Leaving the ruined city to its sole inhabitants, the birds and perchance the rabbits, we had a fine view of the isolated hill of the Wrekin, from the top of which flamed forth the beacon that told the great Armada was in sight. Then
... streamed in crimson on the wind the Wrekin's crest of light.
"To friends all round the Wrekin" is a famous Shropshire toast, and all good Salopians know how that hill came into being: how that the Devil, once upon a time, as the fairy story-books have it, had a grudge against Shrewsbury, and was carrying a great load of earth and rocks on his back, intending to dump it down in the bed of the Severn, and so block the flow of the river and drown all the Shrewsbury people; but even the Devil grew weary of his heavy load, and threw it down on the spot where the Wrekin now stands, declaring he would carry it no longer. So the mountain arose and Shrewsbury was saved. At one point or another the Devil appears to have been very busy in Shropshire knocking the scenery about. When later on I found myself at Ironbridge, with its furnaces and factories, I really thought the Devil must still be busy in Shropshire, for who but he could have entered into the mind of man to cause him to spoil so fair a spot for the sake of mere money-making? Remove the dirty, mean, and ugly town and all connected with it, Madeley too, with its collieries close above, and smoky Broseley but a mile away, and I doubt if the Severn could show in all its pleasant meanderings from its source in lone Plynlimmon to the sea a spot so fair as this would be—and was in the days of old.
The scenery improved with every mile as we wound our way down by the Severn side, from which rose gently sloping and wooded hills on the other hand, a very pleasant land in truth. Coming to the little village of Eaton Constantine, I pulled up there to photograph an exceedingly picturesque black and white half-timber farmhouse with a great gable at one end, its roof sloping down to a sheltering porch. Were I an architect and designer of country homes I certainly would seek for inspiration in Shropshire; I know no other part of England where the houses look more like homes. Chatting with the owner of the farmhouse, who kindly allowed me to photograph it from his farmyard, and even stood in front of his porch to be included in the picture—though I did not desire this further favour of him—I learnt that it was formerly the home of Richard Baxter, the Nonconformist divine and the author of The Saints' Everlasting Rest, and quite a host of other improving religious works well known to fame, but which I regret I have never read. It was at Eaton Constantine, I believe, that when a boy Richard Baxter used to rob his neighbours' orchards, but, as some one says, "often the worst boys become the best men," a pleasant way of excusing their peccadilloes. Even Bunyan I have somewhere read "sowed his wild oats" freely when a youth, and I have even heard of a certain Cabinet minister who has boasted that he frequently went poaching as a lad. Perhaps it is because I was so good a boy that I have failed to distinguish myself in any way; had I to live my life again I might have got more enjoyment out of my youth, knowing now what good and clever men bad boys can make. I heard a Cabinet minister at dinner tell the story of how his schoolmaster one day declared to him that he was a lazy, troublesome boy, always in some mischief, a disgrace to the school, that he would never do any good for himself or any one else. In after years, when the boy had become one of Her Majesty's ministers, the very same schoolmaster, then an old man, met him and clapped him on the back, declaring, "I'm proud of you, my boy. I always said there was the making of a clever man in you." The story must be true, for a Cabinet minister would not tell a lie—about a trifle, but only for the good of his party.
BUILDWAS ABBEY, LOOKING EAST.
The next village of Leighton was almost ideal, with its picturesque black and white cottages half drowned in foliage; then our road became as beautiful as a dream till we came in sight of Buildwas Abbey, gloriously situated by the banks of the Severn, where the river flows gently by. But the situation is robbed of much of its charm by the intruding railway, that passes close to the abbey's ruined walls and sadly disturbs its quiet. All you can do is to try and forget the railway as though it were not. Amidst the ruins you cannot see it, but alas! you can hear it; and how can one romance to the sound of a railway train and the locomotive's blatant whistle?
Buildwas Abbey is the relic of a splendid building, beautiful and stately even in decay, seemingly too proud to mourn its long-lost grandeur, "cased in the unfeeling armour of old time." Its massive pillars and stout walls, braving all weathers, stand strong and enduring still. Time, that gentle healer, has tinted and adorned its broken walls with many hues, and fringed their rugged tops with bright wild-flowers, grasses, and weeds; here and there, too, the ivy creeps over them and peeps in from without through the vacant windows. Its silent stones seem laden with memories: would that they could tell their story apart from the written one! Its open arches frame pleasant pictures of rich meadows, of woods beyond them, of blue hills beyond again, with bits of sky peeping above. Says Disraeli, "Men moralise amongst ruins"; here is a rare spot to moralise in for those so minded.