[Sidenote: Scenery]
By the village and through the dale which Gray thought so beautiful flows the Wharfe; winding amid verdant meads, rushing between lofty banks, or loitering in sunny shallows, it holds its shining course to the Ouse, beyond the fateful field of Towton, where the red rose of Lancaster went down in blood. Ilkley nestles cosily at the foot of green slopes which swell away from the stream and are dotted with copses and embowered villas. Farther away the dim lines rise to the heights of the Whernside, whence we look to the chimneys of Leeds and the towers of York"s mighty minster. Detached from Rumbald"s cliffs lie two ma.s.ses, called "Cow and Calf Rocks," bearing the imprint of giant Rumbald"s foot: these rocks are a resort of the young people, and here Collyer and his friends oft came with their books. From this point Wharfedale, domed by a summer sky, seems a paradise of loveliness; its every aspect, from the glinting stream to the highest moorland crags, is replete with the beauty Turner loved to paint and which here first inspired his genius.
Ruskin discerns this Wharfedale scenery throughout the great artist"s works, bits of its beauty being unconsciously wrought into other scenes.
These landscapes were a daily vision to the eyes of Collyer in the days when Turner still came to the neighborhood. This region abounds with memorials of the mighty past, with treasures of Druidical, Runic, and Roman history and tradition, but the literary pilgrim finds it rife with a.s.sociations for him still more interesting: here lived the ancestors of our Longfellow, and the family whence Thackeray sprang; the fathers of that gentle singer, Heber, dwelt in their castle here and sleep now under the pavement of the church; a little way across the moors the Brontes dwelt and died. Here, too, lived the Fairfaxes,--one of them a poet and translator of Ta.s.so,--and among their tombs we find that of Fawkes of Farnley, Turner"s early friend and patron, while at the near-by hall are the rooms the painter occupied during the years he was transferring to canvas the beauties he here beheld. Farnley holds the best private collection of Turner"s works, comprising, besides many finished pictures, numerous drawings and color-sketches made here.
[Sidenote: Bolton Abbey]
A delightful excursion from Ilkley, one never omitted by Collyer from his summer saunterings in Wharfedale, is to the sacred shades of Bolton Abbey. The way is enlivened with the prattle and sheen of the limpid Wharfe. A mile past the hamlet of Addingham, where Collyer preached his first sermon, the stream curves about a slight eminence which is crowned by the ruins of the ancient shrine. Some portions of the walls are fallen and concealed by shrubbery; other portions withstand the ravages of the centuries, and we see the crumbling arches, ruined cloisters, and mullioned windows, mantled with ma.s.ses of ivy and bloom and set in the scene of restful beauty which Turner painted and Rogers and Wordsworth poetized. Our pleasure in the ruin and its environment of wood, mead, and stream is enhanced by the companionship of one who had, on another summer"s day, explored the charms of the spot with George Eliot, and who repeats to us her expressions of rapturous delight at each new vista.
Wordsworth loved this spot, and the incident to which the Abbey owed its erection--the drowning of young Romilly, the n.o.ble "Boy of Egremond," in the gorge near by--is beautifully told by him in the familiar poems written here.
[Sidenote: Nidderdale]
[Sidenote: Aram"s Schools]
Another excursion, by Knaresborough and the deadly field of Marston Moor, brings us into lovely Nidderdale, where stalks the dusky ghost of the Eugene Aram of Bulwer"s tale and Hood"s poem amid the scenes of his early life and of the crime for which he died. In the upper portion of the valley the Nidd winds like a ribbon of silver between green braes and moorland hills which rise steeply to the narrow horizon. From either side brooklets flow through wooded glens to join the wimpling Nidd, and at the mouth of one of these we find Ramsgill, where Aram was born. It is a straggling hamlet of thatched cottages, set among bowering orchards and gardens and wearing an aspect of tranquil comfort. The site of the laborer"s hut in which the gentle student was born is shown at the back of one of the newer cottages of the place. Farther up the picturesque stream is the pretty village of Lofthouse, an a.s.semblage of gray stone houses nestled beneath cl.u.s.tering trees, to which Aram returned after a short residence at Skipton, in the dale of the Brontes. Here he wooed sweet Annie Spence and pa.s.sed his early years of married life; here his first children were born and one of them died. At the church in near-by Middlesmoor he was married; here his first child was christened, and in the bleak church-yard it was buried. Near a sombre "gill" which opens into the valley some distance below was Gowthwaite Hall, where Aram taught his first pupils,--an ancient, rambling structure of stone, two stories in height, with many steep gables and wide latticed windows.
