Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands Volume I Part 25

It is recorded of another of the race, that he was one of seven children born at a birth, and that all the rest of his brothers and sisters were, by enchantment, turned into swans with gold collars. This remarkable case occurred in the time of the grandfather of Sir Guy, and of course, if we believe this, we shall find no difficulty in the case of the cow, or any thing else.

There is a very scarce book in the possession of a gentleman of Warwick, written by one Dr. John Kay, or caius, in which he gives an account of the rare and peculiar animals of England in 1552. In this he mentioned seeing the bones of the head and the vertebrae of the neck of an enormous animal at Warwick Castle. He states that the shoulder blade was hung up by chains from the north gate of Coventry, and that a rib of the same animal was hanging up in the chapel of Guy, Earl of Warwick, and that the people fancied it to be the rib of a cow which haunted a ditch near Coventry, and did injury to many persons; and he goes on to imagine that this may be the bone of a bonasus or a urus. He says, "It is probable many animals of this kind formerly lived in our England, being of old an island full of woods and forests, because even in our boyhood the horns of these animals were in common use at the table." The story of Sir Guy is furthermore quite romantic, and contains some circ.u.mstances very instructive to all ladies. For the chronicler a.s.serts, "that Dame Felye, daughter and heire to Erle Rohand, for her beauty called Fely le Belle, or Felys the Fayre, by true enheritance, was Countesse of Warwyke, and lady and wyfe to the most victoriouse Knight, Sir Guy, to whom in his woing tyme she made greate straungeres, and caused him, for her sake, to put himself in meny greate distresses, dangers, and perills; but when they were wedded, and b'en but a little season together, he departed from her, to her greate hevynes, and never was conversant with her after, to her understandinge." That this may not appear to be the result of any revengeful spirit on the part of Sir Guy, the chronicler goes on further to state his motives--that, after his marriage, considering what he had done for a woman's sake, he thought to spend the other part of his life for G.o.d's sake, and so departed from his lady in pilgrim weeds, which raiment he kept to his life's end.

After wandering about a good many years he settled in a hermitage, in a place not far from the castle, called Guy's Cliff, and when his lady distributed food to beggars at the castle gate, was in the habit of coming among them to receive alms, without making himself known to her.

It states, moreover, that two days before his death an angel informed him of the time of his departure, and that his lady would die a fortnight after him, which happening accordingly, they were both buried in the grave together. A romantic cavern, at the place called Guy's Cliff, is shown as the dwelling of the recluse. The story is a curious relic of the religious ideas of the times.

On our way from the castle we pa.s.sed by Guy's Cliff, which is at present the seat of the Hon. C.B. Percy. The establishment looked beautifully from the road, as we saw it up a long avenue of trees; it is one of the places travellers generally examine, but as we were bound for Kenilworth we were content to take it on trust. It is but a short drive from there to Kenilworth. We got there about the middle of the afternoon.

Kenilworth has been quite as extensive as Warwick, though now entirely gone to ruins. I believe Oliver Cromwell's army have the credit of finally dismantling it. Cromwell seems literally to have left his mark on his generation, for I never saw a ruin in England when I did not hear that he had something to do with it. Every broken arch and ruined battlement seemed always to find a sufficient account of itself by simply enunciating the word Cromwell. And when we see how much the Puritans arrayed against themselves all the aesthetic principles of our nature, we can somewhat pardon those who did not look deeper than the surface, for the prejudice with which they regarded the whole movement; a movement, however, of which we, and all which is most precious to us, are the lineal descendants and heirs.

We wandered over the ruins, which are very extensive, and which Scott, with his usual vivacity and accuracy, has restored and repeopled. We climbed up into Amy Robsart's chamber; we scrambled into one of the arched windows of what was formerly the great dining hall, where Elizabeth feasted in the midst of her lords and ladies, and where every stone had rung to the sound of merriment and revelry. The windows are broken out; it is roofless and floorless, waving and rustling with pendent ivy, and vocal with the song of hundreds of little birds.

We wandered from room to room, looking up and seeing in the walls the desolate fireplaces, tier over tier, the places where the beams of the floors had gone into the walls, and still the birds continued their singing every where.

Nothing affected me more than this ceaseless singing and rejoicing of birds in these old gray ruins. They seemed so perfectly joyous and happy amid the desolations, so airy and fanciful in their bursts of song, so ignorant and careless of the deep meaning of the gray desolation around them, that I could not but be moved. It was nothing to them how these stately, sculptured walls became lonely and ruinous, and all the weight of a thousand thoughts and questionings which arise to us is never even dreamed by them. They sow not, neither do they reap, but their heavenly Father feeds them; and so the wilderness and the desolate place is glad in them, and they are glad in the wilderness and desolate place.

