EDWARD EVERETT HALE
To give a complete and truthful account of my own life, the
name of Edward Everett Hale should appear on almost every
page. I became a member of his parish in Worcester in August,
1849. Wherever I have been, or wherever he has been, I have
been his parishioner ever since. I do not undertake to speak
of him at length not only because he is alive, but because
his countrymen know him through and through, almost as well
as I do.
He has done work of the first quality in a great variety
of fields. In each he has done work enough to fill the life
and to fill the measure of fame of a busy and successful man.
I have learned of him the great virtue of Hope; to judge
of mankind by their merits and not their faults; to understand
that the great currents of history, especially in a republic,
more especially in our Republic, are determined by great and
noble motives and not by mean and base motives.
In his very best work Dr. Hale seems always to be doing and
saying what he does and says extempore, without premeditation.
Where he gets the time to acquire his vast stores of knowledge,
or to think the thoughts we all like to hear, nobody can tell.
When he speaks or preaches or writes, he opens his intellectual
box and takes the first appropriate thing that comes to hand.
I do not believe we have a more trustworthy historian than
Dr. Hale, so far as giving us the motive and pith and essence
of great transactions. He is sometimes criticised for inaccuracy
in dates or matters that are trifling or incidental. I suppose
that comes from the fact that while he stores away in his
mind everything that is essential, and trusts to his memory
for that, he has not the time, which less busy men have, to
verify every unsubstantial detail before he speaks or writes.
Sir Thomas Browne put on record his opinion of such critics
in the "Christian Morals."
"Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition and human Lapses,
may make not only Moles but Warts in learned Authors, who
notwithstanding, being judged by the capital matter, admit
not of disparagement. I should unwillingly affirm that Cicero
was but slightly versed in Homer, because in his Work _De
Gloria_ he ascribed those verses unto Ajax, which were delivered
by Hector. Capital Truths are to be narrowly eyed, collateral
Lapses and circumstantial deliveries not to be too strictly
sifted. And if the substantial subject be well forged out,
we need not examine the sparks which irregularly fly from
it."
When Dr. Hale was eighty years old, his countrymen manifested
their affection for him in a manner which I think no other
living man could have commanded. It was my great privilege
to be asked to say to him what all men were thinking, at a
great meeting in Boston. The large and beautiful hall was
thronged with a very small portion of his friends. If they
had all gathered, the City itself would have been thronged.
I am glad to associate my name with that of my beloved teacher
and friend by preserving here what I said. It is a feeble
and inadequate tribute.
The President of the United States spoke for the whole country
in the message which he sent:
WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, Mar. 25, 1902.
_My dear Sen. Hoar:_ I very earnestly wish I could be at
the meeting over which you are to preside in honor of the
eightieth birthday of Edward Everett Hale. A classical allusion
or comparison is always very trite; but I suppose all of us
who have read the simpler classical books think of Timoleon
in his last days at Syracuse, loved and honored in his old
age by the fellow citizens in whose service he had spent the
strength of his best years, as one of the noblest and most
attractive figures in all history. Dr. Hale is just such
a figure now.
We love him and we revere him. We are prouder of our citizenship
because he is our fellow citizen; and we feel that his life
and his writing, both alike, spur us steadily to fresh effort
toward high thinking and right living. To have written "The
Man Without a Country" by itself would be quite enough to
make all the nation his debtor. I belong to the innumerable
army of those who owe him much, and through you I wish him
Godspeed now.
Ever faithfully yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
I spoke as follows:
"If I try to say all that is in my heart to-night, I do not
know where to begin. If I try to say all that is in your
hearts, or in the hearts of his countrymen, I do not know
where to leave off. Yet I can only say what everybody here
is silently saying to himself. When one of your kindred
or neighbors comes to be eighty years old, after a useful and
honored life, especially if he be still in the vigor of manly
strength, his eye not dim or his natural force abated, his
children and his friends like to gather at his dwelling in his
honor, and tell him the story of their gratitude and love.
They do not care about words. It is enough if there be pressure
of the hand and a kindly and loving glance of the eye. That
is all we can do now. But the trouble is to know how to do
it when a man's friends and lovers and spiritual children
are to be counted by the millions. I suppose if all the people
in this country, and, indeed in all the quarters of the globe,
who would like to tell their gratitude to Dr. Hale, were
to come together to do it, Boston Common would not hold them.
"There is once in a while, through the quality is rare, an
author, a historian, or a writer of fiction, or a preacher, or a
pastor, or an orator or poet, or an influential or beloved
citizen, who in everything he says or does seems to be sending
a personal message from himself. The message is inspired
and tinctured and charged and made electric with the quality
of the individual soul. We know where it comes from. No
mask, no shrinking modesty can hide the individuality. Every
man knows from whom it comes, and hails it as a special message
to himself. We say, That is from my friend to me! The message
may be read by a million eyes and reach a million souls. But
every one deems it private and confidential to him.
"This is only, when you come to think of it, carrying the
genius for private and personal friendship into the man's
dealing with mankind. I have never known anybody in all
my long life who seemed to me to be joined by the heart-
strings with so many men and women, wherever he goes, as
Dr. Hale. I know in Worcester, where he used to live; I
know in Washington, where he comes too seldom, and where
for the last thirty-three years I have gone too often, poor
women, men whose lives have gone wrong, or who are crippled
in body or in mind, whose eyes watch for Dr. Hale's coming
and going, and seem to make his coming and going, if they
get a glimpse of him, the event they date from till he comes
again. To me and my little household there, in which we never
count more than two or three, his coming is the event of every
winter.
"Dr. Hale has not been the founder of a sect. He has never
been a builder of partition walls. He has helped throw down
a good many. But still, without making proclamation, he has
been the founder of a school which has enlarged and broadened
the Church into the Congregation, and which has brought the
whole Congregation into the Church.
"When he came, hardly out of his boyhood, to our little parish
in Worcester, there was, so far as I know, no Congregational
church in the country whether Unitarian or of the ancient
Calvinistic faith, which did not require a special vote and
ceremonial of admission to entitle any man to unite with his
brethren in commemorating the Saviour as he desired his friends
and brethren to remember him by the rite of the last supper.
Until then, the Christian communion was but for a favored
few. Mr. Hale believed that the greater the sinfulness of
the individual soul the greater the need and the greater the
title to be taken into the fellowship and the brotherhood
of the Saviour of souls. So, without polemical discussion,
or any heat of controversy, he set the example which has been
so widely followed. This meant a great deal more than the
abolition of a ceremonial or the change of a rubric. It was
an assertion of the great doctrine, never till of late perfectly
comprehended anywhere, that the Saviour of men came into the
world inspired by the love of sinners, and not for an elect
and an exclusive brotherhood of saints.
