building was demolished. This task was carried out with extreme care,
inasmuch as the citizens of Plymouth had requested that the historic
Eddystone structure might be erected on Plymouth Hoe, on the spot
occupied by the existing Trinity House landmark. The authorities agreed
to this proposal, and the ownership of the Smeaton tower was forthwith
transferred to the people of Plymouth. But demolition was carried out
only to the level of Smeaton's lower storeroom. The staircase, well, and
entrance were filled up with masonry, the top was beveled off, and in
the center of the stump an iron pole was planted. While the Plymouth Hoe
relic is but one-half of the tower, its reerection was completed
faithfully, and, moreover, carries the original candelabra which the
famous engineer devised.
Not only is the Douglass tower a beautiful example of lighthouse
engineering, but it was relatively cheap. The engineer, when he prepared
the designs, estimated that an outlay of £78,000, or $390,000, would be
incurred. As a matter of fact, the building cost only £59,255, or
$296,275, and a saving of £18,000, or $90,000, in a work of this
magnitude is no mean achievement. All things considered, the Eddystone
is one of the cheapest sea-rock lights which has ever been consummated.
THE CAPITAL OF THE BRITISH, SAXON AND NORMAN KINGS [Footnote: From
"Visits to Remarkable Places."]
BY WILLIAM HOWITT
What an interesting old city is Winchester! and how few people are aware
of it! The ancient capital of the kingdom--the capital of the British,
and the Saxon, and the Norman kings--the favorite resort of our kings
and queens, even till the revolution of 1688; the capital which, for
ages, maintained a proud, and long a triumphant, rivalry with London
itself; the capital which once boasted upward of ninety churches and
chapels, whose meanest houses now stand upon the foundations of noble
palaces and magnificent monasteries; and in whose ruins or in whose yet
superb minster lie enshrined the bones of mighty kings, and fair and
pious queens; of lordly abbots and prelates, who in their day swayed not
merely the destinies of this one city, but of the kingdom. There she
sits--a sad, discrowned queen, and how few are acquainted with her in
the solitude of her desertion! Yet where is the place, saving London
itself, which can compete with her in solemn and deep interest? Where is
the city, except that, in Great Britain, which can show so many objects
of antique beauty, or call up so many national recollections?
Here lie the bones of Alfred--here he was probably born, for this was at
that time the court and the residence of his parents. Here, at all
events, he spent his infancy and the greater portion of his youth. Here
he imbibed the wisdom and the magnanimity of mind with which he
afterward laid the foundations of our monarchy, our laws, liberties and
literature, and in a word, of our national greatness.
Hence Alfred went forth to fight those battles which freed his country
from the savage Dane; and, having done more for his realm and race than
ever monarch did before or since, here he lay down, in the strength of
his years, and consigned his tomb as a place of grateful veneration to a
people whose future greatness even his sagacious spirit could not be
prophetic enough to foresee.
Were it only for the memory and tomb of this great king, Winchester
ought to be visited by every Englishman with the most profound
veneration and affection; but here also lie the ashes of nearly all
Alfred's family and kin: his father Ethelwolf, who saw the virtues and
talents, and prognosticated the greatness of his son; his noble-minded
mother, who breathed into his infant heart the most sublime sentiments;
his royal brothers, and his sons and daughters. Here also repose Canute,
who gave that immortal reproof on the Southampton shore to his
sycophantic courtiers, and his celebrated queen Emma, so famous at once
for her beauty and her trials. Here is still seen the tomb of Rufus, who
was brought hither in a charcoal-burner's cart from the New Forest,
where the chance arrow of Tyrrel, avenged, in his last hunt, the
cruelties of himself and his father on that ground....
Historians claim a high antiquity for Winchester as the Caer Gwent of
the Celtic and Belgic Britons, the Venta Belgarum of the Romans, and the
Wintanceaster of the Saxons. The history of Winchester is nearly coeval
with the Christian era. Julius Caesar does not seem to have been here,
in his invasion of Britain, but some of his troops must have passed
through it; a plate from one of his standards, bearing his name and
profile, having been found deep buried in a sand bed in this
neighborhood; and here, within the first half century of Christendom,
figured the brave descendants of Cassivelaunus, those noble sons of
Cunobelin or Cymbeline, Guiderius and Arviragus, whom Shakespeare has so
beautifully presented to us in his "Cymbeline." ...
