Classic Audiobook Collection - Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne ~ Full Audiobook [history]

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne audiobook. Genre: history In Our Old Home, Nathaniel Hawthorne turns a diplomat's posting into a quietly sharp-eyed journey through the landscapes, streets, and social rituals of mid-19th-century England. Writing as an American abroad, Hawthorne wanders from foggy port cities to country lanes and ancient manor grounds, lingering over everyday scenes that reveal a nation shaped by tradition, class, and history. He observes public ceremonies and private manners with a mix of curiosity, restraint, and occasional impatience, weighing the comfort of inherited culture against the stifling pull of convention. Along the way, he revisits places and stories that have long haunted the American imagination, testing romantic expectations against what he actually finds: weathered stone, bustling commerce, guarded courtesies, and the persistent presence of the past. Part travelogue, part cultural portrait, and part personal reflection, these sketches explore what it means to call a place home when your roots and your ideals belong to a newer world. The central tension is Hawthorne's own: admiration and skepticism, nostalgia and distance, as he tries to understand the old country without surrendering his American self. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:29:15) Chapter 02 (01:02:06) Chapter 03 (01:25:39) Chapter 04 (01:47:05) Chapter 05 (02:19:16) Chapter 06 (02:48:12) Chapter 07 (03:14:13) Chapter 08 (03:47:36) Chapter 09 (04:23:48) Chapter 10 (05:06:54) Chapter 11 (05:41:34) Chapter 12 (06:09:19) Chapter 13 (06:35:57) Chapter 14 (07:08:15) Chapter 15 (07:56:47) Chapter 16 (08:32:03) Chapter 17 (09:08:17) Chapter 18 (09:42:18) Chapter 19 (10:28:42) Chapter 20 (11:06:48) Chapter 21 (11:45:38) Chapter 22 (12:08:44) Chapter 23 (12:32:08) Chapter 24 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 1. To Franklin Pierce, as a slight memorial of college friendship, prolonged through manhood, and retaining all its vitality in our autumnal years, this volume is inscribed by Nathaniel Hawthorne. To a friend. I have not asked your consent, my dear general, to the foregoing inscription, because it would have been no inconsiderable disappointment to me had you withheld it, for I have long desired to connect your name with some book of mine in commemoration of an early friendship that has grown old

between two individuals of widely dissimilar pursuits and fortunes. I only wish that the offering were a worthier one than this volume of sketches, which certainly are not of a kind likely to prove interesting to a statesman in retirement, inasmuch as they meddle with no matters of policy or government, and have very little to say about the deeper traits of national care. character. In their humble way, they belong entirely to aesthetic literature, and can achieve no higher success than to represent to the American reader a few of the external aspects of English scenery and life, especially those that are touched with the antique charm to which our countrymen are more susceptible than are the people among whom it is of native growth. I once hoped, indeed, that so slight a volume would not be all that I might write. these and other sketches with which, in a somewhat rougher form than I have given them here,

my journal was copiously filled, were intended for the side scenes and backgrounds and exterior adornment of a work of fiction, of which the plan had imperfectly developed itself in my mind, and into which I ambitiously proposed to convey more of various modes of truth than I could have grasped by a direct effort. Of course, I should not mention this abortive project, only that it has been utterly thrown aside and will never now be accomplished. The present, the immediate, the actual, has proved too potent for me. It takes away not only my scanty faculty, but even my desire for imaginative composition, and leaves me sadly content to scatter a thousand peaceful fantasies

upon the hurricane that is sweeping us all along with it, possibly into a limbo where our nation and its polity may be as literally the fragments of a shattered dream as my unwritten romance. But I have far better hopes for our dear country, and for my individual share of the catastrophe, I afflict myself little or not at all, and shall easily find room for the abortive work on a certain ideal shelf, where are reposited many other shadowy volumes of mine, more in number and very much superior in quality, to those which I have succeeded in rendering actual. To return to these poor sketches, some of my friends have told me that they evince an asperity of sentiment towards the English people which I ought not to feel, and which it is

highly inexpedient to express. The charge surprises me, because if it be true, I have written from a shallower mood than I supposed. I seldom came into personal relations with an Englishman without beginning to like him, and feeling my favorable impression wax stronger with the progress of the acquaintance. I never stood in an English crowd without being conscious of hereditary sympathies. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that an American is continually thrown upon his national antagonism by some acrid quality in the moral atmosphere of England. These people sink so loftily of themselves,

and so contemptuously of everybody else, that it requires more generosity than I possess to keep always in perfectly good humor with them. Jotting down the little acrimonies of the moment in my journal, and transferring them thence, when they happen to be tolerably well expressed, to these pages, it is very possible that I may have said things which a profound observer of national character

would hesitate to sanction, though never any, I verily believe, that had not more or less of truth. If they be true, there is no reason in the world why they should not be said. Not an Englishman of them all ever spared America for courtesy's sake or kindness, nor, in my opinion, would it contribute in the least to our mutual advantage and comfort if we were to besmear one another all over with butter and honey. At any rate, we must not judge of an Englishman's susceptibilities by our own, which, likewise I trust, are of a far less sensitive texture than formerly. And now farewell, my dear friend, and excuse, if you think it needs any excuse,

the freedom with which I thus publicly assert a personal friendship between a private individual and a statesman, who has filled what was then, the most August position in the world. But I dedicate my book to the friend, and shall defer a colloquy with a statesman till some calmer and sunnier hour. Only this let me say that,

with the record of your life in my memory, and with a sense of your character and my deeper consciousness as among the few things that time has left as it found them, I need no assurance that you continue faithful forever to that grand idea of an irrevocable union, which, as you once told me, was the earliest that your brave father taught you.

For other men there may be a choice of paths, for you but one, and it rests among my certainties that no man's loyalty is more steadfast, no man's hopes or apprehensions on behalf of our national existence more deeply heartfelt, or more closely intertwined with his possibilities of personal happiness than those of frankly. Piers. The Wayside, July 2, 1863. Consular Experiences The Consulate of the United States in my day was located in Washington buildings, a shabby and smoke-stained edifice of four stories high, thus illustriously named in honor

of our national establishment, at the lower corner of Brunswick Street, contiguous to the gory arcade, and in the neighborhood of some of the old docks. This was by no means a polite or elegant portion of England's great commercial city, nor were the apartments of the American officials so splendid as to indicate the assumption of much consular pomp on his part. A narrow and ill-lighted staircase gave access to an equally narrow and ill-lighted passageway on the first floor, at the extremity of which, surmounting a door-frame, appeared an exceedingly stiff pictorial reverend. representation of the goose and gridiron, according to the English idea of those ever to be honored symbols.

The staircase and passageway were often thronged of a morning, with a set of beggarly and piratical-looking scoundrels. I do no wrong to our countrymen in styling them so, for not one in twenty was a genuine American, purporting to belong to our mercantile marine, and chiefly composed of Liverpool blackballers, and the scum of every maritime nation on earth, such being the seaman by whose assistance we then disputed the navigation of the world with England. These specimens of a most unfortunate class of people were shipwrecked crews in quest of bed, board, and clothing,

invalids asking permits for the hospital, bruised and bloody wretches complaining of ill-treatment by their officers, drunkards, desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, perplexingly intermingled with an uncertain proportion of reasonably honest men. All of them, save here and there a poor devil of a kidnapped landsman in his shore-going rags, wore red flannel shirts in which they had sweltered or shivered throughout the voyage, and all required consular assistance in one form or another. Any respectable visitor, if he could make up his mind to elbow a passage among these sea monsters,

was admitted into an outer office where he found more of the same species, explaining their respective wants or grievances to the vice-consul and clerks, while their shipmates awaited their turn outside the door. Passing through this exterior court, the stranger was ushered into an inner privacy where sat the consul himself, ready to give personal attention to such peculiarly difficult and more important cases, as might demand the exercise of what we will courteously suppose to be, his own higher judicial or administrative sagacity. It was an apartment of very moderate size, painted in imitation of oak, and duskily lighted by two windows looking across a by-street at the rough-border,

brick side of an immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and uglier structure than ever was built in America. On the walls of the room hung a large map of the United States, as they were twenty years ago, but seemed little likely to be twenty years hence, and a similar one of Great Britain, with its territory so provokingly compact that we may expect it to sink sooner than sunder. farther adornments were some rude engravings of our naval victories in the war of 1812, together with the Tennessee State House and a Hudson River steamer, and a colored, life-size lithograph of General Taylor, with an honest hideousness of aspect,

occupying the place of honor above the mantelpiece. On the top of a bookcase stood a fierce and terrible bust of General Jackson, "'pillaried in a military collar which rose above his ears, "'and frowning forth, immidigably, at any Englishman, "'who might happen to cross the threshold. "'I am afraid, however, that the truculence of the old general's expression "'was utterly thrown away on this stolid and obdurate race of men, "'for when they occasionally inquired whom this work of art represented,

"'I was mortified to find that the younger ones "'had never heard of the Battle of New Orleans, and that their elders had either forgotten it altogether, or contrived to misremember, and twist it wrong and foremost into something like an English victory. They have caught from the old Romans, whom they resemble in so many other characteristics, this excellent method of keeping the national glory intact by sweeping all defeats and humiliations clean out of their memory. Nevertheless, my patriotism forbade me to take down either the bust or the pictures, both because it seemed no more than right that an American consulate, being a little patch of our nationality embedded into the soil and institutions of England, should fairly represent the American taste in the fine arts, and because these decorations reminded me so delightfully of an old-fashioned American barbershop. one truly english object was a barometer hanging on the wall generally indicating one or another degree of disagreeable weather and so seldom pointing to fair that i began to consider that portion of its circle as made superfluously the deep chimney with its grate of betumines coal was english too as was also the chill temperature that sometimes called for a fire at midsummer and the fire at the fire

or smoky atmosphere, which, often, between November and March, compelled me to set the gas aflame at noon day. I am not aware of omitting anything important in the above-descriptive inventory, unless it be some bookshelves filled with Octavo volumes of the American statutes, and a good many pigeonholes stuffed with dusty communications from former secretaries of state and other official documents of similar value, constituting part of the archives of the consulate, which I might have done my successor a favor by flinging into the coal-grate. Yes, there was another article demanding prominent notice. The consular copy of the New Testament, bound in black Morocco and greasy, I fear,

with a daily succession of perjured kisses. At least I can hardly hope that all the ten thousand oaths administered by me between, two breaths to all sorts of people and on all manner of worldly business were reckoned by the swirer as if taken at his soul's peril such in short was the dusky and stifled chamber in which i spent wearily a considerable portion of more than four good years of my existence at first to be quite frank with the reader i looked upon it as not altogether fit to be tenanted by the commercial representative of so great and prosperous a country as the United States then were, and I should speedily have transferred my headquarters to airier and loftier apartments, except for the prudent consideration

that my government would have left me thus to support its dignity at my own personal expense. Besides, a long line of distinguished predecessors, of whom the latest is now a gallant general under the Union banner, had found the locality good enough for them, It might certainly be tolerated, therefore, by an individual so little ambitious of external magnificence as myself. So I settled quietly down, striking some of my roots into such soil as I could find, adapting myself to circumstances, and with so much success that, though from first to last, I hated the very sight of the little room, I should yet have felt a singular kind of reluctance in changing it for a bit.

better. Hither, in the course of my incumbency, came a great variety of visitors, principally Americans, but, including almost every other nationality on earth, especially the distressed and downfallen ones, like those of Poland and Hungary. Italian bandits, for so they looked, prescribed conspirators from old Spain, Spanish Americans, Cubans who professed to have stood by Lopez, and, narrowly escaped his fate, scarred French soldiers of the Second Republic,

in a word, all sufferers, or pretended ones, in the cause of liberty, all people homeless in the widest sense, those who never had a country, or had lost it, those whom their native land had impatiently flung off

for planning a better system of things than they were born to. A multitude of these, and doubtless, an equal number of jailbirds, outwardly of the same feather, sought the American consulate in hopes of at least a bit of bread, and perhaps to beg a passage to the blessed shores of freedom. In most cases there was nothing, and in any case distressingly little to be done for them. Neither was I of a proselyting disposition, nor desired to make my consulate a nucleus

for the vagrant discontents of other lands. and yet it was a proud thought, a forcible appeal to the sympathies of an American, that these unfortunates claimed the privileges of citizenship in our republic on the strength of the very same noble misdemeanors that had rendered them outlaws to their native despotisms. So I gave them what small help I could. Methinks the true patriots and martyr spirits of the whole world should have been conscious of a pang near the heart when a deadly, blow was aimed at the vitality of a country which they have felt to be their own in the last resort.

As for my countrymen, I grew better acquainted with many of our national characteristics during those four years than in all my preceding life. Whether brought more strikingly out by the contrast with English manners, or that my Yankee friends assumed an extra peculiarity from a sense of defiant patriotism, so it was. that their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even their figures and cast of countenance, all seemed chiseled in sharper angles than ever I had imagined them to be at home. It impressed me with an odd idea of having somehow lost the property of my own person, when I occasionally heard one of them speaking of me as my consul.

They often came to the consulate in parties of half a dozen or more, on no business whatever, but merely to subject their public servant to a rigid examination, and see how he was getting on with his duties. These interviews were rather formidable being characterized by a certain stiffness, which I felt to be sufficiently irksome at the moment, though it looks laughable enough in the retrospect. It is my firm belief that these fellow citizens possessing a native tendency to organization generally halted outside of the door

to elect a speaker, chairman, or moderator, and thus approached me with all the formalities of a deputation from the American people. After salutations on both sides, abrupt, awful, and severe on their part, and deprecatory on mine, and the national ceremony of shaking hands being duly gone through with

the interview preceded by a series of calm and well-considered questions or remarks from the spokesman, no other of the guests vouchsafing to utter a word, and diplomatic responses from the consul, who sometimes found the investigation a little more searching than he liked. I flatter myself, however, that by much practice I attained considerable skill in this kind of intercourse, the art of which lies in passing off commonplaces for new and valuable truths, and talking trash and emptiness in such a way that a pre-examination in such a way that a pretty acute auditor might mistake it for something solid. If there be any better method of

dealing with such junctures, when talk is to be created out of nothing, and within the scope of several minds at once, so that you cannot apply yourself to your interlocutor's individuality, I have not learned it. Sitting, as it were, in the gateway between the old world and the new, where the steamers and packets landed the greater part of our wandering countrymen and received them again when their wanderings were done, I saw that no people on earth have such vagabond habits as ourselves. The continental races never travel at all if they can help it, nor does an Englishman ever think of stirring abroad

unless he has the money to spare or proposes to himself some definite advantage from the journey. But it seemed to me that nothing was more common than for a young American deliberately to spend all his resources in an aesthetic peregrination about Europe, returning with pockets nearly empty to begin the world in earnest. It happened, indeed, much oftener than was at all agreeable to myself, that their funds held out just long enough to bring them to the door of my consulate, where they entered as if with an undeniable right to its shelter and protection, and required, at my hands to be sent home again. In my first simplicity, finding them gentlemanly in manners, passably educated, and only tempted a little beyond their means by a laudable desire of improving and refining themselves, or perhaps for the sake of getting better artistic instruction in music, painting, or sculpture than our country could supply, I sometimes took charge of them on my private responsibility, since our government gives itself no trouble about its stray children,

except the seafaring class. But after a few such experiments, discovering that none of these estimable and ingenuous young men, however trustworthy they might appear, ever dreamed of reimbursing the consul, I deemed it expedient to take another course with them. Applying myself to some friendly shipmaster, I engaged homeward passages on their behalf, with the understanding that they were to make themselves serviceable on shipboard, and I remember several very pathetic appeals from painters and musicians, touching the damage which their artistic fingers were likely to incur from handling the ropes. But my observation of so many heavier troubles left me very little tenderness for their finger-ends.

In time I grew to be reasonably hard-hearted, though it never was quite possible to leave a kind of countrymen with no shelter save an English poorhouse, when, as he invariably averred, he had only to set foot on his native soil to be possessed of ample funds. It was my ultimate conclusion, however, that American ingenuity may be pretty safely left to itself, and that, one way or another, a Yankee vagabond is certain to turn up at his own threshold, if he has any, without help of a consul, and perhaps be too much to be taken to the country. And perhaps be taught a lesson of foresight that may profit him hereafter. Among these stray Americans, I met with no other case so remarkable as that of an old man,

who is in the habit of visiting me once in a few months, and soberly affirmed that he had been wandering about England more than a quarter of a century, precisely twenty-seven years, I think, and all the while doing his utmost to get home again. Herman Melville, in his excellent novel or biography of Israel Potter, has an idea somewhat similar to this. The individual now in question was a mild and patient, but very ragged and pitiable old fellow, shabby beyond description, lean and hungry-looking, but with a large and somewhat red nose. He made no complaint of his ill-fortune, but only repeated in a quiet voice, with a pathos of which he was evidently unconscious. I want to get home to Ninety-Second Street, Philadelphia. He described himself as a

printer by trade, and said that he had come over when he was a younger man in the hope of bettering himself, and for the sake of seeing the old country, but had never since been rich enough to pay his homeward passage. His manner and accent did not quite convince me that he was an American, and I told him so, but he steadfastly affirmed, sir, I was born and have lived in Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia, and then went on to describe some public edifices and other local objects with which he used to be familiar, adding with the simplicity that touched me very closely, Sir, I had rather be there than here.

Though I still manifested a lingering doubt, he took no offense, replying with the same mild depression as at first, and insisting again and again on Ninety-Second Street. Up to the time when I saw him, he still got a little occasional job work at his trade, but subsisted mainly on such charity as he met with in his wanderings, shifting from place to place continually, and asking assistance to convey him to his native land. Possibly he was an imposter,

one of the multitudinous shapes of English vagabondism, and told his falsehood with such powerful simplicity, because by many repetitions he had convinced himself of its truth. But if, as I believe, the tale was fact, how very strange and sad was this old man's fate, homeless on a foreign shore, looking always towards his country, coming again and again to the point

whence so many were setting to sail for it, so many who would soon tread in Ninety-Second Street, losing in this long series of years some of the distinctive characteristics of an American, and at last dying and surrendering his clay to be a portion of the soil whence he could not escape in this lifetime. He appeared to see that he had moved me, but did not attempt to press his advantage with any new argument or any varied form of entreaty. had but scanty and scattered thoughts in his gray head, and in the intervals of those, like the refrain from an old ballad, came the monotonous burden of his appeal. If I could only find myself in Ninety-second Street, Philadelphia. But even his desire of getting home had ceased to be an ardent one, if indeed it had not always partaken of the dreamy sluggishness of his character, although it remained his only locomotive impulse, and perhaps the sole principle of

life that kept his blood from actual torpor. The poor old fellow's story seemed to me almost as worthy of being chanted in immortal song as that of Odysseus or Evangeline. I took his case into deep consideration, but dared not incur the moral responsibility of sending him across the sea at his age, after so many years of exile, when the very tradition of him had passed away, to find his friends dead or forgetful, or irretrievably vanished, and the whole country become more truly a foreign land to him than England was now, and even Ninety-Second Street, in the weed-like decay and growth of our localities, made over a third. anew and grown unrecognizable by his old eyes. That street so patiently longed for had

transferred itself to the new Jerusalem, and he must seek it there, contenting his slow heart, meanwhile, with the smoke-begrimed thoroughfares of English towns, or the green country lanes and by-paths with which his wanderings had made him familiar. For doubtless he had a beaten track, and was the long-remembered beggar now, with food and a roughly hospitable greeting ready for him, at many a farmhouse door, and his choice of lodging under a score of haystacks. In America nothing awaited him, but that worst form of disappointment which comes under the guise of a long-cherished and late-accomplished purpose, and then a year or two of dry and barren sojourn in an alms-house, and death among strangers at last, where he had imagined a

circle of familiar faces. So I contented myself with giving him alms, which he thankfully accepted, and went away with bent shoulders and an aspect of gentle forlornness, returning upon his orbit, however, after a few months, to tell the same sad and quiet story of his abode in England for more than 27 years, in all which time he had been endeavoring, and still endeavored as patiently as ever to find his way home to 92nd Street, Philadelphia. End of Section 1. Section 2 of Our Old Home. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 2.

consular experiences. I recollect another case of a more ridiculous order, but still with the foolish kind of pathos entangled in it, which impresses me now more forcibly than it did at the moment. One day a queer, stupid, good-natured, fat-faced individual came into my private room, dressed in a sky-blue cutaway coat and mixed trousers, both garments worn and shabby, and rather too small for his overgrown bulk. After a little preliminary talk, he turned out to be a country shopkeeper, from Connecticut, I think, who had left a flourishing business and come over to England purposely and solely to have an interview with the Queen.

Some years before he had named his two children, one for Her Majesty and the other for Prince Albert, and had transmitted photographs of the little people, as well as of his wife and himself to the illustrious godmother. the queen had gratefully acknowledged the favor in a letter under the hand of her private secretary. Now, the shopkeeper, like a great many other Americans, had long cherished a fantastic notion that he was one of the rightful heirs of a rich English estate, and on the strength of her majesty's letter and the hopes of royal patronage which it inspired, he had shut up his little country store and come over to claim his inheritance. On the voyage, a German fellow-passenger had relieved him of his money on pretense of getting it favorably exchanged, and had disappeared immediately on the ship's arrival, so that the poor fellow was compelled upon all his clothes, except the remarkably shabby ones in which I beheld him, and in which, as he himself hinted, with a melancholy yet good-natured smile, he did not look altogether fit to see the queen.

I agreed with him that the bob-tailed coat and mixed trousers constituted a very odd-looking court-dress, and suggested that it was doubtless his present purpose to get back to Connecticut as fast as possible. But no, the resolve to see the queen was as strong in him as ever, and it was marvelous the pertinacity with which he clung to it amid raggedness and starvation, and the earnestness of his supplication that I would supply him with him, funds for a suitable appearance at Windsor Castle. I never had so satisfactory a perception of a complete booby before in my life, and it caused me to feel kindly towards him, and yet impatient and exasperated on behalf of

common sense, which could not possibly tolerate that such an unimaginable donkey should exist. I laid his absurdity before him in the very plainest terms, but without either exciting his anger or shaking his resolution. Oh, my dear man, quoth he with good-natured, placid, simple, and tearful stubbornness, if you could but enter into my feelings and see the matter from beginning to end as I see it!

To confess the truth, I have since felt that I was hard-hearted to the poor simpleton, and that there was more weight in his remonstrance than I chose to be sensible of at the time, for, like many men who have been in the habit of making playthings or tools of their imagination and sensibility, I was too rigidly tenacious of what was reasonable in the affairs of real life. And even absurdity has its rights when,

as in this case, it has absorbed a human being's entire nature and purposes. I ought to have transmitted him to Mr. Buchanan in London, who, being a good-natured old gentleman, and anxious just then, to gratify the universal Yankee nation. might, for the joke's sake, have got him admittance to the Queen, who had fairly laid herself open to his visit, and has received hundreds of our countrymen on infinitely slighter grounds. But I was inexorable, being turned to Flint by the insufferable proximity of a fool, and refused to interfere with his business in any way except to procure him a passage home. I can see his face of mild, ridiculous despair at this moment,

and appreciate better than I could then, how awfully cruel he must have felt my obduracy to be. For years and years, the idea of an interview with Queen Victoria had haunted his poor foolish mind. And now, when he really stood on English ground, and the palace door was hanging a jar for him, he was expected to turn back,

a penniless and bamboozled simpleton, merely because an iron-hearted consul refused to lend him thirty-fews, shillings, so low had his demand ultimately sunk, to buy a second-class ticket on the rail for London. He visited the consulate several times afterwards, subsisting on a pittance that I allowed him in the hope of gradually starving him back to Connecticut, assailing me with the old petition at every opportunity, looking shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly good-tempered, mildly stubborn, and smiling through his tears, not without a perception of the ludicrousness of his own position. Finally, he disappeared altogether, and whither he had wandered, and whether he ever saw the

queen, or wasted quite a way in the endeavor, I never knew. But I remember unfolding the times about that period, with a daily dread of reading an account of a ragged Yankees' attempt to steal into Buckingham Palace, and how he smiled tearfully at his captors, and besought them to introduce him to her majesty. I submit to Mr. Secretary Seward that he ought to make diplomatic remonstrances to the British ministry, and require them to take such order that the Queen shall not any longer bewilder the wits of our poor compatriots by responding to their epistles and thanking them for their photographs. One circumstance in the foregoing incident, I mean the unhappy storekeeper's notion of establishing his claim to an English estate,

common to a great many other applications, personal or by letter, with which I was favored by my countrymen. The cause of this peculiar insanity lies deep in the Anglo-American heart. After all these bloody wars and vindictive animosities, we still have an unspeakable yearning towards England. When our forefathers left the old home, they pulled up many of their roots, but trailed along with them others, which were never snapped asunder by the tug of such a lengthening distance, nor have been torn out of the original soil by the violence of subsequent struggles, nor severed by the edge of the sword. Even so late as these days, they remain entangled with our heartstrings, and might often have influenced our national cause like the tiller ropes of a ship, if the rough grip of England had been capable of managing

so sensitive a kind of machinery. It has required nothing less than the boorishness, the stolidity, the self-sufficiency, the contemptuous jealousy, the half-sogacity, invariably blind of one eye, and often distorted of the other, that characterize this strange people to compel us to be a great nation in our own right, instead of continuing virtually, if not in name, a province of their small island. What pains did they take to shake us off, and have ever since taken to keep us wide apart from them? It might seem, therefore, but was really their fate, or rather the providence of God, who has doubtless a work for us to do, in which the massive materiality of the English character would have been too ponderous a dead weight upon our progress.

And besides, if England had been wise enough to twine our new vigor round her ancient strength, her power would have been too firmly established ever to yield in its due season, to the otherwise immutable law of imperial vicissitude. the earth might then have beheld the intolerable spectacle of a sovereignty and institutions imperfect but indestructible nationally there has ceased to be any peril of so inauspicious and yet outwardly attractive an amalgamation but as an individual the american is often conscious of the deep-rooted sympathies that belong more fitly to times gone by and feels a blind pathetic tendency to wander back again which makes itself evident in such wild dreams as i have alluded to above about english inheritances A mere coincidence of names, the Yankee one perhaps having been assumed by legislative permission, a supposititious pedigree, a silver mug on which an anciently engraved coat of arms has been half scrubbed out, a seal with an uncertain crest, an old yellow letter or document in faded ink,

the more scantily legible the better, rubbish of this kind found in a neglected drawer has been potent enough to turn the brain of many an honest republicans especially if assisted by an advertisement for lost airs cut out of a British newspaper. There is no estimating or believing till we come into a position to know it what foolery lurks latent in the breasts of very sensible people. Remembering such sober extravagances, I should not be at all surprised to find that I am myself guilty of some unsuspected absurdity that may appear to me the most suburbation. substantial trait in my character.

I might fill many pages with instances of this diseased American appetite for English soil. A respectable-looking woman, well advanced in life, of sour aspect, exceedingly homely, but decidedly New Englandish in figure and manners, came to my office with a great bundle of documents at the very first glimpse of which I apprehended something terrible. nor was I mistaken. The bundle contained evidences of her indubitable claim to the site on which Castle Street, the town hall, the exchange, and all the principal business part of Liverpool have long been situated, and with considerable peremptoriness, the good lady signified her expectation that I should take charge of her suit, and prosecute it to judgment, not, however, on the equitable condition of receiving half the value of the property, recovered, which, in case of complete success, would have made both of us ten or twenty-fold millionaires, but without recompense or reimbursement of legal expenses, solely as an incident of my official duty. Another time came two ladies bearing a letter of emphatic introduction

from His Excellency the Governor of their native state, who testified in most satisfactory factory terms to their social respectability. They were claimants of a great estate in Cheshire, and announced themselves as blood relatives of Queen Victoria, a point, however, which they deemed it expedient to keep in the background until their territorial rights should be established, apprehending that the Lord High Chancellor might otherwise be less likely to come to a fair decision in respect to them, from a probable disinclination to admit new members into the royal kin. Upon my honor, I imagine that they had an

eye to the possibility of the eventual succession of one or both of them to the crown of Great Britain through superiority of title over the Brunswick line, although being maiden ladies, like their predecessor Elizabeth, they could hardly have hoped to establish a

lasting dynasty upon the throne. It proves, I trust, a certain disinterestedness on my part, that, encountering them thus in the dawn of their fortunes, I forbore to put in a plea for a future dukedom. Another visitor of the same class was a gentleman of refined manners, handsome figure, and remarkably intellectual aspect. Like many men of an adventurous cast, he had so quiet a

deportment and such an apparent disinclination to general sociability, that you would have fancied him moving always along some peaceful and secluded walk of life. Yet, literate from his first hour he had been tossed upon the surges of a most varied and tumultuous existence, having been born at sea of American parentage, but on board of a Spanish vessel, and spending many of the subsequent years in voyages, travels, and outlandish incidents and vicissitudes, which, methought, had hardly been paralleled since the days of Gulliver or Defoe. When his dignified reserve was overcome, he had the faculty, of narrating these adventures with wonderful eloquence, working up his descriptive sketches

with such intuitive perception of the picturesque points that the whole was thrown forward with a positively elusive effect, like matters of your own visual experience. In fact, they were so admirably done that I could never more than half believe them, because the genuine affairs of life are not apt to transact themselves so artistically. Many of his scenes were laid in the east, and among those seldom visited archipelagos of the Indian Ocean, so that there was an oriental fragrance breathing through his talk, and an odor of the spice islands still lingering in his garments. He had much to say of the delightful qualities of the melee pirates,

who indeed carry on a predatory warfare against the ships of all civilized nations, and cut every Christian throat among their prisoners, but, except for the deeds of that character, which are the rule and habit of their life, and matter of religion and conscience with them, they are gentle-natured people of primitive innocence and integrity. But his best story was about a race of men, if men they were, who seemed so fully to realize Swift's wicked fable of the Yahoo's, that my friend was much exercised with psychological speculations whether or no they had any souls. They dwelt in the wilds of Ceylon, like other savage beasts, hairy and spotted with tufts of fur,

filthy, shameless, weaponless, though warlike in their individual bent, toolless, houseless, languageless, except for a few guttural sounds hideously dissonant, whereby they held some rudest kind of communication among themselves. They lacked both memory and foresight, and were wholly destitute of government, social institutions, or law, or rulership of any description, except the immediate tyranny of the strongest, radically untamable, moreover, save that the people of the country managed to subject a few of the less ferocious and stupid ones to outdoor servitude among their other cattle. There were beastly in almost all their attributes, so that to such a degree that the observer, losing sight of any link betwixt them and manhood,

could generally witness their brutalities without greater horror than at those of some disagreeable quadruped in a menagerie. And yet, at times, comparing what were the lowest general traits in his own race, with what was highest in these abominable monsters, he found a ghastly similitude that half compelled him to recognize them as human brethren. After these Gullivarian researches, my agreeable acquaintance had fallen under the ban of the Dutch government, and had suffered, this at least being matter of fact, nearly two years imprisonment, with confiscation of a large amount of property for which Mr. Belmont, our minister at the Hague, had just made a peremptory demand of reimbursement and damages. Meanwhile, since arriving in England on his way to the United States, he had been providentially led to inquire into the circumstances of his birth on shipboard, and had discovered that not himself alone but another baby had come into the world during the same voyage of the prolific

vessel, and that there were almost irrefragable reasons for believing that these two children had been assigned to the wrong mothers. Many reminiscences of his early days confirmed him in the idea that his nominal parents were aware of the exchange. The family to which he felt authorized to attribute his lineage was that of a nobleman in the picture gallery of whose country seat, whence, if I mistake not, our adventurous friend had just returned. He had discovered a portrait bearing a striking resemblance to himself. As soon as he should have reported the outrageous action of the Dutch government to President Pierce and the Secretary of State, and recovered the confiscated property,

he purposed to return to England and establish his claim to the nobleman's title and estate. I had accepted his oriental fantasies, which, indeed, to do him justice, have been recorded by scientific societies among the genuine phenomena of natural history, not as matters of indubitable credence, but as allowable specimens

of an imaginative traveller's vivid coloring and rich embroidery on the coarse texture and dull neutral tints of truth. The English romance was among the latest communications that he entrusted to my private ear, and as soon as I heard the first chapter, so wonderfully akin to what I might have wrought out of my own head, not unpracticed in such figments, I began to repent having made myself responsible for the future nobleman's passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Nevertheless, should his English rent-roll fall a little behind-hand, his Dutch claim for $100,000 was certainly in the hands of our government, and might at least be valuable to the extent

of 30 pounds, which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. But I have reason to fear that as Dutch riches turned out to be Dutch guilt, or fairy gold, and his English country seat a mere castle in the air, which I exceedingly regret, for he was a delightful companion, and a very gentlemanly man. A consul, in his position of universal responsibility, the general advisor and helper, sometimes finds himself compelled to assume the guardianship of personages who, in their own sphere, are supposed capable of super-indexam. intending the highest interests of whole communities. An elderly Irishman, a naturalized citizen, once put the desire and expectation of all our penniless vagabonds into a very suitable phrase

by pathetically entreating me to be a father to him, and, simple as I sit scribbling here, I have acted a father's part, not only by scores of such unthrifty old children as himself, but by a progeny of far loftier pretensions. It may be well for persons who are conscious of any radical weakness in their character, any besetting sin, any unlawful propensity, any unhallowed impulse, which, while surrounded with the manifold restraints that protect a man from that treacherous and lifelong enemy, his lower self, in the circle of society where he is at home,

they may have succeeded in keeping under the lock and key of strictest propriety. It may be well for them before seeking the perilous freedom of a distant land, released from the watchful eyes of neighborhoods in coteries, lightened of that wearisome burden and immaculate name, and blissfully obscure after years of local prominence. It may be well for such individuals to know that when they set foot on a foreign shore, the long-imprisoned evil, scenting a wild license in the unaccustomed atmosphere is apt to grow riotous in its iron cage. It rattles the rusty barriers with gigantic turbulence, and if there be an infirm joint anywhere in the framework,

it breaks madly forth compressing the mischief of a lifetime into a little space. A parcel of letters had been accumulating at the consulate for two or three weeks directed to a certain doctor of divinity who had left America by a sailing packet and was still upon the sea. In due time the vessel arrived, and the Reverend Doctor paid me a visit. He was a fine-looking middle-aged gentleman,

a perfect model of clerical propriety, scholar-like, yet with the air of a man of the world rather than a student, though overspread with a graceful sanctity of a popular metropolitan divine, a part of whose duty it might be to exemplify the natural accordance between Christianity and good breeding. He seemed a little excited, as an American is apt to be on first arriving in England, but conversed with intelligence as well as animation,

making himself so agreeable that his visit stood out in considerable relief from the monotony of my daily commonplace. As I learned from authentic sources, he was somewhat distinguished in his own region for fervor and eloquence in the pulpit, but was now compelled to relinquish it temporarily for the purpose of renovating his impaired health by an extensive tour in Europe. Promising to dine with me, he took up his bundle of letters and went away. The doctor, however, failed to make his appearance at dinner-time, or to apologize the next day for his absence, and in the course of a day or two more I forgot all about him, concluding that he must have

set forth on his continental travels, the plan of which he had sketched out at our interview. But by and by, I received a call from the master of the vessel in which he had arrived. He was in some alarm about his passenger, whose luggage remained on shipboard, but of whom nothing had been heard or seen since the moment of his departure from the consulate. We conferred together, the captain and I, about the expediency of setting the police on the traces, if any, were to be found, of our vanished friend. But it struck me that the good captain was singularly reticent, and that there was something a little mysterious in a few points that he hinted at, rather than expressed, so that, scrutinizing the affair carefully, I surmised that

the intimacy of life on shipboard might have taught him more about the reverend gentleman than, for some reason or other he deemed it prudent to reveal. At home, in our native country, I would have looked to the doctor's personal safety and left his reputation to take care of itself, knowing that the good fame of a thousand saintly clergyman would amply dazzle out any lamentable spot on a single brother's character. But in scornful and invidious England, on the idea that the credit of the sacred office was measurably entrusted to my discretion, I could not endure, for the sake of American doctors of divinity generally, that this particular doctor should cut an ignoble figure in the police reports of the English newspapers, except at the last necessity. The clerical body, I flatter myself, will acknowledge that I acted on their own principle.

Besides, it was now too late. The mischief and violence, if any, had been impending, were not of a kind which it requires the better part of a week to perpetrate, and to sum up the entire matter, I felt certain from a good deal, of somewhat similar experience that if the missing doctor still breathed this vital air, he would turn up at the consulate as soon as his money should be stolen or spent. Precisely a week after this reverend person's disappearance, there came to my office a tall, middle-aged gentleman in a blue military surtout, braided at the seams, but out at elbows, and as shabby as if the wearer had been bivouacking in it throughout a Crimean campaign. It was buttoned up to the very chin, except where three or four of the buttons were lost,

nor was there any glimpse of a white shirt collar illuminating the rusty black cravat. A grisly mustache was just beginning to roughen the stranger's upper lip. He looked disreputable to the last degree, but still had a ruined air of good society glimmering about him, like a few specks of polish on a sword-blade that is laying corroding in a mud-puddle. I took him to be some American Marine officer of dissipated habits, or perhaps a cashiered British major, stumbling into the wrong quarters through the unrectified bewilderment of last night's debauch. He greeted me, however, with polite familiarity as though we had been previously acquainted,

whereupon I drew coldly back, as sensible people naturally do, whether from strangers or former friends, when too evidently at odds with forewerect. fortune, and requested to know who my visitor might be, and what was his business at the consulate. "'Am I then so changed?' he exclaimed, with a vast depth of tragic intonation, and after a little blind and bewildered talk, Behold! the truth flashed upon me. It was the doctor of divinity. If I had meditated a scene, or coup de teartre, I could not have contrived a more effectual one than by this scene.

simple and genuine difficulty of recognition. The poor divine must have felt that he had lost his personal identity through the misadventures of one little week, and to say the truth, he did look as if, like Job, on account of his especial sanctity, he had been delivered over to the direst temptations of Satan, and proving weaker than the man of us, the arch enemy had been empowered to drag him through Tofut, transforming him in the process from the the most decorous of metropolitan clergymen into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded officers. I never fathomed the mystery of his military costume, but conjectured that a lurking sense of fitness had induced him to exchange his clerical garments for this habit of a sinner.

Nor can I tell precisely into what pitfall, not more of vice than terrible calamity had he precipitated himself, being more than satisfied to know that the outcasts of society can sink no lower than this poor, desecrated wretch had sunk. The opportunity, I presume, does not often happen to a layman of administering moral and religious reproof to a doctor of divinity, but finding the occasion thrust upon me and the hereditary Puritan waxing strong in my breast, I deemed it a matter of conscience not to let it pass entirely unimproved. The truth is, I was unspeakable. I was unspeakable. shocked and disgusted. Not, however, that I was then to learn that clergymen are made of the same

flesh and blood as other people, and perhaps lack one small safeguard which the rest of us possess, because they are aware of their own peccability, and therefore cannot look up to the clerical class for the proof of the possibility of a pure life on earth, with such reverential confidence as we are prone to do. But I remembered the innocent faith of my boyhood and the good or old silver-headed clergyman, who seemed to me as much a saint then on earth as he is now in heaven, and partly for whose sake, through all these darkening years, I retain a devout, though not intact, nor unwavering respect for the entire fraternity. What a hideous wrong, therefore, had the backslider inflicted on his brethren, and still more

on me, who much needed whatever fragments of broken reverence, broken, not as concerned religion, but its earthly institutions and professors. It might yet be possible to patch into a sacred image. Should all pulpits and communion tables have thenceforth a stain upon them, and the guilty one go unrebuked for it? So I spoke to the unhappy man, as I never thought myself warranted in speaking to any other mortal, hitting him hard, doing my utmost to find out his vulnerable part, and prick him into the depths of it. And, and I think him into the depths of it. and not without more effect than I had dreamed of or desired. No doubt the novelty of the doctor's reversed position,

thus standing up to receive such a fulmination as the clergy have heretofore arrogated the exclusive right of inflicting, might give additional weight and sting to the words which I found utterance for. But there was another reason, which, had I in the least suspected, would have closed my lips at once, for his feeling morbidly sensitive to the court. cruel rebuke that I administered. The unfortunate man had come to me, laboring under one of the consequences of his riotous outbreak in the shape of delirium tremens. He bore a hell within the

compass of his own breast, all the torments of which blazed up with tenfold inveteracy when I thus took upon myself the devil's office of stirring up the red-hot embers. His emotions, as well as the external movement and expression of them by voice, countenance, and gesture, were terribly exaggerated by the tremendous vibration of nerves resulting from the disease. It was the deepest tragedy I ever witnessed. I know sufficiently from that one experience how a condemned soul would manifest its agonies, and for the future, if I have anything to do with sinners, I mean to operate upon them through sympathy and not rebuke. What had I to do with rebuking him. The disease, long latent in his heart, had shown itself in a frightful eruption

on the surface of his life. That was all. Is it a thing to scold the sufferer for? To conclude this wretched story, the poor doctor of divinity, having been robbed of all his money in this little airing beyond the limits of propriety, was easily persuaded to give up the intended tour and return to his bereaved flock, who very probably were thereafter conscious of an increased unction in his soul-stirring without suspecting the awful depths into which their pastor had dived in quest of it. His voice is now silent. I leave it to members of his own profession to decide whether it was better for him thus to sin outright, and so to be let into the miserable secret of what manner of man he was, or to have gone through life outwardly unspotted, making the first discovery of his latent evil at the judgment seat.

It has occurred to me that his dire calamity, as both he and I regarded it, might have been the only method by which precisely such a man as himself, and so situated, could be redeemed. He has learned ere now how that matter stood. End of Section 2. Section 3 of Our Old Home. This is a Librevox All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. For a man, with a natural tendency to meddle with other people's business, there could not possibly be a more congenial sphere than the Liverpool consulate.

For myself, I had never been in the habit of feeling that I could sufficiently comprehend any particular conjunction of circumstances with human character, to justify me in thrusting in my awkward agency, the intricate and unintelligible machinery of Providence. I have always hated to give advice, especially when there is a prospect of its being taken. It is only one-eyed people who love to advise or have any spontaneous promptitude of action.

When a man opens both his eyes, he generally sees about as many reasons for acting in any one way as in any other, and quite as many for acting in neither, and is therefore likely to leave his friends to regulate their own conduct, and also to remain quiet as regards his especial affairs till necessity shall prick him onward. Nevertheless, the world and individuals flourish upon a constant succession of blunders. The secret of English practical success lies in their characteristic faculty of shutting one eye, whereby they get so distinct and decided a view of what

immediately concerns them, that they go stumbling towards it over a hundred insurmountable obstacles and achieve a magnificent triumph without ever being aware of half its difficulties. If General McClellan could but have shut his left eye, the right one would long ago have guided us into Richmond. Meanwhile, I have strayed far away from the consulate, where, as I was about to say, I was compelled, in spite of my disinclination to impart both advice and assistance in multifarious affairs that did not personally concern me, and presumed that I affected about as little mischief as other men in similar contingencies. The duties of the office carried me to prisons, police courts, hospitals, lunatic asylums, coroner's inquests, deathbeds, funerals, and brought me in contact with insolence. sane people, criminals, ruined speculators, wild adventurers, diplomatists, brother consuls, and all manner of simpletons and unfortunates in greater number and variety than I had ever

dreamed of as pertaining to America, in addition to whom there was an equivalent multitude of English rogues, dexterously counterfeiting the genuine Yankee article. It required great discrimination not to be taken in by these last-mentioned scoundrels, for they knew how to imitate our national traits, had been at great pains to instruct themselves as regarded American localities, and were not readily to be caught by a cross-examination as to the topographical features, public institutions, or prominent inhabitants of the places where they pretended to belong. The best shibboleth I ever hit upon lay in the pronunciation of the word bin, which the English invariably make to rhyme with green, and we

northerners at least, in accordance, I think, with the custom of Shakespeare's time, universally pronounce bin. All the matters that I have been treating of, however, were merely incidental, and quite distinct from the real business of the office. A great part of the wear and tear of mind and temper, resulted from the bad relations between the seamen and officers of American ships. Scarcely a morning passed, but that some sailor came to show the marks of his ill-usage on shipboard. Often it was a whole crew of them, each with his broken head or livid bruise, and all testifying with one voice to a constant series of savage outrages during the voyage. Or it might be, they laid an accusation of actual murder perpetrated by the first or second officers,

with many blows of steel knuckles, a rope's end, or a marlin spike, or by the captain in the twinkling of an eye with a shot of his pistol. Taking the seaman's view of the case, he would suppose that the gibbet was hungry for the murderers. Listening to the captain's defense, you would seem to discover that he and his officers were the humanest of mortals, but were driven to a wholesome severity by the mutinous conduct of the crew, who, moreover, had themselves slain their comrade in the drunken riot in confusion of the first day or two after they were shipped. Looked at judicially, there appeared to be no right side to the matter, nor any right side possible in so thoroughly vicious a system as that of the American mercantile marine.

The consul could do little, except to take depositions, hold forth the greasy testament to be profaned anew with perjured kisses, and, in a few instances of murder or manslaughter, carry the case before an English magistrate, who generally decided that the evidence was too contradictory to authorize the transmission of the accused for trial in America. The newspapers all over England contained paragraphs in vain against the cruelties of American shipmasters.

The British Parliament took up the matter, for nobody is so humane as John. Bull, when his benevolent propensities are to be gratified by finding fault with his neighbor, and caused Lord John Russell to remonstrate with our government on the outrages for which it was responsible before the world, and which it failed to prevent or punish. The American Secretary of State, old General Cass, responded with perfectly astounding ignorance of the subject to the effect that the statements of outrages had probably been exaggerated, that the present laws of the United States were quite adequate to deal with them,

and that the interference of the British minister was uncalled for. The truth is that the state of affairs was really very horrible, and could be met by no laws at that time, or, I presume now, in existence. I once thought of writing a pamphlet on the subject, but quitted the consulate before finding time to affect my purpose, and all that phase of my life immediately assumed, so dream like a consistency that I despaired of making it seem solid

or tangible to the public. And now it looks distant and dim, like troubles of a century ago. The origin of the evil lay in the character of the seaman, scarcely any of who were American, but the off-scowings and refuse of all the seaports of the world,

such stuff as piracy is made of, together with a considerable intermixture of returning emigrants and a sprinkling of absolutely kidnapped American citizens. Even with such material, the ships were very inadequately manned. The shipmaster found himself upon the deep, with a vast responsibility of property and human life upon his hands, and no means of salvation except by compelling his inefficient and demoralized crew to heavier exertions than could reasonably be required of the same number of able seamen.

by law he had been entrusted with no discretion of judicious punishment he therefore habitually left the whole matter of discipline to his irresponsible mates men often of scarcely a superior quality to the crew hence ensued a great mass of petty outrages unjustifiable assaults shameful indignities and nameless cruelty demoralizing alike to the perpetrators and the sufferers these enormities fell into the ocean between the two countries, and could be punished in neither. Many miserable stories come back upon my memory as I write, wrongs that were immense, but for which nobody could be held responsible, and which, indeed, the closer you looked into them, the more they lost the aspect of willful misdoing, and assumed that of an inevitable calamity. It was the fault of a system, the misfortune of an individual. Be that as it may, however, there will be no possibility of dealing effectually with these troubles as long as we deem it inconsistent with our national dignity or interests to allow the english courts under such restrictions as may seem fit a jurisdiction over offences perpetrated on board our vessels in mid-ocean

in such a life as this the american shipmaster develops himself into a man of iron energies dauntless courage and inexhaustible resource at the expense, it must be acknowledged, of some of the higher and gentler traits which might do him excellent service in maintaining his authority. The class has deteriorated of late years, on account of the narrower field of selection, owing chiefly to the diminution of that excellent body of respectfully educated New England seaman, from the flower of whom the officers used to be recruited. Yet I found them, in many cases, very agreeable and intelligent companions, with less nonsense about them than landsmen usually have, the stewers of fine-spun theories, delighting in square and tangible ideas, but occasionally infested with prejudices that stuck

to their brains like barnacles to a ship's bottom. I never could flatter myself that I was a general favorite with them. One or two, perhaps even now, would scarcely meet me on amicable terms, endowed universally with a great pertinacity of will, they especially disliked the interference of a consul with their management on shipboard, notwithstanding which I thrust in my very limited authority at every available opening, and did the utmost that lay in my power, though with lamentably small effect, towards enforcing a better kind of discipline. They thought, no doubt, and on plausible grounds enough, but scarcely appreciating just that one little grain of hard New England

sense, oddly thrown in among the flimsier composition of the consul's character, that he, a landsman, a bookman, and as people said of him, a fanciful recluse, could not possibly understand anything of the difficulties or the necessities of a shipmaster's position. But their cold regards were rather acceptable than otherwise, for it is exceedingly awkward to assume a judicial austerity in the morning towards a man with whom you have been hobnobbing overnight. with the technical details of the business of that great consulate, for great it then was, though now I fear woefully fallen off, and perhaps never to be revived in anything like its former extent, I did not much interfere. They could safely be left to the treatment of two as faithful, upright, and competent subordinates, both Englishmen, as ever a man was fortunate enough to meet with, in a line of life altogether new and strange to-dain. him. I had come over with instructions to supply both their places with Americans, but, possessing a happy faculty of knowing my own interest and the publics, I quietly kept hold of them, being a little

inclined to open the consular doors to a spy of the State Department, or an intriguer for my own office. The venerable vice-consul, Mr. Pierce, had witnessed the success of arrivals of a score of newly appointed consuls, shadowy and short-lived dignitaries, and carried his reminiscences back to the epoch of Consul Mori, who was appointed by Washington, and has acquired almost the grandeur of a mythical personage in the annals of the consulate. The principal clerk, Mr. Wilding, who has since succeeded to the vice-consulship, was a man of English integrity, not that the English are more honest than ourselves, but only there is a certain sturdy reliabilityness common among them, which we do not quite so invariably manifest in

just these subordinate positions. Of English integrity, combined with American acuteness of intellect, quick-wittedness, and diversity of talent. It seemed an immense pity that he should wear out his life at a desk without a step in advance from years' end to years' end, when, had it been his luck to be born on our side of the water, his bright faculty, and clear property would have ensured him eminent success in whatever path he might adopt. Meanwhile, it would have been a sore mischance to me, had any better fortune on his part, deprived me of Mr. Wilding's services. A fair amount of common sense, some acquaintance with United States statutes, an insight into

character, a tact of management, a general knowledge of the world, and a reasonable but not two inveterately decided preference for his own will and judgment over those of interested people. These natural attributes and moderate acquirements will enable a consul to perform many of his duties respectably, but not to dispense with a great variety of other qualifications, only attainable by long experience. Yet, I think, few consuls are so well accomplished. An appointment of whatever grade in the diplomatic or consular service of America is too often what the English call a job. That is to say, it is made on private and personal grounds, without a paramount eye to the public good or the gentleman's especial fitness for the position. It is not too much to say,

of course allowing for a brilliant exception here and there, that an American never is thoroughly qualified for a foreign post, nor has time to make himself so, before the revolution of the political wheel discards him from his office. Our country wrongs itself by permitting such a system of unsuitable appointments and still more of removals for no cause just when the incumbent

might be beginning to ripen into usefulness. Mere ignorance of official detail is of comparatively small moment, though it is considered indispensable, I presume, that a man in any private capacity shall be thoroughly acquainted with the machinery and operation of his business, and shall not necessarily lose his position on having attained much knowledge. But there are so many more important things to be thought of

in the qualifications of a foreign resident that his technical dexterity or clumsiness is hardly worth mentioning. One great part of a consul's duty, for example, should consist in building up for himself a recognized position in the society where he resides, so that his local influence might be felt in behalf of his own country and so far as they are compatible as they generally are to the utmost extent for the interests of both nations The foreign city should know that it has a permanent inhabitant and a hearty well-wisher in him. There are many conjunctures, and one of them is now upon us,

where a long-established, honored, and trusted American citizen, holding a public position under our government in such a town as Liverpool, might go far towards swaying and directing the sympathies of the inhabitants. He might throw his own weight into the balance against mischief-makers. He might have set his foot. on the first little spark of malignant purpose, which the next wind may blow into a national war. But we willfully give up all advantages of this kind. The position is totally beyond the attainment of an American, there today, bristling all over with the porcupine quills of our

republic, and gone tomorrow, just as he is becoming sensible of the broader and more generous patriotism, which might almost amalgamate with that of England. England, without losing an atom of its native force and flavor. In the changes that appear to await us, and some of which, at least, can hardly fail to be for good, let us hope for a reform in this matter. For myself, as the gentle reader would spare me the trouble of saying, I was not at all the kind of man to grow into such an ideal consul as I have here suggested. I never in my life desired to be burdened with public influence. I disliked my office from the first, and never came into any good accordance with it.

Its dignity, so far as it had any, was an encumbrance. The attentions it drew upon me, such as invitations to mayors' banquets, and public celebrations of all kinds, where, to my horror, I found myself expected to stand up and speak, were, as I may say, without incivility or ingratitude, because there is nothing personal in that sort of hospitality, a bore. The official business was irksome and often painful. There was nothing pleasant about the whole affair except the emoluments, and even those, never too bountifully reaped,

were diminished by more than half in the second or third year of my incumbency. All this being true, I was quite prepared in advance of the inauguration of Mr. Buchanan to send in my resignation. When my successor arrived, I drew the long, delightful breath which first made me thoroughly sensible what an unnatural life I had been leading, and compelled me to admire myself for having battled with it so sturdily. The newcomer proved to be a very genial and agreeable gentleman, an FFV, and, as he pleasantly acknowledged, a southern fire-eater, an announcement to which I responded with similar

good humor and self-complacency by parading my descent from an ancient line of Massachusetts Puritans. Since our brief acquaintanceship, my fire-eating friend has made ample opportunities to banquet on his favorite diet, hot and hot, in the Confederate service. For myself, as soon as I was out of office, the retrospect began to look unreal. I could scarcely believe that it was I, that figure whom they called a consul, but a sort of double-ganger, who had been permitted to assume my aspect, under which he went through his shadowy duties with a tolerable show of efficiency, while my real self had lain, as regarded my proper mode of being and acting, in a state of suspended animation. The same sense of illusion still pursues me. There is some mistake in this matter. I have been writing about another man's consular experiences, with which, through some mysterious medium of transmitted ideas, I find myself intimately acquainted, but in which I cannot possibly have had a personal interest.

Is it not a dream altogether? The figure of that poor Doctor of Divinity looks wonderfully lifelike, so do those of the Oriental adventurer with the visionary cornet above his brow, and the moonstruck visitor of the queen, and the poor old wanderer, see that his native country through English highways and byways for almost thirty years, and so would a hundred others that I might summon up with similar distinctness. But were they more than shadows? Surely I think not. Nor are these present pages a bit of intrusive autobiography. Let not the reader wrong me by supposing it. I never should have written with half such unreserve had it been a portion of this life congenial with my nature, which I am now living. instead of a series of incidents and characters entirely apart from my own concerns, and on which the qualities personally proper to me could have had no bearing. Almost the only real incidents as I see them now were the visits of a young English friend, a scholar and a literary amateur, between whom and myself there sprung up an affectionate,

and I trust, not transitory regard. He used to come and sit or stand by my fireside, talking vivaciously and eloquently with me about literature and life, his own national characteristics and mine, with such kindly endurance of the many rough republicanisms wherewith I assailed him, and such frank and amiable assertion of all sorts of English prejudices and mistakes, that I understood his countrymen infinitely the better for him, and was almost prepared to love the intensest Englishmen of them all for his sake. It would gratify my cherished remembrance of this dear friend, if I could manage without offending him, or letting the public know it, to introduce his name upon my page. Bright was the illumination of my dusky little apartment as often as he made his appearance there. The English sketches which I have been offering to the public comprise a few of the more external and therefore more readily manageable things that I took note of, in many escapes from the imprisonment of my consular servitude. Liverpool, though not very delightful as a place of residence, is a most convenient and admirable point to get away from. London is only five hours off by the fast train. Chester, the most curious town in England, with its encompassing wall, its ancient rose, and its venerable cathedral, is close at hand.

North Wales, with all its hills and ponds, its noble sea scenery, its multitude of grey castles and strange old villages, may be glanced at in a summer day or two. The lakes and mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland may be reached before dinner time. The haunted and legendary Isle of Man, a little kingdom by itself, lies within the scope of an afternoon's voyage. Edinburgh or Glasgow are attainable overnight,

and Loch Le Mans betimes in the morning. Visiting these famous localities and a great many others, I hope that I do not compromise my American patriotism by acknowledging that I was often conscious of a fervent hereditary attachment to the native soil of our forefathers and felt it to be our own old home. End of Section 3. Section 4 of Our Old Home. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 4, Lemington Spa

In the course of several visits and stays of considerable length, we acquired a home-like feeling towards Leamington, and came back thither again and again, chiefly because we had been there before. Wandering and wayside people, such as we had long since become, retain a few of the instincts that belong to a more settled way of life, and often prefer familiar and commonplace objects, for the very reason that they are so, to the dreary strangeness of scenes that might be thought much better worth the scene.

There is a small nest of a place in Leamington at No. 10 Lansdown Circus, upon which, to this day, my reminiscences are apt to settle as one of the coziest nooks in England or in the world, not that it had any special charm of its own, but only that we stayed long enough to know it well, and even to grow a little tired of it. In my opinion, the very tediousness of home and friends makes a part of what we love them for. If it be not mixed in sufficiently with the other elements of life, there may be mad enjoyment, but no happiness. The modest abode to which I have alluded forms one of a circular range of pretty, moderate-sized two-story houses, all built on nearly the same plan, and each provided with its little grass-plot, its flowers, its tufts of box

trimmed into globes and other fantastic shapes, and its verdant hedges shutting the house in from the common drive, and dividing it from its equally cozy neighbors. Coming out of the door and taking a turn round the circle of sister dwellings, it is difficult to find your way back by any distinguishing individuality of your own habitation. In the center of the circus is a space fenced in with iron railing, a small play-place and sylvan retreat for the children of the precinct, permeated by brief paths through the fresh English grass, and shadowed by various shrubbery, amid which, if you like, you may fancy yourself in a deep seclusion, though probably the mark of eye-shot from the windows of all the surrounding houses. But, in truth, with regard

to the rest of the town and the world at large, an abode here is a genuine seclusion, for the ordinary stream of life does not run through this little quiet pool, and few or none of the inhabitants seem to be troubled with any business or outside activities. I used to set them down as half-pay officers, dowagers of narrow income, elderly maiden ladies, and other people of respectability but small account, such as hang on the world's skirts, rather than actually belong to it. The quiet of the place was, seldom disturbed except by the grocer and butcher who came to receive orders, or by the cabs, hackney-coaches, and bath-chairs in which the ladies took an infrequent airing, or the livery-steed,

which the retired captain sometimes bestrored for a morning ride, or by the red-coated postman, who went his rounds twice a day to deliver letters, and again in the evening ringing a hand-bell to take letters for the mail. In merely mentioning these slight interruptions of its sluggish stillness, I seemed to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of quiet that brooded over the spot, whereas its impression upon me was that the world had never found the way hither, or had forgotten it, and that the fortunate inhabitants were the only ones who possessed the spell word of admittance. Nothing could have suited me better at the time, for I had been holding a position of public servitude which imposed upon me among a great many lighter

duties, the ponderous necessity of being universally civil and sociable. Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the bustle of society, he might find it more readily in Leamington than in most other English towns. It is a permanent watering place, a sort of institution to which I do not know any close parallel in American life, for such places as Saratoga bloom only for the summer season, and offer a thousand dissimilitudes even then, while Lemington seems to be always in flower, and serves as a home to the homeless all the year round. Its original nucleus, the plausible excuse for the towns coming into prosperous existence,

lies in the fiction of a callibiate well, which indeed is so far a reality that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, groves, gardens, mansions, shops, and churches, and spread themselves along the banks of the Little River Lem. This miracle accomplished, the beneficent fountain has retired beneath a pump-room, and appears to have given up all pretensions to the remedial virtues formerly attributed to it. I know not whether its waters are ever tasted nowadays, but not the Lestis Lemington, in Pleasant Warwickshire, at the very midmost point in England, in a good hunting neighborhood,

and surrounded by country seats and castles, continue to be a resort of transient visitors, and the more permanent abode of a class of genteel, unoccupied, well-to-do, but not very wealthy people, such as are hardly known among ourselves. Persons who have no country-houses, and whose fortunes are inadequate to a London expenditure, find here, I suppose, a sort of town and country life in one. In its present aspect, the town is of no great age.

In contrast with the antiquity of many places in its neighborhood, it has a bright new face, and seems almost to smile even amid the sombreness of an English autumn. Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds of years old, if we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time during which it existed, as a small village of thatched houses clustered round a priory, and it would still have been precisely such a rural village, but for a certain Dr. Jefferson, who lived within the memory of man, and who found out the magic well, and foresaw what fairy wealth might be made to flow from it.

