“Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge It overtaketh in its pilgrimage,”
announced the place where Shakespeare imbibed his early, deep, and native taste for forest scenery. Oh, it was delightful, indeed! Shakespeare seemed to hover and bless all I saw, thought of, or trod on. Those great roots of the lime and the oak, bursting, as it were, above the ground, bent up by the depth they had struck into it, Shakespeare had seen--Shakespeare had sat on.
In the same spirit of delight, and with the same realizing power, did the great painter--one of those
“Mighty poets in their misery dead,”
“of whom the world was not worthy”--enjoy Stratford itself. Thus does he write of what he felt as sunset descended on the church where lies all that was mortal of God’s greatest human creature. “I stood and drank into enthusiasm all a human being could feel; all that the most ardent and devoted lover of a great genius could have a sensation of; all that the most tender scenery of river, trees, and sunset sky together could excite. I was lost, quite lost; and in such a moment should wish my soul to take its flight (if it please God) when my time is finished.” God willed otherwise; that great soul took flight in a moment, not of delight, but of agony.
There seem to be always American visitors at Stratford. The refined and thoughtful Americans, like Washington Irving and Hawthorne, have by the intensity of their reverie, thrown a halo of fresh beauty around many places sacred to genius. But too many of these trans-atlantic travellers merely visit a place like Stratford just to say they have been there; and people of that kind are singularly unpleasant to meet. There is a story that one Yankee offered an enormous sum of money for Shakespeare’s house, to take it to the States for exhibition.
I must hurry on. Village after village, quaint and beautiful, lie along the margin of Avon; the keen eye will notice whence Shakespeare drew his choicest descriptions of nature; the longest summer-day will not be too long to loiter around the vicinity of Stratford. One of the best proofs that Avon River flows through rich and lovely country is the multitude of monastic institutions which have left their names to the villages, with here and there a noble tower or graceful gateway.
Founders of abbeys loved a pleasant river flowing through fertile meadows; salmon and trout and eels for fast-days were as important as beeves and deer for festivals. So there are more conventual remains between Naseby and Tewkesbury than in almost any equal distance of which I have knowledge; and the glory of those old ecclesiastic foundations is peculiarly realized as the noble bell-tower of Evesham Abbey rises above the town. The great monastery had lasted more than a thousand years when the ruthless hand of Henry VIII. fell upon it. The bell-tower and a most delightful old gateway are the only relics of it left.
The pilgrim through the beautiful Vale of Evesham comes upon another battle-field, where, 600 years ago, fell a famous leader of the Commons against the Crown. Simon de Montfort fought for the right, so far as we can judge at this remote period; but his antagonist was the greatest general of the day, and afterwards became England’s greatest king. He was but twenty-six when he won the immortal victory known as the Murder of Evesham. If Montfort gave England its first parliament, Edward gave us Wales and Scotland, and made the priests pay taxes in defiance of the Pope. A poetic prince, as well as a gallant; for did he not, when Eleanora the Castilian died in Lincolnshire, cause Peter l’Imagineur to build a stately cross wherever her corpse rested on its way to Westminster? Thanks to the poetry of a railway company, London sees the last and stateliest of those crosses rebuilt in what was once the quiet village of Charing.
There was another abbey at Pershore, which takes its name from its abundant pear-trees. Bredon Hill, not far from this town, is worth climbing, for its fine view towards the Malverns. At the village of Strensham the author of _Hudibras_ was born. I must not be retarded by reminiscences of that most humorous writer of wonderful doggerel; but pass on to Tewkesbury, last of the towns on the Avon, which here falls into the wide and shining Severn. Tewkesbury had also its abbey and its famous battle; it has, moreover, its legend of that unfortunate gentleman, Brictric of Bristol, who, somewhere about the noon of the Eleventh Century, made love to Matilda, daughter of Count Baldwin of Flanders, and then jilted her. ’Twas the unluckiest action of his life. For Matilda married a certain fierce and resolute Duke of Normandy, who used to thrash her occasionally; and this same duke became King of England by the strong hand; and then Matilda coaxed him (nothing loth, I guess) to seize all Brictric’s wide demesnes, and imprison their owner. So the poor fellow died in Winchester Castle; and his manors in half-a-dozen counties, as may be seen by Domesday book, passed into the hands of the queen. So much for the _spretæ injuria formæ_.
