Seeing Europe with Famous Authors by Francis W. Halsey

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SEEING EUROPE WITH FAMOUS AUTHORS

Selected And Edited With Introduction, Etc.

By Francis W. Halsey

_Editor of "Great Epochs in American History" Associate Editor of "The
World's Famous Orations" and of "The Best of the World's
Classics," etc._

In Ten Volumes

Illustrated

Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland

Part Two

[_Printed in the United States of America_]

II

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND--PART TWO

IV-ENGLISH LITERARY SHRINES--

(_Continued_)

STOKE POGIS--By Charles T. Congdon

HAWORTH--By Theodore F. Wolfe

GAD'S HILL--By Theodore F. Wolfe

RYDAL MOUNT--By William Howitt

TWICKENHAM--By William Howitt

V-OTHER ENGLISH SCENES

STONEHENGE--By Ralph Waldo Emerson

MAGNA CHARTA ISLAND--By Mrs. S. C. Hall

THE HOME OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS--By James M. Hoppin

OXFORD--By Goldwin Smith

CAMBRIDGE--By James M. Hoppin

CHESTER--By Nathaniel Hawthorne

EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE--By Frederick A. Talbot

THE CAPITAL OF THE BRITISH, SAXON AND NORMAN KINGS--By William Howitt

VI--SCOTLAND

EDINBURGH--By Robert Louis Stevenson

HOLYROOD--By David Masson

LINLITHGOW--By Sir Walter Scott

STIRLING--By Nathaniel Hawthorne

ABBOTSFORD--By William Howitt

DRYBURGH ABBEY--By William Howitt

MELROSE ABBEY--By William Howitt

CARLYLE'S BIBTHPLACE AND EARLY HOMES--By John Burroughs

BURNS'S LAND--By Nathaniel Hawthorne

HIGHLAND MARY'S HOME AND GRAVE--By Theodore F. Wolfe

THROUGH THE CALEDONIA CANAL TO INVERNESS--By H. A. Taine

THE SCOTCH HIGHLANDS--By H. A. Taine

BEN LOMOND AND THE HIGHLAND LAKES--By Bayard Taylor

TO THE HEBRIDES--By James Boswell

STAFFA AND IONA--By William Howitt

VII--IRELAND

A SUMMER DAY IN DUBLIN--By William Makepeace Thackeray

DUBLIN CASTLE--By Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall

ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDHAL--By Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall

LIMERICK--By Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall

FROM BELFAST TO DUBLIN--By William Cullen Bryant

THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY--By Bayard Taylor

CORK--by William Makepeace Thackeray

BLARNEY CASTLE--By Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall

MUCROSS ABBEY--By Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall

FROM GLENGARIFF TO KILLARNEY--By William Makepeace Thackeray

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME II

FRONTISPIECE

PRINCESS STREET AND SCOTT'S MONUMENT, EDINBURGH

STRATFORD-ON-AVON

INTERIOR OF TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD

ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE, NEAR STRATFORD

ROOM IN STRATFORD IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN

NEWSTEAD ABBEY, BYRON'S ANCESTRAL HOME

STOKE POGIS, THE SCENE OF GRAY'S "ELEGY"

OXFORD

EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE

ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH, CANTERBURY

EDINBURGH CASTLE AND NATIONAL GALLERY

OLD GREYFRIAR'S CHURCH, EDINBURGH

HOLYROOD PALACE, EDINBURGH

STIRLING CASTLE

RUINS OF HOLYROOD ABBEY, EDINBURGH

MELROSE ABBEY

GLASTONBURY ABBEY

CRAIGMILLAR CASTLE, SCOTLAND

DUMBARTON ROCK AND CASTLE

LIMERICK CASTLE

ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL, DUBLIN

THE GIANT'S CAUSEWAY

BLARNEY CASTLE

MUCROSS ABBEY

THE LAKES OF KILLARNEY

SACKVILLE STREET, DUBLIN

THE GAP OF DUNLOE

IV

ENGLISH LITERARY SHRINES

(_Continued_)

STOKE POGIS [Footnote: From "Reminiscences of a Journalist." By special
arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, Houghton,
Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1884. Mr. Congdon was, for many years, under
Horace Greeley, a leading editorial writer for the New York "Tribune."]