A public garden has been laid out along the margin of the lem, and called the Jefferson Garden, in honor of him who created the prosperity of his native spot. A little way within the garden gate there is a circular temple of Grecian architecture, beneath the dome of which stands a marble statue of the good doctor, very well executed, and representing him with the face of fussy activity and benevolence, just the kind of man, if luck favored him, to build up the fortunes of those about him, or, quite as probably, to blight his whole neighborhood by some disastrous speculation. The Jefferson Garden is very beautiful, like most other English pleasure grounds,

for aided by their moist climate and not too fervid sun, the landscape gardeners excel in converting flat or tame surfaces into attractive scenery, chiefly through the skillful arrangement of trees and shrubbery. And Englishman aims at this effect, even in the little patches under the windows of a suburban villa, and achieves it on larger scale and attractive many acres. The garden is shadowed with trees of a fine growth, standing alone, or in dusky groves and dense entanglements, pervaded by woodland paths and emerging from these pleasant glooms we come upon a breadth of sunshine where the green sward so vividly green that it has a kind of lustre in it is spotted with beds of gem-like flowers

rustic chairs and benches are scattered about some of them ponderously fashioned out of the stumps of obtruncated trees and others more artfully made with intertwining branches or perhaps an imitation of such frail handiwork and iron in a central part of the garden is an archery ground where laughing maidens practice at the butts generally missing their ostensible mark but by the mere grace of their action sending an unseen shaft into some young man There is space, moreover, within these precincts, for an artificial lake, with a little green island in the midst of it, both lake and island being the haunt of swans, whose aspect and movement in the water are most beautiful and stately, most infirm, disjointed, and decrepit, when, unadvisedly they see fit to emerge, and try to walk upon dry land. In the latter case they look like a breed of uncommonly ill-contrived geese, and I record the matter here for the sake of the moral, that we should never pass judgment on the merits

of any person or thing, unless we behold them in the sphere and circumstances to which they are specially adapted. In still another part of the garden, there is a labyrinthine maze formed of an intricacy of hedge-bordered walks involving himself in which a man might wander for hours inextricably within a circuit of only a few yards. It seemed to me a sad emblem of the mental and moral perplexities in which we sometimes go astray, petty in scope, yet large enough to entangle a lifetime, and bewilder us with a weary movement, but no genuine progress. The lem, the high-complexioned lem, as Drayton calls it, after drowsing across the principal street of the town beneath a handsome bridge, skirts along the margin of the garden without any

perceptible flow. Herefore I had fancied the concord the laziest river in the world, but now assign that amiable distinction to the little English stream. Its water is by no means transparent, but has a greenish goose-puddly hue, which, however, accords well with the other coloring and characteristics of the scene, and is disagreeable neither to sight nor smell. Certainly this river is a perfect feature of that gentle, picturesqueness in which England is so rich, sleeping as it does, beneath a margin of willows, that droop into its bosom, and other trees of deeper verdure than our own country can boast, inclining lovingly over it. On the garden-side it is bordered by a shadowy, secluded grove,

with winding paths among its bosquiness, affording many a peep at the river's imperceptible lapse and tranquil gleam, and on the opposite shore stands the Priory Church, with its church yard full of shrubbery and tombstones. The business portion of the town clusters about the banks of the lem and is naturally densest around the well to which the modern settlement owes its existence. Here are the commercial ins, the post office, the furniture dealers, the ironmongers, and all the heavy and homely establishments that connect themselves even with the ariest modes of human life, while upward from the river, by a long and gentle ascent, rises the principal street, which is very bright and cheerful in its physiognomy, and adorned with shop-fronts almost

as splendid as those of London, though on a diminutive scale. There are likewise side-streets and cross-streets, many of which are bordered with the beautiful Warwickshire Elm, a most unusual kind of adornment for an English town, and spacious avenues wide enough to afford room for stately groves, with footpaths running beneath the lofty shade, and rooks cawing and chattering so high in the treetops that their voices get musical before reaching the earth. The houses are mostly built in blocks and ranges, in which every separate tenement is repetition of its fellow, though the architecture of the different ranges is sufficiently various. Some of them are almost palatial in size and sumptuousness of arrangement.

Then, on the outskirts of the town, there are detached villas, enclosed within that separate domain of high stone fence, and embowered shrubbery, which an Englishman so loves to build and plant around his abode, presenting to the public only an iron gate, with a graveled carriage drive winding away towards the half-hidden mansion. Whether in street or suburb, Lemington may fairly be called beautiful, and at some points magnificent, but by and by you become doubtfully suspicious of a somewhat unreal finery. It is pretentious, though not glaringly so. It has been built with malice aforethought, as a place of gentility and enjoyment. Moreover, splendid as the houses look, and as comfortable as they

often are, there is a nameless something about them, betokening that they have not grown out of human hearts, but are the creations of a skillfully applied human intellect. No man has reared any of them, whether stately or humble, to be his lifelong residence, wherein to bring up his children who are to inherit it as a home. They are nicely contrived lodging-houses, one and all, the best as well as the shabbiest of them, and therefore inevitably lack some nameless property that a home should have. This was the case with our own little snugry and landsdown circus, as with all the rest. It had not grown out of anybody's individual need, but was built to let or sell, and was therefore like a ready-made garment,

a tolerable fit, but only tolerable. All these blocks, ranges, and detached villas are adorned with the finest and most aristocratic names that I have found anywhere in England, except perhaps in Bath, which is the great metropolis of that second-class gentility, with which watering places are chiefly populated. Landsdown Crescent, Landsdown Circus, Landsdown Terrace, Regent Street, Warwick Street, Clarendon Street, the Upper and Lower Parade. Such are a few of the designations. Parade, indeed, is a well-chosen name for the Principal Street,

along which the population of the idle town draws itself out, for daily review and display. I only wish that my descriptive powers would enable me to throw off a picture of the scene at a sunny noontide, individualizing each character with a touch, the great people alighting from their carriages at the principal shop doors, the elderly ladies and infirm Indian officers drawn along in bath chairs, the comely rather than pretty English girls, with their deep, healthy bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milk-maid than for a lady, the mustached gentleman with frogged Sertuz and the military air, the nursemaids and chubby

children, but no chubbier than our own, and scampering on slenderer legs, the sturdy figure of John Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but ever with a stamp of authenticity somewhere about him. To say the truth, I have been holding the pen over my paper, purposing to write a descriptive paragraph or two about the throng on the principal parade of Leamington, so arranging it as to present a sketch of the British out-of-door aspect on a morning walk of gentility. But I find no personages quite sufficiently distinct and individual in my memory to supply the materials of such a panorama. Oddly enough, the only figure that comes fairly forth to my mind's eye is that of a dowager, one of hundreds who

I used to marvel at all over England, but who have scarcely a representative among our own ladies of autumnal life, so thin, careworn and frail as age usually makes the latter. I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late period of life, but not to suggest that an American eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite appreciate the charm of English beauty at any age, It strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate so far as her physique goes than anything we Western people class under the name of woman. She has an awful ponderosity of frame, not pulpy like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive with solid beef and streaky tallow, so that, though struggling manfully against the idea, you inevitably think of her as made up of stakes and sirloins. When she walks, her advances

elephantine. When she sits down, it is on a great, round space of her maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but because it seems to express so much well-founded self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils, troubles, and dangers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe. Without anything positively salient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly

formidable to her neighbors, she had to her. the effect of a seventy-four gunship in time of peace. For, while you assure yourself that there is no real danger, you cannot help thinking how tremendous would be her onset, if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold, nay, a hundredfold, better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed and haggard womankind, but I have not found reason to suppose that the English Dowager of 50 has actually greater courage, fortitude, and strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a tougher physical endurance than they. Morally, she is strong, I suspect only in society,

and in the common routine of social affairs, and would be found powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might call for energy outside the conventionalities amid which she has grown up. You can meet this figure in the street and live, and even smile at the recollection, but conceive of her in a ballroom, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there and all the other corresponding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an overblown cabbage rose as this. Yet somewhere in this enormous bulk, there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet nature of a girl,

whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly overgrown. For an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony

as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he ever bargained for. Is it not a sounder view of the case that the matrimonial bond cannot be held to include the three-fourths of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And as a matter of conscience and good morals, ought not an English-married pair to insist upon the celebration of a silver wedding at the end of 25 years in order to legalize and mutually appropriate that corporeal growth of which both parties have individually come into possession

since they were pronounced one flesh. End of Section 4. Section 5 of Our Old Home. This is the Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 5, Lemington Spa. The chief enjoyment of my several visits to Leamington lay in rural walks about the neighborhood, and in jaunts to places of note and interest which are particularly abundant in that region. The high roads are made pleasant to the traveler by a border of trees, and often

afford him the hospitality of a wayside bench beneath a comfortable shade. But a fresher delight is to be found in the footpaths, which go wandering away from style to style, along hedges and across broad fields, and through wooded parks leading you to little hamlets of thatched cottages, ancient solitary farmhouses, picturesque old mills, streamlets, pools, and all those quiet, secret, unexpected, yet strangely familiar features of English scenery that Tennyson shows us in his idols and echelogs. These by-paths admit the wayfarer into the very heart of rural world. life, and yet do not burden him with a sense of intrusiveness. He has a right to go whithersoever

they lead him, for, with all their shaded privacy, they are as much the property of the public as the dusty high road itself, and even by an older tenure. Their antiquity probably exceeds that of the Roman ways, the footsteps of the Aboriginal Britons first wore away the grass, and the natural flow of intercourse between village and village, has kept the track bare ever since. An American farmer would plow across any such path and obliterate it with his hills of potatoes and Indian corn, but here it is protected by law, and still more by the sacredness that inevitably springs up in this soil along the well-defined footprints of centuries. Old associations are sure to be fragrant herbs in English nostrils. We pull them up as weeds. I remember such a path,

the access to witches from Lovers Grove, a range of tall old oaks and elms on a high hilltop, whence there is a view of Warwick Castle, and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful, though bedimmed with English mist. This particular footpath, however, is not a remarkably good specimen of its kind, since it leads into no hollows and seclusions, and soon terminates in a high road. It connects Lemington by a shortcut with the small neighboring village of Lillington, a place which impresses an American observer with its many points of contrast to the rural aspects of his own country. The village consists chiefly of one row of contiguous dwellings, separated only by party walls, but ill-matched among themselves, being of different heights and apparently of various ages,

though all are of an antiquity which we should call it. venerable. Some of the windows are leaden-framed lattices opening on hinges. These houses are mostly built of gray stone, but others in the same range are of brick, and one or two are in a very old fashion, Elizabethan, or still older, having a ponderous framework of oak, painted black, and filled in with plastered stone or bricks. Judging by the patches of repair, the oak seems to be the more durable part of the structure. Some of the roofs are covered with earth and tiles, others, more decayed and poverty-stricken, with thatch,

out of which sprouts a luxurious vegetation of grass, house leaks, and yellow flowers. What especially strikes an American is the lack of that insulated space, the intervening gardens, grass-plots, orchards, broad-spreading shade trees, which occur between our own village houses. These English dwellings have no such separate surroundings. They all grow together like the cells of a honeycomb. Beyond the first row of houses, and hidden from it by a turn of the road, there was another row, or block, as we should call it,

of small old cottages stuck one against another, with their thatched roofs forming a single contiguity. These, I presume, were the habitations of the poorest order of rustic laborers, and the narrow precincts of each cottage, as well as the close neighborhood of the whole, gave the impression of a stifled, unhealthy atmosphere among the occupants. It seemed impossible that there should be a cleanly reserve, a proper self-respect among individuals,

or a wholesome unfamiliarity between families where human life was crowded and massed into such intimate communities as these. Nevertheless, not to look beyond the outside, I never saw a prettier rural scene than was presented by this rain, of contiguous huts, for in front of the whole row was a luxuriant and well-trimmed hawthorn hedge, and belonging to each cottage was a little square of garden-ground, separated from its neighbors by a line of the same verdant fence. The gardens were chalkful, not of esculent vegetables, but of flowers, familiar ones, but very bright-colored, and shrubs of box, some of which

were trimmed into artistic shapes. And I remember, before one door, a representation of Warwick Castle made of oyster shells. The cottagers evidently loved the little nests in which they dwelt, and did their best to make them beautiful, and succeeded more than tolerably well, so kindly did nature help their humble efforts with its verdure, flowers, moss lichens, and the green things that grew out of the thatch. Through some of the open doorways we saw plump children rolling about on the stone floors, and their mothers, by no means very pretty, but as happy-looking as mothers generally are. And while we gazed at these domestic matters, an old woman rushed wildly out of one of the gates,

upholding a shovel on which she clanged and clattered with a key. At first we fancied that she intended an onslaught against ourselves, but soon discovered that a more dangerous enemy was abroad, for the old lady's bees had swarmed, and the air was full of them whizzing by our heads like bullets, Not far from these two rows of houses and cottages, a green lane, overshadowed with trees, turned aside from the main road, and tended towards a square grey tower, the battlements of which were just high enough to be visible above the foliage. Wending our way thitherward, we found the very picture and ideal of a country church and churchyard. The tower seemed to be of Norman architecture, low, massive, and crowned with battlements. The body of the church was a very picture, a very church, very modest dimensions, and the eaves so low that I could touch them with my walking-stick.

We looked into the windows and beheld the dim and quiet interior, a narrow space, but venerable with the consecration of many centuries, and keeping its sanctity as entire and inviolate as that of a vast cathedral. The nave was divided from the side aisles of the church, by pointed arches resting on very sturdy pillars. It was good to see how so much. solemnly they held themselves to their age-long task of supporting that lowly roof. There was a small organ, suited in size to the vaulted hollow, which it weakly filled with religious sound. On the opposite wall of the church, between two windows, was a mural tablet of white marble, with an inscription in black letters, the only such memorial that I could

discern, although many dead people doubtless lay beneath the floor, and had paved it with their ancient tombstones, as is customary in old English churches. There were no modern painted windows flaring with raw colors, nor other gorgeous adornments, such as the present taste for medieval restoration, often patches upon the decorous simplicity of the gray village church. It is probably the worshipping place of no more distinguished a congregation than the farmers and peasantry who inhabit the houses and cottages which I have just described. Had the Lord of the manor been one of the parishioners, there would have been an eminent pew near the chancel, walled high about, curtained, and softly cushioned, warmed by a fireplace of its own,

and distinguished by hereditary tablets and escutions on the enclosed stone pillar. A well-trodden path led across the churchyard, and the gate being on the latch we entered, and walked round among the graves and monuments. The latter were chiefly headstones, none of which were very old. so far as was discoverable by the dates. Some, indeed, in so ancient a cemetery, were disagreeably new, with inscriptions glittering like sunshine in gold letters. The ground must have been dug over and over again, innumerable times, until the soil is made up of what once was human clay, out of which have sprung successive crops of gravestones that flourish in their allotted time,

and disappear like the weeds and flowers in their briefer period. The English climate is very unfavorable to the endurance of memorials in the open air. Twenty years of it suffice to give as much antiquity of aspect, whether to tombstone or edifice, as a hundred years of our own drier atmosphere. So soon do the drizzly rains and constant moisture corrode the surface of marble or freestone. Sculptured edges lose their sharpness, in a year or two. Yellow lichens overspread a beloved name and obliterate it while it is yet fresh upon some survivor's heart. Time gnaws an English gravestone with wonderful appetite, and when the

inscription is quite illegible, the sexton takes the useless slab away, and perhaps makes a hearthstone of it, and digs up the unripe bones which it ineffectually tried to memorialize, and gives the bed to another sleeper. In the Charter Street burial ground at Salem, and in the old graveyard on the hill at Ipswich, I have seen more ancient gravestones, with legible inscriptions on them than in any English churchyard. And yet this same ungenial climate, hostile as it generally is to the long remembrance of departed people, has sometimes a lovely way of dealing with the records on certain monuments that lie horizontally in the open air. The rain falls into the deep incisions of the letters, and has scarcely time to be dried away before another shower sprinkles the flat stone

again and replenishes those little reservoirs. The unseen, mysterious seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered furrows, and are made to germinate by the continual moisture and watery sunshine of the English sky, and by and by in a year or two years, or many years, behold the complete inscription. Here lieth the body, and all the rest of the tender falsehood, beautifully embossed in raised letters of living green, a bha relief of velvet moss on the marble slab. It becomes more legible under the skyy influences after the world has forgotten the deceased than when it was fresh from the stone-cutter's hands. It outlives the grief of friends. I first saw an example of this in Bebbington Churchyard in Cheshire, and thought that nature

must needs have had a special tenderness for the person. No noted man, however, in the world's history, so long ago laid beneath that stone, since she took such wonderful pains to keep his memory green. Perhaps the proverbial phrase just quoted may have had its origin in the natural phenomenon here described. While we rested ourselves on a horizontal monument which was elevated just high enough to be a convenient seat, I observed that one of the gravestones lay very close to the church, so close that the droppings of the eaves would fall upon it. It seemed as if the inmate of that grave had desired to creep under the church wall. On closer to the closer to In after inspection, we found an almost illegible epitaph on the stone, and with difficulty

made out this forlorn verse, poorly lived and poorly died, poorly buried, and no one cried. It would be hard to compress the story of a cold and luckless life, death and burial, into fewer words, or more impressive ones. At least we found them impressive, perhaps because we had to recreate the inscription, by scraping away the lichens from the faintly traced letters. The grave was on the shady and damp side of the church, endwise toward it, the headstone being within about three feet of the foundation wall, so that, unless the poor man was a dwarf,

he must have been doubled up to fit him into his final resting place. No wonder that his epitaph murmured against so poor a burial as this. His name, as well as I could make it out, was Trio, John Trio, I think, and he died in 1810 at the age of 74. The gravestone is so overgrown with grass and weeds, so covered with unsightly lichens, and so crumbly with time and foul weather, that it is questionable whether anybody will ever be at the trouble of deciphering it again.

But there is a quaint and sad kind of enjoyment in defeating, to such a slight degree as my pen may do it, the probabilities of oblivion for poor John Trio, and asking a little sympathy for him, half a century after his death, and making him better and more widely known, at least, than any other slumberer in Lillington Churchyard, he having been, as appearances go, the outcast of them all. You find similar old churches and villages in all the neighboring country at the distance of every two or three miles, and I describe them not as being rare, but because they are so common and characteristic.

The village of Wittnash, within twenty minutes walk of Leamington, looks as secluded, as rural, and as little disturbed by the fashions of today, as if Dr. Jefferson had never developed all those parades and crescents out of his magic well. I used to wonder whether the inhabitants had ever yet heard of railways, or at their slow rate of progress had even reached the epic of stagecoaches. As you approach the village, while it is yet unseen, you observe a tall, overshadowing canopy of elm tree-tops, beneath which you almost hesitate to follow the public road, on account of the remoteness that seems to exist between the precincts of this old-world community, and the thronged modern street out of which you have

so recently emerged. Venturing onward, however, you soon find yourself in the heart of the part of Wittnash, and see an irregular ring of ancient rustic dwellings surrounding the village green, on one side of which stands the church, with its square Norman tower and battlements, while close adjoining is the vicarage, made picturesque by peaks and gables. At first glimpse none of the houses appear to be less than two or three centuries old, and they are of the ancient wooden-framed fashion, with thatched roofs, which give them the air of birds' nests, thereby assimilating them closely to the simplicity of nature. The church tower is mossy and much gnawed by time. It has narrow loopholes up and down its front and sides,

and an arched window over the low portal, set with small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and irregular, through which a bygone age is peeping out into the daylight. Some of those old, grotesque faces called gargoyles are seen on the projections of the architecture. The churchyard is very small and is encompassed by a gray stone fence that looks as ancient as the church itself. In front of the tower on the village green is a yew tree of incalculable age with a vast circumference of trunk but a very scanty head of foliage, though its boughs still keep some of the vitality which perhaps was in its early prime when the Saxon invaders founded Wittnash. A thousand years is no extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime of a U.

We were pleasantly startled, however, by discovering an exuberance of more youthful life than we had thought possible in so old a tree, for the faces of two children laughed at us out of an opening in the trunk, which had become hollow with long decay. On one side of the U stood a framework of worm-eaten timber, the use and meaning of which puzzled me exceedingly, till I made it out to be the village stocks, a public institution that, in its day, had doubtless hampered many a pair of shank bones,

now crumbling in the adjacent churchyard. It is not to be supposed, however, that this old-fashioned mode of punishment is still in vogue among the good people of Wittnash. The vicar of the parish has antiquarian propensities, and had probably dragged the stocks out of some dusty hiding place, and set them up on their former site as a curiosity. I disquiet myself in vain with the effort to hit upon some characteristic feature or assemblage of features that shall convey to the reader the influence of whore antiquity lingering into the present daylight, as I so often felt it in these old English scenes. It is only an American who can feel it, and even he begins to find himself growing insensible to its

effect after a long residence in England. But while you are still new in the old country, it thrills you with its strange emotion to think that this little church of Wittnash, humble as it seems, stood for ages under the Catholic faith, and has not materially changed since Wycliffe's days, and that it looked as gray as now in Bloody Mary's time, and that Cromwell's troopers broke off the stone noses of those same gargoyles that are now grinning in your face. So too with the immemorial yew tree. You see its great roots grasping hold of the earth like gigantic claws, clinging so sturdily that no effort of time can wrench them away, and there being life in the old tree you feel all the more as if a contemporary witness

were telling you of the things that have been. It has lived among men, and been a familiar object to them, and seen them brought to be christened and married, and buried in the neighboring church and churchyard through so many centuries that it knows all about our race so far as fifty generations of the whitnash people can supply such knowledge and after all what a weary life it must have been for the old tree tedious beyond imagination such i think is the final impression on the mind of an american visitor when his delight at finding something permanent begins to yield to his west love of change, and he becomes sensible of the heavy air of a spot where the forefathers and four mothers have grown up together, intermarried and died, through a long succession of lives, without any intermixture of new elements, till family features and character are all run in the same inevitable mold. Life there is fossilized in its greenest leaf, the man who died

yesterday, or ever so long ago, walks the village street today, and chooses the same wife that he married a hundred years since, and must be buried again tomorrow, under the same kindred dust that has already covered him half a score of times. The stone threshold of his cottage is worn away with his hob-nailed footsteps, shuffling over it from the reign of the first plantagenet to that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our rustle-lawful. countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them tend always toward fresh woods and pastures new. Rather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering on a village green, toiling in hereditary fields, listening to the Parsons drone lengthened through centuries in the Grey Norman Church,

let us welcome whatever change may come, change of place, social customs, political institutions, modes of worship, trusting that, if all present things shall vanish, they will but make room for better systems, and for a higher type of man to clothe his life in them, and to fling them off in turn. Nevertheless, while an American willingly accepts growth and change as the law of his own national and private existence, he has a singular tenderness for the stone-encrusted institutions of the mother country. The reason may be, though I should prefer a more generous explanation, that he recognizes the tendency of these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter her ankles in the race and rivalry of improvement.

I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away from an old wall in England, yet change is at work, even in such a village as Wittnash. At a subsequent visit, looking more critically at the irregular circle of dwellings that surround the yew-tree and confront the church, I perceived that some of the houses must have been built within no long time, although the thatch, the quaint gables, and the old oaken framework of the others diffused in air of antiquity over the whole assemblage. The church itself was undergoing repair and restoration, which is but another name for change. Masons were making patchwork on the front of the tower,

and were sawing a slab of stone, and piling up bricks to strengthen the sidewall, or possibly to enlarge the ancient edifice by an additional aisle. Moreover, they had dug an immense pit in the churchyard, long and broad, and fifteen feet deep, two-thirds of which profundity were discolored by human decay and mixed up with crumbly bones. What this excavation was intended for I could no wise imagine, unless it were the very pit in which Longfellow bids the dead past bury its dead, and Wittnash, of all places in the world, were going to avail itself of our poet's suggestion. If so, it must needs be confessed that many picturesque and delightful things would be thrown into the whole, and covered out of sight forever.

The article which I am writing has taken its own course, and occupied itself almost wholly with country churches, whereas I had purposed to attempt a description of some of the many old towns, Warwick, Coventry, Kenilworth, Stratford on Avon, which lie within an easy scope of Lemington, and still another church presents itself to my remembrance. It is that of Hatton, on which I stumbled in the course of a forenoon's ramble, and paused a little while to look at it for the sake of old Dr. Parr, who was once its vicar. Hatton, so far as I could discover, has no public-house, no shop, no contiguity of roofs, as in most English villages, however small, but is merely an ancient neighborhood of farmhouses,

spacious and standing wide apart, each within its own precincts, and offering a most comfortable aspect of orchards, harvest fields, barns, stacks, and all manner of rural plenty. It seemed to be a community of old settlers, among whom everything had been going on prosperously since an epoch beyond the memory of man. And they kept a certain privacy among themselves, and dwelt on a cross-road, at the entrance of which was a barred gate, hospitably open, but still impressing me with a sense of scarcely warrantable intrusion. After all, in some shady nook of those gentle Warwickshire slopes, there may have been a denser and more populous settlement-styled Hatton, which I never reached.

Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one that crossed it at right angles and led to Warwick. I espied the Church of Dr. Parr. Like the others which I have described, it had a low stone tower, square and battlemented at its summit. For all these little churches seemed to have been built on the same model, and nearly at the same measurement, and have even a greater family-likeness than the cathedrals. As I approached the bell of the tower, a remarkably deep-tone bell, considering how small it was, flung its voice abroad and told me that it was noon. The church stands among its graves, a little removed from the wayside, quite apart from any collection of houses, and with no signs of vicarage. It is a good deal shadowed by trees,

and not wholly destitute of ivy. The body of the edifice, unfortunately, and it is an outrage which the English church wardens are fond of perpetrating, has been newly covered, with a yellowish plaster or wash, so as to quite destroy the aspect of antiquity, except upon the tower which wears the dark gray hue of many centuries. The chancel window is painted with a representation of Christ upon the cross, and all the other windows are full of painted or stained glass, but none of it ancient, nor, if it be fair to judge from without of what ought to be seen within, possessing any of the tender glory that should be the inheritance of this branch,

of art revived from medieval times. I stepped over the graves and peeped in at two or three of the windows, and saw the snug interior of the church glimmering through the many-colored panes, like a show of commonplace objects under the fantastic influence of a dream. For the floor was covered with modern pews, very like what we may see in a New England meeting-house, though I think a little more favorable than those would be to the quiet slumber. of the Hatton farmers and their families. Those who slept under Dr. Parr's preaching now prolong their nap, I suppose, in the churchyard roundabout,

and can scarcely have drawn much spiritual benefit from any of the truths that he contrived to tell them in their lifetime. It struck me as a rare example, even where examples are numerous, of a man utterly misplaced that this enormous scholar, great in the classic tongues, and inevitably converting his own simplest vernacular into a learned language should have been set up in this homely pulpit and ordained to preach salvation to a rustic audience

to whom it is difficult to imagine how he could ever have spoken one available word. Almost always, in visiting such scenes as I have been attempting to describe, I had a singular sense of having been there before. The ivy-grown English churches, even that of Bebbington, the first that I beheld, were quite as familiar to me, when fresh from home, as the old wooden meeting-house in Salem, which used on wintry Sabbaths,

to be the frozen purgatory of my childhood. This was a bewildering, yet very delightful emotion, fluttering about me like a faint summer wind, and filling my imagination with a thousand half-remembrances, which looked as vivid as sunshine, at a side-glance, but faded quite away whenever I tempted to grasp and define them. Of course, the explanation of the mystery was that history, poetry, and fiction, books of travel, and the talk of tourists,

had given me pretty accurate preconceptions of the common objects of English scenery, and these, being long ago vivified by youthful fancy, had insensibly taken their places among the images of things actually seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful that I almost doubted whether such airy remembrances might not be a sort of innate idea, the print of a recollection in some ancestral mind transmitted with fainter and fainter impress through several dissents to my own. I felt indeed like the stalwart progenitor in person, returning to the hereditary haunts after more than two hundred years, and finding the church.

the hall, the farmhouse, the cottage, hardly changed during his long absence, the same shady by-paths and hedge-lanes, the same veiled sky, and green luster of the lawns and fields, while his own affinities for these things, a little obscured by disuse, were reviving at every step. An American is not very apt to love the English people as a whole on whatever length of acquaintance. I fancy that they would value our regard, and even reciprocated in their ungracious way, if we could give it to them in spite of all rebuffs, but they are beset by a curious and inevitable infelicity which compels them, as it were, to keep up what they seem to consider a wholesome bitterness of feeling between themselves and all other nationalities, especially that of America.

They will never confess it. Nevertheless, it is as essential a tonic to them as is their bitter ale. Therefore, and possibly too, from a similar narrowness in his own character, an American seldom feels quite as if he were at home among the English people. If he do so, he has ceased to be an American. But it requires no long residents to make him love their island, and appreciate it as thoroughly as they themselves do. For my part, I used to wish that we could annex it, transferring their 30 millions of inhabitants to some convenient wilderness in the Great West, and putting half or a quarter as many of ourselves into their places. The change would be beneficial to both parties. We, in our dry atmosphere, are getting too nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, extenuated, unsubstantial, theoretic, and need

to be made grosser. John Bull, on the other hand, has well. grown bulbous, long-bodied, short-legged, heavy-witted, material, and in a word too intensely English. In a few more centuries he will be the earthliest creature that the earth ever saw. Herefore, Providence has obviated such a result by timely intermixtures of alien races with the old English stock, so that each successive conquest of England has proved a victory by the revivification and improvement of its native manhood. Cannot America and England hit upon some scheme to secure even greater advantages to both nations?

End of Section 5. Section 6 of Our Old Home. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 6, About Warwick.

Between Bright New Lemington, the growth of the present century, and Rusty Warwick, founded by King's Symboling in the twilight ages, a thousand years before the medieval darkness, there are two roads, either of which may be measured by a sober-paced pedestrian in less than half an hour. One of these avenues flows out of the midst of the smart parades and crescents of the former town, along by hedges and beneath the shadow of great elms, past stuccoed Elizabethan villas, and wayside ale-houses, and through a hamlet of modern aspect, and runs straight into the principal thoroughfare of Warwick. The battlemented turrets of the castle, empowered halfway up in foliage, and the tall, slender

tower of St. Mary's Church, rising from among clustered roofs, have been visible almost from the commencement of the walk. Near the entrance of the town stands St. John's Schoolhouse, a picturesque old edifice of stone, with four peaked gables in a row, alternately plain and ornamented, and wide projecting windows,

and a spacious and venerable porch all overgrown with moss and ivy, and shut in from the world by a high-stone fence, not less mossy than the gabled front. There is an iron gate, through the rusty open work of which you see a grassy lawn, and almost expect to meet the shy, curious eyes of the little boys of past generations, peeping forth from their infantile antiquity

into the strangeness of our present life. I find a peculiar charm in these long-established English schools, where the schoolboy of today sits side by side, as it were, with his great grand sire on the same old benches, and often, I believe, thumbs a later but unimproved edition of the same old grammar or arithmetic. The newfangled notions of a Yankee school committee would madden many a pedagogue, and shake down the roof of many a time-honored seat of learning in the mother country. At this point, however, we will turn back, in order to follow up the other road from Leamington, which was the one that I loved best to take. it pursues a straight and level course bordered by wide gravel walks and overhung by the frequent elm with here a cottage and there a villa on one side a wooded plantation and on the other a rich field of grass or grain

until turning at right angles it brings you to an arched bridge over the avon its parapet is a balustrade carved out of freestone into the soft substance of which a multitude of persons have england engraved their names or initials, many of them now illegible, while others more deeply cut, are illuminated with fresh green moss. These tokens indicate a famous spot, and casting our eyes along the smooth gleam and shadow of the quiet stream, through a vista of willows that droop on either side into the water, we behold the gray magnificence of Warwick Castle, uplifting itself among stately trees, and rearing its turrets, high, and, and rearing its turrets, high above their loftiest branches. We can scarcely think the scene real,

so completely do those machucalated towers, the long line of battlements, the massive buttresses, the high-windowed walls, shape out our indistinct ideas of the antique time. It might rather seem as if the sleepy river, being Shakespeare's Avon, and often no doubt the mirror of his gorgeous visions,

were dreaming now of a lordly residence that stood here many centuries ago, and this fantasy is strengthened when you observe that the image in the tranquil water has all the distinctness of the actual structure. Either might be the reflection of the other. Wherever time has gnawed one of the stones, you see the mark of his tooth just as plainly in the sunken reflection. Each is so perfect that the upper vision seems a castle in the air, and the lower one an old stronghold of feudalism, miraculously kept from decay in an enchanted river.

A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge that projects from the bank a little on the hither side of the castle has the effect of making the scene appear more entirely apart from the everyday world, for it ends abruptly in the middle of the stream, so that if a cavalcade of the knights and ladies of romance should issue from the old walls, they could never tread on earthly ground any more than we, approaching from the side of modern realism, can overleap the gulf between our domain and theirs. Yet, if we seek to disenchant ourselves, it may readily be done. Crossing the bridge on which we stand, and passing a little farther on, we come to the entrance of the castle, abutting on the highway, and hospitably open at certain hours to all curious pilgrims

who choose to disperse half a crown or so toward the support of the Earl's domestics. The sight of that long series of historic rooms, full of such splendors and rarities as a great English family necessarily gathers about itself in its hereditary abode and in the lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten times as much, if indeed the value of the spectacle could be reckoned in money's worth. But after the attendant has hurried you, from end to end of the edifice, repeating a guide-book by rote, and exercising each successive hall of its poetic glamour and witchcraft, by the mere tone in which he talks about it,

you will make the doleful discovery that Warwick Castle has ceased to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to linger on the bridge, gazing at Caesar's Tower and Geis Tower, in the dim English sunshine above, and in the placid avon below, and still keep them as thoughts in your own mind, then climb to their summits, or touch even a stone of their actual substance. They will have all the more reality for you as stalwart relics of immemorial time, if you are reverent enough to leave them in the intangible sanctity of a poetic vision. From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in front of the castle gate, and soon enters the principal street of Warwick, a little beyond St. John's

schoolhouse already described. Chester itself, most antique of English towns, can hardly show quaint or architectural shapes than any of the buildings that border this street. They are mostly of the timber and plaster kind, with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a whole chronology of various patchwork in their walls. Their low-browed doorways open upon a sunken floor. They're projecting stories peep, as it were, over one another's shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of peaked gables.

They have curious windows, breaking out irregularly all over the house, some even in the roof, set in their own little peaks, opening lattice-wise, and furnished with twenty small panes of lozenge-shaped glass. The architecture of these edifices, a visible oaken framework showing the whole skeleton of the house, as if a man's bones should be arranged on his outside, and his flesh seen through the interstices, is often imitated by modern builders and with sufficiently picturesque effect.

The objection is that such houses, like all imitations of bygone styles, have an air of affectation. They do not seem to be built in earnest, There are no better than playthings or overgrown baby houses in which nobody should be expected to encounter the serious realities of either birth or death. Besides, originating nothing, we leave no fashions for another age to copy, when we ourselves shall have grown antique. Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick has overbrimmed, as it were, from the original settlement being outside of the ancient wall. The street soon runs under an arched gateway, with a church or some other venerable structure above it, and admits us into the heart of the town. At one of my first visits, I witnessed a military display. A regiment of Warwickshire militia, probably commanded by the Earl, was going through its drill in the marketplace, and on the collar of one of the officers was embroidered the bare and ragged staff, which has been the cognizance of the Warwick earldom,

from time immemorial. The soldiers were sturdy young men with the simple, stolid, yet kindly faces of English rustics, looking exceedingly well in a body, but slouching into a yeoman-like carriage and appearance the moment they were dismissed from drill. Squads of them were distributed everywhere about the streets,

and sentinels were posted at various points, and I saw a sergeant with a great key in his hand, big enough to have been the key of the castle's main entrance, when the gate was thickest and heaviest, apparently setting a guard. Thus, centuries after feudal times are passed, we find warriors still gathering under the old castle walls, and commanded by a feudal lord, just as in the days of the king-maker, who, no doubt, often mustered his retainers, in the same marketplace where I beheld this modern regiment. The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned aspect than the suburbs through which we approach it,

and the high street has shops with modern plate glass and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting as few projections to hang a thought or sentiment upon as if an architect of today had planned them. And indeed, so far as their surface goes, they are perhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an American street, but behind these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack of expression, there is probably the substance of the same old town that wore a Gothic exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem of England itself. What seems new in it is chiefly a skillful and fortunate adaptation of what such a people as ourselves would destroy. The new things are based and supported on sturdy old things,

and derive a massive strength from their deep and immemorial foundations, though with such limitations and impediments as only an Englishman could endure. But he likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his back, and moreover the antiquity that overburdens him has taken root in his being, and has grown to be rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting rid of it

without tearing his whole structure to pieces. in my judgment as he appears to be sufficiently comfortable under the mouldy accretion he had better stumble on with it as long as he can he presents a spectacle which is by no means without its charm for a disinterested and unencumbered observer when the old edifice or the antiquated custom or institution appears in its pristine form without any attempt at intermarrying it with modern fashions an american cannot but admire the picture effect produced by the sudden cropping up of an apparently dead and buried state of society into the actual present of which he is himself apart We need not go far in Warwick without encountering an instance of the kind Proceeding westward through the town we find ourselves confronted by a huge mass of natural rock Hune into something like architectural shape and penetrated by a vaulted passage which may well have been one of king's symbol the L'belene's original gateways, and on top of the rock over the archway, sits a small old church communicating with an ancient edifice or assemblage of edifices that look down from a similar elevation on the side of the street.

A range of trees half hides the latter establishment from the sun. It presents a curious and venerable specimen of the timber and plaster style of building, in which some of the finest old houses in England are constructed. The front projects into porticos and vestibules, and rises into many gables, some in a row, and others crowning semi-detached portions of the structure. The windows mostly open on hinges, but show a delightful irregularity of shape and position. A multiplicity of chimneys break through the roof at their own will, or at least without any settled purpose of the architect. The whole affair looks very old, so old indeed that the front of the front of the building.

bulges forth as if the timber framework were a little weary, at last, of standing erect so long. But the state of repair is so perfect, and there is such an indescribable aspect of continuous vitality within the system of this aged house, that you feel confident that there may be safe shelter yet, and perhaps for centuries to come under its time-honored roof. And on a bench, sluggishly enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the street of Warwick, as from a life apart, a few old men are generally to be seen, wrapped in long cloaks, on which you may detect the glistening of a silver badge representing the bare and ragged staff. These decorated worthies are some of the twelve brethren of Leicester's Hospital,

a community which subsists today under the identical modes that were established for it in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of course retains many features of a social life that has been. vanished almost everywhere else. The edifice itself dates from a much older period than the charitable institution of which it is now the home. It was the seat of a religious fraternity far back in the Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry VIII turned all the priesthood of England out of doors, and put the most unscrupulous of his favorites into their vacant abodes. In many instances, the old monks had chosen the sites of their domiciles so well, and built them on such a broad system of beauty and convenience

that their lay occupants found it easy to convert them into stately and comfortable homes, and as such they still exist, with something of the antique reverence lingering about them. The structure now before us seems to have been first granted to Sir Nicholas Lestrange, who perhaps intended, like other men, to establish his household gods in the niches whence he had thrown down the images of saints, and to lay his hearth where an altar had stood. But there was probably a natural reluctance in those days, when Catholicism, so lately repudiated, must needs have retained an influence over all but the most obdurate characters, to bring one's hopes of domestic prosperity and a fortunate lineage to the direct hostility

with the awful claims of the ancient religion. At all events, there is still a superstitious, idea betwixt a fantasy and a belief that the possession of former church property has drawn a curse along with it, not only among the posterity of those to whom it was originally granted, but wherever it has subsequently been transferred, even if honestly bought and paid for. There are families now inhabiting some of the beautiful old abbeys who appear to indulge in a species of pride in recording the strange deaths and ugly shapes. of misfortune that have occurred among their predecessors, and may be supposed likely to dog their

own pathways down the ages of futurity. Whether Sir Nicholas Lestrange, in the beef-eating days of old Harry and Elizabeth, was a nervous man, and subject to apprehensions of this kind, I cannot tell, but it is certain that he speedily rid himself of the spoils of the church, and that, within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became the property of the famous Dudley Earl of Leicter, brother of the Earl of Warwick. He devoted the ancient religious precinct to a charitable use, endowing it with ample revenue, and making it the perpetual home of 12 poor, honest and war-broken soldiers, mostly his own retainers, and natives either of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans, or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their monkish dormitories and haunt the time-darkened corridors and galleries of the hospital, leading a life of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges which the Earl of Leicester gave to the original twelve.

He is said to have been a bad man in his day, but he has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what was to his him a distant future. On the projecting story over the arched entrance, there is the date, 1571, and several coats of arms, either the earls or those of his kindred, and immediately above the doorway a stone sculpture of the bare and ragged staff. Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quadrangle or enclosed court, such as always formed the central part of a great family residence in Queen Elizabeth's time and earlier. There can hardly be a more perfect specimen of such an establishment than Leicester's Hospital. The quadrangle is a sort of sky-roofed hall to which there is convenient access from all parts of the house.

The four inner fronts, with their high, steep roofs, and sharp gables, look into it from antique windows, and through open corridors and galleries along the sides, and there seems to be a richer display of architectural devices and ornaments, quainter carvings and oak, and more fantastic shapes of the timber framework than on the side toward the street. On the wall opposite the arched entrance are the following inscriptions comprising such moral rules, I presume, as were deemed most essential for the daily observance of the community.

Honor all men, fear God, honor the king, love the brotherhood, and, again, as if this latter injunction needed emphasis and repetition among a household of aged people soured with the hard fortune of their previous lives, be kindly affectioned one to another. One sentence over a door communicating with the master's side of the house is addressed to that dignitary. He that ruleth over men must be just. All these are characterized in old English letters and form part of the elaborate ornamentation of the house. Everywhere on the walls, over windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them, appear as scutcheons of arms, cognisances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper colors,

and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with their splendor. One of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on a heraldic wreath, being the crest of the Lord's Delisle. But especially is the cognizance of the bare and ragged staff repeated over and over and over again and again, in a great variety of attitudes, at full length, and half-length, in paint and in oaken sculpture,

in bar-relief and rounded image. The founder of the hospital was certainly disposed to reckon his own beneficence as among the hereditary glories of his race, and had he lived and died a half-century earlier, he would have kept up an old Catholic custom by enjoining the twelve beadsmen to pray for the welfare of his soul. At my first visit, some of the brethren were seated on the bench outside of the edifice, looking down into the street, but they did not vouchsafe me a word,

and seemed so estranged from modern life, so enveloped in antique customs and old-fashioned cloaks, that to converse with them would have been like shouting across the gulf between our age and Queen Elizabeth's. So I passed into the quadrangle and found it quite solitary, except that a plain and neat old woman happened to be crossing it, with an aspect of business and carefulness that bespoke her a woman of this world, and not merely a shadow of the past.

Asking her if I could come in, she answered very readily and civilly that I might, and said that I was free to look about me, hinting a hope, however, that I would not open the private doors of the Brotherhood, as some visitors were in the habit of doing. Under her guidance, I went into what was formerly the Great Hall of the Establishment, where King James I first had once been feasted by an Earl of Warwick, as is commemorated by an inscription on the cobwebbed and dingy wall. It is a very spacious and barn-like apartment, with a brick floor and a vaulted roof, the rafters of which are oaken beams wonderfully carved, but hardly visible in the duskiness that bruised.

aloft. The hall may have made a splendid appearance when it was decorated with rich tapestry, and illuminated with chandeliers, cressets, and torches, glistening upon silver dishes, where King James sat at supper among his brilliantly dressed nobles, but it has come to base uses in these latter days, being improved in Yankee phrase, as a brewery and washroom, and as a cellar for the brethren's separate allotments of coal. The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned to the quadrangle. It was very quiet, very handsome in its own obsolete style, and must be an exceedingly comfortable place for the old people to lounge in, when the inclement winds render it inexpedient to walk abroad. There are shrubs against the wall

on one side, and on another is a cloistered walk, adorned with stag's heads and antlers, and running beneath a covered gallery up to which ascends a balustrated staircase. in the portion of the edifice opposite the entrance arch are the apartments of the master and looking into the window as the old woman at no request of mine had specially informed me that i might i saw a low but vastly comfortable parlor very handsomely furnished and altogether a luxurious place it had a fireplace with an immense arch the antique breadth of which extended almost from wall to wall of the room now fitted up in such a way that the modern coal grate looked very diminutive in the midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to me that, among these venerable surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good in former things,

and eking out their imperfection with the results of modern ingenuity, the master might lead a not unenviable life. On the cloistered side of the quadrangle, where the dark oak panels made the enclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained window reddened by a great blaze from within, and heard the bubbling and squeaking of something, doubtless very nice and succulent, that was being cooked at the kitchen fire. I think indeed that a whiff or two of the savory fragrance reached my nostrils. At all events the impression grew upon me that Leicester's Hospital is one of the jolliest old domiciles in England. I was about to depart when another old woman, very plainly dressed but fat, comfortable, and with a cheerful twinkle in her eyes, came through the arch, and looked curiously at me. This repeated apparition of the gentle sex, though by no means under its loveliest guise,

had still an agreeable effect in modifying my ideas of an institution, which I had supposed to be of a stern and monastic character. She asked whether I wished to see the hospital, and said that the porter, whose office it was to attend visitors, was dead, and would be buried that very day, so that the whole establishment could not be conveniently shown me. She kindly invited me, however, to visit the apartment occupied by her husband and herself, so I followed her up the antique staircase along the gallery into a small oak-panelled parlor, where sat an old man in a long blue garment, who arose and saluted me with much courtesy. He seemed a very quiet person, and yet had a look of travel and

adventure, and gray experience such as I could have fancied in a palmer of ancient times, who might likewise have worn a similar costume. The little room was carpeted and neatly furnished, a portrait of its occupant was hanging on the wall, and on a table were two swords crossed, one probably his own battle weapon, and the other, which I drew half out of the scabbard, had an inscription on the blade, purporting that it had been taken from the field of Waterloo. My kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit all the particulars of their housekeeping, and led me into the bedroom, which was in the nicest order, with a snow-white quilt upon the bed,

and in a little intervening room was a washing and bathing apparatus, a convenience, judging from the personal aspect and atmosphere of such parties, seldom to be met with in the humbler ranks of British life. The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of somebody to talk with, but the good woman availed herself of the privilege far more copiously than the veteran himself, insomuch that he felt it expedient, to give her an occasional nudge with his elbow in her well-padded ribs. Don't you be so talkative, quoth he. And indeed, he could hardly feel. find space for a word, and quite as little after his admonition as before. Her nimble tongue ran over the whole system of life in the hospital. The brethren, she said, had a yearly stipend,

the amount of which she did not mention, and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, free, and instead of being pestered with a great many rules, and made to dine together at a great table, they could manage their little household matters as they liked, buying their own dinners and having them cooked in the general kitchen and eating them snugly in their own parlors. And, added she, rightly deeming this the crowning privilege, with the master's permission, they can have their wives to take care of them, and no harm comes of it, and what more can an old man desire? It was evident enough that the good dame found herself in what she considered very rich clover, and moreover had plenty of small occupations to keep her from getting

rusty and dull. But the veteran impressed me as deriving far less enjoyment from the monotonous ease, without fear of change or hope of improvement, that had followed upon thirty years of peril and vicissitude. I fancied, too, that, while pleased with the novelty of a stranger's visit, he was still a little shy of becoming a spectacle for the stranger's curiosity, for, if he chose to be morbid about the matter, the establishment was but in almshouse. in spite of its old-fashioned magnificence, and his fine blue cloak only a popper's garment, with a silver badge on it that perhaps galled his shoulder. In truth, the badge and the peculiar garb, though quite in accordance with the manners of the Earl of Leicester's age, are repugnant to

modern prejudices, and might fitly and humanely be abolished. End of Section 6. Section 7 of Our Old Home. This is a Libervox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our old home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 7, About Warwick. A year or two afterwards, I paid another visit to the hospital,

and found a new porter established in office, and already capable of talking like a guidebook about the history, antiquities, and present condition of the charity. He informed me that the 12-breastened, are selected from among old soldiers of good character, whose other resources must not exceed an income of five pounds, thus excluding all commissioned officers, whose half-pay would, of course, be more than that amount. They receive from the hospital an annuity of 80 pounds each, besides their apartments, a garment of fine blue cloth, an annual abundance of ale, and a privilege at the kitchen fire, so that, considering the class from which they are taken, they may well recognize, themselves among the fortunate of the earth. Furthermore, they are invested with political rights, acquiring a vote for member of Parliament in virtue either of their income or brotherhood.

On the other hand, as regards their personal freedom or conduct, they are subject to a supervision which the master of the hospital might render extremely annoying, were he so inclined. But the military restraint under which they have spent the active portion of their lives makes it easier for them to endure the domestic discipline here imposed upon their age. The porter bore his testimony, whatever were its value, to their being as contented and happy as such a set of old people could possibly be, and affirmed that they spent much time in burnishing their silver badges, and were as proud of them as a nobleman of his star. These badges by the by, except one that was stolen and replaced in Queen Anne's time, are the very very very good. The very

very same that decorated the original twelve brethren. I have seldom met with a better guide than my friend the porter. He appeared to take a genuine interest in the peculiarities of the establishment, and yet had an existence apart from them, so that he could the better estimate what those peculiarities were. To be sure, his knowledge and observation were confined to external things, but so far had a sufficiently extensive scope. He led to the knowledge. me up the staircase and exhibited portions of the timber framework of the edifice that are reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old, and are still neither worm-eaten nor decayed, and traced out what had been a great hall in the days of the Catholic fraternity, though its area is now

filled up with the apartments of the twelve brethren, and pointed to ornaments of sculptured oak, done in an ancient religious style of art, but hardly visible amid the vaulted dimness of the roof. thence we went to the chapel, the Gothic church, which I noted several pages back, surmounting the gateway that stretches half across the street. Here the brethren attend daily prayer, and each have a prayer-book of the finest paper with a fair large type for their old eyes. The interior of the chapel is very plain, with a picture of no merit for an altarpiece, and a single old pane of painted glass in the great eastern window, representing no saint, no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such cases, but that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. Nevertheless, amid so many tangible proofs of his human sympathy, one comes to doubt whether the Earl could have been such a hardened reprobate after all. We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked down between its battlements into the street, a hundred feet below us, while clambering halfway up, were fox-glove flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of the chapel.

grass that had rooted themselves into the roughnesses of the stone foundation. Far around us lay a rich and lovely English landscape, with many a church-spire and noble country seat, and several objects of high historic interest. Edge Hill, where the Puritans defeated Charles I, is in sight on the edge of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house where Cromwell lodged on the night before battle. Right under our eyes, and half enveloping the town with its high-shouldering wall, so that all the closely compacted streets seemed but a precinct of the estate, was the Earl of Warwick's delightful park,

a wide extent of sunny lawns interspersed with broad contiguities of forest shade. Some of the cedars of Lebanon were there, a growth of trees in which the Warwick family take a hereditary pride. The two highest towers of the castle, heave themselves up out of a mass of foliage, and look down in a lordly manner upon the plebeian roofs of the town, a part of which are slate-covered, these are the modern houses, and a part are coated with old red tiles, denoting the more ancient edifices. A hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, a great fire destroyed a considerable portion of

the town, and doubtless annihilated many structures of a remote antiquity. At least there was a possibility of very old houses in the long past of Warwick, which King Symbeline is said to have founded in the year one of the Christian era. And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it may be, brings to mind a more indestructible reality than anything else that has occurred within the present field of our vision, though this includes the scene of Guy of Warwick's legendary exploits, and some of those of the round table to say nothing of the Battle of Edge Hill. For perhaps it was in the landscape now under our eyes that posthumous wandered with the king's daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and courageous Imogen,

the tenderest and womanliest woman that Shakespeare ever made immortal in the world. The silver Avon, which we see flowing so quietly by the grey castle, may have held their images in its bosom. The day, though it began brightly, had long been overcast, And the clouds now spat down a few spiteful drops upon us, besides that the east wind was very chill. So we descended the winding tower stair, and went next into the garden, one side of which is shut in by almost the only remaining portion of the old city wall. A part of the garden ground is devoted to grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel walks, in the center of one of which is a beautiful stone vase of Egyptian sculpture

that formerly stood on the top of a nilometer, or graduated pillar for measuring the rise and fall of the river Nile. On the pedestal is a Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who, his vicarage of Hatton being so close at hand, was probably often the master's guest, and smoked his interminable pipe along these garden walks. Of the vegetable garden which lies adjacent, the lion's share is appropriated to the master,

and twelve small separate patches to the individual brethren, who cultivate them at their own judgment and by their own labor, and their beans and cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt not, than if they had received them directly from the dead hand of the Earl of Leicester, like the rest of their food. In the farther part of the garden is an arbor for the old man's pleasure and convenience, and I should like well to sit down among them there, and find out what is really the bitter and the sweet of such a sort of life. As for the old gentleman themselves, they put me queerly in mind of the Salem Custom House, and the venerable personages whom I found so quietly at anchor there. The master's residence, forming one entire side of the quadrangle, fronts on the garden, and wears an aspect at once

stately and homely. It can hardly have undergone any perceptible changes within three centuries, but the garden, into which its old windows look, has probably put off a great many eccentricities and quaintnesses in the way of cunningly clipped shrubbery since the gardener of Queen Elizabeth's reign threw down his rusty shears and took his departure. The present master's name is Harris. He is a descendant of the founder's family, a gentleman of independent fortune, and a clergyman of the established church, as the regulations of the hospital require him to be. I know not what are his official emoluments, but according to an English precedent, an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held directly for the behoof of those who administer it,

and, perhaps incidentally, in a moderate way, for the nominal beneficiaries, and, in the case before us, the twelve brethren being so comfortably provided for, the master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a distant land, to fling an idle jib against a gentleman of whom I really know nothing, except that the people under his charge bear all possible tokens of being tended and cared for as sedulously as if each of them sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter bustling round the hearth to make ready his porridge and his tidbits. It is delightful to think of the good life which a suitable man, in the master's position, has an opportunity to lead, linked to time-honored customs, welded in with an ancient system, never dreaming of radical change, and bringing all the mellowness and richness of the past down into these railway days, which do not compel him or his community to move a whit quicker than of your.

Everybody can appreciate the advantages of going ahead. It might be well sometimes to think whether there is not a word or two to be said in favor of standing still or going to sleep. From the garden we went into the kitchen, where the fire was burning hospitably. and diffused a genial warmth far and wide, together with the fragrance of some old English roast beef, which I think must at that moment have been done nearly to a turn. The kitchen is a lofty, spacious, and noble room, partitioned off round the fireplace by a sort of semicircular oaken screen, or rather an arrangement of heavy and high-backed settles, with an ever-open entrance between them, on either side of which is the omnipresent image

of the bare and ragged staff, three feet high, and excellently carved an oak, now black with time and unctuous kitchen smoke. The ponderous mantelpiece, likewise of carved oak, towers high towards the dusky ceiling, and extends its mighty breadth to take in a vast area of hearth, the arch of the fireplace being positively so immense that I could compare it to nothing but the city gateway. Above its cavernous opening were crossed two ancient halberds, the weapons, possibly, of soldiers who had fought under Leicester in the low countries, and elsewhere on the walls were displayed several muskets, which some of the present inmates of the hospital may have levelled against the French. Another ornament of the mantelpiece was a square of silken needlework or embroidery,

faded nearly white, but dimly representing that wearisome bear and ragged staff, which we should hardly look at twice, only that it was wrought by the fair fingers of poor Amy Robsart, and beautifully framed in oak from Kenilworth Castle, at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of our own. Certainly no Englishman would be capable of this little bit of enthusiasm. Finally, the kitchen firelight glistens on a splendid display of copper flagons, all of generous capacity, and one of them is about as big as a half-a-half-and-of-thaggall. barrel. The smaller vessels contain the customary allowance of ale, and the larger one is filled with that foaming liquor on four festive occasions of the year, and emptied a main by the Jolly

Brotherhood. I should be glad to see them do it, but it would be an exploit fitter for Queen Elizabeth's age than these degenerate times. The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren. In the daytime they bring their little messes to be cooked here, and eat them in their own parlors, but after a certain hour the great hearth is cleared and swept, and the old men assemble round its blaze, each with his tankard and his pipe, to hold high converse through the evening. If the master be a fit man for his office, methinks he will sometimes sit down sociably among them, for there is an elbow-chair by the fireside, which it would not demean his dignity

to fill, since it was occupied by King James at the great festival of nearly three centuries ago. A sip of the ale and a whiff of the tobacco pipe would put him in friendly relations with his venerable household, and then we can fancy him instructing them by pithy apathoms and religious texts, which were first uttered here by some Catholic priest, and have impregnated the atmosphere ever since. If a joke goes round, it shall be of an elder coinage than Joe Miller's, as old as Lord Bacon's collection, or as the just book that Master Slender asked for, when he lacked small talk for sweet Anne Page. No news shall be spoken of a later than the drifting ashore

on the northern coast of some stern post or figurehead, a barnacled fragment of one of the great galleons of the Spanish armada. What a tremor would pass through the antique group if a damp newspaper should suddenly be spread to dry before the fire. They would feel as if either that printed sheet or they themselves must be an unreality. What a mysterious awe if the shriek of the railway train, as it reaches the Warwick station, should ever so faintly invade their ears. Movement of any kind seems inconsistent with the stability of such an institution.

Nevertheless, I trust that the ages will carry it along with them, because it is such a pleasant kind of dream for an American to find his way thither, and behold a piece of the sixteenth century set into our prosaic times, and then to depart and think of its arched doorway as a spell-guarded entrance, which will never be accessible or visible to him any more. Not far from the marketplace of Warwick stands the great church of St. Mary's, a vast edifice indeed, and almost worthy to be a cathedral. People who pretend to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor style of architecture. though designed, or at least extensively restored by Sir Christopher Wren. But I thought it very striking, with its wide, high, and elaborate windows, its tall towers, its immense length, and, for it was long before I outgrew this Americanism, the love of an old thing merely for the sake of its age, the tinge of grey antiquity over the hole.

Once, while I stood gazing up at the tower, the clock struck twelve with a very deep, intonation, and immediately some chivies began to play, and kept up their resounding music for five minutes, as measured by the hand upon the dial. It was a very delightful harmony, as airy as the notes of birds, and seemed a not unbecoming freak of half-sportive fancy in the huge, ancient, and solemn church, although I have seen an old-fashioned parlor clock that did precisely the same thing in its small way. The great attraction of this edifice is the Beauchamp, or as the English, who delight in vulgarizing their fine old Norman names, call it the Beecham Chapel, where the earls of Warwick and their kindred have been buried, from four hundred years back till within a recent

period. It is a stately and very elaborate chapel, with a large window of ancient painted glass, as perfectly preserved as any that I remember seen in England, and remarkably vivid in its colors. Here are several monuments with marble figures recumbent upon them, representing the earls in their knightly armor, and their dames in the ruffs and court finery of their day, looking hardly stiffer in stone than they must needs have been in their starched linen and embroidery. The renowned Earl of Leicester of Queen Elizabeth's time, the benefactor of the hospital, reclines at full length on the tablet of one of these tombs, side by side with his countess,

not Amy Robsert, but a lady who, unless I have confused the story with some other moldy scandal, is said to have avenged poor Emmy's murder by poisoning the Earl himself. Be that, as it may, both figures, and especially the Earl, look like the very types of ancient honor and conjugal faith. In consideration of his long-enduring kindness to the twelve-breactness to the twelve-breact, brethren i cannot consent to believe him as wicked as he is usually depicted and it seems a marvel now that so many well-established historical verdicts have been reversed why some enterprising writer does not make out lyster to have been the patterned nobleman of his age in the centre of the chapel is the magnificent memorial of its founder richard beauchamp earl of warwick in the time of henry the sixth on a richly ornamented altar-tomb of the time of gray marble lies the bronze figure of a knight in gilded armor, most admirably executed, for the sculptors of those

days had wonderful skill in their own style, and could make so life-like an image of a warrior, in brass or marble, that if a trumpet were sounded over his tomb, you would expect him to start up and handle his sword. The earl, whom we now speak of, however, has slipped soundly in spite of a more serious disturbance than any blast of a trumpet, unless it were the final one. Some centuries after his death, the floor of the chapel fell down and broke open the stone coffin in which he was buried, and among the fragments appeared the anciently entombed Earl of Warwick, with the colors scarcely faded out of his cheeks, his eyes a little sunken, but in other respects looking as natural as if he had died yesterday. But exposure to the atmosphere appeared to

begin and finish the long-delayed process of decay in a moment, causing him to vanish like a bubble, so that, almost before there had been time to wonder at him, there was nothing left of the stalwart earl save his hair. This sole relic the ladies of Warwick made prize of, and braided it into rings and brooches for their own adornment, and thus with a chapel and a ponderous tomb built on purpose to protect his remains, this great nobleman could not help being brought untimely to the light of day, or even keep his love-locks on his skull after he had so long done with love. There seems to be a fatality that disturbs people in their sepulchres, when they have been over-careful to render them magnificent and impregnable, as witnessed the builder of the pyramids,

and Hadrian, Augustus, and the Scipio's, and most other personages whose mausoleums have been conspicuous enough to attract the violator. And as for dead men's hair, I have seen a lock of King Edward IV's of a reddish-brown color, which perhaps was once twisted round the delicate forefinger of Mistress Shore. The direct lineage of the renowned characters that lie buried in this splendid chapel has long been extinct. The earldom is now held by the Grevells, descendants of the Lord brook, who was slain in the parliamentary war, and they have recently, that is to say, within a century, built a burial vault on the other side of the church, calculated, as the sexton assured me, with a nod as if he were pleased, to afford suitable and respectful accommodation to as many

as four-score coffins. Thank Heaven the old man did not call them caskets, a vile, modern phrase, which compels a person of sense and good taste, to be able to. shrink more disgustfully than ever before from the idea of being buried at all. But as regards those eighty coffins, only sixteen have as yet been contributed, and it may be a question with some minds, not merely whether the grevels will hold the earldom of Warwick until the full number shall be made up, but whether earldom's and all manner of lordships will not have faded out of England long before those many generations shall have passed from the castle to the vault.

