Part 4

The Earl of Warwick’s courtesy throws the castle open to the public two or three days a week. Rumour says that the late Earl’s housekeeper, whose monument may be seen in Warwick Church, left her master sixty thousand pounds, accumulated by visitors’ fees! At the very gateway you are met by wonders,--an iron porridge-pot of the great Sir Guy, holding a hogshead or two, I suppose. The old knight must have had a rare appetite for breakfast. There is also his sword, a gigantic weapon, which I defy Jacob Omnium to wield with both hands. As for the contents of the castle, I will not say a word about them; though of historical portraits, Vandykes and Rubenses, there is a fine collection. I commend the traveller upon looking out upon Avon from those wondrous rooms, to call back, if he can, the heroic and poetic times when it was possible to build such a castle; when it seemed fit habitation for those who dwelt in it,--for Neville the Kingmaker, to wit, who fills a marvellous page, brilliant with gold and stained with blood, in England’s history; and who well deserved to be found in Shakespeare’s peerless portrait-gallery.

Warwick town is very quaint, and has two old-fashioned hostelries, the Warwick Arms and the Woolpack, at either of which a hungry and thirsty traveller will find ample refreshment of the right sort. From the top of Warwick Church tower there is a magnificent view over a rich country. The church’s chief glory is the Beauchamp Chapel, just 400 years old, a perfect poem in stone, an absolute triumph of the good old artist-workmen, who find no rivals in the days when artists are never workmen, and workmen never artists. Its dead inhabitant was last of the Beauchamp Earls, and that crowned saint, Henry VI., conferred the earldom upon the Kingmaker; thus commencing the third line of its holders, for the first Earl was a Newburgh, or Neuburg, of the Conqueror’s creation; then, two centuries later, it passed through a female to the Beauchamps; two centuries more, and the last Beauchamp was succeeded by a Nevil; on Nevil’s death, “false, fleeting, perjured Clarence” had the earldom, whose son, last of the Plantagenets, ended the fourth line, when he and Perkin Warbeck died on Tower Hill; next came the Dudleys, creatures of Henry VIII., the elder of whom, Lady Jane Grey’s father-in-law and worst enemy, is better known as Duke of Northumberland; then Lord Rich, whose great grand-son married Cromwell’s daughter, was created Earl of Warwick by James I.; and finally George II. conferred the title on Greville, Earl Brooke, ancestor of the present Earl. Thus six families at least have held this famous earldom.

The traveller will of course turn aside to Leamington, town of fashion and frivolity, about a mile and a half from the poetic stream. Leamington owes its existence, as anything beyond a village, to one Dr. Jephson, who hit on the brilliant notion that the mineral waters of the place would cure all possible diseases. A great hotel sprang up, the Regent, which for years was a kind of hospital for Dr. Jephson’s patients. This medical genius is quite deified in the town. There are pleasant gardens dedicated to him, to which none are admitted save subscribers of a guinea, or something of the sort. It is a downright apotheosis (or apodiabolosis) of physic. But other causes concurred to bring Leamington into the first rank of pleasure towns: there is capital hunting in the neighbourhood, and a first-rate pack of hounds. It is almost the metropolis of archery, a pastime which young ladies wisely patronize, since a pretty girl cannot look prettier than in her toxophilite costume of Lincoln-green. Nothing can be more beautiful than the walk by the margin of Avon through Lord Warwick’s park. After passing through several pleasant villages, full of Warwickshire quaintness, we reach Charlecote House, the seat of the Lucy family. It has always appeared to me that Haydon more admirably than any man expressed the feeling which is produced in poetic minds by the places sacred to Shakespeare. Painting under the stress of a noble ambition, with the sad certainty that the age could not perceive his greatness, had injured his health; instead of joining “the vulgar idlers at a watering-place” he sought change of scene at Stratford. How the man enjoyed it, and how vigorously he depicts his enjoyment! “To Charlecote,” says he, “I walked as fast as my legs could carry me, and crossing the meadow, entered the immortalized park by a back pathway. Trees, gigantic and umbrageous, at once announce the growth of centuries: while I was strolling on, I caught a distant view of the old red-bricked house, in the same style and condition as when Shakespeare lived; and on going close to the river-side, came at once on two enormous old willows, with a large branch across the stream, such as Ophelia hung to. Every blade of grass, every daisy and cowslip, every hedge-flower and tuft of tawny earth, every rustling, ancient and enormous tree which curtains the sunny park with its cool shadows, between which the sheep glitter on the emerald green in long lines of light, every ripple of the river with its placid tinkle,

“Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge It overtaketh in its pilgrimage,”

announced the place where Shakespeare imbibed his early, deep, and native taste for forest scenery. Oh, it was delightful, indeed! Shakespeare seemed to hover and bless all I saw, thought of, or trod on. Those great roots of the lime and the oak, bursting, as it were, above the ground, bent up by the depth they had struck into it, Shakespeare had seen--Shakespeare had sat on.

