II

I had come to Great Britain less to see the noted sights and places than

to observe the general face of nature. I wanted to steep myself long and

well in that mellow, benign landscape, and put to further tests the

impressions I had got of it during a hasty visit one autumn, eleven

years before. Hence I was mainly intent on roaming about the country, it

mattered little where. Like an attic stored with relics and heirlooms,

there is no place in England where you cannot instantly turn from nature

to scenes and places of deep historical or legendary or artistic

interest.

My journal of travel is a brief one, and keeps to a few of the main

lines. After spending a couple of days in Glasgow, we went down to

Alloway, in Burns's country, and had our first taste of the beauty and

sweetness of rural Britain, and of the privacy and comfort of a little

Scotch inn. The weather was exceptionally fair, and the mellow Ayrshire

landscape, threaded by the Doon, a perpetual delight. Thence we went

north on a short tour through the Highlands,--up Loch Lomond, down Loch

Katrine, and through the Trosachs to Callander, and thence to Stirling

and Edinburgh. After a few days in the Scotch capital we set out for

Carlyle's country, where we passed five delightful days. The next week

found us in Wordsworth's land, and the 10th of June in London. After a

week here I went down into Surrey and Hants, in quest of the

nightingale, for four or five days. Till the middle of July I hovered

about London, making frequent excursions into the country,--east, south,

north, west, and once across the channel into France, where I had a long

walk over the hills about Boulogne. July 15 we began our return journey

northward, stopping a few days at Stratford, where I found the Red Horse

Inn sadly degenerated from excess of travel. Thence again into the Lake

region for a longer stay. From Grasmere we went into north Wales, and

did the usual touring and sight-seeing around and over the mountains.

The last week of July we were again in Glasgow, from which port we

sailed on our homeward voyage July 29.

With a suitable companion, I should probably have made many long

pedestrian tours. As it was, I took many short but delightful walks both

in England and Scotland, with a half day's walk in the north of Ireland

about Moville. 'Tis an admirable country to walk in,--the roads are so

dry and smooth and of such easy grade, the footpaths so numerous and so

bold, and the climate so cool and tonic. One night, with a friend, I

walked from Rochester to Maidstone, part of the way in a slow rain and

part of the way in the darkness. We had proposed to put up at some one

of the little inns on the road, and get a view of the weald of Kent in

the morning; but the inns refused us entertainment, and we were

compelled to do the eight miles at night, stepping off very lively the

last four in order to reach Maidstone before the hotels were shut up,

which takes place at eleven o'clock. I learned this night how fragrant

the English elder is while in bloom, and that distance lends enchantment

to the smell. When I plucked the flowers, which seemed precisely like

our own, the odor was rank and disagreeable; but at the distance of a

few yards it floated upon the moist air, a spicy and pleasing perfume.

The elder here grows to be a veritable tree; I saw specimens seven or

eight inches in diameter and twenty feet high. In the morning we walked

back by a different route, taking in Boxley Church, where the pilgrims

used to pause on their way to Canterbury, and getting many good views of

Kent grain-fields and hop-yards. Sometimes the road wound through the

landscape like a footpath, with nothing between it and the rank-growing

crops. An occasional newly-plowed field presented a curious appearance.

The soil is upon the chalk formation, and is full of large fragments of

flint. These work out upon the surface, and, being white and full of

articulations and processes, give to the ground the appearance of being

thickly strewn with bones,--with thigh bones greatly foreshortened. Yet

these old bones in skillful hands make a most effective building

material. They appear in all the old churches and ancient buildings in

the south of England. Broken squarely off, the flint shows a fine

semi-transparent surface that, in combination with coarser material, has

a remarkable crystalline effect. One of the most delicious bits of

architectural decoration I saw in England was produced, in the front

wall of one of the old buildings attached to the cathedral at

Canterbury, by little squares of these flints in brick panel-work. The

cool, pellucid, illuminating effect of the flint was just the proper

foil to the warm, glowing, livid brick.

