CHAPTERXVIFROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH
Edinburgh, September 9, 1889.—Scotland again, and never more beautiful than now! The harvest moon is shining upon the grim old castle, and the bagpipes are playing under my windows to-night. It has been a lovely day. The train rolled out of King's Cross, London, at ten this morning, and it rolled into Waverley, Edinburgh, about seven to-night. The trip by the Great Northern railway is one of the most interesting journeys that can be made in England. At first indeed the scenery is not striking; but even at first you are whirled past spots of exceptional historic and literary interest,—among them the battlefield of Barnet, the ancient and glorious abbey of St. Albans, and the old church and graveyard of Hornsey where Thomas Moore buried his little daughter Barbara, and where the venerable poet Samuel Rogers sleeps the last sleep. Soon these are gone, and presently, dashing through a flat country, you get a clear view ofPeterborough cathedral, massive, dark, and splendid, with its graceful cone-shaped pinnacles, its vast square central tower, and the three great pointed and recessed arches that adorn its west front. That church contains the dust of Queen Catherine, the Spanish wife of Henry the Eighth, who died at Kimbolton Castle, Huntingdonshire, in 1535; and there, in 1587, the remains of Mary Stuart were first buried,—resting there a long time before her son, James the First, conveyed them to Westminster Abbey. Both those queens were buried by the same gravedigger,—that famous sexton, old Scarlett, whose portrait is in the cathedral, and who died July 2, 1591, aged ninety-eight.
PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL
PETERBOROUGH CATHEDRAL
The country is so level that the receding tower of Peterborough remains for a long time in sight, but soon,—as the train speeds through pastures of clover and through fields of green and red and yellow herbage, divided by glimmering hedges and diversified with red-roofed villages and gray church towers,—the land grows hilly, and long white roads are visible, stretching away like bands of silver over the lonely hill-tops. Figures of gleaners are seen, now and then, scattered through fields whence the harvest has lately been gathered. Sheep are feeding in the pastures, and cattle are couched under fringes of wood. The bright emerald of the sod sparkles with the golden yellow of the colt's-foot, and sometimes the scarlet waves of the poppy come tumbling into the plain, like a cataract of fire. Windmills spread their whirling sails upon the summits round about, and over the nestling ivy-clad cottages and over the stately trees there are great flights of rooks. A gray sky broods above, faintly suffused with sunshine,but there is no glare and no heat, and often the wind is laden with a fragrance of wildflowers and of hay.
It is noon at Grantham, where there is just time enough to see that this is a flourishing city of red-brick houses and fine spacious streets, with a lofty, spired church, and far away eastward a high line of hills. Historic Newark is presently reached and passed,—a busy, contented town, smiling through the sunshine and mist, and as it fades in the distance I remember that we are leaving Lincoln, with its glorious cathedral, to the southeast, and to the west Newstead Abbey, Annesley, Southwell, and Hucknall-Torkard,—places memorably associated with the poet Byron and dear to the heart of every lover of poetic literature. At Markham the country is exceedingly pretty, with woods and hills over which multitudes of rooks and starlings are in full career, dark, rapid, and garrulous. About Bawtry the land is flat, and flat it continues to be until we have sped a considerable way beyond York. But in the meantime we flash through opulent Doncaster, famed for manufactories and for horse-races, rosy and active amid the bright green fields. There are not many trees in this region, and as we draw near Selby,—a large red-brick city, upon the banks of a broad river,—its massive old church tower looms conspicuous under smoky skies. In the outskirts of this town there are cosy houses clad with ivy, in which the pilgrim might well be pleased to linger. But there is no pause, and in a little while magnificent York bursts upon the view, stately and glorious, under a black sky that is full of driving clouds. The minster stands out like a mountain, and the giant towers rear themselves in solemnmajesty,—the grandest piece of church architecture in England! The brimming Ouse shines as if it were a stream of liquid ebony. The meadows around the city glow like living emeralds, while the harvest-fields are stored and teeming with stacks of golden grain. Great flights of startled doves people the air,—as white as snow under the sable fleeces of the driving storm. I had seen York under different guises, but never before under a sky at once so sombre and so romantic.
