foot of a range of hills, the loftiest of which is over a thousand feet
in height. A---- and I thought we would go to the top of one of these,
known as the Beacon. We hired a "four-wheeler," dragged by a
much-enduring horse and in charge of a civil young man. We turned out of
one of the streets not far from the hotel, and found ourselves facing an
ascent which looked like what I should suppose would be a pretty steep
toboggan slide. We both drew back. _"Facilis ascensus,"_ I said to
myself, _"sed revocare gradum."_ It is easy enough to get up if you
are dragged up, but how will it be to come down such a declivity? When
we reached it on our return, the semi-precipice had lost all its
terrors. We had seen and travelled over so much worse places that this
little bit of slanting road seemed as nothing. The road which wound up
to the summit of the Beacon was narrow and uneven. It ran close to the
edge of the steep hillside,--so close that there were times when every
one of our forty digits curled up like a bird's claw. If we went over,
it would not be a fall down a good honest precipice,--a swish through
the air and a smash at the bottom,--but a tumbling, and a rolling over
and over, and a bouncing and bumping, ever accelerating, until we
bounded into the level below, all ready for the coroner. At one sudden
turn of the road the horse's body projected so far over its edge that
A---- declared if the beast had been an inch longer he would have
toppled over. When we got close to the summit we found the wind blowing
almost a gale. A---- says in her diary that I (meaning her honored
parent) "nearly blew off from the top of the mountain." It is true that
the force of the wind was something fearful, and seeing that two young
men near me were exposed to its fury, I offered an arm to each of them,
which they were not too proud to accept; A---- was equally attentive to
another young person; and having seen as much of the prospect as we
cared to, we were glad to get back to our four-wheeler and our hotel,
after a perilous journey almost comparable to Mark Twain's ascent of the
Riffelberg.
At Great Malvern we were deliciously idle. We walked about the place,
rested quietly, drove into the neighboring country, and made a single
excursion,--to Tewkesbury. There are few places better worth seeing than
this fine old town, full of historical associations and monumental
relics. The magnificent old abbey church is the central object of
interest. The noble Norman tower, one hundred and thirty-two feet in
height, was once surmounted by a spire, which fell during divine service
on Easter Day of the year 1559. The arch of the west entrance is sixteen
feet high and thirty-four feet wide. The fourteen columns of the nave
are each six feet and three inches in diameter and thirty feet in
height. I did not take these measurements from the fabric itself, but
from the guidebook, and I give them here instead of saying that the
columns were huge, enormous, colossal, as they did most assuredly seem
to me. The old houses of Tewkesbury compare well with the finest of
those in Chester. I have a photograph before me of one of them, in which
each of the three upper floors overhangs the one beneath it, and the
windows in the pointed gable above project over those of the fourth
floor.
I ought to have visited the site of Holme Castle, the name of which
reminds me of my own origin. "The meaning of the Saxon word 'Holme' is a
meadow surrounded with brooks, and here not only did the castle bear the
name, but the meadow is described as the 'Holme,--where the castle
was.'" The final _s_ in the name as we spell it is a frequent
addition to old English names, as Camden mentions, giving the name
Holmes among the examples. As there is no castle at the Holme now, I
need not pursue my inquiries any further. It was by accident that I
stumbled on this bit of archaeology, and as I have a good many
namesakes, it may perhaps please some of them to be told about it. Few
of us hold any castles, I think, in these days, except those _châteaux
en Espagne_, of which I doubt not, many of us are lords and masters.
In another of our excursions we visited a venerable church, where our
attention was called to a particular monument. It was erected to the
memory of one of the best of husbands by his "wretched widow," who
records upon the marble that there never was such a man on the face of
the earth before, and never will be again, and that there never was
anybody so miserable as she,--no, never, never, never! These are not the
exact words, but this is pretty nearly what she declares. The story is
that she married again within a year.
From my window at the Foley Arms I can see the tower of the fine old
abbey church of Malvern, which would be a centre of pilgrimages if it
were in our country. But England is full of such monumental structures,
into the history of which the local antiquarians burrow, and pass their
peaceful lives in studying and writing about them with the same innocent
enthusiasm that White of Selborne manifested in studying nature as his
village showed it to him.
