Stratford—Shakspeare.

Only nine miles to Stratford-upon-Avon! With what a flush of delighted expectation I climbed the coach, and left the Warwick Arms, in the hope of beholding with my eyes, in less than two short hours, the home of Shakspeare, and that world-famous church to which he bequeathed his bones! And yet there was something like a misgiving at the heart. My imagination had been familiar, for years, with a certain ideal of Stratford, that had grown into my whole structure of thought concerning Shakspeare and his times. It had been constructed from here a print, and there a traveller’s tale, and had taken life and beauty from detached anecdotes, and little inklings of historic light, that had come sweetly to me from my boyhood, in some inexplicable manner. In part the product of enthusiastic study, when college oil, that should have been burned in honour of Euclid, and Napier, and Newton, was stealthily sacrificed at the shrine of the great master of the human heart, I had possessed for years, a Stratford of my own; a pet village of my soul, such as Shakspeare should have lived in: and now—in a few hours, all this was to be deposed forever; dull realities were to eclipse the brilliant picture of the fancy, and thenceforth I must know only the Stratford of fact. Would the realization pay me for the downfall of the vision? Alas! what is life but a continual balance between loss and gain; what pleasure do we acquire, without the sacrifice of something almost as sweet? How long the boy looks at his bright penny before he gives it for the toothsome sugar-plum; and how often the bright penny comes back to him, as the substantial wealth, of which the moment’s gratification has deprived him.

As the coach began to draw near Stratford, I found myself greatly excited; and every object began to assume a sort of conscious connection with immortal genius. The very road,—but much more the trees,—and even more, those features of the landscape which might be supposed unchanged by the lapse of centuries, seemed instinct with their past communion with a great creative mind. His spell was on them. He had once been familiar with these scenes. He had gathered many an image, many a thought, and, I doubt not, many a refreshing hope, from intercourse with their spring and summer beauties; and they had been not less instructive to him, perhaps, in the season of the sere-leaf, or in that of the wintry wind. Yonder was Charlecote—beyond the Avon: its park still stretching thro’ the vale, and hiding the old historic hall. But the thought of that juvenile deer-stalking, gave speaking life to even the distant scene. There is some sensitive principle in our nature, to which such associations so powerfully appeal, that nothing is more real, for a time, than the communion we hold with departed greatness, through the medium of objects with which it was once conversant. This reality I never felt so strongly as now. At last we came in sight of that “star-ypointing pyramid”—the spire of Stratford. The gentle tumult of feelings with which it ruffled my inmost nature, for a moment, and the calm enjoyment that succeeded, were enough to pay me for crossing the Atlantic.

I was duly set down at the Red Horse Inn, and ushered into the trim little parlour, and even into the elbow-chair, of which I had read, aforetime, in the pages of Geoffrey Crayon. Mine host readily recognizes an American, and never fails to produce, on such an occasion, the “sceptre” of the said Geoffrey, wherewith he once poked the coals, in the smoking grate of said parlour, and, for a tranquil moment, was “monarch of all he surveyed.” Indeed, if Shakspeare reigns in Stratford, it must be allowed that the Red Horse is, nevertheless, the principality of Crayon, and that it is rapidly rising into a formidable rivalship of New Place, and the Guildhall, on the strength of Crayon’s reputation, to say nothing of the landlord’s ale. In short, no visitor to Stratford has ever left there such a lasting impression of his footsteps, as our own delightful Irving: and it was pleasant, indeed, thus, at the very threshold of my visit, to find, even in the broad glare of Shakspeare’s glory, the star of our countryman revolving steadily in its own peculiar orbit, and shining as no mean satellite of that great central sun of Anglo-Saxon literature.

