Passages from the English Notebooks, Complete

A short time ago, in the evening, in a street of Liverpool, I saw a decent man, of the lower orders, taken much aback by being roughly brushed against by a rowdy fellow. He looked after him, and exclaimed indignantly, "Is that a Yankee?" It shows the kind of character we have here.

October 7th. – On Saturday evening, I gave a dinner to Bennoch, at the Adelphi Hotel. The chief point or characteristic of English customs was, that Mr. Radley, our landlord, himself attended at table, and officiated as chief waiter. He has a fortune of 100,000 pounds, – half a million of dollars, – and is an elderly man of good address and appearance. In America, such a man would very probably be in Congress; at any rate, he would never conceive the possibility of changing plates, or passing round the table with hock and champagne. Some of his hock was a most rich and imperial wine, such as can hardly be had on the Rhine itself. There were eight gentlemen besides Bennoch.

A donkey, the other day, stubbornly refusing to come out of a boat which had brought him across the Mersey; at last, after many kicks had been applied, and other persecutions of that kind, a man stepped forward, addressing him affectionately, "Come along, brother," – and the donkey obeyed at once.

October 26th. – On Thursday, instead of taking the rail for Liverpool, I set out, about eleven, for a long walk. It was an overcast morning, such as in New England would have boded rain; but English clouds are not nearly so portentous as American in that respect. Accordingly, the sun soon began to peep through crevices, and I had not gone more than a mile or two when it shone a little too warmly for comfort, yet not more than I liked. It was very much like our pleasant October days at home; indeed, the climates of the two countries more nearly coincide during the present month than at any other season of the year. The air was almost perfectly still; but once in a while it stirred, and breathed coolly in my face; it is very delightful, this latent freshness, in a warm atmosphere.

The country about Southport has as few charms as it is possible for any region to have. In the close neighborhood of the shore, it is nothing but sand-hillocks, covered with coarse grass; and this is the original nature of the whole site on which the town stands, although it is now paved, and has been covered with soil enough to make gardens, and to nourish here and there a few trees. A little farther inland the surface seems to have been marshy, but has been drained by ditches across the fields and along the roadside; and the fields are embanked on all sides with parapets of earth which appear as if intended to keep out inundations. In fact, Holland itself cannot be more completely on a level with the sea. The only dwellings are the old, whitewashed stone cottages, with thatched roofs, on the brown straw of which grow various weeds and mosses, brightening it with green patches, and sprouting along the ridgepole, – the homeliest hovels that ever mortals lived in, and which they share with pigs and cows at one end. Hens, too, run in and out of the door. One or two of these hovels bore signs, "Licensed to sell beer, ale, and tobacco," and generally there were an old woman and some children visible. In all cases there was a ditch, full of water, close at hand, stagnant, and often quite covered with a growth of water-weeds, – very unwholesome, one would think, in the neighborhood of a dwelling; and, in truth, the children and grown people did look pale.

In the fields, along the roadside, men and women were harvesting their carrots and other root-crops, especially digging potatoes, – the pleasantest of all farm labor, in my opinion, there being such a continual interest in opening the treasures of each hill. As I went on, the country began to get almost imperceptibly less flat, and there was some little appearance of trees. I had determined to go to Ormskirk, but soon got out of the way, and came to a little hamlet that looked antique and picturesque, with its small houses of stone and brick, built, with the one material and repaired with the other perhaps ages afterward. Here I inquired my way of a woman, who told me, in broad Lancashire dialect, "that I main go back, and turn to my left, till I came to a finger-post"; and so I did, and found another little hamlet, the principal object in which was a public-house, with a large sign, representing a dance round a Maypole. It was now about one o'clock; so I entered, and, being ushered into what, I suppose, they called the coffee-room, I asked for some cold neat and ale. There was a jolly, round, rather comely woman for a hostess, with a free, hospitable, yet rather careless manner.

The coffee-room smelt rather disagreeably of bad tobacco-smoke, and was shabbily furnished with an old sofa and flag-bottomed chairs, and adorned with a print of "Old Billy," a horse famous for a longevity of about sixty years; and also with colored engravings of old-fashioned hunting-scenes, conspicuous with scarlet coats. There was a very small bust of Milton on the mantel-piece. By and by the remains of an immense round of beef, three quarters cut away, were put on the table; then some smoking-hot potatoes; and finally the hostess told me that their own dinner was just ready, and so she had brought me in some hot chops, thinking I might prefer them to the cold meat. I did prefer them; and they were stewed or fried chops, instead of broiled, and were very savory. There was household bread too, and rich cheese, and a pint of ale, home brewed, not very mighty, but good to quench thirst, and, by way of condiment, some pickled cabbage; so, instead of a lunch, I made quite a comfortable dinner. Moreover, there was a cold pudding on the table, and I called for a clean plate, and helped myself to some of it. It was of rice, and was strewn over, rather than intermixed, with some kinds of berries, the nature of which I could not exactly make out.