I hope not. A titled and landed aristocracy, if any wise and evil and an encumbrance, is so only to the nation which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders. And an American, whose sole relation to it is to admire its picturesque effect upon society, ought to be the last man to quarrel with what affords him so much gratuitous enjoyment. Nevertheless, conservative as England is, and though I scarce ever found in Englishman who seemed really to desire change, there was continually a dull sound in my ears, as if the old foundations of things were crumbling away. Some time or other, by no irreverent effort of violence, but rather, in spite of all pious efforts to uphold a heterogeneous pile of

institutions that will have outlasted their vitality, at some unexpected moment there must come a terrible crash. The sole reason why I should desire it to have to have, and I was to have to be a happen in my day is that I might be there to see it, but the ruin of my own country is perhaps all that I am destined to witness, and that immense catastrophe, though I am strong in the faith, that there is a national lifetime of a thousand years in us yet, would serve any man well enough as his final spectacle on earth. If the visitor is inclined to carry away any little memorial of Warwick, he had better go to an old curiosity shop in the high street, where there is a vast quantity of obsolete gugaws, great and small, and many of them so pretty and ingenious,

that you wonder how they came to be thrown aside and forgotten. As regards its minor tastes, the world changes, but does not improve. It appears to me, indeed, that there have been epics of far more exquisite fancy than the present one, in manners of personal ornament, and such delicate trifles as we put upon a drawing-room table, a mantelpiece, or a whatnot. The shop in question is near the East Gate, but is hardly to be found without careful search, being denoted only by the name of Red Fern, painted not very conspicuously in the top light of the door. Immediately on entering, we find ourselves among a confusion of old rubbish and valuables, ancient armor,

historic portraits, ebony cabinets inlaid with pearl, tall, ghostly clocks, hideous old China, dim-looking glasses in frames of tarnished magnificence, a thousand objects of strange aspect, and others that almost frighten you by their likeness in unlikeness to things now in use. It is impossible to give an idea of the variety of articles, so thickly strewn about that we can scarcely move without overthrowing some great curiosity with a crash, or sweeping away some small one hitched to our sleeves. Three stories of the entire house are crowded in like manner. The collection, even as we see it exposed to view, must have been got together at great cost, but the real treasures of the establishment lie in secret repositories,

whence they are not likely to be drawn forth at ordinary summons, though if a gentleman with a competently long purse should call for them, I doubt not that the signet ring of Joseph's friend Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva's leading staff, or the dagger that killed the Duke of Buckingham, all of which I have seen, or any other almost incredible thing, might make its appearance.

Gold snuff-boxes, antique gems, jeweled goblets, Venetian wine glasses, which burst when poison is poured into them, and therefore must not be used for modern wine-drinking. Jasper handled knives, painted several teacups, in short, there are all sorts of things that a virtuoso ransacks the world to discover. It would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in Mr. Redfern's shop than to keep the money in one's pocket, but for my part, I contented myself with buying a little old spoon of silver gilt, and fantastically shaped,

and got it at all the more reasonable rate, because there happened to be no legend attached to it. I could supply any deficiency of that kind at much less expense than re-gilding the spoon. End of Section 7. Section 8 of Our Old Home. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our old home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 8.

Recollections of a gifted woman. From Leamington to Stratford on Avon, the distance is eight or nine miles, over a road that seemed to me most beautiful. Not that I can recall any memorable peculiarities, for the country, most of the way, is a succession of the gentlest swells and subsidences, affording wide and far glimpses of champagne scenery here and there,

and sinking almost to a dead level as we draw near Stratford. Any landscape in New England, even the tamest, has a more striking outline, and besides would have its blue eyes open in those lakelets that we encounter almost from mile to mile at home, but of which the old country is utterly destitute, or it would smile in our faces through the medium of the wayside bro, brooks that vanish under a low stone arch on one side of the road and sparkle out again on the other. Neither of these pretty features is often to be found in an English scene. The charm of the latter consists in the rich verdure of the fields, in the stately wayside trees,

and carefully kept plantations of wood, and in the old and high cultivation that is humanized the very sods by mingling so much of man's torts. toil and care among them. To an American, there is a kind of sanctity even in an English turnip field when he thinks how long that small square of ground has been known and recognized as a possession, transmitted from father to son, trodden often by memorable feet, and utterly redeemed from savagery by old acquaintanceship with civilized eyes. The wildest things in England are more than half tame. The trees, for instance, whether in hedgerow, park, or what they call forest, have nothing wild about them.

They are never ragged. There is a certain decorous restraint in the freest outspread of their branches, though they spread wider than any self-nurturing tree. They are tall, vigorous, bulky, with a look of aged-long life, and a promise of more years to come, all of which will bring them into closer kindred with the race of man. Somebody or other has known them from sapling upward, and if they endure long enough, they grow to be traditionally observed and honored, and connected with the fortunes of old families,

till, like Tennyson's talking oak, they babble with a thousand leafy tongues to ears that can understand them. An American tree, however, if it could grow in fair, competition with an English one of similar species would probably be the more picturesque object of the two. The Warwickshire Elm has not so beautiful a shape as those that overhang our village street, and as for the redoubtable English oak, there is a certain John Bullism in its figure, a compact rotundity of foliage, a lack of irregular and various outline, that make it look wonderfully like a gigantic cauliflower. Its leafed, too is much smaller than that of most varieties of American oak, nor do I mean to doubt that the latter, with free leave to grow, reverent care and cultivation and immunity from the axe would live out its centuries as sturdly as its English brother, and prove far the nobler and more majestic specimen of a tree at the end of them. Still, however one's Yankee patriotism

may struggle against the admission, it must be owned that the trees and trees and other objects of an English landscape take hold of the observer by numberless minute tendrils, as it were, which, look as closely as we choose, we never find in an American scene. The parasitic growth is so luxuriant that the trunk of the tree, so gray and dry in our climate, is better worth observing than the boughs and foliage. A verdant messiness coats it all over, so that it looks almost as green as the leaves. And often, moreover, the stately stem is clustered about, high upward, with creeping and twining shrubs, the ivy, and sometimes the mistletoe, close clinging friends, nurtured by the moisture and never too fervid sunshine, and supporting

themselves by the old tree's abundant strength. We call it a parasitical vegetation, but if the phrase imply any reproach, it is unkind to bestow it on this beautiful affection and relationship which exist in England between one order of plants and another. The strong tree being always ready to give support to the trailing shrub, lift it to the sun, and feed it out of its own heart, if it craves such food, and the shrub, on its part, repaying its foster-father with an ample luxuriance of beauty, and adding Corinthian grace to the tree's lofty strength. No bitter winter nips these tender little sympathies, no hot sun burns the life out of them, and therefore they outlast the longevity of the oak, and if the woodman permitted,

would bury it in a green grave when all is over. Should there be nothing else along the road to look at, an English hedge might well suffice to occupy the eyes, and to a depth beyond what he would suppose, the heart of an American. We often set out hedges in our own soil, but might as well set out figs or pineapples, and expect to gather fruit of them. Something grows to be sure, which we choose to call a hedge, but it lacks the dense, luxuriant variety of vegetation that is accumulated into the English original, in which a botanist would find a thousand shrubs and gracious herbs that the hedge's Hedge-maker never thought of planting there. Among them growing wild are many of the kindred blossoms

of the very flowers which our pilgrim fathers brought from England, for the sake of their simple beauty and home-like associations, and which we have ever since been cultivating in gardens. There is not a softer trait to be found in the character of those stern men than that they should have been sensible of these flower-roots clinging among the fibers of their rugged-hors. hearts, and have felt the necessity of bringing them overseas and making them hereditary in the new land, instead of trusting to what rarer beauty the wilderness might have in store for them. Or, if the roadside has no hedge, the ugliest stone fence, such as in America, would keep itself bare and unsympathizing till the end of time, is sure to be covered with the small

handiwork of nature. That careful mother lets nothing go naked, and if she cannot provide clothing gives at least embroidery. No sooner is the fence built than she adopts and adorns it as part of her original plan, treating the hard, uncomely construction, as if it had all along been a favorite idea of her own. A little sprig of ivy may be seen creeping up the side of the low wall, and clinging fast with its many feet to the rough surface. A tuft of grass roots itself between two of the stones, where a pinch or two of wayside dust has been moistened into nutritious soil for it. A small bunch of fern grows in another crevice.

A deep, soft, verdant moss spreads itself along the top and over all the available inequalities of the fence, and where nothing else will grow, lichens stick tenaciously to the bare stones, and variegate the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and red. Finally, a great deal of shrubbery clusters along the base of the stone wall, and takes away the hardness of its outline, and, in due time, as the upshot of these apparently aimless or sportive touches, we recognize that the beneficent creator of all things, working through his handmaiden, whom we call nature,

has deigned to mingle a charm of divine gracefulness, even with so earthly an institution as a boundary fence. The clown who wrought at it little dreamed what fellow laborer he had. The English should send us photographs of portions of the trunks of trees, the tangled and various products of a hedge, and a square foot of an old wall. They can hardly send anything else so characteristic. Their artists, especially of the later school,

sometimes toil to depict such subjects, but are apt to stiffen the lithe tendrils in the process. The poets succeed better, with Tennyson at their head, and often produce ravishing effects by dint of a tender minuteness of touch, to which the genius of the soil and climate artfully impels them, for, as regards grandeur, there are loftier scenes in many countries than the best that England can show. but, for the picturesqueness of the smallest object that lies under its gentle gloom and sunshine, there is no scenery like it anywhere.

In the foregoing paragraphs I have strayed away to a long distance from the road to Stratford on Avon, for I remember no such stone fences as I have been speaking of in Warwickshire, nor elsewhere in England except among the lakes, or in Yorkshire, and the rough and hilly countries to the north of it. Hedges there were along my road, however, and broad level fields, rustic hamlets, and cottages of ancient date, from the roof of one which the occupant was tearing away the thatch, and showing what an accumulation of dust, dirt, moldiness, roots of weeds, families of mice, swallows nests, and hordes of insects had been deposited there since that old straw was new. estimating its antiquity from these tokens, Shakespeare himself in one of his morning rambles out of his native town might have seen the thatch laid on. At all events, the cottage walls were old enough to have known him as a guest. A few modern villas were also to be seen,

and perhaps there were mansions of old gentility at no great distance, but hidden among the trees, for it is a point of English pride that such houses seldom allow themselves to be visible from the high road. In short, I recollect nothing specially remarkable along the way, nor in the immediate approach to Stratford, and yet the picture of that June morning has a glory in my memory, owing chiefly, I believe, to the charm of the English summer weather, the really good days of which are the most delightful that mortal man can ever hope to be favored with. Such a genial warmth. A little too warm it might be, yet only to such a degree as to assure an American, a certainty to which he seldom attains till, a tempered to the customary austerity of an English summer day,

that he was quite warm enough. And after all, there was an unconquerable freshness in the atmosphere, which every little movement of a breeze shook over me like a dash of the ocean spray. Such days need bring us no other happiness than their own light and temperature. No doubt I could not have enjoyed it so exquisitely, except that there must be still latent in us Western wanderers, even after an absence of two centuries and more, an adaptation to the English climate, which makes us sensible of a mother-womener. kindness in its scantiest sunshine, and overflows us with delight at its more lavish smiles. The spire of Shakespeare's Church, the Church of the Holy Trinity, begins to show itself among the trees at a little distance from Stratford.

Next we see the shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-looking houses of a modern date, and the streets being quite level, you are struck and surprised by, nothing so much as the tameness of the general scene, as if Shakespeare's genius were vivid enough to have wrought pictorial splendors in the town where he was born. Here and there, however, a queer edifice meets your eye, endowed with the individuality that belongs only to the domestic architecture of times gone by. The house seems to have grown out of some odd quality in its inhabitant, as a sea-shell is molded from within by the character of its inmate, and having been built in a strange fashion

generations ago, it has ever since been growing stranger and quainter, as old humorists are apt to do. Here, too, as so often impressed me in decayed English towns, there appeared to be a greater abundance of aged people, wearing small clothes and leaning on sticks than you could assemble on our side of the water by sounding a trumpet and proclaiming a reward for the most venerable. I tried to account for this phenomenon by several theories, as, for example, that our new towns are unwholesome for age, and kill it off unseasonably, or that our old men have a subtle sense of fitness and die of their own accord rather than live in an unseemly contrast with youth and novelty, but the secret may be, after all, that hair dyes, false teeth,

modern arts of dress, and other contrivances of a skin-deep youthfulness, have not crept into these antiquated English towns, and so people grow old without the weary necessity of seeming younger than they are. After wandering through two or three streets, I found my way to Shakespeare's birthplace, which is almost a smaller and humbler house than any description can prepare the visitor to expect. So inevitably does an August inhabitant make his abode palatial to our imaginations, receiving his guests, indeed, in a castle in the air, until we unwisely insist on meeting him among the sordid lanes and alleys of lower earth.

The portion of the edifice with which Shakespeare had anything to do is hardly large enough, in the basement to contain the butcher's stall that one of his descendants kept, and that still remains there, windowless, with the cleaver cuts in its hacked counter, which projects into the street under a little penthouse roof, as if waiting for a new occupant. The upper half of the door was open, and on my wrapping at it, a young person in black made her appearance, and admitted me.

She was not a menial, but remarkably genteel, an American characteristic, for an English girl, and was probably the daughter of the old gentlewoman who takes care of the house. This lower room has a pavement of gray slabs of stone, which may have been rudely squared when the house was new, but are now all cracked, broken, and disarranged in a most unaccountable way. One does not see how any ordinary usage, for whatever length of time, should have smashed these heavy stones, It is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor, which afterwards had been imperfectly trodden down again. The room is whitewashed and very clean, but woefully shabby and dingy, coarsely built,

and such as the most poetical imagination would find it difficult to idealize. In the rear of this apartment is the kitchen, a still smaller room of a similar rude aspect. It has a great, rough fireplace, with the room. space for a large family under the blackened opening of the chimney, and an immense passageway for the smoke, through which Shakespeare may have seen the blue sky by day, and the stars glimmering down at him by night. It is now a dreary spot, where the long extinguished embers used to be. A glowing fire, even if it covered only a quarter-part of the hearth, might still do much towards making the old kitchen cheerful.

But we get a depressing idea of the stifled, poor, somber kind of life that could have been lived in such a dwelling, where this room seems to have been the gathering place of the family, with no breadth or scope, no good retirement, but old and young huddling together cheek by jowl. What a hearty plant was Shakespeare's genius! How fatal its development! since it could not be blighted in such an atmosphere. It only brought human nature the closer to him,

and put more unctuous earth about his roots. Thence I was ushered upstairs to the room in which Shakespeare is supposed to have been born, though if you peep too curiously into the matter, you may find the shadow of an ugly doubt on this, as well as most other points of his mysterious life. It is the chamber over the butcher's shop, and is lighted by one broad window containing a great many small irregular panes of glass.

The floor is made of planks, very rudely hewn, and fitting together with little neatness. The naked beams and rafters at the sides of the room and overhead bear the original marks of the builder's broadaxe, with no evidence of an attempt to smooth off the job. Again, we have to reconcile ourselves to the smallness of the space enclosed by these illustrious walls, walls, a circumstance more difficult to accept as regards places that we have heard, read, thought, and dreamed much about than any other disenchanting particular of a mistaken ideal. A few paces, perhaps seven or eight, take us from end to end of it. So low it is that I could easily touch the ceiling, and might have done so without a tiptoe stretch

had it been a good deal higher, and this humility of the chamber has tempted to a vast multitude of people to write their names overhead in pencil. Every inch of the side walls, even into the obscurest nooks and corners, is covered with a similar record. All the window-panes, moreover, are scrawled with diamond signatures, among which is said to be that of Walter Scott, but so many persons have sought to immortalize themselves in close vicinity to his name, that I really could not trace him out. Methinks it is strange, that people do not strive to forget their forlorn little identities in such situations, instead of thrusting them forward into the dazzle of a great renown,

where, if noticed, they cannot but be deemed impertinent. This room, and the entire house, so far as I saw it, are whitewashed and exceedingly clean, nor is there the aged musty smell, with which old Chester first made me acquainted, and which goes far to cure an American of his excessive predilection for antique residences. An old lady, who took charge of me upstairs, had the manners and aspect of a gentlewoman, and talked with somewhat formidable knowledge and appreciative intelligence about Shakespeare. Arranged on a table and in chairs were various prints, views of houses and scenes connected with Shakespeare's memory,

together with editions of his works and local publications about his home and haunts from the sale of which this respectable lady perhaps realizes a handsome profit. At any rate, I bought a good many of them, conceiving that it might be the civilist way of requiting her for her instructive conversation, and the trouble she took in showing me the house. It cost me a pang, not a curmudgeonly, but a gentlemanly one, to offer a downright fee to the ladylike girl who had admitted me,

but I swallowed my delicate scruples with some little difficulty as she digested hers, so far as I could observe, with no difficulty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out half a crown to any person with whom he is occasion to speak a word in England. I should consider it unfair to quit Shakespeare's house without the frank acknowledgement that I was conscious of not the slightest emotion while viewing it, nor any quickening of the imagination. This has often happened to me in visits to memorable places. Whatever pretty and apposite reflections I may have made upon the subject

had either occurred to me before I ever saw Stratford, or have been elaborated since. It is pleasant, nevertheless, to think that I have seen the place, and I believe that I can form a more sensible and vivid idea of Shakespeare as a flesh and blood individual now that I have stood on the kitchen hearth and in the birth chamber. But I am not quite certain that this power of realization is altogether desirable in reference to a great poet. The Shakespeare whom I met there took various guises, but had not his laurel on. He was successively the roguish boy, the youthful dear stealer, the comrade of players, the too-familiar friend of Davon's mother,

the careful, thrifty, thriven man of property, who came back from London to lend money on bond, and occupy the best house in Stratford, the mellow, red-nosed, autumnal boon companion of John Acombe, and finally, or else the Stratford gossips belied him, the victim of convivial habits who met his death by tumbling into a ditch on his way home from a drinking bout, and left his second best bed to his poor wife. I feel, as sensibly as the reader can, what horrible impiety it is to remember

these things, be they true or false. In either case, they ought to vanish out of sight on the distant ocean line of the past, leaving a pure white memory, even as a sail, though perhaps darkened with many stains, looks snowy white on the far horizon. But I draw a moral from these unworthy reminiscences and this embodiment of the poet, as suggested by some of the grimy actualities of his life. It is for the high interests of the world not to insist upon finding out that its greatest men are, in a certain lower sense, very much the same kind of men as the rest of us, and often a little worse, because a common mind, cannot properly digest such a discovery, nor ever know the true proportion of the great man's

good and evil, nor how small a part of him it was that touched our muddy or dusty earth. Thence comes moral bewilderment, and even intellectual loss, in regard to what is best of him. When Shakespeare invoked a curse on the man who should stir his bones, he perhaps meant the larger share of it for him or them who should pry into his own. perishing earthliness, the defects, or even the merits of the character that he wore in Stratford, when he had left mankind so much to muse upon that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep me from incurring any part of the anathema in requital for the irreverent sentences above written.

From Shakespeare's house, the next step, of course, is to visit his burial place. The appearance of the church is most venerable and beautiful, standing amid a great green shadow of lime trees, above which rises the spire, while the Gothic battlements and buttresses and vast arched windows are obscurely seen through the boughs. The Avon loiters passed the churchyard, an exceedingly sluggish river, which might seem to have been considering which way it should flow, ever since Shakespeare left off paddling in it and gathering the large forget-me-nots that grow among its flags and water-weeds. an old man in small clothes was waiting at the gate and inquiring whether i wished to go in he proceeded me to the church porch and rapt i could have done it quite as effectually for myself but it seems the old people of the neighborhood haunt about the churchyard

in spite of the frowns and remonstrances of the sexton, who grudges them the half-Ele-Mossonary sixpence, which they sometimes get from visitors. I was admitted into the church by a respectable-looking and intelligent man in black, the parish clerk, I suppose, and probably holding a richer incumbency than his vicar, if all the fees which he handles remain in his own pocket. He was already exhibiting the Shakespeare monuments to two or three visitors,

and several other parties came in while I was there. The poet and his family are in possession of what may be considered the very best burial places that the church affords. They lie in a row, right across the breadth of the chancel, the foot of each gravestone being close to the elevated floor on which the altar stands. Nearest to the side wall, beneath Shakespeare's bust, is a slab bearing a Latin inscription addressed to his wife, and covering her remains.

then his own slab, with the old anathematizing stanza upon it, than that of Thomas Nash, who married his granddaughter, then that of Dr. Hall, the husband of his daughter Susanna, and lastly Susanna's own. Shakespeare's is the commonest-looking slab of all, being just such a flagstone as Essex Street in Salem used to be paved with when I was a boy. Moreover, unless my eyes or recollection deceive me,

There is a crack across it, as if it had already undergone some such violence as the inscription deprecates. Unlike the other monuments of the family, it bears no name, nor am I acquainted with the grounds or authority on which it is absolutely determined to be Shakespeare's, although being and arranged with those of his wife and children, it might naturally be attributed to him. But then, why does his wife, who died afterwards, take precedence of him and occupy the place next his bust? And where are the graves of another daughter and son, who have a better right in the family row than Thomas Nash, his grandson-in-law? Might not one or both of them have been laid under the nameless stone? But it is a dangerous trifling with Shakespeare's dust, so I forbear to meddle further with the grave, though the prohibition makes it tempting,

and shall let whatever bones be in it rest in peace. Yet I must needs add that the inscription on the bust seems to imply that Shakespeare's grave was directly underneath it. The poet's bust is affixed to the northern wall of the church, the base of it being about a man's height, or rather more above the floor of the chancel. The features of this piece of sculpture are entirely unethical, unlike any portrait of Shakespeare that I have ever seen, and compel me to take down the beautiful,

lofty-browed and noble picture of him which has hitherto hung in my mental portrait gallery. The bust cannot be said to represent a beautiful face, or an eminently noble head, but it clutches firmly hold of one's sense of reality, and insists upon your accepting it, if not as Shakespeare the poet, yet as the wealthy Berger of Stratford, the friend of John Acom, who lies yonder in the corner. I know not what the phrenologists say to the bust. The forehead is but moderately developed, and retreats somewhat, the upper part of the skull rising pyramidally. The eyes are prominent almost beyond the penthouse of the brow. The upper lip is so long that it must have been almost a deformity, unless

the sculptor artistically exaggerated its length, in consideration that, on the pedestal, it must be foreshortened by being looked at from below. On the whole, Shakespeare must have had a singular rather than a prepossessing face, and it is wonderful how, with this bust before its eyes, the world has persisted in maintaining an erroneous notion of his appearance, allowing painters and sculptors to foist their idealized nonsense on its all, instead of the genuine man. For my part, the Shakespeare of my mind's eye is henceforth to be a personage of a ruddy English complexion, with a reasonably capacious brow, intelligent and quickly observant eyes, a nose curved slightly outward, a long, queer upper lip, with a mouth a little unclosed beneath it.

and cheeks considerably developed in the lower part and beneath the chin. But when Shakespeare was himself, for nine-tenths of the time, according to all appearances, he was but the Berger of Stratford, he doubtless shone through this dull mask and transfigured it into the face of an angel. Fifteen or twenty feet behind the row of Shakespeare gravestones is the great east window of the church, now brilliant with stained glass of recent manufacture. On one side of this window, under a sculptured arch of marble, lies a full-length marble figure of John Acombe,

clad in what I take to be a robe of municipal dignity, and holding its hands devoutly clasped. It is a sturdy English figure, with coarse features, a type of ordinary man whom we smile to see immortalized in the sculpturesque material of poets and heroes. But the prayerful attitude encourages us to believe that the old usurer may not, after all, have had that grim reception in the other world which Shakespeare's squib foreboded for him. By the by, till I grew somewhat familiar with Warwickshire pronunciation,

I never understood that the point of those ill-natured lines was a pun. Oho, quoth the devil, tis my John a-come. That is, my John has come. close to the poet's bust is a nameless oblong cubic tomb, supposed to be that of a clerical dignitary of the 14th century. The church has other mural monuments and altar tombs, one or two of the latter upholding the recumbent figures of knights in armor and their dames, very eminent and worshipful personages in their day, no doubt,

but doomed to appear forever intrusive and impertinent within the precincts which Shakespeare has made his own. His renown is tyrannous, and suffers nothing else to be recognized within the scope of its material presence, unless illuminated by some side-ray from himself. The clerk informed me that interments no longer take place in any part of the church. And it is better so, for me thinks a person of delicate individuality, curious about his burial place, and desirous of six feet of earth for himself alone, could never endure to be buried near Shakespeare, but would rise up at midnight and grope his way out of the church door,

rather than sleep in the shadow of so stupendous a memory. End of Section 8. Section 9 of Our Old Home. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 9. recollections of a gifted woman.

I should hardly have dared to add another to the innumerable descriptions of Stratford on Avon, if it had not seemed to me that this would form a fitting framework to some reminiscences of a very remarkable woman. Her labor, while she lived, was of a nature and purpose outwardly irreverent to the name of Shakespeare, yet by its actual tendency, entitling her to the distinction of being that one of all his worshippers who sought, though she knew it not, to place the richest and stateliest diadem upon his brow. We Americans, at least, in the scanty annals of our literature, cannot afford to forget her high and conscientious exercise of noble faculties,

which, indeed, if you look at the manner in one way, evolved only a miserable error, but more fairly considered, produced a result worth almost what it cost her. Her faith in her own ideas was so genuine, that, erroneous as they were, it transmuted them to gold, or at all events, interfused a large proportion of that precious and indestructible substance among the waste material from which it can readily be sifted. The only time I ever saw Miss Bacon was in London, where she had lodgings in spring-strandes, Sussex Gardens at the house of a grocer, a portly, middle-aged, civil and friendly man who, as well as his wife, appeared to feel a personal kindness towards their lodger.

I was ushered up to, and I rather believe, three, pair of stairs, into a parlor somewhat humbly furnished, and told that Miss Bacon would come soon. There were a number of books on the table, and looking into them I found that everyone had some reference, more or less immediate to her Shakespearean theory, a volume of Raleigh's History of the World, a volume of Montaigne, a volume of Lord Bacon's letters, a volume of Shakespeare's plays, and on another table lay a large role of manuscript, which I presume to have been a portion of her work. To be sure, there was a pocket Bible among the books, but everything else referred to the one despotic idea that had got possession of her mind, and as it had ingrained, and as it had

engrossed her whole soul as well as her intellect, I have no doubt that she had established subtle connections between it and the Bible likewise. As is apt to be the case with solitary students, Miss Bacon probably read late and rose late, for I took up Montaigne, it was Hazlitt's translation, and had been reading his journey to Italy a good while before she appeared. I had expected, the more shame for me, having no other ground of such. expectation than that she was a literary woman, to see a very homely, uncouth, elderly personage, and was quite agreeably disappointed by her aspect. She was rather uncommonly tall, and had a striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark eyes, which shone with an inward light as soon as she began

to speak, and by and by a color came into her cheeks and made her look almost young. Not that she really was so, she must have been beyond middle age, and there was no unkindness in coming to that conclusion, because making allowance for years and ill health, I could suppose her to have been handsome and exceedingly attractive once. Though wholly estranged from society, there was little or no restraint or embarrassment in her manner. Lonely people are generally glad to give utterance to their pent-up ideas, and often bubble over with them as freely as children, with their new-found syllables. I cannot tell how it came about,

but we immediately found ourselves taking a friendly and familiar tone together and began to talk as if we had known one another a very long while. A little preliminary correspondence had indeed smoothed the way, and we had a definite topic in the contemplated publication of her book.

She was very communicative about her theory, and would have been much more so had I desired it, but being conscious within myself of a sturdy unbelief, I deemed it fair and honest, rather to repress than draw her out upon the subject. Unquestionably, she was a monomaniac. These overmastering ideas about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, and the deep political philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had completely thrown her off balance. But at the same time they had wonderfully developed her intellect and made her what she had, she could not otherwise have become. It was a very singular phenomenon, a system of philosophy

growing up in this woman's mind without her volition, contrary, in fact, to the determined resistance of her volition, and substituting itself in the place of everything that originally grew there. To have based such a system of fancy, and unconsciously elaborated it for herself, was almost as wonderful as really to have found it in the plays. But, in a certain sense, she did actually find it there. Shakespeare has surface beneath surface to an immeasurable depth adapted to the plummet line of every reader. His works present many phases of truth, each with scope large enough to fill a contemplative mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely discover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhausting the various

interpretations of his symbols, and a thousand years hence a world of new readers will possess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves do, in these volumes old already. I had half a mind to suggest, Miss Bacon, this explanation of her theory, but forbore, because, as I could readily perceive, she had as princely a spirit as Queen Elizabeth herself, and would at once have motioned me from the room. I had heard, long ago, that she believed that the material evidences of her dogma as to the authorship, together with the key of the new philosophy, would be found buried in Shakespeare's grave. Recently, as I understood her, this notion had been somewhat modified,

and was now accurately defined and fully developed in her mind, with a result of perfect certainty. In Lord Bacon's letters, on which she laid her finger as she spoke, she had discovered the key and clue to the whole mystery. There were definite and minute instructions how to find a will and other documents relating to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, which were concealed when, and by whom she did not inform me, in a hollow space in the under-surface of Shakespeare's gravestone.

Thus the terrible prohibition to remove the stone was accounted for. The directions, she intimated, went completely and precisely to the point, obviating all difficulties in the way of coming at the treasure, and even, if I remember right, were so contrived as to ward off any troublesome consequences likely to ensue from the interference of the parish officers. All that Miss Bacon now remained in England for, indeed the object for which she had come hither, and which had kept her here for three years past, was to obtain possession of these material and unquestionable proofs of the authenticity of her theory.

She communicated all this strange matter in a low, quiet tone, while on my part I listened as quietly, and without any expression of dissent. Controversy against a faith so settled would have shut her up at once, and that too, without in the least weakening her belief in the existence of those treasures in the tomb, and had it been possible to convince her

of their intangible nature, I apprehend that there would have been nothing left for the poor enthusiast save to collapse and die. She frankly confessed that she could no longer bear the society of those who did not at least lend a certain sympathy to her views, if not fully sharing them, and, meeting little sympathy or none, she had now entirely secluded herself from the world. In all these years, she had seen Mrs. Farr a few times, but had long ago given her up. Carlisle once or twice, but not of late, although he had received her kindly. Mr. Buchanan, while Minister in England, had once called on her, and General Campbell, our consul in London, had met her two or three times on business.

With these exceptions, which she marked so scrupulously, that it was perceptible what epics they were in the monotonous passage of her days, she had lived in the profoundest solitude. She never walked out. She suffered much from ill health, and yet she assured me she was perfectly happy. I could well conceive it, for Miss Bacon imagined herself to have received what is certainly the greatest boon ever assigned to mortals, a high mission in the world, with adequate powers for its accomplishment, and lest even these should prove insufficient, she, She had faith that special interpositions of Providence were forwarding her human efforts. This idea was continually coming to the surface during our interview.

She believed, for example, that she had been providentially led to her lodging house and put in relations with the good-natured grocer and his family, and to say the truth, considering what a savage and stealthy tribe the London lodging-housekeepers usually are, the honest kindness of this man and his household. appeared to have been little less than miraculous. Evidently, too, she thought that Providence had brought me forward, a man somewhat connected with literature, at the critical juncture when she needed a negotiator with the booksellers,

and, on my part, though little accustomed to regard myself as a divine minister, and though I might even have preferred that Providence should select some other instrument, I had no scruple in undertaking to do what I could for her. Her book, as I could see by turning it over, was a very remarkable one, and worthy of being offered to the public, which, if wise enough to appreciate it, would be thankful for what was good in it

and merciful to its faults. It was founded on a prodigious error, but was built up from that foundation with a good many prodigious truths, and, at all events, whether I could aid her literary views or no, it would have been both rash and impertinent in me to attempt drawing poor Miss Bacon out of her delusions, which were the condition on which she lived in comfort and joy, and in the exercise of great intellectual power. So I left her to dream,

as she pleased, about the treasures of Shakespeare's tombstone, and to form whatever designs might seem good to herself for obtaining possession of them. I was sensible of a ladylike feeling of propriety in Miss Bacon, and a New England orderliness in her character, and, in spite of her bewilderment, a sturdy common sense which I trusted would begin to operate at the right time, and keep her from any actual extravagance. And as regarded this matter of the tombstone, so it proved. The interview lasted above an hour, during which she flowed out freely as to the sole audits, auditor, capable of any degree of intelligent sympathy, whom she had met with in a very long while.

Her conversation was remarkably suggestive, alluring forth one's own ideas and fantasies from the shy places where they usually haunt. She was indeed an admirable talker, considering how long she had held her tongue for lack of a listener, pleasant, sunny and shadowy, often piquant, and giving glimpses of all a woman's various, and readily changeable moods and humours, and beneath them all there ran a deep and powerful undercurrent of earnestness, which did not fail to produce in the listener's mind, something like a temporary faith in what she herself believed so fervently. But the streets of London are not favourable to enthusiasms of this kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to flourish anywhere

in the English atmosphere, so that, long before reaching Paternoster Roe, I felt that it would be a difficult and doubtful matter to advocate the publication of Miss Bacon's book. Nevertheless, it did finally get published. Months before that happened, however, Miss Bacon had taken up her residence at Stratford on Avon, drawn thither by the magnetism of those rich secrets which she supposed to have been hidden by Raleigh, or Bacon, or I Know Not Whom, in Shakespeare's grave, and protected thereby a curse, as pirates used to bury their gold in the guardianship of a fiend. She took a humble lodging and began to haunt the church like a ghost,

but she did not condescend to any stratagem or underhand attempt to violate the grave, which, had she been capable of admitting such an idea, might possibly have been accomplished by the aid of a resurrection man. As her first step, she made acquaintance with the clerk, and began to sound him as to the feasibility of her enterprise, and his own willingness to engage in it. The clerk apparently listened, with not unfavorable ears, but as his situation, which the fees of pilgrims, more numerous than at any Catholic shrine, render lucrative, would have been forfeited by any malfeasance in office,

he stipulated for liberty to consult the vicar. Miss Bacon requested to tell her own story to the reverend gentleman, and seems to have been received by him, with the utmost kindness, and even to have succeeded in making a certain impression on his mind as to the desirability of the search. As their interview had been under the seal of secrecy, he asked permission to consult a friend, who, as Miss Bacon either found out or surmised, was a practitioner of the law. What the legal friend advised, she did not learn, but the negotiation continued, and and certainly was never broken off by an absolute refusal on the vicar's part.

He, perhaps, was kindly temporizing with our poor countrywoman, whom an Englishman of ordinary mold would have sent to a lunatic asylum at once. I cannot help fancying, however, that her familiarity with the events of Shakespeare's life and of his death and burial, of which she would speak as if she had been present at the edge of the grave, and all the history, literature, and personalities of the Elizabethan age, together with the prevailing power of her own belief, and the eloquence with which she knew how to enforce it, had really gone some little way toward making a convert of the good clergyman.

If so, I honor him above all the hierarchy of England. The affair certainly looked very hopeful. However erroneously, Miss Bacon had understood from the vicar that no obstacles would be interposed to the investigation, and that he himself would sanction it with his presence. It was to take place after nightfall, and all preliminary arrangements being made, the vicar and clerk professed to wait only her word in order to set about lifting the awful stone from the sepulchre. So, at least, Miss Bacon believed, and as her bewilderment was entirely in her own thoughts, and never disturbed her perception or accurate remembrance of external things.

I see no reason to doubt it, except it be the tinge of absurdity in the fact. But in this apparently prosperous state of things, her own convictions began to falter. A doubt stole into her mind whether she might not have mistaken the depository and mode of concealment of those historic treasures, and after once admitting the doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone, and finding nothing. She examined the surface of the gravestone, and endeavored without stirring it, to estimate whether it were of such thickness as to be capable of containing the archives of the Elizabethan club.

She went over and knew the proofs, the clues, the enigmas, the pregnant sentences, which she had discovered in Bacon's letters and elsewhere, and was now frightened to perceive that they did not point so that. definitely to Shakespeare's tomb as she had heretofore supposed. There was an unmistakably distinct reference to a tomb, but it might be bacon's or Raleigh's or Spencer's, and instead of the old player, as she profanely called him, it might be either of those three illustrious dead, poet, warrior, or statesman whose ashes in Westminster Abbey, or the tower burial ground, or wherever they sleep, it was her mission to disturb. It is very possible, moreover, that her acute mind

may always have had a lurking and deeply latent distrust of its own fantasies, and that this now became strong enough to restrain her from a decisive step. But she continued to hover around the church, and seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the daytime, and special license, on one occasion at least, at a late hour of the night. She went thither with a dark lantern, which could but twinkle like a glow-worm through the volume of obscurity that filled the great dusky edifice. Grooping her way up the aisle and towards the chancel, she sat down on the elevated part of the pavement above Shakespeare's grave. If the divine poet really wrote the inscription there, and cared as much about the quiet of his bones as its deprecatory earnestness would imply, it was time. for those crumbling relics to bestir themselves under her sacrilegious feet. But they were safe.

She made no attempt to disturb them, though I believe she looked narrowly into the crevices between Shakespeare's and the two adjacent stones, and in some way satisfied herself that her single strength would suffice to lift the former, in case of need. She threw the feeble ray of her lantern up towards the bust, but could not make it visible beneath the darkness of the vaulted roof. Had she been subject to superstitious terrors, it is impossible to conceive of a situation that could better entitle her to feel them,

for if Shakespeare's ghost would rise at any provocation, it must have shown itself then. But it is my sincere belief that, if his figure had appeared within the scope of her dark lantern, in his slashed doublet and gown, and with his eyes bent on her beneath her, the high, bald forehead, just as we see him in the bust, she would have met him fearlessly, and controverted his claims to the authorship of the plays, to his very face.

She had taught herself to contem Lord Leicester's groom, it was one of her disdainful epithets for the world's incomparable poet, so thoroughly that even his disembodied spirit would hardly have found civil treatment at Miss Bacon's hands. Her vigil, though it appears to have had no definite object, continued far into the night. Several times she heard a low movement in the aisles, a stealthy, dubious footfall prowling about in the darkness, now here, now there, among the pillars and ancient tombs, as if some restless inhabitant of the ladder, had crept forth to peep at the intruder. By and by the clerk made his appearance, and confessed that he had been watching her ever since she entered the church.

About this time it was that a strange sort of weariness seems to have fallen upon her. Her toil was all but done, her great purpose, as she believed, on the very point of accomplishment, when she began to regret that so stupendous a mission had been imposed on the fragility of a woman. Her faith in the new philosophy was as mighty as ever, and so was her confidence in her own adequate development of it, now about to be given to the world. Yet she wished, or fancied so, that it might never have been her duty to achieve this unparalleled task, and to stagger feebly forward under her immense burden of responsibility and renown. So far as her personal concern in the matter went, she would gladly have forfeited the reward of her patient, study, and labor for so many years, her exile from her country, and estrangement from her family. family and friends, her sacrifice of health, and all other interests to this one pursuit, if she could only find herself free to dwell in Stratford and be forgotten.

She liked the old slumberous town, and awarded the only praise that I ever knew her to bestow on Shakespeare, the individual man, by acknowledging that his taste in a residence was good, and that he knew how to choose a suitable retirement for a person of shy but genius. temperament, and at this point, I ceased to possess the means of tracing her vicissitudes of feeling any further. In consequence of some advice which I fancied at my duty to tender, as being the only confidant whom she now had in the world, I fell under Miss Bacon's most severe and passionate displeasure, and was cast off by her in the twinkling of an eye. It was a misfortune to which her friends were always particularly liable, but I was a misfortune to which her friends

were always particularly liable, but I think that none of them ever loved, or even respected, her most ingenuous and noble, but likewise most sensitive and tumultuous character the less for it. At that time her book was passing through the press. Without prejudice to her literary ability, it must be allowed that Miss Bacon was wholly unfit to prepare her own work for publication, because, among many other reasons, she was, too thoroughly in earnest to know what to leave out. Every leaf and line was sacred, for all had been written under so deep a conviction of truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of inspiration. A practiced bookmaker, with entire control of her materials, would have shaped out a duodecimo volume, full of eloquent and ingenious dissertation. Criticisms which take the color and pungency out of other people's critical remorse. marks on Shakespeare, philosophic truths which she imagined herself to have found at the roots of his conceptions, and which certainly come from no inconsiderable depth somewhere.

There was a great amount of rubbish, which any competent editor would have shoveled out of the way, but Miss Bacon thrust the whole bulk of inspiration and nonsense into the press in a lump, and there tumbled out a ponderous octavo volume, which fell with a dead-thorice, and the thump at the feet of the public, and has never been picked up. A few persons turned over one or two of the leaves as it lay there, and essayed to kick the volume deeper into the mud, for they were the hack critics of the minor periodical press in London, than whom, I suppose, though excellent fellows in their way, there are no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any sanctity in a book, or less likely to recognize an author's heart in it, or more utterly careless about bruising,

if they do recognize it. It is their trade. They could not do otherwise. I never thought of blaming them. It was not for such an Englishman as one of these to get beyond the idea that an assault was meditated on England's greatest poet. From the scholars and critics of her own country, indeed, Miss Bacon might have looked for a worthier appreciation, because many of the best of them have higher cultivation, and finer and deeper literary sensibilities than all but the very profoundest and brightest of Englishmen. But they are not a courageous body of men. They dare not think a truth that has an odor of absurdity, lest they should feel themselves bound to speak it out. If any American ever wrote a word in her behalf, Miss Bacon never

knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at once republished some of the most brutal vitubirations of the English press, thus pelting their poor countrywoman with stolen mud, without even waiting to know whether the ignominy was deserved, and they never have known it to this day, nor ever will. The next intelligence that I had of Miss Bacon was by a letter from the mayor of Stratford-on-Avon. He was a medical man, and wrote both in his own. his official and professional character, telling me that an American lady who had recently published what the mayor called a Shakespeare book was afflicted with insanity. In a lucid interval she had referred to me as a person who had some knowledge of her

family and affairs. What she may have suffered before her intellect gave way, we had better not try to imagine. No author had ever hoped so confidently as she. None ever failed, more A superstitious fancy might suggest that the anathema on Shakespeare's tombstone had fallen heavily on her head in requital of even the unaccomplished purpose of disturbing the dust beneath, and that the old player had kept so quietly in his grave on the night of her vigil because he foresaw how soon and terribly he would be avenged. But if that benign spirit takes any care or cognizance of such things now, he has surely requited the injustice that she sought to do him, the high justice that she really did, by a tenderness of love and pity, of which only he could be capable. What matters it, though, she called him by some other name? He had wrought a greater miracle on her than on all the world besides.

This bewildered enthusiast had recognized a depth in the man whom she decried, which, scholars, critics, and learned societies devoted to the elucidation of his unrivaled scenes, had never imagined to exist there. She had paid him the loftiest honor that all these ages of Renon have been able to accumulate upon his memory, and when, not many months after the outward failure of her lifelong object, she passed into the best of the best of world, I know not why we should hesitate to believe that the immortal poet may have met her on the threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly and comfortable words, and thanking her, yet with a smile of gentle humor in his eyes at the thought of certain mistaken speculations,

for having interpreted him to mankind so well. I believe that it has been the fate of this remarkable book never to have had more than a single reader. I myself am acquainted with it only in insulated chapters and scattered pages and paragraphs. But since my return to America, a young man of genius and enthusiasm has assured me that he has positively read the book from beginning to end and is completely a convert to its doctrines. It belongs to him, therefore, and not to me, whom, in almost the last letter that I received from her, she declared unworthy to meddle with her work.

It belongs surely to this one individual who has done her so much justice as to know what she wrote, to place Miss Bacon in her due position before the public and posterity. This has been too sad a story. To lighten the recollection of it, I will think of my stroll homeward past Charlacote Park, where I beheld the most stately elms, singly, in clumps and in groves, scattered all about in the sunniest, shadiest, sleepiest fashion, so that I could not but believe in a lengthened, loitering, drowsy enjoyment which these trees must have in their existence.

Diffused over slow-paced centuries, it need not be keen nor bubble into thrills and ecstasies, like the momentary delights of short-lived human beings. These were civilized trees, known to man, and befriended by him for ages past. There is an indescribable difference, as I believe I have heretofore endeavored to express between the tamed, but by no means a feat,

on the contrary, the richer and more luxuriant, nature of England, and the rude, shaggy, barbarous nature which offers as its racier companionship in America. No less a change has been wrought among the wildest creatures that inhabit what the English called, their forests. By and by, among those refined and venerable trees, I saw a large herd of deer,

mostly reclining, but some standing in picturesque groups, while the stags threw their large antlers aloft, as if they had been taught to make themselves tributary to the scenic effect. Some were running fleetly about, vanishing from light into shadow, and glancing forth again, with here and there a little fawn careering at its mother's heels. These deer are almost in the same relation to the wild natural state of their kind that the trees of an English park hold to the rugged growth of an American forest. They have held a certain intercourse with man for immemorial years, and, most probably, the stag that Shakespeare killed,

was one of the progenitors of this very herd, and may himself have been a partly civilized and huge, humanized deer, though in a less degree than these remote posterity. They are a little wilder than sheep, but they do not snuff the air at the approach of human beings, nor evince much alarm at their pretty close proximity, although if you continue to advance, they toss their heads and take to their heels in a kind of mimic terror, or something akin to feminine skittishness, with a dim remembrance or a tradition, as it were, of their having come of a wild stock. They have so long been fed and protected by man, that they must have lost many of their native instincts, and I suppose could not live comfortably through even an English winter without human help.

One is sensible of a gentle scorn at them for such dependency, but feels nonetheless kindly disposed towards the half-domesticated race, and it may have been his observation of these tamer characteristics in the Characote herd that suggested to Shakespeare. the tender and pitiful description of a wounded stag in, as you like it. At a distance of some hundreds of yards from Charlecote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees between it and the roadside, is an old brick archway and porter's lodge. In connection with his entrance there appears to have been a wall, an ancient moat, the latter of which is still visible, a shallow, grassy scoop along the base of an embankment of the lawn.

About 50 yards within the gateway stands the house, forming three sides of a square, with three gables in a row on the front, and on each of the two wings, and there are several towers and turrets at the angles, together with projecting windows, antique balconies, and other quaint ornaments suitable to the half-gothic taste in which the edifice was built. Over the gateway is the Lucy coat of arms, emblazoned in its proper colors. The mansion dates from the early days of Elizabeth, and probably looked very much the same as now, when Shakespeare was brought before Sir Thomas Lucy for outrages among his dear. The impression is not that of gray antiquity, but of stable and time-honored gentility, still as vital as ever.

It is a most delightful place. All about the house and domain there is a perfection of comfort and domestic taste, an amplitude of convenience, and amplitude of convenience. which could have been brought about only by the slow ingenuity and labor of many successive generations, intent upon adding all possible improvement to the home, where years gone by and years to come give a sort of permanence to the intangible present. An American is sometimes tempted to fancy that only by this long process can real homes be produced. One man's lifetime is not enough for the accomplishment of such a work of. of art and nature, almost the greatest, merely temporary one that is confided to him, too little

at any rate, yet perhaps too long when he is discouraged by the idea that he must make his house warm and delightful for a miscellaneous race of successors, of whom the one thing certain is, that his own grandchildren will not be among them. Such repinings, as are here suggested, however, come only from the fact that, bred in English habits of thought, as most of us are, we have not yet modified our instincts to the necessities of our new forms of life. A lodging in a wigwam or under a tent has really as many advantages when we come to know them as a home beneath the roof-tree of Charlecote Hall. But, alas, our philosophers have not yet taught us what is best,

nor have our poets sung us what is beautifulest in the kind of life that we must lead, and therefore we still read the old English wisdom and harp upon the ancient strings. And thence it happens that when we look at a time-honored hall, it seems more possible for men who inherit such a home than for ourselves to lead noble and graceful lives, quietly doing good and lovely things as their daily work, and achieving deeds of simple greatness when circumstances require them. I sometimes apprehend that our institutions may perish before we shall have discovered

the most precious of the possibilities which they involve. End of Section 9. Section 10 of Our Old Home. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 10, Litchfield and Eutoxeter. After my first visit to Lemington Spa, I went by an indirect route to Litchfield and put up at the Black Swan.

Had I known where to find it, I would much rather have established myself at the inn, formerly kept by the worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous for his ale in Farquhar's time. The Black Swan is an old-fashioned hotel, its street-fronted. being penetrated by an arched passage, in either side of which is an entrance door to the different parts of the house, and through which, and over the large stones of its pavement, all vehicles and horsemen rumble and clatter into an enclosed courtyard, with a thunderous uproar among the contiguous rooms and chambers. I appeared to be the only guest of the spacious establishment, but may have had a few fellow lodgers hidden in their separate parlors, and utterly assuing that

community of interests, which is the characteristic feature of life in an American hotel. At any rate, I had the great, dull, dingy, and dreary coffee-room, with its heavy old mahogany chairs and tables, all to myself, and not a soul to exchange a word with, except the waiter, who, like most of his class in England, had evidently left his conversational abilities uncultivated. No former practice of solitary living, nor habits of reticence, nor well-tested self-dependence for occupation of mind and amusement, can quite avail, as I now proved, to dissipate the ponderous gloom of an English coffee-room under such circumstances as these, with no book at hand save the county directory, nor any newspaper but a torn local journal of five days ago. So I buried myself betimes in a huge heap of ancient feathers, there is no other kind of bed in these old ends, let my head sink into an unsubstantial pillow,

and slept a stifled sleep, infested with such fragmentary confusion of dreams, that I took them to be a medley, compounded of the night troubles of all my predecessors in that same unrestful couch. And when I awoke, the musty odor of a bygone, century was in my nostrils, a faint, elusive smell, of which I never had any conception before

crossing the Atlantic. In the morning, after a mutton-chop and a cup of chicory in the dusky coffee-room, I went forth and bewildered myself a little while among the crooked streets in quest of one or two objects that had chiefly attracted me to the spot. The city is of very ancient date, and its name in the old Saxon tongue has a dismal import that would apply well in these days and forever henceforward to many an unhappy locality in our native land. Litchfield signifies the field of the dead bodies, an epithet, however, which the town did not assume in remembrance of a battle, but which probably sprung up by a natural process, like a sprig of rue or other funereal weed,

out of the graves of two princely brothers, sons of a pagan king of Mercia, who were converted by St. Chad, and afterwards martyred for their Christian faith. Nevertheless, I was but little interested in the legends of the remote antiquity of Litchfield, being drawn thither partly to see its beautiful cathedral, and still more, I believe,

because it was the birthplace of Dr. Johnson, with whose sturdy English character I became acquainted at a very early period of my life through the good offices of Mr. Boswell. In truth, he seems as familiar to my recollection, and almost as vivid in his personal aspect to my mind's eye, as the kindly figure of my own grandfather. It is only a solitary child, left much to such wild modes of culture as he chooses for himself, while yet ignorant, what culture means, standing on tiptoe to pull down books from no very lofty shelf, and then shutting himself up, as it were, between the leaves, going astray through the volume at his own pleasure, and comprehending it rather by his sensibilities and affections than his intellect. That child is the only student that ever gets the sort of intimacy which I am now thinking of

with a literary personage. I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about any of the stalwart doctor's grandiloquent productions, except his two stern and masculine poems, London, and the vanity of human wishes. It was as a man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more thoroughly than I do now, though never seeking to put my instinctive perception of his character. into language. Beyond all question, I might have had a wiser friend than he. The atmosphere in which alone he breathed was dense. His awful dread of death showed how much muddy imperfection was

to be cleansed out of him before he could be capable of spiritual existence. He meddled only with the surface of life, and never cared to penetrate further than to plough-share depth. His very sense and sagacity were but a one-eyed, clear-sightedness. I laughed at him, sometimes standing beside his knee, and yet, considering that my native propensities were towards fairyland, and also how much yeast is generally mixed up with the mental sustenance of a New Englander, it may not have been altogether amiss in those childish and boyish days to keep pace with his heavy-footed traveller, and feed on the gross diet that he carried in his knapsack. It is wholesome food even now.

And then, how English! Many of the latent sympathies that enabled me to enjoy the old country so well, and that so readily amalgamated themselves with the American ideas that seemed most adverse to them, may have been derived from, or fostered and kept alive by the great English moralist. Never was a descriptive epithet more nicely appropriate than that. Dr. Johnson's morality was as English an article as a beefsteak. The city of Litchfield, only the cathedral towns are called cities in England, stands on an ascending site.

It has not so many old gabled houses as Coventry, for example, but still enough to gratify an American appetite for the antiquities of domestic architecture. The people, too, have an old-fashioned way with them, and stare at the passing visit. as if the railway had not yet quite accustomed them to the novelty of strange faces moving along their ancient sidewalks. The old women whom I met, in several instances, dropped me a curtsey, and as they were of decent and comfortable exterior, and kept quietly on their way without pause or further greeting, it certainly was not allowable to interpret their little act of respect as a modest method of asking for sixpence, so that I had the pleasure of considering it a remnant of the reverential and hospitable manners of elder times, when the rare presence of a stranger might be deemed worth a general acknowledgment.

Positively, coming from such humble sources, I took it all the more as a welcome on behalf of the inhabitants, and would not have exchanged it for an invitation from the mayor and magistrates to a public dinner. yet I wish, merely for the experiments' sake, that I could have emboldened myself to hold out the aforesaid sixpence to at least one of the old ladies. In my wanderings about town, I came to an artificial piece of water called the Minster Pool. It fills the immense cavity in a ledge of rock, whence the building materials of the cathedral were quarried out a great many centuries ago. I should never have guessed the little lake to be of man's creation, so very pretty and quietly picturesque an object has it grown to be, with its green banks and the old trees hanging over its glassy surface, in which you may see reflected some of the battlements of the majestic structure

that once lay here in unshaped stone. Some little children stood on the edge of the pool, angling with pin-hooks, and the scene reminded me, though, really to be quite fair with the reader, the gist of the analogy has now escaped me, of that mysterious lake in the Arabian Nights, which had once been a palace and a city, and where a fisherman used to pull out the former inhabitants in the guise of enchanted fishes. There is no need of fanciful associations to make the spot interesting. It was in the porch of one of the houses, in the street that runs beside the Minster Pool, that Lord Brooke was slain. in the time of the parliamentary war by a shot from the battlements of the cathedral, which was then held by the royalists as a fortress. The incident is commemorated by an inscription on a stone, inlaid into the wall of the house. I know not what rank the Cathedral of Litchfield holds among its sister edifices in England as a piece of magnificent architecture, except that of Chester, the grim and simple nave of which stands,

yet unrivaled in my memory, and one or two small ones in North Wales, hardly worthy of the name of cathedrals, it was the first that I had seen. To my uninstructed vision, it seemed the object best worth gazing at in the whole world, and now, after beholding a great many more, I remember it with less prodigal admiration only because others are as magnificent as itself. The traces remaining in my memory represented as airy rather than massive. A multitude of beautiful shapes appeared to be comprehended within its single outline. It was a kind of kaleidoscopic mystery, so rich a variety of aspects did it assume from each altered point of view through the presentation of a different face and the rearrangement of its peaks and pinnacles and the three battlemented towers,

with the spires that shot heavenward from all three, but one loftier than its fellows. Thus it impressed you at every change as a newly created surface of the passing moment, in which yet you lovingly recognized the half-vanished structure of the instant before, and felt, moreover, a joyful faith in the indestructible existence of all this cloud-like vicissitude. A Gothic cathedral is surely the most wonderful work which mortal man has yet achieved, so vast, so intricate, and so profoundly simple, with such strange, delightful recesses in its grand figure, so difficult to comprehend within one idea, and yet all so consonant that it ultimately draws the beholder and his universe into its harmony.

It is the only thing in the world that is vastly. fast enough and rich enough. Not that I felt, or was worthy to feel, an unmingled enjoyment in gazing at this wonder. I could not elevate myself to its spiritual height any more than I could have climbed from the ground to the summit of one of its pinnacles. Ascending but a little way, I continually fell back and lay in a kind of despair, conscious that a flood of uncomprehended beauty was pouring down upon me, of which I could appropriate only the minutest portion. After a hundred years, incalculably as my higher sympathies might be invigorated by so divine and employment, I should still be a gazer from below, and at an awful distance, as yet

remotely excluded from the interior mystery. But it was something gained, even to have that painful sense of my own limitation. and that half-smothered yearning to soar beyond them. The cathedral showed me how earthly I was, but yet whispered deeply of immortality. After all, this was probably the best lesson that it could bestow, and taking it as thoroughly as possible home to my heart, I was fain to be content.

If the truth must be told, my ill-trained enthusiasm soon flagged, and I began to lose the vision of a spiritual or ideal edifice behind the time-worn and weather-stained front of the actual structure. Whenever that is the case, it is most reverential to look another way. But the mood disposes one to minute investigation, and I took advantage of it to examine the intricate and multitudinous adornment that was lavished on the exterior wall of this great church. Everywhere there were empty niches where statues had been thrown down, and here and there a statue still lingered in its niche, and over the chief entrance, and extending across the whole breadth of the building, was a row of angels, sainted personages, martyrs, and kings, sculptured in reddish stone, being much corroded by the moist English atmosphere during four or five hundred winters that they had stood there. These benign and majestic figures perversely put me in mind of the appearance of a sugar image

after a child has been holding it in his mouth. The venerable infant time has evidently found them sweet morsels. Inside of the Minster there is a long and lofty nave, transcepts of the same height, and side aisles and chapels, dim nooks of holiness, where in Catholic times the lamps were continually burning before the richly decorated, shrines of saints. In the audacity of my ignorance, as I humbly acknowledge it to have been, I criticized this great interior as too much broken into compartments, and shorn of half its rightful impressiveness by the interposition of a screen betwixt the nave and chancel.

It did not spread itself in breadth, but ascended to the roof in lofty narrowness. One large body of worshippers might have knelt down in the nave, others in each of the transepts, and smaller ones in the side aisles, besides an indefinite number of esoteric enthusiasts in the mysterious sanctities beyond the screen. Thus it seemed to typify the exclusiveness of sects rather than the worldwide hospitality of genuine religion. I had imagined a cathedral with a scope more vast, these Gothic aisles with their groaned arches overhead, supported by clustered pillars in long vistas up and down, were venerable and magnificent, but included too much of the twilight of that monkish gloom out of which they grew. It is no matter whether I ever came to a more

satisfactory appreciation of this kind of architecture, the only value of my strictures being to show the folly of looking at noble objects in the wrong mood, and the absurdity of a new visitant, pretending to hold any opinion whatever on such subjects, instead of surrendering himself to the old builder's influence with childlike simplicity. A great deal of white marble decorates the old stonework of the aisles, in the shape of altars, obelisks, sarcophagi, and busts. Most of these memorials are commemorative of people locally distinguished, especially the deans and canons of the cathedral, with their relatives and families. and I found but two monuments of personages whom I had ever heard of,

one being Gilbert Wansley, and the other Lady Mary Wartley Montague, a literary acquaintance of my boyhood. It was really pleasant to meet her there, for after a friend has lain in the grave far into the second century, she would be unreasonable to require any melancholy emotions in a chance interview at her tombstone. It adds a rich charm to sacred edifices, this time-honored custom of burial in churches, after a few years at least when the mortal remains

have turned to dust beneath the pavement, and the quaint devices and inscriptions still speak to you above. The statues that stood or reclined in several recesses of the cathedral had a kind of life, and I regarded them with an odd sort of deference as if they were privileged denizens of the precinct. It was singular to how the memorial of the latest buried person, the man whose features went familiar in the streets of Litchfield only yesterday, seemed precisely as much at home here as his medieval predecessors. Henceforward, he belonged in the cathedral like one of its original pillars. Me thought this impression in my fancy might be the shadow of a spiritual fact. The dying melt into the great multitude of the

departed, as quietly as a drop of water into the ocean. and it may be our conscious of no unfamiliarity with their new circumstances, but immediately become aware of an insufferable strangeness in the world which they have quitted. Death has not taken them away, but brought them home. The vicissitudes and mischances of sublunary affairs, however, have not ceased to attend upon these marble inhabitants, for I saw the upper fragment of a sculptured lady in a very old-fashioned garb, the lower half of whom had doubtless been demolished by Cromwell's soldiers when they took the minster by storm.

And there lies the remnant of this devout lady on her slab, ever since the outrage, as for centuries before, with a countenance of divine serenity and her hands clasped in prayer, symbolizing a depth of religious faith which no earthly turmoil or calamity could disturb. Another piece of sculpture, apparently a favorite subject in the Middle Ages, for I have seen several like it in other cathedrals, was a reclining skeleton, as faithfully representing an open work of bones as could well be expected in a solid block of marble, and at a period, moreover, when the mysteries of the human frame were rather to be guessed at than revealed. Whatever the anatomical defects of his production, the old sculptor had succeeded in making it ghastly beyond measure.

