# Walks in the Black Country and its Green Border-Land/Chapter 14

CHAPTER XIV.
VISIT TO A BARONIAL HALL—WILD CATTLE OF CHARTLEY—LICHFIELD; ITS CATHEDRAL AND HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS—COVENTRY; ITS HISTORY AND INDUSTRIES—KENILWORTH AND ITS ROMANTIC REPUTATION—WARWICK TOWN AND CASTLE—LEAMINGTON
HAVING occupied so much space with walks in the semicircle embracing the Black Country, and based upon a line drawn through Birmingham from Bromsgrove to Walsall, but little room remains for a notice of those interesting towns and sceneries lying eastward of equal radius. These would supply abundant and varied material for an independent volume, but I must condense within a few pages what should occupy five hundred.
In the course of last summer I was, for the first time, one of the invited guests of an English nobleman, residing in North Staffordshire. And it being the first time, I felt myself fortunate in sharing the generous and easy hospitalities of a host who was as good a specimen of "a fine old English gentleman" as England could produce. ​The large company had dispersed in several excursions about the grounds and neighbourhood, when I arrived, and he alone seemed waiting within doors to receive new guests. He gave me the kindliest welcome, with his bland face still beaming with the sunlight of his benevolent heart, which he had just shed upon a little cold-water army of children who had come with their teachers from the Potteries to have a healthy, happy frolic in his great park. I regretted that I was not in time to see as well as hear him making a fatherly talk, in the Roger de Coverley style, to the gambolling flock of these boys and girls right from the smoke and smut of their district. I am sure no man could have made a more genial and pleasant speech to such children; or have spoken to their hearts more kindly with his face and eyes as well as with his voice. I was especially pleased to see in this incident a feature more admirable and beautiful than the romance of feudal hospitality which has been made so much of in the literature of novels. The hundreds of little folks assembled in this park were not to the manor born; they were not children of the baron's retainers, or of his tenants. They were all the children of working men entirely unknown to him, and living perhaps twenty miles away. He had not a village or town interest in them, or any local motive or relationship to gratify or discharge ​in his treatment of them. They were merely "somebody's children"—the children of humble artisans of a distant town; but he opened his park to them with as kind a welcome as if he had stood godfather to every mother's son of them all, in his own parish church. Now this is a fact and feature of the times very pleasant to dwell upon. Here are private parks and gardens kept in the highest state of beauty and perfection, at immense expense, by wealthy noblemen, opened as pic nic and play-grounds for the multitudes that toil in the mines and redden the heavens of the district by night with their fiery industries. While the spaces between these villages grow narrower and blacker; and while the chimneys thicken, and their swart dew falls faster on roof, road, and walk, here are breathing-grounds held in reserve for their recreation, and kept smokeless, free, and open for their enjoyment. Surely the nobility and gentry of these manufacturing districts, by imitating these generous examples, have it in their power, as many of them have it in their will, to attach the working classes to them by stronger ties than ever bound the peasantry of the feudal times to the lords of the soil.
Immediately on my arrival the Earl took me a walk of two or three miles all around the park, which was of great extent and most pleasantly variegated in surface and wooded very ​picturesquely, but still as if Nature herself had planted all the trees at her own sweet will. There were groves with openings, like tubes of her telescope, directed towards the beautiful landscapes that stretched far outward and softened into the mist of blue and gold under the horizon on every side. As far as the eye could see, the space was filled with baronial parks with no visible roads or boundary lines between them. This truly was the Green Country of Staffordshire; still it is possible that it would not have been so green and beautiful, and peaceful and quiet, were it not for the fire, smoke, sweat, and thunder of the Black Country of the county.
The next day the company made themselves up into different parties, for different rides and walks about the park and neighbourhood. I had the pleasure of making one of the company which the Earl took in his carriage to visit some of the parks and other interesting localities a few miles distant, the most unique and interesting of which was Chartley, the seat of the Ferrers family. Here I saw the greatest contrast that I ever witnessed in England—Nature in linsey-woolsey petticoat and Nature in her court-dress. Our drive was between parks and plantations and grounds of high cultivation until we came to the wildest, boggiest, roughest stretch of land you could think possible to exist in the heart of a ​civilized country. One might well fear to wander deep into it, for it seemed endless and pathless, and fitted only for the lair of wild beasts. And then there were wild beasts in it, which had perpetuated their race from pre-historic times. They were the genuine wild cattle of the old British breed, a kind of white buffaloes which, doubtless, in their day and generation, had supplied the Druids with raw beef-steaks. They were in a word just such looking animals as you would expect to find on such pasturage: and I am not sure that it would not in the end turn civilized cows into like barbarism in a few generations. They are quite untameable, and spurn the advances of human interest. Their keepers must keep at a respectful distance from their long horns; for they still, with all their wildness and independence, are glad of a little human help and attention. But the touch of the human hand is utter abomination to them. They prefer death to such a familiarity. We were told that they often drop their calves far out in the cold, stormy wilderness. The little things would frequently perish if not brought to shelter; but their mothers would abandon them for ever if the keeper touched them with his hand. So, to avoid giving them this unpardonable offence, a couple of men run two fork-handles under the calf, and, one behind and the other before, carry ​it carefully to the shed. Two bullocks of this wild breed were being kept up in a yard, to be slaughtered for a barbecue when the young lord of the estate came of age. At our request the keeper, with a club in his hand, turned them out into the adjoining paddock, so that we could have a full view of them. They sauntered about naturally and did not appear any fiercer than tigers, whose eyes look as mild sometimes as those of purring cats. But one of them seemed to sidle up towards the keeper as if to catch him off his guard, and we all felt inclined to shorten the interview lest it should end in a disagreeable incident. Almost on the opposite side of the road we had visited a farmer's establishment, where we saw a large family of the same genus of animals in the highest state of moral and physical culture, both as to form, dress, disposition, and deportment. Here were thirty-two cows, graded shorthorns, drawn up in two parallel lines facing each other in a large milking shed. Here they stood, with their large, honest eyes so full of peace and contentment that it was good to look at them. The white streams were pattering against the inner sides of the pails all up and down the lines, and the good, kind-spirited creatures seemed happy in making such music for their master's cars. The contrast was very striking. Here were wild Indian squaws on one side, and gentle, graceful ​queenly ladies on the other, all of the same general race, but so widely sundered by cultivation.
Returning from this excursion, we stopped at a little village church, which, with its surroundings, was the very beau-ideal that you are looking for in a country drive or walk. Here was a winding street of one-story houses thatched with straw, each with a long, narrow yard in front, full of the simple flowers of the poor, cheaply grown, hardy and ruddy-cheeked, like the poor man's children in healthy air. Opposite the church was the village inn, one-story, thatched, neat, comfortable and quiet; looking, for all the world, as if it sold more milk than beer. The carriage with the guests was standing with the liveried driver and footman on the opposite side of the road by the church, while the Earl went to the inn for a glass of milk for the ladies. It was a pleasant sight to see his tall, venerable form emerging from the low door which he had to stoop on entering. The setting sun was flooding the hamlet with its blandest illumination, which, tinted by the sunflowers and hollyhocks the nearest cottage yards, blended with the benevolent radiance of his countenance, and made him a living picture which Correggio would have delighted to copy. In this little quiet church, which one might almost take for the crickets' cathedral, are the monuments of men who have won great names in English history. Here lies entombed the ​father of that Earl of Essex whom Elizabeth delighted to honour until she found a more attractive favourite.
I spent a couple of days at this nobleman's seat, and met several men of high distinction. One of these was a young peer whose speeches in the House of Lords I had read with great interest and admiration for their eloquence and vigour, thinking they were the topmore rounds of the ladder by which he was ascending to one of the highest places in the government of the nation. Among the ladies was one whose name is known and honoured to the furthest colony and corner of the British empire as the queen of benevolence, whose means are only exceeded by her disposition to do good.
Lichfield is the clasp-jewel of the gold-and-green embroidered zone of the Black Country. Its cathedral is an edifice of which a whole nation might be proud, if possessing no other monument of beautiful architecture. The century-plant, that puts forth its white blossom only at the end of a hundred years, has its special reputation and place in the floral kingdom. This Staffordshire cathedral is a millenium plant, which has unfolded the exquisite petals and leaves of its great and beautiful blossom of architecture at the end of ten centuries of steady growing. Tradition claims it to have been planted by King Oswy, twelve hundred years ​ago, on soil watered by the blood of Christian martyrs under Diocletian. The city takes its name from this tradition, which signifies, Aceldama, or Field of Corses. It would have been a good and thoughtful act on the part of past generations if they had preserved for us at least one completely Saxon cathedral of the earliest structure in England; for instance, one like that built here by King Oswy in the middle of the seventh century. Doubtless it was as large as a modern one-story chapel, with wattle walls and thatched roof. That was the germ of this magnificent fabric. It grew slowly in the ice-storms and wild tempests of those Saxon centuries. The village planted around it was very small and grew slowly and feebly. Even as late as towards the close of the eleventh century, the little church was so small and mean in structure and accommodation that the bishop transferred the see to Chester, and his successor carried it to Coventry. But Bishop Clinton, about fifty years later, brought it back to Lichfield, and began, on the site of the old Saxon building, the present edifice. He seems to have been the first architectural Solomon that put hand to the work with some of Solomon's eye to beauty and grandeur. For ten times the length of time occupied in erecting the famous Jewish Temple has this of Christian worship been in building. And, on studying all the features of its exterior ​and interior symmetries, one might well feel that four hundred years were not too long a period for producing the fabric to its present perfection. If such a building could be erected in a century, to the finest and last line of the sculptor's chisel, even an amateur of architecture might walk up and down under its lofty arches and roofage with but a forced sentiment of veneration. But the rime of age and history, which six hundred years have breathed upon its gray forests of columns, pillars, and carved work, produces upon a thoughtful mind an impression which no artistic architecture, however grand, can create without such associations.
