THE PEAK OF DERBYSHIRE.

The river Mersey takes its sources for it is formed by the union of several smaller streams in the ranges of high limestone hills east of Liverpool, in North Derbyshire. These hills are an extension of the Pennine range that makes the backbone of England, and in Derbyshire they rise to a height of nearly two thousand feet, giving most picturesque scenery. The broad top of the range at its highest part is called the Kinderscout, or, more familiarly, “The Peak.” The mountain-top is a vast moor, abounding in deep holes and water-pools, uninhabited excepting by the stray sportsman or tourist, and dangerous and difficult to cross. Yet, once mounted to the top, there are good views of the wild scenery of the Derbyshire hills, with the villages nestling in the glens, and of the “Kinder Fall,” where much of the water from the summit pours down a cataract of some five hundred feet height, while not far away is the “Mermaid’s Pool,” where, if you go at the midnight hour that ushers in Easter Sunday, and look steadily into the water, you will see a mermaid. The man who ventures upon that treacherous bogland by night certainly deserves to see the best mermaid the Peak can produce. This limestone region is a famous place. In the sheltered valley to the westward of the Kinderscout is the village of Castleton, almost covered in by high hills on all sides. It was here upon a bold cliff to the southward of the village that “Peveril of the Peak” built his renowned castle at the time of the Norman Conquest, of which only the ruins of the keep and part of the outer walls remain. Almost inaccessible, it possessed the extraordinary powers of defence that were necessary in those troublous times, and here its founder gave a grand tournament, to which young knights came from far and near, the successful knight of Lorraine being rewarded by his daughter’s hand. In the time of Edward III. this “Castle of the Peak” reverted to the Crown, but now it is held by the Duke of Devonshire. Under the hill on which the ruins stand is the “Cavern of the Peak,” with a fine entrance in a gloomy recess formed by a chasm in the rocks. This entrance makes a Gothic arch over one thousand feet wide, above which the rock towers nearly three hundred feet, and it is chequered with colored stones. Within is a vast flat-roofed cavern, at the farther side being a lake over which the visitors are ferried in a boat. Other caverns are within, the entire cave extending nearly a half mile, a little river traversing its full length. There are more and similar caverns in the neighborhood.

BESS OF HARDWICKE.

One of the great characters of the sixteenth century was Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, familiarly known as “Bess of Hardwicke,” where she was born, and who managed to outlive four husbands, thus showing what success is in store for a woman of tact and business talent. She was a penniless bride at fourteen, when she married an opulent gentleman of Derbyshire named Barley, who left her at fifteen a wealthy widow. At the age of thirty she married another rich husband, Sir William Cavendish, the ancestor of the Dukes of Devonshire, who died in 1557, leaving her again a widow, but with large estates, for she had taken good care to look after the proper marriage settlements; and in fact, even in those early days, a pretty good fortune was necessary to provide for the family of eight children Sir William left her. She next married Sir William Loe, who also had large estates and was the captain of the king’s guard, the lady’s business tact procuring in advance of the wedding the settlement of these estates upon herself and her children a hard condition, with which, the historian tells us, “the gallant captain, who had a family by a former marriage, felt himself constrained to comply or forego his bride.” But in time the captain died, and his estates all went to the thrifty lady, to the exclusion of his own family; and to the blooming widow, thus made for the third time, there came a-courting the Earl of Shrewsbury; the earl had numerous offspring, and therefore could hardly give Bess all his possessions, like her other husbands, but she was clever enough to obtain her object in another way. As a condition precedent to accepting the earl, she made him marry two of his children to two of hers, and after seeing these two weddings solemnized, the earl led her to the altar for the fourth time at the age of fifty; and we are told that all four of these weddings were actual “love-matches.” But she did not get on well with the earl, whose correspondence shows she was a little shrewish, though in most quarrels she managed to come off ahead, having by that time acquired experience. When the earl died in 1590, and Bess concluded not again to attempt matrimony, she was immensely rich and was seized with a mania for building, which has left to the present day three memorable houses: Hardwicke Hall, where she lived, Bolsover Castle, and the palace of Chatsworth, which she began, and on which she lavished the enormous sum, for that day, of $400,000. The legend runs that she was told that so long as she kept building her life would be spared an architect’s ruse possibly; and when finally she died it was during a period of hard frost, when the masons could not work.

Hardwicke Hall, near Mansfield, which the renowned Bess has left as one of her monuments, is about three hundred years old, and approached by a noble avenue through a spacious park; it is still among the possessions of the Cavendish family and in the Duke of Devonshire’s estates. The old hall where Bess was born almost touches the new one that she built, and which bears the initials of the proud and determined woman in many places outside and in. It was here that Mary Queen of Scots was held in captivity part of the time that she was placed by Queen Elizabeth in the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and her statue stands in the hall. There is an extensive picture-gallery containing many historical portraits, and also fine state-apartments. The mansion is a lofty oblong stone structure, with tall square towers at each corner, the architecture being one of the best specimens of the Elizabethan Period; on the side, as viewed from the park, the hall seems all windows, which accounts for the saying of that neighborhood:

“Hardwicke Hall, more glass than wall.”

The ruins of the old hall, almost overgrown with ivy, are picturesque, but from everywhere on the ancient or on the modern hall there peer out the initials “E. S.,” with which the prudent Bess was so careful to mark all her possessions.

BOLSOVER CASTLE.

The noted Bolsover Castle, which Bess also built, though her son finished it after her death, stands in a magnificent position on a high plateau not far from Chesterfield, overlooking a wide expanse of Derbyshire. The present castle replaced an ancient structure that had fallen into ruin, and was supposed to have been built by “Peveril of the Peak;” it was fortified during King John’s time, and traces of the fortifications still remain; it was repeatedly besieged and taken by assault. The present building is a square and lofty mansion of castellated appearance, with towers at the corners built of brown stone; in it the Earl of Newcastle, who subsequently inherited it, spent on one occasion $75,000 in entertaining King Charles I., the entire country round being invited to come and attend the king: Ben Jonson performed a play for his amusement. Lord Clarendon speaks of the occasion as “such an excess of feasting as had scarce ever been known in England before.” It now belongs to the Duke of Portland, and has fallen into partial decay, with trees growing in some of the deserted apartments and ivy creeping along the walls. Visitors describe it as a ghostly house, with long vaulted passages, subterranean chambers, dungeon-like holes in the towers, and mysterious spaces beneath the vaults whence come weird noises. When Mr. Jennings visited Bolsover recently he described it as like a haunted house, and after examining the apartments, in which most things seemed going to decay, he went down stairs, guided by an old woman, to the cellars and passages that are said to be the remains of the original Norman castle. A chamber with a high vaulted roof was used as a kitchen, and an ancient stone passage connected it with a crypt; beneath this, she told him, there was a church, never opened since the days of Peveril. Their voices had a hollow sound, and their footsteps awakened echoes as if from a large empty space beneath: the servants, she said, were afraid to come down where they were, excepting by twos and threes, and she added: “Many people have seen things here besides me: something bad has been done here, sir, and when they open that church below they’ll find it out. Just where you stand by that door I have several times seen a lady and gentleman only for a moment or two, for they come like a flash; when I have been sitting in the kitchen, not thinking of any such thing, they stood there the gentleman with ruffles on, the lady with a scarf round her waist; I never believed in ghosts, but I have seen them. I am used to it now, and don’t mind it, but we do not like the noises, because they disturb us. Not long ago my husband, who comes here at night, and I could not sleep at all, and we thought at last that somebody had got shut up in the castle, for some children had been here that day; so we lit a candle and went all over it, but there was nothing, only the noises following us, and keeping on worse than ever after we left the rooms, though they stopped while we were in them.” The old woman’s tale shows the atmosphere there is about this sombre and ghostly castle of Bolsover.

THE WYE AND THE DERWENT.

These two noted rivers take their rise in the Derbyshire hills, and, coming together at Rowsley near the pretty Peacock Inn, flow down to the sea through the valleys of the Wye, the Trent, and the Humber. Rising in the limestone hills to the north of Buxton, the Wye flows past that celebrated bath, where the Romans first set the example of seeking its healing waters, both hot and cold springs gushing from the rocks in close proximity. It stands nine hundred feet above the sea, its nucleus, “The Crescent,” having been built by the Duke of Devonshire; and the miraculous cures wrought by St. Mary’s Well are noted by Charles Cotton among the Wonders of the Peak. From Buxton the Wye follows a romantic glen to Bakewell, the winding valley being availed of, by frequent tunnels, viaducts, and embankments, as a route for the Midland Railway. In this romantic glen is the remarkable limestone crag known as Chee Tor, where the curving valley contracts into a narrow gorge. The gray limestone cliffs are in many places overgrown with ivy, while trees find rooting-places in their fissures. Tributary brooks fall into the Wye, all flowing through miniature dales that disclose successive beauties, and then at a point where the limestone hills recede from the river, expanding the valley, Bakewell is reached. Here are also mineral springs, but the most important place in the town is the parish church, parts of which are seven hundred years old. It is a picturesque building, cruciform, with a spire, and is rich in sepulchral remains, containing the ancestors of the Duke of Rutland who owns the town in the tombs of a long line of Vernons and Manners. In the churchyard are several curious epitaphs, among them that of John Dale and his two wives, the inscription concluding,

“A period’s come to all their toylsome lives; The good man’s quiet still are both his wives.”

In this churchyard is also the well-known epitaph often quoted:

“Beneath a sleeping infant lies, to earth whose body lent, More glorious shall hereafter rise, tho’ not more innocent. When the archangels trump shall blow, and souls to bodies join, Millions will wish their lives below had been as short as thine.”

HADDON HALL.

Three miles below Bakewell, near the Wye, is one of the most famous old mansions of England Haddon Hall. This ancient baronial home, with its series of houses, its courtyards, towers, embattled walls, and gardens, stands on the side of a hill sloping down to the Wye, while the railway has pierced a tunnel through the hill almost underneath the structure. The buildings surround two courtyards paved with large stones, and cover a space of nearly three hundred feet square. Outside the arched entrance-gate to the first courtyard is a low thatched cottage used as a porter’s lodge. Haddon is maintained, not as a residence, but to give as perfect an idea as possible of a baronial hall of the Middle Ages. To get to the entrance the visitor toils up a rather steep hill, and on the way passes two remarkable yew trees, cut to represent the crests of the two families whose union by a romantic marriage is one of the traditions of this famous place. One yew represents the peacock of Manners, the present ducal house of Rutland, and the other the boar’s head of Vernon. Parts of this house, like so many structures in the neighborhood, were built in the time of “Peveril of the Peak,” and its great hall was the “Martindale Hall” of Scott’s novel, thus coming down to us through eight centuries, and nearly all the buildings are at least four hundred years old.

Entering the gateway, the porter’s guard-room is seen on the right hand, with the ancient “peephole” through which he scanned visitors before admitting them. Mounting the steps to the first courtyard, which is on a lower level than the other, the chapel and the hall are seen on either hand, while in front are the steps leading to the state-apartments. The buildings are not lofty, but there are second-floor rooms in almost all parts, which were occupied by the household. There is an extensive ball-room, while the Eagle Tower rises at one corner of the court. Many relics of the olden time are preserved in these apartments. The ancient chapel is entered by an arched doorway from the court, and consists of a nave, chancel, and side aisle, with an antique Norman font and a large high-back pew used by the family. After passing the court, the banquet-hall is entered, thirty-five by twenty-five feet, and rising to the full height of the building. In one of the doorways is a bracket to which an iron ring is attached, which was used, as we are told, “to enforce the laws of conviviality.” When a guest failed to drink his allowance of wine he was suspended by the wrist to this ring, and the liquor he failed to pour down his throat was poured into his sleeve. A tall screen at the end of the room formed the front of a gallery, where on great occasions minstrels discoursed sweet music, while at the opposite end the lord and his honored guests sat on a raised dais. Here still stands the old table, while behind the dais a flight of stairs leads up to the state-apartments. Stags’ heads and antlers of great age are on the walls. Another door opens out of the banquet-hall into the dining-room, the end of which is entirely taken up with a fine Gothic window displaying the Vernon arms and quarterings. This room is elaborately wainscoted. The royal arms are inscribed over the fireplace, and below them is the Vernon motto carved in Gothic letters:

“Drede God and Honour the Kyng.”

An exquisite oriel window looks out from this room over the woods and grounds of Haddon, the recess bearing on one of its panels the head of Will Somers, who was Henry VIII.’s jester. The drawing-room, which is over the dining-room, is hung with old tapestry, above which is a frieze of ornamental mouldings. A pretty recessed window also gives from this room a delightful view over the grounds.