"We are not thinking chiefly of another world when we think
of Dr. Hale or when we listen to him. He has been telling
us all his life that what the theologians call two worlds
are but one; that the Kingdom of God is here, within and around
you; that there is but one Universe and not two; that the
relation of man to God is that of father and child, not of
master and slave, or even of sovereign and subject; that when
man wields any of the great forces of the Universe, it is
God also who is wielding them through him; that the power
of a good man is one of God's powers, and that when man is
doing his work faithfully the supreme power of God's omnipotence
is with him.
"Dr. Hale has done a good many things in his own matchless
fashion. He would have left a remarkable name and fame behind
him if he had been nothing but a student and narrator of history,
as he has studied and told it; if he had been nothing but
a writer of fiction--the author of 'The Man Without a Country,'
or 'Ten Times One is Ten,' or 'In His Name'--if he had done
nothing but organize the Lend a Hand clubs, now found in the
four quarters of the world; if he had been nothing but an
eloquent Christian preacher; if he had been nothing but a
beloved pastor; if he had been only a voice which lifted to
heaven in prayer the souls of great congregations; if he had
been only a public-spirited citizen, active and powerful in
every good word and work for the benefit of this people; it
he had been only the man who devised the plan that might have
saved Texas from slavery, and thereby prevented the Civil
War, and which did thereafter save Kansas; if he had been
only remembered as the spiritual friend and comforter of large
numbers of men and women who were desolate and stricken by
poverty and sorrow; if he had been only a zealous lover of
his country, comprehending, as scarcely any other man has
comprehended, the true spirit of the American people; if he
had been any one of these things, as he has been, it would
be enough to satisfy the most generous aspiration of any man,
enough to make his life worth living for himself and his race.
And yet, and yet, do I exaggerate one particle, when I say
that Dr. Hale has been all these, and more?
"Edward Everett Hale has been the interpreter of a pure,
simple loving and living faith to thousands and thousands
of souls. He has taught us that the fatherhood and tenderness
of God are manifested here and now in this world, as they
will be hereafter; that the religion of Christ is a religion
of daily living; that salvation is the purifying of the soul
from sin, not its escape from the consequences of sin. He
is the representative and the incarnation of the best and
loftiest Americanism. He knows the history of his country,
and knows his countrymen through and through. He does not
fancy that he loves his country, while he dislikes and despises
his countrymen and everything they have done and are doing.
The history he loves and has helped to write and to make is
not the history of a base and mean people, who have drifted
by accident into empire. It is the history of such a nation
as Milton conceived, led and guided by men whom Milton would
have loved. He will have a high and a permanent place in
literature, which none but Defoe shares. He possesses the
two rarest of gifts, that to give history the fascination
of fiction, and that to give fiction the verisimilitude of
history. He has been the minister of comfort in sorrow and
of joy in common life to countless persons to whom his friendship
is among their most precious blessings, or by whose fireside
he sits, personally unknown, yet a perpetual and welcome guest.
"Still, the first duty of every man is to his own family.
He may be a warrior or a statesman, or reformer, or philanthropist,
or prophet or poet, if he careth not first for his own household,
he is worse than an infidel. So the first duty of a Christian
minister is still that of a pastor to his own flock. You
know better than I do how it has been here in Boston; but
every one of our little parish in Worcester, man or woman,
boy or girl, has felt from the first time he or she knew him,
ever afterward, that Dr. Hale has been taking hold of his
hand. That warmth and that pressure abide through all our
lives, and will abide to the end. There are countless persons
who never saw his face, who still deem themselves his obedient,
loving and perpetual parishioners.
"I knew very well a beautiful woman, left widowed, and childless,
and solitary, and forlorn, to whom, after every other consolation
seemed to have failed to awake her from her sorrow and despair,
a friend of her own sex said: 'I thought you were one of
Edward Hale's girls.' The appeal touched the right chord
and brought her back again to her life of courage and Christian
well-doing.
"He has ever been a prophet of good hope and a preacher of
good cheer. When you have listened to one of his sermons,
you have listened to an evangel, to good tidings. He has
never stood aloof from the great battles for righteousness
or justice. When men were engaged in the struggle to elevate
the race for the good of their fellow men, no word of discouragement
has ever come from his lips. He has recalled no memory of
old failure in the past. He has never been found outside
the ranks railing at or criticising the men who were doing
the best work, or were doing the best work they knew how to
do. He has never been afraid to tackle the evils that other
men think hopeless. He has uttered his brave challenge to
foemen worthy of his steel. Poverty and war and crime and
sorrow are the enemies with whom he has striven.
"I do not know another living man who has exercised a more
powerful influence on the practical life of his generation.
He has taught us the truth, very simple, but somehow nobody
ever got hold of it till he did, that virtue and brave living,
and helping other men, can be made to grow by geometrical
progression. I am told that Dr. Hale has more correspondents
in Asia than the London _Times._ I cannot tell how many persons
are enrolled in the clubs of which he was the founder and
inspirer.
"But I am disqualified to do justice to the theme you have
assigned to me. For an impartial verdict you must get an
impartial juryman. You will have to find somebody that loves
him less than I do. You cannot find anybody who loves him
more. To me he has been a friend and father and brother and
counsellor and companion and leader and instructor; prophet
of good hope, teacher of good cheer. His figure mingles with
my household life, and with the life of my country. I can
hardly imagine either without him. He has pictured for us
the infinite desolation of the man without a country. But
when his time shall come, what will be the desolation of the
country without the man?
"And now what can we give you who have given us so much? We
have something to give you on our side. We bring you a more
costly and precious gift than any jewel or diadem, though
it came from an Emperor's treasury.
Love is a present for a mighty King.
"We bring you the heart's love of Boston where you were born,
and Worcester where you took the early vows you have kept
so well; of Massachusetts who knows she has no worthier son,
and of the great and free country to whom you have taught
new lessons of patriotism, and whom you have served in a thousand
ways.
"This prophet is honored in his own country. There will
be a place found for him somewhere in the House of many Mansions.
I do not know what will be the employment of our dear friend
in the world whose messages he has been bringing to us so
long. But I like to think he will be sent on some errands
like that of the presence which came to Ben Adhem with a great
wakening light, rich and like a lily in bloom, to tell him
that the name of him who loved his fellow men led all the
names of those the love of God had blessed."
APPENDIX
THE FOREST OF DEAN
BY JOHN BELLOWS
The Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, is one of the very
few primeval Forests of Britain that have survived to this
century. It has just been my privilege to accompany Senator
Hoar on a drive through a portion of it, and he has asked
me to write a few notes on this visit, for the American Antiquarian
Society, in the hope that others of its members may share
in the interest he has taken in its archaeology.
