We followed a main road almost due south from Cheltenham through Painswick, Stroud and Nailsworth, gray old towns lying deep in the hills. At Painswick is a fine Perpendicular church, so much restored as to present a rather new appearance. The churchyard has a wonderful array of carefully clipped yew trees, perhaps a hundred in all, though no one, says local tradition, can count them twice the same—a peculiarity also ascribed to the monoliths at Stonehenge. Close to the church walls are the ancient stocks, in this case forged from heavy iron bars and presenting an air of staunch security that must have struck terror to the hearts of old-time culprits; and the rough stone slab upon which the offenders were seated still remains in place.

Stroud is a larger and better-appearing town, whose ten thousand inhabitants depend mainly upon the manufacture of English broadcloths. The whole section, in fact, was once the center of cloth manufacture, but the advent of the steam engine and more modern methods superseded the watermills. All about are half-ruined factory buildings, some of them once of vast extent, with shattered windows and sagging roofs. Here and there one has survived in a small way or has been adapted to some other industry. In the neighborhood are many country houses, once the residences of wealthy cloth-makers, but now either deserted or turned into farm tenements.

The country is hilly and wooded, and we had few points of vantage that afforded views more picturesque and far-reaching than from some of the upland roads overlooking these Gloucestershire landscapes. The road sweeps around the hills, rising at times far above the valleys, affording a panorama of the Avon gleaming through the dense green foliage that half conceals it. The vale presents the most charming characteristics of rural England. One sees the irregular patchwork of the little fields, the great parks with their sunny meadowlands and groups of ancient trees, the villages lying in the valleys or clinging to the hillsides, and the gray church towers that lend a touch of majesty and solemn sentiment to almost every glimpse of Britain.

We missed the main road from Bath to Wells, wandering through a maze of unmarked byroads, and were able to proceed only by frequent inquiry. We did not regain the highway until just entering the town and had been a comparatively long time in going a short distance. After a few minutes’ pause to admire the marvelous west front of the cathedral, with its endless array of crumbling prophets, saints and kings, weatherworn to a soft-gray blur, we were away on the highroad leading across the wold to Cheddar, famed for its stupendous cliffs, its caverns—and its cheese. The caverns and cliffs are there, but little cheese now comes from Cheddar, even though it bears the name. As we ascended the exceedingly steep and winding road we were astonished—overwhelmed. We had not expected to find natural scenery upon such an amazing scale in the heart of England—gray pinnacled cliffs rising, almost sheer, five hundred feet into the sky. Not often may British scenery be styled imposing, but the towering cliffs of Cheddar surely merit such description. In the midst of the gorge between the great cliffs there are two prehistoric caverns extending far into the earth. We entered one of them, now a mere passageway, now a spacious cavern whose domelike roof glistens with translucent stalactites. Here we pass a still, mirrorlike pool, and there a deep fissure from which comes the gurgle of a subterranean river. Altogether, there is much that is interesting and impressive. Perhaps it all seems a little gaudy and unnatural because of the advertising methods and specious claims of the owner and alleged discoverer, but none the less a visit is worth while. The museum of relics found in the cavern contains a remarkable prehistoric skull, with low, thick frontal bone and heavy square jaw, but its queerest feature is little spurlike projections of the temporal bone just above the ear. It is estimated by archaeologists that the possessor of this curious skull had lived at least forty thousand years ago and mayhap had made his dwelling-place in the Cheddar Caves. We were assured that an offer from the British Museum of five thousand pounds for the relic had been refused.

The sun was low when we left Cheddar, and Taunton seemed the nearest place where we might be sure of good accommodations. We soon reached Axbridge, a gray little market town, so ancient that a hunting-lodge built by King John still stands on the market square. Near Bridgewater, a few miles farther, is the Isle of Athelney—once an island in a marsh, perhaps—where King Alfred made his last desperate stand against the Danish invaders, defeating them and finally expelling them from Britain. Not less in interest, though perhaps less important in its issues, was the Battle of Sedgemoor, fought here in 1685, when the Duke of Monmouth was disastrously defeated by the Royal Army—the last battle worthy of the name to be waged on English soil.

