Mil lIHilll mini Ik ■■111 w hHHbi ■ JhH ■I ^% I ^ ' r >. % l,J < , & BROWN HEATH AND BLUE BELLS j&m J ^OWN HEATH AND BLUE BELLS Being Sketches of Scotland WITH OTHER PAPERS V BY WILLIAM WI %n& MACMILLAN AND COMPANY AND LONDON I8 95 All rights reserved Copyright, 1895, By MACMILLAN AND CO. THE LIBRARY OF C ONGR ESS WASHINGTON it. 1 .1 r. " Nr.rfoanti Press: J. S. Cus%nJ & Co. — Berwick & Smith. No? vood, Mass., U.S.A. TO SElt^afatfj Campbell Wnter HONOURED AND LOVED COMPANION OF MY LONG JOURNEY THROUGH MANY LANDS OF SUNSHINE AND OF SHADOW OF JOY AND OF GRIEF I DEDICATE THIS BOOK PKEFACE. Tee favour which has been accorded to previous sketches by the present toriter has encouraged him to believe that he may venture to offer to a friendly public these additional pages, in a kindred vein. He has endeavoured to express the charm of lovely and inspiring scenes in Scotland and elsewhere, to stimulate the desire for travel in storied regions, and to impart such hints of beauty as a traveller might helpfully remember. He is desirous that this volume may be considered in rela- tion to its predecessors, — Shakespeare* s 7 8 PREFACE. England, Gray Days and Gold in England and Scotland, and Old Shrines and Ivy, — all of which aim to reflect the poetry of memorable places and of natural loveli- ness, and all of which are offered as simple and possibly useful memorials of careless wandering and reverent thought. In Gray Days and in Old Shrines there are twelve chapters on Scotland. A few personal tributes are added to the sketches in the present volume, with a view to diversify its contents, and also vnth the feeling that ad- miration for fine spirits may fitly consort with remembrance of beautiful scenes. The end is a note of poetry, to suit a farewell: " The setting sun, and music at the close." W. W. November 11, 1895. CONTENTS. SKETCHES OF SCOTLAND. PAGE I. OVER THE BORDER ... 13 II. THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES 21 HI. THE PASS OF GLENCOE ... 32 IV. THE HOLY ISLE .... 41 V. FAREWELL TO IONA ... 55 VI. DUNFERMLINE ABBEY . . .58 Vn. HAUNTS OF MARY STUART . . 66 VIII. THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND . 80 IX. SCOTTISH BORDER SCENERY . 90 X. SCOTTISH MEMORIES ... 94 OTHER PAPERS. XI. TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY . Ill XII. STRATFORD GLEANINGS . . 127 9 IO CONTENTS. PAGE XIII. RELIC AND REVERIE . 141 XIV. A VALLEY OF PEACE . . 152 XV. MOUNTAIN DAYS . . 160 XVI. SEASHORE PICTURES . 164 XVII. TRIBUTES . . . . . 177 1. George Arnold. 2. Fitz-James O'Brien. 3. Charles Dawson Shanly. 4. Rufus Choate. 5. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 6. Jefferson. XVIII. ON THE VERGE . . 233 Brown Heath and Blue Bells Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood. On the wild hill Let the wild heath-bell flourish still" Sir Walter Scott. BBOWN HEATH AND BLUE BELLS. OVER THE BORDER. GLASGOW, September8, 1894. —Masses of dusky cloud were hanging low over Liverpool as I sped away from it, in the early morning, on a journey to Scotland. The air was cold, the day cheerless, and the time seemed long before I came to the open country and was gladdened with the sight of green fields, the dark foliage of many trees, and the golden sheaves of the late harvest, — lovely in the glint of sun- shine, beneath dim, slate-coloured skies. Soon I saw the towers and steeples of Orm- skirk and, in its adjacent pastures, many bright patches of heather, purple against the green. The country there is low and flat, and is much intersected with canals. Next came Rufford, green but sombre, — 13 14 OVER THE BOEDER. its dreariness accented by the trembling of wind-swept rushes that grow in its cold streams. At Croston there was a pleasing picture of placid life, in the grouping of cattle in the fields, and presently, gazing over Houghton, I was aware of distant mountains, rising nobly through the mist. Spires, chimneys, and copious smoke an- nounced busy Blackburn, and soon there- after the train flashed into deep and va- riegated valleys of Lancashire. Around Gisborne the country smiles with bloom, the hillside pastures are populous with sleek cattle and fleecy sheep, and in the deep dales the emerald of the meadow is strik- ingly diversified with the darker green of those graceful hedge-rows which add so much to the charm of that delicious land. After Hellifield there were green fields and picturesque hedges upon every side, — a few walls of stone coming into the picture, — and then the open country grew lonely and bleak once more, as I gazed on vacant moorlands, and saw, with musing eyes, a single figure of a traveller, lessening in the dim distance, upon a long and solitary road. Around Settle and Appleby the valleys are of great breadth and splendid beauty, and as you look westward from OVER THE BORDER. 15 those scenes of peace and plenty you can see the mountains of Cumberland, and your thoughts will drift away to the poetic past, — to Southey, the blameless and gentle, among his books, on Greta's bank, and to Wordsworth, austere and simple, wander- ing among his native hills, and speaking forth their heart, in words of golden ca- dence and imperishable truth. At Salkeld you would note a tiny river flowing, amid flowers, through a plain of sunshine, and, far away, the receding, misty, much broken outline of the country of the Lakes. There was but a faint prospect of storied Carlisle, — memorable for its sad associations of the crushed rebellion of '45, — and after Car- lisle I caught a glimpse of the ocean ; and then, with a quick sense of freedom and of home, I dashed across the Border and was in Scotland. It has been my fortune, at various times, to see this land in capricious moods of weather, but never before in such a blaze of warmth and light. There was not a cloud in the sky as I rolled through Dum- fries, and underneath a golden sun the pas- tures all around it glowed and sparkled with brilliant emerald sheen, while in the clear, cool, autumn breeze the flowering vines and 1 6 OVER THE BORDER. the roses, on many a gray stone cottage, seemed to dance with joy. The country all along is level, but its diversity makes it piquant, and as I heard or saw the familiar names, and caught a fleeting glimpse of Cluden, I thought of Robert Burns, — whose especial region it is, — and could not fail to recognise its loveliness and feel its charm. There, within the radius of a few miles, is comprised the entire story of that great poet's life. His first seven years are associated with the cottage at Alloway, where he was born, January 25, 1759, and where he lived, a happy boy, until 1766. Then, becoming a labourer for his father, he moved to the farm of Mount Oliphant, where he remained till he was eighteen. In 1777 he accompanied his parents to another farm in Ayrshire, called Lochlea. His next residence, and one at which he wrote many characteristic and beautiful poems, notably The Cotter 1 s Saturday Night, was at Mossgiel, near Mauchline, — his home from 1784 till 1788. In 1786 he first repaired to Edinburgh, and dur- ing about two years he was a brilliant figure in that brilliant • capital ; but Edin- burgh was an episode. In July, 1788, he established his residence at Ellisland, OVER THE BORDER. 1 7 where he wrote, among other immortal verses, John Anderson, and that exquisite lyric, To Mary in Heaven, and where he became an exciseman. In 1791 he settled in the neighbouring town of Dumfries, and there he died, July 21, 1796, and there he was buried. His lifetime comprised only thirty-seven years and a half. He never left Scotland, and even of his native land he saw but little. It is astonishing to con- sider how narrow were the physical limits of Burns's environment and observation, when contrasted with the wide range of his experience. Thus recalling familiar facts, and with many wandering thoughts upon them, I traversed the country of Burns and sped through the haunted lands of the Border, — leaving, far eastward, St. Mary's Loch and the haunts of the Ettrick Shep- herd, and far southward Ecclefechan, with its memories of Carlyle ; passing Kilmar- nock, where the poems of Burns were first published ; seeing the distant mountains of Arran, beyond the water of Ayr ; thinking of Scott, Campbell, Wilson, Motherwell, Thomson, Gait, Montgomery, and the many minstrels who have shed imperishable glory on the land ; and coming at last, in the cold lustre of closing day, to Glasgow and rest. 1 8 OVER THE BORDER. The traveller commonly sees Glasgow in rain, and then it is dismal ; but on a bright day there is not a cheerier city in the king- dom. Along the Broomielaw — while the Clyde flashes in sunshine, and the graceful stone bridges are thronged with vehicles and people — the ships and steamers are gay with flags, and there is every sign of prosperous activity. In Buchanan street and other great thoroughfares the teeming shop-windows denote a profuse opulence, and in the bright faces and lithe move- ments of the many pedestrians it is easy to read the story of energetic labour, buoyant spirits, and a happy and hopeful mind. The Lowland Scots seem not to be as vari- able as the Highlanders, — who alternate forever between impetuous joy and calm despondency, the smile and the secret tear, — but to possess more of the steadiness and uniformity that mark the English. Glas- gow is self-centred, the home of contented industry, and the peer, for enterprise, of any city in the world. Edinburgh pos- sesses the eminent advantage of position, and is glorious with historic association and literary renown; but Glasgow is the commercial centre of Scotland ; and to look upon her long lines of busy, brilliant OVER THE BORDER. 19 streets, her sumptuous public buildings and monuments, and her noble University, throned above the lovely pageant of Kelvin Grove, and to hear the clatter of hammers in the splendid shipyards on the Clyde, is to know the restless, puissant, victorious spirit of the present day, and to feel that Scot- land is the land of deeds as well as dreams. Devotion to practical affairs, on the other hand, has not made Glasgow mindless of national literature and art, — for George Square, with its grand column to Scott, and its statues of Burns, Campbell, Sir John Moore [commemorated in Charles Wolfe's immortal lines, "Not a drum was heard"], Lord Clyde, Livingston, Watt, and Sir Robert Peel, not to speak of the massive, symmetrical buildings around it, is, architecturally, finer than the vaunted Trafalgar Square, of London, and nobler in its meaning. The poet Campbell was born in Glasgow, but I sought in vain for the house of his birth. In those streets he may have walked, as was his custom of composition, when making the sonorous and splendid Pleasures of Hope ; and, thinking of the wonderful eloquence and beauty of .that poem, it has been a pleasure, passing all words, to follow in the footsteps of that 20 OVER THE BORDER. fine genius, and to honour his pure and noble memory. There may be other pursuits which tend more to broaden the mind and strengthen the character, but, if so, I have not found them ; and I know not of any pursuit so gratifying to the imagination and so stimulative to spiritual growth as that of musing among haunts that have been adorned by genius, endeared by associations of heroic or pathetic experience, and digni- fied by the splendid force of illustrious ex- ample. The present should not be blindly undervalued, in comparison with the past ; but no man is to be envied who could stand unmoved beside the grave of Motherwell, in Glasgow's solemn Necropolis, or at the stone that covers the dust of Edward Irving, — a stone whereon the face of the apostle looks with eyes of life from a wonderful painted window, — in the gloomy crypt of her grim cathedral. By sights like those the best virtues of human character are sustained and augmented, and by sights like those the place of them is made precious forever, in a loving and reverent remembrance. THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. II. THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. OBAN, Argyllshire, September 12, 1894. — In the cold, gray light of dawn, look- ing from a high casement in the St. Enoch Hotel, I saw the towers and chimneys of Glasgow, its ranges of buildings, — lighted here and there, but mostly dark, — and its long lines of empty street, bleak and cheer- less, thinly veiled in mist. To view a great centre of population and industry when thus quiescent is to be reminded of that pathetic weakness which, even at his best, always underlies the condition and achievement of man. The lesson of humility may be learned in many ways, and it is a lesson that, sooner or later, all persons must learn. The city was still asleep when I made my way toward the Clyde, and even upon the Broomielaw, usually so populous, I saw but few passengers. I was soon embarked and gliding down the river — at first slowly, amid ships, barges, and steamers, that 22 THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. seemed to rise like phantoms out of the mist ; then more rapidly, as the sharp, brisk wind came on to blow, and the river grew clearer beneath the gradual approach of the sun. Soon I was speeding past those great shipyards, the glory of this region, the echo of whose busy hammers is heard all round the world. Then presently I saw, upon the green banks of the Clyde, farmhouses couched among trees, cattle in pasture, a circle of smiling hills, and far away, beneath a gray sky necked with blue, the mountain peaks that seem to whisper of Loch Lomond and the haunted North. Flights of rooks enlivened the air, and in the wake of the vessel an eager flock of gulls persistently followed, with catlike mewing and shrill cries. Overhead the dome of heaven was filled with misty, dreamlike sunshine. Around flitted many steamers and many a tiny craft with brown sails and sturdy hull — the fishing boats of Greenock. Past Dunoon and Innellan, onward I journeyed, past the pretty lighthouse on Toward Point, past opulent Rothesay, — its gray houses and teeming causeways gloomy in the sub- dued light, — and so into the lovely Kyles of Bute, and over happy waterways to Loch Fyne, rocky Tarbert, the port of Ardrishaig, THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 23 and the Crinan Canal. All along that course the scenery is sharply characteristic of Scotland ; — a rocky coast, girdled with steel-coloured seas ; hills clad with heather ; peaceful bays ; stone houses, scattered among the rocks ; fishing-boats, with red or brown canvas, at anchor, or under sail, or slowly drifting with the tide ; fields, su- perbly cultivated, alternating with lonely pasture and moorland, sprinkled over with wandering sheep ; ruined towers, on dark, sea-girt crags ; and, over all, the ever-chang- ing gladness and gloom of skies that are al- ways beautiful, never at rest, and never twice the same. Beside the Crinan the Highland piper was playing, as he always does, and I heard once more the wild slogan of the MacGregor and the tearful cadences of Bonnie Doon. Once through the Crinan, the brief and cheery run to my desired haven was northward, along the coast of Lorn, with Islay, Jura, and Scarba on the west and south, past the ominous precincts of Corrivreckin, past St. Columba's Garve- loch Isles, past the slate quarries of Balna- huay, and so to the Sound of Kerrera and the gay and generous port of Oban. The Sound of Kerrera, running about northeast and southwest, and being about a 24 THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. mile wide, separates the island of Ken-era from the mainland. At the head of it lies Oban, in a sheltered bay, backed by a great semicircle of wooded crags and heather- covered hills. The water front of the town, in shape a crescent, is protected by a splen- did sea-wall, made of granite, and fretted like the battlements of a castle. Two little piers jut into the harbour, around which are often clustered many black steamboats, picturesque with rakish hulls, tapering spars, and red funnels, and upon which, at almost all times, there is the stir of travel. Along the crescent street and up the con- tiguous hillside are ranged the many stone buildings that constitute the town. Hotels are numerous ; lodging-houses abound ; the permanent inhabitants number about four thousand ; there are gay shops, — in one of which I saw a sporran and a mas- sive twisted stick once owned by Eob Roy MacGregor, together with a bronze clock, once the property of Sir Walter Scott, — and in all ways the place is pleasant. A traveller wishing for seclusion, rest, comfort, and variety could nowhere find them in more abundance than at Oban. The Mac- Brayne steamers, a fleet of thirty-six superb vessels, strong, swift, safe, and luxurious, THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 25 ply continually in these waters, and excur- sions are feasible from this point to every part of Scotland. Meantime, the immedi- ate vicinity of the town has charms that familiarity will only endear. Each day I have walked many miles, and every day I have found a new prospect of beauty. A few steps from this place will, at any time, bring the pilgrim into Highland glens where absolute solitude seems throned in perpetual sway ; where nothing stirs but, now and then, a wandering sheep, or the fragrant purple heather just ruffled by the gentle wind ; and where the only sound is the lone call of the solitary curlew or the musical murmur of a hidden brook. Or, should he be minded for the water and for the heights and moors of Kerrera, a sail of half an hour will bring him to that lonely and lovely island, upon which, although it is not unin- habited, he may stroll for hours, without sight of a human face or sign of a human abode. Gazing from a headland on the west coast of Kerrera, I saw the dark mountains of Mull and Morven, clear-cut against the heavens, — vast masses of rock and verdure, softly relieved by spots of light, and calm as if no gale had ever swept their summits, nor darkness, tempest, and 26 THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. danger been ever known. The sky was covered with thin, gray clouds, in which were rifts of blue, and from behind its fleecy mantle the sun flashed here and there a gentle radiance. The sea, in all direc- tions, was smooth and still, and the thin, rocky points that jut into it, and the tiny islands scattered upon its surface, seemed carved out of ebony. In front were visible the lighthouse on the southern arm of Lis- more, the lady rock, — a dark speck in the glassy water, whence the Campbells res- cued Fair Ellen of Lorn, — the ruins of Duart Castle, in Mull, and of Ardtornish, in Morven, the ancient fortress of the Lord of the Isles. In every quarter, far and near, the rocky shores, indented by many bays, displayed the greatest variety of shape and prospect. There is almost always a stir in the heavens in this wild region, and even while I gazed an arrow of gold darted slantwise across the grim Morven hills, while above it huge masses of great, steel- coloured clouds were curled upward toward the zenith, and a single brilliant shaft of light fell straight upon the intervening plain of the sea. Upon some neighbouring rocks rested for a moment a few uneasy gulls. In the pastures, below my crag, heedless THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 2J slieep were feeding and cattle were couched at rest. A single sail-boat drifted on the deep. A solemn hush seemed brooding over the world. Only at times the melan- choly jackdaws croaked, from a higher cliff ; the air was turned to music by the momentary rippling warble of small birds ; and, in the deep silence, was faintly audible the sleepy buzzing of idle flies. Amid that scene of peace I looked toward the more dis- tant Hebrides, and almost I could see, upon the gloomy, desolate waters, the frowning, martial galleys of old Norwegian kings. Southwesterly from Oban the road to Kil- bride, Ardoran, and Loch Feochan runs close to the margin of Kerrera Sound, and for a lovely twilight ramble I do not think a sweeter place was ever discovered. Al- most as soon as you leave the town you come upon great boulders clad with heather, and your walk is then between sea and mountain, along the base of a gigantic cliff, — at first slightly masked by a luxuriant growth of larch and fir, then naked and bold in its colossal strength and rugged desolation. In cosey nooks beneath the shadow of those tremendous crags are a few dwellings, lovely amid flowering lawns, and richly decorated with the beautiful green 25 THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. and crimson of the delicate woodbine, — their windows opening on the ever-change- ful waters of the Sound. Those waters, when last I saw them, were faintly wrinkled by the gentle wind of evening, while every puff of the breeze brought delicious odour from the moorlands and the woods. A lit- tle island rose dark in the stream, and mid- way between Lorn and Kerrera a bright, revolving light flashed from a tiny buoy, fast anchored to the rocks. At that point there is a ferry to Kerrera, — practicable when signalled from the mainland ; and, looking across to that island, with its rich, green pasture lands, its broad stretches of breezy heath, its scattered farmhouses and its dark ravines, the stroller is strongly tempted to kindle the signal brand or wind the horn. The margin of the shore is there a confused mass of scrawled rocks, while great beetling cliffs overhang the road. To- ward the end of the crag I saw the mouth of a cavern which — since it has been there, unchanged, for countless centuries — must often have been the abode of savage beasts, or of men scarcely less savage, in the earlier ages of unrecorded time. Not distant, in the vacant pasture, was a strange, uncouth, lichen-covered stone, in shape a THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 29 clumsy sphinx, silently watching over the bleak and darkening waste. Along the white road, which curves with the curving of the shore, there is an ample growth of rushes and of thistles, — whereof the down was floating here and there, — and, looking up the gorges of the hills, I saw much bracken and great shining patches of golden gorse. Throughout that region there is a wealth of flowers, while among the mountain rocks are great trees of thick ivy, so that the face of every crag is veined with green, and the sternest aspect of nature often wears a smile. In a little bay, where a boat had been beached, I rested long, to dream upon that scene of savage grandeur and yet of sweet repose. Far out upon the glassy water a single sloop was nestled, like a bird asleep. The regular, rhythmic beat of the oars of a distant skiff floated over the silent sea. The faint breeze was scented with the fragrance of hay-fields, near at hand. A few drowsy bird-notes were sprinkled on the air; and slowly, over the sacred stillness, the soft gray light which follows the sunset waned and faded, until all was dark. This place, indeed, is one of strange and incommunicable beauty, and words can but 30 THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. faintly suggest its charm. Looking north- ward from my windows in the home-like Royal Hotel of Oban, I see the pretty bay of this picturesque city, placid now, and smooth as a mirror, and on it a few little steam- yachts and fishing-boats at anchor. Many gulls are resting on its glossy, steel-like sur- face, or circling, with shrill clamour, in the empurpled, golden air. Immediately before me lies the ample garden of a neighbouring dwelling, — its walks fringed with marigolds and late roses, its green lawns shaded by tremulous willow trees, the rowan, and the ash, a still fountain in its centre, and in the ample, dry basin a child at play. Beyond the garden rises the embattled sea-wall of the town. Away to the right stretches a long line of dwellings, gray against the autumn-tinted gseen of Dunolly Mount. Through the middle distance extends the bleak, green, treeless, broken and vacant point of Kerrera, upon which, near its north- ern extremity, rises a simple monument, to commemorate that admirable public bene- factor, David Hutcheson, whose manage- ment of steam navigation opened to general access the western highlands of Scotland. On the left are the buildings and gardens of the Caledonian Railway, and a little west- THE GATE OF THE HEBRIDES. 3 1 ward of them rises the wooded height of Pulpit Hill, — commemorating the revered character and life of David Macrae, — from which you may have one of the loveliest views of landscape and water that are any- where to be found. Far off, in the north and west, ridge beyond ridge, extend the dark and frowning mountains of Morven and of Mull. From the streets adjacent comes a noise of traffic, the click of hoofs, the rattle of wheels, and the occasional din of bells. Squads of tourists hasten to and fro along the causeway. Flocks of black- faced sheep and herds of shaggy, wide- horned cattle appear suddenly, from time to time, coming around the curves of the har- bour road, and, spurred by shepherds and by vigilant collie dogs, tramp away and vanish. The sun, as it sinks behind the western mountain, casts slanting rays of golden light across the peaceful bay, from beneath thick clouds of lilac and of steel. The sky immediately above is of the clearest, deepest blue, and high in heaven the little starlings are flying in flocks, while a single sea-swallow, poised for an instant, makes a picture of wild freedom and happy sover- eign power, serene in the sapphire arch. 32 THE PASS OF GLENCOE. III. THE PASS OP GLENCOE. GLENCOE HOTEL, Pass of Glencoe, September 14, 1894. — As I sailed out of Oban Bay the sea was perfectly smooth, the air was cool and sweet, and, looking eastward, I could see rifts of blue, shining through a gray and rainy sky. The course was northward, past the ivy-clad ruins of Dunolly Castle, and past the mouth of Loch Etive, with Lismore, the Great Gar- den, on the west, and the mountains of Benderloch and Ardchattan on the east, while in front gradually opened a gay and blooming prospect of the Airds of Appin. It is a lovely country, and whether seen in sunshine or in shadow it fires the imagi- nation and satisfies the heart. On Lis- more the fields were green and fair, and upon the rocks that fringe the shore glowed many patches of brilliant moss, which pres- ently were reflected in the still and shining water ; and I saw little clefts along the coast, THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 23 wherein boats had been beached, and, in- land, occasional tall trees, and many stone cottages nestled in sheltered nooks. The whole scene was encompassed with hills, and constantly, as we sped onward, — leav- ing a wake of broadening rollers, over which the greedy seagulls circled and screamed, — that wrinkled landscape would change in form and colour, till the senses were bewil- dered with its variety and its pomp. Far to the eastward were visible the gigantic double peaks of Ben Cruachan, and not alone those proud, imperial heights, but the spires and ridges of all the mountain chains around Glen Creran, Glen Etive, Glen Kinglas, and Glen Strae ; while in the west, defined with wonderful sharpness of outline, rose the frowning bastions of Mor- ven, and, more southerly, the black, pre- cipitous mountains of Mull. As the boat drew near to Appin, — whence sprung the royal Stuarts, — the sea, before it, was a mirror of burnished steel, while behind, underneath a misty sun, it was one broad plain of rippling silver. There is a fine bay at Appin, a sturdy sea-wall and a pretty beach, and I could see the sleek, contented cattle, feeding in their pastures, the slop- ing hillsides above them, thickly wooded 34 THE PASS OF GLENCOE. with the hardy Scotch fir, and the great highlands beyond, red and gleaming with heather, in its perfection of bloom. The land was of various colours, — tawny, yel- low, red, and dark green, — and the water was so placid that the unbroken reflection of the adjacent mountains could be dis- tinctly seen in its depths, while each lonely bird that drifted on the surface left a rip- ple in its wake. Sometimes near the land, sometimes distant from it, the rapid steamer made her steadfast way, while ever, as she advanced among the engirdling hills, new vistas of beauty kept opening and chang- ing, till perception was confused with the novel vicissitude of mysterious prospect. The sun, about meridian, hung in the heavens, like a silver shield. Mists began to thicken and to droop, but through them I saw the riven sides of crags, black and barren from long scarcity of rain, and towering behind them the dark mass of Ben Vair, where it frowns upon the mouth of Loch Leven. The landing was at Bal- lachulish pier, and from that point onward I drove toward the famous Pass of Glencoe. No doubt it is a beaten track ; but every track is beaten, in these days of systematic touring and all-conquering steam, and, as THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 35 to the results of observation, everything is dependent on the eyes that see. For a time the course was by the margin of the loch and eastward along the base of the great mountains that border it, following a road through the village of Ballachulish, where there are slate quarries of great ex- tent, and where I saw a fine slate-stone monument, to commemorate the Queen's Jubilee year, — inscribed with the date, Sep- tember, 21, 1887. In that region the fields are divided with walls of slate, and at one point the carriage rolls beneath a tall and splendid arch of slate-stones, fashioned in a buttress to the impending hill, and cre- ating a singular effect of rugged grace. A small church appears, proclaiming itself by no less than six crosses, and on the broad reaches of bleak hillside the traveller's gaze wanders curiously over groups of moun- tain sheep, — the tiny, graceful beasts of the Highlands. It is one effect of solemn emotion that it causes you to observe trifles with acute perception, and I think no per- son of a sensitive temperament could ap- proach that little village of Glencoe without such feelings of awe as would impress the scene upon his memory forever. The place of the massacre lies near the entrance to 36 THE PASS OF GLENCOE. the glen, and it is marked by a simple granite shaft. Scarce anything remains of the shielings of the Mclan tribe of the clan Macdonald, — the wretched victims of that hideous crime, — but you are told of the spot where the house of the chieftain stood, and you see the ruins of a few huts that once were the homes of his unfortu- nate people. Time, that heals all wounds and tries to hide all scars, has gently cov- ered every vestige of the inhuman butchery with verdure and bloom, and that scene of horror is now a peaceful hamlet, in which you may hear the sound of the church-bell and the laughter of children at their play. All the same, there is a shadow on the place that nothing can remove, — a sense of unspeakable terror and dread. More than two centuries have passed since that fearful winter night (February 13, 1692), when the soldiers of king William so basely murdered the trusting Highlanders whose bread they had eaten and in whose homes they had slept ; but, whether from its phys- ical peculiarities or from the mysterious power of association, the Pass of Glencoe is forever invested with pathos and gloom. All around are huge mountains, black and barren, or clad with green turf and bracken, THE PASS OF GLENCOE. yj and mostly veined with deep, stony fissures, which are the beds of rapid rivulets. Low in the gorge you see the rocky bed of the river Cona, here and there diversified with tiny waterfalls, and you hear the noise of water bickering over the stones, the lonely caw of rooks, and the bleating of distant sheep. Beside that river the long road, like a ribbon of silver, ascending and de- scending, winds away, with the windings of the glen. Far in the Pass I found a refuge, and it was my privilege to spend a night amid those scenes of desolation, — among the dreariest beneath the eye of heaven. In that way only can the full meaning of such a place be absorbed into the mind, — the lonely magnificence of stu- pendous natural objects, and that copious, cruel, terrible vitality of nature which is so completely indifferent to the life of man. Thus I reflected, sitting alone, among the rocks in that wilderness, and listening, in the gloaming, to the voice of the hidden mountain streams. Above me towered the gigantic black crags of Bidean-nam-Bian, its huge bastions banked like some great organ, whereon, smitten by all .the tem- pests round about the world, might sound, through everlasting time, the solemn music 38 THE PASS OF GLENCOE. of eternity. Not distant I saw the black waters of Loch Triochatan, and far above, in the mountain side, the dark and seem- ingly inaccessible arch of Ossian's cave, — for that poet was born beside the Cona, and the spell of his weird genius rests on all those rocks and waters. As the night deepened, a faint moonlight, as from another world, — for the moon was hid- den behind the mountain peaks, — drifted into the Pass, suffusing its grim battle- ments and dusky depths with an unearthly glow ; and almost I could see dim shapes of phantoms, the murdered children of the glen, gliding toward me, across the riven rocks. Later, and just before the dawn, I looked, forth again, and saw where great clouds of mist were drifting across the mountain sides, while yet the peaks rose bare and grim above, and looking upward I beheld, through a rift in the driving clouds, the golden orb of the morning star. I had seen Glencoe under a blaze of sun- shine. I was now to see it under the tran- sient shadow of a storm. Nothing can exceed in grandeur the effect of the Scot- tish mountains when they are draped in mist. All the imagery of Ossian is justi- fied, and more than justified, by the por- THE PASS OF GLENCOE. 