Lichfield looks like a little city of steeples on approaching it in any direction. The tall spire of one of the churches, nearly half a mile from the cathedral, seems to arise from one of the towers of the great edifice, making four of graceful proportions that stand up in the heavens like the spangled minarets of a county's crown. Indeed, not until you are within the city itself do you find this fourth spire detached and standing on its own church tower. Near the cathedral on the city side there is a long, wide pool of water, almost a little lake, which serves as a mirror in which you see the three spires and the upper part of the grand edifice photographed as large and true as life. But, unhappily for the picture and the fancy, ​there is a row of plain brick houses between you and the cathedral, and these too are looking at their homely faces in the water; and as their red walls reach up half-way to the caves of the magnificent structure, the latter looks like a queen standing in full court robes at a mirror with a dumpy country milkmaid in a red woollen petticoat just before, blending her peasant form and dress in the same reflection.
This cathedral perhaps suffered more than any other in England during the Civil War; and mostly for the reason that it was more strongly fortified. One of its Bishops. Langton, had surrounded it with a strong wall and a foss, giving it the attitude of an embattled castle as well as a Christian church—a strength which proved its weakness and half destruction. Being found in the armour of carnal warriors, they put it on for the battle, and church and all suffered sadly as the result. The cathedral was garrisoned like a castle for King Charles I, and was taken and retaken, battered and rebattered by the contending forces. It shows one of the horrible features of a civil war that both Royalists and Parliamentarians could have the heart to point their cannon at such an edifice. In the course of one bombardment, the great central spire, the apex of the splendid triangle, was shorn off close to the roof. The Puritans come in for severe condemnation for their ​conduct toward all that was then held so sacred, and all the defacing of sculpture, the mutilating of marble noses, and the destruction of carved images are generally laid to their charge. They doubtless did have a religious repugnance to all graven images, even of good men and women, and regarded them as under the ban of the second commandment of the Decalogue. It is quite possible that they have been made to bear many of the sins of the Cavaliers and Royalists in this respect. Between the two Lichfield Cathedral was left a splendid ruin. It had verified in its experience the truth of the declaration, "They that take the sword shall perish by the sword." Its wall and foss, instead of protection, brought great desolation upon it. But these were speedily repaired, after the Restoration, under Bishop Hacket; who not only gave munificently from his private means, but induced the nobility, gentry, and clergy of the diocese to follow his example.
During the Civil War the stained glass in the windows of the cathedral was totally destroyed, either out of wantonness or for the lead mouldings in which it was encased. This was a sad calamity to the eyes and hearts of all devout mediævalists. What was to be done? to sew new bits of cassimere into the rents of the venerable robe? to put young, bran new eyes into the eye-sockets five centuries old, to stare in the face of such solemn and august ​antiquities? The idea was repugnant, almost profane, to all true lovers of the Gothic order of religious worship. Happily they were not obliged to submit to this repulsive alternative. It was an ill wind of violence that had battered and broken the windows of Lichfield Cathedral; but a wind equally violent and destructive had blown upon convents and other religious houses on the Continent. There was a great amount and variety of stained glass to be found in the wreck of abbeys, of the best antiquity and imagery. Sir Brooke Boothby, travelling in Germany, visited the dissolved Abbey of Herckenrode, founded in 1182, and ornamented with the choicest specimens of the glass-staining art which the great masters of the sixteenth century could produce. He succeeded in buying up a good portion of this glass, consisting of 340 pieces, each about twenty-two inches square, besides a large quantity of tracing and fragments, at the low figure of £200, and transferred the purchase to the Dean and Chapter of the cathedral. It was a good bargain for them; as the amount purchased, estimated at the standard at which continental convent glass was afterwards sold in England, was worth £10,000. The whole expense of this beautiful glass bought by Sir Brooke Boothby, including transportation, arranging and fitting into the windows, was only £1,000. It was sufficient to fill seven of the large windows in the Lady ​Choir, or Chancel, the other two being supplied by modern productions. Thus the stained windows of the old Herckenrode Abbey, that for centuries looked down upon continental monks at their worship and vibrated to their Latin chaunts, now flood all the aisles, arches, and delicate traceries of this English cathedral with the haloed smile of their eyes.
Having visited all the cathedrals of Great Britain, and studied them with all the interest of American admiration for such structures, I am inclined to believe that this exceeds all others in the quality of beauty, both in its exterior and interior structure and embellishment. After Hawthorne's exquisite description of it in "Our Old Home," it would be presumption in me to attempt another. But, as this volume may be read by some who have not seen his, I will dwell a little longer upon two or three features of the edifice. It illustrates, more fully than any other that I know, the power and almost immeasurable capacity of the voluntary principle in England. Let any intelligent person see what that principle has produced here, and then compare the result with the production of the same principle in the Cologne Cathedral, and he will be deeply impressed by the contrast. He will see what a community educated in benevolence can accomplish by their voluntary contributions. Here they have produced and beautified a ​magnificent fabric, and filled it with treasures of exquisite art. The cathedral at Cologne belongs not only to Prussia but the whole of Germany. The very founder and first Emperor, Charlemagne, was entombed in it. No other building is the centre and attraction of so many German associations. For nearly a thousand years it has been rising under the thin, trickling streams of German contributions. But the builders, with these small means, have hardly been able to outstrip the slow feet of time and to fill its deforming footsteps. While working at one end of the cathedral the other is falling to ruin. Time seems to be chasing them from one end to the other, defacing their work as they creep on with the slow centuries. But look at Lichfield Cathedral. Two hundred years ago it was almost a ruin—its windows and roofage broken, its central spire battered down, and its carved work defaced and mangled. A sentiment stronger than even patriotism, an association more enduring than ever attached to a great emperor, has rebuilt the desolated edifice, and beautified it with trophies and treasures of art which Solomon's sculptors and workers in iron, brass, and wood could not produce for his Temple. The people of the district have been made willing in the power of this sentiment. The wealth of their contributions, if they could be reduced to the low standard of a money value, would show how they prize this great heirloom of ​past generations. In renovating and embellishing, the blending of the ages has been accomplished very happily. One has been softened into the other delicately, making almost a seamless whole of beauty. Even the latest additions of iron lacework harmonize with carvings in wood and stone centuries old. Two of these are really masterpieces of artistic design and mechanical skill. The screen which divides the choir from the nave was wrought by Mr. Skidmore, of Coventry. It resembles a thin hedge of tressed blackberry tendrils, leafed to the life, interspersed with seed-vessels of the wild rose and currant, and strawberry blossoms, so natural and graceful that one might fancy that they could almost breathe forth the odour of green life upon the music of the choir. The arched gateway of this hedge of metal shrubbery is an exquisite work of art. Sixteen shining angels, back to back, stand among the topmost boughs and blossoms of this floral wall, eight facing the singers in the choir and eight the congregation in the nave. They form an angelic band of singers, surpliced in gold, keeping time with harp and voice apparently with the human choristers in white robes below and the voices of all the worshippers of the great assembly. This idea is wrought out to all the perfection that art could give it.
The pulpit has no equal in England of the same ​species of work. It is a gem well set. It is entirely of metal, but is so perfectly constructed and placed that you notice no sharp contrast between it and the carver's work in stone and wood around and above. It looks like a great blossom of all the shining metals, lifting up its self-wreathed cup on four twisted stems of polished brass. "This goblet wrought with curious art" from base to brim, is as richly embossed and ornamented as any drinking cup in the old King of Hanover's collection. Interspersed with rosettes of brilliant metal are set large coloured stones and enamels. And the whole of this artistic structure presents a softened aspect, so that, at a little distance, no sense of iron, or hard incongruity of substance, affects your impression in taking the great whole of nave, transept, choir, column, and carved work into one view.
But the master-piece of all these modern embellishments is the reredos, or altar-back. I am inclined to think this is Gilbert Scott's chef d'œuvre, which he will never surpass, even with this work as a base of suggestion. In the first place, the body of the reredos is of the purest alabaster, taken from the Tutbury quarry in the same county. Into this delicate ground are wrought all kinds of precious stones, such as the lapis lazuli, cornelian, and malachite. The whole surface is most elaborately inlaid with ​variously coloured marbles; one of which called the "Duke's Red," contributed by the Duke of Devonshire from his estate, is pre-eminently brilliant. The back side of the reredos presents a more softened aspect, but one full of exquisite features. It is a great diaper, or crinkled veil of creamy or unpolished alabaster, carved and inlaid with no less than 2,000 small pieces of marble. The central portion of this beautiful structure, exclusive of the wings, cost about £1,000, which was raised by subscription among ladies specially interested in the cathedral. If the entire edifice were a six-century plant, possessing within itself the faculty of germination, it could not have put forth a more natural and beautiful effloresence than this alabaster flower so petaled and polished. The carved woodwork of the throne, stalls, and sub-stalls, harmonizes well with all the other modern ornamentations, and presents specimens of the art which excite admiration. The pavements are equally artistic and full of symbolic history of the cathedral, and scripture pieces happily executed. The choir was paved originally with a singular material, or with a mosaic of cannel coal and alabaster. The statuary and monuments here have long been noted for their surpassing excellence, believe that Chantrey's "Sleeping Children" are regarded as his master-piece of sculpture. ​Thousands have visited the cathedral chiefly to see this work of art, and many prose and poetical descriptions have been given of it. It still holds its reputation, though so many new masters have surpassed the old in conception and execution. They represent two infant daughters of Rev. Wm. Robinson, one of the prebendaries. Sleeping life could not be made more natural. They lie in each other's arms on a low mattress of marble, just like one which a mother might lay by the fireplace for a pair of twin toddlings tired with a Christmas frolic. The very pallet in which their young cheeks are half buried looks as if you might blow up wrinkles in it with your breath. I should not wonder if, now and then, a tender mother approaching them, has softened her step unconsciously as if loth to wake them up out of such sweet repose, for they look tired, not dead. Whoever appreciates fully the genius of the sculptor to breathe speaking life into cold marble, and give it the visible pulse of thought and feeling, should see and study this work of Chantrey, if he has not done so already. Bishop Ryder stands like a living man with lips just still, after a sermon on "God is Love." The statue is Chantrey's very last, and he had in the large-hearted and munificently-benevolent bishop an excellent subject for his chisel. He was only 59 years old when he died; yet he had filled the episcopal chair more ​than twenty years. Among the monuments to persons who made for themselves more than a local reputation, is Lady Mary Wortley Montague's, bearing for an inscription a testimony to the value of her introduction of the art of inoculating the small-pox from Turkey. "Convinced of its efficacy she first tried it with success on her own children and then recommended the practice of it to her fellow-citizens. Thus, by her example and advice, we have softened the virulence and escaped the danger of this malignant disease." Garrick has a monument here, erected by his wife, including in the inscription the sentiment of Johnson: "His death eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasures." The monumental statuary of nobility, gentry, clergy, and notabilities is generally of a high order of sculpture, and of great variety of design. Some of the Latin inscriptions are worth translating entire both for the history they contain and for unique, piquant expression. Eliza Rhodes, eldest daughter of John Hutchinson, one of the dignitaries of the cathedral, after stating that her father died at the age of 94 in 1704, asks, "Do you wish to know more, what good he did? Let this church say, let this chapter-house and all the choir say; go thou and find the like." Bishop Hacket, who restored the cathedral after the Civil War, lies in life-size effigy upon a lofty table monument, ​bearing a long inscription in which his good works are put forth very expressively. It then says: "Let us stop, therefore; it repays delay to know who lies here by Langton's side. Hacket alone is worthy to trouble Langton's ashes, by whose pious liberality they were kept from freezing. There lies the founder, here the restorer of Lichfield Cathedral."