We bear toward Thirsk now, leaving behind us, westward of our track, old Ripon, in the distance, memorable for many associations,—especially the contiguity of that loveliest of ecclesiastical ruins, Fountains Abbey,—and cherished in theatrical annals as the place of the death and burial of the distinguished founder of the Jefferson family of actors.[48]Bleak Haworth is not far distant, and remembrance of it prompts many sympathetic thoughts of the strange genius of Charlotte Brontë. Darlington is the next important place, a town of manufacture, conspicuous for its tall, smoking chimneys and evidently prosperous. This is the land of stone walls and stone cottages,—the grim precinct of Durham. The country is cultivated, but rougher than the Midlands, and the essentially diversified character of this small island is once again impressed upon your mind. All through this region there are little white-walled houses with red roofs. At Ferry Hill the scenery changes again and becomes American,—a mass of rocky gorges anddensely wooded ravines. All trace of storm has vanished by this time, and when, after a brief interval of eager expectation, the noble towers of Durham cathedral sweep into the prospect, that superb monument of ancient devotion, together with all the dark gray shapes of that pictorial city,—so magnificently placed, in an abrupt precipitous gorge, on both sides of the brimming Weir,—are seen under a sky of the softest Italian blue, dappled with white clouds of drifting fleece. Durham is all too quickly passed,—fading away in a landscape sweetly mellowed by a faint blue mist. Then stately rural mansions appear, half hidden among great trees. Wreaths of smoke curl upward from scattered dwellings all around the circle of the hills. Each distant summit is seen to be crowned with a tower or a town. A fine castle springs into view just before Birtley glances by, and we see that this is a place of woodlands, piquant with a little of the roughness of unsophisticated nature. But the scene changes suddenly, as in a theatre, and almost in a moment the broad and teeming Tyne blazes beneath the scorching summer sun, and the gray houses of Gateshead and Newcastle fill the picture with life and motion. The waves glance and sparkle,—a wide plain of shimmering silver. The stream is alive with shipping. There is movement everywhere, and smoke and industry and traffic,—and doubtless noise, though we are on a height and cannot hear it. A busier scene could not be found in all this land, nor one more strikingly representative of the industrial character and interests of England.
Berwick Castle.
Berwick Castle.
After leaving Newcastle we glide past a gentle, winding ravine, thickly wooded on both its sides, with a brightstream glancing in its depth. The meadows all around are green, fresh, and smiling, and soon our road skirts beautiful Morpeth, bestriding a dark and lovely river and crouched in a bosky dell. At Widdrington the land shelves downward, the trees become sparse, and you catch a faint glimpse of the sea,—the broad blue wilderness of the Northern Ocean. From this point onward the panorama is one of perfect and unbroken loveliness. Around you are spacious meadows of fern, diversified with clumps of fir-trees, and the sweet wind that blows upon your face seems glad and buoyant with its exultant vitality. At Warkworth Castle, once the home of the noble Hotspur, the ocean view is especially magnificent,—the brown and red sails of the ships and various craft descried at sea contributing to the prospect a lovely element of picturesque character. Alnwick, with its storied associations of "the Percy out of Northumberland,"is left to the westward, while on the east the romantic village of Alnmouth woos the traveller with an irresistible charm. No one who has once seen that exquisite place can ever be content without seeing it again,—and yet there is no greater wisdom in the conduct of life than to avoid forever a second sight of any spot where you have once been happy. This village, with its little lighthouse and graceful steeple, is built upon a promontory in the sea, and is approached over the sands by a long, isolated road across a bridge of four fine arches. All the country-side in this region is rich. At Long Houghton a grand church uprears its vast square tower, lonely and solemn in its place of graves. Royal Berwick comes next, stately and serene upon its ocean crag, with the white-crested waves curling on its beach and the glad waters of the Tweed kissing the fringes of its sovereign mantle, as they rush into the sea. The sun is sinking now, and over the many-coloured meadows, red and brown and golden and green, the long, thin shadows of the trees slope eastward and softly hint the death of day. The sweet breeze of evening stirs the long grasses, and on many a gray stone house shakes the late pink and yellow roses and makes the ivy tremble. It is Scotland now, and as we pass through the storied Border we keep the ocean almost constantly in view,—losing it for a little while at Dunbar, but finding it again at Drem,—till, past the battlefield of Prestonpans, and past the quaint villages of Cockenzie and Musselburgh and the villas of Portobello, we come slowly to a pause in the shadow of Arthur's Seat, where the great lion crouches over the glorious city of Edinburgh.