Leaving London for the north a passing thought is due to Bir_With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 3

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_SPECIAL EDITION_

WITH THE WORLD'S

GREAT TRAVELLERS

EDITED BY CHARLES MORRIS

AND OLIVER H. G. LEIGH

VOL. III

CHICAGO

UNION BOOK COMPANY

1901

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

E. R. DUMONT

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, CITY OF MEXICO]

CONTENTS.

SUBJECT. AUTHOR. PAGE

London, Glasgow, Dublin, Manchester,

Liverpool OLIVER H. G. LEIGH 5

Kenilworth and Warwick Castles ELIHU BURRITT 25

Windsor Forest and Castle ANONYMOUS 36

The Aspect of London HIPPOLYTE TAINE 47

Westminster Abbey NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 56

The Gardens at Kew JULIAN HAWTHORNE 64

Chatsworth Castle JOHN LEYLAND 75

King Arthur's Land J. YOUNG 84

The English Lake District AMELIA BARR 93

The Roman Wall of Cumberland ROSE G. KINGSLEY 105

English Rural Scenery SARAH B. WISTER 112

The "Old Town" of Edinburgh ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 120

In the Land of Rob Roy NATHANIEL P. WILLIS 129

The Island of Staffa and Fingal's Cave BERIAH BOTFIELD 140

Ireland and Its Capital MATTHEW WOODS, M. D. 148

From Cork to Killarney SARA J. LIPPINCOTT 157

North of Ireland Scenes W. GEORGE BEERS 168

Paris and Its Attractions HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 178

Travel in France Fifty Years Ago CHARLES DICKENS 189

From Normandy to Provence DONALD G. MITCHELL 200

A French Farmer's Paradise M. BENTHAM-EDWARDS 211

Cordova and Its Mosque S. P. SCOTT 218

The Spanish Bull-Fight JOSEPH MOORE 230

Seville, the Queen of Andalusia S. P. SCOTT 238

Street Scenes in Genoa AUGUSTA MARRYAT 249

The Alhambra S. P. SCOTT 257

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME III

THE CATHEDRAL, CITY OF MEXICO _Frontispiece_

LONDON BRIDGE 14

BANK OF ENGLAND 50

WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND VICTORIA TOWER 62

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM THE NORTHWEST 114

PRINCES STREET AND SIR WALTER SCOTT'S MONUMENT, EDINBURGH 122

THE FORTH BRIDGE FROM THE NORTH 136

CUSTOM-HOUSE, DUBLIN, IRELAND 150

QUEENSTOWN HARBOR 164

GRAND OPERA HOUSE, PARIS 180

THE LUMINOUS PALACE, PARIS 216

THE GROTTO OF THE SIBYL, TIVOLI 250

WITH THE WORLD'S

GREAT TRAVELLERS.

THE WORLD'S GREAT CAPITALS OF TO-DAY.

OLIVER H. G. LEIGH.

LONDON.

To the ordinary eye the moon and stars have at least prettiness, perhaps

grandeur. To the trained astronomer, and the contemplative poet, the

mighty firmament overwhelms the mind with the sense of human inability

to grasp the vast. Knowing and loving the features and characteristics

of London as a lover those of his mistress, it can be imagined how such

a one despairs of doing justice, in a brief space, either to his subject

or his own sane enthusiasm. He would fain impart his knowledge, insight,

and what glimmerings of romantic fancy may add charm to the prosy

exposition, but the showman's harangue is received as art without heart.

London is a hundred captivating sights and themes for our hundred

capacities and moods. You go to it the first time with the child's

enviable eye-delight in novelty, and are lucky if in a week you are not

eye-sore, dazed, and jaded with the very monotony of new scenes and

blurred impressions. You wisely fly to the lovely country lanes for

restful change, and come back with new eyes and a clean slate. Then

the mysterious quality which lifts visible London into the London of

real romance and realizable antiquity dawns upon the mind. A third

exploration reveals its almost omniscient and omnipotent headship as for

three centuries the world's centre for the intellectual and material

forces that have so largely built up our civilization. Continued

observation brings other and endless aspects of the indescribable city,

which is no city, but a Chinese puzzle of separately whirling worlds

within each other.

This mystifying prelude may seem rather disheartening to the stranger,

primed with rational curiosity to understand, as well as see, this

unwieldy London. He will find, however, his curiosity whetted, deepened,

elevated, in proportion as he takes with him a moderate grounding

in the historical associations of the old city. This easily acquired

information will prove to be a key that will unlock hidden places

holding bunches of other keys, so that everywhere one may turn, the

streets, buildings, and monuments recite their own fascinating stories.

We live in the day of big things, and sneer as we may at the

superficiality of estimating quality by size, there is no escape from it

when the purpose is only to kindle interest. Analysis can be undertaken

afterwards. London "whips creation" in the number of its people, though

its greatness is quite independent of this. The circle can be drawn to

include four, six, or seven millions and it will still be true that the

sustainers of its greatness come within a single million, possibly the

half of that. Yet it has a few businesses useful for the novice to know.