How much mischief has been brought upon us by this invariable gloom of the Gothic imagination, flinging itself like a death-scented pall over our conceptions of the future state, smothering our hopes, hiding our sky, and inducing dismal efforts to raise the harvest of immortality out of what is most opposite to it, the grave. The cathedral service is performed twice every day at ten o'clock and at four. When I first entered, the choristers, young and old, but mostly I think boys, with voices inexpressibly sweet and clear and as fresh as bird notes, were just winding up their harmonious labors,

and soon came thronging through a side door from the chancel into the nave. They were all dressed in long white robes, and looked like a peculiar order of beings, created on purpose to hover between the roof and pavement of that dim, consecrated edifice, and illuminate it with divine melodies, reposing themselves, meanwhile, on the heavy grandeur of the organ tones, like cherubs on a golden cloud. All at once, however, one of the cherubic multitude pulled off his white gown, thus transforming himself before my very eyes into a commonplace youth of the day, in modern frock-coat and trousers of a decidedly provincial cut.

This absurd little incident, I verily believe, had a sinister effect in putting me at odds with the proper influences of the cathedral, nor could I quite recover a suitable frame of mind during my stay there. But, emerging into the open air, I began to be sensible that I had loved, left a magnificent interior behind me, and I have never quite lost the perception and enjoyment of it in these intervening years. A large space in the immediate neighborhood of the cathedral is called the close, and comprises beautifully kept lawns and a shadowy walk bordered by the dwellings of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the diocese. All this row of Episcopal, canonical,

and clerical residences, has an air of the deepest quiet repose, and well-protected, though not inaccessible seclusion. They seemed capable of including everything that a saint could desire, and a great many more things than most of us sinners generally succeed in acquiring. Their most marked feature is a dignified comfort, looking as if no disturbance or vulgar intrusiveness could ever cross their thresholds, encroach upon their ornamented loiter. lawns, or straggle into the beautiful gardens that surround them with flower-beds and rich clumps of shrubbery. The Episcopal Palace is a stately mansion of stone, built somewhat in the Italian style, and burying on its front the figures 1637 as the date of its erection.

A large edifice of brick, which, if I remember, stood next to the palace, I took to be the residence of the second dignitary of the cathedral, and in that case, it was a little bit of the cathedral, and in that case, It must have been the youthful home of Addison, whose father was the Dean of Litchfield. I tried to fancy his figure on the delightful walk that extends in front of those priestly abodes, from which, and the interior lawns, it is separated by an open-work iron fence, lined with a rich old shrubbery, and overarched by a minster aisle of venerable trees. This path is haunted by the shades of famous personages who have formerly trodden it, johnson must have been familiar with it both as a boy and in his subsequent visits to litchfield an illustrious old man miss seward connected with so many literary reminiscences lived in one of the adjacent houses

tradition says that it was a favorite spot of major andre who used to pace to and fro under these trees waiting perhaps to catch a last angel glimpse of anoria sued before he crossed the ocean to encounter his dismal doom from an American court-martial. David Garrick, no doubt, scampered along the path in his boyish days, and if he was an early student of the drama, must often have thought of those two airy characters of the Bow Stratagem, Archer and Aymwell, who, on this very ground, after attending service at the cathedral, contrived to make acquaintance with the ladies of the comedy.

These creatures of mere fiction have, as positive a substance now as the sturdy old figure of Johnson himself. They live while realities have died. The shadowy walk still glistens with their gold-embroidered memories. Seeking for Johnson's birthplace, I found it in St. Mary's Square, which is not so much a square as the mere widening of a street. The house is tall and thin of three stories with a square front and roof rising steep and high. On a side view, the building looks as if it had been cut in two in the midst, there being no slope of the roof on that side. A ladder slanted against the wall, and a painter was giving a livelier line to the plaster. In a corner room of the basement, where old

Michael Johnson may be supposed to have sold books, is now what we should call a dry-goods store, or, according to the English phrase, a Mercer's and Haberdasher's shop. The house, has a private entrance on a cross street, the door being accessible by several much-worn stone steps, which are bordered by an iron balustrade. I set my foot on the steps and laid my hand on the balustrade, where Johnson's hand and foot must many a time have been, and ascending to the door, I knocked once, and again, and again, and got no admittance. Going round to the shop entrance, I tried to open it, but found it fast-bolted as the gate of paradise. It is mortifying to be so balked in one's little enthusiasms, but, looking round in quest of somebody to make inquiries of, I was a good

deal consoled by the side of Dr. Johnson himself, who happened, just at that moment, to be sitting at his case nearly in the middle of St. Mary's Square, with his face turned towards his father's house. Of course, it been almost four-score years since the doctor laid aside his weary bulk of flesh, together with the ponderous melancholy that had so long weighed him down, the intelligent reader will at once comprehend that he was marble in his substance, and seated in a marble chair on an elevated stone pedestal. In short, it was a statue, sculptured by Lucas, and placed here in 1838, at the of Dr. Law, the Reverend Chancellor of the Diocese. The figure is colossal, though perhaps not much more so than the mountainous doctor himself, and looks down upon the spectator from its pedestal

of ten or twelve feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity of aspect, very like and feature to Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Johnson, but calmer and sweeter in expression. Several big books are piled up beneath his chair, and, if I mistake not, he holds a volume in his hand, thus blinking forth at the world out of his learned abstraction, owl-like, yet benevolent at heart. The statue is immensely massive, a vast ponderosity of stone, not finely spiritualized nor indeed fully humanized, but rather resembling a great stone bolder than a man. You must look with the eyes of faith and sympathy, or possibly you might lose the human being altogether, and find only a big stone within your mental grasp. On the pedestal are three bas-reliefs. In the first, Johnson is represented as hardly

more than a baby, bestriding an old man's shoulders, resting his chin on the bald head which he embraces with his little arms, and listening earnestly to the high church eloquence of Dr. Satchfural. In the second tablet, he is seen writing to school on the shoulders of two of his comrades, while another boy supports him in the rear. The third, Ba relief possesses, to my mind, a great deal of pathos, to which my appreciative faculty is probably the more alive, because I have always been profoundly impressed by the incident here commemorated, and long ago tried to tell it for the behoof of childish readers. It shows Johnson in the marketplace of Utoxeter, doing penance for an act of disobedience to his father, committed fifty years before. He stands bareheaded, a venerable figure, and a countenance extremely sad and woebegone, with the wind and rain driving hard against him, and thus helping to suggest to the spectator the gloom of his inward state.

Some market people and children gaze awe-stricken into his face and an aged man and woman with clasped and uplifted hands seemed to be praying for him. These latter personages, whose introduction by the artist is nonetheless effective

because in queer proximity there are some commodities of market day in the shape of living ducks and dead poultry. I interpreted to represent the spirits of Johnson's father and mother lending what aid they could to lighten his half-century's burden of remorse. I had never heard of the above-described piece of sculpture before. It appears to have no reputation as a work of art, nor am I at all positive that it deserves any.

For me, however, it did as much as sculpture could, under the circumstances, even if the artist of the Libyan Sybil had wrought it, by reviving my interest in the sturdy old Englishman, and particularly by freshening my perception of a wonderful beauty and pathetic tenderness in the incident of the penance. So, the next day I left Litchfield for Utoxeter, on one of the few purely sentimental pilgrimages that I ever undertook to see the very spot where Johnson had stood. Boswell, I think, speaks of the town, its name is pronounced Utoxeter, as being about nine miles off from Lichfield, but the county map would indicate a greater distance, and by rail, passing from one line to another,

it is as much as 18 miles. I have always had an idea of old Michael Johnson sending his literary merchandise by carrier's wagon, journeying to Utoxeter afoot on Market Day morning, selling books through the busy hours, and returning to Litchfield at night. This could not possibly have been the case. Arriving at the Utoxeter Station, the first objects that I saw, with a green field or two between them and me, were the tower and gray steeple of a church, rising among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees. A very short walk takes you from the station up into the town. It had been my previous impression that the marketplace of Utoxeter lay immediately round about the church, and if I remember the narrative a right, Johnson, or Boswell in his behalf, describes his father's bookstall as standing in the marketplace, close beside the sacred edifice. It is impossible for me to say what changes may have occurred

in the topography of the town, during almost a century and a half since Michael Johnson retired from business, and, 90 years at least, since his son's penance was performed. But the church has now merely a street of ordinary width passing around it, while the market-price place, though near at hand, neither forms a part of it, nor is really contiguous, nor would its throng and bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries, and surge against the church-yard and the old grey tower. Nevertheless, a walk of a minute or two brings a person from the center of the marketplace to the church door, and Michael Johnson might very conveniently have located his stall, and laid out his literary wear in the corner at the tower's base.

better there indeed than in the busy center of an agricultural market. But the picturesque arrangement and full impressiveness of the story absolutely require that Johnson shall not have done his penance in a corner, ever so little retired, but shall have been the very nucleus of the crowd, the midmost man of the marketplace, a central image of memory and remorse, contrasting with and overpowering the petty materialism around him. He himself, having the force to throw vitality and truth

into what persons differently constituted might reckon a mere external ceremony and an absurd one, could not have failed to see this necessity. I am resolved, therefore, that the true sight of Dr. Johnson's penance was in the middle of the marketplace. That important portion of the town is a rather spacious and irregularly shaped vacuity, surrounded by houses and shops, some of them old with red-tiled roofs, others wearing a pretense of newness, but probably as old in their inner substance as the rest. The people of Utoxeter seemed very idle in the warm summer day, and were scattered in

little groups along the sidewalks, leisurely chatting with one another, and often turning a about to take a deliberate stare at my humble self, in so much that I felt as if my genuine sympathy for the illustrious penitent, and my many reflections about him, must have imbued me with some of his own singularity of mean. If their great-grandfathers were such redoubtable stares in the doctor's day, his penance was no light one. This curiosity indicates a paucity of visitors to the little town, except for market purposes, and I question if you talks that ever saw an American before. The only other thing that greatly impressed me was the abundance of public houses, one at every step or two, red lions, white hearts, bulls heads, miters, cross-keys,

and I know not what besides. They are probably for the accommodation of the farmers and peasantry of the neighborhood on Market Day, and content themselves with a very meager business on other days of the week. At any rate, I was the only guest in Utoxeter at the period of my visit, and had but an infinitesimal portion of patronage to distribute among such a multitude of inns. The reader, however, will possibly be scandalized to learn what was the first, and, indeed, the only important affair that I attended to, after coming so far to indulge a solemn and high emotion, and standing now on the very spot where my pious errand should have been consummated. I stepped into one of the rustic hostelries and got my dinner, bacon and greens,

some mutton chops, juicier and more delectable than all America could serve up at the President's table, and a gooseberry pudding, a sufficient meal for six yeomen, and good enough for a prince, besides a pitcher of foaming ale, the whole at the pitiful sea. small charge of eighteen pence. Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me, for nobody had a heartier faith in beef and mutton than himself, and as regards my lack of sentiment in eating my dinner, it was the wisest thing I had done that day. A sensible man had better not let himself be betrayed into these attempts to realize

the things which he has dreamed about, and which, when they cease to be purely ideal in his mind, will have lost the truest of it. of their truth, the loftiest and profoundest part of their power over his sympathies. Facts, as we really find them, whatever poetry they may involve, are covered with the stony excrescence of prose, resembling the crust on a beautiful seashell, and they never show their most delicate and divinest colors, until we shall have dissolved away their grosser actualities by steeping them long in powerful menstruum of thought. and seeking to actualize them again, we do but renew the crust.

If this were otherwise, if the moral sublimity of a great fact depended in any degree on its garb of external circumstances, things which change and decay, it could not itself be immortal and ubiquitous, and only a brief point of time and a little neighborhood would be spiritually nourished by its grandeur and beauty. Such were a few of the reflections which I mingled with my ale, as I remember to have seen an old quaffer of that excellent liquor, stir up his cup with a sprig of some bitter and fragrant herb. Meanwhile, I found myself still haunted by a desire to get a definite result out of my visit to Utoxeter. The hospitable inn was called the Nags Head, and standing beside the marketplace was as likely as any other to have entertained old Michael Johnson in the days when he used to come hither to sell books.

He perhaps had dined on bacon and greens, and drunk his ale, and smoked his pipe, in the very room where I now sat, which was a low, ancient room, certainly much older than Queen Anne's time, with a red-brick floor and a white-washed sea. ceiling, traversed by bare, rough beams, the whole in the rudest fashion, but extremely neat. Neither did it lack ornament, the walls being hung with colored engravings of prize oxen, and other pretty prints, and the mantelpiece adorned with earthenware figures of shepherdesses in the arcadian taste of long ago. Michael Johnson's eyes might have rested on that self-same earthen image, to examine which more

closely I had just crossed the brick pavement of the room. And sitting down again, still as I sipped my ale, I glanced through the open window into the sunny marketplace, and wished that I could honestly fix on one spot rather than another as likely to have been the holy sight where Johnson stood to do his penance. How strange and stupid it is that tradition should not have marked and kept in mind the very place! How shameful! nothing less than that, that there should be no local memorial of this incident, as beautiful and

touching a passage as can be cited out of any human life, no inscription of it, almost as sacred as a verse of scripture on the wall of the church, no statue of the venerable and illustrious penitent in the marketplace to throw a wholesome awe over its earthliness, its frauds and petty wrongs of which the benumbed fingers of conscience can make no record, its selfish competition of each man with his brother, or his neighbor, its traffic of sole substance for a little worldly gain. Such a statue, if the piety of the people did not raise it, might almost have been expected to grow up out of the pavement of its own accord, on the spot that had been watered by the rain that dripped from Johnson's garment mingled with his remorseful tears.

Long after my visit to Utoxeter, I was told that there were individuals in the town who could have shown me the exact, indubitable spot where Johnson performed his penance. I was assured, moreover, that sufficient interest was felt in the subject to have induced certain local discussions as to the expediency of erecting a memorial. With all deference to my polite informant, I surmise that there is a mistake, and decline without further and precise evidence, giving credit to either of the above statements. The inhabitants know nothing as a matter of general interest about the penance, and care nothing for the scene of it. If the clergyman of the parish, for example, had ever heard of it, would he not have used the theme, time, and again, wherewith to work tenderly and profoundly on the souls committed to his charge?

If parents were familiar with it, would they not teach it to their young ones at the fireside, both to ensure reverence to their own gray hairs, and to protect the children from such unavailing regrets as Johnson bore upon his heart for fifty years? If the sight were ascertained, would not the pavement thereabouts be worn with reverential footsteps? Would not every town-born child be able to do. direct the pilgrim thither? While waiting at the station before my departure, I asked a boy who stood near me, an intelligent and gentlemanly lad, twelve or thirteen years old, whom I should take

to be a clergyman's son, I asked him if he had ever heard of the story of Dr. Johnson, how he stood an hour doing penance near that church, the spire of which rose before us. The boy stared and answered, no. Were you born and you Toxeter? Yes. I inquired if no circumstance such as I had mentioned was known or talked about among the inhabitants. No, said the boy, not that I ever heard of. Just think of the absurd little town, knowing nothing of the only memorable incident which ever happened within its boundaries since the old Britons built it. This sad and lovely story, which consecrates the spot, for I found it wholly to my contemplation, again as soon as it lay behind me, in the heart of a stranger from three thousand miles over the sea. It but confirms what I have been

saying, that sublime and beautiful facts are best understood when etherealized by distance. End of Section 10. Section 11 of Our Old Home. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our old home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 11, Pilgrimage to Old Boston. We set out at a little past 11 and made our first stage to Manchester. We were by this time sufficiently anglicized to reckon the morning a bright and sunny one, although the May sunshine was mingled with water as it were

and distempered with a very bitter east wind. Lancashire is a dreary county, all at least except its hilly portions, and I have never passed through it without wishing myself anywhere but in that particular spot where I then happened to be. A few places along our route were historically interesting, as, for example, Bolton, which was the scene of many remarkable events,

in the parliamentary war, and in the market square of which one of the earls of Derby was beheaded. We saw along the wayside the never-failing green fields, hedges, and other monotonous features of an ordinary English landscape. There were little factory villages, too, or larger towns, with their tall chimneys, and their pennons of black smoke, their ugliness of brickwork, and their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace, which seems to be the only kind of stuff which nature cannot take back to herself and resolve into the elements, when man has thrown it aside. These hillocks of waste and a feat mineral always disfigure the neighborhood of iron-mongering towns, and even after a considerable antiquity are hardly made decent with a little grass.

At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Sheffield and Lincoln-Raeft. railway. The scenery grew rather better than that through which we had hitherto passed, though still by no means very striking, for, except in the show districts such as the Lake Country or Derbyshire, English scenery is not particularly well worth looking at, considered as a spectacle or a picture. It has a real, homely charm of its own, no doubt, and the rich verdure and the thorough finish added by human art are perhaps as a true. to an American eye as any stronger feature could be. Our journey, however, between Manchester and Sheffield was not through a rich tract of country, but along a valley walled in by bleak,

ridgy hills, extending straight as a rampart, and across black moorlands with here and there a plantation of trees. Sometimes there were long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, and desolate, conveying the very impression which the reader gets from many pastes. of Miss Bronte's novels, and still more from those of her two sisters. Old stone or brick farmhouses, and once in a while an old church tower were visible, but these are almost two common objects to be noticed in an English landscape. On a railway, I suspect, what little do we see of the country is seen quite amiss, because it was never intended to be looked at from any point of view in that straight line, so that it is like looking, at the wrong side of a piece of tapestry. The old highways and footpaths were as natural as brooks and rivulets, and adapted themselves by an inevitable impulse to the physiognomy of the country, and furthermore every object within view of them had some subtle reference to their

curves and undulations. But the line of a railway is perfectly artificial, and puts all precedent things at sixes and sevens. At any rate, be the cause what it may, there is seldom anything worth seeing within the scope of a railway traveller's eye, and if there were, it requires an alert marksman to take a flying shot at the picturesque. At one of the stations, it was near a village of ancient aspect, nestling round a church on a wide Yorkshire moor. I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed to have just alighted from the train. She caught my attention by a singular movement of the head, not once only, but continually repeated, and at regular intervals, as if she were making a stern and solemn protest against some action that developed itself

before her eyes, and were foreboding terrible disaster, if it should be persisted in. Of course, it was nothing more than a paralytic or nervous affection, yet, one might fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime ago in this old gentlewoman's presence, either against herself or somebody whom she loved still better. Her features had a wonderful sternness, which I presume was caused by her habitual effort to compose and keep them quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to paralytic movement. The slow, regular, and inexorable character of the motion, her look of force and self-control, which had the appearance of rendering it voluntary, while yet it was so fateful, have stamped

this poor lady's face and gesture into my memory, so that, some dark day or other, I am afraid she will reproduce herself in a dismal romance. The train stopped a minute or two to allow the tickets to be taken just before entering the Sheffield station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous town of razors and pen-knives, enveloped in a cloud of its own diffusing. My impressions of it are extremely vague and misty, or rather smoky, for Sheffield seems to me smokier than Manchester, Liverpool, or Birmingham, smokier than all England besides, unless Newcastle be the exception. It might have been Pluto's own metropolis, shrouded in sulfurous vapor, and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the valley of the shadow of death, through a tunnel three miles in length, quite traversing the breadth and depth of a mountainous hill. After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of Sherwood Forest, not consistent.

however, of thousand-year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's days, but of young and thriving plantations, which will require a century or two of slow English growth to give them much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property lies in this neighborhood, and probably his castle was hidden among some soft depth of foliage not far off. Farther onward the country grew quite level around us, whereby I judged that we must now be in Lincolnshire. and shortly after six o'clock we caught the first glimpse of the cathedral towers, though they loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived idea of them. But as we grew nearer, the great edifice began to assert itself, making us acknowledge it to be larger than our receptivity could

take in. At the railway station we found no cab, it being an unknown vehicle in Lincoln, but only an omnibus belonging to the Saracen's head, which the driver recommended as the best hotel in the city, and took us thither accordingly. It received us hospitably, and looked comfortable enough, though, like the hotels of most old English towns, it had a musty fragrance of antiquity, such as I have smelt in a seldom opened London church, where the broad aisle is paved with tombstones. The house was of an ancient fashion, the entrance into its interior courtyard being through an arch, in the side of which is the door of the hotel.

There are long corridors, an intricate arrangement of passages, and an up and down meandering of staircases, amid which it would be no marvel to encounter some forgotten guest who had gone astray a hundred years ago, and was still seeking for his bedroom while the rest of his generation were in their graves.

There is no exaggerating the confusion of mind that seizes upon a stranger in the bewildering geography of a great old-fashioned English inn. The hotel stands in the principal street of Lincoln, and within a very short distance of one of the ancient city gates, which is arched across the public way, with a smaller arch for foot passengers on either side.

The whole, a gray, time-none, ponderous, shadowy structure, through the dark vista of which you look into the Middle Ages. The street is narrow and retains many antique peculiarities, though unquestionably, English domestic architecture has lost its most impressive features in the course of the last century. In this respect, there are finer old towns than Lincoln, Chester, for instance, and Shrewsbury, which last is unusually rich in those quaint and stately edifices where the gentry of the shire used to make their winter abodes in a provincial metropolis. Almost everywhere nowadays there is a monotony of modern brick or stuccoed fronts, hiding houses that are older than ever, but obliterating the picturesque antiquity of the street. Between 7 and 8 o'clock, it being still broad daylight in these long English days, we set out to pay a preliminary visit to the exterior of the cathedral.

passing through the stone bow, as the city gate close by is called, we ascended a street which grew steeper and narrower as we advanced, till at last it got to be the steepest street I ever climbed, so steep that any carriage, if left to itself, would rattle downward much faster than it could possibly be drawn up. Being almost the only hill in Lincolnshire, the inhabitants seemed disposed to make the most of it. the houses on each side had no very remarkable aspect except one with a stone portal and carved ornaments which is now a dwelling place for poverty-stricken people but may have been an aristocratic abode in the days of the norman kings to whom its style of architecture dates back

this is called the jewess's house having been inhabited by a woman of that faith who was hanged six hundred years ago and still the street grew steeper and steeper certainly the bishop and clergy of lincoln ought not to be fat men but a very spiritual saint-like almost angelic habit if it be a frequent part of their ecclesiastical duty to climb this hill for it is a real penance and was probably performed as such and was probably performed as such and groaned over accordingly in monkish times. Formerly, on the day of his installation, the bishop used to ascend the hill barefoot, and was doubtless cheered and invigorated by looking upward to the grandeur that was to console him for the humility of his approach.

We, likewise, were beckoned onward by glimpses of the cathedral towers, and finally, attaining an open square on the summit, we saw an old Gothic gateway to the left hand, and another to the right. The latter had apparently been a part of the exterior defenses of the cathedral at a time when the edifice was fortified. The west front rose behind. We passed through one of the side arches of the Gothic portal and found ourselves in the cathedral close, a wide level space where the great old Minster has fair room to sit, looking down on the ancient structures that surround it,

all of which in former days were the habitations of its dignitaries and officers. Some of them are still occupied as such, though others are in too neglected and dilapidated estate to seem worthy of so splendid an establishment. Unless it be Salisbury close, however, which is incomparably rich as regards the old residences that belong to it, I remember no more comfortably picturesque precincts round any other cathedral, but, in truth, almost every cathedral close, in turn, has seemed to me the loveliest, coziest, safest, least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most enjoyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of mortal man contrived for himself. How delightful to combine all this with the service of the temple! Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish-brown stone, which appears either to have

been largely restored, or else does not assume the hoary, crumbly surface that gives such a venerable aspect to most of the ancient churches and castles in England. In many parts, the recent restorations are quite evident, but other, and much the larger portions, can scarcely have been touched for centuries, for there are still the gargoyles, perfect, or with broken noses, as the case may be, but showing that variety and fertility of grotesquess, extravagance, which no modern imitation can affect. There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all over the walls, most of them empty, but a few containing the lamentable remnants of headless saints and angels.

It is singular what a native animosity lives in the human heart against carved images, in so much that, whether they represent Christian saint or pagan deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe opportunity to knock off their heads. In spite of all dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front of the cathedral is still exceedingly rich, being covered from massive base to airy summit with the minutest details of sculpture and carving. At least it was so once, and even now the spiritual impression of its beauty remains so strong that we have to look twice to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have seen a cherry stone carved all over by a monk, so minutely that it must have cost him

half a lifetime of labor, and this cathedral front seems to have been elaborated in a monkish spirit like that cherry stone. Not that the result is in the least petty, but miraculously grand, and all the more so for the faithful beauty of the smallest details. An elderly maid, seeing us looking up at the west front, came to the door of an adjacent house, and called to inquire if we wished to go into the cathedral, but as there would have been a dusky twilight beneath its roof, like the antiquity that has sheltered itself within,

we declined for the present. So we merely walked around the exterior and thought it more beautiful than that, of York, though on recollection, I hardly deem it so majestic and mighty as that. It is vain to attempt a description, or seek even to record the feeling which the edifice inspires. It does not impress the beholder as an inanimate object, but as something that has a vast, quiet, long-enduring life of its own.

A creation which man did not build, though in some way or other it is connected with him, and kindred to human nature. In short, I fall straightway to talking nonsense when I try to express my inner sense of this and other cathedrals. While we stood in the close at the eastern end of the Minster, the clock chimed the quarters, and then the great Tom, who hangs in the rude tower, told us it was eight o'clock

in far the sweetest and mightiest accents that I ever heard from any bell, slow and solemn, and allowing the profound reverberations of each stroke to die away before the next one fell. It was still broad daylight in that upper region of the town, and would be so for some time longer, but the evening atmosphere was getting sharp and cool. We therefore descended the steep street, our younger companion running before us, and gathering such headway that I fully expected him to break his head, against some projecting wall. In the morning we took a fly, an English term for an exceedingly

sluggish vehicle, and drove up to the Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than the one we had previously climbed. We alighted before the west front and sent our charioteer in quest of the verger, but as he was not immediately to be found, a young girl led us into the nave. we found it very grand it is needless to say but not so grand methought as the vast knave of york cathedral especially beneath the great central tower of the latter unless a writer intends a professedly architectural description there is but one set of phrases in which to talk of all of the cathedrals in england and elsewhere they are alike in their great features an acre or two of stone flags for a pavement rows of vast columns supporting a vaulted roof at a dusky height, great windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with ancient or modern stained glass, and an elaborately carved screen between the nave and chancel, breaking the vista that might else be of such glorious length, and which is further choked up by a massive organ, in spite of which obstructions, you catch the broad,

variegated glimmer of the painted east window, where a hundred saints wear their robes of transfiguration. Behind the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the chapter and prebendaries, the bishop's throne, the pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out the holy of holies. Nor must we forget the range of chapels, once dedicated to Catholic saints, but which have now lost their individual consecration, nor the old monuments of king, kings, warriors, and prelates in the side aisles of the chancel. In close contiguity to the main body of the cathedral is the Chapter House, which, here at Lincoln, is at Salisbury, and is supported by one central pillar rising from the floor,

and putting forth branches like a tree to hold up the roof. Adjacent to the Chapter House are the cloisters, extending round a quadrangle, and paved with lettered tombstones, the more antique of which have had their inscriptions, half obliterated by the feet of monks, taking their noontide exercise in these sheltered walks five hundred years ago. Some of these old burial stones, although with ancient crosses engraved upon them, have been made to serve as memorials to dead people of very recent date. In the chancel among the tombs of forgotten bishops and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone purporting to be the monument of Catherine Swinford, wife of

John of Gaunt. Also here was the shrine of the Little St. Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled to have been crucified by the Jews of Lincoln. The cathedral is not particularly rich in monuments, for it suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at the Reformation and in Cromwell's time. This latter iconoclast is especially bad odor with the sextons and vergers of most of the old churches which I have visited. His soldiers stabled their steeds in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, and hacked and hewed the monkish sculptures, and the ancestral memorials of great families quite at their wicked and plebeian pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most exquisite and marvelous specimens of flowers, foliage, and grapevines, and miracles

of stonework twined about arches as if the material had been as soft as wax in the cunning sculptor's hands, the leaves being represented with all their veins, so that you would almost think it petrified nature for which he sought to steal the praise of art. Here, too, were those grotesque faces which always grin at you from the projections of monkish architecture, as if the builders had gone mad with their own deep solemnity, or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless permitted to throw in something ineffably absurd. Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to the yet most degree of lustre.

Nor is it unreasonable to think that the artists would have taken these further pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor and working out their conceptions to the extremist point. But, at present, the whole interior of the cathedral is smeared over with a yellowish wash, the very meanest hue imaginable, and for which somebody's soul has a bitter reckoning to undergo. In the center of the grassy quadrangle about which the cloisters perambulate is a small, mean brick building, with a locked door. Our guide—I forgot to say that we had been captured by a verger, in black and with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect, our guide unlocked this door and disclosed a flight of steps. At the bottom appeared what I should have taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and faded oil carpeting, which might originally have been painted of a rather gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tessellated pavement made of small colored bricks or pieces of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered there, and has not been meddled with further than by removing the superestilated pavement. It was accidentally discovered there, and has not been meddled with further than by removing the super-

incumbent earth and rubbish. Nothing else occurs to me just now to be recorded about the interior of the cathedral, except that we saw a place where the stone pavement had been worn away by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as they knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin. Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street of more venerable appearance than we had heretofore seen, bordered with houses, the high-peaked roofs of which were covered with red earth and tiles. It led us to a Roman arch, which was once the gateway of a fortification, and has been striding across the English Street ever since the latter was a faint village path,

and for centuries before. The arch is about 400 yards from the cathedral, and it is to be noticed that there are Roman remains in all this neighborhood, some above ground, and doubtless innumerable more beneath it, for, as in ancient Rome itself, an inundation, of accumulated soil seems to have swept over what was the surface of that earlier day. The gateway which I am speaking about is probably buried to a third of its height, and perhaps has a perfect Roman pavement, if sought for it the original depth, as that which runs beneath the arch of Titus. It is a rude and massive structure, and seems as stalwart now as it could have been two thousand years ago,

and though time has gnawed it externally he has made what amends he could by crowning its rough and broken summit with grass and weeds and planting tufts of yellow flowers on the projections up and down the sides. These are the ruins of a Norman castle built by the Conqueror in pretty close proximity to the cathedral, but the old gateway is obstructed by a modern door of wood, and we were denied admittance because some part of the precincts, are used as a prison. We now rambled about on the broad back of the hill, which, besides the minster and ruined castle, is the sight of some stately and queer old houses, and many mean little hovels. I suspect that all or most of the life of the present day has subsided into the lower town, and that only priests, poor people, and prisoners dwell in these upper regions. In the wide, dry moat, at the base of the castle wall, are closed. clustered whole colonies of small houses, some of brick, but the larger portion built of old stones

which once made part of the Norman keep, or of Roman structures that existed before the conqueror's castle was ever dreamed about. They are like toad-stools that spring up from the mold of a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, they add wonderfully to the picturesqueness of the seen, being quite as valuable in that respect as the great, broad, ponderous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above our heads, heaving its huge gray mass out of a bank of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as lilacs and other flowering plants, in which its foundations were completely hidden. After walking quite around the castle, I made an excursion through the Roman Gateway, along a pleasant and level road bordered with dwellings of various character.

One or two were houses of gentility, with delightful and shadowy lawns before them. Many had those high, red-tiled roofs, ascending into acutely pointed gables, which seemed to belong to the same epoch as some of the edifices in our own earlier towns. And there were pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and rural, with hedges so dense and high, fencing them in, as almost to hide them up to the eaves of their thatched roofs. In front of one of these I saw various images, crosses, and relics of antiquity, among which were fragments of old Catholic tombstones, disposed by way of ornament. We now went home to the Saracen's head, and as the weather was very unpropitious, and it

sprinkled a little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself released from further thraldom to the cathedral. but it had taken possession of me and would not let me be at rest, so at length I found myself compelled to climb the hill again between daylight and dusk. A mist was now hovering about the upper height of the great central tower, so as to dim and half-obliterate its battlements and pinnacles, even while I stood in the close beneath it. It was the most impressive view that I had had. The whole lower part of the structure was seen with purport, distinctness, but at the very summit the mist was so dense as to form an actual cloud,

as well-defined as ever I saw resting on a mountain-top. Really and literally, here was a cloud-capped tower. The entire cathedral two transfigured itself into a richer beauty and more imposing majesty than ever. The longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exterior is certainly far more beautiful than that of Yorkminster, and its finer effect is due, I think, to the many peaks in which the structure ascends, and to the pinnacles which, as it were, repeat and re-echo them into the sky. York Cathedral is comparatively square and angular in its general effect, but in this at Lincoln there is a continual mystery of variety, so that at every glance you are aware of a change and a disclosure of something new, yet working a harmonious development of what you have

heretofore seen. The West Front is unspeakably grand, and may be read over and over again forever, and still show undetected meanings, like a great, broad page of marvelous writing in black letter, so many sculptured ornaments there are, blossoming out before your eyes, and gray statues that have grown there since you looked last, and emerald. empty niches, and a hundred airy canopies beneath which carved images used to be, and where they will show themselves again if you gaze long enough. But I will not say another word about the cathedral. We spent the rest of the day within the somber precincts of the Saracen's head, reading yesterday's

times, the guide-book of Lincoln, and the directory of the eastern counties. Dismal as the weather was, the street beneath our window was enlivened with a great bustle and turmoil of people all the evening, because it was Saturday night, and they had accomplished their week's toil, received their wages, and were making their small purchases against Sunday, and enjoying themselves as well as they knew how. A band of music passed to and fro several times, with the raindrops falling into the mouth of the brazen trumpet, and pattering on the bass drum. A spirit shop opposite the hotel had a vast run of custom, and a coffee dealer in the open air found occasional vent for his commodity, in spite of the cold water that dripped into the cups.

The whole breadth of the street between the stone bough and the bridge across the witham was thronged to overflowing and humming with human life. Observing in the guidebook that a steamer runs on the river witham between Lincoln and Boston, I inquired of the waiter and learned that she was to start on Monday at ten o'clock. Thinking it might be an interesting trip, and a pleasant variation of our customary mode of travel, we determined to make the voyage. The Witham flows through Lincoln, crossing the main street under an arched bridge of Gothic construction, a little below the Saracen's head. It has more the appearance of a canal than of a river,

in its passage through the town, being bordered with hewn stone mason. and work on each side, and provided with one or two locks. The steamer proved to be small, dirty, and altogether inconvenient. The early morning had been bright, but the sky now lowered upon us with a sulky English temper, and we had not long put off before we felt an ugly wind from the German ocean blowing right in our teeth. There were a number of passengers on board, country people, such as travel by third class on the railway, for, I suppose, nobody but ourselves ever dreamt of voyaging by the steamer for the sake of what he might happen upon in the way of river scenery. We bothered a good while about getting through a preliminary lock,

nor, when fairly underway, did we ever accomplish, I think, six miles in an hour. Constant delays were caused, moreover, by stopping to take up passengers and freight, not at regular landing places, but anywhere along the green banks. The scenery was identified, with that of the railway, because the ladder runs along by the riverside through the whole distance, or nowhere departs from it except to make a short cut across some sinuosity, so that our only advantage lay in the drawling, snail-like, slothfulness of our progress, which allowed us time enough and to spare for the objects along the shore. Unfortunately, there was nothing or next nothing to be seen,

the country being one unvaryed level over the whole. whole thirty miles of our voyage, not a hill in sight, neither near or far, except that solitary one on the summit of which we had left Lincoln Cathedral, and the cathedral was our landmark for four hours or more, and at last rather faded out than was hidden by any intervening object. It would have been a pleasantly lazy day enough if the rough and bitter wind had not blown directly in our faces and chilled us through, in spite of the sunshine that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of rain. These English east winds, which prevail from February till June, are greater nuisances than the east wind of our own Atlantic coast, although they do not

bring mist and storm as with us, but some of the sunniest weather that England sees. Under their influence, the sky smiles and is villainous. The landscape was tamed to the last degree, but had an English character that was abundantly worth our looking at. A green luxuriance of early grass, old, high-roofed farmhouses, surrounded by their stone barns and ricks of hay and grain, ancient villages, with the square gray tower of a church seen afar over the level country, amid the cluster of red roofs, here and there a shadowy grove of venerable trees surrounding what was perhaps an Elizabethan hall, though it looked more like the abode of some rich yeoman. Once, too, we saw the tower of a medieval castle,

that of Tattersall, built by a Cromwell, but whether of the protector's family, I cannot tell. But the gentry do not appear to have settled multitudinously in this tract of country, nor is it to be wondered at, since a lover of the picturesque would as soon think of settling in Holland. The river retains its canal-like aspect all along, and only in the latter part of its course does it become more than wide enough for the little steamer to turn itself around, at broadest, not more than twice that width. End of Section 11. Section 12 of Our Old Home. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 12, Pilgrimage to Old Boston The only memorable incident of our voyage happened when a mother duck was leading her little fleet of five ducklings across the river, just as our steamer went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into great waves that lashed the banks on either side. I saw the imminence of the catastrophe, and hurried to the stern of the boat to witness its consummation, since I could not possibly avert it. The poor ducklings had uttered their baby quacks, and striven with all their tiny might to escape. Four of them, I believe, were washed aside, and thrown off unhurt from the steamer's prow, but the fifth must have gone under the whole

length of the keel, and never could have come up alive. At last in mid-afternoon, we beheld the tall tower of St. Botolph's Church, three hundred feet high, the same elevation as the tallest Tower of Lincoln Cathedral, looming in the distance. At about half-past four we reached Boston, which name has been shortened in the course of ages, by the quick and slovenly English pronunciation from Botolph's town, and were taken by cab to the peacock in the marketplace. It was the best hotel in town, though a poor one enough, and we were shown into a small stifled parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke two days old, for the waiter assured us that the room had not more recently been fumigated.

An exceedingly grim waiter he was, apparently a genuine descendant of the old Puritans of this English Boston, and quite as sour as those who people the daughter city in New England. Our parlor had the one recommendation of looking into the marketplace, and affording a side-long glimpse of the tall spire and noble old church. In my first ramble about the town, Chance led me to the riverside at that quarter where the port is situated. Here were long buildings of an old-fashioned aspect, seemingly warehouses, with windows in the high, steep roofs. The custom-house found ample accommodation within an ordinary dwelling-house. Two or three large schooners were moored along the river's

brink, which had here a stone margin. Another large and handsome schooner was evidently just finished, rigged and equipped for her first voyage. The rudiments of another were on the stocks, in a shipyard bordering on the river. Still another, while I was looking on, came up the stream and lowered her mainsail from a foreign voyage. An old man on the bank hailed her and inquired about her cargo, but the Lincolnshire people have such a queer way of talking English that I could not understand the reply. Farther down the river, I saw a brig approaching rapidly under sail.

The whole scene made an odd impression of bustle and sluggishness and decay, and a remnant of wholesome life, and I could not but contrast it with the mighty and populous activity of our own Boston, which was once the feeble infant of this old English town. The latter, perhaps, almost stationary ever since that day,

as if the birth of such an offspring had taken away its own principle of growth. I thought of Long Wharf and Faniel Hall and Washington Street, and the Great Elm and the State House, and exulted lustily, but yet began to feel at home in this good old town for its very name's sake, as I had never before felt in England. The next morning we came out in the early sunshine. The sun must have been shining nearly four hours, for it was after eight o'clock, and strolled about the streets like people who had a right to be there.

The marketplace of Boston is an irregular square, into one end of which the chancel of the church slightly projects. The gates of the churchyard were open and free to all passengers, and the common footway of the townspeople seems to lie to and fro across it. It is paved, according to English custom, with flat tombstones, and there are also raised or altar-tom. some of which have armorial bearings on them. One clergyman has caused himself and his wife to be buried right in the middle of the stone-bordered path that traverses the churchyard, so that not an individual of the thousands who pass along this public way can help trampling over him or her. The scene nevertheless was very cheerful in the morning sun, people going about their business in the day's primal freshness,

which was just as fresh here as in younger villages. children with milk pails loitering over the burial stones, schoolboys playing leapfrog with the altar-tombs, the simple old town preparing itself for the day, which would be like myriads of other days that had passed over it, but yet would be worth living through. And down on the churchyard, where were buried many generations whom it remembered in their time, looked the stately tower of St. Botulf, and it was good to see and think of such an age-long giant, intermarrying the present epoch with a distant past, and getting quite imbued with the human nature by being so immemorially connected with men's familiar knowledge and homely interests.

It is a noble tower, and the jackdaws, evidently, have pleasant homes in their hereditary nests among its topmost windows, and live delightful lives, flitting and cawing about its pinnacles and flying buttresses. I should almost like to be a jack-daw myself for the sake of living up there. In front of the church, not more than twenty yards off, and with a low brick wall between, flows the river witham. On the hither bank a fisherman was washing his boat, and another skiff, with her sail lazily half-twisted,

lay on the opposite strand. The stream at this point is about of such width that, if the tall tower were to tumble over flat on its face, its top stone might perhaps reach to the middle of the channel. On the farther shore there is a line of antique-looking houses, with roofs of red tile and windows opening out of them, some of these dwellings being so ancient that the Reverend Mr. Cotton, subsequently our first Boston minister, must have seen them with his own bodily eyes when he used to issue from the front portal after service. Indeed, there must be very many houses here, and even some streets that bear much the aspect that they did when the Puritan divine paced solemnly among them.

In our rambles about town we went into a bookseller's shop to inquire if he had any description of Boston for sale. He offered me, or rather produced for inspection, not supposing that I would buy it, a quarto history of the town published by subscription nearly forty years ago. The bookseller showed himself a well-informed and affable man, and a local antiquary, to whom a party of inquisitive strangers were a godsend. He had met with several Americans who, at various times, had come on pilgrimages to this place, and he had been in correspondence with others. Happening to have heard the name of one member of our party, he showed us great courtesy and kindness, and invited us to his inner domicile, where, as he modestly intimated, He kept a few articles which it might interest us to see. So we went with him through the shop upstairs into the private part of his establishment, and really it was one of the rarest adventures I ever met with

to stumble upon this treasure of a man, with his treasury of antiquities and curiosities veiled behind the unostentatious front of a bookseller's shop in a very moderate line of village business. The two upstairs rooms into which he introduced us were so crowded with inestimable articles that we were almost afraid to stir for fear of breaking some fragile thing that had been accumulating value for unknown centuries. The apartment was hung round with pictures and old engravings, many of which were extremely rare.

Promising that he was going to show us something very curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room and returned with a counterpane of fine linen, elaborately embroidered with silk, which so profusely covered the linen that the general effect was as if the main texture were silken. It was stained and seemed very old, and had an ancient fragrance. It was wrought all over with birds and flowers in a most delicate style of needlework, and among other devices, more than once repeated, was the cipher MS, being the initials of one of the most unhappy names that ever a woman bore. This quilt was embroidered. by the hands of Mary Queen of Scots during her imprisonment at Fotheringay Castle,

and having evidently been a work of years, she had doubtless shed many tears over it, and wrought many doleful thoughts and abortive schemes into its texture, along with the birds and flowers. As a counterpart to this most precious relic, our friend produced some of the handiwork of a former Queen of Tahiti, presented by her to Captain Cook. It was a bag, cunningly made of some delicate vegetable stuff, and ornamented with feathers. Next, he brought out a green silk waistcoat, a very antique fashion, trimmed about the edges and pocket-holes, with a rich and delicate embroidery of gold and silver. This, as the possessor of the treasure proved, by tracing its pedigree till it came into his hands,

was once the vestment of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burley, but that great statesman must, have been a person of very moderate girth in the chest and waist, for the garment was hardly more than a comfortable fit for a boy of eleven, the smallest American of our party, who tried on the gorgeous waistcoat. Then Mr. Porter produced some curiously engraved drinking glasses, with a view of St. Bottles steeple on one of them, and other Boston edifices, public or domestic, on the remaining two, very admirably done. These crystal goblets had been a present long ago to an old master of the free school from his pupils, and it is very rarely, I imagine, that a retired schoolmaster can exhibit such trophies of gratitude and affection,

one from the victims of his birch rod. Our kind friend kept bringing out one unexpected and wholly unexpected thing after another, as if he were a magician, and had only to fling a private signal into the air, and some attendant imp would hand forth any strange relic he might choose to ask for. He was especially rich in drawings by the old masters, producing two or three of exquisite delicacy by Raphael, one by Salvador, a head by Rembrandt, and others in chalk or pen and ink, by Giordano, Benvenuto Cellini, and Hans almost as famous. And besides what were shown us, there seemed to be an endless supply of these art treasures in reserve. On the wall hung a crayon portrait of Stern, never engraved,

representing him as a rather young man, blooming and not uncomely. It was the worldly face of a man fond of pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, odd expression that we see in his only engraved portrait. The picture is an original and must needs be very valuable, and we wish it might be prefixed to some new and worthier biography of a writer whose character the world has always treated with singular harshness, considering how much it owes him. There was likewise a crayon portrait of Stern's wife, looking so haughty and unamiable that the wonder is,

not that he ultimately left her, but how he ever contrived to live a week with such an awful woman. After looking at these and a great many more things that I can remember above stairs, we went down to a parlor where this wonderful bookseller opened an old cabinet containing numberless drawers and looking just fit to be the repository of such knick-knacks as were stored up in it. He appeared to possess more treasures than he himself knew of, or knew where to find. But rummaging here and there, he brought forth things new and old, rose nobles, Victoria crowns, gold angels, double sovereigns of George the Fourth, two guinea pieces of George II, a marriage medal of the first Napoleon,

only 45 of which were ever struck off, and of which even the British Museum does not contain a specimen like this in gold, a brass metal, three or four inches in diameter of a rock, Roman Emperor, together with buckles, bracelets, amulets, and I know not what besides. There was a green silk tassel from the fringe of Queen Mary's bed at Holyrood Palace. There were illuminated missiles, antique Latin Bibles, and what may seem of a special interest to the historian, a secret book of Queen Elizabeth in manuscript, written for ought I know by her own hand. On examination, however, it proved to contain, not secrets of state, but recipes for

dishes, drinks, medicines, washes, and all such matters of housewifery, the toilet and domestic quackery, among which we were horrified by the title of one of the nostrums, how to kill a fellow quickly. We never doubted that Bloody Queen Bess might often have had occasion for such a recipe, but wondered at her frankness and at her attending to these anomalous necessities in such a methodical way. The truth is we had read amiss, and the queen had spelt amiss. The word was felon, a sort of witlow, not fellow. Our hospitable friend now made us drink a glass of wine, as old and genuine as the curiosities of his cabinet,

it, and while sipping it, we ungratefully tried to excite his envy by telling him various things, interesting to an antiquary and virtuoso, which we had seen in the course of our travels about England. We spoke, for instance, of a missile bound in solid gold and set around with jewels, but of such intrinsic value as no setting could enhance, for it was exquisitely illuminated throughout by the hand of Raphael himself. We mentioned a little silver case which once contained a portion of the heart of Louis XIV, nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner's horror and astonishment, Dean Buckland popped the kingly morsel into his mouth and swallowed it.

We told about the black-letter prayer-book of King Charles the martyr, used by him upon the scaffold, taking which into our hands, it opened itself at the communion service, and there on the left-hand page appeared a spot. about as large as a sixpence of a yellowish or brownish hue, a drop of the king's blood had fallen there. Mr. Porter now accompanied us to the church, but first leading us to a vacant spot of ground where old John Cotton's vicarage had stood till a very short time since. According to our friend's description, it was a humble habitation of the cottage order built of brick with a

thatched roof. The site is now rudely fenced in and cultivarily. as a vegetable garden. On the right-hand aisle of the church there is an ancient chapel, which, at the time of our visit, was in the process of restoration, and was to be dedicated to Mr. Cotton, whom these English people consider as the founder of our American Boston. It would contain a painted memorial window in honor of the old Puritan minister. A festival in commemoration of the event was to take place in the ensuing July, to which I had myself received an invitation, but I knew too well the pains and penalties incurred by an invited guest at public festivals in England to accept it. It ought to be recorded, and seems to have made a very

kindly impression on our kinsfolk here, that 500 pounds had been contributed by persons in the United States, principally in Boston, towards the cost of the memorial window, and the repair and restoration of the chapel. After we emerged from the chapel, Mr. Pryson's. porter approached us with the vicar, to whom he kindly introduced us, and then took his leave. May a stranger's benediction rest upon him. He is a most pleasant man, rather, I imagine, a virtuoso than an antiquary, for he seemed to value the queen of Tahiti's bag, as highly as Queen Mary's embroidered quilt, and to have an omnivorous appetite for everything strange and rare. Would that we could fill up his shelves and drawers, if there are

are any vacant spaces left, with the choicest trifles that have dropped out of time's carpet-bag, or give him the carpet-bag itself to take out what he will. The vicar looked about thirty years old, a gentleman, evidently assured of his position, as clergymen of the established church invariably are, comfortable and well-to-do, a scholar and a Christian, and fit to be a bishop, knowing how to make the most of life without prejudice to the life to come. I was glad to see such a model English priest so suitably accommodated with an old English church. He kindly and courteously did the honors, showing us quite round the interior, giving us all the information that we required, and then leaving us to

the quiet enjoyment of what we came to see. The interior of St. Botolph's is very fine and satisfactory, as stately almost as a cathedral, and has been repaired, so far as repairs were necessary, in a chaste and noble style. The great eastern window is of modern painted glass, but is the richest, mellowest, and tenderest modern window that I have ever seen, the art of painting these glowing transparencies in pristine perfection being one that the world has lost. The vast, clear space of the interior church delighted me. There was no screen, nothing between the vestibule and the altar to break the long vista, even the organ stood aside, though it by and by, made us aware of its presence by a melodious roar.

Around the walls there were old engraved brasses and a stone coffin, and an alabaster knight of St. John, and an alabaster lady, each recumbent at full length, as large as life and in perfect preservation, except for a slight modern touch at the tips of their noses. In the chancel we saw a great deal of oaken work, quaintly and admirably carved, especially about the seats formerly appropriated to the monks, which were so contrived as to tumble down with a tremendous crash

if the occupant happened to fall asleep. We now assayed to climb to the upper regions. Up we went, winding and still winding round the circular stairs, till we came to the gallery beneath the stone roof of the tower, whence we could look down and see the raised font, and my Talma lying on one of the steps, looking about as big as a pocket-handkerchief. Then up again, up, up, up through a yet smaller staircase,

till we emerged into another stone gallery above the jackdaws, and far above the roof beneath which we had before made a halt. Then up another flight, which led us to a pinnought, pinnacle of the temple, but not the highest, so, retracing our steps, we took the right tour at this time, and emerged into the loftiest lantern, where we saw Level Lincolnshire far and near, though with a haze on the distant horizon. There were dusty roads, a river and canals converging towards Boston, which, a congregation of red-tiled roofs, lay beneath our feet, with pygmy people creeping about its narrow streets.

We were 300 feet aloft, and the pinnacle on which we stood is a landmark 40 miles at sea. Content and weary of our elevation, we descended the corkscrew stairs and left the church, the last object that we noticed in the interior being a bird, which happened to be at home there, and responded with its cheerful notes to the swell of the organ. Pausing on the church steps, we observed that there were formerly two statues, one on each side of the doorway, the canopies still remaining, and the pedestals being about a yard from the ground.

Some of Mr. Cotton's Puritan parishioners are probably responsible for the disappearance of these stone saints. This doorway at the base of the tower is now much dilapidated, but must once have been very rich and of a peculiar fashion. It opens its arch through a great square tablet of stone, reared against the front of the tower. On most of the projections, whether on the tower or about the body of the church, there are gargoyles of genuine Gothic grotesqueness, fiends, beasts, angels, and combinations of all three. And where portions of the edifice are restored, the modern sculptors have tried to imitate these wild fantasies, but with very poor success. extravagance and absurdity have still their law and should pay as rigid obedience to it as the primaced things on earth in our further rambles about boston we crossed the river by a bridge and observed that the larger part of the town seems to be on that side of its navigable stream

the crooked streets and narrow lanes reminded me much of hanover street anne street and other portions of the north end of our american boston as i remember remember that picturesque region in my boyish days. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the local habits and recollections of the first settlers may have had some influence on the physical character of the streets and houses in the New England metropolis. At any rate, here is a similar intricacy of bewildering lanes, and numbers of old, peaked, and projecting storied dwellings, such as I used to see there. It is singular what a home-feeling and sense of kindred I derived from this hereditary connection, and fancied physiognomical resemblance between the old town and its well-grown daughter, and how reluctant I was, after chill years of banishment,

to leave this hospitable place on that account. Moreover, it recalled some of the features of another American town, my own dear native place, when I saw the seafaring people leaning against posts and sitting on planks under the lee of warehouses, or lolling on longboats drawn up high and dry, as sailors and old wharf rats are accustomed to do in seaports of little business. In other respects, the English town is more village-like than either of the American ones. The women and budding girls chat together at their doors, and exchange merry greetings with young men. Children chase one another in the summer twilight, schoolboys sail little boats on the river or play at marbles across the flat tombstones in the churchyard and ancient men in breeches and long waistcoats wander slowly about the streets with a certain familiarity of deportment as if each one were everybody's grandfather

i have frequently observed in old english towns that old age comes forth more cheerfully and genially into the sunshine than among ourselves where the rush stir, bustle, and irreverent energy of youth are so preponderant, that the poor, forlorn grandsires begin to doubt whether they have a right to breathe in such a world any longer, and so hide their silvery heads in solitude. Speaking of old men, I am reminded of the scholars of the Boston Charity School, who walk about in antique, long-skirted blue coats and knee-breeches, and with bands at their necks, perfect and grotesque pictures of the costume of three centuries ago. On the morning of our departure, I looked from the parlor window of the peacock into the marketplace and beheld its irregular square already well covered with booths, and more in progress of

being put up by stretching tattered sailcloth on poles. It was market day. The dealers were arranging their commodities consisting chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which seemed to be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there was much greater variety of merchandise, basket work both for fancy and use, twig brooms, beehives, oranges, rustic attire, all sorts of things in short that are commonly sold at a rural fair. I heard the lowing of cattle to and the bleeding of sheep and found that there was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs in another part of the town. A crowd of townspeople and Lincolnshire yeoman elbowed one another in the square. Mr. Punch was speaking in one corner, and a vagabond juggler tried to find space for his exhibition in another,

so that my final glimpse of Boston was calculated to leave a livelier impression than my former ones. Meanwhile, the Tower of St. Botolph's looked benignantly down, and I fancied it was bidding me farewell, as did Mr. Cotton two or three hundred years ago. and telling me to describe its venerable height and the town beneath it to the people of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to the living inhabitants of old Boston, yet to some of the dust that lies in its churchyard. One thing more, they have a bunker hill in the vicinity of their town, and, what could hardly be expected of an English community, seem proud to think that their neighborhood has given name to our first,

and most widely celebrated and best remembered battlefield. End of Section 12. Section 13 of Our Old Home. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 13, near Oxford. On a fine morning in September, we set out on an excursion to Blenham.

the sculptor and myself being seated on the box of our four-horse carriage, two more of the party in the dicky, and the others less agreeably accommodated inside. We had no coachman but two postilions in short scarlet jackets and leather breeches with top boots, each astride of a horse, so that, all the way along, when not otherwise attracted, we had the interesting spectacle of their up-and-down bobbing in the saddle. It was a sunny and beautiful day, a specimen of the perfect English weather, just warm enough for comfort, indeed a little too warm perhaps in the noontide sun, yet retaining a mere spice or suspicion of austerity, which made it all the more enjoyable. The country between Oxford and Blenham is not particularly interesting, being almost level, or undulating very slightly, nor is Oxfordshire agriculturally, a rich part of England. We saw one or two hamlets, and I especially remember a picturesque old gabled house at a turnpike gate, and altogether the wayside scenery had an aspect of old-fashioned

English life, but there was nothing very memorable till we reached Woodstock, and stopped to water our horses at the Black Bear. This neighborhood is called New Woodstock, but has by no means the brand new appearance of an American town, being a large village of stone houses, most of them pretty well time-worn and weather-stained. The Black Bear is an ancient inn, large and respectable, with balustrated staircases and intricate passages in corridors, and queer old pictures and engravings hanging in the entries and apartments. We ordered lunch, the most delightful of English institutions next to dinner, to be ready against our return, and then resumed our drive to Blenham.

The park gate of Blenham stands close to the end of the village street of Woodstock. Immediately on passing through its portals, we saw the stately palace in the distance, but made a wide circuit of the park before approaching it. This noble park contains 3,000 acres of land, and is 14 miles in circumference, having been in part a royal domain before it was granted to the Marlboro family, it contains many trees of unsurpassed antiquity, and has doubtless been the haunt of game and deer for centuries. We saw pheasants in abundance, feeding in the open lawns and glades,

and the stags tossed their antlers and bounded away, not affrighted, but only shy and gamesome, as we drove by. It is a magnificent pleasure-ground, not too tamely kept, nor rigidly subjected within rule, but vast enough to have lapsed back into nature again, after all the pains the landscape-gardners of Queen Anne's time bestowed on it, when the domain of Blenheim was scientifically laid out. The great, knotted, slanting trunks of the old oaks do not now look as if man had much intermeddled with their growth and postures. The trees of later date that were set out in the Great Duke's time are arranged on the plan of the order of battle

in which the illustrious commander ranked his troops at Blenheim, but the ground covered is so extensive, and the trees now so luxuriant that the spectator is not disagreeably conscious of their standing in a military array, as if Orpheus had summoned them together by beat of drum. The effect must have been very formal a hundred and fifty years ago, but has ceased to be so, although the trees, I presume, have kept

their ranks with even more fidelity than Marlboro's veterans did. One of the parkkeepers on horseback rode beside our carriage, pointing out the choice views and glimpses at the palace as we drove through the domain. There is a very large artificial lake, to say the truth, it seemed to me fully worthy of being compared with the Welsh lakes, at least, if not with those of Westmoreland, which was created by Capability Brown, and fills the basin that he scooped for it, just as if nature had poured these broad waters into one of her own valleys. It is a most beautiful object at a distance, and not less so, on its immediate banks, for the water is very pure, being supplied by a small river of the choicest transparency,

which was turned to their word for the purpose. And Blenham owes not merely this water scenery, but almost all its other beauties to the contrivance of man. Its natural features are not striking, but art has affected such wonderful things that the uninstructed visitor would never guess that nearly the whole scene was but the embodied thought of a human mind. A skillful painter hardly does more for his blank sheet of

canvas, then the landscape gardener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done for the monotonous surface of Blenheim, making the most of every undulation, flinging down a hillock, a big lump of earth out of a giant's hand, wherever it was needed, putting in beauty as often as there was a niche for it, opening vistas to every point that deserved to be seen, and throwing a veil of impenetrable foliage around what ought to be hidden. And then, to be sure, the lapse of a century has softened the harsh outline of man's labors, and has given the place back to nature again, with the addition of what consummate science could achieve. After driving a good way, we came to a battlemented tower and adjoining house,

which used to be the residence of the ranger of Woodstock Park, who held charge of the property for the king, before the Duke of Marlborough possessed it. The keeper opened the door for us, and in the entrance hall we found various things that had to do with the chase and woodland sports. We mounted the staircase through several stories, up to the top of the tower, whence there was a view of the spires of Oxford, and of points much farther off, very indistinctly seen, however, as is usually the case with the misty distances of England. Returning to the ground floor, we were ushered into the room in which died Wilmere, the wicked earl of Rochester, who was ranger of the park in Charles II's time.

It is a low and bare little room, with a window in front, and a smaller one behind, and in the contiguous entrance room there are the remains of an old bedstead, beneath the canopy of which, perhaps, Rochester may have made the penitent end that Bishop Burnett attributes to him. I hardly know what it is in this poor fellow's character, which affects us with greater tenderness on his behalf than for all the other profligates of his day, who seemed to have been neither better nor worse than himself. I rather suspect that he had a human heart which never quite died out of him, and the warmth of which is still faintly perceptible amid the dissolute

trash which he left behind. Methinks, if such good fortune ever befell a bookish man, I should choose this lodge for my own residence, with the topmost room of the tower for a study, and all the seclusion of cultivated wildness beneath to ramble in. There being no such possibility we drove on, catching glimpses of the palace in new points of view, and by and by came to Rosamond's well. The particular tradition that connects Fair Rosamond with it is not now in my memory, but if Rosamond ever lived and loved and ever had her abode in the maze of Woodstock, it may well be believed that she and Henry sometimes sat beside this spring.

It gushes out from a bank through some old stonework, and dashes its little cascade about as abundant as one might turn out of a large pitcher, into a pool whence it steals away towards the lake, which is not far removed. The water is exceedingly cold, and as pure as the legendary Rosamond was not, and is fancied to possess medicinal virtues, like springs at which saints have quenched their thirst. There were two or three old women and some children in attendance with tumblers which they present to visitors, full of the consecrated water, but most of us filled the tumblers for ourselves and drank. thence we drove to the triumphal pillar which was erected in honor of the great duke, and on the summit of which he stands in Roman garb, holding a winged figure of victory in his hand, as an ordinary man might hold a bird. The column is, I know, not how many feet high,

but lofty enough at any rate, to elevate Marlborough far above the rest of the world, and to be visible a long way off, and is so placed in reference to other objects that, wherever the hero wandered about his grounds, and especially as he issued from his mansion, he must inevitably have been reminded of his glory. In truth, until I came to Blenheim, I never had so positive and material an idea of what fame really is, of what the admiration of his country can do for a successful warrior, as I carry away with me and shall always retain. unless he had the moral force of a thousand men together, his egotism, beholding himself everywhere, imbueing the entire soil, growing in the woods, rippling and gleaming in the water,

and pervading the very air with his greatness, must have been swollen within him like the liver of a Strasbourg goose. On the huge tablets inlaid into the pedestal of the column, the entire act of Parliament, bestowing Blenheim, on the Duke of Marlborough and his posterity is engraved in deep letters painted black on the marble ground. The pillar stands exactly a mile from the principal front of the palace, in a straight line with the precise center of its entrance hall, so that, as already said, it was the Duke's principal object of contemplation. We now proceeded to the palace gate, which is a great pillared archway of wonderful loftiness and state,

giving admittance to a spacious quadrangle. A stout, elderly, and rather surly footmen in livery appeared at the entrance, and took possession of whatever canes, umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold of in order to claim sixpence on our departure. This had a somewhat ludicrous effect. There is much public outcry against the meanness of the present Duke in his arrangements for the admission of visitors,

chiefly, of course, his native countrymen, to view the magnificent palace which their forefathers bestowed upon his own. In many cases it seems hard that a private abode should be exposed to the intrusion of the public merely because the proprietor has inherited or created a splendor which attracts general curiosity, insomuch that his home loses its sanctity and seclusion for the very reason that it is better than other men's houses. But in the case of Blenheim, the public has certainly an equitable claim to admission, both because the fame of its first inhabitant is a national possession, and because the mansion was a national gift,

one of the purposes of which was to be a token of gratitude and glory to the English people themselves. If a man chooses to be illustrious, he is very likely to incur some little inconveniences himself, and entail them on his posterity. Nevertheless, his present grace of Marlborough absolutely ignores the public claim above suggested, and, with a thrift of which even the hero of Blenham himself did not set the example, sells tickets admitting six persons at ten shillings.

