Part 2

This is the crowning charm of London the unique--that we tread on ground every inch of which has its thrilling story to tell. There Shakespeare trod. Here Marlowe fell. Here Otway died, starved. Here Carey fainted, foodless. Here Goldsmith trailed footsore, hungry, despairing of fame. Here Johnson and Savage tramped the street all night with three cents between them for coffee at the street stall in the early morning. Here gentle De Quincey slept on the doorsteps. Hear him: "So then, Oxford Street, stony-hearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans and drinkest the tears of children, the time was come at last, that I no more should pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces; no more should dream, and wake in captivity to the pangs of hunger. Thou, Oxford Street, hast echoed to the groans of innumerable hearts!" Aye, and still do thy throbbing streets, O glorious, pitiless London, reverberate with the wails of unsuspected thousands! To-day, this very day, the artist, the poet, the scholar, the inventor, the helpless sons of genius may perish, and most literally do perish, die of the heart-break that is born of hunger, in the wilderness of merry London. Who cannot readily recall a score of these tragedies, within any past score of years, where genius, talent, worth, character, industry, patient effort, failed to win recognition for the ill-fated ones--until the day _after_ their lamentable death?

GLASGOW, DUBLIN, LIVERPOOL, MANCHESTER.

London is not the typical English city, though types of almost every city in the eastern hemisphere can be unearthed in its mazes by those who know. The traveller who would get an understanding view of the United Kingdom must visit the great centres of industry in England, the sources of its modern strength, and take a look at the chief cities of Scotland and Ireland. But if he would penetrate deeper into the heart of the nation he will do well to halt by the way and get in touch with the unpretentious towns and lovely country scenes from whose old-fashioned folks most of the makers of the great cities have sprung.

Leaving London for the north a passing thought is due to Birmingham, the most American of English cities in its marvellous activities, metal work of every kind especially, from "ancient" idols for pagan temples in the East to exquisite altar-plate and prayer-book bindings for the institutional foes of idolatry. The local corruption of the name into Brummagem has added a descriptive term to the language, and it also illustrates the interesting fact that these local pronunciations usually preserve historical fact, as the now important city used to be no more than a hamlet adjoining Bromwich, hence Brumwich-ham. It showed the way, in the early seventies, how municipalities of unsalaried and unselfish citizens can acquire their own lighting and waterworks and otherwise carry on the town's business at an immense saving over the ordinary system. A new city has arisen out of the old one and the running expenses are lower than ever. Sheffield, the centre of the cutlery industry, is well worth studying for a day, for its activity, the surrounding scenery, and the effect of foreign competition upon its staple trade.

Manchester is familiar as the mother of the cotton trade. Its fortune was made by its spinning and weaving enterprises, by its quick utilization of the steam-engine and the inventions of mechanical genius. The first working railway was that which ran between Manchester and Liverpool in 1830. It first gave England the honor of being regarded as the workshop of the world. The wider adaptations of steam power and the establishment of free trade enriched its capitalists and merchants beyond the dreams of their fathers. Many a Lancashire millionaire could not write his name. Within the memory of middle-aged men there have been great enterprises, princely philanthropies, and striking public speeches by self-made magnates who could not compose letters nor speak gracefully without help from others. The city is marked by its pillar of smoke by day and of furnace fire by night. Its wise people carry their umbrellas as constantly as their pocket-books, for "the rain it raineth every day," at least drizzleth. The population of Manchester and its twin city, Salford, touches three-quarters of a million, sturdy and stern Britons, proudly dubbing themselves "Manchester men," in distinction from "Liverpool gentlemen."

Its murky air, ungainly factories and buildings generally, impress the stranger with its intensely practical spirit. The poetry of existence reveals itself in the cosy interiors and the charming outskirt residences. It has romance in its history and associations. Mancastra was a Roman camp in the reign of Titus. Under the Saxons and the later Normans it fashioned itself to the times just as it did to the magic wand of the nineteenth-century genius. It fought for the Parliament against the Royalists. For more than three centuries it led in woollen and, latterly, cotton manufactures. Its district is rich in coal-mines. The Bridgewater Canal dates from 1761, the principal one in the country. A greater, though apparently a less wise, because unprofitable, enterprise, has been the ship-canal. American cotton has always been unshipped at Liverpool, by which its brokers have greatly profited. To save tolls, delays and cost of rail transport, Manchester men made an imitation Suez Canal by deepening and adapting certain waterways, by which ships can pass into the new port of Manchester without troubling Liverpool. It may be hard to realize that Manchester can scarcely hope to become again the world's cotton factory, seeing that she has not only taught other nations how to do her work, but has long been selling them her machinery and coal for that purpose. A momentous sign of the times is the rapid migration of her capital and brain to Japan and India, where operatives of sufficient skill are content with a mere fraction of the home-workers' wage, and ocean transport is saved.

