The day after our simple reception was notable for three social events

in which we had our part. The first was a lunch at the house of Mrs.

Cyril Flower, one of the finest in London,--Surrey House, as it is

called. Mr. Browning, who seems to go everywhere, and is one of the

vital elements of London society, was there as a matter of course. Miss

Cobbe, many of whose essays I have read with great satisfaction, though

I cannot accept all her views, was a guest whom I was very glad to meet

a second time.

In the afternoon we went to a garden-party given by the Princess Louise

at Kensington Palace, a gloomy-looking edifice, which might be taken

for a hospital or a poorhouse. Of all the festive occasions which I

attended, the garden-parties were to me the most formidable. They are

all very well for young people, and for those who do not mind the

nipping and eager air, with which, as I have said, the climate of

England, no less than that of America, falsifies all the fine things the

poets have said about May, and, I may add, even June. We wandered about

the grounds, spoke with the great people, stared at the odd ones, and

said to ourselves,--at least I said to myself,--with Hamlet,

"The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold."

[Illustration: Robert Browning.]

The most curious personages were some East Indians, a chocolate-colored

lady, her husband, and children. The mother had a diamond on the side of

her nose, its setting riveted on the inside, one might suppose; the

effect was peculiar, far from captivating. A---- said that she should

prefer the good old-fashioned nose-ring, as we find it described and

pictured by travellers. She saw a great deal more than I did, of course.

I quote from her diary: "The little Eastern children made their native

salaam to the Princess by prostrating themselves flat on their little

stomachs in front of her, putting their hands between her feet, pushing

them aside, and kissing the print of her feet!"

I really believe one or both of us would have run serious risks of

catching our "death o' cold," if we had waited for our own carriage,

which seemed forever in coming forward. The good Lady Holland, who was

more than once our guardian angel, brought us home in hers. So we got

warmed up at our own hearth, and were ready in due season for the large

and fine dinner-party at Archdeacon Farrar's, where, among other guests,

were Mrs. Phelps, our Minister's wife, who is a great favorite alike

with Americans and English, Sir John Millais, Mr. Tyndall, and other

interesting people.

I am sorry that we could not have visited Newstead Abbey. I had a letter

from Mr. Thornton Lothrop to Colonel Webb, the present proprietor, with

whom we lunched. I have spoken of the pleasure I had when I came

accidentally upon persons with whose name and fame I had long been

acquainted. A similar impression was that which I received when I found

myself in the company of the bearer of an old historic name. When my

host at the lunch introduced a stately-looking gentleman as Sir Kenelm

Digby, it gave me a start, as if a ghost had stood before me. I

recovered myself immediately, however, for there was nothing of the

impalpable or immaterial about the stalwart personage who bore the name.

I wanted to ask him if he carried any of his ancestor's "powder of

sympathy" about with him. Many, but not all, of my readers remember that

famous man's famous preparation. When used to cure a wound, it was

applied to the weapon that made it; the part was bound up so as to bring

the edges of the wound together, and by the wondrous influence of the

sympathetic powder the healing process took place in the kindest

possible manner. Sir Kenelm, the ancestor, was a gallant soldier, a

grand gentleman, and the husband of a wonderfully beautiful wife, whose

charms he tried to preserve from the ravages of time by various

experiments. He was also the homoeopathist of his day, the Elisha

Perkins (metallic tractors) of his generation. The "mind cure" people

might adopt him as one of their precursors.

I heard a curious statement which was illustrated in the person of one

of the gentlemen we met at this table. It is that English sporting men

are often deaf on one side, in consequence of the noise of the frequent

discharge of their guns affecting the right ear. This is a very

convenient infirmity for gentlemen who indulge in slightly aggressive

remarks, but when they are hit back never seem to be conscious at all of

the _riposte_,--the return thrust of the fencer.

Dr. Allchin called and took me to a dinner, where I met many

professional brothers, and enjoyed myself highly.

By this time every day was pledged for one or more engagements, so that

many very attractive invitations had to be declined. I will not follow

the days one by one, but content myself with mentioning some of the more

memorable visits. I had been invited to the Rabelais Club, as I have

before mentioned, by a cable message. This is a club of which the late

Lord Houghton was president, and of which I am a member, as are several

other Americans. I was afraid that the gentlemen who met,

"To laugh and shake in Rabelais's easy chair,"

might be more hilarious and demonstrative in their mirth than I, a sober

New Englander in the superfluous decade, might find myself equal to. But

there was no uproarious jollity; on the contrary, it was a pleasant

gathering of literary people and artists, who took their pleasure not

sadly, but serenely, and I do not remember a single explosive guffaw.

Another day, after going all over Dudley House, including Lady Dudley's

boudoir, "in light blue satin, the prettiest room we have seen," A----

says, we went, by appointment, to Westminster Abbey, where we spent two

hours under the guidance of Archdeacon Farrar. I think no part of the

Abbey is visited with so much interest as Poets' Corner. We are all

familiarly acquainted with it beforehand. We are all ready for "O rare

Ben Jonson!" as we stand over the place where he was planted standing

upright, as if he had been dropped into a post-hole. We remember too

well the foolish and flippant mockery of Gay's "Life is a Jest." If I

were dean of the cathedral, I should be tempted to alter the _J_ to

a _G_. Then we could read it without contempt; for life _is_ a

gest, an achievement,--or always ought to be. Westminster Abbey is too

crowded with monuments to the illustrious dead and those who have been

considered so in their day to produce any other than a confused

impression. When we visit the tomb of Napoleon at the Invalides, no

side-lights interfere with the view before us in the field of mental

vision. We see the Emperor; Marengo, Austerlitz, Waterloo, Saint Helena,

come before us, with him as their central figure. So at Stratford,--the

Cloptons and the John a Combes, with all their memorials, cannot make us

lift our eyes from the stone which covers the dust that once breathed

and walked the streets of Stratford as Shakespeare.

Ah, but here is one marble countenance that I know full well, and knew

for many a year in the flesh! Is there an American who sees the bust of

Longfellow among the effigies of the great authors of England without

feeling a thrill of pleasure at recognizing the features of his native

fellow-countryman in the Valhalla of his ancestral fellow-countrymen?

There are many memorials in Poets' Corner and elsewhere in the Abbey

which could be better spared than that. Too many that were placed there

as luminaries have become conspicuous by their obscurity in the midst of

that illustrious company. On the whole, the Abbey produces a distinct

sense of being overcrowded. It appears too much like a lapidary's

store-room. Look up at the lofty roof, which we willingly pardon for

shutting out the heaven above us,--at least in an average London day;

look down at the floor and think of what precious relics it covers; but

do not look around you with the hope of getting any clear, concentrated,

satisfying effect from this great museum of gigantic funereal bricabrac.

Pardon me, shades of the mighty dead! I had something of this feeling,

but at another hour I might perhaps be overcome by emotion, and weep, as

my fellow-countryman did at the grave of the earliest of his ancestors.

I should love myself better in that aspect than I do in this coldblooded

criticism; but it suggested itself, and as no flattery can soothe, so no

censure can wound, "the dull, cold ear of death."

Of course we saw all the sights of the Abbey in a hurried way, yet with

such a guide and expositor as Archdeacon Farrar our two hours' visit was

worth a whole day with an undiscriminating verger, who recites his

lesson by rote, and takes the life out of the little mob that follows

him round by emphasizing the details of his lesson, until "Patience on a

monument" seems to the sufferer, who knows what he wants and what he

does not want, the nearest emblem of himself he can think of. Amidst all

the imposing recollections of the ancient edifice, one impressed me in

the inverse ratio of its importance. The Archdeacon pointed out the

little holes in the stones, in one place, where the boys of the choir

used to play marbles, before America was discovered, probably,--

centuries before, it may be. It is a strangely impressive glimpse

of a living past, like the _graffiti_ of Pompeii. I find it

is often the accident rather than the essential which fixes my attention

and takes hold of my memory. This is a tendency of which I suppose I

ought to be ashamed, if we have any right to be ashamed of those

idiosyncrasies which are ordered for us. It is the same tendency which

often leads us to prefer the picturesque to the beautiful. Mr. Gilpin

liked the donkey in a forest landscape better than the horse. A touch of

imperfection interferes with the beauty of an object and lowers its

level to that of the picturesque. The accident of the holes in the stone

of the noble building, for the boys to play marbles with, makes me a boy

again and at home with them, after looking with awe upon the statue of

Newton, and turning with a shudder from the ghastly monument of Mrs.

Nightingale.

What a life must be that of one whose years are passed chiefly in and

about the great Abbey! Nowhere does Macbeth's expression "dusty death"

seem so true to all around us. The dust of those who have been lying

century after century below the marbles piled over them,--the dust on

the monuments they lie beneath; the dust on the memories those monuments

were raised to keep living in the recollection of posterity,--dust,

dust, dust, everywhere, and we ourselves but shapes of breathing dust

moving amidst these objects and remembrances! Come away! The good

Archdeacon of the "Eternal Hope" has asked us to take a cup of tea with

him. The tea-cup will be a cheerful substitute for the funeral urn, and

a freshly made infusion of the fragrant leaf is one of the best things

in the world to lay the dust of sad reflections.

It is a somewhat fatiguing pleasure to go through the Abbey, in spite of

the intense interest no one can help feeling. But my day had but just

begun when the two hours we had devoted to the visit were over. At a

quarter before eight, my friend Mr. Frederick Locker called for me to go

to a dinner at the Literary Club. I was particularly pleased to dine

with this association, as it reminded me of our own Saturday Club, which

sometimes goes by the same name as the London one. They complimented me

with a toast, and I made some kind of a reply. As I never went prepared

with a speech for any such occasion, I take it for granted that I

thanked the company in a way that showed my gratitude rather than my

eloquence. And now, the dinner being over, my day was fairly begun.

This was to be a memorable date in the record of the year, one long to

be remembered in the political history of Great Britain. For on this

day, the 7th of June, Mr. Gladstone was to make his great speech on the

Irish question, and the division of the House on the Government of

Ireland Bill was to take place. The whole country, to the corners of its

remotest colony, was looking forward to the results of this evening's

meeting of Parliament. The kindness of the Speaker had furnished me with

a ticket, entitling me to a place among the "distinguished guests,"

which I presented without modestly questioning my right to the title.

The pressure for entrance that evening was very great, and I, coming

after my dinner with the Literary Club, was late upon the ground. The

places for "distinguished guests" were already filled. But all England

was in a conspiracy to do everything possible to make my visit

agreeable. I did not take up a great deal of room,--I might be put into

a seat with the ambassadors and foreign ministers. And among them I was

presently installed. It was now between ten and eleven o'clock, as

nearly as I recollect. The House had been in session since four o'clock.

A gentleman was speaking, who was, as my unknown next neighbor told me,

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, a leading member, as we all know, of the

opposition. When he sat down there was a hush of expectation, and

presently Mr. Gladstone rose to his feet. A great burst of applause

welcomed him, lasting more than a minute. His clean-cut features, his

furrowed cheeks, his scanty and whitened hair, his well-shaped but not

extraordinary head, all familiarized by innumerable portraits and

emphasized in hundreds of caricatures, revealed him at once to every

spectator. His great speech has been universally read, and I need only

speak of the way in which it was delivered. His manner was forcible

rather than impassioned or eloquent; his voice was clear enough, but

must have troubled him somewhat, for he had a small bottle from which he

poured something into a glass from time to time and swallowed a little,

yet I heard him very well for the most part. In the last portion of his

speech he became animated and inspiriting, and his closing words were

uttered with an impressive solemnity: "Think, I beseech you, think well,

think wisely, think not for a moment, but for the years that are to

come, before you reject this bill."

After the burst of applause which followed the conclusion of Mr.

Gladstone's speech, the House proceeded to the division on the question

of passing the bill to a second reading. While the counting of the votes

was going on there was the most intense excitement. A rumor ran round

the House at one moment that the vote was going in favor of the second

reading. It soon became evident that this was not the case, and

presently the result was announced, giving a majority of thirty against

the bill, and practically overthrowing the liberal administration. Then

arose a tumult of applause from the conservatives and a wild confusion,

in the midst of which an Irish member shouted, "Three cheers for the

Grand Old Man!" which were lustily given, with waving of hats and all

but Donnybrook manifestations of enthusiasm.

I forgot to mention that I had a very advantageous seat among the

diplomatic gentlemen, and was felicitating myself on occupying one of

the best positions in the House, when an usher politely informed me that

the Russian Ambassador, in whose place I was sitting, had arrived, and

that I must submit to the fate of eviction. Fortunately, there were some

steps close by, on one of which I found a seat almost as good as the one

I had just left.

It was now two o'clock in the morning, and I had to walk home, not a

vehicle being attainable. I did not know my way to my headquarters, and

I had no friend to go with me, but I fastened on a stray gentleman, who

proved to be an ex-member of the House, and who accompanied me to 17

Dover Street, where I sought my bed with a satisfying sense of having

done a good day's work and having been well paid for it.

III.