39 tentous shapes and the immeasurable magnitude that the vapours impart to the hills. Sometimes those mists are piled upon each other till they reach far into the heavens. Sometimes they drift in vast masses, low down upon the crags. Sometimes they impend and float in strange processions, — thin, long streamers, moving slowly across the mountain side. But, what- ever shape they take, and however they come, they are beautiful ; and very grate- ful I was to the little birds whose twitter- ing in the eaves of the cottage awakened me before the dawn, that I might enjoy that spectacle of majesty and wild romance. I took a boat and rowed for a while upon the lake, — musing in that delightful soli- tude, beyond the reach of man to despoil or to mar, however darkened with the shadow of his crime and sin. I saw the remains of the old bridle path, along which some of the Macdonalds escaped from the murderous hands of Campbell of Glen Lyon, and I was told that many ruined houses, once tiny cots of stone and thatch, the homes of the clan Macdonald of other days, may still be seen, scattered in places among the hills. Scotland's glens were far more populous two hundred years ago than 40 THE PASS OF GLENCOE. they are now, for then the land was owned by the clans, and each clan obeyed its chieftain and possessed the product of its toil ; but after the rising for Prince Charles, in '45, and the disaster of Culloden, those lands were rended and parcelled among the conquerors, and gradually the old inhabi- tants have been banished to the south or into foreign countries. The clannish feel- ing, the native language, and the primitive customs of the Highlander have not, indeed, been extinguished ; but they survive only in remote and isolated places — such as Morven, Iona, Mull, and Colonsay, and such as the weird Pass of Glencoe. Far distant be the day when a language so sweetly musical and so poetically expres- sive shall cease to sound, when customs so picturesque shall be discarded, and when a home life so generous and romantic shall exist no more. THE HOLY ISLE. 41 IV. THE HOLY ISLE. IONA, September 24, 1894. — The sky was cloudy and the wind was cold when I sailed out of Oban, bound for Staffa and Iona, but the sea was smooth, and soon the sun struggled through the clouds and streaked the liquid plain with lace-like rays of silver. On Mull the mountain shapes were dark and stately, and the green hills of Morven — less impressive, however, than when they are half hid- den by streamers of drifting mist — stood forth, bold and splendid, in the gray light of an autumn morning. The tide was gently plashing on the lady rock as the boat swept by it, and frowning in the dis- tance, rose the grim ruin of Duart Castle, — objects eloquent of the cruel Maclean and of his baffled crime, long since commemo- rated alike in poem and in play. In the north I saw again Ardtornish, and I thought of Scott and of the Lord of the Isles. Over 42 THE HOLY ISLE. that region, also, as over Loch Katrine, Loch Lomond, and the land of the Mac- Gregor, the great Minstrel of Scotland has cast the imperishable glamour of his genius and his renown. Upon both shores of the spacious Sound of Mull I saw the many ruined castles that Scott has immortalised, — strongholds of ancient chieftains, long since dead and gone, — and soon I looked on modest Salen and haughty Tobermory, sheltered secure in their peaceful bays. A thin silver haze had gathered on the moun- tains, when we put to sea from Tobermory, but through it I had a grand vision of lofty Ardnamurchan, — the cape of the Great Seas, the extreme western point of Britain, — and far away I could discern the seques- tered islands of Coll and Tiree, lying like long clouds on the western horizon. At Staff a the wind was hushed, the sun shone brightly over that mysterious island, — bosomed on the ocean like a great ship dis- mantled and grounded, — and, save for a deep, regular swell that surged through the channels of rock upon its riven coast, the sea was silent, a giant, breathing low in his heavy sleep. The boatmen of Gometra were there, with the great red lifeboat, and the landing was easily made. Some of us, THE HOLY ISLE. 43 indeed, were rowed into Fingal's Cave, so that we could gaze upward, in the centre of its superb cathedral aisle, and hear, from its reverberant arches, groined by the hand of God, the echo of the musical surges that solemnly break upon its base. Staff a might, perhaps, be adequately described by an ob- server who should dwell there for a time without human companionship, — because in solitude the spirit of the place would stand revealed and would become an inspi- ration and a guide. Even when marred by the chatter and levity of a commonplace throng of sightseers, the scene has still a wonderful power upon the heart. It was very glorious on that day, — the solemn cave almost flooded with brilliant sunshine, the jagged walls covered with gleaming sea- grass and limpets, and the dark basaltic columns basking in light and heat. To be there alone, to listen to the breakers, to see the endless succession of on-coming waves, — each sinister with cruel desire and awful with silent menace, — and to hear the wind among the rocks, would be to feel the divine might, the weird mystery, and the nameless terror of the caverned isle, and, perhaps, to translate them into words. In the Highlands and among the Hebrides 44 TH E HOLY ISLE. the traveller is influenced more by natural objects and their atmosphere than by his- toric association. Throughout those moun- tain glens and upon those lonely islands and those bleak and wandering waters man has, indeed, been active, from an immemo- rial time, alike in the ravages of war and the pursuits of peace ; but, in contrast with those solitary hills and that gloomy ocean, man and all his works dwindle to insignifi- cance and seem no more than the dying echo of a wave that is spent. With that thought I stood upon the summit of the crags of Staffa and gazed out upon the Heb- rides, sleeping in a sea of gold. Never have the shores of Scotland been more lovely to human eyes than they were that day, — for never was the sunlight more resplendent upon them, or the overarching sky more cloudless, or the girdling sea more brilliant or more calm. Northward the Tresnish Islands lay like gems of jet in the spar- kling water. Eastward green Inchkenneth smiled upon sable TJlva and the jagged, ruddy coast of Mull. "Westward, a dark speck in the wild Atlantic, was dimly visible the rock of Skerry vore. And in the south rose the single mountain of Iona, — the Holy Isle, the land of my desire and the THE HOLY ISLE. 45 chief goal of my pilgrimage ; at once the most romantic, the most pastoral, and the most illustrious of all the shrines of Scotland. It has been said of Iona that " its inter- est lies altogether in human memories." Those memories certainly hallow it, and they invest it with a peculiar solemnity ; but in itself, by reason of its position and its physical attributes, Iona exercises upon the senses and the imagination the excep- tional spell of an august and melancholy charm, and therefore it possesses an in- terest essentially its own. You can go no- where in that island without seeing, every hour, a new picture, and every picture will be superb. In the early morning the scene is usually sombre ; but as the sun mounts into the clear heavens, burning away the mist, all the region begins to glow with glistening verdure and with a sheen of many-coloured waters, and to vibrate with the vital energy of a cool, crystal air, which is delicious with varied fragrance and with the music of many birds. The surrounding sea is a mirror, sometimes purple, some- times blue or green, and alike upon the sea and the land the passing clouds cast many a gray shadow as they drift along. In little 46 - THE HOLY ISLE. gardens, here and there, the red roses are still in bloom, the flaming marigolds lift their bright heads, and the broad shields of the clematis fleck the cottage walls with purple splashes, — darkly beautiful against green leaves and gray stone. Fields of clover, flooded with sunshine, tremble in the breeze. The wallflowers and thin grasses upon the ruined church and nun- nery stir faintly and seem to make the still- ness stiller and the solitude more deep. Far off, in austere Mull, the rays of the sun, falling from behind a great cloud, light up the red, barren rocks, and make them, for a moment, great masses of ruby and diamond. Every minute the sea and the sky are changed, while silence seems to grow denser and holier with the deepening of the day. There is a low murmur of waves upon the shore. A stray jackdaw caws lazily, floating around the grim cathe- dral parapet, — so lovely in its decay. There is a flutter of small birds, — the friendly little starling being the chief of them, — and this occasionally breaks into a song or a tremulous trill ; while far away sounds the call of the curlew, low and mournful in the solemn stillness. If you pause in your moorland ramble, the air is THE HOLY ISLE. 47 so peaceful that you may hear the hum of a passing bee or the buzzing of flies. High up, among the rocks of Dun-I, the black woolly cattle and the little fleecy sheep gaze at you with attentive eyes, and make no motion of fear or flight. Now and then you come upon a small cottage, sequestered in seaside cove or rural glen or moor, and from every chimney a thin spire of white and blue smoke rises almost straight toward the placid sky. Out upon the Sound of Iona a single boat is drifting with the tide, while around the point of the Torran Rocks, — so terrible in tempest, but now so full of peace, — a tiny steam yacht makes her graceful course, like a phantom floating across the mirror of a dream. In the broad fields, lately mown and golden now with stubble, the harvest has mostly been stacked in yellow sheaves, and sometimes, over the distance, — in an air so clear that faint sounds may be heard for more than a mile, — you can catch the singing of the reapers, the sound of laughter, and even that of spoken words. So speeds the happy day : and now, a little later, the sun sinks slowly in the west, beyond the wide and desolate Atlantic plain. Eastward the crags of Mull grow dark, while high above them, girdling 48 THE HOLY ISLE. the summit of Ben More, vast masses of bronze cloud float dreamily in space. The Strait of Iona is a rill of burnished silver. Westward in the heavens the gold of sun- set is veined with long rifts of lilac and steel-blue. The shadows deepen. The wide and lonesome moors — in daytime green with lush grass and purple with abundant heather — grow dimmer and more forlorn. The whisper of the sea rises, upon a faint breeze of night, and over the darkening solitude the jackdaws, in a sable multitude, make wing for the sombre tower of the ruined church which is their home. At a late hour of the night I went to St. Oran's chapel, among the graves of the Scottish kings, and to the cathedral ruins, — which then were partly in shadow and partly illumined by the faint light of a gibbous moon. The winds were hushed. The sea was like glass. The sky was covered with thin clouds. of silver fleece, through which the moonlight struggled, commingling with the faint, doubtful radi- ance of a few uncertain stars. Upon the grassy plain that surrounds the ancient church the spectral crosses — of St. Mar- tin, St. Matthew, and St. John, each cast- THE HOLY ISLE. 49 ing a long, weird shadow — glimmered like ghosts. Within the ruins the awful silence was broken only by a low sighing of the air through crevices of the mouldering walls, and by the fluttering of birds, in the dark, hollow heights of the great tower, — jack- daws, disturbed in their midnight slumber by the unusual foot of man. Framed in darkness the lovely eastern casement was a wonder of light, — each mullion clearly defined, and every lancet and rose made visible in a perfection of form scarce dreamed of until then. I stood long upon the place of the altar, with those strange, rude effigies of kings and warriors and priests around me, and the stone pillar of St. Columba close by, and I listened to the faint murmur of the sea ; and in the chill air of midnight the rustling of the grass upon those broken arches seemed the whis- per of beings from another world. Amid such scenes as these the human spirit is purified and exalted, — because amid such scenes as these the best of our present life may be enjoyed, while our humble and rev- erent hope of the life to come is strength- ened and confirmed. On a Sunday morning I sailed, in a small boat, from Iona across to Mull. Neither 50 THE HOLY ISLE. wind nor tide would serve us, and we had to make a long reach toward the ocean, so that I saw, very close at hand, and in their guise of holiday, those dangerous Torran Kocks, — well remembered as I had seen them in the terrors of the tempest, but peaceful and smiling now, in the warm light of the morning sun and amid the calm of the sleeping sea. Over the waters all around, and often near to our boat, the seagulls swooped and mewed, and the cor- morants skimmed, while scores of black divers made their pretty curves and van- ished in the deep. Seals here and there came up to view, and upon the low rocks of the coast some pairs of hoodie-crows, the ill-omened corbies of the moorland, sat close together, in sinister counsel, planning mischief, and doubtless intent upon its speedy accomplishment, — for no bird is more sagacious or more wicked. The land- ing upon Mull was accomplished by difficult scrambling over a mass of jagged rocks, and presently I came to a neat road, that winds away across the great island, eastward and north, toward the villages of Kintra and Bunessan. Near to the shore there is a lonely little graveyard, in which are a few mounds and rude sepulchral stones, and I THE HOLY ISLE. 5 I was told that the bodies there buried were such as had been intended for interment in Iona, but had been stayed by storms, — for, in tempestuous weather, the Sound becomes impassable and may remain so for many days at a time. Many such accidental bournes of sepulchre exist in the Western Islands of Scotland, — their presence deep- ening the melancholy bleakness of solitary places, and darkly bespeaking the inexor- able power of the savage sea. The walk was through pasture lands for about three miles, with scarcely a house in sight; but many cattle and sheep were visible, peace- fully grazing, and often I passed huge piles of peat, the only fuel that is used in the Ross of Mull. Peat bogs abound in that country, and some that I saw were at least twelve feet deep. The lower strata is said to be the best, and a fire of peats, as I had occasion to know, is both comfortable and fragrant. I made my way into Mull, as far as the Parish of Icolmkill extends, its eastern boundary being marked by a tiny brook, the burnie of Scottish song, which ripples beneath the road, not far eastward of Loch Porlie. There are, in that parish, which reaches from Kintra to Erraid and from the Sound of Iona to Creich, about 52 THE HOLY ISLE. four hundred and twenty inhabitants, in- clusive of the keepers of the lighthouse on Dim Heartach, — otherwise called the Rock of St. John, — which is distant from Iona about twelve miles southwest, in the lone Atlantic, and on the still more remote and desolate . Skerry vore. Those lighthouse- keepers have homes upon Erraid Island, among the Torran Rocks, and each man may pass two weeks at home, after six weeks at the Light, when the weather per- mits a relief-boat to bring him away from his ocean solitude. Lonelier vigils are not kept, anywhere in the world, than on those remote, storm-beaten coasts of the Hebrides. Nowhere have I found more primitive man- ners than in Mull. The inhabitants speak the Gselic language, and in that language divine service was performed at Creich, — the Minister of Iona, Rev. Archibald Mac- millan, delivering a sermon, marked by intense feeling, winning sweetness, and per- fect simplicity. A schoolroom serves for a church in that wild place, — its walls of discoloured plaster being embellished with maps, — and the worshippers sit upon wooden benches. The manner of all things there was very simple, and I have not seen in any house of worship a more profoundly THE HOLY ISLE. 53 reverent spirit. The building is isolated, and over miles of encircling pasture the autumn sun shone brightly and the sable rooks, seemingly so wise and always so busy, took their melancholy flight. In the home of the . schoolmaster, Duncan Cameron, we were entertained with Highland cordiality, and so parting we sailed away. The sky, half blue and half filled with clouds of white and slate, smiled over us as we sped, the sea was smooth, and, save for the lapping of the waves against our boat, I heard no sound. When half way across the Strait of Iona the voyager may see weird Staffa in one direction, the savage Torran Rocks in another, and the Morven heights just peeping over Mull. A wreath of mist was on Ben More, but the peak of that mountain stood clearly forth above it, and, scattered here and there among the glisten- ing red rocks of Mull, the little cottages seemed more than ever the abodes of pre- destinate and unassailable peace. Before us lay the fields of fair Iona, golden and green in a blaze of sunshine. Around us the sea was gray, or violet, or resplendent with great streaks of purple. Clear against the western sky rose the cairn of Iona's single mountain of Dun-I, and more near we 54 THE HOLY ISLE. saw the ruins of the nunnery and the cathe- dral, beautiful in proportion, lovely in col- our, and venerable with the memories of eight hundred years. The great cathedral tower, visible from almost every point in this region, dominates every picture ; and no effect of colour could be finer than its commingling of red and gray, in the warm light of the autumnal sun, with weeds and flowers and long grass in its crevices, and rooks circling about its summit. There it stands, in desolate magnificence, the gaunt survivor of a glorious past, the lonely em- bodiment of a spirit of devotion that is dead and gone, and forever departed out of this world. Men build no more as they built when love was the soul of religion and self-sacrifice was the law of life. Such a temple as Iona Cathedral or Fountains Abbey will never be reared again. It is the age of reason now, and not of feeling. I lingered in the Port of the Coracle and stood upon the rock where Columba landed, and I wandered, in the twilight, upon the White Beach of the Monks. Not a vestige remains of the saint or of his labours. But the place is beautiful beyond words, and his august spirit has hallowed it forever. FAREWELL TO IONA. 55 V. FAREWELL TO IONA. Oban, September 27, 189U. I. SHRINED among their crystal seas- Thus I saw the Hebrides: All the land with verdure dight ; All the heavens flushed with light ; Purple jewels 'neath the tide ; Hill and meadow glorified ; Beasts at ease and birds in air ; Life and beauty everywhere ! Shrined amid their crystal seas — Thus I saw the Hebrides. n. Fading in the sunset smile — Thus I left the Holy Isle ; Saw it slowly fade away, Through the mist of parting day ; 56 FAREWELL TO IONA. Saw its ruins, grim and old, And its bastions, bathed in gold, Rifted crag and snowy beach, Where the seagulls swoop and screech, Vanish, and the shadows fall, To the lonely curlew's call. Fading in the sunset smile — Thus I left the Holy Isle. As Columba, old and ill, Mounted on the sacred hill, Raising hands of faith and prayer, Breathed his benediction there, — Stricken with its solemn grace, — Thus my spirit blessed the place : O'er it while the ages range, Time be blind and work no change ! On its plenty be increase ! On its homes perpetual peace ! While around its lonely shore Wild winds rave and breakers roar, FAREWELL TO IONA. 57 Round its blazing hearths be blent Virtue, comfort, and content ! On its beauty, passing all, Ne"er may blight nor shadow fall ! Ne'er may vandal foot intrude On its sacred solitude ! May its ancient fame remain Glorious, and without a stain ; And the hope that ne'er departs, Live within its loving hearts ! Slowly fades the sunset light, Slowly round me falls the night : Gone the Isle, and distant far All its loves and glories are : Yet forever, in my mind, Still will sigh the wand' ring wind, And the music of the seas, Mid the lonely Hebrides. 58 DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. VI. DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. EDINBURGH, October 25, 1894.— The Castle looms above us, in rugged splendour, as we glide along at the base of its gigantic foundation crag, and speed away into the green fields. It is autumn and there has been frost, but the landscape still smiles, and beneath a delicate blue sky, rifted with many clouds of white and pink, the harvest fields are golden, and the lazy sheep stray in green pastures, and all the earth is glad. In one field innumerable seagulls are busy among the stubble ; in another there is a multitude of rooks, portly, sleek, black, and preternaturally industrious. Upon every side are hedge- rows and groups of trees, and often we see long lines of cone-shaped, yellow hay- stacks and sometimes red-roofed cottages with russet-tinted barns, and the scene is lovely with colour and with the genial sug- gestion of rural peace and comfort. The DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 59 sinuous, domelike shapes of the Corstor- phine and the Pentland Hills are stately and mysterious, within vast bastions and parapets of cloud and through a thin veil of gauzy mist. Upon the broad Forth, when we traverse the great bridge, there is a sheen of gold, as the westering sun gleams over its surface of wrinkled steel, and, far below us, across that wide expanse of bur- nished beauty, the little steamboats make their easy way, each leaving a ripple of sil- ver in its wake. Every time I have seen the Forth, at that point, it has presented a gorgeous picture. This time it was more than ever magnificent, because of impend- ing storm. A great cloud-rack was coming from the north, and underneath a confused interblending of light and shadow — streaks of blue and rolling masses of bronze and black — both land and water took on a glory of changing hues for which there is no descriptive word, and a gloomy gran- deur which is the perfect garment of mystery and omen. At picturesque Inver- keithing we darted suddenly into the heart of the tempest, and nothing more was seen till we came to clear skies again, and to fair Dunfermline, serene upon her royal hill. It was the Abbey that I wished to see, 60 DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. and a short walk, through streets of gray stone houses and little shops, soon brought me to its stately portal, — one of the most imposing types of the recessed Norman door to be found in this kingdom. The church rears itself in the centre of a large burial-place, and, being set upon a ridge of land which slopes both ways, its massive, square tower is visible far off. In the fret- work at the top of that tower appear the words King Robert the Bruce, the letters being of great size and being placed as supports for the coping. That portion of the fabric is modern, for in the days of Knox the old church, — erected by Mal- colm and Margaret, in 1075, — was demol- ished, excepting its nave, and the stones of it, which had been hallowed by nearly five hundred years of dedication to sacred wor- ship, were thereupon, from time to time, carried away and built into other struct- ures, wherever stones might happen to be wanted. The ancient nave remains ; and noble it is, with its ponderous round pil- lars, its lofty casements, its gaunt trifo- rium, and its unmistakable character of perfect simplicity and truth. Two of the pillars are decorated with arrowhead carv- ing, ingeniously devised to create the opti- DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 6l cal delusion that they are narrower at the base than at the top. In a chapel near the north porch are two stone coffins, one open and one closed and sealed, — the latter con- taining the bones of two sons of Malcolm, one of whom was slain, in company with his father, at the battle of Alnwick, and the other of whom brought to his mother, Queen Margaret, tidings of her bereave- ment. The new part of the Abbey is built immediately over the ruin of the old one, so that the ancient nave affords an avenue to the modern chancel ; yet even in that modern structure the spell of antiquity asserts its power, ■ — for immediately under the pulpit is the tomb of king Robert, the Bruce, and beneath the pews toward the north end of the transept rest stone coffins containing the bones of eleven of the earlier monarchs of Scotland. Malcolm and Mar- garet were buried side by side, near the altar of the former church, but their tomb, now a ruin, though carefully covered and enclosed, is directly east of the present building and outside of it. The bones of the sainted Margaret no longer rest in that sepulchre, having been long ago conveyed away and buried in Spain. Bruce died at Cardross in 1329, and was buried in front 62 DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. of the altar in Dunfermline church. In 1818 his coffin, of oak and lead, was discov- ered and opened, his skeleton was found entire, and an examination of it revealed the fact that the ribs had been severed with a saw, so that his heart could be re- moved, — that brave and pious heart, which he had willed should be placed in the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, but which, after many vicissitudes, was buried in Melrose Abbey. The bones of Bruce, it is said, are preserved with pitch. The tomb was marked, in 1889, with a superb brass, representing the full-length figure of the monarch, panoplied for war, set in a slab of Egyptian porphyry. As to the stone coffins of the other kings, the sexton of the Abbey told me he had several times exam- ined them with great care, but could find no mark by which the identity of the bur- ied persons could be established. The stones that originally covered those re- mains of old royalty appear to have been demolished. Queen Anne's elaborate mon- ument to the architect William Schaw [1702] is at the west end of the north aisle of the older church, but in a place so dark that I could only discern that it is florid and artificial. Foley's beautiful and DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 63 touching sculpture, commemorative of Gen- eral Robert Bruce, brother to Augusta Bruce, who became the wife of the beloved Dean Stanley, stands in the south transept, — a veiled woman, supporting the head of the dead man, and bending over his recum- bent figure, in the mute agony of grief. The contrast of death and life in those fig- ures, together with the truth of anatomy and the flexibility and grace of drapery, make that work a marvel, and I remember it with the sculptures by Chantrey, and Watts, at Lichfield, and with the angel at the font, in the cathedral at Inverness. In the churchyard at Dunfermline Abbey they show the grave of the mother of the heroic Wallace, still marked, as he marked it, with a thorn tree, the successor to many thorns that have there bloomed and withered. There is no name in Scottish history so encrusted with fable as that of William Wallace, but in this tradition of him it is good to maintain an absolute trust. A few fragments of gray stone, weather- beaten and beautiful with age, are all that remain of the old palace, where " The king sat in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blood-red wine." 64 DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. Those fragments and the land adjacent to them are enclosed, and a small sign, over the gate, announces the Palace Ruins. At my approach a custodian emerged from a watch-box and opened the gate. The ground is overgrown with grass and young trees, and the place is neatly kept. The palace must have been extensive, but only one wall of it is now extant. John Knox laid upon Dunfermline the hand of destruc- tion, and church and monastery and palace were tumbled into a shapeless mass of ruin. The wall that remains is sustained by a strong foundation and by massive but- tresses, and it is pierced for many windows, all notable for beauty of design and fine proportion. One window, formerly an oriel, now simply an arch, is especially interest- ing, as that of the room in which was born prince Charles, afterward Charles the First, king of England. The spacious fireplace of that room is in the old wall, and about it you may see traces of the carving with which it was adorned. Five of the windows on the lower story are, obviously, those of a banquet hall, — now a broad walk, beneath the sky. Adjacent to the walk, at its east end, may be seen the remains of a spacious chamber, beneath which is a low room, DUNFERMLINE ABBEY. 