Old And New

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

IT is surprising how much of historie interest is to be found in the fen-lands of the counties bordering upon the North Sea and English Channel ; clustering about the broad-mouthed Humber and the Wash, their coasts encroached upon by the sea and undergoing change, so that what was firm land is now marsh ; penetrated by wide estuaries and innumerable small streams and canals ; flat as the scenery of Holland, but varied by slight eminences, on which stand towns with tall towers, like Lincoln and Ely ; it being the case in low countries that buildings instinctively and by contrast rise to loftier proportions, or as landmarks to be seen from the sea and long distances inland. But in these intricate and im-passable fen-lands, as in mountainous countries, whatever was precious in times of peril found refuge, and they became fastnesses of freedom ; as the Italian people, driven from the mainland by Hunnish invaders, fled to the sand-islands of the lagoons and built Venice. As early as the invasion of the Romans, the marshlands afforded shelter to the unyielding Britons, and here, too, the English retreated at the time of the Norman conquest ; and our forefathers, who were mostly from Lincolnshire and the low-lying regions, may have drawn their love of independence from this early source. These counties occupy what were once the great realms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, which in Alfred's time, and after the establishment of the Saxon heptarchy, grew into the kingdom of England.

On my way from Scarborough to Cambridge, in the summer of 1888, I went to see the ruins of the Abbey of Croyland, to which I was attracted, not only because it was the germ of Cambridge University, but from historic and poetic reasons, representing as it does a storm and stress" period of English history when the poetic was overborne by the terribly actual; and from its associations with the hero Hereward, the last Englishman who resisted the Normans, and whom Kingsley enshrined in his romance, which his daughter-in-law told me he thought more of than any of his works, and breathed into it an indomitable spirit of freedom. An English gentleman, who himself claimed descent from Hereward and bore his name, was the means of drawing my attention to an original Latin copy of Ingulph's " Chronicle of Croyland Abbey," belonging to a lover of old books in Peterborough, who locked me into his room, near the Cathedral Close, while copying certain passages. Ingulph's Chronicle undoubtedly contains fragments of English history, though evidently colored for ecclesiastical purposes. Interspersed with puerile fable, and its authenticity and authorship doubted by Sir Francis Palgrave and other antiquarians, this Chronicle presents, nevertheless, a graphic picture of the growth of the monastic system in England in the time, say, from 800 to 1200 (Ingulph was made Abbot of Croyland Abbey in 1076, and his history was continued by another), when monasteries formed an important part of the " social machinery " of those disordered times, moulding the rude mass into some civilized shape, repressing the tendency to lawless violence, teaching the art of tillage, improving the breed of cattle and sheep (the Cistercians were famous for their horses), caring for the poor, and constituting a home for learning and such of the arts as existed, — church architecture and music, organ-building, bell-founding, glass-painting, illumining of missals, copying of Greek and Latin manuscripts, and the writing of chronicles or histories as far as they had to do with the church's affairs ; and in this way it comes about that these Anglia Sacra contain much profane history and other matter. For example, Geoffrey of Monmouth's monkish chronicle gave Shakespeare " King Lear ; " Geoffrey's chronicle also records the story of Arthur and the legendary period of English history, though, indeed, Arthur's great victory over the Saxons at Badon Hill in 451 is held by many writers to be not altogether improbable ; and the Venerable Beda furnishes the only trustworthy account of the long wavering struggle between Paganism and Christianity in the middle kingdoms, in the time of powerful King Penda. The abbots who governed these monasteries were veritable rulers of the people, and their towns, clustering about the great abbeys that rose like mountains in the midst, were hardly distinguishable from royal burghs, so that the people sometimes enjoyed less liberty under their sway than the royal burgesses themselves.They looked keenly after their revenues, and, in the days of the Conqueror, the Norman bishops were great feudal lords, holding their possessions by baronial tenure.

