On returning from the sale, with the carriage loaded with our purchases, we disposed our new acquisitions in the different rooms, and laid ourselves out for a few weeks' enjoyment of the blest retirement—friend to life's decline—which we had struggled so hard to gain, and which now looked so satisfying in every point.
There is nothing to be compared, for comfort and beauty, to a dairy-farm. Arable lands are detestable; and the windows of the house generally look into a horrible yard, where the present agonies of the nose are made tolerable only by the hope of the rich crop to come. Here our windows looked upon a sloping green field, bounded from the road by a good thick hedge, at the distance of seventy or eighty yards. Beyond the road stretched fine luxuriant meadows, each bordered with its fence of noble elms, down to the river; so that we had nothing to do but cross the road, and wander among fields and hedgerows, miles and miles, either east or west—always within hearing of the gentle voice of the Usk, and often in sight of the long, still reaches of the river, that looked like beautiful lakes, fringed to the water side with willows and flowering shrubs. Seventeen or eighteen cows were our fellow-lodgers at the farm; and no sight is more fascinating, especially if you are fond of warm milk, than the long majestic march, and musical invocations, of the milky mothers, as they come home at evening from the pastures. Before three days were over, the names of all the cows were household words among the young ones; their very voices were distinguished; and it was decided that the flower of the flock, as to beauty, was Glo'ster, though some of us stoutly maintained that the whiteness of Handsome entitled her to the prize. Then there were about thirty sheep; but with them (in spite of frequent intercourse) we could only make out a general acquaintance—for we disbelieve altogether in the possibility of distinguishing one of the flock from the others. It must be the easiest thing in the world for a sheep to establish an alibi; and we are rather surprised that the impossibility of detection does not encourage some of the bolder of the woolly-sided heroes to some desperate outrage. There could be no identifying the culprit. But we saw no instance of spirit among them, except a wicked attempt on the part of a young lamb to overthrow authorities and powers; and we are sorry to say it was successful. Our friend the farmer discovered the presence of some insects in the wool, or rather in the body, of one of the yearlings. He proceeded, attended by us all, to extirpate this fatal enemy with his shears; and, having seized the sufferer, put its head between his knees, and proceeded to lay bare the hiding-place of the devouring grub. By some unlucky chance, the lamb got its head loose, pushed forward with two or three tremendous jumps, and the operator was thrown on his back, his feet in the air, and the shears held helplessly up in his discomfited hands. It created great consternation among the spectators; and the two younger children, after looking on in speechless amazement, thought, probably, that the assailant was a tiger in disguise, and sought safety ignominiously in flight. The patient—the lamb, we mean—was again submitted to the shears, the grub extirpated, and the cure, we believe, effected. The muscular power of a sheep is tremendous; and, if it were to get its head between the ankles of the brazen Achilles, down would fall the glory of Hyde Park. It is lucky they have not found out the secret of their strength, as they might take such a dangerous attitude as materially to raise the price of mutton—a consummation by no means to be wished.
In addition to the cows and sheep, and innumerable multitudes of chickens and turkeys, the farm boasted a goodly array of horses. These would have made a poor figure at Newmarket, as they were no kin to Godolphin or Eclipse—but in plough or harrow they looked respectable. There was an old mare, and her daughter, and her daughter's daughter—Grannie, and Polly, and Rose by name. There were also another mare and her foal; but our acquaintance was confined to the three generations—or rather to the two—for Grannie was old and stupid; and as the farmer sported a fine old-fashioned strong rough gig, we occasionally pressed Polly into the service, put two or three children on footstools in the front, brandished a whip that had done duty at the plough, and trotted off with the easy dignity of four miles an hour, and lionized the whole neighbourhood. Amidst bumps, and thumps, and bursts of laughter at the unwieldy turn-out, the excursion was pleasanter than if made in a chariot and four.