BY CHARLES T. CONGDON

It was a comfort as I came out of the Albert Memorial Chapel, and
rejoined nature upon the Terrace, to mutter to myself those fine lines
which not a hundred years ago everybody knew by heart: "The boast of
heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth ere
gave, Await alike th' inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to
the grave,"--a verse which I found it not bad to remember as in the
Chapel Royal I gazed upon the helmets, and banners, and insignia of many
a defunct Knight of the Garter. I wondered if posterity would care much
for George the Fourth, or Third, or Second, or First, whose portraits I
had just been gazing at; I was sure that a good many would remember the
recluse scholar of Pembroke Hall, the Cambridge Professor of Modern
History, who cared for nothing but ancient history; who projected twenty
great poems, and finished only one or two; who spent his life in
commenting upon Plato and studying botany, and in writing letters to his
friend Mason; and who with a real touch of Pindar in his nature, was
content to fiddle-faddle away his life. He died at last of a most
unpoetical gout in the stomach, leaving behind him a cartload of
memoranda, and fifty fragments of fine things; and yet I, a stranger
from a far distant shore, was about to make a little pilgrimage to his
tomb, and all for the sake of that "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard," which has so held its own while a hundred bulkier things
have been forgotten.

The church itself is an interesting but not remarkable edifice, old,
small, and solidly built in a style common enough in England. Nothing,
however, could be more in keeping with the associations of the scene.
The very humility of the edifice has a property of its own, for anything
more magnificent would jar upon the feelings, as the monument in the
Park does most decidedly. It was Gray's wish that he might be buried
here, near the mother whom he loved so well; otherwise he could hardly
have escaped the posthumous misfortune of a tomb in Westminster Abbey or
St. Paul's. In such case the world would have missed one of the most
charming of associations, and the great poem the most poetical of its
features. For surely it was fit that he who sang so touchingly of the
dead here sleeping, should find near them his last resting-place; that
when the pleasant toil in libraries was over, the last folio closed by
those industrious hands, the last manuscript collated, and the last
flower picked for the herbarium, he who here so tenderly sang of the
emptiness of earthly honors and the nothingness of worldly success should
be buried humbly near those whom he best loved, and where all the moral
of his teaching might be perpetually illustrated. I wondered, as I stood
there, whether Horace Walpole ever thought it worth his while, for the
sake of that early friendship which was so rudely broken, to come there,
away from the haunts of fashion, or from his plaything villa at
Strawberry Hill, to muse for a moment over the grave of one who rated
pedigrees and peerages at their just value. Probably my Lord Orford was
never guilty of such a piece of sentimentality. He was thinking too much
of his pictures and coins and eternal bric-a-brac for that.

A stone set in the outside of the church indicates the spot near which
the poet is buried. I was very anxious to see the interior of the
edifice, and, fortunately I found the sexton busy in the neighborhood.
There was nothing, however, remarkable to be seen, after sixpence had
opened the door, except perhaps the very largest pew which these eyes
ever beheld. It belonged to the Penn family, descendants of drab-coated
and sweet-voiced William Penn, whose seat is in the neighborhood. I do
not know what that primitive Quaker would have said to such an enormous
reservation of space in the house of God for the sole use and behoof of
two or three aristocratic worshipers. Probably few of my readers have
ever seen such a pew as that. It was not so much a pew as a room. It was
literally walled off, and quite set apart from the plebeian portion of
the sanctuary, was carpeted, and finished with comfortable arm-chairs,
and in the middle of it was a stove. The occupants could look out and
over at the altar, but the rustics could not look in and at them. The
Squire might have smoked or read novels, or my lady might have worked
worsted or petted her poodle through the service, without much scandal.
The pew monopolized so much room that there was little left for the
remainder of the "miserable offenders," but I suspect that there was
quite enough for all who came to pray. For it was, as I have said,
literally a country church; and those who sleep near it were peasants.

It is difficult to comprehend the whole physiognomy of the poem, if I
may use the expression, without seeing the spot which it commemorates. I
take it for granted that the reader is familiar with it. There are
"those rugged elms," and there is "that yew tree's shade." There are
"the frail memorials," "with uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture
decked;" there "the name, the years, spelt by the unlettered muse;" and
the holy texts strewn round "that teach the rustic moralist to die."
There is still "the ivy-mantled tower," tho the "moping owl" that
evening did not "to the moon complain," partly because there was no moon
to complain to, and possibly because there was no moping owl in the
tower. But there was one little circumstance which I may be pardoned for
mentioning. Gray, somehow, has the reputation of being an artificial
poet, yet for one who wrote so little poetry he makes a good many
allusions to childhood and children. As I passed through the Park on my
way to the churchyard, I encountered a group of merry boys and girls
playing about the base of the monument; and I recalled that verse which
Gray wrote for the Elegy, and afterward discarded, under the impression
that it made the parenthesis too long.

There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.

