OVER THE OCEAN;

OR,

SIGHTS AND SCENES

IN

FOREIGN LANDS.

BY

CURTIS GUILD,

EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COMMERCIAL BULLETIN.

BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.
NEW YORK:
LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM.
1871.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871,
By LEE AND SHEPARD,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Cambridge: Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry,
No. 10 Spring Lane.

[PREFACE.]

The following pages are the record of the fruition of years of desire and anticipation; probably the same that fills the hearts of many who will read them—a tour in Europe.

The habits of observation, acquired by many years' constant occupation as a journalist, were found by the author to have become almost second nature, even when the duties of that profession were thrown aside for simple gratification and enjoyment; consequently, during a journey of nearly seven months, which was enjoyed with all the zest of a first tour, the matter which composes this volume was prepared.

Its original form was in a series of sketches in the columns of the Boston Commercial Bulletin. In these the writer attempted to give as vivid and exact an idea of the sights and scenes which he witnessed as could be conveyed to those who had never visited Europe.

Whether describing Westminster Abbey, or York Minster, Stratford-on-Avon, or the streets of London; the wonders of the Louvre, or the gayeties and glitter of Paris; the grandeur of the Alpine passes; the quaintness of old continental cities; experiences of post travelling; the romantic beauties of the Italian lakes; the underground wonders of Adelsberg, or the aqueous highways of Venice,—the author aimed to give many minute particulars, which foreign letter-writers deem of too little importance to mention, but which, nevertheless, are of great interest to the reader.

That the effort was, in some measure, successful, has been evinced by a demand for the sketches in permanent form, sufficient to warrant the publication of this volume.

In so presenting them, it is with the belief that it may be pleasant to those who have visited the same scenes to revisit them in fancy with the writer, and with a hope that the volume may, in some degree, serve as a guide to those who intend to go "over the ocean," as well as an agreeable entertainment to the stay-at-homes.

C. G.

[CONTENTS.]

OVER THE OCEAN.

[CHAPTER I.]

Do you remember, dear reader, when you were a youngster, and studied a geography with pictures in it, or a "First" or "Second" Book of History, and wondered, as you looked upon the wood-cuts in them, if you should ever see St. Paul's Cathedral, or Westminster Abbey, or London Bridge, or go to the Tower of London, and into the very room in which the poor little princes were smothered by the order of their cruel uncle Richard, by the two rude fellows in a sort of undress armor suit, as depicted in the Child's History of England, or should ever see the Paris you had heard your elders talk so much of, or those curious old Rhine castles, of which we read so many startling legends of robber knights, and fair ladies, and tournaments, and gnomes, and enchanters? What a realm of enchantment to us, story-book readers, was beyond the great blue ocean! and how we resolved, when we grew to be a man, we would travel all over the world, and see every thing, and buy ever so many curious things in the countries where they grew or were made. Even that compound which produced "the finest jet black ever beheld," was to us invested with a sort of poetic interest in boyhood's day, for the very stone jug that we held in our hand had come from London,—"97 High Holborn,"—and there was the picture of the palatial-looking factory on the pink label.

LONDON! There was something sonorous in the sound, and something solid in the very appearance of the word when written. When we were a man, didn't we mean to go to London!

Years added to youth dissipated many of these air-built castles, and other barriers besides the watery plain intervene between the goal of one's wishes, and Europe looks further away than ever. "Going to Europe! Everybody goes to Europe nowadays," says a friend. True, and in these days of steam it is not so much of an event as formerly; indeed, one would judge so from many of his countrymen that he meets abroad, who make him blush to think how they misrepresent Americans.

The Great Expositions at London and Paris drew from our shores every American who could by any manner of means or excuse leave business, and obtain funds sufficient to get over and back, if only for a six weeks' visit. The Exposition brought out to Paris and to Europe, among the swarm of Americans who went over, many such, and some who had scarcely visited beyond the confines of their native cities before crossing the Atlantic. These people, by their utter inexperience as travellers, and by their application of the precept inculcated in their minds that money would answer for brains, was a substitute for experience, and the only passport that would be required anywhere and for anything, became a source of mortification to their countrymen, easy game for swindling landlords and sharp shop-keepers, and rendered all the great routes of travel more beset with extortions and annoyances than ever before.

But about "going to Europe." When one decides to start on a pleasure trip to that country for the first time, how many very simple things he wishes to know, that correspondents and people who write for the papers have never said anything about. After having once or twice gone over in a steamship, it never seems to occur to these writers that anybody else will want to become acquainted with the little minutiæ of information respecting life on board ship during the trip, and which most people do not like to say they know nothing about; and novices, therefore, have to clumsily learn by experience, and sometimes at four times the usual cost.

Speaking of cost, let me say that this is a matter upon which hardly any two tourists will agree. How much does it cost to go to Europe? Of course the cost is varied by the style of living and the thoroughness with which one sees sights; by thoroughness I mean, besides expenditure of time, the use of extra shillings "pour boires," and the skilful dispensation of extra funds, which will gain admission to many a forbidden shrine, insure many an unexpected comfort, and shorten many a weary journey.

There is one popular error which one quickly becomes disabused of, and that is, that everything abroad is dirt cheap, and it costs a mere song to live. Good articles always bring good prices. Many may be cheaper than at home, it is true, but they are by no means thrown away, and good living in Paris cannot be had, as some suppose, for three francs a day.

If one is going abroad for pleasure, and has a taste for travelling, let him first decide what countries he wishes to visit, the routes and time he will take, and then from experienced tourists ascertain about what it would cost; after having learned this, add twenty per cent. to that amount, and he will be safe.

Safe in the knowledge that you have enough; safe in being able to make many little purchases that you will never dream of till you reach Regent Street, the Boulevards, the "Piazza San Marco," the Florence mosaic stores, or the Naples coral shops. Safe in making little side excursions to noted places that you will find on your route, and safe from the annoying reflection that you might have done so much better, and seen so much more, if you had not limited the expenditure to that very amount which your friend said would take you through.

These remarks of course apply only to those who feel that they can afford but a fixed sum for the journey, and who ought always to wait till they can allow a little margin to the fixed sum, the more completely to enjoy the trip.

I have seen Americans in French restaurants actually calculating up the price of a dinner, and figuring out the price of exchange, to see if they should order a franc's worth more or less. We may judge how much such men's enjoyment is abridged.

On the other hand, the class that I refer to, who imagine that money will pass for everything, increase the cost of travel to all, by their paying without abatement the demands of landlords and shopkeepers. The latter class, on the continent, are so accustomed, as a matter of course, to being "beaten down" in the price, that it has now come to be a saying among them, that he who pays what is at first demanded must be a fool or an American. In Paris, during the Exposition, green Englishmen and freshly-arrived Americans were swindled without mercy. The jewelry shops of the Rue de la Paix, the Grand Hotel, the shops of the Palais Royal, and the very Boulevard cafés fleeced men unmercifully. The entrance of an American into a French store was always the occasion of adding from twenty to twenty-five per cent. to the regular price of the goods. It was a rich harvest to the cringing crew, who, with smirks, shrugs, bows, and pardonnez moi's in the oiliest tones, swindled and cheated without mercy, and then, over their half franc's worth of black coffee at the restaurant, or glass of absinthe, compared notes with each other, and boasted, not how much trade they had secured or business they had done, but how much beyond the legitimate price they had got from the foreign purchaser, whom they laughed at.

All the guide-books and many tourists exclaim against baggage, and urge the travelling with a single small trunk, or, as they call it in England, portmanteau. This is very well for a bachelor, travelling entirely alone, and who expects to go into no company, and will save much time and expense at railway stations; but there is some comfort in having wardrobe enough and some space for small purchases, even if a little extra has to be paid. It is the price of convenience in one respect, although the continual weighing of and charging for baggage is annoying to an American, who is unused to that sort of thing; and one very curious circumstance is discovered in this weighing, no two scales on the continent give the same weight of the same luggage.

Passage tickets from America to Europe it is, of course, always best to secure some time in advance, and a previous visit to the steamer may aid the fresh tourist in getting a state-room near the centre of the ship, near the cabin stairs, and one having a dead-light, all of which are desirable things.

Have some old clothes to wear on the voyage; remember it is cold at sea even in summer; and carry, besides your overcoat and warm under-clothing, some shawls and railway rugs, the latter to lie round on deck with when you are seasick.

There is no cure for seasickness; keep on deck, and take as much exercise as possible; hot drinks, and a hot water bottle at the feet are reliefs.

People's appetites come to them, after seasickness, for the most unaccountable things, and as soon as the patient 'hankers' for anything, by all means let him get it, if it is to be had on board; for it is a sure sign of returning vigor, and in nine cases out of ten, is the very thing that will bring the sufferer relief. I have known a delicate young lady, who had been unable to eat anything but gruel for three days, suddenly have an intense longing for corned beef and cabbage, and, after eating heartily of it, attend her meals regularly the remainder of the voyage. Some make no effort to get well from port to port, and live in their state-rooms on the various little messes they imagine may relieve them, and which are promptly brought either by the stewardess or bedroom steward of the section of state-rooms they occupy.

The tickets on the Cunard line express, or did express, that the amount received includes "stewards' fees;" but any one who wants to be well served on the trip will find that a sovereign to the table steward, and one to the bedroom steward,—the first paid the last day before reaching port, and the second by instalments of half to commence with, and half just before leaving,—will have a marvellously good effect, and that it is, in fact, an expected fee. If it is your first voyage, and you expect to be sick, speak to the state-room steward, who has charge of the room you occupy, or the stewardess, if you have a lady with you; tell him you shall probably need his attention, and he must look out for you; hand him half a sovereign and your card, with the number of your room, and you will have occasion to experience most satisfactorily the value of British gold before the voyage is over. If a desirable seat at the table is required in the dining-saloon—that is, an outside or end seat, where one can get out and in easily,—or at the table at which the captain sometimes presides, a similar interview with the saloon steward, a day or two before sailing, may accomplish it.

Besides these stewards, there are others, who are known as deck stewards, who wait upon seasick passengers, who lie about the decks in various nooks, in pleasant weather, and who have their meals brought to them by these attentive fellows from the cabin table. It is one phase of seasickness that some of the sufferers get well enough to lie languidly about in the fresh, bracing air, and can eat certain viands they may fancy for the nonce, but upon entering the enclosed saloon, are at once, from the confined air or the more perceptible motion of the ship, afflicted with a most irrepressible and disagreeable nausea.

Well, the ticket for Liverpool is bought, your letter of credit prepared, and you are all ready for your first trip across the water. People that you know, who have been often, ask, in a nonchalant style, what "boat" you are going "over" in; you thought it was a steamer, and the easy style with which they talk of running over for a few weeks, or should have gone this month, if they hadn't been so busy, or they shall probably see you in Vienna, or Rome, or St. Petersburg, causes you to think that this, to you, tremendous undertaking of a first voyage over the Atlantic is to be but an insignificant excursion, after all, and that the entire romance of the affair and the realizing of your imagination is to be dissolved like one of youth's castles in the air. So it seems as you ride down to the steamer, get on board, pushing amid the crowds of passengers and leave-taking friends; and not until a last, and perhaps, tearful leave-taking, and when the vessel fairly swings out into the stream, and you respond to the fluttering signal of dear ones on shore, till rapid receding renders face and form indistinguishable, do you realize that you are fairly launched on the great ocean, and friends and home are left behind, as they never have been before.

One's first experience upon the great, awful Ocean is never to be forgotten. My esteem for that great navigator, Christopher Columbus, has risen one hundred per cent. since I have crossed it, to think of the amount of courage, strength of mind, and faith it must have required to sustain him in his venturesome voyage in the frail and imperfect crafts which those of his day must have been.

Two days out, and the great broad sweep of the Atlantic makes its influence felt upon all who are in any degree susceptible. To the landsman, the steamship seems to have a regular gigantic see-saw motion, very much like that of the toy ships that used to rise and fall on mimic waves, moved by clock-work, on clocks that used to be displayed in the store windows of jewellers and fancy dealers. Now the bows rise with a grand sweep,—now they sink again as the vessel plunges into an advancing wave,—up and down, up and down, and forging ahead to the never-ceasing, tremulous jar of the machinery. In the calmest weather there is always one vast swell, and when wind or storm prevails, it is both grand and terrible.

The great, vast ocean is something so much beyond anything I ever imagined,—the same vast expanse of dark-blue rolling waves as far as the eye can reach,—day after day, day after day,—the great ship a mere speck, an atom in the vast circle of water,—water everywhere. The very wind sounds differently than on land; a cheerful breeze is like the breath of a giant, and a playful wave will send a dozen hogsheads of water over the lofty bulwarks.