I am indebted for many years' acquaintance with George F.
Hoar, through Oliver Wendell Holmes, to the circumstance
that the Hoar family lived in Gloucester from the time of
the Tudors, if not earlier; and this has led him to pay repeated
visits to our old city, with the object of tracing the history
of his forefathers. In doing this he has been very successful;
and only within the last few months my friend H. Y. J. Taylor,
who is an untiring searcher of our old records, has come upon
an item in the expenses of the Mayor and Burgesses, of a payment
to Charles Hoar, in the year 1588, for keeping a horse ready
to carry to Cirencester the tidings of the arrival of the
Spanish Armada. And Charles Hoar's house is with us to this
day, quaintly gabled, and with over-hanging timber-framed
stories, such as the Romans built here in the first century.
It stands in Longsmith Street, just above the spot where forty
years ago I looked down on a beautiful tessellated pavement
of, perhaps, the time of Valentinian. It was eight feet below
the present surface; for Gloucester, like Rome, has been
a rising city.
Senator Hoar had been making his headquarters at Malvern,
and he drove over from there one afternoon, with a view to
our going on in the same carriage to the Forest. A better
plan would have been to run by rail to Newnham or Lydney,
to be met by a carriage from the "Speech House," a government
hotel in the centre of the woods; but as the arrangement had
been made we let it stand.
To give a general idea of the positions of the places we
are dealing with, I may say that Upton Knoll, where I am
writing, stands on the steep edge of a spur of the Cotteswold
Hills, three and a half miles south of Gloucester. Looking
north, we have before us the great vale, or rather plain,
of the Severn, bounded on the right by the main chain of the
Cotteswolds, rising to just over one thousand feet; and on
the left by the hills of Herefordshire, and the beautiful
blue peaks of the Malverns; these last being by far the most
striking feature in the landscape, rising as they do in a
sharp serrated line abruptly from the plain below. They are
about ten miles in length, and the highest point, the Worcestershire
Beacon, is some fourteen hundred feet above the sea. It is
the spot alluded to in Macaulay's lines on the Armada--
Till twelve fair counties saw the blaze on Malvern's lonely
height;
and two hundred years before the Armada it was on "Malvern
hulles" that William Langland "forwandered" till he fell asleep
and dreamed his fiery "Vision of Piers Plowman"--
In a somere season, when softe was the sonne
when, looking "esteward, after the sonne" he beheld a castle
on Bredon Hill
Truth was ther-ynne
and this great plain, that to him symbolized the world.
A fair feld ful of folke fonde ich ther bytwyne;
Alle manere of men; the meme and the ryche.
Now, in the afternoon light, we can see the towns of Great
and North Malvern, and Malvern Wells, nestling at foot of
the steep slant; and eight miles to the right, but over thirty
from where we stand, the cathedral tower of Worcester. The
whole plain is one sea of woods with towers and steeples glinting
from every part of it; notably Tewkesbury Abbey, which shines
white in the sunlight some fourteen miles from us. Nearer,
and to the right, Cheltenham stretches out under Cleeve Hill,
the highest of the Cotteswolds; and to the left Gloucester,
with its Cathedral dwarfing all the buildings round it. This
wooded plain before us dies away in the north into two of
the great Forests of ancient Britain; Wyre, on the left, from
which Worcester takes its name; and Feckenham, on the right,
with Droitwich as its present centre. Everywhere through
this area we come upon beautiful old timber-framed houses
of the Tudor time or earlier; Roman of origin, and still met
with in towns the Romans garrisoned, such as Chester and Gloucester,
though they have modernized their roofs, and changed their
diamond window panes for squares, as in the old house of Charles
Hoar's, previously mentioned.
Now if we turn from the north view to the west, we get a different
landscape. Right before us, a mile off, is Robin's Wood Hill,
a Cotteswold outlier; in Saxon times called "Mattisdun" or
"Meadow-hill," for it is grassed to the top, among its trees.
"Matson" House, there at its foot, was the abode of Charles
I. during his siege of Gloucester in 1643. To the left of
this hill we have again the Vale of the Severn, and beyond
it, a dozen miles away, and stretching for twenty miles to
the southwest are the hills of the Forest of Dean. They are
steep, but not lofty--eight hundred or nine hundred feet.
At their foot yonder, fourteen miles off, is the lake-like
expanse of the Severn; and where it narrows to something under
a mile is the Severn Bridge that carries the line into the
Forest from the Midland Railway. Berkeley Castle lies just
on the left of it, but is buried in the trees. Thornbury
Tower, if not Thornbury Castle, further south, is visible
when the sun strikes on it. Close to the right of the bridge
is an old house that belonged to Sir Walter Raleigh; and,
curiously enough, another on the river bank not far above
it is said to have been occupied by Sir Francis Drake just
before the coming of the Armada. The Duke of Medina Sidonia,
who commanded the Spanish fleet, was ordered to detach a force
as soon as he landed, to destroy the Forest of Dean, which
was a principal source for timber for the British navy; and
it is probable that the Queen's ministers were aware of this
and took measures in defence, with which Drake had to do.
Two miles lower than the bridge is the Forest port of Lydney,
now chiefly used for shipping coal; and as the ex-Verderer
of the Forest resides near it, and he would be able to furnish
information of interest to our American visitor, we decided
to drive to Lydney to begin.
It was too late to start the same day, however; and Senator
Hoar stayed at Upton, where his visit happens to mark the
close of what is known as the "open-field" system of tillage;
a sort of midway between the full possession of land by freehold,
and unrestricted common rights. The area over which he walked,
and which for thousands of years has been divided by "meres"
and boundary stones, is now to be enclosed, and so will lose
its archaeological claims to interest. In one corner of it,
however, there still remains a fragment of Roman road, with
some of the paving stones showing through the grass of the
pasture field. The name of this piece of land gives the clue
to its history. It is called Sandford; a corruption of Sarn
Ford, from _sarnu_ (pronounced "sarney") _to pave;_ and _fford,_
a road. These are Celtic Cornish and Welsh words; and it
should be noted that the names of the Roman roads in the Island
as well as those of the mountains and rivers, are nearly all
Celtic, and not Latin or Saxon.*
[Footnote]
* The Whitcombe Roman Villa, four miles east of Upton, stands in
a field called Sandals. In Lyson's description of it, written
in 1819 it stands as _Sarn_dells. The paved road ran through
the dell.
