a very weak and confused state. In short, the word i Chris- tianity,' as commonly and loosely used, is one of those HAWTHORN BUDS. 327 vague and misleading terms for each of which it would be beneficial to substitute at least three or four of a more definite sort, to be used on their proper occasions. The very first thing that ought to be aimed at in lan- guage, and usually the very last thing aimed at, is definite expression of definite meaning. But since the latter is too often missing in waiters and speakers, they can scarcely be expected to strive for the former. After peeping in through the windows of this thrice- famous little Church of Saint Martin, I mounted the hill behind, through a market-garden, and found atop a hawthorn in bloom — my first this year. With what a delicious soothing flowed the well-remembered frag- rance over my sense ! One has nothing to quarrel with in these lovely joys of nature. c I love this haw- thorn-bush,' I exclaimed aloud, ' twenty times more than Canterbury Cathedral, with all its pillars and arches, in every style of Gothic ! ' and, picking one pearly tuft, went over to the windmill, and stood awhile under its lee ; now looking up with awe at one great sail after another swashing down like a Titan's sword, now looking forth on the prospect of green sloping corn-fields, with here and there a grove, and amid a shallow vale the simple city, with its one dominant edifice, three-towered, in the midst. It was Saturday night, and I walked about the streets by gas-light, presenting them older and more picturesque than garish day ; but the Cathedral yard 328 AT CANTERBURY. was locked up, which did vex me. I remembered York last year, and that great pile by moonlight, and how I stood on the west steps and climbed with mine eyes into the stars by the ladder of those vast towers. But the west gate of Canterbury is satisfactory, is mighty and massive. In the wider street outside are a good many old wood-fronted houses ; one of which was formerly an inn, where pilgrims arriving after the gates were closed used to put up for the night, I enjoyed the little old-fashioned shops, with their low ceilings and miscellaneous jumble of articles, and often paused at a window or door to watch the friendly greetings and gossipings of vendor and customer, &6 characteristic of a country town not too large for every- body to know nearly everybody else. Countryfolk, their marketings finished, got deliberately into their carts and drove away. I saw no tipsy person, or night prowler, or any sign of disorder, all along the main thoroughfare, from the tall dark foMage of Saint George's Place to where the street of St. Dunstaii melted into the darkness and solitude of a country road,, with a white horse grazing on its hedge-side grass. The last house at this end of the city stood alone, ancient and decayed, at its gable a dead tree seen weirdlike against the broken night-sky. It looked like a house with a history ; at least, like every old house, it has the scene of many histories under its uneven roof, and behind its lead-latticed windows ; not of people and events who are ' historic ' in the usual sense (for A NIGHT WALK. 329 this is but a small house, and never was a rich one), bat of simple human beings, of infancy and maturity, old age and death. Many a child of the house must have played round that withered tree when it, too, was green and gay, and gone to sleep under those battered tiles in a garret more full of wonders than all the palaces and temples of the outside world. Could one but have the record — the real inner record — of the life of one of those unknown and for-ever-forgotten chil- dren, I would not give it for the best extant history of Saint Thomas a Becket, and of Saint Augustine to boot — two personages for whom, taking the reports of their admirers, I confess to feeling but little regard. Wending northwards, I came into the neighbourhood of the barracks, and then first on some token of noc- turnal revelry. From the 6 Duke's Arms ' and the ' British Grenadier ' issued sounds of rude chorusing, in one case with some attempt at ' singing a second.' What a good little thing, I thought for the thousandth time, if part-singing Avere universally taught in schools, so that whenever two or more singers met, they might have a repertory of kindly song-music at their com- mand. Elsewhere in the same street was the notice, 'A Free and Easy every night. Miss Aclelina Villi ers, lady dancer; Mr. Brown, pianist ; singing.' In the dim road a few belated soldiers were making for their quarters ; and presently the- patrol came round the corner and marched past with a slow swing. At the barrack-gate