It is left us only to conjecture why the founders of English cathedrals and abbeys built them on such low grounds. One would naturally think that they would have chosen commanding eminences for the erection of these magnificent temples of worship; that they would have accepted some of the everlasting hills as foundations furnished by nature for structures which should rival them in strength and duration. These noble monuments of all the Christian ages of England would have made splendid crowns of glory on such a setting. But all but two or three are built on the level of meadow brooks. Lincoln and Durham stand on grand pedestals of nature, worthy the superstructure. But Salisbury, Peterborough, Winchester, Lichfield and others arise from humble levels. The nave of grand old Salisbury is sometimes flooded at the rising of the little river near it. If the monks and other ecclesiastics lived more on fish than their successors of the present day, surely they would not have erected their great religious ​edifices on the low banks of the streams merely to save them ten minutes' walk with their hooks and nets. Nor could it be said that there was any necessity for hiding their abbeys and cathedrals for fear of any violence from the populations of the districts; for not only the whole civil power of the realm was in their hands, but they were regarded as half-divine beings by the peasantry and higher ranks.
But structures of wider reputation than the cathedral have been founded and erected in Lichfield. It has given physical or intellectual birth to men of a stature of mind that has overlooked the tallest of the three cathedral spires, and cast a luminous shadow over two hemispheres. Can any other town so small in England boast, like this flat-footed little city, of giving birth, first shaping, or residence to four such men as Johnson, Addison, Garrick, and Ashmole? Samuel Johnson!—a nation that could build fifty cathedrals in ten years would need a century for building such another man as he was to the world of mind and thought. Here, as you stand by his monument in the market-place, with several of the most touching incidents of his life carved in the stone, you feel yourself standing in the disk of a living and immortal reputation—more than a reputation; more than the illuminated shadow of a great memory. It is a sensible and ​commanding presence; it is a great individuality that absorbs and covers the whole city. What a life was that, from the first baby battles of the little cripple with the rough goblins of misfortune that barred his pathway, to his glorious bringing up into that haven of triumph to which, after the tempests and storms of the wild sea of troubles he had braved, Lord Chesterfield sent out his cock-boat of insolent patronage to escort him? Who can estimate the worth to struggling genius of the sturdy wrestles of this bookseller's son with grim and glowering adversities? He left something more than "footprints on the sands of time." He left footholdings and footposts for the men wrestling with the surges of misfortune, and many a half-drowned struggler has reached the sunny shore of fame and fortune by taking hold of the skirts of his great example. Some one would do a good service to all coming generations by simply giving to them the consecutive chain of his experiences, just as they were linked to his life, and by doing it in a series of pictures or illustrations graven in stone, after the manner of his monument in the Lichfield market-place. There was his childhood's wrestle for learning, borne to school on the back of some generous and stronger school-mate. That is a picture in the stone touching to see. Then his Oxford struggle would make another. When, ​like Bunyan's pilgrim, he had waded through sloughs of difficulty and despond, and had got almost within hand's reach of the wicket gate of the great goal of his hopes, Poverty, like a Giant Despair, clutched him and hurled him back from the temple of learning into the bitter vicissitudes of indigence. In his patient and baffled attempts to climb again, we find him in busy, noisy Birmingham, translating, in the din and dim of its mechanical industries, Lobo's account of Abyssinia. He lived for a time with a printer here, and gave to the public probably the first literary production that ever went to the press from the metropolis of the Black Country. How little know the masses of the great town that it ever had such a man wrestling his way in it to a fame wider than a hemisphere! Still, it must have been well known and appreciated in his day, for I have recently seen a halfpenny token bearing the image of the great writer and his name, struck in 1783, the year before his death. Here too lived a man who ought to have left a more definite history; for he was one whom Johnson held to the last in boyhood's affection, and often honoured with his company. His name was Edmund Hector, and the house in which he lived and received frequently the great man as his guest, is standing still in the Old Square. It is now a portion of the "Stork" hotel and ​bears the following inscription carved in a tablet over the door:
   Here in this house Samuel Johnson was the guest, Edmund Hector was the host. Of this host this guest has written: 'Hector is likewise an old friend, the only companion of my childhood that passed through the school with me; we have always loved one another' This stone, by leave of the owner of the house, William Scholefield, Esq., M.P., was put up by the members of 'Our Shakespere Club' of Birmingham. A.D. 1865."
He married Mrs. Porter in Birmingham, whose fortune of £800 enabled him to set up a school near Lichfield. That experience would make another good subject for painter or sculptor. The picture of himself and his three scholars, including little Davy Garrick, would show well with all the other painted passages of his life. How many stately tomes would we not give in exchange for the conversations between him and his illustrious pupil which decided them to go up together and try their fortunes in London? Indeed there is hardly a life ever lived in England that would present more passages of varied interest and instruction than that of Samuel Johnson. And Lichfield, to its credit, holds the dignity of his birth as the first of its crown jewels. Many ​relics of his residence are preserved and treasured with a lively sense of their value; and if you will do it reverently, you may sit for a thoughtful moment in his arm-chair and handle his cane.
Although Addison was not born in Lichfield, he must have received a good deal of shaping culture of his mind there. His father, a learned, accomplished, sharp-witted man, had already attained to high distinction before he was appointed dean of Lichfield Cathedral, which was in 1683, when he was about fifty years of age. As his illustrious son Joseph entered college at Oxford in 1687, he must have resided with his father in Lichfield several years before and many after his collegiate course. At least, the little city claims him as one of her sons, perhaps mostly on the ground that his father's grave is with them unto this day. In the long Latin inscription of his father's monument in the cathedral, his own name and memory are blended in the closing sentence with a filial tribute to what he owed to his parent's qualities and example. It reads thus:
   "An honour of his age, from him his eldest son Joseph received his extraordinary natural gifts, his pure habits, his goodwill to men, piety to God, and every other brilliant patrimony; who, while he would have erected this monument to himself in companionship of his excellent parent, was called away by sudden death. A.D. 1719."
​Thus Addison died comparatively young, or at the age of forty-seven, when Johnson was only ten years old. He was born to fortune and fame, and the road to both was strewn with flowers. Had he passed through some of Johnson's experience, his mind perhaps would have gained in vigour if it lost somewhat in polish. Ashmole preceded Addison, and if he did not acquire a literary reputation that has endured to the present time, he founded a Museum at Oxford that bears his name, and contains the collection of curiosities he made in his life-time. Many other names of mark are associated with Lichfield, and the little city has contributed a contingent to the great English army of preachers, teachers, and writers of which it may well be proud.
Coventry is a town which no American can pass by without special notice, whether he travel on the turnpike road of English history, or on the clattering metal of the modern railway. On both routes it stands a conspicuous object, claiming respect and study. On the whole, there is no provincial city or town in England that is so vividly individualized by historical incidents and associations. Its very name emanates from these. It was a city of convents, probably of three at least, existing at different times; from which circumstance it may have been first called Conventria. Then the most popular, attractive legend attaching to any town in ​the kingdom decorates and diadems this like a crown-jewel of the first water of romantic interest. Lady Godiva is the patron saint of the city-a Saxon saint, draped in pendent tresses of golden hair. And the people of Coventry believe in her, and have believed in her, with a beautiful, unreasoning, natural, romantic faith that has come down, like the substance of a happy vision, through half a dozen centuries. And if you take the census of her believers and admirers in both hemispheres, you will find that nine-tenths of the English-speaking race cherish and enjoy the sentiment of her actual existence. Poets have sung of her—bards before Shakespeare was born—and the Poet Laureate of the present day, and, of the two heroines of his verse. Lady Godiva is a more tangible being than Guinevere, and will always have ten times the popular homage bestowed upon that splendid fiction in the "Mort d'Arthur." Through these many centuries gone her memory has lived, moved, and had a being more distinctive than all the English queens who have died from this to the Conquest. She has had her triumphal processions in queenly state through Coventry on the anniversary of that celebrated ride, when she "unclasped the wedded eagles of her belt," and paced her palfrey from wall to wall, "and built herself an everlasting name." Few living queens, on either side of Elizabeth's time, have been ​honoured with more stately pageants than the memory of this Saxon lady, "the woman of a thousand summers back." The most splendid of them all was probably the last, which took place in June, 1866. Indeed, no city ever impressed the existence of one human being upon its own more vividly than Coventry has done that of Lady Godiva.
