FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH
Edinburgh, September 9, 1889.--Scotland again, and never more beautiful
than now! The harvest moon is shining upon the grim old castle, and
the bagpipes are playing under my windows to-night. It has been a
lovely day. The train rolled out of King's Cross, London, at ten this
morning, and it rolled into Waverley, Edinburgh, about seven to-night.
The trip by the Great Northern railway is one of the most interesting
journeys that can be made in England. At first indeed the scenery
is not striking; but even at first you are whirled past spots of
exceptional historic and literary interest,--among them the battlefield
of Barnet, the ancient and glorious abbey of St. Albans, and the old
church and graveyard of Hornsey where Thomas Moore buried his little
daughter Barbara, and where the venerable poet Samuel Rogers sleeps
the last sleep. Soon these are gone, and presently, dashing through a
flat country, you get a clear view of Peterborough cathedral, massive,
dark, and splendid, with its graceful cone-shaped pinnacles, its vast
square central tower, and the three great pointed and recessed arches
that adorn its west front. That church contains the dust of Queen
Catherine, the Spanish wife of Henry the Eighth, who died at Kimbolton
Castle, Huntingdonshire, in 1535; and there, in 1587, the remains of
Mary Stuart were first buried,--resting there a long time before her
son, James the First, conveyed them to Westminster Abbey. Both those
queens were buried by the same gravedigger,--that famous sexton, old
Scarlett, whose portrait is in the cathedral, and who died July 2,
1591, aged ninety-eight.
[Illustration: PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL]
The country is so level that the receding tower of Peterborough remains
for a long time in sight, but soon,--as the train speeds through
pastures of clover and through fields of green and red and yellow
herbage, divided by glimmering hedges and diversified with red-roofed
villages and gray church towers,--the land grows hilly, and long white
roads are visible, stretching away like bands of silver over the lonely
hill-tops. Figures of gleaners are seen, now and then, scattered
through fields whence the harvest has lately been gathered. Sheep are
feeding in the pastures, and cattle are couched under fringes of wood.
The bright emerald of the sod sparkles with the golden yellow of the
colt's-foot, and sometimes the scarlet waves of the poppy come tumbling
into the plain, like a cataract of fire. Windmills spread their
whirling sails upon the summits round about, and over the nestling
ivy-clad cottages and over the stately trees there are great flights of
rooks. A gray sky broods above, faintly suffused with sunshine,
but there is no glare and no heat, and often the wind is laden with a
fragrance of wildflowers and of hay.
It is noon at Grantham, where there is just time enough to see that
this is a flourishing city of red-brick houses and fine spacious
streets, with a lofty, spired church, and far away eastward a high
line of hills. Historic Newark is presently reached and passed,--a
busy, contented town, smiling through the sunshine and mist, and as
it fades in the distance I remember that we are leaving Lincoln, with
its glorious cathedral, to the southeast, and to the west Newstead
Abbey, Annesley, Southwell, and Hucknall-Torkard,--places memorably
associated with the poet Byron and dear to the heart of every lover
of poetic literature. At Markham the country is exceedingly pretty,
with woods and hills over which multitudes of rooks and starlings are
in full career, dark, rapid, and garrulous. About Bawtry the land is
flat, and flat it continues to be until we have sped a considerable way
beyond York. But in the meantime we flash through opulent Doncaster,
famed for manufactories and for horse-races, rosy and active amid the
bright green fields. There are not many trees in this region, and as
we draw near Selby,--a large red-brick city, upon the banks of a broad
river,--its massive old church tower looms conspicuous under smoky
skies. In the outskirts of this town there are cosy houses clad with
ivy, in which the pilgrim might well be pleased to linger. But there
is no pause, and in a little while magnificent York bursts upon the
view, stately and glorious, under a black sky that is full of driving
clouds. The minster stands out like a mountain, and the giant towers
rear themselves in solemn majesty,--the grandest piece of church
architecture in England! The brimming Ouse shines as if it were a
stream of liquid ebony. The meadows around the city glow like living
emeralds, while the harvest-fields are stored and teeming with stacks
of golden grain. Great flights of startled doves people the air,--as
white as snow under the sable fleeces of the driving storm. I had seen
York under different guises, but never before under a sky at once so
sombre and so romantic.