paced the sentry with his gun;, while 330 AT CANTERBURY. inside lay quietly, each on his own pallet, hundreds of strong men, of coarse unruly natures many of them, ready to start up, one and all, at the bugle's sound to- morrow morning, and ' fall in,' each to his allotted place. The most wonderful of machines is an army, composed of that complicated and variable material, human nature ; yet acting at its best with a powerful concert and regularity as of the heavenly spheres themselves. Might not men be trained to act with equal order and combination to peaceful ends ? Un- doubtedly. Let us manage that little business of part- singing to begin with ; and go on to the organisa- tion of labour. Next day was Sunday, and I went to morning ser- vice in the Cathedral, heard the living river of choral harmony, heard the Athanasian Creed, and a sermon, or rather the noise of it, like the cawing of a rook, for the words slipped through my mind unheeded. In the quarto Prayer-Book on the ledge before me was a book-plate of old device, showing enclosed in scrollwork a cross with X at the centre, and written underneath, ( Christ Church, Canterbury.' On one side of the cross in this book some profane pencil had drawn (most likely at sermon-time) a grotesque face or mask. The nave and choir looked almost as new and fresh as though Pugin had built them yesterday; and one half-expected to see here and there a warning of ' Wet paint.' It was only by turning to certain corners and details that the eyes assured themselves they were gazing on a INSIDE THE CATHEDRAL. 331 thrice- venerable building. Seen from where I sat, the uniformity of the newly cleaned pillars and groin- ings of the nave, and the uniformity of the panellings of the choir, along with the execrable modern stained- glass, made the general effect disappointing. There was a kind of dismal tidiness and smartness ; no grand gloom anywhere. Even the oblique glimpses of the transepts (usually effective in cathedrals) were uncom- fortable, showing, as it were, a jumbled museum of various kinds of arches. I learned next day that most of the modern glass is the doing of a private gentleman of Canterbury, solicitor by profession, who having, first, a turn (such as it is) for designing painted windows, se- condly, money to spare, thirdly, ambition to dis- tinguish himself, and, fourthly, interest with the Cathedral authorities, has filled, not one or two, but perhaps a dozen or more of the great windows with his handiwork. Let me offer my contribution to his fame by copying the inscription, * George Austin, dedicavitj and add the remark of a verger on the subject : c Well, sir, there they are, and we can't take 'em away, you see ; and the boys won't break 'em.' I wished to ascend the great tower, but was told it was inaccessible to visitors, the stairs being out of repair. Most part of the crypt, also, is in a very dis- orderly condition. Leaving closer examination for the morrow (which I duly accomplished: but vide Professor Willis, Dean 832 AT CANTERBURY. Stanley, and many others), I went forth or a country walk, and was lucky in my course. Mounting by St. Thomas's Hill, a slope of the gentle ridge that shuts in Canterbury vale on the west, I took a field-path to the left. Zephyrus came over the flowery meads, and every breath carried conscious health and sweetness into the blood. The path led me to the edge of a steep little dell, into which it sloped. On the right hand was a thick grove not yet in full leaf; on the left stood, some fields off, a little church: in the hollow, among orchards, peeped the brown roofs of an old hamlet, and thither I gladly descended ; nor was my pleasure lessened to find that this hamlet was Harbledown, formerly Herbaldown, the very place — at least I doubt it not — which Chaucer calls i Bob-up-and-down, under the Blea' (now the Blean, still a wild tract of half- forest land), and certainly where Erasmus was stopped to kiss Saint Thomas's old shoe. f Having set forth for London,' says Ogygius, i we came, not far from Canterbury, to a place where the road descended, steep and narrow, into a hollow, hemmed in with banks on either side, so that there is no escape : you cannot take any other way. Here on the left hand is a little almshouse of old men. When they spy a horseman coming, one of them runs out, sprinkles the traveller with holy water, and then offers him the upper part of a shoe bound round with brass, in which is set a bit of glass by way of a gem. After kissing this, you give a small piece of money.' HARBLEDOWN. 