Leaving Peterborough and its Norman cathedral, I drove through the fen-country, crossing the Ouse, on whose bosom once were crowded the Danish war-ships at the sacking of the " Golden Borough," to Crowland, nine miles to the north of Peterborough, in the county of Lincoln and the borders of Northamptonshire, situated on the river Welland, and right in the marshes. Here, as Ingulph's Chronicle tells us, Guthlac, one of the nobles of Ethelbald, king of Mercia, wishing to withdraw from the world, allowed his boat to float along wherever the wind or tide bore it, and was wafted to " Crowland Isle," on which he built a hut and lived and died as a holy hermit. In honor of St. Guthlac, the king founded here in 716 a monastery, and endowed it splendidly for that day. The abbey was sacked and burned by the Danes (those fierce marauders who overran six English- counties), and afterwards was burned several times, so that what remains of it does not date from an earlier period than the twelfth century. The grand nave was almost altogether destroyed in 1688, since which time the north aisle has been used as a parish church, and some old things and Saxons coffins are preserved in it; but even this part of the structure has lost its sculptures, and the whole has been fearfully ravaged by fire and war, — a discrowned pile ! Yet its fragments, which are but a fourth part of what it once was, — the massive tower ; the gray west front, one of the most remarkable in England for its rows of statues of Norman kings and bishops, among which St. Guthlac, holding a whip and treading a fiend underfoot, is prominent; the nave, with the arches of its great east and west windows, one of them a thin curve suspended as by magic over empty space, — make it a picture of dignified decay. Within the arch of the west doorway is a quatre-foil, with curious little carvings in each of its lobes of scenes from the life of St. Guthlac, his coming in a boat to Crowland Isle, his temptation by demons, his reception of King Ethelbald ; and exquisite bits of mouldings and capitals lie strewed about, showing the former glories of Crowland, or Croyland, Abbey (crudam terram, crude or muddy earth), when it stretched its protecting shadow far over the fens ; and here, often, rowed Hereward, summoning the trembling monks with his wild horn, and with shoutings of " Hereward is come home again ! " Here he was buried, it may be in one of the Saxon coffins now to be seen. Hither Torfrida came, drawn over the frozen fens in a sledge shod with beef-bones. Abbot Ingulph's Chronicle reads like a romance, and we devoutly wish it were true :

" At this time [1062] Leofric, a person of high lineage, illustrious for warlike prowess and a friend of our monastery, by his wife Ediva [Godiva], who was of like noble blood, had a son, Heward [Hereward] by name, at this time a young man remarkable for his strength of body. He was tall, and a youth of singular beauty but too fond of strife and a spirit uncontrolled beyond expression. In sports he manifested such ardor that ' his hand was against every man, and every man's hand was against him.' The consequence was, that when those of similar age engaged in wrestling and other such games, if he could not triumph over them all, and they did not give him the crown, he would obtain with the edge of the sword what his arm did not win. For this reason his neighbors made complaints against him, and so greatly did they provoke his father that, in the bitterness of his anger, he disclosed these youthful pranks to King Edward and procured his outlawry. . . . This most valiant youth first repaired to Northumbria, then to Cornwall, thence to Ireland, and afterwards to Flanders ; and, everywhere behaving with the great-est bravery, in a short time acquired a glorious name, so that the feelings of his father and mother and fellow-countrymen towards him were changed into those of warm affection. . . . When the earls above named were making resistance to King William, holding possession, together with many other nobles who were similarly disinherited, of the fens, they sent a speedy messenger to fetch Reward, on whose arrival he was made leader in the warfare and chief of the forces; upon which he performed so many glorious exploits, was so often victorious over his foes, eluded them on so many occasions, that he earned lasting praise, be-cause he upheld his falling country as long as he could, and did not permit his countrymen to go unrevenged to the shades below. The rest of the noblemen, surrender, ing themselves to the king, endeavored to gain favor, while he was the only one who utterly refused to do so, adopting ever some new scheme."

It might be well to add to the above quotation from the Chronicle, that John Richard Green, in his History of the English People," says : " William met with a more obstinate resistance from Hereward than he encountered anywhere else in England."

