Volume I Part 23 (2/2)
In the morning we took leave of our hotel. In leaving we were much touched with the simple kindliness of the people of the house. The landlady and her daughters came to bid us farewell, with much feeling; and the former begged my acceptance of a bead purse, knit by one of her daughters, she said, during the winter evenings while they were reading Uncle Tom. In this town one finds the simple-hearted, kindly English people corresponding to the same cla.s.s which we see in our retired New England towns. We received many marks of kindness from different residents in Stratford; in the expression of them, they appreciated and entered into our desire for privacy with a delicacy which touched us sensibly.
We had little time to look about us to see Stratford in the suns.h.i.+ne. So we went over to a place on the banks of the Avon, where, it was said, we could gain a very perfect view of the church. The remembrance of this spot is to me like a very pleasant dream. The day was bright, the air was soft and still, as we walked up and down the alleys of a beautiful garden that extended quite to the church; the rooks were dreamily cawing, and wheeling in dark, airy circles round the old b.u.t.tresses and spire. A funeral train had come into the graveyard, and the pa.s.sing bell was tolling. A thousand undefined emotions struggled in my mind.
That loving heart, that active fancy, that subtile, elastic power of appreciating and expressing all phases, all pa.s.sions of humanity, are they breathed out on the wind? are they spent like the lightning? are they exhaled like the breath of flowers? or are they still living, still active? and if so, where and how? Is it reserved for us, in that ”undiscovered country” which he spoke of, ever to meet the great souls whose breath has kindled our souls?
I think we forget the consequences of our own belief in immortality, and look on the ranks of prostrate dead as a mower on fields of prostrate flowers, forgetting that activity is an essential of souls, and that every soul which has pa.s.sed away from this world must ever since have been actively developing those habits of mind and modes of feeling which it began here.
The haughty, cruel, selfish Elizabeth, and all the great men of her court, are still living and acting somewhere; but where? For my part I am often reminded, when dwelling on departed genius, of Luther's e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n for his favorite cla.s.sic poet: ”I hope G.o.d will have mercy on such.”
We speak of the glory of G.o.d as exhibited in natural landscape making; what is it, compared with the glory of G.o.d as shown in the making of souls, especially those souls which seem to be endowed with a creative power like his own?
There seems, strictly speaking, to be only two cla.s.ses of souls--the creative and the receptive. Now, these creators seem to me to have a beauty and a worth about them entirely independent of their moral character. That ethereal power which shows itself in Greek sculpture and Gothic architecture, in Rubens, Shakspeare, and Mozart, has a quality to me inexpressibly admirable and lovable. We may say, it is true, that there is no moral excellence in it; but none the less do we admire it.
G.o.d has made us so that we cannot help loving it; our souls go forth to it with an infinite longing, nor can that longing be condemned. That mystic quality that exists in these souls is a glimpse and intimation of what exists in Him in full perfection. If we remember this we shall not lose ourselves in admiration of worldly genius, but be led by it to a better understanding of what He is, of whom all the glories of poetry and art are but symbols and shadows.
LETTER XI.
DEAR H.:--
From Stratford we drove to Warwick, (or ”Warrick,” as they call it here.) This town stands on a rocky hill on the banks of the Avon, and is quite a considerable place, for it returns two members to Parliament, and has upwards of ten thousand inhabitants; and also has some famous manufactories of wool combing and spinning. But what we came to see was the castle. We drove up to the Warwick Arms, which is the princ.i.p.al hotel in the place; and, finding that we were within the hours appointed for exhibition, we went immediately.
With my head in a kind of historical mist, full of images of York and Lancaster, and Red and White Roses, and Warwick the king maker, I looked up to the towers and battlements of the old castle. We went in through a pa.s.sage way cut in solid rock, about twenty feet deep, and I should think fifty long. These walls were entirely covered with ivy, hanging down like green streamers; gentle and peaceable pennons these are, waving and whispering that the old war times are gone.
At the end of this pa.s.sage there is a drawbridge over what was formerly the moat, but which is now gra.s.sed and planted with shrubbery. Up over our heads we saw the great iron teeth of the portcullis. A rusty old giant it seemed up there, like Pope and Pagan in Pilgrim's Progress, finding no scope for himself in these peaceable times.
When we came fairly into the court yard of the castle, a scene of magnificent beauty opened before us. I cannot describe it minutely. The princ.i.p.al features are the battlements, towers, and turrets of the old feudal castle, encompa.s.sed by grounds on which has been expended all that princely art of landscape gardening for which England is famous--leafy thickets, magnificent trees, openings, and vistas of verdure, and wide sweeps of gra.s.s, short, thick, and vividly green, as the velvet moss we sometimes see growing on rocks in New England. Gra.s.s is an art and a science in England--it is an inst.i.tution. The pains that are taken in sowing, tending, cutting, clipping, rolling, and otherwise nursing and coaxing it, being seconded by the misty breath and often falling tears of the climate, produce results which must be seen to be appreciated.