But in a stiff breeze, when a great wave strikes like an iron avalanche against the ship, she seems to pause and shudder, as it were, beneath the blow; then, gathering strength from the unceasing throb of the mighty power within, urges her way bravely on, while far as the eye can reach, as the ship sinks in the watery valleys, you see the great black tossing waves, all crested with spray and foam, like a huge squadron of white-plumed giant cavalry. The spray sometimes flies high over the smoke-stack, and a dash of saline drops, coming fiercely into the face, feels like a handful of pebbles. A look around on the vast expanse, and the ship which at the pier seemed so huge, so strong, so unyielding, becomes an atom in comparison,—is tossed, like a mere feather, upon old Ocean's bosom; and one realizes how little is between him and eternity. There seem to be no places that to my mind bring man so sensibly into the presence of Almighty God as in the midst of the ocean during a storm, or amid the grand and lofty peaks of the Alps; all other feelings are swallowed up in the mute acknowledgment of God's majesty and man's insignificance.

If ever twelve days seem long to a man, it is during his first voyage across the Atlantic; and the real beauty of green grass is best appreciated by seeing it on the shores of Queenstown as the steamer sails into Cork harbor.

Land again! How well we all are! A sea voyage,—it is nothing. Every one who is going ashore here is in the bustle of preparation.

We agree to meet A and party in London; we will call on B in Paris,—yes, we shall come across C in Switzerland. How glib we are talking of the old country! for here it is,—no three thousand miles of ocean to cross now. A clear, bright Sunday morning, and we are going ashore in the little tug which we can see fuming down the harbor to meet us.

We part with companions with a feeling of regret. Seated on the deck of the little tug, the steamer again looms up, huge and gigantic, and we wonder that the ocean could have so tossed her about. But the bell rings, the ropes are cast off, the tug steams away, our late companions give us three parting cheers, and we respond as the distance rapidly widens between us.

Custom-house officials examine your luggage on the tug. American tourists have but very little trouble, and the investigation is slight; cigars and fire-arms not forming a prominent feature in your luggage, but little, if any, inconvenience may be anticipated.

This ordeal of the custom-house constitutes one of the most terrible bugbears of the inexperienced traveller. It is the common opinion that an inspection of your baggage means a general and reckless overhauling of the personal property in your trunks—a disclosure of the secrets of the toilet, perhaps of the meagreness of your wardrobe, and a laying of profane hands on things held especially sacred. Ladies naturally dread this experience, and gentlemen, too, who have been foolish enough to stow away some little articles that custom-house regulations have placed under the ban. But the examination is really a very trifling affair; it is conducted courteously and rapidly, and the traveller laughs to himself about his unfounded apprehensions.

The tug is at the wharf; the very earth has a pleasant smell; let us get on terra firma. Now, then, a landsman finds out, after his first voyage, what "sea legs" on and sea legs off, that he has read of so much in books, mean.

He cannot get used to the steadiness of the ground, or rather, get at once rid of the unsteadiness of the ship. I found myself reeling from side to side on the sidewalk, and on entering the Queen's Hotel, holding on to a desk with one hand, to steady myself, while I wrote with the other. The rolling motion of the ship, to which you have become accustomed, is once more perceptible; and I knew one friend, who did not have a sick day on board ship, who was taken landsick two hours after stepping on shore, and had as thorough a casting up of accounts for an hour as any of us experienced on the steamer at sea. The Cunard steamers generally arrive at, or used to arrive at, Queenstown on Sunday mornings, and all who land are eager to get breakfast ashore. We tried the Queen's Hotel, where we got a very fair breakfast, and were charged six or eight shillings for the privilege of the ladies sitting in a room till the meal was ready for us—the first, and I think the only, positive swindle I experienced in Ireland. After breakfast the first ride on an English (or rather Irish) railway train took us to Cork. The road was through a lovely country, and, although it was the first of May, green with verdure as with us in June—no harsh New England east winds; and one can easily see in this country how May-day came to be celebrated with May-queens, dances, and May-poles.

To us, just landed from the close steamer, how grateful was the fragrance of the fresh earth, the newly-blossomed trees, and the hedges all alive with twittering sparrows! The country roads were smooth, hard, and clear as a ball-room floor; the greensward, fresh and bright, rolled up in luxuriant waves to the very foot of the great brown-trunked trees; chapel bells were tolling, and we saw the Irish peasantry trudging along to church, for all the world as though they had just stepped out of the pictures in the story-books. There were the women with blue-gray cloaks, with hoods at the back, and broad white caps, men in short corduroys, brogues, bobtail coats, caubeens and shillalah; then there was an occasional little tip-cart of the costermonger and his wife, drawn by a donkey; the jaunting-car, with half a dozen merry occupants, all forming the moving figures in the rich landscape of living green in herbage, and the soft brown of the half moss-covered stone walls, or the corrugated stems of the great trees.

We were on shore again; once more upon a footing that did not slide from beneath the very step, and the never-ending broad expanse of heaving blue was exchanged for the more grateful scene of pleasant fields and waving trees; the sufferings of a first voyage had already begun to live in remembrance only as a hideous nightmare.

A good hotel at Cork is the Imperial Hotel; the attendance prompt, the chamber linen fresh and clean, the viands well prepared.

The scenery around Cork is very beautiful, especially on the eastern side, on what is known as the upper and lower Glanmere roads, which command fine views. The principal promenade is a fine raised avenue, or walk, over a mile in length, extending through the meadows midway between two branches of the River Lee, and shaded by a double row of lofty and flourishing elms.

Our first walk in Ireland was from the Imperial Hotel to the Mardyke. Fifteen minutes brought us to the River Lee; and now, with the city proper behind us, did we enjoy the lovely scene spread out to view.

In the month of May one realizes why Ireland is called the Emerald Isle—such lovely green turf, thick, luxurious, and velvety to the tread, and so lively a green; fancy New England grass varnished and polished, and you have it. The shade trees were all in full leaf, the fruit trees in full flower; sheep and lambs gamboling upon the greensward, birds piping in the hedges, and such hedges, and laburnums, and clambering ivy, and hawthorn, the air perfumed with blossoms, the blue sky in the background pierced by the turrets of an old edifice surrounded by tall trees, round which wheeled circles of cawing rooks; the little cottages we passed, half shrouded in beautiful clambering Irish ivy, that was peopled by the nests of the brisk little sparrows, filling the air with their twitterings; the soft spring breeze, and the beautiful reach of landscape—all seemed a realization of some of those scenes that poets write of, and which we sometimes fancy owe their existence to the luxuriance of imagination.

Returning, we passed through another portion of the city, which gave us a somewhat different view; it was nearly a mile of Irish cabins. Of course one prominent feature was dirt, and we witnessed Pat in all his national glory. A newly-arrived American cannot help noticing the deference paid to caste and position; we, who treat Irish servants and laborers so well as we do, are surprised to see how much better they treat their employers in Ireland, and how little kind treatment the working class receive from those immediately above them.

The civil and deferential Pat who steps aside for a well-dressed couple to pass, and touches his hat, in Cork, is vastly different from the independent, voting Pat that elbows you off the sidewalk, or puffs his fragrant pipe into your very face in America. In Ireland he accepts a shilling with gratitude, and invocation of blessings on the donor; in America he condescends to receive two dollars a day! A fellow-passenger remarked that in the old country they were a race of Touch-hats, in the new one of Go to ——. I found them here obliging and civil, ready to earn an honest penny, and grateful for it, and much more inclined to "blarney" a little extra from the traveller than to swindle it out of him.

I made an arrangement with a lively driver to take us to the celebrated Blarney Castle in a jaunting-car—a delightful vehicle to ride in of a pleasant spring day, as it was on that of our excursion. The cars for these rides are hung on springs, are nicely cushioned, and the four passengers sit back to back, facing to the side; and there being no cover or top to the vehicle, there is every opportunity of seeing the passing landscape.

No American who has been interested in the beautiful descriptions of English and Irish scenery by the British poets can realize their truthfulness until he looks upon it, the characteristics of the scenery, and the very climate, are so different from our own. The ride to Blarney Castle is a delightfully romantic one, of about six miles; the road, which is smooth, hard, and kept in excellent order, winds upon a side hill of the River Lee, which you see continually flashing in and out in its course through the valley below; every inch of ground appears to be beautifully cultivated. The road is lined with old brown stone walls, clad with ivy of every variety—dark-green, polished leaf, Irish ivy, small leaf, heart leaf, broad leaf, and lance leaf, such as we see cultivated in pots and green-houses at home, was here flourishing in wild luxuriance.

The climate here is so moist that every rock and stone fence is clad with some kind of verdure; the whole seems to satisfy the eye. The old trees are circled round and round in the ivy clasp; the hedges are in their light-green livery of spring; there are long reaches of pretty rustic lanes, with fresh green turf underneath grand old trees, and there are whole banks of violets and primroses—yes, whole banks of such pretty, yellow primroses as we preserve singly in pots at home.

There are grand entrances to avenues leading up to stately estates, pretty ivy-clad cottages, peasants' miserable, thatched cabins, great sweeps of green meadow, and the fields and woods are perfectly musical with singing birds, so unlike America: there are linnets, that pipe beautifully; finches, thrushes, and others, that fill the air with their warblings; skylarks, that rise in regular circles high into the air, singing beautifully, till lost to vision; rooks, that caw solemnly, and gather in conclaves on trees and roofs. Nature seems trying to cover the poverty and squalor that disfigures the land with a mantle of her own luxuriance and beauty.

Blarney Castle is a good specimen of an old ruin of that description for the newly-arrived tourist to visit, as it will come up to his expectation in many respects, in appearance, as to what he imagined a ruined castle to be, from books and pictures. It is a fine old building, clad inside and out with ivy, situated near a river of the same name, and on a high limestone rock; it was built in the year 1300. In the reign of Elizabeth it was the strongest fortress in Munster, and at different periods has withstood regular sieges; it was demolished, all but the central tower, in the year 1646.

The celebrated Blarney Stone is about two feet below the summit of the tower, and held in its place by iron stanchions; and as one is obliged to lie at full length, and stretch over the verge of the parapet, having a friend to hold upon your lower limbs, for fear an accidental slip or giddiness may send you a hundred feet below, it may be imagined that the act of kissing the Blarney Stone is not without its perils. However, that duty performed, and a charming view enjoyed of the rich undulating country from the summit, and inspection made of some of the odd little turret chambers of the tower, and loopholes for archery, we descended, gratified the old woman who acts as key-bearer by crossing her palm with silver, strolled amid the beautiful groves of Blarney for a brief period, and finally rattled off again in our jaunting-cars over the romantic road.

The Shelborne House, Dublin, is a hotel after the American style, a good Fifth Avenue sort of affair, clean, and well kept, and opposite a beautiful park (Stephens Green). Americans will find this to be a house that will suit their tastes and desires as well, if not better, than any other in Dublin. Sackville Street, in Dublin, is said to be one of the finest streets in Europe. I cannot agree with the guide-books in this opinion, although, standing on Carlisle Bridge, and looking down this broad avenue, with the Nelson Monument, one hundred and ten feet in height, in the centre, and its stately stores on each side, it certainly has a very fine appearance. Here I first visited shops on the other side of the water, and the very first thing that strikes an American is the promptness with which he is served, the civility with which he is treated, the immense assortment and variety of goods, and the effort of the salesmen to do everything to accommodate the purchaser. They seem to say, by their actions, "We are put here to attend to buyers' wants; to serve them, to wait upon them, to make the goods and the establishment attractive; to sell goods, and we want to sell goods." On the other hand, in our own country the style and manner of the clerks is too often that of "I'm just as good, and a little better, than you—buy, if you want, or leave—we don't care whether we sell or not—it's a condescension to inform you of our prices; don't expect any attention."

The variety of goods in the foreign shops is marvellous to an American; one pattern or color not suiting, dozens of others are shown, or anything will be made at a few hours' notice.

Here in Dublin are the great Irish poplin manufactures; and in these days of high prices, hardly any American lady leaves Dublin without a dress pattern, at least, of this elegant material, which can be obtained in the original packages of the "Original Jacobs" of the trade, Richard Atkinson, in College Green, whose front store is a gallery of medals and appointments, as poplin manufacturer to members of royal families for years and years. The ladies of my party were crazy with delight over the exquisite hues, the splendid quality, the low prices—forgetting, dear creatures, the difference of exchange, and the then existing premium on gold, and sixty per cent. duty that had to be added to the rate before the goods were paid for in America. Notwithstanding the stock, the hue to match the pattern a lady had in her pocket was not to be had.