The tough Norman knight, No Taillebois, who has so large a place in Kingsley's story, figures in Ingulph's narration as a cruel thorn in his side, persecuting his monks, despoiling the monastery and stealing its lands, tremendously thrashed by Hereward, and entombed at last in Spalding Priory, " with some little sorrow of his wife, but loud exultations of his neighbors." We are delighted to discover that plumbing was the cause of the destruction of the abbey (a plumber's stove being upset on the roof), and was an old as well as modern source of trouble. Ingulph's own adventures, escapes, and agonies during the great fire are too vividly personal to be entirely untrue. In his chronicle we have also the story of the death of William Rufus in New Forest, and an unqualified testimony is given to its being un-witting" on the part of Walter Tirel. The earth-quake of 1118 is magniloquently described : —

" The tower of Milan Cathedral was shook to the ground, and the roof of the church of Croyland, being new work, was split asunder, shocking to relate ! and the southern wall thereof, with horrible yawnings, would have fallen had not the carpenters bound it together with beams laid transversely."

There is likewise a record of the grand council held by Earl John, afterwards King John, in his brother Richard's absence, in relation to the claims of John and one of his barons to lands of the abbey, to which council the Abbot of Croy-land was summoned, and in which he produced the royal father's charter setting forth the monas_ tery's rights to the marsh-land, whereupon John " blushed for very shame ;" but in the whole transaction there is reason to suspect considerable sharp practice on the part of the abbot himself, not only in bribing the covetous John, but in regard to certain letters, obtained from Richard in his captivity, going to establish the claim of the abbey to its beloved marsh. The violent controversy between Henry de Longchamp, abbot of Croyland, and Simon, prior of Spalding, regarding the "common of pasture in the marshes of Croyland, Spalding, Pinchbeck, Langtoft, Baston, and Deyping," which lie about the western side of the river Welland, is feelingly narrated, showing there could be anger in heavenly minds. The humble life of the holy Abbot Thomas " is a more edifying chapter ; but even of him it is said : " He did not spend his time in idleness, and in neglecting to perform the works of goodness, for he was always strenuously exerting himself in increasing the pos-sessions of his church." The latter half of the chronicle, by another hand, is fuller of fable and vaticination, relating, for instance, at length, the story of one John Wayle, who unworthily offered him-self as a partaker of the holy communion, and who was tormented by an evil spirit and by the monks, who, having bound him to a pillar in the church, performed all manner of exorcisms over him, and, finally, being dragged with ropes to the tomb of the blessed Guthlac, he was restored and saved. In a certain year there were seen in the heavens

" Three suns, and a rain of blood. This latter came down in a manner like a gentle shower. Besides this, horsemen and men in armor were observed rushing through the air ; so much so that Saint George, conspicuous with the red cross, his usual banner, and attended by a vast throng of armed men, appeared visibly to great numbers, who were subjected to rigorous examination by the venerable Thomas, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury," —

which sounds like a legend of Spain instead of England. The same chronicle gives us the familiar story of King Alfred's playing the disguised minstrel in the Danish camp, and of his wax tapers and literary labors, and transcribes many of his wise laws. But who could have dreamed that the wise King Alfred would have written so satiric a verse as this ! —

" Many a man singeth
That a wife home bringeth:
If he knew what he brought,
Weep he ought."

I make but one more quotation from the history of the worthy Ingulphus :

" At this period the venerable father, Abbot Wulgat, seeing the scarcity of food, and that his sons the monks, who before his arrival had been refreshed with dainties, were now feeding on an inferior kind of bread and small fish caught in the river, sighed deeply and grieved exceedingly that he had ' multiplied the nation and not in-creased the joy,' and he deliberately consulted with his brethren, what steps ought to be taken in this most imminent peril."