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE
CHARLES DICKENS
Queenston, at which place the steamboats start from Toronto (or I should rather say at which place they call, for their wharf is at Lewiston, on the opposite shore), is situated in a delicious valley, through which the Niagara River, in colour a very deep green, pursues its course. It is approached by a road that takes its winding way among the heights by which the town is sheltered; and seen from this point is extremely beautiful and picturesque.
Our steamboat came up directly this had left the wharf, and soon bore us to the mouth of the Niagara: where the Stars and Stripes of America flutter on one side, and the Union Jack of England on the other: and so narrow is the space between them that the sentinels in either fort can often hear the watchword of the other country given. Thence we emerged on Lake Ontario, an inland sea; and by half-past six o’clock were at Toronto.
The country round this town being very flat, is bare of scenic interest; but the town itself is full of life and motion, bustle, business, and improvement. The streets are well paved, and lighted with gas; the houses are large and good; the shops excellent. Many of them have a display of goods in their windows, such as may be seen in thriving county towns in England; and there are some which would do no discredit to the metropolis itself.
[Illustration: THE ST. LAWRENCE]
The time of leaving Toronto for Kingston is noon. By eight o’clock next morning, the traveller is at the end of his journey, which is performed by steamboat upon Lake Ontario, calling at Port Hope and Coburg, the latter a cheerful, thriving little town. Vast quantities of flour form the chief item in the freight of these vessels. We had no fewer than one thousand and eighty barrels on board, between Coburg and Kingston.
We left Kingston for Montreal on the tenth of May, at half-past nine in the morning, and proceeded in a steamboat down the St. Lawrence River. The beauty of this noble stream at almost any point, but especially in the commencement of this journey when it winds its way among the Thousand Islands, can hardly be imagined. The number and constant successions of these islands, all green and richly wooded; their fluctuating sizes, some so large that for half an hour together one among them will appear as the opposite bank of the river, and some so small that they are mere dimples on its broad bosom; their infinite variety of shapes; and the numberless combinations of beautiful forms which the trees growing on them present: all form a picture fraught with uncommon interest and pleasure.
In the afternoon we shot down some rapids where the river boiled and bubbled strangely, and where the force and headlong violence of the current were tremendous. At seven o’clock we reached Dickenson’s Landing, whence travellers proceed for two or three hours by stage-coach: the navigation of the river being rendered so dangerous and difficult in the interval, by rapids, that steamboats do not make the passage. The number and length of those _portages_, over which the roads are bad, and the travelling slow, render the way between the towns of Montreal and Kingston somewhat tedious.
Our course lay over a wide, uninclosed tract of country at a little distance from the riverside, whence the bright warning lights on the dangerous parts of the St. Lawrence shone vividly. The night was dark and raw, and the way dreary enough. It was nearly ten o’clock when we reached the wharf where the next steamboat lay; and went on board, and to bed.
She lay there all night, and started as soon as it was day. The morning was ushered in by a violent thunder-storm, and was very wet, but gradually improved and brightened up. Going on deck after breakfast, I was amazed to see floating down with the stream, a most gigantic raft, with some thirty or forty wooden houses upon it, and at least as many flag-masts, so that it looked like a nautical street. I saw many of these rafts afterwards, but never one so large. All the timber, or “lumber,” as it is called in America, which is brought down the St. Lawrence, is floated down in this manner. When the raft reaches its place of destination, it is broken up; the materials are sold, and the boatmen return for more.