I slept rather late after my yesterday's fatigues, and did not leave
Scarborough till two o'clock. The road to Whitby is very hilly, and the
aspect of the country singular. As far as the eye can reach, neither
tree, house, wall, nor hedge;--nothing but an endless sea of wavy hills,
often of a strange regularity of form, like heaps of rubbish shot down,
thickly overgrown with heather, which at a near view presents the most
beautiful shades of purple and red, but at a distance sheds one uniform
dingy brown over the whole landscape, promising a rich harvest to
grouse-shooters. Nothing breaks the uniformity but a number of white
spots moving slowly here and there--the down sheep, with their black
faces and fine wool. About three miles from Whitby, as you descend from
the hilly country, the scene gradually changes, and near the town
becomes very romantic. Meanwhile English cleanliness and elegance
sensibly diminish. Whitby is exactly like an old German town; without
'trottoirs,' equally dirty, and with as narrow streets.
Probably few strangers of any 'apparence' visit this miserable place; or
whether they took me for somebody else I know not,--but so it was, that
they besieged me like some strange animal, and did not let me depart
without an escort of at least a hundred people, who crowded round me,
very good-naturedly indeed, but rather too pressingly, and examined me
from head to foot. I could not help thinking of a droll anecdote the
Duke of Leeds told me. This nobleman was very affable with his tenants
and people; one of them came up to him one day when he was riding, and
told him he had a great favour to beg of him. The Duke asked him what it
was. The man replied, after some hesitation, that he had a little boy
who plagued him day and night to let him see the Duke, and that as His
Grace was now close to his cottage, he would perhaps do him the great
favour to let his son look at him. The Duke readily consented, and rode
laughing to the cottage, where the delighted father ran in and fetched
his child. The boy stood amazed, looking at the middle-aged gentleman of
not very commanding exterior before him, of whose greatness and power he
had heard so much; gazed at him a long time; then touched him; and
suddenly asked, "Can you swim?" "No, my good boy," said the Duke. "Can
you fly?" "No, I can't fly neither." "Then I like father's drake better,
for he can do both."
Whitby has a harbour shut in between very picturesque rocks, with a
handsome granite pier stretching far into the sea, from which you have a
fine view of the town. The ruins of the celebrated abbey, standing on an
abrupt crag, are peculiarly beautiful. It was founded by a King of
Northumberland in the sixth century, and is now the property of some
private individual, who does nothing for the preservation of this
sublime memorial of ancient greatness. His cattle feed among its
mouldering walls, which are so choked with dirt and rubbish that I could
hardly approach to see them. I alighted by the light of the young moon,
and was enchanted by the romantic effect,--lofty columns, darting up
into the air like the slender trunks of pines; long rows of windows in
good preservation, and many finely executed ornaments about them, still
as perfect as if the wind of the first autumn now played among their
ample arches. Other parts were quite altered and decayed, and many a
frightful face lay scattered about, grinning at me in the moonlight.
Near the abbey is a very ancient church, which is still used, and is
surrounded by hundreds of moss-grown gravestones.
I am lodged in a humble but very comfortable country inn, kept by two
sisters, whose civility is of that sort which springs from real
good-nature and zeal, and not from regard to pelf alone. As I asked for
a book they brought me the Chronicle of Whitby, which I turned over,
while the wind roared as loudly without, as it does round our good
castle of M----. In this Chronicle is a valuation of lands in the
seventh century, in which Whitby, with its appurtenances, is rated at
sixty shillings!
I find from it, that the vast and magnificent abbey has been destroyed
neither by fire nor by violence, but was delivered over by more silent
tyranny to the tooth of time. Henry the Eighth confiscated this with the
rest, and sold it, even to the stones of the building. Fortunately,
after several houses in the town had been built of the materials, an
ancestor of the present possessor bought what remained, which has ever
since been left 'in statu quo.'