The gem of Haddon is the long gallery or ball-room, which extends over one hundred feet along one side of the inner court: the semicircular wooden steps leading to this apartment are said to have been cut from a single tree that grew in the park. The gallery is wainscoted in oak in semicircular arched panels, alternately large and small, surmounted by a frieze and a turreted and battlemented cornice. The ceiling is elaborately carved in geometric patterns, and the tracery contains the alternating arms and crests of Vernon and Manners: the remains are still visible of the rich gilding and painting of this ceiling. In the anteroom paintings are hung, and from it a strongly-barred door opens upon a flight of stone steps leading down to the terrace and garden: this is “Dorothy Vernon’s Door;” and across the garden another flight of steps leading to the terrace is known as “Dorothy Vernon’s Steps.” It was the gentle maiden’s flight through this door and up these steps to elope with John Manners that carried the old house and all its broad lands into the possession of the family now owning it. The state bedroom is hung with Gobelin tapestry, illustrating AEsop’s fables: the state bed is fourteen feet high, and furnished in green silk velvet and white satin, embroidered by needlework, and its last occupant was George IV. The kitchen and range of domestic offices are extensive, and show the marvellous amount of cooking that was carried on in the hospitable days of Haddon; the kitchen has a ceiling supported by massive beams and a solid oak column in the centre; there are two huge fireplaces, scores of stoves, spits, pothooks, and hangers, large chopping-blocks, dressers, and tables, with attendant bakehouses, ovens, pantries, and larders; among the relics is an enormous salting-trough hollowed out of one immense block of wood. Beyond the garden or lawn, one hundred and twenty feet square, extends the terrace, planted with ancient yews, whose gnarled roots intertwine with and displace the stones. This terrace extends the full width of the outer or upper garden, and gives a charming view of the southern front of the hall.

More romance hangs about Haddon than probably any other old baronial hall in England, and it has therefore been for years an endless source of inspiration for poets, artists, and novelists. Mrs. Radcliffe here laid some of the scenes of the Mysteries of Udolpho. Bennett’s “King of the Peak” was Sir George Vernon, the hospitable owner of Haddon. Scott has written of it, a host of artists have painted its most attractive features, and many a poet has sung of the

“Hall of wassail which has rung To the unquestioned baron’s jest: Dim old chapel, where were hung Offerings of the o’erfraught breast; Moss-clad terrace, strangely still, Broken shaft and crumbling frieze Still as lips that used to fill With bugle-blasts the morning breeze.”

But, unlike most baronial strongholds, the history of Haddon tells only the romance of peace, love, and hospitality. It came by marriage into the possession of the Vernons soon after the Conquest; one of them, Sir Henry Vernon of Haddon, was appointed governor of Prince Arthur by Henry VII. His grandson, Sir George Vernon, lived in such princely magnificence at Haddon that he was known as the “King of the Peak;” his initials, “G. V.,” are carved in the banquet-hall. Around his youngest daughter, Dorothy, gathers the chief halo of romance. The story in brief is, that her elder sister, being the affianced bride of the son of the Earl of Derby, was petted and made much of, while Dorothy, at sweet sixteen, was kept in the background. She formed an attachment for John Manners, son of the Earl of Rutland, but this her family violently opposed, keeping her almost a prisoner: her lover, disguised as a forester, lurked for weeks in the woods around Haddon, obtaining occasionally a stolen interview. At length on a festal night, when the ball-room was filled with guests summoned to celebrate the approaching nuptials of the elder sister, and every one was so wrapped up in enjoyment that there was no time to watch Dorothy, the maiden, unobserved, stole out of the ball-room into the anteroom, and through the door, across the garden, and up the steps to the terrace, where her lover had made a signal that he was waiting. In a moment she was in his arms, and rode away with him in the moonlight all night, across the hills of Derbyshire, and into Leicestershire, where they were married next morning. It was the old story an elopement, a grand row, and then all was forgiven. Sir George Vernon had no sons, and his daughters divided his estate, Haddon going to Dorothy, who thus by her elopement carried the famous hall over to the family of Manners. Dorothy died in 1584, leaving four children, the oldest, Sir George Manners, living at Haddon and maintaining its hospitable reputation. Dying in 1679, his son John Manners, who was the ninth Earl of Rutland, became the master of Haddon, and “kept up the good old mansion at a bountiful rate,” as the chronicler tells us. He kept one hundred and forty servants, and had so many retainers and guests that every day the tables in the old banquet-hall were spread as at a Christmas feast. The earl was raised to the rank of duke, and his son John, Duke of Rutland, known as the “Old Man of the Hill,” died in 1779, since which time the family have not used the hall as a place of residence, having gone to Belvoir in Leicestershire. Its present owner is the sixth Duke of Rutland, Charles Cecil Manners, and the descendant of the famous Dorothy. There are few places, even in England, that have the fame of Haddon, and it is one of the chief spots sought out by the tourist. The duke maintains it just as it existed centuries ago, with the old furniture and utensils, so as to reproduce as faithfully as possible the English baronial hall of his ancestors.

CHATSWORTH.

Below Haddon Hall the valley of the Wye broadens, with yet richer scenery, as it approaches the confluence of the Wye and Derwent at Rowsley, where the quaint old Peacock Inn, which was the manor-house of Haddon, bears over the door the date 1653, and the crest of the ducal House of Rutland, a peacock with tail displayed. Ascending for a short distance the valley of the Derwent, which washes the bases of the steep limestone hills, we come to Chatsworth. In sharp contrast with the ancient glories of Haddon is this modern ducal palace, for whose magnificence Bess of Hardwicke laid the foundation. This “Palace of the Peak” stands in a park covering over two thousand acres; the Derwent flows in front, over which the road to the palace is carried by a fine bridge. From the river a lawn gently slopes upward to the buildings, and the wooded hill which rises sharply behind them is surmounted by a hunting-tower, embosomed in trees. A herd of at least a thousand deer roam at will over the park, and have become very tame. Chatsworth is a brownish-yellow building, square and flat-topped, with a modern and more ornamental wing. Its front extends fully six hundred feet, and in parts it is of that depth. The estate was bought in the sixteenth century by Sir William Cavendish, who built the original house, a quadrangular building with turrets, which was greatly extended by his wife. It was used as a fortress in the Civil Wars, and was considerably battered. The first Duke of Devonshire about the year 1700 rebuilt the mansion, employing the chief architects, artists, designers, and wood-carvers of his time, among them Sir Christopher Wren. In the grounds, not far from the bridge over the Derwent, is the “Bower of Mary Queen of Scots.” There is a small, clear lake almost concealed by foliage, in the centre of which is a tower, and on the top a grass-grown garden, where are also several fine trees. Here, under guard, the captive was permitted to take the air. In those days she looked out upon a broad expanse of woods and moorland: now all around has been converted into gardens and a park. Entering the house through a magnificent gateway, the visitor is taken into the entrance-hall, where the frescoes represent the life and death of Julius Cæsar; then up the grand staircase of amethyst and variegated alabaster guarded by richly-gilded balustrades. The gorgeously-embellished chapel is wainscoted with cedar, and has a sculptured altar made of Derbyshire marbles. The beautiful drawing-room opens into a series of state-apartments lined with choice woods and hung with Gobelin tapestries representing the cartoons of Raphael. Magnificent carvings and rare paintings adorn the walls, while the richest decorations are everywhere displayed. Over the door of the antechamber is a quill pen so finely carved that it almost reproduces the real feather. In the Scarlet Room are the bed on which George II. died and the chairs and footstools used at the coronation of George III. On the north side of the house is another stairway of oak, also richly gilded. In the apartments replacing those where Mary Queen of Scots lived are her bed-hangings and tapestries. There is an extensive library with many rare books and manuscripts, and a sculpture-gallery, lined with Devonshire marble, containing many statues and busts, and also two recumbent lions, each nine feet long and four feet high and weighing four tons, and carved out of a solid block of marble. The final enlargement of Chatsworth was completed about forty years ago, when Queen Victoria made a state visit and was given a magnificent reception by the Duke of Devonshire.

The gardens at Chatsworth are as noted as the house, and are to many minds the gem of the estate. They cover about one hundred and twenty-two acres, and are so arranged as to make a beautiful view out of every window of the palace. All things are provided that can add to rural beauty fountains, cascades, running streams, lakes, rockeries, orange-groves, hothouses, woods, sylvan dells and no labor or expense is spared to enhance the attractions of trees, flowers, and shrubbery. From a stone temple, which it completely covers, the great cascade flows down among dolphins, sea-lions, and nymphs, until it disappears among the rocks and seeks an underground outlet into the Derwent. Enormous stones weighing several tons are nicely balanced, so as to rock at the touch or swing open for gates. Others overhang the paths as if a gust of wind might blow them down. In honor of the visit of the Czar Nicholas in 1844 the great “Emperor Fountain” was constructed, which throws a column of water to an immense height. The grounds are filled with trees planted by kings, queens, and great people on their visits to the palace. The finest of all the trees is a noble Spanish chestnut of sixteen feet girth. Weeping willows do not grow at Chatsworth, but they have provided one in the form of a metal tree, contrived so as to discharge a deluge of raindrops from its metallic leaves and boughs when a secret spring is touched. The glory of the Chatsworth gardens, however, is the conservatory, a beautiful structure of glass and iron covering nearly an acre, the arched roof in the centre rising to a height of sixty-seven feet. In this famous hot-house are the rarest palms and tropical plants. It was designed by Joseph Paxton, the duke’s head-gardener, and, enlarging the design, Paxton constructed in the same way the London Crystal Palace for the Exhibition of 1851, for which service he was knighted. Besides this rare collection of hot-house plants, the famous Victoria Regia is in a special house at Chatsworth, growing in a tank thirty-four feet in diameter, the water being maintained at the proper temperature and kept constantly in motion as a running stream. The seed for this celebrated plant was brought from Guiana, and it first bloomed here in 1849. Some fifty persons are employed in the gardens and grounds, besides the servants in the buildings, showing the retinue necessary to maintain this great show-palace, for that is its chief present use, the Duke of Devonshire seldom using it as a residence, as he prefers the less pretentious but more comfortable seat he possesses at Bolton in Yorkshire. North of Chatsworth Park, near Baslow, on top of a hill, is the strange mass of limestone which can be seen from afar, and is known as the Eagle Rock.

MATLOCK AND DOVEDALE.

Retracing the Derwent to the Wye again, the valley of the latter is open below for several miles, and then as Matlock is approached a mass of limestone stretching across the valley seems to bar all egress, and the river plunges through a narrow glen. The bold gray crags of the High Tor rise steeply on the left hand, and the gorge not being wide enough for both river and railway, the latter pierces a tunnel through the High Tor. The river bends sharply to the right, and the village makes a long street along the bank and rises in terraces up the steep hill behind. These are the “Heights of Abraham,” while the pretty slope below the High Tor is the “Lovers’ Walk.” Matlock is beautifully situated, and its springs are in repute, while the caves in the neighborhood give plenty of opportunity for that kind of exploration. The Derbyshire marbles are quarried all about, and mosaic manufacture is carried on. It was near Matlock that Arkwright first set up his cotton-spinning machine, and when fortune and fame had made him Sir Richard Arkwright he built Willersley Castle for his home, on the banks of the Derwent. The valley of the little river Dove also presents some fine scenery, especially in the fantastic shapes of its rocks. The river runs between steep hills fringed with ash and oak and hawthorn, and Dovedale can be pursued for miles with interest. One of its famous resorts is the old and comfortable Izaak Walton Inn, sacred to anglers. In Dovedale are the rocks called the Twelve Apostles, the Tissington Spires, the Pickering Tor, the caverns known as the Dove Holes, and Reynard’s Hall, while the entire stream is full of memories of those celebrated fishermen of two centuries ago, Walton and his friend Cotton.

BEAUCHIEF ABBEY.

Before leaving Derbyshire the ruin of Beauchief Abbey, which gave the name of Abbey Dale to one of the pleasant vales on the eastern border of the county, must not be forgotten. It was built seven hundred years ago, and there remains but a single fragment of this famous religious house, the arch of the great east window. Singularly enough, under the same roof with the abbey was built an inn, and at a short distance there is a hermitage: the hermit’s cave is scooped out of a rock elevated above the valley and overhung with foliage. We are told that a pious baker lived in the town of Derby who was noted for his exemplary life: the Virgin Mary, as a proof of his faith, required him to relinquish all his worldly goods and go to Deepdale and lead a solitary life in Christ’s service. He did as he was told, departed from Derby, but had no idea where he was to go; directing his footsteps towards the east, he passed through a village, and heard a woman instruct a girl to drive some calves to Deepdale. Regarding this as an interposition of Providence, the baker, encouraged, asked where was Deepdale; the woman told the girl to show him. Arrived there, he found it marshy land, distant from any human habitation; but, seeking a rising ground, he cut a small dwelling in a rock under the side of a hill, built an altar, and there spent day and night in the Divine service, with hunger and cold, thirst and want. Now, it happened that a person of great consequence owned this land Ralph, the son of Geremund and coming to the woods to hunt, he saw smoke rising from the hermit’s cave, and was filled with astonishment that any one should have dared to establish a dwelling there without his permission. Going to the place, he found the hermit clothed in old rags and skins, and, inquiring about his case, Ralph’s anger changed to pity. To show his compassion, he granted the hermit the ground where the hermitage stood, and also for his support the tithe of a mill not far away. The tradition further relates “that the old Enemy of the human race” then endeavored to make the hermit dissatisfied with his condition, but “he resolutely endured all its calamities,” and ultimately he built a cottage and oratory, and ended his days in the service of God. After his death, Ralph’s daughter prevailed upon her husband to dedicate Deepdale to religious uses, and he inviting the canons, they built the abbey. We are told in Howitt’s Forest Minstrel of the wonder caused by the construction of the abbey, and also how in later years the monks became corrupted by prosperity. A place is shown to visitors where the wall between the chapel and the inn gave way to the thirsty zeal of the monks, and through an opening their favorite liquor was handed. The Forest Minstrel tells us they

“Forsook missal and mass To chant o’er a bottle or shrive a lass; No matin’s bell called them up in the morn, But the yell of the hounds and sound of the horn; No penance the monk in his cell could stay But a broken leg or a rainy day: The pilgrim that came to the abbey-door, With the feet of the fallow-deer found it nailed o’er; The pilgrim that into the kitchen was led. On Sir Gilbert’s venison there was fed. And saw skins and antlers hang o’er his head.”