I should be a bold man, indeed, to attempt to add anything to Irving’s description of Stratford-upon-Avon. I have only the adventures of my day to tell of, and they were few and simple. I followed in the beaten track to the old tumble-down cottage, which is called the birth-place of Shakspeare, and which was doubtless the scene of his infancy. I recognized at once, the original of many a well-thumbed print, and of many a descriptive page. Timber from the forest of Arden; clay from the bed of the Avon; sticks and mud at best compose the nest in which the Mighty Mother brought the immortal Swan to light. It was once a better nest than now. A butcher has degraded it to serve as shambles, and it has yet the appearance of a stall for meat, although it is no longer used, except as a relic, the show-woman being its only tenant. Here, in spite of its transmutations, you cannot but fancy the elder Shakspeare, “with spectacles on nose,” sitting in the spacious chimney, and teaching little Will his alphabet, or telling him, beside the winter’s fire, of the “mysteries” he had seen played, near by, at Coventry, when he was a boy. Through the door, you seem yet to see the marvellous urchin, with his satchel, creeping unwillingly to school: or, back he comes, with shining face, to tell that the Queen’s players have just arrived from London, to play “Troy-town,” at the Guildhall! Here, at all events, day after day went over that mysterious young head, filling it with impressions, not one of which ever seems to have escaped it, and preparing its tenant genius to be the great bridge between old and modern England, by means of which, feeling, as well as fact, runs on continuously, in the line of English History, and gives it a unity and a vitality which the annals of other nations lack. Oh, strange, immortal, universal Will! How supernatural the interest that hangs about thine every step, from the cradle to the grave.

You ascend a few creaking stairs, and you are in the very room where the first of his Seven Ages was, no doubt, duly signalized by himself, “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.” How many lives have been the mere pendants of the life that here flickered in its first lighting, and which a puff of air might have put out—the world none the sadder for its loss! Yet now, how supreme the dominion of that one soul, these scribbled walls attest; where vulgar enthusiasm is not more legible, than that of the worldly great, of foreign scholars and sovereign princes, and of intellectual autocrats scarce less imperial than Shakspeare himself. How powerful the inspiration of the genius loci, is best proved by the fact that among the scribblings one reads the autograph of Walter Scott. Verily, there is no fame like Shakspeare’s! Subduing, as he does, the instincts of all classes alike, and entering as he does, into the sympathies of all nations, he must be regarded less as a man of genius, than as a noble instrument of God, for subordinating human passions and affections to some superior purpose of His own, perhaps not yet conceived. The rise of a Christian literature, and that the purest which the world has ever possessed, is dated from the age of which he was the bright peculiar star; and the whole Anglo-Saxon race must ever recognize in him the original master of many of its forms of thought, a rich contributor to its idiom and language, and the constructor of some of its strongest sentiments of civilization, of morals, and of religion.

The site of the New Place is occupied by a solid mansion, which, devoid of interest in itself, commands a moment’s attention, as occupying the spot on which Shakspeare’s prosperous days were passed, and which was emphatically his home. All that remains of him, in this place, and its immediate neighbourhood, is nevertheless soon seen and dismissed, as nothing but the enthusiasm of an idolator would detect anything specially attractive in a statue set up by Garrick at the Town Hall, and a few other memorials, too minute, or too modern, to deserve much delay in their inspection. I reserved my raptures for the walk to Shottery. Striking into the fields, I pleased myself with the conviction that air and earth are still very much the same in them, as when the boy Shakspeare played truant, and sported among their sweets. The birds and the flowers are still as gay as when he preferred to learn their lessons, rather than the schoolmaster’s; and when I turned into a shady lane, all green and white with hawthorn, or plucked the peas’ blossom in the upland, or the buttercup and daisy in the meadow, I felt sure that his foot had fallen where they grew, and that they had given him pleasure, and taught him morals, which the world has willingly taken at second-hand, and will never “willingly let die.” Yes, the very labouring oxen, and the pasturing cows, seemed to me of a superior breed. Short-horn, or Devonshire, or whatever they may be to the farmer, they were, in my esteem, not less than Shaksperean beef fed on the grass of Stratford, and feeding my imagination with images of the animated nature of the same scenery, as it was three hundred years ago. I came to several pretty farm cottages, with shrubbery in their little door-yards, and at one of these I knocked, thinking it must be Anne Hathaway’s; but the damsel who opened the door seemed not much flattered by the inquiry, for Anne, though she was Shakspeare’s wife, was not an honest woman, by the parish register, and has little honour in her own village. However, the damsel pointed out my way, with milk-maid courtesy, and away I went with traveller-like apologies. Here, then, at last, was the scene of Will’s discreditable courtship; and here, if they deceived me not, descendants of the Hathaways live still. The house is in two parts, like nave and chancel in ecclesiastical architecture; timbered and plastered, like the birth-place aforesaid, and thatched in the picturesque style so dear to Crayon artists and sketchers; its little windows peeping out of the straw, like sharp eyes under the shaggy brows of an old pensioner, sunning himself in front of an ale-house. I am glad to say that roses, and other flowers, were duly set about the cottage, as one which I plucked, and brought away, bears witness. They showed me some old Hathaway furniture, and among others an enormous bedstead of Elizabethan date, on which, they would have me believe, that many of the poet’s dreams had visited him. There was also an ancient oaken chair: and finally, some bed and table linen was taken out of an old chest. It was evidently homespun, and they believed it to be Anne’s work, as well as property. With this view of the matter, however, the initials E. H. did not entirely agree, and although I was inclined to yield this objection at the moment, when credulity was allowable, I do not now flatter myself that I have seen the bedstead or the bed-clothes of Shakspeare. It is something better that I have seen the Church in which he was christened, and where he now lies, under the chancel; and where he was taught to pray; and where he often knelt, one would fain believe, in true contrition; and where he learned, from some lowly parson, unknown to fame, many of those sublime and gospel verities, which have given, even to his poorer themes, their savor of immortality.