I have often wondered how Gray could bear to give up these sweet, tender
and most natural lines. I have sometimes surmised that he thought them a
little too much like Ambrose Philips's verses about children--Namby
Pamby Philips, as the Pope set nicknamed that unfortunate writer.

I lingered about the churchyard until that long twilight, of which we
know nothing in America, began to grow dimmer and dimmer. If it was
still before, it seemed all the stiller now. I was glad that I had
waited so long, because by doing so I understood all the better how true
the Elegy is to nature. The neighborhood, with its agreeable variety of
meadow and wood, has all the hundred charms of the gentle and winning
English scenery. The hush, hardly broken even by the songs of the birds,
brought forcibly to my mind that beautiful line of the Elegy: "And all
the air a solemn stillness holds;" while that other line: "Now fades the
glimmering landscape on the sight," is exactly true. The landscape did
glimmer, and as I watched the sun go down, I pleased myself with the
fancy that I was sitting just where the poet sat, as he revolved those
lines which the world has got by heart. Just then came the cry of the
cattle, and I knew why Gray wrote: "The lowing herd winds slowly o'er
the lea," nor did I fail to encounter a plowman homeward plodding his
weary way.

As I strolled listlessly back to the station, there was such a serenity
on the earth about me, and in the sky above me, that I could easily give
myself to gentle memories and poetic dreams. I recalled the springtime
of life, when I learned this famous Elegy by heart as a pleasant task,
and, as yet unsophisticated by critical notions, accepted it as perfect.
I thought of innumerable things which I had read about it; of the long
and patient revision which its author gave it, year after year, keeping
it in his desk, and then sending it, a mere pamphlet, with no flourish
of trumpets, into the world. Many an ancient figure came to lend
animation to the scene. Horace Walpole in his lace coat and spruce wig
went mincing by; the mother of Gray, with her sister, measured lace for
the customers who came to her little shop in London; the wags of
Pembroke College, graceless varlets, raise an alarm of fire that they
may see the frightened poet drop from the window, half dead with alarm;
old Foulis, the Glasgow printer, volunteers to send from his press such,
a luxurious edition of Gray's poems as the London printers can not
match; Dr. Johnson, holding the page to his eyes, growls over this
stanza, and half-grudgingly praises that. I had spent perhaps the
pleasantest day which the fates vouchsafed me during my sojourn in
England; and here I was back again in Slough Station, ready to return to
the noisy haunts of men. The train came rattling up, and the day with
Gray was over.

HAWORTH [Footnote: From "A Literary Pilgrimage." By arrangement with,
and by permission of, the publishers, J. B. Lippincott Co.
Copyright, 1895.]

BY THEODORE F. WOLFE

Other Bronte shrines have engaged us,--Guiseley, where Patrick Bronte
was married and Neilson worked as a mill-girl; the lowly Thornton home,
where Charlotte was born; the cottage where she visited Harriet
Martineau; the school where she found Caroline Helstone and Rose and
Jessy Yorke; the Fieldhead, Lowood, and Thornfield of her tales; the
Villette where she knew her hero; but it is the bleak Haworth hilltop
where the Brontes wrote the wonderful books and lived the pathetic lives
that most attracts and longest holds our steps. Our way is along
Airedale, now a highway of toil and trade, desolated by the need of
hungry poverty and greed of hungrier wealth; meads are replaced by
blocks of grimy huts, groves are supplanted by factory chimneys that
assoil earth and heaven, the one "shining" stream is filthy with the
refuse of many mills.

At Keighley our walk begins, and altho we have no peas in our "Pilgrim
shoon," the way is heavy with memories of the sad sisters Bronte who so
often trod the dreary miles which bring us to Haworth. The village
street, steep as a roof, has a pavement of rude stones, upon which the
wooden shoes of the villagers clank with an unfamiliar sound. The dingy
houses of gray stone, barren and ugly in architecture, are huddled along
the incline and encroach upon the narrow street. The place and its
situation are a proverb of ugliness in all the countryside; one dweller
in Airedale told us that late in the evening of the last day of creation
it was found that a little rubbish was left, and out of that Haworth was
made. But, grim and rough as it is, the genius of a little woman has
made the place illustrious and draws to it visitors from every quarter
of the world. We are come in the "glory season" of the moors, and as we
climb through the village we behold above and beyond it vast undulating
sweeps of amethyst-tinted hills rising circle beyond circle,--all now
one great expanse of purple bloom stirred by zephyrs which waft to us
the perfume of the heather.

