In the corresponding spot, on the other side, lies just such another slab, over another sepulchre. The body has been removed to Westminster Abbey; but its first repose was here. The brass has been torn out; but it once read, “Queen Mary, 1587”—for here the poor Queen of Scots was laid, headless, and festering in her cerements, six months after that fatal day, in the neighbouring Fotheringay Castle. The date of her interment offers the best apology for the severity she had suffered, although nothing can excuse the sin of Elizabeth. It was the year before the Spanish Armada; and it is now known that she had, two years previously, given her kingdom to Philip II., inviting that bloody bigot to set up his Inquisition among her Scottish subjects, and excluding her own son from his right. Such was her crime against her own people, aimed, however, more especially at England, by her fanatical zeal. Between these solemn tombs of a Queen of France, and a daughter of Spain, I worshipped that day, and received the Holy Communion, to my comfort. The anthem was a familiar strain, from Mozart, which we sing in America to the Christmas hymn, set to words from the Psalter—Quam magnificata opera tua! The Bishop of Peterborough was the preacher, and I heard him again at Evening Service. As you leave the nave through the western entrance, you see an odd portrait set against the wall, that of a grave-digger, spade in hand. Underneath, you read—“R. Scarlett, died 1594, aged 98.” He buried the two Queens, and the inhabitants of the town twice over, as you learn from uncouth rhymes subjoined. Was ever such a “king of spades?”
Next morning I saw “Lincoln, on its sovereign hill,” and heard the Great Tom—“swinging slow with sullen roar.” The restorations going on in the choir had driven the service into a little chapel, near the west end; but the singing was very sweet, and solemn, though entirely without ceremony. I devoted the morning to the survey of this model of art, which I like the better, because it is, in part, a monument of the Anglican Liberties, as they were maintained in the middle ages, against the Roman Pontiff. The central tower is the work of brave old Bishop Grostéte, in the thirteenth century. He was the predecessor of Wycliffe and Cranmer, in defying the Pope, and in spite of papal anathemas, he died in peaceful possession of his See. All honour to his pious memory.
It is the custom to admire the west front of this cathedral extravagantly; but I confess that with all that there is to admire in its separate parts, the whole seems, to me, ill-composed. The towers, more particularly, strike me as possessing no unity with the mass of architecture, behind which they rise, as from a screen, whose broad rectangular frontage detracts from the apparent height. It is only as seen from the foot of the hill, that the whole architectural bulk affects the eye sublimely, towering majestically over the town, which crouches at its base. The whole pile affords to the architectural student every luxury of his art, both within and without; but such were the desecrations which it suffered from the Cromwellians, that few of those gorgeous shrines, for which it was formerly distinguished, remain, to delight the ordinary visiter. In the cloisters have lately been discovered some Roman remains: a mosaic pavement, in particular, such as the traveller is so often shown in Italy. “The Jew’s house,” so called, a relic of mediæval art, was more interesting to me, as connected with the legend of the little martyr who lies in the cathedral, and who is celebrated by Chaucer, in the tale of the Prioress.
The City of York makes an imposing show, crowned by the glories of its vast minster, and walled in, like Chester, with ancient ramparts, which nearly encircle the town. How singular the reflection that Constantine the Great was a native Yorkshire-man, born in this town, in A.D. 272! Here, too, his father died, in A.D. 307, and he succeeded to the empire, going forth to reform pagan Rome, as I trust the spirit of England has even now gone forth to do the same for Rome papal. Here, too, died the Emperor Severus vainly striving to reconcile his sons Caracalla and Geta. Among the monuments of the Roman Forum, these names afterward reminded me of York; while, across the broad Atlantic, the immense city where I had been brought up, had always been to me, her memorial. How many were the reflections with which I walked the whole circuit of her walls, and surveyed the town, the ancient castle, and the surrounding scenery, and then sailed upon the river beneath! The beautiful ruins of an old abbey, near the river, still delight the antiquarian; but after cursorily surveying these, I hastened to the cathedral.