If only one person enters the gate, he must pay for six, and if there are seven in company, two tickets are required, to admit them. The attendants, who meet you everywhere in the park and palace, expect fees on their own private account, their noble master pocketing the ten shillings, but to be sure, the visitor gets his money's worth, since it buys him the right to speak justice freely of the Duke of Marlborough as if he were the keeper of the Cremorne Gardens. The above was written two or three years ago or more, and the Duke of that day has since transmitted his coronet to his successor, who we understand has adopted much more liberal

arrangements. There is seldom anything to criticize or complain of as regards the facility of obtaining admission to interesting private houses in England. Passing through a gateway on the opposite side of the quadrangle, we had before us the noble classic front of the palace with its two projecting wings. We ascended the lofty steps of the portal, and were admitted into the entrance hall, the height of which, from floor to ceiling, is not much less than seventy feet, being the entire elevation of the edifice. The hall is lighted by windows in the upper story, and it being a clear bright day, was very radiant with lofty sunshine, amid which a swallow was flitting to and fro. The ceiling was painted by Sir James Thornhill

in some allegorical design, doubtless commemorative of Marlborough's victory. the purport of which I did not take the trouble to make out, contenting myself with the general effect which was most splendidly and effectively ornamental. We were guided through the showrooms by a very civil person who allowed us to take pretty much our own time in looking at the pictures. The collection is exceedingly valuable, many of these works of art having been presented to the Great Duke by the crowned heads of England or the continent. One room was all aglow with pictures by Rubens, and there were works of Raphael, and many other famous painters, any one of which would be sufficient to illustrate the meanest house that might contain it. I remembered none of them, however, not being in a picture-seeing mood, so well as Van Dyke's large and familiar picture of Charles I first on horseback, with a figure and face of melancholy dignity, such as Van Dyke's large and familiar picture of Charles I'm not in horseback, such as Van Dyke's large and familiar picture of Charles I, as never by any other hand was put on canvas. Yet on considering this face of Charles, which I find often repeated in half-lengths, and translating it from the ideal into literalism, I doubt whether

the unfortunate king was really a handsome or impressive-looking man, a high, thin-ridged nose, a meager hatchet face, and reddish hair and beard. These are the literal facts. It is the the painter's art that has thrown such pensive and shadowy grace around him. On our passage through this beautiful suite of apartments, we saw through the vista of open doorways, a boy of ten or twelve years old coming towards us from the farther rooms. He had on a straw hat, a linen sack that certainly had been washed and rewashed for a summer or two, and grey trousers a good deal worn, a dress in short which an American mother in Middle Station would have thought too shabby for her darling schoolboy's ordinary wear.

This urchin's face was rather pale, as those of English children are apt to be quite as often as our own, but he had pleasant eyes, an intelligent look, and an agreeable boyish manner. It was Lord Sunderland, grandson of the present Duke, and heir, though not, I think, in the direct line of the blood of the Great Marlborough, and of the title and estate. After passing through the first suite of rooms, we were conducted through a corresponding suite on the opposite side of the entrance hall. These latter apartments are most richly adorned with tapestries wrought and presented to the first Duke by a sisterhood of Flemish nuns. They look like great glowing pictures and completely cover the walls of the rooms. The designs purport to represent the Duke's battles and sieges, and everywhere we see the hero himself as large as,

life, and as gorgeous in scarlet and gold as the Holy Sisters could make him, with a three-cornered hat and flowing wig, reigning in his horse, and extending his leading staff in the attitude of command. Next to Marl, Prince Eugene, is the most prominent figure. In the way of upholstery, there can never have been anything more magnificent than these tapestries, and, considered as works of art, they have quite as much merit as nine pictures out of ten. One whole wing of the palace is occupied by the library, a most noble room with a vast perspective length from end to end. Its atmosphere is brighter and more cheerful than that of most

libraries, a wonderful contrast to the old college libraries of Oxford, and perhaps less somber and suggestive of thoughtfulness than any large library ought to be, inasmuch as so many studious brains as have left their deposit on the shelves cannot have conspired without producing a very serious and ponderous result. Both walls and ceiling are white, and there are elaborate doorways and fireplaces of white marble. The floor is of oak, so highly polished, that our feet slipped upon it as if it had been New England ice. At one end of the room stands a statue of Queen Anne in her royal robes, which are so admirably designed and exquisite. rot, that the spectator certainly gets a strong conception of her royal dignity, while the face of the statue, fleshy and feeble, doubtless conveys a suitable idea of her personal character.

The marble of this work, long as it has stood there, is as white as snow just fallen, and must have required most faithful and religious care to keep it so. As for the volumes of the library, they are wired within the cases, and turn their gilded, backs upon the visitor, keeping their treasures of wit and wisdom just as intangible as if still in the unwrought minds of human thought. I remember nothing else in the palace except the chapel, to which we were conducted last, and where we saw a splendid monument to the first Duke and Duchess, sculptured by Risbrac, at the cost it is said of forty thousand pounds. The design includes the statues of the deceased dignitaries and various allegation.

allegorical flourishes, fantasies, and confusions, and beneath sleep the great Duke and his proud wife, their veritable bones and dust, and probably all the Marlboroughs that have since died. It is not quite a comfortable idea that these moldy ancestors still inhabit after their fashion, the house where their successors spend the passing day. But the adulation lavished upon the hero of Blenheim could not have been consummated unless the palace of his lifetime had become likewise a stately mausoleum over his remains, and such we felt it all to be after gazing at his tomb. The next business was to see the private gardens. An old Scotch undergarner admitted us and led the way, and seemed to have a fair prospect of

earning the fee all by himself, but by and by another respectable Scotchman made his appearance and took us in charge, proving to be the head gardener in person. He was extremely intelligent and agreeable, talking both scientifically and lovingly about trees and plants, of which there is every variety capable of English cultivation. Positively, the Garden of Eden cannot have been more beautiful than this private garden of Blenheim. It contains 300 acres,

and by the artful circumlocution of the paths and the undulations, and the skillfully interposed clumps of trees, is made to appear limitless. The sylvan delights of a whole country are compressed into this space, as whole fields of Persian roses go to the concoction of an ounce of precious Atar. The world within that garden fence is not the same weary and dusty world with which we outside mortals are conversant. It is a finer, lovelier, more harmonious nature, and the great mother lends herself kindly to the gardener's will, knowing that he will make evident the half-obliterated traits of her pristine and ideal beauty, and allow her to take all the credit and praise to herself. I doubt whether there is ever any winter within that precinct, any clouds except the fleecy ones of summer. The sunshine that I saw there rests upon my recollection of it,

if it were eternal. The lawns and glades are like the memory of places where one has wandered when first in love. What a good and happy life might be spent in a paradise like this! And yet at that very moment the besotted duke, ah, I have let out a secret which I meant to keep myself, but the ten shillings must pay for all, was in that very garden, for the guide told us so, and cautioned our young people not to be too uproaring. and, if in a condition for arithmetic, was thinking of nothing nobler than how many ten-shilling tickets had that day been sold. Republican, as I am, I should still love to think that noblemen lead noble lives,

and that all this stately and beautiful environment may serve to elevate them a little way above the rest of us. If it failed to do so, the disgrace falls equally upon the whole race of mortals as on themselves, because it proves that no more favorable conditions of existence would eradicate our vices and weaknesses. How sad if this be so! Even a herd of swine, eating the acorns under those magnificent oaks of Blenheim, would be cleanlier and of better habits than ordinary swine. Well, all that I have written is pitifully meager, as a description of Blenham,

and I hate to leave it without some more adequate expression of the noble edifice with its rich domain, all as I saw them in that beautiful sunshine, for if a day had been chosen out of a hundred years, it could not have been a finer one. But I must give up the attempt, only further remarking that the finest trees here were cedars, of which I saw one, and there may have been many such, immense in girth, and not less than three centuries old. I likewise saw a vast heap of laurel, two hundred feet in circumference, all growing from one root, and the gardener offered to show us another growth of twice that stupendous size. If the great Duke himself had been buried in that spot, his heroic heart could not have been the seed of a more plentiful

crop of laurels. We now went back to the black bear and sat down to a cold collation of which we ate abundantly and drank in the good old English fashion, a due proportion of various delightful liquors. A stranger in England, in his rambles to various quarters of the country, may learn little in regard to wines, for the ordinary English taste is simple, though sound, in that particular, but he makes acquaintance with more varieties of hop and malt liquor than he previously supposed to exist. I remember a sort of foaming stuff called hop champagne, which is very vivacious and appears to be a hybrid between ale and bottled cider. Another excellent tipple for warm weather is concocted by mixing brown stout or

bitter ale with ginger beer, the foam of which stirs up the heavier liquor from its depths, forming a compound of singular vivacity and sufficient body. But of all things ever brewed from malt, unless it be Trinity Ale of Cambridge, which I drank long afterwards, and which Barry Cornwall has celebrated in immortal verse, commend me to the archdeacon, as the Oxford scholars call it, in honor of the jovial dignitary who first taught these erudite worthies how to brew their favorite nectar. John Barley-Corn has given his very heart to this admirable liquor. It is a superior kind of ale, the prince of ales, with a richer flavor, and mightier spirit than you can find elsewhere in this weary world.

Much have we been strengthened and encouraged by the potent blood of the archdeacon. End of Section 13. Section 14 of Our Old Home. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Our old home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 14, near Oxford. A few days after our excursion to Blenham, the same party set forth in two flies on a tour to some other places of interest in the neighborhood of Oxford.

It was again a delightful day, and, in truth, every day of late, had been so pleasant that it seemed as if each must be the very last of such perfect weather, and yet the long succession had given us confidence in as many more to come. The climate of England has been shamefully maligned. sulkiness and asperities are not nearly so offensive as Englishmen tell us, their climate being the only attribute of their country which they never overvalue, and the really good summer weather is the very kindest and sweetest that the world knows. We first drove to the village of Cumnar, about six miles from Oxford, and alighted at the entrance of the church. Here, while waiting for the keys, we looked at an old wall of the churchyard, piled up of loose grace, stones, which are said to have once formed a portion of Comner Hall, celebrated in Mickle's

ballad and Scott's romance. The hall must have been in very close vicinity to the church, not more than twenty yards off, and I waited through the long-dewy grass of the church-yard, and tried to peep over the wall in hopes to discover some tangible and traceable remains of the edifice. But the wall was just too high to be overlooked, and difficult to clamber over with tumbling down some of the stones. So I took the word of one of our party who had been here before that there is nothing interesting on the other side. The churchyard is in rather a neglected state, and seems not to have been moaned for the benefit of the parson's cow. It contains a good many gravestones, of which I remember only some upright memorials of slate to individuals of the

name of tabs. Soon a woman arrived with the key of the church door, and we entered the simple old edifice, which has the pavement of lettered tombstones, the sturdy pillars and low arches, and other ordinary characteristics of an English country church. One or two pews, probably those of the gentlefolk of the neighborhood, were better furnished than the rest, but all in a modest style. Near the high altar, in the holiest place, there is an oblong, angular, ponderous tomb of blue marble built against the wall, and surmounted by a carved canopy of the same material, and over the tomb and beneath the canopy,

are two monumental brasses, such as we often are see inlaid into a church pavement. On these brasses are engraved the figures of a gentleman in armor, and a lady in an antique garb, each about a foot high, devoutly kneeling in prayer, and there is a long Latin inscription likewise cut into the enduring brass, bestowing the highest eulogies on the character of Anthony Forster, who, with his virtuous dame, lies buried beneath this tombstone. His is the knightly figure that kneels above,

and if Sir Walter Scott ever saw this tomb, he must have had an even greater than common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs to venture on depicting Anthony Forster in such lines as blacken him in the romance. For my part, I read the inscription in full faith and believe the poor deceased gentleman to be a much-wronged individual with good grounds for bringing an action of slander in the courts above. But the circumstance, lightly as we treat it, has its serious moral. What nonsense it is, this anxiety which so worries us about our good fame or our bad fame after death. If it were of the slightest real moment, our reputations would have been placed by Providence more in our own power, and less in other peoples than we now find them to be. If poor Anthony Forster happens to have met Sir Walter in the other world, I doubt whether he has ever thought it worthwhile to complain of the latter's misrepresentations.

We did not remain long in the church, as it contains nothing else of interest, and driving through the village we passed a pretty large and rather antique-looking inn, bearing the sign of the bare and ragged staff. It could not be so old, however, by at least a hundred years, as Giles Gosling's time, nor is there any other object to remind the visitor of the Elizabethan age, unless it be a few ancient cottages that are perhaps of still. earlier date. Comner is not nearly so large a village, nor a place of such mark as one anticipates from its romantic and legendary fame, but, being still inaccessible by railway, it has retained more of a sylvan character than we often find in English country towns. In this retired

neighborhood, the road is narrow and bordered with grass, and sometimes interrupted by gates. The hedges grow in unpruned luxuriance. There is not that close-shaven neatness and trimness that characterize the ordinary English landscape. The whole scene conveys the idea of seclusion and remoteness. We met no travelers, whether on foot or otherwise. I cannot very distinctly trace out this day's peregrinations, but after leaving Cumnor a few miles behind us,

I think we came to a ferry over the Thames, where an old woman served as ferryman, and pulled a boat across by means of a rope stretching from shore to shore. Our two vehicles being thus placed on either side, we resumed our drive, first glancing, however, at the old woman's antique cottage with its stone floor, and the circular settle around the kitchen fireplace, which was quite in the medieval English style. We next stopped at Stanton Harcourt, where we were received at the parsonage with a hospitality which we should take delight in describing, if it were allowable to make public acknowledgment of the private and personal kindnesses which we never failed to find ready for our needs. An American in an English house will soon adopt the opinion that the English are the very kindest people on earth, and will retain that idea as long at least as he remains on the inner side of the threshold. Their magnetism is of a kind that repels strongly while you keep beyond a certain limit, but attracts as forcibly if you get within the magic line.

It was at this place, if I remember right, that I heard a gentleman ask, a friend of mine whether he was the author of the red letter A, and after some consideration, for he did not seem to recognize his own book at first under this improved title, our countrymen responded doubtfully that he believed so. The gentleman proceeded to inquire whether our friend had spent much time in America, evidently thinking that he must have been caught young, and have had a tincture of English breeding, at least, if not birth, to speak the language so tolerably, and appear so much like other people. This insular narrowness is exceedingly queer, and of very frequent occurrence, and is quite as much a characteristic of men of education

and culture as of clowns. Stanton Harcourt is a very curious old place. It was formerly the seed of the ancient family of Harcourt, which now has its principal abode at Noonham-Courtney a few miles off. The parsonage is a relic of the family mansion or castle, other portions of which are close at hand, for across the garden rise two grey towers, both of them picturesquely venerable, and interesting for more than their antiquity. One of these towers, in its entire capacity, from height to depth, constituted the kitchen of the ancient castle, and is still used for domestic purposes, although it has not nor ever had a chimney, or we might rather say, it is itself one vast chimney, with a hearth of thirty feet square, and a flu and aperture of the

same size. There are two huge fireplaces within, and the interior walls of the tower are blackened with the smoke that for centuries used to gush forth from them and climb upward, seeking an exit through some wide air-holes in the conical roof full seventy feet above. These lofty openings were capable of being so arranged with reference to the wind that the cooks are said to have been seldom troubled by the smoke, and here no doubt they were accustomed to roast oxen whole, with as little fuss and ado as a modern cook would roast a fowl. The inside of the tower is very dim and sombre,

being nothing but rough stone walls, lighted only from the apertures above mentioned, and has still a pungent odor of smoke and soot, the reminiscence of the fires and feasts of generations that have passed away. Methinks the extremist range of domestic economy lies between an American cooking stove and the ancient kitchen, 70 dizzy feet in height, and all one fireplace of Stanton Harcourt. Now, the place being without a parallel in England, and therefore necessarily beyond the experience of an American, it is somewhat remarkable that, while we stood gazing at this kitchen, I was haunted and perplexed by an idea that somewhere or other I had seen just this strange spectacle before. The height, the blackness, the dismal void before my eyes, seemed as familiar as the decorous neatness of my grandmother's kitchen.

Only my unaccountable memory of the scene was lighted up with an image of lurid fires blazing round the dim interior circuit of the tower. I had never before had so pertinacious an attack as I could not but suppose it, of that odd state of mind wherein we fitfully and teasingly remember some previous scene or incident of which the one now passing appears to be but the echo and reduplication. though the explanation of the mystery did not for some time occur to me, I may as well conclude the matter here. In a letter of popes addressed to the Duke of Buckingham, there is an account of Stanton Harcourt, as I now find, though the name is not mentioned, where he resided while translating a part of the Iliad. It is one of the most admirable pieces of description in the language, playful and picturesque with fine touches of humorous

pathos, and conveys as perfect a picture as ever was drawn of a decayed English country house, and among other rooms, most of which have since crumbled down and disappeared, he dashes off the grim aspect of this kitchen, which, moreover, he peoples with witches, engaging Satan himself as head cook, who stirs the infernal caldrons that seeth and bubble over the fires. This letter and others relative to his abode here, were very very much of his abode here, were very familiar to my early reading, and remaining still fresh at the bottom of my memory, caused the weird and ghostly sensation that came over one on beholding the real spectacle that had formerly been made so vivid to my imagination. Our next visit was to the church, which

stands close by, and is quite as ancient as the remnants of the castle. In a chapel or side aisle, dedicated to the Harcorts, are found some very interesting family monuments, and among them, recumbent on a tombstone, the figure of an armed knight of the Lancasterian party, who was slain in the wars of the roses. His features, dress, and armor are painted in colors, still wonderfully fresh, and there still blushes the symbol of the red rose, denoting the faction for which he fought and died. His head rests on a mark. marble or alabaster helmet, and on the tomb lies the veritable helmet it is to be presumed which he wore in battle, a ponderous iron case with the visor complete and remnants of the gilding

that once covered it. The crest is a large peacock, not of metal but of wood. Very possibly this helmet was but a heraldic adornment of his tomb, and, indeed, it seems strange that it has not been stolen before now, especially in Cromwell's time, when nightly tombs were little respected, and when armor was in request. However, it is needless to dispute with the dead knight about the identity of his iron pot, and we may as well allow it to be the very same that so often gave him the headache in his lifetime. Leaning against the wall at the foot of the tomb is the shaft of a spear, with a woefully tattered and utterly faded banner appended to it, the nightly banner beneath which he marshalled his followers in the field. As it was absolutely

falling to pieces, I tore off one little bit, no bigger than a fingernail, and put it into my waistcoat pocket, but seeking it subsequently it was not to be found. On the opposite side of the little chapel, two or three yards from this tomb, is another monument on which lie side by side, one of the same nightly race of Harcourts and his lady. The tradition of the family is that this knight was the standard-bearer of Henry of Richmond in the Battle of Bosworth Field, and a banner, supposed to be the same that he carried, now droops over his effigy. It is just such a colorless silk rag as the one already described. The knight has the order of the garter on his knee, and the lady wears it on her left arm, an odd place enough for a garter, but if worn in its

proper locality, it could not be decorously visible. The complete preservation and good condition of these statues, even to the minutest adornment of the sculpture, and their very noses, the most vulnerable part of a marble man, as of a living one, are miraculous. Except in Westminster Abbey, among the chapels of the kings, I have seen. seen none so well preserved. Perhaps they owe it to the loyalty of Oxfordshire, diffused throughout its neighborhood by the influence of the university during the great civil war and the rule of the parliament. It speaks well, too, for the upright and kindly character of this old family, that the peasantry, among whom they had lived for ages, did not desecrate their tombs when it might have done

with impunity. There are other and more recent memorials of the Harcourts, one of the Hark-Quartz, one of which is the tomb of the last Lord, who died about a hundred years ago. His figure, like those of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb, clad, not in armor, but in his robes as a peer. The title is now extinct, but the family survives in a younger branch, and still holds this patrimonial estate, though they have long since quitted it as a residence. We next went to see the ancient fish-ponds appertaining to the mansion, and which used to be of a vast dietary importance to the family in Catholic times, and when fish was not otherwise attainable. There are two or three or more of these reservoirs, one of which is of very respectable size, large enough indeed to be really a

picturesque object with its grass-green borders and the trees drooping over it, and the towers of the castle and the church reflected within the weed-grown depths of its smooth mirror. A sweet fragrance, as it were, of ancient time and present quiet in seclusion, was breathing all around. The sunshine of today had a mellow charm of antiquity in its brightness. These ponds are said still to breed abundance of such fish as love deep and quiet waters, but I only saw some minnows and one or two snakes which were lying among the weeds on the top of the water, sunning and bathing themselves at once. I mentioned that there were two towers remaining of the old castle, the one containing the kitchen we have already visited, the other still more interesting, is next to be described. It is some seventy feet high, grey and reverend, but in excellent repair, though I could not perceive that anything had been done to renovate it. The basement story was once the family chapel, and is, of course, still a consecrated spot. At one corner of the tower is a circular turret,

within which a narrow staircase, with worn steps of stone, winds round and round as it climbs upward, giving access to a chamber on each floor, and finally emerging on the battlemented roof. Ascending this turret stair, and arriving at the third story, we entered a chamber, not large, though occupying the whole area of the tower, and lighted by a window on each side. It was wainscoded from floor to ceiling with dark oak, and had a little fireplace in one of the corners. The window-panes were small and set in lead. The curiosity of this room is that it was once the residence of Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part of the translation of Homer, and likewise, no doubt, the admirable letters to which I have referred above. The room once

contained a record by himself, scratched with a diamond on one of the window-panes, since removed for safekeeping to Nunham Courtney where it was shown me, purporting that he was, purporting that he had here finished the fifth book of the Iliad on such a day. A poet has a fragrance about him, such as no other human being is gifted withal. It is indestructible, and clings forevermore to everything that he has touched. I was not impressed at Blenham with any sense that the mighty duke still haunted the palace that was created for him, but here, after a century and a half, we are still conscious of the presence of that decrepit little figure of Queen Anne's time, although he was merely a casual guest in the old tower during one or two summer months.

However briefed the time and slight the connection, his spirit cannot be exercised so long as the tower stands. In my mind, moreover, Pope or any other person with an available claim, is right in adhering to the spot, dead or alive, for I never saw a chamber that I should like better to inhabit, so comfortably small, in such a safe and inaccessible seclusion, and with a varied landscape from each window. One of them looks upon the church close at hand, and down into the green churchyard, extending almost to the foot of the tower, the others have views wide and far over a gently undulating tract of country. If desirous of a loftier elevation, about a dozen, or more steps of the turret stair will bring the occupant to the summit of the tower, where Pope used to come, no doubt, in the summer evenings, and peep, poor little shrimp that he was, through the embraciers of the battlement.

From Stanton Harcourt we drove, I forget how far, to a point where a boat was waiting for us on the Thames, or some other stream, for I am ashamed to confess my ignorance of the precise geographical whereabout, We were, at any rate, some miles above Oxford, and, I should imagine, pretty near one of the sources of England's mighty river. It was little more than wide enough for the boat, with extended oars to pass, shallow to, and bordered with bulrushes and water-weeds, which, in some places, quite overgrew the surface of the river from bank to bank. The shores were flat and meadow-like, and sometimes, the boatmen told us, are overflowed by the rise of the strain, The water looked clean and pure, but not particularly transparent, though enough so to show

us that the bottom is very much weed grown, and I was told that the weed is an American production, brought to England with importations of timber, and now threatening to choke up the Thames and other English rivers. I wonder it does not try its obstructive powers upon the Merrimack, the Connecticut or the Hudson, not to speak of the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi. It was an open boat with cushioned seats astern, comfortably accommodating our party. The day continued sunny and warm and perfectly still. The boatman, well-trained to his business, managed the oars skillfully and vigorously, and we went down the stream quite as swiftly as it was desirable to go,

the scene being so pleasant and the passing hours so thoroughly agreeable. The river grew a little wider and deeper, perhaps. as we glided on, but was still an inconsiderable stream, for it had a good deal more than a hundred miles to meander through before it should bear fleets on its bosom, and reflect palaces and towers, and parliament-houses, and dingy and sordid piles of various structure, as it rolled to and fro with a tide, dividing London asunder. Not in truth that I ever saw any edifice whatever reflected in its turbid breast, when the sylvan stream, as we beheld it now, is swollen into the Thames at London. Once on our voyage we had to land, while the boatman and some other persons drew our skiff around some rapids, which we could not otherwise have passed.

Another time the boat went through a lock. We, meanwhile, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the old nunnery, of Godstow, where Fair Rosamond secluded herself after being separated from her royal lover. There is a long line of a ruinous wall and a shattered tower at one of the angles, the whole much ivy grown, brimming over indeed with clustering ivy, which is rooted inside of the walls. The nunnery is now, I believe, held in lease by the city of Oxford, which has converted its precincts into a barnyard. The gate was under lock and key, so that we could merely look at the outside, and soon resumed our places in the boat. At three o'clock or thereabouts, or sooner or later, for I took little heed of time, and only wished that these delightful wanderings might last

forever. We reached Folly Bridge at Oxford. Here we took possession of a spacious barge, with a house in it, and a comfortable dining-room or drawing-room within the room. the house, and a level roof on which we could sit at ease, or dance if so inclined. These barges are common at Oxford, some very splendid ones being owned by the students of the different colleges or by clubs. They are drawn by horses like canal boats, and a horse being attached to our own barge. He trotted off at a reasonable pace, and we slipped through the water behind him with a gentle and pleasant motion, which, save for the constant vicissitude of cultivated scenery, was like no motion at all. It was life without the trouble of living. Nothing was ever more quietly agreeable.

In this happy state of mind and body we gazed at Christchurch meadows, as we passed, and at the receding spires and towers of Oxford, and on a good deal of pleasant variety along the banks, young men rowing or fishing, troops of naked boys bathing as if this were Arcadia in the simplicity of the golden age, country houses, cottages, waterside inns, all with something fresh about them as not being sprinkled with the dust of the highway. We were a large party now, for a number of additional guests had joined us at Folly Bridge, and we comprised poets, novelists, scholars, sculptors, painters, architects, men and women of renown, dear friends, genial outspoken, open-hearted Englishmen,

all voyaging onward together like the wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. I remember not a single annoyance except indeed that a swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the scent of the palmatum which he had been rubbing into his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble the one little flaw in our day's felicity, to put us in mind that we were mortal. Meanwhile, a table had been laid in the interior of our barge, and spread with cold ham, cold fowl, cold pigeon-pie, cold beef, and other substantial cheer, such as the English love and Yankees, too, besides tarts and cakes and pears and plums, not forgetting, of course, a goodly provision of poor, sherry and champagne, and bitter ale, which is like mother's milk to an Englishman, and soon grows

equally acceptable to his American cousin. By the time these matters had been properly attended to, we had arrived at that part of the Thames which passes by Nunam Courtney, a fine estate belonging to the Harcourt's, and the present residence of the family. Here we landed, and, climbing a steep slope from the riverside, paused a moment or two to look at an architectural object called the Carfax, the purport of which I do not will understand. Thence we proceeded onward, through the loveliest park and woodland scenery I ever saw, and under as beautiful a declining sunshine as heaven ever shed over earth to the stately mansion house. As we here cross a private threshold, it is not allow we,

to pursue my feeble narrative of this delightful day with the same freedom as heretofore. So, perhaps, I may as well bring it to a close. I may mention, however, that I saw the library, a fine, large apartment, hung round with portraits of eminent literary men, especially of the last century, most of whom were familiar guests of the Harcourt's. The house itself is about eighty years old, and is built in the classic style, as if the family had been anxious to diverge as far as possible from the gothic picturesqueness of their old abode at stanton harcourt the grounds were laid out in part by capability brown and seemed to me even more beautiful than those of blenheim mason the poet a friend of the house gave the design of a portion of the garden of the whole place i will not be niggardly of my rude transatlantic praise but be bold to say that it appeared to me as perfect as anything earthly can be

utterly and entirely finished as if the years and generations had done all that the hearts and minds of the successive owners could contrive for a spot they dearly loved such home Such homes as Noonam Courtney are among the splendid results of long hereditary possession, and we Republicans, whose households melt away like new fallen snow in a spring morning, must content ourselves with our many counterbalancing advantages, for this one so apparently desirable to the far projecting selfishness of our nature, we are certain never to attain. It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that Noonanum-Corn, Courtney is one of the great show-places of England. It is merely a fair specimen of the better

class of country seats, and has a hundred rivals and many superiors in the features of beauty and expansive manifold redundant comfort which most impressed me. A moderate man might be content with such a home, that is all. And now I take leave of Oxford, without even an attempt to describe it, there being no literary faculty attainable or conceivable by me, which can avail to put it adequately, or even tolerably, upon paper. It must remain its own sole expression, and those whose sad fortune it may be never to behold it have no better resource than to dream about gray, weather-stained, ivy-grown edifices, wrought with quaint Gothic ornament, and standing around grassy quadrangles, where cloistered walks have echoed to the quiet footsteps of

twenty generations. Lons and gardens of luxurious repose, shadowed with canopies of foliage, and lit up with sunny glimpses through archways of great boughs. Spires, towers and turrets, each with its history and legend, dimly magnificent chapels, with painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly diversified hues, creating an atmosphere of richest gloom, vast college halls, high-windowed, oaken-paneled, and hung round with portraits of the men

in every age whom the university has nurtured to be illustrious. Long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the wisdom and learned folly of all time is shelved. Kitchens, we throw in this feature by way of ballast, and because it would not be English, Oxford without its beef and beer, with huge fireplaces, capable of roasting a hundred joints at once, and cavernous cellars, where rows of piled up hogsheads seeth and fume, with that mighty malt liquor which is the true milk of alma mater. Make all these things vivid in your dream, and you will

never know nor believe how inadequate is the result to represent even the merest outside of Oxford. we feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this article without making our grateful acknowledgments by name to a gentleman whose overflowing kindness was the main condition of all our sight-scenes and enjoyments delightful as will always be our recollection of oxford in its neighborhood we partly suspect that it owes much of its happy coloring to the genial medium through which the objects were presented to us to the kindly magic of a hospitality surpassed within our experience in the quality of making the guest contented with his host, with himself, and everything about him. He has inseparably mingled his image with our remembrance of the spires of Oxford. End of Section 14. Section 15 of Our Old Home. This is Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org.

Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 15, Some of the Honts of Burns We left Carlisle at a little past eleven, and within the half-hour we're at Gretna Green. Thence we rushed onward into Scotland through a flat and dreary tract of country, consisting mainly of desert and bog, where probably the moss troopers were accustomed to take refuge after their raids into England. Anon, however, the hills hove themselves up to view, occasionally attaining a height which might almost be called mountainous. In about two hours we reached Dumfries, and alighted at the station there. Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed to be, we found it an awfully hot day, not a wit less so than the day before,

but we sturdily adventured through the burning sunshine up into the town, inquiring our way to the residents of Burns. The street leading from the station is called Shakespeare Street, and at its farther extremity we read Burns Street on a corner house, the avenue thus designated, having been formerly known as Mill Hole Bray. It is a vile lane, paved with small hard stones from side to side, and bordered by cottages or mean houses of whitewale. washed stone, joining one to another along the whole length of the street. With not a tree,

of course, or a blade of grass between the paving stones, the narrow lane was as hot as top it, and reeked with a genuine scotch odor, being infested with unwashed children, and altogether in a state of chronic filth, although some women seemed to be hopelessly scrubbing the thresholds of their wretched dwellings. I never saw an outskirt of a town less fit for a poet's residence, or in which it would be more miserable for any man of cleanly predilections to spend his days. We asked for Burns' dwelling, and a woman pointed across the street to a two-story house built of stone, and whitewashed like its neighbors, but perhaps of a little more respectable aspect than most of them, though I hesitate and saying so.

It was not a separate structure, but under the same content. continuous roof with the next. There was an inscription on the door bearing no reference to Burns, but indicating that the house was now occupied by a ragged or industrial school. On knocking, we were instantly admitted by a servant girl, who smiled intelligently when we told her our errand, and showed us into a low and very plain parlor, not more than twelve or fifteen feet square. A young woman, who seemed to be a teacher in the school, soon appeared, and told us that this had been Burns' usual sitting-room, and that he had written many of his songs here. She then led us up a narrow staircase into a little bedchamber over the parlor. Connecting with it, there is a very small room, or windowed closet, which Burns used as a study, and the bed-chamber itself was the one where he slept in his later lifetime, and in which he died at least. last. Altogether, it is an exceedingly unsuitable place for a pastoral and rural poet to

live or die in, even more unsatisfactory than Shakespeare's house, which has a certain homely picturesqueness that contrasts favorably with the suburban sordidness of the abode before us. The narrow lane, the paving stones, and the contiguity of wretched hovels are depressing to remember, and the steam of them, such is our human weakness, might almost make the poet's memory less fragrant. As already observed, it was an intolerably hot day. After leaving the house, we found our way into the principal street of the town, which, it may be fair to say, is of very different aspect from the wretched outskirt above described. Entering a hotel, in which, as a Dumfrey's guide-book assured us,

Prince Charles Edward had once spent a night. We rested and refreshed ourselves, and then set forth in quest of the mausoleum of Burns. Coming to St. Michael's Church, we saw a man digging a grave, and, scrambling out of the hole, he led us into the churchyard, which was crowded full of monuments.

Their general shape and construction are peculiar to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet of marble or other stone, within a framework of the same material, somewhat resembling the frame of a looking-glass, and all over the churchyard these sepulchral memorials rise to the height of 10, 15, or 20 feet, forming quite an imposing collection of monuments, but inscribed with names of small general significance. It was easy indeed to ascertain the rank of those who slept below, for in Scotland it is the custom to put the occupation of the buried personage as Skinner, Shoemaker, Flesher, on his tombstone.

As another peculiarity, wives are buried under their maiden names instead of those of their husbands, thus giving a disagreeable impression that the married pair have bidden each other an eternal farewell on the edge of the grave. There was a footpath through this crowded churchyard, sufficiently well-worn to guide us to the grave of Burns,

but a woman followed behind us, who, it appeared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was privileged to show it to strangers. The monument is a sort of Grecian temple with pylasters and a dome, covering a space of about 20 feet square. It was formerly open to all the inclemencies of the Scotch atmosphere, but is now protected and shut in by large squares of rough glass, each pane being the size of one whole side of the structure.

The woman unlocked the door and admitted us into the interior. Inlaid into the floor of the mausoleum is the gravestone of Burns, the very same that was laid over his grave by Jean Armour before this monument was built. Displayed against the surrounding wall is a marble statue of Burns at the plough, with the genius of Caledonia summoning the plowman to turn poet. me thought it was not a very successful piece of work, for the plough was better sculptured than the man, and the man, though heavy and cloddish, was more effective than the goddess. Our guide informed us that an old man of 90, who knew Burns, certifies this statue to be very like the original. The bones of the poet and of Jean Armour, and of some of their children, lie in the vault over which we stood. Our guide, who was intelligent in her own plain way and very agreeable to talk with all, said that the vault was opened about three weeks ago on occasion of the burial of the eldest son of Burns. The poet's bones were disturbed, and the dry skull, once so brimming over, with powerful thought and bright and tender fantasies, was taken away, and kept for several days by a Dumfries doctor.

It has since been deposited in a new leaden coffin and restored to the vault. We learned that there is a surviving daughter of Burns' eldest son, and daughters likewise of the two younger sons, and, besides these, an illegitimate posterity by the eldest son, who appears to have been of disreputable life in his younger days. He inherited his father's failings, with some faint shadow I have also. understood, of the great qualities which have made the world tender of his father's vices and weaknesses. We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of the reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over his grave

had very much the same tendency and effect as the home scene of his life, which we had been visiting just previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, and picturing his outward life and earthly manifestations from these, one does not so much wonder that the people of that day should have failed to recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a disreputable, drunken, shabbily-clothed, and shabbly housed man, consorting with associates of damaged character, and, as his only ostensible occupation, gauging the whiskey which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs must, in his plea against the world,

let us try to do the world a little justice, too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet when his fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of marble than when the actual man comes staggering before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned so brightly while he was still living. There must have been something very grand in his immediate presence, some strangely impressive characteristic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demigod so soon.

As we went back through the churchyard, we saw a spot where nearly 400 inhabitants of Dumfries were buried during the cholera year, and also some curious old monuments with raised letters, the inscriptions on which were not sufficiently legible to induce us to puzzle them out, but I believe they mark the resting places of old covenanters, some of whom were killed by Claverhouse and his fellow ruffians. St. Michael's Church is of red freestone, and was built about a hundred years ago on an old Catholic foundation.

Our guide admitted us into it and showed us in the porch a very pretty little marble figure of a child asleep with a drapery over the lower part from beneath which appeared its two baby feet. It was truly a sweet little statue, and the woman told us that it represented a child of the sculptor and that the baby, there still in its marble infant, had died more than 26 years ago.

Many ladies, she said, especially such as had ever lost a child, had shed tears over it. It was very pleasant to think of the sculptor bestowing the best of his genius and art to recreate his tender child in stone and to make the representation as soft and sweet as the original,

but the conclusion of the story has something that jars with our awakened sensibilities. A gentleman from London had seen the statue, and was so much delighted with it that he bought it of the father artist, after it had lain above a quarter of a century in the church porch. So this was not the real tender image that had come out of the father's heart. He had sold that truest one for a hundred guineas, and sculptured this mere copy to replace it. The first figure was entirely naked in its earthly and spiritual innocence. The copy, as I have said above, has a drapery over the lower limbs.

But after all, if we come to the truth of the matter, the sleeping baby may be as fitly reposited in the drawing-room of a connoisseur as in a cold and dreary church porch. We went into the church and found it very plain and naked, naked, without altar decorations, and having its floor quite covered with unsightly wooden pews. The woman led us to a pew, cornering on one of the side aisles, and telling us that it used to be Burns' family pew, showed us his seat, which is in the corner by the aisle. It is so situated that a sturdy pillar hid him from the pulpit, and from the minister's eye. For Robin was no

great friends with the ministers, said she. This touch, his seat behind the pillar, and Burns himself nodding in sermon time, or keenly observant of profane things, brought him before us to the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew right before Burns, and not more than two feet off, sat the young lady on whom the poet saw the unmentionable parasite, which he has immortalized in song. We were ungenerous enough to ask the lady's name, but the good woman could not tell it. This was the last thing which we saw in Dumfries worthy of record, and it ought to be noted that our guide refused some money which my companion offered her, because I had already paid her what she deemed sufficient. At the railway station we spent more than a weary hour waiting

for the train, which at last came up and took us to the train. We took us to the train. We spent more than a weary hour, to Mach Line. We got into an omnibus, the only conveyance to be had, and drove about a mile to the village, where we established ourselves at the Loudoun Hotel, one of the various country inns which we have found in Great Britain. The town of Machline, a place more redolent of burns than almost any other, consists of a street or two of contiguous cottages, mostly whitewashed with thatched roofs. It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate village, and is as ugly a place as mortal man could contrive to make,

or to render uglier through a succession of untidy generations. The fashion of paving the village street and patching one shabby house on the gable end of another quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness, But, I presume, we are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used to be in Burns' time, and long before, than this of Motch Line. The church stands about midway up the street, and is built of red freestone, very simple in its architecture, with a square tower and pinnacles. In this sacred edifice and its churchyard was the scene of one of Burns' most characteristic productions, the holy fair.

Almost directly opposite its gate across the village street stands Posi Nansy's Inn, where the jolly beggars congregated. The latter is a two-story redstone, thatched house, looking old, but by no means venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old-fashioned windows, and may well have stood for centuries, though seventy or eighty years ago, when, Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it might have been something better than a beggar's ale house. The whole town of Motchline looks rusty and time-worn, even the newer houses, of which

there are several, being shadowed and darkened by the general aspect of the place. When we arrived, all the wretched little dwellings seemed to have belched forth their inhabitants into the warm summer evening. Everybody was chatting with everybody on the most familiar terms. The bare-legged children gambled or quarreled uproariously, and came freely, moreover, and looked into the window of our parlor. When we ventured out, we were followed by the gaze of the old town, people standing in their doorways, old women popping their heads from the chamber windows, and stalwart men idle on a Saturday at Ian after their weeks hard labor, clustering at the street corners merely to stare at our unpretending selves. Except in some remote little town

of Italy, where, besides the inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of beggary, I have never been honored with nearly such an amount of public notice. The next forenoon my companion put me to shame by attending church, after vainly exhorting me to do the like, and it being sacrament Sunday, and my poor friend being wedged into the farther end of a closely filled pew, he was forced to stay through the preaching of four several sermons, and came back perfectly exhausted and desperate. He was somewhat consoled, however, on finding that he had witnessed a spectacle of Scotch manners identical with that of Burns' holy fair, on the very spot where the poet located that immortal description.

By way of further conformance to the customs of the country, we ordered a sheep's head and the broth, and did penance accordingly, and at five o'clock we took a fly, and set out for Burns' farm of Moskeel. Mosgeal is not more than a mile from Mach line, and the road extends over a high ridge of land with a view of far hills and green slopes on either side. Just before we reached the farm, the driver stopped to point out a hawthorn growing by the wayside, which he said was Byrne's lousy thorn, and I devoutly plucked a branch, although I have really forgotten where or how this illustrious shrub has been celebrated.

We then turned into a rude gateway, and almost immediately came to the farmhouse of Mos Giel, standing some 50 yards removed from the high road, behind a tall hedge of Hawthorne, and considerably overshadowed by trees. The house is a whitewashed stone cottage, like thousands of others in England and Scotland, with a thatched roof on which grass and weeds have intruded in a picturesque, though alien, growth. There is a door and one window in front, besides another little window that peeps out among the thatch. Close by the cottage and extending back at right angles from it, so as to enclose the farmyard, are two other buildings of the same size, shape, and general appearance as the house.

Any one of the three looks just as fit for a human habitation as the two others, and all three look still more suitable for donkey stables and pig sties. As we drove into the farmyard, bounded on three sides by these three hovels, a large dog began to bark at us, and some women and children made their appearance, but seemed to demure about admitting us, because the master and mistress were very religious people, and had not yet come back from the sacrament at Motchline. However, it would not do to be turned back from the very threshold of Robert Burns, and as the women seemed to be merely straggling visitors,

and nobody at all events had a right to send us away, we went into the back door and, turning to the right, entered a kitchen. It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely neatness, and in it there were three or four children, one of whom, a girl eight or nine years old, held a baby in her arms. She proved to be the daughter of the people of the house, and gave us what leaves she could to look about us. Thence we stepped across the narrow mid-passage of the cottage into the only other apartment below stairs, a sitting-room where

we found a young man eating bread and cheese. He informed us that he did not live there, and had only called in to refresh himself on his way home from church. This room, like the kitchen was a noticeably poor one, and, besides being all that the cottage had to show for a parlor, it was a sleeping apartment, having two beds which might be curtained off on occasion. The young man allowed us liberty, so far as in him lay, to go upstairs. Up we crept accordingly, and a few steps brought us to the top of the staircase over the kitchen, where we found the wretchedest little sleeping chamber in the world, with a sloping roof under the thatch,

and two beds spread upon the bare floor. This most probably was Byrne's chamber, or perhaps it may have been that of his mother's servant-maid, and, in either case, this rude floor at one time or another, must have creaked beneath the poet's midnight tread. On the opposite side of the passage was the door of another attic chamber, opening which I saw a considerable number of cheeses on the floor. The whole house was pervaded with a frowsy smell and also a dunghill odor, and it is not easy to understand how the atmosphere of such a dwelling can be any more agreeable or salubrious morally than it appeared to be physically. No virgin, surely, could keep a holy awe about her, while stowed higgledy-piggledy with coarse-natured rustics into this narrowness and filth.

Such a habitation is calculated to make beasts of men and women, and it indicates a degree of barbarism which I did not imagine to exist in Scotland, that a tiller of broad fields, like the farmer of motch-line, should have his own. his abode in a pig's die. It is sad to think of anybody, not to say a poet, but any human being, sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, and spending all his home life in this miserable hovel. But methinks, I never in the least knew how to estimate the miracle of Burns' genius, nor his heroic merit for being no worse man, until I thus learned the squalid hindrances amid which he developed himself. Space, a free atmosphere, and cleanliness have a vast deal to do with the possibilities of human virtue.

The biographers talk of the farm and Mosquil as being damp and unwholesome, but I do not see why, outside of the cottage walls, it should possess so evil a reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge enjoying surely whatever benefit can come of a breezy sight and sloping far downward before any marshy soil is reached. The high hedge and the trees that stand beside the cottage

give it a pleasant aspect enough to one who does not know the grimy secrets of the interior, and the summer afternoon was now so bright that I shall remember the scene with a great deal of sunshine over it. Leaving the cottage we drove through a field which, the driver told us was that in which Burns turned up the mouse's nest. It is the enclosure nearest to the cottage, and seems now to be a pasture, and a rather remarkably unfurtile one. A little farther on, the ground was whitened with an immense number of daisies, daisies everywhere, and in answer to my inquiry, the driver said that this was the field where Burns

ran his plowshare over the daisy. If so, the soil seems to have been consecrated to daisies by the song which he bestowed on that first immortal one. I alighted and plucked a whole handful of these wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers, which will be precious to many friends in our own country, as coming from Burns' farm, and being of the same race and lineage as that daisy which he turned into an amaranthine flower, while seeming to destroy it. From Mos Giel we drove through a variety of pleasant scenes, some of which were familiar to us by their connection with Burns.

We skirted, too, along a portion of the estate of Ochchenlich, which still belongs to the Boswell family, the present possessor being Sir James Boswell, a grandson of Johnson's friend, and son of the Sir Alexander who was killed in a duel. Our driver spoke of Sir James as a kind, free-hearted man, but addicted to horse races and similar pastimes, and a little too familiar with a wine-cup, so that poor Bozzy's boozyness would appear to have become hereditary in his ancient line. There is no male heir to the estate of Ochinlick. The portion of the lands which we saw is covered with wood and much undermined with rabbit warrens, nor the land. though the territory extends over a large number of acres, is the income very considerable.

By and by we came to the spot where Burns saw Miss Alexander, the lass of Balak Mile. It was on a bridge which, or more probably, a bridge that has been succeeded to the old one and is made of iron, crosses from bank to bank, high in air over a deep gorge of the road, so that the young lady may have appeared to Burns, like a creature between earth and sky, and compounded chiefly of celestial elements. But in honest truth, the great charm of a woman in Burns' eyes was always her womanhood, and not the angelic mixture which other poets find in her. Our driver pointed out the course taken by the lass of Balak-Myle,

through the shrubbery to a rock on the banks of the luger, where it seems to be the tradition that burns accosted her. The song implies no such interview. Lovers of whatever condition, high or low, could desire no lovelier scene in which to breathe their vows, the river flowing over its pebbly bed, sometimes gleaming into the sunshine, sometimes hidden deep in verdure,

and here and there eddying at the foot of high and precipitous cliffs. This beautiful estate of Balak Mile is still held by the family of Alexander's, to whom Burns' song has been given renown on cheaper terms than any other set of people ever attained it. How slight the tenure seems! A young lady happened to walk out one summer afternoon, and crossed the path of a neighboring farmer, who celebrated the little incident in four or five warm, rude, at least not refined, though rather ambitious, and somewhat plowman-like verses.

Burns has written hundreds of better things, but henceforth for centuries, that maiden has free admittance into the dreamland of beautiful women, and she and all her race are faithful. I should like to know the present head of the family, and ascertain what value, if any, the members of it put upon the celebrity thus won. We passed through Catrine, known hereabouts as the clean village of Scotland. Certainly, as regards the point indicated, it has greatly the advantage of Motchline, whither we now returned without seeing anything else worth writing about. There was a rainstorm during the night, and in the morning the rusty old sloping street of

Motchline was glistening with wet, while frequent showers came spattering down. The intense heat of many days past was exchanged for a chilly atmosphere, much more suitable to a stranger's idea of what Scotch temperature ought to be. We found, after breakfast, that the first train northward had already gone by, and that we must wait till nearly two o'clock for the next. I merely ventured out once during the four noon, and took a brief walk through the village, in which I have left little to describe. Its chief business appears to be the manufacturer of snuff boxes. There are perhaps five or six shops or more, including those licensed to sell only tea and tobacco. The best of them have the characteristics

of village stores in the United States, dealing in a small way with an extensive variety of articles. I peeped into the open gateway of the churchyard and saw that the ground was absolutely stuffed with dead people, and the surface crowded with gravestones, both perpendicular and horizontal. All Byrne's old matchline acquaintance are doubtless there, and the armors among them except Bonnie Jean, who sleeps by her poet's side. The family of armor is now extinct in Motchline. Arriving at the railway station, we found a tall, elderly, comely gentleman walking to and fro waiting for the train. He proved to be a Mr. Alexander. It may fairly be presumed the

Alexander of Balak-Myle, a blood relation of the lovely lass, wonderful efficacy of a poet's verse, that should shed a glory from long ago on this old gentleman's white hair. These Alexanders, by the by, are not an old family on the Baloch Mile estate, the father of the last having made a fortune in trade, and established himself as the first landed proprietor of his name in these parts. The original family was named Whiteford. Our ride to air presented nothing very remarkable, and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish off the scenery, and causes a woeful

diminution in the beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy level in a southerly direction. We reached air in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove to the King's Arms Hotel. In the intervals of showers, I took peeps at the town, which appeared to have to have to have to beaum, have many modern or modern-fronted edifices, although there are likewise tall, gray, gabled, and quaint-looking houses in the by-streetstreets here and there, betokening an ancient place. The town lies on both sides of the air, which is here broad and stately, and bordered with dwellings that look from their windows directly down the passing tide.

I crossed the river by a modern and handsome stone bridge, and recrossed it at no great distance, by a venerable structure of four grey arches, which must have bestridden the stream ever since the early days of Scottish history. Those are the two brigs of air, whose midnight conversation was overheard by Burns, while other auditors were aware only of the rush and rumble of the wintry stream among the arches. The ancient bridge is steep and narrow and paved like a street, and defended by a parapet of red freestone, except at the two ends, where some mean old shops allow scanty room for the pathway to creep between. Nothing else impressed me hereabouts, unless I mentioned that, during the rain, the women and girls went about the streets of air barefooted to save their shoes. The next morning wore a louring aspect as if it felt itself destined to be one of many consecutive days of storm.

After a good scotch breakfast, however, of fresh herrings and eggs, we took a fly and started at a little past ten for the banks of the dune. On our way, at about two miles from air, we drew up at a roadside cottage, on which was an inscription to the effect that Robert Burns was born within its walls. It is now a public house, and of course we alighted and entered its little sitting-room, which, as we at present see it, is a neat apartment with the modern improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much over-scribbled with names of visitors, and the wooden door of a cupboard in the Wayne Scott, as well as all the other woodwork of the room, is cut and carved with initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having received a coat of varn-es,

over the inscriptions form really curious and interesting articles of furniture. I have seldom, though I do not personally adopt this mode of illustrating my humble name, felt inclined to ridicule the natural impulse of most people, thus to record themselves at the shrines of poets and heroes. On a panel, led into the wall in a corner of the room, is a portrait of Burns copied from the original picture by Nazmuth. The floor of this apartment is of boards, which are probably a recent substitute for the ordinary flagstones of a peasant's cottage. There is but one other room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of Robert Burns. It is the kitchen into which we now went.

It has a floor of flagstones, even ruder than those of Shakespeare's house, though perhaps not so strangely cracked and broken as the latter, over which the hoof of the hoof of Satan himself might seem to have been trampling. A new window has been opened through the wall towards the road, but on the opposite side is the little original window of only four small panes, through which came the first daylight that shone upon the Scottish poet. At the side of the room, opposite the fireplace, is a recess containing a bed which can be hidden by curtains. In that humble nook, of all places in the world, Providence was pleased to deposit the germ of richest human life which mankind then had within its circumference. These two rooms,

as I have said, make up the whole sum and substance of Byrne's birthplace, for there were no chambers nor even attics, and the thatched roof formed the only ceiling of kitchen and sitting-room. height of which was that of the whole house. The cottage, however, is attached to another edifice of the same size and description, as these little habitations often are, and, moreover, a splendid addition has been made to it since the poet's renown began to draw visitors to the Wayside Alehouse. The old woman of the house led us through an entry, and showed a vaulted hall, of no vast dimensions to be sure, but marvellously large and splendid as compared with what might be anticipated from the outward aspect of the cottage. It contained a bust of burns,

and was hung round with pictures and engravings, principally illustrative of his life and poems. In this part of the house, too, there is a parlor, fragrant with tobacco smoke, and, no doubt, many a noggin of whiskey is here quaffed to the memory of the bard, who professed to draw so much inspiration from that potent liquor. We bought some engravings of Kirk Alloway, the bridge of Dune, and the monument, and gave the old woman a fee besides, and took our leave. A very short drive farther brought us within sight of the monument, and to the hotel, situated close by the entrance of the ornamental grounds within which the former is enclosed. We rang the bell at the gate of the enclosure, but were forced to wait a considerable time, because the old man,

the regular superintendent of the spot, had gone to assist at the lane of the cornerstone of the new Kirk. He appeared anon and admitted us, but immediately hurried away to be present at the concluding ceremonies, leaving us locked up with Burns. The enclosure around the monument is beautifully laid out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly provided with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with loving care. The monument stands on an elevated site, and consists of a massive basement story, three-sided, above which rises a light and elegant Grecian temple, a mere dome, supported on Corinthian pillars, and opened to all.

the winds. The edifice is beautiful in itself, though I know not what peculiar appropriateness it may have, as the memorial of a Scottish rural poet. The door of the basement story stood open, and entering, we saw a bust of burns in a niche, looking keener, more refined, but not so warm and whole-souled as his pictures usually do. I think the likeness cannot be good. In the center of the room stood a glass case in which were reposited the two volumes of the Little Pocket Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary when they pledged their troth to one another. It is poorly printed on coarse paper.

A verse of scripture referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows is written within the cover of each volume in the poet's own hand, and fastened to one of the covers, is a lock of Highland Mary's golden hair. This Bible had been carried to America by one of her relatives, but was sent back to be fitly treasured here. There is a staircase within the monument, by which we ascended to the top,

and had a view of both Briggs and Dune, the scene of Tamashanter's misadventure being close at hand. Descending, we wandered through the enclosed garden and came to a little building in a corner, on entering which we found the two statues of Tam and Souter Watt, ponderous stonework enough, yet permeated in a remarkable degree with living warmth and jovial hilarity. From this part of the garden, too, we again beheld the old brig of dune, over which the Tam galloped in such imminent and awful peril.

It is a beautiful object in the landscape with one high graceful arch, ivy-grown, and shadowed all over and around with foliage. When we had waited a good while, the old gardener came, telling us that he had heard an excellent prayer at Lane the cornerstone of the new Kirk. He now gave us some roses and sweet briar and let us out from his pleasant garden. We immediately hastened to Kirk Alloway, which is within two or three minutes' walk of the monument. A few steps ascend from the roadside, through a gate, into the old graveyard, in the midst of which stands the Kirk. The edifice is wholly roofless, but the side walls and gable ends are quite entire, though portions of them are evidently modern restorations. Never was there a plainer little church, or one with smaller architectural pretensions.

No New England meeting-house has more simplicity in its very self, though poetry and fun have clambered and clustered so wildly over Kirk Alloway that it is difficult to see it as it actually exists. By the by, I do not understand why Satan and an assembly of witches should hold their revels within a consecrated precinct. But the weird scene has so established itself in the world's imaginative faith that it must be accepted as an authentic incident, in spite of rule and reason to the contrary.

Possibly some carnal minister, some priest of pious aspect and hidden infidelity, had dispelled the consecration of the holy edifice by his pretense of prayer, and thus made at the resort of unhappy ghosts and sorcerers and devils. The interior of the Kirk even now is applied to quite as impertinent a purpose as when Satan and the witches used it as a dancing hall, for it is divided in the midst by a wall of stone masonry, and each compartment has been converted into a family burial place. The name on one of the monuments is Crawford, the other bore no inscription.

It is impossible not to feel that these good people, whoever they may be, had no business to thrust their prosaic bones into a spot that belongs to the world, and where their presence jars with the emotions, be they sad or gay, which the pilgrim brings thither. They shut us out from our own precincts, too, from that inalienable possession, which burns bestowed in free gift upon mankind, by taking it from the actual earth and annexing it to the domain of imagination. And here these wretched squatters have lain down to their long sleep,

after barring each of the two doorways of the Kirk, with an iron grate, may their rest be troubled till they rise and let us in. Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small, considering how large a space it fills in our imagination before we see it. I paced its length outside the wall, and found it only seventeen of my paces, and not more than ten of them in breadth. There seem to have been but very few windows, all of which, if I rightly remember, are now blocked up with masonwork of stone. One mullioned window, tall and narrow in the eastern gable, might have been seen by Tamashanter, blazing with devilish light as he approached along the road from air, and there is a small and square one on the side nearest the road,

into which he might have peered as he sat on horseback. Indeed, I could easily have looked through it, standing on the ground, had not the opening been walled up. There is an odd kind of belfry at the peak of one of the gables, with the small bell still hanging in it, and this is all that I remember of the Kirk Alloway, except that the stones of its material are gray and irregular. The road from air passes Alloy Kirk, and crosses the dune by a modern bridge, without swerving much from a straight line. To reach the old bridge, it appears to have made a bend shortly after. passing the kirk, and then to have turned sharply towards the river.

The new bridge is within a minute's walk of the monument, and we went thither and leaned over its parapet to admire the beautiful dune, flowing wildly and sweetly between its deep and wooded banks. I never saw a lovelier scene, although this might have been even lovelier if a kindly sun had shone upon it. The ivy-grown ancient bridge, with its high arch, through which we had a picture of the river and the green banks beyond, was absolutely the most picturesque object in a quiet and gentle way that ever blessed my eyes. Bonnie Dune, with its wooded banks, and the boughs dipping into the water.

The memory of them, at this moment, affects me like the song of birds, and burns, crooning some verses, simple and wild, in accordance with their native melody. It was impossible to depart without crossing the very bridge of Tam's adventure, so we went thither over a now disused portion of the road, and, standing on the center of the arch, gathered some ivy leaves from that sacred spot. This done, we returned as speedily as might be to air, whence taking the rail, we soon beheld Ailsa Craig, rising like a pyramid out of the sea, drawing nearer to Glasgow, Ben-Lamond Hoven sight, with a dome-like summit supported by a shoulder on each side. But a man is better than a mountain, and we had been holding intercourse, if not with the reality, at least with the stall-wrecked. ghost of one of Earth's memorable sons amid the scenes where he had lived and sung. We shall appreciate

him better as a poet hereafter, for there is no writer whose life as a man has so much to do with his fame, and throws such a necessary light upon whatever he has produced. Henceforth, there will be a personal warmth for us in everything that he wrote, and, like his countrymen, We shall know him in a kind of personal way, as if we had shaken hands with him, and felt the thrill of his actual voice. End of Section 15. Section 16 of Our Old Home. This is a Libravox recording.