I then set forth again. It was still sunny and warm, and I walked more slowly than before dinner; in fact, I did little more than lounge along, sitting down, at last, on the stone parapet of a bridge.

The country grew more pleasant, more sylvan, and, though still of a level character, not so drearily flat. Soon appeared the first symptom that I had seen of a gentleman's residence, – a lodge at a park gate, then a long stretch of wall, with a green lawn, and afterwards an extent of wooded land; then another gateway, with a neat lodge on each side of it, and, lastly, another extent of wood. The Hall or Mansion-house, however, was nowhere apparent, being, doubtless, secluded deep and far within its grounds. I inquired of a boy who was the owner of the estate, and he answered, "Mr. Scarisbrick"; and no doubt it is a family of local eminence.

Along the road, – an old inn; some aged stone houses, built for merely respectable occupants; a canal, with two canal-boats, heaped up with a cargo of potatoes; two little girls, who were watching lest some cows should go astray, and had their two little chairs by the roadside, and their dolls and other playthings, and so followed the footsteps of the cows all day long. I met two boys, coming from Ormskirk, mounted on donkeys, with empty panniers, on which they had carried vegetables to market. Finally, between two and three o'clock, I saw the great tower of Ormskirk Church, with its spire, not rising out of the tower, but sprouting up close beside it; and, entering the town, I directed my steps first to this old church.

ORMSKIRK CHURCH

It stands on a gentle eminence, sufficient to give it a good site, and has a pavement of flat gravestones in front. It is doubtless, as regards its foundation, a very ancient church, but has not exactly a venerable aspect, being in too good repair, and much restored in various parts; not ivy-grown, either, though green with moss here and there. The tower is square and immensely massive, and might have supported a very lofty spire; so that it is the more strange that what spire it has should be so oddly stuck beside it, springing out of the church wall. I should have liked well enough to enter the church, as it is the burial-place of the Earls of Derby, and perhaps may contain some interesting monuments; but as it was all shut up, and even the iron gates of the churchyard closed and locked, I merely looked at the outside.

From the church, a street leads to the market-place, in which I found a throng of men and women, it being market-day; wares of various kinds, tin, earthen, and cloth, set out on the pavements; droves of pigs; ducks and fowls; baskets of eggs; and a man selling quack medicines, recommending his nostrums as well as he could. The aspect of the crowd was very English, – portly and ruddy women; yeomen with small-clothes and broad-brimmed hats, all very quiet and heavy and good-humored. Their dialect was so provincial that I could not readily understand more than here and there a word.

But, after all, there were few traits that could be made a note of. I soon grew weary of the scene, and so I went to the railway station, and waited there nearly an hour for the train to take me to Southport. Ormskirk is famous for its gingerbread, which women sell to the railway passengers at a sixpence for a rouleau of a dozen little cakes.

November 30th. – A week ago last Monday, Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner… We soon found ourselves on pretty much our former terms of sociability and confidence… He is thus far on his way to Constantinople. I do not wonder that he found it necessary to take an airing through the world, after so many years of toilsome pen-labor, following upon so wild and adventurous a youth as his was. I invited him to come and stay with us at Southport, as long as he might remain in this vicinity, and accordingly he did come the next day… On Wednesday we took a pretty long walk together, and sat down in a hollow among the sand-hills, sheltering ourselves from the high cool wind. Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything else that lies beyond human ken… He has a very high and noble nature, and is better worth immortality than the most of us… On Saturday we went to Chester together. I love to take every opportunity of going to Chester; it being the one only place, within easy reach of Liverpool, which possesses any old English interest.

We went to

THE CATHEDRAL

Its gray nave impressed me more than at any former visit. Passing into the cloisters, an attendant took possession of us, and showed us about.