But we were to learn more of Monmouth at Taunton and to have again impressed upon us how easy it is in Britain for one to hasten through places of the deepest historic interest quite unaware of their tragic story. We had passed through Taunton before, seeing little but a staid old country town with a church tower of unmatched gracefulness and dignified proportions; but Taunton’s tragic part in the parliamentary wars and her fatal connection with “King Monmouth” never occurred to us, if, indeed, we knew of it at all. Taunton was strongly for the Parliament, but it was a storm center and was taken and retaken until the iron hand of Fairfax crushed the Royalists before its walls. Its record stood against it when the King “came into his own again.” Its walls were leveled to the ground, its charter taken away and many of its citizens thrown into prison. Discontent and hatred of the Stuarts were so rampant that any movement against their rule was welcomed by the Taunton Whigs, though it is hard to see any consistency in the unreasoning support they gave to the Duke of Monmouth—the son of Charles II. and one of his many mistresses—in his pretensions to the throne occupied by James II. Monmouth entered Taunton amidst the wildest acclamations, and it was from the market square of the rebellious town that he issued his proclamation assuming the title of King. He was followed by an ill-organized and poorly equipped army of seven thousand men, who were defeated by four thousand Royal Troops. Then followed a reign of terror in Taunton. The commander of the King’s forces hanged, without pretense of trial, many of his prisoners, using the sign of the old White Hart Inn as a gallows. Then came the Bloody Assizes, held by Jeffreys of infamous memory, in the great hall of the castle. After trials no more than travesties of brutal jests and savage cruelty, more than three hundred Somersetshire men were sentenced, according to the terrible customs of the time, to be “hanged, drawn and quartered,” and a thousand were doomed to transportation. Here the active history of Taunton may be said to have ended.

But Taunton has little to remind us of these dark and bloody times as we glide through her fine old streets and draw up in front of the London Hotel, where the host himself in evening dress welcomes us at the door. Every attention is given us and The London certainly deserves its official appointment by the Royal Automobile Club as well as the double distinction accorded it by the infallible Baedeker. It is one of the charming old-fashioned inns, such as perhaps inspired the poet Shenstone with the sentiment expressed in his well-known quatrain:

Modern Taunton is a city of some twenty thousand people, and being the county town, with some manufactories, it enjoys a quiet prosperity. Of its ancient landmarks, the castle, dating from the eleventh century, is the most notable and has appropriately been turned into a museum. Here one may enter the hall where Jeffreys held his court. Though two centuries or more have elapsed, the “horror of blood” seems still to linger in the gloomy apartment. The market-place retains its old-time characteristics, and though the house occupied by Jeffreys has disappeared, the White Hart Inn still stands. But the glory of Taunton is St. Mary’s Church, one of the most graceful examples of the Perpendicular period in England. The splendid tower seems almost frail in its airy lightness—and perhaps it is, for it is a recent restoration, or rather replacement, of the older one, which had become insecure.

Sherborne Abbey we had missed in our former wanderings, though once very near it, and we felt that we must make amends though it cost us a detour of sixty miles. And yet, what hardship is it to go out of one’s way in Britain? Indeed, can one ever go out of his way in rural England? Scarcely, from the point of view of such nomads as ourselves.

The great tower of Curry Rivell Church dominates in such a lordly manner the village straggling up the hill toward it that we were tempted to look inside, and a mild curiosity was aroused, from which we have never yet been able to rid ourselves. For, chained to one of the iron railings of a sixteenth century tomb, is a queer little iron-bound oaken cabinet. It is scarcely more than a foot in length, the wood is worm-eaten and the massive lock and heavy hinges are red with rust. What mystery does it contain and why did it escape the church-looters of Puritan times? The church is rich in antique carvings, among them a delicately wrought screen and fine fifteenth century bench ends. The tomb to which the coffer is chained is a very unusual one. It bears on its altar the effigies of two mail-clad warriors, while at either side kneel figures of their wives over two tiny cribs with several gnomelike children tucked in each. Overhead, borne by four pillars, is a domed canopy upon which are painted four sprawling cherubs. All very quaint and strange and illustrative of the queer mortuary ideas of the medieval period.

We followed the winding, hilly and often indifferent road that leads through Somerton, Ilchester and Yeovil to Sherborne, and while our lunch was preparing at the slow-moving Antelope—there is little in a name, in this instance—we wandered down old-world streets to the abbey, the goal of all pilgrims to Sherborne. It seemed odd to find the old town crowded with rural visitors all agape at a fantastic circus parade that was winding along the crooked streets, but Sherborne is fond of parades and pageants, for we were assured that the historical pageant now the rage in the older towns of England was originated in Sherborne. The town itself is a charming place—I borrow the words of an enthusiastic admirer whose picture may be better than I can paint:

“It is a bright town, prim and old-fashioned, and unsullied by the aggressive villas and red brick terraces of the modern suburb. Although a small place, it is yet of much dignity. Here are timber-faced dwellings, where the upper story overhangs the lower, and where the roof breaks out into irrelevant gables; houses with the stone-mullioned casements of Tudor days or the round bow window of the Georgian period; houses with gateways under them leading into courtyards; humble buildings fashioned out of stone filched from a church; cottages with the arched doorways of a convent or with buttresses worthy of a chapel; pieces of old wall and other miscellaneous fragments which the town with its love for the past has never had the heart to cast aside. Over the grey roofs can be seen the trees upon the hilltop, while over many a crumbling wall comes the fragrance of garden or orchard.”

