We took leave of our kind host and his family, gratefully impressed with the simplicity and sincere cordiality of our reception. There are many different names for goodness in this world; but, after all, true brotherly kindness and charity is much the same thing, whether it show itself by a Quaker's fireside or in an archbishop's palace.
Leaving the archbishop's I went to Richmond's again, where I was most agreeably entertained for an hour or two. We have an engagement for Playford Hall to-morrow, and we breakfast with Joseph Sturge: it being now the time of the yearly meeting of the Friends, he and his family are in town.
LETTER XXIV.
MY DEAR S.:—
The next morning C. and I took the cars to go into the country, to Playford Hall. "And what's Playford Hall?" you say. "And why did you go to see it?" As to what it is, here is a reasonably good picture before you. As to why, it was for many years the residence of Thomas Clarkson, and is now the residence of his venerable widow and her family.
Playford Hall is considered, I think, the oldest of the fortified houses in England, and is, I am told, the only one that has water in the moat. The water which is seen girdling the wall, in the picture, is the moat: it surrounds the place entirely, leaving no access except across the bridge, which is here represented.
After crossing this bridge, you come into a green court yard filled with choice plants and flowering shrubs, and carpeted with that thick, soft, velvet-like grass which is to be found nowhere else in so perfect a state as in England.
The water is fed by a perpetual spring, whose current is so sluggish as scarcely to be perceptible, but which yet has the vitality of a running stream.
It has a dark and glassy stillness of surface, only broken by the forms of the water plants, whose leaves float thickly over it.
The walls of the moat are green with ancient moss, and from the crevices springs an abundant flowering vine, whose delicate leaves and bright yellow flowers in some places entirely mantle the stones with their graceful drapery.