With such a koh-i-noor of legend to wear in its crown. Coventry might well dispense with all other historical regalia. But this is only the beginning of her wealth of fame. Shakespeare has wreathed for her another reputation of almost equal lustre, in the character of Falstaff. What reading man has ever walked her streets, or heard of them, without thinking of that doughty coward's horror at "marching through Coventry with such a jail delivery" as his awkward squad presented? These fictions of romance or of genius give the town a reputation and a place in the world's mind for which all the incontestable and proven facts of its history hardly serve as a setting. Still real, written history is full of these facts, which would stand out with considerable distinctiveness if they were not eclipsed by these more brilliant legends and fictions. Two Parliaments have been held here; the last by Henry VI, in 1458, called "Parliamentum Diabolicum," in which Richard Duke of York, and the Earls of Warwick, March, ​and Salisbury were attainted. Before this, an earlier Henry, then Duke of Hereford, and the Duke of Norfolk met here "in angry parlance," to decide a quarrel by the old wager of battle. Mary Queen of Scots passed some of her prison months here in 1566. Coventry sided with Parliament in the conflict with Charles I, and would have done it even if the people of the town had already commenced making ribbons for the Court. They were chastised, like Birmingham, for this preference and participation by Charles II, who destroyed the walls of the city, which had stood since the time of Edward II. The pageants and mystery plays exhibited here have from time to time attracted sight-seers from a distance, and frequently royal spectators. The Godiva procession was instituted in 1677, and has always rivalled the London Lord Mayor's Show as an elaborate and gorgeous fantasy, and even exceeded that unique exhibition in having a female divinity as aerial looking as possible, instead of the solid corporeity of a London alderman new-blown into the blushing honours of civic dignity.
The manufactures which most distinguish Coventry are ribbon weaving, and watch and clock making. It is perhaps more especially known for the first, than for any other business. Still, the manufacture of ribbons is comparatively of recent introduction, dating back only to 1730. This trade ​was well protected with the wet blanket of duties on foreign competition until 1861, when these were removed, and the ribbon makers of Coventry were brought face to face and foot to foot, on the same level, with French and other continental rivals, whose genius and ability for cheap and artistic production had been developed to superior capacity by the very pressure of necessity put upon them by the protective policy of other countries. When plants grown under glass are deprived of their artificial air and roofage and turned "out in the cold," they get at first a chill, and, for awhile, are unable to compete with plants of the same genus that have been acclimated to the open sky, dew and rain of nature. It was natural and inevitable that the ribbon trade of Coventry, when thus unroofed and turned out of the conservatory of protection, should experience a chill and check in its growth for awhile, though in the end it may become more hardy and prosperous than ever from this very exposure to the out-door climate of the world's competition and commerce. Some one has said that commerce has no conscience; and that fashion has no patriotism is a truth still more evident and universal. No trade could be subjected to more sudden and sweeping vicissitudes of taste than that of ribbons. A new pattern or style worn by one of the ton, or some new whim of fancy, might throw out of ​sale a large stock already manufactured for the market. As the French led the way in exquisite designs and brought highly trained art and taste to their elaboration, their patterns ruled as well as created the fashions; and English ladies would give them the preference at any price to which heavy duties might raise them. The English manufacturers, who seemed to progress in improved production just in proportion to the pressure of this foreign competition, with the short-sightedness which protection engenders, petitioned Parliament in 1832 not only for customs regulations which smugglers could not clude, but insisted upon absolute prohibition of French goods, or the kind of goods they made themselves; not French brandy, wines, and that sort of thing which, of course, they would like to get as cheap as possible. They maintained before the committee of the House that nothing short of this policy "could produce any effect on the obstinate preference of English ladies for French ribbons, or save the producers of English goods from immediate ruin." It was a complemental or constituent opinion to this determined conclusion, "that steam could never be profitably applied to the manufacture of ribbons." But the hard-hearted Parliament would neither bar the ports against French goods nor impose heavier duties upon them. So, just for lack of the "protection" demanded, the manufacturers had to go ​and apply steam to the production of ribbons, introduce new improvements, and otherwise strain their wits and activities in order to compete successfully with the French. If Parliament had only been patriotic enough to pass the act of prohibition, they would have been saved from all this bothering exercise of intellect, and have gone on comfortably in the old way. Schools of Design in the large manufacturing towns, though so recently established, have already told with decisive effect upon all articles of taste, luxury, and ornamentation, bringing up the English production to a higher standard of conception and value. The free trade and free play of genius and skill have kept pace with the other great freedoms of commerce and civilization, and constitute a common stock from which all communities may draw at will.
The next in the rank of the industries of Coventry is watch-making. The proportion between them may be put in figures. In ordinary times ribbons give employment to about 10,000 hands, watches, to 2,000; but of this number there are not included 100 females; whilst in the ribbon trade the women outnumber the men by two to one. Coventry once unfortunately had virtually but one string to its bow, and suffered often and deeply in consequence. But not only has the watch trade been added or ​expanded to a large business, but several other manufactures have been recently introduced, such as cotton frilling, bead-goods, and various kinds of trimming. We have already noticed some specimens of ornamental iron-work in Lichfield Cathedral produced here. Thus Coventry is in a fair way to provide itself with all those diversified strings of industry which are so necessary to the steady well-being and progress of a manufacturing town.
But Coventry seen from the railway presents as conspicuous individuality in its physical aspect, as it does from the high road of history as a municipal community. When I first caught a glimpse of it, at a few miles distance, a sudden simile came to my thoughts which did it great injustice, and gave my mind some compunction for admitting it for a moment. Lo, suggested the fancy, a fallen town still trying to cling to heaven with its three fingers! Would it not be fairer to say, responded a better thought, a Christian town trying to climb to heaven by its three fingers? Indeed, no city in England that the eye can cover, as sharpshooters say, at a glance, shows to the traveller three such church spires as tower up over Coventry. And these spires play off remarkable evolutions before his eyes as he approaches or leaves the town on the railway. At a certain distance one advances to the front and forms the ​apex sentinel of an equilateral triangle. When it has reconnoitred your position for a few minutes, it falls back into the centre of the line of spires, all drawn up in the order of review. Then they change fronts, wheel, advance, and retreat as you change your point of view; so that you have a stately steeple-chase enacted before you, and you feel constrained to stop and study the principles of these tactics, and the parties that perform them. And it will pay well any intelligent traveller to stop and go up into the town, and study the relationships and individual characters of these three remarkable spires and the churches which lift them up into the sky. Nowhere else in England can you find two such churches, standing locked in arms, as The Holy Trinity and St. Michael's, of Coventry. They seem to be twins in age, and to have grown up to their grand stature by the side of their infancy's cradle. They stand in the same churchyard, wrinkled and furrowed with their long centuries. No one has undertaken to prove or say which is the oldest. A soft mist of antiquity surrounds them, and legends of the first Henrys and Edwards and of Norman nobles hover around them like tattling rooks. Trinity stands a little higher on its foundation, but St. Michael's, with its feet planted lower, lifts up a higher spire, and the two are as graceful fingers as ever twin churches raised toward heaven, ​St. Michael's looks the oldest, for the court-plaster and rouge of modern renovation have not smoothed the deep wrinkles and crow-feet tracks of age in its face. The view and study of these two remarkable structures will well repay a visit to Coventry if there were no other specimens of ancient architecture and history to be seen there. But there are other buildings and associations of peculiar interest that enrich the town.
St. Mary's Hall is one of the most unique and impressive buildings in England. Indeed. I do not remember one which presents such an external aspect of age. This shows you all its years at a glance. Other buildings equally old in various towns have been faced and refaced, so that the outside walls are comparatively smooth and trim, having had all their wrinkles ironed out of them by the hand of renovation. All amateurs of antiquity owe Coventry for much enjoyment in its thus preserving such venerable buildings unaltered, with all their centuries eaten into their faces. This St. Mary's Hall is a jewel of this order; as much so as the finger-ring of a Roman knight dug up in the battle field of Canne. Inside and out it is covered with the hoary rime of the history of trade guilds, city councils, royal visitations. Lady Godiva's pageantry, knightly romance, and other heroics and fantasies of bygone times. On entering the massive archway through those time-proof ​doors of solid English oak, you might well fancy yourself on the threshold of some old guildhall in Nuremburg or Venice. The cellarage and cooking departments show what manner of proceedings took the head and lead of all the questions discussed in the great hall above. Few abbey kitchens even could have exceeded the capacity of roasting beef or doing turtle soup, which this establishment possessed. In the grand old hall you stand face to face with over four hundred years of the town's life and history. On the dais or platform kings and queens and nobles of the realm have been crowned with all the dignities which pompous guilds could bestow. Here loyalty, clad in crimson, has knelt, and uttered with a tremulous voice its magniloquent platitudes to sovereigns who looked as gracious as if they believed it all, and dubbed the blushing kneeler a knight for his pains. The hall is seventy feet long, thirty feet broad, and thirty-four feet high; making excellent proportions for the best aspects and uses of such an apartment. The great north window over the platform or throne gallery, is the centre-piece and first object of attraction that meets the eye on entering. It is the only one that retains its original stained glass, which impresses upon you a more vivid sense of antiquity than even the time-eaten face of the outside wall. The side windows, however, had become so blind and battered by the storms of ​centuries, and by ruder violence, that new glass eyes had to be put into their sockets. These were made to look as nearly like the old as the connoisseurs of Birmingham could produce them. All the old figures and emblems were reproduced with almost photographic exactness, and it was thought and hoped that the modern colours would rival the ancient in fixity as well as brilliancy of tinting. But only forty years of exposure have disclosed the difference between modern and ancient art in this respect, and already some of the names and figures inscribed begin to soften off into that mellow and confused obscurity which distinguishes some of Turner's pictures. The Black Prince was one of the royal patrons of Coventry and its guilds, and one of the shields bears his crest and motto, Ich dien, above, and "Cressy," beneath, with the date of the battle, "1346." It is rather remarkable that this prince of blue Norman blood should have chosen two German words for his motto; and if he did, it is equally remarkable that Prince Albert should have adopted the same, unless he could trace back his descent to that redoubtable warrior. The elephant and castle are the arms of Coventry, and these have a conspicuous place in the heraldic symbols that line the interior walls and embellish the windows. It is rather interesting to conjecture the source or suggestion of this cognizance of the city. It was incorporated in 1346, several centuries ​before Englishmen began to travel in oriental countries or to read of elephants and castles going into battle. Perhaps some knight of the first crusade brought back the idea. Old Leofric and his Godiva, of course, have their place in the galaxy of worthies. In a unique and curious recess stands the old chair of state, with all its carved clusters of emblems, effigies, and allegories. Solid, shining like ebony, made of oak growing before the Conquest, it offers a seat of honour to you, on which kings and queens have sat on festal Occasions. But perhaps many visiters will be most attracted to a breadth of curiously wrought tapestry thirty feet long and ten feet deep, that fills the whole space of the north end of the hall under the great stained window. It is paged off into six compartments, each with its group like the painted panels of the Rotunda in the Capitol at Washington. Its history also lies in the blue mist of legendary fiction, which makes it all the more interesting. A considerable volume of historical incident might be translated out of these illuminated pages of needle-work. Indeed, both for its architectural features, its antiquity, and internal embellishment and symbolic heraldry, no other hall in England that I have seen presents so many aspects of interest to the visiter.
