triumphal column upon Runnymead; but we have sometimes a strange
antipathy to do what would seem avoidable; the monument to the memory of
Hampden is a sore proof of the niggardliness of liberals to the liberal;
but all monuments to such a man or to such a cause must appear poor; the
names "Hampden" and "Runnymead" suffice; the green and verdant mead,
encircled by the coronet of Cooper's Hill, reposing beneath the sun, and
shadowed by the passing cloud, is an object of reverence and beauty,
immortalized by the glorious liberty which the bold barons of England
forced from a spiritless tyrant.
Tho Cooper's Hill has no claim to the sublimity of mountain scenery, its
peculiar situation commands a broad expanse of country. It rises
abruptly from the Runnymead meadows, and extends its long ridge in a
northwesterly direction; the summit is approached by a winding road,
which from different points of the ascent progressively unfolds a
gorgeous number of fertile views, such as no other country in the
world can give.
"Of hills and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires,
And glittering towns, and silver streams."
We have heard that the views from Kingswood Lodge--the dwelling of the
hill--are delicious, and that its conservatory contains an exquisite
marble statue of "Hope." On the west of Cooper's Hill is the interesting
estate of Anckerwycke Purnish. Anckerwycke has been for a series of
years in the possession of the family of Harcourt. There is a "meet" of
the three shires in this vicinity--Surrey, Buckinghamshire, and
Berkshire. The views from the grounds of Anekerwycke are said to be of
exceeding beauty, and the kindness of its master makes eloquent the poor
about his domain. All these things, and the sound of the rippling waters
of the Thames, and the songs of the myriad birds which congregate in its
groves, and the legends sprung of its antiquity, all contribute to the
adornment of the gigantic fact that here, King John, sorely against his
will, signed Magna Charta! How that single fact fills the soul, and
nerves the spirit; how proudly the British birthright throbs within our
bosoms. We long to lead the new Napoleon, the absolute Nicholas, the
frank, hospitable, and brave, but sometimes overconfident American, to
this green sward of Runnymead and tell them that here was secured to the
Englishman a liberty which other nations have never enjoyed! Here in the
thickset beauty of yon little island, was our Charter granted.
There has been much dispute as to whether the Charter was signed upon
the Mead or on the island called "Magna Charta Island," which forms a
charming feature in the landscape, and upon which is built a little sort
of altar-house, so to call it. We leave the settlement of such matters
to wiser and more learned heads; but we incline to the idea that John
would have felt even the mimic ferry a protection. The island looks even
now exclusive, and as we were impelled to its shore, we indulged the
belief that the charter was really there signed by the king.
There was a poetic feeling in whoever planted the bank of
"Forget-me-not" just at the entrance to the low apartment which was
fitted up to contain the charter stone, by the late Simon Harcourt,
Esq., in the year 1835. The inscription on the stone is as follows:--"Be
it remembered, that on this island, in June, 1215, John, King of
England, Signed the Magna Charta, and in the year 1834, this building
was erected in commemoration of that great and important event by George
Simon Harcourt, Esq., Lord of the Manor and then High Sheriff of the
county." A gentleman rents the island from Mr. Harcourt, and has built
there a Gothic cottage in excellent keeping with the place. It adjoins
the altar-room, but does not interfere with it, nor with the privileges
so graciously bestowed on the public by Mr. Harcourt--permitting
patriots or fishermen to visit the island, and picnic in a tent prepared
for the purpose, under the shelter of some superb walnut trees.
THE HOME OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS [Footnote: From "Old England: Its
Scenery, Art and People." Published Toy Houghton, Mifflin Co.]
BY JAMES M. HOPPIN.