Venerable trees shaded the walls, leafy vines climbed to and overran the roofs, and a quaint garden of prim squares and formally trimmed foliage lay at one side. We found these externals little changed since Aram was tutor here. The part.i.tion of the mansion into three tenements had altered the arrangement of the interior, but the wide stairway still led from the entrance to the upper room at the east end, where Aram taught: it was a large, lofty apartment, reputed to be haunted, changed since his time only by the closing of one cas.e.m.e.nt. Richard Craven was then tenant of the Hall, and his son, the erudite doctor, doubtless received his first tuition in this room and from Aram.
[Sidenote: Place of Murder]
Some miles down the valley is Knaresborough, to which Aram removed from Lofthouse to establish a school, and where eleven years later the murder was committed. Soon after, Aram removed from the neighborhood, and during his residence at Lynn, where he was arrested for the crime, he was some time tutor in the house of Bulwer"s grandfather, a circ.u.mstance which led to the production of the fascinating tale. A little way out of Knaresborough, in a recess at the base of the limestone cliffs which here border the murmuring Nidd, is the place where Clarke was killed and buried. This impressive spot was long the hermitage of "Saint Robert," who formed the cave out of the crag. In clearing the rubbish from the place after the publication of Bulwer"s tale, the remains of a little shrine were found, and a coffin hewn from the rock, which proved that the hermitage had before been a place of burial, as urged by Aram in his defence. Upon a hill of the forest not far away the body of Aram hung in irons, and local tradition avers that his widow watched to recover the bones as they fell, and when she had at last interred them all, emigrated with her children to America.
[Sidenote: Belief in Aram"s Innocence]
It is noteworthy that belief in his innocence was universal among those who knew him in this countryside. Incidents ill.u.s.trating his self-denial, patient forbearance, disregard for money, and care to preserve even the lowest forms of life are still cherished and recounted here as showing that robbery and murder were for him impossible crimes.
We were reminded, too, that at the time of Clarke"s disappearance Aram was husband of a woman of his own station, father of a family, and master of a moderately prosperous school,--conditions of which Bulwer could scarcely have been unaware, and which are inconsistent with the only motives suggested as inciting Aram to crime. In the opinion of the descendants of Aram"s old neighbors in his native Nidderdale, Houseman was alone guilty; and if Aram had, instead of undertaking to conduct his own defence, intrusted it to proper counsel, the trial would have resulted in his acquittal.
HOME OF SYDNEY SMITH
_Heslington-Foston, Twelve Miles from a Lemon-Church--Rector"s Head-- Study--Room-of-all-work--Grounds--Guests--Universal Scratcher-- Immortal Chariot--Reminiscences._
[Sidenote: Heslington]
The metropolis of England holds many places which knew "the greatest of the many Smiths:" dwellings he some time inhabited, mansions in which he was the honored guest, pulpits and rostrums from which he discoursed, the room in which he died, the tomb where loving hands laid him beside his son. But it is in a remote valley of Yorkshire, where half his adult years were pa.s.sed in a lonely retreat among the humble poor, that we find the scenes most intimately a.s.sociated with the fruitful period of his life. In the lovely dale of York, not far from one of the ancient gates and within sound of the bells of the great minster, is the village of Heslington, Smith"s first place of abode in Yorkshire. His dwelling here--lately the rectory of a parish which has been created since his time, and one of the best houses of the village--is a s.p.a.cious and substantial old-fashioned mansion of brick, two stories in height and delightfully cosy in appearance. Large bow-windows, built by Smith, project from the front and rise to the eaves. The rooms are of comfortable dimensions, and that in which Smith wrote is "glorified" by the sunlight from one of his great windows, near which his writing-table was placed. The house stands a rod or two from the highway, amid a ma.s.s of foliage; an iron railing borders the yard, trees grow upon either side, and at the back is an ample garden which was Smith"s especial delight, and which he paced for hours as he pondered his compositions.