_Guisborough:--Evening._
I had written a note to Lord Mulgrave, the proprietor of a great
alum-work, and of a beautiful house and park on the sea-shore, begging
permission to see them. He sent me a very polite answer, and a groom on
horseback to conduct me. This aggravated the yesterday's misery; and the
chief magistrate of the little town now though fit to becompliment me by
the mission of two of his colleagues, who were also secretaries of the
Museum, which they proposed to show me. As it contains many very curious
fossils found in this neighbourhood, I accepted their offer. Half the
town was collected again, and followed us, with an 'arrière garde' of a
very noisy 'jeunesse.' In the Museum I found a number of the members
assembled, and a blooming company of ladies, from whose attractive faces
I was continually forced to turn away my eyes to look at a crocodile or
a petrified fish. The two secretaries had divided the duties between
them:--one did the honours of the fish and amphibia; the other of the
quadrupeds, birds, and minerals: and both were so zealous that I should
see everything in their respective departments, while some dilettanti
were no less eager to show me other things, that I had need of the
hundred eyes of Argus to take in all. The thing which interested me the
most was an Esquimaux canoe with the fishing apparatus complete,
presented by Captain Parry. It is made entirely of whalebone and
seal-skins, and so light that one can scarcely conceive how it can
encounter the sea. It is tolerably long; but in the centre, at its
greatest breadth, scarcely a foot across; the whole is enclosed like a
box, with the exception of a round hole in the middle, in which the
Esquimaux sits and balances his little bark with a double oar. The
petrifactions of all kinds, as well of existing as of antediluvian
animals and plants, are extremely numerous and fine, and the large
crocodile, almost perfect, is certainly 'unique' in its kind. The
gentlemen insisted on accompanying me back to my inn, whither we were
attended by the usual 'cortège.' As I drove off, a dreadful hurrah
resounded, and several of the children of both sexes did not quit me
till they found it impossible to keep pace with the horses.
I now drove slowly along the beach, conducted by Lord Mulgrave's
servant. I alighted to walk, and amused myself with picking up little
stones of the most brilliant colours which covered the beach. In an hour
we reached the alum-work, which lies in the most romantic situation,
between the abrupt cliffs overhanging the sea. I examined it all very
minutely, as you will see by the accompanying letter to the A---- D----.
I had to go back along a path which seemed fit only for goats, and of
the inconveniences of which the overseer had advertized me. Sometimes it
was scarcely a foot broad, and at its sides rose a smooth alum rock of
two hundred feet perpendicular height. Along such paths, many of which
intersect the rocks, the men work, and hew away the alum ore which lies
near the surface. This affords the strangest spectacle you can imagine:
the men appear to hang to the wall of rock like swallows, and are often
obliged to be pulled up by ropes. Below, in the valley, are large cars
for carrying away the ore, which is incessantly heard clattering down
the rocks. It took me two hours to see all; and I then drove to the
house, where Lord Mulgrave's son (the earl himself being ill of the
gout) regaled me very hospitably with an excellent luncheon, and
conducted me about the park. It is indebted for its greatest beauties to
Nature, to whose rocks, brooks, and wooded glens, you have access
through very judiciously-cut roads, some German miles in length. From
the house you look from under high oaks and beeches along a velvet turf,
upon the sea, covered with a hundred sails. One of the greatest
ornaments of the park is the old castle,--a ruin believed to have been
originally a Roman fort, and afterwards the castle of the Saxon prince
Wanda. At a later period it was given to the ancestor of the present
family by King John, as a reward for the murder of the young prince, so
touchingly described by Shakspeare. The view from the old battlements is
wild and picturesque. In the new castle, which was built fifty years ago
in the Gothic style, I was much struck with the portrait of a female
ancestor of the present earl, who must have been lovely and no less
original; for she is painted in deep mourning, and yet she sits smiling
at a window with this inscription in old English: "Since my husband's
love was but a jest, so is my mourning but a jest."