Twelve miles to the south of Doncaster, on the great Northern line of
railway, and just at the junction of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and
Lincolnshire, in the county of Nottingham, but bordering upon the fenny
districts of Lincolnshire, whose monotonous scenery reminds one of
Holland, lies the village of Scrooby. Surely it is of more interest to
us than all the Pictish forts and Roman walls that the "Laird of
Monkbarns" ever dreamed of. I was dropt out of the railway-carriage,
which hardly stopt upon a wide plain at a miniature station-house, with
some suspicions of a church and small village across the flat rushy
fields in the distance. This was indeed the humble village (tho now
beginning to be better known) which I had been searching for; and which
nobody of whom I inquired in Doncaster, or on the line of the railway,
seemed to know anything about, or even that such a place existed. I made
its discovery by the help of a good map. The station-master said he came
to Scrooby in 1851, and then it numbered three hundred inhabitants; and
since that time there had been but twelve deaths.
My search for the manor-house where Brewster and Bradford established
the first church of the Pilgrims, was, for a time, entirely fruitless. I
inquired of a genuine "Hodge" working in the fields; but his round red
face showed no glimmer of light on the matter so far removed from beans
and barley. I next encountered a good Wesleyan minister, trudging his
morning circuit of pastoral visitation, but could gain nothing from him,
tho a chatty, communicative man. At the venerable stone church of
Scrooby, very rude and plain in architecture, but by no means devoid of
picturesqueness, I was equally unsuccessful. The verger of the church,
who is generally the learned man of the village, was absent; and his
daughter knew nothing outside the church and churchyard.
I strolled along the grassy country road that ran through the place till
I met a white-haired old countryman, who proved to be the most
intelligent soul in the neighborhood. He put his cane to his chin, shut
and opened his eyes, and at last told me in broad Yorkshire, that he
thought the place I was looking for must be what they called "the
bishop's house," where Squire Dickinson lived. Set at last upon the
right track, I walked across two swampy meadows that bordered the Idle
River--pertinently named--till I came to a solitary farmhouse with a
red-tiled roof. Some five or six slender poplar-trees stood at the back
of it, and a ditch of water at one end, where there had been evidently
an ancient moat--"a moated grange."
It was a desolate spot, and was rendered more so just then by the coming
up of a thunder-storm, whose "avant courier," the wind, made the slender
poplars and osiers bend and twist. Squire John Dickinson, the present
inhabitant of the house, which is owned by Richard Monckton Milnes, the
poet, gave me a hearty farmer's welcome. I think he said there had been
one other American there before; at any rate he had an inkling that he
was squatted on soil of some peculiar interest to Americans. He
introduced me to his wife and daughters, healthy and rosy-cheeked
English women, and made me sit down to a hospitable luncheon. He
entertained me with a discourse upon the great amount of hard work to be
done in farming among these bogs, and wished he had never undertaken it,
but had gone to America or Australia. The house, he said, was rickety
enough, but he contrived to make it do. It was, he thought, principally
made of what was once a part of the stable of the Manor House.
The palace itself has now entirely disappeared; "but," said my host,
"dig anywhere around here and you will find the ruins of the old
palace." Dickinson said that he himself was reared in Austerfield, a few
miles off in Yorkshire; and that a branch of the Bradford family still
lived there. After luncheon I was shown Cardinal Wolsey's mulberry-tree,
or what remained of it; and in one of the barns, some elaborately carved
woodwork and ornamental beams, covered with dirt and cobwebs, were
pointed out, which undoubtedly belonged to the archiepiscopal palace.
This was all that remained of the house where Elder Brewster once lived,
and gathered his humble friends about him, in a simple form of
worship.... This manor was assigned to the Archbishop of York in the
"Doomsday Book." Cardinal Wolsey, when he held that office, passed some
time at this palace. While he lived there, Henry VIII. slept a night in
the house. It came into Archbishop Sandys's hands in 1576. He gave it by
lease to his son, Samuel Sandys, under whom Brewster held the manor.
Brewster, as is now well known, was the Post-Superintendent of Scrooby,
an important position in those days, lying as the village did, and does
now, upon the great northern line of travel from London to Yorkshire,
Northumberland, and Scotland....
But to look at this lonely and decayed manor-house, standing in the
midst of these flat and desolate marshes, and at this most obscure
village of the land, this Nazareth of England, slumbering in rustic
ignorance and stupid apathy, and to think of what has come out of this
place, of what vast influences and activities have issued from this
quiet and almost listless scene, one has strange feelings. The storied
"Alba Longa," from which Rome sprang, is an interesting spot, but the
newly discovered spiritual birthplace of America may excite
deeper emotions.
