But there is no doing justice to old Chester, on a tourist’s page. Its cathedral is a poor one, and so crumbling are its walls and buttresses, that every shower washes down a plentiful soil, from the decomposing stone. I lingered without weariness, however, in its aisles and cloisters, and must say that its service was sung delightfully, although the singers were few, and the clergy fewer still. The same disgraceful poverty and lifelessness, which I had remarked elsewhere, characterized the visible force of the establishment; and I could not but say to myself, if this feeble performance is, nevertheless, so edifying and effective, what might not be the blessed result of a vitalized cathedral body, serving God night and day in His Temple, as God should be always served, in this rich and ancient Church of an empire which professes to be Christian, and which God has so unspeakably exalted among the nations of the earth.
The other ecclesiastical objects of the town were duly visited, and then I took a boat on the Dee, and was rowed toward Eaton Hall, which I finally reached on foot, after a walk through the surrounding park. This was, till very lately, regarded as the finest possible specimen of modern Gothic, in the domestic line, and a vast amount of Cockney admiration has been wasted on it. I found it undergoing repairs, which must greatly improve it; but, after all, it is a meagre thing, when one has seen the Gothic of the cathedrals, or of such a castle as Kenilworth. I did not see much of the interior, as visitors were necessarily excluded, in favour of the workmen; and so after visiting the conservatories, and various outlying dependencies of this great house, I left it, not greatly overwhelmed with what I had seen. I was better pleased with my return voyage, on the Dee, and with the river-view of Chester.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A Trip into Wales.
From the walls of Chester, one has a very tempting prospect before him in the mountains of Wales. To Wales I now took my way, and first of all alighted at Holywell station, to visit the wondrous shrine and fountain of St. Winifred. A Welsh lady had advised me, by all means, to pay this homage to her native place, and had sportively prepared me to see something very strange, indeed, in the legendary well of its tutelar. The story which she told me was this, in short: that the well had sprung from the earth, in the olden time, just where the head of the Holy Winifred, fair and lovely as it was, touched the earth, when her barbarous lover, Caradoc, smote it off, to revenge his disappointed passion. Be this as it may, I found, in Holywell, a very remarkable pool and fountain, by which lay a great number of impotent folk, as formerly they did at Bethesda, in Jewry, waiting for the moving of the waters. But no—these waters always move. The fountain gushes up with violence, and runs with a full tide. Whether it cures or not, I cannot say. It is supposed to do so; and is used for healing purposes by hundreds. The crutches of many of those who have been healed, are reverently hung up over the well; and several inscriptions have been cut, deep in the stone walls and pillars of the Church which rises above it, expressive of gratitude for cure. Here James the Second came to worship, in his dotage, in 1686. The Irish Romanists, and modern converts, consider it a sort of duty to uphold the miraculous reputation of the well, and are very zealous in such tributes to the legend and the saint. One may certainly believe that it is a healing spring, without swallowing the whole story about St. Winifred; and for one, I am far from unwilling to see such springs resorted to, and used, in a religious spirit, as the gift of God. Nay, if we might but have the truth, and not a “superstitious vanity,” I should rejoice to see them connected with the memory of God’s saints; and, as I washed in the crystal waters, I allowed myself to believe that the spot had indeed been famous for some holy martyrdom, which perverse ingenuity has distorted into the fable aforesaid—of which I have only given the least ridiculous part. A fine and fragrant moss, which grows about the well, and some red spots in the stone, have furnished additional material to the fabulists, which tradition has not failed to preserve; but the light and graceful temple which rises over it, with a figure of the saint, and which is ascribed to Margaret, the mother of Henry the Seventh, is its most substantial monument. It is now a chapel of the adjoining parish church, and I found it filled with plain benches, and used for a Sunday-school room, and for service in the English tongue.