At the hilltop we come to the Black Bull Inn, where one Bronte drowned
his genius in drink, and from our apartment here we look upon all the
shrines we seek. The inn stands at the churchyard gates, and is one of
the landmarks of the place. Long ago preacher Grimshaw flogged the
loungers from its taproom into chapel; here Wesley and Whitefield lodged
when holding meetings on the hilltop; here Bronte's predecessor took
refuge from his riotous parishioners, finally escaping through the low
easement at the back,--out of which poor Branwell Bronte used to vault
when his sisters asked for him at the door. This inn is a quaint
structure, low-eaved and cosy; its furniture is dark with age. We sleep
in a bed once occupied by Henry J. Raymond, [Footnote: In the editorial
sense, the founder of the New York "Times." Mr. Raymond died in 1869,
eighteen years after the paper was started.] and so lofty that steps are
provided to ascend its heights. Our meals are served in the
old-fashioned parlor to which Branwell came. In a nook between the
fireplace and the before-mentioned easement stood the tall arm-chair,
with square seat and quaintly carved back, which was reserved for him.

The landlady denied that he was summoned to entertain travelers here;
"he never needed to be sent for, he came fast enough of himself." His
wit and conviviality were usually the life of the circle, but at times
he was mute and abstracted and for hours together "would just sit and
sit in his corner there." She described him as a "little, red-haired,
light-complexioned chap, cleverer than all his sisters put together.
What they put in their books they got from him," quoth she, reminding us
of the statement in Grundy's Reminiscences that Branwell declared he
invented the plot and wrote the major part of "Wuthering Heights."
Certain it is he possest transcending genius and that in this room that
genius was slain. Here he received the message of renunciation from his
depraved mistress which finally wrecked his life; the landlady, entering
after the messenger had gone, found him in a fit on the floor. Emily
Bronte's rescue of her dog, an incident recorded in "Shirley," occurred
at the inn door.

The graveyard is so thickly sown with blackened tombstones that there is
scant space for blade or foliage to relieve its dreariness, and the
villagers, for whom the yard is a thoroughfare, step from tomb to tomb;
in the time of the Brontes the village women dried their linen on these
graves. Close to the wall which divides the churchyard from the vicarage
is a plain stone set by Charlotte Bronte to mark the grave of Tabby, the
faithful servant who served the Brontes from their childhood till all
but Charlotte were dead. The very ancient church-tower still "rises dark
from the stony enclosure of its yard;" the church itself has been
remodeled and much of its romantic interest destroyed. No interments
have been made in the vaults beneath the aisles since Mr. Bronte was
laid there. The site of the Bronte pew is by the chancel; here Emily sat
in the farther corner, Anne next and Charlotte by the door, within a
foot of the spot where her ashes now lie.

A former sacristan remembered to have seen Thackeray and Miss Martineau
sitting with Charlotte in the pew. And here, almost directly above her
sepulcher, she stood one summer morning and gave herself in marriage to
the man who served for her as "faithfully and long as did Jacob for
Rachel." The Bronte tablet in the wall bears a uniquely pathetic record,
its twelve lines registering eight deaths, of which Mr. Bronte's at the
age of eighty-five, is the last. On a side aisle is a beautiful stained
window inscribed "To the Glory of God, in Memory of Charlotte Bronte, by
an American citizen." The list shows that most of the visitors come from
America, and it was left for a dweller in that far land to set up here
almost the only voluntary memento of England's great novelist. A worn
page of the register displays the tremulous autograph of Charlotte as
she signs her maiden name for the last time, and the signatures of the
witnesses to her marriage,--Miss Wooler, of "Roe Head," Ellen Nussy, who
is the E of Charlotte's letters and the Caroline of "Shirley."

The vicarage and its garden are out of a corner of the churchyard and
separated from it by a low wall. A lane lies along one side of the
churchyard and leads from the street to the vicarage gates. The garden,
which was Emily's care, where she tended stunted shrubs and borders of
unresponsive flowers and where Charlotte planted the currant-bushes, is
beautiful with foliage and flowers, and its boundary wall is overtopped
by a screen of trees which shuts out the depressing prospect of the
graves from the vicarage windows and makes the place seem less "a
churchyard home" than when the Brontes inhabited it. The dwelling is of
gray stone, two stories high, of plain and somber aspect. A wing is
added, the little window-panes are replaced by larger squares, the stone
floors are removed or concealed, curtains--forbidden by Mr. Bronte's
dread of fire--shade the window, and the once bare interior is furbished
and furnished in modern style; but the arrangement of the apartments is
unchanged.

