f its population, all mark Northumberland by striking features. Its remoteness, the separate nationality (so to speak) which it retained during many centuries, and the slight intercourse with the rest of the kingdom formerly enjoyed by its inha- bitants, combined, moreover, to give this part of England many distinguishing peculiarities. Then, too, its traditions and associations with by-gone times are full of character and interest; and perhaps there is not a county where the present is seen in more striking contrast with the past, for works of "the stone age" constructed by British tribes — probably the contemporaries of the unknown founders of Stonehenge and Carnac — enduring remains of Roman mili- tary occupation, feudal structures and towers of refuge and de- fence, are here the characteristic representatives of times gone by. But the Celtic inhabitants of Northumbria have been succeeded by a hardy and industrious people, who, instead of fashioning rude weapons of war and chase in earthy huts, raise coal, build ships, and manufacture iron for the world; and a walled town, and thinly scattered villages that were ravaged by the moss-trooper, have given place to crowded 2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. haunts, spreading habitations, and a rapid extension of commercial enterprise and mining industry. To the stony ways that were traversed by the Roman legions, turnpike roads and railways have succeeded; lands formerly swept by trie border robber now adorn a tale of peace and plenty at local agricultural meetings; and the waters of the liede and the North Tyne, that in former times often reddened to the beacon fires on Scottish (bray, flow through pastoral and even fertile landscapes. Thriving plantations wave on lauds that continued to he wastes at the beginning of even the present century, and on many a height the plough traverses camps and graves of ancient Britons. Agriculture — pursued in the days of the Romans and in the feudal ages under pro- tection of stone walls and towers — now obliterates in its progress the defences which it no longer needs. At the mouth of the Tyne, in places where, so lately as a century ago, crops of corn were raised amidst the rude " schelings" of fishermen, a populous seaport has risen, which draws its harvests from the deep, and has at length wrested from New- castle independence and a share in the conservancy of the river; and that town, which was defended through the middle ages by massive walls, has spread within the last thirty years far and wide beyond their circuit, and become a centre of railway traffic and manufacturing industry, with a population numbering a hundred thousand souls. Natural Before entering on the historic monuments of North- features, umberland, its natural features demand some description. In its nmt hern, central, and western regions, it is a country of mountainous hills, broad tracts of sombre moorland and brown heathery wastes, indeed a third of the county may be said to consist of moorlands, having an average elevation of from 500 to 1,000 feet. These vast hilly moors rise on the western and south-western frontiers of Northumberland into bold and mountainous forms of very picturesque character, but not marked by the steep and rugged grandeur of the Highlands of Scotland or the mountains of the English lake district. The lofty range of hills, or Pennine Chain, MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 3 stretching with little interruption from the borders of Scot- land, through Northumberland, into Derbyshire, attains its greatest elevation in the wild and sterile heights of Cross Fell. To the north-west, from the high frontier moorlands of Cumberland, this range presents successive elevations, which in Northumberland culminate in the Cheviot moun- tains — the highest eminences in the county. The scenery in all the high regions is remarkable for breadth rather than the softness of outline of the chalk downs in the South of England, and the sterile wastes derive impressiveness of aspect from their solitude and extent. "Cheviots' mountains lone" are the well-known emi- The Cheviots, nences of an elevated region of porphyritic and pyrogenous rocks, about equal in area to Dartmoor, and extending from Chew Green and Coquet-head, on the north-western frontier of Northumberland, to Flodden-field on the north- east, and from near the vale of Whittingham (on their south-eastern slope) to Kelso on the Tweed. Perhaps the Cheviots cannot be better described than by saying that they form a tripled range of rounded massive hills, some of which have a perfectly conical form; the highest attains 2,680 feet; next is Hedgehope, and then comes Yevering Bell, which attains nearly 2,000 feet, and forms a dome-shaped mass, eminent above the lesser elevations. It overlooks scenes to which the genius of Scott has given an undying charm, and many a spot celebrated in border annals, besides Homelhaugh — the Homildon under which Hotspur and Douglas fought in 1402, and Percy-lawe, another height associated with the memory of Hotspur's valiant race. But the great Cheviot Forest is gone, and the red deer that occasioned the celebrated chase have vanished. One of the lower eminences detached from the range is Flodden field, the hill of Flodden, and below it stretches the memorable field. "With its green hillocks are now mixed flourishing plantations, and it retains few of the characteristic features described by Scott. "King James's Chair " has been de- stroyed, but its site is marked by a clump of firs. The B 'I 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS.' country then was bare and open: inclosures now stretch on the uplands, and the straggling patches of natural wood are idually yielding to cultivation. On the adjacent ridges, heather has given place to corn, habitations have risen amid green pastures, and broad plantations border the river Till. The slopes of the Cheviots are covered for some distance from their base by a sort of copsewoqd, but on their greater heights this verdure dwindles to brushwood, bracken, and thin turf. The whole range is intersected by wild glens and sequestered denes, and many a secluded spot is still clothed by remains of primeval forest. In some of the ravines the reddish porphyrinic cliffs are exposed,* and through them flow the tributaries of the river Till — shallow sparkling burns that murmur over a stony bed, or fall in little cascades through their rocky channel. Among the Cheviot hills the tourist is in an impressive region of natural wildness — one of those few remaining realms of solitude where Lone Nature feels that she may freely breathe ; AVhile round us, and beneath, Are heard her sacred tones : the fitful sweep Of winds across the steep ; The wheeling kite's wild solitary cry, And — scarcely heard so high — The dashing waters when the air is still, From many a torrent rill That winds unseen beneath the shaggy fell, Track'd by the blue mist well. Rothbury The wild moorlands of Rothbury Forest, which culmi- Forest. na t e in the dark rugged slopes of Simonside, a hill 1,400 feet in height, form, with Ottercaps, a series of lofty hills dis- tinct from the Cheviot range, and not of their mountainous character. Remarkable for their precipitous and picturesque * The porphyries and sienites of the Cheviots are seen at Wooler in prox- imity to the lower sandstone of the carboniferous formations. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 5 crags rather than for their height, are the basaltic forma- tions which cross the county from the north-east to the south-west, and rise into precipitous eminences on the line of the Roman Wall. In the south-western part of Northum- South Tyne and berland are the elevated regions of the lead-mining district, Allendale - and the sterile lonely fells of millstone-grit and limestone rock. Knaresdale — which is perhaps the most picturesque part of the valley of the South Tyne — winds amidst lofty massive hills, and is the pass into the lead-mining district of Alston Moor and Nenthead, surrounded by wild heights that stretch southward to Cross Fell. This hilly region of the lead-mines extends from the Cumberland frontier at Alston round the southern boundary of Northumberland, and is continued in the commons of Allendale and Hex- hamshire. The counties of Northumberland, Durham, and Cumberland join near Allenheads in an elevated region of moorlands and mosses from 1,000 to 2,200 feet' above the sea level ; and on the northern declivity the sister streams of Allen have their birth, while on the declivities to the south and east rise the Wear and the Tees. The lead-mining districts form a tract about twenty miles in diameter in each direction, comprising the border dis- tricts just now mentioned, the manor of Alston Moor and the mountainous region stretching to Cross Fell, the higher dales of the Wear and the Tees in Durham, the valleys of the East and West Allen, the Tyne, and the Derwent. The aspect of the higher portion of this mining district is almost unrelieved by cultivated lands; the heights are for a great part of the year commonly wrapped in mists, and snow lies on the higher fells until summer. Yet, in favour- able weather, the mining settlements are far from presenting a dreary wilderness or Siberian climate. The great centre of lead-mining in Northumberland is Allenheads — which is Allenheads. 1,400 feet above the sea, and can boast the highest residence in England. Alston, the highest market-town, is on the Cumbrian side of the boundary. Here the population is almost wholly employed in mining, and much secluded P> LECTURES AND E8SAT8. from the rest of the world. In the school maintained at Allenheads by Mr. Beaumont, a gossiping writer says he found, out of (iit v children assembled on some occasion a year or two ago, only five boys who had seen wheat grow- ing, and three who had beheld the sea. The inhabitants of the district were correctly enough described* more than thirty years ago, as "an industrious and loyal people, moral, intelligent, and of simple habits, whose seclusion from the rest of the country, and whose occupation, lead them to inquiries which quicken their understanding and induce them to seek knowledge from books." They appear still to deserve this character, and to have availed themselves eagerly of opportunities for improvement. A branch of the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway has for some years past opened to the rest of the world the adjacent mining district of Alston Moor, and Allendale will probably ere long be penetrated by a railway. The prevailing features of this part of the country are bleak wild fells, traversed by few roads, with patches of fir planted here and there on the steep slopes. It is stated by Mr. Sopwith, F.R.S., and President of the British Meteor- ological Society, that the maximum temperature of the district of Allenheads is nearly coincident with the mini- mum temperature of Bywell, — a place seated about tAventy miles distant in the valley of the Tyne,andabout twelve miles westward from Newcastle. In the elevated region described, the quantity of rain is in some years double that which falls in Middlesex; insomuch that Mr. Walter White, in his book already quoted, congratulates the inhabitants on having employment underground out of the way of bad weather ! But Nature, if not remarkable for geniality as regards sky and climate in this high moorland country^ Uad mining, has been bountiful beneath the surface. The quantity of lead produced from Mr. Beaumont's mines at Allenheads, * By Mr. Locker, in one of his Reports to the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital, the lords of the manor. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 7 and at the adjacent mining settlements of Coaleleugh and St. John's, Weardale (a part of the parish of Stanhope), is understood to have amounted to nine or ten thousand tons annually. Galena (from which as is Avell known the lead of commerce is derived) is the most abundant of the minerals; and some of the ores are exceedingly rich in silver. An economical process for the separation of silver from lead, founded on the simple natural law that melted lead will crystallise while silver remains fluid, was invented in 1829 by the late Mr. Hugh Lee Pattinson, a distinguished native of Alston Moor — a practical chemist and electrician, who in his latter years liberally devoted to the cultivation of astronomy much of his leisure and of the fortune acquired in the alkali works he established on the Tyne. Jn one year the ores of a mine called the Hudgill Burn Mine yielded, by refinement from the lead, silver worth 8,000/. The mineral veins prove to the adventurous miner some- times only slender threads of hope that lead to ultimate disappointment: more commonly, they conduct him to arteries of mineral wealth. There seems to be no doubt of the existence and value of copper ores in the Alston dis- trict, but they have not been worked with success. Iron ore is abundant in the shale formations of the lead-mining country; and at Nunstones, near Tynehead, there is a great sulphur vein * in a hill which was denominated in a lease " the back-bone of the earth:" — it is remarkable as a mine- ral vein, being at one part 300 feet in width, and thro wing- up the strata 60 feet. The lead-mines of Alston Moor, which in 1734 were vested by Act of Parliament in Green- wich Hospital after the attainder of the ill-fated Earl of Derwentwater, have yielded a considerable proportion of the great annual revenues of that national institution, besides fortunes to private lessees of mines worked in the manor of Alston Moor.f * It is described as containing amorphous white quartz, several strong ribs of sulphur, and some yellow copper-ore. + A notable example of mining enterprise was in progress in April 1859 r a 8 LECTURES AXD ESSAYS. All the engine work of the mines is done by hydraulic power, and one of the most interesting things in the dis- trict is this application of natural force to the aid of human Labour. Not a steam-engine is used in any of Mr. Beau- mont's mines. Springs rising in the caverns of the hills become arteries of industry: and on the river Allen itself, the economy of water-power is something quite instructive. This important mining-field was certainly known to the Romans, of whose station at Whitley, (near the town of Alston, and on the " Maiden Way" from Caervoran on the Wall to Kirhy Thore,) there are some interesting remains. When the Roman legions penetrated from York to Carlisle, their path took them from the rich mining-fields of York- shire and Durham to cross this yet richer land of mineral wealth beyond; and the mines of the Derwent Valley (now proposed to be made accessible by a railway), the mines of Allendale and Tynedale, and those of the Cumbrian frontier, all lay within the province guarded by the Roman Wall. In the days of the Anglo-Norman kings, the mines were pro- fitably worked under protection of the crown, and yielded surprising quantities of silver. In those days the miners found their fuel in the forest tracts around, and until com- paratively recent times the hill-sides, now so barren and hardly yielding scanty pasturage for sheep, were clothed with their native wood. Basaltic forma- Northumberland owes much of its picturesque scenery to the basaltic rocks. They form some of its most remarkable eminences, especially on a part of the line of the Roman Wall ; they occur also amongst stratilied formations, and they traverse the county in the form of dykes. Extending from new level was being driven seven miles underground, running north and south, to explore for the veins of lead which run in an opposite direction. Mr. Sop- with, in speaking of the celebrated aqueduct of " Nentforce Level,'' which was projected by Smeaton, remarks that among the great improvements it has effected in the practice of mining is the general use of horse-levels, by which easy access to the mines is gained — a mode of working said to have been introduced Vy Sir Walter Calverley Blackett a century ago. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 9 Ettrick Water by the north-west of Hawick, a dyke crosses Northumberland in almost a right line to the sea-coast, a little to the south of Warkworth, a course of about sixty miles. Another remarkable basaltic dyke is that great and con- tinuous fracture or line of dislocation which extends from the coast at Cullercotes, a fishing village to the north of Tynemouth, westward through the valley of the Tyne, and then southward by the Cumberland frontier, Brough, Kirby Stephen, and Kirby Lonsdale, ending in what is called the " Craven Fault," near Settle, a course of 110 miles, placing the whole section of the strata on one side of the dyke much above the corresponding beds on the other side, and forming one of the most remarkable dislocations known. A great range of basaltic rock also traverses Northumberland from south- west to north-east; it begins in the dale or "forest" of the Lune, sweeps round the great limestone escarpment of Cross- fell and Tyne dale -fell, and, curving towards Thirlwall on the border of Cumberland, runs from thence in a north- easterly direction, in a hilly range with precipitous declivities on the northern face; crossing the North Tyne, it extends to the sea coast at Howick; it then rises in masses nearly a hundred feet thick at Bamburgh, having the rocky group, or "seventeen sister-satellites," of Fame, forks seaAvard pro- longation; and ends in the hills called the Kyloe Crags. Basaltic veins or dykes also appear on the coast at Holy Island, Beadnell, Tynemouth, and other places, and seem to have a direction transverse to the great ridge above described. On the line of the Roman Wall we find that its builders availed themselves of the bold, precipitous escarp- ments, and carried the wall in many places over the basaltic crags. A crest near Wall-town, which was formerly crowned by a mile-castle of the wall, is 800 feet above the level of the sea. In this district, populous in the days of Roman mili- tary occupation, but now an almost uninhabited waste, the lonely sheets of water known as the Northumbrian Lakes reflect the basaltic cliffs. In the northern part of the county also, the basalt forms rocky eminences of great height (in 10 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. one place 500 feet above the level of the sea), on some of which elevations Saxons or Romans raised their castles, as at Bamburgh, Holy Island, and Dunstanburgh, where the magnificent rocks of columnar basalt rise a hundred feet above the surging waves. At Bamburgh, to the northward, (an important citadel from the days of the Northumbrian kings,) the draw-well was excavated through Beventy-five feet of basaltic rock and a like thickness of the underlying sandstone — a fine-grained reddish-tinted rock. The basalt is even thicker on the adjacent rocky islets of Fame * The isolated, metamorphic, and dislocated condition of the lime- stone, sandstone, and shales, on some of these islands, seems to indicate that the antient lavas flowed over those lower groups of the carboniferous limestone series. In many plaic - the rocks appear to have been disturbed by an eruption of the basalt, which occurs both as an injected dyke and an overflowing lava. Thus, on the coast at Howick, a lew miles to the south, basaltic dykes intersect the carboniferous limestone cliffs. In some localities the basalt rests conform- ably on those formations; for example, near Alnwick, a bold cliff of columnar basalt, called Ratcheugh Crag, is capped by the carboniferous limestone, changed here and there, by the contact, into granular marble. Another basaltic eminence, between Alnwick and the coast, rests on beds of blue lime- stone and metamorphic shale, which has been converted in some localities into a porcelain jasper, or, where in contact with the basalt, into a black mineral of conchoidal fracture. Another formation that is conspicuous in Northumberland, Boulder-clay. especially in the northern and eastern regions, is the Boulder- clay. Jt covers the eastern side of the range of sandstone hills which extends in a south-westerly direction from Kvloe to Alnwick Moor; in some places it forms long hilly slopes, in others it is heaped in isolated mounds resembling gigantic tumuli. Then there are hills and ridges of diluvium (gravel, • > * A valuable paper on the geology of the Faroe Islands, by Mr. (too. Tate, of Alnwick, F.G.S., will be found in the Proceedings of the Berwickshire Nut. Club, 1857, p. 231. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 11 clay, and pebbles), which certainly resemble lateral moraines, Traces of glacial i ■ * t f* action. and have been attributed to glaciers. A tortuous ridge of "hills at North Charlton, between Alnwick and Belford, is an example ; and similar mounds occur over considerable portions of the country at the foot of the eastern valleys of the Cheviots. The boulders and fragments of Scottish mountains which occur in the boulder-clay, and are scattered over Northumberland, especially on the shores of the sea and rivers, can hardly have been transported by any other agency than that of floating ice, which probably bore the ponderous and far-travelled boulders to the places where they rest, at a time when the climate of this part of the island was of an Arctic character. Beneath an overlying boulder-clay in the Hawkhill quarry, probably once an icy shore, the limestone bed in situ is in some places polished, scratched, and grooved; the markings having generally a direction from north to south.* The chalk, greensand, and associated formations are absent in Northumberland; so that there are not in this county the water-reservoirs of the south, and the supply seems to depend on the actual rainfall. The carboniferous limestone formations stretch from the Carboniferous Northumberland side of the Tweed at Kelso to the sea; mat i ons they extend along the coast to the mouth of the Coquet, and pass under the northern and western boundary of the great coal field. The coal series, which are of course regarded as the for- The coal-field, mations most characteristic of Northumberland, and which hold the first place in regard to its mineral wealth and maritime trade, must now be adverted to; but it would require a separate Essay to give any adequate description of mining operations, or of the coal-field itself.f The car- * Proceedings of the Berwickshire Nat. Club, p. 102. + An ample description of the coal field of Northumberland and Durham, the different qualities of coal, and a catalogue of organic fossils, may be found in Mr. Winch's paper, published in the fourth volume of the Transactions of the Geological Society of London. And in a recently published work, entitled Our Coal Fields, much information relating to the pits and pitmen of the New- castle and Durham coal field will be found. 12 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. boniferous sandstones certainly cannot be said, however, to contribute to the picturesque features of the county, except in river-valleys, for low rounded hills, and a generally flat coast, mark the extent of the coal formations. It will be sufficient here to say, that the northern extremity of the great coal field of Northumberland and Durham reaches to the mouth of the Coquet, and that it is circumscribed by a line following the coast of Northumberland, and running in a southerly direction from the mouth of the Tyne, bor- dered by the magnesian limestone formations of the Durham coast, and passing by Ferry Hill nearly to Pierse Bridge on the Tees; thence, running diagonally across the counties of Durham and Northumberland to their northern limit on the Coquet river, Bywell on the Tyne being the western boun- dary of the coal field in the last named county.* The coal worked further to the west — in the millstone- grit and carboniferous limestone formation, near Haltwistle and adjacent places — belongs to isolated coal formations quite independent of the great field above described. Through this vast basin fifty-seven different seams or beds of coal lie in succession; the thickest and most important of which are respectively about seventy-five fathoms and one hundred and thirty-five fathoms deep, a little to the eastward of New- castle.f The most important of the beds worked in the pro- ductive " Steam Coal" district between the Tyne and the Blyth lie from ninety to one hundred and ten fathoms deep, and the workings in some instances extend a mile and a half from the pit-shaft. The " High Main " seam lies under one hundred and sixty fathoms of beds of stone at Jarrow, but rises to the cliffs beyond Tynemouth, only two miles to the northward ; as regards geological succession, the mountain- limestone and the strata of the lofty hills of Alston Moor lie under the deepest coal mines of this great basin. Coal-mining. The quantity of coal now annually raised from it exceeds * The extreme length of the coal field is therefore aliout forty-eight miles, and its extreme breadth about half its length. f The lowest seam worked in the whole " Newcastle dial Field " is on the Wear at Monkwearmouth, at a depth of 1,700 feet. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 13 sixteen millions of tons.* It is unnecessary to dwell on the wondrous impetus given to the production of coal by the introduction of steam machinery in collieries; it works the pumps that are constantly moving to free the mines from water, f lifts the coal to the pit mouth, and propels the wagons that convey it to the ships-! A colliery, with the peculiar machinery it arrays upon the surface, the neighbouring settlements of the pitmen, the uncouth look- ing objects with which it blackens the rural landscape, the dark underground economy of a coal mine, and the charac- ter of the people engaged in this occupation, all afford matter of curious interest to a stranger. And how striking are their commercial l'esults ! When one reflects that its coal field has covered the banks of the Tyne in Newcastle, and for some miles above and below the town, with factories and ironworks, has converted the walled mediaeval town of monks and merchants into a busy emporium of commeice inhabited by a hundred thousand people, and has concen- trated in adjacent places that were rural a few years ago, a population equal to that of many an old county town of Eng- land, it is curious to compare such an extent of coal production with its state in days wdien the use of coal was prohibited in London, or even thirty years ago, when the whole quantity produced in Great Britain was not equal to what is now consumed in the manufacture of iron. "When Edward the Third's works at Windsor were in progress, no coals could be bought in the metropolis, and the king's master of the works was obliged to obtain the king's writ to the sheriff of Northumberland for the purchase of a cargo direct from a colliery upon the Tyne. He bought 726 chaldrons, which cost seventeen-pence a chaldron, at Winlaton, whence * The total produce from all the British coal-mines appears to be about 68,000,000, which is four times the quantity raised thirty yea;s ago. ■f In one colliery on the Tyne, now abandoned, the weight of water raised is computed to have exceeded by thirty times that of the coal. X In some small collieries in remote parts of the Northumberland coal-field mining operations are still, however, almost as primitive as in the days of AVykeham; the machinery is rude, and pack-horses convey the produce. 14 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. they were taken in barges for shipment at Newcastle; and, a greal part of the cargo having been thrown overboard during a storm, the small residue which readied Windsor cost, besides the barge-hire to that 'place, 165/. 5s. 2c/.!* The fortunes of coal-mining, the princely incomes realised from successful speculations, the capital hopelessly sunk in others, would form a curious chapter in the history of in- dustrial enterprise. Here, as in man}' other fields, science, energy, and perseverance have won their triumphs; but, nevertheless, hopes have often been disastrously destroyed. All the layers or seams of coal together bear in their aggre- gate thickness but a small proportion to that of the rocks with which they alternate; and a large proportion of the beds are too thin for profitable working ; so that many un- fortunate speculators have derived nothing from the labo- rious, slow descent, but the lesson which the succession of many hundred feet of sedimentary rock must teach as to the enormous duration of the globe. At the doors of a local museum (at Newcastle) may be seen the warning trunks of two p-igantic conifene — all that ever rewarded the heavy cost of sinking a certain pit in search of coal. The sylva of From this glance at the carboniferous formations in l and> which we find stored up the remains of forests that in some pie-Adamite condition of our globe waved in tropical luxu- riance on the area now forming the county of Northum- berland, it is time to pass to the existing sylva of this part of England. To the; regret of the lover of forest trees and or- namental woodland, there are few localities in which North- umberland can boast of fine old timber. Remains of gigantic oaks that grew in its primaeval forests have been found in peat-mosses, in spots now either destitute of timber, or where the largest living trees are dwarfs compared to them, or in alluvium of the river banks from Newcastle to the sea, now crowded by objects very unlike forest timber, and more familiar with glowing coke ovens than glistening * To the metropolis alone 1,200,000 tons of coal went sea-borne from the Tyne in the year 1859. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 15 leaves. In the north of the county , hawthorn and holly, which latter often attains great size and ornamental character, enrich the denes; and in many a hilly ravine the snowy blossoms pf the thorn in spring, the bright coral berries of the moun- tain ash in autumn, and those of the holly in winter, con- trast with the deep green foliage of the pine and fir. Many fine whitethorns also flourish near old mansions, and on river-meadows ; but, within the last eighty years, quickset hedges have been generally planted, and the roads and hedge-rows of Northumberland too generally want the adornment and shade of trees, and are destitute of the lines of snowy blossom that in spring perfume the roads in the midland and southern counties. The yew is not common, but some rural churchyards in this county are fitly sha- dowed by its venerable form, and by the dark perennial foliage that seems so symbolic of duration, and of a life beyond decay. At Beltingham, for example, (the native parish of Bishop Eidley, a pleasant rural seclusion not far westward from the confluence of the Allen and the Tyne,) there is a fine old yew, that companioned through storm and sunshine the little church of Norman days, and is still green beside the more modern edifice that has succeeded to it. Flourishing plantations are scattered over the county; those of fir are now quite a conspicuous feature, whereas a century ago this tree was seen only in exposed situations, and in gloomy isolated groups ; but the cultivation of the common larch in the north of England within the last seventy-five years has surpassed that of any other tree, and its wood is in extensive use. The silver fir also been planted with advantage, and there are some noble speci- mens of it that have stood for more than a century as orna- mental forest trees — e.g. those in Alnwick-paik and in the glebe land on the river bank at Hartburn, where a silver fir planted about the accession of George III. is nearly 140 feet in height and 12 feet in circumference. AVithin the last fifty years an immense extent of land in this county has been appropriated to the raising of timber; but, in 10 LECTURES AM) ESSAYS. ornamental woodlands Northumberland cannot vie with southern comities. Its chief seats and castles arc however surrounded by their parks; and, in natural as well as arti- ficial beauty and extent, Alnwick Park is one of the chief sylvan glories of the kingdom.* About seventy years ago, the beeeli began to be extensively planted in this county, less, however, for its ornamental character than for the value of its timber; but noble beech trees, and woods and avenues of beech, surround some of the old castles and man- sions of Northumberland. It has been remarked with ap- parent truth that, the further we go northward from York- shire, the later the elm seems to have been introduced; but, where there is deep rich soil in Northumberland near to some " well-watered shore," many a fine wych-elm grows luxuriantly. The evergreen or holm-oak flourishes even within the influence of the sea-breeze, and the Spanish chestnut attains a large size when planted in a free loam, or other favourable soil, but there are few remarkable avenues of chestnut trees: — those at Dilston, Shawdon, and Rock, seem the most noticeable. The birch has been much cultivated, for it attains a profitable size in less than twenty years, and is in demand for making fish-barrels and the clogs used for shoes by the peasantry. The Oriental plane is seldom seen; but of the sycamore, as well as of the ash, there are in this county some fine specimens. The holly flourishes in native luxuriance ; the alder borders many of the rocky, swift-running streams; and there are groups of large willows, as at Elishaw {i.e. the willow-wood), a place where the Watling-street crosses the river Rede. Rivers. And now the rivers claim some notice, after detaining the reader so long amongst the hills and rocks, the minerals and forest trees. It is in the river valleys of Northumberland that its most pleasing landscapes arc found, and the region of the * It was here that Hugh Duke of Northumberland planted the original tree of Athenian poplar, which he had brought from America with other kinds during the Colonial war, and from which the trees disseminated in the North of England have been derived. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 17 carboniferous rocks is that in which the picturesque beauty of its river-scenery is greatest. In the central and western parts of the county the rivers generally wind through country of a bold and mountainous character. In the hilly regions of the Tyne, the Derwent, the Allen, the Coquet, and the Wansbeck, the river in many places flows under lofty banks which rise sometimes to a considerable height clothed to the summit with native wood; in one place some gray, weather- tinted cliff* or scar of rock tufted with trees throws its shadow on the stream ; in another, a succession of ledges of stone breaks its current into narrow rapids and murmuring falls; elsewhere we see it leave the deep embrowning shade for sunny meadows, and flow past them in a bright tranquil current, or wind through a broad shingly bed. The lover of " Potamology " might revel amidst the swift rivers of Northumberland, or by the many burns and rivulets that, With fitful sound Wafted o'er sullen moss and craggy mound, descend through sequestered dells to join the better-known historic streams, and might listen with delight to its dreamy carol as below some heathery bank the rivulet " goes on. for ever " in its gladsome course, with many a little cascade in the " dimpled linn," and many a winding in the sunshine or beneath the shadow of purple fox -glove and pendent fern. From its rise on the eastern declivity of Cross Fell, at a South Tyne. spot not far from the source of the Tees, the South Tyne is but a slender rivulet until it has passed the dark fells of Hartside and Alston x\loor, and received the Nent below Alston ; thence flowing northward through the picturesque and fertile valley of Knaresdale, it is bent to its eastward course by the high border lands to the west of Haltwhistle. It then receives the waters of the river Allen, whose sister streams, descending from the moorlands that separate Allen- East ami West dale from Weardale, have flowed on the eastern and western Allen> sides of the high ridge of Allendale Common, and met under the grey old tower of Staward Peel, in scenery hardly in- ferior to that of some wooded passes in the Tyrol. Although C North Tyne. In lectures and essays. intersecting a wild moorland region, the banks of these rivers are full of natural beauty, and the ravine that forms the course of the river is often marked in the landscape by its deep natural wood. The North Tyne rises at the opposite extremity of the county, — indeed some of its springs are in Roxburghshire across the border, and its native region is a district of lonely fells ; but the wild graces of Tynedale are gemmed by many bosky burns, and the North and South Tyne meet in a valley (not far to the north-west of Hex- ham, and now opened to the tourist by the Border Counties Railway), which has few rivals in the beauty of its pastoral and wooded scenery. Many a trout-stream sought by the angler has its source in the Cheviot hills — many a River to whose shallow falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. The Till. ^ ne chief of these is the Beamish, afterwards known as the Till, which rises, on their eastern slope, in the mountainous moorlands that give birth to the river Aln; but unlike that river, which flows eastward to the sea, the Till pursues a cu- riously winding course through many a bright vale to the north and west round the eastern declivities of the range, and, passing Flodden Field and the historic sites of Ford and Tweed. Etal, meets the Tweed in very imposing scenery at Twizell, where the bridge, a semi-circular arch of ribbed stone, pre- sents One bow, but great and strong, as when Surrey with his vanguard and artillery passed over it on the morning of the battle of Flodden. Here, too, the gray old border-tower of Twizell until lately crowned the lofty rock crested with wood that still looks down upon the stream.* From its first appearance in the Northumberland landscape, the silver Tweed, dear to archaeologist and lover of the picturesque — is marked by scenery of great beauty, * It is certainly not matter for regret that the modern Castle above it was never finished ; and one hopes that ivy and creeping plants may ere long hide its frightful rows of Georgian windows. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 19 and it flows by " Norham's castled steep," and several monu- ments of religion and chivalry. Its banks are crowned by many old churches and ruined towers; and shady fishpools, and the music of many a brook tempt the angler and pedes- trian to its shores. The picturesque banks of the Aln are Rlver Aln - likewise dignified by historic associations, for it passes the sites of the ruined abbeys of Hulne and Alnwick, and re- flects the princely towers of Alnwick Castle. Next comes the river Coquet, which traverses some of the finest scenery Co( l uet - in Northumberland; amid the deep woods that clothe its banks it surrounds the grey ruins of Brinkburn Priory and laves the monastic meads of Guyzance; and then the river, passing the hermitage " deep hewn within a craggy cliff and overhung with wood," which is commemorated in the well- known ballad, flows seaward past the feudal towers of Warkworth, proud of Percy's name. Between the Coquet and the Tyne low sandhills for the most part form the coast; but the lesser streams of the Wansbeck and the Blyth still Wansbeck. Rush to the sea through sounding woods ; and Wallington, Morpeth, Mitford, and Bothal, mingle objects of historic interest and picturesque character with the sylvan beauty of the Wansbeck valley. Glancing from natural features to works of human in- dustry, a curious contrast to these quiet streams and to the secluded wildness of the hiffher regions of Tvnedale, is pre- , The r - Vi 00 w *■ lower course. The Tyne in its sented by the noise and restless traffic on the banks of the Tyne for fourteen miles before it joins the sea. Signs of trade and manufacturing industry accumulate on either bank of the river for some distance above Newcastle: there is the hydraulic-engine and ordnance factory at Elswick, lately extended and made famous by the manufacture of the Arm- strong gun; then come the older manufactories of lead and shot, and Stephenson's great locomotive engine works; and acres of workshops standing where not half a century ago were c 2 20 LECTURES AND ESSAY8. shady walks to which the citizens resorted for rural views; then, below the quays, warehouses, manufactories, and murky smoke of the town'a succession of blast-furnaces and iron-works, ship-building yards, rope-works, coke-oven-, alkali-works, and manufactories of glass,* of pottery, and fire-bricks meet the eye on either side of the river .f Walls- end — once familiar with the eagles of Roman legions and the raven-banner of Danish sea kings, is now surrounded by the smoke of furnaces and the sounds of industry. Midway between it and the sea, are the new " Northumberland Docks;" and looking thence across the Tyne to Jarrow, we see other new docks (second only to the Victoria Dock in extent), which have been formed in the slake or bay Avhcre the Saxon Ecgfrid's little Jleet was wont to ride; and now, busy workshops and a forest of masts surround the gray old church tower of the monastery at Jarrow, which Venerable Bede made so famous through the Christian world. And nearer the sea, the populous towns of North and South Shields, vessels on the stocks, and a crowd of shipping afloat. wharfs, coal-staiths, piles of timber, tall chimneys pouring forth smoke, coke-ovens jrlowino;, hammers resounding, and thousands of sooty faces, mark the busy traffic, the active industry, and material riches of the Tyne. Agriculture. Hardly less striking than the vast dcvelopement of min- * Glass-works seem to have been first established on the Tyne in the reign of James I., and the artisans were emigrants from the Low Countries. t In what is called " The Newcastle District," thirteen iron furnaces were in blast at the beginning of the present year, producing iron at the rate of 118,000 tons per annum. A large proportion of this enormous produce leaves the district in the shape of engines, both those of war and those of peace; in machinery and manufactured articles ; and an immense quantity is transformed upon the Tyne into iron steam-ships. The first iron-ship seen in the Tyne arrived about twenty years ago, and now scores are built every year, smne of which are really noble and gigantic vessels. From the works of one entcr- terprising firm alone, a fleet of powerful iron steam -ships have issued, and those which are employed in the coasting trade have quite changed the cha- racter and fortunes of that traffic. Here also two express steam-ships, larger than the ill-fated [Royal Charter, have been built for the Atlantic, besides a frig i eminent, and lessels lor the navigation of Indian waters. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 21 ing and manufacturing industry seen upon the river is the advancement of agriculture in Northumberland ; and very striking is the contrast between the high cultivation for which the agricultural districts of the county are now generally remarkable, and the state of natural wildness in which a great part of Northumberland remained even within the time of living memory — a state attributable to the former isolation and disturbed condition of the county, its remoteness, and the difficulty of communication from its want of roads. It would seem that after the departure of the Romans, the Long. eon- populous colonies which the conquerors from Italy had f the county/ raised up — even on the bleak regions bordered by the Wall — decayed, and that Northumberland relapsed into a desolate and unproductive condition. It was a wild and impene- trable territory in the days of William the Conqueror, and if a Domesday Survey of this part of England had come down to us it would present, no doubt, a rugged picture. The ancient lakes, woods and morasses of which we have the remains in the bog and black peat-earth that fills up many a basin-shaped depression throughout the valley of the Till, probably continued to occupy parts of the alluvial district eastward of the Cheviot hills in the days when Saxon chieftains held sway at Bam burgh ; and Milfield plain (near Wooler), was probably a swamp, or covered by tangled forest, in and long after the days when adjacent eminences of the Cheviots were the abode of a British tribe who wandered in skins of the wolf and the elk. The beaver — which occurs in 1188 apparently for the last time in any of our historical records — certainly lingered in streams of the North of England long after it had disappeared from those of Wales and the southern counties, and the wolf undoubt- edly inhabited Northumberland down to the time of Henrv 1 1 1., if not later. From the fact that the picturesque basaltic rocks of Spindlestone near Bamburgh, and some other localities in northern counties, are the scenes of strange legends about a voracious serpent or dragon by which they 22 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. axe said to have been formerly inhabited, it would appear probable that tracts of primeval rock and forest lingered in those parts of the country down to the Anglo-Saxon reigns. The period is not perhaps many centuries more remote when the last hippopotami and elephants ranged the river banks of Yorkshire; and there is now the authority of Professor Owen himself for the belief that we once had our native British lion, and that it may even have been contemporary with the aborigines of Britain. But whether any of the great carnivorous animals now living only within the tropics, whose remains are found in bone caves in Eng- land, did or did not linger clown to the time of the Roman invasion, it is certain that there existed in Britain in the time of Julius Caesar two species of gigantic ox and one of reindeer, which are now extinct in this country ; and it is highly probable that a species of the great fossil ox (Bos primigenius) was seen living in the wild forests of Britain, and in those of Germany, when they were penetrated by the Roman legions.* In localities, then, of primeval rock and forest, such as Spindlestone continued to be in the time of the Heptarchy, may there not have co-existed with the species of animals that were living in Cassar's time, but are now extinct, a reptile having such saurian affinities as to have been in- vested by popular terror with attributes of the dragon of legendary tale? Not only Rhodes, Naples, and Aries had their legendary dragon: in many a less renowned locality popular tradition commemorates the exploit of a hero who delivered the territory from the dragon's ravages. The dragon of Aries seems to belong to the time when a great crocodile, or other saurian, inhabited the estuary of the Rhone and other rivers flowing into the Mediterranean. Legends of conflicts with dragons are widely spread through northern * Remains of the Bos primigenius were recently found about three miles westward from Spindlestone in a post-plciocene deposit of whitish clay, gravel, and water- worn stones, reposing on a peaty soil known as the Adderstonc Mains Hog, which is traversed by the North-Eastern Railway. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 23 Christendom, and are among the fabled feats of Teutonic heroes; they are connected with many antient churches, and are commemorated in sculptured stone as well as in rustic legend; as, for example, in Devonshire, where local folk- lore asserts that the stone avenues on Dartmoor, like the hut-circles and the kistvaens, were erected in far-distant times when winged serpents frequented the hills, and wolves inhabited the valleys. The dragon of" Spindlestone Heugh " was probably an equally substantial adversary : but the legend no further concerns the present subject than as indicating the primeval wildness retained by the locality in question within the time of tradition. The name of Chevy (Cheviot) chase is a memory of the wild forests of this county : many another waste of rock and wood retained its primeval state even in the middle of the seventeenth century ; and a large tract of the Border country continued until a much later period in a state hardly less primitive than it was when the monks from Iona, or St. Cuthbert from Melrose, journeyed through it, intent on their apostolic mission to the pagan natives. Thus, within the memory of some who are still living (as Lord Macaulay in his History of England remarks,) the sportsman who wan- dered in pursuit of game to the sources of the Tyne, found the heaths round Keeldar Castle peopled by a race hardly less savage than the Indians of California, and heard with surprise the half-naked women chanting a wild measure while the men with brandished dirks danced a war-dance. Of the lawless state of this part of the border country from Lawless state of the middle of the thirteenth to the middle of the seventeenth the Borders - century, history affords a terrible picture. One of the oldest documents illustrative of this state of things, is a roll of pleas held at Wark, in North Tynedale, in 1279, before justices itinerant of Alexander III. of Scotland, to whom that regality then belonged ; and the various deeds of robbery, violence, and encroachment recorded, exhibit a general disregard of the rights of persons and property. Four centuries afterwards, in the reign of James II. of 24 LECTURES AM) ESSAYS. England, .' orth Tynedale was still looked upon as a waste of evil r< pute, the haunt of border thieves, and a country which no king's messenger dared enter.* Camden had to leave his task unfinished when he reached Thirlwall on the Cumbrian border. Other parts of Northumberland, which had been centres of Roman civilization, were swept by the moss-troopers through those four centuries, and were in the wiM, uncultivated condition naturally resulting from such a state of social insecurity. Notwithstanding the rude laws by which the townships Averc charged with the pursuit and apprehension of malefactors and the loyal inhabitants of the country united for its defence, the reports of the Lords Warden of the Marches, even down to the Union, afford a melancholy picture of the barbarous state of things, the insecurity of life, and the atrocious forays which harassed the owners of property. The State Papers, during the ad- ministration of Cardinal Wolsey, abound in complaints on the state of the Borders, and portentous anathemas were ful- minated in aid of the civil power. Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, Governor of Norham, and Warden of the Middle Marches, writing in the seventeenth century, from Alnwick Abbey, where he had taken refuge with his family and house- hold, says that, amongst the malefactors he had captured and hung, were "two gentlemen thieves" who robbed travellers. The priest and curate of Newcastle are both included in a list of" Border thieves," early in the reign of Elizabeth; and Fox, bishop of Durham, writing a few years before, describes the priests of Tynedale and llcdesdalc — themselves thieves, and chaplains of landowners who were thieves — as too unlettered to read the service-books, and as persons of scandalous lives. In a Border survey in 1550, we read — " the whole countrey of Northumberland is much given to riotte, specially the young gentlemen or head men, * The spirit of insubordination was not wholly quenched until a later reign, and, in North Tynedale, the king's authority was defied until late even in the last century. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 25 and clivers also of them to theftes and other greater offences." In a will made by an inhabitant of Morpeth, in 1583, the testator describes himself to be dying of the wounds mur- derously inflicted by four of the Ogle family and their acces- sories, in consequence of his having presumed to say that " the Dacres," then lords of Morpeth, " were of as good blood as the Ogles." At this time, even Hexham market was attended by " a hundred strong border-thieves," who overawed the country people they robbed. So Avild and insecure was the country between Newcastle and Carlisle, that the judges of assize were escorted by an armed force. When Lord Chief Justice North came the circuit in the days of Elizabeth, the village of Bywell, through which the road passed, was inhabited by expert handicraftsmen who worked in iron — " village blacksmiths," who became inured to bear arms; and, the tenants of each manor in the barony of Bywell being bound to guard the judges in their progress, the service devolved on these stout and hardy men. The Lord Chief Justice describes his attendants as wearing long O CD beards, short cloaks, and long, basket hilted broadswords hanging from broad belts, and mounted on horses so small that the riders' feet and swords touched the ground. The state of the road then, and until the road-making achieve- ments of Marshal Wade, was such that it would have been difficult to give effect to the traditional usage mentioned by Lord Campbell- — that a jury, who had not agreed by the end of the assizes, were to be carried in a cart after the judge to the boundary of the next county, and there shot into a ditch — as that result was likely to be much sooner arrived at. All the communication in the way of trade between Newcastle and Carlisle, now denominated "goods traffic," was undertaken in single-horse carts by carriers, who always journeyed in company, in the fashion of an Eastern caravan, for mutual protection — a state of things which, in these days of railway travelling, it is curious to contrast with the ease and swiftness of our transit through the pic- turesque scenery and over the cultivated lands between Former want of roads. 2o LECTURES AND ESSAYS. those towns.* And, if the road between Newcastle and Carlisle was often nearly impassable until Marshal Wade overthrew many miles of the great Koman barrier to con- struct his military way upon the line and with the materials of the wall, it may be imagined in what condition those parts of Northumberland remained in which there were no roads at all, and in which the violence of the moss-troopers had prevented cultivation and improvement. The frontier- lands were not reclaimed from their lawless state until the stern rule of that picturesque old chieftain and Warden of the Marches Lord William Howard (" Belted Will ") procured for him the honourable title of " Civilizer of the Borders," and restored peace to the country.! But it was not until a century after his time that the old roads through Northum- berland were improved, and new roads formed to render accessible the country which had been so long impenetrable. The first Turnpike Act for Northumberland was obtained about 1746, on a representation by the grand jury that the high post- road from London to Edinburgh had become so deep and ruinous by reason of the heavy carriages passing over it, that it could not be traversed without danger.^ Soon afterwards, '"the military road " (as it was called) from Newcastle to Carlisle was taken in hand. On the road between Hexham and Penrith a public conveyance appeared for the first time thirty years ago. About the same time, road-trustees in this part of England became so enterprising as to form plans for widening and levelling the high roads and reducing the steep hills and vexatious windings which * Festina lente seems nevertheless to be the motto of the Railway Company. f The Courts of the Wardens seem to have been regulated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in a spirit of justice, and to have administered the rude border-laws with judicial forms. A complete cordon of defence was also maintained, with watchers at fords and passes. X It has been suggested that the first wheeled-carriage capable of conveying travellers, that ever crossed the Tyne, was probably that in which the ladies of the Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., accompanied her on her nuptial journey into Scotland. Remembering what the roads then were, and that the carriages were without springs, it is surprising how travellers could survive such a journey. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 2? retarded traffic through the central parts of the county: large sums were then expended on the roads through Aln- wick into Scotland, and on the road from Newcastle by way of Weldon Bridge and Wooler to the Tweed at Coldstream. But now the railway whistle will ere long be heard among the lonely border hills where (as at Keeldar) the inhabit- ants still derive their supplies through carriers from Hawick, some of whom are stated to combine the trades of draper, grocer, baker, stationer, and hardware and crockery dealer. The border regions are no longer the uncultivated lands in which the lawless freebooter defied the arm of justice: — Long rolling years have swept those scenes away, And peace is on the mountain and the fell ; And rosy dawn and closing twilight grey Hear but the distant sheepwalk's tinkling bell. With security of property and facility of communication the Agricultural f, , -i • i i -i • i i improvements. era ot improvement and agricultural production began, and Northumberland stood honourably foremost in adopting the improved system of agriculture which was introduced on this side of the border about thirty years ago. Weedy wastes were reclaimed ; thorough draining began to be prac- tised extensively; the value of lime in agriculture was re- cognised by Northumbrian farmers ; and in time improved implements appeared, and even thrashing machines driven by steam or water power were set up. Within the last ten years much has been done in draining, and it is esti- mated that 170,000 acres have been drained in that time; still, however, much remains to be done. Landlords wisely fostered the spirit of improvement, and the agriculturists of Northumberland have for some time past shown themselves not behind their mining and manufacturing brethren on the Tyne in the spirit of enterprise. Long leases and liberal covenants as in the South, capital, and intelligence, are now the recognised requirements for successful farming in this part of England also, and much has been done of late years to enforce the conviction that the highest state of cultivation is the most productive to the tenant. A traveller through 28 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. the border district north of Wooler, formerly the scene of constant forays, and where on many a hill the purple heather hides the black stains of ancient battle, cannot fail to be struck by the extension of agriculture: cultivated fields stretch for hundreds of acres where no villages and few human dwellings are seen, and up the slope of steep hills agriculture bravely holds its own. It says much for the " peace and plenty " picture drawn by Mr. Grey, the agent of the Greenwich Hospital Commissioners for their estates in Northumberland, at a meeting of the Hexham Farmers' Club, in the summer of 1859, that on those large estates, the rental of which exceeds 42,000£. a-year, there were only 'SOL in arrcar at the last audit. The condition of the pea- santry as well as of the farmers has improved rapidly. The farm-buildings and the labourers' cottages have shared in the general improvement, and within the last ten years the wages of farm -labourers and hinds have increased by nearly one fifth. In the cottages where, not long ago, wheat-flour was seldom seen and meat was almost an un- known luxury, white bread is common, and the butcher's cart even is said to have now become a regular visitor in North- umbrian villages. It is not many years since the primitive agricultural cart with solid wooden wheels mi Hit be found in Northumberland just as it is now seen in Spain. The improvement has reached even the remote districts of Tyne- dale, where, from the time of Henry III. down to the pre- sent century, there existed the tenure " in drengage" (the service of ploughing, harrowing, and sowing the lord's land), which seems to have been common in, if it was not confined to, the territory that constituted the old kingdom of Northumberland ; and, for a long time past, rents have come to be paid in money instead of the primitive forms of farm produce or bond-service. There is a remarkable pro- portion of large holdings in the farms of Northumberland. Iii 1851 there were returned thirty-four farms of 2,000 acres and upwards. The whole arable land of the county is about 270,000 acres, and the cereal produce amounts to about two MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 29 millions and a half annually. In the pastoral division of the county an immense improvement has been made. There are sheep-farms of grass-land of immense extent, the scanty herbage and ungenial climate of the high moorland tracts rendering those parts of the county fit only for grazing, and large flocks of the native breed of sheep— " a hardy race on Cheviot bred " — are there maintained. The proportion of meadow-land is small. A considerable breadth of the level tract of country extending along the coast is devoted to the culture of wheat, the soil being for the most part a strong clayey loam. The corn produce in Northumberland amounts to about a million and a quarter annually. A large pro- portion of the arable lands, especially in the carboniferous sandstone districts, are of a moist loam with a subsoil of re- tentive clay, and are, of course, appropriated chiefly to the raising of grain. A sandy or gravelly dry soil, favourable for raising turnips, is found on the river banks of Northum- berland, and also on the uplands and in the valleys of the Cheviot district. Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone laments (as the reader will remember) that the new turnips, with the rats and the Hanoverians, the French antics and book- learning, had changed the world which he had known in old England. Turnip cultivation has however become a con- siderable feature of Northumbrian farming, and the common white turnip as well as Swedes are successfully raised on even the heaviest lands, for retentive* soils have been con- verted into rich loam by a judicious sj^stem of cultivation. Only a century ago no turnips were grown in Northumber- land, and the culture of potatoes was then first introduced in this county by the vicar of the border parish of Norham. To glance from potatoes to population: we find that at the last census the population was returned as follows: — Unmarried males (all ages) . . 97,356) Husbands ..... 46,655 ( 149,515 Widowers ..... 5,504) Unmarried females (all ages) . . 93,441 \ Wives (many husbands were probably at sea) 48,403 I jg^ (^3 Widows ..... 12,209 ( homes. 30 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Of the 303,568 total inhabitants, only 232,826 were re- turned us natives of the county. The agricultural labourers greatly exceeded the coal-miners in number. Labourers' The condition of the labourers' cottages on some of the great estates of Northumberland has been deplorable, but considerable improvement in this respect also has been made in its agricultural districts within the last few years; Lord Grey's Howick cottages are models of neatness, and the Duke of Northumberland has spent immense sums on his estates. His Grace set about the improvement of his labourers' homes in a business-like way; and an immense number of cottages marked by fitness and utility, and by a wish to benefit the occupiers, have consequently risen — a permanent improve- ment to the property and an honour to the noble owner. The mountainous and moorland regions, which are about equal in extent to the arable division of the county, are, of course, vast solitudes; and even in the central districts the county appears very thinly inhabited,* the villages being few and far between, many land-owners having been accustomed to clear the peasants' cottages from their estates. It is in the agricultural districts generally that the North- umbrian character is the most favourably displayed. Manly independence, shrewdness, honesty, and hospitality, are the eommon characteristics of the peasantry ; and there is many a village the very remoteness and isolation of which seem to promise that those good old-fashioned qualities will be found — a village where (as a late historian remarked) the weaver and the smith work only for the farmer, where the mill is a corn-mill only, where the ale-house is not "licensed to let post-horses," and the tailor is not " from London" — a place girt by small inclosures, intersected by briery lanes, and telling altogether in its aspect that it belongs to an ancient race of yeomanry, jealous to preserve their little patrimony and tenacious of the habits and tra- * In the parish of Elsdon, for example, one of the largest and least popu- lous in Britain, a population of 2,000 is thinly scattered over an area 21 miles long by 5 miles broad. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 31 ditions of their sires. Nevertheless, the aspect of most of the villages of Northumberland, even in the agricultural districts (excepting, perhaps, some old villages of rural districts in the north of the county), does not bespeak any- thing attractive or pleasing in the inhabitants, or reflect much credit on the former disposition of the land-owner. And as to the new settlements (the endearing name of villages seems hardly applicable to them) that sprang up when waste lands came to be divided, when men no longer dwelt under the protection of castles, and population in- creased with the advance of peaceful industry, there cer- tainly is not anything imaginative, or (as in the case of Absurd modern most old British names) descriptive of locality, in the names that were given to them. Of this very modern class of appellations we have the following ridiculous examples in Northumberland : — Blink-bonny, Brandy-well Hall, Bread- less-row, Click-him-in, Cold-knuckles, Delicate Hall, De- light, Fell-him-down, Glower-o'er-him, Maccaroni, Make- me-rich, Mount Hooley, Philadelphia, Pinch-me-near, Pon- dicherry, Portobello, Quality-corner, Skirl-naked, Twice- brewed, Windy-nook, &e. The agricultural villages, and the labourers' homes gene- Colliery rally, as Avell as the population of agricultural districts, stand, however, in favourable contrast to the chief part of the pit-villages (as they are called) and the mining population. Long rows and aggregations of unsightly cottages, peopled only by those who earn their living from the adjacent pits, mark too many of the colliery districts; and the cottages, especially where the property is leasehold, are generally hideous, sordid, barrack-like abodes, not indeed destitute of cleanliness and homely comfort, but totally wanting in the humanising though humble adornments of southern rustic homes: no flowers grace these dwellings of dusky toil, no verdure relieves the bare cindery earth around them, no church diffuses its hallowed influence and associations; and, Character of if we were to judge of the coal-mining population of North- J™"" 8 pop a " umberland and Durham by comparing their dwellings with the cottages of the mining population of Cornwall, a con- 32 LECTURES and essays. elusion very unfavourable to the Northumbrian miners would lie drawn ; but, although the pitmen are an unpolished race, and as regards religious and secular instruction have too generally been Left as uncultivated as their dialect is un- couth, the}- share the Northumbrian energy of character, and, where they have acquired any education at all, there are constant examples of their desire for knowledge, especially in applied sciences. Great allowances must be made for this Troglodytean class of labourers, for they spend their youth and vigour cramped in close and impure air in a high tempe- rature, are liable to instant destruction from the " fire-damp" and equally fatal "choke-damp" of the mine, and lead a cheerless life which almost separates them from the world of breeze and sunshine. Where libraries have been funned for the colliers, or the workmen in the great iron, alkali. and other manufactories upon the Tyne, the men readily avail themselves of such advantages, and it appears that works of imagination are especially in demand. Allotment gardens, too, are becoming very generally cultivated in the colliery villages. The wages of the pitmen are good, and sufficient for their wants, and there are few colliery villages where a school is not maintained besides a reading room or mechanics' institute. The lead-mining districts, however, are much in advance of most colliery districts in regard to edu- cational provisions. Allusion has been already made in par- ticular to the system of industrial polity established at Mr. Beaumont's lead-mines. The comforts of the labourers and the education of their children are well eared for; schools and libraries are established, benefit societies are in operation, and the miners enjoy such physical comforts and leisure that they can profit by the educational provisions made in their behalf. It is really worthy of remark, that, at one ol these mining settlements called Coalclellgll, in Weardale, some miners published a selection of poems, and four con- jointly wrote a pamphlet on the benefits to be derived from will-conducted friendly societies. The lead-miner's day is for eight hours only, and he works for five' days in the week, his wag - \ uying from 15s. to 20s. Some of the MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 33 leisure time of the miners is employed in cultivating cottage-gardens, and their ambition is to possess a small freehold. In the coal-mining districts, unfortunately, a boy is no sooner able to earn some wages than he is taken from school; and, as regards benefit societies, the helpless widows and children of coal-miners have still to lament the want of a provident or assurance fund, a provision which the coal-owners ought to assist their labourers in making,* for, although of late years, from greater care and improved ven- tilation, there have been fewer of the frightful explosions that used to bring sorrow and destitution to scores of fami- lies at once, there is an increase in the number of deaths in coal-pits in proportion to the number of tons of coal now raised. So much for the physical condition of the labour- ing population. The peasantry of Northumberland cherish the local tra- Legendary lore, ditions of the county; they very generally retain the feelings of clanship which in former days bound the tenants and dependants of an estate or family to its hereditary owner or representative : and they hold in memory, as part of the folk-lore of Northumberland, the stirring events of Border history. In ballad-poetry Northumberland is richer than some other counties, and it seems as if the natives had been tenacious of their oral traditions in proportion to the former want of books, education, and intercourse with the rest of the world. The student of folk-lore finds, therefore, much to interest him in Northumberland. Many old superstitions linger among the peasantry, and in this county, as in the South- West of England, much of heathendom survives, but with this peculiarity in Northumberland, that there are traces of Scandinavian as well as of Celtic and Saxon superstitions. In some Northumbrian customs, however, we seem to have * That strange amphibious race, the " keelmen " of the Tyne, formerly a very numerous class, but who are gradually becoming extinct, have a provi- dent fund arising from a tax of a farthing a ton on all coal shipped in the Tyne. D 34 LECTURES AND ESSAYS* Olil customs. Superstitions. vestiges of the Romans: thus, the image called " the Harvest Queen" ov "Corn-baby," which has been deemed the representative of the Roman Ceres, continued, in the latter half of the last century, to be dressed up and carried from many a village on the Last day of harvest to the field, where it remained to the end of reaping; again, the sword-dance, which though Scandinavian also, some antiquaries have con- nected with the Saltatio armata of the Roman militia on their festival Armilustrium, is or lately was practised in some Northumbrian villages; the Roman feast of the Lares, when their couch was adorned with flowers and placed be- fore the houses, was represented late in the last century by exhibiting a cushion covered with flowers at cottage doors on Midsummer-day; and at Allhallows, too, there was still the rural sacrifice of nuts which has been deemed the relic of a pagan festival in honour of Pomona. Although the belief in witchcraft, which in the first year of that accursed usurpation of fanatics called the " Commonwealth," sacrificed fourteen unhappy women in one series of executions at New- castle-upon-Tyne, now seldom takes a form that is any- thing more than ludicrous; it lingered, with many less mis- chievous superstitions, down to later times. It is not alone at Housestcads, by the Roman Wall, on a meadow once occupied by a suburb of the military station of Borcovicus, that the fairies come from an adjacent cave for their moon- light dances; the "good people" figure in many another rural locality, and arc quite familiar objects in the folk-lore of the county. It has been remarked, with much truth, that where popular tradition associates fairy legends with any spot, it is highly probable that such tradition has been derived from Celtic inhabitants of the locality. The parish registers in Northumberland — most of which begin after the Restoration,* afford many traces of the gross ignorance and superstition of the people. The condition of the peasantry in Northumberland during the old days of violence and * The registers of only five parishes, viz.: Newcastle, Berwick, Hexham, ?.rorpeth, and Earsdon contain any entries that go back to the time of Elizabeth. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. o.j insecurity may be easily inferred. Even in later times, education continued to be sadly deficient on the Border lands, but at the beginning of the seventeenth century the gentle- men of property and old family were often unable to write or read. At that time there appear to have been only twenty-one schoolmasters * in the whole county, of whom eleven were employed at Newcastle; sixteen gentlemen of old family were discharging the duties of parish clerk; and in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth, out of 146 Northumbrian landowners who combined to defend the borders, only fifty-four could write their names; but in re- gard to education at that period Northumberland probably was not much behind other and more peaceful parts of England. A century ago, in the time of Hutchinson, the historian of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Durham, the Solstitial " Beltein" fires were still raised on Midsummer eve on the top of high hills, and the people danced around them; the rustic inhabitants still carried lighted torches about their fields on the eve of St. Peter's day, and at May- day practised a kind of divination by fishing for a wedding- ring in a syllabub: the Christmas fire is still lighted with the yule log in this county, and there are relics of the rock and river worship of Celtic tribes. Of course stories of the supernatural are connected with several of the Border towers. For example, Meldon Tower, in the vale of the Wansbeck, is the scene of the ghostly wanderings of a per- sonage celebrated as Meg of Meldon, f who for her covetous habits, and practice of unearthly arts, was doomed after her death to wander seven years and rest seven years alternately, and her phantom — the terror of the neighbourhood — haunts the place where she had deposited a bull's hide full of gold ; but the former lady of Meldon does not come, like Lady Howard of Okehampton, nightly to her park in a gilt coach * One of the Berwick pedagogues in 1578 was Aristotle Knowsley, and another was John Wacke. t Supposed by Hodgson to be Margaret, wife of Sir William Feawick. D 2 36 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. attended by her black bound. Perhaps the AVansbcck Valley Railway, now commenced, may produce the gold and banish the phantom. Again, the ruins of a mansion of the Orde family, built at a place called Sandybank, is attributed to a ghost of such terrific character as to have rendered it unin- habitable. But enough of these popular legends; it is time to turn to things more substantial. Celtic or an- The monuments of the pre-historic period in Northumbcr- antiquities. land are so numerous, as to show that this part of our island must have been the scene of populous British settle- ments. Earthworks and encampments, stone-circles and sepulchral remains, abound in the north of the county, and occupy localities that arc now mountain solitudes and hills where now only the moorfowl dwells among the heather. Here, as in Wiltshire, it was the high lands, and not the valleys, that were inhabited by the aboriginal people; forests seem to have overspread the vales, and the earthworks and other traces of the long residence of Celtic tribes occupy the heights. Northumberland does not present any such monu- ments as the grey Cyclopean monoliths of Stonehengc ; but single and double stone-circles, of the kind which used to be called Druidical, occupy wild solitudes in the northern part of the county, amid the camps, villages, and graves of the rude tribes with whom the Romans came in contact. Some inclosures, containing circular foundations, which are found in Redesdale, resemble those existing on Ingleborough in Yorkshire, and at several places in Cornwall. The top of Yevering Bell is crowned with circular mounds and fosses, and with the remains of circular walls of stone that are sup- posed to have formed temples for Celtic worship or con- spicuous altars for the Baaltein fire; and almost every lesser eminence of the Cheviots is crested with remains of the early inhabitants who chased wild animals in the adjacent forest. Numerous cromlechs, tumuli, stone obelisks and circles are marked on the admirable maps of Watling Street recently prepared by direction of the Duke of Northumberland ; and at Old Bewick, and various other places in the north of the MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 37 county, are camps and entrenchments of circular and of half- moon form.* Northumberland preserves in many local names the traces of its former Celtic language. The British names of places were generally, as is well known, descriptive of some natural characteristic, and many of them have survived in their primitive form, or as modified by the language of conquerors : ex. gr. — the names of Tyne and Tweed, of Aln and Derwent, of Lindis and Low, are British ; and some names of hills in the Cheviot range, as Yevering, Steroch, and Vensheon, in- dicate a similar derivation. Again, the name of a spot called " Petty-may "or " Pity-me," which is situated among some remarkable knolls on the Watling Street, and seems to have been a place of sepulture, is perhaps, as some one has sug- gested, derived from Beddau-maes — a field of graves ; so too, " Foul-play " from Foel-blae — the bald, blue hill. Most of the Roman names of stations on the Wall are evidently Latinized forms of the descriptive British names, but few or no other traces of Koman speech are found in the county. It is, of course, to the enduring sway of the Saxons in England that we have to attribute the greatest part of its local names. Those of Saxon derivation greatly prepon- derate in Northumberland, but the Danes, also, have left many similar memorials. Long, however, as was the Danish rule in the North of England, its only monuments are found in local names, and in the Scandinavian element visible in * In this locality some remarkable stones have been found, which are in- cised with figures sculptured in the rudest forms, and bearing resemblance to some of those Pictish or early sculptured stones of Scotland, which form the subject of a very interesting paper, with illustrative drawings, printed in the fourth volume of the Spalding Club books. The incised markings of the Old Bewick stones are of so primitive a character that they seem to belong to a more remote era than the very early crosses of Caledonia. Some circular figures on the rock, near the site of two hilhforts in the Old Bewick district, correspond re. markably with some sculptures of unknown purport which are engraved in " The Sculptured Stones of Scotland," and are stated in the last part of the Proceedings of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries to resemble figures in the Mound at New Grange in Ireland, and others that are found in Britany. 38 LKCTIKES AND ESSAYS. Monuments of Roman period. Watling Street. the dialect and population, especially in tlie people who derive their living, as tlicir forefathers did, from the sea. The Norman scribes of the Domesday Survey (which, un- fortunately, does not extend to Northumberland), corrupted the Saxon and Danish names, both of places and persons, much in the same way that the Romans had altered the British names; but of the Norman, as of the Roman speech, few traces are left in English topography. The historical monuments of the Roman period in North- umberland consist, not only of the remains of art, the military weapons, the altars and votive-tablets that have been found in once populous military stations, but of paved roads, and, above all, of considerable fragments of the great barrier-wall which forms so imposing a monument of the Roman power. The surveys of the Roman Wall, and of the Watling Street, lately made by Mr. MacLauchlan for the Duke of Northum- berland, and, by the liberality of his grace sumptuously produced for private distribution, accurately illustrate the two greatest military works of the Romans in Northumber- land, and have done for these celebrated monuments what has not been done for Roman remains in other parts of England. Watling Street has a course of sixty-nine miles from Pierse-bridge (where it enters the county of Durham,) to Chew-green on the Scotish border, the intermediate stations being Binchester, Lanchester, and Ebchester, in the county of Durham; and Corbridge, Risingham, and Rochester, in Northumberland; all, save Chew-green, being inclosed by walls of masonry, and the whole line being bordered more or less by remains of British occupation. The Watling Street, and the Roman roads that joined it, have been oblite- rated in many localities in Northumberland, even within the last hundred years, by the progress of cultivation, and the former way is traceable by only faint remains through large portions of its course.* * A county map which was published a hundred years ago, when few of the roads that now traverse Northumberland had been made, delineates this great MEMOIR OX NORTHUMBERLAND. 39 It is striking and suggestive to discover, amid grassy mounds in remote solitudes far from the haunts of men, memorials of the former residence in those places of martial legions; and strange and exotic, on lonely Northumbrian hills, seem the inscriptions which were set up there by soldiers from sunny Mediterranean shores, by legionaries from Italy and Spain, Belgium and Gaul. And more sug- gestive still are those lapidary monuments — some in such preservation that they seem as if chiseled yesterday, others scarcely legible; names that once carried terror to nations as nearly obliterated on the stone as in human memory; some in which a line is pregnant with the genius or faith of antient Eome : often a few letters reveal a whole fable of heathen mythology; and it is touching to find amongst the overthrown military edifices of the Roman soldier an in- scription to a" beloved wife," another, set up by a Belgic tribune, in memory of a "charming daughter," — memorials of their love that have outlived mighty monuments of their sway. The most wonderful of the Roman military works in T] Roman Northumberland was the Barrier Wall, and most imposing Wall, must have been its appearance, when, with its commanding stations, it stood in all its strength, scaling the heights of the rugged cliffs, and descending the valleys, in its course across the country from sea to sea. Portions of this great monument may still be traced through a considerable part of the line from Newcastle to Carlisle, for, though it was generally resorted to as the stone-quarry for any farm- buildings in its vicinity, a line of masonry eight feet broad, and twelve feet high, has not been easy to demolish. The stations per linearn valli, which seem to have been cities on a small scale (containing, as they did, temples and baths, and the buildings of a garrison,) were twenty-three in number; and, besides these fortified stations, there were mile-castles along the whole line, with watch-towers between military way, and certain branches of it, as then existing in localities in which it has now been obliterated for many years. 40 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. them on the wall. Some of the stations were of considerable magnitude ; one of the largest was Borcovicus (now known as Housesteads), garrisoned by the first cohort of the Tungrians from Belgic Gaul, which, from the foundations of streets and ruined buildings still visible, and the descrip- tions left by Hunter, Gordon, Horslcy, Gale, Stukelcy, and other antiquaries, seems to have deserved its appellation of " The Tadmor of Britain." The station called Chcsters is remarkable for extensive and almost perfect remains of the baths of a luxurious villa. Perhaps the largest and best naturally defended of the stations is Amboglanna, which, from its modern name of Burdoswald, seems to have become the citadel of a Saxon king. It occupies a large quadran- gular plateau, beneath the steep slope of which flows the rocky Irthing; and the interest of the fine view from it is much enhanced by the similarity (which Lord Carlisle has suggested,*) to the scenery of the celebrated place supposed to be the site of Troy. But it is not within the scope of the present Memoir to describe the "Wall or its stations. f The question "Who built the Wall?" was much debated by northern antiquaries a few years since, but it is not neces- sary to throw upon these pages the " cold shade" of that frigid and pedantic controversy 4 It has always been a question whether the "Wall, and the works connected with it, are to be attributed to three distinct periods, — whether Agricola constructed the stations as well as the military- way; whether Hadrian built only the ditch and southern mounds of the vallum ; and Severus the wall of stone? Whatever conclusion maybe the correct one, Mr. MacLauchlan's careful survey greatly augments our * In his " Diary in Turkish and Greek waters." f " The Roman Wall in Northumberland "" is the subject of an able and interesting article in the Quarterly Review for December, 1859. % The reader who may be interested in the question, will find a long chapter devoted to its discussion in a work recently produced under the auspices of the Antiquarian Society of Newcastle, entitled A History of North- umberland, in three parts ; Part I. containing the general history of the county. 4to. 1858. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 41 knowledge of these stupendous works themselves. It is curious to contrast with what we now know about the Wall, the idea entertained in Horsley's days (when it had been very imperfectly explored,) as to'the extent of the command held by the Roman legions over the country beyond it. Horsley had not been able to discover any gates in the Wall or passes through it, excepting at the stations or the inter- section of the military ways ; but, it appears that in each of the mile-castles recently excavated, important passes through the wall have been found, and the remains of massive gates. In the valley, eastward from Borcovicus, a passage in the Wall was found, defended with double gates, having a guard- room on each side, and in the middle an upright stone such as is found in other gateways of the stations and likewise in the streets of Pompeii. The territories of five British tribes extended from the Wall to the Forth and Clyde, and formed the province of Valentia in the reign of Valentinian. Bremenium (the Roman towns only one of Ptolemy's toAvns to the north of the Wall which "°^_ of the occurs in the Itinerary,) was the chief seat of the Otadenei — a tribe that does not seem to have been subdued until the return of Agricola from his campaign in Caledonia in A.D. 84, and commands the upper part of the valley of the Eede on the line of the great Roman road. It lately attracted some attention on account of excavations in progress there; and it is curious that, amongst Roman remains found in this remote station, is a metallic mass which has proved to be wholly composed of chain-mail, hauberks of which are re- presented on the base of Trajan's column at Rome. In the same part of the province are remains of another remarkable centre of British settlement — the Mote Hill of Elsdon, perhaps the most perfect earthwork of the kind in North- umberland. It is surrounded by entrenched works not only of the British inhabitants but of their Roman conquerors, who seem, indeed, to have occupied the Mote Hill itself, for in it two altars bearing the name of Aurelius Antoninus were found. From the antient British inhabitants has been 42 LECTlliKS AND ESSAYS. Saxon period. Ecclesiastical antiquities. derived the name of Otterburn, which is near the line of the Watling Street, and retained until lately some British earth- works. In the same distriet was Habitancum (now Ri- singham); and remains of nameless outlying Roman camps are found on the branches of Watling Street that traverse this part of the Roman province. But from Roman mili- tary works and altars, it is time to turn to those monuments in Northumberland which belong to the mediaeval period of its history, and are more interesting to ourselves. Of the dark interval between the departure of the Ro- mans and the conversion of Edwin, it is of course not to be expected that any monuments can be found, unless some of the remains of British settlement already referred to should really belong to that period. The followers of Woden seem to have raised a temple to their deity at the mouth of the Aln, for a Christian- edifice, now in ruins, which was probably its successor, was known even down to a century ago by the name of " Woden's Church." It is more interesting as the probable locality from which the royal embassy sailed forth to invite St. Cuthbert from his island hermitage on Fame : in modern times, this little port of the Aln acquired very different associations, for there w T as, during many years, a considerable shipment from it of corn and other agricultural produce; but the wasting sea has nearly swept away the antient church of Alnmouth that rose above the sand-hills; the railway has diverted its trade, and almost its only visitors are those few who come hither to woo Hygeia amid the sea-born gales. The ecclesiastical monuments of Northumberland have quite a peculiar character. It has a prominent place in the annals of the church and nation from the very earliest times, for its inhabitants were converted to Christianity before those of the West of England, and in its fountains Paulinus bap- tised converts soon after the mission of Augustine. In the far-off morning of Northumbrian Christianity, Aidan and Cuthbert, Oswald and Oswin, form a saintly and regal con- stellation; and religion, arts, and letters were cultivated by MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 43 Northumbrian monks — or perhaps by Scotish monks in Northumbrian monasteries — long before the days of Alfred, and in times when some other parts of England seem to have hardly emerged from barbarism. The Anglo-Saxon church had not a more fruitful field than this distant pro- vince, nor a period of greater historical lustre than that in which Northumberland was ruled by a monarch of its own. Sunny uplands on the slopes of Cheviot now traversed by the lonely shepherd were then seats of Saxon royalty ; Bam- burgh was the citadel of kings, and Hexham the dowry of a queen ; and the site of many a parish church in Northum- berland, now neglected and remote, was consecrated by its first apostles. The light of the Gospel, cherished by a regal convert, shone from Bamburgh while Christianity was being spread amongst its pagan natives. Hexham — the fifth church that was built of stone in Britain, and one of its chief glories — was the masterpiece of St. Wilfrid, the greatest of Anglo-Saxon church-builders; and near to it St. John of Beverley had lived a hermit beneath the " Eagle's Mount." The then royal abbey of Tynemouth was famed far to the Cleveland hills and northward to the Tweed; and the sanctity of Cuthbert gave a line of bishops to Lindisfarne. In that remote island, moreover, arts flourished from the seventh century, as we may see in the celebrated book of the Gospels, called " The Durham Book," now in the Cottonian Library, which was written and illuminated at Lindisfarne. The history of Northumberland during the Saxon period is more ample than that of any other part of England, but its architectural monuments cannot claim so high a degree of antiquity. Notwithstanding the picture drawn in Marmion of Lindisfarne, standing with the "deep walls" that had defied the Dane, the "ponderous columns short and low," and all the " Saxon strength " — That could twelve hundred years withstand Winds, waves, and northern pirate's hand ; and notwithstanding the belief of an enthusiastic ecclesiolo- 44 LECTURKS AND ESSAYS. Norman churches. Monastic remains. gist, who visited the county a few years ago, that he recog- nised Saxon work in the grey old towers of the sister- churches at By well and of Ovingham upon the Tync,it does not appear there is any undoubted Saxon architecture Standing above ground in any part of Northumberland, save such fragments as are built up with later work in va- rious churches; but on many ecclesiastical sites in this county Saxon foundations have been laid bare in the course of rebuilding or other alteration. The Norman period was the most important era for church-building in Northumberland. A large number of its parish churches date from the twelfth century, and in many of them the actual fabric is of that period. Norman piety also rebuilt the Saxon monasteries of Hexham, Lin- disfarne, and Tyncmouth, and founded five other abbeys. Northumberland, however, cannot boast a Tavistock or Woburn; its monastic foundations was generally more re- markable for antiquity than magnificence, and for saintly associations than for architectural splendour. Its parochial churches, too, are plain and stern ; no lofty spires adorn the landscapes of " mountainous Northumberland," nor are its religious edifices enriched by much architecture of the De- corated style. None of its villages or way-sides, and few of its churchyards, afford an example of those gray antique crosses which, abounding in the West of England, for example, consecrate the spot to Christian memories, nor docs monumental sculpture enrich many of its churches. All the monastic edifices in the county are in ruins except- ing the choir and transepts of the noble abbey church of Hexham, which became the parochial church some time after the dissolution of monasteries.* The monks must have owned no small part of Northum- berland. The Augustine Canons flourished at Hexham, * The nave was burnt by the Scots in 1296. In Hexham Abbey Church is preserved, however, one venerable and curious monument of its Saxon privi- b.pos— the stone chair called " Frith-stol," or scat of peace. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 45 also at Alnwick (where the Abbey was founded by that martial predecessor of the Percys of Alnwick, Eustace FitzJohn, the husband of Beatrice heiress of Ivo de Vesci); and at Brinkburn, where, girded by the Coquet, and shel- tered in deep woods, the walls of their church, a work of Norman and Transition architecture, remain. The Benedic- tines flourished on the bold sea-beaten cliffs of Tynemouth, and northward at Lindisfarne; the Carmelites at Ilulne, (the first monastery of that order founded in England,) and the Praemonstratensians at Blanchland on the wooded Der- went. The Cistercians — those pious men who from ambition's pathway stole To give their whole lives blamelessly to God were established at Newminster, eldest, and for a long time •only, daughter of princely Fountains ; — Newminster, whose abbat Eobert was canonized as of the holy company of heaven, and whose gray walls rose near Morpeth, on a secluded sunny meadow of the Wansbeck, set in an amphi- theatre of woods, and half-encircled by the peaceful shining stream. Many of the religious houses of Northumberland were defended in the manner of a castle, having their strong outer walls, and fortified gate-towers; others, like Blanchland and Brinkburn, seem to have relied for safety on their seclusion in deep-wooded river valleys, surrounded by wild and lonely moorlands, and far from the highways of the Northumbrian marauders. The island monastery of Lindisfarne was defended by a castle, but seems to have owed its exclusive immunity from pillage to the respect which even the Scots could own for Cuthbert, its patron saint. The monastic remains in Northumberland may be briefly described. The grand old Romanesque church of Lindis- Lindisfarne. fame, round which such memories crowd of Saxon bishops, wild sea-kings, and Norman monks, is the oldest monastic church in Northumberland. The episcopal dignity having been transferred to Durham before the Conquest, Lindis- farne was subsequently refounded as a priory or dependent AG LECTURES AND ESSAYS. bouse of the great Benedictine monastery upon the Wear. Here on Holy Isle no sound of strife or martial armament disturbed the recluses' prayer; from the cares of state and policy that beset the thorny splendour of Durham the monks of Lindisfarne were free; their cloister long re- sounded only to the cry of the waterfowl or the roar of the waves, and in the reign of Henry II. was celebrated as the " school of saints." The Surtecs Society has published that interesting series of v ' Account Rolls " of Lindisfarne which remain at Durham, and in these we may read the story of the house from year to year, and see the monks at their employments, at one time dispensing a yearly income equal to 2,000/. in our money, and at another by the failure of crops reduced to the very low ebb of 32/. They main- tained a great sea-fishery, and sold to their brethren at Durham porpoises and other fish then esteemed as delicacies' for episcopal feasts. They protected, and never presumed to destroy, those eider-ducks of which Fame has been the abode from the earliest times — a bird about which they cherished the harmless superstition that it had been miracu- lously preserved from the days of St. Cuthbert. These feathered children of the wave seem, like themselves, to have loved quiet, yet not to have shunned the society of man. It is very remarkable that on the barren Fame islands the wild waves have not the sole dominion, for, on several of these rocky islets, though swept by storm and sea-spray, the gentle eider-ducks, besides various tribes of noisy sea- fowl, breed and dwell.* The finest example of Transitional architecture in North- Ilexham Abbey umberland is the stately abbey church which the Augustine Canons raised at Hexham near the end of the twelfth cen- tury, above the curious crypt constructed partly with stones bearing Roman inscriptions, which, from its resemblance to * Their protection is highly creditable to Archdeacon Thorp. Besides the eider-duck, the dotterel and rare roseate tern may now be seen on the Fame islands. Hut ornithologists have to lament that the local catalogue of birds is elsewhere diminishing, and that rare birds are too often wantonly destroyed. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 47 the crypt at Ripon, seems to have been a subterranean part of Wilfrid's cathedral. At Tynemouth some portions of the early- English choir, Tynemouth. a structure of peculiar beauty, and considerable portions of the Norman church, remain, though the great waves have rolled beneath them and the wings of the sea-birds have swept them, for seven hundred years. But none of the build- ings of the monastery exist, the site and circuit having been a garrison from the time of the Dissolution — a strange contrast to the state of the priory in its palmy days, when its monks enjoyed a kind of separate regality, owned pa- rishes and manors scattered from the Tyne almost to the Cheviots, entertained sovereigns, and maintained a splendid hospitality. The ruins of Hulne Abbey crown a wooded height of Hulne. enchanting beauty upon the river Aln, and the remains, as well of the buildings as of the church of the Carmelites, are considerable.* Of Alnwick Abbey, -however, in the Alnwick, adjacent park, a fine gate-tower is all that remains. At Newminster there is only a solitary archway, amid grass- grown lines and mounds of ruined wall, to mark the site of that once famous Cistercian house. Of Brinkburn Priory Brinkburn. the church alone exists, but it stands comparatively entire, and presents fine examples of Transitional work, as stern in aspect as it is secluded from the world in situation. In the Anglo-Norman reigns England saw an age of Military anti- castle-building and of warlike manners, but an age which f^^aee " * The foundation of Hulne is attributed to somewhat romantic circum- stances. John de Vesci, lord of Alnwick, visited Mount Carmel with a com- panion Crusader before he succeeded to his inheritance, and there found that another Northumbrian knight, who had signalized his valour, had preceded him " To Bethlehem's glade, and Carmel's haunted strand," and had taken the vow and the Carmelite robe among the fraternity on the Mount. The ardent Crusaders, however, obtained permission for their coun- tryman to return with them, on their promising to found a house of Carmelite Friars ; and, being struck by the resemblance to Mount Carmel of the secluded hill on which the ruins of Hulne Abbey now stand, they selected it for the site of their monastery. 48 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. marked its -wonderful vigour by also building churches; just as in France, where many cathedrals, even, wore com- pleted in the time of Philip Augustus, notwithstanding the wars that characterise his reign. The parish churches of Northumberland are, for the most part, built with more of strength than ornament; and, in this respect, resemble the churches of Cornwall. Tiny have generally low, square, heavy towers, which seem also to have been used as places of defence ; and other architectural features bear the impress of the days of Border warfare, — ex. gr. narrow, deep-splayed windows, few and high, in the Norman walls, sometimes a roof of stone, and such other features (common in castel- lated architecture, but seldom seen in churches in the southern parts of England), as the square-headed trefoiled arch, and considerable massivencss in the walls. In many instances we have a campanile instead of a western tower, where a castle is adjacent, lest a church-tower should have afforded to the Border enemy a place of strength; and where there is not an adjacent castle a tower stood detached in the church -yard. Parish The most noticeable parish churches in the county are, those of Norham, Bamburgh, Warkworth, and Alnwick, in the northern division; Mitford and Morpeth on the Wansbeck; Hexham, By well, Ovingham, and By ton, upon the Tyne; and St. Nicholas in the town of Newcastle. Norham church is remarkable historically for its connection with the early bishops of the once princely sec of Durham, lords of " Norham's castled steep," and the frequent resi- dence there of Edward I. in his wars with Scotland. The church, which stands amidst trees in a beautiful situation, is a Norman fabric, massive and solemn in aspect, and almost cathedral-like in proportion. Bamburgh church is a fine early-English edifice with a beautiful crypt, and its earlier history is associated with the regal memories of the adja- cent castle, now the chief seat of the charities founded by Bishop Crewe. Warkworth has a chancel of late-Norman work with vaulted roof of stone ; and the fine church of churches. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 49 the Augustine Canons of Alnwick (St. Michael's, now the parish church) has good Middle Pointed work. At Oving- ham (an early-English transeptal church) and at By well, we have examples of a class of towers of, at all events, early- Norman date, with single belfry windows rude and severe in character.* At Newcastle, the small church which Osmund " the good," the Conqueror's nephew, is said to have built within the Roman Station, probably amidst the ruins of Saxon " Monkchester," was rebuilt on an enlarged plan in the reign of Edward III., and this edifice, famous for its light and graceful coronal spire, which surmounts the lantern-tower of Lancastrian days, is one of the largest (but, in the interior, most puritanical looking) parish churches in England. There are three other parochial churches in the town, one of which (St. Andrew's) is partly Norman; and formerly the walls of Newcastle in- closed also many monastic edifices; but, of these, few vestiges remain. In few of the churches of Northumberland are preserved sepulchral monuments earlier than the sixteenth century; but in the church at Chillingham a noble sepulchral monument, which presents good examples of the armour and costume of the period, and has only one equal in the northern counties, commemorates Sir Ralph Grey of Chillingham Castle, who died in 144-3, and Elizabeth his wife. In Bothal church there are recumbent figures of somewhat later date upon an altar tomb; and here and there, as at Wark worth, Hexham, and a few other churches, we come upon cross- legged effigies bearing on their shields of stone the heraldry of Northumbrian chieftains and Crusaders. Many of the parish churches have not recovered from the * In the peaceful churchyard of Ovingham rest the remains of Thomas Bewick, who perpetuated so many charming traits of Tyneside scenery in his characteristic engravings; and opposite to this spot, on a bold wooded slope, is Cherryburn, once the Bewicks'' home. Not far to the eastward of Oving- ham, also on the Tyne, is the birth-place of George Stephenson. It is an ordi- nary rude double cottage, but pleasantly situated near wooded knolls, and within sound of the rippling of the broad stream. E 50 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. forlorn and dismantled state in which they lay for a century and a half after the Reformation, a period during whiohsome were without glass to their windows, and some without font, priest, or congregation. Many an interior has still a cold, poor, and meagre aspect from the general want of stained glass and of architectural enrichment, and the prevalence of whitewash, and of pews " more suggestive of sleep than supplication;" several edifices have suffered moreover from ignorant church wardenisms hardly less destructive than Ravivalofarchi- fanatical zeal or Border hostility. But the revived taste for ecclesiastical architecture, which has been for more than thirty years past so beneficially active in other parts of Eng- land, has at length gained some ground in Northumberland ; new churches have risen, old churches have been restored, and the taste for church building and church restoration is seen even in remote localities. Thus, in the northern divi- sion of the county, Ford church has been restored ; at Etal a chapel designed by Mr. Butterfield has been built; the Norman church of Kirk Newton, at the foot of Yevering Bell, has been saved from ruin; and at the more famous church of Lindisfarne further dilapidations are (at least for the time) averted. The ruins of Brinkburn priory church, moreover, have been preserved, and Hexham abbey church has been freed from some tasteless and hideous defacements. Many costly churches in good architectural taste have been built — St. Peter's at Newcastle, St. Mary's (the Roman Catholic cathedral), St. James's at Morpeth, and St. Paul's at Alnwick, deserve particular mention. Warkworth too, as well as Lesbury, Cheswick, Bamburgh, the Fame island, and Kyloc, all present evidences of the revived feeling for the preservation of the ecclesiastical edifices and the revival of the ecclesiastical architecture of mediaeval days. But it is time to glance at the Military and Domestic Architecture of Northumberland. — Castles and There is not any class of historical monuments in this county so characteristic of past times as the remains of its feudal architecture ; indeed, to the eye of a traveller, the dis- towers. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 51 languishing features of Northumberland seem to be the many grey towers that mark its landscapes, and its larger baronial castles. Of the latter class of buildings, the castles of Alnwick, Wark worth, and Prudhoe, Dunstanburgh, Mor- peth, and Bothal, (of all which, only Alnwick is maintained entire,) Ford, Chillingham, and Langley were the chief examples; and, besides these, there are the once-royal castles of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Bamburgh, and Wark (the latter now reduced to a green mound), and Norham — once the northern stronghold of the mitred lords palatine of Durham. The castles and pele-towers of Northumberland were the Their general only domestic buildings that had any permanence or strength, character « and they form almost the only visible remains of its inhabit- ants during the middle ages. For example, in the extensive Border-parish of Elsdon, which is twenty miles in length, there is not a house a century old, excepting the fourteenth- century pele-tower immemorially appropriated as the rec- tory-house, nor is any old dwelling except the tower of Otterburn remembered. Indeed the whole county hardly affords a house like the Tudor mansion or manor-house so common in southern counties,* although there are houses that were built, and some pele-towers to which mansions were added, in the seventeenth century. The pele-towers or lesser strongholds have a character of their own ; their aspect seems in keeping with their situation, and many a tower now crumbling in decay is the scene of some stirring Border legend. They are, generally, square massive buildings, the ground floor vaulted, and the upper chambers reached by a narrow newel staircase; many are in fact built like little fortresses, in which the chieftain and his neighbours mioht defend their moveable goods on incursions of the enemy .f * Denton Hall, an old manorial-looking house with gabled roofs and mul- lioned windows, which stands about three miles westward from Newcastle, is however deserving of mention, and it has some associations of interest, inas- much as it was the residence of the literary Mrs. Montagu, in the family of whose husband it now remains, the house being the property of Lord Rokeby. f Even in the time of Dr. Dutens, rector of Elsdon, who died in 1812, the E 2 52 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Many a fortalice had for its owner? an old family of North- umbrian gentry,slow to abandon it for the comforts and ac- commodation afforded by the manorial residence of southern type; and it is, no doubt, for this reason that in Northum- berland scarcely any residences as distinguished from towers of defence are found of a date earlier than James I. In this respect, Northumberland alfords a striking contrast to some other counties — Somersetshire, for example, where there is hardly a village that has not its sixteenth-century house. The lawless and insecure condition of the Border lands until a much later time than even the days of the Stuarts de- layed the progress of improvement, and the dwellings of the yeomen, farmers, and peasantry retained a rude and primitive character, while those of the landowners continued to be lonely towers. In the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, as appears from the accounts of the " ministers " or crown re- ceivers after the dissolution of monasteries, thousands of acres remained wholly waste and unproductive, owing doubtless to their liability to be ravaged by the Scots and Moss troopers of the Border. Camden describes the herdsmen on the wastes of Northumberland as a sort of nomadic race, living in huts called scheles, from collections of which ancient schelings some places in the county derive their names, and, amongst them, even the populous port near the mouth of the Tyne, the site of which was occupied formerly by dwellings of the fishermen. But, with the civilization of the Borders, modern dwellings often came to be joined to the old tower. A good example of this addition is seen at Belsay, originally a square pele-tower of the time of Edward II., remarkable as the finest specimen of that kind of fortress in the county. And at Dilston — a place to which the sad fate of the chival- rous and' devoted young Earl of Derwent water has given a ground-floor of liis rectory tower there, remained the dark vault in which the cattle of preceding rectors had been housed by night ; the floor above, paved with stone, being used for kitchen and servants' lodging, and the upper floor lor studv and bedroom. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 53 melancholy interest — Sir Francis Radcliffe,his ancestor, built, early in the seventeenth century, a stately mansion which he annexed to the more ancient stronghold. At Cresswell, too, which still belongs to the Cresswell family, a long, low hall of two stories, of the time perhaps of Queen Anne, was added to the massive old tower * It was not until after the Restoration that their dangerous vicinity to the Scotish border ceased to influence the domestic economy of in- habitants of Northumberland, and from that period many of the modern additions to old fortress-houses date. It may be said, therefore, that all the domestic architecture of Northumberland which belongs to former ages is of a military character; and that at this day most of the chief seats in the county are either mediaeval castles and towers, characteristic of the old times of insecurity and strife, or mansions adapted to modern elegance and refinement. Besides a few mansions and eighteenth-century halls not pre- tending to castellated style, such asWallington and Howick, Cresswell and Bywell, or Eslington (Lord Bavensworth's charming seat in the wooded vale of Whittingham.) some imposing new structures have been built more recently in the form of old castles, such as Blenkinshope and Bcaufront, the latter of which is on the site of the old mansion of the Erringtons. Northumberland, however, can boast but few of those attractive seats surrounded by ancestral trees which abound in other parts of the country, and fewer still of those antique manor-houses— those old historic sixteenth- century houses — which, with shadowy gables, perhaps with battlement and moat, and royalist memories clustering round them like their ivy, adorn the stately parks of England in the South. No fewer than thirty-seven castles and seventy-eight towers are enumerated in a list of the castles and towers of Northumberland which was drawn up in 1460. Of the castles which then existed, eleven have disappeared, eighteen * The present residence, which was built adjacent to it during the present century, acknowledges Ihe more elegant requirements of modern times. 54 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. are more or loss in ruin, and only eight arc maintained Tor use and habitation. Castles formerly ^ c h;ul forfcresg t Bam|)ur h _ ruyal. o " King Ida's castle, huge and square," now private property, and modernized in the interior for residence; also at Newcastle, the keep-tower of which is a conspicuous and well-known feature of the town; atWark upon the Tweed the bishops of Durham (who, as lords palatine, exercised a sovereignty of their own,) had the stronghold of their Northern home (Nort-ham) " On Tweed's fair river, broad and deep," a building which even in its ruin has not lost its imposing grandeur; and a castle was built at Tynemouth by Robert de Mowbray, the Norman Earl of Northumberland, who re- founded the monastery there ; but the garrison buildings now called the Castle of Tynemouth have no claim to anti- quity, and few portions remain of the ancient surrounding walls that were maintained by the monks for their defence. Three of the castles in Northumberland date from a period even earlier than the reigns of Stephen and Henry II., in which such a great architectural movement took place throughout England; but several of the most important castles in this county were built in those reigns, and generally upon the model which was first introduced in the "White Tower of London, and derived from certain castles in Normandy. The largest and most imposing in situation, if not the Bambnrgb. oldest, of the Northern castles, is the once regal pile of Ba in burgh, built probably in the reign of Henry I. Here, as at Dover, outer walls (which at Bamburgh follow the irregular outline of the precipitous basaltic crags,) inclose an area, in the centre of which rises the square massive keep. A steep road, winding under the tower-crowned cliffs, leads to the citadel, and on the southern edge of the fortified inelosure stood the hall and chapel. Down to the time of the Union a constable of high rank governed the MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 55 castle for the Crown,* but, it having been sold by James I., and, in little more than a century afterwards, forfeited by Thomas Forster, the Northumbrian squire who made so unfortunate a figure in the Jacobite rising of 1715, Bam- burgh was purchased by Nathaniel Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham, and by him bequeathed to charitable uses. In the hands of his trustees, this old historic fortress, no longer armed against a foe, has long spread forth hands of mercy to mankind : there the young are educated and the destitute relieved, and charities are maintained which were aptly enough described as being to sailors shipwrecked on that coast what the convent of St. Bernard is to travellers on the Alps.f The chief room in the keep is applied to a purpose that its Norman builders never contemplated, for there a noble but little -known library reposes. Something should be done to restore the mediaeval character of Bam- burgh Castle, the repairs executed in the last century being in the worst possible taste. The fortress which gave its name to the town of New- The New Castle castle-upon-Tyne may be said to have commanded the on Tyne " northern frontier of England. Its erection is attributed to Robert Duke of Normandy, and it occupies a plateau where probably he found some buildings of the Roman castle then in existence. The Norman stronghold before long looked down upon a rising town to which ships resorted as in the Roman days; and in the reign of John it had become a port of some importance,! an d seems to have then had some * In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was the subject of an in- teresting series of mandates, highly illustrative of Northern history, which are preserved among the Liberate Rolls at the Tower of London. t Qu. Rev. xxxix. p. 399, where the charities of Bamburgh are characterised as the most extensively useful, as well as munificent, of our eleemosynary foundations : whether as extensively useful as they might be is, however, doubtful. X Out of 4,958/. contributed to the Crown in King John's reign by all the ports of the Eastern and Southern coast, Newcastle paid 158/. Mr. Hodgson Hinde estimates the population of Newcastle 150 years afterwards, viz. in 1377, at nearly 4,000, and in 1548 at 10,000. The latter estimate seems beyond the mark. The population of Newcastle now, however, approaches 100,000. The customs duties received at the port in 1852 amounted to 327,677/. 56 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. trade with Norway. Skins of beavers, sables, squirrels, martins, luxes, and goats, besides wool, were then exported from the Tvne. Under Edward I. the Norman fortress was expanded somewhat on the plan of Conway and Carnarvon, and surrounded by walls defended by nine towers, which were called alter baronies in Northumberland charged with their maintenance; but of these surrounding defences there are no remains excepting a gate-tower in which old-elothes dealers have succeeded to armourers and warders. In the Scotish campaigns this castle had particular importance, and here the kings of England often resided; but after the Union its dignity departed: James I. sold it into private hands, and for a long time the keep of the PlantagenetS became a county prison, and their royal free chapel was suffered by the Newcastle municipality to be used as a beer- cellar; but happily it is now the fashion to respect and pre- serve historical monuments, and the old castle after all its vicissitudes is in the care of the local Antiquarian Society, and appropriated to its collections and meetings. The dark, frowning keep, still entire, forms an interesting example of the military architecture of the Norman days. The town itself was probably walled as early as the reign of Edward I., at all events it Avas then inclosed by a circuit of massive walls with gate-towers, considerable portions of which re- mained down to about thirty years since, when, however, the defences that had withstood Time, the Scots, and the Civil Wars yielded to town-improvement, before whose march the many religious houses that once flourished in Newcastle have also fallen. But on the river-bank called the Sand- hill, formerly and still the merchants' quarter, there are some many-storied timber houses, with overhanging fronts and casemented windows, which have stood for perhaps tliree centuries. From their former inhabitants many families now received amongst the gentry of Northumberland have sprung. In one of these houses lived. Mr. Surtccs the lather of the first Lady Eldon, and from it she eloped with the future Chancellor. In Sandgate — an adjacent locality — MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 57 lived Scott the prosperous yeoman, whose son William be- came Lord Stowell, and whose younger son John became Lord Eldon; but, although he followed the trade of "fitter" (a sort of coal-broker^) on the Tyne, he it is said could boast among remote ancestors no less a person than Sir Michael Scott the Wizard, whose fame has been perpetuated by a more lawful magician. The Grammar-school in which these distinguished brothers were pupils was then held in the chapel of the old hospital of St. Mary in the West-gate (to which it had been removed when the school became a royal foundation in the 42nd of Queen Elizabeth), and there Hutton was mathematical master. In the same school, Cuthbert, afterwards Admiral Lord Collin gwood (also a native of Newcastle,) was educated until, at the age of eleven, he went to sea; and there Akenside not many years before received the first part of his education; but, notwith- standing its associations and the remonstrances of archaeolo- gists, the building was demolished a few years ago for approaches to the new Railway Station. In the higher part of Newcastle, a new town of tall stone-fronted houses — overspreading what had been the secluded garden of a nunnery — rose about twenty-five years ago, and the new streets in many places intersect those of the old town, so that Newcastle presents a strange combination of buildings; it may well be called a "surprising place for, its history, trade, buildings, social economy, and smoke." In striking contrast to the spreading town upon the Tyne, with its noisy traffic and busy population, stands the Norbam. time-worn dark-red sandstone pile of Norham upon the Tweed, which was built by a Bishop of Durham in the reign of -Henry I., not long after the new castle on the Tyne. The privileges which the episcopal lords of Noiham granted to their little town were such as might have made it the Newcastle of the Tweed, if they could have only brought the tide so far. Traces of military architecture of various periods are found in this ruined castle. But the square and massive keep — 58 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. " Where whilom kings did make repair," is now reduced to a mere shell crumbling on its steep and rocky banks — a scene of ruin and repose that recals sonic old-world town of Normandy, and Tennyson's picture of a decayed castle — " Here had fallen great part of a tower Whole, like a crag that tumbles from the cliff, And like a crag 'twas gay with wilding flowers; And, high above, a piece of turret stair Worn by the feet that now are silent, wound Bare to the Sun." It is much to be lamented that, while a taste for architec- tural improvement has been manifested in so many of the old historic buildings of Northumberland, Norham Castle, like Dunstanburgh, Etal, Edlingham, and some other castles, is falling more and more into decay. Wark. Upon a steep precipice above the Tweed stood another royal castle, viz. Wark, originally built by Walter Espcc, the noble founder of Rievaulx Abbey, but reconstructed in the reign of Henry II. This frontier fortress became of great importance to the Crown during the wars with Scot- land, and was in 1342 the scene of a somewhat romantic incident described by Froissart* David of Scotland and his army, on their return from slaughtering the monks and people of Durham, encamped under Wark Castle, laden with church-plate and spoil. The Earl of Salisbury, constable of the fortress, was absent when it was beleaguered by the Scots, and the little garrison fell to the command of the youthful countess, the beauty of the age, who defended it while the King of England was advancing against the enemy, and there she 1 entertained Edward and his chivalry right nobly, but much to the disturbance of the young monarch's peace, who according to some historians not only instituted the Order of the Garter in her honour, but did so in commemoration of this event. The castle afterwards came to the chivalrous family * c. 77. The story is related in Brady's Hist, of Edw. III. p. 254. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 59 of Grey, and in 1623 Sir William was created Lord Grey of Wark, but the dignity became extinct in 1706. Of Wark Castle little but rubble of the foundations now remains. The chief baronial castle in Northumberland is that of Alnwick Castle Alnwick, which was built by Eustace de Vesci about 700 years ago, and still retains some portions of the Norman fortress. The castle and barony were acquired by Henry de Percy in 1309, and it is at this day a residence of the noble inheritor of the dignities and possessions of that great historic family. The most important portions of the existing castle were the work of the second Henry de Percy, lord of Alnwick, who defeated David king of Scotland at Neville's Cross — a nobleman who, seen in his deeds of martial valour and his works of architectural splendour, forms a very com- manding figure in the history of his time. An adequate idea of the importance of these old Percys in the age in which they lived can only be derived from the public records of the realm: their power and prominence were such that their history is almost the history of England, and their piety and munificence constantly meet us in the churches and monastic chartularies of the North, just as we see at this day the Percy crescent sculptured on many a building in Northumberland — and very suggestive is the contrast between the peaceful dominion which that badge now marks and the time when it gleamed on the banner of the earls in the pride of warlike array, or when the " Percy's silver crescent set in blood." It would be foreign to the scope of this memoir to sketch the genealogy of the Percy line from the time when William Le Gernons, the Conqueror's companion in arms, exchanged the slopes of his native Percy for Northumbrian moors. Suffice it to say that Henry, son of the Henry de Percy who acquired Alnwick, and died in 1315, succeeded him as second lord, and in the service of Edward III. — to whom he seems to have been hardly inferior in importance — ran a career full of honour. It was he who superseded the square Norman keep by a picturesque cluster of seven semicircular 60 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. towers, inclosing a large court-yard, and surrounded by an area defended by curtain-walls with towers, and entered through a strong barbican and between lofty walls. His grandson, who became the first Karl of Northumberland, was the father of Hotspur, the hero whose ardour shone on the field of Ottcrburn, and with whom the Lion of North- umberland fell in the fatal conflict at Shrewsbury. The family honours were restored in 1414 to the Earl's grandson, and he became the second great builder of his race, for he repaired the decay into which Alnwick Castle had fallen, Warkworth anf l lnult tnc keep at Warkworth, which castle and manor Castle. had been acquired by the second Lord Percy. Its chief feature is the magnificent octagonal keep which this noble- man (the second Earl of Northumberland) added to the Norman castle of the FitzRichard family, and its walls and the vaulted chambers of its lower story are still strong and massive. In the adjacent area arc impressive remains of the Norman and the Edwardian structures, where now " Through fractured arch and doorway freely pass The sunbeams into halls o'ergrown with grass; The floors unroofed are open to the sky, And the snows lodge there when the storm sweeps by." But the grey old keep has not lost all its feudal dignity. Its aspect, notwithstanding that it is roofless and is sur- rounded by ruined walls, seems worthy of the associations which history and Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth connect with Warkworth Castle; for, unlike the keep of Alnwick which was almost rebuilt about ninety years ago, its medi- aeval structure, and character have at least remained unim- paired by any modern alterations, and, " Like veteran worn but unsubdued," it looks forth on land and sea as if still maintaining the pride of the ancient Percys. The interior presents a very characteristic and unexpected scene, for the guard-rooms and other gloomy vaulted chambers on the entrance-floor MEMOIR OX NORTHUMBERLAND. 61 (beneath winch are still more rayless dungeons) remain perfect and in their former strength, like shapely caverns hewed in a rock of solid stone ; and the walls of the once beautiful chapel, of the dining- hall, and the various chambers and domestic offices connected with it, which occupy the floor above the floor of entrance, are still massive and entire, and, though now open to the sky and a resting-place of the sea-birds, afford an impressive example of the baronial state of other days. The imposing fragments of the older keep, the chief tower of entrance, and the curtain-walls that surround the whole plateau of the fortified inclosure, are for the most part of Norman date. But at Warkworth the castle is not the only interesting monument of the Past, for, on the opposite side of the river, among the deep woods seen from the rampart, are the cells — excavated like a grotto in the sandstone cliff, and over- hung by trees — to which the well-known ballad gives ro- mantic associations as the work and former abode of the " Hermit of Warkworth : "— " The chief, a chapel, neatly arched, On branching columns rose ; " a chantry, probably, that was founded by the third Earl Percy for Mary Plantagenet his wife. Castle and hermitage, wood, rock, and water, combine so many picturesque features at Warkworth, that it has long been a favourite subject with artists; and, as the keep with its tall watch-tower is seen far and wide over the country and the coast, it is quite a fami- liar object to the traveller. While the feudal pile rises at the higher end of the accli- vity on which the wide street of Warkworth is built, the still older edifice of religion — the parish church — stands at its lower end upon the river bank. The church is a Norman structure built on foundations of the earlier church of Saxon days. With its venerable associations and its Norman features (the most striking is a vaulted stone roof to the chancel), some defacements of the Georgian era — such as sash-windows, 62 LECTURES AM) ESSAYS. sordid pews, hideous galleries, decaying wood-work, white- wash, and green mould, were sadly out of keeping; but these have lately been swept away — a welcome though tardy proof that the revived feeling of reverence for churches, and of taste for church architecture, is now extending in Northumberland. Works in pro- In the long and disastrous interval before the ancient greaa at Alnwick nonoui . s f the Percy family were revived with the ducal Castle. J J coronet of Northumberland, Alnwick Castle suffered great dilapidation, and in the latter half of the last century it was still more injured by alterations in what was at that time sup- posed to be the Gothic style. The towers clustered in the central keep were then converted into large reception rooms, and the whole castle underwent such an injurious transform- ation that it lost its ancient feudal dignity of aspect without acquiring either comfort or fitting splendour. The present duke, who may be called the third great builder in the Percy family, therefore formed and is now completing a magnificent design for the purpose of restoring to the exterior of his castle its mediaeval dignity, and providing a new and sumptuous interior, which is being enriched with carvings and decorations designed from churches and palaces of Italy. These costly works are naturally attracting much attention to Alnwick, and the fitness of a Renaissance style of ornament for the interior of a feudal castle in Northum- berland has been much debated ; but at all events the archi- tecture of former times really worthy of preservation has been carefully preserved, and Alnwick Castle is acquiring the splendour which the greatest historical edifice in the North of England should display. Dunstanhurgh. The other baronial strongholds may be briefly men- tioned. Dunstanburgh Castle, which was built by Thomas Earl of Lancaster in 1315 (about the time of the completion of the Edwardian works at Alnwick), is one of the most picturesque objects in Northumberland. It is built on basaltic crags on a rocky peninsula, beneath whose preci- pices the billows " leap and fall," — a situation well adapted MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. G3 for defence : the entrance is guarded by two circular towers of a height and breadth exceeded only by the " Eagle Tower " of Caernarvon ; but the archway is the only part of the castle that is not in ruins. The ruins of Prudhoe Castle, crowning a green eminence Prudhoe. on the south bank of the river, are familiar to all travellers in the valley of the Tyne. To the ancestor of the Umfra- villes — Kobert-with-the-beard — the Conqueror gave the barony of Prudhoe and that of Redesdale, which was then a wild forest tract, to hold by the honourable service of defending that part of the country from wolves and the king's enemies, with the sword which King William wore when he entered Northumberland. The castle was origin- ally built in the reign of Stephen, by Odonel de Umfraville, and resisted a siege by William the Lion of Scotland; but at no very distant period from the days of its Norman strength the castle, like the family, declined from its high estate. The ruins present interesting architectural features, especially a domestic chapel of the end of the thirteenth century, remarkable for the earliest known example of an oriel window. In 1381, Gilbert, the last of the Umfravilles, died, and, his widow marrying Henry de Percy, first Earl of Northumberland, the castle and barony of Prudhoe became a property of the Percys, and gave a title which was borne for many years by the present Duke of Northumberland, who has given it fame in the annals of science. With Prudhoe is connected the early history of Harbotle ("the high dwelling"), which lies on the verge of a wild and un- frequented district in Redesdale, for it was anciently a stronghold of the Umfraville family. After becoming a refuge for the Redesdale men, and a prison for their Border foes, the castle fell into decay. In a situation of great strength and picturesque beauty, Mitford. near the confluence of the two bright streams of the Wans- beck and the Font, is Mitford Castle, which was built between 1150 and 1170, upon the model of Gisors in Nor- mandy, by William Bertram the noble founder of Brink- G-t LECTURES AND ESSAYS. burn Priory. From a remote period this fortress, whether in English or Scotish hands, was conspicuous in history; in it William the Lion resided; in it Roger Bertram confede- rated with the Barons against Henry III.; and to it Gilbert de Midelton, a Northumbrian chief and freebooter, conveyed his princely captive Louis de Beaumont, Bishop of Durham, in the reign of Edward II. Mi t ford stands on a loftv rock in a moated plateau: the keep is in ruins, and the ramparts that environed the hill lie in shattered masses overgrown by trees. Of the adjacent Norman stronghold of the De Mer- Morpetb. lavs, at Morpeth, only some curtain-walls remain: a later gate-tower has recently been repaired for offices of the agent of the noble owner, Lord Carlisle. A similar but finer gate-tower, and fragments of surrounding walls, are all Uothal. that remain of the neighbouring castle of Bothal ; formerly a barony of the Bertram family, and of the Lords Ogle in the reign of Elizabeth, but now inherited by the Duke of Portland. Ford. Ford Castle, in the north of the coiinty, stands on an eminence above the river Till, and in view of the hills of Flodden. It is an edifice of imposing aspect; but two massive corner-towers, apparently of fourteenth-century date, are its only ancient portions: high up a turret-stair in one of these towers is the chamber in which King James is said to have slept on the night before the battle of Flodden Field. It attained castellated dignity early in the reign of Edward III. when its owner was Sir William Heron, who married the heiress of Odonel de Ford, and from whom the baronial family of Heron of Ford descended. Langley. At Langley, which is near Haydon Bridge upon the Tyne, a mere shell remains of the baronial stronghold of the lords of Tyncdalc — a picturesque building of grey stone, of imposing appearance, and much resembling a Norman keep, but of the date 1345 to 1365. It was confiscated after the so-called rebellion of James last Earl of Derwentwater. Ciiiilinghani. Chillingham Castle (the property of the Earl of Tanker- ville, as representative of the ancient family of Grey of MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 65 Wark,) concludes the list of the castles of feudal ages of which any considerable portions remain, but it is not of much interest to the antiquary. The park, however, is celebrated for the formidable wild cattle which have been its inhabitants from time immemorial. These animals are similar to the herd of wild cattle still inhabiting the antient forest tract of Cadzow, near Hamilton Palace, supposed to represent the aboriginal race of the Scotish forests, to which Sir Walter Scott alludes : — Mightiest of all the beasts of chase That roam in woody Caledon, Crashing the forest in his race, The mountain bull comes thundering on : Fierce on the hunter's quivered band He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, Spurns with black hoof and horn the sand, And tosses high his mane of snow. These animals are of middle size, and are perfectly white except at the ears, but the hoofs and horns are black. They are remarkable for symmetry of form and gracefulness in action, but are perfectly wild and untamed, and dan- gerous when exasperated. Professor Owen has remarked on the essential differences between the white cattle ol Chillingham and our domestic cattle, and he considers the colour, the dewlap, and other characteristics, to indicate that they are descendants of the sacred Brahmin bull. He seems disposed to regard them, not as belonging to an abori- ginal stock of British cattle, but as probably obtained from India through the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, and introduced to Britain by the Roman colonists. The present number of the herd at Chillingham is about sixty.* One would not expect to find upon a lonely eminence by the river Till, the former home of the great family of * A bull lately slaughtered weighed between five and six hundred pounds. The flesh is dark, but tender and juicy, and is said to have a game flavour. G6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Manners: their ancestors, however, had their stronghold Etui. from the time of Henry II. at Etal Castle. It was deserted « by its owner Sir Thomas Manners, ancestor of the Duke of Rutland, for the more peaceful and splendid halls of Belvoir, on his marriage with the heiress of De Roos, and the antient stronghold has disappeared. Bywell. A gate-tower called By well Castle is the only architectural monument of the Barony of the Balliols, and even this tower was raised after the property had come to the Nevilles, Earls of Westmorland, whose possessions were forfeited on the rising in 1569. It is now the property of Mr. W. B. Beau" mont, whose Tyneside mansion, Bywell Hall, stands adjacent in pleasing woodland scenery. Five miles to the northward from Tynemouth on the Seaton Oeiaval. Seaton Delaval estate, now inherited by Lord Hastings, there formerly stood a castle of the Delavals, but the only relic is a Norman chapel, with double chancel arch, whieh stands amidst the trees that surround the ruins of the modern hall. The family flourished in Northumberland from the coming of the Normans. At the time of the Restoration, it was represented by Sir Ralph Delaval, who has left a curious monument of his enterprising character at his little port of Seaton Delaval, for he built piers, and cut a sluice through the solid sandstone cliffs to form an entrance to the harbour, closing the seaward opening with booms of timber after the manner of a portcullis. The honours of the family had be- come extinct when Admiral George Delaval (of the Dissing- ton branch), who was employed on embassies to Portugal and Morocco in the reign of Queen Anne, purchased the Seaton Delaval estates, and, with Vanbrugh for his architect, began to build the stately hall of Italian architecture, which in the latter half of last century was the scene of the hospi- talities of the later Delavals. In their time it was famous for strange practical jokes, of which their guests were frequently the victims; but of these once gay halls of pleasure a de- structive fire, which occurred in 1822, has left only a scathed and ruined shell. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 67 Of the lesser strongholds or Border towers many have dis- Lesser strong- appeared within the last four hundred years ; some have been holds - incorporated with modern buildings; a few are maintained in habitable condition, but the greater part are in decay. Of those which are kept up for residence, Belsay, already men- tioned, is architecturally the most interesting; and Haughton Castle, in the valley of the North Tyne, is also remarkable as a fine specimen of this kind of fortalice. The old tower of Featherston, on the wild and wooded banks of the South Tyne, formerly the inheritance of an historic family of Northumberland, is a good example of a pele tower, merged, so to speak, in a modern castellated mansion. For beauty and natural strength of situation, none of these old buildings are more remarkable than Staward Pele, which like a pharos- tower crowns a narrow promontory where the eastern and western branches of the Allen river meet under those wooded banks, on which, nearer to the Tyne, are formed the sylvan walks of Ridley Hall. Some of these old fortress towers stand as if still guarding lonely passes in the Border hills ; some, that formerly saw the frequent inroad of hostile forces, stand dismantled and decaying by highways that are now seldom trod; some, half hidden by trees, crown a precipitous bank above a rocky stream now sought only by the angler or the lover of scenery ; and here and there upon the coast is a tower that now looks upon no other enemy than the wasting sea; but all, in their stern character and struc- ture, mark the lawless ages through which they stood; — all take back our thoughts to times when life and property were insecure, and when the owner depended on his own vigilance and his weapons for his daily food. Yet in this county a large number of the estates con- Vicissitudes in tinued hereditary in one line of succession for centuries.* wn rs ip The confiscations which followed the events of 1715, pro- * Probably, however, there are not many such examples as the estate of Angerton near Morpeth, which descended from the Bolbecks, its owners in the time of Henry I. to the Howards Earls of Carlisle, and was held by that family until the late Earl sold it to Mr. Ralph Atkinson. F 2 68 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. duccd a greater change in the ownership of landed property in Northumberland than all the vicissitudes of time since the Norman Conquest, and caused the destruction not only of many an ancient family of gentry, but of many an ancient fbrtalice. So lell ■ the tower of Widdrinjfton — Mother of many a valiant son ; so fell the RadclifFe's towers of Dilston and Cartington and Langley, and the houses of many other families in whom loyalty was as hereditary as land * The Northumberland gentry seem to have suffered beyond those of any other county for their fidelity to the Stuart cause. Yet it is curious to find amongst the freehold tenants in North Tyne- dale six centuries ago many names still found in that district; for example, William dc Swinburne (who was treasurer to the English princess Margaret, Queen of Scotland) held the lands now possessed by Sir John Swinburne, his representa- tive, and Charlton holds what Adam, de Charleton held. Some pele-towers seem to have been themselves perpetua- ted by the church they were built to protect, as at Hexham, where there is a strong tower of the days when the Arch- bishops of York held their regality of Hexham shire ; and at Corbridge, on the Tync, where a tower of the time of Ed- ward II., formerly the priest's residence, stands adjacent to the church, and affords an interesting specimen of this kind of fortified dwelling ; at Elsdon, too, the tower of the Umfra- villes is preserved as the rectory, and the fortified tower at liothbury has been the rector's residence from early times. No longer needed for defence, these Border-towers, so characteristic of the rude and troubled times gone by, are now mere picturesque objects in a peaceful landscape, where * The ruined fortalice of Cartington, which stands, in beautiful scenery, three, miles northward from Rothhury, has historical associations of some interest, for in the 29tli Hen. VI. it belonged to John Cartington, whose only child, heiress of Cartington and Dilston, carried those estates, with other lands, to the family of Radcliffe of Derwentwater, by her marriage to Sir Edward Radcliffe, ancestor of the short-lived Earls of Derwentwater. MEMOIR ON NORTHUMBERLAND. 69 tlieir existence only serves to bring the past in striking con- trast with the present, and to heighten the gratitude of all dwellers on the Border-lands for the peace and security they now enjoy. " In such houses," said Lord Monboddo to Dr. Johnson when they were standing before his wild-look- ing tower in Scotland, " our ancestors lived, and they were better men than we." "No," said the Doctor, " we are as strong as they, and a great deal wiser." With this rapid glance at the chief historical monuments of Northumberland, it is time to bring the present Memoir to a close. Upon a retrospect of the objects to which the readers attention has been directed, few things, perhaps, are more striking than the fact that in this county British chief- tains, Roman governors, Saxons, Scandinavians, Normans, and feudal lords have all left their characteristic monuments. As to the far-off time when a Celtic people brought hither their Gaulish traditions, some of the earliest works of man maybe seen in this county; probably, indeed, no rock-sculp- tures, stone-circles, mote-hills, or graves can be found in Britain older than those that remain in Northumberland. Hilly regions, that are now lonely solitudes, must evidently have been once a most populous part of this island; and the British camps, gray monoliths, stone-circles, and green sepulchral mounds, that still border the Watling Street and are scattered on the hills in adjacent localities, are but a small part of what the Roman legions saw when Ctesar invaded Britain. Then, of the Roman period, the remains are characteristic as well as numerous, and, to crown them, there is the Roman Wall. Even of the dark period follow- ing the departure of the Romans and before the Middle Ages began, Northumberland, as the reader has seen, pos- sesses monuments; and when we come to the feudal age, from which period its most memorable localities were battle- fields, and during which history draws so dark a picture of its state, we find a distinguishing feature of this county to be the stern monuments of mediaeval times that rise in almost every part of it. Then, turning to its inhabitants, 70 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. we see that those turbulent and warlike ages have not passed "without leaving their impress on the character of the people as well as of their buildings. The scenes marked by Border chivalry and national conflict in former days, the ancient superstitions, and the legends handed down from sire to son, are commemorated in ballad poetry and popular tradition ; and highly interesting is this folk-lore in Northumberland, as might be expected from the character and variety of the people who have contributed to it. As regards the Christian antiquities of this part of England, the reader will have observed that the connection of most of them with the Anglo-Saxon church surrounds those sacred monuments with its own hist 01 "ic splendour, but that their present con- dition is little in keeping with their associations. Finally, if the mutability of all things on the earth is seen in the edifices of religion, so the student of genealogy finds that there is no part of this country in which the vicissitudes of families read a more impressive lesson of the evanescence of human glory. AUCKLAND CASTLE. A Paper read before the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Dur- ham and Northumberland, assembled at Auckland Castle by invitation of the Lord Bishop of Durham, Sept. 29, 1862. [Ecclesiologist, February, 1863.] The architectural importance of this old historic building cannot be regarded, in its present state, as at all commensurate with the dignity of its associations, although its chapel is a very noble relic of the ecclesiastical art of other clays ; but there is enough in the history of this ancient seat of prelates to render it well worthy the attention of an archaeological, if not of an architectural, association. Auckland Castle — the only one of the many castles, halls, and manor-houses formerly belonging to the see which now remains the bishop's residence — is remarkable not only for having been a favourite abode of the see of Durham for more than seven centuries, but for the memories which some of the most illustrious of her bishops have associated with this ancient seat of piety, munificence, and learning. Although now and for long- past termed a castle, it was not dignified by that appellation until late in the fifteenth century, and it has not been the scene of any very memorable events in national history. It did not stand forth during the middle ages in the Norman might of the castle of the bishops at Durham, nor did it resemble the fortress of Xorham, their northern home upon the Tweed. At Auckland no dark, massive keep frowned defiance on beleaguering foes; nor from its gates did the mitred earls of the palatinate lead forth a martial band. Auckland appears to us in history rather as the spot to which, in turbulent and warlike times, the bishops loved to with- er -• 72 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. draw from strile, to seek the peace of God, and to rejoice in His gifts of natural beauty amidst the lonely and tranquil woodlands of the Wear. In a long previous age the green dells of the park were the resort of the Roman soldiers who maintained their camp on the adjacent mount, now called Binchcstcr, by the Watliug Street or great military way; and their sepulchral urns have been found by the rocky stream of the Gaunless, not far below the castle. It has been conjectured that the Romans also fortified the ridge on which Auckland Castle itself stands, and maintained there an outpost subsidiary to their great camp on the opposite hill at Bin- chester; but, be this as it may, Auckland first appears in history very soon after the sec had been founded at Durham, for it is mentioned as part of the gift conferred on the see of Durham by Canute the Dane. Of Auckland during the Norman era history affords hardly any glimpse. But in the survey called Boldon Book, compiled in the year 1183 by order of Hugh Pudscy the powerful and magnifi- cent Bishop of Durham, we have proof that Auckland had then become an episcopal abode. The definition there recorded of services rendered by tenants in lieu of rent gives a pleasant picture of the simple manners of the time, and of the residence of the early bishops on this spot. The record brings before us provi- sions for the enjoyment of the chase, and for the exercise of hos- pitality; we see the oxen of the bishop's neighbouring tenants ploughing his land, or carting his wine, or carrying his wood for fuel; the husbandman sowing seed, or making hay, or reaping the bishop's crops; the miller grinding the bishop's corn, and other tenants bringing eggs, poultry, and other produce. Then, too, we almost behold, in records of another kind, viz. the mor- tuary rolls or inventories of each bishop's personal possessions at his death, — the rich plate and the illuminated manuscripts, which, even in those early ages, accompanied the prelate as he moved about from castle to castle or manor to manor, and which gene- rally came afterwards to enrich his abbey-church. — we see the bishop surrounded by his court and his retainers; and here, far from camps, and oblivious of the thorny state and splendour of the feudal castle, celebrating high festivals of the Christian year. AUCKLAND CASTLE. 73 That the duties of religion were not forgotten amidst the amuse- ments of secular life we see from the noble domestic chapel that has come down to our times at Auckland, and from the inventory rolls extant at Durham from the death of the second Norman bishop to the death of Cardinal Langley. These almost bring before our eyes the commanding figure of Carileph himself, in his gold-embroidered robe ornamented with gryphons and other quaint devices, and faintly shadow forth many another noble form in the long line of Durham's sovereign prelates. In these records, too, we see them only as bishops, habited in the vestments of church ceremonial, and divested of the coats of mail and warlike attributes in which we meet them in our national history. What kind of building stood here in Bishop Pudsey's day we can only conjecture. That it was a fabric with massive stone walls, though not havino - the form and characteristics of a castle or any important chamber except a great hall, is probable; for in those times of turbulence and insecurity all great men dwelt in fortified houses. Perhaps the architectural works of Bishop Pudsey that remain in other parts of his diocese, and the digni- fied character of such features of the chapel as connect it with his time, justify the inference that there was some corresponding stateliness in the bishop's palace at Auckland even in Pudsey's day. But history throws not a ray of its pale light on those for- gotten walls. The Bishop of Durham was often not only the King's chief minister of state and companion in his wars, but also his host when the King came into the North. The first royal visit to Auckland of which we read is that of King John, who came here on the 18th April, 1209, in which year he led a great army against Scotland, and frightened the King into paying eleven hundred marks of silver, and delivering over his two daughters as hostages for securing the treaty. The restless King of England came again on the 11th of April in the following year, and soon afterwards we find the name of Ernald de Auckland connected with King John ; for Ernald's dogs captured a wolf in the park at Freemantle, and his groom received five shillings from the King on bringing him the wolf. Frequently as succeeding kings of England were in the North j (t2 74 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. especially during the wars with Scotland, Auckland — probably because ol'its situation, or perhaps because it was not a defensible castle — escaped the costly honour of again receiving the sovereign and his followers until the time of Edward III. But, meantime, let us glance at its state under early bishops of Durham. The architectural history of Auckland is connected with one of her greatest prelates — the magnanimous Anthony Beck, son of Walter lord of Eresby in Lincolnshire, who became Bishop of Durham on the 9th of July, 1283, and was (somewhat curiously) celebrated as "the most valiant bishop of the realm." The life of Bishop Beck seems to have been spent chiefly in the court and the camp. One of his exploits in the Scottish wars was to attend Edward I. with a large army arrayed under the banner of St. Cuthbert; and he held dignities which no one of the other bishops of Durham ever attained, or perhaps desired, inasmuch as he was Patriarch of Jerusalem and King of the Isle of Man (for the shadowy crown of that island kingdom, which, after the death of Magnus, last King of Man of the old Norwegian dynasty, is seen at one time worn by a Scottish monarch, and at another bestowed by Edward of England as Lord Paramount of Man, rested afterwards on this warlike prelate and lord palatine of Durham): so that one would think he had little time for building. Graystanes (the monk of Durham who wrote in the reign of Edward III.) says, hoAvever, that Beck " constructed the manor-house of Auckland, with a chapel and chambers, in a most sumptuous way ;" and that he made provision for chaplains to serve for ever in the chapel. Godwin adds (but I do not know on what authority) that this bishop "incastellated" the ancient manor-place of Auckland; "and he built," continues Godwin, " the great hall, wherein were divers pillars of black marble speckled with white; also the great cham- ber and many other rooms adjoining; and erected a goodly chapel there of well-squared stone, and placed in the same a dean and twelve prebendaries, allotting the quadrant in the west side of the castle for their habitation." The roll of Bishop Beck, containing an account of his receipts and expenses apparently for the year 1308, contains, moreover, the following item: — " To Geoffrey, the bailiff of Auckland, for building the chapel of Auckland, 148/. ;" and that large sum, be it remembered, is equivalent to more than 2,000/. of the money of our day. AUCKLAND CASTLE. 75 It was probably on the dedication feast that the Archbishop of York came to Auckland : at all events, the same roll contains an entry of 34s. Id. for " the expenses of the archbishop at Auck- land for one night." From the same roll it would appear, that* out of the savings of Beck's enormous income, he deposited, in little more than a year, in the hands of foreign bankers, a sum total equivalent to little short of 80,000Z. in our money. Edward I. seems to have admired Bishop Beck's plate, embroidered vest- ments, and paraphernalia very much; for, after his death, cups and flagons of gold, tents, and a cloth of embroidered work, were bought by the King, and the purchase-money, represented in our currency, is little short of 20,000/. The bishop's vest- ment of red cloth of Tartary, embroidered with archangels in gold, had. been lent to the King of England on his way to Scot- land, and there lost in the war. Nothing memorable concerning Auckland occurs for the next thirty years. The northern counties were, during all that period, incessantly harassed and wasted by the wars begun by the mighty and invincible Edward, and continued by his feeble successor; and the bishops, even when they retired to Auckland, did not escape the sound Of wars and tumults far away. The stately cathedral church of Durham, completed by the care of a line of prelates and priors reaching back to the days of Carileph, had now acquired the height of its splendour; and Edward III. had not long attained the throne, when Richard de Bury, the foremost statesman of his age, the most learned man in England, and the greatest minister of the Crown in the most brilliant reign of English history, was elected bishop of this regal see. The young King, intent on his campaign against the Scots, came to Auckland in October, 1336, and was entertained by Bishop de Bury, who was at that time enjoying the society of his beloved books and his learned chaplains in this ancient wood-en- vironed home. One dwells with pleasure on the picture of the learned prelate in his retirement; for Auckland must have stood pre-eminently forward as a seat of learning in his day. He took advantage of his frequent embassies on affairs and treaties of 7G LECTURES AND ESSAYS. state to visit the library at Paris, and ransack the Blender libraries of the foreign monasteries at which he rested on his way ; and year after year, with undiminished pleasure, he returned to these repositories of books, " to quench the fever of political strife in the calm fountain of the muse." On these embassies he managed to collect an enormous number of manuscripts, and is said to have possessed more books than all the other bishops in England. He also maintained a staff of transcribers, correctors, illuminators, and binders, and filled his chambers with his books wherever he resided. The historian of his life tells us that the bishop had such an accumulation of manuscripts, that the floors were covered with them, insomuch that persons who came into his presence could not with due reverence approach him ; and it was difficult to move in his sleeping-room without treading on a book. And he was not only surrounded by these silent friends collected in his house from all parts of Christendom, but he loved to keep around him men of ability and learning. The food of the bishop and his companions was not, however, wholly literary, neither did they " cultivate literature on a little oatmeal." From the roll of a steward of Auckland for the year 1338, it appears that, although the bishop resided there for only five weeks in that year, there was consumed a fat ox per week, beside fat pigs, and the sheep and poultry which were found by the tenants, and the venison from the bishop's park, and thirty- one quarters of wheat, and seventy-eight quarters of malt. John de Whitchurch, a grave archdeacon, the bishop's commissary during his absence from the diocese, conducted the chase in Wear- dale; and, when he and his followers went to the forest, they took with them three quarters of wheat baked into bread, and a plen- tiful supply of ale, to accompany the venison on which they were to feast. And, when a whale or a sturgeon was taken on the coast of the bishop's manor of Howden, portions of the royal fish were duly brought to Auckland. It was not uncommon for bishops to keep monkeys for their amusement at table ; and Bishop Beck having kept an old and a young monkey to divert his cares, we have an amusing picture of the greediness with which the younger animal appropriated the blanched almonds from a silver plate on the bishop's table, and was deprived of them by the elder. But AUCKLAND CASTLE, 77 De Bury seems to have preferred monks to monkeys, and a chap- lain read to him during dinner. This lover of literature found time also to be an author, and it was at Auckland that he wrote the " Treatise on the Love of Books," which is a unique monument of literary ardour, and has long been known as one of the most remarkable of the intellectual productions of the middle ages. It shows how anxious he was to remove the obstacles which in his time stood in the way of learn- ing, and it may be regarded as a foundation charter for the public library which he founded in the University of Oxford, and to which he bequeathed his immense collection of books, — Sure that the works of mighty men — The good, the faithful, the sublime, Stored in the gallery of Time, Repose awhile, to wake again ; * and at Auckland on the 14th April, 1345, the good bishop died. The first yearly account that has been preserved of a steward of the manor embraces twelve months from Michaelmas in the fourth year of De Billy's pontificate, and the document is interesting, not only as illustrating the domestic economy of Auckland, and show- ing that it was at that time a long-established place of residence of the bishops, but because it refers to the house itself sometimes as the Manor House, and sometimes as the Hall, but never as the Castle, and indicates that considerable works were then in pro- gress. Mention is made in it of various buildings, offices, and chambers. A cottage " at the gate of the manor house" is men- tioned, and the rent accounted for. There is a payment to the plumber for work "in the great chapel" and "in the little chapel;" to a carpenter, " for repairing the turret;" to various workmen, for "repairs to the great hall,' 5 to "the great stone wall on the west side of the manor-house," to the " glass windows of the great chapel," and to " the gable of the hall." This part of the building, and also the kitchen, appears to- have been covered with timber, and Norway timber was bought for the kitchen door and windows. Mention is made of " my lord's chamber," and of " the king's chamber;" and the brewhouse was duly recognised, and was " put in order against my lord's coming." " The king's * Goethe. 78 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. chamber," mentioned in this account of the year 1338, again occurs in 1350 and in 1459, and very probably derived its name from having been the place of lodging of Edward III. himself, ■when he was the guest of Dc Bury for two or three days in October, 1336, only two years before the date of the roll in which mention of" the king's chamber" first occurs. In the year 1346, when Thomas de Hatfield was Bishop of Durham, Auckland Park is connected with an event ever me- morable in English history. David of Scotland, who had long menaced the English frontier, seized the opportunity of Edward's absence with the chivalry of England, in the campaign which was crowned by the victory of Crcci, to invade the northern counties with a great army. On the night of the 16th October, 1346, while David, threatening Durham, lay at Beaurepaire, a country-house of the monks, the Archbishop of York (who with the Lords Henry Percy and Ralph Neville had been appointed arraycrs of the northern forces) assembled the English army in Auck- land Park, without the knowledge of the Scots, and the following day saw the victory of Neville's Cross and the capture of the fugitive Scottish King. About thirty years after this time, an account of the clerk of the works for 1378 refers to work " in my lord's chamber on the north of the small garden within the manor house," and to " the parlour," which seems to have had a window towards the Wear ; but nothing worthy of mention concerning Auckland occurs until the spring of 1381, in a roll of Bishop Fordham's time, when many payments occur for wine, for wax bought for candles, and for various other articles taken to Auckland, appa- rently for the entertainment of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was on his way to the Borders as a commissioner of the crown, and was escorted by the bishop, and was accompanied to Gateshead by " the bishop's archers of Durham." Walter Skirlaw,»the succeeding bishop, is not otherwise con- nected with the architectural history of Auckland than inasmuch as he erected a great stone gateway which led to the manor- house, which was standing in the reign of George III., and also constructed a bridge over the Wear. It was at Auckland that he made his will, on the 7 th March, 1405, and the document AUCKLAND CASTLE. 79 indicates, as Dr. Eainc lias remarked, the splendour of the see of Durham at the period of its highest magnificence, and affords us a gorgeous list of the plate, the vestments, the books, and the embroidered cloths which surrounded the bishop at Auckland- The prelates, from early times, maintained considerable state, and we derive from the records at Durham many glimpses of the manner in which they lived. The windows had long been filled with glass; the bare walls were hung with tapestry; and their table was served with dishes and plates of silver, although the trenchers and platters, used by persons of inferior rank, were of wood. Bishop Skirlaw bequeathed to his friends fifteen silver and silver-gilt cups, the design and ornaments of which are de- scribed, and he was attended by esquires, valets, grooms, pages, clerks, cellar-keepers, chamberlain, and chaplain. Some repairs and works were in progress at Auckland during the pontificate of Cardinal Langley, but they do not seem to have been important. In the roll of his clerk and surveyor of works for 1423 mention is made of the postern gate opening to the highway on the south side of the chapel, and of a passage extending from the parlour to the east end of the chapel; but such scattered notices as these do not enable us to form any clear notion of the arrangement of the buildings in that day. It was in what was called " the inner chamber " at Auckland that Car- dinal Langley made his will, on the 11th Dec. 1436^ and he died there on the 10th Nov. in the following year. Perhaps, inasmuch as the belfry or upper stage of the tower of St. Andrew's church, which, although distant a mile, is the parish church of Auckland, is not only contemporary with Lang- ley's pontificate, but was built by his gift, — and inasmuch also as the collegiate foundation which formerly flourished in St. Andrew's became, after its establishment within the walls of the bishop's palace, connected with the history of Auckland Castle, this may be a fitting place to advert to that foundation. The parish church itself had been endowed at a period of remote an- tiquity, and it existed long before the time at which Auckland first occurs as an episcopal abode. It was this church that was made collegiate by Bishop Beck, but his statutes seem to have been only a revival of an older foundation, for Carileph himself 80 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. is said to have instituted a sort of collegiate foundation for secular priests in St. Andrew's, Auckland. At all events a collegiate establishment of canons was existing in 1292, when Beck re- founded it, and charged the dean with providing for divine service daily " in the chapel within his manor-house of Auck- land;" and so much earlier as 1239 the deanery of Auckland is mentioned. It is interesting to look upon those Early English features of the existing fabric which saw the ecclesiastics of the great bishop's day. Before 1314 an endowment had been as- signed for the officiating priest of the domestic chapel, and Bishop Skirlaw bequeathed many valuable robes and vestments to what is described as " his collegiate church of Auckland." Other bishops paid persons for teaching the choristers to sing in the chapel, and Cardinal Langley revived the statutes of Bishop Beck. Subsequently, however, the dean and his canons appear to have obtained a residence, which came to be known as " the College," within the walls of Auckland Castle ; and inasmuch as in 1460, and again in 1470, the fabric is called " The New College," it seems probable that the arrangement was made by Booth, the bishop of that day. In his chancellor's roll repairs to the New College are mentioned, and he built the stone gateways of the College. It occurs again in 1498;* and in the following year Bishop Fox constitutes the priest of the chantry of the Blessed Virgin in the parish church sacrist " in the collegiate chapel within the manor- house of Auckland," and seems to recognise the domestic chapel as having become the collegiate church of the dean and canons. The collegiate establishment, at all events, became removed from the vicinity of the parish church to that of the bishop's hall, and, when Leland visited the North in 1538, it would appear that nothing remained near the parish church but the dean's great house and barns, and other houses of husbandry. But the college of Auckland was an educational as well as an ecclesiastical foundation, and it was the school in which many of the young nobility and gentry of the North of England were educated. At the dissolution, the college fell to the Crown, and it be- * In the inventory of the implements and books of the College, taken on the acces- sion of Win. Thomason to the deanery in this year. Wills and Inv. Surt. Soc. p. 101. AUCKLAND CASTLE. 81 came the private property of the bishops. Repairs to its buildings are frequently mentioned in the account rolls of the time of Elizabeth. It is a grave accusation against the sacrilegious Pil- kington, the first post-reformation Bishop of Durham, that in 1561 he broke up the college bells of Auckland and sold and converted them to his own use. He is also stated to have made a bowling-alley where divine service used to be celebrated, from which the inference would seem to be that the chapel of the college was not the present chapel of the castle, and that it had been actually destroyed. The spoliations of the college did not end with Pilkington's life, for he was buried at Durham under the marble slab which had been the monument in Auckland College of one of its deans, and which was brought to Durham for this new duty. After the Restoration, the land and buildings of the college were conveyed by Bishop Cosin to the see. The walls that remain have been so altered and modernised that they afford no indications of its former architecture or plan ; but the shape was that of a quadrangle, of which Mr. Gresley's house occupies the southern front. To return, however, to the general history of Auckland Castle. From the time of Cardinal Langley, the buildings seem to have remained much in the state in which they were left by that bishop, and it does not appear that Auckland was the scene of any event memorable in our history during those devastating wars of the Roses — When the Percys, Veres, and Nevilles left their castle-halls and revels To rush like raging devils into the deadly fight, And Loyalty and Reason were confounded by the Treason That cast into a prison the king of yester-night. Events then followed events with startling rapidity, and Eng- land's nobles were in a state of change ; but, though kingly dynasties were falling, bishop tranquilly succeeded to bishop at Auckland, Where valour bowed before the rood and book, And kneeling knighthood served a prelate lord ; and in the still domain of their cathedral church religion con- tinued to celebrate her stately rites and hail the returning seasons 82 LECTURES AND ES8ATS. of tlic year, as much undisturbed by the agitations of the world as the sunlight that decked their park in the glories of spring or the calm splendour of the autumn day. The bishop's residence is still called " the Manor-house of Auckland," in 1457, when, in the month of July, Robert Neville, Bishop of Durham, who was the fifth son of Ralph, Earl of West- moreland, and had for his mother, Catherine, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, here made his will and died. In the rolls of his successor, in 1471, repairs of " the great chapel," as it is there called, occur; and new glass was brought in 1475 from Newcastle for repairing the windows of the manor- house. In the same year, rushes were bought for strewing the hall and other chambers. In January, 1489, Bishop Sherwood subscribes a letter " written at my castel or manoir of Auckland," and at this period the appellation of" castle" seems first to occur. In the year 1480, " wild cattle and other untamed animals " are first mentioned as denizens of the park. The stock -keeper accounts in that year for the farm of the herbage of part of the park, and states the rest to be occupied and depastured by the wild cattle. It is worthy of remark that this wild race survived all the storms and changes that fell during the next hundred and fifty years upon the Church of England and upon the lords of Auck- land, and that thirty-two head of the wild cattle remained in the park on the 24th September, 1627. In 1634, too, Sir "William Brereton, on his visit, saw twenty-nine wild white cattle in the park. Fallow deer inhabited it, as well as the wild bulls and kino, when Leland came to Auckland in 1538; but from a much earlier period the park was as well stocked with deer as the fish- ponds were with fish and the thickets with fowl. The old pomarium episcopi or bishop's orchard occurs as early as the time of De Bury. In the year 1338, however, his steward had no produce to account for, and he gives the sufficient reason that " there is neither fruit nor tree." The almost unique fig-tree of Auckland Castle, which was planted by Bishop Barrington and is still flourishing and fruitful, is, at all events, a becoming representative of the old orchard of the bishops, whether it does or does not grow upon the site. Long may it flourish, and may its branches never be less ! AUCKLAND CASTLE. 83 A letter from Bishop Ruthall, written at Auckland in 1513, in the month after the battle of Flodden, affords a lively picture of the hospitality of Auckland : the bishop had been urged by the Crown to repair his castle at Xorham, which the Scots had seized before the conflict, and writing to Wolsey, then almoner, says: " TJie hospitalitie of this countray agreth not with the buyld- ing so greate a warke, for thate 1 spend here wold make many towris, and refreshe my ruynous howses. I broght hider with me viij tunne of wyne, and, our Lord be thankyd, I hafe not two tunne left at this hoicre, and this is f aire utteraunce in two moncths i and schame it is to saye how many befs and motons have bene spent in my hous, besids other fresh meats, ivhete, malt, fysche, and such baggags : on my fayth, ye wold marvayle, if my pastures had not been sum what stockyt byfore behynd, for cce. persons some day is but a small numbre, and of these days have I many, besides 60 or 80 beggers at the gate ; and this the way to keep a man poore? In the preceding month of September the bishop contributed 800£. to the Earl of Surrey, then on his road to the borders : it was carried to Newcastle on three horses, and three men were employed four days in telling the money and delivering it to Surrey. Bishop Ruthall nevertheless made great additions to the house at Auckland during the thirteen years of his pontificate (1509 to 1522). He built from the ground the whole of the dining chamber of his day. But the upper part of the gable window of this great dining-room was left incomplete by Ruthall, and finished by Bishop Tunstall, his successor. The lower win- dow which gives light to the present servants' hall, and the panels above it containing the armorial bearings of the See and of Ruthall, are the work of that bishop. The upper part of the structure, with its rich ornamental work, is TunstalPs, and his arms are represented in the same way. Between the works of the two bishops Wyatt inserted the incongruous modern windows of the present dining-room, but all the rest of the gable is a very elegant and characteristic piece of work. This portion of the buildings itself proves that the Parliamentarian usurper Haslerigg did not really demolish the castle, as he is stated to have done, deeply as " ravenous sacrilege " has injured the secular as well as the ecclesiastical buildings of this venerable pile. 84 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. In 1538, when Leland was here, the groat hall was standing, for he saw it in what lie describes as " divers pillars of black marble speckled with white." The material probably was the same shelly limestone, capable of high polish like Pnrbcck marble, which is used in the piers of the noble chapel. Leland mentions, too, " the exceeding fair Great Chamber, with other chambers there." Skirlaw's " goodly gate-house at entering into the castle " was likewise then standing. We have now arrived at the pontificate of Tunstall — a bishop who made great contributions to the learning and science of his country, as well as considerable additions to his house of Auck- land during the long eventful years of his rule, which extended from 1529 to 1558. He saw the happy union of the Ked and the White Eose in the person of Henry VII. ; he lived through the destructive and sanguinary reign of Henry VIII. ; saw the brief reign of Edward, and the still shorter but perilous reign of Mary, and died in the year in which Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. Tunstall in his will says, he found the houses and dwellings belonging to the bishopric in such almost total ruin, that " he had not a house at his first coming to lye dry in," and that he had, " by great cost and labour," repaired them. Ac- cordingly, in 1531, very soon after he became bishop, the roll of the clerk of the works contains an entry of 421. 3.s. 4d. paid for " repairs in the manor house of Auckland." He appears to have built the gallery, in which there is a range of bed-chambers, as Well as to have finished the great gable of the dining-room begun CD O O CD by his predecessor. That gallery or wing (which stretches in a straight line westward, and is called " Scotland ") is built above a range of cellars, which, however, may be older than Tunstall's time. The bed-chambers have succeeded to his " long gallery, which was seen a century later by Brereton when he came to visit Bishop Morton in 1634. The origin of the traditional name of " Scotland" for this part of the building is unknown; but, as Scottish hostages were in and from Beck's time occasionally com- mitted to the custody of the bishop, it may have acquired its name from the older chambers which occupied its site having been set apart for their reception. It certainly adds a more gloomy horror to the dark range of cellars, fit as they are for AUCKLAND CASTLE. 85 dungeons, if we can imagine that here Scottish captives were occasionally confined — Doomed, in sad durance pining, to abide The long delay of hope from Solway's farther side ; but Auckland is not a likely place to have long detained prisoners, and nothing has been observed in the stone walls or roof of these cellars to connect them with the time When English lords and Scottish chiefs were foes, or to show that they ever held in confinement any potentate less friendly than the family of Sir John Barleycorn. The long gallery was materially altered 'when appropriated to its present uses by Bishop Trevor. Tunstall not only found Auckland in decay, but clear of any furniture, and he seems to have recog- nized the fitness of instituting heirlooms in this episcopal resi- dence, for he bequeathed for the use of his successors all his tapestry, tables, and bedsteads, expressly to invite succeeding bishops to hospitality and residence in the diocese. That his in- junctions were not neglected, we have many proofs ; and towards the close of the century Bishop Toby Matthew seems to have begun his rule at Auckland by providing (amongst other things) three hogsheads of Gascony wine, which was bought at New- castle at 51. a hogshead, and brought to Auckland. In 1611, during the pontificate of Bishop James, a fair and illustrious guest was intended to be the unwilling recipient of the hospitality of Auckland. The Lady Arabella Stuart, the heroine of one of the most melancholy love stories in real history, having incurred the resentment of her kinsman James I. by marrying without the king's consent Mr. Seymour, afterwards Marquis of Hertford, the Privy Council determined to transfer the custody of the lady to the Bishop of Durham at Auckland. But she (of course) had a will of her own, and viewed with despair, as we read, her removal to " a place so out of the world as Durham ;" so, when the bishop had conducted her and her attendants at great expense to Mr. Conyers's house at Barnet, she escaped in man's attire, and was on the sea when she was overtaken and re- captured. She was then conducted to the Tower of Londonj where she died. 86 LECTURE AND ESSAYS. Bishop Xcile, whose pontificate lasted from 1617 to 1627, is stated to have expended nearly 3,0001. in repairing and orna- menting the palace of Auckland. His works must have been very considerable, if they really cost so large a sum of money; but we know that he delighted in building, for while Dean of Westminster large sums were expended on the abbey under his superintendence.* Beef and beer seem to have been the basis of all architectural energy at Durham, for this prelate, too, wrote to his agent in 1622, to desire that there should be "a brewing of bcare at Awkland in regard of my purpose of lieing there, God willing, some part of this sommer; and I wish it should be well hop't for keeping it the better from sowering ; but the brewer must be charged to look well to the sweeteness of his caskes, for there is never a ycare but I lose much beare by the mustines of his caskes." In 1628, on Bishop Neile's translation to Winchester, an in- ventory was taken, in which the following, amongst less important parts of the palace (it is still the manor house) are mentioned : — The hall ; The chamber on the north side of it ; The great chamber ; The dining-room, well wainscotted round about ; The earl's chamber ; The chancellor's chamber ; The knights' chamber ; My lord's study ; The long gallery, and A chamber at the end ; My lord's chamber, and A chamber within ; The new library ; The buttery, and the chamber above it. Mention occurs a hundred and forty years before of a chamber called " the Wyndesore chamber," and of " the high chapel ;" and again, in 1548, " the high chapel " is mentioned in an item for taking down the stalls, and helping to convey them to Dur- ham. Within three years of Bishop Neile's translation, the great kitchen was pulled down by his successor, who seems to have been * A minute account of the expenditure on the works at Westminster remains, cu- riously enough, in the Library of the Dean and Chapter of Durham. AUCKLAND CASTLE. 87 a destroyer; for the bishop who succeeded him recovered 333/. for dilapidations, which sum appears to have included 300/. for the estimated cost of rebuilding the kitchen as it was before. And now we have arrived at the pontificate of the excellent Morton, a learned man and the patron of learning, who was pre- late during a sad and eventful period of our history, for he became bishop in 1632, was deprived of his see by the usurpers in 1646, and, retiring into a life of poverty and content, died at a great age in 1659 ; exiled, as Dr. Raine has justly said, by the strong arm of successful treason, from a home ennobled by his munificence, and consecrated by his piety. In 1634, when Bishop Morton was living at Auckland in peace, Sir William Brereton, already mentioned, visited him there ; and his letter not only gives a lively picture of Auckland in his day, but is important for its mention of the two chapels. " This very worthy reverend bishop," he writes, " maintains great hos- pitality in an orderly, well-governed house. The castle, as it is a stately, pleasant seat, of great receipt, so it is of great strength, compassed with a thick stone wall, seated upon the side of an hill, upon a rock, a river running below, and good store of wood (though little of timber) encompassing above. Here," continues Brereton, " is a very fair, neat hall as I have found in any bishop's palace in England. Two chapels belong hereunto, the one over the other; the higher a most dainty, neat, light, pleasant place, but the voice is so drowned and swallowed by the echo, as few words can be understood. The lower is made use of upon Sab- bath days, and there is great resort hither by the neighbourhood. Here are three dining-rooms, a fair matted gallery, wherein there was placed on both sides these pictures ;" and then he enumerates the portraits of Reformers, adding, " and none but of this strain." "A dainty, stately park," he continues, "wherein I saw wild bulls and kine, which had two calves runners. There are about twenty wild beasts, all white ; will not endure your approach, but, if they be enraged or distressed, very violent and furious." And in conclusion he says, " Here we rested the Lord's Day, and were very generously and nobly entertained." It was Bishop Morton who appropriated for the free grammar- school which King James I. had instituted shortly after his acces- H 88 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. sion, the old chapel of S. Anno, in the market-place. An older history attaches to that desecrated little building ; for in tlie parish church of S. Andrew there existed formerly a guild or fraternity, to which pertained a chapel of great antiquity dedicated to S. Anne, and situated in the market-place. This chapel seems to have been resorted to by parishioners of Auckland, and it was enlarged in the time of Richard II., and again in 1482. This edifice was standing when Bishop Morton appropriated it for the school-house of the free grammar-school. It had probably fallen into decay before 1781, for a wretched structure then succeeded to it, which seems to have served for the grammar-school and the chapel ; and the lower part of an unseemly tower at the west was converted into a market-house. But these buildings were all re- moved in 1847, when the present edifice, designed by Mr. Salvin, was built. But, to revert to Auckland Castle in the time of Morton. Here, on the 31st May, 1633, he received King Charles I. on his pro- gress to his realm and crown of Scotland. This was not his first visit; for, when a mere boy, he sojourned for a while at Auck- land, on his way to the South. He saw it again before his un- timely death ; but his third and last visit was made in 1647, when he came to Bishop- Auckland as a prisoner, having been shortly before sold by his Scottish subjects to their fellow -rebels in Eng- land. But the success of armed rebellion had then driven the learned and munificent Morton from his see, and the king was surrounded by rude soldiers in a small inn kept by one Christopher Dobson in Bishop- Auckland, and the castle of the prelates was in the hands of " insulting rebel powers." In 1647 a survey was made for the Parliament, preparatory to the sale of Auckland. It is returned as "a very stately manor- house, called the castle or palace of the late Bishop of Durham, with two chapels to it, one over the other, built of stone, and covered with lead ; the site of the house walled about with stone, and in some places embattled, having thereto a stately gate-house, stables, brewhouse, bakehouse, and other offices, all which are in dilapidation." The castle and manor were conveyed by the Parliamentarian Commissioners to Sir Arthur Haslcrigg for 6,102/., and he AUCKLAND CASTLE. 89 began to build a new mansion-house upon the spot. Haslerigg is stated by Dugdale to have disliked the old-fashioned buildings at Auckland Castle. The fanatics of the usurpation clays desired, we know, to trample out all the monuments of the past, as well as the Church and Monarchy of England, and to begin the affairs of mankind anew ; and no doubt Haslerigg found the old build- ings too characteristic of the ecclesiastical traditions of Auckland to be agreeable to his taste. So he resolved on building, says Dugdale, " a new structure of a noble fabric, all of one pile, taking for his model the curious and stately building at Thorpe, near Peterborough," a large, square, four-storied edifice, which Chief Justice Oliver St. John, after the murder of Charles I., erected partly out of the cathedral at Peterborough. Haslerigg accordingly demolished a considerable part of the buildings of Auckland Castle, and out of the materials built what is described as a magnificent house ; and it seems to have stood on the ground to the south of the chapel, the destruction of which he seems, however, only to have begun. And so The reverend pile lay wild and waste, Profaned, dishonoured, and defaced. Through storied lattices no more In softened light the sunbeams pour ; Gilding the Gothic sculpture rich Of shrine, and monument, and niche. The civil fury of the time Made sport of sacrilegious crime ; And dark fanaticism rent Altar, and screen, and ornament. But the reign of the usurper was short; and he had not completed his stately mansion when his place knew him no more. Upon the Eestoration the zealous and learned Cosin was appointed Bishop of Durham ; and the twelve years of his pontificate were fully occupied in removing all Haslerigg's buildings, and in carry- ing out his design of reinstating Auckland Castle. The buildings of his time remained for a century much as he left them ; and although the alterations made in the latter half of the last century have been such as to deprive most parts of the castle of any original character, its plan and form seem to be what Cosin left. The two oil paintings now hanging on the staircase in the porter's H 2 90 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. lodge, and Buck's engraving in 1728, probably represent with substantial accuracy the walls and arrangement of the courtyards as they stood in Cosin's time. He seems to have begun with the chapel. In a letter to Robert Morlcy, of the craft of Freemasons, he gives minute directions as to buttresses and rustic ashlar work, and sends a pattern; so that the bishop seems to have been his own architect, and to have directed the works from his house in London. Gothic achitecture, civil as well as ecclesiastical, was in his day at its lowest debasement ; and little as the munificent bishop knew of church architecture, his chapel would probably have been much worse, but for his directions. The work of his time may be open to our criticism, but not its motives; for he laboured for the honour of God, and evidently felt that " artistic splendour of costly decoration forms a natural, right, and scriptural tribute for thankful man to lavish upon the holy and beautiful houses of the Giver of all Good." Cosin rebuilt the south wall; added a clerestory to the body of the chapel, and a new roof; put in new windows throughout, raised the sills of the windows of the north aisle to suit the levels of his new windows on the south ; repaired and ornamented the eastern gable; repaved the nave, the aisles, and the altar-platform, and put in new screens and woodwork. He ordered marble stones from Amsterdam for his chapel; and in 1663 entered into contracts with two glaziers at Durham and two at Auckland for glazing the windows with blue and white glass. For decorative painting, John Baptist Van Ersell, of the city of Durham, was employed; and the sculptor was Hendrick de Keyser, of Bishop Auckland. The roof was to be painted a blue ground, and the coats of arms in their colours, decorations which are said to have been obliterated in the time of Bishop Barrington.* Cosin also entered into a contract in 1664 for work at the holy table, none of which remains. It is strange that Haslerigg should be stated to have destroyed the chapel of Auckland Castle in order to build his mansion, and * It is stated that the chapel was at some timo during the Georgian era used for a school, and that the gilded and coloured ornaments were found to divert the attention of the boys from their books. AUCKLAND CASTLE. 