In the same spirit of delight, and with the same realizing power, did the great painter--one of those

“Mighty poets in their misery dead,”

“of whom the world was not worthy”--enjoy Stratford itself. Thus does he write of what he felt as sunset descended on the church where lies all that was mortal of God’s greatest human creature. “I stood and drank into enthusiasm all a human being could feel; all that the most ardent and devoted lover of a great genius could have a sensation of; all that the most tender scenery of river, trees, and sunset sky together could excite. I was lost, quite lost; and in such a moment should wish my soul to take its flight (if it please God) when my time is finished.” God willed otherwise; that great soul took flight in a moment, not of delight, but of agony.

There seem to be always American visitors at Stratford. The refined and thoughtful Americans, like Washington Irving and Hawthorne, have by the intensity of their reverie, thrown a halo of fresh beauty around many places sacred to genius. But too many of these trans-atlantic travellers merely visit a place like Stratford just to say they have been there; and people of that kind are singularly unpleasant to meet. There is a story that one Yankee offered an enormous sum of money for Shakespeare’s house, to take it to the States for exhibition.

I must hurry on. Village after village, quaint and beautiful, lie along the margin of Avon; the keen eye will notice whence Shakespeare drew his choicest descriptions of nature; the longest summer-day will not be too long to loiter around the vicinity of Stratford. One of the best proofs that Avon River flows through rich and lovely country is the multitude of monastic institutions which have left their names to the villages, with here and there a noble tower or graceful gateway.

Founders of abbeys loved a pleasant river flowing through fertile meadows; salmon and trout and eels for fast-days were as important as beeves and deer for festivals. So there are more conventual remains between Naseby and Tewkesbury than in almost any equal distance of which I have knowledge; and the glory of those old ecclesiastic foundations is peculiarly realized as the noble bell-tower of Evesham Abbey rises above the town. The great monastery had lasted more than a thousand years when the ruthless hand of Henry VIII. fell upon it. The bell-tower and a most delightful old gateway are the only relics of it left.

The pilgrim through the beautiful Vale of Evesham comes upon another battle-field, where, 600 years ago, fell a famous leader of the Commons against the Crown. Simon de Montfort fought for the right, so far as we can judge at this remote period; but his antagonist was the greatest general of the day, and afterwards became England’s greatest king. He was but twenty-six when he won the immortal victory known as the Murder of Evesham. If Montfort gave England its first parliament, Edward gave us Wales and Scotland, and made the priests pay taxes in defiance of the Pope. A poetic prince, as well as a gallant; for did he not, when Eleanora the Castilian died in Lincolnshire, cause Peter l’Imagineur to build a stately cross wherever her corpse rested on its way to Westminster? Thanks to the poetry of a railway company, London sees the last and stateliest of those crosses rebuilt in what was once the quiet village of Charing.

There was another abbey at Pershore, which takes its name from its abundant pear-trees. Bredon Hill, not far from this town, is worth climbing, for its fine view towards the Malverns. At the village of Strensham the author of _Hudibras_ was born. I must not be retarded by reminiscences of that most humorous writer of wonderful doggerel; but pass on to Tewkesbury, last of the towns on the Avon, which here falls into the wide and shining Severn. Tewkesbury had also its abbey and its famous battle; it has, moreover, its legend of that unfortunate gentleman, Brictric of Bristol, who, somewhere about the noon of the Eleventh Century, made love to Matilda, daughter of Count Baldwin of Flanders, and then jilted her. ’Twas the unluckiest action of his life. For Matilda married a certain fierce and resolute Duke of Normandy, who used to thrash her occasionally; and this same duke became King of England by the strong hand; and then Matilda coaxed him (nothing loth, I guess) to seize all Brictric’s wide demesnes, and imprison their owner. So the poor fellow died in Winchester Castle; and his manors in half-a-dozen counties, as may be seen by Domesday book, passed into the hands of the queen. So much for the _spretæ injuria formæ_.

DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE

CHARLES DICKENS

Queenston, at which place the steamboats start from Toronto (or I should rather say at which place they call, for their wharf is at Lewiston, on the opposite shore), is situated in a delicious valley, through which the Niagara River, in colour a very deep green, pursues its course. It is approached by a road that takes its winding way among the heights by which the town is sheltered; and seen from this point is extremely beautiful and picturesque.

