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LETTERS FROM EUROPE.

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I. Ruins of Kenilworth. — Warwick Castle 9

I. Ruins Of Kenilworth. — Warwick Castle

^T^LTE sun is sliining through haze of smoke and va por: and every body says, what a splendid day! a1 least, everybody whose ideas of a fine day are English It is a fine day in England when it does not actually jain. To-day, then, blessed with a sun that shines visibly, but with a tender brightness, I will go to Kenil worth ; and to Warwick castle ; and to Stratford-on-Avon, more interesting to me than either. "Waiter, will you bring my bill? I leave in the 10£ o'clock train to Coventry." "Yez-zur." Ah, very reasonable. I have been here a day and a-half, and it is but five dollars and a-quarter, servants' fees and all; which, by the way, I will always have included in the bill. I do not like to settle with four landlords at every inn ; — • the chambermaid landlady, the boots landlord, the waiter landlord, the porter landlord, and the landlord — five instead of four. To the railway station is but 1*

10 RIDE TO KENILWORTH.

a step ; the waiter bids me a very polite good-bye — we don't shake hands — and the porter with my baggage follows me to the cars. A trim little engine, with a smoke-pipe not larger than our stove-pipes, is amusing itself with every antic possible to a thing of its nature. It runs out with a fierce whistle, for no other reason, apparently, than to run back again with another whistle. It reminds one of a rheumatic old gentleman pacing about to limber his joints. After a little sport he sobers down to business and falls to work making up a train. I am booked for the second-class cars, which are about one-third cheaper than the first class, and a good deal more than that uncomfortable, as I will by and by explain. My shining patent-leather valise and my rival shining carpet-bag, (for one is American and the other is English, and so I call them my John and Jonathan,) are put into the compartment and piled up on the seat before me ; my overcoat, neatly folded, is put upon the uncushioned oak seat for me by the obliging porter. In spite of my determination to fee none of the railway servants, I did slip a sixpence into his hands, and he did shut his fingers upon it without apparent pain. - And now, the bustle over — for, true to American habits, I became quite eager, and stepped about much more lively than there was any need for — I will watch other people. I am struck with the ease manifested. These plump people will not sweat themselves. Nice old gentlemen walk as quietly along as if passing out to tea in their own houses. The railway servants in

RIDE TO KENILWOKTH. 11

uniform, with their number worked in white upon their coat-coiiars, are diligent, but very measured in their functions. One is stowing this man's luggage on the top of the car — for large baggage goes upon the top, and small stuff goes into the car with you ; another trundles a wheeled basket with packages, careful to knock no one down; another stops respectfully to answer a gentleman's questions. I hear no shouting, see no racing about, hear no oaths or contentions ; there is no higgling for fares, but every thing is very easy and orderly. Now steps out a man with the largest of 1 i;md-bells, with which he gives three or four strokes, saying as plainly as words could say it, " Get into the cars, all who mean to." In a moment more he strikes again, and chunk comes the engine into connection with the train. Without further signal you move away slowly out of the station-house and thread your way through a perfect maze of tracks.

"We are rushing through the open fields. The lots are small, seldom of more than one or two acres, divided by hedges, which, for the most part, are uncombed, ragged, and full of gaps ; yet, even thus, more agreeable to the eye than rigid fences. Trees, in groups of two or three, but more often in rows along the hedges, have that unvarying dark, almost black, green, which, thus far, has characterized the foliage which I have seen about Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham. The shades of green which we see in America, aud the liveliness and airiness of foliage seem wanting. But the eye is never weary with the landscape. As we drive through

12 RIDE TO KENILWORTH.

the cuts, the bank on either hand is carved evenly with a perfect slope to the top, and is there ruffled with a closecut hedge, while the sides are grassed down to the road, and the edges of the grass cut as regularly along the whole way as a border of turf in a gentleman's garden. When the road rises above the surrounding country, the sides of it are planted ; so that the eye is cheered with a beautiful arboretum, in which are elms, maples, mountain ash, poplars, and, .among others, a beautiful drooping tamarack or larch, as it appears to my eye. The stations are little gems of places. The way-stations, out of towns, are frequently decorated with flowers and miniature pleasure-grounds. If there be a bit of ground but ten feet square, it is a turf-plat, with a raised bed cut out of it, or cut into it, on which are displayed fine, thrifty tufts of flowers. They are not, either, dumped down just as it may happen; but are arranged with uniform good taste. Thus a fuchsia, two or three feet high, covered with brilliant crimson blossoms, has growing behind it a tuft of tall grass, upon whose vivid green the plant is admirably contrasted. Neat little spots of pansies, of different varieties, foxglove, marigolds, geraniums, roses, and, always, profusely, the fragrant minionette, fill up the bed.