People have walked and ridden through the double tunnel under the wider

part of the Thames since 1843. Its underground railway, costing five

million dollars per mile to make, carries one hundred and fifty millions

of people a year, and has been running forty years. The public are

served by fifteen thousand cabs, which earn twenty-five million dollars

a year. There are over one thousand omnibuses, not including tram-cars,

on which there are roof seats, and you pay from two to six cents,

according to distance. Steamboats afford a fine view of the city, at the

same fares.

It has about five hundred theatres and music-halls, giving variety

programmes. Many of these hold from three to five thousand and they are

always well-filled. The roof of a famous music-hall built in 1870 slides

off for a few minutes at a time, for ventilation on summer nights. The

Crystal Palace entertains a hundred thousand people without being

crowded, in its beautiful glass hall, 1,608 feet long, with two great

aisles and transepts, and a charming pleasure park. In the palace are

reproductions of ancient architecture, primitive peoples, extinct

animals, everything in art and nature that can expand knowledge. The

orchestra seats four thousand, the concert-hall four thousand, and the

theatre four thousand, all under the same roof, yet their performances

are simultaneous. The Palace cost over seven million dollars in 1854,

and admission is twenty-five cents. The Albert Memorial Hall holds ten

thousand. The Agricultural Hall covers three acres and a half, and holds

audiences of twenty-five thousand.

There is not a day in the year without half-a-dozen or more public

meetings, convened by religious, scientific, or other societies, a

free field for the stranger to see distinguished people, hear average

oratory, study character and customs, and lay in stores of useful

knowledge with varied entertainment. "Doing the sights" is a matter of

course, but they should be selected to suit one's mood at the time, also

the usually unlovely weather, and above all, after some preliminary

guide-book reading. The Tower is already familiar in story and picture,

yet not every cockney is aware that its walls enclose a virtual town of

over three thousand inhabitants. It has a hundred distinct interests

for the leisurely-minded, besides that of being a great old fortress.

The new Tower bridge equals the underground railway and sub-river

tunnels as a triumph of engineering, lifting itself high above the tall

ships' masts when they sail in and out of the port. Near by, the much

maligned East End, the Whitechapel district beloved by horror-vending

reporters, invites and will repay a visit.

Would you like to realize a dream of some magnificent pageant, in

which the great notabilities of all the earth take a share? Take your

stand where Rotten Row meets the Drive any morning or afternoon between

April and July. Here meet the pink of fashion and the celebrities

distinguished for honors won in art, science, diplomacy, statesmanship,

and war. The outward and visible magnificence belongs to the horses

rather than their riders and drivers, for plainness of attire and

decoration is the rule among the great folks. This double daily parade

is truly a unique spectacle, viewed by throngs of idlers of all nations,

themselves a picturesque feature of the show.

A panorama with another sort of interest should be viewed ponderingly.

Let the visitor approach Westminster Abbey from Victoria station along

Victoria Street, once a worse than any Whitechapel nest of criminal

slum-dwellers. Grouped into a picture unrivalled elsewhere in the world

for architectural splendor combined with historic glory, he will see the

hoary Abbey, not simply the stone record of a thousand years of human

progress; not simply the petrified survival of druidicial worship in the

forest groves, with its soaring tree-trunk columns breaking into foliage

as their tops meet to screen the sun and echo down again the ascending

incense of prayer and song; not simply the stately temple which for ages

has been the shrine of England's great ones, thirteen kings, fourteen

queens, and the greater than these--the glorious array of its poets,

musicians, statesmen, soldiers, sailors, and explorers, who, like

Livingstone in his line and Chaucer in his, poured all their wealth of

genius and power into the lap of their motherland, to make her happier

and stronger. He will see through the mediaeval stained windows the

deeper meaning of the old church's story, the reddened sun-rays telling

of the bloodshed that watered the growing plant of the nation's

greatness, and the blue beams that figure Britannia's olden mastery of

the seas, and the rainbow hues suggestive of her labors to give hope to

the people that long sat in darkness till she brought the light of

civilization.

Close to the Abbey's side stands the venerable St. Margaret's parish

church, where Caxton printed the first book and is buried; where

Ambassador James Russell Lowell's epitaph on Raleigh graces the window

that honors the memory of Virginia's founder, whose headless body

reposes in its precincts. Just behind the two churches stands

Westminster Hall, as King William Rufus built it in 1099, though its

great oak-beam roof was heightened by Richard II. Close behind it

rises the majestic file of the Houses of Parliament, the great Victoria

tower at one end, at the other the clock tower, with its minute-hand

twelve feet long and its chimes that float around for miles. From its

foot Westminster Bridge gladly crosses the Thames to the noblest of

hospitals, St. Thomas's, founded in 1213. Its separate blocks corridored

together, fitly match the Parliament building on the opposite bank of

the river. When you stand on the Abbey sidewalk, near the Beaconsfield

statue, you may feel you are standing in the true centre of the earth,

for there will pass you in the course of a week in the season the

picked leaders of most nations, the representatives of every faith and

system of government, the ruling men of Asiatic empires and tribes,

and travellers from the world's end to do homage to the mother of

parliaments and the shrine of the immortal dead. And far in the distant

haze hovers the dome of St. Paul's like a balloon ascending through the

smoke clouds to the clear blue.