But as we rounded a corner and came upon a full view of the abbey church, we felt that it had rightly been styled the “glory of Sherborne.” Perhaps its low tower gives an impression of incompleteness and lack of proportion—but it seemed to accentuate the mighty proportions of the church itself and it was with a feeling almost verging upon awe that we entered the majestic portals. And we learned it as we know only few historic churches in England, for the gem of all vergers is at Sherborne. To him his work is a labor of love, not the usual perfunctory performance in hope of a fee. He had made discoveries of importance himself in whiling away his time in the abbey and had located and uncovered an ancient effigy that had been inconsiderately built into the walls in earlier days. He told us of the checkered history of the abbey, of the wars of the monks and citizens, as a result of which the church suffered from a great fire, the marks of which still remain in the red stains on the soft yellow stone, of the Dissolution and the cavalier manner in which Henry the Wrecker bestowed the abbey on one of his friends, who in turn sold it to the parish for two hundred and fifty pounds—all of which would be too long to record in detail in this crowded chronicle. But the interior of Sherborne Abbey—where is there another like it? Not in all England; probably not in the world. It lacks the “dim religious light” that pervades, like a soft-toned mist, most of the great church buildings; the windows flood the yellow stone with many-colored beams and lighten the splendors of the golden fan vault with its rich bosses and heraldic devices until every detail comes out clearly to the beholder below.

But we are lingering too long at the abbey; we were to return to the Antelope in half an hour, and thrice that period has elapsed. We hie back to our inn and do not complain of our cold repast. “It is ten minutes’ walk to the castle,” said our host. Then why take the car? A ten minutes’ walk will give us a little of the exercise we need. We start under the sweltering sun—it is a hot day, even as we reckon it—and follow the crooked streets. Here is a high wall—it must be the castle. No, the castle is farther on; and we repeat the wearisome experience until half an hour has elapsed and we are only at the entrance gate of the park. We are almost exhausted, for our long tramp on the “abbey stones” did not especially invigorate us, but we will go on after having come so far.

It was hardly worth while—Cromwell had left very little of Sherborne Castle. It seemed melancholy, indeed, that the riddled gateway and the straggling pieces of wall should be all that remains of such a lordly building. We were interested to know that it had been granted to Sir Walter Raleigh “forever” in 1597—but only six years later the knightly founder of Virginia was indicted for treason and fell a victim to the cowardly malice of King James, and Sherborne Castle reverted to the crown. It was less than half a century later that Fairfax received its surrender in the name of the Parliament, and when the gunpowder mines were fired the active days of the fortress were at an end.

We retrace our steps to the Antelope, thinking mournfully of the car, which would have made such short and easy work of our weary trip, and we heave a sigh of relief when once more, having donned our “seven-league boots,” we hear the soft purr of the motor and enjoy the rush of the cool, sweet air—after our “ten minutes’ walk.”

It grows late and Exeter is far away, but we are sure of comfort at the Rougemont and we give the car rein. How she sweeps over the sunset hills and glides along the cool valleys, pausing cautiously to pass some rose-embowered village, now gathering speed again for another rush over the fine road! She is ahead of schedule at Honiton, and one of our party remembers that the Honiton lace is famous. It is an expensive bit of recollection, but all things go in a motor tour. After a half-hour’s pause, we are away again, and before long catch sight of the huge bulk of Exeter Cathedral looming above the old city against the twilight sky.

V
RAMBLES IN THE WEST COUNTRY

“Through the heart of Dartmoor forest” may bring up many fascinating, even weird associations, but on our map we regarded the thin red line of our road rather dubiously. It runs almost straight from Exeter to Prince Town—the prison town of the moor—and on either side for many miles lies a waste country, apparently quite devoid of villages and even of roads. The road as shown on the map is thickly studded with arrow heads, denoting dangerous hills, and the description in the road-book is far from alluring. But we were not to be deterred from exploring Dartmoor, as we had been on a previous occasion, though indeed we found the first few miles between Exeter and Moreton Hampstead trying and almost terrifying in places. The hills offered little impediment to our motor, but for all that one has a rather eery feeling when clinging to a precipitous incline. If something should let loose! But nothing did.

Moreton Hampstead is a bleak, lonely little town set well into the western edge of the moor and surrounded by rugged tors on every hand. It is not without a bit of antiquity, for it has a sixteenth century building, called the Arcade, whose Moorish touches are decidedly picturesque. It is like a bit of Spain in the hills of Dartmoor and seems strangely out of place. Only three miles from Moreton Hampstead, lying in a secluded valley, is Chagford, famous for its quaint old inn and wild surroundings.