From Rochester we walked to Gravesend, over Gad's Hill; the day soft and

warm, half sunshine, half shadow; the air full of the songs of skylarks;

a rich, fertile landscape all about us; the waving wheat just in bloom,

dashed with scarlet poppies; and presently, on the right, the Thames in

view dotted with vessels. Seldom any cattle or grazing herds in Kent;

the ground is too valuable; it is all given up to wheat, oats, barley,

hops, fruit, and various garden produce.

A few days later we walked from Feversham to Canterbury, and from the

top of Harbledown hill saw the magnificent cathedral suddenly break upon

us as it did upon the footsore and worshipful pilgrims centuries ago. At

this point, it is said, they knelt down, which seems quite probable, the

view is so imposing. The cathedral stands out from and above the city,

as if the latter were the foundation upon which it rested. On this walk

we passed several of the famous cherry orchards of Kent, the thriftiest

trees and the finest fruit I ever saw. We invaded one of the orchards,

and proposed to purchase some of the fruit of the men engaged in

gathering it. But they refused to sell it; had no right to do so, they

said; but one of them followed us across the orchard, and said in a

confidential way that he would see that we had some cherries. He filled

my companion's hat, and accepted our shilling with alacrity. In getting

back into the highway, over the wire fence, I got my clothes well tarred

before I was aware of it. The fence proved to be well besmeared with a

mixture of tar and grease,--an ingenious device for marking trespassers.

We sat in the shade of a tree and ate our fruit and scraped our clothes,

while a troop of bicyclists filed by. About the best glimpses I had of

Canterbury cathedral--after the first view from Harbledown hill--were

obtained while lying upon my back on the grass, under the shadow of its

walls, and gazing up at the jackdaws flying about the central tower and

going out and in weather-worn openings three hundred feet above me.

There seemed to be some wild, pinnacled mountain peak or rocky ledge up

there toward the sky, where the fowls of the air had made their nests,

secure from molestation. The way the birds make themselves at home about

these vast architectural piles is very pleasing. Doves, starlings,

jackdaws, swallows, sparrows, take to them as to a wood or to a cliff.

If there were only something to give a corresponding touch of nature or

a throb of life inside! But their interiors are only impressive

sepulchres, tombs within a tomb. Your own footfalls seem like the echo

of past ages. These cathedrals belong to the pleistocene period of man's

religious history, the period of gigantic forms. How vast, how

monstrous, how terrible in beauty and power! but in our day as empty and

dead as the shells upon the shore. The cold, thin ecclesiasticism that

now masquerades in them hardly disturbs the dust in their central

aisles. I saw five worshipers at the choral service in Canterbury, and

about the same number of curious spectators. For my part, I could not

take my eyes off the remnants of some of the old stained windows up

aloft. If I worshiped at all, it was my devout admiration of those

superb relics. There could be no doubt about the faith that inspired

those. Below them were some gorgeous modern memorial windows: stained

glass, indeed! loud, garish, thin, painty; while these were like a

combination of precious stones and gems, full of depth and richness of

tone, and, above all, serious, not courting your attention. My eye was

not much taken with them at first, and not till after it had recoiled

from the hard, thin glare in my immediate front.

From Canterbury I went to Dover, and spent part of a day walking along

the cliffs to Folkestone. There is a good footpath that skirts the edge

of the cliffs, and it is much frequented. It is characteristic of the

compactness and neatness of this little island, that there is not an

inch of waste land along this sea margin; the fertile rolling landscape,

waving with wheat and barley, and with grass just ready for the scythe,

is cut squarely off by the sea; the plow and the reaper come to the very

brink of the chalky cliffs. As you sit down on Shakespeare's Cliff, with

your feet dangling in the air at a height of three hundred and fifty

feet, you can reach back and pluck the grain heads and the scarlet

poppies. Never have I seen such quiet pastoral beauty take such a sudden

leap into space. Yet the scene is tame in one sense: there is no hint of

the wild and the savage; the rock is soft and friable, a kind of chalky

bread, which the sea devours readily; the hills are like freshly cut

loaves; slice after slice has been eaten away by the hungry elements.

