Chapter VI: Oxford Life (1)

1853-1855

"When I recall my youth, what I was then,
What I am now, ye beloved ones all:
It seems as though these were the living men,
And we the coloured shadows on the wall."
--MONCKTON MILNES.

"You are not bound to follow vulgar examples, nor to succeed--Fais
ce que dois."--AMIEL.

"Study as if you would never reach the point you seek to attain,
and hold on to all you have learnt as if you feared to lose
it."--CONFUCIUS.

During a visit at Lime, Arthur Stanley had spent a whole evening in entertaining us with a most delightful description of the adventures of Messrs. Black, White, Blue, Green, and Yellow on their first arrival at Oxford, so that I was not wholly unprepared for what I had to encounter there. His kindness had also procured me a welcome from his most eccentric, but kind-hearted, friend Jowett, then a Fellow and tutor of Balliol,[80] which prevented any forlornness I might otherwise have experienced; but indeed so great was my longing for change and a freer life, that I had no need of consolation, even under the terrors of "Matriculation." At nineteen, I was just beginning to feel something of the self-confidence which boys usually experience at thirteen, and, as I emancipated myself gradually from the oppressors of my boyhood, to yearn with eager longings for and sudden inexplicable sympathies towards the friendship and confidence of companions of my own age. There was also a pleasure in feeling that henceforward, though I should always have to economise, I must have _some_ money of my own, although a regular allowance was never granted at Oxford, or at any other time. It was partially the fact that I had no money to spend in my own way, and that my bills were always overlooked and commented upon, and partly that I had known no other young men except those whom I met at my private tutor's, which made me still very peculiar in dress as in voice and manner. I can see myself now--very shy and shrinking, arriving at Oxford in a rough "bear greatcoat," with a broad stripe down my trousers, such as was worn then, and can hear the shrill high tones in which I spoke.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Balliol College, Oxford, March 14, 1853._--I cannot help writing
to my own mother on this my first night in Oxford. I should not
seem to have got through the day without it.

"I left Southgate with all good wishes and in pouring rain. When
the domes and towers of Oxford rose over the levels, I was not much
agitated at seeing them, and was very much disappointed at the look
of them. A number of young men were at the station, but I jumped
into an omnibus, and, in a tone as unlike a Freshman's as I could
make it, exclaimed 'Balliol.' Dull streets brought us to an arched
gateway, where I was set down, and asked the way to Mr. Jowett's
rooms. Through one court with green grass and grey arches to
another modern one, and upstairs to a door with 'Mr. Jowett' upon
it. Having knocked some time in vain, I went in, and found two
empty rooms, an uncomfortable external one evidently for lectures,
and a pleasant inner sanctuary with books and prints and warm fire.
My mother's letter was on the table, so she was the first person to
welcome me to Oxford. Then Mr. Jowett came in, in cap and gown,
with a pile of papers in his hand, and immediately hurried me out
to visit a long succession of colleges and gardens, since which we
have had dinner in his rooms and a pleasant evening. I like him
thoroughly. It is a bright beginning of college life."

"_March 16._--It is a member of the University who writes to my own
mother.

"It was nervous work walking in the cold morning down the High
Street to University. Mr. Jowett's last advice had been, 'Don't
lose your presence of mind; it will be not only weak, but wrong.'
Thus stimulated, I knocked at the Dean's (Mr. Hedley's) door. He
took me to the Hall--a long hall, with long rows of men writing at
a long table, at the end of which I was set down with pens, ink,
and paper. Greek translation, Latin composition, and papers of
arithmetic and Euclid were given me to do, and we were all locked
in. I knew my work, and had done when we were let out, at half-past
one, for twenty minutes. At the end of that time Mr. Hedley took me
to the Master.[81] The old man sate in his study--very cold, very
stern, and _very_ tall. I thought the examination was over. Not a
bit of it. The Master asked what books I had ever done, and took
down the names on paper. Then he chose Herodotus. I knew with that
old man a mistake would be fatal, and I did not make it. Then he
asked me a number of odd questions--all the principal rivers in
France and Spain, the towns they pass through, and the points where
they enter the sea; all the prophecies in the Old Testament in
their order relating to the coming of Christ; all the relationships
of Abraham and all the places he lived in. These things fortunately
I _happened_ to know. Then the Master arose and solemnly made a
little speech--'You have not read so many books, Mr. Hare, not
nearly so many books as are generally required, but in
consideration of the satisfactory way in which you have passed
your general examination, and in which you have answered my
questions, you will be allowed to matriculate, and this, I hope,
will lead you,' &c. &c. But for me the moral lesson at the end is
lost in the essential, and the hitherto cold countenance of Mr.
Hedley now smiles pleasantly.

"Then a great book is brought out, and I am instructed to
write--'Augustus Joannes Cuthbertus Hare, Armigeri filius.' Then
there is a pause. The Master and Dean consult how 'born at Rome' is
to be written. The Dean suggests, the Master does not approve; the
Dean suggests again, the Master is irritated; the Dean consults a
great folio volume, and I am told to write 'de urbe Roma civitate
Italiæ.' When this is done, Mr. Hedley stands up, the Master looks
vacant, I bow, and we go out.