Once out of Moreton Hampstead and away on the yellow highway that bisects the moor, we found ourselves in a country as barren as any we had seen in England. The road, though winding and steep, is generally visible for some distance ahead, and we found little hindrance to a swift, steady flight that carried us over the long hills far more quickly than we anticipated. The day, which had begun in mist and rain, became lighter and a rapidly clearing sky gave us the opportunity of seeing the wild beauty of the moor at its best. Despite its loneliness and cheerlessness, there was a wonderful play of color: the reds and browns of the broken granite, the purple blaze of the heather, the vivid yellow of the gorse and the metallic green of the whortle, all intensified by golden sunshine, have marvelously transformed the somber tone of the moorland of scarce an hour before. But where is the “forest”? Only stunted trees appear here and there, or a fringe of woods along the clear streams; we learn that “forest” once meant a waste, uncultivated tract of land, and in later days has been applied to woodlands alone. We run for miles with no human habitation in sight save an occasional cottage in a small, barren field surrounded by stone walls. We come upon a large, attractive-looking inn unexpectedly—though it ought not to be unexpected to find an inn anywhere in England—the Two Bridges, situated near the head waters of the Dart, here no more than a brawling streamlet. We leave the car by the roadside and enter the homelike hall, where an array of fishing-tackle makes clear the excuse for this pleasant hotel in the moor. The day has been chilly and, strange to say, a fire flickers in the grate. We are just in time for luncheon and a goodly number of guests respond to the vigorous beating of the gong—that almost universal abomination of the provincial English hotel. It appears that the quiet and seclusion of Dartmoor is not without its attractions to many people. We ourselves leave the pleasant inn with regret; we should have liked a day’s rest in the cozy ingle-nook.

The walls and battlements of Prince Town Prison soon loom in sight. This was established in 1800 as a military prison for French soldiers, and a few Americans were confined here in 1812. It then fell into disuse until 1850, but for the half-century since it has served its present purpose as a penal institution and has been greatly added to from time to time.

An English writer says: “Dartmoor is so huge that one must be born and spend a lifetime near it to really know it, and the visitor can merely endeavour to see typical examples of its granite tors, its peaty streams, its great stretches of boulder-strewn heather, and its isolated villages.” Evidently he must mean that it is huge in its mysteries and its moods, for it is really only fourteen by twenty-two miles—perhaps half as large as the average county in the United States.

At Tavistock we are well beyond the confines of the moor and follow a fine road to Launceston, where we glance at the huge circular keep of the castle and look longingly at the White Hart, which recalls only pleasant memories. But we are bound for an enchanted land and, like many a gallant knight of yore, we would hasten past “many-towered Camelot” to the castle of the blameless king. The declining sun, toward which we rapidly course, seems to flash across the Cornish hills the roselight of the old Arthurian romance, and the stately measures of the “Idyls of the King” come unbidden to our minds. But we soon have something less romantic to think of, for in attempting a short cut to Tintagel without going to Camelford, we run into a series of the crookedest, roughest lanes we found in all England. These appear to have been quite abandoned; in places mere ravines with myriads of sharp loose stones and many long steep hills. But we push on and almost ere we are aware, find ourselves in Tintagel village, which with its long rows of boarding-houses hardly accords with one’s preconceived romantic notions. Then we catch a glimpse of the ocean out beyond the headland, upon which is perched a huge, square-towered building—King Arthur’s Castle Hotel, they tell us—and thither we hasten. This hotel, only recently completed, is built on a most liberal scale, though it can hardly accommodate many guests at a time. The public rooms are most elaborately furnished and of enormous size. The great round table in the reading room is a replica of the original at Shrewsbury, at which, declares tradition, King Arthur sat with his fifty knights. The guest rooms are on an equally generous scale and so arranged that every one fronts on the sea. The rates are not low by any means, yet it is hard to conceive how such a hotel can be a paying investment.

After we reached the hotel, the long twilight still gave time to contemplate the weird beauty of the surroundings and to explore the ruins of the castle so famed in song and story. We scrambled down the high headland, upon which the hotel stands, to the level of the blue inlet of the sea, depicted in such a masterly manner in the painting by Mr. Moran, the towering cliffs crowned by the fragmentary ruins looming far above us. A path cut in the edge of the cliff leads to a precarious-looking foot-bridge across the chasm and a still narrower and steeper path hugs the face of the precipice on the opposite side until a heavy oaken door is reached. This door, to which the old caretaker in the cottage below had given me the key, opens into the supposed site of King Arthur’s castle. Only a few scattered bits of masonry remain and these are probably of a later time than that of the early Briton.

