vmMKm I rv, V^ ^^^ i^^^ ''^^''^ 5/^/Kt^y. ENGLISH RAMBLES: AND OTHER FUGITIVE PIECES, Sn IProse ant] "Basi. BY WILLIAM WINTER. " / should love to ^o ■with you,- -as I have gone. Cod knows ho-w q/len, — inio Little Britain, and EastcJuap, \ and Green Arbour Court, and lyestminster Abbey. I should like to travel "with you. outside 0/ the last 0/ the coaches. doTim to Braccbridge Hall.** — CHARLES Dickens. BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY. 1884. Copyright 1883, By William Winter. A!l Rishts Reserved. University Press: John IVilson and Son, Cambridge. TO LAWRENCE BARRETT, IN WHOSE THOUGHTFUL AND SYMPATHETIC COMPANIONSHIP THESE RAMBLES WERE ENJOYED, AND BY WHOSE FRIENDSHIP, DURING MANY YEARS, THE AUTHOR HAS BEEN HONOURED AND CHEERED, (Lf)ifi Volume IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. ^ ^4^ ri^ PREFACE. rsEAUTIFUL and storied scenes -cvJiich have •^ soothed and elevated tJie mind naturally inspire a feeling of gratitude. It is this feeling •which prompted the author of the present volume to 'write a record of his English Rambles. It also •was his "wish, in dwelling thus upon the rural loveliness and the literary and historical associa- tions of England, to afford sympathetic guidance and useful suggestion to other Ainerican travel- lers, who, like himself, might be attracted to roatn among the shrines of our mother land. There is no pursuit more fascinating, or, in a high intellect- ual sense, more remunerative y since it serves to define and regulate the stores of knowledge which have been acquired by reading, to correct misap- prehensions of fact, to broaden tlu mental vision, to ripen and refine the judgment and the taste. 6 Preface. and to fill the mejnory with ennobling 7'ecollections. These English Rainbles are designed as a com- panioji to the Trip to England. They were first published in the New York Tribune; they are now reprinted, in a revised far7n. In that journal also were first published the author''s coinineniorative tributes to Longfellow, which are incbided in this book. The article on the Pocfs Death was writ- ten in the evening of the day on which he died, and the Personal Recollections and the Elegy a few days afterwards. The Poevis here presented have hitherto been Wanderers — as their collective title declares. Two of them, '■'■In Sanctuary'''' and " W. A. 6".," were first published in Harper's Magazine. Most of them are now for the first time brought together: and it is hoped that they may find favour, at least with those readers who have accepted with generates kindness the previous poetical writings of the same pen. W. W. Fort Hill, New Brighton, Stateii Island, August 15, 1883. ^ CONTENTS. ^ ENGLISH RAMELES. I. Up to London II. Old Churches of London . . III. Literary Shrines of London. IV. A Haunt of Edmund Kean . V. Stoke Pogis and Thomas Gray VI. At the Grave of Coleridge . VII. On Barnet Battle-Field . . VIII. A Glimpse of Canterbury . . IX. The Shrines of Warwickshire X. A Borrower of the Night . . II 17 26 34 40 47 55 60 67 Si IL IN ME:M0RY of LONGFELLOW. I. The Poet's Death 93 II. Personal Recollections 99 IH. Elegy "3 8 Contents. WANDERERS. The Wrecker's Bell "9 Accomplices 126 A Dream of the Past 128 Homeward Bound ^34 A Poet's Life 141 The Merry SIonarch 146 Blue Eyes and Black i49 Old Times '^V- John McCullough iS3 Lawrence Barrett ^S^ In Honour of William Warren 162 W. A. S 167 White Roses ^7^ In Sanctuary ^73 ►!< ENGLISH RAMBLES. 1SS2. ^ " All that I saw returns upon my view ; All that I heard comes back upon my ear ; All that I felt this movient doth renew" " Fair land! by Time' s parental love made free. By Social Order'' s watchful arms embraced, With unexampled union meet in thee, For eye and mind, the prese7it and the past ; With goldeii prospect for futurity. If that be reverenced which ought to last." Wordsworth. ^ ENGLISH RAMBLES. UP TO LONDON. ABOUT the middle of the night the great ship comes to a pause, off the coast of Ireland, and, looking forth across the black waves, and through the rifts in the rising mist, we see the low and lone- some verge of that land of trouble and misery. A beautiful white light flashes now and then from the shore, and at intervals the mournful booming of a solemn bell floats over the sea. Soon is heard the rolling click of oars, and then two or three dusky boats glide past the ship, and hoarse voices hail and answer. A few stars are visible in the hazy sky, and the breeze from the land brings off, in fitful puffs, the fragrant balm of grass and clover, 12 English Rambles. mingled with the salty odors of sea-weed and slimy rocks. There is a sense of mystery over the whole wild scene ; but we realize now that human com- panionshi]) is near, and that the long and lonely ocean voyage is ended. Travellers who make the run from Liverpool to London by the Midland Railway pass through the Vale of Derby, and skirt around the stately Peak that Scott has commemorated in his novel of " Pev- eril." It is a more rugged country than is seen in the transit by the Northwestern road, but not more beautiful. You see the storied mountain, in all its delicacy of outline and all its airy magnifi- cence of poise, soaring into the sky — its summit almost lost in the smoky haze — and you wind through hillside pastures and meadow lands that are curiously intersected with low, zigzag stone walls ; and constantly, as the scene changes, you catch glimpses of green lane and shining river ; of dense copses that cast their cool shadow on the moist and gleaming emerald sod ; of long white roads that stretch away like cathedral aisles, and are lost beneath the leafy arches of elm and oak ; of little church turrets embowered in ivy ; of thatch cottages draped with roses ; of dark ravines, luxu- riant with a wild profusion of rocks and trees ; and of golden grain that softly waves and whispers in the summer wind; while, all around, the grassy banks and ghmmering meadows are radiant with yellow daisies, and with that wonderful scarlet of up to London. 13 the poppy which gives an almost human glow of life and loveliness to the whole face of England. After some hours of such a pageant — so novel, so fascinating, so fleeting, so stimulative of eager cu- riosity and poetic desire — it is a relief at last to stand in the populous streets and among the grim houses of London, with its surging tides of life, and its turmoil of effort, conflict, exultation, and misery. How strange it seems — yet, at the same time, how homelike and familiar ! There soars aloft the great dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, with its golden cross that flashes in the sunset ! There stands the Vic- toria Tower — fit emblem of the true royalty of the sovereign whose name it bears. And there, more lowly but more august, rise the sacred turrets of the Abbey. It is the same old London — the great heart of the modern world — the great city of our reverence and love. As the wanderer writes these words he hears the plashing of the fountains in Trafalgar Square and the evening chimes that peal out from the spire of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and he knows himself once more at the shrine of all his youthful dreams. To the observant stranger in London few sights can be more impressive than those which illustrate the singular manner in which the life of the present encroaches upon the memorials of the past. Old Temple Bar has gone, and only a column, at the junc- tion of Fleet Street and the Strand, denotes where once it stood. The Midland Railway trains dash 14 English Rambles. over what was once St. Pancras Churchyard — the burial-place of Mary Woilstonecraft, and of many other British worthies — and passengers looking from the carriages may see the children of the neighbourhood sporting among the few tombs that yet remain in that despoiled cemetery. Dolly's Chop House, intimately associated with the wits of the reign of Queen Anne, has been destroyed. The ancient tavern of " The Cock," immortalized by Tennyson, in his poem of " Will Waterproofs Monologue," is soon to disappear, — with its sin-' gular wooden entry, that existed before the time of the Plague, and that escaped the Great Fire of 1666. On the site of Northumberland House stands the Grand Hotel. The gravestones that formerly paved the yard of Westminster Abbey have been removed, to make way for grassy lawns intersected with path- ways. In Southwark, across the Thames, the en- gine-room of the brewery of Messrs. Barclay & Perkins occupies the site of the Globe Theatre, that Shakespeare managed. One of the most ven- erable and beautiful churches in London, that of St. Bartholomew the Great, — a gray, mouldering temple, of the twelfth century, hidden away in a corner of Smithfield, and now become so poor that it has to beg sixpence from every visitor, — is desecrated by the irruption of an adjacent shop, the staircase hall of which breaks cruelly into the sacred edifice and impends above the altar. As lately as the 12th of July, 1882, the present writer, Up to London. 