STAFFORD AND TRENTHAM.

The rivers which drain the limestone hills of Derbyshire unite to form the Trent, and this stream, after a winding and picturesque course through Midland England towards the eastward, flows into the Humber, and ultimately into the North Sea. Its first course after leaving Derby is through Staffordshire, one of the great manufacturing counties of England, celebrated for its potteries, whose product Josiah Wedgewood so greatly improved. The county-seat is Stafford, on the Sow River, not far from the Trent Valley, and on a high hill south-west of the town are the remains of the castle of the Barons, of Stafford, originally built a thousand years ago by the Saxons to keep the Danes in check. This castle was destroyed and rebuilt by William the Conqueror; again destroyed and again rebuilt by Ralph de Stafford in Edward III.’s reign. In the Civil Wars this castle was one of the last strongholds of King Charles I., but it was ultimately taken by Cromwell’s troops and demolished, excepting the keep; a massive castellated building of modern construction now occupies its place. The river Trent, in its winding course, forms near Trentham a fine lake, and the beautiful neighborhood has been availed of for the establishment of the splendid residence of the Duke of Sutherland, about a mile west of the village, and known as Trentham Hall. The park is extensive, the gardens are laid out around the lake, and the noble Italian building, which is of recent construction, has a fine campanile tower one hundred feet high, and occupies a superb situation. The old church makes part of Trentham Hall, and contains monuments of the duke’s family and ancestors, the Leveson-Gowers, whose extensive estates cover a wide domain in Staffordshire. Trentham, which is in the pottery district and not far from Newcastle-under-Lyme, was originally a monastery, founded by St. Werburgh, niece of AEthelred. She was one of the most famous of the Anglo-Saxon saints, and some venerable yews still mark the spot where her original house stood, it being known as Tricengham. These yews, said to have been planted about that time, form three sides of a square. The religious house, rebuilt in William Rufus’s reign, was given, at the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., to his brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and it afterwards came into possession of the Levesons. From the marriage of a daughter of Sir John Leveson with Sir Thomas Gower sprang the family of the present ducal house of Sutherland, the head of it being created Marquis of Stafford in 1786 and Duke of Sutherland in 1833. The present duke is the third who has held the title, his mother having been the daughter of the Earl of Carlisle the famous Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland. The old Trentham Hall was built in 1633, being rebuilt and enlarged by Sir Charles Barry about fifty years ago.

TAMWORTH AND TUTBURY.

Staffordshire contains some famous places. In the eastern part of the county, bordering Warwick, is the ancient town of Tamworth, standing upon the little river Tame; this was originally a fortification built for defence against the Danes, and its castle was founded by Marmion, of whom Scott writes,

“They hailed Lord Marmion, They hailed him Lord of Fontenaye, Of Lutterward and Scrivelbaye, Of Tamworth tower and town.”

Tamworth is also Shakespearian ground, for here Richmond halted on his march to Bosworth Field, and made a stirring address to inspire his forces for the coming combat. In later years Tamworth sent Sir Robert Peel to Parliament, and his bronze statue adorns the market-square; the ruins of the ancient castle are almost obliterated, and the present castle is upon higher ground, its architecture being of various periods. Tutbury Castle, of which little is left but a straggling mass of ruins, stands on an eminence overlooking the Dove, and crowns a ridge of red sandstone rock: it was a great stronghold, founded by John of Gaunt, covering several acres, and was demolished after the Civil Wars. This castle, like so many other famous places, was also one of the prison-palaces of Mary Queen of Scots; although the castle is destroyed, yet near by is its parish church of St. Mary, founded by Henry de Ferrars in the reign of William Rufus, and known then as Ferrars Abbey: its west end is one of the most perfect Norman fronts remaining in England, and it has been carefully restored. Tutbury is known for some of its ancient customs, among them the annual bull-running. A minstrel band, after devotions and a long sermon in the abbey, had an excellent dinner in the castle, and then repairing to the abbey-gate demanded the bull; the prior let the bull out, with his horns and tail cut off, his ears cropped, his body greased, and his nostrils filled with pepper to make him furious. The bull being let loose, the steward proclaimed that none were to come nearer than forty feet, nor to hinder the minstrels, but all were to attend to their own safety. The minstrels were to capture the bull before sunset, and on that side of the river, but if they failed or he escaped across the stream, he remained the lord’s property. It was seldom possible to take him fairly, but if he was held long enough to cut off some of his hair it was considered a capture, and after a bull-baiting he was given to the minstrels. Thus originated the Tutbury bull-running, which ultimately degenerated into a scene of wild debauchery, often resulting in a terrible riot. The Duke of Devonshire, when he came into possession of Tutbury, was compelled to abolish the custom. About six miles from Stafford is Chartley Castle, dating from the Conquest, and belonging to the Earls of Chester and Derby, and subsequently to the famous Earl of Essex, who here entertained Queen Elizabeth, and afterwards planned the plot for which she signed his death-warrant. This castle has been many years in ruins: it had a circular keep about fifty feet in diameter, and the present remains are chiefly the fragments of two round towers and part of a wall twelve feet thick, with loopholes constructed for shooting arrows at an attacking force. Queen Mary was also imprisoned here, and a bed said to have been wrought by her is shown in the village. This unfortunate queen seems to have had more prisons and wrought more needlework than any other woman in Britain.

ALTON TOWERS.

Alton Towers, the superb home of the Earl of Shrewsbury, is also in Staffordshire, and is one of the famous seats of England. The estate stands on the Churnet, and the house and grounds are on one side of its deep valley. The present mansion, a modern Gothic structure, was built about fifty years ago on a rocky plateau overlooking the valley. An extensive park surrounds the mansion, and there are several entrances. Of these Quicksall Lodge ushers the visitor to a magnificent approach known as the “Earl’s Drive,” extending three miles along the valley of the Churnet, and having its natural advantages increased by the profuse distribution along the route of statues, busts, and ornamental vases. Another entrance is from the railway-station, where is a lodge of great beauty, from which the road, about a mile in length, gradually ascends to the eminence where the mansion stands. The approach by both roads is fine, and through the intervening foliage the Towers open upon the view rich in spire, dome, and gable, and with their fair proportions enhanced by the arcades that adorn the house and the antique stone setting that brings out the majesty of the Gothic architecture. The gardens of this fine place are beautiful, their extent being made apparently greater than in reality by the artificially-formed terraces and other resources of the landscape artist. The grounds are most lavishly ornamented with statuary, vases, temples, and fountains, while gardening is carried to perfection. There is a grand conservatory, containing a palm-house and orangery. From the top of an elaborate Gothic temple four stories high there is a fine view, while the Flag Tower, a massive building with four turrets, and six stories high, is used as an observatory. There is a delightful retreat for the weary sightseer called the Refuge, a fine imitation of Stonehenge, and Ina’s Rock, where Ina, king of Wessex, held a parliament after his battle with the king of Mercia. The picturesque ruins of Alton Castle and convent are in the grounds, also the ruins of Croxden Abbey and the charming Alton Church, which was of Norman foundation. The castle existed at the time of the Conquest, and the domain in 1408, through the marriage of Maude Neville to John Talbot, was brought into the possession of the present family. Talbot having been afterwards made the first Earl of Shrewsbury. This was the famous English warrior who was so feared in France, where he conducted brilliant campaigns, that “with his name the mothers stilled their babes.” He was killed at the siege of Chatillon in his eightieth year. It was the sixth Earl of Shrewsbury who married Bess of Hardwicke and made her fourth husband. It was the fifteenth Earl of Shrewsbury who erected the present magnificent structure, with its varied turrets and battlements, for his summer residence, where before stood a plain house known as Alton Lodge. Upon his tomb, in memory of the wonderful change he wrought in the place, is the significant motto: “He made the desert smile.” The nineteenth earl is now in possession.

SHREWSBURY.

Westward of Stafford is the land of the “proud Salopians,” Shropshire, through which flows the Severn, on whose banks stands the ancient town from which the Earls of Shrewsbury take their title. We are told that the Britons founded this town, and that in Edward the Confessor’s time it had five churches and two hundred and thirty houses, fifty-one of which were cleared away to make room for the castle erected by Roger de Montgomery, a kinsman of William the Conqueror. The Norman king created him Earl of Shrewsbury long before the present line of earls began with John Talbot. Wars raged around the castle: it was besieged and battered, for it stood an outpost in the borderland of Wales. It was here that Henry IV. assembled an army to march against Glendower, and in the following year fought the battle of Shrewsbury against Hotspur, then marching to join Glendower. Hotspur’s death decided the battle. The Wars of the Roses were fought around the town, and here Henry VII., then the Earl of Richmond, slept when going to Bosworth Field; and in the Civil Wars King Charles had Shrewsbury’s support, but Cromwell’s forces captured it. The town is on a fine peninsula almost encircled by the Severn, and the castle stands at the entrance to the peninsula. Only the square keep and part of the inner walls remain of the original castle, but a fine turret has been added by modern hands. In the neighborhood of Shrewsbury are the remains of the Roman city of Uriconium, said to have been destroyed by the Saxons in the sixth century. Shrewsbury has always been famous for pageants, its annual show being a grand display by the trade societies. It is also famous for its cakes, of which Shenstone says:

“And here each season do those cakes abide, Whose honored names the inventive city own, Rendering through Britain’s isle Salopia’s praises known.”

The great Shrewsbury cake is the “simnel,” made like a pie, the crust colored with saffron and very thick. It is a confection said to be unsafe when eaten to excess, for an old gentleman, writing from melancholy experience in 1595, records that “sodden bread which bee called simnels bee verie unwholesome.” The Shropshire legend about its origin is that a happy couple got into a dispute whether they should have for dinner a boiled pudding or a baked pie. While they disputed they got hungry, and came to a compromise by first boiling and then baking the dish that was prepared. To the grand result of the double process his name being Simon and her’s Nell the combined name of simnel was given. And thus from their happily-settled contention has come Shrewsbury’s great cake, of which all England acknowledges the merit.

BRIDGENORTH AND WENLOCK ABBEY.

BRIDGENORTH.

1. From near Oldbur. Keep of the Castle.

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Following down the Severn River from Shrewsbury, we come to Bridgenorth, an ancient town planted on a steep hill, full of quaint houses, and having an old covered market where the country-people gather on Saturdays. The lower part is of brick, and the upper part is black-and-white-timbered, but the human love for what is old and familiar is shown by the way in which the people still fill up the old market-house, though a fine new one has recently been built. The most prized of the old houses of this venerable town is a foundry and blacksmith shop standing by the river; it was in this house that Bishop Percy, author of the Reliques, was born. On the promontory of sandstone, which steeply rises about one hundred and eighty feet above the river, the upper part of the town is built, and here are the ruins of Bridgenorth Castle, which stood in an exceptionally strong situation. The red sandstone predominates here, but not much of it remains in the castle, there being little left excepting a huge fragment of the massive wall of the keep, which now inclines so much on one side from the settlement of the foundation as to be almost unsafe. This castle was built eight hundred years ago by the third and last of the Norman Earls of Shrewsbury: it was held for King Charles in the Civil Wars, and underwent a month’s siege before it surrendered, when the conquerors destroyed it. Bridgenorth is the most picturesque of all the towns on the Severn, owing to the steep promontory up which the houses extend from the lower to the upper town and the magnificent views from the castle. The communication with the hill is by a series of steeply-winding alleys, each being almost a continuous stairway: they are known as the “Steps.” A bridge with projecting bastions crosses the river and connects the higher with the lower parts of the town, thus giving the place its name.

About twelve miles south-east of Shrewsbury is the village of Much Wenlock, where there are remains of a magnificent abbey founded by the Black monks, and exhibiting several of the Early English and Gothic styles of architecture, but, like most else in these parts, it has fallen in ruin, and many of the materials have been carried off to build other houses. Portions of the nave, transepts, chapter-house, and abbot’s house remain, the latter being restored and making a fine specimen of ecclesiastical domestic architecture built around a court. An open cloister extends the entire length of the house. There are beautiful intersecting Norman arches in the chapter-house. There are some quaint old houses in the town timbered structures with bold bow-windows and not a few of them of great age. Roger de Montgomery is credited with founding Wenlock Abbey at the time of the Norman Conquest. The site was previously occupied by a nunnery, said to have been the burial-place of St. Milburgh, who was the granddaughter of King Penda of Mercia. This was a famous religious house in its day, and it makes a picturesque ruin, while the beauty of the neighboring scenery shows how careful the recluses and religious men of old were to cast their lots and build their abbeys in pleasant places.