In our long drives we have seen everywhere the same picturesque old
cottages, with the pretty gardens, and abundant flowers, and noble
trees, more frequently elms than any other. One day--it was on the 10th
of July--we found ourselves driving through what seemed to be a
gentleman's estate, an ample domain, well wooded and well kept. On
inquiring to whom this place belonged, I was told that the owner was Sir
Edmund Lechmere. The name had a very familiar sound to my ears. Without
rising from the table at which I am now writing, I have only to turn my
head, and in full view, at the distance of a mile, just across the
estuary of the Charles, shining in the morning sun, are the roofs and
spires and chimneys of East Cambridge, always known in my younger days
as Lechmere's Point. Judge Richard Lechmere was one of our old Cambridge
Tories, whose property was confiscated at the time of the Revolution. An
engraving of his handsome house, which stands next to the Vassall house,
long known as Washington's headquarters, and since not less celebrated
as the residence of Longfellow, is before me, on one of the pages of the
pleasing little volume, "The Cambridge of 1776." I take it for granted
that our Lechmeres were of the same stock as the owner of this property.
If so, he probably knows all that I could tell him about his colonial
relatives, who were very grand people, belonging to a little
aristocratic circle of friends and relatives who were faithful to their
king and their church. The Baroness Riedesel, wife of a Hessian officer
who had been captured, was for a while resident in this house, and her
name, scratched on a window-pane, was long shown as a sight for eyes
unused to titles other than governor, judge, colonel, and the like. I
was tempted to present myself at Sir Edmund's door as one who knew
something about the Lechmeres in America, but I did not feel sure how
cordially a descendant of the rebels who drove off Richard and Mary
Lechmere would be received.
From Great Malvern we went to Bath, another place where we could rest
and be comfortable. The Grand Pump-Room Hotel was a stately building,
and the bath-rooms were far beyond anything I had ever seen of that
kind. The remains of the old Roman baths, which appear to have been very
extensive, are partially exposed. What surprises one all over the Old
World is to see how deeply all the old civilizations contrive to get
buried. Everybody seems to have lived in the cellar. It is hard to
believe that the cellar floor was once the sun surface of the smiling
earth.
I looked forward to seeing Bath with a curious kind of interest. I once
knew one of those dear old English ladies whom one finds all the world
over, with their prim little ways, and their gilt prayer-books, and
lavender-scented handkerchiefs, and family recollections. She gave me
the idea that Bath, a city where the great people often congregate, was
more especially the paradise of decayed gentlewomen. There, she told me,
persons with very narrow incomes--not _demi-fortunes_, but
_demi-quart-de-fortunes_--could find everything arranged to
accommodate their modest incomes. I saw the evidence of this everywhere.
So great was the delight I had in looking in at the shop-windows of the
long street which seemed to be one of the chief thoroughfares that,
after exploring it in its full extent by myself, I went for A----, and
led her down one side its whole length and up the other. In these shops
the precious old dears could buy everything they wanted in the most
minute quantities. Such tempting heaps of lumps of white sugar, only
twopence! Such delectable cakes, two for a penny! Such seductive scraps
of meat, which would make a breakfast nourishing as well as relishing,
possibly even what called itself a dinner, blushing to see themselves
labelled threepence or fourpence! We did not know whether to smile or to
drop a tear, as we contemplated these baits hung out to tempt the coins
from the exiguous purses of ancient maidens, forlorn widows, withered
annuitants, stranded humanity in every stage of shipwrecked penury. I am
reminded of Thackeray's "Jack Spiggot." "And what are your pursuits,
Jack? says I. 'Sold out when the governor died. Mother lives at Bath. Go
down there once a year for a week. Dreadful slow. Shilling whist.'" Mrs.
Gaskell's picture of "Cranford" is said to have been drawn from a
village in Cheshire, but Bath must have a great deal in common with its
"elegant economies." Do not make the mistake, however, of supposing that
this splendid watering-place, sometimes spoken of as "the handsomest
city in Britain," is only a city of refuge for people that have seen
better days. Lord Macaulay speaks of it as "that beautiful city which
charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and
Palladio." If it is not quite so conspicuous as a fashionable resort as
it was in the days of Beau Nash or of Christopher Anstey, it has never
lost its popularity. Chesterfield writes in 1764, "The number of people
in this place is infinite," and at the present time the annual influx of
visitors is said to vary from ten to fourteen thousand. Many of its
public buildings are fine, and the abbey church, dating from 1499, is an
object of much curiosity, especially on account of the sculptures on its
western façade. These represent two ladders, with angels going up and
down upon them,--suggested by a dream of the founder of the church,
repeating that of Jacob.