Within the choir there is a profusion of very rich oaken carving, both on the screen that separates it from the nave, and on the seats and walls; very curious and most elaborate, and lavished (one would say) most wastefully, where nobody would think of looking for it, – where, indeed, amid the dimness of the cathedral, the exquisite detail of the elaboration could not possibly be seen. Our guide lighted some of the gas-burners, of which there are many hundreds, to help us see them; but it required close scrutiny, even then. It must have been out of the question, when the whole means of illumination were only a few smoky torches or candles. There was a row of niches, where the monks used to stand, for four hours together, in the performance of some of their services; and to relieve them a little, they were allowed partially to sit on a projection of the seats, which were turned up in the niche for that purpose; but if they grew drowsy, so as to fail to balance themselves, the seat was so contrived as to slip down, thus bringing the monk to the floor. These projections on the seats are each and all of them carved with curious devices, no two alike. The guide showed us one, representing, apparently, the first quarrel of a new-married couple, wrought with wonderful expression. Indeed, the artist never failed to bring out his idea in the most striking manner, – as, for instance, Satan, under the guise of a lion, devouring a sinner bodily; and again in the figure of a dragon, with a man halfway down his gullet, the legs hanging out. The carver may not have seen anything grotesque in this, nor intended it at all by way of joke; but certainly there would appear to be a grim mirthfulness in some of the designs. One does not see why such fantasies should be strewn about the holy interior of a cathedral, unless it were intended to contain everything that belongs to the heart of man, both upward and downward.

In a side aisle of the choir, we saw a tomb, said to be that of the Emperor Henry IV. of Germany, though on very indistinct authority. This is an oblong tomb, carved, and, on one side, painted with bright colors and gilded. During a very long period it was built and plastered into the wall, and the exterior side was whitewashed; but, on being removed, the inner side was found to have been ornamented with gold and color, in the manner in which we now see it. If this were customary with tombs, it must have added vastly to the gorgeous magnificence, to which the painted windows and polished pillars and ornamented ceilings contributed so much. In fact, a cathedral in its fresh estate seems to have been like a pavilion of the sunset, all purple and gold; whereas now it more resembles deepest and grayest twilight.

Afterwards, we were shown into the ancient refectory, now used as the city grammar-school, and furnished with the usual desks and seats for the boys. In one corner of this large room was the sort of pulpit or elevated seat, with a broken staircase of stone ascending to it, where one of the monks used to read to his brethren, while sitting at their meals. The desks were cut and carved with the scholars' knives, just as they used to be in the school-rooms where I was a scholar. Thence we passed into the chapter-house, but, before that, we went through a small room, in which Melville opened a cupboard, and discovered a dozen or two of wine-bottles; but our guide told us that they were now empty, and never were meant for jollity, having held only sacramental wine. In the chapter-house, we saw the library, some of the volumes of which were antique folios. There were two dusty and tattered banners hanging on the wall, and the attendant promised to make us laugh by something that he would tell us about them. The joke was that these two banners had been in the battle of Bunker Hill; and our countrymen, he said, always smiled on hearing this. He had discovered us to be Americans by the notice we took of a mural tablet in the choir, to the memory of a Lieutenant-Governor Clarke, of New York, who died in Chester before the Revolution. From the chapter-house he ushered us back into the nave, ever and anon pointing out some portion of the edifice more ancient than the rest, and when I asked him how he knew this, he said that he had learnt it from the archaeologists, who could read off such things like a book. This guide was a lively, quick-witted man, who did his business less by rote, and more with a vivacious interest, than any guide I ever met.

After leaving the cathedral we sought out the Yacht Inn, near the water-gate. This was, for a long period of time, the principal inn of Chester, and was the house at which Swift once put up, on his way to Holyhead, and where he invited the clergy to come and sup with him. We sat down in a small snuggery, conversing with the landlord. The Chester people, according to my experience, are very affable, and fond of talking with strangers about the antiquities and picturesque characteristics of their town. It partly lives, the landlord told us, by its visitors, and many people spend the summer here on account of the antiquities and the good air. He showed us a broad, balustraded staircase, leading into a large, comfortable, old-fashioned parlor, with windows looking on the street and on the Custom House that stood opposite. This was the room where Swift expected to receive the clergy of Chester; and on one of the window-panes were two acrid lines, written with the diamond of his ring, satirizing those venerable gentlemen, in revenge for their refusing his invitation. The first line begins rather indistinctly; but the writing grows fully legible, as it proceeds.

The Yacht Tavern is a very old house, in the gabled style. The timbers and framework are still perfectly sound. In the same street is the Bishop's house (so called as having been the residence of a prelate long ago), which is covered with curious sculpture, representing Scriptural scenes. And in the same neighborhood is the county court, accessible by an archway, through which we penetrated, and found ourselves in a passage, very ancient and dusky, overlooked from the upper story by a gallery, to which an antique staircase ascended, with balustrades and square landing-places. A printer saw us here, and asked us into his printing-office, and talked very affably; indeed, he could have hardly been more civil, if he had known that both Melville and I have given a good deal of employment to the brethren of his craft.