The western front of the minster is worthy of its extraordinary fame. The semi-barbarian features of many of the cathedrals are here superseded by what might seem to be the idealized perfection of their rude details. The unity which was wanting in Lincoln, seemed to be here complete and entire; and the rich and delicate tracery which invests it has the appearance of an elaborate tissue of lace, fitted over the stone after the substantial part was complete. From other points of view, the impression is less of grace, and more of majesty. The whole is sublime in its effect beyond that of any other cathedral that I ever saw; and even in Milan, I could not but say to myself, as I gazed on its wonderful Duomo—“after all, it is, as compared with York, only a beautiful monster.” There is something about it which realizes the idea of a cathedral, in its model form; and this is a charm that is wanting in many others of its class. In its ample choir, I was more affected by the service than at any other place, with the exception perhaps of Canterbury, so far as it depended on the elevating influence of mere architecture, consciously felt and employed to ennoble the sacrifice of praise and prayer. With the survey of the chapter-house, cloisters, and tombs, I was less interested than with repeated efforts to take in the vast sweep of the interior, and to animate it with visions of what it may yet become, when Deans and Canons wake up to the immense responsibility of their opportunities to work for the glory of God. The tone of the service, and the swell of the organ, even now, give wings to worship, when the anthem rises beneath this lofty vault, and dies away in the profound depth of the nave, or spreads itself amid aisles and columns, with multiplied reverberations and undulations of harmony; but oh! what might not be its heavenly effect, were the choir and nave all one, and filled with kneeling thousands, lifting up their voice with one accord in the overwhelming common-prayer of the Anglican Church! A friend of mine, who was once present, in Yorkminster, on a Sunday, realized something very near what I strove to imagine. The congregation was swelled by the presence of several regiments of soldiers, who appeared to take part in the worship, and whose gay uniforms, as they knelt on the mosaic floor, received a richer splendour from the tinted lights that flowed down from lofty windows, where meek saints and mighty princes seem to live again in the lustre of their portraiture.
An early start next morning, a short railway trip, and then a stage-coach drive of two miles, and then a walk through the fields, brought me to S—— parsonage, before breakfast, where a kindly welcome awaited me from my Malvern acquaintances. A day had been planned for me by the kind lady of the parsonage, and though it threatened rain, she laughed at the idea of abandoning it on that account. An American lady would scarcely have thought of it, even in fair weather, as the excursion involved not a little exercise of the foot. Off we went in a pony-carriage to Ripon, where I had time for a hasty inspection of the minster, lately made a cathedral. It is a severe specimen of Early English, and affords much to interest the student; but very little to make a story of, unless we adopt Camden’s explanation of St. Wilfrid’s needle in the crypt. It is a narrow perforation of the masonry, through which ladies were sometimes required to pass, when, as Fuller says, “those who could not thread the needle pricked their own credit.”
We went through the grounds of Studley Royal, enjoying a diversified view of beautiful park scenery, till we came to the neighbourhood of Fountains Abbey, and exchanged our drive for a walk. We passed through woods, and by little lakes, and over rustic bridges, and came at last into a walk richly embowered with trees, along a height, where the foliage completely screened the view below. Our fair conductress promised us a lunch at a little halting-place called Anne Boleyn’s Seat. I did not tell her that I had foreknowledge of the trick she meant to play upon me; but I sincerely wish that I had never heard of it, for my own sake as well as hers. Arrived at the spot, we sat down to rest, when suddenly the lady flung open a door, and before us was such a view as can be seen nowhere else in the world. We were balconied, in a lofty window, and below was the beautiful valley and meadow: at the extremity of which, rise the ancient walls, chapel window, and tower of Fountains Abbey—the most poetical ruin in existence. All Italy has nothing to show, that can be compared with it for beauty, especially if we take into account the extraordinary charms of the wooded steeps that surround it, and of the green velvet mead, from which it lifts itself like the creation of enchantment. Its architecture is vast and majestic in scale, and the ivy has contrived to festoon and mantle its magnificence, in such wise as to lend it a grace it never could have possessed even in its first glory. There is a more sylvan charm about Tintern. Fountains Abbey is the perfection of artificial beauty, for even its surrounding nature is impressed with a look of long and complete subjugation to the hand of consummate art.
I assured our fair enchantress, that although I had heard of this surprise before, her playfulness had not been lost on me. I had expected to enjoy it only under the humdrum operation of an ordinary guide. She had heightened the effect by her talismanic touch and artistic air, and I was free to confess that the effect produced was such, that “the half had not been told me.” A little streamlet runs through the meadow, like a silver thread upon emerald; and nothing which a painter could wish is wanting to make the scene a picture of delight. I could not but think of the still waters, and the green pastures, and the glorious mansions of a better world.
The Abbey was Cistercian, as the fat valley in which it stands might indicate, according to the rhyme:—
“Bernard the vales, as Benedict the steeps,