[End of Footnote]
We made a short delay in the morning, at Gloucester, to give
Senator Hoar time to go on board the boat "Great Western"
which had just arrived in our docks from Gloucester, Massachusetts,
to visit the mother city, after a perilous voyage across the
Atlantic by Captain Blackburn single-handed. Senator Hoar
having welcomed the captain in his capacity of an old Englishman
and a New Englander "rolled into one," we set out for Lydney,
skirting the bank of one arm of the Severn which here forms
an island. It was on this Isle of Alney that Canute and Edmund
Ironside fought the single-handed battle that resulted in
their dividing England between them.* We pass on to the Island
at Westgate Bridge; and a quarter of a mile further leave
it by Over Bridge; one of Telford's beautiful works. Just
below it the Great Western Railway crosses the river by an
iron bridge, the western piers of which rest upon Roman foundations.
[Footnote]
* Sharon Turner's "Anglo Saxons," Vol. III., Chap. XV.
[End of Footnote]
One remarkable thing which I believe I forgot to mention to
George Hoar as we crossed the Island, is, that the meadows
on both sides of the causeway belong to the "Freemen" of the
city; and that, go back as far as we may in history, we cannot
find any account of the original foundation of this body.
But we have this clue to it--that Gloucester was made into
a Colony in the reign of Nerva, just before the end of the
first century; and in each Roman colony lands were allotted
to the soldiers of the legions who had become freemen by reason
of having served for twenty-five years. These lands were
always on the side of the city nearest the enemy; and the
lands we are crossing are on the western side of Glevum, nearest
the _Silures,_ or South Welsh, who were always the most dangerous
enemies the Romans had in Britain. Similarly, at Chester,
the freemen's lands are on the west, or enemy's side, by the
Dee. In Bath it was the same.
Immediately after passing "Over" Bridge we might turn off,
it time permitted, to see Lassington Oak, a tree of giant
size and unknown age; but as Emerson says--
There's not enough for this and that--
Make thy option which of two!
and we make ours for Lydney. A dozen miles drive, often
skirting the right bank of the Severn, brings us to Newnham,
a picturesque village opposite a vast bend, or horse-shoe,
of the river, and over which we get a beautiful view from
the burial ground on the cliff. The water expands like a
lake, beyond which the woods, house-interspersed, stretch
away to the blue Cotteswold Hills; the monument to William
Tyndale being a landmark on one of them--Nibley Knoll. Just
under that monument was fought the last great battle between
Barons. This battle of Nibley Knoll, between Lord Berkeley
and Lord Lisle, left the latter dead on the field, at night,
with a thousand of the men of the two armies; and made Lord
Berkeley undisputed master of the estates whose name he bore.
We now leave the river, and turn inland; and in a short time
we have entered the Forest of Dean proper; that is, the lands
that belong to the Crown. Their area may be roughly set down
as fifteen miles by ten; but in the time of the Conqueror,
and for many years after, it was much larger; extending from
Ross on the north, to Gloucester on the east, and thence thirty
miles to Chepstow on the south-west. That is, it filled the
triangle formed by the Severn and the Wye between these towns.
It is doubtless due to this circumstance of its being so completely
cut off from the rest of the country by these rivers that
it has preserved more remarkably than any other Forest, the
characteristics and customs of ancient British life, to which
we shall presently refer; for their isolation has kept the
Dean Foresters to this hour a race apart.
Sir James Campbell, who was for between thirty and forty years
the chief "Verderer," or principal government officer of the
Forest, lives near Lydney. He received us with great kindness,
and gave us statistics of the rate of grown of the oak, both
with and without transplantation. Part of them are published
in an official report on the Forest (A 12808. 6/1884. Wt.
3276. Eyre & Spottiswoode, London) and part are in manuscript
with which Senator Hoar has been presented. Briefly, the
chief points are these:
In 1784 or thereabouts acorns were planted in "Acorn Patch
Enclosure" in the Forest; and in 1800 trees marked A and B
were taken from this place and planted opposite the "Speech
House." Two, marked D and F, were drawn out of Acorn Patch
in 1807 and planted near the Speech House fence. Another,
marked N, was planted in 1807, five and one-half feet high,
in the Speech House grounds, next the road; and L, M, N, X,
have remained untransplanted in the Acorn Patch.
The dimensions were (circumference, six feet from the ground),
in inches--
A B D F L M N X
In 1814, Oct. 5, 14-3/4 14 11 9-1/2 15-5/8 18-1/2 13 24-1/2
1824, Oct. 20, 29-1/2 28-3/4 25-3/8 22-1/8 22-1/2 23-3/4 30-1/8 32-1/8
1844, Oct. 5, 58-1/2 58 45 46 35 34-1/2 57 44-1/2
1864, Oct. 1, 73-1/2 71 59-1/2 67-3/4 46-1/2 44 73-1/4 56
Another experiment tried by Sir James Campbell himself gave
the following results:
Experiment begun in 1861 to test the value, if any, of merely
lifting and replanting oak trees in the same holes without
change of soil, situation, or giving increased space; as compared
with the experiment already detailed, which was begun in
1800.
In 1861, twelve oak trees of about 25 years' growth, which
had been self-sown (dropping from old trees afterwards cut
down) in a thick plantation, were selected, all within gunshot
of each other, and circumferences measured at five feet from
the ground. Of these, six were taken up and immediately replanted
in the same holes. The other six were not interfered with
at all.
Aggregate admeasurement of six Aggregate admeasurement of six
dug up and replanted. Marked not interfered with. Marked in
in _white_ paint 1, 2, 3, &c. _red_ paint 1, 2, 3, &c.
1861, 24-1/2 inches 27 inches (_i. e._, 2-1/2 inches more
than the transplanted ones,
at starting.)
1866, 37-3/4 " 46-1/2 " (_i. e._, 10-7/8 inches more
than the transplanted ones
at starting.)
1886, 118-1/4 " 118-5/8 " (_i. e._, the transplanted
ones had now _regained_
10-1/2 inches.)
1888, 125-1/2 " 123-1/2 " (The transplanted trees in '88
had outgrown the others by
2 ins.)
1890, 133-7/8 " 128 " (The transplanted trees in '90
had outgrown the others by
5-7/8 ins.)
1892, 141 " 131-1/4 " (The transplanted trees in '92
had outgrown the others by
9-3/4 ins.)
Thus proving that merely transplanting is beneficial to oaks;
the benefit, however, being greater when the soil is changed
and more air given.*
[Footnote]
* The Earl of Ducie, who has had very large experience as an
arboriculturist, does _not_ hold the view that oaks are benefited
by transplanting, if the acorns are sown _in good soil._ In the
case of trees that show little or no satisfactory progress after
four years, but are only just able to keep alive, he cuts them
down to the root. In the next season 80 per cent. of them
send up shoots from two to three feet high, and at once start
off on their life's mission.