LUDLOW CASTLE.

The most important of all the castles in the middle marches of Wales was Ludlow, whose grand ruins, mouldered into beauty, stand upon the river Tame, near the western border of Shropshire. It was here that the lord president of the Council of Wales held his court. Its ruins, though abandoned, have not fallen into complete decay, so that it gives a fine representation of the ancient feudal border stronghold: it is of great size, with long stretches of walls and towers, interspersed with thick masses of foliage and stately trees, while beneath is the dark rock on which it is founded. It was built shortly after the Conquest by Roger de Montgomery, and after being held by the Norman Earls of Shrewsbury it was fortified by Henry I.: then Joyce de Dinan held it, and confined Hugh de Mortimer as prisoner in one of the towers, still known as Mortimer’s Tower. Edward IV. established it as the place of residence for the lord president of the Council that governed Wales: here the youthful King Edward V. was proclaimed, soon to mysteriously disappear. From Ludlow Castle, Wales was governed for more than three centuries, and in Queen Elizabeth’s time many important additions were made to it. The young Philip Sidney lived here, his father being the lord president; the stone bridge, replacing the drawbridge, and the great portal were built at that time. In 1634, Milton’s “Masque of Comus” was represented here while Earl Bridgewater was lord president, one of the scenes being the castle and town of Ludlow: this representation was part of the festivities attending the earl’s installation on Michaelmas Night. It was in Ludlow Castle that Butler wrote part of Hudibras. The castle was held for King Charles, but was delivered up to the Parliamentary forces in 1646. The present exterior of the castle denotes its former magnificence. The foundations are built into a dark gray rock, and the castle rises from the point of a headland, the northern front consisting of square towers with high, connecting embattled walls. In the last century trees were planted on the rock and in the deep and wide ditch that guarded the castle. The chief entrance is by a gateway under a low, pointed arch which bears the arms of Queen Elizabeth and of Earl Pembroke. There are several acres enclosed, and the keep is an immense square tower of the Early Norman, one hundred and ten feet high and ivy-mantled to the top. On its ground floor is the dungeon, half underground, with square openings in the floor connecting with the apartment above. The great hall is now without roof or floor, and a tower at the west end is called Prince Arthur’s Tower, while there are also remains of the old chapel. The ruins have an imposing aspect, the towers being richly clustered around the keep. This famous castle is now the property of Earl Powis.

The town of Ludlow adjoins the castle, and on approaching it the visitor is struck by the fine appearance of the tower of the church of St. Lawrence. The church is said to be the finest in Shropshire, and this tower was built in the time of Edward IV. Its chantry is six hundred years old, and belonged to the Palmers’ guild. Their ordinances are still preserved, one of which is to the effect that “if any man wishes, as is the custom, to keep night-watches with the dead, this may be allowed, provided that he does not call up ghosts.” The town is filled with timber-ribbed, pargetted houses, one of the most striking of these being the old Feathers Inn. The exterior is rich in various devices, including the feathers of the Prince of Wales, adopted as the sign perhaps in the days of Prince Arthur, when the inn was built. Many of the rooms are panelled with carved oak and have quaintly moulded ceilings. It is not often that the modern tourist has a chance to rest under such a venerable roof, for it is still a comfortable hostelrie. The ancient priory of Austin Friars was at Ludlow, but is obliterated.

In the neighborhood of Ludlow are many attractive spots. From the summit of the Vignals, about four miles away, there is a superb view over the hills of Wales to the south and west, and the land of Shropshire to the northward. Looking towards Ludlow, immediately at the foot of the hill is seen the wooded valley of Hay Park: it was here that the children of the Earl of Bridgewater were lost, an event that gave Milton occasion to write the “Masque of Comus,” and locate its scenes at and in the neighborhood of Ludlow. Richard’s Castle is at the southern end of this wood, but there is not much of the old ruin left in the deep dingle. At Downton Castle the romantic walks in the gardens abound in an almost endless variety of ferns. Staunton Lacey Church, containing Romanesque work, and supposed to be older than the Conquest, is also near Ludlow. But the grand old castle and its quaint and venerated Feathers Inn are the great attractions before which all others pale. What an amazing tale of revelry, pageant, and intrigue they could tell were only the old walls endowed with voice!

LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL.

We are told that in Central Staffordshire churches with spires are rare. The region of the Trent abounds in low and simple rather than lofty church-towers, but to this rule the cathedral city of Lichfield is an exception, having five steeples, of which three beautiful spires often called the “Ladies of the Vale” adorn the cathedral itself. The town stands in a fertile and gently undulating district without ambitious scenery, and the cathedral, which is three hundred and seventy-five feet long and its spires two hundred and fifty-eight feet high, is its great and almost only glory. It is an ancient place, dating from the days of the Romans and the Saxons, when the former slaughtered without mercy a band of the early Christian martyrs near the present site of the town, whence it derives its name, meaning the “Field of the Dead.” This massacre took place in the fourth century, and in memory of it the city bears as its arms “an escutcheon of landscape, with many martyrs in it in several ways massacred.” In the seventh century a church was built there, and the hermit St. Chad became its bishop. His cell was near the present site of Stowe, where there was a spring of clear water rising in the heart of a forest, and out of the woods there daily came a snow-white doe to supply him with milk. The legend tells that the nightingales singing in the trees distracted the hermit’s prayers, so he besought that he might be relieved from this trial; and since that time the nightingales in the woods of Stowe have remained mute. After death the hermit-bishop was canonized and Lichfield flourished, at least one of his successors being an archbishop. St. Chad’s Well is still pointed out at Stowe, but his Lichfield church long ago disappeared. A Norman church succeeded it in the eleventh century, and has also been removed, though some of its foundations remain under the present cathedral choir. About the year 1200 the first parts of the present cathedral were built, and it was over a hundred years in building. Its architecture is Early English and Decorated, the distinguishing features being the three spires, the beautiful western front, and the Lady Chapel. The latter terminates in a polygonal apse of unique arrangement, and the red sandstone of which the cathedral is built gives a warm and effective coloring. Some of the ancient bishops of Lichfield were fighting men, and at times their cathedral was made into a castle surrounded by walls and a moat, and occasionally besieged. The Puritans grievously battered it, and knocked down the central spire. The cathedral was afterwards rebuilt by Christopher Wren, and the work of restoration is at present going on. As all the old stained glass was knocked out of the windows during the Civil Wars, several of them have been refilled with fine glass from the abbey at Liege. Most of the ancient monuments were also destroyed during the sieges, but many fine tombs of more modern construction replace them, among them being the famous tomb by Chantrey of the “Sleeping Children.” The ancient chroniclers tell bad stories of the treatment this famous church received during the Civil Wars. When the spire was knocked down, crushing the roof, a marksman in the church shot Lord Brooke, the leader of the Parliamentary besiegers, through his helmet, of which the visor was up, and he fell dead. The marksman was a deaf and dumb man, and the event happened on St. Chad’s Day, March 2d. The loss of their leader redoubled the ardor of the besiegers; they set a battery at work and forced a surrender in three days. Then we are told that they demolished monuments, pulled down carvings, smashed the windows, destroyed the records, set up guard-houses in the cross-aisles, broke up the pavement, every day hunted a cat through the church, so as to enjoy the echo from the vaulted roof, and baptized a calf at the font. The Royalists, however, soon retook Lichfield, and gave King Charles a reception after the battle of Naseby, but it finally surrendered to Cromwell in 1646. Until the Restoration of Charles II. the cathedral lay in ruins, even the lead having been removed from the roof. In 1661, Bishop Hacket was consecrated, and for eight years he steadily worked at rebuilding, having so far advanced in 1669 that the cathedral was reconsecrated with great ceremony. His last work was to order the bells, three of which were hung in time to toll at his funeral; his tomb is in the south aisle of the choir.

Lichfield has five steeples grouped together in most views of the town from the Vale of Trent, the other two steeples belonging to St. Mary’s and St. Michael’s churches; the churchyard of the latter is probably the largest in England, covering seven acres, through which an avenue of stately elms leads up to the church. The town has not much else in the way of buildings that is remarkable. In a plain house at a corner of the market-place, where lived one Michael Johnson, a bookseller, Dr. Samuel Johnson, his son, was born in 1709. and in the adjacent market-place is Dr. Johnson’s statue upon a pedestal adorned with bas-reliefs: one of these represents the “infant Samuel” sitting on his father’s shoulder to imbibe Tory principles from Dr. Sacheverel’s sermons: another, the boy carried by his schoolfellows: and a third displays him undergoing a penance for youthful disobedience by standing up for an hour bareheaded in the rain. The “Three Crowns Inn” is also in the market-place, where in 1776 Boswell and Johnson stayed, and, as Boswell writes, “had a comfortable supper and got into high spirits,” when Johnson “expatiated in praise of Lichfield and its inhabitants, who, he said, were the most sober, decent people in England, were the genteelest in proportion to their wealth, and spoke the purest English.” David Garrick went to school to Dr. Johnson in the suburbs of Lichfield, at Edial; Addison lived once at Lichfield; and Selwyn was its bishop a few years ago, and is buried in the Cathedral close; but the chief memories of the ancient town cluster around St. Chad, Johnson, and Garrick.

LADY GODIVA OF COVENTRY.

The “three spires” which have so much to do with the fame of Lichfield are reproduced in the less pretentious but equally famous town of Coventry, not far away in Warwickshire, but they do not all belong to the same church. The Coventry Cathedral was long ago swept away, but the town still has three churches of much interest, and is rich in the old brick-and-timbered architecture of two and three centuries ago. But the boast of Coventry is Lady Godiva, wife of the Earl of Mercia, who died in 1057. The townsfolk suffered under heavy taxes and services, and she besought her lord to relieve them. After steady refusals he finally consented, but under a condition which he was sure Lady Godiva would not accept, which was none other than that she should ride naked from one end of the town to the other. To his astonishment she consented, and, as Dugdale informs us, “The noble lady upon an appointed day got on horseback naked, with her hair loose, so that it covered all her body but the legs, and then performing her journey, she returned with joy to her husband, who thereupon granted the inhabitants a charter of freedom.” The inhabitants deserted the streets and barred all the windows, so that no one could see her, but, as there are exceptions to all rules, Tennyson writes that

“One low churl, composed of thankless earth, The fatal byword of all years to come, Boring a little auger-hole, in fear Peeped; but his eyes, before they had their will, Were shrivelled into darkness in his head, And drop: before him. So the Powers who wait On noble deeds cancelled a sense misused; And she, that knew not, passed.”

Thus has “Peeping Tom of Coventry” passed into a byword, and his statue stands in a niche on the front of a house on the High Street, as if leaning out of a window an ancient and battered effigy for all the world to see. Like all other things that come down to us by tradition, this legend is doubted, but in Coventry there are sincere believers, and “Lady Godiva’s Procession” used to be an annual display, closing with a fair: this ceremony was opened by religious services, after which the procession started, the troops and city authorities, with music and banners, escorting Lady Godiva, a woman made up for the occasion in gauzy tights and riding a cream-colored horse; representatives of the trades and civic societies followed her. This pageant has fallen into disuse.

In this ancient city of Coventry there are some interesting memorials of the past the venerable gateway, the old St. Mary’s Hall, with its protruding gable fronting on the street, coming down to us from the fourteenth century, and many other quaint brick and half-timbered and strongly-constructed houses that link the dim past with the active present. Its three spires surmount St. Michael’s, Trinity, and Christ churches, and while all are fine, the first is the best, being regarded as one of the most beautiful spires in England. The ancient stone pulpit of Trinity Church, constructed in the form of a balcony of open stone-work, is also much admired. St. Michael’s Church, which dates from the fourteenth century, is large enough to be a cathedral, and its steeple is said to have been the first constructed. This beautiful and remarkably slender spire rises three hundred and three feet, its lowest stage being an octagonal lantern supported by flying buttresses. The supporting tower has been elaborately decorated, but much of the sculpture has fallen into decay, being made of the rich but friable red sandstone of this part of the country; the interior of the church has recently been restored. The Coventry workhouse is located in an old monastery, where a part of the cloisters remain, with the dormitory above; in it is an oriel window where Queen Elizabeth on visiting the town is reputed to have stood and answered a reception address in rhyme from the “Men of Coventrie” with some doggerel of equal merit, and concluding with the words, “Good Lord, what fools ye be!” The good Queen Bess, we are told, liked to visit Coventry to see bull-baiting. As we have said, Coventry formerly had a cathedral and a castle, but both have been swept away; it was an important stronghold after the Norman Conquest, when the Earls of Chester were lords of the place. In the fourteenth century it was fortified with walls of great height and thickness, three miles in circuit and strengthened by thirty-two towers, each of the twelve gates being defended by a portcullis. A parliament was held at Coventry by Henry VI., and Henry VII. was heartily welcomed there after Bosworth Field; while the town was also a favorite residence of Edward the Black Prince. Among the many places of captivity for Mary Queen of Scots Coventry also figures; the walls were mostly knocked down during the Civil Wars, and now only some fragments, with one of the old gates, remain. In later years it has been chiefly celebrated in the peaceful arts in the manufacture of silks and ribbons and the dyeing of broad-cloth in “Coventry true blue;” at present it is the “Coventry bicycle” that makes Lady Godiva’s ancient city famous, and provides amusement for youth who are able to balance their bodies possibly at the expense of their minds.