91 that credit should be given to Bishop Cosin for building " another and a beautiful chapel " on the north side of the castle, with the stone of Haslerigg's mansion. The various ancient features of the existing edifice show that if Haslerigg destroyed any chapel, it stood elsewhere; and it was probably that upper or lesser fabric, which is mentioned in 1338, which seems to have been used for divine service in the time of Charles I. which contained the stalls that Bishop Tunstall removed,' and which would seem to have stood to the north of the present drawing-room, above the porch of the existing chapel, in a part of the castle now converted into bedrooms. At all events the masonry of the north wall of the chapel is ancient; the original stones of the window jambs remain, though the windows were partly blocked up by Cosin's windows being- placed at a higher level. At the east end too, on the exterior, two buttresses and parts of the original wall remain. Inside the chapel, however, the most ancient portions of the fabric are to be seen. The westernmost piers are in the style of Bishop Pudsey's time, and strongly resemble those in his Galilee at Durham. The rest of the pier arches also seem earlier than Bishop Beck's time: they are fine, and rest on clustered columns, banded, and having moulded capitals. The corbel-shafts and aisle-corbels of the original roof remain. The polished Stanhope marble shafts, which seem to have been coupled with freestone shafts in the piers, were unadvisedly covered with whitewash in the time of Bishop Van Mildert, when also, according to Dr. Raine, the tracery of the windows was filled with the tasteless coloured glass that now defaces this beautiful edifice. Passing from the chapel, to revert to the work of Cosin in other parts of the castle, we find that the bishop speaks of " the new hall" in a letter of 1662. Probably what is called "the great hall or chamber " of his time is now the noble drawing- room of the castle. It had a lantern ; and this appears to have been finished by the bishop's desire in the form of the lantern which he found over the chapel. A lantern in the centre of the roof is represented in Buck's view. Cosin contracted for windows to be opened on the west side of the hall, but these are now closed by masonry. He stipulated that the buttresses should be 92 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. built up to the battlement, on the model of those which he built on the south side of the edifice which he calls " the new chapel." The ornamental woodwork which Cosin added to the great hall was removed in Bishop Barrington's time by the injudicious advice of that arch-destroyer Wyatt. The very remarkable oak-panelled room with armorial bear- ings, now called the store-room or housekeeper's room, is probably the chamber which Cosin destined for his library, inasmuch as its mullioncd window is probably the same bay or three-light window which, by a contract dated 1st Sept. 1664, was " to be taken out of Sir Arthur Haslerigg's building, and set into the wall of the room where my lord intends to make his library." The panel in the upper part of the bow has the arms of Queen Elizabeth, with a lion and rouge dragon as supporters, and in the corners we have a Tudor rose and a pomegranate crowned. Along one side of the room at the top are shields bearing what purport to be the arms of contemporary sovereigns of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and " a strange assemblage of potentates " they may well be called. On another side of the room are shields bearing the arms of several English earls of the reign of Eliza- beth, decorations which may very probably have given to this room the name of " the earls' chamber" A room in the castle bore that name in 1628. This curious apartment was probably a room of dignity in later times, for the arms of Lord Crewe, Bishop of Durham (who gave the organ now in Auckland Castle Chapel), and the arms of several of the sees of England, are re- presented in the window. If Dr. Eaine was right in his opinion that the present kitchen was an original part of the building, and that if any portions of Bishop Beck's great hall remain, they are to be found in this kitchen, it cannot have been the " great kitchen " which Bishop Morton's immediate predecessor is recorded to have pulled down. At all events, it is old as well as spacious; but it has been spoiled by the modern flat ceiling which cuts off half its proper height, and only one of the old fireplaces remains in it. The present servants' hall was destined, as we have seen, for a dining-room by Tunstall, whose crest is carved in the coiling. The buildings of Auckland Castle seem to have remained much AUCKLAND CASTLE, 93 as Cosin left them until the time of Bishop Trevor, who built the suite of rooms on the south front, which are so important to the comfort and convenience of the house. Trevor is stated to have spent 8,000/. on Auckland Castle. In that amount is included the purchase-money of the house now the porter's lodge. Trevor did not live to complete the additions he began to build, and they were completed by Bishop Egerton. When Pennant came here in Egerton's time, he found that Skirlaw's Gate Tower had been destroyed, and replaced by Bishop Trevor's attempt at Gothic. Pennant gives such dimensions of the " old hall" which he found standing (and mentions by that designation), as seem to show that the present ante-room was, before Barrington's time, part of that noble structure; for he says, — " The principal apartments are an old hall 75 feet by 32, the height 35, and a handsome dining parlour ornamented with portraits of Jacob and the twelve patriarchs, presented by Bishop Trevor." The present drawing-room retains its original breadth only, its length being- reduced to 60 feet, and its height to 27. Auckland Castle was described by Pennant as having lost its castellated form, and as then resembling some of the magnificent foreign abbeys. Pro- bably it never had a really castellated form ; but even Wyatt's transformations could not deprive the building of the picturesque irregularity and mediaeval aspect which were so striking in Pen- nant's day. To Egerton's work succeeded the pseudo-Gothicising of the great drawing-room and other parts of the structure, under the unhappy direction of "Wyatt, that prince of sham and stucco; when Cosin's old timber roof, if not destroyed, was masked by a tasteless groining in plaster; when the great staircase was altered and enlarged, and alterations were made which destroyed the original character of the house. At the same period the gateway was built, the line of screen- work on the south front of the castle put up, and the turret of the old courtyard walls removed. And here the story of Auckland Castle ends. It has been truly said that we live in days of returning reve- rence for the structures that link our age with bygone periods of English history ; and certainly, in most cases, when we do ven- ture to meddle with the historic monuments of our country, we are careful to show that reverent love for the past which can 94 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. preserve and appropriate what was excellent in it, while acknow- ledging a necessity for change. Excepting the ancient and dig- nified chapel, few portions of this building have been left to appeal to us for preservation on architectural or on sentimental grounds; but let us not forget that upon this spot illustrious men have lived and died ; that here some of the greatest of the princely bishops of this see with pious zeal planned and directed many of the great and useful works which elsewhere at this day claim our grateful remembrance; and that here, in a turbulent age, they might be seen calmly founding noble institutions of charity and learning, or maintaining the liberties of the Anglican Church; that here they gave their thoughts, and time, and wealth, to build for posterity, and to let their light so shine before the world, that the Father in heaven might receive the more glory and honour amongst men. May a time never come when in this ancient diocese of Durham her people will be indifferent to the historic traditions and the dignified memories which are garnered up in Auckland Castle ! Mr. Frederick R. "Wilson of Alnwick, Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, having, after the foregoing paper was read, kindly offered to prepare and present a ground-plan and other illustrative details to accompany it on its publication, visited Auckland Castle, and traced out the remains of an ancient curtain- wall fortified with towers. The results of the survey so made by Mr. "Wilson have been, at the author's request, stated by him in the following letter addressed to the author in January, 1863: — Dear Sir, — My archaeological survey of Auckland Castle, made on the 14th and 15th inst., brings me to the discovery that Bishop Beke must have built here a vei'itable Edwardian castle. I am enabled to say there was a keep, and a castellated circumvallation, 'garnished with towers,' as the chroniclers have described. The Bishop of Durham, who most hospitably and ably furnished me with every assistance in the survey, drew my atten- tion to two ancient views of the castle hanging in the gateway tower. One of these depicts a central mass of building, surrounded by an embrasured wall, on which there are towers at intervals. Although this evidence was not very old, it confirmed me in my impression that a site possessing such military advantages would not have been disregarded by a martial prelate like Authony Beke. I, therefore, in conjunction with his lordship, pro- AUCKLAND CASTLE. 95 secuted my search, and ultimately ascertained the positions of several of the wall-towers and the barbacan. By reference to the plan, which I have great pleasure in sending, you will perceive there is a large square tower at the south-west angle, now used as the entrance-lodge. This, I find, occupies the site of a large Edwardian tower; although, from the fact of its having been rebuilt by Skirlaw, and rebuilt again by Ruthall, and again by Tunstall, since that period, it presents a Tudor instead of an Edwardian appearance. Near the stables are the remains of the entrance-barbacan, which faces the coevally principal street of the town. Attached to this are the two modern gate-pillars, walled across, indicating that it continued to be the principal entrance to the castle ; and beyond this again, at the north- west angle of the curtain, on the verge of the declivity of the bank, there is a square platform, much modernised, which indubitably marks the site of a corresponding tower to that at the south-west angle, which would leave the barbacan, as at Alnwick, mid-way between the two lengths of curtain fortified with towers. From this north-west angle'the ancient north curtain- wall, now represented, for about half its ancient length, by a low modern one, skirted the edge of the precipitous bank. About two hundred feet from the angle, the low wall in question takes a semicircular form, marking the existence of a semicircular tower ; and at the same interval again there is a projecting belt of trees, in a similar form, which, I conclude, marks the site of a second tower. The eastern curtain-walls and towers shown in the view have disappeared : a carriage-road to the park occupies their site, and a modern wall now curtails and circumscribes the outer ward. I have carefully gone over all the apartments of the keep, and have traced the ancient lodgings. I show these on my plan ; and as I have distinguished all modern partitions, you can perceive exactly all that remains of the ancient configuration of Auckland Castle. To the above letter the author ought, perhaps, to add that he does not know in what " chroniclers " any mention is found of " a keep and a castellated circumvallation." That the " central mass of building " could ever have been called a Norman or an Edwardian " keep," the author presumes his able correspondent does not mean to assert. As to the curtain- wall, it will be re- membered that, in the reign of Charles I., Auckland Castle is described to be " encompassed with a thick stone wall." From Skirlaw's time, at all events, the great gate-house seems to have been the entrance to the castle. The author desires to add his acknowledgments, and to express his satisfaction that Mr. Wilson has made the discoveries which he so clearly describes. FINCHALE PKIOEY. ALTHOUGn closely connected with the great priory at Durham from the time of Richard the First, Finchale has a history earlier than that of Durham itself, and seems to have been a place of some importance in days when the primeval forest still overspread the hill on which the remains of St. Cuthbert finally rested, — Where his cathedral, huge and vast, Looks down upon the Wear. There is reason to believe that in St. Cuthbert's life-time, and subsequently during the reigns of Anglo-Saxon princes, Finchale was a monastic if not a royal abode. It is mentioned in history as the place where synods of the Church of Xorthumbria assem- bled in the years 788, 798, and 810 — a period when the bishop's see was at Hexham ; and it is worthy of remark, that in the reign of William Rufus, when Finchale had relapsed into a state of wildness and solitude, the foundations of forgotten buildings and the remains of men were often uncovered by the spade. We have no certain information as to the building to which these foundations belonged ; and whatever dignity Finchale may have known in Saxon times, it had certainly become the abode only of wolves and noxious animals at the time of the Xorman Conquest, and at the time (a.d. 1110) when Godric, afterwards celebrated as its hermit-saint, came to dwell amongst its solitudes and give to it a new and more enduring fame. The biography of Godric was written by his friend Reginald, a monk of the Benedictine fraternity which had then been esta- blished for more than a century at Durham. From this memoir it appears that he had been a sailor for sixteen years; and that having in the course of his travels viaited St. Andrew's in Scot- land, as well as Lindisfarne and the sea-girt hermitage of St. Cuthbert, he began to emulate the devotion of that holy recluse. FINCHALE PRIORY. 97 He made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem as well as to Eome, and on his return sold his property and began a hermit's life ; but this wanderer of the sea did not begin that life in any fixed dwelling- place, for he roved amongst woods and inhabited caves in the vicinity first of Carlisle and then of Wolsingham. After passing two years in this way, he believed that St. Cuthbert himself directed him to take up his abode finally at a place in the forest near Durham indicated to him by the name of " Finchalech," but he was first to make another visit to the Holy Land. He obeyed these directions; and returning to Durham — where the cathedral of the magnificent Bishop Carileph was then rising in Norman strength, and where the monastery had been founded that was afterwards to become so renowned — Godric after a short stay journeyed forth from Durham, and is recorded to have found the spot which was to be his final resting-place, by the same means that had directed the monks who were wandering with St. Cuth- bert's body to Dunholme, which had been indicated to them 'as his chosen place of rest. St. Cuthbert, as we have all read, was to be carried to Dunholme; but where this place lay the monks in those pre-chorographic days had no idea. As they proceeded, however, a woman looking for her cow called aloud to another peasant, who replied she was in Dunholme, and the monks hearing this were directed to their journey's end, and there the good brethren most wisely and with the best possible taste remained. Equally wild was Finchale when Godric first came hither, and he is said to have experienced a most discouraging reception, for he was attacked by a wolf, and found he was to become, like Job, " a brother of serpents and a companion of owls." He neverthe- less began to build of wood an oratory and a cell for his abode. These were situated on a plot of ground which is many hundred yards higher up the river than the site of the priory of Finchale and is still called " Godric's Garth." Reginald gives a curious account of the austerities he practised and of the pertinacity of the Evil One in harassing and interrupting him in various ways and tempting shapes. He was moreover robbed and nearly killed by the Scots — probably on the invasion of England in 1138. But kind and holy comforters were not wanting ; and good Regi- 98 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. nakl relates that Godric was visited not only by monks and emi- nent ecclesiastics who came to his hermitage as to a shrine, but that he even received encouragement in visits from some of the holy company of heaven. In 1149 he built a larger chapel of stone, probably on the site of the existing ruins of Finchalc Priory, in gratitude for deliver- ance from a flood, the raging waters of which in that deep rocky vale had quarried stone for his work by detaching blocks from the cliffs on the opposite side of the river. And in that chapel, which was dedicated in honour of St. John the Baptist, a priest came from Durham every Sunday, and on many holy days, to celebrate divine offices for the country people of the secluded region around St. Godric's dwelling. The chapel of his hermit- age was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. These little edifices were connected by a cloister, and there were other buildings, and near to them welled forth a spring afterwards known as Godric's fountain. He planted an orchard and reaped harvests from his corn-land; he ground his wheat and made his own bread; and' though he probably did not indulge himself by practising "the gentle craft " of the angler, he drew from the river an abundant supply offish. At length on the 21st of May, 1170, when from this seques- tered dell he had marked in the starry skies the flight of sixty summers, his body yielded to decay of nature and his spirit put on immortality. He had attained more than ninety years of age. His remains were interred in a stone coffin in the chapel of St. John in the presence of a large assembly, and a plate of lead was inscribed to his memory. Finchale continued to be a hermit's dwelling for some years after Godric's death. The hermitage with its fields and fishery were in the gift of the prior and convent of Durham, and two monks named Keginald and Henry, the former of whom is be- lieved to be identical with Godric's literate friend and biographer, succeeded ; and it may be reasonably supposed that in this valley of deep retirement the learned monk wrote some of the historical works known to have proceeded from his pen which have come down to our own days, and which present to our view those in which he lived with a freshness of portraiture unimpaired by time. FINCHALE PRIORY. 99 Fincliale, after witnessing for three hundred and fifty years the daily life and works of the populous monastery which ere long succeeded to the hermitage, has become again a solitude, and has been so for a period of more than three hundred years; but still the same natural walls of beauty and peace that formed to the Hermit-Saint and to the reverend pair who succeeded him their bounds of monastic seclusion, seem, even to the casual visitor of to-day, to exclude the "jarring world;" still the rapid stream, by whose waters they took their pensive way, encircles the green turf they trod and sweeps by the shadowy recesses where they dwelt; still at summer eventide the sunlight gilds the woods that wave upon the river's bank ; and when the broad moon climbs the neighbouring heights, the silvery lustre falls upon the river still flowing through sylvan shadows to the un- changing sea. In the reign of Richard I. the time had arrived when the modest hermitage was to acquire the dignity of a convent. This it did through the act of that very great prelate Hugh de Pudsey, who is memorable as one of the greatest of the mitred Counts Palatine of Durham. It was this bishop who built the Galilee Chapel and some other parts of the Cathedral Church of Durham, and accomplished many enduring and costly works in his diocese. He had a son named Henry, who derived from his mother, Adelis de Percy, property in Yorkshire, and who was owner of Wingate, and Has well, and Hetton, in this county of Durham — then rustic vills, but now populous and smoke- enveloped colliery settlements. Under the protection of this Henry de Pudsey, or FitzHugh, certain canons of the Augustine Priory of Guisborough migrated from their convent in the Cleveland hills to a sheltered and beautiful spot, about a mile from Durham, on the little river called the Browney; and upon this brotherhood he conferred those three Saxon villages. But the Bendictine monks, who had then acquired much land in the county, and were becoming rich and powerful, were jealous of the settlement of monks of another order in such near proximity to themselves; and accordingly they brought Henry de Pudsey to repent of what he had already done, and to agree with them that he would expiate his too-hasty liberality towards 100 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. the monks of Guisborougli by building a church or monastery at Finchale instead, and by transferring to the Benedictines of Durham the endowments he had destined for the Augustine canons of Guisborougli who were to be conciliated by receiving possessions elsewhere. Father Stephen, the superior of the little colony of canons who had been invited to the glades of the Browncy was, however, extremely unwilling to accede to this arrangement. Representations were addressed to the Holy See; negotiations took place, but ultimately the monks of Durham prevailed. And so, in the Norman Chapter-house of the black- robed Benedictines came Father Stephen, on behalf of the little fraternity of White Monks, and relinquished into their hands all the possessions of his short-lived convent. To the Durham monks also Henry the founder transferred his foundation gifts, and the bishop confirmed the arrangement and gave his charter for the foundation of a priory at Finchale. This was done in 1196, and thus— Iu the antique age of bow and spear And feudal rapine, clothed in iron mail, Came ministers of peace intent to rear Their holy church in this sequestered vale. Within the first fifty years from this time, the monks of Fin- chale received the greater part of their endowments, but they were unable to begin the erection of a larger church and monas- tery until about 1238. In 1213, King John extorted from the poor prior a sum equivalent to 1,000Z. of our money, besides two good palfreys, for delivery of Yokeflete, in the East Riding, and some other lands which had been conferred upon his convent; and it is not surprising that they were unable to begin the building of their priory church, if they had to submit to many such exactions in order to obtain possession of their land. How- ever, during the half century from 1238 to 1288, distinct traces of their proceedings are afforded in a series of documents preserved at Durham, which consist for the most part of " Indulgences," granted by different English and Scottish bishops for the purpose of inducing the men of the North to contribute to the new fabric, money, if they had it, and labour and materials if they had not money. In 1242, the work of building the new church was in FINCHALE PRIOKY. 101 progress, and the early English portions of the existing ruins are its remains. Soon afterwards, three altars were dedicated in this new church. In 1260, Robert, Bishop of Dunblane, ex- horted his flock to visit devoutly " the Church of Saint John the Baptist at Finchale, and the tomb of St. Godric;" and his shrine had then become an object of pilgrimage. It would be curious to know whether any Scotsmen were really induced to cross the border for such a purpose ; but other Scottish bishops certainly took Finchale under their care. It is to be remem- bered that the realm of Alexander III. of Scotland then extended into the county of Northumberland. In 1266, Archibald, Bishop of Moray, granted an indulgence "towards sustentation of the lights and ornaments of the chapel of St. Godric, in Finchale, and towards the building of the window that was to light it from the east;" and the series ends in 1288 with an indulgence granted by Alan — a bishop whose diocese was the remote and storm- swept land of Caithness. But the last of the indulgences in which the building is mentioned as unfinished bears the date of 1264. The only portions of the older church that seem to have been then preserved were discovered in the south transept a few years ago, and appear to have belonged to the Norman shrine of Godric. The early-English work that remains is very characteristic of the style which prevailed during the period embraced in the indulgences referred to ; but it is of an austere simplicity, and almost wholly without those elaborate ornaments that enrich the architecture of the period in churches built by wealthy fraternities. When the monks of Finchale were beginning to construct this church, Thomas de Melsonby, the great prior of their parent house of Durham, was completing the transept of the nine altars in the cathedral — an elaborate and stately fabric, which still stands as unrivalled and unspoiled as the Norman portion of the cathedral, and forms an enduring monument of the taste and the resources of church architects in the thirteenth century. The chief architectural features of the existing priory church at Finchale may be described in a few words. The plan of the church is cruciform, and originally there were aisles to the nave and to the choir, as far as the third bay eastward. The great 102 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. cylindrical piers at the intersection of the transepts arc still massive and imposing; they supported, of course, a tower, and the spire that crowned it (or a later spire) was standing a hundred years after the Dissolution, but of the tower even, not a vestige now remains. The eastern end has a pointed gable with flanking turrets. All the piers of the choir are cylindrical with roll mouldings : those in the nave are alternately round and hexagonal . The western front retains the original lancet lights, which here, as in the transepts, are well proportioned and very characteristic. The canopy of the sedilia remains, and Finchale is remarkable for a double piscina of the high altar. Two events, of some advantage to the monks of Finchale, occurred while the construction of the church and the monastic buildings of Finchale was in progress, or soon after their com- pletion. Two of their superiors were successively elected Bishops of Durham, namely, Robert de Stichill, elected in 1260, who died in France on his return from a general council at Lyons in 1274, and desired that his heart might be deposited among his beloved fraternity in the Chapter-house of Durham ; and Robert de Insula, his successor, who carried the piety and humility of the cloister to the episcopal throne. But before a century elapsed from the time of these bishops, the edifice of the priory church of Finchale underwent great changes and curtailment. The cause is not known; but when we remember the troubled state of this realm during the first half of the fourteenth century, the outrages committed by the Scots, and the consumption by armies of the produce of the convent lands of England, we may conjecture that in some of these devastating inroads the priory sustained losses which its inmates were unable to repair, except by contracting the original proportions of their church. The piers between the choir and aisles and the nave and aisles were (probably at this time) filled with rough masonry, and windows of Decorated work were inserted between the piers. The material used in these repairs is a freestone of perishable quality, and very inferior to the ashlar work of the early-English fabric. The "Account Rolls " of the monastery for several years before 1369 contain disbursements for materials and FINCH ALE PRIORY. 103 amongst workmen, which show that some considerable works were then in progress ; and the fabric of this time is seen not only in the church, but in adjacent buildings of the convent. In some years, 1374 for example, the expenditure of the monks exceeded their income, and the excess is set down as " due to creditors." The monks were again employed in repairing their church after the sun of Plantagenet had set, and while princes of the House of Lancaster were on /the throne ; but at this time the convent was no doubt much impoverished. However, the monks had become so luxurious that they actually wore linen shirts — an in- dulgence not contemplated by the Benedictine Rule ; and not very long before, they had been reproved for keeping a pack of deer-hounds — a custom then common among the secular clergy, and which the prior probably justified on the old ground that venison was good for sick monks, and that deer- skins were useful for binding their books. And apropos to books, I must advert to the literary labours that were carried on within the walls of Finchale. The Scrip- torium — as the place was called where books were transcribed — was an important feature of most monasteries ; and to the in- dustry with which the work of transcribing and illuminating was prosecuted by the monks, posterity is indebted for many inestimable manuscripts that have survived the wreck of the religious houses — a legacy for which we used to express our gratitude by stigmatizing as " the Dark Ages " the times in which those manuscripts were produced. At Finchale the scriptorium and the library were on the south side of the church, and occupied the tower now standing to the eastward of the re- fectory, but separated from it by the passage which led to the orchard, and they communicated with the apartments of the prior. The monks of Finchale expended considerable sums in materials for books, and there is a remarkable instance which shows that they procured the services of the best transcribers the age afforded. That instance occurs during the reign of Edward the Third, in the priorate of Ughtred de Boldon, an eminent and learned monk who was a preserver of learning, and himself an author. He brought William de Stiphel, of Bretagne, to Finchale, and there employed him for some time as I 104 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. a transcriber. Two of the manuscripts which he wrote at Finchale in 1381 are in the British Museum, and the splendid folio copy of Nicholas do Lyra's Commentaries, still remarkable as one of the finest manuscripts in the unrivalled collection of the church of Durham, was finished by him at Durham in 1386. We derive, therefore, some glimpse of the life of the monks in the cloistered seclusion of Finchale ; and this is not all, for a most valuable series of " Account Rolls " of Finchale arc pre- served at Durham, in which we find much to illustrate the former state of the priory and the life of its monks. Not that they com- mitted to writing even their own names, or any particulars re- lating to themselves. Unknown to the world except in the instances in which monks were selected for the high places of ecclesiastical rule and were compelled to move in the turbulent scenes of the world's ambition, they only desired so to pass through things temporal that they might not lose the things eternal. The lapse of centuries has obliterated even the sepulchral monuments of the monks of Finchale, and overspread with grass- grown ruins the very cemetery in which, beneath the shadow of their beautiful church and by the flowing waters of the Wear, their brethren committed them to the final rest, and their personal history is veiled for ever from the world. Some of the customs of the monks and of the neighbouring country, the condition of their monastery at different times, the prices of various articles of commerce, and the wages of labour, receive, however, considerable illustration from the Account Rolls of Finchale. They exist from 1303 down to nearly the time of the Dissolution, but the series, unfortunately, is not unbroken. It is curious that, while ages have overthrown the massive walls of the priory, and covered them in many parts with trees, we can read in those fragile written memorials — those dry leaves that have rustled to the winged feet of Time — a picture of what was going on year by year at Finchale, and may almost behold its inmates engaged in their innocent labours. The monastic buildings of Finchale Priory are in such a state of confused ruin, that it would be very difficult to give any description of them. In many parts we find only — FINCHALE PlilOllY. 105 Cypress and ivy, weed and wall-flower grown, Matted and massed together ; hillocks heaped On what were chambers ; arch-crush'd columns strewn In fragments, choked-up vaults, and frescoes steeped • In subterranean damps. The cloister square is on the south of the nave, and it had originally a vaulted roof, as appears by the early-English columns remaining. The chapter-house adjoined the south transept, as at Durham. The dormitory was on the opposite side of the cloister square; and the refectory, which has been built on a remarkably fine early-English crypt, and must have been a noble looking structure, occupies the south side. There is a deeply recessed doorway to this hall, and six windows lighted it from the south. To the eastward stood the scriptorium and the prior's chambers, the guest house, and the various domestic offices. The fine early- English doorway which stands on the south-side of the church was no doubt the great entrance to the guest hall. There was somewhere in Finchale Priory an apartment which was called " the Plaer chambre," and was appropriated to the miracle plays of the age, and to the performance of minstrels and gleemen who were always welcome visitors at the monasteries. It is to be hoped that the monks of Finchale did not follow the bad example which was sometimes set by the court of Henry VII., in the value placed upon minstrels and players as compared with poets. A " Household Book " of that monarch has the following entries : — Paid to a dancing lass from Spain . . .12/. To my lord of Oxon's players . . .1/. To a blind poet ..... One shilling. I have mentioned the Guest House, and may as well remark, that the expenses of the convent at Finchale (like those of other convents) for hospitality were considerable. Of course these payments varied greatly; but, in every year, " the kitchen" was a formidable head of expenditure. In 1374 the prior's ac- count shows that no less than 84/. 6s. 8d. was expended on the kitchen alone; a sum worth, probably, 800/. at least in the money of our day. It must be remembered, that not only noblemen and travellers resorted in those times to the monasteries for lodg- 12 106 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. ing and entertainment, but that the indigent received support at the convent gate in days when poor laws were unknown. On a visit of Edward II. to Battle Abbey, in 1324, so laborious was travelling, and so rare were the means of hospitality, that the king had to bring his own rice, ginger, cloves, and almonds; Avhile bread, pigs, "muttons," capons, and peacocks, were con- tributed for the royal table by the abbot and the neighbouring landholders. No doubt the difficulty of travelling and the want of luxuries were still greater in the north country. One instance of a prince's visit to this remote convent is on record. It is that of Edward Earl of Lancaster, second son of King Henry III., who was at Finchale on the 4th Dec. 1285, with a large com- pany of nobles, knights, and clerics. He conferred on the priory an annual rent from his mills of Emildon, in Northumberland, "towards sustentation of the lights in the church." Lights are mentioned in 1353 as burning by Godric's shrine. Probably Earls of Douglas were amongst their visitors, for the tower, in which there are the remains of a bay window overlooking a beau- tiful sweep of the Wear, eastward of the priory, and well known to visitors, is called " the Douglas Tower." To return once more to the conventual kitchen, though, unfortunately, only upon paper. We find that among the contents of the larder enume- rated in 1411 were 3,500 salt herrings, 140 salmon trout salted, and two pots of honey, besides abundance of corn in the granary, and good store of convent ale. But people now know better than to adopt the vulgar idea that the monastic revenues expended by the monks on their kitchen wenfr to provide good eating and drinking for themselves. It was once the fashion for us to vin- dicate our Protestantism and enlightenment by sneering at the monks as incarnations of laziness and gluttony ; but that bigotry has given place to more just convictions amongst educated men. The fasts of the monks are known to have been frequent; their diet was a continued round of frugal simplicity ; their devotions may have been formal, but occupied the chief part of their time ; and the monastic wealth, of which they are said to have been so greedy, went to raise the noble edifices which no modern art has rivalled, to maintain a stately splendour in the worship of Al- mighty God, and to promote good works of education and charity amongst men. FINCHALE PRIORY. 107 Of the charities, indeed, that were dispensed at Finchale, we have an interesting memorial. In a survey made after the sup- pression, in the reign of Henry VIIL, we find that the amount distributed annually under the head of " alms," at Finchale, was 341 3s. lid. ; and the dole or daily distribution of food ordained by the charter of Henry de Pudsey, their founder, " for the relief of all indigent persons resorting to the monastery of Finchale," appears to have been fulfilled from the reign of Eichard I. down to 1535, when the sum of 91. 10s. yearly appears to have been the amount of the charge upon the monastery for Pudsey's gift alone. Here then was a charity flourishing continuously for a period of 350 years ! The place where these charities were dis- tributed appears to have been the building called the ' Exchequer/ or ' Celarer's Lodging ;' and the gate-tower and chapel on the approach from Durham, which stand apart from the monastic buildings, were connected with the great resort of strangers and indigent people to Finchale Priory. But Finchale is now a silent region of the past. The antiquary, with inquisitive eye, here treads above the buried footprints of a once active monastic community, and stands — Within the shade Of ruined walls, that have survived the names Of those who reared them. Here are the altars before which the pious knelt, and here are the choral walls that so long witnessed day by day the ritual so- lemnities of their faith; but cold, and silent, and deserted are the buildings within which throbbing hearts, with all their griefs and hopes, have beaten, and where voices daily raised on high the songs of praise. Early sovereigns, and a long succession of religious men, desir- ing the prosperity of Finchale, had fenced it round by grants, and fondly hoped that it would flourish till the end of time. But Henry VIIL decreed that Finchale should become again a soli- tude, and should yield up all the dedicated property that could be sold for the use of the crown. The gross yearly income was valued at the time of the suppression at a sum equivalent to perhaps 1300/. of our money. The fraternity then numbered thirteen monks, and a large body of dependants. The plate, jewels, 108 LECTURER AND ESSAYS. vestments, hell?, nnd lead wore sold for the crown ; but the landed possessions were granted to the newly-founded chapter of Durham, and are attached to a prebendal stall recently held by the Rev. Henry Douglas, and previously by the Bishop of Bristol. The fallen masonry and rubbish which had accumulated in long years of neglect and desecration choked up the ruins of the church, until a few years since, to the depth of ten feet; and even in 1830 a large sycamore tree grew on the site of the high altar, and the nave and chancel were filled by ash-trees, elders, and thorns. But after that time the ruins were cleared and became the object of some care; yet they are now allowed to suffer dilapidation and injury from any crowd of irreverent visitors who choose to desecrate them. But, roofless and shattered as they are, these de- caying works of man mingle with the enduring beauties of nature, and stand thickly mantled by ivy of ancient growth ; Which now with rude luxuriance bends Its tangled foliage through the cloister'd space ; O'er the grey windows' mouldering height ascends, And fondly clasps them with a last embrace. BYKON AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY. [Chambers's Journal, 4 Oct., 1862.] In a far -off time during the middle ages, when the old forest of Sherwood still spread as wild and wide as it did before the coming of the Normans or even of Julius Caesar, when its thickets were still the home of the red deer, and seldom knew the foot of man, when the Norman castle had not long risen at Newark by the flowing Trent, or the noble minster of St. Mary at Southwell, a little colony of black canons, who followed the rule of St. Augustine, came to raise, amidst the wild solitudes of the forest, that holy and beautiful house which, under the name of Newstead Priory, flourished until the general dissolution of monasteries. Newstead, however, owes its celebrity not to its ecclesiastical associations, nor to the high place it held in English history while it stood as a religious house, but to the splendour of a recent owner's name; for it was the inheritance, and, during part of his short life, the home of Byron — a modern episode, indeed, in the history of a house which had Henry II. for its founder. New- stead, from a very early time, owned almost a principality, and was often the abode of the royal hunters who came to enjoy the chase in Sherwood ; and their regard for the good ale and larder of the monks seems to have extended to the pious recluses them- selves. But, although Newstead was architecturally remarkable for the beauty of many of its features, especially the graceful western front of the church, that portion is now the only relic of the edifice — a fragment which is still the most striking and pic- turesque ornament of the priory buildings, and has perhaps no rival save in St. Mary's Abbey at York. Hoav transitory does Newstead, in its whole duration as a religious house, appear, when compared with the steadfast and enduring oaks amidst which it rose, and which were still vigorous when it fell ! And 110 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. still move transitory was its ownership by the ancestors of the poet, since whose succession to this property it lias twice passed to strangers ! On the Dissolution in 1540, the priory, and all its possessions in lands and tithes, were bestowed by the crown on Sir John Byron, lieutenant of Sherwood Forest, grand-nephew of the knightly " Byron with the Long Beard" who fought beside Richmond at Bosworth. The anecdote relating to the sons of the first lay-owner of Newstead, which is given by Burke on the faith of its tradition in the Byron family, affords an example of the strange fatality supposed, even by the noble poet in his time, to attend the Byrons. Each of the sons married, and their wives are described as models of female excellence; but the elder son having married beneath his own rank, John, the younger son, became the object of his father's preference. The elder, when going out to hunt one day, fell from his horse in a fit, and died immediately. The younger son ultimately succeeded to the in- heritance, but only to experience a life of sorrow. His beautiful and beloved wife lost her reason at the birth of her daughter Margaret, who became the wife of Colonel Hutchinson the regi- cide, and within a few minutes of her death, Sir John, her hus- band — who is said to have become conscious of the event by some mysterious spiritual sympathy — also expired. Although the newly acquired home of the Byrons suffered much from the brutality of the Roundheads during the Great Rebellion, the domestic buildings of the monastery were not in ruin a century afterwards; for in 1760, when Horace Walpole, " with great delight," as he says, visited Newstead, he found it still " the very abbey . . . the hall entire, the refectory entire, the cloister untouched. The park, which is still charming, has not been (he adds) so much unprofaned, the present lord has lost large sums and paid part in old oaks; five thousand pounds' worth have been cut near the house. The refectory, now the great drawing-room, is full of Byrons, and the vaulted roof re- mains." The room here referred to appears to have been the dormitory of the monks, their refectory having been used as a hay-loft until Colonel Wildman acquired the property, and con- verted it into the dining-hall. The fine roof of what was the BYRON AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY. Ill dormitory is not vaulted, but is of oak, in which stucco ornaments, in a seventeenth-century style, have been inserted between the timbers. " The Byrons " have vanished. But the owner mentioned by Walpole as " the present lord " — namely, "William, fifth baron, who had succeeded in 1736, and was the grand- uncle and immediate predecessor of the noble poet — suffered the buildings as well as the estate to fall into deplorable decay. The refectory was, as already mentioned, full of hay, and there was hardly a chamber of which the roof did not admit the rain. He not only cut down the oaks — insomuch that the noble and spreading tree which stands alone before the entrance to the park from the Nottingham and Mansfield road, is almost a solitary relic — but sold all the deer of the park, which is said to have sheltered two thousand seven hundred head. It has been suggested that this was probably the topic on which his memorable duel with Mr. Chaworth, in January, 1765, arose. A club of Nottinghamshire gentlemen dined at the Star and Garter Tavern in Pall Mall, and a dispute arose whether Lord, Byron, who took no care of his game, or Mr. Chaworth, who was a strict preserver of it, had most game on his manor. Mr. Chaworth having been mortally wounded, Lord Byron was tried by his peers, and found guilty of manslaughter; and he passed the latter years of his strange life in austere and almost savage seclusion, dreaded and unpopular, but surrounded by a colony of crickets, which, it is said, were seen on the day of his death to leave the house in such numbers that a person could not cross the hall without treading on them. On the death of this old lord of Newstead without issue, George Noel Gordon Byron, then in Scotland, succeeded to the title and estates. This was in May, 1798, when the " young heir of fame" was in the eleventh year of his age ; and it was in the following autumn, when his mother brought him from Aberdeen to take possession of Newstead, that he for the first time beheld, as he has said, " its woods stretching out to receive him." Its state of ruin might well have called forth the lament he penned at a later period : Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle ; Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay. 112 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. His college- friend, Mr. Charles Skinner Mathews, in describing (in 1809) his recent visit, gives some notion of the state in which Byron found the mansion: " Ncwstcad," he says, "though sadly fallen to decay, is still completely an abbey, and most part of it is still standing in the same state as when it was first built. There are two tiers of cloisters, with a variety of cells and rooms about them, which, though not inhabited, nor in an inhabitable state, might easily be made so ; and many of the original rooms, amongst which is a fine stone hall, are still in use. Of the abbey- church, only one end remains; and the old kitchen, with a long range of apartments, is reduced to a heap of rubbish. Leading from the abbey to the modern part of the habitation is a noble room, 70 feet in length, and 23 in breadth; but every part of the house displays neglect and decay, save those which the present lord (the poet) has recently fitted up." Such of the buildings of the monastery as were still standing in Byron's time remained, probably, much in the state in which the monks had left them ; and in the clays of the poet they seem to have been still so little altered that the whole aspect of the priory spoke less Of the baron than the monk. The church, however, had been almost destroyed, and only the buildings that were suitable for residence had been at all pre- served; but the domestic architecture of the monks was so far retained, and a monastic style has been so far adopted in the additions of modern times, that the feature of Newstead which to a stranger seems the most characteristic is the transforma- tion of a monastery into an inhabited and elegant mansion of the present day. The picturesque cloisters, with the vaulted chapter-house of Transition architecture, now the domestic chapel; the low, arched dining-room, formerly the prior's chamber; and the fine crypt, now the servants' hall, are the most antique por- tions of the old buildings that have been incorporated with the house. The crypt is as entire as when it was the eleemosynary of the charitable monks.* * The adjacent lake, known as " the Eagle Pond," shares the romance which sur- rounds everything at Newstead. When it was drained in the time of the noble poet's immediate predecessor, the workmen fished up a fine brass eagle, mounted as a reading-desk, on a pedestal (and, as Colonel Wildman always said, two candlesticks BYRON AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY. 113 While the buildings of Newstead have been thus altered, Sher- wood Forest itself has undergone great change. Washington Irving represents the house as standing in "a legendary neigh- bourhood," and amidst the forest-haunts which the exploits of Robin Hood have for ever associated with ballad poetry; but, around the park, few portions of the forest remain uncleared, and " the greenwood" is not what it was when inhabited by the red deer and haunted by the outlaw. Yet patriarchal oaks stand like sentinels on the ancient domain of forest, and waving woods form a sylvan framework round the old historic walls, and seem to keep the spot with all its memories isolated from the turmoil of the world. Of the situation of Newstead Abbey,- the noble poet has him- self drawn the best picture we can have in verse; it was com- posed in Italy, some years after he first saw Newstead, and when the ancestral seat was his own no more. It stood embosomed in a happy valley, Crowned by high woodlands, where the Druid oak Stood like Caractacus, " :; * * * * * * And from beneath the boughs were seen to sally The dappled foresters : as day awoke, The branching stag swept down with all his herd To quaff a brook which murmured like a bird. Before the mansion lay a lucid lake, Broad as transparent, deep and freshly fed By a river, which its softened way did take In currents through the calmer water spread Around : the wild fowl nestled in the brake And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed : The woods sloped downward to its brink, and stood With their green faces fixed upon the flood. Its outlet dashed into a deep cascade Sparkling with foam. * * * also), formerly, doubtless, used in the priory church, and thrown into the lake for concealment from Henry VIII. 's plundering " visitors." After remaining submerged for two centuries and a half, the eagle has found its way to the choir of the noble old collegiate church of Southwell. The hollow globe on which the figure of the bird stands was found to contain writings of the monastery. Two chests are said to have been seen when the lake was drained, but they were not raised, nor were they reco- vered (if they exist at all) when the water was again drained off after Colonel Wild- man's purchase of Newstead. 114 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. And he thus describes the appearance of the buildings : A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile (While yet the church was Koine's) stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screened many an aisle ; These last had disappeared — a loss to art. The mansion's self was vast and venerable, With more of the monastic than had been Elsewhere preserved ; the cloisters still were stable, The cells, too, and refectory, I ween. An exquisite small chapel had been able, Still unimpaired, to decorate the scene ; The rest had been reformed, replaced, or sunk, And spoke more of the baron than the monk. ***** Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers joined By no quite lawful marriage of the arts, Might shock a connoisseur, * * Yet left a grand impression on the mind. It was not Lord Byron's fate to see the domestic buildings of the monastery restored and preserved, as they have since been, or to leave many visible traces of his ownership at Newstead ; but his genius has for ever surrounded the spot with poetic asso- ciations that will be more enduring than its walls. At New- stead, when The boy was sprung to manhood, Lord Byron lived ; here he wrote many of his lesser poems ; near Newstead is the " gentle hill" on which, in his pathetic Dream, he Saw two beings in the hues of youth Standing ; and it was while living at Newstead that he beheld the face Which made The starlight of his boyhood ; for in the vicinity lived Mary Chaworth, the granddaughter of his predecessor's antagonist and victim. Even the grave of his favourite dog receives the honours of a place of pilgrimage, and "Boatswain" is quite one of the "dogs of history." The character of his monument among the ornamental trees that decorate the grassy site of the priory church, and its unfitness for such a spot, do not diminish the touching force of the epitaph BYRON AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY. 115 written by Byron at Newstead on the 30th November, 1808, and engraved on the tablet in commemoration of his gentle and affectionate follower — The poor dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend. One memorial of his boyhood's home at Newstead is still green and flourishing, namely, the oak which he planted near the house soon after his arrival. His name, too, has been attached to a spring that rises near a group of yews which were probably old before his ancestors had a name in history. Byron, after long absence, took up his residence at Newstead in September, 1808, and there celebrated his coming of age (on the 22nd of the following January) by such festivities as his narrow means and limited society could furnish. Besides " the ritual roasting " of an ox, a ball was given in honour of the day. Nor were these the only revels of his "hours of idleness" at Newstead that startled the owls and woke the long silent echoes of the cloister. In the same year (1809), when contemplating a long absence from England, he assembled round him a party of young college-friends for a sort of festive farewell, and in a letter (written many years afterwards), in speaking of his friendship for Mr. Mathews, Byron himself describes their unhallowed doings : " We went down to Newstead together, where I had got a famous cellar, and monks' dresses from a masquerade warehouse. We were a company of some seven or eight, with an occasional neighbour or so for visitors, and used to sit up late in our friars' dresses drinking Burgundy, claret, champagne, and what not, out of the skull-cup* and all sorts of glasses, and buffooning all round the house in our conventual garments. Mathews always deno- minated me the abbot." After returning in July, 1811, from his Eastern tour, Byron wrote thus in a letter to Moore: " The place is worth seeing as a ruin, and I can assure you there was some fun there even in my The skull found in digging within the priory, which had been polished and mounted in silver for a drinking-cup, and is now among the few Byron relics pre- served at Newstead. It is of a dark colour, mottled, and resembling tortoise-shell. 116 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. time, but that is past. The ghosts, however, and the gothics, and the waters, and the desolation, make it very lively still." He peopled the gloomy and romantic pile with shadowy as well as substantial inhabitants, and it seems to have been during his visit to Xewstead in 1814 that he actually fancied he saw the ghost of the Black Friar, which was said to have haunted the priory from the time of the Dissolution : A monk arrayed In cowl, and beads, and dusky garb, appeared, Now in the moonlight, and now lapsed in shade, With steps that trod as heavy, yet unheard : ***** He moved as shadowy as the sisters weird, But slowly. This is the apparition that seems to have been regarded as a kind of evil genius of the Byrons : By the marriage-bed of their lords, 'tis said He flits on the bridal eve ; And — 'tis held as faith — to their bed of death He comes — but not to grieve : When an heir is born, he is heard to mourn ; And when aught is to befall That ancient line, in the pale moonshine He walks from hall to hall. The life and the brief dominion of the noble poet himself seem hardly less shadowy. He had not long attained twenty-one, when, writing to his mother, he said: " Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have now lived on the spot; I have fixed my heart upon it, and no pressure, present or future, shall induce me to barter the last vestige of our inheritance. I have that pride within me which will enable me to support difficulties. I can endure privations; but could I obtain, in exchange for Newstead Abbey, the first fortune in the country, I would reject the pro- position." This was written in 1809. In three years afterwards, New- stead was nevertheless put up for sale ; but only 90,000/. being offered, a private contract for its sale at 140,000/. was after- wards made. The contract, however, was not completed, and in BYRON AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY. 117 September, 1814, Lord Byron wrote: " I have got back New- stead;" but in 1815 (on the 2nd January) his ill-fated marriage took place; and on the 25th April, 1816, at the age of twenty- eight, he left his native country for ever. In 1818 Newstead was purchased by Colonel Wildman ; and his noble schoolfellow expressed to him his satisfaction that the place which had cost him " more than words to part with," had fallen into the hands of one who was likely to raise the venerable building to some- thing like its former splendour. The purchase-money in 1818 is understood to have been about 100, OOOL; and the much larger amount for which it was sold in the year 1861 marks the im- provement which everything at Newstead underwent in the hands of the late owner, who not only planted largely, and increased the value of the estate generally, but evinced his good taste by care and improvement of the domestic buildings of this romantic old pile. In little more than eight years from his finally leaving Newstead the remains of Byron were brought from Greece to his last resting-place in the little village church of Hucknall, near Newstead, and deposited beside the remains of his mother. This was in July, 1824. The rooms that the poet inhabited, and the furniture he used, were, at the time of Colonel "Wildman's death, preserved as Byron left them — plain and sombre, but more attractive to the visitor who goes in retrospective mood, than the new and lux- urious halls of Newstead in their modern splendour. The panelled room, now or lately the breakfast-room, is a chamber of great interest, not only from its seventeenth-century character, but because it was used as the dining-room by Lord Byron. His bed-room, too, was carefully preserved, furnished as he left it. His life-like portrait by Phillips adorns the drawing-room, and a few less important objects — personal relics, such as the little bronze candlesticks of his writing-table, and the collar of " Boatswain," his favourite dog, are still preserved upon the spot. The library is perhaps more in keeping with the historical shadows of Newstead Priory than any other room; and the books, which, after Colonel Wildman's death, were sold in bulk to the new owner of the estate, remain as they were in the Colonel's time ; but in the collection none that appear to have belonged to 118 LECTUltES AND ESSAYS. Byron are known. As far as regards pictures, Byron's descrip- tion, in Don Juan, of the Gallery of a sombre hue, Long, furnished with old pictures of great worth Of knights and dames, where The pale smile of beauties in the grave, The charms of other days, in starlight gleams, Glimmer on high — has ceased to be applicable to Newstead. Heavy tapestries, old cabinets, and quaint portraits, collected from various sources and countries by Colonel Wildman, and carved ceilings of seven- teenth-century date, give a very antique aspect to most of the bedrooms in the abbey, the names given to some of which — as " King Edward the Third's Boom," " King Henry the Seventh's Lodgings," " King Charles the Second's Room," Prince Rupert's Room," &c. — are at least in keeping with the historical traditions of the spot, though it must not be supposed that the chambers themselves are of Gothic character, or their furniture of medieval date. The private apartments, as lately used by Colonel and Mrs. Wildman, enriched as they are by historical portraits and recent works of art, are of a more cheerful character ; and in the stately and noble drawing-room, and equally fine dining-hall, into which the old refectory and dormitory have been respect- ively converted, one forgets the former destination of their walls amidst objects that certainly speak more of the baron than the monk. The western front of the church, already mentioned, is the only fragment of ecclesiastical architecture that has been com- bined with the picturesque faga.de of the mansion ; but it is a fragment remarkable for the elegance of its character and for its architectural value as a graceful work of the period when the early-English passed into that Decorated style which began to prevail late in the reign of Edward I. The enclosure, once beneath the vaulted roof of the church, is now an open lawn and shrubbery; but in the highest niche of the gable or western front, " alone and crowned," Spared by some chance, when all beside was spoiled, BYRON AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY. 119 the statue of the blessed Virgin and infant Saviour holds its tutelary place, And makes the earth below seem holy ground. The pensive beauty of the scene is greatly enhanced when the calm and softening moonbeams fall on the ruins of human art, and the garden lies in pale lustre beyond the deep shadow of the ivied walls, and the cold uncertain light rests so tranquilly over the forgotten graves. Byron himself has pictured the scene when the rising moon begins to climb The topmost arch, and gently pauses there ; When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, And the low niidit-breeze waves along the air. " The sun of Newstead " is not likely again to shine, nor can it be supposed that " hours splendid as the past" will again be known ; but it is a place that must ever be consecrated by historic memories as a mediaeval shrine of worship and a modern home of genius. K. THE PERCYS STRONGHOLD. [Morning Post, August 1861.] Alnwick Castle, "the Windsor of the North," has for some time past attracted much public attention in consequence of the important works of renovation and embellishment which have been In progress for some years in that interesting old relic of feudal times, and are now approaching completion. It is not only the chief of the baronial castles of Northumberland, but is famous in English history, and quite foremost among England's monu- ments of the past ; while it is of course celebrated in Border tale and song. As a building, it is remarkable architecturally, and for the mediaeval character which, notwithstanding all the deface- ments of the Georgian era, it has retained ; and its extent and picturesque grandeur are commensurate with its historic fame. Before adverting to what has been going on inside the castle, we will briefly describe its situation and appearance. Alnwick Castle stands (as probably most of our readers know) on a high bank of the river Aln, about five miles above its junction with the sea, in a most fertile part of Northumberland, and midway between the Tyne and the Tweed. As the great north road passes through the thriving old county town that nestles beneath the castle walls, the castle commanded, by its situation, a highway which in the days of Border warfare was oftener traversed by armies than by peaceful travellers. The hills between Alnwick and the North-Eastern Railway intercept any view of the castle from the line ; but no person who has seen it from the hill tra- versed by the north road, or has viewed from " the Lion-bridge " across the Aln the turrets rising above the wooded slopes that border the glassy stream, can forget the aspect of the picturesque and stately pile, with all its variety of towers, and with those the Percy's stronghold. 121 strange warriors "in stone that stand upon the merlons and are seen against the sky, as if some former garrison had been sud- denly petrified and fixed in their attitudes of defence. But, indeed, the whole building preserves so antique an aspect, and seems so like a feudal castle that has remained spell-bound amidst all the changes of time, that many a spectator must have felt, on his first view, that it would scarcely have been surprising if he had seen the bowmen and helmed warders of the mighty Percy moving on the ramparts. On the northern side, the castle, with its coronal of towers, proudly crowns the green declivity, at the foot of which the river flows, and from the terrace before the keep there is an enchant- ing view of the wooded scenery of the park, which stretches for miles over lands once held by the Carmelites of Hulne and the canons of Alnwick, under the protection of its martial lords. On the other sides, the keep and its great area are surrounded by curtain walls, partly of Norman masonry, but on which, towards the middle of the fourteenth century, strong towers were placed at intervals, each having its appropriate destination and name, as " The Constable's Tower," " The Armourer's Tower," " The Falconer's Tower," " The Postern Tower," and so on — defences that are characteristic of the time when they lodged the armed retainers of the lord of Alnwick, and when the spectator could not admire their commanding forms and picturesque variety of outline without the danger of receiving an arrow from their loop-holed walls. The chief entrance to the castle was then, as it is now, through a fortified gate tower, approached between high and massive walls, formerly strengthened by portcullis and double gates, and still retaining, with its fine barbacan — a work completed in 1315 — much of its stern and feudal aspect. The square keep-tower of the Norman lords which stood within this fortified area was succeeded early in the reign of Edward III., when the castle and barony had become the property of Henry de Percy, by a picturesque group of semicircular towers, built round an inner court, of polygonal form, to which a Norman gateway of immense strength gave entrance, and this noble arch- way is still perfect and undecayed. The Henry de Percy who defeated David King of Scots, at the buttle of Neville's Cross, k2 122 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. and whose power in the realm seems to have made him hardly second in importance to Edward himself, was the lord of Alnwick who built this grand Edwardian castle — this Conway or Caernar- von of the Northumberland border ; and his fortress, as completed shortly before the age of William of Wykeham, has stood to the present day, mutilated indeed, yet still Like veteran worn, but unsubdued. His grandson, the first Earl of Northumberland of the Percy line, was the father of Hotspur, Shakespeare's hero, with whom the Lion of Northumberland fell in blood on the field of Shrewsbury. The earl's grandson, to whom the family honours were restored in 1414, repaired the castle, and fortified his town of Alnwick with four gate-towers, of which the "Bond-gate," on the entrance by the great north road, alone remains. He and his son, ever con- stant and loyal, were slain at Towton-moor ; and so greatly did the Percy family suffer in the troubles which convulsed England during the century that followed the Wars of the Roses, that the castle had lost its ancient pride long before Thomas de Percy, who, in 1557, was created Earl of Northumberland, executed his works of building and repair. Alnwick Castle escaped destruction in the great rebellion and the civil wars of the seventeenth century, only to suffer neglect more wasting than the ancient sieges of • Scottish kings. After another hundred years the honours of the family were revived, and the first Duke of Northumberland who held the princely possessions of the Percies undertook the repair and alteration of this old historic fortress, but in an evil hour employed Adam, the prolific builder, as his architect. When it is remembered that this was about 1780, when the military archi- tecture of the middle ages was not understood, and Strawberry Hill, or Confectionery Gothic, was deemed the perfection of art, the result may be imagined. The alterations made at this period afforded a warning example of the mischief which a presumptuous architect may perpetrate, who, without due reverence for a historical monument, dares ignorantly to raise his destructive hand against a building which the men of other days gave the best of their noble thoughts and constructive skill to fashion for future time. Alnwick Castle was THE PERCY'S STRONGHOLD. 123 deplorably debased, changed, and modernised, on the outside as well as in the interior. The towers clustered in the central keep were almost reconstructed internally, and little more was left than their outer shell. Even Percy's banquet hall was modernised, and its walls reduced to such a dangerous condition that the magnificent new dining room has had to be constructed on its site. Modernised reception rooms, a chapel and library (the only good room in the whole castle) were formed * and elaborately plastered with Gothic ornaments; and every part of the building- underwent such a transformation that there was not a room of any historical or antiquarian interest left, or (excepting the library) a room of comfort or splendour acquired. The apart- ments remained isolated and inconvenient ; and the liability of the patties and other artistic productions of the remote kitchen to be blown away in their passage through an open court used to be facetiously deplored. On the outside the imposing features of an ancient castle were mutilated ; the aspect of the whole building became tame and level. The ditch or moat which had surrounded the keep was not only filled up, but the turf was heaped against the central towers ; the characteristic pointed and mullioned lights of former days were altered. Here an incongruous quatre- foil was inserted ; there, some travesty of the loopholes of a mediaeval fortress. In short, few parts of the castle had not been altered, and whatever was altered was impaired. About six years ago, therefore, the present Duke of Northum- berland began to carry into effect a design the object of which is to restore to the exterior of the castle its mediasval grandeur; and, while retaining all the ancient architecture really worthy of pre- servation, to reconstruct a new and sumptuous interior, and to enrich it with decorations of the Renaissance period of Italian art. These costly works have of course diffused some hundreds of pounds weekly in wages during many years past ( more than 200 workmen have been employed upon the spot for six years, besides all the work in marble sculpture thas has been executed in Italy); * The chapel was formerly over the second gateway, or middle ward of the castle, and was reached through the library, but the space which was occupied by these apartments is now converted into the private rooms of the noble duke and duchess. 124 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. and they have raised up at Alnwick quite a school of decorative art, with native workmen for the artists. But the importance of these works, and the exotic character of the style adopted for the decoration of the interior, has naturally led to much debate and no small difference of opinion as to the propriety of bringing Italian ornament to the great Border Castle of the martial Pcrcies. On the one hand it is urged that, although Alnwick Castle has no longer to defend the Borders or repel besiegers, and its lords need no longer maintain it as a fortress, it is a historical monument so thoroughly mediaeval in character and associations, that the inte- rior cannot with any congruity or fitness be decorated in Kenais- sance style; that English decorative art of the time of Edward III. is a known reality, and can be modified to meet the require- ments of modern luxury; that the renovation of Alnwick Castle afforded a rare opportunity for reviving this national style, and showing that it is as compatible with modern luxury as with archi- tectural dignity ; that it is an error to regard tapestry and rushes as inseparable from a mediaeval castle ; and that a style of decora- tion founded on the noble works of art of our English forefathers in the fourteenth century can be adapted to the refinements and usages of the nineteenth. On the other hand, it is contended that such a style of decoration would be experimental, and would have to be reconstructed from illuminations in MSS. or studied from a variety of buildings of the period; whereas there was to be seen, in churches and patrician residences 'in Italy, ready to the hand, a system of decorative art — revived classic, certainly, but elaborated by great artists of the sixteenth century — in itself really beautiful, and recommended by very dignified associations; that its adoption for the interior of the castle need not affect the feudal simplicity or mediaeval character of the structure externally, or sacrifice any architecture of Edwardian times; and that the stern character and associations of the castle he has inherited could not be a reason why the Duke of Northumberland should not surround himself with the richest productions that wealth and taste can command. Upon this controversy we do not intend to give any opinion, for our present purpose is only to describe what has been done. As for as regards the exterior of the castle, the duke's noble the Percy's stronghold. 125 idea of thorough renovation has been well carried out by his able architect, Mr. Salvin. It is a relief to find, after all the ominous suggestions by correspondents in daily newspapers, that no archi- tecture of the Edwardian age has been destroyed for the present improvements, except two towers of the curtain wall, which, if we remember them aright, were not worthy of preservation ; and the two damaged towers of the keep, which it was justifiable to sacri- fice for the sake of obtaining so fine a feature as the new " Prudhoe Tower," by which not only a fitting entrance, vesti- bule, and staircase, and a spacious library are gained, but dignity and a culminating point to the grouping of the towers. The attempts made during the Georgian era to restore the castles of the middle ages in the style of their period were for the most part miserable failures, from "Windsor Castle downwards; and equally offensive to good taste, although not also injurious to historical monuments, have been most of the pretentious adaptations of feudal architecture to modern mansions that aspired to swell into castles in the nineteenth century. But at this old stronghold of the Percies we have no mimic feudalism, and its noble owner is fast removing all the monstrosities of pseudo-Gothic. Even the range of stables, built in 1788, with their crockets and pinnacles of the period, are being swept away, and the new stables form at this moment the focus of building energy at Alnwick Castle, the spacious and magnificent kitchens, with their vaulted roof, having been completed. This new structure surpasses anything of the kind, and rivals the finest kitchens of the middle ages; indeed, the abbots of Glastonbury might covet such a building, replete as it is with all the appliances of modern art. Even the monastery of Alcobaca, of which Mr. Beckford gives such a glowing descrip- tion, can hardly boast such a kitchen. Alnwick Castle has retained, notwithstanding the weak and tasteless perpetrations of last century, so much of the grand sim- plicity of an Edwardian castle, that every Englishman who can value the historical monuments of his country is interested in the character of the works undertaken for its restoration. It has what Mr. Gilbert Scott has justly described as the requisites for a dignified building, inasmuch as it has a good and commanding position, actual extent, suitable material, and first-rate workman- 126 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. ship, and now, by the building of the " Prudhoe Tower," height, and due subordination of parts; and we have, moreover, at Alnwick a bold development of the features naturally arising from the exigencies of the building and adapted to its site. As far as regards the interior of the castle, whatever view may be taken as to the fitness of the style of decoration adopted, it is at all events satisfactory that no sham, no machine-work has been admitted here : all the elaborate carvings have been executed by hand, and the carving (for example) for a door-panel in Italian walnut has alone occupied an artist for many months. The forms are classic and conventional it is true, and present none of the sculptured richness and variety of Gothic art, for in the works at Alnwick Castle the art workmen have not been sent — as those employed contemporaneously in the new Museum Buildings at Oxford have been sent — to study and arrange their designs from the works of nature, and copy actual foliage for the decoration of the marble arcades, so that no herb or floweret glistened there But was carved in the cloister arch as fair. All, however, are characterised by beauty, richness of detail, and refined taste in colouring and combination. Wood carvings of fruit and foliage, refulgent in gilding, and framed on coloured panels, adorn the ceilings; painted friezes of classic design, and elaborate mouldings, enriched with gold and colour, decorate the walls; and these, moreover, are to receive panels of Genoa damask tissue* The gorgeous decorations above described are certainly of a character and designed in a style of art which the martial Percies never knew, and they glitter very unexpectedly before the visitor who enters the castle with the impressions which the stern sim- plicity of its exterior aspect can hardly fail to produce, and who passes under De Yesci's Norman gateway and Henry de Percy's grey feudal towers; but they transplant the decorative arts of Italy to remote Northumberland, and will form a sumptuous monument of the taste and splendour of a great English nobleman. * Much still remains to be done in these state rooms, but the works are so far advanced that we understand fifty apartments are to be ready for use before the close of the present summer (1861). SUMMEB DAYS IN SCOTLAND. [Bentley's Miscellany, 1861.] A great charm of the ruined abbey of Melrose is the character of the scenery by which it is surrounded. Wooded acclivities adorn the landscape, and the silvery Tweed flows by green haughs bright with the golden flowers of " the bonny broom," by waving fields and pastures green, With gentle slopes and groves between, in a region " where every field has its story and every rivulet its song," and where the natural features of the country derive a heightened charm from their historic memories. But the interest of association seems to culminate in " the ruined pride" of Mel- rose, which, with the Eildon's purple peaks on the one side and the bright river on the other, is set in a thoroughly Cistercian valley of wood and water. That was a great day for Melrose and for Scotland which beheld a little colony of monks from Eievaux arrive, at the bid- ding of St. David, in this fair valley of the Tweed, to found a new abbey under those weird hills, and in the shadow of the great name of that older Melrose, which (originally deriving its faith from Iona) had been founded here in the seventh century by St. Aidan, the Celtic apostle of Northumberland, and was long a lamp of Christianity to the northern province. But the Cistercians, who came in David's reign to plant the light of the gospel among the rude and benighted natives of this part of the old Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, chose for their abbey a dif- ferent site to that of old Melrose, and reared its Norman walls upon a meadow sloping to the Tweed, where the triple peaks of Eildon rose above the adjacent hills of the royal forest in which 1 28 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. the jolly abbots .afterwards loved to cliase their deer. But of this early fabric no portion remains. During the Wars of the Succes- sion in Scotland, Melrose suffered in common with the other Border abbeys, and in 1326 the present edifice rose, under the care of King Robert Bruce, who marked his pious affection for the place by appointing his heart to be deposited within its walls. The architecture of the chief part of it shows that it was built before the close of the fourteenth century, and the graceful symmetry of its structure, the delicacy and profusion of its sculptured ornaments, render it the glory of Scottish eccle- siastical art. It must be confessed that the reality falls short of the poetic ideal of Melrose; and certainly, on a first view, to see the grey and shattered ruins standing hardly apart from the little town, is to be disenchanted, for mean and unsightly dwellings have crept up to the walls of the church and deprived it of the romantic seclusion which generally characterises a Cistercian abbey, and always renders more impressive its " calm decay." But these in- congruous surroundings may be forgotten when the spectator stands — not, indeed, by moonlight, but even in " the gay beams of lightsome day " — in the interior of the deserted pile. The nave is ruined and roofless, but the choir and transepts, which are in better preservation, retain much of their dignified beauty, and high aloft over the east end the fretted and sculptured stone roof remains. The slender shafts of shapely stone By foliaged tracery combined ; the capitals, the mouldings, the architectural enrichments and sculptured figures, are as sharp and perfect as when they were cut; and the east window and the south transept window retain their elegant tracery. The ruined central tower, with its curious parapet of quatrefoils, rises on lofty and massive pointed arches. The vaulting and quaint sculptured adornments of the range of chapels in the south aisle are still almost entire. On the outside most of the pinnacles, canopies, niches, statues, and strange goblin- looking heads that so profusely covered the building remain. But in every part of the abbey church that sacrilegious hands could SUMMER DAYS IN SCOTLAND. 129 reach, and in the total destruction of the monastic buildings, we see the barbarous ravages committed, first by the Earl of Hertford's army, in 1545, then by the reforming mobs of the hateful Knox, and afterwards by the fanatical rage of the Cove- nanters, in whose sight all architectural beauty was abomination. When more peaceable times arrived, the abbey became a conve- nient stone quarry for the buildings of the town. Pursuing the journey to Edinburgh after seeing Melrose, and climbing ' ' the steep where " Roslin's chapel ' ' shines afar," it is curious to see the striking contrast presented between the Renaissance de- corations of that unique and celebrated building and the Gothic graces of Melrose. Roslin chapel was built not long after the completion of the latest portions of that abbey church, for it was founded in 1446, but so exotic is its style, and so elaborately is it encrusted with decorations, that it seems a kind of architectural dream perpetuated in sculptured stone. The chapel has been restored for Anglican worship, but a fac-simile restoration of de- cayed parts has been attempted — a replacing which generally destroys all historical validity in a building, and is not restoration, but substitution. For the most part, however, what has been done is little more than renewal and repair, and the enrichments of the interior are brought out with almost their original fresh- ness. It is exalted on a lofty ridge, from which there is a fine view of the picturesque Pentland hills and the distant range of the Lammermoors. The adjacent massive archway and tiers of strong vaults are the remains of the castle of its ancient lords — the stronghold " where erst St. Clairs held princely sway," and it is a fit scene for the most romantic legends. By supernatural aid the first Baron of Roslin is recorded to have won this lordship from Robert Bruce, and on the death of the lords of Roslin a supernatural illumination in the chapel is said to have been always witnessed. It is pleasant to pass from the vaults of Roslin to the sunshine and exhilarating air — from the decaying monuments of human splendour to the ever-renewing beauties of nature in the adjacent scenery; and it would be hard to find a river glen where wood and rock and water are seen in more enchanting combination than in the deep dell which winds between Roslin and " the classic 130 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Hawthorn den." The mansion is built above caverned precipices, on a lofty cliff, round the base of which the North Esk river flows through a deep, luxuriantly wooded winding dell; and the house seems externally in much the same state as it was left when repaired, in 1638, by the poet and historian William Drummond, and when Ben Jonson made his pedestrian journey from London to visit him. In those pre-locomotive days people were not so constantly admonished to "move on" — they enjoyed leisure to linger amidst caves and wooded rivers, and to turn aside from the crowded highways to visit monuments of religion and chivalry ; but I was "to the Highlands bound," and a short ride exchanged these quiet old-world scenes for the metropolis of Scotland. A nation's history seems to be displayed in the variety and mul- titude of picturesque objects which Edinburgh presents. Striking, indeed, is the contrast between the ancient and the modern city — between the squalid and narrow wynds of the former, with their tall dilapidated houses, and the broad and stately avenues of the new town. The change of times and manners can hardly be more strikingly displayed than it is in Edinburgh. Thus, the houses in the Cowgate — the hollow to the south of the central ridge on which the old High Street stands — which the Lowland nobility and judges inhabited before the extension of the city, are now abandoned to the poorest of the community; and many of the closes that diverge from the Canon (Kyning) gate, formerly inhabited by nobles and men of eminence, are now dark, dirty, and of unsavoury odour, and strangely unworthy of the noble appellations they retain.* All the historic scenes (of course) cluster in the storied line which ascends from Holyrood to the castle, and to mention them would be to write a book ; whereas, the present paper is designed as a mere sketch of the archaeological and the picturesque. The most ancient part of the palace is the north- * Of this decadence, the large sombre mansion called Queensberry House, which encloses three sides of a court, affords an example. It was built chiefly by William, the first duke, was the frequent residence of his son James, the second duke (one of the chief promoters of the Union), and the birthplace of Charles, third duke, who, with his duchess — the " wild, witty, and beautiful " Catherine Hyde, commemorated by Prior, Pope, Gay, Swift, and Horace Walpole — here resided, but, the last duke having dismantled and sold the mansion, it has now become the " House of Refuge." SUMMER DAYS IN SCOTLAND. 131 west angle, which was built in 1525 by James V. ; the rooms shown as Queen Mary's are in a part of the building which is, perhaps, hardly older than the reign of Charles II. Of the ruined chapel (still, as in mockery, called the Chapel Royal), the oldest portion is a Romanesque door, which may belong to the age of the Augustine canons whom David, the royal founder of the abbey, brought hither in 1128 — a time when, in the romantic wilds of what is now called the Queen's Park, the kings of Scot- land chased the forest deer. The piers of the nave are of the middle of the thirteenth century, and the western front is of Transition date, but none of the windows seem much earlier than the time when Holyrood was the scene of the gay nuptial festivi- ties held on the marriage of the English princess, Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., to James of Scotland. The so-called cathedral of St. Giles, the parish church of Edinburgh, contains some fine relics of Second Pointed architecture in the choir and in the piers of the tower. The modern facade of the buildings of the law courts in the Parliament Square does not prepare the visitor for such a sight as the spacious old Parliament chamber, with its open roof of dark oak timber — the Westminster Hall of Scotland; but the noblest monument that this Temple of Themis contains is the splendid library founded by Sir George Mackenzie, Lord Advocate. • It is not rich in illuminated MSS. but amono- its 160,000 printed volumes are many rare works of literary as well as professional value* From an instructive visit to the unique and well- arranged Museum of the Society of Antiquaries, and the silent relics of the Celtic and Scandinavian and mediaeval inhabitants of the country, it is a striking transition to pass again into the region of daily life in the busy and splendid line of Prince's Street. From this point the most striking of the architectural and characteristic features of the city are seen in picturesque combination. Looking westward from that commanding terrace, considerable portions of the old town are beheld clustering on the ridge that terminates in the magnificent escarpments of the Castle rock, while a few steps in the opposite direction bring into view the new town of stately but monotonous streets, crescents, * Amongst the curiosities are some poems from the press of Walter Chapman and Andrew Millar, who, in 1507, introduced printing into Scotland. 13li LECTUllE* AJSD ESSAYS. squares, and terraces with their pleasant gardens, which over- spreads the declivities to the east. How different was the scene on which David I. looked down when he came to visit his castle of Edinburgh and his monks of Holyrood ! In those days the country round was a wild forest tract, partly covered with native wood, and inhabited only by wild animals of chase. Probably the only existing edifice that was then standing in Edinburgh is Queen Margaret's chapel, on the highest ridge of the Castle rock, from whence, in the new gun-fire signal at one every afternoon, time is now electrically flashed from the Observatory clock on Calton Hill. What a wonderful view is beheld on these ram- parts ! The eye ranges from the grey slopes of Arthur's Seat, and the dusky grandeur of Holyrood, by clusters of cone-shaped turrets and tall gables, to the gleaming lines of the new town, and farther northward to the waters of the Forth and the distant shores of Fife; then, from the monumental heights of the Calton Hill, surveys the blue expanse of sea beyond, and the rocky wilds of Salisbury Crags, soaring darkly above the grey floating haze; and, while " the murmur of the city crowd" is wafted to the ear, beholds the silent landscape of the far-off hills, the wooded uplands, and yellow corn-fields lying in their " soft peacefulness of light." To the geologist, the rocky citadel itself, and its precipices of basaltic greenstone, carry back the thoughts to that remote pre- historic period when Edinburgh had no existence, and when glaciers or masses of ice probably traversed the Castle Hill and the Calton Hill, as well as the Castle Hill of Stirling, and left the stria; and marks of glacial action which have been traced upon these basaltic cliffs. The traveller who wishes to make a rapid transition from the busy life and traffic and splendour of to-day, and to step back, as it were, into the decaying old-world scenes of former days, should stop on his way from Edinburgh to Glasgow at David's old royal burgh of Linlithgow (the chief industry of which appears to be that of the sons of Crispin), where the palace — the finest of Scot- tish regal buildings, the birth-place of Mary Queen of Scots, is, though in ruins, full of interest, architecturally as well as histori- cally. The only other very noticeable building here is the adjacent church of St. Michael, the scene of the spectral pageant SUMMER DAYS IN SCOTLAND. 133 that warned James IV. against the campaign which ended so fatally for him on Flodden field. It was not until a century ago, when the population of Glas- gow had risen to about thirty-five thousand, that a regular conveyance for passengers between that city and Edinburgh was established, two previous attempts having proved abortive; and very deliberate was the pace, for with four horses the coach took twelve hours for the journey of forty -two miles, and for thirty years (as we learn from those entertaining " Domestic Annals of Scotland," for which the public is indebted to Mr. Robert Cham- bers) this was the only stage-coach upon the road. Yet Glasgow was described more than a hundred and thirty years ago as the emporium of the west of Scotland for its commerce and riches; but a carriage was unknown in Smollett's time, and Glasgow had not then seen the rise of the West Indian trade. The visitor, when he finds himself in the crowded thoroughfares, amidst the mate- rial, mechanical, and commercial activity of a vast manufacturing city with half a million of inhabitants, contrasts it with the time when " the tobacco princes " were the aristocracy of Glasgow, and might be seen on the plain-stanes daily with their scarlet cloaks, curled wigs, cocked hats, and gold-headed canes, the people reverently making way for them ; or the earlier time when its antique burghers clustered under the shadow of its cathedral undisturbed by dreams of gigantic manufacture, and when the Blackfriars' Monastery and the University (founded late in the fifteenth century) were the chief foundations of St. Mungo's Town. And one loves to picture the solemn and stately pro- cession of Masters, Licentiates, Bachelors, and Students of the Faculty of Arts, when (on the Sunday or festival next after the translation of St. Nicholas, 9th May) they rode forth from their college, bearing flowers and branches of trees, and traversed the streets from the upper part of the town to the cross, returning to the college to dinner, after which the Masters acted some inter- lude or show to rejoice the people. But Glasgow now retains few monuments of the past save the cathedral, once the metropolitan cathedral of the west, an edifice which has been justly described as the noblest unmutilated specimen of ecclesiastical art in Scotland. Here, again, we are on the footsteps of the good King David. 134 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. When his previous fabric rose, the population of the west of Scot- land comprised descendants of the Britons of Strathclyde, among Saxon colonists, Norwegians, Celtic Highlanders, and men of Galloway; and with wonder must the rude natives have seen his Norman church rising in its Itomanesque grandeur. The present edifice succeeded to it early in the thirteenth century, and very characteristic of the period are its massive clustered piers and graceful lancets, its long perspectives, its symmetrical and im- pressive crypt, and its pervading dignity; and much to the honour of the town and of the neighbouring contributors is the recent enrichment of this fine structure with stained glass, the work chiefly of Munich artists. Such architectural splendour pre- sents a striking contrast to the sordid vulgarities of Presbyterian kirk-sessions; to see such a monument of the art and reverence of the past, and then to traverse the streets around it, is to realise the chasm between our days and the picturesque middle ages in which warriors and ecclesiastics raised Glasgow Cathedral ! With a sense of relief and thankfulness I escaped from the dense, sunless atmosphere, the din and turmoil of Glasgow, and the muddy river crowded with the trade of nations and darkened by smoke, and ere long rejoiced in the wild freshness of the hills that lay in all the glory of sunshine beyond the bright rippling waters of the Firth of Clyde. The tourist sees few spots of historical interest on the voyage between Glasgow and Loch Goil. The most conspicuous is the rocky citadel of Dunbarton, a curious isolated mount, which is said to have been the seat of royalty in the days of the British kingdom of Strathclyde, and was in the middle ages a strong castle "standing (as Froissart describes it) in the marches against the wild Scots." Geologically, this picturesque hill, with its double peak, is remarkable as a mass of trap-rock — a formation which composes some lesser eminences visible on the route; and the shores of the Clyde on either side present other objects of interest to the geologist, for sea-worn terraces or ancient beaches may be observed; there are boulders of ice-borne rock on the igneous range of Kilpatrick ; the mica-schist mountains of Dunbarton and Argyll bound with serrated sky-line the distant landscape; and, below Gourock, the red sandstone is seen upon the shore. SUMMER DAYS IN SCOTLAND. 135 After passing Helensburgh, the high but not mountainous shores of the Gareloch, with its promontories and rocky bays, and the white houses of its somewhat upstart sea-bathing villages, and the wooded peninsula of Roseneath, form a succession of pleasing objects ; and then comes the grandeur of Loch Long, from whose clear deep water the blue hills rise in a picturesque variety of outline, their tints ever changing as the cloud-shadows traverse their wastes of rock and heather, every change in light and shade, and distance, and colour, presenting the landscape as a new picture. Then, past the silent glens, and under the dark, craggy hills that advance as if to bar the approach of man to the mountain fastnessess, the steam-boat speeds on through the still, cold depths, and seems a profane intruder on the solitude of na- ture. The mountainous shores of Loch Long have a grand breadth and massiveness, and, in their general forms and cha- racter, resemble the upper and finer parts of Loch Lomond ; and the distant view of the " Alps of Arrochar," seen before diverging into Loch Goil, is one of wild sublimity. That mountain wilder- ness of rock and heather hears no voice but the wild bird's cry ; and the occasional sound of a waterfall in some gorge or rocky channel which the melted snows have worn upon the mountain- side, seems to deepen our sense of the solemn stillness of the hills, The work of God untouch' d by man. The tourist on Loch Goil is not likely to forget the favourite lyric of which the "dark and stormy water " is the scene; and leaving behind — not pursuing foes, but — the cares of the busy world, he quits the boat at the head of the loch, and ascends the wild ravine called Hell's Glen (the name seems to be a memory of the Scandinavian goddess), where the great hills rise in mag- nificent walls of wild crag and natural wood. The steep road traverses a wilderness of mountainous wastes strewn with riven masses of rock, in such wild confusion, that this glen might seem part of the primaeval realm of Chaos. On gaining the highest point of the road the gleaming water of Loch Fyne suddenly delights the eye, lying fringed by its wooded slopes, and sur- rounded by lofty hills, with the little town and the shipping of Inveraray sheltered in a, pleasant bay, and the noble woods of the L 136 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Duke of Argyll's castle stretching to the distant heights of Glen Aray, and the mountainous forms around Glencroc rising in still and sunny heights amid depths of sombre shadow. Arrived in the county town of Argyllshire, the antiquary does not find any object of interest save the Inveraray Cross — a fine specimen of those stone crosses which form the most perfect of the ecclesiastical remains of the diocese. It is said (but not his- torically known) to have been brought hither from Iona: the sculptured tombstones and stone crosses of Argyllshire are com- monly, however, called "Iona Stones" and "Iona Crosses" — perhaps because they originated with the monks who, in rude and barbarous ages, cultivated art among the western waves, and colonised Argyll.* Foliage resembling vine-branches, with a kind of double leaf, is sculptured on this cross, with figures of animals, in the style of the Runic crosses, but the characters of the inscription it bears seem of the thirteenth century. The Argyll crosses are often rudely sculptured with a hunting scene or a mounted horseman, and the legs and tails whirl off in a strange way into intricate scroll-work and trails of wandering foliage which surround the stone. The art was probably of Scandinavian origin, like the one-masted galley with oars, which is borne as an heraldic device by certain families who had posses- sions on the coast, as, for example, the Earls of Arran, Orkney, and Caithness, and for the lordship of Lorn, and is quartered with the arms of several families in the west of Scotland ; but is really a memorial of the times when the lords of Argyll and the Isles were pirates, and rude, independent princes. But onward lies our route, through the magnificent woods of Inveraray Castle, where the graces of English park scenery and ornamental forest trees are bordered by wild alpine country. Here the tourist gladly exchanges the gloomy grandeur of barren crags and moorland wastes for luxuriantly wooded hills and an avenue of noble trees, stretching for more than two miles, and bordered by the sounding torrent of the Aray, which skirts a great part of the road to Loch Awe, and forms more than one * Its original position seems to have been near the chapel in the old town, but until late years it was lying at the entrance of the great beech avenue, and is now erected near the edge of the loch at the end of the principal street of Inveraray. SUMMER DAYS IN SCOTLAND. 