Starting westward from the Abbey, in this sacred bit of the great city,

it is possible to walk seven miles on the grass and paths, through St.

James's park, surrounded by Government buildings, stately old mansions,

the home of the king when Prince of Wales, St. James's Palace, and

Buckingham Palace. Then along Constitution Hill, across Piccadilly into

Hyde Park, along Rotten Row (from _Route du Roi_) to Kensington Gardens

with the house Victoria was born in, and so on, with a few breaks. The

group of palatial museums at South Kensington tempt the stranger,

whatever his tastes or culture, to spend a year there, and each year so

spent will need another to do justice to their marvellous contents.

Turn back now, along Piccadilly, a unique panorama in itself, pass the

cluster of great restaurants, theatres, music-halls, and other pleasure

places that reach half a mile or so towards the Strand, where the hotels

range round Charing Cross. Along this narrow but brilliant highway lie

more theatres and a famous church or two, and the cold bath in use since

the Romans made it two thousand years ago. Then up Fleet Street, whence

the daily papers flutter morning, noon and night, until St. Paul's

crowns the highest bit of the city. Its interior, and the monuments to

the nation's naval and military heroes, will impress the visitor, though

hardly so much as the exquisite singing at the short services of morning

and afternoon, the strains of vocal and organ music floating and

billowing in the great dome and along the lofty aisles.

Between St. Paul's and old Bishopsgate lies "the city," that is, the

square mile or so given up to business, with no private houses left

in it. Still going eastward the route passes through the Billingsgate

fishmarket quarter, where its famous language still flourishes.

Here stands "the Monument," a column surmounted with a gilt frame,

commemorating the great fire of 1666, which began at this spot. If we

take our stand far away on Blackfriars Bridge some thirty-five church

steeples may be counted, each with its upper part painted black. The

dome of St. Paul's is one of these. They mark the area of the fire,

as each rebuilt church had to bear this memorial. But for this law St.

Paul's would have had a gilded dome. Soon we come to the Tower, and then

the long line of docks, covering thousands of acres, and stretching

miles down the river. Here the merchant wealth of the country, and of

the world, is realizable as nowhere else.

London shows both sides of its shield: incalculable wealth, poverty that

defies description. Years of familiarity with its slums, before slumming

was invented as a fashionable fad, only deepened the conviction that

all the noble efforts to eradicate the worst evils in the situation are

utterly hopeless. The breed flourishes faster than the mild measures to

improve it can operate.

The homes of aristocracy in Mayfair, the heart of the West End,

disappoint those who expect magnificence--long rows of houses in narrow

streets, once red brick, now dingy black and musty-looking, the monotony

broken here and there by a newer and more pretentious stone mansion. The

great Squares are a brighter feature. The same sooty brick houses, large

and small, make the quadrangle, each having a key to the gates that

enclose the park, in which nursemaids exercise the children and pet

dogs, and an occasional game of croquet is ventured by country cousins.

The coating of soot on every branch and leaf is fatal to clean hands

and summer costumes. The newer streets, and the region around the South

Kensington Museums, make a better display of architecture. A little

experience will reconcile the stranger to the general dowdiness of house

exteriors, when he learns that the English climate has caused the

English people to think most of the home within. The contrast on

entering these plain structures is startling and gratifying. While

this home love and home pride with homely ways are the strongest

characteristics of the people, the saying of Charles the Second is still

true, that there is no other country in which one can spend so many

hours the year round in the open air. They spend as much of their

daylight as possible out of doors and their evenings at home have a

hearty, informal, delightful charm, wholly in contrast to the stiff and

stagy receptions known in other cities.

The innate love of country life is shown by rich and poor alike. On

the four legal bank holidays, the Monday after Christmas, Easter

Monday, Whitsun Monday, and the first Monday in August, all business is

suspended throughout the land, in most cases from the Friday evening

until Tuesday morning. Then the masses come forth in all their might and

finery, they take possession of the street vehicles, the railways and

boats. The "upper" and "upper middle" classes religiously stay at home

on those days, dreading the uproarious throngs of 'Arries and 'Arriets,

who jam themselves ten deep into seats for five and monopolize every

place of amusement. Yet it is a cheery sight to see all these hundreds

of thousands of London toilers hurrying on wheels of all sorts away to

Epping Forest, kept in its virgin state these four hundred years, and

to Hampstead Heath, the Crystal Palace, the great parks, and similar

handy breathing places, not to mention the favorite resorts within a

twenty-mile radius. You will smile at grown folks playing skip the rope

the whole day long, and kiss in the ring, and such like primitive games,

but it is a wholesome sign when a whole population can find hearty

pleasure in romping on the grass, for simple delights gained by healthy

open-air exercise yield a more lasting happiness than is to be got by

paying money to sit still and see hirelings make antics for you.

