Chapter XXV: Letter XVII (6)

I forgot to mention in the beginning of these notes that two or three miles before coming to Stratford we passed through Shottery, where Anne Hathaway lived. A nephew of the excellent baronet whose guests we were occupies the house. I looked up and down the green lanes about it, and glanced my eye round upon the hills over which the sun has continued to set and the moon to rise in her love inspiring beauty ever since. There were doubtless outlines in the landscape which had been followed by the eye of Shakespere when coming, a trembling lover, to Shottery—doubtless, teints in the sky, crops on the fields, smoke-wreaths from the old homesteads on the high hill-sides which are little altered now. How daringly imagination plucks back the past in such places! How boldly we ask of fancy and probability the thousand questions we would put, if we might, to the magic mirror of Agrippa? Did that great mortal love timidly, like ourselves? Was the passionate outpouring of his heart simple, and suited to the humble condition of Anne Hathaway, or was it the first fiery coinage of Romeo and Othello? Did she know the immortal honor and light poured upon woman by the love of genius? Did she know how this common and oftenest terrestrial passion becomes fused in the poet’s bosom with celestial fire, and, in its wondrous elevation and purity, ascends lambently and musically to the very stars? Did she coy it with him? Was she a _woman_ to him, as commoner mortals find woman—capricious, tender, cruel, intoxicating, cold—everything by changes impossible to calculate or foresee? Did he walk home to Stratford, sometimes, despairing, in perfect sick heartedness, of her affection, and was he recalled by a message or a lover’s instinct to find her weeping and passionately repentant?

How natural it is by such questions and speculations to betray our innate desire to bring the lofty spirits of our common mould to our own inward level—to seek analogies between _our_ affections, passions, appetites, and _theirs_—to wish they might have been no more exalted, no more fervent, no more worthy of the adorable love of woman than ourselves! The same temper that prompts the depreciation, the envy, the hatred, exercised toward the poet in his lifetime, mingles, not inconsiderably, in the researches so industriously prosecuted after his death into his youth and history. To be admired in this world, and much more to be beloved for higher qualities than his fellow-men, insures to genius not only to be persecuted in life, but to be ferreted out with all his frailties and imperfections from the grave.

The church in which Shakspere is buried stands near the banks of the Avon, and is a most picturesque and proper place of repose for his ashes. An avenue of small trees and vines, ingeniously overlaced, extends from the street to the principal door, and the interior is broken up into that confused and accidental medley of tombs, pews, cross-lights, and pillars, for which the old churches of England are remarkable. The tomb and effigy of the great poet lie in an inner chapel, and are as described in every traveller’s book. I will not take up room with the repetition.

It gives one an odd feeling to see the tomb of his wife and daughter beside him. One does not realize before, that Shakspere had wife, children, kinsmen, like other men—that there were those who had a right to lie in the same tomb; to whom he owed the charities of life; whom he may have benefited or offended; who may have influenced materially his destiny, or he theirs; who were the inheritors of his household goods, his wardrobe, his books—people who looked on him—on Shakspere—as a landholder, a renter of a pew, a townsman; a relative, in short, who had claims upon them, not for the eternal homage due to celestial inspiration, but for the charity of shelter and bread had he been poor, for kindness and ministry had he been sick, for burial and the tears of natural affection when he died. It is painful and embarrassing to the mind to go to Stratford—to reconcile the immortality and the incomprehensible power of genius like Shakspere’s, with the space, tenement, and circumstance of a man! The poet should be like the sea-bird, seen only on the wing—his birth, his slumber, and his death, mysteries alike.

I had stipulated with the hostess that my baggage should be put into the chamber occupied by Washington Irving. I was shown into it to dress for dinner—a small neat room, a perfect specimen, in short, of an English bedroom, with snow-white curtains, a looking-glass the size of the face, a well-polished grate and poker, a well-fitted carpet, and as much light as heaven permits to the climate.

Our dinner for two was served in a neat parlor on the same floor—an English inn dinner—simple, neat and comfortable, in the sense of that word unknown in other countries. There was _just_ fire enough in the grate, _just_ enough for two in the different dishes, a servant who was _just_ enough in the room, and _just_ civil enough—in short, it was, like everything else in that _country of adaptation and fitness_, just what was ordered and wanted, and no more.

The evening turned out stormy, and the rain pattered merrily against the windows. The shutters were closed, the fire blazed up with new brightness, the well-fitted wax lights were set on the table; and when the dishes were removed, we replaced the wine with a tea-tray, and Miss Porter sent for the hostess to give us her company and a little gossip over our cups.

Nothing could be more nicely understood and defined than the manner of English hostesses generally in such situations, and of Mrs. Gardiner particularly in this. Respectful without servility, perfectly sure of the propriety of her own manner and mode of expression, yet preserving in every look and word the proper distinction between herself and her guests, she insured from them that kindness and ease of communication which would make a long evening of social conversation pass, not only without embarrassment on either side, but with mutual pleasure and gratification.

“I have brought up, mem,” she said, producing a well-polished poker from under her black apron, before she took the chair set for her at the table—“I have brought up a relic for you to see, that no money would buy from me.”

She turned it over in my hand, and I read on one of the flat sides at the bottom—“GEOFFREY CRAYON’S SCEPTRE.”

