Passages from the English Notebooks, Volume 1.

We found pleasant rooms here, and established ourselves for the night. From this point we have a view of the beautiful lake, and of Skiddaw at the head of it. The cascade is wit...

At four o'clock there was some music from the band of the First Life-Guards, a great multitude of chairs being set on the greensward in the sunshine and shade, for the accommoda...

August 25th.--On Thursday I went by invitation to Smithell's Hall in Bolton le Moors to dine and spend the night. The Hall is two or three miles from the town of Bolton, where I...

By and by our kind guide had to stop at an intermediate farm; but he gave us full directions how to proceed, and we went on till it began to shower again pretty briskly, and we...

All the officers of the regiment are Irishmen, and all of them, I believe, men of fortune; and they do what they can towards alleviating their hardships in camp by eating and dr...

The grandmother of Mrs. ------ died fifty years ago, at the age of twenty-eight. She had great personal charms, and among them a head of beautiful chestnut hair. After her buria...

My early life was perhaps a good preparation for the declining half of life; it having been such a blank that any thereafter would compare favorably with it. For a long, long wh...

February 18th.--On Saturday there called on me an elderly Robinson-Crusoe sort of man, Mr. H------, shipwright, I believe, of Boston, who has lately been travelling in the East....

It is remarkable what a natural interest everybody feels in fishing. An angler from the bridge immediately attracts a group to watch his luck. It is the same with J-----, fishin...

Coming from the cathedral, we went through Paternoster Row, and saw Ave Mary Lane; all this locality appearing to have got its nomenclature from monkish personages. We now took...

October 1st.--On Thursday I went with Mr. Ticknor to Chester by railway. It is quite an indescribable old town, and I feel at last as if I had had a glimpse of old England. The...

She was going farther towards the West End, and I into the city; so we soon parted, and I lost myself among the streets and squares, arriving at last at Oxford Street, though ev...

In the evening, just before eight o'clock, I took a walk alone, by a road which goes up the hill, back of our hotel, and which I supposed might be the road to the town of Winder...

I remember nothing more that we saw yesterday; but, before breakfast, J----- and I sallied forth again, and inspected the gateway and interior court of the Council House,--a ver...

February 23d.--There came to see me the other day a young gentleman with a mustache and a blue cloak, who announced himself as William Allingham, and handed me a copy of his poe...

I am not sure, after all, that Verrio's frescoed grand staircase was not in another part of the palace; for I remember that we went from it through an immensely long suite of ap...

The dear and valued friend, who, by his generous and genial hospitality and unfailing sympathy, contributed so largely (as is attested by the book itself) to render Mr. Hawthorn...

November 5th.--We all, together with Mr. Squarey, went to Chester last Sunday, and attended the cathedral service. A great deal of ceremony, and not unimposing, but rather tedio...

We went on board the Great Britain before dinner, between five and six o'clock,--a great structure, as to convenient arrangement and adaptation, but giving me a strong impressio...

September 13th.--On Monday we went with O'Sullivan to Conway by rail. Certainly this must be the most perfect specimen of a ruinous old castle in the whole world; it quite fills...

June 11th.--I walked with J----- yesterday to Bebington Church. When I first saw this church, nearly two years since, it seemed to me the fulfilment of my ideal of an old Englis...

On one side of the church-tower there was a little penthouse, or lean-to,--merely a stone roof, about three or four feet high, and supported by a single pillar, beneath which wa...

The woman was a very intelligent-looking person, not of the usual English ruddiness, but rather thin and somewhat pale, though bright, of aspect. Her way of talking was very agr...

It is a very agreeable place: not striking as to scenery, but with a pleasant rural aspect. A stone bridge of five arches crosses the river Severn (which is the communication be...

In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may have carried away with him a family secret, whereby it was in his power, had he so chosen, to have brought about the ruin of...

Leaving the museum, we walked down to the stone bridge over the Severn, which is here the largest river I have seen in England, except, of course, the Mersey and the Thames. A f...

After seeing the steam-officials, we went to London Bridge, which always swarms with more passengers than any of the streets. Descending the steps that lead to the level of the...

There were a good many well-dressed people scattered through the grounds,--young men and girls, husbands with their wives and children, nursery-maids and little babes playing ab...

While we sat on the flat slabs resting ourselves, several little girls, healthy-looking and prettily dressed enough, came into the churchyard, and began to talk and laugh, and t...

As we were retiring, the gardener suddenly stopped, as if he were alarmed, and motioned to us to do the same, saying, "I believe it is my lady!" And so it was,--a tall and state...