Coventry does not look like a city that has sewed new patches to this old garment of antiquity. ​The very streets are like the crooked seams of the ancient robe, and on them are worked fabrics that harmonize as well with these century-worn buildings as the pictures in the tapestry of St. Mary's Hall do with that edifice. These seams or winding streets, lanes, courts, and alleys twist in and out in the most interesting way, bringing you up against all sorts of unexpected angles and niches. And there is the curious image of Peeping Tom grinning out upon all the fingers of scorn that have been pointed at him for so many generations. As he looks down from an upper window of a corner house upon the main street, he wears the very face of a conscious poltroon, as an outlaw that has sinned against the best sex in the world more outrageously than any man in history. Of course a town with two such churches and a guildhall like St. Mary's would have a great variety of charities, benevolent and educational institutions. Ford's Hospital is as unique in its way as any of the same date and object to be found in England. It was founded in 1529 by William Ford, and the building must have been erected very soon afterwards, for it looks quite three hundred years old, and as if it might endure for as many centuries to come. It is a rare specimen of the architecture of its time, and will probably be preserved as such as long as it is able to stand upright. It is of the old skeleton order, or that ​in which the flesh of the outer wall does not cover the bones but only fills the spaces between them It is forty feet in front length, with two unique stories embellished with the quaint, elaborate carvings of the olden days. The upper story juts out over the lower, and projects still further three large balcony windows, that look like three great eyes, each with six pupils, staring out of the sloping roof through a pair of highly ornamented goggles. The lower story, on each side of the massive doorway, is a kind of post-and-rail fence of glass and wood, or a long window divided into nine compartments, with headings and sidings wrought with the best genius of the wood carvers in the great Henry's time. In a word, it would make an excellent subject for a painter of ancient architecture. Its founder must have been a man of eccentric ideas. His programme of benevolence was only to house in this building five men and one woman, allowing them only five pence apiece weekly. But as the property he left for the support of the institution increased in value, and other donations were added, it enlarged its benefactions, and there are now thirty-seven aged women recipients of the charity, seventeen of whom reside in the building. The whole receive now four shillings a week each, with a ton of coals yearly.
A workhouse sprouting up out of the extensive ​remains of the old White Friars' Monastery, and absorbing them into its walls, is another interesting building for this concrete work of early and late centuries. The educational institutions rest on equally religious foundations and seem to grow favourably upon them. As the walls of one monastery were wrought into a workhouse, so the "dissolved" Hospital of St. John, with all its lands, furnished the foundation of The Free School. They yielded about £67 net revenue at the Dissolution, and £1,100 in 1862. Few schools in the country afford such help as this to young men desirous of obtaining a college education. Wealthy and benevolent men in the seventeenth century gave lands and other property to found prizes, scholarships, and fellowships at Oxford. The school-room, eighty-four feet long and twenty-four in width, is supposed to have been the church of St. John's Hospital; the very doubt proving the antiquity of the building. Bablake's Boys' School is another educational establishment founded in Elizabeth's time, and built on the site of the ancient Hospital of Bablake. It is an excellent institution, which, in all its expansion, has carried out the original design of the first founder. It lodges, feeds, clothes, and instructs about seventy boys, and puts them out as apprentices at fourteen years of age, giving each £2 for clothes, and £2 to the master to whom he is bound. There are ​several other schools founded about the same time, and enlarged by the increased value of the property funded for their support and by additional donations. Truly Coventry may well have been called a city of convents, hospitals, monasteries, and other religious houses. On enlarging the Blue Coat School building the foundations of the ancient cathedral were brought to light.
In addition to all these benevolent foundations for education, another for the material comfort and well-being of the common people is a most valuable perquisite to them. It consists of 1,300 acres, lying around the city, of common land on which any poor man may pasture his cow without charge. For several hundred years this free pasturage has been held inviolate; but it is doubtful if the inheritance will be kept green for them many years longer; as the town cannot expand much further without overlapping upon this great common. If it is thus alienated from them by this necessity, it is to be hoped that its value will accrue to them in some other form equally useful.
I visited Coventry twice during the Exhibition of the Arts and Industries of the city in 1867, and saw all their silk-weaving machinery in busy occupation in a large hall, well ornamented with other productions of ingenious handicraft. It was a unique and interesting sight; for these machines ​were not in miniature or small working models, to show how ribbons were made, but they were the very machines of the factory brought out and put in operation day after day, turning out fabrics for the general market as well as for curiosities. Here you saw at a glance, and in striking illustration, the long line of progression in the trade, or the improved methods introduced under the pressure of that very competition which the early manufacturers and their operatives so much deprecated. It was exceedingly interesting to see the silken threads of every shade and tint painting portraits of distinguished men, and the churches, towers, and spires of the city. This Exhibition was eminently successful in every way, attracting visiters by special trains from considerable distances, and yielding a surplus of several thousand pounds sterling over and above the expenses involved.
Few cities in England, in a word, will present to the visiter so many features of interest as Coventry. It has played its part conspicuously in the history, literature, and industry of the kingdom, and it contains several of the most impressive monuments of the architecture of the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries. The romantic lore of legends and poetical fictions has illuminated its actual history, and made it stand out with attractive features of interest.
​Between Coventry and Warwick, in a green, quiet, rural district, stands Kenilworth. And Kenilworth is a castle, which absorbs into itself all of space, population, and history that belongs to the name. Not only novel readers but practical history readers at a distance, never think of anything but the castle when the name is mentioned or suggested. Still, there is a goodly, tidy, and comfortable village near the ruins worth visiting without the lion which attracts so many thousands a year to pay their homage and their admiration—to the genius of Sir Walter Scott. All the ordinary trades of a practical business community are carried on in this village; and a tall, taper chimney of a tannery, as high as any church steeple, smokes its pipe in the face of all the romantic antiquities of the place. Still, the people would probably confess that the principal source of their income is derived from their vested interest in Sir Walter Scott's "Kenilworth," not in the real castle walls. Take away that famous novel, and, with all the authenticated history that remains attached to them, not one in five of the visitors they now attract would walk around them with admiration. In fact they are more a monument to the genius of the great novelist than to the memory of Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester. If any community ever owed a statue to the honour of a benefactor for money ​value received, the Kenilworthies owe one to the celebrated Scotch writer. One might reasonably, estimate that his book has been worth £10,000 a year to them for the last quarter of a century or more. There are observatories, barometer and anemometer stations around the coasts of England, where rain-falls and wind-blows, tide-risings and star-showers are registered. There are other observation-stations where the self-registering offices of human fames and reputations are kept, and where these are measured spontaneously. Go to Stratford and look at the inner walls of Shakespeare's house and the record kept there, and count the names from the four quarters of the globe written there in homage of the great bard; go to Abbotsford, and consult the day-book of that great memory; go to Olney, and see what manner and multitude of names cover and recover the little garden summer-house in which Cowper wrote, and you will have this self-registration of human genius and its appreciation. So at Kenilworth, the visiters' day-book at the hotel will show how many come from both hemispheres and all their continents to see the scene of Sir Walter Scott's romance.
I was favoured with a bright day on the sunny edge of autumn for my visit, when the very sky imparts a radiance to the ivied ruins of old castles and abbeys. Kenilworth shows its successive ​ages and uses in the various departments of its structure. From the ground it occupied, one would hardly conceive it to have been a fighting castle. But when you come to look at the massive Cæsar's Tower, you will be impressed with its impregnable strength in the bow-and-arrow period of English warfare. Its lofty walls hold their frontage and perpendicular lines as true and even as if they were a last year's structure. It is seemingly composed of several towers connected by walls sixteen feet thick, perforated by window-holes which look like so many archways. It is built or faced with hewn red sandstone, and is a perfect specimen of mason-work. The Insurgent Barons stood a siege of six months against Henry III behind these strong walls, and in the reign of Edward I, Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, presided over a grand tournament beneath them. In a later century the castle passed into the hands of John o' Gaunt, who added the noble structure called the Lancaster Buildings, or banqueting hall. This must have been one of the finest specimens of architecture of his time in England, and, in ruins, presents the graceful proportions and embellishments of its structure. Under the regime of that celebrated nobleman the castle began to put a civilian dress over its coat of mail, and to echo with the music and mirth of dancing and feasting, instead of the clangour ​of arms. But Robert Dudley. Earl of Leicester, completed the transformation into a residential palace. He not only added the wing called the Leicester Buildings, but he renovated, extended, and embellished all the old portions of the huge pile. He erected an ante-castle, or a great gate house, which is a noble structure in itself. Never did a subject build, and rebuild, and embellish on such a scale as he did to receive his sovereign. Three times Elizabeth was his guest. Her last visit was in July, 1575, and lasted seventeen days. Of the festivities and princely entertainments he prepared for her on this occasion Sir Walter Scott has written with all that natural enthusiasm and predilection with which, perhaps above all other English novelists, he dilated upon such a subject. His graphic descriptions of these scenes are so familiar to the million, that I will not venture to go behind his brilliant fictions in search of actual, historical facts of duller interest. The day of such favourites has gone by, like the beauty and glory of this once gorgeous fabric. The sun of Christian morality and civilization has risen to a purer flood of light; and such broad-faced gallantries would now be looked out of countenance in high places.