137 beautiful waterfall in a rocky chasm, overhung by wood. When the plantations end, the road through Glen A ray becomes wild and hilly, and, as you ascend, the magnificent group of mountains which enclose Loch Awe come into view ; and then the cheerful gleaming water is beheld, with its wooded promontories and its retreating bays (seen in its length, it seems a broad river rather than a loch); and, soaring beyond mountain slopes on its north- western side, Ben Cruachan is seen, with the white mists floating below its peaks and filling its dark corries. The shores of Loch Awe to the southward, though affording a thousand attractions to the artist, are tame and uninteresting compared with the northern end, where Glen Orchay opens to the lake, and where the scenery has a picturesque sublimity peculiar to itself, and affords a good example of that which is so great a charm of Highland landscape, viz. its infinite variety — the mingling of the beautiful and wild — the combination of sylvan beauty with rugged forms and mountain grandeur. The fair land-locked expanse is seen, bright as a burnished shield in the blaze of sunshine, set in a grand framework of bold, moun- tainous forms, melting in the distance into blue aerial tints; a softer beauty suffuses the scene when the roseate hue of evening- glows upon the lake, or when the clouds, piled up in fleecy masses beyond the western sky, are bright with the orange tints of sunset, and throw a warm radiance on the glassy waters, its islets, and bay-indented shores; but it is in the soft lustre of moon- light that Loch Awe is a scene of unearthly beauty. And then, when only distant waterfalls break the silence of the summer night, the mind recalls the ancient association of these shores with the first apostles of Christianity in Argyll, the early reli- gious sanctity of some of its shadowy islands, and the legends of which they are the scene. There is Fraoch Eilan, for example, which had its enchanted apples that were guarded by a dragon or great serpent, until it was slain by some mythic chieftain — strange, that this remote isle of heather should be the scene of what seems a Highland version of the Hesperian fable ! Then, there is the Isle of Inishail (" the lovely isle"), where the inhabitants were more substantial, for it was the site of a Cistercian nunnery. Crosses and sepulchral slabs of old chieftains of the hills mark l 2 138 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. this lonely island of the dead. The burial-ground is still a sacred spot, and in the chapel of the convent service was performed down to the time of George II., but now the chapel has disappeared. Monuments of the feudal ages likewise remain on the shores of Loch Awe, and the chief of them is the famous Kilchurn, which, under the dark slopes of Ben Laoidh, appears to rise out of the water that nearly insulates the castle, Sole sitting by the shore of old romance. It occupies the whole of a rock which seems to have been formerly an island at the mouth of the river Orchay; its aspect is well in keeping with its situation amidst the dark and solemn mountains, and it brings before us vividly the wild and pic- turesque life of its ancient lords. x\lthough much ruined and very wild looking, it retains its massive strength, and has traces of ancient stateliness. And who can forget Kilchurn's well- known legend about Sir Colin Campbell (its owner in the time of our Henry V.), who, after long absence in the wars, returned hither, disguised as a mendicant, to find that his wife (a very strong-minded woman she must have been) had during his absence built this keep tower as a surprise for him, but, having given him up for dead, was, on the very day of his return, about to marry again, when he opportunely revealed himself at the wedding feast. Castle Kilchurn had ceased before 1551 to be the chief or even the usual dwelling of the lords of Glenorchy. On Fraoch Eilan are the ruins of the MacXaughtons' castle, with a great tree growing in what was the chieftain's hall. The Orchay and Cladich rivers, and some lesser rills, fall into Loch Awe, but the river Awe is its only outlet, and within living memory the waters of the lake permanently submerged lands upon its shore, on which thriving plantations have risen since the channel of the river was artificially deepened. The Pass of Awe opens through very wild and impressive scenery. As the shores narrow towards its straits, the steep side of the mountain, covered to a great height by a thick wood of dwarf timber and coppice, leaves only a narrow strip of stony beach, above which the road from Oban to Dalmally has been formed ; while the southern shore is almost a wall of steep and barren SUMMER DAYS IN SCOTLAND. 139 rock, rising precipitously from the water. This arm or outlet of the lake, after gradually contracting, ends at the rocks of Brandir, which approach so near that a tall mountain pine might reach across the strait, and, indeed, a rude bridge did probably exist at this spot in the days when great timber flourished in the forests of Glen Etive. From this outlet there is a gradual descent to the sea -loch of Etive, and the Awe rushes foaming over a bed strewn with the debris of the neighbouring heights. The defile where the mountains approach is dark and gloomy, and the ceaseless waterfall and the rushing torrent of the Awe fill the rocky pass with a sound like the roar of the sea. It was in this pass that the warlike clan of MacDougal of Lorn were nearly all destroyed by Kobert Bruce. And by an old oak-tree — described by Scott as growing at the foot of a cliff from which a mountain stream leaps in a fall of sixty feet, near the bridge of Awe, on the left-hand side of the river as it descends, and where the rocks retain few remains of the wood that probably once clothed them — the superstitious believe that " the Woman of the Tree," Scott's Highland Widow, may still be seen seated, as was her wont. Ben Cruachan, "one of the noblest of Scotland's mountain kings," is about the same height as Snowdon, but its base has a circumference of more than twenty miles, and, with its five wave- like peaks, it is conspicuous for its majestic outline as well as for its mass. The mountain seems to be composed of red and grey granite, with veins of porphyry, but clay slate and mica slate, veined with quartz, are found on its sides. Some of the most beautiful scenery in the vicinity of Loch Awe is in Glen Nant, a pass which lies between it and Loch Etive, and Ben Cruachan forms a very grand object from the road. The rocky stream which traverses the glen is overhung in part by wild crags, and the other side of the ravine is covered with dense hanging woods of native oak, and birch, and hazel. The scenery of Loch Etive derives a peculiar character from the granite hills that bound its shores, and from lying at the foot of the grand precipices and dark ridges of Ben Cruachan, while on the other side the deer forests rise steep from the water's edge in wild hills of grey crag and dark-green coppice, which are reflected in deepened colour in the still and tinted water. The 140 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. head of Loch Etivc presents one of the finest landscapes to be seen in the Western Highlands, for there the glen opens to Buachaillc Etive and the other mountains which extend north- ward and eastward towards Glencoe. But Cruachan is the Giant of the Loch. Loch Etive could boast at least one religious foundation — Lone Ardchattan's abbey gray — which was founded more than six centuries ago for Benedictine monks. Robert Bruce is said to have held a parliament here, the business of which was transacted in Gaelic. The buildings of the monastery are' much dilapidated, but the basement walls of the church remain. This edifice and the prior's house appear to have faced the loch; the house is almost entire, and a green pas- ture ground adjacent is still called " the Monks' garden." One of the most beautiful scenes in Argyllshire seems here fitly conse- crated to religious calmness. At the head of this loch some of the large oak-trees, which appear to have abounded in this country in the time of Edward's wars, are, or lately were, remaining; and, though they stand in rocky soil, some of the trunks measure more than twenty feet in circumference. And near Inverawe, at the base of Cruachan, a group of noble and gigantic fir-trees, of great age, standing together, forms quite a dark and solemn grove. Returning by the pass of Awe, I traversed the really noble vale of Glenorchy (from which the Marquis of Breadalbane takes a second title), one of the most attractive scenes in the Highlands. The grand mountainous forms of Glenorchy, rising one beyond another, compose landscapes which continually change as you advance; and from the peaceful village of Dalmally, whose English-looking white church-tower in the vale marks the site of Clachan Dysart — " the place of the High God" — the hills rise in many a grand unbroken sweep, and over their crests the white wings of the mists are floating, while rivulets here unheard, that only gleam like lines of quicksilver, are traversing their furrowed sides. On a hill near Dalmally, commanding a fine view of his native glen, a monument in granite has lately been raised in honour of SUMMER DAYS IN SCOTLAND. 141 Duncan Bane Macintyre, the bard of Glenorcliy, who is stated to have served in the Argyll militia at the battle of Falkirk, and to have denounced in a poem (which led to his imprisonment) the vindictive attempts which were made by the government, after the rising of 1745, to crush the national spirit and the inborn loyalty of the Highlanders. Admirers of this native bard have ascribed to him the descriptive power of Thomson with the ver- satile genius of Burns. He could not himself have chosen a finer situation for his monument than the height on which it stands. The vicinity of Tyndrum — a station at the head of Strathfillan between Dalmally and Loch Lomond, a vale in which St. Fillan had reverence of old — is wild and dreary, yet Strathfillan was probably not so desolate a tract when St. Fillan was the apostle of the vale. Lead mines are worked at Tyndrum, on the Breadal- bane property.* At Crianlarich (where the Perthshire road diverges from that to Loch Lomond) the river takes the name of the Dochart, and a linn, called " the pool of St. Fillan," was in repute for the cure of insanity ; but the process was a trying one, for the patient was immersed at sunset, and left bound in the ruins of St. Fillan's neighbouring church until the morning ! After traversing " the chilling deserts of Tyndrum," the wooded banks of Glenfalloch are quite refreshing to the eye, and the course of the river is diversified by more than one rocky cataract, and by scenes of grandeur as well as beauty when the glen opens to the mountains round the head of Loch Lomond. It is not surprising that the palm of pre-eminence in beauty has been awarded to this charming lake. It would be the Mediter- ranean of the Highlands if it was an arm of the sea. Its shores are full of varied scenery ; the grand and rugged mountainous forms that surround the upper or higher end of the lake are as remark- able for the picturesque character of their outlines as its shores and rocky promontories and islets are for their wooded beauty; while the majestic heights of Ben Lomond, which culminate above the wild mountains of its eastern shore, form a magnificent and distinguishing feature of its scenery ; and there the giant and * The neighbourhood is one of great interest to the geologist, and presents one very remarkable feature, viz., a vein of quartz running for miles like a high wall over hill and vale. 142 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. master-presence of the Loch seems serenely looking down for ever on mountains and lakes and far-off western isles. In the lower part, where the lake expands into sueh a breadth that it seems an inland sea, it is crossed by a belt of wooded islets rich in picturesque beauty, and (many of them) distinguished by legen- dary associations, and marked by white villas now inhabited by " descendants of clansmen at enmity no more." The tourist is not likely to forget that it was chiefly in the mountains between Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, then a Highland border country, that the ancestors of the Robin Hood of Scotland, popu- larly known as Rob Roy, had their abode. He appears to have held, and was perhaps entitled to hold, the domain of rock and forest called Crag Rostan, lying on the eastern side of Loch Lomond, where its bright waters are narrowed by the approach of the dark mountains of Glen Falloch, and here his cave, not far to the northward from Inversnaid, is shown. But to mention the spots with which his name is associated, would be to dwell too long on the Loch Lomond country. A good road and the " Roderick Dim " coach, and a steam- boat on the lake, afford facilities for traversing Rob Roy's country, which, if they had existed in his days, would have deprived us of much of the attractive romance which surrounds his exploits. Loch Katrine presents scenes of wondrous beauty, marked by features which, in many respects, give its scenery a character different from that of other lakes. Its waters are so tranquil, its shores of emerald green are so beautiful in form, they rise against a background of grey mountains so picturesque in character, its jutting peninsulas of rock and wood, and the islands that seem to rest on its unruffled waters, are so charmingly picturesque, and their graceful trees come down to the water's edge, and stand With their green faces fixed upon the flood, doubled in such magical clearness and beauty of tint, that the whole scene may appear a fit realm for Titania and a glimpse of fairyland. Then there are the beautiful declivities of Ben Venue, and there are the belts of natural wood hanging on the mountain's side, or marking the course of a waterfall in some deep chasm, and there are the softened tints of purple in which the regions SUMMER DAYS IN SCOTLAND. 143 of dark heather glow in the sunshine, and the changes of colour on the hills when the cloud-shadows sweep their distant slopes or darken their mysterious hollows; and there is the subjective and ideal charm which some of the most charming poetry in the English language has thrown over the scenery of Loch Katrine. I shall not attempt to describe that unique labyrinth the pass of the Trosachs — the " bristled territory" — where a narrow wind- ing mountain-gorge or ravine is clothed almost to the grey crests of the wild rocks with luxuriant native wood, and every turn in the defile exhibits These native bulwarks of the pass under some new form of picturesque beauty. The waters were rippling in the morning light, and the feathery birch " that waves and weeps on Loch Achray " was bending to the breeze, when, with renewed love for the Highland hills, and with a pleasant recollection of the hospitalities of friends, of the salmon and mutton, and of the cream and butter of Highland farms, and the pure buoyant air, and the thousand scenes of beauty and grandeur, and the high-arched skies that spread above them, I quitted these realms, where Nature seems commissioned from Heaven to awaken the delight and gratitude of man, to return by the interesting valley of the Teith, between Loch Katrine and Callandar, to the more prosaic lowlands, Where wrangling courts and stubborn law To smoke and crowds and cities draw. Dr. Buckland insisted that the ravines formerly covered, more or less, the valley of the Teith, from Loch Katrine to Callandar, and he regarded the lofty terraces which flank the valley from the last-named place to Doune, as formed by the ravines and modified by the great floods which followed the melting of the ice. I have aimed at describing — not all that is worth seeing even on the route embraced in these notes, but — only what I saw in a few pleasant days in Scotland; and glad indeed shall I be if these pages shall recall to the reader pleasant recollections of places which have been to him also scenes of enjoyment. SCANDINAVIAN TRAVEL.* Bentley's Miscellany, 1861. Denmark and Jutland are lands of legend and romance. Historic and even pre-historic monuments abound in them: harrows and tumuli are seen in almost every landscape, and the dreaded Vikings of old have left their mark upon the country. The manor-houses and castles of a later, yet ancient time, rise in every direction, and the memorials of bygone families linger on many a site. With so many visible monuments of former days around them, it is no wonder that the Danes live much in the past and cherish the memory of their own proud history. The natural features of the Danish isles and Jutland are not less remarkable than the historical. Blue lakes and green woods diversify the wide plains in many parts of the country, and form a picturesque contrast to its tracts of moss and heather. The land is for the most part fertile; and the country generally (Lolland in particular) is famous for fair pleasure-grounds. The forests are gorgeous in their autumnal tints, but Denmark is especially the country of the spring. Most of the considerable towns (as Elsinore, for example) are adorned by charming walks; cheerful villages and country-houses enliven the shores of the Sound; distant objects of interest are seen on the horizon; and beyond a foreground of well kept gardens bright with flowers y the descriptive name of Hyperodapedon Gordoni. If these reptilian beds are nevertheless still to be classed with the old red sandstone formations, the age of reptile life upon the globe must be carried back to a much more remote era than has been hitherto assigned to it. Land plants of great size, of which, until the recent dis- covery of a Lepidodendvon, no traces had been recognised in Silu- rian rocks, begin to appear in the old red or Devonian epoch, and amidst these plants reptilian amphibia lived. After that epoch the Grampians and adjacent mountains probably formed an island, and on its southern shores grew the tropical flora out of which the coal-fields of Glasgow and Fife have been elabo- rated. From a valuable paper read by Professor Owen, " On the Orders of Fossil and Recent Reptilia, and their Distribution in Time," it appears that late researches into the forms that have become 'extinct have shown how artificial is the boundary between the class Fishes and the class Reptilia of modern zoological systems, and that there are characters which indicate one natural group blending fishes and reptiles. The Archegosaurus, or pri- meval lizard (discovered, Ave believe, some years ago in the Bavarian coal-fields), had aquatic habits ; and the characters of this representative of the oldest known order of reptiles assign it a low position in the class, and an affinity to the ganoid fishes of the Devonian series. The Plesiosaurus — an old acquaintance, a reptile with Lacertian affinities not in the head only — was better organised for occasional progression on the land, notwithstanding its turtle-like paddles. It is curious to see how in the Pterodac- tyle, or flying lizard of the Lias formations, the whole osseous SCIENCE AND ROYALTY UNDER HIGHLAND SKIES. 191 system became modified to the possession of wings expanding twenty feet; but this strange creature must have moved upon the ground like a bat. The most gigantic of Crocodilians was the Cetiosaurus longus, caudal vertebrae of which have been found in the Portland-stone formations at Garsington measuring seven inches in length. Crocodilians with " cup-and-ball " vertebra?, like those of living species, are first found in Europe in the Tertiary strata : these lived in rivers flowing over what now forms the south coast of England. An enormous species of turtle, the skull of which is a foot in breadth, lived at that period at Sheppey, where its remains are found in the Eocene clay. There should have been also aldermanic giants on the earth in those days — veritable prototypes of Gog and Magog ! But more interesting than these curious traces of extinct am- phibia was the statement of Sir Charles Lyell, in his address as President of the Geological Section, touching some recent disco- veries in France, which affect the question whether man really was contemporary with the great tropical carnivora now extinct in Europe. The occurrence of weapons of human workmanship in association with remains of those extinct animals in cave breccia in certain localities in England, seemed to indicate that the era of man must be carried back much beyond the date hitherto assigned to the human period. A new piece of evidence, supposed to have the same tendency, was discovered in 1844, in a volcanic breccia in Auvergne : it was, the occurrence of parts of two human skeletons, embedded in the breccia in the environs of Le Puy en Velay. Sir Charles Lyell in the summer of 1858 examined the human fossils and their alleged site, and came to the conclu- sion that they afford no proof of man having witnessed the last volcanic eruptions of Central France ; had he done so, the human race would be older than the Siberian mammoth. Another piece of evidence has been more recently adduced from Abbeville and Amiens, in the north of France, viz. the discovery of flint im- plements associated in undisturbed gravel with the bones of ele- phants, as to which remains a clear statement was laid before the Eoyal Society by Mr. Prestwich, in the year 1859. Two of the worked flints were discovered — the one at the depth of ten, and the other of seventeen, feet below the surface — at the 192 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. time of Sir Charles Lyell's visit, but not in his own presence. M. Pouchet, of Rouen, author of a work on the " Races of Man," has, however, since extracted one of these implements with his own hands, as Mr. Prestwich had done before him. The stratified gravel in which they were found is a fluviatile and post-glacial formation, and the area over which similar hatchets, spear-heads, and wedges have been found exceeds fifteen miles in length. Sir Charles believes the antiquity of these flint instruments to be great indeed, if compared to the times of history or tradition ; and the disappearance of the elephant and rhinoceros (some bones of rhinoceros were found over the bed containing the flints) implies, in his opinion, a vast lapse of ages separating the era in which these implements were formed and the Roman invasion of Gaul. In the discussion which followed, Professor Phillips disclaimed on the part of geologists any attempt to fix the duration of that interval, and pointed out that the contemporaneousness of the human remains with certain animals now extinct in the locality was all that these discoveries established. So much for the department of geology. A paper contributed by Mr. John Stuart, of Edinburgh, Secretary of the Scottish Antiquarian Society and of the Spalding Club (which Aberdeen had the honour of instituting), " On the Sculptured Stones of Scotland," called attention to a class of antiquities which have lately excited much curiosity, viz. the rude pillars covered with symbols found in the district between the Dee and the Spey, and the sculptured crosses found from the Forth to Caithness, and especially in Forfarshire ; and the former of which class of monu- ments, although not dating from pre-historic times, are, perhaps, the earliest existing works of art of the former inhabitants of Caledonia. The sculptured stones of Scotland form two classes ; the one bearing symbols of a rude and simple character, such as the double disc, the crescent, &c, some of which are common to the Celtic races of the South of Europe and to the Caledonians, and others of which arc found among sculptures in the cave- temples of India ; the other class belonging to Christian times and resembling crosses, many of which are adorned with inter- laced work, and some of which bear the ruder symbols found on SCIENCE AND ROYALTY UNDER HIGHLAND SKIES. 193 the earlier sculptured stones. It is remarkable that the subjects sculptured on these upright stones in Scotland are secular, whereas the crosses of Wales and Ireland represent scriptural subjects. On those remaining in Scotland we have horsemen in armour, processions, a hunt in which an antlered animal is represented, and a centaur bearing a bough, which is a figure delineated on tombs in Etruria, and on some Etruscan vases. Fish also, and the serpent, are represented. Many of the symbols sculptured on these early stones occur in illuminations of the celebrated Book of the Gospels which was written and illuminated for St. Cuth- bert, probably by Scottish monks, in the monastery of Lindis- farne. As to the unsculptured standing stones of Scotland, Mr. Stuart attributes them to the ancient Caledonians, who were overcome by the Scoti from Hibernia. The paper was appro, priately followed by Colonel Forbes's Discourse on the Ethnology and Hieroglyphics of the Caledonians, whom he regards as an Indo-Highland people allied to the Celtic races whose monuments are found from the shores of India to those of Brittany, of many of which monuments he exhibited his beautiful drawings. A most remarkable collection of objects of antiquity, illustrative as well of the Pictish, or stone period, as of later Scottish history, were brought together during the meeting at Aberdeen. The relics exhibited ranged from the stone weapons of the aboriginal inhabitants, through the weapons and objects of decorative art belonging to the Middle Ages down to the arms borne by the followers of " the Pretender." The collection of celts, hatchets, arrow- and spear-heads, hammers, and flint implements, seemed to bring the spectator in contact with the ancient inhabitants of Scotland, with the chieftain of pre-historic days clad in his skins or ox-hide, armed with his flint-barbed arrows, his stone axe, or his flint-headed spear, who felled trees and chased the deer in forests that have sunk into mosses or been cleared for the towns and trodden streets of men. Urns, exhibiting various degrees of progress in the art of pottery, were also exhibited; and, coming to the bronze period, which in Scotland, as in Scandinavia, is supposed to have extended over six centuries, a large collection of works of Promethean art was shown, including swords, spears, and battle-axes, gold armlets, and other personal ornaments. An early excellence has been claimed for Scottish art in the fabrica- 194 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. tion of metals. The weapons exhibited a remarkable uniformity of type; so, too, through the bronze armlets there runs a notice- able similarity of design — for example, that peculiar snake-form which has been regarded as especially belonging to the races of Northern Europe. There was a complete and interesting col- lection of brooches; some were Scandinavian, of elegant form, •which were found in Caithness and Sutherland; and there were Highland brooches of every age and shape, but marked by that uniformity of style -which characterises Celtic art. There was also a fine collection of old silver armlets; conspicuous amongst those of mediaeval date was the jewelled silver armlet of the Campbells of Glenlyon, a work of rude yet sumptuous art, bearing the names of the three kings enshrined at Cologne; and there was the lord of Glenlyon's walking-stick, mounted with a beautiful relic of Eoman art — a pair of eagle's wings. In mediaeval weapons there were arms of every period, ranging from the old double-headed sword that might have been wielded against the Norsemen, through Lochaber axes, dirks, and dag- gers, rude cross-bows, and the later transitional forms of arque- buss, matchlock, and musket. One could not look upon these relics without recalling the state of Scotland especially in the sixteenth century, when the usages of polished life had but recently pene- trated into the Scottish Highlands, and the population still retained the unlettered simplicity and the rude manners of mediaeval days; when commercial towns were of no importance, the people generally vassals of feudal lords, and often at war amongst themselves; when sanguinary feud and Border warfare dis- turbed the land, and the Reformation mingled the elements of religious discord with civil turbulence. To the archaeological curiosities of the collection were added a most interesting and unexampled series of Jacobite relics, miniatures, seals, rings, lockets, and other memorials of the royal house of Stuart, from Darnley's seal and Queen Mary's watch to relics of the last princes of that ill-fated line. Then, the wonderful collection of portraits which adorned the walls of the temporary museum during the meeting, brought before us most of the leading actors in events memorable in Scottish history: there were maids of honour to the Scottish queen, and historical beauties with the light of old romance about them ; military leaders in troubled periods of the SCIENCE AND ROYALTY UNDER HIGHLAND SKIES. 195 national annals ; bishops and statesmen ; the sourest of Cove- nanters and the most chivalrous of Koyalists. To this collection of portraits were added some interesting autographs collected with a view to illustrate the civil and literary history of the country by the handwriting of men celebrated in her annals. It contained a complete series of the signatures and letters of sove- reigns of Scotland from James IV. to Queen Anne; several letters of princes and princesses of the House of Stuart ; and autographs of most of the statesmen and divines distinguished in the great rebellion. And. while the archaeological museum thus contained the relics of extinct dynasties, the visitor might examine in the fine geolo- gical museum, opened in Marischal College, the relics of extinct creations and pre- Adamite conditions of the globe. But we must pass from these memorials of other days to some matters relating to our own, which were discussed in the sections. None of the subjects brought before the Geography section were more attractive than those which directed attention to the East. A very animated and agreeable description of Arab character and customs was given by M. Ameuney, a native of Mount Lebanon (who speaks English fluently, and pleased his hearers by men- tioning that he had learned it in order to read the poetry of Sir Walter Scott), and who has come to Europe for the purpose of arousing sympathy and obtaining aid towards the social regene- ration of the native Christians of his race. He maintains that Arabic was the original of Hebrew — at all events, that the children of Israel spoke Arabic when they went into Egypt, lost its purity during their sojourn, adopted many Egyptian words, and, after their return to Judaea, wrote their language in the form known to us as Hebrew. After adverting to our obligations to the Arab race for much of the learning preserved in the Middle Ages, and for the introduction of paper into Europe, he gave many traits of Arab life and character, representing them as a spiritual-minded people; he described their hospitality, honour, and brotherhood, and their love of poetry; he gave examples of its amplitude in the language of the lover, and stated that the production of sixty verses is deemed sufficient for the lifetime of a great poet. I'Jd LECTURES AND ESSAYS. A paper on tlic Russian trade in Central Asia led to sonic in- teresting statements. Russia, which had formerly a monopoly of the inland trade with China, has lately made treaties with that empire, and acquired vast territory in Chinese Tartary. The trade is a system of barter, and, to keep up the high price for Muscovite woollen manufactures, they put enormously high prices on Chinese productions, and pay three times the price for tea that we do. Russia has found an outlet for her fleet into the Great Southern Ocean by passing down the Amoor. Cities arc being established and commerce fostered, and colonies of settlers are drawn from inhospitable Siberia to the Land of the Rising Sun. Sir John Bowring, who was present at the reading of the paper, expressed his opinion that Russia cannot compete with England in the Chinese markets; and, as regards tea, gave some idea of its enormous production in the Chinese Empire, by stating that a hundred and twenty millions of pounds are exported annually, notwithstanding that in every Chinese household tea is drunk five times a day, and the population has reached four hun- dred and twelve millions. Mr. Lawrence Oliphant, in his " Notes on Japan," awarded to the Japanese people a high place among the nations of the East for civilisation and good government ; he described them as sufficiently enlightened to appreciate a policy founded on higher considerations than commercial gain, and admonished the British people, that, having now opened to the world this prosperous and happy community, they deserve our care to win their con- fidence and respect. He gave a pleasing picture of the great natural beauty of the amphitheatre in which lies the port of Nagasaki — a name now for the first time made so familiar to English readers ; the swelling hills around, terraced with rice- fields, the valleys clothed with wood and watered by gushing mountain streams, the projecting points crowned by temples amid sacred groves approached by rock-cut steps, cottages deep in foliage, and tasteful gardens bright with flowers. He estimates the population of Nagasaki at fifty thousand, and that of Yedo, the capital city of the empire, at two millions. The citadel or residence of the temporal emperor is more than five miles in cir. cumfcrence: elsewhere in Japan, the spiritual emperor passes a SCIENCE AND ROYALTY UNDER HIGHLAND SKIES. 197 sub-celestial existence, reminded of Lis humanity only by his twelve wives, who are not spiritual. Some of the streets are lined with peach- and plum-trees ; and there is a bridge of enor- mous length, which is the Hyde Park Corner of Japan, distances through the empire being measured from it. In a discussion on changes of deviation of the compass on board iron ships, Professor W. Thomson urged the necessity for constant determinations of the error of the compass, and, as the only way of using the compass safely on board iron ships, recom- mended masters never to trust to it alone. Referring to the wreck of the Tayleur (a new iron ship), which disaster the late Dr. Scoresby attributed to a change in the magnetism of the ship, produced in consequence of the vessel being tossed about in a gale soon after leaving Liverpool, the Professor remarked, that this case appeared to corroborate the opinion now expressed by the Astronomer Royal, that new iron ships are liable to sudden and great changes of magnetism on being knocked about by rough weather at sea. At the second of the two evening meetings of the Association, a crowded audience assembled to hear the reverend and eloquent Dr. Robinson, of the Armagh Observatory, lecture " On electrical discharges in rarefied media/' How strikingly does our present knowledge of electricity, and its various ministrations to the use of man, contrast with the little that was known when the Greek mind was given to some electrical phenomena two thousand years ago ! Even after Volta's invention, sixty years since, of the potent instrument that bears his name, how wonderful has been our advancement ! The brilliant experiments by which the discourse was illustrated were made by means of the induction coil machine, in which, as is well known, a length equal to six miles of wire is coiled in helix form round a bar of magnetic iron. The stream thus produced would probably pass through eighty yards of rarefied media as well as it did through the ex- hausted seven feet glass tube, in which the lecturer showed a brilliant auroral discharge of rose-coloured light in vacuo, which became surrounded, after a few moments, by a blue light of ame- thyst tint. The electrical current appears to differ remarkably 198 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. from the solar ray in not having chemical power; but letters on a sheet of paper, the forms of which had been traced by a chemical solution, and which were invisible by the light of the room, started into brilliance in the electric light. In some beau- tiful experiments made with M, Becquerel's vacuum-tubes, from which hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and atmospheric air, respect- ively, had been exhausted, different tints were produced, and a fine wavy stratification was shown. In another tube, a current rotatory in vacuo round a magnetic bar was shown, and the stra- tified light was deflected by the magnet. At the evening assemblies, addressed by Dr. Robinson and Sir Roderick Murchison, and more particularly on the evening when the Prince Consort inaugurated this meeting, there was a brilliant and intellectual-looking assemblage ; but the animated picture seen on these occasions, and on the two conversazioni of the Asso- ciation, wanted the splendid framework of the Victoria Hall at Leeds (where, it will be remembered, the association met in 1858), the spacious new Music Hall of Aberdeen being almost destitute of ornament and colour. But it is a building well adapted to its purpose, and a great credit to the town. The scientific labours of this busy week having been brought to a happy close, and Her Majesty having graciously invited that distinguished but somewhat numerous body, the general com- mittee of the Association, to a luncheon at Balmoral, it was pleasant to see that they could shut up their books like any schoolboy, forget their learned convocations, and eagerly set forth with the sunrise on a bright September morning, to be the guests of their sovereign in her Highland home, and the spectators of Highland sports in the shadow of the mountains. Perplexed by " the hypothesis of Berkeley," wearied by " Chinese genealogical tables," escaped from a debate on " Indian finance," or some other Slough of Despond and Dulness ; bored by " the classification of the salmonidae," or by a Scotch missionary's history of some hill- tribe in India, or sickened by " the composition of Thames water," they doubtless thought "a system of moving bodies" was best studied in the progress of two hundred philosophers to a royal luncheon ; that ' ' the organs of the senses and the mental per- ceptive faculties" would be better understood amidst mountain SCIENCE AND ROYALTY UNDEii HIGHLAND SKIES. 199 scenery than in a crowded lecture-room; and that the distribution of swans over the slopes of Balmoral would be a refreshing con- trast to studying " the distribution of heat over the surface of the sun," or "the connection between the solar spots and magnetic disturbances" — subjects discussed during the week. By Heaven ! it was a glorious sight, When the sun started from the sea, And in the vivid morning light The long blue waves were rolling free. This is not the place to expatiate on the picturesque beauty or historic interest of the country traversed between Aberdeen and Balmoral : suffice it to say, that Nature presented a very beautiful aspect to her votaries on that bright morning. The foliage had begun to be touched with the gorgeous tints of autumn ; red and pale yellow charmingly contrasted with the sombre hues of the forest and the dark green foliage of the pine and larch woods. The steep, bare sides of mighty hills, grey with the stony ddbris of ages, were purpled by the heath-flower; and the shadows that chased one another over their expanse continually presented some new charm of light and shade, while in the blue distance the giant mountains reared their dark grey forms. Such a cavalcade of philosophers had never before been seen in these mountain solitudes ; and great was the sensation when they alighted amongst the wondering inhabitants on changing horses at Ballater and Aboyne, and when, from the omnibuses of arkite dimensions, strange figures descended, some wearing hooded cloaks that seemed fit to cover some philosophic mystery, and all attired in anything but courtly costume. There were Oxford professors and Indian officers, grave divines and German savans, Scotch mathe- maticians and lively Irishmen ; there were men who had grown grey in patient investigation of nature — inheritors of elder wis_ dom — scientific leaders who had won European fame ; and they were going amidst the rude, unlettered mountaineers, and amidst the representatives of a patriarchal and unlearned state of society. Chiefs in science were to meet clans marching under Highland chieftains ; victors in intellectual conflict were to see men com- peting for the prizes of strength and agility in the games and * p 200 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. wild costume and to the primitive music of the ancient inhabitants of Caledonia. Yet many a master in science, gifted with the power to view unrolled the stores hidden from grosser eyes, and learned in the laws that hold the planets in their courses, may that day have envied those rude clansmen their health, and their freedom from smoke and crowds and cities, from ambition, and from wearing toil ; and when they thought of the labours of the week in studying mathematical formulae and applied mechanics — papers " On the Application of Quaternions to the Geometry of Frcsnel's Wave-surface," on "The Theory of Numbers," on the " Theory of Light," on " The Dynamical Theory of Gases," or " The Mechanical Theory of Electricity," on " The Genetic Cycle in Organic Nature," or the " Statistics of Vaccination," may have been ready to exclaim, O ! that I were a mountaineer, To dwell among the Highland hills ! To tread the heath, to watch the deer, Beside the fountains of the rills — To wander by the lonely lake All silent in the evening's glow, When, like a phantom, from the brake Comes gliding past the stealthy roe. At times the cavalcade was seen winding round the base of massive rock-strewn hills, now crossing a wide heathery moor, then mounting a height above the " rushing Dee," or skirting vast hill-side plantations of dark evergreen, and passing under avenues of the graceful weeping birch. The Queen's mountain chateau, as the reader probably knows, stands on a mountain plain, skirted by the Dee, and is a building of varied outline in Scotch baronial style, built of a beautiful greyish white granite, dressed in ashlar work, with chaste and effective ornament, and presenting the bold aspect of an ancient stronghold in a tower eighty feet high, which gives dignity of outline to the structure, and from which the royal standard of England was floating to the breeze. It was a pretty sight to see this picturesque edifice glistening in the sunshine like a castle of romance; and, surrounded as it is by giant hills and far from any SCIENCE AND ROYALTY UNDER HIGHLAND SKIES. 201 towns, it struck the eye with all the unexpected charm of palatial elegance in the midst of mountain solitude. The terrace and slopes on the west of the castle command a green meadow, on which the games and dances of the day came off; and beyond a beautiful mountain pass The steep, frowning glories of dark Locli-na-gar close in the scene. On the southern side rises a vast hill clothed with wood, already tinted with gorgeous hues. On the north- west, a blue mountain range soars beyond the wooded hills that form the middle distance; and the valley between them was often filled during the day by driving mists, which the sun turned to golden haze as it declined. On the level greensward to the west, the clans were gathered under their respective banners in every variety of picturesque grouping : there were the Duffs (who carried warlike-looking spears), the Farquharsons, and the Forbes' men; various tents surrounded the square, and beyond stood the peasantry of the country round. The scene reminded one of the games provided by Menelaiis for his honoured guest, and the poet's description by a slight alteration applies to it : — Meanwhile, 'neath Loch-na-gar the Highland powers In active games divide the jovial hours ; On verdant meadows with athletic art Some whirl the disc, and some the javelin dart ; Aside, sequestered from the vast resort, Victoria sat, spectator of the sport. Many tartans and military uniforms were mingled in the pictu- resque group of courtiers and visitors which surrounded her Majesty and the royal family on the grassy slopes of the castle terrace, to view the foot-races, games, and dances; and these characteristic features of Highland life, the old-world character of the games themselves, and the presence of the peaceful and learned Englishmen amid such sights, all placed the present time in striking contrast with the by-gone days, " when English lords and Scottish chiefs were foes/' Nothing could be more pictu- resque and suggestive than the whole scene. The philosophers, no doubt, acknowledged all its poetical P 2 202 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. interest, but also showed great capacity to enjoy the good things to which they were invited ; and when the time came to drive homeward amidst the mountains, lighted by the silent stars, they were again in the presence of Nature in one of her most impres- sive aspects ; nightfall hid the sterility of the rocky wastes, and only the grand soaring forms of the everlasting hills and the dark woods were seen, with here and there a light twinkling from some hill-side shieling. And so returned the guests to Aberdeen, and so ended one of the most successful meetings the British Asso- ciation has known. THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. [Bentley's Miscellany, Sept. I860.] I roamed Delighted through the motley spectacle ; — Gowns grave or gaudy, doctors, students, streets, Courts, cloisters, flocks of churches, gateways, towers. The British Association for the Advancement of Science, which held at Oxford, in June, 1832, the first annual congress after its birth at York, returned in June, 1860, to that venerable seat of learning, in full maturity of vigour, to hold its thirtieth annual meeting. The cultivators of natural science, whose motto is " Progress," again met in the time-honoured University, whose traditions are so peculiarly classic, ecclesiastical, and retrospective, and whose genius, while looking to the future, seems ever mind- ful of the past. The students of nature assembled not only amidst objects of natural beauty, amidst libraries, museums, and collec- tions illustrative of natural history, and among professors and scholars, but were surrounded by such buildings of historic grandeur, such objects of artistic grace, and such treasures of fine art, as can be found only in the queen of English cities. And the Oxford meeting had the added charm of contrast and variety, inasmuch as the Association met last year beyond the Grampians, in the remote capital of northern Scotland. Aberdeen has like- wise, as everybody knows, its University and its High Street to boast, and it rejoices in those lions of the modern town, if it is not so proud as it ought to be of the religious and regal memories that cluster round the quaint half-deserted adjacent town of Old Aberdeen, once famous for scholars and salmon, and still dio-nified by the remains of the cathedral and the buildings of King's College, with their unique coronal spire. But the characteristic features of the past have yielded to the prosaic sights and sounds 204 LECTURES AM) ESSAYS. of commercial industry in the granite city of the Dee, whereas at Oxford the romantic character of the middle ages seems even now to pervade the buildings which have there " been sheltered under the wings of Time," and, lingering amidst the graceful monuments of pious zeal and religious learning, still to throw upon them all the dignity of age. In the aspect of the great city of Aberdeen there is nothing distinctly academical: Marischal College certainly cannot be called collegiate in its aspect; and, instead of the grey pinnacles of shapely stone that have been raised at Oxford amidst venerable trees, " into the midst of sailing birds and silent air," the modern pile is closely surrounded by the buildings of a busy and prosperous seaport. The High Street of Aberdeen may undoubtedly boast the impressiveness of two very long parallel lines of granite houses, £"ey, cold, and uniform ; but the High Street of Oxford presents a matchless variety of architecture, and a succession of buildings adorned with the graces of art and dignified by the witness of history ; all differing in form and character, but all picturesque and beautiful, and pre- senting a tout ensemble which has no parallel in the world. Father Lacordaire, in recounting his impressions of a visit (in 1852), well described in the following culogium some of the aspects of this ancient scat of learning : " How calm and beautiful is Oxford! Fancy, in a plain, sur- rounded by uplands, and bathed by two rivers, a mass of monu- ment?, Gothic and Greek; churches, colleges, quadrangles, por- ticoes, all distributed profusely, but most gracefully, in quiet streets terminating in trees and meadows. All those buildino-s. consecrated to letters and science, have their gates open. The stranger enters as he would enter his own home, because they are the asylums of the beautiful to all who are endowed with feeling. As you traverse these noiseless quadrangles you meet here and there with young men in cap and gown, but no crowding, no din. There is a solemnity in the very atmosphere, as on walls darkened by ages, for it seems to me that nothing here is re- paired, for fear of committing a crime against antiquity; and yet you have the most exquisite neatness in all these buildings, from the base to the summit. I have nowhere seen such an appear- ance of ruin with so much of preservation. In Italy the build THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 205 ings breathe of youth; in Oxford it is Time which shows itself, but Time without decay, and with all its majesty. The town itself is small, but even this does not take from the grandeur of the place ; the monuments serve for houses, and give it an air of vastness." Towers and spires and domes rising amidst clusters of foliage, seem (as Dr. Waagen, the art-critic of Berlin, observes) to pro- claim from afar the Gothic glories of Oxford ; and a first view of its buildings undoubtedly produces, as he has remarked, an im- pression that is ineffaceable. The preponderance and profusion of artistic beauty and sumptuous architecture give to its aspect such a peculiar character that the spirit of the middle ages might well seem to dwell spell-bound there, and to be still a living power. We propose to give a resume of the pleasant week which began with the speech of the Prince Consort, and closed under the presidency of Lord Wrottesley; and to any readers unacquainted with Oxford, it may be acceptable if we introduce our sketch of the scientific business of the meeting by glancing at the collegiate and other antiquities which brought the votaries of science in the year 1860 face to face, as it were, with the art, and learning, and piety of the past. And perhaps no monument of former days at Oxford can place the past in more striking contrast with the present, than that chief, if not sole, relic of what Oxford's noble Chancellor might call " pre- scientific " times, the old royal castle, which dates from the reign of William Eufus. " The massive arches broad and round" that remain in what was probably the crypt of the great hall, are characteristic of Anglo-Norman days; and from the existing tower — remarkable for its rude construc- tion and peculiar form — the Empress Matilda is said to have escaped when besieged by Stephen ; but the mound on which the castle stands is perhaps as old as the days of the Mercian kings. The adjacent locality of Beaumont, however, was the seat of royalty down to the time of the Plantagenets, and in it Richard Cceur de Lion was born, but no fragment of the palace remains. So likewise have disappeared the various other buildings once enclosed by the walls of Oxford Castle ; among the historic asso- ciations of which it is memorable that in 1258 the barons here 206 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. exacted from Henry III. those celebrated " Provisions," which, however objectionable on the score of abuse of power by the nobles and unconstitutional encroachment on royal prerogative, ultimately extended the constitutional liberties of England; and that in a parliament held (probably in the great hall of this castle) in 1264, the custom originated of choosing knights of the shire by assent of the county instead of the nomination of the Crown. It is characteristic of the times, that in one of the earliest par- liaments (or councils of the realm) held at Oxford (a.d. 1189),* advantage was taken of the presence of the King and several bishops to disinter the remains of St. Frideswide, "the fair and perhaps fabled " inhabitant of the bowers of Woodstock in days of Mercian rule, and translate them to a shrine in the then new priory church, now the cathedral. In remembrance of what befel the Saxon prince who pursued the saint herself into Oxford, it had been for centuries forbidden for any monarch to approach her relics, and the humiliation of Henry III. by the barons at Lewes was superstitiously attributed to his indiscreet devotion in approaching the shrine. But the latter part of Henry's reign saw at Oxford the rise of buildings and the establishment of societies that were destined to survive the edifices of feudal power, and to enshrine there for all future time the light of religion and learning. The latter half of the thirteenth century was an age of great activity and zeal in the foundation of halls of learning at Oxford, and saw the beginning of the great and venerable institution which has been for cen- turies so famous throughout the world. Most of the halls esta- blished at the period referred to had monastic bodies for their founders, who maintained there the scholars of the parent house sent to prosecute their studies at the university. And accordingly, while the realm was distracted by political strife, many a white line of cloistered wall was rising at Oxford amidst its wooded glades; but, although some of these monastic edifices appear to have had such architectural pretensions as to make their destruc- tion in the sixteenth century a loss to art, they were very different in their constitution and extent from the stately and independent * Oxford was the some of a still earlier parliament, viz. in 1180, when the king was present, THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 207 collegiate foundations that to this day gem the university coronal. Probably they too gained by the taste for pictorial decoration which iiad so greatly extended in England at that time, and which adorned " the great chamber of the King" at Woodstock, " the private chapel of the Queen" in Oxford castle, and other royal palaces, as well as the religious houses, with artistic deco- rations in a style of which we have an example in the Painted Chamber at Westminster, and of which we can still form some idea from the contemporary specimens remaining in the Chapter House of the Abbey. The representatives of the philosophical nineteenth century, when looking at the fragments which here and there remain of those first houses of the university, or at the building (near the bridge) which bears the appellation of " Roger Bacon's Tower," might think Avith allowable pride of the pebbles that have been gathered on the shore of the great ocean of truth since the days when the learned friar studied by the rippling Isis, and when Aristotle was the sun of doctrine to the university. From the present 'vantage ground of science, the attainments of the pro- foundest philosopher in the days of the Plantagenets may undoubtedly seem very small ; yet we must not forget that an enlightened zeal for knowledge is then seen humanising an age of political strife, and that its architects brought, to honour the abodes of learning and grace the houses of God, a decorative art, which we are but humbly emulating in these days of scientific advancement. A description of the colleges of Oxford would, of course, be foreign to the scope of the present article, and, indeed, a book might be written on many a college separately, so beautiful externally, so interesting in associations, and so rich in literary and artistic treasures, are those noble foundations ; yet their more prominent features of general interest to a stranger may be brought together in a brief view. As several parts of Merton College are the most ancient academical buildings in the univer- sity, so, as regards antiquity of foundation, it would seem to have priority over the other colleges, for Walter de Merton, Bishop of Rochester and Chancellor of England, its founder, gave its first statutes in 1264. The grand old chapel, which consists of choir ? 208 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. transepts, and tower, the nave and aisles never having been com- pleted, is a peculiarly dignified and beautiful structure; the choir, which has seven windows on each side, of line Decorated work, Mas completed before 1277; the transepts were finished by Cardinal Archbishop Kempe, and the glorious tower was com- pleted about 1424. Amongst the chapels of colleges, it is not, perhaps, too much to assign to the chapel of Merton the first place; and, ajyrojws of the recent decoration of its roof and walls, Dr. Waagen says (and an accomplished foreigner's remark on such a subject is worth quoting), " I the more rejoiced to see such a work in progress [it was in 1850], as showing that the unfortunate prejudice which has banished art from the service of the Church, whereby all cultivation of genuine monumental art has been hindered in England, is now at last giving way." The buildings of Merton are remarkable for presenting some interesting specimens of early domestic architecture. At University College, a nearly coeval foundation (its statutes date from 1280), the want of ancient architecture is very disappointing, as this society claims King Alfred himself for its original founder, and has celebrated the six hundredth anniversary from its second foundation by the learned and munificent William of Durham, afterwards Arch- bishop of Eouen. It was not, however, until nearly a century later that the society became established on the present site, and the Edwardian buildings seem to have been in decay in the seventeenth century. Whosoever founded the first University Hall, University College has vindicated its right to the privileges of a royal foundation. It has always had a traditional connection with the north of England, and the library had for its first known benefactor Walter Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham. This part of the college is much indebted for its present creditable state to the judicious care and taste of the Rev. Dr. Plumptre, the present Master; and a new library in the Decorated style is now in course of erection from the design of Mr. Scott, much to the credit of the college authorities. Neither do we find many actual remains of the old buildings of Balliol College, which had for its founder that great martial baron John de Balliol, whose widow the lady Devorgilla gave the original statutes in 1282; but there is a fine tower gateway THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 209 of the time of Henry VII. The dignified though piquant-looking chapel of Balliol, as rebuilt by Mr. Butterfield, in which coloured materials are introduced externally as well as in the interior with good and original effect, adds a new work of beauty to Oxford itself. Then, at Exeter College, founded by that worthy prelate- architect Walter de Stapledon, who became Bishop of Exeter in 1307, few of the buildings have any interest for the antiquarian visitor; but its long stately front, with oriel windows and tower gateway, is worthy of this eminent foundation, and quite an ornament to the university. The new chapel recently built by Mr. Scott (at the cost, as it is understood, of 16,000Z.) is the chief architectural ornament of Exeter College, and a splendid addition to the glories of Oxford. It is a lofty and dignified apsidal building, imitating, but with English features, the Sainte-Chapelle, in which pointed architecture seems to have culminated in France. The new chapel is a really noble monument of the renaissance of Gothic architecture at Oxford ; and its erection is another proof of the attachment felt by her sons for the foundations they inherit from elder days, and that her colleges are still animated by the spirit which in the middle ages adorned the university with the best achievements of art. The hall of Exeter likewise attracted many visitors during the meeting, it being a good specimen of a college dining-hall of the early part of the seven- teenth century. Queen's College — the next in time of foundation — is architecturally remarkable only for the facade which forms so conspicuous an object among the palatial ornaments of the High-street ; but no parts of the college building date from the time of Kobert de Egleslield, the worthy chaplain of Queen Philippa, who, in her honour, designated his foundation here " the hall of the Queen's Scholars." At New College, how- ever — that noble monument of the munificence and skill of William of Wykcham, Bishop of Winchester, its founder in 1380 — the buildings remain, for the most part, as erected in his time and upon his plan. The chapel, which has been pronounced the pride of the whole university, the hall, cloisters, groined gateways, and many windows in different parts of the college buildings remain nearly as they came from the hands of the illustrious founder; and the feudal-looking tower, still adorned with its 210 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. three canopied figures, is thought to have been his latest work. Probably (as Dr. Ingram suggested) it is because this lbundation introduced the collegiate as distinguished from the aularian system, and thus marked a new era in college annals, that it is still called " Xew College" — a designation which does not pre- pare the stranger to witness the thoroughly medieval character of the best of its buildings. Magdalen College, which had for its founder another great prelate-architect, William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, and Lord Chancellor in the reign of Henry VI. was meditated by him in 1457 ; but he saw the union of the Red and the White Koses before his work could be com- pleted. The graceful belfry-tower, finished in 1505, combines with the western front to form an architectural group of most striking beauty. Considering the reforming rage of the six- teenth century, the foul atrocities with which Cromwell repaid the hospitality of the college in 1649, and that his myrmidons tore down and trampled on the stained glass from the chapel windows, and committed every outrage that fanatical hatred of religious and scholastic learning could dictate, it is wonderful that so much of the old building has escaped destruction. The qua- drangle, containing the hall, chapel, and cloisters, is ancient, and there is a fine coeval entrance-tower; the west door of the chapel is rich and elegant, and the interior has been very successfully restored; but the most distinguishing feature of this great college is the lofty and wondrously beautiful tower, whose melodious bells are Still wont to usher in delightful May. Contemporary with Magdalen College and the munificent founder's great works at Eton and Windsor, is the richly deco- rated and interesting edifice known as the Divinity School, built soon after 1480, in the time of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, where, during the meeting of the Association, the section of " Geography and Ethnology" assembled to meet travellers from countries that were undiscovered, and to consider subjects that were not studied at Oxford, in the days when loving hands were encrusting these walls with a thousand forms of beauty. It is difficult to believe that this once gorgeous work can have been reduced to such a state after the Reformation, that nettles and THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 211 brambles grew about its walls. The architectural defects of* "the schools' quadrangle" and its strange eclectic gateway are forgotten when we consider that it encloses one of the most celebrated libraries of Europe (the Bodleian), and that in one of the old schools, on the basement story, are some of the marbles collected by the great Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel. The reign of Henry VII. was a time of great architectural activity at Oxford, and to that period belongs also the whole of the fine church of St. Mary, except the tower and spire and a portion eastward of the tower. The original foundation of this remarkable church is referred by tradition to King Alfred him- self: at all events, its royal origin is made probable by the fact that the patronage has belonged to the Crown from the earliest times, and that St. Mary's has always been peculiarly the church of the university. The beautiful spire, " thick set with pinnacles," a work of the Decorated period, was built under the care of Adam de Brome, the first founder of Oriel College and almoner of Eleanor of Castile, but the whole body of the church fell into a ruinous condition in the time of Edward IV. and was, in 1492, rebuilt by benefactions from all England. The incongruous though picturesque south porch, with its well-known twisted columns, is a seventeenth century addition. There are not any old buildings at Oriel College (said to have taken its name from L'Orielle, the building that was the first home of the society), which was originally founded by De Brome, — Edward II., the reputed founder, being but its foster-father. In Corpus Christi College — the next house in order of foundation — the munificent and learned Fox, bishop successively of Exeter, Bath, Durham, and Winchester, nobly commemorated the devotion of his latter days and his wealth to the service of God and the benefit of future ages. Architecturally, the hall — a well-proportioned spe- cimen of late Perpendicular work — is the most interesting part of the college buildings, but the whole quadrangle is remarkable for what has been called its genuine and characteristic aspect. Xo member of the British Association could forget, amongst the modern memories of these walls, that Dr. Buckland resided here before his preferment. Then conies Archbishop Chichele's magni- ficent foundation of All Souls' College, the long facade of which 212 LECTURES AND ESSATTS. forma so picturesque an addition to the beauties of High-street. The gateway and first quadrangle arc contemporary and interest- ing specimens of Perpendicular "work of the founder's time. His connexion with the earlier history of Saint John's College is not generally remembered. In 1437, about a hundred and seventeen years before the foundation of St. John's, Chichelc selected its site for a college, but he appropriated it to a body of Cistercian monks, whom he brought there to cultivate philosophical learn- ing, and he founded All Souls' on another site. The tower of St. John's and its gateway — a conspicuous ornament of the pic- turesque entrance to Oxford from the north (St. Giles's Street), which, with its fine trees, resembles a Parisian boulevard — belong- to the time of Chichele's silent but not inactive Cistercians, and the effigy of their holy patron, St. Bernard, is still in its original niche ; the hall (though modernised in windows and interior) was their refectory, and below it is the original crypt.* Of course, the good Archbishop's foundation, being, as it was, semi-monastic, shared the fate of non- collegiate establishments at the dissolution; but, in 1554, Sir Thomas White, the first London alderman and mayor who ever founded a college, bought the site and lands, and endowed a college under invocation of St. John the Baptist, to which he afterwards added the lands of the old Benedictine house called Gloucester Hall. But the founder lived in days of persecution; his president and fellows were scattered by Queen Elizabeth, and the college languished until the time of William Laud, afterwards Arch- bishop of Canterbury, who became its president in 1611. He * While the more costly monuments of All Souls' and St. John's Oxford, and " the Oxford Tower " at Canterbury, tell of Chichele's regard for his university and his diocess, the church, the college, the school, and the bede-house, which remain to give character to the little, faded borough of Higham Ferrers, speak no less plainly of the love he bore to his native birthplace. The church of Higham is invested with interest on account of its builder. It was in a neighbouring field that Henry Chichele was found by William of AVykeham, as Giotto by Cimabue, tending his father's flock ; and the prelate-architect and the painter each led his pupil to follow worthily in his patron's footsteps. Rising peacefully above the civil brawls of the fifteenth century, few calmer and nobler figures appear than that of Archbishop Chichele's, who, in a boisterous age, with one hand laid the foundation of so many noble institutions of learning and cha- rity, while with the other he manfully resisted the papal encroachments on the liber, ties of the Anglican Church. (Q. Rev. Jan. 1857, art. on Northamptonshire*) THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 213 employed Inigo Jones to build the inner quadrangle (the first quadrangle dates from White's time) ; and at this day the eastern (or garden) front of the library, which was built at the cost of the illustrious president, is one of the most picturesque of all the University buildings. Here, on the 30th August, 1636, Laud, then Chancellor of Oxford, entertained the King and Queen, Prince Rupert and the court, all of whom afterwards wit- nessed a play in the college hall. What a picturesque scene must have been presented at St. John's, when the gay costumes of the cavaliers, their lace collars, buff coats, and crimson scarfs, their broad plumed hats and flowing hair, mingled with the black academic gowns in these grey cloisters ! Although the contents of the Ashmolean Museum were more interesting to physiologi- cally inclined members of the British Association than historic memories and ecclesiastical relics, visitors to St. John's did not forget that to the chapel of his beloved college — successfully restored some years since by Mr. Blore — the remains of Laud were translated from the church of All Hallows by the Tower, and that here also repose the bones of the founder, and of Arch- bishop Juxon. Books with Laud's autograph, the stick with which he walked to his execution, and his portrait by Vandyck, are likewise treasured at St. John's. Lincoln College has some features of fifteenth- century architecture, but is chiefly interesting as a monument of the days when Oxford was in the diocese of Lincoln, this college having been founded by Thomas Rotherham, Bishop of Lincoln, afterwards Archbishop of York, and chan- cellor of the last Plantagenet king. Its chapel is a curious spe- cimen of the Jacobean Gothic of Inigo Jones. Then, passing to the colleges that were founded after the disso- lution of monasteries, we come to the partly academical and partly cathedral establishment of Christ Church, that splendid monument of Wolsey's magnificent spirit, the most imposing of all the colleges in architectural extent, and whose long street facade, dignified by Wren's picturesque and well-known gateway tower, the home of deep-voiced " Tom of Oxford," is so promi- nent among the lions of the university. The kitchen, which remains nearly as built by the mighty cardinal, is said to have been the first building that was finished in the college — a signifi- 214 LECTUKES AM) ESSAYS. cant recognition, certainly, of what Sydney Smith called the roast-beef basis of our English strength. There is not a more stately refectory in this country than the noble and beautifully proportioned hall of Christ Church (built in 1529); and the staircase, although built ninety years later, is remarkable for pre- serving Gothic forms, and for the lightness and richness of its fan- tracery vault, which springs from a central pillar like some tall palm-tree. The open timber- roof of the hall is one of its finest features; and the portraits that cover its walls are remarkable, not only as historical works of art, but lor the long array they present of distinguished Englishmen who have been on the foundation of this unrivalled college. Historical memories alone remain of the priory of St. Frideswide, and of the twenty-two other founda- tions which were absorbed into Wolsey's new college; but the Norman church, which he altered for the collegiate chapel, placing on the choir its curious and beautiful vaulted roof with rich pen- dants, is the present cathedral. But very unworthy it is, archi- tecturally, to be the mother church of such a diocese, for the choir and transepts only remain ; the choir is narrow, it has no carved stalls or side-screens, and the whole interior is much wanting in dignity. Some of its singular architectural features led to the supposition that it was a Saxon building heightened and enlarged in Norman days, but no part is older than the latter half of the twelfth century. The Norman tower and early spire are remark- able, and the chapter- house (which has an enriched Norman door-way from the cloister), though small, presents some of the finest early-English work in the kingdom.* Proceeding to the other colleges of post-Eeformation date, Trinity College is histo- rically remarkable as the first house of learning founded after the dissolution of monasteries, and as the successor of that old college of the Benedictines which was connected from very early times with the great see of Durham, one of whose bishops — the cele- brated Richard de Bury, the tutor and friend of Edward III. — bequeathed to it such an unrivalled collection of MSS. as led to his being regarded as the first founder of the university library. The picturesque and quaint buildings of the president's lodgings group with the line yew-trees of the garden to form a picture * The dedication stone of Wolsey's intended college of Ipswich is here preserved. THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 215 characteristic of the Oxford of other clays, when her benefactors took such care that the serious pursuits of learning should not be without the cheerful solace of natural beauty and the adorn- ments of art. At Brasenose (brasen-huis), founded in the time of Henry VIII. , the tower gateway and hall retain their original character, but the chapel is a strange specimen of what has been called the unhallowed union of the Grecian and Gothic styles. Its materials, however, are worthy of respect, for they were de- rived from the chapel of the Augustine canonry of St. Mary, where Erasmus studied, and which occupied the site of "Frewen's Hall," the house lately selected as the residence of the Prince of Wales while pursuing his studies at the university. At Wadham College, which was completed in 1613, and succeeded to an old Augustine priory of which no portion remains, the windows of the chapel are in such good taste and style as to have been mis- taken for monastic work, and the hall has a timber roof and fine oak screen. The college which commemorates the name of William Earl of Pembroke rose, like some other colleges, on the ruins of an earlier academical foundation. Pembroke College dates from 1614, but none of the buildings seem as old even as the time of the Restoration. The hall, however, should not be forgotten in this retrospect, for a distinguished circle was there received by the Vice -Chancellor, and Pembroke was the only college at which any general reception took place during the meeting. Lastly, as the most modern of the nineteen colleges and five halls of Oxford, comes Worcester College, which was founded at the close of the reign of Queen Anne, upon the site of Gloucester Hall, one of the earliest foundations for reli- gious learning, and is remarkable for the beauty of its gardens rather than its edifices. But we must not detain the reader any longer amongst these academic buildings: Oxford is accustomed to look to the past, and it is hardly possible to mention the colleges amongst which the members of the British Association met in 1860, without falling into the retrospective mood. Our brief survey of their chief architectural features cannot, however, be concluded with- out deploring that so many examples of the debased architecture of later times deface the mediaeval beauty of Oxford, and that its Q 216 LECTUBE6 AND ESSAYS. buildings have suffered, not only from the abortive attempt made after the restoration of Charles II. to revive Gothic forms, but from the tasteless, ignorant, and presumptuous attempts that were made during the Georgian period — that long dark age of architectural debasement. Nevertheless, the eighteenth century did add to the ancient buildings of Oxford two of its most remarkable and important edifices, viz. the stately Sheldonian Theatre and the spacious Radcliffe Library — a building of im- posing style and dimensions, the more remarkable for the contrast a circular temple in the classic style of architecture pre- sents to all that here surrounds it. But as a perishable free-stone was unfortunately used for the rebuilding, enlargement, or repair of many of the colleges in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- ries, the masonry of most of the buildings is in a state of ruinous decay and discoloration, and the destructive hand of Wyatt, in his so-called restorations in more recent days, has done more mis- chief than that of Time. Yet, although the forms of the univer- sity buildings may thus have changed, the great institution itself happily remains in its original character and force, exercising its privileges, bestowing its honours, and fulfilling the high pur- poses of its mission. Of course a volume might be devoted to describing only the more remarkable of the literary treasures in the college libraries. Most of them contain ancient manuscripts, and many a volume is adorned with illuminated drawings and miniatures of great value in the history of art — productions that occupied perhaps a lifetime, and commanded in former days as high prices as are now given for fine pictures. And while, in the college libraries of Oxford, books place her students in familiar intercourse with the master spirits of the past, so from many a college hall the worthies of former generations, whose portraits adorn the walls, seem to be looking upon the votaries of learning; and as in the streets of Rome the country's gods were everywhere set up to remind her citizens of moral obligations, so at Oxford illustrious men seem ever encouraging her students to follow their good example. Then, too, there are the university galleries of paintings and antique sculpture, and that wonderful domain of books, the Bodleian Library, with the celebrated manuscript and other trea- THE BHITISII ASSOCIATION AT OXFOHD. 217 sures of whose lengthened galleries the exclusive devotion of the whole week would not have sufficed to acquaint a visitor. To the capacious archives of Bodley's Library, by the way, the whole Ashmolean collection of MSS. has lately been transferred. More attractive, however, than the architecture, the libraries, the old plate,* or the other historical relics of the colleges of Oxford, were those sequestered gardens which constitute their distinguishing charm, and are never seen to such advantage as in Commemoration week, or on a gathering like the present, when the cool glade and the " shadow-chequered lawn " are lighted up with many a bright glow of colour, and animated by many a graceful form. The delicious gardens of the colleges set the antique, time-worn, edifices amidst the ever-renewing loveliness * Few of the college treasures are more attractive than the old plate, but it is of course only shown as a matter of favour. In this particular, the university suffered in succession from both parties in the contest between Charles I. and his parliament. After the battle of Edge Hill, the king established his court at Oxford and his mint at New Inn Hall, whither, in January, 1643, the loyal but reluctant colleges and halls brought their plate to be coined into money "for his Majesties use," and an enormous quantity in the aggregate must have been obtained. Thus, Wadham College alone gave up a hundred pounds' weight of silver plate, and twenty-three pounds of gilt plate. There had not been such spoliation since the days of Henry VIII., when that royal miscreant despoiled the monasteries. Some of the colleges managed, how- ever, to preserve a few relics, now highly prized, and celebrated as specimens of mediceval goldsmith's work. At their respective foundations of New College and Corpus Christi are preserved the magnificent pastoral staves of Wykeham and Fox ; the former is especially remarkable for its elaborate canopy-work, enamelling, and jewelled ornaments. Amongst the sacramental plate at All Souls' are two silver-gilt flagons, the covers formed of a swan's head and neck — the heraldic cognizance attri- buted to Archbishop Chichele; and here, too, is his silver-gilt and crystal salt-cellar. At Corpus are the silver-gilt salt-cellars and cups of the founder (whose device of a pelican is repeated on one of them) , and other cups and tankards, older than any of the college buildings, besides a fine pyx, and a beautiful chalice of silver-gilt, the founder's gift. At Trinity College is preserved a fine fifteenth-century chalice, saved (by the founder) from the spoils of St. Alban's Abbey. The buffalo horn, mounted with silver-gilt bands, preserved at Queen's College, and said to have been the gift of Queen Philippa herself, is thought to have been originally employed for convening the members of the foundation (who by the statutes are to be called together by sound of horn), but it is used as a drinking-horn on days of festivity. At New College are several silver-gilt cups of elaborate work, and a chased silver-gilt salt- cellar, given in 1493, besides the silver seal which was engraved in Wykeham 's time; and at Oriel there is a silver-gilt cup attributed to Edward II., though not of so early a date, and a cocoa-nut cup set in silver, given by Bishop Carpenter, provost, in 1470. Q 2 218 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. of nature, and relieve with bright verdure and noble trees the grey lines and angular forms of the buildings. After sedu- lously attending the scientiiie discourses in the sections, and witnessing the intellectual conflicts that occasionally animated the proceedings, it was especially refreshing to seek the college gardens; to wander beneath the leafy arcades of Magdalen, or view the pleasing landscape, varying at every step, in Christ Church meadows, on the banks of Isis and Cherwcll ; or see from the beautiful and tastefully disposed. gardens of St. John's, where the stately chestnut trees wave above the shady lawn, the many picturesque views of college buildings, round which memories cluster as thickly as their ivy ; or seek the meditative seclusion of Wadham, or the gardens that surround Wvkeham's graceful ar- chitecture with perennial beauty ; or wander where the bright lake ripples on its green margin in the ornamental grounds of Worcester. Such, then, are the historic and suggestive scenes amidst which the representatives of natural science assembled. But a new and most attractive building of another kind, and of peculiar interest to the members of the British Association, has lately risen under the tutelage of the university — we mean the Oxford Museum; and we must briefly glance at its structure and purpose. This ambitious building proclaims both the revival in Gothic archi- tecture and the resolution of the university that from henceforth the knowledge of natural phenomena and of the laws which govern the constitution of the earth and its inhabitants shall be engrafted on Oxford studies.* The building, which has been erected on Mr. Woodward's prize design, is quadrangular, en- closing a great central area. Externally it presents on the chief front a long facade of windows in Italianising Gothic style, in two tiers, pointed roofs, and central high-capped tower. Inside, the area is lighted by a glass roof, and surrounded on the base- ment and on the upper story by a pointed arcade, opening to corridors on each side of the square, and they give access to lecture-rooms and professors' apartments, in which utility and. fitness seem to have been judiciously studied. This area is destined for the display of various collections in Physiology * The introduction of geological studies into the university of Oxford is due to the lectures delivered between 1805 and 1810 by Dr. Kidd, Professor of Chemistry. THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFOED. 219 and Natural History ; a projws to which, we are glad to see that the promoters desire to bring into conjunction with them a library of books on medicine and physical science. This part of the structure presents a bold and novel attempt to combine the iron-work of this materialistic nineteenth century with the grace- ful stone architecture of the middle ages; for Ave have here wrought-iron banded shafts for the piers and iron arches and spandrils, so that the spacious Exchange-like area presents a forest of slender pillars, expanding, far above, into interwoven branches, with leaf, and flower, and fruit boldly and truthfully wrought in the same material. The selection and arrangement of the British marbles which form the shafts in the two tiers of open arcades, is an instructive as well as striking feature of this building, and here science and art have been — as was fitting — most happily combined. Thus, on the western side of the arcade, the shafts are of various granitic rocks; on the south, of our native British marbles (still too little known) ; on the east, of trap rocks ; and on the north, of Devonian and Irish mountain limestones; so that this part of the building is itself a systematic exhibition of natural objects. Then, in the sculptured decorations, it is full of beauty and promise, the style of ornamentation selected being less conventional than founded on natural forms and produced by the workman's imitative powers as exercised on objects gathered from Nature ; yet there is in some of the details too little of con- ventional restraint, or, in other words, of the spirit in which Gothic architects expressed natural form. The capitals and bases, too, are peculiar, inasmuch as they represent groups of plants and animals of various epochs and climates, arranged according to their natural orders. The statues of illustrious dis- coverers or cultivators of the various branches of natural science to which the edifice is dedicated, which have been contributed by her Majesty and by the friends of the undertaking, and are placed on brackets in front of several of the arcade piers, add greatly to the animated and pleasing effect of the interior, and fitly associate the sister arts of architecture and sculpture. The design of this building is undoubtedly lofty and original, the execution is in the highest degree meritorious, and the outlay upon it has been very great, the cost of the fabric and fittings 220 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. being understood to amount to G5, 000/. ; yet it is unfortunately marked by a rigidly restrained economy in many parts where expenditure was essential to effect and grandeur, and the long facade presents anunpleasing flatness, which, however, would be greatly relieved by a bold central porch. The Oxford Museum nobly inaugurates the new order of things in university educa- tion, and, whatever the success of that change may be, presents at all events a splendid proof of Oxford's good will to the impor- tant studies connected with Natural History. In the days of the founders and benefactors of her colleges, physical science had no especial schools, professors, or students, and university education did not profess to aid the learner — as In' is henceforth to be aided— "in acquiring a general view of the planet on which wc live, of its constituent parts, and of its relations, as a world amongst worlds; and in studying in the most scientific manner, and with a view to any pursuit, any detailed portion which his powers qualify him to grasp." As Professor Faraday has observed, education in science teaches us, first by tutors and books to learn that which is already known to others, and then by the light and methods which belong to science to learn for ourselves and for others — to render fruitful for men in the future that which has been obtained from the men of the pre- sent or the past ; and the promoters of the Oxford Museum exem- pli fy the principle taught by Lord Bacon, that the scientific stu- dent ought not to be as the ant, who gathers merely, nor as the spider, who only spins, but rather as the bee, who both gathers and produces. On this meeting of the British Association the building afforded ample accommodation for the natural history sections, and was an object of novel attraction to the visitors who thronged it, as well in the daytime as in the evenings when it was opened for general receptions or conversazioni. On the last of those meetings there was a perfect feast of microscopes, and it seemed as if there had been a general levy of these instruments throughout England. The meeting was inaugurated by an admirable address from Lord Wrottesley, as president, delivered to a brilliant and crowded audience in the Sheldonian Theatre, and we shall endeavour to give an outline of its principal topics. He opened his address by THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 221 placing in striking contrast with the present condition of science the state and teaching of science in the university in 1814, when he was a pupil at Oxford, remarking that he regarded the School of Physical Science lately instituted, and the prizes now founded for encouraging its cultivation, as full of hope for the future. The noble President adverted to the progress of astronomy, and to the labours of the private observers — voluntary rivals of the public observatories — whose labours have been chiefly devoted, first, to the stars — those "landmarks of the universe," other than the brighter stars, about a hundred in number, whose places it is the province of the public observer to establish, and to mapping the smaller stars; secondly, to the positions and relative distances of double or multiple stars; thirdly, to the nebulae; fourthly, to the minor planets; fifthly, to comets; sixthly, to observations of the sun's spots and other solar phenomena; and seventhly, occul- tations of stars by the moon, eclipses, &c. The observations and cataloguing of the smaller stars, and the comparison of the results obtained at different and distant periods, have revealed the won- drous fact that the sun itself does not occupy one fixed spot in the universe, but is constantly moving (at the supposed rate of eighteen thousand miles an hour) towards a point in the constel- lation Hercules, carrying with it the whole planetary and come- tary system. Many of the double or multiple stars, appearing single to the naked eye, are in fact suns, and probably systems. As regards the cataloguing and mapping of the stars, it may be mentioned that Dr. Robinson's catalogue gives the places of more than five thousand stars, whereas the catalogue of Flamsteed, first Astronomer Eoyal at Greenwich, contained about three thousand only. Still more than even these distant and distinguishable bodies, do the nebulas — those mysterious starry clouds of light — afford an overwhelming view of the infinitude of space. The noble president referred to the unrivalled instrument erected by Lord Rosse, and the curious discovery that some of these nebulre are arrayed in a spiral form, and mentioned the powerful instru- ment just finished by Mr. W. Lassell, the discoverer of Neptune's satellite. He then passed to the observations of comets, and mentioned that the important and unexpected fact that at each successive approach the comet of Encke arrives at its perihelion 222 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. sooner and sooner, has led to the supposition that space is per- vaded by a rarefied atmosphere or ether, which does not exercise a perceptible effect on the solid planets, but influences the more attenuated bodies moving with great velocity, the effect of the resistance being to allow the attractive force of gravity to draw the comet nearer to the sun, and thus to continually contract the dimensions of its orbit and augment its velocity, as if, said the President, the comet, circling like a celestial moth round the great luminary, were destined to be mercilessly consumed. We could not but think of the ancient (astronomical) fable of the phcenix, which, after a wandering life of fourteen hundred and eighty-one years, was to return to die, consumed by the rays of the sun in the Temple of Heliopolis. Lord Wrottesley men- tioned the suggestion of Professor W. Thomson, that the heat and light of the sun may be from time to time replenished by the absorption, not only of comets, but of the countless meteors which circulate round it. Herschel, it is known, regarded the zodiacal light as " a tornado of stones." The phenomenon witnessed in September 1859 by Mr. Carrington and Mr. Hodgson would seem to show that the process of feeding the sun by the fall of meteoric matter was actually then beheld. The next astronomical topics of general interest adverted to were the recent observations of the spots and peculiar appearances on the sun's disc, and the indications of a connexion between magnetic phenomena on the earth, and events taking place upon the surface of the sun; and the remarkable fact was mentioned that a moderate but marked magnetic disturbance occurred at the time of the apparent absorp- tion by the sun of two bright meteors, as witnessed by Mr. Car- rino-ton and Mr. Hodgson. Then, from wandering on the dim confines of the unknown, the President, after referring to the means of rendering more con- ducive to science the government expenditure of 1000/. a year for scientific objects, passed to chemical science, and mentioned the activity which had been displayed, especially in the organic department of chemistry. Among its practical applications, he instanced the beautiful dyes now extracted from aniline, an or- ganic base formerly obtained as a chemical curiosity from pro- ducts of the distillation of coal-tar, but now manufactured as an THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 223 article of commerce, in consequence of the demand for " mauve," " Magenta," and " Solferino," which are prepared by the action of oxidising agents (as bichromate of potash, corrosive sublimate, and iodide of mercury) upon aniline. We are sorry to say, that, in a paper read by Professor Voelcker in the Chemical Science section, a very different application of chemical agents was de- scribed — viz. the employment in some of the dairies of Gloucester and Wilts of sulphate of copper or sulphate of zinc in the making of cheese. In Geology, the principal topic discussed in the Presi- dent's address was the bearing of recent discoveries in the valley of the Somme, in Picardy, on the question of the high antiquity of man. Rude flint implements, unquestionably of human work- manship, have been found (at Abbeville and Amiens) in such a posi- tion in old fluviatile formations as to show that these weapons are at least as ancient as a great mass of alluvial gravel which stretches between those cities, and sometimes contains, and sometimes oc- curs under beds containing, fresh-water shells and remains of a foreign and extinct fauna, beside bones of the mammoth, an ex- tinct species of rhinoceros, and an extinct species of deer, probably the contemporaries of the deposit of these flints. Their high anti- quity is also inferred from the changes which the physical geogra- phy of the country has subsequently undergone, and which are of such a character as to testify a slow lapse of geological time. More- over, the accumulation of those deposits of peat in the valley of the Somme which belong to pre-historic times, and contain monu- ments of the Celtic period, has been subsequent to the formation of the uppermost of the alluvial beds overlying the gravel. In connection with this subject, Lord Wrottesley referred to the flint implements observed by Dr. Falconer in caves at Brixham and at Palermo, associated in such a manner with bones of extinct mammalia as to indicate that man co-existed with certain lost species of quadrupeds. The Amiens flints were described and exhibited at the Aberdeen meeting, but their discovery did not form at Oxford, as it did at Aberdeen, the subject of more than incidental discussion in the sections. Similar flint implements have been found on a Mediterranean shore, and also in Terra del Fuego, as Admiral Fitzroy took occasion to remark in the Geo- graphy and Ethnology section. Another topic of general interest 22-i LECTURES AND ESSAYS. adverted to in the address was, the more extended and successful application of chemistry, physics, and collateral sciences to the study of the animal and vegetable economy, and the progress made in scrutinising animal structures by the microscope, and in extend- ing our knowledge of the functions of the nervous system. Well might such a survey be concluded by the remark, that the secret forces which retain the planets in their course, the boundless extent of space, the means by which light and heat are conveyed through unfathomable distances, the subtle agencies of electricity, the beauties and prodigies of contrivance displayed by all animals and plants, and the geological changes of our planet, all present such marvels and mysteries as must ever task the highest efforts of the mind ! The scientific business of the week thus inaugurated was, of course, for the most part transacted in the sections, but was also marked by an admirable discourse from Professor Walker on the present state of our knowledge of the sun, addressed to a brilliant assemblage that again crowded the Sheldonian Theatre, and by an interesting discourse by Captain Sherard Osborn on Arctic dis- covery. In such a paper as the present it is impossible to give any outline that could convey a just idea of Professor Walker's discourse ; it must suffice to say, that it presented a masterly view of what is known of the sun. Perhaps no parts of the discourse were more interesting than those in which the Professor adverted to the still unresolved questions whether comets arc the aliment of the sun, whether aerolites and meteoric stones do fall into it, and by what means its light and heat arc uniformly maintained; and in which he treated of those dark shallows or cavities in the phosphorescent atmosphere of the sun called spots, and of their now ascertained periodicity, or, in other words, their decennial cycle of maximum development — a phenomenon of periodicity with which magnetic disturbances remarkably coincide. The sun's action on the needle is unconnected with heat, but, as regards the meteorological influence of the spots, it is remarkable that a year of greater spots appears also to be one of greater moisture. In describing the appearance and magnitude of the solar spots, the professor stated that one of them seemed to be a cavity large enough to hold the earth. He gave a good idea of the attractive force THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 225 exerted by the enormous bulk of the sun by stating- that upon the solar surface a man would weigh two tons ! The attendance in the sections, throughout the meeting, showed that they also exert a great attractive force: these constitutional chambers of the association were sedulously attended, as at former meetings, not only by the habitual votaries of science, but by the ladies, for it is the pleasantcst feature of these gatherings that we always find " beauty ministering to philosophy." We cannot here attempt anything like a report of the scientific business of the week. We can only select, and for very brief notice, those papers which afforded matter of general interest. In the " Mathematical and Physical Science" section, some of the most scientific papers read were on such subjects that no idea of the contents could be conveyed in a popular sketch, and the same remark applies to the sections of " Chemical Science," "Mechanical Science," and " Zoology and Botany." Two papers relating to atmospheric phenomena that were read in the first-mentioned section may however be mentioned. The one was the Eeport on Observations of Luminous Meteors by the late able Professor of Geometry Professor Baden Powell, conti- nued by Mr. J. Glashier, in which he considered the three cur- rent modes of accounting for the luminosity of meteors. These, as stated by Mr. K. P. Greg, are, first, the supposition that they are opaque bodies illuminated by the sun's light after emerging from the earth's shadow, a theory to which there are grave objections; second, that they are self-luminous, an opinion now almost aban- doned; and, third, that they become incandescent in the earth's atmosphere. A considerable portion of the report was devoted to the large meteor seen in sunlight over a considerable portion of the United States on the 15th November 1859, which seems to have had a velocity of at least thirty miles a second. The other was a paper by Admiral Fitzroy, " On Storms on the British Coast," in treating of which he described the gale of the 25th and 26th October 1859, (in which the Royal Charter was lost), and its attendant phenomena of cyclonic commotion, and referred to dia- grams representing, as it were, soundings in the atmosphere, and showing that the pressure was exerted over large areas rather than particular lines. In that fatal storm the wind attained a 226 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. maximum velocity of from sixty to a hundred miles an hour ! He adverted to the power of the mountain-ranges of Wales and Scot- land to alter the direction, and probably the velocity, of the wind; and, on a review of the investigations of Dr. Lloyd and Mr. Wil- liam Stevenson, deduced that storms which come from the west and north come on gradually, but that those from the south and east begin suddenly, and often with extraordinary force. Of these the barometer does not give notice, but the thermometer affords some indications. Amongst the signs which preceded that particular gale, were great electric or magnetic storms in the atmosphere. The gallant admiral referred to the recent ex- traordinary storm near Calne, which transcended the supposed feats of the spiritualists with tables, for it lifted a broad-Avheeled waggon from the road over a hcd^e into the next field; and he explained in detail the arrangement by which, under government authority, warning of storms will be communicated by telegraph from one part of the country to another, and the mode in which the signals will be visibly repeated along the coast, by which means, it is hoped, the shipwrecks that too often strew our coasts may be diminished. In the " Zoology and Botany" section a crowded audience was attracted, and a lively debate was led to, by a paper in which the startling theories of Mr. Darwin, as to the development of species by what he calls " natural selection," came into discussion. It was a paper by a Dr. Draper of New York, " On the Intellectual Development of Europe;" and the author, referring to the views of Mr. Darwin and others, that the progression of organisms is determined by law, attempted to draw a parallel between the in- tellectual progress of man and the physical development of the lower animals. Mr. Darwin's theories were eloquently and vigorously opposed by the Bishop of Oxford, who was supported by the views expressed by Professor Owen himself, and by Sir Benjamin Brodie and other eminent naturalists. Dr. Hooker explained that Mr. Darwin's theory does not assert the transmu- tation of existing species one into another, which is quite a different thing from the successive development of species by variation and natural selection, an hypothesis which he consi- dered to be strongly countenanced by the characteristics of the THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 227 vegetable kingdom, but Dr. Hooker reserved liberty to resume his allegiance to the doctrine "with which he said he had begun the study of natural science, that" species are original creations. A paper " On the Final Causes of the Sexuality of Plants," par- ticularly referring to Mr. Darwin's work, led to a debate, in the course of which Professor Owen remarked that there are facts from which a conclusion may be formed as to the probabilities of the truth of Mr. Darwin's theory. In the course of his remarks he adverted to the deficiencies in cerebral structure of the gorilla as compared with man, and described them as immense (the in- telligence of some tribes of the Quadrumana had been mentioned, and Dr. Wright had instanced a gorilla which took its young to the sea-shore to feed them on oysters, which they broke with great facility); but Professor Huxley denied that the deficiencies are so great as represented by Professor Owen, and contended that the great attribute which distinguishes man from the monkey is the gift of speech. In the Geology section, Professor Phillips's paper " On the Geology of the Vicinity of Oxford" attracted (as might be ex- pected) a large and much interested audience. The fossil contents of the " three square yards of Triassic drift" (near Frome) were described by Mr. Moore, who exhibited a series of organic re- mains, almost sufficient to set up a museum, including teeth and vertebra: belonging to three or four genera of mammalia, sup- posed, therefore, to have inhabited the adjacent dry land from which the drift came. In the course of Dr. Daubeny's " Remarks on the Elevation Theory of Volcanoes," he pointed out several volcanic formations, the phenomena of which could not, he thought, be ascribed (according to the theory held by the Greeks) to the scoria? and lava flowing from a vent, or crater, having accumulated in the conical mass of a volcanic mountain. There are many places in which the fluid lava seems to have been hori- zontally spread over a subjacent and submarine granite bed, and to have then been raised up, in some cases broken through, from below by a mass which has formed a cone and crater. The paper led to a discussion, in which Sir Charles Lyell spoke on these theories with his accustomed animation, the venerable President, Professor Sedgwick, protesting against our thoughts on this sub- 228 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. jcct being macadamised, and, as it were, constantly turned over by u new pickaxe. Several papers of a most interesting character were read in the Geography section. Dr. Livingstone's letter (dated River Shire, 4th Nov. 1859) on the latest discoveries in South Central Africa attracted a large audience. Describing the course of the Shire, he mentioned a table-land three thousand feet above the sea, with mountains, some of which are from seven thousand to eight thousand feet high, a region well watered by springs and clear, cool, gushing mountain rills. He describes many of the natives as intelligent-looking, with high foreheads and well-shaped heads; but, nevertheless, they wear copper, brass, and iron rings on their arms and legs, and the women (for beauty) wear a ring through the upper lip. They wear goatskins, prepared bark, and a cloth of strong cotton. It is a great cotton-growing country. He describes the country as healthy, well timbered, and having water communication all the way to England, except thirty miles. Large quantities of what is called beer are drunk, and the people often get tipsy; but notwithstanding this, and that they never wash themselves, they attain a great age in the high lands. An old man said he remembered having washed once when a boy, but he never repeated it; and a man was threatened, as a severe punishment, to be taken to the river and washed. They believe in witchcraft, and try by ordeal accusations of its practice. A badge of mourning consists of narroAV bands of palmyra leaf worn as armlets. The people have the idea of a Supreme Being and a future state. " Sometimes," said a chief, "the dead come back again; they appear in dreams, but they never tell where they have gone to." An interesting letter to the noble President from Captain Maury, of the United States navy, was read, in which that scien- tific officer urges the exploration of the unknown regions (eight millions of square miles) in the Antarctic regions. The lost Polar expedition, and the possible recovery of its scientific documents, was the subject of an interesting address by Captain Parker Snow, whose proposal to take the command of an expedition with that view received some cordial and liberal support. THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 229 Dr. Eae gave a highly interesting description of the aborigines of the Arctic regions with whom he had come in contact. He corroborated the statements as to the Mongolian type of the Esquimaux, described their life, habits, and character, but spoke of them favourably, describing, for example, their affection to parents. Some of their superstitions are curious: they look on the stars as spirits of the dead, and, when they see meteors or falling stars, say the spirits are visiting each other. They make propi- tiatory offerings to a supposed spirit of evil, deeming the Almighty too benevolent to will anything but good. Such is the sterility of their country, that the undigested grass and moss in the stomach of the migrating deer are frozen and often used as vegetable food. Sir Edward Belcher exhibited to the section some of their stone hatchets, tools, and arrow-heads, of native manufacture. Captain Sherard Osborn, in a paper read to the Geography section " On the formation of Oceanic Ice in the Arctic Regions," described the enormous extent of some of the glacial regions, and helped us to appreciate what the English climate owes to the coast of Labrador. Captain Osborn saw a floating iceberg as large as the new palace at Westminster, and gave some notion of what a battle of the bergs must be in those latitudes. From these sterile regions it was refreshing to glance with M. Pierre de Tchihatcheff at the luxuriant flora of the mountains in Asia Minor. His paper was on the geographical distribution of plants in those regions, and he described it as distinguished by a remarkable localisation or isolation of the tribes growing on the mountains. On five mountains of Armenia are found more than all the kinds of plants known in Great Britain. In Asia Minor the birch-tree lives at a height of seven thousand feet, and the remarkable atmospheric dryness of the climate is shown by the great height at which the grape flourishes. How strange it is that a mountainous region, which may well be called the Almighty's masterpiece in natural grandeur and fertility, should be politically a scene of desolation ! Mr. Ball (of the Alpine Club) mentioned, at the close of the paper, the remarkable resemblance in the flora of Anatolian 230 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. mountains to that localised in a mountainous region of Spain, and its pre-eminent richness in kinds. In a paper on microscopic vision, and on some optical illusions connected with the inversion of perspective, some interesting theoretic views were brought forward by Sir David Brewster, who also exhibited some beautiful drawings by the Hon. Mrs. Ward, explanatory of the phenomena in common and in polarised light, which are exhibited by the specimens of decomposed glass found at Nineveh, Rome, &c, on which specimens he had read a paper at the Aberdeen meeting. The rock-crystal lens found by Mr. Layard at Nineveh is as perfect as it was many thousand years ago, whereas the Assyrian glass that had surrendered to time was found much altered. The optical phenomena exhibited by films of pure glass from these specimens were minutely described, and the curious question they raise as to atomic forces was discussed. As regards the optics of the photographic art, an interesting paper was read by M. Claudet on Woodward's solar camera, an improvement which he deems capable of producing results of the greatest beauty. It decides the difficult question as to the right position of the focus of the condensing lens, and by its means small negatives may produce pictures that can be magni- fied to any extent. So much for the sections. The mental strain of all this scien- tific business was pleasantly relieved throughout the meeting by the hospitalities of Oxford (Dr. Waagen enthusiastically declares its roast beef unequalled); there was, as already mentioned, a select evening reception at Pembroke, and there was another by Dr. Daubeny in the charming Botanical Gardens; there was an excursion to Shotover by a party of geologists, and less ardently scientific visitors formed parties innumerable to the splendid grounds and galleries of Blenheim. The Association has never met at a place better suited to such a gathering than Oxford. The reader has seen what architectural lions the university can boast; and to the lovers of architecture few localities are richer in objects of interest than its vicinity. There are the monastic sites of Godstow and Abingdon, the picturesque and pleasant village of Ewelmc, with the quaint and curious old buildings THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT OXFORD. 