“Do you remember Mr. Irving,” asked my friend, “or have you supposed, since reading his sketch of Stratford-on-Avon that the gentleman in number three _might_ be the person?”

The hostess drew up her thin figure, and the expression of a person about to compliment herself stole into the corners of her mouth.

“Why, you see, mem, I am very much in the habit of observing my guests, and I think I may say I knows a superior gentleman when I sees him. If you remember, mem,” (and she took down from the mantle-piece a much-worn copy of the Sketch-Book,) “Geoffrey Crayon tells the circumstance of my stepping in when it was getting late, and asking if he had rung. I knows it by that, and then the gentleman I mean was an American, and I think, mem, besides,” (and she hesitated a little, as if she was about to advance an original and rather venturesome opinion)—“I think I can see that gentleman’s likeness all through this book.”

A truer remark or a more just criticism was perhaps never made on the Sketch-Book. We smiled, and Mrs. Gardiner proceeded:—

“I was in and out of the coffee room the night he arrived, mem,
and I sees directly by his modest ways and timid look that he
was a gentleman, and not fit company for the other travellers.
They were all young men, sir, and business travellers, and you
know, mem, _ignorance takes the advantage of modest merit_, and
after their dinner they were very noisy and rude. So, I says to
Sarah, the chambermaid, says I, ‘That nice gentleman can’t get
near the fire, and you go and light a fire in number three, and
he shall sit alone, and it shan’t cost him nothing, for I like
the look on him.’ Well, mem, he seemed pleased to be alone, and
after his tea, he puts his legs up over the grate, and there he
sits with the poker in his hand till ten o’clock. The other
travellers went to bed, and at last the house was as still as
midnight, all but a poke in the grate now and then in number
three, and every time I heard it, I jumped up and lit a
bed-candle, for I was getting very sleepy, and I hoped he was
getting up to ring for a light. Well, mem, I nodded and nodded,
and still no ring at the bell. At last I says to Sarah, says I,
‘Go into number three, and upset something, for I am sure that
gentleman has fallen asleep.’—‘La, ma’am,’ says Sarah,’I don’t
dare.’ ‘Well, then,’ says I, ‘I’ll go.’ So I opens the door, and
I says, ‘If you please, sir, did you ring?’—little thinking
that question would ever be written down in such a beautiful
book, mem. He sat with his feet on the fender poking the fire,
and a smile on his face, as if some pleasant thought was in his
mind. ‘No, ma’am,’ says he, ‘I did not.’ I shuts the door, and
sits down again, for I hadn’t the heart to tell him that it was
late, for _he was a gentleman not to speak rudely to_, mem.
Well, it was past twelve o’clock when the bell _did_ ring.
‘There,’ says I to Sarah, ‘thank Heaven he has done thinking,
and we can go to bed.’ So he walked up stairs with his light,
and the next morning he was up early and off to the Shakspere
house, and he brings me home a box of the mulberry tree, and
asks me if I thought it was genuine, and said it was for his
mother in America. And I loved him still more for that, and I’m
sure I prayed she might live to see him return.”

“I believe she did, Mrs. Gardiner; but how soon after did you set aside the poker?”

“Why, sir, you see there’s a Mr. Vincent that comes here sometimes, and he says to me one day—‘So, Mrs. Gardiner, you’re finely immortalized. Read that.’ So the minnit I read it, I remembered who it was, and all about it, and I runs and gets the number three poker, and locks it up safe and sound, and by-and-by I sends it to Brummagem, and has his name engraved on it, and here you see it, sir—and I wouldn’t take no money for it.”

I had never the honor to meet or know Mr. Irving, and I evidently lost ground with the hostess of the “Red Horse” for that misfortune. I delighted her, however, with the account which I had seen in a late newspaper, of his having shot a buffalo in the prairies of the west; and she soon courtesied herself out, and left me to the delightful society of the distinguished lady who had accompanied me. Among all my many loiterings in many lands, I remember none more intellectually pure and gratifying, than this at Stratford-on-Avon. My sleep, in the little bed consecrated by the slumbers of the immortal Geoffrey, was sweet and light; and I write myself his debtor for a large share of the pleasure which genius like his lavishes on the world.

CHARLECOTE.

Once more posting through Shottery and Stratford-on-Avon, on the road to Kenilworth and Warwick, I felt a pleasure in becoming an _habitué_ in Shakspere’s town—it being recognized by the Stratford post-boys, known at the Stratford inn, and remembered at the toll-gates. It is pleasant to be welcomed by name anywhere; but at Stratford-on-Avon, it is a recognition by those whose fathers or predecessors were the companions of Shakspere’s frolics. Every fellow in a slouched hat—every idler on a tavern bench—every saunterer with a dog at his heels on the highway—should be a deer-stealer from Charlecote. You would almost ask him, “Was Will Shakspere with you last night?”

The Lucys still live at Charlecote, immortalized by a varlet poacher who was tried before old Sir Thomas for stealing a buck. They have drawn an apology from Walter Savage Landor for making too free with the family history, under cover of an imaginary account of the trial. I thought, as we drove along in sight of the fine old hall, with its broad park and majestic trees—very much as it stood in the days of Sir Thomas, I believe—that most probably the descendants of the old justice look even now upon Shakspere more as an offender against the game-laws than as a writer of immortal plays. I venture to say, it would be bad tact in a visiter to Charlecote to felicitate the family on the _honor_ of possessing a park in which Shakspere had stolen deer—to show more interest in seeing the hall in which he was tried than in the family portraits.