All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Section 16. A London suburb. one of our english summers looks in the retrospect as if it had been patched with more frequent sunshine than the sky of england ordinarily affords but i believe that it may be only a moral effect a light that never was on sea nor land caused by our having found a particularly delightful abode in the neighbourhood of london in order to enjoy it however i was compelled to solve the problem of living in two places at once an impossibility which i so far accomplished as to vanish at frequent intervals out of men's sight and knowledge on one side of england and take my place in a circle of familiar faces on the other so quietly that i seemed to have been there all along

It was the easier to get accustomed to our new residence, because it was not only rich in all the material properties of a home, but had also the home-like atmosphere, the household element, which is of too intangible a character to be let even with the most thoroughly furnished lodging-house. A friend had given us his suburban residence, with all its conveniences, elegances, and snuggeries, its drawing-rooms and library, still warm and bright with a recollection of the genial presences that we had known there. Its closets, chambers, kitchen, and even its wine-cellar, if we could have availed ourselves of so dear and delicate a trust, its lawn and cozy garden nooks, and whatever else makes up the multitudinous idea of an English home. He had transferred it all to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that we might rest and take our ease during his summer's absence on the

continent. We had long been dwelling in tents, as it were, and morally shivering by hearts which heaped the bituminous coal upon them as we might, no blaze could render cheerful. I remember to this day the dreary feeling with which I sat by our first English fireside, and watched the chill and rainy twilight of an autumn day darkening down upon the garden, while the portrait of the preceding occupant of the house, evidently a most unamiable personage in his lifetime, scowled inhospitably from above the mantelpiece, as if indignant that an American should try to make himself at home there. Possibly it may appease his sulky shade, to know that I quitted his abode as much a stranger as I entered it. But now at last we were in a

genuine British home where refined and warm-hearted people had just been living their daily life and had left us a summer's inheritance of slowly ripening days, such as a stranger's hasty opportunities so seldom permit him to enjoy. Within so trifling a distance of the central spot of all the world, which, as Americans have at present, no center of their own, we may allow to be somewhere in the vicinity, we will say, of St. Paul's Cathedral. It might have seemed natural that I should be tossed about by the turbulence of the vast London whirlpool. But I had drifted into a still eddy, where conflicting movements made a repose, and, wearied with a good deal of uncongenial activity, I found the quiet of my temporary haven more attractive than anything that the

great town could offer. I already knew London well, that is to say, I had long ago satisfied, so far as it was capable of satisfaction, that mysterious yearning, the magnetism of millions of hearts operating upon one, which impels every man's individuality to mingle itself with the immensest mass of human life within his scope. Day after day, at an earlier period, I had trodden the thronged thoroughfares, the broad, lonely squares, the lanes, alleys, and strange labyrinth and courts, the parks, the gardens and enclosures of ancient studious societies, so retired and silent amid the city uproar. The markets, the foggy streets along the riverside, the bridges,

I had sought all parts of the metropolis, in short, with an unwearable and indiscriminating curiosity, until few of the native inhabitants I fancy had turned so many of its corners as myself. These aimless wanderings, in which my prime purpose and achievement, were to lose my way, and so to find it the more surely, had brought one at one time or another to the sight and actual presence of almost all the objects and renowned localities that I had read about, and which had made London, the dream city of my youth. I had found it better than my dream, for there is nothing else in life comparable, in that species of enjoyment, I mean, to the thick, heavy, oppressive, somber delight

which an American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether to call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of London. The result was that I acquired a home feeling there as nowhere else in the world, though afterwards I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment in regard to Rome, and as long as either of those two great cities shall exist, the cities of the past and of the present, a man's native soil may crumble beneath his feet without leaving him altogether homeless upon earth. Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I was in a manner free of the city, and could approach or keep away from it as I pleased. Hence it happened that, living within a quarter of an hour's rush of the London Bridge Terminus, I was oftener tempted to spend a whole summer day in our garden than to seek anything new or old, wonderful or commonplace beyond its precincts. It was a delightful garden, of no great extent, but comprising a good many facilities for repose and enjoyment, such as arbors and garden seats, shrubbery, flower-beds, rose-bushes in a profusion of bloom, pinks, poppies, geraniums, sweet peas, and a variety of other scarlet, yellow, blue, and purple blossoms, which I did not trouble myself to recognize individually, yet had all of the other scarlet, yellow, blue, and purple blossoms, which I did not trouble myself to recognize individually, yet had all

always a vague sense of their beauty about me. The dim sky of England has a most happy effect on the coloring of flowers, blending richness with delicacy in the same texture, but in this garden as everywhere else, the exuberance of English verdure had a greater charm than any tropical splendor or diversity of hue. The hunger for natural beauty might be satisfied with grass and green leaves forever. Conscious of the triumph of England in this respect, and loyally anxious for the credit of my own country, it gratified me to observe what trouble and pains the English gardeners

are fain to throw away in producing a few sour plums and abortive pears and apples, as, for example, in this very garden, where a row of unhappy trees were spread out perfectly flat against a brick wall, looking as, if impaled alive, or crucified, with a cruel and unattainable purpose of compelling them to produce rich fruit by torture. For my part, I never ate an English fruit, raised in the open air, that could compare in flavor with a Yankee turnip. The garden included that prime feature of

English domestic scenery, a lawn. It had been leveled, carefully shorn, and converted into a bowling-growing on which we sometimes assayed to practice the time-honored game of bowls, most unskilfully, yet not without a perception that it involves a very pleasant mixture of exercise and ease, as is the case with most of the old English pastimes. Our little domain was shut in by the house on one side, and in other directions by a hedge-fence and a brick wall, which last was concealed or softened by shrubbery and the impaled fruit trees already mentioned. Over all the outer region, beyond our immediate precincts,

there was an abundance of foliage tossed aloft from the near or distant trees with which that agreeable suburb is adorned. The effect was wonderfully sylvan and rural, insomuch that we might have fancied ourselves in the depths of a wooded seclusion, only that at brief intervals we could hear the galloping sweep of a railway train passing within a quarter of a mile and its discordant screech, moderated by a little farther distance, as it reached the Blackheath station. That harsh, rough sound seeking me out so inevitably was the voice of the great world summoning me forth. I know not whether I was the more pained or pleased to be thus constantly put in mind of the neighborhood of London, for, on the one hand, my conscience stung me a little for reading a book, or playing with children in the grass, when there were so many better things for an enlightened traveler to do, while at the same time it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idleness, to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped.

On the whole, however, I do not repent of a single wasted hour, and only wish that I could have spent twice as many in the same way. for the impression on my memory is that I was as happy in that hospitable garden as the English summer day was long. One chief condition of my enjoyment was the weather. Italy has nothing like it, nor America. There never was such weather except in England, where, in requital of a vast amount of horrible east wind between February and June, a brown October and black November, and a wet, chill, sunless winter. There are a few weeks of incomparable summer, scattered through July and August,

and the earlier portion of September, small in quantity, but exquisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmospheric delinquencies. After all, the prevalent somberness may have brought out those sunny intervals in such high relief that I see them in my recollection brighter than they really were. A little light makes a glory for people who live habitually in a gray gloom. The English, however, do not seem to know how enjoyable the momentary gleams of their summer are. They call it broiling weather, and hurry to the seaside with red perspiring faces in a state of combustion and delinquents, and I have observed that even their cattle have similar susceptibilities, seeking the deepest shade,

or standing mid-leg-deep in pools and streams to cool themselves at temperatures, which our own cows would deem little more than barely comfortable. To myself, after the summer heats of my native land, had somewhat effervesce out of my blood and memory, it was the weather of paradise itself. It might be a little too warm, but it was that modest and inestimable superabundance which constitutes a bounty of providence instead of just a niggardly enough. During my first year in England, residing in perhaps the most ungenial part of the kingdom, I could never be quite comfortable without a fire on the hearth. In the second twelve-month, beginning to get acclimatized, I became sensible of an austere friendliness, shy but sometimes almost tender, in the veiled,

shadowy, seldom smiling summer, and in the succeeding years, whether that I had renewed my fiber with English beef and replenished my blood with English ale, or whatever were the cause, I grew content with winter, and especially in love with summer, desiring little more for happiness than merely to breathe and bask. At the midsummer which we are now speaking of, I must needs confess that the noontide sun came down more fervently than I found altogether tolerable, so that I was fain to shift my position with the shadow of the shrubbery,

making myself the movable index of a sundial that reckoned up the hours of an almost interminable day. For each day seemed endless, though never wearisome. As far as your actual experience is concerned, the English summer day has positively no beginning and no end. When you awake at any reasonable hour, the sun is already shining through the curtains. You live through unnumbered hours of Sabbath quietude, with a calm variety of incident softly etched upon their tranquil laps, and at length you become conscious that it is bedtime again, while there is still enough daylight in the sky, to make the pages of your book distinctly legible. Night, if there be any such season,

hangs down a transparent veil through which the bygone day beholds its successor. Or, if not quite true of the latitude of London, it may be soberly affirmed of the more northern parts of the island, that tomorrow is born before yesterday is dead. They exist together in the golden twilight, where the decrepit old day dimly discerns the face of the ominous infant, and you, though a mere mortal, may simultaneously touch them both with one finger of recollection and another of prophecy. I cared not how long the day might be, nor how many of them. I had earned this repose by a long course of irksome toil and perturbation, and could have been content never to stray out of the limits of that suburban villa and its garden.

If I lacked anything beyond, it would have satisfied me well enough to dream about it instead of struggling for its actual possession. At least this was the feeling of the moment, although the transitory, flitting, and irresponsible character of my life there was perhaps the most enjoyable element of all, as allowing me much of the comfort of house and home, without any sense of their weight upon my back. The nomadic life has great advantages if we can find tents ready pitched for us at every stage. So much for the interior of our abode, a spot of deepest quiet within reach of the intensest activity. But even when we stopped beyond our own gate, we were not shocked with any immediate presence of the great world.

We were dwelling in one of those oases that have grown up, in comparatively recent years, I believe. on the wide waste of black heath, which otherwise offers a vast extent of unoccupied ground in singular proximity to the metropolis. As a general thing, the proprietorship of the soil seems to exist in everybody and nobody, but exclusive rights have been obtained here and there, chiefly by men whose daily concerns link them with London, so that you find their villas or boxes standing along village streets, which have often more of an American aspect than the Elder English settlements. The scene is semi-rural. Ornamental trees overshadowed the sidewalks, and grassy margins

border the wheel tracks. The houses, to be sure, have certain points of difference from those of an American village, bearing tokens of architectural design, though seldom of individual taste, and as far as possible, they stand aloof from the street, and separated each from its neighbor by hedge or fence, in accordance with the careful exclusiveness of the English character, which impels the occupant, moreover, to cover the front of his dwelling with as much concealment of shrubbery as his limits will allow. Through the interstices, you catch glimpses of well-kept lawns, generally ornamented with flowers, and with what the English call rockwork, being heaps of ivy-grown stones and fossils designed for romantic effect in a

small way. Two or three of such village streets, as are here described, take a collective name, as, for instance, Blackheath Park, and constitute a kind of community of residence with gateways kept by a policeman, and a semi-privacy, stepping beyond which you find yourself on the breezy heath. On this great, bare, dreary common, I often went astray, as I afterwards did on the Campania of Rome, and drew the air, tainted with London smoke, though it might be, into my lungs by deep inspirations, with a strange and unexpected sense of desert freedom. The misty atmosphere helps you to fancy a remoteness that perhaps does not quite exist. During the little time that it lasts, the solitude is as impressive as that of western prairie or forest, but soon the railway shriek, a mile or two away, insists upon informing you of your whereabout, or you recognize in the distance some landmark that you may have known,

an insulated villa, perhaps, with its garden wall around it, or the rudimental street of a new settlement which is sprouting on this otherwise barren soil. Half a century ago, the most frequent token of man's beneficent contiguity might have been a gibbet, and the creek, like a tavern sign, of a murderer swinging to and fro in irons. Blackheath, with its highwaymen and footpads, was dangerous in those days, and even now, for odd I know, the western prairie may still compare favorably with it as a safe region to go astray in. When I was acquainted with Blackheath, the ingenious device of garretting had recently come into fashion, and I can remember while crossing those waste places at midnight and hearing footsteps behind me

to have been sensibly encouraged by also hearing, not far off, the clinking hoof-tramp of one of those horse-patrels who do regular duty there. About sunset or a little later was the time when the broad and somewhat desolate peccasily. of the heath seemed to me to put on its utmost impressiveness. At that hour, finding myself on elevated ground, I once had a view of immense London, four or five miles off, with the vast dome in the midst, and the towers of the two houses of Parliament rising up into the smoky canopy, the thinner substance of which obscured a mass of things, and hovered about the objects that were most distinctly visible. A glorious and somber picture, dusky, awful, but irresistibly attractive, like a young man's dream of the great world, foretelling at that distance a grandeur never to be

fully realized. While I lived in that neighborhood, the tents of two or three sets of cricket players were constantly pitched on Blackheath, and matches were going forward that seemed to involve the honor and credit of communities or counties, exciting and interest in everybody but myself, who cared not what part of England might glorify itself at the expense of another. It is necessary to be born an Englishman, I believe, in order to enjoy this great national game. At any rate, as a spectacle for the outside observer, I found it lazy, lingering, tedious, and utterly devoid of pictorial effects. Choice of other amusements was at hand.

Buts for archery were established, and bows and arrows were to be let at so many shots for a penny, there being abundance of space for a farther flight-shot than any modern archer can lend to his shaft. Then there was an absurd game of throwing a stick at crockery-wear, which I have witnessed a hundred times, and personally engaged in once or twice, without ever having the satisfaction to see a bit of broken crockery. In other spots you found donkeys for children to ride, and ponies of a very meek and patient spirit,

on which the cockney pleasure-seekers of both sexes rode races, and made wonderful displays of horsemanship. By way of refreshment there was gingerbread, but, as a true patriot, I must pronounce it greatly inferior to our name. native dainty, and ginger beer, and probably staunch or liquor among the booth-keeper's hidden stores. The frequent railway trains, as well as the numerous steamers to Greenwich, have made the vacant portions of Blackheath, a playground and breathing place for the Londoners, readily and very cheaply accessible, so that, in view of this broader use and enjoyment, I a little grudged the tracts that have been filched away, so to speak, and individualized by thriving citizens. One sort of visitors especially interested me. They were schools of little boys or girls

under the guardianship of their instructors, charity schools, as I often surmised from their aspect, collected among dark alleys and squalid courts, and hither they were brought to spend a summer afternoon these pale little progeny of the sunless nooks of the sunless nooks of London, who had never known that the sky was any broader than that narrow and vapoury strip above their native lane. I fancied that they took but a doubtful pleasure, being half affrighted at the wide, empty space overhead and round about them, finding the air too little medicated with smoke, soot, and graveyard exhalations, to be breathed with comfort, and feeling shelterless

and lost, because Grimy London, their slattery. and disreputable mother had suffered them to stray out of her arms. Passing among these holiday people, we come to one of the gateways of Greenwich Park, opening through an old brick wall. It admits us from the bare heath into a scene of antique cultivation and woodland ornament, traversed in all directions by avenues of trees, many of which bear tokens of a venerable age. These broad and well-kept pathways rise and decline over the elevations and along the bases of gentle hills which diversify the whole surface of the park. The loftiest and most abrupt of them, though but a very moderate height, is one of the earth's noted summits,

and may hold up its head with Montblanc and Chimborazo, as being the site of Greenwich Observatory, where, if all nations will consent to say so, the longitude of our great globe begins. I used to regulate my watch by the broad dial-plate against the observatory wall, and felt it pleasant to be standing at the very center of time and space. There are lovelier parks than this in the neighborhood of London, richer scenes of Greensford and cultivated trees, and Kensington, especially in a summer afternoon, has seemed to me as delightful as any place can or ought to be,

in a world which, some time or other, we must quit. But Greenwich, too, is beautiful, a spot where the art of man has conspired with nature, as if he and the great mother had taken counsel together how to make a pleasant scene, and the longest liver of the two had faithfully carried out their mutual design. It has likewise an additional charm of its own,

because, to all appearance, it is the people's property and playground in a much more genuine way than the aristocratic resorts in closer vicinity to the metropolis. It affords one of the instances in which the monarch's property is actually the peoples, and shows how much more natural is their relation to the sovereign than to the nobility, which pretends to hold the intervening space between the two, for a nobleman makes a paradise only for himself, and fills it with his own pomp and pride, whereas the people are,

are sooner or later the legitimate inheritors of whatever beauty kings and queens create, as now of Greenwich Park. On Sundays when the sun shone, and even on those grim and somber days when, if it do not actually rain, the English persist in calling it fine weather, it was too good to see how sturdily the plebeians trod under their own oaks, and what fullness of simple enjoyment they evidently found there. They were the people, not the populace, specimens of a class whose Sunday clothes are a distinct kind of garb from their weekday ones,

and this in England implies wholesome habits of life, daily thrift, and a rank above the lowest. I longed to be acquainted with them in order to investigate what manner of folks they were, what sort of households they kept, their politics, their religion, their tastes, and whether they were as narrow-minded as their betters. There can be very little doubt of it, and Englishman is English, in whatever rank of life, though no more intensely so I should imagine as an artisan or petty shopkeeper than as a

member of Parliament. The English character, as I conceive it, is by no means a very lofty one. They seemed to have a great deal of earth and grimy dust clinging about them, as was probably the case with the stalwart and quarrelsome people who sprouted up out of the soil, after Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth. And yet, though the individual Englishman is sometimes preternaturally disagreeable, an observer standing aloof has a sense of natural kindness towards them in the lump. They adhere closer to the original simplicity in which mankind was created than we ourselves do. They love, quarrel, laugh, cry, and turn their actual selves inside out, with greater freedom than any class of Americans would consider decorous. It was often so with these holiday folks in Greenwich Park, and, ridiculous as it may sound, I fancy myself to have caught very satisfactory glimpses of Arcadian life among the cockneys there, hardly beyond the scope of bow-bells, picnicking in the grass, uncouthly gambling on the broad slopes,

or strain and motley groups or by single pairs of love-making youths and maidens along the sun-streaked avenues. Even the omnipresent policeman or park-keepers could not disturb the beatific impression on my mind. One feature at all events of the golden age was to be seen in the herds of deer that encountered you in the somewhat remoter recesses of the park, and were readily prevailed upon to nibble a bit of bread out of your hand. But though no wrong had ever been done them, and no horn had sounded, nor hound bayed at the heels of themselves, or their antlered progenitors for centuries past, there was still an apprehensiveness, lingering in their hearts, so that a slight movement of the hand, or a step too near, would send a

whole squadron of them scampering away, just as a breath scatters the winged seeds of a dandelion. The aspect of Greenwich Park, with all those festal people wandering through it, resembled that of the Borghese gardens under the walls of Rome, on a Sunday or a saint's day, but, I am not ashamed to say it a little disturbed whatever grim ghost of Puritanic strictness might be lingering in the sombre depths of a New England heart among severe and sunless remembrances of sabbaths of childhood and pangs of remorse for ill-gotten lessons in the catechism

and for erratic fantasies or hardly suppressed laughter in the middle of long sermons. Occasionally I tried to take the long hordid sting out of these compunctious smarts by attending divine service in the open air. On a cart outside the park wall, and, if I mistake not, at two or three corners and secluded spots within the park itself, a Methodist preacher uplifts his voice and speedily gathers the congregation, his zeal for whose religious welfare impels the good man to such earnest vociferation and toilsome gesture that his perspiring face is quixing.

quickly in a stew. His inward flame conspires with the too fervid sun, and makes a positive martyr of him, even in the very exercise of his pious labor, insomuch that he purchases every atom of spiritual increment to his hearers by loss of his own corporeal solidity, and should his discourse last long enough, must finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile at him, be it understood it is not in scorn, he performs his sacred office more acceptably than many a prelate. These wayside services attract numbers who would not otherwise listen to prayer, sermon, or him, from one year's end to another, and who, for that very reason, are the auditors most likely to be moved by the preacher's eloquence.

Yonder Greenwich-Pensioner, too, in his costume of three-cornered hat, and old-fashioned brass-buttoned blue coat with ample skirts, which makes him look like a contemporary of Admiral Benbow, that tough old mariner may hear a word or two which will go nearer his heart than anything that the chaplain of the hospital can be expected to deliver. I always noticed, moreover, that a considerable proportion of the audience were soldiers who came hither with the day's leave from Woolwich, hardy veterans in aspect, some of whom wore as many as four or five medals, Crimean or East Indian, on the breasts of their scarlet coats. The miscellaneous congregation listen with every appearance of heartfelt interest,

and for my own part I must frankly acknowledge that I never found it possible to give five minutes' attention to any other English preaching. So cold and commonplace are the homilies that pass for such under the aged roofs of churches. And as for cathedral, and as for cathedral, the sermon is an exceedingly diminutive and unimportant part of the religious services, if indeed it be considered a part, among the pompous ceremonies, the intonations, and the resounding and lofty-voiced strain of the choristers. The magnificence of the setting quite dazzles out what we Puritans look upon as the jewel of the whole affair, for I presume that it was our forefathers, the dissenters in England

and America, who gave the sermon its present prominence in Sabbath exercises. The Methodists are probably the first and only Englishmen who have worshipped in the open air since the ancient Britons listened to the preaching of the druids, and it reminded me of that old priesthood to see certain memorials of their dusky epoch, not religious, however, but warlike, in the neighborhood of the spot where the Methodist was holding forth. These were some ancient barrows, beneath or within which, are supposed to be buried the slain of a forgotten or doubtfully remembered battle fought on the side of Greenwich Park as long ago as two or three centuries after the birth of Christ. Whatever may once have been their height and magnitude,

they have now scarcely more prominence in the actual scene, than the battle of which they are the sole monuments retains in history, being only a few mounds, side by side, elevated a little above the surface of the ground, ten or twelve feet in diameter, with a shallow depression in their summits. When one of them was opened, not long since, no bones nor armor nor weapons were discovered, nothing but some small jewels and a tuft of hair, perhaps from the head of a valiant general, who, dying on the field of his victory, bequeathed this lock, together with his indestructible fame, to end up to endestructible fame, to after ages. The hair and jewels are probably in the British Museum, where the pot-shards and

rubbish of innumerable generations make the visitor wish that each passing century could carry off all its fragments and relics along with it, instead of adding them to the continually accumulating burden which human knowledge is compelled to lug upon its back. As for the fame, I know not what has become of it. End of Section 16. Section 17 of Our Old Home. This is a Libervox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 17, a London suburb. After traversing the park, we come into the neighborhood of Greenwich Hospital, and will pass through one of its spacious gateways for the service. sake of glancing at an establishment which does more honor to the heart of England than anything else that I am acquainted with of a public nature. It is very seldom that we can be sensible of anything like kindliness in the acts or relations of such an artificial thing as a national government. Our own government, I should conceive, is too much an abstraction

ever to feel any sympathy for its maimed sailors and soldiers, though it will doubtless do them a severe kind of justice as chilling as the touch of steel. But it seemed to me that the Greenwich pensioners are the petted children of the nation, and that the government is their dry nurse, and that the old men themselves have a childlike consciousness of their position. Very likely a better sort of life might have been

arranged, and a wiser care bestowed on them, but, such as it is, it enables them to spend a sluggish, careless, comfortable old age, grumbling, growling, gruff, as if all the foul weather of their past years were pent up within them. Yet not much more discontented than such weather-beaten and battle-battered fragments of humankind must inevitably be. Their home, in its outward form, is on a very magnificent plan. Its germ was a royal palace, the full expansion of which has resulted in a series of edifices externally more beautiful than any English palace that I have seen, consisting of several quadrangles of stately architecture, united by colonnades and gravel walks, and enclosing grassy squares, with statues in the center, the whole extending

along the Thames. It is built of marble, or very light-colored stone, in the classic style, with pillars and porticoes, which, to my own taste, and I fancy, to that of the old sailors, produce but a cold and shivery effect in the English climate. Had I been the architect, I would have studied the characters, habits, and predilections of nautical people in Wapping, Hother Heights, and the neighborhood of the tower, places which I visited in affectionate remembrance of Captain Lemuel Gulliver and other actual or mythological navigators, and would have built the hospital in a kind of ethereal similitude to the narrow, dark, ugly, and inconvenient, but snug and cozy homeliness of the sailor boarding-house is there.

There can be no question that all the above attributes, or enough of them to satisfy an old sailor's heart, might be reconciled with architectural beauty and the wholesome contrivances of modern dwellings, and thus a novel and genuine style of building be given to the world. But their countrymen meant kindly by the old fellows in assigning them the ancient royal site, where Elizabeth held her court, and charged her court, and charged, Charles II began to build his palace. So far as the locality went, it was treating them like so many kings, and, with a discreet abundance of grog, beer, and tobacco, there was perhaps little more to be accomplished in behalf of men, whose whole previous lives have tended to unfit them for old age. Their chief discomfort is probably for lack of something to do or think about, but, judge of the judge of the same thing to do or think about. But, judge of the judge of the same thing to do for the age. But, by the few whom I saw, a listless habit seems to have crept over them, a dim dreaminess of mood in which they sit between asleep and awake, and find the long day wearing towards bedtime, without its having made any distinct record of itself upon their consciousness. Sitting on stone benches in the sunshine, they subside into slumber, or nearly so, and start at the approach of footsteps echoing under the colonnades, ashamed to be caught napping,

and rousing themselves in a hurry, as formerly on the midnight watch at sea. In their brightest moments they gather in groups and bore one another with endless sea-yarns about their voyages under famous admirals, and about gale and calm, battle and chase, and all that class of incident that has its sphere on the deck, and in the hollow interior of a ship where their world has exclusively been. For other pastime, they quarrel among themselves, comrade with comrade, and perhaps shake paralytic fists in furrowed faces. If inclined for a little exercise,

they can bestir their wooden legs on the long esplanade that borders by the Thames, criticizing the rig of passing ships, and firing off volleys of malediction at the, steamers, which have made the sea another element that they used to be acquainted with. All this is but cold comfort for the evening of life, yet may compare rather favorably with the preceding portions of it, comprising little, save imprisonment on shipboard, in the course of which they have been tossed all about the world, and caught hardly a glimpse of it, forgetting what grass and green trees are, and never finding out what grass.

what woman is, though they may have encountered a painted spectre which they took for her. A country owes much to human beings whose bodies she has worn out, and whose immortal part she has left undeveloped or debased, as we tied them here, and having wasted an idle paragraph upon them, let me now suggest that old men have a kind of susceptibility to moral impressions, and even up to an advantage. period, a receptivity of truth, which often appears to come to them after the active time of life is passed. The Greenwich pensioners might prove better subjects for true education now than in their schoolboy days, but then where is the normal school that could educate instructors for such a class?

There is a beautiful chapel for the pensioners in the classic style, over the altar of which hangs a picture by West. I never could look at it long enough to make out its design, for this artist, though it pains me to say it of so respectable a countryman, had a gift of frigidity, a knack of grinding ice into his paint, a power of stupefying the spectator's perceptions, and quelling his sympathy beyond any other limer that ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of conscience, I seize this opportunity to wreak a lifelong abhorrence upon the poor, blameless man, for the sake of that dreary picture of leer, an explosion of frosty fury, that used to be a bugbear to me in the Athenian exhibition. Would fire burn it, I wonder?

The principal thing that they have to show you at Greenwich Hospital is the painted hall. It is a splendid and spacious room, at least a hundred feet long and half as high, with a ceiling painted in fresco by Sir James Thornhill. As a work of art, I presume, this frescoed canopy has little merit, though it produces an exceedingly rich effect by its brilliant coloring and as a specimen of magnificent upholstery. The walls of the Grand Department are entirely covered with pictures, many of them representing battles and other naval incidents that were once fresher in the world's memory than now,

but chiefly portraits of old admirals comprising the whole line of heroes who have trod the quarter-decks of British ships for more than 200 years back. Next to a tomb in Westminster Abbey, which was Nelson's most elevated object of ambition, It would seem to be the highest need of a naval warrior to have his portrait hung up in the painted hall. But by dint of victory upon victory, these illustrious personages have grown to be a mob, and by no means a very interesting one,

so far as regards the character of the faces here depicted. They are generally commonplace, and often singularly stolid, and I have observed, both in the painted hall and elsewhere, and not only in portraits, but in the actual presence of such renowned people as I have caught glimpses of, that the countenances of heroes are not nearly so impressive as those of statesmen, except, of course, in the rare instances where warlike ability has been but the one-sided manifestation of a profound genius for managing the world's affairs.

nine-tenths of these distinguished admirals, for instance, if their faces tell truth, must needs have been blockheads, and might have served better, one would imagine, as wooden figureheads for their own ships, than to direct any difficult and intricate scheme of action from the quarter-deck. It is doubtful whether the same kind of men will hereafter meet with a similar degree of success, for they were victorious chiefly through the old English hardihood, exercised in a field of which modern science had not yet got possession. Rough valor has lost something of its value since their days, and must continue to sink lower and lower in the comparative estimate

of warlike qualities. In the next naval war, as between England and France, I would bet, me thinks, the Frenchman's head. It is remarkable, however, that the great naval hero of England, the greatest, therefore, in the world and of all time, had none of the stolid characteristics that belonged to his class, and cannot fairly be accepted as their representative man. Foremost, in the roughest of professions, he was as delicately organized as a woman, and as painfully sensitive as a poet. more than any other englishman he won the love and admiration of his country but won them through the efficacy of qualities that are not english or at all events were intensified in this case and made poignant and powerful by something morbid in the man which put him otherwise at cross-purposes with life he was a man of genius and genius in an englishman not to cite the man

good old simile of a pearl in the oyster, is usually a symptom of a lack of balance in the general making up of the character, as we may satisfy ourselves by running over the list of their poets, for example, and observing how many of them have been sickly or deformed, and how often their lives have been darkened by insanity. An ordinary Englishman is the healthiest and wholesomest of human beings, An extraordinary one is almost always, in one way or another, a sick man. It was so with Lord Nelson. The wonderful contrast or relation between his personal qualities,

the position which he held, and the life that he lived, makes him as interesting a personage as all history has to show. And it is a pity that Sadi's biography, so good in its superficial way, and yet so inadequate as regards any real delineation of the man, should have taken the subject out of the hands of some writer endowed with more delicate appreciation and deeper insight than that genuine Englishman possessed. But Sadi accomplished his own purpose,

which apparently was to present his hero as a pattern for England's young midshipman. But the English capacity for hero worship is full to the brim with what they are able to comprehend of Lord Nelson's character. Adjoining the painted hall is a smaller room, the walls of which are completely and exclusively adorned with pictures of the great Admiral's exploits. We see the frail, ardent man in all the most noted events of his career, from his encounter with a polar bear to his death at Trafalgar, quivering here and there about the room

like a blue, lambent flame. No Britain ever enters that apartment without feeling the beef and ale of his composition stirred to its depths and finding himself changed into a hero for the notice however stolid his brain, however tough his heart, however unexcitable his ordinary mood.

To confess the truth, I myself, though belonging to another parish, have been deeply sensible to the, the sublime recollections there aroused, acknowledging that Nelson expressed his life in a kind of symbolic poetry which I had as much right to understand as these Burley Islanders. Cool and critical observer as I sought to be, I enjoyed their burst of honest indignation when a visitor, not an American, I am glad to say, thrust his walking-stick almost into Nelson's face in one of the pictures by way of point in a remark, and the bystanders

immediately glowed like so many hot coals, and would probably have consumed the offender in their wrath had he not affected his retreat. But the most sacred objects of all are two of Nelson's coats under separate glass cases. One is that which he wore at the Battle of the Nile, and is now sadly injured by moths, which will quite destroy it in a few years, unless its guardians preserve it as we do Washington's military suit by occasionally baking it in an oven. The other is the coat in which he received his death wound at Trafalgar. On its breast are sowed three or four stars and orders of knighthood, now much dimmed by time and damp,

but which glittered brightly enough on the battle day to draw the, fatal aim of a French marksman. The bullet-hole is visible on the shoulder, as well as part of the golden tassels of an epaulet, the rest of which was shot away. Over the coat is laid a white waistcoat with a great blood-stain on it, out of which all the redness has utterly faded, leaving it of a dingy yellow line in the threescore years since that blood gushed out. yet it was once the reddest blood in England, Nelson's blood. The hospital stands close adjacent to the town of Greenwich, which will always retain a kind of festal aspect in my memory,

in consequence of my having first become acquainted with it on Easter Monday. Till a few years ago the first three days of Easter were a carnival season in this old town, during which the idle and disreputable part of England, poured itself into the streets like an inundation of the Thames, as unclean as that turbid mixture of the off-scourings of the vast city, and overflowing with its grimy pollution, whatever rural innocence, if any, might be found in the suburban neighborhood. The festivity was called Greenwich Fair, the final one of which, in an immemorial succession, it was my fortune to behold.

If I had bethought myself of going through the fair with a notebook and pencil, jotting down all the prominent objects, I doubt not that the result might have been a sketch of English life quite as characteristic and worthy of historical preservation as an account of the Roman carnival. Having neglected to do so, I remember little more than a confusion of unwashed and shabbily dressed people, intermixed with some smarter figures but on the whole presenting a mobish appearance such as we never see in our own country it taught me to understand why shakespeare in speaking of a crowd so often alludes to its attribute of evil odor

the common people of england i am afraid have no daily familiarity with even so necessary a thing as a wash-bowl not to mention a bathing tub and furthermore it is one mighty difference between them and us that every man and woman on our side of the water has a working-day suit and a holiday suit and is occasionally as fresh as a rose, whereas in the good old country the griminess of his labor or squalid habits clings forever to the individual and gets to be a part of his personal substance. These are broad facts involving great corollaries and dependents, There are, really, if you stop to think about it, few sadder spectacles in the world than a ragged coat or a soiled and shabby gown at a festival. This unfragrant crowd was exceedingly dense, being welded together as it were in the street through which we strove to make our way.

On either side were oyster stands, stalls of oranges, a very prevalent fruit in England, where they give the withered ones a guise of freshness by boiling them, and booths covered with old sailcloth, in which the commodity that most attracted the eye was gilt gingerbread. It was so completely enveloped in Dutch gilding that I did not at first recognize an old acquaintance, but wondered what those golden crowns and images could be. There were likewise drums and other toys for small children, and a variety of showy and worthless articles for children of love. larger growth, though it perplexed me to imagine who in such a mob could have the innocent taste to desire play things, or the money to pay for them.

Not that I have a right to license the mob, on my own knowledge, of being any less innocent than a set of cleaner and better-dressed people might have been, for, though one of them stole my pocket-handkerchief, I could not but consider it fair game under the circumstances, and was grateful to the thief for sparing me my purse. They were quiet, civil, and remarkably good-humored, making due allowance for the national gruffness. There was no riot, no tumultuous swaying to and fro of the mass, such as I have often noted in an American crowd.

No noise of voices, except frequent bursts of laughter, hoarse or shrill, and a widely diffused, in articulate murmur, resembling nothing so much as the rumbling of a tide among the arches of London Bridge. What immensely perplexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle in all quarters, far off and close at hand, and sometimes right at my own back, where it sounded as if the stout fabric of my English sir-toe had been ruthlessly rent and twain, and everybody's clothes all over the fair were evidently being torn asunder in the same way. By and by, I discovered that this strange noise was produced by a little instrument called the fun of the fair, a sort of rattle consisting of a wooden wheel, the cogs of which turn against a thin slip of wood, and so produce a rasping sound when drawn smartly against a person's back.

The ladies draw their rattles against the backs of their male friends, and everybody passes for a friend at Greenwich Fair, and the young men return the compliment on the broad British backs of the ladies, and all are bound by immemorial custom to take it in good part and be merry at the joke. as it was one of my prescribed official duties to give an account of such mechanical contrivances as might be unknown in my own country, I have thought it right to be thus particular in describing the fun of the fair. But this was far from being the sole amusement. There were theatrical booths in front of which were pictorial representations of the scenes to be enacted within, and anon a drummer emerged from one of them, thumping on a terribly laxed drum, and followed by the entire dramatist personi, who ranged themselves on a wooden platform in front of the theatre.

They were dressed in character, but woefully shabby, with very dingy and wrinkled white tights, threadbare cotton velvets, crumpled silks, and crushed muslin, and all the gloss and glory gone out of their aspect and attire, seen thus in the broad daylight and after a long series of performances. They sang a song together and withdrew into the theatre, whither the public were invited to follow them at the inconsiderable cost of a penny a ticket.

Before another booth stood a pair of brawny fighting men, displaying their muscle, and soliciting patronage for an exhibition of the noble British art of pugilism. There were pictures of giants, monsters, and outlandish beasts, most prodigious to be sure, and worthy of all admiration, unless the artist had gone incomparably beyond his subject. Jugglers proclaimed aloud the miracles which they were prepared to work, and posture-makers dislocated every joint of their bodies, and tied their limbs into inextricable knots,

wherever they could find space to spread a little square of carpet on the ground. In the midst of the confusion, while everybody was treading on his neighbor's toes, some little boys were very solicitous to brush your boots. These lads, I believe, are a product of modern society, at least no older than the time of gay, who celebrates their origin in his trivia. But in most other respects, the scene reminded me of Bunyan's description of vanity fair, nor is it all improbable that the pilgrim may have been a merry-maker here

in his wild youth. It seemed very singular, though, of course, I immediately classified it as an English characteristic, to see a great many portable weighing machines, the owners of which cried out continually and amane, Come, know your weight! Come, come, come, know your weight to-day! come know your weight, and a multitude of people, mostly large in the girth, were moved by this vociferation to sit down in the machines. I know not whether they valued themselves on their

beef, and estimated their standing as members of society at so much a pound, but I shall set it down as a national peculiarity, and a symbol of the prevalence of the earthly over the spiritual element, that Englishmen are wonderfully bent on knowing how solid and physically ponderous they are. On the whole, having an appetite for the brown bread and the tripe and sausages of life, as well as for its nicer kates and dainties, I enjoyed the scene, and was amused at the sight of a gruff old Greenwich pensioner, who, forgetful of the sailor frolics of his young days, stood looking with grim disapproval at all these vanities. Thus we squeezed our way through the mob-jammed town,

and emerged into the park, where likewise we met a great many merry-makers, but with freer space for their gambols than in the streets. We soon found ourselves the targets for a cannonade with oranges, most of them in a decayed condition, which went humming past our ears from the vantage-ground of neighboring hillocks, sometimes hitting our sacred persons with an inelastic thump. This was one of the privileged freedoms of the time, which was no wise to be resented, except by returning the salute. Many persons were running races, hand in hand, down the declivities, especially that steepest one on the summit of which stands the World Central Observatory, and, as in the race of life, the partners were usually male and female,

male, and often caught a tumble together before reaching the bottom of the hill. Hereabouts we were pestered and haunted by two young girls, the eldest, not more than thirteen, teasing us to buy matches, and finding no market for their commodity, the taller one suddenly turned a Somerset before our faces, and rolled heels overhead from top to bottom of the hill on which we stood. Then, scrambling up the acclivity, The topsy-turvy trollop offered us her matches again, as demurely as if she had never flung aside her equilibrium, so that, dreading a repetition of the feat, we gave her sixpence and an admonition, and enjoined her never to do so any more.

The most curious amusement that we witnessed here, or anywhere else indeed, was an ancient and hereditary pastime called Kissing in the Ring. I shall describe the sport exactly as I saw it, although an English friend assures me that there are certain ceremonies with a handkerchief which make it much more decorous and graceful. A handkerchief, indeed. There was no such thing in the crowd, except it were one which they had just filched out of my pocket. It is one of the simplest kind of games, needing little or no practice to make the player altogether perfect, and the manner of it is this. this. A ring is formed, in the present case, it was of large circumference, and thickly gemmed around with faces, mostly on the broad grin, into the center of which steps an adventurous youth, and, looking round the circle, selects whatever maiden may most delight his

eye. He presents his hand, which she is bound to accept, leads her into the center, salutes her on the lips and retires taking his stand in the expectant circle. The girl in her turn throws a favorable regard on some fortunate young man, offers her hand to lead him forth, makes him happy with a maidenly kiss, and withdraws to hide her blushes, if any there be, among the simpering faces in the ring. While the favored swain loses no time in transferring her salutes, to the prettiest and plumpest among the many mouths that are primming themselves in anticipation. And thus the thing goes on till all the festive throng are enreathed and intertwined

into an endless and inextricable chain of kisses, though indeed it smote me with compassion to reflect that some forlorn pair of lips might be left out, and never know the triumph of a salute after throwing a sultan. so many delicate reserves for the sake of winning it. If the young men had any chivalry, there was fair chance to display it by kissing the homeliest damsel in the circle. To be frank, however, at the first glance, and to my American eye, they all looked homely alike, and the chivalry that I suggest is more than I could have been capable of at any period of my

life. They seemed to be country-lasses of sturdy and wholesome aspect with coarse-grained cabbage-rosy cheeks, and I am willing to suppose a stout texture of moral principle, such as would bear a good deal of rough usage without suffering much detriment. But how unlike the trim little damsels of my native land! I desire, above all things to be courteous, but since the plain truth, must be told, the soil and climate of England produce feminine beauty as rarely as they do delicate fruit, and though admirable specimens of both are to be met with, they are the hot-house ameliorations of refined society, and apt, moreover, to relapse into the coarseness of the original stock. The men are manlike, but the women are not beautiful, though the

female bull be well enough adapted to the male. To return to the lasses of Greenwich Fair, their charms were few, and their behavior perhaps not altogether commendable, and yet it was impossible not to feel a degree of faith in their innocent intentions, with such a half-bashful zest and entire simplicity did they keep up their part of the game. It put the spectator in good humor to look at them, because there was still something of the old Arcadian life, the secure, of the antique age in their way of surrendering their lips to strangers, as if there were no evil or impurity in the world. As for the young men, they were chiefly specimens of the vulgar sediment of London life, often shabbily genteel, rowdyish, pale, wearing the unbrushed coat, unshifted linen, and unwashed faces of yesterday, as well as the haggardness of last night's jollity and the

in a gin-shop. Gathering their character from these tokens, I wondered whether there were any reasonable prospect of their fair partners returning to their rustic homes with as much innocence, whatever were its amount or quality, as they brought to Greenwich Fair, in spite of the perilous familiarity established by kissing in the ring. The manifold disorders resulting from the fair, at which a vast city was brought into intimate relations, with a comparatively rural district have at length led to its suppression. This was the very last celebration of it, and brought to a close the broad-mouthed merriment of many hundred years.

Thus my poor sketch, faint as its colors are, may acquire some little value in the reader's eyes from the consideration that no observer of the coming time will ever have an opportunity to give a better. I should find it difficult to believe, however, that the queer pastime just described, or any moral mischief to which that and other customs might pave the way, can have led to the overthrow of Greenwich Fair, for it has often seemed to me that Englishmen of station and respectability, unless of a peculiarly philanthropic turn, have neither any

faith in the feminine purity of the lower orders of their own countrywomen, nor the slightest value for it, allowing its possible existence. The distinction of ranks is so marked that the English cottage damsel holds a position somewhat analogous to that of the Negro girl in our southern states. Hence comes inevitable detriment to the moral condition of those men themselves, who forget that the humblest woman has a right and a duty to hold herself in the same sanctity as the highest. The subject cannot well be discussed in these pages, but I offer it as a serious conviction, from what I have been able to observe, that the England of today is the unscrupulous

old England of Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, Humphrey Clinker and Roderck Randham, and in our refined era, just the same as that more free-spoken epoch, this singular people has a certain contempt for any fine-strained purity, any special squeamishness, as they consider it, on the part of an ingenuous youth. They appear to look upon it as a suspicious phenomenon in the masculine character. Nevertheless, I by no means take upon me to affirm that English morality, as regards the phase here alluded to, is really at a lower point than our own. assuredly I hope so, because, making a higher pretension, or, at all events, more carefully hiding whatever may be amiss, we are either better than they, or necessarily, a great

deal worse. It impressed me that their open avowal and recognition of immoralities served to throw the disease to the surface, where it might be more effectually dealt with, and leave a sacred interior not utterly profaned, instead of turning its poison back among the inner vitalities of the character, and at the imminent risk of corrupting them all. Be that as it may, these Englishmen are certainly a franker and simpler people than ourselves, from peer to peasant, but if we can take it as compensatory on our own part, which I leave to be considered, that they owe those noble and manly, qualities to a coarser grain in their nature, and that, with a finer one in ours, we shall

ultimately acquire a marble polish of which they are unsusceptible. I believe that this may be the truth. End of Section 17. Section 18 of our old home. This is a Librevox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox.org. old home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 18, Up the Thames. The upper portion of Greenwich, where my last article left me loitering, is a cheerful, comely, old-fashioned town, the peculiarities of which, if there be any, have passed out of my remembrance. As you descend towards the Thames, the streets get meaner, and the shabby and sunken houses,

elbowing one another for frontage, bear the suns. signboards of beer shops and eating rooms, with the special promises of white bait and other delicacies in the fishing line. You observe also a frequent announcement of the gardens in the rear, although estimating the capacity of the premises by their external compass, the entire sylvan charm and shadowy seclusion of such blissful resorts must be limited within a small backyard. These places of cheap sustenance and recreation depend for support upon the innumerable pleasure parties who come from London Bridge by steamer at a fare of a few pence, and who get as enjoyable a meal for a shilling ahead as the ship hotel would afford a gentleman for a guinea.

The steamers, which are constantly smoking their pipes up and down the Thames, offer much the most agreeable mode of getting to London. At least it might be exceedingly agreeable, except for the myriad floating particles of soot from the stovepipe, and the heavy heat of midsummer sunshine on the unsheltered deck, or the chill, misty air draft of a cloudy day, and the spiteful little showers of rain that may spatter down upon you at any moment, whatever the promise of the sky, besides which there is some slight inconvenience from the inexhaustible throng of passengers who scarcely allow you standing-room, nor so much as a breath of unappropriated air, and never a chance to sit down. If these difficulties added to the possibility of getting

your pocket-picked, way little with you, the panorama along the shores of the memorable River, and the incidents and shows of passing life upon its bosom, render the trip far preferable to the brief yet tiresome shoot along the railway track. On one such voyage, a regatta of waries raced past us, and at once involved every soul on board our steamer in the tremendous excitement of the struggle. The spectacle was but a moment within our view, and presented nothing more than a few light skis in each of which sat a single roer, bare-armed and with little apparel, save a shirt and drawers, pale, anxious, with every muscle on the stretch, and plying his oars in such a fashion, that the boat

skimmed along with the aerial celerity of a swallow. I wondered at myself for so immediately catching an interest in the affair, which seemed to contain no very exalted rivalship of manhood, but, whatever the kind of battle or the prize of victory, it stirs one's sympathy immensely, and is even awful to behold the rare sight of a man thoroughly in earnest, doing his best, putting forth all there is in him, and staking his very soul, as these rowers appeared willing to do, on the issue of the contest. It was the 74th annual regatta of the Free Watermen of Greenwich, and announced itself as under the patronage of the Lord Mayor and other distinguished individuals,

at whose expense, I suppose, a prize-boat was offered to the conqueror, and some small amounts of money to the inferior competitors. The aspect of London along the Thames, below bridge, as it is called, is by no means so impressive as it ought to be, considering what peculiar advantages are offered for the display of grand and stately architecture by the passage of a river through the midst of a great city. It seems indeed as if the heart of London has been cleft open for the mere purpose of showing how rotten and drearily mean it had become.

The shore is lined with the shabbiest, blackest, and ugliest buildings that can be imagined, decayed warehouses with blind windows, and wharves that look ruinous, in so much that, had I known nothing more of the world's metropolis, I might have fancied that it had already experienced the downfall, which I have heard commercial and financial profits predict for it within the century. And the muddy tide of the Thames, reflecting nothing, and hiding a million of unclean secrets within its breast, a sort of guilty conscience, as it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of sin that constantly flow into it, is just the dismal stream to glide by such a city. The surface, to be sure, displays no lack of activity, being fretted by the passage

of a hundred steamers, and covered with a good deal of shipping, but mostly of a clumsier build than I had been accustomed to see in the mercy, a fact which I complacently attributed to the smaller number of American clippers in the Thames and the less prevalent influence of American example in refining away the broad-bottomed capacity of the old Dutch or English models. About midway between Greenwich and London Bridge,

at a rude landing place on the left bank of the river, the steamer rings its bell and makes a momentary pause in front of a large circular structure, where it may be worth our while to scramble ashore. It indicates the locality of one of those prodigious practical blunders that would supply John Bull with a topic of inexhaustible ridicule if his cousin Jonathan had committed them, but of which he himself perpetrates ten to our one in the mere wantonness of wealth that lacks better employment. The circular building covers the entrance to the Thames Tunnel, and is surmounted by a dome of glass, so as to throw daylight down into the great depths at which the passage

of the river commences. Descending a wearisome succession of staircases, we at last find ourselves still in the broad noon, standing before a closed door, on opening, which we behold the vista of an arched corridor that extends into everlasting midnight. In these days, when glass has been applied to so many new purposes, it is a pity that the architect had not thought of arching portions of his abortive tunnel with immense blocks of the lucid substance, over which the dusky Thames would have flowed like a cloud, making the sub-fluvial avenue only a little gloomier than a street of Upper London.

At present, it is illuminated at regular intervals by jets of gas, not very brilliantly, yet with luster enough to show the damp plaster of the ceiling and walls, and the massive stone pavement, the crevices of which are oozy with moisture, not from the incumbent river, but from hidden springs in the earth's deeper heart. There are two parallel corridors with a wall between, for the separate, accommodation of the double throng of foot passengers, equestrians, and vehicles of all kinds, which was expected to roll and reverberate continually through the tunnel. Only one of them has ever been opened, and its echoes are but feebly awakened by infrequent footfalls. Yet there seem to be

people who spend their lives here, and who probably blink like owls when, once or twice a year perhaps they happened to climb into the sunshine. All along the corridor, which I believe to be a mile and extent, we see stalls or shops in little alcoves, kept principally by women. They were of a ripe age, I was glad to observe, and certainly robbed England of none of its very moderate supply of feminine loveliness by their deeper than tomb-like interment. As you approach, and they are so accustomed to the dusky Giasissel, light that they read all your characteristics afar off. They assail you with hungry entreaties to buy some of their merchandise, holding forth views of the tunnel, put up in cases of Derbyshire

spar, with a magnifying glass at one end to make the vista more effective. They offer you, besides, cheap jewelry, sunny topazes, and resplendent emeralds for sixpence, and diamonds as big as the Kohi Inor, at not much heavier cost, together with a multifarious trumpery which has died out of the upper world to reappear in this Tartarian bazaar. That you may fancy yourself still in the realms of the living, they urge you to partake of cakes, candy, ginger beer, and such small refreshment, more suitable, however, for the shadowy appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy stomachs of Englishmen. The most capacious of the shops contains a diaramic exhibition of cities and scenes in the daylight world, with a dreary glimmer of gas among them all, so that they serve well enough

to represent the dim, unsatisfactory remembrances that dead people might be supposed to retain from their past lives, mixing them up with the ghastliness of their unsubstantial state. I dwell the more upon these trifles, and do my best to give them a mockery of important because if these are nothing, then all this elaborate contrivance and mighty piece of work has been wrought in vain. The Englishman has burrowed under the bed of his great river, and set ships of two or three thousand tons a rolling over his head, only to provide new sites for a few old women to sell cakes and ginger-bear. Yet the conception was a grand one, and though it has proved an absolute failure,

swallowing and immensity of toil and money, with annual returns hardly sufficient to keep the pavement free from the ooze of subterranean springs, yet it needs, I presume, only an expenditure three or four, or, for odd I know, twenty times as large, to make the enterprise brilliantly successful.

The descent is so great from the bank of the river to its surface, and the tunnel dips so profoundly under the river's bed that the approaches on either side must commence a long way off in order to render the entrance accessible to horsemen or vehicles, so that the larger part of the cost of the whole affair should have been expended on its margins. It has turned out a sublime piece of folly, and when the New Zealander of distant ages shall have moralized sufficiently among the ruins of London Bridge, He will bethink himself that somewhere thereabout was the marvelous tunnel, the very existence of which will seem to him as incredible as that of the hanging gardens of Babylon. But the Thames will long ago have broken through the massive arch, and choked up the corridors with mud and sand, and with the large stones of the structure itself,

intermixed with skeletons of drowned people, the rusty ironwork of sunken vessels, and the great many such precious and curious things as a river always contrives to hide in its bosom. The entrance will have been obliterated, and its very sight forgotten beyond the memory of twenty generations of men, and the whole neighborhood beheld a dangerous spot on account of the malaria, in so much that the traveler will make but a brief and careless inquisition for the traces of the old wonder, and will stake his credit before the pot. public in some Pacific monthly of that day, that the story of it is but a myth, though enriched

with a spiritual profundity which he will proceed to unfold. Yet it is impossible, for a Yankee at least, to see so much magnificent ingenuity thrown away, without trying to endow the unfortunate result with some kind of usefulness, though perhaps widely different from the purpose of its original conception. In former ages, the mile-long corridors with their numerous alcoves might have been utilized as a series of dungeons, the fittest of all possible receptacles for prisoners of state. Dethrowned monarchs and fallen statesmen would not have needed to remonstrate against a domicile so spacious, so deeply secluded from the world's scorn, and so admirably in accordance with their thenceforward sunless fortunes. An alcove here might have suited Sir Walter Raleigh better

than that darksome hiding-place communicating with the great chamber in the tower, pacing from end to end of which he meditated upon his history of the world. His track would here have been straight and narrow, indeed, and would therefore have lacked somewhat of the freedom that his intellect demanded, and yet the length to which his footsteps might have traveled forth and retraced themselves would partly have harmonized his physical movement with the grand curves and planetary returns of his thought through cycles of majestic periods. Having it in his mind to compose the world's history, methinks he could have asked no better retirement than such a cloister as this, insulated from all the seductions of mankind and womankind, deep beneath their mysteries and

motives, down into the heart of things, full of personal reminiscences in order to the comprehensive measurement and verification of historic records, seeing into the secrets of human nature, secrets that daylight never yet revealed to mortal, but detecting their whole scope and purport with the infallible eyes of unbroken solitude and night. And then the shades of the old mighty men might have risen from their still profounder abodes and joined him in the dim corridor, treading beside him with an antique stateliness of mean, telling him in melancholy tones, grand but always melancholy, of the greater ideas and purposes which their most renowned,

performances so imperfectly carried out that magnificent successes in the view of all posterity they were but failures to those who planned them. As Raleigh was a navigator, Noah would have explained to him the peculiarities of construction that made the ark so sea-worthy. As Raleigh was a statesman, Moses would have discussed with him the principles of laws and government. As Raleigh was a soldier, Caesar and Hannibal would have held debate in his presence with this martial student for their umpire. As Raleigh was a poet, David, or whatever most illustrious bard he might call up, would have touched his harp and made manifest all the true significance of the past by means of song and the subtle intelligences of music.

Meanwhile, I had forgotten that Sir Walter Raleigh's century knew nothing of gas-light, and that it would require a prodigious and wasteful expenditure of tallow candles to illuminate the tunnel sufficiently to discern even a ghost. On this account, however, it would be all the more suitable place of confinement for a metaphysician to keep him from bewildering mankind with his shadowy speculations, and being shut off from the external converse, the dark corridor would help him to make rich discoveries in those cavernous regions and mysterious by-pads of the intellect, which he had so long accustomed himself to explore. But how would every successive age rejoice in so secure

habitation for its reformers, and especially for each best and wisest man that happened to be then alive. He seeks to burn up our whole system of society under pretense of purifying it from abuses, away with him into the tunnel, and let him begin by setting the Thames on fire if he is able. If not precisely these, yet akin to these, were some of the fantasies that haunted me as I passed under the river, for the place is suggestive of such idle and irresponsible stuff by its own abortive character, its lack of whereabout on upper earth, or any solid foundation of realities. Could I have looked forward a few years? I might have regretted that American Enterprise had not provided a similar tunnel under the Hudson or the Potomac for the convenience of our national

government in times hardly yet gone by. It would be delightful to clap up all the enemies of our peace and union in the dark together, and there let them abide, listening to the monotonous roll of the river above their heads, or perhaps in a state of miraculously suspended animation, until, be it after months, years, or centuries, when the turmoil shall be all over the wrong washed away in blood, since that must needs be the cleansing fluid, and the right firmly rooted in the soil which that blood will have enriched, they might crawl forth again, and catch a single glimpse at their redeemed country, and feel it to be a better land than they deserve, and die. I was not sorry when the daylight reached me after a much briefer abode

in the nether regions than, I fear, would await the troublesome personages just hinted at. Emerging on the Surrey side of the Thames, I found myself and rather than, Hithe, a neighborhood not unfamiliar to the readers of old books of maritime adventure. There being a ferry hard by the mouth of the tunnel, I recrossed the river in the primitive fashion of an open boat which the conflict of wind and tide, together with the swash and swell of the passing steamers, tossed high and low rather tumultuously. This inquietude of our frail skiff, which indeed bobbed up and down like a cork, so much alarmed an old lady, the only other passenger, that the boatman assayed to comfort her.

Never fear, mother, grumbled one of them. We'll make the river as smooth as we can for you. We'll get a plane and plane down the waves. This joke may not read very brilliantly, but I make bold to record it as the only specimen that reached my ears of the old rough-water wit for which. which the Thames used to be so celebrated. Passing directly along the line of the sunken tunnel, we landed in wapping, which I should have presupposed to be the most tarry and pitchy spot on earth, swarming with old salts, and full of warm, bustling, coarse, homely, and cheerful life.

Nevertheless, it turned out to be a cold and torpid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and unpicturesque, both as to its buildings and inhabitants, the latter comprising, so far as was visible to me, not a single unmistakable sailor, though plenty of land sharks who get a half-disfonest livelihood by business connected with the sea. Ale and spirit vaults, as petty drinking establishments are styled in England, pretending to contain vast cellars full of liquor within the compass of ten feet square, above ground, were particularly abundant, together with apples, oranges, and oysters, the stalls of fishmongers and butchers, and slop shops, where blue jackets and duck trousers

swung and capered before the doors. Everything was on the poorest scale, and the place-born aspect of unredeemable decay. From this remote point of London, I strolled leisurely towards the heart of the city, while the streets, at first but thinly occupied by man or vehicle, got more and more thronged with foot passengers, carts, drays, cabs, and the all-pervading and all-accommodating omnibus. But I lack courage, and feel that I should lack perseverance, as the gentlest reader would lack patience, to undertake a descriptive stroll through London streets, more especially as there would be a volume ready for the printer before we could reach a midway resting place at Charing Cross. It will be the easier course to step aboard another passing steamer and continue our trip up the Thames.

The next notable group of objects is an assemblage of ancient walls, battlements, and turrets, out of the midst of which rises prominently one great square tower of a grayish line bordered with white stone, and having a small turret at each corner of the roof. This central structure is the white tower, and the whole circuit of ramparts and enclosed edifices constitutes what is known in English history, and still more widely and impressively in English poetry as the tower. A crowd of rivercraft are generally moored in front of it,

but if we look sharply at the right moment under the base of the rampart, we may catch a glimpse of an arched water entrance, half submerged, past which the Thames glides as indifferently as if it were the mouth of a city kennel. Nevertheless, it is the Traders' Gate, a dreary kind of triumphal passageway, now supposed to be shut up and barred forever, through which a multitude of noble and illustrious personages have entered the tower, and found it a brief resting place on their way to heaven. Passing it many times, I never observed that anybody glanced at this shadowy and ominous trap-door, save myself.

It is well that America exists, if it were only that her vagrant children may be impressed and affected by the historical monuments of England, in a degree of which the native inhabitants are evidently incapable. These matters are too familiar, too real, and too hopelessly built in. amongst and mixed up with the common objects and affairs of life to be easily susceptible of imaginative coloring in their minds, and even their poets and romancers feel it a toil, and almost a delusion, to extract poetic material out of what seems embodied poetry itself to an American. An Englishman cares nothing about the tower, which to us is a haunted castle in dreamland. that honest and excellent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P.R. James, whose mechanical ability,

one might have supposed, would nourish itself by devouring every old stone of such a structure, once assured me that he had never in his life set eyes upon the tower, though for years an historic novelist in London. Not to spend a whole summer's day upon the voyage, we will suppose ourselves to have reached London, bridge, and thence to have taken another steamer for a farther passage up the river. But here the memorable objects succeed each other so rapidly that I can spare but a single sentence even for the Great Dome, though I deem it more picturesque in that dusky atmosphere than St. Peter's in its clear blue sky. I must mention, however, since everything connected with royalty is especially interesting

to my dear countrymen, that I once saw a large and beautiful barge, splendidly gilded and ornamented, and overspread with a rich covering, lying at the pier nearest to St. Paul's Cathedral. It had the royal banner of Great Britain displayed, besides being decorated with a number of other flags, and many footmen, who are universally the grandest and gaudiest objects to be seen in England at this day, and these were regress. ones, in a bright scarlet livery bedizened with gold lace and white silk stockings, were in attendance. I know not what festive or ceremonial occasion may have drawn out this pageant. After all, it might have been merely a city spectacle appertaining to the Lord Mayor, but the sight had

its value in bringing vividly before me the grand old times when the sovereign and nobles were accustomed to use the Thames as the high street of the metropolis and join in pompous processions upon it, whereas the deswitude of such customs nowadays has caused the whole show of river life to consist in a multitude of smoke-begrimed steamers. An analogous change has taken place in the streets, where cabs and the omnibus have crowded out a rich variety of vehicles, and thus life gets more monotonous in hue from age to age, and appears to seize every opportunity to strip off a bit of its gold lace among the wealthier classes, and to make itself decent in the lower ones.

Yonder is white friars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now wearing as decorous a face as any other portion of London, and adjoining it the avenues and brick squares of the the temple, with that historic garden close upon the riverside, and still rich in shrubbery and flowers, where the partisans of York and Lancaster plucked the fatal roses, and scattered their pale and bloody petals over so many English battlefields. Hard by we see the long white front or rear of Somerset House, and farther on rise the two new houses of Parliament with a huge unfinished tower already hiding its imperfect summit in the smoky canopy, the whole vast and cumbrous edifice,

a specimen of the best that modern architecture can affect, elaborately imitating the masterpieces of those simple ages, when men builded better than they knew. Close by it we have a glimpse of the roof and upper towers of the Holy Abbey, while that gray ancestral pile on the opposite side of the River is Lambeth Palace, a venerable group of halls and turrets, chiefly built of brick, but with at least one large tower of stone. In our course we have passed beneath half a dozen bridges, and, emerging out of the black heart of London, shall soon reach a cleanly suburb, where Old Father Thames, if I remember, begins to put on an aspect of unpolluted innocence. And now we look back upon the mass of in New York.

innumerable roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers, columns, and the great crowning dome. Look back, in short, upon that mystery of the world's proudest city, amid which a man so longs and loves to be, not perhaps because it contains much that is positively admirable and enjoyable, but because, at all events, the world has nothing better. The cream of external life is there. and whatever merely intellectual or material good we failed to find perfect in london we may as well content ourselves to seek that unattainable thing no farther on this earth The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, and old town endowed with a prodigious number of pot-houses, and some famous gardens, called the Cremorne, for public amusement.