The odd triangular stone bridge in the marketplace of Crowland, that strides with its three legs over dry earth, with its battered archaic statue, would seem formerly to have been a footway over the junction of two streams running at right angles, showing an economy of design in engineering doubtless belonging to the architectural plan of the abbey, though now at some distance from its ruins. My driver aided me in comprehending the geography of the amphibious region where land and water so intermingle, and in the otherwise unvaried drive from and to Peterborough, he entertained me with his talk about the noble and wealthy landlords (descendants of No Taillebois, for aught I know) of Spalding, Deyping, Peakick, and Stilton. The road was embroidered with crimson poppies and a marvelous abundance of flowers and tangled weeds of every hue, while the gigantic mass of the gray old abbey lingered long in the distance on the flat horizon.

Croyland Abbey is at present but a solitary fragment, whose tottering walls need propping or they will soon tumble down, which would be a great pity. It is not at all comparable with Furness Abbey, which is on the west coast ; but before speaking of that, I would say a word of one or two other places on this eastern shore, and the first of them is Beverley, near the foot of the Wolds. Beverley is 182 miles from London, and a good way north on this small island. As I landed from the swift-rushing North Eastern Rail-way train, nothing could be more quiet than the town itself, though, like a Spanish town, its carved coats-of-arms show ancient pride (here reigned " old King Coil" of happy memory) ; and nothing could be more charming than the interior of the minster, with its stone roof and magnificent choir-work. It is next to the large cathedrals in size, and superior to some of them in harmonious elegance, and is, in some points, unique. Like the cathedral of Bourges, in France, it has an organic unity that moulds all into one perfect whole. Its front has tiers on tiers of tabernacle work, shooting up into two towers that end in delicate pinnacles. The west window literally fills the middle portion of the ,front with intricate tracery, and its lovely marigold windows are, I believe, quite unlike in their pattern to any others. I was astonished (having just come from studying the great French churches) by the rhythmic beauty of the nave of Beverley minster, its arches springing so boldly from clusters of cylindrical pillars, combining solidity with lightness. A double-arched triforium is a dainty feature, the inner arch of which is quatrefoil and the outer trefoil ; and other arcades with ogee arches are decorated with luxuriant running foliage ending in flower finials, and intermixed with figures of angels playing upon musical instruments, — you can hear them ; for great size is not always needful for harmonious effect, but there is music in lines appealing solely to the eye. Beverley minster and St. Mary's church (two gems in dull settings), and their glorious traceried windows, are among the purest examples of the Decorated Gothic in England. In St. Mary's, I remember, preparations for a wedding ceremony filled the chancel with banks of tall white lilies, white roses, and other flowers, so that the carven flowery stonework was well matched by the living flowers that met and carried out the blossoming richness of the architectural idea.

A fine example, also, of the mingled Decorated and Perpendicular is St. Botolph's Church, in Boston, which I saw a day or two later on ; Boston is also on its bay, like our Boston — think of it ! The interior of this church, and its timber-roof and rows of high clere-story windows and curious wood carvings, will repay the student. But Boston and its crowded-together, red-tiled roofs in flat Lincolnshire is as unlike Boston on its three hills in Massachusetts as two cities well could be, yet it has claims to attention besides its church, in whose pulpit John Cotton preached, and whose paneled octagon spire lifts itself to the height of three hundred feet seen over the fen - lands. Its Saxon saint Botolph should take the fair American city under his wing, and not allow it to be entirely given over to Celtic or Celestial invaders, as the English town was to the raven-bannered Danes ; at all events, the reflected light of some-thing greater and more famous of which it is the namesake is cast back upon this respectable English seaport of twenty thousand inhabitants, which will continue to be visited by sons of the Pilgrims. But I must not forget Furness Abbey, that has some points of resemblance to Croyland, though its ruins are infinitely more extensive and beautiful.

I have a passion for ruins (if they are poetic), and I have sometimes asked myself what is the explanation of the charm of ruins ? Mr. Ruskin, it is said, will not come to this country because there are no old castles here so beautiful in their decay. Ruins appeal entirely to the imagination.