BELVOIR CASTLE.

In describing the ancient baronial mansion, Haddon Hall, it was mentioned that the Dukes of Rutland had abandoned it as their residence about a hundred years ago and gone to Belvoir in Leicestershire. Belvoir (pronounced Beever) Castle stands on the eastern border of Leicestershire, in a magnificent situation on a high wooded hill, and gets its name from the beautiful view its occupants enjoy over a wide expanse of country. In ancient times it was a priory, and it has been a castle since the Norman Conquest. Many of the large estates attached to Belvoir have come down by uninterrupted succession from that time to the present Duke of Rutland. The castle itself, however, after the Conquest belonged to the Earl of Chester, and afterwards to the family of Lord Ros. In the sixteenth century, by a fortunate marriage, the castle passed into the Manners family. Thomas Manners was created by Henry VIII. the first Earl of Rutland, and he restored the castle, which had for some time been in ruins. His son enlarged it, making a noble residence. The sixth Earl of Rutland had two sons, we are told, who were murdered by witchcraft at Belvoir through the sorcery of three female servants in revenge for their dismissal. The three “witches” were tried and committed to Lincoln jail. They were a mother and two daughters, and the mother before going to the jail wished the bread and butter she ate might choke her if guilty. Sure enough, the chronicler tells us, she died on the way to jail, and the two daughters, afterwards confessing their guilt, were executed March 11, 1618. The seventh Earl of Rutland received Charles I. at Belvoir, and in the wars that followed the castle was besieged and ruined. After the Restoration it was rebuilt, and in finer style. The Dukes of Rutland began to adapt it more and more as a family residence, and, after abandoning Haddon Hall, Belvoir was greatly altered and made a princely mansion. It consists of a quadrangular court, around which are castellated buildings, with towers surmounting them, and occupying almost the entire summit of the hill. Here the duke can look out over no less than twenty-two of his manors in the neighboring valleys. The interior is sumptuously furnished, and has a collection of valuable paintings. A large part of the ancient castle was burnt in 1816. The Staunton Tower, however, still exists. It is the stronghold of the castle, and was successfully defended by Lord Staunton against William of Normandy. Upon every royal visit the key of this tower is presented to the sovereign, the last occasion being a visit of Queen Victoria. Belvoir, in the generous hands of the Dukes of Rutland, still maintains the princely hospitality of the “King of the Peak.” A record kept of a recent period of thirteen weeks, from Christmas to Easter, shows that two thousand persons dined at the duke’s table, two thousand four hundred and twenty-one in the steward’s room, and eleven thousand three hundred and twelve in the servants’ hall. They were blessed with good appetites too, for they devoured about $7000 worth of provisions, including eight thousand three hundred and thirty-three loaves of bread and twenty-two thousand nine hundred and sixty-three pounds of meat, exclusive of game, besides drinking two thousand four hundred bottles of wine and seventy hogsheads of ale. Thus does Belvoir maintain the inheritance of hospitable obligation descended from Haddon Hall.

CHARNWOOD FOREST.

We have now come into Leicestershire, and in that county, north of Leicester City, is the outcropping of the earth’s rocky backbone, which has been thrust up into high wooded hills along the edge of the valley of the Soar for several miles, and is known as Charnwood Forest. It hardly deserves the name of a forest, however, for most of this strange rocky region is bare of trees, and many of the patches of wood that are there are of recent growth. Yet in ancient years there was plenty of wood, and a tradition comes down to us that in Charnwood once upon a time a squirrel could travel six miles on the trees without touching the ground, and a traveller journey entirely across the forest without seeing the sun. The district consists of two lines of irregular ridgy hills, rising three hundred to four hundred feet above the neighboring country. These ridges are separated by a sort of valley like a Norwegian fjord, tilled with red marl. The rocks are generally volcanic products, with much slate, which is extensively quarried. Granite and sienite are also quarried, and at the chief granite-quarry Mount Sorrel, an eminence which projects into the valley of the Soar was in former times the castle of Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester. In King John’s reign the garrison of this castle so harassed the neighborhood that it was described as the “nest of the devil and a den of thieves.” In Henry III.’s reign it was captured and demolished; the latter fate is gradually befalling the hill on which it stood, under the operations of the quarrymen. Near these quarries is the ancient village of Groby, which was quite a flourishing place eight hundred years ago, and has not grown much since. This village belonged to the Ferrars family, and an heiress of that family was the unfortunate Queen Elizabeth Widvile. About two miles away is Bradgate, a spot of rare beauty and interest, the history of which is closely connected with Groby. On the end of one of the ridges of Charnwood, just where it is sinking down to the level of the surrounding country, stands Bradgate House. The surrounding park is quite wild and bare, but there are fine old oaks in the lower portions. From the ancient house a beautiful dell, called the Happy Valley, leads to the neighboring village of Newtown Linford. Bradgate House was destroyed in the early part of the last century by its mistress. The Earl of Suffolk, who then owned it, brought his wife, who had no taste for a rural life, from the metropolis to live there. Her sister in London wrote to inquire how she was getting on. She answered, “The house is tolerable, the country a forest, and the inhabitants all brutes.” In reply the sister advised, “Set the house on fire, and run away by the light of it.” The countess took the advice, and Bradgate never was rebuilt.

ULVERSCROFT AND GRACE DIEU ABBEY.

Charnwood Forest, like almost every other place in England, contains the remains of religious houses. There was a priory at Ulverscroft, not far from Bradgate, and some picturesque moss-grown remains still exist, said to be the finest ruin in Leicestershire. Grace Dieu Abbey was also in the forest, and on the dissolution of the monasteries was granted to the Beaumonts; the ruins of this abbey were much frequented by Wordsworth, who dedicated his poems to their owner. The Cistercians have in the present century established the monastery of Mont St. Bernard in the forest, and brought large tracts under cultivation as garden-land. Bardon, the highest hill of Charnwood, which is near by, rises nine hundred feet, an obtuse-angled triangular summit that can be seen for miles away: not far from the forest are several famous places. The abandoned castle of Ashby de la Zouche has been made the site of an interesting town, deriving much prosperity from its neighboring coal-mines: this castle was built by Lord Hastings, and here dwelt Ivanhoe. The ruins of the tower, chapel, and great hall are objects of much interest, and in the chapel is the “finger pillory” for the punishment of those who were disorderly in church. Staunton Harold, the seat of Earl Ferrars, is north of the town, while about nine miles to the north-east of Ashby is Donington Hall, the palace of the Marquis of Hastings: this estate is connected with Langley Priory, three miles southward; the latter domain belonged to the Cheslyns fifty years ago, and had an income of $40,000 a year. Between lavish hospitality and ruinous lawsuits the entire property was eaten up, and Richard Cheslyn became practically a pauper; but he bore ill-fortune with good grace, and maintained his genial character to the last, being always well received at all the noble houses where he formerly visited. Sir Bernard Burke writes that Cheslyn “at dinner-parties, at which every portion of his dress was the cast-off clothes of his grander friends, always looked and was the gentleman; he made no secret of his poverty or of the generous hands that had ‘rigged him out.’ ‘This coat,’ he has been heard to say, ’was Radcliffe’s; these pants, Granby’s; this waistcoat, Scarborough’s.’ His cheerfulness never forsook him; he was the victim of others’ mismanagement and profusion, not of his own.” John Shakespear, the famous linguist, whose talents were discovered by Lord Moira, who had him educated, was a cowherd on the Langley estate. The poor cowherd afterwards bought the estates for $700,000, and they were his home through life.

ELIZABETH WIDVILE AND LADY JANE GREY.

Charnwood Forest is also associated in history with two unfortunate women. Elizabeth Widvile was the wife of Sir John Grey of Groby, who lost his life and estate in serving the House of Lancaster, leaving Elizabeth with two sons; for their sake she sought an interview with King Edward IV. to ask him to show them favor. Smitten by her charms, Edward made her his queen, but he was soon driven into exile in France, and afterwards died, while her father and brother perished in a popular tumult. Her daughter married King Henry VII., a jealous son-in-law, who confined Elizabeth in the monastery of Bermondsey, where she died. Bradgate passed into the hands of her elder son by Sir John Grey of Groby, and his grandson was the father of the second queen to which it gave birth, whose name is better known than that of Elizabeth Widvile the unfortunate “ten-days’ queen,” Lady Jane Grey. She lived the greater part of her short life at Bradgate, in the house whose ruins still stand to preserve her memory. We are told by the quaint historian Fuller that “she had the innocency of childhood, the beauty of youth, the solidity of middle, the gravity of old age, and all at eighteen the birth of a princess, the learning of a clerk, the life of a saint, and the death of a malefactor for her parents’ offences.” These parents worried her into accepting the crown they played for high stakes and lost and her father and father-in-law, her husband and herself, all perished on the scaffold. We are told that this unfortunate lady still haunts Bradgate House, and on the last night of the dying year a phantom carriage, drawn by four gray horses, glides around the ruins with her headless body. The old oaks have a gnarled and stunted appearance, tradition ascribing it to the woodsmen having lopped off all the leading shoots when their mistress perished. The remains of the house at present are principally the broken shells of two towers, with portions of the enclosing walls, partly covered with ivy.

LEICESTER ABBEY AND CASTLE.

The city of Leicester, which is now chiefly noted for the manufacture of hosiery, was founded by the Britons, and was subsequently the Roman city of Ratae. Many Roman remains still exist here, notably the ancient Jewry wall, which is seventy-five feet long and five feet high, and which formed part of the town-wall. Many old houses are found in Leicester, and just north of the city are the ruins of Leicester Abbey, This noted religious house was founded in the twelfth century, and stood on a meadow watered by the river Soar. It was richly endowed, and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but its chief fame comes from its being the last residence of Cardinal Wolsey. This great man, once the primate of England, has had his downfall pathetically described by Shakespeare. The king summoned him to London to stand trial for treason, and on his way Wolsey became so ill that he was obliged to rest at Leicester, where he was met at the abbey-gate by the abbot and entire convent. Aware of his approaching dissolution, the fallen cardinal said, “Father abbot, I have come hither to lay my bones among you.” The next day he died, and to the surrounding monks, as the last sacrament was administered, he said, “If I had served God as diligently as I have done the king, He would not have given me over in my gray hairs.” The remains were interred by torchlight before daybreak on St. Andrew’s Day, 1530, and to show the vanity of all things earthly tradition says that after the destruction of the abbey the stone coffin in which they were buried was used as a horse-trough for a neighboring inn. Nothing remains of the abbey as Wolsey saw it excepting the gate in the east wall through which he entered. The present ruins are fragments of a house built afterwards. The foundations that can still be traced show that it was a grand old building. The gardens and park now raise vegetables for the Leicester market.

Leicester Castle still exists only in a portion of the great hall, but it has been enlarged and modernized, and is now used for the county offices. The castle was built after the Norman Conquest to keep the townspeople in check. It was afterwards a stronghold of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and it then became part of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Dukes of Lancaster restored it, and lived there frequently in great pomp, and they also built the adjoining Hospital of the Newarke and a singular earthwork alongside, called the Mount. Several parliaments were held here, but after the time of Edward IV. the castle fell into decay. There are now few remains of the original castle, excepting part of the great hall and the Mount or earthwork of the keep, which is about thirty feet high and one hundred feet in diameter upon its flat, circular top. Not far from Leicester was fought the last great battle of the “Wars of the Roses,” Bosworth Field, upon Redmoor Plain, about two miles from the village now known as Market Bosworth. It was a moor at the time of the battle in 1485, overgrown with thistles and scutch-grass. Shakespeare has been the most popular historian of this battle, and the well where Richard slaked his thirst is still pointed out, with other localities of the scenes of the famous contest that decided the kingship of England, Richard III. giving place to Richmond, who became Henry VII.

THE EDGEHILL BATTLEFIELD.

While we are considering this locality two other famous battlefields not far away, that together were decisive of the fate of England, must not be overlooked. These were Edgehill and Naseby, the opening and closing contests of the Civil War that overthrew Charles I., the scene of one being visible from the other, though the intervening contest spread almost all over the island. The high ground that borders Warwickshire and Northamptonshire has various roads crossing it, and the opposing forces meeting on these highlands made them the scenes of the battles practical repetitions of many hot contests there in earlier years. The command of the Parliamentary army had been given to the Earl of Essex, and he and all his officers were proclaimed traitors by the king. Charles I. assembled an army at Nottingham in 1642 to chastise them, and it was considered an evil omen that when the royal standard was set up on the evening of the day of assemblage, a gale arose and it was blown down. Charles moved west from Nottingham to Shrewsbury to meet reinforcements from Wales, and then his army numbered eighteen thousand men. Essex was at Northampton, and moved southward to Worcester. Charles desired to march to London to break up the Parliament, but to do this must either defeat or outflank Essex. He chose the latter plan, moved to Kenilworth, but could not enter Coventry, because Lord Brooke, who was afterwards killed at Lichfield, held it for the Parliament. Essex left Worcester, and pressed the king by forced marches, but Charles turned his flank and started for London with Essex in pursuit. In October he reached Edgecot, near the field at Edgehill, and there in the open country he was astonished to find a gentleman amusing himself with a pack of hounds. He asked who it was who could hunt so merrily while his sovereign was about to fight for his crown. Mr. Richard Shuckburgh was accordingly introduced, and the king persuaded him to take home his hounds and raise his tenantry. The next day he joined Charles with a troop of horse, and was knighted on the field of Edgehill.