Young Mr. Phipps told me that a strange accident occurred on a ridge of
slate-rocks which run into the sea near the house.--Two girls were
sitting on a cliff with their backs to the sea; a sharp fragment of the
slate split off from the rock high above them, and falling with
increasing velocity cut off the head of one of them, (who was earnestly
talking to the other,) so clean, that it rolled to a distance on the
sand, while the trunk remained unmoved. The parents are still living in
the village.
_Ripon, Sept. 27th._
I slept through the night very well in my carriage, breakfasted in the
garden of a pretty inn, and then hastened to Studley Park, which
contains the famous ruins of Fountain's Abbey, esteemed the largest and
most beautiful in England. They far exceeded my expectation, as did the
park.--I must describe them to you as I saw them.
The way leads through a majestic wood, first to a steep hill, and then,
at an abrupt turn, to a green valley about three or four hundred feet
wide, in the centre of which is a little river broken into various
natural waterfalls. On one side of the valley is a considerable chain of
hills, overgrown with venerable ashes, beeches, and oaks; on the other,
an abrupt wall of rock overhung with trailing plants, and also crowned
with old trees. The whole end of the valley is closed by the ruins and
the lofty towers of the abbey. You will easily form some conception of
the vastness of these ruins, when I tell you that the buildings
belonging to the abbey, when entire, covered fifteen acres of ground,
and that the ruins now cover four. The nave of the church, great part of
the walls of which are still standing, is three hundred and fifty-one
feet in length, the oriel window fifty feet high, and the tower, though
partly fallen down, a hundred and sixty-six feet high. The architecture
is of the best period--the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--as simple
as it is grand. A gateway leads from the church to the cloister, three
hundred feet long and forty-two wide; a second to the cloister garden,
which is cultivated as a flower-garden by its present possessor, and
surrounded by various picturesque ruins,--the library, court and
chapter-house. The vaulted ceiling of the latter, like the Römer in
Marienburg, is supported by a single pillar in the centre. The groined
roof of the kitchen is constructed, with consummate skill, without any
support. Near it is the magnificent confectory, a hundred and eight feet
long and forty-five wide:--this was, of course, the crown and glory of
the abbey, which was famed for its luxury and dissoluteness. In the
church are many monuments--one of Lord Mowbray in full chain armour,
carved in stone; further on, several abbots; and lastly, a stone coffin,
which contained the mortal remains of Harry Percy. Above it is an angel,
in good preservation, and beneath it the date 1283, very distinct. At
the top of the tower is a Latin inscription in gigantic Gothic letters,
which proclaims from on high these beautiful and appropriate words,
"Glory and praise to God alone through all ages!" The whole ruin is hung
with draperies of ivy and creeping plants, and majestic trees here and
there wave their tops above it. The river winds by, and a few steps
further on, turns the old abbey-mill, which is still in use; as if to
teach the lesson, that when power and magnificence pass away, the useful
retains its modest existence. At a short distance behind the abbey
stands the old dwelling of the proprietor, which was built out of the
fallen stones of the ruins in the sixteenth century. This, too, is
highly picturesque, though of course in a far less noble style. Its
walled gardens with their high-cut yew hedges, and regular, trim
flower-beds; and the mixture of objects comparatively modern, yet now
fast acquiring a claim to antiquity, give the fancy an agreeable and
spacious field to expatiate in. Here are perhaps the oldest yews in
England. One, which is thought to be a thousand years old, is thirty
feet in circumference in the thickest part of its stem. Among the
carvings in the house are those of two old knights taken from the abbey,
with the inscription, probably modern, 'Sic transit gloria mundi.' The
decay of Fountain's Abbey, too, is to be attributed to the suppression
of monasteries under Henry the Eighth.
Leaving the abbey, in half an hour you reach a beautiful and finely kept
pleasure-ground, which is rendered peculiarly delightful by its
diversity of hill and vale, noble trees, and well-placed clumps; though
rather encumbered with a multitude of old-fashioned summer-houses,
temples, and worthless leaden statues. In one of these temples,
dedicated to the Gods of antiquity, stands a bust of--Nero! But these
slight defects might easily be removed, while such a combination of
natural beauty can rarely be met with. At the end of the deer-park
stands the house of the proprietress, an elderly single lady of large
fortune. I met her in the garden, and was invited by her to luncheon,
which I gladly accepted, as my long walk had made me very hungry.