I had read enough of English agriculture to know very well that there was much waste soil — fens, sandwastes, etc. But I had read and heard also that England was a garden. This expression, as more poetical, had clung to my imagination ; and I found myself a little disappointed when I came upon poor and neglected lands

RIDE TO KENIL WORTH. 13

and waste spots, most ungardenlike. But this is only one of a hundred things which teaches me how much better it is to see a thing, than to read about it or imagine it. The fields of grain were rapidly changing from green to a golden russet. The sickle, in a few days, will grow bright in its work. Fields of turnips, planted in long rows, straight as a rule could draw them, are being hoed and thinned out by men, women and children. They do not even look up as we shoot past them.

Eide to Kenilworth Castle.

Calling for a cab, I started from Coventry upon a fivemiles ride to Kenilworth. The road was smooth as a floor, rising and falling over gentle swells of ground, bordered the whole way with oaks and elms. The sky above was perfectly clear, but, all around the horizon, banks of cloud were piled up in huge cliffs, rounded masses, but at the edge fleecy and melting off to a mist. Beautiful, most beautiful are the fields, some close cut — for haying is over — some with grain, and a few just plowed. The hedges are full of flowers which I do not recognize. And now, I am riding to a famous old castle. I shall but look on it and pass on. Others would enjoy this more than I shall. It requires a store of historical associations ; and much of the sentiment of veneration; or else a lively relish for antiquarian lore ; none of which have I. My thoughts were broken by the driver— honest soul ! — asking to what inn he should go. Yankee like, I replied by asking

14 EUINS OF KENILWOETH CASTLE.

•

where it was best to go. " To King's Head, sir." " Very well, King's Head let it be." "We turn the corner. Here is a Lord's carriage, I suppose, just before us Well, he has as much right to go to Kenil worth as I. Paying the driver — not so honest a soul after all — two shillings more than he should have had, because he declined giving change, under a plea of begging for a gratuity — I sallied forth toward the ruins. As the road wound among trees, I was close upon them before I saw them. When they rose up before me I found myself trembling, I knew not why. I could not help tears from coming. I had never in my life seen an old building. I had never seen a ruin. Here, for the first time in my life, I felt the presence of a venerable ruined castle! At first I did not wish to go within the walls which enclosed the grounds, and so strolled a little way along the outside. I can not tell what a strange mingling of imagination, and thoughts, and emotions, took possession of me. At length I entered. With a little plan of the building I traced the rooms from point to point — the great banqueting Hall, the scene of wondrous festivities which shall never again disturb its silence, being the most perfectly preserved of any apartment. I was surprised to find how much I knew of Kenilworth Castle. Had one asked me as I rode hither, I should have replied that I knew only that it was old and famous, that it was by Scott wrought into one of his most successful novels. But as I sat in a room, upon a fallen stone, one incident after another from the novel, and

RUINS OF KENILWORTH CASTLE. 15

from history, came to me, one name after another, until I seemed to be visiting an old and familiar place. And now I am sitting in what was, in its days of glory, the Inner Court, and leaning against Leicester's, buildings. Before me is Cesar's Tower — the oldest, the most massive, and the best preserved of any part. It was old a thousand years ago. Masses of ivy cover its recessed angles and its corners. Through its arched windows, where the walls are more than ten feet thick, — yea, sixteen feet, as my book says, — I see trees and a tangled mass of growing vines, rooted upon the ruins that have fallen and enclosed by the walls of its former halls. Through the square windows above I see fleecy clouds sailing lazily in the air. In what was the " three Kitchens " are growing old butternut trees and haws. The banqueting hall, whose side presented four beautiful windows, has but two of them in a tolerable state of preservation ; and projecting fragments show in outline where the others were. I stood in the windows opposite these, where Elizabeth, and hundreds of fairer and better women than she, looked out upon the lake and orchard. But how different were my thoughts and theirs ; the scene which they admired and that which I beheld ! From beneath these crumbled ruins too, utterly forgotten now, except of God, shall arise many forms to stand with me in judgment. Those who reveled here, squire, knight, and lady, those who rebelled and plotted, they who built and those who destroyed, how do they seem to me now, as I bring them back in imagination ! — and how strangely contemptible seems, for the most part, that greatness which was then so great ! I have never felt such solemnity in the presence of physical creations. But these stones, these old gateways, these mounds, what power have they to send the soul back through ages of time, and stir it up from its very bottom ! I could not bear the approach of men. The children of a party, visiting like myself, came frolicking round the place where I sat ; but, for the first time, children and their sports pained me. I would, if I could, come and sit in this court at evening — after sunset, or by moonlight. Then should I not see flitting shadows and forms, and hear low airy voices ? As it was, a spirit almost spoke to me ; for, going into one of the tower halls of Leicester's building, I heard a clear ringing sound, and a tiny echo like a bird, in the deserted room. Sure enough it was a bird, sitting far up upon a window-sill, and trying his voice in the solitude. Fly away, little friend, this is no place for you ; the trees and hedges are yours, but not this old solitude! At last I awoke. Three hours had passed like a dream. I hastened back to my inn, with a strange sadness of spirit, which I did not shake off all day. Perhaps I have some veneration after all, if it were rightly come at.