It was here that the dignified Jeffrey of the _Edinburgh Review_ rode the children"s pet donkey over the gra.s.s. Smith"s famous "Peter Plimley"
letters were produced at Heslington. He never felt at home here, because he constantly contemplated removing. His own parish had no rectory, and he was permitted by his bishop to reside here while he sought to exchange the living for another: failing in this, he was allowed a further term in which to erect a dwelling in his parish, consequently Heslington was his home for some years. During this time he made weekly excursions to his church, twelve miles distant, behind a steed which he commemorates as Peter the Cruel, and in the year he built his parsonage the excursions were so frequent that he computed he had ridden Peter "several times round the world, going and coming from Heslington."
[Sidenote: Foston-le-Clay]
[Sidenote: Smith"s Parsonage]
[Sidenote: Fields and Farmsteading]
In the remoter hamlet of Foston, "twelve miles from a lemon," we find the church where he ministered for twenty years and the house which was his home longer than any other. Our way thither--the same once so familiar to Smith and his cruel steed--lies along the green valley through which the wimpling Foss ripples and sings on its way to the Ouse. In sun and shadow our road leads through a pleasant country until we see the roofs of Smith"s parsonage rising among the tree-tops. The Rector"s Head, as the wit delighted to call his home, stands among the glebe-lands at a little distance from the highway, and a carriage-drive--constructed by Smith after some of his guests had been almost inextricably mired in their attempts to reach his door--conducts from a road-side gate near the school through the tasteful and well-kept grounds. Before we reach the rectory a second barrier is encountered, Smith"s "Screeching Gate," which, like the gate at "Amen Corner,"
remains just as it was when he bestowed its name. The mansion, of which he was both architect and builder, described by him and his friend Loch as "the ugliest house ever seen," presents a singularly attractive aspect of cosiness and comfort. The edifice is somewhat improved since the great essayist dwelt beneath its roof, but the original structure remains,--an oblong brick fabric, of ample proportions and unpretentious architecture, two stories in height, with hip-roofs of warm-tinted tiles. A large bay-window struts from one side wall; a beautiful conservatory abuts upon another side; a little porch, overgrown with creepers and flowers, protects the entrance. The once plain brickwork, which rose bare of ornamentation, is mantled with ivy and flowering vines which clamber to the roofs and riot along the walls, imparting to the "unparsonic parsonage" a picturesque charm which no architectural decoration could produce. The bare field in which Smith erected his house has been transformed into an Eden of beauty and bloom; on every side are velvety lawns, curving walks, beds of flowers, patches of shrubbery, and groups of woodland trees, forming a pretty park, mostly planned by Smith and planted by his hand. Within, we find the apartments s.p.a.cious and cheerful: the windows are the same that were screened by the many-hued patchwork shades designed by Smith and wrought by the deft fingers of his daughters, the chimney-pieces of Portland stone which he erected remain, but tasteful and elegant furniture now replaces the rude handiwork of the village carpenter, which was disposed through these rooms during Smith"s inc.u.mbency. He blithely tells a guest, "I needed furniture; I bought a cart-load of boards and got the carpenter, Jack Robinson; told him, "Jack, furnish my house," and you see the result." Some of the resulting furniture is still preserved in the neighborhood and valued above price. From the bay-window of the parlor the gray towers of York"s colossal cathedral are seen ten miles away; the room adjoining at the left is the memorable apartment which was Smith"s study, school-room, court, surgery, and what-not. Here his gayly-bound books were arranged by his daughter, the future Lady Holland, and here, when not applied to him, his famous "rheumatic armor"
stood in a bag in yonder corner. Here he wrote his sermons, his brilliant and witty essays, the wise and effective disquisitions on the disabilities of the Catholics, the coruscating and incisive articles for the Review which electrified the English world. In this room he taught his children and gave Bible lessons to the youth of the parish, some of whom survive to praise and bless him; here, too, he prescribed for the sick and dispensed mercy rather than justice to culprits haled before him; for, as his letters declare, he was at once "village magistrate, village parson, village doctor, village comforter, and Edinburgh Reviewer." To these manifold avocations he added, despite his "not knowing a turnip from a carrot," that of the farmer, and managed the three hundred acres of glebe-lands which were so unproductive that no one else would cultivate them. A door-way of the rectory overlooks most of the plantation, and he suspended here a telescope and a tremendous speaking-trumpet by means of which he could observe and direct much of his operations without himself going afield. Behind the house, and screened by trees which Smith planted, are the farmstead buildings he planned; here are the stables and pens where he was welcomed by every individual of his stock, whom he daily visited to feed and pet; here is the enclosure where he found his fuddled pigs "grunting G.o.d save the King about the sty" after he had administered a medicament of fermented grains. In the adjoining field is the site of his "Universal Scratcher,"--a sharp-edged pole having a tall support at one extremity and a low one at the other, which so adapted it to the height of every animal that "they could scratch themselves with the greatest facility and luxury; even the "Reviewer" [himself] could take his turn."