We bear toward Thirsk now, leaving behind us, westward of
our track, old Ripon, in the distance, memorable for many
associations,--especially the contiguity of that loveliest of
ecclesiastical ruins, Fountains Abbey,--and cherished in theatrical
annals as the place of the death and burial of the distinguished
founder of the Jefferson family of actors.[48] Bleak Haworth is not
far distant, and remembrance of it prompts many sympathetic thoughts
of the strange genius of Charlotte Brontë. Darlington is the next
important place, a town of manufacture, conspicuous for its tall,
smoking chimneys and evidently prosperous. This is the land of stone
walls and stone cottages,--the grim precinct of Durham. The country
is cultivated, but rougher than the Midlands, and the essentially
diversified character of this small island is once again impressed
upon your mind. All through this region there are little white-walled
houses with red roofs. At Ferry Hill the scenery changes again and
becomes American,--a mass of rocky gorges and densely wooded ravines.
All trace of storm has vanished by this time, and when, after a brief
interval of eager expectation, the noble towers of Durham cathedral
sweep into the prospect, that superb monument of ancient devotion,
together with all the dark gray shapes of that pictorial city,--so
magnificently placed, in an abrupt precipitous gorge, on both sides
of the brimming Weir,--are seen under a sky of the softest Italian
blue, dappled with white clouds of drifting fleece. Durham is all too
quickly passed,--fading away in a landscape sweetly mellowed by a
faint blue mist. Then stately rural mansions appear, half hidden among
great trees. Wreaths of smoke curl upward from scattered dwellings
all around the circle of the hills. Each distant summit is seen to
be crowned with a tower or a town. A fine castle springs into view
just before Birtley glances by, and we see that this is a place of
woodlands, piquant with a little of the roughness of unsophisticated
nature. But the scene changes suddenly, as in a theatre, and almost in
a moment the broad and teeming Tyne blazes beneath the scorching summer
sun, and the gray houses of Gateshead and Newcastle fill the picture
with life and motion. The waves glance and sparkle,--a wide plain of
shimmering silver. The stream is alive with shipping. There is movement
everywhere, and smoke and industry and traffic,--and doubtless noise,
though we are on a height and cannot hear it. A busier scene could not
be found in all this land, nor one more strikingly representative of
the industrial character and interests of England.
[Illustration: _Berwick Castle._]
After leaving Newcastle we glide past a gentle, winding ravine, thickly
wooded on both its sides, with a bright stream glancing in its depth.
The meadows all around are green, fresh, and smiling, and soon our
road skirts beautiful Morpeth, bestriding a dark and lovely river and
crouched in a bosky dell. At Widdrington the land shelves downward, the
trees become sparse, and you catch a faint glimpse of the sea,--the
broad blue wilderness of the Northern Ocean. From this point onward
the panorama is one of perfect and unbroken loveliness. Around you are
spacious meadows of fern, diversified with clumps of fir-trees, and
the sweet wind that blows upon your face seems glad and buoyant with
its exultant vitality. At Warkworth Castle, once the home of the noble
Hotspur, the ocean view is especially magnificent,--the brown and red
sails of the ships and various craft descried at sea contributing to
the prospect a lovely element of picturesque character. Alnwick, with
its storied associations of "the Percy out of Northumberland," is left
to the westward, while on the east the romantic village of Alnmouth
woos the traveller with an irresistible charm. No one who has once seen
that exquisite place can ever be content without seeing it again,--and
yet there is no greater wisdom in the conduct of life than to avoid
forever a second sight of any spot where you have once been happy. This
village, with its little lighthouse and graceful steeple, is built upon
a promontory in the sea, and is approached over the sands by a long,
isolated road across a bridge of four fine arches. All the country-side
in this region is rich. At Long Houghton a grand church uprears its
vast square tower, lonely and solemn in its place of graves. Royal
Berwick comes next, stately and serene upon its ocean crag, with the
white-crested waves curling on its beach and the glad waters of the
Tweed kissing the fringes of its sovereign mantle, as they rush into
the sea. The sun is sinking now, and over the many-coloured meadows,
red and brown and golden and green, the long, thin shadows of the trees
slope eastward and softly hint the death of day. The sweet breeze
of evening stirs the long grasses, and on many a gray stone house
shakes the late pink and yellow roses and makes the ivy tremble. It
is Scotland now, and as we pass through the storied Border we keep
the ocean almost constantly in view,--losing it for a little while at
Dunbar, but finding it again at Drem,--till, past the battlefield of
Prestonpans, and past the quaint villages of Cockenzie and Musselburgh
and the villas of Portobello, we come slowly to a pause in the shadow
of Arthur's Seat, where the great lion crouches over the glorious city
of Edinburgh.