CARLISLE CASTLE
John Wesley visited Carlisle and preached there on several occasions. Rabbie Burns, too, after the publication of the first edition of his poems, visited it in 1786, patronising the "Malt Shovel Inn," where, as he wrote, "he made a night of it."
We paid a hurried visit to the castle on the summit of a sharp aclivity overlooking the River Eden, in whose dungeons many brave men have been incarcerated, where we saw a dripping-or dropping-stone worn smooth, it was said, by the tongues of thirsty prisoners to whom water was denied. The dropping was incessant, and we were told a story which seems the refinement of cruelty, in which the water was allowed to drop on a prisoner's head until it killed him. From the castle mound we could see the country for a long distance, and there must have been a good view of the Roman wall in ancient times, as the little church of Stanwix we had passed before crossing the River Eden was built on the site of a Roman station on Hadrian's Wall, which there crossed the river on low arches. The wall was intended to form the boundary between England and Scotland, and extended for seventy miles, from Bowness-on-the-Solway to Wallsend-on-the-Tyne, thus crossing the kingdom at its narrowest part.
We left Carlisle at a speed of four miles per hour, and within the hour we had our first near view of the Cumberland Hills, Scawfell being the most conspicuous. We decided to go to Maryport, however, as we heard that a great number of Roman altars had recently been discovered there. We were now once more in England, with its old-fashioned villages, and at eleven miles from Carlisle we reached Wigton, whose streets and footpaths were paved with boulders and cobble-stones; here we stayed for refreshments. A further eight-miles' walk, some portion of it in the dark, brought us to Aspatria, but in the interval we had passed Brayton Hall, the residence of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bart., M.P., the leader of the Legislative Temperance Movement for the abolition of the Liquor Traffic, and who, at a later date, was said to be the wittiest member of the House of Commons. As Chairman of the United Kingdom Alliance, that held its annual gatherings in the great Free Trade Hall in Manchester, a building capable of seating 5,000 persons, so great was his popularity that the immense building, including the large platform, was packed with people long before the proceedings were timed to begin, there being left only sufficient space for the chairman and the speakers. The interval before the arrival of these gentlemen was whiled away by the audience in singing well-known hymns and songs, and on one occasion, when Sankey and Moody's hymns had become popular, just as the people were singing vociferously the second line of the verse—
See the mighty host advancing,
Satan leading on!
CARLISLE CASTLE
Sir Wilfrid appeared on the platform followed by the speakers. His ready wit seized the humour of the situation, and it is said that he was so deeply affected by this amusing incident that it took him a whole week to recover! As a speaker he never failed to secure the attention and respect of his audience, and even of those in it who did not altogether agree with his principles. As an advocate of the total suppression of the Liquor Traffic, on every occasion his peroration was listened to with almost breathless attention, and concluded in an earnest and impressive manner which left a never-to-be-forgotten impression upon those who heard it, the almost magic spell by which he had held the vast audience being suddenly broken, as if by an electric shock, into thunders of applause when he recited his favourite verse. We can hear his voice still repeating the lines:
Slowly moves the march of ages,