The sight-seer will be charmed by the noble city hall with its tall tower, its peal of twenty-one bells, and the public recitals on its great organ. Manchester possesses the oldest free library in the world, Chetham's, with 40,000 rare old books ranged on the shelves in the old mansion rooms where some of them have reposed for nearly three hundred years. It also has the first of modern free libraries on the grand scale, opened in 1851, a gift from a citizen, greatly enlarged since. Its famous Free Trade Hall has echoed with the eloquence of the world's famous men and women, in speech and song. Scarcely an American statesman or orator of note, being in England since 1856, but has been cheered by its audiences. The public meetings of all kinds in this hall have been among the most valuable educational influences of the half century. It was said by Lord Salisbury, many years before he became Premier, that "as Manchester thinks to-day, England thinks to-morrow," and it used to be true.

The traveller should try to be in Manchester in Whitsun Week, to see its most striking characteristic. It is the Sunday-school children's gala time and all business is demoralized in their honor. On the Monday twenty or thirty thousand Church of England scholars march with bands to a service in the Cathedral, the whole town and country around crowding the streets. Tuesday is the only off-day. Every other one is a half-holiday for those who do not take whole ones. Each church gives its scholars picnics in parks or on local farms in the afternoons, and a whole day's country outing on one day. Friday is the grown folks' picnic day, and on Saturday the Total Abstainers' parade. They are called Tee-totallers, because one of the founders, a Lancashire man, happened to stammer in a speech in trying to say _total abstinence_.

The Cathedral is not a great edifice, but has many remarkable fifteenth-century carvings and side chapels. It is affectionately known, in the local vernacular, as "t'owd church," the old church. On Easter Mondays the villagers and working folk used to crowd in to be married, as many as two hundred couples being despatched at a blow, the same service answering for all simultaneously. The city may be proud of its Victoria University, the development of Owen's College, founded in 1847. Of its many famous characters, the names of De Quincey and Harrison Ainsworth are perhaps the best known in literature.

Liverpool is thirty-six miles from Manchester and three from the sea. Its first charter was granted in 1229 and it sent two members to Parliament in 1296, yet its population until the seventeenth century was only about one thousand. It has the distinction of having made the first dock, penning up with flood-gates sufficient water to keep ships afloat between the fall and rise of tides. This was built in 1709. It is unkind, though true, to record that Liverpool's first fortune was made in the slave-trade. Its ships went to the west coast of Africa and took in cargoes of natives whom they then transported to the West Indies as slaves, being paid for by cargoes of sugar and rum, brought home to Liverpool. This traffic began about 1720. It was suppressed by Parliament in 1807, the number of ships then engaged in it being 185, carrying over forty thousand slaves annually. A good deal of privateering was carried on during the eighteenth-century wars, an echo of which survived until the American Civil War of 1861-65.

Liverpool has many unique features of interest. It has not many manufactures, and only four or five ship-building establishments, for reasons which will appear in the pages on Glasgow. Its commercial growth has been extraordinary. In 1800 the population was under 78,000; in 1900 it was about 750,000. In the first-named year the tonnage of its ships was 450,000, and is now nearly 10,000,000. Its commerce is chiefly with America. A magnificent sight is its endless array of docks, stretching along both shores of the Mersey in a line, measured continuously, of over thirty miles. Many a stately procession of great ships glides up the spacious river, laden with precious cargoes not to be estimated by statistics. Over fifty thousand Americans, it is said, visit England each summer, entering by this majestic water-gate. Who shall tell the influence of this mingling of kindred peoples, the moral and national worth of all they bring and all they take?

It is a new city, as towns go in the old country, with few visible marks of its history. The public buildings are not specially imposing, but St. George's Hall stands on a commanding site and in exterior and interior holds its own with the best civic temples, in spaciousness and grace. The great public library near by does honor to the city and to its donor. The art gallery is remarkable for its construction, as for its exhibits. It has a circular floor of one hundred feet in diameter without columns or any intermediate support, and beneath it is an amphitheatre, used for lectures, with its benches hewn out of the solid rock.

To ferry across the river to Birkenhead and Bootle, and down to New Brighton and other popular resorts, is an excellent way to appreciate the greatness of this famous port. As a city it has little charm, except in its surroundings.

All the excitements of the transatlantic voyage may be had in miniature (except the _mal de mer_) in crossing the lively channel to Dublin. The metropolis of Ireland must not be judged by commercial and cosmopolitan standards.

