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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of
+Famous British Authors, by Theodore F. (Theodore Frelinghuysen) Wolfe
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of Famous British Authors
+
+
+Author: Theodore F. (Theodore Frelinghuysen) Wolfe
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 15, 2012  [eBook #38890]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AMONG THE
+HAUNTS OF FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
+Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 38890-h.htm or 38890-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38890/38890-h/38890-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38890/38890-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/literarypilgrima00wolfrich
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+
+
+
+
+A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE
+
+SEVENTH EDITION
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+  _BY DR. WOLFE_
+
+  Uniform with this volume
+
+  LITERARY SHRINES
+  THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS
+
+  _Treating descriptively and reminiscently of the scenes amid which
+  Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, and many other American
+  authors lived and wrote_
+
+  223 pages. Illustrated with four photogravures. $1.25
+
+  A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AND LITERARY SHRINES
+
+  Two volumes in a box, $2.50
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+  [Illustration: CASTLE OF CHILLON]
+
+
+A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AMONG THE HAUNTS
+OF FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS
+
+by
+
+THEODORE F. WOLFE
+M.D. PH.D.
+
+Author of Literary Shrines etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+J. B. Lippincott Company
+Philadelphia MDCCCXCVI
+
+Copyright, 1895,
+By
+Theodore F. Wolfe.
+
+Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The favor with which a few articles in the periodical press, similar to
+those herewith presented, have been received induces the hope that the
+present volume may prove acceptable. If some popular literary shrines
+which are inevitably included in the writer's personal itinerary are
+herein accorded but scant notice, it is for the reason that they have
+been already so oft described that portrayal of them is therefore
+purposely omitted from this account of a literary pilgrimage: even
+Stratford-on-Avon here for once escapes description. However, the
+initial paragraphs of these chapters lightly outline a series of
+literary rambles which the writer has found measurably complete and
+consecutive. The pilgrim is understood to make his start from London.
+
+If these notes of his sojourns in the scenes hallowed by the presence of
+British authors or embalmed in their books shall prove pleasantly
+reminiscent to some who have fared to the same shrines, or helpfully
+suggestive to others who contemplate such pilgrimage, then
+
+                          "not in vain
+  He wore his sandal shoon and scallop-shell."
+
+The writer is indebted to the publishers of the _Home Journal_ for
+permission to reproduce one or two articles which have appeared in that
+periodical.
+
+                                                                T. F. W.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+    LITERARY HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE.
+
+  _Haunt of Dickens--Steele--Pope--Keats--Baillie--Johnson--Hunt--
+    Akenside--Shelley--Hogarth--Addison--Richardson--Gay--Besant--Du
+    Maurier--Coleridge, etc.--Grave of George Eliot_                  13
+
+    BY SOUTHWARK AND THAMES-SIDE TO CHELSEA.
+
+  _Chaucer--Shakespeare--Dickens--Walpole--Pepys--Eliot--Rossetti--
+    Carlyle--Hunt--Gay--Smollett--Kingsley--Herbert--Dorset--
+    Addison--Shaftesbury--Locke--Bolingbroke--Pope--Richardson, etc._ 24
+
+    THE SCENE OF GRAY'S ELEGY.
+
+  _The Country Church-Yard--Tomb of Gray--Stoke-Pogis Church--
+    Reverie and Reminiscence--Scenes of Milton--Waller--Porter--
+    Coke--Denham_                                                     39
+
+    DICKENSLAND: GAD'S HILL AND ABOUT.
+
+  _Chaucer's Pilgrims--Falstaff--Dickens's Abode--Study--Grounds--
+    Walks--Neighbors--Guests--Scenes of Tales--Cobham--Rochester--
+    Pip's Church-Yard--Satis House, etc._                             49
+
+    SOME HAUNTS OF BYRON.
+
+  _Birthplace--London Homes--Murray's Book-Store--Kensal Green--
+    Harrow--Byron's Tomb--His Diadem Hill--Abode of his Star of
+    Annesley--Portraits--Mementos_                                    62
+
+    THE HOME OF CHILDE HAROLD.
+
+  _Newstead--Byron's Apartments--Relics and Reminders--Ghosts--
+    Ruins--The Young Oak--Dog's Tomb--Devil's Wood--Irving--
+    Livingstone--Stanley--Joaquin Miller_                             80
+
+    WARWICKSHIRE: THE LOAMSHIRE OF GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+  _Miss Mulock--Butler--Somervile--Dyer--Rugby--Homes of George
+    Eliot--Scenes of Tales--Cheverel--Shepperton--Milly's Grave--
+    Paddiford--Milby--Coventry, etc.--Characters--Incidents_          91
+
+    YORKSHIRE SHRINES: DOTHEBOYS HALL AND ROKEBY.
+
+  _Village of Bowes--Dickens--Squeers's School--The Master and his
+    Family--Haunt of Scott_                                          106
+
+    STERNE'S SWEET RETIREMENT.
+
+  _Sutton--Crazy Castle--Yorick's Church--Parsonage--Where Tristram
+    Shandy and the Sentimental Journey were written--Reminiscences--
+    Newburgh Hall--Where Sterne died--Sepulchre_                     111
+
+    HAWORTH AND THE BRONTËS.
+
+  _The Village--Black Bull Inn--Church--Vicarage--Memory-haunted
+    Rooms--Brontë Tomb--Moors--Brontë Cascade--Wuthering Heights--
+    Humble Friends--Relic and Recollection_                          121
+
+    EARLY HAUNTS OF ROBERT COLLYER: EUGENE ARAM.
+
+  _Childhood Home--Ilkley Scenes, Friends, Smithy, Chapel--Bolton--
+    Associations--Wordsworth--Rogers--Eliot--Turner--Aram's Homes--
+    Schools--Place of the Murder--Gibbet--Probable Innocence_        136
+
+    HOME OF SYDNEY SMITH.
+
+  _Heslington--Foston, Twelve Miles from a Lemon--Church-Rector's
+    Head--Study--Room-of-all-work--Grounds--Guests--Universal
+    Scratcher--Immortal Chariot--Reminiscences_                      148
+
+    NITHSDALE RAMBLES.
+
+  _Scott--Hogg--Wordsworth--Carlye's Birthplace--Homes--Grave--
+    Burns's Haunts--Tomb--Jeanie Deans--Old Mortality, etc.--Annie
+    Laurie's Birthplace--Habitation--Poet-Lover--Descendants_        161
+
+    A NIECE OF ROBERT BURNS.
+
+  _Her Burnsland Cottage--Reminiscences of Burns--Relics--
+    Portraits--Letters--Recitations--Account of his Death--Memories
+    of his Home--Of Bonnie Jean--Other Heroines_                     181
+
+    HIGHLAND MARY: HER HOMES AND GRAVE.
+
+  _Birthplace--Personal Appearance--Relations to Burns--Abodes:
+    Mauchline, Coilsfield, etc.--Scenes of Courtship and Parting--
+    Mementos--Tomb by the Clyde_                                     194
+
+    BRONTË SCENES IN BRUSSELS.
+
+  _School--Class-Rooms--Dormitory--Garden--Scenes and Events of
+    Villette and The Professor--M. Paul--Madame Beck--Memories of
+    the Brontës--Confessional--Grave of Jessy Yorke_                 207
+
+    LEMAN'S SHRINES.
+
+  _Beloved of Littérateurs--Gibbon--D'Aubigné--Rousseau--Byron--
+    Shelley--Dickens, etc.--Scenes of Childe Harold--Nouvelle
+    Heloïse--Prisoner of Chillon--Land of Byron_                     226
+
+    CHÂTEAUX OF FERNEY AND COPPET.
+
+  _Voltaire's Home, Church, Study, Garden, Relics--Literary Court of
+    de Staël--Mementos--Famous Rooms, Guests--Schlegel--Shelley--
+    Constant--Byron--Davy, etc.--De Staël's Tomb_                    238
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+  Castle of Chillon                                      _Frontispiece._
+
+  Stoke-Pogis Church and Church-Yard                                  45
+
+  Newstead Abbey                                                      81
+
+  Home of Annie Laurie                                               177
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE
+
+_Haunt of Dickens--Steele--Pope--Keats--Baillie--Johnson--Hunt--
+  Akenside--Shelley--Hogarth--Addison--Richardson--Gay--Besant--Du
+  Maurier--Coleridge, etc.--Grave of George Eliot._
+
+
+The explorations which first brought renown to the immortal Pickwick
+were made among the uplands which border the valley of the Thames at the
+north of London: the illustrious creator of Pickwick loved to wander in
+the same region through the picturesque landscapes he made the scenes of
+many incidents of his fiction, and the literary prowler of to-day can
+hardly find a ramble more to his mind than that from the former home of
+Dickens or George Eliot by Regent's Park to Hampstead, and thence
+through the famous heath to Highgate. The way traverses storied ground
+and teems with historic associations, but these are, for us, lessened
+and subordinated by the appeal of memories of the famous authors who
+have loved and haunted this delightful region, and have imparted to it
+the tenderest charm. The acclivity of Hampstead has measurably resisted
+the encroachment of London, and has deflected the railroads with their
+disturbing tendencies, so that this old town probably retains more of
+its ancient character than any other of the near suburbs, and some of
+its quaint streets would scarcely be more quiet if they lay a hundred
+miles away from the metropolis. Off the highway by which we ascend the
+hill, we find many evidences of antiquity, old streets lined by rows of
+plain and sedate dwellings wearing an air of dignified sobriety which is
+not of this century, and which is in grateful contrast with the pert
+artificiality of the modern fabrics of the vicinage. Many old houses are
+draped with ivy or shrouded by trees of abundant foliage; some are shut
+in by depressing brick walls, over which float the perfumes of unseen
+flowers. A few of the older streets lie in perpetual crepuscule, being
+vaulted by gigantic elms and limes as opaque as arches of masonry.
+
+[Sidenote: Baillie--Johnson--Kit-Kat Club]
+
+[Sidenote: Keats]
+
+Along the slope of Haverstock hill, where our ascent begins, we find the
+sometime homes of Percival, Stanfield, Rowland Hill, and the historian
+Palgrave. Near by is the cottage where dwelt Mrs. Barbauld, and the
+Roslyn House, where Sheridan, Pitt, Burke, and Fox were guests of
+Loughborough. Here, too, formerly stood the mansion where Steele
+entertained the poet of the "Dunciad," with Garth and other famed wits.
+On the hill-side a leafy lane leads out of High Street to the
+picturesque church of the parish, whose tower is a conspicuous
+landmark. Within this fane we find, against the wall on the right of the
+chancel, the beautiful marble bust recently erected by American admirers
+"To the Ever-living Memory" of the author of "Lamia" and "Hyperion."
+Here, too, is the plain memorial tablet of the poetess Joanna Baillie,
+who lived in an unpretentious mansion lately standing in the
+neighborhood, where she was visited by Wordsworth, Rogers, and others of
+potential genius. In the thickly tenanted church-yard she sleeps with
+her sister near the graves of Incledon, Erskine, and the historian
+Mackintosh. Below the church, on the westering slope, lies embowered
+Frognall, once the home of Gay, where Dr. Johnson lived and wrote "The
+Vanity of Human Wishes" in the house where the gifted Nichol now resides
+with the author of "Ships that Pass in the Night" for a neighbor and
+with the home of Besant in view from his study. Near the summit of
+Hampstead stands a sober old edifice which was of yore the Upper Flask
+tavern, where the famous Kit-Kat Club held its summer _séances_, when
+such luminous spirits as Walpole, Prior, Dorset, Pope, Congreve, Swift,
+Steele, and Addison assembled here in the low-panelled rooms which we
+may still see, or beneath the old trees of the garden, and interchanged
+sallies of wit and fancy over their cakes and ale. To this inn Lovelace
+brought the "Clarissa Harlowe" of Richardson's famed romance, and here
+Steevens, the scholiast of Shakespeare, lived and died. Flask Walk,
+which leads out of the high street among old houses and greeneries,
+brings us to the shadowy Well Walk, with its overarching trees and with
+many living memories masoned into its dead walls. Here we see the little
+remnant of the once famous well which for a time made Hampstead a resort
+for the fashionable and the suffering. Among the fancied invalids who
+once dwelt in Well Walk was the spouse of Dr. Johnson. Akenside,
+Arbuthnot, and Mrs. Barbauld (editor of "Richardson's Correspondence")
+have sometime lived in this same little street; here the mother of
+Tennyson died, and here the sweet boy-poet Keats lodged and wrote
+"Endymion." At a house still to be seen in the vicinage he was for two
+years the guest of his friend Brown; here he wrote "Hyperion," "St.
+Agnes," and the "Ode to a Nightingale," and here he wasted in mortal
+illness, being at last removed to Rome only to die. Under the limes of
+Well Walk is a spot especially hallowed by the memory of Keats: it was
+the object and limit of his walks in his later months, and here was
+placed a seat (which until lately was preserved and bore his name),
+where he sat for hours at a time beneath the whispering boughs, gazing,
+often through tears, upon the enchanting vista of wave-like woods and
+fields, the valley with its gleaming lakelets, and the farther slopes
+crowned by the spires of Highgate, which rise out of banks of foliage.
+The view is no less beautiful than when Keats's vision lingered lovingly
+upon it, although we must go into the open fields to behold it now.
+
+[Sidenote: The Heath]
+
+[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt--Jack Straw's Castle]
+
+If we bestir ourselves to reach the summit of the heath before the
+accustomed pall shall have settled down upon the great city, the
+exertion will be abundantly rewarded by the prospect that greets us as
+we overlook the abodes of eight millions of souls. Such a view is
+possible nowhere else on earth: outspread before us lies the vast
+metropolis with its seven thousand miles of streets, while without and
+beyond this aggregation of houses we behold an expanse of landscape
+diversified with vale and hill, copse and field, village and park,
+extending for leagues in every direction and embracing portions of seven
+of England's populous shires. We see the great dome of St. Paul's and
+the tall towers of Westminster rising out of the mass of myriad roofs;
+the Crystal Palace glinting amid its green terraces; across the city we
+behold the verdured slopes of Surrey and, farther away, the higher hills
+of Sussex; our eyes follow the course of the Thames from imperial
+Windsor, whose battlements are misty in the distance of the western
+horizon, to its mouth at Gravesend; yonder at the right is Harrow, set
+on its classic hill-top, with its ancient church by which the boy Byron
+idled and dreamed; northward we see pretty Barnet, where "Oliver Twist"
+met the "Dodger;" nearer is romantic Highgate, and all around us lie the
+green slopes and leafy recesses of the heath. Through these strode the
+murderer Sykes of Dickens's tale, and from the higher parts of this
+common we may trace the way of his aimless flight from the pursuing eyes
+of Nancy,--through Islington and Highgate to Hendon and Hatfield, and
+thence to the place of his miserable death at Rotherhithe. There are
+hours of delightful strolling amid the mazes of the picturesque heath,
+with its alternations of heathered hills and flower-decked dales, its
+pretty pools, its braes of brambled gorse and pine, its tangle of
+countless paths. One will not wonder that it has been the resort of
+_littérateurs_ from the time of Dryden till now: Pope, Goldsmith, and
+Johnson loved to ramble here; Hunt, Dickens, Collins, and Thackeray were
+familiar with these shady paths; Nichol, Besant, James, and Du Maurier
+are now to be seen among the walkers on the heath. A worn path bearing
+to the right conducts to the turf-carpeted vale where, in a little
+cottage whose site is now occupied by the inn, Leigh Hunt lived for
+some years. Such guests as Lamb, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Hood, and Cornwall
+came to this humble home, and here Shelley met Keats, the "Adonais" of
+his elegy. Not far away lie the ponds of Pickwick's unwearied
+researches; and in another corner of the common we find an ancient
+tavern bowered with shrubbery, in whose garden Addison and Steele oft
+sipped their ale of a summer evening, and where is still cherished a
+portion of a tree planted by Hogarth. On an elevation of the heath
+stands "Jack Straw's Castle," believed to mark the place of encampment
+of that rebel chieftain with his mob of peasantry. It is a curious old
+structure, with wainscoted walls, and was especially favored by Dickens,
+who often dined here with Maclise and Forster and read to them his MSS.
+or counselled with them concerning his plots. Out on the heath near by
+was found the corpse of Sadlier the speculator, who, after bankrupting
+thousands of confiding dupes, committed suicide here; his career
+suggested to Dickens the Merdle and his complaint of "Little Dorrit."
+Among the embowered dwellings beyond West Heath we find that in which
+Chatham was self-immured, the cottage in which Mrs. Coventry
+Patmore--the Angel in the House--died, the place where Crabbe sojourned
+with Hoare. This vicinage has been the delight of artists from the time
+of Gainsborough, and is still a favorite sketching ground: here lived
+Collins and Blake, and Constable dwelt not far away. The author of
+"Trilby," who has recently taken front rank in the literary profession,
+long had home and studio in a picturesque ivy-grown brick mansion of
+many angles and turrets, in a quiet street upon the other side of the
+hill; here among his treasures of art he commenced a third book soon to
+be published.
+
+[Sidenote: The Spaniard's]
+
+The highway which leads north from Jack Straw's affords an exhilarating
+walk, with a superb prospect upon either hand, and brings us to the
+historic Spaniard's Inn, a pleasant wayside resort decked with vines and
+flowers, where pedestrians stop for refreshments. Dickens oft came to
+this place, and here we see the shady garden, with its tables and seats,
+where Mrs. Bardell held with her cronies the mild revel which was
+interrupted by the arrest of the widow for the costs in Bardell _vs._
+Pickwick. The quiet of this ancient inn was disturbed one night by a
+fierce band of Gordon rioters, who rushed up the paths of the heath on
+their way to Mansfield's house, and stopped here to drink or destroy the
+contents of the inn-cellars,--an occurrence which is graphically
+described by Dickens in the looting of the Maypole Inn of Willet, in
+"Barnaby Rudge." Next to the Spaniard's once lived Erskine, and among
+the grand beeches of Caen Wood we see the house of Mansfield, where the
+daughter of Mary Montagu was mistress, and where illustrious guests like
+Pope, Southey, and Coleridge were entertained.
+
+[Sidenote: Home of Coleridge]
+
+A farther walk through the noble wood brings us to the delightful suburb
+of Highgate, where we now vainly seek the Arundel House where the great
+Bacon died and find only the site of the simple cottage where Marvell,
+the "British Aristides," lived and wrote. The last home of the author of
+"Ancient Mariner" is in a row of pleasant houses on a shady street
+called The Grove, a little way from the high street, which was in
+Coleridge's time the great Northern coach-road from London. The house is
+a neat brick structure of two stories, in which we may see the room
+where the poet lodged and where he breathed out his melancholy life. A
+pretty little patch of turf is in front of the dwelling, a larger
+garden, beloved by the poet, is at the back, and the trees which border
+the foot-walk were planted in his lifetime. To this cosy refuge he came
+to reside with his friends the Gilmans; here he was visited by Hunt, who
+once lodged in the next street, Lamb, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Shelley, De
+Quincey, and others of like fame; and here, for nineteen years,
+"afflicted with manifold infirmities," he continued the struggle against
+a baneful habit, which ended only with his life. His grave was made not
+far away, in a portion of the church-yard which has since been overbuilt
+by a school, among whose crypt-like under-arches we find the tomb of
+stone, lying in pathetic and perpetual twilight, where the poet sleeps
+well without the lethean drug which ruined his life. On this hill lived
+"Copperfield" with Dora, and at its foot is the stone where Whittington
+sat and heard the bells recall him to London.
+
+[Sidenote: Grave of George Eliot]
+
+On the slope toward the city is the most beautiful of the London
+cemeteries, with a wealth of verdure and bloom. Within its hallowed
+shades lie the ashes of many whose memories are more fragrant than the
+flowers that deck their graves. In a beautiful spot which was beloved by
+the sweet singer in life we find the tomb of Parepa Rosa, tended by
+loving hands; not far away, among the mourning cypresses, lie Lyndhurst
+and the great Faraday. A plain tombstone erected by Dickens marks the
+sepulchre of his parents, and by it lies his daughter Dora, her
+gravestone bearing now, besides her simple epitaph prepared by her
+father, the name of the novelist himself and the names of two of his
+sons. Here, too, is the grave of Rossetti's young wife, whence his
+famous poems were exhumed. Among the many tombs of the enclosure, the
+one to which most pilgrims come is that of the immortal author of
+"Romola." On a verdant slope we find the spot where, upon a cold and
+stormy day which tested the affection of her friends, the mortal part of
+George Eliot was covered with flowers and lovingly laid beside the
+husband of her youth. Wreaths of flowers conceal the mound, and out of
+it rises a monument of gray granite bearing her name and years and the
+lines
+
+  "Of those immortal dead who live again
+  In minds made better by their presence."
+
+From the terraces above her bed we look over the busy metropolis, astir
+with its myriad pulses of life and passion, while its rumble and din
+sound in our ears in a murmurous monotone. As we linger amid the
+lengthening shadows until the sunset glory fades out of the sky above
+the heath and the lights of London gleam mistily through the smoke, we
+rejoice that we find the tomb of George Eliot, not in the aisles of
+Westminster, where some would have laid her, but in this open place,
+where the winds sigh a requiem through the swaying boughs, the birds
+swirl and twitter in the free azure above, and the silent stars nightly
+watch over her grave.
+
+
+
+
+BY SOUTHWARK AND THAMES-SIDE TO CHELSEA
+
+_Chaucer--Shakespeare--Dickens--Walpole--Pepys--Eliot--Rossetti--
+  Carlyle--Hunt--Gay--Smollett--Kingsley--Herbert--Dorset--Addison--
+  Shaftesbury--Locke--Bolingbroke--Pope--Richardson, etc._
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Tabard--White Hart--Marshalsea]
+
+If our way to Southwark be that of the pilgrims of Chaucer's time, by
+the London Bridge, we have on our right the dark reach of river where
+Lizzie Hexam was discovered in the opening of "Our Mutual Friend,"
+rowing the boat of the bird of prey; on the right, too, we see the Iron
+Bridge where "Little Dorrit" dismissed young Chivery; and a few steps
+bring us to a scene of another of Dickens's romances, the landing-stairs
+at the end of London Bridge, where Nancy had the interview with "Oliver
+Twist's" friends which cost the outcast her life. Here, too, the boy
+Dickens used to await admission to the Marshalsea, often in company with
+the little servant of his father's family who figures in his fiction as
+the "orfling" of the Micawber household and the "Marchioness" of the
+Brass establishment in Bevis Marks. In the adjacent church of St.
+Saviour, part of which was standing when the Father of English poetry
+sojourned in the near Tabard inn, is the effigied tomb of the poet
+Gower, a friend of Chaucer; here also lie buried Shakespeare's brother
+Edmund, an actor; Fletcher the dramatist, who lived close by; and
+Lawrence Fletcher, coparcener of Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre, which
+stood near at hand, on a portion of the site of the brewery which Dr.
+Johnson, executor of his friend Thrale, sold to Barclay and Perkins. The
+extensions of this establishment now cover the site of a church where
+Baxter preached, and the sepulchre of Cruden, author of the
+"Concordance." In near-by Zoar Street, Bunyan preached in a large chapel
+near the Falcon tavern, which was a resort of Shakespeare. Of the Tabard
+inn, whence Chaucer's Canterbury company set out, the pilgrim of to-day
+finds naught save the name on the sign of the new tavern which marks its
+site on Borough High Street; and the picturesque White Hart, which stood
+near by--an inn known to Shakespeare and mentioned in his dramas--where
+Jingle of "Pickwick," eloping with Miss Wardle, was overtaken and Sam
+Weller discovered, was not long ago degraded into a vulgar dram-shop.
+Near St. Thomas's Church in this neighborhood formerly stood the
+hospital in which Akenside was physician and Keats a student. A little
+farther along the High Street we come to a passage at the left leading
+into a paved yard which was the court of the Marshalsea, and the high
+wall at the right is believed to have been a part of the old prison
+where Dickens's father was confined in the rooms which the novelist
+assigns to William Dorrit, and where "Little Dorrit" was born and
+reared. In this court the Dickens children played, and under yonder pump
+by the wall Pancks cooled his head on a memorable occasion. Just beyond
+is St. George's Church, where "Little Dorrit" was baptized and married,
+with its vestry where she once slept with the register under her head;
+adjoining is the church-yard, once overlooked by the prison-windows of
+Dickens and Dorrit, where the disconsolate young Chivery expected to be
+untimely laid under a lugubrious epitaph. Another block brings us to
+dingy Lant Street--"out of Hight Street, right side the way"--where the
+boy Dickens lived in the back attic of the same shabby house in which
+Bob Sawyer afterward lodged and gave the party to Pickwick. Beyond the
+next turning stood King's Bench Prison, where Micawber was incarcerated
+by his stony-hearted creditors, and beyond this again we come to the
+tabernacle where Spurgeon preached. Turning at the site of Micawber's
+prison, the Borough Road conducts us, by the sponging-house where Hook
+was confined, to the Christ Church of Newman Hall,--successor to Rowland
+Hill: it is a beautiful edifice, erected largely by contributions from
+America, its handsome tower being designed as a monument to Abraham
+Lincoln and marked by a memorial tablet. A little way southward, we find
+among the buildings of Lambeth Palace the library of which Green, the
+historian of the "English People," was long custodian, and the ancient
+room where Essex and the poet Lovelace were imprisoned.
+
+[Sidenote: Thames-Side--Shop of Jenny Wren]
+
+[Sidenote: Old Chelsea]
+
+Recrossing Father Thames and passing the oft-described shrines of
+Westminster we come to Millbank, the region into which Copperfield and
+Peggotty followed the wretched Martha and saved her from suicide. Out of
+Millbank Street, a few steps by a little thoroughfare bring us into the
+somnolent Smith Square in which stands the grotesque church of St. John,
+where Churchill once preached,--described in "Our Mutual Friend" as a
+"very hideous church with four towers, resembling some petrified monster
+on its back with its legs in the air." To this place came Charley Hexam
+and his school-master and Wrayburn, for here in front of the church, at
+a house near the corner, Lizzie Hexam--the best of all Dickens's
+women--lodged with Jenny Wren. It was a little house of two stories, and
+its dingy front room--the shop of the dolls' dress-maker--later was used
+as a cheap restaurant, where we once regaled ourselves with a dish of
+equivocal tea while we looked about us and recognized the half-door
+across which Wrayburn indolently leaned as he chatted with Lizzie, the
+seat in front of the wide window where Jenny sat at her work with her
+crutch leaning against the wall, the corner to which she consigned her
+"bad old child" in his drunken disgrace, the stairs which led to
+Lizzie's chamber,--objects all noted by the observant glance of Dickens
+as he peered for a moment through the door-way. Sauntering southward by
+Grosvenor Road, where Lizzie walked with her brother and Headstone, we
+have beside us on the left the river, glinting and shimmering in the
+morning sunlight and alive with every sort of craft that plies for trade
+or pleasure. It was along these curving reaches of the Thames that the
+merry parties of the olden time, destined like ourselves to Chelsea,
+used to row over the miles that then intervened between London and the
+ancient village, and here, too, Franklin, then a printer in Bartholomew
+Close, once swam the entire distance from Chelsea to Blackfriars Bridge.
+The way along which we are strolling then lay in the open country, with
+leafy lanes leading aside among groves and sun-flecked fields. But woods
+and fields have disappeared under compact masses of brick and mortar,
+and the quaint old suburb is linked to the city by continuous streets
+and structures. Contact has not altogether destroyed the distinctive
+features of the ancient suburb, and we know when our walk has brought us
+to its borders. Few of its thoroughfares retain the dreamful quiet of
+the olden time, few of its rows of sombre and dignified dwellings have
+wholly escaped the modern eruption of ornate and staring architecture;
+the old and the new are curiously blended, but enough of the former
+remains to remind us that Chelsea is olden and not modern, and to revive
+for us the winsome associations with which the place is permeated. The
+suggestion of worshipful antiquity is seen in sedate, ivy entwined
+mansions of dusky-hued brick, in carefully kept old trees which in their
+saplinghood knew Pepys, Johnson, or Smollett, in quaint inns whose
+homely comforts were enjoyed by illustrious _habitués_ in the long ago.
+
+[Sidenote: Walpole]
+
+Our stroll beyond the Grosvenor Road brings us to the famous "Chelsea
+Physick Garden," presented to the Apothecaries' Society by Sloane, the
+founder of the British Museum, who was a medical student here; it was to
+this garden that Polyphilus of the "Rambler" was going to see a new
+plant in flower when he was diverted by meeting the chancellor's coach.
+At the adjoining hospital dwelt the gifted Mrs. Somerville, whose
+husband was a physician there; and the ancient mansion of dingy brick,
+in which Walpole lived, and where Pope, Swift, Gay, and Mary Wortley
+Montagu were guests, is a portion of the infirmary,--the great
+drawing-room in which the brilliant company met being a hospital ward. A
+little way northward, by Sloane Street, we come to Hans Place, where, at
+No. 25, the sweet poetess Letitia Landon ("L. E. L.") was born in a tiny
+two-storied house; she attended school in a similar house of the same
+row, where Miss Mitford and the authoress of "Glenarvon" had before been
+pupils. Along the river again we find beyond the hospital a passage
+leading to the place of Paradise Row, where, in a little brick house,
+the witching Mancini was visited by Charles II. and poetized by the
+brilliant Evremond. Here, at the corner of Robinson's Lane, Pepys
+visited Robarte in "the prettiest contrived house" the diarist ever saw;
+not far away a comfortable old inn occupies the site of the dwelling of
+the historian Faulkner, in the neighborhood where the essayist Mary
+Astell--ridiculed by Swift, Addison, Steele, Smollett, and Congreve--had
+her modest home. Robert Walpole's later residence stood near Queen's
+Road West, and its grounds sloped to the river just below the Swan
+Tavern, near the bottom of the lane now called Swan Walk. It was at
+this river inn that Pepys "got affright" on being told of an eruption of
+the plague in Chelsea.
+
+[Sidenote: Homes of George Eliot and Rossetti]
+
+For a half-mile or so westward from the Swan, picturesque Cheyne
+Walk--beloved of the _literati_--stretches along the river-bank. Its
+many old houses, with their solemn-visaged fronts overlooking the river,
+their iron railings, dusky walls, tiled roofs, and curious
+dormer-windows, are impressive survivors of a past age. At No. 4, a
+substantial brick house of four stories, with battlemented roof and with
+oaken carvings in the rooms, are preserved some relics of George Eliot,
+for this was her last home, and here she breathed out her life in the
+same room where Maclise, friend of Carlyle and Dickens, had died just a
+decade before. No. 16, a spacious dwelling with curved front and finely
+wrought iron railing and gate-way, was the home of Rossetti for the
+twenty years preceding his death. With these panelled rooms, which he
+filled with quaint and beautiful objects of art, are associated most of
+the memories of the gifted poet and painter. The large lower room was
+his studio, where one of his last occupations was painting a replica of
+"Beata Beatrix," the portrait of his wife, whose tragic death darkened
+his life. Around the fireplace in this room a brilliant company held the
+nightly _séances_ which a participant styles feasts of the gods.
+Through the passage at the side the famous zebu was conveyed, and
+reconveyed after his assault upon the poet in the garden. The rooms
+above were sometime tenanted by Meredith, Swinburne, and Rossetti's
+brother and biographer, who was also Whitman's editor and advocate.
+Later, the essayist Watts, to whom Rossetti dedicated his greatest work,
+resided here to cherish his friend. The garden, where Rossetti kept his
+odd pets and where neighbors remember to have seen him walking in
+paint-bedaubed attire for hours together, is now mostly covered by a
+school. At first, many luminaries of letters and art came to him
+here,--Jones, Millais, Hunt, Gosse, Browning, Whistler, Morris, Oliver
+Madox Brown, whose death elicited Rossetti's "Untimely Lost," and others
+like them; later, when baneful narcotics had sadly changed his
+temperament, he dwelt in seclusion, exercising only in his garden and
+seeing such devoted friends as Watts, Knight, Hake, "The Manxman" Hall
+Caine, and the gifted sister, author of "Goblin Market," etc., who was
+pictured by Rossetti in his "Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and who lately
+died. In his study here he produced his best work; here he revised the
+poems exhumed from his wife's grave and wrote "The Stream's Secret" and
+other parts of the volume which made his fame and occasioned the battle
+between the bards Buchanan and Swinburne; here he wrote the magnificent
+"Rose Mary," "White Ship," etc., and completed the series of sonnets
+which has been pronounced "in its class the greatest gift poetry has
+received since Shakespeare."
+
+[Sidenote: Carlyle's House--Smollett--Gay]
+
+[Sidenote: Kingsley--Herbert--Dorset]
+
+[Sidenote: Shaftesbury--Bolingbroke]
+
+No. 18 was the famous coffee-house and barber-shop of Sloane's servant
+Salter,--called "Don Saltero" by Gay, Evremond, Steele, Smollett, and
+the other wits who frequented his place. On the Embankment by this
+Cheyne Walk we find the statue of Carlyle; behind it is the dull little
+lane of Cheyne Row, whose quiet Carlyle thought "hardly inferior to
+Craigenputtock," and here at No. 5, later 24, a plain three-storied
+house of sullied brick,--even more dingy than its neighbors,--the
+pessimistic sage lived, wrote, and scolded for half a century. All the
+wainscoted rooms are sombre and cheerless, but the memory-haunted study
+seems most depressing as we stand at Carlyle's hearth-stone and look
+upon the spot where he sat to write his many books. The garden was a
+pleasanter place, with bright flowers his wife planted, and the tree
+under which he loved to smoke and chat. Here Tennyson lounged with him,
+devoted to a long pipe and longer discourse; here Froude oft found him
+on the daily visits which enabled him to picture the seer, "warts and
+all;" here Dickens, Maclise, and Hunt saw him at his best, and here the
+latter wrote "Jenny Kissed Me,"--Jenny being Mrs. Carlyle. To Carlyle in
+this sombre home came Emerson, Ruskin, Tyndal, and a host of friends and
+disciples from all lands, and hither will come an endless procession of
+admirers, for many Carlyle belongings have been recovered, and the place
+is to be preserved as a memorial of the stern philosopher. Around the
+corner Hunt lived, in the curious little house Carlyle described, and
+here he studied and wrote in the upper front room. On the next block of
+the same street stood the home of Smollett, which was removed the year
+that Carlyle came to dwell in the vicinage. It was a spacious mansion
+which had been the Lawrence manor-house. Smollett wrote here "Count
+Fathom," "Clinker," and "Launcelot Greaves," and finished Hume's
+"England." Here Garrick, Johnson, Sterne, and other starry spirits were
+his guests, and here later lived the poet Gay and wrote "The Shepherd's
+Week," "Rural Sports," and part of his comedies. In the cellars of some
+of the houses at the top of Lawrence Street may be seen remains of the
+ovens of the once famous Chelsea china-factory, where Dr. Johnson
+wrought for some time vainly trying to master the art of
+china-making,--his pieces always cracking in the oven: a service of
+china presented to him by the factorymen here was preserved in Holland
+House. A tasteful Queen Anne mansion with beautiful interior
+decorations, not far from the Carlyle house, was a domicile of the poet
+and æsthete Oscar Wilde. In the picturesque rectory of St. Luke's, a few
+rods north from Cheyne Row, the author of "Hypatia" and his scarcely
+less famed brother Henry, of "Ravenshoe," lived as boys, their father
+being the incumbent of the parish. Henry Kingsley presents, in his
+"Hillyars and Burtons," charming sketches of Chelsea as it existed in
+his boyhood. Overlooking the river at the foot of the adjoining street,
+we find Chelsea Church, one of the most curious and interesting of
+London's many fanes, albeit partially disfigured by modern changes. In
+its pulpit Donne, the poet-divine, preached at the funeral of the mother
+of George Herbert; at its altar the dramatist Colman was married. Among
+its many monuments we find the mural tablet of Sir Thomas More, a marble
+slab with an inscription by himself which formerly described him as
+"harassing to thieves, murderers, and heretics." Here lie the ancestors
+of the poet Sidney, and in the little church-yard are the graves of
+Shadwell the laureate, who died just back of the church, of the
+publisher of "Junius," and of a brother of Fielding. Leading back from
+the river here is Church Street, on which dwelt Swift, Atterbury, and
+Arbuthnot, while Steele had a little house near by. The next street is
+named for Sir John Danvers, whose house was at the top of the little
+street: his wife was the mother of the poet Herbert, who dwelt here for
+a time and wrote some of his earlier poems; Donne and the amiable angler
+Izaak Walton were frequent guests of Herbert's mother in this place. The
+adjacent street marks the place of Beaufort House, the palatial
+residence of Sir Thomas More, where he was visited by his much-married
+monarch; where the learned and colloquial author of "Encomium Moriæ,"
+Erasmus, was sometime an inmate; and where, decades later, Thomas
+Sackville, Earl Dorset, wrote the earliest English tragedy, "Gorboduc."
+A time-worn structure between King's Road and the Thames was once the
+home of the bewitching Nell Gwynne, and in later years "became (not
+inappropriately) a gin-temple," as Carlyle said: this old edifice was
+also sometime occupied by Addison. Back of King's Road we find the
+venerable Shaftesbury House,--in which the famous earl wrote
+"Characteristics," Locke began his "Essay," and Addison produced some of
+his Spectator papers,--long transformed into a workhouse, in the grounds
+of which we are shown the place of "Locke's yew," recently removed. The
+Old World's End Tavern, by Riley Street, was the notorious resort of
+Congreve's "Love for Love;" the once ill-famed Cremorne Gardens, just
+beyond, were erst part of the estate of a granddaughter of William Penn,
+who was related to the Penns of Stoke-Pogis, where Gray wrote the
+"Elegy." A near-by little ivy-grown brick house, with wide windows in
+its front and an iron balcony upon its roof, was long the home of
+Turner, and in the upper room, through whose arched window he could look
+out upon the river, he died. From the water-edge here we see, upon the
+opposite shore, the old church where Blake was married and Bolingbroke
+was buried, and from whose vestry window Turner made his favorite
+sketches; near by is a portion of the ancient house where Bolingbroke
+was born and died, where he entertained such guests as Chesterfield,
+Swift, and Pope, and where the latter wrote part of the "Essay on Man."
+Beyond Chelsea we find at Fulham the spot where lived and died
+Richardson, who is said to have written "Clarissa Harlowe" here; and,
+near the river, the place of the home of Hook, and his mural tablet in
+the old church by which he lies, near the grave of the poet Vincent
+Bourne. Our ramble by Thames-side may be pleasantly prolonged through a
+region rife with the associations we esteem most precious. Our way lies
+among the sometime haunts of Cowley, Bulwer, Pepys, Thomson, Marryat,
+Pope, Hogarth, Tennyson, Fielding, "Junius," Garrick, and many another
+shining one. Some of lesser genius dwell now incarnate in this
+memory-haunted district by the river-side,--the radical Labouchère,
+living in Pope's famous villa, Stephens, and the author of "Aurora
+Floyd,"--but it is the memory of the mighty dead that impresses us as we
+saunter amid the scenes they loved and which inspired or witnessed the
+work for which the world gives them honor and homage; we find their
+accustomed resorts, the rural habitations where many of them dwelt and
+died, the dim church aisles or the turf-grown graves where they are laid
+at last in the dreamless sleep whose waking we may not know.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCENE OF GRAY'S ELEGY
+
+_The Country Church-Yard--Tomb of Gray--Stoke-Pogis Church--Reverie
+  and Reminiscence--Scenes of Milton--Waller--Porter--Coke--Denham._
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Country Church-Yard]
+
+Our visit to the country church-yard where the ashes of Gray repose amid
+the scenes his muse immortalized is the culmination and the fitting end
+of a literary pilgrimage westward from London to Windsor and the nearer
+shrines of Thames-vale. Our way has led us to the sometime homes of
+Pope, Fielding, Shelley, Garrick, Burke, Richardson; to the birthplaces
+of Waller and Gibbon, the graves of "Junius," Hogarth, Thomson, and
+Penn; to the cottage where Jane Porter wrote her wondrous tales, and the
+ivy-grown church where Tennyson was married. Nearer the scene of the
+"Elegy" we visit other shrines: the Horton where Milton wrote his
+earlier works, "Masque of Comus," "Lycidas," "Arcades;" the Hallbarn
+where Waller composed the panegyric to Cromwell, the "Congratulation,"
+and other once famous poems; the mansion where the Herschels studied and
+wrote. We have had the gray spire of Stoke-Pogis Church in view during
+this last day of our ramble. From the summit of the "Cooper's Hill" of
+Denham's best-known poem, from the battlements of Windsor and the
+windows of Eton, from the elm-shaded meads that border the Thames and
+the fields redolent of lime-trees and new-mown hay where we loitered, we
+have had tempting glimpses of that "ivy-mantled tower" that made us wish
+the winged hours more swift; for we have purposely deferred our visit to
+that sacred spot so that the even-tide and the hour the curfew tolled
+"the knell of parting day" across this peaceful landscape may find us
+amid the old graves where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." As
+we approach through verdant lanes bordered by fields where the ploughman
+is yet at his toil and the herds feed among the buttercups, the abundant
+ivy upon the tower gleams in the light of the declining sun, and the
+"yew-tree's shade" falls far aslant upon the mouldering turf-heaps. The
+sequestered God's-acre, consecrated by the genius of Gray, lies in
+languorous solitude, far removed from the highway and within the
+precincts of a grand park once the possession of descendants of Penn.
+Just without the enclosure stands a cenotaph erected by John Penn,
+grandson of the founder of Pennsylvania; it represents a sarcophagus and
+is ostensibly commemorative of Gray, but, as has been said, it
+"resembles nothing so much as a huge tea-caddy," and its inscription
+celebrates the builder more than the bard. Within the church-yard all
+is rest and peace; the strife and fever of life intrude not here; no
+sound of the busy world breaks in upon the hush that pervades this spot,
+and "all the air a solemn stillness holds." Something of the serenity
+which here pervades earth and sky steals into and uplifts the soul, and
+the demons of greed and passion are subdued and silenced as we stand
+above the tomb of Gray and realize all the imagery of the "Elegy." While
+our hearts are thrilling with the associations of the place and the
+hour, while the ashes of the tender poet rest at our feet and the
+objects that inspired the matchless poem surround us, we may hope to
+share in some measure the tenderer emotions to which the contemplation
+of this scene stirred his soul. As we ponder these objects, upon which
+his loving vision lingered, they seem strangely familiar; we feel that
+we have known them long and will love them alway.
+
+One must visit this spot if he would appreciate the absolute fidelity to
+nature of the "Elegy:" its imagery is the exact reproduction of the
+scene lying about us, which is practically unchanged since that time so
+long ago when Gray drafted his poem here. Above us rises the square
+tower, mantled with ivy and surmounted by a tapering spire whose shadow
+now falls athwart the grave of the poet; here are the rugged elms with
+their foliage swaying in the summer breeze above the lowly graves;
+yonder by the church porch is the dark yew whose opaque shade covers the
+site of the poet's accustomed seat on the needle-carpeted sward; around
+us are scattered the mouldering heaps beneath which, "each in his narrow
+cell forever laid," sleep the rustic dead. Some of the humble mounds are
+unmarked by any token of memory or grief, but many bear the "frail
+memorials," often rude slabs of wood, which loving but unskilled hands
+have graven with "uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture," with the
+names and years of the unhonored dead, and "many a holy text that teach
+the rustic moralist to die." Some of these lowly graves hold the
+forefathers of families who, not content with the sequestered vale of
+life which sufficed for these simple folk, have sought on another shore
+largesses of fame or fortune unattainable here. Among the names "spelled
+by the unlettered muse" upon the stones around us we see those of
+Goddard, Perry, Gould, Cooper, Geer, and many others familiar to our
+American ears. The overarching glades of the woods which skirt the
+sacred precinct were the haunt of the "youth to fortune and to fame
+unknown;" the nodding beech, that "wreathes its old fantastic roots so
+high" in the grove at near-by Burnham, was his favorite tree, as it was
+that of Gray; afar through the haze of a golden after-glow we see the
+"antique towers" of Eton, the stately brow of Windsor, with its royal
+battlements, and nearer the wave of woods and fields and all the
+dream-like beauty of the landscape upon which the eyes of Gray so often
+dwelt, a landscape that literally glimmers in the fading light.
+
+[Sidenote: Tomb of Gray]
+
+A tablet set by Penn in the chancel wall beneath the mullioned window is
+inscribed, "Opposite this stone, in the same tomb upon which he so
+feelingly recorded his grief at the loss of a beloved parent, are
+deposited the remains of Thomas Gray, author of the Elegy written in a
+Country Church-yard." A few feet distant is the tomb he erected for his
+mother, which now conceals the ashes of the gentle poet. It is of the
+plainest and simplest, a low structure of brick, covered by a marble
+slab. No "storied urn or animated bust" is needed to perpetuate the name
+of him who made himself immortal; even his name is not graven upon the
+marble. We are come directly from the splendors of the royal chapels of
+Windsor, where costly sculpture, gilding, and superlative epitaphs mark
+the sepulchres of some who were mediocre or mendicant of mind and
+virtue, and we are, therefore, the more impressed by the fitting
+simplicity of the poet's tomb among the humble dead whose artless tale
+he told. At the grave of Gray, how tawdry seems the pomp of those kingly
+mausoleums, how mean some of the lives the bedizened monuments
+commemorate, of how little consequence that the world should know where
+such dust is hid from sight! At the grave of Gray, if anywhere the wide
+world round, we will correctly value the vanities, ambitions, and
+rewards of earth. Gray's desire to be buried here saved him from what
+some one has called the "misfortune of burial in Westminster." While the
+pilgrim vainly seeks in that national mausoleum the tombs of
+Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Gray, Wordsworth, Thackeray, Coleridge,
+Eliot, and others of divine genius, and finds instead the graves of many
+sordid and impure, entombment there may be a misfortune. Happily the
+poet of the Elegy reposes in his church-yard, beside the beings he best
+loved, on the spot he frequented in life and hallowed by his genius,
+among those whose virtues he sang; here his grave perpetually emphasizes
+the sublime teachings of his verse and affords a most touching
+association. The only inscription upon the slab is the poet's tribute to
+his aunt, Mary Antrobus, and to "Dorothy Gray, the careful and tender
+mother of many children, of whom one alone had the misfortune to
+survive her." It has been our pleasure on a previous day to seek out
+amid the din of London the spot where, in a modest dwelling, this mother
+gave birth to the poet, and where she and Mary Antrobus sold laces to
+maintain the "many children."
+
+  [Illustration: STOKE-POGIS CHURCH]
+
+[Sidenote: The Ivy-Mantled Church]
+
+Set upon a gentle eminence in the midst of this peaceful scene, the
+church has a picturesque beauty which harmonizes well with its
+environment. It is low and sombre, but age has given a dignity and grace
+which would make it attractive apart from its associations. Overrunning
+the walls, shrouding the crumbling battlements of the tower, clambering
+along the steep roofs, clinging to the highest gables, and festooning
+the stained windows, are masses of dark ivy, which conceal the inroads
+of time and impart to the whole structure a beauty that wins us
+completely. The tower is early English, the chancel is Norman, and the
+newer portions of the edifice were already old when Gray frequented the
+place. A path bordered by abundant roses leads from the gate-way of the
+enclosure to the quaint porch of timbers and the entrance to the church.
+Within, the light falls dimly at this hour upon the curious little
+galleries of the peasantry, the great pew of the Penns, the humbler
+place at the end of the south aisle where Gray came to pray, the huge
+mural tablet and the burial vault where the son of William Penn and his
+family sleep in death. In the park close by is the palace of the Penns,
+and the mansion where Charles I. was imprisoned and where Coke wrote
+some of his Commentaries and entertained his queen. Not far distant is
+the house--now a fine abode--which Gray shared for some years with his
+mother and aunt, and where his bedroom and study may still be seen.
+Farther away are the Beaconsfield which furnished the title of the
+gifted author of "Lothair," and the old church where Burke and Waller
+await the resurrection.
+
+[Sidenote: Discarded Stanzas]
+
+In the twilight we hastily sketch Gray's "ivy-mantled tower," and then
+sit by his tomb gazing upon the fading landscape and recalling the life
+of this divine poet and the lines of the matchless poem which was
+drafted here and with exquisite care revised and polished year after
+year before it was given to the world. It may not be generally known
+that he discarded six stanzas from the original draft,--among them this,
+written as the fourth stanza:
+
+  "Hark, how the sacred calm that breathes around
+    Bids every fierce, tumultuous passion cease;
+  In still small accents whispering from the ground
+    A grateful earnest of eternal peace;"
+
+this, from the reply of the "hoary-headed swain:"
+
+  "Him have we seen the greenwood side along
+    While o'er the heath we hied, our labor done,
+  Oft as the wood-lark piped her farewell song
+    With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun;"
+
+and this, from the description of the poet's grave:
+
+  "There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
+    By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
+  The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
+    And little footsteps lightly print the ground."
+
+We may judge what was the high standard of Gray, and what the
+transcending quality of the finished poem from which its author could,
+after years of deliberation, reject such stanzas. The Elegy is the
+expression in divinest poetry of the best conceptions of a noble soul
+upon the most serious topic on which human thought can dwell. No wonder
+that the world has literally learned by heart those precious lines; that
+they are the solace of the thoughtful and the bereft in every clime
+where mortals meditate on death; that the brave Wolfe, on the way to his
+triumphal death, should recite them in the darkness and declare he had
+rather be their author than the victor in the morrow's battle; that the
+great Webster, on his death-bed, should beg to hear them, and die at
+last with their melody sounding in his ears.
+
+As the glow fades out of the darkening sky, the birds in the leafy elms
+one by one cease their songs, "the lowing herds wind slowly o'er the
+lea" to distant folds, the "drowsy tinklings" grow fainter, the summer
+wind sighing among the trees dies with the day, and the scene which
+seemed still before is noiseless now. In this hush we are content to
+leave this deathless poet and the spot he loved. We gather ivy from the
+old wall and a spray from the boughs of his dreaming yew, and take our
+way back to the busy haunts of men.
+
+
+
+
+DICKENSLAND: GAD'S HILL AND ABOUT
+
+_Chaucer's Pilgrims--Falstaff--Dickens's Abode--Study--Grounds--Walks--
+  Neighbors--Guests--Scenes of Tales--Cobham--Rochester--Pip's
+  Church-Yard--Satis House, etc._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Gad's Hill House]
+
+"To go to Gad's Hill," said Dickens, in a note of invitation, "you leave
+Charing Cross at nine o'clock by North Kent Railway for Higham." Guided
+by these directions and equipped with a letter from Dickens's son, we
+find ourselves gliding eastward among the chimneys of London and, a
+little later, emerging into the fields of Kent,--Jingle's region of
+"apples, cherries, hops, and women." The Thames is on our left; we pass
+many river-towns,--Dartford where Wat Tyler lived, Gravesend where
+Pocahontas died,--but most of our way is through the open country, where
+we have glimpses of fields, parks, and leafy lanes, with here and there
+picturesque camps of gypsies or of peripatetic rascals "goin'
+a-hoppin'." From wretched Higham a walk of half an hour among orchards
+and between hedges of wild-rose and honeysuckle brings us to the hill
+which Shakespeare and Dickens have made classic ground, and soon we see,
+above the tree-tops, the glittering vane which surmounted the home of
+the world's greatest novelist. The name Gad's (vagabond's) Hill is a
+survival of the time when the depredations of highwaymen upon "pilgrims
+going to Canterbury with rich offerings and traders riding to London
+with fat purses" gave to this spot the ill repute it had in
+Shakespeare's day: it was here he located Falstaff's great exploit. The
+tuft of evergreens which crowns the hill about Dickens's retreat is the
+remnant of thick woods once closely bordering the highway, in which the
+"men in buckram" lay concealed, and the robbery of the franklin was
+committed in front of the spot where the Dickens house stands. By this
+road passed Chaucer, who had property near by, gathering from the
+pilgrims his "Canterbury Tales." In all time to come the great master of
+romance who came here to live and die will be worthily associated with
+Shakespeare and Chaucer in the renown of Gad's Hill. In becoming
+possessor of this place, Dickens realized a dream of his boyhood and an
+ambition of his life. In one of his travellers' sketches he introduces a
+"queer small boy" (himself) gazing at Gad's Hill House and predicting
+his future ownership, which the author finds annoying "because it
+happens to be _my_ house and I believe what he said was true." When at
+last the place was for sale, Dickens did not wait to examine it; he
+never was inside the house until he went to direct its repair. Eighteen
+hundred pounds was the price; a thousand more were expended for
+enlargement of the grounds and alterations of the house, which, despite
+his declaration that he had "stuck bits upon it in all manner of ways,"
+did not greatly change it from what it was when it became the goal of
+his childish aspirations. At first it was his summer residence
+merely,--his wife came with him the first summer,--but three years later
+he sold Tavistock House, and Gad's Hill was thenceforth his home. From
+the bustle and din of the city he returned to the haunts of his boyhood
+to find restful quiet and time for leisurely work among these "blessed
+woods and fields" which had ever held his heart. For nine years after
+the death of Dickens Gad's Hill was occupied by his oldest son; its
+ownership has since twice or thrice changed.
+
+[Sidenote: Gad's Hill--House and Grounds]
+
+[Sidenote: Dickens's Chalet]
+
+Its elevated site and commanding view render it one of the most
+conspicuous, as it is one of the most lovely, spots in Kent. The mansion
+is an unpretentious, old-fashioned, two-storied structure of fourteen
+rooms. Its brick walls are surmounted by Mansard roofs above which rises
+a bell-turret; a pillared portico, where Dickens sat with his family on
+summer evenings, shades the front entrance; wide bay-windows project
+upon either side; flowers and vines clamber upon the walls, and a
+delightfully home-like air pervades the place. It seems withal a modest
+seat for one who left half a million dollars at his death. At the right
+of the entrance-hall we see Dickens's library and study, a cosy room
+shown in the picture of "The Empty Chair:" here are shelves which held
+his books; the panels he decorated with counterfeit book-backs; the nook
+where perched the mounted remains of his raven, the "Grip" of "Barnaby
+Rudge." By this bay-window, whence he could look across the lawn to the
+cedars beyond the highway, stood his chair and the desk where he wrote
+many of the works by which the world will know him alway. Behind the
+study was his billiard-room, and upon the opposite side of the hall the
+parlor, with the dining-room adjoining it at the back, both bedecked
+with the many mirrors which delighted the master. Opening out of these
+rooms is a conservatory, paid for out of "the golden shower from
+America" and completed but a few days before Dickens's death, holding
+yet the ferns he tended. The dining-room was the scene of much of that
+emphatic hospitality which it pleased the novelist to dispense, his
+exuberant spirits making him the leader in all the jollity and
+conviviality of the board. Here he compounded for bibulous guests his
+famous "cider-cup of Gad's Hill," and at the same table he was stricken
+with death; on a couch beneath yonder window, the one nearest the hall,
+he died on the anniversary of the railway accident which so frightfully
+imperilled his life. From this window we look out upon a lawn decked
+with shrubbery and see across undulating cornfields his beloved Cobham.
+From the parquetted hall, stairs lead to the modest chambers,--that of
+Dickens being above the drawing-room. He lined the stairway with prints
+of Hogarth's works, and declared he never came down the stairs without
+pausing to wonder at the sagacity and skill which had produced the
+masterful pictures of human life. The house is invested with roses, and
+parterres of the red geraniums which the master loved are ranged upon
+every side. It was some fresh manifestation of his passion for these
+flowers that elicited from his daughter the averment, "Papa, I think
+when you are an angel your wings will be made of looking-glasses and
+your crown of scarlet geraniums." Beneath a rose-tree not far from the
+window where Dickens died, a bed blooming with blue lobelia holds the
+tiny grave of "Dick" and the tender memorial of the novelist to that
+"Best of Birds." The row of gleaming limes which shadow the porch was
+planted by Dickens's own hands. The pedestal of the sundial upon the
+lawn is a massive balustrade of the old stone bridge at near-by
+Rochester, which little David Copperfield crossed "foot-sore and weary"
+on his way to his aunt, and from which Pickwick contemplated the
+castle-ruin, the cathedral, the peaceful Medway. At the left of the
+mansion are the carriage-house and the school-room of Dickens's sons. In
+another portion of the grounds are his tennis-court and the
+bowling-green which he prepared, where he became a skilful and tireless
+player. The broad meadow beyond the lawn was a later purchase, and the
+many limes which beautify it were rooted by Dickens. Here numerous
+cricket matches were played, and he would watch the players or keep the
+score "the whole day long." It was in this meadow that he rehearsed his
+readings, and his talking, laughing, weeping, and gesticulating here
+"all to himself" excited among his neighbors suspicion of his insanity.
+From the front lawn a tunnel constructed by Dickens passes beneath the
+highway to "The Wilderness," a thickly wooded shrubbery, where
+magnificent cedars uprear their venerable forms and many sombre firs,
+survivors of the forest which erst covered the countryside, cluster upon
+the hill-top. Here Dickens's favorite dog, the "Linda" of his letters,
+lies buried. Amid the leafy seclusion of this retreat, and upon the very
+spot where Falstaff was routed by Hal and Poins ("the eleven men in
+buckram"), Dickens erected the chalet sent to him in pieces by Fechter,
+the upper room of which--up among the quivering boughs, where "birds and
+butterflies fly in and out, and green branches shoot in at the
+windows"--Dickens lined with mirrors and used as his study in summer. Of
+the work produced at Gad's Hill--"Two Cities," "Uncommercial Traveller,"
+"Mutual Friend," "Edwin Drood," and many tales and sketches of "All the
+Year Round"--much was written in this leaf-environed nook; here the
+master wrought through the golden hours of his last day of conscious
+life, here he wrote his last paragraph and at the close of that June day
+let fall his pen, never to take it up again. From the place of the
+chalet we behold the view which delighted the heart of Dickens,--his
+desk was so placed that his eyes would rest upon this view whenever he
+raised them from his work,--the fields of waving corn, the green expanse
+of meadows, the sail-dotted river.
+
+Many friends came to Dickens in this pleasant Kentish home,--Forster,
+Maclise, Reade, Macready, Leech, Collins, Yates, Hans Christian
+Andersen, Mr. and Mrs. Fields, Longfellow and his daughters, Fechter and
+his wife: some of them were guests here for many days together. The
+master was the most genial of hosts, apparently the happiest of men,
+with the hearty laugh which Montaigne says never comes from a bad heart.
+After the morning task in library or chalet he gave the rest of the day
+to exercise and recreation, often at games with his guests in the
+grounds, but taking daily in rain or shine the long walks which made his
+lithe figure and rapid gait familiar to all the cottagers and
+field-laborers of the countryside. It is pleasant to hear the loving
+testimony of these simple folk--many of them descendants of the "men of
+Kent" who followed the standard of Wat Tyler from Blackheath to
+London--concerning Dickens's uniform kindness, his helpful generosity,
+his scrupulous regard of the rights of inferiors, the traits which won
+their hearts. One rustic neighbor declares, "Dickens was a main good
+man, sir: it was a sorry day for the neighborhood when he was taken
+away." Near the gate of Gad's Hill House is a wayside inn, the "Sir John
+Falstaff," which for more than two centuries has stood for remembrance
+of that worthy's exploit at this place. Its weather-worn sign bears
+portraits of Falstaff and Prince Hal and a picture of the "Merry Wives
+of Windsor" putting Falstaff into the basket. The name of a son of the
+recent keeper of this hostelry, Edward Trood, doubtless suggested the
+title of the "Mystery" which must, alas! remain a mystery evermore.
+
+[Sidenote: Scenes of Great Expectations]
+
+[Sidenote: The Marshes]
+
+From the inn a lane leads to a sightly summit surmounted by a monument
+which Dickens called "Andersen's Monument," because it was the resort of
+that illustrious author while a guest at Gad's Hill. Its far-reaching
+prospect is indeed alluring: on every hand vast, wave-like expanses of
+forest and orchard, moor and mead, sweep away to the horizon, while
+northward, beyond great cornfields and market-gardens, we see twenty
+miles of the Thames--"stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's
+life"--bordered here by a wilderness of low-lying marsh. A walk beloved
+of Dickens brings us to one of his favorite haunts,--a dreary
+church-yard on the margin of this marsh. It lies in the dismal,
+ague-haunted "hundred of Loo," a peninsula between the Thames and the
+Medway having a broad hem of desolate fens along the river-banks--a
+weird, little known region, whose ancient reputation was unsavory. A
+wooden finger on a post directs us to Cooling,--Dickens makes Pip say
+that this direction was never accepted, no one ever came,--a forlorn
+hamlet which straggles about the ruins of Cooling Castle. This was an
+ancient seat of the Cobhams; through a Cobham heiress it passed to
+Oldcastle, leader of the Lollards, who shut himself up here and was
+dragged hence to martyrdom. It is noteworthy that this Oldcastle has
+been thought to be the original of Falstaff, the hero of Gad's Hill. Of
+the stronghold little remains save the machicolated gate-way, flanked
+with ponderous round towers bearing quaint inscriptions. The water of
+the moat is green and stagnant, suggesting frogs and rheumatism, and the
+space it encloses is occupied by the cottage of a farmer. The forge and
+cottage of Joe Gargery are not found in the wretched village,--indeed,
+we should be sorry to find that splendid fellow and the good Betty so
+poorly housed,--but beyond the narrow street and at the verge of the
+marshes we come to a low, quaint, square-towered old church, which rises
+from a wind-swept, nettle-grown church-yard, the scene of the opening
+chapter of "Great Expectations." Yonder mound, whose gravestone is
+inscribed to George Comfort, "Also Sarah, Wife of the Above," stands for
+the tomb of Pip's parents; and sunken in the grass at our feet is the
+row of little gravestones whose curious shape led Pip to believe that
+his little brothers (whose graves they marked) "had been born on their
+backs, with their hands in their trousers pockets, and had never taken
+them out in this stage of existence." Over this low wall which divides
+God's-acre from the marshes the convict climbed, and we, standing upon
+it, look across the scene of his chase and capture, which Pip witnessed
+from Joe's back. On this sombre autumn afternoon of our visit the
+landscape is startlingly like that the terrified boy beheld: we see the
+same far-stretching waste of marshes, the intersecting dikes, the low,
+leaden line of the river beyond, dark mists hanging heavy over all,
+while the chill wind blows in our faces from its "savage lair" in the
+sea. Upon yonder flat tombstone in the far corner of the church-yard
+Dickens sat and lunched with Fields when he last walked to this place.
+Hidden now in the mists, but not far distant, and reached by a foot-path
+from the road to Chalk, is a dirty and dilapidated Thames-side inn,
+whose creaking sign-board reads, "Ship and Lobster:" this is The Ship of
+"Great Expectations," where Pip and his party slept the night preceding
+their attempt to put Magwich on the steamer, and the open river below
+the little causeway is the scene of their mischance and the transport's
+recapture.
+
+[Sidenote: Cobham]
+
+[Sidenote: Cloisterham]
+
+The walk which Dickens most enjoyed--the one which was his last before
+he died--was to and around Cobham, the seat of his friend Darnley. We
+follow the way once so familiar to his feet, through the noble park
+which the Pickwick Club found "so thoroughly delightful," on a June
+afternoon, by the stately old hall where lately stood Dickens's chalet,
+and farther, through majestic forest and open glade, to the place whence
+Pickwick--overcome by cold punch--was wheeled to the pound. Skirting the
+park on our return, we come to Cobham village and the neat Leather
+Bottle Inn to which the lovelorn Tupman retired to conceal his woe after
+his discomfiture at Manor Farm, and where Dickens himself, rambling in
+the neighborhood with Forster, lodged in 1841. Here is the little
+church-yard where Pickwick walked with Tupman and persuaded him to
+return to the world, and hard by the cottage of Bill Stumps, before
+which Pickwick made the immortal discovery which was "the pride of his
+friends and the envy of every antiquarian in this or any other country."
+Another favorite walk of Dickens conducts us, past a quaint, rambling
+mansion of dingy brick which served as the model for Satis House of
+"Great Expectations," to Rochester, the Cloisterham of "Edwin Drood."
+Here we find the Bull Inn,--"good house, nice beds,"--where the Pickwick
+Club lodged, in rooms 13 and 19, and the ballroom, where Tupman and
+Jingle (the latter in Winkle's coat) danced with the widow and enraged
+little Slammer; the Watt's Charity of "The Uncommercial Traveller;" the
+picturesque castle-ruin which Dickens frequented and has so charmingly
+described. Here, too, is the gray old cathedral he loved, which appears
+in many of his tales, from Jingle's piquant account of it in "Pickwick"
+to that touching description of this ancient fane in the last lines of
+the master, written within sound of its bells and but a few hours before
+his death.
+
+[Sidenote: Land of Dickens]
+
+This region of sunny Kent, the scene of his earliest and latest years,
+may fitly be called The Land of Dickens, so intimately is it associated
+with his life and work. Here at near-by Chatham (whence he used to come
+to gaze longingly at Gad's Hill House), in a whitewashed cottage on
+Ordnance Place, he lived as a child; at yonder village of Chalk he spent
+his honeymoon, its expenses being defrayed by the sale of the first
+numbers of "Pickwick;" here were the habitual resorts of his holiday
+leisure; here was his latest home; here he died, and here he desired to
+be buried. This district was no less the life-haunt and home of his
+imagination and genius. The scenes of his most effective romances are
+laid here; into the fabric of many a tale and sketch his fancy has woven
+the familiar features of town and hamlet, field and forest, marsh and
+river, of the region he knew and loved so well; here his first tale
+opens, here his last tale ends.
+
+
+
+
+SOME HAUNTS OF BYRON
+
+_Birthplace--London Homes--Murray's Book-Store--Kensal Green--Harrow--
+  Byron's Tomb--His Diadem Hill--Abode of his Star of Annesley--
+  Portraits--Mementos._
+
+
+[Sidenote: London Homes]
+
+Of the places in and about great London which were associated with the
+brief life of Byron, the rage for improvement which holds nothing sacred
+has spared a few, and the quest for Byron-haunts is still fairly
+rewarded. Holles Street, where he was born, has not long been resigned
+to trade: we have known it as a somnolent little street whose grateful
+quiet--reached by a step from the tumult of De Quincey's "stony-hearted
+step-mother"--made it seem like a placid pool beside a riotous torrent.
+It is scarce a furlong in length, and from the shade of Cavendish Square
+at its extremity we could look, between bordering rows of modest
+dwellings, to the square where Ralph Nickleby lived and Mary Wortley
+Montagu died. At our right, a little way down the street, stood a small,
+plain, two-storied house of dingy brick, where the poet's mother lodged
+in the upper front room at the time of his birth. This dwelling was No.
+16, later 24, and has now given place to a shop. An unpretentious
+tenement near Sloane Square was Byron's home during his pupilage with
+Dr. Glennie.
+
+In the house No. 8 St. James Street, nearly opposite the place where
+Gibbon died, Byron had for some years a suite of rooms. Here he was
+convenient to Almack's aristocratic ballrooms and St. James Theatre, and
+was in the then, as it is now, centre of fashionable club-life. His
+residence here began when he came to London to publish "Bards and
+Reviewers," was resumed upon his return from the Levantine tour, and
+continued during the publication of the early cantos of "Childe Harold"
+and other poems written on that tour. In these rooms "Corsair," "The
+Giaour," and "Bride of Abydos" were written, the latter in a single
+night and with one quill. The last year of Byron's residence here was
+the period of his highest popularity, when he was the especial pet of
+London society queens, one of whom--who later wrote a book to defame
+him--was recognized in bifurcated masculine garb in these chambers. On
+the same street is the home of White's Club, the Bays' of "Pendennis,"
+of which the present Lord Byron is a member, and on the site of the
+Carlton Club, Pall Mall, stood the Star and Garter tavern, where, in
+room No. 7 at the right on the first floor, the poet's predecessor
+killed his neighbor Chaworth, grand-uncle of Byron's "star of Annesley."
+Adjoining the Academy of Arts in Piccadilly is that "college of
+bachelors," the Albany apartment house where Dickens lodged
+"Fascination" Fledgeby and laid the scene of his flagellation by Lammle
+and the dressing of his wounds with pepper by Jenny Wren. Here the
+handsome suite A 2 was the abode of Byron for the year or so preceding
+his hapless marriage, and here "Lara" and "Hebrew Melodies" were
+written. The poet had passed the zenith of the social horizon, and the
+"Byron-madness" was waning, when he came to the Albany; still, the
+visits of fair admirers were vouchsafed him in these rooms. It was here
+that the girl whose story Guiccioli adduces as evidence of Byron's
+virtuous self-denial came to him for counsel. If the partiality of his
+mistress has unduly praised his conduct at this time, it is a
+thousandfold outweighed by the bitterness of another narrative--happily
+discredited, if not disproven--which indicates this same period as being
+that of the beginning of a _liaison_ with his sister. To these rooms
+Moore was a daily visitant, and Canning then lodged on the second floor
+adjoining the suite E 1, where Macaulay wrote the "History of England"
+and many essays. Byron's last abode in London was a stately house in
+Piccadilly, opposite Green Park and not far from the then London sojourn
+of Scott. Byron's dwelling, now No. 139, belonged to the Duchess of
+Devon, and was known as 13 Piccadilly Terrace. To this elegant home he
+brought his bride after the "treacle-moon," and here passed the
+remainder of their brief period of cohabitation. Here "The Siege of
+Corinth," "Parisina," and many minor poems were penned, the MS. of some
+being in the handwriting of his wife. Here Augusta Leigh was a guest
+warmly welcomed by Lady Byron, despite her alleged knowledge of the
+"shocking misconduct" of Byron and his sister in this house. Here Ada,
+"sole daughter of his house and heart," was born, and from here, a few
+weeks later, his wife went forth, never to see him again. Some letters
+came from her to this home,--playful notes to Byron inviting him to
+follow her, affectionate epistles to the sister, then a final letter
+announcing her determination never to return. In the ten months during
+which Byron occupied this house it was nine times in possession of
+bailiffs on account of his debts. It has since been refaced and
+repaired, but the original rooms remain. Hamilton Place now leads from
+it to Hamilton Gardens, where stands a beautiful statue of Byron. To the
+mansion of Sir Edward Knatchbull, No. 25 Great George Street, a site now
+occupied by the Institute of Engineers, the corpse of Byron was brought
+upon its arrival from Greece; and here in the great parlors, but a few
+steps from the spot where the remains of Sheridan had lain eight years
+before, Byron's body lay in state while his friends vainly sought
+sepulture for it in Westminster.
+
+[Sidenote: Murray's]
+
+At No. 50 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly, not far from the Albany, is the
+establishment of John Murray, whose predecessor, John Murray II.,
+published "Childe Harold" and all Byron's subsequent poems to the
+earlier cantos of "Don Juan." At this house the poet was a frequent and
+familiar lounger. Here, in a cosy drawing-room which is handsomely
+furnished and embellished, Murray used to hold a literary court, and
+here Byron first shook hands with the "great Wizard of the North" and
+met Moore, Canning, Southey, Gifford, and other _littérateurs_. Scott
+afterward wrote, "Byron and I met for an hour or two daily in Murray's
+drawing-room, and found much to say to each other." During his
+residence in London, Byron was customarily one of the coterie of
+authors--facetiously called the "four o'clock club"--which daily
+assembled in this room. The _séances_ were frequented at one time or
+another by most of the stars of English letters, embracing, besides
+those above named, Campbell, Hallam, Crabbe, Lockhart, Disraeli, Irving,
+George Ticknor, etc. We find the room little changed since their time.
+Original portraits of that brilliant company look down from the walls
+of the room they haunted in life, and the visitor thrills with the
+thought that in some subtile sense their presence pervades it still. In
+this room Ada Byron, kept in ignorance of her father until womanhood,
+first saw his handwriting, and in yonder fireplace beneath his portrait,
+four days after intelligence of his death had reached London, the
+manuscript of his much-discussed "Memoirs" was burned at the desire of
+Lady Byron and in the presence of Moore and Byron's executor, Hobhouse,
+who had witnessed his hapless marriage. Until the death of Byron his
+relations with Murray were most cordial, and the present John Murray
+IV., grandson of Byron's publisher, possesses numerous letters of the
+poet, some of which were used in Moore's "Life." Perhaps most
+interesting of Byron's many rhyming epistles is the one commencing,--
+
+      "My dear Mr. Murray,
+      You're in a blanked hurry
+  To set up this ultimate canto,"
+
+which announces the final completion of "Childe Harold." Among many
+mementos of Byron cherished in this famous room are the original MSS. of
+"Bards and Reviewers" and of most of his later poems. With them are
+other priceless MSS. of Scott, Swift, Gray, Southey, Livingstone,
+Irving, Motley, etc. The Murray III. who used to show us these treasures
+with reverent pride, and who could boast that he had known Byron, Scott,
+and Goethe, died not long ago. When we ask for the Bible popularly
+believed to have been given to Murray by Byron with a line so altered as
+to read "now Barabbas was a _publisher_," we are told this joke was
+Campbell's and was upon another publisher than Murray. Byron's
+signet-ring has passed to the possession of Pierre Barlow, Esq., of New
+York. _Littérateurs_ still come to "Murray's den," though not so often
+as in the time when clubs were less popular: among those who may
+sometimes be met here are Argyll, Knight, Layard, Dufferin, Temple,
+Francis Darwin, etc. Murrays' was the home of the Review--"whose mission
+in life is to hang, draw, and _Quarterly_," as one victim avers--to
+which came Charlotte Brontë's burly Irish uncle with his shillalah in
+search of the harsh reviewer of "Jane Eyre," and haunted the place until
+he was turned away.
+
+[Sidenote: Kensal Green--Harrow]
+
+A most delightful outing is the jaunt from Byron's London haunts, past
+Kensal Green, where we find the precious graves in which sleep
+Thackeray, Motley, Cunningham, Jameson, Hood, Hunt, Sydney Smith, and
+Mrs. Hawthorne,--the latter beneath ivy from her Wayside home and
+periwinkle from her husband's tomb on the piny hill-top at Concord,--to
+Harrow, the "Ida" of Byron's verse. Here is the ancient school of which
+Sheridan, Peel, Perceval, Trollope, and others famous in letters or
+politics were inmates; where Byron was for years "a troublesome and
+mischievous pupil" and made the acquaintance of Clare, Dorset, and
+others to whom some of his poems are addressed, and of Wildman who
+rescued his Newstead from ruin: the present Byron and the son of Ada
+Byron were also Harrow boys. Here may be seen some of the poet's worn
+and scribbled books; his name graven by him upon a panel of the oldest
+building; the Peachie tombstone--protected now by iron bars--which was
+his evening resort, where some of his stanzas were composed, and whence
+he beheld a landscape of enchanting beauty. Near this beloved spot,
+where Byron once desired to be entombed, sleeps a sinless child of sin,
+his daughter Allegra, born of Mrs. Shelley's sister. At Harrow, Byron
+repaid help upon his exercises by fighting for his assistant; his
+successes here were mainly pugilistic, but his battles were often those
+of younger and weaker boys, and the spot where he fought the tyrants of
+the school is pointed out with interest and pride.
+
+In Notts, _en route_ to Newstead, we lodge in an old mansion alleged to
+have been the abode of the poet in his school-vacations; we have the
+high authority of the landlord for the conviction that we occupy the
+room and the very bed oft used by Byron; but the credulity even of a
+pilgrim has a limit, and the agility of the fleas that now inhabit the
+bed forbids belief that they too are relics of the poet. Better
+authenticated are the Byron relics of a local society, among which are
+the boot-trees certified by his bootmaker to be those upon which the
+poet's boots were fitted. They are of interest as demonstrating that the
+asymmetry of his feet was much less than has been believed; one foot was
+shorter than its fellow, and the ankle was weak, but not deformed.
+
+[Sidenote: Tomb of Childe Harold]
+
+From Nottingham a winsome way along a smiling vale, with billowy hills
+swelling upon either hand, conducts us to the village of Hucknall. By
+its market-place an ancient church-tower rises from a grave-strewn
+enclosure; we enter the fane through a porch of ponderous timbers, and,
+traversing the dim aisle, approach the chancel and find there the tomb
+of Childe Harold. A slab of blue marble, sent by the King of Greece and
+bearing the word Byron, is set in the pavement to mark the spot where,
+after the throes of his passion-tossed life, Byron lies among his
+kindred in "the dreamless sleep that lulls the dead." One who, as a lad,
+entered the vault at the burial of Ada Byron, indicates for us its size
+upon the pavement and the position of the coffins; Byron, in a coffin
+covered with velvet and resting upon benches of stone, lies between his
+mother and the "sole daughter of his house and heart;" at his feet a
+receptacle contains his heart and brain. His valet and the Little White
+Lady of Irving's narrative sleep in the yard near by. A marble tablet on
+the church wall describes Byron as the "Author of Childe Harold's
+Pilgrimage;" this was erected by his sister, and near it we saw a
+chaplet of faded laurel placed years ago by our "Bard of the Sierras."
+Byron's tomb has never been a popular shrine, but such Americans as
+Irving, Hawthorne, Halleck, Ludlow, Joaquin Miller, and William Winter
+have been reverent pilgrims. Once Byron's "Italian enchantress," la
+Guiccioli, was found weeping here and kissing the pavement which covers
+the lover of her youth.
+
+[Sidenote: Annesley Hall]
+
+Above Hucknall the ancestral domain of the Byrons lies upon the right,
+while upon the other hand extend the broad lands which were the heritage
+of Mary Ann Chaworth, Byron's "star of Annesley." From the boundary of
+the estates, where the poet sometimes met his youthful love, a stroll
+across a landscape parquetted with grain-field gold and meadow emerald
+brings us to the ancient seat of the time-honored race of which the
+maiden of Byron's "Dream"--the "Mary" of many poems--was the "last
+solitary scion left." It is now the property of her great-grandson. Most
+of her married life was passed elsewhere, and Annesley fell into the
+neglected condition which Irving describes. Mary's husband, the maligned
+Musters, instead of hating the place and seeking to destroy its
+identity, preferred it to his other property, and spent many years after
+his wife's death in restoring and beautifying it, taking pains to
+preserve the grounds and the main portion of the mansion in the
+condition in which his wife had known them in her maidenhood. This
+became the beloved home of his later years, and here he died. This
+mansion of the "Dream" stands upon an elevation overlooking many acres
+of picturesque park. It is a great, rambling pile of motley
+architecture, obviously erected by different generations of Chaworths to
+suit their varying needs and tastes, but the walls are overgrown with
+clambering vines, which conceal the touch of time and impart to the
+structure an aspect of harmonious beauty. The principal façade which
+presents along the court is imposing and stately, but on every side are
+pointed gables, stone balustrades, and picturesque walls. The interior
+arrangement of the body of the house remains precisely as Mary knew it,
+even the decorations of some of the rooms having been preserved by the
+considerate love of her husband and descendants; and here, despite the
+averment of a Byron-biographer that "every relic of her ancient family
+was sold and scattered to the winds," the Chaworth plate, portraits, and
+other belongings are religiously cherished. We were first invited to the
+place to see these while they were yet displayed by the maid in whose
+arms Mary died. Upon the walls of the great lower hall are many family
+pictures, among them that of the Chaworth whom Byron's great-uncle had
+slain. It was this portrait that Byron feared would come out of its
+frame to haunt him if he remained here over-night. From the hall low
+stairs lead to the apartments. At the right is Mary's sitting-room,
+where Byron spent many hours beside her, listening entranced while she
+played to him upon the piano which stood in the farther corner. It is a
+pleasant apartment, its windows looking out upon the garden-beds Mary
+tended, which we see now ablaze with the flowers known to have been her
+favorites. In this room, which "her smiles had made a heaven to him,"
+Byron, years afterward, saw Mary for the last time and kissed for its
+mother's sake "the child that ought to have been his." On this occasion
+she made the inquiry which prompted the lines, "To Mrs. Musters, on
+being asked my reason for quitting England in the spring." This last
+painful interview is recalled in the poems "Well, Thou art Happy" and
+"I've seen my Bride Another's Bride." Above the hall is the large
+drawing-room, where we see several portraits of Mary, which represent
+her as a most beautiful woman, with a pathetically sweet and winning
+face,--by no means the "wicked-looking cat" which Byron's jealous wife
+described. Here, too, are pictures of her husband which fully justify
+his popular sobriquet, "handsome Jack Musters." Physically they were an
+admirably matched pair. Out of the drawing-room is the "antique oratory"
+of the poem, a small apartment above the entrance-porch, pictured as the
+scene of Byron's parting with Mary after her announcement of her
+betrothal. Byron was cordially welcomed at Annesley; the family were his
+relatives, and all of them, save that young lady herself, would gladly
+have had him marry the heiress. Among the guest-chambers is one, called
+of yore the blue room, which during one summer--after his fear of the
+family portraits had been subdued by the greater fear of meeting
+"bogles" on his homeward way--Byron often occupied. Here he incensed
+Nanny the housekeeper by allowing his dog to sleep upon the bed and
+soil her neat counterpanes. Another servant, "old Joe," tired of sitting
+up at night to wait upon him, finally frightened him away by means of
+some hideous nocturnal noises, which he assured the young poet proceeded
+from "spooks out of the kirk-yard,"--Byron's superstition doubtless
+suggesting the ruse.
+
+[Sidenote: Annesley Park--Diadem Hill]
+
+[Sidenote: Byron-Chaworth-Musters]
+
+Giant trees overtop the chimneys and bower the walls of the venerable
+mansion. The garden which Irving found matted and wild was long ago
+restored by Musters to its former beauty of turf, foliage, and flower. A
+grand terrace,--one of the finest in England,--with brick walls and
+carved balustrades of stone mantled and draped with ivy, lies at the
+right, with broad steps leading down to the garden where Byron delighted
+to linger with Mary during the swift hours of one too brief summer.
+Beneath the terrace is a door, carefully protected by Musters and his
+descendants, which Byron daily used as a target and in which we see the
+marks of bullets from his pistol. The grounds are extensive and
+beautifully diversified by copses of great trees and grassy glades where
+deer feed amid myriad witcheries of leaf and bloom. Half a mile from the
+Hall is a shrine that will attract the sentimental prowler, Byron's
+diadem hill. Projecting from the extremity of a long line of eminences,
+it is a landmark to the countryside and overlooks the living landscape
+which the poet depicted in lines throbbing with life and beauty. From
+its acclivity we see much of his ancestral Newstead, the adjoining fair
+acres of Annesley which he would have added to his own, the tower and
+chimneys of the Hall rising among clustering oaks: beyond these darkly
+wooded hills decline to the valley, along which we look--past parks,
+villages, and the church where Byron sleeps--to the spires of the city.
+As we contemplate the vista from the spot where stood the two bright
+"beings in the hues of youth," we have about us a ring of dark firs, the
+"diadem of trees in circular array" pictured in the "Dream," apparently
+unchanged since the day the maiden and the youth here met for the last
+time before her marriage. The Byron-writers have united in denouncing
+Musters for denuding this hill-top in a splenetic endeavor to prevent
+its identification as the scene of the interview described in the poem.
+In truth, we owe the preservation of the features which identify this
+romantic spot to the very hand which the author of "Crayon Miscellany"
+avers is "execrated by every poetic pilgrim." When natural causes were
+rapidly destroying the grove, Musters caused its removal and replaced
+it by saplings grown from cones of the old trees, each fir of the
+present beautiful diadem being sedulously rooted upon the site of its
+lineal ancestor. Musters had much greater reason to regard this spot
+with romantic tenderness than had the poet; here he enjoyed many stolen
+interviews with his sweetheart, for he was forbidden to see her in her
+home, and she, perverse and persistent in her passion for him, came here
+daily with the hope of meeting him and watched for his approach along
+the valley. Upon the very occasion the poem describes, she waited here,
+"Looking afar if yet her lover's steed kept pace with her expectancy,"
+and merely tolerated the company of the "gaby" boy Byron until Musters
+might arrive. The latter had no reason for the irritable jealousy toward
+Byron which has been attributed to him, and there is no evidence that he
+evinced or entertained such a feeling. He freely invited the poet to his
+house, rode and swam with him, preserved the few Byron mementos at
+Annesley, and protected the tombs of Byron's ancestors at Colwick. So
+much of untruth has been published anent the Byron-Chaworth-Musters
+matter, and especially concerning the attitude of the lady toward Byron
+and the conditions of her subsequent life, that it is pleasant, even at
+this late day, to be able to record upon undoubted evidence that her
+loving admiration for her husband ceased only with her life.
+
+[Sidenote: Mary's Grave]
+
+On the bank of the silvery Trent, three miles from Nottingham, is
+Colwick Hall, where Mary's married life was spent. This was an ancient
+seat of the Byrons, said to have been lost by them at the card-table.
+Mary's home was an imposing mansion, with lofty cupola, balustraded
+roofs, and stately pediments upheld by Ionic columns. From the front
+windows we look across a wide expanse of sun-kissed meadow beyond the
+river, while at the back rocky cliffs rise steeply and are tufted by
+overhanging woods. The Hall was attacked and pillaged in 1831 by a
+Luddite mob, from whom poor Mary escaped half naked into the shrubbery
+and lay concealed in the cold wet night. The exposure and terror of this
+event impaired her reason, and caused her death the next year at
+Wiverton, another seat of the Chaworths, where her descendants reside.
+Close by the mansion at Colwick, now a summer resort, was the old gray
+church, with battlemented tower, where Mary was married, and where she
+lies in death with her husband and his kindred, near the burial-vault of
+the ancestors of the lame boy who linked her name to deathless verse. At
+the side of the altar a beautiful monumental tablet, bearing a graceful
+female figure and a laudatory inscription, is placed in memory of the
+"star of Annesley," whose brightness went out in distraction and gloom.
+
+To Byron's early passion and its failure we owe some of the sweetest and
+tenderest of his songs; and it has been believed that the memory of that
+defeat adapted his thoughts to their highest flights and gave added
+pathos and beauty to his noblest work. Thus all the world were gainers
+by his disappointment, and evidence is lacking that either the lady or
+the lover was a loser.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOME OF CHILDE HAROLD
+
+_Newstead--Byron's Apartments--Relics and Reminders--Ghosts--Ruins--The
+  Young Oak--Dog's Tomb--Devil's Wood--Irving--Livingstone--Stanley--
+  Joaquin Miller._
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Abbey]
+
+However alluring other haunts of Byron may be found, the "hall of his
+fathers" must remain paramount in the interest and affection of his
+admirers. The stanzas he addressed to that venerable pile, the graphic
+description in "Don Juan," the plaintive allusions in "Childe Harold,"
+its own romantic history as a mediæval fortress and shrine, and its
+association with the bard who inherited its lands and dwelt beneath its
+battlements, render Newstead Abbey a Mecca to which the steps of
+pilgrims tend. It came to the Byrons by royal gift, and in the middle of
+the last century was inherited by the poet's predecessor the Wicked
+Byron, who killed his neighbor of Annesley and so desolated the Abbey
+that the only spot sheltered from the storms was a corner of the
+scullery where he breathed out his wretched life. The poet occupied the
+place at intervals for twenty years, and then sold it to Colonel
+Wildman, who had been his form-fellow at Harrow, and to whom we are
+mainly indebted for the restoration of the edifice and the
+preservation of every memento of the poet and his race. At the death
+of Wildman the Abbey became the property of Colonel W. F. Webb, a sharer
+in Livingstone's explorations, who gathers here a brilliant circle of
+authors, artists, travellers, and wits whose gayety dispels the hoary
+and ghostly associations of the place.
+
+  [Illustration: NEWSTEAD ABBEY]
+
+[Sidenote: Chapel Ruin]
+
+[Sidenote: Byron's Apartments]
+
+From the boundary of the estate a broad avenue, lined with noble trees,
+leads to an inner park of eight hundred acres, among whose sylvan
+beauties our way lies, through verdant glades and under leafy boughs
+whose shadows the sunshine prints upon the path, until we see, from the
+verge of the wood, the noble pile rising amid an environment of lawn and
+lake, grove and garden. It is a vast stone structure, composed of motley
+parts joined "by no quite lawful marriage of the arts" into an
+harmonious and impressive whole. The western façade is the one usually
+pictured, because it contains the Byron apartments and best displays the
+characteristic features of the edifice, having a castellated tower at
+one extremity, while to the other is joined the ruined chapel front
+which, as an example of its style, is rivalled in architectural value
+only by St. Mary's at York. This Newstead fragment, retaining its
+perfect proportions, its noble windows, its gray statue of the Virgin
+and "God-born Child" in the high niche of the gable,--the whole draped
+and garlanded with ivy which conceals the scars of Cromwell's
+cannon-balls,--is a vision of unique beauty. From the Gothic door-way of
+the mansion we are admitted to a gallery with a low-vaulted roof of
+stone upheld by massive columns. This was the crypt of the abbot's
+dormitory; it adjoins the cloisters, and, like them, was used by the
+Wicked Byron as a stable for cattle. It is now adorned with the spoils
+of African deserts, trophies of the mighty huntsman who now inhabits the
+Abbey. One of these, the skin of a noble lion, is said to have belonged
+to a beast which had mutilated Livingstone and was standing above his
+body when a ball from Webb's rifle laid him low and saved the great
+explorer. From the crypt, stone stairs lead to the corridors above the
+cloisters: in Byron's time entrance was between a bear and a wolf
+chained on these stairs and menacing the guest from either side. Out of
+the corridor adjoining the chapel ruin a spiral stairway ascends to a
+plain and sombre suite of rooms, once the abbot's lodgings, but
+cherished now because they were the private apartments of Byron. His
+chamber is neither large nor elegant, its walls are plainly papered, and
+its single oriel window is shaded by a faded curtain. The room remains
+as Byron last occupied it: his carpet is upon the floor; the carved
+bedstead, with its gilt posts and lordly coronets, is the one brought
+by him from college; its curtains and coverings are those he used; above
+the mantel is the mirror which often reflected his handsome features. We
+sit in his embroidered arm-chair by the window, overlooking lawn and
+lake and the wood he planted, and write out upon his plain table the
+memoranda from which this article is prepared. The tourist is told that
+the chamber has never been used since Byron left it; but Irving occupied
+it for some time, as his letters to his brother declare, and a few years
+ago our Joaquin Miller lay here in Byron's bed, and saw, in the
+moonbeams sharply reflected from the mirror into his face, an
+explanation of the ghostly apparitions which Byron beheld in this glass.
+In the adjoining room are a portrait of the poet's "corporeal pastor,"
+Jackson, in arena costume, and a painting of Byron's valet, Joe Murray,
+a bright-looking fellow of pleasing face and faultless attire. This room
+was sometime occupied by Byron's pretty page, whom the housekeeper
+believed to be a girl in masquerade: this page was introduced elsewhere
+as the poet's younger brother Gordon, and an attempt has been made to
+identify her with the mysterious "Thyrza" of his poems, and with
+"Astarte" also. The third room of the suite, Byron's dressing-room and
+study, was one of the haunts of the goblin friar who was heard stalking
+amid the dim cloisters or in the apartments above. Byron's room here is
+the Gothic chamber of the Norman abbey where "Don Juan" slept and
+dreamed of Aurora Raby, and the corridor is the "gallery of sombre hue"
+where he pursued the sable phantom and captured a very material duchess.
+Directly beneath is a panelled apartment of moderate dimensions which
+was Byron's dining-room and the scene of many a revel when the monk's
+skull, brimming with wine, was sent round by the poet's guests. His
+sideboard is still here, his heavy table remains in the middle of the
+room, and the famous skull, mounted as a drinking-cup and inscribed with
+the familiar anacreontic, is carefully preserved. The library is a
+stately and spacious apartment: here, among many mementos of the poet,
+Ada Byron first heard a poem of her father's; here Byron's Italian
+friend la Guiccioli made notes for her "Recollections," and here
+Livingstone penned portions of the books which record his explorations.
+In the grand hall we see the elevated chimney-piece beneath which Byron
+and his guests heaped so great a fire, on the first night of his
+occupancy of the Abbey, that its destruction was threatened. This superb
+apartment, the old dormitory of the monks, was used by the poet as a
+shooting-gallery, and was one of the haunts of his "Black Friar." The
+drawing-room of the mansion is palatial in dimensions and furnishing.
+Its panels and grotesque carvings have been restored, and this ancient
+room, once the refectory of the monks and later the hay-loft of the
+Wicked Byron, is now a marvel of elegance. Here is the familiar portrait
+of Byron at twenty-three, an earlier watercolor picturing him in college
+gown, and a later bust in marble. Here by her desire the body of Ada
+Byron lay in state, and from here it was borne to rest beside her father
+at near-by Hucknall, more than realizing the closing stanzas of the
+third canto of "Childe Harold."
+
+[Sidenote: Relics]
+
+In these stately rooms and in the adjoining corridors are numerous
+priceless relics of the immortal bard; among them, the cap, belt, and
+cimeter he wore in Greece; his foils, spurs, stirrups, and
+boxing-gloves; a painting of his famous dog Boatswain; the bronze
+candlesticks from his writing-table and the table upon which were
+written "Bards and Reviewers," poems of "Hours of Idleness," "Hebrew
+Melodies," and portions of his masterpiece, "Childe Harold." Preserved
+here, with Byron's will, unpublished letters, and scraps of verse, are
+papers which indicate that the poet's _chef-d'oeuvre_ was originally
+designed for private circulation and was entitled "Childe Byron." An
+interesting relic is a section of the noted "twin-tree" bearing the
+names "Byron--Augusta" carved by the poet at his last visit to the
+Abbey. Our own Barnum once visited the place and offered Wildman five
+hundred pounds for this double tree (then standing in the grove),
+intending to remove it for exhibition; the colonel indignantly replied
+that five thousand would not purchase it, and that "the man capable of
+such a project deserved to be gibbeted." Here, too, are the portrait of
+the first lord of Newstead, "John Byron-the-Little-with-the-Great-Beard;"
+the huge iron knocker in use on the door of the Abbey seven centuries
+ago; a collection of mediæval armor and weapons; some personal
+belongings of Livingstone, and many specimens of fauna and flora
+gathered by him and Webb in the dark continent. One vaulted apartment
+of exquisite proportions, erst the sanctuary of the abbot, and later
+Byron's dog-kennel, is now the chapel of the household. Newstead has
+been the abode of royalty, and holds rooms in which, from the time of
+Edward III., kings have often lodged. We see the chamber occupied by
+Ada Byron during her visit; another, adorned with quaint carvings and
+once haunted by Byron-of-the-Great-Beard, was used by Irving. The noble
+chambers contain richly carved furniture, costly tapestries, and beds of
+such altitude that steps are provided for scaling them. The hangings of
+one bed belonged to Prince Rupert, and its counterpane was embroidered
+by Mary Queen of Scots.
+
+[Sidenote: Court and Gardens]
+
+In the centre of the edifice is the quadrangular court, surrounded by a
+series of low-vaulted arcades, once the stables of the Wicked Byron and
+long ago the "cloisters dim and damp" of the monks whose dust moulders
+now beneath the pavement. One crypt-like cell which holds the boilers
+for heating the mansion was Byron's swimming-bath. In the middle of the
+court the ancient stone fountain, with its grotesque sculptures of
+saints and monsters, graven by the patient toil of the monks, still
+sends out sprays of coolness.
+
+We spend delightful hours loitering in the ancient gardens of the friars
+and about their ruined chapel. Through its mighty window, "yawning all
+desolate," pours a flood of western light upon the turf that covers the
+holy ground where congregations knelt in worship; while, amid the dust
+of the priests and near the site of the altar where they "raised their
+pious voices but to pray," Byron's dog lies in a tomb far handsomer than
+that which holds his noble master. It was in excavating Boatswain's
+grave that Byron found the skull afterward used as a drinking-cup. The
+dog's monument consists of a wide pedestal, surmounted by a panelled
+altar-stone which upholds a funeral urn and bears Byron's familiar
+eulogistic inscription and the misanthropic stanzas ending with the
+lines,--
+
+  "To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;
+  I never knew but one, and here he lies."
+
+Other panels were designed to bear the epitaph of Byron, who directed in
+his will (1811) that he should be buried in this spot with his valet and
+dog; it is said to have been discovered that the poet had made careful
+preparation for his entombment here, the stone trestles and slab to
+support his coffin being in place upon the pavement, but the sale of
+Newstead led to his interment elsewhere, and faithful Murray--who
+declined to lie here "alone with the dog"--sleeps near his master.
+
+[Sidenote: Grounds--Recollections]
+
+The gardens of the Abbey lie about its ancient walls: here are the
+fish-pools of the monks; the noble terrace; the "Young Oak" of Byron's
+poem, planted by his hands and now grown into a large and graceful tree;
+other trees rooted by Livingstone and Stanley while guests here. At one
+side is a grove of beeches and yews, in whose gloomy recesses the Wicked
+Byron erected leaden statues of Pan and Pandora, of which the rustics
+were so afraid that they would not go near them after nightfall, and
+which are still respectfully spoken of in the servants' hall as "Mr.
+and Mrs. Devil." Before the mansion lies the lucid lake described in
+"Don Juan:" the forest that shades its shore and sweeps over the farther
+hill-side was planted by Byron to repair the spoliation of his uncle,
+and is called the "Poet's Wood." Upon some of the farms of the domain
+live descendants of Nancy Smith, whom Irving's readers will remember,
+her son having married despite his mother's protest and reared a family.
+One aged servitor claims to remember Irving's visit, and opines "the old
+colonel [Wildman] thought him a very fine man--for an American." He
+recounts some peccadilloes of Joe Murray, traditional among the
+servants, which show that worthy to have been less precise in morals
+than in dress. The ancient Byron estates were among the haunts of one
+whose exploits inspired a book of ballads, and we here see Robin Hood's
+cave and other reminders of the bold outlaw and his "merrie men in
+Lyncolne greene."
+
+Such, briefly, is the condition of Byron's ancestral home as it appears
+nearly eighty years after he saw it for the last time. Besides the
+charms which won his affection and made him relinquish the Abbey with
+such poignant regret, it holds for us an added spell in that it has been
+the habitation of a transcendent genius. Where Wildman's fortune failed
+his wishes the present owner has supplemented his work, until the vast
+pile now gleams with more than its ancient splendor; and, as we take a
+last view through a glade whose beauty fitly frames the picture of the
+restored mansion, we trust that somehow and somewhere Byron knows that
+his hope for his beloved Newstead is accomplished:
+
+  "Haply thy sun emerging yet may shine,
+    Thee to irradiate with meridian ray;
+  Hours splendid as the past may still be thine,
+    And bless thy future as thy former day."
+
+
+
+
+WARWICKSHIRE: THE LOAMSHIRE OF GEORGE ELIOT
+
+_Miss Mulock--Butler--Somervile--Dyer--Rugby--Homes of George Eliot--
+  Scenes of Tales--Cheverel--Shepperton--Milly's Grave--Paddiford--
+  Milby--Coventry, etc.--Characters--Incidents._
+
+
+Some one has said that to write about Warwickshire is to write about
+Shakespeare. True, the transcending fame of the bard of Avon gives the
+places associated with his life and genius pre-eminence, but the
+literary rambler will find in this heart of England other shrines worthy
+of homage. Inevitably our pilgrimage includes the Stratford
+scenes,--from the birthplace and the Hathaway cottage to the fane where
+all the world bows at Shakespeare's tomb,--but, resolutely repressing
+the inclination to describe again these oft-described resorts, we fare
+to less familiar shrines: to the birthplace of the author of "Hudibras"
+and the haunts and tomb of Somervile, poet of "The Chase" and "Rural
+Sports;" to the Rhynhill of Braddon's tale and the Kenilworth of Scott's
+matchless romance; to Bilton, where Addison sometime dwelt, and the
+Calthorpe home of Dyer, bard of "Grongar Hill" and "The Fleece," where
+we find his garden and a tree he planted which shades now his
+battlemented old church; to Rugby, where we see the dormitory of "Tom
+Brown" Hughes, the class-rooms he shared with Clough, Matthew Arnold,
+and Dean Stanley, the grave of the beloved Dr. Arnold in the "Rugby
+Chapel" of his son's poem.
+
+At Avonmouth we find the Norton Bury of "John Halifax," and the old inn
+where Dinah Mulock lived while writing this her popular tale. The inn
+garden holds the yew hedge of the novel, "fifteen feet high and as many
+thick," and the sward over which crept the lame Phineas: sitting there,
+we see the view the boy admired,--the old Abbey tower, the mill of Abel
+Fletcher, the river where the famished rioters fought for the grains the
+grim old man had flung into the water, the green level of the Ham dotted
+with cattle, the white sails of the encircling Severn, the farther sweep
+of country extending to the distant hills,--and hear the sweet-toned
+Abbey chimes and the lazy whir of the mill which sounded so pleasantly
+in Phineas's ears.
+
+[Sidenote: Other Shrines--Loamshire]
+
+[Sidenote: Birthplace and Home of George Eliot]
+
+[Sidenote: Scenes of her Tales]
+
+"John Halifax" was published simultaneously with another tale of
+Warwickshire life, "Amos Barton." We are newly come from the London
+homes of George Eliot and her grave on the Highgate hill-side, and now,
+as we traverse sweet Avonvale, we gladly remember that Shakespeare's
+shire is hers as well. A jaunt of a score of miles from Stratford
+brings us to the scenes amid which she was born and grew to physical and
+mental maturity. Our course by "Avon's stream," bowered by willows or
+bordered by meads, lies past the noble park where Shakespeare did not
+steal deer and the palace of his Justice Shallow where he was not
+arraigned for poaching. (We find it as impossible to keep Shakespeare
+out of our MS. as did Mr. Dick of "Copperfield" to keep Charles I. out
+of the memorial.) Beyond Charlecote is storied Warwick Castle, with the
+old mansion of Compton Wyniates, dwelling of the royalist knight of
+Scott's "Woodstock," not far away. Beyond these again we come to the
+Coventry region and the frontier of the "Loamshire" whose
+characteristics are imaged and whose traditions, phases of life, and
+scenery are wrought with tender touch into poem and tale by George Eliot
+and so made familiar to all the world. Warwickshire scenery is not
+sublime; Dr. Arnold characterized it as "an endless monotony of enclosed
+fields and hedgerow trees." While its landscapes lack striking features,
+theirs is the quiet, unobtrusive beauty which Hawthorne loved and which
+for us is full of restful charm. Across sunny vales and gentle eminences
+we look away to the far-off Malvern Hills, whose shadowy outlines bound
+many a "Loamshire" landscape. We see vistas of low-lying meads with
+circling "lines of willows marking the watercourses;" of slumberous
+expanses of green or golden fields; of villages grouped about gray
+church-towers; of groves of venerable woods,--survivors of Shakespeare's
+"Forest of Arden" which erst clothed the countryside. We find it,
+indeed, "worth the journey hither only to see the hedgerows,"--green,
+fragrant walls of hawthorn which border lane and highway, bound garden
+and field. With their gleaming boughs rayed by bright blossoms and
+festooned with interlacing vines, these barriers are often marvels of
+beauty and strength. Between miles of such hedgerows, and beneath lines
+of overshading elms, a highway running northward from the town of Godiva
+and "Peeping Tom" brings us to the great Arbury property of the
+Newdigates, where we find the South Farm homestead in which Robert
+Evans--newly appointed agent of the estate--temporarily placed his
+family, and where, in the room at the left of the central chimney-stack,
+at five o'clock on the morning of St. Cecilia's day, 1819, his youngest
+child, Mary Ann, was born. It is a broad-eaved, many-gabled, two-storied
+structure of stuccoed stone, with trim hedges and flower-bordered
+garden-beds about it, a wider environment of lawn and woodland, and
+colonnades of the elms which figure in her poems and were already
+venerable when she saw the light beneath their shade. On the same
+estate, near the highway between Bedworth and Nuneaton, is Griff House,
+"the warm nest where her affections were fledged," to which she was
+removed at the age of four months, and where her first score years of
+life were passed. It is a pleasant and picturesque double-storied
+mansion of brick, quaint and comfortable. Massy ivy mantles its walls,
+climbs to its gables, overruns its roofs, peeps in at its tiny-paned
+casements; doves coo upon its ridges. About it flowers shine from their
+setting in the emerald of the lawn, and great trees open their leaves to
+the sunshine and winds of summer. Spacious rooms lie upon either side of
+the entrance: of the one at the left, the novelist gives us a glimpse in
+"The Mill on the Floss." It is a home-like apartment, with low walls and
+a pleasant fireplace; it was the dining-room and sitting-room also in
+the days when "the little wench" Mary Ann was the pet of the household.
+Here she acted charades with her brother Isaac and astonished the family
+by repeating stories from "Miller's Jest Book," a treasured volume of
+hers in that early time. We learn from Maggie Tulliver--in whose
+childhood is pictured the author's inner life as a child--that Defoe's
+"History of the Devil" was another of Mary Ann's juvenile favorites,
+and her relatives preserve the worn copy she used to read here before
+this fireplace with her father, containing the pictures of the drowning
+witch and the devil which little Maggie explained to Mr. Riley in "The
+Mill on the Floss." Here, years afterward, Mary Ann heard, from her
+"Methodist Aunt Samuel," the thrilling story of the girl executed for
+child-murder, which was the germ of the great romance "Adam Bede." The
+aunt, who had been a preacher in earlier life, remained at Griff for
+some time, and George Eliot has told us that the character of Dinah
+Morris grew out of her recollections of this relative. It may be noted
+that in real life Dinah married Seth Bede, Adam being drawn in
+part--like Caleb Garth--from the novelist's father. In this same room,
+but a few years ago, the "Brother" of the poem, who played here at
+charades with little Mary Ann, suddenly expired in his chair but a few
+minutes after his return from "Shepperton Church." The windows of Mary
+Ann's chamber command a reach of the coach-road of "Felix Holt" and a
+farther vista of woodlands and fields; in another chamber is the
+mahogany bed beneath which she was once found hidden to avoid going to
+school. In the roof is the attic which was Maggie Tulliver's retreat,
+where she kept her wooden doll with the nails in its head, and here is
+the chimney-stack against which that vicarious sufferer was ground and
+beaten. The death of her mother, Mrs. Hackit of "Barton," made Mary Ann
+mistress of Griff at sixteen. At Griff's gates stood the cottage of Dame
+Moore's school, where the novelist began her education, and where years
+after she used to collect the children of the vicinage for religious
+instruction each Sabbath. A son of Mrs. Moore lately lived not far away,
+and had more to say in praise of "Mary Hann" than of her surviving
+kinsfolk, who seem ashamed of their relationship to the novelist. In a
+shaded part of the garden lately stood a bower with a stone table, which
+George Eliot doubtless had in mind when she described the finding of
+Casaubon's corpse in the arbor at Lowick. The exhausted quarries in the
+shale close by, a resort of Mary Ann's girlhood, are the "Red Deeps"
+where Maggie met her lover; the "brown canal" of the poem winds through
+the near hollow; and beyond it, on "an apology for an elevation of
+ground," is the "College" workhouse to which Amos Barton walked through
+the sleet to read prayers. Not far distant is Arbury Hall, seat of the
+Newdigates, for whom the tenant of Griff was and is agent. This is the
+Cheverel Manor of "Gilfil," an imposing castellated structure of gray
+stone, with flanking towers and great mullioned windows of multishaped
+panes, famous for its elaborately decorated ceilings. That George Eliot
+had often been within this mansion is shown by her familiarity with the
+arrangement and ornamentation of the rooms, accurately described as
+scenes of many incidents of the tale. In the grounds, too, the imagery
+of the "Love Story" may be perfectly realized: here are the lawn where
+little Caterina sat with Lady Cheverel, and the shimmering pool, with
+its swans and water-lilies, which was searched for her corpse the
+morning of her flight; at a little distance we find "Moss-lands," and
+the cottage of the gardener to which the dead body of Wybrow was
+carried; and, farther away, the spot under giant limes where the poor
+girl, coming to meet her recreant lover "with a dagger in her dress and
+murder in her heart," found him lying dead in the path, his hand
+clutching the dark leaves, his eyes unheeding the "sunlight that darted
+upon them between the boughs." A touching incident in the life of a
+former owner of Arbury was made the plot of Otway's tragedy "The
+Orphan."
+
+[Sidenote: Shepperton Church--Milly's Grave]
+
+A mile northward from Griff is the quaint church of Chilvers Coton,
+where Mary Ann was christened at the age of a week, where a little later
+her "devotional patience" was fostered by smuggled bread-and-butter, and
+where as child and woman she worshipped for twenty years. It is a
+massive stone edifice with Gothic windows, one of them being a memorial
+of the wife of Isaac Evans, and with a square tower rising above its low
+roofs; at one corner, "a flight of stone steps, with their wooden rail
+running up the outer wall," still leads to the children's gallery as in
+the days of Gilfil and Amos Barton, for this is the Shepperton Church of
+the tales. Within we see the memorials of Rev. Gilpin Ebdell (thought to
+be Gilfil) and of the original of Mrs. Farquhar; the place where Gilfil
+read his sermons from manuscript "rather yellow and worn at the edges,"
+and where Barton later "preached without book." About the renovated fane
+is the church-yard, with its grassy mounds and mouldering tombstones,
+one of which, protected by a paling and shaded by leafy boughs, is
+crowned by a funeral urn and marks the spot where Milly was laid,--"the
+sweet mother with her baby in her arms,"--the grave to which Barton came
+back an old man with Patty supporting his infirm steps. Its inscription
+is to "Emma, beloved wife of Revd. John Gwyther, B.A.," curate here in
+George Eliot's girlhood: during his incumbency the community felt
+aggrieved for his wife on account of the prolonged stay at the parsonage
+of a strange woman who, years after, was described as Countess Czerlaski
+by one who as a child had seen her here. Not far from Milly's monument
+the parents of George Eliot lie in one grave, with Isaac, the "Brother"
+of her poem, sleeping near. By the church-yard wall stands the pleasant
+ivy-grown parsonage to which Gilfil brought his dark-eyed bride, and
+where, after brief months of happiness, he lived the long years of
+solitude and sorrow. We see the cosy parlor--smelling no longer of his
+or Barton's pipe--where the lonely old man sat with his dog, and above,
+its pretty window overlooking the garden, the chamber where he tenderly
+cherished the dainty belongings of his dead wife with the unused
+baby-clothes her fingers had fashioned, and where, in another tale, is
+laid one of the most affecting and high-wrought scenes in all fiction,
+the death of Milly Barton.
+
+[Sidenote: Milby--Liggins]
+
+A half-mile distant lies the village of Attleboro, where, at the age of
+five, Mary Ann was sent to Miss Lathorn's school; and a mile southward
+from Griff, in a region blackened by pits, is the town of
+Bedworth,--"dingy with coal-dust and noisy with looms,"--whose men "walk
+with knees bent outward from squatting in the mine," and whose haggard,
+overworked women and dirty children and cottages are pathetically
+pictured in "Felix Holt." Obviously the changes of the half-century
+which has elapsed since George Eliot knew its wretchedness have wrought
+little improvement in this place, over which her nephew is rector: we
+see pale, hungry faces in the streets, squalor in the poor dwellings,
+proofs of pinching poverty everywhere. A little beyond Chilvers Coton we
+find the market-town of Nuneaton, the Milby of the romances. The shaking
+of hand-looms is less noticeable now than in George Eliot's school-days
+here, factories having supplanted the cottage industry; but the dingy,
+smoky town, with its environment of flat fields, is still "nothing but
+dreary prose." Here we find, near the church, "The Elms" of her
+girlhood, a tall brick edifice embowered with ivy; on its garden side,
+the long low-ceiled school-room, with its heavy beams, broad windows,
+and plain furniture, where she was four years a pupil; the dormitory
+whence she beheld the riot which she describes in the election-riot at
+Treby in "Felix Holt." Another vision of her girlhood here was a "tall,
+black-coated young clergyman-in-embryo," Liggins by name, who afterward
+claimed the authorship of her books and so far imposed upon the public
+that a subscription was made for him. Mrs. Gaskell was one of the last
+to relinquish the belief that Liggins was George Eliot. He spent most of
+his time drinking, but did his own house-work, and was found by a
+deputation of literary admirers washing his slop-basin at the pump. All
+about us at Nuneaton lie familiar objects: the cosy Bull Inn is the "Red
+Lion" where, in the opening of "Janet's Repentance," Dempser is
+discovered in theologic discussion, and from whose window he harangued
+the anti-Tyranite mob; the fine old church, with its beautiful oaken
+carvings, is the sanctuary where Mr. Crewe, in brown Brutus wig,
+delivered his "inaudible sermons," and where Mr. Elty preached later;
+adjoining is the parsonage, erst redolent of Crewe's tobacco, where
+Janet helped his deaf wife to spread the luncheon for the bishop, and
+where, in the time of Elty, Barton came to the sessions of the "Clerical
+Meeting and Book Society;" on this Church street, "Orchard Street" of
+Eliot, a quaint stuccoed house with casement windows was Dempser's home,
+whence he thrust his wife at midnight into the darkness and cold; the
+arched passage near by is that through which she fled to the haven of
+Mrs. Pettifer's house. A little way westward amid the pits is
+Stockingford, "Paddiford" of the tale, and the chapel where Mr. Tyran
+preached. A cousin of George Eliot's was recently a coal-master in this
+vicinity.