333 ' Well,' says Menedemus, ' I'd rather meet a set of old almsmen in such a place than a gang of sturdy robbers.' ( Gratian,' continues Ogygius, i rode on my left, next to the little almshouse. He bore the sprinkling pretty well, but when the shoe was held out, he asked what was that? "Saint Thomas's shoe," says the man. Upon which Gratian got angry, and turning to me exclaimed, " What do these animals \_pecudes~\ want? would they have us kiss all good people's shoes ? They might as well ask us to kiss their spittle, and so forth !" I pitied the old man, who was looking doleful at this, and consoled him with a little money.' Menedemus, ( In my opinion Gratian was not wholly unreasonable in being wroth. If such shoes or slippers be preserved, as proofs of the wearer's frugality, I don't object ; but it seems to me a piece of impudence to thrust these things upon everybody to be kissed. If anyone liked of his own free will to kiss them out of a vehement impulse of piety, I should hold that pardonable enough,' Ogygius. e 'Twere better these practices were given up, I confess ; but from things which cannot suddenly be amended, it is my habit to extract what good I can find, if any good there be.' A sentence very cha- racteristic of friend Erasmus. And here is the very place — the hollow of two hills and the narrow way between steep banks where Erasmus and Colet rode by ; and here is the almshouse or hospital of Saint Nicholas, the very same chari- table institution that harboured the old man who ran 334 AT CANTERBURY. forth with his holy shoe, for the Reformation spared little Herbaldown Hospital. It is rebuilt as to its walls, and now stands in the form of a small group of trim red dwellings, wherein nine old brethren and seven old sisters abide. In the first letter to John Colet in the collection (Epis. xli.) dated Oxford, 1498, Erasmus gives an interesting sketch of his own character, which has probably full as great a share of truth as is usual in such confessions. From this letter, along with Colet's previous one (Epis. xi.) already alluded to, I infer, contrary to the statements of biographers, that they had no personal intercourse until this visit of Erasmus to England. After much compliment and depreca- tion of Colet's too high estimation of him, Erasmus says, e I will describe myself to you, and better than any other can, since no other knows me so well. You shall find in me a man of little fortune, nay, none at all ; averse from ambition ; most ready to affection ; but slightly skilled, it is true, in literature, yet a most flagrant admirer of it ; who religiously venerates another's goodness, though he has none of his own ; who easily yields to all in matters of doctrine, to none in matters of faith ; simple, open, free ; well- nigh ignorant of simulation and dissimulation ; pusil- lanimous, yet honest ; sparing of speech ; and in fine one from whom you must expect nothing but his soul \finimurri\.' > Climbing the steep bank on the south side of the THE NIGHTINGALE. 335 hollow way at Harbledown, I came to an old weedy churchyard with a little very old church with square tower and Norman door. The low side-wall is crum- bling, the old high-pitched roof seems almost ready to fall in. As usual, everything has been let go to the verge of destruction for the want of a stone here, a tile there, till at the last moment shall step in the restorers (a clergyman most likely the ringleader) to make a grand job of it. Some such thing, I gathered, is about to happen to this little gray church also. Mounting the hill westward, and catching sight, as the pilgrims used to do at this point, of the great cathedral, at the same moment a rich gurgle of song broke from a thicket close at hand — a nightingale ! My first this year, and the song lifted me again to poetry and Chaucer. — Every true gentle hearte free, That with him [Love] is, or thinketh for to be, Against May now shall have some stirriDg, Or to joye, or else to some mourning: In no season so much, as thinketh me. For when they may hear the birds sing, And see the flowers and the leaves spring, That bringeth into heart's remembrance A manner ease, medled [mingled] with grievance, And lustie thoughts full of great longing. As I lay awake (says Chaucer) the other night, I thought of the saying, that it was of good omen for lovers to hear the nightingale sing before the cuckoo ; and anon I thought, as it was day, I would go some where to try if I might hear a nightingale ; for I had 336 AT CANTERBURY. heard none that year, and it was the third night of May. So as I espied the daylight, I would no longer stay in bed, but boldly went forth alone to a wood that was fast by, and held the v^ay down by a brook-side, till I came to a land of white and green, the fairest I ever saw. The