To return to the ruin.--Giving way to my critical vein, I must add one
thing,--which is, that while too little care is bestowed upon Whitby,
too much is bestowed upon this. Not a loose stone lies on the ground,
which is mowed as smooth as a carpet. The old cloister garden is laid
out in a too modern taste; and were this poetic structure mine, I would
immediately set out about creating a little more artificial wildness
about it; for the whole ought to partake of that air of half-decayed
grandeur which has the greatest power over the imagination.
After my return to Ripon I visited the church there--another beautiful
remnant of antiquity, with a choir full of the richest carvings. There
is a subterranean arched room--a sort of catacomb, adorned with skulls
and bones,--in which I busied myself a long while with my favourite
craniological researches. Among these human ruins was a skull so
strikingly like my own, that it even struck the clerk. What may the old
boy have been?--perhaps myself in another garment? Nobody could give me
any account of this house of bone. There was the genuine French skull of
an emigrant priest, which the clerk himself had smuggled in. He looked
so polite and so talkative, that I fancied he would have said,
'Monsieur, j'ai l'honneur de vous présenter mes respects; vous êtes trop
poli de venir nous rendre visite. Nous avons si rarement l'occasion de
causer ici!' It was a well bred skull--that you saw at the first glance;
my portrait, on the other hand, looked very thoughtful and silent. It
would be odd enough if one thus stood over one's own old bones.
_Harrowgate, Sept. 28th._
This bathing place is much after the fashion of ours, and more social
than most of the English ones. People meet at 'table d'hôte,' at tea,
and at the waters, and thus easily become acquainted. The place consists
of two villages, both pretty and cheerful, and situated in a beautiful
fertile country. Unfortunately, the weather is now dreadful: it rains
incessantly; and the sulphureous water I drank to-day has made me so ill
that I cannot leave my room.
_September 29th._
These waters do not agree with me at all; nevertheless, I made my way
to-day to the World's End, a short walk here,--'The World's End' being
only a neighbouring village, with a pretty view into--the world's
beginning; for as it is round, you may make it begin and end where you
will. At 'table d'hôte' I met about seventy other persons. Though the
season is nearly over, there are still about a thousand visitors, most
of them of the middle classes; for Harrowgate is not one of the
fashionable watering places, though it seems to me far more pleasant
than the most fashionable Brighton.
An old General of eighty, who was my neighbour at dinner, interested me
extremely. He had met with Frederick the Great, Kaunitz, the Emperor
Joseph, Mirabeau, and Napoleon, on various occasions of his life, and
told me many interesting particulars about them. He had likewise been
Governor of Surinam, and of the Isle of France; had commanded for a
long time in India, and was now what we call General of Infantry, (next
rank to a Field-Marshal.) All this would give him a high station with
us:--here, no such thing; and this he remarked himself. "Here," said he,
"the aristocracy is every thing: without family influence, without
connexion, without some person of rank by whom a man may be pushed, he
may indeed attain a high rank in the army; but, except under some very
peculiar circumstances, this gives him no consideration. I am only a
baronet," added he; "yet that empty and trifling hereditary title gives
me more consideration than my long services or my high military rank;
and I am not called General,--or, as I should be with you, '_Euer
Excellenz_,'--but Sir Charles."
After dinner the company re-assembled to tea, which ended with a little
dance.
_Leeds, Oct. 1st._
I remained in Harrowgate so long, chiefly in expectation of letters from
you, as I had given L---- that address. To-day, then, I found one on my
return from my walk: you can think the joy it gave me.