[Sidenote: Guests--Reminiscences]
Of Smith"s life in this retirement his many letters and the memoirs of his daughter give us pleasant pictures. Although he said his whole life had "been pa.s.sed like a razor, in hot water or a sc.r.a.pe," the years spent here seem to have been happy ones. Even his removal to this house while it was yet so damp that the walls ran down with wet and the grounds were so miry that his wife lost her shoes at the door, was made enjoyable. He writes to one friend, "I am too busy to be lonely;" to another, "I thank G.o.d who made me poor that he also made me merry, a better gift than much land with a doleful heart;" to another, "I am content and doubling in size every year;" to Lady Grey, "Come and see how happy people can be in a small parsonage;" to Jeffrey, "My situation is one of great solitude, but I possess myself in cheerfulness." He had expended upon his improvements here more than the living was worth, therefore economy ruled the selection of the _personnel_ of this establishment. Faithful Annie Kay was first employed as child"s-maid; later she was housekeeper and trusted friend, removed from here with her loved master, attended him in his last illness, and lies near him in the long sleep. A garden girl, made like a mile-stone, was hired by Smith, who "christened her Bunch, gave her a napkin, and made her his butler."
Jack Robinson was retained as general factotum of the place, and Molly Mills, "a yeowoman, with short petticoat, legs like mill-posts, and cheeks shrivelled like winter apples," did duty as "cow-, pig-, poultry-, garden-, and post-woman." Guests testify that good-natured training had, out of this unpromising material, produced such efficient servants that the household ran smoothly in the stress of much company.
For, despite the seclusion of Smith"s retreat, his fame and the charm and wit of his conversation drew many visitors to his house. Lords Carlisle and Morpeth were almost weekly guests; Sir Humphry Davy and his gifted wife were many times guests for days together; among those who came less frequently were Jeffrey, Macaulay, Marcet, Dugald Stewart, John Murray, Mackintosh, and Lord and Lady Holland, with many of less fame; and we may imagine something of the scintillant converse these rooms knew when the master wit entertained such company. Neither his friends nor his literary pursuits were allowed to interfere with his attentions to the simple rustics of his parish; in sickness and trouble he was tireless in their service, furnishing medicines, food, and clothing out of his slender means. During the prevalence of an infectious fever he was constantly among them, as physician, nurse, and priest. The oldest parishioners speak of him by his Christian name, and testify that he was universally beloved. One lately remembered that Sydney had cared for his father during a long illness and maintained the family until he could return to his work. Another had been accustomed, as a child, to run after Sydney on the highway and cling to him until he bestowed the sugar-plums he always carried in his pockets. In one portion of the glebe we found small enclosures of land stocked with abundant fruit-trees and called Sydney"s Orchards, which were planted by him and given to the parishioners at a nominal rental.
[Sidenote: The Chariot]
Smith"s solitary excursions through the parish were made astride a gaunt charger, called by him Calamity, noted for length of limb and strength of appet.i.te, as well as for a propensity to part company with his rider, sometimes throwing the great Smith "over his head into the next parish."
But when the rector"s family were to accompany him, the ancient green chariot was employed. This was believed to have been the first vehicle of the kind, was purchased by Smith at second (or twenty-second) hand, and was from time to time partially restored by the unskilled village mechanics. Anent this structure the delightful Smith writes, "Each year added to its charms: it grew younger and younger: a new wheel, a new spring; I christened it the Immortal: it was known everywhere: the village boys cheered it, the village dogs barked at it." To the ends of the shafts Smith attached a rod so that it projected in front of the horse and sustained a measure of grain just beyond his reach,--a device which evoked a maximum of speed from the beast with the minimum of exertion on the part of the driver, the deluded horse being "stimulated to unwonted efforts by hope of overtaking the provender." We have talked with some in the vicinage who remembered seeing Smith and his family riding in this perennial chariot, drawn by a plough-horse which was harnessed with plough-lines and driven by a plough-boy.