December 15th. – An old gentleman has recently paid me a good many visits, – a Kentucky man, who has been a good deal in England and Europe generally without losing the freshness and unconventionality of his earlier life. He was a boatman, and afterwards captain of a steamer on the Ohio and Mississippi; but has gained property, and is now the owner of mines of coal and iron, which he is endeavoring to dispose of here in England. A plain, respectable, well-to-do-looking personage, of more than seventy years; very free of conversation, and beginning to talk with everybody as a matter of course; tall, stalwart, a dark face, with white curly hair and keen eyes; and an expression shrewd, yet kindly and benign. He fought through the whole War of 1812, beginning with General Harrison at the battle of Tippecanoe, which he described to me. He says that at the beginning of the battle, and for a considerable time, he heard Tecumseh's voice, loudly giving orders. There was a man named Wheatley in the American camp, a strange, incommunicative person, – a volunteer, making war entirely on his own book, and seeking revenge for some relatives of his, who had been killed by the Indians. In the midst of the battle this Wheatley ran at a slow trot past R – (my informant), trailing his rifle, and making towards the point where Tecumseh's voice was heard. The fight drifted around, and R – along with it; and by and by he reached a spot where Wheatley lay dead, with his head on Tecumseh's breast. Tecumseh had been shot with a rifle, but, before expiring, appeared to have shot Wheatley with a pistol, which he still held in his hand. R – affirms that Tecumseh was flayed by the Kentucky men on the spot, and his skin converted into razor-straps. I have left out the most striking point of the narrative, after all, as R – told it, viz. that soon after Wheatley passed him, he suddenly ceased to hear Tecumseh's voice ringing through the forest, as he gave his orders. He was at the battle of New Orleans, and gave me the story of it from beginning to end; but I remember only a few particulars in which he was personally concerned. He confesses that his hair bristled upright – every hair in his head – when he heard the shouts of the British soldiers before advancing to the attack. His uncomfortable sensations lasted till he began to fire, after which he felt no more of them. It was in the dusk of the morning, or a little before sunrise, when the assault was made; and the fight lasted about two hours and a half, during which R – fired twenty-four times; and said he, "I saw my object distinctly each time, and I was a good rifle-shot." He was raising his rifle to fire the twenty-fifth time, when an American officer, General Carroll, pressed it down, and bade him fire no more. "Enough is enough," quoth the General. For there needed no more slaughter, the British being in utter rout and confusion. In this retreat many of the enemy would drop down among the dead, then rise, run a considerable distance, and drop again, thus confusing the riflemen's aim. One fellow had thus got about four hundred and fifty yards from the American line, and, thinking himself secure, he made a derisive gesture. "I'll have a shot at him anyhow," cried a rifleman; so he fired, and the poor devil dropped.

R – himself, with one of his twenty-four shots, hit a British officer, who fell forward on his face, about thirty paces from our line, and as the enemy were then retreating (they advanced and were repelled two or three times) he ran out, and turned him over on his back. The officer was a man about thirty-eight, tall and fine-looking; his eyes were wide open, clear and bright, and were fixed full on R – with a somewhat stern glance, but there was the sweetest and happiest smile over his face that could be conceived. He seemed to be dead; – at least, R – thinks that he did not really see him, fixedly as he appeared to gaze. The officer held his sword in his hand, and R – tried in vain to wrest it from him, until suddenly the clutch relaxed. R – still keeps the sword hung up over his mantel-piece. I asked him how the dead man's aspect affected him. He replied that he felt nothing at the time; but that ever since, in all trouble, in uneasy sleep, and whenever he is out of tune, or waking early, or lying awake at night, he sees this officer's face, with the clear bright eyes and the pleasant smile, just as distinctly as if he were bending over him. His wound was in the breast, exactly on the spot that R – had aimed at, and bled profusely. The enemy advanced in such masses, he says, that it was impossible not to hit them unless by purposely firing over their heads.