On the road which I was travelling (from Stratford to Charlecote) Shakspere had been dragged as a culprit. What were his feelings before Sir Thomas? He felt, doubtless, as every possessor of the divine fire of genius must feel, when brought rudely in contact with his fellow-men, that he was too much their superior to be angry. The humor in which he has drawn Justice Shallow proves abundantly that he was more amused than displeased with his own trial. But was there no vexation at the moment? A reflection, it might be, from the estimate of his position in the minds of those who were about him—who looked on him simply as a stealer of so much venison. Did he care for Anne Hathaway’s opinion then?

How little did Sir Thomas Lucy understand the relation between Judge and culprit on that trial! How little did he dream he was sitting for his picture to the pestilent varlet at the bar; that the deer-stealer could better afford to forgive _him_ than he the deer-stealer! Genius forgives, or rather forgets, all wrongs done in ignorance of its immortal presence. Had Ben Jonson made a wilful jest on a line in his new play, it would have rankled longer than fine and imprisonment for deer-stealing. Those who crowd back and trample upon men of genius in the common walk of life; who cheat them, misrepresent them, take advantage of their inattention or their generosity in worldly matters, are sometimes surprised how their injuries, if not themselves, are forgotten. Old Adam Woodcock might as well have held malice against Roland Græme for the stab in the stuffed doublet of the Abbot of Misrule.

Yet, as I might have remarked in the paragraph gone before, it is probably not easy to put conscious and secret superiority entirely between the mind and the opinions of those around who think differently. It is one reason why men of genius love more than the common share of solitude—_to recover self-respect_. In the midst of the amusing travesty he was drawing in his own mind of the grave scene about him, Shakspere possibly felt at moments as like a detected culprit as he seemed to the gamekeeper and the justice. It is a small penalty to pay for the after worship of the world! The ragged and proverbially ill-dressed peasants who are selected from the whole campagna, as models to the sculptors of Rome, care little what is thought of their good looks in the Corso. The disguised proportions beneath their rags will be admired in deathless marble, when the noble who scarce deigns their possessor a look will lie in forgotten dust under his stone scutcheon.

WARWICK CASTLE.

Were it not for the “out-heroded” descriptions in the guide-books, one might say a great deal of Warwick castle. It is the quality of overdone or ill-expressed enthusiasm to silence that which is more rational and real. Warwick is, perhaps, the best kept of all the famous old castles of England. It is a superb and admirably-appointed modern dwelling, in the shell, and with all the means and appliances preserved of an ancient stronghold. It is a curious union, too. My lady’s maid and my lord’s valet coquet upon the bartizan, where old Guy of Warwick stalked in his coat-of-mail. The London cockney, from his two days’ watering at Leamington, stops his pony-chaise, hired at half-a-crown the hour, and walks Mrs. Popkins over the old drawbridge as peacefully as if it were the threshold of his shop in the Strand. Scot and Frenchman saunter through fosse and tower, and no ghost of the middle ages stalks forth, with closed visor, to challenge these once natural foes. The powdered butler yawns through an embrasure, expecting “miladi,” the countess of this fair domain, who in one day’s posting from London seeks relief in Warwick castle from the routs and _soirées_ of town. What would old Guy say, or the “noble imp” whose effigy is among the escutcheoned tombs of his fathers, if they could rise through their marble slabs, and be whirled over the drawbridge in a post-chaise? How indignantly they would listen to the reckoning within their own port-cullis, of the rates for chaise and postillion. How astonished they would be at the butler’s bow and the proffered officiousness of the valet. “Shall I draw off your lordship’s boots? Which of these new vests from Staub will your lordship put on for dinner?”

Among the pictures at Warwick, I was interested by a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, (the best of that sovereign I ever saw;) one of Machiavelli, one of Essex, and one of Sir Philip Sidney. The delightful and gifted woman whom I had accompanied to the castle observed of the latter, that the _hand_ alone expressed all his character. I had often made the remark in real life, but I had never seen an instance on painting where the likeness was so true. No one could doubt, who knew Sir Philip Sidney’s character, that it was a literal portrait of his hand. In our day, if you have an artist for a friend, he makes use of you while you call, to “sit for the hand” of the portrait on his easel. Having a preference for the society of artists myself, and frequenting their studios habitually, I know of some hundred and fifty unsuspecting gentlemen on canvass, who have procured for posterity and their children portraits of their own heads and dress-coats to be sure, but of the hands of other persons!

The head of Machiavelli is, as is seen in the marble in the gallery of Florence, small, slender, and visibly “made to creep into crevices.” The face is impassive and calm, and the lips, though slight and almost feminine, have an indefinable firmness and character. Essex is the bold, plain, and blunt soldier history makes him, and Elizabeth not unqueenly, nor (to my thinking) of an uninteresting countenance; but, with all the artist’s flattery, ugly enough to be the abode of the murderous envy that brought Mary to the block.

We paid our five shillings for having been walked through the marble hall of Castle Warwick, and the dressing room of its modern lady, and, gratified much more by our visit than I have expressed in this brief description, posted on to Kenilworth.

KENILWORTH.