"At five o'clock, having got a cap and gown at the tailor's, I
return to Mr. Hedley, now very affable, who walks with me to
Worcester, to the Vice-Chancellor. The servant at the door says, 'A
gentleman is matriculating.' Mr. Hedley says he is going to
matriculate me. So we go in, and I write again in a great book and
sign the Articles. I swear to abjure the Pope and be devoted to the
Queen, and kiss a Testament upon it. Then the Vice-Chancellor says,
'Now attend diligently,' and makes a little speech in Latin about
obedience to the institutes of the University. Then I pay £3,
10_s._ and am free."

On my way back through London I went to my first evening party. It was at Lambeth Palace. Well do I remember my Aunt Kitty (Mrs. Stanley) looking me over before we set out, and then saying slowly, "Yes, you will _do_." At Lambeth I first heard on this occasion the beautiful singing of Mrs. Wilson, one of the three daughters of the Archbishop (Sumner). His other daughters, Miss Sumner and Mrs. Thomas and her children lived with him, and the household of united families dwelling harmoniously together was like that of Sir Thomas More. Another evening during this visit in London I made the acquaintance of the well-known Miss Marsh, and went with her to visit a refuge for reclaimed thieves in Westminster. As we were going over one of the rooms where they were at work, she began to speak to them, and warmed with her subject into a regular address, during which her bonnet fell off upon her shoulders, and, with her sparkling eyes and rippled hair, she looked quite inspired. It was on the same day--in the morning--that, under the auspices of Lea, who was a friend of the steward, I first saw Apsley House, where the sitting-room of the great Duke was then preserved just as he left it the year before, the pen lying by the dusty inkstand, and the litter of papers remaining as he had scattered them.

When I reached Southgate, Mr. Bradley received me with "How do, Hare? Your troubles are ended. No, perhaps they are begun." That was all, yet he had really been anxious about me. I was always so brimming with exaggerated sentiment myself at this time, that I had expected quite a demonstration of farewell from the poor people in the wretched Southgate district, to whom--after a sentimental fashion--I had devoted much time and trouble, and was greatly disappointed to receive little more than "Oh! be you?" when I informed them that I was going to leave them for ever. The parting with Mr. Bradley was also more than chilling, as his manner was so repellent; yet in after life I look back to him as a man to whom, with all his eccentricities, I am most deeply indebted.

During the greater part of the Easter vacation, my Uncle Penrhyn and his daughter Emmie were with us,--still filled with the first sorrow caused by Aunt Penrhyn's death a few weeks before. To me personally the death of this aunt made little difference, though she had always been kind to me--she had so long been ill, never recovering the birth of her immense number of children, chiefly still-born, and wornout besides with asthma. My uncle used to obtain for her a reprieve of sleep by mesmerising her, but in this state, though immovable and taking rest, she could be talked to, understood all that was said, and recollected it afterwards. I remember on one occasion her describing her agony when, in a mesmeric state, she knew a wasp had settled on her nose, and yet was unable to move. It was partly distress for her sorrowing relations acting on one in whom the mind so acutely affected the body, which made my dear mother very ill this spring, with the usual trying symptoms of trembling, confusion, giddiness, and sleeplessness. On such occasions I sincerely believe I never had _any_ thought but for her. Not only for hours, but for weeks I would sit constantly beside her, chafing her cold hands and feet, watching every symptom, ready to read if she could bear it, or to bring my thoughts and words into almost baby-language, if--as was sometimes the case--she could bear nothing else. But when she was ill, the dead silence at Lime or the uncongenial society from the Rectory was certainly more than usually depressing, and I was glad when, as at this Easter, her doctor sent her to Hastings. Here, in her rare better moments, I had great enjoyment in beginning to colour from nature on the rocks. On the day before I returned to Oxford, we received the Sacrament kneeling by the sick-bed of Priscilla Maurice,[82] whose sick-room, which she then never left, was facing the sea in White Rock Place. At this time I had not only an _enthusiasm_ for religion, which in itself was worth very little, but was just beginning to be filled with a steady anxiety to fulfil all the nobler aims of life; and to have a contempt for that life of much preaching and little practice in which I had latterly lived at Southgate, teaching others while I made no effort to improve myself. In going to Oxford, from the set I lived in, the so-called moral temptations of Oxford life not only did not assail, but were invisible to me. I believe the very fact that I was always ready--far too ready--to speak my mind, made base men avoid me. My chief difficulty was to do any work; not to see my acquaintance at all hours of the day; not to shut up Sophocles in utter weariness of what I had so often read before, that I might go out to talk and laugh with those I liked. In fact, probably I should have done little or nothing at first, if the Schools, like the sword of Damocles, had not been hanging over my head--the Schools, which, as I wrote in my journal-book, had, for hundreds of years, probably seen more continuous trouble and misery than any other rooms in the world.

On my way to Oxford, I paid a first visit to Hugh Pearson,[83] afterwards my very dear friend, at Sonning Rectory near Reading, and also visited the old Maria Josepha, Lady Stanley of Alderley,[84] at Holmwood. Old Lady Stanley was then, as always, most formidable; but her daughters Rianette and Louisa were not afraid of her, and in the one afternoon I was there they had a violent dispute and quarrel, with very high words, over which of their dogs barked loudest.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_University College, Oxford, April 9, 1853._--It is from my own
rooms, 'No. 2, Kitchen Staircase,' that I write to my mother--in a
room long and narrow, with yellow beams across the ceiling, and a
tall window at one end admitting dingy light, with a view of
straight gravel-walks, and beds of cabbages and rhubarb in the
Master's kitchen-garden. Here, for £32, 16_s._ 6_d._ I have been
forced to become the owner of the last proprietor's
furniture--curtains which drip with dirt, a bed with a ragged
counterpane, a bleared mirror in a gilt frame, and some ugly
mahogany chairs and tables. 'Your rooms might be worse, but your
servant could not,' said Mr. Hedley when he brought me here.... How
shy I have just felt in Hall, sitting through a dinner with a whole
set of men I did not know and who never spoke to me."