After the battle, R – leaped over the rampart, and took a prisoner who was standing unarmed in the midst of the slain, having probably dropped down during the heat of the action, to avoid the hail-storm of rifle-shots. As he led him in, the prisoner paused, and pointed to an officer who was lying dead beside his dead horse, with his foot still in the stirrup. "There lies our General," said he. The horse had been killed by a grape-shot, and Pakenham himself, apparently, by a six-pounder ball, which had first struck the earth, covering him from head to foot with mud and clay, and had then entered his side, and gone upward through his breast. His face was all besmirched with the moist earth. R – took the slain General's foot out of the stirrup, and then went to report his death.

Much more he told me, being an exceedingly talkative old man, and seldom, I suppose, finding so good a listener as myself. I like the man, – a good-tempered, upright, bold and free old fellow; of a rough breeding, but sufficiently smoothed by society to be of pleasant intercourse. He is as dogmatic as possible, having formed his own opinions, often on very disputable grounds, and hardened in them; taking queer views of matters and things, and giving shrewd and not ridiculous reasons for them; but with a keen, strong sense at the bottom of his character.

A little while ago I met an Englishman in a railway carriage, who suggests himself as a kind of contrast to this warlike and vicissitudinous backwoodsman. He was about the same age as R – , but had spent, apparently, his whole life in Liverpool, and has long occupied the post of Inspector of Nuisances, – a rather puffy and consequential man; gracious, however, and affable, even to casual strangers like myself. The great contrast betwixt him and the American lies in the narrower circuit of his ideas; the latter talking about matters of history of his own country and the world, – glancing over the whole field of politics, propounding opinions and theories of his own, and showing evidence that his mind had operated for better or worse on almost all conceivable matters; while the Englishman was odorous of his office, strongly flavored with that, and otherwise most insipid. He began his talk by telling me of a dead body which he had lately discovered in a house in Liverpool, where it had been kept about a fortnight by the relatives, partly from want of funds for the burial, and partly in expectation of the arrival of some friends from Glasgow. There was a plate of glass in the coffin-lid, through which the Inspector of Nuisances, as he told me, had looked and seen the dead man's face in an ugly state of decay, which he minutely described. However, his conversation was not altogether of this quality; for he spoke about larks, and how abundant they are just now, and what a good pie they make, only they must be skinned, else they will have a bitter taste. We have since had a lark-pie ourselves, and I believe it was very good in itself; only the recollection of the Nuisance-man's talk was not a very agreeable flavor. A very racy and peculiarly English character might be made out of a man like this, having his life-concern wholly with the disagreeables of a great city. He seemed to be a good and kindly person, too, but earthy, – even as if his frame had been moulded of clay impregnated with the draining of slaughter-houses.

December 21st. – On Thursday evening I dined for the first time with the new Mayor at the Town Hall. I wish to preserve all the characteristic traits of such banquets, because, being peculiar to England, these municipal feasts may do well to picture in a novel. There was a big old silver tobacco-box, nearly or quite as large round as an ordinary plate, out of which the dignitaries of Liverpool used to fill their pipes, while sitting in council or after their dinners. The date "1690" was on the lid. It is now used as a snuff-box, and wends its way, from guest to guest, round the table. We had turtle, and, among other good things, American canvasback ducks… These dinners are certainly a good institution, and likely to be promotive of good feeling; the Mayor giving them often, and inviting, in their turn, all the respectable and eminent citizens of whatever political bias. About fifty gentlemen were present that evening. I had the post of honor at the Mayor's right hand; and France, Turkey, and Austria were toasted before the Republic, for, as the Mayor whispered me, he must first get his allies out of the way. The Turkish Consul and the Austrian both made better English speeches than any Englishman, during the evening; for it is inconceivable what shapeless and ragged utterances Englishmen are content to put forth, without attempting anything like a wholeness; but inserting a patch here and a patch there, and finally getting out what they wish to say, indeed, but in most disorganized guise… I can conceive of very high enjoyment in making a speech; one is in such a curious sympathy with his audience, feeling instantly how every sentence affects them, and wonderfully excited and encouraged by the sense that it has gone to the right spot. Then, too, the imminent emergency, when a man is overboard, and must sink or swim, sharpens, concentrates, and invigorates the mind, and causes matters of thought and sentiment to assume shape and expression, though, perhaps, it seemed hopeless to express them, just before you rose to speak. Yet I question much whether public speaking tends to elevate the orator, intellectually or morally; the effort, of course, being to say what is immediately received by the audience, and to produce an effect on the instant. I don't quite see how an honest man can be a good and successful orator; but I shall hardly undertake to decide the question on my merely post-prandial experience.