On the road from Warwick to Kenilworth, I thought more of poor Pierce Gaveston than of Elizabeth and her proud earls. Edward’s gay favorite was tried at Warwick, and beheaded on Blacklow hill, which we passed soon after leaving the town. He was executed in June; and I looked about on the lovely hills and valleys that surround the place of his last moments, and figured to myself very vividly his despair at this hurried leave-taking of this bright world in its brightest spot and hour. Poor Gaveston! It was not in his vocation to die! He was neither soldier nor prelate, hermit nor monk. His political sins, for which he suffered, were no offence against good fellowship, and were ten times more venial than those of the “black dog of Arden,” who betrayed and helped to murder him. He was the reckless minion of a king, but he must have been a merry and pleasant fellow; and now that the world (on _our_ side the water at least) is grown so grave, one could go back with Old Mortality, and freshen the epitaph of a heart that took life more gayly.

As we approached the castle of the proud Leicester, I found it easier to people the road with the flying Amy Robsart and her faithful attendant, with Mike Lambourne, Flibbertigibbat, Richard Varney, and the troop of mummers and players, than with the more real characters of history. To assist the romance, a little Italian boy, with his organ and monkey, was fording the brook on his way to the castle, as if its old towers still held listeners for the wandering minstrel. I tossed him a shilling from the carriage window, and while the horses slowly forded the brook, asked him in his own delicious tongue, where he was from.

“_Son’ di Firenze, signore!_”

“And where are you going?”

“_Li! al castello._”

Come from Florence and bound to Kenilworth! Who would not grind an organ and sleep under a hedge, to answer the hail of the passing traveller in terms like these? I have seen many a beggar in Italy, whose inheritance of sunshine and leisure in that delicious clime I could have found it in my heart to envy, even with all its concomitants of uncertainty and want; but here was a bright-faced and inky-eyed child of the sun, with his wardrobe and means upon his back, travelling from one land to another, and loitering wherever there was a resort for pleasure, without a friend or a care; and, upon my life, I could have donned his velveteen jacket, and with his cheerful heart to button it over, have shouldered his organ, put my trust in _i forestieri_, and kept on for Kenilworth. There really is, I thought, as I left him behind, no profit or reward consequent upon a life of confinement and toil; no moss ever gathered by the unturned stone, that repays, by a thousandth part, the loss of even this poor boy’s share of the pleasures of change. What would not the tardy winner of fortune give to exchange his worn-out frame, his unloveable and furrowed features, his dulled senses, and his vain regrets, for the elastic frame, the unbroken spirits, and the redeemable yet not oppressive poverty of this Florentine _regazzo_! The irrecoverable gem of youth is too often dissolved, like the pearl of Cleopatra, in a cup which thins the blood and leaves disgust upon the lip.

The magnificent ruins of Kenilworth broke in upon my moralities, and a crowd of halt and crippled _ciceroni_ beset the carriage-door as we alighted at the outer tower. The neighborhood of the Spa of Leamington makes Kenilworth a place of easy resort; and the beggars of Warwickshire have discovered that your traveller is more liberal of his coin than your sitter-at-home. Some dozens of pony-chaises, and small, crop saddle-horses, clustered around the gate, assured us that we should not muse alone amid the ruins of Elizabeth’s princely gift to her favorite. We passed into the tilt-yard, leaving on our left the tower in which Edward was confined, now the only habitable part of Kenilworth. It gives a comfortable shelter to an old seneschal, who stands where the giant probably stood, with Flibbertigibbet under his doublet for a prompter; but it is not the tail of a rhyme that serves now for a passport.

Kenilworth, as it now stands, would probably disenchant almost any one of the gorgeous dreams conjured up by reading Scott’s romance. Yet it is one of the most superb ruins in the world. It would scarce be complete to a novel-reader, naturally, without a warder at the gate, and the flashing of a spear-point and helmet through the embrasures of the tower. A horseman in armor should pace over the drawbridge, and a squire be seen polishing his cuirass through the opening gate; while on the airy bartizan should be observed a lady in hoop and farthingdale, philandering with my lord of Leicester in silk doublet and rapier. In the place of this, the visiter enters Kenilworth as I have already described, and stepping out into the tilt-yard, he sees, on an elevation before him, a fretted and ivy-covered ruin, relieved like a cloud-castle on the sky; the bright blue plane of the western heavens shining through window and broken wall, flecked with waving and luxuriant leaves, and the crusted and ornamental pinnacles of tottering masonry and sculpture just leaning to their fall, though the foundations upon which they were laid, one would still think, might sustain the firmament. The swelling root of a creeper has lifted that arch from its base, and the protruding branch of a chance-sprung tree, (sown perhaps by a field-sparrow) has unseated the keystone of the next; and so perish castles and reputations, the masonry of the human hand, and the fabrics of human forethought; not by the strength which they feared, but by the weakness they despised! Little thought old John of Gaunt, when these rudely-hewn blocks were heaved into their seat by his herculean workmen, that, after resisting fire and foe, they would be sapped and overthrown at last by a vine-tendril and a sparrow!