Here it was that, while Caractacus himself reigned, the fate of the
brave Queen Boadicea was sealed. Stung to the quick with the insults she
had received from the Romans, this noble queen of the Iceni, the Bonduca
of some writers, and the Boo Tika of her own coins, had sworn to root
out the Roman power from this country. Had she succeeded, Caractacus
himself had probably fallen, nor had there ever been a king Lucius here.
She came, breathing utter extermination to every thing Roman or of Roman
alliance, at the head of 230,000 barbarians, the most numerous army then
ever collected by any British prince. Already had she visited and laid
in ashes Camulodunum, London, and Verulam, killing every Roman and every
Roman ally to the amount of 70,000 souls. But in this neighborhood she
was met by the Roman general Paulinus, and her army routed, with the
slaughter of 80,000 of her followers. In her despair at this
catastrophe, she destroyed herself, and instead of entering the city in
triumph was brought in, a breathless corpse, for burial.
Henry III. was born here, and always bore the name of Henry of
Winchester; Henry IV. here married Joan of Brittany; Henry VI. came
often hither, his first visit being to study the discipline of Wykeham's
College as a model for his new one at Eton, to supply students to King's
College, Cambridge, as Wykeham's does to his foundation of New College,
Oxford; and happy had it been for this unfortunate monarch had he been a
simple monk in one of the monasteries of a city which he so loved,
enjoying peace, learning and piety, having bitterly to learn:
"That all the rest is held at such a rate
As brings a thousand-fold more care to keep
Than in possession any jot of pleasure."
Henry VIII. made a visit with the Emperor Charles V., and stayed a week
examining its various antiquities and religious institutions; but he
afterward visited them in a more sweeping manner by the suppression of
its monasteries, chantries, etc., so that, says Milner, "these being
dissolved, and the edifices themselves soon after pulled down, or
falling to decay, it must have worn the appearance of a city sacked by a
hostile army." Through his reign and that of Edward VI., the destruction
of the religious houses, and the stripping of the churches, went on to a
degree which must have rendered Winchester an object of ghastly change
and desolation.
"Then," says Milner, "were the precious and curious monuments of piety
and antiquity, the presents of Egbert and Ethelwolph, Canute, and Emma,
unrelentingly rifled and east into the melting-pot for the mere value of
the metal which composed them. Then were the golden tabernacles and
images of the Apostles snatched from the cathedral and other altars,"
and not a few of the less valuable sort of these sacred implements were
to be seen when he wrote (1798), and probably are now, in many private
houses of this city and neighborhood.
The later history of this fine old city is chiefly that of melancholy
and havoc. A royal marriage should be a gay thing; but the marriage of
Bloody Mary here to Philip of Spain awakes no great delight in an
English heart. Here, through her reign and that of Elizabeth, the chief
events were persecutions for religion. James I. made Winchester the
scene of the disgraceful trials of Sir Walter Raleigh, Lords Cobham and
Grey, and their assumed accomplices--trials in which that most vain and
pedantic of tyrants attempted, on the ground of pretended conspiracies,
to wreak his personal spite on some of the best spirits of England.
VI
SCOTLAND
EDINBURGH [Footnote: From "Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh."]
BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Venice, it has been said, differs from all other cities in the sentiment
which she inspires. The rest may have admirers; she only, a famous fair
one, counts lovers in her train. And, indeed, even by her kindest
friends, Edinburgh is not considered in a similar sense. These like her
for many reasons, not any one of which is satisfactory in itself. They
like her whimsically, if you will, and somewhat as a virtuoso dotes upon
his cabinet. Her attraction is romantic in the narrowest meaning of the
term. Beautiful as she is, she is not so much beautiful as interesting.
She is preeminently Gothic, and all the more so since she has set
herself off with some Greek airs, and erected classic temples on her
crags. In a word, and above all, she is a curiosity.