The Mayor toasted his guests by their professions, – the merchants, for instance, the bankers, the solicitors, – and while one of the number responded, his brethren also stood up, each in his place, thus giving their assent to what he said. I think the very worst orator was a major of Artillery, who spoke in a meek, little, nervous voice, and seemed a good deal more discomposed than probably he would have been in the face of the enemy. The first toast was "The Ladies," to which an old bachelor responded.

December 31st. – Thus far we have come through the winter, on this bleak and blasty shore of the Irish Sea, where, perhaps, the drowned body of Milton's friend Lycidas might have been washed ashore more than two centuries ago. This would not be very likely, however, so wide a tract of sands, never deeply covered by the tide, intervening betwixt us and the sea. But it is an excessively windy place, especially here on the Promenade; always a whistle and a howl, – always an eddying gust through the corridors and chambers, – often a patter of hail or rain or snow against the windows; and in the long evenings the sounds outside are very much as if we were on shipboard in mid-ocean, with the waves dashing against the vessel's sides. I go to town almost daily, starting at about eleven, and reaching Southport again at a little past live; by which time it is quite dark, and continues so till nearly eight in the morning.

Christmas time has been marked by few characteristics. For a week or two previous to Christmas day, the newspapers contained rich details respecting market-stalls and butchers' shops, – what magnificent carcasses of prize oxen and sheep they displayed…

The Christmas Waits came to us on Christmas eve, and on the day itself, in the shape of little parties of boys or girls, singing wretched doggerel rhymes, and going away well pleased with the guerdon of a penny or two. Last evening came two or three older choristers at pretty near bedtime, and sang some carols at our door. They were psalm tunes, however. Everybody with whom we have had to do, in any manner of service, expects a Christmas-box; but, in most cases, a shilling is quite a satisfactory amount. We have had holly and mistletoe stuck up on the gas-fixtures and elsewhere about the house.

On the mantel-piece in the coroner's court the other day, I saw corked and labelled phials, which it may be presumed contained samples of poisons that have brought some poor wretches to their deaths, either by murder or suicide. This court might be wrought into a very good and pregnant description, with its grimy gloom illuminated by a conical skylight, constructed to throw daylight down on corpses; its greasy Testament covered over with millions of perjured kisses; the coroner himself, whose life is fed on all kinds of unnatural death; its subordinate officials, who go about scenting murder, and might be supposed to have caught the scent in their own garments; its stupid, brutish juries, settling round corpses like flies; its criminals, whose guilt is brought face to face with them here, in closer contact than at the subsequent trial.

O – P – , the famous Mormonite, called on me a little while ago, – a short, black-haired, dark-complexioned man; a shrewd, intelligent, but unrefined countenance, excessively unprepossessing; an uncouth gait and deportment; the aspect of a person in comfortable circumstances, and decently behaved, but of a vulgar nature and destitute of early culture. I think I should have taken him for a shoemaker, accustomed to reflect in a rude, strong, evil-disposed way on matters of this world and the next, as he sat on his bench. He said he had been residing in Liverpool about six months; and his business with me was to ask for a letter of introduction that should gain him admittance to the British Museum, he intending a visit to London. He offered to refer me to respectable people for his character; but I advised him to apply to Mr. Dallas, as the proper person for his purpose.

March 1st, 1857. – On the night of last Wednesday week, our house was broken into by robbers. They entered by the back window of the breakfast-room, which is the children's school-room, breaking or cutting a pane of glass, so as to undo the fastening. I have a dim idea of having heard a noise through my sleep; but if so, it did not more than slightly disturb me. U – heard it, she being at watch with R – ; and J – , having a cold, was also wakeful, and thought the noise was of servants moving about below. Neither did the idea of robbers occur to U – . J – , however, hearing U – at her mother's door, asking for medicine for R – , called out for medicine for his cold, and the thieves probably thought we were bestirring ourselves, and so took flight. In the morning the servants found the hall door and the breakfast-room window open; some silver cups and some other trifles of plate were gone from the sideboard, and there were tokens that the whole lower part of the house had been ransacked; but the thieves had evidently gone off in a hurry, leaving some articles which they would have taken, had they been more at leisure.