Most interesting of these is the Bronte parlor, at the left of the
entrance; here the three curates of "Shirley" used to take tea with Mr.
Bronte and were upbraided by Charlotte for their intolerance; here the
sisters discuss their plots and read each other's MSS.; here they
transmuted the sorrows of their lives into the stories which make the
name of Bronte immortal; here Emily, "her imagination occupied with
Wuthering Heights," watched in the darkness to admit Branwell coming
late and drunken from the Black Bull; here Charlotte, the survivor of
all, paced the night-watches in solitary anguish, haunted by the
vanished faces, the voices forever stilled, the echoing footsteps that
came no more. Here, too, she lay in her coffin. The room behind the
parlor was fitted by Charlotte for Nichols's study. On the right was
Bronte's study, and behind it the kitchen, where the sisters read with
their books propt on the table before them while they worked, and where
Emily (prototype of "Shirley"), bitten by a dog at the gate of the lane,
took one of Tabby's glowing irons from the fire and cauterized the
wound, telling no one till danger was past.

Above the parlor is the chamber in which Charlotte and Emily died, the
scene of Nichols's loving ministrations to his suffering wife. Above
Bronte's study was his chamber; the adjoining children's study was later
Branwell's apartment and the theater of the most terrible tragedies of
the stricken family; here that ill-fated youth writhed in the horrors of
mania-a-potu; here Emily rescued him--stricken with drunken stupor--from
his burning couch, as "Jane Eyre" saved Rochester; here he breathed out
his blighted life erect upon his feet, his pockets filled with
love-letters from the perfidious woman who brought his ruin. Even now
the isolated site of the parsonage, its environment of graves and
wild-moors, its exposure to the fierce winds of the long winters, make
it unspeakably dreary; in the Brontes' time it must have been cheerless
indeed. Its influence darkened the lives of the inmates and left its
fateful impression upon the books here produced. Visitors are rarely
admitted to the vicarage; among those against whom its doors have been
closed is the gifted daughter of Charlotte's literary idol, to whom
"Jane Eyre" was dedicated, Thackeray.

By the vicarage lane were the cottage of Tabby's sister, the school the
Brontes daily visited, and the sexton's dwelling where the curates
lodged. Behind the vicarage a savage expanse of gorse and heather rises
to the horizon and stretches many miles away; a path oft-trodden by the
Brontes leads between low walls from their home to this open moor, their
habitual resort in childhood and womanhood. The higher plateaus afford a
wide prospect, but, despite the August bloom and fragrance and the
delightful play of light and shadow along the sinuous sweeps, the aspect
of the bleak, treeless, houseless waste of uplands is even now
dispiriting; when frosts have destroyed its verdure, and wintry skies
frown above, its gloom and desolation must be terrible beyond
description. Remembering that the sisters found even these usually
dismal moors a welcome relief from their tomb of a dwelling, we may
appreciate the utter dreariness of their situation and the pathos of
Charlotte's declaration, "I always dislike to leave Haworth, it takes so
long to be content again after I return."

GAD'S HILL [Footnote: From "A Literary Pilgrimage." By arrangement with,
and by permission of, the publishers, J. B. Lippincott Co.
Copyright, 1895.]

BY THEODORE F. WOLFE

"To go to Gad's Hill," said Dickens, in a note of invitation, "you leave
Charing Cross at nine o'clock by North Kent Railway for Higham." Guided
by these directions and equipped with a letter from Dickens's son, we
find ourselves gliding eastward among the chimneys of London and, a
little later, emerging into the fields of Kent,--Jingle's region of
"apples, cherries, hops, and women." The Thames is on our left; we pass
many river-towns,--Dartford where Wat Tyler lived, Gravesend where
Pocahontas died,--but most of our way is through the open country, where
we have glimpses of "fields," "parks," and leafy lanes, with here and
there picturesque camps of gypsies or of peripatetic rascals "goin'
a-hoppin.'" From wretched Higham a walk of half an hour among orchards
and between hedges of wild-rose and honeysuckle brings us to the hill
which Shakespeare and Dickens have made classic ground, and soon we see,
above the tree tops, the glittering vane which surmounted the home of
the world's greatest novelist.

The name Gad's (Vagabond's) Hill is a survival of the time when the
depredations of highwaymen upon "pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich
offerings and traders riding to London with fat purses" gave to this
spot the ill repute it had in Shakespeare's day; it was here he located
Falstaff's great exploit. The tuft of evergreens which crowns the hill
about Dickens' retreat is the remnant of thick woods once closely
bordering the highway, in which the "men in buckram" lay concealed, and
the robbery of the Franklin was committed in front of the spot where the
Dickens house stands. By this road passed Chaucer, who had property near
by, gathering from the pilgrims his "Canterbury Tales." In all time to
come the great master of romance who came here to live and die will be
worthily associated with Shakespeare and Chaucer in the renown of
Gad's Hill.

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