The avenue of limes which leads to the church-porch, is rather stiff than otherwise. The “way to Parish Church” was probably unpaved, and perhaps unshaded, when Will tottered over it, to be catechised; or when, in maturer years, he sought the House of God with reverence, among the multitude that kept holy day. The Church itself is of Anglo-Norman date, and was originally such in its architecture, but has frequently been altered and repaired, at various periods. It is cruciform, and would be not unworthy of a visit for its own sake. The churchyard is full of graves, and the Avon flows under its walls. I sat there, for nearly an hour, quite alone, trying to grasp the full idea of the spot. A lubberly scow came paddling along on the turbid river; and the rooks started up, and then lighted upon the old gray tower; and some sheep came nibbling among the graves; and finally, two or three children ran about me, and kept me company, for awhile; but oh! how unconscious seemed all these of the great reality of the place, and how still and solemnly the poet slumbered on, in his sepulchre, unconscious of this prosy nineteenth century, which thus wags on without him. I took out my tablets in a sort of reverie; wrote down the date, and scribbled on at random, as follows: ‘Here, in the churchyard of Stratford, I am sitting on the stone-wall, which defends it from the Avon, and at the foot of which, its fringe of flags grows rank, amid the slime. The sun, through the half-misty atmosphere, is falling tenderly on the limes; birds are singing; a rook cawing; nobody is near, but the breeze whispers, socially, through the elms overhead. How still the old spire points up to heaven! How dearly the grass clings to the tower and belfry, growing there in every “coigne of vantage!” And this quiet old chancel, too! Within these walls was Shakspeare made a member of Christ, and here he waits the Judgment. Oh, Will! how much for thee imports the Scripture, “by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned!”’

The old legendary sexton of Irving’s visit has passed away, and another reigns in his stead. Availing myself of his keys, I excused him from any further effort of his tongue, and surveyed the solemn interior in peace. Here, too, the hand of restoration has been freshly at work, and has set the holy house in order. The Church which enfolds the tomb of Shakspeare is dedicated to the Holy Trinity—the God who made him, and whom he adored. The meagre god of unbelief would never have filled such a soul as his, or moved him to kneel down; but how often that overwhelming Mystery of Faith must have thrilled him here, as he repeated the creed, or chanted the Te Deum! At last I stood before the famous bust, and looked upon that sublime forehead, and those composed features, and said to it silently those brotherly lines of Milton, which the sight brings naturally to mind. Then I read the inscription, and spelled out, letter by letter, the words of that imprecatory verse, in which Shakspeare’s self is as legible as anything else. “Good friend, for Jesu’s sake,” etc.—Amen, was my response. It was a moment to remember, but not to describe.

I next tried to satisfy myself as to the sense of Mistriss Hall’s epitaph, which is ambiguous; and on which the inspection of the original throws little additional light. It tells us first, that she was “witty above her sexe,” and second, that she was “wise to salvation,” and then adds:

