It was, at any rate, no Tridentine Eucharist, though it was a mutilated one; and sad as were the scenes of debauchery with which those solemnities are associated, I could not but trust that, even here, Christ crucified had been truly worshipped, of old, on the solemn feast of his Nativity, and on many other occasions of Christian joy or penitence. Who would not cling to such communion with ancient piety? And yet this natural sympathy, when morbidly developed, has done more than all things else together, to bewitch the imaginative with Romanism, and to make them slavish captives to a Church which has retained nothing mediæval except that newfangled creed, to which the departed spirit of Mediæevalism has bequeathed none of its poetry, and which only exists as the inanimate slough of its superstition.
Compared with Haddon Hall, the superb modern residence of Chatsworth struck me as tame and spiritless. The mansion has indeed a pleasant seat: and the deer, bounding over the velvet turf of its park, or the peacock, strutting amid its balusters and fountains, give it indeed a lordly look of opulent show, without much ease. Yet what is it, at best, but the dull round of “my lord’s apartments,” without one association beyond that of my lord’s great wealth and luxury? I should be ashamed to confess, indeed, that I was not pleased with the pictures, and more than pleased with the exquisite carvings and magnificent sculpture, viewed merely as works of art; but I was fatigued with the vast worldliness of such a house, and felt that it would better have suited a Hadrian, than it does a Christian nobleman of England. Such a residence as Warwick Castle comes to its possessor historically, and a nobleman may well keep it up; but Chatsworth seems built for display, and must be altogether too much for comfort. I am glad if its possessor enjoys it—but I should rather dwell in the humblest parsonage in England. Nature itself, as seen from the windows of Chatsworth, has a combed and dressy look. Its vast conservatory—the original of the Crystal Palace—is well worth a visit, and its gardens are curious enough, but the water-works are elaborately frivolous. I was promised a fine artificial cataract—but lo! in the side of a beautiful hill I saw a stone stair-case, and by-and-by the water came sluggishly down stairs, like a little girl, in white dress, afraid to let go of the hand rail, as she leaps timidly from step to step. “Good morning, Miss Cataract,” said I, “that will do!”
The same clipped and artificial beauty belongs to the neighbouring village of Edensor, and the whole seems the more unreal as contrasting violently with the natural features of this wild and ruggedly beautiful country. I am glad to have seen Chatsworth, but I should not care to see it again, though the desolate Haddon Hall never recurs in my memory, without awakening fresh longings to be once more in Derbyshire, and to saunter again along its rushing Wye.
With my visit to Matlock Bath, I was much better satisfied. Here indeed is Derbyshire, in spite of spruce inns and fashionable boarding-houses. I scampered over the hills, (having first climbed them with more pleasure than fatigue,) and went from view to view with increasing transports. This region is all cliff and ravine, and precipice and chasm; yet in every direction the eye is refreshed and delighted, and the mind takes pleasure alike in thinking that it is scarcely English scenery, and that it is yet strikingly unlike anything but England after all! These sharp outlines, and bold walls of rock, for example, you say are somewhat Swiss; but as you look over them, towards the horizon, you see that their foliage and their verdure are English, absolutely; and then, looking down the chasm, at your feet, you see a trim and neat little village, and houses set in gardens, and peeping out from shrubbery, and especially a church, altogether such as no one ever sees save in England only! I entered the Speedwell mine, and went through the usual experiments with lights amid the spar, but, on the whole, the subterranean part of Matlock was what I liked least about it. I felt lonely, however, in enjoying my ramble about so beautiful a place, and the company of certain loved ones in America was longed for over and over again to make it all that I desired. From this delightful place I made my way to Shrewsbury.
Beautiful is Shrewsbury, without and within! Its spires and its towers give you far-off promise of a place worthy of the traveller’s halt, and when you enter its old-fashioned streets, you are not disappointed. I found the market-place, with its hall and surrounding mansions, quite as unmodernized as those of towns in the north of France. The projecting gable of many an old timbered house confronts you as you go hither and thither through the borough, and very often the woodwork of such houses is fancifully arranged and ornamented, in a manner highly effective and picturesque. Their modern tenants paint the timbers with grave, but appropriate colours, and whitewash the plastered walls which intervene, thus bringing out the full design of the ancient architect in a neat and striking manner. I saw, in one of the streets, a chair carried by bearers, precisely as in Hogarth’s prints, and which seemed to have been in use ever since Hogarth’s day. Its occupant was a portly female, who might have graced the Court of Queen Anne, so far as her appearance was concerned, and what with such an apparition, in a place altogether so antique, I found myself for a moment quite in doubt whether the nineteenth century were actually in existence, with its many inventions.