I have accompanied you in thought to Dresden, and drunk your health
before the illuminated letters of your name. It is one of my strange
peculiarities, that though I was four years in garrison at D----, I
never saw either Pillnitz or Moritzburg; so that your description of the
latter, with the old Landvoigt, was very interesting to me.
You reproach me with liking better to write than to speak upon certain
subjects. You are right on the whole. But this affair,--and indeed all
sorts of petitioning,--is so contrary to my nature, that I speak
awkwardly and ill, and do better if I write. Besides, failure is not so
disagreeable.--But back to my journey.
The magnificent seats in England are really almost countless. One must
confine oneself to the most remarkable. Ten miles from Harrowgate I
found Harewood Park, a delightful residence;--fine natural wood, with
glens, rocks, a copious mountain stream, the ruin of an old castle on a
hill,--all situated in the richest country, and with distant views of
the Cumberland mountains.
The scene was enlivened in a striking manner. Just as I drove past the
house, I saw the possessor, Lord Harewood, with his pack of a hundred
hounds, his red-coated huntsmen, and a number of high-mettled horses
coming down a hill, on their return from a fox-hunt. I could not avoid
going up to him to explain the cause of my being here. I found a tall
handsome man, of remarkably winning air, in appearance and manner young
and active, in years (which one must be assured of to believe it,)
sixty-five. He received me with singular courtesy, said he had had the
pleasure of seeing me several times in London, ('je n'en savais pas un
mot,') and begged me to allow him to show me his park. I entreated him
not to give himself the trouble, after the toils of the chase (in which
men generally ride five or six German miles full gallop, and leap fifty
or sixty hedges and ditches:) but all my entreaties were vain; and this
fine old man accompanied me, up hill and down dale, over the whole of
his princely domain. What interested me most, as being new to me, was
the kennel. Here I saw a hundred and fifty dogs in two perfectly clean
rooms, each containing a large bed for seventy-five dogs, and each
having its own enclosure in front. There was not the slightest
offensive smell, nor the least dirt. In each yard was a tub with running
water, and a man armed with a broom, whose whole business it is to keep
the ground continually washed, for which purpose he can let the water
flow over it at pleasure. The dogs are accustomed to perfect obedience,
and keep their bed and room very clean. It is a great art to feed them
properly; for to sustain their great exertions, they must be kept very
lean, and yet their flesh ought to be as firm as iron. This was
perfectly accomplished here; and there could not be a more beautiful
sight than these slender, obedient, and happy-looking animals, half of
whom were just returned from the chase, and yet seemed quite unwearied.
They all lay however on their huge common bed, and looked at us
affectionately, wagging their tails; while the other half sprang eagerly
and wildly forward, into their court. The stables too, built in a
quadrangle at a little distance from the house, were very fine, and
contained about thirty noble horses. My carriage had followed, and Lord
Harewood now gave the postillion instructions which way to drive through
the park, that I might see the most beautiful points, and then sauntered
home accompanied by two great water-dogs and a jet-black spaniel. He was
in fox-hunting costume,--a scarlet coat that looks like a livery.
I forgot to say that we had first made a tour through the house, which
is richly and handsomely furnished, and contains family pictures by
Vandyk, Reynolds, and Lawrence, the three best painters of England in
their several centuries. There was one work of art in the principal
apartment quite peculiar,--red curtains painted on wood, so admirably
executed that Rauch himself would have been astounded at the flow of the
drapery. Though I was told what they were, I could scarcely believe it
till I convinced myself by the touch, so completely deceptive was the
imitation of the silken stuff. Another uncommon decoration consisted in
having the ceilings of all the rooms of the same designs as the carpets;
a very expensive thing, if, as I imagine, the carpets were all woven
after the pattern of the ceilings.
The long drive through the park, a good league, was very delightful. The
road lay at first along the lake, with a majestic view of the house, and
then through the wood to the river, which forms various cascades and
little lakes. The wood itself was full of variety,--now thick and almost
impervious to the view; then grove-like; then open patches with a dense
enclosure; or young copse from which deer were peeping out; or anon a
long and narrow vista to the distant mountains.