OXFORD [Footnote: From "Oxford and Her Colleges." By arrangement with
the publishers, Macmillan Co. Copyright, 1893.]
BY GOLDWIN SMITH
There is in Oxford much that is not as old as it looks. The buildings of
the Bodleian Library, University College, Oriel, Exeter, and some
others, medieval or half medieval in their style, are Stuart in date. In
Oxford the Middle Ages lingered long. Yon cupola of Christ Church is the
work of Wren, yon towers of All Souls' are the work of a still later
hand. The Headington stone, quickly growing black and crumbling, gives
the buildings a false hue of antiquity. An American visitor, misled by
the blackness of University College, remarked to his host that the
buildings must be immensely old. "No," replied his host, "their color
deceives you; their age is not more than two hundred years." It need not
be said that Palladian edifices like Queen's, or the new buildings of
Magdalen, are not the work of a Chaplain of Edward III., or a Chancellor
of Henry VI. But of the University buildings, St. Mary's Church and the
Divinity School, of the College buildings, the old quadrangles of
Merton, New College, Magdalen, Brasenose, and detached pieces not a few
are genuine Gothic of the Founders' age.
Here are six centuries, if you choose to include the Norman castle, here
are eight centuries, and, if you choose to include certain Saxon
remnants in Christ Church Cathedral, here are ten centuries, chronicled
in stone. Of the corporate lives of these Colleges, the threads have run
unbroken through all the changes and revolutions, political, religious,
and social, between the Barons' War and the present hour. The economist
goes to their muniment rooms for the record of domestic management and
expenditure during those ages.
Till yesterday, the codes of statutes embodying their domestic law, tho
largely obsolete, remained unchanged. Nowhere else in England, at all
events, unless it be at the sister University, can the eye and mind feed
upon so much antiquity, certainly not upon so much antique beauty, as on
the spot where we stand. That all does not belong to the same remote
antiquity, adds to the interest and to the charm. This great home of
learning, with its many architectures, has been handed from generation
to generation, each generation making its own improvements, impressing
its own tastes, embodying its own tendencies, down to the present hour.
It is like a great family mansion, which owner after owner has enlarged
or improved to meet his own needs or tastes, and which, thus chronicling
successive phases of social and domestic life, is wanting in uniformity
but not in living interest or beauty.
Oxford is a federation of Colleges. It had been strictly so for two
centuries, and every student had been required to be a member of a
college when, in 1856, non-collegiate students, of whom there are now a
good many, were admitted. The University is the federal government. The
Chancellor, its nominal head, is a non-resident grandee, usually a
political leader whom the University delights to honor and whose
protection it desires. Only on great state occasions does he appear in
his gown richly embroidered with gold. The acting chief is the
Vice-Chancellor, one of the heads of Colleges, who marches with the
Bedel carrying the mace before him, and has been sometimes taken by
strangers for the attendant of the Bedel. With him are the two Proctors,
denoted by their velvet sleeves, named by the Colleges in turn, the
guardians of University discipline.
The University Legislature consists of three houses--an elective
Council, made up equally of heads of Colleges, professors, and Masters
of Arts; the Congregation of residents, mostly teachers of the
University or Colleges; and the Convocation, which consists of all
Masters of Arts, resident or non-resident, if they are present to vote.
Congregation numbers 400, Convocation nearly 6,000. Legislation is
initiated by the Council, and has to make its way through Convocation
and Congregation, with some chance of being wrecked between the
academical Congregation, which is progressive, and the rural
Convocation, which is conservative. The University regulates the general
studies, holds all the examinations, except that at entrance, which is
held by the Colleges, confers all the degrees and honors, and furnishes
the police of the academical city. Its professors form the general and
superior staff of teachers. Each College, at the same time, is a little
polity in itself. It has its own governing body, consisting of a Head
(President, Master, Principal, Provost, or Warden) and a body of
Fellows. It holds its own estates; noble estates, some of them are. It
has its private staff of teachers or tutors, usually taken from the
Fellows, tho the subjects of teaching are those recognized by the
University examinations....