They have nothing else. They are, in this respect, genuine poems. Setting aside their aesthetic power, they speak of what no longer exists. They awaken no troublesome thoughts, no " burning questions," except of their own burning. The people who lived in them are ghosts, and terrible as their misfortunes may have been, it is like the pleasing horror of tragedy, though milder, for they leave us to fill up the human picture as we choose. The pensive shadow of death grows poetic in-stead of painful under the crumbling arches that have no use now, and through the long hollow spaces where the rain and leaves fall unheeded.

I saw Furness Abbey on an English summer day of rain and shine, with magnificent clouds piling up and floating as full-sailed argosies across the blue sky, making a lovely chiaroscuro among those massive fragments of buildings that covered eight acres, and are still firm and mantled thickly with ivy and parasite vines. They stand at the end of the peninsula, between the mouth of Dud-don River and Morecambe Bay, six miles from Ulverston, and are situated in the " Vale of the Deadly Nightshade." Furness Abbey's seal was the Virgin Mary, to whom the monastery was dedicated, and on each side of her were the royal arms of England, over which hung bunches of night-shade. Gloom and solitude were thereby conveyed, and the narrow valley with its melancholy name promoted meditation. But it is now a carefully kept ruin belonging to the Duke of Devonshire, and was once a lordly establishment of the Cistercian or Bernardine monks, second only to Fountains Abbey, though I give preference to Fountains for solid and incomparable grandeur ; but Furness has a warmer color from its deep red sandstone. The abbey held in dominion a broad territory, embracing the region about Lake Windermere and landed rights in other parts of the kingdom, and was noted for its agricultural and pastoral wealth ; so that when the enormous ransom-price of King Richard was generously paid by the English people, one of the contributions came from the Cistercians, and was raised by them from the sale of wool. Though founded by Stephen in 1127 (his head and Matilda's are sculptured on the east wall), its historic interest is not so great as that of Croyland, though it, too, carried on an embittered fight for precedence with Waverley Abbey, and they divided the honors and spoils. It had also its affiliations with religious houses in Ireland, which was always a devout land. The abbot had at his command an army of knights and spearmen ; yet this and other monasteries were, in the main, beneficent institutions, and were on the side of peace, industry, and religion ; and at this day history seems to re-peat itself, and religious buildings are beginning to be like those ancient closes, or conventual houses, combining chapel, refectory, kitchen, dormitory, guest-hall, and all the conveniences of common life, with the idea that accompanies such comprehensive institutions, that Christianity is responsible for the moral and physical as well as religious well-being of the whole community. The hundreds of " white monks " that peopled this sweet vale were not all lazy drones, but worked with their hands to sow the fields, minister to the sick, and exercise the rites of hospitality. All broken up and brought to naught in a day by the stamp of Henry VIII.'s foot ! Three hundred and seventy-six monasteries, among them Furness Abbey, which had existed 413 years, were confiscated at one stroke by the bill commencing, Forasmuch as manifest synne, vicious, carnal, and abominable living is dayly used and committed commonly in such Abbeys, Priories, and other Religious Houses of Monks, Canons," and so on ; and their property went into the royal strong-box, and the ruins only are left to tell the story of the good and evil they did. The monks did some things well. They built well ; and their secret disappeared with them. They inspired the people to become creative artists, rousing the entire populace to the pious work. Enthusiasts were they, and every great work of art is unconscious work springing from the deepest spirit of the people. Why did they make the lofty east and west windows of Furness Abbey church fifty feet high and half as many broad, that now, jagged and weed-fringed, let in all the winds that blow, but were once so splendid with many-colored lights ? They thought to build a bouse for God, to be his foundation and dwelling, constant and firm as the everlasting hills, and not merely for man's occasional worship and convenience, as is the mod-ern idea of church architecture. This almost in-finite conception of the building admitted of vast scope and magnificence of plan, and endless beauty of detail and elaboration. The various sections of the Furness Abbey church, the chancel, choir, and nave, with the side-chapels on the east end, are now easily traced, and the chancel is particularly noticeable with the remains of very beautiful stone sedilia, in niches highly sculptured and separated by exquisitely pierced screens, and over the top of each seat is a rich canopy of ogee moulding, and this surmounted by flower-work. The choir, cloisters, fratry, chapter-house, guest-hall, and what was once the abbot's house remain, though in ruins: the arches broken at their spring, the roofs gone, the delicate bar-tracery swept away ; the work of the giants left, but that of the dwarfs gone. But nothing about it is so superb as the three grand round-headed Norman doorways leading from the cloisters into the chapter-house, ornamented with rope-like concentric rings and the dog's-tooth moulding ; a strong design, strongly carried out ; virile like the Norman architecture that would not give way to the refinements of the pointed arch ; uninjured and meant to last, and standing just as they did when priest, noble, and king passed through them to the council chamber. In fact, these great abbeys themselves illustrate better than almost anything that has come down to us the characteristic Norman period of English history, when England and Normandy were under one ruler, when arts and letters in Eng-land came from Normandy and France, and especially architecture, the days of the great prelates Lanfranc and Anselm, Thomas Becket and Stephen Langton, when the church strove for supreme power with the king, but could never quite subdue to its purposes the proud, masterful, all-grasping spirit of the Norman line of monarchs, and this, in the long run, was helpful to the cause of popular liberty.