Clinging against the outer wall, on that side of the castle overlooking the meadow, which was overflowed for the aquatic sports of Kenilworth, stands an antique and highly ornamental fireplace, which belonged, doubtless, to the principal hall. The windows on either side looking forth upon the fields below, must have been those from which Elizabeth and her train observed the feats of Arion and his dolphin; and at all times, the large and spacious chimney-place, from the castle’s first occupation to its last, must have been the centre of the evening revelry, and conversation of its guests. It was a hook whereon to hang a revery, and between the roars of vulgar laughter which assailed my ears from a party lolling on the grass below, I contrived to figure to myself, with some distinctness, the personages who had stood about it. A visit to Kenilworth, without the deceptions of fancy, would be as disconnected from our previous enthusiasm on the subject as from any other scene with which it had no relation. The general effect at first, in any such spot, is only to dispossess us, by a powerful violence, of the cherished picture we had drawn of it in imagination; and it is only after the real recollection has taken root and ripened—after months, it may be—that we can fully bring the visionary characters we have drawn to inhabit it. If I read Kenilworth now, I see Mike Lambourne stealing out, not from the ruined postern which I clambered through, over heaps of rubbish, but from a little gate that turned noiselessly on its hinges, in the unreal castle built ten years ago in my brain.

I had wandered away from my companion, Miss Jane Porter, to climb up a secret staircase in the wall, rather too difficult of ascent for a female foot, and from my elevated position I caught an accidental view of that distinguished lady through the arch of a Gothic window, with a background of broken architecture and foliage—presenting, by chance, perhaps the most fitting and admirable picture of the authoress of the Scottish Chiefs, that a painter in his brightest hour could have fancied. Miss Porter, with her tall and striking figure, her noble face (said by Sir Martin Shee to have approached nearer in its youth to his _beau idéal_ of the female features than any other, and still possessing the remains of uncommon beauty,) is at all times a person whom it would be difficult to see without a feeling of involuntary admiration. But standing, as I saw her at that moment, motionless and erect, in the mourning dress, with dark feathers, which she has worn since the death of her beloved and gifted sister, her wrists folded across, her large and still beautiful eyes fixed on a distant object in the view, and her nobly-cast lineaments reposing in their usual calm and benevolent tranquillity, while, around and above her, lay the material and breathed the spirit over which she had held the first great mastery—it was a _tableau vivant_ which I was sorry to be alone to see.

Was she thinking of the great mind that had evoked the spirits of the ruins she stood among—a mind in which (by Sir Walter’s own confession) she had first bared the vein of romance which breathed so freely for the world’s delight? Were the visions which sweep with such supernatural distinctness and rapidity through the imagination of genius—visions of which the millionth portion is probably scarce communicated to the world in a literary lifetime—were Elizabeth’s courtiers, Elizabeth’s passions, secret hours, interviews with Leicester—were the imprisoned king’s nights of loneliness and dread, his hopes, his indignant, but unheeded thoughts—were all the possible circumstances, real or imaginary, of which that proud castle might have been the scene, thronging in those few moments of revery through her fancy? Or was her heart busy with its kindly affections, and had the beauty and interest of the scene but awakened a thought of one who was most wont to number with her the sands of those brighter hours?

Who shall say? The very question would perhaps startle the thoughts beyond recall—so elusive are even the most angelic of the mind’s unseen visitants.

I have recorded here the speculations of a moment while I leaned over the wall of Kenilworth, but as I descended by the giddy staircase, a peal of rude laughter broke from the party in the fosse below, and I could not but speculate on the difference between the various classes whom curiosity draws to the spot. The distinguished mind that conceives a romance that enchants the world, comes in the same guise and is treated with but the same respect as theirs. The old porter makes no distinction in his charge of half-a-crown, and the grocer’s wife who sucks an orange on the grass, looks at the dark crape hat and plain exterior—her only standards—and thinks herself as well-dressed, and therefore equal or superior to the tall lady, whom she presumes is out like herself on a day’s pleasuring. One comes and goes like the other, and is forgotten alike by the beggars at the gate and the seneschal within, and thus invisibly and unsuspected, before our very eyes, does genius gather its golden fruit, and while _we_ walk in a plain and commonplace world, with commonplace and sordid thoughts and feelings, the gifted walk side by side with us in a world of their own—a world of which we see distant glimpses in their after-creations, and marvel in what unsunned mine its gems of thought were gathered!

A VISIT TO DUBLIN ABOUT THE TIME OF
THE QUEEN’S MARRIAGE.

The usual directions for costume, in the corner of the court card of invitation, included, on the occasion of the Queen’s marriage, a wedding favor, to be worn by ladies on the shoulder, and by gentlemen on the left breast. This trifling addition to the dress of the individual was a matter of considerable importance to the milliners, hatters, etc., who, in a sale of ten or twelve hundred white cockades (price from two dollars to five) made a very pretty profit. The power of giving a large ball to the more expensive classes, and ordering a particular addition to the costume—in other words, of laying a tax on the rich for the benefit of the poor, is exercised more frequently in Ireland than in other countries, and serves the double purpose of popularity to the Lord Lieutenant, and benefit to any particular branch of industry that may be suffering from the decline of a fashion.