ground was green, and powdered with daisies ; the flowers and the grass of the same height, — all green and white, and nothing else to be seen. There I sat down among the fair flowers, and saw the birds trip out of their bowers, where they had rested all night; and they were so joyous of the daylight, they began at once to do honour to May, singing with many voices, and in various songs. They pruned them, and danced, and leaped on the spray, and were all two and two in pairs as they had chosen each other on Saint Valentine's Day. And the river whereby I sat made such a noise as it ran, accordant with the birds' harmony, methought it was the best melody that might be heard of any man.' For very delight he fell into a half-slumber, not all asleep, not fully waking, and in this he heard a cuckoo sing, which vexed him, and made him say to the bird, i Sorrow on thee ! full little joy have I of thy cry!' And as I with the cuckoo thus 'gan chide I heard, in the next bush beside, A nightingale so lustely sing, That her clere voice she made ring Through all the greene wood wide. Then followed a dispute between the birds, the NA T URE'S BALM. 337 nightingale praising love, and the cuckoo disparaging the same, till at last the former cried out bitterly, * Alas ! my heart will break, to hear this lewd bird speak thus of Love, and his worshipful service.' Then (says Chaucer), methought I started up and ran to the brook, and got a stone and flung it heartily at the cuckoo, who for dread flew away; and glad was I when he was gone. For this service the nightingale thanked the Poet, saying, One avow to lore make I now, That all this May I will thy singer be ;. and promising that next May he should hear her song first, and meanwhile must believe no whit of the cuckoo's slanders against love. Nothing (replies Chaucer) shall bring me to that ; — and yet love hath done me much woe. ' Yea ? Use,' quoth she, ' this medicine, Every day this May or thou dine, — Go -look upon the fresh daisie, And, though thou he for wo at point to die, That shall full greatly lessen thee of thy pine. And look alway that thou he good and true, And I will sing one of my songes new, For love of thee, as loud as I may cry.' And then she began this song full high, ' I shrew all them that be of love untrue ! ' and so she flew away. Chaucer's hearty and untiring delight in grass and daisies and birds' songs,' and his sincere belief, which he preserved into old age, in the curative balm for anxious thoughts which is given to men in these simple z 338 AT CANTERBURY. joys, is one of those things for which we dearly lore the old poet. His very heart and soul are soothed by a pleasant grove, a green field, a chimp of wild flowers. And so did these vernal sights and sounds and odours soothe me that day as they soothed old Geoffrey ^.yq centuries ago. ' The Flower and the Leaf,' by the bye, is certainly not Chaucer's (say the experts), but later, and most likely by a woman. In that case, the name and memory of a great English poetess, able to write of these things as well as Chaucer himself, lie buried among the dark centuries. She too, whilst yet her eyes could see daylight, rejoiced greatly in the branches broad, laden with leaves new, That springen out against the sunny sheen, Some very red, and some a glad light green — of early spring, and the rich fields 6 covered with corn and grass,' and the fragrance of flowers. — Suddenly I felt so sweet an air Of the eglatere, that certainly There is no heart, I deem, in such despair, Nor with thoughts froward and contraire So overlaid, but it should soon have bote [relief], If it had once felte this savour sote [sweet]. By this time I had come back into the city, and here my meditations took another turn. Close to the railway station is a grass-field, and in a corner of it two or three children were gathering handfuls of buttercups. ( Is this the field where the people were burnt ? ' s Yes, sir/ says a little maid of four years, dropping a curtsey. THE 31 ART YES 1 FIELD. 