English Hours

Rye continued indeed, under her old brown south cliff, to build big boats till this industry was smitten by the adoption of iron. That was the last stroke; though even now you m...

The reader will perceive that I do not shrink even from the extreme concession of speaking of our capital as British, and this in a shameless connection with the question of loy...

For half an hour, from eight to nine, every pair of wheels presents the portrait of a diner-out. To consider only the rattling hansoms, the white neckties and “dressed” heads wh...

To walk in quest of any object that one has more or less tenderly dreamed of, to find your way, to steal upon it softly, to see at last, if it be church or castle, the tower-top...

If she doesn’t go into particulars it may seem a very presumptuous act to have attempted to do so on her behalf, and the reader will doubtless think I have been punished by havi...

These are meagre memories, however, compared with those which cluster about that place of pleasantness which is locally known as Lynton. I am afraid I may seem a mere profession...

I returned to the habitation of my friend—for I too was guilty of “staying”—through an old Norman portal, massively arched and quaintly sculptured, across whose hollow threshold...

And yet that same day, on the edge of the Avon, I found it in me to say that a new house too may be a very charming affair. But I must add that the new house I speak of had real...

The Isle of Wight is at first disappointing. I wondered why it should be, and then I found the reason in the influence of the detestable little railway. There can be no doubt th...

I daresay I speak of “Denis Duval” as “old” mainly to make an impression on readers whose age is less. I remember, after all, perfectly, the poetry of its original appearance—th...

The course at Epsom is in itself very pretty, and disposed by nature herself in sympathetic prevision of the sporting passion. It is something like the crater of a volcano witho...

I have still other memories of Greenwich, where there is a charming old park, on a summit of one of whose grassy undulations the famous observatory is perched. To do the thing c...

It will hardly be pretended this year that the English Christmas has been a merry one, or that the New Year has the promise of being particularly happy. The winter is proving ve...

I hoped, on the occasion of which I am now speaking, that the attack would not be acute, and indeed for the first five minutes I flattered myself that this was the case. In the...

It is not the absence of a close that damages Canterbury; the cathedral stands amid grass and trees, with a cultivated margin all round it, and is placed in such a way that, as...

Next after its wall—possibly even before it—Chester values its Rows, an architectural idiosyncrasy which must be seen to be appreciated. They are a sort of gothic edition of the...

The papers gathered into this series, originally published in various periodicals, have already been reprinted—the earliest in date more than thirty years ago; the others, with...

It may be said of the English, as is said of the council of war in Sheridan’s farce of “The Critic” by one of the spectators of the rehearsal, that when they _do_ agree, their u...

FitzGerald, devoted to Crabbe, was apparently not less so to this small break in the wide, low, heathery bareness that brings the sweet Suffolk commons—rare purple and gold when...

I walked down to Westminster Abbey on Good Friday afternoon—walked from Piccadilly across the Green Park and through that of St. James. The parks were densely filled with the po...