Our steamboat came up directly this had left the wharf, and soon bore us to the mouth of the Niagara: where the Stars and Stripes of America flutter on one side, and the Union Jack of England on the other: and so narrow is the space between them that the sentinels in either fort can often hear the watchword of the other country given. Thence we emerged on Lake Ontario, an inland sea; and by half-past six o’clock were at Toronto.

The country round this town being very flat, is bare of scenic interest; but the town itself is full of life and motion, bustle, business, and improvement. The streets are well paved, and lighted with gas; the houses are large and good; the shops excellent. Many of them have a display of goods in their windows, such as may be seen in thriving county towns in England; and there are some which would do no discredit to the metropolis itself.

The time of leaving Toronto for Kingston is noon. By eight o’clock next morning, the traveller is at the end of his journey, which is performed by steamboat upon Lake Ontario, calling at Port Hope and Coburg, the latter a cheerful, thriving little town. Vast quantities of flour form the chief item in the freight of these vessels. We had no fewer than one thousand and eighty barrels on board, between Coburg and Kingston.

We left Kingston for Montreal on the tenth of May, at half-past nine in the morning, and proceeded in a steamboat down the St. Lawrence River. The beauty of this noble stream at almost any point, but especially in the commencement of this journey when it winds its way among the Thousand Islands, can hardly be imagined. The number and constant successions of these islands, all green and richly wooded; their fluctuating sizes, some so large that for half an hour together one among them will appear as the opposite bank of the river, and some so small that they are mere dimples on its broad bosom; their infinite variety of shapes; and the numberless combinations of beautiful forms which the trees growing on them present: all form a picture fraught with uncommon interest and pleasure.

In the afternoon we shot down some rapids where the river boiled and bubbled strangely, and where the force and headlong violence of the current were tremendous. At seven o’clock we reached Dickenson’s Landing, whence travellers proceed for two or three hours by stage-coach: the navigation of the river being rendered so dangerous and difficult in the interval, by rapids, that steamboats do not make the passage. The number and length of those _portages_, over which the roads are bad, and the travelling slow, render the way between the towns of Montreal and Kingston somewhat tedious.

Our course lay over a wide, uninclosed tract of country at a little distance from the riverside, whence the bright warning lights on the dangerous parts of the St. Lawrence shone vividly. The night was dark and raw, and the way dreary enough. It was nearly ten o’clock when we reached the wharf where the next steamboat lay; and went on board, and to bed.

She lay there all night, and started as soon as it was day. The morning was ushered in by a violent thunder-storm, and was very wet, but gradually improved and brightened up. Going on deck after breakfast, I was amazed to see floating down with the stream, a most gigantic raft, with some thirty or forty wooden houses upon it, and at least as many flag-masts, so that it looked like a nautical street. I saw many of these rafts afterwards, but never one so large. All the timber, or “lumber,” as it is called in America, which is brought down the St. Lawrence, is floated down in this manner. When the raft reaches its place of destination, it is broken up; the materials are sold, and the boatmen return for more.

At eight we landed again, and travelled by a stage-coach for four hours through a pleasant and well-cultivated country, perfectly French in every respect: in the appearance of the cottages; the air, language, and dress of the peasantry; the signboards on the shops and taverns; and the Virgin’s shrines, and crosses, by the wayside. Nearly every common labourer and boy, though he had no shoes to his feet, wore round his waist a sash of some bright colour: generally red: and the women, who were working in the fields and gardens, and doing all kinds of husbandry, wore, one and all, great flat straw hats with most capacious brims. There were Catholic Priests and Sisters of Charity in the village streets; and images of the Saviour at the corners of cross-roads, and in other public places.

At noon we went on board another steamboat, and reached the village of Lachine, nine miles from Montreal, by three o’clock. There we left the river, and went on by land.

Montreal is pleasantly situated on the margin of the St. Lawrence, and is backed by some bold heights, about which there are charming rides and drives. The streets are generally narrow and irregular, as in most French towns of any age; but in the more modern parts of the city, they are wide and airy. They display a great variety of very good shops; and both in the town and suburbs there are many excellent private dwellings. The granite quays are remarkable for their beauty, solidity and extent.

There is a very large Catholic cathedral here, recently erected; with two tall spires, of which one is yet unfinished. In the open space in front of this edifice, stands a solitary, grim-looking, square brick tower, which has a quaint and remarkable appearance, and which the wiseacres of the place have consequently determined to pull down immediately. The Government House is very superior to that at Kingston, and the town is full of life and bustle. In one of the suburbs is a plank road--not foot-path--five or six miles long, and a famous road it is, too. All the rides in the vicinity were made doubly interesting by the bursting out of spring, which is here so rapid, that it is but a day’s leap from barren winter, to the blooming youth of summer.