A city of many contrasts, stirring associations and poetical interest, two patriotisms, two grand divisions of its community, are discernible in the air. On the one hand is the Castle, lacking the castle feature and charm, with a pervading sense of royalism _minus_ the outward symbols of state which give it popularity and influence. On the other is the vibrant nationalism which, in many tones and by a hundred tokens, expresses its hostility to the emblems of what it regards as alien dominance. Pathetic in its way is the decay of once fashionable, not to say aristocratic, districts, that have lapsed into commonplace, and many fine streets hobnob with veritable slums. This gradual decline of much residential property impoverished old families and added to the sum of general discontent. Dublin has never taken kindly to the idea of becoming a commercial city, such as Liverpool. The intellectual head of the island, it prides itself on the genius of its professional people. Irish eloquence shines as brightly as ever in its pulpits, in the law courts, and, indeed, wherever public speech is heard. The Four Courts enshrine the fame of many a gifted patriot orator and wit. Trinity College, founded by Queen Elizabeth, has made its mark not simply in the island and kingdom but all over the world. The same is true of its colleges in general.

The city lions are these buildings, the Castle, Phoenix Park, St. Patrick's Cathedral and sundry monuments. One world-important industry has done wonders for the city. The Guiness product rebuilt the Cathedral out of its decaying remains. A local distillery has contributed nobly to the city's reputation for progress. Singular it certainly is that the most appreciated malt liquor of the kind known as stout, should be produced in three cities, Dublin, London, and Philadelphia, each of which can boast the filthiest river in its country, the Liffey, the Thames, and the Schuylkill.

Dublin earth quickly turns to black bog under the frequent rains. Yet neither its mud nor its political differences can damp the cheery spirits of its natives. This is one great delight of a journey to the island. Usually we see what we set out to see anywhere. No matter whether our quest is for city shows or the lovely rural scenery, or the sports on the Curragh, or the woes of the impoverished masses, we cannot pass a single hour without marvelling at the native good-humor and good wit of even the most distressful-conditioned people. Where less gifted sufferers grow melancholy-visaged, the Irish greet misfortune with a continual smile, in which fact lies a world of hope, and not a little envy.

Up in Belfast the austere-faced Ulstermen have made a commercial centre of the first rank. Ship-building and the flax industry, with others, flourish, and the city might be a civic paradise if faction warfare could be cooled down.

Passing now to Glasgow we find ourselves in a city of comparative palaces. Its buildings are of sandstone, its streets handsome, its municipal government so admirable as to have become the model for American cities. The canny Scot may be trusted to make the citizen's penny bring a full pennyworth. The city authorities own their plants for providing the people with light, and for bringing the pure waters of Loch Katrine into every home. They went a step farther and bought the public tramways and cars, giving the people cheaper travel than had ever been known.

Glasgow stole the greater part of Liverpool's ship-building business and Belfast a goodly share. Miles and miles of the banks of the Clyde are decorated with skeletons of new vessels waiting to be clothed in steel or wood garb. Every variety of craft is to be seen, from the battle-ship to the racing yacht. But Glasgow turns its hands to everything makable and salable. Its three-quarters of a million inhabitants work at innumerable trades. Their success shows in the substantial build of their city, which has more than a liberal allowance of splendid structures. Modern and up-to-date, its whirl of daily life recalls New York in certain aspects. This modernness in architectural effect is the more striking when we stand in the High Street and reflect that the grand national hero, William Wallace, fought a battle with the English on this spot in 1300. The city's patron saint, Kentigern, gave it its name in the sixth or seventh century, _glasgu_, the dear family, after a band of his disciples settled there. Its cathedral, old St. Mungo's, takes its name also from Kentigern's _munghu_, or most loved friend. Its charter, authorizing the holding of a free market, was granted in 1175. Commercial development dates from 1707, when the union with England was settled. Glasgow University traces its beginnings to 1450. In making a new dock recently the diggers brought to light a boat, formed out of the trunk of a tree, a relic of primeval seamanship. The scenery of the Clyde, and for miles beyond its banks, has been the theme of many a poetical description by American travellers. The reader of Scott needs no reminder of its richness in historic story. But is not all Scotland a picture-poem of stirring romance?

"Auld" Edinburgh is written of elsewhere in this volume by its brilliant son. American newspapers that lop off the final letter, also objected to in Pittsburgh, are evidently unaware that it is pronounced Edinborough (burrow). The unrivalled queen of British cities, the uncommercial capital of Scotland, its ancient capital and its present glory, is worth the pilgrimage, even from old Athens and Rome. The towering castle was begun twelve centuries ago. St. Giles's church dates from 1110. It was a walled town in 1450. Progressive in the sleepy old days, it set up its first printing-press, one of the world's first presses, in 1507, and has been literary ever since. The early rulers brought musicians and scholars from abroad to delight their courts, and many jealousies they caused.