[Sidenote: Smith"s Church]
A mile from the rectory, past the few straggling cottages of the hamlet, we come to the quaint little church of Foston, one of the oldest in England. It was already in existence in 1081 when Doomsday Book was compiled, being then the property of Earl Allen: later it was conveyed to St. Mary"s Abbey, whose ruins--marvellously beautiful even in decay--we find at the gates of York. It is noteworthy that this church of Foston early contained an image of the Virgin of such repute that people flocked to it in great numbers, and in 1313 the archbishop issued an edict that they should not desert their own churches to come here.
Smith"s church is prettily placed upon a gentle eminence from which we look across a wave-like expanse of smiling fields to steeper slopes beyond, a picture of pastoral peace and calm. Beneath the many mouldering heaps of the church-yard sleep the rustic poor for whom Smith labored, many of them having been committed to their narrow cells, "in the certain hope of the life to come," by his kindly hands. Among the graves stands the old church, the plainest and smallest of its kind. The present venerable and reverend inc.u.mbent, to whom we are indebted for many courtesies, has at his own expense restored the chancel as a memorial of his wife, but the princ.i.p.al portion of the edifice remains the same "miserable hovel" that Macaulay described in Smith"s day. A heavy porch shelters the entrance, and above this is a sculptured Norman arch of great antiquity, a Scripture subject being graven upon each stone, that upon the key-block representing the Last Supper. The bare walls are surmounted by a dilapidated belfry, and the barn-like edifice is desolate and neglected. We find the interior dismal and depressive, and quite unchanged since Smith"s time, save that the stove-pipe now enters a flue instead of emerging through a window. The quaint old pulpit, perched high in the corner opposite the gallery and beneath a huge sounding-board, is the same in which he so often stood; its frayed and faded cushions are said to be those that he belabored in his discourses, and out of which, on one occasion, he raised such a cloud of dust "that for some minutes he lost sight of the congregation." The pewter communion plate he used is preserved in a recess of the wall.
Across the end and along one side of the church extends a gallery, in which sat the children under Smith"s sharp eye, and kept in order, as some remember, by "a threaten-shake of his head." Along the front of this gallery ugly wooden pegs are aligned, on which the occupants of the pews hang their wraps, and so diminutive is the place that there are but four pews between door and pulpit. The present rector, whose father owned most of the parish and was Smith"s firm friend, attended as a boy Smith"s ministrations here, and remembers something of the direct eloquence of his sermons and their impressive effect upon the auditors.
Attracted by his fame, some came from far to hear him preach who afterward became his ardent friends, among these being Macaulay and the Mrs. Apreece whom de Stael depicted as "Corinne" and who subsequently, as wife of Humphry Davy, was guest at The Rector"s Head. In this shabby little church Smith gave away his daughter Emily, the Archbishop of York reading the marriage service; and not long after Smith removed to Somerset, and Foston saw him no more.
The church contains no memorial of any sort in memory of Smith. The decayed condition of this temple has long been a reproach to the resident gentry. Since those whose property interests are most concerned in the restoration of the church have declined to enter upon it, the good rector contemplates undertaking it at his own charge. Not long ago he was engaged upon the plans, and it may be that, by the time these pages reach the reader, Foston church as Smith knew it will have ceased to exist. The writer has a lively hope that some of the New World pilgrims who have marked other Old World shrines which else had been neglected, will set in these renovated walls an enduring memorial--of pictured gla.s.s or sculptured stone or graven metal--in remembrance of the ill.u.s.trious author-divine who, during his best years, ministered in this lowly place to a congregation of rude and unlettered poor.
