St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1890-10-09
Gbe Californian
ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

EDITOR CALIFORNIAN:
once read of a newspaper that
announced that it would publish
original poetry on the same terms as
advertisements. | do not know
whether the Caledonian has an
equally enlightened and humane pol
icy in regard to original letters or
not. If not, / propose to take adj
vantage of that fact and at the same
time become one of the pretexts for
the adoption by it of some such be-
neficent regulation in the future
Ulysses had his Homer and John
son his Boswell. 1t naturally occurs
to us then that we should have our
chronicle even though he necessarily
be somewhat of an autobiograplIical
one Since we left home nearly eight
weeks ago we have been looking most
of the time at an ever-changIng pan
Drama as well as playing the roll of
perpetual motion machines; but now
that we have drawn up for few
weeks stay in quiet, peaceful, red
rooted German city. we have time to
speak with our occidental friends;
and, indeed, amid this modern Babel,
the German tongue, we gladly cease
our frantic and furious attempts a
joining into the linguistic life of this
community and find in our pen and
paper a genuine solace.
Though we've kissed the Barney
stone and sat in Shakespeare seat
in the chimney corner, yet we do not
feel an inspiration at all commensr-
rate with the Importance of the sub
jects we have to describe. Irving
says, that to an American visiting
Europe, the long voyage he has to
make is an excellent preparat1ve, the
temporary absence of worldly scenes
producing a state of mind peculiarly
fitted to receive new and vivid i'm
pressions. Such, indeed, was our ex-
perience. Our first steps on British
lawn as rich, soft and yielding as
velvet, and our first glimpse of a
British castle, looking out from
among its clump of trees and its ivy
dress, were events in our lives that
will not soon drift out of remem-
brance There is a beauty in English
landscape and a charm in English
story as one reads them in her great
historic buildings and places, her fall
ing towers, her ruined castles, and
her city walls, rare remnants of an
tiquity, silent reminders of the past,
that one cannot soon forget. | do
not feel as that American who, when
asked how he liked the ruins of Pom
peii, replied Not very well, they re
so dreadfully out of repair" In fact
| wish that that contemplating Yankee
who proposed to buy the Arc de
Triomphe of Paris and Shakespeare
house of Stratford and exhibit them
in America, would include among his
purchases some of these lovely lawns
and fascinating ruins
They have a way over here of di7
viding their fields by hedges and all
along these lines of division theyal-
low their old elms and lines to grow,
and thus a scenery which would soon
become mOnOtonous in a setting Of
barbed wire fences is made /ra Their
constant delight to the eye. In Ire
land, which is not as leTel, in many
parts at least, as England, one is
often constrained to think that even
nature has been affected by the
amusements of her more ingenious
daughters and has thrown over her
hillsides a selfnade crazy quilt, so
many and SO irregular are its fields
thus stitched together, as it were,
with green thread. But | do not
wish to give the impression that
Great Britain is made up mostly of
lawns and ruins, for this would be a
trifle misleading and visit to such a
city as Edinburgh would conf1it
somewhat with such a criticism.
Edinburgh. as the travellers K ran,
Baedeker's guide book says, is one
of the most economically beautiful
cities of Europe We were there three
days and sighed for a snow storm,
railroad strike or some of the equally
effective combination of circumstan-
ces, compelling us to stay there lon
ger. 1t has population of 100000
people, is the seat of the administra-
tive and judicial authorities of Scot
land, is a great centre of the printing,
publishing and book trades, and
boasts splendid University Itcon-
SiSts of what are known as the old
town and the new town, the former,
once the seat of wealth and fashion,
now resigned to the poorer people,
has been immortalized by Sir Walter
Scott. 1t has one street in which al
most every stone and brick has
story to tell. AT one end is the castle
finely situated on the summit of
bold rock. Here the Scottish kings
lived at times, and here they now
show the Scottish regalia, crown and
sceptres, badges and swords, and
here they point out the room in which
James | was born, and the window
from which he is said to have been
lowered over a hundred feet down
the side of a sheer rock to be an
nointed into the Catholic faith. We
always believed what anyone told us
regarding places as we fancied that
thereby we were adding to the sum
total of our trip.
Leaving the castle and going down
the street one comes to St Giles
church, where John Knox often
preached and where Jenny Geddes
threw her stool at Dean Hanna,
which famous event is commemora-
ted by a tablet on one of the pillars
and which famous stool is preserved
in the Antiquarian Museum. Further
on in the pavement is a figure of a
heart-the heart of Midlothian. Then
comes the old Parliament house, for
merly the place of meeting for the
Scottish parliament, now used by
the supreme law courts and frequent
ly by barristers in wigs and gowns
There little further still is the house
in which John Knox, stern, fearless,
bold uncOmDrOmiSiup. ever fierce