"_March 10._--The chapel-clock is _in_ my bedroom, and woke me with
its vibration every time it struck the hour. However, I suppose I
shall get used to it. But I was up long before the scout came to
call me at seven, and was in such fear of being late for chapel,
that I was ten minutes too early, and had to walk about in the cold
and stare at the extraordinary stained windows--Jonah and the whale
swimming about side by side; Abraham dragging Isaac to the
sacrifice by his hair; Mary and Martha attending upon Christ, each
with a brass ladle in her hand, only that Mary holds hers
suspended, and Martha goes on dipping hers in the pot while He is
talking. At last the Master entered statelily, and the troop of
undergraduates in black gowns and scholars in white ones came
clattering in; and Mr. Hedley read the service, and we all
responded, and a scholar read the lessons; and then there was a
general rush into Quad, and a great shaking of hands, at which I,
having no hand to shake, felt very blank, and escaped to my rooms,
and afterwards to breakfast with Mr. Jowett.... I am to go to him
every night with a hundred lines of Sophocles, some Latin
composition, and a piece of Cicero by heart--a great addition to my
eighteen lectures a week, but the greatest advantage; and really he
could not have done a more true kindness: I do not know how to say
enough of it.

"I wish I knew some one in this college. It is most disagreeable
being stared at wherever one goes, and having no one to speak to,
and though the Hall, with its high roof and pictures, may seem
picturesque at first, solitude in society becomes a bore. Expenses
appear to be endless. This morning I held a levée. First a sooty
man with a black face poked his head in at the door with 'Coalman's
fee, if you please, sir,--half-a-crown.' The buttery, represented
by a boy in a white apron, came up next, and then the college
porter and scouts, though as yet all these officials have done for
me--nothing! A man who declared himself sole agent of an important
magazine, and also a vendor of flannels and 'dressing-robes,' has
also just called--'supposed he had the honour of addressing Mr.
Hare, and would I for a moment favour him with my approval,' which
I declined to do, when he thanked me for 'my great condescension'
and departed."

"_March 17._--I have now been a whole week here. It seems a life to
look back upon, and I am becoming quite used to it. My first
visitor was a man called Troutbeck. This was our conversation:--

"'I suppose you're fond of boating: we must have you down to the
river and see what you're made of.'

"'But I don't boat: you would find me utterly inefficient.'

"'Then you ride?'

"'No.'

"'Do you sing, then?'

"'No, not at all.'

"'Do you play rackets?'

"'No, I neither boat, nor ride, nor sing, nor play rackets; so you
will never have been to call upon a more hopelessly stupid
Freshman.'

"However, I have made plenty of acquaintances already, and I do not
see much of either the temptations or difficulties of college life.
In some ways a college repeats a public school. For instance, I
have made rather friends with a Canadian called Hamilton, who all
dinner-time has to answer, and does answer most good-naturedly,
such questions as--'Pray, are you going to Canada for the
long?--When did you hear last from the Bishop of the Red River?'
&c."

"_April 23._--Having been induced, or rather compelled, to give a
two-guinea subscription to the cricket club, I have just been asked
to a great wine given to show that Coleridge the undergraduate is
not the same as Coleridge the cricket collector. I have now to
prepare Latin prose for the cynical Goldwin Smith, but my principal
lectures are with Mr. Shadforth, a man who has the character of
being universally beloved and having no authority at all. The
undergraduates knock at his door and walk in. He sits at a table in
the middle, they on cane-chairs all round the room, and his lecture
is a desultory conversation--questions addressed to each individual
in turn. But he dawdles and twaddles so much over details, we have
generally done very little before the hour ends, when he says, 'I
will not detain you any longer.' I doubt if there is much good in
any of the lectures one attends, or anything to be learnt from them
except what one teaches oneself; still they are part of the college
routine, and so have to be pottered through.

"There is a high Romanistic club here, called the Alfred, whose
members spend their time in passing ridiculous votes of censure on
different individuals. They are much tormented, but have a pleasant
imagination of martyrdom, and believe they are suffering for their
faith. When they met at Merton, the men of the college put slates
on the top of the chimney of the room where they were, and they
were almost suffocated with smoke. Here they met to pass a vote of
censure on--St. Augustine, and the whole time of their sitting in
conclave cayenne-pepper was burnt through the keyhole; and when it
was over, every window in the Quad along which they passed was
occupied by a man with a jug of water; so you may imagine they were
well soused before they got out.

"The Schools are going on now. They seem less alarming since I have
heard that the man passed satisfactorily who construed ??????
???????--Julius Cæsar, and also the man who, when asked why they
broke the legs of the two thieves, said he supposed it was to
prevent their running away. It was all put down to nervousness.
Christ Church walks are now green with chestnut buds, and a
pear-tree is putting out some blossoms in the Master's arid garden
under my windows."