+
+[Sidenote: Coventry--Birds Grove]
+
+[Sidenote: Coventry Friends]
+
+Eight miles from Griff is Coventry, where our companion is one who had
+met Rossetti there forty years before. George Eliot was sometime a pupil
+of Miss Franklin's school, lately standing in Little Park Street, and
+saw there that lady's father, whom she described as Rev. Rufus Lyon of
+Treby Chapel. His diminutive legs, large head, and other peculiarities
+are yet remembered by some who were in the school; his home is
+accurately pictured in "Felix Holt." In the Foleshill suburb we find the
+stone villa of Birds Grove, which was the home of the novelist after
+Isaac Evans had succeeded his father at Griff. The house has been
+enlarged, but the apartments she knew are little changed: a plain little
+room above the entrance, whose window looked beyond the tree-tops to the
+superb spire of St. Michael's Church,--where Kemble and Siddons were
+married,--was her study, in which, despite her tasks as her father's
+housewife and nurse, she accomplished much literary work. At the right
+of the window stood her desk, with an ivory crucifix above it, and here
+her translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu," undertaken through the
+persuasion of her friends at Rosehill, was written. Some portions of
+this work she found distressing; she declared to Mrs. Bray that nothing
+but the sight of the Christ image enabled her to endure dissecting the
+beautiful story of the crucifixion. Adjoining the study is her modest
+bedchamber, and beyond it that of her father, where during many months
+of sickness she was his sole attendant, often sitting the long night
+through at his bedside with her hand in his. The grounds are little
+changed, save that the occupant has removed much of the foliage which
+formerly shrouded the mansion, but some of George Eliot's favorite trees
+remain on the lawn. Half a mile away is the pretty villa of Rosehill,
+whilom the home of Mrs. Bray and her sister Sara Hennel, who were the
+most valued friends of the novelist's young-womanhood and exerted the
+strongest influence upon her life. Her letters to these friends
+constitute a great part of Cross's "Life." At Rosehill she met Chapman,
+Mackay, Robert Owen, Combe, Thackeray, Herbert Spencer, and others of
+like genius, and here she spent a day with Emerson and wrote next day,
+"I have seen Emerson--the first _man_ I have ever seen." Sara Hennel
+testifies that Emerson was impressed with Miss Evans and declared, "That
+young lady has a serious soul." When he asked her, "What one book do you
+like best?" and she replied, "Rousseau's Confessions," he quickly
+responded, "So do I: there is a point of sympathy between us." After her
+father's death she was for sixteen months a resident at Rosehill, and
+there wrote, among other things, the review of Mackay's "Progress of the
+Intellect." Financial reverses caused the Brays long ago to relinquish
+this beautiful home, but some of this household were lately living in
+another suburb of Coventry and receiving an annuity bequeathed by
+George Eliot. Here, too, lately resided another old-time friend, the
+Mary Sibtree of the novelist's Coventry days, to whom were addressed
+some of the letters used by Cross.
+
+In 1851 George Eliot left this circle of friends to become an inmate of
+Chapman's house in London, returning to them for occasional visits for
+the next few years; then came her union with Lewes, after which the
+loved scenes of her youth knew her no more in the flesh; but the
+allusions to them which run like threads of gold through all her work
+show how oft she revisited them in "shadowy spirit form."
+
+
+
+
+YORKSHIRE SHRINES: DOTHEBOYS HALL AND ROKEBY
+
+_Village of Bowes--Dickens--Squeers's School--The Master and his
+  Family--Haunt of Scott._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Bowes--Dotheboys Hall]
+
+From the familiar shrines of Cumberland, the lakeside haunts of
+Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, a journey across a wild moorland
+region--from whose higher crags we see through the fog-rifts the German
+Ocean and the Irish Sea--brings us into Gretavale, on the northern
+border of great Yorkshire. In the upper portion of the valley, among the
+outlying spurs of the Pennines, the storied Greta flows at the foot of a
+bleak, treeless hill on whose summit we find the village of Bowes. This
+was the Lavatræ of the Romans, who for three centuries had here a
+station, and remains of great Roman works may still be traced in the
+vicinage; but to the literary pilgrim Bowes is chiefly of interest as
+representing "the delightful village of Dotheboys" described in
+Squeers's advertisement of his school in "Nicholas Nickleby." The aspect
+of the village is dreary and desolate in the extreme. A single street,
+steep and straight, bordered by straggling houses of dull gray stone,
+extends along the hill, which is crowned by the church and an ancient
+castle: the dun moors decline steeply on every side, leaving the
+treeless village dismal and bare and often exposed to a wind "fit to
+knock a man off his legs," as Squeers said to Nicholas. In the midst of
+the village stands a cosy inn, where Dickens for some time lodged and
+was visited by John Browdie, and where we are shown the wainscoted
+apartment in which some portion of "Nickleby" was noted. At the time of
+Dickens's sojourn here, Bowes was the centre of the pernicious
+cheap-school system which he came to expose, and half the houses of the
+village were "academies" similar to that of Squeers: among them one is
+pointed out as being the place where Cobden was a pupil. But most
+interesting of all is the large house at the top of the hill which
+Dickens depicted as Dotheboys Hall,--by which name it was long known
+among the older dwellers of the place,--a long, heavy, two-storied,
+dingy structure of stone, with many windows along its front, and
+presenting, despite its bowering vines and trees, an aspect so chill and
+cheerless that one can scarcely conceive of a more depressing domicile
+for the neglected children who once thronged it. Through an archway at
+one end could be seen the pump which was frozen on the first morning of
+Nicholas's stay, and beyond it the garden which, by a surprising
+mistake, Dickens represents a pupil to be weeding on a freezing winter's
+day.
+
+[Sidenote: Squeers]
+
+A few residents of the neighborhood remember the "measther" of Dotheboys
+Hall; his name, like Squeers's, was of one syllable and began with S; in
+person he was not like Squeers, nor was he an ignorant man. A quondam
+pupil of the school informed the writer that Johnny S. was fairly drawn
+as Wackford Squeers, but Miss S. was a young lady of considerable
+refinement and was in no sense like the spiteful Fanny of the tale.
+Squeers had the largest of the schools, and, besides rooms in the
+adjoining house, he hired barns in which to lodge his many pupils. A
+farm attached to his house was cultivated by the scholars, whose food
+was chiefly oatmeal: scanty diet and liberal flogging was the portion of
+all who displeased the master. According to local belief, this school
+was not so bad as some of its neighbors, and no one of the schools
+realized all the wretchedness which Dickens portrays; yet, despite the
+author's avowal that Squeers was a representative of a class, and not an
+individual, the popular identification of this school as the typical
+Dotheboys, and the odium consequent thereupon, wrought its speedy ruin
+and the death of the master and mistress. The latter result is to be
+deplored, for the reason that in the case of this pair the abhorrence
+seems to have been not wholly deserved. Two charges, at least, which
+affected them most painfully--that of goading the boys to suicide and
+that of feeding them upon the flesh of diseased cattle--were, by the
+testimony of their neighbors, unfounded so far as the proprietors of
+this school were concerned. Relatives of Squeers lately occupied
+Dotheboys Hall, which had become a farm-house, and other relatives and
+descendants are respectable denizens of the vicinity. Dickens's exposure
+of the schools led to their extinction and to the consignment of Bowes
+to its present somnolent condition. In the village church-yard lie the
+lovers whose simultaneous deaths were commemorated by Mallet in "Edwin
+and Emma." At Barnard Castle, a few miles away, the prototype of Newman
+Noggs is still traditionally known, and known as "a gentleman."
+
+[Sidenote: Rokeby]
+
+The abounding beauties of the Greta have been painted by Turner and sung
+by Scott, both frequenters of this vale. From Bowes, a ramble along the
+lovely stream, between steep tree-shaded banks where it chafes and
+"greets" over the great rocks, and through mossy dells where it softly
+murmurs its content, brings us to the demesne of Rokeby, where Scott
+laid the scene of his famous poem. On every hand amid this region of
+enchantment, in glade and grove, in riven cliff and headlong torrent, in
+sunny slope and dingle's shade, we recognize the poetic imagery of
+Scott. Every turn reveals some new vista, rendered doubly delightful by
+the romantic associations with which the great poet has invested it. To
+the poet himself Greta's banks were potent allurements, and they were
+his habitual haunts during his sojourns in the valley. A descendant of
+the friend whom Scott visited here and to whom the poem is inscribed,
+points out to us a natural grotto, in the precipitous bank above the
+stream, where the poet often sat, and where some part of "Rokeby" was
+pondered and composed amid the scenery it portrays.
+
+
+
+
+STERNE'S SWEET RETIREMENT
+
+_Sutton--Crazy Castle--Yorick's Church--Parsonage--Where Tristram
+  Shandy and the Sentimental Journey were written--Reminiscences--
+  Newburgh Hall--Where Sterne died--Sepulchre._
+
+
+At historic old York we are fairly in the midst of great Yorkshire:
+standing upon the tower of its colossal cathedral, we overlook half that
+ancient county. At our feet lie the quaint olden streets depicted in
+Collins's "No Name," where erstwhile dwelt Porteus, Defoe, Wallis,
+Lindley Murray, Mrs. Stannard, Poole of "Synopsis Criticorum," Burton
+the author immortalized by Sterne as "Dr. Slop." Below us we see the
+feudal castle where Eugene Aram was hanged, the ancient city wall with
+its gate-ways and battlements, the ruins of mediæval shrine and of Roman
+citadel and necropolis; abroad we behold the vale which Bunsen
+pronounces the "most beautiful in the world (the vale of Normandy
+excepted)," with its streams, its mosaics of green and golden fields and
+sombre woods, its distant border of savage moors and uplands. The Ouse,
+shining like a ribbon of silver, flows at our feet; we may trace its
+course from the hills of Craven on the one hand, while southward we
+behold it "slow winding through the level plain" on its way to the sea;
+into its valley we see the Wharfe flowing from the lovely dale where
+Collyer grew to manhood, and, farther away, the Aire emerging from the
+dreary region where lived the sad sisters Brontë and wove the sombre
+threads of their lives into romance. The Foss flows toward us from the
+northeast, and our view along its valley embraces the region where dwelt
+Sydney Smith, while rising in the north are the Hambleton Hills, which
+shelter the vale where Sterne wrote the books that made him famous.
+Indeed, this region of York is pervaded with memories of that prince of
+sentimentalists: in the great minster beneath us we find the tomb and
+monument of his grandfather, once archbishop of this diocese; in the
+carved pulpit of the minster Sterne preached as prebendary, and here he
+delivered his last sermon; his uncle was a dignitary of the old minster;
+his "indefatigably prolific" mother was native to this region; his wife
+was born here, and was first seen and loved by Sterne within sound of
+the glorious minster bells; most of his adult life was passed within
+sight of the minster towers.
+
+[Sidenote: Crazy Castle]
+
+[Sidenote: Sterne's Church]
+
+At Sutton, Sterne's first living, the pilgrim finds little to reward his
+devotion. Sterne's life here was obscure and, save in preparation,
+unproductive. Skelton Castle was then the seat of his college friend
+Stevenson, author of "Crazy Tales," etc., who was the Eugenius of
+"Shandy," and to whom the "Sentimental Journey" was inscribed. Here
+Sterne found a library rich in rare treatises upon unusual subjects, in
+which, during his stay at Sutton, he spent much time and acquired a fund
+of odd and fanciful learning which constituted in part his equipment for
+his work. We find this castle nearer the stern coast which Yorkshire
+opposes to the endless thunders of the North Sea. Once a Roman
+stronghold, then a feudal fortress and castle of the Bruces, later a
+country-seat, it has since Sterne's time been rebuilt and modernized out
+of all semblance to the "Crazy Castle" of his letters. It is believed
+that only a few of the rooms remain substantially as he knew them. A
+tradition is preserved to the effect that during his visits here he
+bribed the servants to tie the vane with the point toward the west,
+because Eugenius would never leave his bed while an east wind prevailed.
+A near-by hill is called Sterne's Seat, but time has left here little to
+remind us of the sentimental "Yorick" who long haunted the place. It is
+only at Coxwold, fourteen miles from York and in the deeper depths of
+the shire, that we find many remaining objects that were associated with
+his work and with that portion of his life which chiefly concerns the
+literary world. A result of the publication of the first part of
+"Tristram Shandy" was the presentation of this living to its author, and
+his removal to this sequestered retreat, which was to be his home during
+his too few remaining years. The hamlet has now a railway station, but
+the usual approach is by a rustic highway which conducts to and
+constitutes the village street. Within the hamlet we find a low-eaved
+road-side inn, and by it the shaded green where the rural festivals were
+held, and where, to celebrate the coronation of George III., Sterne had
+an ox roasted whole and served with great quantities of ale to his
+parishioners. Just beyond, Sterne's church stands intact upon a gentle
+eminence, overlooking a lovely pastoral landscape bounded by verdant
+hills. The church dates from the fifteenth century and is a pleasing
+structure of perpendicular Gothic style, with a shapely octagonal tower
+embellished with fretted pinnacles and a parapet of graceful design. One
+window has been filled with stained glass, but Sterne's pulpit remains,
+and the interior of the edifice is scarcely changed since he preached
+here his quaint sermons. The walls are plain; the low ceiling is divided
+by beams whose intersections are marked by grotesque bosses; the whole
+effect is depressing, and to the sensitive "Yorick"--haunted as he was
+by habitual dread that his ministrations might provoke a fatal pulmonary
+hemorrhage--it must have been dismal indeed. Among the effigied tombs of
+the Fauconbergs which line the chancel we find that of Sterne's friend
+who gave him this living.
+
+[Sidenote: Shandy Hall]
+
+[Sidenote: Sterne's Parsonage--Study]
+
+Beyond the church and near the highway stands the quaint and picturesque
+old edifice where dwelt Sterne during the eight famous years of his
+life. In his letters he calls it Castle Shandy, and in all the
+countryside it is now known as Shandy Hall, shandy meaning in the local
+dialect crack-brained. It is a long, rambling, low-eaved fabric, with
+many heavy gables and chimneys, and steep roofs of tiles. Curious little
+casements are under the eaves; larger windows look out from the gables
+and are aligned nearer the ground, many of them shaded by the dark ivy
+which clings to the old walls and overruns the roofs. Abutting the
+kitchen is an astounding pyramidal structure of masonry--an Ailsa Craig
+in shape and solidity, yet more resembling Stromboli with its emissions
+of smoke,--which, beginning at the ground as a buttress, terminates as a
+kitchen-chimney and imparts to this portion of the house an
+architectural character altogether unique. Shrubbery grows about the old
+domicile, venerable trees which may have cast their shade upon "Yorick"
+himself are by the door, and the aspect of the place is decidedly
+attractive. To Sir George Wombwell, who inherits the Fauconberg estate
+through a daughter of Sterne's patron, we are indebted for the
+preservation of the exterior of the house in the condition it was when
+Sterne inhabited it; but the interior has been partitioned into two
+dwellings and thus considerably altered. However, we may see the same
+sombre wainscots and low ceiling that Sterne knew, and we find the one
+room which interests us most--Sterne's parlor and study--little changed.
+It is a pleasant apartment, with windows looking into the garden, where
+stood the summer-house in which he sometimes wrote, and beyond which was
+the sward where "my uncle Toby" habitually demonstrated the siege of
+Namur and Dendermond. On the low walls of this room Sterne disposed his
+seven hundred books,--"bought at a purchase dog-cheap,"--and here he
+wrote, besides his sermons, seven volumes of "Tristram Shandy" and the
+"Sentimental Journey." There is a local tradition that other MSS.
+written here were found by the succeeding tenant and used to line the
+hangings of the room. Sterne's letters afford glimpses of him in this
+room: in one we see him "before the fire, with his cat purring beside
+him;" in another he is "sitting here and cudgelling his brains" for
+ideas, though he usually wrote facilely and rapidly; in another he shows
+us a prettier picture, in which "My Lydia" (his daughter) "helps to copy
+for me, and my wife knits and listens as I read her chapters;" and
+later, after his estrangement from Mrs. Sterne, we see him "sitting here
+alone, as sad and solitary as a tomcat, which by the way is all the
+company I keep." In the repose of this charming place, and amid the
+peaceful influences about him here in his pretty home, Sterne appears at
+his best. And here for a time he was happy; we find his letters
+attesting, "I am in high spirits, care never enters this cottage;" "I am
+happy as a prince at Coxwold;" "I wish you could see in what a princely
+manner I live. I sit down to dinner--fish and wild fowl, or a couple of
+fowls, with cream and all the simple plenty a rich valley can produce,
+with a clean cloth on my table and a bottle of wine on my right hand to
+drink your health." But the melancholy days came all too soon; the
+"bursting of vessels in his lungs" became more and more frequent, his
+struggle with dread consumption was inaugurated, and now his letters
+from the pretty parsonage abound with references to his "vile cough,
+weak nerves, dismal headaches," etc. Now his "sweet retirement" has
+become "a cuckoldy retreat;" he complains of its situation, of its
+"death-doing, pestiferous wind." Returning to it from a sentimental
+journey or from a brilliant season of lionizing in London, he finds its
+quiet and seclusion insufferably irksome. Mortally ill, growing old,
+hopelessly estranged from his wife, deprived of the companionship of his
+idolized child, the poor master of Castle Shandy is "sad and desolate,"
+his "pleasures are few," he sits "alone in silence and gloom." Such were
+some of the diverse phases of his life which these dumb walls have
+witnessed; in the dismalest, they have seen him at his desk here,
+resolutely ignoring his ills and tracing the passages of wit and fancy
+which were to delight the world. The incomplete "Sentimental Journey"
+was written in his last months of life.
+
+A mile from Sterne's cottage, and approached by a way oft trodden by him
+and his "little Lyd," is Newburgh Hall, the ancient seat of Sterne's
+friend. Parts of the walls of a priory founded here in 1145 are
+incorporated into the oldest portion of the hall, and this has been
+added to by successive generations until a great, incongruous pile has
+resulted, which, however, is not devoid of picturesque beauty. Within
+this mansion Sterne was a familiar guest: urged by the friendly
+persistence of Fauconberg, he frequently came here to chat or dine with
+his friend and the guests of the hall, his brilliant converse making
+him the life of the company. Among the family portraits here are that of
+his benefactor and one of Mary Cromwell, wife of the second Fauconberg,
+who preserved here many relics of the great Protector, including his
+bones, which were somehow rescued from Tyburn and concealed in a mass of
+masonry in an upper apartment of the hall.
+
+Sterne was not only popular with his lordly neighbor of Newburgh, but
+also, improbable as it would seem, with the illiterate yeomen who were
+his parishioners: although they understood not the sermons and found the
+sermonizer in most regards a hopeless enigma, yet, according to the
+traditions of the place, these simple folk discerned something in the
+complexly blended character of the creator of "my uncle Toby" which
+elicited their esteem and prompted many acts of love and service. In a
+letter to an American friend, Arthur Lee, Sterne writes, "Not a
+parishioner catches a hare, a rabbit, or a trout, but he brings it an
+offering to me."
+
+[Sidenote: Place of Sterne's Death and Burial]
+
+As set forth by the inscription at Sterne's cottage, he died in London.
+One autumn day we find ourselves pondering the sad event of his last
+sojourn in the great city, as we stand upon the spot where his
+"truceless fight with disease" was ended, barely a fortnight after the
+"Sentimental Journey" was issued. His wish to die "untroubled by the
+concern of his friends and the last service of wiping his brows and
+smoothing his pillow" was literally realized. During the publication of
+the "Journey" he lodged in rooms above a silk-bag shop in Old Bond
+Street; here he rapidly sank, and in the evening of March 18, 1768,
+attended only by a hireling who robbed his body, and in the presence of
+a staring footman, the dying man suddenly cried, "Now it is come!" and,
+raising his hand as if to repel a blow, expired. A few furlongs distant,
+opposite Hyde Park, we find an old cemetery hidden from the streets by
+houses and high walls which shut out the din of the great city. Here, in
+seclusion almost as complete as that of the graveyard of his own
+Coxwold, Sterne was consigned to earth. The spot is overlooked by the
+windows of Thackeray's sometime home. An old tree stands close by, and
+in its boughs the birds twitter above us as we essay to read the
+inscription which marks Sterne's poor sepulchre. But, mean and neglected
+as it is, we may never know that his ashes found rest even here; a
+report which has too many elements of probability and which never was
+disproved, avers that the grave was desecrated and that a
+horror-stricken friend recognized Sterne's mutilated corse upon the
+dissecting-table of a medical school. "Alas, poor Yorick!"
+
+
+
+
+HAWORTH AND THE BRONTËS
+
+_The Village--Black Bull Inn--Church--Vicarage--Memory-haunted
+  Rooms--Brontë Tomb--Moors--Brontë Cascade--Wuthering Heights--Humble
+  Friends--Relic and Recollection._
+
+
+Other Brontë shrines have engaged us,--Guiseley, where Patrick Brontë
+was married and Neilson worked as a mill-girl; the lowly Thornton home,
+where Charlotte was born; the cottage where she visited Harriet
+Martineau; the school where she found Caroline Helstone and Rose and
+Jessy Yorke; the Fieldhead, Lowood, and Thornfield of her tales; the
+Villette where she knew her hero; but it is the bleak Haworth hill-top
+where the Brontës wrote the wonderful books and lived the pathetic lives
+that most attracts and longest holds our steps. Our way is along
+Airedale, now a highway of toil and trade, desolated by the need of
+hungry poverty and greed of hungrier wealth: meads are replaced by
+blocks of grimy huts, groves are supplanted by factory chimneys that
+assoil earth and heaven, the once "shining" stream is filthy with the
+refuse of many mills. At Keighley our walk begins, and, although we have
+no peas in our "pilgrim shoon," the way is heavy with memories of the
+sad sisters Brontë who so often trod the dreary miles which bring us to
+Haworth. The village street, steep as a roof, has a pavement of rude
+stones, upon which the wooden shoes of the villagers clank with an
+unfamiliar sound. The dingy houses of gray stone, barren and ugly in
+architecture, are huddled along the incline and encroach upon the narrow
+street. The place and its situation are a proverb of ugliness in all the
+countryside; one dweller in Airedale told us that late in the evening of
+the last day of creation it was found that a little rubbish was left,
+and out of that Haworth was made. But, grim and rough as it is, the
+genius of a little woman has made the place illustrious and draws to it
+visitors from every quarter of the world. We are come in the "glory
+season" of the moors, and as we climb through the village we behold
+above and beyond it vast undulating sweeps of amethyst-tinted hills
+rising circle beyond circle,--all now one great expanse of purple bloom
+stirred by zephyrs which waft to us the perfume of the heather.
+
+[Sidenote: Black Bull Inn]
+
+At the hill-top we come to the Black Bull Inn, where one Brontë drowned
+his genius in drink, and from our apartment here we look upon all the
+shrines we seek. The inn stands at the church-yard gates, and is one of
+the landmarks of the place. Long ago preacher Grimshaw flogged the
+loungers from its tap-room into chapel; here Wesley and Whitefield
+lodged when holding meetings on the hill-top; here Brontë's predecessor
+took refuge from his riotous parishioners, finally escaping through the
+low casement at the back,--out of which poor Branwell Brontë used to
+vault when his sisters asked for him at the door. This inn is a quaint
+structure, low-eaved and cosy; its furniture is dark with age. We sleep
+in a bed once occupied by Henry J. Raymond, and so lofty that steps are
+provided to ascend its heights. Our meals are served in the
+old-fashioned parlor to which Branwell came. In a nook between the
+fireplace and the before-mentioned casement stood the tall arm-chair,
+with square seat and quaintly carved back, which was reserved for him.
+The landlady denied that he was summoned to entertain travellers here:
+"he never needed to be sent for, he came fast enough of himsel'." His
+wit and conviviality were usually the life of the circle, but at times
+he was mute and abstracted and for hours together "would just sit and
+sit in his corner there." She described him as a "little, red-haired,
+light-complexioned chap, cleverer than all his sisters put together.
+What they put in their books they got from him," quoth she, reminding us
+of the statement in Grundy's Reminiscences that Branwell declared he
+invented the plot and wrote the major part of "Wuthering Heights."
+Certain it is he possessed transcending genius and that in this room
+that genius was slain. Here he received the message of renunciation from
+his depraved mistress which finally wrecked his life; the landlady,
+entering after the messenger had gone, found him in a fit on the floor.
+Emily Brontë's rescue of her dog, an incident recorded in "Shirley,"
+occurred at the inn door.
+
+[Sidenote: Church--Brontë Tomb]
+
+The graveyard is so thickly sown with blackened tombstones that there is
+scant space for blade or foliage to relieve its dreariness, and the
+villagers, for whom the yard is a thoroughfare, step from tomb to tomb:
+in the time of the Brontës the village women dried their linen on these
+graves. Close to the wall which divides the church-yard from the
+vicarage is a plain stone set by Charlotte Brontë to mark the grave of
+Tabby, the faithful servant who served the Brontës from their childhood
+till all but Charlotte were dead. The very ancient church-tower still
+"rises dark from the stony enclosure of its yard;" the church itself has
+been remodelled and much of its romantic interest destroyed. No
+interments have been made in the vaults beneath the aisles since Mr.
+Brontë was laid there. The site of the Brontë pew is by the chancel;
+here Emily sat in the farther corner, Anne next, and Charlotte by the
+door, within a foot of the spot where her ashes now lie. A former
+sacristan remembered to have seen Thackeray and Miss Martineau sitting
+with Charlotte in the pew. And here, almost directly above her
+sepulchre, she stood one summer morning and gave herself in marriage to
+the man who served for her as "faithfully and long as did Jacob for
+Rachel." The Brontë tablet in the wall bears a uniquely pathetic record,
+its twelve lines registering eight deaths, of which Mr. Brontë's, at the
+age of eighty-five, is the last. On a side aisle is a beautiful stained
+window inscribed "To the Glory of God, in Memory of Charlotte Brontë, by
+an American citizen." The list shows that most of the visitors come from
+America, and it was left for a dweller in that far land to set up here
+almost the only voluntary memento of England's great novelist. A worn
+page of the register displays the tremulous autograph of Charlotte as
+she signs her maiden name for the last time, and the signatures of the
+witnesses to her marriage,--Miss Wooler, of "Roe Head," and Ellen Nussy,
+who is the E of Charlotte's letters and the Caroline of "Shirley."
+
+[Sidenote: Brontë Parsonage--Apartments]
+
+The vicarage and its garden are out of a corner of the church-yard and
+separated from it by a low wall. A lane lies along one side of the
+church-yard and leads from the street to the vicarage gates. The garden,
+which was Emily's care, where she tended stunted shrubs and borders of
+unresponsive flowers and where Charlotte planted the currant-bushes, is
+beautiful with foliage and flowers, and its boundary wall is overtopped
+by a screen of trees which shuts out the depressing prospect of the
+graves from the vicarage windows and makes the place seem less "a
+church-yard home" than when the Brontës inhabited it. The dwelling is of
+gray stone, two stories high, of plain and sombre aspect. A wing is
+added, the little window-panes are replaced by larger squares, the stone
+floors are removed or concealed, curtains--forbidden by Mr. Brontë's
+dread of fire--shade the windows, and the once bare interior is
+furbished and furnished in modern style; but the arrangement of the
+apartments is unchanged. Most interesting of these is the Brontë parlor,
+at the left of the entrance; here the three curates of "Shirley" used to
+take tea with Mr. Brontë and were upbraided by Charlotte for their
+intolerance; here the sisters discussed their plots and read each
+other's MSS.; here they transmuted the sorrows of their lives into the
+stories which make the name of Brontë immortal; here Emily, "her
+imagination occupied with Wuthering Heights," watched in the darkness to
+admit Branwell coming late and drunken from the Black Bull; here
+Charlotte, the survivor of all, paced the night-watches in solitary
+anguish, haunted by the vanished faces, the voices forever stilled, the
+echoing footsteps that came no more. Here, too, she lay in her coffin.
+The room behind the parlor was fitted by Charlotte for Nichols's study.
+On the right was Brontë's study, and behind it the kitchen, where the
+sisters read with their books propped on the table before them while
+they worked, and where Emily (prototype of "Shirley"), bitten by a dog
+at the gate of the lane, took one of Tabby's glowing irons from the fire
+and cauterized the wound, telling no one till danger was past. Above the
+parlor is the chamber in which Charlotte and Emily died, the scene of
+Nichols's loving ministrations to his suffering wife. Above Brontë's
+study was his chamber; the adjoining children's study was later
+Branwell's apartment and the theatre of the most terrible tragedies of
+the stricken family; here that ill-fated youth writhed in the horrors of
+_mania-a-potu_; here Emily rescued him--stricken with drunken
+stupor--from his burning couch, as "Jane Eyre" saved Rochester; here he
+breathed out his blighted life erect upon his feet, his pockets filled
+with love-letters from the perfidious woman who wrought his ruin. Even
+now the isolated site of the parsonage, its environment of graves and
+wild moors, its exposure to the fierce winds of the long winters, make
+it unspeakably dreary; in the Brontë time it must have been cheerless
+indeed. Its influence darkened the lives of the inmates and left its
+fateful impression upon the books here produced. Visitors are rarely
+admitted to the vicarage; among those against whom its doors have been
+closed is the gifted daughter of Charlotte's literary idol, to whom
+"Jane Eyre" was dedicated, Thackeray.
+
+[Sidenote: The Moors]
+
+By the vicarage lane were the cottage of Tabby's sister, the school the
+Brontës daily visited, and the sexton's dwelling where the curates
+lodged. Behind the vicarage a savage expanse of gorse and heather rises
+to the horizon and stretches many miles away: a path oft trodden by the
+Brontës leads between low walls from their home to this open moor, their
+habitual resort in childhood and womanhood. The higher plateaus afford a
+wide prospect, but, despite the August bloom and fragrance and the
+delightful play of light and shadow along the sinuous sweeps, the aspect
+of the bleak, treeless, houseless waste of uplands is even now
+dispiriting; when frosts have destroyed its verdure and wintry skies
+frown above, its gloom and desolation must be terrible beyond
+description. Remembering that the sisters found even these usually
+dismal moors a welcome relief from their tomb of a dwelling, we may
+appreciate the utter dreariness of their situation and the pathos of
+Charlotte's declaration, "I always dislike to leave Haworth, it takes so
+long to be content again after I return." We trace the steps of the
+Brontës across the moor to the cascade, called now the "Brontë Falls,"
+where a brooklet descends over great boulders into a shaded glen. This
+was their favorite excursion, and as we loiter here we recall their many
+visits to the spot: first they came four children to play upon these
+rocks; later came three grave maidens with Caroline Helstone or Rose
+Yorke; later came two saddened women; and then Charlotte came alone,
+finding the moor a featureless wilderness full of torturing reminders of
+her dead, and seeing their vanished forms "in the blue tints, the pale
+mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon." Later still, during her
+few months of happiness, she came here many times with her husband, and
+her last walk on earth was made with him to see the cascade "in its
+winter wildness and power."
+
+[Sidenote: Wuthering Heights]
+
+Above the village was the parsonage of Grimshaw and the original
+"Wuthering Heights." It was a sombre structure; a few trees grew about
+it, the moors rose behind; the apartments were like the oak-lined,
+stone-paved interior pictured in the tale, while the inscription above
+the door, H E 1659, was changed to Hareton Earnshaw 1500 by Miss
+Brontë, who described here much of her own grandfather's early life and
+suffering and portrayed his wife in Catherine Linton. It is notable that
+the name Earnshaw and other names in the Brontë books may be seen on
+shop-signs along the way the sisters walked to Keighley.
+
+[Sidenote: Recollections of the Brontës]
+
+Among the villagers we meet some who remember the Brontës with affection
+and pride. We find them so uniformly courteous that we are willing to
+doubt Mrs. Gaskell's ascriptions of surly rudeness. They indignantly
+deny the statements of Reid, Gaskell, and others regarding the character
+of Mr. Brontë. One whose relations to that clergyman entitle him to
+credence assures us that Brontë did not destroy his wife's silk dress,
+nor burn his children's colored shoes, nor discharge pistols as a
+safety-valve for his temper: "he didn't have that sort of a temper." It
+would appear that many charges of the biographers were made upon the
+authority of a peculating servant whom Brontë had angered by dismissal.
+Some parishioners testify that "the Brontës had odd ways of their own,"
+"went their gait and didn't meddle o'ermuch with us;" "nobody had a word
+against them." Charlotte's husband, too, became popular after her death,
+perhaps at first because of his tender care of her father: "to see the
+good old man and Nichols together when the rest were dead, and Mr.
+Brontë so helpless and blind, was just a pretty sight." We hear more
+than once of Brontë's wonderful cravat: he habitually covered it
+himself, putting on new silk without removing the old, until in the
+course of years it became one of the sights of the place, having
+acquired such phenomenal proportions that it concealed half his head.
+Many still remember hearing him preach from the depths of this cravat,
+while the sexton perambulated the aisles with a staff to stir up the
+sleepers and threaten the lads. Mr. Wood, a cabinet-maker of the
+village, was church-warden in Brontë's incumbency and an intimate friend
+of the family till the death of the last member: his loving hands
+fashioned the coffins for them all. He was sent for to see Richmond's
+portrait of Charlotte on its arrival, and was laughed at by that lady
+for not recognizing the likeness; while Tabby insisted that a portrait
+of Wellington, which came in the same case, was a picture of Mr. Brontë.
+That clergyman often complained to Wood that Mrs. Gaskell "tried to make
+us all appear as bad as she could." We find some survivors of
+Charlotte's Sunday-school class among the villagers. From one, who was
+also singer in Brontë's church choir, we obtain pictures of the church
+and rectory as they appeared in Charlotte's lifetime and a photographic
+copy of Branwell's painting of himself and sisters, in which the
+likenesses are said to be excellent. Charlotte is remembered as being
+"good looking," having a wealth of lustrous hair and remarkably
+expressive eyes. She was usually neatly apparelled in black, and was so
+small that when Mrs. F. entered her class, at the age of twelve, the
+pupil was larger than the teacher. Another of Charlotte's class
+remembers her as being nervously quick in all her movements and a rapid
+walker; a third stood in the church-yard and saw her pass from the
+vicarage to the church on the morning of her marriage wearing a very
+plain bridal dress and a white bonnet trimmed with green leaves. A few
+brief months later this person, from the same spot, beheld the mortal
+part of her immortal friend borne by a grief-stricken company along the
+same path to her burial. In the hands of another of Charlotte's pupils
+we see a volume of the original edition of the poems of the three
+sisters, presented by Charlotte, and a Yorkshire collection of hymns
+which contains some of Anne's sweet verses.
+
+[Sidenote: Branwell Brontë--Brontë Relics]
+
+It is evident that, of all the family, the hapless Branwell was most
+admired by the villagers. They delight to extol his pleasant manners,
+his ready repartee, his wonderful learning, his ambidextrousness, his
+personal courage. On one occasion restraint was required to prevent his
+attacking alone a dozen mill-rioters, "any one of whom could have put
+him in his pocket." Holding a pen in each hand, he could simultaneously
+write letters on two dissimilar subjects while he discoursed on a third.
+Wood thought him naturally the brightest of the family, and believed
+that lack of occupation, in a place where there was nothing to stimulate
+mental effort, accounted for his vices and failures. He came often with
+his sisters to Wood's house, and would talk by the hour of his projects
+to achieve fame and fortune. One of his associates preserved some
+letters received from him while he was "away tutoring," in which he
+shamelessly recorded his follies and referred to himself as a "Joseph in
+Egypt." A local society has collected in its museum some Brontë
+mementos: a relative of Martha, Tabby's successor in the household,
+saved a few,--Charlotte's silken purse, her thimble-case and some
+articles of dress, elementary drawings made by the sisters, autograph
+letters of Charlotte and her copies of the "Quarterly" and other
+periodicals in which she had read the reviews of "Jane Eyre." Among the
+treasures Wood preserved were sketches by Emily and Branwell; a
+signatured set of Brontë volumes presented by Brontë the day before his
+death; Charlotte's worn history containing annotations in her
+microscopic chirography; a copy of "Jane Eyre" presented by Charlotte
+before its authorship was ascertained; an article on "Advantages of
+Poverty," by Mrs. Brontë; a highly graphic tale and religious poems by
+Mr. Brontë. Comment upon the latter reminded Wood that Brontë had shown
+him some poems by an Irish ancestor Hugh Brontë, and that he had met at
+the vicarage an irate relative who came from Ireland with a shillalah to
+"break the head" of a cruel critic of "Jane Eyre." Most of the Brontë
+belongings were removed by Mr. Nichols. He served the parish
+assiduously, as the people declare, for fifteen years, and at Brontë's
+death they desired that Nichols should succeed him; but the living was
+bestowed upon a stranger, and Nichols removed to the south of Ireland,
+where he married his cousin and is now a gentleman farmer. Martha Brown,
+the devoted servant of the family, accompanied him, and Nancy
+Wainwright, the Brontës' nurse, died some years ago in Bradford
+workhouse: so every living vestige of the family has disappeared from
+the vicinage.
+
+[Sidenote: Charlotte Brontë's Husband]
+
+A resident of near-by Wharfedale lately possessed a package of
+Charlotte's essays, written at the Brussels school and amended by "M.
+Paul." Study of these confirms the belief that she was for a time
+tortured by a hopeless love for her preceptor, husband of "Madame Beck,"
+and that it was this wretched passage in her life, rather than the fall
+of her brother, which "drove her to literary speech for relief." Her
+marriage with Nichols was eventually happy, but her own descriptions of
+him show that his were not the attributes that would please her fancy or
+readily gain her love. In "Shirley" she writes of him as successor of
+Malone: "the circumstance of finding himself invited to tea with a
+Dissenter would unhinge him for a week; the spectacle of a Quaker
+wearing his hat in church, the thought of an unbaptized fellow-creature
+being interred with Christian rites, these things would make strange
+havoc in his physical and mental economy." In a letter to E. Charlotte
+writes, "I am _not_ to marry Mr. Nichols. I couldn't think of mentioning
+such a rumor to him, even as a joke. It would make me the laughing-stock
+of himself and fellow-curates for half a year to come. They regard me as
+an old maid, and I regard them, _one and all_, as highly uninteresting,
+narrow, and unattractive specimens of the coarser sex." Why then did she
+finally accept Mr. Nichols? Was it not from the same motive that had led
+her to reject his addresses not long before, the desire to please her
+father?
+
+
+
+
+EARLY HAUNTS OF ROBERT COLLYER: EUGENE ARAM
+
+_Childhood Home--Ilkley Scenes, Friends, Smithy, Chapel--
+  Bolton-Associations--Wordsworth--Rogers--Eliot--Turner--Aram's
+  Homes--Schools--Place of the Murder--Gibbet--Probable Innocence._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Early Home--School]
+
+The factory-town of Keighley,--amid the moors of western Yorkshire,--to
+which the Brontë pilgrimage brings us, becomes itself an object of
+interest when we remember it was the birthplace of Robert Collyer. On a
+dingy side-street resonant with the din of spindles and looms and
+sullied with soot from factory chimneys, of humble parentage, and in a
+home not less lowly than that of another Yorkshire blacksmith in which
+Faraday was born, our orator and author first saw the light. Collyer
+came to Keighley "only to be born," and soon was removed to the lovely
+Washburndale, a few miles away. Here we find the place of the boyhood
+home he has made known to us--the cottage of two rooms with whitewashed
+walls and floor of flags--occupied by the mansion of a mill-owner, and
+the Collyer family vanished from the vicinage. "Little Sam," the
+kind-hearted father, fell dead at his anvil one summer day; the
+blue-eyed, fair-haired mother, of whom the preacher so loves to speak,
+died in benign age; and the boisterous bairns who once filled the
+cottage are scattered in the Old World and the New. A little way down
+the sparkling burn is the picturesque old church of Fewston, where
+Collyer was christened, where Amos Barton of George Eliot's tale later
+preached, and where the poet Edward Fairfax--of the ancient family which
+gave to Virginia its best blood--was buried with his child who "was held
+to have died of witchcraft." Near by was Collyer's school, taught by a
+crippled and cross-eyed old fiddler named Willie Hardie, who survived at
+our first sojourn in the dale and had much to tell about his pupil
+"Boab," whom he had often "fairly thrashed." Collyer's school education
+ended in his eighth year, and he was early apprenticed at Ilkley, in the
+next valley, where he grew to physical manhood and attained to a measure
+of that intellectual stature which has since been recognized.
+
+[Sidenote: Companions]
+
+[Sidenote: Collyer's Humble Friends--The Smithy]
+
+At Ilkley we find some who remember when Collyer came first, a stripling
+lad, to work in "owd Jackie's" smithy, and who in the long-ago worked,
+played, and fought with him in the village or read with him on the
+moors. One remembers that he was from the first an insatiable student,
+often reading as he plied the bellows or switched the flies from a
+customer's horse. His master "Jackie" Birch, who was native of Eugene
+Aram's home, is recalled as a selfish and unpopular man, who had no
+sympathy with the lad's studious habit, but tolerated it when it did not
+interfere with his work. Collyer's love of books was contagious, and
+soon a little circle of lads habitually assembled, whenever released
+from toil, to read with him the volumes borrowed from friends or
+purchased by clubbing their own scant hoards. A survivor of this group
+walked with us through the village, pointing out the spots associated
+with Collyer's life here, and afterward showed us upon the slopes of the
+overlooking hills the nooks where the lads read together in summer
+holidays. Collyer was especially intimate with the Dobsons: of these
+John was best beloved, because he shared most fully Collyer's studies
+and aspirations; between the two an affectionate friendship was formed
+which, despite long separation and disparity of position,--for John
+remained a laborer,--ended only with his death. When, thirty years ago,
+Collyer--honored and famous--revisited the scenes of his early struggles
+and was eagerly invited to opulent and cultured homes, he turned away
+from all to abide in the humble cottage of Dobson, which we found near
+the site of the smithy and occupied by others who were friends of
+Collyer's youth. His associates of the early time--some of them old and
+poor--tell us with obvious pleasure and pride of his visits to their
+poor homes in these later summers when he comes to the place, and we
+suspect he often leaves with them more substantial tokens of his
+remembrance than kind words and wishes: indeed, he once made us his
+almoner to the more needy of them, one of whom we found in the
+workhouse. Some of his old-time friends recall the circumstances of his
+conversion under the preaching of a Wesleyan named Bland, his own
+eloquent and touching prayers, and his first timorous essays to conduct
+the services of the little chapel to which the villagers were bidden by
+the bellman, who proclaimed through the streets, "The blacksmith will
+preach t'night." When he preaches at Ilkley now, the Assembly-rooms are
+thronged with friends, old and new, eager to hear him. "Jackie" sleeps
+with his fathers, and the smithy is replaced by a modern cottage, into
+whose masonry many blackened stones from the old forge were
+incorporated. One of Collyer's chums showed us the door of the smithy
+which he had rescued from demolition and religiously preserved, and
+presented us with a photograph which we were assured represents the
+building just as Collyer knew it,--a long, low fabric of stone, with a
+shed joined at one end, two forge chimneys rising out of the roof, and
+the rough doors and window-shutters placarded with public notices.
+Before the forge was demolished, the large two-horned anvil on which
+Collyer wrought twelve years was bought for a price and removed to
+Chicago, where it is still preserved in the study of Unity Church,
+albeit Collyer long ago predicted to the writer, with a characteristic
+twinkle and a sweet hint of the dialect his tongue was born to, "they'll
+soon be sellin' _thet_ for old iron."
+
+[Sidenote: Wharfedale Antiquities]
+
+The health-giving waters of the hill-sides attract hundreds of invalids
+and idlers, and the Ilkley of to-day is a smart town of well-kept
+houses, hotels, and shops, amid which we find here and there a quaint
+low-roofed structure which is a relic of the village of Collyer's
+boyhood. Among the survivals is the chapel--now a local museum,
+inaugurated by Collyer--where our "blacksmith" was converted and where
+he labored at the spiritual anvil as a local preacher. He has told us
+that for his labors in the Wesleyan pulpit during several years in
+Yorkshire and America he received in all seven dollars and fifty cents;
+he expounded for love, but pounded for a living. Another survival is the
+ancient parish church, built upon the site of the Roman fortress Olicana
+and of stones from its ruined walls, which preserves in its masonry many
+antiquarian treasures of Roman sculpture and inscription. Standing
+without are three curious monolithic columns, graven with mythological
+figures of men, dragons, birds, etc., which give them an archæological
+value beyond price. A doltish rector damaged them by using them as
+gate-posts; from this degradation the hands of Collyer helped to rescue
+them, and the same hands fashioned at the forge the neat iron gates
+which enclose the church-yard.
+
+[Sidenote: Scenery]
+
+By the village and through the dale which Gray thought so beautiful
+flows the Wharfe; winding amid verdant meads, rushing between lofty
+banks, or loitering in sunny shallows, it holds its shining course to
+the Ouse, beyond the fateful field of Towton, where the red rose of
+Lancaster went down in blood. Ilkley nestles cosily at the foot of green
+slopes which swell away from the stream and are dotted with copses and
+embowered villas. Farther away the dim lines rise to the heights of the
+Whernside, whence we look to the chimneys of Leeds and the towers of
+York's mighty minster. Detached from Rumbald's cliffs lie two masses,
+called "Cow and Calf Rocks," bearing the imprint of giant Rumbald's
+foot: these rocks are a resort of the young people, and here Collyer and
+his friends oft came with their books. From this point Wharfedale, domed
+by a summer sky, seems a paradise of loveliness; its every aspect, from
+the glinting stream to the highest moorland crags, is replete with the
+beauty Turner loved to paint and which here first inspired his genius.
+Ruskin discerns this Wharfedale scenery throughout the great artist's
+works, bits of its beauty being unconsciously wrought into other scenes.
+These landscapes were a daily vision to the eyes of Collyer in the days
+when Turner still came to the neighborhood. This region abounds with
+memorials of the mighty past, with treasures of Druidical, Runic, and
+Roman history and tradition, but the literary pilgrim finds it rife with
+associations for him still more interesting: here lived the ancestors of
+our Longfellow, and the family whence Thackeray sprang; the fathers of
+that gentle singer, Heber, dwelt in their castle here and sleep now
+under the pavement of the church; a little way across the moors the
+Brontës dwelt and died. Here, too, lived the Fairfaxes,--one of them a
+poet and translator of Tasso,--and among their tombs we find that of
+Fawkes of Farnley, Turner's early friend and patron, while at the
+near-by hall are the rooms the painter occupied during the years he was
+transferring to canvas the beauties he here beheld. Farnley holds the
+best private collection of Turner's works, comprising, besides many
+finished pictures, numerous drawings and color-sketches made here.
+
+[Sidenote: Bolton Abbey]
+
+A delightful excursion from Ilkley, one never omitted by Collyer from
+his summer saunterings in Wharfedale, is to the sacred shades of Bolton
+Abbey. The way is enlivened with the prattle and sheen of the limpid
+Wharfe. A mile past the hamlet of Addingham, where Collyer preached his
+first sermon, the stream curves about a slight eminence which is crowned
+by the ruins of the ancient shrine. Some portions of the walls are
+fallen and concealed by shrubbery; other portions withstand the ravages
+of the centuries, and we see the crumbling arches, ruined cloisters, and
+mullioned windows, mantled with masses of ivy and bloom and set in the
+scene of restful beauty which Turner painted and Rogers and Wordsworth
+poetized. Our pleasure in the ruin and its environment of wood, mead,
+and stream is enhanced by the companionship of one who had, on another
+summer's day, explored the charms of the spot with George Eliot, and who
+repeats to us her expressions of rapturous delight at each new vista.
+Wordsworth loved this spot, and the incident to which the Abbey owed its
+erection--the drowning of young Romilly, the noble "Boy of Egremond," in
+the gorge near by--is beautifully told by him in the familiar poems
+written here.
+
+[Sidenote: Nidderdale]
+
+[Sidenote: Aram's Schools]
+
+Another excursion, by Knaresborough and the deadly field of Marston
+Moor, brings us into lovely Nidderdale, where stalks the dusky ghost of
+the Eugene Aram of Bulwer's tale and Hood's poem amid the scenes of his
+early life and of the crime for which he died. In the upper portion of
+the valley the Nidd winds like a ribbon of silver between green braes
+and moorland hills which rise steeply to the narrow horizon. From either
+side brooklets flow through wooded glens to join the wimpling Nidd, and
+at the mouth of one of these we find Ramsgill, where Aram was born. It
+is a straggling hamlet of thatched cottages, set among bowering orchards
+and gardens and wearing an aspect of tranquil comfort. The site of the
+laborer's hut in which the gentle student was born is shown at the back
+of one of the newer cottages of the place. Farther up the picturesque
+stream is the pretty village of Lofthouse, an assemblage of gray stone
+houses nestled beneath clustering trees, to which Aram returned after a
+short residence at Skipton, in the dale of the Brontës. Here he wooed
+sweet Annie Spence and passed his early years of married life; here his
+first children were born and one of them died. At the church in near-by
+Middlesmoor he was married; here his first child was christened, and in
+the bleak church-yard it was buried. Near a sombre "gill" which opens
+into the valley some distance below was Gowthwaite Hall, where Aram
+taught his first pupils,--an ancient, rambling structure of stone, two
+stories in height, with many steep gables and wide latticed windows.
+Venerable trees shaded the walls, leafy vines climbed to and overran the
+roofs, and a quaint garden of prim squares and formally trimmed foliage
+lay at one side. We found these externals little changed since Aram was
+tutor here. The partition of the mansion into three tenements had
+altered the arrangement of the interior, but the wide stairway still led
+from the entrance to the upper room at the east end, where Aram taught:
+it was a large, lofty apartment, reputed to be haunted, changed since
+his time only by the closing of one casement. Richard Craven was then
+tenant of the Hall, and his son, the erudite doctor, doubtless received
+his first tuition in this room and from Aram.
+
+[Sidenote: Place of Murder]
+
+Some miles down the valley is Knaresborough, to which Aram removed from
+Lofthouse to establish a school, and where eleven years later the murder
+was committed. Soon after, Aram removed from the neighborhood, and
+during his residence at Lynn, where he was arrested for the crime, he
+was some time tutor in the house of Bulwer's grandfather, a circumstance
+which led to the production of the fascinating tale. A little way out of
+Knaresborough, in a recess at the base of the limestone cliffs which
+here border the murmuring Nidd, is the place where Clarke was killed
+and buried. This impressive spot was long the hermitage of "Saint
+Robert," who formed the cave out of the crag. In clearing the rubbish
+from the place after the publication of Bulwer's tale, the remains of a
+little shrine were found, and a coffin hewn from the rock, which proved
+that the hermitage had before been a place of burial, as urged by Aram
+in his defence. Upon a hill of the forest not far away the body of Aram
+hung in irons, and local tradition avers that his widow watched to
+recover the bones as they fell, and when she had at last interred them
+all, emigrated with her children to America.
+
+[Sidenote: Belief in Aram's Innocence]
+
+It is noteworthy that belief in his innocence was universal among those
+who knew him in this countryside. Incidents illustrating his
+self-denial, patient forbearance, disregard for money, and care to
+preserve even the lowest forms of life are still cherished and recounted
+here as showing that robbery and murder were for him impossible crimes.
+We were reminded, too, that at the time of Clarke's disappearance Aram
+was husband of a woman of his own station, father of a family, and
+master of a moderately prosperous school,--conditions of which Bulwer
+could scarcely have been unaware, and which are inconsistent with the
+only motives suggested as inciting Aram to crime. In the opinion of the
+descendants of Aram's old neighbors in his native Nidderdale, Houseman
+was alone guilty; and if Aram had, instead of undertaking to conduct his
+own defence, intrusted it to proper counsel, the trial would have
+resulted in his acquittal.
+
+
+
+
+HOME OF SYDNEY SMITH
+
+_Heslington-Foston, Twelve Miles from a Lemon-Church--Rector's Head--
+  Study--Room-of-all-work--Grounds--Guests--Universal Scratcher--
+  Immortal Chariot--Reminiscences._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Heslington]
+
+The metropolis of England holds many places which knew "the greatest of
+the many Smiths:" dwellings he some time inhabited, mansions in which he
+was the honored guest, pulpits and rostrums from which he discoursed,
+the room in which he died, the tomb where loving hands laid him beside
+his son. But it is in a remote valley of Yorkshire, where half his adult
+years were passed in a lonely retreat among the humble poor, that we
+find the scenes most intimately associated with the fruitful period of
+his life. In the lovely dale of York, not far from one of the ancient
+gates and within sound of the bells of the great minster, is the village
+of Heslington, Smith's first place of abode in Yorkshire. His dwelling
+here--lately the rectory of a parish which has been created since his
+time, and one of the best houses of the village--is a spacious and
+substantial old-fashioned mansion of brick, two stories in height and
+delightfully cosy in appearance. Large bow-windows, built by Smith,
+project from the front and rise to the eaves. The rooms are of
+comfortable dimensions, and that in which Smith wrote is "glorified" by
+the sunlight from one of his great windows, near which his writing-table
+was placed. The house stands a rod or two from the highway, amid a mass
+of foliage; an iron railing borders the yard, trees grow upon either
+side, and at the back is an ample garden which was Smith's especial
+delight, and which he paced for hours as he pondered his compositions.
+It was here that the dignified Jeffrey of the _Edinburgh Review_ rode
+the children's pet donkey over the grass. Smith's famous "Peter Plimley"
+letters were produced at Heslington. He never felt at home here, because
+he constantly contemplated removing. His own parish had no rectory, and
+he was permitted by his bishop to reside here while he sought to
+exchange the living for another: failing in this, he was allowed a
+further term in which to erect a dwelling in his parish, consequently
+Heslington was his home for some years. During this time he made weekly
+excursions to his church, twelve miles distant, behind a steed which he
+commemorates as Peter the Cruel, and in the year he built his parsonage
+the excursions were so frequent that he computed he had ridden Peter
+"several times round the world, going and coming from Heslington."
+
+[Sidenote: Foston-le-Clay]
+
+[Sidenote: Smith's Parsonage]
+
+[Sidenote: Fields and Farmsteading]
+
+In the remoter hamlet of Foston, "twelve miles from a lemon," we find
+the church where he ministered for twenty years and the house which was
+his home longer than any other. Our way thither--the same once so
+familiar to Smith and his cruel steed--lies along the green valley
+through which the wimpling Foss ripples and sings on its way to the
+Ouse. In sun and shadow our road leads through a pleasant country until
+we see the roofs of Smith's parsonage rising among the tree-tops. The
+Rector's Head, as the wit delighted to call his home, stands among the
+glebe-lands at a little distance from the highway, and a
+carriage-drive--constructed by Smith after some of his guests had been
+almost inextricably mired in their attempts to reach his door--conducts
+from a road-side gate near the school through the tasteful and well-kept
+grounds. Before we reach the rectory a second barrier is encountered,
+Smith's "Screeching Gate," which, like the gate at "Amen Corner,"
+remains just as it was when he bestowed its name. The mansion, of which
+he was both architect and builder, described by him and his friend Loch
+as "the ugliest house ever seen," presents a singularly attractive
+aspect of cosiness and comfort. The edifice is somewhat improved since
+the great essayist dwelt beneath its roof, but the original structure
+remains,--an oblong brick fabric, of ample proportions and
+unpretentious architecture, two stories in height, with hip-roofs of
+warm-tinted tiles. A large bay-window struts from one side wall; a
+beautiful conservatory abuts upon another side; a little porch,
+overgrown with creepers and flowers, protects the entrance. The once
+plain brickwork, which rose bare of ornamentation, is mantled with ivy
+and flowering vines which clamber to the roofs and riot along the walls,
+imparting to the "unparsonic parsonage" a picturesque charm which no
+architectural decoration could produce. The bare field in which Smith
+erected his house has been transformed into an Eden of beauty and bloom;
+on every side are velvety lawns, curving walks, beds of flowers, patches
+of shrubbery, and groups of woodland trees, forming a pretty park,
+mostly planned by Smith and planted by his hand. Within, we find the
+apartments spacious and cheerful: the windows are the same that were
+screened by the many-hued patchwork shades designed by Smith and wrought
+by the deft fingers of his daughters, the chimney-pieces of Portland
+stone which he erected remain, but tasteful and elegant furniture now
+replaces the rude handiwork of the village carpenter, which was disposed
+through these rooms during Smith's incumbency. He blithely tells a
+guest, "I needed furniture; I bought a cart-load of boards and got the
+carpenter, Jack Robinson; told him, 'Jack, furnish my house,' and you
+see the result." Some of the resulting furniture is still preserved in
+the neighborhood and valued above price. From the bay-window of the
+parlor the gray towers of York's colossal cathedral are seen ten miles
+away; the room adjoining at the left is the memorable apartment which
+was Smith's study, school-room, court, surgery, and what-not. Here his
+gayly-bound books were arranged by his daughter, the future Lady
+Holland, and here, when not applied to him, his famous "rheumatic armor"
+stood in a bag in yonder corner. Here he wrote his sermons, his
+brilliant and witty essays, the wise and effective disquisitions on the
+disabilities of the Catholics, the coruscating and incisive articles for
+the Review which electrified the English world. In this room he taught
+his children and gave Bible lessons to the youth of the parish, some of
+whom survive to praise and bless him; here, too, he prescribed for the
+sick and dispensed mercy rather than justice to culprits haled before
+him; for, as his letters declare, he was at once "village magistrate,
+village parson, village doctor, village comforter, and Edinburgh
+Reviewer." To these manifold avocations he added, despite his "not
+knowing a turnip from a carrot," that of the farmer, and managed the
+three hundred acres of glebe-lands which were so unproductive that no
+one else would cultivate them. A door-way of the rectory overlooks most
+of the plantation, and he suspended here a telescope and a tremendous
+speaking-trumpet by means of which he could observe and direct much of
+his operations without himself going afield. Behind the house, and
+screened by trees which Smith planted, are the farmstead buildings he
+planned; here are the stables and pens where he was welcomed by every
+individual of his stock, whom he daily visited to feed and pet; here is
+the enclosure where he found his fuddled pigs "grunting God save the
+King about the sty" after he had administered a medicament of fermented
+grains. In the adjoining field is the site of his "Universal
+Scratcher,"--a sharp-edged pole having a tall support at one extremity
+and a low one at the other, which so adapted it to the height of every
+animal that "they could scratch themselves with the greatest facility
+and luxury; even the 'Reviewer' [himself] could take his turn."
+
+[Sidenote: Guests--Reminiscences]
+
+Of Smith's life in this retirement his many letters and the memoirs of
+his daughter give us pleasant pictures. Although he said his whole life
+had "been passed like a razor, in hot water or a scrape," the years
+spent here seem to have been happy ones. Even his removal to this house
+while it was yet so damp that the walls ran down with wet and the
+grounds were so miry that his wife lost her shoes at the door, was made
+enjoyable. He writes to one friend, "I am too busy to be lonely;" to
+another, "I thank God who made me poor that he also made me merry, a
+better gift than much land with a doleful heart;" to another, "I am
+content and doubling in size every year;" to Lady Grey, "Come and see
+how happy people can be in a small parsonage;" to Jeffrey, "My situation
+is one of great solitude, but I possess myself in cheerfulness." He had
+expended upon his improvements here more than the living was worth,
+therefore economy ruled the selection of the _personnel_ of this
+establishment. Faithful Annie Kay was first employed as child's-maid;
+later she was housekeeper and trusted friend, removed from here with her
+loved master, attended him in his last illness, and lies near him in the
+long sleep. A garden girl, made like a mile-stone, was hired by Smith,
+who "christened her Bunch, gave her a napkin, and made her his butler."
+Jack Robinson was retained as general factotum of the place, and Molly
+Mills, "a yeowoman, with short petticoat, legs like mill-posts, and
+cheeks shrivelled like winter apples," did duty as "cow-, pig-,
+poultry-, garden-, and post-woman." Guests testify that good-natured
+training had, out of this unpromising material, produced such efficient
+servants that the household ran smoothly in the stress of much company.
+For, despite the seclusion of Smith's retreat, his fame and the charm
+and wit of his conversation drew many visitors to his house. Lords
+Carlisle and Morpeth were almost weekly guests; Sir Humphry Davy and his
+gifted wife were many times guests for days together; among those who
+came less frequently were Jeffrey, Macaulay, Marcet, Dugald Stewart,
+John Murray, Mackintosh, and Lord and Lady Holland, with many of less
+fame; and we may imagine something of the scintillant converse these
+rooms knew when the master wit entertained such company. Neither his
+friends nor his literary pursuits were allowed to interfere with his
+attentions to the simple rustics of his parish; in sickness and trouble
+he was tireless in their service, furnishing medicines, food, and
+clothing out of his slender means. During the prevalence of an
+infectious fever he was constantly among them, as physician, nurse, and
+priest. The oldest parishioners speak of him by his Christian name, and
+testify that he was universally beloved. One lately remembered that
+Sydney had cared for his father during a long illness and maintained the
+family until he could return to his work. Another had been accustomed,
+as a child, to run after Sydney on the highway and cling to him until he
+bestowed the sugar-plums he always carried in his pockets. In one
+portion of the glebe we found small enclosures of land stocked with
+abundant fruit-trees and called Sydney's Orchards, which were planted by
+him and given to the parishioners at a nominal rental.
+
+[Sidenote: The Chariot]
+
+Smith's solitary excursions through the parish were made astride a gaunt
+charger, called by him Calamity, noted for length of limb and strength
+of appetite, as well as for a propensity to part company with his rider,
+sometimes throwing the great Smith "over his head into the next parish."
+But when the rector's family were to accompany him, the ancient green
+chariot was employed. This was believed to have been the first vehicle
+of the kind, was purchased by Smith at second (or twenty-second) hand,
+and was from time to time partially restored by the unskilled village
+mechanics. Anent this structure the delightful Smith writes, "Each year
+added to its charms: it grew younger and younger: a new wheel, a new
+spring; I christened it the Immortal: it was known everywhere: the
+village boys cheered it, the village dogs barked at it." To the ends of
+the shafts Smith attached a rod so that it projected in front of the
+horse and sustained a measure of grain just beyond his reach,--a device
+which evoked a maximum of speed from the beast with the minimum of
+exertion on the part of the driver, the deluded horse being "stimulated
+to unwonted efforts by hope of overtaking the provender." We have talked
+with some in the vicinage who remembered seeing Smith and his family
+riding in this perennial chariot, drawn by a plough-horse which was
+harnessed with plough-lines and driven by a plough-boy.
+
+[Sidenote: Smith's Church]
+
+A mile from the rectory, past the few straggling cottages of the hamlet,
+we come to the quaint little church of Foston, one of the oldest in
+England. It was already in existence in 1081 when Doomsday Book was
+compiled, being then the property of Earl Allen: later it was conveyed
+to St. Mary's Abbey, whose ruins--marvellously beautiful even in
+decay--we find at the gates of York. It is noteworthy that this church
+of Foston early contained an image of the Virgin of such repute that
+people flocked to it in great numbers, and in 1313 the archbishop issued
+an edict that they should not desert their own churches to come here.
+Smith's church is prettily placed upon a gentle eminence from which we
+look across a wave-like expanse of smiling fields to steeper slopes
+beyond, a picture of pastoral peace and calm. Beneath the many
+mouldering heaps of the church-yard sleep the rustic poor for whom Smith
+labored, many of them having been committed to their narrow cells, "in
+the certain hope of the life to come," by his kindly hands. Among the
+graves stands the old church, the plainest and smallest of its kind. The
+present venerable and reverend incumbent, to whom we are indebted for
+many courtesies, has at his own expense restored the chancel as a
+memorial of his wife, but the principal portion of the edifice remains
+the same "miserable hovel" that Macaulay described in Smith's day. A
+heavy porch shelters the entrance, and above this is a sculptured Norman
+arch of great antiquity, a Scripture subject being graven upon each
+stone, that upon the key-block representing the Last Supper. The bare
+walls are surmounted by a dilapidated belfry, and the barn-like edifice
+is desolate and neglected. We find the interior dismal and depressive,
+and quite unchanged since Smith's time, save that the stove-pipe now
+enters a flue instead of emerging through a window. The quaint old
+pulpit, perched high in the corner opposite the gallery and beneath a
+huge sounding-board, is the same in which he so often stood; its frayed
+and faded cushions are said to be those that he belabored in his
+discourses, and out of which, on one occasion, he raised such a cloud of
+dust "that for some minutes he lost sight of the congregation." The
+pewter communion plate he used is preserved in a recess of the wall.
+Across the end and along one side of the church extends a gallery, in
+which sat the children under Smith's sharp eye, and kept in order, as
+some remember, by "a threaten-shake of his head." Along the front of
+this gallery ugly wooden pegs are aligned, on which the occupants of the
+pews hang their wraps, and so diminutive is the place that there are but
+four pews between door and pulpit. The present rector, whose father
+owned most of the parish and was Smith's firm friend, attended as a boy
+Smith's ministrations here, and remembers something of the direct
+eloquence of his sermons and their impressive effect upon the auditors.
+Attracted by his fame, some came from far to hear him preach who
+afterward became his ardent friends, among these being Macaulay and the
+Mrs. Apreece whom de Staël depicted as "Corinne" and who subsequently,
+as wife of Humphry Davy, was guest at The Rector's Head. In this shabby
+little church Smith gave away his daughter Emily, the Archbishop of York
+reading the marriage service; and not long after Smith removed to
+Somerset, and Foston saw him no more.
+
+The church contains no memorial of any sort in memory of Smith. The
+decayed condition of this temple has long been a reproach to the
+resident gentry. Since those whose property interests are most concerned
+in the restoration of the church have declined to enter upon it, the
+good rector contemplates undertaking it at his own charge. Not long ago
+he was engaged upon the plans, and it may be that, by the time these
+pages reach the reader, Foston church as Smith knew it will have ceased
+to exist. The writer has a lively hope that some of the New World
+pilgrims who have marked other Old World shrines which else had been
+neglected, will set in these renovated walls an enduring memorial--of
+pictured glass or sculptured stone or graven metal--in remembrance of
+the illustrious author-divine who, during his best years, ministered in
+this lowly place to a congregation of rude and unlettered poor.
+
+
+
+
+NITHSDALE RAMBLES
+
+_Scott--Hogg--Wordsworth--Carlyle's Birthplace--Homes--Grave--Burns's
+  Haunts--Tomb--Jeanie Deans--Old Mortality, etc.--Annie Laurie's
+  Birthplace--Habitation--Poet-Lover--Descendants._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Carlyle's Birthplace--Grave]
+
+From the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" and the many shrines of picturesque
+Edinburgh, once the literary capital of Britain, our saunterings bring
+us to other haunts of the "Wizard of the North:" to his oft described
+Abbotsford,--that baronial "romance in stone and lime,"--with its
+libraries and armories, its precious relics and more precious memories
+of its illustrious builder and occupant, who here literally "wrote
+himself to death;" to the dream-like, ivy-grown ruins of holy Melrose,
+whose beauties he sang and within whose crumbling walls he lingered and
+mused; to his tomb fittingly placed amid the ruined arches and
+mouldering pillars of Dryburgh Abbey, embowered by venerable trees and
+mantled by clinging vines. Strolling thence among the "Braes of Yarrow,"
+the Yarrow of Wordsworth and Hamilton, through the haunts of Hogg the
+Ettrick Shepherd, and passing the Hartfell, we come into the dale of
+Annan, and follow that winsome water past Moffat, where lived Burns's
+daughter, to historic Applegarth, and thence by Lockerby approach
+Ecclefechan, the hamlet of Carlyle's birth and sepulture. Among the
+lowly stone cottages on the straggling street of the rude village is a
+double dwelling with an arched passage-way through the middle of its
+lower story; this humble structure was erected by the stone-mason James
+Carlyle, and the northern end of it was his home when his illustrious
+son was born. Opening from the street is a narrow door; beside it is a
+diminutive window, with a similar one above and another over the arch.
+The exterior is now smartened somewhat,--the shillings of pilgrims would
+pay for that,--but the abode is pathetically small, bare, and poor. The
+one lower room is so contracted that the Carlyles could not all sit at
+the table, and Thomas used to eat his porridge outside the door. Some
+Carlyle relics from Cheyne Row--letters, portraits, pieces of china,
+study-lamp, tea-caddy, and other articles--are preserved in the room
+above, and adjoining it is the narrow chamber above the archway where
+the great historian, essayist, and cynic was born. In this comfortless
+home, and amid the dreary surroundings of this hard and rough village,
+which is little improved since the days of border war and pillage, he
+was reared. The stern savagery of the physical horizon of his boyhood
+here, and the hateful and uncongenial character of his environment at
+the most impressionable period of his life, may account to us for much
+of the morose cynicism of his later years. Further excuse for his
+petulance and his acerbities of tongue and temper is found in his
+dyspepsia, and a very limited experience of Ecclefechan cookery suffices
+to convince us that his indigestion was another unhappy sequence of his
+early life in this border hamlet. In "Sartor Resartus" he has
+vivaciously recorded some of the incidents and impressions of his
+childhood here,--notably the passage of the Carlisle coach, like "some
+terrestrial moon, coming from he knew not where, going he knew not
+whither." A shabby cross-street leads to the village graveyard, which
+was old a thousand years ago, and there, within a few rods of the spot
+of his birth, the great Carlyle is forever laid, with his parents and
+kindred. The yard is a forlorn enclosure, huddled with hundreds of
+unmarked graves, and with other hundreds of crumbling memorials drooping
+aslant among the brambles which infest the place. The tombstone of
+Carlyle, within an iron railing, is a little more pretentious than those
+about it, but his grave seems neglected; daisies and coarse grass grow
+about it, and the only tokens of reverent memory it bears are placed by
+Americans, who constitute the majority of the pilgrims to this place.
+Not far from the kirk-yard is a lowly cottage, hardly better than a
+hut, in which dwelt Burns's "Lass of Ecclefechan."
+
+[Sidenote: Dumfries--Burns's Dwelling]
+
+By a transverse road from Lockerby we come to the ruined Lochmaben
+Castle of Bruce, and thence into Nithsdale and to Dumfries, the ancient
+capital of southwestern Scotland. Here lived Edward Irving, and here
+Allan Cunningham toiled as a common mason; but the gray town is
+interesting to us chiefly because of its associations with Burns. Here
+are the tavern, familiar to us as the "howff," which he frequented, and
+where he made love to the bar-maid, "Anna of the Gowden Locks;" the
+parlor where his wit kept the table in a roar; the heavy chair in the
+"ingle neuk" where he habitually sat, and, in the room above, the lines
+to "Lovely Polly Stewart" graven by his hand upon the pane. From the inn
+a malodorous lane, named Burns Street, and oft threaded by the bard when
+he "wasna fou but just had plenty," leads to the poor dwelling where
+lived and died the poet of his country and of mankind. An environment
+more repulsive and depressing, a spot more unworthy to be the home of a
+poet of nature, can scarcely be imagined. Here not a flower nor a green
+bough, not even a grass-blade, met his vision, not one beautiful object
+appeased his poetic taste; he saw only the squalid street infested by
+unwashed bairns and bordered by rows of mean cottages. How shall we
+extol the genius which in such an uncongenial atmosphere produced those
+exquisite poems which for a century have been read and loved in every
+clime? His own dwelling, a bare two-storied cottage, is hardly more
+decent than its neighbors. Within, we find a kitchen and sitting-room,
+small and low-ceiled; above, a windowed closet,--sometimes used by the
+poet as a study,--and the poor little chamber where he died, only
+thirty-seven years after he first saw the light in the clay biggin by
+his bonnie Doon.
+
+[Sidenote: Tomb]
+
+The interior of St. Michael's Church has been refitted, and the
+sacristan can show us now only the site of Burns's seat, behind a great
+pillar which hid him from the preacher, and that of the Jenny on whose
+bonnet he saw the "crowlin'" pediculus. Through the crowded church-yard
+a path beaten by countless pilgrims from every quarter of the globe
+conducts to the place where he lies with "Bonnie Jean" and some of their
+children. The costly mausoleum which now covers his tomb--erected by
+those who had neglected or shunned him in his life--is to us less
+impressive than the poor little gravestone which the faithful Jean first
+placed above him, which now forms part of the pavement. The ambitious
+statue, designed to represent Genius throwing her mantle over Burns at
+the plough, suggests, as some one has said, that a bath-woman bringing a
+wet sheet to an unwilling patient had served as a model. Oddly enough,
+the grave of John Bushby, an attorney oft lampooned in Burns's verse,
+lies but a few feet from that of the poet.
+
+[Sidenote: Jeanie Deans--Carlyle's Craigenputtock]
+
+Our ramble along the wimpling Nith lies for the most part in a second
+Burnsland, so closely is it associated with his personality and poetry.
+The beauties of the stream itself are celebrated in half a score of his
+songs. Every seat and scene are sung in his verse; every neighborhood
+and almost every house preserve some priceless relic or some touching
+reminiscence of the ploughman-bard. A short way above Dumfries we come
+to the picturesque ruin of Lincluden Abbey, at the meeting of the waters
+of Cluden and Nith. The crumbling walls are enshrouded in ivy and
+surrounded by giant trees, among which Burns loved to loiter. His
+"Evening View" and "Vision" commemorate this ruin, and the poem
+"Lincluden" was written here. In a tasteful cottage not far from the
+Abbey sojourned the Mrs. Goldie who communicated to Scott the incidents
+which he wrought into his "Heart of Mid-Lothian," and it was in the
+little kitchen of this cottage that the lady talked with Helen Walker,
+the original Jeanie Deans. In a poor little low-eaved dwelling, a mile
+or two up the valley, that heroine lived, keeping a dame's school and
+rearing chickens; and our course along the tuneful stream brings us to
+the ancient and sequestered kirk-yard of Irongray, where, among the
+grass-grown graves of the Covenanters, her ashes repose beneath a
+tombstone erected by Scott himself and marked by an inscription from his
+hand: "Respect the Grave of Poverty when associated with love of Truth
+and dear Affection." Farther in this lovely region we come to ancient
+Dunscore and the monument of Scott's "Old Mortality;" and beyond
+Moniaive we find, near the source of the Cairn, Craigenputtock--the
+abode where "Thomas the Thunderer prepared his bolts" before he removed
+to London. This dreary place, "the loneliest in Britain," had been the
+abode of many generations of Mrs. Carlyle's ancestors,--among whom were
+"several black-guards but not one blockhead,"--and Carlyle rebuilt and
+furnished the house here to which he brought the bride he had wedded
+after his repulsion by his fair Rose-goddess, the Blumine of his
+"Romance." It is a severely plain and substantial two-storied structure
+of stone with steep gables. The entrance is under a little porch in the
+middle of the front; on either side is a single window, with another
+above it in the second story. There are comfortable and commodious rooms
+at each side of the entrance, and a large kitchen is joined at the back.
+Carlyle's study, a rather sombre apartment, with a dispiriting outlook,
+is at the left; a fireplace which the sage especially loved is in one
+wall, his writing-table stood near it, and here he sat and clothed in
+virile diction the brilliant thoughts which had come to him as he paced
+among his trees or loitered on the near hill-tops. The dining-room and
+parlor are on the other side, looking out upon wild and gloomy crags.
+Mrs. Carlyle's pen long ago introduced us to this interior, and,
+although all her furniture, except perhaps the kitchen "dresser," has
+been removed, we recognize the household nooks she has mentioned. The
+kitchen, which was the scene of her tearful housekeeping trials, seems
+most familiar; its chimney retains its abominable habits, but a recent
+incumbent, instead of crying as did Mrs. Carlyle, declared the "chimla
+made her feel like sweerin'." Great ash-trees, which were old when the
+sage dwelt beneath them, overtop the house; many beautiful flowers--some
+survivors of those planted by Carlyle and his wife--bloom in the yard.
+In front a wide field slopes away to a tributary of the Cairn, but
+sombre moorland hills rise at the back and cluster close about the
+house on either side, imparting to the place an indescribably depressing
+aspect: as we contemplate the desolate savagery of this wilderness, we
+can understand why one of Carlyle's predecessors here killed himself and
+others "took to drink."
+
+The bare summit behind the house overlooks Carlyle's estate of a
+thousand acres and, beyond it, an expanse of bleak hills and black
+morasses. From the craggy brow on the left, the spot where Carlyle and
+Emerson sat and talked of the immortality of the soul, we see Dunscore
+and a superb vista of the valley towards Dumfries and the Wordsworth
+country. The isolation of this place--so complete that at one time not
+even a beggar came here for three months--was an advantage to Carlyle at
+this period. He speaks of it as a place of plain living and high
+thinking: life here appeared to him "an humble russet-coated epic," and
+long afterward he referred to the years of their stay in this waste as
+being "perhaps the happiest of their lives." This expresses his own
+feeling rather than that of his wife, whose discontent finds expression
+in many ways, notably in her poem "To a Swallow." Carlyle produced here
+some of his best work, including the matchless "Sartor Resartus," the
+essay on Burns, and several scintillant articles for the various reviews
+which denoted the rise of a new star of genius; but the period of his
+stay here was essentially one of study and thought, and, plenteous as it
+was in production, it was more prolific in preparation for the great
+work he had to do. To Carlyle in this solitude Jeffrey was a visitor, as
+well as "Christopher North," Hazlitt, and Edward Irving: hither, "like
+an angel from heaven," came Emerson to greet the new genius on the
+threshold of its career and to enjoy the "quiet night of clear, fine
+talk." Carlyle bequeathed this estate to the University of Edinburgh.
+
+[Sidenote: Friars Carse--Burns's Ellisland]
+
+Another day, our ramble follows the winding Nith northward from
+Lincluden. As we proceed, the lovely and opulent dale, once the scene of
+clannish strife, presents an appearance of peaceful beauty, pervaded
+everywhere with the sentiment of Burns. In one enchanting spot the
+stream circles about the grounds of ancient Friars Carse, now a tasteful
+and pretty seat. It was erstwhile the residence of Burns's friend
+Riddel, to which the poet was warmly welcomed: here he composed the poem
+"Thou whom Chance may hither lead," and here he presided at the famous
+drinking-match which he told to future ages in "The Whistle." It is
+noteworthy that the first Scotch winner of the Whistle was father of
+Annie Laurie of the popular song, and that the contest here was between
+two of her grandnephews and her grandson,--the latter being victorious.
+Burns celebrated his friend of this old hermitage in seven of his poems;
+and the present proprietor carefully cherishes the window upon whose
+pane the bard inscribed "Lines written in Friars Carse." A little way
+beyond lies Druidical Holywood, where once dwelt the author of "De
+Sphæra," and next we find the Nith curving among the acres which Burns
+tilled in his happiest years, at Ellisland. Embowered in roses and
+perched upon an eminence overhanging the stream is the plain little
+dwelling which he erected with his own hands for the reception of his
+bonnie Jean. It is little changed since the time he lived under its
+lowly roof. We think the rooms dingy and bare, but they are better than
+those of his abode at Alloway and Mossgiel, much better than those in
+which he died at Dumfries. In the largest of the apartments, by a window
+which looks down the dreamful valley, Burns had a rude table, and here
+he penned some of the most touchingly beautiful poetry of our
+language,--poems which he had pondered as he worked or walked afield.
+Adjoining the house is the yard where he produced the exquisite lines
+"To Mary in Heaven;" in this near-by field he met "The Wounded Hare" of
+his verse; in yonder path along the murmuring Nith he composed the
+immortal "Tam O'Shanter," laughing aloud the while at the pictures his
+fancy conjured; and all about us are reminders of the bard and of the
+idyllic life which here inspired his muse: it would repay a longer
+journey to see the spot where the one song "John Anderson, my Jo" was
+pondered and written.
+
+[Sidenote: Annie Laurie--Early Home]
+
+[Sidenote: Annie Laurie and her Lover]
+
+A further jaunt amid varied beauties of woodland shade and meadow
+sunshine, of gentle dale and savage scaur, brings us past historic
+Closeburn to the neighborhood of Thornhill. Here at the Buccleuch Arms
+the illegitimate daughter of Burns was for thirty years a servant, and
+boasted of having had a chat with Scott among the burnished utensils of
+her kitchen. Two miles eastward Scott found the Balfour's Cave and Leap
+described in "Old Mortality." Middle Nithsdale expands into a broad
+valley, commanded by lofty Queensberry and lower green hills and
+diversified with upland brae, shadowy copse, sunny mead, and opulent
+plantation. This lovely region, dotted with pretty hamlets, embowered
+villas, and moss-grown ruins, and teeming with the charming associations
+of history and sentiment, holds for us a crowning interest which has
+drawn our steps into its romantic haunts: it was the birthplace and
+life-long home of Annie Laurie. On the right of the Nith, among the
+bonnie braes of the song, we find the ancient manor-house of Maxwelton,
+where the heroine was born. The first of her race to reside here was her
+great-grandfather, who in 1611 built additions to the old tower already
+existing. The marriage-stone of Annie Laurie's grandparents, John Laurie
+and Agnes Grierson, is set in the massive walls and graven with their
+initials, crest, and date. This Agnes was daughter of the bloody
+persecutor who figures in "Redgauntlet," and whose ashes lie in Dunscore
+kirk-yard, not far distant. Another stone in the Maxwelton house
+commemorates the marriage of Robert Laurie and Jean Riddel, the parents
+of the heroine of the song,--this Robert being the champion of Bacchus
+who won the Whistle from the noble Danish toper. In this ancient abode,
+according to a record made by her father, "At the pleasure of the
+Almighty God, my daughter Anna Laurie was born upon the 16th day of
+Decr., 1682 years, about six o'clock in the morning;" here the bonnie
+maiden grew to womanhood; here occurred the episode to which the world
+is indebted for the sweet song; from here she married and went to her
+future home, but a few miles away. In the last century much of the
+venerable edifice was destroyed, but the older portion, which had been
+part of a stronghold in the time of the border wars, remains intact
+since Annie dwelt within. This part is still called The Tower, and
+consists of a large rectangular structure, with a ponderous
+semi-circular fabric abutting it at one end, its fortress-like walls
+being five feet in thickness and clothed by a luxuriant growth of ivy.
+Newer portions have been added in varying styles, and the mansion is now
+an elegant and substantial seat. All about it lie terraced lawns, with
+parterres of flowers, noble trees, and banks of shrubbery: lovely
+grounds slope away from the house and command an enchanting view which
+must often have delighted the vision of the fair Annie. Her boudoir is
+in the second story of The Tower; it is a corner room, forming now an
+alcove of the drawing-room; it has a vaulted ceiling of stone, and its
+windows, pierced in the ponderous walls, look out through the ivy and
+across an expanse of sward, flower, and foliage to the wooded braes
+where she kept tryst with her lover. Among the treasures of the old
+house is a portrait of the bonnie heroine which shows her as an
+impressively beautiful woman, of lissome figure, large and tender eyes,
+long oval face with Grecian features, wide forehead framed by a
+profusion of dark-brown hair. Her hands, like her "fairy feet," were of
+exceptional smallness and beauty. The present owner of Maxwelton, to
+whom the writer is indebted for many courtesies, is Sir Emilius Laurie;
+from him and from the lineal descendants of the widely-sung Annie who
+still inhabit Nithsdale are derived the materials for this account of
+that winsome lady. The lover who immortalized her was William Douglas of
+Fingland, and she requited him by breaking "her promise true" and
+marrying another man. Douglas is said to have been the hero of the song
+"Willie was a Wanton Wag;" he was one of the best swordsmen of his time,
+and his personal qualities gained him the patronage of the Queensberry
+family and secured him social advantages to which his lower rank and
+poverty constituted no claim. He and Annie met at an Edinburgh ball, and
+seem to have promptly become enamoured of each other. To separate them,
+Sir Robert quickly carried his family back to Nithsdale, but Douglas as
+quickly followed, and lurked in the vicinage for some months,
+clandestinely meeting his love among "Maxwelton's bonnie braes." Here the
+pair plighted troth, and when Douglas returned to Edinburgh, to assist
+in a projected Stuart uprising, he took with him the promise which he
+celebrated in the tender melody. The song was published in an Edinburgh
+paper and attracted much notice. Douglas's devotion to the Jacobites
+cost him his sweetheart; his political intrigues being suspected, he was
+forced to fly the country, and when, after some years passed in France,
+he secured pardon and returned, she was the wife of another. After
+giving "her promise true" to some other lovers, she married in 1709
+Alexander Fergusson, a neighboring laird, who could not write poetry but
+had "muckle siller an' lan'" and a genealogy as long as Leviticus.
+Douglas and Annie never met again, and she makes but a single reference
+to him in her letters: being told of his return, she wrote to her
+sister, Mrs. Riddel, grandmother of Burns's friend, "I trust he has
+forsaken his treasonable opinions and is content."
+
+[Sidenote: Her Later Home]
+
+A stroll of but a few miles along a delightful way, fanned by the sweet
+summer winds, brings us to Craigdarrock, Annie Laurie's home for more
+than half a century. It is a spacious and handsome edifice of three
+stories, with dormer-windows in the hip-roof; a conservatory is
+connected at one end, bow-windows project from either side, and
+clambering vines cover the walls of the lower stories.
+
+  [Illustration: HOME OF ANNIE LAURIE]
+
+It is beautifully placed in a vale overlooking the winding stream, with
+the rugged Craigdarrock looming steeply in the background. Most of the
+mansion was built under the direction of Annie Laurie, and the gardens
+were laid out by her in their formal style: a delightful walk beneath
+the trees on the margin of the water was her favorite resort, and is
+still known by her name. Within the spacious rooms are preserved many
+of her belongings: curious furniture and hangings, quaint fineries of
+dress, her porcelain snuff-box, her will, a package of her letters
+written in the prim fashion of her time and signed "Anna." Through these
+epistles we look in vain for indications of the wit and genius which one
+naturally attributes to the possessor of the bright face which inspired
+a deathless song. In this house she lived happily with her husband, and
+was at once the Lady Bountiful and the matchmaker-in-ordinary for the
+whole countryside; here she died, aged seventy-nine. This estate has
+been handed down from father to son for fifteen generations, the present
+urbane laird, Captain Cutlar Fergusson, being a great-great-grandson of
+Annie Laurie and grandson of the hero of Burns's "Whistle." This famous
+trophy--a plain object in dark wood--is preserved here at Craigdarrock,
+and has not been challenged for since the bout which Burns witnessed.
+
+[Sidenote: Burial-place]
+
+In the now ruined church of Glencairn, hardly a mile from her
+birthplace, and not far from her later home, Annie Laurie worshipped,
+and in its yard, which has been a place of burial for a thousand years,
+she was laid with her husband, among the many generations of his
+kindred, by the gable-end of the ancient church. Her sepulchre was not
+marked, and it is to be feared the bones of the erst beauteous lady have
+been more than once disturbed in excavating for later interments in the
+crowded plot. From the summit of Craigdarrock we look upon the wilder
+beauty of the upper Nith, a region of moorland hills and dusky glens,
+where we may find the birthplace of "the Admirable Crichton," and beyond
+it the bleak domain where the poet Allan Ramsay first saw the light.
+Beyond this, again, the sweet Afton "flows amang its green braes," and
+we come to the Ayrshire shrines of Burns.
+
+A few miles westward from Craigdarrock, and not so far from Carlyle's
+lonely den, is Fingland farm, the birthplace and home of Annie's
+poet-lover. It lies among sterile hills in the wild Glenkens of ancient
+Galloway, near the source of Ken water. From neighboring elevations we
+see Craigenputtock and the swelling Solway, and westward we look, across
+the dark fens and heathery hills of the region "blest with the smell of
+bog-myrtle and peat," almost to the Irish Sea. In this region Crockett
+was reared, and he pictures it in his charming tales "The Raiders" and
+"The Lilac Sunbonnet."
+
+No trace of the peel-tower in which Douglas dwelt remains, but we know
+that it stood within an enclosing wall twenty yards square and one yard
+in thickness. The tower had projecting battlements; its apartments,
+placed above each other, were reached by a narrow, easily defended
+stair. In such a home and amid this most dismal environment Douglas grew
+to manhood, his poetic power unsuspected until it was called forth by
+the love and beauty of Annie Laurie. Later he wrote many poems, but
+diligent inquiry among the families of Buccleuch and Queensberry shows
+that few of his productions are now extant save the famous love-song. It
+is notable that he did not "lay doun his head and die" for the faithless
+Annie; instead, he made a runaway marriage with Elizabeth Clerk, of
+Glenborg, in his native Galloway, subsided into prosy country life, and
+reared a family of six children, of whom one, Archibald, rose to the
+rank of lieutenant-general in Brittany.
+
+[Sidenote: Annie Laurie--The Singer and the Song]
+
+Douglas's song was revised by Lady Scott, sister of the late Duke of
+Buccleuch, and published by her for the benefit of the widows and
+orphans made by the Crimean War. Lines of the original, for which the
+writer is indebted to a descendant of Annie Laurie, are hereto appended,
+that the reader may appreciate how much of the tender beauty of the
+popular version of the song is attributable to the poetic talent of Lady
+Scott.
+
+  "Maxwelton banks are bonnie,
+    Where early fa's the dew,
+  Where me and Annie Laurie
+    Made up the promise true:
+  Made up the promise true,
+    And ne'er forget will I:
+  And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+    I'd lay doun my head and die.
+
+  "She's backit like a peacock;
+    She's breastit like a swan;
+  She's jimp about the middle;
+    Her waist ye weel may span:
+  Her waist ye weel may span,--
+    She has a rolling eye;
+  And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+    I'd lay doun my head and die."
+
+
+
+
+A NIECE OF ROBERT BURNS
+
+_Her Burnsland Cottage--Reminiscences of Burns--Relics--Portraits--
+  Letters--Recitations--Account of his Death--Memories of his Home--Of
+  Bonnie Jean--Other Heroines._
+
+
+In the course of a summer ramble in Burnsland we had sought out the
+homes, the haunts, the tomb of the ploughman poet, and had bent at many
+a shrine hallowed by his memory or his song. From the cottage of "Bonnie
+Jean" and the tomb of "Holy Willie," the field of the "Mountain Daisy"
+and the church of the "Holy Fair," the birthplace of "Highland Mary" and
+the grave of "Mary Morison," we came to the shrines of auld Ayr, beside
+the sea. Here we find the "Twa Brigs" of his poem; the graves of the
+ministers satirized in "The Kirk's Alarm;" the old inn of "Tam
+O'Shanter," and the very room, with its ingle, where Tam and Souter
+Johnny "got fou thegither," and where we may sip the nappy from the
+wooden caup which Tam often drained. From Ayr a delightful stroll along
+the highway where Tam made his memorable ride, and where William Burns
+carried the howdie upon the pillion behind him on another stormy
+winter's night when the poet was born, brought us to the hamlet of
+Alloway and the place of Burns's early life. Here are the auld clay
+biggin, with its rude stone floor and roof of thatch, erected by the
+unskilled hands of his father, where the poet first saw the light, and
+where he laid the scene of the immortal "Cotter's Saturday Night;" the
+fields where his young hands toiled to aid his burdened sire; the
+kirk-yard where his kindred lie buried, some of their epitaphs written
+by him; the "auld haunted kirk,"--where Tam interrupted the witches'
+dance,--unknown save for the genius of the lad born by its roofless
+walls; the Burns monument, with its priceless relics; the ivy-grown
+bridge, four centuries old, whose arch spans the songful stream and
+across which Tam galloped in such sore peril, and its "key-stane," where
+Meg lost "her ain gray tail" to Nannie, fleetest of the pursuers; the
+enchanting "banks and braes of bonnie Doon," where Burns wandered a
+brown-eyed boy, and later found the inspiration of many of his exquisite
+strains. We have known few scenes more lovely than this in which his
+young life was passed: long and delightful is our lingering here, for
+interwoven with the many natural beauties are winsome memories of the
+bard whose spirit and genius pervade all the scene.
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Burns Begg--Bridgeside Cot]
+
+[Sidenote: Recitations--Bonnie Jean]
+
+Returning thence past the "thorn aboon the well" (the well is closed
+now) and the "meikle-stane" to the ancient ford "where in the snaw the
+chapman smoor'd," we made a détour southward, and came by a pleasant
+way--having in view on the right the picturesque ruin of Greenan Castle
+upon a cliff overhanging the sea--to Bridgeside cottage, the home of
+Miss Isabella Burns Begg, niece of the poet and long his only surviving
+near relative. We found a cottage of stone, from whose thatched roof a
+dormer-window, brilliant with flowers, peeped out through the foliage
+which half concealed the tiny homelet. The trimmest of little maids
+admitted us at the gate and led along a path bordered with flowers to
+the cottage door, where stood Miss Begg beaming a welcome upon the
+pilgrims from America. We were ushered into a prettily furnished little
+room, upon whose walls hung a portrait of Burns, one of his sister Mrs.
+Begg, and some framed autograph letters of the bard, which the niece
+"knew by heart." She was the daughter and namesake of Burns's youngest
+and favorite sister, who married John Begg. We found her a singularly
+active and vivacious old lady, cheery and intelligent, and more than
+pleased to have secured appreciative auditors for her reminiscences of
+her gifted uncle. She was of slender habit, had a bright and winning
+face, soft gray hair partially concealed by a cap, and when she was
+seated beneath the Burns portrait we could see that her large dark
+eyes--now sparkling with merriment or misty with emotion, and again
+literally glowing with feeling--were like those on the canvas. Among the
+treasures of this room was a worn copy of Thomson's "Seasons," a
+favorite book of Burns, which he had freely annotated; his name in it is
+written "Burnes," as the family spelled it down to the publication of
+the bard's first volume. In the course of a long and pleasant chat we
+learned that Miss Begg had lived many years in the cottage, first with
+her mother and later with her sister Agnes,--named for Burns's
+mother,--who died before our visit and was laid beside her parents and
+the father of Burns in the kirk-yard of auld Alloway, where Miss Begg
+expected "soom day, please God an it be soon," to go to await the
+resurrection, thinking it an "ill hap" that she survived her sister. She
+innocently inquired if we "kenned her nephew Robert in America," and
+then explained that he and a niece of hers had formerly lived with her,
+but she had discovered that "they were sweetheartin' and wantin' to
+marry, which she wouldna allow, so they went to America," leaving her
+alone with her handmaiden. Most of her visitors had been Americans. She
+remembered the visits of Hawthorne, Grant, Stanley, and Helen Hunt
+Jackson,--the last with greatest pleasure,--and thought that "Americans
+care most about Burns." She mentioned the visit of a Virginian maid,
+who by rapturous praise of the uncle completely won the heart of the
+niece. The fair enthusiast had most of Burns's poems at her tongue's
+end, but insisted upon having them repeated by Miss Begg, and at parting
+exclaimed, after much kissing, "Oh, but I always pray God that when he
+takes me to heaven he will give me the place next to Burns." Apparently,
+Robin still has power to disturb the peace of "the lasses O." Yet we can
+well excuse the effusiveness of our compatriot: to have listened to the
+old lady as she sat under his portrait, her eyes twinkling or softening
+like his own, her voice thrilling with sympathetic feeling as she
+repeated in his own sweet dialect the tender stanzas, "But pleasures are
+like poppies spread," "My Mary! dear departed shade!" and "Oh, happy
+love, when love like this is found," and others of like pathos and
+beauty, is a rapture not to be forgotten. She spoke quickly, and the
+Scottish accent kept one's ears on the alert, but it rendered the lines
+doubly effective and melodious. Many of the poems were inspired by
+special events of which Miss Begg had knowledge from her mother, which
+she recalled with evident relish. She distinctly remembered the bard's
+widow, "Bonnie Jean," and often visited her in the poor home where he
+died. Jean had a sunny temper, a kind heart, a handsome figure, a fine
+voice, and lustrous eyes, but her brunette face was never bonnie. While
+she lacked intellectual appreciation of his genius, she was proud of and
+idolized him, finding ready excuse and forgiveness for his failings.
+When the frail "Anna with the Gowden Locks" bore him an illegitimate
+child, Jean cradled it with her own, and loyally averred to all
+visitors, "It's only a neebor's bairn I'm bringin' up." ("Ay, she must
+'a' lo'ed him," was Miss Begg's comment on this part of her narrative.)
+Jean had told that in his last years the poet habitually wore a blue
+coat, with nankeen trousers (when the weather would allow), and his
+coat-collar was so high that his hat turned up at the back. Her account
+of the manner of his death is startling, and differs from that given by
+the biographers. He lay apparently asleep when "sweet Jessy"--to whom
+his last poem was written--approached, and, to remind him of his
+medicine, touched the cup to his lips; he started, drained the cup, then
+sprang headlong to the foot of the bed, threw his hands forward like one
+about to swim, and, falling on his face, expired with a groan. Jean saw
+him for the last time on the evening before his funeral, when his wasted
+body lay in a cheap coffin covered with flowers, his care-worn face
+framed by the wavy masses of his sable hair, then sprinkled with gray.
+At his death he left MSS. in the garret of his abode, which were
+scattered and lost because Jean was unable to take care of them,--a loss
+which must ever be deplored.
+
+[Sidenote: Reminiscences--Burns' Youth]
+
+[Sidenote: Mossgiel--Recollections]
+
+One of the delights of Miss Begg's girlhood was the converse of Burns's
+mother concerning her first-born and favorite child, the poet, a theme
+of which she never tired. Miss Begg remembered her as a "chirk" old lady
+with snapping black eyes and an abundant stock of legends and ballads.
+She used to declare that Bobbie had often heard her sing "Auld Lang
+Syne" in his boyhood; hence it would appear that, at most, he only
+revised that precious old song. Miss Begg more than once heard the
+mother tell, with manifest gusto, this incident of their residence at
+Lochlea. Robert was already inclined to be wild, and between visiting
+his sweetheart Ellison Begbie--"the lass of the twa sparkling, roguish
+een"--and attending the Tarbolton club and Masonic lodge was abroad
+until an unseemly hour every night, and his mother or Isabella sat up to
+let him in. His anxious sire, the priest-like father of the "Cotter's
+Saturday Night," determined to administer an effectual rebuke to the
+son's misconduct, and one night startled the mother by announcing
+significantly that he would wait to admit the lad. She lay for hours
+(Robert was later than ever that night), dreading the encounter between
+the two, till she heard the boy whistling "Tibbie Fowler" as he
+approached. Then the door opened: the father grimly demanded what had
+kept him so late; the son, for reply, gave a comical description of his
+meeting auld Hornie on the way home,--an adventure narrated in the
+"Address to the De'il,"--and next the mother heard the pair seat
+themselves by the fire, where for two hours the father roared with
+laughter at Robert's ludicrous account of the evening's doings at the
+club,--she, meanwhile, nearly choking with her efforts to restrain the
+laughter which might remind her husband of his intended reproof.
+Thereafter the lad stayed out as late as he pleased without rebuke. The
+niece had been told by her mother that Burns was deeply distressed at
+his father's death-bed by the old man's fears for the future of his
+wayward son; and when his father's death made Robert the head of the
+family, he every morning led the household in "the most beautiful
+prayers ever heard;" later, at Ellisland and elsewhere, he continued
+this practice, and on the Sabbath instructed them in the Catechism and
+Confession. Mrs. Begg's most pleasing recollections of her brother were
+associated with the farm-life at Mossgiel, where he so far gave her his
+confidence that she was allowed to see his poems in the course of their
+composition. He would ponder his stanzas during his labors afield, and
+when he came to the house for a meal he would go to the little garret
+where he and his brother Gilbert slept and hastily pen them upon a table
+which stood under the one little window. Here Isabella would find them,
+and, after repeated perusals, would arrange them in the drawer; and so
+it passed that her bright eyes were the first, besides his own, to see
+"The Twa Dogs," "Winter's Night," "The Bard's Epitaph," "The Cotter's
+Saturday Night," the satirical poems, and most of the productions which
+were published in his Kilmarnock volume. His sister testified that he
+was always affectionate to the family, and that after his removal to a
+home of his own he invariably brought a present for each when he
+revisited the farm, the present for his mother being always, despite his
+poverty, a costly pound of tea. Most of the receipts from his publishers
+were given to the family at Mossgiel. Miss Begg intimated that Burns's
+mother did not at first like his wife, because of the circumstances of
+the marriage, but Jean's stanch devotion to her husband won the heart of
+the doting mother, and they became warm friends and spent much time
+together after Burns's death. The niece believed that the accounts of
+his intemperance are mostly untrue. Her mother, who was twenty-five
+years old at the time of his decease, always asserted that she "never
+saw him fou," and believed it was his antagonism to the "unco' guid"
+that made them ready to believe and circulate any idle report to his
+discredit.
+
+Mrs. Begg saw and liked "Highland Mary" at the house of Gavin Hamilton,
+and knew Miss Dunlop, the blooming Keith of Burns's "New-Year Day."
+Another of his heroines the niece had herself visited with her mother;
+this was Mrs. Jessy Thompson, _née_ Lewars, who was a ministering angel
+in his final illness, and was repaid by the only thing he could
+bestow,--a song of exquisite sweetness, "Here's a health to ane I lo'e
+dear." Our informant had seen in that lady's hands the lines beginning
+"Thine be the volumes, Jessy fair," which the poet gave her with a
+present of books within a month of his death. Many other reminiscences
+related by the niece are to be found in the biographies of the bard, and
+need not be repeated. The letters which hung upon her walls are not
+included in any published collection. She assisted us in copying the
+following to Burns's youngest brother:
+
+[Sidenote: A Letter of Burns]
+
+                                                 "ISLE, Tuesday Evening.
+
+"DEAR WILLIAM,--In my last I recommended that valuable apothegm, Learn
+taciturnity. It is certain that nobody can know our thoughts, and yet,
+from a slight observation of mankind, one would not think so. What
+mischiefs daily arise from silly garrulity and foolish confidence! There
+is an excellent Scots saying that a man's mind is his kingdom. It is
+certainly so, but how few can govern that kingdom with propriety! The
+serious mischiefs in Business which this Flux of language occasions do
+not come immediately to your situation, but in another point of
+view--the dignity of man--now is the time that will make or mar. Yours
+is the time of life for laying in habits. You cannot avoid it, tho' you
+will choose, and these habits will stick to your last end. At
+after-periods, even at so little advance as my years, 'tis true that one
+may still be very sharp-sighted to one's habitual failings and
+weaknesses, but to eradicate them, or even to amend them, is quite a
+different matter. Acquired at first by accident, they by-and-by begin to
+be, as it were, a necessary part of our existence. I have not time for
+more. Whatever you read, whatever you hear of that strange creature man,
+look into the living world about you, look to yourself, for the
+evidences of the fact or the application of the doctrine. I am ever
+yours,
+
+                                                          "ROBERT BURNS.
+
+"MR. WILLIAM BURNS, Saddler, Longtown."
+
+The sentiment and style of this epistle are suggestive of the stilted
+conversations of Burns, recorded in Hugh Miller's "Recollections." Miss
+Begg was pleased by some account we could give her of American Burns
+monuments and festivals; she seemed reluctant to have us leave, called
+to us a cheery "God keep ye!" when we were without the gate, and stood
+looking after us until the intervening foliage hid her from our sight.
+As we walked Ayr-ward, while the sun was setting in a golden haze behind
+the hills of Arran, we felt that we had been very near to Burns that
+day,--had almost felt the thrill of his presence, the charm of his
+voice, and had in some measure made a personal acquaintance with him
+which would evermore move us to a tenderer regard for the man and a
+truer appreciation of his verse, as well as a fuller charity for his
+faults:
+
+  We know in part what he has done,
+    God knows what he resisted.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Burns's Niece]
+
+For some months after our visit to Bridgeside, quaint letters--one of
+them containing a portrait of the worthy occupant of the
+cottage--followed us thence across the sea. These came at increasing
+intervals and then stopped; the kindly heart of the niece of Burns had
+ceased to beat on her eightieth birthday.
+
+A recent pilgrim in Burnsland found an added line on the gravestone in
+the old kirk-yard, to tell that Isabella Burns Begg rests there in
+eternal peace. At Bridgeside, her once cherished garden is a waste and
+her tiny cottage has wholly disappeared. "So do things pass away like a
+tale that is told."
+
+
+
+
+HIGHLAND MARY: HER HOMES AND GRAVE
+
+_Birthplace--Personal Appearance--Relations to Burns--Abodes: Mauchline,
+  Coilsfield etc.--Scenes of Courtship and Parting--Mementos--Tomb by
+  the Clyde._
+
+
+There is no stronger proof of the transcending power of the genius of
+Burns than is found in the fact that, by a bare half dozen of his
+stanzas, an humble dairy servant--else unheard of outside her parish and
+forgotten at her death--is immortalized as a peeress of Petrarch's Laura
+and Dante's Beatrice, and has been for a century loved and mourned of
+all the world. We owe much of our tenderest poesy to the heroines whose
+charms have attuned the fancy and aroused the impassioned muse of
+enamoured bards; readers have always exhibited a natural avidity to
+realize the personality of the beings who inspired the tender
+lays,--prompted often by mere curiosity, but more often by a desire to
+appreciate the tastes and motives of the poets themselves. How little is
+known of Highland Mary, the most famous heroine of modern song, is shown
+by the brief, incoherent, and often contradictory allusions to her which
+the biographies of the ploughman-poet contain. This paper,--prepared
+during a sojourn in "The Land o' Burns,"--while it adds a little to our
+meagre knowledge of Mary Campbell, aims to present consecutively and
+congruously so much as may now be known of her brief life, her relations
+to the bard, and her sad, heroic death.
+
+[Sidenote: Birthplace--Early Home]
+
+She first saw the light in 1764, at Ardrossan, on the coast, fifteen
+miles northward from the "auld town of Ayr." Her parentage was of the
+humblest, her father being a sailor before the mast, and the poor
+dwelling which sheltered her was in no way superior to the meanest of
+those we find to-day on the narrow streets of her village. From her
+birthplace we see, across the Firth of Clyde, the beetling mountains of
+the Highlands, where she afterward dwelt, and southward the great mass
+of Ailsa Craig looming, a gigantic pyramid, out of the sea. Mary was
+named for her aunt, wife of Peter McPherson, a ship-carpenter of
+Greenock, in whose house Mary died. In her infancy her family removed to
+the vicinage of Dunoon, on the western shore of the Firth, eight miles
+below Greenock, leaving the oldest daughter at Ardrossan. Mary grew to
+young womanhood near Dunoon, then returned to Ayrshire, and found
+occupation at Coilsfield, near Tarbolton, where her acquaintance with
+Burns soon began. He told a lady that he first saw Mary while walking in
+the woods of Coilsfield, and first spoke with her at a rustic
+merry-making, and, "having the luck to win her regards from other
+suitors," they speedily became intimate. At this period of life Burns's
+"eternal propensity to fall into love" was unusually active, even for
+him, and his passion for Mary (at this time) was one of several which
+engaged his heart in the interval between the reign of Ellison
+Begbie--"the lass of the twa sparkling, roguish een"--and that of
+"Bonnie Jean." Mary subsequently became a servant in the house of
+Burns's landlord, Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer of Mauchline, who had early
+recognized the genius of the bard and admitted him to an intimate
+friendship, despite his inferior condition. When Hamilton was persecuted
+by the kirk, Burns, partly out of sympathy with him, wrote the satires,
+"Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Twa Herds," and "The Holy Fair," which
+served to unite the friends more closely, and brought the poet often to
+the house where Mary was an inmate. This house--a sombre structure of
+stone, little more pretentious than its neighbors--we found on the
+shabby street not far from Armour's cottage, the church of "The Holy
+Fair," and "Posie Nansie's" inn, where the "Jolly Beggars" used to
+congregate. Among the dingy rooms shown us in Hamilton's house was that
+in which he married Burns to "Bonnie Jean" Armour.
+
+[Sidenote: Personal Appearance]
+
+[Sidenote: Betrothal and Parting]
+
+The bard's niece, Miss Begg, of Bridgeside, told the writer that she
+often heard Burns's mother describe Mary as she saw her at Hamilton's:
+she had a bonnie face, a complexion of unusual fairness, soft blue eyes,
+a profusion of shining hair which fell to her knees, a _petite_ figure
+which made her seem younger than her twenty summers, a bright smile, and
+pleasing manners, which won the old lady's heart. This description is,
+in superlative phrase, corroborated by Lindsay in Hugh Miller's
+"Recollections:" she was "beautiful, sylph-like," her bust and neck were
+"exquisitely moulded," her arms and feet "had a statue-like symmetry and
+marble-like whiteness;" but it was in her lovely countenance that
+"nature seemed to have exhausted her utmost skill,"--"the loveliest
+creature I have ever seen," etc. All who have written of her have
+noticed her beauty, her good sense, her modesty and self-respect. But
+these qualities were now insufficient to hold the roving fancy of Burns,
+whose "susceptibility to immediate impressions" (so called by Byron, who
+had the same failing) passes belief. His first ephemeral fancy for Mary
+took little hold upon his heart, and the best that can be said of it is
+that it was more innocent than the loves which came before and after it.
+Within a stone's-throw of Mary dwelt Jean Armour, and when the former
+returned to Coilsfield, he promptly fell in love with Jean, and solaced
+himself with her more buxom and compliant charms. It was a year or so
+later, when his intercourse with Jean had burdened him with grief and
+shame, that the tender and romantic affection for Mary came into his
+life. She was yet at Coilsfield, and while he was in hiding--his heart
+tortured by the apparent perfidy of Jean and all the countryside
+condemning his misconduct--his intimacy with Mary was renewed; his
+quickened vision now discerned her endearing attributes, her trust and
+sympathy were precious in his distress, and awoke in him an affection
+such as he never felt for any other woman. During a few brief weeks the
+lovers spent their evenings and Sabbaths together, loitering amid the
+
+  "Banks and braes and streams around
+  The castle of Montgomery,"
+
+talking of the golden days that were to be theirs when present troubles
+were past; then came the parting which the world will never forget, and
+Mary relinquished her service and went to her parents at Campbeltown,--a
+port of Cantyre behind "Arran's mountain isle." Of this parting Burns
+says, in a letter to Thomson, "We met by appointment on the second
+Sunday of May, in a sequestered spot on the Ayr, where we spent the day
+in taking farewell before she should embark for the West Highlands to
+prepare for our projected change of life." Lovers of Burns linger over
+this final parting, and detail the impressive ceremonials with which the
+pair solemnized their betrothal: they stood on either side of a brook,
+they laved their hands in the water and scattered it in the air to
+symbolize the purity of their intentions; clasping hands above an open
+Bible, they swore to be true to each other forever, then exchanged
+Bibles, and parted never to meet more. It is not strange that when death
+had left him nothing of her but her poor little Bible, a tress of her
+golden hair, and a tender memory of her love, the recollection of this
+farewell remained in his soul forever. He has pictured it in the
+exquisite lines of "Highland Mary" and "To Mary in Heaven."
+
+[Sidenote: Mementos]
+
+In the monument at Alloway--between the "auld haunted kirk" and the
+bridge where Maggie lost her tail--we are shown a memento of the
+parting; it is the Bible which Burns gave to Mary and above which their
+vows were said. At Mary's death it passed to her sister, at Ardrossan,
+who bequeathed it to her son William Anderson; subsequently it was
+carried to America by one of the family, whence it has been recovered to
+be treasured here. It is a pocket edition in two volumes, to one of
+which is attached a lock of poor Mary's shining hair. Within the cover
+of the first volume the hand of Burns has written, "And ye shall not
+swear by my name falsely, I am the Lord;" within the second, "Thou shalt
+not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." Upon
+a blank leaf of each volume is Burns's Masonic signet, with the
+signature, "Robert Burns, Mossgiel," written beneath. Mary's
+spinning-wheel is preserved in the adjoining cottage. A few of her
+bright hairs, severed in her fatal fever, are among the treasures of the
+writer and lie before him as he pens these lines.
+
+[Sidenote: Coilsfield--Plans of the Lovers]
+
+A visit to the scenes of the brief passion of the pair is a pleasing
+incident of our Burns-pilgrimage. Coilsfield House is somewhat changed
+since Mary dwelt beneath its roof,--a great rambling edifice of gray
+weather-worn stone with a row of white pillars aligned along its façade,
+its massive walls embowered in foliage and environed by the grand woods
+which Burns and Mary knew so well. It was then a seat of Colonel Hugh
+Montgomerie, a patron of Burns. The name Coilsfield is derived from
+Coila, the traditional appellation of the district. The grounds comprise
+a billowy expanse of wood and sward; great reaches of turf, dotted with
+trees already venerable when the lovers here had their tryst a hundred
+years ago, slope away from the mansion to the Faile and border its
+murmuring course to the Ayr. Here we trace with romantic interest the
+wanderings of the pair during the swift hours of that last day of
+parting love, their lingering way 'neath the "wild wood's thickening
+green," by the pebbled shore of Ayr to the brooklet where their vows
+were made, and thence along the Faile to the woodland shades of
+Coilsfield, where, at the close of that winged day, "pledging oft to
+meet again, they tore themselves asunder." Howitt found at Coilsfield a
+thorn-tree, called by all the country "Highland Mary's thorn," and
+believed to be the place of final parting; years ago the tree was
+notched and broken by souvenir seekers; if it be still in existence the
+present occupant of Coilsfield is unaware.
+
+[Sidenote: Burns's Regard for Mary--Her Death]
+
+At the time of his parting with Mary, Burns had already resolved to
+emigrate to Jamaica, and it has been supposed, from his own statements
+and those of his biographers, that the pair planned to emigrate
+together; but Burns soon abandoned this project and, perhaps, all
+thought of marrying Mary. The song commencing "Will ye go to the Indies,
+my Mary?" has been quoted to show he expected her to accompany him, but
+he says, in an epistle to Thomson, that this was his farewell to her,
+and in another song, written while preparing to embark, he declares that
+it is leaving Mary that makes him wish to tarry. Further, we find that
+with the first nine pounds received from the sale of his poems he
+purchased a single passage to Jamaica,--manifestly having no intention
+of taking her with him. Her being at Greenock in October, _en route_ to
+a new place of service at Glasgow, indicates she had no hope that he
+would marry her then, or soon. True, he afterward said she came to
+Greenock to meet him, but it is certain that he knew nothing of her
+being there until after her death. During the summer of 1786, while
+she was preparing to wed him, he indited two love-songs to her, but
+they are not more glowing than those of the same time to several
+inamoratas,--less impassioned than the "Farewell to Eliza" and allusions
+to Jean in "Farewell, old Scotia's bleak domains,"--and barely four
+weeks after his ardent and solemn parting with Mary we find him writing
+to Brice, "I do still love Jean to distraction." Poor Mary! Possibly the
+fever mercifully saved her from dying of a broken heart. The bard's
+anomalous affectional condition and conduct may perhaps be explained by
+assuming that he loved Mary with a refined and spiritual passion so
+different from his love for others--and especially from his conjugal
+love for Jean--that the passions could coexist in his heart. The
+alternative explanation is that his love for Mary, while she lived, was
+by no means the absorbing passion which he afterward believed it to
+have been. When death had hallowed his memories of her love and of all
+their sweet intercourse,--beneficent death! that beautifies, ennobles,
+irradiates, in the remembrance of survivors, the loved ones its touch
+has taken,--then his soul, swelling with the passion that throbs in the
+strains of "To Mary in Heaven," would not own to itself that its love
+had ever been less.