It was a beautiful conception, this making of birds. Sh.e.l.ley calls them "imbodied joys;" and Christ says, that amid the vaster ruins of man's desolation, ruins more dreadfully suggestive than those of sculptured frieze and architrave, we can yet live a bird's life of unanxious joy; or, as Martin Luther beautifully paraphrases it, "We can be like a bird, that sits singing on his twig and lets G.o.d think for him."

The deep consciousness that we are ourselves ruined, and that this world is a desolation more awful, and of more sublime material, and wrought from stuff of higher temper than ever was sculptured in hall or cathedral, this it must be that touches such deep springs of sympathy in the presence of ruins. We, too, are desolate, shattered, and scathed; there are traceries and columns of celestial workmans.h.i.+p; there are heaven-aspiring arches, splendid colonnades and halls, but fragmentary all. Yet above us bends an all-pitying Heaven, and spiritual voices and callings in our hearts, like these little singing birds, speak of a time when almighty power shall take pleasure in these stones, and favor the dust thereof.

We sat on the top of the strong tower, and looked off into the country, and talked a good while. Some of the ivy that mantles this building has a trunk as large as a man's body, and throws out numberless strong arms, which, interweaving, embrace and interlace half-falling towers, and hold them up in a living, growing ma.s.s of green.

The walls of one of the oldest towers are sixteen feet thick. The lake, which Scott speaks of, is dried up and grown over with rushes. The former moat presents only a gra.s.sy hollow. What was formerly a gate house is still inhabited by the family who have the care of the building. The land around the gate house is choicely and carefully laid out, and has high, clipped hedges of a species of variegated holly.

Thus much of old castles and ivy. Farewell to Kenilworth.

LETTER XII.

MY DEAR H.:--

After leaving Kenilworth we drove to Coventry, where we took the cars again. This whole ride from Stratford to Warwick, and on to Coventry, answers more to my ideas of old England than any thing I have seen; it is considered one of the most beautiful parts of the kingdom. It has quaint old houses, and a certain air of rural, picturesque quiet, which is very charming.

Coventry is old and queer, with narrow streets and curious houses, famed for the ancient legend of G.o.diva, one of those beautiful myths that grow, like the mistletoe, on the bare branches of history, and which, if they never were true in the letter, have been a thousand times true in the spirit.

The evening came on raw and chilly, so that we rejoiced to find ourselves once more in the curtained parlor by the bright, sociable fire.

As we were drinking tea Elihu Burritt came in. It was the first time I had ever seen him, though I had heard a great deal of him from our friends in Edinburgh. He is a man in middle life, tall and slender, with fair complexion, blue eyes, an air of delicacy and refinement, and manners of great gentleness. My ideas of the "Learned Blacksmith" had been of something altogether more ponderous and peremptory. Elihu has been, for some years, operating in England and on the continent in a movement which many, in our half-Christianized times, regard with as much incredulity as the grim, old, warlike barons did the suspicious imbecilities of reading and writing. The sword now, as then, seems so much more direct a way to terminate controversies, that many Christian men, even, cannot conceive how the world is to get along without it.

Burritt's mode of operation has been by the silent organization of circles of ladies in all the different towns of the United Kingdom, who raise a certain sum for the diffusion of the principles of peace on earth and good will to men. Articles, setting forth the evils of war, moral, political, and social, being prepared, these circles pay for their insertion in all the princ.i.p.al newspapers of the continent. They have secured to themselves in this way a continual utterance in France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany; so that from week to week, and month to month, they can insert articles upon these subjects.

Many times the editors insert the articles as editorial, which still further favors their design. In addition to this, the ladies of these circles in England correspond with the ladies of similar circles existing in other countries; and in this way there is a mutual kindliness of feeling established through these countries.

When recently war was threatening between England and France, through the influence of these societies conciliatory addresses were sent from many of the princ.i.p.al towns of England to many of the princ.i.p.al towns of France; and the effect of these measures in allaying irritation and agitation was very perceptible.

Furthermore, these societies are preparing numerous little books for children, in which the principles of peace, kindness, and mutual forbearance are constantly set forth, and the evil and unchristian nature of the mere collision of brute force exemplified in a thousand ways. These tracts also are reprinted in the other modern languages of Europe, and are becoming a part of family literature.