"We can make you a dress, if you can wait, madam," said the polite shopman, "of exactly the same color as your sample."

"How long will it take to make it?"

"We can deliver it to you in eight or ten days."

"O, I shall be in London then," said the lady.

"That makes no difference, madam. We will deliver it to you anywhere in London, carriage free."

And so, indeed, it was delivered. The order was left, sent to the factory by the shopman, and at the appointed time delivered in London, the lady paying on delivery the same rate as charged for similar quality of goods at the store in Dublin, and having the enviable satisfaction of showing the double poplin that was "made expressly to her order"—one dress pattern—"in Dublin."

I mention this transaction to show what pains are taken to suit the purchaser, and how any one can get what he wants abroad, if he has the means to pay.

This is owing chiefly to the different way of doing business, and also to the sharper competition in the old countries. For instance, the Pacific Mills, of Lawrence, Mass., would never think of opening a retail store for the sale of their goods on Washington Street, Boston; and if an English lady failed to find a piece of goods of the color that suited her, of manufacturing sixteen or eighteen yards to her order, and then sending it, free of express charge, to New York.

The quantity and variety of goods on hand are overwhelming; the prices, in comparison with ours, so very low that I wanted to buy a ship-load. Whole stores are devoted to specialities—the beautiful Irish linen in every variety, Irish bog-wood carving in every conceivable form, bracelets, rings, figures, necklaces, breast-pins, &c. I visited one large establishment, where every species of dry goods, fancy goods, haberdashery, and, I think, everything except eatables, were sold. Three hundred and fifty salesmen were employed, the proprietors boarding and lodging a large number of them on the premises.

The shops in Dublin are very fine, the prices lower than in London, and the attendance excellent.

"But Dublin—are you going to describe Dublin?"

Not much, dear reader. Describing cities would only be copying the guide-book, or doing what every newspaper correspondent thinks it necessary to do. Now, if I can think of a few unconsidered trifles, which correspondents do not write about, but which tourists, on their first visit, always wish information about, I shall think it doing a service to present them in these sketches.

The Nelson Monument, a Doric column of one hundred and ten feet high, upon which is a statue eleven feet high of the hero of the Nile, always attracts the attention of visitors. The great bridges over the Liffey, and the quays, are splendid pieces of workmanship, and worth inspection, and of course you will go to see Dublin Castle.

This castle was originally built by order of King John, about the year 1215. But little of it remains now, however, except what is known as the Wardrobe Tower, all the present structure having been built since the seventeenth century. Passing in through the great castle court-yard, a ring at a side door brought a courteous English housekeeper, who showed us through the state apartments. Among the most noteworthy of these was the presence-chamber, in which is a richly-carved and ornamental throne, frescoed ceilings, richly-upholstered furniture, &c., the whole most strikingly reminding one of those scenes at the theatre, where the "duke and attendants," or the "king and courtiers," come on. It is here the lord lieutenant holds his receptions, and where individuals are "presented" to him as the representative of royalty. The great ball-room is magnificent. It is eighty-two feet long, and forty-one wide, and thirty-eight in height, the ceiling being decorated with beautiful paintings. One represents George III., supported by Liberty and Justice, another the Conversion of the Irish by St. Patrick, and the third, a very spirited one, Henry II. receiving the Submission of the Native Irish Chiefs. Henry II. held his first court in Dublin in 1172.

The Chapel Royal, immediately adjoining, is a fine Gothic edifice, with a most beautiful interior, the ceiling elegantly carved, and a beautiful stained-glass window, with a representation of Christ before Pilate, figures of the Evangelists, &c. Here, carved and displayed, are the coats-of-arms of the different lord lieutenants from the year 1172 to the present time. The throne of the lord lieutenant in one gallery, and that for the archbishop opposite, are conspicuous. This edifice was completed in 1814, and cost forty-two thousand pounds. It was the first Church of England interior I had seen over the ocean, and its richness and beauty were impressive at the time, but were almost bleached from memory by the grander temples visited a few weeks after. The polite housekeeper, whom, in my inexperience, I felt almost ashamed to hand a shilling to, took it, nevertheless, very gratefully, and in a manner that proved that her pride was not at all wounded by the action.

In obedience to the advice of an Emeralder, that we must not "lave Dublin widout seein' St. Patrick's Church," we walked down to that celebrated cathedral. The square which surrounds it is as much a curiosity in its way as the cathedral itself. The whole neighborhood seemed to consist of the dirtiest, quaintest tumble-down old houses in Dublin, and swarmed with women and children.

Hundreds of these houses seemed to be devoted to the sale of old junk, sixth-hand clothing, and fourth-hand articles of every description one could name or think of—old tin pots and kettles, old rope, blacking-jugs, old bottles, old boots, shoes, and clothing in every style of dilapidation—till you could scarcely say where the article ended being sold as a coat, and became rags—iron hoops, old furniture, nails, old hats, bonnets, cracked and half-broken crockery. It verily seemed as if this place was the rag fair and ash-heap of the whole civilized world. The contents of six American ash-barrels would have given any one of these Cheap John stores a stock that would have dazzled the neighborhood with its magnificence.

You could go shopping here with two-pence. Costermongers' carts, with their donkeys attached, stood at the curbstones, ragged and half-starved children played in the gutters, great coarse women stood lazily talking with each other, or were crouched over a heap of merchandise, smoking short pipes, and waiting or chaffering with purchasers. Little filthy shops on every hand dealt out Ireland's curse at two-pence a dram, and "Gin," "Choice Spirits Sold Here," "Whiskey," "Spirits," were signs that greeted the eye on their doorposts. The spring breeze was tainted with foul odors, and there was a busy clatter of tongues from the seething and crowded mass of humanity that surged round in every direction.

Upon the farther corner of the third side of the square, where the neighborhood was somewhat better, we discovered the residence of the sexton who had charge of the church—a strong Orangeman, bitterly opposed to the Romish church, and with a strong liking for America, increased by the fact of having a brother in the American Union army, who rose from sergeant to colonel in one of the western regiments.

"Think o' that, sir! Ye might be as brave as Julyus Sayzer in the English army, and sorra a rise would ye get, except ye'd be sated on a powdher magazine whin it exploded."

The legend is, that this church was originally built by St. Patrick, and the sexton took me into a little old crypt at the end of one of the aisles of the nave—all that remains of that portion of the church, which it is averred was built A. D. 540. This crypt was floored with curious old tiles, over a thousand years old, put down and the fragments matched together with great labor and expense, and the flooring worth more money than a covering of an "aven layer o' guineas" upon it.

The old stone font, A. D. 1190, the old carved chest for vestments, and the curious stone coffins, relics of the old church, were interesting. Among the monuments in the church, Archbishop Whately's magnificently-carved marble sarcophagus, surmounted by his full-length effigy, was particularly noticeable; Swift's monument, Stella's tablet, and the economical tablet put up in memory of Duke Schomberg by Swift.

Here in St. Patrick's Cathedral are displayed the stalls, arms, and banners of the Knights of St. Patrick, the army "memorials" of the India and China British regiments, with the flags they carried from 1852 to 1857 in their campaigns. Upon the wall was suspended the cannon shot that killed Schomberg at the memorable battle of the Boyne in 1690, and the spurs that he wore at the time. Schomberg's remains are interred at Westminster Abbey.

My first ride in an old country park was in the Phœnix Park, Dublin a—beautiful pleasure-ground of over eighteen hundred acres in extent. I imagined how laughable it must have seemed to the Prince of Wales, when, at the review he attended on Boston Common, he politely assented to the remark of a militia officer, that "this great area" (the Common parade ground) "was well adapted for displays of large bodies of troops," as I sat looking at the parade ground of this park, a clear, unbroken greensward of six times the size.

Think of riding over drives or malls fifty feet wide, and from three to five miles in length, lined with gas-lights to illuminate it at night, herds of hundreds of deer sporting on the open sward, or under the great, sturdy trees, which are grouped in twos, threes, or clusters, for landscape effect, and the turf beneath them thick, green, and luxuriant; and then, again, there are rustic, country-like roads, shady dells, and rustic paths in the beautiful park; a great monument erected to Wellington by his countrymen at a cost of one hundred thousand pounds, will attract attention, and so will the numerous fashionable turnouts that roll over the well-kept roads every pleasant spring afternoon.

From Dublin to Kingston is a pleasant little ride by rail. Kingston is on St. George's Channel, or the lower part of the Irish Sea, and directly opposite Holyhead, Wales. At Kingston we took steamer for the passage across. The steamers of this line carry the royal mail, are built for strength and speed, and are splendid boats, of immense power, said to be the strongest and swiftest in Great Britain, and run at the rate of sixteen miles an hour. Fortunately, the passage was comparatively a smooth one, and we disembarked in good condition upon the opposite shore, where we took train for Chester. An English railway carriage—its form is familiar to all from frequent description; but think of the annoyance of having to look after your luggage, to see it safely bestowed on the top of the car, or in a luggage van, and to be obliged to look out that it is not removed by mistake at any of the great stations you do not stop at, or that it is removed when you do stop.

A few words on railway travelling in England: it differs from ours essentially. First, the cars on English roads are not so convenient, comfortable, or even so private as the American car. In the English first-class carriage, four persons must sit facing four persons; consequently four must perforce ride backwards, and the four are placed so as to stare directly at their opposite neighbors,—sometimes unpleasant, if all are not acquainted, especially at lunch time, &c. Then, in the English carriage, four persons only of the eight can get a fair view of the scenery, and two of these are riding backwards. These four "govern" the windows, and lower or close at their pleasure. I have been nearly smothered, as well as thoroughly chilled, by happening to have people of adverse temperaments get the window seats, till I learned how to travel by rail in England, of which, hints anon.

There are no means of heating the English railway carriage, and they are not tightly joined, especially the second-class ones. Hence the "railway rugs," &c., one hears so much about. But then, it must be confessed, the danger of the American stove renders it a rather unpopular affair. The second-class car is a plain, substantial carriage, and the larger portion of the passengers travel in it. The first-class car is more luxurious, upholstered more plentifully, supplied with racks for light baggage, and curtains at the windows. The English have not even reached the improvement of the sliding blind, which we have in America, so useful in excluding the sun's rays and admitting the air, the substitute being a flapping silk curtain. The second-class car has no curtain or shade to the window whatever. The absence of the signal rope is noticeable, and no man nowadays will remain in an English railway carriage, if one or two other men come in that he does not know. Is it not singular that so simple an arrangement as the signal rope to the engine driver should not have been applied, after all the murders, and assaults, and casualties, that have occurred on English railway trains, and proved its necessity?

Not at all. It is an American invention—a novelty. An Englishman does not believe in novelties, in innovations, or in American inventions. After he has tried every other thing he can think of as a substitute, and finds he can get nothing so simple and effectual, he will adopt it; and then it will be claimed as an English invention—invented by an Englishman; just as they claim the invention of the revolver, steamboat, and I don't know but the sewing-machine.

The English locomotives have no protection upon them for the engine-driver and fireman. These men are exposed, without shelter, and must have a rough time of it in bad weather. The "guard," who occupies the place of the American conductor, but by no means fills it, is always recognizable by his uniform; and at the stations, the numerous porters which it is necessary for the company to employ to handle baggage, owing to the absence of the check system, are also in uniform. These men are invariably civil, ready to serve, and understand their position and duties thoroughly.

On some of the English railroads that I travelled over, it seemed as though the only duty the company thought they had to perform, was to simply carry you over their road; and the ignorance of some of the under employés was positively amazing. Seated in the carriage, you might ride twenty miles past the station at which you wished to stop without knowing it, if you chanced to be on the off side.

There was no conductor to pass and repass through the train, to look out that you debarked at the proper station; no list of towns on the back of your railroad check; no shout of "Passengers for Chester! Chester!" when the train stopped; and the guard knew nothing of any other train except his own, or any other distance over the road, or of how to connect with any other train.

The passenger is left to himself, and is never told by the guard to "change cars here for ——." That, you have to know yourself, and look out and have the railway porter get your luggage (not baggage) off, or it will carried on, as they have no check system—another American affair, which it won't do to adopt too readily.

Luggage is weighed, and, beyond a certain amount, charged for; but any portmanteau one can get under the seat is free; and it is astonishing what big valises some men carry. And in the absence of the check system, this is, of course, the safest way.

Comparatively little luggage is lost or stolen. One reason why it is not stolen is, that there is a law here which punishes thieves, and does not allow them liberty for a stipulated sum, known as bail in America.

The price in the first-class carriage, on the fast or express trains, is about a third higher than the second. A third class is still cheaper. The parliamentary or slow trains have cheaper rates than the express.

