where we arrived after an hour's ride, and remained over night, much enjoying our accommodation at the Avenue Hotel. Next morning, after breakfast, took a stroll out over the town. It is a noted place of aristocratic resort for pleasure, and for its springs—a sort of cross between English Bath and American Saratoga. Everywhere were facilities for the enjoyment of pleasure or health-seeking tourists. It would seem as though one could hardly be sick here. It was in this place that Sir Walter Scott wrote "Kenilworth," and as one breathes the exhilarating air, he is inclined to reduce the honors usually accorded to the great writer, and imagine that it is nothing strange that, with such surroundings, he wrote as he did. A visit to Leamington, and one is in the secret of Sir Walter's power when he wrote that smoothest of romances.
Perhaps we ought to make a more economical use of adjectives in describing the neatness of streets and the beauty of public and private grounds, for this is the universal and not exceptional condition.
The pink hawthorn is in bloom, and such pansies as we never saw at home. Remember, this is May 28. We have not anywhere in our travels seen Indian corn growing, and think it is not raised. We have seen no fields of potatoes, only small patches for family use; and these are six inches out of the ground. Carrots and early cabbages are fully grown and exposed for sale. We visited one grapery, where the Black Hamburg vines were forty years old and in good bearing, the grapes being about the size of peas. The vines were set in the borders of the greenhouse, which were two and a half feet wide, and the vines were three and a half feet apart,—the stocks, or trunks, being not more than an inch and a half in diameter. On the outside of a small conservatory was a fine heliotrope, one and a half inches in diameter, nine years old, which had often been well pruned and was in profuse bloom.
The town has a population of 22,730, and is very pleasantly situated on the River Leam, a tributary of the Avon, and is one of the handsomest towns in England, and more American in appearance than any other place we saw on our journey. The spring waters are saline, sulphurous, and chalybeate. They came into use in 1797, and are visited constantly by the élite of the land.
KENILWORTH.
"Kenilworth Castle!" says the reader. That and more! The station is reached by a half-hour's ride from Leamington, being about five miles in a direct line from Stratford, Leamington, and Coventry. The country is hilly and abounds with fertile fields, on which are grazing sheep, cows, and horses in countless numbers. Everything has an inhabited look. Elms, oaks, horse-chestnuts, and poplars abound. There are fine groves that might be called woods. The town itself is a small one of 4,250 inhabitants. It has manufactures of ribbons, gauzes, combs, and chemicals, and is a market-town, to whose public square the farmers bring their produce, while traders, from temporary stands, offer for sale all kinds of wares. For centuries these market-days have been a part of the weekly life of the people.
There is a very ancient church, and the ruins of an abbey, founded in 1122; but the great object of interest is the ruins of its celebrated castle, made so familiar by Sir Walter Scott's romance. The spot was reached by a pleasant walk of about a mile from the station. When we had passed through a well shaded country road,—through the woods, as we should say in America,—there was presented to view a most enchanting scene. Ahead of us, say five minutes' walk, our road seemed to terminate in a gently rising plain, a miniature common, on which were three or four stone residences, partly public and partly private in appearance. The scene reminded us of a New England common.
To the left, bounding the road, was a stone wall; from this, gently sloping, for perhaps two hundred feet, was a grazing pasture. At the upper end of this were the ruins, not of the castle proper, but of some of its outbuildings. These massive and ivy-dressed ruins alone would have satisfied us, and we mistook them for the castle itself, but we went up to the little plateau, and round to the left hand, to get admission to the grounds; for we were now somewhat educated on the ruins question, and believed there was more in waiting for us. Lads and lasses, and some very old women, offered their services and guide-books. They told their story well, but we told ours better. We found the gateway, paid our shillings, and decided to be our own guides.
First, there was a flower garden,—centuries ago cultivated as now, but then only for the inmates of the castle. Here was also a museum, containing many articles once used in the castle. We did not get up enthusiasm enough to go in; and now content ourselves by saying, "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." Beyond another gate, we find ourselves in a closely cropped sheep-pasture. No lawn in our Boston suburbs equals this carpet of green, acres in extent. To our left, five hundred feet away, were the ruins observed before. We don't discount this beauty even now, and we never will. Put those ruins in Brookline or Brighton, and we'd stand our ground even with Englishmen. But what shall we say about the ruins of the castle itself,—there on our right, two hundred feet away?
This is Cæsar's Tower. Square in plan, the surface is broken with piers and vertical projections of varying width; the top is perhaps sixty feet from the ground, and made irregular by its decay. It is roofless, of course, and has walls sixteen feet thick at the bottom; half the surface is covered with dark-leaved ivy, precisely such as is grown in our houses. We go nearer; now on our right, two hundred feet on our front, and left, leaving a half enclosed square, are other portions of this great castle. What variety of outline! What solidity! There are patches of ivy fifty feet square. Measuring a single trunk, conformed to the crevices of the wall, we found it to be 3 feet 10 inches wide, and 16 inches thick at the centre, decreasing to a thickness of 3 inches at the edges. We should have been unable to believe this story, had it been told by others, and will not find fault with any one who now doubts our accuracy.