Now, of course, this him must mean her Saviour, with whom she is in Paradise; yet, it may mean, for all that, her father Shakspeare; and the question is, was not the ambiguity a quaint conceit, and intended to be a doublet? If so, as it has often struck me, whatever we may think of its taste, it is an important testimony to the maturer character of the poet; since its secondary meaning would be, to give it in paraphrase—that her wit had something in it of Shakspeare, but that her piety was wholly learned of her father, with whom she now reaps its reward. Now if we exclude this idea, it would almost seem to force us into the sad reverse; for certainly, as it is first read, it seems to imply that she was not indebted to her father for any of her religion, though she was for her wit. Of course, it may be answered, that wisdom unto salvation is so exclusively from Christ, as its meritorious cause, that nothing else is to be taken into account, as its instrument; but is this the sole idea of the verse? Very likely; and yet after all, I wonder that its ambiguous character has never attracted the attention of the many who have raked and scraped the very dust of Stratford for something rich and strange. Certain it is, that, like many readings of Shakspeare himself, it wants but a change of emphasis, from word to word, to give two or three different senses, any one of which is tolerable, although it is an intolerably bad epitaph, after all.

I believe the droppings of this Church of Stratford bedew the works of Shakspeare, from the first sonnet to the last play, and that here he was schooled to that strict law of his dramas, which runs through all, and by which he always “shows virtue her own feature, and scorn her own image,” instead of fitting the mask of propriety upon the front of shame. More than all, it was here that he learned that reverence for the name of Jesus, with which he so often embalms his pages, and which so often makes them melodious to a believer’s ear and heart. How much, too, the first and second lesson out of “the Bishop’s Bible”—how much the Epistle and Gospel, and the Psalter, taught him, not only of sonorous English, but of Christian doctrine and morals! I am sure these influences may be detected in his works; and as I looked at the very spot where his young idea was taught to shoot toward heaven, I felt that this was the sublimest association of the place. Here once (my fancy suggested) he may have heard in the lesson for the day—suffer chyldren to come unto Me, and then, a few verses afterwards, he must have been struck with the contrast, when the parson read on—it is easier for a camell to go thorow a nedle’s eye, etc. He was now a prosperous man, and had just purchased New-Place, and obtained a grant of Arms. His conscience therefore pricked him with the question—Was he one of the rich men for whom admission into heaven was to be so hard? The parson mounted the pulpit, and quoted much learned stuff out of Sir John Maundeville, to explain the orientalism of the lesson: and among other things, he threw out the idea that the postern gate of an Eastern city was so small, that it was impossible for a beast of burthen to pass through it, and was usually called “the needle’s eye,” and hence the force of the comparison. All this, Shakspeare, who was thinking his own thoughts, heard only incoherently, and he got a somewhat confused idea of the postern and needle; but being, just then, at work on his Richard the Second, he goes home, and puts his Sunday reverie into the mouth of his hero, thus:—

Such at least is the story, which this passage suggests to me as, very possibly, the way in which it came to him. I often trace to a similar source, that is, to the open Scriptures, and the vernacular services of the Church of England, the innumerable Siloan streams which freshen and even sanctify his verse. The great themes of redemption may be found richly illustrated in many passages; and I think I could select from his works enough of sacred poetry to fill a little volume, and one fit to be kept as a companion to the Prayer-Book and the Christian Year. I cannot credit the scandal that Shakspeare died of a debauch, nor do I believe he was less than an ordinary Christian. While the secrets of his heart are with his God, we may at least, in Christian charity, believe that the friend of publicans and sinners may have seen in him a practical dependence upon that Atonement which, by the mouth of Portia, he has preached so well:—

As I departed, I plucked a branch of ivy from the Church wall, near the spot where his dust awaits the resurrection. It was brought home with me to America—the land in which he has more readers than anywhere else in the whole world. How little he foresaw this, when in compliment to James the First, he recorded (if the passage be his own) the prediction that James should “make new nations;” adding—what proves rather true of himself—

A threatening rain prevented my walking to Charlecote, but I went away contented. I was inclined to indulge a little in Jacques’ vein, and the melancholy clouds began to favour us with congenial tears, as—reduced to sober prose—I made my way in the storm, on the top of a stage-coach, through what was once the Forest of Arden.

Haddon Hall—Chatsworth—Shrewsbury—Chester.