6$ with a groined roof, supported by short columns. That, probably, was a wine- cellar, although the antiquarian preference is to call it a chapel. A circuitous flight of earthen steps conducts the visitor from the terrace above the ruin to a walk along the base of the old wall, and from that walk it is easy to see how splendid Dunfermline Palace must once have been. The position is just upon the brink of a wide ravine, — now considerably wooded upon both its slopes, — through the dim depth of which flows a rapid stream, sending up continu- ally that sweetest of music, the sound of running water, gently impeded in its inces- sant course. From the windows of prince Charles's room the gazer would look down into that deep and verdurous valley, and across it to fertile fields and emerald past- ures, stretching far away to the northern bank of the Forth. It was easy, in imagi- nation, to repeople those vacant spaces, and to see once more the royal Stuarts, in all their glorv, little dreaming of the awful fate which was to close their dynasty and ulti- mately extinguish their race. 66 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. VII. HAUNTS OF MART STUART. STIRLING, November 9, 1894. — The most fascinating figure in the history of Scotland is Mary Stuart. Her nature must have combined imagination, taste, sensibility, intellectual power, deep feeling, and a certain joyous, passionate abandon- ment akin to recklessness, and those attri- butes, manifestly, were incarnated in a person of voluptuous and most alluring beauty. Even at the distance of centuries from her death, her name arouses the live- liest emotions, and for her sake many a place in England and Scotland is now a shrine of sorrowful pilgrimage and pious reverence. All readers know her miserable story. Some persons believe the best of her, and some believe the worst ; but, irre- spective of all belief, the world is conscious of her strange allurement, her incessant, abiding charm. It had been my fortune to see many places with which Mary Stuart HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 6j was associated, — among them her rooms in Holyrood, where Rizzio was murdered ; her rooms in Edinburgh Castle, where her son James was born; the ruins of her castle of Craigmillar, where once she was so happy ; Carberry Hill, where she sur- rendered to her insurgent nobles ; the re- mains of her Loch Leven prison ; the field of Langside, — now thickly covered with dwellings, where, May 13, 1568, she lost her crown ; the mount of Cathcart, from which she watched the Langside battle ; the chapel in Notre Dame, in Paris, where she was married to Francis of France ; the cathedral at Peterborough, where her man- gled body was first buried ; and the stately tomb in Westminster, where, finally, her ashes were laid to rest. I was now to stand in the stone chamber in which, December 7, 1542, she was born. It is a roofless ruin, — deserted, save for the footstep of an occa- sional pilgrim, and silent, save for the moaning of the wind ; but no spot could be more eloquent. Linlithgow, I was told, is seldom visited, — and that is the more re- markable, considering how easily it can be reached. It is a gray and red town, rearing itself beside a blue lake, a little south of the Forth, about twenty miles west from 68 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. Edinburgh, on the road to Falkirk. The place itself is mostly modern and conven- tional, but the Palace of Linlithgow is one of the noblest ruins in Europe, and even if it were devoid of historic associations it would richly repay study, as a representa- tive dwelling of a remote and picturesque age. It was accidentally burnt, in 1745- 46, and since then it has been a cluster of walls ; yet, even so, much of the original building remains, and observation, with a little help of fancy, can readily reconstruct its splendours, and animate its desolation with the teeming, sumptuous life of Long Ago. Standing in the courtyard of that gray and bleak ruin, you look up to the in- ner window of the room in which Mary was born, and you may discern, above it, the royal symbols, still perfect, that were placed there by her son, years afterward, in memory of his most unfortunate mother. In the room itself the remains of what was once a splendid fireplace will attract your admiration, and you will see, in about the centre of the floor, a stone that is marked with nine circular indentations, possibly designed for Mary's juvenile game of nine- pins — as, indeed, the guide does not scruple to intimate. The royal infant [for Mary HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 69 became a queen when she was only six days old] , passed but two years at Linlith- gow, before she was removed to Stirling Castle. Next to the queen's room is a chamber that was occupied, in succession, by three of her ancestors, James the Third, James the Fourth, and her father, James the Fifth, and in one corner of it is still visible the hiding-place wherein, beneath a trapdoor, James the Third concealed him- self from the lords who would have slain him, — while his queen, Margaret of Den- mark, sat by, in seeming tranquillity, and by her perfect composure averted the sus- picion of the insurgents and threw them off the scent. Those rooms, in the old Stuart days, were splendidly decorated. Indeed, the whole palace was magnificent, — so that Mary of Guise, when James the Fifth brought her home, said that she had never seen a more princely dwelling. It is a grand structure, even in its decay. At the time of the Stuarts it was so admirable that it was deemed a good model for even the splendid castle of Heidelberg, whereof, at the present day, the ruin is one of the most gorgeous spectacles in Europe. At the northeast angle of Linlithgow still stand the bastions erected by Edward the First. JO HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. At the northwest you may ascend a noble tower, that still is eloquent of poor Margaret Tudor, who there first heard of the death of her errant husband, James the Fourth, at the fatal battle of Flodden. The wind was moaning drearily around it, as I sat in the little stone chamber at its summit, and the dull November sky was darkly brood- ing overhead ; but far away upon the grassy hillsides and over the wimpling waters of the sullen lake the sunbeams streamed downward from behind masses of cloud, and seemed to typify the life that still springs triumphant out of death, and the hope that ever rises from despair. Nearly four centuries have passed since the bereaved Margaret sorrowed and wept in that room ; but all her sorrows and equally all her pleasures are at rest, and around those barren and crumbling stones, which are her cold memorial, surge and beat the waves of a new existence, which is all power, enterprise, confidence, and joy. They show to you, just within the gate of the palace, a dark, low, groined, gloomy chamber, four stone walls and a floor of bare earth now, in which the Regent Murray died, — shot down, like a dog, in a street of Linlithgow, by Hamilton, of Bothwell- HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 71 haugh, January 20, 1570. The place of the murder is marked by a medallion bust of Murray, affixed to the County Court build- ing, not distant from the palace gates. More near to the palace, of which indeed it was once a part, stands the church of St. Michael, now undergoing such a renovation as will make it almost a new building, but not to be overlooked by any pilgrim ; for there it was that James the Fourth, when on his way to Flodden, received the mys- terious warning of his impending fate — a portent which, passing into literature, through Scott's martial and splendid poetic tale of Marmion, has become one of the most precious memories of romantic art : — " But lighter than the whirlwind's blast He vanished from our eyes, Like sunbeam on the billow cast, That glances but, and dies." Under a gloomy sky and in the face of a bitterly cold wind I traversed the streets of ancient Stirling and struggled up the steep ascent to the castle. It is a grim place, and its bleak grandeur was heightened by the sombre menace of impending storm. Not a ray of sunshine was anywhere visi- ble, and in the north a great, shapeless 72 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. mass of black cloud covered and concealed everything. The fortitude of the citadel is extraordinary. It stands upon a vast crag, and its defences include a dry moat, a flexi- ble drawbridge, a double portcullis, several gates, several batteries, and, encircling all, walls of tremendous thickness and strength. Almost as soon as you pass the first gate your attention is directed to a low, dungeon- like cell, formerly a guardroom, which was named and described by Scott, in the Lady of the Lake, as the prison of Roderick Dhu. It is now a store-room. Looking upward, you behold, toward the west, a building curiously decorated with uncouth images, which was the royal palace in the Stuart days, and adjacent to it a square tower wherein once dwelt Queen Mary, and wherein her son James was instructed and trained by that famous Scottish poet, scholar, and historian, George Buchanan. All the windows of that royal building are grated with iron bars — a precaution taken for the security of James, when he was a child. Access to that building is usually denied, since it is occupied as a residence by the officers of the garrison. Opposite to it, on the north side of an irregular quad- rangle, a building that once was a royal HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. JT> chapel is now used as a show-place for armour and weapons, — after the fashion of the White Tower, in London, and of the superb banquet-hall in Edinburgh Castle, but not comparable with either. Beneath this a narrow arch affords access to an enclosure called the Douglas Garden, and thence you enter the room in which the eighth Earl Douglas was cruelly and treach- erously murdered, by James the Second, in 1452. They show you a little ante-chamber, through which the body of the murdered man was dragged, and also the window through which it was thrown. A beautiful bit of stained glass, exhibiting the arms of Douglas, now fills that casement, — placed there by Queen Victoria. The Douglas, it is said, was buried where he thus fell ; in which case his grave would be in the middle of the pathway, where every passenger must trample above his bones. From the Douglas Garden you mount by easy steps to the northern and western ramparts of the castle, whence you may gaze down upon the links of the winding Eorth, the battle-field of old Stirling Bridge (1297), and the ever-memorable field of Bannock- burn, — marked now by a tall flagstaff, set in the Bore Stone, in which, on that great 74 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. day, was placed the standard of Bruce. At one point on the western rampart is a look- out port, which is said to have been made for the use of Mary Stuart, and with her the castle has many associations, — as in- deed it has with all the earlier Stuarts. On the northeast corner of the Palace still stands a rude, quaint statue of James the Fifth, — King of the Commons, as once they called him, — in his roving character of the Goodman of Ballengeich. In the queen's room, after Flodden, Margaret Tudor, James's widow, gave birth to Prince Alexander, Duke of Ross, who died in infancy and was buried in storied Cam- buskeimeth. In the magnificent Grayfriars, — now, by a strange and deplorable per- versity of taste, divided into two misshapen parts, called the East and West Churches, — Mary Stuart, a babe in arms, and crying continually throughout the ceremonial, was crowned the Scottish Queen [September 9, 1543]. In Stirling she passed a part of her childhood, — most of the years 1545- 46-47, — till in 1547 she was taken thence to Inchmahome, in the Lake of Monteith ; and to Stirling she returned, after the French episode of her life was ended, in 1561 ; and it was at Stirling, in the room of HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 75 David Rizzio, that she was secretly wedded to her cousin, Parnley, in 1565 — a mar- riage the most disastrous that ever was made by any great person. To Stirling she came again, after the birth of her son James, and it was there the boy was christ- ened, amid a splendid pomp of festivity, December 19, 1566. That ceremonial the jealous and infuriated father refused to attend: the house, called Willie Bell's Lodging, in which that day he is said to have kept his carousal, is still extant, in Broad Street, a short walk from the castle gate. After the frightful tragedy of the Kirk of Field Mary visited Stirling for the last time, to see her child, and on April 24, 1567, she left it forever. It is easy to understand that no person who has studied the annals of Scotland, no person to whom the strange and melancholy history of Mary Stuart appeals with anything like force, can look upon Stirling Castle without emo- tion too deep for words. All the elements of romance and of tragedy adorn the place and hallow it. From Stirling the traveller goes to Cam- buskenneth Abbey, being rowed across the Forth in a little boat. Nothing remains of the Abbey except a single tower — part j6 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. of which has been restored — and a few fragments of broken masonry. Many of the foundation stones, however, are in their places, and the outline of the building can be traced in the soil. It was in shape a cross, having, apparently, two towers at its west end. A graceful pinnacle, terminating in a sculptured flame, surmounts, at the northwest corner, the tower that is still extant, and in that tower there are two spacious chambers, besides a dark base- ment-room, — all devoted to the preserva- tion of pieces of the carved stonework of the old Abbey. The nave, the aisles, and the chancel are now an open field, but upon the spot where once stood the altar stands now a handsome tomb, enclosed within an iron rail, to mark the sepulchre of James the Third, and of Margaret of Denmark — to whom Scotland owes the Orkneys and the Shetlands, which were her dower. In Cambuskenneth those sovereigns were buried, four hundred years ago, and there, upon careful exploration, in 1864, the sad relics of them were discovered. The pres- ent tomb was placed by the Queen of Eng- land. Upon the top is a sculptured cross ; upon the west end are carved the arms of Scotland, quartered with those of Den- HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. JJ mark ; upon the south side it is written that : "In this place, near to the high altar of the Abbey of Cambuskenneth, were de- posited the remains of James the Third, King of Scotland, who died the 11th of June, 1488, and of his Queen, the Princess Margaret of Denmark"; and finally the north side records that: "This restoration of the tomb of her ancestors was executed by command of H. M. Queen Victoria, a.d. 1865." The surviving tower of this once .splendid church, more Norman than Gothic, is remarkably massive. A hundred steps will conduct you to its summit, from which the prospect is ample and uncommonly beautiful. In the north rises the Abbey Craig, with its gaunt monument, a mod- ern structure, commemorative of William Wallace, and, more distant, the dark, rugged shapes of the Grampian Hills. In the west and south your gaze wanders over the gray houses of Stirling, and rests upon its sombre castle, frowning from the crested rock of kings. Eastward and southward fields and farms stretch away into the hazy distance, until the bounds of earth and sky are merged and lost in one blue line. Close at hand are the wonderful, silvery, serpentine links of the 78 HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. Forth, — that broad, bright, teeming river, sparkling, for miles and miles, through a wide plain of brilliant verdure, dotted with villages, and everywhere hallowed with the sense of contentment and peace. No place has witnessed more abundant or more san- guinary strife : no place is now more tran- quil and sweet. In the neighbourhood of the Abbey ruin there is a cluster of cot- tages, nestled among gardens, but the land around the ruin is mostly open field, and it is girdled, upon all but one side, by a curvature of the Forth. In its prosperous days the Abbey, with its monastic build- ings and its gardens, must have occupied the whole of the territory thus enclosed by the river, and perhaps a wall upon its landward side protected it there. The history of Scotland centres in that ruin. "Wallace, and after him Bruce, knew Cambuskenneth. The first Alexander and William the Lion were buried in it. Next to Iona, it was, for the earlier Scottish kings and nobles, the chief of shrines. And in the terrible warfare and carnage through which the stately civilisation of Scotland has been developed all the region round about it has been drenched with heroic blood. HAUNTS OF MARY STUART. 79 It had been a day of alternate gloom and glory. At one time, as I descended from the castle, a vast bank of gray and yellow fog drifted over the landscape, and through it the Abbey Craig loomed dim and ghostly, a black, shapeless hulk. Soon a shaft of sunshine smote upon its centre, and I beheld what seemed a gigantic white angel hovering in the mist. A moment more, and this had changed into a great pillar of silver, which presently dissolved, and then the colossal Wallace Tower stood forth, baseless, framed in clouds, a vision floating in the heavens. Next came a mighty wind, and even while I gazed every wreath of cloud was swept away, and castle and city and plain, the distant peaks of Ben Lomond, Ben Lecli, and Ben Venue, and the whole Grampian ridge, blazed forth under stainless blue and in the glory of the setting sun. There is no fairer scene in all the world, nor one more richly freighted with memories that stir the heart. 8o THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. VIII. THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. ST. ANDREWS, September 18, 1895.— As I speed through the green and yel- low autumn fields, northward and west out of Edinburgh, the huge Pentland Hills show black in the morning mist, and the sombre Corstorphine looms stately and splendid be- neath a rainy sky. There are portents of storm, but in the capricious clime of Scot- land the smile is close to the tear, and I am rejoiced rather than surprised, when rolling across the Forth Bridge, to see rifts of blue in the sullen clouds and a glint of golden sunshine on the smooth, dark river far below. Upon the beaches of Burnt- island the tide is flowing softly, in long, thin, foamless waves that idly lapse and seem to make no sound. Southward, look- ing across the steel-gray water of the Forth, I can discern the receding spires and domes of beautiful Edinburgh, with Arthur's Seat and the Pentland mass, like watchful lions, THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 8 1 couched confronting in the mist. Soon 1 flit through gray Kirkcaldy, — a name grimly famous in Scottish history, — gazing, as I pass, on its quaint church among the graves, and marking, far at sea, the lighthouse on the lonely Isle of May. At Dysart the train leaves the coast and trends north- ward through meadows that are fresh with verdure, and among graceful hills, crowned with green copses, and now beginning to glitter in the brilliant autumn sun. No part of Scotland is more tastefully cultivated and adorned than this section of Fife, where every prospect eloquently denotes the gra- cious result of many years of industry and thrift. Stately villas peep forth from the woods. Low, red-roofed cottages, the sim- ple and cosey abodes of comfort, nestle in the vales. Lazy cattle, many-coloured and picturesque, stray in the pastures, or couch beside the dark, cool, shining streams. Not even in finished Warwickshire can the wan- derer find gentler pictures of rural peace than may be seen in Eife. At Ladybank the traveller is almost within the shadow of that singular mountain, the obvious in- spiration of the name, which, with its sym- metrical double peaks, suggests a virgin bosom bared to the benediction of the sky. 82 THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. Next I dash past opulent Cupar, — illus- trious as the birthplace of that characteris- tic national poet, Sir David Lindsay, 1490- 1557, — and presently, from busy Leuchars, where myriads of screaming sea-birds fill the grassy moors, I look across the bay to the sand dunes and the crags of St. An- drews, the gray tower of its ancient and famous church, and the desolate pinnacles of its ruined Cathedral, once so beautiful, always renowned, and still august and rev- erend among the shrines of Scotland. St. Andrews of the present is a small gray town, built mostly of stone, perched on a promontory overlooking the northern ocean, and devoted in part to learning and in part to sport. Its four principal streets, like the ribs of an outspread fan, converge to a point at the ruined Castle and Cathe- dral on its eastern shore, and those streets are interlaced with lateral causeways and diversified with occasional squares. Upon one side of the promontory the surges of a wild sea break, in stormy music, on beach and crag. Upon the other, rising from the bed of a tiny river, a moorland shelves away to a circle of low hills. Northward, across the broad waste of sparkling water, rises the shore of Forfarshire, stretching from THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 83 Buddon Ness toward Montrose, while far to the eastward gleams the lighthouse on the lonely Bell Rock, long famous in legend and poetry as the place of the Inchcape bell. The living sights of the town are the Colleges and the Golf Links. It is not, how- ever, for living sights that the pilgrim seeks St. Andrews, but for the associations that cluster round its ruins, and for the thoughts that are prompted by remembrance of its past. St. Andrews is to Scotland what Canterbury is to England, — the emblem of a vast civic conflict and a national tragedy, — and as you stand in the roofless nave of its once glorious, now desolate, Cathedral, and see the moss and the trembling wild flowers on its broken walls, and hear the moan of the ocean wind through its lofty mullioned casements and around its crum- bling turrets, so softly restful to your eyes, you forget the present, and remember only the princes and prelates of a bygone age, the zealots who fought and the martyrs who perished, and all the misery and all the pa- thos of the ancient battle — long over and done with now — for liberty of conscience and of faith. St. Andrews was the centre of that contention, and it is replete with its relics. In the dark and dreadful pit called 84 THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. the Bottle Dungeon, still extant and ma- lignly perfect, in the northwest sea-tower of its Castle, George Wishart was held a captive, until burned, for heresy, in front of the Castle gates, while Cardinal Beaton and his companions of the Church . looked on, merciless, at a martyr's death. The old guide, who now lowers his lighted candle into that foul abyss, and prattles of its hor- rors, might make a tamer theme grotesque ; but this is wholly tragic, and not even droll volubility can dissipate its gloom. Into that grisly and loathsome cavern Kirkcaldy of Grange, Norman Leslie and their fierce con- federates cast the body of Beaton, and lapped it with salt, after they had murdered him in his bedroom of the Castle, and dan- gled his corse from the battlements. The windows of the Cardinal's rooms in the great front tower still look upon the town. From that Castle, when taken by the French, John Knox was carried away into captivity in the galleys. Not much remains of the grim old structure now, but, perched as it was upon a precipitous crag, jutting into the sea, with a broad, deep moat around its landward sides, it must have been a cit- adel of prodigious fortitude : it is formid- able even in its ruin. The waves were THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 85 breaking angrily at its base, and all the sea, for many miles around, was white with wreaths of foam, as I looked down upon it from the windy height of the grim Tower of St. Regulus, and in the offing a single ship, with her sails close-reefed, was heavily tossing on the surge. Such a spectacle may often have been seen, from its battlements, by Edward Baliol, or Queen Mary Stuart, or the Regent Murray. It was long the abode of princes before it became the home of priests. Beaton, when he trod its ram- parts, looked forth to many a baleful blaze of the fagots kindled by his cruelty for the burning of men whose faith was not as his. Knox gazed from it upon the Cathedral that he hated, and that he was destined to de- stroy. It was in the ancient Town Church of St. Andrews, — a part of which is still extant, and all of which is most charac- teristic and interesting as an ecclesiastical building, — that Knox preached, June 5, 1559, the renowned sermon against Idolatry which caused the destruction of the Cathe- dral, and of the beautiful churches of the Black and Gray Friars ; and the pulpit in which he preached it is still preserved, in the museum of St. Salvator's College. In the Town Church, also, on the east wall 86 THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. of the south transept, stands the monumental tomb of James Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews, the Becket of Scottish history, — not as noble a character, and not the rep- resentative of as great a principle ; yet, in the tremendous drama of the Scotch Reformation, the most conspicuous roy- alist figure and the most illustrious victim. Within that tomb, whereon, in white and black marble, sculpture and allegory com- bine to pay homage to a saint, the mangled body of the slaughtered Archbishop was buried, and there, for many a year, the pensive gazer will review his strange story and consider his ghastly fate ; but the dead priest's relics have long been gone. In 1725 the tomb was rifled, and whether those ashes were elsewhere sepulchred, or were cast to the winds of heaven, no man knows. A pleasant drive of about three miles westward from St. Andrews brought me to Magus Moor, the scene of the Arch- bishop's murder. The road winds through fertile farm lands and past the long walls of a parklike estate, and presently, near to the little village of Strathkinness, it ascends a hill and penetrates a thick wood. More than two centuries have passed since the fatal May morning when the doomed prel- THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 87 ate, whose sin was ambition and whose offence was an alleged breach of faith, was there dragged from his carriage and bar- barously killed before his daughter's eyes. The country-side was a bleak moorland then, but over it then, as now, the wind blew softly and birds were on the wing. The grove that now covers this hillside, though dense and wild, is comparatively young. The scene of the murder is deep in its heart, and the visitor must leave his carriage and make his way to it on foot. A long winding path, thickly strewn with needles of the fir, leads to the spot, and on it, closely embowered so as to be almost hidden by foliage, stands a grim pyramid of gray stones, fronted with an oblong tab- let whereon, in a few Latin words, is writ- ten the miserable story of crime and grief: " Hunc prope locum Jacobus Sharp, Arch- iepiscopus, Sancti Andrae, a salvis inimicis adstante filia sua et deprecante trucidatus est. A.D. MDCLXXIX." Nine assassins fell upon the old man — he was in his sixty- first year — and cruelly and horribly slew him. He had gone to the Court of Charles the Second, a Presbyterian, commissioned to represent his church ; he had returned an Episcopalian and Primate of all Scotland, 88 THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. and for that he must die. So was accom- plished, despite the frantic supplications of a daughter for her aged father's life, one of the foulest murders in all the long annals of crime, and one more of the many dark and hideous deeds that earnest men have done for the cause of religion and in the name of Him who was the Prince of Peace. A principal hand in that conscientious in- iquity was John Balfour, of Kinloch, called Burley, whom Scott has so marvellously depicted in Old Mortality. I had but lately seen, in the Whitehall exhibition at London, the tattered, discoloured Bible that once was Balfour's property, and surely his idol. I was now standing at the scene of his crown- ing sacrifice and disaster. From the horror and the anguish of that hideous day it may well be true that he never recovered. But he also sleeps ; and even the memory of his wickedness has grown dim with age. In that sequestered place, as I turned away from it, the faint light of an autumn sun, which there would be dim even at noonday, was fast fading into night ; and where once the air resounded with cries of rage, an- guish, and entreaty, all was now silent, save for a sorrowful moaning of the wind and a dreary rustling of the leaves. THE CANTERBURY OF SCOTLAND. 89 In England the most imposing ecclesias- tical ruin is that of Fountain's Abbey, which broods upon its desolate yet majestic gran- deur far in the green depths of the stately park of the Marquis of Ripon. In Scotland it is the Cathedral of St. Andrews, around which has grown up a modern cemetery, but of which the gaunt fragments that yet remain are sublime in their sacred loneli- ness and inexpressibly magnificent. As I stood in the centre of the recessed western door, so rich and yet so simple in its beauty, and gazed down the nave toward all that time and malice have spared of the lovely chancel, I thought of that reverend pilgrim, Dr. Johnson, who stood there more than one hundred years ago ; and I wondered whether for him then, as to-day for me, the glory of the sun was blazing on those gray and mouldering relics, and the strong wind singing in the shattered arcades, and whether he also may have pondered on the solemn thought that even this ruin, so bleak and so forlorn, is more permanent than the best of mortal strength and more eloquent than the best of mortal speech. 90 SCOTTISH BOEDER SCENERY. IX. SCOTTISH BORDER SCENERY. CARLISLE, September 30, 1895. — Glas- gow faded in a dense fog, on the hot September morning when I said farewell to its bnsy streets and happy homes, and my first glimpses of sunshine were caught as the mists parted over the towers, cones, steeples, and gray and red houses of Motherwell and Elemington. The course was southeasterly, across Lanarkshire, and, since only a passing glance at the country was possible, it seemed wise to make the most of it. Just as the character of an individual may, to some extent, be divined from his environment, so the life of a people may be deduced from the aspect of its habitations and its visible pursuits. Wishart was soon passed, — a large, crowded town, encompassed with pastures, and with many pretty hedge-rows in which the haws were gleaming red against the green. It is mostly a level land, but near to Law and to SCOTTISH BORDER SCENERY. 91 Castleliill there are deep and finely wooded ravines, and beyond the broad expanse of hay fields and meadows adjacent there are long lines of trees, like distant sentinels, on the dim horizon. At gray Carluke, partly on a hillside and partly in a verdant vale, the eye lingers pleased upon the red roofs, and upon woods of fir, and green and pleasant pastures, and, now and then, the silver thread of a brook. Around Car- stairs there is much open country, and a river glides through the plain and gladdens it, while crowds of sprightly starlings, twinkling in the sunshine, skim over the stubble of fields but lately reaped, and now shining with orange tints and green. Eine hills presently appear, to the westward of the track, on some of which there are grand reaches of woods ; and sometimes an isolated farmhouse, with many cone-shaped yellow haystacks, shows prettily through the trees. Soon I am among bleak moors and fern-streaked hills, and I see that in many places the bed of the river has been laid bare by intense drouth, — for this is the hottest September known in Britain for many years. The stream is Evan Water, and the course is along its valley, through a region of low mountains, moors, and 92 SCOTTISH BORDER SCENERY. occasional marshes. Northward a beauti- ful prospect opens, of the lonely mystery of the vacant hills, on which, beneath a flood of sunshine, the fern, the heather, and the grass are commingled, in masses of colour, brown and emerald, and pink and gold. The fern has been crisped by heat, and turned to russet. A few cottages are noted, amid this wilderness, and, in a little inclosure beside one of the lonely houses on the moor, a white gravestone tells its melancholy tale of the partings that are inevitable and the tragedy that never ends. In the few trees there are touches of colour, and upon the gaunt hill- sides, as they recede, the multitudes of couchant sheep seem like bits of stone, in the distance. I have passed Moffat, which is the entrance to the Vale of Yarrow and lone St. Mary's Loch, — places precious with golden memories of the Ettrick Shep- herd, and the Bard of Rydal, and the Min- strel of the North, — and I have left the region of the Hartf ells and now am on the lowland plain. In the objects that com- pose the Border scenery there is neither great variety nor striking character ; yet the scenery is never monotonous. The smooth, green fields, intersected with hedge-rows, SCOTTISH BORDER SCENERY. 93 the trim white roads, winding away over hill and plain, the dark, still rivers, crossed by many a stone bridge, picturesque upon its strong and graceful arches, the comfort- able farmhouses, each amid its shaded and flower-spangled lawns, the occasional palace upon its upland, embosomed in lofty elms, the ever- changing groups of sheep and cat- tle, the frequent flights of rooks, always so suggestive of ordered industry and yet of adventure, mischief, and sport, the slumber- ous mist upon the landscape, and the gen- eral air of permanence and repose, — all these blend themselves into endless pictures of diversified, piquant beauty. Through Wamphrey, Dinwoodie, Netherscleugh, and Ecclefechan, onward I speed, and so, across a long stretch of level green country, much variegated with hedge-rows and strips of woodland, I come to the Eden, and see the villas on its sunny banks, and the great square cathedral tower, and the red and gray buildings of antique Carlisle. 94 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. X. SCOTTISH MEMORIES. From my Note Book. FROM Edinburgh, through Portobello and Musselburgh, it is a short drive to the battle-field of Prestonpans. It was a bright summer morning when I traversed that region, and the scene of rural peace that was presented by it offered a strong contrast with the stormy picture, — speed- ily drawn by the nimble fingers of fancy, — of old and half -forgotten war. Upon that field, September 21, 1745, the High- land followers of Charles Edward Stuart struck a blow that shook the throne of England, and if the advantage then gained had been ably pursued the house of Han- over would have fallen, and the house of Stuart would have reigned once more. It was a rapid fight, — the Highlanders showing terrible ferocity, and conquering almost in an instant. Sir John Cope, lead- ing an English force of three thousand soldiers, had landed at Dunbar, on Sep- SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 95 tember 17, and inarched along the coast toward Edinburgh, — then held by Prince Charles, who was giving balls at Holyrood. The Prince, with a force about equal to the number of his foe, moved eastward to Duddingston, drew his sword, and "flung away the scabbard." Cope advanced by the low road from Seton to Preston ; the Highlanders occupied the higher ground, and between the two armies there was a bog. Colonel Gardiner, upon the English side, urged an attack, but his commander chose to stand upon the defensive, and in that way, no doubt, made his fatal error. The Prince's army was piloted across the bog by Anderson of Whitburgh, and in a few minutes the forces of Cope were in full retreat, — that officer himself never paus- ing till he reached Berwick. Gardiner, cut down by a scythe, expired almost at his own door. On the Prince's side, four officers and fifty soldiers were killed, and six officers and seventy soldiers wounded ; while of the English, five officers and four hundred soldiers were killed, and eighty officers and two thousand soldiers captured. The Highlanders also captured Cope's bag- gage, which had been left at Cockenzie, and £2500. g6 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. It is an old story and has often been told, but the pilgrim who stands upon the veritable scene of the battle apprehends as never before the suspense, the shuddering excitement, the carnage, the panic, and the horror of that memorable episode in the Stuart wars. The field is now divided by the tracks of the North British railway, and the most of it is devoted to grain and pasture. I saw and ascended the ancient Market Cross of Preston, — once the cen- tre of the village, now the chief object vis- ible in a market garden, — and I viewed the forlorn fragments that yet remain of Preston Castle, not far away. The Tower was once formidable as a place of guard- rooms and dungeons, but it is tame and common now. Close to the railway there is a plain monument, on which appears the simple inscription: "To Col. Gardiner, who fell in the battle of Prestonpans, 21 Sept. 1745." A touching allusion to that gallant gentleman occurs in a letter, pre^ served among the Culloden Papers, from General Wightman to the Lord President of Scotland; Newcastle, 26 Sept. 1745: "Honest, pious, bold Gardiner died in the field, and was stripe very nigh to his own house, as is said. I believe he prayed for SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 97 it and got his desire ; for his state of health was bad, and his heart was broken with the behaviour of the Irish whom he com- manded." From Preston a short drive brought me to Port Seton, and at Seton House I met Mrs. Dunlop, a kindly gentlewoman, who showed me the principal rooms of that inter- esting mansion, and especially its library. There, among other relics, I saw a book of funeral sermons, one of them being Laud's dying speech, delivered on the scaffold. It had once been the property of a duchess of Argyle, and the name of Anna Argyle was written on the title-page of each discourse. On the wall there was an uncommonly good portrait of Garrick as Hamlet, together with a painting of Daniel Webster, and several pictures of North American Indians. Mrs. Dunlop said that her husband, when a youth, about sixty years ago, had visited America and had obtained those relics. She also indicated a copy of Nasmith's fine por- trait of Burns, but said, ' ' It has not the exuberant, birdlike look, as if he were sing- ing in the air, which is in the original.' 