On the 14th of July we left Bath for Salisbury. While passing Westbury,
one of our fellow-passengers exclaimed, "Look out! Look out!" "What is
it?" "The horse! the horse!" All our heads turned to the window, and all
our eyes fastened on the figure of a white horse, upon a hillside some
miles distant. This was not the white horse which Mr. Thomas Hughes has
made famous, but one of much less archaic aspect and more questionable
history. A little book which we bought tells us all we care to know
about it. "It is formed by excoriating the turf over the steep slope of
the northern escarpment of Salisbury Plain." It was "remodelled" in
1778, and "restored" in 1873 at a cost of between sixty and seventy
pounds. It is said that a smaller and ruder horse stood here from time
immemorial, and was made to commemorate a victory of Alfred over the
Danes. However that may be, the horse we now see on the hillside is a
very modern-looking and well-shaped animal, and is of the following
dimensions: length, 170 feet; height from highest part of back, 128
feet; thickness of body, 55 feet; length of head, 50 feet; eye, 6 by 8
feet. It is a very pretty little object as we see it in the distance.
Salisbury Cathedral was my first love among all the wonderful
ecclesiastical buildings which I saw during my earlier journey. I looked
forward to seeing it again with great anticipations of pleasure, which
were more than realized.
Our travelling host had taken a whole house in the Close,--a privileged
enclosure, containing the cathedral, the bishop's palace, houses of the
clergy, and a limited number of private residences, one of the very best
of which was given over entirely into the hands of our party during our
visit. The house was about as near the cathedral as Mr. Flower's house,
where we stayed at Stratford-on-Avon, was to the Church of the Holy
Trinity. It was very completely furnished, and in the room assigned to
me as my library I found books in various languages, showing that the
residence was that of a scholarly person.
If one had to name the apple of the eye of England, I think he would be
likely to say that Salisbury Cathedral was as near as he could come to
it, and that the white of the eye was Salisbury Close. The cathedral is
surrounded by a high wall, the gates of which,--its eyelids,--are closed
every night at a seasonable hour, at which the virtuous inhabitants are
expected to be in their safe and sacred quarters. Houses within this
hallowed precinct naturally bring a higher rent than those of the
unsanctified and unprotected region outside of its walls. It is a realm
of peace, glorified by the divine edifice, which lifts the least
imaginative soul upward to the heavens its spire seems trying to reach;
beautified by rows of noble elms which stretch high aloft, as if in
emulation of the spire; beatified by holy memories of the good and great
men who have worn their lives out in the service of the church of which
it is one of the noblest temples.
For a whole week we lived under the shadow of the spire of the great
cathedral. Our house was opposite the north transept, only separated by
the road in front of it from the cathedral grounds. Here, as at
Stratford, I learned what it was to awake morning after morning and find
that I was not dreaming, but there in the truth-telling daylight the
object of my admiration, devotion, almost worship, stood before me. I
need not here say anything more of the cathedral, except that its
perfect exterior is hardly equalled in beauty by its interior, which
looks somewhat bare and cold. It was my impression that there is more to
study than to admire in the interior, but I saw the cathedral so much
oftener on the outside than on the inside that I may not have done
justice to the latter aspect of the noble building.
Nothing could be more restful than our week at Salisbury. There was
enough in the old town besides the cathedral to interest us,--old
buildings, a museum, full of curious objects, and the old town itself.
When I was there the first time, I remember that we picked up a
guide-book in which we found a verse that has remained in my memory ever
since. It is an epitaph on a native of Salisbury who died in Venice.
"Born in the English Venice, thou didst dye
Dear Friend, in the Italian Salisbury."
This would be hard to understand except for the explanation which the
local antiquarians give us of its significance. The Wiltshire Avon flows
by or through the town, which is drained by brooks that run through its
streets. These, which used to be open, are now covered over, and thus
the epitaph becomes somewhat puzzling, as there is nothing to remind one
of Venice in walking about the town.
While at Salisbury we made several excursions: to Old Sarum; to
Bemerton, where we saw the residence of holy George Herbert, and visited
the little atom of a church in which he ministered; to Clarendon Park;
to Wilton, the seat of the Earl of Pembroke, a most interesting place
for itself and its recollections; and lastly to Stonehenge. My second
visit to the great stones after so long an interval was a strange
experience. But what is half a century to a place like Stonehenge?