The division of "classes" is, in many respects, an excellent arrangement. It affords to him who desires better accommodations, and has the means to pay for them, the opportunity of enjoying them; and it does not force the poor man, the laborer or emigrant, to ride in a richly upholstered carriage, where he feels he is out of place, when he would prefer to save his money, and have less gilding and upholstery.

One very soon finds, in England, the deference paid to class and to wealth, and nowhere sooner than on the railway train. It is presumed, on the expensive routes, that those riding in first-class carriages are "first-class" people, and the guard's manner to the passengers in the different carriages is an index of English education in this matter. As he appears at the window of the first-class carriage, he politely touches his hat:—

"All are for London in this compartment? Thank you."

To the second-class: "Tickets, please."

To the third-class: "Now, then, tickets. Look alive here, will you?"

The first-class passenger finds that his wants are better attended to, his questions answered deferentially; he is allowed to take almost any amount of small luggage into the car with him, much of which would be excluded from the second-class, if an attempt were made to carry it in. And O, the potency of the English shilling!

Each car seats eight; but we will suppose that there are a party of four travelling together, and desire no more passengers in the compartments. Call the guard to the window, put your hand in your pocket, looking him in the eye significantly. He will carelessly drop his own hand within the window opening inside the car. You drop a shilling in the hand. "This car is occupied."

"Quite so, sir."

Touching his hat, he locks the car door, and when other people come trying the door, he is conveniently out of the way, or informs the applicant, "Third carriage forward for London, sir," and by a dozen ingenious subterfuges keeps you free from strangers, so much that you betray yourself to him as an American by giving him another shilling at your journey's end; and, although smoking "is strictly forbidden in first-class carriages," a party of three or four smokers, by the judicious use of a couple of shillings, may have one all to themselves for that purpose.

The railway stations in England are very fine, and much superior to those in America, although we are improving ours, especially in the great cities. In the great English cities and towns, the stations are vast iron, glass-roofed structures, kept in excellent order. The waiting-rooms are divided into first, second, and third class, and the door opening upon the platform is not opened until a certain time before the train starts. Porters in uniform take the luggage to the train, and the "guard" who acts as conductor knows nothing about any railway train connections or line beyond his own. The passenger is supposed to know all that sort of thing, and he who "wants to know, you know," is at once recognized as an American.

The country stations are beautiful little rustic affairs, with gardens of roses and sweetbrier, honeysuckles and flowering shrubs about them. Some have the name of the station sown in dwarf flowers upon the bank outside, presenting a very pretty appearance in spring and summer, and contrasting very agreeably with the rude shanties we find in America, with their tobacco-stained floors within, and bare expanse of yellow sand outside.

We rattled through Wales in an express train, a romantic view of wild Welsh mountains on one side, and the beating and heaving ocean dashing up on the other, sometimes almost to the very railway track. We ran through great tunnels, miles in length, whirled at the rate of fifty miles an hour through the great slate-quarrying district and Bangor, past the magnificent suspension bridge over Menai Straits, by the romantic old castle of Conway, with its shattered battlements and turrets looking down at the sea, which dashes up its foam-crested waves ceaselessly at its rocky base, the old red sandstone walls worn and corroded with time; on, past thatched huts, rustic cottages, and green landscape, till the panting train halted at the great modern railway station in that oldest of English cities, Chester.

This station is one of the longest in England, being ten hundred and fifty feet long, and having wings, a kind of projecting arcades, with iron roofs, to shelter vehicles waiting for trains. From this magnificent modern-built station a cab carried us, in a few minutes, on our route to the hotel (Grosvenor House), into an old street that looked as though we had got into a set scene at the theatre, representing a street in Windsor for Falstaff and the Merry Wives to appear in; houses built in 1500, or years before, the street or sidewalks passing right under some of them; quaint old oddities of architecture, with curious inscriptions in abbreviated old English on their carved cross-beams, and their gables sticking out in every direction; curious little windows with diamond-shaped panes set in lead; and houses looking as though the hand of time had squeezed them together, or extracted the juice from them like sucked oranges, and left only the dried rind, half shrunken from its original shape, remaining.

The great curiosity, however, in Chester, is the Chester Cathedral, and the old walls that encompass the city. I never realized the force of the expression "the corroding tooth of time" till I saw this magnificent old cathedral: portions of it which were once sharply sculptured in various designs are now worn almost smooth by age, the old red sandstone looking as though time had sand-papered it with gritty hail and honeycombed its stones with melting rains; but the whole was surrounded with a mellow, softened beauty of groined arches, beautiful curves, dreamy old cloisters, and quaint carving, that invested even the ruined portion with a hallowed beauty. The stained-glass windows, both old and modern, are glorious colored wonders; the chapel where the services are now held is the same where, a thousand years ago, dreamy old monks told their beads; and there are their stalls or seats, so contrived as to afford but partial rest, so that if the sitter slumbered they fell forward with his weight, and threw him to the floor.

The antique wood carving upon the seats and pews here, now blackened and hardened almost to ebony in appearance, is very fine, excellently executed, and well preserved. High above ran around the nuns' walk, with occasional openings, whence the meek-eyed sisterhood could hear service below without being seen themselves as they came from their quiet cloisters near at hand, a quadrangle of one hundred and ten feet square, in which were four covered walks looking upon the enclosed garden, now a neglected greensward, where several forgotten old abbots slumber peacefully beneath great stone slabs with obliterated inscriptions.

The curious grope into some of the old cells, and most of us go down under the building in the crypt, where the massive Gothic pillars, that support the pile, still in perfect preservation, bring vividly to mind those canvas representations of prison scenes one sees upon the stage.

Inside the cathedral were numerous very old monuments and mementos of the past; among others an immense tapestry wrought by nuns hundreds of years ago, and representing Elymas struck with blindness. The enormous size of these cathedrals strikes the "fresh" American tourist with wonder. Fancy churches five times as large as ours, and the height inside from sixty to one hundred feet from the stone floor to the arched ceiling, lighted with glorious great windows of stained glass, upon which the stories of the Bible are told in colored pictures, and south, east, west, transepts, nave, and choir, crowded with relics of the past, that you have read of in the story-books of youth, and again upon the pages of history in maturer years; artistic sculptures, old monuments, statues, carvings, and curious remains.

In the chapter-house connected with the cathedral, we were shown the colors carried by the Cheshire regiment on the field of Waterloo; and it was interesting for me to grasp with my sacrilegious American hand one of the colors borne by a British regiment in America during the war of the Revolution.

We also visited the ecclesiastical court-room in which the Bishop of Chester, in 1554, tried a Protestant minister, George Marsh, and sentenced him to be burned for heresy. The seats of the judges and chair of the accused are still preserved and shown to the visitor, who generally desires to sit in the martyr's seat, and finds it, even for a few minutes, an uncomfortable one.

The Chester Cathedral is said to have been founded in the year 200, and was used as a place of safety against the Danes in 800. It was well kept, and ruled by abbots, and its history well preserved from the time of King William Rufus, who was killed in New Forest, 1093, down to 1541.

The old walls of Chester are the great attraction of the city; in fact, Chester is the only city in Great Britain that has preserved its old walls entire: they enclose the city proper, and are about two miles in circumference, affording a delightful promenade and prospect of the surrounding country. The walls are squarely built of a soft red freestone, something like that used for our "brown stone front" houses, though apparently not so hard a material, and vary from twelve to forty feet in height. A fresh tourist from a new country like our own begins to feel he is communing with the past, as he walks over these old walls, erected A. D. 61, and finds their chronology to read thus:—

So that it will be seen they have looked down upon some of the most eventful scenes of history; and as we strolled along, thinking what a feeble obstacle they would prove against the formidable engines of modern warfare, we came to a tower called the Phœnix Tower; and an inscription upon it informs the visitor that upon this tower King Charles I. stood in 1645, and witnessed the defeat of his army on Rowton Moor, four miles off, then a barren field, but now a smiling plain of fields and cottages, looking very unlike a barren moor, or the scene of a sanguinary combat. In this old tower a curious, antiquary sort of old fellow keeps a motley collection of curiosities, among which were Havelock's spurs, buckles of Queen Mary's time, bean from tree planted by Washington (!), and a great, staring, size-of-life wood-cut of Abraham Lincoln, besides coins, relics, &c., that were labelled to interest, but whose genuineness might not stand the test of too close an investigation.

[CHAPTER II.]

It is a comparatively short ride from Chester to Liverpool, and of course we went to the Adelphi Hotel, so frequently heard mentioned our side of the water; and if ever an American desires a specimen of the tenacity with which the English cling to old fashions, their lack of what we style enterprise, let him examine this comfortable, curious, well kept, inconvenient old house, or rather collection of old residences rolled into a hotel, and reminding him of some of the old-fashioned hotels of thirty years ago at the lower part of the city of New York.

Upon the first day of my arrival I was inexperienced enough to come down with my wife to the "ladies' coffee-room" as it is called, before ordering breakfast. Let it be kept in mind that English hotels generally have no public dining and tea rooms, as in America, where a gentleman with ladies can take their meals; that solemn performance is done by Englishmen in the strictest privacy, except they are travelling alone, when they take their solitary table in "the coffee-room," and look glum and repellent upon the scene around at intervals of the different courses of their well-served solitary dinner. Public dining-rooms, however, are gradually coming into vogue at English hotels, and at the Star and Garter, Richmond, I dined in one nearly as large as that of the St. Nicholas, Fifth Avenue, or Parker House, crammed with chattering guests and busy waiters; but that was of a pleasant Sunday, in the height of the season, and the price I found, on settling the bill, fully up to the American standard.

But at the Adelphi I came down in the innocence of my heart, expecting to order a breakfast, and have it served with the American promptitude.

Alas! I had something to learn of the English manner of doing things. Here was the Adelphi always full to overflowing with new arrivals from America and new arrivals for America, and here was its ladies' coffee-room, a small square parlor with five small tables, capable of accommodating, with close packing, fifteen people, and the whole room served by one waiter. The room was full on my arrival; but fortunately, while I was hesitating what course to pursue, a lady and gentleman who had just finished breakfast arose, and we sat down at the table they had vacated.

In the course of ten minutes the waiter cleared the table and spread a fresh cloth. "'Ave you hordered breakfast, sir?"

"No! Bring me mutton chops, coffee, and boiled eggs, and hot biscuit, for two."

"Beg pardon, sir; chops, heggs, coffee—a—biscuits, aren't any biscuits, sir; send out and get some, sir."

Biscuits. I reflected; these benighted Britons don't understand what an American hot biscuit is. "No biscuits! Well, muffins, then."

"Muffins, sir; yes, sir;" and he hastened away.

We waited five, ten, fifteen minutes; no breakfast. One party at another table, who were waiting when we came in, were served with their breakfast; in five minutes more a fresh plate of muffins to another party; five more, and the waiter came to our table, put on two silver forks, a salt-cellar, and castor, and smoothed out some invisible wrinkles in the table linen, and went away; five minutes more, and he was hustling among some knives at a sideboard.

"Waiter!"

"Yes, sir."

"Are you going to bring my breakfast?"

"Yes, sir; d'reckly, sir; chops most ready, sir."

Chops, always call 'em chops; never call for a mutton chop in England; the word is superfluous, and stamps you as an untravelled, inexperienced Yankee at once.

Five minutes more, and he appeared, bearing a tray with the breakfast, just thirty-five minutes after the order had been given for it. How long would a hotel in America be patronized that made its guest wait one half that time for four times as elaborate a repast?

I soon learned how to manage this matter better, especially as there are no printed bills of fare, and the list comprises a very few standard dishes. My plan was, on first rising in the morning, to write my order for breakfast on a scrap of paper, ring for the chambermaid, hand it to her with instructions to have that breakfast ready in the ladies' coffee-room directly.

The English "directly" signifies the "right away" of America, or, more correctly, immediately.

In half an hour afterwards, when we descended, the waiter, whose memory had been strengthened by the judicious investment of a shilling, had the cloth laid, and met us with, "Breakfast d'reckly, sir; Number 19; yes, sir."

The breakfast, when it did come, was perfect; the coffee or tea excellent, pure and unadulterated; the chops,—not those American affairs with one bite of meat the size of half a dollar, tough and ill cooked, but large as the palm of one's hand,—cooked as they can only be cooked in England; the muffins hot and smoking; the eggs fresh and excellent; so that the old-fashioned framed engravings, mahogany furniture, cramped quarters, and style of the past were forgotten in the appeal to that god of the Englishman, the stomach.

All the viands at the Adelphi were of the best description, and admirably cooked, but the bill of fare was limited to very few articles. A sight of one of the printed bills of our great American hotels would have driven the waiter crazy, while the utter disregard of time, or rather of the value of time, in an English hotel, is the first thing that strikes a newly-arrived American and stirs up his irritability.