1 From the Castle I went to Seton Abbey, — a venerable and beautiful church. Nothing 98 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. remains of it except the chancel, the two transepts, and a tower. The nave is gone, or, perhaps, never existed. I was much impressed with the sense of death, — ex- tinction, ■ — conclusion, — utter finality and silence, — that is all about the place. In the chancel is the tomb of that Lord Seton who was killed at Flodden, and in the south transept is that of Isabella Seton. The Setons had the earldom of Winton. Isa- bella married a gentleman who would have been Earl of Perth, but he died, and he was buried in this church. Both tombs have been despoiled, and they are much decayed. That of Isabella is inscribed with some quaint and good lines, by Drummond of Hawthornden : — " In steed of epitaphes and airye praise This monument a lady chaste did raise To her lord's living fame, and after death Her bodye doth unto this place bequeath To rest with his till God's shrill trumpet sound. Thoch tyme her life no tyme her love can hound." Later, though not much, Isabella married a gentleman named Bothwell, who was un- kind to her ; so it had been wise if she had SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 99 remained true to her original purpose, as denoted in the epitaph that she inspired. I noted especially in Seton Abbey the large flat stones over the vaults of Lord Wemyss and his wife, the two fonts, ancient and defaced, the ribbed roof of the Lady chapel, which is superb, the remains of several old tombs, and the fragments of carved stone, — one piece, in particular, showing the Win ton arms, with the mottoes, "Hazard zit fordward" and "In via virtuti, via nulla." In the north chancel there is a tomb consecrated to James Oglevie of Birnest, 1618, and Georgius Oglevie of Carnousis. Seton Abbey, externally, is of exceptional beauty, — impressive with solemn grandeur and pleasing with deli- cacy and grace. The green moss around its buttresses and the grasses that grow upon parts of its roof augment in its aspect the effect of venerable antiquity, and likewise they impart to it an air of gentle melan- choly, harmonious equally with its remi- niscent character and its sequestered and lonely situation. Seton House is modern, — the old castle having been burnt down many years ago, — but the Abbey i« " the rarest antiquities of Scot]!" the summit of the house th° IOO SCOTTISH MEMORIES. cent view. Several showers had fallen, but the rain was now over, and a glorious bow spanned the whole arch of heaven. East- ward the sky was black, and under it the vast bulk of Berwick Law towered in sullen majesty, while far to the west Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crag were sumptu- ous and splendid in the glow of sunset; and northward, in front, a bright green sea, flecked with white caps, was shuddering beneath the gale. It is alleged by various authorities that Seton Abbey was founded by George, the second Lord Seton, June 20, 1493 ; but this is doubted by other antiquarians, who de- clare that the church was founded earlier, as the parochial church, and that it was made collegiate by the second Lord Seton, in the time of James the Fourth [1488, 1513]. In architectural style the edifice is Middle Pointed. The choir consists of three bays with a semi-hexagonal end. The transepts consist of two bays, and, as is customary in the Scottish churches, they were designed for mortuary chapels. The tower is low ' ^uare, and upon its top is a truncated ■"->ire, of which the haunches are >ht of the tower is twenty- SCOTTISH MEMORIES. IOI four feet, six inches. The length of the choir is sixty-five feet, three inches ; that of the north transept, twenty-nine feet, six inches ; that of the south transept, thirty- one feet, three inches. The roof of the choir is a pointed vault, which from the west end to the centre is plain, but from the centre to the east end there runs a ridge-piece, uniting transverse and diagonal pieces, which spring from floriated corbels and are joined with sculptured bosses. The windows have two and three lights, foliated loop-tracery in the heads, and moulded hoods with floriated ends. Beneath the east window of the north wall, in a monumental recess, are recum- bent effigies of a knight in armour, and a lady. The male figure is five feet, nine inches in length. The knight's head rests upon a helmet ; that of the lady upon a cushion. This is the tomb of the second Lord Seton, who fell at Flodden. George Seton, the fifth earl, participated in the re- bellion of 1715, and, having been captured at Preston, was sentenced to death for trea- son. He escaped, and he died at Rome, in 1749. The Parbroath Setons survive in America, and are well represented by the admirable scholar, Monsignor Robert Seton of Jersey. 102 SCOTTISH MEMOBIES. The Argyle Cross, at Iona, stands near the little mound that St. Colmnba ascended on that memorable day, toward the end of his life, when he gave his farewell blessing to the island. It is alone, in a green square, enclosed within an iron fence, and around it are tall bushes of the fuchsia, covered with graceful, drooping blooms. It is formed like the cross of St. Martin, in front of the cathedral ruin, — except that the ends of the transverse beam are not grooved to the nimbus, as they are in St. Martin's, evi- dently incomplete, — and it is made of red granite taken from the quarry in Mull. The inscription upon it is cut in this manner : — TO ELIZABETH SUTHERLAND WIFE OF GEORGE EIGHTH DUKE OF ARGYLE THIS CROSS IS ERECTED BY HER HUSBAND IN THE ISLAND SHE LOVED 1879 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. IO3 It is a pleasant journey from Edinburgh around to Gourock, — a crescent route that sometimes may be of great service to a traveller who wishes to get speedily from the east coast to the waterways upon the west. I left the capital at early morning. The sky was cloudless, the air crisp, the sun bright, and only on the far horizon was there any mist. In England when the hills are misty and the sheep lie down you may look for fair weather ; in Scotland all por- tents appear to be dubious. At first the course was through a rolling country of pastures and lawns, diversified with hay- stacks, golden sheaves of the late harvest, clumps of trees with shining leaves, hedges still green, and woods beginning to turn brown. Then, near Currie Hill, stone houses came into the picture, and the long shadows, falling westward, streamed across vacant fields, in which many rooks were fluttering about, upon their ever-comic search for plunder. All this part of Scot- land is far better wooded than it was of old, and on every side there are signs of prosperity, order, and taste. The distant prospects across the country grew more and more lovely, — a sweet confusion of many-coloured fields, red-roofed cottages, 104 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. mansions of gray stone bosomed in large trees, pastures with flocks of sheep, smooth, white roads winding through plain and over hill and wooded ravines, each with a bab- bling stream in its green and rocky depth. Wide tracts were passed of unoccupied land, all of it cleared and in fine condi- tion, notwithstanding its apparent solitude. Then a light mist began to drape the varie- gated landscape and slowly to settle upon the lovely green of the pastures, and from Fauldhouse to Hollytown and Bellshill scarce anything was visible. Near the lat- ter place a huge stone quarry was suddenly revealed, — the workmen upon its various ledges looking like pigmies. Then a bright, dark river was crossed, and in the neigh- bouring meadows great nights of starlings seemed almost to darken the air. Ibrox and Cardonald were left behind, — towns of a rough region, devoted to tall chim- neys, smoke, shops, coal, and the indus- tries of the railway, — and in a little while I dimly saw, just glimmering through the fog, the crowded buildings of Paisley, be- neath a sun that hung in the gloomy heavens like a globe of tarnished silver. At Pais- ley you think of the old Abbey which is there, with its wonderful echoing aisle, and SCOTTISH MEMORIES. IO5 of the ruins close by, of Crookston Castle, where it is said Queen Mary was plighted to Darnley. The run from Paisley t'o the southern bank of the Clyde was swiftly made, and at Gourock Pier, I embarked comfortably for the North. Much time may be saved in that way, — for it is a long sail between Glasgow and Gourock, and sometimes a weary one. The heather was pink on the sides of the hills and over their grim tops the white mist was drifting, and in the tender light of morning the Highlands looked their love- liest when I bade them farewell. Silver clouds dappled the sky, mingled with streamers of dark slate, the air was soft and cool, and on a shining sea, without one ripple to break its calm, the boat sped south- ward, down Kerrera Sound. For a time the light mist lingered upon the land, but pres- ently the rising breeze swept it away, and then the rocky shores of Kerrera were re- flected deep in the smooth water, — its lone hills gaunt and grim, and its verdure won- derfully bright. A few buoys here and there, marking the channel, animated the picture, — each being thickly covered with pershing sea-birds, while other sea-birds 106 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. circled around them. In the distance, north- westward, rose the mountains of Mull — a long line of sable bastions and parapets, dis- tinct and huge, against a streak of yellow light. On the low shores of little islands in the stream there was an occasional dash of sudden breakers, as if the sea were momen- tarily troubled, but these surges were far off and inaudible. When the boat drew near to Easdale, the sunshine fell, in long, spear- like shafts, upon the dark water, and the grand cliffs of Seil were burnished with gold, while all the rocks were seen to be covered with sea-gulls, seemingly in deep meditation, — so still were they, from head to foot, and so unspeakably solemn. A woman and a child, standing among the thickly scattered slate-stones on the tiny, cir- cular island of Easdale, waved their hands in farewell, as the boat glided away. The vil- lage of Easdale, sheltered under high banks, facing a broad bay, and made up of small stone cottages, is simplicity itself ; but it looked to be the abode of unusual comfort. New pictures, however, soon dimmed the impression of its cosy tranquillity. Prom- ontories and islands, of irregular size and shape, came quickly into view; the great rocks, westward, in the sea, far off, seemed SCOTTISH MEMORIES. 107 like monsters who had risen to breathe, and were resting on the surface ; a single fisherman, in a little boat, flitted by, like a dream ; the rapid solan-goose winged his expeditious way, close to the water ; and all around, and especially astern, the air was full of hungry gulls. At Luing the life-boat came off, with passengers, and then, over a smooth sea, and under brilliant skies, all golden and blue, the boat skimmed blithely through Dornsmor, — the Great Gate, — and past Duntroon Castle, superb upon its crag, to the rock and fort of Crinan. A lovely view of Edinburgh may be obtained by a ramble to the Braid Hills. The turf on which we trod [August 30, 1890] was fine, strong, elastic, and of a remarkably beautiful colour. All around were sprinkled daisies, foxglove, butter- cups, and bluebells. Thistles were in flower, — and few objects are more pleasing to the eye than the flowering thistle. The chaffinches were everywhere, and many rooks, loquacious and vocal, croaked in the pleasant air. Little grass-paths, straying over hill and dell, allured the wanderer's steps, and in every direction glistened the 108 SCOTTISH MEMORIES. furse, — which is called whins, — and the abundant yellow blossoms of the colt's-foot. A more brilliant scene it would be hard to find. A few white clouds were drifting over the stately city in the distance, and around the far horizon floated a delicate wreath of mist ; but the chill hills were clearly defined to the vision, and so were the Lomonds in Fife, and so was the ever- present mountain of Arthur's seat. Near by we saw the river Jordan, flowing through a dell that is wooded with some of the finest trees in Scotland. We explored the farm and visited the home of that excellent, most respected lady, Miss Menie Trotter. Black- ford Home it is called — and it is somewhat famous among Scottish homes. From the Braid Hills we walked to Craig- crook, once the home of Lord Jeffrey, — an elegant residence, sequestered in a park, and pleasantly suggestive of the mansions of Warwickshire. Many of the rooms were shown to us, and also the garden, wherein were many flowers. Lord Jeffrey was fond of yellow roses, and he cultivated them with great success, but there are not any of them on the place now. Craigcrook was occupied, after Jeffrey's time, by Mr. John Hunter : the present occupant is Mr. Crowle. The SCOTTISH MEMORIES. IO9 library, which was Jeffrey's, is an antique room, furnished with alcoves, in the shape of Gothic arches, for bookshelves, and it looks upon the park, which has many noble trees and a splendid vista of lawn. Upon the wall there were portraits of Jeffrey and Scott. In the cosey sitting-room the motto over the fireplace had a touching signifi- cance : ' ' We want no future that breaks the ties of the past." Other mottoes were in other places, — one being "Live pure. Speak true. Right wrong," and another the familiar lines that end the precept speech of Polonius to Laertes. In the spa- cious dining-room there were many excel- lent paintings, and above these are many quaint bedrooms : those in the turret much captivated my fancy. As I looked upon the richly furnished drawing-room I thought of the poet Moore, and his singing, in that very room, and Jeffrey listening, with tears in his eyes, to " There's a song of the olden time." Moore has left a record of this, in his diary. He was there in 1825. Craig- crook is castellated, and at a distance the aspect of the building, as its cones and tur- rets rise among the trees, is mediaeval and especially attractive. I brought away a leaf of holly. IIO SCOTTISH MEMORIES. We walked through the neighbouring park of Ravelston and looked on the old house. Sir Walter Scott gften visited that mansion, in the days of his friend Lady Keith, and he had it in mind when he wrote the de- scription of Tillietudelem. So said my com- panion, David Douglas, the most delightful guide that any pilgrim ever had in Edin- burgh and its classic neighbourhood, and a charming comrade anywhere. There is much timber on the Ravelston estate, and there is a deep and dark lake in its woods, — an old quarry -hole, — the depth of which is so great as to be unknown. It would be lonesome at night in Ravelston park, and it would be dangerous because of the precipitous cliffs which are there. Scott's lines came into my thoughts as we strolled away : — " Till onRavelston's cliff and on Clermiston's lea, Died away the wild war-notes of bonnie Dun- dee." TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. I XI. TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. IN the westering glow of a June day I rested at the Hop-Pole in Tewkesbury and saw, for the first time, the noble Abbey which is at once the glory of that ancient town and one of the grandest relics of feudal England. A vast, grim tower, necked with dusky orange tints and gray with age, rears its majestic head above a cluster of red brick dwellings, in a wide, green plain at the confluence of the Avon and the Severn, and, visible for many miles around, an- nounces, with silent but moving eloquence, one of the most storied of English historic shrines. Old Tewkesbury, if not an active town, is distinctly an emblem of to-day ; and yet, amid all its romantic and impres- sive associations, its life of the passin* hour seems to surge and break as at the base of monumental ages, long gone and half forgotten. Various antique buildings of the town have been restored, and several 112 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. timbered fronts of rare beauty diversify, among its habitations, a general prospect of tinted stucco, red brick, and those staring, shutterless windows that look like lidless eyes. Upon those picturesque homes the gaze of the traveller lingers with deep pleas- ure, while fancy, brooding on their quaint- ness, readily conjures up long vistas of mediaeval dwellings, with, all about them, the steel-clad warriors of Lancaster and of York, in days when the Wars of the Eoses were steeping England in blood and grief. Tewkesbury in its general aspect is mod- ern ; and yet it is to the stormy period of those bitter wars that it carries back the pilgrim's thought. The Abbey is more than the town, and the distant Past is more than the Present. Dedicated in 1123, that Abbey was an old church [for it had already stood there during three centuries and a half] when the fierce battle between the armies of Edward the Fourth and Queen Margaret raged around it, and the house of Lancas- ter, in 1471, suffered such a crushing de- feat. Yet it appears now much as it must have appeared then. Buildings, it is true, press closely upon every side of it and somewhat mar, just as they do at Lincoln, an effect which otherwise would be that of TEWKESBURY AXD SALISBURY. II3 superlative stateliness. Not every Gothic giant in the realm of England is so fortu- nate as Salisbury, or Canterbury, or Win- chester, or, most favoured of all, Durham, in charm of situation. Yet, in spite of a commonplace environment, the Abbey of Tewkesbury dominates its contiguous landscape ; and no man who is capable of serious feeling can look without reverence upon that venerable church, there keeping its long, mysterious vigil among the labours, loves, sorrows, and evanescent nothings of an everyday world. A mere musing wanderer among the relics of Long Ago must not presume to tell their story. It is not needed. Yet such a wanderer may extol their grace and their glory, and may commend them to other dreamers, like himself. In the little, winding streets of Tewkesbury there was no crowd, as I rambled through them at nightfall, and there was but little motion of persons or sign of life ; and at evening service in a chapel of the Abbey the wor- shippers were so few that the presence of a single stranger quite augmented the group. It was a solemn service, no doubt, but I could not much heed it, for thinking of the ghosts that were all around me, and 114 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. for thinking of the gray splendour of the church itself. Columns as grand may be seen at Durham, — of all the cathedrals of England the most grim and the most austere, — hut neither at Durham nor else- where is the view of nave and choir more spacious, more celestial, or more stimulative of reverent awe ; and not in any temple of religion have been effected interments more pathetic. There, just beneath the tower, was laid the beloved Prince Edward, son of Henry the Sixth, of whom, on a memorial brass in the pavement, it is sadly said that he "was cruelly slain whilst but a youth " ; and there, in a tomb at the back of the altar, in one of the most extensive and commodious Lady Chapels known to exist, lies buried one of his reputed assassins, George, Duke of Clarence, Shakespeare's "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," — himself the alleged victim of midnight murder in the Tower of London. In for- mer days the interior of the tomb of Clar- ence was sometimes shown, and persons entering within it beheld the bones of the Duke and of his wife Isabella, daughter of the great Earl of Warwick, the king-maker ; but that spectacle is no longer afforded. A rude drawing of the interior is, however, TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 1 15 hung upon the tomb, showing the likeness of those relics, which are in a transparent box, affixed to the wall, at some height, — because in seasons when the Severn over- flows its banks the vaults beneath the Abbey are occasionally inundated. Not distant from those royal persons rest other historic chieftains, the De Clares and the De Spen- cers, at various times Earls of Gloucester, and several of them victims of the heads- man's axe. One notable De Spencer, in particular, is thought to lie there, — the youthful Hugh, who was the friend and fa- vourite of Edward the Second, and whom Roger Mortimer, predominant lover of Ed- ward's queen, Isabella, caused to be dragged on a hurdle through the streets of Hereford [1326], and then barbarously hanged and quartered. Of Gilbert De Clare, tenth Earl of Gloucester and last of his house, who also lies buried at Tewkesbury, the traveller ob- serves that he was slain at the battle of Bannockburn, and remembers him as a figure in Scott's poem of The Lord of the Isles. Every foot of the Abbey is historic ; and when at length reluctantly you leave it, a few steps will bring you to "the field by Tewkesbury," wherein the fight raged with its greatest fury, so that the Severn Il6 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. ran red with blood. Shakespeare, following, as he customarily did, the Tudor historians, makes that field the scene of the murder of Prince Edward. It is a peaceful place now, and when I walked upon it at early- morning, the sun was gilding its copious verdure of waving shade-trees and shining grass, the rooks were flying over it, with many a solemn caw, and the sleek cattle, feeding, or couched ruminant in careless groups, were scattered all along its glitter- ing, breezy plain. There is a tradition in Tewkesbury that the Lancastrian Prince of Wales was not murdered in the field, but in a house, then a palace, still extant, in the High Street, near the Cross, — a house now used for the display and sale of confection- ery. Upon the floor of one of the rooms in that building blood-stains, said to be of great age, are still visible. Such traces, indeed, the silent tokens of savagery and crime, cannot be eradicated, — as the visitor may learn, by convincing evidence, at such old houses as Clopton, near Stratford, and Compton-Wynyate, near Banbury, — the latter one of the most interesting mansions in England. It is a superstition in Tewkes- bury that at midnight on May 7, in every year, — that being the anniversary of the TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. II7 Prince's assassination, — a spectral train, bearing his body, passes out of that house, to the solemn tolling of the Abbey bell, and vanishes. It is a cheerful place by day- light, with gaily trimmed casements, gar- nished counters, gleaming mirrors, and smiling girls ; but, late at night, when the shops were closed and the town was still, the whole region of the Cross with its dark, lowering, timbered fronts, its gloomy win- dows and its dusky passages, seemed indeed a fit haunt for phantoms, and the tale of the spectral obsequies was remembered more with a shudder than a smile. There are pleasant walks about Tewkes- bury. The town is not large, and its chief streets may be explored in a few hours. Most of its antique buildings are private. The Bell Inn stands at one end of it and the Bear Inn at the other — both timbered structures that date back to Plantagenet times. Near the Bear is an ancient bridge, across the Avon, — a bridge curiously in- dented, as the old custom was, with tri- angular embrasures, in which the pedestrian may find refuge from horses and vehicles, upon the narrow roadway. Crossing that bridge, after sunset, I found a footpath through the meadows, — which are very Il8 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. extensive, and upon which it is impos- sible to build, so frequently are they overflowed, — and presently I came to Avonmouth and saw where the waters of Shakespeare's river mingle with those of the Severn, and are carried onward to the all- embracing sea. The wide green fields were vacant, save for a silent angler here and there upon the river's brink. The distant town seemed asleep in the gloaming ; the notes of a mellow chime floated out from the Abbey tower ; and more near, the air was tremulous with the silver call of the lark. So, and of such antiquity and peace, that legendary city takes its place among the pictures that memory will always cherish. No traveller who rambles in the midlands of England, and especially no votary of Shakespeare, should omit the privilege of a prospect of Tewkesbury Ab- bey. Upon that scene the gaze of Shake- speare must often have rested, and the genius of Shakespeare has made it immortal. From Tewkesbury you may drift to many places of kindred beauty and interest. "Once more I came to Sarum Close." It is many a year -since I read The Angel in the House, — that exalted, chivalric, tender poem by Coventry Patmore, — but TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. II9 it all came back to me, as I walked again along the familiar avenue, and approached the stately cathedral of Salisbury. No fitter environment could be found for a representative love-story of the more fas- tidious order, and seldom in poetical litera- ture has scenery been so deftly blended with sentiment as it is in those melodious pages. Among the cities of England none can excel Salisbury in opulent refinement ; and now that Americans, voyaging to Southampton, — as many do, since the establishment of the American Line, — are landed almost at its gates, they ought surely to improve the hour for making practical acquaintance with one of the loveliest places in England. My own slight knowl- edge of the city dates back to 1885 and involves several visits. The White Hart, near the cathedral, is the most desirable and convenient inn, and from that point it is easily possible to visit many scenes of rare interest and soft delight. A walk of two miles, mostly through the fields, will bring you to Bemerton ; and then you are in the valley where George Herbert lived some part of his saintly life and wrote some of his exquisite devotional poetry. St. Andrew's, the tiny church of Bemerton, 120 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. nestles deep in the bosom of a green vale, making the corner of a little triangular graveyard, full of crosses and cedar trees, and over it broods the blessing of perfect repose. Chief among the inscriptions with- in its walls are the words of sacred promise and comfort, ' ' In this place will I give peace ' ' ; and never were words better chosen for the purpose they fulfil. I entered it at evening, when it was all in shadow ; when birds were calling their mates ; when the children in the neighbour- ing rectory were singing a vesper hymn ; and when, at the approach of night, the summer breeze was heavy with the scent of roses and of new-mown hay ; and very sweet it was, there to meditate upon the continent character, the pure spirit, the gentle life, and the exquisite art of the poet and preacher whose presence once made it a cynosure and a shrine for many loving worshippers, and whose name has hallowed it forever. George Herbert died at Bemer- ton in 1633, and his dust reposes near the altar of his little church. The rector of Bemerton [1894], Rev. Francis Warre, has addressed a letter to friends of the church, asking their assist- ance toward the restoration of the building, TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 121 so that it may be made, as nearly as possi- ble, what it was when Herbert lived. The chnrch is only fifty feet long, by fourteen wide, and it is said to have been built in 1408, by an Abbess of Wilton, — then a monastery, upon the site of which now stands Wilton House, the splendid and storied abode of the noble family of Pem- broke. The chancel was repaired by Her- bert, to whom the little church was precious. In 1866 that chancel was rebuilt. It is now thought desirable that a plaster ceil- ing should be removed from it, so that the wooden roof of the nave may appear as it was in Herbert's time ; that the original splays of the windows should be restored, and the walls relieved of a covering of lath and plaster ; that the chancel should be newly roofed, as it has fallen much into decay ; that the nave should be provided with oak seats; that the sanctuary should be enclosed within a rail ; and that a font should be placed at the entrance. Those changes will help to preserve that historic edifice for future ages. The rector asks for contributions ; and if every lover of George Herbert's poetry were to give but a mite, he would not wait long for the means to accomplish his good work. 122 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. Another pleasant walk from Salisbury, going southward about two miles, along the bank of the Wiltshire Avon and through green meadows sweetly shaded by elm trees and vocal with song of thrush and cawing of rooks, will bring you to Britf ord church, — a relic of the four- teenth century, and precious to the Shake- speare antiquary as containing the tomb of that Duke of Buckingham whom king Richard the Third, with such sanguinary precipitation, sends to the block, alike in history and in the play. The tomb is a low, rectangular structure, covered with a flat stone, and it stands against the north wall of the chancel. Its sides are richly chased with figures and symbols of saints, and over it impend a carved arch and cross ; while above it, upon a brass plate, appears the inscription : ' ' Henricus Stafford, Dux Buckingham, decapitatus apud Salisbury, 1 Ric. Ill, a.d. 1483." Doubt has been cast upon the authenticity of that relic, — it being alleged that the remains of the Duke were conveyed to London and buried at Grayfriars ; but, since at that time Lionel Woodville, brother-in-law to the Duke, was the Bishop of Salisbury, it seems not unlikely that the interment would have TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 123 been accomplished by him, speedily and without ostentation, close at home. In Britford, at any rate, stands the tomb ; and as I think of it I see again the silent church, the sunlight streaming in coloured rays upon the chancel floor, the mural tablets and the vacant pews ; while upon the walls outside there is a faint rustle of leaves and a twitter of birds among the ivy, and all is peace. More than four hun- dred years have passed since the ambitious, scheming, unlucky Buckingham was sud- denly laid low by the dangerous monarch against whom he had raised his rebellious hand ; yet in the fresh vitality of Shake- speare's page it seems but as a thing of yesterday. In that tomb lie the ashes of as proud an ambition as ever filled the breast of man ; and in that tomb is buried the key to a terrible mystery, — the great historic secret of Bichard's reign : for Buckingham aspired to wear the crown of England, and Buckingham, earlier and better than any other man, there is good reason to believe, . knew the fate of the Princes in the Tower. They show you, in the Market Place of Salisbury, a build- ing that stands nearly upon the spot where the Duke was beheaded, — a build- 124 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. ing situated on the north side of the square, near St. John's street, and now devoted to trade. There, in Richard's time, stood the Blue Boar Inn, and the yard of that inn was the place of the execution. To visit Salisbury is to visit Stonehenge, and on the drive to Stonehenge the trav- eller will not omit to pause both at Old Sarum and at Amesbury. The former is only an earthwork now, but, its massive heights abundantly exemplify the formid- able character of ancient fortifications, and on its breezy slopes the long grass ripples in the wind, and myriads of butter- cups brighten the emerald meadow with a sheen of gold. Close by there is an old habitation called the Castle Inn ; and if you are in quest of a refuge from the ills and worries of conventional life, I know not where you could more certainly find it than in that quaint dwelling, — with all of Old Sarum for your pleasure ground, and with the distant spire of Salisbury cathe- dral, towering noble and clear on the southern horizon, for your silent monitor, pointing up to heaven. In Amesbury once stood the monastery, dear to the lover of Tennyson's Idyls as the haven and last refuge of poor Guinevere, in her remorse TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. 