The Anchor Inn.
The present writer, when first he saw the distant and dim coast of Britain, felt, with a sense of forlorn loneliness that he was a stranger; but when last he saw that coast he beheld it through a mist of tears and knew that he had parted from many cherished friends, from many of the gentlest men and women upon the earth, and from a land henceforth as dear to him as his own. England is a country which to see is to love. As you draw near to her shores you are pleased at once with the air of careless finish and negligent grace that everywhere overhangs the prospect. The grim, wind-beaten hills of Ireland have first been passed—hills crowned, here and there, with dark, fierce towers that look like strongholds of ancient bandit chiefs, and cleft by dim valleys that seem to promise endless mystery and romance, hid in their sombre depths. Passed also is white Queenstown, with its lovely little bay, its circle of green hillsides, and its valiant fort; and picturesque Fastnet, with its gaily painted tower, has long been left behind. It is off the noble crags of Holyhead that the voyager first observes with what a deft skill the hand of art has here moulded nature's luxuriance into forms of seeming chance-born beauty; and from that hour, wherever in rural England the footsteps of the pilgrim may roam, he will behold nothing but gentle rustic adornment, that has grown with the grass and the roses—greener grass and redder roses than ever we see in our western world! In the English nature a love of the beautiful is spontaneous, and the operation of it is as fluent as the blowing of the summer wind. Portions of English cities, indeed, are hard and harsh and coarse enough to suit the most utilitarian taste; yet even in those regions of dreary monotony the national love of flowers will find expression, and the people, without being aware of it, will, in many odd little ways, beautify their homes and make their surroundings pictorial, at least to stranger eyes. There is a tone of rest and homelike comfort even in murky Liverpool; and great magnificence is there—as well of architecture and opulent living as of enterprise and action. "Towered cities" and "the busy hum of men," however, are soon left behind by the wise traveller in England. A time will come for those; but in his first sojourn there he soon discovers the two things that are utterly to absorb him—which cannot disappoint—and which are the fulfilment of all his dreams. These things are—the rustic loveliness of the land and the charm of its always vital and splendid antiquity. The green lanes, the thatched cottages, the meadows glorious with wildflowers, the little churches covered with dark-green ivy, the Tudor gables festooned with roses, the devious footpaths that wind across wild heaths and long and lonesome fields, the narrow, shining rivers, brimful to their banks and crossed here and there with gray, moss-grown bridges, the stately elms whose low-hanging branches droop over a turf of emerald velvet, the gnarled beech-trees "that wreathe their old, fantastic roots so high," the rooks that caw and circle in the air, the sweet winds that blow from fragrant woods, the sheep and the deer that rest in shady places, the pretty children who cluster round the porches of their cleanly, cosy homes, and peep at the wayfarer as he passes, the numerous and often brilliant birds that at times fill the air with music, the brief, light, pleasant rains that ever and anon refresh the landscape—these are some of the everyday joys of rural England; and these are wrapped in a climate that makes life one serene ecstasy. Meantime, in rich valleys or on verdant slopes, a thousand old castles and monasteries, ruined or half in ruins, allure the pilgrim's gaze, inspire his imagination, arouse his memory, and fill his mind. The best romance of the past and the best reality of the present are his banquet now; and nothing is wanting to the perfection of the feast. I thought that life could have but few moments of content in store for me like the moment—never to be forgotten!—when, in the heart of London, on a perfect June day, I lay upon the grass in the old Green Park, and, for the first time, looked up to the towers of Westminster Abbey.
Old House at Bridport.
