The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-02-21
AT LAST, FAREWELL
From the Vale of Avon to the
Streets of New York.
NOTES OF A HOOSIER'S HOLIDAY
The Mother Country Has the Beauties of Ma
turlty-Bedf Warwick Castle
and Stratford- On-Avon

pool | felt an increasing regret, for it was
then that rural England was at the very
perfection of her summer beauty. In
June, walking some days in Bedfordshire,
| thought it in6e..fibably lovely, but it
was nothing to the same scene in August,
especially in the vale of the Ouse. Far as
the eye could sweep the country shone as
one continuous stretch of rich meadow,
park and garden, dotted with clear pools
and traversed by crystal streams, the white
cottages showing beautifully through the
trees. On the border of every village
stands the handsome parish church and
near it the rectory, almost buried in the
leafy mass of green. Most of the larger
villages have chimes, and as | sauntered
along the road or reclined by the hedge I
heard their various melodies sounding
every hour-melodies that float upon the
soft summer air in perfect harmony with
the landscape
The road is everywhere as smooth and
hard as our finest asphalt streets and
much whittier, and the hedges are so solid
that it seems man might walk along
their tops as on green wall. The little
plots of plowed ground are cultivated with
such care that scarcely weed is seen, and
everywhere about the dwellings every adj
vantage is taken to produce a softened
rural effect Even in the most compactly
built streets the English love of the rural
asserts itself-th1-cal boxes of earth in
the windows anu plants trailing down;
vines cover one end at least of the house
and make the windows seem to be framed
In green, while every secluded corner not
in use is set in grass. The exceptions are
about the brick yards and kilns, where the
people appear to live the same crowded and
slovenly life as is witnessed in many coal
mining towns in America. Even the road
sides bloom with fragrance, the fragrance
of sod and flowers.
need not describe the glories and won
ders of Warwick and it's castle; the quaint
street 400 years old; the great wall and
grove about the castle; the sunken road
which winds between rocky walls to the
castle arch; the great cedars of Lebanon
brought from the Holy Land by the Cru
saders and still fourishing on the bank of
the Avon, and the qveer old chambers, in
the most noted of which Piers Gaveston
was confined while waiting his death. All
those and the ride to Stratford-on-Avon,
the Shakesperean memorials, the Lucy
park and mansion. still the abode of the
Lucy family, and the arched gateway where
Shakespeare fixed those scurrilous lines.
may wait more convenient season, or the
Impatient reader may go to any standard
library for the standard description. 1t is
not in my line. Just now am more in
terested in the living.
One thing, however, should be mentioned.
chiefly because it is an encouragement to
the living. All England is sort of mu-
scum to him who cares for antiquities, and
every antiquity is an object lesson to prove
that mankind has improved And how
much it has improved! How human
ity has grown and broadered; how much
more rapidly than all others has our own
branch of it risen, and how much faster in
the last three centuries than ever before!
Ii any tourist doubts it let him go to the
Tower of London, for instance; let him sit
on the benches in the little park and look
at that little square of stone around which
they are grouped, and recall the facts of
which that stone is a mute witness Con-
slider these points: That only 300 years ago
an English king got rid of two undesirable
wives by the simple process of chopping off
their heads, and any number of men high
in place stood ready to help him: that he
got rid of two others by easy divorce, and
that this royal villain was regarded by his
subjects and addressed by Christian minis
tiers as 'divinely appointed" Goods vice
gerent, king by divine right" "the
Lords anointed," and so on ad nauseam.
Then consider that in this age the nation
was driven mad by the alleged wrongs of
Queen Caroline, and it will be seen what
fr-ov Il ~, d.
made.
1t is even so at Warwick castle. The
sunken road, which might have been de-
signed to trap the enemy, now winds be-
tween masses of ferns, which line the moist
rocks on each side, and is overarched by
magnificent trees, which createa perpetual
shade-the whole an ever fresh delight to
thousands of tourists every summer. The
narrow stone pathway on the Avon side of
the castle, once worn smooth by prisoners