On the 8th of June we visited the Record Office for a sight of the

Domesday Book and other ancient objects of interest there preserved. As

I looked at this too faithful memorial of an inexorable past, I thought

of the battle of Hastings and all its consequences, and that reminded me

of what I have long remembered as I read it in Dr. Robert Knox's "Races

of Men." Dr. Knox was the monoculous Waterloo surgeon, with whom I

remember breakfasting, on my first visit to England and Scotland. His

celebrity is less owing to his book than to the unfortunate connection

of his name with the unforgotten Burke and Hare horrors. This is his

language in speaking of Hastings: "... that bloody field, surpassing far

in its terrible results the unhappy day of Waterloo. From this the Celt

has recovered, but not so the Saxon. To this day he feels, and feels

deeply, the most disastrous day that ever befell his race; here he was

trodden down by the Norman, whose iron heel is on him yet.... To this

day the Saxon race in England have never recovered a tithe of their

rights, and probably never will."

The Conqueror meant to have a thorough summing up of his stolen

property. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says,--I quote it at second

hand,--"So very straitly did he cause the survey to be made, that there

was not a single hyde, nor a yardland of ground, nor--it is shameful to

say what he thought no shame to do--was there an ox or a cow, or a pig

passed by, and that was not down in the accounts, and then all these

writings were brought to him." The "looting" of England by William and

his "twenty thousand thieves," as Mr. Emerson calls his army, was a

singularly methodical proceeding, and Domesday Book is a searching

inventory of their booty, movable and immovable.

From this reminder of the past we turned to the remembrances of home;

A---- going to dine with a transplanted Boston friend and other ladies

from that blessed centre of New England life, while I dined with a party

of gentlemen at my friend Mr. James Russell Lowell's.

I had looked forward to this meeting with high expectations, and they

were abundantly satisfied. I knew that Mr. Lowell must gather about him,

wherever he might be, the choicest company, but what his selection would

be I was curious to learn. I found with me at the table my own

countrymen and his, Mr. Smalley and Mr. Henry James. Of the other

guests, Mr. Leslie Stephen was my only old acquaintance in person; but

Du Maurier and Tenniel I have met in my weekly "Punch" for many a year;

Mr. Lang, Mr. Oliphant, Mr. Townsend, we all know through their

writings; Mr. Burne-Jones and Mr. Alma Tadema, through the frequent

reproductions of their works in engravings, as well as by their

paintings. If I could report a dinner-table conversation, I might be

tempted to say something of my talk with Mr. Oliphant. I like well

enough conversation which floats safely over the shallows, touching

bottom at intervals with a commonplace incident or truism to push it

along; I like better to find a few fathoms of depth under the surface;

there is a still higher pleasure in the philosophical discourse which

calls for the deep sea line to reach bottom; but best of all, when one

is in the right mood, is the contact of intelligences when they are off

soundings in the ocean of thought. Mr. Oliphant is what many of us call

a mystic, and I found a singular pleasure in listening to him. This

dinner at Mr. Lowell's was a very remarkable one for the men it brought

together, and I remember it with peculiar interest. My entertainer holds

a master-key to London society, and he opened the gate for me into one

of its choicest preserves on that evening.

I did not undertake to renew my old acquaintance with hospitals and

museums. I regretted that I could not be with my companion, who went

through the Natural History Museum with the accomplished director,

Professor W. H. Flower. One old acquaintance I did resuscitate. For the

second time I took the hand of Charles O'Byrne, the celebrated Irish

giant of the last century. I met him, as in my first visit, at the Royal

College of Surgeons, where I accompanied Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson. He was

in the condition so longed for by Sydney Smith on a very hot day;

namely, with his flesh taken off, and sitting, or rather standing, in

his bones. The skeleton measures eight feet, and the living man's height

is stated as having been eight feet two, or four inches, by different

authorities. His hand was the only one I took, either in England or

Scotland, which had not a warm grasp and a hearty welcome in it.

A---- went with Boston friends to see "Faust" a second time, Mr. Irving

having offered her the Royal box, and the polite Mr. Bram Stoker serving

the party with tea in the little drawing-room behind the box; so that

she had a good time while I was enjoying myself at a dinner at Sir Henry

Thompson's, where I met Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Browning, and other

distinguished gentlemen. These dinners of Sir Henry's are well known for

the good company one meets at them, and I felt myself honored to be a

guest on this occasion.

Among the pleasures I had promised myself was that of a visit to

Tennyson, at the Isle of Wight. I feared, however, that this would be

rendered impracticable by reason of the very recent death of his younger

son, Lionel. But I learned from Mr. Locker-Lampson, whose daughter Mr.

Lionel Tennyson had married, that the poet would be pleased to see me at

his place, Farringford; and by the kind intervention of Mr.

Locker-Lampson, better known to the literary world as Frederick Locker,

arrangements were made for my daughter and myself to visit him. I

considered it a very great favor, for Lord Tennyson has a poet's

fondness for the tranquillity of seclusion, which many curious explorers

of society fail to remember. Lady Tennyson is an invalid, and though

nothing could be more gracious than her reception of us both, I fear it

may have cost her an effort which she would not allow to betray itself.

Mr. Hallam Tennyson and his wife, both of most pleasing presence and

manners, did everything to make our stay agreeable. I saw the poet to

the best advantage, under his own trees and walking over his own domain.

He took delight in pointing out to me the finest and the rarest of his

trees,--and there were many beauties among them. I recalled my morning's

visit to Whittier at Oak Knoll, in Danvers, a little more than a year

ago, when he led me to one of his favorites, an aspiring evergreen which

shot up like a flame. I thought of the graceful American elms in front

of Longfellow's house and the sturdy English elms that stand in front of

Lowell's. In this garden of England, the Isle of Wight, where everything

grows with such a lavish extravagance of greenness that it seems as if

it must bankrupt the soil before autumn, I felt as if weary eyes and

overtasked brains might reach their happiest haven of rest. We all

remember Shenstone's epigram on the pane of a tavern window. If we find

our "warmest welcome at an inn," we find our most soothing companionship

in the trees among which we have lived, some of which we may ourselves

have planted. We lean against them, and they never betray our trust;

they shield us from the sun and from the rain; their spring welcome is a

new birth, which never loses its freshness; they lay their beautiful

robes at our feet in autumn; in winter they "stand and wait," emblems of

patience and of truth, for they hide nothing, not even the little

leaf-buds which hint to us of hope, the last element in their triple

symbolism.

This digression, suggested by the remembrance of the poet under his

trees, breaks my narrative, but gives me the opportunity of paying a

debt of gratitude. For I have owned many beautiful trees, and loved many

more outside of my own leafy harem. Those who write verses have no

special claim to be lovers of trees, but so far as one is of the

poetical temperament he is likely to be a tree-lover. Poets have, as a

rule, more than the average nervous sensibility and irritability. Trees

have no nerves. They live and die without suffering, without

self-questioning or self-reproach. They have the divine gift of silence.

They cannot obtrude upon the solitary moments when one is to himself the

most agreeable of companions. The whole vegetable world, even "the

meanest flower that blows," is lovely to contemplate. What if creation

had paused there, and you or I had been called upon to decide whether

self-conscious life should be added in the form of the existing animal

creation, and the hitherto peaceful universe should come under the rule

of Nature as we now know her,

"red in tooth and claw"?

Are we not glad that the responsibility of the decision did not rest on

us?

I am sorry that I did not ask Tennyson to read or repeat to me some

lines of his own. Hardly any one perfectly understands a poem but the

poet himself. One naturally loves his own poem as no one else can. It

fits the mental mould in which it was cast, and it will not exactly fit

any other. For this reason I had rather listen to a poet reading his own

verses than hear the best elocutionist that ever spouted recite them. He

may not have a good voice or enunciation, but he puts his heart and his

inter-penetrative intelligence into every line, word, and syllable. I

should have liked to hear Tennyson read such lines as

"Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere;"

and in spite of my good friend Matthew Arnold's _in terrorem_, I

should have liked to hear Macaulay read,

"And Aulus the Dictator

Stroked Auster's raven mane,"

and other good mouthable lines, from the "Lays of Ancient Rome." Not

less should I like to hear Mr. Arnold himself read the passage

beginning,--

"In his cool hall with haggard eyes

The Roman noble lay."

The next day Mrs. Hallam Tennyson took A---- in her pony cart to see

Alum Bay, The Needles, and other objects of interest, while I wandered

over the grounds with Tennyson. After lunch his carriage called for us,

and we were driven across the island, through beautiful scenery, to

Ventnor, where we took the train to Ryde, and there the steamer to

Portsmouth, from which two hours and a half of travel carried us to

London.

* * * * *

My first visit to Cambridge was at the invitation of Mr. Gosse, who

asked me to spend Sunday, the 13th of June, with him. The rooms in

Neville Court, Trinity College, occupied by Sir William Vernon Harcourt

when lecturing at Cambridge, were placed at my disposal. The room I

slept in was imposing with the ensigns armorial of the Harcourts and

others which ornamented its walls. I had great delight in walking

through the quadrangles, along the banks of the Cam, and beneath the

beautiful trees which border it. Mr. Gosse says that I stopped in the

second court of Clare, and looked around and smiled as if I were

bestowing my benediction. He was mistaken: I smiled as if I were

receiving a benediction from my dear old grandmother; for Cambridge in

New England is my mother town, and Harvard University in Cambridge is my

Alma Mater. She is the daughter of Cambridge in Old England, and my

relationship is thus made clear.

Mr. Gosse introduced me to many of the younger and some of the older men

of the university. Among my visits was one never to be renewed and never

to be forgotten. It was to the Master of Trinity, the Reverend William

Hepworth Thompson. I hardly expected to have the privilege of meeting

this very distinguished and greatly beloved personage, famous not alone

for scholarship, or as the successor of Dr. Whewell in his high office,

but also as having said some of the wittiest things which we have heard

since Voltaire's _pour encourager les autres_. I saw him in his

chamber, a feeble old man, but noble to look upon in all "the monumental

pomp of age." He came very near belonging to the little group I have

mentioned as my coevals, but was a year after us. Gentle, dignified,

kindly in his address as if I had been his schoolmate, he left a very

charming impression. He gave me several mementoes of my visit, among

them a beautiful engraving of Sir Isaac Newton, representing him as one

of the handsomest of men. Dr. Thompson looked as if he could not be very

long for this world, but his death, a few weeks after my visit, was a

painful surprise to me. I had been just in time to see "the last of the

great men" at Cambridge, as my correspondent calls him, and I was very

grateful that I could store this memory among the hoarded treasures I

have been laying by for such possible extra stretch of time as may be

allowed me.

My second visit to Cambridge will be spoken of in due season.

While I was visiting Mr. Gosse at Cambridge, A---- was not idle. On

Saturday she went to Lambeth, where she had the pleasure and honor of

shaking hands with the Archbishop of Canterbury in his study, and of

looking about the palace with Mrs. Benson. On Sunday she went to the

Abbey, and heard "a broad and liberal sermon" from Archdeacon Farrar.

Our young lady-secretary stayed and dined with her, and after dinner

sang to her. "A peaceful, happy Sunday," A---- says in her diary,--not

less peaceful, I suspect, for my being away, as my callers must have got

many a "not at 'ome" from young Robert of the multitudinous buttons.

On Monday, the 14th of June, after getting ready for our projected

excursions, we had an appointment which promised us a great deal of

pleasure. Mr. Augustus Harris, the enterprising and celebrated manager

of Drury Lane Theatre, had sent us an invitation to occupy a box, having

eight seats, at the representation of "Carmen." We invited the

Priestleys and our Boston friends, the Shimminses, to take seats with

us. The chief singer in the opera was Marie Roze, who looked well and

sang well, and the evening went off very happily. After the performance

we were invited by Mr. Harris to a supper of some thirty persons, where

we were the special guests. The manager toasted me, and I said

something,--I trust appropriate; but just what I said is as

irrecoverable as the orations of Demosthenes on the seashore, or the

sermons of St. Francis to the beasts and birds.

Of all the attentions I received in England, this was, perhaps, the

least to be anticipated or dreamed of. To be fêted and toasted and to

make a speech in Drury Lane Theatre would not have entered into my

flightiest conceptions, if I had made out a programme beforehand. It is

a singularly gratifying recollection. Drury Lane Theatre is so full of

associations with literature, with the great actors and actresses of the

past, with the famous beauties who have stood behind the footlights and

the splendid audiences that have sat before them, that it is an

admirable nucleus for remembrances to cluster around. It was but a vague

spot in memory before, but now it is a bright centre for other images of

the past. That one evening seems to make me the possessor of all its

traditions from the time when it rose from its ashes, when Byron's poem

was written and recited, and when the brothers Smith gave us the

"Address without a Phoenix," and all those exquisite parodies which make

us feel towards their originals somewhat as our dearly remembered Tom

Appleton did when he said, in praise of some real green turtle soup,

that it was almost as good as mock.

With much regret we gave up an invitation we had accepted to go to

Durdans to dine with Lord Rosebery. We must have felt very tired indeed

to make so great a sacrifice, but we had to be up until one o'clock

getting ready for the next day's journey; writing, packing, and

attending to what we left behind us as well as what was in prospect.