On walking around these broken walls, some seven hundred years old, and others not three centuries, one must be struck with the weak ​vitality they possess compared with the religious buildings of the country, which seemingly renovate themselves into perpetual strength and beauty. Here, for example, are the Leicester Buildings, a splendid fabric, erected only so far back as 1571, and no older on its foundations than hundreds of village churches scattered over the kingdom. The best material and art and labour of the time were employed upon the structure. There are many one-story, thatched cottages in the village of Kenilworth that now make sunny homes for young children, quite as old as this superb wing of the palace castle. But here stands the latter with all its lofty pretensions in haggard ruins. It could not have been demolished by a bombardment; for in Cromwell's time it could not have had much fighting capacity. Oliver Martel smote even sacred things hip and thigh that came in his way, but it must have been like shooting chickens in a farm-yard with a breech-loader, for him to point his cannon at the ornate and helpless windows of the Leicester Buildings and John o' Gaunt's Banqueting Hall. But his soldiers did seize and possess it, and, so it is charged, laid unscrupulous hands upon its ornamental wealth, doubtless regarding it as a part of the pomps and vanities which were inconsistent with a sober and a religious people. Still, the Parliamentary Puritans were apt to save some ​Babylonish garments and a wedge or two of gold in dealing destruction to these superfluous things; and they are accused of having despoiled Kenilworth of all that could be made transportable and marketable.
After the Restoration, Charles II gave the castle to Lawrence Hyde, the second son of the great Chancellor, and through his descendants it has come into the possession of the present Earl of Clarendon, who fully appreciates its value as a historical monument of interesting and romantic associations. The facing of the massive and lofty Cæsar's Tower must be nearly three centuries old, and it is wonderfully perfect. The perpendicular lines from base to battlement are as straight as if the walls were run in a mould. The eye cannot detect a deflection of a hair's-breadth; nor has time been able to eat into the smooth and even surface. I noticed, however, that "the brave old ivy green" which braids such bandages for the wounds made by time and human violence in abbeys and castles, had wound around the front of this huge tower such a thick spread that it had deadened the skin of the wall and was eating into the solid body of it like a caustic blister. There were men at work on tall ladders removing this thick green bandage, and letting the sun in upon the stone, which had not seen its light for years.
​The Gate House is in excellent preservation, and is occupied by a tenant of the Earl of Clarendon. The towers are supported by old pear trees that clasp their long arms around the stone-work and hug it so tightly that you may see their impress in the wall. It is a pleasant sight, which a poet might make something of, to see them hanging their clusters of luscious fruit up and down, as if, like the idea expressed in Solomon's Song, they were staying the venerable building with apples and cheering delicacies. Indeed, for its historical associations as well as for the architectural character disclosed in its picturesque ruins. Kenilworth, perhaps, stands at the very head of all old English castles as an object of popular interest. If a self-registering apparatus could be put in operation at the gate opening to it, which would number and record the human feet, just as some instruments register the rain-drops that fall, doubtless no other castle in England would show such a census of visiters as this.
Warwick Castle! England and all who speak its language owe the successive inheritors of this great living pile of buildings more than they have ever acknowledged. For it is really the only baronial castle that has survived the destruction or decay of all the other monuments of the feudal ages of the same order. We should not know what they were in their day and generation ​were it not for this. It helps our fancy to fill up the vast breaks in the walls of Kenilworth. Dudley, and Chepstow; to reconstruct their banqueting halls, their drawing-rooms, galleries, crypts, and kitchens; and to reproduce them entire in their first and fullest grandeur. By the light of Warwick we can not only rebuild and roof the broken walls of these old castles, but bring into the vista of the imagination their interior embellishments, their carved cornices and wainscoting, their luxurious furniture, tapestry, paintings, and other works of art. Thus Warwick represents to us in its living being and form of to-day the hundreds of castles that were planted over the island in the first century after the Conquest. Schamyl in his native costume and dignity could not represent better at St. Petersburgh the leaders of the Circassian race and country, than does this grand home and fortress of the Warwicks the embattled citadels of the old English knights.
Warwick Castle, the fortress of one of the stoutest and grimmest of the old English fighting knights, did not put on the armour of nature to help out its own. It did not take advantage of perpendicular rocks or river-sides like Stirling, Edinburgh, or Chepstow. At first thought one might fancy the founders of it selected the location more for fishing than fighting. And now, in ​these quiet, sunny days of peace, with its venerable mane of cedar trees, it looks like a grand old lion lying down with its paw tenderly over a tired lamb. Or, it basks its broad side on the bank of the Avon, which photographs its walls and towers and turrets every bright day in the centuries. The castle is all intact and entire, with no part clean gone or going to ruin. Inside and out, from end to end, it is the harmonious growth of many ages, and registers them in distinctive illustrations. It shows what can be done by a dozen generations of wealthy men, inheriting an estate that doubles in income every half century. Here each branch of the wide-spreading family tree has hung in festooned clusters the foliage of its life, genius, and taste. Each has contributed its contingent to the magnificent whole to be handed down to a posterity which should cherish and adorn the heirloom of illustrious ancestors, and send it down the line of the future with added wealth and beauty. With such an anchorage to moor a family name and estate to, there is no wonder that both should attach their being, life, and treasures to it with a proud ambition of perpetuity. The name holds on as everlastingly as the estate. For the poorest man on earth must have some distant relation, and the richest man's son would take the name of the twentieth cousin to inherit the title and castle of Warwick. However thin and attenuated ​may be the line of blood relationship between these families, the favoured heir to this baronial rank and wealth gathers within his coronet all the memories and distinctions and even relationships of his predecessors all the way back to the Conquest. He is the heir of all of them. Saxon, Dane, and Norman converge into his status and blend in his being. Just glance at the succession which the present Earl of Warwick represents. Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great, built a fort here in 914. Under the Danish regime this and the town came into the ownership and rule of a nobleman by the name of Thurkil, or, as it was originally spelt, Thorkill, a name that figured in the old Icelandic sagas. He was ousted by William the Conqueror to make room for one of his followers, Henry de Newburgh, originally from Flanders judging from his name. He rebuilt or perhaps enlarged the castle which Thorkill had erected on the foundation laid for him by the Saxon lady, Ethelfleda. This Henry de Newburgh became the first Earl of Warwick. The title and estate thence descended through the families, Le Plessetis, Maudit, De Beauchamp, Nevill, Plantagenet, Dudley, Rich, and Greville, the family name of the present earl. All these noblemen added each to what he found, both to building and its adornment. And here we see most of their external and interior contributions. The ​great body of the castle itself, viewed detached from its grand surrounding walls and towers, presents no very salient features. It is a long range of buildings, with a straight front on the river. It never had the imposing and varied frontage of Dudley Castle in its day, or the palace halls that flanked the great tower of Kenilworth. But in its large, straight suite of lofty apartments you have a museum of objects illustrating the tastes, habits, fashions, luxuries, and arts of all the ages and generations which those massive walls have seen. Passing from end to end you may gauge English history for seven centuries with an observing glance through these objects. Here the white-winged dove of Peace has made her nest in the rusty and battered helmet of grim-visaged War.
On entering the Great Hall one is deeply impressed with its capacious faculty of hospitable entertainment. Truly, if tables were ever spread from end to end, a regiment of guests must have sat down to the banquet. It is sixty-two feet in length, forty in breadth, and the roofage of it is lofty and done in elaborate Gothic, rich in carving and other ornament. Here are the coronets and shields of all the earls back to Henry de Newburgh, who seem to look down upon the company below through their cognizances, as if represented in and countenancing all the generous hospitalities their living heir is disposed to give. ​The walls are wainscoted with the brave old English oak, far advanced in its seeming transformation into ebony. All you ever read in romance or veritable history about halls hung with armour of crusaders and other knightly raiders, interspersed with spoils of the chase, is here realized in full; and you see that even Sir Walter Scott has not exaggerated the fact in this respect. Conspicuous on the genealogical tree of these weapons and outfittings for war, is the helmet usually worn, says the loyal guide-book, "by the usurper Cromwell." Here, too, is the doublet in which Lord Brooke was killed at Lichfield, in 1643. Three great Gothic windows are set out in deep recesses, as if to embrace and welcome the first and last light of the day, and to soften and diffuse it, a tinted smile, over the spacious apartment and its embellishments. But if the outside world smiles inward through these great windows so graciously, their outward vision opens upon a scene of exquisite beauty, which few can be found to equal. Here a vista deploys before the view full of all the attractions that nature and art can give to a landscape. What a pier-glass is to the richest drawing-room, the gentle and classic Avon is to this variegated scenery, as a portion of it, and as a reflecting medium of all its other features. It meanders through the landscape as a limpid hem to lawn, field, grove, ​garden, and forest; now flashing a silver radiance, now one of gold upon the robe it adorns, just as the sun's rays vary in their fall and flood. Right before the face and eyes of the castle, the river forms a great brooch of emerald, or a little green island, which may be taken for its coat of arms, or cognizance, much older and nobler than any hung up in the Great Hall. Then the soft and level river, looking half asleep, or checking its flow in the presence of these human antiquities, just below them arises and stands on its feet, showing a stature 100 feet high in a cascade that sings a kind of lullaby to the by-gone ages whose spirits haunt the castle. It was in these grounds that, in 1846. I saw for the first time a real cedar of Lebanon, and I never shall forget the impression it made upon me. Here they stood, grand and venerable, with their long low arms extended as if pronouncing "a benediction after prayer" upon the green lawn that mirrored their august entourage. Here they stood singing the same old song they sang to David on Mount Lebanon. It was a mere fancy; but I listened to the soughing murmur with the thought that they were reciting to each other some of his best psalms of praise and thanksgiving.
From the Great Hall you have a vista of state rooms on one side, and private or family rooms on the other, extending in a straight line for ​333 feet. All these apartments, large and small, are adorned and enriched with specimens of high art and high labour collected by all the families that have owned and occupied the estate. Ιn some respects, each room, if not the museum, is the mirror of its age. Armour and articles of luxurious or antique furniture divide with pictures of the same dates the admiration of the visiter. Here is the celebrated painting of Charles I, by Vandyck, for which Sir Joshua Reynolds offered to pay 500 guineas in his time. How much it would bring under the hammer to-day those who know the existing furore for the old masters may easily estimate. And all the old masters are here, represented each in several of the pictures that made their fame. In fact a national gallery of paintings, of creditable number and variety, might be filled from the treasures of the art exhibited in these splendid apartments. Here figure Rubens, Rembrandt, Vandyck, Salvator Rosa, Guido, Murillo, David, and other great artists of different ages, schools, and countries. Then, as the frame-work of all these pictures, you see the artistry of the chisel, or carved work in wood and stone of contemporary schools in that department. Then the garnered treasures collected by these various branches of the family, purchased in different centuries and countries, are arranged in happy taste and harmony with the ​pictorial adornments. Wardrobes, cabinets, tables, and all the articles of luxurious furniture found in palaces. English or Continental, modern or ancient, are here in all their variety and curious workmanship. The "Kenilworth Buffet," a work which attracted so much admiration in the Great Exhibition of 1851, is a master-piece of design and execution. It is Kenilworth and its romantic history, with the principal acts and actors of its Elizabethan drama, carved in oak from a tree that stood a green, tall sentinel of nature at the time to witness the festive scenes. Even Elizabeth's meeting with Amy Robsart, and her interview with Leicester after the exposure of his faithlessness, are done to the life by the carver's chisel.