Warwick Castle.

Taking a cab, I started for "Warwick. The same smooth road, the same trees, the same beautifully diversified fields, and the same blue sky over them, only the clouds are all islands now, floating about just above the

WAEWICK CASTLE. IT

horizon; but I have not the same light-hearted, singing spirit which I had in the morning ; there is a deep, yet a pleasant sadness, which I do not wish to shake off. I was glad that I had visited the place alone ; no one should go except alone. While at Kenilworth, had those I love most been with me, we would have separated, and each should have wandered alone up and down and around the solemn old place. The landscape is full of soft beauty, yet my thoughts are running back to the olden time. But here we come to "Warwick ! What bands of steel-clad knights have tramped these streets before us! Here is, doubtless, the old gate of the town renewed with modern stone. Ordering dinner at six o'clock, I start for the castle, without the remotest idea of what I shall see. Walk ing along a high park wall which forms one part of the town, or rather which stops the town from extending further in that direction — the top covered with ivy, that garment of English walls and buildings — I come to the gateway of the ajiproach. A porter opens its huge leaf. Cut through a solid rock, the road, some twenty feet wide, winds for a long way in the most solemn beauty. The sides, in solid rock, vary from five to twenty feet in height — at least so it seemed to my imagination — the only faculty that I allowed to conduct me. It was covered on both hands with ivy, growing down from above, and hanging in beautiful reaches. Solemn trees on the bank, on either side, met overhead, and cast a delicious twilight down upon my way, and made it yet softer by a murmuring of their leaves; while multitudes of little birds flew about and sang merrily.

Winding in graceful curves, it at last brings you to the first view of the Castle, -at a distance of some hundred rods before you. It opens on the sight with grandeur ! On either corner is a huge tower, apparently one hundred and fifty feet high; ir the center is a square tower, called properly a gateway; and a huge wall connects this central access with tlie two corner towers. I stood for a little, and let the vision pierce me through. Who can tell what he feels ha such a place ! How, especially, can I tell you — who have never seen, or felt, such a view any more than I had before this time! Primeval forests, the ocean, prairies, Niagara, I had seen and felt. But never had I seen any pile around which were historic associations, blended not only with heroic men and deeds, but savoring of my own childhood. And now, too, am I to see, and understand by inspection, the things which Scott has made so familiar to all as mere words — moats, portcullises, battlements, keeps or mounds, arrow-slit windows, watch-towers. They had a strange effect upon me ; they were perfectly new, and yet familiar old friends. I had never seen them, yet the moment I did behold, all was instantly plain ; I knew name and use, and seemed in a moment to have known them always. My mind was so highly excited as to be perfectly calm, and apparently it perceived by an intuition. I seemed to spread myself over all that was around or before me, while in the court and on the walls, or rather to draw every thing within me. I

WARWICK cas:le. 19

fear that I seem crazy to you. It was, however, the calmness of intense excitement.

I came up to the moat, now dry, and lined with beautiful shrubs and trees, crossed the bridge, and entered the outer gateway or arched door, through a solid square tower. The portcullis was drawn up, but I could see the projecting end. Another similar gateway, a few steps further on, showed the care with, which the defense was managed. This passed, a large court opened, surrounded on" every side with towers, walls, and vast ranges of buildings. Here I beheld the pictures which I had seen on paper, magnified into gigantic realities. Drawings of many-faced, irregular, Gothic mansions, measuring an inch or two, with which my childhood was familiar, here stood before me measuring hundreds and hundreds of feet. It was the first sight of a real baronial castle ! It was a historic dream breaking forth, into a waking reality.