The palace of Holyrood has been left aside--in the growth of Edinburgh,
and stands gray and silent in a workman's quarter and among breweries
and gas-works. It is a house of many memories. Great people of yore,
kings and queens, buffoons and grave ambassadors, played their stately
farce for centuries in Holyrood. Wars have been plotted, dancing has
lasted deep into the night, murder has been done in its chambers. There
Prince Charlie held his fantom levées, and in a very gallant manner
represented a fallen dynasty for some hours. Now, all these things of
clay are mingled with the dust, the king's crown itself is shown for
sixpence to the vulgar; but the stone palace has outlived these changes.
For fifty weeks together, it is no more than a show for tourists and a
museum of old furniture; but on the fifty-first, behold the palace
reawakened and mimicking its past.
The Lord Commissioner, a kind of stage sovereign, sits among stage
courtiers; a coach and six and clattering escort come and go before the
gate; at night, the windows are lighted up, and its near neighbors, the
workmen, may dance in their own houses to the palace music. And in this
the palace is typical. There is a spark among the embers; from time to
time the old volcano smokes. Edinburgh has but partly abdicated, and
still wears, in parody, her metropolitan trappings. Half a capital and
half a country town, the whole city leads a double existence; it has
long trances of the one and flashes of the other; like the king of the
Black Isles, it is half alive and half a monumental marble. There are
armed men and cannon in the citadel overhead; you may see the troops
marshaled on the high parade; and at night after the early winter
even-fall, and in the morning before the laggard winter dawn, the wind
carries abroad over Edinburgh the sound of drums and bugles. Grave
judges sit bewigged in what was once the scene of imperial
deliberations. Close by, in the High Street perhaps, the trumpets may
sound about the stroke of noon; and you see a troop of citizens in
tawdry masquerade; tabard above, heather-mixture trouser below, and the
men themselves trudging in the mud among unsympathetic bystanders. The
grooms of a well-appointed circus tread the streets with a better
presence. And yet these are the Heralds and Pursuivants of Scotland, who
are about to proclaim a new law of the United Kingdom before two score
boys, and thieves, and hackney coachmen.
Meanwhile, every hour the bell of the University rings out over the hum
of the streets, and every hour a double tide of students, coming and
going, fills the deep archways. And, lastly, one night in the
springtime--or, say, one morning rather, at the peep of day--late folk
may hear the voices of many men singing a psalm in unison from a church
on one side of the Old High Street; and a little after, or perhaps a
little before, the sound of many men singing a psalm in unison from
another church on the opposite side of the way. There will be something
in the words about the dew of Hermon, and how goodly it is to see
brethren dwelling together in unity. And the late folk will tell
themselves that all this singing denotes the conclusion of two yearly
ecclesiastical parliaments--the parliaments of churches, which are
brothers in many admirable virtues, but not specially like brothers in
this particular of a tolerant and peaceful life.
Again, meditative people will find a charm in a certain consonancy
between the aspect of the city and its odd and stirring history. Few
places, if any, offer a more barbaric display of contrasts to the eye.
In the very midst stands one of the most satisfactory crags in nature--a
Bass Rock upon dry land, rooted in a garden shaken by passing trains,
carrying a crown of battlements and turrets, and describing its warlike
shadow over the liveliest and brightest thoroughfare of the New Town.
From their smoky beehives, ten stories high, the unwashed look down upon
the open squares and gardens of the wealthy; and gay people sunning
themselves along Prince's Street, with its mile of commercial palaces
all beflagged upon some great occasion, see, across a gardened valley
set with statues, where the washings of the Old Town flutter in the
breeze at its high windows.