The object had in view by those in this movement is, the general disbandment of standing armies and warlike establishments, and the arrangement, in their place, of some settled system of national arbitration. They suggest the organization of some tribunal of international law, which shall correspond to the position of the Supreme Court of the United States with reference to the several states. The fact that the several states of our Union, though each a distinct sovereignty, yet agree in this arrangement, is held up as an instance of its practicability. These ideas are not to be considered entirely chimerical, if we reflect that commerce and trade are as essentially opposed to war as is Christianity. War is the death of commerce, manufactures, agriculture, and the fine arts. Its evil results are always certain and definite, its good results scattered and accidental.

The whole current of modern society is as much against war as against slavery; and the time must certainly come when some more rational and humane mode of resolving national difficulties will prevail.

When we ask these reformers how people are to be freed from the yoke of despotism without war, they answer, "By the diffusion of ideas among the ma.s.ses--by teaching the bayonets to think." They say, "If we convince every individual soldier of a despot's army that war is ruinous, immoral, and unchristian, we take the instrument out of the tyrant's hand. If each individual man would refuse to rob and murder for the Emperor of Austria, and the Emperor of Russia, where would be their power to hold Hungary? What gave power to the ma.s.ses in the French revolution, but that the army, pervaded by new ideas, refused any longer to keep the people down?"

These views are daily gaining strength in England. They are supported by the whole body of the Quakers, who maintain them with that degree of inflexible perseverance and never-dying activity which have rendered the benevolent actions of that body so efficient. The object that they are aiming at is one most certain to be accomplished, infallible as the prediction that swords are to be beaten into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, and that nations shall learn war no more.

This movement, small and despised in its origin, has gained strength from year to year, and now has an effect on the public opinion of England which is quite perceptible.

We spent the evening in talking over these things, and also various topics relating to the antislavery movement. Mr. Sturge was very confident that something more was to be done than had ever been done yet, by combinations for the encouragement of free, in the place of slave-grown, produce; a question which has, ever since the days of Clarkson, more or less deeply occupied the minds of abolitionists in England.

I should say that Mr. Sturge in his family has for many years conscientiously forborne the use of any article produced by slave labor.

I could scarcely believe it possible that there could be such an abundance and variety of all that is comfortable and desirable in the various departments of household living within these limits. Mr. Sturge presents the subject with very great force, the more so from the consistency of his example.

From what I have since observed, as well as from what they said, I should imagine that the Quakers generally pursue this course of entire separation from all connection with slavery, even in the disuse of its products. The subject of the disuse of slave-grown produce has obtained currency in the same sphere in which Elihu Burritt operates, and has excited the attention of the Olive Leaf Circles. Its prospects are not so weak as on first view might be imagined, if we consider that Great Britain has large tracts of cotton-growing land at her disposal in India. It has been calculated that, were suitable railroads and arrangements for transportation provided for India, cotton could be raised in that empire sufficient for the whole wants of England, at a rate much cheaper than it can be imported from America. Not only so, but they could then afford to furnish cotton cheaper at Lowell than the same article could be procured from the Southern States.

It is consolatory to know that a set of men have undertaken this work whose perseverance in any thing once begun has never been daunted. Slave labor is becoming every year more expensive in America. The wide market which has been opened for it has raised it to such an extravagant price as makes the stocking of a plantation almost ruinous. If England enters the race with free labor, which has none of these expenses, and none of the risk, she will be sure to succeed. All the forces of nature go with free labor; and all the forces of nature resist slave labor. The stars in their courses fight against it; and it cannot but be that ere long some way will be found to bring these two forces to a decisive issue.

Mr. Sturge seemed exceedingly anxious that the American states should adopt the theory of immediate, and not gradual, emanc.i.p.ation. I told him the great difficulty was to persuade them to think of any emanc.i.p.ation at all; that the present disposition was to treat slavery as the pillar and ground of the truth, the ark of religion, the summary of morals, and the only true millennial form of modern society.

He gave me, however, a little account of their antislavery struggles in England, and said, what was well worthy of note, that they made no apparent progress in affecting public opinion until they firmly advocated the right of every innocent being to immediate and complete freedom, without any conditions. He said that a woman is fairly ent.i.tled to the credit of this suggestion. Elizabeth Heyrick of Leicester, a member of the society of Friends, published a pamphlet ent.i.tled Immediate, not Gradual Emanc.i.p.ation. This little pamphlet contains much good sense; and, being put forth at a time when men were really anxious to know the truth, produced a powerful impression.

She remarked, very sensibly, that the difficulty had arisen from indistinct ideas in respect to what is implied in emanc.i.p.ation. She went on to show that emanc.i.p.ation did not imply freedom from government and restraint; that it properly brought a slave under the control of the law, instead of that of an individual; and that it was possible so to apply law as perfectly to control the emanc.i.p.ated. This is an idea which seems simple enough when pointed out; but men often stumble a long while before they discover what is most obvious.