+
+Mary remained at Campbeltown during the summer of 1786. Coming to
+Greenock in the autumn, she found her brother sick of a malignant fever
+at the house of her aunt; bravely disregarding danger of contagion, she
+devoted herself to nursing him, and brought him to a safe convalescence
+only to be herself stricken by his malady and to rapidly sink and die, a
+sacrifice to her sisterly affection. By this time the success of his
+poems had determined Burns to remain in Scotland, and he returned to
+Mossgiel, where tidings of Mary's death reached him. His brother relates
+that when the letter was handed to him he went to the window to read it,
+then his face was observed to change suddenly, and he quickly went out
+without speaking. In June of the next year he made a solitary journey to
+the Highlands, apparently drawn by memory of Mary. If, indeed, he
+dropped a tear upon her neglected grave and visited her humble Highland
+home, we may almost forgive him the excesses of that tour, if not the
+renewed _liaison_ with Jean which immediately preceded, and the amorous
+correspondence with "Clarinda" (Mrs. M'Lehose) which followed it.
+
+Whatever the quality or degree of his passion for Mary living, his grief
+for her dead was deep and tender, and expired only with his life.
+Cherished in his heart, it manifested itself now in some passage of a
+letter, now in some pathetic burst of song,--like "The Lament" and
+"Highland Mary,"--and again in some emotional act. Of many such acts
+narrated to the writer by Burns's niece, the following is, perhaps, most
+striking. The poet attended the wedding of Kirstie Kirkpatrick, a
+favorite of his, who often sang his songs for him, and, after the wedded
+pair had retired, a lass of the company, being asked to sing, began
+"Highland Mary." Its effect upon Burns "was painful to witness; he
+started to his feet, prayed her in God's name to forbear, then hastened
+to the door of the marriage-chamber and entreated the bride to come and
+quiet his mind with a verse or two of 'Bonnie Doon.'" The lines "To Mary
+in Heaven" and the pathetic incidents of their composition show most
+touchingly how he mourned his fair-haired lassie years after she ceased
+to be. It was at Ellisland, October 20, 1789, the anniversary of Mary's
+death, an occasion which brought afresh to his heart memories of the
+tender past. Jean has told us of his increasing silence and unrest as
+the day declined, of his aimless wandering by Nithside at nightfall, of
+his rapt abstraction as he lay pillowed by the sheaves of his
+stack-yard, gazing entranced at the "lingering star" above him till the
+immortal song was born.
+
+[Sidenote: Her Grave]
+
+Poor Mary is laid in the burial-plot of her uncle in the west kirk-yard
+of Greenock, near Crawford Street; our pilgrimage in Burnsland may fitly
+end at her grave. A pathway, beaten by the feet of many reverent
+visitors, leads us to the spot. It is so pathetically different from the
+scenes she loved in life,--the heather-clad slopes of her Highland home,
+the seclusion of the wooded braes where she loitered with her
+poet-lover. Scant foliage is about her; few birds sing above her here.
+She lies by the wall; narrow streets hem in the enclosure; the air is
+sullied by smoke from factories and from steamers passing within a
+stone's-throw on the busy Clyde; the clanging of many hammers and the
+discordant din of machinery and traffic invade the place and sound in
+our ears as we muse above the ashes of the gentle lassie.
+
+For half a century her grave was unmarked and neglected; then, by
+subscription, a monument of marble, twelve feet in height, and of
+graceful proportions, was raised. It bears a sculptured medallion
+representing Burns and Mary, with clasped hands, plighting their troth.
+Beneath is the simple inscription, read oft by eyes dim with tears:
+
+    Erected Over the Grave of
+
+          HIGHLAND MARY
+
+              1842.
+
+  "My Mary, dear departed shade,
+    Where is thy place of blissful rest?"
+
+
+
+
+BRONTË SCENES IN BRUSSELS
+
+_School--Class-Rooms--Dormitory--Garden--Scenes and Events of Villette
+  and The Professor--M. Paul--Madame Beck--Memories of the Brontës--
+  Confessional--Grave of Jessy Yorke_.
+
+
+We had "done" Brussels after the approved fashion,--had faithfully
+visited the churches, palaces, museums, theatres, galleries, monuments;
+had duly admired the windows and carvings of the grand cathedral, the
+tower and tapestry and frescos and façade of the Hôtel de Ville, the
+stately halls and the gilded dome of the Courts of Justice, and the
+consummate beauty of the Bourse; had diligently sought out the naïve
+boy-fountain, and had made the usual excursion to the field of Waterloo.
+
+[Sidenote: The Park--Héger Mansion]
+
+This delightful task being conscientiously discharged, we proposed to
+devote our last day in the Belgian capital to the accomplishment of one
+of the cherished projects of our lives,--the searching out of the
+localities associated with Charlotte Brontë's unhappy school-life here,
+which she has so graphically portrayed. For our purpose no guide was
+needful, for the topography and local coloring of "Villette" and "The
+Professor" are as vivid and unmistakable as in the best work of Dickens
+himself. Proceeding from St. Gudule to the Rue Royale, and a short
+distance along that thoroughfare, we reached the park and a locality
+familiar to Miss Brontë's readers. Seated in this lovely
+pleasure-ground, the gift of the Empress Maria Theresa, with its cool
+shade all about us, we noted the long avenues and the paths winding amid
+trees and shrubbery, the dark foliage ineffectually veiling the gleaming
+statuary and the sheen of bright fountains, "the stone basin with its
+clear depth, the thick-planted trees which framed this tremulous and
+rippled mirror," the groups of happy people filling the seats in
+secluded nooks or loitering in the mazes and listening to the music; we
+noted all this, and felt that Miss Brontë had revealed it to us long
+ago. It was across this park that Lucy Snowe was piloted from the bureau
+of the diligence by the chivalrous Dr. John on the night when she,
+despoiled, helpless, and solitary, arrived in Brussels. She found the
+park deserted, the paths miry, the water dripping from the trees. "In
+the double gloom of tree and fog she could not see her guide, and could
+only follow his tread" in the darkness. We recalled another scene under
+these same trees, on a night when the gate-way was "spanned by a flaming
+arch of massed stars." The park was a "forest with sparks of purple and
+ruby and golden fire gemming the foliage," and Lucy, driven from her
+couch by mental torture, wandered unrecognized amid the gay throng at
+the midnight concert of the Festival of the Martyrs and looked upon her
+lover, her friends the Brettons, and the secret junta of her enemies,
+Madame Beck, Madame Walravens, and Père Silas. The sense of familiarity
+with the vicinage grew as we observed our surroundings. Facing us, at
+the extremity of the park, was the palace of the king, in the small
+square across the Rue Royale at our right was the statue of General
+Béliard, and we knew that just behind it we should find the Brontë
+school; for "The Professor," standing by the statue, had looked down a
+great staircase to the door-way of the school, and poor Lucy on that
+forlorn first night in "Villette," to avoid a pair of ruffians, had
+hastened down a flight of steps from the Rue Royale and had come, not to
+the inn she sought, but to the _pensionnat_ of Madame Beck. From the
+statue we descended, by a series of stone stairs, into a narrow street,
+old-fashioned and clean, quiet and secluded in the very heart of the
+great city, and just opposite the foot of the steps we came to the wide
+door of a spacious, quadrangular, stuccoed old mansion, with a bit of
+foliage showing over a high wall at one side. A bright plate embellished
+the door and bore the name Héger. A Latin inscription in the wall of
+the house showed it to have been given to the Guild of Royal Archers by
+the Infanta Isabelle early in the seventeenth century. Long before that
+the garden had been the orchard and herbary of a convent and the
+Hospital for the Poor.
+
+[Sidenote: Characters of Villette]
+
+[Sidenote: The Hégers]
+
+We were detained at the door long enough to remember Lucy standing
+there, trembling and anxious, awaiting admission, and then we too were
+"let in by a _bonne_ in a smart cap," apparently a fit successor to the
+Rosine of other days, and entered the corridor. This was paved with
+blocks of black and white marble and had painted walls. It extended
+through the entire depth of the house, and at its farther extremity an
+open door afforded us a glimpse of the garden. We were ushered into the
+little _salon_ at the left of the passage, the one often mentioned in
+"Villette," and here we made known our wish to see the garden and
+class-rooms, and met with a prompt refusal from the neat portress. We
+tried diplomacy (also lucre) without avail: it was the _grandes
+vacances_, M. Héger was engaged, we could not be gratified,--unless,
+indeed, we were patrons of the school. At this juncture a portly,
+ruddy-faced lady of middle age and most courteous of speech and manner
+appeared, and, addressing us in faultless English, introduced herself as
+Mdlle. Héger, co-directress of the school, and "wholly at our service."
+In response to our apologies for the intrusion and explanations of the
+desire which had prompted it, we received complaisant assurances of
+welcome; yet the manner of our entertainer indicated that she did not
+share in our admiration and enthusiasm for Charlotte Brontë and her
+books. In the subsequent conversation it appeared that Mademoiselle and
+her family hold decided opinions upon the subject,--something more than
+mere lack of admiration. She was familiar with the novels, and thought
+that, while they exhibit a talent certainly not above mediocrity, they
+reflect the injustice, the untruthfulness, and the ingratitude of their
+creator. We were obliged to confess to ourselves that the family have
+reason for this view, when we reflected that in the books Miss Brontë
+has assailed their religion and disparaged the school and the characters
+of the teachers and pupils, has depicted Madame Héger in the odious duad
+of Madame Beck and Mdlle. Reuter, has represented M. Héger as the
+scheming and deceitful Pelet and the preposterous Paul, Lucy Snowe's
+lover; that this lover was the husband of Madame Héger, and father of
+the family of children to whom Lucy was at first _bonne d'enfants_, and
+that possibly the daughter she has described as the thieving, vicious
+Désirée--"that tadpole Désirée Beck"--was this very lady now so politely
+entertaining us. To all this add the significant fact that "Villette"
+is an autobiographical novel, which "records the most vivid passages in
+Miss Brontë's own sad heart's history," not a few of the incidents being
+transcripts "from the darkest chapter of her own life," and the light
+which the consideration of this fact throws upon her relations with
+members of the family will help us to apprehend the stand-point from
+which the Hégers judge Miss Brontë and her work, and to excuse a natural
+resentment against one who has presented them in a decidedly bad light.
+How bad we realized when, during the ensuing chat, we called to mind
+just what she had written of them. As Madame Beck, Madame Héger had been
+represented as lying, deceitful, and shameless, as "watching and spying
+everywhere, peeping through every key-hole, listening behind every
+door," as duplicating Lucy's keys and secretly searching her bureau, as
+meanly abstracting her letters and reading them to others, as immodestly
+laying herself out to entrap the man to whom she had given her love
+unsought. It was some accession to the existing animosity between
+herself and Madame Héger which precipitated Miss Brontë's departure from
+the _pensionnat_. Mrs. Gaskell ascribes their mutual dislike to
+Charlotte's free expression of her aversion to the Catholic Church, of
+which Madame Héger was a devotee, and hence "wounded in her most
+cherished opinions;" but a later writer plainly intimates that Miss
+Brontë hated the woman who sat for Madame Beck because marriage had
+given to _her_ the man whom Miss Brontë loved, and that "Madame Beck had
+need to be a detective in her own house." The death of Madame Héger had
+rendered the family, who held her only as a sacred memory, more keenly
+sensitive than ever to anything which would seem by implication to
+disparage her.
+
+[Sidenote: Recollections of the Brontës]
+
+For himself, it would appear that M. Héger had less cause for
+resentment; for, although in "Villette" his double is pictured as "a
+waspish little despot," as detestably ugly, in his anger closely
+resembling "a black and sallow tiger," as having an "overmastering love
+of authority and public display," as playing the spy and reading
+purloined letters, and in the Brontë epistles Charlotte declares he is
+choleric and irritable, compels her to make her French translations
+without a dictionary or grammar, and then has "his eyes almost plucked
+out of his head" by the occasional English word she is obliged to
+introduce, etc., yet all this is partially atoned for by the warm praise
+she subsequently accords him for his goodness to her and his
+disinterested friendship, by the poignant regret she expresses at
+parting with him,--perhaps wholly expiated by the high compliment she
+pays him of making her heroine fall in love with him, or the higher
+compliment it is suspected she paid him of falling in love with him
+herself. One who reads the strange history of passion in "Villette," in
+conjunction with her letters, "will know more of the truth of her stay
+in Brussels than if a dozen biographers had undertaken to tell the whole
+tale." Still, M. Héger can hardly be pleased by having members of his
+school set forth as stupid, animal, and inferior, "their principles
+rotten to the core, steeped in systematic sensuality," by having his
+religion styled "besotted papistry, a piece of childish humbug," and the
+like. Something of the displeasure of the family was revealed in the
+course of our conversation with Mdlle. Héger, but the specific causes
+were but cursorily touched upon. She could have no personal recollection
+of the Brontës; her knowledge of them was derived from her parents and
+the teachers,--presumably the "repulsive old maids" of Charlotte's
+letters. One teacher whom we saw in the school had been a classmate of
+Charlotte's here. The Brontës had not been popular with the school.
+Their "heretical" religion had something to do with this; but their
+manifest avoidance of the other pupils during hours of recreation,
+Mademoiselle thought, had been a more potent cause,--Emily, in
+particular, not speaking with her school-mates or teachers, except when
+obliged to do so. The other pupils thought them of outlandish accent and
+manners, and ridiculously old to be at school at all,--being twenty-four
+and twenty-six, and seeming even older. Their sombre and ugly costumes
+were fruitful causes of mirth to the gay young Belgian misses. The
+Brontës were not brilliant students, and none of their companions had
+ever suspected that they were geniuses. Of the two, Emily was considered
+to be the more talented, but she was obstinate and opinionated. Some of
+the pupils had been inclined to resist having Charlotte placed over them
+as teacher, and may have been mutinous. After her return from Haworth
+she taught English to M. Héger and his brother-in-law. M. Héger gave the
+sisters private lessons in French without charge, and for some time
+preserved their compositions, which Mrs. Gaskell copied. Mrs. Gaskell
+visited the _pensionnat_ in quest of material for her biography of
+Charlotte, and received all the aid M. Héger could afford: the
+information thus obtained was, we were told, fairly used. Miss Brontë's
+letters from Brussels, so freely quoted in Mrs. Gaskell's "Life," were
+addressed to Ellen Nussy, a familiar friend of Charlotte's, whose
+signature we saw in the register at Haworth as witness to Miss Brontë's
+marriage. The Hégers had no suspicion that she had been so unhappy with
+them as these letters indicate, and she had assigned a totally different
+reason for her sudden return to England. She had been introduced to
+Madame Héger by Mrs. Jenkins, wife of the then chaplain of the British
+Embassy at the Court of Belgium; she had frequently visited that lady
+and other friends in Brussels,--among them Mary and Martha Taylor and
+the family of a Dr. ---- (_not_ "Dr. John"),--and therefore her life here
+need not have been so lonely and desolate as it was made to appear.
+
+[Sidenote: The Garden]
+
+[Sidenote: School]
+
+The Hégers usually have a few English pupils in the school, but have
+never had an American. American tourists have before called to look at
+the garden, but the family are not pleased by the notoriety with which
+Miss Brontë has invested it. However, Mdlle. Héger kindly offered to
+conduct us over any portion of the establishment we might care to see,
+and led the way along the corridor to the narrow, high-walled garden. We
+found it smaller than in the time when Miss Brontë loitered here in
+weariness and solitude. Mdlle. Héger explained that, while the width
+remained the same, the erection of class-rooms for the day-pupils had
+diminished the length by some yards. Tall houses surrounded and shut it
+in on either side, making it close and sombre, and the noises of the
+great city all about it penetrated only as a far-away murmur. There was
+a plat of verdant turf in the centre, bordered by scant flowers and
+gravelled walks, along which shrubs of evergreen were irregularly
+disposed. A few seats were here and there within the shade, where, as in
+Miss Brontë's time, the _externats_ ate the lunch brought with them to
+the school; and overlooking it all stood the great pear-trees, whose
+gnarled and deformed trunks were relics of the time of the convent.
+Beyond these and along the gray wall which bounded the farther side of
+the enclosure was the sheltered walk which was Miss Brontë's favorite
+retreat, the "_allée défendue_" of her novels. It was screened by shrubs
+and perfumed by flowers, and, being secure from the intrusion of pupils,
+we could well believe that Charlotte and her heroine found here restful
+seclusion. The coolness and quiet and, more than all, the throng of
+vivid associations which filled the place tempted us to linger. The
+garden was not a spacious nor even a pretty one, and yet it seemed to us
+singularly pleasing and familiar, as if we were revisiting it after an
+absence. Seated upon a rustic bench close at hand, possibly the very one
+which Lucy had "reclaimed from fungi and mould," how the memories came
+surging up in our minds! How often in the summer twilight poor
+Charlotte had lingered here in solitude after the day's burdens and
+trials with "stupid and impertinent" pupils! How often, with weary feet
+and a dreary heart, she had paced this secluded walk and thought, with
+longing, of the dear ones in far-away Haworth parsonage! In this
+sheltered corner her other self, Lucy, sat and listened to the distant
+chimes and thought forbidden thoughts and cherished impossible hopes.
+Here she met and talked with Dr. John. Deep beneath this "Methuselah of
+a pear-tree," the one nearest the end of the alley, lies the imprisoned
+dust of the poor nun who was buried alive ages ago for some sin against
+her vow, and whose perambulating ghost so disquieted poor Lucy. At the
+root of this same tree one miserable night Lucy buried her precious
+letters, and meant also to bury a grief and her great affection for Dr.
+John. Here she leant her brow against Methuselah's knotty trunk and
+uttered to herself those brave words of renunciation, "Good-night, Dr.
+John; you are good, you are beautiful, _but you are not mine_.
+Good-night, and God bless you!" Here she held pleasant converse with M.
+Paul, and with him, spellbound, saw the ghost of the nun descend from
+the leafy shadows overhead and, sweeping close past their wondering
+faces, disappear behind yonder screen of shrubbery into the darkness of
+the summer night. By that tall tree next the class-rooms the ghost was
+wont to ascend to meet its material sweetheart, Fanshawe, in the great
+garret beneath yonder sky-light,--the garret where Lucy retired to read
+Dr. John's letter, and wherein M. Paul confined her to learn her part in
+the vaudeville for Madame Beck's _fête_-day. In this nook where we sat
+"The Professor" had walked and talked with and almost made love to
+Mdlle. Reuter, and from yonder window overlooking the alley had seen
+that perfidious fair one in dalliance with Pelet beneath these
+pear-trees. From that window M. Paul watched Lucy as she sat or walked
+in the _allée défendue_, dogged by Madame Beck; from the same window
+were thrown the love-letters which fell at Lucy's feet sitting here.
+Leaves from the overhanging boughs were plucked for us as souvenirs of
+the place; then, reverently traversing once more the narrow alley so
+often traced in weariness by Charlotte Brontë, we turned away. From the
+garden we entered the long and spacious class-room of the first and
+second divisions. A movable partition divided it across the middle when
+the classes were in session; the floor was of bare boards cleanly
+scoured. There were long ranges of desks and benches upon either side,
+and a lane through the middle led up to a raised platform at the end of
+the room, where the instructor's chair and desk were placed.
+
+[Sidenote: M. Paul]
+
+How quickly our fancy peopled the place! On these front seats sat the
+gay and indocile Belgian girls. There, "in the last row, in the quietest
+corner, sat Emily and Charlotte side by side, insensible to anything
+about them;" and at the same desk, "in the farthest seat of the farthest
+row," sat Mdlle. Henri during Crimsworth's English lessons. Here Lucy's
+desk was rummaged by Paul and the tell-tale odor of cigars left behind.
+Here, after school-hours, Miss Brontë taught Héger English, he taught
+her French, and Paul taught Lucy arithmetic and (incidentally) love.
+This was the scene of their _tête-à-têtes_, of his efforts to persuade
+her into his religious faith, of their ludicrous supper of biscuit and
+baked apples, and of his final violent outbreak with Madame Beck, when
+she literally thrust herself between him and his love. From this
+platform Crimsworth and Lucy and Charlotte Brontë herself had given
+instruction to pupils whose insubordination had first to be confronted
+and overcome. Here Paul and Héger gave lectures upon literature, and
+Paul delivered his spiteful tirade against the English on the morning of
+his _fête_-day. Upon this desk were heaped his bouquets that morning;
+from its smooth surface poor Lucy dislodged and fractured his
+spectacles; and here, seated in Paul's chair, at Paul's desk, we saw and
+were presented to Paul Emanuel himself,--M. Héger.
+
+[Sidenote: School Scenes]
+
+It was something more than curiosity which made us alert to note the
+appearance and manner of this man, who has been so nearly associated
+with Miss Brontë in an intercourse which colored her subsequent life and
+determined her life-work, who has been made the hero of her novels and
+has been deemed the hero of her own heart's romance; and yet we _were_
+curious to know what manner of man it was who has been so much as
+suspected of being honored with the love and preference of the dainty
+Charlotte Brontë. During a short conversation with him we had
+opportunity to observe that in person this "wise, good, and religious"
+man must, at the time Miss Brontë knew him, have more closely resembled
+Pelet of "The Professor" than any other of her pen-portraits: indeed,
+after the lapse of more than forty years that delineation still, for the
+most part, aptly applied to him. He was of middle size, of rather spare
+habit of body; his face was fair and the features pleasing and regular,
+the cheeks were thin and the mouth flexible, the eyes--somewhat
+sunken--were mild blue and of singularly pleasant expression. We found
+him aged and somewhat infirm; his finely-shaped head was fringed with
+white hair, and partial baldness contributed reverence to his presence
+and tended to enhance the intellectual effect of his wide brow. In
+repose his countenance showed a hint of melancholy: as Miss Brontë said,
+his "physiognomy was _fine et spirituelle_;" one would hardly imagine it
+could ever resemble the "visage of a black and sallow tiger." His voice
+was low and soft, his bow still "very polite, not theatrical, scarcely
+French," his manner _suave_ and courteous, his dress scrupulously neat.
+He accosted us in the language Miss Brontë taught him forty years ago,
+and his accent and diction honored her instruction. He was talking with
+some patrons, and, as his daughter had hinted that he was averse to
+speaking of Miss Brontë, we soon took leave of him and were shown other
+parts of the school. The other class-rooms, used for less advanced
+pupils, were smaller. In one of them Miss Brontë had ruled as monitress
+after her return from Haworth. The large dormitory of the _pensionnat_
+was above the long class-room, and in the time of the Brontës most of
+the boarders--about twenty in number--slept here. Their cots were
+arranged along either side, and the position of those occupied by the
+Brontës was pointed out to us at the extreme end of the room. It was
+here that Lucy suffered the horrors of hypochondria, so graphically
+portrayed in "Villette," and found the discarded costume of the spectral
+nun lying upon her bed, and here Miss Brontë passed those nights of
+wakeful misery which Mrs. Gaskell describes. A long, narrow room in
+front of the class-rooms was shown us as the _réfectoire_, where the
+Brontës, with the other boarders, took their meals, presided over by M.
+and Madame Héger, and where, during the evenings, the lessons for the
+ensuing days were prepared. Here were held the evening prayers which
+Charlotte used to avoid by escaping into the garden. This, too, was the
+scene of Paul's readings to teachers and pupils, and of some of his
+spasms of petulance, which readers of "Villette" will remember. From the
+_réfectoire_ we passed again into the corridor, where we made our adieus
+to our affable conductress. She explained that, whereas this
+establishment had been both a _pensionnat_ and an _externat_, having
+about seventy day-pupils and twenty boarders when Miss Brontë was here,
+it was after the death of Madame Héger used as a day-school only,--the
+_pensionnat_ being in another street.
+
+[Sidenote: The Confessional]
+
+The genuine local color Miss Brontë gives in "Villette" enabled us to be
+sure that we had found the sombre old church where Lucy, arrested in
+passing by the sound of the bells, knelt upon the stone pavement,
+passing thence into the confessional of Père Silas. Certain it is that
+this old church lies upon the route she would take in the walk from the
+school to the Protestant cemetery, which she had set out to do that
+afternoon, and the narrow streets which lie beyond the church correspond
+to those in which she was lost. Certain, too, it is said to be that this
+incident is taken from her own experience. Reid says, "During one of the
+long holidays, when her mind was restless and disturbed, she found
+sympathy, if not peace, in the counsels of a priest in the confessional,
+who soothed her troubled spirit without attempting to enmesh it in the
+folds of Romanism."
+
+[Sidenote: The Cemetery]
+
+Our way to the Protestant cemetery--a spot sadly familiar to Miss
+Brontë, and the usual termination of her walks--lay past the site of the
+Porte de Louvain and out to the hills beyond the old city limits. From
+our path we saw more than one tree-shrouded farm-house which might have
+been the place of Paul's breakfast with his school, and at least one
+quaint mansion, with green-tufted and terraced lawns, which might have
+served Miss Brontë as the model for La Terrasse, the suburban home of
+the Brettons and the temporary abode of the Taylor sisters whom she
+visited here. From the cemetery we beheld vistas of farther lines of
+hills, of intervening valleys, of farms and villas, and of the great
+city lying below. Miss Brontë has well described this place: "Here, on
+pages of stone and of brass, are written names, dates, last tributes of
+pomp or love, in English, French, German, and Latin." There are stone
+crosses all about, and great thickets of roses and yews; "cypresses that
+stand straight and mute, and willows that hang low and still;" and there
+are "dim garlands of everlasting flowers." Here "The Professor" found
+his long-sought sweetheart kneeling at a new-made grave under the
+overhanging trees. And here we found the shrine of poor Charlotte
+Brontë's many pilgrimages hither,--the burial-place of her friend and
+school-mate, the Jessy Yorke of "Shirley;" the spot where, under "green
+sod and a gray marble head-stone, cold, coffined, solitary, Jessy sleeps
+below."
+
+
+
+
+LEMAN'S SHRINES
+
+_Beloved of Littérateurs--Gibbon--D'Aubigné--Rousseau--Byron--Shelley--
+  Dickens, etc.--Scenes of Childe Harold--Nouvelle Heloïse--Prisoner of
+  Chillon--Land of Byron._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Haunts of Littérateurs]
+
+A pilgrimage in the track of Childe Harold brings us from the shores of
+Albion, by Belgium's capital and deadly Waterloo, along the castled
+Rhine and over mountain-pass to "Italia, home and grave of empires," and
+to the sublimer scenery of "Manfred," "Chillon," and the third canto of
+the pilgrim-poet's masterpiece; to his "silver-sheeted Staubbach" and
+"arrowy Rhone," "soaring Jungfrau" and "bleak Mont Blanc." We linger
+with especial pleasure on the shores of "placid Leman," in an enchanting
+region which teems with literary shrines and is pervaded with memories
+and associations--often so thrilling and vivid that they seem like
+veritable and sensible presences--of the brilliant number who have
+here had their haunts. Here Calvin wrought his Commentaries; here
+Voltaire polished his darts; here Rousseau laid the scenes of his
+impassioned tale; here Dickens, Byron, and Shelley loitered and wrote;
+here Gibbon and de Staël, Schlegel and Constant, and many another
+scarcely less famous, lived and wrought the treasures of their knowledge
+and fancy into the literature of the world. A lingering voyage round
+the lake, like that of Byron and Shelley, is a delight to be remembered
+through a lifetime, and affords opportunity to visit the spots
+consecrated by genius upon these shores. At Geneva we find the inn where
+Byron lodged and first met the author of "Queen Mab," the house in which
+Rousseau was born, the place where d'Aubigné wrote his history, the
+sometime home of John Calvin. Near by, in a house presented by the
+Genevese after his release from the long imprisonment suffered on their
+account, dwelt Bonnivard, Byron's immortal "Prisoner of Chillon," and
+here he suffered from his procession of wives and finally died. Just
+beyond the site of the fortifications, on the east side of the city, is
+an eminence whose slopes are tastefully laid out with walks that wind,
+amid sward and shrub, to the observatory which crowns the summit and
+marks the site of Bonnivard's Priory of St. Victor, lost to him by his
+devotion to Genevan independence. Not far away is the public library,
+founded by his bequest of his modest collection of books and MSS. which
+we see here carefully preserved. Here also is an old portrait of the
+prisoner, which represents him as a reckless and jolly "good fellow"
+rather than a saintly hero, and accords better with his character as
+described by late writers than with the common conception of him.
+
+[Sidenote: Byron at Villa Diodati]
+
+Byron loved this Leman lake, and it is said his discontented sprite
+still walks its margins; certain it is he remains its poetic genius; his
+melody seems to wake in every breeze that stirs its surface. The Villa
+Diodati, a plain, quadrangular, three-storied mansion of moderate
+dimensions, standing on the shore a few miles from Geneva, was the
+handsome "Giaour's" first home after his separation from Lady Byron and
+his exile from England. It had been the residence of the Genevan
+Professor Diodati and the sojourn of his friend the poet Milton.
+Pleasant vineyards surround the place and slope away to the water, but
+there is little in the spot or its near environment to commend it to the
+fancy of a poet. Byron's study here was a sombre room at the back from
+which neither the lake nor the snowy peaks were visible, and here he
+wrote, besides many minor poems, "Manfred," "Prometheus," "Darkness,"
+"Dream," and the third canto of "Childe Harold." Here also he wrote
+"Marriage of Belphegor," a tale setting forth his version of his own
+infelicitous marriage; but hearing that his wife was seriously ill, he
+burned it in his study fire. From here, by instigation of de Stael, he
+sent to Lady Byron ineffectual overtures for a reconciliation. His
+companion at the villa was an eccentric Italian physician, Polidori, who
+was uncle to the poet Rossetti, and who here quarrelled with Byron's
+guests and wrote "The Vampire," a weird production afterward attributed
+to Byron. Lovers of Byron owe much to his sojourn on Leman; he found in
+the inspiring landscapes here, especially in the environment of
+mountains, a power that profoundly stirred what his wife called "the
+angel in him." His letters recognize an afflatus breathed upon him by
+the "majesty around and above," and the quality of the poems here
+produced shows his yielding and response to that benign influence; many
+a gem of poetic thought was here begotten of lake and mount and
+cataract, which otherwise had never been. The insincere stanzas of some
+of his later poems would scarcely have been written on Leman. As we muse
+in the spots he frequented--wandering on the entrancing margins or
+floating on the crystal waters--and look thence upon the snow-crowned
+peaks, resplendent in the sunshine or roseate in the after-glow, we
+aspire to not only partake of his rapture in this sublime beauty, but to
+appreciate the deeper feelings to which it moved him.
+
+[Sidenote: Shelley]
+
+A villa near Byron's, and reached by a path through his grounds,--Maison
+Chapuis, of Mont Allegra,--was occupied that summer by the "impassioned
+Ariel of English verse," with Mary Shelley and her brunette relative
+Jane Clermont (the Claire of Shelley's journal), who after bore to
+Byron a daughter called Alba by the Shelleys, but later named by Byron
+Allegra, for the place where he had known the mother. At Mont Allegra
+"Bridge of Arve," "Intellectual Beauty," and Mrs. Shelley's weird
+"Frankenstein" were penned. Here Byron was a daily visitant, and the
+Shelleys were the usual companions of his excursions upon the lake of
+beauty, in a picturesque lateen-rigged boat which was the property of
+the poets and the counterpart of which we see moored by the Diodati
+shore, looking like a bit of the Levant transported to this tramontane
+water. The "white phantom" observed by telescopists on the opposite
+shore to sometimes embark with Byron, and which he gravely told Madame
+de Staël was his dog, was doubtless the frail Claire. The admonitions of
+de Staël anent his mode of life provoked Byron to take sure revenge by
+being attentive to her husband, which the overshadowing wife always
+resented as an affront upon herself. It is said the poet's observation
+of this pair prompted the couplet of "Don Juan:"
+
+  "But oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
+  Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?"
+
+[Sidenote: Voltaire--Gibbon--Dickens]
+
+Passing for the present the shrines of Ferney and Coppet, we find in
+picturesque Lausanne the quaint house in which Voltaire lived several
+winters, and not far away the place where Secretan died a few months
+ago. Gibbon's dwelling has been demolished, but we find the place of his
+summer-house where the great history was completed, and of his famous
+rose-tree where Byron gathered roses long ago. Madame de Genlis narrates
+this incident of the great "Decliner and Faller" at Lausanne: he was
+enamoured of the comely Madame Crousaz, and, finding her alone, he knelt
+at her feet and besought her love. He received an unfavorable reply, but
+remained in his humble posture until the lady, after repeatedly
+requesting him to arise, discovered that his weight made it impossible,
+and summoned a servant to assist him to regain his feet. His obesity
+seems to have been a standing jest among his acquaintances: a sufferer
+from indigestion, due to lack of exercise, was advised by a witty friend
+to "walk twice around Gibbon before breakfast." Several decades later
+another illustrious English man of letters sojourned in Lausanne. A
+pretty cottage-villa, with embowered walls and flower-shaded porticos
+which look from a mild eminence across the crescentic lake, was, in
+1846, the dwelling of Dickens, who here wrote one of the matchless
+Christmas stories and a part of "Dombey and Son." From the magnificent
+slope of Lausanne the whole lake region is visible, with the dark Juras
+rising to the western horizon, the Alps of Savoy, and "the monarch of
+mountains with a diadem of snow" upholding the sky away in the south. At
+the foot of this slope is the port-town of Ouchy, a resort of Byron's in
+his sailing excursions; at the plain little Anchor inn near the _quai_
+(Byron called it a "wretched inn") he lodged, and here, being detained
+two days (June 26 and 27, 1816) by a storm which overtook him on his
+return from Chillon and Clarens, he wrote the touching "Prisoner of
+Chillon." In a parsonage not far from Lausanne was reared sweet Suzanne
+Curchod, erst _fiancée_ of Gibbon, and later the mother of de Staël.
+
+[Sidenote: Rousseau]
+
+Eastward is "Clarens, birthplace of deep love," whose "air is the breath
+of passionate thought, whose trees take root in love;" about it lies the
+charming region which Rousseau chose for his fiction and peopled with
+affections, and where Byron, Houghton, and Shelley loved to linger. Here
+the latter first read "Nouvelle Héloïse" amid the settings of its
+scenes; here Byron wrote many glowing lines, inspired by the beauty and
+romantic associations around him. From the vine-clad terraces which
+cling to the heights we behold the view which enraptured the poet,--a
+broad expanse of lacustrine beauty and Alpine sublimity, embracing the
+Leman shores from the Rhone to the Juras of Gex, the entire width of the
+"_bleu impossible_" lake and Alp piled on Alp beyond. Back of Clarens we
+find the spot of Rousseau's "Bosquet de Julie," and, at a little
+distance among embowering trees, the birthplace of a woman stranger than
+any fancied character of his fiction, the Madame de Warens of his
+"Confessions."
+
+[Sidenote: Prison of Chillon]
+
+Between Clarens and Villeneuve, on an isolated rock whose base is laved
+by Leman's waters, which "meet and flow a thousand feet in depth below,"
+stands the grim prison of Chillon, the scene of Byron's poem. The
+fortress is an irregular pile of masonry, and, with its massive walls,
+loop-holed towers, and white battlements, is a picturesque object seen
+across wide reaches of the lake. The present structure is a hoary
+successor to a stronghold still more ancient: the prehistoric
+lake-dwellers here had a fortress and were succeeded by the Franks and
+Romans. Of the present structure, the Romanesque columns and the range
+of dungeons are known to have been in existence in 830, when Count Wala,
+a cousin of Charlemagne, for alluding to the wife of Louis the Debonair
+as "that adulterous woman," was incarcerated here. Thus Judith's
+reputation was vindicated and the earliest certain date of this fortress
+fixed. The present superstructure remains unchanged since the
+thirteenth century. It is now connected with the shore by a wooden
+structure which spans the moat and replaces the ancient drawbridge.
+Through a massive gate-way we enter a roughly-paved court, whence a
+bluff Savoyard conducts us through the romantic pile. Among the
+apartments of the ducal family we see the banqueting-hall where the
+dukes held roistering wassail; the kitchen on whose great hearth oxen
+were roasted whole; the Chamber of Inquisition where hapless prisoners
+were tortured to extort confession, this room being near the chamber of
+the duchess, into which--despite its thick wall--the shrieks of the
+tortured must have sometimes penetrated and disturbed Her Serene
+Highness. Outside her door is a post to which the wretches were bound,
+and it is scored by marks of the irons which cauterized their flesh; in
+a near corner stood a rack which rent them limb from limb. The crypt
+beneath, with its low arched vaults and its graceful pillars rising out
+of the rock, is the most interesting portion of the fortress. Referring
+to their architectural perfection, Longfellow once said these were the
+"most delightful dungeons he ever saw," but as we stand in their
+twilight gloom the horrors of their history weigh heavily on the heart.
+During this century the castle has been used as an arsenal, but
+occasionally also as a prison, and Byron found some of these "chambers
+of sorrow" tenanted at the time of his visits. One contracted cell is
+that in which the condemned passed their last night of life chained upon
+a rock, near the beam upon which they were strangled and the opening
+through which their bodies were thrust into the lake. Another vault
+contains a pit or well, with a spiral stair down which poor dupes
+stepped into a yawning depth and--eternity. A third chamber, so dark
+that its grotesque carvings are scarcely discernible and no missal could
+be read by daylight, was the chapel of the fortress. Traversing the
+succession of dungeons, we come to the last and largest, and reverently
+stand beside the column where Byron's prisoner was chained. This
+"dungeon deep and old" lies not beneath the level of the lake, as Byron
+believed, yet it is sufficiently dank and dismal to be the appropriate
+scene of the touching and tragic story which he located here. It is a
+long, crypt-like apartment, whose vaulted roof of rock is upheld by the
+"seven pillars of Gothic mould" aligned along the middle. It is dimly
+lighted by loop-holes pierced in the ponderous walls for the feudal
+bowmen; through these narrow apertures, where the prisoner "felt the
+winter's spray wash through the bars when winds were high," we look out,
+as did he, upon the distant town, "the lake with its white sails," the
+"mountains high," and the little Isle de Paix--"scarce broader than the
+dungeon floor"--gleaming like an emerald from a setting of amethyst.
+Here is Bonnivard's chain, scarce four feet long, and in the central
+pillar the ring which held it. The light, falling aslant "through the
+cleft of the thick wall" upon the floor, shows us the pathway worn in
+the rock by the pacing of the prisoner during the weary years, and
+reveals--graven on the column-stone by the poet's hand--the name Byron.
+
+At Chillon we are in the midst of a region pervaded by the sentiment of
+the pilgrim-poet. The Byron path leads from the shore to the broad
+terraces of the Hôtel Byron, whence we behold as in a picture the
+romantic scene his poetry portrays,--the "mountains with their thousand
+years of snow," the shimmering water of "the wide long lake," the dark
+slopes of the Juras terraced to their summits, the "white-walled towns"
+upon the nearer hill-sides. Directly before us--bearing its three tall
+trees--"the little isle, the only one in view," smiles in our faces from
+the bosom of the water; on the right we see sweet Clarens and the
+picturesque battlements of Chillon; on the left, the glittering peaks of
+Dent du Midi and the Alps of Savoy, with the "Rhone in fullest flow"
+between the rocky heights; while from the farther shore rise the cliffs
+of Meillerie, at whose base Byron and Shelley, clinging to their frail
+boat, narrowly escaped a watery grave on the very spot where St. Preux
+and Julia of "Nouvelle Héloïse" were rescued from the same fate.
+
+[Sidenote: Rousseau and Byron scenes]
+
+Our farewell view of this Land of Byron is taken on a cloudless summer
+night, when the radiance of the harvest moon exalts and glorifies all
+the scene; the grim prison of Bonnivard is transformed into a snowy
+palace of peaceful delights, the white mountain-peaks gleam with the
+chaste lustre of pearls, the vine-embowered village on the shore seems
+an Aidenn of purity and light, and the sheen of the tremulous water is
+that of a sea of molten silver. Surely, on all her round, "Luna lights
+no spot more fair."
+
+
+
+
+CHÂTEAUX OF FERNEY AND COPPET
+
+_Voltaire's Home, Church, Study, Garden, Relics--Literary Court of
+  de Staël--Mementos--Famous Rooms, Guests--Schlegel--Shelley--
+  Constant--Byron--Davy, etc.--De Staël's Tomb._
+
+
+A literary pilgrimage on Leman's shores that did not include Ferney
+among its shrines would be obviously incomplete. No matter how widely we
+may dissent from his opinions or how much we may deplore some of his
+utterances, the brilliant philosopher who for so many years inhabited
+that spot and made it the intellectual capital of the world commands a
+place in letters which we may neither gainsay nor ignore, and the
+Château Voltaire is to many visitors one of the chief objects of
+interest in the neighborhood of Geneva.
+
+[Sidenote: Voltaire's Church--Mansion]
+
+Beneath a summer sky a delightful jaunt of a few miles, among orchards
+and vineyards and past the ancestral home of Albert Gallatin, brings us
+to Voltaire's domain in Gex. The mansion and town of Ferney were alike
+the creation of the _genius loci_; he was architect and builder of both.
+The town and its factories were erected to give shelter and employment
+to hundreds of artisans who appealed to him against oppressive
+employers at Geneva. The place has obviously degenerated since his time;
+an air of shabbiness and thriftlessness prevails, and ancient smells by
+no means suggestive of "the odors of Araby the blest" obtrude upon the
+pilgrim. At the public fountain stout-armed women were washing family
+linen manifestly long unused to such manipulation. Near by dwell
+descendants of Voltaire's secretary Wagnière. Upon a verdant plateau
+farther away, in the heart of one of the most beautiful regions of
+earth, "girdled by eighty leagues of mountains that pierce the sky," was
+Voltaire's last home. By its gate is the little church he built, bearing
+upon its gable his inscription "Deo Erexit Voltaire." Here he attended
+mass with his niece, and, as _seigneur_, was always incensed by the
+priest; here he gave in marriage his adopted daughters; here he preached
+a homily against theft; and here he built for himself a tomb, projecting
+into the side of the church,--"neither within nor without," as he
+explained to a guest,--where he hoped to be buried. The church was long
+used as a tenement, later it has been a storage- and tool-house. The
+cháteau is a spacious and dignified three-storied structure of Italian
+style, attractive in appearance and well suited to one of Voltaire's
+tastes and occupations. The exterior has been somewhat altered, but the
+apartments of the philosopher are essentially unchanged. The late
+proprietor preserved the study and bedroom nearly as Voltaire left them
+when he started upon his fatal visit to Paris. They are small, with high
+ceilings, quaint carvings, faded tapestries, and are obviously planned
+to facilitate the work of the busiest author the world has known, who
+here, after the age of threescore, wrote a hundred and sixty works. Many
+of these assailed the church authorities, who had shown themselves
+capable of punishing mere difference of opinion by the rack and the
+stake, but "the religion of the Sermon on the Mount and the character of
+men of good and consistent lives" they did not attack: some of the books
+were cursed at Rome, some at Geneva, others were burned at both places.
+
+[Sidenote: His Rooms--Furniture]
+
+Disposed in Voltaire's rooms we have seen his heavy furniture; his
+study-chair standing by the table upon which he wrote half of each day;
+his beautiful porcelain stove, a gift from Frederick the Great; a draped
+mausoleum bearing an inscription by Voltaire and designed by his
+_protégé_ to contain his heart; many paintings presented by royal
+admirers,--Albani's "Toilet of Venus," Titian's "Venus and Love," a
+picture of Voltaire's chimney-sweep, portrait of Lekain who acted so
+many of Voltaire's tragedies, portraits of that philosopher, a fanciful
+deification of him by Duplessis; on the same wall, coarse engravings of
+Washington and Franklin. Franklin was the firm friend of Voltaire, and
+it was his letters which first brought to Ferney news of the Declaration
+of Independence. The discolored embroidery of Voltaire's bed and
+arm-chair was wrought by his niece Madame Denis, "the little fat woman
+round as a ball." Habitually complaining of illness in his last years,
+he spent more than half his time in this quaint bed. He had a desk,
+containing writing materials, suspended above the bed so that he could
+write here day or night, and the amount of work he thus accomplished is
+astounding: in the last four years of feeble life he wrote thirty works
+varying in size from a pamphlet to a ponderous tome. His breakfast was
+served in bed, and here he habitually attended to his correspondence,
+which included most of the sovereigns of Europe and the learned and
+great of all climes. In this bed he once lay for weeks feigning mortal
+illness, and thus induced the priest to give him the _viaticum_. This
+bedroom, too, was the scene of many quarrels with his niece regarding
+her extravagances, but as we sit in his chair by his bedside we prefer
+to recall more pleasing incidents the room has witnessed; here he
+dictated to Marie Corneille the ardent words which brought reparation
+to many a cruelly wronged family; this was the scene of his many
+pleasantries with the house-keeper "Baba," and of the loving
+ministrations of his sweet ward "Belle et Bonne."
+
+Many of Voltaire's belongings have been removed and his estate has been
+shorn of its vast dimensions, but much remains to remind us of the
+genius of the place. Here are the gardens, lawns, and shrubberies he
+planted; on this turf-grown terrace beneath his study windows he paced
+as he planned his compositions, and here, at the age of eighty-three, he
+evolved "Irene" and parts of "Agathocles;" near by are his fount, his
+arbored promenade, the shaded spot where he wrote in summer days, the
+place of the lightning-rod made for him by Franklin. Long reaches of the
+hedge were rooted by him, many of the trees are from the nursery he
+cultured, the cedars were raised from seeds sent to him by the Empress
+Catherine. A venerable tree in the park was planted by Voltaire's own
+hands: when we point to a blemish upon its trunk and ask our guide,
+whose family have dwelt on the estate since the time of Voltaire, if
+that is the effect of lightning, as has been averred, he indignantly
+declares the only damage the tree ever sustained has been from visitors
+who, to secure souvenirs of the illustrious philosopher, would destroy
+the whole tree were he not alert to protect it.
+
+[Sidenote: An Intellectual Capital--Reminiscences]
+
+For twenty years this home of Voltaire was the centre and pharos of the
+intellectual world. To this court kings sent couriers with proffers of
+honors and assurances of esteem; hither came legions of _littérateurs_,
+academicians, politicians, eager to hail the savant or to secure his
+commendation. "All roads then led to Ferney as they once did to Rome,"
+and the hospitalities of the château were so taxed that Voltaire
+declared he was innkeeper for all Europe. He habitually complained of
+the climate here, "Lapland in winter, Naples in summer;" during some
+seasons "thirty leagues of snow were visible from his windows;" but on
+the July day of our visit the atmosphere is exquisitely delightful and
+Voltaire's "desert" seems a paradise. Behind us rise the vine-clad
+slopes of Jura, below lies the lake like an amethystine sea, afar gleam
+the snow-crowned peaks, and about us in the old gardens are the golden
+sunshine, the incense of flowers, the twitter of birds, and all the
+charm of sweet summer-time. As we linger in the spots he loved it is
+pleasant to recall the good that mingled in the oddly composite nature
+of the daring old man who inhabited this beautiful scene and created
+much of its beauty; to remember that dumb creatures loved him and fed
+from his hand; that the destitute and oppressed never vainly applied to
+him for succor or protection; that in varying phrase he solemnly
+averred, in letters of counsel to youthful admirers in his own and other
+lands, "We are in the world only for the good we can do."
+
+Of the galaxy of _littérateurs_ who had home or haunt by Leman's margins
+Madame de Staël, by her long residence and many incidents of her career,
+seems most closely associated with this region of delights. The château
+of Coppet has for two centuries belonged to her family; here some
+portion of her girlhood was passed; here she found asylum from the
+horrors of the French Revolution and residence when Napoleon banished
+her from his capital. Later her son Auguste dwelt here, and the place is
+now the property of her great-granddaughter. Literary and social
+associations render this mediæval château one of the most interesting
+spots on earth. Exiled from the society of Paris, de Staël erected here
+a court which became the centre of intellectual Europe. Coppet was in
+itself a lustrous microcosm whose attraction was the conversation of its
+hostess and queen, which allured the wit and wisdom of a continent,
+making this court not only a literary centre, but a political power of
+which Napoleon, by his proscriptions, proclaimed his fear. The great
+number of illustrious courtiers who came to Coppet caused the priestess
+of its hospitalities to aver she needed "a cook whose heels were
+winged."
+
+[Sidenote: Home of de Staël]
+
+The darkly-verdured terraces of Jura on the one hand, the blue waters
+and the farther snowy peaks on the other, fitly environ the enchanting
+scene in the midst of which was set the abode of the greatest woman of
+her time. From Geneva a charming sail along the lake conveys us to her
+home and sepulchre. We approach the château between rows of venerable
+trees beneath which de Staël loitered with her guests. The stately
+edifice rises from three sides of a court, whence we are admitted to a
+large hall on the lower floor which she used as a theatre. These walls,
+which give back only the echo of our foot-falls, have resounded with the
+applause of fastidious auditors when the queen of Coppet, with her
+children and Récamier, de Sabran, Werner, Jenner, Constant, Von Vought,
+or Ida Brun acted upon a stage at yonder end of the room. The
+composition of plays for this theatre was sometime de Staël's principal
+recreation: these have been published as "Essais Dramatiques." But more
+ambitious dramas were presented; the matchless Juliette acted here with
+Sabran and de Staël in "Semiramis;" Werner assisted in the first
+presentation of "Attila," which was written here; Constant's
+"Wallenstein" was composed here and first produced on this stage, as was
+also Oehlenschläger's "Hakon Jarl." De Staël was an efficient actress,
+her lustrous eyes, superb arms, and strong and flexible voice
+compensating for deficiencies of training. A broad stair leads from the
+silent theatre to the principal apartments, among which we find the
+library where Necker wrote his "Politics and Finance," the grand salon
+and reception-rooms,--all of imposing dimensions and having parquetted
+floors. Arranged in these rooms are many mementos of the daughter of
+genius who once inhabited them,--hangings of tapestry; antique
+spindle-legged furniture carved and gilded in quaint fashion; the
+cherub-bedecked clock that stood above her desk; her books and inkstand;
+the desk upon which "Necker," "Ten Years of Exile," "Allemagne," and
+many minor treatises were written. Upon the wall is her portrait, by
+David, which pictures her with bare arms and shoulders, her head crowned
+by a nimbus of yellow turban which she wore when costumed as "Corinne:"
+the features are not classical, but the brunette face, with its splendid
+dark eyes, is comely as well as intellectual, and obviously contradicts
+Byron's declaration, "She is so ugly I wonder how the best intellect of
+France could have taken up such a residence." Schäffer's portrait of
+her daughter hangs near by, displaying a face of striking beauty, and a
+picture of Madame Necker, de Staël's mother, represents a sweet-faced
+woman who smiles upon the visitor despite the discomfort of a painfully
+tight-fitting dress of white satin. Here also are portraits of Necker,
+of de Staël's first husband, of her son Auguste, of Schlegel, and of
+other literary _confrères_, a statue of her father, by Tieck, and a bust
+of Rocca, her youthful second husband. The latter represents a
+finely-shaped head and a winning face. Byron thought Rocca notably
+handsome, and Frederica Brun testified, "he had the most magnificent
+head I ever saw." He was so slender that one of de Staël's courtiers
+wondered "how his many wounds found a place upon him:" these wounds,
+received in the Peninsula, won for him the sympathy of de Staël, which
+deepened into love.
+
+[Sidenote: Memorable Rooms--Mementos]
+
+As we wander through the rooms, waking the echoes and viewing the
+souvenirs of the illustrious dead, as we ponder their lives, their aims,
+their works, it seems, amid the vivid associations of the place, to
+require no supernal effort of the fancy to repeople it with the
+brilliant company who were wont to assemble here. Of these apartments,
+the salon, from whose wall looks down the portrait of Corinna, will
+longest hold the pilgrim. It was the throne-room of this court: here
+resorted a throng of the best and noblest minds, _littérateurs_,
+scientists, men of largest thought, of highest rank. Here Récamier was a
+frequent guest: yonder mirror, with its multipanes framed in gilt metal,
+often reflected her lovely face. In this room she danced for the delight
+of de Staël her famous gavotte, which had transported the _beau monde_
+of Paris, and was rewarded by its celebration in "Corinne." Some who
+came to this court remained as residential guests: for fifteen years
+Sismondi worked here upon his "Literature of Southern Europe," etc.;
+here the sage Bonstetten wrote many of his twenty-five volumes; here
+Schlegel, the great critic of his age, who is commemorated in "Corinne"
+as Castel-Forte, was installed for twelve years and prepared his works
+on dramatic literature; here Werner, author of "Luther," "Wanda," etc.,
+wrote much of his mystic poetry; here the Danish national poet composed
+his noblest tragedies, "Correggio" being a souvenir of Coppet; here
+Constant penned many dramas. Among the frequenters of this salon were
+Madame de Saussure, famous for her books on education; Frederica Brun,
+with her daughter Ida who is imaged in "Allemagne;" Sir Humphry and Lady
+Davy, the latter being the realization of "Corinne;" Madame de
+Krüdener, author of "Valérie," from whom Delphine was mainly drawn;
+Barante the critic; Dumont, editor of Jeremy Bentham. Of those who came
+less often were Cuvier, Gibbon, Ritter, Lacretelle, Mirabeau, Houghton,
+Brougham, Ampère, Byron, Shelley, Montmorency, Wynona, Tieck, Müller,
+Candolle, de Sergey, Prince Augustus, and scores of others.
+
+[Sidenote: Literary Court and Courtiers]
+
+This room, where that galaxy assembled, has witnessed the most wonderful
+intellectual _séances_ of the century. We may imagine something of the
+brilliancy of an assembly of such minds presided over by de Staël,--what
+gayety, what coruscations of wit, what displays of wisdom, what keenness
+of discussion were not possible to such a circle! For some time
+religious tenets were frequently under consideration. Every shade of
+belief, doubt, and agnosticism had its defenders in the company.
+Sismondi was corresponding with Channing of Boston, whose views he
+espoused, and the arrival of each letter caused the renewal of the
+argument in which de Staël was the principal advocate of the spiritual
+motive of Christianity as against a system of mere well-doing. All
+questions of literature, art, ethics, philosophy, politics, were
+considered here by the most capable minds of the age, the discussions
+being oft prolonged into the night. But that there may be too much
+even of a good thing is naïvely confessed by Bonstetten, one of the
+lights of these _séances_, in his letters: "I feel tired by surfeit of
+intellect: there is more mind expended at Coppet in a day than in many
+countries in a year, but I am half dead." Scintillant converse was
+interspersed with music from the old harpsichord in yonder
+corner,--touched by fingers that now are dust,--with recitations and
+reading of MSS. It was the habit of de Staël to read to the circle, for
+their criticism, what she had written during the morning, and to discuss
+the subsequent chapters. Guests who were writing at the château then
+read their compositions--Bonstetten's "Latium" often put the company to
+sleep--and eagerly sought de Staël's suggestions; "the lesser lights
+were glad to borrow warmth and lustre from the central sun."
+Châteauvieux declares, "She formed my mental character; for twenty years
+my sentiments were founded upon hers." Sismondi says, "She determined my
+literary career; her good sense guided my pen." Bonstetten, Schlegel,
+Werner, and others bear similar testimony to the value of her counsel.
+
+[Sidenote: Byron, Shelley, etc.]
+
+The place was never more animated than in the last summer of her life,
+when Byron and Shelley used to cross the lake to join the circle in this
+room. De Staël had met Byron in London during the ephemeral
+"Byron-madness," and now, in his social exile, her doors were freely
+open to him: his letters testify "she made Coppet as agreeable as
+society and talent can make any place on earth." Here he first saw
+"Glenarvon," a venomous attack upon him which seems to have served no
+purpose save to illustrate the aphorism about "a woman scorned," its
+authoress having been notoriously importunate for Byron's favor, even
+attempting, it was said, to enter his apartments in male attire. In this
+salon Mrs. Hervey, the novelist, feigned to faint at Byron's approach:
+from the balcony outside these windows, where de Staël and her father
+stood and saw Napoleon's army cross the Swiss frontier, Byron looked
+upon the scene which inspired some of his divinest stanzas. The château
+was a busy place in those years: a guest writes from here, "In every
+corner one is at a literary task; de Staël is writing 'Exile,' Auguste
+and Constant a tragedy, Sabran an opera, Sismondi his 'Republics,'
+Bonstetten a philosophy, and Rocca his 'Spanish War.'"
+
+One noble chamber hung with dim tapestries is that erst occupied by
+Récamier: it had before been the sick-room of Madame Necker and the
+scene of her husband's loving care of her, which de Staël so touchingly
+records. The chamber of de Staël is near by, its windows overlooking
+her sepulchre: here she wrote the books which made her fame; here she
+instructed her children, their Sabbath lessons being from the devout
+treatises of her father and à Kempis's "Imitation of Christ," the book
+she read in her own dying hours. A smaller room, looking out upon the
+park, the terraces of Jura, and the white walls of Lausanne, was shared
+by Constant and Bonstetten. In the tower above have been found letters
+written by Gibbon to his _fiancée_, who became the mother of de Staël:
+they have been published by the grandson of de Staël, and show that the
+conduct of the great "Decliner and Faller" toward the then poor girl was
+thoroughly selfish and unscrupulous.
+
+[Sidenote: Tomb of Necker and de Staël]
+
+The rooms are renovated and the place is offered for rent, but nothing
+is destroyed. The formal park at the side of the château is little
+changed: along yonder wooded aisle and upon this _allée_ between prim
+patches of sward the de Staël walked with her guests in the summers of
+long ago; upon the seat beneath this coppice, beside this placid pool,
+or on the margin of yonder brooklet from the top of Jura, they lingered
+in brilliant converse till the stars came out one by one above the
+darkening mountains. These--the mute, soulless inanimates--remain, while
+the illustrious company that quickened and glorified them all has
+vanished from human ken. Some rods distant from the château, shaded by
+a sombre grove and bounded by a hoary wall, is the picturesque chapel in
+which Necker is laid with his wife, to whose tomb he, for many years,
+daily came to pray. In the same crypt the mortal part of de Staël rests
+at his feet; the portal was walled up at her burial and eye hath not
+since seen her sepulchre. A stone which marks the grave of her son
+Auguste, and lies on the threshold of that sealed portal, is fittingly
+inscribed, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?"
+
+Beyond the closed gate we pause for a parting view of the scene, now
+flooded with sunshine, and as we leave the place we carry thence that
+resplendent vision embalmed in a memory that will abide with us forever.
+As I write these closing lines I see again that summer sky, cloudless
+save for the fleece floating above Jura like that which the bereaved
+Necker fancied was bearing the soul of his wife to paradise. I see again
+the glimmering water; the mountains with their tiaras of snow, sending
+back the sunbeams from their shining peaks like reflections from the
+pearly gates that enclose the Celestial City; and, amid this sublime
+beauty, the gleaming sycamores that sway above the tomb of "the
+incomparable Corinna."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Abbotsford,--Scott,--161.
+
+  Addison, 15, 19, 30, 36, 91.
+
+  Akenside, 16, 25.
+
+  Andersen, Hans Christian, 55, 57.
+
+  Annesley Hall and Park, 71-77.
+
+  Aram, Eugene;
+    Scenes, 111, 144-147.
+
+  Arbuthnot, 16, 36.
+
+  Arnold, Dr. and Matthew, 92.
+
+  Astell, Mary, 30.
+
+
+  Bacon, 21.
+
+  Baillie, Joanna, 15.
+
+  Barbauld, Mrs., 14, 16.
+
+  Besant, 15, 18.
+
+  Bolingbroke, 37.
+
+  Bolton Abbey, 143.
+
+  Bonnivard, Francis, 227.
+
+  Bowes, Dotheboys, 106.
+
+  Braddon, Miss, 38.
+
+  Brontës, The, 68;
+    Brussels, 134, 207;
+    Haworth, 121;
+    Scenes and Characters of Tales, 121, 124, 126, 127, 129, 135,
+      207-225.
+
+  Brown, Oliver Madox, 32.
+
+  Brussels,--Villette,--Brontë Scenes, 207.
+
+  Bulwer,--Eugene Aram,--144-147.
+
+  Burns;
+    Alloway, 181;
+    Dumfries, 164;
+    Ellisland, 171;
+    Grave, 165;
+    Haunts,--Scenes of Poems,--164, 165, 166, 170, 171, 178, 181, 196,
+      200, 205;
+    Heroines, 185, 190, 194;
+    Niece, 183.
+
+  Butler, Samuel, 91.
+
+  Byron;
+    Annesley, 71;
+    Coppet, 250;
+    Harrow, 69;
+    Newstead, 80;
+    Leman, 226-237;
+    London, 62;
+    Scenes of Poems, 69, 72-77, 80-90, 226, 232, 233, 251;
+    Tomb, 70.
+
+
+  Caine, Hall, mentioned, 32.
+
+  Campbell, 66, 68.
+
+  Canning, 64.
+
+  Carlyle, Birthplace, 162;
+    Homes, 33, 162, 167;
+    Sepulchre, 163.
+
+  Chaucer, 24, 25, 50.
+
+  Chaworth, Mary Ann, 71-79.
+
+  Chelsea, 29-37.
+
+  Chillon, 233.
+
+  Clarens,--Rousseau,--232.
+
+  Coleridge, 19, 106;
+    Grave, 22;
+    Home, 21.
+
+  Collyer, Robert, Early Haunts, 136.
+
+  Colwick Hall,--Chaworth-Musters,--78.
+
+  Congreve, mentioned, 15, 30, 37.
+
+  Constant, 245, 246, 248, 251, 252.
+
+  Cooling,--Great Expectations,--57.
+
+  Coppet,--Madame de Staël,--244.
+
+  Coventry,--George Eliot,--102.
+
+  Coxwold,--Sterne,--113.
+
+  Crabbe, mentioned, 19, 66.
+
+  Craigenputtock,--Carlyle,--167.
+
+  Crockett, S. R., 178.
+
+  Cunningham, Allan, 164.
+
+
+  Davy, Sir Humphry, mentioned, 155, 159, 248.
+
+  Denham, mentioned, 40.
+
+  De Quincey, mentioned, 21, 62.
+
+  De Staël, 159, 228, 230;
+    Home and Sepulchre, 244.
+
+  Dickens, 13, 19, 20, 24, 28, 34, 230;
+    Gad's Hill, 49;
+    Scenes of Tales, 18-20, 22, 24-28, 54, 57-61, 64, 106.
+
+  Donne, John, 35, 36.
+
+  Dorset,--Shaftesbury,--15, 36.
+
+  Dotheboys,--Nicholas Nickleby,--106.
+
+  Douglas, Poet of Annie Laurie, 175-179.
+
+  Du Maurier, 18, 20.
+
+  Dumfries,--Burns,--164.
+
+  Dyer, 91.
+
+
+  Ecclefechan,--Carlyle,--162.
+
+  Eliot, George, 31, 143;
+    Birthplace, Early Homes, 93;
+    Grave, 23;
+    Scenes and Characters of Fiction, 93, 95-103.
+
+  Emerson, 34, 104, 169, 170.
+
+  Erasmus, mentioned, 36.
+
+
+  Fairfax, Edward, 137, 142.
+
+  Falstaff, 50, 55, 56, 58.
+
+  Ferney,--Voltaire,--238.
+
+  Fields, James T., 55, 59.
+
+  Foston,--Sydney Smith,--149.
+
+  Froude, 33.
+
+
+  Gad's Hill,--Dickens, Shakespeare,--49.
+
+  Gaskell, Mrs., 101, 130, 131, 215, 223.
+
+  Gay, 15, 30, 33, 34.
+
+  Geneva, 227.
+
+  Gibbon, 39, 63;
+    On Leman, 231, 232, 249, 252.
+
+  Goldsmith, mentioned, 18.
+
+  Gray,--Scene of Elegy,--39.
+
+
+  Hampstead, Literary, 13.
+
+  Harridan, Mrs., 15.
+
+  Harrow,--Byron,--18, 69.
+
+  Haworth,--The Brontës,--121.
+
+  Hawthorne, 68, 71, 184.
+
+  Hazlitt, mentioned, 19, 21, 170.
+
+  Herbert, George, 36.
+
+  Heslington,--Sydney Smith,--148.
+
+  Highgate, Literary, 21.
+
+  Highland Mary,--Homes, Scenes, Grave,--195.
+
+  Hogarth, 19.
+
+  Hogg, mentioned, 161.
+
+  Hood, mentioned, 19, 68.
+
+  Hook, Theodore, 26, 37.
+
+  Hunt, Leigh, 18, 19, 21, 34, 68.
+
+
+  Ilkley,--Collyer, etc.,--137.
+
+  Irving, Edward, mentioned, 164, 170.
+
+  Irving, Washington, 66, 71, 72, 76, 83, 86, 89.
+
+
+  Jackson, Helen Hunt, mentioned, 184.
+
+  Jeanie Deans, 167.
+
+  Jeffrey, Francis, 149, 154, 155, 170.
+
+  Johnson, Dr., 15, 18, 25, 34.
+
+
+  Keats, 15, 16, 19, 25.
+
+  Keighley,--Brontë, Collyer,--121, 136.
+
+  Kensal Green, Graves of Literati, 68.
+
+  Kingsley, 35.
+
+  Kit-Kat Club, 15.
+
+
+  Lake Leman,--Literary Shrines,--226-253.
+
+  Lamb, mentioned, 19, 21.
+
+  Landon, Letitia E., 30.
+
+  Laurie, Annie, Birthplace and Homes, 172, 176;
+    Grave, 177;
+    Song, 180.
+
+  Lausanne,--Gibbon, Dickens, etc.,--230.
+
+  Livingstone, 81, 82, 84, 86.
+
+  Loamshire of George Eliot, 93.
+
+  Locke, 36.
+
+  London, 13, 17, 24, 45, 62, 119, 148.
+
+  Longfellow, alluded to, 55, 142, 234.
+
+
+  Macaulay, 64, 155, 158, 159.
+
+  Maclise, 19, 31, 34, 55.
+
+  Marvell, 21.
+
+  Maxwelton,--Annie Laurie,--173.
+
+  Melrose,--Scott,--161.
+
+  Miller, Joaquin, 71, 83.
+
+  Milton, 39, 228.
+
+  Mitford, Miss, mentioned, 30.
+
+  Montagu, Mary Wortley, 21, 31, 62.
+
+  Moore, 64, 67.
+
+  Mulock, Miss,--John Halifax Scenes,--92.
+
+  Murray, John,--Drawing-Room,--66.
+
+
+  Newburgh,--Sterne,--118.
+
+  Newstead Abbey,--Byron,--80.
+
+  Nidderdale,--Eugene Aram,--143.
+
+  Niece of Burns, 183;
+    quoted, 196, 204.
+
+  Nithsdale,--Burns, Scott, Carlyle,--164.
+
+  Nuneaton,--Milby of Eliot,--101.
+
+
+  Pepys, 30, 31.
+
+  Pope, 14, 15, 18, 21, 30, 37, 38.
+
+  Porter, Jane, 39.
+
+
+  Ramsay, Allan, 178.
+
+  Richardson, 16, 37.
+
+  Rochester,--Dickens,--54, 60, 61.
+
+  Rogers, mentioned, 15, 143.
+
+  Rokeby,--Scott,--109.
+
+  Rossetti, 23, 229;
+    Home and Friends, 31, 32.
+
+  Rousseau, 227;
+    Scenes of Fiction, 232, 233, 237.
+
+  Rugby,--Hughes, Arnold,--92.
+
+  Ruskin, mentioned, 34.
+
+
+  Schlegel, 248.
+
+  Scott;
+    Abodes and Resorts, 64, 66, 109, 161, 172;
+    Scenes and Characters, 109, 161, 167, 172.
+
+  Shakespeare, 25, 50, 91, 92, 93.
+
+  Shelley, 19, 21;
+    Leman, 227, 229, 232, 237, 250.
+
+  Shepperton Church and Parsonage, 98.
+
+  Smith, Sydney, 68;
+    Yorkshire Homes and Church, 148.
+
+  Smollett, 30, 33, 34.
+
+  Somervile, 91.
+
+  Somerville, Mrs., 29.
+
+  Southey, mentioned, 21, 106.
+
+  Southwark,--Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens,--24.
+
+  Stanley, H. M., 88, 184.
+
+  Steele, 14, 15, 19, 30, 33, 36.
+
+  Sterne, 34;
+    Grave, 120;
+    Home and Study, 112, 113, 115;
+    Resorts, 113, 118.
+
+  Stoke-Pogis,--Gray,--39.
+
+  Swift, 15, 30, 36, 37.
+
+  Swinburne, 32, 33.
+
+
+  Tennyson, 33, 39.
+
+  Thackeray, 18, 68, 104, 120.
+
+  Turner, 37, 142, 143.
+
+
+  Voltaire, Château and Study, 238.
+
+
+  Waller, 39, 46.
+
+  Walpole, 15, 30.
+
+  Walton, mentioned, 36.
+
+  Watts, Theodore, 32.
+
+  Wilde, Oscar, 35.
+
+  Wordsworth, 15, 21, 106, 143, 161.
+
+  Wuthering Heights, 129.
+
+
+  York,--Sterne, etc.,--111.
+
+  Yorkshire Shrines, 106, 111, 121, 136, 148.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+  LITERARY SHRINES:
+
+  THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS.
+
+
+  BY THEO. F. WOLFE, M.D., Ph.D.,
+
+  Author of "A Literary Pilgrimage," etc.
+
+  Illustrated with four photogravures.
+  12mo. Crushed buckram, gilt top, deckel edges, $1.25;
+  half calf or half morocco, $3.00.
+
+
+  CONTAINS, AMONG OTHERS, CHAPTERS TREATING OF
+
+  CONCORD: A Village of Literary Shrines.
+
+  THE OLD MANSE.
+
+  THE HOMES OF EMERSON AND ALCOTT.
+
+  HAWTHORNE'S "WAYSIDE."
+
+  THE WALDEN OF THOREAU.
+
+  IN LITERARY BOSTON.
+
+  OUT OF BOSTON: Cambridge--Elmwood--Mt. Auburn--"Wayside Inn"--Brook
+  Farm--Webster's Marshfield--Homes of Whittier, Hawthorne's Salem,
+  etc.
+
+  IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE: The Graylock Region--Middle and Lower
+  Berkshire--Haunts of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Bryant, Melville, Sedgwick,
+  Kemble, Holmes, Longfellow, etc.
+
+  A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET.
+
+
+  UNIFORM WITH "A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE."
+
+
+  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Publishers,
+
+  PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+
+
+  BY CHARLES CONRAD ABBOTT.
+
+
+  THE BIRDS ABOUT US.
+
+  Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.
+
+
+  TRAVELS IN A TREE-TOP.
+
+  12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+
+  RECENT RAMBLES; OR, IN TOUCH WITH NATURE.
+
+  Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.
+
+
+  A COLONIAL WOOING.
+
+  12mo. Cloth, $1.00.
+
+
+  "Dr. Abbott is a kindred spirit with Burroughs and Maurice Thompson
+  and, we might add, Thoreau, in his love for wild nature, and with
+  Olive Thorne Miller in his love for the birds. He writes without a
+  trace of affectation, and his simple, compact, yet polished style
+  breathes of out-of-doors in every line. City life weakens and often
+  destroys the habit of country observation; opportunity, too, fails
+  the dweller in cities to gather at first hand the wise lore
+  possessed by the dweller in tents; and whatever sends a whiff of
+  fresh, pure, country air into the city house, or study, should be
+  esteemed an agent of intellectual sanitation."--_New York
+  Churchman._
+
+
+  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY,
+
+  PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+
+
+  BY ANNE HOLLINGSWORTH WHARTON.
+
+
+  THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS.
+
+  With a number of Colonial Illustrations from Drawings specially made
+  for the work. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+  "It is a pleasant retrospect of fashionable New York and
+  Philadelphia society during and immediately following the
+  Revolution; for there was a Four Hundred even in those days, and
+  some of them were Whigs and some were Tories, but all enjoyed
+  feasting and dancing, of which there seemed to be no limit. And this
+  little book tells us about the belles of the Philadelphia
+  meschianza, who they were, how they dressed, and how they flirted
+  with Major André and other officers in Sir William Howe's wicked
+  employ."--_Philadelphia Record._
+
+
+  COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES.
+
+  With numerous Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+  "In less skilful hands than those of Anne Hollingsworth Wharton's,
+  these scraps of reminiscences from diaries and letters would prove
+  but dry bones. But she has made them so charming that it is as if
+  she had taken dried roses from an old album and freshened them into
+  bloom and perfume. Each slight paragraph from a letter is framed in
+  historical sketches of local affairs or with some account of the
+  people who knew the letter writers, or were at least of their date,
+  and there are pretty suggestions as to how and why such letters were
+  written, with hints of love affairs, which lend a rose-colored veil
+  to what were probably every-day matters in colonial
+  families."--_Pittsburg Bulletin._
+
+
+  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY,
+
+  PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from
+    the original.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AMONG THE
+HAUNTS OF FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 38890-8.txt or 38890-8.zip *******
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of Famous British Authors, by Theodore F. (Theodore Frelinghuysen) Wolfe</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
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+</head>
+<body>
+<h1 class="center">The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of
+Famous British Authors, by Theodore F. (Theodore Frelinghuysen) Wolfe</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of Famous British Authors</p>
+<p>Author: Theodore F. (Theodore Frelinghuysen) Wolfe</p>
+<p>Release Date: February 15, 2012  [eBook #38890]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AMONG THE HAUNTS OF FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4 class="center">E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.archive.org">http://www.archive.org</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/literarypilgrima00wolfrich">
+      http://www.archive.org/details/literarypilgrima00wolfrich</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">SEVENTH EDITION</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><i>BY DR. WOLFE</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">Uniform with this volume</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">LITERARY SHRINES</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS</p>
+
+
+<p class="blockquot"><i>Treating descriptively and reminiscently of the scenes amid which
+Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, and many other American
+authors lived and wrote</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">223 pages. Illustrated with four photogravures. $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center">A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AND LITERARY SHRINES</p>
+
+<p class="center">Two volumes in a box, $2.50</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Castle of Chillon</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="giant">A LITERARY<br />
+PILGRIMAGE</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="huge">AMONG THE HAUNTS<br />
+OF FAMOUS BRITISH<br />
+AUTHORS</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">BY THEODORE F. WOLFE<br />
+M.D.<span class="smcap">Ph.D.</span></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">AUTHOR OF LITERARY SHRINES ETC.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/title.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY<br />
+PHILADELPHIA MDCCCXCVI</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1895,<br />
+by<br />
+Theodore F. Wolfe.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.</span></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">PREFACE</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="cap">THE favor with which a few articles in the periodical press, similar to
+those herewith presented, have been received induces the hope that the
+present volume may prove acceptable. If some popular literary shrines
+which are inevitably included in the writer's personal itinerary are
+herein accorded but scant notice, it is for the reason that they have
+been already so oft described that portrayal of them is therefore
+purposely omitted from this account of a literary pilgrimage: even
+Stratford-on-Avon here for once escapes description. However, the
+initial paragraphs of these chapters lightly outline a series of
+literary rambles which the writer has found measurably complete and
+consecutive. The pilgrim is understood to make his start from London.</p>
+
+<p>If these notes of his sojourns in the scenes hallowed by the presence of
+British authors or embalmed in their books shall prove pleasantly
+reminiscent to some who have fared to the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> shrines, or helpfully
+suggestive to others who contemplate such pilgrimage, then</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">"not in vain</span><br />
+He wore his sandal shoon and scallop-shell."</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The writer is indebted to the publishers of the <i>Home Journal</i> for
+permission to reproduce one or two articles which have appeared in that
+periodical.</p>
+
+<p class="right">T. F. W.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">CONTENTS</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Literary Hampstead and Highgate.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Haunt of Dickens&mdash;Steele&mdash;Pope&mdash;Keats&mdash;Baillie&mdash;Johnson&mdash;Hunt&mdash;Akenside&mdash;Shelley&mdash;Hogarth&mdash;Addison&mdash;Richardson&mdash;Gay&mdash;Besant&mdash;Du
+Maurier&mdash;Coleridge, etc.&mdash;Grave
+of George Eliot</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">By Southwark and Thames-Side to Chelsea.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Chaucer&mdash;Shakespeare&mdash;Dickens&mdash;Walpole&mdash;Pepys&mdash;Eliot&mdash;Rossetti&mdash;Carlyle&mdash;Hunt&mdash;Gay&mdash;Smollett&mdash;Kingsley&mdash;Herbert&mdash;Dorset&mdash;Addison&mdash;Shaftesbury&mdash;Locke&mdash;Bolingbroke&mdash;Pope&mdash;Richardson,
+etc.</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">The Scene of Gray's Elegy.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>The Country Church-Yard&mdash;Tomb of Gray&mdash;Stoke-Pogis
+Church&mdash;Reverie and Reminiscence&mdash;Scenes of Milton&mdash;Waller&mdash;Porter&mdash;Coke&mdash;Denham</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Dickensland: Gad's Hill and about.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Chaucer's Pilgrims&mdash;Falstaff&mdash;Dickens's Abode&mdash;Study&mdash;Grounds&mdash;Walks&mdash;Neighbors&mdash;Guests&mdash;Scenes
+of Tales&mdash;Cobham&mdash;Rochester&mdash;Pip's Church-Yard&mdash;Satis
+House, etc.</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Some Haunts of Byron.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Birthplace&mdash;London Homes&mdash;Murray's Book-Store&mdash;Kensal
+Green&mdash;Harrow&mdash;Byron's Tomb&mdash;His Diadem Hill&mdash;Abode
+of his Star of Annesley&mdash;Portraits&mdash;Mementos</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">The Home of Childe Harold.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Newstead&mdash;Byron's Apartments&mdash;Relics and Reminders&mdash;Ghosts&mdash;Ruins&mdash;The
+Young Oak&mdash;Dog's Tomb&mdash;Devil's
+Wood&mdash;Irving&mdash;Livingstone&mdash;Stanley&mdash;Joaquin
+Miller</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Warwickshire: the Loamshire of George
+Eliot.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Miss Mulock&mdash;Butler&mdash;Somervile&mdash;Dyer&mdash;Rugby&mdash;Homes
+of George Eliot&mdash;Scenes of Tales&mdash;Cheverel&mdash;Shepperton&mdash;Milly's
+Grave&mdash;Paddiford&mdash;Milby&mdash;Coventry,
+etc.&mdash;Characters&mdash;Incidents</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Yorkshire Shrines: Dotheboys Hall and
+Rokeby.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Village of Bowes&mdash;Dickens&mdash;Squeers's School&mdash;The Master
+and his Family&mdash;Haunt of Scott</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Sterne's Sweet Retirement.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Sutton&mdash;Crazy Castle&mdash;Yorick's Church&mdash;Parsonage&mdash;Where
+Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental
+Journey were written&mdash;Reminiscences&mdash;Newburgh
+Hall&mdash;Where Sterne died&mdash;Sepulchre</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Haworth and the Brontës.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>The Village&mdash;Black Bull Inn&mdash;Church&mdash;Vicarage&mdash;Memory-haunted
+Rooms&mdash;Brontë Tomb&mdash;Moors&mdash;Brontë
+Cascade&mdash;</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span><i>Wuthering Heights&mdash;Humble Friends&mdash;Relic
+and Recollection</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Early Haunts of Robert Collyer: Eugene Aram.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Childhood Home&mdash;Ilkley Scenes, Friends, Smithy, Chapel&mdash;Bolton&mdash;Associations&mdash;Wordsworth&mdash;Rogers&mdash;Eliot&mdash;Turner&mdash;Aram's
+Homes&mdash;Schools&mdash;Place of the
+Murder&mdash;Gibbet&mdash;Probable Innocence</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Home of Sydney Smith.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Heslington&mdash;Foston, Twelve Miles from a Lemon&mdash;Church-Rector's
+Head&mdash;Study&mdash;Room-of-all-work&mdash;Grounds&mdash;Guests&mdash;Universal
+Scratcher&mdash;Immortal
+Chariot&mdash;Reminiscences</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Nithsdale Rambles.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Scott&mdash;Hogg&mdash;Wordsworth&mdash;Carlye's Birthplace&mdash;Homes&mdash;Grave&mdash;Burns's
+Haunts&mdash;Tomb&mdash;Jeanie Deans&mdash;Old
+Mortality, etc.&mdash;Annie Laurie's Birthplace&mdash;Habitation&mdash;Poet-Lover&mdash;Descendants</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">A Niece of Robert Burns.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Her Burnsland Cottage&mdash;Reminiscences of Burns&mdash;Relics&mdash;Portraits&mdash;Letters&mdash;Recitations&mdash;Account
+of his
+Death&mdash;Memories of his Home&mdash;Of Bonnie Jean&mdash;Other
+Heroines</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Highland Mary: her Homes and Grave.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Birthplace&mdash;Personal Appearance&mdash;Relations to Burns&mdash;Abodes:
+Mauchline, Coilsfield, etc.&mdash;Scenes of
+Courtship and Parting&mdash;Mementos&mdash;Tomb by the
+Clyde</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_194">194</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Brontë Scenes in Brussels.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>School&mdash;Class-Rooms&mdash;Dormitory&mdash;Garden&mdash;Scenes and
+Events of Villette and The Professor&mdash;M. Paul&mdash;Madame
+Beck&mdash;Memories of the Brontës&mdash;Confessional&mdash;Grave
+of Jessy Yorke</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Leman's Shrines.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Beloved of Littérateurs&mdash;Gibbon&mdash;D'Aubigné&mdash;Rousseau&mdash;Byron&mdash;Shelley&mdash;Dickens,
+etc.&mdash;Scenes of Childe
+Harold&mdash;Nouvelle Heloïse&mdash;Prisoner of Chillon&mdash;Land
+of Byron</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_226">226</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Châteaux of Ferney and Coppet.</span></span></td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><i>Voltaire's Home, Church, Study, Garden, Relics&mdash;Literary
+Court of de Staël&mdash;Mementos&mdash;Famous Rooms,
+Guests&mdash;Schlegel&mdash;Shelley&mdash;Constant&mdash;Byron&mdash;Davy,
+etc.&mdash;De Staël's Tomb</i></td><td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">ILLUSTRATIONS</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" summary="table">
+
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Castle of Chillon</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1"><i>Frontispiece.</i></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Stoke-Pogis Church and Church-Yard &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Newstead Abbey</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_81">81</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>Home of Annie Laurie</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_177">177</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">LITERARY HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Haunt of
+Dickens&mdash;Steele&mdash;Pope&mdash;Keats&mdash;Baillie&mdash;Johnson&mdash;Hunt&mdash;Akenside&mdash;Shelley&mdash;Hogarth&mdash;Addison&mdash;Richardson&mdash;Gay&mdash;Besant&mdash;Du
+Maurier&mdash;Coleridge, etc.&mdash;Grave of George Eliot.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">THE explorations which first brought renown to the immortal Pickwick
+were made among the uplands which border the valley of the Thames at the
+north of London: the illustrious creator of Pickwick loved to wander in
+the same region through the picturesque landscapes he made the scenes of
+many incidents of his fiction, and the literary prowler of to-day can
+hardly find a ramble more to his mind than that from the former home of
+Dickens or George Eliot by Regent's Park to Hampstead, and thence
+through the famous heath to Highgate. The way traverses storied ground
+and teems with historic associations, but these are, for us, lessened
+and subordinated by the appeal of memories of the famous authors who
+have loved and haunted this delightful region, and have imparted to it
+the tenderest charm. The acclivity of Hampstead has measurably resisted
+the encroachment of London, and has deflected the railroads with their
+disturbing tendencies, so that this old town probably retains more of
+its ancient character<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> than any other of the near suburbs, and some of
+its quaint streets would scarcely be more quiet if they lay a hundred
+miles away from the metropolis. Off the highway by which we ascend the
+hill, we find many evidences of antiquity, old streets lined by rows of
+plain and sedate dwellings wearing an air of dignified sobriety which is
+not of this century, and which is in grateful contrast with the pert
+artificiality of the modern fabrics of the vicinage. Many old houses are
+draped with ivy or shrouded by trees of abundant foliage; some are shut
+in by depressing brick walls, over which float the perfumes of unseen
+flowers. A few of the older streets lie in perpetual crepuscule, being
+vaulted by gigantic elms and limes as opaque as arches of masonry.</p>
+
+<p>Along the slope of Haverstock hill, where our ascent begins, we find the
+sometime homes of Percival, Stanfield, Rowland Hill, and the historian
+Palgrave. Near by is the cottage where dwelt Mrs. Barbauld, and the
+Roslyn House, where Sheridan, Pitt, Burke, and Fox were guests of
+Loughborough. Here, too, formerly stood the mansion where Steele
+entertained the poet of the "Dunciad," with Garth and other famed wits.
+On the hill-side a leafy lane leads out of High Street to the
+picturesque church of the parish, whose tower is a conspicuous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+landmark. Within this fane we find, against the wall on the right of the
+chancel, the beautiful marble bust recently erected by American admirers
+"To the Ever-living Memory" of the author of "Lamia" and "Hyperion."
+Here, too, is the plain memorial tablet of the poetess Joanna Baillie,<span class="sidenote">Baillie</span>
+who lived in an unpretentious mansion lately standing in the
+neighborhood, where she was visited by Wordsworth, Rogers, and others of
+potential genius. In the thickly tenanted church-yard she sleeps with
+her sister near the graves of Incledon, Erskine, and the historian
+Mackintosh. Below the church, on the westering slope, lies embowered
+Frognall, once the home of Gay,<span class="sidenote">Johnson</span> where Dr. Johnson lived and wrote "The
+Vanity of Human Wishes" in the house where the gifted Nichol now resides
+with the author of "Ships that Pass in the Night" for a neighbor and
+with the home of Besant in view from his study. Near the summit of
+Hampstead stands a sober old edifice which was of yore the Upper Flask
+tavern, where the famous Kit-Kat Club<span class="sidenote">Kit-Kat Club</span> held its summer <i>séances</i>, when
+such luminous spirits as Walpole, Prior, Dorset, Pope, Congreve, Swift,
+Steele, and Addison assembled here in the low-panelled rooms which we
+may still see, or beneath the old trees of the garden, and interchanged
+sallies of wit and fancy over their cakes and ale. To<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> this inn Lovelace
+brought the "Clarissa Harlowe" of Richardson's famed romance, and here
+Steevens, the scholiast of Shakespeare, lived and died. Flask Walk,
+which leads out of the high street among old houses and greeneries,
+brings us to the shadowy Well Walk, with its overarching trees and with
+many living memories masoned into its dead walls. Here we see the little
+remnant of the once famous well which for a time made Hampstead a resort
+for the fashionable and the suffering. Among the fancied invalids who
+once dwelt in Well Walk was the spouse of Dr. Johnson. Akenside,
+Arbuthnot, and Mrs. Barbauld (editor of "Richardson's Correspondence")
+have sometime lived in this same little street; here the mother of
+Tennyson died, and here the sweet boy-poet Keats lodged and wrote
+"Endymion." At a house still to be seen in the vicinage he was for two
+years the guest of his friend Brown; here he wrote "Hyperion," "St.
+Agnes," and the "Ode to a Nightingale," and here he wasted in mortal
+illness, being at last removed to Rome only to die. Under the limes of
+Well Walk is a spot especially hallowed by the memory of Keats:<span class="sidenote">Keats</span> it was
+the object and limit of his walks in his later months, and here was
+placed a seat (which until lately was preserved and bore his name),
+where he sat for hours at a time beneath<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> the whispering boughs, gazing,
+often through tears, upon the enchanting vista of wave-like woods and
+fields, the valley with its gleaming lakelets, and the farther slopes
+crowned by the spires of Highgate, which rise out of banks of foliage.
+The view is no less beautiful than when Keats's vision lingered lovingly
+upon it, although we must go into the open fields to behold it now.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Heath</div>
+
+<p>If we bestir ourselves to reach the summit of the heath before the
+accustomed pall shall have settled down upon the great city, the
+exertion will be abundantly rewarded by the prospect that greets us as
+we overlook the abodes of eight millions of souls. Such a view is
+possible nowhere else on earth: outspread before us lies the vast
+metropolis with its seven thousand miles of streets, while without and
+beyond this aggregation of houses we behold an expanse of landscape
+diversified with vale and hill, copse and field, village and park,
+extending for leagues in every direction and embracing portions of seven
+of England's populous shires. We see the great dome of St. Paul's and
+the tall towers of Westminster rising out of the mass of myriad roofs;
+the Crystal Palace glinting amid its green terraces; across the city we
+behold the verdured slopes of Surrey and, farther away, the higher hills
+of Sussex; our eyes follow the course of the Thames from imperial
+Windsor, whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> battlements are misty in the distance of the western
+horizon, to its mouth at Gravesend; yonder at the right is Harrow, set
+on its classic hill-top, with its ancient church by which the boy Byron
+idled and dreamed; northward we see pretty Barnet, where "Oliver Twist"
+met the "Dodger;" nearer is romantic Highgate, and all around us lie the
+green slopes and leafy recesses of the heath. Through these strode the
+murderer Sykes of Dickens's tale, and from the higher parts of this
+common we may trace the way of his aimless flight from the pursuing eyes
+of Nancy,&mdash;through Islington and Highgate to Hendon and Hatfield, and
+thence to the place of his miserable death at Rotherhithe. There are
+hours of delightful strolling amid the mazes of the picturesque heath,
+with its alternations of heathered hills and flower-decked dales, its
+pretty pools, its braes of brambled gorse and pine, its tangle of
+countless paths. One will not wonder that it has been the resort of
+<i>littérateurs</i> from the time of Dryden till now: Pope, Goldsmith, and
+Johnson loved to ramble here; Hunt, Dickens, Collins, and Thackeray were
+familiar with these shady paths; Nichol, Besant, James, and Du Maurier
+are now to be seen among the walkers on the heath. A worn path bearing
+to the right conducts to the turf-carpeted vale where, in a little
+cottage whose site is now occupied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> by the inn, Leigh Hunt<span class="sidenote">Leigh Hunt</span> lived for
+some years. Such guests as Lamb, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Hood, and Cornwall
+came to this humble home, and here Shelley met Keats, the "Adonais" of
+his elegy. Not far away lie the ponds of Pickwick's unwearied
+researches; and in another corner of the common we find an ancient
+tavern bowered with shrubbery, in whose garden Addison and Steele oft
+sipped their ale of a summer evening, and where is still cherished a
+portion of a tree planted by Hogarth. On an elevation of the heath
+stands "Jack Straw's Castle,"<span class="sidenote">Jack Straw's Castle</span> believed to mark the place of encampment
+of that rebel chieftain with his mob of peasantry. It is a curious old
+structure, with wainscoted walls, and was especially favored by Dickens,
+who often dined here with Maclise and Forster and read to them his MSS.
+or counselled with them concerning his plots. Out on the heath near by
+was found the corpse of Sadlier the speculator, who, after bankrupting
+thousands of confiding dupes, committed suicide here; his career
+suggested to Dickens the Merdle and his complaint of "Little Dorrit."
+Among the embowered dwellings beyond West Heath we find that in which
+Chatham was self-immured, the cottage in which Mrs. Coventry
+Patmore&mdash;the Angel in the House&mdash;died, the place where Crabbe sojourned
+with Hoare.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> This vicinage has been the delight of artists from the time
+of Gainsborough, and is still a favorite sketching ground: here lived
+Collins and Blake, and Constable dwelt not far away. The author of
+"Trilby," who has recently taken front rank in the literary profession,
+long had home and studio in a picturesque ivy-grown brick mansion of
+many angles and turrets, in a quiet street upon the other side of the
+hill; here among his treasures of art he commenced a third book soon to
+be published.</p>
+
+<p>The highway which leads north from Jack Straw's affords an exhilarating
+walk, with a superb prospect upon either hand, and brings us to the
+historic Spaniard's Inn,<span class="sidenote">The Spaniard's</span> a pleasant wayside resort decked with vines and
+flowers, where pedestrians stop for refreshments. Dickens oft came to
+this place, and here we see the shady garden, with its tables and seats,
+where Mrs. Bardell held with her cronies the mild revel which was
+interrupted by the arrest of the widow for the costs in Bardell <i>vs.</i>
+Pickwick. The quiet of this ancient inn was disturbed one night by a
+fierce band of Gordon rioters, who rushed up the paths of the heath on
+their way to Mansfield's house, and stopped here to drink or destroy the
+contents of the inn-cellars,&mdash;an occurrence which is graphically
+described by Dickens in the looting of the Maypole Inn of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> Willet, in
+"Barnaby Rudge." Next to the Spaniard's once lived Erskine, and among
+the grand beeches of Caen Wood we see the house of Mansfield, where the
+daughter of Mary Montagu was mistress, and where illustrious guests like
+Pope, Southey, and Coleridge were entertained.</p>
+
+<p>A farther walk through the noble wood brings us to the delightful suburb
+of Highgate, where we now vainly seek the Arundel House where the great
+Bacon died and find only the site of the simple cottage where Marvell,
+the "British Aristides," lived and wrote. The last home of the author of
+"Ancient Mariner" is in a row of pleasant houses on a shady street
+called The Grove, a little way from the high street, which was in
+Coleridge's time the great Northern coach-road from London. The house<span class="sidenote">Home of Coleridge</span> is
+a neat brick structure of two stories, in which we may see the room
+where the poet lodged and where he breathed out his melancholy life. A
+pretty little patch of turf is in front of the dwelling, a larger
+garden, beloved by the poet, is at the back, and the trees which border
+the foot-walk were planted in his lifetime. To this cosy refuge he came
+to reside with his friends the Gilmans; here he was visited by Hunt, who
+once lodged in the next street, Lamb, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Shelley, De
+Quincey, and others<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> of like fame; and here, for nineteen years,
+"afflicted with manifold infirmities," he continued the struggle against
+a baneful habit, which ended only with his life. His grave was made not
+far away, in a portion of the church-yard which has since been overbuilt
+by a school, among whose crypt-like under-arches we find the tomb of
+stone, lying in pathetic and perpetual twilight, where the poet sleeps
+well without the lethean drug which ruined his life. On this hill lived
+"Copperfield" with Dora, and at its foot is the stone where Whittington
+sat and heard the bells recall him to London.</p>
+
+<p>On the slope toward the city is the most beautiful of the London
+cemeteries, with a wealth of verdure and bloom. Within its hallowed
+shades lie the ashes of many whose memories are more fragrant than the
+flowers that deck their graves. In a beautiful spot which was beloved by
+the sweet singer in life we find the tomb of Parepa Rosa, tended by
+loving hands; not far away, among the mourning cypresses, lie Lyndhurst
+and the great Faraday. A plain tombstone erected by Dickens marks the
+sepulchre of his parents, and by it lies his daughter Dora, her
+gravestone bearing now, besides her simple epitaph prepared by her
+father, the name of the novelist himself and the names of two of his
+sons. Here, too, is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> the grave of Rossetti's young wife, whence his
+famous poems were exhumed. Among the many tombs of the enclosure, the
+one to which most pilgrims come is that of the immortal author of
+"Romola." On a verdant slope we find the spot where, upon a cold and
+stormy day which tested the affection of her friends, the mortal part of
+George Eliot<span class="sidenote">Grave of George Eliot</span> was covered with flowers and lovingly laid beside the
+husband of her youth. Wreaths of flowers conceal the mound, and out of
+it rises a monument of gray granite bearing her name and years and the
+lines</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"Of those immortal dead who live again<br />
+In minds made better by their presence."</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>From the terraces above her bed we look over the busy metropolis, astir
+with its myriad pulses of life and passion, while its rumble and din
+sound in our ears in a murmurous monotone. As we linger amid the
+lengthening shadows until the sunset glory fades out of the sky above
+the heath and the lights of London gleam mistily through the smoke, we
+rejoice that we find the tomb of George Eliot, not in the aisles of
+Westminster, where some would have laid her, but in this open place,
+where the winds sigh a requiem through the swaying boughs, the birds
+swirl and twitter in the free azure above, and the silent stars nightly
+watch over her grave.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">BY SOUTHWARK AND THAMES-SIDE TO CHELSEA</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Chaucer&mdash;Shakespeare&mdash;Dickens&mdash;Walpole&mdash;Pepys&mdash;Eliot&mdash;Rossetti&mdash;Carlyle&mdash;Hunt&mdash;Gay&mdash;Smollett&mdash;Kingsley&mdash;Herbert&mdash;Dorset&mdash;Addison&mdash;Shaftesbury&mdash;Locke&mdash;Bolingbroke&mdash;Pope&mdash;Richardson,
+etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">IF our way to Southwark be that of the pilgrims of Chaucer's time, by
+the London Bridge, we have on our right the dark reach of river where
+Lizzie Hexam was discovered in the opening of "Our Mutual Friend,"
+rowing the boat of the bird of prey; on the right, too, we see the Iron
+Bridge where "Little Dorrit" dismissed young Chivery; and a few steps
+bring us to a scene of another of Dickens's romances, the landing-stairs
+at the end of London Bridge, where Nancy had the interview with "Oliver
+Twist's" friends which cost the outcast her life. Here, too, the boy
+Dickens used to await admission to the Marshalsea, often in company with
+the little servant of his father's family who figures in his fiction as
+the "orfling" of the Micawber household and the "Marchioness" of the
+Brass establishment in Bevis Marks. In the adjacent church of St.
+Saviour, part of which was standing when the Father of English poetry
+sojourned in the near Tabard inn,<span class="sidenote">The Tabard</span> is the effigied tomb of the poet
+Gower, a friend of Chaucer;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> here also lie buried Shakespeare's brother
+Edmund, an actor; Fletcher the dramatist, who lived close by; and
+Lawrence Fletcher, coparcener of Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre, which
+stood near at hand, on a portion of the site of the brewery which Dr.
+Johnson, executor of his friend Thrale, sold to Barclay and Perkins. The
+extensions of this establishment now cover the site of a church where
+Baxter preached, and the sepulchre of Cruden, author of the
+"Concordance." In near-by Zoar Street, Bunyan preached in a large chapel
+near the Falcon tavern, which was a resort of Shakespeare. Of the Tabard
+inn, whence Chaucer's Canterbury company set out, the pilgrim of to-day
+finds naught save the name on the sign of the new tavern which marks its
+site on Borough High Street; and the picturesque White Hart,<span class="sidenote">White Hart</span> which stood
+near by&mdash;an inn known to Shakespeare and mentioned in his dramas&mdash;where
+Jingle of "Pickwick," eloping with Miss Wardle, was overtaken and Sam
+Weller discovered, was not long ago degraded into a vulgar dram-shop.
+Near St. Thomas's Church in this neighborhood formerly stood the
+hospital in which Akenside was physician and Keats a student. A little
+farther along the High Street we come to a passage at the left leading
+into a paved yard which was the court of the Marshalsea,<span class="sidenote">Marshalsea</span> and the high
+wall at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> the right is believed to have been a part of the old prison
+where Dickens's father was confined in the rooms which the novelist
+assigns to William Dorrit, and where "Little Dorrit" was born and
+reared. In this court the Dickens children played, and under yonder pump
+by the wall Pancks cooled his head on a memorable occasion. Just beyond
+is St. George's Church, where "Little Dorrit" was baptized and married,
+with its vestry where she once slept with the register under her head;
+adjoining is the church-yard, once overlooked by the prison-windows of
+Dickens and Dorrit, where the disconsolate young Chivery expected to be
+untimely laid under a lugubrious epitaph. Another block brings us to
+dingy Lant Street&mdash;"out of Hight Street, right side the way"&mdash;where the
+boy Dickens lived in the back attic of the same shabby house in which
+Bob Sawyer afterward lodged and gave the party to Pickwick. Beyond the
+next turning stood King's Bench Prison, where Micawber was incarcerated
+by his stony-hearted creditors, and beyond this again we come to the
+tabernacle where Spurgeon preached. Turning at the site of Micawber's
+prison, the Borough Road conducts us, by the sponging-house where Hook
+was confined, to the Christ Church of Newman Hall,&mdash;successor to Rowland
+Hill: it is a beautiful edifice, erected<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> largely by contributions from
+America, its handsome tower being designed as a monument to Abraham
+Lincoln and marked by a memorial tablet. A little way southward, we find
+among the buildings of Lambeth Palace the library of which Green, the
+historian of the "English People," was long custodian, and the ancient
+room where Essex and the poet Lovelace were imprisoned.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Thames-Side</div>
+
+<p>Recrossing Father Thames and passing the oft-described shrines of
+Westminster we come to Millbank, the region into which Copperfield and
+Peggotty followed the wretched Martha and saved her from suicide. Out of
+Millbank Street, a few steps by a little thoroughfare bring us into the
+somnolent Smith Square in which stands the grotesque church of St. John,
+where Churchill once preached,&mdash;described in "Our Mutual Friend" as a
+"very hideous church with four towers, resembling some petrified monster
+on its back with its legs in the air." To this place came Charley Hexam
+and his school-master and Wrayburn, for here in front of the church, at
+a house near the corner, Lizzie Hexam&mdash;the best of all Dickens's
+women&mdash;lodged with Jenny Wren. It was a little house of two stories, and
+its dingy front room&mdash;the shop<span class="sidenote">Shop of Jenny Wren</span> of the dolls' dress-maker&mdash;later was used
+as a cheap restaurant, where we once regaled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> ourselves with a dish of
+equivocal tea while we looked about us and recognized the half-door
+across which Wrayburn indolently leaned as he chatted with Lizzie, the
+seat in front of the wide window where Jenny sat at her work with her
+crutch leaning against the wall, the corner to which she consigned her
+"bad old child" in his drunken disgrace, the stairs which led to
+Lizzie's chamber,&mdash;objects all noted by the observant glance of Dickens
+as he peered for a moment through the door-way. Sauntering southward by
+Grosvenor Road, where Lizzie walked with her brother and Headstone, we
+have beside us on the left the river, glinting and shimmering in the
+morning sunlight and alive with every sort of craft that plies for trade
+or pleasure. It was along these curving reaches of the Thames that the
+merry parties of the olden time, destined like ourselves to Chelsea,<span class="sidenote">Old Chelsea</span>
+used to row over the miles that then intervened between London and the
+ancient village, and here, too, Franklin, then a printer in Bartholomew
+Close, once swam the entire distance from Chelsea to Blackfriars Bridge.
+The way along which we are strolling then lay in the open country, with
+leafy lanes leading aside among groves and sun-flecked fields. But woods
+and fields have disappeared under compact masses of brick and mortar,
+and the quaint old suburb is linked to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> the city by continuous streets
+and structures. Contact has not altogether destroyed the distinctive
+features of the ancient suburb, and we know when our walk has brought us
+to its borders. Few of its thoroughfares retain the dreamful quiet of
+the olden time, few of its rows of sombre and dignified dwellings have
+wholly escaped the modern eruption of ornate and staring architecture;
+the old and the new are curiously blended, but enough of the former
+remains to remind us that Chelsea is olden and not modern, and to revive
+for us the winsome associations with which the place is permeated. The
+suggestion of worshipful antiquity is seen in sedate, ivy entwined
+mansions of dusky-hued brick, in carefully kept old trees which in their
+saplinghood knew Pepys, Johnson, or Smollett, in quaint inns whose
+homely comforts were enjoyed by illustrious <i>habitués</i> in the long ago.</p>
+
+<p>Our stroll beyond the Grosvenor Road brings us to the famous "Chelsea
+Physick Garden," presented to the Apothecaries' Society by Sloane, the
+founder of the British Museum, who was a medical student here; it was to
+this garden that Polyphilus of the "Rambler" was going to see a new
+plant in flower when he was diverted by meeting the chancellor's coach.
+At the adjoining hospital dwelt the gifted Mrs. Somerville, whose
+husband was a physician there;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> and the ancient mansion of dingy brick,
+in which Walpole<span class="sidenote">Walpole</span> lived, and where Pope, Swift, Gay, and Mary Wortley
+Montagu were guests, is a portion of the infirmary,&mdash;the great
+drawing-room in which the brilliant company met being a hospital ward. A
+little way northward, by Sloane Street, we come to Hans Place, where, at
+No. 25, the sweet poetess Letitia Landon ("L. E. L.") was born in a tiny
+two-storied house; she attended school in a similar house of the same
+row, where Miss Mitford and the authoress of "Glenarvon" had before been
+pupils. Along the river again we find beyond the hospital a passage
+leading to the place of Paradise Row, where, in a little brick house,
+the witching Mancini was visited by Charles II. and poetized by the
+brilliant Evremond. Here, at the corner of Robinson's Lane, Pepys
+visited Robarte in "the prettiest contrived house" the diarist ever saw;
+not far away a comfortable old inn occupies the site of the dwelling of
+the historian Faulkner, in the neighborhood where the essayist Mary
+Astell&mdash;ridiculed by Swift, Addison, Steele, Smollett, and Congreve&mdash;had
+her modest home. Robert Walpole's later residence stood near Queen's
+Road West, and its grounds sloped to the river just below the Swan
+Tavern, near the bottom of the lane now called Swan Walk. It was at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+this river inn that Pepys "got affright" on being told of an eruption of
+the plague in Chelsea.</p>
+
+<p>For a half-mile or so westward from the Swan, picturesque Cheyne
+Walk&mdash;beloved of the <i>literati</i>&mdash;stretches along the river-bank. Its
+many old houses, with their solemn-visaged fronts overlooking the river,
+their iron railings, dusky walls, tiled roofs, and curious
+dormer-windows, are impressive survivors of a past age. <span class="sidenote">Homes of George Eliot and Rossetti</span>At No. 4, a
+substantial brick house of four stories, with battlemented roof and with
+oaken carvings in the rooms, are preserved some relics of George Eliot,
+for this was her last home, and here she breathed out her life in the
+same room where Maclise, friend of Carlyle and Dickens, had died just a
+decade before. No. 16, a spacious dwelling with curved front and finely
+wrought iron railing and gate-way, was the home of Rossetti for the
+twenty years preceding his death. With these panelled rooms, which he
+filled with quaint and beautiful objects of art, are associated most of
+the memories of the gifted poet and painter. The large lower room was
+his studio, where one of his last occupations was painting a replica of
+"Beata Beatrix," the portrait of his wife, whose tragic death darkened
+his life. Around the fireplace in this room a brilliant company held the
+nightly <i>séances</i> which a participant styles feasts of the gods.
+Through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> the passage at the side the famous zebu was conveyed, and
+reconveyed after his assault upon the poet in the garden. The rooms
+above were sometime tenanted by Meredith, Swinburne, and Rossetti's
+brother and biographer, who was also Whitman's editor and advocate.
+Later, the essayist Watts, to whom Rossetti dedicated his greatest work,
+resided here to cherish his friend. The garden, where Rossetti kept his
+odd pets and where neighbors remember to have seen him walking in
+paint-bedaubed attire for hours together, is now mostly covered by a
+school. At first, many luminaries of letters and art came to him
+here,&mdash;Jones, Millais, Hunt, Gosse, Browning, Whistler, Morris, Oliver
+Madox Brown, whose death elicited Rossetti's "Untimely Lost," and others
+like them; later, when baneful narcotics had sadly changed his
+temperament, he dwelt in seclusion, exercising only in his garden and
+seeing such devoted friends as Watts, Knight, Hake, "The Manxman" Hall
+Caine, and the gifted sister, author of "Goblin Market," etc., who was
+pictured by Rossetti in his "Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and who lately
+died. In his study here he produced his best work; here he revised the
+poems exhumed from his wife's grave and wrote "The Stream's Secret" and
+other parts of the volume which made his fame and occasioned the battle
+between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> the bards Buchanan and Swinburne; here he wrote the magnificent
+"Rose Mary," "White Ship," etc., and completed the series of sonnets
+which has been pronounced "in its class the greatest gift poetry has
+received since Shakespeare."</p>
+
+<p>No. 18 was the famous coffee-house and barber-shop of Sloane's servant
+Salter,&mdash;called "Don Saltero" by Gay, Evremond, Steele, Smollett, and
+the other wits who frequented his place. On the Embankment by this
+Cheyne Walk we find the statue of Carlyle; behind it is the dull little
+lane of Cheyne Row, whose quiet Carlyle thought "hardly inferior to
+Craigenputtock," and here at No. 5, later 24, a plain three-storied
+house of sullied brick,&mdash;even more dingy than its neighbors,&mdash;the
+pessimistic sage lived,<span class="sidenote">Carlyle's House</span> wrote, and scolded for half a century. All the
+wainscoted rooms are sombre and cheerless, but the memory-haunted study
+seems most depressing as we stand at Carlyle's hearth-stone and look
+upon the spot where he sat to write his many books. The garden was a
+pleasanter place, with bright flowers his wife planted, and the tree
+under which he loved to smoke and chat. Here Tennyson lounged with him,
+devoted to a long pipe and longer discourse; here Froude oft found him
+on the daily visits which enabled him to picture the seer, "warts and
+all;" here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> Dickens, Maclise, and Hunt saw him at his best, and here the
+latter wrote "Jenny Kissed Me,"&mdash;Jenny being Mrs. Carlyle. To Carlyle in
+this sombre home came Emerson, Ruskin, Tyndal, and a host of friends and
+disciples from all lands, and hither will come an endless procession of
+admirers, for many Carlyle belongings have been recovered, and the place
+is to be preserved as a memorial of the stern philosopher. Around the
+corner Hunt lived, in the curious little house Carlyle described, and
+here he studied and wrote in the upper front room. On the next block of
+the same street stood the home of Smollett,<span class="sidenote">Smollett</span> which was removed the year
+that Carlyle came to dwell in the vicinage. It was a spacious mansion
+which had been the Lawrence manor-house. Smollett wrote here "Count
+Fathom," "Clinker," and "Launcelot Greaves," and finished Hume's
+"England." Here Garrick, Johnson, Sterne, and other starry spirits were
+his guests, and here later lived the poet Gay<span class="sidenote">Gay</span> and wrote "The Shepherd's
+Week," "Rural Sports," and part of his comedies. In the cellars of some
+of the houses at the top of Lawrence Street may be seen remains of the
+ovens of the once famous Chelsea china-factory, where Dr. Johnson
+wrought for some time vainly trying to master the art of
+china-making,&mdash;his pieces always cracking in the oven: a service of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+china presented to him by the factorymen here was preserved in Holland
+House. A tasteful Queen Anne mansion with beautiful interior
+decorations, not far from the Carlyle house, was a domicile of the poet
+and æsthete Oscar Wilde. In the picturesque rectory of St. Luke's, a few
+rods north from Cheyne Row, the author of "Hypatia" and his scarcely
+less famed brother Henry, of "Ravenshoe," lived as boys, their father
+being the incumbent of the parish. Henry Kingsley<span class="sidenote">Kingsley</span> presents, in his
+"Hillyars and Burtons," charming sketches of Chelsea as it existed in
+his boyhood. Overlooking the river at the foot of the adjoining street,
+we find Chelsea Church, one of the most curious and interesting of
+London's many fanes, albeit partially disfigured by modern changes. In
+its pulpit Donne, the poet-divine, preached at the funeral of the mother
+of George Herbert;<span class="sidenote">Herbert</span> at its altar the dramatist Colman was married. Among
+its many monuments we find the mural tablet of Sir Thomas More, a marble
+slab with an inscription by himself which formerly described him as
+"harassing to thieves, murderers, and heretics." Here lie the ancestors
+of the poet Sidney, and in the little church-yard are the graves of
+Shadwell the laureate, who died just back of the church, of the
+publisher of "Junius," and of a brother of Fielding. Leading<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> back from
+the river here is Church Street, on which dwelt Swift, Atterbury, and
+Arbuthnot, while Steele had a little house near by. The next street is
+named for Sir John Danvers, whose house was at the top of the little
+street: his wife was the mother of the poet Herbert, who dwelt here for
+a time and wrote some of his earlier poems; Donne and the amiable angler
+Izaak Walton were frequent guests of Herbert's mother in this place. The
+adjacent street marks the place of Beaufort House, the palatial
+residence of Sir Thomas More, where he was visited by his much-married
+monarch; where the learned and colloquial author of "Encomium Moriæ,"
+Erasmus, was sometime an inmate; and where, decades later, Thomas
+Sackville, Earl Dorset,<span class="sidenote">Dorset</span> wrote the earliest English tragedy, "Gorboduc."
+A time-worn structure between King's Road and the Thames was once the
+home of the bewitching Nell Gwynne, and in later years "became (not
+inappropriately) a gin-temple," as Carlyle said: this old edifice was
+also sometime occupied by Addison. Back of King's Road we find the
+venerable Shaftesbury<span class="sidenote">Shaftesbury</span> House,&mdash;in which the famous earl wrote
+"Characteristics," Locke began his "Essay," and Addison produced some of
+his Spectator papers,&mdash;long transformed into a workhouse, in the grounds
+of which we are shown the place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> of "Locke's yew," recently removed. The
+Old World's End Tavern, by Riley Street, was the notorious resort of
+Congreve's "Love for Love;" the once ill-famed Cremorne Gardens, just
+beyond, were erst part of the estate of a granddaughter of William Penn,
+who was related to the Penns of Stoke-Pogis, where Gray wrote the
+"Elegy." A near-by little ivy-grown brick house, with wide windows in
+its front and an iron balcony upon its roof, was long the home of
+Turner, and in the upper room, through whose arched window he could look
+out upon the river, he died. From the water-edge here we see, upon the
+opposite shore, the old church where Blake was married and Bolingbroke
+was buried, and from whose vestry window Turner made his favorite
+sketches; near by is a portion of the ancient house where Bolingbroke<span class="sidenote">Bolingbroke</span>
+was born and died, where he entertained such guests as Chesterfield,
+Swift, and Pope, and where the latter wrote part of the "Essay on Man."