1 25 and penitence and shame. Nothing now remains of it ; but you will see, in the church wall, a remnant of the ancient ecclesiastical building, and, entering the park of Sir Edmund Antrobus, you will obtain a glimpse of wide lawns whereon, perhaps, Guinevere may have wandered, and of the sequestered Avon on which her sad gaze may many a time have rested, in those long years before she drifted away, "to where, beyond these voices, there is peace." The ancient mon- astery was made into a dwelling by Somer- set, the Protector, and afterward it passed through various hands and suffered many changes. The Duke of Queensberry owned it in Queen Anne's time, and the poet Gay, so kindly befriended by the sprightly Duchess of Queensberry, was a frequent visitor there, and there he composed The Beggar's Opera. I saw the stone room called Gay's Cave, which is built into a high bank, and so placed as to form the central feature of a hillside terrace that takes the shape of a diamond and by that name is known. That was the genial poet's study, and as he looked forth from that bower he would behold a broad vista of emerald lawn, diversified with brilliant flowers and with shade-trees that were 126 TEWKESBURY AND SALISBURY. the growth of centuries, the tall columns, bold capitals, and classic front of a stately- mansion that was the home of his friends, and, more near, the limpid waters of the Avon, brown in the shallows, rippling be- neath a lovely rustic bridge and sleeping in sun and shadow at his feet. The visitor to Stonehenge by day com- monly finds the stones surrounded with carriages and overrun with picnics, while in the centre is posted an expounder with a model. The day drive is one of exquisite beauty, — over the long, breezy reaches of Salisbury Plain, through fields of golden grain and scarlet poppy and long grass, that sways and tumbles underneath the cloud-shadows, like the tumbling plains of the sea ; and it is a drive that no one should miss. But Stonehenge, if you would truly feel its mystery and its power, should be seen under the cold light of the stars, and when the night wind is whispering through its wilderness of haunted rocks, when no human creature is near, and when nothing comes between your soul and heaven. Once, in distant days, I saw the ruin in that way, and the spirit that is within it was revealed. STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 12^ XII. STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 189U. IT has again been my fortune to dwell for a time in Stratford-upon-Avon and to deepen the old friendships and freshen the old associations of that hallowed place. Some of the kind faces that once smiled a welcome are seen no more, and some of the familiar resorts have been renovated, but in general the borough remains un- changed, and its allurement for the Shake- speare scholar is as potent as ever. In all England there is not a cleaner, more deco- rous, or more restful town than Stratford- upon-Avon, and even to look upon it is to receive a suggestion of peace and comfort. The physical prospect is still the same that travellers long have known. The red brick dwellings shine among the trees ; the flower- spangled meadows stretch away, on every hand ; the green hills, sprinkled over with copse and villa, glimmer through silver mist, 128 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. all round the lovely Vale of the Red Horse, — Welcombe in the north, with its con- spicuous monument ; Meon in the south, rugged and bold ; Red Hill in the west ; and far away eastward, beyond a wide, smiling area of farms and villages, the crests of Edgehill, at Radley and Rising Sun, where once the armies of king Charles confronted his roundhead foe. The summer, this year [1894], came slowly. Much of the English June was like the American March. There was frost and in some places there was light snow, and it was needful to have frequent fires, —so that life was often bleak and dreary. But, all the while, the verdure deepened in colour, the roads and the hedges were free from dust, the white and coral hawthorn was abundant in sheltered places, and the thick-pleached elms, the green lanes, and the daisied meadows glistened with emerald sheen ; and presently a day came when we ceased to exchange Christmas greetings, and rejected the overcoat, and almost dis- carded the umbrella, — a day when Eng- land, which had been all frowns, decked herself once more in smiles, and we could look upon her face without a shiver. It is a face that can wear many expressions, but STRATFORD GLEANINGS. I29 when propitious it is a face which to see is to love, — and nowhere is it more softly beautiful than in stately Warwickshire, and around the home of Shakespeare. The restoration of the Guild Hall and Grammar School at Stratford, substantially completed, has been made with excellent judgment and taste. That good work was planned and begun by the late Charles Edward Flower [1830-1892], and the cost of it was paid by him. It has been carried forward under the superintendence of his widow, whose devotion to every task and purpose cherished by him is that of rever- ent memory and affectionate zeal. The visitor to the Guild Hall sees it now much as it was when Shakespeare saw it, when a boy. It is a room fifty-two feet long by eighteen feet nine inches wide, and eight feet eight inches high. Three sides of it are panelled, — the panels resting upon a base of timber and rock. The ceiling is of timber and plaster and the floor of stone. One massive timber runs along the centre of the ceiling, from north to south, and with that the other timbers of the ceiling run parallel, — the intermediate spaces be- ing filled with plaster, finished with a wave- like surface. On the west side are four I30 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. spandrels, and also, high in the wall, nine windows, each about four feet by two, set near together and filled with small, leaded, diamond panes of white glass. At the north end is a large oak door, made in imitation of the doors of old, opening into a passage leading from the street, on the west, to the quadrangle and pedagogue's house, on the east. Upon the east wall there are four spandrels, and there is a brick chimney-breast, and near that is a large casement, made of green and white glass, through which you may look into the quadrangle. At the south end there are thirteen large upright and three small tim- bers, stained black, — as, indeed, most of the timbers are, whether new or old, — and between those the plaster reveals traces of ancient frescos. Five panels of the fresco are set in a large oak frame and are glazed. The walls, above the panels, are plastered and are finished with a smooth, cream- coloured surface. The north end of the hall adjoins the venerable church tower of the Guild, — one of the most picturesque objects in Stratford, and, unhappily, one that is crumbling to decay. In the east wall, near the north end, there is a door. In the ceiling there are thirty-seven lines STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 131 of timber. At the south end a bit of the original timber, once ornamented with gay colour, still faintly visible, has been left untouched. Presentations of Miracle Plays and Mysteries were effected in that hall, in the time of Shakespeare's boyhood, and it may be true, as is believed, that the first dramatic performances the lad ever saw were seen by him in that room. As I sat there, on a sombre Sunday morning, alone and listening to the rain upon the roof, the chapel bell suddenly began to ring, and I remembered the tradition that this chapel bell, which had sounded in his ears when he was a schoolboy, was tolled at his fu- neral. The schoolroom is over the Guild Hall, and an oak partition of great age divides it in two parts. The main timbers of the roof, massive and rugged, cross the room at an altitude of about ten feet, and above them is a network of rafters. The staircase leading to the schoolroom is of oak, and very rich, and there are fine oak doors on the east side, and lattices on the west. On the south wall hangs a portrait of Henry Irving, as Hamlet, — that great actor being honoured there, as indeed he is everywhere else in Shakespeare's town. 132 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. East of the southern branch of the school- room, and opening from it, is a quaint room called the Council Chamber, now used as a library. The roof, rising to a peak, is wrought of old timbers, bare, massive, and strange. An ancient oak table, much hacked by the jackknives of many genera- tions of boys, stands in the centre of that room, together with some oak benches, while around the walls are bookcases, con- taining about one thousand volumes, and at the north side is a dais sustaining a great chair and a reading-desk, above which hangs a copy of the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare. [The original of the Chan- dos portrait is at the Bethnal Green Mu- seum, in London, where the American pilgrim should see it, together with other priceless historic treasures of the kingdom. ] From the council-room a narrow, crooked staircase gives access to a tiny room be- neath the eaves, of the same general char- acter, — probably a priest's cell, in ecclesi- astical times, but used now as a storeroom and a study. The outside of the building is timber-crossed, with interstices of plaster, the roof being covered with red tiles. In the rear stands the little cottage in which dwelt Shakespeare's schoolmaster, Walter STRATFORD GLEANINGS. I33 Roche, — a structure, now restored, con- taining a quaint, charming room, used as a study by the head-master of the Guild. At one time it was thought that this build- ing, one of the oldest houses in Stratford, must be sacrificed, but it has been deftly set upon new foundations, and it will, doubtless, be seen by a distant posterity. Human bones were discovered in the earth, while the work of restoration was in prog- ress, near to that building, — the remains, doubtless, of some ecclesiastic of long ago. In its renovated condition the schoolhouse of king Edward the Sixth, while it reveals the care of the restorer, retains its aspect of venerable antiquity, and it is more than ever one of the most precious historic shrines of Stratford. The day is near when the same good offices must be done for the Guild church, although even to touch that ancient fabric will be to mar the indescribable charm of its reverend age, the strange and awful beauty, — which no art can make and no passion of homage perpetuate, — of time, tempest, and decay. There is a book at the Grammar School in which visitors may inscribe their names. The first name written in it is that of Charles Dickens, the younger, dated De- 134 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. cember 6, 1890. The record, from that date until June 22, 1894, fills seventy-two MS. pages, and contains about 1900 names. Among them are Virginia Bateman Comp- ton, January 14. 1891 ; Henry James, Janu- ary 15, 1891 ; Walter Besant, Otis Skinner, H. Beerbohm Tree, August 29, 1891 ; James Fernandez, Fred. Terry, Julia Neil= son, Isabel Bateman, October 25, 1891 ; Albert H. Smyth, John Addington Sy- monds, July, 1892, and Stopford A. Brooke, May 8, 1893. Some excitement was caused in Stratford, in June, 1894, by the discovery that the doors of the north porch of Trinity church had not only been removed from their place but had been sold, and for a time the matter was a theme of wonder. The doors had long been disused, but there they had hung for centuries, — useless but vener- able, — and nobody wished them to be dis- turbed. The Vicar of Stratford, however, caused them to be taken away. The porch is provided with an iron grill, and the removal of the doors, which had for years stood open, served to reveal more clearly the proportions and peculiarities of its interior. There was no complaint, and the doors might long have reposed, unnoted, STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 1 35 among the rubbish in the churchyard, but for their sudden appearance as a commodity of commerce. That appearance was precip- itated by one of the church-wardens. A quantity of refuse wood and stone was to be sold ; the ancient oaken doors, massive and ponderous, stood in the way ; and so, with a word, they were dispatched. Such things are done more in heedlessness than with purpose. The most frugal-minded of church-wardens, considering what Strat- ford is and upon what mainly it thrives, would scarcely have sold those church doors, had he paused to reflect that the gaze of Shakespeare may have rested on them, and that therefore they belong to the story of the poet. Sold they were, and conveyed away, and but that the fact be- came public and attracted the attention of the Bishop of Worcester, they would not have come back. A mandate from that authority declared the sale invalid, the church-warden was compelled to recover the alienated property, and those relics of the beautiful church now once more repose in a shed in the churchyard. The incident was a sign of the spirit in which the affairs of the Shakespeare church have long been managed. I36 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. The ancient cottage at Wilmcote, in which dwelt Mary Arden, the mother of Shakespeare, has not been bought by the corporation of Stratford, but some day it will be, and then the cluster of the Shakespeare shrines will be complete. The cottage of Anne Hathaway was bought in 1892, together with the old furniture and relics contained in it, — the latter being the property of Mrs. Mary Taylor Baker, who still resides in the cottage, and, notwith- standing infirmities of age, assists in the genial task of showing it to visitors. At the Shakespeare Birthplace the custo- dians are Miss Rebecca Florence Hancock and Miss Marie Louise Hancock, who as- sumed the office in May, 1893, and who have been successful in it, — fulfilling a difficult duty with patience, grace, and tact, and winning the favour of visitors and the pleased approval of the borough. Richard Savage, that excellent scholar and antiquary, so long associated with the Hen- ley street cottage, is still the librarian. All the Shakespeare Trusts are fortunate, and so is the public, in the presidency of Sir Arthur Hodgson, of Clopton, whose zeal is tireless and whose conservative ad- ministration tends to insure stability. The STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 1 37 influence of Charles Edward Flower has been missed, and in many ways the death of that excellent man was an affliction to Stratford from which it will not soon re- cover. His grave is in the parish cemetery, and ever him the grass ripples and the flowers bloom in a wild profusion of beauty, like the good deeds that adorned his beneficent life, and like the blessings of love, gratitude, and honour that cluster round his name. Warwickshire is rich in relics. At War- wick Castle the visitor sees, or used to see, a fine portrait of Anne Boleyn, to- gether with one of her sister Mary, — the only one known to exist; armour that was worn by the great Montrose ; Vandyke's superb equestrian portrait of Charles the First ; a helmet that was worn by Oliver Cromwell, and a cast of Cromwell's dead face ; a trunk that was once the property of Queen Anne ; and, among many other mementos, a life-like and powerful por- trait of Wentworth, the puissant and re- nowned Earl of Strafford, whom Charles so strangely sacrificed to the Puritan rage. At Stratford there are relics of singular interest. One of them, shown to me by Sir Arthur Hodgson, of Clopton, is a prayer- I38 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. book, having on its title page the autograph of its former owner, Ambrose Eokewood, one of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot. At Clopton Rokewood lived, before the discovery of that iniquitous conspiracy, and to Clopton his prayer-book has found its way. His handwriting is quaint, char- acteristic, and handsome, and the book — a beautiful piece of printing — is in perfect condition. The other relic is a copy, in the handwriting of Dr. Johnson, of the letter that he sent to Dr. William Dodd, on the night before that unfortunate clergyman was hanged, for forgery [June 27, 1777]. The document will be found in Boswell's Life of Johnson. The copy is the property of Alderman R. M. Bird, of Stratford, to whose grandfather it was given by Dr. Johnson ; and equally in its perfect composure of benignant sentiment and its mellifluous style, it is, perhaps, the most superb re- corded example of absolute resignation to another man's woe. Dr. Johnson was a philosopher, and he never displayed the interesting fact more conspicuously than when he wrote to Dr. Dodd. February, 1895. — Americans who pos- sess pleasant memories of Stratford- upon- STRATFORD GLEANINGS. 1 39 Avon have heard with sorrow of the death of the old parish-clerk and sexton of the Shakespeare church, William Butcher. He was a familiar figure in Stratford, and, in a special sense, he seemed appro- priate to the place. He was a man of venerable aspect, gentle disposition, and quaint manner. He moved about the old church in a slow, silent, decorous way, he knew its history, he loved and venerated its antiquities and its hallowing associations, and he impressed the beholder as a part of its traditions. He will be sadly missed by all who have known him and been accustomed to meet him in the Shake- spearian haunts. He was a kind, modest, unobtrusive, thoughtful man, a close ob- server, and he had a deeply reverent ap- preciation of the shrines among which he lived. Mr. Butcher had been parish- clerk of Stratford for thirty-five years. He died on February 20, 1895, aged sixty-six, and was buried in the Stratford cemetery. His father was for many years clerk of the venerable Guild church, — with which, as with Trinity church, Shakespeare was in- timately associated. His portrait by C. L. Mitchell, of Philadelphia, is excellent. 140 STRATFORD GLEANINGS. July, 1895. — The retirement of Mr. A. H. Wall from the office of Librarian of the Shakespeare Memorial should here be recorded. Mr. Wall retired in June, and was succeeded by Mr. William Salt Bras- sington. It should also be recorded that Stratford has suffered a loss in the with- drawal of Rev. R. S. de Courcy Laffan from the office of head-master of the Guild. Mr. Laffan has become President of Chelten- ham College, and he has been succeeded, in the School of King Edward the Sixth, by Rev. Edward J. W. Houghton, formerly of Bromsgrove. My latest visits to Stratford were made in September and October, 1895. Charle- cote house, hitherto accessible only to friends of the Lucy family, or by special permit, is now, at specified hours, and for a small fee, open to the visitor, and if, having viewed Warwick Castle, Compton Wynyate, near Banbury, and Charlecote, he fails to comprehend the stately home life of the English nobility in Shakespeare's day, he will have but himself to blame. The spacious halls and timbered and pan- elled ceilings at Charlecote are imposing and beautiful, and the art treasures are among the most precious in the kingdom. RELIC AND REVERIE. 141 XIII. RELIC AND REVERIE. IN the visitors' book at the old Black Swan in York I read the following comprehensive words, appended to his name by a previous guest : k ■ Arrived at 5. Left at 5:05. Found all correct." There is a rapid way of looking at the world, with which many travellers appear to be contented, but it may be doubted whether the rapid way is always the wise way. Places no doubt there are through which the pilgrim should pass with all convenient speed, but, as a rule, every place, in an old country, is a place of interest, and that is especially true of England, where so much has been lost and won, so much done and suffered, such hallowing charms of poetry and such wealth of historic action diffused, that every countryside has its traditions, every temple its relics, and every city, town, and hamlet its legends, associations, and subtle, mysterious ro- mance. And certainly every place has its 142 RELIC AND REVERIE. surprises, — as I could not choose but think when, in the course of a lonely walk in old Southampton, I found, in the lane called Back of the Walls, the burial-place of that paragon of humour, John O'Keeffe. No mer- rier soul ever bore the burdens of earthly- life, and even to come near his ashes was to be reminded of the joy and sunshine that are in the world, and how idle it is not to rejoice while yet the light endures. John O'Keeffe was a pioneer in that movement against the sentimental drama in England which culminated with the success of Gold- smith, Colman the younger, and Sheridan ; and, as a lover of the dramatic art, I felt that I had come upon the shrine of a benefactor. Everybody remembers Wild Oats, but few people know that the author of that gay comedy, and of about fifty others, rests in an obscure corner of South- ampton, that picturesque but slighted port of entry, through which everybody rushes and in which nobody is supposed to find a pleasure or a thought. He was an Irish- man, born in Dublin, in 1747 ; he had his career as actor and author ; he became blind about 1800 ; he enjoyed a small pen- sion during the last few years of his life, and he died in 1833, in his eighty-sixth RELIC AND REVERIE. I43 year, and was buried in All Saints' ground, in the parish of St. Lawrence. I had passed many days in solitary rambling about Southampton, and had carefully explored it ; yet even then I stumbled upon a novelty, and many novelties, I doubt not, remain to be discovered there. The sights to which the stranger in that place is commonly directed are the church at Lyndhurst, not distant, adorned with the beautiful fresco, by Sir Frederick Leighton, of the Ten Virgins ; the wonderful antique beeches in the contiguous New Forest, where also is a stone, duly inscribed, that marks the spot on which king William Rufus was slain by the arrow of Walter Tyrrell ; the ruins of Beaulieu, melancholy relics of the dark and dangerous monarch, John ; and the broken, mouldering, picturesque frag- ments of Netley Abbey: but there is a pleasure in discoveries, that the routine spectacles never impart. The place of O'Keeffe's sepulchre is somewhat difficult of access, — the ceme- tery of All Saints, long since disused, being situated in rather a squalid region, and likewise being enclosed within a high wall. The key was obtained from the neighbouring abode of a butcher, some of 144 RELIC AND REVERIE. whose sheep were grazing among the graves. The least of those animals was so tame that he came to me and put his nose into my hand. " I keep that there one," the serious butcher said, " to lead the others to death." No arrangement, surely, could be more harmonious with those grim surroundings. The graves in that forlorn yard are very numerous, and each one is not only marked by a tall perpendicular stone, but also cov- ered with a flat slab, the inscription being indented, and painted black. O'Keeffe's grave is close to the wall, and near the large wooden gate, in the southeast corner of the enclosure. The environment of shops and stables, the absence of foliage and flowers, and the presence of rubbish in- vested it with an air of extreme desolation; but all sepulchres, however they may be beautified, are unspeakably dreary, when you consider their stony and awful silence and muse upon the humour, grace, and joy that were hushed and hidden in their depths. The mourners for the sprightly dramatist have long since followed him to rest, and here as elsewhere charitable and consoling Time turns all things to peace. The inscription upon the tombstone, once viewed through tears, is read without a sigh. RELIC AND REVERIE. I45 WITHIN THIS GRATE ARE DEPOSITED THE MORTAL REMAINS OF JOHN O'KEEFFE ESQ A PIOUS MEMBER OF THE HOLY ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE IN THE 86TH YEAR OF HIS AGE. HE WAS BORN IN DUBLIN, IRELAND, THE 24th OF JUNE, 1747, AND DIED AT SOUTHAMPTON THE 4TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833. BLESSED BE HIS SPIRIT IN THE NAME OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. THE ABOVE INSCRIPTION AVRITTEN AND THIS STONE PLACED TO HIS BELOVED MEMORY BY HIS ONLY DAUGHTER AND SURVIVING CHILD ADELAIDE o'KEEFFE. 146 RELIC AND REVERIE. It was a surprise to find the grave of O'Keeffe in that by-way of Southampton, and yet it should not have been surprising, — for the graves of English actors are scattered far and wide over the earth. Susanna Cibber, Anne Bracegirdle, Anne Oldfield, Anne Street [the latter succes- sively Mrs. Dancer, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Crawford], Thomas Betterton, Spranger Barry, Barton Booth, Samuel Foote, David Garrick, and John Henderson were buried in Westminster Abbey, or in its cloisters ; Mrs. Siddons and Miss Murray near the old parish church at Paddington ; Est- court, Haines, King, Kynaston, Macklin, and Wilks at Co vent Garden church ; Nell Gwyn and John Bannister at the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields ; Suett in St. Paul's cathedral precinct ; Edmund Kean at Richmond [his grave is immediately under a closet in the church porch, in which are now kept brooms and dust-pans] ; the elder Mathews at Plymouth ; Mossop, Egerton, and Blanchard at Chelsea ; Powell and Mountfort in the old London church of St. Clement-le-Dane ; Mme. Vestris and Macready at Kensal Green; Mrs. Bland in St. Margaret's, Westminster ; John Palmer at Wooton, near Liverpool ; Quin RELIC AND REVERIE. 1 47 at Bath Abbey ; Elliston at St. John's, Waterloo Road, London ; Mrs. Crouch at Brighton ; Laura Honey at Hampstead ; Tom D'Urfey in the ground of St. James's, London, near the Jermyn street gate ; Mrs. Davenport, Adelaide Neilson, Benjamin Webster, and Harry Beckett at Brompton cemetery ; Dora Jordan at St. Cloud ; John Kemble at Lausanne; and George Fred- erick Cooke in the churchyard of St. Paul's, at New York. Those are but a few of the once admired and honoured sovereigns of theatrical popularity. Each year adds to the dismal record : and yet it is not alto- gether dismal, for however much those fading names may bespeak the evanescence of achievement in art, at least they teach, — since each succeeding period brings its princes of the hour, — that the line of genius runs unbroken through the ages, and that art can never die. All the incitations to effort that man has devised serve only to employ his active faculties. He still keeps doing, and that is all, — for in this world there are no permanent results. All is change. The spirit, the something for which art is at once occupation, expression, and sustainment — that alone endures ; and there alone will permanence be found. I48 RELIC AND REVERIE. Many a walk in London has taught me that lesson, and much have I written about those London walks, — as the kind reader is aware. On May 24, 1894, I went into Gough Square, to look for the last time upon what was once the home of Dr. Johnson. One side of the square had already been demolished, and the busy hand of "improvement' 1 was visibly at work. The house of the great scholar will disappear, and with it will pass away a spring of many memories, well calculated to please and exalt a thoughtful mind. The past cannot, in material things, with- stand the present. This is a vital age, and one by one the London places associated with great names in English literature are changed beyond recognition or utterly de- stroyed. The luxurious hotel which has been opened, near the end of the Broad Walk, at Kensington, stands near the site of the old King's Arms Inn, which Thack- eray has artfully associated with the con- spiracy in Esmond. Thackeray's resi- dence in Yonge Street, Kensington Square, — where he lived when he was writing Esmond, — will soon be gone. Several years have passed since [in 1888-89], the front of the Byron house, 139 Piccadilly, RELIC AND REVERIE. 1 49 where dwells Sir Algernon Borthwick, was so much changed that the observer could not recognise it for the place that Byron knew. " So runs the world away." In the pictorial edition of my Shake- speare's England [1893], on page 184, an engraving shows Green Arbour Court, which was once the abode of Goldsmith. An old resident of London, — Samuel Poyn- ter, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Barrister at Law, — who chanced to see it, has sent to me an interesting note, which persons who care for literary antiquities will be glad to read : — "The three top windows on the right side, or else the three top windows facing the spec- tator, light Goldsmith's floor. One of the rooms nearest the angle — either the last room on the side of the court or the last room on the right-hand side of the central building — was his. I have often been in both rooms, and, indeed, in all the rooms on those corresponding floors. I was well acquainted with the floors just beneath the attic story, before the build- ings were razed, to clear the site for the Snow Hill station of the London, Chatham and Dover railway. That operation involved the demoli- tion of the old Break-Neck steps, a steep double set of stairs, two abrupt flights, with a landing midway, leading from the court into I50 RELIC AND REVERIE. a lane running down into Farringdon street. Formerly those steps ran down to the channel, or valley, of the Fleet River, to the eastern bank of that stream . That lane was absorbed, long ago, in the railway premises. The en- trance to Break-Neck steps is shown in the engraving, under the pent-house roof, to the right, facing the spectator, and, perhaps, Goldsmith's room was the one where the top window (save the attic window) shows, over the entrance to the steps. Originally a rope, slung on each side, served for a support, much needed, to the pedestrian, but, about half a cen- tury ago, the corporation substituted wooden rails, rounded and smooth, fixed by stanchions to the walls, which rose sheer, on each side, to a great height ; and in course of time those rails became finely polished by the hinder gar- ments of innumerable little boys who used to amuse themselves by sliding down them." The memory of Goldsmith chiefly sur- vives in the Temple, where once he dwelt and where still you may see his grave ; and to walk there is to think of that gentle spirit and of the rich legacy of beauty that his genius bequeathed. The precincts of the Temple are at all times peaceful, and whoever walks there is allured to a distant past. It was the abode of the Knights Templars, but after the ex- RELIC AND REVERIE. 151 tinction of that order it was bought by lawyers [1340] arid converted into inns. Temple Bar, where now the Griffin stands, was built in 1672, and then Essex House, which lay outside of the Bar and which was a part of the residence, was called the Outer Temple, while the structures which lay within the Bar became known as the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple, — the latter being modern. Essex House, the abode of the unfortunate nobleman who rose against Queen Elizabeth and perished beneath the axe [1601], was long ago demolished, but the Inner and the Middle Temple remain, together with St. Mary's, the ancient and beautiful church of the Templars, dedicated by Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, in 1185, — in which was heard the eloquent voice of Sherlock, and in which many a British worthy has worshipped, from Howe to Moore, from Blackstone to Charles Lamb, and from Congreve to Sheridan. 152 A VALLEY OF PEACE. XIV. A VALLEY OP PEACE. . MENTONE, California. —The California season begins about the first of Decem- ber and lasts till about the end of March. It was my fortune to make acquaintance with the country at the wrong time, but, even at the wrong time, this land is one of extraordinary beauty. The place in which I write these words is a valley of peace. I came into it on a brilliant April morning, after a continuous railway journey of more than a hundred hours, and presently the world of my accustomed pursuits, with its turmoil and fever, seemed a dim and fading memory. Coming here from the North — along the comfortable line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Ee railroad — the pil- grim enters this valley through the Cajon Pass, a sinuous, rugged, fantastic rift in the majestic San Bernardino mountains — and at first he pauses at the slumberous old A VALLEY OF PEACE. 1 53 town of San Bernardino. From that town, settled by the Spaniards many years ago, this cosey nook is distant, eastward, about twelve miles. Mentone is a suburb of the prosperous city of Redlands, — a wonder of enterprise and rapid growth, — and it lies at the eastern extremity of the vale, in the centre of a pleasant plain that is steeped in sunshine and glorious with flowers. Fancy could not picture, nor could taste devise, a sweeter refuge from care; The broad expanse of this valley is sparsely sprinkled with neat cottages and covered with groves of orange, blooming vineyards, meadows of sage, and a tossing and tumbling sea of wild flowers ; and all this shining luxuriance of green and purple and gold is haunted by the blackbird and the meadow lark, and swept by cool winds, that waft from every quarter the mingled fragrance of orange blossoms, roses, and the mountain-pine. Around it, at no great distance, and forming an almost continuous girdle, rise the grim mountains, — riven, crinkled, jagged, precipitous — Nature's everlasting citadel, surviving unchanged through countless ages, and brooding in stony silence on the transient life of man. Northward those mountains form a crescent. 154 A VALLEY OF PEACE. In the east towers San Bernardino, crowned with snow. More distant rises the saddle- shaped crest of Grayback, mantled with the same delicate ermine. More distant still, and more in the south, crouches the lion-fronted majesty of San Jacinto, frown- ing on the snow-clad summits of San Anto- nio, superbly ominous in the west. It is only in the south that the ramparts are low, and in a short segment of the west, — where the waters of the Santa Ana river wind past blooming Eiverside, and glide by the Temescal mountains, to their home in the blue Pacific. Whichever way you look, your gaze reposes on the serrated outline and the haggard desolation of those eternal hills ; while above you, cloudless and stain- less, the sky is a blue crystal flooded with golden light. In Southern California, as in France, and in all wine-growing and citrus fruit countries, the traveller observes an excess of sunshine and a lack of foliage. Trees, indeed, there are — long lines of eucalyptus ; fringes of alder ; the graceful, drooping pepper, from Mexico ; the weird, ghost-like cypress of Italy ; the palm ; the olive ; and, of course, there are orange and lemon and fig trees, by thousands. Nevertheless, the A VALLEY OF PEACE. 