CHAPTER VI.

GLOUCESTER--BRISTOL--BATH--SALISBURY--SARUM--AMESBURY--STONEHENGE--WILTON.

At 6 P. M., after a scant two hours' ride, we take rooms at the Gloucester House, and are out on a walk in another beautiful town, the River Severn running through it,--a town more like Worcester than like Hereford, though in population (18,330) strikingly like the latter. The city is of British origin, but is very ancient. It was once a Roman station by the name of Colonia Glevum, and under the Emperor Claudius received the name of Claudia Castra. The Saxons, after they had taken it, gave it the name of Glean-ceaster; hence our modern word Gloucester. It had its part in battles, and in the seventeenth century was strongly fortified and took part with the Royalists. The place was of so much importance that Henry VIII. made it a bishop's seat, and so its great abbey church became a cathedral. The edifice is in fine repair, and is noted for its elegant cloisters,--the finest of any cathedral in the world. They are of very liberal dimensions, and adorned with fanlike tracery of extraordinary finish; and the openings into the great courtyard are filled with glass. The cathedral itself is one of rare beauty. It is 423 feet long, and 147 feet wide at the transepts; and the great central tower is 176 feet high to the base of the corner pinnacles, which tower up 49 feet higher. The cloisters are 148 feet long on each of their four sides. We shall not attempt a closer description of this than of other cathedrals, though every part is a study.

It has but a small number of noted monuments, but among them are some of unusual interest. One, always attracting attention, is of Robert, Duke of Normandy. It is a recumbent effigy of bog-oak, covered with wire network. Being a Crusader, the legs are crossed, as is the customary representation. Robert was imprisoned by his brother Henry, his eyes were put out, and for twenty-eight years he continued in this miserable condition till death came to his relief. Another monument is to the memory of Edward II., who was murdered Sept. 21, 1327. Another commemorates Bishop Warburton, who was made bishop of the diocese in 1759, and died here in 1779. Near the entrance is a monument to Dr. Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination, or inoculation, as a preventive of smallpox. He died at Berkley, in the county of Gloucestershire, and was buried in this cathedral in 1823, at the age of seventy-five.

In this city, in 1735, was born Robert Raikes, who in 1781 hired rooms for Sunday-schools, and employed women at a shilling a day to teach poor children, whom he found in the streets, the rudiments of common education. The school was held from 10 A. M. to 12 M. An hour's recess was followed by a lesson in reading, and then they went to church. After service the catechism was repeated till 5 P. M., "when they were charged to go home at once, and quietly." This was the origin of our present system of Sunday-schools, that of Mr. Raikes being the first of which we have any account. Here also, on the 16th of December, 1714, was born the celebrated preacher, George Whitefield, who died at Newburyport, Mass., Sept. 30, 1770, and whose remains are entombed under the pulpit of the Old South (Presbyterian) Church of that place. One mural tablet was of especial interest to us,--a white marble slab, high up on one of the transept walls, thought to be in memory of a relative of the founder of the chimes on Christ Church at the North End of Boston. It reads as follows:--

ABRAHAM RUDHALL BELL FOUNDER FAM'D FOR HIS GREAT SKILL BELOV'D AND ESTEEM'D FOR HIS SIGNAL GOOD NATURE AND INTEGRITY DIED JAN'Y 25TH 1785-6 AGED 78.

One of the bells at our Christ Church bears this inscription: "Abel Rudhall of Gloucester cast us all, Anno. 1744." As Abraham would have been about forty-two years old at the time, perhaps he was the son of this Abel.

The organ in the cathedral is one of great power and brilliancy of tone. It was built by the celebrated Renatus Harris of London, who built many of the large organs of England.

Reluctantly we left these beautiful grounds, and entertaining a regret unusually deep. The walks are kept scrupulously clean, and the flowers in the vicinity of the student's precincts were charming. As we sauntered about we could not but think of the great who have here held court. Beneath the shadow of these very walls walked Edward the Confessor, and many a Norman lord. In the old abbey Henry III. was crowned three hundred years ago; and who can walk and meditate here and not think of Richard III., Duke of Gloucester? We cannot refrain from quoting the quaint description given of him by Sir Thomas More:--

Richarde, the thirde sonne of Richard, Duke of Yorke, was in witte and corage equal with his two brothers, in bodye and prowesse far under them both, little of stature, ill fetured of limmes, croke backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard favored of visage, and such as in stater called warlye, in other menne otherwise, he was malicious, wrathful, envious and from his birth ever frowarde. It is for truth reported that he came into the world with the feet forwarde, and also ontothed, as if nature changed her course in hys beginnynge, which in the course of his lyfe manny thinges unnaturallye committed.