The spot is lonely and quite barren save a few patches of greensward upon which were peacefully grazing a flock of sheep—one finds them everywhere in Britain. I was quite alone—there were no other visitors at that late hour and my companions had given up the dizzy ascent before it was fairly begun—and I strove to reconstruct in imagination the castle as it stood in the days of the blameless king. How the wild old stories crowded upon me in that lonely twilight hour! Here, legend declares—and I care not if it be dim indeed and questioned by the wiseacres—was once the court of the wise and faultless Arthur, who gathered to himself the flower of knighthood of Christendom and was invincible to all attacks from without, but whose dominion crumbled away before the faithlessness and dishonor of his own followers. Here, perchance, the faithless Guinevere pined and sighed for her forsworn lover and gazed on the sea, calm and radiant as it is even now, or saw it lash itself into unspeakable fury upon the frowning bastions of the coast. But, alas! how dim and uncertain is all that is left, and how the tales vary save that they all center in the king! Little remains in local tradition of all the vanished splendors of those ancient days save that the king did not die; that in the form of a chough he haunts the scenes of his glory and his downfall, and that he will come again—

But I am quite forgetting the flight of time, and with a lingering look at the storied spot, I slowly descend. Then I climb to the more extensive ruin on the landward side, much shattered but grim and massive in decay. There must have been a connection between the castles on either side of the great ravine, though it is hardly apparent how this could have been. Perhaps the gap has widened much in the long course of time. It is dusk when we return to the hotel and sit long on the open terrace fronting the sea, contemplating the beauty of the scene.

Never have I beheld a more glorious sunset than that which lightened the wild Cornish coast and ocean on that particular evening. A dark band of cloud lay low along the western horizon, with a clear, opalescent sky above, and below a thin strip of lucent gold with silvery clouds floating in it like fairy ships. Suddenly the sun dropped from behind the cloud, which had obscured his full splendor, into the resplendent zone beneath, flooding the sea, into which he slowly sank, with a marvelous though evanescent glory. Then followed all the indescribable color changes and combinations, which varied momentarily until they faded into the dusky hues of a moonlit night. It marked the close of a perfect day—clear and cool, with sky of untainted blue and ocean as still and glassy as a quiet inland lake.

Not less inspiring was the scene that greeted us through our open lattices in the morning—a sea steely blue in the distance, rippling into bars of frosted silver near the shore, while the stern outlines of the headlands were softened by a clinging blue haze. We lingered on the legend-haunted ground until nearly noon and it was with keen regret that we glided away from the pleasant hostelry back to the village and past the old church on the headland, whose bells tolled without mortal hands on the far-off day when the body of King Arthur was borne away to sepulture in Glastonbury Abbey.

A fine upland road led us nearly due north from Camelford through long stretches of moorland—or country almost as sterile as the moors—diversified with great patches of gorse and scattered groups of stunted trees. We encountered scarcely a village for a distance of twenty-five miles, for we did not turn aside for Bude or for Stratton, just opposite on each side of the road. The latter is said to be one of the most unspoiled and genuinely ancient of the smaller Cornish villages. At times we were within a mile or two of the ocean and caught fugitive glimpses of blue expanses of quiet sea. Then the road sweeps farther inland and the country improves in appearance, though it is still Cornwall and Devon and far different from the sleek, prosperous beauty of the Midlands.

Clovelly well deserves its reputation for the picturesque qualities that have transformed it from an unpretentious fishing village, lost among the clifflike hills, into a thronged tourist resort. Fortunately, as yet there has been no attempt to modernize; no stucco-and-timber hotel detracts from the antique flavor; the people who come to Clovelly do not as a rule stay long. Large excursion steamers, usually crowded, ply from Ilfracombe, and coaches and chars-a-bancs from Hartland and Barnstaple bring troops of visitors. Coaching parties come from Tintagel (round trip eighty miles) and one is sure to find Clovelly crowded in season, especially if the day is fine. And so we found it, literally thronged, a huge excursion steamer lying at anchor in the harbor. There was a little disarray and confusion at the pleasant New Inn—new in name only—evidently due to more patronage than could easily be taken care of. As we waited for luncheon we looked about at the collection of antique brass, copper, china and pottery that almost covered the walls and crowded the mantelpieces and odd corners about the inn. We were told that the landlady is a famous collector and that many of the pieces are rare and valuable. A more amusing if not less interesting feature of the house is the sentiment expressed in halting doggerel, emblazoned in large red letters on the walls and ceiling of the dining-room. It is good only from the standpoint of exceeding badness, and its general tenor is to flatter Americans, who no doubt constitute a large proportion of the guests.