1 55 effect is nowhere produced of a country that is wooded. Except for agricultural results everything is "too much i' the sun, ' ' and the greatest luxury that you can have is an occasional day of gray twilight and drifting cloud. The orange, however, loves the sunshine and cannot have too much of it ; and in this land of eternal summer the orange is the king. To that monarch the inhabitants are loyal; for him they labour, and by him, for the most part, they subsist. One valley may speak for all. Southern California, throughout its extent, is composed of fruitful vales, nestled among rugged mountains and envi- roned with deserts, and everywhere her fertile plains are beautiful with the bright green of orange groves and radiant with flowers. Not very long ago those groves were shining with innumerable globes of gold. To-day they are white with starry blossoms, that sweeten the air for miles around, and all the world seems gay with the happiness of a bridal feast. As I drove through the long vistas of cypress and palm and olive that make the famous Magnolia avenue of Eiverside, and saw around me palaces, on every hand, set in emerald orange groves and draped with roses, I I56 A VALLEY OF PEACE. thought of our Atlantic tempests as a half- forgotten dream, and scarcely could realise that our country is not, always and every- where, a paradise. One day in this valley is so like another, and all days are so uneventful, that you might soon lose account of time. About four o'clock the morning light begins to glow, over the ridge of the eastern mountains. A few ribs of slate-coloured cloud in the fir- mament are slowly changed to rose and then to gold. Far in the west the shadows steal upward, and the foothills of San Antonio catch the gathering and growing brightness of the dawn. Then, suddenly, a ball of fire, the sun leaps above the crest of Gray- back, and the whole vale is filled with light. All this while, from distant groves and out of waste places on the wide and lonely moorland, the calls of many birds are wafted, in melodious tumult. Here and there, joyous with freedom, a squirrel or a rabbit leaps up among the brush, and scur- ries away. The quail pipes in his cover. The buzzard sails high in air. A thin, lace-like mist, drifting along the mountain- sides, is slowly melted away. The wild flowers, in every direction, unclose their petals and clothe the sunny plain in odor- A VALLEY OF PEACE. 1 57 oils garments of yellow and purple, and white and lavender, and all that copious and wild profusion of colour which Nature, and Nature alone, can make harmonious and delightful. As day deepens and the warmth increases, the mountains, in their lonely splendour, stand forth like crags of ebony, veined with emerald, against the sapphire of a cloudless summer sky. No sound breaks the stillness save the rippling song, — frequently repeated and almost always the same, — of the brown meadow lark, or the querulous, triple note of the quail, mingled with the distant murmur of a brawling stream ; and if you pause in your ramble through the slumbering meadows, where the candlestick and the pear-shaped cactus are beautiful with myriad roses of pink and yellow, the place is so still and so lonely that swift, stealthy lizards will glide across your path, and the harmless gopher-snake pursue his prey, and the droll little horned toad come forth to look and listen. There is a great heat between four and six o'clock in the after- noon, but it is not distressing, and it serves only to deepen the vast tranquillity of the mountain heights, upon which your gaze might dwell unwearied forever. As the I58 A VALLEY OF PEACE. sun begins to decline, the wind blows cool from the west ; the wilderness of flowers seems to fade ; the far-stretching fields grow lonesome and desolate ; and the mountains, more huge and more tremen- dous in the impending gloom, put on an awful pageantry of light and shadow, myste- rious grandeur, and inaccessible repose. The sunset comes quickly. The orb of golden fire falls in an instant behind the colossal head of San Antonio, and then the whole Sierra Madre range looms in purple bastions against the yellow sky — its long, sinuous, gigantic outline sharply defined and stu- pendously magnificent. There is a lovely gloaming, and, long after the wide valley has darkened, the sunset light lingers on the high western slopes of San Bernardino in the east, slowly fading upward, — like the glory of a beautiful life that has come to its end on earth, yet, for a time, will seem to cast its blessing backward out of heaven. Then the night descends and the sky is full of stars, — larger and more near than in our northern clime, — and only the distant lights of the town of San Bernardino shining, innumerable, at the foot of the western mountains, suggest the presence of human life ; and you are lulled to sleep by A VALLEY OF PEACE. 1 59 the gentle music of the rushing river, and by winds that are laden with balm. Scenes of that character suggest a con- tented and peaceful community — and such it is. There may be fever and action in the great cities of California ; there is nothing but tranquillity here. Throughout these valleys the work of life proceeds silently. Little by little the waste places are redeemed ; the bloom of cultivation creeps up to the base of the mountains ; villas and cottages are reared upon the foothills and in the plains; and the long, white roads stretch afar off, through fields that are green wich barley and yellow with ripening hay ; the neat schoolhouse and the pretty church peep forth from groves of alder ; and, all around, you may discern the fruits of enterprise without its clamour and the calm of patience without its melancholy. This people has only to labour and to wait. The future — not distant — greets it, with both hands full of blessings. Scarce a quarter of a century has passed since all this region was a wilderness. To-day there is not in the world a scene of softer grace or more radiant promise. l6o MOUNTAIN DAYS. XV. MOUNTAIN DATS. MENTONE, California. — There is a change in the valley as the summer deepens. The heat, by day, grows more intense. The wild flowers are less abun- dant. The orange blossoms gradually disappear. The roads are deep in dust. The sun rises like a fierce flame, and holds its course with unrelenting vigour through a perfectly cloudless sky. The broad expanse of moorland, covered with brush, shrivels in the heat. Chirping sounds, made by unseen insects, are continual. Every place is infested with flies, and the scattering of water is the chief occupation of the inhabitants. The heat, I am assured, will increase, and the mercury will some- times stand at more than a hundred degrees. It is only toward sunset and in the night that life becomes comfortable. As the sun sinks the air grows cool, and about the middle of the night the wind is cold, and MOUNTAIN DAYS. l6l often is full of moaning sounds, — as if a storm were coming ; but no storm comes. On the lofty summits of Grayback and San Bernardino a little snow still lingers, but, all around, the mountains, veiled in a thin blue haze, are wearing their mantle of summer rest. The birds are nesting, and are less vocal than they were of late, — the blithe little meadow lark being almost the only one who continues to sing ; and even he is seldom heard. It happens to be the period of the full moon, and that planet, rising above a line of cloven and treeless hills, toward the south-east, casts a soft splendour over the whole valley, concealing its every blemish and making it like a lake of silver, dappled with little islands, serene within a mountain girdle of granite and ebony. It is for sunset and evening, accordingly, that the dreamer waits. The parched and shimmering landscape waits for them also, and will welcome their approach. As the long shadows begin to slope to the east- ward, the hollows among the foothills and the ravines in the mountains grow dark and cool. Then the trees that fringe the sinu- ous watercourses sway and murmur in the rising breeze. The light grows softer and 1 62 MOUNTAIN DAYS. fades away. A thin gray gauze creeps along the mountain-side, and the moorlands beneath are darkened. Soon it is evening, and over the desolate plain floats the mournful call of the owl, while far over- head, in a pale blue sky, without a cloud, a single star steals slowly into view — shy herald of all the host of heaven. Amid these scenes, and notwithstanding the rigours of heat and dust, the soundless industry of the inhabitants of this region steadily continues. All day long you may see labourers at work in the fields — direct- ing and superintending the flow of the water, which at intervals is delivered upon all the orange farms, and which is their safeguard and nourishment. Sometimes that labour of irrigation proceeds until a late hour of the night, and all around you may discern stars of light, — the lanterns of the toilers of the orchard, — flitting about in the wide, remote, and dusky plains. At all times a picture, this landscape is especially pictorial under a starlit sky or in the silver lustre of the moon — for then the encircling mountain range is one vast mass of confused and broken shadows, while its high serrated outline stands clearly revealed against a dome of sable, and the engirdled MOUNTAIN DAYS. 1 63 plain seems a glimmering waste of sea, with here and there a craft at anchor, and with solitary beacon-fires on its distant, nnknown shores. Persons who chiefly value the pleasures of society and the pursuits of active life would find themselves lost, in such a place as this ; but the mind that loves to brood upon Nature, and is willing to learn the lesson of personal insig- nificance, may here find serene pleasure and lasting benefit. And what a precious lesson it is to learn ! In all my wanderings, — and they have been far and long, — nothing has impressed me more painfully than the ignorance, folly, and capricious instability of popular applause, as set against the trouble that men take to win it. There is but one refuge. The bard of Rydal Mount spake well — But Nature for herself speaks too, Nor any secret had to tell To him, that's hid from me or you. For us she gems her sapphire sky, For us her mountains cleave the air ; And he that sees with Nature's eye Sees all things good and all things fair. 164 SEASHORE PICTURES. XVI. SEASHORE PICTURES. CORONADO, SanDiego, California.— The sky was a vast dome of blue crystal and all space seemed flooded with sunshine as I rolled down the valley, at morning, making my course for the sea. A fresh breeze was stirring in the spires of the eu- calyptus and in the feathery, pendent stream- ers of the pepper, and among the radiant flowers on many a blooming lawn, and over many a field of golden hay, and the air was laden with fragrance, from oleander, mag- nolia, and heliotrope, and countless blossom- ing shrubs that make this region one field of costly beauty. The trail that I followed runs west and south, past Redlands, on her stately heights, and Riverside, in her fertile vale, and the Temescal mountains, and the cornfields and orange groves of Santa Ana, and so onward toward the ocean. All along the way from Orange to Capistrano I saw the massive Santa Ana range, with Santiago SEASHORE PICTURES. 1 65 at its head. Between those mountains and the sea the bottom lands are exceptionally level, and much of the territory is devoted to hay and grain. At El Toro the pilgrim thinks of beautiful Modjeska, whose ranch is in the Santiago Canon, about twenty miles to the east, and whose name and pres- ence have cast a glamour over all this coun- try side. Signs of the sea have been growing frequent, and at Capistrano, where there is an old mission church, half in ruins, its welcome proximity is evident in the cool wind, the saline odour, the sandy soil, and the hardy vegetation. A little further, and through a broad vista of golden meadow, I saw for the first time the great white breakers and the blue desert of the magnifi- cent Pacific. It is at San Juan that the Santa F6 route strikes the coast, and from that point almost to San Diego it skirts the shore and runs through scenery as sweet and gen- tle, as breezy and romantic, as ever soothed the senses or bewitched the mind. Often, indeed, the country is bleak, from lack of trees : but the grass is beautiful, with hues of russet and orange ; the air is scented with herb-like odours that are full of health ; on one side the great ocean surges and spar- kles in shimmering silver, and on the other l66 SEASHORE PICTURES. side the hills roll away in billows of gold. At this season of the year the prevalent colour is yellow ; in the winter it will toe green. At all times the scene is a pageant. The general character of the landscape in Southern California is amply and truth- fully denoted in the objects that fill the picture as you make this journey toward the Mexican frontier. It is a landscape of wonderful amplitude and rich variety, and the sight of it at once toroadens percep- tion and dignifies thought. The life of the inhabitants may be frivolous or may be fine ; the life of Nature is stupendous, and every- thing here has been made for grandeur. The mountains and the ocean, monitors of human insignificance and emblems of eter- nity, are here closely confronted ; and, how- ever much the spirit of the spectacle may be modified by inferior adjuncts, the dominant note of it is sublimity. Gentler aspects of the scenery mingle with its stateliness, but no natural element of it is trivial or mean ; and, while its majesty inspires awe, its va- riety is a continual delight. At a distance the mountain-peaks loom through a pale blue mist. More near, their craggy, wooded slopes, silent and grim in the sunshine, gleam through vistas in the lower hills, — SEASHORE PICTURES. 167 range beyond range, reaching backward and upward to the unclouded sapphire of the summer sky. On the foothills, and in the meadows that fringe the sea, the dry russet grass is thickly sown with golden tar- weed. In the shaded and moist ravines the trees and shrubbery are rank and green. Kivers, that soon will be copious and precip- itate torrents, flow now in thin streams, through sand and rocks, in the shallows of their arid beds. Groves of the live-oak are frequent, and sentinel lines of the Lom- bardy poplar, and clumps of eucalyptus, with here and there a cottage ; while wheat- fields commingle with fruit orchards, salt marshes with deserts of brush, patches of barley with acres of pasture, vineyards with almost boundless tracts of corn, and beds of bulrush with a wilderness of cactus and sage. Cattle feed in the low ground, and over it there are occasional flights of birds. In some of the meadows the hay is stacked in prodigious heaps, and, since months pass with scarce one drop of rain , it will remain there, uncovered and safe. The hay-fields are many and broad, and often, as you look upon the distant hay-cart and the workers around it, in the sunny plain, you might think yourself in Warwickshire or York- l68 SEASHORE PICTURES. shire — but that you miss the opulent Eng- lish foliage, the gray church tower, and the far-off, floating music of the chimes. At intervals the brilliant green of the alfalfa lights up the yellow expanse. The rocks shine with a delicate flowering sea-moss. A lone tree upon the hilltop catches your passing vision. A ruined adobe house gleams from its nest of scarlet geranium and droop- ing willow. A little wooden town drifts by, — still and seemingly unpeopled, — on the sunny western slope that fronts the sea. It is a world of pictures and of dreams, and over it the spirit of the mountain shares dominion with the wizard of the deep. Miles of white beach extend along this coast, on which the vast Pacific breaks con- tinually, in the endless music of foaming billows and dashing surge. All the land seems to flower into gold, while out over the ocean the blue of heaven darkens into purple and the horizon is an endless line of mystery, — at once allurement and menace, — the everlasting symbol of human fate. Oceanside ought to be a favourite resort. The facilities for surf-bathing are excep- tionally good ; the hotel is surrounded with flowers ; the place is free from crowds, and the adjacent country is romantic and beau- SEASHORE PICTURES. 169 tiful. The surges of the Pacific foam un- checked upon the coast, — the broad, white beach extending, north and south, as far as eyes can see, — and the high banks that front the ocean are thickly covered with breezy sage-brush, grass, and star-like, yellow blooms. Sand and marsh inter- mingle, and at various points the water runs into deep fissures in the land. Live- oak trees, many and strange, are scattered around, and under them the lazy cattle couch or feed. Seaward there is an in- terminable field of blue and silver, out of which, at the near margin, the breakers roll continually, in three or four broad bands of snowy foam, — an incessant motion and a perpetual voice. Landward, beyond the plains and the little wooden town, rise the wrinkled hills, almost treeless ; and far above those hills, dimly visible, the gaunt Sierras show like guardian ghosts. Eastward, and inward, from Oceanside — which sleeps on this delicious coast, about midway between San Juan and San Diego — there is a drive across the mountains that no traveller should omit to take. The ascent is gentle but, even from the first height, you gain a view of the Pacific that amazes you by its extent and overwhelms you with its I70 SEASHORE PICTURES. beauty. Soon, however, the sea is hidden and your gaze is completely fascinated by the charm of the land. You are on a road that winds and dips and rises, yet keeps ever at the crest of the range, and on every side you are environed with golden hills and ample valleys, clad mostly in russet and yellow verdure that ripples in wind and sun, and given over to the cattle and the birds. Here and there you may, perhaps, discern a farmhouse, far down in the lowlands ; but almost the only visible sign of human life is the distant railway track, winding out through a hill-gap, from Carlsbad, toward Escondido, — " the hidden one," — twenty miles away. Nowhere in my wanderings have I been conscious of greater airiness and magnificent amplitude than there, on the brink of the great valley of San Luis Rey. Far to the north, indistinct yet clearly outlined in the gauze-like mist, ap- pear the giant peaks of San Jacinto and San Bernardino ; but those are cloud-effects rather than ■ substance. The nearer hills bound the prospect, — and a fairer one it would indeed be hard to find. The great river of San Luis, when I saw it, had dwindled almost to a silver thread ; but its bed and its banks were glorious with colour, SEASHORE PICTURES. 171 and its winding vale, for many miles, was a wilderness of foliage and flowers. No one who cares for landscape could fail to mark with delight the vast extent of that pictorial valley, the rich slopes and swells of the land, the numerous adjacent ravines, the colours of the grass, and the lonely trails that wind over the hilltops and disappear in the mys- terious distance. North of the river-bed are four considerable lakes, and those were gleaming in the sunshine like sheets of sil- ver. Amid those surroundings it was easy to understand why the Spanish monks, who came there a hundred years ago or more, chose that vale for the establishment of their mission and the consecration of their church. A portion of that church still stands and still is devoted to the Catholic service ; but, for the most part, the mission is in ruins. Its cloisters must have been extensive. They are roofless now, yet sixty arches re- main — built around three sides of the enclosure, wherein heaps of rubbish are mouldering, and grass and wild flowers grow, in rank luxuriance. The church was built well. The short tower is still solid, and the nave, with five pillars on either side, and with tarnished frescoes upon its interior surface, is still intact. One transept, the 172 SEASHORE PICTURES. north one, is entirely gone ; the other is in ruins and is closed. In many apertures of those old walls the doves have nested, and the place is so lonely that owls flit over it by day, and even the timid quail is careless of approach. I sat for a long time upon a bench in front of the rude altar, and heard the chirping and twittering of many swallows that haunt about those ruins, and the sound of priestly voices, intoning mass in a cottage near by ; and, in the chill and solemn silence, I felt once more the sense of that dignity of the spiritual life — that celestial exaltation of the soul — which comes only from communion with thoughts of another world, and tender, reverent mem- ories of those whom we have loved and lost in this. South of the church, nestled close to its yellow walls, is a little burial-place, in which a few brick tombs and fenced enclosures, marked with wooden crosses, are overgrown with weeds and covered with dust. Upon one small marble I read the words ' ' Our darling," and knew the meaning of that heart-broken cry. Go where you will, there is no corner of this world that gives a ref- uge from sorrow, — and neither is there any place so remote and solitary as not to SEASHORE PICTURES. 1 73 know the trouble of human ambition, strife, and wrong. Even in that lonely dell, where religious devotion broods in awful silence over ruin and decay, as you look upward to the crest of the golden hills, you may see a group of century plants, marking the spot where batteries were placed to subdue the mission — then fortified — after a battle at the contiguous hamlet of Buena Vista. The scene of that victory — a peaceful grain-ranch now — is only a few miles away, southeastward from San Luis. It required no effort of the imagination to cover those hills once more with trium- phant soldiers, to hear the blare of trumpets, and to see the banners flashing in the sun. TRIBUTES. The sketch of George Arnold, — reprinted here by permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., — was originally published as a preface to his Poems, collected and edited by one, in 1866 and 1867. It has been condensed and improved. The sketch of Fits- James O'Brien, — reprinted here by permission of Messrs. Charles Scribner' s Sons, — was originally ptiblished as a preface to his Poems and /Stories, collected and edited by me in 1881, and issued by Messrs. James B. Osgood, & Co. That book has long been out of print, but the stories contained in it are published by the house of Scribner. The remarks on Charles Dawson Shanly, Rufus Choate, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, — reprinted here by permission of the New York Tribune, with which journal I have had the honour of being intimately associated since August, 1865, — were published, at different times in that paper. The eulogy of Holmes was printed on October 8, 189U, the morning after he died. My poem now called On the Verge was orig- inally called Into the Dark, and, with that title, it was published, May, 1895, in Scribner'' s Magazine. 176 TRIBUTES. I77 XVII. TRIBUTES. George Arnold. THIS author was dear to me as a comrade, and I do not pretend to speak impar- tially of him. During six years it was my fortune to be intimately associated with him, and to participate in many of his pleasures and in some of his sorrows. Tenderness for his memory and grief for his loss may colour the language of this tribute. Affection is not critical. But, whatever be the faults of this memorial sketch, I believe that the appreciative reader of Arnold's poems will feel them to be emblems of genius and of a winning character. George Arnold was born in Bedford street, New York, on June 24, 1834, and he died at Strawberry Earms, Monmouth County, New Jersey, on November 9, 1865. His parents resided in New York till he was I78 TRIBUTES. three years old, when they removed to Alton, Illinois, where he passed twelve years of his happy boyhood, — years diversified by exercise and study, and blessed by free communion with nature, amid some of her most picturesque and inspiring scenery. There he laid the foundation of that love and knowledge of natural things which he manifested in after years. He never went to school. His education was conducted by his parents, from whom he learned, in a good home, the lessons of truth and the principles of conduct which are the suf- ficient basis of an honourable life. Those teachings he never forgot, and, though his later years were not unblemished with error, he was, from first to last, in all things and to all persons, manly and sincere. Nor was that result altogether due to early training. Simplicity and truthfulness were natural to him. He was a gentle person, and his im- pulses were generous and good. In the summer of 1849 his parents moved from Alton to Strawberry Farms, New Jersey. A "Fourierite Phalansterie " had been established there, but, at that time, it was in decay. Residing there for three years, seeing many social reformers, — some of them rational and some of them eccentric, TRIBUTES. 179 — and hearing much of social reform, his impressible mind took a philosophic turn, and began to ruminate upon the contrast between things as they are and as they ought to be. That habit of thought continued to the end of his life. He never was a re- former and for professional reformers he had an aversion. His conviction appeared to be, — and it is, perhaps, as sound as any current doctrine on this subject, — that "the world is out of joint," and that no human power can set it right. His philosophy how- ever, or his lack of it, is immaterial, and I refer to his early acquaintance with doc- trines of reform, merely to explain the bias toward speculation which appears in some of his poems, notably in Wool-Gathering , and also his independent custom of viewing all subjects in the light of common sense. In the autumn of 1852, having shown a preference and aptitude for painting, he was placed in the studio of a portrait-painter, in New York, and that was the beginning of his career. Experience proved that he had mistaken his vocation. He became a good draughtsman, he manifested skill and taste, and his faculty for sketching landscapes grew with his years and afforded him much enjoyment ; but that was all. Several of l8o TRIBUTES. his friends possess sketches that he made, chiefly in water-colours, which, if less com- plete as works of art, are often as char- acteristic of their author as even his best poems. Such a sketch is before me, as I write these words. It shows a square, in an old German city, around which are quaint houses, with diamond-lattices, lancets, and gargoyles. In the background a cathedral lifts its spire toward the blue sky of summer, flecked with clouds of fleece. A lame beg- gar halts in the shadow. Hooded monks stand apart, conversing. The scene is slum- berous, poetic, and suggestive. But it was oftener with the sweet or stern aspects of nature that his fancy held genial commun- ion. He loved to think of still woodland places ; of mossgrown rocks, and the bright green of creeping vines ; of the music of lonely brooks; of thick-clustering, dewy roses ; of the burnished glories of autumn woods ; of the wind among the pine trees, on sombre autumn nights ; of lonely beaches, whereon forever echoes the ancient, solemn dirge of the sorrowing, desolate ocean, mind- ful not alone of its mysterious grief, but of missing ships, and vanished forms, and "wrecks far out at sea." His poems mani- fest those moods of his fancy, and those TRIBUTES. l8l moods also tinged his sketches and gave them character. But he did not succeed as a painter of faces and figures, and so he abandoned the brush. His early studies of painting were not wasted. Loving the art, and knowing its technicalities, he sub- sequently became an expert commentator upon pictures. His remarks on paintings are animated by sympathy with high ideals, cordial appreciation of merit, and contempt for mere prettiness. He was competent to the performance of the duty of a reviewer, and he faithfully served the art in which he had once hoped to win distinction. The transition from the brush to the pen, not uncommon, was with him inevitable. Though his temperament was dream-like, his will never became the slave of dreams. He laid down the brush with a sigh, but he laid it down, and thereafter, to the end, he worked with the pen, bearing the sorrows, surmounting the obstacles, and enjoying some of the pleasures of the noble profes- sion of letters. His literary career lasted about twelve years. In that time he wrote, with fluency and versatility, stories, sketches, essays, poems, comic and satirical verses, reviews of books and of pictures, editorial articles, jokes, and paragraphs, everything 1 82 TRIBUTES. for which there was a demand in the literary magazines and in journalism. The quantity of writing that he produced is surprisingly large. Much of it is ephemeral. He was obliged to combine journalism with litera- ture, and in journalism, sufficient unto the day is the article thereof. But while he wrote much for the moment he wrote things that will endure. The original mind, the kind heart, and the impulse of genius often gave accidental value to even his lightest compositions. The reader of his McArone Papers, begun in Vanity Fair, November 24, 1860, and continued, in that and other journals, with slight intermissions, until October 14, 1865, will especially appreciate this truth. Those papers, in which the Chevalier McArone records his exploits and reflections (excepting those written toward the close of the author's life, which are deeply pathetic) aim to excite mirth by their preposterous absurdity ; yet beneath their sunny vein of nonsense runs a current of thought and sentiment, revealing the con- victions and ardent sympathy of a strong nature. Similar indications appear in his stories. The poems, of which a volume made and arranged by me contains a selection, published in 1866, show their author more TRIBUTES. 183 distinctly. Subtle knowledge of the heart, quick sympathy with ideals of purity, inno- cence, and beauty, deep love for nature, combined with knowledge of the subject, fine appreciation of the holiest emotions, acquaintance with grief, tender humanity underlying a keen intellect, playful humour closely blended with pathos, religious senti- ment, a manly spirit, proud, aspiring, and ca- pable of endurance and resignation, — these qualities of mind and character are mani- fested in the poems, which, moreover, are, with scarcely an exception, finished with severe taste. They do not attempt high, imaginative flights. They sprang from the writer's heart, and they were uttered natu- rally, in simple music. Arnold wrote for bread, and he sold his writings to whoever would buy them, and it was noticeable, especially in his later years, that he had no care for literary rep- utation. He was industrious, in order that he might be independent. He lived simply, because he could not afford to live otherwise. He was not deficient in luxu- rious and eccentric tastes, or in the careless liberality of jovial good-fellowship ; yet he accomplished much work, and he did it faithfully and well. In this respect, and 1 84 TRIBUTES. in all respects, his private life was governed by strict integrity. He had a wide knowl- edge of the world, and he wisely chose to hold his place in it by ability, industry, honour, and cheerfulness. The principal motive of his conduct was a desire to be, rather than to seem, — to develop his char- acter, deserve the love of friends, surround himself with cheerfulness, and thus make the best of the comedy of life ; and in that he succeeded. Those who knew him well loved him dearly. They knew that he was genuine, that he scorned imposture, and that his friendship, not idly bestowed, was, when once given, steadfast and true, whether in sunshine or storm. This genu- ine character, revealed through a cheerful temperament, — all the more winning for its latent gravity, — was the source of his peculiar personal influence, and of his ca- pacity to inspire affection. He attracted the good side of every nature. Those who came in contact with him exhibited them- selves to the best advantage. He had no conceit of intellectual superiority, nor did he flaunt a quill in the face of society. His manners had repose, and something of the autumnal ripeness and beauty which he so much loved, and of which he has written TRIBUTES. 185 so well. Even his affectations were not un- pleasant. He liked to represent himself as an utterly selfish and heartless man, and to attribute selfish motives to everybody, and he liked to suggest the ludicrous side of serious subjects, and to chill the ardour of sentiment with a cold spray of cynicism. But he wore the mask of the cynic with an ill grace, and toward the last he laid it aside. Gentle, simple, and affectionate, such he appeared to me, in those last days, and such I believe him to have been. It is pleasant to remember that the clos- ing days of his life were passed. in the society of dear friends, and that he entered into his rest amid scenes that were hallowed to him by tender associations of a happy and hopeful youth. His custom, for several years, had been to spend a part of the sum- mer and autumn at Strawberry Farms. To that place he went, in August, 1865, having been ill for some time. His face, though it wore a weary look, gave no sign of ap- proaching death ; yet his thoughts had dwelt often upon that solemn theme, and I think he knew that the end was near. In spite of sickness and pain, his habitual mood remained calm and cheerful. He wrote for the Press, till within four weeks 1 86 TRIBUTES. of his death. The last prose article that he wrote was the last of the McArone Papers, humorously yet sadly expressive of a wish to be an Old Lady. The last poem that he sent for publication was one called The Matron Year. At the last, he amused himself by writing songs, — care- less lyrics, not intended for print. He had a happy facility for composing melodies to match his words, and he used often to sing his songs. They were simple and sweet, and he sang them sweetly. Many a day, in that golden autumn which was his last on earth, he sat alone in the parlour of the old house at Strawberry Farms, playing the piano and singing softly to himself. I picture him thus, as the end drew nigh, — his handsome face calm with the repose of resignation, his gentle, blue eyes full of kind, sad light, his voice, soft, tremulous, and low, breathing out his glad hymn of faith in the protecting love of the Divine Father : — "To-day a song is on my lips; Earth seems a paradise to me, — For God is good, and lo! my ships Are coming home from sea." TRIBUTES. 