+Beyond Chelsea we find at Fulham the spot where lived and died
+Richardson, who is said to have written "Clarissa Harlowe" here; and,
+near the river, the place of the home of Hook, and his mural tablet in
+the old church by which he lies, near the grave of the poet Vincent
+Bourne. Our ramble by Thames-side may be pleasantly prolonged through a
+region rife with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> the associations we esteem most precious. Our way lies
+among the sometime haunts of Cowley, Bulwer, Pepys, Thomson, Marryat,
+Pope, Hogarth, Tennyson, Fielding, "Junius," Garrick, and many another
+shining one. Some of lesser genius dwell now incarnate in this
+memory-haunted district by the river-side,&mdash;the radical Labouchère,
+living in Pope's famous villa, Stephens, and the author of "Aurora
+Floyd,"&mdash;but it is the memory of the mighty dead that impresses us as we
+saunter amid the scenes they loved and which inspired or witnessed the
+work for which the world gives them honor and homage; we find their
+accustomed resorts, the rural habitations where many of them dwelt and
+died, the dim church aisles or the turf-grown graves where they are laid
+at last in the dreamless sleep whose waking we may not know.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE SCENE OF GRAY'S ELEGY</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>The Country Church-Yard&mdash;Tomb of Gray&mdash;Stoke-Pogis Church&mdash;Reverie
+and Reminiscence&mdash;Scenes of Milton&mdash;Waller&mdash;Porter&mdash;Coke&mdash;Denham.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Country Church-Yard</div>
+
+<p class="cap">OUR visit to the country church-yard where the ashes of Gray repose amid
+the scenes his muse immortalized is the culmination and the fitting end
+of a literary pilgrimage westward from London to Windsor and the nearer
+shrines of Thames-vale. Our way has led us to the sometime homes of
+Pope, Fielding, Shelley, Garrick, Burke, Richardson; to the birthplaces
+of Waller and Gibbon, the graves of "Junius," Hogarth, Thomson, and
+Penn; to the cottage where Jane Porter wrote her wondrous tales, and the
+ivy-grown church where Tennyson was married. Nearer the scene of the
+"Elegy" we visit other shrines: the Horton where Milton wrote his
+earlier works, "Masque of Comus," "Lycidas," "Arcades;" the Hallbarn
+where Waller composed the panegyric to Cromwell, the "Congratulation,"
+and other once famous poems; the mansion where the Herschels studied and
+wrote. We have had the gray spire of Stoke-Pogis Church in view during
+this last day of our ramble. From the summit of the "Cooper's Hill"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> of
+Denham's best-known poem, from the battlements of Windsor and the
+windows of Eton, from the elm-shaded meads that border the Thames and
+the fields redolent of lime-trees and new-mown hay where we loitered, we
+have had tempting glimpses of that "ivy-mantled tower" that made us wish
+the winged hours more swift; for we have purposely deferred our visit to
+that sacred spot so that the even-tide and the hour the curfew tolled
+"the knell of parting day" across this peaceful landscape may find us
+amid the old graves where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." As
+we approach through verdant lanes bordered by fields where the ploughman
+is yet at his toil and the herds feed among the buttercups, the abundant
+ivy upon the tower gleams in the light of the declining sun, and the
+"yew-tree's shade" falls far aslant upon the mouldering turf-heaps. The
+sequestered God's-acre, consecrated by the genius of Gray, lies in
+languorous solitude, far removed from the highway and within the
+precincts of a grand park once the possession of descendants of Penn.
+Just without the enclosure stands a cenotaph erected by John Penn,
+grandson of the founder of Pennsylvania; it represents a sarcophagus and
+is ostensibly commemorative of Gray, but, as has been said, it
+"resembles nothing so much as a huge tea-caddy," and its inscription
+celebrates the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> builder more than the bard. Within the church-yard all
+is rest and peace; the strife and fever of life intrude not here; no
+sound of the busy world breaks in upon the hush that pervades this spot,
+and "all the air a solemn stillness holds." Something of the serenity
+which here pervades earth and sky steals into and uplifts the soul, and
+the demons of greed and passion are subdued and silenced as we stand
+above the tomb of Gray and realize all the imagery of the "Elegy." While
+our hearts are thrilling with the associations of the place and the
+hour, while the ashes of the tender poet rest at our feet and the
+objects that inspired the matchless poem surround us, we may hope to
+share in some measure the tenderer emotions to which the contemplation
+of this scene stirred his soul. As we ponder these objects, upon which
+his loving vision lingered, they seem strangely familiar; we feel that
+we have known them long and will love them alway.</p>
+
+<p>One must visit this spot if he would appreciate the absolute fidelity to
+nature of the "Elegy:" its imagery is the exact reproduction of the
+scene lying about us, which is practically unchanged since that time so
+long ago when Gray drafted his poem here. Above us rises the square
+tower, mantled with ivy and surmounted by a tapering spire whose shadow
+now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> falls athwart the grave of the poet; here are the rugged elms with
+their foliage swaying in the summer breeze above the lowly graves;
+yonder by the church porch is the dark yew whose opaque shade covers the
+site of the poet's accustomed seat on the needle-carpeted sward; around
+us are scattered the mouldering heaps beneath which, "each in his narrow
+cell forever laid," sleep the rustic dead. Some of the humble mounds are
+unmarked by any token of memory or grief, but many bear the "frail
+memorials," often rude slabs of wood, which loving but unskilled hands
+have graven with "uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture," with the
+names and years of the unhonored dead, and "many a holy text that teach
+the rustic moralist to die." Some of these lowly graves hold the
+forefathers of families who, not content with the sequestered vale of
+life which sufficed for these simple folk, have sought on another shore
+largesses of fame or fortune unattainable here. Among the names "spelled
+by the unlettered muse" upon the stones around us we see those of
+Goddard, Perry, Gould, Cooper, Geer, and many others familiar to our
+American ears. The overarching glades of the woods which skirt the
+sacred precinct were the haunt of the "youth to fortune and to fame
+unknown;" the nodding beech, that "wreathes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> its old fantastic roots so
+high" in the grove at near-by Burnham, was his favorite tree, as it was
+that of Gray; afar through the haze of a golden after-glow we see the
+"antique towers" of Eton, the stately brow of Windsor, with its royal
+battlements, and nearer the wave of woods and fields and all the
+dream-like beauty of the landscape upon which the eyes of Gray so often
+dwelt, a landscape that literally glimmers in the fading light.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Tomb of Gray</div>
+
+<p>A tablet set by Penn in the chancel wall beneath the mullioned window is
+inscribed, "Opposite this stone, in the same tomb upon which he so
+feelingly recorded his grief at the loss of a beloved parent, are
+deposited the remains of Thomas Gray, author of the Elegy written in a
+Country Church-yard." A few feet distant is the tomb he erected for his
+mother, which now conceals the ashes of the gentle poet. It is of the
+plainest and simplest, a low structure of brick, covered by a marble
+slab. No "storied urn or animated bust" is needed to perpetuate the name
+of him who made himself immortal; even his name is not graven upon the
+marble. We are come directly from the splendors of the royal chapels of
+Windsor, where costly sculpture, gilding, and superlative epitaphs mark
+the sepulchres of some who were mediocre or mendicant of mind and
+virtue, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> we are, therefore, the more impressed by the fitting
+simplicity of the poet's tomb among the humble dead whose artless tale
+he told. At the grave of Gray, how tawdry seems the pomp of those kingly
+mausoleums, how mean some of the lives the bedizened monuments
+commemorate, of how little consequence that the world should know where
+such dust is hid from sight! At the grave of Gray, if anywhere the wide
+world round, we will correctly value the vanities, ambitions, and
+rewards of earth. Gray's desire to be buried here saved him from what
+some one has called the "misfortune of burial in Westminster." While the
+pilgrim vainly seeks in that national mausoleum the tombs of
+Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Gray, Wordsworth, Thackeray, Coleridge,
+Eliot, and others of divine genius, and finds instead the graves of many
+sordid and impure, entombment there may be a misfortune. Happily the
+poet of the Elegy reposes in his church-yard, beside the beings he best
+loved, on the spot he frequented in life and hallowed by his genius,
+among those whose virtues he sang; here his grave perpetually emphasizes
+the sublime teachings of his verse and affords a most touching
+association. The only inscription upon the slab is the poet's tribute to
+his aunt, Mary Antrobus, and to "Dorothy Gray, the careful and tender
+mother of many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> children, of whom one alone had the misfortune to
+survive her." It has been our pleasure on a previous day to seek out
+amid the din of London the spot where, in a modest dwelling, this mother
+gave birth to the poet, and where she and Mary Antrobus sold laces to
+maintain the "many children."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img1.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Stoke-Pogis Church</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Ivy-Mantled Church</div>
+
+<p>Set upon a gentle eminence in the midst of this peaceful scene, the
+church has a picturesque beauty which harmonizes well with its
+environment. It is low and sombre, but age has given a dignity and grace
+which would make it attractive apart from its associations. Overrunning
+the walls, shrouding the crumbling battlements of the tower, clambering
+along the steep roofs, clinging to the highest gables, and festooning
+the stained windows, are masses of dark ivy, which conceal the inroads
+of time and impart to the whole structure a beauty that wins us
+completely. The tower is early English, the chancel is Norman, and the
+newer portions of the edifice were already old when Gray frequented the
+place. A path bordered by abundant roses leads from the gate-way of the
+enclosure to the quaint porch of timbers and the entrance to the church.
+Within, the light falls dimly at this hour upon the curious little
+galleries of the peasantry, the great pew of the Penns, the humbler
+place at the end of the south aisle where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> Gray came to pray, the huge
+mural tablet and the burial vault where the son of William Penn and his
+family sleep in death. In the park close by is the palace of the Penns,
+and the mansion where Charles I. was imprisoned and where Coke wrote
+some of his Commentaries and entertained his queen. Not far distant is
+the house&mdash;now a fine abode&mdash;which Gray shared for some years with his
+mother and aunt, and where his bedroom and study may still be seen.
+Farther away are the Beaconsfield which furnished the title of the
+gifted author of "Lothair," and the old church where Burke and Waller
+await the resurrection.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Discarded Stanzas</div>
+
+<p>In the twilight we hastily sketch Gray's "ivy-mantled tower," and then
+sit by his tomb gazing upon the fading landscape and recalling the life
+of this divine poet and the lines of the matchless poem which was
+drafted here and with exquisite care revised and polished year after
+year before it was given to the world. It may not be generally known
+that he discarded six stanzas from the original draft,&mdash;among them this,
+written as the fourth stanza:</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"Hark, how the sacred calm that breathes around<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bids every fierce, tumultuous passion cease;</span><br />
+In still small accents whispering from the ground<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A grateful earnest of eternal peace;"</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>this, from the reply of the "hoary-headed swain:"</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"Him have we seen the greenwood side along<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">While o'er the heath we hied, our labor done,</span><br />
+Oft as the wood-lark piped her farewell song<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun;"</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>and this, from the description of the poet's grave:</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td>
+"There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;</span><br />
+The redbreast loves to build and warble there,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And little footsteps lightly print the ground."</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>We may judge what was the high standard of Gray, and what the
+transcending quality of the finished poem from which its author could,
+after years of deliberation, reject such stanzas. The Elegy is the
+expression in divinest poetry of the best conceptions of a noble soul
+upon the most serious topic on which human thought can dwell. No wonder
+that the world has literally learned by heart those precious lines; that
+they are the solace of the thoughtful and the bereft in every clime
+where mortals meditate on death; that the brave Wolfe, on the way to his
+triumphal death, should recite them in the darkness and declare he had
+rather be their author than the victor in the morrow's battle;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> that the
+great Webster, on his death-bed, should beg to hear them, and die at
+last with their melody sounding in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>As the glow fades out of the darkening sky, the birds in the leafy elms
+one by one cease their songs, "the lowing herds wind slowly o'er the
+lea" to distant folds, the "drowsy tinklings" grow fainter, the summer
+wind sighing among the trees dies with the day, and the scene which
+seemed still before is noiseless now. In this hush we are content to
+leave this deathless poet and the spot he loved. We gather ivy from the
+old wall and a spray from the boughs of his dreaming yew, and take our
+way back to the busy haunts of men.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">DICKENSLAND: GAD'S HILL AND ABOUT</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Chaucer's Pilgrims&mdash;Falstaff&mdash;Dickens's
+Abode&mdash;Study&mdash;Grounds&mdash;Walks&mdash;Neighbors&mdash;Guests&mdash;Scenes of
+Tales&mdash;Cobham&mdash;Rochester&mdash;Pip's Church-Yard&mdash;Satis House, etc.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Gad's Hill House</div>
+
+<p class="cap">"TO go to Gad's Hill," said Dickens, in a note of invitation, "you leave
+Charing Cross at nine o'clock by North Kent Railway for Higham." Guided
+by these directions and equipped with a letter from Dickens's son, we
+find ourselves gliding eastward among the chimneys of London and, a
+little later, emerging into the fields of Kent,&mdash;Jingle's region of
+"apples, cherries, hops, and women." The Thames is on our left; we pass
+many river-towns,&mdash;Dartford where Wat Tyler lived, Gravesend where
+Pocahontas died,&mdash;but most of our way is through the open country, where
+we have glimpses of fields, parks, and leafy lanes, with here and there
+picturesque camps of gypsies or of peripatetic rascals "goin'
+a-hoppin'." From wretched Higham a walk of half an hour among orchards
+and between hedges of wild-rose and honeysuckle brings us to the hill
+which Shakespeare and Dickens have made classic ground, and soon we see,
+above the tree-tops, the glittering vane which surmounted the home of
+the world's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> greatest novelist. The name Gad's (vagabond's) Hill is a
+survival of the time when the depredations of highwaymen upon "pilgrims
+going to Canterbury with rich offerings and traders riding to London
+with fat purses" gave to this spot the ill repute it had in
+Shakespeare's day: it was here he located Falstaff's great exploit. The
+tuft of evergreens which crowns the hill about Dickens's retreat is the
+remnant of thick woods once closely bordering the highway, in which the
+"men in buckram" lay concealed, and the robbery of the franklin was
+committed in front of the spot where the Dickens house stands. By this
+road passed Chaucer, who had property near by, gathering from the
+pilgrims his "Canterbury Tales." In all time to come the great master of
+romance who came here to live and die will be worthily associated with
+Shakespeare and Chaucer in the renown of Gad's Hill. In becoming
+possessor of this place, Dickens realized a dream of his boyhood and an
+ambition of his life. In one of his travellers' sketches he introduces a
+"queer small boy" (himself) gazing at Gad's Hill House and predicting
+his future ownership, which the author finds annoying "because it
+happens to be <i>my</i> house and I believe what he said was true." When at
+last the place was for sale, Dickens did not wait to examine it; he
+never was inside<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> the house until he went to direct its repair. Eighteen
+hundred pounds was the price; a thousand more were expended for
+enlargement of the grounds and alterations of the house, which, despite
+his declaration that he had "stuck bits upon it in all manner of ways,"
+did not greatly change it from what it was when it became the goal of
+his childish aspirations. At first it was his summer residence
+merely,&mdash;his wife came with him the first summer,&mdash;but three years later
+he sold Tavistock House, and Gad's Hill was thenceforth his home. From
+the bustle and din of the city he returned to the haunts of his boyhood
+to find restful quiet and time for leisurely work among these "blessed
+woods and fields" which had ever held his heart. For nine years after
+the death of Dickens Gad's Hill was occupied by his oldest son; its
+ownership has since twice or thrice changed.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Gad's Hill&mdash;House and Grounds</div>
+
+<p>Its elevated site and commanding view render it one of the most
+conspicuous, as it is one of the most lovely, spots in Kent. The mansion
+is an unpretentious, old-fashioned, two-storied structure of fourteen
+rooms. Its brick walls are surmounted by Mansard roofs above which rises
+a bell-turret; a pillared portico, where Dickens sat with his family on
+summer evenings, shades the front entrance; wide bay-windows project
+upon either side; flowers and vines clamber<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> upon the walls, and a
+delightfully home-like air pervades the place. It seems withal a modest
+seat for one who left half a million dollars at his death. At the right
+of the entrance-hall we see Dickens's library and study, a cosy room
+shown in the picture of "The Empty Chair:" here are shelves which held
+his books; the panels he decorated with counterfeit book-backs; the nook
+where perched the mounted remains of his raven, the "Grip" of "Barnaby
+Rudge." By this bay-window, whence he could look across the lawn to the
+cedars beyond the highway, stood his chair and the desk where he wrote
+many of the works by which the world will know him alway. Behind the
+study was his billiard-room, and upon the opposite side of the hall the
+parlor, with the dining-room adjoining it at the back, both bedecked
+with the many mirrors which delighted the master. Opening out of these
+rooms is a conservatory, paid for out of "the golden shower from
+America" and completed but a few days before Dickens's death, holding
+yet the ferns he tended. The dining-room was the scene of much of that
+emphatic hospitality which it pleased the novelist to dispense, his
+exuberant spirits making him the leader in all the jollity and
+conviviality of the board. Here he compounded for bibulous guests his
+famous "cider-cup of Gad's Hill,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> and at the same table he was stricken
+with death; on a couch beneath yonder window, the one nearest the hall,
+he died on the anniversary of the railway accident which so frightfully
+imperilled his life. From this window we look out upon a lawn decked
+with shrubbery and see across undulating cornfields his beloved Cobham.
+From the parquetted hall, stairs lead to the modest chambers,&mdash;that of
+Dickens being above the drawing-room. He lined the stairway with prints
+of Hogarth's works, and declared he never came down the stairs without
+pausing to wonder at the sagacity and skill which had produced the
+masterful pictures of human life. The house is invested with roses, and
+parterres of the red geraniums which the master loved are ranged upon
+every side. It was some fresh manifestation of his passion for these
+flowers that elicited from his daughter the averment, "Papa, I think
+when you are an angel your wings will be made of looking-glasses and
+your crown of scarlet geraniums." Beneath a rose-tree not far from the
+window where Dickens died, a bed blooming with blue lobelia holds the
+tiny grave of "Dick" and the tender memorial of the novelist to that
+"Best of Birds." The row of gleaming limes which shadow the porch was
+planted by Dickens's own hands. The pedestal of the sundial upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> the
+lawn is a massive balustrade of the old stone bridge at near-by
+Rochester, which little David Copperfield crossed "foot-sore and weary"
+on his way to his aunt, and from which Pickwick contemplated the
+castle-ruin, the cathedral, the peaceful Medway. At the left of the
+mansion are the carriage-house and the school-room of Dickens's sons. In
+another portion of the grounds are his tennis-court and the
+bowling-green which he prepared, where he became a skilful and tireless
+player. The broad meadow beyond the lawn was a later purchase, and the
+many limes which beautify it were rooted by Dickens. Here numerous
+cricket matches were played, and he would watch the players or keep the
+score "the whole day long." It was in this meadow that he rehearsed his
+readings, and his talking, laughing, weeping, and gesticulating here
+"all to himself" excited among his neighbors suspicion of his insanity.
+From the front lawn a tunnel constructed by Dickens passes beneath the
+highway to "The Wilderness," a thickly wooded shrubbery, where
+magnificent cedars uprear their venerable forms and many sombre firs,
+survivors of the forest which erst covered the countryside, cluster upon
+the hill-top. Here Dickens's favorite dog, the "Linda" of his letters,
+lies buried. Amid the leafy seclusion of this retreat, and upon the very
+spot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> where Falstaff was routed by Hal and Poins ("the eleven men in
+buckram"), Dickens erected the chalet<span class="sidenote">Dickens's Chalet</span> sent to him in pieces by Fechter,
+the upper room of which&mdash;up among the quivering boughs, where "birds and
+butterflies fly in and out, and green branches shoot in at the
+windows"&mdash;Dickens lined with mirrors and used as his study in summer. Of
+the work produced at Gad's Hill&mdash;"Two Cities," "Uncommercial Traveller,"
+"Mutual Friend," "Edwin Drood," and many tales and sketches of "All the
+Year Round"&mdash;much was written in this leaf-environed nook; here the
+master wrought through the golden hours of his last day of conscious
+life, here he wrote his last paragraph and at the close of that June day
+let fall his pen, never to take it up again. From the place of the
+chalet we behold the view which delighted the heart of Dickens,&mdash;his
+desk was so placed that his eyes would rest upon this view whenever he
+raised them from his work,&mdash;the fields of waving corn, the green expanse
+of meadows, the sail-dotted river.</p>
+
+<p>Many friends came to Dickens in this pleasant Kentish home,&mdash;Forster,
+Maclise, Reade, Macready, Leech, Collins, Yates, Hans Christian
+Andersen, Mr. and Mrs. Fields, Longfellow and his daughters, Fechter and
+his wife: some of them were guests here for many days together.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> The
+master was the most genial of hosts, apparently the happiest of men,
+with the hearty laugh which Montaigne says never comes from a bad heart.
+After the morning task in library or chalet he gave the rest of the day
+to exercise and recreation, often at games with his guests in the
+grounds, but taking daily in rain or shine the long walks which made his
+lithe figure and rapid gait familiar to all the cottagers and
+field-laborers of the countryside. It is pleasant to hear the loving
+testimony of these simple folk&mdash;many of them descendants of the "men of
+Kent" who followed the standard of Wat Tyler from Blackheath to
+London&mdash;concerning Dickens's uniform kindness, his helpful generosity,
+his scrupulous regard of the rights of inferiors, the traits which won
+their hearts. One rustic neighbor declares, "Dickens was a main good
+man, sir: it was a sorry day for the neighborhood when he was taken
+away." Near the gate of Gad's Hill House is a wayside inn, the "Sir John
+Falstaff," which for more than two centuries has stood for remembrance
+of that worthy's exploit at this place. Its weather-worn sign bears
+portraits of Falstaff and Prince Hal and a picture of the "Merry Wives
+of Windsor" putting Falstaff into the basket. The name of a son of the
+recent keeper of this hostelry, Edward Trood, doubtless suggested the
+title of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> "Mystery" which must, alas! remain a mystery evermore.</p>
+
+<p>From the inn a lane leads to a sightly summit surmounted by a monument
+which Dickens called "Andersen's Monument," because it was the resort of
+that illustrious author while a guest at Gad's Hill. Its far-reaching
+prospect is indeed alluring: on every hand vast, wave-like expanses of
+forest and orchard, moor and mead, sweep away to the horizon, while
+northward, beyond great cornfields and market-gardens, we see twenty
+miles of the Thames&mdash;"stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's
+life"&mdash;bordered here by a wilderness of low-lying marsh. A walk beloved
+of Dickens brings us to one of his favorite haunts,&mdash;a dreary
+church-yard on the margin of this marsh. It lies in the dismal,
+ague-haunted "hundred of Loo," a peninsula between the Thames and the
+Medway having a broad hem of desolate fens along the river-banks&mdash;a
+weird, little known region, whose ancient reputation was unsavory. A
+wooden finger on a post directs us to Cooling,&mdash;Dickens makes Pip say
+that this direction was never accepted, no one ever came,&mdash;a forlorn
+hamlet which straggles about the ruins of Cooling Castle. This was an
+ancient seat of the Cobhams; through a Cobham heiress it passed to
+Oldcastle, leader of the Lollards, who shut himself up here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> and was
+dragged hence to martyrdom. It is noteworthy that this Oldcastle has
+been thought to be the original of Falstaff, the hero of Gad's Hill. Of
+the stronghold little remains save the machicolated gate-way, flanked
+with ponderous round towers bearing quaint inscriptions. The water of
+the moat is green and stagnant, suggesting frogs and rheumatism, and the
+space it encloses is occupied by the cottage of a farmer. The forge and
+cottage of Joe Gargery are not found in the wretched village,&mdash;indeed,
+we should be sorry to find that splendid fellow and the good Betty so
+poorly housed,&mdash;but beyond the narrow street and at the verge of the
+marshes we come to a low, quaint, square-towered old church, which rises
+from a wind-swept, nettle-grown church-yard, the scene<span class="sidenote">Scenes of Great Expectations</span> of the opening
+chapter of "Great Expectations." Yonder mound, whose gravestone is
+inscribed to George Comfort, "Also Sarah, Wife of the Above," stands for
+the tomb of Pip's parents; and sunken in the grass at our feet is the
+row of little gravestones whose curious shape led Pip to believe that
+his little brothers (whose graves they marked) "had been born on their
+backs, with their hands in their trousers pockets, and had never taken
+them out in this stage of existence." Over this low wall which divides
+God's-acre from the marshes the convict climbed, and we,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> standing upon
+it, look across the scene of his chase and capture, which Pip witnessed
+from Joe's back. On this sombre autumn afternoon of our visit the
+landscape is startlingly like that the terrified boy beheld: we see the
+same far-stretching waste of marshes,<span class="sidenote">The Marshes</span> the intersecting dikes, the low,
+leaden line of the river beyond, dark mists hanging heavy over all,
+while the chill wind blows in our faces from its "savage lair" in the
+sea. Upon yonder flat tombstone in the far corner of the church-yard
+Dickens sat and lunched with Fields when he last walked to this place.
+Hidden now in the mists, but not far distant, and reached by a foot-path
+from the road to Chalk, is a dirty and dilapidated Thames-side inn,
+whose creaking sign-board reads, "Ship and Lobster:" this is The Ship of
+"Great Expectations," where Pip and his party slept the night preceding
+their attempt to put Magwich on the steamer, and the open river below
+the little causeway is the scene of their mischance and the transport's
+recapture.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Cobham</div>
+
+<p>The walk which Dickens most enjoyed&mdash;the one which was his last before
+he died&mdash;was to and around Cobham, the seat of his friend Darnley. We
+follow the way once so familiar to his feet, through the noble park
+which the Pickwick Club found "so thoroughly delightful," on a June
+afternoon, by the stately old hall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> where lately stood Dickens's chalet,
+and farther, through majestic forest and open glade, to the place whence
+Pickwick&mdash;overcome by cold punch&mdash;was wheeled to the pound. Skirting the
+park on our return, we come to Cobham village and the neat Leather
+Bottle Inn to which the lovelorn Tupman retired to conceal his woe after
+his discomfiture at Manor Farm, and where Dickens himself, rambling in
+the neighborhood with Forster, lodged in 1841. Here is the little
+church-yard where Pickwick walked with Tupman and persuaded him to
+return to the world, and hard by the cottage of Bill Stumps, before
+which Pickwick made the immortal discovery which was "the pride of his
+friends and the envy of every antiquarian in this or any other country."
+Another favorite walk of Dickens conducts us, past a quaint, rambling
+mansion of dingy brick which served as the model for Satis House of
+"Great Expectations," to Rochester, the Cloisterham<span class="sidenote">Cloisterham</span> of "Edwin Drood."
+Here we find the Bull Inn,&mdash;"good house, nice beds,"&mdash;where the Pickwick
+Club lodged, in rooms 13 and 19, and the ballroom, where Tupman and
+Jingle (the latter in Winkle's coat) danced with the widow and enraged
+little Slammer; the Watt's Charity of "The Uncommercial Traveller;" the
+picturesque castle-ruin which Dickens frequented and has so charmingly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+described. Here, too, is the gray old cathedral he loved, which appears
+in many of his tales, from Jingle's piquant account of it in "Pickwick"
+to that touching description of this ancient fane in the last lines of
+the master, written within sound of its bells and but a few hours before
+his death.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Land of Dickens</div>
+
+<p>This region of sunny Kent, the scene of his earliest and latest years,
+may fitly be called The Land of Dickens, so intimately is it associated
+with his life and work. Here at near-by Chatham (whence he used to come
+to gaze longingly at Gad's Hill House), in a whitewashed cottage on
+Ordnance Place, he lived as a child; at yonder village of Chalk he spent
+his honeymoon, its expenses being defrayed by the sale of the first
+numbers of "Pickwick;" here were the habitual resorts of his holiday
+leisure; here was his latest home; here he died, and here he desired to
+be buried. This district was no less the life-haunt and home of his
+imagination and genius. The scenes of his most effective romances are
+laid here; into the fabric of many a tale and sketch his fancy has woven
+the familiar features of town and hamlet, field and forest, marsh and
+river, of the region he knew and loved so well; here his first tale
+opens, here his last tale ends.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">SOME HAUNTS OF BYRON</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Birthplace&mdash;London Homes&mdash;Murray's Book-Store&mdash;Kensal
+Green&mdash;Harrow&mdash;Byron's Tomb&mdash;His Diadem Hill&mdash;Abode of his Star of
+Annesley&mdash;Portraits&mdash;Mementos.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">OF the places in and about great London which were associated with the
+brief life of Byron, the rage for improvement which holds nothing sacred
+has spared a few, and the quest for Byron-haunts is still fairly
+rewarded. Holles Street, where he was born, has not long been resigned
+to trade: we have known it as a somnolent little street whose grateful
+quiet&mdash;reached by a step from the tumult of De Quincey's "stony-hearted
+step-mother"&mdash;made it seem like a placid pool beside a riotous torrent.
+It is scarce a furlong in length, and from the shade of Cavendish Square
+at its extremity we could look, between bordering rows of modest
+dwellings, to the square where Ralph Nickleby lived and Mary Wortley
+Montagu died. At our right, a little way down the street, stood a small,
+plain, two-storied house of dingy brick,<span class="sidenote">London Homes</span> where the poet's mother lodged
+in the upper front room at the time of his birth. This dwelling was No.
+16, later 24, and has now given place to a shop. An unpretentious
+tenement near Sloane Square was Byron's home during his pupilage with
+Dr. Glennie.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>In the house No. 8 St. James Street, nearly opposite the place where
+Gibbon died, Byron had for some years a suite of rooms. Here he was
+convenient to Almack's aristocratic ballrooms and St. James Theatre, and
+was in the then, as it is now, centre of fashionable club-life. His
+residence here began when he came to London to publish "Bards and
+Reviewers," was resumed upon his return from the Levantine tour, and
+continued during the publication of the early cantos of "Childe Harold"
+and other poems written on that tour. In these rooms "Corsair," "The
+Giaour," and "Bride of Abydos" were written, the latter in a single
+night and with one quill. The last year of Byron's residence here was
+the period of his highest popularity, when he was the especial pet of
+London society queens, one of whom&mdash;who later wrote a book to defame
+him&mdash;was recognized in bifurcated masculine garb in these chambers. On
+the same street is the home of White's Club, the Bays' of "Pendennis,"
+of which the present Lord Byron is a member, and on the site of the
+Carlton Club, Pall Mall, stood the Star and Garter tavern, where, in
+room No. 7 at the right on the first floor, the poet's predecessor
+killed his neighbor Chaworth, grand-uncle of Byron's "star of Annesley."
+Adjoining the Academy of Arts in Piccadilly is that "college<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> of
+bachelors," the Albany apartment house where Dickens lodged
+"Fascination" Fledgeby and laid the scene of his flagellation by Lammle
+and the dressing of his wounds with pepper by Jenny Wren. Here the
+handsome suite A 2 was the abode of Byron for the year or so preceding
+his hapless marriage, and here "Lara" and "Hebrew Melodies" were
+written. The poet had passed the zenith of the social horizon, and the
+"Byron-madness" was waning, when he came to the Albany; still, the
+visits of fair admirers were vouchsafed him in these rooms. It was here
+that the girl whose story Guiccioli adduces as evidence of Byron's
+virtuous self-denial came to him for counsel. If the partiality of his
+mistress has unduly praised his conduct at this time, it is a
+thousandfold outweighed by the bitterness of another narrative&mdash;happily
+discredited, if not disproven&mdash;which indicates this same period as being
+that of the beginning of a <i>liaison</i> with his sister. To these rooms
+Moore was a daily visitant, and Canning then lodged on the second floor
+adjoining the suite E 1, where Macaulay wrote the "History of England"
+and many essays. Byron's last abode in London was a stately house in
+Piccadilly, opposite Green Park and not far from the then London sojourn
+of Scott. Byron's dwelling, now No. 139, belonged to the Duchess of
+Devon, and was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> known as 13 Piccadilly Terrace. To this elegant home he
+brought his bride after the "treacle-moon," and here passed the
+remainder of their brief period of cohabitation. Here "The Siege of
+Corinth," "Parisina," and many minor poems were penned, the MS. of some
+being in the handwriting of his wife. Here Augusta Leigh was a guest
+warmly welcomed by Lady Byron, despite her alleged knowledge of the
+"shocking misconduct" of Byron and his sister in this house. Here Ada,
+"sole daughter of his house and heart," was born, and from here, a few
+weeks later, his wife went forth, never to see him again. Some letters
+came from her to this home,&mdash;playful notes to Byron inviting him to
+follow her, affectionate epistles to the sister, then a final letter
+announcing her determination never to return. In the ten months during
+which Byron occupied this house it was nine times in possession of
+bailiffs on account of his debts. It has since been refaced and
+repaired, but the original rooms remain. Hamilton Place now leads from
+it to Hamilton Gardens, where stands a beautiful statue of Byron. To the
+mansion of Sir Edward Knatchbull, No. 25 Great George Street, a site now
+occupied by the Institute of Engineers, the corpse of Byron was brought
+upon its arrival from Greece; and here in the great parlors, but a few
+steps from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> spot where the remains of Sheridan had lain eight years
+before, Byron's body lay in state while his friends vainly sought
+sepulture for it in Westminster.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Murray's</div>
+
+<p>At No. 50 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly, not far from the Albany, is the
+establishment of John Murray, whose predecessor, John Murray II.,
+published "Childe Harold" and all Byron's subsequent poems to the
+earlier cantos of "Don Juan." At this house the poet was a frequent and
+familiar lounger. Here, in a cosy drawing-room which is handsomely
+furnished and embellished, Murray used to hold a literary court, and
+here Byron first shook hands with the "great Wizard of the North" and
+met Moore, Canning, Southey, Gifford, and other <i>littérateurs</i>. Scott
+afterward wrote, "Byron and I met for an hour or two daily in Murray's
+drawing-room, and found much to say to each other." During his residence
+in London, Byron was customarily one of the coterie of
+authors&mdash;facetiously called the "four o'clock club"&mdash;which daily
+assembled in this room. The <i>séances</i> were frequented at one time or
+another by most of the stars of English letters, embracing, besides
+those above named, Campbell, Hallam, Crabbe, Lockhart, Disraeli, Irving,
+George Ticknor, etc. We find the room little changed since their time.
+Original portraits of that brilliant company look<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> down from the walls
+of the room they haunted in life, and the visitor thrills with the
+thought that in some subtile sense their presence pervades it still. In
+this room Ada Byron, kept in ignorance of her father until womanhood,
+first saw his handwriting, and in yonder fireplace beneath his portrait,
+four days after intelligence of his death had reached London, the
+manuscript of his much-discussed "Memoirs" was burned at the desire of
+Lady Byron and in the presence of Moore and Byron's executor, Hobhouse,
+who had witnessed his hapless marriage. Until the death of Byron his
+relations with Murray were most cordial, and the present John Murray
+IV., grandson of Byron's publisher, possesses numerous letters of the
+poet, some of which were used in Moore's "Life." Perhaps most
+interesting of Byron's many rhyming epistles is the one commencing,&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"My dear Mr. Murray,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">You're in a blanked hurry</span><br />
+To set up this ultimate canto,"</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>which announces the final completion of "Childe Harold." Among many
+mementos of Byron cherished in this famous room are the original MSS. of
+"Bards and Reviewers" and of most of his later poems. With them are
+other priceless MSS. of Scott, Swift, Gray, Southey,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> Livingstone,
+Irving, Motley, etc. The Murray III. who used to show us these treasures
+with reverent pride, and who could boast that he had known Byron, Scott,
+and Goethe, died not long ago. When we ask for the Bible popularly
+believed to have been given to Murray by Byron with a line so altered as
+to read "now Barabbas was a <i>publisher</i>," we are told this joke was
+Campbell's and was upon another publisher than Murray. Byron's
+signet-ring has passed to the possession of Pierre Barlow, Esq., of New
+York. <i>Littérateurs</i> still come to "Murray's den," though not so often
+as in the time when clubs were less popular: among those who may
+sometimes be met here are Argyll, Knight, Layard, Dufferin, Temple,
+Francis Darwin, etc. Murrays' was the home of the Review&mdash;"whose mission
+in life is to hang, draw, and <i>Quarterly</i>," as one victim avers&mdash;to
+which came Charlotte Brontë's burly Irish uncle with his shillalah in
+search of the harsh reviewer of "Jane Eyre," and haunted the place until
+he was turned away.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Kensal Green</div>
+
+<p>A most delightful outing is the jaunt from Byron's London haunts, past
+Kensal Green, where we find the precious graves in which sleep
+Thackeray, Motley, Cunningham, Jameson, Hood, Hunt, Sydney Smith, and
+Mrs. Hawthorne,&mdash;the latter beneath ivy from her Wayside home and
+periwinkle from her husband's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> tomb on the piny hill-top at Concord,&mdash;to
+Harrow, the "Ida" of Byron's verse. Here is the ancient school of which
+Sheridan, Peel, Perceval, Trollope, and others famous in letters or
+politics were inmates; where Byron was for years "a troublesome and
+mischievous pupil" and made the acquaintance of Clare, Dorset, and
+others to whom some of his poems are addressed, and of Wildman who
+rescued his Newstead from ruin: the present Byron and the son of Ada
+Byron were also Harrow boys. Here may be seen some of the poet's worn
+and scribbled books; his name graven by him upon a panel of the oldest
+building; the Peachie tombstone&mdash;protected now by iron bars&mdash;which was
+his evening resort, where some of his stanzas were composed, and whence
+he beheld a landscape of enchanting beauty. Near this beloved spot,
+where Byron once desired to be entombed, sleeps a sinless child of sin,
+his daughter Allegra, born of Mrs. Shelley's sister. At Harrow,<span class="sidenote">Harrow</span> Byron
+repaid help upon his exercises by fighting for his assistant; his
+successes here were mainly pugilistic, but his battles were often those
+of younger and weaker boys, and the spot where he fought the tyrants of
+the school is pointed out with interest and pride.</p>
+
+<p>In Notts, <i>en route</i> to Newstead, we lodge in an old mansion alleged to
+have been the abode<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> of the poet in his school-vacations; we have the
+high authority of the landlord for the conviction that we occupy the
+room and the very bed oft used by Byron; but the credulity even of a
+pilgrim has a limit, and the agility of the fleas that now inhabit the
+bed forbids belief that they too are relics of the poet. Better
+authenticated are the Byron relics of a local society, among which are
+the boot-trees certified by his bootmaker to be those upon which the
+poet's boots were fitted. They are of interest as demonstrating that the
+asymmetry of his feet was much less than has been believed; one foot was
+shorter than its fellow, and the ankle was weak, but not deformed.</p>
+
+<p>From Nottingham a winsome way along a smiling vale, with billowy hills
+swelling upon either hand, conducts us to the village of Hucknall. By
+its market-place an ancient church-tower rises from a grave-strewn
+enclosure; we enter the fane through a porch of ponderous timbers, and,
+traversing the dim aisle, approach the chancel and find there the tomb
+of Childe Harold.<span class="sidenote">Tomb of Childe Harold</span> A slab of blue marble, sent by the King of Greece and
+bearing the word Byron, is set in the pavement to mark the spot where,
+after the throes of his passion-tossed life, Byron lies among his
+kindred in "the dreamless sleep that lulls the dead." One who, as a lad,
+entered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> the vault at the burial of Ada Byron, indicates for us its size
+upon the pavement and the position of the coffins; Byron, in a coffin
+covered with velvet and resting upon benches of stone, lies between his
+mother and the "sole daughter of his house and heart;" at his feet a
+receptacle contains his heart and brain. His valet and the Little White
+Lady of Irving's narrative sleep in the yard near by. A marble tablet on
+the church wall describes Byron as the "Author of Childe Harold's
+Pilgrimage;" this was erected by his sister, and near it we saw a
+chaplet of faded laurel placed years ago by our "Bard of the Sierras."
+Byron's tomb has never been a popular shrine, but such Americans as
+Irving, Hawthorne, Halleck, Ludlow, Joaquin Miller, and William Winter
+have been reverent pilgrims. Once Byron's "Italian enchantress," la
+Guiccioli, was found weeping here and kissing the pavement which covers
+the lover of her youth.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Annesley Hall</div>
+
+<p>Above Hucknall the ancestral domain of the Byrons lies upon the right,
+while upon the other hand extend the broad lands which were the heritage
+of Mary Ann Chaworth, Byron's "star of Annesley." From the boundary of
+the estates, where the poet sometimes met his youthful love, a stroll
+across a landscape parquetted with grain-field gold and meadow emerald
+brings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> us to the ancient seat of the time-honored race of which the
+maiden of Byron's "Dream"&mdash;the "Mary" of many poems&mdash;was the "last
+solitary scion left." It is now the property of her great-grandson. Most
+of her married life was passed elsewhere, and Annesley fell into the
+neglected condition which Irving describes. Mary's husband, the maligned
+Musters, instead of hating the place and seeking to destroy its
+identity, preferred it to his other property, and spent many years after
+his wife's death in restoring and beautifying it, taking pains to
+preserve the grounds and the main portion of the mansion in the
+condition in which his wife had known them in her maidenhood. This
+became the beloved home of his later years, and here he died. This
+mansion of the "Dream" stands upon an elevation overlooking many acres
+of picturesque park. It is a great, rambling pile of motley
+architecture, obviously erected by different generations of Chaworths to
+suit their varying needs and tastes, but the walls are overgrown with
+clambering vines, which conceal the touch of time and impart to the
+structure an aspect of harmonious beauty. The principal façade which
+presents along the court is imposing and stately, but on every side are
+pointed gables, stone balustrades, and picturesque walls. The interior
+arrangement of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> the body of the house remains precisely as Mary knew it,
+even the decorations of some of the rooms having been preserved by the
+considerate love of her husband and descendants; and here, despite the
+averment of a Byron-biographer that "every relic of her ancient family
+was sold and scattered to the winds," the Chaworth plate, portraits, and
+other belongings are religiously cherished. We were first invited to the
+place to see these while they were yet displayed by the maid in whose
+arms Mary died. Upon the walls of the great lower hall are many family
+pictures, among them that of the Chaworth whom Byron's great-uncle had
+slain. It was this portrait that Byron feared would come out of its
+frame to haunt him if he remained here over-night. From the hall low
+stairs lead to the apartments. At the right is Mary's sitting-room,
+where Byron spent many hours beside her, listening entranced while she
+played to him upon the piano which stood in the farther corner. It is a
+pleasant apartment, its windows looking out upon the garden-beds Mary
+tended, which we see now ablaze with the flowers known to have been her
+favorites. In this room, which "her smiles had made a heaven to him,"
+Byron, years afterward, saw Mary for the last time and kissed for its
+mother's sake "the child that ought to have been his."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> On this occasion
+she made the inquiry which prompted the lines, "To Mrs. Musters, on
+being asked my reason for quitting England in the spring." This last
+painful interview is recalled in the poems "Well, Thou art Happy" and
+"I've seen my Bride Another's Bride." Above the hall is the large
+drawing-room, where we see several portraits of Mary, which represent
+her as a most beautiful woman, with a pathetically sweet and winning
+face,&mdash;by no means the "wicked-looking cat" which Byron's jealous wife
+described. Here, too, are pictures of her husband which fully justify
+his popular sobriquet, "handsome Jack Musters." Physically they were an
+admirably matched pair. Out of the drawing-room is the "antique oratory"
+of the poem, a small apartment above the entrance-porch, pictured as the
+scene of Byron's parting with Mary after her announcement of her
+betrothal. Byron was cordially welcomed at Annesley; the family were his
+relatives, and all of them, save that young lady herself, would gladly
+have had him marry the heiress. Among the guest-chambers is one, called
+of yore the blue room, which during one summer&mdash;after his fear of the
+family portraits had been subdued by the greater fear of meeting
+"bogles" on his homeward way&mdash;Byron often occupied. Here he incensed
+Nanny the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> housekeeper by allowing his dog to sleep upon the bed and
+soil her neat counterpanes. Another servant, "old Joe," tired of sitting
+up at night to wait upon him, finally frightened him away by means of
+some hideous nocturnal noises, which he assured the young poet proceeded
+from "spooks out of the kirk-yard,"&mdash;Byron's superstition doubtless
+suggesting the ruse.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Annesley Park</div>
+
+<p>Giant trees overtop the chimneys and bower the walls of the venerable
+mansion. The garden which Irving found matted and wild was long ago
+restored by Musters to its former beauty of turf, foliage, and flower. A
+grand terrace,&mdash;one of the finest in England,&mdash;with brick walls and
+carved balustrades of stone mantled and draped with ivy, lies at the
+right, with broad steps leading down to the garden where Byron delighted
+to linger with Mary during the swift hours of one too brief summer.
+Beneath the terrace is a door, carefully protected by Musters and his
+descendants, which Byron daily used as a target and in which we see the
+marks of bullets from his pistol. The grounds are extensive and
+beautifully diversified by copses of great trees and grassy glades where
+deer feed amid myriad witcheries of leaf and bloom. Half a mile from the
+Hall is a shrine that will attract the sentimental prowler, Byron's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+diadem hill.<span class="sidenote">Diadem Hill</span> Projecting from the extremity of a long line of eminences,
+it is a landmark to the countryside and overlooks the living landscape
+which the poet depicted in lines throbbing with life and beauty. From
+its acclivity we see much of his ancestral Newstead, the adjoining fair
+acres of Annesley which he would have added to his own, the tower and
+chimneys of the Hall rising among clustering oaks: beyond these darkly
+wooded hills decline to the valley, along which we look&mdash;past parks,
+villages, and the church where Byron sleeps&mdash;to the spires of the city.
+As we contemplate the vista from the spot where stood the two bright
+"beings in the hues of youth," we have about us a ring of dark firs, the
+"diadem of trees in circular array" pictured in the "Dream," apparently
+unchanged since the day the maiden and the youth here met for the last
+time before her marriage. The Byron-writers have united in denouncing
+Musters for denuding this hill-top in a splenetic endeavor to prevent
+its identification as the scene of the interview described in the poem.
+In truth, we owe the preservation of the features which identify this
+romantic spot to the very hand which the author of "Crayon Miscellany"
+avers is "execrated by every poetic pilgrim." When natural causes were
+rapidly destroying the grove, Musters caused its removal and replaced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+it by saplings grown from cones of the old trees, each fir of the
+present beautiful diadem being sedulously rooted upon the site of its
+lineal ancestor. Musters had much greater reason to regard this spot
+with romantic tenderness than had the poet; here he enjoyed many stolen
+interviews with his sweetheart, for he was forbidden to see her in her
+home, and she, perverse and persistent in her passion for him, came here
+daily with the hope of meeting him and watched for his approach along
+the valley. Upon the very occasion the poem describes, she waited here,
+"Looking afar if yet her lover's steed kept pace with her expectancy,"
+and merely tolerated the company of the "gaby" boy Byron until Musters
+might arrive. The latter had no reason for the irritable jealousy toward
+Byron which has been attributed to him, and there is no evidence that he
+evinced or entertained such a feeling. He freely invited the poet to his
+house, rode and swam with him, preserved the few Byron mementos at
+Annesley, and protected the tombs of Byron's ancestors at Colwick. So
+much of untruth has been published anent the Byron-Chaworth-Musters<span class="sidenote">Byron-Chaworth-Musters</span>
+matter, and especially concerning the attitude of the lady toward Byron
+and the conditions of her subsequent life, that it is pleasant, even at
+this late day, to be able to record upon undoubted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> evidence that her
+loving admiration for her husband ceased only with her life.</p>
+
+<p>On the bank of the silvery Trent, three miles from Nottingham, is
+Colwick Hall, where Mary's married life was spent. This was an ancient
+seat of the Byrons, said to have been lost by them at the card-table.
+Mary's home was an imposing mansion, with lofty cupola, balustraded
+roofs, and stately pediments upheld by Ionic columns. From the front
+windows we look across a wide expanse of sun-kissed meadow beyond the
+river, while at the back rocky cliffs rise steeply and are tufted by
+overhanging woods. The Hall was attacked and pillaged in 1831 by a
+Luddite mob, from whom poor Mary escaped half naked into the shrubbery
+and lay concealed in the cold wet night. The exposure and terror of this
+event impaired her reason, and caused her death the next year at
+Wiverton, another seat of the Chaworths, where her descendants reside.
+Close by the mansion at Colwick, now a summer resort, was the old gray
+church, with battlemented tower, where Mary was married, and where she
+lies in death with her husband and his kindred,<span class="sidenote">Mary's Grave</span> near the burial-vault of
+the ancestors of the lame boy who linked her name to deathless verse. At
+the side of the altar a beautiful monumental tablet, bearing a graceful
+female figure and a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> laudatory inscription, is placed in memory of the
+"star of Annesley," whose brightness went out in distraction and gloom.</p>
+
+<p>To Byron's early passion and its failure we owe some of the sweetest and
+tenderest of his songs; and it has been believed that the memory of that
+defeat adapted his thoughts to their highest flights and gave added
+pathos and beauty to his noblest work. Thus all the world were gainers
+by his disappointment, and evidence is lacking that either the lady or
+the lover was a loser.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE HOME OF CHILDE HAROLD</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Newstead&mdash;Byron's Apartments&mdash;Relics and
+Reminders&mdash;Ghosts&mdash;Ruins&mdash;The Young Oak&mdash;Dog's Tomb&mdash;Devil's
+Wood&mdash;Irving&mdash;Livingstone&mdash;Stanley&mdash;Joaquin Miller.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">HOWEVER alluring other haunts of Byron may be found, the "hall of his
+fathers" must remain paramount in the interest and affection of his
+admirers. The stanzas he addressed to that venerable pile, the graphic
+description in "Don Juan," the plaintive allusions in "Childe Harold,"
+its own romantic history as a mediæval fortress and shrine, and its
+association with the bard who inherited its lands and dwelt beneath its
+battlements, render Newstead Abbey<span class="sidenote">The Abbey</span> a Mecca to which the steps of
+pilgrims tend. It came to the Byrons by royal gift, and in the middle of
+the last century was inherited by the poet's predecessor the Wicked
+Byron, who killed his neighbor of Annesley and so desolated the Abbey
+that the only spot sheltered from the storms was a corner of the
+scullery where he breathed out his wretched life. The poet occupied the
+place at intervals for twenty years, and then sold it to Colonel
+Wildman, who had been his form-fellow at Harrow, and to whom we are
+mainly indebted for the restoration of the edifice and the
+preservation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> of every memento of the poet and his race. At the death
+of Wildman the Abbey became the property of Colonel W. F. Webb, a sharer
+in Livingstone's explorations, who gathers here a brilliant circle of
+authors, artists, travellers, and wits whose gayety dispels the hoary
+and ghostly associations of the place.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img2.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Newstead Abbey</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Chapel Ruin</div>
+
+<p>From the boundary of the estate a broad avenue, lined with noble trees,
+leads to an inner park of eight hundred acres, among whose sylvan
+beauties our way lies, through verdant glades and under leafy boughs
+whose shadows the sunshine prints upon the path, until we see, from the
+verge of the wood, the noble pile rising amid an environment of lawn and
+lake, grove and garden. It is a vast stone structure, composed of motley
+parts joined "by no quite lawful marriage of the arts" into an
+harmonious and impressive whole. The western façade is the one usually
+pictured, because it contains the Byron apartments<span class="sidenote">Byron's Apartments</span> and best displays the
+characteristic features of the edifice, having a castellated tower at
+one extremity, while to the other is joined the ruined chapel front
+which, as an example of its style, is rivalled in architectural value
+only by St. Mary's at York. This Newstead fragment, retaining its
+perfect proportions, its noble windows, its gray statue of the Virgin
+and "God-born Child" in the high niche of the gable,&mdash;the whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> draped
+and garlanded with ivy which conceals the scars of Cromwell's
+cannon-balls,&mdash;is a vision of unique beauty. From the Gothic door-way of
+the mansion we are admitted to a gallery with a low-vaulted roof of
+stone upheld by massive columns. This was the crypt of the abbot's
+dormitory; it adjoins the cloisters, and, like them, was used by the
+Wicked Byron as a stable for cattle. It is now adorned with the spoils
+of African deserts, trophies of the mighty huntsman who now inhabits the
+Abbey. One of these, the skin of a noble lion, is said to have belonged
+to a beast which had mutilated Livingstone and was standing above his
+body when a ball from Webb's rifle laid him low and saved the great
+explorer. From the crypt, stone stairs lead to the corridors above the
+cloisters: in Byron's time entrance was between a bear and a wolf
+chained on these stairs and menacing the guest from either side. Out of
+the corridor adjoining the chapel ruin a spiral stairway ascends to a
+plain and sombre suite of rooms, once the abbot's lodgings, but
+cherished now because they were the private apartments of Byron. His
+chamber is neither large nor elegant, its walls are plainly papered, and
+its single oriel window is shaded by a faded curtain. The room remains
+as Byron last occupied it: his carpet is upon the floor; the carved
+bedstead, with its gilt posts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> and lordly coronets, is the one brought
+by him from college; its curtains and coverings are those he used; above
+the mantel is the mirror which often reflected his handsome features. We
+sit in his embroidered arm-chair by the window, overlooking lawn and
+lake and the wood he planted, and write out upon his plain table the
+memoranda from which this article is prepared. The tourist is told that
+the chamber has never been used since Byron left it; but Irving occupied
+it for some time, as his letters to his brother declare, and a few years
+ago our Joaquin Miller lay here in Byron's bed, and saw, in the
+moonbeams sharply reflected from the mirror into his face, an
+explanation of the ghostly apparitions which Byron beheld in this glass.
+In the adjoining room are a portrait of the poet's "corporeal pastor,"
+Jackson, in arena costume, and a painting of Byron's valet, Joe Murray,
+a bright-looking fellow of pleasing face and faultless attire. This room
+was sometime occupied by Byron's pretty page, whom the housekeeper
+believed to be a girl in masquerade: this page was introduced elsewhere
+as the poet's younger brother Gordon, and an attempt has been made to
+identify her with the mysterious "Thyrza" of his poems, and with
+"Astarte" also. The third room of the suite, Byron's dressing-room and
+study, was one of the haunts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> of the goblin friar who was heard stalking
+amid the dim cloisters or in the apartments above. Byron's room here is
+the Gothic chamber of the Norman abbey where "Don Juan" slept and
+dreamed of Aurora Raby, and the corridor is the "gallery of sombre hue"
+where he pursued the sable phantom and captured a very material duchess.
+Directly beneath is a panelled apartment of moderate dimensions which
+was Byron's dining-room and the scene of many a revel when the monk's
+skull, brimming with wine, was sent round by the poet's guests. His
+sideboard is still here, his heavy table remains in the middle of the
+room, and the famous skull, mounted as a drinking-cup and inscribed with
+the familiar anacreontic, is carefully preserved. The library is a
+stately and spacious apartment: here, among many mementos of the poet,
+Ada Byron first heard a poem of her father's; here Byron's Italian
+friend la Guiccioli made notes for her "Recollections," and here
+Livingstone penned portions of the books which record his explorations.
+In the grand hall we see the elevated chimney-piece beneath which Byron
+and his guests heaped so great a fire, on the first night of his
+occupancy of the Abbey, that its destruction was threatened. This superb
+apartment, the old dormitory of the monks, was used by the poet as a
+shooting-gallery, and was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> one of the haunts of his "Black Friar." The
+drawing-room of the mansion is palatial in dimensions and furnishing.
+Its panels and grotesque carvings have been restored, and this ancient
+room, once the refectory of the monks and later the hay-loft of the
+Wicked Byron, is now a marvel of elegance. Here is the familiar portrait
+of Byron at twenty-three, an earlier watercolor picturing him in college
+gown, and a later bust in marble. Here by her desire the body of Ada
+Byron lay in state, and from here it was borne to rest beside her father
+at near-by Hucknall, more than realizing the closing stanzas of the
+third canto of "Childe Harold."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Relics</div>
+
+<p>In these stately rooms and in the adjoining corridors are numerous
+priceless relics of the immortal bard; among them, the cap, belt, and
+cimeter he wore in Greece; his foils, spurs, stirrups, and
+boxing-gloves; a painting of his famous dog Boatswain; the bronze
+candlesticks from his writing-table and the table upon which were
+written "Bards and Reviewers," poems of "Hours of Idleness," "Hebrew
+Melodies," and portions of his masterpiece, "Childe Harold." Preserved
+here, with Byron's will, unpublished letters, and scraps of verse, are
+papers which indicate that the poet's <i>chef-d'&oelig;uvre</i> was originally
+designed for private circulation and was entitled "Childe Byron." An
+interesting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> relic is a section of the noted "twin-tree" bearing the
+names "Byron&mdash;Augusta" carved by the poet at his last visit to the
+Abbey. Our own Barnum once visited the place and offered Wildman five
+hundred pounds for this double tree (then standing in the grove),
+intending to remove it for exhibition; the colonel indignantly replied
+that five thousand would not purchase it, and that "the man capable of
+such a project deserved to be gibbeted." Here, too, are the portrait of
+the first lord of Newstead, "John
+Byron-the-Little-with-the-Great-Beard;" the huge iron knocker in use on
+the door of the Abbey seven centuries ago; a collection of mediæval
+armor and weapons; some personal belongings of Livingstone, and many
+specimens of fauna and flora gathered by him and Webb in the dark
+continent. One vaulted apartment of exquisite proportions, erst the
+sanctuary of the abbot, and later Byron's dog-kennel, is now the chapel
+of the household. Newstead has been the abode of royalty, and holds
+rooms in which, from the time of Edward III., kings have often lodged.
+We see the chamber occupied by Ada Byron during her visit; another,
+adorned with quaint carvings and once haunted by
+Byron-of-the-Great-Beard, was used by Irving. The noble chambers contain
+richly carved furniture, costly tapestries, and beds of such altitude
+that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> steps are provided for scaling them. The hangings of one bed
+belonged to Prince Rupert, and its counterpane was embroidered by Mary
+Queen of Scots.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Court and Gardens</div>
+
+<p>In the centre of the edifice is the quadrangular court, surrounded by a
+series of low-vaulted arcades, once the stables of the Wicked Byron and
+long ago the "cloisters dim and damp" of the monks whose dust moulders
+now beneath the pavement. One crypt-like cell which holds the boilers
+for heating the mansion was Byron's swimming-bath. In the middle of the
+court the ancient stone fountain, with its grotesque sculptures of
+saints and monsters, graven by the patient toil of the monks, still
+sends out sprays of coolness.</p>
+
+<p>We spend delightful hours loitering in the ancient gardens of the friars
+and about their ruined chapel. Through its mighty window, "yawning all
+desolate," pours a flood of western light upon the turf that covers the
+holy ground where congregations knelt in worship; while, amid the dust
+of the priests and near the site of the altar where they "raised their
+pious voices but to pray," Byron's dog lies in a tomb far handsomer than
+that which holds his noble master. It was in excavating Boatswain's
+grave that Byron found the skull afterward used as a drinking-cup. The
+dog's monument consists of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> a wide pedestal, surmounted by a panelled
+altar-stone which upholds a funeral urn and bears Byron's familiar
+eulogistic inscription and the misanthropic stanzas ending with the
+lines,&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;<br />
+I never knew but one, and here he lies."</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Other panels were designed to bear the epitaph of Byron, who directed in
+his will (1811) that he should be buried in this spot with his valet and
+dog; it is said to have been discovered that the poet had made careful
+preparation for his entombment here, the stone trestles and slab to
+support his coffin being in place upon the pavement, but the sale of
+Newstead led to his interment elsewhere, and faithful Murray&mdash;who
+declined to lie here "alone with the dog"&mdash;sleeps near his master.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Grounds</div>
+
+<p>The gardens of the Abbey lie about its ancient walls: here are the
+fish-pools of the monks; the noble terrace; the "Young Oak" of Byron's
+poem, planted by his hands and now grown into a large and graceful tree;
+other trees rooted by Livingstone and Stanley while guests here. At one
+side is a grove of beeches and yews, in whose gloomy recesses the Wicked
+Byron erected leaden statues of Pan and Pandora, of which the rustics
+were so afraid that they would not go near them after nightfall, and
+which are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> still respectfully spoken of in the servants' hall as "Mr.
+and Mrs. Devil." Before the mansion lies the lucid lake described in
+"Don Juan:" the forest that shades its shore and sweeps over the farther
+hill-side was planted by Byron to repair the spoliation of his uncle,
+and is called the "Poet's Wood." Upon some of the farms of the domain
+live descendants of Nancy Smith, whom Irving's readers will remember,
+her son having married despite his mother's protest and reared a family.
+One aged servitor claims to remember Irving's visit,<span class="sidenote">Recollections</span> and opines "the old
+colonel [Wildman] thought him a very fine man&mdash;for an American." He
+recounts some peccadilloes of Joe Murray, traditional among the
+servants, which show that worthy to have been less precise in morals
+than in dress. The ancient Byron estates were among the haunts of one
+whose exploits inspired a book of ballads, and we here see Robin Hood's
+cave and other reminders of the bold outlaw and his "merrie men in
+Lyncolne greene."</p>
+
+<p>Such, briefly, is the condition of Byron's ancestral home as it appears
+nearly eighty years after he saw it for the last time. Besides the
+charms which won his affection and made him relinquish the Abbey with
+such poignant regret, it holds for us an added spell in that it has been
+the habitation of a transcendent genius. Where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> Wildman's fortune failed
+his wishes the present owner has supplemented his work, until the vast
+pile now gleams with more than its ancient splendor; and, as we take a
+last view through a glade whose beauty fitly frames the picture of the
+restored mansion, we trust that somehow and somewhere Byron knows that
+his hope for his beloved Newstead is accomplished:</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"Haply thy sun emerging yet may shine,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thee to irradiate with meridian ray;</span><br />
+Hours splendid as the past may still be thine,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And bless thy future as thy former day."</span></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">WARWICKSHIRE: THE LOAMSHIRE OF GEORGE ELIOT</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Miss Mulock&mdash;Butler&mdash;Somervile&mdash;Dyer&mdash;Rugby&mdash;Homes of George
+Eliot&mdash;Scenes of Tales&mdash;Cheverel&mdash;Shepperton&mdash;Milly's
+Grave&mdash;Paddiford&mdash;Milby&mdash;Coventry, etc.&mdash;Characters&mdash;Incidents.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">SOME one has said that to write about Warwickshire is to write about
+Shakespeare. True, the transcending fame of the bard of Avon gives the
+places associated with his life and genius pre-eminence, but the
+literary rambler will find in this heart of England other shrines worthy
+of homage. Inevitably our pilgrimage includes the Stratford
+scenes,&mdash;from the birthplace and the Hathaway cottage to the fane where
+all the world bows at Shakespeare's tomb,&mdash;but, resolutely repressing
+the inclination to describe again these oft-described resorts, we fare
+to less familiar shrines: to the birthplace of the author of "Hudibras"
+and the haunts and tomb of Somervile, poet of "The Chase" and "Rural
+Sports;" to the Rhynhill of Braddon's tale and the Kenilworth of Scott's
+matchless romance; to Bilton, where Addison sometime dwelt, and the
+Calthorpe home of Dyer, bard of "Grongar Hill" and "The Fleece," where
+we find his garden and a tree he planted which shades now his
+battlemented<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> old church; to Rugby, where we see the dormitory of "Tom
+Brown" Hughes, the class-rooms he shared with Clough, Matthew Arnold,
+and Dean Stanley, the grave of the beloved Dr. Arnold in the "Rugby
+Chapel" of his son's poem.</p>
+
+<p>At Avonmouth we find the Norton Bury of "John Halifax," and the old inn
+where Dinah Mulock lived while writing this her popular tale. The inn
+garden holds the yew hedge of the novel, "fifteen feet high and as many
+thick," and the sward over which crept the lame Phineas: sitting there,
+we see the view the boy admired,&mdash;the old Abbey tower, the mill of Abel
+Fletcher, the river where the famished rioters fought for the grains the
+grim old man had flung into the water, the green level of the Ham dotted
+with cattle, the white sails of the encircling Severn, the farther sweep
+of country extending to the distant hills,&mdash;and hear the sweet-toned
+Abbey chimes and the lazy whir of the mill which sounded so pleasantly
+in Phineas's ears.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Other Shrines</div>
+
+<p>"John Halifax" was published simultaneously with another tale of
+Warwickshire life, "Amos Barton." We are newly come from the London
+homes of George Eliot and her grave on the Highgate hill-side, and now,
+as we traverse sweet Avonvale, we gladly remember that Shakespeare's
+shire is hers as well. A jaunt of a score of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> miles from Stratford
+brings us to the scenes amid which she was born and grew to physical and
+mental maturity. Our course by "Avon's stream," bowered by willows or
+bordered by meads, lies past the noble park where Shakespeare did not
+steal deer and the palace of his Justice Shallow where he was not
+arraigned for poaching. (We find it as impossible to keep Shakespeare
+out of our MS. as did Mr. Dick of "Copperfield" to keep Charles I. out
+of the memorial.) Beyond Charlecote is storied Warwick Castle, with the
+old mansion of Compton Wyniates, dwelling of the royalist knight of
+Scott's "Woodstock," not far away. Beyond these again we come to the
+Coventry region and the frontier of the "Loamshire"<span class="sidenote">Loamshire</span> whose
+characteristics are imaged and whose traditions, phases of life, and
+scenery are wrought with tender touch into poem and tale by George Eliot
+and so made familiar to all the world. Warwickshire scenery is not
+sublime; Dr. Arnold characterized it as "an endless monotony of enclosed
+fields and hedgerow trees." While its landscapes lack striking features,
+theirs is the quiet, unobtrusive beauty which Hawthorne loved and which
+for us is full of restful charm. Across sunny vales and gentle eminences
+we look away to the far-off Malvern Hills, whose shadowy outlines bound
+many a "Loamshire" landscape. We see vistas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> of low-lying meads with
+circling "lines of willows marking the watercourses;" of slumberous
+expanses of green or golden fields; of villages grouped about gray
+church-towers; of groves of venerable woods,&mdash;survivors of Shakespeare's
+"Forest of Arden" which erst clothed the countryside. We find it,
+indeed, "worth the journey hither only to see the hedgerows,"&mdash;green,
+fragrant walls of hawthorn which border lane and highway, bound garden
+and field. With their gleaming boughs rayed by bright blossoms and
+festooned with interlacing vines, these barriers are often marvels of
+beauty and strength. Between miles of such hedgerows, and beneath lines
+of overshading elms, a highway running northward from the town of Godiva
+and "Peeping Tom" brings us to the great Arbury property of the
+Newdigates, where we find the South Farm homestead in which Robert
+Evans&mdash;newly appointed agent of the estate&mdash;temporarily placed his
+family, and where, in the room at the left of the central chimney-stack,
+at five o'clock on the morning of St. Cecilia's day, 1819, his youngest
+child, Mary Ann, was born.<span class="sidenote">Birthplace and Home of George Eliot</span> It is a broad-eaved, many-gabled, two-storied
+structure of stuccoed stone, with trim hedges and flower-bordered
+garden-beds about it, a wider environment of lawn and woodland, and
+colonnades of the elms which figure in her poems<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> and were already
+venerable when she saw the light beneath their shade. On the same
+estate, near the highway between Bedworth and Nuneaton, is Griff House,
+"the warm nest where her affections were fledged," to which she was
+removed at the age of four months, and where her first score years of
+life were passed. It is a pleasant and picturesque double-storied
+mansion of brick, quaint and comfortable. Massy ivy mantles its walls,
+climbs to its gables, overruns its roofs, peeps in at its tiny-paned
+casements; doves coo upon its ridges. About it flowers shine from their
+setting in the emerald of the lawn, and great trees open their leaves to
+the sunshine and winds of summer. Spacious rooms lie upon either side of
+the entrance: of the one at the left, the novelist gives us a glimpse in
+"The Mill on the Floss." It is a home-like apartment, with low walls and
+a pleasant fireplace; it was the dining-room and sitting-room also in
+the days when "the little wench" Mary Ann was the pet of the household.
+Here she acted charades with her brother Isaac and astonished the family
+by repeating stories from "Miller's Jest Book," a treasured volume of
+hers in that early time. We learn from Maggie Tulliver&mdash;in whose
+childhood is pictured the author's inner life as a child&mdash;that Defoe's
+"History of the Devil" was another of Mary Ann's juvenile favorites,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+and her relatives preserve the worn copy she used to read here before
+this fireplace with her father, containing the pictures of the drowning
+witch and the devil which little Maggie explained to Mr. Riley in "The
+Mill on the Floss." Here, years afterward, Mary Ann heard, from her
+"Methodist Aunt Samuel," the thrilling story of the girl executed for
+child-murder, which was the germ of the great romance "Adam Bede." The
+aunt, who had been a preacher in earlier life, remained at Griff for
+some time, and George Eliot has told us that the character of Dinah
+Morris grew out of her recollections of this relative. It may be noted
+that in real life Dinah married Seth Bede, Adam being drawn in
+part&mdash;like Caleb Garth&mdash;from the novelist's father. In this same room,
+but a few years ago, the "Brother" of the poem, who played here at
+charades with little Mary Ann, suddenly expired in his chair but a few
+minutes after his return from "Shepperton Church." The windows of Mary
+Ann's chamber command a reach of the coach-road of "Felix Holt" and a
+farther vista of woodlands and fields; in another chamber is the
+mahogany bed beneath which she was once found hidden to avoid going to
+school. In the roof is the attic which was Maggie Tulliver's retreat,
+where she kept her wooden doll with the nails in its head, and here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> is
+the chimney-stack against which that vicarious sufferer was ground and
+beaten. The death of her mother, Mrs. Hackit of "Barton," made Mary Ann
+mistress of Griff at sixteen. At Griff's gates stood the cottage of Dame
+Moore's school, where the novelist began her education, and where years
+after she used to collect the children of the vicinage for religious
+instruction each Sabbath. A son of Mrs. Moore lately lived not far away,
+and had more to say in praise of "Mary Hann" than of her surviving
+kinsfolk, who seem ashamed of their relationship to the novelist.<span class="sidenote">Scenes of her Tales</span> In a
+shaded part of the garden lately stood a bower with a stone table, which
+George Eliot doubtless had in mind when she described the finding of
+Casaubon's corpse in the arbor at Lowick. The exhausted quarries in the
+shale close by, a resort of Mary Ann's girlhood, are the "Red Deeps"
+where Maggie met her lover; the "brown canal" of the poem winds through
+the near hollow; and beyond it, on "an apology for an elevation of
+ground," is the "College" workhouse to which Amos Barton walked through
+the sleet to read prayers. Not far distant is Arbury Hall, seat of the
+Newdigates, for whom the tenant of Griff was and is agent. This is the
+Cheverel Manor of "Gilfil," an imposing castellated structure of gray
+stone, with flanking towers and great mullioned windows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> of multishaped
+panes, famous for its elaborately decorated ceilings. That George Eliot
+had often been within this mansion is shown by her familiarity with the
+arrangement and ornamentation of the rooms, accurately described as
+scenes of many incidents of the tale. In the grounds, too, the imagery
+of the "Love Story" may be perfectly realized: here are the lawn where
+little Caterina sat with Lady Cheverel, and the shimmering pool, with
+its swans and water-lilies, which was searched for her corpse the
+morning of her flight; at a little distance we find "Moss-lands," and
+the cottage of the gardener to which the dead body of Wybrow was
+carried; and, farther away, the spot under giant limes where the poor
+girl, coming to meet her recreant lover "with a dagger in her dress and
+murder in her heart," found him lying dead in the path, his hand
+clutching the dark leaves, his eyes unheeding the "sunlight that darted
+upon them between the boughs." A touching incident in the life of a
+former owner of Arbury was made the plot of Otway's tragedy "The
+Orphan."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Shepperton Church</div>
+
+<p>A mile northward from Griff is the quaint church of Chilvers Coton,
+where Mary Ann was christened at the age of a week, where a little later
+her "devotional patience" was fostered by smuggled bread-and-butter, and
+where as child and woman she worshipped for twenty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> years. It is a
+massive stone edifice with Gothic windows, one of them being a memorial
+of the wife of Isaac Evans, and with a square tower rising above its low
+roofs; at one corner, "a flight of stone steps, with their wooden rail
+running up the outer wall," still leads to the children's gallery as in
+the days of Gilfil and Amos Barton, for this is the Shepperton Church of
+the tales. Within we see the memorials of Rev. Gilpin Ebdell (thought to
+be Gilfil) and of the original of Mrs. Farquhar; the place where Gilfil
+read his sermons from manuscript "rather yellow and worn at the edges,"
+and where Barton later "preached without book." About the renovated fane
+is the church-yard, with its grassy mounds and mouldering tombstones,
+one of which, protected by a paling and shaded by leafy boughs, is
+crowned by a funeral urn and marks the spot where Milly<span class="sidenote">Milly's Grave</span> was laid,&mdash;"the
+sweet mother with her baby in her arms,"&mdash;the grave to which Barton came
+back an old man with Patty supporting his infirm steps. Its inscription
+is to "Emma, beloved wife of Revd. John Gwyther, B.A.," curate here in
+George Eliot's girlhood: during his incumbency the community felt
+aggrieved for his wife on account of the prolonged stay at the parsonage
+of a strange woman who, years after, was described as Countess Czerlaski
+by one who as a child had seen her here. Not far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> from Milly's monument
+the parents of George Eliot lie in one grave, with Isaac, the "Brother"
+of her poem, sleeping near. By the church-yard wall stands the pleasant
+ivy-grown parsonage to which Gilfil brought his dark-eyed bride, and
+where, after brief months of happiness, he lived the long years of
+solitude and sorrow. We see the cosy parlor&mdash;smelling no longer of his
+or Barton's pipe&mdash;where the lonely old man sat with his dog, and above,
+its pretty window overlooking the garden, the chamber where he tenderly
+cherished the dainty belongings of his dead wife with the unused
+baby-clothes her fingers had fashioned, and where, in another tale, is
+laid one of the most affecting and high-wrought scenes in all fiction,
+the death of Milly Barton.</p>
+
+<p>A half-mile distant lies the village of Attleboro, where, at the age of
+five, Mary Ann was sent to Miss Lathorn's school; and a mile southward
+from Griff, in a region blackened by pits, is the town of
+Bedworth,&mdash;"dingy with coal-dust and noisy with looms,"&mdash;whose men "walk
+with knees bent outward from squatting in the mine," and whose haggard,
+overworked women and dirty children and cottages are pathetically
+pictured in "Felix Holt." Obviously the changes of the half-century
+which has elapsed since George Eliot knew its wretchedness have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> wrought
+little improvement in this place, over which her nephew is rector: we
+see pale, hungry faces in the streets, squalor in the poor dwellings,
+proofs of pinching poverty everywhere. A little beyond Chilvers Coton we
+find the market-town of Nuneaton, the Milby<span class="sidenote">Milby</span> of the romances. The shaking
+of hand-looms is less noticeable now than in George Eliot's school-days
+here, factories having supplanted the cottage industry; but the dingy,
+smoky town, with its environment of flat fields, is still "nothing but
+dreary prose." Here we find, near the church, "The Elms" of her
+girlhood, a tall brick edifice embowered with ivy; on its garden side,
+the long low-ceiled school-room, with its heavy beams, broad windows,
+and plain furniture, where she was four years a pupil; the dormitory
+whence she beheld the riot which she describes in the election-riot at
+Treby in "Felix Holt." Another vision of her girlhood here was a "tall,
+black-coated young clergyman-in-embryo," Liggins<span class="sidenote">Liggins</span> by name, who afterward
+claimed the authorship of her books and so far imposed upon the public
+that a subscription was made for him. Mrs. Gaskell was one of the last
+to relinquish the belief that Liggins was George Eliot. He spent most of
+his time drinking, but did his own house-work, and was found by a
+deputation of literary admirers washing his slop-basin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> at the pump. All
+about us at Nuneaton lie familiar objects: the cosy Bull Inn is the "Red
+Lion" where, in the opening of "Janet's Repentance," Dempser is
+discovered in theologic discussion, and from whose window he harangued
+the anti-Tyranite mob; the fine old church, with its beautiful oaken
+carvings, is the sanctuary where Mr. Crewe, in brown Brutus wig,
+delivered his "inaudible sermons," and where Mr. Elty preached later;
+adjoining is the parsonage, erst redolent of Crewe's tobacco, where
+Janet helped his deaf wife to spread the luncheon for the bishop, and
+where, in the time of Elty, Barton came to the sessions of the "Clerical
+Meeting and Book Society;" on this Church street, "Orchard Street" of
+Eliot, a quaint stuccoed house with casement windows was Dempser's home,
+whence he thrust his wife at midnight into the darkness and cold; the
+arched passage near by is that through which she fled to the haven of
+Mrs. Pettifer's house. A little way westward amid the pits is
+Stockingford, "Paddiford" of the tale, and the chapel where Mr. Tyran
+preached. A cousin of George Eliot's was recently a coal-master in this
+vicinity.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Coventry</div>
+
+<p>Eight miles from Griff is Coventry, where our companion is one who had
+met Rossetti there forty years before. George Eliot was sometime a pupil
+of Miss Franklin's school, lately standing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> in Little Park Street, and
+saw there that lady's father, whom she described as Rev. Rufus Lyon of
+Treby Chapel. His diminutive legs, large head, and other peculiarities
+are yet remembered by some who were in the school; his home is
+accurately pictured in "Felix Holt." In the Foleshill suburb we find the
+stone villa of Birds Grove,<span class="sidenote">Birds Grove</span> which was the home of the novelist after
+Isaac Evans had succeeded his father at Griff. The house has been
+enlarged, but the apartments she knew are little changed: a plain little
+room above the entrance, whose window looked beyond the tree-tops to the
+superb spire of St. Michael's Church,&mdash;where Kemble and Siddons were
+married,&mdash;was her study, in which, despite her tasks as her father's
+housewife and nurse, she accomplished much literary work. At the right
+of the window stood her desk, with an ivory crucifix above it, and here
+her translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu," undertaken through the
+persuasion of her friends at Rosehill, was written. Some portions of
+this work she found distressing; she declared to Mrs. Bray that nothing
+but the sight of the Christ image enabled her to endure dissecting the
+beautiful story of the crucifixion. Adjoining the study is her modest
+bedchamber, and beyond it that of her father, where during many months
+of sickness she was his sole attendant, often sitting the long night
+through at his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> bedside with her hand in his. The grounds are little
+changed, save that the occupant has removed much of the foliage which
+formerly shrouded the mansion, but some of George Eliot's favorite trees
+remain on the lawn. Half a mile away is the pretty villa of Rosehill,
+whilom the home of Mrs. Bray and her sister Sara Hennel, who were the
+most valued friends<span class="sidenote">Coventry Friends</span> of the novelist's young-womanhood and exerted the
+strongest influence upon her life. Her letters to these friends
+constitute a great part of Cross's "Life." At Rosehill she met Chapman,
+Mackay, Robert Owen, Combe, Thackeray, Herbert Spencer, and others of
+like genius, and here she spent a day with Emerson and wrote next day,
+"I have seen Emerson&mdash;the first <i>man</i> I have ever seen." Sara Hennel
+testifies that Emerson was impressed with Miss Evans and declared, "That
+young lady has a serious soul." When he asked her, "What one book do you
+like best?" and she replied, "Rousseau's Confessions," he quickly
+responded, "So do I: there is a point of sympathy between us." After her
+father's death she was for sixteen months a resident at Rosehill, and
+there wrote, among other things, the review of Mackay's "Progress of the
+Intellect." Financial reverses caused the Brays long ago to relinquish
+this beautiful home, but some of this household were lately living in
+another suburb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> of Coventry and receiving an annuity bequeathed by
+George Eliot. Here, too, lately resided another old-time friend, the
+Mary Sibtree of the novelist's Coventry days, to whom were addressed
+some of the letters used by Cross.</p>
+
+<p>In 1851 George Eliot left this circle of friends to become an inmate of
+Chapman's house in London, returning to them for occasional visits for
+the next few years; then came her union with Lewes, after which the
+loved scenes of her youth knew her no more in the flesh; but the
+allusions to them which run like threads of gold through all her work
+show how oft she revisited them in "shadowy spirit form."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">YORKSHIRE SHRINES: DOTHEBOYS HALL AND ROKEBY</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Village of Bowes&mdash;Dickens&mdash;Squeers's School&mdash;The Master and his
+Family&mdash;Haunt of Scott.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">FROM the familiar shrines of Cumberland, the lakeside haunts of
+Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, a journey across a wild moorland
+region&mdash;from whose higher crags we see through the fog-rifts the German
+Ocean and the Irish Sea&mdash;brings us into Gretavale, on the northern
+border of great Yorkshire. In the upper portion of the valley, among the
+outlying spurs of the Pennines, the storied Greta flows at the foot of a
+bleak, treeless hill on whose summit we find the village of Bowes.<span class="sidenote">Bowes</span> This
+was the Lavatræ of the Romans, who for three centuries had here a
+station, and remains of great Roman works may still be traced in the
+vicinage; but to the literary pilgrim Bowes is chiefly of interest as
+representing "the delightful village of Dotheboys" described in
+Squeers's advertisement of his school in "Nicholas Nickleby." The aspect
+of the village is dreary and desolate in the extreme. A single street,
+steep and straight, bordered by straggling houses of dull gray stone,
+extends along the hill, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> is crowned by the church and an ancient
+castle: the dun moors decline steeply on every side, leaving the
+treeless village dismal and bare and often exposed to a wind "fit to
+knock a man off his legs," as Squeers said to Nicholas. In the midst of
+the village stands a cosy inn, where Dickens for some time lodged and
+was visited by John Browdie, and where we are shown the wainscoted
+apartment in which some portion of "Nickleby" was noted. At the time of
+Dickens's sojourn here, Bowes was the centre of the pernicious
+cheap-school system which he came to expose, and half the houses of the
+village were "academies" similar to that of Squeers: among them one is
+pointed out as being the place where Cobden was a pupil. But most
+interesting of all is the large house at the top of the hill which
+Dickens depicted as Dotheboys Hall,&mdash;by<span class="sidenote">Dotheboys Hall</span> which name it was long known
+among the older dwellers of the place,&mdash;a long, heavy, two-storied,
+dingy structure of stone, with many windows along its front, and
+presenting, despite its bowering vines and trees, an aspect so chill and
+cheerless that one can scarcely conceive of a more depressing domicile
+for the neglected children who once thronged it. Through an archway at
+one end could be seen the pump which was frozen on the first morning of
+Nicholas's stay, and beyond it the garden<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> which, by a surprising
+mistake, Dickens represents a pupil to be weeding on a freezing winter's
+day.</p>
+
+<p>A few residents of the neighborhood remember the "measther" of Dotheboys
+Hall; his name, like Squeers's, was of one syllable and began with S; in
+person he was not like Squeers, nor was he an ignorant man. A quondam
+pupil of the school informed the writer that Johnny S. was fairly drawn
+as Wackford Squeers, but Miss S. was a young lady of considerable
+refinement and was in no sense like the spiteful Fanny of the tale.
+Squeers<span class="sidenote">Squeers</span> had the largest of the schools, and, besides rooms in the
+adjoining house, he hired barns in which to lodge his many pupils. A
+farm attached to his house was cultivated by the scholars, whose food
+was chiefly oatmeal: scanty diet and liberal flogging was the portion of
+all who displeased the master. According to local belief, this school
+was not so bad as some of its neighbors, and no one of the schools
+realized all the wretchedness which Dickens portrays; yet, despite the
+author's avowal that Squeers was a representative of a class, and not an
+individual, the popular identification of this school as the typical
+Dotheboys, and the odium consequent thereupon, wrought its speedy ruin
+and the death of the master and mistress. The latter result is to be
+deplored, for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> the reason that in the case of this pair the abhorrence
+seems to have been not wholly deserved. Two charges, at least, which
+affected them most painfully&mdash;that of goading the boys to suicide and
+that of feeding them upon the flesh of diseased cattle&mdash;were, by the
+testimony of their neighbors, unfounded so far as the proprietors of
+this school were concerned. Relatives of Squeers lately occupied
+Dotheboys Hall, which had become a farm-house, and other relatives and
+descendants are respectable denizens of the vicinity. Dickens's exposure
+of the schools led to their extinction and to the consignment of Bowes
+to its present somnolent condition. In the village church-yard lie the
+lovers whose simultaneous deaths were commemorated by Mallet in "Edwin
+and Emma." At Barnard Castle, a few miles away, the prototype of Newman
+Noggs is still traditionally known, and known as "a gentleman."</p>
+
+
+<p>The abounding beauties of the Greta have been painted by Turner and sung
+by Scott, both frequenters of this vale. From Bowes, a ramble along the
+lovely stream, between steep tree-shaded banks where it chafes and
+"greets" over the great rocks, and through mossy dells where it softly
+murmurs its content, brings us to the demesne of Rokeby,<span class="sidenote">Rokeby</span> where Scott
+laid the scene of his famous poem. On every hand amid this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> region of
+enchantment, in glade and grove, in riven cliff and headlong torrent, in
+sunny slope and dingle's shade, we recognize the poetic imagery of
+Scott. Every turn reveals some new vista, rendered doubly delightful by
+the romantic associations with which the great poet has invested it. To
+the poet himself Greta's banks were potent allurements, and they were
+his habitual haunts during his sojourns in the valley. A descendant of
+the friend whom Scott visited here and to whom the poem is inscribed,
+points out to us a natural grotto, in the precipitous bank above the
+stream, where the poet often sat, and where some part of "Rokeby" was
+pondered and composed amid the scenery it portrays.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">STERNE'S SWEET RETIREMENT</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Sutton&mdash;Crazy Castle&mdash;Yorick's Church&mdash;Parsonage&mdash;Where Tristram
+Shandy and the Sentimental Journey were
+written&mdash;Reminiscences&mdash;Newburgh Hall&mdash;Where Sterne
+died&mdash;Sepulchre.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">AT historic old York we are fairly in the midst of great Yorkshire:
+standing upon the tower of its colossal cathedral, we overlook half that
+ancient county. At our feet lie the quaint olden streets depicted in
+Collins's "No Name," where erstwhile dwelt Porteus, Defoe, Wallis,
+Lindley Murray, Mrs. Stannard, Poole of "Synopsis Criticorum," Burton
+the author immortalized by Sterne as "Dr. Slop." Below us we see the
+feudal castle where Eugene Aram was hanged, the ancient city wall with
+its gate-ways and battlements, the ruins of mediæval shrine and of Roman
+citadel and necropolis; abroad we behold the vale which Bunsen
+pronounces the "most beautiful in the world (the vale of Normandy
+excepted)," with its streams, its mosaics of green and golden fields and
+sombre woods, its distant border of savage moors and uplands. The Ouse,
+shining like a ribbon of silver, flows at our feet; we may trace its
+course from the hills of Craven on the one hand,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> while southward we
+behold it "slow winding through the level plain" on its way to the sea;
+into its valley we see the Wharfe flowing from the lovely dale where
+Collyer grew to manhood, and, farther away, the Aire emerging from the
+dreary region where lived the sad sisters Brontë and wove the sombre
+threads of their lives into romance. The Foss flows toward us from the
+northeast, and our view along its valley embraces the region where dwelt
+Sydney Smith, while rising in the north are the Hambleton Hills, which
+shelter the vale where Sterne wrote the books that made him famous.
+Indeed, this region of York is pervaded with memories of that prince of
+sentimentalists: in the great minster beneath us we find the tomb and
+monument of his grandfather, once archbishop of this diocese; in the
+carved pulpit of the minster Sterne preached as prebendary, and here he
+delivered his last sermon; his uncle was a dignitary of the old minster;
+his "indefatigably prolific" mother was native to this region; his wife
+was born here, and was first seen and loved by Sterne within sound of
+the glorious minster bells; most of his adult life was passed within
+sight of the minster towers.</p>
+
+<p>At Sutton, Sterne's first living, the pilgrim finds little to reward his
+devotion. Sterne's life here was obscure and, save in preparation,
+unproductive.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> Skelton Castle was then the seat of his college friend
+Stevenson, author of "Crazy Tales," etc., who was the Eugenius of
+"Shandy," and to whom the "Sentimental Journey" was inscribed. Here
+Sterne found a library rich in rare treatises upon unusual subjects, in
+which, during his stay at Sutton, he spent much time and acquired a fund
+of odd and fanciful learning which constituted in part his equipment for
+his work. We find this castle nearer the stern coast which Yorkshire
+opposes to the endless thunders of the North Sea. Once a Roman
+stronghold, then a feudal fortress and castle of the Bruces, later a
+country-seat, it has since Sterne's time been rebuilt and modernized out
+of all semblance to the "Crazy Castle"<span class="sidenote">Crazy Castle</span> of his letters. It is believed
+that only a few of the rooms remain substantially as he knew them. A
+tradition is preserved to the effect that during his visits here he
+bribed the servants to tie the vane with the point toward the west,
+because Eugenius would never leave his bed while an east wind prevailed.
+A near-by hill is called Sterne's Seat, but time has left here little to
+remind us of the sentimental "Yorick" who long haunted the place. It is
+only at Coxwold, fourteen miles from York and in the deeper depths of
+the shire, that we find many remaining objects that were associated with
+his work and with that portion of his life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> which chiefly concerns the
+literary world. A result of the publication of the first part of
+"Tristram Shandy" was the presentation of this living to its author, and
+his removal to this sequestered retreat, which was to be his home during
+his too few remaining years. The hamlet has now a railway station, but
+the usual approach is by a rustic highway which conducts to and
+constitutes the village street. Within the hamlet we find a low-eaved
+road-side inn, and by it the shaded green where the rural festivals were
+held, and where, to celebrate the coronation of George III., Sterne had
+an ox roasted whole and served with great quantities of ale to his
+parishioners. Just beyond, Sterne's church<span class="sidenote">Sterne's Church</span> stands intact upon a gentle
+eminence, overlooking a lovely pastoral landscape bounded by verdant
+hills. The church dates from the fifteenth century and is a pleasing
+structure of perpendicular Gothic style, with a shapely octagonal tower
+embellished with fretted pinnacles and a parapet of graceful design. One
+window has been filled with stained glass, but Sterne's pulpit remains,
+and the interior of the edifice is scarcely changed since he preached
+here his quaint sermons. The walls are plain; the low ceiling is divided
+by beams whose intersections are marked by grotesque bosses; the whole
+effect is depressing, and to the sensitive "Yorick"&mdash;haunted as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> he was
+by habitual dread that his ministrations might provoke a fatal pulmonary
+hemorrhage&mdash;it must have been dismal indeed. Among the effigied tombs of
+the Fauconbergs which line the chancel we find that of Sterne's friend
+who gave him this living.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Shandy Hall</div>
+
+<p>Beyond the church and near the highway stands the quaint and picturesque
+old edifice where dwelt Sterne during the eight famous years of his
+life. In his letters he calls it Castle Shandy, and in all the
+countryside it is now known as Shandy Hall, shandy meaning in the local
+dialect crack-brained. It is a long, rambling, low-eaved fabric, with
+many heavy gables and chimneys, and steep roofs of tiles. Curious little
+casements are under the eaves; larger windows look out from the gables
+and are aligned nearer the ground, many of them shaded by the dark ivy
+which clings to the old walls and overruns the roofs. Abutting the
+kitchen is an astounding pyramidal structure of masonry&mdash;an Ailsa Craig
+in shape and solidity, yet more resembling Stromboli with its emissions
+of smoke,&mdash;which, beginning at the ground as a buttress, terminates as a
+kitchen-chimney and imparts to this portion of the house an
+architectural character altogether unique. Shrubbery grows about the old
+domicile, venerable trees which may have cast their shade upon "Yorick"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+himself are by the door, and the aspect of the place is decidedly
+attractive. To Sir George Wombwell, who inherits the Fauconberg estate
+through a daughter of Sterne's patron, we are indebted for the
+preservation of the exterior of the house in the condition it was when
+Sterne inhabited it; but the interior has been partitioned into two
+dwellings and thus considerably altered. However, we may see the same
+sombre wainscots and low ceiling that Sterne knew, and we find the one
+room which interests us most&mdash;Sterne's parlor and study&mdash;little<span class="sidenote">Sterne's Parsonage&mdash;Study</span> changed.
+It is a pleasant apartment, with windows looking into the garden, where
+stood the summer-house in which he sometimes wrote, and beyond which was
+the sward where "my uncle Toby" habitually demonstrated the siege of
+Namur and Dendermond. On the low walls of this room Sterne disposed his
+seven hundred books,&mdash;"bought at a purchase dog-cheap,"&mdash;and here he
+wrote, besides his sermons, seven volumes of "Tristram Shandy" and the
+"Sentimental Journey." There is a local tradition that other MSS.
+written here were found by the succeeding tenant and used to line the
+hangings of the room. Sterne's letters afford glimpses of him in this
+room: in one we see him "before the fire, with his cat purring beside
+him;" in another he is "sitting here and cudgelling his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> brains" for
+ideas, though he usually wrote facilely and rapidly; in another he shows
+us a prettier picture, in which "My Lydia" (his daughter) "helps to copy
+for me, and my wife knits and listens as I read her chapters;" and
+later, after his estrangement from Mrs. Sterne, we see him "sitting here
+alone, as sad and solitary as a tomcat, which by the way is all the
+company I keep." In the repose of this charming place, and amid the
+peaceful influences about him here in his pretty home, Sterne appears at
+his best. And here for a time he was happy; we find his letters
+attesting, "I am in high spirits, care never enters this cottage;" "I am
+happy as a prince at Coxwold;" "I wish you could see in what a princely
+manner I live. I sit down to dinner&mdash;fish and wild fowl, or a couple of
+fowls, with cream and all the simple plenty a rich valley can produce,
+with a clean cloth on my table and a bottle of wine on my right hand to
+drink your health." But the melancholy days came all too soon; the
+"bursting of vessels in his lungs" became more and more frequent, his
+struggle with dread consumption was inaugurated, and now his letters
+from the pretty parsonage abound with references to his "vile cough,
+weak nerves, dismal headaches," etc. Now his "sweet retirement" has
+become "a cuckoldy retreat;" he complains of its situation, of its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+"death-doing, pestiferous wind." Returning to it from a sentimental
+journey or from a brilliant season of lionizing in London, he finds its
+quiet and seclusion insufferably irksome. Mortally ill, growing old,
+hopelessly estranged from his wife, deprived of the companionship of his
+idolized child, the poor master of Castle Shandy is "sad and desolate,"
+his "pleasures are few," he sits "alone in silence and gloom." Such were
+some of the diverse phases of his life which these dumb walls have
+witnessed; in the dismalest, they have seen him at his desk here,
+resolutely ignoring his ills and tracing the passages of wit and fancy
+which were to delight the world. The incomplete "Sentimental Journey"
+was written in his last months of life.</p>
+
+<p>A mile from Sterne's cottage, and approached by a way oft trodden by him
+and his "little Lyd," is Newburgh Hall, the ancient seat of Sterne's
+friend. Parts of the walls of a priory founded here in 1145 are
+incorporated into the oldest portion of the hall, and this has been
+added to by successive generations until a great, incongruous pile has
+resulted, which, however, is not devoid of picturesque beauty. Within
+this mansion Sterne was a familiar guest: urged by the friendly
+persistence of Fauconberg, he frequently came here to chat or dine with
+his friend and the guests of the hall, his brilliant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> converse making
+him the life of the company. Among the family portraits here are that of
+his benefactor and one of Mary Cromwell, wife of the second Fauconberg,
+who preserved here many relics of the great Protector, including his
+bones, which were somehow rescued from Tyburn and concealed in a mass of
+masonry in an upper apartment of the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Sterne was not only popular with his lordly neighbor of Newburgh, but
+also, improbable as it would seem, with the illiterate yeomen who were
+his parishioners: although they understood not the sermons and found the
+sermonizer in most regards a hopeless enigma, yet, according to the
+traditions of the place, these simple folk discerned something in the
+complexly blended character of the creator of "my uncle Toby" which
+elicited their esteem and prompted many acts of love and service. In a
+letter to an American friend, Arthur Lee, Sterne writes, "Not a
+parishioner catches a hare, a rabbit, or a trout, but he brings it an
+offering to me."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Place of Sterne's Death and Burial</div>
+
+<p>As set forth by the inscription at Sterne's cottage, he died in London.
+One autumn day we find ourselves pondering the sad event of his last
+sojourn in the great city, as we stand upon the spot where his
+"truceless fight with disease" was ended, barely a fortnight after the
+"Sentimental Journey" was issued. His wish to die "untroubled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> by the
+concern of his friends and the last service of wiping his brows and
+smoothing his pillow" was literally realized. During the publication of
+the "Journey" he lodged in rooms above a silk-bag shop in Old Bond
+Street; here he rapidly sank, and in the evening of March 18, 1768,
+attended only by a hireling who robbed his body, and in the presence of
+a staring footman, the dying man suddenly cried, "Now it is come!" and,
+raising his hand as if to repel a blow, expired. A few furlongs distant,
+opposite Hyde Park, we find an old cemetery hidden from the streets by
+houses and high walls which shut out the din of the great city. Here, in
+seclusion almost as complete as that of the graveyard of his own
+Coxwold, Sterne was consigned to earth. The spot is overlooked by the
+windows of Thackeray's sometime home. An old tree stands close by, and
+in its boughs the birds twitter above us as we essay to read the
+inscription which marks Sterne's poor sepulchre. But, mean and neglected
+as it is, we may never know that his ashes found rest even here; a
+report which has too many elements of probability and which never was
+disproved, avers that the grave was desecrated and that a
+horror-stricken friend recognized Sterne's mutilated corse upon the
+dissecting-table of a medical school. "Alas, poor Yorick!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">HAWORTH AND THE BRONT&Euml;S</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>The Village&mdash;Black Bull Inn&mdash;Church&mdash;Vicarage&mdash;Memory-haunted
+Rooms&mdash;Brontë Tomb&mdash;Moors&mdash;Brontë Cascade&mdash;Wuthering Heights&mdash;Humble
+Friends&mdash;Relic and Recollection.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">OTHER Brontë shrines have engaged us,&mdash;Guiseley, where Patrick Brontë
+was married and Neilson worked as a mill-girl; the lowly Thornton home,
+where Charlotte was born; the cottage where she visited Harriet
+Martineau; the school where she found Caroline Helstone and Rose and
+Jessy Yorke; the Fieldhead, Lowood, and Thornfield of her tales; the
+Villette where she knew her hero; but it is the bleak Haworth hill-top
+where the Brontës wrote the wonderful books and lived the pathetic lives
+that most attracts and longest holds our steps. Our way is along
+Airedale, now a highway of toil and trade, desolated by the need of
+hungry poverty and greed of hungrier wealth: meads are replaced by
+blocks of grimy huts, groves are supplanted by factory chimneys that
+assoil earth and heaven, the once "shining" stream is filthy with the
+refuse of many mills. At Keighley our walk begins, and, although we have
+no peas in our "pilgrim shoon," the way is heavy with memories of the
+sad sisters Brontë<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> who so often trod the dreary miles which bring us to
+Haworth. The village street, steep as a roof, has a pavement of rude
+stones, upon which the wooden shoes of the villagers clank with an
+unfamiliar sound. The dingy houses of gray stone, barren and ugly in
+architecture, are huddled along the incline and encroach upon the narrow
+street. The place and its situation are a proverb of ugliness in all the
+countryside; one dweller in Airedale told us that late in the evening of
+the last day of creation it was found that a little rubbish was left,
+and out of that Haworth was made. But, grim and rough as it is, the
+genius of a little woman has made the place illustrious and draws to it
+visitors from every quarter of the world. We are come in the "glory
+season" of the moors, and as we climb through the village we behold
+above and beyond it vast undulating sweeps of amethyst-tinted hills
+rising circle beyond circle,&mdash;all now one great expanse of purple bloom
+stirred by zephyrs which waft to us the perfume of the heather.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Black Bull Inn</div>
+
+<p>At the hill-top we come to the Black Bull Inn, where one Brontë drowned
+his genius in drink, and from our apartment here we look upon all the
+shrines we seek. The inn stands at the church-yard gates, and is one of
+the landmarks of the place. Long ago preacher Grimshaw flogged the
+loungers from its tap-room into chapel;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> here Wesley and Whitefield
+lodged when holding meetings on the hill-top; here Brontë's predecessor
+took refuge from his riotous parishioners, finally escaping through the
+low casement at the back,&mdash;out of which poor Branwell Brontë used to
+vault when his sisters asked for him at the door. This inn is a quaint
+structure, low-eaved and cosy; its furniture is dark with age. We sleep
+in a bed once occupied by Henry J. Raymond, and so lofty that steps are
+provided to ascend its heights. Our meals are served in the
+old-fashioned parlor to which Branwell came. In a nook between the
+fireplace and the before-mentioned casement stood the tall arm-chair,
+with square seat and quaintly carved back, which was reserved for him.
+The landlady denied that he was summoned to entertain travellers here:
+"he never needed to be sent for, he came fast enough of himsel'." His
+wit and conviviality were usually the life of the circle, but at times
+he was mute and abstracted and for hours together "would just sit and
+sit in his corner there." She described him as a "little, red-haired,
+light-complexioned chap, cleverer than all his sisters put together.
+What they put in their books they got from him," quoth she, reminding us
+of the statement in Grundy's Reminiscences that Branwell declared he
+invented the plot and wrote the major part of "Wuthering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> Heights."
+Certain it is he possessed transcending genius and that in this room
+that genius was slain. Here he received the message of renunciation from
+his depraved mistress which finally wrecked his life; the landlady,
+entering after the messenger had gone, found him in a fit on the floor.
+Emily Brontë's rescue of her dog, an incident recorded in "Shirley,"
+occurred at the inn door.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Church</div>
+
+<p>The graveyard is so thickly sown with blackened tombstones that there is
+scant space for blade or foliage to relieve its dreariness, and the
+villagers, for whom the yard is a thoroughfare, step from tomb to tomb:
+in the time of the Brontës the village women dried their linen on these
+graves. Close to the wall which divides the church-yard from the
+vicarage is a plain stone set by Charlotte Brontë to mark the grave of
+Tabby, the faithful servant who served the Brontës from their childhood
+till all but Charlotte were dead. The very ancient church-tower still
+"rises dark from the stony enclosure of its yard;" the church itself has
+been remodelled and much of its romantic interest destroyed. No
+interments have been made in the vaults beneath the aisles since Mr.
+Brontë was laid there. The site of the Brontë pew is by the chancel;
+here Emily sat in the farther corner, Anne next, and Charlotte by the
+door, within a foot of the spot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> where her ashes now lie. A former
+sacristan remembered to have seen Thackeray and Miss Martineau sitting
+with Charlotte in the pew. And here, almost directly above her
+sepulchre, she stood one summer morning and gave herself in marriage to
+the man who served for her as "faithfully and long as did Jacob for
+Rachel." The Brontë tablet in the wall bears a uniquely pathetic record,
+its twelve lines registering eight deaths,<span class="sidenote">Brontë Tomb</span> of which Mr. Brontë's, at the
+age of eighty-five, is the last. On a side aisle is a beautiful stained
+window inscribed "To the Glory of God, in Memory of Charlotte Brontë, by
+an American citizen." The list shows that most of the visitors come from
+America, and it was left for a dweller in that far land to set up here
+almost the only voluntary memento of England's great novelist. A worn
+page of the register displays the tremulous autograph of Charlotte as
+she signs her maiden name for the last time, and the signatures of the
+witnesses to her marriage,&mdash;Miss Wooler, of "Roe Head," and Ellen Nussy,
+who is the E of Charlotte's letters and the Caroline of "Shirley."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Brontë Parsonage</div>
+
+<p>The vicarage and its garden are out of a corner of the church-yard and
+separated from it by a low wall. A lane lies along one side of the
+church-yard and leads from the street to the vicarage gates. The garden,
+which was Emily's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> care, where she tended stunted shrubs and borders of
+unresponsive flowers and where Charlotte planted the currant-bushes, is
+beautiful with foliage and flowers, and its boundary wall is overtopped
+by a screen of trees which shuts out the depressing prospect of the
+graves from the vicarage windows and makes the place seem less "a
+church-yard home" than when the Brontës inhabited it. The dwelling is of
+gray stone, two stories high, of plain and sombre aspect. A wing is
+added, the little window-panes are replaced by larger squares, the stone
+floors are removed or concealed, curtains&mdash;forbidden by Mr. Brontë's
+dread of fire&mdash;shade the windows, and the once bare interior is
+furbished and furnished in modern style; but the arrangement of the
+apartments<span class="sidenote">Apartments</span> is unchanged. Most interesting of these is the Brontë parlor,
+at the left of the entrance; here the three curates of "Shirley" used to
+take tea with Mr. Brontë and were upbraided by Charlotte for their
+intolerance; here the sisters discussed their plots and read each
+other's MSS.; here they transmuted the sorrows of their lives into the
+stories which make the name of Brontë immortal; here Emily, "her
+imagination occupied with Wuthering Heights," watched in the darkness to
+admit Branwell coming late and drunken from the Black Bull; here
+Charlotte, the survivor of all, paced the night-watches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> in solitary
+anguish, haunted by the vanished faces, the voices forever stilled, the
+echoing footsteps that came no more. Here, too, she lay in her coffin.
+The room behind the parlor was fitted by Charlotte for Nichols's study.
+On the right was Brontë's study, and behind it the kitchen, where the
+sisters read with their books propped on the table before them while
+they worked, and where Emily (prototype of "Shirley"), bitten by a dog
+at the gate of the lane, took one of Tabby's glowing irons from the fire
+and cauterized the wound, telling no one till danger was past. Above the
+parlor is the chamber in which Charlotte and Emily died, the scene of
+Nichols's loving ministrations to his suffering wife. Above Brontë's
+study was his chamber; the adjoining children's study was later
+Branwell's apartment and the theatre of the most terrible tragedies of
+the stricken family; here that ill-fated youth writhed in the horrors of
+<i>mania-a-potu</i>; here Emily rescued him&mdash;stricken with drunken
+stupor&mdash;from his burning couch, as "Jane Eyre" saved Rochester; here he
+breathed out his blighted life erect upon his feet, his pockets filled
+with love-letters from the perfidious woman who wrought his ruin. Even
+now the isolated site of the parsonage, its environment of graves and
+wild moors, its exposure to the fierce winds of the long winters, make<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+it unspeakably dreary; in the Brontë time it must have been cheerless
+indeed. Its influence darkened the lives of the inmates and left its
+fateful impression upon the books here produced. Visitors are rarely
+admitted to the vicarage; among those against whom its doors have been
+closed is the gifted daughter of Charlotte's literary idol, to whom
+"Jane Eyre" was dedicated, Thackeray.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Moors</div>
+
+<p>By the vicarage lane were the cottage of Tabby's sister, the school the
+Brontës daily visited, and the sexton's dwelling where the curates
+lodged. Behind the vicarage a savage expanse of gorse and heather rises
+to the horizon and stretches many miles away: a path oft trodden by the
+Brontës leads between low walls from their home to this open moor, their
+habitual resort in childhood and womanhood. The higher plateaus afford a
+wide prospect, but, despite the August bloom and fragrance and the
+delightful play of light and shadow along the sinuous sweeps, the aspect
+of the bleak, treeless, houseless waste of uplands is even now
+dispiriting; when frosts have destroyed its verdure and wintry skies
+frown above, its gloom and desolation must be terrible beyond
+description. Remembering that the sisters found even these usually
+dismal moors a welcome relief from their tomb of a dwelling, we may
+appreciate the utter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> dreariness of their situation and the pathos of
+Charlotte's declaration, "I always dislike to leave Haworth, it takes so
+long to be content again after I return." We trace the steps of the
+Brontës across the moor to the cascade, called now the "Brontë Falls,"
+where a brooklet descends over great boulders into a shaded glen. This
+was their favorite excursion, and as we loiter here we recall their many
+visits to the spot: first they came four children to play upon these
+rocks; later came three grave maidens with Caroline Helstone or Rose
+Yorke; later came two saddened women; and then Charlotte came alone,
+finding the moor a featureless wilderness full of torturing reminders of
+her dead, and seeing their vanished forms "in the blue tints, the pale
+mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon." Later still, during her
+few months of happiness, she came here many times with her husband, and
+her last walk on earth was made with him to see the cascade "in its
+winter wildness and power."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Wuthering Heights</div>
+
+<p>Above the village was the parsonage of Grimshaw and the original
+"Wuthering Heights." It was a sombre structure; a few trees grew about
+it, the moors rose behind; the apartments were like the oak-lined,
+stone-paved interior pictured in the tale, while the inscription above
+the door, H E 1659, was changed to Hareton<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> Earnshaw 1500 by Miss
+Brontë, who described here much of her own grandfather's early life and
+suffering and portrayed his wife in Catherine Linton. It is notable that
+the name Earnshaw and other names in the Brontë books may be seen on
+shop-signs along the way the sisters walked to Keighley.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Recollections of the Brontës</div>
+
+<p>Among the villagers we meet some who remember the Brontës with affection
+and pride. We find them so uniformly courteous that we are willing to
+doubt Mrs. Gaskell's ascriptions of surly rudeness. They indignantly
+deny the statements of Reid, Gaskell, and others regarding the character
+of Mr. Brontë. One whose relations to that clergyman entitle him to
+credence assures us that Brontë did not destroy his wife's silk dress,
+nor burn his children's colored shoes, nor discharge pistols as a
+safety-valve for his temper: "he didn't have that sort of a temper." It
+would appear that many charges of the biographers were made upon the
+authority of a peculating servant whom Brontë had angered by dismissal.
+Some parishioners testify that "the Brontës had odd ways of their own,"
+"went their gait and didn't meddle o'ermuch with us;" "nobody had a word
+against them." Charlotte's husband, too, became popular after her death,
+perhaps at first because of his tender care of her father: "to see the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+good old man and Nichols together when the rest were dead, and Mr.
+Brontë so helpless and blind, was just a pretty sight." We hear more
+than once of Brontë's wonderful cravat: he habitually covered it
+himself, putting on new silk without removing the old, until in the
+course of years it became one of the sights of the place, having
+acquired such phenomenal proportions that it concealed half his head.
+Many still remember hearing him preach from the depths of this cravat,
+while the sexton perambulated the aisles with a staff to stir up the
+sleepers and threaten the lads. Mr. Wood, a cabinet-maker of the
+village, was church-warden in Brontë's incumbency and an intimate friend
+of the family till the death of the last member: his loving hands
+fashioned the coffins for them all. He was sent for to see Richmond's
+portrait of Charlotte on its arrival, and was laughed at by that lady
+for not recognizing the likeness; while Tabby insisted that a portrait
+of Wellington, which came in the same case, was a picture of Mr. Brontë.
+That clergyman often complained to Wood that Mrs. Gaskell "tried to make
+us all appear as bad as she could." We find some survivors of
+Charlotte's Sunday-school class among the villagers. From one, who was
+also singer in Brontë's church choir, we obtain pictures of the church
+and rectory as they appeared<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> in Charlotte's lifetime and a photographic
+copy of Branwell's painting of himself and sisters, in which the
+likenesses are said to be excellent. Charlotte is remembered as being
+"good looking," having a wealth of lustrous hair and remarkably
+expressive eyes. She was usually neatly apparelled in black, and was so
+small that when Mrs. F. entered her class, at the age of twelve, the
+pupil was larger than the teacher. Another of Charlotte's class
+remembers her as being nervously quick in all her movements and a rapid
+walker; a third stood in the church-yard and saw her pass from the
+vicarage to the church on the morning of her marriage wearing a very
+plain bridal dress and a white bonnet trimmed with green leaves. A few
+brief months later this person, from the same spot, beheld the mortal
+part of her immortal friend borne by a grief-stricken company along the
+same path to her burial. In the hands of another of Charlotte's pupils
+we see a volume of the original edition of the poems of the three
+sisters, presented by Charlotte, and a Yorkshire collection of hymns
+which contains some of Anne's sweet verses.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Branwell Brontë</div>
+
+<p>It is evident that, of all the family, the hapless Branwell was most
+admired by the villagers. They delight to extol his pleasant manners,
+his ready repartee, his wonderful learning, his ambidextrousness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> his
+personal courage. On one occasion restraint was required to prevent his
+attacking alone a dozen mill-rioters, "any one of whom could have put
+him in his pocket." Holding a pen in each hand, he could simultaneously
+write letters on two dissimilar subjects while he discoursed on a third.