"_May 1._--I am writing at half-past six A.M., for at four o'clock
I got up, roused Milligan[85] (now my chief friend and companion),
and we went off to Magdalen. A number of undergraduates were
already assembled, and when the door was opened, we were all let
through one by one, and up the steep winding staircase to the
platform amid the pinnacles on the top of the tower. Here stood the
choristers and chaplains in a space railed off, with bare heads,
and white surplices waving in the wind. It was a clear morning, and
every spire in Oxford stood out against the sky, the bright young
green of the trees mingling with them. Below was a vast crowd, but
in the high air the silence seemed unbroken, till the clock struck
five, and then, as every one took off their caps, the choristers
began to sing the Latin hymn, a few voices softly at first, and
then a full chorus bursting in. It was really beautiful, raised
above the world on that great height, in the clear atmosphere of
the sky. As the voices ceased, the bells began, and the tower
rocked so that you could _see_ it swaying backwards and forwards.
Milligan and I walked round Magdalen walks afterwards, and when my
scout found me dressed on coming to call me, he asked if I had been
'out a-Maying.' Yesterday afternoon I rowed with Milligan on the
river to Godstowe. It was so shallow, that if we had upset, which
was exceedingly probable, we could have walked to shore."

"_May 4._--I have now become a regular visitor at the lodging-house
of the Mendicity Society, which means taking my turn in going every
evening for a week to receive the beggars who come with tickets,
and reading prayers to them, besides giving them their supper, and
noting any remarkable cases which need help. It is a strange
congregation of wild haggard people, chiefly Irish, probably
meeting for that one evening only on earth, and one feels anxious
to do them some good.

"I went the other day with Troutbeck[86]--a friend of whom I see
much--to Bagley Wood, where he sang old ballads under the trees
upon a bank of bluebells and primroses. I have many friends now,
and I never was happier in my life."

"_May 22._--I am in the Schools to-morrow for Little-go, having
insisted on going in, in spite of my tutors. I do not feel as if I
minded much, but some of my friends are so alarmed about themselves
that they can scarcely eat."

"_May 23._--This morning the School-yard was full of men in white
ties and Masters in hoods, friends catching friends for last words
of advice, &c. Then the doors of the four Schools opened, and we
poured in. The room where I was was full of little tables, and we
each had one to ourselves. Then a Don walked about distributing the
long printed papers to be filled up--arithmetic, chiefly decimals.
At first I felt as if I understood nothing, and I saw several of my
neighbours wringing their hands in the same despair which
overwhelmed myself, but gradually ideas dawned upon me, and I wrote
as fast as any one, and had only one question unanswered when we
went out at twelve. In the afternoon was the Euclid school--very
horrid, but I am certainly not plucked by to-day's work."

"_May 30._--You will rejoice to hear I am safe. Just as I was
preparing to decamp this morning, to be out of the way of the
authorities, I was caught by the Dean's messenger, and was obliged
to go to him. He began by saying he could not allow me to go into
the Schools, both my friends and the college would suffer; but I so
entreated, and declared, and exclaimed that I must go in, that I
would be careful, &c., that at last, as his breakfast was getting
quite cold, he gave in.

"I had translations of Sophocles and Virgil to do on paper, but it
was not till the afternoon that 'Mr. Hare' was called for _viva
voce_. I really did pretty well, and as one of the examiners
considerately growled whenever I was turning down a wrong path, I
was able to catch up my faults. Mr. Jowett was present amongst my
friends, and as soon as all was over, carried me off to walk in New
College Gardens; and when we came back, it was he who went in to
ask my fate. He came back to me radiant with my _testamur_, and I
am very happy in the restful feeling of its being over, and no
other examination for so long.

"I have just been electro-biologised in the most marvellous manner
by the power of Troutbeck's left eye! by which he is able to
mesmerise friends far away in their own rooms, and can make a
fellow called Barrow[87] clairvoyant, in which state he travels to
Rugby, and other places where he has never been, and accurately
describes all that is going on there."

"_June 6._--Commemoration has been most amusing--concerts,
flower-shows, &c. The procession of boats was really a beautiful
sight--all the college boats, with their different flags and
uniforms, moving slowly up between the banks crowded with people,
and saluting the University barge by raising their oars and holding
them straight up in the air as they passed."

All through my first year at Oxford, Mr. Jowett (afterwards Master of Balliol) continued to show me the utmost kindness, giving me extra work, and allowing me to bring the result to him in the evening. I had been so much neglected at Lyncombe, and so ill-grounded altogether in my boyhood, that my passing all my examinations successfully was probably owing to this generous action of his. Honours at Oxford, even in the History School, I never thought of. My mother would only have wondered what on earth I wanted them for, and, had I gained them, would have lamented them as terribly ensnaring. I was profoundly grateful to Mr. Jowett, but being constantly asked to breakfast alone with him was a terrible ordeal. Sometimes he never spoke at all, and would only walk round the room looking at me with unperceiving, absent eyes as I ate my bread and butter, in a way that, for a very nervous boy, was utterly terrific. Walking with this kind and silent friend was even worse: he scarcely ever spoke, and if, in my shyness, I said something at one milestone, he would make no response at all till we reached the next, when he would say abruptly, "Your last observation was singularly commonplace," and relapse into silence again. He was indeed truly "intermittent," as Swinburne has called him. His quaint brevity of speech was never more remarkable than when the Council, met in solemn conclave, summoned "the little heretic," as he used to be called, into its awful presence. Then, being asked, "Now, Mr. Jowett, answer the truth; _can_ you sign the Thirty-nine Articles?" he dumbfoundered them with--"If you've a little ink!" He could be very satirical. I remember, in after years, when Jex Blake, afterwards Dean of Wells, had been talking very prosily, he said, "I have long known that Law comes from Lex, but I never knew till now that Jaw comes from Jex."