Two objects connected with Warwick Castle every one, young or old, who visits it, will remember perhaps most distinctively. They are the "Guy's porridge-pot" and the great marble Vase. Both are of prodigious capacity, the very Gog and Magog of all hollow-ware. The Irishman who called the donkey the father of all rabbits would call this large porridge-pot the father of all kettles. Its history cannot be got out of it by the grave and solemn thumpings that the old woman gives its massive sides. So it is ascribed to the great Guy's time and to his personal use. As ornithologists deduce the size and habits of some ​prehistoric bird by a single foot-track in petrified clay, so the size, strength, and other capacities of that legendary giant are deduced from the size of this remarkable pot. The analogy might seem reasonable to many simple-minded people. Surely no man could be less than eight feet and a half high who needed such a kettle for cooking for himself and family, even if his children were nearly as large as himself. And this is the size accorded to that prehistoric hero. He was one of those amphibious beings who, like King Arthur, have lived in the misty border-land of history, half substance and half shadow, but projecting a full human outline upon the spectrum of by-gone centuries. The history of the Great Vase is more ancient and uncertain still. It is of white marble, executed in the purest Grecian order of conception and art. It is truly a mighty goblet, with two handles of intertwisted vine-branches and wreathed and crowned with the tendrils, leaves, and clusters of the vineyard. It was fished up from the bottom of a lake near Tivoli by the British ambassador then at Naples, from whom it passed into the hands of the father of the present earl, who conveyed it to England and placed it in its present position.
The high and solid walls that enclose the castle, and their great towers, impress you with the realities of the ages they represent. Erected before ​gunpowder had been brought into the field of battle, they still look as if the builders anticipated its introduction and power; and they would stand a heavy battering now, old as they are, by common cannon. In a word. Warwick Castle is a structure which must grow more and more interesting from decade to decade. It is the only feudal palace left intact in England. It was ranked among the very best of them when they were all alive and strong over the land. It is associated with a name that stands among the first in the Norman aristocracy. Its location in itself is deeply interesting. Shakespeare breathed an inspiration upon the little Avon that laves its foundations, and gave to its name an immortality more vital and beautiful than the Tiber's. All these aspects and associations are becoming more and more widely appreciated, and the footfall of visiters from distant countries crossing the threshold will grow more and more frequent as the readers of English history and romance increase in both hemispheres.
But Warwick is not all castle. Far from it. It is a goodly, venerable town with a public character and history distinct from the castle. One of its streets, full a third of a mile in length, can hardly be surpassed in the country for neatness, tidy elegance, and picturesque variety and vista of architecture. Then there is a unique and happy ​feature to these streets, or the two main ones that intersect each other at right angles. They run into the heart of the town through the porches or between the feet of churches, as if all who entered or issued should pass under the cloud of sanctuary influence. St. Mary's is the great, commanding edifice, and a kind of Westminster Abbey to the noble families of the castle. Most of the building is comparatively modern, and fails to impress you with the sense of venerable antiquity. The tower is a lofty, massive structure, standing on four feet, between two of which the main street passes; so that doubtless loads of hay are frequently seen going through the porch on the way to market. The church itself is a spacious building and creditable to modern architecture, but presenting nothing impressive inside or out. But the choir, which is a part of the ancient edifice, is a beautiful structure. The groined ceiling overhead is a work of wonderful art. The ornate roofage is supported by long delicate branches that seem to grow out of the graceful trunks of the stone trees planted against the side walls on either side. They are called flying ribs, but are more like long taper fingers of white marble. In the centre of the choir lie on an altar-shape monument the full length effigies of Earl Thomas Beauchamp and his second countess, both clad in the costume of their time ​and rank. This is one of the very oldest of the baronial monuments, and yet, though the figures are done in plaster, they have all the enamel-looking surface and lustre of marble. The earl died at Calais in 1370, and if he really did erect this choir in his day, or provide the money and genius for its erection, he richly deserved the monument that perpetuates his name.
The Beauchamp Chapel is, however, the distinguishing feature of the church. It is a kind of Henry VII Chapel, in which the Warwick earls have costly monuments wrought to most ornate elaboration. It is a little church of itself, more capacious than several built for small villages in remote districts. It is fifty-eight feet long, twenty-five wide, and thirty-two high, and would seat a strong force of monks and other ecclesiastics assembled to pray for the peace of the dead. It may give some idea of the labour bestowed upon this mausoleum chapel to state, that it occupied twenty-one years in building, and cost about £2,500, when wheat was fivepence a bushel. The centre and subordinating monument is the one consecrated to the founder of the chapel. Richard Beauchamp, who died in Rouen in 1434. It is a remarkable work, and would at the present day be considered a rich specimen of workmanship. It is an altar-tomb of Purbeck marble, on which, as a bed, lies the full length form of the ​doughty earl clad cap-a-pie in gilt armour. Everything is brass of the first quality. It must have been of the purest kind to preserve such a natural polish. The slab of solid brass laid over the marble tomb on which the figure rests, is several inches thick, bearing inscribed on its edge all the way round quite a history of the earl. Then over the form is a brass structure, consisting of long poles of the metal hooped with gilt bands, representing the hearse used at the time. It is some satisfaction that the old Norman chieftain spoke English, and that those to whom he willed his memory in special charge were not ashamed of the language of the country, rude as it was. Unlike the pretentious pedants of later times, they regarded it good enough for the epitaph of one of the greatest men of the age. In this epitaph, which makes a good sized printed page when copied from the brass, it is stated that he was "visited with longe sicknes in the castel of Roan, therinne decessed ful cristenly the last day of April, the yer of oure lord god A. MCCCCXXXIV, he being at that tyme Lieutenant gen'al and governer of the Roialme of FFraunce and of the Duchie of Normandie"; and then it goes on to remind the reader of some geographical incidents connected with the transportation of his remains; "the whuch body with grete deliberacion and ful worshipful conduit Bi see and by lond was ​broght to Warrewiks." In the sides of the marble tomb supporting this brazen image and its funeral surroundings, are carved fourteen figures of lords and ladies, representing not only the Earl's children and nearest of kin, but distant posterity, who are to constitute a body guard of "weepers" for the dead. One of these is a rather remote descendant, or the famous "King-maker," who is here represented clad in a half-monkish habit, with a long face of artificial sorrow, looking as if he had just been taking a double pinch of snuff to force a little moisture from his eyes.
And here in this gorgeous chapel, even a man well read in English history will be at a loss how to conjugate the moods and tenses of this Warwick family. Indeed, ten chances to one, he will find himself at sea as to their distinctive individualities when standing by their separate or blended monuments. To begin with, there is the legendary Guy and the historic Guy, the Saxon of King Arthur's century, and the Norman who fought at Falkirk, and cut off the head of Piers Gaveston, the favourite of King Edward I, who had "called him names," such as "The Black Hound of Arden." Then we have two illustrious "Richards," easily to be confounded in one nebula of reputation. Here is the Richard that founded this chapel, and lies in solid brass on this tomb over a long posterity weeping in marble beneath. ​Then there is the Richard the King-maker, who figures on such a large scale in English history and romance. Then there is that most remarkable young man. Henry de Beauchamp, son of the earl in brass, who was married at about twelve and began to reign in his father's stead at fourteen, created premier Earl of England at nineteen, made Duke of Warwick, crowned King of the Isle of Wight. Governor of all the Channel Islands, and succumbed and died under the Pelion-upon-Ossa of these ponderous dignities at twenty-two years of age. Then there is the stalwart carl that founded the choir, and lies there with his countess in graceful images of well-enamelled plaster. Seemingly he was the bravest of them all. He was one of the chief commanders under the Black Prince at Cressy; fought terribly at Poietiers, and afterwards in the Crusades, and was regarded a cœur de lion by friends and foes. Now I should like to know how many well-read men in a hundred could stand among those monuments, and say off-hand which of these celebrated chieftains was the "Great Earl of Warwick," of whom the world has heard so much.
But here against the north wall of the chapel is the monument of one of the family about whom there is no mist or mistake as to his individuality. Here is one whose memory has a more enduring monument than any other man that ever wore ​his name or the Bear and Ragged Staff. Robert Dudley. Earl of Leicester, lies here in effigy side by side with his Countess Lætitia. It is a superb monument, full of elaborate allegory, device, emblem, and inscription, and all the beautifully carved symbols of posthumous piety, faith, and hope. At the close of the long inscription in Latin, detailing the dignities and titles worn by him in his lifetime, it is stated that "He gave up his soul to God his Saviour on the 4th day of September, in the year of salvation, 1588." This monument was put up by "His most sorrowful wife. Lætitia, through a sense of conjugal love and fidelity to the best and dearest of husbands."
Close by stands the tomb of the Earl of Leicester's brother. Ambrose, a far better man. It was also erected to his memory by "His last and wel-beloved wiefe ye Lady Anne Coventes of Warr: in further testimony of her faythfvll love towardes him." Doubtless he was more faithful to her than his brother was to one or more of his wives. In or against the south wall of the chapel is the monument of the infant and only son of the Earl of Leicester, with his small and innocent effigy dressed in the peculiar long clothes of his time. Poor little fellow! few small human beings were ever born to such titles as are recorded in the inscription assigned to his memory. It calls him "the noble Impe Robert of Dudley, ​bar of Denbigh, son of Robert Earl of Leycester," and after recounting the dignities he would have worn, states that he died at Wanstead. Essex, in 1584, "beinge the xxvith yere of the happy reigne of the most virtvoves and Godly Princis Queen Elizabethe, and in this place layed up emonge his noble avncestors, in the assured hope of generall resyrrection."