One day we started off to visit Ragland Castle; the distance was five or six miles, the day beautiful, the mare in splendid order, and the whip ornamented with a new lash. Disregarding the whinnyings and neighings with which the family received our steed as we passed the field where they were all assembled to see us at the gate, from Grannie down to the foal, we applied the thong vigorously, and chirruped, and whistled, and cried "Gee!" and Hither!" and got fairly into a trot; and an easy thing it is to maintain the pace after you have once got into it—in fact, you find some difficulty in getting into a slower rate; and if by any chance we pulled up altogether to see a view, Polly, who was no judge of the picturesque, was very apt to turn round and run away home—if the word "run away" can be applied to a very determined walk, with no regard whatever to bit and rein. A struggle of this sort was very apt to occur at Llansaintfraed Lodge, meaning, we are told, in the original, the Church of St Bridget—and a pretty church it is. It is in a park of moderate size, crowning a gentle elevation; a carriage-drive leads to it, nicely gravelled, for it is the approach to Llansaintfraed House. The church, when we saw it, was all festooned over the porch and a portion of the walls, with honeysuckle in full show; roses and other flowers were planted all round, and a fine solid stone cross threw its beautiful shadow over the graves. The church is very small and very old, and owes a part of its good condition to the good fortune of having had the late Bishop of Llandaff for a parishioner. Some years ago he occupied Llansaintfraed House, and rescued the parish from the disgrace of a ruinous and neglected church. It is only to be wished that every parish had its manor occupied so well—for a district with churches so shamefully fallen into disrepair we never saw. In all the churchyards, for instance, the piety of our forefathers had raised a cross; and it surely does not argue a man to be a Puseyite, if he thinks highly of such an emblem in such a place; and in every instance, except this one of Llansaintfraed, the hand of the spoiler hath been upon it. The cross, in every instance, is broken, and only a portion of the broken pillar remaining. If the archdeacon disapproves of the cross, let it be removed altogether; but if not, let it be repaired, and not left to affront the parishioners with the daily spectacle of the rate-payers' meanness and the clergyman's neglect. So, having managed to get Polly's head round again—for she had availed herself of our pause to whisk homeward—we proceed on our way to Ragland. Welsh precisians, we perceive, call it Rhaglan—and probably attach a nobler meaning to the name than can be forced out of the Saxon Rag and Land; but as novelists and historians have agreed in calling it Ragland, we shall keep to the old spelling in spite of sennachie and bard. A short way beyond Llansaintfraed is the handsome gate and beautiful park of Clytha; the gate surmounted by a magnificent and highly ornamented Gothic arch, and the mansion-house pure Grecian—an allegory, perhaps, of the gradual civilization of mankind, or the process by which chivalrous knights are turned into Christian gentlemen. The house is modern, and even the arch without much pretension to antiquity; but the family stretching far back into the gloom of ages, and lineal ancestors of the antediluvian patriarchs. Since the Deluge, however, they have restricted themselves to this part of Monmouthshire; and judging from the number of Joneses—which is the great name in the neighbourhood—there seems no great chance of the genealogical tree being in want of branches. There is nothing so strange in a new vicinity as the different weight attached to family names. We have known districts where the word Smith itself, even without the fictitious dignity of y in the middle and e at the end, was pronounced with great veneration. Jones—elsewhere sacred to the comic muse—is of as potent syllable—unluckily it has only one—along the banks of the Usk, as Scott or Douglas on the Nith and Yarrow. And such is the effect of territorial or moral association, that we shall willingly withdraw an objection we made to a line in the tragedy of our late friend J—— S——, where some one, speaking of the patriot Pym—to eye and ear the most pithless and contemptible of cognomens—says,
"There is a sound of thunder in the name."
We have no doubt there was a very distinct peal of heaven's dread artillery in the ear of that bitter-hearted Roundhead every time he heard the magic word—Pym.
The family highest in mere antiquity in Monmouthshire, we are told, rejoices in the curious-looking name of Progers. From them are descended the noble Beauforts, and even the Joneses of Clytha. For hundreds of years, the Progerses had kept going down-hill; estate after estate had disappeared; farm after farm took to flight; till, thirty or forty years ago, the blood of the Progerses flowed in the veins of a poor gentleman with about two hundred a-year, a house in very bad repair, and family pride that seemed to flourish in proportion as every thing else decayed. Some tourist, in the course of his researches, encountered this Monmouthshire Marins sitting among the ruins of his former state. The tourist was of a genealogical turn of mind, and the Desdichado poured forth his hoarded boasts in his sympathizing ear. "Out of this house," he said, pointing mechanically to the tottering walls of his family mansion, but metaphorically alluding to the House of Progers, "came the Joneses of Clytha and Llanerth—out of this house came the noble Somersets, now Dukes of Beaufort;" and so he went on, relating all the great and powerful names that had owed their origin to his house. The tourist seems also to have had some knowledge of architecture, for his answer to the catalogue was—"Well, sir, it's my advice to you to come out of this house yourself as quickly as you can, or it will be down upon you some of these days to a certainty."