A nobleman thus situated is a dignified representative of his class; and
it is very natural that, thus favoured by nature and by fortune, he
should appear kind, benevolent, respectable, and happy, like this noble
Earl, whose image will always afford me as delightful and refreshing a
subject of recollection, as the beautiful landscape it graces.
Very different from the impression of the day, and yet not less
agreeable, was that of the evening. I reached the great manufacturing
town of Leeds just in the twilight. A transparent cloud of smoke was
diffused over the whole space which it occupies, on and between several
hills; a hundred red fires shot upwards into the sky, and as many
towering chimneys poured forth columns of black smoke.
The huge manufactories, five stories high, in which every window was
illuminated, had a grand and striking effect. Here the toiling artisan
labours far into the night. And that some romantic features might not be
wanting in the whirl of business and the illumination of industry, two
ancient Gothic churches reared their heads above the mass of houses, and
the moon poured her silver light upon their towers, and seemed to damp
the hard glare of the busy crowd below, with her serene majesty.
Leeds has near 120,000 inhabitants, and yet no representatives in
parliament,--because it is a new town: while, as it is well known, many
a wretched ruined village sends two members, who are, of course, the
creatures of the proprietor. Glaring and monstrous as is this nuisance,
the statesmen of England have not yet dared to abate it; perhaps because
they fear that any change in so complicated a piece of machinery may be
a dangerous operation, to which recourse should be had only in extreme
necessity.
_Late in the Evening._
I have adapted myself to many English customs,--among others, to cold
dinners. As a change they are sometimes wholesome, and, being completely
national, are almost always of excellent quality. To-day my solitary
table was covered with no less than the following varieties; a cold ham,
an awful 'roast beef,' a leg of mutton, a piece of roast veal, a hare
pie, a partridge, three sorts of pickle, cauli-flowers cooked in water,
potatoes, butter, and cheese. That this would have been meat enough to
feed a whole party of German burghers, 'saute aux yeux.'
_October 2nd._
The first thing I saw this morning before my windows was the refined
contrivance of a grocer, who had not been satisfied with exhibiting,
like most of his brethren, a number of Chinese tea-chests, mandarins,
and vases, but had put a piece of clockwork in his window, a stately
automaton Turk diligently grinding coffee. From hence I proceeded on my
further tour. First I visited the Market-hall, a beautiful building, in
which the market is held under a glass roof; then the Cloth-hall, an
immense room entirely filled with cloth of all sorts and colours; and
lastly, the largest cloth manufactory of the place, which is worked by
three steam-engines. Here you begin with the raw material (the sorting
of the wool,) and finish with the perfect cloth; so that if you took a
tailor with you, you might bring your wool in the manufactory in the
morning, and come out with a coat made of it in the evening. Our friend
R---- actually performed this feat, and wore the coat for a long time
with great predilection. The various machines are ingenious in the
highest degree; but the stench and the unwholesome air, as well as the
dust in many of the operations, must be very unhealthy to the poor
workmen, who moreover were all of a dark blue colour. The young man who
showed me the manufactory said, however, that the cotton manufactories
were much more unhealthy, from the fine and subtle dust; that in them a
workman seldom reached his fiftieth year, whereas here there were
instances of men of sixty. The Gothic churches which yesterday produced
such an effect at a distance, presented nothing remarkable on a nearer
inspection; and the town itself, enveloped in an everlasting fog
produced by the smoke, which never ceases day nor night, is the most
disagreeable place you can imagine.
_Rotherham:--Evening._
Continuing my journey, I made the first halt at Templenewsome, a house
of Elizabeth's time, belonging to the Dowager Marchioness of Hertford.