NITHSDALE RAMBLES
_Scott--Hogg--Wordsworth--Carlyle"s Birthplace--Homes--Grave--Burns"s Haunts--Tomb--Jeanie Deans--Old Mortality, etc.--Annie Laurie"s Birthplace--Habitation--Poet-Lover--Descendants._
[Sidenote: Carlyle"s Birthplace--Grave]
From the "Heart of Mid-Lothian" and the many shrines of picturesque Edinburgh, once the literary capital of Britain, our saunterings bring us to other haunts of the "Wizard of the North:" to his oft described Abbotsford,--that baronial "romance in stone and lime,"--with its libraries and armories, its precious relics and more precious memories of its ill.u.s.trious builder and occupant, who here literally "wrote himself to death;" to the dream-like, ivy-grown ruins of holy Melrose, whose beauties he sang and within whose crumbling walls he lingered and mused; to his tomb fittingly placed amid the ruined arches and mouldering pillars of Dryburgh Abbey, embowered by venerable trees and mantled by clinging vines. Strolling thence among the "Braes of Yarrow,"
the Yarrow of Wordsworth and Hamilton, through the haunts of Hogg the Ettrick Shepherd, and pa.s.sing the Hartfell, we come into the dale of Annan, and follow that winsome water past Moffat, where lived Burns"s daughter, to historic Applegarth, and thence by Lockerby approach Ecclefechan, the hamlet of Carlyle"s birth and sepulture. Among the lowly stone cottages on the straggling street of the rude village is a double dwelling with an arched pa.s.sage-way through the middle of its lower story; this humble structure was erected by the stone-mason James Carlyle, and the northern end of it was his home when his ill.u.s.trious son was born. Opening from the street is a narrow door; beside it is a diminutive window, with a similar one above and another over the arch.
The exterior is now smartened somewhat,--the shillings of pilgrims would pay for that,--but the abode is pathetically small, bare, and poor. The one lower room is so contracted that the Carlyles could not all sit at the table, and Thomas used to eat his porridge outside the door. Some Carlyle relics from Cheyne Row--letters, portraits, pieces of china, study-lamp, tea-caddy, and other articles--are preserved in the room above, and adjoining it is the narrow chamber above the archway where the great historian, essayist, and cynic was born. In this comfortless home, and amid the dreary surroundings of this hard and rough village, which is little improved since the days of border war and pillage, he was reared. The stern savagery of the physical horizon of his boyhood here, and the hateful and uncongenial character of his environment at the most impressionable period of his life, may account to us for much of the morose cynicism of his later years. Further excuse for his petulance and his acerbities of tongue and temper is found in his dyspepsia, and a very limited experience of Ecclefechan cookery suffices to convince us that his indigestion was another unhappy sequence of his early life in this border hamlet. In "Sartor Resartus" he has vivaciously recorded some of the incidents and impressions of his childhood here,--notably the pa.s.sage of the Carlisle coach, like "some terrestrial moon, coming from he knew not where, going he knew not whither." A shabby cross-street leads to the village graveyard, which was old a thousand years ago, and there, within a few rods of the spot of his birth, the great Carlyle is forever laid, with his parents and kindred. The yard is a forlorn enclosure, huddled with hundreds of unmarked graves, and with other hundreds of crumbling memorials drooping aslant among the brambles which infest the place. The tombstone of Carlyle, within an iron railing, is a little more pretentious than those about it, but his grave seems neglected; daisies and coa.r.s.e gra.s.s grow about it, and the only tokens of reverent memory it bears are placed by Americans, who const.i.tute the majority of the pilgrims to this place.
Not far from the kirk-yard is a lowly cottage, hardly better than a hut, in which dwelt Burns"s "La.s.s of Ecclefechan."
[Sidenote: Dumfries--Burns"s Dwelling]
By a transverse road from Lockerby we come to the ruined Lochmaben Castle of Bruce, and thence into Nithsdale and to Dumfries, the ancient capital of southwestern Scotland. Here lived Edward Irving, and here Allan Cunningham toiled as a common mason; but the gray town is interesting to us chiefly because of its a.s.sociations with Burns. Here are the tavern, familiar to us as the "howff," which he frequented, and where he made love to the bar-maid, "Anna of the Gowden Locks;" the parlor where his wit kept the table in a roar; the heavy chair in the "ingle neuk" where he habitually sat, and, in the room above, the lines to "Lovely Polly Stewart" graven by his hand upon the pane. From the inn a malodorous lane, named Burns Street, and oft threaded by the bard when he "wasna fou but just had plenty," leads to the poor dwelling where lived and died the poet of his country and of mankind. An environment more repulsive and depressing, a spot more unworthy to be the home of a poet of nature, can scarcely be imagined. Here not a flower nor a green bough, not even a gra.s.s-blade, met his vision, not one beautiful object appeased his poetic taste; he saw only the squalid street infested by unwashed bairns and bordered by rows of mean cottages. How shall we extol the genius which in such an uncongenial atmosphere produced those exquisite poems which for a century have been read and loved in every clime? His own dwelling, a bare two-storied cottage, is hardly more decent than its neighbors. Within, we find a kitchen and sitting-room, small and low-ceiled; above, a windowed closet,--sometimes used by the poet as a study,--and the poor little chamber where he died, only thirty-seven years after he first saw the light in the clay biggin by his bonnie Doon.