Eating, with a Briton, is a very serious and solemn thing, and the dinner one of the most important social ceremonies in the kingdom. You cannot, if you will, in England, precipitate yourself into dyspepsia with the ease that it is possible to do it in America. First, because people will not be hurried into eating at railroad speed, and next, because there is better cooking of standard dishes and fewer knickknacks at the hotel tables than in America.

That inevitable pork fat that flavors everything after one gets west of Buffalo, and a little off the line of travel that leads you through the great hotels in the great cities in America,—that saleratus bread, hayey tea, clammy pie-crust, and great whity-gray, soury baker's bread,—that we, who have travelled at home, are so familiar with, give place in England to articles prepared in a very different style. I have often thought, when travelling at the West, that it was a sin for people in the midst of such luxurious plenty to abuse it so abominably in preparing it for the table.

With all the prejudices of a raw tourist upon his first visit, I must acknowledge that during two months' constant travel in England and Scotland, I never sat down to a single ill-cooked or badly-served meal; and I have tested humble roadside inns in the country, as well as the more pretentious hotels of the great cities. The bread of all kinds is close-grained, sweet, well baked, and toothsome; the chops served sometimes on napkins in hot dishes; muffins hot, with fresh, sweet butter; butter served in thin pats, ornamented with parsley; broiled chicken garnished with thin slices of delicately broiled ham, so thin and free from grease as not to make a spot upon the pure damask table linen; the dropped eggs upon crisp toast, are a triumph of gastronomic art, and I need say no word in praise of English roast beef.

But there is one dish which can be had in perfection only in America, and that is an American beefsteak. It is almost impossible to get a decent beefsteak in England, out of the city of London, and there only at a few well-known restaurants celebrated for that specialty. They would think it almost sacrilege to cut beef into what is known in America as sirloin or tenderloin steaks; and, with the few exceptions above named, the art of broiling a steak in the American style, and serving it with the thin, dry-fried potatoes, is unknown. But a truce to the department of cuisine.

The one thing we all have most heard of in Liverpool is its great docks, which are the grand and characteristic feature, indicating forcibly its great commercial activity and enterprise by their magnitude, solidity, and extent. These immense receptacles of merchandise extend for six miles along the river, and have an enclosure of two hundred and fifty-four acres, a quay space of over eighteen miles; then upon the other side of the river are the Birkenhead docks, enclosing one hundred and sixty-seven acres, and having a quay space of over nine miles,—thus giving to Liverpool four hundred and twenty-one acres of enclosed docks, and twenty-seven miles of quay space.

The enormous heaps of every species of merchandise seen at these places, great ships from every part of the world, the perfect forest of masts, immense storehouses, cargoes that in the general mass seem but mounds of tea-chests, hillocks of coffee-bags, heaps of grain, piles of lumber, or fragments of machinery in these great areas, but which in reality would provision an army, build a navy, and outfit a manufacturing city, give one the impression that Liverpool is the entrepôt of the world, and some idea of the enormous commerce of Great Britain.

Each dock has a chief, or master, who directs the position of all ships, and superintends the flood-gates at the docking and undocking of vessels; and strict regulations are enforced for the prevention of fire and the preservation of property. The sea walls in front of some of these docks are magnificent specimens of masonry, and each dock is designated by a name; our American ships, I believe, favor that known as Waterloo Dock. All the docks are surrounded by huge bonding warehouses and merchandise sheds.

The Free Museum, which we visited in Liverpool, contains the largest and finest collection of ornithological specimens in the world. It was indeed superb, and I never saw such splendid taxidermical skill as was displayed in the mounting and arranging of this vast collection of thousands and thousands of birds, of every species (it seemed), from every country in the known world.

For instance, there was every species of eagle known to exist,—gray, white, bald, harpy, &c.,—poised, at rest, in flight, and in various positions, as in life; every species of owl,—the gigantic, judge-like fellow, horned, snowy, gray, black, white, and dwarf; every falcon,—a magnificent set of specimens of this kind, as there was also of the crow family, which were represented not only by elegant black specimens, but by light-blue, and even white ones; every species of sea bird, from the gigantic albatross to the Mother Cary's chicken; rare and curious birds; great cassowaries; the biggest ostrich I ever saw,—he could have carried a full-grown African upon his back with ease; great emus; a skeleton of the now extinct dodo; a collection of every species of pheasant, including specimens of the Himmalayan pheasant, the most gorgeous bird in the whole collection, whose plumage actually glistened and sparkled with glorious tints, like tinsel or precious stones—a gorgeous combination of colors. Over one hundred different varieties of humming-birds were displayed, and the same of parrots, who were in green, blue, yellow, white, pink, and every uniform of feather that could be imagined; magnificent lyre-birds, with tall, erected tail, in exact form of Apollo's fabled lyre.

Great condors from South America; a brilliant array of every species of birds of paradise; a whole army of toucans; a brilliant array of flamingoes and all the vulture tribe; in fact, every kind of a bird you had ever heard, seen pictures or read of, and very many you never had heard of, were presented in this most wonderful collection; and one pleasing feature besides the astonishing life-like positions they were placed in, was the admirable neatness and order of the whole; not a stain marred the clear plate glass of the great cases, not a speck of dust could be seen in or about them; and upon the pedestal of each specimen was pasted a label, in good plain English characters, giving the English name of it, the country it came from, and, in many instances, its habits, &c., so much better than the presumption acted upon in some museums, that all the visitors are scientific Latin scholars.

Besides this collection in the Museum, was one of minerals and corals, and another of preserved specimens of natural history. In this last we saw the entire skeleton of a large humpback whale, an entire skeleton of the gigantic Irish elk (species extinct) discovered in an Irish bog, a two-horned rhinoceros's head as big as a common hogshead, an enormous and splendidly-mounted specimen of the gorilla, larger than any, I think, that Du Chaillu exhibited in America, and a vast number of other interesting curiosities I have not space to enumerate, the whole of which was open free to the public, for pleasure or scientific study.

St. George's Hall, Liverpool, occupies a commanding position, and presents a fine architectural appearance; the eastern side of it is four hundred and twenty feet long, and has fifteen elegant Corinthian columns, each forty-five feet in height. Within the portico are some fine specimens of sculpture; the great saloon is one hundred and sixty-seven feet long by seventy-seven feet high, and, it may be interesting to Bostonians to know, contains the great organ of Liverpool, which is not so fine a one as the Boston one. The hall is used for public meetings, musical festivals, &c.,—very much for the same purposes as Boston Music Hall. In the immediate vicinity of St. George's Hall are the famous Liverpool lions, colossal stone monsters, the equestrian statue of Prince Albert, and other objects of interest.

It was in Liverpool that I first saw that evidence of real, terribly suffering poverty that we read so much of as prevailing in the streets of some of the great cities of England. I don't know but as squalid misery might be found in New York city; but there need be but very little of suffering by any one in America who has health and strength sufficient to do a day's work. In Liverpool I saw groups of poor creatures in the street, with starvation written in their countenances; and one evening, having occasion to go to the telegraph office from the hotel, I found that the streets absolutely swarmed with women, who were actually annoying to the stranger by their persistent importunities. Upon one occasion, being awakened by the sound of voices at one o'clock at night, I looked across the square from my window, and there, opposite an illuminated gin-shop, stood a group of three poor children, droning through a song, in hopes of extracting a penny or two from those in or about it; the oldest of the three could not have been a dozen years old, and the youngest a little ragged girl of six.

There are people that one meets here whose appearance is an anguish to the aching heart. We saw a poor woman, in a sleazy calico dress, with a colorless, wan face, walking wearily up an ascent in one of the streets, one afternoon, looking as if hope were dead within her heart; and thinking it a case of need, my friend thrust a half crown into her hand, saying, "Here! I think you need that." The poor creature looked at him for a moment, and, without saying a word, burst into a flood of tears. My experience with a little youngster of six, whose whole clothing was a sort of tow shirt, and who persistently begged for a penny, which I at last gave him, was somewhat different, for he dashed off with a shout, and, as I paused on the corner of the street, an army of young ragamuffins seemed to start out from every nook and cranny, with outstretched arms and rags fluttering in the breeze, and shrill cries of "Gi' me one, gi' me a penny," so that I was glad to take refuge in the cab I had signalled.

From Liverpool, instead of starting directly for London, I concluded to go to Scotland, passing through the Lake district en route. If the reader will look at a good map of England and Scotland, and find Solway Firth, which is on the west coast, and then look at the country immediately south of it, occupying a portion of the counties of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancaster, he will see that it is full of lakes and mountains, and will find, on visiting it, that its picturesque attractions are unequalled in any other part of England. Additional interest is imparted to the Lake district from its being the haunt and home of many of England's most celebrated modern poets; and inspired, doubtless, by its lovely views and quiet beauty of landscape, from here have emanated some of their best compositions.

We left the main road in our journey westward at a place called Oxenholme, and there took a 'bus, which carried us down to Lake Windermere. This lake is a beautiful, irregular sheet of water, eleven miles in length and about a mile wide, and numerous little islands add to its picturesque appearance, the scenery being soft and graceful; the gentle slopes and eminences that surround it, and the numerous country-seats and cottages peeping from the wooded slopes, combining to render it one of those pictures of quiet beauty that English poets delight to sing of. The hotel that we rested at was perched upon a commanding eminence, from which a delightful view of the lake and surrounding scenery was obtained.

The pretty village of Bowness, near by, attracted my attention, this being my first experience in an English country village; and its appearance was in many respects novel, and unlike what I had expected. First, I was struck at the entire absence of wooden houses; wood is scarce here; the houses are all built of stone, about the color of our stone walls in the country towns of New England, the stones about two feet square, and irregular in shape. A little rustic porch of wood, with the bark on, is sometimes built before the door, and this is overrun with ivy, or some climbing and flowering plant. Some of the more pretentious houses had stone porches; but all round and about them was twined the beautiful ivy, honeysuckle, or other plants, from in and out of which hopped and twittered the sparrows.

The village streets were quite narrow, and some as crooked as the letter S, but all scrupulously clean. There were no great brush heaps, chips, dirt-piles, or worn-out tin ware about any of these charming little cottages or their vicinity; the appearance is as if the place had just been thoroughly swept up and put in holiday trim. One reason for this is, I suppose, that everything here is utilized that a penny can be realized upon, and what we make a litter with about an American house of the kind, is here either sold, or turned to account in some other way; but certainly this air of extreme neatness, which I noticed in many English villages, must, in a degree, account for some of their tourists' disgust in America. I have not seen a man spit on the floor here since I set foot in England, and the floors even of the village ale-houses are a striking contrast to those of our New England country taverns: spitting appears to be an American national habit.

After a quiet rest at this charming spot, we chartered a "dog cart," and started on a ride of twenty-three miles, for Keswick; and of the charming drives I have had, this surpasses all. The road ran along Lake Windermere to Ambleside, Grassmere to Rydal Lake and Rydal Mount, Nab-Scar up Dunmail Rise, in sight of Helvellyn, and past Thirlemere.

The views were beautiful—high hills, with little green-shored lakes set in among them, like flashing brilliants; pretty little English villages, like those already described; country-seats; little rustic arched stone bridges, with dark, cool trout-streams running beneath them; grand country-seats, with their imposing entrances and porters' lodges; old ivy-clad churches, and here and there a tall grove of trees, with the rooks cawing in their branches. The bridges, walls, cottages, and churches, with their dark stone-work relieved by clustering ivy, had a softened and pleasing appearance to the eye, while the fields and meadows were a vivid green, and swarming with sheep and young lambs frisking about them, or on the lawns and hill-sides.

The road continually gave us long reaches of these views, such as I had never seen before, except in paintings, or in the better class of English illustrated books. We passed Dove's Nest, where Mrs. Hemans lived for a year; saw Miss Martineau's pleasant and picturesque residence, Wordsworth's house at Rydal Mount, and went to the little cottage on the borders of Grassmere Lake, where he dwelt when young, and wrote much of his best poetry; then to the humble cottage, not far from the lake shore, where De Quincey lived.

We drove to the churchyard in the little village of Grassmere, to visit Wordsworth's grave,—a charming spot,—the little church situated near a swift little stream, spanned by arched stone bridges, and surrounded by scenery of rustic beauty. The grave of the poet is marked by a plain stone, upon which are inscribed his own and his wife's name; and not far from it is the grave of Hartley Coleridge. The secluded and beautiful spot seemed a fitting resting-place for the poet; the gentle babble of the little stream, the peaceful rustle of the grass in the churchyard, and the modest little daisies that bloomed upon the graves, all seemed to lend a tranquil and dreamy calm to the place, that made it appear as if hallowed to the poet's repose.