15 walking in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, — the sepulchre of William Wycherley, Robert Wilks, Charles Macklin, Joseph Haines, Thomas King, Samuel Butler, Thomas Southerne, Edward Shuter, Dr. Arne, Thomas Davies, Edward Kynaston, Richard Estcourt, William Havard, and many other renowned votaries of literature and the stage, — found workmen building a new wall to sustain the enclo.sure, and almost every stone in the cemetery uprooted and leaning against the adjacent houses. These monuments, it was said, would be replaced ; but it was impossible not to consider the chances of error, in a new mortuary deal — and the grim witticism of Rufus Choate, about dilating with the wrong emotion, came then into remembrance, and did not come amiss. Facts such as these, however, bid us remember how even the relics of the past are passing away, and that cities, unlike human creatures, may grow to be so old that at last they will become new. It is not wonderful, that London should change its aspect from one decade to another, as the living surmount and obliterate the dead. Thomas Sut- ton's Charter House School, founded in 161 1, when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were still writing, was reared upon ground in which several thousand corpses were buried, during the time of the Indian Pestilence of 1348 ; and it still stands and flour- ishes. Nine thousand new houses, it is said, are built in the great capital every year, and twenty- 1 6 English Rambles. eigfht miles of new streets are thus added to it. On a Sunday I drove for three hours through the east- ern part of London, without coming upon a single trace of the open fields. On the west, all the re- gion from Kensington to Richmond is settled for most part of the way ; while northward the city is stretching its arms toward Hampstead, Highgate, and tranquil and blooming Finchley. Truly the spirit of this age is in strong contrast with that of the time of Henry the Eighth when (1580), to prevent the increasing size of London, all new buildings were forbidden to be erected "where no former hath been known to have been." The march of improvement nowadays carries everything before it : even British conservatism is at some points giv- ing way : and, noting the changes which have oc- curred here within only five years, I am persuaded that those who would see what remains of the Lon- don of which they have read and dreamed — the London of Dryden and Pope, of Addison, Sheridan and Byron, of Betterton, Garrick, and Edmund Kean — will, as time passes, find more and more difficulty both in tracing the footsteps of fame^ and in finding that sympathetic, reverent spirit which hallows the rehcs of genius and renown. ^=^ •^#- II. OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON. SIGHT-SEEING, merely for its own sake, is not to be commended. Hundreds of persons roam through the storied places of England, carry- ing nothing away but the bare sense of travel. It is not the spectacle that benefits, but the meaning of the spectacle. In the great temples of religion, in those wonderful cathedrals which are the glory of the old world, we ought to feel, not merely the physical beauty, but the perfect, illimitable faith, the passionate, incessant devotion, which alone made them possible. The cold intellect of a scep- tical age — like the present — could never create such a majestic cathedral as that of Canterbury. Not till the pilgrim feels this truth has he really 1 8 English Ravj^lcs. learned the lesson of such places, — to keep alive in his heart the capacity of self-sacrifice, of toil and of tears, for the grandeur and beauty of the spirit- ual life. At the tombs of great men we ought to feel something more than a consciousness of the crumbling clay that moulders within, — something more even than knowledge of their memorable words and deeds : we ought, as we ponder on the certainty of death and the evanescence of earthly things, to realize that Art at least is permanent, and that no creature can be better employed than in noble effort to make the soul worthy of immortal- ity. The relics of the past, contemplated merely because they are relics, are nothing. You tire, in this old land, of the endless array of ruined castles and of wasting graves ; 3'ou sicken at the thought of the mortality of a thousand years, decaying at your feet, and you long to look again on roses and the face of childhood, the ocean and the stars. But not if the meaning of the past is truly within your sympathy ; not if you perceive its associations as feeling equally with knowledge ; not if you truly knAw that its lessons are not of death but of life ! To-day builds over the ruins of yesterday, as well in the soul of man as on the vanishing cities that mark his course. There need be no regret that, in this sense, the present should obliterate the past. Much, however, as London has changed, and con- stantly as it continues to change, there still remain, and long will continue to remain, many objects that Old Churches of London. 19 startle and impress the sensitive mind. Through all its wide compass, by night and day, there flows and beats a turbulent, resounding tide of activity, and hundreds of trivial and vacuous people, sordid, ignorant, and commonplace, tramp to and fro amid its storied antiquities, heedless of their existence. Through such surroundings, but finding here and there a sympathetic guide or a friendly suggestion, the explorer must take his way, — lonely in the crowd, and walking, indeed, like one who lives in a dream. Yet he never will drift in vain through a city like this. I went, one night, into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey — that part, the South Walk, which is still accessible after the gates have been closed. The stars shone down upon the blackening walls and glimmering windows of the great cathedral ; the grim, mysterious arches were dimly lighted; the stony pathways, stretching away beneath the venerable building, seemed to lose themselves in caverns of darkness ; not a sound was heard but the faint rustling of the grass within the close. Every stone here is the mark of a sep- ulchre ; every breath of the night-wind seemed the whisper of a gliding ghost. Here, among the crowded graves, rest Anne Oldfield and Anne Bracegirdle, — in Queen Anne's reign, such bril- liant luminaries of the stage, — and here was bur- ied the dust of Aaron Hill, poet and dramatist, the old manager of Drury Lane, who wrote " The Fair Inconstant" for Barton Booth, and some not- 20 E7tdish Rambles. .5' ably sweet and felicitous love-songs. Here, too, are the relics of Susanna Maria Arne (Mrs. Theo. Gib- ber), Aphra Behn, Thomas Betterton, and Spranger Barry. Sitting upon the narrow ledge which was the monks' rest, I could touch, close at hand, the tomb of a mitred Abbot, while at my feet was the great stone that covers twenty-six monks of West- minster who perished by the Plague nearly six hun- dred years ago. It would scarcely be believed that the doors of dwellings open upon this gloomy spot ; that women may sometimes be seen tending flowers upon the ledges that roof these cloister walks. Yet so it is ; and in such a place, at such a time, you comprehend, better than before, the self- centred, serious, ruminant, romantic character of the English mind, — which loves, more than any- thing else in the world, the privacy of august sur- roundings and a sombre and stately solitude. It need hardly be said that you likewise obtain here a striking sense of the power of contrast. I was again aware of this, a little later, when, seeing a dim light in St. Margaret's Church near by, I entered that old temple, and found the boys of the choir at their rehearsal, and presently observed on the wall a brass plate which announces that Sir Walter Raleigh was buried here, in the chancel, after be- ing decapitated for high treason in the Palace Yard outside. Such things are the surprises of this his- toric capital, — the exceeding great reward of the wanderer's devotion. This inscription begs the Old Churches of London, 2 1 reader to remember Raleigh's virtues as well as his faults, — a plea, surely, that every man miglit well wish should be made for himself at last. I thought of the verses that the old warrior-poet is said to have left in his Bible, when they led him out to die : "Even such is time ; that takes in trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, x\nd pays us nought but age and dust ; Which, in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days. — But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust." In St. Margaret's ^ — a storied haunt, for shining names alike of nobles and poets — was also buried John Skelton, another of the old bards (obiit 1529), the enemy and satirist of Cardinal Wolsey and Sir 1 This church contains a window, commemorative of Raleigh, presented by Americans, and inscribed with these lines, by Lowell : The New World's sons, from England's breast we drew Such milk as bids remember whence we came : Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grev^r, This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name. It also contains a window, commemorative of Caxton, pre- sented by the printers and publishers of London, wliich is in- scribed with these lines, by Tennyson : Thy prayer was Light — more Light — while Time shall last. Thou sawest a glory growing on the night. But not the shadows which that light would cast Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light. 22 English Rambles, Thomas More, one of whom he described as "madde Amaleke," and the other as "dawcock doctor." Their renown has managed to survive these terrific shafts ; but at least this was a falcon who flew at eagles. Here the poet Campbell was married, — October nth, 1803. Such old churches as this — guarding so well their treasures of his- tory — are, in a special sense, the traveller's bless- ings. At St. Giles's, Cripplegate, the janitor is a woman ; and she will point out to you the lettered stone that formerly marked the grave of Milton. It is in the nave, but it has been moved to a place about twelve feet from its original position, — the remains of the illustrious poet being, in fact, beneath the floor of a pew, on the left of the cen- tral aisle, about the middle of the church : albeit there is a story, possibly true, that, on an occasion when this church was repaired, in August, 1790, the coffin of Milton suffered profanation, and his bones were dispersed. Among the monuments hard by is a fine marble bust of Milton, placed against the wall, and it is said, by way of enhancing its value, that George the Third came here to see it. Several of the neighbouring inscriptions are of astonishing quaintness. They claim the dust of Daniel De Foe for this church, but cannot desig- nate his grave. The adjacent churchyard — a queer, irregular, sequestered, lonesome bit of grassy ground, teeming with monuments, and hemmed in with houses, terminates, at one end, in a piece of Old Churches of London. 