Of the English monasteries that I have seen I would characterize Fountains Abbey for majesty ; Croyland for historic romance and the associations of English freedom ; Tintern for architectural beauty, quite perfect ; Bolton for poetry of art and nature ; Netley for grace ; Glastonbury for religious antiquity and solemn grandeur, going back to England's earliest Christianity ; and Furness for magnificence of plan and glowing color. When, shortly after, I revisited Fountains Abbey, I was sorry to observe that the old yew-tree, which seemed to be created to last forever, looked more decayed than when I first saw it, and could not compare with a yew-tree at Darley - dale in Derbyshire, six hundred, if not a thousand, years old, and thirty-four feet in girth, and which, a little way up, divides itself into two mighty masses, dark, impenetrable, solid as a rock and with sombre foliage, the ancient stone church beside it an infant in age compared with it.

I would speak of another interesting excursion, made out of London, to the famous field of Runnimede, which historic spot I had determined to visit if I ever went again to England. Runnimede is about an hour's ride on the railway from Water-loo Station through Putney, Richmond, Twickenham, Staines, and Egham on the road to Windsor. At Egham I found a shackly old carriage, and drove by what is called the " low road " along the Thames through " Bell Weir Lock," coming to the Meadow of Council," at this time overflowed and half under water, where the barons encamped, and where on the 15th of June, 1215, King John signed Magna Charta. A little gray stone house on Magna Charta Island, now a private gentle-man's villa, is said to cover the identical stone upon which John signed the charter. The whole looked like a green amphitheatre closed in, where a host might encamp and be shut off from the rest of the world, and as if made for the transaction of some important historical event, the tree-shadowed and flower-edged Thames brimming full and cutting its way through, here a clear stream. Situated in a bend of the river with low swelling green hills on one side and densely wooded banks on the other, I was struck with the reposeful beauty of the spot from which, as if from this quiet heart of the country, a deep thought of freedom had emanated that influenced the land. It is true that here was not the fountain-head of constitutional freedom in England, and that there were other charters, as, for example, that which was given by Henry I., which formed the basis of Magna Charta, and which also confirmed the elective nature of English monarchy, restrained oppressive feudal claims, moderated the national tax, allowed the rights of land tenants, protected the poor and widows, and reinforced wholesome old Saxon principles of civil law; but, at Runnimede, these things were confirmed to be incorporated into English law once for all; and here too the barons, who were by this time nearly English in feeling and in blood, were led to make common cause with the common people, securing to them also the same rights they secured to themselves, thus moulding together the different classes of society, and laying the foundations of a limited monarchy and a free, and, in the aggregate, republican, constitution of the nation.