The old, time-worn churches of England are past numbering and they came to have an almost weird fascination for us. The tombs, ranging from the artistic to the ghastly or grotesque, the old stones with their often queer or even ridiculous epitaphs, the sculptures, the bosses, the frescoes, the stained windows, the gargoyles and the oftentimes strange history or still stranger legends connected with nearly every one—but why prolong the list of curious attractions of these ancient fanes, often quite peculiar in each case? Just before we entered Barnstaple we turned into a byroad, and dropping down a hill of appalling steepness and length, came to Tawstock Church, famed as the finest country church in Devon—the “Westminster of the West Country,” some enthusiast has styled it. Though hardly deserving such a dignified characterization as this, Tawstock Church is well worth a visit. Besides some remarkable tombs and fine Elizabethan pews, it has a peculiar gallery curiously wrought in vine and leaf pattern from black oak, and now used by the bell-ringers to reach the tower. Tawstock Mansion, near by, appears rather modern—a large building shining in a fresh coat of yellow paint that gave it much the appearance of a summer hotel. The house and church are located in a deep wooded valley and the towers of the ancient gateway lend a touch of much-needed antiquity to the scene.

Barnstaple, like Bideford, while a very old town, has few old-time relics now left. It has become a manufacturing town, its chief product being Barum ware, an inexpensive grade of pottery. The Golden Lion Inn, once a residence of the Earl of Bath, is famed as a place of solid comfort, and still retains much of the gorgeous decorations done by its former occupant. The poet Shelley had an odd association with Barnstaple. When living at Lynton, after his marriage with Harriet Westbrook, he came to Barnstaple and spent some time in bringing out a pamphlet scurrilously attacking the chief justice who had sentenced to prison the publisher of the works of Thomas Paine. One of the poet’s associates, who distributed the pamphlets, was sentenced to six months in jail, and Shelley narrowly escaped by hastily leaving the town.

The road from Bideford through Barnstaple and Ilfracombe is rather uninteresting, save the last few miles, which pass through wooded hills and along deep verdant valleys. Ilfracombe is a resort town, pure and simple, and we found few hotels on a grander scale than the Ilfracombe, standing in beautiful grounds facing the sea, which murmured almost directly beneath our open windows. It was a beautiful evening; the tide was just receding from the jutting rocks scattered along the coast, whereon the sea, even in its mildest moods, chafes into foam; and one can easily imagine a most awe-inspiring scene when the angry ocean, driven by a westerly wind, assails these bold, angular rocks. After having visited every resort town of note in England, our recollection is that of all, Ilfracombe is the most strikingly situated; nor do any of them command views of a coast line more rugged and picturesque.

The rain was falling heavily when we came to Dunster on the following day and the abbey church was gloomy indeed. And what can be gloomier than an old church on a gray day, when the rain pours from the low-hung clouds and sweeps in fitful gusts against the mossy gravestones and crumbling, ivy-clad walls? A scene that renders one solemn and thoughtful on almost any occasion becomes positively depressing under such conditions. And though we recall Dunster Church with associations not unpleasing in perspective, the surroundings were not altogether pleasing at the time. We found the caretaker, a bent old woman, in the church, but she informed us that there were really two churches and that she had jurisdiction over only one of them. However, she conducted us about the dimly lighted building, gloomy indeed from the lowering skies without, and our recollection of her story of the quarrel that resulted in the partition of the church has faded quite away. But we do remember the rood screen which has fourteen separate openings, no two wrought in the same pattern and altogether as marvelous a piece of black-oak carving as we saw in England.

Aside from the abbey church, there are other things of interest in Dunster, especially the market cross and the castle. The latter overlooks the town from a neighboring hill and is one of the lordliest fortresses in the West Country. The town lies in one of the loveliest vales in Somersetshire and is famed for its beautiful surroundings. This section of Somerset and Devon is rich in literary associations; at Nether Stowey we pass the square, uncomfortable-looking house, close to the roadside, where Coleridge lived for three years, beginning in 1797. Indeed, it was in the autumn of that year that he made the excursion with Wordsworth and Dorothy, during which the plan of the “Ancient Mariner” was conceived. A few months before, while in a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Lynton, he had the dream which he started to record in “Kubla Khan.” This poem he had composed in his dream, but while writing it down on awakening, a “person from Porlock” interrupted, and when the poet essayed to write, not only the words but the images of the vision had faded away, and the fragment of “Kubla Khan” remains like a shattered gem. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came a little later to Alfoxden House, standing in a pleasant park in the parish of Halford, and here the literary association between Coleridge and Wordsworth became intimate and the little volume of “Lyrical Ballads” was published jointly by them in 1798. Southey, while storm-stayed by “an unwelcome summer rain” at the Ship Inn in Porlock, wrote a sonnet in praise of the hills and glens. Hazlitt and Charles Lamb at times joined their friends here for pedestrian excursions among the hills. Nor can we forget Blackmore, whose “Lorna Doone” turned the eyes of the English-speaking world toward the Exmoor wastes. Shelley’s escapade at Barnstaple we have already mentioned and the cottage he occupied at Lynton still stands. No doubt much of the weird beauty that pervades his work entered his soul amidst the glorious surroundings—the sea, the hills and the vales—of the West Country.