Flower Border
It is not strange that Englishmen should be—as certainly they are—passionate lovers of their country; for their country is, almost beyond parallel, peaceful, gentle, and beautiful. Even in vast London, where practical life asserts itself with such prodigious force, the stranger is impressed, in every direction, with a sentiment of repose and peace. This sentiment seems to proceed in part from the antiquity of the social system here established, and in part from the affectionate nature of the English people. Here are finished towns, rural regions thoroughly cultivated and exquisitely adorned; ancient architecture, crumbling in slow decay; and a soil so rich and pure that even in its idlest mood it lights itself up with flowers, just as the face of a sleeping child lights itself up with smiles. Here, also, are soft and kindly manners, settled principles, good laws, wise customs—wise, because rooted in the universal attributes of human nature; and, above all, here is the practice of trying to live in a happy condition instead of trying to make a noise about it. Here, accordingly, life is soothed and hallowed with the comfortable, genial, loving spirit of home. It would, doubtless, be easily possible to come into contact here with absurd forms and pernicious abuses, to observe absurd individuals, and to discover veins of sordid selfishness and of evil and sorrow. But the things that first and most deeply impress the observer of England and English society are their potential, manifold, and abundant sources of beauty, refinement, and peace. There are, of course, grumblers. Mention has been made of a person who, even in heaven, would complain that his cloud was damp and his halo a misfit. We cannot have perfection; but the man who could not be happy in England—in so far, at least, as happiness depends upon external objects and influences—could not reasonably expect to be happy anywhere.
Summer heat is perceptible for an hour or two each day, but it causes no discomfort. Fog has refrained; though it is understood to be lurking in the Irish sea and the English channel, and waiting for November, when it will drift into town and grime all the new paint on the London houses. Meantime, the sky is softly blue and full of magnificent bronze clouds; the air is cool, and in the environs of the city is fragrant with the scent of new-mown hay; and the grass and trees in the parks—those copious and splendid lungs of London—are green, dewy, sweet, and beautiful. Persons "to the manner born" were lately calling the season "backward," and they went so far as to grumble at the hawthorne, as being less brilliant than in former seasons. But, in fact, to the unfamiliar sense, this tree of odorous coral has been delicious. We have nothing comparable with it in northern America, unless, perhaps, it be the elder, of our wild woods; and even that, with all its fragrance, lacks equal charm of colour. They use the hawthorne, or some kindred shrub, for hedges in this country, and hence their fields are seldom disfigured with fences. As you ride through the land you see miles and miles of meadow traversed by these green and blooming hedgerows, which give the country a charm quite incommunicable in words. The green of the foliage—enriched by an uncommonly humid air and burnished by the sun—is in perfection, while the flowers bloom in such abundance that the whole realm is one glowing pageant. I saw near Oxford, on the crest of a hill, a single ray of at least a thousand feet of scarlet poppies. Imagine that glorious dash of colour in a green landscape lit by the afternoon sun! Nobody could help loving a land that woos him with such beauty.
Restoration House, Rochester.
English flowers are exceptional for substance and pomp. The roses, in particular—though some of them, it should be said, are of French breeds—surpass all others. It may seem an extravagance to say, but it is certainly true, that these rich, firm, brilliant flowers affect you like creatures of flesh and blood. They are, in this respect, only to be described as like nothing in the world so much as the bright lips and blushing cheeks of the handsome English women who walk among them and vie with them in health and loveliness. It is easy to perceive the source of those elements of warmth and sumptuousness that are so conspicuous in the results of English taste. It is a land of flowers. Even in the busiest parts of London the people decorate their houses with them, and set the sombre, fog-grimed fronts ablaze with scarlet and gold. These are the prevalent colours—radically so, for they have become national—and, when placed against the black tint with which this climate stains the buildings, they have the advantage of a vivid contrast that much augments their splendour. All London wears crape, variegated with a tracery of white, like lace upon a pall. In some instances the effect is splendidly pompous. There cannot be a grander artificial object in the world than the front of St. Paul's cathedral, which is especially notable for this mysterious blending of light and shade. It is to be deplored that a climate which can thus beautify should also destroy; but there can be no doubt that the stones of England are steadily defaced by the action of the damp atmosphere. Already the delicate carvings on the palace of Westminster are beginning to crumble. And yet, if one might judge the climate by this glittering July, England is a land of sunshine as well as of flowers. Light comes before three o'clock in the morning, and it lasts, through a dreamy and lovely gloaming, till nearly ten o'clock at night. The morning sky is usually light blue, dappled with slate-coloured clouds. A few large stars are visible then, lingering to outface the dawn. Cool winds whisper, and presently they rouse the great, sleepy, old elms; and then the rooks—which are the low comedians of the air in this region—begin to grumble; and then the sun leaps above the horizon, and we sweep into a day of golden, breezy cheerfulness and comfort, the like of which is rarely or never known in northern America, between June and October. Sometimes the whole twenty-four hours have drifted past, as if in a dream of light, and fragrance, and music. In a recent moonlight time there was scarce any darkness at all; and more than once I have lain awake all night, within a few miles of Charing Cross, listening to a twitter of birds that is like the lapse and fall of silver water. It used to be difficult to understand why the London season should begin in May and last through most of the summer; it is not difficult to understand the custom now.