After renewing my acquaintance with the hospitable friends at B——, with whom I had passed my Easter, I made an excursion into Derbyshire, with an episodical trip to Nottingham. My chief attraction to this latter place was that of an invitation from sundry relatives of my B—— friends to visit them, though the town is certainly well worthy of being visited for itself. For the sake of poor Kirke-White, one would wish to hunt up his lowly birth-place, and some would say that Newstead Abbey deserves a traveller’s homage. In fact, the Park and Abbey are the great charm of the neighbourhood, to most visitors; but I must own that I could not bring myself to make a pilgrimage to the scene of those orgies for which it is chiefly distinguished. On making some such remark to a worthy ex-magistrate of the borough, I was struck with the downright English common sense of his reply,—“You are quite right”—said he—“no one thinks much of Lord Byron, in these parts, where he was known; he cheated the tradesmen with whom he had dealings, and made himself so odious, that when his remains were brought through Nottingham, to be buried, we could not make up our minds to pay him any honours!” So much for romance and misanthropy! Genius, without honour and morality, is despicable indeed: and one even doubts the sentimental refinement of the man, of whom an intimate friend and companion could say, with anything like epigrammatic truthfulness, that “he cried for the press, and wiped his eyes with the public.”

A visit to the castle, and its caves, to which my reverend friend from B—— conducted me, well repaid us for our walk to the eminence on which it stands in ruins. It belonged to the late Duke of Newcastle, and was burned, as I remember very well, during the Reform riots, by an infuriate mob: but it is supposed, that the stiff old aristocrat whom they meant to injure, was very well pleased with the outrage. He did not inhabit it; he was well reimbursed for his loss; and was relieved from the tax of keeping up an unnecessary residence. The caves which undermine the castle, are famous for their historical connection with the story of the “She-wolf of France:” for through them was made the entrance into the fortress, which resulted in the arrest of Isabella and her paramour. They still point out a certain cave, as Mortimer’s; but the whole rock is riddled by fissures and loop-holes, and appears to be very soft and friable. From the summit one gets a beautiful view of Clifton-grove and the Vale of Trent; and on another side of Belvoir Castle, (pronounced Beaver,) the seat of the Duke of Rutland. The “Field of the Standard” is near the castle, and I surveyed, with deep feeling, the spot where King Charles set up his ensign, to be torn down by the storm the same night, and to be even more unfortunate, in the issue, than the omen seemed to require. After a visit to a few of the churches and public buildings, and a single night under one of its roofs, I was off to Derbyshire.

With Derby itself I was not long detained, though I cannot but remember, with pleasure, the acquaintance I formed there with several very agreeable persons. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Derby is the historical reminiscence, that here the progress of the Stuart standard was finally, and forever arrested. It is surprising that “Royal Charlie” ever succeeded in pushing his invasion to this point: but thus much he effected, in the fatal ’45, and the spot where he was lodged, in Derby, is still shown by the townsfolk, with interest, if not enthusiasm.

Even railway glimpses of Derbyshire give one many pleasurable emotions, abounding as it does in beautiful valleys and streams, and in abrupt rocky hills—jocosely described by Walton, as frightful and savage, to such a degree that he affects surprise at the sight of a church among them, and asks whether there be verily any Christians in such a country. When, at last, I found myself strolling along the Wye, and conversing with an angler, in the green mead, just within sight of the battlements of Haddon Hall, all the delicious nature and good humour of old Izaak came upon me, and observing that nothing near me seemed to be of modern fashion, I was almost transported back two centuries, and fancied myself for a moment at his side, learning, like Venator, to love angling, and so to weather the evil days of Cromwell—studying to be quiet in that vocation, and to mind my own business, as the apostle doth enjoin. It had been my purpose to visit Dove-dale, in honour of Walton, but this I found impracticable, and the nearest I could come to it was now realized. Blessings on his worthy memory! for though I be not an accepted brother of the angle, having never enjoyed great luck when I have gone a fishing, yet do I allow the art all honour, and do consider it the becoming recreation for a Churchman; admitting its connection with the catechism, and saying Amen to divers other postulates of Walton, of like grave and self-evident character.

