Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Harriet Beecher Stowe

to roam, and dream, and feel, and to come unexpectedly on the choicest points of view, it is rather a damper to have all his raptures prearranged and foreordained for him, set down in the guide book and proclaimed by the guide, even though it should be done with the most artistic accuracy.

      Nevertheless, when we came to the arbor which commanded the finest view of the old castle, and saw its gray, ivy-clad walls, standing forth on a beautiful point, round which swept the brown, dimpling waves of the Clyde, the indescribable sweetness, sadness, wildness of the whole scene would make its voice heard in our hearts. "Thy servants take pleasure in her dust, and favor the stones thereof," said an old Hebrew poet, who must have felt the inexpressibly sad beauty of a ruin. All the splendid phantasmagoria of chivalry and feudalism, knights, ladies, banners, glittering arms, sweep before us; the cry of the battle, the noise of the captains, and the shouting; and then in contrast this deep stillness, that green, clinging ivy, the gentle, rippling river, those weeping birches, dipping in its soft waters—all these, in their quiet loveliness, speak of something more imperishable than brute force.

      The ivy on the walls now displays a trunk in some places as large as a man's body. In the days of old Archibald the Grim, I suppose that ivy was a little, weak twig, which, if he ever noticed, he must have thought the feeblest and slightest of all things; yet Archibald has gone back to dust, and the ivy is still growing on. Such force is there in gentle things.

      I have often been dissatisfied with the admiration, which a poetic education has woven into my nature, for chivalry and feudalism; but, on a closer examination, I am convinced that there is a real and proper foundation for it, and that, rightly understood, this poetic admiration is not inconsistent with the spirit of Christ.

      For, let us consider what it is we admire in these Douglases, for instance, who, as represented by Scott, are perhaps as good exponents of the idea as any. Was it their hardness, their cruelty, their hastiness to take offence, their fondness for blood and murder? All these, by and of themselves, are simply disgusting. What, then, do we admire? Their courage, their fortitude, their scorn of lying and dissimulation, their high sense of personal honor, which led them to feel themselves the protectors of the weak, and to disdain to take advantage of unequal odds against an enemy. If we read the book of Isaiah, we shall see that some of the most striking representations of God appeal to the very same principles of our nature.

      The fact is, there can be no reliable character which has not its basis in these strong qualities. The beautiful must ever rest in the arms of the sublime. The gentle needs the strong to sustain it, as much as the rock flowers need rocks to grow on, or yonder ivy the rugged wall which it embraces. When we are admiring these things, therefore, we are only admiring some sparkles and glimmers of that which is divine, and so coming nearer to Him in whom all fulness dwells.

      After admiring at a distance, we strolled through the ruins themselves. Do you remember, in the Lady of the Lake, where the exiled Douglas, recalling to his daughter the images of his former splendor, says,—

      "When Blantyre hymned, her holiest lays,

      And Bothwell's walls flung back the praise"?

      These lines came forcibly to my mind, when I saw the mouldering ruins of Blantyre priory rising exactly opposite to the castle, on the other side of the Clyde.

      The banks of the River Clyde, where we walked, were thick set with Portuguese laurel, which I have before mentioned as similar to our rhododendron. I here noticed a fact with regard to the ivy which had often puzzled me; and that is, the different shapes of its leaves in the different stages of its growth. The young ivy has this leaf; but when it has become more than a century old every trace and indentation melts away, and it assumes this form, which I found afterwards to be the invariable shape of all the oldest ivy, in all the ruins of Europe which I explored.

      This ivy, like the spider, takes hold with her hands in kings' palaces, as every twig is furnished with innumerable little clinging fingers, by which it draws itself close, as it were, to the very heart of the old rough stone.

      Its clinging and beautiful tenacity has given rise to an abundance of conceits about fidelity, friendship, and woman's love, which have become commonplace simply from their appropriateness. It might, also, symbolize that higher love, unconquerable and unconquered, which has embraced this ruined world from age to age, silently spreading its green over the rents and fissures of our fallen nature, giving "beauty for ashes, and garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness."

      There is a modern mansion, where the present proprietor of the estate lives. It was with an emotion partaking of the sorrowful, that we heard that the Douglas line, as such, was extinct, and that the estate had passed to distant connections. I was told that the present Lord Douglas is a peaceful clergyman, quite a different character from old Archibald the Grim.

      The present residence is a plain mansion, standing on a beautiful lawn, near the old castle. The head gardener of the estate and many of the servants came out to meet us, with faces full of interest. The gardener walked about to show us the localities, and had a great deal of the quiet intelligence and self-respect which, I think, is characteristic of the laboring classes here. I noticed that on the green sweep of the lawn, he had set out here and there a good many daisies, as embellishments to the grass, and these in many places were defended by sticks bent over them, and that, in one place, a bank overhanging the stream was radiant with yellow daffodils, which appeared to have come up and blossomed there accidentally. I know not whether these were planted there, or came up of themselves.

      We next went to the famous Bothwell bridge, which Scott has immortalized in Old Mortality. We walked up and down, trying to recall the scenes of the battle, as there described, and were rather mortified, after we had all our associations comfortably located upon it, to be told that it was not the same bridge—it had been newly built, widened, and otherwise made more comfortable and convenient.

      Of course, this was evidently for the benefit of society, but it was certainly one of those cases where the poetical suffers for the practical. I comforted myself in my despondency, by looking over at the old stone piers underneath, which were indisputably the same. We drove now through beautiful grounds, and alighted at an elegant mansion, which in former days belonged to Lockhart, the son-in-law of Scott. It was in this house that Old Mortality was written.

      As I was weary, the party left me here, while they went on to see the Duke of Hamilton's grounds. Our kind hostess showed me into a small study, where she said Old Mortality was written. The window commanded a beautiful view of many of the localities described. Scott was as particular to consult for accuracy in his local descriptions as if he had been writing a guide book.

      He was in the habit of noting down in his memorandum book even names and characteristics of the wild flowers and grasses that grew about a place. When a friend once remarked to him, that he should have supposed his imagination could have supplied such trifles, he made an answer that is worth remembering by every artist—that no imagination could long support its freshness, that was not nourished by a constant and minute observation of nature.

      Craignethan Castle, which is the original of Tillietudlem, we were informed, was not far from thence. It is stated in Lockhart's Life of Scott, that the ruins of this castle excited in Scott such delight and enthusiasm, that its owner urged him to accept for his lifetime the use of a small habitable house, enclosed within the circuit of the walls.

      After the return of the party from Hamilton Park, we sat down to an elegant lunch, where my eye was attracted more than any thing else, by the splendor of the hothouse flowers which adorned the table. So far as I have observed, the culture of flowers, both in England and Scotland, is more universally an object of attention than with us. Every family in easy circumstances seems, as a matter of course, to have their greenhouse, and the flowers are brought to a degree of perfection which I have never seen at home.

      I may as well say here, that we were told by a gentleman, whose name I do not now remember, that this whole district had been celebrated for its orchards; he added, however, that since the introduction of the American apple into the market, its superior excellence had made many of these orchards almost entirely worthless.