These outlying places are the crowning glory of London. Beautiful

Windsor, Richmond Park, Kew Gardens, Epping Forest, and the ideally

delightful Edens that nestle along the bends of the upper Thames, are

all within the twenty-five mile circle, though one can find fifty

fairy-grounds within five miles from any city station, where one can

sprawl on the velvet grass beneath some spreading oak, and drink in the

balmy scent-laden air, out of sight and sound of bricks and mortar. You

may, certainly, be disturbed by the carolling of larks, linnets and

others of the feathered choir, and perhaps by the waftings of some

village church's silvery peal of bells, celebrating a wedding on the

general holiday merrymaking. Even in the very heart of London's busiest

quarters one can instantaneously step from the streets into grassy

enclosures with great old trees, as silent and restful as if we were

in some monastic cloister a century or two back. Until it has been

experienced it is impossible to realize the beauty and mental relief of

being able to turn from the rush and roar of the great city into one of

these lovely retreats, or into the Cathedral, or Abbey, or nearest old

church, where "the dim, religious light" of the stained windows, and the

poetry of design and associations, and perhaps the pealing organ, waft

the jaded senses into lotos land.

Coming back to details of another kind it is to be remarked that for

noise, we can conscientiously claim our own New York as champion

unrivalled. This item of metropolitan noise in some wise hits off

the characteristics of the nations. New York has its fearsome

rattle-clatter, sharp, pungent, nerve-racking, incessant, typical of

the ceaseless "hurry-up" of its folk, in talk and motion. All is

"rapid-transit" rush, anyhow, anywhere. Paris has its light, flitting,

skipping, pittypat noise, as of a million chattering magpies busy

shifting quarters. London has altogether another noise--a deep, soft

diapason, Niagara-like in its immensity and pitch--a low melodious roar,

the noise of "the roaring loom of time"; noises of the past; great

booming echoes of dead centuries; the wailings of populations crushed by

endless wars, oppressed by dynasties of tyrants, crowned and uncrowned;

smitten to death by plagues; swept out of life by Ignorance, Poverty,

Evil Fate. Great London has gathered the voices of the peoples in a

thousand years of matchless history, and he who listens aright can hear

them all as they go up to heaven in the mighty volume of its sun-dimmed

incense of smoke.

This London is a miniature world. It is made up of representatives

of every nationality; is the hive of every land's industry; the

market-place for every country's products. It is the mart where

traders from all the ends of the earth transact their business; the

bank to which every nation and tribe intrust their gains; the parlor,

the parleying-place, the parliament of the earth, where rulers and

subjects, races and clans, leaders and followers, explorers, travellers,

scholars, reformers, do their best talking, most of it in the hearing

of all peoples who use the English tongue.

[Illustration: LONDON BRIDGE]

London is more than all this. It is the purgatory and the elysium of

generations of Britain's great souls. As the centuries have cast their

hallowed tints of sombre gray over her dumbly eloquent stones, they have

seen a long procession of sad figures threading the old, quaint, crooked

byways and highways, figures of gaunt men and weary women, dropping

out from the ranks here and there from sheer want of the wherewithal

of life. These have been the forerunners, the seed-sowers, the pioneers

of England's greatness--singers and seers, planners and day-dreamers,

toilers with hand and brain, potential Caesars and Alfreds, Shakespeares

and Arkwrights, Wrens, Reynoldses and Wellingtons, without a ray of the

ripening sunshine. Old England had its genius-breeders long before the

luckier later sons were born. Not a stone of St. Paul's that glorifies

the powers of its designers but is also, when you rightly look, a

tombstone to the memory of some unknown toiler whose brain, heart,

muscle or blood was spent to make that cathedral sublime; nor can you

pick up a page of your Chaucers, Shakespeares, Miltons, Goldsmiths, and

Tennysons but, if you scan it closely enough, you will find it stained

with the tears of countless strugglers, who wrought themselves sore

in the cause of man's elevation, only to earn a nameless grave for

themselves. Pioneers, they sank, but their bones so enriched the soil

that the London which was a purgatory to them is an elysium to us

to-day, pacing whose witching shades we may see, if we close our eyes on

inferior sights, the ghosts of the legion of Greathearts who haunt the

old home, whose coldness to them in their own day they have avenged by

making it glow with the glory of their names and works.

This is the crowning charm of London the unique--that we tread on ground

every inch of which has its thrilling story to tell. There Shakespeare

trod. Here Marlowe fell. Here Otway died, starved. Here Carey fainted,

foodless. Here Goldsmith trailed footsore, hungry, despairing of fame.