[End of Footnote]
From Lydney a drive of a few miles through pleasant ups and
downs of woodland and field, brings us to Whitemead Park,
the official residence of the Verderer, Philip Baylis. The
title "Verderer" is Norman, indicating the administration
of all that relates to the "Vert" or "Greenery" of the Forest;
that is, of the timber, the enclosures, the roads, and the
surface generally. The Verderer's Court is held at the "Speech
House," to which we shall presently come: but the Forest of
Dean is also a mineral district, and the Miners have a separate
Court of their own. That some of their customs go back to
a very remote antiquity we may well believe when we find the
scale of which the Romans worked iron in the Forest; a scale
so great that with their imperfect method of smelting with
Catalan furnaces, etc., so much metal was left in the Roman
cinder that it has been sought after all the way down to within
the present generation as a source of profit; and in the
time of Edward I., one-fourth of the king's revenue from
this Forest was derived from the remelted Roman refuse.
I have a beautiful Denarius of Hadrian which was found in
the old Roman portion of the Lydney-Park Iron Mine in 1854,
with a number of other silver coins, some of them earlier
in date; but when we speak of the "mines," the very ancient
ones in the Forest were rather deep quarries than what would
now be termed mines. As we drive along we now and then notice
near the roadside, nearly hidden by the dense foliage of the
bushes, long dark hollows, which are locally known as _"scowles,"_
another Celtic word meaning gorges or hollows; something like
ghyll in the Lake District, "Dungeon Ghyll," and so on. These
were Roman and British Hematite mines. If we had been schoolboys
I would have taken Senator Hoar down into a scowl and we should
both have come back with our clothes spoiled, and our arms
full of the splendid hartstongue ferns that cover the sides
and edges of the ravine. But they are dangerous places for
any but miners _or_ schoolboys; and I shrank from encouraging
an enthusiastic American to risk being killed in a Roman pit,
even with the ideal advantage of afterwards being buried with
his own ancestors in England! So I said but little about
them.
The Miners' Court is presided over by another government
officer, called the "Gaveller"; from a Celtic word which means
_holding;_ as in the Kentish custom of "Gavelkind."* These
courts are held in "Saint Briavels" (pronounced "Brevels")
Castle: a quaint old building of the thirteenth century,
on the western edge of the Forest, where it was placed to
keep the Welsh in check. It looks down on a beautiful reach
of the river Wye at Bigswear; and it was just on this edge
that Wordsworth stood in 1798, when he thought out his "Lines
composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey," etc.
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters; and again I hear
These waters rolling from their mountain springs
With a soft inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs.
Senator Hoar will recall the scene from the railway below:
the
"Plots of cottage ground" that "lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses";
and he will say how exactly the words describe
These hedge-rows; hardly hedge-rows; little lines
Of sportive wood run wild,
for they cover yards in width in some places, as he will
remember my pointing out to him. The castle is placed on
the outside of the Forest and close on the Wye, to guard what
was seven centuries ago the frontier of Wales; and the late
William Philip Price (Commissioner of Railways and for many
years member of Parliament for Gloucester) told me that when
he was a boy the Welsh tongue was still spoken at Landogo,
the next village down the river, midway between Bigswear and
Tintern.
[Footnote]
* I suspect "Gaffer," the English equivalent of "Boss," may be
the same root: _i. e.,_ the _taker_ or contractor.
[End of Footnote]
Philip Baylis showed us some of the old parchments connected
with the Mine Court; one document especially precious being
a copy of the "Book of Denys," made in the time of Edward
III. It sets forth the ancient customs which formed the laws
of the miners. At this point the Verderer had to settle some
matter of the instant, but he put us under the care of a young
man who acted as our guide to one of the ancient and giant
oaks of the Forest, on the "Church Hill" enclosure, about
three-quarters of a mile up the hill above the Park. Nicholls
("History of the Forest of Dean," page 20) thinks the name
Church Hill comes from the setting apart of some land here
for the Convent of _Grace Dieu_ to pay for masses for the
souls of Richard II., his ancestors and successors.
It was a steep climb; and the evening twilight was coming
on apace as we followed the little track to the spot where
the old oak rises high above the general level of the wood,
reminding one of Rinaldo's magical myrtle, in "Jerusalem Delivered":
O'er pine, and palm, and cypress it ascends;
And towering thus all other trees above
Looks like the elected queen and genius of the grove!
Only that for an _oak_ of similar standing we must say "king"
instead of "queen"; emblem as it is of iron strength and endurance.
It is not so much the girth of the tree as its whole bearing
that impresses a beholder; and I do not think either of us
will forget its effect in the gloom and silence and mystery
of the gathering night.
Resisting a kindly pressure to stay the night at Whitemead,
that we might keep to our programme of sleeping at the Speech
House, we started on the last portion of the long day's drive.
The road from Parkend, after we have climbed a considerable
hill, keeps mostly to the level of a high ridge. It is broad
and smooth; and the moonlight and its accompanying black shadows
on the trees made the journey one of great beauty; while the
mountain air lessened the sense of fatigue that would otherwise
have pressed heavily on us after so long a day amid such novel
surroundings. The only thing to disturb the solitude is
the clank of machinery; and the lurid lights, as we pass a
colliery; and then a mile of two more with but the sound
of our own wheels and the rhythm of the horses' feet, and
we suddenly draw up at an hotel in the midst of the Forest,
its quiet well-lighted interior inviting us through the doorway,
left open to the cool summer night air. We are at the Speech
House. We had bespoken our rooms by wire in the morning:
Senator Hoar had a _chambre d'honneur,_ with a gigantic carved
four-post bed that reminded him of the great bed of Ware.
His room like my "No. 5," looked out over magnificent bays
of woodland to the north. The Speech House is six hundred
feet above the sea, and the mountain breeze coming through
the wide open window, with this wonderful prospect of oak
and beech and holly in the moonlight,--the distance veiled,
but scarcely veiled, by the mist, suggest a poem untranslatable
in words, and incommunicable except to those who have passed
under the same spell. We speak of a light that makes darkness
visible; and similarly there are sounds that deepen the long
intervals of silence with which they alternate. One or two
vehicles driving past; now and then the far-off call of owls
answering one another in the woods--one of the sweetest sounds
in nature--the varying cadence carrying with it a sense of
boundlessness and infinite distance; and with it we fall asleep.
If there is anything more beautiful than a moonlight summer
night in the heart of the Forest of Dean, it is its transformation
into a summer morning, with the sparkle of dew on the grass,
and the sunrise on the trees; with the music of birds, and
the freshness that gives all these their charm.