Keswick, our next halting-place, is situated in a delightful vale, between Derwentwater, or Keswick Lake, and Bassenthailewater, and surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills. The elegant Keswick Hotel is situated in a charming position, just out of the town, and in the centre of the great circle of hills—one of the finest and best-kept houses of the kind in all England. From its great coffee-room, or, as we should call it, dining-room, which runs nearly half the length of one side of the house, and the promenade, or balustrade, which extends the whole length, is a most charming view, and the grounds of the house, which are quite extensive, are laid out quite handsomely. First came an elegant, close-shaven lawn, running one hundred feet from the hotel walk; then a green terrace, descended by ornamental stone steps; then a broad gravel walk, or mall, running round the estate; and from this another broad, green lawn, sloping gently down to the little Greta River, a stream of about twenty feet in width at this point, spanned, here and there, with arched stone bridges, and dashing off into several noisy little waterfalls.

From this little park of the hotel there is a pretty view of the village of Keswick, with its dark stone-work houses, and English church tower, rising above. Beyond, on every side in the huge circle, rise the lofty hill-tops, and here and there elegant country-seats and villas sit enthroned, midway as it were in the mountain's lap, and some high up towards the breezy peaks. The verdant sides of the hill are pencilled off, as it were, with hedges, marking the division lines of property, and a winding road occasionally throws its brown tracks out amid the green.

The Keswick Hotel is built of lighter colored stone than is generally used for houses there, and is finished off in such an expensive and ornamental style as to look quite like an English hall or country-seat. It is owned, I think, by the railroad company whose road passes here. The station is directly adjoining the house, and is reached by a glass-roofed walk, thirty or forty feet long. And here let me remark, that the excellent system, good management, and entire absence of noise, shrieking, puffing, blowing, whistling, and all sorts of disturbance that render a location near a railroad station in America so objectionable, were most striking. I never should have taken note of any arrival or departure of trains from any noise of them; for, save the distant whistle as they approached, there was nothing to indicate their presence.

The house is kept admirably. Such neatness, such thoroughness, and such courteous attention, and such an incomparable cuisine are, after one gets accustomed to English deliberation, most gratifying to the tourist. There can be but few better places for the American traveller to see and enjoy English country life, and beautiful English scenery, than Keswick, and at this beautiful house, in the month of May.

We rambled round through the quaint village of Keswick, and of a Sunday morning took our way over two little stone bridges, on through a deep, shady English lane, with the trees arching overhead, and the hedges green at its side, to Crossthwaite Church, built several hundred years ago, and with its rustic churchyard, beautiful and green, containing the graves of the poet Southey and his wife. I sat upon an old slab in the churchyard, and watched the pretty, rustic picture, as the bells sweetly chimed, and the villagers came to church; some up the green lane by twos and threes, others across the fields and over stiles, threading their way among the churchyard mounds to the rural church.

Wordsworth describes in one of his poems the English rural church so perfectly that I cannot forbear making the extract, it was so appropriate to this, which stood amid

"The vales and hills whose beauties hither drew

The poet's steps."

In fact, Wordsworth's description might well be taken as a correct one of almost any one of the picturesque English country churches that the tourist sees here in the rural districts.

"Not framed to nice proportions was the pile,

But large and massy, for duration built;

With pillars crowded, and the roof upheld

By naked rafters, intricately crossed,

Like leafless underboughs in some thick grove,

All withered by the depth of shade above.

Admonitory texts inscribed the walls,

Each in its ornamental scroll enclosed;

Each also crowned with winged heads—a pair

Of rudely painted cherubim. The floor

Of nave and aisle, in unpretending guise,

Was occupied by oaken benches ranged

In seemly rows; the chancel only showed

Some inoffensive marks of earthly state

And vain distinction. A capacious pew

Of sculptured oak stood here, with drapery lined;

And marble monuments were here displayed

Upon the walls; and on the floor beneath

Sepulchral stones appeared, with emblems graven,

And foot-worn epitaphs, and some with small

And shining effigies of brass inlaid."

The marks of earthly state and vain distinction in the church were two old stone effigies of Lord Derwentwater and his wife, died in 1527, with a very legible inscription in brass setting forth that fact, and a white marble effigy and monument to Southey.

In the churchyard is a plain black slate tombstone over the poet's grave, on which is inscribed, "Here lies the body of Robert Southey, LL. D., Poet Laureate. Born August 12, 1774; died March 21, 1843. For forty years resident in this parish. Also, of Edith, his wife, born May 20, 1774; died November 16, 1837." Returning home, we passed "Greta Hall," the poet's residence, situated in Keswick, a plain mansion, upon a slight elevation just back from the street, commanding a good view of the surrounding scenery, and with a pleasant, grassy slope in front, and beautiful shrubbery round and about its well-kept grounds.

Another pleasant walk was one taken up a winding road on the hill-side, to a spot containing some of the Druidical remains found in different parts of England. This is known here as the Druids' Temple, and consists of a great circle of upright stones, six or eight feet in height, and set up at regular intervals, with two or three placed together at one side of the circle, as if for a gigantic altar. The spot for this temple was admirably chosen by the ancient priests of the oak and mistletoe for their mysterious rites, being upon a sort of natural platform, or hill shaped like a truncated cone, while all round rises a natural circle of lesser hills.

From Keswick to Penrith is a pleasant ride by rail. Near the station in Penrith are the ruins of an old castle, for a long time the residence of the Duke of Gloster, afterwards Richard III. From this spot we started on a pleasant walk for Brougham Hall, the seat of Lord Brougham, about two and a half miles distant, passing on the way a curious formation in a field, denominated King Arthur's Round Table. It very much resembles places in waste land in America, where a travelling circus has left its ring-mark, that becomes overgrown with turf, only the circle was much larger. This field and formation were carefully preserved by the owner, it being, as we were informed, one of those places where the Knights of King Arthur's time used to exercise themselves in the practice of horsemanship and feats of arms. Perhaps it was.

Brougham Hall is situated upon a hill not far from the ruins of Brougham Castle, and is an old and picturesque building, commanding, from its elevated position, extensive views of the surrounding country. The place was invested with a peculiar interest, as being the residence of one of England's greatest orators and statesmen. His voice, since our visit to his beautiful home, however, has been hushed forever, and he has laid him down to sleep with the humblest.

Owing to its situation and prospects, the English guide-books style this castle the "Windsor of the North." The grounds are beautifully laid out—a broad lawn, bounded by a grove of old trees, with the rooks cawing and circling about them; the great paved court-yard of the castle, upon which the stables and servants' rooms looked out; a tower on the stables, with clock and bell. From this, a Gothic arched gateway opened into another square and more pretentious court-yard, upon which the inner windows of his lordship's family looked. On one side of this court-yard, the castle wall was completely covered with a thick, heavy mass of beautiful ivy, the window spaces and turrets all being cut out in shape, giving it a novel and picturesque appearance. In the centre of this court-yard was a pretty grass plat.

The other front of the castle looked out upon the estate, and the view from the windows upon this side was lovely. The fine lawn and trimly laid out grounds, the gradually sloping landscapes stretching down to the little River Eamont, winding on its tortuous way, and spanned, as usual, by the pretty arched bridges, and the hills of Ullswater for a background, made a charming prospect. There were so many novel and interesting things to see in the different apartments of the castle, that description will in some degree appear but tame.

We first went into the armor-room, used on great occasions as a dining-hall. The apartment was not very large, but the walls and niches were filled with rare and curious arms and armor of various periods, and that had been used by historic personages. Here we were shown the skull of one of Lord Brougham's ancestors, carefully preserved under a glass case—a Knight Templar, who fought in the first crusade; this skull was taken, together with a spur, from his coffin a few years ago, when the tomb was opened, where he was found lying with crossed feet, as a good Knight Templar should lie. At one end of this hall was a little raised gallery about five feet from the floor, separated from the room by a high Gothic screen, through which a view of the whole could be obtained. This platform led to an elegant little octagon chamber, a few steps higher up, occupied by Lord Brougham's son as a sort of lounging and writing room. In this apartment were a few choice and beautiful pictures; one of dogs fighting, presented to Lord Brougham by Louis Napoleon, some original Titians, Vandykes, Tintorettos, Hogarth, &c.

We next visited the drawing-room, which was hung all over with beautiful Gobelin tapestry, wrought to represent the four quarters of the globe in productions, fruit, flowers, vegetation, and inhabitants—a royal gift and an elegant sight. Here were also displayed a fine Sevres dessert service, the gift of Louis Philippe, the great purses of state presented to Lord Brougham when he was chancellor, as a sort of badge or insignia of office. These were rigged on fire-frame screens, and were heavily gold-embroidered affairs, twenty-four inches square or more, and worth over three hundred pounds each. Here also was a glass case filled with gifts made to Lord Brougham by different distinguished personages, such as gold snuff-boxes from different cities, watches, a miniature, taken from life, of the great Napoleon, presented by Joseph Bonaparte, &c.

The library, which was well stocked with choice books, was another elegant room, most artistically arranged. Here portraits of great writers, by great artists, occupied conspicuous positions; and among other noteworthy pictures in this room was one of Hogarth, painted by himself, a portrait of Voltaire and others.

The ceilings of these apartments were laid out in squares or diamond indentation, elegantly frescoed, or carved from the solid oak, the color formed to harmonize with the furniture and upholstery. The ceiling of the drawing-room was occupied by the different quarterings of the coat of arms of the Brougham family, in carved work of gold and colors, one to each panel, very elaborately finished.

When we were escorted to the sleeping apartments, new surprises awaited us. Here was one complete suite of rooms,—chambers, dressing-room, closet, &c.,—all built and furnished in the early Norman style; the old, carved, black, Norman bedstead, hundreds of years old; gilt leather tapestry on the walls, decorated with Norman figures of knights, horses and spearmen; huge Norman-looking chairs; great brass-bound oaken chests, black with age and polished by the hand of time; rude tables; chests of drawers; the doors and windows with semicircular arched head-pieces, the former of massive black oak, with huge brass chevron-shaped hinges, quaint door-handles, and bolts of the period represented, and the various ornaments of zigzag, billet, nail-head, &c., of Norman architecture appearing in every direction. Something of the same style is seen in some of our Episcopal churches in America, but it is more modernized. Here the Norman rooms were Norman in all details, the dark, old wood was polished smooth as steel, the brass work upon the doors and old chests gleamed like beaten gold, and the whole picture of quaint, old tracery of arches and narrow windows, tapestry, carving, and massive furniture, conveyed an impression of wealth, solidity, and substantial beauty.

From the Norman rooms we passed into the Norman gallery, a corridor of about fifty feet long and sixty feet wide, upon the sides of which are painted a complete copy of the wonderous Bayeaux tapestry, wrought by Matilda, queen of William I., and representing the conquest of England—the only perfect copy said to have been made. The different sleeping apartments were each furnished in different styles; in one was an elegantly carved bedstead, of antique design, which cost four hundred guineas, and was a present to Lord Brougham.

Lord Brougham's own study, and his favorite resort for reading, writing, and thinking, was one of the plainest, most unpretending rooms in the whole building; the furniture of the commonest kind, the pictures old impressions of Hogarth's, Marriage a la Mode, and the Industrious and Idle Apprentice, in cheap frames, and that familiar to Americans, of Humboldt in his study. Two battered hats, hung upon a wooden hat-tree in the corner,—hats that Punch has made almost historical, and certainly easily recognizable wherever seen,—completed the picture of the simple apartment where one of the greatest statesmen of the present generation was wont to muse upon the affairs of one of the mightiest nations of the world, at whose helm his was the guiding hand.

Returning on our way to the railway station, we lunched in the tap-room of a little wayside inn, "The White Hart," just one of those places that we Americans read of in English novels, and which are so unlike anything we have at home, that we sometimes wonder if the description of them is not also a part of the writer's creation. But here was one just as if it had stepped out of an English story book; the little room for guests had a clean tile floor ornamented with alternate red and white chalk stripes, a fireplace of immense height and width, round which the village gossips probably sipped their ale o' winter nights, the wooden chairs and benches and the wooden table in the centre of the room, spotlessly clean and white from repeated scrubbings; half a dozen long clay tobacco pipes were in a tray on the table for smokers, clustering vines and snowy curtains shaded the windows, and there was an air of quiet comfort and somnolency about the place quite attractive to one who was fatigued with a long and dusty walk.

The landlady entered with snowy apron, broad, clean cap, and of a figure suggestive of the nutritious quality of English ale or good living, and, like the Mrs. Fezziwig of Dickens,—

"One vast, substantial smile."