On the morning of Wednesday, June 16th, Dr. Donald Macalister called to

attend us on our second visit to Cambridge, where we were to be the

guests of his cousin, Alexander Macalister, Professor of Anatomy, who,

with Mrs. Macalister, received us most cordially. There was a large

luncheon-party at their house, to which we sat down in our travelling

dresses. In the evening they had a dinner-party, at which were present,

among others, Professor Stokes, President of the Royal Society, and

Professor Wright. We had not heard much talk of political matters at the

dinner-tables where we had been guests, but A---- sat near a lady who

was very earnest in advocating the Irish side of the great impending

question.

The 17th of June is memorable in the annals of my country. On that day

of the year 1775 the battle of Bunker's Hill was fought on the height I

see from the window of my library, where I am now writing. The monument

raised in memory of our defeat, which was in truth a victory, is almost

as much a part of the furniture of the room as its chairs and tables;

outside, as they are inside, furniture. But the 17th of June, 1886, is

memorable to me above all the other anniversaries of that day I have

known. For on that day I received from the ancient University of

Cambridge, England, the degree of Doctor of Letters, "Doctor Litt.," in

its abbreviated academic form. The honor was an unexpected one; that is,

until a short time before it was conferred.

Invested with the academic gown and cap, I repaired in due form at the

appointed hour to the Senate Chamber. Every seat was filled, and among

the audience were youthful faces in large numbers, looking as if they

were ready for any kind of outbreak of enthusiasm or hilarity.

The first degree conferred was that of LL.D., on Sir W. A. White,

G.C.M., G.C.B., to whose long list of appended initials it seemed like

throwing a perfume on the violet to add three more letters.

When I was called up to receive my honorary title, the young voices were

true to the promise of the young faces. There was a great noise, not

hostile nor unpleasant in its character, in answer to which I could

hardly help smiling my acknowledgments. In presenting me for my degree

the Public Orator made a Latin speech, from which I venture to give a

short extract, which I would not do for the world if it were not

disguised by being hidden in the mask of a dead language. But there will

be here and there a Latin scholar who will be pleased with the way in

which the speaker turned a compliment to the candidate before him, with

a reference to one of his poems and to some of his prose works.

_"Juvat nuper audivisse eum cujus carmen prope primum 'Folium ultimum'

nominatum est, folia adhuc plura e scriniis suis esse prolaturum.

Novimus quanta lepore descripserit colloquia illa antemeridiana,

symposia illa sobria et severa, sed eadem festiva et faceta, in quibus

totiens mutata persona, modo poeta, modo professor, modo princeps et

arbiter, loquendi, inter convivas suos regnat."_

I had no sooner got through listening to the speech and receiving my

formal sentence as Doctor of Letters than the young voices broke out in

fresh clamor. There were cries of "A speech! a speech!" mingled with the

title of a favorite poem by John Howard Payne, having a certain amount

of coincidence with the sound of my name. The play upon the word was not

absolutely a novelty to my ear, but it was good-natured, and I smiled

again, and perhaps made a faint inclination, as much as to say, "I hear

you, young gentlemen, but I do not forget that I am standing on my

dignity, especially now since a new degree has added a moral cubit to my

stature." Still the cries went on, and at last I saw nothing else to do

than to edge back among the silk gowns, and so lose myself and be lost

to the clamorous crowd in the mass of dignitaries. It was not

indifference to the warmth of my welcome, but a feeling that I had no

claim to address the audience because some of its younger members were

too demonstrative. I have not forgotten my very cordial reception, which

made me feel almost as much at home in the old Cambridge as in the new,

where I was born and took my degrees, academic, professional, and

honorary.

The university town left a very deep impression upon my mind, in which a

few grand objects predominate over the rest, all being of a delightful

character. I was fortunate enough to see the gathering of the boats,

which was the last scene in their annual procession. The show was

altogether lovely. The pretty river, about as wide as the Housatonic, I

should judge, as that slender stream winds through "Canoe Meadow," my

old Pittsfield residence, the gaily dressed people who crowded the

banks, the flower-crowned boats, with the gallant young oarsmen who

handled them so skilfully, made a picture not often equalled. The walks,

the bridges, the quadrangles, the historic college buildings, all

conspired to make the place a delight and a fascination. The library of

Trinity College, with its rows of busts by Roubiliac and Woolner, is a

truly noble hall. But beyond, above all the rest, the remembrance of

King's College Chapel, with its audacious and richly wrought roof and

its wide and lofty windows, glowing with old devices in colors which are

ever fresh, as if just from the furnace, holds the first place in my

gallery of Cambridge recollections.

I cannot do justice to the hospitalities which were bestowed upon us in

Cambridge. Professor and Mrs. Macalister, aided by Dr. Donald

Macalister, did all that thoughtful hosts could do to make us feel at

home. In the afternoon the ladies took tea at Mr. Oscar Browning's. In

the evening we went to a large dinner at the invitation of the

Vice-Chancellor. Many little points which I should not have thought of

are mentioned in A----'s diary. I take the following extract from it,

toning down its vivacity more nearly to my own standard:--

"Twenty were there. The Master of St. John's took me in, and the

Vice-Chancellor was on the other side.... The Vice-Chancellor rose and

returned thanks after the meats and before the sweets, as usual. I have

now got used to this proceeding, which strikes me as extraordinary.

Everywhere here in Cambridge, and the same in Oxford, I believe, they

say grace and give thanks. A gilded ewer and flat basin were passed,

with water in the basin to wash with, and we all took our turn at the

bath! Next to this came the course with the finger-bowls!... Why two

baths?"

On Friday, the 18th, I went to a breakfast at the Combination Room, at

which about fifty gentlemen were present, Dr. Sandys taking the chair.

After the more serious business of the morning's repast was over, Dr.

Macalister, at the call of the chairman, arose, and proposed my welfare

in a very complimentary way. I of course had to respond, and I did so in

the words which came of their own accord to my lips. After my

unpremeditated answer, which was kindly received, a young gentleman of

the university, Mr. Heitland, read a short poem, of which the following

is the title:--

LINES OF GREETING TO DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

AT BREAKFAST IN COMBINATION ROOM, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,

ENGLAND.

I wish I dared quote more than the last two verses of these lines, which

seemed to me, not unused to giving and receiving complimentary tributes,

singularly happy, and were so considered by all who heard them. I think

I may venture to give the two verses referred to:--

"By all sweet memory of the saints and sages

Who wrought among us in the days of yore;

By youths who, turning now life's early pages,

Ripen to match the worthies gone before:

"On us, O son of England's greatest daughter,

A kindly word from heart and tongue bestow;

Then chase the sunsets o'er the western water,

And bear our blessing with you as you go."

I need not say that I left the English Cambridge with a heart full of

all grateful and kindly emotions.

I must not forget that I found at Cambridge, very pleasantly established

and successfully practising his profession, a former student in the

dental department of our Harvard Medical School, Dr. George Cunningham,

who used to attend my lectures on anatomy. In the garden behind the

quaint old house in which he lives is a large medlar-tree,--the first I

remember seeing.

On this same day we bade good-by to Cambridge, and took the two o'clock

train to Oxford, where we arrived at half past five. At this first visit

we were to be the guests of Professor Max Müller, at his fine residence

in Norham Gardens. We met there, at dinner, Mr. Herkomer, whom we have

recently had with us in Boston, and one or two others. In the evening we

had music; the professor playing on the piano, his two daughters, Mrs.

Conybeare and her unmarried sister, singing, and a young lady playing

the violin. It was a very lovely family picture; a pretty house,

surrounded by attractive scenery; scholarship, refinement, simple

elegance, giving distinction to a home which to us seemed a pattern of

all we could wish to see beneath an English roof. It all comes back to

me very sweetly, but very tenderly and sadly, for the voice of the elder

of the two sisters who sang to us is heard no more on earth, and a deep

shadow has fallen over the household we found so bright and cheerful.

Everything was done to make me enjoy my visit to Oxford, but I was

suffering from a severe cold, and was paying the penalty of too much

occupation and excitement. I missed a great deal in consequence, and

carried away a less distinct recollection of this magnificent seat of

learning than of the sister university.

If one wishes to know the magic of names, let him visit the places made

memorable by the lives of the illustrious men of the past in the Old

World. As a boy I used to read the poetry of Pope, of Goldsmith, and of

Johnson. How could I look at the Bodleian Library, or wander beneath its

roof, without recalling the lines from "The Vanity of Human Wishes"?

"When first the college rolls receive his name,

The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;

Resistless burns the fever of renown,

Caught from the strong contagion of the gown:

O'er Bodley's dome his future labors spread,

And Bacon's mansion trembles o'er his head."

The last line refers to Roger Bacon. "There is a tradition that the

study of Friar Bacon, built on an arch over the bridge, will fall when a

man greater than Bacon shall pass under it. To prevent so shocking an

accident, it was pulled down many years since." We shall meet with a

similar legend in another university city. Many persons have been shy of

these localities, who were in no danger whatever of meeting the fate

threatened by the prediction.

We passed through the Bodleian Library, only glancing at a few of its

choicest treasures, among which the exquisitely illuminated missals were

especially tempting objects of study. It was almost like a mockery to

see them opened and closed, without having the time to study their

wonderful miniature paintings. A walk through the grounds of Magdalen

College, under the guidance of the president of that college, showed us

some of the fine trees for which I was always looking. One of these, a

wych-elm (Scotch elm of some books), was so large that I insisted on

having it measured. A string was procured and carefully carried round

the trunk, above the spread of the roots and below that of the branches,

so as to give the smallest circumference. I was curious to know how the

size of the trunk of this tree would compare with that of the trunks of

some of our largest New England elms. I have measured a good many of

these. About sixteen feet is the measurement of a large elm, like that

on Boston Common, which all middle-aged people remember. From twenty-two

to twenty-three feet is the ordinary maximum of the very largest trees.

I never found but one exceed it: that was the great Springfield elm,

which looked as if it might have been formed by the coalescence from the

earliest period of growth, of two young trees. When I measured this in

1837, it was twenty-four feet eight inches in circumference at five feet

from the ground; growing larger above and below. I remembered this tree

well, as we measured the string which was to tell the size of its

English rival. As we came near the end of the string, I felt as I did

when I was looking at the last dash of Ormonde and The Bard at

Epsom.--Twenty feet, and a long piece of string left.--Twenty-one.

--Twenty-two.--Twenty-three.--An extra heartbeat or two.--Twenty-four!

--Twenty-five and six inches over!!--The Springfield elm may have grown

a foot or more since I measured it, fifty years ago, but the tree at

Magdalen stands ahead of all my old measurements. Many of the fine old

trees, this in particular, may have been known in their younger days to

Addison, whose favorite walk is still pointed out to the visitor.

I would not try to compare the two university towns, as one might who

had to choose between them. They have a noble rivalry, each honoring the

other, and it would take a great deal of weighing one point of

superiority against another to call either of them the first, except in

its claim to antiquity.

After a garden-party in the afternoon, a pleasant evening at home, when

the professor played and his daughter Beatrice sang, and a garden-party

the next day, I found myself in somewhat better condition, and ready for

the next move.

[Illustration: Magdalen College, Oxford.]

At noon on the 23d of June we left for Edinburgh, stopping over night at

York, where we found close by the station an excellent hotel, and where

the next morning we got one of the best breakfasts we had in our whole

travelling experience. At York we wandered to and through a flower-show,

and _did_ the cathedral, as people _do_ all the sights they

see under the lead of a paid exhibitor, who goes through his lesson like

a sleepy old professor. I missed seeing the slab with the inscription

_miserrimus_. There may be other stones bearing this sad

superlative, but there is a story connected with this one, which sounds

as if it might be true.

In the year 1834, I spent several weeks in Edinburgh. I was fascinated

by the singular beauties of that "romantic town," which Scott called his

own, and which holds his memory, with that of Burns, as a most precious

part of its inheritance. The castle with the precipitous rocky wall out

of which it grows, the deep ravines with their bridges, pleasant Calton

Hill and memorable Holyrood Palace, the new town and the old town with

their strange contrasts, and Arthur's Seat overlooking all,--these

varied and enchanting objects account for the fondness with which all

who have once seen Edinburgh will always regard it.

We were the guests of Professor Alexander Crum Brown, a near relative of

the late beloved and admired Dr. John Brown. Professor and Mrs. Crum

Brown did everything to make our visit a pleasant one. We met at their

house many of the best known and most distinguished people of Scotland.

The son of Dr. John Brown dined with us on the day of our arrival, and

also a friend of the family, Mr. Barclay, to whom we made a visit on the

Sunday following. Among the visits I paid, none was more gratifying to

me than one which I made to Dr. John Brown's sister. No man could leave

a sweeter memory than the author of "Rab and his Friends," of "Pet

Marjorie," and other writings, all full of the same loving, human

spirit. I have often exchanged letters with him, and I thought how much

it would have added to the enjoyment of my visit if I could have taken

his warm hand and listened to his friendly voice. I brought home with me

a precious little manuscript, written expressly for me by one who had

known Dr. John Brown from the days of her girlhood, in which his

character appears in the same lovable and loving light as that which

shines in every page he himself has written.