The buildings of the University lie mainly in the center of the city
around us. There is the Convocation House, the hall of the University
Legislature, where, in times of collision between theological parties,
or between the party of the ancient system of education and that of the
modern system, lively debates have been heard. In it, also, are
conferred the ordinary degrees. They are still conferred in the
religious form of words, handed down from the Middle Ages, the candidate
kneeling down before the Vice-Chancellor in the posture of medieval
homage. Oxford is the classic ground of old forms and ceremonies. Before
each degree is conferred, the Proctors march up and down the House to
give any objector to the degree--an unsatisfied creditor, for
example--the opportunity of entering a caveat by "plucking" the
Proctor's sleeve. Adjoining the Convocation House is the Divinity
School, the only building of the University, saving St. Mary's Church,
which dates from the Middle Ages. A very beautiful relic of the Middle
Ages it is when seen from the gardens of Exeter College. Here are held
the examinations for degrees in theology, styled, in Oxford of old,
queen of the sciences, and long their tyrant. Here, again, is the
Sheldonian Theater, the gift of Archbishop Sheldon, a Primate of the
Restoration period, and as readers of Pepys's "Diary" know, of
Restoration character, but a patron of learning....
The Clarendon was built with the proceeds of the history written by the
Minister of the early Restoration, who was Chancellor of the University,
and whose touching letter of farewell to her, on his fall and flight
from England, may be seen in the Bodleian Library. There, also, are
preserved documents which may help to explain his fall. They are the
written dialogs which passed between him and his master at the board of
the Privy Council, and they show that Clarendon, having been the
political tutor of Charles the exile, too much bore himself as the
political tutor of Charles the king. In the Clarendon are the University
Council Chamber and the Registry. Once it was the University press, but
the press has now a far larger mansion yonder to the northwest, whence,
besides works of learning and science, go forth Bibles and prayer-books
in all languages to all quarters of the globe. Legally, as a printer of
Bibles the University has a privilege, but its real privilege is that
which it secures for itself by the most scrupulous accuracy and by
infinitesimal profits.
Close by is the University Library, the Bodleian, one of those great
libraries of the world in which you can ring up at a few minutes' notice
almost any author of any age or country. This Library is one of those
entitled by law to a copy of every book printed in the United Kingdom,
and it is bound to preserve all that it receives, a duty which might in
the end burst any building, were it not that the paper of many modern
books is happily perishable.... We stand in the Radcliffe, formerly the
medical and physical library, now a supplement and an additional
reading-room of the Bodleian, the gift of Dr. Radcliffe, Court Physician
and despot of the profession in the times of William and Anne, of whose
rough sayings, and sayings more than rough, some are preserved in his
"Life." He it was who told William III. that he would not have His
Majesty's two legs for his three kingdoms, and who is said to have
punished the giver of a niggardly fee by a prediction of death, which
was fulfilled by the terrors of the patient. Close at hand is the
Ashmolean, the old University Museum, now only a museum of antiquities,
the most precious of which is King Alfred's gem. Museum and Medical
Library have together migrated to the new edifice on the north side
of the city.
But of all the University buildings the most beautiful is St. Mary's
Church, where the University sermons are preached, and from the pulpit
of which, in the course of successive generations and successive
controversies, a changeful and often heady current of theology has
flowered. There preached Newman, Pusey, and Manning; there preached
Hampden, Stanley, and the authors of "Essays and Reviews." ...
On the north of the city, where fifty years ago stretched green fields,
is now seen a suburb of villas, all of them bespeaking comfort and
elegance, few of them overweening wealth. These are largely the
monuments of another great change, the removal of the rule of celibacy
from the Fellowships, and the introduction of a large body of married
teachers devoted to their profession, as well as of the revival of the
Professorships, which were always tenable by married men. Fifty years
ago the wives of Heads of Houses, who generally married late in life if
they married at all, constituted, with one or two officers of the
University, the whole female society of Oxford. The change was
inevitable, if education was to be made a profession, instead of being,
as it had been in the hands of celibate Fellows of Colleges, merely the
transitory occupation of a man whose final destination was the parish.