The large quadrangular court-yard of the castle rattled with the tramp of horses’ feet and the clatter of sabres and spurs, and in the uncertain glare of torches and lamps, the gay colors and glittering arms of the mounted guard of lancers had a most warlike appearance. The procession which the guard was stationed to regulate and protect, rather detracted from the romantic effect—the greater proportion of equipages being the covered hack cars of the city—vehicles of the most unmitigated and ludicrous vulgarity. A coffin for two, set on its end, with the driver riding on the turned-down lid, would be a very near resemblance; and the rags of the driver, and the translucent leanness of his beast, make it altogether the most deplorable of conveyances. Here and there a carriage with liveries, and here and there a sedan-chair with four stout Milesian calves in blue stockings trotting under the poles, rather served as a foil than a mitigation of the effect, and the hour we passed in the line, edging slowly toward the castle, was far from unfruitful in amusement. I learned afterward that even those who have equipages in Dublin go to Court in hack cars as a matter of economy—one of the many indications of that feeling of lost pride which has existed in Ireland since the removal of the parliament.

A hall and staircase lined with files of soldiers is not quite as festive an entrance to a ball as the more common one of alleys of flowering shrubs; but with a waltz by a military band resounding from the lofty ceiling, I am not sure that it does not temper the blood as aptly for the spirit of the hour. It was a rainy night, and the streets were dark, and the effect upon myself of coming suddenly into so enchanted a scene—arms glittering on either side, and a procession of uniforms and plumed dames winding up the spacious stairs—was thrilling, even with the chivalric scenes of Eglinton fresh in my remembrance.

At the head of the ascent we entered a long hall, lined with the private servants of Lord Ebrington, and the ceremony of presentation having been achieved the week before, we left the throne-room on the right, and passed directly to St. Patrick’s Hall, the grand scene of the evening’s festivities. This, I have said before, is the finest ball-room I remember in Europe. Twelve hundred people, seated, dancing, or promenading, were within its lofty walls on the night whose festivities I am describing; and at either end a gallery, supported by columns of marble, contained a band of music, relieving each other with alternate waltzes and quadrilles. On the long sides of the hall were raised tiers of divans, filled with chaperons, veteran officers, and other lookers-on, and at the upper end was raised a platform with a throne in the centre, and seats on either side for the family of the Lord Lieutenant, and the more distinguished persons of the nobility. Lord Ebrington was rather in his character of a noble host than that of Viceroy, and I did not observe him once seated under his canopy of state; but with his Aids and some one of the noble ladies of his family on his arm, he promenaded the hall conversing with his acquaintances, and seemingly enjoying in a high degree the brilliant gayety of the scene. His dress, by the way, was the simple diplomatic dress of most continental courts, a blue uniform embroidered with gold, the various orders on his breast forming its principal distinction. I seldom have seen a man of a more calm and noble dignity of presence than the Lord Lieutenant, and never a face that expressed more strongly the benevolence and high purity of character for which he is distinguished. In person, except that he is taller, he bears a remarkably close resemblance to the Duke of Wellington.

We can scarcely conceive, in this country of black coats, the brilliant effect of a large assembly in which there is no person out of uniform or court-dress—every lady’s head nodding with plumes, and every gentleman in military scarlet and gold or lace and embroidery. I may add, too, that in this country of care-worn and pale faces, we can as little conceive the effect of an assembly rosy with universal health, habitually unacquainted with care, and abandoned with the apparent child-like simplicity of high breeding, to the inspiring gayety of the hour. The greater contrast, however, is between a nation where health is the first care, and one in which health is never thought of till lost; and light and shade are not more contrasted than the mere general effect of countenance in one and in the other. A stranger travelling in our country, once remarked to me that a party he had attended seemed like an entertainment given in the convalescent ward of a hospital—the ladies were so pale and fragile, and the men so unjoyous and sallow. And my own invariable impression, in the assemblies I have first seen after leaving my own country, was a corresponding one—that the men and women had the rosy health and untroubled gayety of children round a May-pole. That this is _not_ the effect of climate, I do most religiously believe. It is _over-much care_ and _over-much carelessness_—the corroding care of an avid temerity in business, and the carelessness of all the functions of life till their complaints become too imperative to be disregarded. But this is a theme out of place.

The ball was managed by the Grand Chamberlain (Sir William Leeson,) and the aids-de-camp of the Lord Lieutenant, and except that now and then you were reminded by the movement around you that you stood with your back to the representative of royalty, there was little to draw your attention from the attractions of the dance. Waltz, quadrille, and gallop, followed each other in giddy succession, and “what do you think of Irish beauty?” had been asked me as often as “how do you like America?” was ever mumbled through the trumpet of Miss Martineau, when I mounted with a friend to one of the upper divans, and tried, what is always a difficult task, and nowhere so difficult as in Ireland, to call in the intoxicated fancy, and anatomize the charm of the hour.

Moore’s remark has been often quoted—“there is nothing like an Irish woman to take a man off his feet;” but whether this figure of speech was suggested by the little bard’s common _soubriquet_ of “Jump-up-and-kiss-me[5] Tom Moore,” or simply conveyed his idea of the bewildering character of Irish beauty, it contains, to any one who has ever travelled (or waltzed) in that country, a very just, as well as realizing description. Physically, Irish women are probably the finest race in the world—I mean, taller, better limbed and chested, larger eyed, and with more luxuriant hair, and freer action, than any other nation I have observed. The Phœnician and Spanish blood which has run hundreds of years in their veins, still kindles its dark fire in their eyes, and with the vivacity of the northern mind and the bright color of the northern skin, these southern qualities mingle in most admirable and superb harmony. The idea we form of Italian and Grecian beauty is never realized in Greece and Italy, but we find it in Ireland, heightened and exceeded. Cheeks and lips of the delicacy and bright teint of carnation, with snowy teeth, and hair and eyebrows of jet, are what we should look for on the palette of Apelles, could we recall the painter, and re-animate his far-famed models; and these varied charms, united, fall very commonly to the share of the fair Milesian of the upper classes. In other lands of dark eyes, the rareness of a fine-grained skin, so necessary to a brunette, makes beauty as rare—but whether it is the damp softness of the climate or the infusion of Saxon blood, a coarse skin is almost never seen in Ireland. I speak now only of the better-born ranks of society, for in all my travels in Ireland I did not chance to see even one peasant girl of any pretensions to good looks. From north to south, they looked, to me, coarse, ill-formed, and repulsive.