Just outside the cathedral grounds, in a little park, stands a monument to the memory of John Hooper, who, in the reign of Queen Mary, was one of the first to suffer martyrdom, and was on this spot burned at the stake Feb. 9, 1555. Over three hundred years are gone since the smoke of the martyr arose from this spot. How changed the scene! Over the vast domain, none now for conscience sake have power to destroy.

As reluctantly as can be imagined, we turned away. Very dear to us already had become old Gloucester. With an indescribable feeling we left the hallowed spot, and at 11 A. M., on Wednesday, May 8, took cars for Bristol. Our people do not think enough of the Mother Country. They hurry breathlessly and thoughtlessly, with but confused perceptions, to yet more foreign lands; they do not rest by the way in these fine old towns, drink in the inspiration which pervades their very atmosphere, and so make themselves ever after able better to interpret history. Another has well expressed it: "To him who is of a mind rightly framed, the world is a thousand times more populous than to the men to whom everything that is not flesh and blood is nothing."

BRISTOL.

Arrived at 2 o'clock P. M., after a ride of three hours from Gloucester. First impressions of the place were much like those one experiences at our American Pittsburg, for smoke prevailed, and the dingy appearance of the buildings confirmed the belief, that this condition of the atmosphere was not exceptional. The city is a seaport, situated on both sides of the rivers Avon and Frome, at their confluence, and eight miles from their entrance into the Severn, which is the head of Bristol Channel. The population is 182,524, and the city presents a bustling, hurried appearance. It is provided with docks built in the time of George III., at a cost of $30,000,000, and in commercial influence was long the second city in the kingdom. There are five substantial bridges connecting the several portions of the city. Tides rise very high,--those denominated spring tides forty-eight feet, and the neap ones twenty-three feet, compelling the use of a floating landing.

Our luggage left at the station, in anticipation of but a short stay, we walked out in quest of the cathedral, and soon, as we fancied, saw it in the distance. We entered, admiring much about it, yet disappointed in its general appearance, for it looked old but not cathedralish. It didn't seem to have the genuine antique atmosphere. There were old monuments, but not old enough. The color was dark-reddish brown, very sombre, and in places the building was decayed.

At the risk of showing our ignorance we asked the female verger--for it was a woman this time--if this was the cathedral. Lo, our good judgment had prevailed, and we were informed that it was St. Mary Radcliff Church. We were glad of the mistake, for here the celebrated Joseph Butler--author of the renowned "Analogy," who was made Bishop of Bristol in 1738, and died at Bath, June 16, 1752--was buried. Before us was a monument to his memory, the inscription written by the poet Southey. There were other monuments of considerable antiquity, which in number and interest greatly excelled those of the real cathedral. Of most interest to the visitor is the fact that in one part of this structure the wonderful young Thomas Chatterton--who died in this city August 24, 1770, at the age of eighteen--wrote his astonishing literary forgeries.

We were ushered up a flight of narrow stone stairs, from one of the transepts, into a room where yet remains a dusty chest, formerly belonging to a wealthy merchant in the reign of Edward IV. It was in this that Chatterton said he found his manuscripts,--declaring that, after being sealed up for centuries, these documents, among others, were there in 1727 when the chest was opened. It was in this room, with its unglazed openings, with the rooks as his companions, his only light that of the moon,--for he claimed that by her illumination he could write best,--were penned these remarkable impositions. History says that during the entire Sundays he would wander in the fields of Bristol, and lay for hours on the grass, gazing, rapt in meditation, on the tower of this old church.

We can hardly forbear stating briefly the nature of his remarkable deception. Let it be remembered that Chatterton died at the age of eighteen. His father, who was one of the schoolmasters of Bristol, died three months before his birth. At the age of five he was sent to school; so obtuse was his intellect, that in a year and a half "he was dismissed as an incorrigible dunce." His mother finally taught him to read, and to the astonishment of all he became at once an intellectual prodigy. At the age of eight he was again sent to school, and remained till his fifteenth year. He took little interest in his associates, but gave his attention to miscellaneous reading. In 1767, the year he left school, he was apprenticed to a Bristol attorney. Very studious, but remarkably eccentric, he kept his own counsel, employing his leisure time in the study of theology, history, and especially the phraseology of Old English. The next season, when in his seventeenth year, he performed the work which immortalizes his name. The old chest was opened by the proper authorities a half-century before. The parchments were of no especial value, and they remained undisturbed, till Chatterton's father used some of them as covers for schoolbooks. Some of them his son obtained; their curious chirography and phraseology excited his attention, and he conceived the idea of writing something of the kind himself. He asserted that some were written by Canynge, the original owner of the _cofre_, or trunk, and others by Thomas Rowley, the ecclesiastic and poet. He carefully copied the style of writing, followed the phraseology, and, by a process known only to himself, succeeded in giving a stained and timeworn look to his parchments, deceptive to all who examined them.