Sitting here, I saw no "crows and choughs" winging "the midway air," but

a species of hawk, "haggards of the rocks," were disturbed in the niches

beneath me, and flew along from point to point.

"The murmuring surge,

That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,

Cannot be heard so high."

I had wondered why Shakespeare had made his seashores pebbly instead of

sandy, and now I saw why: they are pebbly, with not a grain of sand to

be found. This chalk formation, as I have already said, is full of flint

nodules; and as the shore is eaten away by the sea, these rounded masses

remain. They soon become worn into smooth pebbles, which beneath the

pounding of the surf give out a strange clinking, rattling sound. Across

the Channel, on the French side, there is more sand, but it is of the

hue of mud and not pleasing to look upon.

Of other walks I had in England, I recall with pleasure a Sunday up the

Thames toward Windsor: the day perfect, the river alive with row-boats,

the shore swarming with pedestrians and picnickers; young athletic

London, male and female, rushing forth as hungry for the open air and

the water as young mountain herds for salt. I never saw or imagined

anything like it. One shore of the Thames, sometimes the right,

sometimes the left, it seems, belongs to the public. No private grounds,

however lordly, are allowed to monopolize both sides.

Another walk was about Winchester and Salisbury, with more

cathedral-viewing. One of the most human things to be seen in the great

cathedrals is the carven image of some old knight or warrior prince

resting above his tomb, with his feet upon his faithful dog. I was

touched by this remembrance of the dog. In all cases he looked alert and

watchful, as if guarding his master while he slept. I noticed that

Cromwell's soldiers were less apt to batter off the nose and ears of the

dog than they were those of the knight.

At Stratford I did more walking. After a row on the river, we strolled

through the low, grassy field in front of the church, redolent of cattle

and clover, and sat for an hour on the margin of the stream and enjoyed

the pastoral beauty and the sunshine. In the afternoon (it was Sunday)

I walked across the fields to Shottery, and then followed the road as

it wound amid the quaint little thatched cottages till it ended at a

stile from which a footpath led across broad, sunny fields to a stately

highway. To give a more minute account of English country scenes and

sounds in midsummer, I will here copy some jottings in my note-book,

made then and there:--

"_July 16._ In the fields beyond Shottery. Bright and breezy, with

appearance of slight showers in the distance. Thermometer probably about

seventy; a good working temperature. Clover--white, red, and yellow

(white predominating)--in the fields all about me. The red very ruddy;

the white large. The only noticeable bird voice that of the

yellow-hammer, two or three being within ear-shot. The song is much like

certain sparrow songs, only inferior: _Sip, sip, sip, see-e-e-e_; or,

_If if, if you ple-e-ease_. Honey-bees on the white clover. Turf very

thick and springy, supporting two or three kinds of grass resembling

red-top and bearded rye-grass. Narrow-leaved plantain, a few buttercups,

a small yellow flower unknown to me (probably ladies' fingers), also a

species of dandelion and prunella. The land thrown into marked swells

twenty feet broad. Two Sunday-school girls lying on the grass in the

other end of the field. A number of young men playing some game, perhaps

cards, seated on the ground in an adjoining field. Scarcely any signs of

midsummer to me; no ripeness or maturity in nature yet. The grass very

tender and succulent, the streams full and roily. Yarrow and cinquefoil

also in the grass where I sit. The plantain in bloom and fragrant. Along

the Avon, the meadow-sweet in full bloom, with a fine cinnamon odor. A

wild rose here and there in the hedge-rows. The wild clematis nearly

ready to bloom, in appearance almost identical with our own. The wheat

and oats full-grown, but not yet turning. The clouds soft and fleecy.