Those who remember the old Common Room life, which is now departing, can
not help looking back with a wistful eye to its bachelor ease, its
pleasant companionship, its interesting talk and free interchange of
thought, its potations neither "deep" nor "dull."
Nor were its symposia without important fruits when such men as Newman
and Ward, on one side, encountered such men as Whateley, Arnold, and
Tait, on the other side in Common Room talk over great questions of the
day. But the life became dreary when a man had passed forty, and it is
well exchanged for the community that fills those villas, and which,
with its culture, its moderate and tolerably equal incomes, permitting
hospitality but forbidding luxury, and its unity of interests with its
diversity of acquirements and accomplishments, seems to present the
ideal conditions of a pleasant social life. The only question is, how
the College system will be maintained when the Fellows are no longer
resident within the walls of the College to temper and control the
younger members, for a barrack of undergraduates is not a good thing.
The personal bond and intercourse between Tutor and pupil under the
College system was valuable as well as pleasant; it can not be resigned
without regret. But its loss will be compensated by far
superior teaching.
CAMBRIDGE [Footnote: From "Old England: Its Scenery, Art and People."
Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co.]
BY JAMES M. HOPPIN.
I was struck with the positive resemblances between Oxford and
Cambridge. Both are situated on slightly rising ground, with broad green
meadows and a flat, fenny country stretching around them. The winding
and muddy Cam, holding the city in its arm, might be easily taken for
the fond but still more capricious Isis, tho both of them are
insignificant streams; and Jesus' College Green and Midsummer Common at
Cambridge, correspond to Christ Church Meadows and those bordering the
Cherwell at Oxford. At a little distance, the profile of Cambridge is
almost precisely like that of Oxford, while glorious King's College
Chapel makes up all deficiencies in the architectural features and
outline of Cambridge.
Starting from Bull Inn, we will not linger long in the streets, tho we
might be tempted to do so by the luxurious book-shops, but will make
straight for the gateway of Trinity College. This gateway is itself a
venerable and imposing structure, altho a mass of houses clustered about
it destroys its unity with the rest of the college buildings. Between
its two heavy battlemented towers are a statue of Edward III. and his
coat-of-arms; and over the gate Sir Isaac Newton had his observatory.
This gateway introduces into a noble court, called the Great Court, with
a carved stone fountain or canopied well in the center, and buildings of
irregular sizes and different ages inclosing it. The chapel which forms
the northern side of this court dates back to 1564. In the ante-chapel,
or vestibule, stands the statue of Sir Isaac Newton, by Roubiliac. It is
spirited, but, like all the works of this artist, unnaturally
attenuated. The head is compact rather than large, and the forehead
square rather than high. The face has an expression of abstract
contemplation, and is looking up, as if the mind were just fastening
upon the beautiful law of light which is suggested by the hand holding a
prism. By the door of the screen entering into the chapel proper, are
the sitting statues of Sir Francis Bacon and Dr. Isaac Barrow, two more
giants of this college. The former represents the philosopher in a
sitting posture, wearing his high-crowned hat, and leaning thoughtfully
upon his hand.
The hall of Trinity College, which separates the Great Court from the
Inner or Neville Court, (courts in Cambridge, quads in Oxford), is the
glory of the college. Its interior is upward of one hundred feet in
length, oak-wainscoted, with deep beam-work ceiling, now black with age,
and an enormous fireplace, which in winter still blazes with its old
hospitable glow. At the upper end where the professors and fellows sit,
hang the portraits of Bacon and Newton. I had the honor of dining in
this most glorious of banqueting-halls, at the invitation of a fellow of
the college. Before meals, the ancient Latin, grace, somewhat
abbreviated, is pronounced.
We pass through the hall into Neville Court, three sides of which are
cloistered, and in the eastern end of which stands the fine library
building, built through the exertions of Dr. Barrow, who was determined
that nothing in Oxford should surpass his own darling college.