The deer park has two thousand acres and eight hundred head of deer. We saw several different herds of one hundred each, perhaps two hundred.
Next by a short drive, to Haddon Hall on a hill overlooking as fair a scene as eye would care to dwell on. A soft drab stone, time-stained and worn, moss and ivy covered, it is an immense pile built around a quadrangular court, with its ancient rooms sufficiently well-preserved to show in what state it was kept away back in that romantic age. The grand banqueting hall, with antlers for ornaments, its old table in the upper end, with the same old benches, both worm-eaten; besides this the dining hall for daily use, wainscoted to the ceiling in heavy, dark oak panels, and a great round table; the drawing-room with its arras, hangings said to be of the fourteenth century, the bed-rooms hung in the same way; the dancing saloon one hundred and ten by seventeen feet wide, with its grand stained windows, and a bust of one of the countesses taken after her death. I went up Percival tower and stood on it looking down into the “inner court” (the quadrangle) and off over the landscape, and trying to imagine “the olden time.” There is a door opening on to an avenue of yews with a terrace and steps into a walled flower garden with a postern gate in the wall, outside which are steps leading to a bridge across the moat beyond which lies an expanse of open meadow, and a pretty story
says the loveliest daughter of the house stole out this way to “off and away,” with her “young Lochinvar,” he and his steed awaiting her at the hither side of the bridge. The little boy who opened the postern for us, said in answer to us: “This is the gate, and them’s the steps, and that are the bridge she crossed to the ’oss.”
From the Peacock next a. m. to Stratford-on-Avon! Next day was Sunday, and the birthday of Shakespeare. Think of my spending it at his birthplace! It is almost too much to realize. The first afternoon we walked to see his birthhouse (just the outside), the hall where Garrick’s present stands, and the bridge over the Avon from which is a pretty view of the church where he lies. The morning found us all fresh and ready for church. There was fine music and a full congregation. You know the whole service is intoned in the English Church. When the vicar went to his desk for that I dreaded to hear a word, fearing it would not be in harmony with the day. It proved to be the best sermon I ever heard from the Episcopal pulpit, indeed an inspiration. After the congregation was dismissed we asked permission to enter the chancel to see the grave, and I had a collection of the flowers he knew so well to lay upon it. It was “against rule” to let any one in at that hour, but the vicar instantly and courteously accorded us this as soon as he knew we were Americans. I knelt and laid the flowers by the inscription. The “painted bust” is just above the grave. I did not like it. It looked both beefy and beery. Too much so for my ideal of him who the vicar had just said “was the greatest poet and perhaps the greatest being that ever lived.” It was the 318th anniversary. No wonder he chose “Trinity” for his last resting-place. It is a beautiful situation on the Avon, and from the street you walk up a long avenue of lime trees, on either side of which are the graves of centuries. We stayed three days at Stratford, and to-morrow we go, as the great Cardinal went, “by easy roads to Leicester;” we are going to London.
May 1st. We came here Saturday, after such a two days in that “ancient university city,” Oxford, as I hope most fervently I shall repeat in extenso. It was from one extreme enjoyment to something beyond! I stepped into the university founded by Alfred the Great, a huge mass of time-stained and somewhat crumbling marble. I went through Christ College, first into the kitchen. “The very best time you could