Here Johnson and Savage tramped the street all night with three cents

between them for coffee at the street stall in the early morning. Here

gentle De Quincey slept on the doorsteps. Hear him: "So then, Oxford

Street, stony-hearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of

orphans and drinkest the tears of children, the time was come at last,

that I no more should pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces; no more

should dream, and wake in captivity to the pangs of hunger. Thou, Oxford

Street, hast echoed to the groans of innumerable hearts!" Aye, and still

do thy throbbing streets, O glorious, pitiless London, reverberate with

the wails of unsuspected thousands! To-day, this very day, the artist,

the poet, the scholar, the inventor, the helpless sons of genius may

perish, and most literally do perish, die of the heart-break that is

born of hunger, in the wilderness of merry London. Who cannot readily

recall a score of these tragedies, within any past score of years, where

genius, talent, worth, character, industry, patient effort, failed to

win recognition for the ill-fated ones--until the day _after_ their

lamentable death?

GLASGOW, DUBLIN, LIVERPOOL, MANCHESTER.

London is not the typical English city, though types of almost every

city in the eastern hemisphere can be unearthed in its mazes by those

who know. The traveller who would get an understanding view of the

United Kingdom must visit the great centres of industry in England, the

sources of its modern strength, and take a look at the chief cities of

Scotland and Ireland. But if he would penetrate deeper into the heart of

the nation he will do well to halt by the way and get in touch with the

unpretentious towns and lovely country scenes from whose old-fashioned

folks most of the makers of the great cities have sprung.

Leaving London for the north a passing thought is due to Birmingham, the

most American of English cities in its marvellous activities, metal work

of every kind especially, from "ancient" idols for pagan temples in

the East to exquisite altar-plate and prayer-book bindings for the

institutional foes of idolatry. The local corruption of the name into

Brummagem has added a descriptive term to the language, and it also

illustrates the interesting fact that these local pronunciations usually

preserve historical fact, as the now important city used to be no more

than a hamlet adjoining Bromwich, hence Brumwich-ham. It showed the way,

in the early seventies, how municipalities of unsalaried and unselfish

citizens can acquire their own lighting and waterworks and otherwise

carry on the town's business at an immense saving over the ordinary

system. A new city has arisen out of the old one and the running

expenses are lower than ever. Sheffield, the centre of the cutlery

industry, is well worth studying for a day, for its activity, the

surrounding scenery, and the effect of foreign competition upon its

staple trade.

Manchester is familiar as the mother of the cotton trade. Its fortune

was made by its spinning and weaving enterprises, by its quick

utilization of the steam-engine and the inventions of mechanical genius.

The first working railway was that which ran between Manchester and

Liverpool in 1830. It first gave England the honor of being regarded

as the workshop of the world. The wider adaptations of steam power and

the establishment of free trade enriched its capitalists and merchants

beyond the dreams of their fathers. Many a Lancashire millionaire could

not write his name. Within the memory of middle-aged men there have been

great enterprises, princely philanthropies, and striking public speeches

by self-made magnates who could not compose letters nor speak gracefully

without help from others. The city is marked by its pillar of smoke by

day and of furnace fire by night. Its wise people carry their umbrellas

as constantly as their pocket-books, for "the rain it raineth every

day," at least drizzleth. The population of Manchester and its twin

city, Salford, touches three-quarters of a million, sturdy and stern

Britons, proudly dubbing themselves "Manchester men," in distinction

from "Liverpool gentlemen."

Its murky air, ungainly factories and buildings generally, impress the

stranger with its intensely practical spirit. The poetry of existence

reveals itself in the cosy interiors and the charming outskirt

residences. It has romance in its history and associations. Mancastra

was a Roman camp in the reign of Titus. Under the Saxons and the later

Normans it fashioned itself to the times just as it did to the magic

wand of the nineteenth-century genius. It fought for the Parliament

against the Royalists. For more than three centuries it led in woollen

and, latterly, cotton manufactures. Its district is rich in coal-mines.

The Bridgewater Canal dates from 1761, the principal one in the country.

A greater, though apparently a less wise, because unprofitable,

enterprise, has been the ship-canal. American cotton has always been

unshipped at Liverpool, by which its brokers have greatly profited. To

save tolls, delays and cost of rail transport, Manchester men made an

imitation Suez Canal by deepening and adapting certain waterways, by

which ships can pass into the new port of Manchester without troubling

Liverpool. It may be hard to realize that Manchester can scarcely hope

to become again the world's cotton factory, seeing that she has not only

taught other nations how to do her work, but has long been selling them

her machinery and coal for that purpose. A momentous sign of the times

is the rapid migration of her capital and brain to Japan and India,

where operatives of sufficient skill are content with a mere fraction

of the home-workers' wage, and ocean transport is saved.

The sight-seer will be charmed by the noble city hall with its tall

tower, its peal of twenty-one bells, and the public recitals on its

great organ. Manchester possesses the oldest free library in the world,

Chetham's, with 40,000 rare old books ranged on the shelves in the old

mansion rooms where some of them have reposed for nearly three hundred

years. It also has the first of modern free libraries on the grand

scale, opened in 1851, a gift from a citizen, greatly enlarged since.

Its famous Free Trade Hall has echoed with the eloquence of the world's

famous men and women, in speech and song. Scarcely an American statesman

or orator of note, being in England since 1856, but has been cheered by

its audiences. The public meetings of all kinds in this hall have been

among the most valuable educational influences of the half century. It

was said by Lord Salisbury, many years before he became Premier, that

"as Manchester thinks to-day, England thinks to-morrow," and it used to

be true.