On passing Clytha, we enter into a territory which might more justly be called Somersetshire than the county the other side of the channel. The Dukes of Beaufort seem paramount wherever you go; and in every town, and even in all the villages, there is sure to be a house of entertainment with the royal portcullis on the signpost, and the name of the Beaufort Arms. The domains of the family must be larger than half a dozen foreign principalities; and, from all we heard, the conduct of the present noble Somerset is worthy of his high position—liberal, kind-hearted, magnificent. One thing very pleasant to see was the little garden-ground taken from the road, and attached to nice clean cottages, almost all the way. Little portions, about thirty feet in depth, and considerable length, formed the wealth and ornament of the wayside dwellings. They were all well filled with apple and other fruit-trees, and stocked with useful vegetables. If this is the plan of enclosing commons, we wish we were in Parliament to give Lord Worsley our aid; for a few perches, well hedged and carefully kept, are worth all the rights of pasture, whether of cows, geese, or donkeys, that ever the poor possessed. Inside of this fringe of rustic independencies, snug farm-houses rose up in all directions; but, with a perverseness which seems characteristic of the whole county, and not limited to farm-houses, or even semi-genteel villas, no sooner does a man fix on a nice situation—a rising knoll beside a river—a gentle slope—or beautiful level green—no sooner does he rear a modest, or perhaps an ornamental, mansion on the site, than his next care is to plant as thick round it as the trees will stand. Elms, poplars, oaks, and larches, in a few years block up the view; and arbutus, rododendrons, and enormous Portugal laurels, stand as an impenetrable screen before every window; so that a house, which by its architecture ought to be an ornament to the neighbourhood, and should command noble hills and rich valleys, might as well be a wigwam in an Indian forest. There seems a greater tendency to rheumatism than romance among the inhabitants; and, by the by, we observed on all the walls Welsh placards of Parr's pills. But in spite of the large letters, and the populousness of the towns and villages where they were posted up, we did not see a single individual reading the announcements. Query, can the Welsh peasantry read Welsh? or is their book-learning limited to English, and their native tongue left to its oral freedom, untrammeled with A, B, C? In addition to the usual fence of impenetrable trees and shrubs, we noticed one pretty little dwelling, newly built, a mile or two from the village of Ragland, tastefully ornamented with an immense heap of compost, which nearly barricaded the drawing-room window. The inhabitant must have been a prodigious agriculturist; and probably preferred the useful, but unromantic heap, to any other object in the view. We gave it the name of Guano Hall.
But where, all this while, is Ragland Castle, and when will the old mare jiggle joggle to the end of our course? All eyes were kept in constant motion to catch a glimpse of the towers and pinnacles, of which we felt sure we were now within a mile. Trees, trees, and nothing but trees, with sometimes a glimpse of blue hills far off, and wreaths of smoke from cottages or farms rising above the wilderness of leaves. At last, on a little elevation on the left hand, rising solemnly, into the silent air, we caught sight of the old ruin, with great ponderous walls, covered with ivy, and the sky seen through the open arches of its immense windows. A beautiful mass of building, with such rents and fissures in it, that you wondered whether it was ever entire; and the walls so thick and massive that you wondered again how it ever fell into decay. We hobbled into the village, keeping the castle in view the whole time, got good quarters for the mare at the first hostel we encountered, and proceeded up a country lane to spend an hour or two among the ruins. The entrance is very fine, and might give rise to grand historic emotions in people fond of the feudal and sublime; but in our instance such a train of thought would have been impossible, for just inside of the majestic portal sat an old harper thrumming away at the pathetic melody of Jenny Jones. He might as well have played Jim Crow at once, for romance was put to flight, and we speedily got as far as we could from the descendant of Talessin. The Duke of Beaufort has fitted up the ruins in a way that would have gratified the heart of Mrs Radcliffe. Winding stairs lead, in the thickness of the walls, from tower to tower, and the dim corridors and dizzying bartizans are made safe to the most timid of Cockneys by stout wooden banisters, that enable you to stand as securely on a crumbling battlement as on the top of Salisbury plain. We saw the courts and quadrangles, admired the splendid windows, and only wondered at the lowness of the ceilings of some of the principal rooms, as from floor to floor could not have been more than seven feet and a half. There were fountain courts without a fountain; and chapel-yards with no chapel; why should we speak of kitchens, conjuring up visions of roasted oxen, and butteries suggestive of hogsheads of home-brewed ale, when fire-places are now choked up, and nothing is left of the buttery but a pile of broken stones? At first, on going in, we dilated on the grand things we should do in the way of restoration if we were the lord of the castle. First, we would fit it up exactly as it was in the brave days of old: we should have new floors put in the audience-chamber; a roof on the great dining-hall; a stately dais at the upper end, and get it from the hands of Pugin—the identical castle of the days of Elizabeth. But, on closer inspection, we came to the conclusion that the natural condition of such buildings is that of interesting remains. The rooms are low, the passages are dark, the bed-rooms dog-kennels, the stairs ladders, the court-yards damp, the windows all turned the wrong way, and, in short, the sixteenth century an excellent trimmer of popes and conqueror of armadas, but a very bad architect.
In one of the court-yards was a flock of sheep nibbling at the grass that had been trodden by the great marquis, as he walked down after his noble defence, to deliver his sword to the Parliamentarian Fairfax. Has Cattermole or Charles Landseer never thought of the brave old cavalier, at the age of eighty-five, surrendering his ancestral home,—surrounded by his sorrowing garrison, and bearing himself with the true dignity of a heroic noble? Let them think of this, and send us a proof print.