The elements of discontent and disturbance which are visible in English society are found, upon close examination, to be merely superficial. Underneath them there abides a sturdy, immutable, inborn love of England. Those croakings, grumblings, and bickerings do but denote the process by which the body politic frees itself from the headaches and fevers that embarrass the national health. The Englishman and his country are one; and when the Englishman complains against his country it is not because he believes that either there is or can be a better country elsewhere, but because his instinct of justice and order makes him crave perfection in his own. Institutions and principles are, with him, by nature, paramount to individuals; and individuals only possess importance—and that conditional on abiding rectitude—who are their representatives. Everything is done in England to promote the permanence and beauty of the home; and the permanence and beauty of the home, by a natural reaction, augment in the English people solidity of character and peace of life. They do not dwell in a perpetual fret and fume as to the acts, thoughts, and words of other nations: for the English there is absolutely no public opinion outside of their own land: they do not live for the sake of working, but they work for the sake of living; and, as the necessary preparations for living have long since been completed, their country is at rest. This is the secret of England's first, and continuous, and last, and all-pervading charm and power for the stranger—the charm and power to soothe.
Charing Cross.
The efficacy of endeavouring to make a country a united, comfortable, and beautiful home for all its inhabitants,—binding every heart to the land by the same tie that binds every heart to the fireside,—is something well worthy to be considered, equally by the practical statesman and the contemplative observer. That way, assuredly, lie the welfare of the human race and all the tranquillity that human nature—warped as it is by evil—will ever permit to this world. This endeavour has, through long ages, been steadily pursued in England, and one of its results—which is also one of its indications—is the vast accumulation of what may be called home treasures in the city of London. The mere enumeration of them would fill large volumes. The description of them could not be completed in a lifetime. It was this copiousness of historic wealth and poetic association, combined with the flavour of character and the sentiment of monastic repose, that bound Dr. Johnson to Fleet Street and made Charles Lamb such an inveterate lover of the town. Except it be to correct a possible insular narrowness there can be no need that the Londoner should travel. Glorious sights, indeed, await him, if he journeys no further away than Paris; but, aside from ostentation, luxury, gaiety, and excitement, Paris will give him nothing that he may not find at home.
Kensington Palace.
The great cathedral of Notre Dame will awe him; but not more than his own Westminster Abbey. The grandeur and beauty of the Madeleine will enchant him; but not more than the massive solemnity and stupendous magnificence of St. Paul's. The embankments of the Seine will satisfy his taste with their symmetrical solidity; but he will not deem them superior in any respect to the embankments of the Thames. The Pantheon, the Hotel des Invalides, the Luxembourg, the Louvre, the Tribunal of Commerce, the Opera-House,—all these will dazzle and delight his eyes, arousing his remembrances of history and firing his imagination of great events and persons; but all these will fail to displace in his esteem the grand Palace of Westminster, so stately in its simplicity, so strong in its perfect grace! He will ride through the exquisite Park of Monceau,—one of the loveliest spots in Paris,—and onward to the Bois de Boulogne, with its sumptuous pomp of foliage, its romantic green vistas, its many winding avenues, its hillside hermitage, its cascades, and its affluent lakes whereon the white swans beat the water with their joyous wings; but still his soul will turn, with unshaken love and loyal preference to the sweetly sylvan solitude of the gardens of Kensington and Kew. He will marvel in the museums of the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and Cluny; and probably he will concede that of paintings, whether ancient or modern, the French display is larger and finer than the English; but he will vaunt the British Museum as peerless throughout the world, and he will still prize his National Gallery, with its originals of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Turner, its spirited, tender, and dreamy Murillos, and its dusky glories of Rembrandt. He will admire, at the Théâtre Français, the photographic perfection of French acting; but he will be apt to reflect that English dramatic art, if it sometimes lacks finish, often has the effect of nature; and he will certainly perceive that the playhouse itself is not superior to either Her Majesty's Theatre or Covent Garden. He will luxuriate in the Champs Élysées, in the superb Boulevards, in the glittering pageant of precious jewels that blazes in the Rue de la Paix and the Palais Royal, and in that gorgeous panorama of shop-windows for which the French capital is unrivalled and famous; and he will not deny that, as to brilliancy of aspect, Paris is prodigious and unequalled—the most radiant of cities—the sapphire in the crown of Solomon. But, when all is seen, either that Louis the Fourteenth created or Buonaparte pillaged,—when he has taken his last walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, and mused, at the foot of the statue of Caesar, on that Titanic strife of monarchy and democracy of which France has seemed destined to be the perpetual theatre,—sated with the glitter of showy opulence and tired with the whirl of frivolous life he will gladly and gratefully turn again to his sombre, mysterious, thoughtful, restful old London; and, like the Syrian captain, though in the better spirit of truth and right, declare that Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, are better than all the waters of Israel.