KENILWORTH AND WARWICK CASTLES.

ELIHU BURRITT.

[Elihu Burritt, the "Learned Blacksmith," wrote two works of mingled description and economic observation in the British island, these being "A Walk from John O'Groat's to Land's End" and "Walks in the Black Country and its Green Border-Land." It is from the "green border-land" section of the latter that we take the following description of two of England's most famous ancient castles.]

Between Coventry and Warwick, in a green, quiet rural district, stands Kenilworth, and Kenilworth is a castle which absorbs into itself all of space, population, and history that belongs to the name. Not only novel-readers, but practical history-readers at a distance, never think of anything but the castle when the name is mentioned or suggested.

Still, there is a goodly, tidy, and comfortable village near the ruins worth visiting, without the lion which attracts so many thousands a year to pay their homage and their admiration--to the genius of Sir Walter Scott. All the ordinary trades of a practical business community are carried on in this village; and a tall, taper chimney of a tannery, as high as any church steeple, smokes its pipe in the face of all the romantic antiquities of the place. Still, the people would probably confess that the principal source of their income is derived from their vested interest in Sir Walter Scott's "Kenilworth," not in the real castle walls. Take away that famous novel, and, with all the authenticated history that remains attached to them, not one in five of the visitors they now attract would walk around them with admiration. In fact, they are more a monument to the genius of the great novelist than to the memory of Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester. If any community ever owed a statue to the honor of a benefactor for money value received, the Kenilworths owe one to the celebrated Scotch writer. One might reasonably estimate that his book has been worth ten thousand pounds a year to them for the last quarter of a century or more.

There are observatories, barometer and anemometer stations around the coasts of England, where rain-falls and wind-blows, tide-risings and star-showers are registered. There are other observation-stations where the self-registering offices of human fames and reputations are kept, and where these are measured spontaneously. Go to Stratford and look at the inner walls of Shakespeare's house and the record kept there, and count the names from the four quarters of the globe written there in homage of the great bard; go to Abbotsford, and consult the day-book of that great memory; go to Olney, and see what manner and multitude of names cover and re-cover the little garden summer-house in which Cowper wrote, and you will have this self-registration of human genius and its appreciation. So at Kenilworth, the visitors' day-book at the hotel will show how many come from both hemispheres and all their continents to see the scene of Sir Walter Scott's romance.

I was favored with a bright day on the sunny edge of autumn for my visit, when the very sky imparts a radiance to the ivied ruins of old castles and abbeys. Kenilworth shows its successive ages and uses in the various departments of its structure. From the ground it occupied, one would hardly conceive it to be a fighting castle. But when you come to look at the massive Caesar's Tower, you will be impressed with its impregnability in the bow-and-arrow period of English warfare. Its lofty walls hold their frontage and perpendicular lines as true and even as if they were a last-year's structure. It is seemingly composed of several towers connected by walls sixteen feet thick, perforated by window-holes which look like so many archways. It is built or faced with hewn red sandstone, and is a perfect specimen of mason-work. The Insurgent Barons stood a siege of six months against Henry III. behind these strong walls, and in the reign of Edward I. Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, presided over a grand tournament beneath them.

In a later century the castle passed into the hands of John o' Gaunt, who added the noble structure called the Lancaster Buildings, or banqueting-hall. This must have been one of the finest specimens of architecture of his time in England, and, in ruins, presents the graceful proportions and embellishments of its structure. Under the _regime_ of that celebrated nobleman the castle began to put on a civilian dress over its coat of mail, and to echo with the music and mirth of dancing and feasting, instead of the clangor of arms.

But Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, completed the transformation into a residential palace. He not only added the wing called the Leicester Buildings, but he renovated and embellished all the old portions of the huge pile. He erected an ante-castle, or a great gate house, which is a noble structure in itself. Never did a subject build, and rebuild, and embellish on such a scale as he did to receive his sovereign.

Three times Elizabeth was his guest. Her last visit was in July, 1575, and lasted seventeen days. Of the festivities and princely entertainments he prepared for her on this occasion Sir Walter Scott has written with all that natural enthusiasm and predilection with which, perhaps, above all other English novelists, he dilated upon such a subject. His graphic descriptions of these scenes are so familiar to the million that I will not venture to go behind his brilliant fictions in search of actual historical facts of duller interest. The day of such favorites has gone by, like the beauty and glory of this once gorgeous fabric. The sun of Christian morality and civilization has risen to a purer flood of light, and such broad-faced gallantries would now be looked out of countenance in high places....