I must own that I found Haddon Hall of considerably less dimensions than I had foreshadowed to my fancy. I had supposed its smallest chamber one of those gigantic apartments, in which candles and fire-light must strive in vain to throw their illumination from the chimney-piece to the opposite wainscot; or in which a nocturnal guest might find the freest exercise of imagination, in looking after noises, towards the dark distance, from the lamp at his bedside, of the waving hangings and creaking doors. It is not altogether such a house as that; and yet if there be a better site for the residence of a ghost, or a troop of them, I have never seen it. Your nervous man should never try to lodge there. It is stripped of nearly all its furniture, save only such as is requisite to give full effect to midnight sounds and mysterious moanings. Its history is lost in that of the dim and traditionary ages of the Plantagenets; the windows of its lonely chapel bear the date 1427; and the last touches of the builder were given to it at least three hundred years ago. There it stands—a relic of the domestic architecture of feudal England. Here are turreted and embattled gate-ways, and quadrangular courts, enclosed as if to stand a siege. The kitchen is designed for the largest hospitality; spits, dressers and chopping block, all speaking of the bountiful housekeeping of the olden time—to say nothing of the vast chimneys, which seem made to roar with Christmas fires perpetually. You ascend a great stair-case, on which it seems almost profane to set a modern foot, so entirely does it bespeak its ancient right to be trodden by the doughty and dainty steps of lords and dames, in the attire of by-gone centuries. You enter a room hung with antique tapestry, now ready to drop into tatters. You push-to the old squeaking doors, and drop these hangings, and it no longer appears how you got in, or how you may get out. You understand at once the allusions of many an old play, and almost expect to find some thievish figure lurking behind the arras. Hangings they truly are, for hooks are built into the wall, and to these the arras are attached. But the “Long Gallery” is the place in which a ghost would naturally air himself. It is wainscoated and floored with oak, and ornamented with various carved devices and emblems, such as the rose, and the thistle, and the boar’s head; and then it has deep recessed window-seats and oriels; and some of them look out on the sunny terraces of the garden, and suggest vague ideas of romance, and create phantom ladies of olden time, to fill up the scene, and rich illustrative stories to make them interesting. No doubt real hearts have throbbed here with high and tender emotions: and events which we know only as the dry details of history, have filled these silent chambers with notes of joy or sorrow, with the wail of the widow or the forlorn maiden, or with the voice of the bridegroom and the bride. The stately Elizabeth is said to have once figured in this gallery, at a ball.

The architecture of the great hall is severely antique, and suggests a rude and uncivil age, in spite of its air of dignity and hospitality. The men who dined here evidently wore swords, and the loving-cup and health-drinking were no mere ceremonies; the party who drank, as he lifted his arm, looking narrowly at the friend who stood up to guard him. A hand-cuff which is fastened to the wood-work seems to hint that guests were sometimes troublesome after taking plenty of sack. I could think of nothing but Twelfth-night revels in this curious old place, adorned as it is with the antlers of stags that were hunted long ago, and whose venison once smoked on the board.

The terraced gardens, with their shades, and balusters, and steps, and walks, and portals, are in keeping with all the rest, and the tale of the Lady Dorothea Vernon, and of her mysterious elopement, is enough to fill them with the charm of romance. From one of the towers you look down upon the whole range of roofs and courts, and then gaze far away over a beautiful view of the vale of Haddon. Before you depart you are shown some ancient utensils belonging to the place, such as jack-boots, and match-locks, and doublets. These are kept in the apartment of my reverend brother, the domestic chaplain, whoever he may have been; but whether he had any use for such things I cannot bear testimony. The adjoining chapel in which he officiated is very small, and quite plain. The ancient piscina, beside the altar, tells its simple story of the rites which, according to the mediæval liturgy of England, hallowed it of yore. It conjured up before my fancy the midnight mass of Christmas, as described by Scott—

It was, at any rate, no Tridentine Eucharist, though it was a mutilated one; and sad as were the scenes of debauchery with which those solemnities are associated, I could not but trust that, even here, Christ crucified had been truly worshipped, of old, on the solemn feast of his Nativity, and on many other occasions of Christian joy or penitence. Who would not cling to such communion with ancient piety? And yet this natural sympathy, when morbidly developed, has done more than all things else together, to bewitch the imaginative with Romanism, and to make them slavish captives to a Church which has retained nothing mediæval except that newfangled creed, to which the departed spirit of Mediæevalism has bequeathed none of its poetry, and which only exists as the inanimate slough of its superstition.

The same clipped and artificial beauty belongs to the neighbouring village of Edensor, and the whole seems the more unreal as contrasting violently with the natural features of this wild and ruggedly beautiful country. I am glad to have seen Chatsworth, but I should not care to see it again, though the desolate Haddon Hall never recurs in my memory, without awakening fresh longings to be once more in Derbyshire, and to saunter again along its rushing Wye.