Ribbon Border
There is so much to be seen in London that the pilgrim scarcely knows where to choose and certainly is perplexed by what Dr. Johnson called "the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness." One spot to which I have many times been drawn, and which the mention of Dr. Johnson instantly calls to mind, is the stately and solemn place in Westminster Abbey where that great man's ashes are buried. Side by side, under the pavement of the Abbey, within a few feet of earth, sleep Johnson, Garrick, Sheridan, Henderson, Dickens, Cumberland, and Handel. Garrick's wife is buried in the same grave with her husband. Close by, some brass letters on a little slab in the stone floor mark the last resting-place of Thomas Campbell. Not far off is the body of Macaulay; while many a stroller through the nave treads upon the gravestone of that astonishing old man Thomas Parr, who lived in the reigns of nine princes (1483-1635), and reached the great age of 152. All parts of Westminster Abbey impress the reverential mind. It is an experience very strange and full of awe suddenly to find your steps upon the sepulchres of such illustrious men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and Grattan; and you come, with a thrill of more than surprise, upon such still fresh antiquity as the grave of Anne Neville, the daughter of Warwick and queen of Richard the Third. But no single spot in the great cathedral can so enthral the imagination as that strip of storied stone beneath which Garrick, Johnson, Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, Dickens, Macaulay, and Handel sleep, side by side. This writer, when lately he visited the Abbey, found a chair upon the grave of Johnson, and sat down there to rest and muse. The letters on the stone are fast wearing away; but the memory of that sturdy champion of thought can never perish, as long as the votaries of literature love their art and honour the valiant genius that battled—through hunger, toil, and contumely—for its dignity and renown. It was a tender and right feeling that prompted the burial of Johnson close beside Garrick. They set out together to seek their fortune in the great city. They went through privation and trial hand in hand. Each found glory in a different way; and, although parted afterward by the currents of fame and wealth, they were never sundered in affection. It was fit they should at last find their rest together, under the most glorious roof that greets the skies of England. Fortune gave me a good first day at the Tower of London. The sky lowered. The air was very cold. The wind blew with angry gusts. The rain fell, now and then, in a chill drizzle. The river was dark and sullen. If the spirits of the dead come back to haunt any place they surely come back to haunt that one; and this was a day for their presence. One dark ghost seemed near, at every step—the ominous shade of the lonely Duke of Gloster. The little room in which the princes are said to have been murdered, by his command, was shown, and the oratory where king Henry the Sixth is supposed to have met a violent death, and the council chamber, in which Richard—after listening, in an ambush behind the arras—denounced the wretched Hastings. The latter place is now used as an armoury; but the same ceiling covers it that echoed the bitter invective of Gloster and the rude clamour of his soldiers, when their frightened victim was plucked forth and dragged downstairs, to be beheaded on "a timber-log" in the courtyard. The Tower is a place for such deeds, and you almost wonder that they do not happen still, in its gloomy chambers. The room in which the princes were killed (if killed indeed they were) is particularly grisly in aspect. It is an inner room, small and dark. A barred window in one of its walls fronts a window on the other side of the passage by which you approach it. This is but a few feet from the floor, and perhaps the murderers paused to look through it as they went to their hellish work upon the children of king Edward. The entrance was indicated to a secret passage by which this apartment could be approached from the foot of the Tower. In one gloomy stone chamber the crown jewels are exhibited, in a large glass case. One of the royal relics is a crown of velvet and gold that was made for poor Anne Boleyn. You may pass across the courtyard and pause on the spot where that miserable woman was beheaded, and you may walk thence over the ground that her last trembling footsteps traversed, to the round tower in which, at the close, she lived. Her grave is in the chancel of the little antique church, close by. I saw the cell of Raleigh, and that direful chamber which is scrawled all over with the names and emblems of prisoners who therein suffered confinement and lingering agony, nearly always ending in death; but I saw no sadder place than Anne Boleyn's tower. It seemed in the strangest way eloquent of mute suffering. It seemed to exhale grief and to plead for love and pity. Yet—what woman ever had greater love than was lavished on her? And what woman ever trampled more royally and recklessly upon human hearts?