So again of trees in England. Trees here are an order of n.o.bility; and they wear their crowns right kingly. A few years ago, when Miss Sedgwick was in this country, while admiring some splendid trees in a n.o.bleman's park, a lady standing by said to her encouragingly, ”O, well, I suppose your trees in America will be grown up after a while!” Since that time another style of thinking of America has come up, and the remark that I most generally hear made is, ”O, I suppose we cannot think of showing you any thing in the way of trees, coming as you do from America!”
Throwing out of account, however, the gigantic growth of our western river bottoms, where I have seen sycamore trunks twenty feet in diameter--leaving out of account, I say, all this mammoth arboria, these English parks have trees as fine and as effective, of their kind, as any of ours; and when I say their trees are an order of n.o.bility, I mean that they pay a reverence to them such as their magnificence deserves.
Such elms as adorn the streets of New Haven, or overarch the meadows of Andover, would in England be considered as of a value which no money could represent; no pains, no expense would be spared to preserve their life and health; they would never be shot dead by having gas pipes laid under them, as they have been in some of our New England towns; or suffered to be devoured by canker worms for want of any amount of money spent in their defence.
Some of the finest trees in this place are magnificent cedars of Lebanon, which bring to mind the expression in Psalms, ”Excellent as the cedars.” They are the very impersonation of kingly majesty, and are fitted to grace the old feudal stronghold of Warwick the king maker.
These trees, standing as they do amid magnificent sweeps and undulations of lawn, throwing out their mighty arms with such majestic breadth and freedom of outline, are themselves a living, growing, historical epic.
Their seed was brought from Holy Land in the old days of the crusades; and a hundred legends might be made up of the time, date, and occasion of their planting. These crusades have left their mark every where through Europe, from the cross panel on the doors of common houses to the oriental touches and arabesques of castles and cathedrals.
In the reign of Stephen there was a certain Roger de Newburg, second Earl of Warwick, who appears to have been an exceedingly active and public-spirited character; and, besides conquering part of Wales, founded in this neighborhood various priories and hospitals, among which was the house of the Templars, and a hospital for lepers. He made several pilgrimages to Holy Land; and so I think it as likely as most theories that he ought to have the credit of these cedars.
These Earls of Warwick appear always to have been remarkably stirring men in their day and generation, and foremost in whatever was going on in the world, whether political or religious. To begin, there was Guy, Earl of Warwick, who lived somewhere in the times of the old dispensation, before King Arthur, and who distinguished himself, according to the fas.h.i.+on of those days, by killing giants and various colored dragons, among which a green one especially figures. It appears that he slew also a notable dun cow, of a kind of mastodon breed, which prevailed in those early days, which was making great havoc in the neighborhood. In later times, when the giants, dragons, and other animals of that sort were somewhat brought under, we find the Earls of Warwick equally busy burning and slaying to the right and left; now crusading into Palestine, and now fighting the French, who were a standing resort for activity when nothing else was to be done; with great versatility diversifying these affairs with pilgrimages to the holy sepulchre, and founding monasteries and hospitals. One stout earl, after going to Palestine and laying about him like a very dragon for some years, brought home a live Saracen king to London, and had him baptized and made a Christian of, _vi et armis_.
During the scuffle of the Roses, it was a Warwick, of course, who was uppermost. Stout old Richard, the king maker, set up first one party and then the other, according to his own sovereign pleasure, and showed as much talent at fighting on both sides, and keeping the country in an uproar, as the modern politicians of America.
When the times of the Long Parliament and the Commonwealth came, an Earl of Warwick was high admiral of England, and fought valiantly for the Commonwealth, using the navy on the popular side; and his grandson married the youngest daughter of Oliver Cromwell. When the royal family was to be restored, an Earl of Warwick was one of the six lords who were sent to Holland for Charles II. The earls of this family have been no less distinguished for movements which have favored the advance of civilization and letters than for energy in the battle field. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth an Earl of Warwick founded the History Lecture at Cambridge, and left a salary for the professor. This same earl was general patron of letters and arts, a.s.sisting many men of talents, and was a particular and intimate friend of Sir Philip Sidney.
What more especially concerns us as New Englanders is, that an earl of this house was the powerful patron and protector of New England during the earlier years of our country. This was Robert Greville, the high admiral of England before alluded to, and ever looked upon as a protector of the Puritans. Frequent allusion is made to him in Winthrop's Journal as performing various good offices for them.
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