On Friday, the 25th, I went to the hall of the university, where I was

to receive the degree of LL.D. The ceremony was not unlike that at

Cambridge, but had one peculiar feature: the separate special investment

of the candidate with the _hood_, which Johnson defines as "an

ornamental fold which hangs down the back of a graduate." There were

great numbers of students present, and they showed the same exuberance

of spirits as that which had forced me to withdraw from the urgent calls

at Cambridge. The cries, if possible, were still louder and more

persistent; they must have a speech and they would have a speech, and

what could I do about it? I saw but one way of pacifying a crowd as

noisy and long-breathed as that which for about the space of two hours

cried out, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" So I stepped to the front

and made a brief speech, in which, of course, I spoke of the

"_perfervidum ingenium Scotorum_." A speech without that would have

been like that "Address without a Phoenix" before referred to. My few

remarks were well received, and quieted the shouting Ephesians of the

warm-brained and warm-hearted northern university. It gave me great

pleasure to meet my friend Mr. Underwood, now American consul in

Glasgow, where he has made himself highly esteemed and respected.

In my previous visit to Edinburgh in 1834, I was fond of rambling along

under Salisbury Crags, and climbing the sides of Arthur's Seat. I had

neither time nor impulse for such walks during this visit, but in

driving out to dine at Nidrie, the fine old place now lived in by Mr.

Barclay and his daughters, we passed under the crags and by the side of

the great hill. I had never heard, or if I had I had forgotten, the name

and the story of "Samson's Ribs." These are the columnar masses of rock

which form the face of Salisbury Crags. There is a legend that one day

one of these pillars will fall and crush the greatest man that ever

passes under them. It is said that a certain professor was always very

shy of "Samson's Ribs," for fear the prophecy might be fulfilled in his

person. We were most hospitably received at Mr. Barclay's, and the

presence of his accomplished and pleasing daughters made the visit

memorable to both of us. There was one picture on their walls, that of a

lady, by Sir Joshua, which both of us found very captivating. This is

what is often happening in the visits we make. Some painting by a master

looks down upon us from its old canvas, and leaves a lasting copy of

itself, to be stored in memory's picture gallery. These surprises are

not so likely to happen in the New World as in the Old.

It seemed cruel to be forced to tear ourselves away from Edinburgh,

where so much had been done to make us happy, where so much was left to

see and enjoy, but we were due in Oxford, where I was to receive the

last of the three degrees with which I was honored in Great Britain.

Our visit to Scotland gave us a mere glimpse of the land and its people,

but I have a very vivid recollection of both as I saw them on my first

visit, when I made an excursion into the Highlands to Stirling and to

Glasgow, where I went to church, and wondered over the uncouth ancient

psalmody, which I believe is still retained in use to this day. I was

seasoned to that kind of poetry in my early days by the verses of Tate

and Brady, which I used to hear "entuned in the nose ful swetely,"

accompanied by vigorous rasping of a huge bass-viol. No wonder that

Scotland welcomed the song of Burns!

On our second visit to Oxford we were to be the guests of the

Vice-Chancellor of the university, Dr. Jowett. This famous scholar and

administrator lives in a very pleasant establishment, presided over by

the Muses, but without the aid of a Vice-Chancelloress. The hospitality

of this classic mansion is well known, and we added a second pleasant

chapter to our previous experience under the roof of Professor Max

Müller. There was a little company there before us, including the Lord

Chancellor and Lady Herschell, Lady Camilla Wallop, Mr. Browning, and

Mr. Lowell. We were too late, in consequence of the bad arrangement of

the trains, and had to dine by ourselves, as the whole party had gone

out to a dinner, to which we should have accompanied them had we not

been delayed. We sat up long enough to see them on their return, and

were glad to get to bed, after our day's journey from Edinburgh to

Oxford.

At eleven o'clock on the following day we who were to receive degrees

met at Balliol College, whence we proceeded in solemn procession to the

Sheldonian Theatre. Among my companions on this occasion were Mr. John

Bright, the Lord Chancellor Herschell, and Mr. Aldis Wright. I have an

instantaneous photograph, which was sent me, of this procession. I can

identify Mr. Bright and myself, but hardly any of the others, though

many better acquainted with their faces would no doubt recognize them.

There is a certain sensation in finding one's self invested with the

academic gown, conspicuous by its red facings, and the cap with its

square top and depending tassel, which is not without its accompanying

satisfaction. One can walk the streets of any of the university towns in

his academic robes without being jeered at, as I am afraid he would be

in some of our own thoroughfares. There is a noticeable complacency in

the members of our Phi Beta Kappa society when they get the pink and

blue ribbons in their buttonholes, on the day of annual meeting. How

much more when the scholar is wrapped in those flowing folds, with their

flaming borders, and feels the dignity of the distinction of which they

are the symbol! I do not know how Mr. John Bright felt, but I cannot

avoid the impression that some in the ranks which moved from Balliol to

the Sheldonian felt as if Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like

the candidates for the degree of D.C.L.

After my experience at Cambridge and Edinburgh, I might have felt some

apprehension about my reception at Oxford. I had always supposed the

audience assembled there at the conferring of degrees was a more

demonstrative one than that at any other of the universities, and I did

not wish to be forced into a retreat by calls for a speech, as I was at

Cambridge, nor to repeat my somewhat irregular proceeding of addressing

the audience, as at Edinburgh. But when I found that Mr. John Bright was

to be one of the recipients of the degree I felt safe, for if he made a

speech I should be justified in saying a few words, if I thought it

best; and if he, one of the most eloquent men in England, remained

silent, I surely need not make myself heard on the occasion. It was a

great triumph for him, a liberal leader, to receive the testimonial of a

degree from the old conservative university. To myself it was a graceful

and pleasing compliment; to him it was a grave and significant tribute.

As we marched through the crowd on our way from Balliol, the people

standing around recognized Mr. Bright, and cheered him vociferously.

The exercises in the Sheldonian Theatre were more complex and lasted

longer than those at the other two universities. The candidate stepped

forward and listened to one sentence, then made another move forward and

listened to other words, and at last was welcomed to all the privileges

conferred by the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, which was announced as

being bestowed upon him. Mr. Bright, of course, was received with

immense enthusiasm. I had every reason to be gratified with my own

reception. The only "chaffing" I heard was the question from one of the

galleries, "Did he come in the One-Hoss Shay?"--at which there was a

hearty laugh, joined in as heartily by myself. A part of the

entertainment at this ceremony consisted in the listening to the reading

of short extracts from the prize essays, some or all of them in the dead

languages, which could not have been particularly intelligible to a

large part of the audience. During these readings there were frequent

_interpellations_, as the French call such interruptions, something

like these: "That will do, sir!" or "You had better stop, sir!"

--always, I noticed, with the sir at the end of the remark. With us it

would have been "Dry up!" or "Hold on!" At last came forward the young

poet of the occasion, who read an elaborate poem, "Savonarola," which

was listened to in most respectful silence, and loudly applauded at its

close, as I thought, deservedly. Prince and Princess Christian were

among the audience. They were staying with Professor and Mrs. Max

Müller, whose hospitalities I hope they enjoyed as much as we did. One

or two short extracts from A----'s diary will enliven my record: "The

Princess had a huge bouquet, and going down the aisle had to bow both

ways at once, it seemed to me: but then she has the Guelph spine and

neck! Of course it is necessary that royalty should have more elasticity

in the frame than we poor ordinary mortals. After all this we started

for a luncheon at All Souls, but had to wait (impatiently) for H. R. H.

to rest herself, while our resting was done standing."

It is a long while since I read Madame d'Arblay's Recollections, but if

I remember right, _standing_ while royalty rests its bones is one

of the drawbacks to a maid of honor's felicity.

"Finally, at near three, we went into a great luncheon of some fifty.

There were different tables, and I sat at the one with royalty. The

Provost of Oriel took me in, and Mr. Browning was on my other side.

Finally, we went home to rest, but the others started out again to go to

a garden-party, but that was beyond us." After all this came a

dinner-party of twenty at the Vice-Chancellor's, and after that a

reception, where among others we met Lord and Lady Coleridge, the lady

resplendent in jewels. Even after London, this could hardly be called a

day of rest.

The Chinese have a punishment which consists simply in keeping the

subject of it awake, by the constant teasing of a succession of

individuals employed for the purpose. The best of our social pleasures,

if carried beyond the natural power of physical and mental endurance,

begin to approach the character of such a penance. After this we got a

little rest; did some mild sight-seeing, heard some good music, called

on the Max Müllers, and bade them good-by with the warmest feeling to

all the members of a household which it was a privilege to enter. There

only remained the parting from our kind entertainer, the

Vice-Chancellor, who added another to the list of places which in

England and Scotland were made dear to us by hospitality, and are

remembered as true homes to us while we were under their roofs.

On the second day of July we left the Vice-Chancellor's, and went to the

Randolph Hotel to meet our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Willett, from Brighton,

with whom we had an appointment of long standing. With them we left

Oxford, to enter on the next stage of our pilgrimage.

IV.

It had been the intention of Mr. Willett to go with us to visit Mr.

Ruskin, with whom he is in the most friendly relations. But a letter

from Mr. Ruskin's sister spoke of his illness as being too serious for

him to see company, and we reluctantly gave up this part of our plan.

My first wish was to revisit Stratford-on-Avon, and as our travelling

host was guided in everything by our inclinations, we took the cars for

Stratford, where we arrived at five o'clock in the afternoon. It had

been arranged beforehand that we should be the guests of Mr. Charles E.

Flower, one of the chief citizens of Stratford, who welcomed us to his

beautiful mansion in the most cordial way, and made us once more at home

under an English roof.

I well remembered my visit to Stratford in 1834. The condition of the

old house in which Shakespeare was born was very different from that in

which we see it to-day. A series of photographs taken in different years

shows its gradual transformation since the time when the old projecting

angular sign-board told all who approached "The immortal Shakespeare was

born in this House." How near the old house came to sharing the fortunes

of Jumbo under the management of our enterprising countryman, Mr.

Barnum, I am not sure; but that he would have "traded" for it, if the

proprietors had been willing, I do not doubt, any more than I doubt that

he would make an offer for the Tower of London, if that venerable

structure were in the market. The house in which Shakespeare was born is

the Santa Casa of England. What with my recollections and the

photographs with which I was familiarly acquainted, it had nothing very

new for me. Its outside had undergone great changes, but its bare

interior was little altered.

My previous visit was a hurried one,--I took but a glimpse, and then

went on my way. Now, for nearly a week I was a resident of

Stratford-on-Avon. How shall I describe the perfectly ideal beauty of

the new home in which I found myself! It is a fine house, surrounded by

delightful grounds, which skirt the banks of the Avon for a considerable

distance, and come close up to the enclosure of the Church of the Holy

Trinity, beneath the floor of which lie the mortal remains of

Shakespeare. The Avon is one of those narrow English rivers in which

half a dozen boats might lie side by side, but hardly wide enough for a

race between two rowing abreast of each other. Just here the river is

comparatively broad and quiet, there being a dam a little lower down the

stream. The waters were a perfect mirror, as I saw them on one of the

still days we had at Stratford. I do not remember ever before seeing

cows walking with their legs in the air, as I saw them reflected in the

Avon. Along the banks the young people were straying. I wondered if the

youthful swains quoted Shakespeare to their ladyloves. Could they help

recalling Romeo and Juliet? It is quite impossible to think of any human

being growing up in this place which claims Shakespeare as its child,

about the streets of which he ran as a boy, on the waters of which he

must have often floated, without having his image ever present. Is it

so? There are some boys, from eight to ten or a dozen years old, fishing

in the Avon, close by the grounds of "Avonbank," the place at which we

are staying. I call to the little group. I say, "Boys, who was this man

Shakespeare, people talk so much about?" Boys turn round and look up

with a plentiful lack of intelligence in their countenances. "Don't you

know who he was nor what he was?" Boys look at each other, but confess

ignorance.--Let us try the universal stimulant of human faculties. "Here

are some pennies for the boy that will tell me what that Mr. Shakespeare

was." The biggest boy finds his tongue at last. "He was a writer,--he

wrote plays." That was as much as I could get out of the youngling. I

remember meeting some boys under the monument upon Bunker Hill, and

testing their knowledge as I did that of the Stratford boys. "What is

this great stone pillar here for?" I asked. "Battle fought here,--great

battle." "Who fought?" "Americans and British." (I never hear the

expression Britishers.) "Who was the general on the American side?"

"Don' know,--General Washington or somebody."--What is an old battle,

though it may have settled the destinies of a nation, to the game of

base-ball between the Boston and Chicago Nines which is to come off

to-morrow, or to the game of marbles which Tom and Dick are just going

to play together under the shadow of the great obelisk which

commemorates the conflict?

The room more especially assigned to me looked out, at a distance of not

more than a stone's-throw, on the northern aspect of the church where

Shakespeare lies buried. Workmen were busy on the roof of the transept.