The Tower of London.
The Tower of London is degraded by being put to commonplace uses and by being exhibited in a commonplace manner. They use the famous White Tower now as a store-house for arms, and it contains about one hundred thousand guns, besides a vast collection of old armour and weapons. The arrangement of the latter was made by J. R. Planché, the dramatic author,—famous as an antiquarian and a herald. [That learned, able, brilliant, and honoured gentleman died, May 29, 1880, aged 84.] Under his tasteful direction the effigies and gear of chivalry are displayed in such a way that the observer may trace the changes that war fashions have undergone, through the reigns of successive sovereigns of England, from the earliest period until now. A suit of mail worn by Henry the Eighth is shown, and also a suit worn by Charles the First. The suggestiveness of both figures is remarkable. In a room on the second floor of the White Tower they keep many gorgeous oriental weapons, and they show the cloak in which General Wolfe died, on the Plains of Abraham. It is a gray garment, to which the active moth has given a share of his assiduous attention. The most impressive objects to be seen there, however, are the block and axe that were used in beheading the Scotch lords, Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, after the defeat of the pretender, in 1746. The block is of ash, and there are big and cruel dents upon it, showing that it was made for use rather than ornament. It is harmless enough now, and this writer was allowed to place his head upon it, in the manner prescribed for the victims of decapitation. The door of Raleigh's bedroom is opposite to these baleful relics, and it is said that hisHistory of the Worldwas written in the room in which these implements are now such conspicuous objects of gloom.† The place is gloomy and cheerless beyond expression, and great must have been the fortitude of the man who bore, in that grim solitude, a captivity of thirteen years—not failing to improve it by producing a book so excellent for quaintness, philosophy, and eloquence. A "beef-eater," arrayed in a dark tunic, trousers trimmed with red, and a black velvet hat adorned with bows of blue and red ribbon, precedes each group of visitors, and drops information and the letter h, from point to point. The centre of what was once the Tower green is marked with a brass plate, naming Anne Boleyn and giving the date when she was there beheaded. They found her body in an elm-wood box, made to hold arrows, and it now rests, with the ashes of other noble sufferers, under the stones of the church of St. Peter, about fifty feet from the place of execution. The ghost of Anne Boleyn is said to haunt that part of the Tower where she lived, and it is likewise whispered that the spectre of Lady Jane Grey was seen, not long ago, on the anniversary of the day of her execution [Obiit February 12, 1554], to glide out upon a balcony adjacent to the room in which she lodged during nearly eight months, at the last of her wasted, unfortunate, but gentle and noble life. [That room was in the house of Thomas Brydges, brother and deputy of Sir John Brydges, Lieutenant of the Tower, and its windows command an unobstructed view of the Tower green, which was the place of the block.] It could serve no good purpose to relate the particulars of those visitations; but nobody doubts them—while he is in the Tower. It is a place of mystery and horror, notwithstanding all that the practical spirit of to-day has done to make it trivial and to cheapen its grim glories by association with the commonplace.
† Many of these relics have since been disposed in a different way.—Raleigh was incarcerated in various parts of the Tower, in the course of his several imprisonments.
Old Water Gate.