339 6 And where did they burn them ? ' ( Down there, please, sir,' pointing to a grassy, weedy hollow. This, then, is the Martyrs' Field. In the year 1556, on March 2, Cranmer was burnt alive at Oxford, in front of Balliol College ; and the same day Queen Mary made Cardinal Pole Archbishop of Canterbury in his room. Under his primacy about 2000 Protestants, men and women, were burnt alive ; eighteen of them in this hollow, within siolit of the great Christ Church and the monastery of the first English saint; such being the practical result of a thousand years of ( Christianity.' No shrine covers the ashes of these tf martyrs ; ' only the spires of grass spring above them ; only the indiscriminate rain falls upon the scene of their torture. Yet, if voluntary acceptance for conscience' sake of the worst extremities of suffering constitutes martyrdom, some of these poor men and women — long since at peace — are better entitled to it than Thomas a, Becket, slain in a wrangle with fierce knights of his own creed, on motives political and personal ; or Alphage (whose church is here, close to the Palace), carried off a prisoner by the heathen Danes when they sacked Canterbury in 1011, and after seven months' captivity, slain by the stroke of an axe. Alas ! how men torment each other and themselves. Is human life in its own nature too long and too happy ? The sun shown out gaily, and the children went on gathering king-cups ; and a white butterfly came z 2 340 AT CANTERBURY. wandering into the Dell of Agony, and poised for a moment on a tall stem of grass. Another walk, that kindly afternoon, led me to the ( Dane John,' where were many folk in Sunday clothes enjoying, according to their several measure, the grass and trees, and the prospect from the battlements. Then I found the Old Castle, a shapeless mass of pebbled wall. To one corner telegraph wires are fastened, and the fortress is now a gas factory. Behind it lurks the little old church of St. Mildred with a quiet avenue of lindens. Thence by bye-streets, such as set one meditating on life in a country town, both to-day and in its past generations, for everywhere is the suggestion of peaceful continuity, I slipt into a field-path, among young corn and hop-poles, and so came round by Long Port to a quaint little space named ' Lady Wotton's Green,' and facing upon it the great old gate, older than Chaucer's time, of Saint Augustine's Monastery. Looking from the shade of a linden on the mullioned window of the room above the gateway, I thought of it now as the marriage-chamber of a happy bridegroom and bride, he five-and-twenty, she not sixteen ; he an Englishman, tall, slender, handsome, dignified, full of chivalrous courtesy and grave tenderness ; she French, girlish, vivacious, spirituelle, with clear brown com- plexion and soft black eyes, a sparkling brunette, now timid in a foreign land and new condition ; he a king, just come into his ancient heritage, she the daughter THE YOUNG QUEEN. 341 of many kings. How gay was the old gateway with flags and flowers as the young royal pair drove through, coming from Dover to sup and sleep here ! Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of King Henry the Fourth of France, married by proxy in Notre Dame, May 21, 1625, to King Charles of England, was detained a month by weather and else, during which time the King waited much at Dover for his bride ; but he was at Canterbury when she landed, on Sunday evening, about eight o'clock, June 23 (N.S.). Next morning about ten came the King to Dover Castle, when his sweetheart was at breakfast. Hearing of his arrival, she hurried down, and would have knelt, but ' he wrapped her in his arms with many kisses.* The trembling little bride began a set speech — ' Sire, je suis venue dans ce paysj &c, but broke down in a burst of weeping. The courteous tenderness of her bridegroom soon reassured her ; and when, finding her taller than he had expected, he glanced towards her feet, she showed her shoes with a smile, saying, e Sir, I stand upon my own feet ; I have no helps by art ; ' and they drove off together to Canterbury. e The same night, having supped at Canterbury, her Majesty went to bed, and some time after his Majesty followed her ; but having entered her bedchamber, he bolted all the doors with his own hand. . . , The next morning he lay till seven o'clock, and was very pleasant with the lords that he had beguiled them, and hath ever 342 AT CANTERBURY. since been very jocund.' l The lords in waiting had planned, doubtless, not to exempt even Majesty from some of the old-fashioned epithalamic ceremonies. Next morning at breakfast the young couple ( f Mary' is the name he calls her by), looking out through that large window, see before them in the June morning sky this same great tower, with its attendant pinnacles. The little Queen is unfortunately a ( Papist,' which may make some trouble by-and-by, when the priests and politicians get to work, but hardly in present circumstances. They say something, it is likely, of the past history of the city and the kingdom. Over the future history of England, over their own future, hangs for them a thick, impenetrable veil. From Canterbury the happy young pair travelled to Rochester, the next day to Gravesend, and in the State barge they entered the capital, — the river banks, in spite of a heavy shower of rain, lined with loyal and applausive multitudes ; and landed at Wliitehall. Happy, thrice happy, young King and Queen! Thence I passed to North Gate Street, and the Hospital of Saint John (founded under Lanfranc, 1070- 1089), i twin-hospital of Herbaldown.' Through an old arched gateway, mostly of wood, I passed into a quiet quadrangle (rebuilt) with tall trees behind and a space of little garden-Jots where the inmates cultivate their patches of peas and lettuce, mixed with many gay 1 Contemporary Letters, given in Court and Times of Charles I. London, 1848. THE RIVER. 