Charles slept in the old house at Edgecot: the house has been superseded by a newer one, in which is preserved the bed in which the king rested on the night of October 22, 1642. At three o’clock next morning, Sunday, he was aroused by a messenger from Prince Rupert, whose cavalry guarded the rear, saying that Essex was at hand, and the king could fight at once if he wished. He immediately ordered the march to Edgehill, a magnificent situation for an army to occupy, for here the broken country of the Border sinks suddenly down upon the level plain of Central England. Essex’s camp-fires on that plain the previous night had betrayed his army to Prince Rupert, while Rupert’s horsemen, appearing upon the brow of the hill, told Essex next morning that the king was at hand. Edgehill is a long ridge extending almost north and south, with another ridge jutting out at right angles into the plain in front: thus the Parliamentary troops were on low ground, bounded in front and on their left by steep hills. On the southern side of Edgehill there had been cut out of the red iron-stained rock of a projecting cliff a huge red horse, as a memorial of the great Earl of Warwick, who before a previous battle had killed his horse and vowed to share the perils of the meanest of his soldiers. Both sides determined to give battle; the Puritan ministers passed along the ranks exhorting the men to do their duty, and they afterwards referred to the figure as the “Red Horse of the wrath of the Lord which did ride about furiously to the ruin of the enemy.” Charles disposed his army along the brow of the hill, and could overlook his foes, stretched out on the plain, as if on a map, with the village of Kineton behind them. Essex had twelve thousand men on a little piece of rising ground known afterwards as the “Two Battle Farms,” Battledon and Thistledon. The king was superior both in numbers and position, with Prince Rupert and his cavalry on the right wing; Sir Edmund Verney bore the king’s standard in the centre, where his tent was pitched, and Lord Lindsey commanded; under him was General Sir Jacob Astley, whose prayer before the battle is famous: “O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day; if I forget thee, do not thou forget me. March on, boys!” The king rode along in front of his troops in the stately figure that is familiar in Vandyke’s paintings full armor, with the ribbon of the Garter across his breastplate and its star on his black velvet mantle and made a brief speech of exhortation. The young princes Charles and James, his sons, both of them afterwards kings of England, were present at Edgehill, while the philosopher Hervey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, was also in attendance, and we are told was found in the heat of the battle sitting snugly under a hedge reading a copy of Virgil.

The battle did not begin till afternoon, and the mistake the king made was in not waiting for the attack in his strong position on the brow of the hill; but his men were impatient and in high spirits, and he permitted them to push forward, meeting the attack halfway. Rupert’s cavalry upon encountering the Parliamentary left wing were aided by the desertion of part of the latter’s forces, which threw them into confusion; the wing broke and fled before the troopers, who drove them with great slaughter into the village of Kineton, and then fell to plundering Essex’s baggage-train. This caused a delay which enabled the Parliamentary reserves to come up, and they drove Rupert back in confusion; and when he reached the royal lines he found them in disorder, with Sir Edmund Verney killed and the royal standard captured. Lord Lindsey wounded and captured, and the king in personal danger: but darkness came, and enabled the king to hold his ground, and each side claimed a victory. The royal standard was brought back by a courageous Cavalier, who put on a Parliamentary orange-colored scarf, rode into the enemy’s lines, and persuaded the man who had it to let him carry it. For this bold act he was knighted by the king on the spot and given a gold medal. There were about fourteen hundred killed in the battle, and buried between the two farm-houses of Battledon and Thistledon, at a place now called the Graveyards. Lord Lindsey died on his way to Warwick with his captors. Cromwell was not personally engaged at Edgehill, although there as a captain of cavalry. Carlyle says that after watching the fight he told Hampden they never would get on with a “set of poor tapsters and town-apprentice people fighting against men of honor; to cope with men of honor they must have men of religion.” Hampden answered, “It was a good notion if it could be executed;” and Cromwell “set about executing a bit of it, his share of it, by and by.”

THE BATTLE OF NASEBY.

The last great contest of the Civil War, at which the fate of King Charles was really decided, was fought nearly three years afterwards, June 14, 1645, and but a few miles north-east of Edgehill, at Naseby, standing on a high plateau elevated nearly seven hundred feet. The Parliamentary forces had during the interval become by far the stronger, and were engaged in besieging Chester. The king and Prince Rupert in May left Oxford with their forces, and marched northward, hoping to raise this siege. The king had gone as far north as Leicester, when, hearing that Lord Fairfax had come from the borders of Wales and besieged Oxford, he turned about to relieve it. His army was about ten thousand strong, and, having reached Daventry in June, halted, while Fairfax, leaving Oxford, marched northward to meet the king, being five miles east of him on June 12. Being weaker than Fairfax, the king determined on retreat, and the movement was started towards Market Harborough, just north of Naseby. The king, a local tradition says, while sleeping at Daventry was warned, by the apparition of Lord Strafford in a dream, not to measure his strength with the Parliamentary army. A second night the apparition came, assuring him that “if he kept his resolution of fighting he was undone;” and it is added that the king was often afterwards heard to say he wished he had taken the warning and not fought at Naseby. Fairfax, however, was resolved to force a battle, and pursued the king’s retreating army. On June 13th he sent Harrison and Ireton with cavalry to attack its rear. That night the king’s van and main body were at Market Harborough, and his rear-guard of horse at Naseby, three miles southward. Ireton about midnight surprised and captured most of the rear-guard, but a few, escaping, reached the king, and roused him at two in the morning. Fairfax was coming up, and reached Naseby at five in the morning. The king held a council of war in the “King’s Head Inn” at Market Harborough, and determined to face about and give battle. The forces met on Broad Moor, just north of Naseby village. Prince Rupert had command of the royal troops, and Sir Jacob Astley was in command of the infantry. The king rode along the lines, inspiriting the men with a speech, to which they gave a response of ringing cheers. Cromwell commanded the right wing of Fairfax’s line, while Ireton led the left, which was opposed by Rupert’s cavalry. The advance was made by Fairfax, and the sequel proved that the Parliamentary forces had improved their tactics. Rupert’s troopers, as usual, broke down the wing opposing them, and then went to plundering the baggage-wagons in the rear. But fortune inclined the other way elsewhere. Cromwell on the right routed the royal left wing, and after an hour’s hot struggle the royal centre was completely broken up. Fairfax captured the royal standard, and the king with his reserve of horse made a gallant attempt to recover the day. But it was of no use. Fairfax formed a second line of battle, and the king’s wiser friends, seizing his horse’s bridle, turned him about, telling him his charge would lead to certain destruction. Then a panic came, and the whole body of Royalists fled, with Fairfax’s cavalry in pursuit. Cromwell and his “Ironsides” chased the fugitives almost to Leicester, and many were slaughtered. The king never halted till he got to Ashby de la Zouche, twenty-eight miles from the battlefield, and he then went on to Lichfield. There were one thousand Royalists killed and four thousand five hundred captured, with almost all the baggage, among it being the king’s correspondence, which by disclosing his plans did almost equal harm with the defeat. The prisoners were sent to London. A monument has since been erected on the battlefield, with an inscription describing the contest as “a useful lesson to British kings never to exceed the bounds of their just prerogative; and to British subjects, never to swerve from the allegiance due to their legitimate monarch.” This is certainly an oracular utterance, and of its injunctions the reader can take his choice.

THE LAND OF SHAKESPEARE.

Close to the village of Naseby rises the Avon, some of its springs being actually within the village, where their waters are caught in little ponds for watering cattle. The slender stream of Shakespeare’s river flows downward from the plateau through green meadows, and thence to the classic ground of Stratford and of Warwick. It was at Stratford-on-Avon that Shakespeare was born and died;

“Here his first infant lays sweet Shakespeare sung, Here the last accents faltered on his tongue.”

The old house where he was born is on the main street of the town, and has been taken possession of by a Trust which has restored it to its original condition. Its walls are covered with the initials of visitors; there is nothing to be seen in the house that has any proved connection with Shakespeare excepting his portrait, painted when he was about forty-five years old. The sign of the butcher who had the building before the Trust bought it is also exhibited, and states that “The immortal Shakespeare was born in this house.” His birth took place in this ancient but carefully preserved building on April 23, 1564, and exactly fifty-two years later, on April 23, 1616, he died in another house near by, known as the “New Place,” on Chapel Street. Excepting the garden and a portion of the ancient foundations nothing now remains of the house where Shakespeare died; a green arbor in the yard, with the initials of his name set in the front fence, being all that marks the spot. Adjoining the remnants of this “New Place” is the “Nash House,” where the curator representing the Shakespeare Trust has his home. This building is also indirectly connected with Shakespeare, having belonged to and been occupied by Thomas Nash, who married Elizabeth Hall, the poet’s granddaughter, who subsequently became Lady Barnard. The church of the Holy Trinity at Stratford contains Shakespeare’s grave; five flat stones lying in a row across the narrow chancel cover his family, the grave of Anne Hathaway, his wife, being next to that of the poet; his monument is on the wall, and near it is the American memorial window, representing the Seven Ages of Man. In the chancel upon the western side, within a Grecian niche, is the well-known half-figure monument of Shakespeare that has been so widely copied, representing him in the act of composition. The most imposing building in Stratford is the “Shakespeare Memorial,” a large and highly ornamental structure, thoroughly emblematic, and containing a theatre. Stratford is full of relics of Shakespeare and statues and portraits in his memory. There is a life-size statue of the poet outside the Town-Hall which was presented to the city by Garrick in the last century, while within the building is his full-length portrait, also a present from Garrick, together with Gainsborough’s portrait of Garrick himself. At the modest hamlet of Shottery, about a mile out of town, is the little cottage where Anne Hathaway lived, and where the poet is said to have “won her to his love;” a curious bedstead and other relics are shown at the cottage. Charlecote House, the scene of Shakespeare’s youthful deer-stealing adventure that compelled him to go to London, is about four miles east of Stratford, near the Avon: it is an ancient mansion of the Elizabethan period. In the neighborhood are also a mineral spring known as the Royal Victoria Spa and some ancient British intrenchments called the Dingles.

WARWICK

The renowned castle of Warwick is upon the Avon, a short distance above Stratford. Warwick was founded by the Britons at a very early period, and is believed to be as old in some parts as the Christian era; it was afterwards held as a Christian stronghold against the Danes. Lady Ethelfleda, daughter of King Alfred, built the donjon-keep upon an artificial mound of earth that can still be traced in the castle grounds. The most ancient part of the present castle was erected in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and in William the Conqueror’s time it received considerable additions, and he created the first Earl of Warwick. It was a great stronghold in the subsequent wars, and an heiress brought the castle to Richard Neville, who assumed the title in right of his wife, and was the famous Warwick, “the King-maker.” After many changes it came to the Grevilles, who are now the Earls of Warwick. This castle is one of the best specimens of the feudal stronghold remaining in England, and occupies a lovely position on the river-bank, being built on a rock about forty feet high; its modern apartments contain a rich museum filled with almost priceless relics of the olden time. Here are also valuable paintings and other works of art, among them Vandyck’s portrait of Charles I. and many masterpieces of Rembrandt, Paul Veronese, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, Holbein, and Salvator Rosa. In December, 1871, the great hall and suite of private apartments at Warwick were burnt, but the valuable contents were almost all saved with little injury. The castle was restored by a public subscription. It is built around a large oval-shaped court; the gatehouse tower is flanked by embattled walls covered with ivy, and having at either extremity Caesar’s Tower and Guy’s Tower; the inner court is bounded by ramparts and turrets, and has on one side an artificial mound surmounted by an ancient tower. From the modernized rooms of the castle, where the family live and the museum is located, and which extend in a suite for three hundred and fifty feet, all the windows look out upon beautiful views; many of these rooms are hung with tapestry. Caesar’s Tower, believed to be the most ancient part of the castle and as old as the Norman Conquest, is one hundred and seventy-four feet high; Guy’s Tower, which was built in 1394, has solid walls ten feet thick and is one hundred and twenty-eight feet high, disclosing fine views from the turrets. The grounds are extensive, and the magnificent marble “Warwick Vase,” brought from the Emperor Adrian’s villa at Tivoli in Italy, is kept in a special greenhouse, being one of the most completely perfect and beautiful specimens of ancient sculpture known. St. Mary’s Church at Warwick is a fine building, which in the early part of the last century replaced the original collegiate church of St. Mary, an edifice that had unfortunately been burnt. Thomas Beauchamp, one of the earlier Earls of Warwick, was the founder of this church, and his monument with recumbent effigy is in the middle of the choir. The Beauchamp Chapel, over four hundred years old, is a beautiful relic of the original church still remaining, and stands on the southern side of the new building. The whole of this portion of Warwickshire is underlaid by medicinal waters, and the baths of Leamington are in the valley of the little river Leam, a short distance north-east of the castle, its Jephson Gardens, a lovely park, commemorating one of the most benevolent patrons.