But I was en route for the vale of Clwyd, (pronounced Clooyd,) and so landing at Rhyl, I took a Welsh jaunting-car to St. Asaph. At the very entrance of the vale stands an old historic castle, in utter ruins, but overhung with ivy, and nobly bastioned, and presenting a very venerable appearance. It was built before the Norman invasion, and stands near the scene of that ancient battle, still commemorated in the national air—Morva Rhuddlan—which is full of traditional melancholy and plaintive sweetness. Near Rhuddlan Castle a bridge spans the Clwyd, adding a very picturesque feature to the scene; and just as you descend to the bridge, you observe, on the projecting wall of a mean cottage, the following inscription: “This fragment is the remains of the building in which King Edward the First held his Parliament, A. D. 1283.” Oh! what a romantic land is Wales. England is fine prose; but Wales is all poetry. Even here I fell in love with it; for Rhuddlan is a truly historic pile. Almost its meanest memory is that of the progress of the second Richard, who tarried here on his way to Flint, to be deposed by Bolingbroke. Its latest memory, however, is that of the national Bardic Festival, called an Eisteddfod, which was celebrated here in 1850, with sad if not fatal results. A staging gave way, during the performance, and several of the fair and noble received severe contusions.
I enjoyed a pleasant ride to St. Asaph, which finally disclosed to my view a cathedral of very unpretending dimensions, on a pretty hill, with a few houses grouped under its shadow, and a sightly bridge of stone. This the City of St. Asaph! Even so—for it is an ancient Episcopal See, and therefore it is a city, while Liverpool is but a town. Therefore do I love St. Asaph, because, of all cities I ever saw, it looks most like a village. Indeed, as a village it would be much to my liking, as still and quiet above most villages, and sweetly embosomed among trees, over which the solid tower of the ancient church presides with a motherly air, and ticks a sleepy time from its solemn clock. It was Saturday night when I reached the Mostyn Arms, and ordered my supper, and my bed-room. ‘Here then,’ said I, ‘I will spend a Sunday in supremest loneliness; here I know nobody and am known of none; I will be a mystery to mine host of the inn, who seems to have no other guest, dropping nothing of mine errand in these parts, but going my way on Monday morning, with an air of dignified secrecy, and leaving him to imagine, as he may, what could have brought me to St. Asaph.’
A quiet breakfast at the inn was served with such noiseless neatness and despatch, at the appointed hour, that I grew sad with my bachelor comfort, feeling first, that I ought not to enjoy so much, except at home, and then longing to be there. It was not my hostess’s unimpeachable fare; bread all crisp without, and all snowy sponge within; butter golden and fragrant; prawns, gathered freshly from the clean sands of Rhyl; eggs, that were never cold, and that now were hot to the very second of culinary time; and divers varieties and fruits that feasted the imagination even more than they gratified the taste; it was not this substantial and meritorious breakfast that made the Mostyn Arms a delightful resting-place; but it was that entire order and decency that invested all, and that forbade the idea of a hotel, and seemed to remind me that it was Sunday; it was this that first charmed me, and then made me lonely, and then positively sad. There is often a domestic character about such an inn, in England and Wales, that is positively religious. I remember one, in which the innkeeper always invited his guests to family prayers.
The cathedral is the very plainest of its kind, but the choir is not without effective dignity and beauty. I attended the morning service, which was that of Pentecost, with exceeding pleasure; and yet I observed with pain, that except the children of the Sunday-school, there were few present, who were not, unmistakeably, of the higher classes, or at least of those which are considered very respectable. Where were the poor? The liveried servants of the neighbouring gentry, in their powder and plush, were perhaps of the humblest class represented; but, of course, they are not the people. I was pleased, however, to see several of them kneeling with their masters’ families at the Holy Communion.
After service, I was lingering among the tombs, in the churchyard, and had particularly observed that of the excellent Bishop Barrow, when one of the clergy approached me, and said, “You are a clergyman, I’m sure; I beg you’ll come home with me to dinner!” Never was I so much surprised, in my life, by such a salutation. Welsh hospitality was proving more than a Highland welcome! I expressed my scruples to accept an invitation which was probably based on the idea that I was an Englishman, and a clergyman of the National Church; but only so much the more did my new acquaintance press me to dine with him, offering to take me, after dinner, to a little Welsh parish, in the mountains, where he promised that I should hear the service in Welsh, and also a Welsh sermon, from himself. So very attractive a bill it was impossible to resist, and presenting my card, I promised to be at the appointed place, at the proper hour. But I little knew how great a pleasure was in store for me.