23 the old Roman wall of London (A. D. 306), — an adamantine structure of cemented flints — which has lasted from the days of Julius Caesar, and which bids fair to last forever. I shall always remember this strange nook with the golden light of a summer morning shining upon it, the birds twittering among its graves, and all around it such an atmosphere of solitude and rest as made it seem, though in the heart of the great city, a thousand miles from any haunt of man. At St. Helen's, Bishopgate, also, the janitor is a woman, and one who knows and loves every monument in this ancient and venerable temple — the church of the priory of the nuns of St. Helen, built in the thirteenth century, and full of relics of the history of England. The priory, which ad- joined this church, has long since disappeared, and portions of the building have been restored ; but the noble Gothic columns and the commemorative sculpture remain unchanged. Here are the tombs of Sir John Crosby, who built Crosby Place (1466), Sir Thomas Gresham, who founded both Gresham College and the Royal Exchange in London, and Sir William Pickering, once Queen Elizabeth's Minister to Spain and one of the amorous aspirants for her royal hand ; and here, in a gloomy chapel, stands the veritable altar at which the cruel and crafty Duke of Gloster received absolution, after he had despatched the princes to the Tower. Standing at that altar, in the cool silence of the 24 English Rambles. lonely church and the waning light of afternoon, it was easy to conjure up his slender, misshapen form, decked out in the rich apparel that he loved, his handsome, aquiline, thoughtful face, the drooping head, the glittering, baleful eyes, the nervous hand that toyed with the dagger, and the stealthy still- ness of his person, from head to foot, as he knelt there before the priest and mocked himself and heaven with the form of prayer. Every place that Richard touched is haunted by his magnetic pres- ence : no place more strangely so than this! In another part of the church you are shown the tomb of a knight whose will provided that the key of his sepulchre should be placed beside his body, and that the door should be opened once a year, for a hun- dred years. It seems to have been his expectation to awake and arise ; but tlie allotted century has passed and his knightly bones are still quiescent. How calmly they sleep — these warriors who once filled the world with the tumult of their deeds ! If you go into Saint Mary's, in the Temple, — one of the noblest Gothic buildings in England, — you will stand above the dust of the Crusaders, and mark the beautiful copper effigies of them, recumbent on the marble pavement, and feel and know, as per- haps you never did before, the calm that follows the tempest. Saint Mary's was built in 1240, and re- stored in 1828. It would be difficult to find a love- lier specimen of Norman Gothic architecture — at once massive and airy, perfectly simple, yet rich Old Churches of London. 25 witri beauty, in every line and scroll. There is only one other church in Great Britain, it is said, which has, like this, a circular vestibule. The stained glass windows, both iiere and at St. Helen's, are very glorious. The organ at St. Mary's was se- lected by Jeffries, afterwards infamous as the wicked judge. The pilgrim who pauses to muse at the grave of Goldsmitli may often hear its solemn, mournful tones. I heard them thus, and was think- ing of Doctor Johnson's tender words, when he first learned that Goldsmith was dead: "Poor Goldy was wild — very wild — but he is so no more." The room in which he died, a broken- hearted man at only forty-six, was but a little way from the spot wliere he sleeps.^ The noises of Fleet Street are heard there only as a distant mur- mur. But birds chirp over him, and leaves flutter down upon his tomb, and every breeze that sighs around the gray turrets of the ancient Temple breathes out his requiem. ' No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple. —In 1757-58 Gold- smith was employed by a chemist, near Fish Street Hill. When he wrote his " Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe" he was living in Green Arbour Court, "over Break-neck Steps." At a lodging in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, he wrote " The Vicar of Wakefield. " After\vards he had lodgings at Canonbury House, Islington, and in 1764, in the Library Staircase of the Inner Temple. III. LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON, THE mind that can reverence historic associa- tions needs no explanation of the charm that such associations possess. There are streets and houses in London which, for pilgrims of this class, are haunted with memories and hallowed with an im- perishable light — that not even the dreary common- ness of every-day life can quench or dim. Almost every great author in English literature has here left behind him some personal trace, some relic that brings us at once into his living presence. In the days of Shakespeare, — of whom it maybe noted that wherever you find him at all you find him in select and elegant neighbourhoods, — Bishopgate was a retired and aristoq;-atic quarter of the town ; I i Literary Shrines of London. 27 and here the poet had his residence, convenient to the theatre in Blackfriars, of which he was an owner. It is said that he dwelt very near to Crosby Place, and certainly he saw that building in its splendour, and, no doubt, was often in St. Helen's Church, near by ; and upon this spot, — amid all the din of traffic and all the strange adjuncts of a new age, — those who love him are in his company. Milton was born in a court adjacent to Bread Street, Cheapside, and the explorer comes upon him as a resident in St. Bride's Churchyard, — where the poet Lovelace was buried, — and at the house which is now No. 19 York Street, Queen's Square (in later times occupied by Bcntham and by Hazlitt), and in Jewin Street, Aldersgate. When Secretary to Cromwell he lived in Scotland Yard, where now is the headquarters of the London police. His last home was in Artillery Walk, Bunliill Fields, but the visitor to that ground finds it covered by the Artillery Barracks. Walking through King Street, Westmin- ster, you will not forget Edmund Spenser, who died there, in grief and destitution, a victim to the same inhuman spirit of Irish ruffianism which is still dis- gracing humanity and troubling the peace of the world. Everybody remembers Ben Jonson's terse record of this calamity : " The Irish having robbed Spenser's goods and burnt his house and a little child new-born, he and his wife escaped, and after he died, for lack of bread, in King Street." Jonson himself is closely and charmingly associated with 28 En dish Rambles. a' places that may still be seen. He passed his boy- hood near Charing Cross — having been born in Hartshorne Lane, now Northumberland Street — and went to the parish school of St. Martin's-in-the- Fields ; and those who roam around Lincoln's Inn will surely call to mind that this great poet helped to build it — a trowel in one hand and Horace in the other. His residence, in liis days of fame, was just outside of Temple Bar — but all that neigh- bourhood is new at the present day. The Mermaid, which he frequented — with Shake- speare, Fletcher, Herrick, Chapman, and Donne — was in Bread Street, but no trace of it remains ; and a banking house (Child's Bank) stands now on the site of the Devil Tavern, in Fleet Street, where the Apollo Club, which he founded, used to meet. The famous inscription, "O rare Ben Jonson," is three times cut in the Abbey — once in Poets' Corner, and twice in the north aisle where he was buried, the smaller of the two slabs marking the place of his vertical grave. Dryden once dwelt in a narrow, dingy, quaint little house, in Fetter Lane, — the street in which Dean Swift has placed the home of Gulliver, and where now the famous Doomsday Book is kept, — but later he removed to a finer dwelling, in Gerrard Street, Soho, which was the scene of his death. Both buildings are marked with mural tablets, and neither of them seems to have undergone much change. Edmund Burke's house, also in Gerrard Street, is let in lodgings and Literary Shrines of London. 