Prunella dark purple. A few paces farther on I enter a highway, one of

the broadest I have seen, the roadbed hard and smooth as usual, about

sixteen feet wide, with grassy margins twelve feet wide, redolent with

white and red clover. A rich farming landscape spreads around me, with

blue hills in the far west. Cool and fresh like June. Bumblebees here

and there, more hairy than at home. A plow in a field by the roadside is

so heavy I can barely move it,--at least three times as heavy as an

American plow; beam very long, tails four inches square, the mould-board

a thick plank. The soil like putty; where it dries, crumbling into

small, hard lumps, but sticky and tough when damp,--Shakespeare's soil,

the finest and most versatile wit of the world, the product of a sticky,

stubborn clay-bank. Here is a field where every alternate swell is

small. The large swells heave up in a very molten-like way--real turfy

billows, crested with white clover-blossoms."

"_July 17._ On the road to Warwick, two miles from Stratford. Morning

bright, with sky full of white, soft, high-piled thunderheads. Plenty

of pink blackberry blossoms along the road; herb Robert in bloom, and a

kind of Solomon's-seal as at home, and what appears to be a species of

goldenrod with a midsummery smell. The note of the yellow-hammer and the

wren here and there. Beech-trees loaded with mast and humming with

bumblebees, probably gathering honey-dew, which seems to be more

abundant here than with us. The landscape like a well-kept park dotted

with great trees, which make islands of shade in a sea of grass. Droves

of sheep grazing, and herds of cattle reposing in the succulent fields.

Now the just felt breeze brings me the rattle of a mowing-machine, a

rare sound here, as most of the grass is cut by hand. The great

motionless arms of a windmill rising here and there above the horizon. A

gentleman's turnout goes by with glittering wheels and spanking team;

the footman in livery behind, the gentleman driving. I hear his brake

scrape as he puts it on down the gentle descent. Now a lark goes off.

Then the mellow horn of a cow or heifer is heard. Then the bleat of

sheep. The crows caw hoarsely. Few houses by the roadside, but here and

there behind the trees in the distance. I hear the greenfinch, stronger

and sharper than our goldfinch, but less pleasing. The matured look of

some fields of grass alone suggests midsummer. Several species of mint

by the roadside, also certain white umbelliferous plants. Everywhere

that royal weed of Britain, the nettle. Shapely piles of road material

and pounded stone at regular distances, every fragment of which will go

through a two-inch ring. The roads are mended only in winter, and are

kept as smooth and hard as a rock. No swells or 'thank-y'-ma'ams' in

them to turn the water; they shed the water like a rounded pavement. On

the hill, three miles from Stratford, where a finger-post points you to

Hampton Lucy, I turn and see the spire of Shakespeare's church between

the trees. It lies in a broad, gentle valley, and rises above much

foliage. 'I hope and praise God it will keep foine,' said the old woman

at whose little cottage I stopped for ginger-beer, attracted by a sign

in the window. 'One penny, sir, if you please. I made it myself, sir. I

do not leave the front door unfastened' (undoing it to let me out) 'when

I am down in the garden.' A weasel runs across the road in front of me,

and is scolded by a little bird. The body of a dead hedgehog festering

beside the hedge. A species of St. John's-wort in bloom, teasels, and a

small convolvulus. Also a species of plantain with a head large as my

finger, purple tinged with white. Road margins wide, grassy, and

fragrant with clover. Privet in bloom in the hedges, panicles of small

white flowers faintly sweet-scented. 'As clean and white as privet when

it flowers,' says Tennyson in 'Walking to the Mail.' The road and avenue

between noble trees, beech, ash, elm, and oak. All the fields are

bounded by lines of stately trees; the distance is black with them. A

large thistle by the roadside, with homeless bumblebees on the heads as

at home, some of them white-faced and stingless. Thistles rare in this

country. Weeds of all kinds rare except the nettle. The place to see the

Scotch thistle is not in Scotland or England, but in America."