With my visit to Matlock Bath, I was much better satisfied. Here indeed is Derbyshire, in spite of spruce inns and fashionable boarding-houses. I scampered over the hills, (having first climbed them with more pleasure than fatigue,) and went from view to view with increasing transports. This region is all cliff and ravine, and precipice and chasm; yet in every direction the eye is refreshed and delighted, and the mind takes pleasure alike in thinking that it is scarcely English scenery, and that it is yet strikingly unlike anything but England after all! These sharp outlines, and bold walls of rock, for example, you say are somewhat Swiss; but as you look over them, towards the horizon, you see that their foliage and their verdure are English, absolutely; and then, looking down the chasm, at your feet, you see a trim and neat little village, and houses set in gardens, and peeping out from shrubbery, and especially a church, altogether such as no one ever sees save in England only! I entered the Speedwell mine, and went through the usual experiments with lights amid the spar, but, on the whole, the subterranean part of Matlock was what I liked least about it. I felt lonely, however, in enjoying my ramble about so beautiful a place, and the company of certain loved ones in America was longed for over and over again to make it all that I desired. From this delightful place I made my way to Shrewsbury.

Beautiful is Shrewsbury, without and within! Its spires and its towers give you far-off promise of a place worthy of the traveller’s halt, and when you enter its old-fashioned streets, you are not disappointed. I found the market-place, with its hall and surrounding mansions, quite as unmodernized as those of towns in the north of France. The projecting gable of many an old timbered house confronts you as you go hither and thither through the borough, and very often the woodwork of such houses is fancifully arranged and ornamented, in a manner highly effective and picturesque. Their modern tenants paint the timbers with grave, but appropriate colours, and whitewash the plastered walls which intervene, thus bringing out the full design of the ancient architect in a neat and striking manner. I saw, in one of the streets, a chair carried by bearers, precisely as in Hogarth’s prints, and which seemed to have been in use ever since Hogarth’s day. Its occupant was a portly female, who might have graced the Court of Queen Anne, so far as her appearance was concerned, and what with such an apparition, in a place altogether so antique, I found myself for a moment quite in doubt whether the nineteenth century were actually in existence, with its many inventions.

I went through the beautiful and finely-wooded field called the Quarry, and the walk called St. Chad’s, and crossed one of the bridges over the Severn to the Abbey Church. Here I found some interesting monuments and architectural curiosities; and the neighbourhood seemed to abound in similar relics of what must once have been a very large conventual establishment. At St. Mary’s, there was a Jesse-window and some tombs, which afforded me a gratifying occupation for awhile; then the ruins of an old castle, such as they are, attracted me; and, though last, not least, the fragments of a very ancient church, being merely its chancel, dedicated to St. Chad. The school in which Sir Philip Sydney was reared, and where Fulke Grevil became his friend, still swarms with the ingenuous youth of England, and I encountered them at every turn, in the highways and by-ways of the town. What an element of education it must be of itself for a lad to be sent to a school that has such a history! Such thoughts made me faint of heart for a moment, when I felt the irreparable poverty of my own country in historical associations. The inestimable dowry of a glorious antiquity can never mingle its ennobling qualities with our national character. We may, and we do, enjoy immense compensations; but what reflective American does not give way at times to a melancholy sense that he has indeed “no past at his back,” and that God has isolated him involuntarily, by this great fact, from the fellowship of nations! “But here comes a Shrewsbury boy,” said I, amid such thoughts, “what cares he for Sydney, more than an ordinary American lad at school?” Sure enough! Why then be sentimental? It is, after all, only a certain class of minds, that receives powerful impressions from anything past or future: and I believe an American youth can enjoy such impressions effectively, by means of a healthful imagination, while an English youth may often find it hard to divest the realities with which he is daily conversant, of the degrading effects of familiarity. Such is my calmer judgment.

I tasted the famous “Shrewsbury cakes” at the station-house, and having spent several hours “by Shrewsbury clock,” in this pleasing survey of the old borough, I left it with regret, purposing to return, and to make excursions from it to a neighbouring seat to which I had been kindly invited, and also to Hodnet, which I greatly desired to see, in honour of the gentle and beloved Heber. In these plans, however, I was disappointed. As you leave Shrewsbury for the north, you gain a most agreeable view of the town, which stands on a fair peninsula in the bright embrace of the Severn. It is a place full of poetry. On one side are the Welsh Mountains; on the other, amid Salopian fields, you descry the columnar monument of Lord Hill; but the tall spires and the Abbey Tower tell more eloquently of Hotspur.

