The gardens of the Abbey lie about its ancient walls: here are the fish-pools of the monks; the noble terrace; the "Young Oak" of Byron's poem, planted by his hands and now grown into a large and graceful tree; other trees rooted by Livingstone and Stanley while guests here. At one side is a grove of beeches and yews, in whose gloomy recesses the Wicked Byron erected leaden statues of Pan and Pandora, of which the rustics were so afraid that they would not go near them after nightfall, and which are still respectfully spoken of in the servants' hall as "Mr. and Mrs. Devil." Before the mansion lies the lucid lake described in "Don Juan:" the forest that shades its shore and sweeps over the farther hill-side was planted by Byron to repair the spoliation of his uncle, and is called the "Poet's Wood." Upon some of the farms of the domain live descendants of Nancy Smith, whom Irving's readers will remember, her son having married despite his mother's protest and reared a family. One aged servitor claims to remember Irving's visit,Recollections and opines "the old colonel [Wildman] thought him a very fine man—for an American." He recounts some peccadilloes of Joe Murray, traditional among the servants, which show that worthy to have been less precise in morals than in dress. The ancient Byron estates were among the haunts of one whose exploits inspired a book of ballads, and we here see Robin Hood's cave and other reminders of the bold outlaw and his "merrie men in Lyncolne greene."

Such, briefly, is the condition of Byron's ancestral home as it appears nearly eighty years after he saw it for the last time. Besides the charms which won his affection and made him relinquish the Abbey with such poignant regret, it holds for us an added spell in that it has been the habitation of a transcendent genius. Where Wildman's fortune failed his wishes the present owner has supplemented his work, until the vast pile now gleams with more than its ancient splendor; and, as we take a last view through a glade whose beauty fitly frames the picture of the restored mansion, we trust that somehow and somewhere Byron knows that his hope for his beloved Newstead is accomplished:

"Haply thy sun emerging yet may shine,
Thee to irradiate with meridian ray;
Hours splendid as the past may still be thine,
And bless thy future as thy former day."

WARWICKSHIRE: THE LOAMSHIRE OF GEORGE ELIOT

Miss Mulock—Butler—Somervile—Dyer—Rugby—Homes of George Eliot—Scenes of Tales—Cheverel—Shepperton—Milly's Grave—Paddiford—Milby—Coventry, etc.—Characters—Incidents.

SOME one has said that to write about Warwickshire is to write about Shakespeare. True, the transcending fame of the bard of Avon gives the places associated with his life and genius pre-eminence, but the literary rambler will find in this heart of England other shrines worthy of homage. Inevitably our pilgrimage includes the Stratford scenes,—from the birthplace and the Hathaway cottage to the fane where all the world bows at Shakespeare's tomb,—but, resolutely repressing the inclination to describe again these oft-described resorts, we fare to less familiar shrines: to the birthplace of the author of "Hudibras" and the haunts and tomb of Somervile, poet of "The Chase" and "Rural Sports;" to the Rhynhill of Braddon's tale and the Kenilworth of Scott's matchless romance; to Bilton, where Addison sometime dwelt, and the Calthorpe home of Dyer, bard of "Grongar Hill" and "The Fleece," where we find his garden and a tree he planted which shades now his battlemented old church; to Rugby, where we see the dormitory of "Tom Brown" Hughes, the class-rooms he shared with Clough, Matthew Arnold, and Dean Stanley, the grave of the beloved Dr. Arnold in the "Rugby Chapel" of his son's poem.

At Avonmouth we find the Norton Bury of "John Halifax," and the old inn where Dinah Mulock lived while writing this her popular tale. The inn garden holds the yew hedge of the novel, "fifteen feet high and as many thick," and the sward over which crept the lame Phineas: sitting there, we see the view the boy admired,—the old Abbey tower, the mill of Abel Fletcher, the river where the famished rioters fought for the grains the grim old man had flung into the water, the green level of the Ham dotted with cattle, the white sails of the encircling Severn, the farther sweep of country extending to the distant hills,—and hear the sweet-toned Abbey chimes and the lazy whir of the mill which sounded so pleasantly in Phineas's ears.

Other Shrines