Bird Border
All old cities get rich in association, as a matter of course and whether they will or no; but London, by reason of its great extent, as well as its great antiquity, is richer in association than any modern place on earth. The stranger scarcely takes a step without encountering a new object of interest. The walk along the Strand and Fleet Street, in particular, is continually on storied ground. Old Temple Bar still stands (July 1877), though "tottering to its fall," and marks the junction of the two streets. The statues of Charles the First and Charles the Second on its western front would be remarkable anywhere, as characteristic portraits. You stand beside that arch and quite forget the passing throng, and take no heed of the tumult around, as you think of Johnson and Boswell leaning against the Bar after midnight in the far-off times and waking the echoes of the Temple Garden with their frolicsome laughter. The Bar is carefully propped now, and they will nurse its age as long as they can; but it is an obstruction to travel—and it must disappear. (It was removed in the summer of 1878.) They will probably set it up, newly built, in another place. They have left untouched a little piece of the original scaffolding built around St. Paul's; and that fragment of decaying wood may still be seen, high upon the side of the cathedral. The Rainbow, the Mitre, the Cheshire Cheese, Dolly's Chop-House, the Cock, and the Round Table—taverns or public-houses that were frequented by the old wits—are still extant (1877). The Cheshire Cheese is scarcely changed from what it was when Johnson, Goldsmith, and their comrades ate beefsteak pie and drank porter there, and the Doctor "tossed and gored several persons," as it was his cheerful custom to do. The benches in that room are narrow, incommodious, penitential; mere ledges of well-worn wood, on which the visitor sits bolt upright, in difficult perpendicular; but there is, probably, nothing on earth that would induce the owner to alter them—and he is right.
Approach to Cheshire Cheese.
The conservative principle in the English mind, if it has saved some trash, has saved more treasure. At the foot of Buckingham Street, in the Strand,—where was situated an estate of George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, assassinated in 1628, whose tomb may be seen in the chapel of Henry the Seventh in Westminster Abbey,—still stands the slowly crumbling ruin of the old Water Gate, so often mentioned as the place where accused traitors were embarked for the Tower. The river, in former times, flowed up to that gate, but the land along the margin of the Thames has been redeemed, and the magnificent Victoria and Albert embankments now border the river for a long distance on both sides. The Water Gate, in fact, stands in a little park on the north bank of the Thames. Not far away is the Adelphi Terrace, where Garrick lived and died (Obiit January 20, 1779, aged 63), and where, on October 1, 1822, his widow expired, aged 98. The house of Garrick is let in "chambers" now. If you walk up the Strand towards Charing Cross you presently come near to the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which is one of the works of James Gibbs, a pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and entirely worthy of the master's hand. The fogs have stained that building with such a deft touch as shows the caprice of nature to be often better than the best design of art. Nell Gwyn's name is connected with St. Martin. Her funeral occurred in that church, and was pompous, and no less a person than Tenison (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury) preached the funeral sermon.†
† This was made the occasion of a complaint against him, to Queen Mary, who gently expressed her unshaken confidence in his goodness and truth.
Temple Church.
That prelate's dust reposes in Lambeth church, which can be seen, across the river, from this part of Westminster. If you walk down the Strand, through Temple Bar, you presently reach the Temple; and there is no place in London where the past and the present are so strangely confronted as they are here. The venerable church, so quaint with its cone-pointed turrets, was sleeping in the sunshine when first I saw it; sparrows were twittering around its spires and gliding in and out of the crevices in its ancient walls; while from within a strain of organ music, low and sweet, trembled forth, till the air became a benediction and every common thought and feeling was purified away from mind and heart. The grave of Goldsmith is close to the pathway that skirts this church, on a terrace raised above the foundation of the building and above the little graveyard of the Templars that nestles at its base. As I stood beside the resting-place of that sweet poet it was impossible not to feel both grieved and glad: grieved at the thought of all he suffered, and of all that the poetic nature must always suffer before it will utter its immortal music for mankind: glad that his gentle spirit found rest at last, and that time has given him the crown he would most have prized—the affection of true hearts. A gray stone, coffin-shaped and marked with a cross,—after the fashion of the contiguous tombs of the Templars,—is imposed upon his grave.
St. Mary-le-Strand--The Strand.
One surface bears the inscription, "Here lies Oliver Goldsmith"; the other presents the dates of his birth and death. (Born Nov. 10, 1728; died April 4, 1774.) I tried to call up the scene of his burial, when, around the open grave, on that tearful April evening, Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Beauclerk, Boswell, Davies, Kelly, Palmer, and the rest of that broken circle, may have gathered to witness
"The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid,And the last rites that dust to dust conveyed."