We gave information to the police, and an inspector and constable soon came to make investigations, taking a list of the missing articles, and informing themselves as to all particulars that could be known. I did not much expect ever to hear any more of the stolen property; but on Sunday a constable came to request my presence at the police-office to identify the lost things. The thieves had been caught in Liverpool, and some of the property found upon them, and some of it at a pawnbroker's where they had pledged it. The police-office is a small dark room, in the basement story of the Town Hall of Southport; and over the mantel-piece, hanging one upon another, there are innumerable advertisements of robberies in houses, and on the highway, – murders, too, and garrotings; and offences of all sorts, not only in this district, but wide away, and forwarded from other police-stations. Bring thus aggregated together, one realizes that there are a great many more offences than the public generally takes note of. Most of these advertisements were in pen and ink, with minute lists of the articles stolen; but the more important were in print; and there, too, I saw the printed advertisement of our own robbery, not for public circulation, but to be handed about privately, among police-officers and pawnbrokers. A rogue has a very poor chance in England, the police being so numerous, and their system so well organized.

In a corner of the police-office stood a contrivance for precisely measuring the heights of prisoners; and I took occasion to measure J – , and found him four feet seven inches and a half high. A set of rules for the self-government of police-officers was nailed on the door, between twenty and thirty in number, and composing a system of constabulary ethics. The rules would be good for men in almost any walk of life; and I rather think the police-officers conform to them with tolerable strictness. They appear to be subordinated to one another on the military plan. The ordinary constable does not sit down in the presence of his inspector, and this latter seems to be half a gentleman; at least, such is the bearing of our Southport inspector, who wears a handsome uniform of green and silver, and salutes the principal inhabitants, when meeting them in the street, with an air of something like equality. Then again there is a superintendent, who certainly claims the rank of a gentleman, and has perhaps been an officer in the army. The superintendent of this district was present on this occasion.

The thieves were brought down from Liverpool on Tuesday, and examined in the Town Hall. I had been notified to be present, but, as a matter of courtesy, the police-officers refrained from calling me as a witness, the evidence of the servants being sufficient to identify the property. The thieves were two young men, not much over twenty, – James and John Macdonald, terribly shabby, dirty, jail-bird like, yet intelligent of aspect, and one of them handsome. The police knew them already, and they seemed not much abashed by their position. There were half a dozen magistrates on the bench, – idle old gentlemen of Southport and the vicinity, who lounged into the court, more as a matter of amusement than anything else, and lounged out again at their own pleasure; for these magisterial duties are a part of the pastime of the country gentlemen of England. They wore their hats on the bench. There were one or two of them more active than their fellows; but the real duty was done by the Clerk of the Court. The seats within the bar were occupied by the witnesses, and around the great table sat some of the more respectable people of Southport; and without the bar were the commonalty in great numbers; for this is said to be the first burglary that has occurred here within the memory of man, and so it has caused a great stir.

There seems to be a strong case against the prisoners. A boy attached to the railway testified to having seen them at Birchdale on Wednesday afternoon, and directed them on their way to Southport; Peter Pickup recognized them as having applied to him for lodgings in the course of that evening; a pawnbroker swore to one of them as having offered my top-coat for sale or pledge in Liverpool; and my boots were found on the feet of one of them, – all this in addition to other circumstances of pregnant suspicion. So they were committed for trial at the Liverpool assizes, to be holden some time in the present month. I rather wished them to escape.

February 27th. – Coming along the promenade, a little before sunset, I saw the mountains of the Welsh coast shadowed very distinctly against the horizon. Mr. Channing told me that he had seen these mountains once or twice during his stay at Southport; but, though constantly looking for them, they have never before greeted my eyes in all the months that we have spent here. It is said that the Isle of Man is likewise discernible occasionally; but as the distance must be between sixty and seventy miles, I should doubt it. How misty is England! I have spent four years in a gray gloom. And yet it suits me pretty well.

TO YORK

April 10th. – At Skipton. My wife, J – , and I left Southport to-day for a short tour to York and its neighborhood. The weather has been exceedingly disagreeable for weeks past, but yesterday and to-day have been pleasant, and we take advantage of the first glimpses of spring-like weather. We came by Preston, along a road that grew rather more interesting as we proceeded to this place, which is about sixty miles from Southport, and where we arrived between five and six o'clock. First of all, we got some tea; and then, as it was a pleasant sunset, we set forth from our old-fashioned inn to take a walk.

Skipton is an ancient town, and has an ancient though well-repaired aspect, the houses being built of gray stone, but in no picturesque shapes; the streets well paved; the site irregular and rising gradually towards Skipton Castle, which overlooks the town, as an old lordly castle ought to overlook the feudal village which it protects. The castle was built shortly after the Conquest by Robert de Romeli, and was afterwards the property and residence of the famous Cliffords. We met an honest man, as we approached the gateway, who kindly encouraged us to apply for admittance, notwithstanding it was Good Friday; telling us how to find the housekeeper, who would probably show us over the castle. So we passed through the gate, between two embattled towers; and in the castle court we met a flock of young damsels, who had been rambling about the precincts. They likewise directed us in our search for the housekeeper, and S – , being bolder than I in such assaults on feudal castles, led the way down a dark archway, and up an exterior stairway, and, knocking at a door, immediately brought the housekeeper to a parley.