This edifice has a great singularity; instead of battlements, a stone
gallery surrounds the roof, consisting of letters which compose a
sentence from the Bible. The park is melancholy, and the furniture of
the house old-fashioned, without being interesting. I found nothing
remarkable in the picture-gallery, but in the other rooms there were
some interesting portraits: both the Guises, the uncles of Mary of
Scotland; General Monk, who is strikingly like our old friend
Thielemann; and Lord Darnley (Mary's husband,) to whom this castle
belonged; it hangs in the room in which he was born. I had a very bad
headache; for which reason, perhaps, a second park, Stainbrook, appeared
to me dreary and uncomfortable, nor could I admire the pictures. The
road then led me through a series of manufacturing places, which looked
like burning towns and villages. Rotherham itself, where I now am, is
celebrated for its great iron-works, and I intend to see some of them
to-morrow, if my illness goes off.
_October 3rd._
After having walked half a German mile to the largest iron-work, I
unluckily found the engine stopped, in consequence of the furnace having
received some damage yesterday. I could therefore see but little, and
went a mile further on to the steel-works. Here the steam-engine had
just got out of order, and the operations were likewise suspended. So I
wandered on again to the thread and linen manufactory; and my own
astonishment, as well as that of my guide, was not small, when we
perceived no signs of working here also, and heard that the great
spindle had been broken in the morning. With this extraordinary
'guignon' ended my useless efforts to instruct myself for to-day; indeed
there was no time to make any more.
_Sheffield:--Evening._
I rode from Rotherham to Wentworth House, the seat of Lord Fitzwilliam,
another truly regal domain, for extent, richness, and splendour; but
(like many English parks) melancholy and monotonous; the immense tracts
of grass, with a few scattered trees, and the tame sheep-like deer
grazing upon them, in time become intolerable. Certainly, it is a most
tasteless custom to have these green deserts extend on one side up to
the very houses; it makes them look like enchanted palaces, inhabited by
deer instead of men. It is easier to give oneself up to this notion
since there is seldom a human being to be seen outside the house, which
is usually shut up, so that you are often obliged to ring at the door
for a quarter of an hour before you can get admittance, or the Lady
'Chátelaine' appears to play the cicerone, and receive her fee.
Wentworth House is adorned with many valuable statues and pictures.
Amongst others, a beautiful picture by Vandyk, representing the builder
of the castle, Lord Strafford, just as sentence of death has been
announced to him: he is holding the fatal scroll in his hand, and
dictating to his secretary his last will. Another picture represents his
son, a beautiful boy of sixteen, in a most becoming mourning
dress,--black, with rich lace, fawn-coloured boots, a tight enamelled
collar, a short cloak, a rich sword, and a scarf 'en bandoulière.'
The picture of a race-horse as large as life, painted on gray linen, and
placed in a niche without a frame, really deceived me; I thought it
alive. This horse won so much, that the former lord built a quadrangle
of magnificent stables, the most complete I have seen in this country,
with the money. In these stables, which contain also a riding-school,
stand sixty beautiful and picked horses.
An excellent portrait of the vain and ambitious Cardinal Wolsey, and one
of the fickle Duke of Buckingham, are very interesting. The housekeeper,
pointing to the portrait of Harvey, said: "This is the man who invented
the circulation of the blood." One would like to make that man's
acquaintance.
In the flower-gardens I found some beautiful parts; amongst others, an
enclosure made of wire-fence, running along the gay parterres, peopled
with foreign birds, a clear brook flowing through it, and planted with
evergreens, on which the feathered inhabitants could sport at pleasure.
Several black swans, which have already reared four young ones, were
swimming on a small pond near it. They seem to be completely accustomed
to this climate. I was struck by a common beech on the banks of the
water, which, by early polling, had completely changed its character. It
was very low, but its branches stretched out on all sides, so as to
cover an immense space, and form a regularly leafy tent of unequalled
beauty. A fir, polled in the same manner, had attained a beauty far
greater than that of its natural growth.
I arrived in good time at Sheffield, where, from the quantity of smoke,
the sun appeared shorn of his beams. I looked at the astonishing
productions in cutlery; as, for instance, a knife with a hundred and
eighty blades; scissors which cut perfectly and can be used, though
hardly visible with the naked eye, &c. &c. In defiance of superstition,
I bought you needles and scissors enough for your whole life, with some
other newly-invented trifles, which I am sure will please you.