The traveller should try to be in Manchester in Whitsun Week, to see

its most striking characteristic. It is the Sunday-school children's

gala time and all business is demoralized in their honor. On the

Monday twenty or thirty thousand Church of England scholars march with

bands to a service in the Cathedral, the whole town and country around

crowding the streets. Tuesday is the only off-day. Every other one is a

half-holiday for those who do not take whole ones. Each church gives its

scholars picnics in parks or on local farms in the afternoons, and a

whole day's country outing on one day. Friday is the grown folks' picnic

day, and on Saturday the Total Abstainers' parade. They are called

Tee-totallers, because one of the founders, a Lancashire man, happened

to stammer in a speech in trying to say _total abstinence_.

The Cathedral is not a great edifice, but has many remarkable

fifteenth-century carvings and side chapels. It is affectionately known,

in the local vernacular, as "t'owd church," the old church. On Easter

Mondays the villagers and working folk used to crowd in to be married,

as many as two hundred couples being despatched at a blow, the same

service answering for all simultaneously. The city may be proud of its

Victoria University, the development of Owen's College, founded in 1847.

Of its many famous characters, the names of De Quincey and Harrison

Ainsworth are perhaps the best known in literature.

Liverpool is thirty-six miles from Manchester and three from the sea.

Its first charter was granted in 1229 and it sent two members to

Parliament in 1296, yet its population until the seventeenth century was

only about one thousand. It has the distinction of having made the first

dock, penning up with flood-gates sufficient water to keep ships afloat

between the fall and rise of tides. This was built in 1709. It is

unkind, though true, to record that Liverpool's first fortune was made

in the slave-trade. Its ships went to the west coast of Africa and took

in cargoes of natives whom they then transported to the West Indies

as slaves, being paid for by cargoes of sugar and rum, brought home

to Liverpool. This traffic began about 1720. It was suppressed by

Parliament in 1807, the number of ships then engaged in it being

185, carrying over forty thousand slaves annually. A good deal of

privateering was carried on during the eighteenth-century wars, an

echo of which survived until the American Civil War of 1861-65.

Liverpool has many unique features of interest. It has not many

manufactures, and only four or five ship-building establishments, for

reasons which will appear in the pages on Glasgow. Its commercial

growth has been extraordinary. In 1800 the population was under 78,000;

in 1900 it was about 750,000. In the first-named year the tonnage of

its ships was 450,000, and is now nearly 10,000,000. Its commerce is

chiefly with America. A magnificent sight is its endless array of

docks, stretching along both shores of the Mersey in a line, measured

continuously, of over thirty miles. Many a stately procession of great

ships glides up the spacious river, laden with precious cargoes not to

be estimated by statistics. Over fifty thousand Americans, it is said,

visit England each summer, entering by this majestic water-gate. Who

shall tell the influence of this mingling of kindred peoples, the moral

and national worth of all they bring and all they take?

It is a new city, as towns go in the old country, with few visible marks

of its history. The public buildings are not specially imposing, but St.

George's Hall stands on a commanding site and in exterior and interior

holds its own with the best civic temples, in spaciousness and grace.

The great public library near by does honor to the city and to its

donor. The art gallery is remarkable for its construction, as for its

exhibits. It has a circular floor of one hundred feet in diameter

without columns or any intermediate support, and beneath it is an

amphitheatre, used for lectures, with its benches hewn out of the solid

rock.

To ferry across the river to Birkenhead and Bootle, and down to New

Brighton and other popular resorts, is an excellent way to appreciate

the greatness of this famous port. As a city it has little charm, except

in its surroundings.

All the excitements of the transatlantic voyage may be had in miniature

(except the _mal de mer_) in crossing the lively channel to Dublin. The

metropolis of Ireland must not be judged by commercial and cosmopolitan

standards.

A city of many contrasts, stirring associations and poetical interest,

two patriotisms, two grand divisions of its community, are discernible

in the air. On the one hand is the Castle, lacking the castle feature

and charm, with a pervading sense of royalism _minus_ the outward

symbols of state which give it popularity and influence. On the other is

the vibrant nationalism which, in many tones and by a hundred tokens,

expresses its hostility to the emblems of what it regards as alien

dominance. Pathetic in its way is the decay of once fashionable, not to

say aristocratic, districts, that have lapsed into commonplace, and many

fine streets hobnob with veritable slums. This gradual decline of much

residential property impoverished old families and added to the sum of

general discontent. Dublin has never taken kindly to the idea of

becoming a commercial city, such as Liverpool. The intellectual head of

the island, it prides itself on the genius of its professional people.

Irish eloquence shines as brightly as ever in its pulpits, in the law

courts, and, indeed, wherever public speech is heard. The Four Courts

enshrine the fame of many a gifted patriot orator and wit. Trinity

College, founded by Queen Elizabeth, has made its mark not simply in

the island and kingdom but all over the world. The same is true of its

colleges in general.