187 They Lave come home now, — all the high hopes, all the ventures of aspiration, that his soul sent forth, in the holy season of innocent youth. His dreams of happiness are all realized ; his life, that was broken on earth, is fulfilled in heaven. II. In the foregoing sketch of George Arnold, prefixed to his hook called Drift, I have re- corded the events of his life and described his character. In that volume are poems which show the nobleness, simplicity, sen- timent, winning quaintness, and half-cheer- ful, half-sad repose, that were blended in him, and that endeared him to his friends. His genius was manifested in various as- pects by other works. The second volume of his writings, published in 1867, and after- wards combined with the first, comprises a number of his poems found after the com- pilation of Drift, together with some of his humorous and satirical verse. There remain his humorous prose writings, his tales and sketches, and those pieces of his comic verse for which he made drawings, and which would lose their significance if printed apart from the illustrations. Upon l88 TRIBUTES. these volumes rests George Arnold's title to an honourable place among the poets of America. To view the poems with the eyes of affec- tion is, perhaps, to see in them a higher value than they possess, but, anticipating the verdict of the impartial future, I believe that Arnold will be recognised as a poet, — as one who knew, worshipped, and could interpret the beautiful; who understood, by poetic intuition, the heart of man and the sanctity of nature ; who felt the deep tragedy of human life, and heard the voice of God in rustling leaf, and rippling brook, and murmuring surges of the sea ; who sympathised with the aspirations of hu- manity, desiring that happiness might pre- vail as the fruit of justice ; who uttered, in admirable forms of art, the truth which he saw and felt, and the ideal for which he longed ; and who preserved, through all the vicissitudes of life, a simple mind, a true heart, and perfect faith in goodness and beauty. That is the testimony of his poems. They do not strikingly evince the greatest of poetic faculties, imagination. They do not evince a controlling intellectual pur- pose. But they denote a character fraught with rare and lovable attributes, a fine intel- TRIBUTES. I»9 lect touched with genius, and the poetic faculty guided by a true instinct of art. It is futile to conjecture what a man would have been, and what he would have done, under other circumstances than those which actually surrounded him . Yet I can- not but think, — remembering how much greater Arnold was than the writings that he left, — that under happier conditions he would have enriched the literature of his country with riper and better works. The reader will perceive in his poetry the ele- ments of fever and recklessness. He lived, ripened, and died within the brief period of thirty-one years. His lot was cast in a civ- ilisation, the enormous physical activity of which prevents repose and is an enemy to art. Moreover, the best years of his life, which were the latest, were the wild years of civil war, when poetic meditation was im- possible. His experience, it must be added, had deeply saddened him. He began life with exultant enthusiasm. He believed in everything, — in love, hope, ambition, pleas- ure, the rewards of success, and the prom- ises of fame. Love came to him, and sorrow followed in its train and a common grief broadened into a tragedy. At first he plunged into pleasure. Then came a mood I90 TRIBUTES. of apathy, in which he tired of everything. His lines entitled An Autobiography sug- gest this mood. Among the last words that he wrote are these, from the manuscript of his last McArone letter: "To sit in the chimney-corner and smoke a pipe, looking tranquilly backward upon all the troubles, trials, and tribulations, the losses, the dis- appointments, the doubtings and fearings, that make up the bitterness of life, — to look back upon these as things of the past, matters of history, already uninteresting to the present generation, is a boon I do mightily desire." In the gloom of these words his mood is displayed, a mood that could not, and did not, favour sustained ef- fort in literary art ; yet he wrote continu- ally, despite this apathy, and he never lost the poet's devotion to nature, nor the gen- tleman's sensibility, nor the thinker's ca- pacity to cope with the affairs of life. His sadness was for himself ; his cheerfulness for others. Those who met George Arnold saw a handsome, merry creature, whose blue eyes sparkled with mirth, whose voice was cheerful, whose manners were buoyant and winning, whose courtesy was free and gay. He had a smile and a kind word for everybody. He saw the best side of all per- TRIBUTES. 191 sons. His large humanity was quick to find excuses for the errors and the faults of others. He could throw himself with hearty zest into the pleasures of the passing hour, and thus, wherever he went, he attracted friends. Among men of letters his presence was sunshine. He mingled with many classes of persons, and he was a favourite with all. Upon the minds of conventional people, indeed, he left an erroneous impres- sion, for he was impatient of the common- place, and he was proficient in the art of playful banter. But his nature was good, and the current of his life sparkled with graces as it flowed onward from light to darkness. Many pictures of him rise, as I think of pleasant hours passed in his society, in years that are gone, — of long rambles by day, and sad or merry talk by night, in pleasant lodg- ings where we dwelt together. His affec- tionate sympathy, his quaint cynicism, his wit, and his humorous philosophy were, at such times, inexpressibly winning. He had read many books, but he had studied man and nature with deeper interest, and his conversation was vital and various with the fruits of observation rather than reading. But no personal reminiscence, no tender, I92 TRIBUTES. regretful word, can reanimate his silent face or rekindle his " spell o'er hearts." In the love of his friends he can live for only them. For others he must live in his writings, if at all. " Thy leaf has perished in the green: And, while we breathe beneath the sun, The world, which credits what is done, Is cold to all that might have been." He was a writer from the first. While a hoy he amused himself toy making little newspapers and printing them with his pen. Several years later he began to keep a ver- sified Diary, in that Italian stanza which probably Byron's Beppo, in imitation of Whistlecraft, had commended to his fancy. That Diary he kept for a long time, so that it filled a large volume, but ultimately, and no doubt wisely, he destroyed it. In letters to his friends, also, which he ornamented with illustrative drawings, his literary fac- ulty was exercised. About the year 1853 he drifted from painting to literature. There were fewer periodicals published in New York then than there are now, and fewer opportunities were afforded to writers, yet he was soon actively employed as the sub-editor of a story paper and as long TRIBUTES. 193 as he remained in that office he was effi- cient and successful ; but his taste soon impelled him to decline editorial cares, and from that time he seldom undertook labours that could fetter his personal freedom. He could work in an orderly manner and with incessant industry, but he preferred to work whenever and wherever impulse directed him. In that way he became a contributor to many publications. His writings, col- lected by me, have been drawn from twenty- seven periodicals. He preserved printed copies of some of them, but in general he was careless of their fate. The collection of his stories, still unpublished, numbers one hundred and ninety-four, and it is incomplete. To assemble all his essays, sketches, reviews, and paragraphs would be impossible, they are so numerous and so widely scattered. Many a bright article that has anonymously gone the rounds of the press, pleasing hundreds of readers, came from his pen, — carelessly sold, to supply the need of the moment, and then forgotten. In the prominent magazines of America he is represented by only a few poems and stories. He was not fastidious as to the sale of Lis writings ; the nearest purchaser satisfied him. He sometimes 194 TRIBUTES. gave poems to editors who were his personal friends. He was not a voluminous writer of serious verse, but his comic verses are numerous. At an early period he began to write for the comic papers, and he continued to work in that vein to the last. Vanity Fair, which was started in New York in the autumn of 1859, by Mr. W. A. Stephens, gave him constant employment. That paper was discontinued in the summer of 1863, and later its record of contributors and con- tributions was in part destroyed, so that a complete list of the articles that Arnold wrote for it cannot be obtained ; but it is certain that he contributed several hundred articles, in prose and verse, many of which he illustrated with pen-and-ink sketches. For Mrs. Grundy, started, in New York, by Dr. Alfred L. Carroll, in July, 1865, and discontinued after the publication of twelve numbers, he wrote twenty-nine articles, and made many drawings. His best known efforts in comic writing were his McArone Papers, which include a comic novel, in ten chapters. He used the pen-names of " Gra- hame Allen," "George Garrulous," "Pier- rot," and " The Undersigned." The humorous and satirical poems of Arnold that have been collected are mainly TRIBUTES. I95 those which possess a general rather than a local interest. He wrote many clever verses in satire of passing events, but since the events have been forgotten the verses would appear to be pointless. The collection of his serious poems includes several which I was not able to obtain, prior to the publica- tion of Drift, and also several which, at first, I hesitated to print. It is easy to pub- lish ; it is hard to recall. My design was that a genius prematurely blighted should express itself in careless suggestion as well as in rounded and finished works of art. The fact that Arnold died young seemed to justify the preservation of some pieces which might properly have been rejected had his powers attained their full maturity. The fruits of a poetic mind that is early extin- guished by death are entitled to considera- tion not only as works of art but as relics. I96 TRIBUTES. Fitz- James O'Brien. 1881. The facts of a man's life that can be recorded when he is gone, as a rule, hut poorly convey an adequate idea of what his life really was. This imperfect biog- raphy is, nevertheless, as nearly complete as careful research can make it. The more important part of the life of its subject was his intellectual experience. The history of his mind must be sought in his works. Fitz-James O'Brien was bOrn in Limer- ick County, Ireland, about the year 1828. His father was an attorney. His mother is said to have been a lady of remarkable beauty. He was educated at Dublin Uni- versity, but he was not trained to any profession, and it is remembered that he claimed to have been, in youth, a soldier in the British service. He early evinced a faculty for writing verses, and among his first compositions are two poems en- titled Loch hie and Irish Castles, which TRIBUTES. 197 appear, without an author's name, in The Ballads of Ireland, collected and edited by Edward Hayes, 1856. On leaving college he went to London, where, in about two years, he spent a considerable inheritance. In 1851, according to a dubious report, he edited, in London, a periodical devoted to the World's Fair. Late in that year, or early in 1852, he resolved to seek his fort- une in America. One of his friends, Dr. Collins, brother to the Roman Catholic bishop of Cloyne, obtained for him letters of introduction from Dr. R. Shelton Mac- kenzie, then editor of a newspaper in Liv- erpool and correspondent for the New York Evening Star, addressed to Major Noah, General George P. Morris, and other prom- inent citizens of New York. On his arri- val the adventurous young writer made an auspicious entrance into New York society, and it was not long before his brilliant abilities were recognised* and he became a favourite. In that way began his Ameri- can career, which was destined to be sig- nalised by some of the most original poems and stories in the literature of his time, to flow through painful vicissitudes and much trouble, and to end in a soldier's grave. O'Brien's literary life was not more I98 TRIBUTES. eventful than such lives usually are, — ex- cept that it was, perhaps, more irregular and more surprisingly productive. His earliest writings were published by the comedian John Brougham, in a paper called the Lantern. " When I first knew him," said his old comrade, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, " he was trimming the wick of the Lantern, which went out shortly after- ward." In that paper appeared his touch- ing poem, An Old Story, The Ballad of Sir Brown, The Gory Gnome, and The Wonder- ful Adventures of Mr. Papplewick. At one of Brougham's dinners, in Windust's res- taurant, near the old Park theatre, — feasts at which the writers and artists of his Lan- tern were periodically convened, and at which everything except their paper was discussed, — O'Brien made the acquaint- ance of the artist and author, Frank H. Bellew, who became one of his intimate friends. The New York residences, in those days, were much further south in the city than they are now, and O'Brien and Bellew at one time lodged together in Leonard street, and subsequently in Broad- way, opposite to the Metropolitan Hotel, and on the site of the building afterward locally famous as Stanwix Hall. That was TRIBUTES. I99 the season of the light heart and the foam- ing flagon, when the chimes are heard at midnight, and the bloom is on the rye. O'Brien's associations then were with the circles that eddied aronnd N. P. Willis and G. P. Morris, and at that time he wrote sketches and verses for their Home Jour- nal. His poem, which I have named The Demon of the Gibbet, first appeared in that paper under the inexpressive title of What Befell. He contributed, also, in a fitful way, to the Evening Post and to the New York Times, and he wrote for the Ameri- can Wliig Beview his Fragments from an Unpublished Magazine. He was a literary soldier of fortune, and, with expensive tastes and habits of extravagance, he found Grub street a weary road. The most important literary association that O'Brien ever formed was that which made him a regular contributor to Har- per's Magazine. His first paper in that periodical appeared in February, 1853, is called The Two Skulls, and is scientific and philosophical. He contributed to fifty- two numbers, and there are sixty-six of his productions in that magazine. His pen ap- pears to have been especially prolific during 1855, 1856, and 1857. His last paper in 200 TRIBUTES. Harper, a story entitled How I overcame my Gravity, was not published till May, 1864, more than two years after he was dead. He never saw in print, either, for they also were posthumous publications, his story of Tommatoo and his poem of Down in the Glen at Idlewild. He wrote copiously for Harper's Weekly, as well as for the Magazine. His Ode on Kane was first printed in that journal, and there like- wise first appeared his fanciful, picturesque poem of The Zouaves, — a work which con- spicuously illustrates his remarkable faculty for giving an imaginative application to a topic of the passing hour. He wrote stories for Harper's Weekly, and he wrote a series of familiar letters called The Man about Town, which, even now, can be read with pleasure, for the liveliness of their spirit and the grace of their style. All this while he was writing, as capricious fancy prompted, or as the spur of necessity com- pelled, in other quarters. The veteran actor James W. Wallack was one of his best friends, and for Wallack's theatre he wrote several bright pieces, spirited, im- petuous, and polished, which were acted well, and which found a ready acceptance. One of them, A Gentleman from Ireland, TRIBUTES. 201 still keeps the stage, and is still found ser- viceable to the dashing light comedian. For Laura Keene's theatre, at the sug- gestion of Mr. Jefferson, then its stage manager and principal actor, he adapted one of Brough's burlesques, and that piece, under the title of The Tycoon, was pro- duced during the visit of the first Japan- ese . embassy to America in 1859-1860. O'Brien possessed dramatic instinct, and in his London days he had obtained a good knowledge of the stage, and although he pushed the theory of "natural" acting too far, as may be seen in his tale of Mother of Pearl, he could write with judgment and taste on the acted drama. He did so, in the autumn of 1858, in the New York Saturday Press : one of his dramatic ar- ticles in particular — a disquisition on Ham- let, with Barry Sullivan as the Dane — is remarkable for intelligence, acute analysis, and good description. To Putnam's Mag- azine — that noble monument to the taste of George William Curtis — he was a contrib- utor, for several years. He was a diligent writer for Vanity Fair, and in the spark- ling columns of that paper were printed his grisly fancy of The Wharf Bat, his so- norous Song of the Locomotive, and his idyl 202 TRIBUTES. of Strawberries. Two of his most remark- able stories, The Diamond Lens and The Wondersmith, were published in the Atlan- tic Monthly, in January, 1858, and Octo- ber, 1859, and of those tales it may be said that they set up a model of excellence which has made magazine literature better than it had been, in America, before they were printed. O'Brien much admired the strange, wild, passionate genius of Matilda Heron, and he once travelled as a literary aid with H. L. Bateman, that genial Boanerges of mana- gers, on a professional tour with that actress. Miss Heron was acting in Camille, and in a drama, by Mrs. Bateman, entitled Geraldine. O'Brien visited Boston, and remained for some time in that city, and he astonished some of its decorous literary circles by his irreverence for literary mag- nates whom it was then customary to wor- ship. It was then that I first met him and first observed the stalwart mind and formidable frankness for which he was remarkable. He was considerably changed from what he had been when he came to America. Mental toil and bodily privation, the hardships of a gypsy life, the reaction- ary sense of being in false positions and of TRIBUTES. 203 being misunderstood, — which may embit- ter amiability and turn it to proud defi- ance, — had done their work upon him, and made him, in some of his moods, as lawless, arrogant, and truculent, as, in others, he was gentle, affectionate, and almost forlorn. In his face and manner there was the splendid freedom of the wild woods, yet at times there came into his eyes an indescribable light of danger- ous, half -slumbering wrath, — as of a soul that was a hunted vagabond, standing sentinel over its own desolation. I was attracted toward him, and we became com- rades, and so remained to the end. I have heard that when he first established his home in New York he dwelt in comfort- able quarters, surrounded with luxury ; that his raiment was superb ; his library excellent ; his furniture tasteful ; and that, like De Mauprat in the play, he was "splendid in banquets." His appearance in those days, before his nose had been broken, June, 1858, by the blow of a pugi- list, was unusually attractive. He had a fair complexion and waving brown hair; his eyes were gray-blue, large, brilliant, and expressive ; his smile was honest ; his countenance was frank and winning ; he 204 TRIBUTES. was of the middle stature, of an athletic build, and he moved with negligent grace. His voice was rich, loud, and clear, and he had a bluff, breezy manner of speech, tend- ing to a joyous turbulence. In a general way he retained those characteristics, but at the time of our companionship he had emerged from his condition of prosperity, and his fortunes were low. He had noth- ing, he was at variance with many old acquaintances, his face had suffered dis- figurement, he lived nowhere, and he was well acquainted with hard times. I found him, in those gypsy days, a most interest- ing associate. His animal spirits were prodigious. His literary invention was sprightly, vigorous, and almost incessant. His enjoyment of the passing hour was so keen that it gave a zest to the enjoyment of all around him. No matter how hard poverty might pinch, or how dark the clouds might lower over the future, the laugh of O'Brien blew care away from the cup of life, as the foam is blown from the white-caps of the sea. O'Brien's habits of literary composition were erratic. A man less buoyant than he would have been dismayed by the hard- ships with which he was encompassed. TRIBUTES. 205 But whether in calm or tempest he was always seeing, always thinking, always at work. He liked best to drift in the sun- shine and to he merry with genial com- panions, but he could nerve himself to effort, when occasion demanded it, and he could perform heavy tasks with amazing celerity. Times of indolence and times of exertion checkered his life, along the whole of its course. He was not naturally fluent, because he thought deeply, and wrote logi- cally, and was fastidious in taste, but his creative literary faculty was strong and his feeling was earnest. He possessed re- sources of literary art, his mind was replete with the reading it had absorbed in hours of apparent idleness, and he worked with purpose and zeal. He could accomplish a formidable task in a surprisingly short time, presenting his work rounded and fin- ished, as if with the scrupulous labour of many days. His poem of A Fallen Star was written in my lodging, between mid- night and morning ; he left the original draft upon the table, having made a clean copy of it for the press, and that manu- script strikingly indicates the care with which he wrote. His poem of The Sewing Bird was written in my lodging, in the 206 TRIBUTES. course of two nights, and I have kept the pen with which it was written, as a relic of a remarkably expeditious effort. I never saw him so deeply depressed as he was then, for he was destitute and hungry ; and whenever that was his case he would not share with a comrade, and even when food was left in his way he would not take it. He sold The Sewing Bird for one hun- dred dollars, and a few hours later he was as merry as a brook in springtime. One of his favourite haunts was the old Hone house, in Broadway, at the southeast cor- ner of Great Jones street [long since de- molished], and there, under similar cir- cumstances, in one evening, he wrote the fine poem of The Lost Steamship. His story of What Was It f was written in the lodging of T. B. Aldrich, in Clinton place. These details are trivial, but they help to give a picture of his character and life. The burden laid upon a poet is, that he must feel and express the elemental pas- sions of humanity, yet never lapse from the perfect poise of a sane and decorous life ; and, being only a man, he usually falls short of his duty. Yet he still strives upward ; still obeys his fate ; still tries to utter the voice of the universal heart : and TRIBUTES. 207 still, amid the flying echoes of his celestial music, he sometimes strays into sin and sorrow, faints and falters by the way, and drops into a lamentable grave. O'Brien was not more successful than some others of his kind. He was far from being per- fect. He was not deficient in moral sense. On the contrary, his perception of right and wrong was uncommonly keen ; but he was deficient in moral courage and stability of principle. The original nobility of his moral nature had been marred, though not spoiled, by conviviality and chronic reck- lessness. His conduct was not intention- ally wrong, but it was sometimes marked by heedless irregularity as to the ordinary duties of life, — a defect which, to some persons, is almost as culpable as bad inten- tion. He knew this, and his knowledge of it enraged him against himself. He was at times haughty and combative, partly because he was an Irishman, and partly because of his resentful conviction that he deserved, — by virtue of his powers, his achievements, and the possibilities of his mind and future, — a higher position in letters than had been accorded to him. But, so far as I could learn, his faults and errors did serious injury to no one but himself, 208 TRIBUTES. while for the creation of literature he was a magnificent instrument. There was such a breezy audacity in his genius that, think- ing of him after all these years, I feel a thrill of careless joy, as if youth were come back. He was like a giant oak, responsive to the midnight gale and exultant in its rage. He was like the ocean swept by the tempest, that answers with clarion tumult and savage delight. He never paltered with life, nor fawned on the many self-consti- tuted potentates with whom the avenues of society are largely occupied. He did not approach literature with timid deprecation, but he fronted the ordeal royally, and he proved equal to it. He spoke his thought, and he neither valued life nor feared death. Thus constituted, — sensitive to the grand influence of nature and the tender touch of art, — the mystic spirit that is in creation could play upon him at will, and sound what stops it pleased. Time would have improved that organ of the Muse ; would have broadened and mellowed its tones, and made it vocal with more heavenly emo- tion. The noble instrument was too soon broken ; the life that promised so much was too soon palled in the darkness of the grave. Nevertheless, in what was uttered, TRIBUTES. 209 there lives a buoyant power and a soul of beauty. Garnered in O'Brien's pages there are rich creations of imagination, splendid or sombre pictures, original conceptions of character, rare bits of description, fine strokes of analysis, paeans of joy, and wails of grief. Those pages are the elo- quent manifestation of a rich mind, broad in scope, adequate in strength, gentle and human in influence. Such works are the best interpreters of their beneficence. There is no limit to the good that literature accomplishes when, through the ministration of beauty, it helps to free our souls from the hard conditions — strug- gle, loss, and suffering — under which life is given to the human race. Shelton Mackenzie, now dead, in a gra- cious letter responsive to inquiries of mine, referred to O'Brien's death in these words: "To die on the field of honour, under the flag of his adopted country, was just the doom his gallant spirit would have craved." It was the doom reserved for him, and he met it well. He was a lover of liberty, and a stanch advocate of union in the Ameri- can Republic. When the Civil War began, in 1861, he joined the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard of New York, in the 2IO TRIBUTES. hope of being sent to the front, and he was in camp with that regiment, at Washington, for six weeks, ' ' A brilliant, dashing fel- low," wrote Colonel Emmons Clark ; " very- brave, and a universal favourite. He never, in any way, did anything to hurt the good name of the regiment. He held the rank of Captain, and is so entered on our regi- mental roll of honour. ' ' When the Seventh came home he left it, and for a time he was engaged in gathering recruits for a volun- teer regiment, to be called the McClellan Rifles. He subsequently received an ap- pointment on the staff of General Lander, 1 1 There is but a meagre, imperfect record at the War Department in Washington, a strictly official one and correct as far as it goes, of O'Brien's military career. Thomas Bailey Aldrich and O'Brien applied, at nearly the same time, for a place on General Lander's staff. The application of Aldrich, an old friend of General Lander, was a little before that of O'Brien. General Lander sent a telegram to Aldrich, at Ports-' month, New Hampshire, offering to him a staff ap- pointment, with the rank of lieutenant. In the mean- time Aldrich had left Portsmouth, and the telegram remained there, unopened and unknown to him. Gen- eral Lander, receiving no answer from Aldrich, gave the post to O'Brien, who shortly afterward was killed. Old Henry Clapp used to say that "Aldrich was shot in O'Brien's shoulder." That O'Brien received the appointment is certain, but, being already in the field, he was not formally TRIBUTES. 211 and at once went to the scene of conflict in Virginia. His period of active military service was brief, but he distinguished him- mustered in, and he was killed before his commission had been signed : hence the meagre official record at the War Department. Writing from Camp Kelly, Virginia, January 21, 1862, to his friend, Mr. Thomas E. Davis, O'Brien said : " I am in harness, and am staff officer of parade, and am already entrusted with the rather arduous but important duty of posting the pickets all through this devil of a wilderness. Address to me always as A.D.C., General Lander's Brigade." " My impression is " — so General McClellan wrote to me — "that Mr. O'Brien served with Lander as a volunteer aid." In the absence of a regular commission that would have been his rank. He gave his life without price. In the New American Cyclopcedia, volume for 1862, page 543, occurs this reference to an exploit at Bloomery Gap in which O'Brien participated : " In this brilliant dash the Confederate commander and his staff surrendered to General Lander, who, with a sin- gle Aid, had outridden the rest of the force, and, com- ing upon them at full gallop, demanded their swords." The " single Aid " was O'Brien. The body of O'Brien was, at first, placed in the receiving tomb at Greenwood, but on November 27, 1874, it was removed and buried in the earth. His grave is number 1183, in lot 17,263, in that cemetery. At the funeral of O'Brien, Frank Wood. T. B. Aldrich, Edward F. Mullen, the quaint artist of Vanity Fair, and the writer of this sketch rode in a coach together, and Wood carried O'Brien's sword. Mullen and "Wood have since died. • 212 - TRIBUTES. self by energy and valour. On February 26, 1862, in a skirmish with the Confeder- ate Colonel Ashley's cavalry, he was shot, and severely wounded, and he lingered till April 6, dying on that day, at Cumberland, Virginia. The last time I saw O'Brien in life he was going to the front. The next time I saw him he was in his coffin. The silver cord had been loosed, and the stormy heart of the poet-soldier was at rest. 'Even in death his countenance wore its old expres- sion of defiant endurance. His funeral occurred in the armoury of the Seventh Kegiment. The silver-haired Wallack, lean- ing on his son Lester's arm, his pale, hand- some face wet with tears, stood beside the coffin, and round them were clustered many of O'Brien's comrades, now likewise dead and gone. With muffled drums and mar- tial dirges we bore him to Greenwood, and there a guard of honour fired a volley over his tomb, and, with a few flowers from the loving hand of Matilda Heron, we left him forever. There his ashes still rest, and there, in time to come, the pilgrim — if such there be — to the shrine of genius and valour, will place the chaplet of remem- brance on his grave. TRIBUTES. 213 Charles Dawson Shanly. Charles Dawson Shanly, who died at Jacksonville, Florida, April 15, 1875, was known as a companionable, humorous, and quaint writer, but his excellence in letters fades from memory, in comparison with his worth as a man. Nobility of character, in- tegrity of conduct, fidelity to duty, cheerful submission to fate, sweetness of tempera- ment, and modesty of bearing are rarer virtues than intellectual brilliancy, and they were all combined in him. He lived in New York, working with his pen, for about eighteen years, and to all with whom he came into contact he was conspicuous as a type of the ideal gentleman. His life was lonely. His mind seemed to have been early saddened, though not embittered. He was a kind, thoughtful man, who worked hard, accomplished much, did all the good that he could find to do, and never spoke about himself or his labours. His fortunes were precarious ; he was acquainted with hardship ; but, whether in shadow or sun- 214 TRIBUTES. shine, his mind remained equable and pa- tient, and his industry and probity were undisturbed. There were not many persons who saw and appreciated his example. The more showy and pretentious author captures the crowd. But those who did understand that example found comfort and strength in it, and they remember it with love. Shanly wrote essays and descriptive articles, in the Atlantic Monthly, many poems and ballads, — some of which are imaginative and pathetic, while some are satirical or humorous, — and many miscel- laneous articles in newspapers. He was, in 1860, one of the chief contributors to Vanity Fair, and he subsequently became its editor. He was also the editor of Mrs. Grundy, and he was a contributor to The New York Leader, for which, as afterward for The New York Weekly Beview, and, during a short time, for The New York Albion, he wrote reviews of pictures. He was fond of painting, and he was an expert draughtsman, especially in the line of comic sketches. One of his characteristic draw- ings, published long ago in Punch, repre- sents, with comic effect, the discomfiture, of a stout old Englishman, who, at a private museum, has mistaken a horned owl for TRIBUTES. 