A Year in Europe

by Walter W. Moore

On Sunday we attended service in the cathedral, and found it formal, cold and unsatisfying. I yield to no man in my admiration of the beauty of these vast and venerable cathedrals, but they have been in some respects a hindrance to vital religion, as I shall endeavor to show in a later letter. This one at Salisbury was erected in the middle of the thirteenth century, so that for six hundred and fifty years it has been used continuously as a place of Christian worship, first Romish and now Anglican.

But on Monday we made an excursion which took us back to a still more remote antiquity. One mile to the north of Salisbury at Old Sarum (a name well known to students of English politics as that of the "rotten borough," which till 1832 had the privilege of sending two members to Parliament, though without a single inhabitant), crowning a great hill which commands the surrounding country for miles, stands the vast, grass-clad earthworks of an ancient Roman fortress, the largest entrenched camp in the kingdom. That is old, but we are bound for something older still, and so we continue our drive northwards.

One great charm of the summer in Great Britain is the cool weather. The English people never have to endure the withering heats to which we are subjected in America. This year it has been much cooler even than usual. So, as we drive on through the June day, although the sun is shining brightly, the air is bracing and exhilarating.

Rural Scenery in Southern England.

Another marked difference between this country and most parts of ours is the extraordinary finish of the landscape, due to scantiness of forests, absence of undergrowth, thoroughness of tillage, and especially the luxuriance and smoothness of the turf. The quiet beauty of rural England has a perpetual charm. When I was here some years ago it was May, the hawthorn hedges were in bloom, and the whole country was robed in tender green. Before landing this time I felt some regret that we should not see it in the same lovely attire, thinking of the difference between early May and late June in America. But I find it even more beautiful than when I first saw it. The farmers were cutting the lush grass in some places, impregnating the air with the delicious fragrance of new-mown hay. In other fields the wheat was standing thick, with here and there a blaze of scarlet poppies, sometimes an acre or two in extent, a solid mass of brilliant red, no green or other color visible at all. Still prettier, if possible, are the scattered poppy blooms in a field of half ripe grain, looking like ruby bubbles on a gently moving, sunlit sea.

The youngsters in our party are interested to see horses hitched tandem to the wide hay wains in the fields, and to observe that when we meet a double team in the road, instead of being harnessed as two horses are with us, on each side of a tongue, here each of the two horses is in his own pair of shafts. Nor are they slow to observe that teams always turn to the left in passing each other, instead of to the right as with us, and the same rule is observed in the running of trains on a double track railway.

No frame houses are to be seen in town or country. We have not seen a wooden house since we landed. All are of brick or stone, though many of them in the country are covered with thatch, sometimes with clay tiles. But slate is more and more superseding these old-fashioned materials. This does not promote the cottager's comfort. Slate roofs are hotter in summer and colder in winter than those of straw, and, of course, too, they are far less picturesque. I observe that many farmers thatch even their stone and brick fences to prevent the water from coming in and freezing, to the injury of the masonry. No wooden fences are seen, and few of wire. They are either living hedges of thorn or privet or the like, or they are walls of stone or brick. In short, the improvements look more substantial than ours, the agricultural methods more thorough, the country more finished, and, I should think, more comfortable to live in, in the material sense. Very striking is the universal love of flowers. Every little village yard, if but three or four feet wide, and every cottage window, however humble, has its rows of brilliant geraniums, and other ornamental plants.

Impressiveness of Stonehenge.

And now, after a drive of nine miles, we reach Salisbury Plain, a name familiar to me from early boyhood from the title of a little book that used to be read in many homes, The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. As we came up, sure enough, there was a shepherd on one of the green slopes, with his flock and his shepherd dog. We give them but a glance, however, for our attention is instantly claimed by the object which we have come so far to see, Stonehenge, "the most imposing megalolithic monument in Britain," a group of great stones which seem originally to have been arranged in two concentric circles enclosing two ellipses, but some are now fallen. Of the outer circle, which was one hundred feet in diameter, seventeen stones are still standing, with six of the great cap-stones over them. The largest uprights of the whole group, those near the centre of the circle, were twenty-two and a half feet high, and the transverse blocks were three and a half feet thick. These are, therefore, quite large stones, but it is not their size that gives them their interest. The ancient Egyptians handled much larger stones than these. It is their antiquity, and the mystery, still unsolved, as to the purpose for which they were erected. Were they placed here by the Druids? If so, for what purpose? The name does not help us, Stonehenge being but a corruption of the Saxon name, meaning "hanging stones." Were they intended for a temple of the sun, or a calendar in stone for the measurement of the solar year, or a huge gallows on which defeated enemies were hung in honor of Woden, or a sepulchral circle connected with the burial of the dead? No positive answer can be given, but the last mentioned view is now regarded as the most probable, and is confirmed by the existence in the immediate vicinity of great turf-covered barrows, or burial places. These barrows are of the Bronze Age, and to this same remote period Stonehenge itself is referred by the best authorities.