On looking back through the mists of years, I am often surprised at the acquaintance whose society I sought during my first terms at Oxford, few of whom, except my dear friends Willie Milligan and George Sheffield,[88] have had any share in my after life. This was partly owing to the fact that the men who were at University in my time for the most part belonged to so entirely different a station in life, that our after paths were not likely to cross; and partly to the fact that those who had _any_ mental gifts--for most of my companions had none--were repulsive or disagreeable in their habits.

Milligan was the first real friend I had ever had; before that, if I had liked any one, they had never liked me, and _vice versa_. It was always "l'un qui baisse, et l'autre qui tend la joue."

Very odd and far less satisfactory were others of my early Oxford friendships. One was for a man who imposed upon those younger than himself by a sort of apathetic high-handed manner of his own, and whom, when he professed a great preference for me, I used to look up to as a sort of divinity. Many were the almost volumes of sentimental twaddle I wrote both to and about him, and I used to listen for his footstep on my staircase as the great event of the evening. But all this soon wore off, and when my idol was once dethroned from its pedestal, it became a contemptible object.

An odder friendship still, made in my early Oxford life, was that for a good-looking, sentimental, would-be poet. Of him I wrote home with heartfelt enthusiasm, and at length, though I had never before asked anything at home, took courage to persuade my mother to let me go abroad with him to Bohemia for part of the long vacation. Before we set out he came to stay with us at Hurstmonceaux, and greatly astonished my relations must have been to find my charming young man so utterly unlike what I had described him. But we had scarcely set out on our travels before I found it out for myself--the first discovery being made when he pronounced Cologne Cathedral "very pretty" and S. Aposteln "very nice."

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_Andernach am Rhein, June 30, 1853._--I was delighted when we
rounded the corner of the river below Rheinach, and the old tower
of Andernach came in sight, with the cathedral, and the
vineyard-clad hills behind. The whole place is delightful. In the
evening we rambled up the rocks over carpets of thyme and
stonecrop, and saw the last tinge of yellow pass away from the sky
behind the cathedral and the light fade out of the river. All along
the road are stone niches with sculptures of the 'Sept Douleurs,'
and as we came in through the dark orchards a number of children
were chaunting with lighted tapers before a gaudy image of a saint
in a solitary place overshadowed by trees."

"_July 2._--This morning we went out at five, meeting crowds of
peasants coming in to market with their cheerful 'Guten Tag.' I
sate to draw at the Convent of St. Thomas in a rose-garden, while
A. read Hallam. At twelve, we drove through the volcanic hills,
covered with the loveliest flowers--blue larkspur, marigolds,
asphodels, campanulas, and great tufts of crimson pinks--to the
Laacher See, a deep blue lake, once the crater of a volcano, in a
wooded basin of the hills. It still sends forth such noxious
vapours that no bird can fly across it and live, and dead bodies of
small animals are constantly found along its shores. At one end of
the lake, Kloster Laach rises out of the woods, with a little inn
nestling in an orchard close under the walls of the church. The
exterior of that old Norman church is most beautiful, mellowed with
every tint of age, but internally it is disfigured by whitewash;
only the canopied tomb of the Phaltzgraf Henry II. is very curious.
We were so delighted with the place, that we sent away the carriage
and spent the evening by the lake, which was all alive with
fireflies, darting in and out with their little burdens of light
amongst the trees. In the morning we walked back to Andernach,
which was quite possible, as I had no luggage but a comb and a pair
of scissors."

"_Limbourg on Lahn, July 3._--What a tiresome diligence-drive we
have had from Coblentz here through endless forests, but we were
well repaid as we descended upon Limbourg. Our apathetic German
fellow-travellers were roused to 'wunderschön,' 'wunderliebliche,'
and even A. gave one glance and faintly emitted the word 'pretty.'
The view from the bridge is glorious. A precipitous rock rises out
of the flats, with the Lahn rushing beneath, and all up one side
the picturesque old black and white houses of the town, while
growing out of the bare rock, its front almost on the precipice,
like Durham, towers the magnificent cathedral, one of the oldest in
Germany, abounding in all those depths and contrasts of colour
which make the old German churches so picturesque--each window
having its different moulding of blue, yellow, and red stone: and
reflected in the clear water beneath. In the evening we walked to
the neighbouring village of Dietz--a long rambling street of old
houses, with the castle of Oranienstein overhanging them; and a
wonderful ruined bridge, with the river dashing triumphantly
through broken arches and over towers which have fallen into the
stream."