To Burgam, the celebrated pewterer, ambitious of obtaining the heraldic honors of his family, he gave a full pedigree, tracing his descent directly from the noble family of De Bergham. The historian of Bristol was aided in his ecclesiastical researches, and put in possession of a full account of the churches as they were three hundred years before, according to Thomas Rowley. A theological student was presented with part of a sermon by Rowley. One of the wealthy citizens of Bristol received from him a poem, entitled "Romaunt of the Cnyghte," said to have been written by the recipient's ancestor four hundred years before. To the Town and Country Magazine he made contributions, and Horace Walpole gratefully received anecdotes of eminent travellers and painters. So he continued cultivating, in the singular atmosphere of his temperament, this strange enthusiasm for the antique, and felt most comfortable while deceiving the public; but at length more critical eyes were turned toward him. Walpole, entertaining suspicions, submitted the parchments to Gray, who unhesitatingly pronounced them forgeries. They were returned to young Chatterton, who, indignant, avenged himself by a bitter attack on his antagonist. He led next a singular life of semi-seclusion and misery, writing articles for the reviews, sermons for clergymen, and songs for beer-gardens; all the time maintaining a gay exterior, though very poor, for he had an unconquerable vanity. Confiding in no one, he declined a dinner offered him by his landlady, even when he had been three days without food. Finally he expended his last pennies for arsenic, and was found dead in his room, August, 1770. He was buried in the pauper burial-ground in Shoe Lane, Bristol, and afterwards some of the citizens erected a monument to his memory.

Here, in 1495, and probably for some years before, lived John Cabot, the discoverer of the North American Continent, and while living here, March 5, 1496, he and his three sons obtained a patent from Henry VII., authorizing them, and their heirs and assigns, to go on voyages of discovery; and so we have it that a Bristol ship early touched our shores. Newfoundland was colonized by people from this place in 1610, under the supervision of a merchant by the name of Guy, whose colonists--while not successful in making a permanent settlement of the island, being superseded in 1621 or 1623 by others--were the first among foreigners to make this place their fixed residence.

Bristol was one of the first places in Great Britain, whence regular steam communication was established with the United States. April 4, 1838, the steamship Sirius, of 700 tons burthen, and with engines of 250 horse-power, sailed from Cork for New York. Four days later, April 8, the Great Western, of 1,340 tons, having engines of 450 horse-power, sailed from Bristol. Both arrived in New York on the 23d, the former making the passage in eighteen, and the latter, in fourteen days, arriving respectively on the morning and noon of the day named.

This city is the seat of manufacture of the well-known Bristol Brick, so long used for domestic purposes throughout America. An operative in one of the works visited the United States in 1820, and discovered similar sand in South Hampton, N. H., since which period a brick of equal value has been made in our own country.

The cathedral itself was next visited. It is on the other side of the River Avon, and is not a large structure, but is in good repair within and without. It is built of red sandstone, and has no grounds about it, but is situated in the midst of a populous neighborhood. It was founded in the time of King Stephen, who was born A. D. 1100, and died in 1154. It is 175 feet long, 128 feet wide, and has a large, solid, clumsy tower, 140 feet high. Here, as usual, we were entertained by the three-o'clock service. As an inducement to stay, we were informed by the verger that a new anthem was to be performed. We remained in chairs near the door, and were soon greeted with the usual imposing procession,--the verger with his elevated mace, followed by the robed choir of twelve men and boys, the two canons, and the bishop. With much order and becoming dignity they took their places before an audience of twelve persons. The service was intoned, making an unintelligent jumble of echoes and indistinct sounds, to us annoying in the extreme. We venture to say: "We think it don't pay." At the risk of being dealt with as were some of old for making a similar remark, we are inclined to ask, "Why was this waste of ointment made?" There are some monuments of interest in the cathedral, but none of great renown.

As we walked through the long and many streets, we were impressed with the city's extent. The land rises abruptly from the rivers, making many of the streets quite hard to climb. Very observable was the great number of houses in which the first stories were occupied as shops, the families of their keepers residing in the rooms above. A good idea, and one not practised enough. There were several Tremont and Park streets. Some of the buildings are modern in style, though for the most part they have an old and substantial appearance. Many of the oldest were originally so well built as to need no change, save for trading purposes.

The immediate suburbs are elevated. There are hills, amphitheatre like, on all sides; and on those adjoining the city proper are the fine grounds and mansions of the merchants and wealthier families. It is a place of manufactures and much commerce, and the central part, about the rivers, has the appearance of an American city.