Leaving these tombs of the Warwicks, we next visited what may be called the crypt of the choir, but which perhaps in Saxon times was the place of worship. It showed its old Saxon lineage of architecture in its columns and arches, and doubtless constituted the foundation for the Norman superstructure. In side apartments or capacious vaults are deposited the remains of several of the Warwick baronial families. One of these has been walled up, after having been filled with a hundred coffins. And that belonging to the present family has already received eighteen contributions to the silent companionship of the tomb. There is one object of unique interest preserved in this crypt, which will repay a visit to the church, if you notice nothing else. It is that compulsory bath-chair used in olden times, called the Ducking Stool. No machine at Brighton or Scarborough equals this in its douche capacity. It is a cross between the old chariot of the early Britons and common wheelbarrow. It has three solid ​wooden wheels, one leader and two abreast at the heavy axle. It is truly a massive affair, and must have been drawn by a donkey or full-sized horse. Above the two hind wheels a kind of rocking-chair is geared into the axle beams; not a rocking-chair in the sense of ease and comfort but a kind of perpendicular trap-door of very hard wood, to which evidently the subject of the salutary discipline was bound very fast. There is a tradition kept afloat with characteristic pertinacity that the subjects of this mode of correction were always women, such as scolds and other female termagants. The more is the shame and wrong if this be true; for the discipline was equally and even better fitted for confirmed wife-beaters and drunkards. Well, when the subject, male or female, was bound fast to the back of the chair, the wooden chariot was drawn down to the river or pond, and backed into the water up to the proper depth. Then the bolt or other fastening was withdrawn, and the prisoner was "rocked in the cradle of the deep" for half a minute or so, or long enough to cool down the fiery tempers or appetites which had led to such correction. It is a unique and interesting machine, and we studied its structure and working with great curiosity. It evidently had done the town some service for several generations; for the stout wooden wheels were much worn by use.
​The third building in the rank and age of interest is the Leicester Hospital. It is a unique edifice as well as institution. Hawthorne has given such a graphic description of both in "Our Old Home" that I will not undertake an extended notice of either. It is the best thing that Elizabeth's favourite ever did; and having done one of such large design and compass of benevolence, it should accrue to the credit of his memory. The buildings are as picturesque as possible. They are of the half-timbered order which all Englishmen, but few Americans, understand. For the benefit of the latter I have called it the skeleton order, or a house showing all its thigh-bones and ribs fleshless to the world. The front building is older than Leicester's day, and was once occupied as the halls of various guilds of the town. He added, by his bequests, a quadrangle of buildings with this old edifice for the front. Here twelve brethren and the master find a home of comfort, case, and quiet meditation. The brethren are to be selected from old, infirm, or superannuated soldiers from the four towns and villages, Warwick, Kenilworth, Stratford-on-Avon, Wooton-under-Edge, and Erlingham. In default of soldiers, other subjects of the bounty are admitted from these places. Each brother is allowed £80 per annum, besides the privileges of the house. Each has a separate apartment, well aired and ​lighted and comfortable; and, over and above all this, he can have his wife with him. Then there is the common kitchen, a brave place as ever a dozen old soldiers could desire to tell over to each other the strange experiences of their lives. One of the masters had bequeathed to this kitchen fraternity a copper mug which must hold at least two gallons of beer. What a curious volume of talk a short-hand reporter might take down while that huge mug was being emptied from brim to bottom! And there are men now among the brethren who can tell stories that would read well in print. We went into several of their rooms; one of which was occupied by a sharp-eyed old veteran who went out in the ship that conveyed Napoleon to St. Helena. He gave us several incidents of the passage, and gave us the posture in which the dethroned emperor used to sit in his chair on the deck. He said he showed a friendly regard to all the sailors and marines, and afterwards presented every one of them with a pair of shoes. I was struck with the sight of a familiar face in this old oak-ceiled room. There was a Connecticut clock, of the Jerome brand, looking very honestly at the old British soldier while he was recounting these experiences of his younger days. Indeed, nearly every room allotted to the brethren seemed to be furnished with one of these cheap wooden clocks, contrasting so ​singularly with the walls to which they were hung and other articles of olden furniture. Everywhere the Bear and Ragged Staff meets the visiter or inmate. Then there are the scripture and other mottoes noticed so pleasantly by Hawthorne, enjoining all sorts of Christian virtues and patriotic and brotherly sentiments.
Among the relics preserved and exhibited, there was a small one at which many must linger with peculiar interest. It is a piece of embroidery on silk wrought by the fingers of Amy Robsart. A few years ago an American, by the name of Connor, of New York, on seeing this small piece of her handy-work, left half a sovereign as his contribution to a frame for it. The brethren added each a small sum, and a deep, massive frame of carved oak, from Kenilworth Castle, was obtained, as black as ebony with age. In this it is now exhibited among other relics. The chapel of the hospital is a gem in its way, both of the earliest and very latest styles of architecture and embellishment. It is built over a deep cut or vaulted passage, through which runs one of the main streets. It has recently been renovated in its interior arrangements, and makes a beautiful little sanctuary, in which the brethren assemble for prayers daily. The "living" of the Master makes him a comfortable berth of £400 a year, with a good house for his rectory, and other ​perquisites. The celebrated Puritan reformer, Thomas Cartwright, was one if not the first master of the hospital, and after his several imprisonments for nonconformity, died here in 1663, and was buried in St. Mary's Church.
There are several other institutions as well as public buildings in Warwick which deserve even extended notice, but as considerable space has been given to more special and historical monuments of the town, I must pass on to other points of interest.
Leamington is a kind of Saratoga, and a resort for invalids of mild indisposition, and for wealthy and aristocratic sportsmen, and persons of leisure inclining more to the sports of society than those of the field. From time immemorial its waters were known to possess curative qualities; but their reputation and use were local for a long period. At last an intelligent shoemaker of the village, of an observant and philosophical turn of mind, became impressed with their value, and determined to make it known by the best evidence. His name was Benjamin Satchwell, and well did he turn the leaking seams of mineral waters to account. He made a record of the cures effected by them, which was better proof of their virtue than any chemist's analysis. This was published, and the notice of scientific men attracted to the subject. From that time Leamington began to ​grow to its expansion and elegance as a town. Baths, pump-rooms, concert and ball rooms, and all the other institutions usually provided to make such watering-places enjoyable to persons of feeble health or fashionable proclivities, abound here in their best attractions. And where these abound, if it may be said reverently, grace or the means of grace much more abound. The town is well provided with churches of all denominations, numbering several structures that do credit to the taste and liberality of the people. It has been for many years a somewhat favourite resort for Americans, not only for its waters and society, but for the picturesque and historical district of which it is the centre. Warwickshire is one of the most highly finished counties in England, both for its scenery and associations. And there is Hardly an inland town in the kingdom which embraces within the radius of a comfortable walk so many points of interest. Hawthorne seems to have cherished this impression, and the description he gives of his walks through the quiet and daisied fields to little ivy-netted churches in rural villages around Leamington, are full of the life and beauty of his best thoughts. The house he occupied in the town will doubtless be held in better memory by the inhabitants when they come to realize more clearly its worth to the world.
Stoneleigh Abbey is a place that well repays ​a visit, as many American travellers and tourists have often found to their great satisfaction. I went with Capern, my usual companion in these "Walks," to see it on a delightful April day, when the spring sun shone upon it and its surroundings with its blandest beams. Kenilworth is the nearest railway station, and from that point we made our way across the intervening fields by those endless footpaths which permeate apparently the whole island, as do its branching tendons the surface of an oak leaf. After following these into green-hedged lanes, thence into broad white roads, we came out upon the park gate, and into a full-faced view of the mansion. It is a stately, large, and elegant building, of modern structure and style, such as a block of the same length taken from the Rue Rivoli in Paris, or from the terraces of the west end of London would look if transported and planted in a rural landscape. Thus it does not present those external aspects which make the old Tudor style so prominent and unique, as, for example. Aston Hall, near Birmingham, with its quadrangle of irregular towers, gables, and turrets. But doubtless what is lost in this external picturesqueness of architecture is amply compensated by that capacity of internal grandeur and embellishment which the more modern style of building possesses. The landscape of the park is truly beautiful. The most interesting feature ​of it is the Avon, which intersects and embraces it. For it meanders about, now opening its arms and enfolding a little green island in front of the mansion, now dashing down in a broad cascade, a veritable minnehaha, or laughing water, that sends up into the wooded heights above its rollicking chatter.
We were particularly struck with the might and majesty of two or three grand old English oaks. One was truly a monarch or father of the forest. It wore a coat of mail, one of thickly woven knots from foot to crown. What a binding for that vast book of the centuries! Who shall unclasp that cover, and read the chronicles within that volume? He who does will doubtless turn over a thousand leaves, each standing for a year of Nature's registry. Having nothing else wherewith to span the circumference, we embraced the trunk, clasping it closely with our outstretched arms until the tips of our fingers met. We measured our united lengths twice and about three-fourths around the tree, making its circumference full thirty-two feet by this extemporized standard. There were other oaks green to the tips of the widest and highest branches with a foliage not their own. They presented a remarkable sight. Trees of ivy had grown up at their roots and ascended to their tops with their thick braids of netted tendrils. I never saw before ivy of such circumference and ​solidity of trunk. One measured three feet round at the bottom where it began to climb. Another flattened itself against the iron-clad oak, until its spread of solid wood was full three feet broad and six inches thick. The little green leaves with which it trims all the branches and twigs of the giant oak, are so many small dogstars heralding the approach of the great tree's own foliage. Parts of the old abbey still remain—the old gateway quite entire. The stables are of modern structure and constitute a kind of half moon of buildings, enclosing a space of a full half acre. With their gate-house, and the long covered walk extending to the mansion, they almost constitute a castle of themselves. Indeed, if they were ruined to the right aspect, they would attract visiters and admiration for their architecture and elegance of finish. As Lord Leigh was at home, we did not ask permission to see the interior of the house, which, from published accounts, must be fitted up with great taste, with all the luxuries and adornments which wealth can command.