231 (in moulded brickwork and wood tracery) of the hospital known as " God's House," and the parish church, remarkable in the annals of revived ecclesiastical taste as the first church in which open benches were substituted, for pews, and for its enriched south aisle, containing the fine monuments of the Duchess of Suffolk and Sir Thomas Chaucer. Then there is Dorchester (where in Saxon times was the bishop's see, before William the Conqueror transferred it to Lincoln) — a noble old church, partly- Norman, full of architectural interest, and enriched with brasses, stained glass, and ancient monuments, among which is the recumbent effigy of Chief Justice John de Stonor, who died in 1348. Near Dorchester, too, are the remains of the earthworks of a British town and Roman camp. Nearer Oxford there is the Norman church at Sandford, where once the Templars had their preceptory, and the interesting church of Ifney, over the older parts of which seven centuries have passed : — the tower-arches, groined chancel, and early-English work of the latter edifice arc well worthy of attention. Thus, on the steepled plain of Oxford, the cultivators of natural science ever found themselves amid scenes hallowed by historic memories, and nobly marked by the patriotism and the devotion of our forefathers; scenes upon which (as has been truly said) it is impossible we can ever look coldly, for they seem to reanimate the life of former days, and to detain the fleeting shadows of the past, to link its noble examples with the greater refinement and more advanced knowledge of the nine- teenth century, and to surround with " the impressive grandeur of historic recollections " the academic pursuits and the scientific labours of the present time. MINERAL SPRINGS: THEIR MEDICINE AND MYTHOLOGY. [The substance of the following Taper appeared in Household Words, Mar. 10, 1859.] O ye Wells, bless ye the Lord : praise Him and magnify Ilim for ever. The springs and fountains that are perpetually rising to the surface of the earth seem to be the providentially-appointed nourishers of organic life, the messengers of health and renova- tion to mankind. They not only restore to the service of ani- mated nature the waters that have fallen from the atmosphere, but, after traversing dark veins and caverns of the earth, they brine to the surface medicinal ingredients derived from nature's laboratories, deep hidden in the hills. The varied characters and properties of mineral springs are attributes not less wonderful than their chemical permanence, their constancy and abundance. Welling forth unfailingly through ages to bear health and life and beauty in their course, their value to mankind is unspeak- able, and it was natural that, in the simplicity of early times, a kind of worship should be paid to the waters that sprang — As a banquet from the friendly rock, Furnished by the King of Kings. Many of the mineral waters — wines we may call them, from the cellarage of mother earth — Springing through the veins of the mountains, come up tolerably well iced, others froth over at various degrees of heat, up to the temperature even of boiling water; some springs arc bright and sparkling; others, like "fruity port," are deeply tinged with alkaline and earthy matter. " It is sufficient," says a physician who has lately written on mineral springs, "for water to dissolve a little oxygen or a little carbonic acid, a trace MINERAL SPRINGS. 233 of phosphoric and nitric acids, to act npon substances which might seem the farthest removed from its action. By these simple means it dis-aggregates by slowly decomposing the constituents of the granites, porphyries, basalts, and crystalline rocks; it ex- tracts the silicic acids, the alkalies, and earthy bases, and, holding these materials in various combinations, our mineral springs offer them everywhere to organic life." Thus, the gaseous and the saline contents which have been absorbed by the water during its course through the channels of the rocks, give to mineral springs their diversity of character and their various remedial powers; and the earthy substances they hold in solution give them, as Humboldt has pointed out, another kind of action — at once formative and mctamorphic ; in other words, the waters transport saline and earthy substances from one kind of rock to the fissures of another, and issue from the earth charged with ingredients derived from deep and distant formations, so that many springs exert in their passage a forma- tive, a metamorphic, or a destructive action. The gaseous constituents of mineral waters are generally nitrogen, oxygen, carbonic acid, and sulphuretted hydrogen. The alkaline, earthy, and metallic constituents are, most com- monly, the muriates and sulphates of potash, soda, baryta, alumina, and lime. The active mineral principles of waters are, the sul- phates of soda and magnesia, the hydrochlorides of soda and lime, the muriates of lime and of soda, the chlorides of sodium and magnesium, the carbonates of soda, magnesia, and iron, and the sulplmrets of sodium and calcium. Other salts occur in some few springs, but the constituents just enumerated are the most common and important. Of the sulphated saline springs, one class com- prises sulphates of soda (Glauber's salts) ; another, sulphates of magnesia (Epsom salts); another, as, for example, the Bath waters and some other thermal springs, sulphates of lime; and a fourth, as at Cheltenham and Leamington, sulphates of iron, but most ferruginous springs owe their character to carbonate of iron held in solution by excess of carbonic acid. The greatest quantities of saline constituents are generally found in those springs which rise in low situations, while the springs which rise from primitive rocks are generally the most pure. it 2 234 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Mineral spring?, therefore, present a surprising variety of medicated contents, insomuch that it would seem as if the earth was an apothecary's shop. The druggist must acknowledge that the mixtures arc made up with a wondrous accuracy in the sub- terranean establishment, and may well marvel that each stream or spring should absorb its definite proportion of solid or gaseous constituents, unchangingly as far as we can observe, through all time, so as to present always, like the ocean or the atmosphere, the identical character which constitutes its settled value. Here the prescriptions are, indeed, carefully prepared, and from Nature's laboratory mankind from generation to generation has been freely supplied with medicine. Well may their physical and medicinal properties have procured popular reverence for the health-giving waters from early times, and made the spring the object of rustic gratitude and honour ! Many a votive altar erected at the spot where a stream first issues to the day, remains in England, as well as in the south of Europe, to testify the grateful appreciation of the Romans; and the beautiful ceremony of well-flowering, which still takes place annually in some few English parishes, is the expression of a simple love and gratitude which has proved as perennial as the spring itself. The emblematic flowers and songs bestowed on certain wells in this pleasing custom of our English ancestors re- present the earlier rites of worship that w r ere observed at wells and fountains. According to pagan ideas, nymphs exclusively presided over wells; and it is perhaps for this reason that in Christian times so few springs and fountains came to be dedicated to male saints. An old Roman writer tells us that "all waters had their particular nymphs presiding over them." Everybody has heard of Egeria and her fountain, not left unsung by Ovid: Egeria est qua? prrcbet aquas (lea gratu Camcenis Ilia Numa: conjunx consiliumque fuit — and the remains of this celebrated spring, once sacred to the nymph and the muses, are, or lately were, existing, in a romantic spot in the valley of Egeria.* It is through this valley that the Rio di Appio runs — the Aqua Mercurii, with which the Roman * In his Notes on Italy, 1859, Lord Broughton discusses the question as to the locality of this fountain. MINERAL SPRINGS. 235 shopkeepers blessed their goods, and which seems to have been sacred to Cybele. Mythical as the gentle deities of the fountain may seem, there is, at all events, one instance on record in which the pre- siding nymph condescended to appear in person. About eight miles from Rome, on the Via Collatina, near to Salone, is the Aqua Virginia, a spring* which, according to Fontinus, took its name from the apparition there of a virgin, who pointed out the well to a body of soldiers. Those thirsty souls, in return for her favour, built an JEdicula, or small temple, to the nymph of the well, and honoured her as a divinity. It was not in Italy only that the Romans recognised a nymph as the presiding genius of a well. At Bao-neres, which has been a favourite summer retreat from the age of the Csesars of old to the hour of the Cassars of to-day, there are votive tablets of the Roman era, which were dedicated to the nymphs 'presiding over streams, and they manifest a grati- tude for health restored which modern refinement, it has been justly said, would do well to imitate, only in a different manner. So, too, at Bourbonne-les-bains, a votive tablet was raised by a Roman consul to the goddess Vorvonna (honoured by the Gauls as presiding over mineral springs) for the cure of his daughter Cocilla; and, indeed, so numerous are the mineral springs in the Bourbonnais, that this goddess is supposed to have even given name to the province, and thus to the royal family of France. Again, to come to our own country, two instances may be given from Yorkshire, namely, the inscription that was found on the banks of the river Greta, near Bowes (the Roman Lavatae) being a votive offering by two Roman ladies, in honour of the nymph Elaune, perhaps, as Professor Phillips has suggested, the river Lune; and the votive altar dedicated at Ilkley, the Roman Olicana, to Verbeia, the nymph or goddess of the fair impetuous Wharfe. Nor (as Whitaker in his History of Craven remarks) was this an idle homage: Verbeia was dangerous as well as fair, the Roman Trajectus was a deep and stony ford ; and the Prefect Claudius Fronto having umvarily plunged into that deceitful torrent might vow an altar in the moment of distress, and absolve his obligation in the grateful season of safety. 236 LECTtJEES AND ESSAYS. To the intuitive scent of the praetors and Legionaries of Rome for mineral and thermal waters we probably owe the knowledge of many springs which have given importance in modern times to a whole district and still draw strangers from afar; and it is curious to sec how large a proportion of the mineral waters known to us were known to the ancients, and particularly to the Romans. The warm springs of Thermopylae still attest the origin of a name which has been consecrated by the history of the spot. In ancient times these springs were sacred to Hercules, and bathing establishments once stood near to them.* These are not the only remarkable mineral waters in Greece. Adjacent to Thermopylae are the muriatcd sulphurous springs of Hypate. At the foot of Hymettus are muriatcd waters which arc resorted to for diseases of the eye. At iEdepsos in Eubeea there arc thermal waters resembling those of Wiesbaden; and many sulphurous thermal springs are found in tjie Archipelagus,f the formation of which is altogether volcanic. It would seem, from the testimony of Aristotle, that the Greeks were the first to use mineral waters as remedies in disease. Most of the thermal springs in which Greece abounds were sacred to Hercules, and Herculean baths existed of old in all parts of Greece, Sicily, and Italy. The temples erected to the god of medicine were adjacent to mineral springs, and such temples were connected as well with medical schools as with places of amuse- ment. The most fabulous effects were ascribed to some of the mineral waters of Greece — ex.. yS'2, in article on English Local Nomenclature. MINERAL SPRINGS. 241 green lane, a good run from the church dedicated to the old British saint; and the bride or bridegroom who first drinks the water gains the mastery, as we have all read in Southey's ballad, where the newly-married man relates how he was outwitted : — I hasten'd, as soon as the wedding was o'er, And stole from my bride in the porch : But the daughter of Eve had been wiser than I, For she took a bottle to church ! The reputed virtues of the saint's well near Polperro have sur- vived the edifice which enclosed it. People suffering from inflamed eyes and some other ailments still resort to it, but not without observing certain ceremonies. Saint Augustine's well, another spring also reputed good for sore eyes, rises in the western suburb of Leicester, near the old Koman road; and in Carmar- thenshire, six miles from Llandilo Fawr, an out-of-the-way well is resorted to for the same complaint. So also is the spring known as Holy Well, or Cefyn Bryn; and the well by the chapel or hermitage of Saint Goven, on the coast of Pembrokeshire, in a small bay between Tenby and Milford Haven, below which there is another spring, reached by a descent of fifty-two steps, which is visited from distant parts of Wales for the cure of scrofula, and even paralysis. The saint is said to have been buried under the primitive altar in the building which incloses this collyrium. Some of the most favourite and celebrated mineral springs in England and on the continent are, however, of comparatively recent discovery, and rise in some instances in places which were remote solitudes, and which are connected with no saintly legend. The instinct of birds, it is said, first led to the discovery of the Spa of Cheltenham. It was noticed in the year 1716 that flocks of pigeons daily resorted to the head of a small stream in a meadow near the town, for the purpose of feeding on some white saline particles deposited there by evaporation of the water. The same kind of birds have been seen to resort to the mineral spring at Inverleithen (the Saint Ronan's Well of Scott) before it acquired any celebrity. The discovery of the healing waters of Schlangen- bad, in the Duchy of Nassau, is attributed to the conduct of a cow, — the animal, which, it will be remembered, led the monks to Durham, as we read in the legend of Saint Cuthbert. In 242 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Nassau, the story runs that there was a heifer which wasted away and was given over, but which, after having been absent for some weeks, re-appeared amongst the herd in re-established health; whereupon the herdsman took notice, and observed that this animal, every evening, made its way into the forest until it reached a spring, not previously known, and drank from it. A young lady, sometime afterwards, exhibiting symptoms of the heifer's malady, was prevailed upon to try the heifer's remedy, and became one of the stoutest and comcliest of the daughters of the duchy. In like manner Bagnolcs, in the department of the Orne, owes the discovery of the virtue of its waters to a horse. An old animal suffering from disease of the skin and covered with sores was turned into a valley surrounded by rocks, and abandoned to its fate. Two months afterwards, on its master passing the end of the valley, a fat and healthy horse came trotting towards him familiarly, and turned out to be his once sick old servant. He thereupon watched its proceedings, and presently saw it roll in mud intermingled with green marshy vegetation. On drain- ing the marsh, springs of hot water, limpid and abundant, were revealed. So, the thermal sulphurous springs of Bareges are said to have been discovered through a sheep having been seen to traverse the snows every morning to the springs. The anecdote of the dis- covery of Karlsbad has been often told: — A stag, Hying before the Emperor Charles the Fourth and his huntsmen, plunged through a thin crust into thermal waters, which were afterwards made baths for the Emperor, and restored him to health. Before glancing at the chief of the continental spas of Europe, the mineral waters of England may be briefly enumerated. The chief of them are the muriatic gypsum springs of Bath, and the waters of Buxton and Bristol, at all which places the water is thermal ; the brine springs of Droitwich, Kingswood, and Ashby- de-la-Zouch ; the iodine and bromine springs of Purton in Wilts, the calcareous bitter water of Epsom, the muriatic springs of Har- rogate, the alkalines of Malvern, the muriatic alkalines of Lea- mington, the muriatic salines and chalybeates of Cheltenham, and the alkaline chalybeate of Scarborough. MINERAL SPRINGS. 243 As to the characteristics of the mineral waters of this country, there is, as Dr. Glover has pointed out, a decided difference in the character of the northern and southern mineral springs of England. In the north, sulphur-waters prevail; in the south, the sulphated saline waters are more common. But chalybeate and saline springs are to be found in all parts of England. The op- position shop delivers its goods, carriage free, all over the country, and yet has not so much as a boy to pay for carrying a basket. Patients, however, may find the devil to pay if they drink those waters without due advice. Such waters, being for the most part highly medicated in Nature's laboratory, may prove really dangerous to persons who take them under the vague idea that the draught cannot prove otherwise than whole- some — that " the well" is a specific for every sort of disease. The most northerly of the English spas is Gilsland, which is situated on the river Irthing, near the opening of high, barren moorlands upon the cultivated vale of Eden. Adjacent to the line of the Roman wall, it is near to scenes famed in Border story, and to a country of historical, as well as picturesque, attractions: it was at Naworth, near this spot, that Lord William Howard, the Belted Will of Marmion, had his stronghold, and, ruling there, he crushed the moss-troopers in their last retreat. Burdoswald, too, a fine specimen of a Roman camp, is near Gilsland ; and the place has received in recent times more gentle associations; for here, as the reader will remember, Scott first met the lady who became his bride; and near Gilsland, scenes in The Bridal of Triermain, and a portion of Guy Mannering are accordingly laid. Sulphur in the form of sulphuret of sodium exists in this spa — an ingredient to the existence of which in mineral waters of the Pyrenees great importance has been attached. Scarborough, fondly called the Northern Brighton and the Queen of English spas, has predominant advantages in its situa- tion, sheltered as it is by high cliffs overlooking a fine bay, and surrounded by noble marine scenery. It is, moreover, adjacent to a beautiful country full of interest to the naturalist and the historian. The medicinal properties of the Scarborough waters, which are valuable saline chalybeates, seem to have been dis- covered in 1621. 24-1 LECTURES AND ESSAY-. At Filey, too, the rising and attractive neighbour of Scar- borough, there is a water highly charged with alterative salts. As Scarborough, Brighton, Hastings, and some less famous marine localities, first made attractive by their mineral spring, have become since its discovery favourite places of resort for sea- bathing, the advantages of the health-giving wells are more widely diffused every year; and the condition of Scarborough and other towns of popular resort contrasts curiously enough with the present condition of places that were once famous for their mineral waters, but where fashion no longer courts the genii of the well. Of inland spas, Harrogate is not surpassed in the whole island for the power and variety of its mineral waters, which have the additional advantage of rising in a healthy and interesting country. The strength of Low Harrogate is in the sulphur wells, the discovery of which dates from the year 1561 (at which time this now fashionable place was a remote hamlet in the forest of Knaresborough) ; and it also affords an almost pure muriated water, which lias sulphuretted hydrogen for its most active in- gredient. As Professor Phillips has remarked, the many wells of Low Harrogate may have their local origin determined mainly by the anticlinal axis of strata which may be traced in the higher ground west of Harrogate, between the millstone-grit ranges of Eigton and Birkscrag, which dip in opposite directions. The existence of chalybeate waters is, of course, common enough; but the sul- phuretted water of Harrogate, loaded with common salt, indicates a deep seated spring rising under peculiar circumstances. The Old Well is, in fact, a salt spring with traces of iodine and bromine, as in sea-water. The difference between it and adjacent springs in the proportion of sulphates especially, seems to be attributable to the different channels through which they reach the surface. The only deficiency of the Harrogate waters is, that they arc not thermal, nor are they aerated by much carbonic acid. Leamington now so populous and splendid, was in 1811 a village, containing only sixty houses, yet the saline waters — which are aperient and alterative — were known more than two centuries ago. MINERAL SPRINC4S. 245 The powerful saline springs of Cheltenham, which likewise are aperient and alterative, became famous after the cure of George the Third by the water of the Koyal Old Wells. Cheltenham waters have been pronounced by medical authority to be pre- eminent in the treatment of diseases induced by hot climates. If Cheltenham has lost any of its reputation as a spa, the loss is, it seems, to be attributed — as in the case of Bath — to its extension as a city, and to the aggregation of splendid dwellings, which invite gay visitors rather than the invalid. Seated in the rich valleys of Evesham and Gloucester, natural scenery and historical monuments combine to surround with attractive objects these health-giving wells. Other saline springs are at Woodhall, Tenbury, Ashby, Strat- ford, and Kilburn, which latter place, though now so nearly in the stony embrace of London, was qirite a rural resort even late in the last century. The medicinal virtues of the water were probably known to the monastic recluses, but they do not seem to have been publicly announced until the year 1742. Kilburn wells, however, became famous early in the reign of George the Third, when it was fashionable to resort to them ; and an enthu- siastic singer (which must surely have been their own water when boiled fortuitously in a tea-kettle,) thus addressed the spa: — 0, were thy virtues but as fairly known As universal as their good foretells, How should we hail thee, Pyrmont of our own, And bid adieu to all the foreign wells ! But, alas ! their glory has departed, and of the three wells which were formerly celebrated only one is now known, and that last well of Kilburn, left gushing alone, is in a stable to the north of the railway. Kilburn spa seems to have been only one in a numerous cluster of suburban wells which were formerly resorted to by Londoners. Epsom spa had acquired earlier celebrity, namely, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Prince George of Denmark drank the water: and we are told that, under the stimulating influence of the South Sea Scheme, this spa became frequented like a fair, and was crowded by alchemists, 246 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Dutchmen, Germans, and Jew?, — motley votaries, who, it is to be feared, were not attracted thither by the waters only. Shad well, too, was in great esteem for years; and so was "Anne's Well" in Hyde Park, called after Queen Anne, who had faith in its efficacy, hut is believed, nevertheless, to have qualified the water by the addition of eau de vie. In those days Ilampstead was celebrated for its chalybeate spring, which seems to have been known in the reign of Charles the Second, when, indeed, spas were much in vogue. It was then that Scarborough, Harrogate, Tunbridge, and Epsom started into fame; it was then that the reputation of Bath extended, and that the new Islington spa was discovered. The Islington wells were also called " Sadler's Wells," from a spring of mineral water discovered by a man named Sadler, in 1683, in the garden of a house which he had opened as a public music room, and called " Sadler's Music house." A pamphlet was published in 1684 in praise of the water, which is said to be of ferruginous quality, much resembling the water of Tunbridge Wells : — People may talk of Epsom wells, Of Tunbridge springs, which most excels ; I'll tell you by my ten years' practice Plainly what the matter of fact is : These are but good for one disease, To all distempers this gives ease.* The fame of the Ilampstead water has departed, but the Wells Tavern and the pump room — now a chapel — remain to tell of its whereabouts. The holy spring of Saint John, at Clerkenwell, and that on the site of Holywell Street, seem to have owed their fame to an early reputation for sanctity and brightness, rather than to any mineral virtues. A pump now covers St. Clement's Well. Fitzstcphen, in his description of London in the reign of Henry II., informs us " that round the city again, and towards the north, arise certain excellent springs at a small distance, whose waters are sweet, salubrious, and clear, and whose runnels murmur over the shining stones. Among these, Holywell, Clerkenwell, and St. Clement's Well, may be esteemed the principal, as being the most frequented both by the scholars from the school (West- * A Morning Ramble, or Islington Wells Burlesqt. Lond. 1684. MINERAL SPRINGS. 247 minster) and the youth from the city, when in a summer's evening they are disposed to take an airing." The last-named well was also much resorted to, because it was supposed to be of peculiar efficacy in the cure of cutaneous disease and other disorders. At the end of Old Street Eoad is a famous spring dedicated to St. Agnes, which, from the transparency and salubrity of its waters, is denominated St. Agnes la Clair. It has claims to antiquity, for it appears that in the reign of Henry VIII. it was thus named: — "Fons t'oc' Dame Agnes a Clere" and has been described as belong- ing to "Charles Stuart, late king of England." This spring is 18 feet deep. It is said to be of great efficacy in all rheumatic and nervous cases, headache, &c. The spring was divided into two baths. In a six-acre field facing the great wall of Aldgate House gardens, but on the other side of the high road to Bow, a fine spring of excel- lent water was dedicated as early as the year 1160 to St. Winifrid. The water was conveyed to adjacent houses by copper pipes underground, and to the villages, monasteries, and other religious foundations in the neighbourhood. Dudley, third Lord North, who succeeded to that title in 1600, writes : " the use of Tunbridge and Epsom waters, for health and cure, I first made known to London and the king's people." James the First considered he was cured by the Tunbridge water. These chalybeate wells are still resorted to: those of Brighton, Sandrock, and Hastings, are of more modern though not less deserved celebrity. Brighton, however, owes its splendour and extension more to its convenience as a marine bathing-place, than to the qualities of its chalybeate water. Situation and associations seem to be the chief causes of the pre-eminence of Tunbridge amongst English chalybeates; the place, moreover, presents more of the attractive villa -like English houses than other spas. Some iron springs are even more tonic than sea-water when used as baths, and such is the water of Sand- rock — the most powerful iron spring in English territory. The climate of that part of the Isle of Wight has been thought superior for equability even to the climate of Madeira. The thermal springs of England are at Bath, Clifton, and Buxton. The Romans early availed themselves of the thermal waters of Bath. Extensive remains of their baths were found twenty feet below the level of the street; and these buildings s 248 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. showed the importance of the establishment that was maintained here. In the days of the Romans the hot springs of Bath (aquce Suits) appear to have been held sacred to the god Sul or Sol, who was probably worshipped in the adjacent temple. In mediaeval times, the friars and monks, whose church rose on the site of the Roman fane, were bound to keep the baths in repair, to be in readiness for the King's use. The brethren seem to have been caught napping in this respect in the year 1235, for a sum of thirteen pounds, eleven shillings, was then levied upon them to repair the King's houses and the King's bath. Queen Elizabeth vested the baths in the corporation. When Anne of Denmark, queen of James the First, was bathing here, her Majesty was frightened by a sudden evolution from the water of phosphurctted hydrogen in the form of a flame. The waters were always in favour with royalty: Catherine of Braganza came to them, and so, in 1687, did Mary of Modena ; and the history of Bath in the eighteenth century exhibits constant increase of prosperity. The spring that supplies the King's Bath rises at the temperature of a hundred and sixteen degrees. The Bath waters have stimulant properties, and are beneficial in nervous and paralytic as well as gouty and rheumatic affections, and diseases of the skin. The Clifton waters are inferior to those of Bath in strength of saline ingredients and also in temperature, for their heat does not exceed seventy-six degrees. As a spa, Clifton is now of little importance ; and the qualities of the place as a healthy residence* combined with its romantic scenery, are thought to constitute its real advantages. Buxton, the only mountain-spa in England, — its elevation is a thousand feet above the the sea — is of course much indebted to its situation amidst the wondrous scenery of the Peak, and to its interesting vicinity and bracing air. Buxton, like Bath, retains many traces of the regard paid by the Romans to good mineral springs; but one such monument, namely, the Avail of Roman bricks round the well of Anne the Saint, was destroyed in the reign of Anne the Queen. The water is still chiefly used exter- nally. In the reign of Henry the Eighth it was customary for sick people to resort to Buxton, who, not having the fear of Thomas Cromwell before their eyes, supcrstitiously hung, as in MINERAL SPRINGS. 241) old times accustomed, their votive offerings upon the Avails of Saint Anne's chapel; and, what was worse, the poor men among the votaries used to beg — offences which the Tudor Parliament took care to interdict. Mary Queen of Scots appears to have resorted often to Buxton under the stern escort of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who erected that building at the well in which registers of cures were for many years preserved amongst rows of crutches left by the cured. The Buxton water is remarkable not only for its thermal temperature: its medicinal qualities are not (as Dr. Glover has remarked) sufficiently accounted for by the nitrogen gas Avhich issues with the water from its native rock. All thermal springs that are at all of atmospheric derivation contain nitrogen, but some — for example, the waters of Pfeffers — are in other respects absolutely pure; Avhereas some thermal springs — those of Luxueil and Gastein, for example, hold in so- lution from eight to twelve solid or gaseous bodies. No warm springs whatever occur in Scotland. It has many sul- phurous waters — the spas of Strathpeffer and Moffat are examples, — and some saline and chalybeate springs. The Well of Moffat was discovered in 1653, and extolled shortly afterwards in a Latin pamphlet. The water rises from two springs in one of the beds of shale and anthracite that occur amongst the greywacke rocks. It is beautifully clear and sparkling, but the sulphuretted hydrogen makes the draught at first somewhat unpleasant. The water is said to be useful in chronic rheumatism, gout, and dys- pepsia, and some forms of liver-disease. Moffat has also a chaly- beate spring in a valley near the base of Hartfell : it contains sulphates of iron, aluminum, lime, and magnesia, and is therefore used as a tonic, and in diseases accompanied with debility and deficiency of blood.* * The mineral waters of various parts of England have had a literature of their ovvii. A Collection of Tracts relating to them, in twelve thick octavo volumes (!) published between 1687 and 1778, is offered by *a London bookseller. Many of them are of great scarcity, ex. gr. " A briefe Discours of certaine Bathes of medicinal Waters in the Countie of Warwicke, neere unto a village called Newman Regis, 1587." This most rare book appears to have been printed for private circulation, " Fons Sanitatis, or the Healing Spring at W T illowbridge, Staffordshire, found out by the Lady Janu Gerrard, Baroness of Bramley; published for the common good by Samuel Gilbert, Rector of Quat, 1676.'" " The Queene's Welles, that is, a Treatise of the Nature and s 2 250 Liorri i:i> and essays. It is now time to glance at some of the chief springs in Germany and France. Here the traveller leaves the compara- tively tame scenery of most of the English spas to imbibe the mineral waters under mountainous heights and first experience the sparkling qualities imparted by carbonic acid gas. And, out of England, mention must first be made of Spa, that great mineral sjDring of Belgium, which is so renowned that its name has been given to all mineral waters. The copious escape of earbonic acid gas gives a kind of life to this water, and aids its remedial efficacy. The spas of Germany, however, have for the most part become so well known in England that I shall say very little about them. From the hills of Nassau mineral waters of various descriptions spring; and besides the Selters water, which is drunk as a luxury in every quarter of the globe, bright sparkling remedies arc said to be found lor almost every disorder. As Sir Francis Head observes, the consumptive or dyspeptic patient is sent to Ems; the worn invalid in search of tonic and streno-thenino; agents to Langen Schwalbach (the swallow's stream); if the brain recmires calming, the nerves soothing, and the skin softening, he goes to Schlangenbad (the serpents' bath) ; and if he be rheumatic he may lose his aches in the hot springs of Wiesbaden. The effect of the iron springs of Schwalbach has been compared to that of a tan-pit; and in the same category we find the mud-baths for which Franzcnbad is celebrated. The peaty mud there used is diluted with mineral water, and the mixture is compared to a soft poultice of bread steeped in ink. Such a remedy was known to the ancients, and was revived in a modified manner at the close of the last century, when a certain Doctor Graham went about recommending earth-baths. He was accompanied by a nymph whom he styled the Goddess of Health, and the doctor and his goddess might be seen separately buried up to the neck, he with Vertucs of Tunbridge Water, by Lodou ick Rowzee, Dr. of Physicke, practising at Ashford in Kent, 1632." "Treatise of Metal and Mineral Waters, viz.: those of the Spaw, Bathe, Kpsoni, Northall, Barnct, Tunbridge, and the New Wells at Islington, by E. P[ratt], M.D., 1684." The Bath waters seem to have been known to Dr. William Turner, who in 15C2 published "A Booke of the Nature and Properties as well of tho Bathes in England as of other Bathes in Germanye and Italic." MINERAL SPRINGS. 251 his powdered head and pigtail just above the ground. His patients, when induced to put themselves in this helpless situa- tion, are said to have been made the objects of a refined cruelty, the doctor having permitted a zealous preacher to come and lecture them while undergoing their sentence in the earth-baths. Much more agreeable are those mud-baths at Saint Arnaud in France, in which the patients play at cards and receive visits. But no charlatanrie detracts from the opaque mud-baths of Fran- zenbad, or the sparkling flow of the cold iron-waters of Schwal- bach, although (if sentenced to such a life) most people would deem it melancholy beyond endurance to crawl and fret — as many hundred quiet people may be observed crawling and fretting — at the rate of a mile and a half an hour through that narrow portion of their existence which lies between one glass of cold iron- water and another. There is, however, no habit (as the author of Bubbles from the Brunnen has remarked) which fashion cannot gild or custom sweeten. On the other hand, — " How delightful it is on a balmy morning of June to start from your couch ere yet the heat of the day has begun, and, after a cold ablution, to wend your way through paths lined with flowering shrubs to the fountain, where the attendant nymphs dispense the sparkling element. No wretched pumping appa- ratus, like those exhibited on the counters of the gin-palaces, is there : through a basement of polished pebbles the beautiful clear water bubbles up into the basin, and in the glass it shines and sparkles like diamonds dissolved into dew. Drink it, wasted and weary man ! — drink it with a grateful heart, and render thanks and praise to Him who is the giver of all good things !"* But- Devoid of care approach this spot That you may part devoid of sickness ; There is no cure for those who care."f Of the bath of Langen Schwalbach no inviting account can be given. The mixture is best described as resembling a horse- * Blackwood's Magazine, Oct. 1861. t Curae vacuus hunc adeas locum, Ut morborum vacuus abire queas; Non enim hie curatur, qui curat." 252 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. pond, and being about the colour of mulligatawny soup. It is so deeply tinged witli the red oxide of iron that the body is invisible three inches below the surface. The temperature strikes the bather as neither hot nor cold, but the water is felt to be of a bracing strengthening nature. Its solitary virtue of strengthen- ing the stomach has been declared to be the secret of its power in almost every disorder of body and mind, for every malady is said to be either by highways or byways connected with the stomach. In the time of the Romans, Schwalbach, then in a forest, was known for the medicinal effects of its sulphurous and other foun- tains, and a small street sprang up adjacent to the well. The mineral springs of Carlsbad contain a considerable quantity of silver, and have the property of converting into a hard red- coloured stone anything that is immersed in them for some days. At the Exhibition in 1862, various little statuettes and other ob- jects formed in soft clay thus hardened and coloured formed very peculiar and pleasing objects. A fact in the history of Pyrmont in Westphalia shows the in- fluence of fashion upon spas. Three hundred years ago those celebrated chalybeate waters were so renowned that people flocked to them from all parts. More than ten thousand persons are said to have come in a month, and a camp was formed for their ac- commodation as the surrounding villages could not hold them. But the spa has now lost much of its once unrivalled fame, pro- bably because so many other valuable springs have been made known. So too, the modern Romans had at the close of last century quite abandoned the waters of the sulphurous lake — the Solfatara (anciently Aquae Albulae mentioned by Pliny in his Natural History), which were much resorted to in former times. In the south of France, however, the springs that the ancient Romans valued are for the most part still in repute. Of the springs in the Pyrenees those of Bareges and Cauterets arc the most important. The springs at Bareges rise at a spot about sixteen" miles from Luz, and on the left bank of the im- petuous torrent of the Bastan in wild and savage scenery at a height of four thousand feet above the sea. From the granite and clay-slate rocks of this high narrow valley eight thermal springs MINERAL SPRINGS. 253 have their source. Winter avalanches often fall on the site of the wooden barracks that are erected each summer down the one long- street that forms the villao-e. Its modern fame dates from the visit of Madame de Maintenon with the young Prince of Maine in 1675. La Raillere is a celebrated spring in Cauterets, — a district three thousand feet above the sea. Every year horses afflicted by chronic bronchitis and leanness are brought here from Tarbes and Pan, and they drink with instinctive avidity and recover. The mineral waters of the Pyrenees are for the most part sulphurous, some are merely saline, others are chalybeate. The sulphurous springs rise generally in granitic or transition rock, and they are eminently thermal, for their temperature varies from 53° to 172°. The saline springs, on the contrary, issue from the upper limestone series or the adjacent alluvial formation. In the Pyrenean waters great importance has been attached to the existence of sulphur in the form of sulphuret of an alkali or earthy base. Sulphuretted hydrogen is probably held in solution in waters which do not contain any carbonate of soda, but in others, as for example in springs of Aix-la-Chapelle,no sulphuretted hydrogen has been found. The sulphurous springs of the Py- renees appear to have peculiarities which distinguish them from all others. Throughout the Pyrenees these medicated fountains issue from the granitic formation at varying degrees of heat. Bagneres de Bigorrc is the chief seat of the thermal springs, of which there are seventy-two, varying from 8 1 to 1 24 degrees of tem- perature, and owing their saline properties to salts of lime, soda, and magnesia. The whole town is pierced by thermal springs. Some of these which contain more or less iron and issue at a high temperature are stimulating ; others are sedative, and the tem- perature of these does not exceed 90 degrees. They rise amidst splendid scenery and in a sheltered climate at a height of one thousand seven hundred and forty feet above the sea. Persons weakened by sedentary pursuits find a remedy in the stimulating waters of Bagneres ; and sufferers from other causes find in one or other of its saline and thermal springs a remedy combining tonic and alterative agents. Bagneres de Luchon — known to the Romans as Aquas Bal> 254 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. neariaa Luxonienscs — is situated near the Spanish frontier, at an elevation of nearly two thousand feet above the sea, in a magni- ficent valley, in which thirty-eight springs rise from the granite and limestone rocks. Fifty-six miles from Pau, in a little green hollow of the Pyrenees, at the stupenduous elevation of eight thousand feet, are the three springs of Penticosa — one of the most remarkable of Spanish watering-places. The baths of Penticosa lie in the heart of a vast stony cirque or amphitheatre, formed by a lofty range of mountains rising abruptly round it. The waters are con- sidered of unparalleled efficacy for all complaints of the liver. The place is really one of surpassing wildness and grandeur, though not without a certain cast of gloom from the impression of profound solitude it creates. It is about nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, and yet the boundless range of moun- tains seems as if it stretched still upwards for another thousand. In fact you stand in the centre of an enclosure of steep barren pre- cipices seamed by torrents, scarred by fissures, and patched by snow-drifts. The granite around is in immense masses. The springs generally issue between or near the junction of the lime- stone and granite. It is one of those wild and secluded spots to which mere fashion could never suffice to bring votaries ; the real virtues of the healing fountain could alone induce sufferers to resort to Penticosa. The Spanish ladies take the waters appa- rently in solitude, and any Englishman who chances to catch glimpses of them will probably for days carry with him the memory of the haunting beauty of their eyes, for the fame of the baths and the coolness of the mountains often bring Spaniards here even from Andalusia or Castile.* The hot springs of Fuente Caliente in Valencia are also famous. Twelve hundred mineral springs have been enumerated in Spain ; they are for the most part of sulphurous thermal water. A spring much resembling Bath water, except that it has a lower temperature, rises at the foot of an immense precipice, amidst highly picturesque scenery, on the border of the Ariege, a few leagues from Foix, the water of which is sedative, and * Wayiide Sketches in South of France and Spanish Pyrenees. 1859. MINERAL SPRINGS. 255 valuable in neuralgic affections and disorders induced by over study or anxiety. It would extend the present sketch beyond its destined limits to add anything more about the waters of the Pyrenees than that their reputation is increasing : a fame which they are thought to owe to the character of the sulphur springs especially ; and that the new roads and handsome houses that have risen at some of the Pyrenean springs contrast strikingly enough with the rude huts of the time when they were resorted to by the kings of Navarre. After all, these and other celebrated spas owe much to the fine scenery which has always been recognised as such an important adjunct in the administration of mineral waters. Fine country and pleasant climate are the most potent of the attractions of the baths of Lucca, to which many nervous and rheumatic patients resort; and the beautiful regions in the vicinity of the Pyrenees and the Alps present that aiding charm of scenery in perfection. It pleases the mind, and withdraws it from former scenes of anxiety or pain, while the mountain air exhilarates the animal spirits and excites to active recreation. Happy the man who can visit the clear fountains of health amid such advantages ! Nearly a thousand springs are enumerated in France ; but the mineral waters of that great country are less known in England than the spas of Germany. The establishment at the German spa is generally a matter of government, and often a large part of a grand duke's revenues is drawn from a well. In France, on the contrary, many medicinal springs are the property of a commune, and therefore suffer under as sordid and grasping a spirit as if they belonged to a reformed municipality of England. Some improve- ment, however, is noticeable, and access is becoming more easy; so that when the extreme value of many of the springs and the grandeur of the scenery in which they rise, as well as their ad- vantages of climate, become better known, many of the waters of France and Savoy will probably be as freely resorted to by our countrymen, if sufficient accommodation is provided. The mineral waters of Central France are chiefly situated in the old province of Auvergne and in the Bourbonnais, which are chiefly composed of vast granitic formations, with porphyries and 256 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. volcanic rocks. The temperature of some of the springs approaches the boiling point. The waters of this Terra del Fuego are saline: they contain sulphates, bicarbonates, chlorides, and silicates, and abound in carbonic acid gas. The springs of Bourbonne les Bains are muriatcd, and rise in granite rocks at a height of eight hundred and seventy feet above the sea : the waters resemble those of Baden. The Spa of Yichy is unlike any other alkaline water, and unites rare and valuable qualities. The bicarbonate of soda so predominates in all the eight springs of Vichy that it is regarded as the essential element in their mode of action. The alkaline springs generally contain the carbonate of soda, sometimes the carbonate of lime or of magnesia, and often other salts. Such springs arc generally found near volcanic rocks. The predominating element in the waters of the east of France is common salt. Its presence is sufficiently explained by the abundance of sea-salt in the formations of marl from which these springs proceed. The mountains amidst which they rise, unlike the volcanic mountains of Auvergnc, arc covered with umbrageous woods. The temperature of these springs, too, is less elevated than that of the springs in the volcanic districts of Central France. To this eastern division also belong the much frequented springs of Plombieres, the most peaceful part of France. The spring of Bourbon l'Arch-ambault, in the department of Allier, is the place to which Madame de Montespan retreated to end her life in repentance and devotion; and here it was that on the night of her death a cavalier dismounted at her door, and, hastily entering her chamber, withdrew the clothes which covered her breast, and tore away a key that was suspended at her neck; then, taking a casket from a drawer, he, without having spoken, remounted his horse and pursued his way to Paris. It was her son, the Duke of Antin; but what mystery the casket concealed Avas never known. Tuscany affords a comparatively larger number of mineral springs than any other country. Two hundred and thirty have been enumerated. Piedmont possesses powerful thermal springs of sulphurous water at Acqui near Genoa — the hottest of these has a temperature of 167°. MINERAL SPRINGS. 257 The spas of Switzerland are chiefly in the canton of Berne, and they rise at heights varying from two thousand to four thousand feet above the sea. Eemarkable variations of temperature are witnessed in some of them, for example, in the thermal springs of Lavey in the canton of Vaud. In Germany and Austria there are more than two thousand mineral waters, some of which are hot springs. Many of the German waters have been adverted to above, and it will be suf- ficient to add that the mineral waters of Germany are in their medical properties unequalled by those of any other country, and they are declared by Dr. Althaus to include every mineral water of any importance in the treatment of disease. The hot springs of the Arctic province are not within the category of mineral waters that have therapeutic powers, but they present — the Geysers in Iceland especially — more astonishing phenomena than any other hot springs. Such phenomena might have been thought, from their very nature, the subjects of un- ceasing change, yet the numerous and extraordinary hot springs of Reykolt were found recently by Capt. Forbes, on his visit to the island, to be much as they were described by Mackenzie fifty years before. At Yakutsk in Siberia hot springs rise up through the frozen soil from a greater depth even than six hundred feet. The mineral waters of Sweden and Norway are not thermal : observers have connected the issue of hot springs with an alterna- tion of crystalline and sedimentary formations, which is not found in those countries. Asia and several islands of the Eastern Archipelago contain many sulphurous, acidulous springs, both cold and thermal. There is hardly a station between Mecca and Medina without thermal waters. The spas of Erzeroum in Armenia, and of Tiflis in Georgia, have long been celebrated, and on the Steppes, north east of the Caspian, springs containing soda and magnesia abound. So too, in Africa: at the Cape, and in the oasis of the African desert, as well as along the northern coast, various mineral springs are found. There are many mineral waters in Algeria, and here, also, remains left by the Romans testify to the curative qualities of the springs. The most important of them is said to be the Hamman Miskoutin, the largest sulphurous spring known, and it 258 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. is moreover a hot spring, its temperature being 96°. It led the French to found there a military hospital, and the waters are found potent in the cure of confirmed rheumatism and of old wounds, insomuch that patients and tourists from Europe are ex- pected to be attracted thither. From mountain-chains of both North and South America, in Mexico, and in the West Indian Islands, hot mineral springs are likewise found, and on the Atlantic coast of the Western Conti- nent there are many mineral, but not thermal, springs. So much for the universality of mineral waters in point of geo- graphical distribution. A few words remain to be said on another branch of the subject, viz. the temperature of springs, and the supposed volcanic source of those mineral waters which are thermal. Edward Hallmann (whose thermomctric measurements were made on the banks of the Rhine and around Rome) distinguishes three classes: — 1st, pure meteorological springs, whose mean temperature is not raised by the internal temperature of the earth; 2nd, meteorolo-geo- logical springs, which, being independent of the distribution of rain and warmer than the atmosphere, are changed only by the ground through which they issue; and 3rd, abnormally cold springs, in which the low temperature is brought down from great heights. To this class belongs the famous Styx — a rill or river even now of evil renown amongst the inhabitants of Arcadia. An enterprising traveller recently succeeded in reaching the rocky precipice from which the water trickles down just as indicated by Homer, Hesiod, and Herodotus; and, not being as credulous as Aristotle was with regard to its poisonous qualities, he drank of the cold, pure water. But it is on the tem- perature of thermal springs that I wish to add a few words in con- clusion of the present essay. Wholly due, as many of their cha- racteristics seem to be, to processes of deep-seated volcanic activity (to use the language of Humboldt), what a striking contrast to the transitory and tumultuous phenomena of volcanic emissions is nevertheless presented by the vast and tranquil system of springs which we see flowing so permanently, clear, calm, and bright, from the bosom of the earth !* Four theories have been pro- * Humboldt's Cosmos, Sabine's edit. 1853, vol. iv. p. 202. MINERAL SPRINGS. 259 posed in order to account for thermal springs, 1st, the Artesian, or that which attributes their temperature to the internal heat of the earth; 2nd, the volcanic, the supporters of which urge the frequent occurrence of thermal springs in volcanic districts, the fact that their constituents are in many respects such as volcanoes evolve, and the alteration, modification, or augmentation of waters after earthquakes; 3rd, the chemical theory which is based on the evolution of heat in chemical action ; and 4th, the electrical theory, which regards certain rocks that form the crust of the earth, as a kind of voltaic pile, and depends upon the power of certain magnetic rocks to evolve continually those elec- trical currents which we know can produce heat and chemical decomposition. The electrical theory is certainly in harmony with the general constancy of action seen in thermal springs, with the occasional interruption of that action by earthquakes, with their thermality, if not with their variety of temperature, and with their chemical constitution; and has been suo-aested, more- over as a possible explanation of that medicinal action in which they so greatly differ from and exceed the action of ordinary springs. To the theory of their volcanic origin it is objected that some thermal springs, as for example those which rise in the lias and the oolites of Bath, seem unconnected with volcanic rocks; and that, if a thermal spring depended on that agency, it would not be regular in its How or uniform in its temperature. As regards the chemical theory, it has been pointed out that there is no connection between the amount of contents held in solution by thermal waters and their thermality. There are undoubtedly many volcanic districts like Broussa, for example, where the con- nection between hot springs and volcanic action seems irresisti- ble. At that place amidst mountains often torn by earthquakes, a fountain which has a temperature of a hundred and ninety- eight degrees was known in the early ages of Christianity; and, according to the legend, was made the instrument in the martyr- dom of St. Patricks, who, for refusing to sacrifice to the gods, was thrown into the reservoir which receives that scalding water. The phenomena of thermal springs, of saline springs, and the effervescence of carbonic acid gas, may be due to a deep-seated vulcanic action, but they are witnessed in springs that arc con- 260 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. nected with the sedimentary us well as with the volcanic rocks. It is observable, however, that, in the north of Germany, at many of the carbonic acid springs of water and gas, the actual disloca- tion of the strata and the character of the valleys in which the springs rise suggest volcanic action. As regards the heat of the earth, no doubt the temperature of the solid crust of the globe, as far as it is known to us, does increase with the depth. Artesian wells with absolute depths varying from 750 to 2,000 feet, have shown an increase of temperature at the rate of a degree of Fah- renheit for a mean descent of fifty-six feet; but the temperature of such mountain-springs as are permanent decreases unequally with increasing elevation. The difference between the tempera- ture of the air and the spring increases with the elevation, but the phenomena of disturbing causes are very intricate, and the question is altogether one that could not be adequately discussed here. After so much water, it is pleasant to turn one's thoughts to the roast mutton and potatoes which Sydney Smith deemed the only satisfactory basis on which human ills could be encountered; and the good sense is unquestionable of Sir Francis Head's remark, that if our countrymen, instead of breaking up their English homes to seek health and cheapness of living on the con* tinent, would have sense enough, or rather courage enough, to live as economically and as rationally at home as foreign princes and people of rank live throughout the rest of Europe, much health and real happiness would be the result. At all events an Englishman has an additional cause for thankfulness in the reflec- tion that when unhappily driven to seek medicinal agents, he may find in his own country healing fountains that have for cen- turies proved waters of mercy to mankind : — Felix qui potuit boni foutem vivere lucidum ! RIVERS, AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. [Bentleys Miscellany, July I860.] See the rivers ; how they run Through woods and meads in shade and sun, Sometimes swift, sometimes slow, Wave succeeding wave, they go A various journey to the deep — Like human life, to endless sleep ! Southey has remarked that rivers may be considered Physically, geographically, and mathematically ; Politically and commercially ; Historically ; Poetically and pictorially ; Morally, and even religiously. Were we to say all that might be said on these various heads, our readers (if any should remain) would be provided with enough fluviatile reading to last for a voyage up the Rhine, or the Nile itself; but although we propose to glance at rivers under these several aspects, we intend to do so within the compass of a short article, and to suggest rather than to discuss some consi- derations presented by rivers. First, therij Physically and Geographically. In the earth's struc- ture, rivers have been aptly enough called its Veins, just as the mountains and the mighty masses of granite represent its bones, and, like mountain-chains, rivers mark out Nature's kingdoms and provinces, and are the physical dividers and sub-dividers of continents. Some of the most picturesque features of natural scenery are obviously due to the action of rivers ; and in many a mountain-gorge and rocky valley we see them still exerting their plastic force in wearing down solid rock, and carrying the debris towards the sea. In mountainous countries some of the grandest scenery of glens and ravines is due to a river having forced its way between the rocky walls that now compress its current ; and many a rich and beautiful river- valley seems to have been once either stony wilderness or ancient lake. Rome would not have crowned her 262 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. seven hills if the waters of the ancient lake of the Roman plain had not found an outlet in some pre-historic age through the gorge in which the Tiber flows. The flowery vale of Tempe is said to have been inundated before Ossa and Olympus were separated, as Pliny says, " by divine agency," and gave an outlet to the river Pencus; but we need not go so far as Thessaly for instances where a river flows between approximating precipices which seem to have been riven asunder by an earthquake, or a cataclysm. The geologist sees in rivers " the faithful and continuous chro- nologers of the earth," the recorders of ages anterior to human records, and even to the existence of man, for by their uniform and endless flow they register in visible characters in their channels and valleys successive changes of bygone time. lie is, indeed, led to startling conclusions with regard to the lapse of pre-historic ages, and the antiquity of the existing continents, by studying the action of great rivers. For instance (but it is, per- haps, the grandest example that could be given) the seven hun- dred thousand tons of water which rush over the precipice at the Falls of Niagara every minute, are estimated to carry away a foot of the cliff yearly, and the cataract having evidently once been at Queenstown, four miles below, it is concluded — assuming this rate of destruction to have been uniform — that the fall has been twenty thousand years in receding to its present site. Again, we see immense deposits accumulating at the mouths of great rivers, and tracts of new land in course of formation — as, for example, at the mouth of the Khone — by the debris and shingle carried by the river towards the sea; and in the extent of those formations we have, in many instances, proof of the lapse of immense periods of time; thus, it has been calculated that the " delta " of the Mississippi, which is fourteen thousand square miles in extent, cannot have been formed in less than sixty thou- sand years. But this is not the place to pursue geological argu- ments, or to treat of what rivers have done in modifying the sur- face of the globe, for an essay might be devoted to that subject alone. The quantity of water which they are continually pouring into the seas and oceans, is, perhaps the most astonishing of river phenomena. It is computed that eighty thousand cubic feet of water flow every minute into the tideway of the Thames at Ted- RIVERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 263 dington ; but the Ganges receives in its course of sixteen hundred and eighty miles (by the windings) eleven tributaries, some of which are as large as the Bhine, and none smaller than the Thames ; and the Nile brings down annually a body of water two hundred and fifty times greater than our metropolitan river. Apropos to the Nile, it is a peculiar attribute of that wonderful stream that he has no tributaries. After having advanced eight hundred miles up his course, you naturally expect, as in the Rhine, that when you have tracked him to his mountain-bed, and are approaching to his veiled sources, you will find the vast volume of water shrink, but, on the contrary, the breadth and strength below are found to have been all his own, and throughout that long descent no tributary augments his flood; so that (as Canon Stanley remarks) you have the strange sight of a majestic river flowing like an arm of the sea in the Highlands, as calm and as broad amidst those wild Nubian hills as in the plain of Egypt.* The remarkable fact that the period of its annual rising was the same four thousand years ago as it is at the present day, affords another proof of that uniformity of physical conditions, during a long series of ages, of which science in modern times has furnished so many examples. The hopes of the shepherd and husbandman, which depended on the annual rising of the Nile, were thus connected with the fall of periodical rains on the melting of collected snows in a far-off region of unknown mountains. Although most large rivers have their origin, like the Nile, in mountainous ranges or tracts of table- land, some of the largest rivers have a hardly perceptible fall. Thus the Volga, the largest stream of Europe, which has a course of two thousand miles, rises in a district little more than a thousand feet above the sea, and the still greater Mississippi rises in a tract of country of little higher elevation. Generally, the sources of the English rivers, likewise, are only a few hundred feet higher than the mouth. What a striking contrast between a rushing mountain torrent that descends perhaps two or three thousand feet in a few miles, and the sullen river of the plains where hardly flows The frozen Tanais through a waste of snows ! * Sinai and Palestine, Introduction, p 50. T 264 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Some idea of the enormous quantity of water that is perpetually flowing into the oceans of the globe is derived from the extent of its chief river-basins. The Rhone, for example, drains the waters from an area of 7000 square miles of country; the Rhine, which has a length exceeding 600 miles by its windings, drains the waters from a country of twice that area; and the Danube from 55,000 square miles of surface; but the waters from an area of 300,000 square miles fall into the St. Lawrence, and those from 1,000,000 of square miles into the Mississippi, which, by its windings, has a length of 3560 miles. It is estimated that 1 ,800,000,000 of tons of water flow daily into the Mediterranean, which, besides the great rivers that fall into it, receives more than twenty secondary rivers and innumerable smaller streams. More than a fourth of the river-water of all Europe falls into the Black Sea. If it was our present object to give a complete physical de- scription of any river, we should have to go somewhat deeply into the science which Sou they hailed as " Potamology." We must consider its basin, comprising the entire tract drained by the chief stream and all its branches; the features of its channel; its direct length from the source to the sea, and its length with wind- ings (that of the Thames is stated at 220 miles, or double its direct length) ;* the height of its sources, and of different points * The following table shows the length in miles of the principal rivers of the world: — J" 2310 To the Mississippi. 1 4096 To the sea. Euphrates 1716 Persian Gulf. Missouri Orinoco 1556 Atlantic Ocean. Amazon or Maranon V3545 Atlantic Ocean. Columbia Dnieper 1565 Pacific Ocean. 1243 Euxine Sea. Yangtsekiar g 3314 Pacific Ocean. Don 1104 Sea of Azof. Volga 2762 Caspian Sea. f 1010 To Euphrates river. 1 1100 To the sea. Amur 2739 Sea of Japan. Tigris Obi 2670 Gulf of Obi, Arctic Weser 922 Ocean. Rhine 690 To German Ocean. Nile 2578 Mediterranean Sea. Rhone 644 Gulf of Lyons. La Plata 2210 Atlantic Ocean. Loire 598 Bay of Biscay. St. Lawrence 2072 Gulf of St. Law- Tagus 552 Atlantic. rence. Neva 506 Gulf of Finland. Indus 2256 Arabian Sea. Po 405 Adriatic Sea. Ganges 1933 Bay of Bengal. Seine 391 British Channel. Jumna r 780 To Ganges. 1 1550 To sea. Guadalquivei 299 Atlantic. Severn 240 Mississippi 1930 Gulf of Mexico. Thames 220 British Channel. Danube 1722 Euxine Sea. Forth 120 German Ocean. RIVERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 265 in its course, above the level of the sea (as regards the Thames, the fall in its navigable distance from Lechlade to London is 258 feet, or 21 inches per mile) ; the rapidity of its current as a mean quantity, and in different places (the mean velocity of the Thames is 2 miles an hour); its depth under similar conditions; the quantity of water it contains and conveys as estimated from these particulars ; the variation in the quantity at different seasons ; the extent of river navigation ; the proportion of earthy matters the stream brings down, and the extent and place of their deposit; the manner of its termination in the sea, and the influence of tides ascending the channel. Suffice it to say, that, whether we dwell on such physical details as regards any one great river, or view rivers collectively, we cannot fail to see how essential they are to the great scheme of circulation for the waters of the earth, to maintaining the purity of the atmosphere and the health of mankind. Everywhere we find rivers ministering to beauty and fertility as they flow, and giving commerce and communication to lands that would be otherwise inaccessible deserts. We have alluded to some of the mightier rivers of the globe, but the importance of a river is not, of course, in proportion to the extent of country drained by it, the magnitude of its flood, or the length of its windings. The Tiber, which has been justly called the most illustrious of rivers, is little more than fifty yards in width where it is girded by the double line of buildings through which it flows; and above and below the city, where it has more scope to wander and expand, it does not generally exceed eighty or a hundred. Though it sweeps along with great power and concentrated energy, it is only (as a traveller has 'remarked) from its historic associations that it can excite enthusiasm or even com- mand admiration. Considered merely in its physical aspect, how different is this comparatively diminutive but classic river from the majestic flood of the Father of Waters of the New World ! But what native of the banks of Isis — -what Englishman — can forget that the Thames " diffuses more of power and activity over the whole earth than all other European rivers conjoined?" The father of British floods becomingly asserts his dignity when he says, amidst the tributary rivers assembled round him by the poet, Though Tiber's streams immortal Rome behold. Though foaming Hermus swells with titles of gold, T 2 266 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. From Heaven itself though sevenfold Kilus flows, And harvests on a hundred realms bestows ; These now no more shall be the Muses' themes — Lost in my fame as in the sea their streams. Let Volga's banks with iron squadrons shine, And groves of lances glitter on the Rhine ; Let barb'rous Ganges arm a servile train — Be mine the blessings of a peaceful reign. # # # * * The time shall come when, free as seas or wind, Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind, Whole nations enter with each swelling tide, And seas but join the regions they divide. And this brings us to consider rivers Politically and Commercially. Upon the banks of the Euphrates, which was distinguished emphatically in Asia as the RI VEK, shapeless mounds of ruin mark the earliest cities of man- kind. Upon the banks of the Nile, which might well be called the " fertilising nurse of Egypt," are the mightiest and most magnificent monuments of ancient genius and power that the world can show; and to the commercial riches borne by the Arabian merchants upon the spreading waters of the Nile, Thebes and Memphis have been thought to owe their former splendour. Thus, in one part of Africa, the Nile, flowing into the frequented waters of the Mediterranean, has raised upon its banks im- perishable monuments of early civilisation, and has become renowned by historians sacred and profane ; while on the Niger, flowing into the lonely and long unknown Atlantic, the natives of its shores remain in their original state of barbarism. Again, upon the four rivers which flow from the mountain-chain of Lebanon sprang up successively the four ruling powers of that portion of Asia : the northern river — the Orontes — is the river of the Greek kingdom of Antioch and Seleucia, and, rising from the fork of the two ranges of Lebanon and anti- Lebanon, it forms the channel of life and civilisation in those highlands of Syria which are interposed between the great plains of Assyria and the Mediterranean shores; the western river — the Leontes — is the river of Phoenicia, and, rising from the same water-shed between the two ranges, near Baalbec, it falls into the sea close to Tyre ; the eastern river — the modern Barada (the Abana or Pharphar of the Old RIVERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 267 Testament) — is the river of the Syrian kingdom of Damascus; and the southern river — the Jordan — which rises at the point where Hermon divides into its two parallel ranges, is emphatically " the river of Palestine " — a river which, as is well known, is the artery of the whole country, and which, in the deep depression of its valley and in its extraordinary physical features, is unique on the surface of the globe.* The first-mentioned of these four very remarkable rivers— the Orontes— presented (says Canon Stanley) the chief point of contact between this corner of Asia and the Western World. Near the turning-point of its course rose the Greek city of Antioch, to which, on one side, the river formed a natural moat; by the beauty of this new capital all the cities in Palestine were eclipsed: here the disciples "were first called Christians;" and here, on the banks of the Orontes, was (as it were) the halting-place of Christianity before it left its Asiatic home for the banks of the Tiber and the Western World. In like manner the foundation, no less than the prosperity, of many another city of renown, as well in ancient as in modern times, has been connected with a river. But we will not lengthen our paper by dwelling on this part of the subject. To turn from rivers gleaming with the Eastern light to nearer and more homely streams, the reader need not be reminded that to the falls of its rivers South Lancashire owes the establishment of those mills driven by water-power which have exercised so important an in- fluence in the developement of British industry. The tract of country lying between the Ribble and the Mersey is surrounded on the east and north by high ranges of hills, from which nume- rous streams descend rapidly towards the level country on the west; along these valleys hundreds of mills were erected, and the water (as a contemporary writer remarks) was made to pay a tribute in power to each as it passed. But here we find ourselves in a region where intensely utilitarian views of rivers would natu- rally be taken, just as in the view of Brindley, the engineer, rivers were only made by the Creator in order to feed navigable canals, or, perhaps, in the view of an epicure, have their most in- teresting associations in the fish they furnish to cookery. By * Stanley : Sinai and Palestine (5th edition), p. 110. 268 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Sou they nobler uses are ascribed to rivers. " They welcome," he says, " the bold discoverer into the heart of the country to whose ci tast the sea has borne his adventurous barque ; the richest freights have floated on their bosoms: and while by their mechanical power they move the wheels of cotton-mills, and afford transit for the goods of the merchant, they furnish the most profound philo- sophy with illustration and example." And so, reminding the reader that it was upon rivers that the gigantic power of steam now governing the ocean first began its sway, we pass from the political and commercial aspects of our subject to consider rivers Historically. Great natural objects, such as rivers and mountains, retain their original or ancient names longer than any- thing around them; they survive human revolutions; and while they enjoy, as it were, a perpetual youth, the names they re- ceived from the first settlers on their shores have very commonly passed untranslated into the speech of the modern inhabitants. No natural features more permanently fix, and, as some writer has said, endear, the classical associations of a land than its rivers. The primeval names of many rivers have thus been transmitted, little changed, from age to age, and they often preserve the remains of ancient language. Most rivers of France retain the names by which the Romans knew them. In caves by many a river side Celtic colonists of Britain made their dwellings, and at the present day we find many of our native rivers that retain their old British names — e. g. Thames and Tamar, Avon and Severn, Isis (Ouse) and Derwent, Aire and Calder, Wye and Lune, Yare or Gar, Ure and Irwell (Ir-gwili, as in Abergwili); indeed, Celtic is the prevailing element in the river names of Europe. The Cymric word aber, found in so many local names in Wales, denotes the mouth of a river, and where found on the eastern coast in Scot- land indicates the former presence there of the Cymric race. In their language and in Celtic the word abhain, and in Sanscrit the word ab, denotes a river ; the same word in Hebrew, and aba or abhar in Irish, is " father," or " cause;" thus the Nile is said by Bruce to be called in its higher regions abay, or father. It is worthy of remark, that au is a most ancient appellation of water RIVERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 269 in Gaulish and British speech, and from the simple form abh, (found in obsolete gaelic) we have probably derived many ancient com- pound words relating to water, as A vermis, Avignon, Aar, Awe, and Avren (in Scotland) , and Alaunus, (in Northumberland,) mentioned by Ptolemy ; and, the b and u being promiscuously sounded in some ancient languages, aber is probably related to it.* It has also been traced by an ingenious philologist even in America, in the names of Niagara and Kanawha, attributed to Sanscrit. So that traces of a lost speech seem to survive in rivers just as those natural foun- tains which still freshen the flowers of Helicon and are so cele- brated in classic legend, point (as the Sanscrit Helikonda does) to a forgotten worship of the sun upon that Heliconian mount. The names of most of the rivers of North Germany are Gothic, and related to the Scythian and Indian dialects: thus, Elbe is probably derived from the Sanscrit al, to move; Oder, from the Sanscrit udra, water ; Vistula, from the Sanscrit dwis, to separate ; Rhine is the swift water; and Danube (Danawa or Tanais) the broad water, from the Sanscrit root tan, to spread. f But we must not lead the reader among the " mazy waters" of etymology. Whatever traces of the descriptive language of our forefathers may survive in the names of rivers, we find that from a river many a name "familiar as household words" has been derived. Even in the arid page of those old laws of the Franks, which have an historical existence from the time of Clovis (the Salic laws), we seem to behold the river Sala flowing by the old Palatium Salae, where Saltzburg stands. If we sometimes find a sort of fossil history in the name of a river, much more exciting associations are often connected with its shores. Some of the most memorable battles of the world have been fought upon the banks of rivers ; some of the richest monuments of the arts of peace are reflected in their waters. Their boundaries are enduring landmarks of history; and, as regards most of the rivers that fall into the Mediterranean, the classical associations which seem inseparable from them render those streams familiar to us at the present day, * Rowland's Mona Antiqua. + We can often recognise the ancient names as fitting and descriptive of the parti- cular river, just as it was with some rivers of Palestine that are mentioned in Scripture ; thus the Kedron, " the black," is a stream which western nations might call the Black-water; the Kishon is winding, the Arnon noisy, the Pharphar rapid. 270 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. and people them with the forms and memories of their old renown. And this brings us to consider rivers Poetically and Pictorially. Ancient nations were ac- customed to personify rivers and recognise in them a mysterious presence. To the Greeks, a river was in some measure a local seat of deity : by its waters the productive spirit diffused its influence, and attributes of the universal divinity were ascribed to the river ; hence rivers became personified as of the immortal progeny of Jupiter, the guardians to mortal man, and objects of his reverence and invocation. In the Homeric times, the nymphs seem to have been considered as the guardian spirits or local deities of the springs and rivers, the companions of the river-gods, who were accounted the male progeny of the Ocean, though the mystic system gave them a more exalted genealogy. Next to the host of heaven, rivers seem from ancient times to have attracted a sort of grateful worship in the adjacent lands. Even in northern climates, the gushing of a fresh stream seems like the presence of a living power, and the water is, as it were, the very soul of the landscape; but in Syria and the East the life-giving power of running water is yet more strongly felt. To the Hebrews, springs were "the eyes" — the bright glistening eyes — of the thirsty land ; a sort of personality was given to the stream : it had its "right hand," the estuary its " lip," the bay its "tongue." On many a river in a sterile, mountainous region of Palestine, the spectator (as an eminent author, writing of the Barada on its course towards Damascus, has remarked) literally stands between the living and the dead ; for, bursting forth from a cleft in the rocky hills between two precipitous cliffs, the river, as if in a moment, scatters life and foliage over the plain, and the rushing flood of crystal water, overhung by willow, poplar, hawthorn, and walnut, carries a belt of verdure through a framework of barren and desert hills. Noble the mountain stream Bursting in grandeur from its vantage ground ; Glory is in its gleam Of brightness — thunder in its deafening sound. Yet lovelier in my view The streamlet flowing silently serene, RIVERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 271 Traced by the brighter hue And livelier growth it gives, itself unseen. It flows through flowery meads, Gladdening the herds which on its margin browse ; Its quiet beauty feeds The alders that o'ershade it with their boughs. The stream, flowing from its spring, rising, as it were, out of the midst of gloom, comes forth sparkling to the sun. Its waters carry life and beauty on their course as on they flow through lights and shadows and depths and shallows. Like the youth springing to manhood, how it deepens as it goes, involving larger interests and wider aims, but still retaining its pure living waters ! How it visits every region ! The long unlovely street, pleasant villages where the sheep-bells tinkle on the breezy downs, the waste and lonely wilderness, or the umbrageous wood; now within hearing of the minster clock, now of the college bells and the vague hum of the crowded city ; and overhead through all its course, the mighty heaven with its clouds, its sun and moon and stars ; but always and in all places declaring its source, and. at length mingling with the sea, like thoughts that wander through eternity.* The old Greeks, in their fertile climate, had not the same reason that the inhabitants of Syria had for (as it were) personi- fying a river, and treating it as a living power entitled to their grateful worship ; but in giving to each river a semi-human per- sonality, a river-god of its own, they showed, as has been truly said, their deep insight into Nature. It is hardly necessary to refer to Homer's mention of Scamander's worshipped stream, His earthly honours and immortal name ; or to Achilles offering his hair to Sperchius' honoured flood.t Among the Greeks, rivers were commonly honoured with offer- ings of hair. Their deities were thought to have a title to this respect, perhaps (as Archbishop Potter suggests), because some * Dr. Brown, Horae Subsec. 1st series, p. 297. f Iliad, v. HO. 272 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. philosophers taught that all things had been produced out of water. Such great rivers of the earth as the Nile, the Ganges, and the Indus preserve to this time the adoration of the inhabitants of the fruitful countries through which they flow, and their waters are still held sacred. On some East Indian rivers an offering to the deity of the stream takes at this day the picturesque form of tiny rafts, bearing lights, which maidens launch in the still night, and many a dark-fringed eye is said to watch the trem- bling flame as it floats onward, and to regard its long burning as a happy augury. The Chinese offer sacrifices to the spirit of the river; and Hornemann, in his "Travels in the Interior of Africa," mentions the custom to have been not long before observed at Bornou, of throwing a girl richly-dressed into the Niger, as an offering to the river — a custom which certainly cannot be said to be honoured in the observance. It reminded that traveller of the similar sacrifice to the Nile which is stated to have been annually made at Cairo. Whatever their form of sacrifice was, the Egyptians undoubtedly paid divine honours to the Nile.