I noticed in St. Patrick’s Hall what I had remarked ever since I had been in the country, that with all their beauty, the Irish women are very deficient in what in England is called _style_. The men, on the contrary, were particularly _comme il faut_, and as they are a magnificent race (corresponding to such mothers and sisters) I frequently observed I had never seen so many handsome and elegant men in a day. Whenever I saw a gentleman and lady together, riding, driving, or walking, my first impression was, almost universally, that the man was in attendance upon a woman of an inferior class to his own. This difference may be partly accounted for by the reduced circumstances of the gentry of Ireland, which keeps the daughters at home, that the sons may travel and improve; but it works differently in America, where, spite of travel and every other advantage to the contrary, the daughters of a family are much oftener lady-like than the sons are gentleman-like. After wondering for some time, however, why the quick-witted women of Ireland should be less apt than those of other countries in catching the air of high breeding usually deemed so desirable, I began to like them better for the deficiency, and to find a reason for it in the very qualities which make them so attractive. Nothing could be more captivating and delightful than the manners of Irish women, and nothing, at the same time, could be more at war with the first principles of English high breeding—coldness and _retenu_. The frank, almost hilarious “how are you?” of an Irish girl, her whole-handed and cordial grasp, as often in the day as you meet her, the perfectly un-missy-ish, confiding, direct character of her conversation, are all traits which would stamp her as somewhat rudely bred in England, and as desperately vulgar in New York or Philadelphia.

Modest to a proverb, the Irish woman is as unsuspecting of an impropriety as if it were an impossible thing, and she is as fearless and joyous as a midshipman, and sometimes as noisy. In a ball-room she looks ill-dressed, not because her dress was ill-put-on, but because she dances, not glides, sits down without care, pulls her flowers to pieces, and if her head-dress incommodes her, gives it a pull or a push—acts which would be perfect insanity at Almack’s. If she is offended, she asks for an explanation. If she does not understand you, she confesses her ignorance. If she wishes to see you the next day, she tells you how and when. She is the child of nature, and children are not “stylish.” The niminy-piminy, eye-avoiding, finger-tipped, drawling, don’t-touch-me manner of some of the fashionable ladies of our country, would amuse a cold and reserved English woman sufficiently, but they would drive an Irish girl into hysterics. I have met one of our fair country-people abroad, whose “Grecian stoop,” and exquisitely subdued manner, was invariably taken for a fit of indigestion.

The ball-supper was royally sumptuous, and served in a long hall thrown open at midnight; and in the gray of the morning, I left the floor covered with waltzers, and confessed to an Irish friend, that I never in my life, not even at Almack’s, had seen the half as much true beauty as had brightened St. Patrick’s Hall at the celebration of the queen’s marriage.

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[5] The name of a small flower, common in Ireland.

CLOSING SCENES OF THE SESSION AT
WASHINGTON.

The paradox of “the more one does, the more one can do,” is resolved in life at Washington with more success than I have seen it elsewhere. The inexorable bell at the hotel or boarding-house pronounces the irrevocable and swift transit of breakfast to all sleepers after eight. The elastic depths of the pillow have scarcely yielded their last feather to the sleeper’s head before the drowse is rudely shaken from his eyelids, and with an alacrity which surprises himself, he finds his toilet achieved, his breakfast over, and himself abroad to lounge in the sunshine till the flag waves on the capitol. He would retire to his chamber to read during these two or three vacant hours, but the one chair in his pigeon-hole creaks, or has no back or bottom, or his anthracite fire is out, or, is too hot for the size of the room; or, in short, Washington, from whatever cause, is a place where none read except those who stand up to a padlocked newspaper. The stars and stripes, moving over the two wings of the capitol at eleven announce that the two chambers of legislation are in session, and the hard working idler makes his way to the senate or the house. He lingers in the lobby awhile, amused with the button-hole seizers plying the unwilling ears of members with their claims, or enters the library, where ladies turn over prints, and enfilade, with their battery of truant eyes the comers in at the green door. He then gropes up the dark staircase to the senate gallery, and stifles in the pressure of a hot gallery, forgetting, like listeners at a crowded opera, that bodily discomfort will unlink the finest harmonies of song or oratory. Thence he descends to the rotunda to draw breath and listen to the more practical, but quite as earnest eloquence of candidates for patents; and passes, after a while to the crowded gallery of the house, where, by some acoustic phenomena in the construction of the building, the voices of the speakers come to his ears as articulate as water from a narrow-necked bottle. “Small blame to them!” he thinks, however; for behind the brexia columns are grouped all the fair forms of Washington; and in making his bow to two hundred despotic lawgivers in feathers and velvet, he is readily consoled that the duller legislators who yield to their sway are inaudible and forgotten. To this upper house drop in, occasionally, the younger or gayer members of the lower, bringing, if not political scandal, at least some slight _resumer_ of what Mr. Somebody is beating his desk about below; and thus, crammed with the day’s trifles or the day’s business, and fatigued from heel to eyelid, our idler goes home at five to dress for dinner and the night’s campaign, having been up and on his legs for ten mortal hours.