As soon as we are dressed we take a stroll out among the trees.
In whichever direction we turn we are struck by the abundance
of hollies. I believe there are some three thousand full
grown specimens within a radius of a mile of the Speech House.
This may be due to the spot having been from time immemorial
the central and most important place in the Forest. The roads
that lead to it still show the Roman paving-stones in many
places, as Senator Hoar can bear witness; and the central
point of a British Forest before the Roman time would be occupied
by a sacred oak. The Forest into which Julius Caesar pursued
the Britons to their stronghold, was Anderida, that is, the
Holy Oak; from _dar,_ oak (Sanskrit, daru, a tree), and _da,_
good. It is worth remarking that this idea survives in the
personal name, Holyoak; for who ever heard of "Holyelm," or
"Holyash," or a similar form compounded of the adjective and
the name of any other tree than the oak. If there is an exception
it is in the name of the _holly_. The Cornish Celtic word
for holly was Celyn, from Celli (or Kelli), a grove; literally
a _grove-one;_ so that the holly was probably planted as a
grove or screen round the sacred oak. Such a planting of
a holly grove in the central spot of the Forest in the Druid
time, would account for these trees being now so much more
numerous round the Speech House than they are in any other
part of the woods. The Saxon name is merely the word _holy_
with the vowel shortened, as in _holi_day; and that the tree
really was regarded as holy is shown by the custom in the
Forest Mine Court of taking the oath on a stick of holly held
in the hand. This custom survived down to our own times;
for Kedgwin H. Fryer, the late Town Clerk of Gloucester,
told me he had often seen a miner sworn in the Court, touching
the Bible with the holly stick! The men always kept their
caps on when giving evidence to show they were "Free miners."
The oaks, marked A. B., of whose growth statistics have already
been given, stand on the side of the Newnham road opposite
the Speech House. The Verderer is carrying on the annual
record of their measurements.
We return to the house by the door on the west; the one at
which we arrived last evening. It was then too dark to observe
that the stone above it, of which I took a careful sketch
several years ago, is crumbling from the effects of weather,
after having withstood them perfectly for two centuries. The
crown on it is scarcely recognizable; and the lettering has
all disappeared except part of the R.
We breakfast in the quaint old Court room. Before us is
the railed-off dais, at the end, where the Verderer and his
assistants sit to administer the law. On the wall behind
them are the antlers of a dozen stags; reminders of the time,
about the middle of the present century, when the herds of
deer were destroyed on account of the continual poaching to
which they gave occasion. Many of the cases that come before
the Court now are of simple trespass.
This quaint old room, with its great oak beam overhead, and
its kitchen grate wide enough to roast a deer--this strange
blending of an hotel dining-room and a Court of Justice, has
nevertheless a link with the far distant past more wonderful
than anything that has come down to us in the ruins of Greece
or Rome.
Look at the simple card that notifies the dates of holding
the Vederer's Court. Here is an old one which the Verderer,
Philip Baylis, has kindly sent to Senator Hoar in response
to his request for a copy.
V. R.
Her Majesty's Forest of Dean,
Gloucestershire,
VERDERERS' COURT.
Verderers:
Charles Bathurst, Esq. Sir Thomas H.
Crawley-Boevey, Bart.
Maynard Willoughby Colchester-Wemyss, Esq.
Russell James Kerr, Esq.
Deputy-Surveyor:
Philip Baylis, Esq.
Steward:
James Wintle.
----NOTICE----
The VERDERERS of Her Majesty's Forest of Dean hereby give
Notice that the COURT of ATTACHMENT of our Sovereign Lady
the Queen for the said Forest will be holden by adjournment, at
the Speech House, in the said Forest, at half-past Two o'clock, in
the afternoon, on the following days during the year 1897, viz.:
Wednesday, the 27th January;
Monday, the 8th March;
Saturday, the 17th April;
Thursday, the 27th May;
Tuesday, the 6th July;
Monday, the 16th August;
Friday, the 24th September;
Wednesday, the 3rd November;
Monday, the 13th December;
James Wintle,
Steward.
Newnham, 1st January, 1897.
Many years ago I stood in the Court Room examining a similar
notice, puzzled at the absence of any system or order in the
times appointed for the sittings, which did not come once
a month, or every six weeks; and did not even fall twice in
succession on the same day of the week. Turning to the landlord
of the hotel I asked, "What is the rule for holding the Court?
_When_ is it held?" _"Every forty days at twelve o'clock
at noon"_ was the reply. Reflection showed that so strange
a periodicity related to no notation of time with which we
are now in touch; it must belong to a system that has passed
away; but what could this be?
We are reminded by the date of the building we are in (1680),
that the room itself cannot have been used for much more than
two centuries for holding the Courts.
But there was a Verderer's Court held in several Forests
besides this Forest of Dean, long before the Stuart days.
The office itself is mentioned in Canute's Forest charter,
dating back nearly nine hundred years; and as at that period
about a third of England was covered with Forests, their influence
must have been very powerful; and local laws and customs in
them must have been far too firmly established for such a
man as Canute to alter them. He could only have confirmed
what he found; much as he confirmed the laws of nature as
they affected the tides at Southampton!
The next Forest Charter of national importance after Canute's,
is that of Henry III., in 1225. It is clear that he, again,
made no material change in the old order of things; and in
recapitulating the old order of the Forest Courts, he ordains
that the Court of Attachment (called in Dean Forest the Court
of the Speech) was to be held _every forty days._ This Court
was one of first instance, simply for the hearing of evidence
and getting up the cases for the "Swainmote,"* which came
_three times a year._ The Swains were free man; and at their
_mote_ evidence was required from _three_ witnesses in each
case, on which the Verderer and other officers of the king
passed sentence in accordance with the laws laid down in this
Charter. From this Swainmote there was a final appeal to
the High Court of the Judges in Eyre (Eyre, from "errer" to
wander, being the Norman French for Itinerant, or, on Circuit)
which was held _once in three years._
[Footnote]
* That the Forest Charter of Hen. III. did not establish these
courts is proved from a passage in Manwood, cap. 8, which runs
thus: "And the said Swainmotes shal not be kept but within the
counties in the which they have been used to be kept."
[End of Footnote]
The forty-day court was common to all the ancient forests
of Britain; and that they go back to _before_ the time of
Henry III. is clear from the following extracts from Coke's
Fourth Institute, for which I am indebted to the kindness
of James G. Wood, of Lincoln's Inn.
CAP. LXXIII.
Of the Forests and the Jurisdiction of the Courts
[p 289] of the Forest.