Nothing dwarfs an individual life like one of these massive, almost
unchanging monuments of an antiquity which refuses to be measured. The
"Shepherd of Salisbury Plain" was represented by an old man, who told
all he knew and a good deal more about the great stones, and sheared a
living, not from sheep, but from visitors, in the shape of shillings and
sixpences. I saw nothing that wore unwoven wool on its back in the
neighborhood of the monuments, but sheep are shown straggling among them
in the photographs.
The broken circle of stones, some in their original position, some
bending over like old men, some lying prostrate, suggested the thoughts
which took form in the following verses. They were read at the annual
meeting, in January, of the class which graduated at Harvard College in
the year 1829. Eight of the fifty-nine men who graduated sat round the
small table. There were several other classmates living, but infirmity,
distance, and other peremptory reasons kept them from being with us. I
have read forty poems at our successive annual meetings. I will
introduce this last one by quoting a stanza from the poem I read in
1851:--
As one by one is falling
Beneath the leaves or snows,
Each memory still recalling
The broken ring shall close,
Till the night winds softly pass
O'er the green and growing grass,
Where it waves on the graves
Of the "Boys of 'Twenty-nine."
THE BROKEN CIRCLE.
I stood on Sarum's treeless plain,
The waste that careless Nature owns;
Lone tenants of her bleak domain,
Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.
Upheaved in many a billowy mound
The sea-like, naked turf arose,
Where wandering flocks went nibbling round
The mingled graves of friends and foes.
The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane,
This windy desert roamed in turn;
Unmoved these mighty blocks remain
Whose story none that lives may learn.
Erect, half buried, slant or prone,
These awful listeners, blind and dumb,
Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown,
As wave on wave they go and come.
"Who are you, giants, whence and why?"
I stand and ask in blank amaze;
My soul accepts their mute reply:
"A mystery, as are you that gaze.
"A silent Orpheus wrought the charm
From riven rocks their spoils to bring;
A nameless Titan lent his arm
To range us in our magic ring.
"But Time with still and stealthy stride,
That climbs and treads and levels all,
That bids the loosening keystone slide,
And topples down the crumbling wall,--
"Time, that unbuilds the quarried past,
Leans on these wrecks that press the sod;
They slant, they stoop, they fall at last,
And strew the turf their priests have trod.
"No more our altar's wreath of smoke
Floats up with morning's fragrant dew;
The fires are dead, the ring is broke,
Where stood the many stand the few."
--My thoughts had wandered far away,
Borne off on Memory's outspread wing,
To where in deepening twilight lay
The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.
Ah me! of all our goodly train
How few will find our banquet hall!
Yet why with coward lips complain
That this must lean and that must fall?
Cold is the Druid's altar-stone,
Its vanished flame no more returns;
But ours no chilling damp has known,--
Unchanged, unchanging, still it burns.
So let our broken circle stand
A wreck, a remnant, yet the same,
While one last, loving, faithful hand
Still lives to feed its altar-flame!
My heart has gone back over the waters to my old friends and my own
home. When this vision has faded, I will return to the silence of the
lovely Close and the shadow of the great Cathedral.
V.
The remembrance of home, with its early and precious and long-enduring
friendships, has intruded itself among my recollections of what I saw
and heard, of what I felt and thought, in the distant land I was
visiting. I must return to the scene where I found myself when the
suggestion of the broken circle ran away with my imagination.
The literature of Stonehenge is extensive, and illustrates the weakness
of archaeologists almost as well as the "Praetorium" of Scott's
"Antiquary." "In 1823," says a local handbook, "H. Browne, of Amesbury,
published 'An Illustration of Stonehenge and Abury,' in which he
endeavored to show that both of these monuments were antediluvian, and
that the latter was formed under the direction of Adam. He ascribes the
present dilapidated condition of Stonehenge to the operation of the
general deluge; for, he adds, 'to suppose it to be the work of any
people since the flood is entirely monstrous.'"
We know well enough how great stones--pillars and obelisks--are brought
into place by means of our modern appliances. But if the great blocks
were raised by a mob of naked Picts, or any tribe that knew none of the
mechanical powers but the lever, how did they set them up and lay the
cross-stones, the imposts, upon the uprights? It is pleasant, once in a
while, to think how we should have managed any such matters as this if
left to our natural resources. We are all interested in the make-shifts
of Robinson Crusoe. Now the rudest tribes make cords of some kind, and
the earliest, or almost the earliest, of artificial structures is an
earth-mound. If a hundred, or hundreds, of men could drag the huge
stones many leagues, as they must have done to bring them to their
destined place, they could have drawn each of them up a long slanting
mound ending in a sharp declivity, with a hole for the foot of the stone
at its base. If the stone were now tipped over, it would slide into its
place, and could be easily raised from its slanting position to the
perpendicular. Then filling in the space between the mound and two
contiguous stones, the impost could be dragged up to its position. I
found a pleasure in working at this simple mechanical problem, as a
change from the more imaginative thoughts suggested by the mysterious
monuments.