The next day was Sunday; and, in order to preserve our incognito, and secure an uninterrupted rest, free from conversation and excitement, we were obliged to deprive ourselves of the pleasure of hearing our friend Rev. John Angell James, which we had much desired to do.

It was a warm, pleasant day, and we spent much of our time in a beautiful arbor constructed in a retired place in the garden, where the trees and shrubbery were so arranged as to make a most charming retreat.

The grounds of Mr. Sturge are very near to those of his brother--only a narrow road interposing between them. They have contrived to make them one by building under this road a subterranean pa.s.sage, so that the two families can pa.s.s and repa.s.s into each other's grounds in perfect privacy.

These English gardens delight me much; they unite variety, quaintness, and an imitation of the wildness of nature with the utmost care and cultivation. I was particularly pleased with the rockwork, which at times formed the walls of certain walks, the hollows and interstices of which were filled with every variety of creeping plants. Mr. Sturge told me that the substance of which these rockeries are made is sold expressly for the purpose.

On one side of the grounds was an old-fas.h.i.+oned cottage, which one of my friends informed me Mr. Sturge formerly kept fitted up as a water cure hospital, for those whose means did not allow them to go to larger establishments. The plan was afterwards abandoned. One must see that such an enterprise would have many practical difficulties.

At noon we dined in the house of the other brother, Mr. Edmund Sturge.

Here I noticed a full-length engraving of Joseph Sturge. He is represented as standing with his hand placed protectingly on the head of a black child.

We enjoyed our quiet season with these two families exceedingly. We seemed to feel ourselves in an atmosphere where all was peace and good will to man. The little children, after dinner, took us through the walks, to show us their beautiful rabbits and other pets. Every thing seemed in order, peaceable and quiet. Towards evening we went back through the arched pa.s.sage to the other house again. My Sunday here has always seemed to me a pleasant kind of pastoral, much like the communion of Christian and Faithful with the shepherds on the Delectable Mountains.

What is remarkable of all these Friends is, that, although they have been called, in the prosecution of philanthropic enterprises, to encounter so much opposition, and see so much of the unfavorable side of human nature, they are so habitually free from any tinge of uncharitableness or evil speaking in their statements with regard to the character and motives of others. There is also an habitual avoidance of all exaggerated forms of statement, a sobriety of diction, which, united with great affectionateness of manner, inspires the warmest confidence.

C. had been, with Mr. Sturge, during the afternoon, to a meeting of the Friends, and heard a discourse from Sibyl Jones, one of the most popular of their female preachers. Sibyl is a native of the town of Brunswick, in the State of Maine. She and her husband, being both preachers, have travelled extensively in the prosecution of various philanthropic and religious enterprises.

In the evening Mr. Sturge said that she had expressed a desire to see me. Accordingly I went with him to call upon her, and found her in the family of two aged Friends, surrounded by a circle of the same denomination. She is a woman of great delicacy of appearance, betokening very frail health. I am told that she is most of her time in a state of extreme suffering from neuralgic complaints. There was a mingled expression of enthusiasm and tenderness in her face which was very interesting. She had had, according to the language of her sect, a concern upon her mind for me.

To my mind there is something peculiarly interesting about that primitive simplicity and frankness with which the members of this body express themselves. She desired to caution me against the temptations of too much flattery and applause, and against the worldliness which might beset me in London. Her manner of addressing me was like one who is commissioned with a message which must be spoken with plainness and sincerity. After this the whole circle kneeled, and she offered prayer.

I was somewhat painfully impressed with her evident fragility of body, compared with the enthusiastic workings of her mind.

In the course of the conversation she inquired if I was going to Ireland. I told her, yes, that was my intention. She begged that I would visit the western coast, adding, with great feeling, "It was the miseries which I saw there which have brought my health to the state it is." She had travelled extensively in the Southern States, and had, in private conversation, been able very fully to bear her witness against slavery, and had never been heard with unkindness.

The whole incident afforded me matter for reflection. The calling of women to distinct religious vocations, it appears to me, was a part of primitive Christianity; has been one of the most efficient elements of power in the Romish church; obtained among the Methodists in England; and has, in all these cases, been productive of great good. The deaconesses whom the apostle mentions with honor in his epistle, Madame Guyon in the Romish church, Mrs. Fletcher, Elizabeth Fry, are instances which show how much may be done for mankind by women who feel themselves impelled to a special religious vocation.