* * * * * * *
And now let us set down the Courts of the
Forests--Within _every_ Forest there are these
Courts
1. The Court of the Attachments or the Woodmote
Court. This is to kept before the
Verderors every forty days throughout the year
--and thereupon it is called the Forty-day
Court--At this Court the Foresters bring in
the Attachments de viridi et venalione [&c &c]
* * * * * * *
2. The Court of regard or Survey of days is
holden every third year [&c &c]
* * * * * * *
3. The Court of Swainmote is to be holden
before the Verderors as judges by the Steward of
the Swainmote thrice in every year [&c]
* * * * * * *
4. ------ The Court of the Justice Seat holden
before the Chief Justice of the Forest ---- aptly
called Justice in eire ------ and this Court of
the Justice Seat cannot be kept oftener than
every third year.
* * * * * * *
[319] _For the antiquity of such Forests within England
as we have treated of the best and surest argument
therof is that the Forests in England (being in
number 69) except the New Forest in Hampshire
erected by William the Conqueror as a conqueror,
and Hampton Court Forest by Hy 3, by authority
of Parliament, are so ancient as no record or
history doth make any mention of any of their
Erections or beginnings._
Here then we have clear evidence that nearly seven hundred
years ago the Verderer's Court was being held at periods of
time that bore no relation to any division of the year known
to the Normans or Plantagenets, or, before them, to the Saxons,
or even, still earlier, to the Romans. We are, therefore,
driven back to the period before the Roman invasion in Britain,
and when the Forest legislation was, as Caesar found it, in
the hands of the Druids. In his brief and vivid account of
these people he tells us that they used the Greek alphabet;
and as he also says they were very proficient in astronomy,
it seems clear that they had their astronomy from the same
source as their literature. Their astronomy involved of necessity
their notation of time. And the Greeks, in turn, owed their
astronomy to the Egyptians, with whom the year was reckoned
as of three hundred and sixty days; and this three hundred
and sixty-day year gives us the clue to the forty-day period
for holding the Forest Courts in Ancient Britain.
We cannot fail to be struck, as we examine the old Forest
customs, with the constant use of the _number three,_ as a
sacred or "lucky" number, on every possible occasion. We
have just seen the role it plays in the Mine Court, with its
_three_ presiding officials, its jury of multiples of _three_
(twelve, twenty-four, forty-eight); its holly stick oath sworn
by _three_ witnesses. We have notice the Swainmote Court,
also requiring _three_ witnesses, held _three_ times a year, and
subordinate to the Court of Eyre held once in _three_ years;
to which should be added the perambulation of the Forest
bounds at the same triennial visit in Eyre, when the king's
officers were accompanied by nine foresters in fee (_three
threes_) and twenty-four jurors (_eight threes_).
To go fully into the role of the number three in British
traditions would require a profound study; but it may be
useful briefly to note its influence on the Bardic poetry--
the Triads, where the subjects are all grouped in threes.
Nor was this predilection confined to the Island. We find
it affecting the earliest history of Rome itself, with its _nine_
gods ("By the nine gods he swore") and the _nine_ books which
the Sibyl destroyed by _threes,_ till the last _three_ were
saved. Then we have the evidence in the name _nundina_*
for a market, that the week was originally a cycle not of
seven, but of _nine_ days; and our own saying that a given
thing is a _"nine days wonder"_ is undoubtedly a survival
from the period when the nine days made a week,** for such
a phrase expresses a round number or unit of time; not nine
_separate_ days.
[Footnotes]
* The Romans meant by _nundinae_ periods that were really of
eight days; but they made them nine by counting in the one _from_
which they started. So accustomed were they to this method
of notation that the priests who had the control of the calendar,
upset Julius Caesar's plan for intercalating a day once in
_four_ years ("Bissextile") by insisting that the interval
intended was _three_ years! Augustus was obliged to rectify
this by dropping the overplus day it occasioned. It is this
Roman custom of _inclusive_ reckoning which has led to the
French calling a week _huit jours_, and a fortnight, _une
quinzaine_.
** The word week comes from _wika_ (= Norsk _vika_) to bend or
_turn_. The idea connected with it was no doubt that of the
moon's turning from one of its quarters to the next. I can
remember when some of the people in "the Island" in Gloucester
always made a point of _turning_ any coins they had in their
pockets when it was new moon and repeating a sort of invocation
to the moon! How or when the nine day week was exchanged
by western nations for the seven day one, we do not know;
but it is likely that it may have been brought about by the
Phoenicians and Jews, who regarded the number _seven_ as
the Druids regarded _three_--as something especially sacred.
They had much of the commerce of Southern Europe in their
hands, and, therefore, a certain power in controlling the
markets, which it would be a convenience to Jews to _prevent_
falling on the sabbath day. The circumstance that the lunar
month fitted in with four weeks of seven days no doubt made it
easier to effect the change from _nundinae_.
[End of Footnotes]
Shakespeare had been struck with the relationship of the
_nine_ day week, alluded to in the proverb, to the more modern
one of seven days, as is shown by his very clever juxtaposition
of the two in "As You Like It." In Act III., Scene 2, he
makes Celia say to Rosalind
"But didst thou hear _without wondering_ how thy name should
be hanged and carved upon these trees?"
And Rosalind replies
"I was _seven_ of the _nine days out of the wonder_ before
you came"--_etc._
Gloucester, down till the Norman time, and after, was the
great manufactory of the iron brought from the Forest of
Dean. The metal was brought up the Severn by barges, to
the quay which stood at the road running straight down from
Longsmith Street (in which Charles Hoar's house stands), and
buried under all this street we find the cinder and slag of
the Roman forges. In Domesday book (which was ordered to
be drawn up at a Parliament in Gloucester in 1083) it states
that the City had paid to the King (_i. e.,_ Edward the Confessor)
ten _dicres_ of iron yearly. This is very remarkable, for
a dicre was three dozen rods or bars; so that the whole tribute
was three hundred and sixty bars, or _one bar per day for
the Druid year of three hundred and sixty days._*
[Footnote]
* For more than a century after Julius Caesar had altered the
year to three hundred and sixty-five days, the Roman soldiers
were still paid at the ancient rate of three hundred and
sixty days only, losing the rest as _"terminalia,"_ or days
not counted as belonging to the year! The proof of this
is that in the time of Domitian a soldier's _year's_ pay divided
by three hundred and sixty gives an even number of _ases_.