* So did the ancient Persians to their rivers and fountains; but, in fact, the sentiment seems to have been almost universal in the ancient world. As we read in the Vedas of three thousand years ago of the wayfarers supplicating the spirit of the stream for safe passage, so we read in the newspapers of to-day of the pilgrims, as the train rattled over the iron bridge, casting their propitiatory offerings into the river below.f The point of the junction or union of streams and rivers seems to have been selected for ancient rites. Such junctions are still mysterious or poetical amongst the Hindus, the junction of three rivers being pre-eminently so. Thus, where the Ganges, the sacred river Yamuna (" Daughter of the Sun"),| and the Sarasvati unite, is Allahabad (" Eesidence of the Most High "); and where * Osiris being with the Egyptians " god of the waters," in the same sense that Bacchus was among the Greeks, all rivers when personified were represented under the form or symbol of the Bull. On the coins of some Greek cities of Sicily and Italy, rivers appear thus personified. t Ferguson's River Names of Europe, p. 21. % Sir W. Jones : Asiatic Researches, 29. RIVERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 273 the three sister-streams of Ireland unite, is Kilkenny * These conjoined river-goddesses of Ireland number Spenser among their tuneful admirers: The first, the gentle Shure, that, making way By sweet Clonmell, adorns rich Waterford ; The next, the stubborn Newre, whose waters gray By fair Kilkenny and Roseponte board ; The third, the goodly Barroiv, which doth hoard Great heaps of salmon in her deep bosome ; All which, long sundred, do at last accord To join in one, ere to the sea they roam : So, flowing all from one, all one at last become. A propos to the disposition of some ancient nations and of the Greek poets to attribute a semi-human personality to rivers, the following reasons are fancifully given by the Rev. Charles Kingsley for regarding a river as a living power. " It may be," he says, " but a collection of everchanging atoms of water — what is the human body but a collection of atoms decaying and renew- ing every moment? And is not the river, too, a person — a live thing? It has an individual countenance which you love, which you would recognise again anywhere; it marks the whole land- scape; it determines, probably, the geography and the society of a whole district. It draws you to itself, moreover, as by an in- definable magnetic attraction. If you stop in a strange place, the first instinct of the idle half-hour is to lounge by the river. It is a person to you ; — how do you know that the river has not a spirit as well as yourself? " Thus, at the present day, the great rivers of Scotland, as Sir Walter Scott has remarked, are often spoken of with a certain respect, and an almost personal character is attributed to them. So, too, in Devonshire, the rivers that have their sources on Dartmoor still retain something of the reverence with which they were anciently regarded. Dart, especially, has been said to bear traces of his former distinction. The "cry of Dart" — as the moor-men call that louder sound which rises from all mountain- streams towards nightfall — is ominous, and a sure warning of approaching evil when heard at an unusual distance.f * Moor's Oriental Fragments, 412. t Article, "Devonshire," in Quarterly Rev. April, 1859. 274 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. " Blessed things," says Bulwer, " are those remote and un- changing streams — they fill us with the same love as if they were living creatures." The sanctity attributed of old to rivers, and the association of a tutelary god of its own with each river and fountain, was, doubtless, the origin of many of the strange old superstitions connected with rivers; and it was probably for this reason, too, that to step over any of the tributary streams of Clitumnus was accounted an indignity, which rendered the offender infamous.* Thus, nearer home and to this day, it is in many places an article of popular faith that a running stream destroys a spell or enchant- ment; if you can interpose a brook between you and witches, spectres, or even fiends, you are safe — a superstition of which, as the reader will remember, Burns has availed himself in " Tam o' Shantcr." Its unchanging character and perpetuity are some of the most poetical attributes of a river : No check, no stay, the streamlet fears ; How merrily it goes ! 'Twill murmur on a thousand years, And flow as now it flows. So likewise the brook, which is the miniature of the river in its natural characters and aspects, partakes of its poetry of life and ceaseless motion ; the little streamlet knows no sleep, no pause ; the great frame of Nature may repose, but the spirit of the waters rests not for a moment. f " No haunting tone of music," says Bulwer, " ever so recalled a rushing host of memories and associations as that simple, restless, everlasting sound — the murmur of the sunny rivulet fretting over each little obstacle in its current, the merry child of Nature. Everlasting! all else may have changed, yet with the same * Pliny, b. viii. 8. ■f- Horace's journey to Brundusium being mentioned at a dinner-party at which Dr. Johnson was present, he observed that the brook which Horace describes is to be seen now exactly as at that time; and that he had often wondered how it happened that small brooks such as this kept the same situation for ages, notwithstanding earth- quakes by which even mountains had been changed, and notwithstanding agriculture which produced such variation in the surface of the earth. Thus, while most of the solid structures of Rome are perished, the Tiber remains the same. — Boswell's Johnson, vii. p. 83. RIVERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 275 exulting bound and happy voice the streamlet leaps along its way." But alas ! — Unlike the tide of human time, Which, though it change in ceaseless flow, Retains each grief, retains each crime, Its earliest course was doomed to know; And darker as it downward bears, Is stained with past and present tears.* The permanence of the stream, and the evanescence of man, are well contrasted by Sir Charles Bell, the eminent physiologist, in the following passage inscribed in one of his daily monologues, on returning from a fishing-party : — " Whoever has sat on a sunny stone in the midst of a stream, and played with the osier twigs and running waters, must, if he have a soul, remember the day should he live a hundred years ; and to return to such a spot after twenty years of a struggling life in the great world of man's invention — to come back thus to Nature in her simple guise, again to look up to the same dark hill, again to the same trees still in their youth and freshness, the same clear running waters, — if he can do this and think himself better than a cork floating on the stream, he has more conceit than I." "Rivers," says the Rev. John Eagles, in one of the pleasant papers published under the title of ' The Sketcher,' " are always poetical; they move, or glide, or break into fall and rapid through their courses, as if they were full of life, and were on Nature's mysterious errands. The sunbeams gleam upon them with messages from the heavens; trees bend to them, and re- ceiving freshness and fragrance grow beside their waters, flowers kiss them, love haunts them, silence keeps awake in their caverns and sequestered nooks, and there the nightingale sings to her; the bright and many- coloured bow arches their falls, and the blessed and blessing moon shines upon them and gifts them with magic. Let the lover of landscape follow some of our sweet rivers from their sources in mountain or moor, through dell, dingle, ravine, and more open valley over which the clouds loiter; and if the mind of the sketcher does not drink poetry * Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto iv. at. 1. 276 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. through his eye, and convey it to his portfolio, he may be sure neither Nature nor Art intended him to be painter or sketcher." But, to multiply the testimony of writers to the poetical and picturesque charms of rivers would be a work of supererogation, like that of the worthy divine mentioned by Washington Irving in the " Sketch Book," who astonished his rural congregation at Christmas by a learned array of quotations from old Fathers of the Church in favour of a joyful observance of the season; the worthy preacher having, as afterwards appeared, entangled him- self in his reading amongst the Puritan controversies of the seventeenth century, and having conjured up a host of ideal adversaries to contend with in the pulpit. Where is the lover of Nature who does not acknowledge with Southey the " endless interest which rivers excite?" Where is the artist or the poet whose soul has not drawn inspiration from their picturesque beauty? Where is the Christian who does not regard them with some- thing of the religious honour given to them by the heathen from the earliest times, but with the purer love and reverence due to the revealed Creator, and recognise the sublimest of their associations in the scenes which hallowed the banks of Jordan, and in the fact that rivers form part of the scenery of Para- dise in the Revelations of St. John ? And now, in conclusion, let us briefly glance at rivers considered Morally. Southey's remark, that " rivers enforce the maxims of the moralist," is aptly illustrated by the old moralising of Pliny, who has pointed out the resemblances that rivers bear to the life of man. The river (he says) springs from the earth, but its origin is in Heaven. Its beginnings are small and its infancy frivolous; it plays among the flowers of a meadow, waters a garden, or turns a little mill. Gathering strength in its youth, it becomes wild, impetuous, and impatient of restraints ; it is restless and fretful, quick in its turnings, and unsteady in its course; sometimes turbulent and headlong in progress, and sometimes sullen in repose, it leaves behind what it has swept along, and, quitting its retirement for cultivated fields, yields to circumstances, and winds round the obstacles that oppose its current. It passes through the populous cities and the busy haunts of men, tendering RIVERS AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS. 277 its services on every side, and becoming the support of the country. Now increased by alliances and advanced in its career, it becomes grave and stately, loves peace and quiet, and flowing on, at length in silence mingles with the ocean depth. "Your mighty world's river rises in high and lonely places among the everlasting hills: amidst clouds or inaccessible clearness. On he moves, gathering to himself all waters; refreshing, cheering all lands. Here a cataract, there a rapid; now lingering in some corner of beauty, as if loth to go. Now shallow and wide, rippling and laughing in his glee; now deep, silent, and slow, and not to be meddled with incautiously. Now in the open country, not so clear, for other waters have come in upon him, and he is becoming useful, — no longer turbulent, but travelling more contentedly ; now he is navigable, craft of all kinds coming and going upOn his surface for ever; and then, deep and smooth, he pays his last tribute to the sea, his power and volume bearing him out fresh into the main for many a league." Considerable rivers possess attributes essential to greatness: they have breadth, depth, clearness, rapidity, strength. Calm and majestic, an image at once of power and peace, well might Denham address to the Thames the well-known apostrophe : Oh ! could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example as it is my theme : Though deep, yet clear ; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong without rage ; without o'erflowing full. Truly, indeed, may it be said that rivers feed with pleasinor images the fancy of the poet, and yield illustration and example to the teachings of philosophy. But, although there is no end to the reflections that rivers excite in the contemplative mind, we must now bring to an end our remarks about them. If the con- stant, everlasting flow recals a host of memories, so, whether we listen to the many-murmuring voice " of some rejoicing stream " gliding smoothly under arching shade, or to the thunder of the rolling flood, our fancies wander to the unknown and to the future, seeming to rehearse Our little life. 278 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. In the river's onward course we are ever admonished to Let the turbid waters brighten as they run ; and ever see a familiar image of the stream of life and time flow- ing onward to the ocean of eternity. Oft have I thought, and thinking, sigh'd — How like to thee, thou restless tide, May be the lot, the life of him Who roams along thy waters' brim ; Through what alternate shades of woe And flowers of joy my path may go ! How many a humble, still retreat May rise to court my weary feet, While still pursuing, still unblest, I wander on, nor dare to rest. But, urgent as the doom that calls Thy waters to their destined falls, I see the world's bewildering force Hurry my heart's devoted course From lapse to lapse, till life be done, And the lost current cease to run ! HAILSTORMS AND THEIR PHENOMENA. {Bentley's Miscellany, May, 1861.] Few occurences in all the range of atmospherical phenomena are more calculated to excite terror and awaken curiosity than hailstorms. The dazzling and infrequent meteor and aerolite de- rives an interest of its own from its brief splendour, the mystery of its origin, and the wonder with which the inhabitants of the earth naturally regard bodies that seem to be fragments of other worlds. But hail — a phenomenon of the terrestrial atmosphere, like the thunder and the wind — is not the less remarkable for being familiar : the whirlwind may uproot the oaks that have stood for centuries, and scatter branches like autumn leaves, but a hail- storm is often more sweeping in its desolation. It is as fatal as the hurricane, and as awful as the thunderstorm, and often more destructive to life ; and it is frequently attended by circumstances very surprising in their nature, and exceedingly difficult of ex- planation. In the Bible, hail is frequently mentioned, with circumstances of terror, as an instrument of divine vengeance. We have not only the plague of hail that smote the land of Egypt in the days of Pharaoh,* but in the flight of the Amorites we read that — "The Lord cast down great stones " (magnos grandinis lapides) " from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died : they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword."f In the prophetic, as well as in the historical books, hail is fre- quently mentioned ; and it is alluded to in many places by the Royal Psalmist ; ex. gr. : " The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hailstones and coals of fire."}: * Exodus ix. 25. f Joshua x. 11. + Ps. xviii. 13. IT 280 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. " He gave up their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts."* " lie gave them hail for rain, and flaming fire in their land."t But the terrors and the destructive power of the hailstorm do not need illustration from Scripture or from history. Although hail, destructive to animals and vegetation, is rarely seen in climates not bordering on the tropics, its power to destroy life is frequently witnessed in India to the present day. There is something peculiarly terrific in the character of the tropical hail- storms, and in British India the average size of the hailstones and the masses of ice that have occasionally fallen greatly exceed any- thing known in Europe. The phenomena of hailstorms are manifested with peculiar fre- quency and magnificence in the East Indies. Dr. George Buist, of Bombay, who gave much attention to this curious subject, prepared an historical list of sixty-one remarkable hailstorms, observed from the year 1781 to 1850, which was communicated by Colonel Sykes to the British Association.^ Notices of many hailstorms are pre- served in the Asiatic Journal from 1816 to 1842, and a paper on hailstorms in India from 1851 to 1855, was subsequently contributed by Dr. Buist to the proceedings of the British Association. § From a review of these Indian observations it is deduced that the average maxima of hailstones is from eight to ten inches in circumference', and from two to four ounces in weight; and in the majority of cases the hail exceeds the size of filberts, whereas in Europe it does not often exceed that of peas. But in the Indian hailstorms the stones are more frequently accretions of ice than what we know as hailstones. In 1822, at Bangalore, bullocks were killed by the hailstones, which the natives declared to be as large as pumpkins; and although it was in the scorching month of April, some of the hailstones remained on the third day after they fell, and then measured three inches and a half in thickness. At Kangpore, in May 1851, the stones that fell were * Ps. lxxviii. 48. t Ps. cv. 32. The words " haggle," " hagol-stan,'" from which (it is hardly neces- sary to say) the English words are derived, occur in the Anglo-Saxon Psalter given by the great Earl of Arundel to the Royal Society. X Report of Edinburgh Meeting, 1851, p. 43. § Report of Glasgow Meeting, 1855, p. 31 . HAILSTORMS AND THEIR PHENOMENA. 281 as large as ducks' eggs. So too, in Bengal, various officers, in de- scribing hailstorms which they saw, declare that the stones were as large as turkeys' eggs. At Calcutta, in April 1829, in a hail- storm which killed several natives, the hail fell in angular frag- ments of ice. In the Himalayas, north of the Peshawur, in a storm on the 12th May 1853, the ice masses were globular and compact, and many were upwards of three inches in diameter, while some were nearly a foot in circumference. And in what might be described as an ice-storm, which fell in the Lower Himalaya on the 11th May 1855, the hail increased from stones of the size of pigeons' eggs to that of cricket-balls. But what is more extraordinary, masses of ice exceeding a hundred weight are recorded to have fallen on four occasions in India. Dr. Buist * sees no reason to doubt that a mass of ice which fell at Seringapatam in the time of Tippoo Sultan was, as stated by Dr. Hyne,f as large as an elephant, and took three days to melt ! That a mass of hailstones may have been violently swept together and congealed into such an enormous block is con- ceivable enough, but it is hardly credible that such an aggrega- tion can have been formed in the air and have actually fallen, unless, indeed, a body of water like that of a waterspout can have become frozen in its fall. Yet it seems authenticated that in April ] 838, a mass of hailstones, cemented in one block measuring twenty feet fell at Dharwar; that immediately after another hail- storm in that locality, a mass described as an immense block of ice, consisting of hailstones frozen together, was found ; and that in 1826 a mass of ice actually fell in Candeish which must have been nearly a cubic yard in bulk. J Astonishing as it is that such ponderous masses can have been formed in the air, it is certainly conceivable that falling hailstones may have been swept into a mass by violent whirlwinds or eddies. Hailstones of great size, but more moderate bulk, have often been found to be aggregations. Dr. Buist accounts for the larger concretions of ice by supposing that a whirlwind at a great height swept the hailstones together, * See his communication on Indian Hailstorms in Report of Brit. Assoc, for 1851, p. 43. f In his Tracts, published in 1S14. J Dr. Buist 's communication in Report of Brit. Assoc, for 1852, p. 32. u 2 282 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. and that they became immensely enlarged before escaping from that influence and falling on the earth. Neither in magnitude nor in frequency of occurrence can the cognate phenomena in temperate climates be paralleled with these marvels. In only one instance on record has any similar mass of ice or aggregation of hailstones fallen in Great Britain : in Ross-shire, in August 1849, a huge mass of ice, twenty feet in circumfer- ence, is described to have fallen like an aerolite during a thunder- storm. But there are cases in which it would seem that the ice masses of India might really have been paralleled in Britain if a whirlwind, or the kind of agency which produces the waterspout, had accompanied the hailstorm. For example, on the 24th July 1818,* in a storm which passed over the Orkneys, and was twenty miles in length and a mile and a half in breadth, ice covered the ground to the depth of nine inches in as many minutes. On the afternoon of 31st Aug. 1862 Corfu was visited by a brief but terrible hailstorm. It was limited to a belt of a mile wide across the island, but not in a direct line. On the following morning the hailstones lay a foot deep in the ditches, and were of the size of hens' eggs. This was sixteen hours after they had fallen. In the evening of the day after the hailstorm the narrator brought home blocks of hailstones six inches thick, though the sun had shone unclouded all day, and the thermometer had marked 85° in the shade. From the sheltered watercourses blocks of ice were carted away for the ice-shops in the town. And, to come nearer home, a shower of ice-stones, which might really be described as a hail-spout, fell about three years ago on a spot among the hills near Eslington Park, the North- umberland seat of Lord Ravensworth. Trustworthy persons living near the locus in quo declared that hailstones and fragments of ice of various shapes fell in a great heap, and they were seen in a mass sufficient to fill many baskets upon the spot shortly afterwards. So, too, in the terrific hailstorm which devastated several dis- tricts of France on 22nd June 1861, the hailstones lay so thick on the ground at Sainte-Seine and the neighbourhood, that a trust- worthy witness asserts that he saw a bed of hailstones three feet * Dr. Thomson's Meteorology, i>. 175. HAILSTORMS AND THEIR PHENOMENA. 283 thick on the road between Sainte- Seine and Vaux Saules.* And in a tremendous storm which visited Lavington in Wiltshire in 1862, hailstones covered the ground to the depth of seven feet in half an hour ! But the largest hailstones that are recorded to have fallen in Great Britain or in any part of Europe have very seldom reached dimensions that can be compared with those of hailstones wit- nessed in British India. In a storm of hail on the Norfolk and Suffolk coast, on the 17th July 1666, hailstones were taken up some of which were as large as turkeys' eggs, others measured eight inches, nine inches, and a foot in circumference, and one weighed two ounces and a half. On the 17th May 1685, in a great thunderstorm at Bishop Auckland in the county of Durham, hailstones five inches in circumference fell. The hailstones that fell in a storm on the Denbighshire coast in 1697 were so heavy they not only ploughed up the earth, but killed lambs and a mastiff, as well as poultry and the birds. Some of these accre- tions of ice weighed five ounces, and the force with which they fell showed that they came from a great height. At Hitchin, on the 4th May 1797, after a thunderstorm, a black cloud sud- denly arose in the soufn-west, opposite to the wind, and was im- mediately followed by a shower of hailstones, some of which mea- sured from seven to fourteen inches in circumference. At Offley, near the extremity of the storm, a young man was killed by the hailstones, which bruised his body and beat out one of his eyes; and these formidable missiles tore up the ground, split trees, and destroyed the crops. On the 29th June 1820, a shower of ice- stones, accompanied by a thunderstorm, fell in the south-east part of the county of Mayo. The breadth of the hailstorm did not exceed half a mile, but it left that breadth of country a ruin. Some of the stones were flat, heavy, and as large as a watch ; the greater part were larger than pigeons' eggs in size, and of a simi- lar shape. The bog-turf was penetrated by them as if by shot.f A hailstorm occurred in North Staffordshire on the 22nd July 1857, in which masses of ice fell that were an inch and a half in diameter. :}: This storm continued for half an hour, and was * Paris Correspondent in the Times, 4 July 1861. f Blackw. Edinb. Mag. vol. vii. p. 688. X Report of Brit. Assoc. Cheltenham Meeting, 1857, p. 39. 284 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. attended by gusts of wind and by thunder. At the distance of four miles a violent wind blew from the opposite quarter about the same time, but no rain or hail fell there. Hailstones as large as pigeons' eggs, and some of two and even three inches diameter, fell in a severe storm at Augsburg in Aug. 1862. Au- thentic instances might be given in which masses of ice have fallen in hailstorms in Britain weighing from four to nine ounces, and measuring from a foot to fifteen inches in circumference,* Again, at Lille, on the 25th May 1686, hailstones fell which Aveighed from four ounces to a pound. But it is needless to mul- tiply inptances; those above given seem to be the most remark- that have been recorded. The different forms and the structure of hailstones invite curi- ous inquiry not less than their occasional magnitude. The forms of hailstones are very irregular. Hail in Europe is generally pear-shaped ; but the forms vary. Thus, in the storm in 1797, some of the hailstones were round, others oval, others angular, others flat; and in the Denbighshire storm some were round and others semi-spherical. In the East Indies, too, the forms of the hailstones are very irregular. Some hailstones of angular form and others of oval form ha,ve fallen in the same storm, as in 1822 at Bangalore; in another storm they were com- pact and spherical ; while in the storm at Calcutta already men- tioned the hailstones are described to have been angular masses of ice, in every variety of form, but quite irregular. Sometimes the hailstones have assumed the form of convex lenses.f It has been already mentioned that in the shower of ice which fell in Mayo in 1820 some of the stones were as flat, large, and heavy as a watch. The structure or constitution of the hailstones differs like their form and size, but in almost all cases there is a kernel or nu- cleus, white and opaque, which often appears to be a mere flocule of snow. When the hailstone is large, it is generally found to consist of a nucleus of frozen snow coated with ice, and some- times with alternate layers of ice and snow,| but always with an icy transparent surface. In the storm on the Denbighshire coast, * Prof. J. F. Daniell's Elem. of Meteorol. i. 24. f Ibid. 25. + Somerv., Phys. Geography, ii. 62. HAILSTORMS AND THEIR PHENOMENA. 285 some of the hailstones were smooth, others embossed andcrenated, and the ice was very hard and transparent. The hailstones that fell in the storm in North Staffordshire are described to have had nodulated nuclei containing particles of air, and externally to these were formed irregular conglomerations of ice, looking like a mass of imperfect but transparent crystals. In the storm on the Norfolk and Suffolk coast the hailstones were white, smooth on the surface, and shining within. The concentric strata round the opaque nucleus have generally all the transparency of com- mon ice. In the hailstones that fell at Serampore, which were larger than hens' eggs, the nucleus was observed to be whiter than the exterior. Almost all very large hailstones that have fallen in India were found to enclose a nucleus which appeared to be of snow, or what resembled a small opaque hailstone was in the centre, surrounded by several distinct and very distinguishable layers of transparent ice, these concentric coverings surrounding the nucleus like the coats of an onion, as if the first concretion had been a small one, and the ice had accumulated in its descent. Colonel Sykes describes a still more remarkable formation — viz. globular masses of clear ice, in which a central star of many points of diaphanous ice, resembling ground glass, was enclosed in the transparent covering.* Amongst the remarkable phenomena of hailstorms are the amazing rapidity of their motion, and the comparatively narrow breadth to which they are limited. In Europe hailstorms usually travel in straight bands of great length but small breadth, and travel very rapidly. The storm that passed over the Orkneys in 1818 was twenty miles in length and a mile and a half in breadth, and travelled at the rate of a mile in a minute and a half f — the speed of a race-horse. Showers of hail are generally limited to a locality or line of country, and extend over it in long narrow bands. A hailstorm which fell on July 13th 1788, on the Continent, began in the morning in the south-west of France, and reached Holland in a few hours, destroying a narrow line of country in its course. It moved in * Philos. Trans. 1835. Colonel Sykes also mentions the fall of masses of clear ice exceeding an inch in diameter during hailstorms, t Thomson, Meteorol. 175. 286 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. two columns twelve miles apart, the one on the west ten miles broad, and the other five miles broad, the one extending nearly five hundred and the other ibur hundred and forty miles. Again, the main body of the hailstorm which visited the Denbighshire coast, as before mentioned, appears to have fallen in Lancashire in a right line from Ormskirk to Blackburn on the Yorkshire fron- tier, and the breadth of the storm-cloud was estimated at two miles. How enormous must have been the mass of watery va- pour which became congealed in hail over such long tracts of country ! The Indian hailstorms appear to fall in limited patches, as if affected by configuration of the country or other local circum- stances. They frequently occur simultaneously at remote places, but nearly in straight lines, like a string of beads stretched across the land. In all climates local circumstances appear to affect the forma- tion of bail : thus, it occurs — at least in Europe and America — more frequently in countries at a little distance from mountains than in those close to them. But, whereas, in temperate climates it rarely falls among the mountains, the case is otherwise in India. Dr. Buist compiled a table of localities in which the hailstorms observed during seventy years had fallen, from which table it appears that most of them occur in the delta of the Gan- ges down to the sea — a plain, the humid warm atmosphere of which contrasts strikingly with the pure, crisp, vapourless air of the mountains; but hail is nearly unknown in corresponding latitudes and heights on the Malabar coast, although appearing in abundance to the north-west along the shores of Cutch and Scinde, and to the eastward (as at Sattara), and over the Deccan, at heights of fifteen hundred feet above the sea.* The case of the * The quantity of rain which falls on the delta of the Ganges amounts to hardly one-third of that which descends on the low country of Arraean, for the moisture is discharged on a tract of comparatively small extent, when (as in this case) the winds blow on a. coast-line at a right angle, and are arrested by high and precipitous moun- tain masses. On the coast of Malabar the phenomena are remarkable on the setting in of the south-west monsoon. In February, the low country from the sea to the base of the Ghaut mountains becomes very hot, and the air becomes saturated with vapours. These, during March and April, in which months the heat increases, remain suspended in the air, sometimes rising to the altitude of the mountain-range, where they HAILSTORMS AND THEIR PHENOMENA. 287 valley of the Ganges seems anomalous, for elsewhere hail is rare in the tropical plains, and often altogether unknown, although common at heights exceeding seventeen hundred feet above them. According to the above-mentioned report on Indian hailstorms, the largest number occur in the month of April, and the next largest number in March, which in British India is also one of the driest months. In the coldest months hail is very seldom seen. In the interior of Europe, too, one-half the hailstorms occur in sum- mer, and where the period of the day has been recorded it is found to have been generally during the hours of greatest heat. It appears that in the climate of Britain hailstorms usually occur about the hours when the daily temperature is highest. Hailstones sometimes fall with a velocity which Professor Les- lie computes at seventy feet in a second, or fifty miles an hour. From their destructive power, and the depth to which they have been known to penetrate the earth, we may infer their impetus as well as weight. To the instances already mentioned of the de- structive force of hailstones may be added the curious fact that the hailstones are so violent on the elevated plateau called the Grand Coteau de Missouri, that the stones have been known to penetrate the buffalo-skin tents of the Indians who hunt on that territory. The prairies sometimes retain for many weeks the marks of the occurrence of the hailstorms which during the summer months are not unfrequent in Rupert's Land.* Hail often precedes heavy rain-showers: it seldom follows them. The large drops of rain which often precede a thunderstorm are supposed to be hail which has become melted in its passage through a lower stratum of warm air. To the investigator of hailstorms hardly any of their phenomena are more interesting than those which seem connected with the action of electricity. Hailstorms, indeed, are always accompanied by electrical action; thunder is frequently heard, and the elec- trometer manifests rapid changes in electric intensity. Very often a hailstorm is preceded by a rustling noise in the air, but in become checked by the cold, and then, descending, are rarefied before reaching the earth. The violent winds, attended by thunder, which accompany the setting in of the monsoon, condense these vapours into rain, but for the first two months they remain suspended in the heated air, as above described. * Hind's Narr. of Canadian Expl. Exped., ii. 363. 288 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. the tropical hailstorms this manifestation of electric disturbance is greatly augmented. These symptoms of an approaching hail- storm will remind the reader of the fine passage in Virgil : Continuo ventis surgcntibus, aut freta ponti Incipiunt agitata tumescere, et aridas altis Montibus audiri fragor ; aut resonantia longe Litora misceri, et nemorum increbrescere murmur* Thus, in the hailstorm of the 11th May 1855, in the Lower Himalaya, an eye-witness, stated to be a person of intelligence and information, says it was heralded by a noise as if thousands of bags of walnuts were being emptied in the air. There cannot be any doubt that electricity, quite as much as cold, is an active agent in hailstorms. The clouds from which hail falls are often extremely dense : they generally exhibit a sort of bronze colour, and the edges are irregular. In the memorable " Whit- Monday storm" of (28th May) 1860, that swept over Yorkshire, a re- markable hissing sound is stated by an observer at Pickering to have accompanied the large dense cloud that gathered in the north-west, and moved before the furious gale. From the following passage in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura,f it would seem that the poet, like Pliny ,J had imagined that the clouds could contain and support the hailstones, or frozen vapour : Principio, tonitru quatiuntur cajrula cceli, Propteria quia concurrunt sublime volantes iEtlieriae nubes contra pugnantibus ventis : Nee fit enini sonitus coeli de parte serena, Verum ubicunque magis denso sunt agmine nubes, Tam magis hinc magno fremitus fit murmure saepe. * Georg., i. line 355 seqq. t Lib. vi. 120 seqq. J Historia Naturalis, ii. 43. Pliny states the drink from melted hail to be most insalubrious. " Pestilentissimum potum en grandinibus," for which he gives the strange reason that all the softer lighter elements of the frozen liquid have been eliminated by congelation ! It is curious and worthy of remark, that a correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1764, in describing the sheep and sheep-walks of Spain, says the shep- herd takes especial care never to let the sheep approach a rivulet or pond after a shower of hail, believing that if they should drink hail-water the whole tribe would become unhealthy, fast pine away, and die, as had often happened ! Hail-water, he adds, is deemed so pernicious to men in this climate, that the people of Molina will not drink the river-water after a violent shower of hail : however muddy after rain, they drink it without fear. HAILSTORMS AND THEIR PHENOMENA. 289 Praeterea, neque tam condenso corpore nubes Esse queunt, quam sunt lapides ac tigna : neque autein Tam tenues, quam sunt nebulas, fumique volantes : Nam cadere aut bruto deberent pondere pressse, Ut lapides ; aut, ut fumus, constare nequirent, Nee cohibere niveis gelidas, et grandinis imbreis.* It is surprising that fleecy masses of coherent mists could have been supposed capable of sustaining congealed bodies of such density and gravity, and quite inconceivable that solid aggrega- tions of ice, or of hailstones of even the moderate size which we are accustomed to see, could be developed in the clouds from which they fall, or sustained in the form of clouds at all. The condensation of the crystalline particles of floating vapours which ensues upon electrical action, must be followed by pre- cipitation. That hailstones are drops of rain frozen during their descent through the air can hardly be doubted. If the air is very cold throughout the greater part of the stratum through which hail falls, the hailstone is probably increased in size during its descent; and there seems little reason to doubt that a progressive concretion takes place, the result of a gradual congealing, and that this process is entirely performed between the region of clouds and the earth. The fact that the hailstones and drops of rain that fall on high mountains are smaller than those that fall on the plains seems to strengthen this view. The rarer phenomenon of the fall of masses of ice appears to * Thus rendered into English by Dr. Busby : When lofty clouds, by adverse winds impelled, Meet, strike, and furiously dispute the field; Spread thick around their louring, shaggy forms, And fly, disordered, on the wings of storms: Then Heaven's blue arch tremendous thunder shakes, And earth, affrighted, to her centre quakes. No thunders roll through clear and smiling skies, From congregated clouds alone they rise, And, as those blend and blacken, fiercer lightning flies. Of wood's nor marble's texture clouds consist, Nor are so rare as fleeting smoke or mist, Or to the ground, like stones, they quick would fall, Or fly, dispersed, like melting vapours all; Aloft no chilling mass of snow would keep, Nor magazines of hail within their frame would sleep. 2f)0 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. have engaged the attention of Descartes, who thought that the aqueous clouds might sometimes fall in masses or streams of water, and that these might become frozen in their descent. But whether the drops of rain or aqueous particles congeal in hailstones or become aggregated in the more singular masses and blocks already described, the phenomenon can only be attributed to instantaneous and intense cold in upper strata of the atmosphere; and to what extent atmospheric electricity affects these extraordinary opera- tions of nature cannot be satisfactorily ascertained in the present state of our knowledge. An hypothesis to explain the formation of hail and rain was submitted by Mr. Howell to the British Association in 1847, and appears to be as follows: — Electricity having no weight, and diffusing itself equally on the surface of bodies, the minute particles of water, even in their most condensed state, are en- veloped, as it were, in the natural coating of electricity, and occupy, together with that envelope, nearly the space of an equal weight of air. They are thus rendered buoyant; but, when by heat their specific gravity is lessened, and their capacity for elec- tricity enlarged by their superficial extension, they rise in the atmosphere. When they become condensed, the electricity being in excess escapes to the earth; but, where the particles are above the earth's electrical action, they mutually attract and form clouds, which, under certain circumstances, condense in rain, which becomes frozen, and falls as hail if it passes through a colder stratum of air.* Beccaria found that the density of the spherules of hail decreases as the parts recede from the centre; and he therefore supposes that the electrical action — to which, by the way, he also attributes the formation of hail — is more intense in the regions in which the concretion of the aqueous particles into ice begins. Volta's theory, as modified by M. Peltier, is as follows : — When two clouds in opposite electrical states are placed one above the other the mutual attraction is considerable; the strata approach without any signal electric discharge, but the one acts on the * By this theory, the fall in very short times of extraordinary depths of rain is sought to be explained, and the occurrence of irregular winds is attributed to the partial vacuum thus occasioned. HAILSTORMS AND THEIR PHENOMENA. 291 other by induction, and the electricities are exchanged. This, however, does not happen without vaporising the water contained in the clouds, and hence the temperature is immediately lowered. If the temperature of the one stratum be near zero, the portions not vaporised must be congealed, and they are transformed into flakes of snow, which become quickly surrounded by ice, and fall as hail. That difficult problem in meteorology — the electric formation of hail in summer — receives some illustration from the facts nar- rated in the following description of a storm which visited Wake- field on the 7th May 1862:— " The day has been excessively hot for this locality, and the air nearly saturated with moisture: hardly any wind, and the little there was veering about to nearly all points of the compass. Shortly after four o'clock dense banks of black clouds in the south-west betokened an approaching storm, and by 6.30 the storm-clouds so obscured the town that lights were required to enable persons to read or write. A strong wind suddenly sprang up, and at 6.41 a very heavy fall of hail and rain descended. The rain was continuous throughout the storm, but the hail fell in pulses with the increase of the wind. The hailstones, till 6.51, were of transparent ice with an opaque nucleus ; their form being that of segments of spheres. During this interval of time I saw no other form, nor were any of the hailstones without the opaque nucleus. The flashes of lightning coincided with the pulses of wind and hail. A short lull followed, during which no hail fell; but at 6.52 fresh hail descended. This coincided in time with the lightning and wind, as the former did, but the hailstones were of all kinds of irregular figures, and all opaque. They resembled lumps of frosted silver. The rain and hail ceased here at 6.58, but the lightning and thunder continued for about a quarter of an hour longer, and while I write a fresh wind from the south- west is blowing. The hail and cold rain beat against my study- window, and so chilled the glass that it became covered with moisture on the inside, deposited from the air of the room/' Upon the whole, it appears that the phenomena of hailstorms are closely connected with electric agency, if they are not in all cases due to it. IMPRESSIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION. [Bentley's Miscellany, Aug. 1862.] As if to show the Commissioners 5 lofty disregard for the aesthetic sympathies of our foreign visitors and for the architec- tural honour of our country, Captain Fowke's great building for the " World's Fair " resembles on the outside only an overgrown railway terminus; and to make it the more unlike anything that has ever been constructed, two gigantic glass domes, each as high and broad as the dome of St. Peter's, "shine afar;" but they have no relation to the character of the building, nor are they in harmony with it, and they only proclaim that the contriver of this enormous structure has, like Martin in painting, aimed at the production of effect by magnitude, and has resolved to show how greatly he at all events is above architecture and the laws of composition. But the interior presents a scene which affords to the eye an unexpected pleasure, yet one which is due more to the harmonious colouring of the structure than to any beauty of form or pro- portion that it can boast, for the plan and materials of the building, and the opaque roof and want of picturesque character in the long monotonous nave (as it is called), give irredeemable heavi- ness to the interior. The popular structure at Sydenham is a palace of grace and beauty compared with the Exhibition build- ing; and the visitor who enters here should abandon his remem- brances of the memorable structure that rose in 1851 in Hyde Park; of its sunny, spacious interior, the airy lucidity of the crystal vault that spanned it, "the bright hues of heaven" that fell upon its well-grouped forms of grace and beauty; the trees, the flowers, the fountains, the statues, and the rainbow-tints, that IMPRESSIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION. 293 gave such variety and animation to its bright vistas and its long arcades. During the month of May, at all events, and some part of June, the visitor also missed the music that used to float so pleasantly through the Hyde Park building; but there has been subsequently a too liberal supply, especially from the great organs. The view from the raised platforms under the eastern and the western dome, though gaudy and bewildering, is striking, and those graceful objects the majolica fountain and the noble choir screen for Hereford Cathedral seem to stand there as conspicuous indications that decorative art has found high place in the indus- trial display. But the "trophies" with which "blatant ad- vertisers " have been allowed to fill the nave, although they now occupy less obstructive positions than at first, do not contribute to the picturesque character of the scene; and the visitor only too soon discovers that the Exhibition is for the most part composed of objects brought together more for business purposes than for the illustration of progress in the industrial arts. Still, one cannot attentively survey its multitudinous contents without acknow- ledging that a very wonderful, if not unrivalled, collection of beautiful, costly, artistic, and instructive objects has been here brought together. All countries of the globe seem to have sent tribute to Great Britain; and things upon the earth, things under the earth, productions of nature and achievements of human intellect, are here contributed, to help on our knowledge of the world and its inhabitants. But the things really worthy of at- tention, and illustrative of the progress of nations in art and manufacture, are to be sought out amidst the acres of egregious shop-fronts, Lowther-arcade stalls, black bottles, and wax-candles, which are seen in every direction, and display only the advertising faculties of enterprising tradesmen. But when the productions of Great Britain are compared with those of foreign countries in arts and manufactures, the English- man may look with pride on the results of the Exhibition, for his own country not only still holds her superiority in manufactures and in those applications of science which contribute to material prosperity and power, but has no reason to fear the competition of foreign artists even in artistic productions. Thus, even in the French display of ceramic works, there is nothing equal to the 294 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. best of tlic English porcelain In this beautiful branch of art- manufacture, the most costly, ornate, and artistic works exhibit a wonderful finish and refinement, an admirable delicacy in colouring and grace in outline. Perhaps among all the beautiful porcelain shown by English manufacturers none better exhibits the perfection they have attained than the group of jewelled and Limoges ware in Copeland's stall, or (to instance a different branch of the art) the dessert service with landscape subjects from Turner's views of rivers in France. The imitations of old Limoges and of Sevres ware now displayed are marvellous. In other kinds of earthenware an equally creditable display is made in Minton's court. His works in majolica, and Wedgwood's majolica, are admirable naturalisations of an exotic style. But, although the superiority of English manufacturers is not more conspicuous in any department of art-manufacture than it is in porcelain, the Saxon china from Dresden seems the very perfec- tion of its style, and is especially commendable for its subdued and delicate tints and general good taste. A majolica vase and candelabra in porcelain may be particularly mentioned. There is also a small but very remarkable collection of porcelain from Copenhagen: the subjects and design are for the most part classical, but buildings and landscape scenery are also represented. The KomanofF set and other groups in porcelain are sent from Kussia: Berlin, Austria, and Hungary likewise contribute pro- ductions in earthenware. It is not only in this branch of art-manufacture that British proficiency in the application of correct principles of design and ornamentation is shown : a great improvement on the produc- tions of former years is apparent in metal-work, in carving, in furniture, and in woven fabrics. But we see few departments in which the French applications of design to art-manufacture have kept pace with their progress in England. There are indications, however, that the French exhibitors more correctly appreciated the true purpose of the "World's Fair" than many of the British exhibitors appear to have done, for, instead of admitting everything sent in, and turning the Exhibition into a collection of shop-windows, the best articles in each class would seem to have been selected. IMPRESSIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION 295 Next to the matchless collection of pictures — the chief glory of the Exhibition — the display of jewelry and plate is perhaps its most attractive feature; and in. this department purity of design and true artistic character are for the most part as remarkable as the splendour and intrinsic value of the objects displayed. One of the finest collections is the display of rare corals in Phillips's case, where corals of every tint have been brought together. Here, too, are reproductions of Egyptian, Etruscan, and Greek jewelry, which rival M. Castellani's famous specimens. The enor- mous value of the diamonds, rubies, and pearls exhibited in the cases of some of the great jewellers may well astonish foreigners. In Hancock's display there is a diamond necklace the price of which is 85,000 guineas, and near it are the Devonshire gems, as valuable perhaps as the Koh-i-noor itself. Even this large diamond in its newly-acquired splendour is less attractive than the graceful and magnificent ornaments that sparkle in its vicinity.* In the French jewelry there is much that is spirited and striking in design and fanciful in form, but it has almost a distinct nation- ality; and, excepting the more costly and artistic specimens of the traditional taste of French jewellers, it seems to place what is only showy and glittering in unfavourable contrast with the splendour and intrinsic value of the best part of the English display. There is too much of the Palais Royal, and (what is worse) too much in the style of the false and despicable produc- * The diamond in itself is without a history; it is never old in the common decay of ordinary matter; its lustre represents an eternal youth without one reminiscence of the past — a perpetual newness, though it has been in wear for hundreds of years. There is no possibility of affirming — the past is wholly lost in the refracted light of the present. It is certainly true that there are some few stones which possess a history, but the interest here is no higher than the interest which is attached to the lowest order of historic value — mere relic interest. In this matter the poor onyx stone holds its own triumphantly against the diamond; it is elevated to such a value by the hand of man that it has been deemed worthy of the choicest setting — a setting in which diamonds are only used as auxiliaries to its beauty — its beauty, the genius of fine workers in past times. When the dazzle of the diamonds has satisfied the eye, examine, at Hancock's stall, the Devonshire gems (cameos and intaglios) which were mounted for the late Lady Granville to wear at the coronation of the Emperor of Russia. Every stone enshrines some artistic creation, it tells some tale of the art and faith or incidents of classic times; perhaps perpetuating, as a reduced copy, some great work of sculpture long ago destroyed — appealing at once to the lover of art, the antiquary, and the his- torian by its intrinsic beauty and its high historic value. — Once a Week. X 296 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. tions in which, unfortunately, Birmingham has rivals. The jewelry of Marret, Beaugrand, and Mellerio, a coronet and jewelry exhibited by Rouvenat, the Swiss enamelled watches of Rossel, and Castcllani's selection of old jewels, are, however, most deserving of honourable mention. In precious metal-work, and particularly in plate, our artists and silversmiths have put forth their strength since the Exhibition in 1851, and have pro- duced works generally remarkable for grace of design and careful execution. Hunt and Roskell's display of English race-prizes, won since the first international display, is a unique and most remarkable series of costly and artistic works. Even to people who estimate gold and silver work only by size and weight, the silversmiths' work displayed in the present Exhibition must appear surpassingly magnificent; but it not only affords what must be to many of our foreign visitors a striking picture of our domestic luxury, it shows also a gratifying improvement in correct artistic taste as well as workmanship. The Kean testimonial, although one of the most ambitious, seems to us one of the least commend- able, of the works displayed in this department; and the great silver table and candelabra, the wedding presents of the Berlin silversmiths to the Prince and Princess Royal of Prussia, are, we must own, disappointing. But the enamelled metal- work dis- played is generally of the highest character. Elkington's table- service, enamelled with arabesque patterns, are admirable works, as are a vase and candelabra at the same stall; and Her Majesty has specially lent some examples of their gold and silver work. Foreign countries also contribute some curious enamelled metal- work: ex. r/r. there are vases and ewers from Russia; and Denmark, whose peat-mosses seem so rich in the golden treasure of other days, sends in this department likewise some very notice- able work, particularly a gold horn inlaid, and a silver tazza. The Spanish damascened and Indian enamelled work repay inspection. There is also a display of church plate, which exhibits very high artistic merit; and with the ecclesiastical gold and silver work of Hardman and Keith we are enabled to compare foreign produc- tions, for there is a Russian gold-enamelled altar-service, a Belgian shrine by Chaudronnier, and an enamelled shrine by Rudolphi, besides ecclesiastical candelabra, and episcopal staves enamelled IMPRESSIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION. 297 by Troullier. These we fear will have still less honour from the visitor who has fresh in his remembrance Wykeham's pastoral staff from New College, Oxford, and Fox's pastoral staff, and the other matchless specimens of mediaeval art which are to be seen in the adjacent collection of works on loan in the South Kensing- ton Museum. There is also a very fine display of ecclesiastical work in metals not precious, and foremost in merit as well as in size are Skidmore's magnificent choir screen and corona for Here- ford Cathedral — works worthy of the best period of decorative art in England. It is an instance of the abominable arrange- ments of the Exhibition that the display of church metal-work, instead of being grouped with the mediaeval court, is to be sought out in another part of the building, where it is eclipsed by a large display of Birmingham manufacture. Apropos to this mention of ecclesiastical art, we must acknow- ledge the highly interesting character of the mediaeval court undertaken by the Ecclesiological Society. It shows how suc- cessfully the revival of church architecture and the study of mediaeval art has carried some of our artists backward into the spirit and the forms of the middle ages. Amongst the beautiful sculpture for architectural decoration displayed in this court the recumbent effigy of Dr. Mill, the reredos for Waltham Abbey church, and Mr. Street's rich pulpit for Bournemouth, are par- ticularly noticeable. The applications of coloured marbles to architectural ornamentation are also very striking, and the carved oak slabs and pavement for Chichester cathedral are worthy of their destination; and we should rejoice to see the incised pave- ment for Lichfield brought into general use. Some remarkable furniture in antique style is also displayed in this court; particu- larly Gray and Davison's organ with Westlake's illuminated panels, and Seddon's library case for prints and maps, and library chair. It is to be regretted, however, that some furniture, need- lessly rude and ugly, should have been exhibited as mediaeval, as if rudeness and ugliness were characteristic of mediaeval art. The church furniture is really good, especially in altar embroideries and textile fabrics. The furniture courts contain some really noble works of art, especially in cabinets and sideboards, but, by allowing the British x 2 298 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. furniture court to be cut up by partitions, the officials have done their best to mar the effect of the finest collection of cabinet work that has ever been displayed. It is remarkable that, whereas in 185 1 British manufacturers exhibited little that was worthy of notice in this department, they now bring to the " World's Fair " many works exhibiting proficiency in the tasteful application of decora- tive art to furniture, and achieving beauty of form, fitness of ornament, and excellence in carving and execution. English ' DO makers in this department unquestionably take the chief honours, but foreign countries have sent very creditable and artistic works ; the Italian inlaid ivory cabinets, the ebony cabinets of Fournier and Fourdinois, Marchand's enamelled slate chimney-piece, the Russian pietradura cabinet and flower-stand, and the very beau- tiful and novel works in the onyx marble of Algeria, are all re- markable and meritorious. In the Austrian court very little of the furniture can be praised for design or taste, but the bronze- gilt fenders and great bronze-gilt chandelier from Vienna are fine and meritorious, and the ornamental wood-work in the form of jewel-cases and cabinets inlaid with malachite and coloured marbles exhibits a great advance. Porphyry vases, fine mosaics, and bronzes are the boast of the Russian collection ; and here, if we miss the unique yet tasteless works in malachite that drew so much attention in 1851, we have some new and interesting specimens of the little known Russian plumbago. But Russia shows no progress. For pure and uncoloured cut and engraved glass, nothing in the foreign division at all equals the productions of English manu- facturers, which, indeed, form a collection of objects as much to be admired and eoveted as any in the Exhibition. The cut table- glass shown by Pellatt, Dobson and Pearce, Powell, Phillips, and Copeland, exhibits what seems to be the very perfection of this fine branch of art manufacture; and the pure and brilliant ra- diance of these gems forms a remarkable contrast to the dazzling and many-hued ornamental glass of the Continent, Bohemia especially, and to the gold and white jewelled ware of Austria. The stained glass has been, for the most part, placed in such unsuitable situations, that it is perhaps hardly fair to judge of its merits; we will therefore, from this hasty glance at productions IMPRESSIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION 299 in the arts which decorate our homes, pass to the fabrics employed for dress. And first in elegance and costliness, if not in utility, comes the exquisite display of lace. The specimens which are shown (in the south gallery) by English and Irish manufacturers evince a won- derful advance since 185 1. France well maintains here its ancient eminence, and by its "point d'Alencon " rivals the most costly Brussels lace. Of the whole industrial display from Belgium, the Brussels lace in the present Exhibition may well constitute the chief glory, and in such works as the deep white flounce shown by Julie Everaert, Brussels point seems to have attained its per- fection. But such specimens as the Honiton lace dress exhibited by Howell and James, and the Irish lace by Forrest and Allen, show that our manufacturers have at least kept pace with their foreign rivals, pre-eminent as the latter still continue in regard to design. The British silk trade makes an admirable show, and likewise exhibits honourable progress. Of foreign collections of silks, the Austrian exhibition is, perhaps, the most successful in its class. The cotton fabrics from Ghent and Bruges, and the woollen cloths from Verviers, show that the countries from which England first derived her skilled workmen and these branches of manufac- ture can still hold their own. The cotton manufactures of Great Britain, however, make no remarkable display in the present Exhibition, for, while it presents everywhere successful applica- tions of mechanical and chemical science to the natural productions with which God has surrounded us, the "cotton interest" has done nothing in these ten years to secure sources of future cotton supply that shall be independent of the American Slave States and of American disruption. The Scotch and the Belfast damasks and the Norwich shawls exhibit creditable progress. In embroidery work, save as applied to altar frontals and other church furniture, Vienna appears to send the best specimens ; but Spain and Italy both contribute tissues and embroidery of considerable merit. For muslins worked in gold and silver we of course look to Turkey, and a very fine display of embroidered tissues the Turkish court contains. The gold embroidery from the Ionian Islands forms also a characteristic 300 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. and beautiful collection, and the contributions from India are in this department also of a most interesting kind. The collections from Japan present us with interesting specimens of its non-pro- gressive and grotesque civilisation — the more curious from con- tract with the advance of Western nations. We looked in vain for the waxed-paper great-coats at eighteenpence, which would surely have found a ready sale in this rainy summer ! The designs for carpets, so far as regards British manufacturers, have greatly improved in taste, and show that a carpet is now re- cognised as having a different purpose from a hanging or decora- tion for a wall. The French carpets, on the other hand, though they may have improved in texture, are stationary in design and objectionable in taste. But the International Exhibition is not merely devoted to the industrial arts, for sculpture, architecture, painting, and music are all represented. The picture-galleries contain, perhaps, the real glory of the whole display, and to the works in sculpture and painting we must briefly advert; but we must first halt on the threshold of the fine arts; and, looking back on the multifarious contributions of nations in industrial art, the impression which is, perhaps, uppermost in the mind of the visitor is, that the industry of all nations has remarkably developed since 1851. We have said nothing about the wondrous collection of machinery displayed, nor about the processes of manufacture which are illustrated in action in the "annexes" of this vast building, nor about the magnificent display made by the British Colonics, which is really one of the most impressive features of the "World's Fair" in 1862. Twenty acres are devoted to machinery, raw materials, and manufactures: the western "annexe," with its stupendous marine engines and its attractive miniature models, is, indeed, a wondrous world of brass and iron; but it needs more than an ordinary intelligence, and a doubling of the length of days, to appreciate the works displayed. It must suffice to say, that all these departments strengthen the conviction that the great show is altogether one which may fairly make an Englishman proud of his country. It is a suggestive fact, that, of the twenty-five thousand exhibitors of all nations, seven thousand receive medals, and five thousand receive certificates of honour — whatever the IMPRESSIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION. 301 worth, of such awards may be; and we believe the council of juries do no more than justice when they observe that the state of industry as displayed in the Exhibition evinces a healthy pro- gress throughout the world. It is a gratifying and hopeful sign, that, while we find new productions of nature sought for and rendered useful to man, and while the machinery employed to adapt them to his use has visibly improved, attention has been successfully given to the arts which gratify our taste and minister to our sense of beauty. And here let us say that the many tasteful works in painting, sculpture, and metal-work displayed not only in the mediaeval court, but throughout the Exhibition, encourage the hope that ere long the fine arts will be again employed, as they were in the middle ages, in the interior adornment of our buildings. We have already adverted to the mediarval court, the protege of the Eccle- siological Society ; certainly the recent endeavours of that associa- tion to show how painting, sculpture, and metal-work may be used in architectural decoration, receive in the present Exhibition a very hopeful response. The court devoted to those objects in 1851 was an isolated, and as it were exotic, production; but now it has in a manner spread itself over most parts of the building, and it seems to show that the movement which has done so much for architecture is extending to the other decorative arts of the middle ages. At all events, it is a great fact that architecture and painting, to which no place was appropriated in 1851, are in 1862 not only represented, but more attractive than the Indus- trial Show itself. It seems, indeed, as if a great art congress of nations had assem- bled in these spacious halls, and brought the best of their works to show the state of art in their respective countries, and, as it were, give back the light that genius has thrown on other lands. Perhaps there is nothing more striking and suggestive than the vividness with which the decay of old Rome is brought by the photographs of Eoman ruins exhibited in the Roman court into contrast with the vitality of her arts, as shown in the statues and the mosaics and other fine-art collections from Italy, the work of living artists. Sculpture can hardly be said to be adequately represented in 302 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. the present Exhibition. Perhaps it was foreseen that the uncul- tured visitors from the country, and " the million " whose shil- lings seem to have been the especial care of the commissioners, would only yawn before the cold, inanimate representatives of Greek and Roman mythology — those modern imitations of the antique which are but the spectres of a " dead yet sceptred " past. Much of the sculpture in the Exhibition is good, but it affords very tew works of commanding excellence. There are many failures, which we cannot regret, in the false conventional school of alle- gory and in monumental sculpture; there are some fine and care- ful works in imaginative or ideal art; and, to go to actual life, there are some honourable successes in the art of portraiture in marble. The piece of sculpture which is, perhaps, the most observed in the Exhibition is Gibson's tinted " Venus;" but the effect of the head and hair is hardly such as to convert observers to the expediency of so colouring statues; it is, however, a graceful and piquant representation of the female form, though expres- sionless and wanting in vitality. We do not know that Wyatt's " Girl Bathing " is not a more charming work. Of the male figure in repose, a more beautiful specimen is not exhibited than the "Mercury" of Thorwaldsen. Of draped statues, Story's figures in the Eoman court are much to be commended : perhaps the most dignified of these works are the " Sibyl " and " Cleo- patra." Cavelier's " Cornelia," too, is a fine piece of statuary. Behncs's " Cupid"" (in the English picture gallery) is a natural, poetical, and beautifully executed work, and Woolner's "Con- stance and Arthur " (near to it) is full of imaginative power, and admirable for its delicacy and truth. In portrait sculpture, we see no works that more finely render the expression and character of the originals than the bust of "Tennyson" by the same artist, and Behnes's " Lyndhurst " and " Clarkson." The intelligent and harmonious arrangement of the treasures displayed in the charming picture-galleries — the only portions of this vast Exhibition that one can visit with unalloyed satisfaction and delight — cannot be too highly praised. The British gallery is the more attractive, as it is really the only department that is free from the commercial spirit which has been the curse of this Exhibition; yet art, separated from manufactures, was IMPRESSIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION. 303 hardly within its scope. The Exhibition comprises in all about seven thousand pictures, sculptures, drawings, and engravings, no fewer than four thousand one hundred of which belong to the English division. The British pictures comprise — it is now hardly necessary to say — only selected works of the last hundred years, and there is scarcely a bad picture in the whole collection. Here it is not only living artists whose works compete with those of foreign schools, but celebrated pictures by all the great artists who have made the British school of painting what it is, and who have flourished within the last hundred years, have been brought together in this unrivalled collection. It has no relation to the great industrial display below and around — the Wide hall, with earth's inventions stored, Where science, art, and labour have outpoured Their myriad horns of plenty at our feet — it asks no awards of juries; and it seems to place the spectator in a purer air and a region more serene. It must gratify thousands of visitors to behold face to face pictures already familiarised to them by engravings, pictures that have acquired a place in his- tory, and are celebrated gems of collections which are not easily accessible by the public. Not to mention the works of Hogarth, the great English humourist oa canvas, there are the most famous of Gainsborough's works, most of Reynolds's celebrated portraits, and such a collection as the world has never seen of the best works of more recent and living artists, including Landseer's glorious pictures of deer and wild Highland hill-sides, and speci- mens of the best English landscape painters; but few historical subjects compared with the number in the foreign galleries. Nor are many portraits exhibited in the British division; Grant's "Lord Clyde," "Mrs. Markham " by the same artist, and Watts's " Tennyson," are perhaps the most noticeable. The foreign schools are for the most part well represented, and there are even Norwegian and Swedish pictures so masterly and true that they awaken surprise as well as pleasure. There are enough pic- tures in each national school to afford an instructive study of foreign art, and to enable an English student to compare foreign schools with his own. As regards the French division, the landscape painters appear to us to suffer by comparison with those 304 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. of our own country ; but in the drawing of the human form it must be confessed that the artists of the French, Belgian, and German schools excel. In pictures taken from rustic life, and which invest "common things" with an eloquent poetry, the artists of France likewise show conspicuous merit. The collection of works brought together in the French gallery is altogether one which must impress beholders with the genius, the learning, and the skill of her living artists. But the galleries of the Louvre and the Luxembourg must contribute their best works of modern painters before the national school can be as fairly represented as the British. The chief masters in France are, indeed, very inadequately represented, or wholly absent. Of all the pleasing portraits that arc in the foreign schools, Schrotsberg's " Empress of Austria" is the most charming. It would be impossible, however, to mention particularly the works of art best worthy of attention in these delightful galleries without devoting a separate essay to the subject. The Exhibition shows upon the whole that, in the decade, arts and manufactures have made a great advance; but our coun- trymen must not rest complacently satisfied with the honours they have taken. The Englishman has only to look to his public edifices, his national " monuments," and the inferiority of his countrymen to their continental rivals as regards design, to see how much remains to be done, and how needful it is to advance the education of the people in the principles of art. One would have thought a Department which professes to advance them, would have taken care that the Exhibition building itself should emphatically mark the progress of constructive art and taste in England. ART TREASURES AT SOUTH KENSINGTON. [Bentley's Miscellany, Oct. 1862.] The objects of art and virtu lent for exhibition, and now col- lected in the new court of the South Kensington Museum, instructively display the skilful handiwork of former ages side by side with the artistic achievements of modern days shown in the International Exhibition. Some of the choicest treasures of private and public collections have been here brought together, and the intention of " the Science and Art Department" in forming such a collection, and opening it during the continuance of the International Exhibition, has probably been to enable comparison to be made, in certain definite lines, between the art of former days and the modern objects of artistic manufacture accumulated in the World's Fair — perhaps also to teach exhibitors modesty, and to admonish all modern aspirants by bidding them look at the work of the great artists of bygone times. So valuable an exhibition, however, deserves a London season to itself, and justice is not done to it in adding such a display to the multitudinous attractions and distractions of the summer of 1862; its unobtrusive worth is, indeed, likely to be overshadowed by its imposing and all-absorbing neighbour, and to be recognised only by the connoisseur. Within its special limits the collection is the most important that has ever been brought together, and, unlike the bewildering contents of the International Exhibition, it presents only what is of high artistic as well as money value. It is really a national display, and one which England alone could furnish. The richest productions of art that any country has afforded are well known to have been attracted to these realms ; and this magnificent show 306 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. gives a good idea of the richness of our private collections. It affords the visitor the rare privilege of seeing the choicest orna- ments of many a collection not easily accessible by the public, and of comparing productions of the same kind borrowed from dif- ferent depositories and here ranged side by side. The dingy galleries of the South Kensington Museum through which it is approached have an educational character which does not prepare one for the holiday splendour of this exhibition: they are filled by the models which are destined by schools of design to educate art students and guide the artistic workmen of the future ; but the treasures of the new hall appeal to the connoisseur in objects of luxury and to the educated student of mediaeval art. The exhibition is altogether one that takes the visitor by surprise, and not the less for being collected in a great hall now opened for the first time, and which, although it is the work of the indefatigable Captain Fowke, has considerable pretensions to architectural merit. It forms the only finished part of a new building destined for a permanent art-gallery — a building of brick walls, ornamented by arches, pilasters, and bays, and roofed with glass and iron, like the new museum at Oxford. The lighting and the ventilation seem to be all that can be desired, DO ' and the collections may be viewed with ease as well as profit. Here, too, as in the picture-galleries of the adjacent International Exhibition, the commercial element has not intruded: everything is to be seen, and nothing to be sold. The only drawback was the want of a catalogue (the instalments first published embracing only part of the twenty-three classes of objects displayed); and people naturally thought that a little of the energy which certain busybodies of "the Department" have been discreditably ex- pending as officers of the Society of Arts on officious interference in the Prince Consort's Memorial, might have been much better employed in providing a catalogue of the treasures so liberally confided to their care. Nearly all the considerable collections in England have con- tributed to this exhibition, but the objects collected are less remarkable for number than value. From her Majesty to the City companies, from colleges to municipal corporations, most liberal contributions have been obtained. We have the rarest ART TREASURES AT SOUTH KENSINGTON. 307 porcelain, and the finest work of the best periods of English art in the precious metals; articles of decorative plate that might have graced the banquets of the Medici, and works of ecclesiastical art from the rudest Christian enamels to the most elaborate orna- ments of the time of the Plantagenets ; wonderful carvings in ivory, ranging from the consular diptychs to the finest works of the fifteenth century; jewels, antique gems, and work of the lapidary, rich cabinets, rare glass, art-bronzes, book-covers, em- broidery, illuminated manuscripts, and rare historical miniatures. We have even some specimens of the art of pre-historic times — of Egyptian as well as of Greek and Roman art — which, disentombed from the keeping of the dead, here again glitter before the eyes of the living : thus, Signor Castellani sent a set of golden orna- ments brought from an Alexandrian tomb of the time of the Ptolemies, and the Royal Irish Academy contributes golden torques and brooches worn by the primitive Celts of Ireland, and some of those remarkable monuments of ancient Irish art, the shrines overlaid with interlaced lacertine patterns in metal-work, which were fabricated for her early bishops. A chronological or a classified arrangement of these various objects, though much to be desired, has not been attempted, and was, perhaps, impracticable; besides, some of the exhibitors pre- ferred to keep their collections separate. All the objects shown are tastefully arranged in glass cases. The collection does not embrace the Fine Art of Painting, and in this respect is unlike that which made the memorable exhibi- tion at Manchester a complete epitome of art. But, except as to painting, the visitor seems to have before him at one view, in this magnificent collection at South Kensington, the thoughts and works of the artists of sixteen centuries, and to be enabled to look back upon all Mediseval Art; he may see behind it in a remoter distance some of the waifs and strays of classic ages left by the stream of Time — sculpture from the old city of the Caesars, and ivory carvings contemporary with the empire of the East; may look upon objects which reflected the dawn of Christian art, and upon treasures of its culminating glory; may trace its progress and decline, and may see what the Romantic and the Renaissance schools could do to supply its place. How striking is the con- 308 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. trast, when we pass from the whirl of revolving wheels, the ponderous masses of metal set in motion by steam, and all the marvellous automata of engineering skill that are displayed in the machinery pandemonium of the adjacent exhibition, to see in this more tranquil atmosphere how the artist's mind and the labour of a life can spiritualise material, can transform iron into delicate filigree more precious than gold, give priceless value to fragile pottery, and make a little slab of carved ivory more valuable than many tons of metal. We wish more specimens of illuminated manuscripts could have been collected, for it is very desirable to bring together materials for illustrating that branch of native pictorial art — an art which was as much naturalised in England as architecture, and for which we must look to manuscripts alone. Like our religion and ear- liest learning, it seems to have been originally derived by Great Britain from Ireland. In mediaeval illuminations we often see portrayed the habits and characteristic aspects of the age; they often exhibit much feeling for the higher departments of pictorial art; are frequently marked by the humour of some Hogarth of the cloister, and in their delineation of popular occupations exhibit the English as the cheerful and poetic people indicated by Shak- speare. So much for the general aspects of the exhibition. A separate essay would be necessary in order to do justice to any one of the classes of objects it contains, but we will nevertheless throw toge- ther some brief remarks on its more conspicuous features. The ivory carvings form a very fine display of objects at once remarkable for antiquity, tasteful design, and delicate workman- ship. The collection includes specimens of various styles and ages: there are carvings of the time of Justinian, and carvings of the time of Charlemagne, and a fine series of devotional tablets in ivory of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, chiefly from the collection lent by Mr. Webb. Of that different but very ancient and remarkable class of objects, the carved tenure and other horns in ivory, Lord Northampton contributes a well-known specimen — the horn of the clan Clephane, probably a Carlovin- gian work of the ninth century. Here, too, are the chessmen carved in walrus tusk which were discovered in 1831 in the Isle ART TREASURES AT SOUTH KENSINGTON. 309 of Lewis in the Hebrides, Scandinavian works probably of the twelfth century, which have formed the subject of a learned dis- sertation by Sir Frederic Madden. Anions; the carvings in ivory, the head of a pastoral staff or crosier of rich fourteenth- century work, the property of Mr. Howard of Corby, deserves particular notice. " The Grace-Cup " of St. Thomas of Canter- bury is, as an historical relic, one of the most celebrated and inte- resting objects in the whole collection of ivory cups and tankards. It was left by Sir Edward Howard, the high admiral and stan- dard-bearer of Henry VIII., to Katharine of Aragon, and was for some time in the Arundel collection, whence it came to Bernard Edward, Duke of Norfolk, by whom it was given to the father of the present Mr. Howard of Corby, its worthy possessor. It is a plain ivory cup mounted in gold, and is conjectured to have been presented to the Archbishop by Eleanor of Aquitaine, consort of Henry II., but a more modern aspect has been given to it by the jewelled ornamentation of its mounting and cover, which are of cinque-cento style. A fine basin, elaborately carved with hunting subjects, a work of German seventeenth-century art, is sent by Mr. Beresford Hope, and Baron Rothschild's collection contains some splendid ivory cups and tankards of most exquisite workmanship. In metal-work, as well secular as for ecclesiastical use, the show is especially rich. The colleges of the universities have sent maces, and pastoral staves, and crosiers (the matchless enameled pastoral staff of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, is sent by New College, and the staff of Bishop Fox by Corpus College); and there are such salt-cellars, and salvers, and grace-cups, and goblets, as only the colleges of our universities can boast. City companies and various municipal corporations have likewise sent fine specimens of goldsmiths' work : if they are generally of less antiquity, and have less illustrious associations than the college plate, many of the contributions are remarkably fine and interest- ing. In the gold and silver plate, the capacious grace-cups, and the maces and municipal " regalia" preserved by the City com- panies, and shown in this unrivalled exhibition, we behold a striking proof of the vitality amongst us of old-world ways and objects. Not only colleges of learning, but municipal corpora- 310 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. tions, shorn as they have been of their splendour, and identi- fied as they are with the trading classes, show how strongly rooted amongst Englishmen is the love of tradition, and the good habit of looking to former ages. Indeed, this exhibition, as a whole, affords another and a noble proof of the attachment to the Past which survives in England. When one thinks of the ravages of " reforming " visitors and the destructive storms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one must look with grateful wonder on the quantity and antiquity of the beautiful church and college plate that has come down to our more happy days. Several noblemen and private collectors have lent fine works of mediaeval goldsmiths and costly productions of a more modern school. Conspicuous amongst the latter, for imposing weight of precious metal though not for any beauty of design, are some " centre-pieces," and the ponderous wine-coolers belonging to the Duke of Rutland and Earl Spencer. Besides these, there are the golden ice-pails given by Queen Anne to the Duke of Marl- borough, the cost of which, if it had been accumulated at com- pound interest, would now, it is said, represent a fortune of between two and three millions. What western nation but the English could let such treasure remain unproductive in articles of mere luxury ? We must not omit to mention, amongst the won- drous collection of metal-work, the famous Cellini shield, contri- buted by her Majesty, and that wonderful steel chair (sent by Lord Folkestone) which was executed in 1577, and presented by the city of Augsburg to Rudolph II., which has been described as a museum of delicately-modelled and gracefully -arranged figures, the subject being no less ambitious than an allegory of the history of the world. The rare jewelry and personal ornaments, intaglios, cut crystals, cameos, and engraved gems, form a very interesting feature of the exhibition: the objects displayed are, however, such that the historic or sentimental interest in most instances sur- passes the artistic beauty; and it is well that, in an exhibition in which the Fine Art of Painting does not appeal to the feelings, the cold lustre and passionless dignity of the collection should be set- off by deriving historic interest from the associations connected with many of its contents. Thus, there is the rosary of em- ART TREASURES AT KENSINGTON. 