+Wood thought him naturally the brightest of the family, and believed
+that lack of occupation, in a place where there was nothing to stimulate
+mental effort, accounted for his vices and failures. He came often with
+his sisters to Wood's house, and would talk by the hour of his projects
+to achieve fame and fortune. One of his associates preserved some
+letters received from him while he was "away tutoring," in which he
+shamelessly recorded his follies and referred to himself as a "Joseph in
+Egypt." A local society has collected in its museum some Brontë<span class="sidenote">Brontë Relics</span>
+mementos: a relative of Martha, Tabby's successor in the household,
+saved a few,&mdash;Charlotte's silken purse, her thimble-case and some
+articles of dress, elementary drawings made by the sisters, autograph
+letters of Charlotte and her copies of the "Quarterly" and other
+periodicals in which she had read the reviews of "Jane Eyre." Among the
+treasures Wood preserved were sketches by Emily and Branwell; a
+signatured set of Brontë volumes presented by Brontë the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> day before his
+death; Charlotte's worn history containing annotations in her
+microscopic chirography; a copy of "Jane Eyre" presented by Charlotte
+before its authorship was ascertained; an article on "Advantages of
+Poverty," by Mrs. Brontë; a highly graphic tale and religious poems by
+Mr. Brontë. Comment upon the latter reminded Wood that Brontë had shown
+him some poems by an Irish ancestor Hugh Brontë, and that he had met at
+the vicarage an irate relative who came from Ireland with a shillalah to
+"break the head" of a cruel critic of "Jane Eyre." Most of the Brontë
+belongings were removed by Mr. Nichols. He served the parish
+assiduously, as the people declare, for fifteen years, and at Brontë's
+death they desired that Nichols should succeed him; but the living was
+bestowed upon a stranger, and Nichols removed to the south of Ireland,
+where he married his cousin and is now a gentleman farmer. Martha Brown,
+the devoted servant of the family, accompanied him, and Nancy
+Wainwright, the Brontës' nurse, died some years ago in Bradford
+workhouse: so every living vestige of the family has disappeared from
+the vicinage.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Charlotte Brontë's Husband</div>
+
+<p>A resident of near-by Wharfedale lately possessed a package of
+Charlotte's essays, written at the Brussels school and amended by "M.
+Paul." Study of these confirms the belief that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> she was for a time
+tortured by a hopeless love for her preceptor, husband of "Madame Beck,"
+and that it was this wretched passage in her life, rather than the fall
+of her brother, which "drove her to literary speech for relief." Her
+marriage with Nichols was eventually happy, but her own descriptions of
+him show that his were not the attributes that would please her fancy or
+readily gain her love. In "Shirley" she writes of him as successor of
+Malone: "the circumstance of finding himself invited to tea with a
+Dissenter would unhinge him for a week; the spectacle of a Quaker
+wearing his hat in church, the thought of an unbaptized fellow-creature
+being interred with Christian rites, these things would make strange
+havoc in his physical and mental economy." In a letter to E. Charlotte
+writes, "I am <i>not</i> to marry Mr. Nichols. I couldn't think of mentioning
+such a rumor to him, even as a joke. It would make me the laughing-stock
+of himself and fellow-curates for half a year to come. They regard me as
+an old maid, and I regard them, <i>one and all</i>, as highly uninteresting,
+narrow, and unattractive specimens of the coarser sex." Why then did she
+finally accept Mr. Nichols? Was it not from the same motive that had led
+her to reject his addresses not long before, the desire to please her
+father?</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">EARLY HAUNTS OF ROBERT COLLYER: EUGENE ARAM</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Childhood Home&mdash;Ilkley Scenes, Friends, Smithy,
+Chapel&mdash;Bolton-Associations&mdash;Wordsworth&mdash;Rogers&mdash;Eliot&mdash;Turner&mdash;Aram's
+Homes&mdash;Schools&mdash;Place of the Murder&mdash;Gibbet&mdash;Probable Innocence.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Early Home</div>
+
+<p class="cap">THE factory-town of Keighley,&mdash;amid the moors of western Yorkshire,&mdash;to
+which the Brontë pilgrimage brings us, becomes itself an object of
+interest when we remember it was the birthplace of Robert Collyer. On a
+dingy side-street resonant with the din of spindles and looms and
+sullied with soot from factory chimneys, of humble parentage, and in a
+home not less lowly than that of another Yorkshire blacksmith in which
+Faraday was born, our orator and author first saw the light. Collyer
+came to Keighley "only to be born," and soon was removed to the lovely
+Washburndale, a few miles away. Here we find the place of the boyhood
+home he has made known to us&mdash;the cottage of two rooms with whitewashed
+walls and floor of flags&mdash;occupied by the mansion of a mill-owner, and
+the Collyer family vanished from the vicinage. "Little Sam," the
+kind-hearted father, fell dead at his anvil one summer day; the
+blue-eyed, fair-haired mother, of whom the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> preacher so loves to speak,
+died in benign age; and the boisterous bairns who once filled the
+cottage are scattered in the Old World and the New. A little way down
+the sparkling burn is the picturesque old church of Fewston, where
+Collyer was christened, where Amos Barton of George Eliot's tale later
+preached, and where the poet Edward Fairfax&mdash;of the ancient family which
+gave to Virginia its best blood&mdash;was buried with his child who "was held
+to have died of witchcraft." Near by was Collyer's school,<span class="sidenote">School</span> taught by a
+crippled and cross-eyed old fiddler named Willie Hardie, who survived at
+our first sojourn in the dale and had much to tell about his pupil
+"Boab," whom he had often "fairly thrashed." Collyer's school education
+ended in his eighth year, and he was early apprenticed at Ilkley, in the
+next valley, where he grew to physical manhood and attained to a measure
+of that intellectual stature which has since been recognized.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Companions</div>
+
+<p>At Ilkley we find some who remember when Collyer came first, a stripling
+lad, to work in "owd Jackie's" smithy, and who in the long-ago worked,
+played, and fought with him in the village or read with him on the
+moors. One remembers that he was from the first an insatiable student,
+often reading as he plied the bellows or switched the flies from a
+customer's horse. His master "Jackie" Birch, who was native of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> Eugene
+Aram's home, is recalled as a selfish and unpopular man, who had no
+sympathy with the lad's studious habit, but tolerated it when it did not
+interfere with his work. Collyer's love of books was contagious, and
+soon a little circle of lads habitually assembled, whenever released
+from toil, to read with him the volumes borrowed from friends or
+purchased by clubbing their own scant hoards. A survivor of this group
+walked with us through the village, pointing out the spots associated
+with Collyer's life here, and afterward showed us upon the slopes of the
+overlooking hills the nooks where the lads read together in summer
+holidays. Collyer was especially intimate with the Dobsons: of these
+John was best beloved, because he shared most fully Collyer's studies
+and aspirations; between the two an affectionate friendship was formed
+which, despite long separation and disparity of position,&mdash;for John
+remained a laborer,&mdash;ended only with his death. When, thirty years ago,
+Collyer&mdash;honored and famous&mdash;revisited the scenes of his early struggles
+and was eagerly invited to opulent and cultured homes, he turned away
+from all to abide in the humble cottage of Dobson, which we found near
+the site of the smithy and occupied by others who were friends of
+Collyer's youth. His associates of the early time&mdash;some of them old and<span class="sidenote">Collyer's Humble Friends</span>
+poor&mdash;tell us with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> obvious pleasure and pride of his visits to their
+poor homes in these later summers when he comes to the place, and we
+suspect he often leaves with them more substantial tokens of his
+remembrance than kind words and wishes: indeed, he once made us his
+almoner to the more needy of them, one of whom we found in the
+workhouse. Some of his old-time friends recall the circumstances of his
+conversion under the preaching of a Wesleyan named Bland, his own
+eloquent and touching prayers, and his first timorous essays to conduct
+the services of the little chapel to which the villagers were bidden by
+the bellman, who proclaimed through the streets, "The blacksmith will
+preach t'night." When he preaches at Ilkley now, the Assembly-rooms are
+thronged with friends, old and new, eager to hear him. "Jackie" sleeps
+with his fathers, and the smithy<span class="sidenote">The Smithy</span> is replaced by a modern cottage, into
+whose masonry many blackened stones from the old forge were
+incorporated. One of Collyer's chums showed us the door of the smithy
+which he had rescued from demolition and religiously preserved, and
+presented us with a photograph which we were assured represents the
+building just as Collyer knew it,&mdash;a long, low fabric of stone, with a
+shed joined at one end, two forge chimneys rising out of the roof, and
+the rough doors and window-shutters placarded with public<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> notices.
+Before the forge was demolished, the large two-horned anvil on which
+Collyer wrought twelve years was bought for a price and removed to
+Chicago, where it is still preserved in the study of Unity Church,
+albeit Collyer long ago predicted to the writer, with a characteristic
+twinkle and a sweet hint of the dialect his tongue was born to, "they'll
+soon be sellin' <i>thet</i> for old iron."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Wharfedale Antiquities</div>
+
+<p>The health-giving waters of the hill-sides attract hundreds of invalids
+and idlers, and the Ilkley of to-day is a smart town of well-kept
+houses, hotels, and shops, amid which we find here and there a quaint
+low-roofed structure which is a relic of the village of Collyer's
+boyhood. Among the survivals is the chapel&mdash;now a local museum,
+inaugurated by Collyer&mdash;where our "blacksmith" was converted and where
+he labored at the spiritual anvil as a local preacher. He has told us
+that for his labors in the Wesleyan pulpit during several years in
+Yorkshire and America he received in all seven dollars and fifty cents;
+he expounded for love, but pounded for a living. Another survival is the
+ancient parish church, built upon the site of the Roman fortress Olicana
+and of stones from its ruined walls, which preserves in its masonry many
+antiquarian treasures of Roman sculpture and inscription. Standing
+without are three curious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> monolithic columns, graven with mythological
+figures of men, dragons, birds, etc., which give them an archæological
+value beyond price. A doltish rector damaged them by using them as
+gate-posts; from this degradation the hands of Collyer helped to rescue
+them, and the same hands fashioned at the forge the neat iron gates
+which enclose the church-yard.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Scenery</div>
+
+<p>By the village and through the dale which Gray thought so beautiful
+flows the Wharfe; winding amid verdant meads, rushing between lofty
+banks, or loitering in sunny shallows, it holds its shining course to
+the Ouse, beyond the fateful field of Towton, where the red rose of
+Lancaster went down in blood. Ilkley nestles cosily at the foot of green
+slopes which swell away from the stream and are dotted with copses and
+embowered villas. Farther away the dim lines rise to the heights of the
+Whernside, whence we look to the chimneys of Leeds and the towers of
+York's mighty minster. Detached from Rumbald's cliffs lie two masses,
+called "Cow and Calf Rocks," bearing the imprint of giant Rumbald's
+foot: these rocks are a resort of the young people, and here Collyer and
+his friends oft came with their books. From this point Wharfedale, domed
+by a summer sky, seems a paradise of loveliness; its every aspect, from
+the glinting stream to the highest moorland<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> crags, is replete with the
+beauty Turner loved to paint and which here first inspired his genius.
+Ruskin discerns this Wharfedale scenery throughout the great artist's
+works, bits of its beauty being unconsciously wrought into other scenes.
+These landscapes were a daily vision to the eyes of Collyer in the days
+when Turner still came to the neighborhood. This region abounds with
+memorials of the mighty past, with treasures of Druidical, Runic, and
+Roman history and tradition, but the literary pilgrim finds it rife with
+associations for him still more interesting: here lived the ancestors of
+our Longfellow, and the family whence Thackeray sprang; the fathers of
+that gentle singer, Heber, dwelt in their castle here and sleep now
+under the pavement of the church; a little way across the moors the
+Brontës dwelt and died. Here, too, lived the Fairfaxes,&mdash;one of them a
+poet and translator of Tasso,&mdash;and among their tombs we find that of
+Fawkes of Farnley, Turner's early friend and patron, while at the
+near-by hall are the rooms the painter occupied during the years he was
+transferring to canvas the beauties he here beheld. Farnley holds the
+best private collection of Turner's works, comprising, besides many
+finished pictures, numerous drawings and color-sketches made here.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bolton Abbey</div>
+
+<p>A delightful excursion from Ilkley, one never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> omitted by Collyer from
+his summer saunterings in Wharfedale, is to the sacred shades of Bolton
+Abbey. The way is enlivened with the prattle and sheen of the limpid
+Wharfe. A mile past the hamlet of Addingham, where Collyer preached his
+first sermon, the stream curves about a slight eminence which is crowned
+by the ruins of the ancient shrine. Some portions of the walls are
+fallen and concealed by shrubbery; other portions withstand the ravages
+of the centuries, and we see the crumbling arches, ruined cloisters, and
+mullioned windows, mantled with masses of ivy and bloom and set in the
+scene of restful beauty which Turner painted and Rogers and Wordsworth
+poetized. Our pleasure in the ruin and its environment of wood, mead,
+and stream is enhanced by the companionship of one who had, on another
+summer's day, explored the charms of the spot with George Eliot, and who
+repeats to us her expressions of rapturous delight at each new vista.
+Wordsworth loved this spot, and the incident to which the Abbey owed its
+erection&mdash;the drowning of young Romilly, the noble "Boy of Egremond," in
+the gorge near by&mdash;is beautifully told by him in the familiar poems
+written here.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Nidderdale</div>
+
+<p>Another excursion, by Knaresborough and the deadly field of Marston
+Moor, brings us into lovely Nidderdale, where stalks the dusky ghost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> of
+the Eugene Aram of Bulwer's tale and Hood's poem amid the scenes of his
+early life and of the crime for which he died. In the upper portion of
+the valley the Nidd winds like a ribbon of silver between green braes
+and moorland hills which rise steeply to the narrow horizon. From either
+side brooklets flow through wooded glens to join the wimpling Nidd, and
+at the mouth of one of these we find Ramsgill, where Aram was born. It
+is a straggling hamlet of thatched cottages, set among bowering orchards
+and gardens and wearing an aspect of tranquil comfort. The site of the
+laborer's hut in which the gentle student was born is shown at the back
+of one of the newer cottages of the place. Farther up the picturesque
+stream is the pretty village of Lofthouse, an assemblage of gray stone
+houses nestled beneath clustering trees, to which Aram returned after a
+short residence at Skipton, in the dale of the Brontës. Here he wooed
+sweet Annie Spence and passed his early years of married life; here his
+first children were born and one of them died. At the church in near-by
+Middlesmoor he was married; here his first child was christened, and in
+the bleak church-yard it was buried. Near a sombre "gill" which opens
+into the valley some distance below was Gowthwaite Hall,<span class="sidenote">Aram's Schools</span> where Aram
+taught his first pupils,&mdash;an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> ancient, rambling structure of stone, two
+stories in height, with many steep gables and wide latticed windows.
+Venerable trees shaded the walls, leafy vines climbed to and overran the
+roofs, and a quaint garden of prim squares and formally trimmed foliage
+lay at one side. We found these externals little changed since Aram was
+tutor here. The partition of the mansion into three tenements had
+altered the arrangement of the interior, but the wide stairway still led
+from the entrance to the upper room at the east end, where Aram taught:
+it was a large, lofty apartment, reputed to be haunted, changed since
+his time only by the closing of one casement. Richard Craven was then
+tenant of the Hall, and his son, the erudite doctor, doubtless received
+his first tuition in this room and from Aram.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Place of Murder</div>
+
+<p>Some miles down the valley is Knaresborough, to which Aram removed from
+Lofthouse to establish a school, and where eleven years later the murder
+was committed. Soon after, Aram removed from the neighborhood, and
+during his residence at Lynn, where he was arrested for the crime, he
+was some time tutor in the house of Bulwer's grandfather, a circumstance
+which led to the production of the fascinating tale. A little way out of
+Knaresborough, in a recess at the base of the limestone cliffs which
+here border<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> the murmuring Nidd, is the place where Clarke was killed
+and buried. This impressive spot was long the hermitage of "Saint
+Robert," who formed the cave out of the crag. In clearing the rubbish
+from the place after the publication of Bulwer's tale, the remains of a
+little shrine were found, and a coffin hewn from the rock, which proved
+that the hermitage had before been a place of burial, as urged by Aram
+in his defence. Upon a hill of the forest not far away the body of Aram
+hung in irons, and local tradition avers that his widow watched to
+recover the bones as they fell, and when she had at last interred them
+all, emigrated with her children to America.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Belief in Aram's Innocence</div>
+
+<p>It is noteworthy that belief in his innocence was universal among those
+who knew him in this countryside. Incidents illustrating his
+self-denial, patient forbearance, disregard for money, and care to
+preserve even the lowest forms of life are still cherished and recounted
+here as showing that robbery and murder were for him impossible crimes.
+We were reminded, too, that at the time of Clarke's disappearance Aram
+was husband of a woman of his own station, father of a family, and
+master of a moderately prosperous school,&mdash;conditions of which Bulwer
+could scarcely have been unaware, and which are inconsistent with the
+only motives<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> suggested as inciting Aram to crime. In the opinion of the
+descendants of Aram's old neighbors in his native Nidderdale, Houseman
+was alone guilty; and if Aram had, instead of undertaking to conduct his
+own defence, intrusted it to proper counsel, the trial would have
+resulted in his acquittal.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">HOME OF SYDNEY SMITH</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Heslington-Foston, Twelve Miles from a Lemon-Church&mdash;Rector's
+Head&mdash;Study&mdash;Room-of-all-work&mdash;Grounds&mdash;Guests&mdash;Universal
+Scratcher&mdash;Immortal Chariot&mdash;Reminiscences.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">THE metropolis of England holds many places which knew "the greatest of
+the many Smiths:" dwellings he some time inhabited, mansions in which he
+was the honored guest, pulpits and rostrums from which he discoursed,
+the room in which he died, the tomb where loving hands laid him beside
+his son. But it is in a remote valley of Yorkshire, where half his adult
+years were passed in a lonely retreat among the humble poor, that we
+find the scenes most intimately associated with the fruitful period of
+his life. In the lovely dale of York, not far from one of the ancient
+gates and within sound of the bells of the great minster, is the village
+of Heslington,<span class="sidenote">Heslington</span> Smith's first place of abode in Yorkshire. His dwelling
+here&mdash;lately the rectory of a parish which has been created since his
+time, and one of the best houses of the village&mdash;is a spacious and
+substantial old-fashioned mansion of brick, two stories in height and
+delightfully cosy in appearance. Large bow-windows, built by Smith,
+project from the front and rise to the eaves. The rooms are of
+comfortable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> dimensions, and that in which Smith wrote is "glorified" by
+the sunlight from one of his great windows, near which his writing-table
+was placed. The house stands a rod or two from the highway, amid a mass
+of foliage; an iron railing borders the yard, trees grow upon either
+side, and at the back is an ample garden which was Smith's especial
+delight, and which he paced for hours as he pondered his compositions.
+It was here that the dignified Jeffrey of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> rode
+the children's pet donkey over the grass. Smith's famous "Peter Plimley"
+letters were produced at Heslington. He never felt at home here, because
+he constantly contemplated removing. His own parish had no rectory, and
+he was permitted by his bishop to reside here while he sought to
+exchange the living for another: failing in this, he was allowed a
+further term in which to erect a dwelling in his parish, consequently
+Heslington was his home for some years. During this time he made weekly
+excursions to his church, twelve miles distant, behind a steed which he
+commemorates as Peter the Cruel, and in the year he built his parsonage
+the excursions were so frequent that he computed he had ridden Peter
+"several times round the world, going and coming from Heslington."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Foston-le-Clay</div>
+
+<p>In the remoter hamlet of Foston, "twelve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> miles from a lemon," we find
+the church where he ministered for twenty years and the house which was
+his home longer than any other. Our way thither&mdash;the same once so
+familiar to Smith and his cruel steed&mdash;lies along the green valley
+through which the wimpling Foss ripples and sings on its way to the
+Ouse. In sun and shadow our road leads through a pleasant country until
+we see the roofs of Smith's parsonage<span class="sidenote">Smith's Parsonage</span> rising among the tree-tops. The
+Rector's Head, as the wit delighted to call his home, stands among the
+glebe-lands at a little distance from the highway, and a
+carriage-drive&mdash;constructed by Smith after some of his guests had been
+almost inextricably mired in their attempts to reach his door&mdash;conducts
+from a road-side gate near the school through the tasteful and well-kept
+grounds. Before we reach the rectory a second barrier is encountered,
+Smith's "Screeching Gate," which, like the gate at "Amen Corner,"
+remains just as it was when he bestowed its name. The mansion, of which
+he was both architect and builder, described by him and his friend Loch
+as "the ugliest house ever seen," presents a singularly attractive
+aspect of cosiness and comfort. The edifice is somewhat improved since
+the great essayist dwelt beneath its roof, but the original structure
+remains,&mdash;an oblong brick fabric, of ample proportions and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+unpretentious architecture, two stories in height, with hip-roofs of
+warm-tinted tiles. A large bay-window struts from one side wall; a
+beautiful conservatory abuts upon another side; a little porch,
+overgrown with creepers and flowers, protects the entrance. The once
+plain brickwork, which rose bare of ornamentation, is mantled with ivy
+and flowering vines which clamber to the roofs and riot along the walls,
+imparting to the "unparsonic parsonage" a picturesque charm which no
+architectural decoration could produce. The bare field in which Smith
+erected his house has been transformed into an Eden of beauty and bloom;
+on every side are velvety lawns, curving walks, beds of flowers, patches
+of shrubbery, and groups of woodland trees, forming a pretty park,
+mostly planned by Smith and planted by his hand. Within, we find the
+apartments spacious and cheerful: the windows are the same that were
+screened by the many-hued patchwork shades designed by Smith and wrought
+by the deft fingers of his daughters, the chimney-pieces of Portland
+stone which he erected remain, but tasteful and elegant furniture now
+replaces the rude handiwork of the village carpenter, which was disposed
+through these rooms during Smith's incumbency. He blithely tells a
+guest, "I needed furniture; I bought a cart-load of boards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> and got the
+carpenter, Jack Robinson; told him, 'Jack, furnish my house,' and you
+see the result." Some of the resulting furniture is still preserved in
+the neighborhood and valued above price. From the bay-window of the
+parlor the gray towers of York's colossal cathedral are seen ten miles
+away; the room adjoining at the left is the memorable apartment which
+was Smith's study, school-room, court, surgery, and what-not. Here his
+gayly-bound books were arranged by his daughter, the future Lady
+Holland, and here, when not applied to him, his famous "rheumatic armor"
+stood in a bag in yonder corner. Here he wrote his sermons, his
+brilliant and witty essays, the wise and effective disquisitions on the
+disabilities of the Catholics, the coruscating and incisive articles for
+the Review which electrified the English world. In this room he taught
+his children and gave Bible lessons to the youth of the parish, some of
+whom survive to praise and bless him; here, too, he prescribed for the
+sick and dispensed mercy rather than justice to culprits haled before
+him; for, as his letters declare, he was at once "village magistrate,
+village parson, village doctor, village comforter, and Edinburgh
+Reviewer." To these manifold avocations he added, despite his "not
+knowing a turnip from a carrot," that of the farmer, and managed the
+three hundred acres<span class="sidenote">Fields and Farmsteading</span> of glebe-lands<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> which were so unproductive that no
+one else would cultivate them. A door-way of the rectory overlooks most
+of the plantation, and he suspended here a telescope and a tremendous
+speaking-trumpet by means of which he could observe and direct much of
+his operations without himself going afield. Behind the house, and
+screened by trees which Smith planted, are the farmstead buildings he
+planned; here are the stables and pens where he was welcomed by every
+individual of his stock, whom he daily visited to feed and pet; here is
+the enclosure where he found his fuddled pigs "grunting God save the
+King about the sty" after he had administered a medicament of fermented
+grains. In the adjoining field is the site of his "Universal
+Scratcher,"&mdash;a sharp-edged pole having a tall support at one extremity
+and a low one at the other, which so adapted it to the height of every
+animal that "they could scratch themselves with the greatest facility
+and luxury; even the 'Reviewer' [himself] could take his turn."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Guests&mdash;Reminiscences</div>
+
+<p>Of Smith's life in this retirement his many letters and the memoirs of
+his daughter give us pleasant pictures. Although he said his whole life
+had "been passed like a razor, in hot water or a scrape," the years
+spent here seem to have been happy ones. Even his removal to this house
+while it was yet so damp that the walls<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> ran down with wet and the
+grounds were so miry that his wife lost her shoes at the door, was made
+enjoyable. He writes to one friend, "I am too busy to be lonely;" to
+another, "I thank God who made me poor that he also made me merry, a
+better gift than much land with a doleful heart;" to another, "I am
+content and doubling in size every year;" to Lady Grey, "Come and see
+how happy people can be in a small parsonage;" to Jeffrey, "My situation
+is one of great solitude, but I possess myself in cheerfulness." He had
+expended upon his improvements here more than the living was worth,
+therefore economy ruled the selection of the <i>personnel</i> of this
+establishment. Faithful Annie Kay was first employed as child's-maid;
+later she was housekeeper and trusted friend, removed from here with her
+loved master, attended him in his last illness, and lies near him in the
+long sleep. A garden girl, made like a mile-stone, was hired by Smith,
+who "christened her Bunch, gave her a napkin, and made her his butler."
+Jack Robinson was retained as general factotum of the place, and Molly
+Mills, "a yeowoman, with short petticoat, legs like mill-posts, and
+cheeks shrivelled like winter apples," did duty as "cow-, pig-,
+poultry-, garden-, and post-woman." Guests testify that good-natured
+training had, out of this unpromising material, produced such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> efficient
+servants that the household ran smoothly in the stress of much company.
+For, despite the seclusion of Smith's retreat, his fame and the charm
+and wit of his conversation drew many visitors to his house. Lords
+Carlisle and Morpeth were almost weekly guests; Sir Humphry Davy and his
+gifted wife were many times guests for days together; among those who
+came less frequently were Jeffrey, Macaulay, Marcet, Dugald Stewart,
+John Murray, Mackintosh, and Lord and Lady Holland, with many of less
+fame; and we may imagine something of the scintillant converse these
+rooms knew when the master wit entertained such company. Neither his
+friends nor his literary pursuits were allowed to interfere with his
+attentions to the simple rustics of his parish; in sickness and trouble
+he was tireless in their service, furnishing medicines, food, and
+clothing out of his slender means. During the prevalence of an
+infectious fever he was constantly among them, as physician, nurse, and
+priest. The oldest parishioners speak of him by his Christian name, and
+testify that he was universally beloved. One lately remembered that
+Sydney had cared for his father during a long illness and maintained the
+family until he could return to his work. Another had been accustomed,
+as a child, to run after Sydney on the highway and cling to him until he
+bestowed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> the sugar-plums he always carried in his pockets. In one
+portion of the glebe we found small enclosures of land stocked with
+abundant fruit-trees and called Sydney's Orchards, which were planted by
+him and given to the parishioners at a nominal rental.</p>
+
+<p>Smith's solitary excursions through the parish were made astride a gaunt
+charger, called by him Calamity, noted for length of limb and strength
+of appetite, as well as for a propensity to part company with his rider,
+sometimes throwing the great Smith "over his head into the next parish."
+But when the rector's family were to accompany him, the ancient green
+chariot<span class="sidenote">The Chariot</span> was employed. This was believed to have been the first vehicle
+of the kind, was purchased by Smith at second (or twenty-second) hand,
+and was from time to time partially restored by the unskilled village
+mechanics. Anent this structure the delightful Smith writes, "Each year
+added to its charms: it grew younger and younger: a new wheel, a new
+spring; I christened it the Immortal: it was known everywhere: the
+village boys cheered it, the village dogs barked at it." To the ends of
+the shafts Smith attached a rod so that it projected in front of the
+horse and sustained a measure of grain just beyond his reach,&mdash;a device
+which evoked a maximum of speed from the beast with the minimum of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+exertion on the part of the driver, the deluded horse being "stimulated
+to unwonted efforts by hope of overtaking the provender." We have talked
+with some in the vicinage who remembered seeing Smith and his family
+riding in this perennial chariot, drawn by a plough-horse which was
+harnessed with plough-lines and driven by a plough-boy.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Smith's Church</div>
+
+<p>A mile from the rectory, past the few straggling cottages of the hamlet,
+we come to the quaint little church of Foston, one of the oldest in
+England. It was already in existence in 1081 when Doomsday Book was
+compiled, being then the property of Earl Allen: later it was conveyed
+to St. Mary's Abbey, whose ruins&mdash;marvellously beautiful even in
+decay&mdash;we find at the gates of York. It is noteworthy that this church
+of Foston early contained an image of the Virgin of such repute that
+people flocked to it in great numbers, and in 1313 the archbishop issued
+an edict that they should not desert their own churches to come here.
+Smith's church is prettily placed upon a gentle eminence from which we
+look across a wave-like expanse of smiling fields to steeper slopes
+beyond, a picture of pastoral peace and calm. Beneath the many
+mouldering heaps of the church-yard sleep the rustic poor for whom Smith
+labored, many of them having been committed to their narrow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> cells, "in
+the certain hope of the life to come," by his kindly hands. Among the
+graves stands the old church, the plainest and smallest of its kind. The
+present venerable and reverend incumbent, to whom we are indebted for
+many courtesies, has at his own expense restored the chancel as a
+memorial of his wife, but the principal portion of the edifice remains
+the same "miserable hovel" that Macaulay described in Smith's day. A
+heavy porch shelters the entrance, and above this is a sculptured Norman
+arch of great antiquity, a Scripture subject being graven upon each
+stone, that upon the key-block representing the Last Supper. The bare
+walls are surmounted by a dilapidated belfry, and the barn-like edifice
+is desolate and neglected. We find the interior dismal and depressive,
+and quite unchanged since Smith's time, save that the stove-pipe now
+enters a flue instead of emerging through a window. The quaint old
+pulpit, perched high in the corner opposite the gallery and beneath a
+huge sounding-board, is the same in which he so often stood; its frayed
+and faded cushions are said to be those that he belabored in his
+discourses, and out of which, on one occasion, he raised such a cloud of
+dust "that for some minutes he lost sight of the congregation." The
+pewter communion plate he used is preserved in a recess of the wall.
+Across the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> end and along one side of the church extends a gallery, in
+which sat the children under Smith's sharp eye, and kept in order, as
+some remember, by "a threaten-shake of his head." Along the front of
+this gallery ugly wooden pegs are aligned, on which the occupants of the
+pews hang their wraps, and so diminutive is the place that there are but
+four pews between door and pulpit. The present rector, whose father
+owned most of the parish and was Smith's firm friend, attended as a boy
+Smith's ministrations here, and remembers something of the direct
+eloquence of his sermons and their impressive effect upon the auditors.
+Attracted by his fame, some came from far to hear him preach who
+afterward became his ardent friends, among these being Macaulay and the
+Mrs. Apreece whom de Staël depicted as "Corinne" and who subsequently,
+as wife of Humphry Davy, was guest at The Rector's Head. In this shabby
+little church Smith gave away his daughter Emily, the Archbishop of York
+reading the marriage service; and not long after Smith removed to
+Somerset, and Foston saw him no more.</p>
+
+<p>The church contains no memorial of any sort in memory of Smith. The
+decayed condition of this temple has long been a reproach to the
+resident gentry. Since those whose property interests are most concerned
+in the restoration<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> of the church have declined to enter upon it, the
+good rector contemplates undertaking it at his own charge. Not long ago
+he was engaged upon the plans, and it may be that, by the time these
+pages reach the reader, Foston church as Smith knew it will have ceased
+to exist. The writer has a lively hope that some of the New World
+pilgrims who have marked other Old World shrines which else had been
+neglected, will set in these renovated walls an enduring memorial&mdash;of
+pictured glass or sculptured stone or graven metal&mdash;in remembrance of
+the illustrious author-divine who, during his best years, ministered in
+this lowly place to a congregation of rude and unlettered poor.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">NITHSDALE RAMBLES</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Scott&mdash;Hogg&mdash;Wordsworth&mdash;Carlyle's
+Birthplace&mdash;Homes&mdash;Grave&mdash;Burns's Haunts&mdash;Tomb&mdash;Jeanie Deans&mdash;Old
+Mortality, etc.&mdash;Annie Laurie's
+Birthplace&mdash;Habitation&mdash;Poet-Lover&mdash;Descendants.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">FROM the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" and the many shrines of picturesque
+Edinburgh, once the literary capital of Britain, our saunterings bring
+us to other haunts of the "Wizard of the North:" to his oft described
+Abbotsford,&mdash;that baronial "romance in stone and lime,"&mdash;with its
+libraries and armories, its precious relics and more precious memories
+of its illustrious builder and occupant, who here literally "wrote
+himself to death;" to the dream-like, ivy-grown ruins of holy Melrose,
+whose beauties he sang and within whose crumbling walls he lingered and
+mused; to his tomb fittingly placed amid the ruined arches and
+mouldering pillars of Dryburgh Abbey, embowered by venerable trees and
+mantled by clinging vines. Strolling thence among the "Braes of Yarrow,"
+the Yarrow of Wordsworth and Hamilton, through the haunts of Hogg the
+Ettrick Shepherd, and passing the Hartfell, we come into the dale of
+Annan, and follow that winsome water past Moffat, where lived Burns's
+daughter, to historic Applegarth, and thence by Lockerby approach<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+Ecclefechan, the hamlet of Carlyle's birth<span class="sidenote">Carlyle's Birthplace</span> and sepulture. Among the
+lowly stone cottages on the straggling street of the rude village is a
+double dwelling with an arched passage-way through the middle of its
+lower story; this humble structure was erected by the stone-mason James
+Carlyle, and the northern end of it was his home when his illustrious
+son was born. Opening from the street is a narrow door; beside it is a
+diminutive window, with a similar one above and another over the arch.
+The exterior is now smartened somewhat,&mdash;the shillings of pilgrims would
+pay for that,&mdash;but the abode is pathetically small, bare, and poor. The
+one lower room is so contracted that the Carlyles could not all sit at
+the table, and Thomas used to eat his porridge outside the door. Some
+Carlyle relics from Cheyne Row&mdash;letters, portraits, pieces of china,
+study-lamp, tea-caddy, and other articles&mdash;are preserved in the room
+above, and adjoining it is the narrow chamber above the archway where
+the great historian, essayist, and cynic was born. In this comfortless
+home, and amid the dreary surroundings of this hard and rough village,
+which is little improved since the days of border war and pillage, he
+was reared. The stern savagery of the physical horizon of his boyhood
+here, and the hateful and uncongenial character of his environment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> at
+the most impressionable period of his life, may account to us for much
+of the morose cynicism of his later years. Further excuse for his
+petulance and his acerbities of tongue and temper is found in his
+dyspepsia, and a very limited experience of Ecclefechan cookery suffices
+to convince us that his indigestion was another unhappy sequence of his
+early life in this border hamlet. In "Sartor Resartus" he has
+vivaciously recorded some of the incidents and impressions of his
+childhood here,&mdash;notably the passage of the Carlisle coach, like "some
+terrestrial moon, coming from he knew not where, going he knew not
+whither." A shabby cross-street leads to the village graveyard, which
+was old a thousand years ago, and there, within a few rods of the spot
+of his birth, the great Carlyle is forever laid<span class="sidenote">Grave</span>, with his parents and
+kindred. The yard is a forlorn enclosure, huddled with hundreds of
+unmarked graves, and with other hundreds of crumbling memorials drooping
+aslant among the brambles which infest the place. The tombstone of
+Carlyle, within an iron railing, is a little more pretentious than those
+about it, but his grave seems neglected; daisies and coarse grass grow
+about it, and the only tokens of reverent memory it bears are placed by
+Americans, who constitute the majority of the pilgrims to this place.
+Not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> far from the kirk-yard is a lowly cottage, hardly better than a
+hut, in which dwelt Burns's "Lass of Ecclefechan."</p>
+
+<p>By a transverse road from Lockerby we come to the ruined Lochmaben
+Castle of Bruce, and thence into Nithsdale and to Dumfries,<span class="sidenote">Dumfries</span> the ancient
+capital of southwestern Scotland. Here lived Edward Irving, and here
+Allan Cunningham toiled as a common mason; but the gray town is
+interesting to us chiefly because of its associations with Burns. Here
+are the tavern, familiar to us as the "howff," which he frequented, and
+where he made love to the bar-maid, "Anna of the Gowden Locks;" the
+parlor where his wit kept the table in a roar; the heavy chair in the
+"ingle neuk" where he habitually sat, and, in the room above, the lines
+to "Lovely Polly Stewart" graven by his hand upon the pane. From the inn
+a malodorous lane, named Burns Street, and oft threaded by the bard when
+he "wasna fou but just had plenty," leads to the poor dwelling<span class="sidenote">Burns's Dwelling</span> where
+lived and died the poet of his country and of mankind. An environment
+more repulsive and depressing, a spot more unworthy to be the home of a
+poet of nature, can scarcely be imagined. Here not a flower nor a green
+bough, not even a grass-blade, met his vision, not one beautiful object
+appeased his poetic taste; he saw only the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> squalid street infested by
+unwashed bairns and bordered by rows of mean cottages. How shall we
+extol the genius which in such an uncongenial atmosphere produced those
+exquisite poems which for a century have been read and loved in every
+clime? His own dwelling, a bare two-storied cottage, is hardly more
+decent than its neighbors. Within, we find a kitchen and sitting-room,
+small and low-ceiled; above, a windowed closet,&mdash;sometimes used by the
+poet as a study,&mdash;and the poor little chamber where he died, only
+thirty-seven years after he first saw the light in the clay biggin by
+his bonnie Doon.</p>
+
+<p>The interior of St. Michael's Church has been refitted, and the
+sacristan can show us now only the site of Burns's seat, behind a great
+pillar which hid him from the preacher, and that of the Jenny on whose
+bonnet he saw the "crowlin'" pediculus. Through the crowded church-yard
+a path beaten by countless pilgrims from every quarter of the globe
+conducts to the place where he lies with "Bonnie Jean" and some of their
+children.<span class="sidenote">Tomb</span> The costly mausoleum which now covers his tomb&mdash;erected by
+those who had neglected or shunned him in his life&mdash;is to us less
+impressive than the poor little gravestone which the faithful Jean first
+placed above him, which now forms part of the pavement.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> The ambitious
+statue, designed to represent Genius throwing her mantle over Burns at
+the plough, suggests, as some one has said, that a bath-woman bringing a
+wet sheet to an unwilling patient had served as a model. Oddly enough,
+the grave of John Bushby, an attorney oft lampooned in Burns's verse,
+lies but a few feet from that of the poet.</p>
+
+<p>Our ramble along the wimpling Nith lies for the most part in a second
+Burnsland, so closely is it associated with his personality and poetry.
+The beauties of the stream itself are celebrated in half a score of his
+songs. Every seat and scene are sung in his verse; every neighborhood
+and almost every house preserve some priceless relic or some touching
+reminiscence of the ploughman-bard. A short way above Dumfries we come
+to the picturesque ruin of Lincluden Abbey, at the meeting of the waters
+of Cluden and Nith. The crumbling walls are enshrouded in ivy and
+surrounded by giant trees, among which Burns loved to loiter. His
+"Evening View" and "Vision" commemorate this ruin, and the poem
+"Lincluden" was written here. In a tasteful cottage not far from the
+Abbey sojourned the Mrs. Goldie who communicated to Scott the incidents
+which he wrought into his "Heart of Mid-Lothian," and it was in the
+little kitchen of this cottage that the lady talked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> with Helen Walker,
+the original Jeanie Deans.<span class="sidenote">Jeanie Deans</span> In a poor little low-eaved dwelling, a mile
+or two up the valley, that heroine lived, keeping a dame's school and
+rearing chickens; and our course along the tuneful stream brings us to
+the ancient and sequestered kirk-yard of Irongray, where, among the
+grass-grown graves of the Covenanters, her ashes repose beneath a
+tombstone erected by Scott himself and marked by an inscription from his
+hand: "Respect the Grave of Poverty when associated with love of Truth
+and dear Affection." Farther in this lovely region we come to ancient
+Dunscore and the monument of Scott's "Old Mortality;" and beyond
+Moniaive we find, near the source of the Cairn, Craigenputtock&mdash;the<span class="sidenote">Carlyle's Craigenputtock</span>
+abode where "Thomas the Thunderer prepared his bolts" before he removed
+to London. This dreary place, "the loneliest in Britain," had been the
+abode of many generations of Mrs. Carlyle's ancestors,&mdash;among whom were
+"several black-guards but not one blockhead,"&mdash;and Carlyle rebuilt and
+furnished the house here to which he brought the bride he had wedded
+after his repulsion by his fair Rose-goddess, the Blumine of his
+"Romance." It is a severely plain and substantial two-storied structure
+of stone with steep gables. The entrance is under a little porch in the
+middle of the front; on either side<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> is a single window, with another
+above it in the second story. There are comfortable and commodious rooms
+at each side of the entrance, and a large kitchen is joined at the back.
+Carlyle's study, a rather sombre apartment, with a dispiriting outlook,
+is at the left; a fireplace which the sage especially loved is in one
+wall, his writing-table stood near it, and here he sat and clothed in
+virile diction the brilliant thoughts which had come to him as he paced
+among his trees or loitered on the near hill-tops. The dining-room and
+parlor are on the other side, looking out upon wild and gloomy crags.
+Mrs. Carlyle's pen long ago introduced us to this interior, and,
+although all her furniture, except perhaps the kitchen "dresser," has
+been removed, we recognize the household nooks she has mentioned. The
+kitchen, which was the scene of her tearful housekeeping trials, seems
+most familiar; its chimney retains its abominable habits, but a recent
+incumbent, instead of crying as did Mrs. Carlyle, declared the "chimla
+made her feel like sweerin'." Great ash-trees, which were old when the
+sage dwelt beneath them, overtop the house; many beautiful flowers&mdash;some
+survivors of those planted by Carlyle and his wife&mdash;bloom in the yard.
+In front a wide field slopes away to a tributary of the Cairn, but
+sombre moorland hills rise at the back and cluster close about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+house on either side, imparting to the place an indescribably depressing
+aspect: as we contemplate the desolate savagery of this wilderness, we
+can understand why one of Carlyle's predecessors here killed himself and
+others "took to drink."</p>
+
+<p>The bare summit behind the house overlooks Carlyle's estate of a
+thousand acres and, beyond it, an expanse of bleak hills and black
+morasses. From the craggy brow on the left, the spot where Carlyle and
+Emerson sat and talked of the immortality of the soul, we see Dunscore
+and a superb vista of the valley towards Dumfries and the Wordsworth
+country. The isolation of this place&mdash;so complete that at one time not
+even a beggar came here for three months&mdash;was an advantage to Carlyle at
+this period. He speaks of it as a place of plain living and high
+thinking: life here appeared to him "an humble russet-coated epic," and
+long afterward he referred to the years of their stay in this waste as
+being "perhaps the happiest of their lives." This expresses his own
+feeling rather than that of his wife, whose discontent finds expression
+in many ways, notably in her poem "To a Swallow." Carlyle produced here
+some of his best work, including the matchless "Sartor Resartus," the
+essay on Burns, and several scintillant articles for the various reviews
+which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> denoted the rise of a new star of genius; but the period of his
+stay here was essentially one of study and thought, and, plenteous as it
+was in production, it was more prolific in preparation for the great
+work he had to do. To Carlyle in this solitude Jeffrey was a visitor, as
+well as "Christopher North," Hazlitt, and Edward Irving: hither, "like
+an angel from heaven," came Emerson to greet the new genius on the
+threshold of its career and to enjoy the "quiet night of clear, fine
+talk." Carlyle bequeathed this estate to the University of Edinburgh.</p>
+
+<p>Another day, our ramble follows the winding Nith northward from
+Lincluden. As we proceed, the lovely and opulent dale, once the scene of
+clannish strife, presents an appearance of peaceful beauty, pervaded
+everywhere with the sentiment of Burns. In one enchanting spot the
+stream circles about the grounds of ancient Friars Carse,<span class="sidenote">Friars Carse</span> now a tasteful
+and pretty seat. It was erstwhile the residence of Burns's friend
+Riddel, to which the poet was warmly welcomed: here he composed the poem
+"Thou whom Chance may hither lead," and here he presided at the famous
+drinking-match which he told to future ages in "The Whistle." It is
+noteworthy that the first Scotch winner of the Whistle was father of
+Annie Laurie of the popular song, and that the contest here was between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+two of her grandnephews and her grandson,&mdash;the latter being victorious.
+Burns celebrated his friend of this old hermitage in seven of his poems;
+and the present proprietor carefully cherishes the window upon whose
+pane the bard inscribed "Lines written in Friars Carse." A little way
+beyond lies Druidical Holywood, where once dwelt the author of "De
+Sphæra," and next we find the Nith curving among the acres which Burns
+tilled in his happiest years, at Ellisland.<span class="sidenote">Burns's Ellisland</span> Embowered in roses and
+perched upon an eminence overhanging the stream is the plain little
+dwelling which he erected with his own hands for the reception of his
+bonnie Jean. It is little changed since the time he lived under its
+lowly roof. We think the rooms dingy and bare, but they are better than
+those of his abode at Alloway and Mossgiel, much better than those in
+which he died at Dumfries. In the largest of the apartments, by a window
+which looks down the dreamful valley, Burns had a rude table, and here
+he penned some of the most touchingly beautiful poetry of our
+language,&mdash;poems which he had pondered as he worked or walked afield.
+Adjoining the house is the yard where he produced the exquisite lines
+"To Mary in Heaven;" in this near-by field he met "The Wounded Hare" of
+his verse; in yonder path along the murmuring Nith he composed the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+immortal "Tam O'Shanter," laughing aloud the while at the pictures his
+fancy conjured; and all about us are reminders of the bard and of the
+idyllic life which here inspired his muse: it would repay a longer
+journey to see the spot where the one song "John Anderson, my Jo" was
+pondered and written.</p>
+
+<p>A further jaunt amid varied beauties of woodland shade and meadow
+sunshine, of gentle dale and savage scaur, brings us past historic
+Closeburn to the neighborhood of Thornhill. Here at the Buccleuch Arms
+the illegitimate daughter of Burns was for thirty years a servant, and
+boasted of having had a chat with Scott among the burnished utensils of
+her kitchen. Two miles eastward Scott found the Balfour's Cave and Leap
+described in "Old Mortality." Middle Nithsdale expands into a broad
+valley, commanded by lofty Queensberry and lower green hills and
+diversified with upland brae, shadowy copse, sunny mead, and opulent
+plantation. This lovely region, dotted with pretty hamlets, embowered
+villas, and moss-grown ruins, and teeming with the charming associations
+of history and sentiment, holds for us a crowning interest which has
+drawn our steps into its romantic haunts: it was the birthplace and
+life-long home of Annie Laurie.<span class="sidenote">Annie Laurie&mdash;Early Home</span> On the right of the Nith, among the
+bonnie braes of the song, we find the ancient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> manor-house of Maxwelton,
+where the heroine was born. The first of her race to reside here was her
+great-grandfather, who in 1611 built additions to the old tower already
+existing. The marriage-stone of Annie Laurie's grandparents, John Laurie
+and Agnes Grierson, is set in the massive walls and graven with their
+initials, crest, and date. This Agnes was daughter of the bloody
+persecutor who figures in "Redgauntlet," and whose ashes lie in Dunscore
+kirk-yard, not far distant. Another stone in the Maxwelton house
+commemorates the marriage of Robert Laurie and Jean Riddel, the parents
+of the heroine of the song,&mdash;this Robert being the champion of Bacchus
+who won the Whistle from the noble Danish toper. In this ancient abode,
+according to a record made by her father, "At the pleasure of the
+Almighty God, my daughter Anna Laurie was born upon the 16th day of
+Decr., 1682 years, about six o'clock in the morning;" here the bonnie
+maiden grew to womanhood; here occurred the episode to which the world
+is indebted for the sweet song; from here she married and went to her
+future home, but a few miles away. In the last century much of the
+venerable edifice was destroyed, but the older portion, which had been
+part of a stronghold in the time of the border wars, remains intact
+since Annie dwelt within. This part is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> still called The Tower, and
+consists of a large rectangular structure, with a ponderous
+semi-circular fabric abutting it at one end, its fortress-like walls
+being five feet in thickness and clothed by a luxuriant growth of ivy.
+Newer portions have been added in varying styles, and the mansion is now
+an elegant and substantial seat. All about it lie terraced lawns, with
+parterres of flowers, noble trees, and banks of shrubbery: lovely
+grounds slope away from the house and command an enchanting view which
+must often have delighted the vision of the fair Annie. Her boudoir is
+in the second story of The Tower; it is a corner room, forming now an
+alcove of the drawing-room; it has a vaulted ceiling of stone, and its
+windows, pierced in the ponderous walls, look out through the ivy and
+across an expanse of sward, flower, and foliage to the wooded braes
+where she kept tryst with her lover. Among the treasures of the old
+house is a portrait of the bonnie heroine which shows her as an
+impressively beautiful woman, of lissome figure, large and tender eyes,
+long oval face with Grecian features, wide forehead framed by a
+profusion of dark-brown hair. Her hands, like her "fairy feet," were of
+exceptional smallness and beauty. The present owner of Maxwelton, to
+whom the writer is indebted for many courtesies, is Sir Emilius Laurie;
+from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> him and from the lineal descendants of the widely-sung Annie who
+still inhabit Nithsdale are derived the materials for this account of
+that winsome lady. The lover<span class="sidenote">Annie Laurie and her Lover</span> who immortalized her was William Douglas of
+Fingland, and she requited him by breaking "her promise true" and
+marrying another man. Douglas is said to have been the hero of the song
+"Willie was a Wanton Wag;" he was one of the best swordsmen of his time,
+and his personal qualities gained him the patronage of the Queensberry
+family and secured him social advantages to which his lower rank and
+poverty constituted no claim. He and Annie met at an Edinburgh ball, and
+seem to have promptly become enamoured of each other. To separate them,
+Sir Robert quickly carried his family back to Nithsdale, but Douglas as
+quickly followed, and lurked in the vicinage for some months,
+clandestinely meeting his love among "Maxwelton's bonnie braes." Here the
+pair plighted troth, and when Douglas returned to Edinburgh, to assist
+in a projected Stuart uprising, he took with him the promise which he
+celebrated in the tender melody. The song was published in an Edinburgh
+paper and attracted much notice. Douglas's devotion to the Jacobites
+cost him his sweetheart; his political intrigues being suspected, he was
+forced to fly the country, and when, after some years passed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> France,
+he secured pardon and returned, she was the wife of another. After
+giving "her promise true" to some other lovers, she married in 1709
+Alexander Fergusson, a neighboring laird, who could not write poetry but
+had "muckle siller an' lan'" and a genealogy as long as Leviticus.
+Douglas and Annie never met again, and she makes but a single reference
+to him in her letters: being told of his return, she wrote to her
+sister, Mrs. Riddel, grandmother of Burns's friend, "I trust he has
+forsaken his treasonable opinions and is content."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Her Later Home</div>
+
+<p>A stroll of but a few miles along a delightful way, fanned by the sweet
+summer winds, brings us to Craigdarrock, Annie Laurie's home for more
+than half a century. It is a spacious and handsome edifice of three
+stories, with dormer-windows in the hip-roof; a conservatory is
+connected at one end, bow-windows project from either side, and
+clambering vines cover the walls of the lower stories.</p>
+
+<p>It is beautifully placed in a vale overlooking the winding stream, with
+the rugged Craigdarrock looming steeply in the background. Most of the
+mansion was built under the direction of Annie Laurie, and the gardens
+were laid out by her in their formal style: a delightful walk beneath
+the trees on the margin of the water was her favorite resort, and is
+still known by her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> name. Within the spacious rooms are preserved many
+of her belongings: curious furniture and hangings, quaint fineries of
+dress, her porcelain snuff-box, her will, a package of her letters
+written in the prim fashion of her time and signed "Anna." Through these
+epistles we look in vain for indications of the wit and genius which one
+naturally attributes to the possessor of the bright face which inspired
+a deathless song. In this house she lived happily with her husband, and
+was at once the Lady Bountiful and the matchmaker-in-ordinary for the
+whole countryside; here she died, aged seventy-nine. This estate has
+been handed down from father to son for fifteen generations, the present
+urbane laird, Captain Cutlar Fergusson, being a great-great-grandson of
+Annie Laurie and grandson of the hero of Burns's "Whistle." This famous
+trophy&mdash;a plain object in dark wood&mdash;is preserved here at Craigdarrock,
+and has not been challenged for since the bout which Burns witnessed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img3.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption"><span class="smcap">Home of Annie Laurie</span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Burial-place</div>
+
+<p>In the now ruined church of Glencairn, hardly a mile from her
+birthplace, and not far from her later home, Annie Laurie worshipped,
+and in its yard, which has been a place of burial for a thousand years,
+she was laid with her husband, among the many generations of his
+kindred, by the gable-end of the ancient church. Her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> sepulchre was not
+marked, and it is to be feared the bones of the erst beauteous lady have
+been more than once disturbed in excavating for later interments in the
+crowded plot. From the summit of Craigdarrock we look upon the wilder
+beauty of the upper Nith, a region of moorland hills and dusky glens,
+where we may find the birthplace of "the Admirable Crichton," and beyond
+it the bleak domain where the poet Allan Ramsay first saw the light.
+Beyond this, again, the sweet Afton "flows amang its green braes," and
+we come to the Ayrshire shrines of Burns.</p>
+
+<p>A few miles westward from Craigdarrock, and not so far from Carlyle's
+lonely den, is Fingland farm, the birthplace and home of Annie's
+poet-lover. It lies among sterile hills in the wild Glenkens of ancient
+Galloway, near the source of Ken water. From neighboring elevations we
+see Craigenputtock and the swelling Solway, and westward we look, across
+the dark fens and heathery hills of the region "blest with the smell of
+bog-myrtle and peat," almost to the Irish Sea. In this region Crockett
+was reared, and he pictures it in his charming tales "The Raiders" and
+"The Lilac Sunbonnet."</p>
+
+<p>No trace of the peel-tower in which Douglas dwelt remains, but we know
+that it stood within<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> an enclosing wall twenty yards square and one yard
+in thickness. The tower had projecting battlements; its apartments,
+placed above each other, were reached by a narrow, easily defended
+stair. In such a home and amid this most dismal environment Douglas grew
+to manhood, his poetic power unsuspected until it was called forth by
+the love and beauty of Annie Laurie. Later he wrote many poems, but
+diligent inquiry among the families of Buccleuch and Queensberry shows
+that few of his productions are now extant save the famous love-song. It
+is notable that he did not "lay doun his head and die" for the faithless
+Annie; instead, he made a runaway marriage with Elizabeth Clerk, of
+Glenborg, in his native Galloway, subsided into prosy country life, and
+reared a family of six children, of whom one, Archibald, rose to the
+rank of lieutenant-general in Brittany.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Annie Laurie&mdash;The Singer and the Song</div>
+
+<p>Douglas's song was revised by Lady Scott, sister of the late Duke of
+Buccleuch, and published by her for the benefit of the widows and
+orphans made by the Crimean War. Lines of the original, for which the
+writer is indebted to a descendant of Annie Laurie, are hereto appended,
+that the reader may appreciate how much of the tender beauty of the
+popular version of the song is attributable to the poetic talent of Lady
+Scott.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"Maxwelton banks are bonnie,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where early fa's the dew,</span><br />
+Where me and Annie Laurie<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Made up the promise true:</span><br />
+Made up the promise true,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And ne'er forget will I:</span><br />
+And for bonnie Annie Laurie<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I'd lay doun my head and die.</span><br />
+<br />
+"She's backit like a peacock;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She's breastit like a swan;</span><br />
+She's jimp about the middle;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her waist ye weel may span:</span><br />
+Her waist ye weel may span,&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She has a rolling eye;</span><br />
+And for bonnie Annie Laurie<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I'd lay doun my head and die."</span></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">A NIECE OF ROBERT BURNS</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Her Burnsland Cottage&mdash;Reminiscences of
+Burns&mdash;Relics&mdash;Portraits&mdash;Letters&mdash;Recitations&mdash;Account of his
+Death&mdash;Memories of his Home&mdash;Of Bonnie Jean&mdash;Other Heroines.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">IN the course of a summer ramble in Burnsland we had sought out the
+homes, the haunts, the tomb of the ploughman poet, and had bent at many
+a shrine hallowed by his memory or his song. From the cottage of "Bonnie
+Jean" and the tomb of "Holy Willie," the field of the "Mountain Daisy"
+and the church of the "Holy Fair," the birthplace of "Highland Mary" and
+the grave of "Mary Morison," we came to the shrines of auld Ayr, beside
+the sea. Here we find the "Twa Brigs" of his poem; the graves of the
+ministers satirized in "The Kirk's Alarm;" the old inn of "Tam
+O'Shanter," and the very room, with its ingle, where Tam and Souter
+Johnny "got fou thegither," and where we may sip the nappy from the
+wooden caup which Tam often drained. From Ayr a delightful stroll along
+the highway where Tam made his memorable ride, and where William Burns
+carried the howdie upon the pillion behind him on another stormy
+winter's night when the poet was born, brought us to the hamlet of
+Alloway and the place of Burns's early life. Here are the auld clay
+biggin, with its rude stone floor and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> roof of thatch, erected by the
+unskilled hands of his father, where the poet first saw the light, and
+where he laid the scene of the immortal "Cotter's Saturday Night;" the
+fields where his young hands toiled to aid his burdened sire; the
+kirk-yard where his kindred lie buried, some of their epitaphs written
+by him; the "auld haunted kirk,"&mdash;where Tam interrupted the witches'
+dance,&mdash;unknown save for the genius of the lad born by its roofless
+walls; the Burns monument, with its priceless relics; the ivy-grown
+bridge, four centuries old, whose arch spans the songful stream and
+across which Tam galloped in such sore peril, and its "key-stane," where
+Meg lost "her ain gray tail" to Nannie, fleetest of the pursuers; the
+enchanting "banks and braes of bonnie Doon," where Burns wandered a
+brown-eyed boy, and later found the inspiration of many of his exquisite
+strains. We have known few scenes more lovely than this in which his
+young life was passed: long and delightful is our lingering here, for
+interwoven with the many natural beauties are winsome memories of the
+bard whose spirit and genius pervade all the scene.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="sidenote">Miss Burns Begg</span>Returning thence past the "thorn aboon the well" (the well is closed
+now) and the "meikle-stane" to the ancient ford "where in the snaw the
+chapman smoor'd," we made a détour southward,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> and came by a pleasant
+way&mdash;having in view on the right the picturesque ruin of Greenan Castle
+upon a cliff overhanging the sea&mdash;to Bridgeside cottage,<span class="sidenote">Bridgeside Cot</span> the home of
+Miss Isabella Burns Begg, niece of the poet and long his only surviving
+near relative. We found a cottage of stone, from whose thatched roof a
+dormer-window, brilliant with flowers, peeped out through the foliage
+which half concealed the tiny homelet. The trimmest of little maids
+admitted us at the gate and led along a path bordered with flowers to
+the cottage door, where stood Miss Begg beaming a welcome upon the
+pilgrims from America. We were ushered into a prettily furnished little
+room, upon whose walls hung a portrait of Burns, one of his sister Mrs.
+Begg, and some framed autograph letters of the bard, which the niece
+"knew by heart." She was the daughter and namesake of Burns's youngest
+and favorite sister, who married John Begg. We found her a singularly
+active and vivacious old lady, cheery and intelligent, and more than
+pleased to have secured appreciative auditors for her reminiscences of
+her gifted uncle. She was of slender habit, had a bright and winning
+face, soft gray hair partially concealed by a cap, and when she was
+seated beneath the Burns portrait we could see that her large dark
+eyes&mdash;now sparkling with merriment or misty with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> emotion, and again
+literally glowing with feeling&mdash;were like those on the canvas. Among the
+treasures of this room was a worn copy of Thomson's "Seasons," a
+favorite book of Burns, which he had freely annotated; his name in it is
+written "Burnes," as the family spelled it down to the publication of
+the bard's first volume. In the course of a long and pleasant chat we
+learned that Miss Begg had lived many years in the cottage, first with
+her mother and later with her sister Agnes,&mdash;named for Burns's
+mother,&mdash;who died before our visit and was laid beside her parents and
+the father of Burns in the kirk-yard of auld Alloway, where Miss Begg
+expected "soom day, please God an it be soon," to go to await the
+resurrection, thinking it an "ill hap" that she survived her sister. She
+innocently inquired if we "kenned her nephew Robert in America," and
+then explained that he and a niece of hers had formerly lived with her,
+but she had discovered that "they were sweetheartin' and wantin' to
+marry, which she wouldna allow, so they went to America," leaving her
+alone with her handmaiden. Most of her visitors had been Americans. She
+remembered the visits of Hawthorne, Grant, Stanley, and Helen Hunt
+Jackson,&mdash;the last with greatest pleasure,&mdash;and thought that "Americans
+care most about Burns." She mentioned the visit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> of a Virginian maid,
+who by rapturous praise of the uncle completely won the heart of the
+niece. The fair enthusiast had most of Burns's poems at her tongue's
+end, but insisted upon having them repeated by Miss Begg, and at parting
+exclaimed, after much kissing, "Oh, but I always pray God that when he
+takes me to heaven he will give me the place next to Burns." Apparently,
+Robin still has power to disturb the peace of "the lasses O." Yet we can
+well excuse the effusiveness of our compatriot: to have listened to the
+old lady as she sat under his portrait, her eyes twinkling or softening
+like his own, her voice thrilling with sympathetic feeling as she
+repeated<span class="sidenote">Recitations</span> in his own sweet dialect the tender stanzas, "But pleasures are
+like poppies spread," "My Mary! dear departed shade!" and "Oh, happy
+love, when love like this is found," and others of like pathos and
+beauty, is a rapture not to be forgotten. She spoke quickly, and the
+Scottish accent kept one's ears on the alert, but it rendered the lines
+doubly effective and melodious. Many of the poems were inspired by
+special events of which Miss Begg had knowledge from her mother, which
+she recalled with evident relish. She distinctly remembered the bard's
+widow, "Bonnie Jean,"<span class="sidenote">Bonnie Jean</span> and often visited her in the poor home where he
+died. Jean had a sunny temper,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> a kind heart, a handsome figure, a fine
+voice, and lustrous eyes, but her brunette face was never bonnie. While
+she lacked intellectual appreciation of his genius, she was proud of and
+idolized him, finding ready excuse and forgiveness for his failings.
+When the frail "Anna with the Gowden Locks" bore him an illegitimate
+child, Jean cradled it with her own, and loyally averred to all
+visitors, "It's only a neebor's bairn I'm bringin' up." ("Ay, she must
+'a' lo'ed him," was Miss Begg's comment on this part of her narrative.)
+Jean had told that in his last years the poet habitually wore a blue
+coat, with nankeen trousers (when the weather would allow), and his
+coat-collar was so high that his hat turned up at the back. Her account
+of the manner of his death is startling, and differs from that given by
+the biographers. He lay apparently asleep when "sweet Jessy"&mdash;to whom
+his last poem was written&mdash;approached, and, to remind him of his
+medicine, touched the cup to his lips; he started, drained the cup, then
+sprang headlong to the foot of the bed, threw his hands forward like one
+about to swim, and, falling on his face, expired with a groan. Jean saw
+him for the last time on the evening before his funeral, when his wasted
+body lay in a cheap coffin covered with flowers, his care-worn face
+framed by the wavy masses of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> sable hair, then sprinkled with gray.
+At his death he left MSS. in the garret of his abode, which were
+scattered and lost because Jean was unable to take care of them,&mdash;a loss
+which must ever be deplored.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Reminiscences</div>
+
+<p>One of the delights of Miss Begg's girlhood was the converse of Burns's
+mother concerning her first-born and favorite child, the poet, a theme
+of which she never tired. Miss Begg remembered her as a "chirk" old lady
+with snapping black eyes and an abundant stock of legends and ballads.
+She used to declare that Bobbie had often heard her sing "Auld Lang
+Syne" in his boyhood; hence it would appear that, at most, he only
+revised that precious old song. Miss Begg more than once heard the
+mother tell, with manifest gusto, this incident of their residence at
+Lochlea. Robert was already inclined to be wild, and between visiting
+his sweetheart Ellison Begbie&mdash;"the lass of the twa sparkling, roguish
+een"&mdash;and attending the Tarbolton club and Masonic lodge was abroad
+until an unseemly hour every night, and his mother or Isabella sat up to
+let him in. His anxious sire, the priest-like father of the "Cotter's
+Saturday Night," determined to administer an effectual rebuke to the
+son's misconduct,<span class="sidenote">Burns' Youth</span> and one night startled the mother by announcing
+significantly that he would wait to admit the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> lad. She lay for hours
+(Robert was later than ever that night), dreading the encounter between
+the two, till she heard the boy whistling "Tibbie Fowler" as he
+approached. Then the door opened: the father grimly demanded what had
+kept him so late; the son, for reply, gave a comical description of his
+meeting auld Hornie on the way home,&mdash;an adventure narrated in the
+"Address to the De'il,"&mdash;and next the mother heard the pair seat
+themselves by the fire, where for two hours the father roared with
+laughter at Robert's ludicrous account of the evening's doings at the
+club,&mdash;she, meanwhile, nearly choking with her efforts to restrain the
+laughter which might remind her husband of his intended reproof.
+Thereafter the lad stayed out as late as he pleased without rebuke. The
+niece had been told by her mother that Burns was deeply distressed at
+his father's death-bed by the old man's fears for the future of his
+wayward son; and when his father's death made Robert the head of the
+family, he every morning led the household in "the most beautiful
+prayers ever heard;" later, at Ellisland and elsewhere, he continued
+this practice, and on the Sabbath instructed them in the Catechism and
+Confession. Mrs. Begg's most pleasing recollections of her brother were
+associated with the farm-life at Mossgiel, where he so far gave her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> his
+confidence that she was allowed to see his poems in the course of their
+composition. He would ponder his stanzas during his labors afield, and
+when he came to the house for a meal he would go to the little garret
+where he and his brother Gilbert slept and hastily pen them upon a table
+which stood under the one little window. Here Isabella would find them,
+and, after repeated perusals, would arrange them in the drawer; and so
+it passed that her bright eyes were the first, besides his own, to see
+"The Twa Dogs," "Winter's Night," "The Bard's Epitaph," "The Cotter's
+Saturday Night," the satirical poems, and most of the productions which
+were published in his Kilmarnock volume. His sister testified that he
+was always affectionate to the family, and that after his removal to a
+home of his own he invariably brought a present for each when he
+revisited the farm, the present for his mother being always, despite his
+poverty, a costly pound of tea. Most of the receipts from his publishers
+were given to the family at Mossgiel.<span class="sidenote">Mossgiel</span> Miss Begg intimated that Burns's
+mother did not at first like his wife, because of the circumstances of
+the marriage, but Jean's stanch devotion to her husband won the heart of
+the doting mother, and they became warm friends and spent much time
+together after Burns's death. The niece believed that the accounts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> of
+his intemperance are mostly untrue. Her mother, who was twenty-five
+years old at the time of his decease, always asserted that she "never
+saw him fou," and believed it was his antagonism to the "unco' guid"
+that made them ready to believe and circulate any idle report to his
+discredit.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Begg saw and liked "Highland Mary" at the house of Gavin Hamilton,
+and knew Miss Dunlop, the blooming Keith of Burns's "New-Year Day."
+Another of his heroines the niece had herself visited with her mother;
+this was Mrs. Jessy Thompson, <i>née</i> Lewars, who was a ministering angel
+in his final illness, and was repaid by the only thing he could
+bestow,&mdash;a song of exquisite sweetness, "Here's a health to ane I lo'e
+dear." Our informant had seen in that lady's hands the lines beginning
+"Thine be the volumes, Jessy fair," which the poet gave her with a
+present of books within a month of his death. Many other reminiscences<span class="sidenote">Recollections</span>
+related by the niece are to be found in the biographies of the bard, and
+need not be repeated. The letters which hung upon her walls are not
+included in any published collection. She assisted us in copying the
+following to Burns's youngest brother:</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">A Letter of Burns</div>
+
+<p class="bqright"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+"<span class="smcap">Isle</span>, Tuesday Evening.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"<span class="smcap">Dear William</span>,&mdash;In my last I recommended that valuable apothegm, Learn
+taciturnity. It is certain that nobody can know our thoughts, and yet,
+from a slight observation of mankind, one would not think so. What
+mischiefs daily arise from silly garrulity and foolish confidence! There
+is an excellent Scots saying that a man's mind is his kingdom. It is
+certainly so, but how few can govern that kingdom with propriety! The
+serious mischiefs in Business which this Flux of language occasions do
+not come immediately to your situation, but in another point of
+view&mdash;the dignity of man&mdash;now is the time that will make or mar. Yours
+is the time of life for laying in habits. You cannot avoid it, tho' you
+will choose, and these habits will stick to your last end. At
+after-periods, even at so little advance as my years, 'tis true that one
+may still be very sharp-sighted to one's habitual failings and
+weaknesses, but to eradicate them, or even to amend them, is quite a
+different matter. Acquired at first by accident, they by-and-by begin to
+be, as it were, a necessary part of our existence. I have not time for
+more. Whatever you read, whatever you hear of that strange creature man,
+look into the living world about you, look to yourself, for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> the
+evidences of the fact or the application of the doctrine. I am ever
+yours,</p>
+
+<p class="bqright">"<span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"<span class="smcap">Mr. William Burns</span>, Saddler, Longtown."</p>
+
+<p>The sentiment and style of this epistle are suggestive of the stilted
+conversations of Burns, recorded in Hugh Miller's "Recollections." Miss
+Begg was pleased by some account we could give her of American Burns
+monuments and festivals; she seemed reluctant to have us leave, called
+to us a cheery "God keep ye!" when we were without the gate, and stood
+looking after us until the intervening foliage hid her from our sight.
+As we walked Ayr-ward, while the sun was setting in a golden haze behind
+the hills of Arran, we felt that we had been very near to Burns that
+day,&mdash;had almost felt the thrill of his presence, the charm of his
+voice, and had in some measure made a personal acquaintance with him
+which would evermore move us to a tenderer regard for the man and a
+truer appreciation of his verse, as well as a fuller charity for his
+faults:</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+We know in part what he has done,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">God knows what he resisted.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>For some months after our visit to Bridgeside, quaint letters&mdash;one of
+them containing a portrait of the worthy occupant of the
+cottage&mdash;followed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> us thence across the sea. These came at increasing
+intervals and then stopped; the kindly heart of the niece<span class="sidenote">Death of Burns's Niece</span> of Burns had
+ceased to beat on her eightieth birthday.</p>
+
+<p>A recent pilgrim in Burnsland found an added line on the gravestone in
+the old kirk-yard, to tell that Isabella Burns Begg rests there in
+eternal peace. At Bridgeside, her once cherished garden is a waste and
+her tiny cottage has wholly disappeared. "So do things pass away like a
+tale that is told."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">HIGHLAND MARY: HER HOMES AND GRAVE</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Birthplace&mdash;Personal Appearance&mdash;Relations to Burns&mdash;Abodes:
+Mauchline, Coilsfield etc.&mdash;Scenes of Courtship and
+Parting&mdash;Mementos&mdash;Tomb by the Clyde.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">THERE is no stronger proof of the transcending power of the genius of
+Burns than is found in the fact that, by a bare half dozen of his
+stanzas, an humble dairy servant&mdash;else unheard of outside her parish and
+forgotten at her death&mdash;is immortalized as a peeress of Petrarch's Laura
+and Dante's Beatrice, and has been for a century loved and mourned of
+all the world. We owe much of our tenderest poesy to the heroines whose
+charms have attuned the fancy and aroused the impassioned muse of
+enamoured bards; readers have always exhibited a natural avidity to
+realize the personality of the beings who inspired the tender
+lays,&mdash;prompted often by mere curiosity, but more often by a desire to
+appreciate the tastes and motives of the poets themselves. How little is
+known of Highland Mary, the most famous heroine of modern song, is shown
+by the brief, incoherent, and often contradictory allusions to her which
+the biographies of the ploughman-poet contain. This paper,&mdash;prepared
+during a sojourn in "The Land o' Burns,"&mdash;while it adds a little to our
+meagre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> knowledge of Mary Campbell, aims to present consecutively and
+congruously so much as may now be known of her brief life, her relations
+to the bard, and her sad, heroic death.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Birthplace&mdash;Early Home</div>
+
+<p>She first saw the light in 1764, at Ardrossan, on the coast, fifteen
+miles northward from the "auld town of Ayr." Her parentage was of the
+humblest, her father being a sailor before the mast, and the poor
+dwelling which sheltered her was in no way superior to the meanest of
+those we find to-day on the narrow streets of her village. From her
+birthplace we see, across the Firth of Clyde, the beetling mountains of
+the Highlands, where she afterward dwelt, and southward the great mass
+of Ailsa Craig looming, a gigantic pyramid, out of the sea. Mary was
+named for her aunt, wife of Peter McPherson, a ship-carpenter of
+Greenock, in whose house Mary died. In her infancy her family removed to
+the vicinage of Dunoon, on the western shore of the Firth, eight miles
+below Greenock, leaving the oldest daughter at Ardrossan. Mary grew to
+young womanhood near Dunoon, then returned to Ayrshire, and found
+occupation at Coilsfield, near Tarbolton, where her acquaintance with
+Burns soon began. He told a lady that he first saw Mary while walking in
+the woods of Coilsfield, and first spoke with her at a rustic
+merry-making, and,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> "having the luck to win her regards from other
+suitors," they speedily became intimate. At this period of life Burns's
+"eternal propensity to fall into love" was unusually active, even for
+him, and his passion for Mary (at this time) was one of several which
+engaged his heart in the interval between the reign of Ellison
+Begbie&mdash;"the lass of the twa sparkling, roguish een"&mdash;and that of
+"Bonnie Jean." Mary subsequently became a servant in the house of
+Burns's landlord, Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer of Mauchline, who had early
+recognized the genius of the bard and admitted him to an intimate
+friendship, despite his inferior condition. When Hamilton was persecuted
+by the kirk, Burns, partly out of sympathy with him, wrote the satires,
+"Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Twa Herds," and "The Holy Fair," which
+served to unite the friends more closely, and brought the poet often to
+the house where Mary was an inmate. This house&mdash;a sombre structure of
+stone, little more pretentious than its neighbors&mdash;we found on the
+shabby street not far from Armour's cottage, the church of "The Holy
+Fair," and "Posie Nansie's" inn, where the "Jolly Beggars" used to
+congregate. Among the dingy rooms shown us in Hamilton's house was that
+in which he married Burns to "Bonnie Jean" Armour.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Personal Appearance</div>
+
+<p>The bard's niece, Miss Begg, of Bridgeside,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> told the writer that she
+often heard Burns's mother describe Mary as she saw her at Hamilton's:
+she had a bonnie face, a complexion of unusual fairness, soft blue eyes,
+a profusion of shining hair which fell to her knees, a <i>petite</i> figure
+which made her seem younger than her twenty summers, a bright smile, and
+pleasing manners, which won the old lady's heart. This description is,
+in superlative phrase, corroborated by Lindsay in Hugh Miller's
+"Recollections:" she was "beautiful, sylph-like," her bust and neck were
+"exquisitely moulded," her arms and feet "had a statue-like symmetry and
+marble-like whiteness;" but it was in her lovely countenance that
+"nature seemed to have exhausted her utmost skill,"&mdash;"the loveliest
+creature I have ever seen," etc. All who have written of her have
+noticed her beauty, her good sense, her modesty and self-respect. But
+these qualities were now insufficient to hold the roving fancy of Burns,
+whose "susceptibility to immediate impressions" (so called by Byron, who
+had the same failing) passes belief. His first ephemeral fancy for Mary
+took little hold upon his heart, and the best that can be said of it is
+that it was more innocent than the loves which came before and after it.
+Within a stone's-throw of Mary dwelt Jean Armour, and when the former
+returned to Coilsfield,<span class="sidenote">Betrothal and Parting</span> he promptly fell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> in love with Jean, and solaced
+himself with her more buxom and compliant charms. It was a year or so
+later, when his intercourse with Jean had burdened him with grief and
+shame, that the tender and romantic affection for Mary came into his
+life. She was yet at Coilsfield, and while he was in hiding&mdash;his heart
+tortured by the apparent perfidy of Jean and all the countryside
+condemning his misconduct&mdash;his intimacy with Mary was renewed; his
+quickened vision now discerned her endearing attributes, her trust and
+sympathy were precious in his distress, and awoke in him an affection
+such as he never felt for any other woman. During a few brief weeks the
+lovers spent their evenings and Sabbaths together, loitering amid the</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"Banks and braes and streams around<br />
+The castle of Montgomery,"</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>talking of the golden days that were to be theirs when present troubles
+were past; then came the parting which the world will never forget, and
+Mary relinquished her service and went to her parents at Campbeltown,&mdash;a
+port of Cantyre behind "Arran's mountain isle." Of this parting Burns
+says, in a letter to Thomson, "We met by appointment on the second
+Sunday of May, in a sequestered spot on the Ayr, where we spent the day
+in taking farewell before she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> should embark for the West Highlands to
+prepare for our projected change of life." Lovers of Burns linger over
+this final parting, and detail the impressive ceremonials with which the
+pair solemnized their betrothal: they stood on either side of a brook,
+they laved their hands in the water and scattered it in the air to
+symbolize the purity of their intentions; clasping hands above an open
+Bible, they swore to be true to each other forever, then exchanged
+Bibles, and parted never to meet more. It is not strange that when death
+had left him nothing of her but her poor little Bible, a tress of her
+golden hair, and a tender memory of her love, the recollection of this
+farewell remained in his soul forever. He has pictured it in the
+exquisite lines of "Highland Mary" and "To Mary in Heaven."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mementos</div>
+
+<p>In the monument at Alloway&mdash;between the "auld haunted kirk" and the
+bridge where Maggie lost her tail&mdash;we are shown a memento of the
+parting; it is the Bible which Burns gave to Mary and above which their
+vows were said. At Mary's death it passed to her sister, at Ardrossan,
+who bequeathed it to her son William Anderson; subsequently it was
+carried to America by one of the family, whence it has been recovered to
+be treasured here. It is a pocket edition in two volumes, to one of
+which is attached a lock of poor Mary's shining hair.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> Within the cover
+of the first volume the hand of Burns has written, "And ye shall not
+swear by my name falsely, I am the Lord;" within the second, "Thou shalt
+not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." Upon
+a blank leaf of each volume is Burns's Masonic signet, with the
+signature, "Robert Burns, Mossgiel," written beneath. Mary's
+spinning-wheel is preserved in the adjoining cottage. A few of her
+bright hairs, severed in her fatal fever, are among the treasures of the
+writer and lie before him as he pens these lines.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Coilsfield</div>
+
+<p>A visit to the scenes of the brief passion of the pair is a pleasing
+incident of our Burns-pilgrimage. Coilsfield House is somewhat changed
+since Mary dwelt beneath its roof,&mdash;a great rambling edifice of gray
+weather-worn stone with a row of white pillars aligned along its façade,
+its massive walls embowered in foliage and environed by the grand woods
+which Burns and Mary knew so well. It was then a seat of Colonel Hugh
+Montgomerie, a patron of Burns. The name Coilsfield is derived from
+Coila, the traditional appellation of the district. The grounds comprise
+a billowy expanse of wood and sward; great reaches of turf, dotted with
+trees already venerable when the lovers here had their tryst a hundred
+years ago, slope away from the mansion to the Faile and border its
+murmuring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> course to the Ayr. Here we trace with romantic interest the
+wanderings of the pair during the swift hours of that last day of
+parting love, their lingering way 'neath the "wild wood's thickening
+green," by the pebbled shore of Ayr to the brooklet where their vows
+were made, and thence along the Faile to the woodland shades of
+Coilsfield, where, at the close of that winged day,<span class="sidenote">Plans of the Lovers</span> "pledging oft to
+meet again, they tore themselves asunder." Howitt found at Coilsfield a
+thorn-tree, called by all the country "Highland Mary's thorn," and
+believed to be the place of final parting; years ago the tree was
+notched and broken by souvenir seekers; if it be still in existence the
+present occupant of Coilsfield is unaware.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Burns's Regard for Mary</div>
+
+<p>At the time of his parting with Mary, Burns had already resolved to
+emigrate to Jamaica, and it has been supposed, from his own statements
+and those of his biographers, that the pair planned to emigrate
+together; but Burns soon abandoned this project and, perhaps, all
+thought of marrying Mary. The song commencing "Will ye go to the Indies,
+my Mary?" has been quoted to show he expected her to accompany him, but
+he says, in an epistle to Thomson, that this was his farewell to her,
+and in another song, written while preparing to embark, he declares that
+it is leaving Mary that makes him wish to tarry. Further,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> we find that
+with the first nine pounds received from the sale of his poems he
+purchased a single passage to Jamaica,&mdash;manifestly having no intention
+of taking her with him. Her being at Greenock in October, <i>en route</i> to
+a new place of service at Glasgow, indicates she had no hope that he
+would marry her then, or soon. True, he afterward said she came to
+Greenock to meet him, but it is certain that he knew nothing of her
+being there until after her death. During the summer of 1786, while she
+was preparing to wed him, he indited two love-songs to her, but they are
+not more glowing than those of the same time to several
+inamoratas,&mdash;less impassioned than the "Farewell to Eliza" and allusions
+to Jean in "Farewell, old Scotia's bleak domains,"&mdash;and barely four
+weeks after his ardent and solemn parting with Mary we find him writing
+to Brice, "I do still love Jean to distraction." Poor Mary! Possibly the
+fever mercifully saved her from dying of a broken heart. The bard's
+anomalous affectional condition and conduct may perhaps be explained by
+assuming that he loved Mary with a refined and spiritual passion so
+different from his love for others&mdash;and especially from his conjugal
+love for Jean&mdash;that the passions could coexist in his heart. The
+alternative explanation is that his love for Mary, while she lived, was
+by no means<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> the absorbing passion which he afterward believed it toc
+have been. When death had hallowed his memories of her love and of all
+their sweet intercourse,&mdash;beneficent death! that beautifies, ennobles,
+irradiates, in the remembrance of survivors, the loved ones its touch
+has taken,&mdash;then his soul, swelling with the passion that throbs in the
+strains of "To Mary in Heaven," would not own to itself that its love
+had ever been less.</p>
+
+<p>Mary remained at Campbeltown during the summer of 1786. Coming to
+Greenock in the autumn, she found her brother sick of a malignant fever
+at the house of her aunt; bravely disregarding danger of contagion, she
+devoted herself to nursing him, and brought him to a safe convalescence
+only to be herself stricken by his malady and to rapidly sink and die,<span class="sidenote">Her Death</span> a
+sacrifice to her sisterly affection. By this time the success of his
+poems had determined Burns to remain in Scotland, and he returned to
+Mossgiel, where tidings of Mary's death reached him. His brother relates
+that when the letter was handed to him he went to the window to read it,
+then his face was observed to change suddenly, and he quickly went out
+without speaking. In June of the next year he made a solitary journey to
+the Highlands, apparently drawn by memory of Mary. If, indeed, he
+dropped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> a tear upon her neglected grave and visited her humble Highland
+home, we may almost forgive him the excesses of that tour, if not the
+renewed <i>liaison</i> with Jean which immediately preceded, and the amorous
+correspondence with "Clarinda" (Mrs. M'Lehose) which followed it.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the quality or degree of his passion for Mary living, his grief
+for her dead was deep and tender, and expired only with his life.
+Cherished in his heart, it manifested itself now in some passage of a
+letter, now in some pathetic burst of song,&mdash;like "The Lament" and
+"Highland Mary,"&mdash;and again in some emotional act. Of many such acts
+narrated to the writer by Burns's niece, the following is, perhaps, most
+striking. The poet attended the wedding of Kirstie Kirkpatrick, a
+favorite of his, who often sang his songs for him, and, after the wedded
+pair had retired, a lass of the company, being asked to sing, began
+"Highland Mary." Its effect upon Burns "was painful to witness; he
+started to his feet, prayed her in God's name to forbear, then hastened
+to the door of the marriage-chamber and entreated the bride to come and
+quiet his mind with a verse or two of 'Bonnie Doon.'" The lines "To Mary
+in Heaven" and the pathetic incidents of their composition show most
+touchingly how he mourned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> his fair-haired lassie years after she ceased
+to be. It was at Ellisland, October 20, 1789, the anniversary of Mary's
+death, an occasion which brought afresh to his heart memories of the
+tender past. Jean has told us of his increasing silence and unrest as
+the day declined, of his aimless wandering by Nithside at nightfall, of
+his rapt abstraction as he lay pillowed by the sheaves of his
+stack-yard, gazing entranced at the "lingering star" above him till the
+immortal song was born.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Her Grave</div>
+
+<p>Poor Mary is laid in the burial-plot of her uncle in the west kirk-yard
+of Greenock, near Crawford Street; our pilgrimage in Burnsland may fitly
+end at her grave. A pathway, beaten by the feet of many reverent
+visitors, leads us to the spot. It is so pathetically different from the
+scenes she loved in life,&mdash;the heather-clad slopes of her Highland home,
+the seclusion of the wooded braes where she loitered with her
+poet-lover. Scant foliage is about her; few birds sing above her here.
+She lies by the wall; narrow streets hem in the enclosure; the air is
+sullied by smoke from factories and from steamers passing within a
+stone's-throw on the busy Clyde; the clanging of many hammers and the
+discordant din of machinery and traffic invade the place and sound in
+our ears as we muse above the ashes of the gentle lassie.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>For half a century her grave was unmarked and neglected; then, by
+subscription, a monument of marble, twelve feet in height, and of
+graceful proportions, was raised. It bears a sculptured medallion
+representing Burns and Mary, with clasped hands, plighting their troth.
+Beneath is the simple inscription, read oft by eyes dim with tears:</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="center">Erected Over the Grave of</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="center"><span class="smcap">Highland Mary</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="center">1842.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>"My Mary, dear departed shade,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where is thy place of blissful rest?"</span></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">BRONT&Euml; SCENES IN BRUSSELS</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>School&mdash;Class-Rooms&mdash;Dormitory&mdash;Garden&mdash;Scenes and Events of
+Villette and The Professor&mdash;M. Paul&mdash;Madame Beck&mdash;Memories of the
+Brontës&mdash;Confessional&mdash;Grave of Jessy Yorke</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">WE had "done" Brussels after the approved fashion,&mdash;had faithfully
+visited the churches, palaces, museums, theatres, galleries, monuments;
+had duly admired the windows and carvings of the grand cathedral, the
+tower and tapestry and frescos and façade of the Hôtel de Ville, the
+stately halls and the gilded dome of the Courts of Justice, and the
+consummate beauty of the Bourse; had diligently sought out the naïve
+boy-fountain, and had made the usual excursion to the field of Waterloo.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>This delightful task being conscientiously discharged, we proposed to
+devote our last day in the Belgian capital to the accomplishment of one
+of the cherished projects of our lives,&mdash;the searching out of the
+localities associated with Charlotte Brontë's unhappy school-life here,
+which she has so graphically portrayed. For our purpose no guide was
+needful, for the topography and local coloring of "Villette" and "The
+Professor" are as vivid and unmistakable as in the best work of Dickens
+himself. Proceeding from St.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> Gudule to the Rue Royale, and a short
+distance along that thoroughfare, we reached the park<span class="sidenote">The Park</span> and a locality
+familiar to Miss Brontë's readers. Seated in this lovely
+pleasure-ground, the gift of the Empress Maria Theresa, with its cool
+shade all about us, we noted the long avenues and the paths winding amid
+trees and shrubbery, the dark foliage ineffectually veiling the gleaming
+statuary and the sheen of bright fountains, "the stone basin with its
+clear depth, the thick-planted trees which framed this tremulous and
+rippled mirror," the groups of happy people filling the seats in
+secluded nooks or loitering in the mazes and listening to the music; we
+noted all this, and felt that Miss Brontë had revealed it to us long
+ago. It was across this park that Lucy Snowe was piloted from the bureau
+of the diligence by the chivalrous Dr. John on the night when she,
+despoiled, helpless, and solitary, arrived in Brussels. She found the
+park deserted, the paths miry, the water dripping from the trees. "In
+the double gloom of tree and fog she could not see her guide, and could
+only follow his tread" in the darkness. We recalled another scene under
+these same trees, on a night when the gate-way was "spanned by a flaming
+arch of massed stars." The park was a "forest with sparks of purple and
+ruby and golden fire gemming the foliage," and Lucy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> driven from her
+couch by mental torture, wandered unrecognized amid the gay throng at
+the midnight concert of the Festival of the Martyrs and looked upon her
+lover, her friends the Brettons, and the secret junta of her enemies,
+Madame Beck, Madame Walravens, and Père Silas. The sense of familiarity
+with the vicinage grew as we observed our surroundings. Facing us, at
+the extremity of the park, was the palace of the king, in the small
+square across the Rue Royale at our right was the statue of General
+Béliard, and we knew that just behind it we should find the Brontë
+school; for "The Professor," standing by the statue, had looked down a
+great staircase to the door-way of the school, and poor Lucy on that
+forlorn first night in "Villette," to avoid a pair of ruffians, had
+hastened down a flight of steps from the Rue Royale and had come, not to
+the inn she sought, but to the <i>pensionnat</i> of Madame Beck. From the
+statue we descended, by a series of stone stairs, into a narrow street,
+old-fashioned and clean, quiet and secluded in the very heart of the
+great city, and just opposite the foot of the steps we came to the wide
+door of a spacious, quadrangular, stuccoed old mansion, with a bit of
+foliage showing over a high wall at one side.<span class="sidenote">Héger Mansion</span> A bright plate embellished
+the door and bore the name Héger. A Latin inscription in the wall of
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span> house showed it to have been given to the Guild of Royal Archers by
+the Infanta Isabelle early in the seventeenth century. Long before that
+the garden had been the orchard and herbary of a convent and the
+Hospital for the Poor.</p>
+
+<p>We were detained at the door long enough to remember Lucy standing
+there, trembling and anxious, awaiting admission, and then we too were
+"let in by a <i>bonne</i> in a smart cap," apparently a fit successor to the
+Rosine of other days, and entered the corridor. This was paved with
+blocks of black and white marble and had painted walls. It extended
+through the entire depth of the house, and at its farther extremity an
+open door afforded us a glimpse of the garden. We were ushered into the
+little <i>salon</i> at the left of the passage, the one often mentioned in
+"Villette,"<span class="sidenote">Characters of Villette</span> and here we made known our wish to see the garden and
+class-rooms, and met with a prompt refusal from the neat portress. We
+tried diplomacy (also lucre) without avail: it was the <i>grandes
+vacances</i>, M. Héger was engaged, we could not be gratified,&mdash;unless,
+indeed, we were patrons of the school. At this juncture a portly,
+ruddy-faced lady of middle age and most courteous of speech and manner
+appeared, and, addressing us in faultless English, introduced herself as
+Mdlle. Héger, co-directress of the school, and "wholly at our service."
+In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> response to our apologies for the intrusion and explanations of the
+desire which had prompted it, we received complaisant assurances of
+welcome; yet the manner of our entertainer indicated that she did not
+share in our admiration and enthusiasm for Charlotte Brontë and her
+books. In the subsequent conversation it appeared that Mademoiselle and
+her family hold decided opinions upon the subject,&mdash;something more than
+mere lack of admiration. She was familiar with the novels, and thought
+that, while they exhibit a talent certainly not above mediocrity, they
+reflect the injustice, the untruthfulness, and the ingratitude of their
+creator. We were obliged to confess to ourselves that the family have
+reason for this view, when we reflected that in the books Miss Brontë
+has assailed their religion and disparaged the school and the characters
+of the teachers and pupils, has depicted Madame Héger<span class="sidenote">The Hégers</span> in the odious duad
+of Madame Beck and Mdlle. Reuter, has represented M. Héger as the
+scheming and deceitful Pelet and the preposterous Paul, Lucy Snowe's
+lover; that this lover was the husband of Madame Héger, and father of
+the family of children to whom Lucy was at first <i>bonne d'enfants</i>, and
+that possibly the daughter she has described as the thieving, vicious
+Désirée&mdash;"that tadpole Désirée Beck"&mdash;was this very lady now so politely
+entertaining<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> us. To all this add the significant fact that "Villette"
+is an autobiographical novel, which "records the most vivid passages in
+Miss Brontë's own sad heart's history," not a few of the incidents being
+transcripts "from the darkest chapter of her own life," and the light
+which the consideration of this fact throws upon her relations with
+members of the family will help us to apprehend the stand-point from
+which the Hégers judge Miss Brontë and her work, and to excuse a natural
+resentment against one who has presented them in a decidedly bad light.
+How bad we realized when, during the ensuing chat, we called to mind
+just what she had written of them. As Madame Beck, Madame Héger had been
+represented as lying, deceitful, and shameless, as "watching and spying
+everywhere, peeping through every key-hole, listening behind every
+door," as duplicating Lucy's keys and secretly searching her bureau, as
+meanly abstracting her letters and reading them to others, as immodestly
+laying herself out to entrap the man to whom she had given her love
+unsought. It was some accession to the existing animosity between
+herself and Madame Héger which precipitated Miss Brontë's departure from
+the <i>pensionnat</i>. Mrs. Gaskell ascribes their mutual dislike to
+Charlotte's free expression of her aversion to the Catholic Church, of
+which Madame<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> Héger was a devotee, and hence "wounded in her most
+cherished opinions;" but a later writer plainly intimates that Miss
+Brontë hated the woman who sat for Madame Beck because marriage had
+given to <i>her</i> the man whom Miss Brontë loved, and that "Madame Beck had
+need to be a detective in her own house." The death of Madame Héger had
+rendered the family, who held her only as a sacred memory, more keenly
+sensitive than ever to anything which would seem by implication to
+disparage her.</p>
+
+<p>For himself, it would appear that M. Héger had less cause for
+resentment; for, although in "Villette" his double is pictured as "a
+waspish little despot," as detestably ugly, in his anger closely
+resembling "a black and sallow tiger," as having an "overmastering love
+of authority and public display," as playing the spy and reading
+purloined letters, and in the Brontë epistles Charlotte declares he is
+choleric and irritable, compels her to make her French translations
+without a dictionary or grammar, and then has "his eyes almost plucked
+out of his head" by the occasional English word she is obliged to
+introduce, etc., yet all this is partially atoned for by the warm praise
+she subsequently accords him for his goodness to her and his
+disinterested friendship, by the poignant regret she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> expresses at
+parting with him,&mdash;perhaps wholly expiated by the high compliment she
+pays him of making her heroine fall in love with him, or the higher
+compliment it is suspected she paid him of falling in love with him
+herself. One who reads the strange history of passion in "Villette," in
+conjunction with her letters, "will know more of the truth of her stay
+in Brussels than if a dozen biographers had undertaken to tell the whole
+tale." Still, M. Héger can hardly be pleased by having members of his
+school set forth as stupid, animal, and inferior, "their principles
+rotten to the core, steeped in systematic sensuality," by having his
+religion styled "besotted papistry, a piece of childish humbug," and the
+like. Something of the displeasure of the family was revealed in the
+course of our conversation with Mdlle. Héger, but the specific causes
+were but cursorily touched upon. She could have no personal recollection<span class="sidenote">Recollections of the Brontës</span>
+of the Brontës; her knowledge of them was derived from her parents and
+the teachers,&mdash;presumably the "repulsive old maids" of Charlotte's
+letters. One teacher whom we saw in the school had been a classmate of
+Charlotte's here. The Brontës had not been popular with the school.
+Their "heretical" religion had something to do with this; but their
+manifest avoidance of the other pupils during hours of recreation,
+Mademoiselle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> thought, had been a more potent cause,&mdash;Emily, in
+particular, not speaking with her school-mates or teachers, except when
+obliged to do so. The other pupils thought them of outlandish accent and
+manners, and ridiculously old to be at school at all,&mdash;being twenty-four
+and twenty-six, and seeming even older. Their sombre and ugly costumes
+were fruitful causes of mirth to the gay young Belgian misses. The
+Brontës were not brilliant students, and none of their companions had
+ever suspected that they were geniuses. Of the two, Emily was considered
+to be the more talented, but she was obstinate and opinionated. Some of
+the pupils had been inclined to resist having Charlotte placed over them
+as teacher, and may have been mutinous. After her return from Haworth
+she taught English to M. Héger and his brother-in-law. M. Héger gave the
+sisters private lessons in French without charge, and for some time
+preserved their compositions, which Mrs. Gaskell copied. Mrs. Gaskell
+visited the <i>pensionnat</i> in quest of material for her biography of
+Charlotte, and received all the aid M. Héger could afford: the
+information thus obtained was, we were told, fairly used. Miss Brontë's
+letters from Brussels, so freely quoted in Mrs. Gaskell's "Life," were
+addressed to Ellen Nussy, a familiar friend of Charlotte's, whose
+signature we saw<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> in the register at Haworth as witness to Miss Brontë's
+marriage. The Hégers had no suspicion that she had been so unhappy with
+them as these letters indicate, and she had assigned a totally different
+reason for her sudden return to England. She had been introduced to
+Madame Héger by Mrs. Jenkins, wife of the then chaplain of the British
+Embassy at the Court of Belgium; she had frequently visited that lady
+and other friends in Brussels,&mdash;among them Mary and Martha Taylor and
+the family of a Dr. &mdash;&mdash; (<i>not</i> "Dr. John"),&mdash;and therefore her life here
+need not have been so lonely and desolate as it was made to appear.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Garden</div>
+
+<p>The Hégers usually have a few English pupils in the school, but have
+never had an American. American tourists have before called to look at
+the garden, but the family are not pleased by the notoriety with which
+Miss Brontë has invested it. However, Mdlle. Héger kindly offered to
+conduct us over any portion of the establishment we might care to see,
+and led the way along the corridor to the narrow, high-walled garden. We
+found it smaller than in the time when Miss Brontë loitered here in
+weariness and solitude. Mdlle. Héger explained that, while the width
+remained the same, the erection of class-rooms for the day-pupils had
+diminished the length by some yards. Tall houses surrounded and shut<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> it
+in on either side, making it close and sombre, and the noises of the
+great city all about it penetrated only as a far-away murmur. There was
+a plat of verdant turf in the centre, bordered by scant flowers and
+gravelled walks, along which shrubs of evergreen were irregularly
+disposed. A few seats were here and there within the shade, where, as in
+Miss Brontë's time, the <i>externats</i> ate the lunch brought with them to
+the school; and overlooking it all stood the great pear-trees, whose
+gnarled and deformed trunks were relics of the time of the convent.
+Beyond these and along the gray wall which bounded the farther side of
+the enclosure was the sheltered walk which was Miss Brontë's favorite
+retreat, the "<i>allée défendue</i>" of her novels. It was screened by shrubs
+and perfumed by flowers, and, being secure from the intrusion of pupils,
+we could well believe that Charlotte and her heroine found here restful
+seclusion. The coolness and quiet and, more than all, the throng of
+vivid associations which filled the place tempted us to linger. The
+garden was not a spacious nor even a pretty one, and yet it seemed to us
+singularly pleasing and familiar, as if we were revisiting it after an
+absence. Seated upon a rustic bench close at hand, possibly the very one
+which Lucy had "reclaimed from fungi and mould," how the memories came
+surging up in our minds! How<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> often in the summer twilight poor
+Charlotte had lingered here in solitude after the day's burdens and
+trials with "stupid and impertinent" pupils! How often, with weary feet
+and a dreary heart, she had paced this secluded walk and thought, with
+longing, of the dear ones in far-away Haworth parsonage! In this
+sheltered corner her other self, Lucy, sat and listened to the distant
+chimes and thought forbidden thoughts and cherished impossible hopes.
+Here she met and talked with Dr. John. Deep beneath this "Methuselah of
+a pear-tree," the one nearest the end of the alley, lies the imprisoned
+dust of the poor nun who was buried alive ages ago for some sin against
+her vow, and whose perambulating ghost so disquieted poor Lucy. At the
+root of this same tree one miserable night Lucy buried her precious
+letters, and meant also to bury a grief and her great affection for Dr.
+John. Here she leant her brow against Methuselah's knotty trunk and
+uttered to herself those brave words of renunciation, "Good-night, Dr.
+John; you are good, you are beautiful, <i>but you are not mine</i>.
+Good-night, and God bless you!" Here she held pleasant converse with M.
+Paul, and with him, spellbound, saw the ghost of the nun descend from
+the leafy shadows overhead and, sweeping close past their wondering
+faces, disappear behind yonder screen of shrubbery<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> into the darkness of
+the summer night. By that tall tree next the class-rooms the ghost was
+wont to ascend to meet its material sweetheart, Fanshawe, in the great
+garret beneath yonder sky-light,&mdash;the garret where Lucy retired to read
+Dr. John's letter, and wherein M. Paul confined her to learn her part in
+the vaudeville for Madame Beck's <i>fête</i>-day. In this nook where we sat
+"The Professor" had walked and talked with and almost made love to
+Mdlle. Reuter, and from yonder window overlooking the alley had seen
+that perfidious fair one in dalliance with Pelet beneath these
+pear-trees. From that window M. Paul watched Lucy as she sat or walked
+in the <i>allée défendue</i>, dogged by Madame Beck; from the same window
+were thrown the love-letters which fell at Lucy's feet sitting here.
+Leaves from the overhanging boughs were plucked for us as souvenirs of
+the place; then, reverently traversing once more the narrow alley so
+often traced in weariness by Charlotte Brontë, we turned away.<span class="sidenote">School</span> From the
+garden we entered the long and spacious class-room of the first and
+second divisions. A movable partition divided it across the middle when
+the classes were in session; the floor was of bare boards cleanly
+scoured. There were long ranges of desks and benches upon either side,
+and a lane through the middle led up to a raised platform at the end<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> of
+the room, where the instructor's chair and desk were placed.</p>
+
+<p>How quickly our fancy peopled the place! On these front seats sat the
+gay and indocile Belgian girls. There, "in the last row, in the quietest
+corner, sat Emily and Charlotte side by side, insensible to anything
+about them;" and at the same desk, "in the farthest seat of the farthest
+row," sat Mdlle. Henri during Crimsworth's English lessons. Here Lucy's
+desk was rummaged by Paul<span class="sidenote">M. Paul</span> and the tell-tale odor of cigars left behind.
+Here, after school-hours, Miss Brontë taught Héger English, he taught
+her French, and Paul taught Lucy arithmetic and (incidentally) love.
+This was the scene of their <i>tête-à-têtes</i>, of his efforts to persuade
+her into his religious faith, of their ludicrous supper of biscuit and
+baked apples, and of his final violent outbreak with Madame Beck, when
+she literally thrust herself between him and his love. From this
+platform Crimsworth and Lucy and Charlotte Brontë herself had given
+instruction to pupils whose insubordination had first to be confronted
+and overcome. Here Paul and Héger gave lectures upon literature, and
+Paul delivered his spiteful tirade against the English on the morning of
+his <i>fête</i>-day. Upon this desk were heaped his bouquets that morning;
+from its smooth surface poor Lucy dislodged and fractured<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> his
+spectacles; and here, seated in Paul's chair, at Paul's desk, we saw and
+were presented to Paul Emanuel himself,&mdash;M. Héger.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">School Scenes</div>
+
+<p>It was something more than curiosity which made us alert to note the
+appearance and manner of this man, who has been so nearly associated
+with Miss Brontë in an intercourse which colored her subsequent life and
+determined her life-work, who has been made the hero of her novels and
+has been deemed the hero of her own heart's romance; and yet we <i>were</i>
+curious to know what manner of man it was who has been so much as
+suspected of being honored with the love and preference of the dainty
+Charlotte Brontë. During a short conversation with him we had
+opportunity to observe that in person this "wise, good, and religious"
+man must, at the time Miss Brontë knew him, have more closely resembled
+Pelet of "The Professor" than any other of her pen-portraits: indeed,
+after the lapse of more than forty years that delineation still, for the
+most part, aptly applied to him. He was of middle size, of rather spare
+habit of body; his face was fair and the features pleasing and regular,
+the cheeks were thin and the mouth flexible, the eyes&mdash;somewhat
+sunken&mdash;were mild blue and of singularly pleasant expression. We found
+him aged and somewhat infirm; his finely-shaped head was fringed with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+white hair, and partial baldness contributed reverence to his presence
+and tended to enhance the intellectual effect of his wide brow. In
+repose his countenance showed a hint of melancholy: as Miss Brontë said,
+his "physiognomy was <i>fine et spirituelle</i>;" one would hardly imagine it
+could ever resemble the "visage of a black and sallow tiger." His voice
+was low and soft, his bow still "very polite, not theatrical, scarcely
+French," his manner <i>suave</i> and courteous, his dress scrupulously neat.
+He accosted us in the language Miss Brontë taught him forty years ago,
+and his accent and diction honored her instruction. He was talking with
+some patrons, and, as his daughter had hinted that he was averse to
+speaking of Miss Brontë, we soon took leave of him and were shown other
+parts of the school. The other class-rooms, used for less advanced
+pupils, were smaller. In one of them Miss Brontë had ruled as monitress
+after her return from Haworth. The large dormitory of the <i>pensionnat</i>
+was above the long class-room, and in the time of the Brontës most of
+the boarders&mdash;about twenty in number&mdash;slept here. Their cots were
+arranged along either side, and the position of those occupied by the
+Brontës was pointed out to us at the extreme end of the room. It was
+here that Lucy suffered the horrors of hypochondria,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> so graphically
+portrayed in "Villette," and found the discarded costume of the spectral
+nun lying upon her bed, and here Miss Brontë passed those nights of
+wakeful misery which Mrs. Gaskell describes. A long, narrow room in
+front of the class-rooms was shown us as the <i>réfectoire</i>, where the
+Brontës, with the other boarders, took their meals, presided over by M.
+and Madame Héger, and where, during the evenings, the lessons for the
+ensuing days were prepared. Here were held the evening prayers which
+Charlotte used to avoid by escaping into the garden. This, too, was the
+scene of Paul's readings to teachers and pupils, and of some of his
+spasms of petulance, which readers of "Villette" will remember. From the
+<i>réfectoire</i> we passed again into the corridor, where we made our adieus
+to our affable conductress. She explained that, whereas this
+establishment had been both a <i>pensionnat</i> and an <i>externat</i>, having
+about seventy day-pupils and twenty boarders when Miss Brontë was here,
+it was after the death of Madame Héger used as a day-school only,&mdash;the
+<i>pensionnat</i> being in another street.</p>
+
+<p>The genuine local color Miss Brontë gives in "Villette" enabled us to be
+sure that we had found the sombre old church where Lucy, arrested in
+passing by the sound of the bells, knelt upon the stone pavement,
+passing thence<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> into the confessional of Père Silas. Certain it is that
+this old church lies upon the route she would take in the walk from the
+school to the Protestant cemetery, which she had set out to do that
+afternoon, and the narrow streets which lie beyond the church correspond
+to those in which she was lost.<span class="sidenote">The Confessional</span> Certain, too, it is said to be that this
+incident is taken from her own experience. Reid says, "During one of the
+long holidays, when her mind was restless and disturbed, she found
+sympathy, if not peace, in the counsels of a priest in the confessional,
+who soothed her troubled spirit without attempting to enmesh it in the
+folds of Romanism."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">The Cemetery</div>
+
+<p>Our way to the Protestant cemetery&mdash;a spot sadly familiar to Miss
+Brontë, and the usual termination of her walks&mdash;lay past the site of the
+Porte de Louvain and out to the hills beyond the old city limits. From
+our path we saw more than one tree-shrouded farm-house which might have
+been the place of Paul's breakfast with his school, and at least one
+quaint mansion, with green-tufted and terraced lawns, which might have
+served Miss Brontë as the model for La Terrasse, the suburban home of
+the Brettons and the temporary abode of the Taylor sisters whom she
+visited here. From the cemetery we beheld vistas of farther lines of
+hills, of intervening valleys, of farms and villas, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> of the great
+city lying below. Miss Brontë has well described this place: "Here, on
+pages of stone and of brass, are written names, dates, last tributes of
+pomp or love, in English, French, German, and Latin." There are stone
+crosses all about, and great thickets of roses and yews; "cypresses that
+stand straight and mute, and willows that hang low and still;" and there
+are "dim garlands of everlasting flowers." Here "The Professor" found
+his long-sought sweetheart kneeling at a new-made grave under the
+overhanging trees. And here we found the shrine of poor Charlotte
+Brontë's many pilgrimages hither,&mdash;the burial-place of her friend and
+school-mate, the Jessy Yorke of "Shirley;" the spot where, under "green
+sod and a gray marble head-stone, cold, coffined, solitary, Jessy sleeps
+below."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">LEMAN'S SHRINES</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Beloved of
+Littérateurs&mdash;Gibbon&mdash;D'Aubigné&mdash;Rousseau&mdash;Byron&mdash;Shelley&mdash;Dickens,
+etc.&mdash;Scenes of Childe Harold&mdash;Nouvelle Heloïse&mdash;Prisoner of
+Chillon&mdash;Land of Byron.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">A PILGRIMAGE in the track of Childe Harold brings us from the shores of
+Albion, by Belgium's capital and deadly Waterloo, along the castled
+Rhine and over mountain-pass to "Italia, home and grave of empires," and
+to the sublimer scenery of "Manfred," "Chillon," and the third canto of
+the pilgrim-poet's masterpiece; to his "silver-sheeted Staubbach" and
+"arrowy Rhone," "soaring Jungfrau" and "bleak Mont Blanc." We linger
+with especial pleasure on the shores of "placid Leman," in an enchanting
+region which teems with literary shrines and is pervaded with memories
+and associations&mdash;often so thrilling and vivid that they seem like
+veritable and sensible presences&mdash;of the brilliant number who have
+here had their haunts.<span class="sidenote">Haunts of Littérateurs</span> Here Calvin wrought his Commentaries; here
+Voltaire polished his darts; here Rousseau laid the scenes of his
+impassioned tale; here Dickens, Byron, and Shelley loitered and wrote;
+here Gibbon and de Staël, Schlegel and Constant, and many another
+scarcely less famous, lived and wrought the treasures of their knowledge
+and fancy into the literature of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> world. A lingering voyage round
+the lake, like that of Byron and Shelley, is a delight to be remembered
+through a lifetime, and affords opportunity to visit the spots
+consecrated by genius upon these shores. At Geneva we find the inn where
+Byron lodged and first met the author of "Queen Mab," the house in which
+Rousseau was born, the place where d'Aubigné wrote his history, the
+sometime home of John Calvin. Near by, in a house presented by the
+Genevese after his release from the long imprisonment suffered on their
+account, dwelt Bonnivard, Byron's immortal "Prisoner of Chillon," and
+here he suffered from his procession of wives and finally died. Just
+beyond the site of the fortifications, on the east side of the city, is
+an eminence whose slopes are tastefully laid out with walks that wind,
+amid sward and shrub, to the observatory which crowns the summit and
+marks the site of Bonnivard's Priory of St. Victor, lost to him by his
+devotion to Genevan independence. Not far away is the public library,
+founded by his bequest of his modest collection of books and MSS. which
+we see here carefully preserved. Here also is an old portrait of the
+prisoner, which represents him as a reckless and jolly "good fellow"
+rather than a saintly hero, and accords better with his character as
+described by late writers than with the common conception of him.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Byron at Villa Diodati</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>Byron loved this Leman lake, and it is said his discontented sprite
+still walks its margins; certain it is he remains its poetic genius; his
+melody seems to wake in every breeze that stirs its surface. The Villa
+Diodati, a plain, quadrangular, three-storied mansion of moderate
+dimensions, standing on the shore a few miles from Geneva, was the
+handsome "Giaour's" first home after his separation from Lady Byron and
+his exile from England. It had been the residence of the Genevan
+Professor Diodati and the sojourn of his friend the poet Milton.