While I was in London, the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of Alexander Pope's birthday took place, and I made a little trip to Twickenham, on the same Windsor Road, and went to see Pope's villa, or the spot where the villa stood, on the Thames, and the rock-grot that still exists which he constructed (artificial like him-self), and where doubtless his great London friends, Frederick Prince of Wales, and Lord Peterborough and many other celebrities and wits, had sat, and where he talked over with Bolingbroke the " Essay on Man," whose philosophy was Bolingbroke's, but whose exquisite style was his own.

Some old trees stand in the lawn which may have shaded him, for he loved the shade —" a crooked mind in a crooked body." The collection of Pope's autograph manuscripts and letters, portraits and personal relics, in a room in the Town Hall, gave me a more vivid conception of his singular personality than I had ever had. Though the greatest poet of the Augustan age, his genius lacked the original force of Swift, and was keen rather than strong, French rather than English, loving to travel along the smooth chaussιe of rule and metre, be-longing more to the school of Boileau and Racine than of Shakespeare, or even Dryden, whose successor he was ambitious to be; and yet that little deformed son of a London linen-draper was the feared and courted friend of the highest princes and statesmen of the land.

Another trip, this time in a " hansom," was to see Thomas Carlyle's house on Cheyne Row, Chelsea, and I found it to be a brick house, three little windows wide, crowded between two larger houses, and the street itself narrow and humble, a sort of passageway between greater thoroughfares. It is now painted a smart red color, and re-furbished with flower-boxes and yellow porcelain swans on the sills of the lower windows ; not at all the grave, old-fashioned house that Carlyle de-scribes, as he was driven there and set down, disconsolate, with his boxes of books. A bas-relief profile of Carlyle's face is carved upon a slab at the head of the street ; and a bronze sitting figure in a kind of long dressing-gown stands in the little park overlooking the walk along the river with its constantly shifting scene. I looked through Carlyle's house into the garden in the rear though I did not enter it — a small patch of nature truly in the brick-desert of London, when we think of Carlyle's own words : " All that I do best is when I am forgotten of men and there is nothing above or around me but the impenetrable heaven." Yet, doubtless, he enjoyed his thoughts better than we may suppose, for he knew that behind a gloomy face and cynic hu-mor he hid a large trust in God and hope for man, and knew that sooner or later men would find this out.

Coming, as I did, directly to London from Paris and its Salon, the summer exhibitions in London naturally provoked a comparison between English and French pictures, and not altogether favorable to the former, since the Parisian school represents the best art of to-day, preserving the traditions of classic painting and representing an advance on the side of naturalistic art as seen in such paint-ers as Rousseau, Daubigny, Corot, and Millet in landscape, who have infused new life into their art by going once more to nature, though interpreting it by the action of their own thought. Of course the hideous extravagances of the extreme realistic French school I do not speak of ; yet I did not see in recent English art, in its drawing or coloring, what could compare with the French technique and knowledge ; and in nature itself, the strong point of English painting, there seemed lack of vigor ; but the " New Gallery " contained some pictures of remarkable quality. The portraits by Holl, whose last works showed the inspiring influence of his study of Velasquez, also portraits by Ward and Herkomer, and a profoundly thoughtful, if not great, painting of a death - angel, by Watts, now an old man, and, above all, three pictures by Burne-Jones, two of them of the Perseus-myth, prove that there are still original individuality and creative power in English genius. I went out to Bushey Heath, through Harrow, to see Mr. Hubert Herkomer, a genial and handsome man, who spoke of his visit to Yale University and his interest in America, remarking that in our country he first conceived the thought of making money, — a person of endless though objective energy, who is building a castle, as he said, with " the three fingers of his right hand." The carpentering, mason-work, iron-work, fresco-ornamentation. and wood-carving are done on his own grounds, for he is aiming, like Peter Vischer, or some master of the Middle Ages, to rear a school of universal workers in art.