Elms set bossy signets on the land and throng the hedgerows, their round tops full of sunshine; under them the hawthorns sparkle very white against the riot of the green. From the lifted spinneys and coverts, where bluebells fling their amethyst at the woodland edge, pheasants are croaking, and silver-bright against the blue aloft, wheel gulls, to link the lush valley with the invisible and not far distant sea. They cry and musically mew from their high place; and beneath them the cuckoo answers.
Nestling now upon the very heart of this wide vale a homestead lies, where the fields make a dimple and the burn comes flashing. Byres and granaries light gracious colour here, for their slate roofs are mellow with lichen of red gold, and they stand as a bright knot round which the valley opens and blossoms with many-coloured petals. The very buttercups shine pale by contrast, and the apple-blooth, its blushes hidden from this distance, masses in pure, cold grey beneath the glow of these great roofs. Cob walls stretch from the outbuildings, and their summits are protected against weather by a little penthouse of thatch. In their arms the walls hold a garden of many flowers, rich in promise of small fruits. Gooseberries and raspberries flourish amid old gnarled apple trees; there are strawberries, too, and the borders are bright with May tulips and peonies. Stocks and wallflowers blow flagrant by the pathway, murmured over by honey bees; while where the farmhouse itself stands, deep of eave under old thatch, twin yew trees make a dark splash on either side of the entrance, and a wistaria showers its mauve ringlets upon the grey and ancient front. The dormer windows are all open, and there is a glimpse of a cool darkness through the open door. Within the solid walls of this dwelling neither sunshine nor cold can penetrate, and Hayes Barton is warm in winter, in summer cool. The house is shaped in the form of a great E, and it has been patched and tinkered through the centuries; but still stands, complete and sturdy in harmony of design, with unspoiled dignity from a far past. Only the colours round about it change with the painting of the seasons, for the forms of hill and valley, the modelling of the roof-tree, the walls and the great square pond outside the walls, change not. Enter, and above the dwelling-rooms you shall find a chamber with wagon roof and window facing south. It is, on tradition meet to be credited, the birthplace of Walter Ralegh.
Proof rests with Sir Walter's own assertion, and at one time the manor house of Fardel, under Dartmoor, claimed the honour; but Ralegh himself declares that he was born at Hayes, and speaks of his "natural disposition to the place" for that reason. He desired, indeed, to purchase his childhood's home and make his Devonshire seat there; but this never happened, though the old, three-gabled, Tudor dwelling has passed through many hands and many notable families.
"Probably no conceivable growth of democracy," says a writer on Ralegh's genealogy, "will make the extraction of a famous man other than a point of general interest." Ralegh's family, at least, won more lustre from him than he from them, though his mother, of the race of the Champernownes, was a mother of heroes indeed. By her first marriage she had borne Sir Walter's great half-brother, Humphrey Gilbert; and when Otho Gilbert passed, the widow wedded Walter Ralegh, and gave birth to another prodigy. The family of the Raleghs must have been a large and scattered one; but our Western historian, Prince, stoutly declares that Sir Walter was descended from an ancient and noble folk, "and could have produced a much fairer pedigree than some of those who traduc'd him."
The tale of his manifold labours has been inadequately told, though Fame will blow her trumpet above his grave for ever; but among the lesser histories Prince's brief chronicle is delightful reading, and we may quote a passage or two for the pleasure of those who pursue this note.
"A new country was discovered by him in 1584," says the historian, "called in honour of the Queen, Virginia: a country that hath been since of no inconsiderable profit to our nation, it being so agreeable to our English bodies, so profitable to the Exchequer, and so fruitful in itself; an acre there yielding over forty bushels of corn; and, which is more strange, there being three harvests in a year: for their corn is sow'd, ripe and cut down in little more than two months."
I fear Virginia to-day will not corroborate these agricultural wonders.
We may quote again, for Prince, on Sir Walter's distinction, is instructive at this moment:—
"For this and other beneficial expeditions and designs, her Majesty was pleased to confer on him the honour of Knighthood; which in her reign was more esteemed; the Queen keeping the temple of honour close shut, and never open'd but to vertue and desert."
Well may democracy call for the destruction of that temple when contemplating those that are permitted entrance to-day.