+Pleasant vineyards surround the place and slope away to the water, but
+there is little in the spot or its near environment to commend it to the
+fancy of a poet. Byron's study here was a sombre room at the back from
+which neither the lake nor the snowy peaks were visible, and here he
+wrote, besides many minor poems, "Manfred," "Prometheus," "Darkness,"
+"Dream," and the third canto of "Childe Harold." Here also he wrote
+"Marriage of Belphegor," a tale setting forth his version of his own
+infelicitous marriage; but hearing that his wife was seriously ill, he
+burned it in his study fire. From here, by instigation of de Stael, he
+sent to Lady Byron ineffectual overtures for a reconciliation. His
+companion at the villa was an eccentric Italian physician, Polidori, who
+was uncle to the poet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> Rossetti, and who here quarrelled with Byron's
+guests and wrote "The Vampire," a weird production afterward attributed
+to Byron. Lovers of Byron owe much to his sojourn on Leman; he found in
+the inspiring landscapes here, especially in the environment of
+mountains, a power that profoundly stirred what his wife called "the
+angel in him." His letters recognize an afflatus breathed upon him by
+the "majesty around and above," and the quality of the poems here
+produced shows his yielding and response to that benign influence; many
+a gem of poetic thought was here begotten of lake and mount and
+cataract, which otherwise had never been. The insincere stanzas of some
+of his later poems would scarcely have been written on Leman. As we muse
+in the spots he frequented&mdash;wandering on the entrancing margins or
+floating on the crystal waters&mdash;and look thence upon the snow-crowned
+peaks, resplendent in the sunshine or roseate in the after-glow, we
+aspire to not only partake of his rapture in this sublime beauty, but to
+appreciate the deeper feelings to which it moved him.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Shelley</div>
+
+<p>A villa near Byron's, and reached by a path through his grounds,&mdash;Maison
+Chapuis, of Mont Allegra,&mdash;was occupied that summer by the "impassioned
+Ariel of English verse," with Mary Shelley and her brunette relative
+Jane Clermont<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> (the Claire of Shelley's journal), who after bore to
+Byron a daughter called Alba by the Shelleys, but later named by Byron
+Allegra, for the place where he had known the mother. At Mont Allegra
+"Bridge of Arve," "Intellectual Beauty," and Mrs. Shelley's weird
+"Frankenstein" were penned. Here Byron was a daily visitant, and the
+Shelleys were the usual companions of his excursions upon the lake of
+beauty, in a picturesque lateen-rigged boat which was the property of
+the poets and the counterpart of which we see moored by the Diodati
+shore, looking like a bit of the Levant transported to this tramontane
+water. The "white phantom" observed by telescopists on the opposite
+shore to sometimes embark with Byron, and which he gravely told Madame
+de Staël was his dog, was doubtless the frail Claire. The admonitions of
+de Staël anent his mode of life provoked Byron to take sure revenge by
+being attentive to her husband, which the overshadowing wife always
+resented as an affront upon herself. It is said the poet's observation
+of this pair prompted the couplet of "Don Juan:"</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
+<tr><td>
+"But oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,<br />
+Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?"</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Passing for the present the shrines of Ferney and Coppet, we find in
+picturesque Lausanne the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> quaint house in which Voltaire<span class="sidenote">Voltaire</span> lived several
+winters, and not far away the place where Secretan died a few months
+ago. Gibbon's dwelling has been demolished, but we find the place of his
+summer-house where the great history was completed, and of his famous
+rose-tree where Byron gathered roses long ago. Madame de Genlis narrates
+this incident of the great "Decliner and Faller" at Lausanne: he was
+enamoured of the comely Madame Crousaz, and, finding her alone, he knelt
+at her feet and besought her love. He received an unfavorable reply, but
+remained in his humble posture until the lady, after repeatedly
+requesting him to arise, discovered that his weight made it impossible,
+and summoned a servant to assist him to regain his feet. His obesity
+seems to have been a standing jest among his acquaintances: a sufferer
+from indigestion, due to lack of exercise, was advised by a witty friend
+to "walk twice around Gibbon<span class="sidenote">Gibbon</span> before breakfast." Several decades later
+another illustrious English man of letters sojourned in Lausanne. A
+pretty cottage-villa, with embowered walls and flower-shaded porticos
+which look from a mild eminence across the crescentic lake, was, in
+1846, the dwelling of Dickens,<span class="sidenote">Dickens</span> who here wrote one of the matchless
+Christmas stories and a part of "Dombey and Son." From the magnificent
+slope of Lausanne<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> the whole lake region is visible, with the dark Juras
+rising to the western horizon, the Alps of Savoy, and "the monarch of
+mountains with a diadem of snow" upholding the sky away in the south. At
+the foot of this slope is the port-town of Ouchy, a resort of Byron's in
+his sailing excursions; at the plain little Anchor inn near the <i>quai</i>
+(Byron called it a "wretched inn") he lodged, and here, being detained
+two days (June 26 and 27, 1816) by a storm which overtook him on his
+return from Chillon and Clarens, he wrote the touching "Prisoner of
+Chillon." In a parsonage not far from Lausanne was reared sweet Suzanne
+Curchod, erst <i>fiancée</i> of Gibbon, and later the mother of de Staël.</p>
+
+<p>Eastward is "Clarens, birthplace of deep love," whose "air is the breath
+of passionate thought, whose trees take root in love;" about it lies the
+charming region which Rousseau<span class="sidenote">Rousseau</span> chose for his fiction and peopled with
+affections, and where Byron, Houghton, and Shelley loved to linger. Here
+the latter first read "Nouvelle Héloïse" amid the settings of its
+scenes; here Byron wrote many glowing lines, inspired by the beauty and
+romantic associations around him. From the vine-clad terraces which
+cling to the heights we behold the view which enraptured the poet,&mdash;a
+broad expanse of lacustrine beauty and Alpine sublimity, embracing the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+Leman shores from the Rhone to the Juras of Gex, the entire width of the
+"<i>bleu impossible</i>" lake and Alp piled on Alp beyond. Back of Clarens we
+find the spot of Rousseau's "Bosquet de Julie," and, at a little
+distance among embowering trees, the birthplace of a woman stranger than
+any fancied character of his fiction, the Madame de Warens of his
+"Confessions."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Prison of Chillon</div>
+
+<p>Between Clarens and Villeneuve, on an isolated rock whose base is laved
+by Leman's waters, which "meet and flow a thousand feet in depth below,"
+stands the grim prison of Chillon, the scene of Byron's poem. The
+fortress is an irregular pile of masonry, and, with its massive walls,
+loop-holed towers, and white battlements, is a picturesque object seen
+across wide reaches of the lake. The present structure is a hoary
+successor to a stronghold still more ancient: the prehistoric
+lake-dwellers here had a fortress and were succeeded by the Franks and
+Romans. Of the present structure, the Romanesque columns and the range
+of dungeons are known to have been in existence in 830, when Count Wala,
+a cousin of Charlemagne, for alluding to the wife of Louis the Debonair
+as "that adulterous woman," was incarcerated here. Thus Judith's
+reputation was vindicated and the earliest certain date of this fortress
+fixed. The present superstructure remains unchanged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> since the
+thirteenth century. It is now connected with the shore by a wooden
+structure which spans the moat and replaces the ancient drawbridge.
+Through a massive gate-way we enter a roughly-paved court, whence a
+bluff Savoyard conducts us through the romantic pile. Among the
+apartments of the ducal family we see the banqueting-hall where the
+dukes held roistering wassail; the kitchen on whose great hearth oxen
+were roasted whole; the Chamber of Inquisition where hapless prisoners
+were tortured to extort confession, this room being near the chamber of
+the duchess, into which&mdash;despite its thick wall&mdash;the shrieks of the
+tortured must have sometimes penetrated and disturbed Her Serene
+Highness. Outside her door is a post to which the wretches were bound,
+and it is scored by marks of the irons which cauterized their flesh; in
+a near corner stood a rack which rent them limb from limb. The crypt
+beneath, with its low arched vaults and its graceful pillars rising out
+of the rock, is the most interesting portion of the fortress. Referring
+to their architectural perfection, Longfellow once said these were the
+"most delightful dungeons he ever saw," but as we stand in their
+twilight gloom the horrors of their history weigh heavily on the heart.
+During this century the castle has been used as an arsenal, but
+occasionally also<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> as a prison, and Byron found some of these "chambers
+of sorrow" tenanted at the time of his visits. One contracted cell is
+that in which the condemned passed their last night of life chained upon
+a rock, near the beam upon which they were strangled and the opening
+through which their bodies were thrust into the lake. Another vault
+contains a pit or well, with a spiral stair down which poor dupes
+stepped into a yawning depth and&mdash;eternity. A third chamber, so dark
+that its grotesque carvings are scarcely discernible and no missal could
+be read by daylight, was the chapel of the fortress. Traversing the
+succession of dungeons, we come to the last and largest, and reverently
+stand beside the column where Byron's prisoner was chained. This
+"dungeon deep and old" lies not beneath the level of the lake, as Byron
+believed, yet it is sufficiently dank and dismal to be the appropriate
+scene of the touching and tragic story which he located here. It is a
+long, crypt-like apartment, whose vaulted roof of rock is upheld by the
+"seven pillars of Gothic mould" aligned along the middle. It is dimly
+lighted by loop-holes pierced in the ponderous walls for the feudal
+bowmen; through these narrow apertures, where the prisoner "felt the
+winter's spray wash through the bars when winds were high," we look out,
+as did he, upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> distant town, "the lake with its white sails," the
+"mountains high," and the little Isle de Paix&mdash;"scarce broader than the
+dungeon floor"&mdash;gleaming like an emerald from a setting of amethyst.
+Here is Bonnivard's chain, scarce four feet long, and in the central
+pillar the ring which held it. The light, falling aslant "through the
+cleft of the thick wall" upon the floor, shows us the pathway worn in
+the rock by the pacing of the prisoner during the weary years, and
+reveals&mdash;graven on the column-stone by the poet's hand&mdash;the name Byron.</p>
+
+<p>At Chillon we are in the midst of a region pervaded by the sentiment of
+the pilgrim-poet. The Byron path leads from the shore to the broad
+terraces of the Hôtel Byron, whence we behold as in a picture the
+romantic scene his poetry portrays,&mdash;the "mountains with their thousand
+years of snow," the shimmering water of "the wide long lake," the dark
+slopes of the Juras terraced to their summits, the "white-walled towns"
+upon the nearer hill-sides. Directly before us&mdash;bearing its three tall
+trees&mdash;"the little isle, the only one in view," smiles in our faces from
+the bosom of the water; on the right we see sweet Clarens and the
+picturesque battlements of Chillon; on the left, the glittering peaks of
+Dent du Midi and the Alps of Savoy, with the "Rhone in fullest flow"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+between the rocky heights; while from the farther shore rise the cliffs
+of Meillerie, at whose base Byron and Shelley, clinging to their frail
+boat, narrowly escaped a watery grave on the very spot where St. Preux
+and Julia of "Nouvelle Héloïse" were rescued from the same fate.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Rousseau and Byron scenes</div>
+
+<p>Our farewell view of this Land of Byron is taken on a cloudless summer
+night, when the radiance of the harvest moon exalts and glorifies all
+the scene; the grim prison of Bonnivard is transformed into a snowy
+palace of peaceful delights, the white mountain-peaks gleam with the
+chaste lustre of pearls, the vine-embowered village on the shore seems
+an Aidenn of purity and light, and the sheen of the tremulous water is
+that of a sea of molten silver. Surely, on all her round, "Luna lights
+no spot more fair."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">CH&Acirc;TEAUX OF FERNEY AND COPPET</span></p>
+
+<p class="bqhang"><i>Voltaire's Home, Church, Study, Garden, Relics&mdash;Literary Court of
+de Staël&mdash;Mementos&mdash;Famous Rooms,
+Guests&mdash;Schlegel&mdash;Shelley&mdash;Constant&mdash;Byron&mdash;Davy, etc.&mdash;De Staël's
+Tomb.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="cap">A LITERARY pilgrimage on Leman's shores that did not include Ferney
+among its shrines would be obviously incomplete. No matter how widely we
+may dissent from his opinions or how much we may deplore some of his
+utterances, the brilliant philosopher who for so many years inhabited
+that spot and made it the intellectual capital of the world commands a
+place in letters which we may neither gainsay nor ignore, and the
+Château Voltaire is to many visitors one of the chief objects of
+interest in the neighborhood of Geneva.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath a summer sky a delightful jaunt of a few miles, among orchards
+and vineyards and past the ancestral home of Albert Gallatin, brings us
+to Voltaire's domain in Gex. The mansion and town of Ferney were alike
+the creation of the <i>genius loci</i>; he was architect and builder of both.
+The town and its factories were erected to give shelter and employment
+to hundreds of artisans who appealed to him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> against oppressive
+employers at Geneva. The place has obviously degenerated since his time;
+an air of shabbiness and thriftlessness prevails, and ancient smells by
+no means suggestive of "the odors of Araby the blest" obtrude upon the
+pilgrim. At the public fountain stout-armed women were washing family
+linen manifestly long unused to such manipulation. Near by dwell
+descendants of Voltaire's secretary Wagnière. Upon a verdant plateau
+farther away, in the heart of one of the most beautiful regions of
+earth, "girdled by eighty leagues of mountains that pierce the sky," was
+Voltaire's last home. By its gate is the little church <span class="sidenote">Voltaire's Church</span>he built, bearing
+upon its gable his inscription "Deo Erexit Voltaire." Here he attended
+mass with his niece, and, as <i>seigneur</i>, was always incensed by the
+priest; here he gave in marriage his adopted daughters; here he preached
+a homily against theft; and here he built for himself a tomb, projecting
+into the side of the church,&mdash;"neither within nor without," as he
+explained to a guest,&mdash;where he hoped to be buried. The church was long
+used as a tenement, later it has been a storage- and tool-house.<span class="sidenote">Mansion</span> The
+cháteau is a spacious and dignified three-storied structure of Italian
+style, attractive in appearance and well suited to one of Voltaire's
+tastes and occupations. The exterior has been somewhat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> altered, but the
+apartments of the philosopher are essentially unchanged. The late
+proprietor preserved the study and bedroom nearly as Voltaire left them
+when he started upon his fatal visit to Paris. They are small, with high
+ceilings, quaint carvings, faded tapestries, and are obviously planned
+to facilitate the work of the busiest author the world has known, who
+here, after the age of threescore, wrote a hundred and sixty works. Many
+of these assailed the church authorities, who had shown themselves
+capable of punishing mere difference of opinion by the rack and the
+stake, but "the religion of the Sermon on the Mount and the character of
+men of good and consistent lives" they did not attack: some of the books
+were cursed at Rome, some at Geneva, others were burned at both places.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">His Rooms</div>
+
+<p>Disposed in Voltaire's rooms we have seen his heavy furniture; his
+study-chair standing by the table upon which he wrote half of each day;
+his beautiful porcelain stove, a gift from Frederick the Great; a draped
+mausoleum bearing an inscription by Voltaire and designed by his
+<i>protégé</i> to contain his heart; many paintings presented by royal
+admirers,&mdash;Albani's "Toilet of Venus," Titian's "Venus and Love," a
+picture of Voltaire's chimney-sweep, portrait of Lekain who acted so
+many of Voltaire's tragedies, portraits<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> of that philosopher, a fanciful
+deification of him by Duplessis; on the same wall, coarse engravings of
+Washington and Franklin. Franklin was the firm friend of Voltaire, and
+it was his letters which first brought to Ferney news of the Declaration
+of Independence. The <span class="sidenote">Furniture</span> discolored embroidery of Voltaire's bed and
+arm-chair was wrought by his niece Madame Denis, "the little fat woman
+round as a ball." Habitually complaining of illness in his last years,
+he spent more than half his time in this quaint bed. He had a desk,
+containing writing materials, suspended above the bed so that he could
+write here day or night, and the amount of work he thus accomplished is
+astounding: in the last four years of feeble life he wrote thirty works
+varying in size from a pamphlet to a ponderous tome. His breakfast was
+served in bed, and here he habitually attended to his correspondence,
+which included most of the sovereigns of Europe and the learned and
+great of all climes. In this bed he once lay for weeks feigning mortal
+illness, and thus induced the priest to give him the <i>viaticum</i>. This
+bedroom, too, was the scene of many quarrels with his niece regarding
+her extravagances, but as we sit in his chair by his bedside we prefer
+to recall more pleasing incidents the room has witnessed; here he
+dictated to Marie Corneille the ardent words which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> brought reparation
+to many a cruelly wronged family; this was the scene of his many
+pleasantries with the house-keeper "Baba," and of the loving
+ministrations of his sweet ward "Belle et Bonne."</p>
+
+<p>Many of Voltaire's belongings have been removed and his estate has been
+shorn of its vast dimensions, but much remains to remind us of the
+genius of the place. Here are the gardens, lawns, and shrubberies he
+planted; on this turf-grown terrace beneath his study windows he paced
+as he planned his compositions, and here, at the age of eighty-three, he
+evolved "Irene" and parts of "Agathocles;" near by are his fount, his
+arbored promenade, the shaded spot where he wrote in summer days, the
+place of the lightning-rod made for him by Franklin. Long reaches of the
+hedge were rooted by him, many of the trees are from the nursery he
+cultured, the cedars were raised from seeds sent to him by the Empress
+Catherine. A venerable tree in the park was planted by Voltaire's own
+hands: when we point to a blemish upon its trunk and ask our guide,
+whose family have dwelt on the estate since the time of Voltaire, if
+that is the effect of lightning, as has been averred, he indignantly
+declares the only damage the tree ever sustained has been from visitors
+who, to secure souvenirs of the illustrious philosopher,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> would destroy
+the whole tree were he not alert to protect it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">An Intellectual Capital</div>
+
+<p>For twenty years this home of Voltaire was the centre and pharos of the
+intellectual world. To this court kings sent couriers with proffers of
+honors and assurances of esteem; hither came legions of <i>littérateurs</i>,
+academicians, politicians, eager to hail the savant or to secure his
+commendation. "All roads then led to Ferney as they once did to Rome,"
+and the hospitalities of the château were so taxed that Voltaire
+declared he was innkeeper for all Europe. He habitually complained of
+the climate here, "Lapland in winter, Naples in summer;" during some
+seasons "thirty leagues of snow were visible from his windows;" but on
+the July day of our visit the atmosphere is exquisitely delightful and
+Voltaire's "desert" seems a paradise. Behind us rise the vine-clad
+slopes of Jura, below lies the lake like an amethystine sea, afar gleam
+the snow-crowned peaks, and about us in the old gardens are the golden
+sunshine, the incense of flowers, the twitter of birds, and all the
+charm of sweet summer-time. As we linger in the spots he loved it is
+pleasant to recall<span class="sidenote">Reminiscences</span> the good that mingled in the oddly composite nature
+of the daring old man who inhabited this beautiful scene and created
+much of its beauty; to remember that dumb creatures loved him and fed
+from his hand;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> that the destitute and oppressed never vainly applied to
+him for succor or protection; that in varying phrase he solemnly
+averred, in letters of counsel to youthful admirers in his own and other
+lands, "We are in the world only for the good we can do."</p>
+
+<p>Of the galaxy of <i>littérateurs</i> who had home or haunt by Leman's margins
+Madame de Staël, by her long residence and many incidents of her career,
+seems most closely associated with this region of delights. The château
+of Coppet has for two centuries belonged to her family; here some
+portion of her girlhood was passed; here she found asylum from the
+horrors of the French Revolution and residence when Napoleon banished
+her from his capital. Later her son Auguste dwelt here, and the place is
+now the property of her great-granddaughter. Literary and social
+associations render this mediæval château one of the most interesting
+spots on earth. Exiled from the society of Paris, de Staël erected here
+a court which became the centre of intellectual Europe. Coppet was in
+itself a lustrous microcosm whose attraction was the conversation of its
+hostess and queen, which allured the wit and wisdom of a continent,
+making this court not only a literary centre, but a political power of
+which Napoleon, by his proscriptions, proclaimed his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span> fear. The great
+number of illustrious courtiers who came to Coppet caused the priestess
+of its hospitalities to aver she needed "a cook whose heels were
+winged."</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Home of de Staël</div>
+
+<p>The darkly-verdured terraces of Jura on the one hand, the blue waters
+and the farther snowy peaks on the other, fitly environ the enchanting
+scene in the midst of which was set the abode of the greatest woman of
+her time. From Geneva a charming sail along the lake conveys us to her
+home and sepulchre. We approach the château between rows of venerable
+trees beneath which de Staël loitered with her guests. The stately
+edifice rises from three sides of a court, whence we are admitted to a
+large hall on the lower floor which she used as a theatre. These walls,
+which give back only the echo of our foot-falls, have resounded with the
+applause of fastidious auditors when the queen of Coppet, with her
+children and Récamier, de Sabran, Werner, Jenner, Constant, Von Vought,
+or Ida Brun acted upon a stage at yonder end of the room. The
+composition of plays for this theatre was sometime de Staël's principal
+recreation: these have been published as "Essais Dramatiques." But more
+ambitious dramas were presented; the matchless Juliette acted here with
+Sabran and de Staël in "Semiramis;" Werner assisted in the first
+presentation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> of "Attila," which was written here; Constant's
+"Wallenstein" was composed here and first produced on this stage, as was
+also Oehlenschläger's "Hakon Jarl." De Staël was an efficient actress,
+her lustrous eyes, superb arms, and strong and flexible voice
+compensating for deficiencies of training. A broad stair leads from the
+silent theatre to the principal apartments, among which we find the
+library where Necker wrote his "Politics and Finance," the grand salon
+and reception-rooms,&mdash;all of imposing dimensions and having parquetted
+floors. Arranged in these rooms are many mementos of the daughter of
+genius who once inhabited them,&mdash;hangings of tapestry; antique
+spindle-legged furniture carved and gilded in quaint fashion; the
+cherub-bedecked clock that stood above her desk; her books and inkstand;
+the desk upon which "Necker," "Ten Years of Exile," "Allemagne," and
+many minor treatises were written. Upon the wall is her portrait, by
+David, which pictures her with bare arms and shoulders, her head crowned
+by a nimbus of yellow turban which she wore when costumed as "Corinne:"
+the features are not classical, but the brunette face, with its splendid
+dark eyes, is comely as well as intellectual, and obviously contradicts
+Byron's declaration, "She is so ugly I wonder how the best intellect of
+France could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> have taken up such a residence." Schäffer's portrait of
+her daughter hangs near by, displaying a face of striking beauty, and a
+picture of Madame Necker, de Staël's mother, represents a sweet-faced
+woman who smiles upon the visitor despite the discomfort of a painfully
+tight-fitting dress of white satin. Here also are portraits of Necker,
+of de Staël's first husband, of her son Auguste, of Schlegel, and of
+other literary <i>confrères</i>, a statue of her father, by Tieck, and a bust
+of Rocca, her youthful second husband. The latter represents a
+finely-shaped head and a winning face. Byron thought Rocca notably
+handsome, and Frederica Brun testified, "he had the most magnificent
+head I ever saw." He was so slender that one of de Staël's courtiers
+wondered "how his many wounds found a place upon him:" these wounds,
+received in the Peninsula, won for him the sympathy of de Staël, which
+deepened into love.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Memorable Rooms&mdash;Mementos</div>
+
+<p>As we wander through the rooms, waking the echoes and viewing the
+souvenirs of the illustrious dead, as we ponder their lives, their aims,
+their works, it seems, amid the vivid associations of the place, to
+require no supernal effort of the fancy to repeople it with the
+brilliant company who were wont to assemble here. Of these apartments,
+the salon, from whose wall looks down the portrait of Corinna, will
+longest hold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> the pilgrim. It was the throne-room of this court: here
+resorted a throng of the best and noblest minds, <i>littérateurs</i>,
+scientists, men of largest thought, of highest rank. Here Récamier was a
+frequent guest: yonder mirror, with its multipanes framed in gilt metal,
+often reflected her lovely face. In this room she danced for the delight
+of de Staël her famous gavotte, which had transported the <i>beau monde</i>
+of Paris, and was rewarded by its celebration in "Corinne." Some who
+came to this court remained as residential guests: for fifteen years
+Sismondi worked here upon his "Literature of Southern Europe," etc.;
+here the sage Bonstetten wrote many of his twenty-five volumes; here
+Schlegel, the great critic of his age, who is commemorated in "Corinne"
+as Castel-Forte, was installed for twelve years and prepared his works
+on dramatic literature; here Werner, author of "Luther," "Wanda," etc.,
+wrote much of his mystic poetry; here the Danish national poet composed
+his noblest tragedies, "Correggio" being a souvenir of Coppet; here
+Constant penned many dramas. Among the frequenters of this salon were
+Madame de Saussure, famous for her books on education; Frederica Brun,
+with her daughter Ida who is imaged in "Allemagne;" Sir Humphry and Lady
+Davy, the latter being the realization of "Corinne;" Madame de
+Krüdener,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> author of "Valérie," from whom Delphine was mainly drawn;
+Barante the critic; Dumont, editor of Jeremy Bentham. Of those who came
+less often were Cuvier, Gibbon, Ritter, Lacretelle, Mirabeau, Houghton,
+Brougham, Ampère, Byron, Shelley, Montmorency, Wynona, Tieck, Müller,
+Candolle, de Sergey, Prince Augustus, and scores of others.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Literary Court and Courtiers</div>
+
+<p>This room, where that galaxy assembled, has witnessed the most wonderful
+intellectual <i>séances</i> of the century. We may imagine something of the
+brilliancy of an assembly of such minds presided over by de Staël,&mdash;what
+gayety, what coruscations of wit, what displays of wisdom, what keenness
+of discussion were not possible to such a circle! For some time
+religious tenets were frequently under consideration. Every shade of
+belief, doubt, and agnosticism had its defenders in the company.
+Sismondi was corresponding with Channing of Boston, whose views he
+espoused, and the arrival of each letter caused the renewal of the
+argument in which de Staël was the principal advocate of the spiritual
+motive of Christianity as against a system of mere well-doing. All
+questions of literature, art, ethics, philosophy, politics, were
+considered here by the most capable minds of the age, the discussions
+being oft prolonged into the night. But that there may be too much<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+even of a good thing is naïvely confessed by Bonstetten, one of the
+lights of these <i>séances</i>, in his letters: "I feel tired by surfeit of
+intellect: there is more mind expended at Coppet in a day than in many
+countries in a year, but I am half dead." Scintillant converse was
+interspersed with music from the old harpsichord in yonder
+corner,&mdash;touched by fingers that now are dust,&mdash;with recitations and
+reading of MSS. It was the habit of de Staël to read to the circle, for
+their criticism, what she had written during the morning, and to discuss
+the subsequent chapters. Guests who were writing at the château then
+read their compositions&mdash;Bonstetten's "Latium" often put the company to
+sleep&mdash;and eagerly sought de Staël's suggestions; "the lesser lights
+were glad to borrow warmth and lustre from the central sun."
+Châteauvieux declares, "She formed my mental character; for twenty years
+my sentiments were founded upon hers." Sismondi says, "She determined my
+literary career; her good sense guided my pen." Bonstetten, Schlegel,
+Werner, and others bear similar testimony to the value of her counsel.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Byron, Shelley, etc.</div>
+
+<p>The place was never more animated than in the last summer of her life,
+when Byron and Shelley used to cross the lake to join the circle in this
+room. De Staël had met Byron in London<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> during the ephemeral
+"Byron-madness," and now, in his social exile, her doors were freely
+open to him: his letters testify "she made Coppet as agreeable as
+society and talent can make any place on earth." Here he first saw
+"Glenarvon," a venomous attack upon him which seems to have served no
+purpose save to illustrate the aphorism about "a woman scorned," its
+authoress having been notoriously importunate for Byron's favor, even
+attempting, it was said, to enter his apartments in male attire. In this
+salon Mrs. Hervey, the novelist, feigned to faint at Byron's approach:
+from the balcony outside these windows, where de Staël and her father
+stood and saw Napoleon's army cross the Swiss frontier, Byron looked
+upon the scene which inspired some of his divinest stanzas. The château
+was a busy place in those years: a guest writes from here, "In every
+corner one is at a literary task; de Staël is writing 'Exile,' Auguste
+and Constant a tragedy, Sabran an opera, Sismondi his 'Republics,'
+Bonstetten a philosophy, and Rocca his 'Spanish War.'"</p>
+
+<p>One noble chamber hung with dim tapestries is that erst occupied by
+Récamier: it had before been the sick-room of Madame Necker and the
+scene of her husband's loving care of her, which de Staël so touchingly
+records. The chamber of de Staël is near by, its windows overlooking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+her sepulchre: here she wrote the books which made her fame; here she
+instructed her children, their Sabbath lessons being from the devout
+treatises of her father and à Kempis's "Imitation of Christ," the book
+she read in her own dying hours. A smaller room, looking out upon the
+park, the terraces of Jura, and the white walls of Lausanne, was shared
+by Constant and Bonstetten. In the tower above have been found letters
+written by Gibbon to his <i>fiancée</i>, who became the mother of de Staël:
+they have been published by the grandson of de Staël, and show that the
+conduct of the great "Decliner and Faller" toward the then poor girl was
+thoroughly selfish and unscrupulous.</p>
+
+<p>The rooms are renovated and the place is offered for rent, but nothing
+is destroyed. The formal park at the side of the château is little
+changed: along yonder wooded aisle and upon this <i>allée</i> between prim
+patches of sward the de Staël walked with her guests in the summers of
+long ago; upon the seat beneath this coppice, beside this placid pool,
+or on the margin of yonder brooklet from the top of Jura, they lingered
+in brilliant converse till the stars came out one by one above the
+darkening mountains. These&mdash;the mute, soulless inanimates&mdash;remain, while
+the illustrious company that quickened and glorified them all has
+vanished from human ken.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> Some rods distant from the château, shaded by
+a sombre grove and bounded by a hoary wall, is the picturesque chapel in
+which Necker is laid<span class="sidenote">Tomb of Necker and de Staël</span> with his wife, to whose tomb he, for many years,
+daily came to pray. In the same crypt the mortal part of de Staël rests
+at his feet; the portal was walled up at her burial and eye hath not
+since seen her sepulchre. A stone which marks the grave of her son
+Auguste, and lies on the threshold of that sealed portal, is fittingly
+inscribed, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?"</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the closed gate we pause for a parting view of the scene, now
+flooded with sunshine, and as we leave the place we carry thence that
+resplendent vision embalmed in a memory that will abide with us forever.
+As I write these closing lines I see again that summer sky, cloudless
+save for the fleece floating above Jura like that which the bereaved
+Necker fancied was bearing the soul of his wife to paradise. I see again
+the glimmering water; the mountains with their tiaras of snow, sending
+back the sunbeams from their shining peaks like reflections from the
+pearly gates that enclose the Celestial City; and, amid this sublime
+beauty, the gleaming sycamores that sway above the tomb of "the
+incomparable Corinna."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">INDEX</span></p>
+
+
+<p>
+Abbotsford,&mdash;Scott,&mdash;<a href="#Page_161">161</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Addison, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Akenside, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Andersen, Hans Christian, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Annesley Hall and Park, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Aram, Eugene;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scenes, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>-<a href="#Page_147">147</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Arbuthnot, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Arnold, Dr. and Matthew, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Astell, Mary, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Bacon, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Baillie, Joanna, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Barbauld, Mrs., <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Besant, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bolingbroke, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bolton Abbey, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bonnivard, Francis, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bowes, Dotheboys, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Braddon, Miss, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Brontës, The, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Brussels, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Haworth, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scenes and Characters of Tales, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>-<a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Brown, Oliver Madox, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Brussels,&mdash;Villette,&mdash;Brontë Scenes, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Bulwer,&mdash;Eugene Aram,&mdash;<a href="#Page_144">144</a>-<a href="#Page_147">147</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Burns;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Alloway, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dumfries, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ellisland, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grave, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Haunts,&mdash;Scenes of Poems,&mdash;<a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Heroines, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Niece, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Butler, Samuel, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Byron;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Annesley, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coppet, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Harrow, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Newstead, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Leman, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_237">237</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">London, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scenes of Poems, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>-<a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>;</span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tomb, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Caine, Hall, mentioned, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Campbell, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Canning, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Carlyle, Birthplace, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Homes, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sepulchre, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Chaucer, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Chaworth, Mary Ann, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>-<a href="#Page_79">79</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Chelsea, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>-<a href="#Page_37">37</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Chillon, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Clarens,&mdash;Rousseau,&mdash;<a href="#Page_232">232</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Coleridge, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grave, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Collyer, Robert, Early Haunts, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Colwick Hall,&mdash;Chaworth-Musters,&mdash;<a href="#Page_78">78</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Congreve, mentioned, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Constant, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cooling,&mdash;Great Expectations,&mdash;<a href="#Page_57">57</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Coppet,&mdash;Madame de Staël,&mdash;<a href="#Page_244">244</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Coventry,&mdash;George Eliot,&mdash;<a href="#Page_102">102</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Coxwold,&mdash;Sterne,&mdash;<a href="#Page_113">113</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Crabbe, mentioned, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Craigenputtock,&mdash;Carlyle,&mdash;<a href="#Page_167">167</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Crockett, S. R., <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Cunningham, Allan, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Davy, Sir Humphry, mentioned, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Denham, mentioned, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.<br />
+<br />
+De Quincey, mentioned, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.<br />
+<br />
+De Staël, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home and Sepulchre, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Dickens, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gad's Hill, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scenes of Tales, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>-<a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>-<a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Donne, John, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dorset,&mdash;Shaftesbury,&mdash;<a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dotheboys,&mdash;Nicholas Nickleby,&mdash;<a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Douglas, Poet of Annie Laurie, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_179">179</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Du Maurier, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dumfries,&mdash;Burns,&mdash;<a href="#Page_164">164</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Dyer, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ecclefechan,&mdash;Carlyle,&mdash;<a href="#Page_162">162</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Eliot, George, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Birthplace, Early Homes, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grave, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scenes and Characters of Fiction, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>-<a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Emerson, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Erasmus, mentioned, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Fairfax, Edward, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Falstaff, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ferney,&mdash;Voltaire,&mdash;<a href="#Page_238">238</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Fields, James T., <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Foston,&mdash;Sydney Smith,&mdash;<a href="#Page_149">149</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Froude, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Gad's Hill,&mdash;Dickens, Shakespeare,&mdash;<a href="#Page_49">49</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gaskell, Mrs., <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gay, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Geneva, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gibbon, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On Leman, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Goldsmith, mentioned, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Gray,&mdash;Scene of Elegy,&mdash;<a href="#Page_39">39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Hampstead, Literary, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Harridan, Mrs., <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Harrow,&mdash;Byron,&mdash;<a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Haworth,&mdash;The Brontës,&mdash;<a href="#Page_121">121</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hawthorne, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hazlitt, mentioned, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Herbert, George, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Heslington,&mdash;Sydney Smith,&mdash;<a href="#Page_148">148</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Highgate, Literary, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Highland Mary,&mdash;Homes, Scenes, Grave,&mdash;<a href="#Page_195">195</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hogarth, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Hogg, mentioned, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hood, mentioned, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hook, Theodore, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Hunt, Leigh, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ilkley,&mdash;Collyer, etc.,&mdash;<a href="#Page_137">137</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Irving, Edward, mentioned, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Irving, Washington, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Jackson, Helen Hunt, mentioned, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jeanie Deans, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Jeffrey, Francis, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Johnson, Dr., <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Keats, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Keighley,&mdash;Brontë, Collyer,&mdash;<a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kensal Green, Graves of Literati, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kingsley, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Kit-Kat Club, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Lake Leman,&mdash;Literary Shrines,&mdash;<a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_253">253</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Lamb, mentioned, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Landon, Letitia E., <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Laurie, Annie, Birthplace and Homes, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grave, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Song, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Lausanne,&mdash;Gibbon, Dickens, etc.,&mdash;<a href="#Page_230">230</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Livingstone, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Loamshire of George Eliot, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Locke, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+London, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Longfellow, alluded to, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Macaulay, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Maclise, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Marvell, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Maxwelton,&mdash;Annie Laurie,&mdash;<a href="#Page_173">173</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Melrose,&mdash;Scott,&mdash;<a href="#Page_161">161</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Miller, Joaquin, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Milton, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Mitford, Miss, mentioned, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Montagu, Mary Wortley, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Moore, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Mulock, Miss,&mdash;John Halifax Scenes,&mdash;<a href="#Page_92">92</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Murray, John,&mdash;Drawing-Room,&mdash;<a href="#Page_66">66</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Newburgh,&mdash;Sterne,&mdash;<a href="#Page_118">118</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Newstead Abbey,&mdash;Byron,&mdash;<a href="#Page_80">80</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Nidderdale,&mdash;Eugene Aram,&mdash;<a href="#Page_143">143</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Niece of Burns, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Nithsdale,&mdash;Burns, Scott, Carlyle,&mdash;<a href="#Page_164">164</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Nuneaton,&mdash;Milby of Eliot,&mdash;<a href="#Page_101">101</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Pepys, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Pope, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Porter, Jane, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Ramsay, Allan, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Richardson, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rochester,&mdash;Dickens,&mdash;<a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rogers, mentioned, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rokeby,&mdash;Scott,&mdash;<a href="#Page_109">109</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Rossetti, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home and Friends, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Rousseau, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scenes of Fiction, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Rugby,&mdash;Hughes, Arnold,&mdash;<a href="#Page_92">92</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Ruskin, mentioned, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Schlegel, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Scott;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Abodes and Resorts, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scenes and Characters, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Shelley, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Leman, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Shepperton Church and Parsonage, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Smith, Sydney, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yorkshire Homes and Church, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Smollett, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Somervile, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Somerville, Mrs., <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Southey, mentioned, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Southwark,&mdash;Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens,&mdash;<a href="#Page_24">24</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Stanley, H. M., <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Steele, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Sterne, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grave, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Home and Study, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Resorts, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</span><br />
+<br />
+Stoke-Pogis,&mdash;Gray,&mdash;<a href="#Page_39">39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Swift, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Swinburne, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Tennyson, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Thackeray, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Turner, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Voltaire, Château and Study, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Waller, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Walpole, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Walton, mentioned, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Watts, Theodore, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wilde, Oscar, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wordsworth, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Wuthering Heights, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+York,&mdash;Sterne, etc.,&mdash;<a href="#Page_111">111</a>.<br />
+<br />
+Yorkshire Shrines, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.<br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="big">THE END.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">LITERARY SHRINES:</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big">THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big"><span class="smcap">By Theo. F. Wolfe</span>, M.D., Ph.D.,</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">Author of "A Literary Pilgrimage," etc.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">Illustrated with four photogravures.<br />
+12mo. Crushed buckram, gilt top, deckel edges, $1.25;<br />
+half calf or half morocco, $3.00.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><small>CONTAINS, AMONG OTHERS, CHAPTERS TREATING OF</small></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="table">
+<tr><td>CONCORD: A Village of Literary Shrines.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>THE OLD MANSE.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>THE HOMES OF EMERSON AND ALCOTT.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>HAWTHORNE'S "WAYSIDE."</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>THE WALDEN OF THOREAU.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>IN LITERARY BOSTON.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>OUT OF BOSTON: Cambridge&mdash;Elmwood&mdash;Mt.<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Auburn&mdash;"Wayside Inn"&mdash;Brook Farm&mdash;Webster's</span><br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Marshfield&mdash;Homes of Whittier, Hawthorne's</span><br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Salem, etc.</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE: The<br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Graylock Region&mdash;Middle and Lower Berkshire&mdash;</span><br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Haunts of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Bryant,</span><br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Melville, Sedgwick, Kemble, Holmes,</span><br/>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Longfellow, etc.</span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Uniform with "A Literary Pilgrimage."</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big"><span class="smcap">J. B. Lippincott Company</span>, Publishers,</span><br/>
+
+PHILADELPHIA.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><span class="huge"><span class="smcap">By Charles Conrad Abbott.</span></span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="table">
+
+<tr><td><span class="big"><span class="smcap">The Birds About Us.</span></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.</span></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr><td><span class="big"><span class="smcap">Travels in a Tree-Top.</span></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">12mo. Cloth, $1.25.</span></td></tr>
+
+
+
+<tr><td><span class="big"><span class="smcap">Recent Rambles;</span></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="big"><span class="smcap">or, in touch with nature.</span></span></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.</span></td></tr>
+
+
+
+<tr><td><span class="big"><span class="smcap">A Colonial Wooing.</span></span></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 2em;">12mo. Cloth, $1.00.</span></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Abbott is a kindred spirit with Burroughs and Maurice Thompson and,
+we might add, Thoreau, in his love for wild nature, and with Olive
+Thorne Miller in his love for the birds. He writes without a trace of
+affectation, and his simple, compact, yet polished style breathes of
+out-of-doors in every line. City life weakens and often destroys the
+habit of country observation; opportunity, too, fails the dweller in
+cities to gather at first hand the wise lore possessed by the dweller in
+tents; and whatever sends a whiff of fresh, pure, country air into the
+city house, or study, should be esteemed an agent of intellectual
+sanitation."&mdash;<i>New York Churchman.</i></p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big"><span class="smcap">J. B. Lippincott Company</span>,</span><br/>
+
+PHILADELPHIA.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><span class="huge"><span class="smcap">By Anne Hollingsworth Wharton.</span></span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big"><span class="smcap">Through Colonial Doorways.</span></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">With a number of Colonial Illustrations from Drawings specially made for
+the work. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a pleasant retrospect of fashionable New York and Philadelphia
+society during and immediately following the Revolution; for there was a
+Four Hundred even in those days, and some of them were Whigs and some
+were Tories, but all enjoyed feasting and dancing, of which there seemed
+to be no limit. And this little book tells us about the belles of the
+Philadelphia meschianza, who they were, how they dressed, and how they
+flirted with Major André and other officers in Sir William Howe's wicked
+employ."&mdash;<i>Philadelphia Record.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big"><span class="smcap">Colonial Days and Dames.</span></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">With numerous Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p>"In less skilful hands than those of Anne Hollingsworth Wharton's, these
+scraps of reminiscences from diaries and letters would prove but dry
+bones. But she has made them so charming that it is as if she had taken
+dried roses from an old album and freshened them into bloom and perfume.
+Each slight paragraph from a letter is framed in historical sketches of
+local affairs or with some account of the people who knew the letter
+writers, or were at least of their date, and there are pretty
+suggestions as to how and why such letters were written, with hints of
+love affairs, which lend a rose-colored veil to what were probably
+every-day matters in colonial families."&mdash;<i>Pittsburg Bulletin.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="big"><span class="smcap">J. B. Lippincott Company</span>,<br/>
+PHILADELPHIA.</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AMONG THE HAUNTS OF FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 38890-h.txt or 38890-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br />
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/8/8/9/38890">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/8/8/9/38890</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of
+Famous British Authors, by Theodore F. (Theodore Frelinghuysen) Wolfe
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of Famous British Authors
+
+
+Author: Theodore F. (Theodore Frelinghuysen) Wolfe
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 15, 2012  [eBook #38890]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AMONG THE
+HAUNTS OF FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
+Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 38890-h.htm or 38890-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38890/38890-h/38890-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38890/38890-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/literarypilgrima00wolfrich
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
+
+
+
+
+
+A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE
+
+SEVENTH EDITION
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+  _BY DR. WOLFE_
+
+  Uniform with this volume
+
+  LITERARY SHRINES
+  THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS
+
+  _Treating descriptively and reminiscently of the scenes amid which
+  Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, and many other American
+  authors lived and wrote_
+
+  223 pages. Illustrated with four photogravures. $1.25
+
+  A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AND LITERARY SHRINES
+
+  Two volumes in a box, $2.50
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+  [Illustration: CASTLE OF CHILLON]
+
+
+A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AMONG THE HAUNTS
+OF FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS
+
+by
+
+THEODORE F. WOLFE
+M.D. PH.D.
+
+Author of Literary Shrines etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+J. B. Lippincott Company
+Philadelphia MDCCCXCVI
+
+Copyright, 1895,
+By
+Theodore F. Wolfe.
+
+Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The favor with which a few articles in the periodical press, similar to
+those herewith presented, have been received induces the hope that the
+present volume may prove acceptable. If some popular literary shrines
+which are inevitably included in the writer's personal itinerary are
+herein accorded but scant notice, it is for the reason that they have
+been already so oft described that portrayal of them is therefore
+purposely omitted from this account of a literary pilgrimage: even
+Stratford-on-Avon here for once escapes description. However, the
+initial paragraphs of these chapters lightly outline a series of
+literary rambles which the writer has found measurably complete and
+consecutive. The pilgrim is understood to make his start from London.
+
+If these notes of his sojourns in the scenes hallowed by the presence of
+British authors or embalmed in their books shall prove pleasantly
+reminiscent to some who have fared to the same shrines, or helpfully
+suggestive to others who contemplate such pilgrimage, then
+
+                          "not in vain
+  He wore his sandal shoon and scallop-shell."
+
+The writer is indebted to the publishers of the _Home Journal_ for
+permission to reproduce one or two articles which have appeared in that
+periodical.
+
+                                                                T. F. W.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+    LITERARY HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE.
+
+  _Haunt of Dickens--Steele--Pope--Keats--Baillie--Johnson--Hunt--
+    Akenside--Shelley--Hogarth--Addison--Richardson--Gay--Besant--Du
+    Maurier--Coleridge, etc.--Grave of George Eliot_                  13
+
+    BY SOUTHWARK AND THAMES-SIDE TO CHELSEA.
+
+  _Chaucer--Shakespeare--Dickens--Walpole--Pepys--Eliot--Rossetti--
+    Carlyle--Hunt--Gay--Smollett--Kingsley--Herbert--Dorset--
+    Addison--Shaftesbury--Locke--Bolingbroke--Pope--Richardson, etc._ 24
+
+    THE SCENE OF GRAY'S ELEGY.
+
+  _The Country Church-Yard--Tomb of Gray--Stoke-Pogis Church--
+    Reverie and Reminiscence--Scenes of Milton--Waller--Porter--
+    Coke--Denham_                                                     39
+
+    DICKENSLAND: GAD'S HILL AND ABOUT.
+
+  _Chaucer's Pilgrims--Falstaff--Dickens's Abode--Study--Grounds--
+    Walks--Neighbors--Guests--Scenes of Tales--Cobham--Rochester--
+    Pip's Church-Yard--Satis House, etc._                             49
+
+    SOME HAUNTS OF BYRON.
+
+  _Birthplace--London Homes--Murray's Book-Store--Kensal Green--
+    Harrow--Byron's Tomb--His Diadem Hill--Abode of his Star of
+    Annesley--Portraits--Mementos_                                    62
+
+    THE HOME OF CHILDE HAROLD.
+
+  _Newstead--Byron's Apartments--Relics and Reminders--Ghosts--
+    Ruins--The Young Oak--Dog's Tomb--Devil's Wood--Irving--
+    Livingstone--Stanley--Joaquin Miller_                             80
+
+    WARWICKSHIRE: THE LOAMSHIRE OF GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+  _Miss Mulock--Butler--Somervile--Dyer--Rugby--Homes of George
+    Eliot--Scenes of Tales--Cheverel--Shepperton--Milly's Grave--
+    Paddiford--Milby--Coventry, etc.--Characters--Incidents_          91
+
+    YORKSHIRE SHRINES: DOTHEBOYS HALL AND ROKEBY.
+
+  _Village of Bowes--Dickens--Squeers's School--The Master and his
+    Family--Haunt of Scott_                                          106
+
+    STERNE'S SWEET RETIREMENT.
+
+  _Sutton--Crazy Castle--Yorick's Church--Parsonage--Where Tristram
+    Shandy and the Sentimental Journey were written--Reminiscences--
+    Newburgh Hall--Where Sterne died--Sepulchre_                     111
+
+    HAWORTH AND THE BRONTES.
+
+  _The Village--Black Bull Inn--Church--Vicarage--Memory-haunted
+    Rooms--Bronte Tomb--Moors--Bronte Cascade--Wuthering Heights--
+    Humble Friends--Relic and Recollection_                          121
+
+    EARLY HAUNTS OF ROBERT COLLYER: EUGENE ARAM.
+
+  _Childhood Home--Ilkley Scenes, Friends, Smithy, Chapel--Bolton--
+    Associations--Wordsworth--Rogers--Eliot--Turner--Aram's Homes--
+    Schools--Place of the Murder--Gibbet--Probable Innocence_        136
+
+    HOME OF SYDNEY SMITH.
+
+  _Heslington--Foston, Twelve Miles from a Lemon--Church-Rector's
+    Head--Study--Room-of-all-work--Grounds--Guests--Universal
+    Scratcher--Immortal Chariot--Reminiscences_                      148
+
+    NITHSDALE RAMBLES.
+
+  _Scott--Hogg--Wordsworth--Carlye's Birthplace--Homes--Grave--
+    Burns's Haunts--Tomb--Jeanie Deans--Old Mortality, etc.--Annie
+    Laurie's Birthplace--Habitation--Poet-Lover--Descendants_        161
+
+    A NIECE OF ROBERT BURNS.
+
+  _Her Burnsland Cottage--Reminiscences of Burns--Relics--
+    Portraits--Letters--Recitations--Account of his Death--Memories
+    of his Home--Of Bonnie Jean--Other Heroines_                     181
+
+    HIGHLAND MARY: HER HOMES AND GRAVE.
+
+  _Birthplace--Personal Appearance--Relations to Burns--Abodes:
+    Mauchline, Coilsfield, etc.--Scenes of Courtship and Parting--
+    Mementos--Tomb by the Clyde_                                     194
+
+    BRONTE SCENES IN BRUSSELS.
+
+  _School--Class-Rooms--Dormitory--Garden--Scenes and Events of
+    Villette and The Professor--M. Paul--Madame Beck--Memories of
+    the Brontes--Confessional--Grave of Jessy Yorke_                 207
+
+    LEMAN'S SHRINES.
+
+  _Beloved of Litterateurs--Gibbon--D'Aubigne--Rousseau--Byron--
+    Shelley--Dickens, etc.--Scenes of Childe Harold--Nouvelle
+    Heloise--Prisoner of Chillon--Land of Byron_                     226
+
+    CHATEAUX OF FERNEY AND COPPET.
+
+  _Voltaire's Home, Church, Study, Garden, Relics--Literary Court of
+    de Stael--Mementos--Famous Rooms, Guests--Schlegel--Shelley--
+    Constant--Byron--Davy, etc.--De Stael's Tomb_                    238
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+  Castle of Chillon                                      _Frontispiece._
+
+  Stoke-Pogis Church and Church-Yard                                  45
+
+  Newstead Abbey                                                      81
+
+  Home of Annie Laurie                                               177
+
+
+
+
+LITERARY HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE
+
+_Haunt of Dickens--Steele--Pope--Keats--Baillie--Johnson--Hunt--
+  Akenside--Shelley--Hogarth--Addison--Richardson--Gay--Besant--Du
+  Maurier--Coleridge, etc.--Grave of George Eliot._
+
+
+The explorations which first brought renown to the immortal Pickwick
+were made among the uplands which border the valley of the Thames at the
+north of London: the illustrious creator of Pickwick loved to wander in
+the same region through the picturesque landscapes he made the scenes of
+many incidents of his fiction, and the literary prowler of to-day can
+hardly find a ramble more to his mind than that from the former home of
+Dickens or George Eliot by Regent's Park to Hampstead, and thence
+through the famous heath to Highgate. The way traverses storied ground
+and teems with historic associations, but these are, for us, lessened
+and subordinated by the appeal of memories of the famous authors who
+have loved and haunted this delightful region, and have imparted to it
+the tenderest charm. The acclivity of Hampstead has measurably resisted
+the encroachment of London, and has deflected the railroads with their
+disturbing tendencies, so that this old town probably retains more of
+its ancient character than any other of the near suburbs, and some of
+its quaint streets would scarcely be more quiet if they lay a hundred
+miles away from the metropolis. Off the highway by which we ascend the
+hill, we find many evidences of antiquity, old streets lined by rows of
+plain and sedate dwellings wearing an air of dignified sobriety which is
+not of this century, and which is in grateful contrast with the pert
+artificiality of the modern fabrics of the vicinage. Many old houses are
+draped with ivy or shrouded by trees of abundant foliage; some are shut
+in by depressing brick walls, over which float the perfumes of unseen
+flowers. A few of the older streets lie in perpetual crepuscule, being
+vaulted by gigantic elms and limes as opaque as arches of masonry.
+
+[Sidenote: Baillie--Johnson--Kit-Kat Club]
+
+[Sidenote: Keats]
+
+Along the slope of Haverstock hill, where our ascent begins, we find the
+sometime homes of Percival, Stanfield, Rowland Hill, and the historian
+Palgrave. Near by is the cottage where dwelt Mrs. Barbauld, and the
+Roslyn House, where Sheridan, Pitt, Burke, and Fox were guests of
+Loughborough. Here, too, formerly stood the mansion where Steele
+entertained the poet of the "Dunciad," with Garth and other famed wits.
+On the hill-side a leafy lane leads out of High Street to the
+picturesque church of the parish, whose tower is a conspicuous
+landmark. Within this fane we find, against the wall on the right of the
+chancel, the beautiful marble bust recently erected by American admirers
+"To the Ever-living Memory" of the author of "Lamia" and "Hyperion."
+Here, too, is the plain memorial tablet of the poetess Joanna Baillie,
+who lived in an unpretentious mansion lately standing in the
+neighborhood, where she was visited by Wordsworth, Rogers, and others of
+potential genius. In the thickly tenanted church-yard she sleeps with
+her sister near the graves of Incledon, Erskine, and the historian
+Mackintosh. Below the church, on the westering slope, lies embowered
+Frognall, once the home of Gay, where Dr. Johnson lived and wrote "The
+Vanity of Human Wishes" in the house where the gifted Nichol now resides
+with the author of "Ships that Pass in the Night" for a neighbor and
+with the home of Besant in view from his study. Near the summit of
+Hampstead stands a sober old edifice which was of yore the Upper Flask
+tavern, where the famous Kit-Kat Club held its summer _seances_, when
+such luminous spirits as Walpole, Prior, Dorset, Pope, Congreve, Swift,
+Steele, and Addison assembled here in the low-panelled rooms which we
+may still see, or beneath the old trees of the garden, and interchanged
+sallies of wit and fancy over their cakes and ale. To this inn Lovelace
+brought the "Clarissa Harlowe" of Richardson's famed romance, and here
+Steevens, the scholiast of Shakespeare, lived and died. Flask Walk,
+which leads out of the high street among old houses and greeneries,
+brings us to the shadowy Well Walk, with its overarching trees and with
+many living memories masoned into its dead walls. Here we see the little
+remnant of the once famous well which for a time made Hampstead a resort
+for the fashionable and the suffering. Among the fancied invalids who
+once dwelt in Well Walk was the spouse of Dr. Johnson. Akenside,
+Arbuthnot, and Mrs. Barbauld (editor of "Richardson's Correspondence")
+have sometime lived in this same little street; here the mother of
+Tennyson died, and here the sweet boy-poet Keats lodged and wrote
+"Endymion." At a house still to be seen in the vicinage he was for two
+years the guest of his friend Brown; here he wrote "Hyperion," "St.
+Agnes," and the "Ode to a Nightingale," and here he wasted in mortal
+illness, being at last removed to Rome only to die. Under the limes of
+Well Walk is a spot especially hallowed by the memory of Keats: it was
+the object and limit of his walks in his later months, and here was
+placed a seat (which until lately was preserved and bore his name),
+where he sat for hours at a time beneath the whispering boughs, gazing,
+often through tears, upon the enchanting vista of wave-like woods and
+fields, the valley with its gleaming lakelets, and the farther slopes
+crowned by the spires of Highgate, which rise out of banks of foliage.
+The view is no less beautiful than when Keats's vision lingered lovingly
+upon it, although we must go into the open fields to behold it now.
+
+[Sidenote: The Heath]
+
+[Sidenote: Leigh Hunt--Jack Straw's Castle]
+
+If we bestir ourselves to reach the summit of the heath before the
+accustomed pall shall have settled down upon the great city, the
+exertion will be abundantly rewarded by the prospect that greets us as
+we overlook the abodes of eight millions of souls. Such a view is
+possible nowhere else on earth: outspread before us lies the vast
+metropolis with its seven thousand miles of streets, while without and
+beyond this aggregation of houses we behold an expanse of landscape
+diversified with vale and hill, copse and field, village and park,
+extending for leagues in every direction and embracing portions of seven
+of England's populous shires. We see the great dome of St. Paul's and
+the tall towers of Westminster rising out of the mass of myriad roofs;
+the Crystal Palace glinting amid its green terraces; across the city we
+behold the verdured slopes of Surrey and, farther away, the higher hills
+of Sussex; our eyes follow the course of the Thames from imperial
+Windsor, whose battlements are misty in the distance of the western
+horizon, to its mouth at Gravesend; yonder at the right is Harrow, set
+on its classic hill-top, with its ancient church by which the boy Byron
+idled and dreamed; northward we see pretty Barnet, where "Oliver Twist"
+met the "Dodger;" nearer is romantic Highgate, and all around us lie the
+green slopes and leafy recesses of the heath. Through these strode the
+murderer Sykes of Dickens's tale, and from the higher parts of this
+common we may trace the way of his aimless flight from the pursuing eyes
+of Nancy,--through Islington and Highgate to Hendon and Hatfield, and
+thence to the place of his miserable death at Rotherhithe. There are
+hours of delightful strolling amid the mazes of the picturesque heath,
+with its alternations of heathered hills and flower-decked dales, its
+pretty pools, its braes of brambled gorse and pine, its tangle of
+countless paths. One will not wonder that it has been the resort of
+_litterateurs_ from the time of Dryden till now: Pope, Goldsmith, and
+Johnson loved to ramble here; Hunt, Dickens, Collins, and Thackeray were
+familiar with these shady paths; Nichol, Besant, James, and Du Maurier
+are now to be seen among the walkers on the heath. A worn path bearing
+to the right conducts to the turf-carpeted vale where, in a little
+cottage whose site is now occupied by the inn, Leigh Hunt lived for
+some years. Such guests as Lamb, Hazlitt, Coleridge, Hood, and Cornwall
+came to this humble home, and here Shelley met Keats, the "Adonais" of
+his elegy. Not far away lie the ponds of Pickwick's unwearied
+researches; and in another corner of the common we find an ancient
+tavern bowered with shrubbery, in whose garden Addison and Steele oft
+sipped their ale of a summer evening, and where is still cherished a
+portion of a tree planted by Hogarth. On an elevation of the heath
+stands "Jack Straw's Castle," believed to mark the place of encampment
+of that rebel chieftain with his mob of peasantry. It is a curious old
+structure, with wainscoted walls, and was especially favored by Dickens,
+who often dined here with Maclise and Forster and read to them his MSS.
+or counselled with them concerning his plots. Out on the heath near by
+was found the corpse of Sadlier the speculator, who, after bankrupting
+thousands of confiding dupes, committed suicide here; his career
+suggested to Dickens the Merdle and his complaint of "Little Dorrit."
+Among the embowered dwellings beyond West Heath we find that in which
+Chatham was self-immured, the cottage in which Mrs. Coventry
+Patmore--the Angel in the House--died, the place where Crabbe sojourned
+with Hoare. This vicinage has been the delight of artists from the time
+of Gainsborough, and is still a favorite sketching ground: here lived
+Collins and Blake, and Constable dwelt not far away. The author of
+"Trilby," who has recently taken front rank in the literary profession,
+long had home and studio in a picturesque ivy-grown brick mansion of
+many angles and turrets, in a quiet street upon the other side of the
+hill; here among his treasures of art he commenced a third book soon to
+be published.
+
+[Sidenote: The Spaniard's]
+
+The highway which leads north from Jack Straw's affords an exhilarating
+walk, with a superb prospect upon either hand, and brings us to the
+historic Spaniard's Inn, a pleasant wayside resort decked with vines and
+flowers, where pedestrians stop for refreshments. Dickens oft came to
+this place, and here we see the shady garden, with its tables and seats,
+where Mrs. Bardell held with her cronies the mild revel which was
+interrupted by the arrest of the widow for the costs in Bardell _vs._
+Pickwick. The quiet of this ancient inn was disturbed one night by a
+fierce band of Gordon rioters, who rushed up the paths of the heath on
+their way to Mansfield's house, and stopped here to drink or destroy the
+contents of the inn-cellars,--an occurrence which is graphically
+described by Dickens in the looting of the Maypole Inn of Willet, in
+"Barnaby Rudge." Next to the Spaniard's once lived Erskine, and among
+the grand beeches of Caen Wood we see the house of Mansfield, where the
+daughter of Mary Montagu was mistress, and where illustrious guests like
+Pope, Southey, and Coleridge were entertained.
+
+[Sidenote: Home of Coleridge]
+
+A farther walk through the noble wood brings us to the delightful suburb
+of Highgate, where we now vainly seek the Arundel House where the great
+Bacon died and find only the site of the simple cottage where Marvell,
+the "British Aristides," lived and wrote. The last home of the author of
+"Ancient Mariner" is in a row of pleasant houses on a shady street
+called The Grove, a little way from the high street, which was in
+Coleridge's time the great Northern coach-road from London. The house is
+a neat brick structure of two stories, in which we may see the room
+where the poet lodged and where he breathed out his melancholy life. A
+pretty little patch of turf is in front of the dwelling, a larger
+garden, beloved by the poet, is at the back, and the trees which border
+the foot-walk were planted in his lifetime. To this cosy refuge he came
+to reside with his friends the Gilmans; here he was visited by Hunt, who
+once lodged in the next street, Lamb, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Shelley, De
+Quincey, and others of like fame; and here, for nineteen years,
+"afflicted with manifold infirmities," he continued the struggle against
+a baneful habit, which ended only with his life. His grave was made not
+far away, in a portion of the church-yard which has since been overbuilt
+by a school, among whose crypt-like under-arches we find the tomb of
+stone, lying in pathetic and perpetual twilight, where the poet sleeps
+well without the lethean drug which ruined his life. On this hill lived
+"Copperfield" with Dora, and at its foot is the stone where Whittington
+sat and heard the bells recall him to London.
+
+[Sidenote: Grave of George Eliot]
+
+On the slope toward the city is the most beautiful of the London
+cemeteries, with a wealth of verdure and bloom. Within its hallowed
+shades lie the ashes of many whose memories are more fragrant than the
+flowers that deck their graves. In a beautiful spot which was beloved by
+the sweet singer in life we find the tomb of Parepa Rosa, tended by
+loving hands; not far away, among the mourning cypresses, lie Lyndhurst
+and the great Faraday. A plain tombstone erected by Dickens marks the
+sepulchre of his parents, and by it lies his daughter Dora, her
+gravestone bearing now, besides her simple epitaph prepared by her
+father, the name of the novelist himself and the names of two of his
+sons. Here, too, is the grave of Rossetti's young wife, whence his
+famous poems were exhumed. Among the many tombs of the enclosure, the
+one to which most pilgrims come is that of the immortal author of
+"Romola." On a verdant slope we find the spot where, upon a cold and
+stormy day which tested the affection of her friends, the mortal part of
+George Eliot was covered with flowers and lovingly laid beside the
+husband of her youth. Wreaths of flowers conceal the mound, and out of
+it rises a monument of gray granite bearing her name and years and the
+lines
+
+  "Of those immortal dead who live again
+  In minds made better by their presence."
+
+From the terraces above her bed we look over the busy metropolis, astir
+with its myriad pulses of life and passion, while its rumble and din
+sound in our ears in a murmurous monotone. As we linger amid the
+lengthening shadows until the sunset glory fades out of the sky above
+the heath and the lights of London gleam mistily through the smoke, we
+rejoice that we find the tomb of George Eliot, not in the aisles of
+Westminster, where some would have laid her, but in this open place,
+where the winds sigh a requiem through the swaying boughs, the birds
+swirl and twitter in the free azure above, and the silent stars nightly
+watch over her grave.
+
+
+
+
+BY SOUTHWARK AND THAMES-SIDE TO CHELSEA
+
+_Chaucer--Shakespeare--Dickens--Walpole--Pepys--Eliot--Rossetti--
+  Carlyle--Hunt--Gay--Smollett--Kingsley--Herbert--Dorset--Addison--
+  Shaftesbury--Locke--Bolingbroke--Pope--Richardson, etc._
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Tabard--White Hart--Marshalsea]
+
+If our way to Southwark be that of the pilgrims of Chaucer's time, by
+the London Bridge, we have on our right the dark reach of river where
+Lizzie Hexam was discovered in the opening of "Our Mutual Friend,"
+rowing the boat of the bird of prey; on the right, too, we see the Iron
+Bridge where "Little Dorrit" dismissed young Chivery; and a few steps
+bring us to a scene of another of Dickens's romances, the landing-stairs
+at the end of London Bridge, where Nancy had the interview with "Oliver
+Twist's" friends which cost the outcast her life. Here, too, the boy
+Dickens used to await admission to the Marshalsea, often in company with
+the little servant of his father's family who figures in his fiction as
+the "orfling" of the Micawber household and the "Marchioness" of the
+Brass establishment in Bevis Marks. In the adjacent church of St.
+Saviour, part of which was standing when the Father of English poetry
+sojourned in the near Tabard inn, is the effigied tomb of the poet
+Gower, a friend of Chaucer; here also lie buried Shakespeare's brother
+Edmund, an actor; Fletcher the dramatist, who lived close by; and
+Lawrence Fletcher, coparcener of Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre, which
+stood near at hand, on a portion of the site of the brewery which Dr.
+Johnson, executor of his friend Thrale, sold to Barclay and Perkins. The
+extensions of this establishment now cover the site of a church where
+Baxter preached, and the sepulchre of Cruden, author of the
+"Concordance." In near-by Zoar Street, Bunyan preached in a large chapel
+near the Falcon tavern, which was a resort of Shakespeare. Of the Tabard
+inn, whence Chaucer's Canterbury company set out, the pilgrim of to-day
+finds naught save the name on the sign of the new tavern which marks its
+site on Borough High Street; and the picturesque White Hart, which stood
+near by--an inn known to Shakespeare and mentioned in his dramas--where
+Jingle of "Pickwick," eloping with Miss Wardle, was overtaken and Sam
+Weller discovered, was not long ago degraded into a vulgar dram-shop.
+Near St. Thomas's Church in this neighborhood formerly stood the
+hospital in which Akenside was physician and Keats a student. A little
+farther along the High Street we come to a passage at the left leading
+into a paved yard which was the court of the Marshalsea, and the high
+wall at the right is believed to have been a part of the old prison
+where Dickens's father was confined in the rooms which the novelist
+assigns to William Dorrit, and where "Little Dorrit" was born and
+reared. In this court the Dickens children played, and under yonder pump
+by the wall Pancks cooled his head on a memorable occasion. Just beyond
+is St. George's Church, where "Little Dorrit" was baptized and married,
+with its vestry where she once slept with the register under her head;
+adjoining is the church-yard, once overlooked by the prison-windows of
+Dickens and Dorrit, where the disconsolate young Chivery expected to be
+untimely laid under a lugubrious epitaph. Another block brings us to
+dingy Lant Street--"out of Hight Street, right side the way"--where the
+boy Dickens lived in the back attic of the same shabby house in which
+Bob Sawyer afterward lodged and gave the party to Pickwick. Beyond the
+next turning stood King's Bench Prison, where Micawber was incarcerated
+by his stony-hearted creditors, and beyond this again we come to the
+tabernacle where Spurgeon preached. Turning at the site of Micawber's
+prison, the Borough Road conducts us, by the sponging-house where Hook
+was confined, to the Christ Church of Newman Hall,--successor to Rowland
+Hill: it is a beautiful edifice, erected largely by contributions from
+America, its handsome tower being designed as a monument to Abraham
+Lincoln and marked by a memorial tablet. A little way southward, we find
+among the buildings of Lambeth Palace the library of which Green, the
+historian of the "English People," was long custodian, and the ancient
+room where Essex and the poet Lovelace were imprisoned.
+
+[Sidenote: Thames-Side--Shop of Jenny Wren]
+
+[Sidenote: Old Chelsea]
+
+Recrossing Father Thames and passing the oft-described shrines of
+Westminster we come to Millbank, the region into which Copperfield and
+Peggotty followed the wretched Martha and saved her from suicide. Out of
+Millbank Street, a few steps by a little thoroughfare bring us into the
+somnolent Smith Square in which stands the grotesque church of St. John,
+where Churchill once preached,--described in "Our Mutual Friend" as a
+"very hideous church with four towers, resembling some petrified monster
+on its back with its legs in the air." To this place came Charley Hexam
+and his school-master and Wrayburn, for here in front of the church, at
+a house near the corner, Lizzie Hexam--the best of all Dickens's
+women--lodged with Jenny Wren. It was a little house of two stories, and
+its dingy front room--the shop of the dolls' dress-maker--later was used
+as a cheap restaurant, where we once regaled ourselves with a dish of
+equivocal tea while we looked about us and recognized the half-door
+across which Wrayburn indolently leaned as he chatted with Lizzie, the
+seat in front of the wide window where Jenny sat at her work with her
+crutch leaning against the wall, the corner to which she consigned her
+"bad old child" in his drunken disgrace, the stairs which led to
+Lizzie's chamber,--objects all noted by the observant glance of Dickens
+as he peered for a moment through the door-way. Sauntering southward by
+Grosvenor Road, where Lizzie walked with her brother and Headstone, we
+have beside us on the left the river, glinting and shimmering in the
+morning sunlight and alive with every sort of craft that plies for trade
+or pleasure. It was along these curving reaches of the Thames that the
+merry parties of the olden time, destined like ourselves to Chelsea,
+used to row over the miles that then intervened between London and the
+ancient village, and here, too, Franklin, then a printer in Bartholomew
+Close, once swam the entire distance from Chelsea to Blackfriars Bridge.
+The way along which we are strolling then lay in the open country, with
+leafy lanes leading aside among groves and sun-flecked fields. But woods
+and fields have disappeared under compact masses of brick and mortar,
+and the quaint old suburb is linked to the city by continuous streets
+and structures. Contact has not altogether destroyed the distinctive
+features of the ancient suburb, and we know when our walk has brought us
+to its borders. Few of its thoroughfares retain the dreamful quiet of
+the olden time, few of its rows of sombre and dignified dwellings have
+wholly escaped the modern eruption of ornate and staring architecture;
+the old and the new are curiously blended, but enough of the former
+remains to remind us that Chelsea is olden and not modern, and to revive
+for us the winsome associations with which the place is permeated. The
+suggestion of worshipful antiquity is seen in sedate, ivy entwined
+mansions of dusky-hued brick, in carefully kept old trees which in their
+saplinghood knew Pepys, Johnson, or Smollett, in quaint inns whose
+homely comforts were enjoyed by illustrious _habitues_ in the long ago.
+
+[Sidenote: Walpole]
+
+Our stroll beyond the Grosvenor Road brings us to the famous "Chelsea
+Physick Garden," presented to the Apothecaries' Society by Sloane, the
+founder of the British Museum, who was a medical student here; it was to
+this garden that Polyphilus of the "Rambler" was going to see a new
+plant in flower when he was diverted by meeting the chancellor's coach.
+At the adjoining hospital dwelt the gifted Mrs. Somerville, whose
+husband was a physician there; and the ancient mansion of dingy brick,
+in which Walpole lived, and where Pope, Swift, Gay, and Mary Wortley
+Montagu were guests, is a portion of the infirmary,--the great
+drawing-room in which the brilliant company met being a hospital ward. A
+little way northward, by Sloane Street, we come to Hans Place, where, at
+No. 25, the sweet poetess Letitia Landon ("L. E. L.") was born in a tiny
+two-storied house; she attended school in a similar house of the same
+row, where Miss Mitford and the authoress of "Glenarvon" had before been
+pupils. Along the river again we find beyond the hospital a passage
+leading to the place of Paradise Row, where, in a little brick house,
+the witching Mancini was visited by Charles II. and poetized by the
+brilliant Evremond. Here, at the corner of Robinson's Lane, Pepys
+visited Robarte in "the prettiest contrived house" the diarist ever saw;
+not far away a comfortable old inn occupies the site of the dwelling of
+the historian Faulkner, in the neighborhood where the essayist Mary
+Astell--ridiculed by Swift, Addison, Steele, Smollett, and Congreve--had
+her modest home. Robert Walpole's later residence stood near Queen's
+Road West, and its grounds sloped to the river just below the Swan
+Tavern, near the bottom of the lane now called Swan Walk. It was at
+this river inn that Pepys "got affright" on being told of an eruption of
+the plague in Chelsea.
+
+[Sidenote: Homes of George Eliot and Rossetti]
+
+For a half-mile or so westward from the Swan, picturesque Cheyne
+Walk--beloved of the _literati_--stretches along the river-bank. Its
+many old houses, with their solemn-visaged fronts overlooking the river,
+their iron railings, dusky walls, tiled roofs, and curious
+dormer-windows, are impressive survivors of a past age. At No. 4, a
+substantial brick house of four stories, with battlemented roof and with
+oaken carvings in the rooms, are preserved some relics of George Eliot,
+for this was her last home, and here she breathed out her life in the
+same room where Maclise, friend of Carlyle and Dickens, had died just a
+decade before. No. 16, a spacious dwelling with curved front and finely
+wrought iron railing and gate-way, was the home of Rossetti for the
+twenty years preceding his death. With these panelled rooms, which he
+filled with quaint and beautiful objects of art, are associated most of
+the memories of the gifted poet and painter. The large lower room was
+his studio, where one of his last occupations was painting a replica of
+"Beata Beatrix," the portrait of his wife, whose tragic death darkened
+his life. Around the fireplace in this room a brilliant company held the
+nightly _seances_ which a participant styles feasts of the gods.
+Through the passage at the side the famous zebu was conveyed, and
+reconveyed after his assault upon the poet in the garden. The rooms
+above were sometime tenanted by Meredith, Swinburne, and Rossetti's
+brother and biographer, who was also Whitman's editor and advocate.
+Later, the essayist Watts, to whom Rossetti dedicated his greatest work,
+resided here to cherish his friend. The garden, where Rossetti kept his
+odd pets and where neighbors remember to have seen him walking in
+paint-bedaubed attire for hours together, is now mostly covered by a
+school. At first, many luminaries of letters and art came to him
+here,--Jones, Millais, Hunt, Gosse, Browning, Whistler, Morris, Oliver
+Madox Brown, whose death elicited Rossetti's "Untimely Lost," and others
+like them; later, when baneful narcotics had sadly changed his
+temperament, he dwelt in seclusion, exercising only in his garden and
+seeing such devoted friends as Watts, Knight, Hake, "The Manxman" Hall
+Caine, and the gifted sister, author of "Goblin Market," etc., who was
+pictured by Rossetti in his "Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and who lately
+died. In his study here he produced his best work; here he revised the
+poems exhumed from his wife's grave and wrote "The Stream's Secret" and
+other parts of the volume which made his fame and occasioned the battle
+between the bards Buchanan and Swinburne; here he wrote the magnificent
+"Rose Mary," "White Ship," etc., and completed the series of sonnets
+which has been pronounced "in its class the greatest gift poetry has
+received since Shakespeare."
+
+[Sidenote: Carlyle's House--Smollett--Gay]
+
+[Sidenote: Kingsley--Herbert--Dorset]
+
+[Sidenote: Shaftesbury--Bolingbroke]
+
+No. 18 was the famous coffee-house and barber-shop of Sloane's servant
+Salter,--called "Don Saltero" by Gay, Evremond, Steele, Smollett, and
+the other wits who frequented his place. On the Embankment by this
+Cheyne Walk we find the statue of Carlyle; behind it is the dull little
+lane of Cheyne Row, whose quiet Carlyle thought "hardly inferior to
+Craigenputtock," and here at No. 5, later 24, a plain three-storied
+house of sullied brick,--even more dingy than its neighbors,--the
+pessimistic sage lived, wrote, and scolded for half a century. All the
+wainscoted rooms are sombre and cheerless, but the memory-haunted study
+seems most depressing as we stand at Carlyle's hearth-stone and look
+upon the spot where he sat to write his many books. The garden was a
+pleasanter place, with bright flowers his wife planted, and the tree
+under which he loved to smoke and chat. Here Tennyson lounged with him,
+devoted to a long pipe and longer discourse; here Froude oft found him
+on the daily visits which enabled him to picture the seer, "warts and
+all;" here Dickens, Maclise, and Hunt saw him at his best, and here the
+latter wrote "Jenny Kissed Me,"--Jenny being Mrs. Carlyle. To Carlyle in
+this sombre home came Emerson, Ruskin, Tyndal, and a host of friends and
+disciples from all lands, and hither will come an endless procession of
+admirers, for many Carlyle belongings have been recovered, and the place
+is to be preserved as a memorial of the stern philosopher. Around the
+corner Hunt lived, in the curious little house Carlyle described, and
+here he studied and wrote in the upper front room. On the next block of
+the same street stood the home of Smollett, which was removed the year
+that Carlyle came to dwell in the vicinage. It was a spacious mansion
+which had been the Lawrence manor-house. Smollett wrote here "Count
+Fathom," "Clinker," and "Launcelot Greaves," and finished Hume's
+"England." Here Garrick, Johnson, Sterne, and other starry spirits were
+his guests, and here later lived the poet Gay and wrote "The Shepherd's
+Week," "Rural Sports," and part of his comedies. In the cellars of some
+of the houses at the top of Lawrence Street may be seen remains of the
+ovens of the once famous Chelsea china-factory, where Dr. Johnson
+wrought for some time vainly trying to master the art of
+china-making,--his pieces always cracking in the oven: a service of
+china presented to him by the factorymen here was preserved in Holland
+House. A tasteful Queen Anne mansion with beautiful interior
+decorations, not far from the Carlyle house, was a domicile of the poet
+and aesthete Oscar Wilde. In the picturesque rectory of St. Luke's, a few
+rods north from Cheyne Row, the author of "Hypatia" and his scarcely
+less famed brother Henry, of "Ravenshoe," lived as boys, their father
+being the incumbent of the parish. Henry Kingsley presents, in his
+"Hillyars and Burtons," charming sketches of Chelsea as it existed in
+his boyhood. Overlooking the river at the foot of the adjoining street,
+we find Chelsea Church, one of the most curious and interesting of
+London's many fanes, albeit partially disfigured by modern changes. In
+its pulpit Donne, the poet-divine, preached at the funeral of the mother
+of George Herbert; at its altar the dramatist Colman was married. Among
+its many monuments we find the mural tablet of Sir Thomas More, a marble
+slab with an inscription by himself which formerly described him as
+"harassing to thieves, murderers, and heretics." Here lie the ancestors
+of the poet Sidney, and in the little church-yard are the graves of
+Shadwell the laureate, who died just back of the church, of the
+publisher of "Junius," and of a brother of Fielding. Leading back from
+the river here is Church Street, on which dwelt Swift, Atterbury, and
+Arbuthnot, while Steele had a little house near by. The next street is
+named for Sir John Danvers, whose house was at the top of the little
+street: his wife was the mother of the poet Herbert, who dwelt here for
+a time and wrote some of his earlier poems; Donne and the amiable angler
+Izaak Walton were frequent guests of Herbert's mother in this place. The
+adjacent street marks the place of Beaufort House, the palatial
+residence of Sir Thomas More, where he was visited by his much-married
+monarch; where the learned and colloquial author of "Encomium Moriae,"
+Erasmus, was sometime an inmate; and where, decades later, Thomas
+Sackville, Earl Dorset, wrote the earliest English tragedy, "Gorboduc."
+A time-worn structure between King's Road and the Thames was once the
+home of the bewitching Nell Gwynne, and in later years "became (not
+inappropriately) a gin-temple," as Carlyle said: this old edifice was
+also sometime occupied by Addison. Back of King's Road we find the
+venerable Shaftesbury House,--in which the famous earl wrote
+"Characteristics," Locke began his "Essay," and Addison produced some of
+his Spectator papers,--long transformed into a workhouse, in the grounds
+of which we are shown the place of "Locke's yew," recently removed. The
+Old World's End Tavern, by Riley Street, was the notorious resort of
+Congreve's "Love for Love;" the once ill-famed Cremorne Gardens, just
+beyond, were erst part of the estate of a granddaughter of William Penn,
+who was related to the Penns of Stoke-Pogis, where Gray wrote the
+"Elegy." A near-by little ivy-grown brick house, with wide windows in
+its front and an iron balcony upon its roof, was long the home of
+Turner, and in the upper room, through whose arched window he could look
+out upon the river, he died. From the water-edge here we see, upon the
+opposite shore, the old church where Blake was married and Bolingbroke
+was buried, and from whose vestry window Turner made his favorite
+sketches; near by is a portion of the ancient house where Bolingbroke
+was born and died, where he entertained such guests as Chesterfield,
+Swift, and Pope, and where the latter wrote part of the "Essay on Man."
+Beyond Chelsea we find at Fulham the spot where lived and died
+Richardson, who is said to have written "Clarissa Harlowe" here; and,
+near the river, the place of the home of Hook, and his mural tablet in
+the old church by which he lies, near the grave of the poet Vincent
+Bourne. Our ramble by Thames-side may be pleasantly prolonged through a
+region rife with the associations we esteem most precious. Our way lies
+among the sometime haunts of Cowley, Bulwer, Pepys, Thomson, Marryat,
+Pope, Hogarth, Tennyson, Fielding, "Junius," Garrick, and many another
+shining one. Some of lesser genius dwell now incarnate in this
+memory-haunted district by the river-side,--the radical Labouchere,
+living in Pope's famous villa, Stephens, and the author of "Aurora
+Floyd,"--but it is the memory of the mighty dead that impresses us as we
+saunter amid the scenes they loved and which inspired or witnessed the
+work for which the world gives them honor and homage; we find their
+accustomed resorts, the rural habitations where many of them dwelt and
+died, the dim church aisles or the turf-grown graves where they are laid
+at last in the dreamless sleep whose waking we may not know.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCENE OF GRAY'S ELEGY
+
+_The Country Church-Yard--Tomb of Gray--Stoke-Pogis Church--Reverie
+  and Reminiscence--Scenes of Milton--Waller--Porter--Coke--Denham._
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Country Church-Yard]
+
+Our visit to the country church-yard where the ashes of Gray repose amid
+the scenes his muse immortalized is the culmination and the fitting end
+of a literary pilgrimage westward from London to Windsor and the nearer
+shrines of Thames-vale. Our way has led us to the sometime homes of
+Pope, Fielding, Shelley, Garrick, Burke, Richardson; to the birthplaces
+of Waller and Gibbon, the graves of "Junius," Hogarth, Thomson, and
+Penn; to the cottage where Jane Porter wrote her wondrous tales, and the
+ivy-grown church where Tennyson was married. Nearer the scene of the
+"Elegy" we visit other shrines: the Horton where Milton wrote his
+earlier works, "Masque of Comus," "Lycidas," "Arcades;" the Hallbarn
+where Waller composed the panegyric to Cromwell, the "Congratulation,"
+and other once famous poems; the mansion where the Herschels studied and
+wrote. We have had the gray spire of Stoke-Pogis Church in view during
+this last day of our ramble. From the summit of the "Cooper's Hill" of
+Denham's best-known poem, from the battlements of Windsor and the
+windows of Eton, from the elm-shaded meads that border the Thames and
+the fields redolent of lime-trees and new-mown hay where we loitered, we
+have had tempting glimpses of that "ivy-mantled tower" that made us wish
+the winged hours more swift; for we have purposely deferred our visit to
+that sacred spot so that the even-tide and the hour the curfew tolled
+"the knell of parting day" across this peaceful landscape may find us
+amid the old graves where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." As
+we approach through verdant lanes bordered by fields where the ploughman
+is yet at his toil and the herds feed among the buttercups, the abundant
+ivy upon the tower gleams in the light of the declining sun, and the
+"yew-tree's shade" falls far aslant upon the mouldering turf-heaps. The
+sequestered God's-acre, consecrated by the genius of Gray, lies in
+languorous solitude, far removed from the highway and within the
+precincts of a grand park once the possession of descendants of Penn.
+Just without the enclosure stands a cenotaph erected by John Penn,
+grandson of the founder of Pennsylvania; it represents a sarcophagus and
+is ostensibly commemorative of Gray, but, as has been said, it
+"resembles nothing so much as a huge tea-caddy," and its inscription
+celebrates the builder more than the bard. Within the church-yard all
+is rest and peace; the strife and fever of life intrude not here; no
+sound of the busy world breaks in upon the hush that pervades this spot,
+and "all the air a solemn stillness holds." Something of the serenity
+which here pervades earth and sky steals into and uplifts the soul, and
+the demons of greed and passion are subdued and silenced as we stand
+above the tomb of Gray and realize all the imagery of the "Elegy." While
+our hearts are thrilling with the associations of the place and the
+hour, while the ashes of the tender poet rest at our feet and the
+objects that inspired the matchless poem surround us, we may hope to
+share in some measure the tenderer emotions to which the contemplation
+of this scene stirred his soul. As we ponder these objects, upon which
+his loving vision lingered, they seem strangely familiar; we feel that
+we have known them long and will love them alway.
+
+One must visit this spot if he would appreciate the absolute fidelity to
+nature of the "Elegy:" its imagery is the exact reproduction of the
+scene lying about us, which is practically unchanged since that time so
+long ago when Gray drafted his poem here. Above us rises the square
+tower, mantled with ivy and surmounted by a tapering spire whose shadow
+now falls athwart the grave of the poet; here are the rugged elms with
+their foliage swaying in the summer breeze above the lowly graves;
+yonder by the church porch is the dark yew whose opaque shade covers the
+site of the poet's accustomed seat on the needle-carpeted sward; around
+us are scattered the mouldering heaps beneath which, "each in his narrow
+cell forever laid," sleep the rustic dead. Some of the humble mounds are
+unmarked by any token of memory or grief, but many bear the "frail
+memorials," often rude slabs of wood, which loving but unskilled hands
+have graven with "uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture," with the
+names and years of the unhonored dead, and "many a holy text that teach
+the rustic moralist to die." Some of these lowly graves hold the
+forefathers of families who, not content with the sequestered vale of
+life which sufficed for these simple folk, have sought on another shore
+largesses of fame or fortune unattainable here. Among the names "spelled
+by the unlettered muse" upon the stones around us we see those of
+Goddard, Perry, Gould, Cooper, Geer, and many others familiar to our
+American ears. The overarching glades of the woods which skirt the
+sacred precinct were the haunt of the "youth to fortune and to fame
+unknown;" the nodding beech, that "wreathes its old fantastic roots so
+high" in the grove at near-by Burnham, was his favorite tree, as it was
+that of Gray; afar through the haze of a golden after-glow we see the
+"antique towers" of Eton, the stately brow of Windsor, with its royal
+battlements, and nearer the wave of woods and fields and all the
+dream-like beauty of the landscape upon which the eyes of Gray so often
+dwelt, a landscape that literally glimmers in the fading light.
+
+[Sidenote: Tomb of Gray]
+
+A tablet set by Penn in the chancel wall beneath the mullioned window is
+inscribed, "Opposite this stone, in the same tomb upon which he so
+feelingly recorded his grief at the loss of a beloved parent, are
+deposited the remains of Thomas Gray, author of the Elegy written in a
+Country Church-yard." A few feet distant is the tomb he erected for his
+mother, which now conceals the ashes of the gentle poet. It is of the
+plainest and simplest, a low structure of brick, covered by a marble
+slab. No "storied urn or animated bust" is needed to perpetuate the name
+of him who made himself immortal; even his name is not graven upon the
+marble. We are come directly from the splendors of the royal chapels of
+Windsor, where costly sculpture, gilding, and superlative epitaphs mark
+the sepulchres of some who were mediocre or mendicant of mind and
+virtue, and we are, therefore, the more impressed by the fitting
+simplicity of the poet's tomb among the humble dead whose artless tale
+he told. At the grave of Gray, how tawdry seems the pomp of those kingly
+mausoleums, how mean some of the lives the bedizened monuments
+commemorate, of how little consequence that the world should know where
+such dust is hid from sight! At the grave of Gray, if anywhere the wide
+world round, we will correctly value the vanities, ambitions, and
+rewards of earth. Gray's desire to be buried here saved him from what
+some one has called the "misfortune of burial in Westminster." While the
+pilgrim vainly seeks in that national mausoleum the tombs of
+Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Gray, Wordsworth, Thackeray, Coleridge,
+Eliot, and others of divine genius, and finds instead the graves of many
+sordid and impure, entombment there may be a misfortune. Happily the
+poet of the Elegy reposes in his church-yard, beside the beings he best
+loved, on the spot he frequented in life and hallowed by his genius,
+among those whose virtues he sang; here his grave perpetually emphasizes
+the sublime teachings of his verse and affords a most touching
+association. The only inscription upon the slab is the poet's tribute to
+his aunt, Mary Antrobus, and to "Dorothy Gray, the careful and tender
+mother of many children, of whom one alone had the misfortune to
+survive her." It has been our pleasure on a previous day to seek out
+amid the din of London the spot where, in a modest dwelling, this mother
+gave birth to the poet, and where she and Mary Antrobus sold laces to
+maintain the "many children."
+
+  [Illustration: STOKE-POGIS CHURCH]
+
+[Sidenote: The Ivy-Mantled Church]
+
+Set upon a gentle eminence in the midst of this peaceful scene, the
+church has a picturesque beauty which harmonizes well with its
+environment. It is low and sombre, but age has given a dignity and grace
+which would make it attractive apart from its associations. Overrunning
+the walls, shrouding the crumbling battlements of the tower, clambering
+along the steep roofs, clinging to the highest gables, and festooning
+the stained windows, are masses of dark ivy, which conceal the inroads
+of time and impart to the whole structure a beauty that wins us
+completely. The tower is early English, the chancel is Norman, and the
+newer portions of the edifice were already old when Gray frequented the
+place. A path bordered by abundant roses leads from the gate-way of the
+enclosure to the quaint porch of timbers and the entrance to the church.
+Within, the light falls dimly at this hour upon the curious little
+galleries of the peasantry, the great pew of the Penns, the humbler
+place at the end of the south aisle where Gray came to pray, the huge
+mural tablet and the burial vault where the son of William Penn and his
+family sleep in death. In the park close by is the palace of the Penns,
+and the mansion where Charles I. was imprisoned and where Coke wrote
+some of his Commentaries and entertained his queen. Not far distant is
+the house--now a fine abode--which Gray shared for some years with his
+mother and aunt, and where his bedroom and study may still be seen.
+Farther away are the Beaconsfield which furnished the title of the
+gifted author of "Lothair," and the old church where Burke and Waller
+await the resurrection.
+
+[Sidenote: Discarded Stanzas]
+
+In the twilight we hastily sketch Gray's "ivy-mantled tower," and then
+sit by his tomb gazing upon the fading landscape and recalling the life
+of this divine poet and the lines of the matchless poem which was
+drafted here and with exquisite care revised and polished year after
+year before it was given to the world. It may not be generally known
+that he discarded six stanzas from the original draft,--among them this,
+written as the fourth stanza:
+
+  "Hark, how the sacred calm that breathes around
+    Bids every fierce, tumultuous passion cease;
+  In still small accents whispering from the ground
+    A grateful earnest of eternal peace;"
+
+this, from the reply of the "hoary-headed swain:"
+
+  "Him have we seen the greenwood side along
+    While o'er the heath we hied, our labor done,
+  Oft as the wood-lark piped her farewell song
+    With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun;"
+
+and this, from the description of the poet's grave:
+
+  "There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
+    By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
+  The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
+    And little footsteps lightly print the ground."
+
+We may judge what was the high standard of Gray, and what the
+transcending quality of the finished poem from which its author could,
+after years of deliberation, reject such stanzas. The Elegy is the
+expression in divinest poetry of the best conceptions of a noble soul
+upon the most serious topic on which human thought can dwell. No wonder
+that the world has literally learned by heart those precious lines; that
+they are the solace of the thoughtful and the bereft in every clime
+where mortals meditate on death; that the brave Wolfe, on the way to his
+triumphal death, should recite them in the darkness and declare he had
+rather be their author than the victor in the morrow's battle; that the
+great Webster, on his death-bed, should beg to hear them, and die at
+last with their melody sounding in his ears.
+
+As the glow fades out of the darkening sky, the birds in the leafy elms
+one by one cease their songs, "the lowing herds wind slowly o'er the
+lea" to distant folds, the "drowsy tinklings" grow fainter, the summer
+wind sighing among the trees dies with the day, and the scene which
+seemed still before is noiseless now. In this hush we are content to
+leave this deathless poet and the spot he loved. We gather ivy from the
+old wall and a spray from the boughs of his dreaming yew, and take our
+way back to the busy haunts of men.
+
+
+
+
+DICKENSLAND: GAD'S HILL AND ABOUT
+
+_Chaucer's Pilgrims--Falstaff--Dickens's Abode--Study--Grounds--Walks--
+  Neighbors--Guests--Scenes of Tales--Cobham--Rochester--Pip's
+  Church-Yard--Satis House, etc._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Gad's Hill House]
+
+"To go to Gad's Hill," said Dickens, in a note of invitation, "you leave
+Charing Cross at nine o'clock by North Kent Railway for Higham." Guided
+by these directions and equipped with a letter from Dickens's son, we
+find ourselves gliding eastward among the chimneys of London and, a
+little later, emerging into the fields of Kent,--Jingle's region of
+"apples, cherries, hops, and women." The Thames is on our left; we pass
+many river-towns,--Dartford where Wat Tyler lived, Gravesend where
+Pocahontas died,--but most of our way is through the open country, where
+we have glimpses of fields, parks, and leafy lanes, with here and there
+picturesque camps of gypsies or of peripatetic rascals "goin'
+a-hoppin'." From wretched Higham a walk of half an hour among orchards
+and between hedges of wild-rose and honeysuckle brings us to the hill
+which Shakespeare and Dickens have made classic ground, and soon we see,
+above the tree-tops, the glittering vane which surmounted the home of
+the world's greatest novelist. The name Gad's (vagabond's) Hill is a
+survival of the time when the depredations of highwaymen upon "pilgrims
+going to Canterbury with rich offerings and traders riding to London
+with fat purses" gave to this spot the ill repute it had in
+Shakespeare's day: it was here he located Falstaff's great exploit. The
+tuft of evergreens which crowns the hill about Dickens's retreat is the
+remnant of thick woods once closely bordering the highway, in which the
+"men in buckram" lay concealed, and the robbery of the franklin was
+committed in front of the spot where the Dickens house stands. By this
+road passed Chaucer, who had property near by, gathering from the
+pilgrims his "Canterbury Tales." In all time to come the great master of
+romance who came here to live and die will be worthily associated with
+Shakespeare and Chaucer in the renown of Gad's Hill. In becoming
+possessor of this place, Dickens realized a dream of his boyhood and an
+ambition of his life. In one of his travellers' sketches he introduces a
+"queer small boy" (himself) gazing at Gad's Hill House and predicting
+his future ownership, which the author finds annoying "because it
+happens to be _my_ house and I believe what he said was true." When at
+last the place was for sale, Dickens did not wait to examine it; he
+never was inside the house until he went to direct its repair. Eighteen
+hundred pounds was the price; a thousand more were expended for
+enlargement of the grounds and alterations of the house, which, despite
+his declaration that he had "stuck bits upon it in all manner of ways,"
+did not greatly change it from what it was when it became the goal of
+his childish aspirations. At first it was his summer residence
+merely,--his wife came with him the first summer,--but three years later
+he sold Tavistock House, and Gad's Hill was thenceforth his home. From
+the bustle and din of the city he returned to the haunts of his boyhood
+to find restful quiet and time for leisurely work among these "blessed
+woods and fields" which had ever held his heart. For nine years after
+the death of Dickens Gad's Hill was occupied by his oldest son; its
+ownership has since twice or thrice changed.
+
+[Sidenote: Gad's Hill--House and Grounds]
+
+[Sidenote: Dickens's Chalet]
+
+Its elevated site and commanding view render it one of the most
+conspicuous, as it is one of the most lovely, spots in Kent. The mansion
+is an unpretentious, old-fashioned, two-storied structure of fourteen
+rooms. Its brick walls are surmounted by Mansard roofs above which rises
+a bell-turret; a pillared portico, where Dickens sat with his family on
+summer evenings, shades the front entrance; wide bay-windows project
+upon either side; flowers and vines clamber upon the walls, and a
+delightfully home-like air pervades the place. It seems withal a modest
+seat for one who left half a million dollars at his death. At the right
+of the entrance-hall we see Dickens's library and study, a cosy room
+shown in the picture of "The Empty Chair:" here are shelves which held
+his books; the panels he decorated with counterfeit book-backs; the nook
+where perched the mounted remains of his raven, the "Grip" of "Barnaby
+Rudge." By this bay-window, whence he could look across the lawn to the
+cedars beyond the highway, stood his chair and the desk where he wrote
+many of the works by which the world will know him alway. Behind the
+study was his billiard-room, and upon the opposite side of the hall the
+parlor, with the dining-room adjoining it at the back, both bedecked
+with the many mirrors which delighted the master. Opening out of these
+rooms is a conservatory, paid for out of "the golden shower from
+America" and completed but a few days before Dickens's death, holding
+yet the ferns he tended. The dining-room was the scene of much of that
+emphatic hospitality which it pleased the novelist to dispense, his
+exuberant spirits making him the leader in all the jollity and
+conviviality of the board. Here he compounded for bibulous guests his
+famous "cider-cup of Gad's Hill," and at the same table he was stricken
+with death; on a couch beneath yonder window, the one nearest the hall,
+he died on the anniversary of the railway accident which so frightfully
+imperilled his life. From this window we look out upon a lawn decked
+with shrubbery and see across undulating cornfields his beloved Cobham.
+From the parquetted hall, stairs lead to the modest chambers,--that of
+Dickens being above the drawing-room. He lined the stairway with prints
+of Hogarth's works, and declared he never came down the stairs without
+pausing to wonder at the sagacity and skill which had produced the
+masterful pictures of human life. The house is invested with roses, and
+parterres of the red geraniums which the master loved are ranged upon
+every side. It was some fresh manifestation of his passion for these
+flowers that elicited from his daughter the averment, "Papa, I think
+when you are an angel your wings will be made of looking-glasses and
+your crown of scarlet geraniums." Beneath a rose-tree not far from the
+window where Dickens died, a bed blooming with blue lobelia holds the
+tiny grave of "Dick" and the tender memorial of the novelist to that
+"Best of Birds." The row of gleaming limes which shadow the porch was
+planted by Dickens's own hands. The pedestal of the sundial upon the
+lawn is a massive balustrade of the old stone bridge at near-by
+Rochester, which little David Copperfield crossed "foot-sore and weary"
+on his way to his aunt, and from which Pickwick contemplated the
+castle-ruin, the cathedral, the peaceful Medway. At the left of the
+mansion are the carriage-house and the school-room of Dickens's sons. In
+another portion of the grounds are his tennis-court and the
+bowling-green which he prepared, where he became a skilful and tireless
+player. The broad meadow beyond the lawn was a later purchase, and the
+many limes which beautify it were rooted by Dickens. Here numerous
+cricket matches were played, and he would watch the players or keep the
+score "the whole day long." It was in this meadow that he rehearsed his
+readings, and his talking, laughing, weeping, and gesticulating here
+"all to himself" excited among his neighbors suspicion of his insanity.
+From the front lawn a tunnel constructed by Dickens passes beneath the
+highway to "The Wilderness," a thickly wooded shrubbery, where
+magnificent cedars uprear their venerable forms and many sombre firs,
+survivors of the forest which erst covered the countryside, cluster upon
+the hill-top. Here Dickens's favorite dog, the "Linda" of his letters,
+lies buried. Amid the leafy seclusion of this retreat, and upon the very
+spot where Falstaff was routed by Hal and Poins ("the eleven men in
+buckram"), Dickens erected the chalet sent to him in pieces by Fechter,
+the upper room of which--up among the quivering boughs, where "birds and
+butterflies fly in and out, and green branches shoot in at the
+windows"--Dickens lined with mirrors and used as his study in summer. Of
+the work produced at Gad's Hill--"Two Cities," "Uncommercial Traveller,"
+"Mutual Friend," "Edwin Drood," and many tales and sketches of "All the
+Year Round"--much was written in this leaf-environed nook; here the
+master wrought through the golden hours of his last day of conscious
+life, here he wrote his last paragraph and at the close of that June day
+let fall his pen, never to take it up again. From the place of the
+chalet we behold the view which delighted the heart of Dickens,--his
+desk was so placed that his eyes would rest upon this view whenever he
+raised them from his work,--the fields of waving corn, the green expanse
+of meadows, the sail-dotted river.
+
+Many friends came to Dickens in this pleasant Kentish home,--Forster,
+Maclise, Reade, Macready, Leech, Collins, Yates, Hans Christian
+Andersen, Mr. and Mrs. Fields, Longfellow and his daughters, Fechter and
+his wife: some of them were guests here for many days together. The
+master was the most genial of hosts, apparently the happiest of men,
+with the hearty laugh which Montaigne says never comes from a bad heart.
+After the morning task in library or chalet he gave the rest of the day
+to exercise and recreation, often at games with his guests in the
+grounds, but taking daily in rain or shine the long walks which made his
+lithe figure and rapid gait familiar to all the cottagers and
+field-laborers of the countryside. It is pleasant to hear the loving
+testimony of these simple folk--many of them descendants of the "men of
+Kent" who followed the standard of Wat Tyler from Blackheath to
+London--concerning Dickens's uniform kindness, his helpful generosity,
+his scrupulous regard of the rights of inferiors, the traits which won
+their hearts. One rustic neighbor declares, "Dickens was a main good
+man, sir: it was a sorry day for the neighborhood when he was taken
+away." Near the gate of Gad's Hill House is a wayside inn, the "Sir John
+Falstaff," which for more than two centuries has stood for remembrance
+of that worthy's exploit at this place. Its weather-worn sign bears
+portraits of Falstaff and Prince Hal and a picture of the "Merry Wives
+of Windsor" putting Falstaff into the basket. The name of a son of the
+recent keeper of this hostelry, Edward Trood, doubtless suggested the
+title of the "Mystery" which must, alas! remain a mystery evermore.
+
+[Sidenote: Scenes of Great Expectations]
+
+[Sidenote: The Marshes]
+
+From the inn a lane leads to a sightly summit surmounted by a monument
+which Dickens called "Andersen's Monument," because it was the resort of
+that illustrious author while a guest at Gad's Hill. Its far-reaching
+prospect is indeed alluring: on every hand vast, wave-like expanses of
+forest and orchard, moor and mead, sweep away to the horizon, while
+northward, beyond great cornfields and market-gardens, we see twenty
+miles of the Thames--"stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's
+life"--bordered here by a wilderness of low-lying marsh. A walk beloved
+of Dickens brings us to one of his favorite haunts,--a dreary
+church-yard on the margin of this marsh. It lies in the dismal,
+ague-haunted "hundred of Loo," a peninsula between the Thames and the
+Medway having a broad hem of desolate fens along the river-banks--a
+weird, little known region, whose ancient reputation was unsavory. A
+wooden finger on a post directs us to Cooling,--Dickens makes Pip say
+that this direction was never accepted, no one ever came,--a forlorn
+hamlet which straggles about the ruins of Cooling Castle. This was an
+ancient seat of the Cobhams; through a Cobham heiress it passed to
+Oldcastle, leader of the Lollards, who shut himself up here and was
+dragged hence to martyrdom. It is noteworthy that this Oldcastle has
+been thought to be the original of Falstaff, the hero of Gad's Hill. Of
+the stronghold little remains save the machicolated gate-way, flanked
+with ponderous round towers bearing quaint inscriptions. The water of
+the moat is green and stagnant, suggesting frogs and rheumatism, and the
+space it encloses is occupied by the cottage of a farmer. The forge and
+cottage of Joe Gargery are not found in the wretched village,--indeed,
+we should be sorry to find that splendid fellow and the good Betty so
+poorly housed,--but beyond the narrow street and at the verge of the
+marshes we come to a low, quaint, square-towered old church, which rises
+from a wind-swept, nettle-grown church-yard, the scene of the opening
+chapter of "Great Expectations." Yonder mound, whose gravestone is
+inscribed to George Comfort, "Also Sarah, Wife of the Above," stands for
+the tomb of Pip's parents; and sunken in the grass at our feet is the
+row of little gravestones whose curious shape led Pip to believe that
+his little brothers (whose graves they marked) "had been born on their
+backs, with their hands in their trousers pockets, and had never taken
+them out in this stage of existence." Over this low wall which divides
+God's-acre from the marshes the convict climbed, and we, standing upon
+it, look across the scene of his chase and capture, which Pip witnessed
+from Joe's back. On this sombre autumn afternoon of our visit the
+landscape is startlingly like that the terrified boy beheld: we see the
+same far-stretching waste of marshes, the intersecting dikes, the low,
+leaden line of the river beyond, dark mists hanging heavy over all,
+while the chill wind blows in our faces from its "savage lair" in the
+sea. Upon yonder flat tombstone in the far corner of the church-yard
+Dickens sat and lunched with Fields when he last walked to this place.
+Hidden now in the mists, but not far distant, and reached by a foot-path
+from the road to Chalk, is a dirty and dilapidated Thames-side inn,
+whose creaking sign-board reads, "Ship and Lobster:" this is The Ship of
+"Great Expectations," where Pip and his party slept the night preceding
+their attempt to put Magwich on the steamer, and the open river below
+the little causeway is the scene of their mischance and the transport's
+recapture.
+
+[Sidenote: Cobham]
+
+[Sidenote: Cloisterham]
+
+The walk which Dickens most enjoyed--the one which was his last before
+he died--was to and around Cobham, the seat of his friend Darnley. We
+follow the way once so familiar to his feet, through the noble park
+which the Pickwick Club found "so thoroughly delightful," on a June
+afternoon, by the stately old hall where lately stood Dickens's chalet,
+and farther, through majestic forest and open glade, to the place whence
+Pickwick--overcome by cold punch--was wheeled to the pound. Skirting the
+park on our return, we come to Cobham village and the neat Leather
+Bottle Inn to which the lovelorn Tupman retired to conceal his woe after
+his discomfiture at Manor Farm, and where Dickens himself, rambling in
+the neighborhood with Forster, lodged in 1841. Here is the little
+church-yard where Pickwick walked with Tupman and persuaded him to
+return to the world, and hard by the cottage of Bill Stumps, before
+which Pickwick made the immortal discovery which was "the pride of his
+friends and the envy of every antiquarian in this or any other country."
+Another favorite walk of Dickens conducts us, past a quaint, rambling
+mansion of dingy brick which served as the model for Satis House of
+"Great Expectations," to Rochester, the Cloisterham of "Edwin Drood."
+Here we find the Bull Inn,--"good house, nice beds,"--where the Pickwick
+Club lodged, in rooms 13 and 19, and the ballroom, where Tupman and
+Jingle (the latter in Winkle's coat) danced with the widow and enraged
+little Slammer; the Watt's Charity of "The Uncommercial Traveller;" the
+picturesque castle-ruin which Dickens frequented and has so charmingly
+described. Here, too, is the gray old cathedral he loved, which appears
+in many of his tales, from Jingle's piquant account of it in "Pickwick"
+to that touching description of this ancient fane in the last lines of
+the master, written within sound of its bells and but a few hours before
+his death.
+
+[Sidenote: Land of Dickens]
+
+This region of sunny Kent, the scene of his earliest and latest years,
+may fitly be called The Land of Dickens, so intimately is it associated
+with his life and work. Here at near-by Chatham (whence he used to come
+to gaze longingly at Gad's Hill House), in a whitewashed cottage on
+Ordnance Place, he lived as a child; at yonder village of Chalk he spent
+his honeymoon, its expenses being defrayed by the sale of the first
+numbers of "Pickwick;" here were the habitual resorts of his holiday
+leisure; here was his latest home; here he died, and here he desired to
+be buried. This district was no less the life-haunt and home of his
+imagination and genius. The scenes of his most effective romances are
+laid here; into the fabric of many a tale and sketch his fancy has woven
+the familiar features of town and hamlet, field and forest, marsh and
+river, of the region he knew and loved so well; here his first tale
+opens, here his last tale ends.
+
+
+
+
+SOME HAUNTS OF BYRON
+
+_Birthplace--London Homes--Murray's Book-Store--Kensal Green--Harrow--
+  Byron's Tomb--His Diadem Hill--Abode of his Star of Annesley--
+  Portraits--Mementos._
+
+
+[Sidenote: London Homes]
+
+Of the places in and about great London which were associated with the
+brief life of Byron, the rage for improvement which holds nothing sacred
+has spared a few, and the quest for Byron-haunts is still fairly
+rewarded. Holles Street, where he was born, has not long been resigned
+to trade: we have known it as a somnolent little street whose grateful
+quiet--reached by a step from the tumult of De Quincey's "stony-hearted
+step-mother"--made it seem like a placid pool beside a riotous torrent.
+It is scarce a furlong in length, and from the shade of Cavendish Square
+at its extremity we could look, between bordering rows of modest
+dwellings, to the square where Ralph Nickleby lived and Mary Wortley
+Montagu died. At our right, a little way down the street, stood a small,
+plain, two-storied house of dingy brick, where the poet's mother lodged
+in the upper front room at the time of his birth. This dwelling was No.
+16, later 24, and has now given place to a shop. An unpretentious
+tenement near Sloane Square was Byron's home during his pupilage with
+Dr. Glennie.
+
+In the house No. 8 St. James Street, nearly opposite the place where
+Gibbon died, Byron had for some years a suite of rooms. Here he was
+convenient to Almack's aristocratic ballrooms and St. James Theatre, and
+was in the then, as it is now, centre of fashionable club-life. His
+residence here began when he came to London to publish "Bards and
+Reviewers," was resumed upon his return from the Levantine tour, and
+continued during the publication of the early cantos of "Childe Harold"
+and other poems written on that tour. In these rooms "Corsair," "The
+Giaour," and "Bride of Abydos" were written, the latter in a single
+night and with one quill. The last year of Byron's residence here was
+the period of his highest popularity, when he was the especial pet of
+London society queens, one of whom--who later wrote a book to defame
+him--was recognized in bifurcated masculine garb in these chambers. On
+the same street is the home of White's Club, the Bays' of "Pendennis,"
+of which the present Lord Byron is a member, and on the site of the
+Carlton Club, Pall Mall, stood the Star and Garter tavern, where, in
+room No. 7 at the right on the first floor, the poet's predecessor
+killed his neighbor Chaworth, grand-uncle of Byron's "star of Annesley."
+Adjoining the Academy of Arts in Piccadilly is that "college of
+bachelors," the Albany apartment house where Dickens lodged
+"Fascination" Fledgeby and laid the scene of his flagellation by Lammle
+and the dressing of his wounds with pepper by Jenny Wren. Here the
+handsome suite A 2 was the abode of Byron for the year or so preceding
+his hapless marriage, and here "Lara" and "Hebrew Melodies" were
+written. The poet had passed the zenith of the social horizon, and the
+"Byron-madness" was waning, when he came to the Albany; still, the
+visits of fair admirers were vouchsafed him in these rooms. It was here
+that the girl whose story Guiccioli adduces as evidence of Byron's
+virtuous self-denial came to him for counsel. If the partiality of his
+mistress has unduly praised his conduct at this time, it is a
+thousandfold outweighed by the bitterness of another narrative--happily
+discredited, if not disproven--which indicates this same period as being
+that of the beginning of a _liaison_ with his sister. To these rooms
+Moore was a daily visitant, and Canning then lodged on the second floor
+adjoining the suite E 1, where Macaulay wrote the "History of England"
+and many essays. Byron's last abode in London was a stately house in
+Piccadilly, opposite Green Park and not far from the then London sojourn
+of Scott. Byron's dwelling, now No. 139, belonged to the Duchess of
+Devon, and was known as 13 Piccadilly Terrace. To this elegant home he
+brought his bride after the "treacle-moon," and here passed the
+remainder of their brief period of cohabitation. Here "The Siege of
+Corinth," "Parisina," and many minor poems were penned, the MS. of some
+being in the handwriting of his wife. Here Augusta Leigh was a guest
+warmly welcomed by Lady Byron, despite her alleged knowledge of the
+"shocking misconduct" of Byron and his sister in this house. Here Ada,
+"sole daughter of his house and heart," was born, and from here, a few
+weeks later, his wife went forth, never to see him again. Some letters
+came from her to this home,--playful notes to Byron inviting him to
+follow her, affectionate epistles to the sister, then a final letter
+announcing her determination never to return. In the ten months during
+which Byron occupied this house it was nine times in possession of
+bailiffs on account of his debts. It has since been refaced and
+repaired, but the original rooms remain. Hamilton Place now leads from
+it to Hamilton Gardens, where stands a beautiful statue of Byron. To the
+mansion of Sir Edward Knatchbull, No. 25 Great George Street, a site now
+occupied by the Institute of Engineers, the corpse of Byron was brought
+upon its arrival from Greece; and here in the great parlors, but a few
+steps from the spot where the remains of Sheridan had lain eight years
+before, Byron's body lay in state while his friends vainly sought
+sepulture for it in Westminster.
+
+[Sidenote: Murray's]
+
+At No. 50 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly, not far from the Albany, is the
+establishment of John Murray, whose predecessor, John Murray II.,
+published "Childe Harold" and all Byron's subsequent poems to the
+earlier cantos of "Don Juan." At this house the poet was a frequent and
+familiar lounger. Here, in a cosy drawing-room which is handsomely
+furnished and embellished, Murray used to hold a literary court, and
+here Byron first shook hands with the "great Wizard of the North" and
+met Moore, Canning, Southey, Gifford, and other _litterateurs_. Scott
+afterward wrote, "Byron and I met for an hour or two daily in Murray's
+drawing-room, and found much to say to each other." During his
+residence in London, Byron was customarily one of the coterie of
+authors--facetiously called the "four o'clock club"--which daily
+assembled in this room. The _seances_ were frequented at one time or
+another by most of the stars of English letters, embracing, besides
+those above named, Campbell, Hallam, Crabbe, Lockhart, Disraeli, Irving,
+George Ticknor, etc. We find the room little changed since their time.
+Original portraits of that brilliant company look down from the walls
+of the room they haunted in life, and the visitor thrills with the
+thought that in some subtile sense their presence pervades it still. In
+this room Ada Byron, kept in ignorance of her father until womanhood,
+first saw his handwriting, and in yonder fireplace beneath his portrait,
+four days after intelligence of his death had reached London, the
+manuscript of his much-discussed "Memoirs" was burned at the desire of
+Lady Byron and in the presence of Moore and Byron's executor, Hobhouse,
+who had witnessed his hapless marriage. Until the death of Byron his
+relations with Murray were most cordial, and the present John Murray
+IV., grandson of Byron's publisher, possesses numerous letters of the
+poet, some of which were used in Moore's "Life." Perhaps most
+interesting of Byron's many rhyming epistles is the one commencing,--
+
+      "My dear Mr. Murray,
+      You're in a blanked hurry
+  To set up this ultimate canto,"
+
+which announces the final completion of "Childe Harold." Among many
+mementos of Byron cherished in this famous room are the original MSS. of
+"Bards and Reviewers" and of most of his later poems. With them are
+other priceless MSS. of Scott, Swift, Gray, Southey, Livingstone,
+Irving, Motley, etc. The Murray III. who used to show us these treasures
+with reverent pride, and who could boast that he had known Byron, Scott,
+and Goethe, died not long ago. When we ask for the Bible popularly
+believed to have been given to Murray by Byron with a line so altered as
+to read "now Barabbas was a _publisher_," we are told this joke was
+Campbell's and was upon another publisher than Murray. Byron's
+signet-ring has passed to the possession of Pierre Barlow, Esq., of New
+York. _Litterateurs_ still come to "Murray's den," though not so often
+as in the time when clubs were less popular: among those who may
+sometimes be met here are Argyll, Knight, Layard, Dufferin, Temple,
+Francis Darwin, etc. Murrays' was the home of the Review--"whose mission
+in life is to hang, draw, and _Quarterly_," as one victim avers--to
+which came Charlotte Bronte's burly Irish uncle with his shillalah in
+search of the harsh reviewer of "Jane Eyre," and haunted the place until
+he was turned away.