29 llrcnsed to sell beer ; but his memory hallows the place, and an inscription upon it proudly announces that here lie lived. Dr. Johnson's house in Gough Square bears likewise a mural tablet, and, standing at its time-worn threshold, the visitor needs no ef- fort of fancy to picture that uncouth figure sham- bling through the crooked lanes that lead into this queer, sombre, confined, and melancholy retreat. In this house he wrote the first Dictionary of the English language, and the immortal letter to Lord Chesterfield. In Gough Square lived and died Hugh Kelly, dramatist, author of "The School of Wives" and "The Man of Reason," and one of the friends of Goldsmith, at whose burial he was present. The historical antiquarian society that has marked these literary shrines of London has, surely, rendered a great service. The houses as- sociated with Reynolds and Hogarlh, in Leicester Square, Byron, in Holies Street, Benjamin Franklin and Peter the Great, in Craven Street, Campbell, in Duke Street, St. James's, Garrick, in the Adelphi Terrace, and Mrs. Siddons, in Baker Street, are but a few of the historic spots which are thus commem- orated. Much, however, yet remains to be done. One would like to know, for instance, in which room in " The Albany " it was that Byron wrote " Lara,'' ^ in which of the houses in Buckingham ' Byron was bom at Xo. 24 Holies Street, Cavendish Square. While he was at school in Dulwich Grove his mother lived in a house in Sloane Terrace. Other houses associated with him are 30 Ejiglish Ramhks. Street Coleridge had his lodging, while he was translating" Wallenstein" ; whereabouts in Blooms- bury Square was the residence of Akenside, who wrote "The Pleasures of Imagination," and of Croly, who wrote " Salathiel " ; or where it was that Gray lived, when he established himself close by Russell Square, in order to be one of the first, — as he continued to be one of the most constant, — students at the then newly opened British Museum (1759). These, and such as these, may seem trivial things; but Nature has denied an unfailing source of inno- cent happiness to the man who can find no pleasure in them. For my part, when rambling in Fleet Street, it is a special delight to remember even so slight an incident as that recorded of the author of the " Elegy in a Country Churchyard," — that he once saw here his satirist. Dr. Johnson, rolling and puffing along the sidewalk, and cried out to a friend, "Here comes Ursa Major." For the true lovers of literature " Ursa Major " walks oftener in Fleet Street to-day than any living man. A good thread of literary research might be profit- No. 8 St. James Street ; a lodging in Bennet Street ; No. 2 " The Albany " — a lodging that he rented of Lord Althorpe, and moved into on March 2Sth, 1S14 ; and No. 13 Piccadilly Terrace, where his daughter, Ada, was born, and where Lady Byron left him. John IVIurray's house, where his fragment of Autobiog- raphy was burned, was in Albemarle Street. Byron's body, when brought home from Greece, lay in state at No. 25 Great George Street, Westminster, before being taken north, to Hucknall- Torkard Church, in Nottinghamshire, for burial. Literary Shrines of London. 3 1 ably followed by him who should trace the footsteps of all the poets that have held, in England, the office of laureate. John Kay was laureate in the rci;;n of Edward I\'. ; Andrew Bernard in that of Henry VII. ; John Skclton in that of Henry Vll I. ; and Edmund Spenser in tiuit of Elizabeth. Since then the succession has included the names of Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, Sir William Davenant, John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Lawrence Eusden, Colley Gibber, William Whitehead, Thomas Warton, Henry James Pye, Robert Soulhey, Willi;am Wordsworth, and Alfred Tennyson — the latter still wearing, in spotless renown, that " Laurel greener from the brows Of him that uttered nothing base." Most of these bards were intimately associated with London, and several of them are buried in the Abbey. It is, indeed, because so many storied names are written upon gravestones tiiat the ex- plorer of the old churches of London finds so rich a harvest of impressive association and lofty thought. Few persons visit them, and you are likely to find yourself comparatively alone in rambles of this kind. I went one morning into St. Martin's — once "in the fields," now in one of the busiest thoroughfares at the centre of the city — and found there only a pew-opener preparing for the service, and an organ- ist playing an anthem. It is a beautiful structure, with its graceful spire and its columns of weather- 32 English Rambles. beaten stone, curiously stained in gray and sooty black, and it is almost as famous for theatrical names as St. Paul's, Covent Garden, or St. George's, Bloomsbury, or St. Clement-le-Danes. Here, in a vault beneath the church, was buried the bewitching and large-hearted Nell Gwyn ; here is the grave of James Smith, joint author with his brother Horace, — who was buried at Tunbridge Wells, — of " The Rejected Addresses " ; here rests Yates, the original Sir Oliver Surface ; and here were laid the ashes of the romantic and brilliant Mrs. Centlivre, and of George Farquhar, whom neither youth, genius, patient labour, nor splendid achievement could save from a life of misfortune and an untimely and pite- ous death. A cheerier association of this church is with Thomas Moore, the great poet of Ireland, who was here married. At St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, again, are the graves of George Chapman, who trans- lated Homer, Andrew Marvel, who wrote such lovely lyrics of love. Rich, the manager, who brought out Gay's " Beggar's Opera," and James Shirley, the fine old dramatist and poet, whose immortal couplet has been so often murmured in such solemn haunts as these : " Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." Shirley lived in Gray's Inn when he was writing his plays, and he was fortunate in the favour of Queen Henrietta Maria, wife to Charles the First ; but, when the Puritan times came in, he fell into Literary Shrines of London. -^Z misfortune and poverty and became a school-teacher in Whitefiiars. In 1G66 he was living in or near Fleet Street, and his home was one of tiic many dwell- ings that were destroyed in the Great Fire. Then he fled, with his wife, into tiie parish of St. Giles's-in- the-Ficlds, where, overcome with grief and terror, they both died, witliin twenty-four hours of each other, and they were buried in the same grave. IV. A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN. TO muse over the graves of those about whom we have read so much — the great actors, thinkers, and writers, the warriors and statesmen for whom the play is ended and the lights are put out — is to come very near to them, and to realize more deeply than ever before their close relationship with our own humanity ; and we ought to be wiser and better for this experience. It is good, also, to seek out the favourite haunts of our heroes, and call them up as they were in their lives. One of the happiest accidents of a London stroll was the find- ing of the Harp Tavern,^ in Russell Street, Covent 1 An account of the " Harp," which I have lately found, in the " Victuallers' Gazette," says that this tavern has had within A Haunt of Edmund Kcan. 35 Garden, near the staje door of Drury Lane Theatre, which was the accustomed resort of Edmund Kean. Carpenters and masons were at work upon it when I entered, and it was necessary almost to creep amid heaps of broken mortar and rubbish beneath their scaffolds, in order to reach the interior rooms. Here, at the end of a narrow passage, was a little apartment, pcrliaps fifteen feet square, with a low ceiling and a bare floor, in which Kean habitually took his pleasure, in the society of fellow actors and boon companions, long ago. A narrow, cush- ioned bench against the walls, a few small tables, a chair or two, a number of church-warden pipes on the mantelpiece, and portraits of Disraeli and Gladstone, constituted the furniture. A panelled wainscot and dingy red paper covered the walls, and a few cobwebs hung from the grimy ceiling. By this time tlie old room has been cleaned, re- papered and made spruce and tidy , but then it bore all the marks of hard usage and long neglect, and it seemed all the more interesting for that reason. Kean's seat is at the right, as you enter, and just above it a mural tablet designates the spot, — which its doors every actor of note since the days of Garrick, and many actresses, also, of the period of eighty or a hundred years ago ; and it mentions as visitants here Dora Jordan, Nance Oldfield, Anne Bracegirdlc, Kitty Clive, Harriet Mellon, Barton Booth, Quin, Gibber, Macklin, Grimaldi, i\Ime. Vestris, and Miss Stephens, — who ber,anie the Countess of Essex. 36 English Rambles. is still further commemorated by a death-mask of the actor, placed on a little shelf of dark wood and covered with glass. No better portrait could be desired ; certainly no better one exists. In life this must have been a glorious face. The eyes are large and prominent, the brow is broad and fine, the mouth wide and obviously sensitive, the chin delicate, and the nose long, well-set, and indicative of immense force of character. The whole expres- sion of the face is that of refinement and of great and desolate sadness. Kean, as is known from the testimony of one who acted with him,i was al- ways at his best in passages of pathos. To hear him speak Othello's Farewell was to hear the perfect music of heart-broken despair. To see him when, as The Stranger, he listened to the song, was to see, through tears, the genuine, absolute reality of hopeless sorrow. He could, of course, thrill man- kind in the ferocious outbursts of Richard 2ir\(l Sir Giles, but it was in tenderness and grief that he was supremely great ; and no one will wonder at this, who looks upon his noble face — so eloquent 1 The mother of Jefferson, the comedian, described Edmund Kean in this way. She was a member of the company at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, when he acted there, and it was she who sang for him the well-known lines : " I have a silent sorrow here, A grief I '11 ne'er impart ; It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear, But it consumes my heart." A Haunt of Edmund Kcan. 37 of self-conflict and suffering — even in this cold and colourless mask of death. It is easy to judge and condemn the sins of a weak, passionate hu- manity ; but when we think of such creatures of genius as Edmund Kean and Robert Burns