At Chirk station a Welsh family entered the train, gabbling their consonants most unintelligibly; but I soon discovered from their adieus, and their tears and sighs, that they were emigrants going to Liverpool to ship for America. This stirred up a warm home-feeling: I found that one of them could talk English, and I was not long in finding a way to their hearts. They were going to Wisconsin, and were very willing to be advised on ordinary matters. I tried, also, to impress them with my own ideas of the privileges they might enjoy under the care of the Nashotah Missionaries; but I fear they were dissenters, as the Welsh peasantry too often are, and that my endeavours to add to the burthens of my esteemed brethren of that diocese were quite unavailing. I slept that night at Chester.

But I despair of describing Chester. Elsewhere in England you meet with ancient houses and picturesque streets; but Chester is all antiquity. What you would go miles to see, when in search of the quaintly beautiful, is here multiplied before you in almost every house. In the first place it is a walled town. I made the circuit of the walls in the morning, with constant emotions of astonishment; for they are in good repair, and seem even yet to have their use, whereas, I had imagined them to be mere relics of the past. I came to the Tower upon the wall, from the summit of which Charles the First beheld the total rout of his army. It is a mere watch-tower; but as the memorial of a great event, it would be hard to imagine a monument more striking. There is much more to interest the passenger as he goes on, looking now into houses built into the wall like swallows’ nests, and now into church-yards, and now into a race-course, and again into a river: but a thoughtful tourist, and especially one from America, will find it hard to think of anything but that Tower, and the mighty issues which were once deciding before it, in view of an august and awfully interested spectator. Poor King! as he descended from it, what must have been his emotions?

The streets of Chester are said still to preserve the outlines of the Roman camp, from which the town derives its name. They are a great curiosity in themselves, and seem to have been cut down into the rock, while the houses were reared on the banks, above the level thus obtained. And such houses! Gable after gable, timbered, pargetted, enriched with carving, and jutting over the street—each one “a picture for painters to study!” And where are the trottoirs, or side-walks? Lo! the houses all run down to the carriage-way; but what should be their front rooms, above the basement floor, are mere verandahs, through the whole line of which freely walks the public, always under cover, and always at home! These “rows” (even more than the walls) are the feature of Chester which most strikes the stranger; especially as the opposite houses, which he beholds in passing through them, are full of curious objects for any one whose eye delights in the antique. On one, for example, are rich emblematic or fanciful decorations and carvings; on another, a scene from Scripture history is cut in uncouth style; while another bears the legend: God’s providence is mine inheritance, 1652. A good inheritance always, but especially in Cromwell’s time. The guide-book says, that in the great plague of the year thus designated, this house was the only one which the destroying angel did not visit. Hence the pious inscription.

But there is no doing justice to old Chester, on a tourist’s page. Its cathedral is a poor one, and so crumbling are its walls and buttresses, that every shower washes down a plentiful soil, from the decomposing stone. I lingered without weariness, however, in its aisles and cloisters, and must say that its service was sung delightfully, although the singers were few, and the clergy fewer still. The same disgraceful poverty and lifelessness, which I had remarked elsewhere, characterized the visible force of the establishment; and I could not but say to myself, if this feeble performance is, nevertheless, so edifying and effective, what might not be the blessed result of a vitalized cathedral body, serving God night and day in His Temple, as God should be always served, in this rich and ancient Church of an empire which professes to be Christian, and which God has so unspeakably exalted among the nations of the earth.

The other ecclesiastical objects of the town were duly visited, and then I took a boat on the Dee, and was rowed toward Eaton Hall, which I finally reached on foot, after a walk through the surrounding park. This was, till very lately, regarded as the finest possible specimen of modern Gothic, in the domestic line, and a vast amount of Cockney admiration has been wasted on it. I found it undergoing repairs, which must greatly improve it; but, after all, it is a meagre thing, when one has seen the Gothic of the cathedrals, or of such a castle as Kenilworth. I did not see much of the interior, as visitors were necessarily excluded, in favour of the workmen; and so after visiting the conservatories, and various outlying dependencies of this great house, I left it, not greatly overwhelmed with what I had seen. I was better pleased with my return voyage, on the Dee, and with the river-view of Chester.