Fayette County herald. [volume] (Washington [Washington Court House], Fayette County, O. [Ohio]) 1860-1???, 1878-10-17

NOTES OF EUROPEAN TRAVEL.
Interesting Extracts from Private
Letters of Miss Kate NIillikan to
her Family.
MELRosE. Aug. %. 1873.

the old, old colleges with their blackened,
battered walls, quaint tracery and gener-
ally venerable and decaying appearance
of departed grandeur and uppishness-
All Souls, Baliol and Brazen Nose; Cor
pus Christi and Christ Church, Exter;
the remarkable New Chapel with its gar
den, Lincoln, St. John and Jesus. Marion
and Magdalen, 'Orvi' and Queens, Penn
broke, Wadham, University, Worcester,
Trinity the Bodleian and Radcliffe Libra
ries. How wish was foot free, to stay
here always, and study the worn and
battered old walls till they become as IA
miliar as the faces of friends; to watch
them crumbling year by year, as the moss
and Iichens and weeds gain stronger
foOthold in the lapse of time. The old
gargoYles are mostly indistinct proiec-
tiOns from the walls, the tooth of time has
gnawed away their features and moses
fill the eyes and fringe the grinning ,ghast-
ly memento of departed glory and amb =
ton, while the pigeons coo all day long
among the towers, spires and terraces,
and all is peace.
One sympathises with Hawthorne's des-
pair to see such place and ever to leave
it, for it would take lifetime-and more
than one-to comprehend and satisfacto-
rily enjoy it. Once more on the railway,
we whizzed through Banbury, of Hot
Cross Bun fame, and at midnight stop
ped at beautiful bennington, beloved
alike by tourists, fashionables and inva-
lids. Its twelve medicinal springs, it's
charming parks, walks, drives and shady
streets making a sweet picture, to which,
the next morning, we bade adieu, with
regret. and whirled past Warriek and
Kenilworth without a chance to stop and
visit them, on our way to Stratford on
2 won, Shakspeare's home, which Bar
tI3m was on the point of buying-with
+ intention of Shipping it bodily to Amer
ica-when the sleepy Brelons awOke to
the fact that a priceless treasure was
about slipping from their grasp, ,and forth
with had it repaired and re-inhabited, by
a couple of ancient ladies with voluble
tongues, who exhibited everything for
sixpense-after the preliminary exercise
of inscribing names in the visitors re-
cord. We went up stairs and peeped
through the latticed windows at the
lovely landscape basking in the smiling
sunlight, and which, doubtless, fed the
inspirations of the juvenile poet; then
through the Oddly-built, OBVIOUSLY wind
ing streets, past the school buildings, to
the 'FNew House," which is no house at
all, but only the site where once stood
the home of Shakespeare and Anne Hath
eway, of whom the tender stripping once
wrote:
''She hath a way, Anne Hathaway
To make1ife love. Anne Hathaway"
In later days, before Stratford on Avon
became Mecca to tourists, this place fell
into the hands of some cid curmudgeon,
whose name has properly perished, and
whose spite was vented on Shakspeare's
mulberry tree, and caused it to be lop-
ped down root and branch; because, for
sooth, people would come and beg for a
leaf or a twig from Shakspeare's tree
The house next fell under his displeasure,
and he had it razed to the ground; and
now only few brick, carefully covered
with iron screens, remain of the home
of Shakespeare; and around the iron rail
ing which protects this little plot, the
| Shakespeare devotees gather and peer, and
abstract sacred little blades of grass and
clover-leaves which they treasure up and
carry home, much as a catholic saint
would treasure bit of the 'True Cross.
Past an old church by pleasant winding
walk, made more pleasant by ivy-covered
walls on one hand and venerable trees Oh
| the other, we reached the old church
yard, and passing up lime-shaded aven
/ ue, with the Avon ripping peacefully
along by the walls, we were ushered int
the church, in the north chancel of which
repose the ashes of the poet, together will
his wife, two daughters and grand-daugh
ters; above is memorial tablet repre-
senting the poet, but very unlike our idea
pictures of Shakespeare. Upon the flag
stone which rests over his remains are in
scribed these lines:
Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
| To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man who spares these stones,
And cursed be he who moves my bones.
The writer is rather proud to record tina
On the opposite wall is the memorial tai
let of one of her Birkenhead ancestors
With hands full of surreptitiously oil
tanned ivy, we sauntered back to the sta
ton and spent an hour or more, till th
struggling party collected, and the trai
came laundering in the shimmering sur
light. A mile away lay Shottery, Ami
Hathaway's heme, and reached by pea
ant foot-path through the fields; but, fl
lack of time, we could not go there
Once more on the cars, through Birmin,
ham, Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton an
Wellington, to the quaint old town
Chester, where you are puzzled to kno
/ if the roadway is down in. the cellar or
) you are up stairs on the landing, or if tt
streets have turned themselves out of IL
windows. We wandered around ar
around the ancient churches, built ar
rebuilt so many times, while the quail
old gargoyles are here and there still r
= naming, vacant, grinning, CHASTITY m
mentoes of the chronicled and unchro
: icled events which have occurred in q
these centuries since they were first fas
ioned from the solid rock by the engr
ver's hands, which mouldered to du
nunufeuS OF years Since, WnIlSG Ine
works live and endure and are eloque
in their silence. Could they but spea
what tales they might unfold to us of t
: past, events which they have mutely W
messed through these six hundred al
more years.
Friday morning we were again on o
way northward by Wigan, Preston, Cal
forth, Lancaster, Carlisle and KershO
T. Foot, where we crossed the Scottish bC
der and entered the Braes of Broom a
Heather, and mountains dark with raj
The slopes were purple with Broom, he
and there glowing yellow with Furze
At Penrith we passed the ruins of ancie