The city lions are these buildings, the Castle, Phoenix Park, St.

Patrick's Cathedral and sundry monuments. One world-important industry

has done wonders for the city. The Guiness product rebuilt the Cathedral

out of its decaying remains. A local distillery has contributed nobly to

the city's reputation for progress. Singular it certainly is that the

most appreciated malt liquor of the kind known as stout, should be

produced in three cities, Dublin, London, and Philadelphia, each of

which can boast the filthiest river in its country, the Liffey, the

Thames, and the Schuylkill.

Dublin earth quickly turns to black bog under the frequent rains. Yet

neither its mud nor its political differences can damp the cheery

spirits of its natives. This is one great delight of a journey to the

island. Usually we see what we set out to see anywhere. No matter

whether our quest is for city shows or the lovely rural scenery, or the

sports on the Curragh, or the woes of the impoverished masses, we cannot

pass a single hour without marvelling at the native good-humor and good

wit of even the most distressful-conditioned people. Where less gifted

sufferers grow melancholy-visaged, the Irish greet misfortune with a

continual smile, in which fact lies a world of hope, and not a little

envy.

Up in Belfast the austere-faced Ulstermen have made a commercial centre

of the first rank. Ship-building and the flax industry, with others,

flourish, and the city might be a civic paradise if faction warfare

could be cooled down.

Passing now to Glasgow we find ourselves in a city of comparative

palaces. Its buildings are of sandstone, its streets handsome, its

municipal government so admirable as to have become the model for

American cities. The canny Scot may be trusted to make the citizen's

penny bring a full pennyworth. The city authorities own their plants for

providing the people with light, and for bringing the pure waters of

Loch Katrine into every home. They went a step farther and bought the

public tramways and cars, giving the people cheaper travel than had ever

been known.

Glasgow stole the greater part of Liverpool's ship-building business and

Belfast a goodly share. Miles and miles of the banks of the Clyde are

decorated with skeletons of new vessels waiting to be clothed in steel

or wood garb. Every variety of craft is to be seen, from the battle-ship

to the racing yacht. But Glasgow turns its hands to everything makable

and salable. Its three-quarters of a million inhabitants work at

innumerable trades. Their success shows in the substantial build of

their city, which has more than a liberal allowance of splendid

structures. Modern and up-to-date, its whirl of daily life recalls New

York in certain aspects. This modernness in architectural effect is the

more striking when we stand in the High Street and reflect that the

grand national hero, William Wallace, fought a battle with the English

on this spot in 1300. The city's patron saint, Kentigern, gave it its

name in the sixth or seventh century, _glasgu_, the dear family, after a

band of his disciples settled there. Its cathedral, old St. Mungo's,

takes its name also from Kentigern's _munghu_, or most loved friend. Its

charter, authorizing the holding of a free market, was granted in 1175.

Commercial development dates from 1707, when the union with England was

settled. Glasgow University traces its beginnings to 1450. In making a

new dock recently the diggers brought to light a boat, formed out of the

trunk of a tree, a relic of primeval seamanship. The scenery of the

Clyde, and for miles beyond its banks, has been the theme of many a

poetical description by American travellers. The reader of Scott needs

no reminder of its richness in historic story. But is not all Scotland a

picture-poem of stirring romance?

"Auld" Edinburgh is written of elsewhere in this volume by its brilliant

son. American newspapers that lop off the final letter, also objected to

in Pittsburgh, are evidently unaware that it is pronounced Edinborough

(burrow). The unrivalled queen of British cities, the uncommercial

capital of Scotland, its ancient capital and its present glory, is worth

the pilgrimage, even from old Athens and Rome. The towering castle was

begun twelve centuries ago. St. Giles's church dates from 1110. It was

a walled town in 1450. Progressive in the sleepy old days, it set up

its first printing-press, one of the world's first presses, in 1507, and

has been literary ever since. The early rulers brought musicians and

scholars from abroad to delight their courts, and many jealousies they

caused.

KENILWORTH AND WARWICK CASTLES.

ELIHU BURRITT.

[Elihu Burritt, the "Learned Blacksmith," wrote two works of

mingled description and economic observation in the British

island, these being "A Walk from John O'Groat's to Land's End"

and "Walks in the Black Country and its Green Border-Land." It

is from the "green border-land" section of the latter that we

take the following description of two of England's most famous

ancient castles.]

Between Coventry and Warwick, in a green, quiet rural district, stands

Kenilworth, and Kenilworth is a castle which absorbs into itself all

of space, population, and history that belongs to the name. Not only

novel-readers, but practical history-readers at a distance, never think

of anything but the castle when the name is mentioned or suggested.