“The whole life of the society can be lived over again with but little demands on the imagination. We can see the dormitories in which they slept, the refectory where they fed, the abbot’s particular parlour and the room for accounts, the kitchen, and even the archway through which their bodies went out to the grave. The church suffered from despoilers more than any other part of the abbey, and great is the loss to architecture. Otherwise we get a community of the Middle Ages preserved in all its essential surroundings, the refectory being in particular a grand fifteenth-century hall.” The ceiling of this great apartment is of the hammer-beam pattern, the beams richly carved, and, springing from oaken corbels, figures of angels with expanded wings.

It brings one near indeed to the spirit of monastic days—this gray old ruin, through which sweep the wind and rain and where under foot the grass grows lush and green as it grows only in England—the spirit which the Latin legend over the gatehouse so vividly expresses, quaintly rendered thus:

And the gray-whiskered custodian, so rheumatic and feeble that his daughter, a husky peasant woman, guides visitors about the abbey, warmed up to us as we were about to leave and opened his heart about the ruin in which he dwelt and which he seemed to love. He told us its story in the broad West Country dialect and pointed out to us many things of curious interest that we otherwise should have overlooked.

The sky is clearing; the low sun flashes along the hill-crests and floods the Somerset landscape with ethereal beauty, which we drink in as we skim swiftly along the smooth, wet road. We catch a final gleam of the ocean at Weston-super-Mare and pass a long row of imposing hotels. Then we are away for Bristol, the Queen City of the West Country.

VI
ODD CORNERS OF THE WELSH BORDER

There are few English castles where the spirit of medievalism lingers as at Berkeley and few that have darker deeds recorded in their long annals of crime. It has had a strange fascination for me ever since I read its story in my boyhood days, and the verse of the poet Gray had given the castle a weird association in my mind:

It was therefore a keen disappointment to learn on arriving in the quiet Gloucestershire town that it was not a day when the castle was open to visitors. However, we do not regret this so much in retrospect. The castle, grim, many-towered, ivy-clad, the very embodiment of the days of chivalry, still lingers in memory, with nothing to disenchant its mystery and romance. The old keeper at the imposing entrance was evidently sincere in his regret that the rule might not be suspended for our benefit—for indeed we had found such regulations not as the laws of the Medes and Persians, but there was no such good fortune here. “But do not fail,” said he, “to view the castle from the meadows, for no finer sight will you find in England.”

If there be finer views of other English castles—a mere matter of opinion, after all—there can hardly be a better viewpoint than the Berkeley Meadows. It is a wide expanse of lawnlike meadowland lying alongside the castle, which stretches out its battlemented and turreted length against a background of majestic trees; from these rises the square church-tower in stern outline against the bluest of English June skies. The scene indeed savors more of enchantment than reality, and the environment seems fitting to the historic pile where a king was done to death and which Shakespeare mentions more than once. The present owner is the twenty-seventh in direct descent from Robert Fitzhardinge, to whom the manor was originally granted and who built a large part of the present castle in the tenth century.

The view from the castle keep is described by one who has written much of its legends and history: “Northwards and southwards the broad Vale of Berkeley, rich with verdure of pasture and woodland, runs on into the far distance. To the east and southeast are the Cotswolds, rising abruptly here and there into bold, bare masses whose sides are clothed with beech woods, and anon retiring into lovely valleys which seem to invite the eye to range their recesses. On the west flows the broad estuary of the Severn, studded with many a white sail; beyond it are the dark wooded hills of the Forest of Dean, veiled by the smoke of its iron-works and collieries. Under the walls of the castle, on the north and west sides, the little town seems to nestle, as though seeking shelter and protection from the grim old fortress, which was probably its origin and has been its stay and support through so many generations.”

The highway from Bristol to Gloucester is one of the finest in the Kingdom, and we soon resumed our flight over it after the short detour to Berkeley. At the Bell Hotel in Gloucester we found mild excitement prevailing among the guests and servants, some of the latter standing about in brilliant liveries and powdered wigs. The manageress explained that the high sheriff and county judge were about to leave the hotel and that the gaudy attire we beheld disguised only the porter and head waiter, who had been fitted out in this manner to give due state to the occasion. During the delay in the departure of the distinguished guests we had the services of one of the gorgeous gentlemen at our luncheon. Finally the dignitaries descended the stair, the bedecked servants bowed them solemnly into a carriage, and the porter in all his glory rode away beside the driver. I dwell on this incident, trifling in itself, to illustrate the different status of such officials in England as compared with our own country. In America a dozen county judges and sheriffs might be at a hotel in a city the size of Gloucester without attracting much attention. In some respects the English way is preferable, since it invests the representatives of the law with a dignity quite lacking in the States. And in this connection we might notice that county judges in England receive salaries from three to five times as great as are paid to corresponding officials on our side, thus commanding a high average of legal talent for the bench.