And then, upon all sides, what a clashing of architecture! In this one
valley, where the life of the town goes most busily forward, there may
be seen, shown one above and behind another by the accidents of the
ground, buildings in almost every style upon the globe. Egyptian and
Greek temples, Venetian palaces and Gothic spires, are huddled one over
another in a most admired disorder; while, above all, the brute mass of
the Castle and the summit of Arthur's Seat look down upon these
imitations with a becoming dignity, as the works of Nature may look down
upon the monuments of Art. But Nature is a more indiscriminate patroness
than we imagine, and in no way frightened of a strong effect. The birds
roost as willingly among the Corinthian capitals as in the crannies of
the crag; the same atmosphere and daylight clothe the eternal rock and
yesterday's imitation portico; and as the soft northern sunshine throws
out everything into a glorified distinctness--or easterly mists, coming
up with the blue evening, fuse all these incongruous features into one,
and the lamps begin to glitter along the street, and faint lights to
burn in the high windows across the valley--the feeling grows upon you
that this is a piece of nature in the most intimate sense; that this
profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock, is
not a drop-scene in a theater, but a city in the world of everyday
reality, connected by railway and telegraph wire with all the capitals
of Europe, and inhabited by citizens of the familiar type, who keep
ledgers, and attend church, and have sold their immortal portion to a
daily paper....
The east of new Edinburgh is guarded by a craggy hill, of no great
elevation, which the town embraces. The old London road runs on one side
of it; while the New Approach, leaving it on the other hand, completes
the circuit.... Of all places for a view, this Calton Hill is perhaps
the best; since you can see the Castle, which you lose from the Castle,
and Arthur's Seat, which you can not see from Arthur's Seat. It is the
place to stroll on one of those days of sunshine and east wind which are
so common in our more than temperate summer. The breeze comes off the
sea, with a little of the freshness, and that touch of chill, peculiar
to the quarter, which is delightful to certain very ruddy organizations,
and greatly the reverse to the majority of mankind. It brings with it a
faint, floating haze, a cunning decolorizer, altho not thick enough to
obscure outlines near at hand. But the haze lies more thickly to
windward at the far end of Musselburgh Bay; and over the Links of
Aberlady and Berwick Law and the hump of the Bass Bock it assumes the
aspect of a bank of thin sea fog.
Immediately underneath, upon the south, you command the yards of the
High School, and the towers and courts of the new Jail--a large place,
castellated to the extent of folly, standing by itself on the edge of a
steep cliff, and often joyfully hailed by tourists as the Castle. In the
one, you may perhaps see female prisoners taking exercise like a string
of nuns; in the other, schoolboys running at play, and their shadows
keeping step with them. From the bottom of the valley, a gigantic
chimney rises almost to the level of the eye, a taller and a shapelier
edifice than Nelson's Monument. Look a little farther, and there is
Holyrood Palace, with its Gothic frontal and ruined abbey, and the red
sentry pacing smartly to and fro before the door like a mechanical
figure in a panorama. By way of an outpost, you can single out the
little peak-roofed lodge, over which Rizzio's murderers made their
escape, and where Queen Mary herself, according to gossip, bathed in
white wine to retain her loveliness.
Behind and overhead lie the Queen's Park, from Musehat's Cairn to
Dumbiedykes, St. Margaret's Loch, and the long wall of Salisbury's
Crags; and thence, by knoll and rocky bulwark and precipitous slope, the
eye rises to the top of Arthur's Seat, a hill for magnitude, a mountain
in virtue of its bold design. This upon your left. Upon the right, the
roofs and spires of the Old Town climb one above another to where the
citadel prints its broad bulk and jagged crown of bastions on the
western sky.... Perhaps it is now one in the afternoon; and at the same
instant of time, a ball rises to the summit of Nelson's flagstaff close
at hand, and, far away, a puff of smoke, followed by a report, bursts
from the half-moon battery at the Castle. This is the time-gun by which
people set their watches, as far as the sea coast or in hill farms upon
the Pent-lands. To complete the view, the eye enfilades Prince's Street,
black with traffic, and has a broad look over the valley between the Old
Town and the New; here, full of railway trains and stept over by the
high North Bridge upon its many columns, and there, green with trees
and gardens.
On the north, the Calton Hill is neither so abrupt in itself, nor has it
so exceptional an outlook; and yet even here it commands a striking
prospect. A gully separates it from the New Town. This is Greenside,
where witches were burned and tournaments held in former days. Down that
almost precipitous bank Bothwell launched his horse, and so first, as
they say, attracted the bright eyes of Mary. It is now tesselated with
sheets and blankets out to dry, and the sound of people beating carpets
is rarely absent. Beyond all this, the suburbs run out to Leith; Leith
camps on the seaside with her forests of masts; Leith roads are full of
ships at anchor; the sun picks out the white pharos upon Inchkeith
Island; the Firth extends on either hand from the Ferry to the May; the
towns of Fifeshire sit, each in its bank of blowing smoke, along the
opposite coast; and the hills enclose the view, except to the farthest
east, where the haze of the horizon rests upon the open sea. There lies
the road to Norway; a dear road for Sir Patrick Spens and his Scots
Lords; and yonder smoke on the hither side of Largo Law is Aberdour,
from whence they sailed to seek a queen for Scotland.