we ouEfht to consider what demons in their own souls those wretched men were forced to fight, and by what agonies they expiated their vices and errors. This little tavern-room tells the whole mournful story, with death to point the moral, and pity to breathe its sigh of unavailing regret. Many of the present frequenters of the Harp are elderly men, whose conversation is enriched with memories of the stage and with ample knowledge and judicious taste in literature and art. They naturally speak with pride of Kean's association with their favourite resort. Often in that room the eccentric genius has put himself in pawn, to e.xact from the manager of Drury Lane Theatre the money needed to relieve the wants of some brother actor. Often his voice has been heard there, in the songs that he sang with so much feeling and sweetness and such homely yet beautiful skill. In the circles of the learned and courtly he never was really at home ; but here he filled the throne and ruled the kingdom of the revel, and here no doubt every mood of his mind, from high thought and generous emotion to misanthropical bitterness and vacant levity, found its unfettered expression. They show you a broken panel in the high wain- 38 English Rambles. scot, which was struck and smashed by a pewter pot, that he hurled at the head of a person who had given him offence ; and they tell you, at the same time, — as, indeed, is historically true, — that he was the idol of his comrades, the first in love, pity, sympathy, and kindness, and would turn his back, any day, for the least of them, on the nobles who sought his companionship. There is no better place than this in which to study the life of Edmund Kean. Old men may be met with here, who saw him on the stage, and even acted with him. The room is the weekly meeting-place and habitual nightly tryst of an ancient club, called the City of Lushington, which has existed since the days of the Regency, and of which these persons are mem- bers. The City has its Mayor, Sheriff, insignia, record-book, and system of ceremonials ; and much of wit, wisdom, and song may be enjoyed at its civic feasts. The names of its four wards — Lu- nacy, Suicide, Poverty, and Juniper — are written up in the four corners of the room, and whoever joins must select his ward. Sheridan was a mem- ber of it, and so was the Regent ; and the present landlord of the Harp [Mr. McPherson] preserves among his relics the chairs in which these gay companions sat, when the author presided over the initiation of the prince. It is thought that this club originated, in fact, out of the society of " The Wolves," which was formed by Kean's adherents, when the elder Booth arose to disturb his suprem- A Haunt of Edmund Kean. 39 acy upon the stage. lUit there is no malignity in it now. Its purposes are simply convivial and lit- erary, and its tone is that of thorough good-will. One of the gentlest and most winning traits in the English character is its instinct of companion- ship as to literature and art. Since the days of the Mermaid, the authors and actors of London have dearly loved and deeply enjoyed such odd httle fraternities of wit as are typified, not inaptly, by the City of Lushington. f here are no rosier hours in my memory than those that were passed, be- tween midnight and morning, in the cosey rooms of the Beefsteak Club, in London. And, when dark days come, and foes harass, and the troubles of life annoy, it will be sweet to think that, in still another sacred retreat of friendship, across the sea, the old armour is gleaming in the festal lights, where one of the gentlest spirits that ever wore the laurel of England's love smiles kindlv on his comrades and seems to murmur the mystical spell of English hospitality: " Let no one take beyond this threshold hence, Words uttered here in friendship's confidence." V. STOKE POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY. IT is a cool afternoon in July, and the shadows are falling eastward on fields of waving grain and lawns of emerald velvet. Overhead a few light clouds are drifting, and the green boughs of the great elms are gently stirred by a breeze from the west. Across one of the more distant fields a flock of sable rooks — some of them fluttering and caw- ing — wings its slow and melancholy flight. There is the sound of the whetting of a scythe, and, near by, the twittering of many birds upon a cottage roof. On either side of the country road, which runs like a white rivulet through banks of green, the hawthorn hedges are shining, and the bright sod is spangled with all the wild flowers of an Eng- Stoke Pogis and Thomas Gray. 41 lish summer. An odour of lime-trees and of new- mown hay sweetens the air, for miles and miles around. Far off, on the horizon's verge, just glim- mering tlirough the haze, rises the imperial citadel of Windsor. And close at hand a little child points to a gray spire peering out of a nest of ivy, and tells me that this is Stoke Pogis Church. If peace dwells anyAvhere upon this earth, its dwelling-place is here. You come into this little churchyard by a pathway across the park, and through a wooden turnstile ; and in one moment the whole world is left behind and forgotten. Here are the nodding elms ; here is the yew-tree's shade; here " heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap." All these graves seem very old. The long grass waves over them, and some of the low stones that mark them are entirely shrouded with ivy. Many of the "frail memorials" are made of wood. None of them is neglected or forlorn, but all of them seem to have been scattered here, in that sweet disorder which is the perfection of rural loveliness. There never, of course, could have been any thought of creating this effect ; yet here it remains, to win your heart forever. And here, amid this mournful beauty, the little church itself nestles close to the ground, while every tree that waves its branches around it, and every vine that clambers on its sur- face, seems to clasp it in the arTns of love. Noth- ing breaks the silence but the sighing of the wind in the great yew-tree, at the church door, — beneath 42 English Rambles. which was the poet's favourite seat, and where the brown needles, falhng, through many an autumn, have made a dense carpet on the turf. Now and then there is a faint rustle in the ivy ; a fitlul bird- note serves but to deepen the stillness ; and from a rose-tree near at hand a few leaves flutter down, in soundless benediction ou the dust beneath. Gray was laid in the same grave with his mother, " the careful, tender mother of many children, one alone of whom," as he wrote upon her gravestone, "had the misfortune to survive her." Their tomb — a low, oblong, brick structure, covered with a large slab — stands a few feet away from the church wall, upon which is a small tablet to denote its place. The poet's name has not been inscribed above him. There was no need here of " storied urn or ani- mated bust." The place is his monument, and the majestic Elegy — giving to the soul of the place a form of seraphic beauty and a voice of celestial music — is his immortal epitaph : " Here scattered oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are showers of violets found ; The red-breast loves to build and warble here, And little footsteps lightly print the ground." There is a monument to Gray in Stoke Park, about two hundred yards from the church ; but it seems commemorative of the builder rather than the poet. They intend to set a memorial window in the church, to honour him, and the visitor finds there a money-box for the reception of contribu- Stoke Pogis and Thomas Gray. 43 tions in aid of this pious design. Notliing will be done amiss that serves to direct closer attention to his life. It was one of the best lives ever recorded in the history of literature. It was a life singularly pure, noble, and beautiful. In two qualities, sin- cerity and reticence, it was exemplary almost be- yond a parallel ; and those are qualities which literary character in the present day has great need to acquire. Gray was averse to publicity. He did not sway by the censure of other men ; neither did he need their admiration as his breath of life. Poetry, to him, was a great art ; and he added nothing to literature until he had first made it as nearly perfect as it could be made by the thought- ful, laborious exertion of his best powers, su])er- added to the spontaneous impulse and flow of his genius. More voluminous writers, Charles Dick- ens among the rest, have sneered at him because he wrote so little. The most colossal form of human conceit, probably, is that of the individual who thinks all other creatures inferior who happen to be unlike himself. This reticence on the part of Gray was, in fact, the grand emblem of hi5 sin- cerity and the corner-stone of his imperishable renown. There is a better thing than the sreat man who is always speaking; and that is the great man who only speaks when he has a great word to say. Gray has left only a few poems ; but, of his principal works, each is perfect in its kind, supreme and unapproachable. He did not test merit by ref- 44 English Rambles. ^ erence to ill-informed and capricious public opinion, but he wrought according to the highest standards of art that learning and taste could furnish. His Letters form an English classic. There is no better prose in existence ; there is not much that is so good. But the crowning glory of Gray's nature, the element that makes it so impressive, the charm that brings the pilgrim to Stoke Pogis Church to muse upon it, was the self-poised, sincere, and lovely exaltation of its contemplative spirit. He was a man whose conduct of life would, first of all, purify, extend, and