We saw nothing in England proper prettier than the shady lanes and green foot-paths of Warwickshire. The view from Harrow Hill and the country around Malvern are greatly admired, but they are exceedingly tame, merely an extent of rather flat land seen from an insignificant height, without water, too patchy to have breadth, which is the strong point of flat scenery; there are no stretches of field or forest-land; it is all broken up like a checkerboard by hedgerows and high-roads. We thought the Fen country roads more striking: it has been reclaimed, and is now a fine agricultural district. The eye ranges over wide expanses of cultivation: great plains of pale green bean-vines and yellow grain, alternating with the rich brown of the peat soil, whose pungent odor fills the air, stretch away to the horizon, unbroken save by now and then a row of Lombardy poplars or a line of low willows; the ditches by which the land is drained and divided are marked by long lines of brighter green, and full of graceful waving marsh-grass; and at long intervals a broad, straight, shining path of water takes its way to the sea. Here and there a solitary windmill reminds one of Holland, but it is altogether finer than Holland. With all the teeming fertility there is something which recalls the original desolation: it is very sparsely settled; one seldom sees a house, and then it is not clustered about with outbuildings, but stands up alone against the horizon, and makes one think of Mariana’s moated grange. In the midst of these flats rises the majestic tower of Ely, seen for many a mile.
We passed from this into a wild waste in Norfolk, whose sandy hillocks were clad in purple heath and green fern, with an occasional pine wood, dark and mysterious-looking, for in England even the pine is not the scrubby, scraggy tree of our barrens. This country has a picturesque, original character of its own, and is somewhat thinly settled too, but among the heaths and pines we saw more beautiful ruined churches than in any district south of the Tweed. The unfailing ivy is there, but it does not grow with over-luxuriance, as it does elsewhere in England, making a lovely covering for an ugly building or an unsightly stump, but sometimes muffling and hiding the beauties of finer architecture, and disguising delicate Gothic outlines like a thick hood.
[Our traveller follows this description of scenery with an account of what she saw in the great cathedrals of England, including Westminster, Winchester, Worcester, and Gloucester. Her description of these is too extended for our space.]
Besides these, we saw Chester, Peterboro’, York Minster, Wells, Ely, Canterbury: for the first three I cared less than for the others, though Peterboro’ is very fine, especially the west front, which is a miracle of richness and proportion; and York is grand from its size and the harmony which reigns throughout, all the additions and restorations having been made in such perfect accordance with the original design that it looks as if it were the work of the same century. Besides the fine monuments, there are superb stained-glass windows, one very old, and called the “Five Sisters,” said to have been the gift of five maiden ladies, each of whom bestowed a compartment designed from her own embroidery; for which vide “Nicholas Nickleby.” We went down into the crypt to see the remains of the old Norman church and some fragments of a Saxon one, most ancient of all: there, among those venerable, those sacred stones, was a steam-engine, contrived to blow the huge bellows of the organ; and there were the gas-pipes by which the cathedral is now lighted: a number of jets were flaring in the vaults; the steam-engine blew and heaved in a horrible manner; there were heaps of coal lying between the grand broken Norman pillars; the light and smell of gas pervaded the whole place. It was like the cellar of a manufactory, and we went up-stairs with outraged sensibilities. Ely is glorious within and without; Wells is the loveliest of cathedrals; Canterbury is Canterbury.
Besides cathedrals, almost every parish in England has at least one beautiful church. The most interesting of them to us was the Holy Sepulchre at Cambridge. It belonged to the Knights Templars, and is circular, like most of their churches, in imitation of our Saviour’s tomb at Jerusalem. It is very small, very low, very massive, with short round pillars, round arches, decorated only with the simple, effective zigzag moulding peculiar to the early Norman style; corbels running down from the domical vaulted roof (still recalling Moslem architecture), and ending in strange faces, military yet melancholy in expression,—probably portraits of the knights by whom it was founded in the year of our Lord 1101. The Temple Church in London is much larger and handsomer, but not nearly so curious and striking.
Almost all the old churches in England suffer exceedingly either from the defect of the stone of which they are built or the action of the atmosphere upon it: they look honeycombed, worm-eaten; their tracery is obliterated, their mullions are wasted as if by wear and tear. The interiors, protected from the weather, fare best, but even the cloisters, which are open on one side, are often in a ruinous condition, and the stone peels and crumbles under the touch like rusty iron. Chester Cathedral is an extreme instance: its dilapidation amounts to disfigurement. It is one of the least imposing and interesting, yet for an American just landed it is a profound revelation; and as Chester is close to Liverpool, one cannot do better than stop there for a day.
The old city is full of quaint characteristics, too well known to need description here. One of the gates is called by the odd title of the Pepper-gate. In the sixteenth century there was a mayor named Pepper, who had a young daughter in her middle teens. One evening, as she was playing ball with her companions near this gate, an impetuous youth rushed in, snatched her up, and carried her off through it. The mayor caused the gate to be closed, which gave rise to the saying, “When the daughter is stolen shut the Pepper-gate.” Chester is the only city in England which has preserved the entire circuit of its walls: the town has spread far beyond them in every direction, except where they are washed by the Dee, but they form an unbroken round, and are used as a public walk, from which one looks into many a queer corner. Following its course, one comes upon a small turret rising from the battlements, on which is the inscription, “From this tower, on September 27, 1645, King Charles saw his army defeated at Rowton Moor.” How much of anguish and doom lies in those few words! No doubt Sir Walter Scott is much to blame, but he can hardly be held answerable for all the sentiment with which we trace the footsteps of the Stuarts, dogged by fanatical hatred and murderous revenge, upheld by adventurous, daring, romantic loyalty and chivalrous self-devotion.