These are the main features of the scene roughly sketched. How they are
all tilted by the inclination of the ground, how each stands out in
delicate relief against the rest, what manifold detail, and play of sun
and shadow, animate and accentuate the picture, is a matter for a person
on the spot, and, turning swiftly on his heels, to grasp and bind
together in one comprehensive look. It is the character of such a
prospect, to be full of change and of things moving. The multiplicity
embarrasses the eye; and the mind, among so much, suffers itself to grow
absorbed with single points. You remark a tree in a hedgerow, or follow
a cart along a country road. You turn to the city, and see children,
dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you
have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you
note ridge after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind
another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of roofs. At one
of the innumerable windows you watch a figure moving; on one of the
multitude of roofs you watch clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes a
run and scatters the smoke; bells are heard, far and near, faint and
loud, to tell the hour; or perhaps a sea bird goes dipping evenly over
the housetops, like a gull across the waves. And here you are in the
meantime, on this pastoral hillside, among nibbling sheep and looked
upon by monumental buildings.
HOLYROOD [Footnote: From "Edinburgh Sketches and Memories."]
BY DAVID MASSON
Mary, Queen of Scots, on her return to Scotland after her thirteen years
of residence and education in France, had to form her first real
acquaintance with her native shores and the capital of her realm. She
had left Calais for the homeward voyage on Thursday, the 14th of August,
with a retinue of about one hundred and twenty persons, French and
Scottish, embarked in two French state galleys, attended by several
transports. They were a goodly company, with rich and splendid baggage.
The Queen's two most important uncles, indeed--the great Francis de
Lorraine, Duke of Guise, and his brother, Charles de Lorraine, the
Cardinal--were not on board. They, with the Duchess of Guise, and other
senior lords and ladies of the French court, had bidden Mary farewell at
Calais, after having accompanied her thither from Paris, and after the
Cardinal had in vain tried to persuade her not to take her costly
collection of pearls and other jewels with her, but to leave them in his
keeping till it should be seen how she might fare among her
Scottish subjects.
But on board the Queen's own galley were three others of Guise or
Lorraine uncles--the Duc d'Aumale, the Grand Prior, and the Marquis
d'Elbeuf--with M. Danville, son of the Constable of France, and a number
of French gentlemen of lower rank, among whom one notes especially young
Pierre de Bourdeilles, better known afterward in literary history as
Sieur de Brantôme, and a sprightly and poetic youth from Dauphiné, named
Chastelard, one of the attendants of M. Danville. With these were mixed
the Scottish contingent of the Queen's train, her four famous "Marys"
included--Mary Fleming, Mary Livingstone, Mary Seton, and Mary Beaton.
They had been her playfellows and little maids of honor long ago, in her
Scottish childhood; they had accompanied her when she went abroad, and
had lived with her ever since in France; and they were now returning
with her, Scoto-French women like herself, and all of about her own age,
to share her new fortunes....
Then, as now, the buildings that went by the general name of Holyrood
were distinguishable into two portions. There was the Abbey, now
represented only by the beautiful and spacious fragment of ruin called
the Royal Chapel, but then, despite the spoliations to which it had been
subjected by recent English invasions, still tolerably preserved in its
integrity as the famous edifice, in early Norman style, which had been
founded in the twelfth century by David I., and had been enlarged in the
fifteenth by additions in the later and more florid Gothic. Close by
this was Holyrood House, or the Palace proper, built in the earlier part
of the sixteenth century, and chiefly by James IV., to form a distinct
royal dwelling, and so supersede that occasional accommodation in the
Abbey itself which had sufficed for Scottish sovereigns before Edinburgh
was their habitual or capital residence.