Historical Interest of Southampton.
This mention of the tides reminds me to say that Southampton is the place where Canute the Dane is said to have given his famous rebuke to his flattering courtiers. All the children who have read any English history will recall the story.
They are familiar, too, with the hard-hearted action of William the Conqueror in laying waste an area of one hundred and forty square miles in this neighborhood for the purpose of making a hunting ground, which has ever since been known as the New Forest, and which still stretches westward from Southampton Water. It will be remembered that the Conqueror's son and successor, William Rufus, met his death here, being found one day in these woods with an arrow through his heart. That arrow may have been shot by one of the many peasants who had been driven from their homes when the New Forest was made, though most writers attribute the deed, without sufficient proof, to a gentleman named Walter Tyrrell. At any rate, here William Rufus was killed, and at Winchester, thirteen miles from Southampton, he was buried under the floor of the cathedral, "many looking on and few grieving," as the old chronicler says.
Of still more interest to young readers, especially boys, who are familiar with Sir Walter Scott's stories, The Talisman and Ivanhoe, is the fact that the Crusaders under Richard the Lion Hearted, sailed from Southampton for the Holy Land. That was in 1189.
In the summer of 1620, however, a far more important expedition, though far less spectacular, was fitted out at Southampton by the hiring of a ship here called the Mayflower, in which shortly afterwards the Pilgrim Fathers sailed for the New World.
It will be seen, then, that Southampton is a place of no small historical interest, to say nothing of its associations with Edward III., Henry V., and Charles I., or its being the birthplace of Sir John E. Millais, the artist, or of its having fine statues of Lord Palmerston and "Chinese" Gordon.
Chief Distinction of the Town.
But it was not on account of any of these things that we determined to give to this place the first few hours we were to spend in England. The special reason for our interest in Southampton is that it was the birthplace and residence of the greatest hymn writer that ever lived, a man of totally different physique, character, gifts, and influence from the able, but bloody kings with whose names the earlier history of the place is associated, a small, delicate, scholarly, Christian man, of lovely spirit, who, by exactly antipodal methods, has established a wider, more real, more beneficent, and more lasting reign over human hearts than William or Richard were able to achieve—the Rev. Isaac Watts, D. D., whose simpler pieces for children have become household words throughout the English-speaking world, such as, "Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber," "Let dogs delight to bark and bite," "How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour," etc., and who, as even a supercilious and grudging critic like Matthew Arnold admitted, wrote the finest hymn in the English language, "When I survey the wondrous cross," and very many others of scarcely inferior merit.
He was the author of various able treatises on philosophy and theology, but it was the thought of what he had done for the world by his hymns that caused us to stop at Southampton. So, mounting the winding stairway to the top of the "double-decker" electric tram car, much better adapted to sightseeing than our single-story street cars in America, we were carried smoothly and quickly up the bright and busy High Street, gaily decorated for the Coronation, and in a few minutes passed under the great stone arch of the Bar Gate, the most interesting portion of the ancient city wall. The modern city, of course, stretches far beyond the walls, street after street of clean and attractive houses, with a profusion of brilliant flowers and neatly trimmed greenery, shut in from the street, in many cases, by high stone walls, over which, however, we can easily see from our elevated position.
Sketch of the Great Hymn-Writer.