Warwick Castle, like all the others, has its romance, and this centres in the famous giant, Guy of Warwick, who lived nearly a thousand years ago, and was nine feet high. His staff and club and sword and armor are exhibited in a room adjoining Caesar’s Tower; and here also is Guy’s famous porridge-pot, a huge bronze caldron holding over a hundred gallons, which is used as a punch-bowl whenever there are rejoicings in the castle. There is nothing fabulous about the arms or the porridge-pot, but there is a good deal that is doubtful about the giant Guy himself and the huge dun cow that once upon a time he slew, one of whose ribs, measuring over six feet long, is shown at Guy’s Cliff. This cliff is where the redoubtable Guy retired as a hermit after championing the cause of England in single combat against a giant champion of the Danes, and is about a mile from Warwick. It is a picturesque spot, and a chantry has been founded there, while for many years a rude statue of the giant Guy stood on the cliff, where the chisel had cut it out of the solid rock. The town of Warwick is full of old gabled houses and of curious relics of the time of the “King-maker” and of the famous Earl of Leicester, who in Elizabeth’s time founded there the Leicester Hospital, where especial preference is given to pensioners who have been wounded in the wars. It is a fine old house, with its chapel, which has been restored nearly in the old form, stretching over the pathway, and a flight of steps leading up to the promenade around it. The hospital buildings are constructed around an open quadrangle, and upon the quaint black and white building are some fine antique carvings. The old “Malt-Shovel Inn” is a rather decayed structure in Warwick, with its ancient porch protruding over the street, while some of the buildings, deranged in the lower stories by the acute angles at which the streets cross, have oblique gables above stairs that enabled the builders to construct the upper rooms square. This is a style of construction peculiar to Warwick, and adds to the oddity of this somnolent old town, that seems to have been practically asleep for centuries.

KENILWORTH.

About five miles from Warwick are the ruins of Kenilworth Castle, the magnificent home of the Earl of Leicester, which Scott has immortalized. Geoffrey de Clinton in the reign of Henry I. built a strong castle and founded a monastery here. It was afterwards the castle of Simon de Montfort, and his son was besieged in it for several months, ultimately surrendering, when the king bestowed it on his youngest son, Edward, Earl of Lancaster and Leicester. Edward II., when taken prisoner in Wales, was brought to Kenilworth, and signed his abdication in the castle, being afterwards murdered in Berkeley Castle. Then it came to John of Gaunt, and in the Wars of the Roses was alternately held by the partisans of each side. Finally, Queen Elizabeth bestowed it upon her ambitious favorite, Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who made splendid additions to the buildings. It was here that Leicester gave the magnificent entertainment to Queen Elizabeth which was a series of pageants lasting seventeen days, and cost $5000 a day a very large sum for those times. The queen was attended by thirty-one barons and a host of retainers, and four hundred servants, who were all lodged in the fortress. The attendants were clothed in velvet, and the party drank sixteen hogsheads of wine and forty hogsheads of beer every day, while to feed them ten oxen were killed every morning. There was a succession of plays and amusements provided, including the Coventry play of “Hock Tuesday” and the “Country Bridal,” with bull-and bear-baiting, of which the queen was very fond. Scott has given a gorgeous description of these fêtes and of the great castle, and upon these and the tragic fate of Amy Robsart has founded his romance of Kenilworth. The display and hospitality of the Earl of Leicester were intended to pave the way to marriage, but the wily queen was not to be thus entrapped. The castle is now part of the Earl of Clarendon’s estate, and he has taken great pains to preserve the famous ruins. The great hall, ninety feet long, still retains several of its Gothic windows, and some of the towers rise seventy feet high. These ivy-mantled ruins stand upon an elevated rocky site commanding a fine prospect, and their chief present use is as a picnic-ground for tourists. Not far away are the ruins of the priory, which was founded at the same time as the castle. A dismantled gate-house with some rather extensive foundations are all that remain. In a little church near by the matins and the curfew are still tolled, one of the bells used having belonged to the priory. Few English ruins have more romance attached to them than those of Kenilworth, for the graphic pen of the best story-teller of Britain has interwoven them into one of his best romances, and has thus given an idea of the splendors as well as the dark deeds of the Elizabethan era that will exist as long as the language endures.

BIRMINGHAM.

Thus far we have mainly written of the rural and historical attractions of Warwickshire, but its great city must not be passed by without notice. The “Homestead of the Sons of Beorm” the Saxon, while rising from small beginnings, has had a prodigiously rapid growth since the coal, iron, and railways have so greatly swollen the wealth and population of manufacturing England. It was at the time of the Conquest the manor of Bermingeham, or, as the Midland English prefer to pronounce it, “Brummagem.” It was held for many years by a family of the same name, and had an uneventful history till the townsfolk ranged themselves on the side of Parliament in the Civil War, in revenge for which Prince Rupert captured and pillaged Birmingham: it was then a market-town, built mostly along one street, and noted for its smiths and cutlers, who were kept busy in forging pikes and swords for the king’s opponents. The great growth of the city has been in the present century, when the population has trebled, and now approaches four hundred thousand. The main features of its history relate to trade and manufactures, otherwise its annals are comparatively commonplace. There is little remaining of the old town, almost all the structures being modern. St. Martin’s Church, replacing the original parish church, or “Mother Church,” as it is called, is a fine modern structure, and contains some interesting monuments of the Bermingeham family. There are several other attractive churches, including the Unitarian church of the Messiah, which is supported on massive arches, for it is built over a canal on which are several locks: this has given cause for a favorite Birmingham witticism:

“St. Peters world-wide diocese Rests on the power of the keys; Our church, a trifle heterodox, We’ll rest on a ‘power of locks.’”

Birmingham has many fine public and private buildings and some attractive streets, though much of the town is made up of narrow lanes and dingy houses, with huge factories in every direction. There are several small parks, the gifts of opulent residents, notably Aston Hall. This was formerly the residence of the Holte family, and the fine old mansion which still stands in the grounds was built by Sir Thomas Holte in the reign of James I. Charles I. is said to have slept here for two nights before the battle of Edgehill, for which offence the house was cannonaded by the Puritans and its owners fined. The grounds, covering about forty-two acres, are now a park, and a picturesque little church has been built near the mansion. Some of the factories of this metropolis of hardware are fine structures, but when their product is spoken of, “Brummagem” is sometimes quoted as synonymous for showy sham. Here they are said to make gods for the heathen and antiquities of the Pharaoh age for Egypt, with all sorts of relics for all kinds of battlefields. But Birmingham nevertheless has a reputation for more solid wares. Its people are the true descendants of Tubal Cain, for one of its historians attractively says that the Arab eats with a Birmingham spoon; the Egyptian takes his bowl of sherbet from a Birmingham tray; the American Indian shoots a Birmingham rifle; the Hindoo dines on Birmingham plate and sees by the light of a Birmingham lamp; the South American horsemen wear Birmingham spurs and gaudily deck their jackets with Birmingham buttons; the West Indian cuts down the sugar-cane with Birmingham hatchets and presses the juice into Birmingham vats and coolers; the German lights his pipe on a Birmingham tinder-box; the emigrant cooks his dinner in a Birmingham saucepan over a Birmingham stove; and so on ad infinitum. A century ago this famous town was known as the “toy-shop of Europe.” Its glass-workers stand at the head of their profession, and here are made the great lighthouse lenses and the finest stained glass to be found in English windows. The Messrs. Elkington, whose reputation is worldwide, here invented the process of electro-plating. It is a great place for jewelry and the champion emporium for buttons. It is also the great English workshop for swords, guns, and other small-arms, and here are turned out by the million Gillott’s steel pens. Over all these industries presides the magnificent Town Hall, a Grecian temple standing upon an arcade basement, and built of hard limestone brought from the island of Anglesea. The interior is chiefly a vast assembly-room, where concerts are given and political meetings held, the latter usually being the more exciting, for we are told that when party feeling runs high some of the Birmingham folk “are a little too fond of preferring force to argument.” But, although famed for its Radical politics and the introduction of the “caucus” into England, Birmingham will always be chiefly known by its manufactures, and these will recall its illustrious inventors, Boulton and Watt. Their factory was at Soho, just north of the town. Here Watt brought the steam-engine to perfection, here gas was first used, plating was perfected, and myriads of inventions were developed. “The labors of Boulton and Watt at Soho,” says the historian Langford, “changed the commercial aspects of the world.” Their history is, however, but an epitome of the wonderful story of this great city of the glass and metal-workers, whose products supply the entire globe.

FOTHERINGHAY.

In our journey through Midland England we have paused at many of the prison-houses of Mary Queen of Scots. In Northamptonshire, near Elton, are the remains of the foundations of the castle of Fotheringhay, out in a field, with the mound of the keep rising in front of them; this was the unfortunate queen’s last prison. It was a noted castle, dating from the twelfth century, and had been a principal residence of the Plantagenets. Here Mary was tried and beheaded, February 8, 1587. She is said to have borne up under her great afflictions with marvellous courage. Conducted to the scaffold after taking leave of all, she made a short address, declaring that she had never sought the life of her cousin Elizabeth that she was queen-born, not subject to the laws, and forgiving all. Her attendants in tears then assisted her to remove her clothing, but she firmly said, “Instead of weeping, rejoice; I am very happy to leave this world and in so good a cause.” Then she knelt, and after praying stretched out her neck to the executioner, imagining that he would strike off her head while in an upright posture and with the sword, as in France; they told her of her mistake, and without ceasing to pray she laid her head on the block. There was a universal feeling of compassion, even the headsman himself being so moved that he did his work with unsteady hand, the axe falling on the back of her head and wounding her; but she did not move nor utter a complaint, and, repeating the blow, he struck off her head, which he held up, saying, “God save Queen Elizabeth!” Her lips moved for some time after death, and few recognized her features, they were so much changed.

HOLMBY HOUSE.

Also in Northamptonshire is Holmby House, where King Charles I. was captured by the army previous to his trial. It was built by Sir Christopher Hatton in Queen Elizabeth’s time, but only the gates and some outbuildings remain. After the battle of Naseby the king surrendered himself to the Scots, and they, through an arrangement with the English Parliament, conducted him to Holmby House, where he maintained something of sovereign state, though under the surveillance of the Parliamentary commissioners. He devoted his time to receiving visitors, the bowling-green, and the chess-table. This continued for some months, when a struggle began between the army and the Parliament to decide whose captive he was. The army subsequently, by a plot, got possession of Holmby, and, practically making prisoners of the garrison and the commissioners of Parliament, they abducted the king and took him to a house near Huntingdon. Fairfax sent two regiments of troops thither to escort him back to Holmby, but he had been treated with great courtesy and declined to go back. Thus by his own practical consent the king was taken possession of by Cromwell, Fairfax, and Ireton, who were in command, although they denied it, and put the whole blame on one Cornet Joyce who was in command of the detachment of troops that took possession of Holmby. The king was ultimately taken to London, tried, and executed in Whitehall. At Ashby St. Leger, near Daventry, in Northamptonshire, is the gate-house of the ancient manor of the Catesbys, of whom Robert Catesby was the contriver of the Gunpowder Plot. The thirteen conspirators who framed the plot met in a room over the gateway which the villagers call the “Plot-room,” and here Guy Fawkes was equipped for his task, which so alarmed the kingdom that to this day the cellars of the Parliament Houses are searched before the session begins for fear a new plot may have been hatched, while the anniversary is kept as a solemn holiday in London. The lantern used by Guy Fawkes is still preserved in the Oxford Museum having been given to the University in 1641.

BEDFORD CASTLE.

One of the most ancient of the strongholds of Midland England was the Bedicanford of the Saxons, where contests took place between them and the Britons as early as the sixth century. It stood in a fertile valley on the Ouse, and is also mentioned in the subsequent contests with the Danes, having been destroyed by them in the eleventh century. Finally, William Rufus built a castle there, and its name gradually changed to Bedford. It was for years subject to every storm of civil war was taken and retaken, the most famous siege lasting sixty days, when Henry III. personally conducted the operations, being attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the chief peers of the realm: this was in 1224, and the most ingenious engines of war were used to batter down the castle-walls, which till then had been regarded as impregnable. The stronghold was ultimately captured, chiefly through the agency of a lofty wooden castle higher than the walls, which gave an opportunity of seeing all that passed within. The governor of the castle, twenty-four knights, and eighty soldiers, making most of the garrison, were hanged. King Henry then dismantled it and filled up the ditches, so as to “uproot this nursery of sedition.” The ruins lasted some time afterward, but now only the site is known, located alongside the river Ouse, which runs through the city of Bedford. This town is of great interest, though, as Camden wrote two centuries ago, it is more eminent for its “pleasant situation and antiquity than for anything of beauty and stateliness.” Its neighborhood has been a noted mine for antiquities, disclosing remains of ancient races of men and of almost pre-historic animals of the Bronze and Iron Ages. The town lies rather low on the river, with a handsome bridge connecting the two parts, and pretty gardens fringing each shore. This bridge is a modern structure, having succeeded the “old bridge,” which stood there several centuries with a gate-house at either end, in the larger of which was the old jail, that had for its most distinguished occupant that sturdy townsman of Bedford, John Bunyan. The castle-mound, which is all that is left, and on which once stood the keep, is on the river-shore just below the bridge, and is now used for a bowling-green in the garden of the chief hotel. The memorials of the author of the Pilgrim’s Progress, first a prisoner and then a minister of the gospel in Bedford, are probably the most prized remains of ancient days that Bedford has, though they are now becoming scarce.