[End of Footnote]
And now we come back to the Verderer's Court at the Speech
House with a clear reason for its being held _"every forty
days at twelve o'clock at noon."_
Forty days was the _ninth_ of the Druid year of three hundred
and sixty, and was a period of five weeks of eight days each,
but which according to the ancient method of counting were
called _"nine-days."_ And the reason the Court sits "at Twelve
o'clock at noon" is because the Druid day began at noon. Even
now, within ten miles of where I write, the children on Minchinhampton
Common, on the Cotteswold hills, keep up _"old May Day,"_
which was the opening of the Druid year, though they are ignorant
of this. Boys and girls arm themselves on that day with boughs
of the beech, and go through certain games with them; but
exactly as the clock strikes _twelve_ they throw them away,
under pain of being stigmatized as _"May fools!"_
Well has Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, that _"All_ things
are _in all_ things!" Even this commonplace list of Court
days in the Forest of Dean becomes a beautiful poem when
the light of such a past shines on it; just as the veriest dust
of the Krakatoan volcano evolves itself into every color
of the rainbow when it rises into the sunset sky.
Since writing this paper I find that Philip Baylis, the Verderer
of the Forest of Dean, has kindly sent three or four dozen
of young oak trees from the Government plantations, to Washington,
in order that they may be planted there and in some other
places in the United States, to begin the century with. The
State Department of Agriculture has arranged for the planting
of these oaks, and the periodical record of their measurements,
so that a valuable basis will be established for an experiment
that may be carried on for a century, or more; and we, the
archaeologists of the nineteenth century, shall have wiped
away the stigma implied in the old Aberdeen Baillie's remark,
that as _Posteerity_ had never done anything for us, we ought
not to do anything for _posteerity!_
The Earl of Ducie has sent, accompanying these Forest of Dean
oaks, four small plants, seedlings from the great Chestnut
Tree on his Estate at Tortworth; the largest and oldest of
its sort in Great Britain. It measures forty-nine feet round
the trunk.
Leaving the Speech House for Coleford and Newland we descend
a steep hill for half a mile, and crossing the rail at the
Station we begin to ascend the opposite rise through the woods.
As the carriage climbs slowly up we keep on the lookout for
the margin-stones of the Roman paving which here and there
show through the modern metaled surface--pieces fifteen to
twenty inches long by about five inches in thickness, and
set so deep in the ground that eighteen hundred years' wear
has never moved them. They are buttressed on the outer edge
by similar blocks set four or five inches lower, and themselves
forming one side of the solidly paved water-way or gutter
which was constructed as part of every such road on a steep
gradient, to secure it from abrasion by flood or sudden rush
from heavy rainfall. There are many excellent examples of
this in the Forest of Dean. We are on the watch, however,
for some part where the _"margines"_ remain on _both_ sides
of the way. At last we come upon such a place, and alighting
from the carriage we strain the tape measure across at two
or three points. The mean we find to be thirteen feet and
seven inches. As the Roman foot was just over three per cent.
less than ours, this means that the Romans built the road
here for a fourteen-foot way. So far as I have examined
their roads they were always constructed to certain standard
widths--seven feet, nine feet, eleven feet, thirteen feet,
fourteen feet, or fifteen feet.
It is not too much to say that most of the main roads in
England are Roman; but the very continuity of their use has
caused this to be overlooked. All the _old_ roads in the
Forest of Dean have been pronounced by the Ordnance Surveyors,
after close examination, to bear evidences of Roman paving,
although for some centuries since then wheel carriages went
out of use here!
There is a vivid description in Statius of the making of
an imperial-road through such another Forest (if not indeed
this very one!) especially worth recalling here, because it
was written at very nearly the period of the building of
this track over which we are journeying; _i. e.,_ near the
end of the first century.
The poet stands on a hill from which he can see the effect
of the united work of the army of men who are engaged in
the construction: perhaps a hundred thousand forced laborers,
under the control of the legionary soldiers who act as the
engineers. He makes us see and hear with him the tens of
thousands of stone cutters and the ring of their tools squaring
the "setts"; and then one platoon after another stepping forward
and laying down its row of stones followed by rank after rank
of men with the paviours' rammers, which rise and fall at
the sweep of the band-master's rods, keeping time in a stately
music as they advance; the continuous falling and crashing
of the trees as other thousands of hands ply the axes along
the lines, that creep, slowly, but visibly, on through the
Forest that no foot had ever trodden--the thud of the multitudinous
machines driving the piles in the marshy spaces; the whole
innumerable sounds falling on the ear like the roaring of
a great and vast sea.
The language Statius uses is more simple than mine; but this
is substantially the picture he gives: and I know of nothing
that so impresses on the imagination the thunder of the power
of the Roman Empire as this creation in the wilderness, in
one day, of an iron way that shall last for all time.
We are here in the sweet silence of a summer morning, eighteen
hundred years after such a scene, and able mentally to catch
some glimpse of it; some echo of the storm that has left behind
it so ineffaceable a mark.
"I intended to ask you just now whether the man you spoke
to in the road was a typical native of the district?" said
Senator Hoar. "He was dark and swarthy, with very black hair
and piercing eyes; not at all like the majority of people
we see in Gloucester for instance." "Yes, he is a typical
Forester"; exactly such a man as Tacitus describes his Silurian
ancestors; so Spanish in appearance that he tries to account
for it by remarking that _"that part of Britain lies over
against Spain";_ as if it was such a short run across the
Bay of Biscay to the upper end of the Bristol Channel that
nothing would be more natural than for Spaniards to sail over
here with their wives and families and become Silures!
These Western Britons, both here in the Forest and in Cornwall
certainly remind one of Spaniards. The type is of an older
Celtic than that of the present Welsh people proper, as some
evidences in the language also point to the occupation being
an older one. With respect to this particular district of
the Forest and the East of Monmouthshire, one more element
must not be left out of the account; and that is, that Caerleon
was founded by the second legion being removed to it from
Gloucester about the time this road was made; and that it
remained for three hundred years the headquarters of that
legion, which was a Spanish one raised in the time of Augustus.
Forty years ago I remember being at Caerleon (two and one
half miles from Newport), when I met the children of the village
coming out of school. It was hard to believe they were not
Spanish or Italian!
At all events this part of Britain lies over against Boston;
and Americans can cross over and see Caerleon for themselves
more easily than the people could, of whom Tacitus wrote.
INDEX [omitted]
[Transcriber's notes:
Typed into MS-DOS Editor under Windows XP, using 7-bit characters
only. Several errors of punctuation or of single letters have been
corrected. The author uses both "contemporary" and "cotemporary."
The Latin has not been checked for spelling, grammar, or sense.
The one Greek quotation (of two words) has been omitted.
Words have been hyphenated at the ends of lines only when the words
are hyphenated elsewhere in the text or in common usage.]