The most noticeable thing, however, is Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Greenwich, was founded, I believe, by Charles II, whose bronze statue, in the guise of an old Roman, stands in the center of the quadrangle, and appropriated as a home for aged and infirm soldiers of the British Army. The edifices are of three stories with windows in the high roofs, and are built of dark, somber brick, with stone edgings and facings. The effect is by no means that of grandeur, which is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of Greenwich Hospital, but a quiet and venerable neatness. At each extremity of the street front there is a spacious and hospitably open gateway, lounging about which I saw some gray veterans.

in long scarlet coats of an antique fashion, and the cocked hats of a century ago, or occasionally a modern foraging cap. Almost all of them moved with a rheumatic gate, two or three stumped on wooden legs, and here and there an arm was missing. Inquiring of one of these fragmentary heroes, whether a stranger could be admitted to see the establishment, he replied most cordially, "'Oh, yes, sir, anywhere. Walk in and go where you please, upstairs or anywhere.' So I entered, and passing along the inner side of the quadrangle,

came to the door of the chapel which forms a part of the contiguity of edifices next the street. Here another pensioner, an old warrior of exceedingly peaceable and Christian demeanor, touched his three-cornered hat and asked if I wished to see the interior, to which I assenting, he unlocked the door and we went in. The chapel consists of a great hall with a vaulted roof, and over the altar is a large painting in fresco, the subject of which I did not trouble myself to make out. More appropriate adornments of the place,

dedicated as well to martial reminiscences as religious worship, are the long ranges of dusty and tattered banners that hang from their staves, around the ceiling of the chapel. They are trophies of battles fought and won in every quarter of the world, comprising the captured flags of all the nations with whom the British lion has waged war since James II's time. French, Dutch, East Indian, Prussian, Russian, Chinese, and American, collected together in this consecrated spot, not to symbolize that there shall be no more discord upon earth, but drooping over the aisle in sullen, though peaceable

humiliation. Yes, I said American, among the rest, for the good old pensioner mistook me for an Englishman, and failed not to point out, and, me thought, with an especial emphasis of triumph, some flags that had been taken at Bladensburg and Washington. I fancied indeed that they hung a little higher and drooped a little lower than any of their companions in disgrace. It is a comfort, however, that their proud devices are already indistinguishable, or nearly so, owing to dust and tatters, and the kind offices of the moths, that they will soon rot from the banner staves and be swept out in unrecognized fragments from the chapel door. End of Section 18.

Section 19 of Our Old Home This is a Libervox recording All Libravox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer Please visit Libravox.org Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne Section 19 up the Thames It is a good method of teaching a man

How imperfectly cosmopolitan he is To show him his country's flag Occupy in a position of dishonor in a foreign land. But, in truth, the whole system of a people, crowing over its military triumphs, had far better be dispensed with, both on account of the ill blood that it helps to keep fermenting among the nations, and because it operates as an accumulative inducement to future generations, to aim at a kind of glory, the gain of which has generally proved more ruinous than its loss. I heartily wish that every trophy of victory might crumble away,

and that every reminiscence or tradition of a hero from the beginning of the world to this day could pass out of all men's memories at once and forever. I might feel very differently to be sure if we northerners had anything especially valuable to lose by the fading of those illuminated names. I gave the pensioner, but I'm afraid there might have been a little affectation in it,

a magnificent gurdon of all the silver I had in my pocket, to requite him for having unintentionally stirred up my patriotic susceptibilities. He was a meek-looking, kindly old man, with a humble freedom and affability of manner that made it pleasant to converse with him. Old soldiers, I know not why, seemed to be more accostable than old sailors. One is apt to hear a growl beneath the smoothest courtesy of the latter.

The mild veteran, with his peaceful voice and gentle, reverent aspect, told me that he had fought at a cannon all through the Battle of Waterloo, and escaped unhurt. He had now been in the hospital four or five years, and was married, but necessarily underwent a separation from his wife, who lived outside of the gates. To my inquiry whether his fellow pensioners were comfortable and happy, he answered with great alacrity, Oh, yes, sir, qualifying his evidence, after a moment's consideration, by saying in an undertone, There are some people, Your Honor knows, who could not be comfortable anywhere. I did know it, and fear that the system of Chelsea Hospital allows too little of that wholesome care and

regulation of their own occupations and interests, which might assuage the sting of life to those naturally uncomfortable individuals by giving them something external to think about. But my old friend here was happy in the hospital, and by this time very likely is happy in heaven, in spite of the bloodshed that he may have caused by touching off a cannon at Waterloo. Crossing Battersea Bridge in the neighborhood of Chelsea, I remember seeing a distant gleam of the crystal palace, glimmering afar in the afternoon sunshine like an imaginary structure, an air castle by chance descended upon earth, and resting there one instant before it vanished, as we sometimes see a soap-bubble touch unharmed on the carpet, a thing of only momentary

visibility and no substance, destined to be overburdened and crushed down by the first cloud-shadow that might fall upon that spot. Even as I looked it disappeared. Shall I attempt a picture of this exhalation of modern ingenuity, or what else shall I try to paint? Everything in London and its vicinity has been depicted innumerable times, but never once translated into intelligible images. It is an old, old story never yet told, nor to be told. While writing these reminiscences, I am continually impressed with the futility of the effort to give any creative truth to ink sketch, so that it might produce such pictures in the reader's mind, as would cause the original scenes to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have other writers often been more successful in representing definite objects prophetically to my own mind.

In truth, I believe that the chief delight and advantage of this kind of literature is not for any real information that it supplies to untravelled people, but for reviving the recollections and reawakening the emotions of persons already acquainted with the scenes described. Thus I found an exquisite pleasure the other day in reading Mr. Tuckerman's Month in England, fine example of the way in which a refined and cultivated American looks at the old country, the things that he naturally seeks there, and the modes of feeling and reflection which they excite. Correct outlines avail little or nothing, though truth of coloring may be somewhat more efficacious. Impressions, however, states of mind produced by interesting and remarkable objects, These, if truthfully and vividly recorded, may work a genuine effect, and though but the result of what we see, go further towards representing the actual scene than any direct effort to paint it. Give the emotions that cluster about it, and, without being able to analyze the spell by which it is summoned up, you get something like a simulaker of the object in the midst of them.

From some of the above reflections I draw the comfortable inference that the longer and better known a thing may be, so much the more eligible it is as the subject of a descriptive sketch. On a Sunday afternoon I passed through a side entrance in the time-blackened wall of a place of worship, and found myself among a congregation assembled in one of the transepts and the immediately contiguous portion of the nave. It was a vast old edifice, spacious enough within the extent covered by its pillared roof and overspread by its stone pavement, to accommodate the whole of church-going London, and with a far wider and loftier concave than any human power of lungs could fill with audible prayer. Oaken benches were arranged in the transept, on one of which I seated myself and joined, as well as I knew how, in the sacred business that was going forward. But when it came to the sermon, the voice of the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts, and both seemed impertinent at such a

time and place, where he and all of us were bodily included within a sublime act of religion, which could be seen above and around us, and felt beneath our feet. The structure itself was the worship of the devout men of long ago, miraculously preserved in stone, without losing an atom of its fragrance and fervor. It was a kind of anthem strain that they had sung and poured out of the organ in centuries gone by, and being so grand and sweet, the divine benevolence had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof of auditors unborn. I therefore came to the conclusion that, individual case, it would be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander about the edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts on the evidently uninspired mortal who was venturing,

and felt it no venture at all, to speak here above his breath. The interior of Westminster Abbey, for the reader recognized it no doubt the moment we entered, is built of rich brown stone, and the whole of it, The lofty roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the pointed arches, appears to be in consummate repair. At all points where decay has laid its finger, the structure is clamped with iron or otherwise carefully protected, and being thus watched over, whether as a place of ancient sanctity, a noble specimen of Gothic art, or an object of national interest and pride, it may reasonably be expected to survive for as many ages as have passed over it already. It was sweet to feel its venerable quietude,

its long-enduring peace, and yet to observe how kindly and even cheerfully it received the sunshine of today, which fell from the great windows into the fretted aisles and arches that laid aside somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome it. Sunshine always seems friendly to old abbeys, churches, and castles, kissing them, as it were, with a more affectionate, though still reverential familiarity, than it accords to edifices of later date. A square of golden light lay on the sombre pavement of the nave afar off, falling through the grand western entrance, and folding leaves of which were wide open, and afforded glimpses of people passing to and fro in the outer world, while we sat dimly enveloped in the

solemnity of antique devotion. In the south transept, separated from us by the full breadth of the minster, there were painted glass windows of which the uppermost appeared to be a great orb of many-colored radiance, being, indeed, a cluster of saints and angels whose glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole emanating from a cross in the midst. These windows are modern, but combined softness with wonderful brilliancy of effect. Through the pillars and arches, I saw that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were almost wholly encrusted with marble,

now grown yellow with time, no blank unlettered slabs, but memorials of such men as their respective generations deemed wisest and bravest. Some of them were commemorated merely by inscriptions on mural tablets, others by sculptured bar reliefs, Others, once famous, but now forgotten generals or admirals these, by ponderous tombs that

aspired towards the roof of the aisle, or partly curtained the immense arch of a window. These mountains of marble were peopled with the sisterhood of allegory, winged trumpeters, and classic figures in full-bottomed wigs, but it was strange to observe how the old Abbey melted all such absurdities into the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous. Methinks it is the test of Gothic sublimity to overpower the ridiculous without deigning to hide it, and these grotesque monuments of the last century answer a similar purpose with the grinning faces which the old architects scattered among their most solemn conceptions.

From these distant wanderings, it was my first visit to Westminster Abbey, and I would gladly have taken it all in at a glance. My eyes came back and began to investigate what was immediately about me in the transept. Close at my elbow was the pedestal of Canning's statue. Next beyond it was a massive tomb, on the spacious tablet of which reposed the full length figures of a marble, Lord, and Lady, whom an inscription announced to be the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, the historic Duke of Charles I's time, and the fantastic Duchess traditionally remembered by her poems and plays. She was of a family, as the record on her tomb proudly informed us, of which all the brothers had been valiant and all the sisters virtuous.

statue of Sir John Malcolm, the new marble as white as snow, held the next place, and nearby was a mural monument and a bust of Sir Peter Warren. The round visage of this old British admiral has a certain interest for a New Englander, because it was by no merit of his own, though he took care to assume it as such, but by the valor and warlike enterprise of our colonial forefathers, especially the stout men of Massachusetts, that he won rank and renown, and a tomb in Westminster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, a huge mass of marble done into the guise of a judicial gown and wig, with a stern face in the midst of the ladder, sat on the other side of the transept, and on the pedestal beside him was a figure of justice holding forth instead of the customary grocer's scales, an actual pair of brass steel yards. It is an ancient and classic instrument, undoubtedly, but I had supposed that Portia,

when Shylock's pound of flesh was to be weighed, was the only judge that ever really called for it in a court of justice. Pitt and Fox were in the same distinguished company, and John Kimball, in Roman costume, stood not far off, but strangely, shorn of the dignity that is said to have enveloped him like a mantle in his lifetime. Perhaps the evanescent majesty of the stage is incompatible with the long endurance of marble and the solemn reality of the tomb, though, on the other hand, almost every illustrious personage here represented has been invested with more or less of stage trickery by his sculptor. In truth, the artist, unless there be a divine efficacy in his touch, making evident a heretofore hidden dignity in the actual form, feels it, and imperious law to remove his subject as far from the aspect of ordinary life as may be possible without sacrificing every trace of resemblance.

The absurd effect of the contrary course is very remarkable in the statue of Mr. Willisle. Wilberforce, whose actual self, save for the lack of color, I seemed to behold, seated just across the aisle. This excellent man appears to have sunk himself into a sitting posture, with a thin leg crossed over his knee, a book in one hand, and a finger of the other under his chin, I believe, or applied to the side of his nose, or to some equally familiar purpose, while his exceedingly homely and wrinkled face, face, held a little on one side, twinkles at you with the shrewdest complacency, as if you were looking right into your eyes, and twigged something there which you had half a mind to conceal from him. He keeps this look so pertinaciously that you feel it to be insufferably impertinent, and bethink yourself what common ground there may be between yourself and a stone image, enabling you to resent it. I have no doubt that the statue of the status of the statuses of the

statue is as like Mr. Wilberforce as one P to another, and you might fancy that at some ordinary moment, when he least expected it, and before he had time to smooth away his knowing complication of wrinkles, he had seen the Gorgon's head, and whitened into marble, not only his personal self, but his coat and small clothes, down to a button in the minutest crease of the cloth. The ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing the age-long duration of marble upon small characteristic individualities such as might come within the province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should give permanence to the figure of a great man in his mood of broad and grand composure, which would obliterate all mean peculiarities, for if the original were unaccustomed

to such a mood, or if his features were incapable of assuming the guise, it seems questionable whether he could really have been entitled to a marble immortality. In point of fact, however, the English face and form are seldom statuesque, however illustrious the individual. It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this mood of half-jaw-coast criticism in describing my first visit to Westminster Abbey, a spot which I had dreamed about more reverentially from my childhood upward than any other in the world, and which I then beheld, and now look back upon, with profound gratitude to the men who built it, and a kindly interest, I may add, in the humblest personage that has contributed his little all to its impressiveness, by depositing his dust or his

memory there. But it is a characteristic of this grand edifice that it permits you to smile as freely under the roof of its central nave as if you stood beneath the yet grander canopy of heaven. Break into laughter if you feel inclined, provided the vergers do not hear it echoing among the arches. In an ordinary church you would keep your countenance for fear of disturbing the sanctities or proprieties of the place, but you need leave no honest and decorous portion of your human nature outside of these benign and truly hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness will take care of itself. Thus it does no harm to the general impression when you come to be sensible that many of the monuments are ridiculous and commemorate a mob of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves,

and few of whom ever deserved any better boon from posterity. You acknowledge the force of Sir Godfrey Nellar's objection to being buried in Westminster Abbey, because they do bury fools there. Nevertheless, these grotesque carvings of marble that break out in dingy white blotches on the old freestone of the interior walls, have come there by as natural a process as might cause mosses and ivy. to cluster about the external edifice, for they are the historical and biographical record of each successive age, written with its own hand, and all the truer for the inevitable mistakes, and nonetheless solemn for the occasional absurdity.

Though you entered the abbey expecting to see the tombs only of the illustrious, you are content at last to read many names, both in literature and history, that have now lost the reverence of mankind, if indeed they ever really possessed it. Let these men rest in peace. Even if you miss a name or two that you hoped to find there, they may well be spared. It matters little, a few more or less, or whether Westminster Abbey contains or lacks any one man's grave, so long as the centuries, each with the crowd of personages that it deemed members, have chosen it as their place of honored sepulture, and laid themselves down under its pavement. The inscriptions and devices on the walls are rich with evidences of the fluctuating tastes, fashions, manners, opinions, prejudices, follies, wisdoms of the past,

and thus they combine into a more truthful memorial of their dead times than any individual epitaph maker ever meant to write. When the services were over, many of the audience seemed inclined to linger in the nave, or wander away among the mysterious aisles. For there is nothing in this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which always invites you deeper and deeper into its heart, both by vast revelations and shadowy concealments. Through the open-work screen that divides the nave from the chancel and choir,

We could discern the gleam of a marvelous window, but were debarred from entrance into that more sacred precinct of the abbey by the vergers. These vigilant officials, doing their duty all the more strenuously because no fees could be exacted from Sunday visitors, flourished their staves, and drove us towards the grand entrance like a flock of sheep. Lingering through one of the aisles, I happened to look down, and found my own. foot upon a stone inscribed with this familiar exclamation, O rare Ben Johnson! And I remembered the story of stout old Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright, not, I presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on his part, to lie down in the dust like other men, but because standing-room was all that could be reasonably be demanded for

a poet among the slumberest notabilities of his age. It made me weary to think of it. Such a prodigious length of time to keep one's feet. Apart from the honor of the thing, it would certainly have been far better for Ben to stretch himself at ease in some country churchyard. To this day, however, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy

mixed up with the admiration which the higher classes of English society profess for their literary men. Another day, in truth, many other days, I sought out Poet's Corner and found a signboard and a pointed finger directing the visitor to it on the corner house of a little lane leading towards the rear of the abbey. The entrance is at the southeastern end of the south transept, and it is used on ordinary occasions as the only free mode of access to the building. It is no spacious arch, but a small, lowly door, passing through which, and pushing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the abbey, with the busts of poets gazing at you from the otherwise bare stonework of the walls. Great poets, too, for Ben Johnson is right behind the door, and Spencer's tablet is next, and butlers on the same side of the transept, and Milton's, whose bust you know at once by its resemblance to one of his portraits,

though older, more wrinkled, and sadder than that, is close by, and a profile medallion of grey beneath it. A window high aloft sheds down a dusky daylight on these and many other sculptured marbles, now as yellow as old parchment, that cover the three walls of the nook up to an elevation of about twenty feet above the pavement. It seemed to me to me, that I had always been familiar with the spot, enjoying a humble intimacy and how much of my life had else been a dreary solitude. With many of its inhabitants, I could not feel myself a stranger there. It was delightful to be among them. There was a genial awe, mingled with a sense of kind and friendly presences about me, and I was glad, moreover, at finding so many of them there together

in fit companionship, mutually recognized, and duly honored, all reconciled now, whatever distant generations, whatever personal hostility or other miserable impediment had divided them far asunder while they lived. I have never felt a similar interest in any other tombstones, nor have I ever been deeply moved by the imaginary presence of other famous dead people. A poet's ghost is the only one that survives for his fellow mortals after his bones are in the dust, and be not ghostly, but cherishing many hearts with his own warmth in the chillest atmosphere of life. What other fame is worth aspiring for? Or, let me speak it more boldly, what other long-enduring fame can exist. We neither remember nor care anything for the past, except as the poet

has made it intelligibly noble and sublime to our comprehension. The shade of the shade of the shades of the mighty have no substance, they flit ineffectually about the darkened stage where they performed their momentary parts, save when the poet has thrown his own creative soul into them, and imparted a more vivid life than ever they were able to manifest to mankind while they dwelt in the body. And therefore, though he cunningly disguises himself in their armor, their robes of state or kingly purple, it is not the statesman, the warrior or the monarch that survives, but the despised poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and to whom they owe all that they now are or have, a name. In the foregoing paragraph,

I seem to have been betrayed into a flight above or beyond the customary level that best agrees with me, but it represents fairly enough the emotions with which I passed from poet's corner into the chapels, which contain the sepulchres of kings and great people. They are magnificent even now, and must have been inconceivably so when the marble slabs and pillars wore their new polish, and the statues retained the brilliant colors with which they were originally painted, and the shrines their rich gilding, of which the sunlight still shows a glimmer or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks tarnished with antique dust. Yet this recondite portion of the Abbey presents few memorials of personages whom we care to remember.

The shrine of Edward the Confessor has a certain interest, because it was so long held in religious reverence, and because the very dust that settled upon it was formerly worth gold. The helmet and war-saddle of Henry V, worn at Agincourt, and now suspended above his tomb, are memorable objects, but more for Shakespeare's sake, than the victor's own. Rank has been the general passport to admission here. Noble and regal dust is as cheap as dirt under the pavement. I am glad to recollect indeed,

and it is too characteristic of the right English spirit not to be mentioned, one or two gigantic statues of great mechanicians who contributed largely to the material welfare of England, sitting familiarly in their marble chairs among forgotten kings and queens. Otherwise, the quaintness of the earlier monuments, and the antique beauty of some of them,

are what chiefly gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison is buried among the men of rank. Not on the plea of his literary fame, however, but because he was connected with nobility by marriage, and has been a secretary of state. His gravestone is inscribed with a resounding verse from Tickle's lines to his memory, the only lines by which Tickle himself is now remembered, and which, as I discovered

a little while ago, he mainly filched from an obscure versifier of somewhat earlier date. Returning to Poets' Corner, I look again at the walls and wondered how the requisite hospitality can be shown to poets of our own and the succeeding ages. There is hardly a foot of space left, although room has lately been found for a bust of Sothe and a full-length statue of Campbell. At best, only a little portion of the Abbey is dedicated to poets, literary men, musical composers, and others of the gentle artist breed. And even into that small nook of sanctity, men of other pursuits have thought it decent to intrude themselves. Methinks the tuneful throng, being at home here, should recollect how they were

were treated in their lifetime, and turned the cold shoulder, looking askance at nobles and official personages, however worthy of honorable intercourse elsewhere. Yet it shows aptly and truly enough what portion of the world's regard and honor has heretofore been awarded to literary eminence in comparison with other modes of greatness, this dimly lighted corner, nor even that quietly to themselves, in that vast minster, the walls of which are sheathed and hidden under marble that has been wasted upon the illustrious obscure. Nevertheless, it may not be worthwhile to quarrel with the world on this account, for, to confess the very truth, their own little nook contains more than one poet whose

memory is kept alive by his monument, instead of imbueing the senseless stone with the spiritual immortality, men of whom you do not ask, where is he, but why is he here? I estimate that all the literary people who really make an essential part of one's inner life, including the period since English literature first existed, might have ample elbow room to sit down and quaff their drafts of castile round Chaucer's broad, horizontal tombstone. These divinest poet's consequence the spot, and throw a reflected glory over the humblest of their companions. And as for the latter, it is to be hoped that they may have long outgrown the characteristic jealousies and morbid sensibilities of their craft, and have found out the little value,

probably not amounting to sixpence in immortal currency, of the posthumous renown which they once aspired to win. It would be a poor compliment to a dead poet to fancy him leaning out of the sky, and snuffing up the impure breath of earthly praise. Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion that those who have bequeathed us the inheritance of an undying song would fain be conscious of its endless reverberations in the hearts of mankind, and would delight among sublimer enjoyments to see their names emblazoned in such a treasure-place of great memories

as Westminster Abbey. There are some men, at all events, true and tender poets moreover, and fully deserving of the honor, whose spirits I feel certain would linger a little while about poets' corner for the sake of witnessing their own apotheosis among their kindred. They have had a strong natural yearning, not so much for applause as sympathy, which the cold fortune of their lifetime did but scantily supply, so that this unsatisfied appetite may make itself felt upon sensibilities at once so delicate and retentive, even a step or two beyond the grave. Lee Hunt, for example, would be pleased even now, if he could learn that his bust had been reposited in the midst of the old poets whom he admired and loved,

though there is hardly a man among the authors of today and yesterday, whom the judgment of Englishmen would be able to be. less likely to place there. He deserves it, however, if not for his verse, the value of which I do not estimate, never having been able to read it, yet for his delightful prose, his unmeasured poetry, the inscrutable happiness of his touch, working soft miracles by a life process like the growth of grass and flowers. As with all such gentle writers, his page sometimes betrayed a vestige of affectation, but the next moment a rich natural luxuriance overgrew and buried it out of sight. I knew him a little, and, since Heaven be praised, few English celebrities whom I chance to meet have enfranchised my pen by their decease, and as I assume no liberties with living men, I will

conclude this rambling article by sketching my first interview with Lee Hunt. He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very plain and shabby little house in a contiguous range of others like it, with no prospect but that of an ugly village street, and certainly nothing to gratify his craving for a tasteful environment inside or out. A slatternly maid-servant opened the door for us, and he himself stood in the entry, a beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress-coat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the gentlest and most naturally courteous manner.

He usured us into his little study, or parlor, or both, a very forlorn room, with poor paper hangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I remember, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touched distinctly upon these external blemishes, and this nudity of adornment, not that they would be worth mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable persons, but because Lee Hunt was born with such a faculty of enjoying all beautiful things, that it seemed as if fortune did him as much wrong in not supplying them as in withholding a sufficiency of vital breath from ordinary men. All kinds of mild magnificence, tempered by his taste, would have become him well, but he had not the grim dignity that assumes nakedness as the better robe.

I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In truth, I never saw a finer countenance, either as to the mould of features or the expression, nor any that showed the play of feeling so perfectly without the slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like a child's face in this respect. At my first glimpse of him, when he met us in the entry, I discerned, that he was old, his long hair being white and his wrinkles many. It was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not all expected to see, in spite of dates, because his books talk to the reader with a tender vivacity of youth. But when he began to speak, and as he grew

more earnest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his age. Sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened through the gleam, which his sprightly thoughts diffused about his face, but then another flash of youth came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never witnessed such a wonderfully elusive transformation before or since, and, to this day, trusting only to my recollection, I should find it difficult to decide which was his genuine and stable predicament, youth or age, I have met no Englishman whose manners seem to me so agreeable, soft rather than polished, wholly unconventional, the natural growth of a kindly and sensitive disposition without any

reference to rule or else obedient to some rule so subtle that the nicest observer could not detect the application of it. His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delightful voice accompanied their visible language like music. He appeared to be exceedingly appreciative of whatever was passing among those who surrounded him, and especially of the vicissitudes in the consciousness of the person to whom he happened to be addressing himself at the moment. I felt that no effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and delicate, and to say the truth, it a little confused me to

discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend to a similar reservoir within himself. on matters of feeling and within a certain depth you might spare yourself the trouble of utterance because he already knew what you wanted to say and perhaps a little more than you would have spoken his figure was full of gentle movement though somehow without disturbing its quietude and as he talked he kept folding his hands nervously and betokened in many ways a fine and immediate sensibility quick to feel pleasure or pain, though scarcely capable, I should imagine, of a passionate experience in either direction. There was not an English trait in him from head to foot, morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef, ale or stout, brandy or port wine, entered not at all into his composition. In his earlier life he appears to have given evidences of courage and sturdy principle,

and of a tendency to fling himself into the rough struggle of humanity on the liberal side. It would be taking too much upon myself to affirm that this was merely a projection of his fancy world into the actual, that he never could have hit a downright blow, and was altogether an unsuitable person to receive one. I beheld him not in his armor, but in his peacefulest robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion merely from what I saw, it would have occurred to me that his main deficiency was a lack of grit. Though anything but a timid man, the combative and defensive elements were not prominently developed in his character, and could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the fineness of his nature generally, that the English appreciated him no better,

and left this sweet and delicate poet poor, and with scanty laurels in his declining age. It was not, I think, from his American blood that Lee Hunt derived either his amiability or his peaceful inclinations. At least I do not see how weak and reasonably claim the former quality as a national characteristic, though the latter might have been fairly inherited from his ancestors on the mother's side, who were Pennsylvania Quakers. but the kind of excellence that distinguished him, his fineness, subtlety, and grace, was that which the richest cultivation has heretofore tended to develop in the happier examples of American genius, and which, though I say it a little reluctantly, is perhaps what our future intellectual advancement may make general among us.

His person at all events was thoroughly American, and of the best type, as were likewise his manners, for we are the best as well as the worst-mannered people in the world. Lee Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to say, he desired sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, and perhaps profited by it as much in the richer depth of coloring that it imparted to his ideas. In response to all that we ventured to express about his writings, and for my part I went quite to the extent of my conscience,

which was a long way, and there left the matter to a lady and a young girl, who happily were with me. His face shone, and he manifested great delight, with a perfect and yet delicate frankness for which I loved him. He could not tell us, he said, the happiness that such appreciation gave him. It always took him by surprise, he remarked, for, perhaps because he cleaned his own boots, and performed other little ordinary offices for himself. He never had been conscious of anything wonderful in his own person. And then he smiled, making himself, and all the poor little parlor about him beautiful thereby. It is usually the hardest thing in the world to praise a man to his face,

but Lee Hunt received the incense with such gracious satisfaction, feeling it to be sympathy, not vulgar praise, that the only difficulty was to keep the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit of permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up while we were talking, the rain poured, the lightning flashed, and the thunder broke, but I hope, and have great pleasure in believing, that it was a sunny hour for Lee Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice that he most favorably inclined his ear, but to those of my companions. women are the fit ministers at such a shrine.

He must have suffered keenly in his lifetime, and enjoyed keenly keeping his emotions so much upon the surface as he seemed to do, and convenient for everybody to play upon. Being of a cheerful temperament, happiness had probably the upper hand. His was a light, mildly joyous nature, gentle, graceful, yet seldom attaining to that deepest grace, which results from power. For beauty like a woman, its human representative, dally's with a gentle, but yields its consummate favor only to the strong. I imagine that Lee Hunt may have been more beautiful when I met him, both in person and character, than his earlier days. As a young man, I could conceive of his being finical in certain moods, but not now, when the gravity of age

shed a venerable grace about him. I rejoiced to hear him say that he was favored with most confident in cheering anticipations in respect to a future life, and there were abundant proofs throughout our interview of an unrepining spirit, resignation, quiet relinquishment of the worldly benefits that were denied him, thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward into the dusk, all of which gave a reverential cast to the feeling with which we parted from him. I wish that he could have had one full draft of prosperity before he died. As a matter of artistic propriety, it would have been delightful to see him inhabiting a beautiful

house of his own, in an Italian climate, with all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute elegances about him, and a succession of tender and lovely women to praise his sweet poetry from morning to night. I hardly know whether it is my fault, or the effect of weakness in Lee Hunt's character, that I should be sensible of a regret of this nature, when, at the same time, I sincerely believe that he has found an infinity of better things in the world whither he has gone. At our leave-taking, he grasped me warmly by both hands, and seemed as much interested in our whole party as if he had known us for years. All this was genuine feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his heart, which was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and rare varieties, not acorns,

but a true heart nevertheless. Several years afterwards I met him for the last time at a London dinner party, looking sadly broken down by infirmities, and my final recollection of the beautiful old man presents him arm in arm with, nay, if I mistake not, partly embraced and supported by another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel name, since he has a weekday for one of his personal occasions, I will venture to speak. It was Barry Cornwall, whose kind introduction had first made me known to Lee Hunt. End of Section 19. Section 20 of Our Old Home.

This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 20, Outside Glimpses of English Poverty. Becoming an inhabitant of a great English town, I often turned aside from the prosperous thoroughfell. where the edifices, the shops, and the bustling crowd differed not so much from scenes with which I was familiar in my own country,

and went designedly astray among precincts that reminded me of some of Dickens' grimyest pages. There I caught glimpses of a people and a mode of life that were comparatively new to my observation, a sort of somber, phantasmagoric spectacle, exceedingly undelightful to behold, yet involving a singular interest and even fascination in its ugliness. Dirt, one would fancy, is plenty enough all over the world, being the symbolic accompaniment of the foul incrustation which began to settle over and bedim all earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple, ever since which hapless epoch her daughters have chiefly been engaged in a desperate and unavailing struggle,

to get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty-stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its own limits and is inconceivable everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the great advantage that the brightness and dryness of our atmosphere keep everything clean that the sun shines upon, converting the larger portion of our impurities into transitory dust, which the next wind can sweep away, in contrast with a damp adhesive grime that incorporates itself with all surfaces, unless continually and painfully cleansed, in the chill moisture of the English air. Then the all-pervading smoke of the city, abundantly intermingled with the sable snowflakes of bituminous coal hovering overhead, descending, and alighting on pavements and rich architectural fronts, on the snowy muslin of the ladies, and the gentleman's starched collars and shirt-bosoms, invests even the better streets in half-mourning garb. It is beyond the resources of wealth to keep the smut away from its premises or its own finger's ends. And as for poverty, it surrends itself to the dark influence without a struggle.

Along with disastrous circumstances, pinching, need, adversity so lengthened out as to constitute the rule of life, there comes a certain chill depression of the spirits, which seems especially to shudder at cold water. In view of so wretched a state of things, we accept the ancient deluge not merely as an insulated phenomenon, but as a periodical necessity, and acknowledge that nothing less than such a general washing day could suffice to cleanse the slovenly old world of its moral and material dirt. Gin shops, or what the English call spirit vaults, are numerous in the vicinity of these poor streets and are set off with the magnificence of gilded doorposts, tarnished by contact with the unclean customers who haunt there. Ragged children come thither with old shaving mugs,

or broken-nosed teapots, or ally such makeshift receptacle, to get a little poison or madness for their parents, who deserve no better requital at their hands for having engendered them. Inconceivably sluttish women enter at noonday and stand at the counter among boon companions of both sexes, stirring up misery and jollity in a bumper together, and quaffing off the mixture with a relish. As for the men, they lounge there continually, drinking till they are drunken, drinking as long as they have a half-penny left, and then, as it seemed to me, waiting for a six-penny miracle to be wrought in the their pockets so as to enable them to be drunken again. Most of these establishments have a significant advertisement of beds, doubtless for the accommodation of their customers, in the interval between one intoxication and the next. I never could find it in my heart, however, utterly to condemn these sad revelers, and should certainly wait till I had some better consolation to offer before depriving them of their dram of gin, though death itself

were in the glass, for, methought their poor souls needed such fiery stimulant to lift them a little way out of the smothering squalor of both their outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and suggestions, even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual existence that limited their present misery. The temperance reformers unquestionably derive their commission from the divine beneficence, but have never been taken fully into its councils. All may not be lost, though those good men fail. Pawnbroker's establishments, distinguished by the mystic symbol of the three golden balls,

were conveniently accessible, though what personal property these wretched people could possess, capable of being estimated in silver or copper, so as to afford a basis for a loan, was a problem that still perplexed. as me. Old clothesmen, likewise, dwelt hard by, and hung out ancient garments to dangle in the wind. There were butcher's shops, too, of a class adapted to the neighborhood, presenting no such generously fattened carcasses as Englishmen loved to gaze at in the market. No stupendous halves

of mighty beaves, no dead hogs or mutton's ornamented with carved by reliefs of fat on their ribs and shoulders in a peculiarly British style of art. Not these, but bits and gobbets of lean meat, selvages snipped off from steaks, tough and stringy morsels, bare bones smitten away from joints by the cleaver, tripe, liver, bullock's feats, or whatever else was cheapest and divisible into the smallest lots. I am afraid that even such delicacies came to many of their tables hardly oftener than Christmas. In the windows of other little shops, you saw half a dozen wizened herrings, some eggs in a basket, looking so dingily antique that your imagination smelt them, fly speckled biscuits, segments of a hungry cheese, pipes and papers of tobacco. Now and then a sturdy

milkwoman passed by with a wooden yoke over her shoulders, supporting a pail on either side, filled with a whitish fluid, the composition of which was water and chalk, and the milk of a sickly cow, who gave the best she had, poor thing, but could scarcely make it rich or wholesome, spending her life in some close city nook, and pasturing on strange food. I have seen once or twice a donkey coming into one of these streets with panneers full of vegetables, and departing with a return cargo of what looked like rubbish and street. sweepings. No other commerce seemed to exist except possibly a girl might offer you a pair of stockings, or a worked collar, or a man whisper something mysterious about wonderfully cheap cigars.

And yet I remember seeing female hucksters in those regions, with their wares on the edge of the sidewalk and their own seats right in the carriageway, pretending to sell half-decade oranges and apples, toffee, Ormskirk cakes, combs and cheap jewelry, the coarsest kind of crockery and little plates of oysters, knitting patiently all day long, and removing their undiminished stock in trade at nightfall. All indispensable importations from other quarters of the town were on a remarkably diminutive scale. For example, the wealthier inhabitants purchased their coal by the wheelbarrow load, and the poorer ones by the peck measure. It was a curious and melancholy spectacle when an overladen coal cart happened to pass through the street and drop a handful or two of its

burden in the mud to see a half a dozen women and children scrambling for the treasure trove, like a flock of hens and chickens gobbling up some spilt corn. In this connection I may as well mention a commodity of boiled snails, for such they appear. to me, though probably a marine production, which used to be peddled from door to door, piping hot as an article of cheap nutriment. The population of these dismal abodes appeared to consider the sidewalks and middle of the street as their common hall. In a drama of low life, the unity of place might be arranged rigidly, according to the classic rule, and the street be the one locality in which every scene

and incident should occur. Courtship, quarrels, plot and counterplot, conspiracies for robbery and murder, family difficulties or agreements, all such matters, I doubt not, are constantly discussed or transacted in this sky-roofed saloon, so regally hung with its somber canopy of coal-smoke. Whatever the disadvantages of the English climate, the only comfortable or whole wholesome part of life, for the city poor, must be spent in the open air. The stifled and squalid rooms where they lie down at night, whole families and neighborhoods together, or sulkily elbow one another in the daytime, when a settled rain drives them within doors, are worse horrors than it is worthwhile, without a practical object in view, to admit into one's imagination. No wonder that

they creep forth from the foul mystery of their interiors, stumble down from their garrets, or scramble up out of their cellars, on the upper step of which you may see the grimy housewife, before the shower is ended, letting the raindrops gutter down her visage, while her children, an impish progeny of cavernous recesses below the common sphere of humanity, swarm into the daylight, and attain all that they know of personal purification in the nearest mud puddle. It might also make a man doubt the existence of his own soul, to observe how nature has flung these little wretches into the street and left them there, so evidently regarding them as nothing worth, and how all mankind acquiesce in the great mother's estimate

of her offspring. For if they are to have no immortality, what superior claim can I assert for mine. And how difficult to believe that anything so precious as a germ of immortal growth can have been buried under this dirt heap, plunged into this cesspool of misery and vice. As often as I beheld the scene, it affected me with surprise and loathsome interest, much resembling, though, in a far intenser degree, the feeling with which when a boy I used to turn over a plank or an old log that had long laying on the damp ground and found a vivacious multitude of unclean and devilish-looking insects

scampering to and fro beneath it. Without an infinite faith, there seemed as much prospect of a blessed futurity for those hideous bugs and many-footed worms as for these brethren of our humanity and co-ares of all our heavenly inheritance. Ah, what a mystery. Slowly, slowly, as after groping at the bottom of a deep, noisome, stagnant pool, my hope struggles upward to the surface, bearing the half-drowned body of a child along with it,

and heaving it aloft for its life, and my own life and all our lives. Unless these slime-clogged nostrils can be made capable of inhaling celestial air, I know not how the purest and most intellectual of us can reasonably expect ever to taste a breath of it. The whole question of eternity is staked there. If a single one of those helpless little ones be lost, the world is lost. The women and children greatly preponderate in such places, the men probably wandering abroad in quest of that daily miracle, a dinner and a drink, or perhaps slumbered,

in the daylight that they may the better follow out their cat-like rambles through the dark. Here are women with young figures, but old, wrinkled, yellow faces, fanned and blear-eyed with the smoke, which they cannot spare from their scanty fires, it being too precious for its warmth to be swallowed by the chimney. Some of them sit on the doorsteps, nursing their unwashed babies at bosoms which we will glance aside from, for the sake of our mothers and all womanhood, because the fairest spectacle is here the foulest. Yet motherhood in these dark abodes is strangely identical with what we have all known it to be in the happiest homes. Nothing, as I remember, smote me with more grief and pity, all the more poignant, because, perplexingly entangled

with an inclination to smile, than to hear, to hear, a gaunt and ragged mother, priding herself on the pretty ways of her ragged and skinny infant, just as a young matron might, when she invites her lady friends to admire her plump, white-robed darling in the nursery. Indeed, no womanly characteristic seemed to have altogether perished out of these poor souls. It was the very same creature whose tender torments make the rapture of our young days, whom we love, cherish and protect, and rely upon in life and death, and whom we delight to see beautify her beauty with rich robes and set it off with jewels, though now fantastically masquerading in a garb of tatters, wholly unfit for her to handle.

I recognized her, over and over again, in the groups round a doorstep or in the descent of a cellar, chatting with prodigious earnestness about intangible trifles, laughing for a little jest, sympathizing at almost the same instant with one neighbor's sunshine and another's shadow. Wise, simple, sly and patient, yet easily perturbed, and breaking into small feminine ebullitions of spite, wrath, and jealousy, tornadoes of a moment, such as vary the social atmosphere of her silken-skirted sisters, though smothered into propriety by dint of a well-bred habit. Not that there was an absolute deficiency of good breeding even here. It often surprised me to witness a courtesy and deference among these ragged folks which, having seen it, I did not

thoroughly believe in, wondering whence it should have come. I am persuaded, however, that there were laws of intercourse which they never violated, a code of the cellar, the garret, the common staircase, the doorstep and the pavement, which perhaps had as deep a foundation in natural fitness as the coat of the drawing-room. Yet again I doubt whether I may not have been uttering folly in the last two sentences when I reflect how rude and rough these specimens of feminine character generally were. They had a readiness with their hands that reminded me of Molly Seagram and other heroines in Fielding's novels. For example, I have seen a woman meet a man in the street, and, for no reason perceptible to me, suddenly clutch him by the hair and cuff his ears, an infliction which he bore with exemplary patience, only snatching the very earliest opportunity to take to his heels.

Where a sharp tongue will not serve the purpose, they trust to the sharpness of their fingernails, or incarnate a whole vocabulary of vituperative words in a resounding slap. or the downright blow of a doubled fist. All English people, I imagine, are influenced in a far greater degree than ourselves by this simple and honest tendency, in cases of disagreement, to batter one another's persons, and whoever has seen a crowd of English ladies, for instance, at the door of the Sistine Chapel in Holy Week, will be satisfied that their belligerent propensities are kept in abeyance only by a merciless rigor on the part of society. It requires a vast deal of refinement to spiritualize their large physical endowments. Such being the case with the delicate ornaments of the drawing-room, it is the less to be

wondered at that women who live mostly in the open air, amid the coarsest kind of companionship and occupation, should carry on the intercourse of life with a freedom unknown to any class of American females, though still I am resolved to think, compatible with a generous breadth of natural propriety. It shocked me at first to see them, of all ages, even elderly, as well as infants that could just toddle across the street alone, going about in the mud and mire, or through the dusky snow and slosh of a severe week in winter, with petticoats high, uplifted above bare, red feet and legs, but I was comforted by observing that both shoes and stockings generally reappeared with better weather, having been thriftily kept out of the damp for the convenience

of dry feet within doors. Their hardihood was wonderful, and their strength greater than could have been expected from such spare diet as they probably lived on. I have seen them carrying on their heads great burdens under which they walked as freely as if they were fashionable bonnets. Or sometimes the burden was huge enough almost to cover the whole person looked at from behind, as in Tuscan villages you may see the girls coming in from the country with great bundles of green twigs upon their backs, so that they resemble locomotive masses of verdure and fragrance. But these poor English women seemed to be laden with rubbish, incongruous and indescribable, such as bones and rags, the sweepings of the

house and of the street, a merchandise gathered up from what poverty itself had thrown away, a heap of filthy stuff analogous to Christians' bundle of sin. Sometimes, though very seldom, I detected a certain gracefulness among the younger women that was altogether new to my observation. It was a charm proper to the lowest class, One girl I particularly remember, in a garb none of the cleanest and no wise smart, and herself exceedingly coarse in all respects, but yet endowed with a sort of witchery, a native charm, a robe of simple beauty and suitable behavior that she was born in, and had never been tempted to throw off, because she had really nothing else to put on. Eve herself could not have been more natural. Nothing was affected, nothing imitated, no proper grace was vulgarized by an effort to assume the manners

or adornments of another sphere. This kind of beauty, arrayed in a fitness of its own, is probably vanishing out of the world, and will certainly never be found in America where all the girls, whether daughters of the upper tendon, the mediocrity, the cottage or the kennel, aim at one standard of dress and deportment, seldom accomplishing a perfectly triumphant hit

or an utterly absurd failure. Those words, genteel and ladylike, are terrible ones and do us infinite mischief, but it is because, at least I hope so, we are in a transition state and shall emerge into a higher mode of simplicity than has ever been known to past ages. In such disastrous circumstances as I have been attempting to describe, it was beautiful to

observe what a mysterious efficacy still asserted itself in character. A woman, evidently poor as the poorest of her neighbors, would be knitting or sewing on the doorstep just as fifty other women were, but round about her skirts, though woefully patched. You would be sensible of a certain sphere of decency, which it seemed to me. could not have been kept more impregnable in the coziest little sitting-room, where the tea-kettle on the hob was humming its good old song of domestic peace. Maidenhood had a similar power. The evil habit that grows upon us in this harsh world makes me faithless to my own better perceptions, and yet I have seen girls in these wretched streets on whose virgin purity,

judging merely from their impression on my instincts as they passed by, I should have deemed it safe at the moment to stake my life. The next moment, however, as the surrounding flood of moral uncleanness surged over their footsteps, I would not have staked a spike of thistledown on the same wager. Yet the miracle was within the scope of providence, which is equally wise and equally beneficent, even to those poor girls. though I acknowledge the fact without the remotest comprehension of the mode of it, whether they were pure or what we fellow sinners call vile. Unless your faith be deep-rooted and of most

vigorous growth, it is the safer way not to turn aside into this region so suggestive of miserable doubt. It was a place with dreadful faces thronged, wrinkled and grim with vice and wretchedness, and thinking over the line of Milton here quoted, I come to the conclusion that those ugly lineaments which startled Adam and Eve, as they looked backward to the closed gate of paradise, were no fiends from the pit, but the more terrible foreshadowings of what so many of their descendants were to be. God help them, and us likewise their brethren and sisters. Let me add that, ragged, careworn, hopeless, dirty, haggard, hungry as they were. The most pitiful thing of all was to see the sort of patience with which they accepted their lot, as if they had been

born into the world for that and nothing else. Even the little children had this characteristic in as perfect development as their grandmothers. The children, in truth, were the ill-omened blossoms from which another harvest of precisely such dark fruitage as I saw ripened around me was to be produced. Of course, you would imagine these to be lumps of crude iniquity, tiny vessels, as full as they could hold of naughtiness, nor can I say a great deal to the contrary. Small proof of parental discipline could I discern, save when a mother, drunken, I sincerely hope,

snatched her own imp out of a group of pale, half-naked, humor-eaten abortions that were playing and squabbling together in the mud, turned up its tatters, brought down her heavy hand on its poor little tenderest part, and let it go again with a shake. If the child knew what the punishment was for, it was wiser than I pretend to be. It yelled and went back to its playmates in the mud. yet let me bear testimony to what was beautiful and more touching than anything that I have ever witnessed in the intercourse of happier children. I allude to the superintendents which some of these small people, too small one would think to be sent into the street alone, had there been any other nursery for them, exercised over still smaller ones. whence they derived such a sense of duty, unless immediately from God, I cannot tell,

but it was wonderful to observe the expression of responsibility in their deportment, the anxious fidelity with which they discharged their unfit office, the tender patience with which they linked their less pliable impulses to the wayward footsteps of an infant, and let it guide them whithersoever it liked. in the hollow-cheeked, large-eyed girl of ten, whom I saw giving a cheerless oversight to her baby brother, I did not so much marvel at it. She had merely come a little earlier than usual to the perception of what was to be her business in life. But I admired the sickly-looking little boy, who did violence to his boyish nature, by making himself the servant of his little sister,

she too small to walk, and he too small to take her in his arms, and therefore working a kind of miracle to transport her from one dirt heap to another. Beholding such works of love and duty, I took heart again, and deemed it not so impossible, after all, for these neglected children to find a path through the squalor and evil of their circumstances up to the gate of heaven. Perhaps there was this latent good in all of them, though generally they looked brutish and dull even in their sports, there was little mirth among them, nor even a fully awakened spirit of blackguardism. Yet sometimes again I saw, with surprise, and a sense as if I had been asleep and dreaming, the bright, intelligent merry face of a child whose dark eyes gleamed with vivacious expression through the dirt that encrusted. its skin, like sunshine struggling through a very dusty window-pane. In these streets the belted and blue-coated policeman appears seldom in comparison with the frequency of his occurrence in more reputable thoroughfares. I used to think that the inhabitants would have ample time to murder one another, or any

stranger like myself who might violate the filthy sanctities of the place before the law could bring up its lumbering assistance. Nevertheless, there is a supervision, nor does the watchfulness of authority permit the populace to be tempted to any outbreak. Once, in a time of dearth, I noticed a ballad singer going through the street, hoarsely chanting some discordant strain in a provincial dialect of which I could only make out that it addressed the sensibilities of the auditors on the score of starvation. But by his side stalked the policeman, offering no interest. interference, but watchful to hear what this rough minstrel said or sang, and silence him if his effusion threatened to prove two soul-stirring. In my judgment, however, there is little or no danger of that kind. They starve patiently, sicken patiently, die patiently, not through resignation, but a diseased

flucidity of hope. If ever they should do mischief to those above them, it will probably be by the communication of some destructive pestilence, for so the medical men affirm. They suffer all the ordinary diseases with a degree of virulence elsewhere unknown, and keep among themselves traditionary plagues that have long ceased to afflict more fortunate societies. Charity herself gathers her robe about her to avoid their contact. It would be a dire revenge, indeed, if they were to prove their claims to be reckoned of one blood and nature with the noblest and wealthiest by compelling them to inhale death through the diffusion of their own poverty-poisoned atmosphere. A true Englishman is a kind man at heart, but has an unconquerable dislike to poverty and

beggary. Beggers have heretofore been so strange to an American that he is apt to become their prey, being recognized through his national peculiarities, and beset by them in the streets. The English smile at him, and say that there are ample public arrangements for every popper's possible need, that street charity promotes idleness and vice, and that yonder personification of misery on the pavement will lay up a good day's profit, besides supping more luxuriously than the dupe who gives him a shilling. By and by the stranger adopts their theory and begins to practice upon it, much to his own temporary freedom from annoyance, but not entirely without moral detriment, or sometimes a too late contrition.

Years afterwards it may be his memory is still haunted by some vindictive. wretch, whose cheeks were pale and hunger-pinched, whose rags fluttered in the east wind, whose right arm was paralyzed, and his left leg shriveled into a mere nerveless stick, but whom he passed by remorselessly, because an Englishman chose to say that the fellow's misery looked too perfect, was too artistically got up to be genuine. Even allowing this to be true, as a hundred chances to one it was, it would still have been a clear case of economy to buy him off with a little loose silver, so that his lamentable figure should not limp at the heels of your conscience all over the world. To own the truth, I provided myself with several such imaginary persecutors in England, and recruited their number with at least one sickly-looking wretch,

whose acquaintance I first made at Assisi in Italy, and, taking a dislike to something sinister in his aspect, permitted him to beg early and late and all day long, without getting a single Bayoko. At my latest glimpse of him, the villain avenged himself, not by a volley of horrible curses, as any other Italian beggar would, but by taking an expression of so grief-stricken, want-wrung, hopeless, and withal resigned, that I could paint his life-like portrait at this moment.

Were I to go over the same ground again, I would listen to no man's theories, but buy the little luxury of beneficence at a cheap rate, instead of doing myself a moral mischief by exuding a stony incrust. over whatever natural sensibility I might possess. On the other hand, there were some mendicants whose utmost efforts I even now felicitate myself on having withstood. Such was a phenomenon, abridged of his lower half, who beset me for two or three years together, and in spite of his deficiency of locomotive members, had some supernatural

method of transporting himself, simultaneously, I believe, to all quarters of the city. He wore a sailor's jacket, possibly because skirts would have been a superfluity to his figure, and had a remarkably broad-shouldered and muscular frame, surmounted by a large, fresh-colored face, which was full of power and intelligence. His dress and linen were the perfection of neatness. Once a day at least, wherever I went, I suddenly became aware of this trunk of a man on the path before me, resting on his base. and looking as if he had just sprouted out of the pavement, and would sink into it again and reappear at some other spot the instant you left him behind. The expression of his eye was perfectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding your own as by fascination, never once winking, never wavering from its point-blank gaze right into your face, till you were completely beyond the range of his battery of one immense rifled cannon.

this was his mode of soliciting alms and he reminded me of the old beggar who appealed so touchingly to the charitable sympathies of gill blas taking aim at him from the roadside with a long-barreled musket the intentness and directness of his silent appeal his close and unrelenting attack upon your individuality respectful as it seemed was the very flower of insolence or if you give it a possibly truer interpretation it was the tyrannical effort of a man endowed with a great natural force of character to constrain your reluctant will to his purpose. Apparently he had staked his salvation upon the ultimate success of a daily struggle between himself and me, the triumph of which would compel me to become a tributary to the hat that lay on the pavement beside him. Man or fiend, however, there was a stubbornness in his intended vivor. victim, which this massive fragment of a mighty personality had not altogether reckoned upon, and by its aid I was enabled to pass him at my customary pace hundreds of times over,

quietly meeting his terrible, respectful eye, and allowing him the fair chance which I felt to be his due to subjugate me, if he really had the strength for it. He never succeeded, but, on the other hand, never gave up the contest, and should I ever walk those streets again, I am certain that the truncated tyrant will sprout up through the pavement and look me fixedly in the eye, and perhaps get the victory. I should think all the more highly of myself if I had shown equal heroism in resisting another class of beggarly depredators, who assailed me on my weaker side, and won an easy spoil. Such was the sanctimonious clergyman, with his white cravat, who visited me with a subscription paper which he himself had drawn up,

in a case of heart-rending distress. The respectable and ruined tradesmen, going from door to door, shy and silent in his own person, but accompanied by a sympathizing friend, who bore testimony to his integrity, and stated the unavoidable misfortunes that had crushed him down, or the delicate and prettily dressed lady who had been bred in affluence, but was suddenly thrown upon the perilous charities of the world by the death of an indulgent but secretly insolvent father, or the commercial catastrophe and simultaneous suicide of the best of husbands, or the gifted but unsuccessful author, appealing to my fraternal sympathies, generously rejoicing

and some small prosperities which he was kind enough to term my own triumphs in the field of letters, and claiming to have largely contributed to them by his unbought notices in the public journals. England is full of such people, and a hundred other varieties

of peripatetic tricksters, higher than these, and lower, who act their parts tolerably well, but seldom with an absolutely elusive effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as I was, that they were humbugs, almost without an exception. Rats that nibble at the honest bread and cheese of the community, and grow fat by their petty pilferings,

yet often gave them what they asked, and privately owned myself a simpleton. There is a decorum which restrains you, unless you happen to be a police constable, from breaking through a crust of plausible respectability, even when you are certain, that there is a nave beneath it. End of Section 20. Section 21 of Our Old Home. This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 21, Outside Glimpses of English Poverty. After making myself as familiar as I decently could with the poor streets, I became curious to see what kind of a home one. what kind of a home was provided for the inhabitants at the public expense, fearing that it must needs be a most comfortless one, or else their choice, if choice it were, of so miserable a life outside, was truly difficult to account for. Accordingly, I visited a great almshouse,

and was glad to observe how unexceptionably all the parts of the establishment were carried on, and what an orderly life, full-fed, sufficiently reposeful, and undisturbed by the arbitrary exercise of authority, seemed to be led there. Possibly, indeed, it was that very orderliness, and the cruel necessity of being neat and clean, and even the comfort resulting from these and other Christian-like restraints and regulations, that constituted the principal grievance on the part of the poor, shiftless inmates, accustomed to a lifelong luxury of dirt and haremscarumness. The wild life of the streets has perhaps as unforgettable a charm to those who have once thoroughly imbibed it

as the life of the forest or the prairie. But I conceive, rather, that there must be insuperable difficulties for the majority of the poor in the way of getting admittance to the almshouse, than that a merely aesthetic preference for the street would incline the pauper class to fare scantily and precariously, and expose their raggedness to the rain and snow, when such a hospitable door stood wide open for their entrance. It might be that the roughest and darkest side of the matter was not shown me, there being persons of eminent station, and of both sexes in the party which I accompanied,

and, of course, a properly trained public functionary would have deemed it a monstrous rudeness, as well as a great shame, to exhibit anything to people of rank that might too painfully shock their sensibilities. The women's ward was the portion of the establishment which we especially examined. It could not be questioned that they were treated with kindness as well as care. No doubt, as has been already suggested, some of them felt the irksomeness of submission to general rules of orderly behavior, after being accustomed to that perfect freedom from the minor proprieties, at least, which is one of the compensations of absolutely hopeless poverty,

or of any circumstances that set us fairly below the decencies of life. I asked the Governor of the House whether he met with any difficulty in keeping peace and order among his inmates, and he informed me that his troubles among the women were incomparably greater than with the men. They were freakish and apt to be quarrelsome, inclined to plague and pester one another, ways that it was impossible to lay hold of, and to thwart his own authority by the like intangible methods. He said this with the utmost good nature, and quite won my regard by so placidly resigning himself to the inevitable necessity of letting the women throw dust

into his eyes. They certainly looked peaceable and sisterly enough as I saw them, though still it might be faintly perceptible that some of them were consciously playing their parts before the governor and his distinguished visitors. This governor seemed to me a man thoroughly fit for his position. An American in an office of similar responsibility would doubtless be a much superior person, better educated, possessing a far wider range of thought, more naturally acute, with a quicker tact of external observation, and a readier faculty of dealing with difficult cases. The women would not succeed in throwing half so much dust into his eyes. Moreover, his black coat and thin, sallow visage would make him look like a scholar,

and his manners would indefinitely approximate to those of a gentleman. But I cannot help questioning whether, on the whole, these higher endowments would produce decidedly better results. The Englishman was thoroughly plebeian, both in aspect and behavior, a bluff, ruddy-faced, hearty, kindly, yeoman-like personage, with no refinement whatever, nor any superfluous sensibility, but gifted with a native wholesomeness of character, which must have been a very beneficial element in the atmosphere of the almshouse. He spoke to his pauper family in loud, good-humored, cheerful tones, and treated them with a healthy freedom that probably caused the forlorn wretches to feel as if they were free and healthy likewise. If he had understood them a little better,

he would not have treated them half so wisely. We are apt to make sickly people more morbid, and unfortunate people more miserable, by endeavoring to adapt our deportment to their special and individual needs. They eagerly accept our well-meant efforts, but it is like returning their own sick breath back upon themselves to be breathed over and over again, intensifying the inward mischief at every repetition. The sympathy that would really do them good is of a kind that recognize their sound and healthy parts, and ignores the part affected by disease, which will thrive under the eye of a too close observer, like a poisonous weed in the sunshine. My good friend the governor had no tendencies in the latter direction, and a

abundance of them in the former, and was consequently as wholesome and invigorating as the west wind, with the little spice of the north in it, brightening the dreary visages that encountered us as if he had carried a sunbeam in his hand. He expressed himself by his whole being and personality, and by works more than words, and had not the unusual English merit of knowing what to do much better than how to talk about it. The women, I imagine, must be have felt one imperfection in their state, however comfortable otherwise. They were forbidden, or at all events, lacked the means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorning themselves. All were dressed in one homely uniform of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their heads

as English servants wear. Generally, too, they had one doughty English aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood. We have few of these absolutely unilluminated faces among our Native American population, individuals of whom must be singularly unfortunate if, mixing as we do, no drop of gentle blood has contributed to refine the turbid element. No gleam of hereditary intelligence has lighted up the stolid eyes, which their forefathers brought from the old country. Even in this English almshouse, however,

there was at least one person who claimed to be intimately connected with rank and wealth. The governor, after suggesting that this person would probably be gratified by our visit, ushered us into a small parlor, which was furnished a little more like a room in a private dwelling than others that we entered, and had a row of religious books and fashionable novels on the mantelpiece.

An old lady sat at a bright coal-fire, reading a romance, and rose to receive us with a certain pomp of manner and elaborate display of ceremonious courtesy, which, in spite of myself, made me inwardly question the genuineness of her aristocratic pretensions. But at any rate, she looked like a respectable old soul, and was evidently gladdened to the very core of her frost-bitten heart by the awful punctiliousness with which she responded to her gregory. gracious and hospitable, though unfamiliar welcome. After a little polite conversation we retired, and the governor, with a lowered voice and an air of deference, told us that she had been a lady of quality, and had ridden in her own equipage not many years before, and now lived in continual expectation that some of her rich relatives would drive up in their carriages to take her away. Meanwhile, he added, she was treated with great respect.

by her fellow poppers. I could not help thinking, from a few criticizable peculiarities in her talk and manner, that there might have been a mistake on the governor's part, and perhaps a venial exaggeration on the old ladies concerning her former position in society. But what struck me was the forcible instance of that most prevalent of English vanities, the pretension to aristocratic connection on one side, and the submission and reverence with which it was accepted by the governor and his household on the other. Among ourselves, I think, when wealth and eminent position have taken their departure, they seldom leave a pallid ghost behind them, or, if it's sometimes stalks abroad, few recognize it. We went into several other rooms at the doors of which,

pausing on the outside, we could hear the volubility and sometimes the wrangling of the female inhabitants within, but invariably found silence and peace when we stepped over the threshold. The women were grouped together in their sitting rooms, sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number, classified by their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, and all busied, so far as I can remember, with the one occupation of knitting coarse yarn stockings. Hardly any of them, I am sorry to say, had a brisk or cheerful air, though it often stirred them up to a momentary vivacity to be accosted by the governor, and they seemed to like being noticed, however slightly, by the visitors. The happiest person whom I saw there, and, running hastily through my experiences, I hardly recollect to have seen a happier one in my life, if you take a careless flow of spirits as happiness, was an old one. woman that lay in bed among ten or twelve heavy-looking females who plied their knitting work

round about her. She laughed when we entered, and immediately began to talk to us, in a thin, little spirited quaver, claiming to be more than a century old, and the governor, in whatever way he happened to be cognizant of the fact, confirmed her age to be 104. Her jauntiness and cackling merriment were really wonderful. It was as if she was as if she was a little of the fact, confirmed her age to be a hundred and four. It was as if she had got through with all her actual business in life two or three generations ago, and now, freed from every responsibility for herself or others, had only to keep up a mirthful state of mind till the short time, or long time, and, happy as she was, she appeared not to care whether it were long or short,

before death, who had misplaced her name on his list, might remember to take her away. She had gone quite round the circle of human existence and come back to the playground again. And so she had grown to be a kind of miraculous old pet, the plaything of people 70 or 80 years younger than herself, who talked and laughed with her as if she were a child, finding great delight in her wayward and strangely playful responses, into some of which she cunningly conveyed a jive that caused their ears to tingle a little. She had done getting out of bed in this world, and lay there to be waited upon like a queen or a baby.

