The Rural Life of England

by William Howitt

The Count Pietro Gamba, Jan. 31st, 1825.
The Duke of Sussex visited Lord Byron’s tomb, October 1824.
Lieut.-Colonel Wildman.
Lieut.-Colonel Charles Lallemand.
The Count de Blankensee, Chamberlain to the King of Prussia, Sept. 7th, 1825.
1825,	Sept. 23.	William Fletcher visited his ever-to-be-lamented lord and master’stomb.
	10th month.	Jeremiah Wiffen, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire.
1826,	July 30.	C. R. Pemberton, a wanderer.
1828,	Jan. 21.	Thomas Moore.
	Sept. 12.	Sir Francis S. Darwin, and party.
	Nov. 21.	Lieut.-Colonel D’Aguilar.
	———	Eliza D’Aguilar.
	Dec. 1.	Lieut.-Colonel James Hughes of Llysdulles.
1829,	Sept. 3.	Lord Byron’s Sister, the Honourable Augusta Mary Leigh, visited this church.
1831,	May 17.	Rev. Joseph Gilbert, Nottingham.
	———	Ann Gilbert (formerly Ann Taylor of Ongar).
	Aug. 22.	Lieut.-Gen. and Mrs. Need, Fountain Dale.
1832,	Jan. 8.	M. Van Buren, Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States.
	———	Washington Irving.
	———	John Van Buren, New York, U. S. America.
	Dec. 27.	Lady Lammine, Salendale.
1834,	Feb. 15.	Domingo Maria Ruiz de la Vega, Ex-Deputy of the Spanish Cortes, from Granada.
	Feb. 23.	J. Bellairs, Esq., visited Newstead Abbey, and Lord Byron’s tomb, such as it is—one of hisgreatest admirers of the day!
	———	W. Arundale, of London, accompanied the said J. B.!
	March 8.	J. Murray, Jun. Albemarle-street, London.

Although we did not, at this time, enter even the churchyard, thoughts and feelings which had presented themselves in this very spot, on the day of Lord Byron’s funeral, again returned.

His birth, his death, dark fortunes, and brief life,
Wondrous and wild as his impetuous lay,
Passed through my mind; his wanderings, loves, and strife;
I saw him marching on from day to day:
The kilted boy, roaming mid mountains grey;
The noble youth, whose life-blood was a flame,
In the bright land of demi-gods astray;
The monarch of the lyre, whose haughty name
Spread on from shore to shore, the watchword of all fame;

And then, a lifeless form! The spell was broke;
The wizard’s wild enchantment was destroyed;
He who at will did dreadful forms invoke,
And called up beautiful spirits from the void,
Back to the scenes in which he early joyed,
He came but knew it not. In vain earth’s bloom—
In vain the sky’s clear beauty, which oft buoyed
His spirit to delight; an early doom
Brought him in glory’s arms to the awaiting tomb.

He lies—how quietly that heart which yet
Never could slumber, slumbers now for aye!
He lies—where first, love, fame, his young soul set
With passionate power on flame; where gleam the grey
Turrets of Newstead, through the solemn sway
Of verdurous woods; and where that hoary crown
Of lofty trees, “in circular array,”
Shroud Mary’s Hall, who thither may look down,
And think how he loved her, ay, more than his renown.

ANNESLEY HALL.

From Hucknall we ascended chiefly through open, wild lands:—to our right the wooded valley of Newstead, every moment spreading itself out more broadly; and before us the forest heights of Annesley, growing more bold and attractive. A wild gusty breeze, and dark flying clouds, added sensibly to the deep solitude and picturesque character of the scene. We soon passed a cottage, having beside it an old brick pillar surmounted with a stone ball, and before it an avenue of lime trees, which appeared some time to have formed the boundary or place of entrance to the park; then a new lodge, and found ourselves at the foot of the steep hill, styled in Byron’s Dream—

A gentle hill,
Green, and of mild declivity.

The greenness and mildness of declivity, however, we afterwards found were on the side by which Byron and Mary Chaworth had ascended it from her house; on this side it is a remarkably barren and extremely steep hill. However, up we went, and on the summit discovered the strict accuracy of his delineation of it.

I saw two beings in the hues of youth,
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green, and of mild declivity; the last,
As ’t were the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs:—the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of Nature, but of man.