+
+[Sidenote: Kensal Green--Harrow]
+
+A most delightful outing is the jaunt from Byron's London haunts, past
+Kensal Green, where we find the precious graves in which sleep
+Thackeray, Motley, Cunningham, Jameson, Hood, Hunt, Sydney Smith, and
+Mrs. Hawthorne,--the latter beneath ivy from her Wayside home and
+periwinkle from her husband's tomb on the piny hill-top at Concord,--to
+Harrow, the "Ida" of Byron's verse. Here is the ancient school of which
+Sheridan, Peel, Perceval, Trollope, and others famous in letters or
+politics were inmates; where Byron was for years "a troublesome and
+mischievous pupil" and made the acquaintance of Clare, Dorset, and
+others to whom some of his poems are addressed, and of Wildman who
+rescued his Newstead from ruin: the present Byron and the son of Ada
+Byron were also Harrow boys. Here may be seen some of the poet's worn
+and scribbled books; his name graven by him upon a panel of the oldest
+building; the Peachie tombstone--protected now by iron bars--which was
+his evening resort, where some of his stanzas were composed, and whence
+he beheld a landscape of enchanting beauty. Near this beloved spot,
+where Byron once desired to be entombed, sleeps a sinless child of sin,
+his daughter Allegra, born of Mrs. Shelley's sister. At Harrow, Byron
+repaid help upon his exercises by fighting for his assistant; his
+successes here were mainly pugilistic, but his battles were often those
+of younger and weaker boys, and the spot where he fought the tyrants of
+the school is pointed out with interest and pride.
+
+In Notts, _en route_ to Newstead, we lodge in an old mansion alleged to
+have been the abode of the poet in his school-vacations; we have the
+high authority of the landlord for the conviction that we occupy the
+room and the very bed oft used by Byron; but the credulity even of a
+pilgrim has a limit, and the agility of the fleas that now inhabit the
+bed forbids belief that they too are relics of the poet. Better
+authenticated are the Byron relics of a local society, among which are
+the boot-trees certified by his bootmaker to be those upon which the
+poet's boots were fitted. They are of interest as demonstrating that the
+asymmetry of his feet was much less than has been believed; one foot was
+shorter than its fellow, and the ankle was weak, but not deformed.
+
+[Sidenote: Tomb of Childe Harold]
+
+From Nottingham a winsome way along a smiling vale, with billowy hills
+swelling upon either hand, conducts us to the village of Hucknall. By
+its market-place an ancient church-tower rises from a grave-strewn
+enclosure; we enter the fane through a porch of ponderous timbers, and,
+traversing the dim aisle, approach the chancel and find there the tomb
+of Childe Harold. A slab of blue marble, sent by the King of Greece and
+bearing the word Byron, is set in the pavement to mark the spot where,
+after the throes of his passion-tossed life, Byron lies among his
+kindred in "the dreamless sleep that lulls the dead." One who, as a lad,
+entered the vault at the burial of Ada Byron, indicates for us its size
+upon the pavement and the position of the coffins; Byron, in a coffin
+covered with velvet and resting upon benches of stone, lies between his
+mother and the "sole daughter of his house and heart;" at his feet a
+receptacle contains his heart and brain. His valet and the Little White
+Lady of Irving's narrative sleep in the yard near by. A marble tablet on
+the church wall describes Byron as the "Author of Childe Harold's
+Pilgrimage;" this was erected by his sister, and near it we saw a
+chaplet of faded laurel placed years ago by our "Bard of the Sierras."
+Byron's tomb has never been a popular shrine, but such Americans as
+Irving, Hawthorne, Halleck, Ludlow, Joaquin Miller, and William Winter
+have been reverent pilgrims. Once Byron's "Italian enchantress," la
+Guiccioli, was found weeping here and kissing the pavement which covers
+the lover of her youth.
+
+[Sidenote: Annesley Hall]
+
+Above Hucknall the ancestral domain of the Byrons lies upon the right,
+while upon the other hand extend the broad lands which were the heritage
+of Mary Ann Chaworth, Byron's "star of Annesley." From the boundary of
+the estates, where the poet sometimes met his youthful love, a stroll
+across a landscape parquetted with grain-field gold and meadow emerald
+brings us to the ancient seat of the time-honored race of which the
+maiden of Byron's "Dream"--the "Mary" of many poems--was the "last
+solitary scion left." It is now the property of her great-grandson. Most
+of her married life was passed elsewhere, and Annesley fell into the
+neglected condition which Irving describes. Mary's husband, the maligned
+Musters, instead of hating the place and seeking to destroy its
+identity, preferred it to his other property, and spent many years after
+his wife's death in restoring and beautifying it, taking pains to
+preserve the grounds and the main portion of the mansion in the
+condition in which his wife had known them in her maidenhood. This
+became the beloved home of his later years, and here he died. This
+mansion of the "Dream" stands upon an elevation overlooking many acres
+of picturesque park. It is a great, rambling pile of motley
+architecture, obviously erected by different generations of Chaworths to
+suit their varying needs and tastes, but the walls are overgrown with
+clambering vines, which conceal the touch of time and impart to the
+structure an aspect of harmonious beauty. The principal facade which
+presents along the court is imposing and stately, but on every side are
+pointed gables, stone balustrades, and picturesque walls. The interior
+arrangement of the body of the house remains precisely as Mary knew it,
+even the decorations of some of the rooms having been preserved by the
+considerate love of her husband and descendants; and here, despite the
+averment of a Byron-biographer that "every relic of her ancient family
+was sold and scattered to the winds," the Chaworth plate, portraits, and
+other belongings are religiously cherished. We were first invited to the
+place to see these while they were yet displayed by the maid in whose
+arms Mary died. Upon the walls of the great lower hall are many family
+pictures, among them that of the Chaworth whom Byron's great-uncle had
+slain. It was this portrait that Byron feared would come out of its
+frame to haunt him if he remained here over-night. From the hall low
+stairs lead to the apartments. At the right is Mary's sitting-room,
+where Byron spent many hours beside her, listening entranced while she
+played to him upon the piano which stood in the farther corner. It is a
+pleasant apartment, its windows looking out upon the garden-beds Mary
+tended, which we see now ablaze with the flowers known to have been her
+favorites. In this room, which "her smiles had made a heaven to him,"
+Byron, years afterward, saw Mary for the last time and kissed for its
+mother's sake "the child that ought to have been his." On this occasion
+she made the inquiry which prompted the lines, "To Mrs. Musters, on
+being asked my reason for quitting England in the spring." This last
+painful interview is recalled in the poems "Well, Thou art Happy" and
+"I've seen my Bride Another's Bride." Above the hall is the large
+drawing-room, where we see several portraits of Mary, which represent
+her as a most beautiful woman, with a pathetically sweet and winning
+face,--by no means the "wicked-looking cat" which Byron's jealous wife
+described. Here, too, are pictures of her husband which fully justify
+his popular sobriquet, "handsome Jack Musters." Physically they were an
+admirably matched pair. Out of the drawing-room is the "antique oratory"
+of the poem, a small apartment above the entrance-porch, pictured as the
+scene of Byron's parting with Mary after her announcement of her
+betrothal. Byron was cordially welcomed at Annesley; the family were his
+relatives, and all of them, save that young lady herself, would gladly
+have had him marry the heiress. Among the guest-chambers is one, called
+of yore the blue room, which during one summer--after his fear of the
+family portraits had been subdued by the greater fear of meeting
+"bogles" on his homeward way--Byron often occupied. Here he incensed
+Nanny the housekeeper by allowing his dog to sleep upon the bed and
+soil her neat counterpanes. Another servant, "old Joe," tired of sitting
+up at night to wait upon him, finally frightened him away by means of
+some hideous nocturnal noises, which he assured the young poet proceeded
+from "spooks out of the kirk-yard,"--Byron's superstition doubtless
+suggesting the ruse.
+
+[Sidenote: Annesley Park--Diadem Hill]
+
+[Sidenote: Byron-Chaworth-Musters]
+
+Giant trees overtop the chimneys and bower the walls of the venerable
+mansion. The garden which Irving found matted and wild was long ago
+restored by Musters to its former beauty of turf, foliage, and flower. A
+grand terrace,--one of the finest in England,--with brick walls and
+carved balustrades of stone mantled and draped with ivy, lies at the
+right, with broad steps leading down to the garden where Byron delighted
+to linger with Mary during the swift hours of one too brief summer.
+Beneath the terrace is a door, carefully protected by Musters and his
+descendants, which Byron daily used as a target and in which we see the
+marks of bullets from his pistol. The grounds are extensive and
+beautifully diversified by copses of great trees and grassy glades where
+deer feed amid myriad witcheries of leaf and bloom. Half a mile from the
+Hall is a shrine that will attract the sentimental prowler, Byron's
+diadem hill. Projecting from the extremity of a long line of eminences,
+it is a landmark to the countryside and overlooks the living landscape
+which the poet depicted in lines throbbing with life and beauty. From
+its acclivity we see much of his ancestral Newstead, the adjoining fair
+acres of Annesley which he would have added to his own, the tower and
+chimneys of the Hall rising among clustering oaks: beyond these darkly
+wooded hills decline to the valley, along which we look--past parks,
+villages, and the church where Byron sleeps--to the spires of the city.
+As we contemplate the vista from the spot where stood the two bright
+"beings in the hues of youth," we have about us a ring of dark firs, the
+"diadem of trees in circular array" pictured in the "Dream," apparently
+unchanged since the day the maiden and the youth here met for the last
+time before her marriage. The Byron-writers have united in denouncing
+Musters for denuding this hill-top in a splenetic endeavor to prevent
+its identification as the scene of the interview described in the poem.
+In truth, we owe the preservation of the features which identify this
+romantic spot to the very hand which the author of "Crayon Miscellany"
+avers is "execrated by every poetic pilgrim." When natural causes were
+rapidly destroying the grove, Musters caused its removal and replaced
+it by saplings grown from cones of the old trees, each fir of the
+present beautiful diadem being sedulously rooted upon the site of its
+lineal ancestor. Musters had much greater reason to regard this spot
+with romantic tenderness than had the poet; here he enjoyed many stolen
+interviews with his sweetheart, for he was forbidden to see her in her
+home, and she, perverse and persistent in her passion for him, came here
+daily with the hope of meeting him and watched for his approach along
+the valley. Upon the very occasion the poem describes, she waited here,
+"Looking afar if yet her lover's steed kept pace with her expectancy,"
+and merely tolerated the company of the "gaby" boy Byron until Musters
+might arrive. The latter had no reason for the irritable jealousy toward
+Byron which has been attributed to him, and there is no evidence that he
+evinced or entertained such a feeling. He freely invited the poet to his
+house, rode and swam with him, preserved the few Byron mementos at
+Annesley, and protected the tombs of Byron's ancestors at Colwick. So
+much of untruth has been published anent the Byron-Chaworth-Musters
+matter, and especially concerning the attitude of the lady toward Byron
+and the conditions of her subsequent life, that it is pleasant, even at
+this late day, to be able to record upon undoubted evidence that her
+loving admiration for her husband ceased only with her life.
+
+[Sidenote: Mary's Grave]
+
+On the bank of the silvery Trent, three miles from Nottingham, is
+Colwick Hall, where Mary's married life was spent. This was an ancient
+seat of the Byrons, said to have been lost by them at the card-table.
+Mary's home was an imposing mansion, with lofty cupola, balustraded
+roofs, and stately pediments upheld by Ionic columns. From the front
+windows we look across a wide expanse of sun-kissed meadow beyond the
+river, while at the back rocky cliffs rise steeply and are tufted by
+overhanging woods. The Hall was attacked and pillaged in 1831 by a
+Luddite mob, from whom poor Mary escaped half naked into the shrubbery
+and lay concealed in the cold wet night. The exposure and terror of this
+event impaired her reason, and caused her death the next year at
+Wiverton, another seat of the Chaworths, where her descendants reside.
+Close by the mansion at Colwick, now a summer resort, was the old gray
+church, with battlemented tower, where Mary was married, and where she
+lies in death with her husband and his kindred, near the burial-vault of
+the ancestors of the lame boy who linked her name to deathless verse. At
+the side of the altar a beautiful monumental tablet, bearing a graceful
+female figure and a laudatory inscription, is placed in memory of the
+"star of Annesley," whose brightness went out in distraction and gloom.
+
+To Byron's early passion and its failure we owe some of the sweetest and
+tenderest of his songs; and it has been believed that the memory of that
+defeat adapted his thoughts to their highest flights and gave added
+pathos and beauty to his noblest work. Thus all the world were gainers
+by his disappointment, and evidence is lacking that either the lady or
+the lover was a loser.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOME OF CHILDE HAROLD
+
+_Newstead--Byron's Apartments--Relics and Reminders--Ghosts--Ruins--The
+  Young Oak--Dog's Tomb--Devil's Wood--Irving--Livingstone--Stanley--
+  Joaquin Miller._
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Abbey]
+
+However alluring other haunts of Byron may be found, the "hall of his
+fathers" must remain paramount in the interest and affection of his
+admirers. The stanzas he addressed to that venerable pile, the graphic
+description in "Don Juan," the plaintive allusions in "Childe Harold,"
+its own romantic history as a mediaeval fortress and shrine, and its
+association with the bard who inherited its lands and dwelt beneath its
+battlements, render Newstead Abbey a Mecca to which the steps of
+pilgrims tend. It came to the Byrons by royal gift, and in the middle of
+the last century was inherited by the poet's predecessor the Wicked
+Byron, who killed his neighbor of Annesley and so desolated the Abbey
+that the only spot sheltered from the storms was a corner of the
+scullery where he breathed out his wretched life. The poet occupied the
+place at intervals for twenty years, and then sold it to Colonel
+Wildman, who had been his form-fellow at Harrow, and to whom we are
+mainly indebted for the restoration of the edifice and the
+preservation of every memento of the poet and his race. At the death
+of Wildman the Abbey became the property of Colonel W. F. Webb, a sharer
+in Livingstone's explorations, who gathers here a brilliant circle of
+authors, artists, travellers, and wits whose gayety dispels the hoary
+and ghostly associations of the place.
+
+  [Illustration: NEWSTEAD ABBEY]
+
+[Sidenote: Chapel Ruin]
+
+[Sidenote: Byron's Apartments]
+
+From the boundary of the estate a broad avenue, lined with noble trees,
+leads to an inner park of eight hundred acres, among whose sylvan
+beauties our way lies, through verdant glades and under leafy boughs
+whose shadows the sunshine prints upon the path, until we see, from the
+verge of the wood, the noble pile rising amid an environment of lawn and
+lake, grove and garden. It is a vast stone structure, composed of motley
+parts joined "by no quite lawful marriage of the arts" into an
+harmonious and impressive whole. The western facade is the one usually
+pictured, because it contains the Byron apartments and best displays the
+characteristic features of the edifice, having a castellated tower at
+one extremity, while to the other is joined the ruined chapel front
+which, as an example of its style, is rivalled in architectural value
+only by St. Mary's at York. This Newstead fragment, retaining its
+perfect proportions, its noble windows, its gray statue of the Virgin
+and "God-born Child" in the high niche of the gable,--the whole draped
+and garlanded with ivy which conceals the scars of Cromwell's
+cannon-balls,--is a vision of unique beauty. From the Gothic door-way of
+the mansion we are admitted to a gallery with a low-vaulted roof of
+stone upheld by massive columns. This was the crypt of the abbot's
+dormitory; it adjoins the cloisters, and, like them, was used by the
+Wicked Byron as a stable for cattle. It is now adorned with the spoils
+of African deserts, trophies of the mighty huntsman who now inhabits the
+Abbey. One of these, the skin of a noble lion, is said to have belonged
+to a beast which had mutilated Livingstone and was standing above his
+body when a ball from Webb's rifle laid him low and saved the great
+explorer. From the crypt, stone stairs lead to the corridors above the
+cloisters: in Byron's time entrance was between a bear and a wolf
+chained on these stairs and menacing the guest from either side. Out of
+the corridor adjoining the chapel ruin a spiral stairway ascends to a
+plain and sombre suite of rooms, once the abbot's lodgings, but
+cherished now because they were the private apartments of Byron. His
+chamber is neither large nor elegant, its walls are plainly papered, and
+its single oriel window is shaded by a faded curtain. The room remains
+as Byron last occupied it: his carpet is upon the floor; the carved
+bedstead, with its gilt posts and lordly coronets, is the one brought
+by him from college; its curtains and coverings are those he used; above
+the mantel is the mirror which often reflected his handsome features. We
+sit in his embroidered arm-chair by the window, overlooking lawn and
+lake and the wood he planted, and write out upon his plain table the
+memoranda from which this article is prepared. The tourist is told that
+the chamber has never been used since Byron left it; but Irving occupied
+it for some time, as his letters to his brother declare, and a few years
+ago our Joaquin Miller lay here in Byron's bed, and saw, in the
+moonbeams sharply reflected from the mirror into his face, an
+explanation of the ghostly apparitions which Byron beheld in this glass.
+In the adjoining room are a portrait of the poet's "corporeal pastor,"
+Jackson, in arena costume, and a painting of Byron's valet, Joe Murray,
+a bright-looking fellow of pleasing face and faultless attire. This room
+was sometime occupied by Byron's pretty page, whom the housekeeper
+believed to be a girl in masquerade: this page was introduced elsewhere
+as the poet's younger brother Gordon, and an attempt has been made to
+identify her with the mysterious "Thyrza" of his poems, and with
+"Astarte" also. The third room of the suite, Byron's dressing-room and
+study, was one of the haunts of the goblin friar who was heard stalking
+amid the dim cloisters or in the apartments above. Byron's room here is
+the Gothic chamber of the Norman abbey where "Don Juan" slept and
+dreamed of Aurora Raby, and the corridor is the "gallery of sombre hue"
+where he pursued the sable phantom and captured a very material duchess.
+Directly beneath is a panelled apartment of moderate dimensions which
+was Byron's dining-room and the scene of many a revel when the monk's
+skull, brimming with wine, was sent round by the poet's guests. His
+sideboard is still here, his heavy table remains in the middle of the
+room, and the famous skull, mounted as a drinking-cup and inscribed with
+the familiar anacreontic, is carefully preserved. The library is a
+stately and spacious apartment: here, among many mementos of the poet,
+Ada Byron first heard a poem of her father's; here Byron's Italian
+friend la Guiccioli made notes for her "Recollections," and here
+Livingstone penned portions of the books which record his explorations.
+In the grand hall we see the elevated chimney-piece beneath which Byron
+and his guests heaped so great a fire, on the first night of his
+occupancy of the Abbey, that its destruction was threatened. This superb
+apartment, the old dormitory of the monks, was used by the poet as a
+shooting-gallery, and was one of the haunts of his "Black Friar." The
+drawing-room of the mansion is palatial in dimensions and furnishing.
+Its panels and grotesque carvings have been restored, and this ancient
+room, once the refectory of the monks and later the hay-loft of the
+Wicked Byron, is now a marvel of elegance. Here is the familiar portrait
+of Byron at twenty-three, an earlier watercolor picturing him in college
+gown, and a later bust in marble. Here by her desire the body of Ada
+Byron lay in state, and from here it was borne to rest beside her father
+at near-by Hucknall, more than realizing the closing stanzas of the
+third canto of "Childe Harold."
+
+[Sidenote: Relics]
+
+In these stately rooms and in the adjoining corridors are numerous
+priceless relics of the immortal bard; among them, the cap, belt, and
+cimeter he wore in Greece; his foils, spurs, stirrups, and
+boxing-gloves; a painting of his famous dog Boatswain; the bronze
+candlesticks from his writing-table and the table upon which were
+written "Bards and Reviewers," poems of "Hours of Idleness," "Hebrew
+Melodies," and portions of his masterpiece, "Childe Harold." Preserved
+here, with Byron's will, unpublished letters, and scraps of verse, are
+papers which indicate that the poet's _chef-d'oeuvre_ was originally
+designed for private circulation and was entitled "Childe Byron." An
+interesting relic is a section of the noted "twin-tree" bearing the
+names "Byron--Augusta" carved by the poet at his last visit to the
+Abbey. Our own Barnum once visited the place and offered Wildman five
+hundred pounds for this double tree (then standing in the grove),
+intending to remove it for exhibition; the colonel indignantly replied
+that five thousand would not purchase it, and that "the man capable of
+such a project deserved to be gibbeted." Here, too, are the portrait of
+the first lord of Newstead, "John Byron-the-Little-with-the-Great-Beard;"
+the huge iron knocker in use on the door of the Abbey seven centuries
+ago; a collection of mediaeval armor and weapons; some personal
+belongings of Livingstone, and many specimens of fauna and flora
+gathered by him and Webb in the dark continent. One vaulted apartment
+of exquisite proportions, erst the sanctuary of the abbot, and later
+Byron's dog-kennel, is now the chapel of the household. Newstead has
+been the abode of royalty, and holds rooms in which, from the time of
+Edward III., kings have often lodged. We see the chamber occupied by
+Ada Byron during her visit; another, adorned with quaint carvings and
+once haunted by Byron-of-the-Great-Beard, was used by Irving. The noble
+chambers contain richly carved furniture, costly tapestries, and beds of
+such altitude that steps are provided for scaling them. The hangings of
+one bed belonged to Prince Rupert, and its counterpane was embroidered
+by Mary Queen of Scots.
+
+[Sidenote: Court and Gardens]
+
+In the centre of the edifice is the quadrangular court, surrounded by a
+series of low-vaulted arcades, once the stables of the Wicked Byron and
+long ago the "cloisters dim and damp" of the monks whose dust moulders
+now beneath the pavement. One crypt-like cell which holds the boilers
+for heating the mansion was Byron's swimming-bath. In the middle of the
+court the ancient stone fountain, with its grotesque sculptures of
+saints and monsters, graven by the patient toil of the monks, still
+sends out sprays of coolness.
+
+We spend delightful hours loitering in the ancient gardens of the friars
+and about their ruined chapel. Through its mighty window, "yawning all
+desolate," pours a flood of western light upon the turf that covers the
+holy ground where congregations knelt in worship; while, amid the dust
+of the priests and near the site of the altar where they "raised their
+pious voices but to pray," Byron's dog lies in a tomb far handsomer than
+that which holds his noble master. It was in excavating Boatswain's
+grave that Byron found the skull afterward used as a drinking-cup. The
+dog's monument consists of a wide pedestal, surmounted by a panelled
+altar-stone which upholds a funeral urn and bears Byron's familiar
+eulogistic inscription and the misanthropic stanzas ending with the
+lines,--
+
+  "To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;
+  I never knew but one, and here he lies."
+
+Other panels were designed to bear the epitaph of Byron, who directed in
+his will (1811) that he should be buried in this spot with his valet and
+dog; it is said to have been discovered that the poet had made careful
+preparation for his entombment here, the stone trestles and slab to
+support his coffin being in place upon the pavement, but the sale of
+Newstead led to his interment elsewhere, and faithful Murray--who
+declined to lie here "alone with the dog"--sleeps near his master.
+
+[Sidenote: Grounds--Recollections]
+
+The gardens of the Abbey lie about its ancient walls: here are the
+fish-pools of the monks; the noble terrace; the "Young Oak" of Byron's
+poem, planted by his hands and now grown into a large and graceful tree;
+other trees rooted by Livingstone and Stanley while guests here. At one
+side is a grove of beeches and yews, in whose gloomy recesses the Wicked
+Byron erected leaden statues of Pan and Pandora, of which the rustics
+were so afraid that they would not go near them after nightfall, and
+which are still respectfully spoken of in the servants' hall as "Mr.
+and Mrs. Devil." Before the mansion lies the lucid lake described in
+"Don Juan:" the forest that shades its shore and sweeps over the farther
+hill-side was planted by Byron to repair the spoliation of his uncle,
+and is called the "Poet's Wood." Upon some of the farms of the domain
+live descendants of Nancy Smith, whom Irving's readers will remember,
+her son having married despite his mother's protest and reared a family.
+One aged servitor claims to remember Irving's visit, and opines "the old
+colonel [Wildman] thought him a very fine man--for an American." He
+recounts some peccadilloes of Joe Murray, traditional among the
+servants, which show that worthy to have been less precise in morals
+than in dress. The ancient Byron estates were among the haunts of one
+whose exploits inspired a book of ballads, and we here see Robin Hood's
+cave and other reminders of the bold outlaw and his "merrie men in
+Lyncolne greene."
+
+Such, briefly, is the condition of Byron's ancestral home as it appears
+nearly eighty years after he saw it for the last time. Besides the
+charms which won his affection and made him relinquish the Abbey with
+such poignant regret, it holds for us an added spell in that it has been
+the habitation of a transcendent genius. Where Wildman's fortune failed
+his wishes the present owner has supplemented his work, until the vast
+pile now gleams with more than its ancient splendor; and, as we take a
+last view through a glade whose beauty fitly frames the picture of the
+restored mansion, we trust that somehow and somewhere Byron knows that
+his hope for his beloved Newstead is accomplished:
+
+  "Haply thy sun emerging yet may shine,
+    Thee to irradiate with meridian ray;
+  Hours splendid as the past may still be thine,
+    And bless thy future as thy former day."
+
+
+
+
+WARWICKSHIRE: THE LOAMSHIRE OF GEORGE ELIOT
+
+_Miss Mulock--Butler--Somervile--Dyer--Rugby--Homes of George Eliot--
+  Scenes of Tales--Cheverel--Shepperton--Milly's Grave--Paddiford--
+  Milby--Coventry, etc.--Characters--Incidents._
+
+
+Some one has said that to write about Warwickshire is to write about
+Shakespeare. True, the transcending fame of the bard of Avon gives the
+places associated with his life and genius pre-eminence, but the
+literary rambler will find in this heart of England other shrines worthy
+of homage. Inevitably our pilgrimage includes the Stratford
+scenes,--from the birthplace and the Hathaway cottage to the fane where
+all the world bows at Shakespeare's tomb,--but, resolutely repressing
+the inclination to describe again these oft-described resorts, we fare
+to less familiar shrines: to the birthplace of the author of "Hudibras"
+and the haunts and tomb of Somervile, poet of "The Chase" and "Rural
+Sports;" to the Rhynhill of Braddon's tale and the Kenilworth of Scott's
+matchless romance; to Bilton, where Addison sometime dwelt, and the
+Calthorpe home of Dyer, bard of "Grongar Hill" and "The Fleece," where
+we find his garden and a tree he planted which shades now his
+battlemented old church; to Rugby, where we see the dormitory of "Tom
+Brown" Hughes, the class-rooms he shared with Clough, Matthew Arnold,
+and Dean Stanley, the grave of the beloved Dr. Arnold in the "Rugby
+Chapel" of his son's poem.
+
+At Avonmouth we find the Norton Bury of "John Halifax," and the old inn
+where Dinah Mulock lived while writing this her popular tale. The inn
+garden holds the yew hedge of the novel, "fifteen feet high and as many
+thick," and the sward over which crept the lame Phineas: sitting there,
+we see the view the boy admired,--the old Abbey tower, the mill of Abel
+Fletcher, the river where the famished rioters fought for the grains the
+grim old man had flung into the water, the green level of the Ham dotted
+with cattle, the white sails of the encircling Severn, the farther sweep
+of country extending to the distant hills,--and hear the sweet-toned
+Abbey chimes and the lazy whir of the mill which sounded so pleasantly
+in Phineas's ears.
+
+[Sidenote: Other Shrines--Loamshire]
+
+[Sidenote: Birthplace and Home of George Eliot]
+
+[Sidenote: Scenes of her Tales]
+
+"John Halifax" was published simultaneously with another tale of
+Warwickshire life, "Amos Barton." We are newly come from the London
+homes of George Eliot and her grave on the Highgate hill-side, and now,
+as we traverse sweet Avonvale, we gladly remember that Shakespeare's
+shire is hers as well. A jaunt of a score of miles from Stratford
+brings us to the scenes amid which she was born and grew to physical and
+mental maturity. Our course by "Avon's stream," bowered by willows or
+bordered by meads, lies past the noble park where Shakespeare did not
+steal deer and the palace of his Justice Shallow where he was not
+arraigned for poaching. (We find it as impossible to keep Shakespeare
+out of our MS. as did Mr. Dick of "Copperfield" to keep Charles I. out
+of the memorial.) Beyond Charlecote is storied Warwick Castle, with the
+old mansion of Compton Wyniates, dwelling of the royalist knight of
+Scott's "Woodstock," not far away. Beyond these again we come to the
+Coventry region and the frontier of the "Loamshire" whose
+characteristics are imaged and whose traditions, phases of life, and
+scenery are wrought with tender touch into poem and tale by George Eliot
+and so made familiar to all the world. Warwickshire scenery is not
+sublime; Dr. Arnold characterized it as "an endless monotony of enclosed
+fields and hedgerow trees." While its landscapes lack striking features,
+theirs is the quiet, unobtrusive beauty which Hawthorne loved and which
+for us is full of restful charm. Across sunny vales and gentle eminences
+we look away to the far-off Malvern Hills, whose shadowy outlines bound
+many a "Loamshire" landscape. We see vistas of low-lying meads with
+circling "lines of willows marking the watercourses;" of slumberous
+expanses of green or golden fields; of villages grouped about gray
+church-towers; of groves of venerable woods,--survivors of Shakespeare's
+"Forest of Arden" which erst clothed the countryside. We find it,
+indeed, "worth the journey hither only to see the hedgerows,"--green,
+fragrant walls of hawthorn which border lane and highway, bound garden
+and field. With their gleaming boughs rayed by bright blossoms and
+festooned with interlacing vines, these barriers are often marvels of
+beauty and strength. Between miles of such hedgerows, and beneath lines
+of overshading elms, a highway running northward from the town of Godiva
+and "Peeping Tom" brings us to the great Arbury property of the
+Newdigates, where we find the South Farm homestead in which Robert
+Evans--newly appointed agent of the estate--temporarily placed his
+family, and where, in the room at the left of the central chimney-stack,
+at five o'clock on the morning of St. Cecilia's day, 1819, his youngest
+child, Mary Ann, was born. It is a broad-eaved, many-gabled, two-storied
+structure of stuccoed stone, with trim hedges and flower-bordered
+garden-beds about it, a wider environment of lawn and woodland, and
+colonnades of the elms which figure in her poems and were already
+venerable when she saw the light beneath their shade. On the same
+estate, near the highway between Bedworth and Nuneaton, is Griff House,
+"the warm nest where her affections were fledged," to which she was
+removed at the age of four months, and where her first score years of
+life were passed. It is a pleasant and picturesque double-storied
+mansion of brick, quaint and comfortable. Massy ivy mantles its walls,
+climbs to its gables, overruns its roofs, peeps in at its tiny-paned
+casements; doves coo upon its ridges. About it flowers shine from their
+setting in the emerald of the lawn, and great trees open their leaves to
+the sunshine and winds of summer. Spacious rooms lie upon either side of
+the entrance: of the one at the left, the novelist gives us a glimpse in
+"The Mill on the Floss." It is a home-like apartment, with low walls and
+a pleasant fireplace; it was the dining-room and sitting-room also in
+the days when "the little wench" Mary Ann was the pet of the household.
+Here she acted charades with her brother Isaac and astonished the family
+by repeating stories from "Miller's Jest Book," a treasured volume of
+hers in that early time. We learn from Maggie Tulliver--in whose
+childhood is pictured the author's inner life as a child--that Defoe's
+"History of the Devil" was another of Mary Ann's juvenile favorites,
+and her relatives preserve the worn copy she used to read here before
+this fireplace with her father, containing the pictures of the drowning
+witch and the devil which little Maggie explained to Mr. Riley in "The
+Mill on the Floss." Here, years afterward, Mary Ann heard, from her
+"Methodist Aunt Samuel," the thrilling story of the girl executed for
+child-murder, which was the germ of the great romance "Adam Bede." The
+aunt, who had been a preacher in earlier life, remained at Griff for
+some time, and George Eliot has told us that the character of Dinah
+Morris grew out of her recollections of this relative. It may be noted
+that in real life Dinah married Seth Bede, Adam being drawn in
+part--like Caleb Garth--from the novelist's father. In this same room,
+but a few years ago, the "Brother" of the poem, who played here at
+charades with little Mary Ann, suddenly expired in his chair but a few
+minutes after his return from "Shepperton Church." The windows of Mary
+Ann's chamber command a reach of the coach-road of "Felix Holt" and a
+farther vista of woodlands and fields; in another chamber is the
+mahogany bed beneath which she was once found hidden to avoid going to
+school. In the roof is the attic which was Maggie Tulliver's retreat,
+where she kept her wooden doll with the nails in its head, and here is
+the chimney-stack against which that vicarious sufferer was ground and
+beaten. The death of her mother, Mrs. Hackit of "Barton," made Mary Ann
+mistress of Griff at sixteen. At Griff's gates stood the cottage of Dame
+Moore's school, where the novelist began her education, and where years
+after she used to collect the children of the vicinage for religious
+instruction each Sabbath. A son of Mrs. Moore lately lived not far away,
+and had more to say in praise of "Mary Hann" than of her surviving
+kinsfolk, who seem ashamed of their relationship to the novelist. In a
+shaded part of the garden lately stood a bower with a stone table, which
+George Eliot doubtless had in mind when she described the finding of
+Casaubon's corpse in the arbor at Lowick. The exhausted quarries in the
+shale close by, a resort of Mary Ann's girlhood, are the "Red Deeps"
+where Maggie met her lover; the "brown canal" of the poem winds through
+the near hollow; and beyond it, on "an apology for an elevation of
+ground," is the "College" workhouse to which Amos Barton walked through
+the sleet to read prayers. Not far distant is Arbury Hall, seat of the
+Newdigates, for whom the tenant of Griff was and is agent. This is the
+Cheverel Manor of "Gilfil," an imposing castellated structure of gray
+stone, with flanking towers and great mullioned windows of multishaped
+panes, famous for its elaborately decorated ceilings. That George Eliot
+had often been within this mansion is shown by her familiarity with the
+arrangement and ornamentation of the rooms, accurately described as
+scenes of many incidents of the tale. In the grounds, too, the imagery
+of the "Love Story" may be perfectly realized: here are the lawn where
+little Caterina sat with Lady Cheverel, and the shimmering pool, with
+its swans and water-lilies, which was searched for her corpse the
+morning of her flight; at a little distance we find "Moss-lands," and
+the cottage of the gardener to which the dead body of Wybrow was
+carried; and, farther away, the spot under giant limes where the poor
+girl, coming to meet her recreant lover "with a dagger in her dress and
+murder in her heart," found him lying dead in the path, his hand
+clutching the dark leaves, his eyes unheeding the "sunlight that darted
+upon them between the boughs." A touching incident in the life of a
+former owner of Arbury was made the plot of Otway's tragedy "The
+Orphan."
+
+[Sidenote: Shepperton Church--Milly's Grave]
+
+A mile northward from Griff is the quaint church of Chilvers Coton,
+where Mary Ann was christened at the age of a week, where a little later
+her "devotional patience" was fostered by smuggled bread-and-butter, and
+where as child and woman she worshipped for twenty years. It is a
+massive stone edifice with Gothic windows, one of them being a memorial
+of the wife of Isaac Evans, and with a square tower rising above its low
+roofs; at one corner, "a flight of stone steps, with their wooden rail
+running up the outer wall," still leads to the children's gallery as in
+the days of Gilfil and Amos Barton, for this is the Shepperton Church of
+the tales. Within we see the memorials of Rev. Gilpin Ebdell (thought to
+be Gilfil) and of the original of Mrs. Farquhar; the place where Gilfil
+read his sermons from manuscript "rather yellow and worn at the edges,"
+and where Barton later "preached without book." About the renovated fane
+is the church-yard, with its grassy mounds and mouldering tombstones,
+one of which, protected by a paling and shaded by leafy boughs, is
+crowned by a funeral urn and marks the spot where Milly was laid,--"the
+sweet mother with her baby in her arms,"--the grave to which Barton came
+back an old man with Patty supporting his infirm steps. Its inscription
+is to "Emma, beloved wife of Revd. John Gwyther, B.A.," curate here in
+George Eliot's girlhood: during his incumbency the community felt
+aggrieved for his wife on account of the prolonged stay at the parsonage
+of a strange woman who, years after, was described as Countess Czerlaski
+by one who as a child had seen her here. Not far from Milly's monument
+the parents of George Eliot lie in one grave, with Isaac, the "Brother"
+of her poem, sleeping near. By the church-yard wall stands the pleasant
+ivy-grown parsonage to which Gilfil brought his dark-eyed bride, and
+where, after brief months of happiness, he lived the long years of
+solitude and sorrow. We see the cosy parlor--smelling no longer of his
+or Barton's pipe--where the lonely old man sat with his dog, and above,
+its pretty window overlooking the garden, the chamber where he tenderly
+cherished the dainty belongings of his dead wife with the unused
+baby-clothes her fingers had fashioned, and where, in another tale, is
+laid one of the most affecting and high-wrought scenes in all fiction,
+the death of Milly Barton.
+
+[Sidenote: Milby--Liggins]
+
+A half-mile distant lies the village of Attleboro, where, at the age of
+five, Mary Ann was sent to Miss Lathorn's school; and a mile southward
+from Griff, in a region blackened by pits, is the town of
+Bedworth,--"dingy with coal-dust and noisy with looms,"--whose men "walk
+with knees bent outward from squatting in the mine," and whose haggard,
+overworked women and dirty children and cottages are pathetically
+pictured in "Felix Holt." Obviously the changes of the half-century
+which has elapsed since George Eliot knew its wretchedness have wrought
+little improvement in this place, over which her nephew is rector: we
+see pale, hungry faces in the streets, squalor in the poor dwellings,
+proofs of pinching poverty everywhere. A little beyond Chilvers Coton we
+find the market-town of Nuneaton, the Milby of the romances. The shaking
+of hand-looms is less noticeable now than in George Eliot's school-days
+here, factories having supplanted the cottage industry; but the dingy,
+smoky town, with its environment of flat fields, is still "nothing but
+dreary prose." Here we find, near the church, "The Elms" of her
+girlhood, a tall brick edifice embowered with ivy; on its garden side,
+the long low-ceiled school-room, with its heavy beams, broad windows,
+and plain furniture, where she was four years a pupil; the dormitory
+whence she beheld the riot which she describes in the election-riot at
+Treby in "Felix Holt." Another vision of her girlhood here was a "tall,
+black-coated young clergyman-in-embryo," Liggins by name, who afterward
+claimed the authorship of her books and so far imposed upon the public
+that a subscription was made for him. Mrs. Gaskell was one of the last
+to relinquish the belief that Liggins was George Eliot. He spent most of
+his time drinking, but did his own house-work, and was found by a
+deputation of literary admirers washing his slop-basin at the pump. All
+about us at Nuneaton lie familiar objects: the cosy Bull Inn is the "Red
+Lion" where, in the opening of "Janet's Repentance," Dempser is
+discovered in theologic discussion, and from whose window he harangued
+the anti-Tyranite mob; the fine old church, with its beautiful oaken
+carvings, is the sanctuary where Mr. Crewe, in brown Brutus wig,
+delivered his "inaudible sermons," and where Mr. Elty preached later;
+adjoining is the parsonage, erst redolent of Crewe's tobacco, where
+Janet helped his deaf wife to spread the luncheon for the bishop, and
+where, in the time of Elty, Barton came to the sessions of the "Clerical
+Meeting and Book Society;" on this Church street, "Orchard Street" of
+Eliot, a quaint stuccoed house with casement windows was Dempser's home,
+whence he thrust his wife at midnight into the darkness and cold; the
+arched passage near by is that through which she fled to the haven of
+Mrs. Pettifer's house. A little way westward amid the pits is
+Stockingford, "Paddiford" of the tale, and the chapel where Mr. Tyran
+preached. A cousin of George Eliot's was recently a coal-master in this
+vicinity.
+
+[Sidenote: Coventry--Birds Grove]
+
+[Sidenote: Coventry Friends]
+
+Eight miles from Griff is Coventry, where our companion is one who had
+met Rossetti there forty years before. George Eliot was sometime a pupil
+of Miss Franklin's school, lately standing in Little Park Street, and
+saw there that lady's father, whom she described as Rev. Rufus Lyon of
+Treby Chapel. His diminutive legs, large head, and other peculiarities
+are yet remembered by some who were in the school; his home is
+accurately pictured in "Felix Holt." In the Foleshill suburb we find the
+stone villa of Birds Grove, which was the home of the novelist after
+Isaac Evans had succeeded his father at Griff. The house has been
+enlarged, but the apartments she knew are little changed: a plain little
+room above the entrance, whose window looked beyond the tree-tops to the
+superb spire of St. Michael's Church,--where Kemble and Siddons were
+married,--was her study, in which, despite her tasks as her father's
+housewife and nurse, she accomplished much literary work. At the right
+of the window stood her desk, with an ivory crucifix above it, and here
+her translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu," undertaken through the
+persuasion of her friends at Rosehill, was written. Some portions of
+this work she found distressing; she declared to Mrs. Bray that nothing
+but the sight of the Christ image enabled her to endure dissecting the
+beautiful story of the crucifixion. Adjoining the study is her modest
+bedchamber, and beyond it that of her father, where during many months
+of sickness she was his sole attendant, often sitting the long night
+through at his bedside with her hand in his. The grounds are little
+changed, save that the occupant has removed much of the foliage which
+formerly shrouded the mansion, but some of George Eliot's favorite trees
+remain on the lawn. Half a mile away is the pretty villa of Rosehill,
+whilom the home of Mrs. Bray and her sister Sara Hennel, who were the
+most valued friends of the novelist's young-womanhood and exerted the
+strongest influence upon her life. Her letters to these friends
+constitute a great part of Cross's "Life." At Rosehill she met Chapman,
+Mackay, Robert Owen, Combe, Thackeray, Herbert Spencer, and others of
+like genius, and here she spent a day with Emerson and wrote next day,
+"I have seen Emerson--the first _man_ I have ever seen." Sara Hennel
+testifies that Emerson was impressed with Miss Evans and declared, "That
+young lady has a serious soul." When he asked her, "What one book do you
+like best?" and she replied, "Rousseau's Confessions," he quickly
+responded, "So do I: there is a point of sympathy between us." After her
+father's death she was for sixteen months a resident at Rosehill, and
+there wrote, among other things, the review of Mackay's "Progress of the
+Intellect." Financial reverses caused the Brays long ago to relinquish
+this beautiful home, but some of this household were lately living in
+another suburb of Coventry and receiving an annuity bequeathed by
+George Eliot. Here, too, lately resided another old-time friend, the
+Mary Sibtree of the novelist's Coventry days, to whom were addressed
+some of the letters used by Cross.
+
+In 1851 George Eliot left this circle of friends to become an inmate of
+Chapman's house in London, returning to them for occasional visits for
+the next few years; then came her union with Lewes, after which the
+loved scenes of her youth knew her no more in the flesh; but the
+allusions to them which run like threads of gold through all her work
+show how oft she revisited them in "shadowy spirit form."
+
+
+
+
+YORKSHIRE SHRINES: DOTHEBOYS HALL AND ROKEBY
+
+_Village of Bowes--Dickens--Squeers's School--The Master and his
+  Family--Haunt of Scott._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Bowes--Dotheboys Hall]
+
+From the familiar shrines of Cumberland, the lakeside haunts of
+Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, a journey across a wild moorland
+region--from whose higher crags we see through the fog-rifts the German
+Ocean and the Irish Sea--brings us into Gretavale, on the northern
+border of great Yorkshire. In the upper portion of the valley, among the
+outlying spurs of the Pennines, the storied Greta flows at the foot of a
+bleak, treeless hill on whose summit we find the village of Bowes. This
+was the Lavatrae of the Romans, who for three centuries had here a
+station, and remains of great Roman works may still be traced in the
+vicinage; but to the literary pilgrim Bowes is chiefly of interest as
+representing "the delightful village of Dotheboys" described in
+Squeers's advertisement of his school in "Nicholas Nickleby." The aspect
+of the village is dreary and desolate in the extreme. A single street,
+steep and straight, bordered by straggling houses of dull gray stone,
+extends along the hill, which is crowned by the church and an ancient
+castle: the dun moors decline steeply on every side, leaving the
+treeless village dismal and bare and often exposed to a wind "fit to
+knock a man off his legs," as Squeers said to Nicholas. In the midst of
+the village stands a cosy inn, where Dickens for some time lodged and
+was visited by John Browdie, and where we are shown the wainscoted
+apartment in which some portion of "Nickleby" was noted. At the time of
+Dickens's sojourn here, Bowes was the centre of the pernicious
+cheap-school system which he came to expose, and half the houses of the
+village were "academies" similar to that of Squeers: among them one is
+pointed out as being the place where Cobden was a pupil. But most
+interesting of all is the large house at the top of the hill which
+Dickens depicted as Dotheboys Hall,--by which name it was long known
+among the older dwellers of the place,--a long, heavy, two-storied,
+dingy structure of stone, with many windows along its front, and
+presenting, despite its bowering vines and trees, an aspect so chill and
+cheerless that one can scarcely conceive of a more depressing domicile
+for the neglected children who once thronged it. Through an archway at
+one end could be seen the pump which was frozen on the first morning of
+Nicholas's stay, and beyond it the garden which, by a surprising
+mistake, Dickens represents a pupil to be weeding on a freezing winter's
+day.
+
+[Sidenote: Squeers]
+
+A few residents of the neighborhood remember the "measther" of Dotheboys
+Hall; his name, like Squeers's, was of one syllable and began with S; in
+person he was not like Squeers, nor was he an ignorant man. A quondam
+pupil of the school informed the writer that Johnny S. was fairly drawn
+as Wackford Squeers, but Miss S. was a young lady of considerable
+refinement and was in no sense like the spiteful Fanny of the tale.
+Squeers had the largest of the schools, and, besides rooms in the
+adjoining house, he hired barns in which to lodge his many pupils. A
+farm attached to his house was cultivated by the scholars, whose food
+was chiefly oatmeal: scanty diet and liberal flogging was the portion of
+all who displeased the master. According to local belief, this school
+was not so bad as some of its neighbors, and no one of the schools
+realized all the wretchedness which Dickens portrays; yet, despite the
+author's avowal that Squeers was a representative of a class, and not an
+individual, the popular identification of this school as the typical
+Dotheboys, and the odium consequent thereupon, wrought its speedy ruin
+and the death of the master and mistress. The latter result is to be
+deplored, for the reason that in the case of this pair the abhorrence
+seems to have been not wholly deserved. Two charges, at least, which
+affected them most painfully--that of goading the boys to suicide and
+that of feeding them upon the flesh of diseased cattle--were, by the
+testimony of their neighbors, unfounded so far as the proprietors of
+this school were concerned. Relatives of Squeers lately occupied
+Dotheboys Hall, which had become a farm-house, and other relatives and
+descendants are respectable denizens of the vicinity. Dickens's exposure
+of the schools led to their extinction and to the consignment of Bowes
+to its present somnolent condition. In the village church-yard lie the
+lovers whose simultaneous deaths were commemorated by Mallet in "Edwin
+and Emma." At Barnard Castle, a few miles away, the prototype of Newman
+Noggs is still traditionally known, and known as "a gentleman."
+
+[Sidenote: Rokeby]
+
+The abounding beauties of the Greta have been painted by Turner and sung
+by Scott, both frequenters of this vale. From Bowes, a ramble along the
+lovely stream, between steep tree-shaded banks where it chafes and
+"greets" over the great rocks, and through mossy dells where it softly
+murmurs its content, brings us to the demesne of Rokeby, where Scott
+laid the scene of his famous poem. On every hand amid this region of
+enchantment, in glade and grove, in riven cliff and headlong torrent, in
+sunny slope and dingle's shade, we recognize the poetic imagery of
+Scott. Every turn reveals some new vista, rendered doubly delightful by
+the romantic associations with which the great poet has invested it. To
+the poet himself Greta's banks were potent allurements, and they were
+his habitual haunts during his sojourns in the valley. A descendant of
+the friend whom Scott visited here and to whom the poem is inscribed,
+points out to us a natural grotto, in the precipitous bank above the
+stream, where the poet often sat, and where some part of "Rokeby" was
+pondered and composed amid the scenery it portrays.
+
+
+
+
+STERNE'S SWEET RETIREMENT
+
+_Sutton--Crazy Castle--Yorick's Church--Parsonage--Where Tristram
+  Shandy and the Sentimental Journey were written--Reminiscences--
+  Newburgh Hall--Where Sterne died--Sepulchre._
+
+
+At historic old York we are fairly in the midst of great Yorkshire:
+standing upon the tower of its colossal cathedral, we overlook half that
+ancient county. At our feet lie the quaint olden streets depicted in
+Collins's "No Name," where erstwhile dwelt Porteus, Defoe, Wallis,
+Lindley Murray, Mrs. Stannard, Poole of "Synopsis Criticorum," Burton
+the author immortalized by Sterne as "Dr. Slop." Below us we see the
+feudal castle where Eugene Aram was hanged, the ancient city wall with
+its gate-ways and battlements, the ruins of mediaeval shrine and of Roman
+citadel and necropolis; abroad we behold the vale which Bunsen
+pronounces the "most beautiful in the world (the vale of Normandy
+excepted)," with its streams, its mosaics of green and golden fields and
+sombre woods, its distant border of savage moors and uplands. The Ouse,
+shining like a ribbon of silver, flows at our feet; we may trace its
+course from the hills of Craven on the one hand, while southward we
+behold it "slow winding through the level plain" on its way to the sea;
+into its valley we see the Wharfe flowing from the lovely dale where
+Collyer grew to manhood, and, farther away, the Aire emerging from the
+dreary region where lived the sad sisters Bronte and wove the sombre
+threads of their lives into romance. The Foss flows toward us from the
+northeast, and our view along its valley embraces the region where dwelt
+Sydney Smith, while rising in the north are the Hambleton Hills, which
+shelter the vale where Sterne wrote the books that made him famous.
+Indeed, this region of York is pervaded with memories of that prince of
+sentimentalists: in the great minster beneath us we find the tomb and
+monument of his grandfather, once archbishop of this diocese; in the
+carved pulpit of the minster Sterne preached as prebendary, and here he
+delivered his last sermon; his uncle was a dignitary of the old minster;
+his "indefatigably prolific" mother was native to this region; his wife
+was born here, and was first seen and loved by Sterne within sound of
+the glorious minster bells; most of his adult life was passed within
+sight of the minster towers.
+
+[Sidenote: Crazy Castle]
+
+[Sidenote: Sterne's Church]
+
+At Sutton, Sterne's first living, the pilgrim finds little to reward his
+devotion. Sterne's life here was obscure and, save in preparation,
+unproductive. Skelton Castle was then the seat of his college friend
+Stevenson, author of "Crazy Tales," etc., who was the Eugenius of
+"Shandy," and to whom the "Sentimental Journey" was inscribed. Here
+Sterne found a library rich in rare treatises upon unusual subjects, in
+which, during his stay at Sutton, he spent much time and acquired a fund
+of odd and fanciful learning which constituted in part his equipment for
+his work. We find this castle nearer the stern coast which Yorkshire
+opposes to the endless thunders of the North Sea. Once a Roman
+stronghold, then a feudal fortress and castle of the Bruces, later a
+country-seat, it has since Sterne's time been rebuilt and modernized out
+of all semblance to the "Crazy Castle" of his letters. It is believed
+that only a few of the rooms remain substantially as he knew them. A
+tradition is preserved to the effect that during his visits here he
+bribed the servants to tie the vane with the point toward the west,
+because Eugenius would never leave his bed while an east wind prevailed.
+A near-by hill is called Sterne's Seat, but time has left here little to
+remind us of the sentimental "Yorick" who long haunted the place. It is
+only at Coxwold, fourteen miles from York and in the deeper depths of
+the shire, that we find many remaining objects that were associated with
+his work and with that portion of his life which chiefly concerns the
+literary world. A result of the publication of the first part of
+"Tristram Shandy" was the presentation of this living to its author, and
+his removal to this sequestered retreat, which was to be his home during
+his too few remaining years. The hamlet has now a railway station, but
+the usual approach is by a rustic highway which conducts to and
+constitutes the village street. Within the hamlet we find a low-eaved
+road-side inn, and by it the shaded green where the rural festivals were
+held, and where, to celebrate the coronation of George III., Sterne had
+an ox roasted whole and served with great quantities of ale to his
+parishioners. Just beyond, Sterne's church stands intact upon a gentle
+eminence, overlooking a lovely pastoral landscape bounded by verdant
+hills. The church dates from the fifteenth century and is a pleasing
+structure of perpendicular Gothic style, with a shapely octagonal tower
+embellished with fretted pinnacles and a parapet of graceful design. One
+window has been filled with stained glass, but Sterne's pulpit remains,
+and the interior of the edifice is scarcely changed since he preached
+here his quaint sermons. The walls are plain; the low ceiling is divided
+by beams whose intersections are marked by grotesque bosses; the whole
+effect is depressing, and to the sensitive "Yorick"--haunted as he was
+by habitual dread that his ministrations might provoke a fatal pulmonary
+hemorrhage--it must have been dismal indeed. Among the effigied tombs of
+the Fauconbergs which line the chancel we find that of Sterne's friend
+who gave him this living.
+
+[Sidenote: Shandy Hall]
+
+[Sidenote: Sterne's Parsonage--Study]
+
+Beyond the church and near the highway stands the quaint and picturesque
+old edifice where dwelt Sterne during the eight famous years of his
+life. In his letters he calls it Castle Shandy, and in all the
+countryside it is now known as Shandy Hall, shandy meaning in the local
+dialect crack-brained. It is a long, rambling, low-eaved fabric, with
+many heavy gables and chimneys, and steep roofs of tiles. Curious little
+casements are under the eaves; larger windows look out from the gables
+and are aligned nearer the ground, many of them shaded by the dark ivy
+which clings to the old walls and overruns the roofs. Abutting the
+kitchen is an astounding pyramidal structure of masonry--an Ailsa Craig
+in shape and solidity, yet more resembling Stromboli with its emissions
+of smoke,--which, beginning at the ground as a buttress, terminates as a
+kitchen-chimney and imparts to this portion of the house an
+architectural character altogether unique. Shrubbery grows about the old
+domicile, venerable trees which may have cast their shade upon "Yorick"
+himself are by the door, and the aspect of the place is decidedly
+attractive. To Sir George Wombwell, who inherits the Fauconberg estate
+through a daughter of Sterne's patron, we are indebted for the
+preservation of the exterior of the house in the condition it was when
+Sterne inhabited it; but the interior has been partitioned into two
+dwellings and thus considerably altered. However, we may see the same
+sombre wainscots and low ceiling that Sterne knew, and we find the one
+room which interests us most--Sterne's parlor and study--little changed.
+It is a pleasant apartment, with windows looking into the garden, where
+stood the summer-house in which he sometimes wrote, and beyond which was
+the sward where "my uncle Toby" habitually demonstrated the siege of
+Namur and Dendermond. On the low walls of this room Sterne disposed his
+seven hundred books,--"bought at a purchase dog-cheap,"--and here he
+wrote, besides his sermons, seven volumes of "Tristram Shandy" and the
+"Sentimental Journey." There is a local tradition that other MSS.
+written here were found by the succeeding tenant and used to line the
+hangings of the room. Sterne's letters afford glimpses of him in this
+room: in one we see him "before the fire, with his cat purring beside
+him;" in another he is "sitting here and cudgelling his brains" for
+ideas, though he usually wrote facilely and rapidly; in another he shows
+us a prettier picture, in which "My Lydia" (his daughter) "helps to copy
+for me, and my wife knits and listens as I read her chapters;" and
+later, after his estrangement from Mrs. Sterne, we see him "sitting here
+alone, as sad and solitary as a tomcat, which by the way is all the
+company I keep." In the repose of this charming place, and amid the
+peaceful influences about him here in his pretty home, Sterne appears at
+his best. And here for a time he was happy; we find his letters
+attesting, "I am in high spirits, care never enters this cottage;" "I am
+happy as a prince at Coxwold;" "I wish you could see in what a princely
+manner I live. I sit down to dinner--fish and wild fowl, or a couple of
+fowls, with cream and all the simple plenty a rich valley can produce,
+with a clean cloth on my table and a bottle of wine on my right hand to
+drink your health." But the melancholy days came all too soon; the
+"bursting of vessels in his lungs" became more and more frequent, his
+struggle with dread consumption was inaugurated, and now his letters
+from the pretty parsonage abound with references to his "vile cough,
+weak nerves, dismal headaches," etc. Now his "sweet retirement" has
+become "a cuckoldy retreat;" he complains of its situation, of its
+"death-doing, pestiferous wind." Returning to it from a sentimental
+journey or from a brilliant season of lionizing in London, he finds its
+quiet and seclusion insufferably irksome. Mortally ill, growing old,
+hopelessly estranged from his wife, deprived of the companionship of his
+idolized child, the poor master of Castle Shandy is "sad and desolate,"
+his "pleasures are few," he sits "alone in silence and gloom." Such were
+some of the diverse phases of his life which these dumb walls have
+witnessed; in the dismalest, they have seen him at his desk here,
+resolutely ignoring his ills and tracing the passages of wit and fancy
+which were to delight the world. The incomplete "Sentimental Journey"
+was written in his last months of life.
+
+A mile from Sterne's cottage, and approached by a way oft trodden by him
+and his "little Lyd," is Newburgh Hall, the ancient seat of Sterne's
+friend. Parts of the walls of a priory founded here in 1145 are
+incorporated into the oldest portion of the hall, and this has been
+added to by successive generations until a great, incongruous pile has
+resulted, which, however, is not devoid of picturesque beauty. Within
+this mansion Sterne was a familiar guest: urged by the friendly
+persistence of Fauconberg, he frequently came here to chat or dine with
+his friend and the guests of the hall, his brilliant converse making
+him the life of the company. Among the family portraits here are that of
+his benefactor and one of Mary Cromwell, wife of the second Fauconberg,
+who preserved here many relics of the great Protector, including his
+bones, which were somehow rescued from Tyburn and concealed in a mass of
+masonry in an upper apartment of the hall.
+
+Sterne was not only popular with his lordly neighbor of Newburgh, but
+also, improbable as it would seem, with the illiterate yeomen who were
+his parishioners: although they understood not the sermons and found the
+sermonizer in most regards a hopeless enigma, yet, according to the
+traditions of the place, these simple folk discerned something in the
+complexly blended character of the creator of "my uncle Toby" which
+elicited their esteem and prompted many acts of love and service. In a
+letter to an American friend, Arthur Lee, Sterne writes, "Not a
+parishioner catches a hare, a rabbit, or a trout, but he brings it an
+offering to me."
+
+[Sidenote: Place of Sterne's Death and Burial]
+
+As set forth by the inscription at Sterne's cottage, he died in London.
+One autumn day we find ourselves pondering the sad event of his last
+sojourn in the great city, as we stand upon the spot where his
+"truceless fight with disease" was ended, barely a fortnight after the
+"Sentimental Journey" was issued. His wish to die "untroubled by the
+concern of his friends and the last service of wiping his brows and
+smoothing his pillow" was literally realized. During the publication of
+the "Journey" he lodged in rooms above a silk-bag shop in Old Bond
+Street; here he rapidly sank, and in the evening of March 18, 1768,
+attended only by a hireling who robbed his body, and in the presence of
+a staring footman, the dying man suddenly cried, "Now it is come!" and,
+raising his hand as if to repel a blow, expired. A few furlongs distant,
+opposite Hyde Park, we find an old cemetery hidden from the streets by
+houses and high walls which shut out the din of the great city. Here, in
+seclusion almost as complete as that of the graveyard of his own
+Coxwold, Sterne was consigned to earth. The spot is overlooked by the
+windows of Thackeray's sometime home. An old tree stands close by, and
+in its boughs the birds twitter above us as we essay to read the
+inscription which marks Sterne's poor sepulchre. But, mean and neglected
+as it is, we may never know that his ashes found rest even here; a
+report which has too many elements of probability and which never was
+disproved, avers that the grave was desecrated and that a
+horror-stricken friend recognized Sterne's mutilated corse upon the
+dissecting-table of a medical school. "Alas, poor Yorick!"
+
+
+
+
+HAWORTH AND THE BRONTES
+
+_The Village--Black Bull Inn--Church--Vicarage--Memory-haunted
+  Rooms--Bronte Tomb--Moors--Bronte Cascade--Wuthering Heights--Humble
+  Friends--Relic and Recollection._
+
+
+Other Bronte shrines have engaged us,--Guiseley, where Patrick Bronte
+was married and Neilson worked as a mill-girl; the lowly Thornton home,
+where Charlotte was born; the cottage where she visited Harriet
+Martineau; the school where she found Caroline Helstone and Rose and
+Jessy Yorke; the Fieldhead, Lowood, and Thornfield of her tales; the
+Villette where she knew her hero; but it is the bleak Haworth hill-top
+where the Brontes wrote the wonderful books and lived the pathetic lives
+that most attracts and longest holds our steps. Our way is along
+Airedale, now a highway of toil and trade, desolated by the need of
+hungry poverty and greed of hungrier wealth: meads are replaced by
+blocks of grimy huts, groves are supplanted by factory chimneys that
+assoil earth and heaven, the once "shining" stream is filthy with the
+refuse of many mills. At Keighley our walk begins, and, although we have
+no peas in our "pilgrim shoon," the way is heavy with memories of the
+sad sisters Bronte who so often trod the dreary miles which bring us to
+Haworth. The village street, steep as a roof, has a pavement of rude
+stones, upon which the wooden shoes of the villagers clank with an
+unfamiliar sound. The dingy houses of gray stone, barren and ugly in
+architecture, are huddled along the incline and encroach upon the narrow
+street. The place and its situation are a proverb of ugliness in all the
+countryside; one dweller in Airedale told us that late in the evening of
+the last day of creation it was found that a little rubbish was left,
+and out of that Haworth was made. But, grim and rough as it is, the
+genius of a little woman has made the place illustrious and draws to it
+visitors from every quarter of the world. We are come in the "glory
+season" of the moors, and as we climb through the village we behold
+above and beyond it vast undulating sweeps of amethyst-tinted hills
+rising circle beyond circle,--all now one great expanse of purple bloom
+stirred by zephyrs which waft to us the perfume of the heather.
+
+[Sidenote: Black Bull Inn]
+
+At the hill-top we come to the Black Bull Inn, where one Bronte drowned
+his genius in drink, and from our apartment here we look upon all the
+shrines we seek. The inn stands at the church-yard gates, and is one of
+the landmarks of the place. Long ago preacher Grimshaw flogged the
+loungers from its tap-room into chapel; here Wesley and Whitefield
+lodged when holding meetings on the hill-top; here Bronte's predecessor
+took refuge from his riotous parishioners, finally escaping through the
+low casement at the back,--out of which poor Branwell Bronte used to
+vault when his sisters asked for him at the door. This inn is a quaint
+structure, low-eaved and cosy; its furniture is dark with age. We sleep
+in a bed once occupied by Henry J. Raymond, and so lofty that steps are
+provided to ascend its heights. Our meals are served in the
+old-fashioned parlor to which Branwell came. In a nook between the
+fireplace and the before-mentioned casement stood the tall arm-chair,
+with square seat and quaintly carved back, which was reserved for him.
+The landlady denied that he was summoned to entertain travellers here:
+"he never needed to be sent for, he came fast enough of himsel'." His
+wit and conviviality were usually the life of the circle, but at times
+he was mute and abstracted and for hours together "would just sit and
+sit in his corner there." She described him as a "little, red-haired,
+light-complexioned chap, cleverer than all his sisters put together.
+What they put in their books they got from him," quoth she, reminding us
+of the statement in Grundy's Reminiscences that Branwell declared he
+invented the plot and wrote the major part of "Wuthering Heights."
+Certain it is he possessed transcending genius and that in this room
+that genius was slain. Here he received the message of renunciation from
+his depraved mistress which finally wrecked his life; the landlady,
+entering after the messenger had gone, found him in a fit on the floor.
+Emily Bronte's rescue of her dog, an incident recorded in "Shirley,"
+occurred at the inn door.
+
+[Sidenote: Church--Bronte Tomb]
+
+The graveyard is so thickly sown with blackened tombstones that there is
+scant space for blade or foliage to relieve its dreariness, and the
+villagers, for whom the yard is a thoroughfare, step from tomb to tomb:
+in the time of the Brontes the village women dried their linen on these
+graves. Close to the wall which divides the church-yard from the
+vicarage is a plain stone set by Charlotte Bronte to mark the grave of
+Tabby, the faithful servant who served the Brontes from their childhood
+till all but Charlotte were dead. The very ancient church-tower still
+"rises dark from the stony enclosure of its yard;" the church itself has
+been remodelled and much of its romantic interest destroyed. No
+interments have been made in the vaults beneath the aisles since Mr.
+Bronte was laid there. The site of the Bronte pew is by the chancel;
+here Emily sat in the farther corner, Anne next, and Charlotte by the
+door, within a foot of the spot where her ashes now lie. A former
+sacristan remembered to have seen Thackeray and Miss Martineau sitting
+with Charlotte in the pew. And here, almost directly above her
+sepulchre, she stood one summer morning and gave herself in marriage to
+the man who served for her as "faithfully and long as did Jacob for
+Rachel." The Bronte tablet in the wall bears a uniquely pathetic record,
+its twelve lines registering eight deaths, of which Mr. Bronte's, at the
+age of eighty-five, is the last. On a side aisle is a beautiful stained
+window inscribed "To the Glory of God, in Memory of Charlotte Bronte, by
+an American citizen." The list shows that most of the visitors come from
+America, and it was left for a dweller in that far land to set up here
+almost the only voluntary memento of England's great novelist. A worn
+page of the register displays the tremulous autograph of Charlotte as
+she signs her maiden name for the last time, and the signatures of the
+witnesses to her marriage,--Miss Wooler, of "Roe Head," and Ellen Nussy,
+who is the E of Charlotte's letters and the Caroline of "Shirley."
+
+[Sidenote: Bronte Parsonage--Apartments]
+
+The vicarage and its garden are out of a corner of the church-yard and
+separated from it by a low wall. A lane lies along one side of the
+church-yard and leads from the street to the vicarage gates. The garden,
+which was Emily's care, where she tended stunted shrubs and borders of
+unresponsive flowers and where Charlotte planted the currant-bushes, is
+beautiful with foliage and flowers, and its boundary wall is overtopped
+by a screen of trees which shuts out the depressing prospect of the
+graves from the vicarage windows and makes the place seem less "a
+church-yard home" than when the Brontes inhabited it. The dwelling is of
+gray stone, two stories high, of plain and sombre aspect. A wing is
+added, the little window-panes are replaced by larger squares, the stone
+floors are removed or concealed, curtains--forbidden by Mr. Bronte's
+dread of fire--shade the windows, and the once bare interior is
+furbished and furnished in modern style; but the arrangement of the
+apartments is unchanged. Most interesting of these is the Bronte parlor,
+at the left of the entrance; here the three curates of "Shirley" used to
+take tea with Mr. Bronte and were upbraided by Charlotte for their
+intolerance; here the sisters discussed their plots and read each
+other's MSS.; here they transmuted the sorrows of their lives into the
+stories which make the name of Bronte immortal; here Emily, "her
+imagination occupied with Wuthering Heights," watched in the darkness to
+admit Branwell coming late and drunken from the Black Bull; here
+Charlotte, the survivor of all, paced the night-watches in solitary
+anguish, haunted by the vanished faces, the voices forever stilled, the
+echoing footsteps that came no more. Here, too, she lay in her coffin.
+The room behind the parlor was fitted by Charlotte for Nichols's study.
+On the right was Bronte's study, and behind it the kitchen, where the
+sisters read with their books propped on the table before them while
+they worked, and where Emily (prototype of "Shirley"), bitten by a dog
+at the gate of the lane, took one of Tabby's glowing irons from the fire
+and cauterized the wound, telling no one till danger was past. Above the
+parlor is the chamber in which Charlotte and Emily died, the scene of
+Nichols's loving ministrations to his suffering wife. Above Bronte's
+study was his chamber; the adjoining children's study was later
+Branwell's apartment and the theatre of the most terrible tragedies of
+the stricken family; here that ill-fated youth writhed in the horrors of
+_mania-a-potu_; here Emily rescued him--stricken with drunken
+stupor--from his burning couch, as "Jane Eyre" saved Rochester; here he
+breathed out his blighted life erect upon his feet, his pockets filled
+with love-letters from the perfidious woman who wrought his ruin. Even
+now the isolated site of the parsonage, its environment of graves and
+wild moors, its exposure to the fierce winds of the long winters, make
+it unspeakably dreary; in the Bronte time it must have been cheerless
+indeed. Its influence darkened the lives of the inmates and left its
+fateful impression upon the books here produced. Visitors are rarely
+admitted to the vicarage; among those against whom its doors have been
+closed is the gifted daughter of Charlotte's literary idol, to whom
+"Jane Eyre" was dedicated, Thackeray.
+
+[Sidenote: The Moors]
+
+By the vicarage lane were the cottage of Tabby's sister, the school the
+Brontes daily visited, and the sexton's dwelling where the curates
+lodged. Behind the vicarage a savage expanse of gorse and heather rises
+to the horizon and stretches many miles away: a path oft trodden by the
+Brontes leads between low walls from their home to this open moor, their
+habitual resort in childhood and womanhood. The higher plateaus afford a
+wide prospect, but, despite the August bloom and fragrance and the
+delightful play of light and shadow along the sinuous sweeps, the aspect
+of the bleak, treeless, houseless waste of uplands is even now
+dispiriting; when frosts have destroyed its verdure and wintry skies
+frown above, its gloom and desolation must be terrible beyond
+description. Remembering that the sisters found even these usually
+dismal moors a welcome relief from their tomb of a dwelling, we may
+appreciate the utter dreariness of their situation and the pathos of
+Charlotte's declaration, "I always dislike to leave Haworth, it takes so
+long to be content again after I return." We trace the steps of the
+Brontes across the moor to the cascade, called now the "Bronte Falls,"
+where a brooklet descends over great boulders into a shaded glen. This
+was their favorite excursion, and as we loiter here we recall their many
+visits to the spot: first they came four children to play upon these
+rocks; later came three grave maidens with Caroline Helstone or Rose
+Yorke; later came two saddened women; and then Charlotte came alone,
+finding the moor a featureless wilderness full of torturing reminders of
+her dead, and seeing their vanished forms "in the blue tints, the pale
+mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon." Later still, during her
+few months of happiness, she came here many times with her husband, and
+her last walk on earth was made with him to see the cascade "in its
+winter wildness and power."
+
+[Sidenote: Wuthering Heights]
+
+Above the village was the parsonage of Grimshaw and the original
+"Wuthering Heights." It was a sombre structure; a few trees grew about
+it, the moors rose behind; the apartments were like the oak-lined,
+stone-paved interior pictured in the tale, while the inscription above
+the door, H E 1659, was changed to Hareton Earnshaw 1500 by Miss
+Bronte, who described here much of her own grandfather's early life and
+suffering and portrayed his wife in Catherine Linton. It is notable that
+the name Earnshaw and other names in the Bronte books may be seen on
+shop-signs along the way the sisters walked to Keighley.
+
+[Sidenote: Recollections of the Brontes]
+
+Among the villagers we meet some who remember the Brontes with affection
+and pride. We find them so uniformly courteous that we are willing to
+doubt Mrs. Gaskell's ascriptions of surly rudeness. They indignantly
+deny the statements of Reid, Gaskell, and others regarding the character
+of Mr. Bronte. One whose relations to that clergyman entitle him to
+credence assures us that Bronte did not destroy his wife's silk dress,
+nor burn his children's colored shoes, nor discharge pistols as a
+safety-valve for his temper: "he didn't have that sort of a temper." It
+would appear that many charges of the biographers were made upon the
+authority of a peculating servant whom Bronte had angered by dismissal.
+Some parishioners testify that "the Brontes had odd ways of their own,"
+"went their gait and didn't meddle o'ermuch with us;" "nobody had a word
+against them." Charlotte's husband, too, became popular after her death,
+perhaps at first because of his tender care of her father: "to see the
+good old man and Nichols together when the rest were dead, and Mr.
+Bronte so helpless and blind, was just a pretty sight." We hear more
+than once of Bronte's wonderful cravat: he habitually covered it
+himself, putting on new silk without removing the old, until in the
+course of years it became one of the sights of the place, having
+acquired such phenomenal proportions that it concealed half his head.
+Many still remember hearing him preach from the depths of this cravat,
+while the sexton perambulated the aisles with a staff to stir up the
+sleepers and threaten the lads. Mr. Wood, a cabinet-maker of the
+village, was church-warden in Bronte's incumbency and an intimate friend
+of the family till the death of the last member: his loving hands
+fashioned the coffins for them all. He was sent for to see Richmond's
+portrait of Charlotte on its arrival, and was laughed at by that lady
+for not recognizing the likeness; while Tabby insisted that a portrait
+of Wellington, which came in the same case, was a picture of Mr. Bronte.
+That clergyman often complained to Wood that Mrs. Gaskell "tried to make
+us all appear as bad as she could." We find some survivors of
+Charlotte's Sunday-school class among the villagers. From one, who was
+also singer in Bronte's church choir, we obtain pictures of the church
+and rectory as they appeared in Charlotte's lifetime and a photographic
+copy of Branwell's painting of himself and sisters, in which the
+likenesses are said to be excellent. Charlotte is remembered as being
+"good looking," having a wealth of lustrous hair and remarkably
+expressive eyes. She was usually neatly apparelled in black, and was so
+small that when Mrs. F. entered her class, at the age of twelve, the
+pupil was larger than the teacher. Another of Charlotte's class
+remembers her as being nervously quick in all her movements and a rapid
+walker; a third stood in the church-yard and saw her pass from the
+vicarage to the church on the morning of her marriage wearing a very
+plain bridal dress and a white bonnet trimmed with green leaves. A few
+brief months later this person, from the same spot, beheld the mortal
+part of her immortal friend borne by a grief-stricken company along the
+same path to her burial. In the hands of another of Charlotte's pupils
+we see a volume of the original edition of the poems of the three
+sisters, presented by Charlotte, and a Yorkshire collection of hymns
+which contains some of Anne's sweet verses.
+
+[Sidenote: Branwell Bronte--Bronte Relics]
+
+It is evident that, of all the family, the hapless Branwell was most
+admired by the villagers. They delight to extol his pleasant manners,
+his ready repartee, his wonderful learning, his ambidextrousness, his
+personal courage. On one occasion restraint was required to prevent his
+attacking alone a dozen mill-rioters, "any one of whom could have put
+him in his pocket." Holding a pen in each hand, he could simultaneously
+write letters on two dissimilar subjects while he discoursed on a third.
+Wood thought him naturally the brightest of the family, and believed
+that lack of occupation, in a place where there was nothing to stimulate
+mental effort, accounted for his vices and failures. He came often with
+his sisters to Wood's house, and would talk by the hour of his projects
+to achieve fame and fortune. One of his associates preserved some
+letters received from him while he was "away tutoring," in which he
+shamelessly recorded his follies and referred to himself as a "Joseph in
+Egypt." A local society has collected in its museum some Bronte
+mementos: a relative of Martha, Tabby's successor in the household,
+saved a few,--Charlotte's silken purse, her thimble-case and some
+articles of dress, elementary drawings made by the sisters, autograph
+letters of Charlotte and her copies of the "Quarterly" and other
+periodicals in which she had read the reviews of "Jane Eyre." Among the
+treasures Wood preserved were sketches by Emily and Branwell; a
+signatured set of Bronte volumes presented by Bronte the day before his
+death; Charlotte's worn history containing annotations in her
+microscopic chirography; a copy of "Jane Eyre" presented by Charlotte
+before its authorship was ascertained; an article on "Advantages of
+Poverty," by Mrs. Bronte; a highly graphic tale and religious poems by
+Mr. Bronte. Comment upon the latter reminded Wood that Bronte had shown
+him some poems by an Irish ancestor Hugh Bronte, and that he had met at
+the vicarage an irate relative who came from Ireland with a shillalah to
+"break the head" of a cruel critic of "Jane Eyre." Most of the Bronte
+belongings were removed by Mr. Nichols. He served the parish
+assiduously, as the people declare, for fifteen years, and at Bronte's
+death they desired that Nichols should succeed him; but the living was
+bestowed upon a stranger, and Nichols removed to the south of Ireland,
+where he married his cousin and is now a gentleman farmer. Martha Brown,
+the devoted servant of the family, accompanied him, and Nancy
+Wainwright, the Brontes' nurse, died some years ago in Bradford
+workhouse: so every living vestige of the family has disappeared from
+the vicinage.
+
+[Sidenote: Charlotte Bronte's Husband]
+
+A resident of near-by Wharfedale lately possessed a package of
+Charlotte's essays, written at the Brussels school and amended by "M.
+Paul." Study of these confirms the belief that she was for a time
+tortured by a hopeless love for her preceptor, husband of "Madame Beck,"
+and that it was this wretched passage in her life, rather than the fall
+of her brother, which "drove her to literary speech for relief." Her
+marriage with Nichols was eventually happy, but her own descriptions of
+him show that his were not the attributes that would please her fancy or
+readily gain her love. In "Shirley" she writes of him as successor of
+Malone: "the circumstance of finding himself invited to tea with a
+Dissenter would unhinge him for a week; the spectacle of a Quaker
+wearing his hat in church, the thought of an unbaptized fellow-creature
+being interred with Christian rites, these things would make strange
+havoc in his physical and mental economy." In a letter to E. Charlotte
+writes, "I am _not_ to marry Mr. Nichols. I couldn't think of mentioning
+such a rumor to him, even as a joke. It would make me the laughing-stock
+of himself and fellow-curates for half a year to come. They regard me as
+an old maid, and I regard them, _one and all_, as highly uninteresting,
+narrow, and unattractive specimens of the coarser sex." Why then did she
+finally accept Mr. Nichols? Was it not from the same motive that had led
+her to reject his addresses not long before, the desire to please her
+father?
+
+
+
+
+EARLY HAUNTS OF ROBERT COLLYER: EUGENE ARAM
+
+_Childhood Home--Ilkley Scenes, Friends, Smithy, Chapel--
+  Bolton-Associations--Wordsworth--Rogers--Eliot--Turner--Aram's
+  Homes--Schools--Place of the Murder--Gibbet--Probable Innocence._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Early Home--School]
+
+The factory-town of Keighley,--amid the moors of western Yorkshire,--to
+which the Bronte pilgrimage brings us, becomes itself an object of
+interest when we remember it was the birthplace of Robert Collyer. On a
+dingy side-street resonant with the din of spindles and looms and
+sullied with soot from factory chimneys, of humble parentage, and in a
+home not less lowly than that of another Yorkshire blacksmith in which
+Faraday was born, our orator and author first saw the light. Collyer
+came to Keighley "only to be born," and soon was removed to the lovely
+Washburndale, a few miles away. Here we find the place of the boyhood
+home he has made known to us--the cottage of two rooms with whitewashed
+walls and floor of flags--occupied by the mansion of a mill-owner, and
+the Collyer family vanished from the vicinage. "Little Sam," the
+kind-hearted father, fell dead at his anvil one summer day; the
+blue-eyed, fair-haired mother, of whom the preacher so loves to speak,
+died in benign age; and the boisterous bairns who once filled the
+cottage are scattered in the Old World and the New. A little way down
+the sparkling burn is the picturesque old church of Fewston, where
+Collyer was christened, where Amos Barton of George Eliot's tale later
+preached, and where the poet Edward Fairfax--of the ancient family which
+gave to Virginia its best blood--was buried with his child who "was held
+to have died of witchcraft." Near by was Collyer's school, taught by a
+crippled and cross-eyed old fiddler named Willie Hardie, who survived at
+our first sojourn in the dale and had much to tell about his pupil
+"Boab," whom he had often "fairly thrashed." Collyer's school education
+ended in his eighth year, and he was early apprenticed at Ilkley, in the
+next valley, where he grew to physical manhood and attained to a measure
+of that intellectual stature which has since been recognized.
+
+[Sidenote: Companions]
+
+[Sidenote: Collyer's Humble Friends--The Smithy]
+
+At Ilkley we find some who remember when Collyer came first, a stripling
+lad, to work in "owd Jackie's" smithy, and who in the long-ago worked,
+played, and fought with him in the village or read with him on the
+moors. One remembers that he was from the first an insatiable student,
+often reading as he plied the bellows or switched the flies from a
+customer's horse. His master "Jackie" Birch, who was native of Eugene
+Aram's home, is recalled as a selfish and unpopular man, who had no
+sympathy with the lad's studious habit, but tolerated it when it did not
+interfere with his work. Collyer's love of books was contagious, and
+soon a little circle of lads habitually assembled, whenever released
+from toil, to read with him the volumes borrowed from friends or
+purchased by clubbing their own scant hoards. A survivor of this group
+walked with us through the village, pointing out the spots associated
+with Collyer's life here, and afterward showed us upon the slopes of the
+overlooking hills the nooks where the lads read together in summer
+holidays. Collyer was especially intimate with the Dobsons: of these
+John was best beloved, because he shared most fully Collyer's studies
+and aspirations; between the two an affectionate friendship was formed
+which, despite long separation and disparity of position,--for John
+remained a laborer,--ended only with his death. When, thirty years ago,
+Collyer--honored and famous--revisited the scenes of his early struggles
+and was eagerly invited to opulent and cultured homes, he turned away
+from all to abide in the humble cottage of Dobson, which we found near
+the site of the smithy and occupied by others who were friends of
+Collyer's youth. His associates of the early time--some of them old and
+poor--tell us with obvious pleasure and pride of his visits to their
+poor homes in these later summers when he comes to the place, and we
+suspect he often leaves with them more substantial tokens of his
+remembrance than kind words and wishes: indeed, he once made us his
+almoner to the more needy of them, one of whom we found in the
+workhouse. Some of his old-time friends recall the circumstances of his
+conversion under the preaching of a Wesleyan named Bland, his own
+eloquent and touching prayers, and his first timorous essays to conduct
+the services of the little chapel to which the villagers were bidden by
+the bellman, who proclaimed through the streets, "The blacksmith will
+preach t'night." When he preaches at Ilkley now, the Assembly-rooms are
+thronged with friends, old and new, eager to hear him. "Jackie" sleeps
+with his fathers, and the smithy is replaced by a modern cottage, into
+whose masonry many blackened stones from the old forge were
+incorporated. One of Collyer's chums showed us the door of the smithy
+which he had rescued from demolition and religiously preserved, and
+presented us with a photograph which we were assured represents the
+building just as Collyer knew it,--a long, low fabric of stone, with a
+shed joined at one end, two forge chimneys rising out of the roof, and
+the rough doors and window-shutters placarded with public notices.
+Before the forge was demolished, the large two-horned anvil on which
+Collyer wrought twelve years was bought for a price and removed to
+Chicago, where it is still preserved in the study of Unity Church,
+albeit Collyer long ago predicted to the writer, with a characteristic
+twinkle and a sweet hint of the dialect his tongue was born to, "they'll
+soon be sellin' _thet_ for old iron."
+
+[Sidenote: Wharfedale Antiquities]
+
+The health-giving waters of the hill-sides attract hundreds of invalids
+and idlers, and the Ilkley of to-day is a smart town of well-kept
+houses, hotels, and shops, amid which we find here and there a quaint
+low-roofed structure which is a relic of the village of Collyer's
+boyhood. Among the survivals is the chapel--now a local museum,
+inaugurated by Collyer--where our "blacksmith" was converted and where
+he labored at the spiritual anvil as a local preacher. He has told us
+that for his labors in the Wesleyan pulpit during several years in
+Yorkshire and America he received in all seven dollars and fifty cents;
+he expounded for love, but pounded for a living. Another survival is the
+ancient parish church, built upon the site of the Roman fortress Olicana
+and of stones from its ruined walls, which preserves in its masonry many
+antiquarian treasures of Roman sculpture and inscription. Standing
+without are three curious monolithic columns, graven with mythological
+figures of men, dragons, birds, etc., which give them an archaeological
+value beyond price. A doltish rector damaged them by using them as
+gate-posts; from this degradation the hands of Collyer helped to rescue
+them, and the same hands fashioned at the forge the neat iron gates
+which enclose the church-yard.
+
+[Sidenote: Scenery]
+
+By the village and through the dale which Gray thought so beautiful
+flows the Wharfe; winding amid verdant meads, rushing between lofty
+banks, or loitering in sunny shallows, it holds its shining course to
+the Ouse, beyond the fateful field of Towton, where the red rose of
+Lancaster went down in blood. Ilkley nestles cosily at the foot of green
+slopes which swell away from the stream and are dotted with copses and
+embowered villas. Farther away the dim lines rise to the heights of the
+Whernside, whence we look to the chimneys of Leeds and the towers of
+York's mighty minster. Detached from Rumbald's cliffs lie two masses,
+called "Cow and Calf Rocks," bearing the imprint of giant Rumbald's
+foot: these rocks are a resort of the young people, and here Collyer and
+his friends oft came with their books. From this point Wharfedale, domed
+by a summer sky, seems a paradise of loveliness; its every aspect, from
+the glinting stream to the highest moorland crags, is replete with the
+beauty Turner loved to paint and which here first inspired his genius.
+Ruskin discerns this Wharfedale scenery throughout the great artist's
+works, bits of its beauty being unconsciously wrought into other scenes.
+These landscapes were a daily vision to the eyes of Collyer in the days
+when Turner still came to the neighborhood. This region abounds with
+memorials of the mighty past, with treasures of Druidical, Runic, and
+Roman history and tradition, but the literary pilgrim finds it rife with
+associations for him still more interesting: here lived the ancestors of
+our Longfellow, and the family whence Thackeray sprang; the fathers of
+that gentle singer, Heber, dwelt in their castle here and sleep now
+under the pavement of the church; a little way across the moors the
+Brontes dwelt and died. Here, too, lived the Fairfaxes,--one of them a
+poet and translator of Tasso,--and among their tombs we find that of
+Fawkes of Farnley, Turner's early friend and patron, while at the
+near-by hall are the rooms the painter occupied during the years he was
+transferring to canvas the beauties he here beheld. Farnley holds the
+best private collection of Turner's works, comprising, besides many
+finished pictures, numerous drawings and color-sketches made here.
+
+[Sidenote: Bolton Abbey]
+
+A delightful excursion from Ilkley, one never omitted by Collyer from
+his summer saunterings in Wharfedale, is to the sacred shades of Bolton
+Abbey. The way is enlivened with the prattle and sheen of the limpid
+Wharfe. A mile past the hamlet of Addingham, where Collyer preached his
+first sermon, the stream curves about a slight eminence which is crowned
+by the ruins of the ancient shrine. Some portions of the walls are
+fallen and concealed by shrubbery; other portions withstand the ravages
+of the centuries, and we see the crumbling arches, ruined cloisters, and
+mullioned windows, mantled with masses of ivy and bloom and set in the
+scene of restful beauty which Turner painted and Rogers and Wordsworth
+poetized. Our pleasure in the ruin and its environment of wood, mead,
+and stream is enhanced by the companionship of one who had, on another
+summer's day, explored the charms of the spot with George Eliot, and who
+repeats to us her expressions of rapturous delight at each new vista.
+Wordsworth loved this spot, and the incident to which the Abbey owed its
+erection--the drowning of young Romilly, the noble "Boy of Egremond," in
+the gorge near by--is beautifully told by him in the familiar poems
+written here.
+
+[Sidenote: Nidderdale]
+
+[Sidenote: Aram's Schools]
+
+Another excursion, by Knaresborough and the deadly field of Marston
+Moor, brings us into lovely Nidderdale, where stalks the dusky ghost of
+the Eugene Aram of Bulwer's tale and Hood's poem amid the scenes of his
+early life and of the crime for which he died. In the upper portion of
+the valley the Nidd winds like a ribbon of silver between green braes
+and moorland hills which rise steeply to the narrow horizon. From either
+side brooklets flow through wooded glens to join the wimpling Nidd, and
+at the mouth of one of these we find Ramsgill, where Aram was born. It
+is a straggling hamlet of thatched cottages, set among bowering orchards
+and gardens and wearing an aspect of tranquil comfort. The site of the
+laborer's hut in which the gentle student was born is shown at the back
+of one of the newer cottages of the place. Farther up the picturesque
+stream is the pretty village of Lofthouse, an assemblage of gray stone
+houses nestled beneath clustering trees, to which Aram returned after a
+short residence at Skipton, in the dale of the Brontes. Here he wooed
+sweet Annie Spence and passed his early years of married life; here his
+first children were born and one of them died. At the church in near-by
+Middlesmoor he was married; here his first child was christened, and in
+the bleak church-yard it was buried. Near a sombre "gill" which opens
+into the valley some distance below was Gowthwaite Hall, where Aram
+taught his first pupils,--an ancient, rambling structure of stone, two
+stories in height, with many steep gables and wide latticed windows.
+Venerable trees shaded the walls, leafy vines climbed to and overran the
+roofs, and a quaint garden of prim squares and formally trimmed foliage
+lay at one side. We found these externals little changed since Aram was
+tutor here. The partition of the mansion into three tenements had
+altered the arrangement of the interior, but the wide stairway still led
+from the entrance to the upper room at the east end, where Aram taught:
+it was a large, lofty apartment, reputed to be haunted, changed since
+his time only by the closing of one casement. Richard Craven was then
+tenant of the Hall, and his son, the erudite doctor, doubtless received
+his first tuition in this room and from Aram.
+
+[Sidenote: Place of Murder]
+
+Some miles down the valley is Knaresborough, to which Aram removed from
+Lofthouse to establish a school, and where eleven years later the murder
+was committed. Soon after, Aram removed from the neighborhood, and
+during his residence at Lynn, where he was arrested for the crime, he
+was some time tutor in the house of Bulwer's grandfather, a circumstance
+which led to the production of the fascinating tale. A little way out of
+Knaresborough, in a recess at the base of the limestone cliffs which
+here border the murmuring Nidd, is the place where Clarke was killed
+and buried. This impressive spot was long the hermitage of "Saint
+Robert," who formed the cave out of the crag. In clearing the rubbish
+from the place after the publication of Bulwer's tale, the remains of a
+little shrine were found, and a coffin hewn from the rock, which proved
+that the hermitage had before been a place of burial, as urged by Aram
+in his defence. Upon a hill of the forest not far away the body of Aram
+hung in irons, and local tradition avers that his widow watched to
+recover the bones as they fell, and when she had at last interred them
+all, emigrated with her children to America.
+
+[Sidenote: Belief in Aram's Innocence]
+
+It is noteworthy that belief in his innocence was universal among those
+who knew him in this countryside. Incidents illustrating his
+self-denial, patient forbearance, disregard for money, and care to
+preserve even the lowest forms of life are still cherished and recounted
+here as showing that robbery and murder were for him impossible crimes.
+We were reminded, too, that at the time of Clarke's disappearance Aram
+was husband of a woman of his own station, father of a family, and
+master of a moderately prosperous school,--conditions of which Bulwer
+could scarcely have been unaware, and which are inconsistent with the
+only motives suggested as inciting Aram to crime. In the opinion of the
+descendants of Aram's old neighbors in his native Nidderdale, Houseman
+was alone guilty; and if Aram had, instead of undertaking to conduct his
+own defence, intrusted it to proper counsel, the trial would have
+resulted in his acquittal.
+
+
+
+
+HOME OF SYDNEY SMITH
+
+_Heslington-Foston, Twelve Miles from a Lemon-Church--Rector's Head--
+  Study--Room-of-all-work--Grounds--Guests--Universal Scratcher--
+  Immortal Chariot--Reminiscences._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Heslington]
+
+The metropolis of England holds many places which knew "the greatest of
+the many Smiths:" dwellings he some time inhabited, mansions in which he
+was the honored guest, pulpits and rostrums from which he discoursed,
+the room in which he died, the tomb where loving hands laid him beside
+his son. But it is in a remote valley of Yorkshire, where half his adult
+years were passed in a lonely retreat among the humble poor, that we
+find the scenes most intimately associated with the fruitful period of
+his life. In the lovely dale of York, not far from one of the ancient
+gates and within sound of the bells of the great minster, is the village
+of Heslington, Smith's first place of abode in Yorkshire. His dwelling
+here--lately the rectory of a parish which has been created since his
+time, and one of the best houses of the village--is a spacious and
+substantial old-fashioned mansion of brick, two stories in height and
+delightfully cosy in appearance. Large bow-windows, built by Smith,
+project from the front and rise to the eaves. The rooms are of
+comfortable dimensions, and that in which Smith wrote is "glorified" by
+the sunlight from one of his great windows, near which his writing-table
+was placed. The house stands a rod or two from the highway, amid a mass
+of foliage; an iron railing borders the yard, trees grow upon either
+side, and at the back is an ample garden which was Smith's especial
+delight, and which he paced for hours as he pondered his compositions.
+It was here that the dignified Jeffrey of the _Edinburgh Review_ rode
+the children's pet donkey over the grass. Smith's famous "Peter Plimley"
+letters were produced at Heslington. He never felt at home here, because
+he constantly contemplated removing. His own parish had no rectory, and
+he was permitted by his bishop to reside here while he sought to
+exchange the living for another: failing in this, he was allowed a
+further term in which to erect a dwelling in his parish, consequently
+Heslington was his home for some years. During this time he made weekly
+excursions to his church, twelve miles distant, behind a steed which he
+commemorates as Peter the Cruel, and in the year he built his parsonage
+the excursions were so frequent that he computed he had ridden Peter
+"several times round the world, going and coming from Heslington."
+
+[Sidenote: Foston-le-Clay]
+
+[Sidenote: Smith's Parsonage]
+
+[Sidenote: Fields and Farmsteading]
+
+In the remoter hamlet of Foston, "twelve miles from a lemon," we find
+the church where he ministered for twenty years and the house which was
+his home longer than any other. Our way thither--the same once so
+familiar to Smith and his cruel steed--lies along the green valley
+through which the wimpling Foss ripples and sings on its way to the
+Ouse. In sun and shadow our road leads through a pleasant country until
+we see the roofs of Smith's parsonage rising among the tree-tops. The
+Rector's Head, as the wit delighted to call his home, stands among the
+glebe-lands at a little distance from the highway, and a
+carriage-drive--constructed by Smith after some of his guests had been
+almost inextricably mired in their attempts to reach his door--conducts
+from a road-side gate near the school through the tasteful and well-kept
+grounds. Before we reach the rectory a second barrier is encountered,
+Smith's "Screeching Gate," which, like the gate at "Amen Corner,"
+remains just as it was when he bestowed its name. The mansion, of which
+he was both architect and builder, described by him and his friend Loch
+as "the ugliest house ever seen," presents a singularly attractive
+aspect of cosiness and comfort. The edifice is somewhat improved since
+the great essayist dwelt beneath its roof, but the original structure
+remains,--an oblong brick fabric, of ample proportions and
+unpretentious architecture, two stories in height, with hip-roofs of
+warm-tinted tiles. A large bay-window struts from one side wall; a
+beautiful conservatory abuts upon another side; a little porch,
+overgrown with creepers and flowers, protects the entrance. The once
+plain brickwork, which rose bare of ornamentation, is mantled with ivy
+and flowering vines which clamber to the roofs and riot along the walls,
+imparting to the "unparsonic parsonage" a picturesque charm which no
+architectural decoration could produce. The bare field in which Smith
+erected his house has been transformed into an Eden of beauty and bloom;
+on every side are velvety lawns, curving walks, beds of flowers, patches
+of shrubbery, and groups of woodland trees, forming a pretty park,
+mostly planned by Smith and planted by his hand. Within, we find the
+apartments spacious and cheerful: the windows are the same that were
+screened by the many-hued patchwork shades designed by Smith and wrought
+by the deft fingers of his daughters, the chimney-pieces of Portland
+stone which he erected remain, but tasteful and elegant furniture now
+replaces the rude handiwork of the village carpenter, which was disposed
+through these rooms during Smith's incumbency. He blithely tells a
+guest, "I needed furniture; I bought a cart-load of boards and got the
+carpenter, Jack Robinson; told him, 'Jack, furnish my house,' and you
+see the result." Some of the resulting furniture is still preserved in
+the neighborhood and valued above price. From the bay-window of the
+parlor the gray towers of York's colossal cathedral are seen ten miles
+away; the room adjoining at the left is the memorable apartment which
+was Smith's study, school-room, court, surgery, and what-not. Here his
+gayly-bound books were arranged by his daughter, the future Lady
+Holland, and here, when not applied to him, his famous "rheumatic armor"
+stood in a bag in yonder corner. Here he wrote his sermons, his
+brilliant and witty essays, the wise and effective disquisitions on the
+disabilities of the Catholics, the coruscating and incisive articles for
+the Review which electrified the English world. In this room he taught
+his children and gave Bible lessons to the youth of the parish, some of
+whom survive to praise and bless him; here, too, he prescribed for the
+sick and dispensed mercy rather than justice to culprits haled before
+him; for, as his letters declare, he was at once "village magistrate,
+village parson, village doctor, village comforter, and Edinburgh
+Reviewer." To these manifold avocations he added, despite his "not
+knowing a turnip from a carrot," that of the farmer, and managed the
+three hundred acres of glebe-lands which were so unproductive that no
+one else would cultivate them. A door-way of the rectory overlooks most
+of the plantation, and he suspended here a telescope and a tremendous
+speaking-trumpet by means of which he could observe and direct much of
+his operations without himself going afield. Behind the house, and
+screened by trees which Smith planted, are the farmstead buildings he
+planned; here are the stables and pens where he was welcomed by every
+individual of his stock, whom he daily visited to feed and pet; here is
+the enclosure where he found his fuddled pigs "grunting God save the
+King about the sty" after he had administered a medicament of fermented
+grains. In the adjoining field is the site of his "Universal
+Scratcher,"--a sharp-edged pole having a tall support at one extremity
+and a low one at the other, which so adapted it to the height of every
+animal that "they could scratch themselves with the greatest facility
+and luxury; even the 'Reviewer' [himself] could take his turn."
+
+[Sidenote: Guests--Reminiscences]
+
+Of Smith's life in this retirement his many letters and the memoirs of
+his daughter give us pleasant pictures. Although he said his whole life
+had "been passed like a razor, in hot water or a scrape," the years
+spent here seem to have been happy ones. Even his removal to this house
+while it was yet so damp that the walls ran down with wet and the
+grounds were so miry that his wife lost her shoes at the door, was made
+enjoyable. He writes to one friend, "I am too busy to be lonely;" to
+another, "I thank God who made me poor that he also made me merry, a
+better gift than much land with a doleful heart;" to another, "I am
+content and doubling in size every year;" to Lady Grey, "Come and see
+how happy people can be in a small parsonage;" to Jeffrey, "My situation
+is one of great solitude, but I possess myself in cheerfulness." He had
+expended upon his improvements here more than the living was worth,
+therefore economy ruled the selection of the _personnel_ of this
+establishment. Faithful Annie Kay was first employed as child's-maid;
+later she was housekeeper and trusted friend, removed from here with her
+loved master, attended him in his last illness, and lies near him in the
+long sleep. A garden girl, made like a mile-stone, was hired by Smith,
+who "christened her Bunch, gave her a napkin, and made her his butler."
+Jack Robinson was retained as general factotum of the place, and Molly
+Mills, "a yeowoman, with short petticoat, legs like mill-posts, and
+cheeks shrivelled like winter apples," did duty as "cow-, pig-,
+poultry-, garden-, and post-woman." Guests testify that good-natured
+training had, out of this unpromising material, produced such efficient
+servants that the household ran smoothly in the stress of much company.
+For, despite the seclusion of Smith's retreat, his fame and the charm
+and wit of his conversation drew many visitors to his house. Lords
+Carlisle and Morpeth were almost weekly guests; Sir Humphry Davy and his
+gifted wife were many times guests for days together; among those who
+came less frequently were Jeffrey, Macaulay, Marcet, Dugald Stewart,
+John Murray, Mackintosh, and Lord and Lady Holland, with many of less
+fame; and we may imagine something of the scintillant converse these
+rooms knew when the master wit entertained such company. Neither his
+friends nor his literary pursuits were allowed to interfere with his
+attentions to the simple rustics of his parish; in sickness and trouble
+he was tireless in their service, furnishing medicines, food, and
+clothing out of his slender means. During the prevalence of an
+infectious fever he was constantly among them, as physician, nurse, and
+priest. The oldest parishioners speak of him by his Christian name, and
+testify that he was universally beloved. One lately remembered that
+Sydney had cared for his father during a long illness and maintained the
+family until he could return to his work. Another had been accustomed,
+as a child, to run after Sydney on the highway and cling to him until he
+bestowed the sugar-plums he always carried in his pockets. In one
+portion of the glebe we found small enclosures of land stocked with
+abundant fruit-trees and called Sydney's Orchards, which were planted by
+him and given to the parishioners at a nominal rental.
+
+[Sidenote: The Chariot]
+
+Smith's solitary excursions through the parish were made astride a gaunt
+charger, called by him Calamity, noted for length of limb and strength
+of appetite, as well as for a propensity to part company with his rider,
+sometimes throwing the great Smith "over his head into the next parish."
+But when the rector's family were to accompany him, the ancient green
+chariot was employed. This was believed to have been the first vehicle
+of the kind, was purchased by Smith at second (or twenty-second) hand,
+and was from time to time partially restored by the unskilled village
+mechanics. Anent this structure the delightful Smith writes, "Each year
+added to its charms: it grew younger and younger: a new wheel, a new
+spring; I christened it the Immortal: it was known everywhere: the
+village boys cheered it, the village dogs barked at it." To the ends of
+the shafts Smith attached a rod so that it projected in front of the
+horse and sustained a measure of grain just beyond his reach,--a device
+which evoked a maximum of speed from the beast with the minimum of
+exertion on the part of the driver, the deluded horse being "stimulated
+to unwonted efforts by hope of overtaking the provender." We have talked
+with some in the vicinage who remembered seeing Smith and his family
+riding in this perennial chariot, drawn by a plough-horse which was
+harnessed with plough-lines and driven by a plough-boy.
+
+[Sidenote: Smith's Church]
+
+A mile from the rectory, past the few straggling cottages of the hamlet,
+we come to the quaint little church of Foston, one of the oldest in
+England. It was already in existence in 1081 when Doomsday Book was
+compiled, being then the property of Earl Allen: later it was conveyed
+to St. Mary's Abbey, whose ruins--marvellously beautiful even in
+decay--we find at the gates of York. It is noteworthy that this church
+of Foston early contained an image of the Virgin of such repute that
+people flocked to it in great numbers, and in 1313 the archbishop issued
+an edict that they should not desert their own churches to come here.
+Smith's church is prettily placed upon a gentle eminence from which we
+look across a wave-like expanse of smiling fields to steeper slopes
+beyond, a picture of pastoral peace and calm. Beneath the many
+mouldering heaps of the church-yard sleep the rustic poor for whom Smith
+labored, many of them having been committed to their narrow cells, "in
+the certain hope of the life to come," by his kindly hands. Among the
+graves stands the old church, the plainest and smallest of its kind. The
+present venerable and reverend incumbent, to whom we are indebted for
+many courtesies, has at his own expense restored the chancel as a
+memorial of his wife, but the principal portion of the edifice remains
+the same "miserable hovel" that Macaulay described in Smith's day. A
+heavy porch shelters the entrance, and above this is a sculptured Norman
+arch of great antiquity, a Scripture subject being graven upon each
+stone, that upon the key-block representing the Last Supper. The bare
+walls are surmounted by a dilapidated belfry, and the barn-like edifice
+is desolate and neglected. We find the interior dismal and depressive,
+and quite unchanged since Smith's time, save that the stove-pipe now
+enters a flue instead of emerging through a window. The quaint old
+pulpit, perched high in the corner opposite the gallery and beneath a
+huge sounding-board, is the same in which he so often stood; its frayed
+and faded cushions are said to be those that he belabored in his
+discourses, and out of which, on one occasion, he raised such a cloud of
+dust "that for some minutes he lost sight of the congregation." The
+pewter communion plate he used is preserved in a recess of the wall.
+Across the end and along one side of the church extends a gallery, in
+which sat the children under Smith's sharp eye, and kept in order, as
+some remember, by "a threaten-shake of his head." Along the front of
+this gallery ugly wooden pegs are aligned, on which the occupants of the
+pews hang their wraps, and so diminutive is the place that there are but
+four pews between door and pulpit. The present rector, whose father
+owned most of the parish and was Smith's firm friend, attended as a boy
+Smith's ministrations here, and remembers something of the direct
+eloquence of his sermons and their impressive effect upon the auditors.
+Attracted by his fame, some came from far to hear him preach who
+afterward became his ardent friends, among these being Macaulay and the
+Mrs. Apreece whom de Stael depicted as "Corinne" and who subsequently,
+as wife of Humphry Davy, was guest at The Rector's Head. In this shabby
+little church Smith gave away his daughter Emily, the Archbishop of York
+reading the marriage service; and not long after Smith removed to
+Somerset, and Foston saw him no more.
+
+The church contains no memorial of any sort in memory of Smith. The
+decayed condition of this temple has long been a reproach to the
+resident gentry. Since those whose property interests are most concerned
+in the restoration of the church have declined to enter upon it, the
+good rector contemplates undertaking it at his own charge. Not long ago
+he was engaged upon the plans, and it may be that, by the time these
+pages reach the reader, Foston church as Smith knew it will have ceased
+to exist. The writer has a lively hope that some of the New World
+pilgrims who have marked other Old World shrines which else had been
+neglected, will set in these renovated walls an enduring memorial--of
+pictured glass or sculptured stone or graven metal--in remembrance of
+the illustrious author-divine who, during his best years, ministered in
+this lowly place to a congregation of rude and unlettered poor.
+
+
+
+
+NITHSDALE RAMBLES
+
+_Scott--Hogg--Wordsworth--Carlyle's Birthplace--Homes--Grave--Burns's
+  Haunts--Tomb--Jeanie Deans--Old Mortality, etc.--Annie Laurie's
+  Birthplace--Habitation--Poet-Lover--Descendants._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Carlyle's Birthplace--Grave]
+
+From the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" and the many shrines of picturesque
+Edinburgh, once the literary capital of Britain, our saunterings bring
+us to other haunts of the "Wizard of the North:" to his oft described
+Abbotsford,--that baronial "romance in stone and lime,"--with its
+libraries and armories, its precious relics and more precious memories
+of its illustrious builder and occupant, who here literally "wrote
+himself to death;" to the dream-like, ivy-grown ruins of holy Melrose,
+whose beauties he sang and within whose crumbling walls he lingered and
+mused; to his tomb fittingly placed amid the ruined arches and
+mouldering pillars of Dryburgh Abbey, embowered by venerable trees and
+mantled by clinging vines. Strolling thence among the "Braes of Yarrow,"
+the Yarrow of Wordsworth and Hamilton, through the haunts of Hogg the
+Ettrick Shepherd, and passing the Hartfell, we come into the dale of
+Annan, and follow that winsome water past Moffat, where lived Burns's
+daughter, to historic Applegarth, and thence by Lockerby approach
+Ecclefechan, the hamlet of Carlyle's birth and sepulture. Among the
+lowly stone cottages on the straggling street of the rude village is a
+double dwelling with an arched passage-way through the middle of its
+lower story; this humble structure was erected by the stone-mason James
+Carlyle, and the northern end of it was his home when his illustrious
+son was born. Opening from the street is a narrow door; beside it is a
+diminutive window, with a similar one above and another over the arch.
+The exterior is now smartened somewhat,--the shillings of pilgrims would
+pay for that,--but the abode is pathetically small, bare, and poor. The
+one lower room is so contracted that the Carlyles could not all sit at
+the table, and Thomas used to eat his porridge outside the door. Some
+Carlyle relics from Cheyne Row--letters, portraits, pieces of china,
+study-lamp, tea-caddy, and other articles--are preserved in the room
+above, and adjoining it is the narrow chamber above the archway where
+the great historian, essayist, and cynic was born. In this comfortless
+home, and amid the dreary surroundings of this hard and rough village,
+which is little improved since the days of border war and pillage, he
+was reared. The stern savagery of the physical horizon of his boyhood
+here, and the hateful and uncongenial character of his environment at
+the most impressionable period of his life, may account to us for much
+of the morose cynicism of his later years. Further excuse for his
+petulance and his acerbities of tongue and temper is found in his
+dyspepsia, and a very limited experience of Ecclefechan cookery suffices
+to convince us that his indigestion was another unhappy sequence of his
+early life in this border hamlet. In "Sartor Resartus" he has
+vivaciously recorded some of the incidents and impressions of his
+childhood here,--notably the passage of the Carlisle coach, like "some
+terrestrial moon, coming from he knew not where, going he knew not
+whither." A shabby cross-street leads to the village graveyard, which
+was old a thousand years ago, and there, within a few rods of the spot
+of his birth, the great Carlyle is forever laid, with his parents and
+kindred. The yard is a forlorn enclosure, huddled with hundreds of
+unmarked graves, and with other hundreds of crumbling memorials drooping
+aslant among the brambles which infest the place. The tombstone of
+Carlyle, within an iron railing, is a little more pretentious than those
+about it, but his grave seems neglected; daisies and coarse grass grow
+about it, and the only tokens of reverent memory it bears are placed by
+Americans, who constitute the majority of the pilgrims to this place.
+Not far from the kirk-yard is a lowly cottage, hardly better than a
+hut, in which dwelt Burns's "Lass of Ecclefechan."
+
+[Sidenote: Dumfries--Burns's Dwelling]
+
+By a transverse road from Lockerby we come to the ruined Lochmaben
+Castle of Bruce, and thence into Nithsdale and to Dumfries, the ancient
+capital of southwestern Scotland. Here lived Edward Irving, and here
+Allan Cunningham toiled as a common mason; but the gray town is
+interesting to us chiefly because of its associations with Burns. Here
+are the tavern, familiar to us as the "howff," which he frequented, and
+where he made love to the bar-maid, "Anna of the Gowden Locks;" the
+parlor where his wit kept the table in a roar; the heavy chair in the
+"ingle neuk" where he habitually sat, and, in the room above, the lines
+to "Lovely Polly Stewart" graven by his hand upon the pane. From the inn
+a malodorous lane, named Burns Street, and oft threaded by the bard when
+he "wasna fou but just had plenty," leads to the poor dwelling where
+lived and died the poet of his country and of mankind. An environment
+more repulsive and depressing, a spot more unworthy to be the home of a
+poet of nature, can scarcely be imagined. Here not a flower nor a green
+bough, not even a grass-blade, met his vision, not one beautiful object
+appeased his poetic taste; he saw only the squalid street infested by
+unwashed bairns and bordered by rows of mean cottages. How shall we
+extol the genius which in such an uncongenial atmosphere produced those
+exquisite poems which for a century have been read and loved in every
+clime? His own dwelling, a bare two-storied cottage, is hardly more
+decent than its neighbors. Within, we find a kitchen and sitting-room,
+small and low-ceiled; above, a windowed closet,--sometimes used by the
+poet as a study,--and the poor little chamber where he died, only
+thirty-seven years after he first saw the light in the clay biggin by
+his bonnie Doon.
+
+[Sidenote: Tomb]
+
+The interior of St. Michael's Church has been refitted, and the
+sacristan can show us now only the site of Burns's seat, behind a great
+pillar which hid him from the preacher, and that of the Jenny on whose
+bonnet he saw the "crowlin'" pediculus. Through the crowded church-yard
+a path beaten by countless pilgrims from every quarter of the globe
+conducts to the place where he lies with "Bonnie Jean" and some of their
+children. The costly mausoleum which now covers his tomb--erected by
+those who had neglected or shunned him in his life--is to us less
+impressive than the poor little gravestone which the faithful Jean first
+placed above him, which now forms part of the pavement. The ambitious
+statue, designed to represent Genius throwing her mantle over Burns at
+the plough, suggests, as some one has said, that a bath-woman bringing a
+wet sheet to an unwilling patient had served as a model. Oddly enough,
+the grave of John Bushby, an attorney oft lampooned in Burns's verse,
+lies but a few feet from that of the poet.
+
+[Sidenote: Jeanie Deans--Carlyle's Craigenputtock]
+
+Our ramble along the wimpling Nith lies for the most part in a second
+Burnsland, so closely is it associated with his personality and poetry.
+The beauties of the stream itself are celebrated in half a score of his
+songs. Every seat and scene are sung in his verse; every neighborhood
+and almost every house preserve some priceless relic or some touching
+reminiscence of the ploughman-bard. A short way above Dumfries we come
+to the picturesque ruin of Lincluden Abbey, at the meeting of the waters
+of Cluden and Nith. The crumbling walls are enshrouded in ivy and
+surrounded by giant trees, among which Burns loved to loiter. His
+"Evening View" and "Vision" commemorate this ruin, and the poem
+"Lincluden" was written here. In a tasteful cottage not far from the
+Abbey sojourned the Mrs. Goldie who communicated to Scott the incidents
+which he wrought into his "Heart of Mid-Lothian," and it was in the
+little kitchen of this cottage that the lady talked with Helen Walker,
+the original Jeanie Deans. In a poor little low-eaved dwelling, a mile
+or two up the valley, that heroine lived, keeping a dame's school and
+rearing chickens; and our course along the tuneful stream brings us to
+the ancient and sequestered kirk-yard of Irongray, where, among the
+grass-grown graves of the Covenanters, her ashes repose beneath a
+tombstone erected by Scott himself and marked by an inscription from his
+hand: "Respect the Grave of Poverty when associated with love of Truth
+and dear Affection." Farther in this lovely region we come to ancient
+Dunscore and the monument of Scott's "Old Mortality;" and beyond
+Moniaive we find, near the source of the Cairn, Craigenputtock--the
+abode where "Thomas the Thunderer prepared his bolts" before he removed
+to London. This dreary place, "the loneliest in Britain," had been the
+abode of many generations of Mrs. Carlyle's ancestors,--among whom were
+"several black-guards but not one blockhead,"--and Carlyle rebuilt and
+furnished the house here to which he brought the bride he had wedded
+after his repulsion by his fair Rose-goddess, the Blumine of his
+"Romance." It is a severely plain and substantial two-storied structure
+of stone with steep gables. The entrance is under a little porch in the
+middle of the front; on either side is a single window, with another
+above it in the second story. There are comfortable and commodious rooms
+at each side of the entrance, and a large kitchen is joined at the back.