JOHN BUNYAN.

Elstow, a village about one mile south of Bedford, was Bunyan’s birthplace. The house is still pointed out, though a new front has been put into it, and it is a very small building, suitable to the tinker’s humble estate. The village-green where he played is near by, alongside the churchyard wall; the church, which has been little changed, stands on the farther side of the yard, with a massive tower at the north-western angle, looking more like a fortress than a religious edifice. The bells are still there which Bunyan used to ring, and they also point out “Bunyan’s Pew” inside, though the regularity of his attendance is not vouched for, as he says “absenting himself from church” was one of his offences during the greater part of his life. He married early and in poor circumstances, the young couple “not having so much household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt them both,” though he considered it among his mercies that he was led “to light upon a wife of godly parentage.” He says that a marked change in his mental condition suddenly began while playing a game of “tip-cat” on Sunday afternoon on the village-green, having listened in the morning to a sermon upon Sabbath-breaking. His conscience smote him; he abandoned the game, leaving his cat upon the ground, and then began his great spiritual struggle. He joined the Baptists, and began preaching, for at length, after many tribulations, he says, “the burden fell from off his back.” He was persecuted, and committed to Bedford jail, where he remained (with short intervals of parole) for about twelve years. Here he wrote what Macaulay declares to be incomparably the finest allegory in the English language the Pilgrim’s Progress. He was a voluminous author, having written some sixty tracts and books. Finally pardoned in 1672, he became pastor of the Bedford meeting-house, and afterwards escaped molestation; he preached in all parts of the kingdom, especially in London, where he died at the age of sixty, having caught cold in a heavy storm while going upon an errand of mercy in 1688. His great work will live as long as the Anglo-Saxon race endures. “That wonderful book,” writes Macaulay, “while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.... Every reader knows the strait and narrow path as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another; and this miracle the tinker has wrought.”

WOBURN ABBEY.

The county of Bedford gives the title to the dukedom held by the head of the great family of Russell, and Francis Charles Hastings Russell, the ninth Duke of Bedford, has his residence at the magnificent estate of Woburn Abbey. It is about forty miles from London, and on the Buckinghamshire border. Here the Cistercians founded an abbey in the twelfth century, which continued until the dissolution of the religious houses by Henry VIII., and the last abbot, Robert Hobs, was executed for denying the king’s religious supremacy, the tree on which he was hanged being still carefully preserved in Woburn Park. The abbey and its domain were granted by the youthful king Edward VI. to John Russell, first Earl of Bedford, under circumstances which show how fortune sometimes smiles upon mortals. Russell, who had been abroad and was an accomplished linguist, had in 1506 returned, and was living with his father in Dorsetshire at Berwick, near the sea-coast. Soon afterwards in a tempest three foreign vessels sought refuge in the neighboring port of Weymouth. On one of them was the Austrian archduke Philip, son-in-law of Ferdinand and Isabella, who was on his way to Spain. The governor took the archduke to his castle, and invited young Mr. Russell to act as interpreter. The archduke was so delighted with him that he subsequently invited Russell to accompany him on a visit to King Henry VII. at Windsor. The king was also impressed with Russell, and appointed him to an office in the court, and three years afterwards, Henry VIII. becoming king, Russell was entrusted with many important duties, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Russell. He enjoyed the king’s favor throughout his long reign, and was made one of the councillors of his son, Edward VI., besides holding other high offices, and when the youthful prince ascended the throne he made Russell an earl and gave him the magnificent domain of Woburn Abbey. He also enjoyed the favor of Queen Mary, and escorted her husband Philip from Spain, this being his last public act. Dying in 1555, he was buried in the little parish church of Chenies, near Woburn, where all the Russells rest from his time until now. He thus founded one of the greatest houses of England, which has furnished political leaders from that day to this, for the Dukes of Bedford and Devonshire are the heads of the Whig party, and Lord John Russell (afterwards an earl) was the uncle of the present duke.

Woburn Abbey remained until the last century much in its original condition, but in 1747 changes began which have since been continued, and have resulted in the construction of the ducal palace now adorning the spot. The mansion is a quadrangle enclosing a spacious court, the chief front being towards the west and extending two hundred and thirty feet. It is an Ionic building with a rustic basement, and within are spacious state-apartments and ample accommodations for the family. The rooms are filled with the best collection of portraits of great historical characters in the kingdom, and most of them are by famous artists. They include all the Earls and Dukes of Bedford, with their wives and famous relatives, and also the Leicesters, Essexes, and Sydneys of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, with many others. The unfortunate Lord William Russell and his wife Rachel are here, and over his portrait is the walking-stick which supported him to the scaffold, while hanging on the wall is a copy of his last address, printed within an hour after his execution. Of another of these old portraits Horace Walpole writes: “A pale Roman nose, a head of hair loaded with crowns and powdered with diamonds, a vast ruff and still vaster fardingale, and a bushel of pearls, are the features by which everybody knows at once the pictures of Queen Elizabeth.” There is a fine library, and passing out of it into the flower-garden is seen on the lawn the stump of the yew tree which Mr. Gladstone felled in October, 1878, as a memorial of his visit, he being as proud of his ability as a forester as he is of his eminence as a statesman. From the house a covered way leads to the statue-gallery, which contains an admirable collection, and the green-house, one hundred and fifty feet long, filled with valuable foreign plants, the family being great horticulturists. Busts of the great Whig statesmen are in the gallery, and it also contains the celebrated Lanti vase, brought from Rome. The “Woburn Abbey Marbles” have long been a Mecca for sculpture-loving pilgrims from both sides of the ocean. There are extensive stables, and to them are attached a fine tennis-court and riding-house, both constantly used by the younger Russells. Beyond is a Chinese dairy kept for show, and in a distant part of the grounds a curious puzzle-garden and rustic grotto. Woburn Park is one of the largest private enclosures in England, covering thirty-five hundred acres, and enclosed by a brick wall twelve miles long and eight feet high. It is undulating in surface, containing several pretty lakes and a large herd of deer. Its “Evergreen Drive” is noted, for in the spring-time it attracts visitors from all quarters to see the magnificence of the rhododendrons, which cover two hundred acres. The state entrance to the park is through a large stone archway with ornamental gates, called the “Golden Gates,” on the road from London, and having two drives of about a mile each leading up to the abbey. The dukes are liberal patrons of agriculture, and their annual “sheep-shearing” used to be one of the great festivals of this part of England. They have also aided in the work of draining the Fen country, which extends into Bedfordshire, and which has reclaimed a vast domain of the best farm-land, stretching northward for fifty miles.

STOWE.

We are now approaching London, and, crossing over the border into Buckinghamshire, come to another ducal palace. This is the fine estate, near the town of Buckingham, of Stowe, also originally an abbey, which came into possession of the Temple family in the sixteenth century, and in 1749 merged into the estate of the Grenvilles, the ancestors of the Duke of Buckingham, its present owner. Stowe gets its chief fame from its pleasure-gardens, which Pope has commemorated. They appear at a distance like a vast grove, from whose luxuriant foliage emerge obelisks, columns, and towers. They are adorned with arches, pavilions, temples, a rotunda, hermitage, grotto, lake, and bridge. The temples are filled with statuary. The mansion, which has been greatly enlarged, has a frontage of nine hundred and sixteen feet, and its windows look out over the richest possible landscape, profuse with every adornment. In the interior the rooms, opening one into another, form a superb suite. There is a Rembrandt Room, hung with pictures by that painter, and there were many curiosities from Italy: old tapestry and draperies; rich Oriental stuffs, the spoils of Tippoo Saib; furniture from the Doge’s Palace in Venice; marble pavements from Rome; fine paintings and magnificent plate. Formerly, Stowe contained the grandest collection in England, and in this superb palace, thus gorgeously furnished, Richard Grenville, the first Duke of Buckingham, entertained Louis XVIII. and Charles X. of France and their suites during their residence in England. His hospitality was too much for him, and, burdened with debt, he was compelled to shut up Stowe and go abroad. In 1845 his successor received Queen Victoria at Stowe at enormous cost, and in 1848 there was a financial crisis in the family. The sumptuous contents of the palace were sold to pay the debts, and realized $375,000. A splendid avenue of elms leads up from the town of Buckingham to Stowe, a distance of two miles.

Not far away from Buckingham is Whaddon Hall, formerly a seat of the Dukes of Buckingham, but best known as the residence of Browne Willis, an eccentric antiquary, whose person and dress were so singular that he was often mistaken for a beggar, and who is said “to have written the very worst hand of any man in England.” He wore one pair of boots for forty years, having them patched when they were worn out, and keeping them till they had got all in wrinkles, so that he was known as “Old Wrinkle-boots.” He was great for building churches and quarrelling with the clergy, and left behind him valuable collections of coins and manuscripts, which he bequeathed to Oxford University. Great Hampden, the home of the patriot, John Hampden, is also in Buckinghamshire. The original house remains, much disfigured by stucco and whitewash, and standing in a secluded spot in the Chiltern Hills; it is still the property of his descendants in the seventh generation.

CRESLOW HOUSE.

The manor of Creslow in Buckinghamshire, owned by Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, is a pasture-farm of eight hundred and fifty acres, and is said to raise some of the finest cattle in England; it was the home of the regicide Holland. The mansion is an ancient one, spacious and handsome, much of it, including the crypt and tower, coming down from the time of Edward III., with enlargements in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is a picturesque yet venerable building, with many gables and curious chimneys, and surmounted by a square tower and loopholed turret. But its chief interest attaches to the two ancient cellars known as the crypt and the dungeon: the crypt is about twelve feet square, excavated in the limestone rock, and having a Gothic vaulted ceiling, with a single small window; the dungeon is eighteen feet long, half as wide, and six feet high, without any windows, and with a roof formed of massive stones. This is the “haunted chamber of Creslow” haunted by a lady, Rosamond Clifford, the “Fair Rosamond” of Woodstock, often heard, but seldom seen, by those who stay at night in the room, which she enters by a Gothic doorway leading from the crypt. Few have ever ventured to sleep there, but not long ago a guest was prevailed upon to do it, and next morning at breakfast he told his story: “Having entered the room, I locked and bolted both doors, carefully examined the whole room, and satisfied myself that there was no living creature in it but myself, nor any entrances but those I had secured. I got into bed, and, with the conviction that I should sleep as usual till six in the morning, I was soon lost in a comfortable slumber. Suddenly I was aroused, and on raising my head to listen I heard a sound certainly resembling the light, soft tread of a lady’s footstep, accompanied with the rustling as of a silk gown. I sprang out of bed and lighted a candle; there was nothing to be seen and nothing now to be heard; I carefully examined the whole room, looked under the bed, into the fireplace, up the chimney, and at both the doors, which were fastened as I had left them; I looked at my watch, and it was a few minutes past twelve. As all was now perfectly quiet, I extinguished the candle and soon fell asleep. I was again aroused; the noise was now louder than before; it appeared like the violent rustling of a stiff silk dress. I sprang out of bed, darted to the spot where the noise was, and tried to grasp the intruder in my arms: my arms met together, but enclosed nothing. The noise passed to another part of the room, and I followed it, groping near the floor to prevent anything passing under my arms. It was in vain; I could feel nothing; the noise had passed away through the Gothic door, and all was still as death. I lighted a candle and examined the Gothic door, but it was shut and fastened just as I had left it; I again examined the whole room, but could find nothing to account for the noise. I now left the candle burning, though I never sleep comfortably with a light in my room; I got into bed, but felt, it must be acknowledged, not a little perplexed at not being able to detect the cause of the noise, nor to account for its cessation when the candle was lighted. While ruminating on these things I fell asleep, and began to dream about murders and secret burials and all sorts of horrible things; and just as I fancied myself knocked down by a knight templar, I awoke and found the sun shining brightly.”

This ancient house was originally the home of a lodge of Knights Templar, and the dungeon, which is now said to be appropriately decorated with skulls and other human bones, was formerly their stronghold. At this weird mansion, within a few minutes’ ride of the metropolis, we will close our descriptive journey through Midland England, and its mystic tale will recall that passage from the Book of Days which counsels

“Doubtless there are no ghosts; Yet somehow it is better not to move, Lest cold hands seize upon us from behind.”