215 a stuffed cat, and has got his "bald head scratched by the angry bird. He excelled as a writer of poems of dramatic incident or of representative mood. The Brier- Wood Pipe, which met with much favour during the Civil War, was written by him, and so was the weird ballad of TJie Walker of the Snow. Another unique piece was his start- ling poem, — which is picture and poem in one, — Rifleman, shoot me a fancy shot — first published in London, in Once a Week. Shanly did not accomplish enough in the poetic vein to win for himself a high and permanent rank, but his name is entitled to a place in every representative collection of American poetry. He was not indeed an American by birth, but America was the land of his choice and his labours, and in America he would have wished to be re- membered. He was an Irish gentleman, of old and honourable family. He was born in Dublin, in 1811, and he was educated at Trinity College, in that city. He lived in England, and also in Canada, before mak- ing his home in New York. He was of a hardy constitution, having blue eyes, iron-gray hair, a weather-beaten face, and a slender, wiry figure. He was well ac- quainted with animals and field sports, 2l6 TRIBUTES. and he vas an expert walker. During the last two years of his life he seemed to waste slowly away, but his illness, like all else that was painful and sad in his life, he kept to himself. He knew that he was going to his death, and he had prepared himself, with humbleness and submission, for the inexorable change. There is no busy worker in the arts that may not be benefited by reflection upon a character so pure and simple, a life so useful and blame- less, and an end so full of peace. TRIBUTES. 217 Bufus Choate. No man made a deeper impression upon the best intellect of his time than was made by Eufus Choate. Nearly fifty years have passed since he died, and but few of his contemporaries survive ; yet the tradition of his original character, his poetic genius, his unique personality, and his wonderful elo- quence has never faded. The court-room was his chief arena, and many of his great feats of oratory — which, at times, were brilliant beyond description — were there performed. His life was mainly devoted to the law ; but he frequently spoke on literary subjects, and he delivered speeches in Con- gress, and orations on many memorable pub- lic occasions. One of the most splendid ex- amples of eloquence that have been recorded was his speech in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in 1856, prophetically announcing the approach of the Civil War. He was, in politics, a Whig and a Protectionist, and he was a follower of Daniel Webster, a Unionist, and a conscientious patriot. In oratory he was 2l8 TRIBUTES. the disciple of Cicero and Burke, — "but he had a character and a style entirely his own, not seen in any other man, before or since. As a jurist he was eminent among the best. As a scholar, in the ancient languages and in literature, he had few equals. In religion he was a Presbyterian. His temperament was sweet, gentle, and charming. He dif- fused happiness in private life, and in his public career he was a noble example. The good intellectual habit of judging intellectual men abstractly without regard to their identification with popular move- ments and commonly accepted ideas, has been steadily winning its way ; but it was not widely predominant years ago. During the latter part of Choate's life, and at the time of his death, detraction — always busy with shining names — was audible in his disfavour. One of the bitterest attacks ever made upon genius and virtue was made in an article on Choate, written by the Kev. Moncure D. Conway, in a magazine called The Dial, in 1860. The same intolerance which, in earlier times, had mobbed William Lloyd Garrison in Boston, —the pendulum of public feeling having, meanwhile, swung to the other extreme, — was eager to vent itself upon all conservatives and friends of TRIBUTES. 219 compromise. Choate, who believed that the slavery question, and all other questions, could be settled without a war, and who wished to preserve the Union without the shedding of blood, had, in a letter to the Whigs of Maine, referred to " the sounding and glittering generalities of the Declaration of Independence," and he had voted for Buchanan as President. That was sufficient. To talk of the Constitution was to outrage " the higher law " and to loosen the stoppers in all the vials of partisan wrath. Webster, dying in 1852, had passed away in retire- ment and in considerable disfavour. Choate, Everett, Winthrop, Fillmore, Cushing, and other men of a like political persuasion, whether Democrat or Whig, who set them- selves against the current of opinion, shared in the popular obloquy. Against Choate the censure of the time directed itself toward three points. He was declared to be the advocate of slavery; he was denounced as a lawyer who, by specious beguilement of juries, had made it safe to murder, and who was therefore an enemy to civilised society; and, since it could not be denied that he was brilliant, detraction freely affirmed that he was shallow. C n each point his censors were wrong. He did not believe in slavery, 220 TRIBUTES. but lie believed that the disease could be extirpated without war, and he thought that if the sword were once drawn the Republic would perish. As a lawyer he always did the utmost that he could do, for his client, — which is admittedly a lawyer's duty; but nobody now says that he ever went beyond the line of rectitude and honour. An advo- cate, even when he knows that his client is guilty, when once entered on the case, must continue to defend him. That rule was sanctioned by the court, in the famous case of Phillips and Courvousier. The partial acquittal that Choate obtained in the case of Tirrell was obtained not by eloquence or ingenuity, but by evidence, and by a plausible theory, urged with the sincerity of profound conviction. The advocate did not know, and did not believe, that his client was a wilful murderer. At a later time, in the case of Professor Webster, believing him to be guilty, he refused to undertake the defence. As to his learning, — the man whose legal lore and splendid command of positive knowledge had the admiration of such lawyers as Webster, Shaw, Washburn, Parsons, Lunt, Goodrich, and Bartlett, and whose classical scholarship delighted Edward Everett, can never have needed TRIBUTES. 221 defence. Eeaders who remember Clioate and his times may smile to think of fighting the old battles over again, and once more slaying the slain. " Time is like the peacefulness of grass." Those old heroes are all beneath the sod. The nation has passed through her peril and agony, and is pressing onward. It is easy to be wise after the event. The observer can see now wherein men like Webster and Choate might have shown a larger wisdom and courage, — accepting, in the passionate impulse of a people, an admonition from the moral government of the world, and being content to act upon it, and leave the rest to Heaven. But the posture of their political opinions has long since ceased to be impor- tant. Their personality is now their value. They were great men, and their shining names are a rich legacy from the past. Posterity will honour them, not for what they at any time deemed expedient in policy, but for what they were, and for the great- ness of human nature that they embodied and avouched. In looking at the career of any man there is a disposition to look at its results ; but so much in human life is tem- porary and evanescent that the observer must, at last, look through the results rather 222 TRIBUTES. than at them, and so derive enlightenment and strength from gazing at the soul itself. The outward and visible results of the life of Rufus Choate were disproportionate to his great powers and equipment and his strenuous, incessant toil. High as he rose, he never found a field that was broad enough for his genius, or an occasion to which he was not superior. To see him employed in a trial was, inevitably, to think of a trip- hammer employed to crack a nut. The law, as Hooker defined it and as Choate pursued it, is a noble profession, but it was not broad enough for him. There seemed to be, in his spirit, the faculties and resources that are, by common consent, ascribed to the great actor or the great poet ; yet he seemed not to heed them, not to value them, not indeed to value anything, — aside from living in the heat and splendour of a volcanic intellectual glow and the ecstasy of an ever- increasing communion with knowledge and beauty. TRIBUTES. 223 Oliver Wendell Holmes. The death of Oliver Wendell Holmes (October 7, 1894), a natural event at his great age, but not the less a sorrowful be- reavement, was the extinction of one of the most remarkable men of this century. Holmes may have been, in the characteris- tics of humour and fastidious taste, a dis- ciple of the wits of the age of Queen Anne, but in the fibre of his intellect, — its calm courage, broad vision, ample equipment, and eager, joyous, sanguine vitality, — he was emphatically a man of the present day. He sympathised, to the fullest extent, with the march of thought, and in every direction of advance he stood in the front line. As a writer he ranged over many fields, and in all of them he manifested not only copious and various mental resources, but two of the greatest qualities that dignify the human mind and help the human race, — lucid per- ception and dauntless cheer. He knew the world as it is, and he was neither dismayed nor saddened. At all times and under all 224 TRIBUTES. circumstances he spoke for the nobility that is in man and the spiritual grandeur to which man is naturally destined, and his voice always rang out, clearly and bravely, the inspiring watchwords of labour and hope. Whether in essay, novel, poem, treatise, history, or speech, his indomitable spirit was always present, and thus, while dispensing the force and beauty of thought, the pleasantness of mirth, and the gentle light of humour, he imparted the benefit that is needed most of all, — the blessing of strength. The reader of Holmes receives a continual impulse toward the steadfast, cheerful performance of duty; a continual incentive to unquestioning faith in the final prevalence of right ; and therefore the world is better and happier because he has lived in it. There will be discussion, as time passes, with reference to the rank of Holmes as a man of letters, but there will be no discus- sion as to the influence that he exercised ; and perhaps no question is of much prac- tical importance that can be raised concern- ing any writer who has helped his generation to bear its burdens and to do its appointed work. The literature that is permanently valuable to the world is that which tran- TRIBUTES. 225 scends personal expression and enters into the general life. Holmes, by his Autocrat alone, reached thousands of minds, — filling them with liberal ideas and kindly views, stimulating their finer propensities, and gently prompting them to look at all things in a tolerant mood, to be merciful as well as just, and to lighten the toils and troubles of this transitory life with mirth and laugh- ter. In that respect he did not leave his place to be determined by controversy, but took it, and held it for himself. He was, most of all, a humorist ; and furthermore, which is exceptional and extraordinary, he was a humorist in a new vein ; for he did not stop at character and manners, but ranged through the whole wide realm of philosophy, and, with deep appreciation as well as lively fancy and genial pleasantry, played about the gravest subjects that can occupy the human mind. Reared in the intellectual period of Emerson, he felt, with that great spirit, that "the solar system is not sensitive to criticism," and having a spontaneous drift toward goodness and beauty, he neither darkened his vision, nor restrained his analytical faculties, nor put a curb upon his exuberant humour. His Auto- crat, therefore, is one of the most natural 226 TRIBUTES. books ever written, — a book that teems with stimulative suggestion, and one that has helped, in a high degree, to emancipate the age from many fetters of bigotry, con- ventionality, and folly. Holmes valued his humorous writings less than he valued his poetry. It was as a poet that he chiefly desired recognition and re- membrance ; for he was aware that all his powers derived their vitality, lucidity, and harmony from the poetic principle that was at the basis of his mind. To how great an extent poetic emotion was controlled in him by his vigilant faculties of sense and humour, and by the circumstances of his conventional environment, it would not be easy to de- termine. That it was so controlled, and that he often felt it to be so, is manifest. No writer has suggested so pathetically the strains, surpassing all earthly music, that die away unheard in the viewless temple of the soul. The crowning excellence of his verse is felicity. He had inspiration, as when he wrote The Chambered Nautilus, Tlie Voiceless, The Iron Gate, Under the Violets, Martha, Nearing the Snow-Line, and that exquisite tribute to the memory of Thomas Moore, which is one of the best poems of occasion that ever were written, if TRIBUTES. 227 not the very best. His inspiration, however, does not seem to have been constitutional. Perhaps he was more a poet by art than by nature. He possessed a prodigious moral fervour, combined with the torrid glow of a brilliant intellect and with great sensibility, and he was a supreme master of style. No man has ever spoken better the word that it was in him to speak. With the extinction of Holmes, almost the last of the literary lights of New England has disappeared. It was a noble group. Dana, Percival, Emerson, Hawthorne, Long- fellow, Whittier, Willis, Lowell, Curtis, and Holmes, — all sons of a Puritan common- wealth, all children of the Muses, all famous, and all at rest ! What a wealth of genius, of aspiration, of beautiful character, and of noble living those names denote ! and what a wonderful variety of faculties and achieve- ments ! In all the luminous circle there was no heart more true and tender than the heart that now is stilled forever ; no spirit so bright as the spirit that now has passed into that awful darkness and silence where only the eyes of love and hope can follow. 228 TRIBUTES. Jefferson. Read at a Stage Festival in Honour of Joseph Jefferson, at the Garden Theatre, Nmo York, November 8, 1895, the reader being Agnes Booth, Mrs. John B. Sckoeffel. 1. The songs that should greet him are songs of the mountain — No sigh of the pine-tree that murmurs and grieves, But the music of streams rushing swift from their fountain, And the soft gale of spring through the sun-spangled leaves. In the depth of the forest it woke from its slumbers — His genius that holds ev'ry heart in its thrall ! Beside the bright torrent he learned his first numbers — The thrush's sweet cadence, the meadow- . lark's call. TRIBUTES. 229 O'er his cradle kind Nature — that Mother enchanted Of Beauty and Art — cast her mantle of grace ; In his eyes lit her passion, and deeply im- planted In his heart her strong love of the whole human race. Like the rainbow that pierces the clouds where they darken, He came, ev'ry sorrow and care to be- guile: He spoke, — and the busy throng halted to hearken ; He smiled, — and the world answered back with a smile. Like the sunburst of April, with mist drift- ing after, When in shy, woodland places the daisy uprears, He blessed ev'ry spirit with innocent laugh- ter, — The more precious because it was mingled with tears. 230 TRIBUTES. 6. Like the rose by the wayside, so simple and tender, His art was, — to win us because he was true : We thought not of greatness, or wisdom, or splendour — We loved him, and that was the whole that we knew ! He would heed the glad voice of the sum- mer leaves shaken By the gay wind of morning that sports through the trees ! Ah, how shall we bid that wild music awaken, And thrill to his heart, with such accents as these ? How utter the honour and love that we bear him, — The High Priest of Nature, the Master confest, — How proudly yet humbly revere, and de- clare him The Prince of his Order, the brightest and best ! TRIBUTES. 23I Ah, vain are all words ! But, as long as life's river Through sunshine and shadow rolls down to the sea ; While the waves dash in music forever and ever ; While clouds drift in glory, and sea-birds are free ; 10. So long shall the light and the bloom and the gladness Of Nature's great heart his ordainment proclaim, And its one tender thought of bereavement and sadness Be the sunset of time over Jefferson's fame. Written at sea, aboard the steamship Xmo York, October 11, 1895. ON THE VEEGE. ON THE VERGE. 235 XVIII. ON THE VERGE. OUT in the dark it throbs and glows — The wide, wild sea, that no man knows ! The wind is chill, the surge is white, And I must sail that sea to-night. You shall not sail I The breakers roar, On many a mile of iron shore, The waves are livid in their wrath, And no man knows the ocean path. I must not bide for wind or wave ; I must not heed, though tempests rave ; My course is set, my hour is known, And I must front the dark, alone. Your eyes are wild, your face is pale, — This is no night for ships to sail ! The hungry wind is moaning low, The storm is up — you shall not go ! 'Tis not the moaning wind you hear — It is a sound more dread and drear, A voice that calls across the tide, A voice that will not be denied. 236 ON THE VERGE. Tour words are faint, your brow is cold, Your looks grow sudden gray and old, The lights burn dim, the casements shake, — Ah, stay a little, for my sake ! Too late ! Too late ! The vow you said This many a year is cold and dead, * And through that darkness, grim and black, I shall but follow on its track. Bem.ember all fair things and good, That e'er were dreamed or understood, For they shall all the Past requite, So you but shun the sea to-night ! No more of dreams ! Nor let there be One tender thought of them or me — For on the way that I must wend I dread no harm and need no friend ! The golden shafts of sunset fall Athwart the gray cathedral wall, While o'er its tombs of old renown The rose-leaves softly flutter down. No thought of holy things can save One relic now from Mem'ry's grave, And be it sun or moon or star, The light that falls must follow far ! ON THE VERGE. 237 I mind the ruined turrets bold, The ivy, flushed with sunset gold, The dew-drench" 1 d roses, in their sleep, That seemed to smile, and yet to weep. There'll be nor smile nor tear again ; There'll be the end of every pain ; There'll be no parting to deplore, Nor love nor sorrow any more. I see the sacred rivers flow, The barge in twilight drifting slow, While o'er the daisied meadow swells The music of the vesper bells. It is my knell — so far away ! The night wears on — I must not stay I My canvas strains before the gale — My cables part, and I must sail ! Loud roars the sea ! The dark has come He does not move — his lips are dumb. — Ah, God, receive, on shores of light, The shattered ship that sails to-night ! THE WORKS OF WILLIAM WINTER. SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. Library Edition. Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth. $2.00. Pocket Edi- tion. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. Miniature Edition. i8mo. Paper. 25 cents. GRAY DAYS AND GOLD: In England and Scot- land. Pocket Edition. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. OLD SHRINES AND IVY: Containing Shrines of History and Shrines of Literature. Pocket Edi- tion. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. BROWN HEATH AND BLUE BELLS: Being Sketches Of Scotland. With Other Papers. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. WANDERERS: Being The Poems of William Win- ter. Pocket Edition. With a Portrait of the Author. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. Three Volumes. First Series. 1893. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. Second Series. 1893. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. Third Series. 1895. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. LIFE AND ART OF EDWIN BOOTH. Pocket Edi- tion. With a New and Rare Portrait of Booth as Hamlet. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. Miniature Edi- tion. i8mo. Paper. 25 cents. LIFE AND ART OF JOSEPH JEFFERSON. Library Edition. i2mo. With Sixteen Full-page Illus- trations; Portraits of Jefferson in Character, etc. Cloth. $2.25. This volume contains a full account of Jefferson's ancestors upon the stage, and covers a period of more than 160 years in Dramatic His- tory — from 1728 to 1894. ORATIONS BY WILLIAM WINTER. Two Volumes. George William Curtis. A Commemorative Ora- tion, Delivered before the People of Staten Island, at the Castleton, St. George, February 24, 1893. i8mo. Cloth. 50 cents. The Press and the Stage. An Oration in Reply to Dion Boucicault. Delivered at the Bruns- wick, N.Y., before the Goethe Society, January 28, i88q. Limited Edition, on Hand-made Paper. i2mo. Cloth. $1.50. MACMILLAN & 00., 66 Fifth Avenue, New York. SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. CONTENTS. Chapter Chapter 1. The Voyage. 14. Old Churches of Lon- 2. The Beauty of Eng- don. land. rs- Literary Shrines of 3. Great Historic Places. London. 4. Rambles in London. 16. A Haunt of Edmund 5. A Visit to Windsor. Kean. 6. The Palace of West- 17- Stoke Pogis and minster. Thomas Gray. 7. Warwick and Kenil- 18. At the Grave of Cole- worth. ridge. 8. First View of Strat- 19. On Barnet Battle ford-on-Avon. Field. 9. London Npoks and 20. A Glimpse of Canter- Corners. bury. 10. Relics of Lord Byron. 21. The Shrines of War- 11. Westminster Abbey. wickshire. 12. Shakespeare's Home. 22. A Borrower of the 13. Up to London. Night. LIBRARY EDITION. 12 mo. Cloth. $2.00. " Here is England, in a drop of honey." — George William Curtis. MACMILL^ ,N & CO., 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK. SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. "... It was the author's wish, in dwelling thus upon the rural loveliness and the literary and historical associations of that delightful realm, to afford sympa- thetic guidance and useful suggestion to other Ameri- can travellers who, like himself, might be attracted to roam among the shrines of the mother-land. Tempera- ment is the explanation of style; and he has written thus of England because she has filled his mind with beauty and his heart with mingled joy and sadness; and surely some memory of her venerable ruins, her ancient shrines, her rustic glens, her gleaming rivers, and her flower-spangled meadows will mingle with the last thoughts that glimmer through his brain when tire shadows of the eternal night are falling and the ramble of life is done." — From the Preface. " He offers something more than guidance to the American traveller. He is a convincing and eloquent interpreter of the august memories and venerable sanc- tities of the old country." — Saturday Review. " The book is delightful reading." — Scribner'i Monthly. " Enthusiastic and yet keenly critical notes and com ments on English life and scenery." — Scotsman. MACMILLAN & CO., 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK. GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. CONTENTS. Classic Shrines. Haunted Glens and Houses. The Haunts of Moore. Old York. Beautiful Bath. The Land of Wordsworth. Shakespeare Relics at Worcester. Byron and Hucknall Torkard. Historic Nooks and Corners. Shakespeare's Town. Up and Down the Avon. Rambles in Arden. » The Stratford Fountain. Bosworth Field. The Home of Dr. Johnson. From London to Edinburgh. Into the Highlands. Highland Beauties. The Heart of Scotland. Sir Walter Scott. Elegiac Memorials. Scottish Pictures. Imperial Ruins. The Land of Marmion. This book, which is intended as a companion to Shakespeare 's England, relates to the gray days of an American wanderer in the British Islands, and to the gold of thought and fancy that can be found MACMILLAN & CO., 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK. GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. PRESS NOTICES. " Mr. Winter's graceful and meditative style in his English sketches has recommended his earlier volume upon (Shakespeare's) England to many readers, who /vill not need urging to make the acquaintance of this companion book, in which the traveller guides us through the quiet and romantic scenery of the mother- country with a mingled affection and sentiment of which we have had no example since Irving's day." — The Nation, " As friendly and good-humoured a book on English scenes as any American has written since Washington Irving." — Daily JVews, London. " Much that is bright and best in our literature is brought once more to our dulled memories. Indeed, we know of but few volumes containing so much of observation, kindly comment, philosophy, and artistic weight as this unpretentious little book." — Chicago Herald. " They who have never visited the scenes which Mr. Winter so charmingly describes will be eager to do so in order to realize his fine descriptions of them, and they who have already visited them will be incited by his eloquent recital of their attractions to repeat their former pleasant experiences." — Public Ledger, Philadelphia. MACMILLAN & CO., 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK, OLD SHRINES AND IVY. i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. CONTENTS. SHRfNES OF HISTORY. I. Storied Southampton. n. Pageantry and Relics. III. The Shakespeare Church. IV. A Stratford Chronicle. V. From London to Dover. VI. Beauties of France. VII. Ely and its Cathedral. VIII. From Edinburgh to Inverness. IX. The Field of Culloden. X. Stormbound Iona. SHRfNES OF LITERATURE. XL The Forest of Arden : As You Like It. XII. Fairy Land: A Midsummer Night's Dream, XIII. Will 0' the Wisp: Love's Labour Lost. XIV. Shakespeare's Shrew. XV. A Mad World: Antony and Cleopatra. XVI. Sheridan, and the School for Scandal. XVII. Farquhar, and the Inconstant. XVIII. Longfellow. XIX. A Thought on Cooper's Novels. XX. A Man of Letters: John R. G. Hassard. " Whatever William Winter writes is marked by felic- ity of diction and by refinement of style, as well as by the evidence of culture and wide reading. ' Old Shrines and Ivy ' is an excellent example of the charm of his work." — Boston Courier. MACMILLAN & CO., 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK. Shadows of the Stage, FIRST SERIES. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. CONTENTS. Chapter Chapter i. The Good Old Times. 16. Merry Wives and Fal 2. Irving in Faust. staff. 3- Adelaide Neilson. 17- Ada Rehan. 4- Edwin Booth. 18. Tennyson's Foresters 5- Mary Anderson. 19. Ellen Terry; Mer- 6. Olivia. chant of Venice. 7- On Jefferson's Autobi- 20. Richard Mansfield. ography. 21. Genevieve Ward. 8. On Jefferson's Acting. 22. Edward S. Willard. 9- Jefferson and Florence. 23- Salvini. 10. On the Death of Flor- 24. Irving as Eugene ence. Aram. ii. Shylock and Portia. 25- Charles Fisher. 12. John McCullough. 26. Mrs. Gilbert. 13- Charlotte Cushman. 27. James Lewis. 14. Lawrence Barrett. 28. A Leaf from my Jour- 15- Irving in Ravenswood. nal. MACMILLAN & CO., 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. Shadows of the Stage, SECOND SERIES. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. CONTENTS, Chapter i. The Right Standard. 2. The Story of Mary Duff. 3. The Elder Booth. 4. Falstaff Hackett. 5. A Short Life of For- rest. 6. Life and Character of John Gilbert. 7. Sketch of John Brougham. 8. George W. Jamieson. 9. Life and Genius of Cushman. 10. William Wheatley. 11. John Edmund Owens. 12. Jean Davenport Lan- der. 13. Ada Rehan as Rosa- lind. 14. Clara Morris in Sev- eral Characters. Chapter On the Acting of Law- rence Barrett. Woolfert's Roost and Raymond. Mansfield in Several Characters. Ada Rehan's Acting. The Story of Adelaide Neilson. Henry Irving and El- len Terry in Mac- beth. Irving and Coquelin. Willard as John Need- ham. Adelaide Ristori. Sarah Bernhardt in Several Characters. Coquelin as Tartuffe. Helena Modjeska. Wilson Barrett as Young Hamlet. Tennyson. MACMILLAN & CO., 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. Shadows of the Stage, THIRD SERIES. i8mo. Cloth. 75 cents. CONTENTS. Chapter Chapter I# The Golden Age of 16. Lawrence Barrett as Acting. Lanciotto. 2. Twelfth Night. i7- Irving and Ellen Ter- 3- Ada Rehan as Viola. ry in Henry VIII. 4- Lawrence Barrett as 18. Mansfield's Dandies. Gringoire. 19. Charles Gayler. 5- Henry Irving as Ma- 20. Rossi as Hamlet. thias. 21. Portia and Shylock. 6. Augustin Daly's Wof- 22. Mary Anderson as fington. Juliet. 7- Ada Rehan as Letitia 2 3- Madge Robertson Hardy. Kendal. 8. The Comedy of the 24. Claudian and Wilson Wonder. Barrett. 9- Henry Irving as Ham- 25. Character of Edwin let. Booth. IO. The Old Theatres of 26. Mary Anderson as London. Rosalind. ii. Ada Rehan in Old 27. The Two Gentlemen Comedy. of Verona. 12. Mansfield as Shylock. 28. Representative Amer- x 3- Irving and Ellen ican Plays. Terry in Becket. 29. The Ibsen Drama. 14. Wills's Play of Faust. 3°- Stage Influence. 15- E. S. Willard as Haml et and as the Professor. MACMILLAN & CO., 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK. Shadows of the Stage. i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. " The fame of the actor more than that of any other artist is an evanescent one — a 'bubble reputation' indeed, and necessarily so from the conditions under which his genius is exer- cised. While the impression it makes is often more vivid and inspiring for the moment than that of the poet and the painter, it vanishes almost with the occasion which gave it birth, and lives only as a tradition in the memory of those to whom it had immediately appealed. ' Shadows they are, and shadows they pursue.' " The writer, therefore, who, gifted with insight and a poetic enthusiasm which enables him to discern on the one hand the beauties in a dra- matic work not perceived by the many, and on the other the qualities in the actor which have made him a true interpreter of the poet's thought, at the same time possessing the faculty of revealing to us felicitously the one and the other, is cer- tainly entitled to our grateful recognition. " Such a writer is Mr. William Winter, easily the first, — for we know of none other living in this country, or in the England he loves so much, in whose nature the critic's vision is united with that of the poet so harmoniously. . . . " Over and above all this, there is in these writ- ings the same charm of style, poetic glamour and flavor of personality which distinguish whatever comes to us from Mr. Winter's pen, and which make them unique in our literature." — Home Journal, New York. MACMILLAN & CO., 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK. LIFE AND ART OF Edwin Booth WITH A PORTRAIT. i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. " Mr. Winter's book, aside from the great interest of its subject proper, and without considering its beauties of style and richness of materials, is valuable for the many fine glimpses it gives of Booth's contem- poraries in this country and in England. Nor are these glimpses confined to theatrical life. Many of the most distinguished artists, literary men and women, editors, statesmen, and scholars, were his friends, and delighted in his company. The frontispiece of the book is a striking full-length portrait of Booth." — The Independent. " It is with pleasure that the reader takes up the sin- gle volume in which Mr. Winter has told the story of the greatest actor yet born in America; and the pleas- ure is enhanced by the directness with which Mr. Win- ter gets to work, and by the sincerity of his handling of difficult topics. Booth has indeed been fortunate in his biographers and in his critics." — The Nation. MACMILLAN & CO., 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK. LIFE AND ART OP EDWIN BOOTH. iSmo. Cloth. 75 cents. NOTICES. " It is a wholly successful piece of biographical writ- ing, and a worthy picture of the beautiful character of one of the Americans concerning whose right to be called a genius there will be no dispute." — Philadel- phia Inquirer. " At once tender and reverent, written with the grace, fervor, and beauty of diction which characterize this critic's work. This fascinating and able book." — Hartford C our ant. "Mr. Winter's book will delight every lover of the stage. It gives us a valuable chapter of the dramatic life in America, and it preserves the memory of the most popular actor of our times in enduring colors." — Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. " It is fortunate that Edwin Booth's story has been told by so able, so wise, and so brilliant a writer as Mr. Winter. The great critic has brought to his task the best resources of his gifted mind, and he has given to dramatic history and to American literature the most important contribution they have received for many a day." — Boston Journal. " One has a definite, consistent impression of the actor and the man." — Boston Beacon. " A winning and fascinating picture." — Boston Home Journal. " He has narrated Booth's personal history fully and interestingly." — Congregationalist. "A model of critical and appreciative biography." — Boston Daily Advertiser. MACMILLAN & CO. 287 66 Fifth Avenue, NEW YORK. -It ,0o, w #' % k V x ,-:-X' :; \^. ^/. ^ \ O0' ,0 o w.° ** V ./> :/; ^v*' 'i><0 % V -P. • % 4> 0^/-. /. .-.;»■; :iJiiiiii 021 396 927 4 m I MA ■L — ■ 11181 i ■': ■ fill