[Sidenote: Tomb]
The interior of St. Michael"s Church has been refitted, and the sacristan can show us now only the site of Burns"s seat, behind a great pillar which hid him from the preacher, and that of the Jenny on whose bonnet he saw the "crowlin"" pediculus. Through the crowded church-yard a path beaten by countless pilgrims from every quarter of the globe conducts to the place where he lies with "Bonnie Jean" and some of their children. The costly mausoleum which now covers his tomb--erected by those who had neglected or shunned him in his life--is to us less impressive than the poor little gravestone which the faithful Jean first placed above him, which now forms part of the pavement. The ambitious statue, designed to represent Genius throwing her mantle over Burns at the plough, suggests, as some one has said, that a bath-woman bringing a wet sheet to an unwilling patient had served as a model. Oddly enough, the grave of John Bushby, an attorney oft lampooned in Burns"s verse, lies but a few feet from that of the poet.
[Sidenote: Jeanie Deans--Carlyle"s Craigenputtock]
Our ramble along the wimpling Nith lies for the most part in a second Burnsland, so closely is it a.s.sociated with his personality and poetry.
The beauties of the stream itself are celebrated in half a score of his songs. Every seat and scene are sung in his verse; every neighborhood and almost every house preserve some priceless relic or some touching reminiscence of the ploughman-bard. A short way above Dumfries we come to the picturesque ruin of Lincluden Abbey, at the meeting of the waters of Cluden and Nith. The crumbling walls are enshrouded in ivy and surrounded by giant trees, among which Burns loved to loiter. His "Evening View" and "Vision" commemorate this ruin, and the poem "Lincluden" was written here. In a tasteful cottage not far from the Abbey sojourned the Mrs. Goldie who communicated to Scott the incidents which he wrought into his "Heart of Mid-Lothian," and it was in the little kitchen of this cottage that the lady talked with Helen Walker, the original Jeanie Deans. In a poor little low-eaved dwelling, a mile or two up the valley, that heroine lived, keeping a dame"s school and rearing chickens; and our course along the tuneful stream brings us to the ancient and sequestered kirk-yard of Irongray, where, among the gra.s.s-grown graves of the Covenanters, her ashes repose beneath a tombstone erected by Scott himself and marked by an inscription from his hand: "Respect the Grave of Poverty when a.s.sociated with love of Truth and dear Affection." Farther in this lovely region we come to ancient Dunscore and the monument of Scott"s "Old Mortality;" and beyond Moniaive we find, near the source of the Cairn, Craigenputtock--the abode where "Thomas the Thunderer prepared his bolts" before he removed to London. This dreary place, "the loneliest in Britain," had been the abode of many generations of Mrs. Carlyle"s ancestors,--among whom were "several black-guards but not one blockhead,"--and Carlyle rebuilt and furnished the house here to which he brought the bride he had wedded after his repulsion by his fair Rose-G.o.ddess, the Blumine of his "Romance." It is a severely plain and substantial two-storied structure of stone with steep gables. The entrance is under a little porch in the middle of the front; on either side is a single window, with another above it in the second story. There are comfortable and commodious rooms at each side of the entrance, and a large kitchen is joined at the back.
Carlyle"s study, a rather sombre apartment, with a dispiriting outlook, is at the left; a fireplace which the sage especially loved is in one wall, his writing-table stood near it, and here he sat and clothed in virile diction the brilliant thoughts which had come to him as he paced among his trees or loitered on the near hill-tops. The dining-room and parlor are on the other side, looking out upon wild and gloomy crags.
Mrs. Carlyle"s pen long ago introduced us to this interior, and, although all her furniture, except perhaps the kitchen "dresser," has been removed, we recognize the household nooks she has mentioned. The kitchen, which was the scene of her tearful housekeeping trials, seems most familiar; its chimney retains its abominable habits, but a recent inc.u.mbent, instead of crying as did Mrs. Carlyle, declared the "chimla made her feel like sweerin"." Great ash-trees, which were old when the sage dwelt beneath them, overtop the house; many beautiful flowers--some survivors of those planted by Carlyle and his wife--bloom in the yard.