"What will you please to horder, sir?"

"Can we have some ale and crackers?"

"Hale, sir? Yes, sir. Bread and cheese, sir?" (interrogatively).

"Yes; bread and cheese."

"Two mugs and bread and cheese, Mary," said the landlady, as she bustled out through the passage to a little wicket enclosure, behind which we caught through the opening door the flash of tankards in gleaming rows, and in a moment more "Mary" tripped in with two beer mugs, shining like silver, and the snowy foam rising high and bubbling in creamy luxuriance over their brims upon the little tray that bore them.

Good English home-brewed is said to be better than that served in America; perhaps it may be that we "'aven't got the 'ops" to make as good as they brew in England, or it may be that tasting it while the spring breeze is blowing the perfume from the hedgerows and meadows in at the windows of little road-side inns, which command a pretty rustic view of gentle slope, green valley, and cool shade trees, has something to do with one's judgment of it. The attack upon the ale of old England and the loaf of sweet, close-grained bread and cheese, involved the enormous outlay of ten pence, to which we added two more for Mary, an even shilling, for which she dropped a grateful courtesy, and we strolled on through the antiquated little town of Penrith, visiting the churchyard and seeing the giant's grave, a space of eight feet between a gigantic head and foot stone, each covered with nearly obliterated Runic inscriptions.

[CHAPTER III.]

From Penrith we were whirled away over the rails to Edinburgh. Edinburgh is certainly a wonder—a wonder of historic interest, a wonder of curious old buildings, and a wonder of magnificent new ones. Here we were in the very place that Walter Scott has made us long and long to see, and were to visit the scenes that were sung in his matchless minstrelsy, and painted in his graphic romances. Here was the city where Knox, the Reformer, preached, and Mary, Queen of Scots, held her brief and stormy reign. Here we were to see Holyrood, Edinburgh Castle, and a hundred scenes identified with Scottish history, the very names of which served to help the melodious flow of the rhythm of Scott's entrancing poems. With what wondrous charms does the poet and novelist invest historic scenes! How memory carried us back to the days when the Tales of a Grandfather held us chained to their pages, as with a spell! How the Waverley Novels' scenes came thronging into imagination's eye, like the half-forgotten scenes of happy youth, when we read of the bold Scottish champions, the fierce Highlanders, and the silken courtiers, the knights, battles, spearmen, castles, hunts, feasts, and pageants, so vividly described by the Wizard of the North!

Here we are at a hotel on Princes Street, right opposite the Scott Monument, a graceful structure of Gothic arches and pinnacles, and enshrining a figure of Sir Walter and his favorite dog. The view, seen from Princes Street, reminds one very much of the pictures of Athens Restored, with its beautiful public buildings of Grecian architecture. Between Princes Street, which is in the new, and the old city is a deep ravine or valley, as it were, now occupied by the tracks of the railroad, and spanned by great stone-arched bridges. An immense embankment, called the Mound, also connects the old and new city, its slopes descending east and west into beautiful gardens towards the road-bed. Upon the Mound are the Royal Institution, Gallery of Fine Arts, the former a sort of Pantheon-looking building, and both with plenty of space around them, so that they look as if placed there expressly to be seen and admired.

Princes Street, which is one of the finest in Great Britain, runs east and west. It is entirely open upon the south side, and separated only by a railing from the lovely gardens that run down into the hollow I have mentioned, between the old and new town. Looking across the hollow, we see the old city, where the historic steeples of St. Giles and others mingle among the lofty houses in the extended panoramic view, the eastern end of which is completed by the almost impregnable old castle, rich in historic interest, which lifts its battlements from its rocky seat two hundred feet above the surrounding country, and is a grand and picturesque object. The city, both old and new, appears to be built of stone resembling our darkest granite. The old town is built upon a ridge, gradually ascending towards the castle, and is a curious old place, with its lofty eight and ten-story houses, its narrow lanes, called "wynds," or "closes," and swarming population.

The "closes" are curious affairs, being sort of narrow enclosures, running up in between lofty buildings, with only one place of ingress and egress, that could, in old times, be closed by a portcullis, the remains of some of them being still in existence, and were built as defences against incursions of the Highlanders.

Here in the old town are many streets, the names of which will be recognized by all familiar with Scott—the High Street, Grass Market, Cow Gate, and Canon Gate. We went, one afternoon, and stood in the Grass Market, amid a seething mass of humanity that fills it. Lofty old houses rise high about on all sides, every one with a history, and some of them two or three hundred years old—houses the windows of which were oft packed with eager faces to see the criminal executions here. Some of these houses, Scott says in his Heart of Mid-Lothian, were formerly the property of the Knights Templars and Knights of St. John, and still exhibit, on their points and gables, the cross of those orders in iron—houses that looked down on the furious mob that hung Captain Porteous upon the dyer's pole, over the very spot where we stood. Then, walking down towards the other extremity, we entered the Canon Gate, extending down the hill towards Holyrood Palace—Canon Gate, which was the residence of the wealthy canons of the church when Holyrood was an abbey, and after the Reformation the abode of the Scottish aristocracy. At one end of the old city stands Holyrood, at the other the castle rock rears its rugged height.

The new city is beautifully laid out in broad streets and squares, which are adorned with imposing buildings, monuments, and bronze statues of celebrated men; but I am not to give a guide-book description of Edinburgh, although there is so much that interests in its streets and buildings that one is almost tempted to do so.

The very first visit one desires to make is to the lofty old castle that overlooks the city. It is situated on an elevated basaltic rock, and is separated from the town by an esplanade about three hundred feet wide, and three hundred and fifty long. The castle is said to have been founded in the year 617, and contains many curious relics of antiquity, and is fraught with historic interest, having been the scene of so many crimes, romantic adventures, captivities, and sieges, within the past three or four hundred years—scenes that have been the most vivid in the pages of history, and formed an almost inexhaustible theme for the most graphic pictures of the novelist.

Among the most notable captures will be recollected that of the Earl of Randolph, nephew to Robert Bruce. And also, when in the possession of the English King Edward I., thirty brave fellows, guided by a young man called William Frank, who had often climbed up and down the Castle Rock to visit his sweetheart, ventured one night, in their heavy iron armor, with their swords and axes, to scale the most precipitous side overhanging the West Princes Street Gardens, and, succeeding, quickly overcame the garrison. In 1341, when the castle was again held by the English, Sir William Douglas and Sir Simon Fraser took it by stratagem and surprise in broad daylight, having sent in a cart loaded with wine, which was dexterously overturned in the gateway, so that the gate could not be closed when the Scottish soldiers rushed forward to the attack.

The broad esplanade before the castle affords a fine view, and is used as a place for drilling the troops, the castle having accommodations for two thousand men. We passed across this, and by the statue of the Duke of York, son of George III., and uncle of Queen Victoria, and the monumental cross, erected in memory of the officers of the Highland regiment who fell in the years 1857 and 1858, in the Indian Rebellion War. On over the moat and drawbridge, and through the old portcullis gate, over which was the old prison in which the Earl of Argyle, and numerous adherents of the Stuarts, were confined previous to their execution, and after passing beneath this, were fairly within the castle. One point of interest was the old sally-port, up which Dundee climbed to have a conference with the Duke of Gordon, when on his way to raise the Highland clans in favor of King James II., while the convention were assembled in the Parliament House, and were proceeding to settle the crown upon William and Mary.

Dundee, accompanied by only thirty picked men, rode swiftly along a street in the old city, nearly parallel to the present line of Princes Street, while the drums in the town were beating to arms to pursue him; and leaving his men in a by-place, clambered up the steep rock at this point, and urged the duke to accompany him, but without effect. Scott's song of "Bonnie Dundee" tells us,—

"Dundee he is mounted, he rides up the street,

The bells they ring backward, the drums they are beat;

But the provost, deuce man! said, 'Just e'en let him be,

For the town is well rid of that de'il o' Dundee.'"

Dundee rode off towards Stirling, with the threat that,—

"If there's lords in the Southland, there's chiefs in the North;

There are wild dunnie vassals, three thousand times three,

Will cry, 'Hey for the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee!'"

From what is known as the Bomb Battery an excellent view of Edinburgh is obtained. Here is a curious piece of early artillery, of huge size, designated Mons Meg, made at Mons in Brittany, in 1476, of thick iron bars hooped together, and twenty inches diameter at the bore. Near this is the Chapel of Queen Margaret, a little Norman building eight hundred years old, used by Margaret, Queen of Malcolm III., daughter of Edward the Outlaw, and granddaughter of Edmund Ironside, who, it will be remembered, disputed the crown of England for so many years with Canute.

One of the most interesting, as well as one of the oldest rooms, was a little irregular-shaped apartment, known as Queen Mary's Room, being the room in which James VI. was born, in 1566. The original ceiling remains, with the initials J. R. and M. R., surmounted by a crown, and wrought into the panels. From the window of this little room, it is said, the infant king was let down to the street, two hundred and fifty feet below, by means of a rope and basket, and carried off secretly to Stirling Castle, to be baptized in the Roman Catholic faith. When James made his first visit to Scotland, in 1617, after his accession to the English throne, he caused the royal arms to be elaborately painted on the wall, and underneath his mother's prayer, which still remains in quaint old English letters, somewhat difficult to decipher:—

"Lord Jesu Chryst that crownit was with Thornse

Preserve the birth quhais Badyie heir is borne.

And send hir Sonne successive to reigne stille

Lang in this Realme, if that it be Thy will.

Als grant O Lord quhat ever of Hir proseed

Be to Thy Glorie, Honer and Prais sobied."

The view from the windows, here at the east and south sides of the old castle, is varied and romantic. The curious old houses in the Grass Market, far down below; the quaint, blackened old streets of the old city; the magnificent towers of Herriot's Hospital against the blue sky; and stretching beyond the city, the fine landscape, with the familiar Borough moor, where the Scottish hosts were wont to muster by clans and chieftains,—form a scene of picturesque beauty not soon forgotten.

The armory of the castle contains many interesting weapons of ancient warfare. Among the most notable was a coat of mail worn by one of the Douglases in Cromwell's time; Rob Roy's dagger; some beautiful steel pistols, used by some of the Highland followers of Prince Charles Stuart at the battle of Culloden; and cuirasses worn by the French cuirassiers at Waterloo. The crown room contains the regalia of Scotland, and the celebrated crown of Robert Bruce. The regalia of Scotland consist of a crown, sceptre, and sword of state, the latter a most beautiful piece of workmanship, the scabbard elegantly ornamented with chased and wrought work, representing oak leaves and acorns, and which was a present from Pope Julius II. to James IV. Particular interest attaches to these regalia, from the fact of their discovery through Scott's exertions, in 1818, after a disappearance of about one hundred and eleven years. The crown is the diadem that pressed the valiant brow of Robert the Bruce, and the devoted head of Mary, and was placed upon the infant brow of her son. Charles II. was the last monarch who wore this regal emblem, which is connected with so many stirring events in Scottish history.

From Edinburgh Castle, a gradually descending walk, through some of the most interesting portions of the old city, will take the visitor to Holyrood Palace and Abbey,—quite a distance, but which should be walked rather than rode, if the tourist is a pedestrian of moderate powers, as it is thronged with so many points of historic interest, to which I can only make a passing allusion. The High Street, as it is called, is one of the principal through which we pass, and in old times was considered very fine; but its glory departed with the building of the new portion of the city, and the curious old "closes," in the streets diverging from it, are the habitations of the lowest class of the population.

Bow Street, which, if I remember rightly, runs into Grass Market from High Street, was formerly known as West Bow, from an arch or bow in the city wall. We passed down this quaint old street, which used to be the principal avenue by which carriages reached the upper part of the city. It was a curve of lofty houses, filthy kennels, and noisy children, spirit-shops, groceries, and garbage; yet up this street had ridden, in old times, Anne of Denmark, James I., Charles I., Oliver Cromwell, Charles II., and James II. It was down this street that the Earl of Argyle and Marquis of Montrose were dragged, in the hangman's cart, to execution in the Grass Market, which is situated at its foot, and to which I have previously alluded. Porteous was also dragged down through this street to execution, by the rioters who took him from his jailers.

In the old city we visited a court called Dunbar's Close, where, after the victory of Dunbar, some of Cromwell's soldiers were quartered. Here remains a carved inscription, said to bear the oldest date in the city. It reads as follows:

St. Giles Church, in High Street, is a notable building, and was, in popish times, the cathedral of the city, named after St. Giles, Edinburgh's patron saint. I will not tire the reader with a visit to its interior; but it was here that took place that incident, which every school-boy recollects, of Jenny Geddes throwing her stool at the head of the officiating clergyman, upon his attempt to read the liturgy as prescribed by Archbishop Laud, and which it was proposed to introduce into Scotland.