"_Marbourg, July 6._--We came in the diligence from Limbourg with
an emigrant family returning home from America, and words cannot
describe their ecstasies as we drew near Weilbourg and they
recognised every place as a scene of childhood. 'Oh, look! there is
the school! there is the hedge under which we used to have our
breakfast!' The noble old castle of Weilbourg, on a precipice above
the grey bridge over the Lahn, is very striking. The German waiter
at the inn asked with great gravity if we admired it more than 'the
castled crag of Drachenfels.' The endless forest scenery afterwards
was only varied by the huge castle of Braunfels, till a long avenue
brought us into the town of Wetzlar, which has a great red
sandstone and golden-lichened cathedral, with a grim and grand
Norman door called the Heidenthurm. At Giessen we joined the
railway for Marbourg, and the clock which is now striking nine A.M.
is that of St. Elizabeth![89]

"The Church of St. Elizabeth is almost out of the town; a rambling
street of old timber houses reaches down to it, but its golden-grey
spires have nothing between them and the dark forest. Inside, the
grove of red sandstone pillars is quite unspoilt by images or
altars: one beautiful figure of St. Elizabeth stands in a niche
against a pillar of the nave, and that is all. In the transept is
the 'heilige Mausoleum.' Its red steps are worn away by the
pilgrims: the tomb is covered with faded gold and vermilion; on its
canopy are remains of fresco-painting, and within is a beautiful
sleeping figure of Elizabeth. All around are grey monuments of the
Landgraves, her predecessors, standing upright against the walls.
The choir opens into the sacristy, where is the golden shrine of
the saint. As we reached it, a pilgrim was just emerging, deeply
solemnised by a _tête-à-tête_ with her bones. In her daughter's
tomb the face is quite worn away by the hands of the pilgrims. The
tomb of Conrad, her confessor, is there also. The sacristan
unlocked a great chest to show us Bible tapestry worked by the
hands of the saint. Some of the old pictures in the church
portrayed the flight from the Wartburg, and St. Elizabeth washing
the feet of the lepers: all reminded me of the stories you used to
read to me as a very little child out of the great book at the
Rectory.

"We went from the grave of St. Elizabeth to her palace--the great
castle of Marbourg, seen far and wide over the country and
overhanging the town, with a vast view over the blue-green billows
of Thuringian pine-forest. The castle is divided into two parts,
and you may imagine its size on hearing that 276 soldiers are now
quartered in one of them. A guide, who knew nothing of either
Luther or St. Elizabeth, except that they were both 'ganz heilige,'
let us into the chapel where Luther preached, and the Ritter Saale,
an old vaulted chamber where he met Zwingli and discussed
Transubstantiation."

"_Erfurth, July 8._--It is a delightful walk to the Wartburg from
Eisenach. A winding path through a fir-wood leads to an opening
whence you look across a valley to a hill crowned with a worn
gateway, something like one of the gates of Winchelsea. In the
intervening hollow some stone steps lead to a dark gap in the wood,
where is the fountain of St. Elizabeth under a grey archway with
sculptured pillars and overgrown with ferns. The water here is
excluded from the public as too holy for common use, but a little
is let out for the people into a stone basin below. By the side is
a stone seat, where it is said that Elizabeth used to wash herself.

"Again a narrow path edged with blue campanulas, and then the grey
arch of the castle-gateway. You look down at the side, and half-way
down the gorge you see a little plot of ground called 'Luther's
Garden.'

"The Wartburg is much like an English farmhouse. If Priest's
Hawse[90] was perched on the top of a mountain, it would resemble
it. It has an irregular court, of which rugged rock is the
pavement, surrounded with scattered buildings, some black and
white, and some castellated. The latter, which have two rows of
Norman arches and pillars and a kind of keep-tower at the end, were
the palace of the Landgraves and Elizabeth. The whole was full of
women and guides, geese, chickens, and dogs. We had some time to
wait in a room, where we were refreshed with 'lemonade' made of
raspberries, before we were shown over the castle--the most
interesting points being the chapel with Luther's pulpit, and the
room of his conflict with the devil, full of old pictures and
furniture, but with nothing which can be relied upon as
contemporary except his table and a stone which he used as a
foot-stool. When he threw the inkstand at the devil, the ink made a
tremendous splash upon the wall, but there is no trace of it now:
the relic collectors have scraped the wall away down to the bare
stones.

"At the last moment at Eisenach I could not resist rushing out to
sketch 'Conrad Cotta's House,' where you have so often described
how Ursula Cotta first found the little Martin Luther singing
hymns.

"The heat here at Erfurth is so great that I have been in a state
of perpetual dissolution. It is a dull town with a great cathedral,
and another church raised high above the market-place and
approached by long flights of steps. The Waisenhaus is an orphan
institution occupying the Augustinian convent where Luther lived as
a monk. All there is the same as in his time--the floors he used to
sweep, the doors he had to open, and the courtyard filled with
flowers and surrounded by wooden galleries. A passage lined with
pictures from the Dance of Death leads to the cells. Luther's cell
is a tiny chamber with a window full of octagonal glass, and walls
covered with texts: two sides were written by himself. The
furniture is the same, and even the inkstand from which I had to
write my name, while the woman who showed me the place mentioned
that the pens were not the same, for Luther's pens were worn out
long ago! There is a portrait by Cranach and writing of the three
friends, Luther, Bugenhagen, and Melancthon.

"A. cannot speak a word of German, and never knows what to do on
the simplest occasion, loses everything, is always late for the
train, cannot pack his things up, will not learn the money, and has
left every necessary of life at home and brought the most
preposterous things with him."