adorn the temple of his own soul, out of which should afterward flow, in their own free way, those choral harmonies that soothe, guide, and exalt the human race. He lived before he wrote. The soul of the Elegy is the soul of the man. It was his thought — which he has some- where expressed in better words than these — that human beings are only at their best while such feelings endure as are engendered when death has just taken from us the objects of our love. That was the point of view from which he habit- ually looked upon the world ; and no man who has learned the lessons of experience can doubt that he was right. Gray was twenty-six years old when he wrote the first draft of the Elegy. He began this poem, in 1742, at Stoke Pogis, and he finished and pub- lished it in 1750. No visitor to this churchyard can miss either its inspiration or its imagery. The Stoke Pogis and Thomas Gray. 45 poet has been dead more than a hundred years ; hut tlie scene of liis rambles and reveries has suf- fered no material change. One of his yew-trees, indeed, much weakened with age, was some time since blown down in a storm, and its frai^ments have been carried away. A picturesque house con- tiguous to the cimrchyard, which in Queen Eliz- beth's time was a palace and was visited by that sovereign, and which Gray knew as a manor, has now become a dairy. All the trees of the region have, of course, waxed and expanded, — not forget- ting the neighbouring beeches of Birnam, among which he loved to wander, and where he micrht often have been found, sitting with his book, at some gnarled wreath of '• old fantastic roots." But, in all its general characteristics, its rustic homeliness and peaceful beauty, this " glimmering landscape," im- mortalized in his verse, is the same on which his living eyes have looked. There was no need to seek for him in any special spot. The cottage in which he once lived might, no doubt, be discov- ered; but every nook and vista, every green lane and upland lawn and ivy-mantled tower of this delicious solitude is haunted with his presence. The night is coming on and the picture will soon be dark ; but never while memory lasts can it fade out of the heart. What a blessing would be ours, if only we could hold forever that exaltation of the spirit, that sweet, resigned serenity, that pure free- dom from all the passions of nature and all the 4^ English Rambles. cares of life, which comes upon us in such a place as this ! Alas, and again Alas ! Even with the thought this golden mood begins to melt away ; even with the thought comes our dismissal from its influence. Nor will it avail us anything now to linger at the slirine. Fortunate is he, though in bereavement and regret, who parts from beauty while yet her kiss is warm upon his lips, — waiting not for the last farewell word, hearing not the last notes of the music, seeing not the last gleams of sunset as the light dies from the sky. It was a sad parting, but the memory of the place can never now be despoiled of its loveliness. As I write these words I stand again in the cool and dusky silence of the poet's church, with its air of stately age and its fragrance of cleanliness, while the light of the western sun, broken into rays of gold and ruby, streams through tlie great painted windows, and softly falls upon the quaint httle galleries and decorous pews; and, looking forth through the low, arched door, I see the dark and melancholy boughs of the dreaming yew-lree, and, nearer, a shadow of rippling leaves in the clear sunshine of the churchway path. And all the time a quiet voice is whispering, in the chambers of thought : " No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose). The bosom of his Father and his God." VI. AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE. A MONG the many deep-thoughted, melodious ■^"^ and eloquent poems of Wordsworth there is one — about the burial of Ossian — which glances at the question of fitness in a place of sepulture. Not always, for the illustrious dead, has the final couch of rest been rightly chosen. We think with resignation, and with a kind of pride, of Keats and Shelley in the little Protestant burial-ground at Rome. Every heart is touched at tlie spectacle of Garrick and Johnson sleeping side by side in West- minster Abbey. It was right that the dust of Dean Stanley should mingle with the dust of poets and of kings ; and to see — as the present writer did, only a little while ago — fresh flowers on the 48 English RaiTibles. stone that covers him, in the chapel of Henry the Seventh, was to feel a tender gladness and solemn content. Shakespeare's grave, in the chancel of Stratford Church, awakens the same ennobling awe and melancholy pleasure ; and it is with kin- dred feelings that you linger at the tomb of Gray. But who can be content that poor Letitia Landon should sleep beneath the pavement of a barrack, with soldiers trampling over her dust ? One might almost think, sometimes, that the spirit of calamity, which follows certain persons throughout the whole of life, had pursued them even in death, to haunt about their repose and to mar all the gentleness of association that ought to hallow it. Chatterton, a pauper and a suicide, was huddled into a work- house graveyard, the very place of which — in Shoe Lane, covered now by Farringdon Market — has disappeared. Otway, miserable in his love for Elizabeth Barry, the actress, and said to have starved to death, in the Minories, near the Tower of London, was laid in a vault of St. Clement-le- Danes in the middle of the Strand, where never the green leaves rustle, but where the roar of the mighty city pours on in continual tumult. This church holds also the remains of William Mount- fort, the actor, slain in a brawl by Lord Mohun ; of Nat Lee, "the mad poet"; of George Powell, the tragedian, of brilliant and deplorable memory ; and of the handsome Hildebrand Horden,i cut off by a 1 Hildebrand Horden was the son of a clergyman, of Twick- At the Grave of Coleridge. 49 violent death in the very spring-time of his youth. Henry Mossop, one of the stateliest of stately actors, perishing, by slow degrees, of penury and grief, — which he bore in utter silence, — found a refuge, at last, in the gloomy barrenness of Chelsea Church. Theodore Hook, the cheeriest spirit of his time, the man who filled every hour of life with the sunshine of his wit, and was wasted and de- graded by his own brilliancy, rests (close by Bishop Sherlock) in Fulham Churcliyard, — one of the dreariest spots in the suburbs of London. Per- haps it does not much signify, wlien once the play is over, in what oblivion our crumbling relics are hidden away. Yet to most human creatures these are sacred things, and many a loving heart, for all enham, and lived in the reign of William and Mary. Dramatic chronicles say that he was possessed of great talents as an actor, and of remarkable personal beauty. He was stabbed, in a quar- rel, at the Rose Tavern ; and after he had been laid out for the grave, such was the lively feminine interest in his handsome per- son, many ladies came, some masked and others openly, to view him in his shroud. This is mentioned in Colley Gibber's Apol- ogy. Charles Coffey, the dramatist, author of " The Devil upon Two Sticks," and other plays, lies in the vaults of St. Clement ; as likewise does Thomas Rymer, historiographer for William III., successor to Shadwcll, and author of " Fcedera," in seventeen volumes. In the church of St. Clement you may see the pew in which Dr. Johnson habitually sat, when he at- tended divine service there. It was his favourite church. The pew is in the gallery ; and to those who honour the passionate integrity' and fervent, devout zeal of the stalwart old champion of letters, it is indeed a sacred shrine. 4 50 E?iglish Rambles. time to come, will choose a consecrated spot for the repose of the dead, and will echo the tender words of Longfellow, — so truly expressive of a uni- versal and reverent sentiment : " Take them, O grave, and let them lie Folded upon thy narrow shelves, As garments by the soul laid by And precious only to ourselves." One of the pleasantest and saddest of the liter- ary pilgrimages that I have made was that which brought me to the house in which Coleridge died, and the place where he was buried. The student needs not to be told that this poet, born in 1772, the year after Gray's death, bore the white lihes of pure literature till 1S34, when he too entered into his rest. The last nineteen years of the life of Coleridge were spent in a house at Highgate ; and here, within a few steps of each other, the visitor may behold his dwelling and his tomb. The house is one in a block of dwellings, situated in what is called The Grove — a broad and embowered street, a little way off from the centre of the village. There are gardens attached to these houses, both in the front and the rear, and the smooth and peaceful roadside walks in The Grove itself are pleasantly shaded by elms of noble size and abun- dant foliage. These were young trees when Cole- ridge saw them, and all this neighbourhood, in his day, was but thinly settled. Looking from his At the Grave of Coleridge. 51 chamber window lie could see (he dusky outhnes of sombre London, crowned with the dome of St. Paul's on the southern horizon, while, more near, across a fertile and smiling valley, the gray spire of Hampstead Church would bound his prospect, rising above the verdant woodland of Caen.