_Nottingham, Oct. 4th._
I rode the whole night, and saw only from a distance, and by moonlight,
Newstead Abbey, Lord Byron's birth-place and family seat, now much
neglected.
Besides the Gothic church (of which nearly every English town possesses
one, more or less beautiful,) there is not much to be seen in
Nottingham; a remarkable manufactory of net excepted, where the
steam-engines do all the work, and only a single man stands by the
machinery to take care that nothing goes wrong.
It is most strange to see the iron monsters begin to work, as if moved
by invisible hands, and the most beautiful lace, stretched in a frame,
comes slowly forth at the top, neat and finished; while the spindles,
with the raw thread wound round them, keep on their perpetual motion
below; the whole unaided, as I have said, by a single human hand.
It was just the time of the Fair, which had drawn together a great
number of curiosities; among others, a beautiful collection of wild
beasts. Two Bengal tigers, of an enormous size, were so perfectly tame,
that even ladies and children were allowed to enter their cage, or the
animals were let out in the riding school where the collection was
exhibited. No dog could be more gentle; but I doubt whether our police
would have suffered such experiments. A remarkable animal was the
horned horse, or Nyl Ghau, from the Himalaya mountains,--handsome and
fleet, and in some respects very strangely formed. The beautiful wild
ass of Persia, which they say is swifter and more untireable than a
horse, and can live for weeks without food, was new to me. There were
also here, as in the collection of animals on the Pfaueninsel near
Berlin, a giant and a dwarf.
_London, Oct. 6th._
Before I left Nottingham I visited the neighbouring seat of Lord
Middleton, which is worth seeing. The park offered little remarkable.
There was a curious old picture--a faithful portrait of the house and
gardens as they existed two hundred years ago. It is very interesting;
the more so, as you see the family in the strangest dresses, with a
great company and numerous attendants, walking in the garden, and as the
noble owner therein represented is the same who is so often mentioned in
connexion with the celebrated ghost story. Every one ought to have
pictures of this kind painted for his successors: the comparisons they
suggest are always amusing, and sometimes instructive.
I reached St. Albans in the night, and saw the celebrated Abbey by the
light of the moon, and of lanterns. The clerk was quickly awakened, and
conducted me thither. I first admired the exterior of the building,
built by the Saxons, in the eighth century, of indestructible Roman
bricks, and then entered the imposing interior. The nave of the church
is doubtless one of the largest in the world; it is more than six
hundred feet long. There are many beautiful stone carvings; and although
little could be distinctly seen by so feeble a light, the general effect
by this strange and uncertain illumination, with our dark figures in the
middle, and the sounds of the midnight bell from the tower, was most
romantic and awful.
This was still more the case when we descended into the vault where, in
an open leaden coffin, lies the skeleton of the Duke of Gloucester who
was poisoned six hundred years ago by Cardinal Beaufort. Time has
rendered it as brown and smooth as polished mahogany; and curious
antiquarians have already robbed it of several bones. The clerk, who was
an Irishman, seized one of the leg-bones without ceremony, and
brandishing it in the air like a cudgel, he remarked that this bone had
become so beautiful and hard with time, that it would make an excellent
shillelah. What would the haughty Duke have said, if he could have known
how his remains would be treated by such ignoble hands? The magnificent
oak ceiling, more than 1000 years old, is a glorious proof of the solid
architecture of those times. It is still as beautiful and perfect as if
there were no cyphers after the unit. The painted windows, with the
golden tomb of St. Alban, were unhappily almost entirely destroyed in
Cromwell's time.
I reached London early enough to repose half the night; and my first
business in the morning was to finish this letter, already swollen to a
packet. In a few hours I hope it will be on its way.
Do not be impatient therefore; and receive this letter with the same
affectionate indulgence as its numerous predecessors.
Your faithful L----.