"_Dresden, July 11._--We have seen a number of places on the way
here. In the old cathedral of Naumbourg is a fine Cranach picture
of St. Elizabeth, with the Wartbourg above her head and the
Marbourg church at her feet. In the cathedral of Mersebourg is a
most extraordinary picture of the Electoral family of
Saxe-Mersebourg receiving the dead Christ and bearing him to the
sepulchre. The family became extinct in 1738, and they all lie in
the crypt under the church in the order in which they lived, in
coffins covered with vermilion and gold, the little children in
front and the grown people behind. Above, is the tomb of the
Emperor Rudolph of Swabia, and in the sacristy they put into my
hand a thing which I thought was a hand carved in oak, but found it
was his own real hand, cut off in 1080!

"Dresden announces itself by four black-looking domes and towers
above the flat horizon and then by the many arches of the long Elbe
bridge. It is very like a little--a very little Paris; the same
rows of tall white houses with green shutters: the same orange and
lime trees filling the air with their sweetness: only the river is
different, so gigantic and so bright. A broad flight of steps took
us to the stately Bruhl terrace above the river--golden in the
sunset. At the end an odd-looking building with a dome turned out
to be a Jewish synagogue, and we went in. One old Jew _in_ his hat
dropped in after another, till at last one of them put on a white
muslin shawl, and going up to a desk where the altar should be,
began bobbing his head up and down and quacking like a duck. Then
another in a corner, standing with his face close to the wall,
quacked also at intervals, and then all the rest chimed in, till it
was exactly like a farmyard. But no words can say how ridiculous it
eventually became, when they all burst out into choruses which
sounded like 'Cack a lack-lack-lack. Oh Jeremiah! Jeremiah! Oh
Noah's ark, Noah's ark! Cack a lack-lack-lack, lack, lack: loo,
loo, loo.' All the little black Wellington boots stamping on the
floor together, and all the long white beards bobbing up and down,
and giving an audible thump on the table at every bob.... And not
the least absurd part was that they seemed to think our presence a
compliment, at least they all bowed when we went out."

"_Schona on Elbe, July 16._--We left Dresden by the steamer--the
last view of the town very striking, with the broad flood of the
Elbe sweeping through a line of palaces. At Pirna we left the
boat, and a long walk through hot fields brought us to the entrance
of the Ottowalder Gründ. A flight of steps leads into a chasm, with
high rocks towering all round and the most brilliant and varied
greens beneath. In one place the narrow path is crossed by a
natural arch; then it winds up again through masses of forest and
deep rocky glens, till it emerges on the top of the Bastei.

"I was disappointed with the Bastei, which is like a scene on the
Wye rather exaggerated. You look over a precipice of seven hundred
feet, and see all around rocks equally high shooting straight up
skywards in every conceivable and inconceivable form--pillars,
pyramids, cones: and up all of them fir-trees cling and scramble,
and bright tufts of bilberries hang where no human hand can ever
gather their fruit. There are bridges between some of the rocks,
and they support fragments of castles of the robbers who used to
infest the Elbe, and, beyond the river, all the distant hills rise
in columnar masses of equal irregularity. After dining at the
little inn, we walked on to Königstein, a fortress which has never
been taken, large enough to hold the whole population of Dresden.
Here a tremendous thunderstorm rolled with grand effect around the
mountain. There is a terrible parapet overhanging the precipice,
where a page fell asleep, and was awakened by one of the Electors
firing a pistol close to his ear to break him of the habit. A long
path through bilberry thickets brought us to the station, and we
took the train to Schandau, where we slept--very glad to go to bed
at ten, having been on foot since 4 A.M.

"This morning we took a carriage for the first eight miles up the
valley of the Raven's Crag, and walked on to the Kuhl-stuhl. In the
very top of the hill the rock has made a huge natural arch, which
leads to an otherwise inaccessible platform overhanging the
valleys. The peasants drove their cattle here for protection in the
Thirty Years' War, whence the name of Kuhl-stuhl, and hither the
Bohemian Protestants fled for refuge. There is a natural slit in
the rock, with a staircase to an upper platform, which was the
refuge of the women, but only a _thin_ woman could reach this place
of safety.

"Forest again, ever deeper and darker--and no human life but a few
women gathering faggots with bare arms and legs, till we reached
the Jagd-Haus on the promontory of the Lesser Winterberg, where
Schiller's name is cut, with others, in the mossy stone. Forest and
bilberries again to the hotel on the Greater Winterberg, where we
dined on mountain _florellen_ and strawberries and cranberries.
Forest, ever the same, to the Prebischthor, a natural arch
projecting over an abyss, splendid in light and shadow, and
altogether the finest scene in the Saxon Switzerland ... then a
descent to Schona. We found it easy to accomplish in a day and a
half that for which Murray allots four days."

"_Prague, July 17._--All through the night we travelled in a
railway carriage with twenty-two windows and eighty inmates. Dawn
broke on a flat country near the Moldau. At last a line of white
wall crowned a distant hill. Then, while an Austrian official was
collecting passports, railway and river alike made a turn, and a
chain of towers, domes, and minarets appeared above the waving
cornfields, one larger than the others--the citadel of Prague!