I could not conveniently climb up to have a talk with the roofers, but I

have my doubts whether they were thinking all the time of the dust over

which they were working. How small a matter literature is to the great

seething, toiling, struggling, love-making, bread-winning,

child-rearing, death-awaiting men and women who fill this huge,

palpitating world of ours! It would be worth while to pass a week or a

month among the plain, average people of Stratford. What is the relative

importance in human well-being of the emendations of the text of Hamlet

and the patching of the old trousers and the darning of the old

stockings which task the needles of the hard-working households that

fight the battle of life in these narrow streets and alleys? I ask the

question; the reader may answer it.

Our host, Mr. Flower, is more deeply interested, perhaps, than any other

individual in the "Shakespeare Memorial" buildings which have been

erected on the banks of the Avon, a short distance above the Church of

the Holy Trinity. Under Mr. Flower's guidance we got into one of his

boats, and were rowed up the stream to the Memorial edifice. There is a

theatre, in a round tower which has borrowed some traits from the

octagon "Globe" theatre of Shakespeare's day; a Shakespeare library and

portrait gallery are forming; and in due time these buildings, of

stately dimensions and built solidly of brick, will constitute a

Shakespearean centre which will attract to itself many mementoes now

scattered about in various parts of the country.

On the 4th of July we remembered our native land with all the

affectionate pride of temporary exiles, and did not forget to drink at

lunch to the prosperity and continued happiness of the United States of

America. In the afternoon we took to the boat again, and were rowed up

the river to the residence of Mr. Edgar Flower, where we found another

characteristic English family, with its nine children, one of whom was

the typical English boy, most pleasing and attractive in look, voice,

and manner.

I attempt no description of the church, the birthplace, or the other

constantly visited and often described localities. The noble bridge,

built in the reign of Henry VII. by Sir Hugh Clopton, and afterwards

widened, excited my admiration. It was a much finer piece of work than

the one built long afterwards. I have hardly seen anything which gave me

a more striking proof of the thoroughness of the old English workmen.

They built not for an age, but for all time, and the New Zealander will

have to wait a long while before he will find in any one of the older

bridges that broken arch from which he is to survey the ruins of London.

It is very pleasant to pick up a new epithet to apply to the poet upon

whose genius our language has nearly exhausted itself. It delights me to

speak of him in the words which I have just found in a memoir not yet a

century old, as "the Warwickshire bard," "the inestimable Shakespeare."

Ever since Miss Bacon made her insane attempt to unearth what is left of

Shakespeare's bodily frame, the thought of doing reverently and openly

what she would have done by stealth has been entertained by

psychologists, artists, and others who would like to know what were his

cranial developments, and to judge from the conformation of the skull

and face which of the various portraits is probably the true one. There

is little doubt that but for the curse invoked upon the person who

should disturb his bones, in the well-known lines on the slab which

covers him, he would rest, like Napoleon, like Washington, in a fitting

receptacle of marble or porphyry. In the transfer of his remains the

curiosity of men of science and artists would have been gratified, if

decay had spared the more durable portions of his material structure. It

was probably not against such a transfer that the lines were

written,--whoever was their author,--but in the fear that they would be

carried to the charnel-house.

"In this charnel-house was contained a vast collection of human bones.

How long they had been deposited there is not easily to be determined;

but it is evident, from the immense quantity contained in the vault, it

could have been used for no other purpose for many ages." "It is

probable that from an early contemplation of this dreary spot

Shakespeare imbibed that horror of a violation of sepulture which is

observable in many parts of his writings."

The body of Raphael was disinterred in 1833 to settle a question of

identity of the remains, and placed in a new coffin of lead, which was

deposited in a marble sarcophagus presented by the Pope. The

sarcophagus, with its contents, was replaced in the same spot from which

the remains had been taken. But for the inscription such a transfer of

the bones of Shakespeare would have been proposed, and possibly carried

out. Kings and emperors have frequently been treated in this way after

death, and the proposition is no more an indignity than was that of the

exhumation of the remains of Napoleon, or of André, or of the author of

"Home, Sweet Home." But sentiment, a tender regard for the supposed

wishes of the dead poet, and a natural dread of the consequences of

violating a dying wish, coupled with the execration of its contemner,

are too powerful for the arguments of science and the pleadings of art.

If Shakespeare's body had been embalmed,--which there is no reason that

I know of to suppose,--the desire to compare his features with the bust

and the portraits would have been much more imperative. When the body of

Charles the First was examined, under the direction of Sir Henry

Halford, in the presence of the Regent, afterwards George the Fourth,

the face would have been recognized at once by all who were acquainted

with Vandyke's portrait of the monarch, if the lithograph which comes

attached to Sir Henry's memoir is an accurate representation of what

they found. Even the bony framework of the face, as I have had occasion

to know, has sometimes a striking likeness to what it was when clothed

in its natural features. As between the first engraved portrait and the

bust in the church, the form of the bones of the head and face would

probably be decisive. But the world can afford to live without solving

this doubt, and leave his perishing vesture of decay to its repose.

After seeing the Shakespeare shrines, we drove over to Shottery, and

visited the Anne Hathaway cottage. I am not sure whether I ever saw it

before, but it was as familiar to me as if I had lived in it. The old

lady who showed it was agreeably communicative, and in perfect keeping

with the place.

A delightful excursion of ten or a dozen miles carried our party,

consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Flower, Mr. and Mrs. Willett, with A---- and

myself, to Compton Wynyate, a most interesting old mansion, belonging to

the Marquis of Northampton, who, with his daughter-in-law, Lady William

Compton, welcomed us and showed us all the wonders of the place. It was

a fine morning, but hot enough for one of our American July days. The

drive was through English rural scenery; that is to say, it was lovely.

The old house is a great curiosity. It was built in the reign of Henry

the Eighth, and has passed through many vicissitudes. The place, as well

as the edifice, is a study for the antiquarian. Remains of the old moat

which surrounded it are still distinguishable. The twisted and variously

figured chimneys are of singular variety and exceptional forms. Compton

_Wynyate_ is thought to get its name from the vineyards formerly

under cultivation on the hillsides, which show the signs of having been

laid out in terraces. The great hall, with its gallery, and its

hangings, and the long table made from the trunk of a single tree,

carries one back into the past centuries. There are strange nooks and

corners and passages in the old building, and one place, a queer little

"cubby-hole," has the appearance of having been a Roman Catholic chapel.

I asked the master of the house, who pointed out the curiosities of the

place most courteously, about the ghosts who of course were tenants in

common with the living proprietors. I was surprised when he told me

there were none. It was incredible, for here was every accommodation for

a spiritual visitant. I should have expected at least one haunted

chamber, to say nothing of blood-stains that could never be got rid of;

but there were no legends of the supernatural or the terrible.

Refreshments were served us, among which were some hot-house peaches,

ethereally delicate as if they had grown in the Elysian Fields and been

stolen from a banquet of angels. After this we went out on the lawn,

where, at Lady William Compton's request, I recited one or two poems;

the only time I did such a thing in England.

It seems as if Compton Wynyate must have been written about in some

novel or romance,--perhaps in more than one of both. It is the place of

all others to be the scene of a romantic story. It lies so hidden away

among the hills that its vulgar name, according to old Camden, was

"Compton in the Hole." I am not sure that it was the scene of any actual

conflict, but it narrowly escaped demolition in the great civil war, and

in 1646 it was garrisoned by the Parliament army.

On the afternoon of July 6th, our hosts had a large garden-party. If

nothing is more trying than one of these out-of-door meetings on a cold,

windy, damp day, nothing can be more delightful than such a social

gathering if the place and the weather are just what we could wish them.

The garden-party of this afternoon was as near perfection as such a

meeting could well be. The day was bright and warm, but not

uncomfortably hot, to me, at least. The company strolled about the

grounds, or rested on the piazzas, or watched the birds in the aviary,

or studied rudimentary humanity in the monkey, or, better still, in a

charming baby, for the first time on exhibition since she made the

acquaintance of sunshine. Every one could dispose of himself or herself

as fancy might suggest. I broke away at one time, and wandered alone by

the side of the Avon, under the shadow of the tall trees upon its bank.

The whole scene was as poetical, as inspiring, as any that I remember.

It would be easy to write verses about it, but unwritten poems are so

much better!

One reminiscence of that afternoon claims precedence over all the rest.

The reader must not forget that I have been a medical practitioner, and

for thirty-five years a professor in a medical school. Among the guests

whom I met in the grounds was a gentleman of the medical profession,

whose name I had often heard, and whom I was very glad to see and talk

with. This was Mr. Lawson Tait, F.R.C.S., M.D., of Birmingham. Mr., or

more properly Dr., Tait has had the most extraordinary success in a

class of cases long considered beyond the reach of surgery. If I refer

to it as a scientific _hari kari_, not for the taking but for the

saving of life, I shall come near enough to its description. This

operation is said to have been first performed by an American surgeon in

Danville, Kentucky, in the year 1809. So rash and dangerous did it seem

to most of the profession that it was sometimes spoken of as if to

attempt it were a crime. Gradually, however, by improved methods, and

especially by the most assiduous care in nursing the patient after the

operation, the mortality grew less and less, until it was recognized as

a legitimate and indeed an invaluable addition to the resources of

surgery. Mr. Lawson Tait has had, so far as I have been able to learn,

the most wonderful series of successful cases on record: namely, one

hundred and thirty-nine consecutive operations without a single death.

As I sat by the side of this great surgeon, a question suggested itself

to my mind which I leave the reader to think over. Which would give the

most satisfaction to a thoroughly humane and unselfish being, of

cultivated intelligence and lively sensibilities: to have written all

the plays which Shakespeare has left as an inheritance for mankind, or

to have snatched from the jaws of death more than a hundred fellow-

creatures,--almost seven scores of suffering women,--and restored them

to sound and comfortable existence? It would be curious to get the

answers of a hundred men and a hundred women, of a hundred young people

and a hundred old ones, of a hundred scholars and a hundred operatives.

My own specialty is asking questions, not answering them, and I trust I

shall not receive a peck or two of letters inquiring of me how I should

choose if such a question were asked me. It may prove as fertile a

source of dispute as "The Lady or the Tiger."

It would have been a great thing to pass a single night close to the

church where Shakespeare's dust lies buried. A single visit by daylight

leaves a comparatively slight impression. But when, after a night's

sleep, one wakes up and sees the spire and the old walls full before

him, that impression is very greatly deepened, and the whole scene

becomes far more a reality. Now I was nearly a whole week at

Stratford-on-Avon. The church, its exterior, its interior, the

birthplace, the river, had time to make themselves permanent images in

my mind. To effect this requires a certain amount of exposure, as much

as in the case of a photographic negative.

* * * * *

And so we bade good-by to Stratford-on-Avon and its hospitalities, with

grateful remembrances of our kind entertainers and all they did for our

comfort and enjoyment.

Where should we go next? Our travelling host proposed Great Malvern, a

famous watering-place, where we should find peace, rest, and good

accommodations. So there we went, and soon found ourselves installed at

the "Foley Arms" hotel. The room I was shown to looked out upon an

apothecary's shop, and from the window of that shop stared out upon me a

plaster bust which I recognized as that of Samuel Hahnemann. I was glad

to change to another apartment, but it may be a comfort to some of his

American followers to know that traces of homoeopathy,--or what still

continues to call itself so,--survive in the Old World, which we have

understood was pretty well tired of it.

We spent several days very pleasantly at Great Malvern. It lies at the

foot of a range of hills, the loftiest of which is over a thousand feet

in height. A---- and I thought we would go to the top of one of these,

known as the Beacon. We hired a "four-wheeler," dragged by a

much-enduring horse and in charge of a civil young man. We turned out of

one of the streets not far from the hotel, and found ourselves facing an

ascent which looked like what I should suppose would be a pretty steep

toboggan slide. We both drew back. _"Facilis ascensus,"_ I said to

myself, _"sed revocare gradum."_ It is easy enough to get up if you

are dragged up, but how will it be to come down such a declivity? When

we reached it on our return, the semi-precipice had lost all its

terrors. We had seen and travelled over so much worse places that this

little bit of slanting road seemed as nothing. The road which wound up

to the summit of the Beacon was narrow and uneven. It ran close to the

edge of the steep hillside,--so close that there were times when every

one of our forty digits curled up like a bird's claw. If we went over,

it would not be a fall down a good honest precipice,--a swish through

the air and a smash at the bottom,--but a tumbling, and a rolling over

and over, and a bouncing and bumping, ever accelerating, until we

bounded into the level below, all ready for the coroner. At one sudden

turn of the road the horse's body projected so far over its edge that

A---- declared if the beast had been an inch longer he would have

toppled over. When we got close to the summit we found the wind blowing

almost a gale. A---- says in her diary that I (meaning her honored

parent) "nearly blew off from the top of the mountain." It is true that

the force of the wind was something fearful, and seeing that two young

men near me were exposed to its fury, I offered an arm to each of them,

which they were not too proud to accept; A---- was equally attentive to

another young person; and having seen as much of the prospect as we

cared to, we were glad to get back to our four-wheeler and our hotel,

after a perilous journey almost comparable to Mark Twain's ascent of the

Riffelberg.