Still, there is a goodly, tidy, and comfortable village near the ruins

worth visiting, without the lion which attracts so many thousands a year

to pay their homage and their admiration--to the genius of Sir Walter

Scott. All the ordinary trades of a practical business community are

carried on in this village; and a tall, taper chimney of a tannery, as

high as any church steeple, smokes its pipe in the face of all the

romantic antiquities of the place. Still, the people would probably

confess that the principal source of their income is derived from

their vested interest in Sir Walter Scott's "Kenilworth," not in the

real castle walls. Take away that famous novel, and, with all the

authenticated history that remains attached to them, not one in five of

the visitors they now attract would walk around them with admiration. In

fact, they are more a monument to the genius of the great novelist than

to the memory of Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester. If any community

ever owed a statue to the honor of a benefactor for money value

received, the Kenilworths owe one to the celebrated Scotch writer. One

might reasonably estimate that his book has been worth ten thousand

pounds a year to them for the last quarter of a century or more.

There are observatories, barometer and anemometer stations around the

coasts of England, where rain-falls and wind-blows, tide-risings and

star-showers are registered. There are other observation-stations where

the self-registering offices of human fames and reputations are kept,

and where these are measured spontaneously. Go to Stratford and look at

the inner walls of Shakespeare's house and the record kept there, and

count the names from the four quarters of the globe written there in

homage of the great bard; go to Abbotsford, and consult the day-book of

that great memory; go to Olney, and see what manner and multitude of

names cover and re-cover the little garden summer-house in which Cowper

wrote, and you will have this self-registration of human genius and its

appreciation. So at Kenilworth, the visitors' day-book at the hotel will

show how many come from both hemispheres and all their continents to see

the scene of Sir Walter Scott's romance.

I was favored with a bright day on the sunny edge of autumn for my

visit, when the very sky imparts a radiance to the ivied ruins of old

castles and abbeys. Kenilworth shows its successive ages and uses in the

various departments of its structure. From the ground it occupied, one

would hardly conceive it to be a fighting castle. But when you come to

look at the massive Caesar's Tower, you will be impressed with its

impregnability in the bow-and-arrow period of English warfare. Its lofty

walls hold their frontage and perpendicular lines as true and even as if

they were a last-year's structure. It is seemingly composed of several

towers connected by walls sixteen feet thick, perforated by window-holes

which look like so many archways. It is built or faced with hewn red

sandstone, and is a perfect specimen of mason-work. The Insurgent Barons

stood a siege of six months against Henry III. behind these strong

walls, and in the reign of Edward I. Roger Mortimer, Earl of March,

presided over a grand tournament beneath them.

In a later century the castle passed into the hands of John o' Gaunt,

who added the noble structure called the Lancaster Buildings, or

banqueting-hall. This must have been one of the finest specimens of

architecture of his time in England, and, in ruins, presents the

graceful proportions and embellishments of its structure. Under the

_regime_ of that celebrated nobleman the castle began to put on a

civilian dress over its coat of mail, and to echo with the music and

mirth of dancing and feasting, instead of the clangor of arms.

But Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, completed the transformation into

a residential palace. He not only added the wing called the Leicester

Buildings, but he renovated and embellished all the old portions of the

huge pile. He erected an ante-castle, or a great gate house, which is a

noble structure in itself. Never did a subject build, and rebuild, and

embellish on such a scale as he did to receive his sovereign.

Three times Elizabeth was his guest. Her last visit was in July,

1575, and lasted seventeen days. Of the festivities and princely

entertainments he prepared for her on this occasion Sir Walter Scott

has written with all that natural enthusiasm and predilection with

which, perhaps, above all other English novelists, he dilated upon such

a subject. His graphic descriptions of these scenes are so familiar to

the million that I will not venture to go behind his brilliant fictions

in search of actual historical facts of duller interest. The day of such

favorites has gone by, like the beauty and glory of this once gorgeous

fabric. The sun of Christian morality and civilization has risen to a

purer flood of light, and such broad-faced gallantries would now

be looked out of countenance in high places....

The facing of the massive and lofty Caesar's Tower must be nearly three

centuries old, and it is wonderfully perfect. The perpendicular lines

from base to battlement are as straight as if the walls were run in a

mould; the eye cannot detect a deflection of a hair's breadth, nor has

time been able to eat into the smooth and even surface. I noticed,

however, that "the brave old ivy green," which braids such bandages for

the wounds made by time and human violence in abbeys and castles, had

wound around the front of this huge tower such a thick spread that it

had deadened the skin of the wall and was eating into the solid body of

it like a caustic blister. There were men at work on tall ladders,

removing this thick green bandage and letting the sun in upon the stone,

which had not seen its light for years.

The Gate House is in excellent preservation, and is occupied by a

tenant of the Earl of Clarendon. The towers are supported by old

pear-trees that clasp their long arms around the stone-work and hug it

so tightly that you may see their impress in the wall. It is a pleasant

sight, which a poet might make something of, to see them hanging their

clusters of luscious fruit up and down, as if, like the idea expressed

in Solomon's Song, they were staying the venerable building with apples

and cheering delicacies. Indeed, for its historical associations, as

well as for the architectural character disclosed in its picturesque

ruins, Kenilworth, perhaps, stands at the very head of all old English

castles as an object of popular interest. If a self-registering

apparatus could be put in operation at the gate opening to it, which

would number and record the human feet, just as some instruments

would show such a census of visitors as this.