There are many old institutions, and they have venerable buildings. We can only name a few. One of these is St. Stephen's Church, built in 1470, twenty years before the discovery of America. Others are the Old Guild Hall, built in the time of Richard II., who died A. D. 1400; the Corn Exchange, of modern Corinthian architecture, costing $250,000; the Royal Infirmary, which annually treats seven thousand five hundred patients. The city supports six hundred schools, educating twenty-five thousand pupils. Almshouses and hospitals, charity institutions and infirmaries, abound. After a somewhat hurried examination of the place, we took train at 5.30 P. M. for

BATH,

where, after an hour's ride, we arrived at 6.30 P. M. This is situated on the River Avon, and has a population of 52,542. It is one of the most ancient cities of Great Britain, was founded before the Roman invasion, and was an important station on the Roman road, leading from London to Wales. The remains of a Corinthian temple have been found; also many ancient Roman coins, vases, and altars. The city is chiefly built on level ground, or on a gentle slope; but it has along its rear side very elevated land, arranged in terraces and lawns, presenting, with its costly residences, an imposing background, giving to the place an air of consequence and picturesqueness. The city is principally built of brown stone, not at all dingy or sombre in appearance. A short ramble satisfied us that this was one of the aristocratic places of England. Substantial and clean was everything we beheld. Nothing anywhere was new; but the old was of the very best.

It is a fashionable place of resort for invalids, and we saw in the great thoroughfares carriages drawn by men and occupied by invalids of all ages. We said then and say now: "Let all who go to London go also to Bath." It is England's Queen City, and one of which she may well feel proud.

The cathedral is a perpendicular Gothic structure, very old, but in most perfect repair. It is 210 feet long, and has a tower 170 feet high, and is made of the reddish-drab sandstone of which the city is principally built. The stone ceiling of the church is of open fan-work, the finest of the kind in England. The whiteness of the whole interior is very striking, and accords with the neat exterior. There are no grounds about it, or even a fence; the streets are paved with large flagstones, reaching close to the building itself. The church and the world are in intimate proximity.

Here again the cathedral chimes saluted us every fifteen minutes, all day and all night. To the thoughtful their few notes speak with living lips. Sometimes they have two notes, and it requires but slight imagination to interpret them as saying "Quarter hour;" or three notes, and then they say "Quarter hour gone;" or four, and then we have it "Quarter hour more gone." The intervals are but short when the knell of departing time is not thus sounded. The poet Young says,--

We take no note of time, But from its loss. To give it then a tongue Is wise in man.

The advice is good, and we gave it a tongue; but it makes a deal of difference what the tongue says. If it waken regrets at the loss of time, when an eternity remains, then it had better have no tongue. These divisions of time are made by men, and are but incidentally a part of the Creator's plan. These sweet sounds are fresh music-flowers, strewn over the graves wherein are buried the new minutes of the quarter-hour just departed.

The city takes its name from its famous hot baths, and was frequented by the Romans for the purpose of using its waters, known to them by the name _Aqua Solis_, (sun-water). Baths were erected here in the time of Claudius, who died A. D. 54. These waters are saline and chalybeate, but they also contain sulphur and iron. The principal ones are called King's, Queen's, and the Cross baths, and the waters are constantly boiling at a temperature of from 109 to 117 degrees Fahrenheit. There are two others though of less note, called the Abbey and the Hot baths. Rooms for drinking the water and for bathing are constantly patronized, and at times the population of the city includes 14,000 visitors. King's Bath is the most popular. It is a fine old classic structure, fronting on one of the principal streets, in which is what is called the Pump Room, a saloon 85 feet long, 48 feet wide, and 34 feet high, elegantly finished and well furnished, where every convenience is provided the invalid for rest and refreshment, and for drinking the water from a constantly flowing fountain. These rooms are attended by matrons who for the small fee of a penny, furnish all the water desired. It is not unpleasant to the taste, though unmistakably impregnated with the materials named. It steams up well from the goblet, and is so warm that one must drink it in separate swallows. The old room was erected in 1760, and has been used by millions of people.

The baths connected with this building were the only ones we visited, and are a sample of the others. The visitor pays his shilling (24 cents), and receives a ticket which admits him to another part of the edifice, where he finds dressingrooms and toilet conveniences. He presently passes out into a small room, about four feet wide by eight feet long, closed on three sides; the fourth partly open, but protected by a screen reaching two thirds up to the top of the opening. The floor is covered with hot water, four feet deep, and stone steps lead into it. The bather can remain inside, or he may enter the great swimming-bath, filled with the same water. That is precisely what we