At Great Malvern we were deliciously idle. We walked about the place,

rested quietly, drove into the neighboring country, and made a single

excursion,--to Tewkesbury. There are few places better worth seeing than

this fine old town, full of historical associations and monumental

relics. The magnificent old abbey church is the central object of

interest. The noble Norman tower, one hundred and thirty-two feet in

height, was once surmounted by a spire, which fell during divine service

on Easter Day of the year 1559. The arch of the west entrance is sixteen

feet high and thirty-four feet wide. The fourteen columns of the nave

are each six feet and three inches in diameter and thirty feet in

height. I did not take these measurements from the fabric itself, but

from the guidebook, and I give them here instead of saying that the

columns were huge, enormous, colossal, as they did most assuredly seem

to me. The old houses of Tewkesbury compare well with the finest of

those in Chester. I have a photograph before me of one of them, in which

each of the three upper floors overhangs the one beneath it, and the

windows in the pointed gable above project over those of the fourth

floor.

I ought to have visited the site of Holme Castle, the name of which

reminds me of my own origin. "The meaning of the Saxon word 'Holme' is a

meadow surrounded with brooks, and here not only did the castle bear the

name, but the meadow is described as the 'Holme,--where the castle

was.'" The final _s_ in the name as we spell it is a frequent

addition to old English names, as Camden mentions, giving the name

Holmes among the examples. As there is no castle at the Holme now, I

need not pursue my inquiries any further. It was by accident that I

stumbled on this bit of archaeology, and as I have a good many

namesakes, it may perhaps please some of them to be told about it. Few

of us hold any castles, I think, in these days, except those _châteaux

en Espagne_, of which I doubt not, many of us are lords and masters.

In another of our excursions we visited a venerable church, where our

attention was called to a particular monument. It was erected to the

memory of one of the best of husbands by his "wretched widow," who

records upon the marble that there never was such a man on the face of

the earth before, and never will be again, and that there never was

anybody so miserable as she,--no, never, never, never! These are not the

exact words, but this is pretty nearly what she declares. The story is

that she married again within a year.

From my window at the Foley Arms I can see the tower of the fine old

abbey church of Malvern, which would be a centre of pilgrimages if it

were in our country. But England is full of such monumental structures,

into the history of which the local antiquarians burrow, and pass their

peaceful lives in studying and writing about them with the same innocent

enthusiasm that White of Selborne manifested in studying nature as his

village showed it to him.

In our long drives we have seen everywhere the same picturesque old

cottages, with the pretty gardens, and abundant flowers, and noble

trees, more frequently elms than any other. One day--it was on the 10th

of July--we found ourselves driving through what seemed to be a

gentleman's estate, an ample domain, well wooded and well kept. On

inquiring to whom this place belonged, I was told that the owner was Sir

Edmund Lechmere. The name had a very familiar sound to my ears. Without

rising from the table at which I am now writing, I have only to turn my

head, and in full view, at the distance of a mile, just across the

estuary of the Charles, shining in the morning sun, are the roofs and

spires and chimneys of East Cambridge, always known in my younger days

as Lechmere's Point. Judge Richard Lechmere was one of our old Cambridge

Tories, whose property was confiscated at the time of the Revolution. An

engraving of his handsome house, which stands next to the Vassall house,

long known as Washington's headquarters, and since not less celebrated

as the residence of Longfellow, is before me, on one of the pages of the

pleasing little volume, "The Cambridge of 1776." I take it for granted

that our Lechmeres were of the same stock as the owner of this property.

If so, he probably knows all that I could tell him about his colonial

relatives, who were very grand people, belonging to a little

aristocratic circle of friends and relatives who were faithful to their

king and their church. The Baroness Riedesel, wife of a Hessian officer

who had been captured, was for a while resident in this house, and her

name, scratched on a window-pane, was long shown as a sight for eyes

unused to titles other than governor, judge, colonel, and the like. I

was tempted to present myself at Sir Edmund's door as one who knew

something about the Lechmeres in America, but I did not feel sure how

cordially a descendant of the rebels who drove off Richard and Mary

Lechmere would be received.

From Great Malvern we went to Bath, another place where we could rest

and be comfortable. The Grand Pump-Room Hotel was a stately building,

and the bath-rooms were far beyond anything I had ever seen of that

kind. The remains of the old Roman baths, which appear to have been very

extensive, are partially exposed. What surprises one all over the Old

World is to see how deeply all the old civilizations contrive to get

buried. Everybody seems to have lived in the cellar. It is hard to

believe that the cellar floor was once the sun surface of the smiling

earth.

I looked forward to seeing Bath with a curious kind of interest. I once

knew one of those dear old English ladies whom one finds all the world

over, with their prim little ways, and their gilt prayer-books, and

lavender-scented handkerchiefs, and family recollections. She gave me

the idea that Bath, a city where the great people often congregate, was

more especially the paradise of decayed gentlewomen. There, she told me,

persons with very narrow incomes--not _demi-fortunes_, but

_demi-quart-de-fortunes_--could find everything arranged to

accommodate their modest incomes. I saw the evidence of this everywhere.

So great was the delight I had in looking in at the shop-windows of the

long street which seemed to be one of the chief thoroughfares that,

after exploring it in its full extent by myself, I went for A----, and

led her down one side its whole length and up the other. In these shops

the precious old dears could buy everything they wanted in the most

minute quantities. Such tempting heaps of lumps of white sugar, only

twopence! Such delectable cakes, two for a penny! Such seductive scraps

of meat, which would make a breakfast nourishing as well as relishing,

possibly even what called itself a dinner, blushing to see themselves

labelled threepence or fourpence! We did not know whether to smile or to

drop a tear, as we contemplated these baits hung out to tempt the coins

from the exiguous purses of ancient maidens, forlorn widows, withered

annuitants, stranded humanity in every stage of shipwrecked penury. I am

reminded of Thackeray's "Jack Spiggot." "And what are your pursuits,

Jack? says I. 'Sold out when the governor died. Mother lives at Bath. Go

down there once a year for a week. Dreadful slow. Shilling whist.'" Mrs.

Gaskell's picture of "Cranford" is said to have been drawn from a

village in Cheshire, but Bath must have a great deal in common with its

"elegant economies." Do not make the mistake, however, of supposing that

this splendid watering-place, sometimes spoken of as "the handsomest

city in Britain," is only a city of refuge for people that have seen

better days. Lord Macaulay speaks of it as "that beautiful city which

charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and

Palladio." If it is not quite so conspicuous as a fashionable resort as

it was in the days of Beau Nash or of Christopher Anstey, it has never

lost its popularity. Chesterfield writes in 1764, "The number of people

in this place is infinite," and at the present time the annual influx of

visitors is said to vary from ten to fourteen thousand. Many of its

public buildings are fine, and the abbey church, dating from 1499, is an

object of much curiosity, especially on account of the sculptures on its

western façade. These represent two ladders, with angels going up and

down upon them,--suggested by a dream of the founder of the church,

repeating that of Jacob.

On the 14th of July we left Bath for Salisbury. While passing Westbury,

one of our fellow-passengers exclaimed, "Look out! Look out!" "What is

it?" "The horse! the horse!" All our heads turned to the window, and all

our eyes fastened on the figure of a white horse, upon a hillside some

miles distant. This was not the white horse which Mr. Thomas Hughes has

made famous, but one of much less archaic aspect and more questionable

history. A little book which we bought tells us all we care to know

about it. "It is formed by excoriating the turf over the steep slope of

the northern escarpment of Salisbury Plain." It was "remodelled" in

1778, and "restored" in 1873 at a cost of between sixty and seventy

pounds. It is said that a smaller and ruder horse stood here from time

immemorial, and was made to commemorate a victory of Alfred over the

Danes. However that may be, the horse we now see on the hillside is a

very modern-looking and well-shaped animal, and is of the following

dimensions: length, 170 feet; height from highest part of back, 128

feet; thickness of body, 55 feet; length of head, 50 feet; eye, 6 by 8

feet. It is a very pretty little object as we see it in the distance.

Salisbury Cathedral was my first love among all the wonderful

ecclesiastical buildings which I saw during my earlier journey. I looked

forward to seeing it again with great anticipations of pleasure, which

were more than realized.

Our travelling host had taken a whole house in the Close,--a privileged

enclosure, containing the cathedral, the bishop's palace, houses of the

clergy, and a limited number of private residences, one of the very best

of which was given over entirely into the hands of our party during our

visit. The house was about as near the cathedral as Mr. Flower's house,

where we stayed at Stratford-on-Avon, was to the Church of the Holy

Trinity. It was very completely furnished, and in the room assigned to

me as my library I found books in various languages, showing that the

residence was that of a scholarly person.

If one had to name the apple of the eye of England, I think he would be

likely to say that Salisbury Cathedral was as near as he could come to

it, and that the white of the eye was Salisbury Close. The cathedral is

surrounded by a high wall, the gates of which,--its eyelids,--are closed

every night at a seasonable hour, at which the virtuous inhabitants are

expected to be in their safe and sacred quarters. Houses within this

hallowed precinct naturally bring a higher rent than those of the

unsanctified and unprotected region outside of its walls. It is a realm

of peace, glorified by the divine edifice, which lifts the least

imaginative soul upward to the heavens its spire seems trying to reach;

beautified by rows of noble elms which stretch high aloft, as if in

emulation of the spire; beatified by holy memories of the good and great

men who have worn their lives out in the service of the church of which

it is one of the noblest temples.

For a whole week we lived under the shadow of the spire of the great

cathedral. Our house was opposite the north transept, only separated by

the road in front of it from the cathedral grounds. Here, as at

Stratford, I learned what it was to awake morning after morning and find

that I was not dreaming, but there in the truth-telling daylight the

object of my admiration, devotion, almost worship, stood before me. I

need not here say anything more of the cathedral, except that its

perfect exterior is hardly equalled in beauty by its interior, which

looks somewhat bare and cold. It was my impression that there is more to

study than to admire in the interior, but I saw the cathedral so much

oftener on the outside than on the inside that I may not have done

justice to the latter aspect of the noble building.

Nothing could be more restful than our week at Salisbury. There was

enough in the old town besides the cathedral to interest us,--old

buildings, a museum, full of curious objects, and the old town itself.

When I was there the first time, I remember that we picked up a

guide-book in which we found a verse that has remained in my memory ever

since. It is an epitaph on a native of Salisbury who died in Venice.

"Born in the English Venice, thou didst dye

Dear Friend, in the Italian Salisbury."

This would be hard to understand except for the explanation which the

local antiquarians give us of its significance. The Wiltshire Avon flows

by or through the town, which is drained by brooks that run through its

streets. These, which used to be open, are now covered over, and thus

the epitaph becomes somewhat puzzling, as there is nothing to remind one

of Venice in walking about the town.

While at Salisbury we made several excursions: to Old Sarum; to

Bemerton, where we saw the residence of holy George Herbert, and visited

the little atom of a church in which he ministered; to Clarendon Park;

to Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, a most interesting place

for itself and its recollections; and lastly to Stonehenge. My second

visit to the great stones after so long an interval was a strange

experience. But what is half a century to a place like Stonehenge?

Nothing dwarfs an individual life like one of these massive, almost

unchanging monuments of an antiquity which refuses to be measured. The

"Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" was represented by an old man, who told

all he knew and a good deal more about the great stones, and sheared a

living, not from sheep, but from visitors, in the shape of shillings and

sixpences. I saw nothing that wore unwoven wool on its back in the

neighborhood of the monuments, but sheep are shown straggling among them

in the photographs.

The broken circle of stones, some in their original position, some

bending over like old men, some lying prostrate, suggested the thoughts

which took form in the following verses. They were read at the annual

meeting, in January, of the class which graduated at Harvard College in

the year 1829. Eight of the fifty-nine men who graduated sat round the

small table. There were several other classmates living, but infirmity,

distance, and other peremptory reasons kept them from being with us. I

have read forty poems at our successive annual meetings. I will

introduce this last one by quoting a stanza from the poem I read in

1851:--

As one by one is falling

Beneath the leaves or snows,

Each memory still recalling

The broken ring shall close,

Till the night winds softly pass

O'er the green and growing grass,

Where it waves on the graves

Of the "Boys of 'Twenty-nine."

THE BROKEN CIRCLE.

I stood on Sarum's treeless plain,

The waste that careless Nature owns;

Lone tenants of her bleak domain,

Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.

Upheaved in many a billowy mound

The sea-like, naked turf arose,

Where wandering flocks went nibbling round

The mingled graves of friends and foes.

The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane,

This windy desert roamed in turn;

Unmoved these mighty blocks remain

Whose story none that lives may learn.

Erect, half buried, slant or prone,

These awful listeners, blind and dumb,

Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown,

As wave on wave they go and come.

"Who are you, giants, whence and why?"

I stand and ask in blank amaze;

My soul accepts their mute reply:

"A mystery, as are you that gaze.