"What a poem the town is!--the old square of the Grosse Ring, where
the beautiful delicately-sculptured Rathhaus and church look down
upon a red marble fountain, ever surrounded by women with pitchers,
in tall white caps: the streets of Bohemian palaces, with gigantic
stone figures guarding the doors: the bridge, with statues of
saints bending inwards from every pier, and the huge Hradschin
palace on the hill beyond, with the cathedral in its midst: the
gloomy precipice from which the Amazonian Queen Libessa hurled down
her lovers one by one as she got tired of them: the glorious view
from the terrace of the Hradschin, recalling pictures of the view
from the Pincio at Rome: the wonderful tombs of the Bohemian kings,
and the silver chandeliers and red lights before the shrine of St.
John Nepomuck in the cathedral."

"_July 18._--On Sunday afternoon we were at the Jewish synagogue,
the oldest building here--older than Prague itself, and now only
used on the Day of Atonement and other great occasions. It is quite
in the midst of the Jews' quarter, which is entirely given up to
them, and inside it is black with age, its gothic pillars looming
out of a coating of soot and smoke, never allowed to be cleared
away. The centre was spread with draperies of cloth of gold and
silver. On the platform within them was the chief Rabbi, a
venerable man with a white beard which swept over his brown robe as
far as his waist. 'He is wonderfully learned,' whispered my
neighbour to me. 'He understands every language in the whole world,
and as for English he speaks it as well as an Englishman.' At last
there was a bustle in the crowd, and a young woman made her way
through, enveloped in a very curious ancient hood of worked gold,
and several very smart ladies crowded up after her: we followed.
Then the priest shouted in Hebrew so that the little building rang
again, and the Rabbi took a little silver cup of oil and--I
think--anointed the lady, and a service followed in which all the
people responded electrically as if a bell were struck; but it was
not till we came out that I found the lady in the golden hood had
been--married.

"We went afterwards to the Jewish burial-ground--a wide rambling
expanse in the heart of the town, literally crammed with
tombstones, falling one over the other, and, between them, old
gnarled elder-trees growing fantastically. The cemetery has been
twice emptied!--and filled again. On one of the graves a young
Jewess was lying, evidently very ill. 'You see,' said the old woman
who let us into the cemetery, 'that the Rabbi who is buried there
was so good when he was alive, that when all the other people were
rooted up, they left him and his wife alone; and his good works
live on so much, that sick persons are often brought here to lie
upon his grave, in the hope of their being cured.'

"One of a knot of palaces in the Kleinsite was Wallenstein's. Here,
one room is hung with artificial stalactites: in another are
portraits of Wallenstein and his second wife, and the charger which
was shot under him at Lützen, stuffed--but only the body remains
of the original horse, the head and legs have been eaten up by
moths and renewed! The garden is charming, with an aviary of
peacocks.

"A. has been twice threatened with arrest for persisting in wearing
a wide-awake in the streets, for at present it is a revolutionary
emblem! At first he insisted on putting it on again, but the second
attack has been too much for his fortitude. Just now I was roused
by his shrieks, and reached his room just in time to see a large
black sheep emerge from under his bed!--it had walked in from the
market by the open galleries and had taken refuge there."

"_Bamberg, July 23._--We came here by Dresden and Saxe-Altenberg,
with its charming old castle. Near Hof the engine burst, doing us
no harm, but keeping us for hours sitting on the grassy railway
bank till another engine arrived, so that we did not get here till
3 A.M. The cathedral is glorious. Only imagine my having found
Baron and Baroness von Usedom in the hotel, and the next morning
Lady Malcolm and her two daughters arrived--most kind, most
amusing--and Madame von Usedom most extraordinary. She received me
with 'You're wonderfully like your sister, and she is very
beautiful,' so that's a compliment!"

"_July 28._--We have had another vision of loveliness at Nuremberg.
One became quite weary of saying, 'Oh! how beautiful! how
beautiful!' But no letter can give an idea of what Nuremberg
is--'The German Venice' Madame d'Usedom called it. And Albert
Dürer is a part of the place: whenever I see his woodcuts again at
the Rectory, they will bring back the town to me--where his house
is, and his pictures, his statue, and most of all his grave, in a
cemetery full of hollyhocks and lilies."

We came home by Augsburg, Ulm, and Heidelberg, and then through France _via_ Chalons and Rheims. In thinking of present expenses (1895), I often marvel at the cheapness of the long tour we had made. We had seen the greater part of Germany and much of France, had travelled for six weeks, and travelled in comfort, and, including journeys to and from the coast of England, we _could_ each have spent only £25, for we had no more to spend. I joined my mother at Ashburton Vicarage, near Dartmoor, whence we saw "Wistman's Wood"--that wonderful stunted grove of immemorial oak-trees in the midst of the moors. On our way home we went to stay with Miss Boyle[91] at Portishead. It was my mother's first sight of her, and she was much struck by that extraordinary person, for whom at that time I had an almost passionate devotion, and who had unfortunately just become notorious through her appearance--being subpœnaed on the wrong side--at the trial of the false Sir Hugh Smith, the claimant of Ashton Court. This trial created a tremendous excitement at the time, and the decision was nearly given in favour of the claimant. His wife, a daughter of De Wint the artist, had already ordered the carriage in which she was to make a triumphal entry, when the cause suddenly collapsed through the evidence of a jeweller who had been employed to forge a brooch upon which much of importance depended.