One incident of our excursion to Stonehenge had a significance for me
which renders it memorable in my personal experience. As we drove over
the barren plain, one of the party suddenly exclaimed, "Look! Look! See
the lark rising!" I looked up with the rest. There was the bright blue
sky, but not a speck upon it which my eyes could distinguish. Again, one
called out, "Hark! Hark! Hear him singing!" I listened, but not a sound
reached my ear. Was it strange that I felt a momentary pang? _Those
that look out at the windows are darkened, and all the daughters of
music are brought low._ Was I never to see or hear the soaring
songster at Heaven's gate,--unless,--unless,--if our mild humanized
theology promises truly, I may perhaps hereafter listen to him singing
far down beneath me? For in whatever world I may find myself, I hope I
shall always love our poor little spheroid, so long my home, which some
kind angel may point out to me as a gilded globule swimming in the
sunlight far away. After walking the streets of pure gold in the New
Jerusalem, might not one like a short vacation, to visit the
well-remembered green fields and flowery meadows? I had a very sweet
emotion of self-pity, which took the sting out of my painful discovery
that the orchestra of my pleasing life-entertainment was unstringing its
instruments, and the lights were being extinguished,--that the show was
almost over. All this I kept to myself, of course, except so far as I
whispered it to the unseen presence which we all feel is in sympathy
with us, and which, as it seemed to my fancy, was looking into my eyes,
and through them into my soul, with the tender, tearful smile of a
mother who for the first time gently presses back the longing lips of
her as yet unweaned infant.
On our way back from Stonehenge we stopped and took a cup of tea with a
friend of our host, Mr. Nightingale. His house, a bachelor
establishment, was very attractive to us by the beauty within and around
it. His collection of "china," as Pope and old-fashioned people call all
sorts of earthenware, excited the enthusiasm of our host, whose
admiration of some rare pieces in the collection was so great that it
would have run into envy in a less generous nature.
It is very delightful to find one's self in one of these English country
residences. The house is commonly old, and has a history. It is
oftentimes itself a record, like that old farmhouse my friend John
Bellows wrote to me about, which chronicled half a dozen reigns by
various architectural marks as exactly as if it had been an official
register. "The stately homes of England," as we see them at Wilton and
Longford Castle, are not more admirable in their splendors than "the
blessed homes of England" in their modest beauty. Everywhere one may see
here old parsonages by the side of ivy-mantled churches, and the
comfortable mansions where generations of country squires have lived in
peace, while their sons have gone forth to fight England's battles, and
carry her flags of war and commerce all over the world. We in America
can hardly be said to have such a possession as a family home. We
encamp,--not under canvas, but in fabrics of wood or more lasting
materials, which are pulled down after a brief occupancy by the
builders, and possibly their children, or are modernized so that the
former dwellers in them would never recognize their old habitations.
In my various excursions from Salisbury I was followed everywhere by the
all-pervading presence of the towering spire. Just what it was in that
earlier visit, when my eyes were undimmed and my sensibilities unworn,
just such I found it now. As one drives away from the town, the roofs of
the houses drop out of the landscape, the lesser spires disappear one by
one, until the great shaft is left standing alone,--solitary as the
broken statue of Ozymandias in the desert, as the mast of some mighty
ship above the waves which have rolled over the foundering vessel. Most
persons will, I think, own to a feeling of awe in looking up at it. Few
can look down from a great height without creepings and crispations, if
they do not get as far as vertigos and that aerial calenture which
prompts them to jump from the pinnacle on which they are standing. It
does not take much imagination to make one experience something of the
same feeling in looking up at a very tall steeple or chimney. To one
whose eyes are used to Park Street and the Old South steeples as
standards of height, a spire which climbs four hundred feet towards the
sky is a new sensation. Whether I am more "afraid of that which is high"
than I was at my first visit, as I should be on the authority of
Ecclesiastes, I cannot say, but it was quite enough for me to let my
eyes climb the spire, and I had no desire whatever to stand upon that
"bad eminence," as I am sure that I should have found it.