"A silent Orpheus wrought the charm

From riven rocks their spoils to bring;

A nameless Titan lent his arm

To range us in our magic ring.

"But Time with still and stealthy stride,

That climbs and treads and levels all,

That bids the loosening keystone slide,

And topples down the crumbling wall,--

"Time, that unbuilds the quarried past,

Leans on these wrecks that press the sod;

They slant, they stoop, they fall at last,

And strew the turf their priests have trod.

"No more our altar's wreath of smoke

Floats up with morning's fragrant dew;

The fires are dead, the ring is broke,

Where stood the many stand the few."

--My thoughts had wandered far away,

Borne off on Memory's outspread wing,

To where in deepening twilight lay

The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.

Ah me! of all our goodly train

How few will find our banquet hall!

Yet why with coward lips complain

That this must lean and that must fall?

Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,

Its vanished flame no more returns;

But ours no chilling damp has known,--

Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns.

So let our broken circle stand

A wreck, a remnant, yet the same,

While one last, loving, faithful hand

Still lives to feed its altar-flame!

My heart has gone back over the waters to my old friends and my own

home. When this vision has faded, I will return to the silence of the

lovely Close and the shadow of the great Cathedral.

V.

The remembrance of home, with its early and precious and long-enduring

friendships, has intruded itself among my recollections of what I saw

and heard, of what I felt and thought, in the distant land I was

visiting. I must return to the scene where I found myself when the

suggestion of the broken circle ran away with my imagination.

The literature of Stonehenge is extensive, and illustrates the weakness

of archaeologists almost as well as the "Praetorium" of Scott's

"Antiquary." "In 1823," says a local handbook, "H. Browne, of Amesbury,

published 'An Illustration of Stonehenge and Abury,' in which he

endeavored to show that both of these monuments were antediluvian, and

that the latter was formed under the direction of Adam. He ascribes the

present dilapidated condition of Stonehenge to the operation of the

general deluge; for, he adds, 'to suppose it to be the work of any

people since the flood is entirely monstrous.'"

We know well enough how great stones--pillars and obelisks--are brought

into place by means of our modern appliances. But if the great blocks

were raised by a mob of naked Picts, or any tribe that knew none of the

mechanical powers but the lever, how did they set them up and lay the

cross-stones, the imposts, upon the uprights? It is pleasant, once in a

while, to think how we should have managed any such matters as this if

left to our natural resources. We are all interested in the make-shifts

of Robinson Crusoe. Now the rudest tribes make cords of some kind, and

the earliest, or almost the earliest, of artificial structures is an

earth-mound. If a hundred, or hundreds, of men could drag the huge

stones many leagues, as they must have done to bring them to their

destined place, they could have drawn each of them up a long slanting

mound ending in a sharp declivity, with a hole for the foot of the stone

at its base. If the stone were now tipped over, it would slide into its

place, and could be easily raised from its slanting position to the

perpendicular. Then filling in the space between the mound and two

contiguous stones, the impost could be dragged up to its position. I

found a pleasure in working at this simple mechanical problem, as a

change from the more imaginative thoughts suggested by the mysterious

monuments.

One incident of our excursion to Stonehenge had a significance for me

which renders it memorable in my personal experience. As we drove over

the barren plain, one of the party suddenly exclaimed, "Look! Look! See

the lark rising!" I looked up with the rest. There was the bright blue

sky, but not a speck upon it which my eyes could distinguish. Again, one

called out, "Hark! Hark! Hear him singing!" I listened, but not a sound

reached my ear. Was it strange that I felt a momentary pang? _Those

that look out at the windows are darkened, and all the daughters of

music are brought low._ Was I never to see or hear the soaring

songster at Heaven's gate,--unless,--unless,--if our mild humanized

theology promises truly, I may perhaps hereafter listen to him singing

far down beneath me? For in whatever world I may find myself, I hope I

shall always love our poor little spheroid, so long my home, which some

kind angel may point out to me as a gilded globule swimming in the

sunlight far away. After walking the streets of pure gold in the New

Jerusalem, might not one like a short vacation, to visit the

well-remembered green fields and flowery meadows? I had a very sweet

emotion of self-pity, which took the sting out of my painful discovery

that the orchestra of my pleasing life-entertainment was unstringing its

instruments, and the lights were being extinguished,--that the show was

almost over. All this I kept to myself, of course, except so far as I

whispered it to the unseen presence which we all feel is in sympathy

with us, and which, as it seemed to my fancy, was looking into my eyes,

and through them into my soul, with the tender, tearful smile of a

mother who for the first time gently presses back the longing lips of

her as yet unweaned infant.

On our way back from Stonehenge we stopped and took a cup of tea with a

friend of our host, Mr. Nightingale. His house, a bachelor

establishment, was very attractive to us by the beauty within and around

it. His collection of "china," as Pope and old-fashioned people call all

sorts of earthenware, excited the enthusiasm of our host, whose

admiration of some rare pieces in the collection was so great that it

would have run into envy in a less generous nature.

It is very delightful to find one's self in one of these English country

residences. The house is commonly old, and has a history. It is

oftentimes itself a record, like that old farmhouse my friend John

Bellows wrote to me about, which chronicled half a dozen reigns by

various architectural marks as exactly as if it had been an official

register. "The stately homes of England," as we see them at Wilton and

Longford Castle, are not more admirable in their splendors than "the

blessed homes of England" in their modest beauty. Everywhere one may see

here old parsonages by the side of ivy-mantled churches, and the

comfortable mansions where generations of country squires have lived in

peace, while their sons have gone forth to fight England's battles, and

carry her flags of war and commerce all over the world. We in America

can hardly be said to have such a possession as a family home. We

encamp,--not under canvas, but in fabrics of wood or more lasting

materials, which are pulled down after a brief occupancy by the

builders, and possibly their children, or are modernized so that the

former dwellers in them would never recognize their old habitations.

In my various excursions from Salisbury I was followed everywhere by the

all-pervading presence of the towering spire. Just what it was in that

earlier visit, when my eyes were undimmed and my sensibilities unworn,

just such I found it now. As one drives away from the town, the roofs of

the houses drop out of the landscape, the lesser spires disappear one by

one, until the great shaft is left standing alone,--solitary as the

broken statue of Ozymandias in the desert, as the mast of some mighty

ship above the waves which have rolled over the foundering vessel. Most

persons will, I think, own to a feeling of awe in looking up at it. Few

can look down from a great height without creepings and crispations, if

they do not get as far as vertigos and that aerial calenture which

prompts them to jump from the pinnacle on which they are standing. It

does not take much imagination to make one experience something of the

same feeling in looking up at a very tall steeple or chimney. To one

whose eyes are used to Park Street and the Old South steeples as

standards of height, a spire which climbs four hundred feet towards the

sky is a new sensation. Whether I am more "afraid of that which is high"

than I was at my first visit, as I should be on the authority of

Ecclesiastes, I cannot say, but it was quite enough for me to let my

eyes climb the spire, and I had no desire whatever to stand upon that

"bad eminence," as I am sure that I should have found it.

I soon noticed a slight deflection from the perpendicular at the upper

part of the spire. This has long been observed. I could not say that I

saw the spire quivering in the wind, as I felt that of Strasburg doing

when I ascended it,--swaying like a blade of grass when a breath of air

passes over it. But it has been, for at least two hundred years, nearly

two feet out of the perpendicular. No increase in the deviation was

found to exist when it was examined early in the present century. It is

a wonder that this slight-looking structure can have survived the

blasts, and thunderbolts, and earthquakes, and the weakening effects of

time on its stones and timbers for five hundred years. Since the spire

of Chichester Cathedral fell in 1861, sheathing itself in its tower like

a sword dropping into its scabbard, one can hardly help looking with

apprehension at all these lofty fabrics. I have before referred to the

fall of the spire of Tewkesbury Abbey church, three centuries earlier.

There has been a good deal of fear for the Salisbury spire, and great

precautions have been taken to keep it firm, so that we may hope it will

stand for another five hundred years. It ought to be a "joy forever,"

for it is a thing of beauty, if ever there were one.

I never felt inclined to play the part of the young enthusiast in

"Excelsior," as I looked up at the weathercock which surmounts the

spire. But the man who oils the weathercock-spindle has to get up to it

in some way, and that way is by ladders which reach to within thirty

feet of the top, where there is a small door, through which he emerges,

to crawl up the remaining distance on the outside. "The situation and

appearance," says one of the guide-books, "must be terrific, yet many

persons have voluntarily and daringly clambered to the top, even in a

state of intoxication." Such, I feel sure, was not the state of my most

valued and exemplary clerical friend, who, with a cool head and steady

nerves, found himself standing in safety at the top of the spire, with

his hand upon the vane, which nothing terrestrial had ever looked down

upon in its lofty position, except a bird, a bat, a sky-rocket, or a

balloon.

In saying that the exterior of Salisbury Cathedral is more interesting

than its interior, I was perhaps unfair to the latter, which only yields

to the surpassing claims of the wonderful structure as seen from the

outside. One may get a little tired of marble Crusaders, with their

crossed legs and broken noses, especially if, as one sometimes finds

them, they are covered with the pencilled autographs of cockney

scribblers. But there are monuments in this cathedral which excite

curiosity, and others which awaken the most striking associations. There

is the "Boy Bishop," his marble effigy protected from vandalism by an

iron cage. There is the skeleton figure representing Fox (who should

have been called Goose), the poor creature who starved himself to death

in trying to imitate the fast of forty days in the wilderness. Since

this performance has been taken out of the list of miracles, it is not

so likely to be repeated by fanatics. I confess to a strong suspicion

that this is one of the ambulatory or movable stories, like the

"hangman's stone" legend, which I have found in so many different parts

of England. Skulls and crossbones, sometimes skeletons or skeleton-like

figures, are not uncommon among the sepulchral embellishments of an

earlier period. Where one of these figures is found, the forty-day-fast

story is likely to grow out of it, as the mistletoe springs from the oak

or apple tree.

With far different emotions we look upon the spot where lie buried many

of the Herbert family, among the rest,

"Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother,"

for whom Ben Jonson wrote the celebrated epitaph. I am almost afraid to

say it, but I never could admire the line,

"Lies the subject of all verse,"

nor the idea of Time dropping his hour-glass and scythe to throw a dart

at the fleshless figure of Death. This last image seems to me about the

equivalent in mortuary poetry of Roubiliac's monument to Mrs.

Nightingale in mortuary sculpture,--poor conceits both of them, without

the suggestion of a tear in the verses or in the marble; but the

rhetorical exaggeration does not prevent us from feeling that we are

standing by the resting-place of one who was

"learn'd and fair and good"

enough to stir the soul of stalwart Ben Jonson, and the names of Sidney

and Herbert make us forget the strange hyperboles.

History meets us everywhere, as we stray among these ancient monuments.

Under that effigy lie the great bones of Sir John Cheyne, a mighty man

of war, said to have been "overthrown" by Richard the Third at the

battle of Bosworth Field. What was left of him was unearthed in 1789 in

the demolition of the Beauchamp chapel, and his thigh-bone was found to

be four inches longer than that of a man of common stature.

The reader may remember how my recollections started from their

hiding-place when I came, in one of our excursions, upon the name of

Lechmere, as belonging to the owner of a fine estate by or through which

we were driving. I had a similar twinge of reminiscence at meeting with

the name of Gorges, which is perpetuated by a stately monument at the

end of the north aisle of the cathedral. Sir Thomas Gorges, Knight of

Longford Castle, may or may not have been of the same family as the

well-remembered grandiose personage of the New England Pilgrim period.

The title this gentleman bore had a far more magnificent sound than

those of his contemporaries, Governor Carver and Elder Brewster. No

title ever borne among us has filled the mouth quite so full as that of

"Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Lord Palatine of the Province of Maine," a

province with "Gorgeana" (late the plantation of Agamenticus) as its

capital. Everywhere in England a New Englander is constantly meeting

with names of families and places which remind him that he comes of a

graft from an old tree on a new stock. I could not keep down the

associations called up by the name of Gorges. There is a certain

pleasure in now and then sprinkling our prosaic colonial history with

the holy water of a high-sounding title; not that a "Sir" before a man's

name makes him any better,--for are we not all equal, and more than

equal, to each other?--but it sounds pleasantly. Sir Harry Vane and Sir

Harry Frankland look prettily on the printed page, as the illuminated

capital at the head of a chapter in an old folio pleases the eye of the

reader. Sir Thomas Gorges was the builder of Longford Castle, now the

seat of the Earl of Radnor, whose family name is Bouverie. Whether our

Sir Ferdinando was of the Longford Castle stock or not I must leave to

my associates of the Massachusetts Historical Society to determine.