The steamboats to Quebec perform the journey in the night; that is to say, they leave Montreal at six in the evening, and arrive in Quebec at six next morning. We made this excursion during our stay in Montreal (which exceeded a fortnight), and were charmed by its interest and beauty.

The impression made upon the visitor by this Gibraltar of America: its giddy heights; its citadel suspended, as it were, in the air; its picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways; and the splendid views which burst upon the eye at every turn: is at once unique and lasting. It is a place not to be forgotten or mixed up in the mind with other places, or altered for a moment in the crowd of scenes a traveller can recall. Apart from the realities of this most picturesque city, there are associations clustering about it which would make a desert rich in interest. The dangerous precipice along whose rocky front Wolfe and his brave companions climbed to glory; the Plains of Abraham, where he received his mortal wound; the fortress, so chivalrously defended by Montcalm; and his soldier’s grave, dug for him while yet alive, by the bursting of a shell; are not the least among them, or among the gallant incidents of history. That is a noble Monument, too, and worthy of two great nations, which perpetuates the memory of both brave generals, and on which their names are jointly written.

The city is rich in public institutions and in Catholic churches and charities, but it is mainly in the prospect from the site of the Old Government House, and from the Citadel, that its surpassing beauty lies. The exquisite expanse of country, rich in field and forest, mountain-height and water, which lies stretched out before the view, with miles of Canadian villages, glancing in long white streaks, like veins along the landscape; the motley crowd of gables, roofs, and chimney-tops in the old hilly town immediately at hand; the beautiful St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight; and the tiny ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like spiders’ webs against the light, while casks and barrels on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many puppets: all this, framed by a sunken window in the fortress and looked at from the shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest and the most enchanting pictures that the eye can rest upon.

In the spring of the year, vast numbers of emigrants who have newly arrived from England or from Ireland, pass between Quebec and Montreal on their way to the backwoods and new settlements of Canada. If it be an entertaining lounge (as I very often found it) to take a morning stroll upon the quay at Montreal, and see them grouped in hundreds on the public wharfs about their chests and boxes, it is matter of deep interest to be their fellow-passenger on one of these steamboats, and, mingling with the concourse, see and hear them unobserved.

THE TIGRIS

GEORGE RAWLINSON

The Tigris, like the Euphrates, rises from two principal sources. The most distant, and therefore the true source is the western one, which is in latitude 38° 10′ longitude, 39° 20′, nearly, a little to the south of the high mountain lake called Göljik, in the peninsula formed by the Euphrates where it sweeps round between Palon and Telek. The Tigris’s source is near the south-western angle of the lake, and cannot be more than two or three miles from the channel of the Euphrates. The course of the Tigris is at first somewhat north of east, but after pursuing this direction for about twenty-five miles it makes a sweep round to the south, and descends by Arghani Maden upon Diarbekr. Here is a river of considerable size, and it is crossed by a bridge of ten arches a little below that city. It then turns suddenly to the east, and flows in this direction past Osman Kieui to Til where it once more alters its course and takes that south-easterly direction, which it pursues with certain slight variations, to its final junctions with the Euphrates. At Osman Kieui it receives the second or Eastern Tigris, which descends from Niphates, with a due course south, and, collecting on its way the waters of a large number of streams, unites with the Tigris half-way between Diarbekr and Til, in longitude 41° nearly. Near Til a large stream flows into it from the north-east, bringing almost as much water as the main channel ordinarily holds. The length of the whole stream, exclusive of meanders, is reckoned at 1,146 miles. From Diarbekr to Samara the navigation is much impeded by rapids, rocks and shallows, as well as by artificial bunds or dams, which in ancient times were thrown across the stream, probably for purposes of irrigation. The average width of the Tigris in this part of its course is 200 yards, while its depth is very considerable. From the west the Tigris obtains no tributary of the slightest importance, for the Tharthar, which is said to have once reached it, now ends in a salt lake, a little below Tekrit. Its volume, however, is continually increasing as it descends, in consequence of the great bulk of water brought in from the east, particularly by the Great Zab and the Diyaleh.

The Tigris, like the Euphrates, has a flood season. Early in the month of March, in consequence of the melting of the snow on the southern flank of Niphates, the river rises rapidly. Its breadth gradually increases at Diarbekr from 100 or 120 to 250 yards. The stream is swift and turbid. The rise continues through March and April, reaching its full height generally in the first or second week of May. At this time the country about Baghdad is often extensively flooded, not, however, so much from the Tigris as from the overflow of the Euphrates, which is here poured into the eastern stream through a canal. About the middle of May the Tigris begins to fall, and by midsummer it has reached its normal level.