311 bossed gold beads, formerly enamelled in blue, with pendent cru- cifix and drop-pearls, which, by the tradition of the Howard family, is the chain of beads worn by Mary Queen of Scots at her girdle on the morning of her death, and sent through Melville to the Earl or the Countess of Arundel as the last token of her affec- tion. It formed part of the collection of Thomas the famous Earl of Arundel, and came to Charles Duke of Norfolk, from whom it was acquired by the father of the present Mr. Howard of Corby, its owner. Many other personal relics might be mentioned — ex. gr. the pectoral cross of the Abbot of Colchester, one of the vic- tims of Henry VIII. Mr. Waterton sends his wonderful collec- tion of rings and gems, almost every one of which has some romantic or historical association with the fair, the noble, and the great of other days. Among the gems and historic jewels sent from Corby Castle is the signet-ring of Sir Edward. Howard the high admiral, bearing his initials and the blanch- lion of Mowbray engraved on an old Roman gem. The collection of personal ornaments belonging to the remote period of ancient Irish and of Anglo-Saxon art is very remarkable. The torques and other gold ornaments sent by the Royal Irish Academy and by Lord Londesborousdr form a most interesting collection. The last- named nobleman also contributes some ancient brooches of Celtic work ; and there are some rare jewelled and enamelled ornaments of the Anglo-Saxon period, chiefly from the Ashmolean Museum. The enamels collected in the exhibition display the art from the early Byzantine work to the exquisite grey enamels of Limoges. Among the vases and other objects in rock crystal, sardonyx, &c, one of the most noticeable is Mr. Beresford Hope's enamelled sardonyx vase, attributed to Benvenuto Cellini, and worthy of that artist for its delicacy of design and execution. But one of the most ancient, and in many respects most remarkable, objects in the whole exhibition is the glass cup or vase covered with figures — a work of the period of the Lower Empire. Except for its iridescent hue one could hardly believe the material to be glass. It is well known, however, that vessels of glass coloured to imitate precious stone, or of glass resembling rock crystal, and intended for cutting by the lathe, in the style of cameos, in relief, Y 'X r y which he refused, the ' prefecture ' which he exercised, the ' consulate for life * which he would not accept, the ' prefecture of morals,' and his title of ' Prince of the Senate,' all which are wanting in the Latin. The date also of his testa- ment is given. By means of these supplements I can add much more than I had dared to hope to the knowledge and true interpretation of this important epigraphic monu- ment. I am at this moment in negotiation for the purchase of the adjacent house, which contains the middle part of the inscription. That which Hamilton had partially pulled down only contains the end. The text which he gives begins Table 4 of the Latin. There are probably, therefore, two columns of Greek to find, in order to re- establish the text of this important inscription." CANTERBUEY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS, I. SAXON PERIOD. [Bentley's Miscellany, February 1861.] In Dr. Stanley's engaging narrative of the landing of Augustine — a narrative which has been justly said to be written in the spirit of a poet and with the accuracy of an historian — the reverend and learned writer points out the memories that are associated with the view beheld from the hill of St. Martin's little church, near Canterbury. It is justly described as a view the most inspiriting that can be found in the world; for from Canterbury, the first Christian city of England, from Kent, the first English Christian kingdom, has flowed the Christianity of our country; and from that little hill a power went forth which in the course of a few centuries adorned England with all the glorious monuments of art which piety reared for the future and for God. The landing of Augustine has, therefore, a continuing interest for England through every age; and, beginning with the story of that memorable event, and tracing thence the succession of the Archbishops of Canterbury, the learned Dean of Chichester has produced a work* of national as well as great historical intei*est, by connecting with the biography of each primate the ecclesias- tical and chief political events of his age. Dr. Hook thus presents the Church of England as a national institution, which, under its various phases, has existed from the time of Augustine, through whom is, of course, deduced that succession of the Christian ministry which connects the present Church of England, through the Gallican, with the primitive and apostolic Church of Christ. And, by giving not merely the episcopal acts but the lives of the * Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. By Walter Farquhar Hook, D.D. Dean of Chichester. Vol. I. — Anglo-Saxon Period. London: Richard Bentley 1860. Pp. 530. • CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 343 archbishops, the author has embraced a large region of literature and theology, and events of political and of private life — the latter often as characteristic of the times as of the mind of the individual prelate. Hardly any one of the lives contained in the first volume (which embraces the period — extending over about four hundred and seventy years — from the mission of Augustine to the close of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty) is without some memorable features of interest relating to the early days of the .English Church and English civilisation; and it would be difficult to point out a subject of ecclesiastical controversy, usage, or legislation, from the planting of the Church in England down to the time of the Conquest, that does not' receive illustration in Dr. Hook's pages. The state of the country and of the people, the progress of arts and employments, and of religion and learning, are illustrated in almost every chapter; and one cannot fail to recognise how truly in this labour of love, as in his long life of sacred duty, the learned author has himself worked in the spirit of his maxim, " that no man becomes great or really good who does not give his heart and mind to perform what his hand finds to do." His charitable judgment, his candour, and his fairness, are, moreover, not less conspicuous than his industry. As might have been expected from such an historian, the Dean of Chichester, in tracing the Church of England back to the Italian mission and the see founded by Ethelbert at Canter- bury, is not forgetful of the previous existence of the British Church, or of the earlier missionary enterprise of the Celtic Church among the pagans of the north of Britain. By whom the Church of Christ was first planted in these islands, by what missionaries the Celts, or pre-historic inhabitants, were originally converted, must probably remain for ever unknown. There is the authority of Tertullian for the simple statement that in the second century regions of Britain inaccessible to the Romans were subdued to Christ; and other authorities assert that this conquest was effected by Eastern missionaries either by direct ministrations or through the Church of Gaul. To the abundant zeal of Irish missionaries some years before the landing of Augustine, and no less than thirteen hundred years ago, the northern provinces of 2 A 344 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Britain, which became known as Scotland, were indebted for their conversion; and very remarkable it is to see, that, at a period little antecedent to that in which Gregory the Great sig- nalised at Rome his zeal in the cause of missions, Columba, without any communication from Koine, came from Ireland (crossing in a boat covered with the hides of oxen) ; and in the remote island of the Hebrides, which became famous as Icolmkill (Columba's Island of the Cells), surrounded himself with men of religious zeal and learning, who went forth to preach the gospel to the rude natives of Caledonia. The term "the Celtic Church" aptly enough distinguishes from the Italian mission established at Canterbury that branch of the Church of Christ which comprised the Irish or Scots, the Caledonians, the British, and the Welsh. The author rightly deduces from the history of the Celtic Church that it was eminently a missionary church, and his theory seems to be that the Italian mission became necessary from the unwil- lingness of the Saxons to be taught by the despised and persecuted Britons. Be this as it may, the British Christians seem to have regarded as hopeless the conversion of the pagan Saxons, their oppressors, the slaves of idolatrous superstitions and a terrific mythology. But the northern half of Britain owed its conversion to missionaries of the Celtic Church, and they, in the following century, passed through the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms now com- prised in the counties of Northumberland, Durham, and York. As far as regards the Mercian kingdom, it appears that the British Christians had fled to Wales and to Armorica before the coming of Augustine. His success in conversion was confined to Kent and Essex; but all the branches of the Church that were planted in England by the Celtic missionaries became ultimately absorbed in the Anglo-Saxon patriarchate of Canterbury, just as the Celtic and Teutonic races have blended in the English people. But among even the most hostile of the semi-barbarous tribes in the north and west of Europe, Rome was looked to as the representative of civilisation and excellence. Of Roman forms of government and Roman art some traces survived amongst them- selves. Various works that surrounded the Saxons in England reminded them of Roman grandeur. When Christianity began CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 345 its civilising work among the Anglo-Saxons, England was a thinly populated country, abounding in forests and fens, the resort of the bandit and the abode of the wolf; but towns, light- houses, roads, and bridges of Eoman workmanship remained to tell of the civilisers from Italy who had once held sway in Britain. * There was, however, a special preparation — a preparation which surely we may recognise as providential — for the reception of the Gospel in the kingdom of Kent, inasmuch as Ethelbert the king was not only a noble-hearted, liberal-minded, and intelligent man, but was married to a Christian princess — Bertha, daughter of Charibert, King of Paris, for whose enjoyment of the free exer- cise of her religion due stipulation had been made; and (as the learned historian of the archbishops remarks) " the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit," with which Bertha was adorned, must have predisposed the royal household to think favourably of her religion. Such was the preparation of the land when the sower came to sow his seed ; and it has been truly said that we may well be thankful not only that an Augustine converted, but that an Ethelbert reigned. In describing the circumstances which led to the mission of Augustine, well as they are known, Dr. Hook gives a new interest to them by the manner of the narration, and brings before the mind's eye every scene from the time when Gregory's missionary zeal was excited for the countrymen of the three Yorkshire lads whom he beheld in the slave-market of Rome, to the interview of Augustine at the head of his little band of monks and clergy- men, with Ethelbert, the royal " son of the ash-tree," seated amidst his soldiers and wise men under an ancient oak in the Isle of Thanet. When, after Ethelbert's friendly reception of the mis- sionaries, permission was given them to approach Canterbury, the Saxons gazed with admiration on the dark-haired and swarthy but tall and dignified Augustine, who, preceded by his silver cross and the picture of Our Saviour wearing the crown of thorns, headed the procession ; and the melodious tones of a music they had never heard, as the advancing choir was led by the sweet voice of the youthful Honorius, spoke to their hearts before their minds were enlightened by the truth. The missionaries soon 2 a2 346 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. acquired a fixed locality in Canterbury, but the spot on which probably Augustine first celebrated Christian rites was the vene- rable church of St. Martin. Bertha's chaplain (Liudhard, who had been a French bishop) had received an old Roman or British church for her service, which he consecrated afresh and named after that celebrated French saint — the most famous of all the great Christian saints of whom the descendant of Clovis had heard. Ingoberga — said to be her mother — bequeathed legacies to St. Martin's church at Tours, and this is another reason for suppos- ing that the dedication to St. Martin of the little edifice near Canterbury was a recollection by Bertha of her native land. Bede mentions this church as " formerly built while the Romans were still in the island ;" and the walls of the building that now stands are full of Roman bricks * — relics, doubtless, of the church in which Bertha knelt. The chancel is built almost entirely of Ro- man bricks, but in the rest of the building these are mixed with later materials, and its windows belong to various periods of Go- thic architecture. Tradition maintains that the edifice is as old as the second century, but its form and structure belong to a later date, though it is quite possible that parts of the fabric are coeval Avith the time of Bertha. At Canterbury, too, Ethelbert, after his conversion, endowed the monastery to which Augustine's name was afterwards given, and which was designed as a mis- sionary college, a purpose to which modern piety has in our own day, happily, once more consecrated its site. Gregory the Great intended to have two archbishoprics — one at London, which had been one of the three metropolitan sees of the British Church before the coming of the Saxons, and the other at York, once the altera Roma of Britain — and twenty-four bishoprics throughout England. Probably (as Professor Stanley has suggested) Gregory, to whom Britain was an unknown island, thought it might be about the size of Sicily or Sardinia, the only large islands he had ever seen. Great was the work which Au- gustine accomplished towards fulfilment of this purpose, although * A friend of the writer's infers from the correspondence of these bricks (or rather tiles) in length, width, thickness, and colour, with those in the old church in the Castle at Dover, which differ from those in the adjacent Roman pharos itself and in some other Roman remains, that the former were not of Roman make. CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS 347 much short of the designs of the pontiff, and it seems all the greater when we reflect that it was accomplished within the short space of ten years. We shall not here follow Dr. Hook through the accurate account he gives of the difficulties that arose from the ritualistic peculiarities (attributable to the Eastern traditions, followed by the missionaries, who, coming, not from Rome, but from the Eastern Church, had originally christianised Gaul) which offended the Canterbury mission, or of the memorable conference at " Augustine's Oak," between the archbishop and his Italians on the one side, and the British bishops on the other, the object of which was to decide whether the two branches of the Holy Catholic Church then existing in the land should unite under one head, that head being the archbishop at Canterbury. Although the Celtic branches of the Church were afterwards brought under the Roman obedience, the attempts at conciliation in Augustine's lifetime were abortive, the Scots and Britons refusing to yield points which they conceived to affect their ecclesiastical indepen- dence. In narrating these and the other events of Augustine's life, the author gives us a connected narrative of actual facts, care- fully sifted from the doubtful legends that have surrounded them. The extension to Northurnbria of the Kentish mission is a most interesting portion of this great chapter of English history. It was the principal event of the short episcopate of Justus, a Roman, the first Bishop of Rochester, which, notwithstanding its proxi- mity to Canterbury, was made a separate see, it being the capital of one of the two kings of Kent (for in those*days Kent was ho- noured with two kings), the other of whom reigned at Canterbury. It is very remarkable that in the remote kingdom of Northumbria, Edwin the king — who then ruled from the northern shore of the Humber far into the lowlands of Scotland, and westward into Cumberland — bad been, by his marriage with Ethelburga, brought into contact with Christianity, as Ethelbert was by his marriage to Bertha. Like him, Edwin had conceded that his wife should enjoy free exercise of her religion, and Paulinus was sent with her from Kent by Justus on her marriage to the Northumbrian prince, and in 625 was consecrated Archbishop of York. Very interesting is the picture we have of Paulinus* as he appeared in * His personal appearance was described by one of his converts to a friend of Ven. Bede. 348 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Edwin's council : the lofty stature, slightly bending, the dark eye Hashing, the black hair curling round his bald head, the slender aquiline nose, the thin, spare features, the dignified and venerable appearance of the civilised Italian contrasting with the long-flow- ing flaxen locks, blue eyes, ruddy weatherbeaten faces, and robust forms of the Saxon king's rude warrior-counsellors. The Dean of Chichester gives due prominence to Bede's account of the pro- ceedings at Edwin's Witanagemote in a.d. 627 — so interesting as the earliest report of a parliamentary debate. Edwin's baptism preluded the conversion of his kingdom ; and the heart of the aged Justus, at that time archbishop, was gladdened in his then humble cathedral at Canterbury by the triumphant success of his mission. But in 633, at the fatal field of Hatfield-chase, near Doncaster, the noble Edwin lost his kingdom and his life, and with him fell in the north of England the short-lived edifice of Christianity which Paulinus, the Roman missionary, had so wondrously raised. In narrating how Northumbria once more became a Christian country, Dr. Hook again renders due justice to the Celtic mis- sion, and to the character of Aidan, the new bishop, an illustri- ous representative of the educated, self-denying, and zealous heroes of Christianity, who were sent forth by the Celtic Church, and who brought the sons of Odin into contact with the descen- dants of the Celtic Britons who had resisted Caesar. In those days King Oswald reigned, and the light of the Gospel, cherished by that regal convert, shone from Bamburgh, the sea-coast fort- ress of Ida — "the flame-bearing" — far to the Cleveland Hills. When Oswald determined to attempt the restoration of Christi- anity, he resorted, not to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but to the Celtic Church; and, Aidan having fixed his cathedral on sea- girt Lindisfarne, that remote island church became the pharos of Northumbria in the twilight between Heathendom and Christi- anity, and mother of all the churches from Tyne to Tweed. To the missionaries of the Celtic Church, even the midland (or Mer- cian) kingdom and all the northern territory, from the Wall of Antoninus to the Humber, became indebted for Christianity. The missionaries in Kent seem to have made no attempt to con- vert even the adjoining kingdom of Sussex, which was in those days a territory almost impenetrable, and it did not receive the CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 349 Gospel until Wilfrid, when deposed from his diocese of York, found employment for his active and zealous mind in its conver- sion, Sussex being at that time the only realm in the Heptarchy that still remained pagan. It was in the Whitby synod (at which Hilda, the celebrated abbess, and other ladies were present) that Wilfrid first displayed the powers of intellect and of eloquence which early marked him for prominence and distinction. He was a young Northumbrian Saxon, who had been educated in the Celtic Church, but had visited Eome, and now became the champion for everything Roman : " The scenes of beauty and of grandeur, of nature in its loveliness, and of the relics of art in its perfection, overpowered," says our author, "the enthusiastic mind of the youthful traveller; and from the palaces of Rome and the vineyards of Italy he returned to the wooden hovels on the bleak hill- sides of Northumbria, proclaiming his altered principles by displaying his Italian tonsure, despising everything English, and becoming a vehement assertor to the crowds who surrounded him of the superiority of all that was Roman." Ripon, then a monastery of the Scottish monks, having been conferred upon him, " He immediately," continues Dr. Hook, " indulged his newly acquired and expensive tastes by erecting a building, the marble and ornamental arches of which, while they faintly reminded the builder of his beloved Italy, filled the minds of native beholders with admiration." In the Whitby synod Wilfrid secured a victory for the cause of Roman obedience in the controversy on the subject of Easter — an important step in the concession of superiority to the church of Canterbury as the English representative, in fulness of apos- tolic power, of the Bishop of Rome, whose recognition in Eng- land as successor of the Prince of the Apostles (about seventy years after the coming of Augustine) led to the assumption of those absolute powers which the Pope was ere long to assume. About ten years before the Whitby synod, Honorius, almost the last survivor of the companions of Augustine, died. He was the last Italian bishop of the Anglo-Saxon Church. At that time there was no archbishop either of London or York ; the bishops at London and at Lindisfarne represented the Celtic mis- sion, and claimed no rights over other sees. It is a remarkable fact that to the distant civilisation of Medi- 350 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. tcrrancnn shores, in the persons of Hadrian and of Theodorus, the one an African, and the other a native of Tarsus, in Cilicia, England — at least, in the southern province — became indebted towards the close of the seventh century for the foundation of Learning. Tarsus was still a Greek city in the time of Theodo- rus, who acquired his learning in the same schools in which, six hundred years before (as the Dean of Chichester remarks), St. Paul was a boy learning Greek. Here, from the cailors, the youthful Theodorus may have heard of the Saxon pirates who endangered the trade that had been carried on, from the earliest periods of history, between the shores of the Mediterranean and the Cassiterides : " Little did lie think that his old age would be passed in a remote island — chiefly known by its connexion with the Scilly Islands — which these Saxons had subdued, or that his active mind would find its repose by de- scribing to his converts there the goat-hair tents which dotted those luxu- riant plains upon which, extending on one side to the sea, and terminating on the other with the Taurus, he had been accustomed to look down from the terraced roofs of his native city." This remarkable man, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 669, first introduced the study of the Greek language into England; and while we are indebted to Honorius, his predeces- sor, for our ecclesiastical music (in the chants still heard in our cathedrals), we owe to Theodorus the organ, that noble instru- ment, which was known in the eighth century only to the Greeks, and of which our Church appears to have been in possession be- fore any other Church in the west of Europe. In the schools founded by Theodorus, and carried on by his successors, we find laid down the great principle — revived by William of Wykeham, and still characteristic of English schools and universities — not only to impart knowledge, but to exercise the mind ; not to bur- den the memory, but to invigorate the intellect. St. Augustine's and the other monasteries in England were lay institutions con- nected with the Church; and their resemblance to our colleges in the universities became the greater when, on the whole coun. try having been converted and the Church established, Archbi- shop Theodorus made them seats of learning, and laid the foun- dation of English scholarship. The episcopate of Theodorus was disturbed by many a controversy, and especially by that with CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 351 Wilfrid, of which, as of the other chief events of his politic and sagacious administration, a concise and interesting account is given in Dr. Hook's work. In tracing the extension of Christianity in the northern as well as in the southern province, the learned author justly presents these early missionary bishops as the pioneers of arts and civilisa- tion no less than of Christianity; and the music of the church of Canterbury, as well as the decorative arts of Rome, were ere long imitated by other votaries besides Wilfrid, even in the Celtic branches of the church. We learn from Alcuin, the illustrious preceptor of Charlemagne, that in his time the Northumbrian kingdom possessed written monuments of ancient genius and learning that could not be found in France ; and it would appear that during the lifetime of Bede (who died A.D. 735), and the remainder of the eighth century, learning was pre-eminently cul- tivated in Northumbria. At York, its ancient capital, the princely Archbishop Egbert, the friend of Bede and patron of learning, founded a noble library, which he probably stored with manuscripts obtained from Rome ; and at York he educated Alcuin, the most learned man of his age, who, when founding at the request of Charlemagne a school of learning in Tours, where he was then abbot and desired to raise up an Athens of France, sent to York for copies of works which could not be obtained in France, in order to transplant what he figuratively calls the flowers of Britain to perfume the palaces of Tours. The Anglo-Saxons early learned to excel all western nations in the decorative arts, and they flourished at Lindisfarne in times when the midland and western kingdoms had hardly emerged from barbarism. It is curious that in the lifetime of Bede only eight of the present sees were existing in England. It seems to have been the wish of the kings of Northumbria and of Kent, and perhaps of all the kings of the Heptarchy, to place all the sees under the metropolitan of Canterbury; but into the disputes relating to primacy and ecclesiastical government it is not our purpose to enter here. Years, and decades, and centuries, pass by as we turn over these historic pages : kings succeed to kings, prelates to prelates, 352 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. and at length we see the petty kingdoms of the Heptarchy merge in the realm of England, and the humble mission church of Au- gustine and his companions expand in the stately metropolitan church of Canterbury. May its shadow never be less ! Among the primates, as among the occupants of the Roman see, there have been (to use the language of our author) men, good, bad, and indifferent; some eminent for their learning, integrity, and piety; others, disgracing their station by vicious life and imbe- cility of mind ; but, to the honour of the early archbishops be it said, that their moral conduct and exemplary lives place them in favourable contrast to the Roman dignitaries, who were too often mere politicians and worldly-minded men. Through all the tur- bulence and bloodshed of the time, the calm figures of Anglo- Saxon prelates shine in the troubled scenes of English history: such was Alstan, Bishop of Sherborne, that noble-minded patriot, who was a statesman as well as prelate, wise in council and brave in war, to whom we are to ascribe the ultimate successes of the reign of Ethelwulf; such, too, was St. Swithin, of Winchester, who, little as he may have had to do with July weather, had im- mense and beneficial influence on that monarch, and added sound discretion to religious zeal. A long course of prosperity had followed the fusion of the British and Anglo-Saxon races, and preceded the Danish inva- sions. But in the first quarter of the ninth century there was episcopal indolence, and a decay of morals among public men, the traces of which are found, says Dean Hook, in the enact- ments of the ecclesiastical synods of the time at the courts of Ethelbald and Offa. Piety had decayed and learning had declined in the Church of England when the patriotic Alfred undertook his reforms, and the state of public affairs was menacing to civi- lisation as well as to Christianity. We have a terrible but not ex- aggerated picture of the state of the country at the death of Archbishop Ceolnoth (a.d. 870), when the Danes were devas- tating England. All Europe was equally disturbed, and the ninth and tenth centuries were also the gloomiest period in the history of Rome. In the northern province, the monasteries were always the first objects of plunder by the Danes, yet the rich monastery of CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 353 St. Augustine at Canterbury was spared on both the occasions when the invaders pillaged the city in the time of Ceolnoth. Our author explains its escape by the presumption that this archbishop, who was remarkable for the quantity of money which he coined in virtue of his right of mintage, his moneyers having turned into coin all the silver on which he could lay his hands, applied this treasure to buy off or bribe the enemy. When Alfred had defeated the Danes at " Ethandune " — one of the decisive battles of the world — the illustrious king began to acquire his right to his historical title, Alfred the Great, and added to the abilities of a military commander the prudence and sagacity of a legislator. What a pleasing picture is presented of his court, where the good king had surrounded himself with learned men attracted from all parts of Europe ! From the time of Theodorus schools of learning had been engrafted on the monasteries ; but Alfred founded schools that were independent of monasteries ; and we may, undoubtedly, trace to his wisdom what long afterwards, under Wykeham and Henry VI. became the great blessing of his country — the system of public school education. The dean, however, has no faith in the legend which attributes to Alfred the foundation of the University of Oxford. Neither did he create the British constitution ; but it was his wise and Christian policy to fuse the discordant Anglo-Saxon and Anglo- Danish races into one united people, and in this great work he was aided by the influences of the Church of England. Her re- vived energy was even signalised by a mission to the Christians of India, organised under the pious and patriotic Alfred, and the episcopate of Archbishop Ethelred has become perhaps chiefly remarkable for having witnessed the first intercourse between England and Hindostan. It was in his relations to Alfred that Plegmund, a Mercian, who succeeded Ethelred as archbishop, became memorable. He is presumed to have superintended, if he did not himself tran- scribe, the oldest known manuscript of " the Saxon Chronicle."* Archbishop Wulfhelm began his episcopate auspiciously, for one of his earliest duties was the coronation of Athelstan, which took * The Plegmund manuscript is the basis of the text edited in the Monumenta His- toria Britannica. 354 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. place in the royal camp at Moreford (an old Roman ford across the Thames), since known as Kingston. There the grandson of Alfred stood before the Witan and the people: " a thin, spare man thirty years of age, his yellow hair interwoven with threads of gold, and himself arrayed in a purple vestment, with a Saxon sword in a golden sheath hanging from a jewelled belt, the gifts of Alfred; and on a stone-seat in the market-place he was raised, the better to be seen by the people." Apropos of this event, the Dean remarks that the coronation service has remained substan- tially the same from the eighth century to the present time; and, in relation to the coronation oath, he mentions that very interest- ing, and perhaps only undoubted, relic of the ancient regalia of England — the Latin manuscript of the Gospels (now in the Cotton Library of the British Museum), which was sent over to Athelstan by his brother-in-law the Emperor Otho, and was given by Athelstan to the church of Canterbury. So, too, the Bible which Pope Gregory sent to Augustine — a manuscript justly regarded as the beginning of English biblical learning — was, in the year 1414, still in the library attached to St. Augus- tine's College, and is now in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Dr. Hook gives an interesting sketch of the state of England as it was left by the noble Athelstan and Wulf helm his archbishop ; and then, reverting to ecclesiastical affairs, describes the revolu- tionary reforms of the Benedictine party, led by Odo, Dunstan, and Thurketul. Odo was a young Dane, who had been sent by one of Alfred's nobles to study Greek and Latin, but who was of a military temperament, and was three times in the field after he became a prelate. To a bishop of the tenth century, however, military command was not inconsistent with episcopal duties: " he uplifted his right hand and girded on his armour, using — not, indeed, a sword, for that was contrary to clerical etiquette, but — a yet more formidable weapon, a club studded with spikes." The life of Dunstan naturally occupies a lengthy chapter of Dr. Hook's work, and he has separated the real history of that remark- able man from the mass of fable with which the superstition of devotees and the malignity of enemies have surrounded it. Glas- tonbury — that venerable fane which was the sole inheritance of the Anglo-Saxon from the British Church, and hallowed the CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 355 island, charmed of old, among the glassy streams — fed the fancy, cherished the genius, and excited the imagination of the youthful Dunstan. It was in his time occupied by scholars from Ireland, but by his exertions and endowment, after he became abbot of the royal monastery of Glastonbury, it became the great public school of England through the remainder of the Anglo-Saxon period — the Eton of those days, and, according to William of Malmes- bury , no fewer than seven archbishops of Canterbury were Glaston- bury scholars. The author does justice to the master intellect of Dunstan, the wonderful versatility of his talents, his natural gifts, the ardour of his character, and the variety of his accomplishments; and rightly places this celebrated man in the first rank of eccle- siastical statesmen, such as Becket, Wolsey, Laud, Richelieu, and Mazarin. As minister of Edgar, who became monarch of Eng- land at the age of sixteen, and whose reign is one of the most glorious in the Anglo-Saxon annals, he secured for his sovereign a title — the Pacific — of which even Alfred might have been proud. As a statesman, Dunstan maintained peace by always keeping the country pi*epared for war, and under his administra- tion (says the Dean of Chichester) " England was as a giant tak- ing her rest, but as a giant armed and ever ready for action." The English navy was made so effectual that no enemy dared attack the coast; commerce was fostered, the authority of law enforced, the Danes subdued, and the King of England's sove- reignty established even beyond the Tweed. Elfric, a succeeding archbishop, is, perhaps, best remembered for his Homilies, which became authoritative in the Church of England : he was also remarkable as the author of a Dictionary, Grammar, and Latin Colloquies, and for a facility of composition very rare in that a^e. In relating the history of Elphege (the patron saint of Green- wich, the place of his martyrdom at the hands of the Danes in 1012), Dr. Hook again' enters on the department of the English historian, and concisely places before the reader the political cir- cumstances of England at the time. By a curious revolution, London saw, ten years after Elphege had been slain, the painted and gold-ornamented barge of a Danish king receive on board the body of the archbishop, which had been interred with great 350 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. pomp at London ; and, preceded and surrounded by Danish cour- tiers and a guard of honour, it was conveyed to Canterbury, and deposited beside the reputed relics of Dunstan. It is worthy of remark, that, when the Danish army besieged Canterbury in the time of Elphege, it was sufficiently fortified to hold out for twenty days, and was then only entered by treachery. When the author comes to the middle of the eleventh century, we seem to hear the note of preparation for the Norman invasion, and a very interesting account is given of the gradual establish- ment of the Norman party in England, and the bestowal on Normans of all chief preferments, by the policy of Archbishop Robert of Jumieges, in whose cloisters Dr. Hook represents the affections of Edward, surnamed the Confessor, to have been, even after he had come to the English throne. But when the ex- hortations of the Anglo-Saxon or patriotic party led the king to submit to the decision of a Witanagemote in which Stigand, who was the chaplain and adviser of Queen Emma, presided, Archbishop Robert was deposed. He appealed from the English tribunal to Rome; but England, although the Anglo-Saxon dynasty was drawing to a close, defied the papal decree, and Sti- gand was installed Archbishop of Canterbury. The most inte- resting events with which his name is associated were the conse- cration of Westminster Abbey at the close of 1065, and the coro- nation of " the tall, handsome, and open-handed " Harold (for crowned he seems to have been); and on this event the author eloquently remarks that Stigand, when he presented Harold to the people after the election by the Witan, and saw England once more free, and heard the people hail her champion by one long, loud, patriotic shout, must have experienced the pleasure which those enjoy who, after years of difficulty, doubt, and dan- ger, have at length achieved, as they imagine, the great object of their sublunary ambition and desires. But Stigand was des- tined to be the last Saxon Archbishop of Canterbury, and the patriot and primate lived not only to become a state prisoner at royal Winchester, but to see his brave countrymen and the Church of England prostrate beneath a foreign yoke. CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. II. NORMAN PERIOD. The first volume of Dr. Hook's " Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury" having brought down their history from the mission of Augustine to the close of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty — a period of about four hundred and seventy years — the Archbishops during the Anglo-Norman reigns form the subject of the second volume of this important biographical work,* and it brings before the reader a totally new set of ideas, as well as a different race of men, and a greatly altered state of tilings, in Europe. It comprises historical characters and times of undying interest in the annals of this realm ; for here we have the lives of Lanfranc, Anselm, Becket, Hubert Walter, and Langton, not to mention six arch- bishops of inferior distinction. The book occupies a period of little more than a century and a half; but the years that elapsed between the Conquest and the Great Charter, between Lanfranc and Langton, between Hildebrand and Innocent, are among the most eventful years in mediaeval history. They saw the rise of feudal institutions and of the age of chivalry ; they saw the rise of the universities and of our courts of law ; they saw the beginning of the great struggle between the ecclesiastical and civil power, in which the Church fought the battle of the people against kings and barons; and they saw the sanguinary yet romantic warfare of the Crusades, which brought the arts and learning of the East to Europe, and aided the progress of civilisation. In those contentious ages, when even ecclesiastics were more commonly combative than literate, the primates of England maintained the foremost place, and archbishops were ministers of state and viceroys, warriors and judges, and a bishop was seen at one time emulating the lives of saints, and at another besieging * Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. By Walter Farquhar Hook, Dean of Chichester. Vol. ii. Anglo-Norman Period. Bentley. 1862. 358 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. a castle, often acting as commander-in-chief, or seated among mail-clad barons in the royal councils. It helps one to realise the character of the stormy Anglo-Norman reigns if we remem- ber these features of the age, and think that the cathedrals and the castles of England were then rising; that the speech of the people was still Anglo-Saxon, and the language of the court and the aristocracy Norman-French; that the only written lan- guage was Latin, and the only scholars were the clergy; that the feudal lords were generally turbulent and warlike, and wicked as well as unlettered, and knew not the refinements or the means of enlightenment that are now accessible to the peasant; that the Saxon trials by ordeal were still in use, that our judicial system was only in its dawn, and England had not yet seen the beginning of her parliament; that the lower classes of the people were for a large part in feudal slavery, and the freedom and independence of municipalities was hardly begun. No towns of portentous magnitude then spread labyrinths of streets over the fields or darkened the landscapes of England; most of the highways were those the Romans had left; a great part of the country was still forest, the abode of the bandit, the wild boar, and the wolf; and the abbeys, which received the tra- veller on his route, exhibited almost the only humanising influences of the time. The Dean of Chichester prefixes to the series of biographies contained in the present volume an elaborate introductory sketch of the spirit of the age, the state of the people after the establish- ment of the Norman rule, and the influence of the Crusades on the progress of civilisation. He also shows the importance in those days of the monastic institutions — then the nurseries of statesmen and the homes of learning — and glances at the rise of the university system; and, for the better understanding the con- duct of the archbishops, he sketches the policy of the popes and the lawlessness of the kings. The Crusades cannot be adequately discussed in an incidental notice, but the advantages and the calamities that resulted from them (amongst the former, the abolition of slavery in England) seem to us to be very fairly stated by Dr. Hook : we must not judge them by modern standards, or measure Christian enthu- CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 359 siasm by maxims of political economy. It was an age when (as some one has truly said) life was earnest in its beliefs as well as stormy in its ambitions; when abbeys were reared in many a quiet vale, as well as feudal castles on many an English hill ; and when the feudal chivalry, though unskilled in any art but that of war, and too often the representatives of lawless power, could glow with enthusiasm for the Holy Land, and endow churches, in which, if they lived to return from Palestine, they were laid for their final rest. But, whatever the rank of the Crusader, no con- siderations of worldly honour, interest, or pleasure, restrained him from the heroic enterprise, for religious zeal combined with mili- tary ardour. However depraved the state of society may have been, the Crusade appealed to the nobler instincts of human nature; from those instincts chivalry sprang; and chivalry repre- sented all that was humanising, and softening, and self-denyino-, and courageous in mankind People can now talk wisely about the insanity of the Crusades, and the superstitions of what they call " the dark ages," but a lust for gold is the superstition of the present age; and we believe with Mr. Ruskin that " those who have worshipped the thorns of Christ's crown will be found at last to have been holier and wiser than those who are devoted to the service of the world." Ages may have been warlike and stormy without being dark, and men may have been rude and unlettered without being barbarous; and it certainly does not become an age that tolerates the Revivals — with their insane and revolting accompaniments, that believes in spirit-rapping and hears Spurgeon, to condemn the superstition of the middle ao-es or the fanaticism of the Crusades. Dr. Hook regards the first Crusade as the termination of the " dark ages " and the commencement of a new era. Mediaeval history, he remarks, extends from the commencement of the fourth century to the close of the fifteenth — a period of twelve centuries, of which, he says, " seven may be regarded as dark." But the learned author surely cannot mean to call the first seven centuries of this period " dark." That reproach cannot be applied to the age of Cyril and St. Augustine of Hippo; of Theodosius and Justinian; of St. Benedict, and Boethius, and Gregory of Tours; of Pope Gregory the Great and Augus- 2 B 360 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. tine of Canterbury; of Aidan, and Bede, and Aldhclm; of Alcuin and Charlemagne; of Archbishop Egbert and Erigcna; of Theodorus of Canterbury, Alfred the Great, Elfric, and Dunstan. Neither can the age be called "dark" in which schools of learning were incorporated into universities, and in which the monasteries began to shelter religion, litera- ture, and art. The term is relative; and, after all, the ques- tion arises, What is meant by "a dark age?" If the want of letters, of civilising influences, and of great men makes an age dark, no doubt England passed through dark ages in the time of the first Saxon invasions, in the contests between the petty kingdoms of the Heptarchy, in the long years which preceded the missions of the Church and the Roman branches of the Church, and (in later periods of our history) after the Danish and the Norman ravages laid waste the North of England. But the character of the age in which the archbishops lived is material to their biographies only in as much as their actions must be regarded by the light of contemporary history, and with reference to the state of society in their time. The Dean dis- claims any attempt to depict the character of any one of the per- sonages whose lives he has written, and professes to record actions and opinions only. The noble figure of Lanfranc heads the procession of the Anglo- Norman primates. He was a native of Pavia, in Lombardy, and, having acquired proficiency in the civil and canon law, he prac- tised as an advocate, until political troubles led him to make choice of Normandy as the place of his future labours; and, founding a school at Avranches, he attracted crowds of scholars, for he is said to have been as skilful in imparting as he was laborious in acquiring knowledge. A newly-acquired enthusiasm led him to the monastery of Bee, in which he spent some time, and which he quitted reluctantly for the court of the Duke of Normandy. Although long unwilling to exchange the studious life of the cloister for the thorny distinction of the primacy, he suffered himself to be promoted in 1070 to the archiepiscopal dignity of Canterbury. Three years before that time the Saxon cathedral had been destroyed by fire; and it is remarkable that we should owe to Italians not only the planting of the Church of CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 361 Christ in England at the end of the sixth century, but the building of the Norman cathedral of Canterbury in the eleventh. Lanfranc's edifice was destined to be, like its predecessor, not of long duration. He rebuilt also the episcopal palace, and over it placed Gundulf, a monk of Bee, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, the builder of the massive and more enduring castle upon the Medway, and the architect of the Tower of London. Lanfranc served the Conqueror in high civil office; and the ecclesiastical polity of William's reign is, no doubt, to a considerable extent, attributable to Lanfranc's counsel. He it was who separated the ecclesiastical from the civil tribunal, and in the administration of the Church he acted with prudence and justice. It was in his time that Osmund " the good," Bishop of Salisbury, drew up the service book which afterwards, throughout the province, formed what was known as " the Salisbury use," and, regulating liturgical usage, became the model ritual of the Church of England, and the basis of our Book of Common Prayer. We are glad to see that Lanfranc's literary works and services to literature are men- tioned with due honour by his present biographer. If the age in which he lived was dark, Lanfranc, at all events, nobly con- tributed to its enlightenment. He died in May, 1089, in the second year of the reign of William Rufus, and was succeeded by the famous Anselm, who was also one of the most remarkable men of his time. He was a native of Piedmont, for he was born at Aosta, beneath the Throned emblems of eternity, that rear Above the earth-born clouds their mitred snows. He became a pupil of Lanfranc in the monastery of Bee, and ere long a teacher of others, and his fame attracted to that place a multitude of students, and scholars, and penitents. In 1079, when forty-six years of age, he accepted the abbot's staff from the hands of William the Conqueror, and his literary genius raised the community so high that it came to be regarded as an assembly ' of philosophers. Here he passed thirty-three happy years, the object of adulation, the oracle and lawgiver to all around him, though sadly indifferent to providing food for his monks, for he had a bad habit of preferring his books to his meals, and disregarded 2 b 2 362 LECTUHES AND ESSAYS. -. creature-comforts himself. At Lanfranc's death, the Red King had seized the temporalities of Canterbury, and filled the royal coffers by delaying the nomination of a successor. At length, however, when the profligate and avaricious oppressor believed himself to be dying, he nominated the Abbot of Bee for the vacant see, and amid great rejoicings Anselm was enthroned in 1093. We shall not follow Dr. Hook through his statement of the violent disputes which arose between the king and the arch- bishop, who, inflexible in his notions of duty to the Church, seems to have disregarded tact and conciliation, and he resolutely refused to yield a supremacy to the King that was incompatible with obedience to the Pope. In 1097 he took refuge in Rome, and remained in exile during the rest of William's reign. At length, on the death of the fierce and godless monarch, Anselm was summoned to England by Henry I. But his refusal to re- ceive investiture from the king involved fresh disputes, lie nevertheless assisted at the marriage of Henry with Matilda daughter of Malcolm King of Scotland and of Margaret the sister of Edgar the Atheling, by which restoration of the Anglo- Saxon line, and as a descendant of Matilda, Queen Victoria is connected with Saxon royalty. Henry, with his accustomed policy, made the talents and influence of Anselm conducive to the consolidation of his own power, and the good queen made him her spiritual adviser. In 1093 Anselm went to Rome, and a long and vexatious controversy arose between him and Henry, who at length conceded terms which the Archbishop, by advice of the Pope, accepted, and which formed the precedent for the conciliatory adjustment, some years afterwards, of the ominous controversy as to investitures. Returning to England in the autumn of 1106, Anselm was joyfully welcomed on his landing at Dover, and Matilda in person made the provisions for his comfort which his illness and age (he was now seventy- three) re- quired. He found Prior Conrad engaged on the magnificent architectural works which superseded Lanfranc's choir, and he aided their execution nobly; but he was not destined to witness the completion of the Norman cathedral, for on the 11th April, 1109, amidst his attached friends and the monks of Canterbury, the good archbishop passed to his rest. He was acknowledged to CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 363 be " mighty in Scripture," and the many literary works he pro- duced attest his intellectual power and depth of thought. The saintly Anselm was succeeded by Kalph de Escures, a Frenchman, who, as archbishop, was perhaps chiefly remarkable for being the patron of good and learned men. He was himself of a happy temperament, kind, affable, and joyous in spirit, and he seems to have borne with great equanimity the disputes and divisions which agitated the Church of England in his day. The last public act in which he was engaged was the marriage of Henry I. to Adela of Louvain, and the coronation of the fair young bride. His successor, William of Corbeuil, was, like him, a Frenchman, and he was elected to the archbishopric at a time when the desire of the bishops was to see in the office of primate a politician who could defend the Church from the King on the one hand and from the encroachments of the Pope on the other. The character given of him by a contemporary might really be drawn from the life at the present day: "He was a man of smooth face and strictly religious manners, but much more ready to amass money than to spend it." The works commenced by Lanfranc and carried on by Anselm were completed during his primacy, and he consecrated the cathedral on the 4th May, 1130, in the presence of such a royal and noble assemblage as had never before been seen even in Canterbury, for it included Henry I. and David of Scotland (himself the founder of many abbeys and churches in his own realm), and nobles and bishops almost with- out number. Four years afterwards Archbishop William crowned Stephen, and in 1136 he died, " leaving immense sums secretly hoarded in his coffers." In Theobald, his successor, Canterbury now received a third archbishop from the monastery of Bee. England was in a miserable condition of civil anarchy when this noble Norman became archbishop, and Christianity would have been extinguished if it had not been for the monasteries. But, rude and boisterous as was the time, his court soon became the centre of resort for all the learning and ability of the kingdom, John of Salisbury, one of the most classical writers of the ace, was his secretary, and " in close conversation with him might be seen sitting a young man whom no one could look upon without asking who he was. In stature tall, of strength equal to any 364 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. undertaking, with a keen eye, a quick ear, iluent in speech, cheerful in discourse, ready in debate, with the manners of a noble and a knight, Thomas of London, the son of Gilbert Becket, the portreeve of the city, at once commanded respect, secured attention, and won friends." The study of the civil law had been shortly before revived in Italian universities, particularly at Bologna; and Archbishop Theobald, who was more of the lawyer than the theologian, intro- duced the study of the science, and attracted its professors to his court, and about the year 1144 placed a professor of the Roman law at Oxford, whose lectures were afterwards attended by per- sons of every rank, especially by aspirants to high office in Church or State. He discovered, encouraged, and employed the talents of the young Londoner, and enabled him to complete his legal studies by a year's residence at Bologna, and is said to have after- wards employed Becket in a negotiation with the court of Rome, in which he rendered good offices to the house of Anjou, and paved the way to the favour in which he was held by Henry II. A very remarkable concurrence of circumstances fitted Becket for the position he was destined to occupy ; and his patron the Archbishop, soon after officiating at the coronation of Henry (19th Dec, 1 154), commended to him the youthful scholar — then known as Thomas the archdeacon — as the fittest person to be his chan- cellor, and he was the first Englishman ever appointed to that office. In 1161 the enlightened, charitable, and munificent archbishop died, and was succeeded (in May 1162) by the bril- liant and courtly favourite, his former pupil and archdeacon. To the life of Becket the Dean of Chichester has evidently de- voted especial care. St. Thomas of Canterbury is an ecclesiastical hero who has found so many biographers, and whose life affords such abundant materials for controversy, that the outlines of his career are tolerably familiar to most readers. His character has been viewed from different stand-points, according to the preju- dices of the writer, but Dr. Hook's narrative is distinguished by its fairness and justice no less than by honest and painstaking research. The history of Becket is very conveniently arranged under the distinct periods of — first, his chancellorship; second, his primacy; third, his exile; and fourth, his return to England, CANTERBURY AND ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 365 so speedily followed by the martyrdom (29th Dec. 1170), which has never had a more graphic delineator than Professor Stanley. We must own a wish that Dr. Hook had himself summed up the evidence and given his own view of the character of this extraor- dinary man, and that he had made more apparent to the general reader the motives of conduct which often seems inexplicable. The archiepiscopal mitre seems to have transformed his whole character; and Dr. Hook's portrait of him from the time when his acceptance of the primacy placed him in a situation of antagonism to the king his former friend, as often repels our sympathy as it raises our admiration. In one scene, Becket, as the champion of ecclesiastical independence, popular, yet never basely courting popularity, loving splendour, yet indifferent to the pleasures of the world, nobly contending for his right, single-handed,' against the heathen rage and might of power, engages our sympathies and homage, while in the next, his conduct is that of an aggressor towards the king, and seems marked by the most perverse and wrong-headed obstinacy and passion. But no one, impartially reviewing the circumstances of his position, can deny that his aims were most unselfish and his actions guided by high views of duty; that he was as noble, high-minded, and consistent as he was independent and uncompromising, and that he was a hero worthy of his crown in the noble army of martyrs. Without placing ourselves amidst the controversies of his time, and realising the aims which claimed the loyalty of churchmen in the days of Hildebrand, and remembering also that to con- cede supremacy to the secular power in things ecclesiastical ap- peared to them to be to fear man rather than God, and to be a rendering to Caesar of things that are God's, we cannot adequately appreciate the cause for which Becket fought and died. How- ever he may have been regarded since the Reformation, we must remember that, in his day, the people, and what may be called the religious sentiment of the nation, were with him; and this was the case, not on the Continent only, where during his exile he was regarded as a Confessor for the Christian faith, but also in Eng- land, where, in the memorable conflict with the king and his council at Northampton — portrayed in the present volume with much dramatic force — and again on his return from exile, he was 366 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. borne, as it were, in triumph on a wave of popular enthusiasm. In this day, a champion of ecclesiastical independence contending against the temporal power would find arrayed against him what is called the Religious World, and encounter the roar of Exeter Hall and the motley and heterogeneous Protestants who, we pre- sume, arc adverted to by the apt description of " those noisy, intolerant, ignorant, yet sincere and zealous religionists, who, by their vehemence and violence, overawe, if they do not overpower, wiser and better men." It is to the honour of Richard, a Norman monk, the successor of St Thomas in the see of Canterbury, that he too was the pro- tege of Archbishop Theobald, and, to the last, the friend of Beckct. He seems to have thought more of peace, of making parks, and preserving game, than of following the ecclesiastical policy of his celebrated predecessor; and perhaps a more amiable man, and one whose rule was more equitable, never sat in the chair of Augustine. The penance to which Henry II. submitted in Canterbury cathedral on the 12th of July, 1174, lor the atrocious murder of Becket, was the first of the two memorable events of his primacy: the other was the destruction by fire, in the following September, of Conrad's choir, the glory of the cathedral. Its reconstruction was entrusted to the famous William of Sens — who was in church architecture the Scott of his day — and was completed in 1184; but shortly before the work was finished Archbishop Richard died. He was succeeded by Baldwin of Exeter, a monk of the Cistercian monastery of Ford, who seems to have been of a fervid and inconstant disposition, and who finally forsook his see and province to join the third Crusade, in company with the illustrious Ranulph de Glanville the jus- ticiar, but not before he had crowned Richard King of England. The enthusiastic old primate, after distinguishing himself before Acre, died of grief and disappointment in Palestine, and Hubert Walter, Bishop of Salisbury, followed his friend and patron to his grave in a strange land, and, on 30th of May, 1193, to the archiepiscopal throne of Canterbury. Hubert Walter was of noble family. He was the nephew of Ranulph de Glanville, and, like Becket, was educated as a lawyer. He must have been a perfect incarnation of British energy. After CANTERBURY AND. ITS ARCHBISHOPS. 367 his consecration as Bishop of Salisbury, he fought valiantly as a crusader, and exhibited the military skill of a general officer, while he found in the camp a new field for his pastoral offices. When, on the advance to Jerusalem, the illness of King Eichard spread a panic through the Christian host, the army owed its safety to Hubert Walter's courage and presence of mind; and Saladin himself is said to have respected in him the wisdom and prudence in which Richard was deficient — duly as he inspired respect for the " muscular Christianity " of the age. At a later period the King owed his ransom and delivery to his zealous and judicious friend, who, on his return to England, assumed the functions of the King's justiciar and vicegerent, and was elected Archbishop of Canterbury. When it became neces- sary to reduce the fortresses that were held by John, the King's brother, Hubert, the archbishop, took the command of the forces in person, and at length welcomed back to England the royal hero of the Crusades, who, however, again committed to Hubert the care of the kingdom. We have not room to follow Dr. Hook into his interesting digression on the state of London at this time, and on the domestic affairs in which the Archbishop exhibited his administrative abili- ties. He had no sooner suppressed the formidable insurrection of the Londoners, which was raised by that strange demagogue Fitz-Osbert, known as "William with the Long Beard," than he put himself at the head of the army to check an incursion of the Welsh. Hubert, accustomed to fight by the side of prelates on the plains of Palestine, saw nothing incongruous in commanding as viceroy an army assembled for the defence of his country ; but the Pope thought him too much absorbed in secular affairs, and he gladly resigned the office of justiciar to Geoffrey Fitz- Peter, but, on the coronation of John, accepted the office of lord chan- cellor. At his hands all people, of whatever rank, were sure of justice and protection; he was a lover of peace and of truth, and a reformer of abuses; and the magnificence of his spirit was shown in the architectural works in which he was engaged, in his gifts for the church of Canterbury, and in everything in which he was concerned. Exercising at once regal and apostolical power, this great primate held an accumulation of offices which 368 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. never centred in any other individual, and lie is altogether one of the most remarkable characters in the history of his time. Archbishop Hubert died on the 13th of July, 1205, and was succeeded by Stephen Langton, one of the most distinguished statesmen this country has produced. By his varied talents and knowledge of human nature he was qualified to shine equally in the court and in the cloister. Pope Innocent had called Jiim to Eome, that he might have at hand as his counsellor a man of piety and wisdom, skilled in law and at the same time in divinity. Pie reluctantly parted with him, in order that the most important see in Western Europe might be filled by the fittest man. His appointment by the Pope without the previous consent of the Kino- roused the monarch's indignation, as well as the resistance of the Chapter. The latter, placed in a dilemma, obeyed the Pope and incurred the fierce resentment of the King, and soon England was plunged in all the troubles of the interdict, and the negotiations which ended in John's vassalage to Rome. These exciting chapters of national history are well and concisely written by Dr. Hook, who, by placing before us the active life of Langton as a politician and statesman, portrays his wisdom, his influence, and his superiority to his contemporaries ; and we are to remember that it was as the adviser of Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz- Walter, the future general of the baronial army assembled against King John, leaders of the barons of England, that Stephen Langton became the author of Magna Charta. The splendour of his political life seems to outshine that of his primacy; but in his case the bishop was not wholly absorbed by the statesman ; and the retrospect of his life might justly have been cheered by the reflection that he had ever lived for God, for liberty, and his country. In conclusion, we congratulate Dr. Hook on these contribu- tions to historical literature, and on the increasing interest of his work. ON THE JUSTICIARS, CHANCELLORS, AND JUDGES CELEBRATED IN ENGLISH HISTORY, FROM THE CONQUEST TO THE TIME OF LORD MANSFIELD. A LECTURE [Read before the members of the Durham Athenaeum ; the Mechanics' Institute, Chester-le- Street ; and the Tynemouth Literary and Philosophical Society, North Shields.] Biographical reading is now so favourite an occupation of our leisure, and the lives of English judges have been made familiar by so many popular works, that I dare say few of the audience whom I address this evening need be told that a most interesting series of historical characters may be found in the old Justiciars, Chancellors, and Judges of England. Among the historic shadows that border the dark stream of time, history cannot throw her pale light upon more shining and memorable forms than those which once adorned the judgment- seat of this country, or preserve the memory of any worthies more deserving of remembrance by Englishmen throughout all time, than the judges who won many of our cherished liberties, and by their influence upon the improvement of our laws con- tributed to make our country worthy of our pride and love. In the lives of men who have for ages passed to the historic shadows of Westminster Hall we may view some of the noblest examples of integrity and patriotism that our history can show ; and the student of jurisprudence may trace in the laws of England the influence of her bygone judges, just as he traces throughout our civil code the enduring principles of Roman law, or finds that 370 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. maxims which still affect our rights prevailed in the empires of the Middle Ages. All honour to those illustrious Englishmen who from the tri- bunals of justice proclaimed lofty maxims of right and principles of constitutional liberty in times when private rights and public liberties were endangered by the Crown, who could execute justice and maintain truth in times when parliaments were servile and when society was unenlightened ! In the clays of the Plan- tagenets we find judges holding that " the King's grant is of no .power to prejudice the subject's interest;" that "the common law has so admeasured the King's pcrogatives that they shall not take away or prejudice the interests of any man;" and that " the law of God and the law of the land are all one, and both regard the common and public good of the realm." Later, Ave find judges declaring that " no statute is to be extended to life by doubtful words;" that "arbitrary imprisonment is unknown to the law;" that "a royal proclamation is incompetent to make new law, and cannot impose fine, forfeiture, or imprisonment;" and again, that " the air of England is so free that no slave can breathe it." And remember that these and many other assertions of the majesty of English law were heard from the lips of judges in times which compared with ours were times of barbarism — were heard in the stormy middle ages, when English had hardly become a written language; when there were neither public libraries nor printed books; when the old Saxon trials by ordeal were in use ; when the feudal lords were an unlettered and warlike aristocracy, unacquainted with means of enlightenment common to the humblest artisan ; when, in short, the civilization of our polished and prosperous England seems to have been in its state of infancy. But we must not expect to find the model of a learned and patriotic judge in those early periods when the King's chancellors bore the sword as well as the pastoral staff, when the chief justices were the King's companions in arms, and feudal barons were judges of the land. A chief justice or a chancellor was then seen at one time as an earl mounted on a war-horse and holding a sword, as we see de- lineated, for instance, on the early episcopal seals of Durham — at another, in his pontifical habit giving the benediction; on one EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 371 day besieging a castle, on another adorning his cathedral church. In early times, military command was not thought inconsistent with episcopal duties. A bishop uplifted his right hand for other purposes than benediction, and often girded on his armour, and, although he might not use a sword, he wielded a club studded with spikes. Although the simple institutions of Saxon judicature were not superseded at the Conquest by a system at all resembling our complicated and highly artificial jurisprudence, the feudal law of Normandy substituted intricate rules for the simplicity of Saxon tenures ; the civil and the ecclesiastical jurisdictions were separated, and the bishop no longer sat with the sheriff or earl in the county court; Norman French was used instead of the English tongue in courts of justice, and the clergy were of necessity the only lawyers, as they were the only literate persons of the age. The Anglo-Norman reigns were certainly not an age of Arcadian sim- plicity, but lawyers at all events had not then become a separate class of practitioners, and people did not enjoy the luxury of being- able to go to their solicitor. William the Conqueror seems to have designed one grand central tribunal for the whole realm, in which all causes of importance should be heard and decided, and, from assembling in the hall of the King's palace wheresoever he might be, this court acquired its name of the Curia Regis or Aula Regis ; the great officers or ministers of the Crown were its judges, but the Chief Justiciar enjoyed much more than judicial pre-emi- nence, and was an officer of transcendent power. He was next in authority to the sovereign, represented him as viceroy, and exercised at once the functions now belonging to the Commander- in-chief, the First Minister of the Crown, and the Lord Chief Justice. Yet history shows us more than one chief justiciar of Norman England who presents the calm and dignified aspect of a judge and prelate among the mailed figures of feudal barons. Such a man was William de Carilefe, Bishop of Durham, a prelate particularly memorable in that diocese as the builder of Durham cathedral and the first great benefactor of the see. That building owes its massive grandeur to a man who eight centuries ago was a humble village chaplain in Normandy, but who was one of those favourites of heaven, those beings " gifted with 372 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. celestial fire," who could not only sway "the rod of empire," but advance the kingdom of the Eternal. We sec Carilefe at one time presiding in judgment, ivt another causing nohle manuscripts to be transcribed for his church of Durham which still exist among its treasures; then sitting in the King's great council, and anon raising an edifice that has been the admiration of centuries, upon its wood-environed hill. Like Carilefe, the early Norman chancellors too were distin- guished as church builders rather than as lawyers : Maurice, Bi- shop of London — and he is almost the first chancellor on record — rebuilt the cathedral of St. Paul; Lanfranc, who was a justiciar, rebuilt his cathedral of Canterbury; and Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, the Conqueror's nephew and chancellor, was a great builder of churches, and was moreover canonized as a saint, and that I fear is a distinction which has not been attained by any of his successors in Westminster Hall excepting St. Thomas of Can- terbury, however deserving they may have been as lawyers. Carilefe was succeeded as Bishop of Durham and as chancellor by Ralph Flambard, whose character the monastic historians have certainly done their utmost to blacken, but to whose honour it must be remembered, that this man, who was a Norman of low birth and whose mother was reputed a witch and familiar of de- mons, rose to the highest offices, and built that grand old castle of Norham on the Tweed, where the princely bishops of Durham his successors often resided. Again, in Roger, Bishop of Salis- bury and Chancellor of England in the reign of Henry I. we have another great architect, and his life was marked by romantic vicissitudes, from the time when the King heard him say mass as a village curate in Normandy to the day when he surrendered his castles to King Stephen after a career of almost sovereign power. So that you see the chancellors and justiciars of those days were magnificent churchmen. And when circuits were established for the purpose, chiefly, of trying such criminal accusations as arose in the different counties, and judges-itinerant were appointed, they were generally great barons of the province in which they were assigned to hold pleas, but probably never read a book in their lives. Thus, for Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, and Cumberland, in the year 1131, Eustace Fitz-John, the great Nov- EMINENT JUDGES OP ENGLAND. 373 man nobleman who built Alnwick Castle and governed Bam- burgh for the crown, was appointed a justice-itinerant, and he had for his colleague Walter Espec, that great Yorkshire baron, who, when the Scottish invasion roused the northern patriots to arms, jointly commanded the English host at the Battle of the Stand- ard, and crowned a life of valour by founding Rievaux Abbey. But the functions of these baronial judges of assize were not what we should call judicial, and no more resembled those of our judges than the aspect of the country they beheld resembled that of England at the present day. No towns of portentous magnitude then spread stony pavement and labyrinths of dwellings over the sunny fields; no populous centres of industry darkened the landscape canopied by smoke; most of the highways were those the Romans had left; castles and abbeys received the judges and their armed attendants ; and a third of the country was covered by primeval wood, the haunt of the bandit, the wild boar, and the wolf. The law itself was in a state equally rude down to the reign of Henry II.; and the administrators of justice were too commonly themselves engaged in feudal strife, or were the partisans of con- tending suitors. But in that reign the law became reduced to a system ; the laws of Normandy had been gradually engrafted on those of England, and into this composite structure the Canonists built the enduring marble of the Roman civil law, so that it became necessary that the judges and the advocates should be skilled in law; but the chancellors and in many instances the justiciars were still ecclesiastics. I forbear to go far back in his- toric times, and I will notice very briefly such of these high officers as best deserve remembrance. Two of the most memorable justiciars of Henry the Second's reign, viz. Richard de Luci and Ranulph de Granville, were feudal barons. The former was a great statesman, and governed the kingdom as well as the King's chief court of justice, before the rise and after the martyrdom of Thomas a, Becket. To De Luci are due those celebrated " Constitutions of Clarendon " which formed the basis of the ecclesiastical polity of later times, for, after those enactments, criminal accusations against the clergy came to be tried in the King's courts, and suits relating to bene- fices came to be determined according to the common law; the 374 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. clergy ceased to usurp the jurisdiction to enforce contracts, and causes were no longer carried by appeal to Rome. It was characteristic of the times that De Luci ended his days as a monk in the monastery which he founded in a wooded soli- tude by the Thames, for that (as an eloquent writer has remarked) was an age when life was as earnest in its belief as stormy in its ambitions; when, if feudal castles rose on English hills, abbeys were reared in many a quiet vale; when the chivalry of England flocked to Palestine in the crusades, and if they lived to return were laid for their final rest in the churches they had endowed. De Luci's office of justiciar was shorn of its splendour as long as the genius and ambition of Thomas a Becket joined all the autho- rity of the State to his office of chancellor. It was not until the time of Becket that the chancellorship advanced to the rank and power it has ever since maintained, but it is as a statesman and an ecclesiastic that the name of Becket is so prominent in English history. It is not in his character of chancellor that he is chiefly memorable, nor did his noble qualities, his rare and lofty spirit, shine forth until after he had resigned the great seal and become an actor in that extraordinary series of events which for ever connect his name with the civil and ecclesiastical history of England. He was the first Englishman who was ever ap- pointed chancellor, and he brought to that office the knowledge of civil and canon law which was in his day only to be acquired in Italy ; but the skill in hawking and the chase which, with his attractive qualities as a companion, first recommended the youth- ful Becket to Henry's favour, are tastes which have long ceased to be conducive to preferment in Westminster Hall. Becket must have made a dignified and courtly chancellor, and he travelled with such unheard-of and costly state upon his embassies that the Frenchmen were at a loss to conceive what the grandeur of the King of England himself must be. Glanville, Henry's other great justiciar, was the first judge who won both military and legal renown, and his life affords a curious example of the manners of the age; for at one time he is seen as the grave and learned civilian presiding among the bishops and other judges of the King's Court, at another, clothed in mail and leading a warlike array against Scottish invaders. EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 375 Glanville, when he was Sheriff of Yorkshire in the year 1174, performed an exploit which no sheriff before or subsequently achieved; for, when William the Lion of Scotland invaded England, Glanville raised and arrayed all the force he could collect, mustering his men on many a village green and by many a market cross, and led them against the formidable invader. I fear his volunteers did not all remain to face the Scots; but the gallant Glanville captured the king before Alnwick Castle and safely lodged him in the keep at Richmond. Afterwards, how- ever, exchanging the spear for the pen, he became Justiciar of England, and wrote the treatise " On the Laws and Customs of the Realm" which has gained for him the title of the " Father of English Jurisprudence." This remarkable work, written little more than a century after the Conqueror's ascendancy became established, shows that England was even then " governed " (to use the language of Lord Chief Justice Coke) " by laws and customs founded upon reason and of antient time obtained," and that Henry II. at all events had the wisdom to seek for his judges " men grave in manners, familiar with the laws, and wise, elo- quent, and speedy in their administration." To the advice of his distinguished Justiciar is attributed his ratification of the ancient native laws of Anglo-Saxon days, known as the laws of Edward the Confessor, and his solicitude for the due administration of justice throughout the kingdom. Glanville, however, seems to have been the first justiciar who adorned his office by legal learn- ing and purely judicial qualities. At length, after an honourable tenure of power, he was seen in the new character of a Crusader. In 1188 the Kino; and his council were assembled (this was about eighteen months before Henry's death), and the archbishop had exhorted them to a new Crusade, when the aged justiciar, who had never displayed any symptoms of enthusiasm, and had a wife, children, and grandchildren, the objects of his tender regard, rose up and declared his readiness to march for the Holy Land, where- upon he was solemnly invested with the Cross. At the King's entreaty he delayed his journey, and Henry never performed it; but, soon after the coronation of Richard of the Lion Heart, Glanville accompanied a chosen band of Norman knights to Palestine, where, in the following year, he ended his career at the siege of Acre, 2 c 376 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. How greatly the dying Crusader would have rejoiced if he could have seen what we sec — the power of the Crescent at length drooping beneath the Cross, and England sending her peaceful sons and arts of peace to the Moslem land on which the chivalry of Christendom fought and fell! The office of Chancellor did not rival in dignity and import- ance that of justiciar in Glanvillc's days, and it was not until some years afterwards, when the office of justiciar had been abolished under the Plantagenets and the separate equitable jurisdiction of the Chancellor acquired, that he became first in judicial rank. Tn the Anglo-Norman reigns the Chancellor held both the Great Seal and his place in the Aula Regis as the King's principal chaplain, confessor, and secretary, but force of personal character combined with official power in the case of other great justiciars besides Glanville to give a pre-eminent dignity to the office of Justiciar of England. In the days of the Conqueror this diocese had sent William de Carilefe, the greatest of its early bishops, to the chief judgment- seat of England ; and it is a thing worthy to be remembered here that before the close of the Anglo-Norman dynasty another of these chieftains of the law was a bishop of Durham, for the martial yet lettered Glanville was succeeded by that magnificent prelate Hugh de Pudsey, who, if he did not render himself memorable as a minister of justice, is at all events commemorated in the ca- thedral city of this diocese by enduring monuments of his taste and love of splendour, for he completed the cathedral church, added the unique chapel called the Galilee, and built some im- portant edifices in the county of Durham. Pudsey was superseded as justiciar by a still more powerful churchman — William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, who united in himself the offices of chancellor and justiciar, and ruled England in King Richard's absence. Nothing is known of Longchamp as a judge, but the extraordinary energy of his character displayed itself in all its varied functions, and he even tried his hand as an engineer, for he constructed the ditch or moat of the Tower. His exactions oppressed both clergy and laity alike, and nearly exhausted the wealth of his countrymen, but they did not render him unpopular with people who had nothing to lose; there were EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 377 no newspapers to abuse him, and the minstrels, of whom he was a liberal patron, went about singing his fame in every market-place of England. Falling at length from his almost royal state, we see him a fugitive to the sea-coast, disguised as a female pedlar, and made the sport of the fishermen and sailors while prisoner in a cave upon the English shore, which he soon afterwards quitted for ever. He was more fortunate in making his escape than a succeeding chancellor, the brutal and daring' Jeffreys, who on the flight of James IT. became an object of vengeance for his own judicial atrocities, and as one of the King's evil counsellors. The unhappy ex-Chancellor was in sad consternation, and, planning an escape to Hamburgh from the river side of the Thames by a Newcastle collier, he disguised himself in a sailor's dress, and cut off the bushy eyebrows that added such terror to his frown; but, im- prudently looking out of window at an alehouse in Wapping, he was recognised by a scrivener who had once undergone the terrors of his face; he was seized by the mob, taken before the Council, petitioned against by the widows of the West, whose husbands he had hung or transported on the Monmouth Rebel- lion, and ended his short eventful career a prisoner in the Tower of London. But, to return to mediaeval judges. After the fall of Longchamp, Walter Hubert — who from being a poor boy, educated out of charity by Glanville and his wife Bertha, had reached the dignity of Archbishop of Canterbury — became the chief justiciar of King John. As I cannot say any- thing about him as a justiciar, I may mention one of his exploits as a general. I do not know what we should think of an Arch- bishop of Canterbury in our day who should put himself at the head of an armed force, and, chasing a demagogue into one of the London churches, should drag him from sanctuary with fire and sword, hang him, and reduce the citizens of London to obedience. Yet all this was done by Archbishop Hubert when a kind of re- bellion was stirred up by a formidable personage who was known in the folk-mote of the English citizens as William-with-the- Long-Beard. This strange picture of bygone times we derive from the Rolls of the King's Court — the earliest consecutive judi- cial records now existing; and, dry and uncouth as they appear, 2 c 2 378 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. they afford us many a glimpse of the times; they show the thrifty habits and prosperous state of the trading and the labouring classes early in the thirteenth century, and that the people were still Anglo-Saxon in language and feeling, although the Norman tongue and manners were found in the upper classes of society, and Norman-French was the language of Westminster Hall. These records show us too — and it is more to my present purpose — that the main outlines of the common law had then become de- fined, and that, concurrently with the social advancement of the people of England, their judicial system was moulding the con- stitution, and acquiring an authority which was ever vindicated by its foundation in the law of God. A succeeding Justiciar, the Geoffrey FitzPeter whom Shake- speare introduces in his " King John," was chiefly remarkable for his extravagant love of hawks, and for the fear with which he inspired that odious and cowardly sovereign; and his succes- sor, Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, and tutor of Henry III. was a man who made a great figure in the eyes of his con- temporaries. It is curious to contrast the calm, nameless, and forgotten black marble effigy in Winchester cathedral which is supposed to commemorate this martial Justiciar, with the turbu- lent and restless life of a man whose name, when living, filled all Furope. A more remarkable justiciar was his rival and successor Hubert de Burgh, to whom Shakespeare assigns the custody of Prince Arthur, and to whom authentic history attributes the honour of having persuaded King John to grant the great Charter. His unbounded ambition and rapacity subjected him, however, to accusations like some of those which were afterwards made against Wolsey ; his enemies moreover charged him not only with treason, but with poisoning some of the nobility, ab- stracting from the royal treasury a gem which had the virtue of rendering the wearer invulnerable, and gaining the King's favour by sorcery and enchantment — accusations curiously characteristic of the age. The seizures, escapes, and adventures of the fallen Justiciar are almost romantic; but he lived to spend the rest of his days in seclusion, and died amongst the Black Friars of IIol- born, to whom he gave the house which became the palace of Whitehall. EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 379 With the reign of Henry III. we reach the time when statute law as distinguished from the old common law of England began ; but Henry's ministers were generally too much occupied in mea- sures of defence against the barons to find leisure for legal reform, and only two of their legislative measures are known, viz. " the Statute of Merton," which was passed to encourage the enclosure of waste land, and the " Statute of Marlbridge," which regulated distraint; yet in the most turbulent period of this troubled reign there was given to England the best treatise on law of which our countrymen could boast until the publication of " Blackstone's Commentaries " — I refer to Henry de Bracton's celebrated " Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England." The author is supposed to have been an ecclesiastic who had made jurispru- dence and the Roman civil law his study ; and it is remarkable that, notwithstanding the advancement of society in the six cen- turies from Bracton's time, and all the changes that England saw in that long period, the overthrow of dynasties, and the destruc- tion of her old nobility in civil wars, it was not until the law re- forms of the last five-and-thirty years that any considerable por- tions of Bracton's work became entirely obsolete. In these days, when a lawyer finds himself surrounded by an ever-increasing legal library, he is disposed to think with some envy of the good fortune of these old Plantagenet lawyers who needed only a few portable MSS. for reference. The spirit of jurisprudence seems to have been active in those days in France, for St. Louis the King, who used to administer justice seated amidst his council under a spreading oak on the summer mornings, graced his abso- lute authority by amending the judicial system of his kingdom. I shall mention only one of Henry the Third's justiciars, Hugh le Despencer, a nobleman more celebrated for bravery than learn- ing — which I hope no members of the Inns of Court will ever be, notwithstanding their zeal for the volunteer movement; but he is memorable as the last of those remarkable men, ancestors of some peers of England at the present day, who for more than two centuries united the sword and the gown in the political and commanding functions of Justiciar of England. Hugh le De- spencer, though aged and infirm, was at the battle of Evesham, and, refusing to disgrace his ermine by flight, was slain beside 380 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. the gallant Montfort, Earl of Leicester. The year in which that battle was fought, 1275, was memorable in our history, for Eng- land then saw that parliament assemble with which our represen- tative system may be said to have begun. The first chief justice who acted merely as a judge was Robert de Bruce, that kinsman of Scottish monarchs who is counted among the ancestors of Queen Victoria, and who presided as chief justice in the then rising tribunal afterwards called " the Court of King's Bench." The family of Bruce was Norman; but from the Conquest Skelton in Yorkshire was their chief seat, and in Scotland " their skill in the tournament and in singing ro- mances softened the hearts and won the hands of the Caledonian heiresses." Robert was of the Scottish branch, but educated by his Yorkshire cousins, and, selecting Westminster Hall instead of the field of chivalry for the arena in which he hoped to gain distinction, he ultimately became Chief Justice of England, and, afterwards retiring to Scotland, he claimed, on the death of the Maid of Norway, to be crowned king at Scone, but Edward I. decided in favour of his formidable rival, John Baliol. During the sway of the j usticiars the King's court retained its Norman constitution, but from the time of Henry III. its func- tions were gradually divided, and the various courts at Westmin- ster had their rise from that division. Still, the days had not arrived when Englishmen saw the high places of judgment adorned by the profound learning and the judicial virtues which have been so long characteristic of the English bench of justice, and it was reserved for the professionally-trained judges of later times — the Mansfields, the Hardwickes, and the Ellenboroughs — to earn our grateful remembrance for asserting some principle of law that has ever since governed rights and protected interests of their countrymen. The lives of the Chancellors in the Plantagenet reigns belong more to the history of England than to that of the worthies of the law, for the prelate-chancellors were more prominent in affairs of the state and of the Church than in the exercise of judi- cial functions. What we read of one chancellor in those days is often applicable to many others — either he was a monk who won the royal favour by courtly manners and aptitude for busi- EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 381 ness affairs; or who, as abbot of a monastery, gained the esteem of the brotherhood by his administrative services and his equitable rule ; or was a secular priest who stepped from one preferment to another, became a bishop or a primate, negotiated treaties, and went on foreign embassies, and, when he had, like Wolsey, "sounded all the depths and shoals of honour," returned to be laid for his final rest among the fraternity to whom he owed his education, or in the calm shade of the cathedral church which he had lovingly en- riched. The income of the chancellorship, however, was not at all magnificent, for this great functionary received from the Crown only five shillings a day, with certain cakes and cloth, wine and wax-lights, and lodging, besides the fees on writs and charters passing the Great Seal. The reign of Edward I. was the era when our judicial institu- tions became firmly established on the basis on which they have ever since remained. The principles of English jurisprudence were then defined, and the courts for the administration of justice were established in the form they still retain. The Court of King's Bench — in which the sovereign was supposed to preside assisted by the Chief Justice — became the supreme criminal court, with a certain control over other tribunals of civil jurisdiction. The Court of Common Pleas arose from the provision of Magna Charta by which suits between party and party were fixed at West- minster in order that suitors might no longer have to follow the king as the fountain of justice in his migrations from town to town. The jurisdiction of the Court of Exchequer was at first confined to estates and revenues of the Crown, but it afterwards acquired a jurisdiction both legal and equitable, as between subject and subject; the barons its judges, however, were not necessarily law- yers, even down to the reign of Edward III. The Chancellor became first in precedence of the great officers of State, and now sat in his own court, probably even then a very sleepy domain. The old appellate jurisdiction of the Curia Regis was vested in the great Council of the Nation ; and, upon the division of the legislature into two houses, remained with the Lords spiritual and temporal, who had the judges for their assessors, as they have at the present day. Before the end of the thirteenth century a great change had 382 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. silently occurred, which has ever since proved of the greatest im- portance to the interests of the law. The juridical knowledge which in early times had been monopolized by the clergy had come to be emulated by laymen in the societies of professors of the law which had been established in the Inns of Court, and from them the king now selected his judges. In the reign of Edward I. also began the series of reports of cases, which, under the title of year-books, form a grand repertory of English law, less useful now than curious for their subject-matter and anti- quity, and very unlike the professional and the newspaper reports of the present day. Then too originated that early code of law reform known as " The Statute of Westminster the first," which seems to have acquired for Edward the name of the English Jus- tinian. On looking back at the legislative achievements of this great monarch, it is curious to sec that a whole reign — a reign too which is always regarded as pre-eminent for legislation — produced fewer statutes than one Session of Parliament produces now. Yet, as Blackstone has said, there was more done in the reign of Edward I. to settle and establish the distributive justice of this kingdom, than in all the centuries since his time put together, and under Edward I. the model of the administration of justice as between party and party was settled. Civil strife and national calamity in the feeble reign of Ed- ward II. suspended further law reform, but the jurisdiction of the Chancery seems to have been extended, and the Chancellor's court was fixed at Westminster, where, at the upper end of the great hall, his marble chair was now exalted. Until the time of Edward III. the Chancellors continued to be churchmen, but that sovereign for the first time selected a Chancellor from among the professors of the law, who were to the common law of Eng- land what the civilians of the courts ecclesiastical were to the canon law of the Church. The first thorough- bred common lawyer ever appointed Chan- cellor was Sir Robert Parnynge, but in the person of Sir Robert Bourchier, his predecessor, Edward had departed from the usage of selecting a churchman for the office, and Bourchier, who was the first layman ever made Chancellor, seems to have been better fitted for the duties of a general officer than those of a judge. He EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 383 had been the king's companion in arms, and the military Chan- cellor resumed his proper vocation when he fought beside the Black Prince at Cressy, and gained a peerage which descended to a distinguished posterity. But Edward soon returned to the Church for his Chancellors, and one of the most remarkable men in the whole series was Richard de Bury, who had been his tutor, and was his most trusted friend, secretary, and prime minister. After a wonderful career of ecclesiastical dignities and civil em- ployments this great and learned man became Bishop of Durham, and surrounded himself by scholars and the greatest collec- tion of manuscripts then known in England, all which he be- queathed for the foundation of the Public Library at Oxford. De Bury had an unbounded love of literature, and made munifi- cent provision for the preservation and advancement of learning ; and the noble figure of the good bishop, both scholar and states- man, shines calmly through the eventful scenes of a warlike age and throws a lustre on the most brilliant reign in English history. One of his successors in the office of Chancellor — William of Edynaton, Bishop of "Winchester — is chiefly memorable for his early patronage of William of Wykeham, who built Windsor Castle, then turned ecclesiastic, and succeeded Edyngton as Bishop of Winchester, and finally as Lord Chancellor. Whatever Wyke- ham's judicial merits may have been, he has achieved a sort of im- mortality in his architectural works ; he was the great pioneer in the important educational movement which followed his time ; and his collegiate foundations at Winchester and Oxford, which so nobly commemorate his munificence and love of learning, still continue to diffuse the blessings of education in his native land. The lives of the Common Law Judges of the Plantagenet reigns present few features of general interest; yet in passing I must mention Sir William Howard, who was a Chief Justice, pro- bably of the Common Pleas, in the reign of Edward I. and in the early part of that of Edward II., for to him the illustrious family of Howard appears to owe its rise. With the reign of Edward III. we reach what may be re- garded as the turning point of the Middle Ages in this country. His Chancellors do not appear to have originated any improve- ments in the law; but during the chancellorship of John de 384 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Thoresby, Bishop of St. David's, Parliament passed the well- known statute (now in force) which defined the acts that are to be accounted treasonable. In that reign, however, trial by jury in the form in which it has come down to our own times seems to have had its beginning; juries having then for the first time assisted in the administration of justice as ultimate judges of mat- ters of fact. From two Acts, passed early in Edward's reign, which contain the oath of the judges to disregard letters from the king touching the decision of causes, it appears that the sovereign, after he had ceased to sit in his court of justice, had been accus- tomed to write to the judges desiring them to decide causes be- before them in a particular manner. It was at the same epoch, now nearly five hundred years ago, that the statute passed for the use of English in the Courts at Westminster. In 1362 we have the earliest known example of the use of English in proceedings of Parliament, but it was not until the time of Richard III. that the statute laws were given in the language of the people and were printed. The present use of Norman French in giving the royal assent to bills is, of course, a relic of the language of Parliamentary records in the Plantagenet reigns. At the time of the chancellorships of Edyngton and Wykeham, the Chancellor's equitable jurisdiction as a judge had not become the most important part of his functions. His political office had, however, greatly increased in importance: he was in effect Secre- tary of State for all departments and chief adviser of the King; sanctioned all charters and grants that passed under the Great Seal; had recently acquired the right he still exercises to appoint justices of the peace; summoned and opened Parliaments; and prepared the measures which became law. When the King held his court in any provincial town the Chancellor, with the masters of the chancery, the clerks, and records, followed him; but the officers of the chancery when in the metropolis lived together in an inn or hospitium; and they seem to have been somewhat dainty in their diet, if we may judge from the fact that the King's letters of safe-conduct were obtained by a Chancellor of Edward II. for some poulterers whom he sent into different parts of England to buy poultry " for the maintenance of himself and EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 385 his clerks of chancery." It is no wonder that in a subsequent reign complaint was made in Parliament that the masters were " sinecurists, over fat in body and purse." The Chancellor more- over received, as part of his allowance from the Crown, a liberal supply of wine from the royal vineyards of Gascony. Perhaps it was in consequence of an unwise abstinence from these good things, and a disregard of roast beef as the English basis of strength, that an Archbishop and Chancellor of Edward II. was weak enough to yield to the entreaties of the queen for the con- secration of an unworthy favourite, and, when he heard of the papal displeasure, actually died of fear of the Pope ! So much for the Chancellors. The Chief Justices in the four- teenth century were, like them, much employed on negociations of state, and by no means confined to judicial duties. Some were eminent, a few were sadly unprincipled, and others were very ill-fated. One judge, Sir John de Cavendish, ancestor of the Duke of Devonshire, was put to death in Wat Tyler's rebellion; and another, Sir Robert Tresilian, himself underwent the last penalty of the law on an accusation of treason in 1388. Henry le Scrope, a Chief Justice of this period, demands honourable mention, for he — without the advantage of ancient lineage, and by success in the law alone — founded a family and obtained baronial honours. That he has had many successful followers in later times is sufficiently shown by the fact that no fewer than eighty-two existing peerages have sprung from the law ! Other Scropes were likewise men of law and letters, and, "like good York - shiremen, were uniformly devoted to their own advancement." The year 1388 must have been a famous time for promotion in Westminster Hall, one Chief Justice having been hanged, and all the other judges having been attainted, deprived, or banished. Succeeding judges of those days seem to have wisely kept aloof from politics: — During tumults that convulsed the realm, they seem to have been quietly administering justice at Westminster; and the only battles witnessed by judges under the Lancastrian dynasty were those fought in the fields near Westminster Abbey by champions for the decision of trials under writs of right, when the judges attended to see that the laws of the combat were observed — a curious relic of the ordeal trials in which our Saxon ancestors believed. 