No place could be less romantic than Southwark is now; but there are few places in England that possess a greater charm for the literary pilgrim. Shakespeare lived there, and it was there that he wrote for a theatre and made a fortune. Old London Bridge spanned the Thames at this point, in those days, and was the only road to the Surrey side of the river. The theatre stood near the end of the bridge and was thus easy of access to the wits and beaux of London. No trace of it now remains; but a public-house called the Globe, which was its name, is standing near, and the old church of St. Saviour—into which Shakespeare must often have entered—still braves the storm and still resists the encroachments of time and change. In Shakespeare's day there were houses on each side of London Bridge; and as he walked on the bank of the Thames he could look across to the Tower, and to Baynard Castle, which had been the residence of Richard, Duke of Gloster, and could see, uplifted high in air, the spire of old St. Paul's. The borough of Southwark was then but thinly peopled. Many of its houses, as may be seen in an old picture of the city, were surrounded by fields or gardens; and life to its inhabitants must have been comparatively rural. Now it is packed with buildings, gridironed with railways, crowded with people, and to the last degree resonant and feverish with action and effort. Life swarms, traffic bustles, and travel thunders all round the cradle of the British drama. The old church of St. Saviour alone preserves the sacred memory of the past. I made a pilgrimage to that shrine, with Arthur Sketchley (George Rose), one of the kindliest humourists in England. (Obiit November 13, 1882.) We embarked at Westminster Bridge and landed close by the church in Southwark, and we were so fortunate as to get permission to enter it without a guide. The oldest part of it is the Lady chapel—which, in English cathedrals, is almost invariably placed behind the choir. Through this we strolled, alone and in silence. Every footstep there falls upon a grave. The pavement is one mass of gravestones; and through the tall, stained windows of the chapel a solemn light pours in upon the sculptured names of men and women who have long been dust. In one corner is an ancient stone coffin—a relic of the Roman days of Britain. This is the place in which Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, in the days of cruel Queen Mary, held his ecclesiastical court and doomed many a dissentient devotee to the rack and the fagot. Here was condemned John Rogers,—afterwards burnt at the stake, in Smithfield. Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth may often have entered this chapel. But it is in the choir that the pilgrim pauses with most of reverence; for there, not far from the altar, he stands at the graves of Edmund Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger.
Gower's Monument.
They apparently rest almost side by side, and only their names and the dates of their death are cut in the tablets that mark their sepulchres. Edmund Shakespeare, the younger brother of William, was an actor in his company, and died in 1607, aged twenty-seven. The great poet must have stood at that grave, and suffered and wept there; and somehow the lover of Shakespeare comes very near to the heart of the master when he stands in that place. Massinger was buried there, March 18, 1638,—the parish register recording him as "a stranger." Fletcher—of the Beaumont and Fletcher alliance—was buried there, in 1625: Beaumont's grave is in the Abbey. The dust of Henslowe the manager also rests beneath the pavement of St. Saviour's. Bishop Gardiner was buried there, with pompous ceremonial, in 1555,—but subsequently his remains were removed to the cathedral at Winchester. The great prelate Lancelot Andrews, commemorated by Milton, found his grave there, in 1626. The royal poet King James the First, of Scotland, was married there, in 1423, to Jane, daughter of the Earl of Somerset and niece of Cardinal Beaufort. In the south transept of the church is the tomb of John Gower, the old poet—whose effigy, carved and painted, reclines upon it and is not attractive. A formal, severe aspect he must have had, if he resembled that image. The tomb has been moved from the spot where it first stood—a proceeding made necessary by a fire that destroyed part of the old church. It is said that Gower caused the tomb to be erected during his lifetime, so that it might be in readiness to receive his bones. The bones are lost, but the memorial remains—sacred to the memory of the father of English song. This tomb was restored by the Duke of Sutherland, in 1832.
Andrews Monument.
It is enclosed by a little grill made of iron spears, painted brown and gilded at their points. I went into the new part of the church, and, alone, knelt in one of the pews and long remained there, overcome with thoughts of the past and of the transient, momentary nature of this our earthly life and the shadows that we pursue.