In the same room sat a pauper, who had once been an actress of considerable repute, but was compelled to give up her profession by a softening of the brain. The disease seemed to have stolen the continuity out of her life, and disturbed a healthy relationship between the thoughts within her and the world without. On our first entrance, she looked cheerfully at us and showed herself ready to engage in conversation. But suddenly, while we were talking with a century-old crone, the poor actress began to weep, contorting her face with extravagant stage grimaces, and wringing her hands for some inscrutable sorrow. It might have been a reminiscence of actual calamity in her past life, or quite as probably,

it was but a dramatic woe, beneath which she had staggered and shrieked and wrung her hands with hundreds of repetitions in the sight of crowded theatres, and been as often comforted by thunders of applause. But my idea of the mystery was that she had a sense of wrong in seeing the aged woman, whose empty vivacity was like the rattling of dry peas in a bladder, chosen as the central object of interest to the visitors, while she herself, who had agitated thousands of hearts with a breath, sat starving for the admiration that was her natural food. I appeal to the whole society of artists of the beautiful and the imaginative, poets, romancers, painters, sculptors, actors, whether or no this is a grief that may be felt

even amid the torpor of a dissolving brain. We looked into a good many sleeping chambers, where were rows of beds, mostly calculated for two occupants, and provided with sheets and pillowcases that resembled sackcloth. It appeared to me that the sense of beauty was insufficiently regarded in all the arrangements of the Almshouse.

A little cheap luxury for the eye, at least, might do the poor folks a substantial good. but at all events there was the beauty of perfect neatness and orderliness which being heretofore known to few of them was perhaps as much as they could well digest in the remnant of their lives we were invited into the laundry where a great washing and drying were in process the whole atmosphere being hot and vaporous with the steam of wet garments and bedclothes this atmosphere was the pauper life of the past week or fortnight resolved into a gaseous state, and breathing it, however fastidiously, we were forced to inhale the strange element into our inmost being. Had the queen been there, I know not how she could have escaped the necessity. What an intimate brotherhood is this in which we dwell, do what we may to put an artificial remoteness between the high creature and the low one? A poor man's breath, born on the vehicle of

tobacco smoke floats into a palace window and reaches the nostrils of a monarch. It is but an example obvious to the sense of the innumerable and secret channels by which, at every moment of our lives, the flow and reflux of a common humanity pervade us all. How superficial are the niceties of such as pretend to keep aloof. Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a man or woman of us all can be clean. By and by we came to the ward where the children were kept, on entering which we saw, in the first place, several unlovely and unwholesome little people lazily playing together in a courtyard. And here a singular in commodity befell one member of our party. Among the children was a wretched, pale, half-torpid little thing, about six years old, perhaps, but I know not whether a girl or a boy.

with a humor in its eyes and face, which the governor said was the scurvy, and which appeared to be dim its powers of vision, so that it toddled about gropingly, as if in quest of it did not precisely know what. This child, this sickly, wretched, humor-eaten infant, the offspring of unspeakable sin and sorrow, whom it must have required several generations of guilty progenitors, to render so pitiable an object as we beheld it, immediately took an unaccountable fancy to the gentleman just hinted at. It prowled about him like a pet kitten, rubbing against his legs, following everywhere at his heels, pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exerting all the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly before him, and held forth its arms, mutely insisting

on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps underwitted and incapable of prattle, but it smiled up in his face, a sort of woeful gleam was that smile, through the sickly blotches that covered its features, and found means to express such a perfect confidence that it was going to be fondled and made much of, that there was no possibility in a human heart of balking its expectation. It was as if God had promised the poor child this favor on behalf of that individual, and he was bound to fulfill the contract, or else no longer call himself a man among men. Nevertheless, it could be no easy thing for him to do, for being a person burdened with more than an Englishman's customary reserve, shy of actual contact with human beings,

afflicted with a peculiar distaste for whatever was ugly, and furthermore, accustomed to that habit of observation from an insulated standpoint which is said, but I hope erroneously, to have the tendency of putting ice into the blood. So I watched the struggle in his mind with a good deal of interest, and am seriously of opinion that he did a heroic act, and affected more than he dreamed of towards his final salvation, when he took up the loathsome child, and caressed it as tenderly as if he had been its father. To be sure, we all smiled at him at the time, but doubtless would have acted pretty much the same in a similar stress of circumstances. The child at any rate appeared to be satisfied with his behavior, for when he had held it a considerable time and

set it down, it still favored him with its company, keeping fast hold of his forefinger, till we reached the confines of the place. And Donna returned through the courtyard, after visiting another part of the establishment, here again was this same little wretchedness waiting for its victim, with a smile of joyful and yet dull recognition about its scabby mouth and in its roomy eyes. No doubt the child's mission in reference to our friend was to remind him that he was responsible in his degree for all the sufferings and misdemeanors of the world in which he lived, and was not entitled to look upon a particle of its dark calamity as if it were none of his

concern. The offspring of a brother's iniquity being his own blood relation, and the guilt, likewise, a burden on him, unless he expiated it by better deeds. All the children in this ward seemed to be invalids, and going upstairs we found more of them in the same, or a worse condition, than the little creature just described, with their mothers, or more probably other women, for the infants were mostly foundlings, in attendance as nurses. The matron of the ward, a middle-aged woman, remarkably kind and motherly an aspect, was walking to and fro across the chamber, on that weary journey in which careful mothers and nurses travel so continually and so far,

and gain never a step of progress, with an unquiet baby in her arms. She assured us that she enjoyed her occupation, being exceedingly fond of children, and, in fact, the absence of timidity in all the little people was a sufficient proof that they could have had no experience of harsh treatment,

though, on the other hand, none of them appeared to be attracted to one individual more than another. In this point, they differed widely from the poor child below stairs. They seemed to recognize a unibrated a universal motherhood in womankind, and cared not which individual might be the mother of the moment. I found their tameness as shocking, as did Alexander Selkirk, that of the brute subjects

of his else solitary kingdom. It was a sort of tame familiarity, a perfect indifference to the approach of strangers, such as I never noticed in other children. I accounted for it partly by their nerveless, unstrung state of body, incapable of the quick thrills of delight, and fear which play upon the lively harp-strings of a healthy child's nature, and partly by their woeful lack of acquaintance with a private home, and their being therefore destitute of the sweet home-bred shyness, which is like the sanctity of heaven about a mother-peted child. Their condition was like that of chickens hatched in an oven, and growing up without the special guardianship of a matron hen. Both the chicken and the child methinks must needs want something that is essential to their respective characters.

In this chamber, which was spacious, containing a large number of beds, there was a clear fire burning on the hearth, as in all the other occupied rooms, and, directly in front of the blaze sat a woman holding a baby, which, beyond all reach of comparison, was the most horrible object that ever afflicted my sight. Days afterwards, nay, even now when I bring it up vividly before my mind's eye, it seemed to lie upon the floor of my heart, polluting my moral being with a sense of something grievously amiss in the entire conditions of humanity. The holiest man could not be otherwise than full of wickedness. the chastest virgin seem impure in a world where such a babe was possible. The governor whispered me apart that, like nearly all the rest of them, it was a child of

unhealthy parents. Ah, yes, there was the mischief. This spectral infant, a hideous mockery of the visible link, which love creates between man and woman, was born of disease and sin. diseased sin was its father and sinful disease its mother, and their offspring lay in the woman's arms, like a nursing pestilence which, could it live and grow up, would make the world a more accursed abode than ever heretofore. Thank heaven it could not live. This baby, if we must give it that sweet name, seemed to be three or four months old, but, being such an unthriftly changeling, might have been consistent.

considerably older. It was all covered with blotches and preternaturally dark and discolored. It was withered away, quite shrunken and fleshless. It breathed only amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned painfully at every gasp. The only comfort in reference to it was the evident impossibility of its surviving to draw many more of those miserable moaning breaths, and it would have been infinitely less heart-depressing to see it die. right before my eyes, then to depart and carry it alive in my remembrance, still suffering the incalculable torture of its little life. I can by no means express how horrible this infant was, neither ought I to attempt it. And yet I must add one final touch. Young as the poor little

creature was, its pain and misery had endowed it with a premature intelligence, in so much that its eyes seemed to stare at the bystanders out of their sunken sockets, knowingly and appealingly, as if summoning us one and all to witness the deadly wrong of its existence. At least I so interpreted its look, when it positively met and responded to my own awe-stricken gaze, and therefore I lay the case, as far as I am able, before mankind, on whom God has imposed the necessity to suffer in soul and body till this dark and dreadful wrong be righted. Thence we went to the schoolrooms, which were underneath the chapel. The pupils, like the children whom we had just seen, were in large proportion foundlings. Almost without exception,

they looked sickly, with marks of eruptive trouble in their dultish faces, and a general tendency to diseases of the eye. Moreover, the poor little wretches appeared to be uneasy within their skins and screwed themselves about on the benches in a disagreeable suggestive way as if they had inherited the evil habits of their parents as an innermost garment

of the same texture and material as the shirt of Nessus, and must wear it with unspeakable discomfort as long as they lived. I saw only a single child child that looked healthy, and on my pointing him out, the governor informed me that this little boy, the sole exception to the miserable aspect of his schoolfellows, was not a foundling, nor properly a workhouse child, being born of respectable parentage, and his father, one of the

officers of the institution. As for the remainder, the hundred pale abortions to be counted against one rosy-cheeked boy, what shall we say or do? do, depressed by the sight of so much misery and uninventive of remedies for the evils that force themselves. On my perception, I can do little more than recur to the idea already hinted at in the early part of this article regarding the speedy necessity of a new deluge. So far as these children are concerned, at any rate, it would be a blessing to the human race, which they will contribute to enervate and corrupt, a greater blessing to themselves, who inherit no patrimony but disease and vice, and in whose souls, if there be a spark of God's life,

this seems the only possible mode of keeping it a glow, if every one of them could be drowned tonight by their best friends instead of being put tenderly to bed. This heroic method of treating human maladies, moral and material, is certainly beyond the scope of man's discretionary rights, and probably will not be adopted by divine providence until the opportunity of milder reformation shall have been offered us again and again through a series of future ages. It may be fair to acknowledge that the humane and excellent governor, as well as other persons better acquainted with the subject than myself, took a less gloomy view of it, though still so darker one as to involve scanty consolation.

They remarked that individuals of the male sex, picked up in the streets and nurtured in the workhouse, sometimes succeed tolerably well in life, because they are taught trades before being turned into the world, and by dint of immaculate behavior and good luck, are not unlikely to get employment and earn a livelihood, The case is different with the girls. They can only go to service and are invariably rejected by families of respectability on account of their origin, and for the better reason of their unfitness to fill satisfactorily even the meanest situations in a well-ordered English household. Their resource is to take service with people only a step or two above the poorest class, with whom they fare scantily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and precariously. lives, and finally drop into the slew of evil, through which, in their best estate, they do but pick their slimy way on stepping stones. From the schools we went to the bake-house and the brew-house, for such cruelty is not harbored in the heart of a true Englishman as to deny a pauper his daily allowance of

beer, and through the kitchens, where we beheld an immense pot over the fire, surging and walloping with some kind of a savory stew that filled up to its brim. We also visited a tailor's shop and a shoemaker's shop, in both of which a number of men and pale diminutive apprentices were at work, diligently enough, though seemingly with small heart in the business. Finally, the governor ushered us into a shed, inside of which was piled up in immense quantity of new coffins. They were of the plainest description made of pine boards, probably of American growth, not very nicely smoothed by the plain, neither painted nor stained with black, but provided with a loop of rope at either end for the convenience of lifting the rude box and its inmate into the cart that shall carry them

to the burial ground. There, in holes ten feet deep, the poppers are buried one above another, mingling their relics indistinguishably. In another world may they resume their individuality and find it a happier one than here. As we departed, a character came under our notice which I have met with in all almshouses, whether of the city or village, in England or America. It was the familiar simpleton,

who shuffled across the courtyard, clattering in his wooden-souled shoes, to greet us with a howl or a laugh, I hardly know which, holding out his hand for a penny, and chuckling grossly when it was given him. All underwitted persons, so far as my experience goes, have this craving for copper coin, and appear to estimate its value by a miraculous instinct, which is one of the earliest gleams of human intelligence while the nobler faculties are yet in abeyance. There may come a time, even in this world, when we shall all understand,

that our tendency to the individual appropriation of gold and broad acres, fine houses, and such good and beautiful things, as are equally enjoyable by a multitude, is but a trait of imperfectly developed intelligence, like the simpleton's cupidity of a penny. When that day dawns, and probably not till then, I imagine that there will be no more poor streets nor need of almshouses. I was once present at the wedding of some poor English people, and was deeply impressed by the spectacle, though by no means with such proud and delightful emotions as seemed to have affected all England on the recent occasion of the marriage of its prince.

It was in the cathedral at Manchester, a particularly black and grim old structure, into which I had stepped to examine some ancient and curious wood carvings within the choir. the woman in attendance greeted me with a smile which always glimmers forth on the feminine visage i know not why when a wedding is in question and asked me to take a seat in the nave till some poor parties were married it being the easter holidays and a good time for them to marry because no fees would be demanded by the clergyman i sat down accordingly and soon the parson and his clerk appeared at the altar and a considerable crowd of the people made their entrance at a side door, and ranged themselves in a long, huddled line across the chancel. There were my acquaintances of the poor streets, or persons in a precisely similar condition of life, and were now come to their marriage ceremony in just such garbs as I had always seen them wear, the men in their loafers' coats, out at elbows, or their labourer's

jackets, defaced with grimy toil, the women drawing their shabby shawls tighter about their shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath. All of them unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed, unwashed, uncombed, and wrinkled with penury in care. Nothing virgin-like in the brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the bridegrooms. They were, in short, the mere rags and tatters of the human race, whom some east wind of evil omen, howling along the streets, had chanced to sweep together into an unfragrant heap. Each and all of them, conscious of his or her individual misery, had blundered into the strange miscalculation of supposing that they could lessen the sum of it by multiplying it into the misery of another person. All the couples, and it was difficult in such a confused crowd, to compute

exactly their number, stood up at once, and had execution done upon them in the lump, the clergyman addressing only small parts of the service to each individual pair, but so managing the larger portion as to include the whole company without the trouble of repetition. By this compendious contrivance one would apprehend, he came to, he came to the whole company, and he came dangerously near making every man and woman the husband or wife of every other, nor perhaps would he have perpetrated much additional mischief by the mistake. But after receiving a benediction in common, they assorted themselves in their own fashion, as they only knew how, and departed to the garrets, or the cellars, or the unsheltered street corners, where their

honeymoon and subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled decorously. The clerk and sexton grinned broadly. The female attendant tittered almost aloud, and even the married parties seemed to see something exceedingly funny in the affair. But for my part, though generally apt enough to be tickled by a joke, I laid it away in my memory as one of the saddest sights ever looked upon. Not very long afterwards, I happened to be passing the same venerable cathedral and heard a clang of joyful bells, and beheld a bridal party coming down the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with the portly coachman and two postillions that waited at the gate. One parson and one service had amalgamated the wretchedness of a score of paupers. A bishop and three or four clergymen had combined, their spiritual might to forge the golden links of this other marriage bond. The bridegroom's mien had a sort of careless and kindly English pride. The bride floated along in her white drapery, a creature so nice and delicate that it was a luxury to see her, and a pity that her silk slippers should touch anything so grimy as

the old stones of the churchyard avenue. The crowd of ragged people who always cluster to which, witness what they may of an aristocratic wedding, broke into audible admiration of the bride's beauty and the bridegroom's manliness, and uttered prayers and ejaculations, possibly paid for in alms, for the happiness of both. If the most favorable of earthly conditions could make them happy, they had every prospect of it. They were going to live on their abundance in one of those stately and delightful English homes, such as no other people ever created or inherited, a hall set far and safe within its own private grounds, and surrounded with venerable trees,

shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and trimest pathways, the whole so artfully contrived and tended, that summer rendered it a paradise, and even winter would hardly disrobe it of its beauty, and all this fair property seemed more exclusively and inalienably their own, because of its descent through many forefathers, each of whom had added an improvement or a charm, and thus transmitted it with a stronger stamp of rightful possession to his heir. And is it possible, after all, that there may be a flaw in the title deeds? Is, or is not, the system wrong, that gives one more than the same. married pair so immense a superfluity of luxurious home and shuts out a million others from any home

whatever. One day or another, safe as they deem themselves, and safe as the hereditary temper of the people really tends to make them, the gentlemen of England will be compelled to face this question. End of Section 21. Section 22 of our old home. This is a Librival. recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information order volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our old home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 22, civic banquets. It has often perplexed one to imagine how an Englishman will be able to reconcile himself to any future state of existence from which the earthly institution of dinner shall be excluded. Even if he failed to take his appetit,

tied along with him, which it seems to me hardly possible to believe, since this endowment is so essential to his composition, the immortal day must still admit an interim of two or three hours during which he will be conscious of a slight distaste at all events, if not an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. The idea of dinner has so embedded itself among his highest and deepest characteristics, so illuminated itself with intellect and softened itself with the kindest emotions of his heart, so linked itself with church and state, and grown so majestic with long hereditary customs and ceremonies that, by taking it utterly away, death, instead of putting the final touch to his perfection, would leave him infinitely

less complete than we have already known him. He could not be roundly happy. Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would lack one daily felicity which his somber little island possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to conjecture that a provision may have been made in this particular for the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here suggested, and may have intended to throw out a delightful and consolatory hope for his countrymen when he represents the genial archangel as playing his part with such excellent appetite at Adam's dinner-table and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only because, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve had no more acceptable viands to set before him.

Milton, indeed, had a true English taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately implied in the refection in paradise, and, more substantially, though still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to Lawrence of Virtuous Father, Virtuous Son, a series of nice little dinners in Midwinter, and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which, elaborate as it was,

Satan tossed up in a trice from the kitchen ranges of Tartarus. Among this people, indeed, so wise in their generation, dinner has a kind of sanctity quite independent of the dishes that may be set upon the table, so that if it be only a mutton chop, they treat it with due reverence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment which such reckless devours as ourselves do not often find in our richest abundance. It is good to see how staunch they are after 50 or 60 years of heroic eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and indulging a vigorous appetite, whereas an American has generally lost the one and learned to distrust the other long before reaching the earliest decline.

of life, and thenceforward he makes little account of his dinner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not whether my countrymen will allow me to tell them, though I think it's scarcely too much to affirm that on this side of the water people never dine. At any rate, abundantly as nature has provided us with most of the material requisites, the highest possible dinner has never yet been eaten in America. It is the consummate flower of civilization and refinement, and our inability to produce it or to appreciate its admirable beauty, if a happy inspiration should bring it into bloom, marks fatally the limit of culture which we have attained. It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of cultivated Englishmen

know how to dine in this elevated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of the national character is still an impediment to them, even in that particular line where they are best qualified to excel. Though often present at good men's feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which, while lamentably conscious that many of its higher excellences were thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to be a perfect work of art. It could not, without unpardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal enjoyment, because, out of the very perfection of that lower bliss, there had arisen a dream-like development of spiritual happiness. As in the masterpieces of painting and poetry, there was a something intangible,

a final deliciousness that only fluttered about your comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to detain it, and compelling you to recognize it by faith rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set of senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied for the special fruition of this banquet, and that the guests around the table, only ate in number, were becoming so educated, polished, and softened by the delicate influences of what they ate and drunk, as to be now a little more than mortal for the nonce. and there was that gentle, delicious sadness, too, which we find in the very summit of our most exquisite enjoyments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gaiety through which it keeps breathing its undertone.

In the present case it was worth a heavier sigh to reflect that such a festal achievement, the production of so much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect taste, the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have been ripening for this hour, since man first began to eat and moisten his food with wine, must lavish its happiness upon so brief a moment

when other beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a dinner like this is no better than we can get any day at the rejuvenousant Corn Hill coffee-house, unless the whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach, is ready to appreciate it, it, and unless, moreover, there is such a harmony in all the circumstances and accompaniments, and especially such a pitch of well-according minds, that nothing shall jar rudely against the guest's thoroughly awakened sensibilities.

The world, and especially our part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted, and tumultuous place we find it, a beef-steak is about as good as any other dinner. The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me aside from the main object of my sketch, in which I purposed to give a slight idea of those public, or partially public banquets, the custom of which so thoroughly prevails among the English people, that nothing is ever decided upon in manners of peace and war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of roast beef, and talked it fully over in their cups.

nor are these festivities merely occasional, but of stated recurrence in all considerable municipalities and associated bodies. The most ancient times appear to have been as familiar with them as the Englishman of today. In many of the old English towns, you find some stately Gothic hall or chamber in which the mayor and other authorities of the place have long held their sessions, and always in convenient contiguity, there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fireplace where an ox might be roasting at his ease, though the less gigantic scale of modern cookery may now have permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St. Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an ancient banqueting-room,

that perhaps I may profitably devote a page or two to the description of it. In a narrow street opposite to St. Michael's Church, one of the three famous spires of Coventry, you behold a medieval edifice in the basement of which is such a venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have above alluded to, and on the same level a cellar with low stone pillars and intersecting arches like the crypt of a cathedral, passing up a well-worn staircase, the oaken balustrade of which is as black as ebony, you enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and broad and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six windows of modern stained glass on one side, and by the immense and magnificent arch of another window at the farther end of the room. It's rich and ancient

pains constituting a genuine historical piece, in which are represented some of the kingly personages of old times, with their heraldic blazing. Notwithstanding the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and though it was noon-day when I last saw it, the paneling of black oak and some faded tapestry that hung round the walls, together with the cloudy vault of the roof above, made a gloom which the richness only illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with figures in the dress of Henry the sixth time, which is the date of the hall. and is regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence for both the costume of that epic, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily into the old stitchwork of their substance when you try to make them out. Coats of arms were formerly emblazoned all around the hall, but have been almost rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against them, or by women with their overcoats against them, or by women with their dishcloths and scrubbing brushes, obliterating hereditary glories in their blind hostility to dust and spider's webs. Full-length portraits of several English kings, Charles the second being the

earliest, hang on the walls, and on the dace, or elevated part of the floor, stands an antique chair of state, which several royal characters are traditionally said to have occupied, while feasting here with their loyal subjects of Coventry. It is Rumi and, and, enough for a person of kingly bulk, or even to such, but angular and uncomfortable, reminding me of the oaken settles which used to be seen in old-fashioned New England kitchens. Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, without the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceiling of oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen. At the remote height of sixty feet,

You hardly discern that they are carved with figures of angels, and doubtless many other devices, of which the admirable Gothic art is wasted in the duskiness that has so long been brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall, opposite the great arched window, the party-colored radiance of which glimmers faintly through the interval, is a gallery for minstrels, and a row of ancient suits of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It impresses me, too, for, having gone so. so far, I would fain leave nothing untouched upon, that I remember, somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the artist has been

so niggardly of that illustrious lady's hair, that if she had no ampler garniture, there was certainly much need for the good people of Coventry to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I have made but a poor hand at the description as regards a transference, of the scene from my own mind to the readers. It gave me a most vivid idea of antiquity that had been very little tampered with, insomuch that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come clanking through the doorway,

and a bearded and bereft old figure had handed in a stately dame, rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, unveiling a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the moldy tomb, yet stepping majestically to the trill of harp and vial from the minstrel's gallery, while the rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound beneath, why I should have felt that these shadows, once so familiar with the spot, had a better right in St. Mary's Hall than I,

a stranger from a far country which has no past. But the moral of the foregoing description is to show how tenaciously this love of pompous dinner, this reverence for dinner as a sacred institution has caught hold of the English character since, from the earliest recognizable period, we find them building their civic banqueting halls as magnificently as their palaces or cathedrals. I know not whether the hall just described is now used for festive purposes, but others of similar antiquity and splendor still are. For example, there is the barber-surgeon's hall in London, a very fine old room, adorned with admirably carved woodwork on the ceiling and walls.

It is also enriched with Holbein's masterpiece, representing a grave assemblage of barbers and surgeons, all portraits with such extensive beards that methinks one half of the company might have been profitably occupied in trimming the other, kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir Robert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for the liberty of cutting out one of the heads from this picture, he conditioning to have a perfect facsimile painted in. The room has many other pictures of distinguished members of the company in long past times, and some of the monarchs and statesmen of England, all darkened with age, but darkened into such ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient hall painting on the reader, but it may be worthwhile to touch upon other modes of stateliness that still survive in these time-honored civic feasts,

where there appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and solemn pomp by respectable citizens who would never dream of claiming any privilege of rank outside their own sphere. Thus I saw two caps of state for the warden, and junior warden of the company, caps of silver, real coronets or crowns indeed for these city grandees, wrought in open work and lined with crimson velvet. In a strong closet, opening from the hall, there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish forth the banquet table, comprising hundreds of forks and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the gift of some jolly king or other, and besides a multitude

of less noticeable vessels, two loving cups very elaborately wrought in silver gilt, one presented by Henry VIII, the other by Charles II. These cups, including the covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, though the bowl part would hardly contain more than half a pint of wine, which, when the custom was first established, each guest was probably expected to drink off at a draft. In passing them down from hand to hand, down a long table of compitators, there is a peculiar ceremony which I may hereafter have occasion to describe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a liberty, I should be glad to invite the reader to the official dinner table of his worship, the mayor, at a large English seaport where I spent several

years. The mayor's dinner parties occur as often as once a fortnight, and, inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at a time, his worship probably assembles at his board most of the eminent citizens and distinguished personages of the town and neighborhood more than once during his year's incumbency, and very much no doubt, to the promotion of good feeling among individuals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. A miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find more comfortable ground to meet upon than as many Americans, their differences of opinion being incomparably less radical than ours, and it being the sincerest wish of all their hearts, whether they call themselves liberals or what-not, that nothing in this world shall ever be greatly altered from what it has been and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of political hostility that it may not be dissolved in a glass or two of wine, without making the good liquor any more dry or bitter.

than accords with English taste. The first dinner of this kind at which I had the honor to be present took place during a size time, and included among the guests the judges and the prominent members of the bar. Reaching the town hall at seven o'clock, I communicated my name to one of several splendidly dressed footmen, and he repeated it to another on the first staircase, by whom it was passed to a third, and thence to a fourth, at the door of the reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original sound in the course of these transmissions, so that I had the advantage of making my entrance in the character of a stranger, not only to the whole company, but to myself as well.

His worship, however, kindly recognized me, and put me on speaking terms with two or three gentlemen, whom I found very affable, and all the more high, hospitably attentive on the score of my nationality. It is very singular how kind an Englishman will almost invariably be to an individual American, without ever baiting a jot of his prejudice against the American character in the lump. My new acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my ease, and, in requital of their good nature, I soon began to look round at the general company in a critical spirit, making my crude

observations apart, and drawing silent inferences of the correctness of which I should not been half so well satisfied a year afterwards as at that moment. There were two judges present, a good many lawyers, and a few officers of the army in uniform. The other guests seemed to be principally of the mercantile class, and among them was a shipowner from Nova Scotia, with whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch as we were born with the same thing. sky over our heads, and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode and mine. There was one gentleman whose character I never made out, with powdered hair, clad in black breeches and silk stockings, and wearing a rapier at his side. Otherwise, with the

exception of the military uniforms, there was little or no pretense of official costume. It being the first considerable assemblage of Englishmen that I had seen, my honest impression about them was that they were a heavy and homely set of people, with a remarkable roughness of aspect and behavior, not repulsive, but beneath which it required more familiarity with the national character, than I then possessed, always, to detect the good breeding of a gentleman. Being generally middle-aged, or still further advanced, they were by no means graceful in figure, for the comeliness of the youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with you. years, his body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbreviate themselves, and his stomach to

assume the dignified prominence which justly belongs to that metropolis of his system. His face, what with the acridity of the atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a well-digested abundance of succulent food, gets red and mottled, and develops at least one additional chin with a promise of more. so that, finally, a stranger recognizes his animal part at the most superficial glance, but must take time and a little pains to discover the intellectual. Comparing him with an American, I really thought that our national paleness and lean habit of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in an aesthetic point of view.

It seemed to me, moreover, that the English tailor had not done so much as he might, and ought for these heavy figures, but had gone on willfully exaggerating their uncouthness by the roominess of their garments. He had evidently no idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out of his line. But to be quite open with the reader, I afterwards learned to think that this aforesaid Taylor has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves, knowing how to dress his customers with such individual propriety that they look as if they were born in their clothes, the fit being to the character rather than the form. If you make an Englishman smart, unless he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen a few, you make him a monster. His best aspect is that

of ponderous respectability. End of Section 22. Section 23 of Our Old Home This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our old home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 23, Civic Banquets. To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied that not merely the Suffolk bar, but the bar of any inland county in New England, might show a set of thin-visaged men looking wretchedly worn, sallow, deeply, wrinkled across the forehead, and grimly furrowed about the mouth, with whom these heavy-cheeked English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as they must needs be, would stand very little chance in a professional contest. How that matter might turn out I am unqualified to decide. But I state these results of my earliest glimpses at Englishmen, not for what they are worth, but because I ultimately gave them up as worth little or nothing. In course of time, I came to the conclusion that English men of all ages are a rather good-looking people,

dress in admirable taste from their own point of view, and, under a surface never silken to the touch, have a refinement of manners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a separate endowment, that is to say, if the individual himself be a man of station, and has had gentlemen for his father and grandfather. The sturdy Anglo-Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the third generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other classes have their own proprieties. The only value of my criticisms, therefore, lay in their exemplifying the proneness of a traveler

to measure one people by the distinctive characteristics of another, as English writers invariably measure us, and take upon themselves to be disgusted accordingly. instead of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which we may be in conformity. In due time we were summoned to the table, and went thither in no solemn procession, but with a good deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and scrambling for places when we reached our destination. The legal gentlemen, I suspect, were responsible for this indecorous zeal, which I never afterwards remarked in a similar party. The dining hall was of noble size, and, like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated.

There was a splendid table service, and a noble array of footmen, some of them in plain clothes, and others wearing the town livery, richly decorated with gold lace, and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming young manhood of Britain. When we were fairly seated, it was certainly an agreeable spectacle to look up and down the long vista of earnest faces, and behold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an important business in hand, and so determined to be equal to the occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I hardly know what can be prettier than a snow-white table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central decoration, bright, silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decanters of sherry at due intervals, a French roll, and an artistically folded napkin at each plate, all that airy portion of a banquet, in short, that comes before the first mouthful, the whole, illuminated by a blaze of artificial light, without which a dinner of made dishes looks spectral, and the simplest vions are the best.

printed bills of fare were distributed, representing an abundant feast, no part of which appeared on the table until called for in separate plates. I have entirely forgotten what it was, but deem it no great matter, inasmuch as there is a pervading commonplace and identicalness in the composition of extensive dinners, on account of the impossibility of supplying a hundred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare. It was suggested to me that certain juicy old gentleman had a private understanding what to call for, and that it would be a good policy in a stranger to follow in their footsteps through the feast. I did not care to do so, however, because, like Sancho Pansa's dip out of Camacho's cauldron, any sort of potluck at such a table would be sure to suit my purpose. So I chose a dish or two on my own judgment, and getting through my labors betimes,

had a great pleasure in seeing the Englishman toil onward to the end. They drank rather copiously to, though wisely, for I observed that they seldom took hawk, and let the champagne bubble slowly away out of the goblet, solacing themselves with sherry, but tasting it warily before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste in wines, however, did not seem so exquisite, and certainly was not so various as that,

to which many Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate acquaintance with rare vintages does not suit a sensible Englishman, as he is very much in earnest about his wines, and adopts one or two as his lifelong friends, seldom exchanging them for any deliless of a moment, and reaping the reward of his constancy in an unimpaired stomach, and only so much gout as he deems wholesome and desirable. knowing well the measure of his powers he is not apt to fill his glass too often. Society indeed would hardly tolerate habitual imprudences of that kind, though in my opinion the Englishman now upon the stage could carry off their three bottles at need with as steady a gate as any of their

forefathers. It is not so very long since the three bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be, at least, I should be glad if it were true, that there was an occult sympathy between our temperance reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous disappearance of hard drinking among the respectable classes in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me, in illustration of the very slight importance attached to breaches of temperance within the memory of men not yet old, that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir John Linkwater, or drink-water, but I think the jolly old knight could hardly have staggered under so perverse a misnomer as this last, while sitting on the magisterial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to the clerk. Mr. Clerk, said Sir John, as if it were the most indifferent fact in the world, I was drunk last night. There are my five shillings. During the dinner I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with the gentleman on either side of me. One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with great unction on the social standing of the judges. Representing the dignity and authority of the crown, they take precedence during a size time

of the highest military men in the kingdom of the Lord Lieutenant of the County, of the archbishops, of the Royal Dukes, and even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they are the greatest men in England. With the glow of professional complacency that amounted to enthusiasm, my friend assured me that, in case of a royal dinner, a judge, if actually holding an assize, would be expected to offer his arm and take the queen herself to the table. Happening to be in company with some of these elevated personages,

on subsequent occasions, it appeared to me that the judges are fully conscious, of their paramount claims to respect, and take rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to do. Bishops, if it be not irreverent to say so, are sometimes marked by a similar characteristic. Dignified position is so sweet to an Englishman that he needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incorporated with his nature from its original germ, in order to keep him from flaunting it obtrusively in the faces of innocent bystanders.

My companion on the other side was a thick-set, middle-aged man, uncouth in manners, and ugly where none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn visage that looked grim in repose, and secured to hold within itself the machinery of a very terrific frown. He ate with resolute appetite, and let slip few opportunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to be passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly featured table fellow might most safely be accosted, when he turned to me with a surly sort of kindness, and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then began a conversation that abounded on his part with sturdy sense, and somehow or other brought me closer to him than I had yet stood to an

Englishman. I should hardly have taken him to be an educated man, certainly not a scholar of accurate training, and yet he seemed to have all the resources of education and trained intellectual power at command. My fresh Americanism and watchful observation of English characteristics appeared either to interest or amuse him, or perhaps both. Under the mollifying influences of abundance of meat and drink, he grew very gracious, not that I ought to use such a phrase to describe his evidently genuine good-will, and by and by expressed a wish for further acquaintance, asking me to call at his rooms in London, and inquire for Sergeant Wilkins, throwing out the name forcibly, as if he had no occasion to be ashamed of it. I remembered Dean Swift's retort to

Sergeant Bettsworth on similar announcement, of what regiment, pray, sir, and fancied that the same question might not have been quite amiss if applied to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard of him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the English bar, a rough customer and a terribly strong champion

in criminal cases, and it caused me more regret than might have been expected on so slight an acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw his death announced in the newspapers. Not rich in attractive qualities, he possessed, I think, the most attractive one of all, thorough manhood. After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of decanters were set before the mayor, who sent them forth on their outward voyage, full freighted with port, sherry,

Madeira and claret, of which excellent liquors, me thought, The latter found least acceptance among the guests. When every man had filled his glass, his worship stood up and proposed a toast. It was, of course, our gracious sovereign, or words to that effect, and immediately a band of musicians whose preliminary footings and thrumnings I had already heard behind me, struck up God save the Queen. And the whole company rose with one impulse to assist in singing that famous national anthem. It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen a body of men, or even a single man,

under the active influence of the sentiment of loyalty. For, though we call ourselves loyal to our country and institutions, and prove it by our readiness to shed blood and sacrifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold and hard in an American bosom as the steel spring that puts in motion a powerful machinery. In the Englishman's system, a force similar to that of our steel spring is generated by the warm throbbing of human hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in flesh and blood, at present in the flesh and blood of a woman, and manages to combine love, awe, and intellectual reverence all in one emotion,

and to embody his mother, his wife, his children, the whole idea of kindred in a single person, and make her the representative of his country and its laws. We Americans smile superior, as I did at the mayor's table, and yet I fancy we lose some very agreeable titillations of the heart in consequence of our proud prerogative of caring no more about our president than for a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in a cornfield. But to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather ludicrous, to see this party of stout, middle-aged, and elderly gentlemen, in the fullness of meat and drink,

their ample and ruddy faces glistening with wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old stanzas from the very bottom of their hearts and stomachs, which, two organs, in the English interior arrangement, lie closer together than in ours. The song seemed to me the rudest old ditty in the world, but I could not wonder at its universal acceptance and indestructible popularity, considering how inimitably it expresses the national faith and feeling as regards the inevitable righteousness of England, the Almighty's consequent respect and partiality for that redoubtable little island,

and his presumed readiness to strengthen its defense against the contumacious wickedness and knavery of all other principalities or republics. Tennyson himself, though evidently English to the very last prejudice, could not write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of every pitch between rolling thunder and the squeak of a cart-wheel, and that the strain was not of such delicacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of them, I determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the triumphant roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy to the First Lady in the Land, whose guest, in the largest sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly, my tuneful efforts, and probably my last, for I purpose not to sing any more, unless it be Hail Columbia on the Restoration of the Union, were poured freely forth in honor of Queen Victoria.

The sergeant smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, and the other gentleman in my room. my neighborhood by nods and gestures evinced grave approbation of so suitable a tribute to English superiority, and we finished our stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of mind. Other toasts followed in honor of the great institutions and interests of the country, and speeches in response to each were made by individuals whom the mayor designated or the company called for. None of them impressed me with a very high, idea of English post-prandial oratory. It is inconceivable indeed what ragged and shapeless utterances most Englishmen are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting anything

like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch here and another there, and ultimately getting out what they want to say, and generally with a result of sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized mass as if they had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that this was almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious of public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, his countrymen distrust him. They dislike smartness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of commonplace running through them. and any rough yet never vulgar force of expression such as would knock an opponent down if it hit him only it must be not too personal is altogether to their taste

but a studied neatness of language or other superficial graces they cannot abide they do not often permit a man to make himself a fine orator of malice aforethought that is unless he be a nobleman as for example lord stanley of the derby family, who, as a hereditary legislator and necessarily a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor natural delivery in the best way he can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, and if I cared for any oratory whatever, I should be as likely to applaud theirs as our own. When an English speaker sits down, you feel that you have been listening to a real man, and not to an actor. His sentiments have a wholesome earth smell in them, though very likely.

this apparent naturalness is as much an art as what we expend in rounding out a sentence or elaborating a peroration. It is one good effect of this inartificial style that nobody in England seems to feel any shyness about shoveling the untrimmed and untrimmable ideas out of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least nobody did on the occasion now in hand, except a poor little major of artillery, who responded for the army in a thin, quavering voice, with a terribly hesitating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question not, would rather have been bayoneted in front of his batteries than to have said a word. Not his own mouth, but the canons, was this poor major's proper organ of utterance. While I was thus amiably occupied in criticizing my fellow

guests. The mayor had got up to propose another toast, and listening rather inattentively to the first sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in his worship's remarks that made me glance apprehensively towards Sergeant Wilkins. Yes, grumbled that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of port towards me. It is your turn next! And seen in my face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unpracticed orator. He kindly added, It is nothing. A mere acknowledgement will answer the purpose.

The less you say, the better they will like it. That being the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it best if I said nothing at all. But the sergeant shook his head. Now, on receiving the mayor's invitation to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might possibly be brought into my present predicament, but I had dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagreeable to be

entertained, and, moreover, as so alien from my disposition and character, that fate surely could not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If nothing else prevented, an earthquake, or the crack of doom, would certainly interfere before I need rise to speak. Yet here was the mayor getting on inexorably, and, indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on forever, and of his wordy wanderings find no end. If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest confidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my own experience as a public speaker

quite indifferently as if it concerned another person. Indeed it does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, for it was not I in my proper and natural self that sat there at table or subsequently rose to speak. At the moment then, if the choice had been offered me whether the mayor should let off a speech at my head or a pistol, I should, unhesitatingly, have taken the latter alternative. I had really nothing to say, not an idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal worse,

any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which to dress out that empty nothing, and give it a cunning aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor vacuity the little time it had to live. But time pressed, the mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogistic of the United States, and highly complimentary to their distinguished representative at the table to a close, amid a vast deal of cheering, and the band struck up Hail Columbia, I believe, though it might have been Old Hundred, or God Save the Queen over again, for anything that I should have known or cared. When the music ceased, there was an intensely disagreeable instant,

during which I seemed to rend away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and rose still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, to make a speech. The guests rattled on the table, and cried, here, most vociferously, as if now at length, in this foolish and idly garrulous world, had come the long expected moment when one golden word was to be spoken and in that imminent crisis i caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of international sentiment which it might and must and should do to utter well it was nothing as the sergeant had said what surprised me most was the sound of my own voice which i had never before heard at a declamatory pitch and which impressed me as belonging to some sort of my own voice which i had never before heard at a declamatory pitch and which impressed me as belonging to some some other person who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech.

A prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances! I went on without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down amid great applause, wholly undeserved by anything that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, methought, by the new development of pluck that alone had enabled me to speak at all. It was handsomely done, quothed Sergeant. Wilkins, and I felt like a recruit who had been for the first time under fire. End of Section 23. Section 24 of Our Old Home.

This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org. Our old home by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Section 24, Civic Banquets. I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then and the there forever, but was often placed in a similar or worse position, and compelled to meet it as best I might, for this was one of the necessities of an office which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and beneath which I might be crushed by no moral delinquency on my own part,

but could not shirk without cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was various. Once, though I felt it to be a kind of imposture. I got a speech by heart, and doubtless it might have been a very pretty one, only I forgot every syllable at the moment of need, and had to improvise another as well as I could. I found it a better method to prearrange a few points in my mind, and trust to the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of providence for enabling me to bring them to bear. The presence of any considerable proportion of personal friends generally dumbfounded me. I would rather have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, too, I was much embarrassed by a small audience, and succeeded better with a large one, the sympathy of a

multitude possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the speaker a little way out of his individuality, and tosses him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than his private one. Again, if I rose carelessly and confidently, with an expectation of going through the business entirely at my ease, I often found that I had little or nothing to say, whereas if I came to the charge in perfect despair and at a crisis when failure would have been horrible, it once or twice happened that the frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expression to sentiments which an instant before looked as vague and far off as the clouds in the atmosphere. On the whole, poor as my own success may have been, I apprehend that

any intelligent man with a tongue possesses the chief requisite of oratorical power, and may develop many of the others if he, he deems it worthwhile to bestow a great amount of labor and pains on an object which the most accomplished orators, I suspect, have not found altogether satisfactory to their highest impulses. At any rate, it must be a remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated conception of truth, when the lower feeling of a multitude is assailing his natural sympathies, and who can speak out frankly the best that there is in him, when by adulterating it a little, or a good deal,

he knows that he may make it ten times as acceptable to the audience. This slight article on the civic banquets of England would be too wretchedly imperfect, without an attempted description of a Lord Mayor's dinner at the Mansion House in London. I should have preferred the annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good fortune to witness it. Once, however, I was honored with an invitation to one of the regular dinners,

and gladly accepted it, taking the precaution, nevertheless, though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the city king, though a mutual friend, that I was no fit representative of American eloquence, and must humbly make it a condition that I should not be expected to open my mouth, except for the reception of his lordship's bountful hospitality. The reply was gracious and acquiescent, so that I presented myself in the great entrance hall at the mansion house at half past six o'clock in a state of most enjoyable freedom from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tormented me at such times.

The mansion house was built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old London, and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were he really as great a man as his traditionary state and pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed, however, since the days of Whittington, or even of Hogarth's industrious apprentice, to whom the highest imaginable reward of lifelong integrity was a seat in the Lord Mayor's chair.

People nowadays say that the real dignity and importance have perished out of the office, as they do sooner or later, out of all earthly institutions, leaving only a painted and gilded shell like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only second-rate and third-rate men, who now condescend to be ambitious of the mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at this, for the original emigrants of New England, had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were mostly Puritans in religion and part-reacted. parliamentarians and politics in the early days of our country, so that the Lord Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be hardly second to the prime

minister of the throne. The true great men of the city now appear to have aims beyond city greatness, connecting themselves with national politics and seeking to be identified with the aristocracy of the country. In the entrance hall I was received by a body of footmen dressed in a livery of blue coats and buff breeches, in which they looked wonderfully like American Revolutionary Generals, only bedizened with far more lace and embroidery than those simple and grand old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There were likewise two very imposing figures, whom I should have taken to be military men of rank, being arrayed in scarlet coats and large silver epaulets,

but they turned out to be officers of the Lord Mayor's household, and were now employed in assigning to the guests the places which they were respectively to occupy at the dinner table. Our names, for I had included myself in a little group of friends, were announced, and, ascending the staircase, we met his lordship in the doorway of the first reception room, where also we had the advantage of a presentation to the Lady Mayoris. As this distinguished couple retired into private life at the termination of their year of office,

it is inadmissible to make any remarks critical or laudatory on the manners and bearing of two personages suddenly emerging from a position of respectable mediocrity into one of preeminent dignity within their own sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow nearly or quite to the full size of their office. If it were desirable to write an essay on the latent aptitude of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an exemplification in our own country, and on a scale incomparably greater than that of the mayoral tea, though invested with nothing like the outward magnificence that gilds and embroideres the latter. If I have been correctly informed, the Lord Mayor's salary is exactly double that of the President of the United States, and yet is found very inadequate to his necessary expenditure. There were two reception rooms thrown into one by the opening of wide-folding doors, and though in an old style, and not yet so old as to be venerable, they are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as to be,

as well as spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either end a splendid fireplace of white marble, ornamented with sculptured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The company were about 300, many of them, celebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though I recollect none preeminently distinguished in either department. But it is certainly a pleasant mode of doing honor to men of literature, for example, who deserve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face to face, thus to bring them together under genial auspices in connection with persons of note in other lines. I know not what may be the Lord Mayor's mode or principle of selecting his guests, nor

whether during his official term he can proffer his hospitality to every man of noticeable talent in the wide world of London, nor in fine, whether his lordship's invitation is much sought for or valued. But it seemed to me that this periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods which the English have contrived for keeping up a good understanding among different sorts of people. Like most other distinctions of society, however, I presume that the Lord Mayor's card does not often seek out modest merit, but comes at last when the recipient is conscious of the bore, and doubtful about the honor. One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met with at any other public or partially

public dinner, was the presence of ladies. No doubt they were principally the wives and daughters of city magnates, and if we may judge from the many sly illusions in old plays and satirical poems, the city of London has always been famous for the beauty of its women, and the reciprocal attractions between them and the men of quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither and thither through those crowded apartments, I saw much reason for modifying certain heterodox opinions which I had imbibed in my transatlantic newness and rawness, as regarded the delicate character and frequent occurrence of English beauty. To state the entire truth, being at this period some years old in English life,

my taste, I fear, had long since begun to be deteriorated by acquaintance with other models of feminine loveliness than it was my happiness to know in America. I often found, or seemed to find, if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of my dear countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a certain meagerness, heaven forbid that I should call it scrawneiness, a deficiency of physical development, a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their material make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of voice, all of which characteristics, nevertheless, only made me resolve so much the more sturdily to uphold these fair creatures as angels, because I was sometimes driven to a half-acknowledgement that the English ladies looked at from a lower point of view were perhaps a little finer animals than they.

The advantages of the latter, if any, they could really be said to have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. It would be a pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal charm of American beauty in exchange for a half-a-hundred weight of human clay. At a given signal, we all found our way into an immense room called the Egyptian Hall. I know not why, except that the architecture was classic and as different as possible from the ponderous style of Memphis and the pyramids. A powerful band played inspiringly as we entered, and a brilliant profusion of light shone down on two long tables, extending the whole length of the hall and a cross-table between them, occupying nearly its entire breadth. Glass gleamed and silver glistened on an acre or two of snowy damask, over which were set out all the accompaniments of a stately feast. We found our places without much difficulty, and the Lord, Lord Mayor's Chaplain implored a blessing on the food, a ceremony which the English never omit,

at a great dinner or a small one, yet consider, I fear, not so much a religious right as a sort of preliminary relish before the soup. The soup, of course, on this occasion was Turtle, of which, in accordance with immemorial custom, each guest was allowed two platefuls, in spite of the otherwise immutable law of table decorum. indeed judging from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me i surmised that there was no practical limit except the appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup terrains not being fond of this civic dainty i partook of it but once and then only in accordance with the wise maxim always to taste a fruit a wine or a celebrated dish at its indigenous sight and the very fountain-head of turtle soup i suppose is in the lord mayor's dinner-pot it is one of those orthodox customs which people follow for half a century without knowing why to drink a sip of rum punch in a very small tumbler after the soup it was excellently well brewed and it seemed to me almost worth while to sup the soup for the sake of sipping the punch

the rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill of fare printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque border of green and gold it looked very good not only in the english and french names of the numerous dishes but also in the positive reality of the dishes themselves, which were all set on the table to be carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient and honest method is attended with a good deal of trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy, yet by no means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you have thereby the absolute assurance of a banquet actually before your eyes, instead of a shadowy promise in the Bill of Fair, and such meager fulfillment as a single guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. I wonder that Englishmen, who are fond of looking at prize oxen in the shape of butcher's meat, do not generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism

of devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before proceeding to nibble the comparatively few morsels which, after all, the most heroic appetite and widest stumacic capacity of mere mortals can enable even an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three delectable things enough, which I take pains to remember, that the reader may not go away wholly unsatisfied from the barmecide feast to which I have bidden him, A red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, exquisitely stewed, and a pair of tarmigan, a bird of the same family as the grouse, but, feeding high up towards the summit of the Scotch Mountains, whence it gets a wild delicacy of flavor, very superior to that of the artificially nurtured English game fowl. All of the other dainties have vanished from my memory, as completely as though. of Prospero's banquet after Ariel had clapped his wings over it. The band played at intervals in spiriting us to new efforts, as did likewise the sparkling wines which the footmen supplied

from an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed, with little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact that there comes a tomorrow morning after every feast. As long as that shall be the case, a prudent man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner. Nearly opposite to me on the other side of the table sat a young lady in white, who I am sorely tempted to describe, but dare not, because not only the super-eminence of her beauty, but its peculiar character would cause the sketch to be recognized, however rudely it might be drawn. I hardly thought that there existed so.

such a woman outside of a picture frame or the covers of a romance. Not that I had ever met with her resemblance even there, but, being so distinct and singular an apparition, she seemed likelier to find her sisterhood in poetry and picture than in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch too apt should compel her stately and cold and soft and womanly grace to gleam out upon my page, with a strange repulsion and unattainableness in the very spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and familiarly attentive to her, sad a gentleman of whom I remember only a hard outline of the nose and forehead, and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when he opened it to speak or to put in a morsel of food.

then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrubbery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman and lady were. Any child would have recognized them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife, the loveliest of the series, but with already a mysterious gloom overshadowing her fair young brow, traveling in their honeymoon and dining among other distinguished sources. strangers at the Lord Mayor's table. After an hour or two of valiant achievement with knife and fork came the dessert, and at the

point of the festival where finger glasses are usually introduced, a large silver basin was carried round to the guests containing rose water, into which we dipped the ends of our napkins, and were conscious of a delightful fragrance, instead of that heavy and weary odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This seems to be an ancient custom of the city, not confined to the Lord Mayor's table, but never met with westward of Temple Bar. During all the feast, in accordance with another ancient custom,

the origin or purport of which I do not remember to have heard, there stood a man in armor with a helmet on his head behind his lordship's chair. When the after-dinner wine was placed on the table, still another official personage appeared behind the chair, and proceeded to make a solemn and sonorous proclamation, in which he enumerated the principal guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several baronets and plenty of generals, members of Parliament, aldermen, and other names of the illustrious, one of which sounded strangely familiar to my ears, ending,

in some such style as this, and other gentlemen and ladies, here present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all in a loving cup, giving a sort of sentimental twang to the two words, and sends it round among you. And forthwith the loving cup, several of them indeed, on each side of the tables, came slowly down with all the antique ceremony. The fashion of it is thus. The Lord Mayor, standing up and taking the covered cup in both hands, presents it to the guest at his elbow, who likewise rises, and removes the cover for his lordship to drink, which, being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the cover and receives the cup into his own hands. He then presents it to his next neighbor, that the cover may be again removed for

himself to take a draft, after which the third person goes through a similar maneuver with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the whole company find themselves inextricably intertwisted and entangled in one complicated chain of love. When the cup came into my hands, I examined it critically, both inside and out, and perceived it to be an antique and richly ornamented silver goblet, capable of holding about a cord of wine. Considering how much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to our lips, the guests appeared to content themselves with wonderfully moderate potations. In truth, nearly or quite the original quart of wine, being still in the goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the company had more than barely touched the silver rim before passing

it to their neighbors, a degree of abstinence that might be. accounted for by a fastidious repugnance to so many compitators in one cup, or possibly by a disapprobation of the liquor. Being curious to know all about these important matters, with a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from the loving cup, and had no occasion for another, ascertaining it to be claret of a poor original quality, largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened. It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or ceremonial drink, and could never have been intended for any better purpose. The toasts now began in the customary order, attended with speeches neither

more nor less witty and ingenious than the specimens of table eloquence which had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to each new display, the Herald, or whatever he was, behind the chair of state, gave awful notice that the right, honorable, the Lord Mayor was about to propose a toast. His lordship, being happily delivered thereof, together with some accompanying remarks, the band played an appropriate tune, and the Herald again issued proclamation to the effect that such or such nobleman or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or whatnot, was going to respond to the right honorable the Lord Mayor's toast. Then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments,

and finally the doomed individual, waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young Earl tried his son. made an oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got every word by heart, even including, however he managed it, the most seemingly casual improvisations of the moment, he really spoke like a book, and made incomparably the smoothest speech I had ever heard in England. The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on this occasion but all similar ones, was what impressed me as most extraordinary, not to say absurd.

Why should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits into festive trim with champagne, and afterwards mellow themselves into a most enjoyable state of quietude, with copious libations of Sherry and Oldport, and then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no degree so refreshing. If the champagne had thrown its sparkle over the surface of these effusions, or if the generous port had shone through their substance with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might have seen a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in their cups,

and should undoubtedly have been glad to be a listener. But there was no attempt nor impulse of the coming, on the part of the orators, nor apparent expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the audience. In fact, I imagine that the latter were best pleased when the speaker embodied his ideas in the figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any hard matter of business or statistics as a heavy-laden bark bumps upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad severity, the too earnest utilitarianism of modern life, have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am afraid, in this ancient and goodly institution of civic banquets. People used to come to them a few hundred years ago for the sake of being jolly.

They come now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into their wine by way of wormwood bitters. and thus make such a mess of it that the wine and wisdom reciprocally spoil one another possibly the foregoing sentiments have taken a spice of acridity from a circumstance that happened about this stage of the feast and very much interrupted my own further enjoyment of it up to this time my condition had been exceedingly felicitous both on account of the brilliancy of the scene and because i was in close proximity with three very pleasant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose honored name my readers would recognize as a household word, if I dared write it, another a gentleman, likewise well known to them, whose fine taste, kind heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed in such happy proportion as in him. The third was the man to whom I owed most in England, the warm benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing me good, who led me to many scenes of life,

in town, camp, and country, which I never could have found out for myself, who knew precisely the kind of help of stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not a thousand more important things to live for. Thus I never felt safer or cozier at anybody's fireside, even my own, than at the dinner-table of the lord mayor out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt his lordship got up and proceeded to make some very eulogistic remarks upon the literary and commercial i question whether those two adjectives were ever before married by a copulative conjunction and they certainly would not live together in illicit intercourse of their own accord the literary and commercial attainments of an eminent gentleman there present and then went on to speak of the relations of blood and interest between great britain and the aforesaid eminent gentleman's native country those bonds were more intimate than had ever before existed between two great nations throughout all history and his lordship felt assured that the whole honourable company would join him in the expression of a fervent wish that they might be held inviolably sacred on both sides of the atlantic now and for ever then came the same wearisome old toast dry and hard to chew upon as a musty sea-biscuit which had been the text of nearly all the oratory of my public career

the herald sonorously announced that mr so-and-so would now respond to his right honourable lordship's toast and speech the trumpets sounded the customary flourish for the onset there was a thunderous rumble of anticipatory applause, and finally a deep silence sank upon the festive hall. All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the Lord Mayor's part, after beguiling me within his lines on a pledge of safe conduct, and it seemed very strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual eat his dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the mansion-house wine, and go away grateful at heart for the old English hospitality. If his lordship had sent me an infusion of Ratsbane in the loving-cup, I should have taken it much more kindly at his hands. But I suppose the secret of the matter to have been somewhat as follows. All England just then was in one of those singular fits of panic excitement,

not fear, though, as sensitive and tremulous as that emotion, which, in consequence of the homogenous character of the people, their intense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas in public affairs on other sources than their own examination and individual thought, are more sudden, pervasive, and unreasoning than any similar mood of our own public. In truth, I have never seen the American public in a sense. state at all similar, and believe that we are incapable of it. Our excitements are not impulsive like theirs, but right or wrong, are moral and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of the North at the commencement of this war bore the aspect of impulse and passion only because it

was so universal and necessarily done in a moment, just as the quiet and simultaneous getting up of a thousand people out of their chairs would cause a tumult that might be mistaken for a storm. We were cool then, and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool to the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it may be. There is nothing which the English find so difficult to understand in us as this characteristic. They imagine us in our collective capacity, a kind of wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and are always looking for the moment when we shall break through the slender barriers of international law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the world with themselves at the head to combine for the purpose of putting

us into a stronger cage. At times this apprehension becomes so powerful, and one man feels it a million do, that it resembles the passage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you see the whole crop bending and swaying beneath one impulse, and each separate stock tossing with the self-same disturbance as its myriad companions. At such periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of sentiment and expression. You have the whole country in each man, and not one of them all, if you put him strictly to the question, can give a reasonable ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in the world, our own country and France, that can put England into this singular state. It is the united sensitiveness of a people extremely well-to-do,

careful of their country's honor, most anxious for the preservation of the cumbrous and moscrone prosperity which they have been so long in consolidating, and in it. And in incompetent owing to the national half-sightedness and their habit of trusting to a few leading minds for their public opinion, to judge when that prosperity is really threatened. If the English were accustomed to look at the foreign side of any international dispute, they might easily have satisfied themselves that there was very little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from the simple circumstance that their own government had positively not an inch of honest ground to stand upon, and could not fail to be aware of the fact. Neither could they have met Parliament with any show of a justification for incurring war.

It was no such perilous juncture as exists now, when law and right are really controverted on sustainable or plausible grounds, and a naval commander may at any moment fire off the first canon of a terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic squabble in which the British ministers, with a politic generosity in which they are in the habit of showing towards their official subordinates, had been to be able to be able to be able to be able to be in the public. tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambassador for an indefensible proceeding, and the American government, for God had not denied us an administration of statesmen then, had retaliated with staunch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulging them with no pretense whatever for act of resentment. Now the Lord Mayor, like any other Englishmen, probably fancied that war was on the Western gale, and was glad to lay hold of even so insignificant an American as myself,

who might be made to harp upon the rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity of blood and interest, and community of language and literature, and whisper peace where there was no peace in however we. weak an utterance. And possibly his lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good feeling which was sure to be expressed by a company of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and far-famed dinner-table, might have an appreciable influence on the grand result. Thus, when the Lord Mayor invited me to his feast, it was a piece of strategy. He wanted to induce me to fling myself like a lesser Coutzius, with a larger object of self-sacrifice, into the chasm of discord between England and America,

and, on my ignominious demure, had resolved to shove me in with his own right honorable hands, in the hope of closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole I forgive his lordship. He meant well by all parties, himself who would share the glory, and me, who ought to have desired, desired nothing better than such a heroic opportunity, his own country, which would continue to get cotton and breadstuffs, and mine which would get everything that men work with and wear. As soon as the Lord Mayor began to speak, I rapped upon my mind, and it gave forth a hollow sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas. I never thought of listening to the speech,

because I knew it all beforehand in twenty repetitions from other lips, and was aware that it would not offer a single suggestive point. In this dilemma I turned to one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew to possess an enviable flow of silver speech, and obtested him by whatever he deemed holiest, to give me at least an available thought or two to start with, and once afloat I would trust to my guardian an angel for enabling me to flounder ashore again. He advised me to begin with some remarks complimentary to the Lord Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary reverence in which his office was held. At least my friend thought that there would be no harm in giving his lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the fact or no, was held by the descendants of the Puritan forefathers.

Thence, if I liked, getting flexible with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily slide off into the momentous subject of the relations between England and America, to which his lordship had made such weighty illusion. Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and bidding my three friends bury me honorably, I got upon my legs to save both countries, or perish in the attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, and suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never happened to stand in a position of greater dignity and peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage policy here to close these sketches,

leaving myself still erect in so heroic an attitude. End of Section 24. End of Our Old Home by Nathaniel Hawthorne.