^ In front were beds of flowers, and all around he might hear the songs of birds that filled the fragrant air with their happy, careless music. Not far away stood the old church of Highgate, long since de- stroyed, in which he used to worship, and close by was the Gate House Inn, primitive, quaint, and cosey, which still is standing to comfort the weary traveller with its wholesome hospitality. Highgate, with all its rural peace, must have been a bustling place in the old times, for all the travel went through it that passed either into or out of London by the great north road, — that road in which Whittington heard the prophetic summons of the bells, and where may still be seen, suitably and rightly marked, the site of the stone on which he sat to rest. Here, indeed, the coaches used to halt, either to bait or to change horses, and here the many neglected little taverns still remaining, with their odd names and their swinging signs, testify to the discarded ' " Come in the first stage, so as either to walk or to be driven in Mr. Oilman's gij, to Caen wood and its delicious groves and alleys, the finest in England, a grand Cathedral aisle of giant lime-trees. Pope's favourite composition walk, when with the old Earl." — Coleridge to Crabb Robinson. Highgate, Jutu, 1S17. 52 English Ranihles. customs of a by-gone age. Some years ago a new road was cut, so that travellers might wind around the hill, and avoid climbing the steep ascent to the village ; and since then the grass has begun to grow in the streets. But such bustle as once en- livened the solitude of Highgate could never have been otherwise than agreeable diversion to its in- habitants ; while for Coleridge himself, as we can well imagine, the London coach was welcome indeed, that brought to his door such well-loved friends as Charles Lamb, Joseph Henry Green, Crabb Robinson, Wordsworth, or Talfourd. To this retreat the author of " The Ancient Mariner" withdrew in 1815, to live with his friend James Gilman, a surgeon, who had undertaken to rescue him from the demon of opium, but who, as De Ouincey intimates, was lured by the poet into the service of the very fiend whom both had striven to subdue. It was his last refuge, and he never left it till he was released from life. As you ramble in this quiet neighbourhood your fancy will not fail to conjure up his placid figure, — the silver hair, the pale face, the great, luminous, changeful blue eyes, the somewhat portly form clotlied in black raiment, the slow, feeble walk, the sweet, benignant manner, the voice that was perfect melody, and the inexhaustible talk that was the flow of a golden sea of eloquence and wisdom. Coleridge was often seen walking here, with a book in his hand ; and all the children of the village knew At the Grave of Coleridge. 53 him and loved him. His presence is impressed forever upon this place, to haunt and to hallow it. He was a very great man. The wings of his imag- ination wave easily in the opal air of the highest heaven. The power and majesty of his thought are such as establish forever in the human mind the conviction of personal immortality. No man who reads Coleridge can doubt the destiny of the soul. Yet how forlorn the ending that this stately spirit was enforced to make ! For more than thirty years he was the slave of opium. It broke up his home ; it alienated his wife ; it ruined his he:ilth ; it made him utterly wretched. " I have been, through a large portion of my later life," he wrote, in 1834, " a sufferer, sorely afflicted with bodily pains, languor, and manifold infirmities." But back of all this, — more dreadful still and harder to bear, — was he not the slave of some ingrained perversity of the mind itself, some helpless and hopeless irresolution of character, some enervating spell of that sublime yet pitiable dejection of Ham- let, which kept him forever at war with himself, and, last of all, cast him out upon the homeless ocean of despair, to drift away into ruin and death ! There are shapes more awful than his, in the rec- ords of literary history, — the ravaged, agonizing form of Swift, for instance, and the wonderful, des- olate face of Byron ; but there is no figure more forlorn and pathetic. This way the memory of Coleridge came upon 54 English Rambles. me, standing at his grave. He should have been laid in some wild, free place, where the grass could grow above him and the trees could wave their branches over his head. They placed him in a ponderous tomb, of gray stone, in Highgate Church- yard, and, in later times, they have reared a new building above it, — the grammar school of the vil- lage, — so that now the tomb, fenced round with iron, is in a cold, barren, gloomy crypt, accessible, indeed, from the churchyard, through several arches, but grim and doleful in all its surroundings ; ,as if the evil and cruel fate that marred his life were still triumphant over his ashes. VII. ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD. IN England, as elsewhere, every historic spot is occupied ; and of course it sometimes happens, at such a spot, that its association is marred and its sentiment almost destroyed by the presence of the persons and the interests of to-day. The visitor to such places must carry with him not only knowl- edge and sensibility, but imagination and patience. He will not find the way strewn with roses nor the atmosphere of poetry ready-made for his enjoy- ment. That atmosphere, indeed, for the most part — especially in the cities — he must himself supply. Relics do not robe themselves for exhibition. The Past is utterly indifferent to its worshippers. All manner of little obstacles, too, will arise before the 56 English Rambles. pilgrim, to thwart him in his search. The mental strain and bewilderment, the inevitable physical weariness, the soporific influence of the climate, the tumult of the streets, the frequent and dis- heartening spectacle of poverty, squalour, and vice, the capricious and untimely rain, the inconvenience of long distances, the ill-timed arrival and con- sequent disappointment, the occasional nervous sense of loneliness and insecurity, the inappropriate boor, the ignorant, garrulous porter, the extor- tionate cabman, and the jeering by-stander — all these must be regarded with resolute indifference by him who would ramble, pleasantly and profit- ably, in the footprints of English history. Every- thing depends, in other words, upon the eyes with which you observe, and the spirit which you im- part. Never was a keener truth uttered than in the couplet of Wordsworth : " Minds that have nothing to confer Find little to perceive." To the philosophic stranger, however, even this prosaic occupancy of historic j^laces is not without its pleasurable, because humorous, significance. Such an observer in England will sometimes be amused as well as impressed by a sudden sense of the singular incidental position into which, — partly through the lapse of years and partly through a peculiarity of national character, — the scenes of famous events, not to say the events themselves, have gradually drifted. I thought of this one night, On Barnd Bat tic- Field. 57 when, in Whitehall Gardens, I was looking at the statue of James the Second, — which there marks the place of the execution of his father, Charles the First, — and a courteous policeman came up and silently turned the light of his bull's-eye upon the inscription. A scene of more incongruous elements, or one suggestive of a more serio-comic contrast, could not be imagined. I thought of it again when standing on the village green near Barnet, and viewing, amid surroundings both pastoral and ludi- crous, the column which there commemorates the defeat and death of the great Earl of Warwick, and, consequently, the final triumph of the Crown over the last of the Barons of England. It was toward the close of a cool summer day, and of a long drive through the beautiful hedge- rows of sweet and verdurous Middlesex, that I came to the villages of Barnet and Hadley, and went over the field of King Edward's victory, — that fatal, glorious field, on which Gloster showed such resolute valour, and where Neville, supreme and magnificent in disaster, fought on foot, to make sure that himself might go down in the stormy death of all his hopes. More than four hundred years have drifted by since that misty April morn- ing when the star of Warwick was quenched in blood, and ten thousand men were slaughtered to end the strife between the Barons and the Crown ; yet the results of that conflict are living facts in the government of England now, and in the fortunes of 58 English Rambles. her inhabitants. If you were unaware of the solid simpHcity and proud reticence of the English char- acter, — leading it to merge all its shining deeds in one continuous fabric of achievement, like jewels set in a cloth of gold, — you might expect to find this spot adorned with a structure of more than common splendour. What you actually do find there is a plain monolith, standing in the middle of a common, at the junction of several roads, — the chief of which are those leading to Hatfield and St. Albans, in Hertfordshire, — and on one side of this column you may read, in letters of faded black, the comprehensive statement that " Here was fought the famous battle between Edward the Fourth and the Earl of Warwick, April 14th, anno 1471, in which the Earl was defeated and slaiu.