+Carlyle's study, a rather sombre apartment, with a dispiriting outlook,
+is at the left; a fireplace which the sage especially loved is in one
+wall, his writing-table stood near it, and here he sat and clothed in
+virile diction the brilliant thoughts which had come to him as he paced
+among his trees or loitered on the near hill-tops. The dining-room and
+parlor are on the other side, looking out upon wild and gloomy crags.
+Mrs. Carlyle's pen long ago introduced us to this interior, and,
+although all her furniture, except perhaps the kitchen "dresser," has
+been removed, we recognize the household nooks she has mentioned. The
+kitchen, which was the scene of her tearful housekeeping trials, seems
+most familiar; its chimney retains its abominable habits, but a recent
+incumbent, instead of crying as did Mrs. Carlyle, declared the "chimla
+made her feel like sweerin'." Great ash-trees, which were old when the
+sage dwelt beneath them, overtop the house; many beautiful flowers--some
+survivors of those planted by Carlyle and his wife--bloom in the yard.
+In front a wide field slopes away to a tributary of the Cairn, but
+sombre moorland hills rise at the back and cluster close about the
+house on either side, imparting to the place an indescribably depressing
+aspect: as we contemplate the desolate savagery of this wilderness, we
+can understand why one of Carlyle's predecessors here killed himself and
+others "took to drink."
+
+The bare summit behind the house overlooks Carlyle's estate of a
+thousand acres and, beyond it, an expanse of bleak hills and black
+morasses. From the craggy brow on the left, the spot where Carlyle and
+Emerson sat and talked of the immortality of the soul, we see Dunscore
+and a superb vista of the valley towards Dumfries and the Wordsworth
+country. The isolation of this place--so complete that at one time not
+even a beggar came here for three months--was an advantage to Carlyle at
+this period. He speaks of it as a place of plain living and high
+thinking: life here appeared to him "an humble russet-coated epic," and
+long afterward he referred to the years of their stay in this waste as
+being "perhaps the happiest of their lives." This expresses his own
+feeling rather than that of his wife, whose discontent finds expression
+in many ways, notably in her poem "To a Swallow." Carlyle produced here
+some of his best work, including the matchless "Sartor Resartus," the
+essay on Burns, and several scintillant articles for the various reviews
+which denoted the rise of a new star of genius; but the period of his
+stay here was essentially one of study and thought, and, plenteous as it
+was in production, it was more prolific in preparation for the great
+work he had to do. To Carlyle in this solitude Jeffrey was a visitor, as
+well as "Christopher North," Hazlitt, and Edward Irving: hither, "like
+an angel from heaven," came Emerson to greet the new genius on the
+threshold of its career and to enjoy the "quiet night of clear, fine
+talk." Carlyle bequeathed this estate to the University of Edinburgh.
+
+[Sidenote: Friars Carse--Burns's Ellisland]
+
+Another day, our ramble follows the winding Nith northward from
+Lincluden. As we proceed, the lovely and opulent dale, once the scene of
+clannish strife, presents an appearance of peaceful beauty, pervaded
+everywhere with the sentiment of Burns. In one enchanting spot the
+stream circles about the grounds of ancient Friars Carse, now a tasteful
+and pretty seat. It was erstwhile the residence of Burns's friend
+Riddel, to which the poet was warmly welcomed: here he composed the poem
+"Thou whom Chance may hither lead," and here he presided at the famous
+drinking-match which he told to future ages in "The Whistle." It is
+noteworthy that the first Scotch winner of the Whistle was father of
+Annie Laurie of the popular song, and that the contest here was between
+two of her grandnephews and her grandson,--the latter being victorious.
+Burns celebrated his friend of this old hermitage in seven of his poems;
+and the present proprietor carefully cherishes the window upon whose
+pane the bard inscribed "Lines written in Friars Carse." A little way
+beyond lies Druidical Holywood, where once dwelt the author of "De
+Sphaera," and next we find the Nith curving among the acres which Burns
+tilled in his happiest years, at Ellisland. Embowered in roses and
+perched upon an eminence overhanging the stream is the plain little
+dwelling which he erected with his own hands for the reception of his
+bonnie Jean. It is little changed since the time he lived under its
+lowly roof. We think the rooms dingy and bare, but they are better than
+those of his abode at Alloway and Mossgiel, much better than those in
+which he died at Dumfries. In the largest of the apartments, by a window
+which looks down the dreamful valley, Burns had a rude table, and here
+he penned some of the most touchingly beautiful poetry of our
+language,--poems which he had pondered as he worked or walked afield.
+Adjoining the house is the yard where he produced the exquisite lines
+"To Mary in Heaven;" in this near-by field he met "The Wounded Hare" of
+his verse; in yonder path along the murmuring Nith he composed the
+immortal "Tam O'Shanter," laughing aloud the while at the pictures his
+fancy conjured; and all about us are reminders of the bard and of the
+idyllic life which here inspired his muse: it would repay a longer
+journey to see the spot where the one song "John Anderson, my Jo" was
+pondered and written.
+
+[Sidenote: Annie Laurie--Early Home]
+
+[Sidenote: Annie Laurie and her Lover]
+
+A further jaunt amid varied beauties of woodland shade and meadow
+sunshine, of gentle dale and savage scaur, brings us past historic
+Closeburn to the neighborhood of Thornhill. Here at the Buccleuch Arms
+the illegitimate daughter of Burns was for thirty years a servant, and
+boasted of having had a chat with Scott among the burnished utensils of
+her kitchen. Two miles eastward Scott found the Balfour's Cave and Leap
+described in "Old Mortality." Middle Nithsdale expands into a broad
+valley, commanded by lofty Queensberry and lower green hills and
+diversified with upland brae, shadowy copse, sunny mead, and opulent
+plantation. This lovely region, dotted with pretty hamlets, embowered
+villas, and moss-grown ruins, and teeming with the charming associations
+of history and sentiment, holds for us a crowning interest which has
+drawn our steps into its romantic haunts: it was the birthplace and
+life-long home of Annie Laurie. On the right of the Nith, among the
+bonnie braes of the song, we find the ancient manor-house of Maxwelton,
+where the heroine was born. The first of her race to reside here was her
+great-grandfather, who in 1611 built additions to the old tower already
+existing. The marriage-stone of Annie Laurie's grandparents, John Laurie
+and Agnes Grierson, is set in the massive walls and graven with their
+initials, crest, and date. This Agnes was daughter of the bloody
+persecutor who figures in "Redgauntlet," and whose ashes lie in Dunscore
+kirk-yard, not far distant. Another stone in the Maxwelton house
+commemorates the marriage of Robert Laurie and Jean Riddel, the parents
+of the heroine of the song,--this Robert being the champion of Bacchus
+who won the Whistle from the noble Danish toper. In this ancient abode,
+according to a record made by her father, "At the pleasure of the
+Almighty God, my daughter Anna Laurie was born upon the 16th day of
+Decr., 1682 years, about six o'clock in the morning;" here the bonnie
+maiden grew to womanhood; here occurred the episode to which the world
+is indebted for the sweet song; from here she married and went to her
+future home, but a few miles away. In the last century much of the
+venerable edifice was destroyed, but the older portion, which had been
+part of a stronghold in the time of the border wars, remains intact
+since Annie dwelt within. This part is still called The Tower, and
+consists of a large rectangular structure, with a ponderous
+semi-circular fabric abutting it at one end, its fortress-like walls
+being five feet in thickness and clothed by a luxuriant growth of ivy.
+Newer portions have been added in varying styles, and the mansion is now
+an elegant and substantial seat. All about it lie terraced lawns, with
+parterres of flowers, noble trees, and banks of shrubbery: lovely
+grounds slope away from the house and command an enchanting view which
+must often have delighted the vision of the fair Annie. Her boudoir is
+in the second story of The Tower; it is a corner room, forming now an
+alcove of the drawing-room; it has a vaulted ceiling of stone, and its
+windows, pierced in the ponderous walls, look out through the ivy and
+across an expanse of sward, flower, and foliage to the wooded braes
+where she kept tryst with her lover. Among the treasures of the old
+house is a portrait of the bonnie heroine which shows her as an
+impressively beautiful woman, of lissome figure, large and tender eyes,
+long oval face with Grecian features, wide forehead framed by a
+profusion of dark-brown hair. Her hands, like her "fairy feet," were of
+exceptional smallness and beauty. The present owner of Maxwelton, to
+whom the writer is indebted for many courtesies, is Sir Emilius Laurie;
+from him and from the lineal descendants of the widely-sung Annie who
+still inhabit Nithsdale are derived the materials for this account of
+that winsome lady. The lover who immortalized her was William Douglas of
+Fingland, and she requited him by breaking "her promise true" and
+marrying another man. Douglas is said to have been the hero of the song
+"Willie was a Wanton Wag;" he was one of the best swordsmen of his time,
+and his personal qualities gained him the patronage of the Queensberry
+family and secured him social advantages to which his lower rank and
+poverty constituted no claim. He and Annie met at an Edinburgh ball, and
+seem to have promptly become enamoured of each other. To separate them,
+Sir Robert quickly carried his family back to Nithsdale, but Douglas as
+quickly followed, and lurked in the vicinage for some months,
+clandestinely meeting his love among "Maxwelton's bonnie braes." Here the
+pair plighted troth, and when Douglas returned to Edinburgh, to assist
+in a projected Stuart uprising, he took with him the promise which he
+celebrated in the tender melody. The song was published in an Edinburgh
+paper and attracted much notice. Douglas's devotion to the Jacobites
+cost him his sweetheart; his political intrigues being suspected, he was
+forced to fly the country, and when, after some years passed in France,
+he secured pardon and returned, she was the wife of another. After
+giving "her promise true" to some other lovers, she married in 1709
+Alexander Fergusson, a neighboring laird, who could not write poetry but
+had "muckle siller an' lan'" and a genealogy as long as Leviticus.
+Douglas and Annie never met again, and she makes but a single reference
+to him in her letters: being told of his return, she wrote to her
+sister, Mrs. Riddel, grandmother of Burns's friend, "I trust he has
+forsaken his treasonable opinions and is content."
+
+[Sidenote: Her Later Home]
+
+A stroll of but a few miles along a delightful way, fanned by the sweet
+summer winds, brings us to Craigdarrock, Annie Laurie's home for more
+than half a century. It is a spacious and handsome edifice of three
+stories, with dormer-windows in the hip-roof; a conservatory is
+connected at one end, bow-windows project from either side, and
+clambering vines cover the walls of the lower stories.
+
+  [Illustration: HOME OF ANNIE LAURIE]
+
+It is beautifully placed in a vale overlooking the winding stream, with
+the rugged Craigdarrock looming steeply in the background. Most of the
+mansion was built under the direction of Annie Laurie, and the gardens
+were laid out by her in their formal style: a delightful walk beneath
+the trees on the margin of the water was her favorite resort, and is
+still known by her name. Within the spacious rooms are preserved many
+of her belongings: curious furniture and hangings, quaint fineries of
+dress, her porcelain snuff-box, her will, a package of her letters
+written in the prim fashion of her time and signed "Anna." Through these
+epistles we look in vain for indications of the wit and genius which one
+naturally attributes to the possessor of the bright face which inspired
+a deathless song. In this house she lived happily with her husband, and
+was at once the Lady Bountiful and the matchmaker-in-ordinary for the
+whole countryside; here she died, aged seventy-nine. This estate has
+been handed down from father to son for fifteen generations, the present
+urbane laird, Captain Cutlar Fergusson, being a great-great-grandson of
+Annie Laurie and grandson of the hero of Burns's "Whistle." This famous
+trophy--a plain object in dark wood--is preserved here at Craigdarrock,
+and has not been challenged for since the bout which Burns witnessed.
+
+[Sidenote: Burial-place]
+
+In the now ruined church of Glencairn, hardly a mile from her
+birthplace, and not far from her later home, Annie Laurie worshipped,
+and in its yard, which has been a place of burial for a thousand years,
+she was laid with her husband, among the many generations of his
+kindred, by the gable-end of the ancient church. Her sepulchre was not
+marked, and it is to be feared the bones of the erst beauteous lady have
+been more than once disturbed in excavating for later interments in the
+crowded plot. From the summit of Craigdarrock we look upon the wilder
+beauty of the upper Nith, a region of moorland hills and dusky glens,
+where we may find the birthplace of "the Admirable Crichton," and beyond
+it the bleak domain where the poet Allan Ramsay first saw the light.
+Beyond this, again, the sweet Afton "flows amang its green braes," and
+we come to the Ayrshire shrines of Burns.
+
+A few miles westward from Craigdarrock, and not so far from Carlyle's
+lonely den, is Fingland farm, the birthplace and home of Annie's
+poet-lover. It lies among sterile hills in the wild Glenkens of ancient
+Galloway, near the source of Ken water. From neighboring elevations we
+see Craigenputtock and the swelling Solway, and westward we look, across
+the dark fens and heathery hills of the region "blest with the smell of
+bog-myrtle and peat," almost to the Irish Sea. In this region Crockett
+was reared, and he pictures it in his charming tales "The Raiders" and
+"The Lilac Sunbonnet."
+
+No trace of the peel-tower in which Douglas dwelt remains, but we know
+that it stood within an enclosing wall twenty yards square and one yard
+in thickness. The tower had projecting battlements; its apartments,
+placed above each other, were reached by a narrow, easily defended
+stair. In such a home and amid this most dismal environment Douglas grew
+to manhood, his poetic power unsuspected until it was called forth by
+the love and beauty of Annie Laurie. Later he wrote many poems, but
+diligent inquiry among the families of Buccleuch and Queensberry shows
+that few of his productions are now extant save the famous love-song. It
+is notable that he did not "lay doun his head and die" for the faithless
+Annie; instead, he made a runaway marriage with Elizabeth Clerk, of
+Glenborg, in his native Galloway, subsided into prosy country life, and
+reared a family of six children, of whom one, Archibald, rose to the
+rank of lieutenant-general in Brittany.
+
+[Sidenote: Annie Laurie--The Singer and the Song]
+
+Douglas's song was revised by Lady Scott, sister of the late Duke of
+Buccleuch, and published by her for the benefit of the widows and
+orphans made by the Crimean War. Lines of the original, for which the
+writer is indebted to a descendant of Annie Laurie, are hereto appended,
+that the reader may appreciate how much of the tender beauty of the
+popular version of the song is attributable to the poetic talent of Lady
+Scott.
+
+  "Maxwelton banks are bonnie,
+    Where early fa's the dew,
+  Where me and Annie Laurie
+    Made up the promise true:
+  Made up the promise true,
+    And ne'er forget will I:
+  And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+    I'd lay doun my head and die.
+
+  "She's backit like a peacock;
+    She's breastit like a swan;
+  She's jimp about the middle;
+    Her waist ye weel may span:
+  Her waist ye weel may span,--
+    She has a rolling eye;
+  And for bonnie Annie Laurie
+    I'd lay doun my head and die."
+
+
+
+
+A NIECE OF ROBERT BURNS
+
+_Her Burnsland Cottage--Reminiscences of Burns--Relics--Portraits--
+  Letters--Recitations--Account of his Death--Memories of his Home--Of
+  Bonnie Jean--Other Heroines._
+
+
+In the course of a summer ramble in Burnsland we had sought out the
+homes, the haunts, the tomb of the ploughman poet, and had bent at many
+a shrine hallowed by his memory or his song. From the cottage of "Bonnie
+Jean" and the tomb of "Holy Willie," the field of the "Mountain Daisy"
+and the church of the "Holy Fair," the birthplace of "Highland Mary" and
+the grave of "Mary Morison," we came to the shrines of auld Ayr, beside
+the sea. Here we find the "Twa Brigs" of his poem; the graves of the
+ministers satirized in "The Kirk's Alarm;" the old inn of "Tam
+O'Shanter," and the very room, with its ingle, where Tam and Souter
+Johnny "got fou thegither," and where we may sip the nappy from the
+wooden caup which Tam often drained. From Ayr a delightful stroll along
+the highway where Tam made his memorable ride, and where William Burns
+carried the howdie upon the pillion behind him on another stormy
+winter's night when the poet was born, brought us to the hamlet of
+Alloway and the place of Burns's early life. Here are the auld clay
+biggin, with its rude stone floor and roof of thatch, erected by the
+unskilled hands of his father, where the poet first saw the light, and
+where he laid the scene of the immortal "Cotter's Saturday Night;" the
+fields where his young hands toiled to aid his burdened sire; the
+kirk-yard where his kindred lie buried, some of their epitaphs written
+by him; the "auld haunted kirk,"--where Tam interrupted the witches'
+dance,--unknown save for the genius of the lad born by its roofless
+walls; the Burns monument, with its priceless relics; the ivy-grown
+bridge, four centuries old, whose arch spans the songful stream and
+across which Tam galloped in such sore peril, and its "key-stane," where
+Meg lost "her ain gray tail" to Nannie, fleetest of the pursuers; the
+enchanting "banks and braes of bonnie Doon," where Burns wandered a
+brown-eyed boy, and later found the inspiration of many of his exquisite
+strains. We have known few scenes more lovely than this in which his
+young life was passed: long and delightful is our lingering here, for
+interwoven with the many natural beauties are winsome memories of the
+bard whose spirit and genius pervade all the scene.
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Burns Begg--Bridgeside Cot]
+
+[Sidenote: Recitations--Bonnie Jean]
+
+Returning thence past the "thorn aboon the well" (the well is closed
+now) and the "meikle-stane" to the ancient ford "where in the snaw the
+chapman smoor'd," we made a detour southward, and came by a pleasant
+way--having in view on the right the picturesque ruin of Greenan Castle
+upon a cliff overhanging the sea--to Bridgeside cottage, the home of
+Miss Isabella Burns Begg, niece of the poet and long his only surviving
+near relative. We found a cottage of stone, from whose thatched roof a
+dormer-window, brilliant with flowers, peeped out through the foliage
+which half concealed the tiny homelet. The trimmest of little maids
+admitted us at the gate and led along a path bordered with flowers to
+the cottage door, where stood Miss Begg beaming a welcome upon the
+pilgrims from America. We were ushered into a prettily furnished little
+room, upon whose walls hung a portrait of Burns, one of his sister Mrs.
+Begg, and some framed autograph letters of the bard, which the niece
+"knew by heart." She was the daughter and namesake of Burns's youngest
+and favorite sister, who married John Begg. We found her a singularly
+active and vivacious old lady, cheery and intelligent, and more than
+pleased to have secured appreciative auditors for her reminiscences of
+her gifted uncle. She was of slender habit, had a bright and winning
+face, soft gray hair partially concealed by a cap, and when she was
+seated beneath the Burns portrait we could see that her large dark
+eyes--now sparkling with merriment or misty with emotion, and again
+literally glowing with feeling--were like those on the canvas. Among the
+treasures of this room was a worn copy of Thomson's "Seasons," a
+favorite book of Burns, which he had freely annotated; his name in it is
+written "Burnes," as the family spelled it down to the publication of
+the bard's first volume. In the course of a long and pleasant chat we
+learned that Miss Begg had lived many years in the cottage, first with
+her mother and later with her sister Agnes,--named for Burns's
+mother,--who died before our visit and was laid beside her parents and
+the father of Burns in the kirk-yard of auld Alloway, where Miss Begg
+expected "soom day, please God an it be soon," to go to await the
+resurrection, thinking it an "ill hap" that she survived her sister. She
+innocently inquired if we "kenned her nephew Robert in America," and
+then explained that he and a niece of hers had formerly lived with her,
+but she had discovered that "they were sweetheartin' and wantin' to
+marry, which she wouldna allow, so they went to America," leaving her
+alone with her handmaiden. Most of her visitors had been Americans. She
+remembered the visits of Hawthorne, Grant, Stanley, and Helen Hunt
+Jackson,--the last with greatest pleasure,--and thought that "Americans
+care most about Burns." She mentioned the visit of a Virginian maid,
+who by rapturous praise of the uncle completely won the heart of the
+niece. The fair enthusiast had most of Burns's poems at her tongue's
+end, but insisted upon having them repeated by Miss Begg, and at parting
+exclaimed, after much kissing, "Oh, but I always pray God that when he
+takes me to heaven he will give me the place next to Burns." Apparently,
+Robin still has power to disturb the peace of "the lasses O." Yet we can
+well excuse the effusiveness of our compatriot: to have listened to the
+old lady as she sat under his portrait, her eyes twinkling or softening
+like his own, her voice thrilling with sympathetic feeling as she
+repeated in his own sweet dialect the tender stanzas, "But pleasures are
+like poppies spread," "My Mary! dear departed shade!" and "Oh, happy
+love, when love like this is found," and others of like pathos and
+beauty, is a rapture not to be forgotten. She spoke quickly, and the
+Scottish accent kept one's ears on the alert, but it rendered the lines
+doubly effective and melodious. Many of the poems were inspired by
+special events of which Miss Begg had knowledge from her mother, which
+she recalled with evident relish. She distinctly remembered the bard's
+widow, "Bonnie Jean," and often visited her in the poor home where he
+died. Jean had a sunny temper, a kind heart, a handsome figure, a fine
+voice, and lustrous eyes, but her brunette face was never bonnie. While
+she lacked intellectual appreciation of his genius, she was proud of and
+idolized him, finding ready excuse and forgiveness for his failings.
+When the frail "Anna with the Gowden Locks" bore him an illegitimate
+child, Jean cradled it with her own, and loyally averred to all
+visitors, "It's only a neebor's bairn I'm bringin' up." ("Ay, she must
+'a' lo'ed him," was Miss Begg's comment on this part of her narrative.)
+Jean had told that in his last years the poet habitually wore a blue
+coat, with nankeen trousers (when the weather would allow), and his
+coat-collar was so high that his hat turned up at the back. Her account
+of the manner of his death is startling, and differs from that given by
+the biographers. He lay apparently asleep when "sweet Jessy"--to whom
+his last poem was written--approached, and, to remind him of his
+medicine, touched the cup to his lips; he started, drained the cup, then
+sprang headlong to the foot of the bed, threw his hands forward like one
+about to swim, and, falling on his face, expired with a groan. Jean saw
+him for the last time on the evening before his funeral, when his wasted
+body lay in a cheap coffin covered with flowers, his care-worn face
+framed by the wavy masses of his sable hair, then sprinkled with gray.
+At his death he left MSS. in the garret of his abode, which were
+scattered and lost because Jean was unable to take care of them,--a loss
+which must ever be deplored.
+
+[Sidenote: Reminiscences--Burns' Youth]
+
+[Sidenote: Mossgiel--Recollections]
+
+One of the delights of Miss Begg's girlhood was the converse of Burns's
+mother concerning her first-born and favorite child, the poet, a theme
+of which she never tired. Miss Begg remembered her as a "chirk" old lady
+with snapping black eyes and an abundant stock of legends and ballads.
+She used to declare that Bobbie had often heard her sing "Auld Lang
+Syne" in his boyhood; hence it would appear that, at most, he only
+revised that precious old song. Miss Begg more than once heard the
+mother tell, with manifest gusto, this incident of their residence at
+Lochlea. Robert was already inclined to be wild, and between visiting
+his sweetheart Ellison Begbie--"the lass of the twa sparkling, roguish
+een"--and attending the Tarbolton club and Masonic lodge was abroad
+until an unseemly hour every night, and his mother or Isabella sat up to
+let him in. His anxious sire, the priest-like father of the "Cotter's
+Saturday Night," determined to administer an effectual rebuke to the
+son's misconduct, and one night startled the mother by announcing
+significantly that he would wait to admit the lad. She lay for hours
+(Robert was later than ever that night), dreading the encounter between
+the two, till she heard the boy whistling "Tibbie Fowler" as he
+approached. Then the door opened: the father grimly demanded what had
+kept him so late; the son, for reply, gave a comical description of his
+meeting auld Hornie on the way home,--an adventure narrated in the
+"Address to the De'il,"--and next the mother heard the pair seat
+themselves by the fire, where for two hours the father roared with
+laughter at Robert's ludicrous account of the evening's doings at the
+club,--she, meanwhile, nearly choking with her efforts to restrain the
+laughter which might remind her husband of his intended reproof.
+Thereafter the lad stayed out as late as he pleased without rebuke. The
+niece had been told by her mother that Burns was deeply distressed at
+his father's death-bed by the old man's fears for the future of his
+wayward son; and when his father's death made Robert the head of the
+family, he every morning led the household in "the most beautiful
+prayers ever heard;" later, at Ellisland and elsewhere, he continued
+this practice, and on the Sabbath instructed them in the Catechism and
+Confession. Mrs. Begg's most pleasing recollections of her brother were
+associated with the farm-life at Mossgiel, where he so far gave her his
+confidence that she was allowed to see his poems in the course of their
+composition. He would ponder his stanzas during his labors afield, and
+when he came to the house for a meal he would go to the little garret
+where he and his brother Gilbert slept and hastily pen them upon a table
+which stood under the one little window. Here Isabella would find them,
+and, after repeated perusals, would arrange them in the drawer; and so
+it passed that her bright eyes were the first, besides his own, to see
+"The Twa Dogs," "Winter's Night," "The Bard's Epitaph," "The Cotter's
+Saturday Night," the satirical poems, and most of the productions which
+were published in his Kilmarnock volume. His sister testified that he
+was always affectionate to the family, and that after his removal to a
+home of his own he invariably brought a present for each when he
+revisited the farm, the present for his mother being always, despite his
+poverty, a costly pound of tea. Most of the receipts from his publishers
+were given to the family at Mossgiel. Miss Begg intimated that Burns's
+mother did not at first like his wife, because of the circumstances of
+the marriage, but Jean's stanch devotion to her husband won the heart of
+the doting mother, and they became warm friends and spent much time
+together after Burns's death. The niece believed that the accounts of
+his intemperance are mostly untrue. Her mother, who was twenty-five
+years old at the time of his decease, always asserted that she "never
+saw him fou," and believed it was his antagonism to the "unco' guid"
+that made them ready to believe and circulate any idle report to his
+discredit.
+
+Mrs. Begg saw and liked "Highland Mary" at the house of Gavin Hamilton,
+and knew Miss Dunlop, the blooming Keith of Burns's "New-Year Day."
+Another of his heroines the niece had herself visited with her mother;
+this was Mrs. Jessy Thompson, _nee_ Lewars, who was a ministering angel
+in his final illness, and was repaid by the only thing he could
+bestow,--a song of exquisite sweetness, "Here's a health to ane I lo'e
+dear." Our informant had seen in that lady's hands the lines beginning
+"Thine be the volumes, Jessy fair," which the poet gave her with a
+present of books within a month of his death. Many other reminiscences
+related by the niece are to be found in the biographies of the bard, and
+need not be repeated. The letters which hung upon her walls are not
+included in any published collection. She assisted us in copying the
+following to Burns's youngest brother:
+
+[Sidenote: A Letter of Burns]
+
+                                                 "ISLE, Tuesday Evening.
+
+"DEAR WILLIAM,--In my last I recommended that valuable apothegm, Learn
+taciturnity. It is certain that nobody can know our thoughts, and yet,
+from a slight observation of mankind, one would not think so. What
+mischiefs daily arise from silly garrulity and foolish confidence! There
+is an excellent Scots saying that a man's mind is his kingdom. It is
+certainly so, but how few can govern that kingdom with propriety! The
+serious mischiefs in Business which this Flux of language occasions do
+not come immediately to your situation, but in another point of
+view--the dignity of man--now is the time that will make or mar. Yours
+is the time of life for laying in habits. You cannot avoid it, tho' you
+will choose, and these habits will stick to your last end. At
+after-periods, even at so little advance as my years, 'tis true that one
+may still be very sharp-sighted to one's habitual failings and
+weaknesses, but to eradicate them, or even to amend them, is quite a
+different matter. Acquired at first by accident, they by-and-by begin to
+be, as it were, a necessary part of our existence. I have not time for
+more. Whatever you read, whatever you hear of that strange creature man,
+look into the living world about you, look to yourself, for the
+evidences of the fact or the application of the doctrine. I am ever
+yours,
+
+                                                          "ROBERT BURNS.
+
+"MR. WILLIAM BURNS, Saddler, Longtown."
+
+The sentiment and style of this epistle are suggestive of the stilted
+conversations of Burns, recorded in Hugh Miller's "Recollections." Miss
+Begg was pleased by some account we could give her of American Burns
+monuments and festivals; she seemed reluctant to have us leave, called
+to us a cheery "God keep ye!" when we were without the gate, and stood
+looking after us until the intervening foliage hid her from our sight.
+As we walked Ayr-ward, while the sun was setting in a golden haze behind
+the hills of Arran, we felt that we had been very near to Burns that
+day,--had almost felt the thrill of his presence, the charm of his
+voice, and had in some measure made a personal acquaintance with him
+which would evermore move us to a tenderer regard for the man and a
+truer appreciation of his verse, as well as a fuller charity for his
+faults:
+
+  We know in part what he has done,
+    God knows what he resisted.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Burns's Niece]
+
+For some months after our visit to Bridgeside, quaint letters--one of
+them containing a portrait of the worthy occupant of the
+cottage--followed us thence across the sea. These came at increasing
+intervals and then stopped; the kindly heart of the niece of Burns had
+ceased to beat on her eightieth birthday.
+
+A recent pilgrim in Burnsland found an added line on the gravestone in
+the old kirk-yard, to tell that Isabella Burns Begg rests there in
+eternal peace. At Bridgeside, her once cherished garden is a waste and
+her tiny cottage has wholly disappeared. "So do things pass away like a
+tale that is told."
+
+
+
+
+HIGHLAND MARY: HER HOMES AND GRAVE
+
+_Birthplace--Personal Appearance--Relations to Burns--Abodes: Mauchline,
+  Coilsfield etc.--Scenes of Courtship and Parting--Mementos--Tomb by
+  the Clyde._
+
+
+There is no stronger proof of the transcending power of the genius of
+Burns than is found in the fact that, by a bare half dozen of his
+stanzas, an humble dairy servant--else unheard of outside her parish and
+forgotten at her death--is immortalized as a peeress of Petrarch's Laura
+and Dante's Beatrice, and has been for a century loved and mourned of
+all the world. We owe much of our tenderest poesy to the heroines whose
+charms have attuned the fancy and aroused the impassioned muse of
+enamoured bards; readers have always exhibited a natural avidity to
+realize the personality of the beings who inspired the tender
+lays,--prompted often by mere curiosity, but more often by a desire to
+appreciate the tastes and motives of the poets themselves. How little is
+known of Highland Mary, the most famous heroine of modern song, is shown
+by the brief, incoherent, and often contradictory allusions to her which
+the biographies of the ploughman-poet contain. This paper,--prepared
+during a sojourn in "The Land o' Burns,"--while it adds a little to our
+meagre knowledge of Mary Campbell, aims to present consecutively and
+congruously so much as may now be known of her brief life, her relations
+to the bard, and her sad, heroic death.
+
+[Sidenote: Birthplace--Early Home]
+
+She first saw the light in 1764, at Ardrossan, on the coast, fifteen
+miles northward from the "auld town of Ayr." Her parentage was of the
+humblest, her father being a sailor before the mast, and the poor
+dwelling which sheltered her was in no way superior to the meanest of
+those we find to-day on the narrow streets of her village. From her
+birthplace we see, across the Firth of Clyde, the beetling mountains of
+the Highlands, where she afterward dwelt, and southward the great mass
+of Ailsa Craig looming, a gigantic pyramid, out of the sea. Mary was
+named for her aunt, wife of Peter McPherson, a ship-carpenter of
+Greenock, in whose house Mary died. In her infancy her family removed to
+the vicinage of Dunoon, on the western shore of the Firth, eight miles
+below Greenock, leaving the oldest daughter at Ardrossan. Mary grew to
+young womanhood near Dunoon, then returned to Ayrshire, and found
+occupation at Coilsfield, near Tarbolton, where her acquaintance with
+Burns soon began. He told a lady that he first saw Mary while walking in
+the woods of Coilsfield, and first spoke with her at a rustic
+merry-making, and, "having the luck to win her regards from other
+suitors," they speedily became intimate. At this period of life Burns's
+"eternal propensity to fall into love" was unusually active, even for
+him, and his passion for Mary (at this time) was one of several which
+engaged his heart in the interval between the reign of Ellison
+Begbie--"the lass of the twa sparkling, roguish een"--and that of
+"Bonnie Jean." Mary subsequently became a servant in the house of
+Burns's landlord, Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer of Mauchline, who had early
+recognized the genius of the bard and admitted him to an intimate
+friendship, despite his inferior condition. When Hamilton was persecuted
+by the kirk, Burns, partly out of sympathy with him, wrote the satires,
+"Holy Willie's Prayer," "The Twa Herds," and "The Holy Fair," which
+served to unite the friends more closely, and brought the poet often to
+the house where Mary was an inmate. This house--a sombre structure of
+stone, little more pretentious than its neighbors--we found on the
+shabby street not far from Armour's cottage, the church of "The Holy
+Fair," and "Posie Nansie's" inn, where the "Jolly Beggars" used to
+congregate. Among the dingy rooms shown us in Hamilton's house was that
+in which he married Burns to "Bonnie Jean" Armour.
+
+[Sidenote: Personal Appearance]
+
+[Sidenote: Betrothal and Parting]
+
+The bard's niece, Miss Begg, of Bridgeside, told the writer that she
+often heard Burns's mother describe Mary as she saw her at Hamilton's:
+she had a bonnie face, a complexion of unusual fairness, soft blue eyes,
+a profusion of shining hair which fell to her knees, a _petite_ figure
+which made her seem younger than her twenty summers, a bright smile, and
+pleasing manners, which won the old lady's heart. This description is,
+in superlative phrase, corroborated by Lindsay in Hugh Miller's
+"Recollections:" she was "beautiful, sylph-like," her bust and neck were
+"exquisitely moulded," her arms and feet "had a statue-like symmetry and
+marble-like whiteness;" but it was in her lovely countenance that
+"nature seemed to have exhausted her utmost skill,"--"the loveliest
+creature I have ever seen," etc. All who have written of her have
+noticed her beauty, her good sense, her modesty and self-respect. But
+these qualities were now insufficient to hold the roving fancy of Burns,
+whose "susceptibility to immediate impressions" (so called by Byron, who
+had the same failing) passes belief. His first ephemeral fancy for Mary
+took little hold upon his heart, and the best that can be said of it is
+that it was more innocent than the loves which came before and after it.
+Within a stone's-throw of Mary dwelt Jean Armour, and when the former
+returned to Coilsfield, he promptly fell in love with Jean, and solaced
+himself with her more buxom and compliant charms. It was a year or so
+later, when his intercourse with Jean had burdened him with grief and
+shame, that the tender and romantic affection for Mary came into his
+life. She was yet at Coilsfield, and while he was in hiding--his heart
+tortured by the apparent perfidy of Jean and all the countryside
+condemning his misconduct--his intimacy with Mary was renewed; his
+quickened vision now discerned her endearing attributes, her trust and
+sympathy were precious in his distress, and awoke in him an affection
+such as he never felt for any other woman. During a few brief weeks the
+lovers spent their evenings and Sabbaths together, loitering amid the
+
+  "Banks and braes and streams around
+  The castle of Montgomery,"
+
+talking of the golden days that were to be theirs when present troubles
+were past; then came the parting which the world will never forget, and
+Mary relinquished her service and went to her parents at Campbeltown,--a
+port of Cantyre behind "Arran's mountain isle." Of this parting Burns
+says, in a letter to Thomson, "We met by appointment on the second
+Sunday of May, in a sequestered spot on the Ayr, where we spent the day
+in taking farewell before she should embark for the West Highlands to
+prepare for our projected change of life." Lovers of Burns linger over
+this final parting, and detail the impressive ceremonials with which the
+pair solemnized their betrothal: they stood on either side of a brook,
+they laved their hands in the water and scattered it in the air to
+symbolize the purity of their intentions; clasping hands above an open
+Bible, they swore to be true to each other forever, then exchanged
+Bibles, and parted never to meet more. It is not strange that when death
+had left him nothing of her but her poor little Bible, a tress of her
+golden hair, and a tender memory of her love, the recollection of this
+farewell remained in his soul forever. He has pictured it in the
+exquisite lines of "Highland Mary" and "To Mary in Heaven."
+
+[Sidenote: Mementos]
+
+In the monument at Alloway--between the "auld haunted kirk" and the
+bridge where Maggie lost her tail--we are shown a memento of the
+parting; it is the Bible which Burns gave to Mary and above which their
+vows were said. At Mary's death it passed to her sister, at Ardrossan,
+who bequeathed it to her son William Anderson; subsequently it was
+carried to America by one of the family, whence it has been recovered to
+be treasured here. It is a pocket edition in two volumes, to one of
+which is attached a lock of poor Mary's shining hair. Within the cover
+of the first volume the hand of Burns has written, "And ye shall not
+swear by my name falsely, I am the Lord;" within the second, "Thou shalt
+not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." Upon
+a blank leaf of each volume is Burns's Masonic signet, with the
+signature, "Robert Burns, Mossgiel," written beneath. Mary's
+spinning-wheel is preserved in the adjoining cottage. A few of her
+bright hairs, severed in her fatal fever, are among the treasures of the
+writer and lie before him as he pens these lines.
+
+[Sidenote: Coilsfield--Plans of the Lovers]
+
+A visit to the scenes of the brief passion of the pair is a pleasing
+incident of our Burns-pilgrimage. Coilsfield House is somewhat changed
+since Mary dwelt beneath its roof,--a great rambling edifice of gray
+weather-worn stone with a row of white pillars aligned along its facade,
+its massive walls embowered in foliage and environed by the grand woods
+which Burns and Mary knew so well. It was then a seat of Colonel Hugh
+Montgomerie, a patron of Burns. The name Coilsfield is derived from
+Coila, the traditional appellation of the district. The grounds comprise
+a billowy expanse of wood and sward; great reaches of turf, dotted with
+trees already venerable when the lovers here had their tryst a hundred
+years ago, slope away from the mansion to the Faile and border its
+murmuring course to the Ayr. Here we trace with romantic interest the
+wanderings of the pair during the swift hours of that last day of
+parting love, their lingering way 'neath the "wild wood's thickening
+green," by the pebbled shore of Ayr to the brooklet where their vows
+were made, and thence along the Faile to the woodland shades of
+Coilsfield, where, at the close of that winged day, "pledging oft to
+meet again, they tore themselves asunder." Howitt found at Coilsfield a
+thorn-tree, called by all the country "Highland Mary's thorn," and
+believed to be the place of final parting; years ago the tree was
+notched and broken by souvenir seekers; if it be still in existence the
+present occupant of Coilsfield is unaware.
+
+[Sidenote: Burns's Regard for Mary--Her Death]
+
+At the time of his parting with Mary, Burns had already resolved to
+emigrate to Jamaica, and it has been supposed, from his own statements
+and those of his biographers, that the pair planned to emigrate
+together; but Burns soon abandoned this project and, perhaps, all
+thought of marrying Mary. The song commencing "Will ye go to the Indies,
+my Mary?" has been quoted to show he expected her to accompany him, but
+he says, in an epistle to Thomson, that this was his farewell to her,
+and in another song, written while preparing to embark, he declares that
+it is leaving Mary that makes him wish to tarry. Further, we find that
+with the first nine pounds received from the sale of his poems he
+purchased a single passage to Jamaica,--manifestly having no intention
+of taking her with him. Her being at Greenock in October, _en route_ to
+a new place of service at Glasgow, indicates she had no hope that he
+would marry her then, or soon. True, he afterward said she came to
+Greenock to meet him, but it is certain that he knew nothing of her
+being there until after her death. During the summer of 1786, while
+she was preparing to wed him, he indited two love-songs to her, but
+they are not more glowing than those of the same time to several
+inamoratas,--less impassioned than the "Farewell to Eliza" and allusions
+to Jean in "Farewell, old Scotia's bleak domains,"--and barely four
+weeks after his ardent and solemn parting with Mary we find him writing
+to Brice, "I do still love Jean to distraction." Poor Mary! Possibly the
+fever mercifully saved her from dying of a broken heart. The bard's
+anomalous affectional condition and conduct may perhaps be explained by
+assuming that he loved Mary with a refined and spiritual passion so
+different from his love for others--and especially from his conjugal
+love for Jean--that the passions could coexist in his heart. The
+alternative explanation is that his love for Mary, while she lived, was
+by no means the absorbing passion which he afterward believed it to
+have been. When death had hallowed his memories of her love and of all
+their sweet intercourse,--beneficent death! that beautifies, ennobles,
+irradiates, in the remembrance of survivors, the loved ones its touch
+has taken,--then his soul, swelling with the passion that throbs in the
+strains of "To Mary in Heaven," would not own to itself that its love
+had ever been less.
+
+Mary remained at Campbeltown during the summer of 1786. Coming to
+Greenock in the autumn, she found her brother sick of a malignant fever
+at the house of her aunt; bravely disregarding danger of contagion, she
+devoted herself to nursing him, and brought him to a safe convalescence
+only to be herself stricken by his malady and to rapidly sink and die, a
+sacrifice to her sisterly affection. By this time the success of his
+poems had determined Burns to remain in Scotland, and he returned to
+Mossgiel, where tidings of Mary's death reached him. His brother relates
+that when the letter was handed to him he went to the window to read it,
+then his face was observed to change suddenly, and he quickly went out
+without speaking. In June of the next year he made a solitary journey to
+the Highlands, apparently drawn by memory of Mary. If, indeed, he
+dropped a tear upon her neglected grave and visited her humble Highland
+home, we may almost forgive him the excesses of that tour, if not the
+renewed _liaison_ with Jean which immediately preceded, and the amorous
+correspondence with "Clarinda" (Mrs. M'Lehose) which followed it.
+
+Whatever the quality or degree of his passion for Mary living, his grief
+for her dead was deep and tender, and expired only with his life.
+Cherished in his heart, it manifested itself now in some passage of a
+letter, now in some pathetic burst of song,--like "The Lament" and
+"Highland Mary,"--and again in some emotional act. Of many such acts
+narrated to the writer by Burns's niece, the following is, perhaps, most
+striking. The poet attended the wedding of Kirstie Kirkpatrick, a
+favorite of his, who often sang his songs for him, and, after the wedded
+pair had retired, a lass of the company, being asked to sing, began
+"Highland Mary." Its effect upon Burns "was painful to witness; he
+started to his feet, prayed her in God's name to forbear, then hastened
+to the door of the marriage-chamber and entreated the bride to come and
+quiet his mind with a verse or two of 'Bonnie Doon.'" The lines "To Mary
+in Heaven" and the pathetic incidents of their composition show most
+touchingly how he mourned his fair-haired lassie years after she ceased
+to be. It was at Ellisland, October 20, 1789, the anniversary of Mary's
+death, an occasion which brought afresh to his heart memories of the
+tender past. Jean has told us of his increasing silence and unrest as
+the day declined, of his aimless wandering by Nithside at nightfall, of
+his rapt abstraction as he lay pillowed by the sheaves of his
+stack-yard, gazing entranced at the "lingering star" above him till the
+immortal song was born.
+
+[Sidenote: Her Grave]
+
+Poor Mary is laid in the burial-plot of her uncle in the west kirk-yard
+of Greenock, near Crawford Street; our pilgrimage in Burnsland may fitly
+end at her grave. A pathway, beaten by the feet of many reverent
+visitors, leads us to the spot. It is so pathetically different from the
+scenes she loved in life,--the heather-clad slopes of her Highland home,
+the seclusion of the wooded braes where she loitered with her
+poet-lover. Scant foliage is about her; few birds sing above her here.
+She lies by the wall; narrow streets hem in the enclosure; the air is
+sullied by smoke from factories and from steamers passing within a
+stone's-throw on the busy Clyde; the clanging of many hammers and the
+discordant din of machinery and traffic invade the place and sound in
+our ears as we muse above the ashes of the gentle lassie.
+
+For half a century her grave was unmarked and neglected; then, by
+subscription, a monument of marble, twelve feet in height, and of
+graceful proportions, was raised. It bears a sculptured medallion
+representing Burns and Mary, with clasped hands, plighting their troth.
+Beneath is the simple inscription, read oft by eyes dim with tears:
+
+    Erected Over the Grave of
+
+          HIGHLAND MARY
+
+              1842.
+
+  "My Mary, dear departed shade,
+    Where is thy place of blissful rest?"
+
+
+
+
+BRONTE SCENES IN BRUSSELS
+
+_School--Class-Rooms--Dormitory--Garden--Scenes and Events of Villette
+  and The Professor--M. Paul--Madame Beck--Memories of the Brontes--
+  Confessional--Grave of Jessy Yorke_.
+
+
+We had "done" Brussels after the approved fashion,--had faithfully
+visited the churches, palaces, museums, theatres, galleries, monuments;
+had duly admired the windows and carvings of the grand cathedral, the
+tower and tapestry and frescos and facade of the Hotel de Ville, the
+stately halls and the gilded dome of the Courts of Justice, and the
+consummate beauty of the Bourse; had diligently sought out the naive
+boy-fountain, and had made the usual excursion to the field of Waterloo.
+
+[Sidenote: The Park--Heger Mansion]
+
+This delightful task being conscientiously discharged, we proposed to
+devote our last day in the Belgian capital to the accomplishment of one
+of the cherished projects of our lives,--the searching out of the
+localities associated with Charlotte Bronte's unhappy school-life here,
+which she has so graphically portrayed. For our purpose no guide was
+needful, for the topography and local coloring of "Villette" and "The
+Professor" are as vivid and unmistakable as in the best work of Dickens
+himself. Proceeding from St. Gudule to the Rue Royale, and a short
+distance along that thoroughfare, we reached the park and a locality
+familiar to Miss Bronte's readers. Seated in this lovely
+pleasure-ground, the gift of the Empress Maria Theresa, with its cool
+shade all about us, we noted the long avenues and the paths winding amid
+trees and shrubbery, the dark foliage ineffectually veiling the gleaming
+statuary and the sheen of bright fountains, "the stone basin with its
+clear depth, the thick-planted trees which framed this tremulous and
+rippled mirror," the groups of happy people filling the seats in
+secluded nooks or loitering in the mazes and listening to the music; we
+noted all this, and felt that Miss Bronte had revealed it to us long
+ago. It was across this park that Lucy Snowe was piloted from the bureau
+of the diligence by the chivalrous Dr. John on the night when she,
+despoiled, helpless, and solitary, arrived in Brussels. She found the
+park deserted, the paths miry, the water dripping from the trees. "In
+the double gloom of tree and fog she could not see her guide, and could
+only follow his tread" in the darkness. We recalled another scene under
+these same trees, on a night when the gate-way was "spanned by a flaming
+arch of massed stars." The park was a "forest with sparks of purple and
+ruby and golden fire gemming the foliage," and Lucy, driven from her
+couch by mental torture, wandered unrecognized amid the gay throng at
+the midnight concert of the Festival of the Martyrs and looked upon her
+lover, her friends the Brettons, and the secret junta of her enemies,
+Madame Beck, Madame Walravens, and Pere Silas. The sense of familiarity
+with the vicinage grew as we observed our surroundings. Facing us, at
+the extremity of the park, was the palace of the king, in the small
+square across the Rue Royale at our right was the statue of General
+Beliard, and we knew that just behind it we should find the Bronte
+school; for "The Professor," standing by the statue, had looked down a
+great staircase to the door-way of the school, and poor Lucy on that
+forlorn first night in "Villette," to avoid a pair of ruffians, had
+hastened down a flight of steps from the Rue Royale and had come, not to
+the inn she sought, but to the _pensionnat_ of Madame Beck. From the
+statue we descended, by a series of stone stairs, into a narrow street,
+old-fashioned and clean, quiet and secluded in the very heart of the
+great city, and just opposite the foot of the steps we came to the wide
+door of a spacious, quadrangular, stuccoed old mansion, with a bit of
+foliage showing over a high wall at one side. A bright plate embellished
+the door and bore the name Heger. A Latin inscription in the wall of
+the house showed it to have been given to the Guild of Royal Archers by
+the Infanta Isabelle early in the seventeenth century. Long before that
+the garden had been the orchard and herbary of a convent and the
+Hospital for the Poor.
+
+[Sidenote: Characters of Villette]
+
+[Sidenote: The Hegers]
+
+We were detained at the door long enough to remember Lucy standing
+there, trembling and anxious, awaiting admission, and then we too were
+"let in by a _bonne_ in a smart cap," apparently a fit successor to the
+Rosine of other days, and entered the corridor. This was paved with
+blocks of black and white marble and had painted walls. It extended
+through the entire depth of the house, and at its farther extremity an
+open door afforded us a glimpse of the garden. We were ushered into the
+little _salon_ at the left of the passage, the one often mentioned in
+"Villette," and here we made known our wish to see the garden and
+class-rooms, and met with a prompt refusal from the neat portress. We
+tried diplomacy (also lucre) without avail: it was the _grandes
+vacances_, M. Heger was engaged, we could not be gratified,--unless,
+indeed, we were patrons of the school. At this juncture a portly,
+ruddy-faced lady of middle age and most courteous of speech and manner
+appeared, and, addressing us in faultless English, introduced herself as
+Mdlle. Heger, co-directress of the school, and "wholly at our service."
+In response to our apologies for the intrusion and explanations of the
+desire which had prompted it, we received complaisant assurances of
+welcome; yet the manner of our entertainer indicated that she did not
+share in our admiration and enthusiasm for Charlotte Bronte and her
+books. In the subsequent conversation it appeared that Mademoiselle and
+her family hold decided opinions upon the subject,--something more than
+mere lack of admiration. She was familiar with the novels, and thought
+that, while they exhibit a talent certainly not above mediocrity, they
+reflect the injustice, the untruthfulness, and the ingratitude of their
+creator. We were obliged to confess to ourselves that the family have
+reason for this view, when we reflected that in the books Miss Bronte
+has assailed their religion and disparaged the school and the characters
+of the teachers and pupils, has depicted Madame Heger in the odious duad
+of Madame Beck and Mdlle. Reuter, has represented M. Heger as the
+scheming and deceitful Pelet and the preposterous Paul, Lucy Snowe's
+lover; that this lover was the husband of Madame Heger, and father of
+the family of children to whom Lucy was at first _bonne d'enfants_, and
+that possibly the daughter she has described as the thieving, vicious
+Desiree--"that tadpole Desiree Beck"--was this very lady now so politely
+entertaining us. To all this add the significant fact that "Villette"
+is an autobiographical novel, which "records the most vivid passages in
+Miss Bronte's own sad heart's history," not a few of the incidents being
+transcripts "from the darkest chapter of her own life," and the light
+which the consideration of this fact throws upon her relations with
+members of the family will help us to apprehend the stand-point from
+which the Hegers judge Miss Bronte and her work, and to excuse a natural
+resentment against one who has presented them in a decidedly bad light.
+How bad we realized when, during the ensuing chat, we called to mind
+just what she had written of them. As Madame Beck, Madame Heger had been
+represented as lying, deceitful, and shameless, as "watching and spying
+everywhere, peeping through every key-hole, listening behind every
+door," as duplicating Lucy's keys and secretly searching her bureau, as
+meanly abstracting her letters and reading them to others, as immodestly
+laying herself out to entrap the man to whom she had given her love
+unsought. It was some accession to the existing animosity between
+herself and Madame Heger which precipitated Miss Bronte's departure from
+the _pensionnat_. Mrs. Gaskell ascribes their mutual dislike to
+Charlotte's free expression of her aversion to the Catholic Church, of
+which Madame Heger was a devotee, and hence "wounded in her most
+cherished opinions;" but a later writer plainly intimates that Miss
+Bronte hated the woman who sat for Madame Beck because marriage had
+given to _her_ the man whom Miss Bronte loved, and that "Madame Beck had
+need to be a detective in her own house." The death of Madame Heger had
+rendered the family, who held her only as a sacred memory, more keenly
+sensitive than ever to anything which would seem by implication to
+disparage her.
+
+[Sidenote: Recollections of the Brontes]
+
+For himself, it would appear that M. Heger had less cause for
+resentment; for, although in "Villette" his double is pictured as "a
+waspish little despot," as detestably ugly, in his anger closely
+resembling "a black and sallow tiger," as having an "overmastering love
+of authority and public display," as playing the spy and reading
+purloined letters, and in the Bronte epistles Charlotte declares he is
+choleric and irritable, compels her to make her French translations
+without a dictionary or grammar, and then has "his eyes almost plucked
+out of his head" by the occasional English word she is obliged to
+introduce, etc., yet all this is partially atoned for by the warm praise
+she subsequently accords him for his goodness to her and his
+disinterested friendship, by the poignant regret she expresses at
+parting with him,--perhaps wholly expiated by the high compliment she
+pays him of making her heroine fall in love with him, or the higher
+compliment it is suspected she paid him of falling in love with him
+herself. One who reads the strange history of passion in "Villette," in
+conjunction with her letters, "will know more of the truth of her stay
+in Brussels than if a dozen biographers had undertaken to tell the whole
+tale." Still, M. Heger can hardly be pleased by having members of his
+school set forth as stupid, animal, and inferior, "their principles
+rotten to the core, steeped in systematic sensuality," by having his
+religion styled "besotted papistry, a piece of childish humbug," and the
+like. Something of the displeasure of the family was revealed in the
+course of our conversation with Mdlle. Heger, but the specific causes
+were but cursorily touched upon. She could have no personal recollection
+of the Brontes; her knowledge of them was derived from her parents and
+the teachers,--presumably the "repulsive old maids" of Charlotte's
+letters. One teacher whom we saw in the school had been a classmate of
+Charlotte's here. The Brontes had not been popular with the school.
+Their "heretical" religion had something to do with this; but their
+manifest avoidance of the other pupils during hours of recreation,
+Mademoiselle thought, had been a more potent cause,--Emily, in
+particular, not speaking with her school-mates or teachers, except when
+obliged to do so. The other pupils thought them of outlandish accent and
+manners, and ridiculously old to be at school at all,--being twenty-four
+and twenty-six, and seeming even older. Their sombre and ugly costumes
+were fruitful causes of mirth to the gay young Belgian misses. The
+Brontes were not brilliant students, and none of their companions had
+ever suspected that they were geniuses. Of the two, Emily was considered
+to be the more talented, but she was obstinate and opinionated. Some of
+the pupils had been inclined to resist having Charlotte placed over them
+as teacher, and may have been mutinous. After her return from Haworth
+she taught English to M. Heger and his brother-in-law. M. Heger gave the
+sisters private lessons in French without charge, and for some time
+preserved their compositions, which Mrs. Gaskell copied. Mrs. Gaskell
+visited the _pensionnat_ in quest of material for her biography of
+Charlotte, and received all the aid M. Heger could afford: the
+information thus obtained was, we were told, fairly used. Miss Bronte's
+letters from Brussels, so freely quoted in Mrs. Gaskell's "Life," were
+addressed to Ellen Nussy, a familiar friend of Charlotte's, whose
+signature we saw in the register at Haworth as witness to Miss Bronte's
+marriage. The Hegers had no suspicion that she had been so unhappy with
+them as these letters indicate, and she had assigned a totally different
+reason for her sudden return to England. She had been introduced to
+Madame Heger by Mrs. Jenkins, wife of the then chaplain of the British
+Embassy at the Court of Belgium; she had frequently visited that lady
+and other friends in Brussels,--among them Mary and Martha Taylor and
+the family of a Dr. ---- (_not_ "Dr. John"),--and therefore her life here
+need not have been so lonely and desolate as it was made to appear.
+
+[Sidenote: The Garden]
+
+[Sidenote: School]
+
+The Hegers usually have a few English pupils in the school, but have
+never had an American. American tourists have before called to look at
+the garden, but the family are not pleased by the notoriety with which
+Miss Bronte has invested it. However, Mdlle. Heger kindly offered to
+conduct us over any portion of the establishment we might care to see,
+and led the way along the corridor to the narrow, high-walled garden. We
+found it smaller than in the time when Miss Bronte loitered here in
+weariness and solitude. Mdlle. Heger explained that, while the width
+remained the same, the erection of class-rooms for the day-pupils had
+diminished the length by some yards. Tall houses surrounded and shut it
+in on either side, making it close and sombre, and the noises of the
+great city all about it penetrated only as a far-away murmur. There was
+a plat of verdant turf in the centre, bordered by scant flowers and
+gravelled walks, along which shrubs of evergreen were irregularly
+disposed. A few seats were here and there within the shade, where, as in
+Miss Bronte's time, the _externats_ ate the lunch brought with them to
+the school; and overlooking it all stood the great pear-trees, whose
+gnarled and deformed trunks were relics of the time of the convent.
+Beyond these and along the gray wall which bounded the farther side of
+the enclosure was the sheltered walk which was Miss Bronte's favorite
+retreat, the "_allee defendue_" of her novels. It was screened by shrubs
+and perfumed by flowers, and, being secure from the intrusion of pupils,
+we could well believe that Charlotte and her heroine found here restful
+seclusion. The coolness and quiet and, more than all, the throng of
+vivid associations which filled the place tempted us to linger. The
+garden was not a spacious nor even a pretty one, and yet it seemed to us
+singularly pleasing and familiar, as if we were revisiting it after an
+absence. Seated upon a rustic bench close at hand, possibly the very one
+which Lucy had "reclaimed from fungi and mould," how the memories came
+surging up in our minds! How often in the summer twilight poor
+Charlotte had lingered here in solitude after the day's burdens and
+trials with "stupid and impertinent" pupils! How often, with weary feet
+and a dreary heart, she had paced this secluded walk and thought, with
+longing, of the dear ones in far-away Haworth parsonage! In this
+sheltered corner her other self, Lucy, sat and listened to the distant
+chimes and thought forbidden thoughts and cherished impossible hopes.
+Here she met and talked with Dr. John. Deep beneath this "Methuselah of
+a pear-tree," the one nearest the end of the alley, lies the imprisoned
+dust of the poor nun who was buried alive ages ago for some sin against
+her vow, and whose perambulating ghost so disquieted poor Lucy. At the
+root of this same tree one miserable night Lucy buried her precious
+letters, and meant also to bury a grief and her great affection for Dr.
+John. Here she leant her brow against Methuselah's knotty trunk and
+uttered to herself those brave words of renunciation, "Good-night, Dr.
+John; you are good, you are beautiful, _but you are not mine_.
+Good-night, and God bless you!" Here she held pleasant converse with M.
+Paul, and with him, spellbound, saw the ghost of the nun descend from
+the leafy shadows overhead and, sweeping close past their wondering
+faces, disappear behind yonder screen of shrubbery into the darkness of
+the summer night. By that tall tree next the class-rooms the ghost was
+wont to ascend to meet its material sweetheart, Fanshawe, in the great
+garret beneath yonder sky-light,--the garret where Lucy retired to read
+Dr. John's letter, and wherein M. Paul confined her to learn her part in
+the vaudeville for Madame Beck's _fete_-day. In this nook where we sat
+"The Professor" had walked and talked with and almost made love to
+Mdlle. Reuter, and from yonder window overlooking the alley had seen
+that perfidious fair one in dalliance with Pelet beneath these
+pear-trees. From that window M. Paul watched Lucy as she sat or walked
+in the _allee defendue_, dogged by Madame Beck; from the same window
+were thrown the love-letters which fell at Lucy's feet sitting here.
+Leaves from the overhanging boughs were plucked for us as souvenirs of
+the place; then, reverently traversing once more the narrow alley so
+often traced in weariness by Charlotte Bronte, we turned away. From the
+garden we entered the long and spacious class-room of the first and
+second divisions. A movable partition divided it across the middle when
+the classes were in session; the floor was of bare boards cleanly
+scoured. There were long ranges of desks and benches upon either side,
+and a lane through the middle led up to a raised platform at the end of
+the room, where the instructor's chair and desk were placed.
+
+[Sidenote: M. Paul]
+
+How quickly our fancy peopled the place! On these front seats sat the
+gay and indocile Belgian girls. There, "in the last row, in the quietest
+corner, sat Emily and Charlotte side by side, insensible to anything
+about them;" and at the same desk, "in the farthest seat of the farthest
+row," sat Mdlle. Henri during Crimsworth's English lessons. Here Lucy's
+desk was rummaged by Paul and the tell-tale odor of cigars left behind.
+Here, after school-hours, Miss Bronte taught Heger English, he taught
+her French, and Paul taught Lucy arithmetic and (incidentally) love.
+This was the scene of their _tete-a-tetes_, of his efforts to persuade
+her into his religious faith, of their ludicrous supper of biscuit and
+baked apples, and of his final violent outbreak with Madame Beck, when
+she literally thrust herself between him and his love. From this
+platform Crimsworth and Lucy and Charlotte Bronte herself had given
+instruction to pupils whose insubordination had first to be confronted
+and overcome. Here Paul and Heger gave lectures upon literature, and
+Paul delivered his spiteful tirade against the English on the morning of
+his _fete_-day. Upon this desk were heaped his bouquets that morning;
+from its smooth surface poor Lucy dislodged and fractured his
+spectacles; and here, seated in Paul's chair, at Paul's desk, we saw and
+were presented to Paul Emanuel himself,--M. Heger.
+
+[Sidenote: School Scenes]
+
+It was something more than curiosity which made us alert to note the
+appearance and manner of this man, who has been so nearly associated
+with Miss Bronte in an intercourse which colored her subsequent life and
+determined her life-work, who has been made the hero of her novels and
+has been deemed the hero of her own heart's romance; and yet we _were_
+curious to know what manner of man it was who has been so much as
+suspected of being honored with the love and preference of the dainty
+Charlotte Bronte. During a short conversation with him we had
+opportunity to observe that in person this "wise, good, and religious"
+man must, at the time Miss Bronte knew him, have more closely resembled
+Pelet of "The Professor" than any other of her pen-portraits: indeed,
+after the lapse of more than forty years that delineation still, for the
+most part, aptly applied to him. He was of middle size, of rather spare
+habit of body; his face was fair and the features pleasing and regular,
+the cheeks were thin and the mouth flexible, the eyes--somewhat
+sunken--were mild blue and of singularly pleasant expression. We found
+him aged and somewhat infirm; his finely-shaped head was fringed with
+white hair, and partial baldness contributed reverence to his presence
+and tended to enhance the intellectual effect of his wide brow. In
+repose his countenance showed a hint of melancholy: as Miss Bronte said,
+his "physiognomy was _fine et spirituelle_;" one would hardly imagine it
+could ever resemble the "visage of a black and sallow tiger." His voice
+was low and soft, his bow still "very polite, not theatrical, scarcely
+French," his manner _suave_ and courteous, his dress scrupulously neat.
+He accosted us in the language Miss Bronte taught him forty years ago,
+and his accent and diction honored her instruction. He was talking with
+some patrons, and, as his daughter had hinted that he was averse to
+speaking of Miss Bronte, we soon took leave of him and were shown other
+parts of the school. The other class-rooms, used for less advanced
+pupils, were smaller. In one of them Miss Bronte had ruled as monitress
+after her return from Haworth. The large dormitory of the _pensionnat_
+was above the long class-room, and in the time of the Brontes most of
+the boarders--about twenty in number--slept here. Their cots were
+arranged along either side, and the position of those occupied by the
+Brontes was pointed out to us at the extreme end of the room. It was
+here that Lucy suffered the horrors of hypochondria, so graphically
+portrayed in "Villette," and found the discarded costume of the spectral
+nun lying upon her bed, and here Miss Bronte passed those nights of
+wakeful misery which Mrs. Gaskell describes. A long, narrow room in
+front of the class-rooms was shown us as the _refectoire_, where the
+Brontes, with the other boarders, took their meals, presided over by M.
+and Madame Heger, and where, during the evenings, the lessons for the
+ensuing days were prepared. Here were held the evening prayers which
+Charlotte used to avoid by escaping into the garden. This, too, was the
+scene of Paul's readings to teachers and pupils, and of some of his
+spasms of petulance, which readers of "Villette" will remember. From the
+_refectoire_ we passed again into the corridor, where we made our adieus
+to our affable conductress. She explained that, whereas this
+establishment had been both a _pensionnat_ and an _externat_, having
+about seventy day-pupils and twenty boarders when Miss Bronte was here,
+it was after the death of Madame Heger used as a day-school only,--the
+_pensionnat_ being in another street.
+
+[Sidenote: The Confessional]
+
+The genuine local color Miss Bronte gives in "Villette" enabled us to be
+sure that we had found the sombre old church where Lucy, arrested in
+passing by the sound of the bells, knelt upon the stone pavement,
+passing thence into the confessional of Pere Silas. Certain it is that
+this old church lies upon the route she would take in the walk from the
+school to the Protestant cemetery, which she had set out to do that
+afternoon, and the narrow streets which lie beyond the church correspond
+to those in which she was lost. Certain, too, it is said to be that this
+incident is taken from her own experience. Reid says, "During one of the
+long holidays, when her mind was restless and disturbed, she found
+sympathy, if not peace, in the counsels of a priest in the confessional,
+who soothed her troubled spirit without attempting to enmesh it in the
+folds of Romanism."
+
+[Sidenote: The Cemetery]
+
+Our way to the Protestant cemetery--a spot sadly familiar to Miss
+Bronte, and the usual termination of her walks--lay past the site of the
+Porte de Louvain and out to the hills beyond the old city limits. From
+our path we saw more than one tree-shrouded farm-house which might have
+been the place of Paul's breakfast with his school, and at least one
+quaint mansion, with green-tufted and terraced lawns, which might have
+served Miss Bronte as the model for La Terrasse, the suburban home of
+the Brettons and the temporary abode of the Taylor sisters whom she
+visited here. From the cemetery we beheld vistas of farther lines of
+hills, of intervening valleys, of farms and villas, and of the great
+city lying below. Miss Bronte has well described this place: "Here, on
+pages of stone and of brass, are written names, dates, last tributes of
+pomp or love, in English, French, German, and Latin." There are stone
+crosses all about, and great thickets of roses and yews; "cypresses that
+stand straight and mute, and willows that hang low and still;" and there
+are "dim garlands of everlasting flowers." Here "The Professor" found
+his long-sought sweetheart kneeling at a new-made grave under the
+overhanging trees. And here we found the shrine of poor Charlotte
+Bronte's many pilgrimages hither,--the burial-place of her friend and
+school-mate, the Jessy Yorke of "Shirley;" the spot where, under "green
+sod and a gray marble head-stone, cold, coffined, solitary, Jessy sleeps
+below."
+
+
+
+
+LEMAN'S SHRINES
+
+_Beloved of Litterateurs--Gibbon--D'Aubigne--Rousseau--Byron--Shelley--
+  Dickens, etc.--Scenes of Childe Harold--Nouvelle Heloise--Prisoner of
+  Chillon--Land of Byron._
+
+
+[Sidenote: Haunts of Litterateurs]
+
+A pilgrimage in the track of Childe Harold brings us from the shores of
+Albion, by Belgium's capital and deadly Waterloo, along the castled
+Rhine and over mountain-pass to "Italia, home and grave of empires," and
+to the sublimer scenery of "Manfred," "Chillon," and the third canto of
+the pilgrim-poet's masterpiece; to his "silver-sheeted Staubbach" and
+"arrowy Rhone," "soaring Jungfrau" and "bleak Mont Blanc." We linger
+with especial pleasure on the shores of "placid Leman," in an enchanting
+region which teems with literary shrines and is pervaded with memories
+and associations--often so thrilling and vivid that they seem like
+veritable and sensible presences--of the brilliant number who have
+here had their haunts. Here Calvin wrought his Commentaries; here
+Voltaire polished his darts; here Rousseau laid the scenes of his
+impassioned tale; here Dickens, Byron, and Shelley loitered and wrote;
+here Gibbon and de Stael, Schlegel and Constant, and many another
+scarcely less famous, lived and wrought the treasures of their knowledge
+and fancy into the literature of the world. A lingering voyage round
+the lake, like that of Byron and Shelley, is a delight to be remembered
+through a lifetime, and affords opportunity to visit the spots
+consecrated by genius upon these shores. At Geneva we find the inn where
+Byron lodged and first met the author of "Queen Mab," the house in which
+Rousseau was born, the place where d'Aubigne wrote his history, the
+sometime home of John Calvin. Near by, in a house presented by the
+Genevese after his release from the long imprisonment suffered on their
+account, dwelt Bonnivard, Byron's immortal "Prisoner of Chillon," and
+here he suffered from his procession of wives and finally died. Just
+beyond the site of the fortifications, on the east side of the city, is
+an eminence whose slopes are tastefully laid out with walks that wind,
+amid sward and shrub, to the observatory which crowns the summit and
+marks the site of Bonnivard's Priory of St. Victor, lost to him by his
+devotion to Genevan independence. Not far away is the public library,
+founded by his bequest of his modest collection of books and MSS. which
+we see here carefully preserved. Here also is an old portrait of the
+prisoner, which represents him as a reckless and jolly "good fellow"
+rather than a saintly hero, and accords better with his character as
+described by late writers than with the common conception of him.
+
+[Sidenote: Byron at Villa Diodati]
+
+Byron loved this Leman lake, and it is said his discontented sprite
+still walks its margins; certain it is he remains its poetic genius; his
+melody seems to wake in every breeze that stirs its surface. The Villa
+Diodati, a plain, quadrangular, three-storied mansion of moderate
+dimensions, standing on the shore a few miles from Geneva, was the
+handsome "Giaour's" first home after his separation from Lady Byron and
+his exile from England. It had been the residence of the Genevan
+Professor Diodati and the sojourn of his friend the poet Milton.
+Pleasant vineyards surround the place and slope away to the water, but
+there is little in the spot or its near environment to commend it to the
+fancy of a poet. Byron's study here was a sombre room at the back from
+which neither the lake nor the snowy peaks were visible, and here he
+wrote, besides many minor poems, "Manfred," "Prometheus," "Darkness,"
+"Dream," and the third canto of "Childe Harold." Here also he wrote
+"Marriage of Belphegor," a tale setting forth his version of his own
+infelicitous marriage; but hearing that his wife was seriously ill, he
+burned it in his study fire. From here, by instigation of de Stael, he
+sent to Lady Byron ineffectual overtures for a reconciliation. His
+companion at the villa was an eccentric Italian physician, Polidori, who
+was uncle to the poet Rossetti, and who here quarrelled with Byron's
+guests and wrote "The Vampire," a weird production afterward attributed
+to Byron. Lovers of Byron owe much to his sojourn on Leman; he found in
+the inspiring landscapes here, especially in the environment of
+mountains, a power that profoundly stirred what his wife called "the
+angel in him." His letters recognize an afflatus breathed upon him by
+the "majesty around and above," and the quality of the poems here
+produced shows his yielding and response to that benign influence; many
+a gem of poetic thought was here begotten of lake and mount and
+cataract, which otherwise had never been. The insincere stanzas of some
+of his later poems would scarcely have been written on Leman. As we muse
+in the spots he frequented--wandering on the entrancing margins or
+floating on the crystal waters--and look thence upon the snow-crowned
+peaks, resplendent in the sunshine or roseate in the after-glow, we
+aspire to not only partake of his rapture in this sublime beauty, but to
+appreciate the deeper feelings to which it moved him.
+
+[Sidenote: Shelley]
+
+A villa near Byron's, and reached by a path through his grounds,--Maison
+Chapuis, of Mont Allegra,--was occupied that summer by the "impassioned
+Ariel of English verse," with Mary Shelley and her brunette relative
+Jane Clermont (the Claire of Shelley's journal), who after bore to
+Byron a daughter called Alba by the Shelleys, but later named by Byron
+Allegra, for the place where he had known the mother. At Mont Allegra
+"Bridge of Arve," "Intellectual Beauty," and Mrs. Shelley's weird
+"Frankenstein" were penned. Here Byron was a daily visitant, and the
+Shelleys were the usual companions of his excursions upon the lake of
+beauty, in a picturesque lateen-rigged boat which was the property of
+the poets and the counterpart of which we see moored by the Diodati
+shore, looking like a bit of the Levant transported to this tramontane
+water. The "white phantom" observed by telescopists on the opposite
+shore to sometimes embark with Byron, and which he gravely told Madame
+de Stael was his dog, was doubtless the frail Claire. The admonitions of
+de Stael anent his mode of life provoked Byron to take sure revenge by
+being attentive to her husband, which the overshadowing wife always
+resented as an affront upon herself. It is said the poet's observation
+of this pair prompted the couplet of "Don Juan:"
+
+  "But oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual,
+  Inform us truly, have they not henpecked you all?"
+
+[Sidenote: Voltaire--Gibbon--Dickens]
+
+Passing for the present the shrines of Ferney and Coppet, we find in
+picturesque Lausanne the quaint house in which Voltaire lived several
+winters, and not far away the place where Secretan died a few months
+ago. Gibbon's dwelling has been demolished, but we find the place of his
+summer-house where the great history was completed, and of his famous
+rose-tree where Byron gathered roses long ago. Madame de Genlis narrates
+this incident of the great "Decliner and Faller" at Lausanne: he was
+enamoured of the comely Madame Crousaz, and, finding her alone, he knelt
+at her feet and besought her love. He received an unfavorable reply, but
+remained in his humble posture until the lady, after repeatedly
+requesting him to arise, discovered that his weight made it impossible,
+and summoned a servant to assist him to regain his feet. His obesity
+seems to have been a standing jest among his acquaintances: a sufferer
+from indigestion, due to lack of exercise, was advised by a witty friend
+to "walk twice around Gibbon before breakfast." Several decades later
+another illustrious English man of letters sojourned in Lausanne. A
+pretty cottage-villa, with embowered walls and flower-shaded porticos
+which look from a mild eminence across the crescentic lake, was, in
+1846, the dwelling of Dickens, who here wrote one of the matchless
+Christmas stories and a part of "Dombey and Son." From the magnificent
+slope of Lausanne the whole lake region is visible, with the dark Juras
+rising to the western horizon, the Alps of Savoy, and "the monarch of
+mountains with a diadem of snow" upholding the sky away in the south. At
+the foot of this slope is the port-town of Ouchy, a resort of Byron's in
+his sailing excursions; at the plain little Anchor inn near the _quai_
+(Byron called it a "wretched inn") he lodged, and here, being detained
+two days (June 26 and 27, 1816) by a storm which overtook him on his
+return from Chillon and Clarens, he wrote the touching "Prisoner of
+Chillon." In a parsonage not far from Lausanne was reared sweet Suzanne
+Curchod, erst _fiancee_ of Gibbon, and later the mother of de Stael.
+
+[Sidenote: Rousseau]
+
+Eastward is "Clarens, birthplace of deep love," whose "air is the breath
+of passionate thought, whose trees take root in love;" about it lies the
+charming region which Rousseau chose for his fiction and peopled with
+affections, and where Byron, Houghton, and Shelley loved to linger. Here
+the latter first read "Nouvelle Heloise" amid the settings of its
+scenes; here Byron wrote many glowing lines, inspired by the beauty and
+romantic associations around him. From the vine-clad terraces which
+cling to the heights we behold the view which enraptured the poet,--a
+broad expanse of lacustrine beauty and Alpine sublimity, embracing the
+Leman shores from the Rhone to the Juras of Gex, the entire width of the
+"_bleu impossible_" lake and Alp piled on Alp beyond. Back of Clarens we
+find the spot of Rousseau's "Bosquet de Julie," and, at a little
+distance among embowering trees, the birthplace of a woman stranger than
+any fancied character of his fiction, the Madame de Warens of his
+"Confessions."
+
+[Sidenote: Prison of Chillon]
+
+Between Clarens and Villeneuve, on an isolated rock whose base is laved
+by Leman's waters, which "meet and flow a thousand feet in depth below,"
+stands the grim prison of Chillon, the scene of Byron's poem. The
+fortress is an irregular pile of masonry, and, with its massive walls,
+loop-holed towers, and white battlements, is a picturesque object seen
+across wide reaches of the lake. The present structure is a hoary
+successor to a stronghold still more ancient: the prehistoric
+lake-dwellers here had a fortress and were succeeded by the Franks and
+Romans. Of the present structure, the Romanesque columns and the range
+of dungeons are known to have been in existence in 830, when Count Wala,
+a cousin of Charlemagne, for alluding to the wife of Louis the Debonair
+as "that adulterous woman," was incarcerated here. Thus Judith's
+reputation was vindicated and the earliest certain date of this fortress
+fixed. The present superstructure remains unchanged since the
+thirteenth century. It is now connected with the shore by a wooden
+structure which spans the moat and replaces the ancient drawbridge.
+Through a massive gate-way we enter a roughly-paved court, whence a
+bluff Savoyard conducts us through the romantic pile. Among the
+apartments of the ducal family we see the banqueting-hall where the
+dukes held roistering wassail; the kitchen on whose great hearth oxen
+were roasted whole; the Chamber of Inquisition where hapless prisoners
+were tortured to extort confession, this room being near the chamber of
+the duchess, into which--despite its thick wall--the shrieks of the
+tortured must have sometimes penetrated and disturbed Her Serene
+Highness. Outside her door is a post to which the wretches were bound,
+and it is scored by marks of the irons which cauterized their flesh; in
+a near corner stood a rack which rent them limb from limb. The crypt
+beneath, with its low arched vaults and its graceful pillars rising out
+of the rock, is the most interesting portion of the fortress. Referring
+to their architectural perfection, Longfellow once said these were the
+"most delightful dungeons he ever saw," but as we stand in their
+twilight gloom the horrors of their history weigh heavily on the heart.
+During this century the castle has been used as an arsenal, but
+occasionally also as a prison, and Byron found some of these "chambers
+of sorrow" tenanted at the time of his visits. One contracted cell is
+that in which the condemned passed their last night of life chained upon
+a rock, near the beam upon which they were strangled and the opening
+through which their bodies were thrust into the lake. Another vault
+contains a pit or well, with a spiral stair down which poor dupes
+stepped into a yawning depth and--eternity. A third chamber, so dark
+that its grotesque carvings are scarcely discernible and no missal could
+be read by daylight, was the chapel of the fortress. Traversing the
+succession of dungeons, we come to the last and largest, and reverently
+stand beside the column where Byron's prisoner was chained. This
+"dungeon deep and old" lies not beneath the level of the lake, as Byron
+believed, yet it is sufficiently dank and dismal to be the appropriate
+scene of the touching and tragic story which he located here. It is a
+long, crypt-like apartment, whose vaulted roof of rock is upheld by the
+"seven pillars of Gothic mould" aligned along the middle. It is dimly
+lighted by loop-holes pierced in the ponderous walls for the feudal
+bowmen; through these narrow apertures, where the prisoner "felt the
+winter's spray wash through the bars when winds were high," we look out,
+as did he, upon the distant town, "the lake with its white sails," the
+"mountains high," and the little Isle de Paix--"scarce broader than the
+dungeon floor"--gleaming like an emerald from a setting of amethyst.
+Here is Bonnivard's chain, scarce four feet long, and in the central
+pillar the ring which held it. The light, falling aslant "through the
+cleft of the thick wall" upon the floor, shows us the pathway worn in
+the rock by the pacing of the prisoner during the weary years, and
+reveals--graven on the column-stone by the poet's hand--the name Byron.
+
+At Chillon we are in the midst of a region pervaded by the sentiment of
+the pilgrim-poet. The Byron path leads from the shore to the broad
+terraces of the Hotel Byron, whence we behold as in a picture the
+romantic scene his poetry portrays,--the "mountains with their thousand
+years of snow," the shimmering water of "the wide long lake," the dark
+slopes of the Juras terraced to their summits, the "white-walled towns"
+upon the nearer hill-sides. Directly before us--bearing its three tall
+trees--"the little isle, the only one in view," smiles in our faces from
+the bosom of the water; on the right we see sweet Clarens and the
+picturesque battlements of Chillon; on the left, the glittering peaks of
+Dent du Midi and the Alps of Savoy, with the "Rhone in fullest flow"
+between the rocky heights; while from the farther shore rise the cliffs
+of Meillerie, at whose base Byron and Shelley, clinging to their frail
+boat, narrowly escaped a watery grave on the very spot where St. Preux
+and Julia of "Nouvelle Heloise" were rescued from the same fate.
+
+[Sidenote: Rousseau and Byron scenes]
+
+Our farewell view of this Land of Byron is taken on a cloudless summer
+night, when the radiance of the harvest moon exalts and glorifies all
+the scene; the grim prison of Bonnivard is transformed into a snowy
+palace of peaceful delights, the white mountain-peaks gleam with the
+chaste lustre of pearls, the vine-embowered village on the shore seems
+an Aidenn of purity and light, and the sheen of the tremulous water is
+that of a sea of molten silver. Surely, on all her round, "Luna lights
+no spot more fair."
+
+
+
+
+CHATEAUX OF FERNEY AND COPPET
+
+_Voltaire's Home, Church, Study, Garden, Relics--Literary Court of
+  de Stael--Mementos--Famous Rooms, Guests--Schlegel--Shelley--
+  Constant--Byron--Davy, etc.--De Stael's Tomb._
+
+
+A literary pilgrimage on Leman's shores that did not include Ferney
+among its shrines would be obviously incomplete. No matter how widely we
+may dissent from his opinions or how much we may deplore some of his
+utterances, the brilliant philosopher who for so many years inhabited
+that spot and made it the intellectual capital of the world commands a
+place in letters which we may neither gainsay nor ignore, and the
+Chateau Voltaire is to many visitors one of the chief objects of
+interest in the neighborhood of Geneva.
+
+[Sidenote: Voltaire's Church--Mansion]
+
+Beneath a summer sky a delightful jaunt of a few miles, among orchards
+and vineyards and past the ancestral home of Albert Gallatin, brings us
+to Voltaire's domain in Gex. The mansion and town of Ferney were alike
+the creation of the _genius loci_; he was architect and builder of both.
+The town and its factories were erected to give shelter and employment
+to hundreds of artisans who appealed to him against oppressive
+employers at Geneva. The place has obviously degenerated since his time;
+an air of shabbiness and thriftlessness prevails, and ancient smells by
+no means suggestive of "the odors of Araby the blest" obtrude upon the
+pilgrim. At the public fountain stout-armed women were washing family
+linen manifestly long unused to such manipulation. Near by dwell
+descendants of Voltaire's secretary Wagniere. Upon a verdant plateau
+farther away, in the heart of one of the most beautiful regions of
+earth, "girdled by eighty leagues of mountains that pierce the sky," was
+Voltaire's last home. By its gate is the little church he built, bearing
+upon its gable his inscription "Deo Erexit Voltaire." Here he attended
+mass with his niece, and, as _seigneur_, was always incensed by the
+priest; here he gave in marriage his adopted daughters; here he preached
+a homily against theft; and here he built for himself a tomb, projecting
+into the side of the church,--"neither within nor without," as he
+explained to a guest,--where he hoped to be buried. The church was long
+used as a tenement, later it has been a storage- and tool-house. The
+chateau is a spacious and dignified three-storied structure of Italian
+style, attractive in appearance and well suited to one of Voltaire's
+tastes and occupations. The exterior has been somewhat altered, but the
+apartments of the philosopher are essentially unchanged. The late
+proprietor preserved the study and bedroom nearly as Voltaire left them
+when he started upon his fatal visit to Paris. They are small, with high
+ceilings, quaint carvings, faded tapestries, and are obviously planned
+to facilitate the work of the busiest author the world has known, who
+here, after the age of threescore, wrote a hundred and sixty works. Many
+of these assailed the church authorities, who had shown themselves
+capable of punishing mere difference of opinion by the rack and the
+stake, but "the religion of the Sermon on the Mount and the character of
+men of good and consistent lives" they did not attack: some of the books
+were cursed at Rome, some at Geneva, others were burned at both places.
+
+[Sidenote: His Rooms--Furniture]
+
+Disposed in Voltaire's rooms we have seen his heavy furniture; his
+study-chair standing by the table upon which he wrote half of each day;
+his beautiful porcelain stove, a gift from Frederick the Great; a draped
+mausoleum bearing an inscription by Voltaire and designed by his
+_protege_ to contain his heart; many paintings presented by royal
+admirers,--Albani's "Toilet of Venus," Titian's "Venus and Love," a
+picture of Voltaire's chimney-sweep, portrait of Lekain who acted so
+many of Voltaire's tragedies, portraits of that philosopher, a fanciful
+deification of him by Duplessis; on the same wall, coarse engravings of
+Washington and Franklin. Franklin was the firm friend of Voltaire, and
+it was his letters which first brought to Ferney news of the Declaration
+of Independence. The discolored embroidery of Voltaire's bed and
+arm-chair was wrought by his niece Madame Denis, "the little fat woman
+round as a ball." Habitually complaining of illness in his last years,
+he spent more than half his time in this quaint bed. He had a desk,
+containing writing materials, suspended above the bed so that he could
+write here day or night, and the amount of work he thus accomplished is
+astounding: in the last four years of feeble life he wrote thirty works
+varying in size from a pamphlet to a ponderous tome. His breakfast was
+served in bed, and here he habitually attended to his correspondence,
+which included most of the sovereigns of Europe and the learned and
+great of all climes. In this bed he once lay for weeks feigning mortal
+illness, and thus induced the priest to give him the _viaticum_. This
+bedroom, too, was the scene of many quarrels with his niece regarding
+her extravagances, but as we sit in his chair by his bedside we prefer
+to recall more pleasing incidents the room has witnessed; here he
+dictated to Marie Corneille the ardent words which brought reparation
+to many a cruelly wronged family; this was the scene of his many
+pleasantries with the house-keeper "Baba," and of the loving
+ministrations of his sweet ward "Belle et Bonne."
+
+Many of Voltaire's belongings have been removed and his estate has been
+shorn of its vast dimensions, but much remains to remind us of the
+genius of the place. Here are the gardens, lawns, and shrubberies he
+planted; on this turf-grown terrace beneath his study windows he paced
+as he planned his compositions, and here, at the age of eighty-three, he
+evolved "Irene" and parts of "Agathocles;" near by are his fount, his
+arbored promenade, the shaded spot where he wrote in summer days, the
+place of the lightning-rod made for him by Franklin. Long reaches of the
+hedge were rooted by him, many of the trees are from the nursery he
+cultured, the cedars were raised from seeds sent to him by the Empress
+Catherine. A venerable tree in the park was planted by Voltaire's own
+hands: when we point to a blemish upon its trunk and ask our guide,
+whose family have dwelt on the estate since the time of Voltaire, if
+that is the effect of lightning, as has been averred, he indignantly
+declares the only damage the tree ever sustained has been from visitors
+who, to secure souvenirs of the illustrious philosopher, would destroy
+the whole tree were he not alert to protect it.
+
+[Sidenote: An Intellectual Capital--Reminiscences]
+
+For twenty years this home of Voltaire was the centre and pharos of the
+intellectual world. To this court kings sent couriers with proffers of
+honors and assurances of esteem; hither came legions of _litterateurs_,
+academicians, politicians, eager to hail the savant or to secure his
+commendation. "All roads then led to Ferney as they once did to Rome,"
+and the hospitalities of the chateau were so taxed that Voltaire
+declared he was innkeeper for all Europe. He habitually complained of
+the climate here, "Lapland in winter, Naples in summer;" during some
+seasons "thirty leagues of snow were visible from his windows;" but on
+the July day of our visit the atmosphere is exquisitely delightful and
+Voltaire's "desert" seems a paradise. Behind us rise the vine-clad
+slopes of Jura, below lies the lake like an amethystine sea, afar gleam
+the snow-crowned peaks, and about us in the old gardens are the golden
+sunshine, the incense of flowers, the twitter of birds, and all the
+charm of sweet summer-time. As we linger in the spots he loved it is
+pleasant to recall the good that mingled in the oddly composite nature
+of the daring old man who inhabited this beautiful scene and created
+much of its beauty; to remember that dumb creatures loved him and fed
+from his hand; that the destitute and oppressed never vainly applied to
+him for succor or protection; that in varying phrase he solemnly
+averred, in letters of counsel to youthful admirers in his own and other
+lands, "We are in the world only for the good we can do."
+
+Of the galaxy of _litterateurs_ who had home or haunt by Leman's margins
+Madame de Stael, by her long residence and many incidents of her career,
+seems most closely associated with this region of delights. The chateau
+of Coppet has for two centuries belonged to her family; here some
+portion of her girlhood was passed; here she found asylum from the
+horrors of the French Revolution and residence when Napoleon banished
+her from his capital. Later her son Auguste dwelt here, and the place is
+now the property of her great-granddaughter. Literary and social
+associations render this mediaeval chateau one of the most interesting
+spots on earth. Exiled from the society of Paris, de Stael erected here
+a court which became the centre of intellectual Europe. Coppet was in
+itself a lustrous microcosm whose attraction was the conversation of its
+hostess and queen, which allured the wit and wisdom of a continent,
+making this court not only a literary centre, but a political power of
+which Napoleon, by his proscriptions, proclaimed his fear. The great
+number of illustrious courtiers who came to Coppet caused the priestess
+of its hospitalities to aver she needed "a cook whose heels were
+winged."
+
+[Sidenote: Home of de Stael]
+
+The darkly-verdured terraces of Jura on the one hand, the blue waters
+and the farther snowy peaks on the other, fitly environ the enchanting
+scene in the midst of which was set the abode of the greatest woman of
+her time. From Geneva a charming sail along the lake conveys us to her
+home and sepulchre. We approach the chateau between rows of venerable
+trees beneath which de Stael loitered with her guests. The stately
+edifice rises from three sides of a court, whence we are admitted to a
+large hall on the lower floor which she used as a theatre. These walls,
+which give back only the echo of our foot-falls, have resounded with the
+applause of fastidious auditors when the queen of Coppet, with her
+children and Recamier, de Sabran, Werner, Jenner, Constant, Von Vought,
+or Ida Brun acted upon a stage at yonder end of the room. The
+composition of plays for this theatre was sometime de Stael's principal
+recreation: these have been published as "Essais Dramatiques." But more
+ambitious dramas were presented; the matchless Juliette acted here with
+Sabran and de Stael in "Semiramis;" Werner assisted in the first
+presentation of "Attila," which was written here; Constant's
+"Wallenstein" was composed here and first produced on this stage, as was
+also Oehlenschlaeger's "Hakon Jarl." De Stael was an efficient actress,
+her lustrous eyes, superb arms, and strong and flexible voice
+compensating for deficiencies of training. A broad stair leads from the
+silent theatre to the principal apartments, among which we find the
+library where Necker wrote his "Politics and Finance," the grand salon
+and reception-rooms,--all of imposing dimensions and having parquetted
+floors. Arranged in these rooms are many mementos of the daughter of
+genius who once inhabited them,--hangings of tapestry; antique
+spindle-legged furniture carved and gilded in quaint fashion; the
+cherub-bedecked clock that stood above her desk; her books and inkstand;
+the desk upon which "Necker," "Ten Years of Exile," "Allemagne," and
+many minor treatises were written. Upon the wall is her portrait, by
+David, which pictures her with bare arms and shoulders, her head crowned
+by a nimbus of yellow turban which she wore when costumed as "Corinne:"
+the features are not classical, but the brunette face, with its splendid
+dark eyes, is comely as well as intellectual, and obviously contradicts
+Byron's declaration, "She is so ugly I wonder how the best intellect of
+France could have taken up such a residence." Schaeffer's portrait of
+her daughter hangs near by, displaying a face of striking beauty, and a
+picture of Madame Necker, de Stael's mother, represents a sweet-faced
+woman who smiles upon the visitor despite the discomfort of a painfully
+tight-fitting dress of white satin. Here also are portraits of Necker,
+of de Stael's first husband, of her son Auguste, of Schlegel, and of
+other literary _confreres_, a statue of her father, by Tieck, and a bust
+of Rocca, her youthful second husband. The latter represents a
+finely-shaped head and a winning face. Byron thought Rocca notably
+handsome, and Frederica Brun testified, "he had the most magnificent
+head I ever saw." He was so slender that one of de Stael's courtiers
+wondered "how his many wounds found a place upon him:" these wounds,
+received in the Peninsula, won for him the sympathy of de Stael, which
+deepened into love.
+
+[Sidenote: Memorable Rooms--Mementos]
+
+As we wander through the rooms, waking the echoes and viewing the
+souvenirs of the illustrious dead, as we ponder their lives, their aims,
+their works, it seems, amid the vivid associations of the place, to
+require no supernal effort of the fancy to repeople it with the
+brilliant company who were wont to assemble here. Of these apartments,
+the salon, from whose wall looks down the portrait of Corinna, will
+longest hold the pilgrim. It was the throne-room of this court: here
+resorted a throng of the best and noblest minds, _litterateurs_,
+scientists, men of largest thought, of highest rank. Here Recamier was a
+frequent guest: yonder mirror, with its multipanes framed in gilt metal,
+often reflected her lovely face. In this room she danced for the delight
+of de Stael her famous gavotte, which had transported the _beau monde_
+of Paris, and was rewarded by its celebration in "Corinne." Some who
+came to this court remained as residential guests: for fifteen years
+Sismondi worked here upon his "Literature of Southern Europe," etc.;
+here the sage Bonstetten wrote many of his twenty-five volumes; here
+Schlegel, the great critic of his age, who is commemorated in "Corinne"
+as Castel-Forte, was installed for twelve years and prepared his works
+on dramatic literature; here Werner, author of "Luther," "Wanda," etc.,
+wrote much of his mystic poetry; here the Danish national poet composed
+his noblest tragedies, "Correggio" being a souvenir of Coppet; here
+Constant penned many dramas. Among the frequenters of this salon were
+Madame de Saussure, famous for her books on education; Frederica Brun,
+with her daughter Ida who is imaged in "Allemagne;" Sir Humphry and Lady
+Davy, the latter being the realization of "Corinne;" Madame de
+Kruedener, author of "Valerie," from whom Delphine was mainly drawn;
+Barante the critic; Dumont, editor of Jeremy Bentham. Of those who came
+less often were Cuvier, Gibbon, Ritter, Lacretelle, Mirabeau, Houghton,
+Brougham, Ampere, Byron, Shelley, Montmorency, Wynona, Tieck, Mueller,
+Candolle, de Sergey, Prince Augustus, and scores of others.
+
+[Sidenote: Literary Court and Courtiers]
+
+This room, where that galaxy assembled, has witnessed the most wonderful
+intellectual _seances_ of the century. We may imagine something of the
+brilliancy of an assembly of such minds presided over by de Stael,--what
+gayety, what coruscations of wit, what displays of wisdom, what keenness
+of discussion were not possible to such a circle! For some time
+religious tenets were frequently under consideration. Every shade of
+belief, doubt, and agnosticism had its defenders in the company.
+Sismondi was corresponding with Channing of Boston, whose views he
+espoused, and the arrival of each letter caused the renewal of the
+argument in which de Stael was the principal advocate of the spiritual
+motive of Christianity as against a system of mere well-doing. All
+questions of literature, art, ethics, philosophy, politics, were
+considered here by the most capable minds of the age, the discussions
+being oft prolonged into the night. But that there may be too much
+even of a good thing is naively confessed by Bonstetten, one of the
+lights of these _seances_, in his letters: "I feel tired by surfeit of
+intellect: there is more mind expended at Coppet in a day than in many
+countries in a year, but I am half dead." Scintillant converse was
+interspersed with music from the old harpsichord in yonder
+corner,--touched by fingers that now are dust,--with recitations and
+reading of MSS. It was the habit of de Stael to read to the circle, for
+their criticism, what she had written during the morning, and to discuss
+the subsequent chapters. Guests who were writing at the chateau then
+read their compositions--Bonstetten's "Latium" often put the company to
+sleep--and eagerly sought de Stael's suggestions; "the lesser lights
+were glad to borrow warmth and lustre from the central sun."
+Chateauvieux declares, "She formed my mental character; for twenty years
+my sentiments were founded upon hers." Sismondi says, "She determined my
+literary career; her good sense guided my pen." Bonstetten, Schlegel,
+Werner, and others bear similar testimony to the value of her counsel.
+
+[Sidenote: Byron, Shelley, etc.]
+
+The place was never more animated than in the last summer of her life,
+when Byron and Shelley used to cross the lake to join the circle in this
+room. De Stael had met Byron in London during the ephemeral
+"Byron-madness," and now, in his social exile, her doors were freely
+open to him: his letters testify "she made Coppet as agreeable as
+society and talent can make any place on earth." Here he first saw
+"Glenarvon," a venomous attack upon him which seems to have served no
+purpose save to illustrate the aphorism about "a woman scorned," its
+authoress having been notoriously importunate for Byron's favor, even
+attempting, it was said, to enter his apartments in male attire. In this
+salon Mrs. Hervey, the novelist, feigned to faint at Byron's approach:
+from the balcony outside these windows, where de Stael and her father
+stood and saw Napoleon's army cross the Swiss frontier, Byron looked
+upon the scene which inspired some of his divinest stanzas. The chateau
+was a busy place in those years: a guest writes from here, "In every
+corner one is at a literary task; de Stael is writing 'Exile,' Auguste
+and Constant a tragedy, Sabran an opera, Sismondi his 'Republics,'
+Bonstetten a philosophy, and Rocca his 'Spanish War.'"
+
+One noble chamber hung with dim tapestries is that erst occupied by
+Recamier: it had before been the sick-room of Madame Necker and the
+scene of her husband's loving care of her, which de Stael so touchingly
+records. The chamber of de Stael is near by, its windows overlooking
+her sepulchre: here she wrote the books which made her fame; here she
+instructed her children, their Sabbath lessons being from the devout
+treatises of her father and a Kempis's "Imitation of Christ," the book
+she read in her own dying hours. A smaller room, looking out upon the
+park, the terraces of Jura, and the white walls of Lausanne, was shared
+by Constant and Bonstetten. In the tower above have been found letters
+written by Gibbon to his _fiancee_, who became the mother of de Stael:
+they have been published by the grandson of de Stael, and show that the
+conduct of the great "Decliner and Faller" toward the then poor girl was
+thoroughly selfish and unscrupulous.
+
+[Sidenote: Tomb of Necker and de Stael]
+
+The rooms are renovated and the place is offered for rent, but nothing
+is destroyed. The formal park at the side of the chateau is little
+changed: along yonder wooded aisle and upon this _allee_ between prim
+patches of sward the de Stael walked with her guests in the summers of
+long ago; upon the seat beneath this coppice, beside this placid pool,
+or on the margin of yonder brooklet from the top of Jura, they lingered
+in brilliant converse till the stars came out one by one above the
+darkening mountains. These--the mute, soulless inanimates--remain, while
+the illustrious company that quickened and glorified them all has
+vanished from human ken. Some rods distant from the chateau, shaded by
+a sombre grove and bounded by a hoary wall, is the picturesque chapel in
+which Necker is laid with his wife, to whose tomb he, for many years,
+daily came to pray. In the same crypt the mortal part of de Stael rests
+at his feet; the portal was walled up at her burial and eye hath not
+since seen her sepulchre. A stone which marks the grave of her son
+Auguste, and lies on the threshold of that sealed portal, is fittingly
+inscribed, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?"
+
+Beyond the closed gate we pause for a parting view of the scene, now
+flooded with sunshine, and as we leave the place we carry thence that
+resplendent vision embalmed in a memory that will abide with us forever.
+As I write these closing lines I see again that summer sky, cloudless
+save for the fleece floating above Jura like that which the bereaved
+Necker fancied was bearing the soul of his wife to paradise. I see again
+the glimmering water; the mountains with their tiaras of snow, sending
+back the sunbeams from their shining peaks like reflections from the
+pearly gates that enclose the Celestial City; and, amid this sublime
+beauty, the gleaming sycamores that sway above the tomb of "the
+incomparable Corinna."
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Abbotsford,--Scott,--161.
+
+  Addison, 15, 19, 30, 36, 91.
+
+  Akenside, 16, 25.
+
+  Andersen, Hans Christian, 55, 57.
+
+  Annesley Hall and Park, 71-77.
+
+  Aram, Eugene;
+    Scenes, 111, 144-147.
+
+  Arbuthnot, 16, 36.
+
+  Arnold, Dr. and Matthew, 92.
+
+  Astell, Mary, 30.
+
+
+  Bacon, 21.
+
+  Baillie, Joanna, 15.
+
+  Barbauld, Mrs., 14, 16.
+
+  Besant, 15, 18.
+
+  Bolingbroke, 37.
+
+  Bolton Abbey, 143.
+
+  Bonnivard, Francis, 227.
+
+  Bowes, Dotheboys, 106.
+
+  Braddon, Miss, 38.
+
+  Brontes, The, 68;
+    Brussels, 134, 207;
+    Haworth, 121;
+    Scenes and Characters of Tales, 121, 124, 126, 127, 129, 135,
+      207-225.
+
+  Brown, Oliver Madox, 32.
+
+  Brussels,--Villette,--Bronte Scenes, 207.
+
+  Bulwer,--Eugene Aram,--144-147.
+
+  Burns;
+    Alloway, 181;
+    Dumfries, 164;
+    Ellisland, 171;
+    Grave, 165;
+    Haunts,--Scenes of Poems,--164, 165, 166, 170, 171, 178, 181, 196,
+      200, 205;
+    Heroines, 185, 190, 194;
+    Niece, 183.
+
+  Butler, Samuel, 91.
+
+  Byron;
+    Annesley, 71;
+    Coppet, 250;
+    Harrow, 69;
+    Newstead, 80;
+    Leman, 226-237;
+    London, 62;
+    Scenes of Poems, 69, 72-77, 80-90, 226, 232, 233, 251;
+    Tomb, 70.
+
+
+  Caine, Hall, mentioned, 32.
+
+  Campbell, 66, 68.
+
+  Canning, 64.
+
+  Carlyle, Birthplace, 162;
+    Homes, 33, 162, 167;
+    Sepulchre, 163.
+
+  Chaucer, 24, 25, 50.
+
+  Chaworth, Mary Ann, 71-79.
+
+  Chelsea, 29-37.
+
+  Chillon, 233.
+
+  Clarens,--Rousseau,--232.
+
+  Coleridge, 19, 106;
+    Grave, 22;
+    Home, 21.
+
+  Collyer, Robert, Early Haunts, 136.
+
+  Colwick Hall,--Chaworth-Musters,--78.
+
+  Congreve, mentioned, 15, 30, 37.
+
+  Constant, 245, 246, 248, 251, 252.
+
+  Cooling,--Great Expectations,--57.
+
+  Coppet,--Madame de Stael,--244.
+
+  Coventry,--George Eliot,--102.
+
+  Coxwold,--Sterne,--113.
+
+  Crabbe, mentioned, 19, 66.
+
+  Craigenputtock,--Carlyle,--167.
+
+  Crockett, S. R., 178.
+
+  Cunningham, Allan, 164.
+
+
+  Davy, Sir Humphry, mentioned, 155, 159, 248.
+
+  Denham, mentioned, 40.
+
+  De Quincey, mentioned, 21, 62.
+
+  De Stael, 159, 228, 230;
+    Home and Sepulchre, 244.
+
+  Dickens, 13, 19, 20, 24, 28, 34, 230;
+    Gad's Hill, 49;
+    Scenes of Tales, 18-20, 22, 24-28, 54, 57-61, 64, 106.
+
+  Donne, John, 35, 36.
+
+  Dorset,--Shaftesbury,--15, 36.
+
+  Dotheboys,--Nicholas Nickleby,--106.
+
+  Douglas, Poet of Annie Laurie, 175-179.
+
+  Du Maurier, 18, 20.
+
+  Dumfries,--Burns,--164.
+
+  Dyer, 91.
+
+
+  Ecclefechan,--Carlyle,--162.
+
+  Eliot, George, 31, 143;
+    Birthplace, Early Homes, 93;
+    Grave, 23;
+    Scenes and Characters of Fiction, 93, 95-103.
+
+  Emerson, 34, 104, 169, 170.
+
+  Erasmus, mentioned, 36.
+
+
+  Fairfax, Edward, 137, 142.
+
+  Falstaff, 50, 55, 56, 58.
+
+  Ferney,--Voltaire,--238.
+
+  Fields, James T., 55, 59.
+
+  Foston,--Sydney Smith,--149.
+
+  Froude, 33.
+
+
+  Gad's Hill,--Dickens, Shakespeare,--49.
+
+  Gaskell, Mrs., 101, 130, 131, 215, 223.
+
+  Gay, 15, 30, 33, 34.
+
+  Geneva, 227.
+
+  Gibbon, 39, 63;
+    On Leman, 231, 232, 249, 252.
+
+  Goldsmith, mentioned, 18.
+
+  Gray,--Scene of Elegy,--39.
+
+
+  Hampstead, Literary, 13.
+
+  Harridan, Mrs., 15.
+
+  Harrow,--Byron,--18, 69.
+
+  Haworth,--The Brontes,--121.
+
+  Hawthorne, 68, 71, 184.
+
+  Hazlitt, mentioned, 19, 21, 170.
+
+  Herbert, George, 36.
+
+  Heslington,--Sydney Smith,--148.
+
+  Highgate, Literary, 21.
+
+  Highland Mary,--Homes, Scenes, Grave,--195.
+
+  Hogarth, 19.
+
+  Hogg, mentioned, 161.
+
+  Hood, mentioned, 19, 68.
+
+  Hook, Theodore, 26, 37.
+
+  Hunt, Leigh, 18, 19, 21, 34, 68.
+
+
+  Ilkley,--Collyer, etc.,--137.
+
+  Irving, Edward, mentioned, 164, 170.
+
+  Irving, Washington, 66, 71, 72, 76, 83, 86, 89.
+
+
+  Jackson, Helen Hunt, mentioned, 184.
+
+  Jeanie Deans, 167.
+
+  Jeffrey, Francis, 149, 154, 155, 170.
+
+  Johnson, Dr., 15, 18, 25, 34.
+
+
+  Keats, 15, 16, 19, 25.
+
+  Keighley,--Bronte, Collyer,--121, 136.
+
+  Kensal Green, Graves of Literati, 68.
+
+  Kingsley, 35.
+
+  Kit-Kat Club, 15.
+
+
+  Lake Leman,--Literary Shrines,--226-253.
+
+  Lamb, mentioned, 19, 21.
+
+  Landon, Letitia E., 30.
+
+  Laurie, Annie, Birthplace and Homes, 172, 176;
+    Grave, 177;
+    Song, 180.
+
+  Lausanne,--Gibbon, Dickens, etc.,--230.
+
+  Livingstone, 81, 82, 84, 86.
+
+  Loamshire of George Eliot, 93.
+
+  Locke, 36.
+
+  London, 13, 17, 24, 45, 62, 119, 148.
+
+  Longfellow, alluded to, 55, 142, 234.
+
+
+  Macaulay, 64, 155, 158, 159.
+
+  Maclise, 19, 31, 34, 55.
+
+  Marvell, 21.
+
+  Maxwelton,--Annie Laurie,--173.
+
+  Melrose,--Scott,--161.
+
+  Miller, Joaquin, 71, 83.
+
+  Milton, 39, 228.
+
+  Mitford, Miss, mentioned, 30.
+
+  Montagu, Mary Wortley, 21, 31, 62.
+
+  Moore, 64, 67.
+
+  Mulock, Miss,--John Halifax Scenes,--92.
+
+  Murray, John,--Drawing-Room,--66.
+
+
+  Newburgh,--Sterne,--118.
+
+  Newstead Abbey,--Byron,--80.
+
+  Nidderdale,--Eugene Aram,--143.
+
+  Niece of Burns, 183;
+    quoted, 196, 204.
+
+  Nithsdale,--Burns, Scott, Carlyle,--164.
+
+  Nuneaton,--Milby of Eliot,--101.
+
+
+  Pepys, 30, 31.
+
+  Pope, 14, 15, 18, 21, 30, 37, 38.
+
+  Porter, Jane, 39.
+
+
+  Ramsay, Allan, 178.
+
+  Richardson, 16, 37.
+
+  Rochester,--Dickens,--54, 60, 61.
+
+  Rogers, mentioned, 15, 143.
+
+  Rokeby,--Scott,--109.
+
+  Rossetti, 23, 229;
+    Home and Friends, 31, 32.
+
+  Rousseau, 227;
+    Scenes of Fiction, 232, 233, 237.
+
+  Rugby,--Hughes, Arnold,--92.
+
+  Ruskin, mentioned, 34.
+
+
+  Schlegel, 248.
+
+  Scott;
+    Abodes and Resorts, 64, 66, 109, 161, 172;
+    Scenes and Characters, 109, 161, 167, 172.
+
+  Shakespeare, 25, 50, 91, 92, 93.
+
+  Shelley, 19, 21;
+    Leman, 227, 229, 232, 237, 250.
+
+  Shepperton Church and Parsonage, 98.
+
+  Smith, Sydney, 68;
+    Yorkshire Homes and Church, 148.
+
+  Smollett, 30, 33, 34.
+
+  Somervile, 91.
+
+  Somerville, Mrs., 29.
+
+  Southey, mentioned, 21, 106.
+
+  Southwark,--Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens,--24.
+
+  Stanley, H. M., 88, 184.
+
+  Steele, 14, 15, 19, 30, 33, 36.
+
+  Sterne, 34;
+    Grave, 120;
+    Home and Study, 112, 113, 115;
+    Resorts, 113, 118.
+
+  Stoke-Pogis,--Gray,--39.
+
+  Swift, 15, 30, 36, 37.
+
+  Swinburne, 32, 33.
+
+
+  Tennyson, 33, 39.
+
+  Thackeray, 18, 68, 104, 120.
+
+  Turner, 37, 142, 143.
+
+
+  Voltaire, Chateau and Study, 238.
+
+
+  Waller, 39, 46.
+
+  Walpole, 15, 30.
+
+  Walton, mentioned, 36.
+
+  Watts, Theodore, 32.
+
+  Wilde, Oscar, 35.
+
+  Wordsworth, 15, 21, 106, 143, 161.
+
+  Wuthering Heights, 129.
+
+
+  York,--Sterne, etc.,--111.
+
+  Yorkshire Shrines, 106, 111, 121, 136, 148.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+  LITERARY SHRINES:
+
+  THE HAUNTS OF SOME FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS.
+
+
+  BY THEO. F. WOLFE, M.D., Ph.D.,
+
+  Author of "A Literary Pilgrimage," etc.
+
+  Illustrated with four photogravures.
+  12mo. Crushed buckram, gilt top, deckel edges, $1.25;
+  half calf or half morocco, $3.00.
+
+
+  CONTAINS, AMONG OTHERS, CHAPTERS TREATING OF
+
+  CONCORD: A Village of Literary Shrines.
+
+  THE OLD MANSE.
+
+  THE HOMES OF EMERSON AND ALCOTT.
+
+  HAWTHORNE'S "WAYSIDE."
+
+  THE WALDEN OF THOREAU.
+
+  IN LITERARY BOSTON.
+
+  OUT OF BOSTON: Cambridge--Elmwood--Mt. Auburn--"Wayside Inn"--Brook
+  Farm--Webster's Marshfield--Homes of Whittier, Hawthorne's Salem,
+  etc.
+
+  IN BERKSHIRE WITH HAWTHORNE: The Graylock Region--Middle and Lower
+  Berkshire--Haunts of Hawthorne, Thoreau, Bryant, Melville, Sedgwick,
+  Kemble, Holmes, Longfellow, etc.
+
+  A DAY WITH THE GOOD GRAY POET.
+
+
+  UNIFORM WITH "A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE."
+
+
+  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, Publishers,
+
+  PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+
+
+  BY CHARLES CONRAD ABBOTT.
+
+
+  THE BIRDS ABOUT US.
+
+  Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.
+
+
+  TRAVELS IN A TREE-TOP.
+
+  12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+
+  RECENT RAMBLES; OR, IN TOUCH WITH NATURE.
+
+  Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.
+
+
+  A COLONIAL WOOING.
+
+  12mo. Cloth, $1.00.
+
+
+  "Dr. Abbott is a kindred spirit with Burroughs and Maurice Thompson
+  and, we might add, Thoreau, in his love for wild nature, and with
+  Olive Thorne Miller in his love for the birds. He writes without a
+  trace of affectation, and his simple, compact, yet polished style
+  breathes of out-of-doors in every line. City life weakens and often
+  destroys the habit of country observation; opportunity, too, fails
+  the dweller in cities to gather at first hand the wise lore
+  possessed by the dweller in tents; and whatever sends a whiff of
+  fresh, pure, country air into the city house, or study, should be
+  esteemed an agent of intellectual sanitation."--_New York
+  Churchman._
+
+
+  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY,
+
+  PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+
+
+  BY ANNE HOLLINGSWORTH WHARTON.
+
+
+  THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS.
+
+  With a number of Colonial Illustrations from Drawings specially made
+  for the work. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+  "It is a pleasant retrospect of fashionable New York and
+  Philadelphia society during and immediately following the
+  Revolution; for there was a Four Hundred even in those days, and
+  some of them were Whigs and some were Tories, but all enjoyed
+  feasting and dancing, of which there seemed to be no limit. And this
+  little book tells us about the belles of the Philadelphia
+  meschianza, who they were, how they dressed, and how they flirted
+  with Major Andre and other officers in Sir William Howe's wicked
+  employ."--_Philadelphia Record._
+
+
+  COLONIAL DAYS AND DAMES.
+
+  With numerous Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
+
+  "In less skilful hands than those of Anne Hollingsworth Wharton's,
+  these scraps of reminiscences from diaries and letters would prove
+  but dry bones. But she has made them so charming that it is as if
+  she had taken dried roses from an old album and freshened them into
+  bloom and perfume. Each slight paragraph from a letter is framed in
+  historical sketches of local affairs or with some account of the
+  people who knew the letter writers, or were at least of their date,
+  and there are pretty suggestions as to how and why such letters were
+  written, with hints of love affairs, which lend a rose-colored veil
+  to what were probably every-day matters in colonial
+  families."--_Pittsburg Bulletin._
+
+
+  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY,
+
+  PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+  Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from
+    the original.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE AMONG THE
+HAUNTS OF FAMOUS BRITISH AUTHORS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 38890.txt or 38890.zip *******
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