One object of merriment attracts a passing glance in that old church. There is a tomb in a corner of it that commemorates Dr. Lockyer, a maker of patent physic, in the time of Charles the Second. This elaborate structure presents an effigy of the doctor, together with a sounding epitaph which declares that
"His virtues and his pills are so well knownThat envy can't confine them under stone."
Shakespeare once lived in Clink Street, in the borough of Southwark. Goldsmith practised medicine there. Chaucer came there, with his Canterbury Pilgrims, and lodged at the Tabard inn, which has disappeared. It must have been a romantic region in the old times. It is anything but romantic now.
Hanging Lantern
Old Tabard Inn, Southwark.
St. George and the Dragon Border
If the beauty of England were only superficial it would produce only a superficial effect. It would cause a passing pleasure and would be forgotten. It certainly would not—as now in fact it does—inspire a deep, joyous, serene and grateful contentment, and linger in the mind, a gracious and beneficent remembrance. The conquering and lasting potency of it resides not alone in loveliness of expression but in loveliness of character. Having first greatly blessed the British islands with the natural advantages of position, climate, soil, and products, nature has wrought their development and adornment as a necessary consequence of the spirit of their inhabitants. The picturesque variety and pastoral repose of the English landscape spring, in a considerable measure, from the imaginative taste and the affectionate gentleness of the English people. The state of the country, like its social constitution, flows from principles within, which are constantly suggested, and it steadily comforts and nourishes the mind with a sense of kindly feeling, moral rectitude, solidity, and permanence.
Windsor Castle.
Thus in the peculiar beauty of England the ideal is made the actual—is expressed in things more than in words, and in things by which words are transcended. Milton's "L'Allegro," fine as it is, is not so fine as the scenery—the crystallised, embodied poetry—out of which it arose. All the delicious rural verse that has been written in England is only the excess and superflux of her own poetic opulence: it has rippled from the hearts of her poets just as the fragrance floats away from her hawthorn hedges. At every step of his progress the pilgrim through English scenes is impressed with this sovereign excellence of the accomplished fact, as contrasted with any words that can be said in its celebration.
Among representative scenes that are eloquent with this instructive meaning,—scenes easily and pleasurably accessible to the traveller in what Dickens expressively called "the green, English summer weather,"—is the region of Windsor. The chief features of it have often been described; the charm that it exercises can only be suggested. To see Windsor, moreover, is to comprehend as at a glance the old feudal system, and to feel in a profound and special way the pomp of English character and history. More than this: it is to rise to the ennobling serenity that always accompanies broad, retrospective contemplation of the current of human affairs. In this quaint, decorous town—nestled at the base of that mighty and magnificent castle which has been the home of princes for more than five hundred years—the imaginative mind wanders over vast tracts of the past and beholds as in a mirror the pageants of chivalry, the coronations of kings, the strife of sects, the battles of armies, the schemes of statesmen, the decay of transient systems, the growth of a rational civilisation, and the everlasting march of thought. Every prospect of the region intensifies this sentiment of contemplative grandeur. As you look from the castle walls your gaze takes in miles and miles of blooming country, sprinkled over with little hamlets, wherein the utmost stateliness of learning and rank is gracefully commingled with all that is lovely and soothing in rural life. Not far away rise the "antique towers" of Eton—
"Where grateful science still adoresHer Henry's holy shade."
It was in Windsor Castle that her Henry was born; and there he often held his court; and it is in St. George's chapel that his ashes repose. In the dim distance stands the church of Stoke-Pogis, about which Gray used to wander,
"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade."
You recognise now a deeper significance than ever before in the "solemn stillness" of the incomparable Elegy. The luminous twilight mood of that immortal poem—its pensive reverie and solemn passion—is inherent in the scene; and you feel that it was there, and there only, that the genius of its exceptional author—austerely gentle and severely pure, and thus in perfect harmony with its surroundings—could have been moved to that sublime strain of inspiration and eloquence. Near at hand, in the midst of your reverie, the mellow organ sounds from the chapel of St. George, where, under "fretted vault" and over "long-drawn aisle," depend the ghostly, mouldering banners of ancient knights—as still as the bones of the dead-and-gone monarchs that crumble in the crypt below.