The "Solemn League and Covenant" was sworn to and signed in this church, in 1643. Just within the railings surrounding the old church stands the shaft of the old cross of Edinburgh; and the site of the Tollbooth, which figures in Scott's novels, is marked, near by, by the figure of a heart in the pavement—"The Heart of Mid-Lothian." Numerous other points of historic interest might be enumerated, did space permit. We must, as we pass rapidly on, not forget to take a view of the quaint old rookery-looking mansion of John Knox, the Reformer, with a steep flight of steps, leading up to a door high above the sidewalk, and the inscription upon it, which I could not read, but which I was informed was

and the massive-looking old Canon Gate Tollbooth, erected in the reign of James VI. On we go through the Canon Gate, till we emerge in the open space in front of that ancient dwelling-place of Scottish royalty, Holyrood Palace.

Holyrood Palace is interesting from the numerous important events in Scottish history that have transpired within its walls. It is a great quadrangular building, with a court-yard ninety-four feet square. Its front is flanked with double castellated towers, the tops peaked, and looking something like the lid of an old-fashioned coffee-pot, or an inverted tin tunnel, with the pipe cut off. The embellishments in front of the entrance to the palace and the beautiful fountain were completed under the direction, and at the expense, of the late Prince Albert. The palace is said to have been founded by James IV., quite early in the year 1500, and it was his chief residence up to the time of his death, at Flodden, in 1513. Some of the events that give it its historic celebrity are those that transpired during the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, who made it her ordinary residence after her return to her native country, in 1561. It was here that Mary was married to Darnley, and we were shown the piece of stone flagging upon which they knelt during the ceremony, and which we profaned with our own knees, with true tourist fervor; here that Rizzio, or, as they spell it in Scotland, Riccio, was murdered in her very presence; here that she married Bothwell, endured those fiery discussions with the Scotch Reformers, and wept at the rude and coarse upbraidings of John Knox; here that James VI. brought his queen, Anne of Denmark, in 1590, and had her crowned in the chapel; here, also, was Charles I. crowned, and here, after the battle of Dunbar, in 1650, did Cromwell quarter a part of his forces.

In modern times, George IV. visited the palace in 1822, granting, after his departure, over twenty thousand pounds for repairs and improvements; and in 1850, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and the royal children made a visit there, and since that time she stops annually on her way to and from her Highland residence at the Castle of Balmoral, for a brief period here at old Holyrood.

To those familiar at all, from reading history or the romances and poems, with those events in which this old pile occupies a prominent position, it of course possesses a great interest.

In the broad, open space before the palace, the elaborate fountain, with its floriated pinnacles, figures, &c., will attract attention, although it ill accords with the old buildings. The most interesting apartments in the palace are those of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Passing in at the entrance gate, and buying tickets at a little office very much like a theatrical ticket office, we visited the more ancient part of the palace, and entered first Lord Darnley's rooms. These were hung with fine specimens of ancient tapestry, upon which Cupids are represented plucking fruit, and throwing it down to others; oak trees and leaves, Cupids plucking grapes, &c. Another scene was a lake and castle, with fruit trees and Cupids; also figures of nude youngsters, turning somersaults and performing different antics. Another room contains two pieces of tapestry, telling the story of the flaming cross that appeared to Constantine the Great, the motto, In hoc signo vinces, embroidered on the corner of the hangings; Darnley's elegant armor, &c. Other fine pieces of tapestry are in Darnley's bed-room and dressing-room. Portraits of Scottish kings also adorn the walls.

We were then shown Queen Mary's private staircase, that by which Darnley admitted the conspirators up from a little turret room to assassinate Rizzio. Mary's audience chamber is a room about twenty feet square, the ceiling divided into panelled compartments, adorned with initials and armorial bearings, and the walls hung with tapestry, upon which were wrought various scenes, now sadly faded by the withering breath of time. These tapestry hangings the curious traveller soon becomes accustomed to, and the more, I think, one sees of them, the more he admires them—the scenes of ancient mythology or allegorical design so beautifully wrought as to rival even oil paintings in beauty of color and design, and exciting a wonder at the skill and labor that were expended in producing with many colored threads these wondrous loom mosaics. In the audience chamber stands the bed of Charles I., and upon this couch Prince Charles, the unfortunate descendant of the former occupant, slept in September, 1745, and the Duke of Cumberland, his conqueror, rested upon the same couch. Cumberland, yes, we recollect him; he figured in Lochiel's Warning, Campbell's beautiful poem—

"Proud Cumberland prances, insulting the slain."

Some rich old chairs of the same period, and other furniture, are also in this room, which was the scene of Mary's altercation with Knox.

Looking upon the antique bed, one can see how, despite care, the hand of time leaves its indelible impress upon all that is of man's creation. You can scarcely imagine how time affects an old state bed. No matter what be the care or exclusion from sunlight, the breath of time leaves its mark; the canopy and hangings gradually fade and deaden, the very life seems to be extracted, and they look like an old piece of husk or dried toast, light, porous, and moulding; the wood-work, however, grows dark, and apparently as solid as iron; the quaint carving stands out in jetty polish, rich and luxuriant—a study and a wonder of curious and fantastic art and sculpture in wood.

Queen Mary's room is hung with a beautiful piece of tapestry, representing the fall of Phaeton; half hidden by this tapestry is the door opening upon the secret stair by which Rizzio's murderers entered; upon the wall hang portraits of Mary at the age of eighteen, portraits of Queen Elizabeth and King Henry VIII., presented her by Elizabeth; here also was furniture used by the queen, and the baby linen basket sent her by Elizabeth.

From here we enter that oft-described apartment so celebrated in Scottish history—the queen's supper room, where Rizzio was murdered. Its small size generally excites astonishment. Here, into this little room, which half a dozen persons would fill, rushed the armed conspirators, overturning the table and dragging their shrieking victim from the very feet of the queen, as he clung to her dress for protection, stabbing him as they went beneath her very eyes, forcing him out into the audience chamber, and left him with over fifty ghastly wounds, from which his life ebbed in a crimson torrent, leaving its ineffaceable stain, the indelible mark upon the oaken floor, not more indelible than the blackened stain which rests upon the names of the perpetrators of this brutal murder.

Adown the little staircase which the conspirators passed, we go through a low door into the court-yard. Over the top of this little door, a few years ago, in a crevice of the masonry, an antique dagger-blade was discovered by some workmen; and as the murderers escaped through this door, it was surmised that this was one of the very daggers used in the assassination.

But we leave the place behind, and enter the romantic ruins of the old abbey. How interesting are these picturesque ruined remains of the former glory and power of the church of Rome in England! Their magnificent proportions, beauty of architecture, and exquisite decoration bespeak the wealth of the church and the wondrous taste of those who reared these piles, which, in their very ruin, command our admiration. The abbey is immediately adjoining the palace,—its front a beautiful style of early English architecture, and the noble, high-arched door, with cluster pillars, elaborately sculptured with fret-work figures of angels, flowers, vines, &c.,—one of those specimens of stone carving that excite wonder at the amount of patient work, labor, and skill that must have been required in their production.

The abbey was founded in 1128, and the fragment which remains formed the nave of the ancient building. Here are the graves of David II., James II., Darnley, and that of the ill-starred Rizzio, and other eminent personages, some of whom, judging from the ornaments upon the marble slabs of their graves, were good Freemasons and Knights Templars,—the perfect ashler, setting maul, and square upon the former, and the rude-cut figures of reclining knights, with crossed feet and upraised hands, upon others, indicating the fact.

But the gairish sun shines boldly down into the very centre of what was once the dim-lighted, solemn old abbey, with its cool, quiet cloisters, that scarce echoed to the monk's sandalled footstep, and the gracefully-pointed arches, supported by clusters of stone pillars, throw their quaint shadows on the greensward, now, where was once the chapel's stone pavement; the great arched window through which the light once fell in shattered rainbows to the floor, stands now, slender and weird-like, with its tracery against the heaven, like a skeleton of the past; and the half-obliterated or undecipherable vain-glorious inscriptions upon the slabs, here and there, are all that remain of this monument of man's power and pride—a monument beautiful in its very ruins, and romantic from the halo of associations of the dim past that surround it.

The new city, to which I have referred, is a creation of the last hundred years, the plans of it being published in 1768. The two great streets are George Street and Princes Street, the former filled with fine stores, and adorned with statues of William Pitt, George IV., and many public buildings and beautiful squares.

Here, in Edinburgh, we began to hear the "burr" of the Scotch tongue. Many of the salesmen in the stores where tourists go to buy Scotch linen or Scotch pebble jewelry, the Scotch plaids which were temptingly displayed, or the warm under-clothing which New Englanders appreciate, seemed to have their tongues roughened, as it were, to a sort of pleasant whir-r in speaking the English language.

Up from one end of Princes Street rises Calton Hill, with its unfinished national monument, designed to represent the classical Parthenon at Athens; and in one respect it does, being a sort of ruin, or, I may say, a fragment of ruin, consisting of a dozen splendid Doric columns,—for the monument which was to commemorate the Scotchmen who fell at Waterloo was never finished. Here also is a round monument to Nelson, and a dome, supported by pillars, a monument to Professor Dugald Stewart; while a monument to Burns is seen upon the Regent's Road, close at hand. The view of the long vista of Princes Street from Calton Hill, in which the eye can take in at one sweep the Scott monument, the splendid classical-looking structures of the Royal Institution and National Gallery, the great castle on its rocky perch, and then turning about on the other side and viewing the square, solid old palace of Holyrood, with the fragment of ruined abbey attached, and rising high above them the eminence known as Arthur's Seat, and the winding cliffs of Salisbury Crags, forms a panoramic scene of rare beauty and interest.

Speaking of interest, I cannot leave Edinburgh without referring to the interesting collection of curious relics at the Antiquarian Museum. Think of standing in John Knox's pulpit, and thumping, with your curious, wonder-seeking hand, the same desk that had held his Bible, or been smitten by his indignant palm, as he denounced the church of Rome, nearly three hundred years ago; of looking upon the very stool that Jenny Geddes launched at the head of the Dean of St. Giles, when he undertook to introduce the liturgy into Scotland, in 1565; and seeing one of the very banners of the Covenanters that had been borne amid the smoke and fire of their battles; nay, there, in a glass case, we saw the old Scotch Covenant itself, with the signatures of Montrose, Lothian, and their associates. Here also were Gustavus Adolphus's spurs, Robert Burns's pistols, the very glass that Prince Charlie drank from before the disastrous battle of Culloden; the original draft of inquiry into the massacre of Glencoe, dated 1656, original autographic letters from Charles VI., Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Cromwell, and Mary, Queen of Scots. This was reading Scottish history from the original documents.

Here was the flag of Scotland that flouted the breeze at the battle of Dunbar, in 1650, the pikes of Charles II.'s pikemen, and the old Scottish six-ell spears; nails from the coffin and a portion of the very shroud of Robert Bruce, the blue ribbon of Prince Charlie, worn as Knight of the Garter, in 1745, and the very ring given to him by Flora Macdonald at parting. Among the horrors of the collection is "the Maiden," a rude guillotine of two upright posts, between which a loaded axe blade was hoisted by a cord, and let fall upon the devoted neck beneath. By this very instrument fell the Regent Morton, in 1581, Sir John Gordon, in 1644, the Earl of Argyle, in 1685, and many others—a bloody catalogue.

The collection of ancient implements, coins, seals, medallions, weapons, &c., was interesting as well as valuable and extensive, comprising many that have been exhumed from ancient ruins, and antique relics, more or less connected with the history of the country. The Free National Gallery contains a noble collection of elegant pictures by eminent artists of old and modern times, and a fine statue of Burns.

The ride up Salisbury Crags to the eminence known as Arthur's Seat, which rises behind Holyrood eight hundred feet high, is one of the great attractions to the tourist; the drive to it by the fine carriage road, known as "Queen's Drive," is delightful, and the view of the city and surrounding country from the elevated road very picturesque. There is a romantic little path here, on Salisbury Crags, running by the ruins of St. Anthony's Chapel, that Walter Scott used to walk when working out the plot of some of his novels, and the now broad road was then but a winding path up the crags; the chapel, it will be remembered, figures in the Heart of Mid-Lothian.

The elegant monument, nearly in front of the Royal Hotel, in the Princes Street Gardens, erected in memory of Walter Scott, and known as the Scott Monument, is familiar to most American readers, from engravings. It is a splendid Gothic tower, and said to be "a recollection of the architectural beauties of Melrose Abbey."