I went through the beautiful and finely-wooded field called the Quarry, and the walk called St. Chad’s, and crossed one of the bridges over the Severn to the Abbey Church. Here I found some interesting monuments and architectural curiosities; and the neighbourhood seemed to abound in similar relics of what must once have been a very large conventual establishment. At St. Mary’s, there was a Jesse-window and some tombs, which afforded me a gratifying occupation for awhile; then the ruins of an old castle, such as they are, attracted me; and, though last, not least, the fragments of a very ancient church, being merely its chancel, dedicated to St. Chad. The school in which Sir Philip Sydney was reared, and where Fulke Grevil became his friend, still swarms with the ingenuous youth of England, and I encountered them at every turn, in the highways and by-ways of the town. What an element of education it must be of itself for a lad to be sent to a school that has such a history! Such thoughts made me faint of heart for a moment, when I felt the irreparable poverty of my own country in historical associations. The inestimable dowry of a glorious antiquity can never mingle its ennobling qualities with our national character. We may, and we do, enjoy immense compensations; but what reflective American does not give way at times to a melancholy sense that he has indeed “no past at his back,” and that God has isolated him involuntarily, by this great fact, from the fellowship of nations! “But here comes a Shrewsbury boy,” said I, amid such thoughts, “what cares he for Sydney, more than an ordinary American lad at school?” Sure enough! Why then be sentimental? It is, after all, only a certain class of minds, that receives powerful impressions from anything past or future: and I believe an American youth can enjoy such impressions effectively, by means of a healthful imagination, while an English youth may often find it hard to divest the realities with which he is daily conversant, of the degrading effects of familiarity. Such is my calmer judgment.
I tasted the famous “Shrewsbury cakes” at the station-house, and having spent several hours “by Shrewsbury clock,” in this pleasing survey of the old borough, I left it with regret, purposing to return, and to make excursions from it to a neighbouring seat to which I had been kindly invited, and also to Hodnet, which I greatly desired to see, in honour of the gentle and beloved Heber. In these plans, however, I was disappointed. As you leave Shrewsbury for the north, you gain a most agreeable view of the town, which stands on a fair peninsula in the bright embrace of the Severn. It is a place full of poetry. On one side are the Welsh Mountains; on the other, amid Salopian fields, you descry the columnar monument of Lord Hill; but the tall spires and the Abbey Tower tell more eloquently of Hotspur.
At Chirk station a Welsh family entered the train, gabbling their consonants most unintelligibly; but I soon discovered from their adieus, and their tears and sighs, that they were emigrants going to Liverpool to ship for America. This stirred up a warm home-feeling: I found that one of them could talk English, and I was not long in finding a way to their hearts. They were going to Wisconsin, and were very willing to be advised on ordinary matters. I tried, also, to impress them with my own ideas of the privileges they might enjoy under the care of the Nashotah Missionaries; but I fear they were dissenters, as the Welsh peasantry too often are, and that my endeavours to add to the burthens of my esteemed brethren of that diocese were quite unavailing. I slept that night at Chester.
But I despair of describing Chester. Elsewhere in England you meet with ancient houses and picturesque streets; but Chester is all antiquity. What you would go miles to see, when in search of the quaintly beautiful, is here multiplied before you in almost every house. In the first place it is a walled town. I made the circuit of the walls in the morning, with constant emotions of astonishment; for they are in good repair, and seem even yet to have their use, whereas, I had imagined them to be mere relics of the past. I came to the Tower upon the wall, from the summit of which Charles the First beheld the total rout of his army. It is a mere watch-tower; but as the memorial of a great event, it would be hard to imagine a monument more striking. There is much more to interest the passenger as he goes on, looking now into houses built into the wall like swallows’ nests, and now into church-yards, and now into a race-course, and again into a river: but a thoughtful tourist, and especially one from America, will find it hard to think of anything but that Tower, and the mighty issues which were once deciding before it, in view of an august and awfully interested spectator. Poor King! as he descended from it, what must have been his emotions?
The streets of Chester are said still to preserve the outlines of the Roman camp, from which the town derives its name. They are a great curiosity in themselves, and seem to have been cut down into the rock, while the houses were reared on the banks, above the level thus obtained. And such houses! Gable after gable, timbered, pargetted, enriched with carving, and jutting over the street—each one “a picture for painters to study!” And where are the trottoirs, or side-walks? Lo! the houses all run down to the carriage-way; but what should be their front rooms, above the basement floor, are mere verandahs, through the whole line of which freely walks the public, always under cover, and always at home! These “rows” (even more than the walls) are the feature of Chester which most strikes the stranger; especially as the opposite houses, which he beholds in passing through them, are full of curious objects for any one whose eye delights in the antique. On one, for example, are rich emblematic or fanciful decorations and carvings; on another, a scene from Scripture history is cut in uncouth style; while another bears the legend: God’s providence is mine inheritance, 1652. A good inheritance always, but especially in Cromwell’s time. The guide-book says, that in the great plague of the year thus designated, this house was the only one which the destroying angel did not visit. Hence the pious inscription.