We lived very quietly at our temporary home in Salisbury Close. A

pleasant dinner with the Dean, a stroll through the grounds of the

episcopal palace, with that perpetual feast of the eyes which the

cathedral offered us, made our residence delightful at the time, and

keeps it so in remembrance. Besides the cathedral there were the very

lovely cloisters, the noble chapter-house with its central pillar,--this

structure has been restored and rejuvenated since my earlier visit,--and

there were the peaceful dwellings, where I insist on believing that only

virtue and happiness are ever tenants. Even outside the sacred enclosure

there is a great deal to enjoy, in the ancient town of Salisbury. One

may rest under the Poultry Cross, where twenty or thirty generations

have rested before him. One may purchase his china at the well-furnished

establishment of the tenant of a spacious apartment of ancient

date,--"the Halle of John Halle," a fine private edifice built in the

year 1470, restored and beautified in 1834; the emblazonment of the

royal arms having been executed by the celebrated architectural artist

Pugin. The old houses are numerous, and some of them eminently

picturesque.

Salisbury was formerly very unhealthy, on account of the low, swampy

nature of its grounds. The Sanitary Reform, dating from about thirty

years ago, had a great effect on the condition of the place. Before the

drainage the annual mortality was twenty-seven in the thousand; since

the drainage twenty in the thousand, which is below that of Boston. In

the Close, which is a little Garden of Eden, with no serpent in it that

I could hear of, the deaths were only fourteen in a thousand. Happy

little enclosure, where thieves cannot break through and steal, where

Death himself hesitates to enter, and makes a visit only now and then at

long intervals, lest the fortunate inhabitants should think they had

already reached the Celestial City!

[Illustration: Salisbury Cathedral.]

It must have been a pretty bitter quarrel that drove the tenants of the

airy height of Old Sarum to remove to the marshy level of the present

site of the cathedral and the town. I wish we could have given more time

to the ancient fortress and cathedral town. This is one of the most

interesting historic localities of Great Britain. We looked from

different points of view at the mounds and trenches which marked it as a

strongly fortified position. For many centuries it played an important

part in the history of England. At length, however, the jealousies of

the laity and the clergy, a squabble like that of "town and gown," but

with graver underlying causes, broke up the harmony and practically

ended the existence of the place except as a monument of the past. It

seems a pity that the headquarters of the Prince of Peace could not have

managed to maintain tranquillity within its own borders. But so it was;

and the consequence followed that Old Sarum, with all its grand

recollections, is but a collection of mounds and hollows,--as much a

tomb of its past as Birs Nimroud of that great city, Nineveh. Old Sarum

is now best remembered by its long-surviving privilege, as a borough, of

sending two members to Parliament. The farcical ceremony of electing two

representatives who had no real constituency behind them was put an end

to by the Reform Act of 1832.

Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, within an easy drive's

distance from Salisbury, was the first nobleman's residence I saw in my

early visit. Not a great deal of what I then saw had survived in my

memory. I recall the general effect of the stately mansion and its

grounds. A picture or two of Vandyke's had not quite faded out of my

recollection. I could not forget the armor of Anne de Montmorenci,--not

another Maid of Orleans, but Constable of France,--said to have been

taken in battle by an ancestor of the Herberts. It was one of the first

things that made me feel I was in the Old World. Miles Standish's sword

was as far back as New England collections of armor carried us at that

day. The remarkable gallery of ancient sculptures impressed me at the

time, but no one bust or statue survived as a distinct image. Even the

beautiful Palladian bridge had not pictured itself on my mental tablet

as it should have done, and I could not have taken my oath that I had

seen it. But the pretty English maidens whom we met on the day of our

visit to Wilton,--daughters or granddaughters of a famous inventor and

engineer,--still lingered as vague and pleasing visions, so lovely had

they seemed among the daisies and primroses. The primroses and daisies

were as fresh in the spring of 1886 as they were in the spring of 1833,

but I hardly dared to ask after the blooming maidens of that early

period.

One memory predominates over all others, in walking through the halls,

or still more in wandering through the grounds, of Wilton House. Here

Sir Philip Sidney wrote his "Arcadia," and the ever youthful presence of

the man himself rather than the recollection of his writings takes

possession of us. There are three young men in history whose names

always present themselves to me in a special companionship: Pico della

Mirandola, "the Phoenix of the Age" for his contemporaries; "the

Admirable Crichton," accepting as true the accounts which have come down

to us of his wonderful accomplishments; and Sidney, the Bayard of

England, "that glorious star, that lively pattern of virtue and the

lovely joy of all the learned sort, ... born into the world to show unto

our age a sample of ancient virtue." The English paragon of excellence

was but thirty-two years old when he was slain at Zutphen, the Italian

Phoenix but thirty-one when he was carried off by a fever, and the

Scotch prodigy of gifts and attainments was only twenty-two when he was

assassinated by his worthless pupil. Sir Philip Sidney is better

remembered by the draught of water he gave the dying soldier than by all

the waters he ever drew from the fountain of the Muses, considerable as

are the merits of his prose and verse. But here, where he came to cool

his fiery spirit after the bitter insult he had received from the Earl

of Leicester; here, where he mused and wrote, and shaped his lofty plans

for a glorious future, he lives once more in our imagination, as if his

spirit haunted the English Arcadia he loved so dearly.

The name of Herbert, which we have met with in the cathedral, and which

belongs to the Earls of Pembroke, presents itself to us once more in a

very different and very beautiful aspect. Between Salisbury and Wilton,

three miles and a half distant, is the little village of Bemerton, where

"holy George Herbert" lived and died, and where he lies buried. Many

Americans who know little else of him recall the lines borrowed from him

by Irving in the "Sketch-Book" and by Emerson in "Nature." The

"Sketch-Book" gives the lines thus:--

"Sweet day, so pure, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky."

In other versions the fourth word is _cool_ instead of _pure_,

and _cool_ is, I believe, the correct reading. The day when we

visited Bemerton was, according to A----'s diary, "perfect." I was

struck with the calm beauty of the scene around us, the fresh greenness

of all growing things, and the stillness of the river which mirrored the

heavens above it. It must have been this reflection which the poet was

thinking of when he spoke of the bridal of the earth and sky. The river

is the Wiltshire Avon; not Shakespeare's Avon, but the southern stream

of the same name, which empties into the British Channel.

So much of George Herbert's intellectual and moral character repeat

themselves in Emerson that if I believed in metempsychosis I should

think that the English saint had reappeared in the American philosopher.

Their features have a certain resemblance, but the type, though an

exceptional and fine one, is not so very rare. I found a portrait in the

National Gallery which was a good specimen of it; the bust of a near

friend of his, more intimate with him than almost any other person, is

often taken for that of Emerson. I see something of it in the portrait

of Sir Philip Sidney, and I doubt not that traces of a similar mental

resemblance ran through the whole group, with individual characteristics

which were in some respects quite different. I will take a single verse

of Herbert's from Emerson's "Nature,"--one of the five which he

quotes:--

"Nothing hath got so far

But man hath caught and kept it as his prey;

His eyes dismount the highest star:

He is in little all the sphere.

Herbs gladly cure our flesh because that they

Find their acquaintance there."

Emerson himself fully recognizes his obligations to "the beautiful

psalmist of the seventeenth century," as he calls George Herbert. There

are many passages in his writings which sound as if they were

paraphrases from the elder poet. From him it is that Emerson gets a word

he is fond of, and of which his imitators are too fond:--

"Who sweeps a room as for thy laws

Makes that and the action _fine_."

The little chapel in which Herbert officiated is perhaps half as long

again as the room in which I am writing, but it is four or five feet

narrower,--and I do not live in a palace. Here this humble servant of

God preached and prayed, and here by his faithful and loving service he

so endeared himself to all around him that he has been canonized by an

epithet no other saint of the English Church has had bestowed upon him.

His life as pictured by Izaak Walton is, to borrow one of his own lines,

"A box where sweets compacted lie;"

and I felt, as I left his little chapel and the parsonage which he

rebuilt as a free-will offering, as a pilgrim might feel who had just

left the holy places at Jerusalem.

Among the places which I saw in my first visit was Longford Castle, the

seat of the Earl of Radnor. I remembered the curious triangular

building, constructed with reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, as

churches are built in the form of the cross. I remembered how the

omnipresent spire of the great cathedral, three miles away, looked down

upon the grounds about the building as if it had been their next-door

neighbor. I had not forgotten the two celebrated Claudes, Morning and

Evening. My eyes were drawn to the first of these two pictures when I

was here before; now they turned naturally to the landscape with the

setting sun. I have read my St. Ruskin with due reverence, but I have

never given up my allegiance to Claude Lorraine. But of all the fine

paintings at Longford Castle, no one so much impressed me at my recent

visit as the portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein. This is one of those

pictures which help to make the Old World worth a voyage across the

Atlantic. Portraits of Erasmus are not uncommon; every scholar would

know him if he met him in the other world with the look he wore on

earth. All the etchings and their copies give a characteristic

presentation of the spiritual precursor of Luther, who pricked the false

image with his rapier which the sturdy monk slashed with his broadsword.

What a face it is which Hans Holbein has handed down to us in this

wonderful portrait at Longford Castle! How dry it is with scholastic

labor, how keen with shrewd scepticism, how worldly-wise, how conscious

of its owner's wide-awake sagacity! Erasmus and Rabelais,--Nature used

up all her arrows for their quivers, and had to wait a hundred years and

more before she could find shafts enough for the outfit of Voltaire,

leaner and keener than Erasmus, and almost as free in his language as

the audacious creator of Gargantua and Pantagruel.

I have not generally given descriptions of the curious objects which I

saw in the great houses and museums which I visited. There is, however,

a work of art at Longford Castle so remarkable that I must speak of it.

I was so much struck by the enormous amount of skilful ingenuity and

exquisite workmanship bestowed upon it that I looked up its history,

which I found in the "Beauties of England and Wales." This is what is

there said of the wonderful steel chair: "It was made by Thomas Rukers

at the city of Augsburgh, in the year 1575, and consists of more than

130 compartments, all occupied by groups of figures representing a

succession of events in the annals of the Roman Empire, from the landing

of Æneas to the reign of Rodolphus the Second." It looks as if a life

had gone into the making of it, as a pair or two of eyes go to the

working of the bridal veil of an empress.

Fifty years ago and more, when I was at Longford Castle with my two

companions, who are no more with us, we found there a pleasant, motherly

old housekeeper, or attendant of some kind, who gave us a draught of

home-made ale and left a cheerful remembrance with us, as, I need hardly

say, we did with her, in a materialized expression of our good-will. It

always rubbed very hard on my feelings to offer money to any persons who

had served me well, as if they were doing it for their own pleasure. It

may have been the granddaughter of the kindly old matron of the year

1833 who showed us round, and possibly, if I had sunk a shaft of

inquiry, I might have struck a well of sentiment. But

"Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee,"

carried into practical life, is certain in its financial result to the

subject of the emotional impulse, but is less sure to call forth a

tender feeling in the recipient. One will hardly find it worth while to

go through the world weeping over his old recollections, and paying gold

instead of silver and silver instead of copper to astonished boatmen and

bewildered chambermaids.

On Sunday, the 18th of July, we attended morning service at the

cathedral. The congregation was not proportioned to the size of the

great edifice. These vast places of worship were built for ages when

faith was the rule and questioning the exception. I will not say that

faith has grown cold, but it has cooled from white heat to cherry red or

a still less flaming color. As to church attendance, I have heard the

saying attributed to a great statesman, that "once a day is Orthodox,

but twice a day is Puritan." No doubt many of the same class of people

that used to fill the churches stay at home and read about evolution or

telepathy, or whatever new gospel they may have got hold of. Still the

English seem to me a religious people; they have leisure enough to say

grace and give thanks before and after meals, and their institutions

tend to keep alive the feelings of reverence which cannot be said to be

distinctive of our own people.

In coming out of the cathedral, on the Sunday I just mentioned, a

gentleman addressed me as a fellow-countryman. There is something,--I

will not stop now to try and define it,--but there is something by which

we recognize an American among the English before he speaks and betrays

his origin. Our new friend proved to be the president of one of our

American colleges; an intelligent and well-instructed gentleman, of

course. By the invitation of our host he came in to visit us in the

evening, and made himself very welcome by his agreeable conversation.

I took great delight in wandering about the old town of Salisbury. There

are no such surprises in our oldest places as one finds in Chester, or

Tewkesbury, or Stratford, or Salisbury, and I have no doubt in scores or

hundreds of similar places which I have never visited. The best

substitute for such rambles as one can take through these mouldy

boroughs (or burrows) is to be found in such towns as Salem,

Newburyport, Portsmouth. Without imagination, Shakespeare's birthplace

is but a queer old house, and Anne Hathaway's home a tumble-down

cottage. With it, one can see the witches of Salem Village sailing out

of those little square windows, which look as if they were made on

purpose for them, or stroll down to Derby's wharf and gaze at

"Cleopatra's Barge," precursor of the yachts of the Astors and Goulds

and Vanderbilts, as she comes swimming into the harbor in all her gilded

glory. But it must make a difference what the imagination has to work

upon, and I do not at all wonder that Mr. Ruskin would not wish to live

in a land where there are no old ruins of castles and monasteries. Man

will not live on bread only; he wants a great deal more, if he can get

it,--frosted cake as well as corn-bread; and the New World keeps the

imagination on plain and scanty diet, compared to the rich traditional

and historic food which furnishes the banquets of the Old World.