386 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. The judge most distinguished perhaps of all the reverend sages of the law in Henry the Fourth's reign was Sir William Gas- coigne, whose name is made familiar to us by his having com- mitted the Prince of Wales to prison, and by his introduction in Shakespeare's play. He was of a Yorkshire family, and his ancestors were for the most part men of valour, but the future Chief Justice devoted himself to the law, and gained honourable fame for his uprightness and his disinterested performance of his duty. He showed how nobly he dared to brave the frown of power when he refused to try illegally, at the command of Henry IV., the king's illustrious captives Scrope archbishop of York and Thomas Mowbray son of the banished Duke of Norfolk, who had been taken in insurrection against him. But what has chiefly gained applause for Chief Justice Gascoigne was his dauntless ministering of justice on the royal heir of England who had presumed to insult him on the judgment-seat. Shake- speare has given dramatic effect to the scene in which the young Prince, on his accession to the throne, is represented as re-investing Gascoigne with " the balance and the sword": — You did commit me : For which, I do commit into your hand The unstain'd sword that you have used to bear; With this remembrance — that you use the same With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit As you have done 'gainst me. There is my hand; You shall be as a father to my youth : * * * * And I will stoop and humble my intents To your well-practis'd, wise directions. But I am afraid it is now established that the young King in fact lost no time in dispensing with the services of the dauntless judge. Henry the Fifth's reign was adorned by one of the most dis- tinguished Chief Justices recorded in history, viz., Sir John Fortescue, author of the well-known treatise De Laudibus Legum AngUts. It is refreshing to turn from the intriguing prelates and warlike barons who controlled the administration of justice in the fifteenth century to a man like Fortescue, an enlightened lover of liberty and constitutional law, who won his promotion by merit, EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 387 and was not more remarkable for Lis professional learning than for his judicial integrity. He was advanced in years, and had long worn the robe of dignity, when he signalised his constancy in the Lancastrian cause by fighting for Henry VI. by the side of Morton, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chan- cellor, in the field of Towton Moor — Where the Red and the White Rose, as all the kingdom knows, Were the emblems of the foes in a sad and bloody strife. And, after the fatal and romantic events which reduced Queen Margaret and the young prince to the society of outlaws in Hexham Forest, Fortescue accompanied the royal fugitives in their exile, and wrote his admirable treatise for the purpose of instructing the heir- apparent in the duties of a patriot King. When the cause of the House of Lancaster had become hopeless, Fortescue submitted to Edward IV., but was somewhat cruelly required, as the condition of pardon, to write a treatise in support of the claim of the House of York; and when — like an old lawyer, as people will probably think — he complied, he was restored in blood, and retired to pass the rest of his days at his Gloucestershire estate of Ebrington, which gives the title of viscount to his descendants at the present day. Fortescue is regarded as having laid the foundation of Parliamentary privilege by a celebrated judgment which affirms the exclusive right of the Houses of Parliament to decide upon their own privilege — a judgment which has been followed for four hundred years. But I must not pass from the Lancastrian dynasty without no- ticing three memorable Chancellors, foremost of whom was Car- dinal Beaufort, half brother of Henry IV. who was a distinguished statesman during three eventful reigns, and was four times Chan- cellor. He boldly extended the jurisdiction of the Court of Chan- cery ; but the control which his court then claimed over partition, dower, account, and some other matters cognizable at common law, has since continued, as well as the control which he first asserted over the marriage of infant wards. The jurisdiction of Chancery over uses and trusts had in Beaufort's days become quite established; but some of the subjects then brought before the Chancellor seem very much beneath his dignity; for instance, 388 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Lord Chancellor Beaufort did not deem beneath his notice the revenue he derived from licensing the exportation of cheese and butter; and, as a judge, he was asked in one suit to give relief against the Sheriff of Norwich, who had imprisoned the com- plainant for making tallow candles with wicks of flax instead of cotton; in another, to require sureties for the peace; while in a third, an attorney prayed him to restrain the defendant from using arts of witchcraft to his prejudice. One might imagine this superstitious suitor to be identical with the attorney, in a case in the Year Books, who obtained damages for being called a fool. It is actionable to say of an attorney that he is a fool, because this is saying that he is unfit for the profession whereby he lives, but it is not actionable to call an attorney a sheep, because that imputes innocence. But to return to the Cardinal Chancellor. Beaufort bore chief sway in England until his career closed in 1447, on that death- bed to which Shakespeare"^ description has given ideal terrors. The two other Chancellors conspicuous in the last of the Lancas- trian reigns were, John Stafford, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who held the Great Seal for the then unprecedented period of eighteen years, and carried the Act of Parliament to confirm the founda- tion of Eton College, where Grateful Science still adores Her Henry's holy shade ; and William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, the illustrious founder of Magdalen College, who lived not only to complete that splendid monument of his magnificence and love of learning, but to see the union of the Red and the White Rose. Although o classical learning was about to be restored, and the art of printing was already practised in Europe, a dark cloud seems to cover England during the struggle between the Houses of York and Lancaster — a period rife in usurpation and bloodshed, arbitrary executions, and savage manners; and during which, but for the fame of Chief Justice Fortescue and Judge Littleton, the rays of juridical science would seem to have been extinguished in this country. Thomas Littleton, a judge of the Common Pleas under Edward IV., has left a name still sacred in Westminster Hall. EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 389 He was the author of the Treatise on Tenures, — a work to which students of the common law were said to be no less beholden than civilians to the Institutes of Justinian; it became better known by the celebrated Commentaries of Sir Edward Coke, and has been illustrated in later times by four of the greatest of English lawyers. Judge Littleton was conspicuous for impar- tiality as well as learning ; he was not influenced by the passions of the contending partisans of York and Lancaster, and, though he witnessed two temporary transfers of the crown, the royal disputants retained him in office. The equitable jurisdiction of Chancery made great advance in the -reign of Edward IV., although it still wanted the systematic principles and independence of the courts of law which it afterwards acquired. The most distinguished of Henry the Seventh's chancellors was Cardinal Morton — the model, as he was the precursor, of Cardinal Eichelieu. As Bishop of Ely he is the prelate made familiar by Shakespeare in that scene in the Tower in which Richard III. asks Morton to send for some of the early straw- berries for which the gardens of Ely House, in the then smokeless and suburban Holborn, were famous. Morton is described as of reverend aspect, weighty as well as graceful in discourse, and highly skilled in law. His successor was a prelate — Wareham archbishop of Canterbury — whose chief glory was the friendship of Erasmus, the great scholar, who has eulogized the exalted character, the penetrating judgment, and the pious life of the good and gentle primate. In 1515 Wareham was superseded by Wolsey, who, during the fourteen years for which he held the Great Seal, exercised more power than any previous or succeed- ing chancellor, and is quite unrivalled for the external splendour with which he surrounded his office. I need not describe the dignity of appearance, pleasing expression of countenance, and fascinating power which were so remarkable in his personal gifts ; nor by what rapid steps the young Oxford student, suddenly emerging from the cloisters of Magdalen College, became Henry's favourite companion, and then his Prime Minister and Chancellor, Bishop of Winchester and Durham, Archbishop of York, and Cardinal Legate of the Holy See. His natural abilities to some extent supplied deficiencies of legal training ; but as Chancellor 390 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. he was not guided by those well-defined principles of equitable juris- prudence which have been the growth of a more artificial and re- fined state of society, yet he improved the administration of justice. We have a curious picture of the proud state he maintained in the height of his power. His household is said to have numbered eight hundred persons; an Earl of Derby was his high chamberlain, and he had quite a magnificent personage, who appeared daily in velvet or damask with a gold chain, for his master-cook ; and, when the Cardinal, attired in his judge's robe of scarlet and sable tippet, went from York House to his Court at Westminster, he was received by a line of gentlemen in waiting as he passed to mount his palfrey, which stood in housings of red velvet and gold; and he was ushered by an imposing pageant, in which the Mace, Great Seal, and Silver Cross of York moved on before him to the Chancellor's marble chair. In admonitory contrast with the picture of his pride, we see Wolsey on his fall entering Leicester Abbey to find a grave among the brethren of its tranquil cloister, after sur- rendering all his palaces and dignities; leaving, however, in the unfinished splendour of Christ Church College — the noble foun- dation which he endowed at Oxford from the spoils of suppressed monasteries, and dedicated to the perpetual advancement of learn- ing — a monument destined not to pass away. Sir Thomas More, who was then distinguished alike for his scholastic and his legal attainments, for his genius and his virtue, was designated by the public voice as Wolsey's fittest successor. The charm of his manners and conversation was early owned by Henry VIII. who had been accustomed to familiar intercourse with him amidst his happy domestic circle before promoting him to the perilous dignity of Chancellor. He was installed in office with studied magnificence and eulogy, and his admirable discharge of his judicial duties soon reflected a new splendour on his cha- racter. It is significant of his modest piety that he was accus- tomed every day in term, before he sat in his own court, to enter the adjacent Court of King's Bench, and receive on bended knee the blessing of his venerable father, who was still a judge; and, instead of imitating Wolsey's proud parade, More, even when Chancellor, used to walk with his family to church, and sing among the choristers. To the home enjoyments and the literary EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 391 pursuits which official duty had interrupted, he eagerly returned when the determination of the royal Bluebeard to marry Anne Boleyne, whether his divorce from Catherine should be granted or refused by Rome, obliged More to resign an office which he could no longer conscientiously hold. But his peace was soon to be in- vaded, and with his refusal to be present at Anne Boleyne's coron- ation his troubles began. A tyrannical edict, miscalled a law, made it high treason to " do anything to the prejudice or dero- gation of the King's lawful matrimony with Queen Anne," and required all persons to swear to maintain the contents of the statute. More, deeming the oath unlawful, refused to take it, and was committed to the Tower; but as he had said nothing that could be perverted into a semblance of the acts made treasonable the fickle tyrant could not shed his blood. Rich, the solicitor- general, thereupon undertook the infamous task of trying to betray him, in a confidential conversation, into some expression that might be called treasonable. After a long imprisonment he was arraigned for trial, and Europe had not seen such a prisoner at any bar of justice for a thousand years. What a scene was witnessed by sympathising crowds on that May morning in 1535, when the summer sun- shine fell upon his venerable form, as, aged and bent by imprison- ment, he issued from the Tower gate amidst the guards, walking feebly and supported by his staff, to be tried in that great hall in Westminster where but lately he had sat in judgment ! His hair it was observed had become grey since he was last seen among the people. The prosecution must have failed if Rich had not sworn that More denied the power of Parliament to make the King supreme head of the Church; and thereupon, notwith- standing that this evidence was unsupported by other testimony, and was denied by the illustrious prisoner, he was convicted, and under colour of law, to the general horror of Christendom, be- headed on Tower Hill. In the career of Sir John Popham, one of Elizabeth's Chief Justices, there are some amusing features. While a child he was stolen and disfigured by gipsies; and the irregular habits and little respect for rules of property which marked his youth were attributed to his residence among his early captors. Traditions 2 D 392 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. were then still fresh of robberies haying been committed on Gad's Hill, under sanction of a too sportive Prince of "Wales; and even when young Popham had become a student in the grave decorous Temple his companions out of doors were profligate, and he is even said to have assisted in taking purses on the highway; but, instead of being conducted to Tyburn for his offences, he lived to sentence others, and to become a terror to all evil-doers. His wife has the credit of having accomplished his reformation, and he became a well-conducted barrister. On attaining the degree of Sergeant-at-Law, he gave a feast of extraordinary magnificence* graced by some fine old Gascony wine, which people did say had been intercepted by him one night, many years before, on its way from Southampton to the cellars of a London alderman. Soon after his election as Speaker of the House of Commons, he was appointed Lord Chief Justice, and he presided for fifteen years, exhibiting in civil causes much learning and impartiality ; but his character as a judge is sadly tarnished by his not extending that good quality to state trials, and by his conduct at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, when the practice of interrogating the ac- cused in criminal trials, to which the French still adhere, pre- vailed in England. But few of the Tudor judges exhibited the independence and impartiality as between the Crown and the subject, which most of them showed between suitor and suitor; their subserviency, however, in state trials, is perhaps to be con- sidered the reproach of the age rather than of the individual. Popham is also remarkable for having amassed more property than any lawyer before his time had acquired, and he became the owner of the estate of Littlecote Hall — the scene of the mysterious story of Wild Darrell. The reign of Elizabeth does not present any chancellor of worthy memory; the Queen was often her own chancellor or keeper of the Great Seal ; and perhaps the best known chancellor of that vain and capricious sovereign was her handsome favourite Sir Christopher Hatton, who may be said to have danced his way to the woolsack, and was better fitted to be a chamberlain of the household than to assume judicial duties. I now pass to Sir Edward Coke, a Chief Justice whose life has been written by no fewer than six biographers since 1825, who EMINENT JUDGES OF ENGLAND. 393 has been considered the highest oracle of our civil jurisprudence and the hero of English Law. He was a scion of that ancient Norfolk family which is now represented by the noble owner of Holkham ; but preferring hard study to the easy life of a country gentleman, he devoted himself with exemplary diligence to the study of the law. He rose at three, read formidable black-letter books, and went at eight to hear arguments in the courts at West- minster, which lasted until noon, then the hour of dinner; after which he attended readings or lectures and studied until supper at five, and then he heard questions debated at the moots of his Inn of Court. He finished the day in a sort of atmosphere of law, for he walked in the evening in the gardens or the cloisters of the Temple, as the season permitted, and then wrote down the information he had collected, retiring to bed at nine in order to have an equal portion of sleep before and after midnight. He never indulged in a visit to the Globe or other theatres then rising into repute, or bestowed any time in reading what he deemed so unprofitable as the poems of Spenser or Surrey, although Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were at that time in such fashion that grave lawyers wrote prologues for their plays, or assisted at the brilliant masques which then disturbed the sombre repose of the Inns of Court. Coke's progress after he was called to the bar (which was in 1578) was almost as rapid as that of Erskine two centuries afterwards, but resulted from technical skill and not from a popular eloquence. His manners were not prepossessing; his mind never opened to the liberal studies of philosophy nor owned the charms of literature; and lie afforded a striking contrast to his great rival Francis Bacon, who was a polished courtier and had " taken all knowledge for his province." Coke's reasoning was narrow-minded, his style cramped, his dis- position arrogant and overbearing, his selfishness and love of riches insatiable, but his success was immense, and his practice so profitable that the Crown is said to have been alarmed by the increase of his territorial possessions. He had attained the head of his profession when he cast a longing eye on the great fortune of Lady Hatton — I fear I must say the fortune and not the lady was the attraction — though she was beautiful and young, and had besides the mysterious fascination which widows are commonly 2d2 394 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. found to exercise. Her cousin, Francis Bacon, who was then a briefless barrister, though an accomplished scholar, and a man of winning address, aspired to her hand; but Coke, if not eager for the lady, was eager to prevent his professional and political rival from becoming allied with the Cecil family (she was the grand- daughter of Lord Burghley), and, being preferred by her father, Coke was accepted by the lady, although there were, as the wags said, seven objections to him, viz. his six children and himself. They were privately married, for the young widow refused to be paraded in lace of the church as the bride of a wrinkled attorney- general of fifty. But the sad discrepancy of their tastes soon ap- peared; he loved law, and hated gaiety and expense; she did not appreciate lawyers though she married one, and she delighted in hawking, in masques, and the adulation of the young courtiers who had served under Sidney, and could repeat verses of Spenser; and it is said that, while Coke banished himself to his den in Sergeants' Inn, she thronged the galleries of Hatton House with musicians, dancers, and wizards. Perhaps, if their married life had not become unhappy, Coke would not have pro- duced the voluminous works which have given him such lasting fame, nor have plunged into the toils of public life. His first ap- pearance as public prosecutor after the accession of James was on the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, when Coke disgraced himself by his language and conduct, as he had done in the previous reign on the trial of the noble and unfortunate Lord Essex for his in- surrection in London. In all his prosecutions, indeed, Coke's con- duct was marked by servility to the Crown, an unscrupulous stretching of the royal prerogative, and a want of humanity and justice. At length, after twelve years of Crown practice, he stepped from this stormy ocean to what has been called the som- nolent haven of the Common Pleas, but not until he had sirth to do a wrong to the humblest subject of the realm. DESOKMAIS. A STORY OF SKIPTON CASTLE. [Bentleys Miscellany, April I860.] One of the most celebrated and remarkable women of any pe- riod was Anne Clifford, daughter of George Earl of Cumberland, and Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery. Her pa- ternal name is surrounded by many poetical and romantic asso- ciations, for the Cliffords were one of the great historic families not only of Yorkshire but of England, and a Clifford is the hero of many a deed of chivalry and knightly adventure. Religious, magnificent, and literary, the extraordinary character of the Lady Anne has added its own celebrity to the illustrious name she inherited, and has surrounded with most interesting memo- ries that famous old Castle of Skipton which was long the chief stronghold of her race. She had certainly some very remarkable persons among her progenitors, and she inherited some of their qualities. From the days of the Plantagenets down to the wars of York and Lancas- ter her knightly ancestors were warriors; but " the good Clif- ford " who fought at Flodden Field was almost an old man before he wore his armour, and had led the life of a shepherd until his thirty-second year. The career of his son, before the latter was advanced to the earldom of Cumberland, seems to have been as violent and lawless as that of any of Falstaff's allies; and his suc- cessor fought against the Armada, and was all his life a restless sailor. Such of the Cliffords of the Tudor days as had any tran- quil hours to give to the literature of the age seem to have dab- bled in alchemy, astrology, and magic. It is interesting to glance at the characteristics or the fate for which the Cliffords of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were 412 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. chiefly remarkable. In the Lancastrian cause the family was destined to do and suffer much. Thomas eighth Lord Clifford fell at St. Alban's in 1454, in what Shakspcare calls The silver livery of advised age, leaving a son, John — known as "the Black-faced Clifford" — who succeeded him, but who had short enjoyment of his patrimony and honours, for he was slain on the eve of the battle of Towton Moor. On his death the Cliffords were driven from their pos- sessions by the victorious House of York. It was one of the children of this unfortunate nobleman who became known as " the good Clifford — the Shepherd Lord." In his childhood he was placed by his noble mother for safety, first at Londesborough, and then amongst the simple dalesmen of Cumberland, and much of his boyhood is said to have been passed at the little mountain village of Threlkeld, near Keswick, whilst the Crown usurped his lands and castles : Meantime, far off, 'midst Cumbrian hills, The Clifford lives unknown, On strangers' bounty he depends, And may not claim his own. Like the Chaldasan shepherds, he seems to have early made ac- quaintance with the stars; and he was fond of all such know- ledge and legendary lore as might be acquired among the wildest scenes of nature. As Wordsworth sings of him : Love had he found in huts where poor men lie ; His daily teachers had been woods and rills — The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills. Thus peacefully he passed his life until, on the accession of Henry VII., he was restored to his honours and estates, and with the rest to his ancient tower of Skipton, " too long to vacancy and silence left:" Glad were the vales and every cottage hearth ; The Shepherd Lord was honoured more and more. He indulged in after-life the taste he had acquired for studious pursuits. When he resided on his Yorkshire estates his favourite retreat was Barden Tower — a small stronghold of the Cliffords DESOKMAIS. 413 situated in the deep solitude of ancient woods in Wharfedale; his chosen companions were his neighbours the canons of Bolton Priory; and, though he could only write his name, his favourite pursuit was astronomy, to which he seems to have added ju- dicial astrology ad libitum. But in 1513 the invasion of the Scots roused him to maintain the martial reputation of his race — Armour rusting in his halls On the blood of Clifford calls, and in his sixtieth year he fought in the battle of Flodden Field. In 1523 his course was run, and he was succeeded by Henry his son, who was within two years afterwards advanced to the dig- nity of Earl of Cumberland. In his youth he had been prodigal, raised money by anticipation, assembled a band of dissolute fol- lowers, and turned outlaw. But he was not doomed to remain always a stranger to ie all that life has soft and dear," for he had the good fortune to marry the lady Margaret Percy — an event by which the whole of the vast lordships and manors constituting <4 the Percy fee" in Yorkshire became vested in the Cliffords. From thenceforth all the country from Skipton in Craven to Brougham in Westmoreland, a distance of seventy miles, belonged to them, with the exception of a district about ten miles in length : and, for their chase or hunting-ground, they had around their old demesne of Skipton the vast deer-forest which then overspread the rocky central part of Craven, extending from the Wharfe to the river Aire. It has been conjectured that this adventurous young nobleman was the hero of the ballad of " The Nut-brown Mayde " — that touching though antiquated celebration of woman's love and con- stancy. The ballad, however, has been regarded by some critics as older than the youthful days of Henry VIII., and the hero discovers himself as "an erlys son," which Henry Clifford cer- tainly was not. Be this as it may, the Earl had been in youth the comrade of Henry VIII.,* and, unlike most other friends of * When this young nobleman went to London, upon his creation as Earl of Cum- berland, he had a retinue of thirty-four horsemen, but the cost of each man and horse was only tenpence a day in the money of those times. He was lodged at Derby House, where now the Heralds 1 College stands. He does not seem to have purchased 414 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. that inconstant and blood-stained tyrant, retained the King's favour so long as to receive, in 1542, a grant of the Priory of Bolton, with all the manors and lands of that famous house. But as if the gift by the royal plunderer of the Church had been fatal to the grantee, and the abbey lands had " wrought his swift decay," he lived only nineteen days after he became possessor of these rich spoils, and died at the age of forty-nine. Of his suc- cessor, Henry Clifford, little is to be said, except that he became allied to royalty by his marriage with the Lady Eleanor Bran- don, and that he was not only a studious man in a generally un- lettered age, but was much given to alchemy. Having had a narrow escape of being buried alive during an illness, he lived to marry for his second wife Anne daughter of Lord Dacre, and to enjoy his honours without suffering disturbance, though without acquiring renown.* George Clifford, his son, was the father of Lady Anne, and succeeded, as third Earl of Cumber- land, in 1569. He was a man of noble mind, great natural gifts, and adventurous disposition. He early showed his predilection for " a life on the ocean wave," and even when at Cambridge did not care for any other learning than what might aid To steer the bold barque o'er the new-found main To the new land of glory, blood, and gain. In his nineteenth year he married the Lady Margaret Russell, daughter of Francis second Earl of Bedford, to whom he had been betrothed in infancy; but he did not love her, and often deserted his home to engage in naval expeditions. The sea, which (as Hartley Coleridge says) he wooed for his bride, was to him a cruel mistress, and his naval trophies were bought at the expense of his fortune. He made nine voyages, chiefly to the West Indies, and, on the memorable advance of the Spanish Armada, distinguished himself in the action off Calais. This and brought with him from London to the North any articles of luxury and amuse- ment, except a hound and a falcon, a bugle-horn and a sheaf of arrows. He was very economical in the presents he brought to his wife, for they appear to have been con- fined to " a white embroidered frontlet " which cost fifty shillings, and some velvet. * The inventory of his apparel (printed in Whitaker"s "History of Craven'') affords an example of the showy and costly character of a nobleman's wardrobe at that time, and quite a picture of the interior of a great baronial castle in the middle of the sixteenth century. DESORMAIS. 415 high-born wanderer of the sea is portrayed by the pen of his dutiful daughter, and the pencil of an unknown limner, as a model of masculine comeliness, with an expressive as well as handsome countenance, set off by costly attire. He was possessed of great bodily strength and agility, and was skilled in knightly accomplishments. His valour and love of daring were quite romantic, and he could charm the female ear by eloquent discourse Of all the wonders of the mighty deep — Of perils manifold and strange. James I. had been only two years upon the English throne when the Earl's adventurous career closed, at the age of forty- seven, and, on this event, the right to his lands, baronies, and honours (save the earldom, which went to his only brother Sir Francis Clifford,) descended to the Lady Anne, his only daughter and heir, then in her sixteenth year, she having been born on the 30th of January, 1590. Our noble heroine shall now introduce herself. Writing in the sixty-third year of her age, when Time had long robbed her of her charms and thinned her flowing hair, she says: — " I was very happy in my first constitution, both in mind and body, both for internal and external endowments; for never was there a child more resembling both father and mother than myself. The colour of mine eyes was black like my father's, and the form and aspect of them was quick and lively like my mother's. The hair of my head was brown and very thick, and so long that it reached to the calf of my legs when I stood upright, with a peak of hair upon my forehead, and a dimple on my chin, and an exquisite shape of body like my father. * * * And, though 1 say it, the perfections of my mind were much above those of my body : I had a strong and copious memory, a sound judgment, a discerning spirit, and a strong imagination, insomuch that at many times even my dreams and apprehensions proved to be true." Her portrait at Knowle Park represents a youthful person of symmetrical form, with features betokening great energy of character, Less formed to sue than to command — 416 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. but adorned with the grace of a high-born woman. Another portrait of her, taken in later life, represents features more ex- pressive of firmness than benignity; but, although she did possess a masculine decision of character, she was undoubtedly a person of beneficent and amiable disposition. She inherited the literary taste of some of her ancestors. Amongst the books introduced beside her in a picture in which she is represented as a damsel of thirteen, are Eusebius, St. Augustine, Josephus, and the " Arcadia" of Sir Philip Sidney.* She must have been a learned little lady indeed, if these were the books she was capable of reading ! It is a pleasant relief to find that she nevertheless learned dancing and the use of the cross-bow, and took part in private theatricals. Our sympathies are particularly engaged by finding that she had an early love for poetry and regard for literary men — a taste for which she was, doubtless, much indebted to her worthy tutor Samuel Daniel, himself historian and poet. Her noble father, sea-rover as he was, had been a patron of Spenser, and by her was Spenser's monument erected in Westminster Abbey. The Lady Anne enjoyed the care and affection of her mother until her twenty-sixth year, and owed to her parent the defence of her inheritance and patrimonial rights. f She set up a charac- teristic and enduring monument of her filial love in erecting a pillar upon the spot where she took the last leave of her mother, on the road between Penrith and Appleby, in remembrance of which event she ordained that at the pillar there should be a dis- tribution of money to the poor upon the anniversary for ever. The poet Rogers, it will be remembered, has commemorated * Written, as the reader will remember, in the classic halls of Wilton, in which the Lady Anne passed some period of her life after her marriage to Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery. f Honourable testimony to the care of this excellent parent in forming the character of the Lady Anne is borne by her poet-tutor in the poem addressed to her, in which he says : " With so great care doth she that hath brought forth That comely body, labour to adorn That better part, the mansion of your mind, With all the richest furniture of worth, To make thee highly good as highly born, And set your virtues equal to your kind." DESORMAIS. 417 The modest stone which pious Pembroke reared ; Which still records beyond the pencil's power The silent sorrows of a parting hour. At an early age Anne Clifford was united to Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset, who, although in other respects a man of sense, seems to have been a profligate spendthrift, eager to sign away her patrimonial rights for present gain. He died in 1624, leaving only two daughters, for the noble pair had been suc- cessively bereaved of their three sons ; and it was by the marriage of one of those daughters to John Tufton, Earl of Thanet, that the ancient manor and castle of Skipton has descended on Sir Richard Tufton, the present owner of that historical domain. At the mature age of forty-one, after six years of widowhood, the countess was again overtaken by matrimony. Her second husband was that memorable simpleton (as Walpole calls him) Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, himself a widower of forty-five, whose qualifications seem to have consisted of hawking and hunting, and whose only recommendations were that he was a favourite courtier and a handsome person, for his character has been justly regarded by posterity as odious and contemptible. Yet his mother was that " Sidney's sister" cele- brated as " the subject of all verse," and his brother was Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of the most distinguished of the worthies and benefactors of Oxford, a scholar, philosopher, and hero.* In her own account of her wedded life, the lady says of her departed lords : " It was my misfortune to have crosses and contradictions with them both ... so that in both their lifetimes the marble pillars of Knowle and Wilton were to me oftentimes but the gay arbours of anguish. ... I made good books and virtuous thoughts my companions, which can never discern affliction, nor be daunted when it unjustly happens." But soon the Lady Anne was to merge her conjugal miseries in the troubles of the civil wars. A firm royalist and faithful daughter of the Church of England, this high-spirited lady would * Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, died 23rd January, 1650. For some time before, the countess had been obliged to live apart from him. 418 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. probably have performed heroic actions had her strong castles and broad lands been in her own command during the early years of the rebellion. When she came to be actual mistress of what had been legally hers since 1643, her property was in a dilapi- dated state. Her Westmoreland castles — viz. Appleby, Brougham, Brough (which guarded the pass of Stanemoor), Pendragon (which commanded the pass of Mallerstang), and her Yorkshire strongholds of Barden and Skipton — were in ruins. It might be said of these as of the exiled Percy's in the well-known ballad : Her towers and castles, once so fair, "Were mouldering in decay ; Proud strangers had usurped her lands And borne their wealth away. At Skipton, amidst towering rocks and dark forest, a castle had stood from the Norman days— the chief stronghold in moun- tainous Craven. On a plateau, bounded towards the north by a precipitous rock, and on the south by a natural dell, the Norman lords of Skipton raised their fortress. In the reign of Edward II., when Kobert de Clifford acquired the castle from the Crown, he superseded the Norman stronghold by an Edwardian castle, with the characteristic circular towers which still form the oldest portion of the main fabric. To the edifice of this martial Clifford his successor the first Earl of Cumberland, more than two cen- turies afterwards, added the gallery, a stately range of building sixty yards in length. In this picturesque old stronghold Anne Clifford was born, but before she obtained possession of it Skip- ton Castle had been reduced to little more than roofless walls, for it had undergone two sieges, and had been at length savagely dismantled by the Parliament, and its tapestry, antique furniture, and embossed plate had been ruthlessly scattered. Such was its state when the noble widow, almost immediately after the death of her second husband, returned to her native castle, and set her- self, with characteristic energy, to repair the damage inflicted by years of litigation, waste, and civil discord. The work of re- storation was carried on by this energetic lady in a manner which shows that it was very congenial to her, and she accomplished it in defiance of Cromwell, and completed the repairs in 1658. In her time there were fifty-seven chambers of all kinds in DESORMA1S. 419 Skipton Castle. Towers with winding-stairs, ghostly galleries, and the tapestried octagon chamber that was her bedroom, and might still be her presence-chamber, remain, but the interior of the castle has been much modernised. Its external features, as repaired and left by the Countess, have not, however, undergone much change in the two centuries that have since passed over them; and it presents a picturesque, though inharmonious, com- bination of a Tudor manor-house and more modern architecture with an Edwardian fortress. The fortified gateway of the outer bailey remains as she left it, and in its parapet, as if still proudly looking to the future, the word Desormais — the motto of the Clifford family — is seen in letters of stone against the sky. Per- haps it was not until the Restoration of Charles II. (as Mr. Hartley Coleridge has suggested) that she planted in the bailey of Skipton that acorn from the oak of Boscobel — " as a symbol of the ancient loyalty of her house " — which grew to be a noble tree, lono* surviving the fortunes of the House of Stuart. So strictly did she restore, that in one of the courts of Skipton she slanted, in the place of an old yew that the besiegers had de- stroyed, a yew-tree, whose spreading branches still cast their solemn shade over the inclosure. Its situation reminds the spec- tator that, in the palace of Latinus, Just in the centre of the most retired And secret court, a holy laurel stood, For many years religiously preserved. Anne Clifford aspired to be remembered as " the repairer of the breach, the restorer of places to dwell in;" and this was the text which she set up in her inscriptions on Skipton Castle and over the entrance to Barden. The last-named stronghold, whose grey wood-environed tower is sought by many a summer tourist in romantic Wharfedale, seems to have been a mere forester's lodge in the days when it was surrounded by the deer-park of the adjacent canons of Bolton, now the property of the Duke of Devonshire; it had been, how- ever, enlarged for residence by " the Shepherd Lord," but had fallen into ruin before the noble widow obtained possession of her inheritance. She also rebuilt or repaired her four other castles, besides the 420 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. church of Skipton, and six other churches; for she (we arc told) " would not dwell in ceiled palaces while the Lord's house lay waste." At Skipton, too, she erected a storied monument to her father, and at Appleby a marble tomb for her mother. Her affection for that good and faithful parent seems to have been the warmest feeling of her soul ; and — strong-minded and free from superstition as she was — the daughter was accustomed to attribute her escape from peril to the prayers of her mother in heaven. She seems to have believed herself the object of a providential destiny, and that she was the charge of" a happy genius," acting as a presiding and directing power. The countess resided almost wholly on her Northern domains, diffusing their produce in affording employment, hospitality, and charity. It was her great delight to succour distressed royalists, and to do such deeds of beneficence as made her a blessing in the vales of Westmoreland and among the Craven Hills. She gene- rally resided .at Brougham or Appleby (the stately lady was hereditary sheriff of Westmoreland), but occasionally visited all her castles, and seems to have exercised within her dominions little less than regal sway. Appleby Castle was chiefly her resi- dence; there some of her manuscripts are preserved, and from thence many of her letters are dated. She was a great writer, and in her journals she has noted minute particulars relating to her own life and to her estates, and the events that happened upon them. She resided at Appleby while Skipton Castle was undergoing repair; and writing from the former place on the 10th of January, 1649, she says she should be " in pitiful case " if she had not " excellent Chaucer's book " to comfort her. In 1651 she founded an hospital for widows at Appleby, and endowed it with the manor of Brougham. She did not attempt to revive with vain parade the martial and festal splendours of the past, but took care to maintain the ample hospitality and the time-honoured customs of feudal days, and " the ties which bound the vassal to his lord's domain." For her the court of Charles II. had no attractions, nor did her sympathies embrace the political affairs of any kingdom beyond her own vast patrimony. When much advanced in life (probably about her sixty-third year) she employed an artist, whose name has rfOt been preserved, to paint DESORMAIS. 421 the famous family picture, in three compartments, which is now at Skipton. Her object seems to have been to have a plain de- lineation at one view of the features of those most dear to her; accordingly, in the centre compartment her parents and her brother are represented ; in one of the wings is her own likeness when a little maiden of thirteen ; and in the other wing her por- trait as a widow, in the sombre habiliments of her declining years. Books are introduced in both portraits, as if to indicate that her early love of reading lasted in her age ; but, while her youthful portraiture is attended by Eusebius and Agrippa " De Vanitate Scientiarum," her maturer image has the Bible, Charron " On Wisdom," and (strange decadence !) a book " Of Distilla- tions and Rare Medicines." Such was Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery. She attained the unusual age of eighty-six, with few infirmities, and seems to have remembered through her long career what her poet-tutor told her in her youth — that This fleeting life hath but this port of rest — A heart prepared, that fears no ills to come. Her end was as peaceful as her life had been energetic ; and at Brougham Castle, on the 22nd of March, 1675, she passed to immortality. Her body was interred, not in the tomb of her father and her martial ancestors at Skipton, but at Appleby, by the side of that parent whom she survived nearly sixty years, and never ceased to regard with reverential love. JAMES HOWELL, THE FIRST HISTORIOGRAPHER ROYAL. [The Druid— a College Magazine, Oxford, 1862.] One of the worthiest sons of the University of Oxford in the seventeenth ccnturv was James Howell, who held offices of honour from the first Stuart King, and also from Charles 1. and Charles II., and who was author of many works on historical, political, and philological subjects, the best known of which are, perhaps, his " Familiar Letters " (Epistolce Ho-Eliance), written between 1623 and 1655, of which there have been many editions. His father was Thomas Howell, minister of Abcrnant, in Car- marthenshire, (who died 1632,) and his elder brother was Thomas Howell, Fellow of Jesus' college, Oxford, Bishop of Bristol, and chaplain to the king. James Howell (who was one of fifteen children) was born about 1594, and received his first education at the Free School of Hereford. He was then entered of Jesus' college — the foundation connected with his native principality, and of which his elder brother was already a Fellow ; and, after taking his B.A. degree in 1613, he left the University to seek his fortune, for he was " not born to land, lease, house, or office." Writing to his father in 1619 he says — " When I went to bind my brother Ned apprentice in Drapers' Hall, casting my eyes upon the chimney-piece of the great room, I might spy a picture of an antient gentleman, and, underneath, Thomas Howell. I asked the clerk about him, and he told me that he had been a Spanish merchant in Henry the Eighth's time, and, coming home rich and dying a bachelor, he gave that hall to the Company of Drapers with other things, so that he is accounted one of their chiefest benefactors. 1 told the clerk that JAMES HOWELL. 423 one of the sons of Thomas Howell now came thither to be bound; and he answered that if he be a right Howell* he may have when he is free £300 to help to set up, also that any maid that can prove her father to be a true Howell, may come and demand £50 towards her portion from the said hall." Howell's " Familiar Letters " incidentally afford many parti- culars illustrative of his life and character, often fanciful in thought and quaint in language — ex. gr. " I have (he writes) many aspirings, and airy, odd thoughts swell often in me, corresponding to the quality of the ground whereon I was born — a huge hill looking to the south-east, so that the house I came from (besides my father's and mother's coat), must needs be illustrious, being more obvious to the sun- beams than ordinary." From these letters and from other sources, it will be interest- ing to collect the memorable events in his life: a few extracts from his letters will exemplify his style. In his day, gentlemen sought employment for their sons from merchants and great tra- ders ; and Howell's first employment was that of steward of the manufactory of glass established in Broad-street, London, under the patent or monopoly obtained by Sir Robert Mansell, Lord Pembroke, " and divers others of the prime lords of the Court," for making (as Howell in a letter to his father says) " all sorts of glass with pit coal only, to save those huge proportions of wood which were consumed formerly in the glass furnaces." It being- necessary to obtain workmen from Italy, and the chief materials from Spain, France, and other foreign countries, Howell was selected to be the Company's travelling agent abroad for this pur- pose, and so was enabled to escape from the glass house " where" he says, " I should in a short time have melted away to nothing amongst those hot Venetians, finding myself too green for such a charge." Accordingly, in March, 1618, he first went beyond the seas and proceeded to the Low Countries. His letters written from Amsterdam — at that time superior to Venice in commercial activity, and her rival in the traffic with the East — and from France, and particularly from the Queen of the Adriatic (where gentlemen were in those days glass-makers), and other chief cities * It is not known whether the good Merchant and the writer were related. 2 F 424 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. of Italy, arc very interesting. Castles that are now in ruin were then bristling with arms, and Feudal Europe was seen as a visible reality as yet unchanged by advancing commerce. In these let- ters he gives lively sketches of foreign countries and people, interspersed with notices of current political events and with anec- dotes and witty sayings.* In his foreign travel he acquired a masterly knowledge of modern languages, insomuch that he tells us it became his custom to say his prayers each day in a different language and in seven languages on Sundays; and during his connection with the glass factory he maintained a curious devotion to literature as well as business. During his absence he appears to have been elected a fellow of his college, and in March, 1621, he writes on his return to Lon- don, to thank Sir Eubule Thelwall, the Principal, for nominating him upon his new foundation. In 1622 he went abroad to travel, and again visited the north- ern Venice, and sailing on the sluggish canals, traversed the flat green meadows hardly raised above the watery level. Passing from Zealand to Holland "we might see " (he writes) " divers steeples and turrets under water, of towns that, as we were told, were swallowed up by a deluge within the memory of man." He was now appointed to an embassy under royal commission, the execution of which destined him to be at Madrid during the negotiations for the attempted match bet-ween the Prince of Wales and the Infanta of Spain. Writing to his father 8 Sep- tember, 1623, Howell says — " I was at a dead stand in the course of my fortunes when it pleased God to provide me lately an employment to Spain, pro- posed to me by some of the Cape merchants of the Turkey Com- pany." The business to be undertaken was the prosecution of their claim arising out of the illegal seizure of a valuable merchant- man on the ground of her conveying contraband of war. If Captain Wilkes had seized The Trent, sold the ship and cargo, * The reader is referred, by way of example, to the anecdote about Count Gondo- mar and the Castilian Housekeeper (i. Ep. Ho-Elianse 158, edit. 1655); How the Blasphemer was reclaimed (p. 208) ; the Archbishop an Admiral and the General a Divine (p. 292). JAMES HOWELL. 425 and appropriated the money as his prize, the outrage would have been somewhat similar to that which Howell was now charged to redress. He describes the matter thus : — " A great Turkey ship, called The Vineyard, sailing through the straits towards Constantinople, was driven by stress of weather to put into the little port of Milo in Sardinia. The searchers came aboard of her and finding her richly laden, for her cargazon of broad cloth was worth the first peny near upon £30,000, they cavill'd at some small portion of lead and tin which was on board only for the use of the ship, which the searchers alleged to be ropa de contraband*), for, by article of Peace, nothing is to be carried to Turkey that may arm or vittle. The Viceroy of Sardinia hereupon seized the whole ship and all her goods, landed the master and men in Spain, who coming to Sir Charles Corn- wallis, then ambassador at the Court, Sir Charles could do them little good at present, wherefore they came to England and com- plained to the King and Council. His Majesty sent a particular commission in his own royal name to demand a restitution of the ship and goods and justice upon the Viceroy of Sardinia, who had so apparently broke the peace and wronged his subjects." Howell then describes the failure of three previous royal com- missions, the last of which was intrusted by Lord Digby the ambassador to Mr. Cotington the secretary, but — " He returned without finishing the work, in regard of the re- moteness of the island of Sardinia, whence the witnesses and other dispatches were to be fetched. The Lord Digby is going now Ambassador-Extraordinary to Spain, and is desirous to transmit the King's Commission touching this business to any gentleman that is capable to follow it. He hath now a good round share himself in it. I go to Spain in company of the Ambassador, and 1 shall kiss the King's hand, as his agent touching this particular commission." Upon his arrival in Madrid he found the papers in the law suits already " higher than himself in bulk, though closely pres't together," and the damages awarded by all the sentences of view and review came to above 250,000 crowns, most part of which the Conde del Eeal, quondam Viceroy of Sardinia, then Mayor- domo and Lord Steward to the Infanta Cardinal, had been 2 f 2* 426 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. adjudged to pay. The esteem in which Lord Digby was held at Madrid at that time and the aid of Count Gondomar seemed favourable for the settlement of the business; but in subsequent Inters -written from Madrid, Howell describes the delays and eva- sions of the Spanish potentates, who seem to have well under- stood " How not to do it," and the ultimate insolvency of the dignified and delinquent Viceroy. And so ended the affair of The Vineyard. He gives some interesting particulars as to the wealth of the Church in Spain, and describes the gay scenes he wit- nessed while the Spanish match was under discussion and the ardent Prince's wooing, which was destined to be so fruitless, was going on; and in December, 1624, Howell arrived in England in convoy of the Prince's jewels, valued at £100,000, which had been taken for marriage presents to the King and Queen, the in- tended bride, the ladies of honour, and the grandees. The beauty of these jewels is said to have astonished even the Spaniards. In May, 1626, the match with the French Princess was concluded — the eighth alliance of England with France since the Conquest, and Howell writes, — " We have now a most noble new queen of England, who in true beauty is beyond the long-woo'd Infanta, for she was of a fading flaxen hair, big Kpp'd, and somewhat heavy ey'd ; but this daughter of F ranee, this youngest branch of Bourbon (being but in her cradle when the great Henry, her father, was put out of the world), is of a more lovely and lasting complexion ; a dark brown, she hath eyes that sparkle like stars, and for her physiognomy, she may be said to be a mirror of perfection." In 1627, Howell was appointed. Secretary to Lord Scropc, afterwards Earl of Sunderland, in his capacity of Lord President of the Council of the North, and was chosen a representative for Richmond in the Parliament which began in that year. He was subsequently appointed to the still more honourable office of Clerk of the Council to King Charles I. For the becoming celebration of " Act " at Oxford, in June of the following year (1628), Howell like a true son of Alma Mater contributed thus appropriately : " I send you here enclosed " (he is writing to his brother, Dr. JAMES HOWELL. 427 Howell, at Jesus College) " warrants for four brace of bucks and a stag, the last Sir Andrew Manwaring procured of the King for you, towards the keeping of your Act; I have sent you also a warrant for a brace of bucks out of Waddon Chase; besides, you shall receive by this carrier a great wicker hamper with two geoules of Sturgeon, six barrels of pickled oysters, three barrels of Bologna olives, with some other Spanish commodities." Apropos to the mention of these festive provisions it is curious to observe that he sends (25 July, 1629) to Sir Arthur Ingram, of Temple Newsam, then at York, a hamper of melons from Tot- hill-fields Gardens, Westminster. In a letter from St. Osyth's, at that time the stately seat of his friend Lord Eivers, he mentions the Bon Chretien pear and Bergamot pear, and that Muscatel grapes grew in such plenty that some bottles of wine were sent every year to the King. In 1532, as Secretary to Robert, Earl of Leicester (to whom Howell went at Castle Baynard, London, to receive his appoint- ment), he accompanied the Embassy Extraordinary from Charles I. to the Court of Denmark ; and here we have an example of his habit of correct observation of the men and things he saw, for he set himself to observe "the physiognomies, complexions, and carriage " of the Holstein gentlemen, as they were going in and out of the house in which the Parliament was then sitting at Rheinsburg, " and I thought verily," he says, " I was in Eng land, for they resemble the English more than either Welsh or Scot, though cohabiting upon the same island, or any other peo- ple that ever I saw yet, which makes me believe that the English nation came first from this lower circuit of Saxony." At home, the progress of public affairs constantly employed his pen, and he often mentions things of historical interest. For example, noticing in a letter on 30th January, 1633, the appoint- ment of Noy to be Attorney- General, Howell says of him — " He hath lately found out amongst the old records of the Tower some precedents for raising a tax called Ship Money in all the port towns when the Kingdom is in danger." The private occurrences at Court in the latter part of the reign of James and in the reign of Charles I., and such foreign afTairs as had reference to England are often so minutely described llfN LECTURES AND ESSAYS. that some of Howell's epistles are good specimens of the "News Letter" of the period.* His letters may, indeed, be said to reflect the contemporary affairs of all Europe, and they as often contain profound and philosophical remarks as matter of obsolete interest and anecdotes of questionable delicacy. They afford perhaps the earliest collection of English epistolary literature. Familiar or formal, lively or severe, they arc always manly in tone, calm, concise, and pointed; they display great reading and great knowledge of life, and in them history and philosophy are pleasantly mingled with colloquial humour. Many of the per- sons to whom his letters were addressed were familiar friends, and some of these were persons prominent in the history of their age. " I like," says Howell, " that friendship which by soft gentle paces steals upon the affection and grows mellow with time," and it seems to have been his lot to enjoy some ripened friendships. Several of his correspondents are noblemen of high rank, and many are men of learning, as, for example, Archbishop Usher, the Bishops of London and Kochester, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Sir E. Thelwall, Dr. Francis Mansell, who succeeded Thelwall as Principal of Jesus College, Attorney- General Noy, " rare Ben Jonson," and Sir Kcnelm Digby. By the last named friend and correspondent of Howell, mention of him is made in his "Dis- course on the cure of wounds by sympathy," pronounced at Mont- pelier before an assembly of noble and learned men. Sir Ke- nelm states that Howell was wounded when interposing in a duel between two of his friends, and that he cured him by a sym- pathetic powder which he had derived from the East.f In 1639 Howell went to Ireland, and in the following year to France. He appears to have been thenceforth occupied for some time in his official duties as clerk to the Council, and in his literary works. But, with the progress of the Civil War, his letters became saddened by the thickening troubles of his King and country, the sacrilegious outrages suffered by the Church of England, and the cruel and intrusive tyranny of the Puritans. * The letters containing a relation of the death of King James, and of the assassina- tion of Buckingham may be mentioned as examples. T A translation of the Discourse was published in 1658, and the anecdote is related ;u a more familiar work, namely, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel. See Note W. p. - - of the Sixth Volume of Scott's Poetical Works, ed. ]833. JAMES HOWELL. 429 At length, in November, 1643, "one morning betimes," as he writes, " there rushed into my chamber five men armed with swords, pistols, and bills, and told me they had a warrant from the Parliament for me." He was arrested, his MSS. were seized, and he was committed to the Fleet, where he remained a prisoner until some time after the murder of King Charles. Anthony Wood attributes Howell's imprisonment to debt, but there is no sufficient reason to doubt that he was a political prisoner. A firm royalist and a churchman, Howell was disgusted by the unbridled insolence and the lawless outrages of the leaders in the Great Rebellion; and if, as is stated, he continued to be im- prisoned by the Parliamentarian usurpers, his confinement was, of course, an illegal and vindictive outrage worthy of the Repub- lican faction. He bore it cheerfully, and, like Raleigh during his imprisonment in the Tower, consoled himself with literary employment. He applied his energies to writing and translating books, as well as to continuing his letters : — " Here," says Howell, with his accustomed pleasantry, writing from the Fleet Prison, " I purchased a small spot of ground upon Parnassus, which I have in fee of the Muses." And, truly, his productions at this period, although written from necessity rather than choice, show readiness of wit and play of fancy. Writing in 1645, he says "nine long lustres of years have now passed over my head, and some winters more (for all my life, considering the little sunshine I have had, may be called nothing but winters), yet — I thank God for it, I find no symptom of decay." Anthony Wood has alleged that Howell's Epistolce Ho-Eliance. do not consist entirely of genuine letters, but that many of them were first written in the Fleet, after the times at which they purport to bear date, and, in fact, to gain money for relief of his necessities during his long imprisonment. There are some of the letters as to which this appears very probable, for they seem to be dissertations in the form of letters, although stated to be written at the request of the persons to whom they are addressed ; and to this category, perhaps, belong such communications as the his- torical letter on the Dispersion and Condition of the Jews;* his * Ep. Ho. El. p. 256, edit. 1655. 430 LECTURES AMD ESSAYS. interesting philological essay on the mother tongues of the differ- ent countries of Europe ;* his letter on the Beverages of different Countries, and his remarkable letter dated from the Fleet, May- day, 1647, on the Religions of the World, f in which, speaking of Pagan superstitions, he remarks: — " Those are the excusablest kind who adore the sun and moon, with the host of Heaven; and in Ireland the Kerns of the moun- tains, like some in the Scotch Isles, use a fashion of adoring the new moon to this very day, praying that she would leave them in as good health as she finds them." Of his own devout piety and conscientious observance of Church ordinances his letter on devotional practices $ gives a very high idea; and he was evidently as sincere and unaffected in his devo- tion as he was incapable of the religious cant adopted by the saints of the Commonwealth. Charles II., on the Restoration, distinguished Howell by his favour, and cheaply rewarded his loyalty by creating the office of Historiographer Royal of England for him. The catalogue of his works, original and translated, is too lengthy to be given in this article, and, besides, it is printed at the end of his Londinopolis, published in his life-time, and more fully in Wood's A thence, where some dictionaries, grammars, and various translations arc mentioned. It seems doubtful whether that printed list is complete: for example, it does not include a little book on " Precedence of Foreign Ambassadors," entitled Sir John Finetfs Observations, published in octavo in 1656, of which Howell is stated to have been the author. The reasonable rule had not then been adopted which assigns diplomatic pre- cedence to him Avho has been the longest resident. His works must extend to a very considerable number of volumes, but are little known save to the lovers of old literature. His Familiar Letters first appeared in 1645, another collection in 1647, and both with a third in 1650; a fourth in 1655, and there have been subsequent editions, the eleventh of which was in 1754. The last of his works seems to have been his Londinopolis : an Historical Discourse or Pet-lustration of the City of London, * Ep. Ho. El , vol. ii. p. 72. t Ibid, p. 19. J Ibid, vol. i. p. 273. JAMES HOWELL. 431 whereunto is added another of the City of Westminster, tenth the Courts of Justice, Antiquities, and New Buildings, published at London in folio, 1657, a work in which we may find much curious information and evidence of no small research. Prefixed to a folio, published in 1653, on the German Diet, is the author's portrait, a spirited and somewhat rare etching. To the particulars now brought together as to his life (which, of course, might be greatly extended by a professed biographer,) it only remains to add that he died in November, 1666, and his body was interred in the Temple Church, where a monument to his memory was placed, which bore the following inscription: — "Jacobus Howell, Cambro-Britannus, Regius Historiographus (in Anglia primus), qui post varias peregrinationes, tandem na- turce cursum peregit, satur annorum et famce, domi forisque hie usque erraticus, hie fixus, 1666." The monument is stated to have been pulled down on the repairs in 1683. Of him it may be truly said — The hoary man had spent his live long age In converse with the dead, who leave the stamp Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page When they have gone into the senseless damp Of graves : his spirit thus became a lamp Of brightness like to those on which it fed. Through crowded courts, the city, and the camp, Deep thirst of knowledge bad his footsteps led, And all the ways of men amongst mankind he read. An interleaved copy of his Letters was in the possession of the Principal of Jesus College in 1823. It does not appear that this book contained any MS. particulars as to the life of this learned writer and loyal cavalier, or that any of his MSS. or other memorials of him are known to exist in the University to which he was ever so devotedly attached. A bust of Howell, which might be modelled from the portrait, should be placed in the library of his college ; and upon a tablet or some similar memorial, say in the Bodleian Library, the re- membrance of this distinguished worthy should be perpetuated at Oxford.* * This article was in the hands of the printer some time before the appearance in the Saturday Review (Oct. 11, 1862,) of an article which has opportunely revived attention to Howell's Letters. THE STORY OF RICHARD SAVAGE, DRAMATIST AND POET. \_Bentlcys Miscellany, Nov. 1862.] Tins unfortunate author may be said to live through Dr. John- son's Memoir of his life rather than in his own compositions, inasmuch as his works, eagerly as they were once sought for, and great as are their merits in many respects, are now seldom read. His story enlisted the sympathy of contemporaries, and his claim to noble birth was not denied in his lifetime ; but it was doubted by Boswell (who, after stating the case pro and cow., concludes that the " world must vibrate in a state of uncertainty as to what was the truth,"), and it has since been called in question by more than one writer. No one, however, seems to have taken much pains to test and challenge it until within the last four years, when Mr. Moy Thomas revived the discussion of these historic doubts. Anne, daughter of Sir Richard Mason, of Sutton, in the county of Surrey, married Charles Lord Brandon, afterwards Earl of Macclesfield, in 1683. They separated after a union of only a few months, and in the course of time she formed an intimacy with Richard Savage, Earl Rivers, which led to the birth of a daughter, who died when a few months old, and afterwards of a son, and subsequently to her divorce from her husband. In the mean time, what had been going on came to the ears of Lord Macclesfield. She undoubtedly wished to be separated from him, and she may have acknowledged the adul- terous intercourse, as Dr. Johnson states her to have done; but, lest her title and fortune should be lost, great efforts were made to prevent his obtaining evidence. In December, 1696, under the name of Madam Smith, she took up her temporary abode in THE STORY OF RICHARD SAVAGE. 433 lodgings in Fox Court, a passage between Brook Street and Gray's Inn Lane, and there, on the 16th of January, 1697, gave birth to the second child, a son, who was christened on the 18th by the officiating minister of St. Andrew's, Holborn, and entered on the register as Richard, son of John and Mary Smith. Lord Rivers and a Mr. Ousley stood as godfathers in person, and Dorothy Ousley, his sister, as godmother. On the following day the child was taken to Hampstead, and entrusted to a Mrs. Peglear to be nursed, and she was told that the child's name was Richard Lee. In the following summer she was visited by the wife of Richard Portlock, a baker, in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, who claimed the nursling as their child, and, after some altercation, carried it off. It has been conjectured that the Portlocks, who did not appear as witnesses in the earl's suit for divorce, were bribed to bring up the child as their own, and were only the agents of the Ousleys in removing him. At all events, he was never again seen by Nurse Peglear, and from this time all trace of his fate is lost. The earl, without further prosecuting his suit, obtained on the loth of March, 1698, a special act of divorce (memorable as the first ever granted without previous sentence of the Ecclesiastical Court), and the countess, reduced to her maiden name of Anne Mason, married Colonel Brett, and lived with him until his death in 1714. Richard Savage, the poet, first appears in 1717, when he pub- lished a poem ; and, as far as can now be discovered, he made his first public claim to noble parentage in 1719, when he published another work — a play — entitled " Love in a Veil: a Comedy written by Richard Savage, Gentleman, Son of the late Earl Rivers," in the dedication of which work to Lord Lansdowne he avowed himself to be " the son of Earl Rivers by the Countess of ." His own story is that to which Dr. Johnson gave world- wide currency in his Memoir (which was published in 1744, while Mrs. Brett was still living). The outline of it is that Savage, by the agency of Lady Mason, the Countess of Macclesfield's mother, was placed in the care of a poor woman, who brought him up as her own child, and received payment from Lady Mason for her care ; that his godmother, whom he calls Mrs. Loyd, died when he was only seven years of age, having by her will bequeathed 434 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. to him a legacy of 300/.; that he was placed at a grammar-school mar St. Alban's, where he received the only instruction ever given to him ; that when he was about fifteen he was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Ilolborn, and that while in this servile con- dition the person whom he had always known as his mother died, and that on searching her boxes he found letters written to her by Lady Mason which revealed to him that he was the son of Lady Macclesfield, born during the wedlock of the earl and countess, but that his father was Lord Rivers, and that he was doomed to be disowned. Savage further stated this discovery of his birth to have been made after the death of Lord Rivers; that the carl, when on his death-bed, had insisted on knowing what had become of his son, and had been informed by his mother that he was dead, whereupon he revoked a legacy of six thousand pounds, which he had bequeathed in the boy's favour ; and that the intention of his mother, then Mrs. Brett, had been to send him secretly to the American plantations, but that she had been hindered by her relations from executing that unnatural project, and had thereupon destined him to a life of obscurity and labour. Those who contend that Savage personated the lost son of Lady Macclesfield, point to the many improbabilities which these statements involve, and to the fact that Savage was himself the authority for many of them. They ask, where was he during the intervening ten years? whether the person whom he calls "his godmother, Mrs. Loyd," was identical with Dorothy Ousley? how he acquired the letters of Lady Mason, which he said re- vealed to him the injustice he had suffered; and why, if he pos- sessed them, # they were never produced? where the grammar- school " near St. Alban's" was? who was the shoemaker to whom he had been apprenticed? and what grounds he had for stating that persons were employed to kidnap and transport him? And it has been observed that, if the secret of his birth was discovered by him at the period of his boyhood when he lost his godmother, the fact of his existence could hardly have been concealed from Lord Rivers, who died some years later, viz. in 1712. Savage stated that, on discovering who his mother really was, he sought to arouse her maternal feelings in his favour, but that she steadily THE STORY OF KICHARD SAVAGE. 435 refused to admit him to her presence, and that he used to walk in the dark evenings for hours before her house, in the hope of seeing her figure through the window; but she left him to grow to manhood the victim of her cruel aversion. Those who say that Savage was a pretender, and was not the child that had disappeared, remark that the conduct of the count- ess towards the daughter, who died in infancy (as deposed to by witnesses in the divorce suit), was so marked by natural solicitude as to make it improbable that she would act unfeelingly towards her son, and would abandon him, and neglect all parental duties towards him. Savage himself (in " The Plain Dealer") speaks of her fine qualities; and again in the lines — Yet has this sweet neglecter of my woes The softest tenderest breast that pity knows ! Her eyes shed mercy wheresoe'er they shine, And her soul melts at every woe — but mine. But although the questions asked by objectors may not have received satisfactory answers, and the inconsistencies pointed out may not have been reconciled, there are considerations of very great weight in favour of Savage's pretensions. There is the belief of Dr. Johnson, his companion and biographer, in their validity (and we may be quite sure he concealed nothing about Savage that was known to himself) ; there is the belief and ac- quiescence of contemporaries in his story, a memoir of which, drawn up soon after the appearance of his first play, had an im- mense circulation, and procured for him the intercession of the Countess of Hertford on the memorable occasion which will be mentioned presently ; there is the fact that the charges of cruelty and unnatural conduct were made in the lifetime of his mother, but were never refuted ; and there is the conduct towards him of her own nephew, Lord Tyrconnel, who, if he had believed Savage to be an impostor, is not likely to have taken him to his house and companionship after her inhuman conduct had been publicly exposed.* There seems, indeed, to have been a very general * It is undoubtedly to be borne in mind, as Croker has remarked, before we draw any conclusions from Mrs. Brett's forbearance to prosecute a libeller, that, however innocent she might be as to Savage, she was undeniably guilty in other respects, and would have been naturally reluctant to drag her frailties again before the public. 1 he 43G LECTURES AND ESSAYS. acquiescence in the remark of Sir Richard Steele, that the con- duct of Savage's mother had given him a right to find every good man his father; and the public interest in his behalf must have been grounded on the romantic circumstances of his early life and on the cruelty of his fate, for his works could hardly have won for him such favour on literary grounds. Savage's first comedy (produced, as we have seen, when he was little more than twenty years of age) brought him the friendship of Steele (who, however, was little calculated to teach him either prudence or frugality), and also the friendship ofWilksthc actor, which soon made him an assiduous frequenter of the theatres, and procured for him an occasional benefit. He had not attained his twenty-sixth year when he adapted the story of Sir Thomas Overbury to the stage — a work which Dr. Johnson deemed a remarkable proof not only of genius and power of imagination, but of equality of mind, for during its composition he was often without lodging and without food, and was accustomed to com- pose in the fields or the streets, and to beg from any shopkeeper, as he passed, the use of pen and ink to write down the scenes he had composed. The publication of his tragedy not only made him, for the first time, master of a hundred pounds, but brought him the notice and attentions of some persons of eminence and rank. Three or four years of precarious fortune thus passed, and the aid of his generous friend Mr. Hill — a critic well known among the men of letters of his day — was advancing his reputation, when both his fame and his life were endangered by his falling, with two companions, under an accusation of murder, arising out of an affray in a tavern of discreditable resort. The evidence given on his trial seems open to much doubt and suspicion; but he was found guilty and sentenced to death, and now had no hope but from the mercy of the Crown. Earnest solicitations were made by powerful friends, but, incredible as it seems, those efforts were stated to Dr. Johnson to have been obstructed by his mother, who pretended that he had on one occasion entered her house and story of li is birth seems to have first appeared in Curll's " Poetical Register," in 1719 ; hut that publication is not any authority, as Savage may himself have contributed the story. THE STORY OF RICHARD SAVAGE. 437 placed her in bodily fear; and he would, doubtless, have been left for execution, if the Countess of Hertford had not laid before the queen the whole story of his mother's cruelty and obtained his pardon. This was in 1728. Thus narrowly escaping an ignominious death, he resumed a life strangely divided between beggary and extravagance. Mrs. Brett's relations appear to have purchased his silence towards her, and Lord Tyrconnel received him into his family, and granted him an allowance of 200/. a year. Although for these benefits Savage may be said to have bartered his independence, they brought him an interval of prosperity which rendered this the golden age of his life. His merit was now invested with the glitter of affluence, and he was courted by those who desired to be thought men of taste and genius. His esteem, however, is confessed to have been no very certain possession, and he would lampoon at one time those whom he had praised at another, so that he seemed a flatterer and a calumniator by turns. Yet it must be remembered that he was a censor of great acuteness of perception, indifferent to the power or station of the persons whom he criticised, and that really exalted abilities and virtue could not find an abler judge or a warmer advocate. It is honourable to both, that Pope was his steady friend almost to the close of his life. But the affluence which he enjoyed by the good will and hospi- tality of Lord Tyrconnel was not destined to long continuance — a quarrel estranged them for ever. It seemed to be the curse of his life that his misconduct or his necessities sooner or later alienated the friends whom his attractive qualities had gained; and it was but too truly said of him, that, while he scarcely ever met a stran- ger whom he did not make a friend, he had not a friend long before he obliged him to become a stranger. He seems to have acted in Lord Tyrconnel's house as if it had been a tavern, and to have forfeited that nobleman's good will by gross misconduct. At all events, his quarrel with Lord Tyrconnel turned him adrift upon the world, and precipitated him from plenty to indigence: those whom he had offended now returned the contempt they had suffered; those who had received favours from him did not re- member them, so much more certain (as Dr. Johnson remarks) 438 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. arc the effects of resentment than of gratitude. When the friends of his late patron, in his justification, published the faults of Sa- vage, his superiority of wit enlisted many sympathisers, but afforded little relief to his wants. In 1 729 he had produced his moral poem " The Wanderer," which he iinprovidcntly sold for ten guineas — as much, however, as was paid for the copyright of " Paradise Lost." Savage, now that he had lost his Garden of Eden, published his poem, " The Bastard," thinking himself again at liberty to expose the cruelty of his mother. There were five editions of it in a year, and it had the most general reception of all his works, for in this poem he de- scribes sorrows and misfortunes which are not imaginary; and, writing from the heart, has written with a truth which gives the work its chief force and value. It left the unhappy writer, how- ever, still in want of the necessaries of life : he might well have been the original of the author drawn by Pope, who Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends, Obliged by hunger and request of friends. A short ode on the queen's birthday procured for him 50/. from her majesty, with permission to write every year on the same subject, and a promise of a like yearly reward " until something better could be done for him." Nothing better teas done, but the ode continued to be written, and the pension to be received for some years. On obtaining the money, however, Savage was accustomed to disappear from the sight of all his acquaintances until every penny had been spent, and then he experienced distress from which his pen could not relieve him : he lived by chance, most commonly at the expense of new friends formed at taverns, and lodged as much by accident as he lived, insomuch that in a cellar, or the meanest haunt of the casual wanderer, was to be found (as Johnson has said) the man whose knowledge of life might have aided the statesman, whose eloquence might have influenced senates, and whose conversation might have polished courts. Yet his distress never dejected him, or made him lose confidence in his powers of mind. It seems to have been at this time that his visits to Cave (the publisher of the Gentleman s Magazine) at St. John's Gate brought THE STORY OF RICHARD SAVAGE. 439 him and Dr. Johnson together, and Malone treats it as not im- probable that they were sometimes reduced to stroll about together all night for want of a lodging. Cave appears to have befriended Savage in his distress, but the death of the queen put an end to his hopes of advancement and to his pension, and he now accepted an offer of friends that he should retire to a cheap abode in Wales on an allowance of 50l. a year, which they proposed to subscribe for his support. In submitting to this exile from all the convivial society and the metropolitan life to which he had been accustomed, he intended to complete a play on which he was engaged, and to prepare his works for the press, having received several subscriptions for that purpose, and then to return to London and live on the profits of his labours. And so, with many resolutions of rigid economy, he, in July, 1739, tenderly took leave of Dr. Johnson and the rest of his friends, and went to Swansea. But he soon found the misery of his dependence, and, after living there for little more than a year, he came to look on his contributors as persecutors and oppressors, who had induced him to go into this banish- ment on the faith of promises which were not fulfilled. In the hope of releasing himself he went to Bristol, intending to return to London, and was caressed and entertained by the literary citizens of Bristol for some time, until his irregularities wearied the friends whom his attractive qualities had gained. He again experienced the extremes of want, and, being arrested for a debt he owed at a coffee-house, languished for some months in Bristol gaol a prisoner, supported by charity, until death released him, and threw its awful veil for ever on his frailties. Looking back on a life of which we have now sketched the chief incidents, the reader will probably agree with Dr. Johnson that, if the miseries which Savage underwent were sometimes the consequences of his faults, his faults were very often the effect of his misfortunes. Assuming Savage to have been really the person he represented himself to be, he, bom of noble parents "before the divorce of his mother, and therefore entitled to be educated and provided for as a gentleman, was deprived of his birthright by an arbitrary measure, was doomed to a life of labour and poverty, and was destined by his unnatural mother to grow to 2 G 440 LECTURES AXD ESSAYS. manhood unfriended and disowned. The doubts and questionings which Mr. Thomas lately elaborated into a long essay, are only such as must suggest themselves to any one accustomed to the Bitting of evidence, but the essay is Avell calculated to produce an impression that Savage's story of his birth was an impos- ture. Most persons will, however, be disposed, we think, to agree after all with Boswell, that it is a question to which only the Scotch verdict of " Not proven " can be applied. As a writer, Savage had very great merit, for his works are moral in tone, have much originality, and evince poetical genius and a rare knowledge of life. He seems, indeed, to have had an intuitive perception of character, and a quickness in acquiring knowledge, which in some degree compensated for his deficient education, and enabled him to give his works the air of learning they often possess. He certainly afforded a striking example of genius and instability, and was almost equally remarkable for his weaknesses and his virtues. He had a warm and vig- orous mind, rare gifts, and winning manners, but was sensual and inconstant; better qualified to acquire knowledge than riches, and more retentive of information than of his money. His ill-regulated life, his improvidence, and his literary hypocrisy justly provoke our censure, if not disgust; yet he could forcibly inculcate maxims of virtue which he was not inclined to practise, and could be the foe of all inflated pretensions, whatever the pretender's rank. Although not dejected by distress, he could be intoxicated by good fortune, and he could bear privation with heroism, though he could not enjoy prosperity with mode- ration. Though fickle in his friendship, he could forgive his enemies, and even do good to those who had injured him, and in his own distresses and privations he could cheer and relieve those who were still more unfortunate than himself. Finally, when we think of the extraordinary disadvantages of his birth and early years, the adverse fatality that seemed to attend his fortunes, and the fact that his sufferings were more frequently caused by the crimes of others than by his own vices, we wish to remember only what was good in the character of Richard Savage. EDWARD FOEBES THE NATURALIST. [Bentler/s Miscellany, March, 1862.] The remarkable and gifted subject of this memoir * was born in the Isle of Man in 1815, and within the shores of that tiny kingdom he spent a third of his life, but the fame he won in after-years had nothing remote or insular in its character and limits. His great-grandfather was one of the many adherents of the Stuarts upon whose head a price was set for his loyalty, and he migrated from his native Highlands to the Isle of Man soon after the events of 1 745. The father of Edward Forbes was con- nected with the trade of the island, and became a banker: his mother was of an old Manx family, and is described as a person of intellectual and superior mind, who took great delight in cul- tivating beautiful flowers and rare plants — a source, probably, of her son's early fondness for botanical pursuits. The green romantic beauty of the valleys of Man, and the pic- turesque wildness of its shores and bays, told powerfully on his youthful fancy, and with the zest of a descendant of Norse sea- kings he loved the waters that encircled his island home. He was, indeed, a votary to whom the Muse might say : I saw tbee seek the sounding shore, Delighted with the dashing roar; Or when the North its fleecy store Drove through the sky, I saw grim Nature's visasje hoar Struck thy young eye. Or when the deep-green mantled earth Warm cherish' d every flow'ret's birth, And joy and music sounded forth In every grove, I saw thee eye the general mirth With boundless love. * Memoir of Edward Forbes, F.R.S. late Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh. By George Wilson, M.D., and A. Geikie. Macmillan and Co. 1861. 2 G 2 442 LECTURES AND ES8AY8. The natural charms — the mountains, glens, sea-cliffs, and bay- indented shores of his little fatherland, were of more interest to him than its architectural remains, yet in their influence on the mind these were, in truth, unconsciously identified with the na- tural Iratures, as if the fortress and the rocks together formed one natural whole. From Dr. Wilson's review of his childhood, it would seem that before he was yet twelve years of age he had without aid discovered the true scope of his intellect, and begun to employ it on the subjects which became the pursuit of his life. When a still younger child, his playmates brought him their contributions of minerals, fossils, shells, dried seaweed, hedge- flowers, and butterflies, to cheer his hours of sickness: he filled his pockets with weeds and creeping things, and appropriated another pocket to a tame lizard, and he was still a boy when he formed a museum of his own at home. Even in these early years his countenance was considered very interesting; it expressed amiability and intelligence, and a stranger, it is said, could hardly pass without turning round to look at him again. And thus in busy idleness his childhood passed : What liberty so glad and gay As, where the mountain boy, Reckless of regions far away, A prisoner lives in joy ? But it was necessary that a worldly occupation should be selected for him. His mother's highest ambition was to see him a good clergyman: he, however, felt no vocation for such a life, and would not take holy orders merely as a means of livelihood and leisure. He was fond of the arts and of poetry as well as of na- tural history, and it was no easy matter to say what profession he should follow. His choice being limited to the dissimilar pro- fessions of physician or painter, and his aversion to the special studies of medicine being unconquerable, he consented to make Art his profession. And so the scene now changes to the metro- polis. But here his aspirations were very soon discouraged, and in the autumn of 1831, after wasting a few months in the fruit- less study of Art, he quitted it to become a medical student in the University of Edinburgh. It was his destiny to return, EDWARD FOBBES. 443 eleven years afterwards, to London, to occupy one of its places of honour, and enter upon a career of distinction. The lamented Professor Wilson, his friend and biographer (whose labour of love has been ably continued and completed by Mr. Geikie), casts a retrospective glance at the number and mag- nitude of the changes they had witnessed since the time when Edward Forbes commenced his student-life at Edinburgh. It took him three days to reach the Isle of Man from London, and three more to reach Edinburgh from the island. There was but one public railway in England. No steam-ship had crossed the At- lantic, and iron ships were novelties rarely seen. The penny- postage was not yet planned : the electric telegraph was no more than a possibility. The amazing future of photography was hidden : the physical sciences were taking immense strides, and revolutions were on the eve of occurrence. Logic and metaphy- sics, as taught by Sir William Hamilton, were about to throw over Edinburgh the lustre of a school of philosophy; but ana- tomy, the chief science on which medicine rests, was studied under disadvantages unknown to students of the present day. Chemistry was on the threshold of a great change, and at that time hardly afforded a foundation to botany as a science, or to agriculture as an art. The Botanical Garden was, however, one of the finest gardens of its kind in the country; and at Edinburgh the students possessed the advantage of being amidst a pictu- resque natural garden, affording a flora of great variety. One week, says Dr. Wilson, a party clambered up the Bass Rock to gather its scanty but curious plants among the perplexed Solan geese, its leathered inhabitants; another, they scoured the king- dom of Fife. Professor Jameson at that time represented Natu- ral History in the University, and, under Dr. Hope and Dr. Reid, Forbes was a zealous student. During his noviciate, the micro- scope underwent such great improvements as soon led to the in- struction of pupils in its use, so that while new regions of country were made accessible to botanical excursionists, new wonders of the Divine Hand were revealed in every organic structure, and the philosopher saw spread around him "the evidence that there is no one portion of the universe of God too minute for His notice, nor too humble for the visitations of His care." 444 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. After Edward Forbes had gone through a practical course of chemistry, lie hesitated whether thai science or natural history should be his permanent pursuit; he actually "tossed-up" with a fellow-student for the apparatus which they had bought with their common funds, and, losi g the chemicals, was confirmed in his intention to devote himself to natural history * Accordingly, we find that Forbes, when only eighteen years of age, had acquired "a clear systematic knowledge" of that branch of science: and "his power of perceiving the relation between ap- parently isolated facts in remote departments of nature was" (to quote the testimony of Dr. Campbell, Principal of the University of Aberdeen,) " astounding in one so young." He studied litera- ture and science side by side, and the passages he extracted into his Common-place Book, with such great though desultory dili- gence, are from works which few naturalists, and still fewer students of medicine, would be found to read. It is probably quite true that, as regards natural history studies, he brought to the university more knowledge than the majority of its graduates, after four years' study, carry away with them. Of the influence of the scenery amidst which the Edinburgh student pursued his studies, Forbes thus spoke many years afterwards, when he had himself attained its chair of Natural History : " The tastes of most men," he said, "can be traced back to the habits of their youth, and these habits are in a great measure moulded by the circumstances, physical as well as intellectual, amidst which that youth has been passed. Grand scenery suggests grand thoughts, and every ennobling thought elevates not merely for the moment, but permanently, the mind in which it dwells. It is a great gain to a university to be placed as this is amid scenes of unrivalled beauty ; and the youth whose hours of relax- ation are spent in their presence, carries with him into after-life the memory of their beauty and grandeur." His early career at the university was one of the happiest por- tions of his life. He might truly say For me Life's morning radiance hath not left the hills; Her dew is on the flowers. * Dr. Charlton, of Newcastle, is the person who, when fellow-student, won the chemical apparatus. EDWARD FORBES. 445 The world's cold touch had not chilled him : his eager eyes looked forth on a bright and boundless future. Young men of genius with tastes like his own, whether students in medicine or in other faculties, had become his attached friends, and his sunny spirit and social qualities made him welcome to seniors as well as to associates. Libraries and museums were open to him ; his city walks were through streets which pleased his artist-eye; his ex- cursions carried him into a country which was to him " an Eden filled with creatures yet to be named," and his lodging (at the top of the stairs in No. 21, Lothian Street,) he called his "happy den." When he returned in vacation to his native island, a comparison of its fauna and flora with those of Great Britain and France on the one hand, and of Ireland on the other, illustrated and con- firmed (says his biographer), if it did not suggest, the doctrine of specific centres of distribution of plants and animals; and in like manner, during his early dredgings on his native shores, the doctrine of zones of submarine life, differing in character according to the depth of the sea, dawned upon him. On returning to Edinburgh for his second session, the rival claims of natural history and of medicine again struggled for supremacy; but he did not aspire to a medical degree, and, in a subsequent session, medicine was finally abandoned. Obliged to adopt a profession as a livelihood, but disowned by Art and by Medicine, his career at this point was not encouraging to his friends; but it was as a naturalist that his laurels, were to be won, and the spring of 1836 saw him devote himself formally to the study of Nature. He was (as Dr. Brown of Edinburgh has remarked) in the best sense a natural historian — an observer and a recorder of what is seen and of what goes on over the great field of the world, and not less of what has been seen and has gone on in this wonderful historic earth. He was keen, exact, capacious, and tranquil, and steady in his gaze as Nature herself, and was, thus far, akin to Humboldt, Cuvier, Linnaeus, Pliny, and Aristotle. Learned he was; nor bird nor insect flew, But he its leafy home and history knew ; Nor wild-flower deck'd the rock nor moss the well, But he its name and qualities could tell. 446 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. .Meantime, his autumnal vacation rambles were sources of great delight, for he roamed with keen eye, ready pencil, and light heart, "to gather the wonders and win the secrets of Nature." The first foreign tour he made was a pilgrimage through part of Norway. A very interesting and graphic account is given in the volume before us of his voyage from the Isle of Man. In Norway everything wore a novel aspect: the thousand isles and interlacing fiords, the endless undulations of the pine woods and the bare rocky shores, the picturesque wooden houses nestling in their green hollows or backed by far-stretching forests, were objects that he viewed with new delight. Forbes and his fellow-traveller arrived at Bergen on the festival of St. John, when the peasantry were parading the streets in every variety of costume, yet Forbes's tartan trousers soon attracted a mob. Then they plunged into the unfrequented solitudes of rock and snowfield and mountain; they visited the glacier of Folgefond, and from Bondhuus sailed up the Ilardanger fiord between huge cliffs rising perpendicularly from the quiet waters to the regions of perpetual snow, and, while in Norway, boated and botanised to their hearts' content. Copen- hagen, with its wide squares and numerous public buildings, palaces and churches, picture-galleries, museums, parks, rampart- promenades, and other objects of interest, delighted his artistic eye. On his return he encountered a dreadful storm, and when he again saw the shores of England " shipwrecks strewed them like seaweeds." In the summer of 1834 he visited North Wales, and here he did little else than botanise, and, with wonderful keen- ness of vision and power of climbing, collect the rarer plants. The summer of the following year he spent in France, Switzer- land, and Germany ; and to the museum of the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, devoted continuous study. Having here com- pleted the winter course, he visited the south of Fi-ance. He was charmed by the wildness of Vauclusc, by its bare bold rocks, its fountain — a miniature lake clear as crystal and tinted like the sapphire, mysteriously gushing from the rock, and by the inspi- ration which seemed to him to linger on the spot. Afterwards visiting Port Mahon in Minorca, on his way to the shores of Africa, lie was charmed by the novel and almost Eastern aspect EDWAKD FORBES. 447 of the architecture, the picturesque dress of the natives, and the variety .of nations whose vessels were in the port; and here, for the first time, he saw the cactus and the palm growing as natives of the country. But in these wanderings, as well as during his stay on the African shores, the youthful naturalist seems to have been ever intent on achieving the scientific results of travel. Eeturning to Edinburgh, he gave, in the winter of 1838, a course of lectures " On the Natural History of the Animals in the British Seas." In the September of the following year he began, and in 1841 completed, his well-known " History of British Star- Fishes." He had now become a naturalist by profession, and he sought to make philosophy (to use his own expression) contribute to its expenses, by giving lectures on zoology. In 1840 the Brit- ish Association met at Glasgow, and his scientific standing was greatly heightened by his papers, by the wide range of acquire- ments he evinced, and by the manner in which he discharged the duties of secretary. Yet, with the earnest desire to labour vigor- ously, every avenue towards remunerative employment seemed to fail him. For five years he had drifted from the anchorage of a professional calling, and a settled home and permanent vocation still seemed as distant as ever. A circumstance now occurred which gave him the means of greatly extending his researches and his reputation. Captain Graves, the officer in command of the Mediterranean Survey, proposed that he should join H.M.S. Beacon, as naturalist to the Survey, and he left London for the Levant early in April, 1841. It had been intended to devote the summer to the coast of Can- dia ; but beneath the white distant peaks, that seemed as the ship approached to be resting so peacefully on the deep blue sea, a native revolt against the Turks was raging, and the survey of Candia was of necessity postponed. While the Beacon remained off Paros he explored the neighbouring isles, pitched his tent upon the hill-sides, and partook of the rude fare, the native dances, and the picturesque life of the people. In visiting the seas and shores that had yielded their denizens to the Father of Natural History, he stood, as it were, in the shadow of the great name of Aristotle, and he viewed those isles and seas with reverence and delight. He afterwards joined that distinguished officer, Captain 448 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. (then Lieutenant) Spratt, in a cruise for the prosecution of the coast survey. He found a striking similarity in the flora of all the islands, and up to three thousand five hundred feet (the highest peak he ascended) the plants of the Cyclades yielded no specimen of a sub-alpine character. The scenery presented a mingled wildnesa and beauty such as he had never before seen : huge pre- cipices rising from the sea to towering peaks; and deep ravines, whose steep bare walls rose from tangled thickets of vines, and ftVs, and olives, and brought masses of grey and purple-tinted rock in contrast with the rich colours of the trees. He visited the great region of recent submarine volcanoes in the bay of San- torin — itself the site of an ancient crater — and found a former sea-bed at a height of two hundred feet above its present level. .Among the portly, hospitable monks he visited in their rocky cells perched on the edge of cliffs, he found one recluse who had sol- aced himself by filling a portfolio with his own drawings, and he saw that remarkable monk, Cairi, who had visited England for the purpose of seeing Oxford. The fauna of these seas he found to be of a defined character, and different from that of any other of the marine zones, and over the two hundred miles examined an exact correspondence in productions was observed. Forbes then visited the shores of Asia Minor, and the botanical, zoological, and geological results were combined with those of a later journey, and published in 1847 in the " Travels in Lycia," the joint production of himself and his distinguished colleague. Blending natural history pursuits with the exploration of cities that had been lost for centuries; sketching tombs, temples, and theatres; mingling amongst the peasantry; sometimes benighted amid briars, ruins, and jackals in the wild uplands of Lycia, and well-nigh wrecked among the rocks and skerries that fringe the shores, while he was exhausting the zoological treasures of that classic sea, the three months he spent in Asia Minor formed no uneventful period in his life. His Report to the British Asso- ciation on the Mollusca and Radiata of the JEgean raised him to a hiZ5 I THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Series 9482 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 236115 2