On this side of the river, before you, the peaked tops of a long ridge of hills extend along nearly the whole district which your eyes commands. It is thickly clothed with wood, out of which a continuous wall of rock festooned with ivy picturesquely rears its head. Over this ridge you again discern water,—the Severn, five miles broad, thronged with a hundred white sails, on either shore of which you see blue ridges of hills full of fertility and rich cultivation.
The grouping of this landscape is perfect: I know of no picture more beautiful. Inexhaustible in details, of boundless extent, and yet marked by such grand and prominent features, that confusion and monotony, the usual defects of a very wide prospect, are completely avoided. Piercefield Park, which includes the ridge of hills from Wind-cliff to Chepstow, is therefore without question the finest in England, at least for situation. It possesses all that Nature can bestow; lofty trees, magnificent rocks, the most fertile soil, a mild climate favourable to vegetation of every kind, a clear foaming stream, the vicinity of the sea, solitude, and, from the bosom of its own tranquil seclusion, a view into the rich country I have described, which receives a lofty interest from a ruin the most sublime that the imagination of the finest painter could conceive,—I mean Chepstow Castle. It covers five acres of ground, and lies close to the park on the side next the town, though it does not belong to it.
England is indebted to Cromwell for almost all her ruined castles, as she is to Henry the Eighth for her crumbling churches and religious houses. The former were destroyed with fire and sword; the latter only suppressed, and left to the corroding tooth of time, and the selfishness and wantonness of man. Both agents have been equally efficacious; and these two great men have produced an effect they did not contemplate, but which resembles that of their persons,—a picturesque one. I strolled through the park on foot, and let the carriage follow by the high road: I reached the ruin at the verge of twilight, which increased the awful grandeur of its appearance. The castle contains several extensive courts, and a chapel; a part of it is in good preservation. Large nut and yew-trees, orchards and beautiful turf, adorn the interior; trailing plants of all kinds festoon the walls. In the least ruinous part of the castle lives a woman with her family, who pays the Duke of Beaufort, the possessor, a rent, for permission to show the ruins to strangers, of whom she consequently demands a shilling. You see that in England, ‘on fait flèche de tout bois,’ and that an English nobleman with an income of sixty thousand a year, neither disdains to take the widow’s mite, nor to lay strangers under regular contribution. To be sure there are some little German sovereigns who unfortunately do much the same.
Satisfied with the employment of my day, as well as tired with climbing, and soaked with rain which had fallen within the last hour, I hastened to my inn, my dishabille, and my dinner,—I felt something unusual in the pocket of my dressing-gown. I pulled it out surprised; and with shame I saw—my purse and pocket-book. It but now occurred to me that I had slipped them into this unaccustomed place from the fear of leaving them on the table.
This shall serve as a lesson to me for the future, never to draw any unfavourable conclusions merely from the embarrassment and confusion of an accused person. The bare thought that others could suspect them may produce the same symptoms in men of irritable nerves and a quick sense of honour, as the consciousness of guilt in others. You will trust to the heart you know so well, that I instantly despatched a letter to my friend the bookseller, exculpating the host and waiter, and enclosing two pounds as some compensation to the latter, which I begged him to deliver with my sincere apologies.—I ate my dinner with more relish after I had atoned for my offence to the best of my power.
Your faithful
L——.
LETTER XLV.
Bristol, December 20th, 1828.
Dear Julia,