^ In my reverie, standing at the foot of this humble, weather-stained monument, I saw the long range of Barnet Hills, mantled with grass and flowers and with the golden haze of a morning in spring, swarming with gorgeous horsemen and glittering with spears and banners ; and I heard the vengeful clash of arms, the horrible neighing of maddened steeds, the furious shouts of onset, and all the nameless cries and groans of battle, commingled in a thrilling yet hideous din. Here rode King Ed- ward, intrepid, handsome, and stalwart, with his proud, cruel smile and his long yellow hair. There 1 The words " stick no bills ' ' have been added, just below this inscription, with ludicrous effect. On Barnct Battlc-Fidd. 59 Warwick swung his great two-handed sword, and mowed his foes like grain. And there the fiery form of Richard, splendid in burnished steel, darted like the scorpion, dealing death at every blow ; till at last, in fatal mischance, the sad star of Oxford, assailed by its own friends, was swept out of the field, and the fight drove, raging, into the valleys of Hadley. How strangely, though, did this fan- cied picture contrast with the actual scene before me. At a little distance, all around the village green, the peaceful, embowered cottages kept their sentinel watch. Over the careless, straggling grass went the shadow of the passing clouds. Not a sound was heard, save the rustle of leaves and the low laughter of some httle children, playing near the monument. Close by, and at rest, was a flock of geese, couched upon the cool earth, and, as their custom is, supremely contented with themselves and all the world. And at the very foot of the column, stretched out at his full length, in tattered garments that scarcely covered his nakedness, re- posed the British labourer, fast asleep upon the sod. No more Wars of the Roses now ; but calm retire- ment, smihng plenty, cool western winds, and sleep and peace — " With a red rose and a white rose Leaning, nodding at the wall." ^ VIII. A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY. ONE of the most impressive spots on earth, and one that especially teaches — with silent, pathetic eloquence and solemn admonition — the great lesson of contrast, the incessant flow of the ages and the inevitable decay and oblivion of the past, is the ancient city of Canterbury. Years and not merely days of residence here are essential to the adequate and right comprehension of this wonderful place. Yet even an hour passed among its shrines will teach you, as no printed word has ever taught, the measureless power and the sublime beauty of a perfect religious faith; while, as you stand and meditate in the shadow of the gray Cathedral walls, the pageant of a thousand years A Glimpse of Canterbury. 6i of history will pass before you like a dream. The city itself, with its bright, swift river (the Stour), its opulence of trees and flowers, its narrow, wind- ing streets, its numerous antique buildings, its many towers, its fragments of ancient wall and gate, its formal decorations, its air of perfect clean- liness and thoughtful gravity, its beautiful, umbrage- ous suburbs, — where the scarlet of the poppies and the russet red of the clover make one vast roll- ing sea of colour and of fragrant delight, — and, to crown all, its stately character of wealth without ostentation and industry without tumult, must prove to you a deep and satisfying comfort. But, through all this, pervading and surmounting it all, the spirit of the place pours in upon your heart, and floods your whole being with the incense and organ music of passionate, jubilant devotion. It was not superstition that reared those gor- geous fanes of worship which still adorn, even while they no longer consecrate, the ecclesiastic cities of the old world. In the days of Augustine, Dunstan, and Ethelnoth, humanity had begun to feel its profound and vital need of a sure and settled reliance on religious faith. The drifting spirit, worn with sorrow, doubt, and self-conflict, longed to be at peace — longed for a refuge equally from the evils and tortures of its own condition and the storms and perils of the world. In that longing it recognized its immortality and heard the voice of its Divine Parent ; and out of the ecstatic joy and 62 Endish Rambles. A' utter abandonment of its new-born, passionate, responsive faith, it built and consecrated those stupendous temples, — rearing them with all its love, no less than all its riches and all its power. There was no wealth that it would not give, no toil that it would not perform, and no sacrifice that it would not make, in the accomplishment of its sacred task. It was grandly, nobly, terribly in earnest, and it achieved a work that is not only sublime in its poetic majesty but measureless in the scope and extent of its moral and spiritual in- fluence. It has left to succeeding ages not only a legacy of permanent beauty, not only a sublime symbol of religious faith, but an everlasting monu- ment to the loveliness and greatness that are in- herent in human nature. No creature with a human heart in his bosom can stand in such a building as Canterbury Cathedral without feeling a greater love and reverence than he ever felt be- fore, alike for God and man. On a day, this year, (July 27th, 1882), when a class of the boys of the King's School of Canter- bury was graduated, the present writer chanced to be a listener to the impressive and touching sermon that was preached before them, in the chancel of the Cathedral ; wherein they were tenderly admon- ished to keep unbroken their associations with their school-days, and to remember the lessons of the place itself. This counsel must have sunk deep into every mind. It is difficult to understand A Glimpse of Canterbury. 63 how any person reared amid such scenes and relics could ever cast away their hallowing influence. Even to the casual visitor the bare thought of the historic treasures that are garnered in this temple is, by itself, sufficient to implant in the bosom a mem.orable and lasting awe. For more than twelve hundred years the succession of the Archbishops of Canterbury has remained substantially unbroken. There have been ninety-three "primates of all England," of whom fifty-three were buried in the Cathedral, and here the tombs of fifteen of them are still visible. Here was buried the sagacious, crafty, inflexible, indomitable Henry the Fourth, — that Hereford whom Shakespeare has described and interpreted with matchless, immortal elo- quence, — and here, cut off in the morning of his greatness, and lamented to this day in the hearts of the English people, was laid the body of Edward the Black Prince, who to a dauntless valour and terrible prowess in war added a high-souled, hu- mane, and tender magnanimity in conquest, and whom personal virtues and shining public deeds united to make the ideal hero of chivalry. In no other way than by personal observance of such memorials can iiistoric reading be invested with a perfect and permanent reality. Over the tomb of the Black Prince, with its fine recumbent effigy of gilded brass, hang the gauntlets that he wore ; and they tell you that his sword formerly hung there, but that Oliver Cromwell, — who revealed 64 Efiglish Rambles. his iconoclastic and unlovely character in making a stable of this Cathedral, — carried it away. Close at hand is the tomb of the wise, just, and gentle Cardinal Pole, simply inscribed, "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord ; " and you may touch a little, low mausoleum of gray stone, in which are the ashes of John Morton, that Bishop of Ely fiom whose garden in Holborn the strawberries were brought for the Duke of Gloster, on the day when he slaughtered the accomplished Hastings, and who "fled to Richmond," in good time, from the standard of the grisly and dangerous Protector. Standing there, I could almost hear the resolute, scornful voice of Richard, breathing out, in clear, implacable accents : " Morton with Richmond touches me more near Than Buckingham and his rasli-Ievied numbers." The astute Morton, when Bosworth was over, and Richmond had assumed the crown, and Bour- chier had died, was made Archbishop of Canter- bury ; and as such, at a great age, he passed away. A few hundred yards from his place of rest, in a vault beneath the Church of St. Dunstan, is the head of Sir Thomas More (the body being in St. Peter's, at the Tower of London), who, in his youth, had been a member of Morton's ecclesiasti- cal household, and whose greatness that prelate had foreseen and prophesied. Did no shadow of the scaffold ever fall across the statesman's A Glimpse of Canterbury. 65 thouglils, as lie looked upon that handsome, manly boy, and thought of the tro iblous times that were raging about them ? Morton, aged ninety, died in 1500; More, aged fifty-five, in 1535. Strange fate, indeed, was that, and as inscrutable as mournful, which gave to those who in life had been like father and son such a ghastly association in death ! ' They show you, of course, the spot where Becket was murdered, and the stone steps, worn hollow by the thousands upon thousands of devout pilgrims who, in the days before the Reformation, crept up to •weep and pray at the costly, resplendent shrine of St. Thomas. The bones of Becket, as all the world knows, were, by command of Henry the Eighth, burnt, and scattered to the winds, while his shrine was pillaged and destroyed. Neither tomb nor scutcheon commemorates him here, — but the Cathedral itself is his monument. There it stands, with its grand columns and glorious arches, its towers of enormous size and its long vistas of dis- tance so mysterious and awful, its gloomy crypt 1 St. Dunstan's Church was connected with the Convent of St. Gregory. The Roper family, in tlic time of Henry the Fourth, founded a chapel in it, in which arc two marble tombs, commemorative of them, and underneath which is their burial vault. Margaret Roper, Sir Thomas More's daughter, obtained her father's head, after his execution, and buried it here. The vault was opened in 1S35, — when a new pavement was laid in the chancel of this church, — and persons descending into it saw the head, in a leaden box shaped like a bee-hive, open in front, set in a niche in the wall, and faced with an iron grating. 5 66 English Rambles.