Gray Days and Gold in England and Scotland

More than a century has passed since Walter Scott was born--a poet destined to exercise a profound, far-reaching, permanent influence upon the feelings of the human race, and th...

To traverse Stratford-upon-Avon is to return upon old tracks, but no matter how often you visit that delightful place you will always see new sights in it and find new incidents...

January 22, 1888.--On a night in 1785, when Mrs. Siddons was acting at Edinburgh, the play being _The Fatal Marriage_ and the character Isabella, a young lady of Aberdeenshire,...

Berwick-upon-Tweed, September 8, 1890.--It had long been my wish to see something of royal Berwick, and our acquaintance has at length begun. This is a town of sombre gray house...

Devizes, Wiltshire, August 20, 1888.--The scarlet discs of the poppies and the red and white blooms of the clover, together with wild-flowers of many hues, bespangle now the eme...

A good way by which to enter the Lake District of England is to travel to Penrith and thence to drive along the shore of Ullswater, or sail upon its crystal bosom, to the bloomi...

Warwick, July 6, 1888.--One night, many years ago[3] a brutal murder was done, at a lonely place on the highroad between Charlecote Park and Stratford-upon-Avon. The next mornin...

Edinburgh, August 24, 1890.--A bright blue sky, across which many masses of thin white cloud are borne swiftly on the cool western wind, bends over the stately city, and all her...

York, August 12, 1888.--All summer long the sorrowful skies have been weeping over England, and my first prospect of this ancient city was a prospect through drizzle and mist. Y...

Lichfield, Staffordshire, July 31, 1890.--To a man of letters there is no name in the long annals of English literature more interesting and significant than the name of Samuel...

Warwick, August 29, 1889.--It has long been the conviction of the present writer that the character of King Richard the Third has been distorted and maligned by the old historia...

One denotement, among many, of a genial change, a relaxation of the old ecclesiastical austerity long prevalent in Scotland, is perceptible in the lighter character of her moder...

Oban, September 17, 1889.--Seen in the twilight, as I first saw it, Oban is a pretty and picturesque seaside village, gay with glancing lights and busy with the movements of rap...

London, June 29, 1888.--The poet Emerson's injunction, "Set not thy foot on graves," is wise and right; and being in merry England in the month of June it certainly is your own...

American interest in Stratford-upon-Avon springs out of a love for the works of Shakespeare as profound and passionate as that of the most sensitive and reverent of the poet's c...

Worcester, July 23, 1889.--The present wanderer came lately to The Faithful City, and these words are written in a midnight hour at the Unicorn Hotel. This place is redolent of...

Edinburgh, September 9, 1889.--Scotland again, and never more beautiful than now! The harvest moon is shining upon the grim old castle, and the bagpipes are playing under my win...

Stratford-upon-Avon, August 20, 1889.--The traveller who hurries through Warwickshire,--and American travellers mostly do hurry through it,--appreciates but little the things th...

Oban, September 4, 1890.--Going westward from Stronachlacher, a drive of several delicious miles, through the country of Rob Roy, ends at Inversnaid and the shore of Loch Lomond...

August 21, 1888.--From Devizes the traveller naturally turns toward Bath, which is only a few miles distant. A beautiful city, marred somewhat by the feverish, disturbing spirit...

Loch Awe, September 14, 1889.--Under a soft gray sky and through fields that still are slumbering in the early morning mist, the train rolls out of Edinburgh, bound for the nort...

Stratford-upon-Avon, August 22, 1889.--The river life of Stratford is one of the chief delights of this delightful town. The Avon, according to law, is navigable from its mouth,...

Stratford-upon-Avon, August 27, 1889.--Among the many charming rambles that may be enjoyed in the vicinity of Stratford, the ramble to Wootton-Wawen and Henley-in-Arden is not l...

Stronachlacher, Loch Katrine, September 1, 1890.--No one needs to be told that the Forth bridge is a wonder. All the world knows it, and knows that the art of the engineer has h...

"_Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking be...