Another character, very notorious in his day, lies in the churchyard: Sir James Graham of Netherby, who was Home Secretary in 1844, when the correspondence of Mazzini and other political refugees was opened at the General Post Office by his direction, and read. Graham received his orders from the Earl of Aberdeen, Minister for Foreign Affairs, but it was Graham himself upon whom the whole of the public obloquy fell, and he remarked, in the true spirit of prophecy, that all else he had done would be forgotten, and he would be remembered only by this wretched incident. It surely is a pitiful thing and a real tragedy of the public service that an honourable gentleman who in private life would have scorned to do anything mean should go down in history as the man who violated the sanctity of private correspondence.
ARTHURET CHURCH.
There are no architectural graces in Longtown. Each house is like its fellow and every street resembles every other street. How then do the strayed revellers, returning home “fou,” find the way to their especial domiciles? An attempt to subdue the stark angularity of Longtown, though not to give its streets variety, is seen in the somewhat recent planting of the roads with trees.
Many people suppose the river Esk at Longtown to be the division between England and Scotland. The supposition is reasonable enough, for the actual divisor, the Sark, four miles further on, approaching Springfield, is a very insignificant stream in appearance. The political and the social significances of it were, however, of very serious import indeed.
Solway Moss is passed on the way. Turner has made it the subject of one of the finest plates in his Liber Studiorum, and has imported into the view some mountains that are not there, together with some weather which, fortunately for the present writer, was equally absent when he passed this way.
SOLWAY MOSS
[After J. M. W. Turner, R.A.
BATTLE OF SOLWAY MOSS