She proved to be a nowise awful personage, but a homely, neat, kindly, intelligent, and middle-aged body. She seemed to be all alone in this great old castle, and at once consented to show us about, – being, no doubt, glad to see any Christian visitors. The castle is now the property of Sir R. Tufton; but the present family do not make it their permanent residence, and have only occasionally visited it. Indeed, it could not well be made an eligible or comfortable residence, according to modern ideas; the rooms occupying the several stories of large round towers, and looking gloomy and sombre, if not dreary, – not the less so for what has been done to modernize them; for instance, modern paper-hangings, and, in some of the rooms, marble fireplaces. They need a great deal more light and higher ceilings; and I rather imagine that the warm, rich effect of glowing tapestry is essential to keep one's spirit cheerful in these ancient rooms. Modern paper-hangings are too superficial and wishy-washy for the purpose. Tapestry, it is true, there is now, completely covering the walls of several of the rooms, but all faded into ghastliness; nor could some of it have been otherwise than ghastly, even in its newness, for it represented persons suffering various kinds of torture, with crowds of monks and nuns looking on. In another room there was the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, and other subjects not to be readily distinguished in the twilight that was gathering in these antique chambers. We saw, too, some very old portraits of the Cliffords and the Thanets, in black frames, and the pictures themselves sadly faded and neglected. The famous Countess Anne of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery was represented on one of the leaves of a pair of folding doors, and one of her husbands, I believe, on the other leaf. There was the picture of a little idiot lordling, who had choked himself to death; and a portrait of Oliver Cromwell, who battered this old castle, together with almost every other English or Welsh castle that I ever saw or heard of. The housekeeper pointed out the grove of trees where his cannon were planted during the siege. There was but little furniture in the rooms; amongst other articles, an antique chair, in which Mary, Queen of Scots, is said to have rested.

The housekeeper next took us into the part of the castle which has never been modernized since it was repaired, after the siege of Cromwell. This is a dismal series of cellars above ground, with immensely thick walls, letting in but scanty light, and dim staircases of stone; and a large hall, with a vast fireplace, where every particle of heat must needs have gone up chimney, – a chill and heart-breaking place enough. Quite in the midst of this part of the castle is the court-yard, – a space of some thirty or forty feet in length and breadth, open to the sky, but shut completely in on every side by the buildings of the castle, and paved over with flat stones. Out of this pavement, however, grows a yew-tree, ascending to the tops of the towers, and completely filling, with its branches and foliage, the whole open space between them. Some small birds – quite a flock of them – were twittering and fluttering among the upper branches. We went upward, through two or three stories of dismal rooms, – among others, through the ancient guard-room, – till we came out on the roof of one of the towers, and had a very fine view of an amphitheatre of ridgy hills which shut in and seclude the castle and the town. The upper foliage was within our reach, close to the parapet of the tower; so we gathered a few twigs as memorials. The housekeeper told us that the yew-tree is supposed to be eight hundred years old, and, comparing it with other yews that I have seen, I should judge that it must measure its antiquity by centuries, at all events. It still seems to be in its prime.

Along the base of the castle, on the opposite side to the entrance, flows a stream, sending up a pleasant murmur from among the trees. The housekeeper said it was not a stream, but only a "wash," whatever that may be; and I conjecture that it creates the motive-power of some factory-looking edifices, which we saw on our first arrival at Skipton.

We now took our leave of the housekeeper, and came homeward to our inn, where I have written the foregoing pages by a bright fire; but I think I write better descriptions after letting the subject lie in my mind a day or two. It is too new to be properly dealt with immediately after coming from the scene.

The castle is not at all crumbly, but in excellent repair, though so venerable. There are rooks cawing about the shapeless patches of their nests, in the tops of the trees. In the castle wall, as well as in the round towers of the gateway, there seem to be little tenements, perhaps inhabited by the servants and dependants of the family. They looked in very good order, with tokens of present domesticity about them. The whole of this old castle, indeed, was as neat as a new, small dwelling, in spite of an inevitable musty odor of antiquity.

April 11th. – This morning we took a carriage and two horses, and set out for