343 flowers and fragrant potherbs. Below this a meadow gently slopes to the winding Stour. Coming back to the street I walked northwards to the barracks, and there a side way led me to the river's brink beside a great mill, and a path that followed the watery windings by many a great old pollard- willow. Swallows skimmed the slow-flowing stream; on the other bank were little orchards and sleepy red houses, and for landmark rose ever the long roof and tall towers of the cathedral. This predominance in visible form of a supernatural idea gives (even yet) the suggestion of a reverent unity pervading the life and thought of those who dwell within the compass of its immediate presence. Nor is there much in Canterbury to disturb this impression. Barrack and railway have intruded themselves, but the old city is not swallowed up in the results of modern 6 industry and prosperity.' I returned by the Abbot's Mill, with its dam and rushing weir, fronted by a grass-field in which stand four mighty trees of the poplar kind, mountains of shivering leaves. Higher up, tanneries pollute the stream, and the cows' hoofs, for glue, hang up in ugly rows. In benighted pagan times a river was held sacred. Still, recollecting what the Medlock is like where it crawls with its inky load of foulness by Man- chester Cathedral, one may be almost thankful for the Stour's condition. I had walked a good many hours, but the calm star- light night drew me forth again, and approaching the 344 AT CANTERBVRY. dim bulk of the West Gate, I heard a nio-htWale sincnn^ on the left. There might you hear her kindle her soft voice. Finding a path to the river, where it flowed down through the fields and into a shrubbery just before entering the city, I stood close to the unseen singer, sometimes whistling to him, and answered, I chose to think, with a louder and more triumphant strain. ' She, 9 our old poets always said, following the Greeks and Latins, and it was natural to make feminine this airy charm of sound ; but we cannot now afford to disregard so broad a natural truth as that the male birds of every kind are always the chief and often the only singers. A poetic statement and a scientific statement are essentially different ; yet they must both be statements of truth ; and as scientific truths pass more and more into general apprehension, these, in place of old mistakes, will form the natural and proper vehicles and illustrations of poetry. At midnight, through my open bedroom-window, came the distant song of the tireless bird, and I thought again of Chaucer. With eagerness and faith can I listen to bird or poet ; not to bishop, or dean, dead or living. As to those old saints, their unscrupulous piety seems to have been capable of any lie — one might almost say of any crime ; and, with all their good intentions and self-denying labours, they left a terrible legacy to mankind, of which we also (Prince Bismarck included) are heirs. GOOD NIGHT! 345 But all this is growing dreadfully wearisome, at our time of day. Better look at antique edifices and establishments with the mere eyes of an archaeologist or an American tourist. The Americans enjoy English cathedrals so much that I believe they would keep them up by subscription if necessary. If they were in the market, Mr., Barnum would very likely buy Canterbury and York, to number the stones and set them up in Central Park and Boston Common, and perhaps make a handsome bid for the respective arch- bishops, cleans, vicars-choral, and virgers. I had better go to bed. Chant on, dear bird, God's chorister, and do thy might The whole service to sing 'longing to May. Ah, Chaucer, where now art thou, this new May night ? If one could learn that, 'twere worth a pil- grimage. Good night ! >st£ LONDON: PRINTED BX SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET AND PARLIAMENT STREET ■/, ^-ri ^ ■•■■•m/M . -^ ■ '■'«• |fcgP? t W ' 1 ^WKw ^^fcni|j ^ mm Em •A* , • 77 mmWMi ^ Kyi *,i ^ >* - Air 'J i * 1 -*//?../*/ • v '-PRa ' • . -i ■ i S/ / v ° - / ' m • - -:^ 2 ^^Y.:.-v..-^ ■.. .)^ S • k . • • ■■■.•• A^S'H