The half-dozen miles between Gloucester and Tewkesbury are quickly done and we halt in front of a wide green, studded with gigantic trees, amidst which rises the huge bulk of a church almost as imposing as the cathedral that has barely faded from our view. But it lacks the gracefulness and perfect proportion of the Gloucester church and perhaps its most striking exterior feature is the arch over the western windows, so high and majestic as to remind one of Peterborough. The interior is mainly ponderous Norman—rows of heavy pillars flanking the long nave and supporting massive rounded arches. The windows, however, are the lighter and more graceful creations of the Decorated Period, though the glass is mostly modern. Among the tombs is that of Prince Edward, son of Henry VI., who was cruelly slain in the battle of Tewkesbury, so fatal to the Lancastrian cause. Here, too, lies the “false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,” of Shakespeare; and Somerset, executed by his captors after the battle. The abbey was marked for destruction by Henry VIII., who was deterred from his purpose by a public subscription. Tewkesbury is rather decadent, and has many houses in brick and timber as yet quite unspoiled by modern improvement. It is pleasantly situated on the banks of the classic Avon near its junction with the Severn, and the many-arched stone bridge over the former river is unusually picturesque. Half a mile farther a second bridge crosses the Severn, which lies in broad, still reaches dotted with small craft of every description.

Over these bridges we hastened away toward Hereford, following a level though sinuous road. The old-world quaintness of Ledbury attracted our attention. Its rectangular timber market cross, supported on a colonnade of wooden pillars, is unusual indeed. And nowhere else did we find finer specimens of Elizabethan half-timbered houses, though some of them were rather tawdry in recent applications of black and white paint. Such houses have become quite the rage and some owners have gone so far as to paint black stripes on common brick to represent the timbers. However, no such travesty as this is necessary in Ledbury—the town is overflowing with the genuine article—genuine though disfigured in some cases by the bad taste of the man with the paint pot. Church Lane, leading from the main street up a gentle slope to the church, is bordered with splendid examples of Elizabethan houses, quite unaltered since they left the builders’ hands. At the end of the lane one sees a graceful spire standing apart from the church, which is quite unique in design. It has four sharply pitched roofs running parallel, with odd little minarets between them. The interior has the newness of recent restoration and shows traces of different styles, from Norman to Perpendicular. Ledbury has an institute which commemorates its association with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who passed her girlhood near the town.

At Hereford we sought the cathedral, having missed the interior during a former visit. A small, bare-headed boy in a red sweater saw us pause before the close and marked us as his legitimate prey. “I’ll take you into the Bishop’s Palace,” he said in such a matter-of-fact way that it disarmed our suspicions and we followed the youngster meekly enough, for with all our doing of cathedrals we had caught only glimpses of bishops’ palaces, usually embowered in gardens and apparently quite inaccessible. We had no opportunity to question our small guide as he rapidly led us through the palace grounds, but when he unhesitatingly rang at the door, we insisted on an explanation and learned that the bishop and his family were in London. During their absence the palace was thrown open to the public and our small friend was doubtless improving the opportunity to put cathedral visitors under obligations to himself.

We were admitted and wandered about at will. It is a rambling old house and indicates that a bishop occupies about the same plane in his domestic appointments as a prosperous member of the nobility, among whom, in fact, he takes a high rank. The house was sumptuously furnished and had several great rooms with high decorated ceilings and windows that looked out on the pleasant grounds, bright with flowers and shrubbery. The study pleased us most, with its high bookshelves about the walls and tall mullioned bow windows which open almost directly on the Wye. It was easy to see why the English bishops nearly all complain that their salaries, though apparently large, are hardly adequate to the state they are expected to maintain; and why, as in the case of an American ambassador, a private fortune is often necessary to enable the recipient of such an honor to pay the legitimate expenses. Our picture will show, perhaps better than any description, the beauty of the river front of the palace, with the fine trees and cathedral tower in the background. We had only a moment to look about the cathedral, since the closing hour was nearly at hand. However, we missed little, for Hereford Cathedral has few historic associations and recent restoration gives it an almost new appearance. It is built of red sandstone, which gives the interior a rather warm tone, accentuated by highly-colored modern windows.