It is of very little use to tell you how large the court is, by feet and rods ; or that Guy's Tower is 128 feet high, and Cesar's Tower 147. But it may touch your imagination, and wheel it suddenly backward with long flight and wide vision, to say that Cesar's Tower has stood for 800 years, being coeval with the Norman Conquest ! I stood upon its mute stones and imagined the ring of the hammer upon them when the mason was laying them to their bed of ages. What were the thoughts, the fancies, the conversations of these rude fellows, at that age of the world ! I was wafted backward, and backward, until I stood on the foundations upon which old England herself was builded, when as jet there was none of her. There, far back of all liter ature, before the English tongue itself was formed, earlier than her jurisprudence, and than all modern civilization, I stood, in imagination, and, reversing my vision, looked down into a far future to search for the men and deeds which had been, as if they were yet to be ; thus making a prophesy of history ; and changing memory into a dreamy foresight.

When these stones were placed, it was yet to be two hundred years before Gower and Chaucer should be born. Indeed, since this mortar was wetted and cemented these stones, the original people, the Normans, the Danes, the Saxons, have been mixed together into one people. When this stone, on which I lean, took its place, there was not then a printed book in England. Printing was invented hundreds of years after these foundations went down. When the rude workmen put their shoulders to these stones, the very English language lay unborn in the loins of its parent tongues. The men that laughed and jested as they wrought, and had their pride of skill ; the architect, and the lord for whose praise he fashioned these stones ; the villagers that wondered as they looked upon the growing pile; why, they are now no more to men's memories than the grass they trod on, or the leaves which they cast down in felling the oak !

Against these stones on which I lay my hand, have rung the sounds of battle. Yonder, on these very grounds, there raged, in sight of men that stand where

I do, fiercest and deadliest conflicts. All this ground has fed on blood.

I walked across to Guy's Tower, up its long stone stairway, into some of its old soldiers' rooms. The pavements were worn, though of stone, with the heavy grinding feet of men-at-arms. I heard them laugh between their cups, I saw them devouring their gross food, I heard them recite their feats, or tell the last news of some knightly outrage, or cruel oppression of the despised laborer. I stood by the window out of which the archer sent his whistling arrows. I stood by the openings through which scalding water or molten lead were poured upon the heads of assailants, and heard the hoarse shriek of the wretched fellows from below as they got the shocking baptism. I ascended to the roof of the tower, and looked over the wide glory of the scene, still haunted with the same imaginations of the olden time. How many thoughts had flown hence beside mine! — here where warriors looked out, or ladies watched for their knight's return. How did I long to stand for one hour, really, in their position and in their consciousness, who lived in those days ; and then to come back, with the new experience, to my modern self!

I walked, in a dream, along the line of the westward wall, surveyed the towers begun, but, for some reason, left unfinished ; climbed up the moat and keep, steep enough, and densely covered with trees and underbrush, to the very top.

Grand and glorious were the trees that waved in the t

22 RIDE TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

grounds about the castle; but, though some of them had seen centuries, they were juvenile sprouts in comparison of these old walls and towers, on which William the Conqueror had walked, without thinking a word about me, I'll warrant — in which matter I have the advantage of him — following in his footsteps along the top of the broad walls, ten times more lofty in my transcendent excitement than ever was he in his royal excursion.

Already the sun was drooping far down the west, and sending its golden glow sideways through the trees ; and the glades in the park were gathering twilight as I turned to give a last look at these strange scenes. I walked slowly through the gateway, crossed the bridge over the moat, turned and looked back upon the old towers, whose tops reddened yet in the sun, though I was in deep shadow. Then, walking backward, looking still, till I came to the woods, I took my farewell of Warwick Castle.

It was half-past six when I left the hotel for Stratford-on-Avon. Can you imagine a more wonderful transition than from the baronial castles to the peaceful village of Stratford? Can there possibly be a more utter contrast than between the feelings which exercise one in the presence of the memorials of princely estates — knightly fortresses, scenes full of associations of physical prowess — -jousts and tournaments, knights and nobles, kings and courtiers, war and sieges, sallies, defeats or victories, dungeons and palaces now all alike in confused ruins, and the peaceful, silver Avon, with its little village of Stratford snugged down between

RIDE TO STI.'AT FORD-ON- A VON. 23

smoothly rounded hills ; all of whose interest centers upon one man — gentle Shakspeare ? And what do you think must be the condition of a man's mind who in one day, keenly excited, is entirely possessed and almost demented by these three scenes ? The sun had not long set as I drove across the bridge of Avon, and stopped at the Eed Horse Inn. As soon as I could put my things away, the first question asked was for Henley Street, It was near. In another moment I was there, looking, upon either side, for Shakspeare's house, — which was easily found without inquiry. I examined the kitchen where he used to frolic, and the chamber in which he was born, with an interest which surprised me. That I should be a hero-worshiper — a relic-monger, was a revelation indeed.