Cold water and a little silence in his own room have rather refreshed him, and he dines at six with a party of from fifteen to twenty-five persons. He discusses the vital interests of fourteen millions of people over a glass of wine with the man whose vote, possibly, will decide their destiny, and thence hurries to a ball-room crammed like a perigord pie, where he pants, elbows, eats supper, and waltzes till three in the morning. How human constitutions stand this, and stand it daily and nightly, from the beginning to the end of a session, may well puzzle the philosophy of those who rise and breakfast in comfortable leisure.

I joined the crowd on the twenty-second of February, to pay my respects to the President, and see _the cheese_. Whatever veneration existed in the minds of the people toward the former, their curiosity in reference to the latter predominated, unquestionably. The circular _pavé_, extending from the gate to the White House, was thronged with citizens of all classes, those coming away having each a small brown paper parcel and a very strong smell; those advancing manifesting, by shakings of the head and frequent exclamations, that there may be too much of a good thing, and particularly of a cheese. The beautiful portico was thronged with boys and coach-drivers, and the odor strengthened with every step. We forced our way over the threshold, and encountered an atmosphere, to which the mephitic gas floating over Avernus must be faint and innocuous. On the side of the hall hung a rough likeness of the general, emblazoned with eagle and stars, forming a background to the huge tub in which the cheese had been packed; and in the centre of the vestibule stood the “fragrant gift,” surrounded with a dense crowd, who, without crackers, or even “malt to their cheese,” had, in two hours, eaten and purveyed away _fourteen hundred pounds_! The small segment reserved for the President’s use counted for nothing in the abstractions.

Glad to compromise for a breath of cheeseless air, we desisted from the struggle to obtain a sight of the table, and mingled with the crowd in the east room. Here were diplomates in their gold coats and officers in uniform, ladies of secretaries and other ladies, soldiers on volunteer duty, and Indians in war-dress and paint. Bonnets, feathers, uniforms, and all—it was rather a gay assemblage. I remembered the descriptions in travellers’ books, and looked out for millers and blacksmiths in their working gear, and for rudeness and vulgarity in all. The offer of a mammoth cheese to the public was likely to attract to the presidential mansion more of the lower class than would throng to a common levee. Great-coats there were, and not a few of them, for the day was raw, and unless they were hung on the palings outside, they must remain on the owners’ shoulders; but, with a single exception (a fellow with his coat torn down his back, possibly in getting at the cheese,) I saw no man in a dress that was not respectable and clean of its kind, and abundantly fit for a tradesman out of his shop. Those who were much pressed by the crowd put their hats on; but there was a general air of decorum which would surprise any one who had pinned his faith on travellers. An intelligent Englishman, very much inclined to take a disgust to mobocracy, expressed to me great surprise at the decency and proper behavior of the people. The same experiment in England, he thought, would result in as pretty a riot as a paragraph-monger would desire to see.

The President was down stairs in the oval reception room, and, though his health would not permit him to stand, he sat in his chair for two or three hours, and received his friends with his usual bland and dignified courtesy. By his side stood the lady of the mansion, dressed in full court costume, and doing the honors of her place with a grace and amenity which every one felt, and which threw a bloom over the hour. General Jackson retired, after awhile, to his chamber, and the President elect remained to support his relative, and present to her the still thronging multitude, and by four o’clock the guests were gone, and the “banquet hall” was deserted. Not to leave a wrong impression of the cheese, I dined afterward at a table to which the President had sent a piece of it, and found it of excellent quality. It is like many other things, more agreeable in small qualities.

Some eccentric mechanic has presented to the President a sulkey, made entirely (except the wheels) of rough-cut hickory, with the bark on. It looks rough enough, but has very much the everlasting look of old Hickory himself; and if he could be seen driving a high-stepping, bony old iron-gray steed in it, any passer-by would see that there was as much fitness in the whole thing as in the chariot of Bacchus and his reeling leopards. Some curiously twisted and gnarled branches have been very ingeniously turned into handles and whip-box, and the vehicle is compact and strong. The President has left it to Mr. Van Buren.

In very strong contrast to the sulkey, stood close by, the elegant phæton, made of the wood of the old frigate Constitution. It has a seat for two, with a driver’s box, covered with a superb hammercloth, and set up rather high in front; the wheels and body are low, and there are bars for baggage behind; altogether, for lightness and elegance, it would be a turn out for Long Acre. The material is excessively beautiful—a fine-grained oak, polished to a very high degree, with its colors delicately brought out by a coat of varnish. The wheels are very slender and light, but strong, and, with all its finish, it looks a vehicle capable of a great deal of service. A portrait of the Constitution, under full sail, is painted on the panels.

THE INAUGURATION.

While the votes for president were being counted in the senate, Mr. Clay remarked to Mr. Van Buren with courteous significance:—

“It is a cloudy day, sir!”

“The sun will shine on the fourth of March!” was the confident reply.