Now guess where I am writing ? You have the place in the picture before you.* It is the room where Shakspeare was born 1 Two hundred and eighty-six years ago, in this room, a mother clasped her new-born babe to her bosom ; perhaps on the very spot where I am writing! Do you see the table on the right side of the picture ? It is there I am sitting. The room is represented as it was before it passed into the hands of the Shakspearian society. There are now no curtains to the window which you see, and which looks out from the front of the house into the street ; nor are there any pictures ; but the room, with the exception of the two side

* This letter was written upon pictorial note-paper containing views in and about Stratford.

tables and a few old chairs, is bare, as it should be; leaving you to the consciousness that you are surrounded only by that which the eyes of the child saw when he began to see at all. The room is about fifteen feet wide by eighteen in length. The hight is not great. I can easily touch the ceiling with my hand. An uneven floor of broad oaken plank rudely nailed, untouched, probably, in his day, by mat or carpet. The beams in this room, as also throughout the house, are coarsely shapen, and project beyond the plaster. The original building, owned by Shakspeare's father, has been so changed in its exterior, that but for the preservation of a view taken in 1769, we should have lost all idea of it. It was, for that day, an excellent dwellinghouse for a substantial citizen, such as his father is known to have been. It was afterwards divided into three tenements, the center one remaining in possession of Shakspeare's kindred, who resided there until 1646. And it is this portion that is set apart for exhibition ; — the sections on either side of it having been intolerably "improved" with a new brick front, by the enterprising landlord of the " Swan and Maidenhead Inn," about 1820! Its exterior has grown rude since Shakspeare's time, for the old print represents a front not unpleasing to the eye, with a gable and a bay window beneath, two dormer windows, and three-light latticed windows upon the ground story. The orchard and garden which were in its rear when purchased by Shakspeare's father, are gone, and their place is occupied by dwellings and stables. There is not a spot for even a shrub to grow in!

I shall spend a portion of three days at Stratford-on- Avon; and I have made a treaty with the worthy woman who keeps the premises, by which I can have free use of the room where I now write. Never have I had such a three days' experience ! Kenil worth, Warwick, and Stratford-on- Avon, all in one day ! Then I am to spend a Sabbath here ! I can neither eat nor sleep for excitement. If my journey shall all prove like this, it will be a severer taxation, to recruit than to stay at home and labor.

This room, its walls, the ceiling, the chimney front and sides, the glass of the window, are every inch covered and crossed and re-crossed with the names of those who have visited this spot.

I notice names of distinction noble and common, of all nations, mingled with thousands of others known only to the inscribers. In some portions of the room the signatures overlay each other two or three deep. I felt no desire to add my name, and must be content to die without having written any thing on the walls of the room where Shakspeare was born. I must confess, however, to a little vanity — if vanity it be. A book is open for names and contributions to enable the Committee for the preservation of Shakspeare's house to complete the payment of the purchase money. I did feel a quiet satisfaction to know that I had helped to purchase and preserve this place. Strange gift of genius, that now, after nearly three hundred years, makes one proud to con 2 tribute a mite to perpetuate in its integrity the very room where the noble babe was born !

But I am exhausted and must sleep, if sleep I can To-morrow will be my first Sabbath in England — and that Sunday at Stratford-on-Avon 1

II. A Sabbath At Stratford-on-avon"

August ^ih, 1850.

My dear : If you have read, or will read, my

letter to , you will see what a wonderful day was

Saturday. Coventry, famous for the legend of Godiva, of which Tennyson has a pretty version ; the ruins of Kenil worth Castle, the stately castle of Warwick and its park, and Stratford-on-Avon, all in one day ! Do you wonder that my brain was hot and my sleep fitful that night? 1 tossed from side to side, and dreamed dreams. It was long after midnight before I began to rest, free from dreams; but the sleep was thin, and I broke through it into waking, every half hour.

It was broad daylight when I arose ; the sun shone out in spots ; masses of soft, fleecy clouds rolled about in the heaven, making the day even finer than if it had been all blue. I purposed attending the village church, in the morning, where Shakspeare was buried ; in the afternoon at Shottery, a mile across the fields, where the cottage in which lived Anne Hathaway, his wife, still stands ; and in the evening, at the church of the Holy Cross, adjoining the Grammar School ; in which, as the school about that time was open, and for a period kept, it is probable that Shakspeare studied.