Seeing Europe with Famous Authors (Vol. 1-8). Гарриет Бичер-Стоу

Paley, belonged to this college; but its most brilliant name is that of John Milton. He entered in 1624; took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1628, and that of Master of Arts in 1632. This is the entry in the college record: "John Milton of London, son of John Milton, was entered as a student in the elements of letters under Master Hill of the Pauline School, February 12, 1624. … " Milton has indignantly defended himself against the slander of his political enemies, that he left college in disgrace, and calls it "a commodious lie." …

      It is noticeable that Cambridge has produced all the great poets; Oxford, with her yearnings and strivings, none. Milton were glory enough; but Spenser, Gray, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson (a Lincolnshire man), may be thrown in. It might be said of Cambridge, as Dr. Johnson said of Pembroke College, "We are a nest of singing birds here." Milton, from the extreme elegance of his person and his mind, rather than from any effeminateness of character, was called while in the University, "the lady of Christ's College." The young poet could not have been inspired by outward Nature in his own room; for the miniature dormer-windows are too high to look out of at all. It is a small attic chamber, with very steep narrow stairs leading up to it. The name of "Milton" (so it is said to be, tho hard to make out) is cut in the old oaken door.

      ¹ From "Old England: Its Scenery, Art and People." Published by Houghton, Mifflin Co.

      CHESTER¹

      By Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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      I went with Mr. Ticknor to Chester by railway. It is quite an indescribable old town, and I feel as if I had had a glimpse of old England. The wall encloses a large space within the town, but there are numerous houses and streets not included within its precincts. Some of the principal streets pass under the ancient gateways; and at the side there are flights of steps, giving access to the summit. Around the top of the whole wall, a circuit of about two miles, there runs a walk, well paved with flagstones, and broad enough for three persons to walk abreast. …

      The most utterly indescribable feature of Chester is the Rows, which every traveler has attempted to describe. At the height of several feet above some of the oldest streets, a walk runs through the front of the houses, which project over it. Back of the walk there are shops; on the outer side is a space of two or three yards, where the shopmen place their tables, and stands, and show-cases; overhead, just high enough for persons to stand erect, a ceiling. At frequent intervals little narrow passages go winding in among the houses, which all along are closely conjoined, and seem to have no access or exit, except through the shops, or into these narrow passages, where you can touch each side with your elbows, and the top with your hand. We penetrated into one or two of them, and they smelt anciently and disagreeably.

      At one of the doors stood a pale-looking, but cheerful and good-natured woman, who told us that she had come to that house when first married, 21 years before, and had lived there ever since; and that she felt as if she had been buried through the best years of her life. She allowed us to peep into her kitchen and parlor—small, dingy, dismal, but yet not wholly destitute of a home look. She said she had seen two or three coffins in a day, during cholera times, carried out of that narrow passage into which her door opened. These avenues put me in mind of those which run through ant-hills, or those which a mole makes underground. This fashion of Rows does not appear to be going out; and, for aught I can see, it may last hundreds of years longer. When a house becomes so old as to be untenantable, it is rebuilt, and the new one is fashioned like the old, so far as regards the walk running through its front. Many of the shops are very good, and even elegant, and these Rows are the favorite places of business in Chester. Indeed, they have many advantages, the passengers being sheltered from the rain, and there being within the shops that dimmer light by which tradesmen like to exhibit their wares.

      A large proportion of the edifices in the Rows must be comparatively modern; but there are some very ancient ones, with oaken frames visible on the exterior. The Row, passing through these houses, is railed with oak, so old that it has turned black, and grown to be as hard as stone, which it might be mistaken for, if one did not see where names and initials have been cut into it with knives at some bygone period. Overhead, cross-beams project through the ceiling so low as almost to hit the head. On the front of one of these buildings was the inscription, "God's Providence is mine Inheritance," said to have been put there by the occupant of the house two hundred years ago, when the plague spared this one house only in the whole city. Not improbably the inscription has operated as a safeguard to prevent the demolition of the house hitherto; but a shopman of an adjacent dwelling told us that it was soon to be taken down. Here and there, about some of the streets through which the Rows do not run, we saw houses of very aged aspect, with steep, peaked gables. The front gable-end was supported on stone pillars, and the sidewalk passed beneath. Most of these old houses seemed to be taverns—the Black Bear, the Green Dragon, and such names. We thought of dining at one of them, but, on inspection, they looked rather too dingy and close, and of questionable neatness. So we went to the Royal Hotel, where we probably fared just as badly at much more expense, and where there was a particularly gruff and crabbed old waiter, who, I suppose, thought himself free to display his surliness because we arrived at the hotel on foot. For my part, I love to see John Bull show himself. I must go again and again and again to Chester, for I suppose there is not a more curious place in the world.

      ¹ From "English Note-Books." By special arrangement with, and by permission of the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1870–1898.

      EDDYSTONE LIGHTHOUSE¹

      By Frederick A. Talbot.

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      It is doubtful whether the name of any lighthouse is so familiar throughout the English-speaking world as the "Eddystone." Certainly no other "pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day," can offer so romantic a story of dogged engineering perseverance, of heartrending disappointments, disaster, blasted hopes, and brilliant success.

      Standing out in the English Channel, about sixty miles east of the Lizard, is a straggling ridge of rocks which stretches for hundreds of yards across the marine thoroughfare, and also obstructs the western approach to Plymouth Harbor. But at a point some nine and a half miles south of Rame Head on the mainland the reef rises somewhat abruptly to the surface, so that at low-water two or three ugly granite knots are bared, which tell only too poignantly the complete destruction they could wreak upon a vessel which had the temerity or the ill luck to scrape over them at high-tide. Even in the calmest weather the sea curls and eddies viciously around these stones; hence the name "Eddystone," is derived. …

      As British overseas traffic expanded, the idea of indicating the spot for the benefit of vessels was discust. The first practical suggestion was put forward about the year 1664, but thirty-two years elapsed before any attempt was made to reduce theory to practise. Then an eccentric English country gentleman, Henry Winstanley, who dabbled in mechanical engineering upon unorthodox lines, came forward and offered to build a lighthouse upon the terrible rocks. Those who knew this ambitious amateur were dubious of his success, and wondered what manifestation his eccentricity would assume on this occasion. Nor was their scepticism entirely misplaced. Winstanley raised the most fantastic lighthouse which has ever been known, and which would have been more at home in a Chinese cemetery than in the English Channel. It was wrought in wood and most lavishly embellished with carvings and gilding.

      Four years were occupied in its construction, and the tower was anchored to the rock by means of long, heavy irons. The light, merely a flicker, flashed out from this tower in 1699, and for the first time the proximity of the Eddystones was indicated all around the horizon by night. Winstanley's critics were rather free in expressing their opinion that the tower would come down with the first sou'wester, but the eccentric builder was so intensely proud of his invention as to venture the statement that it would resist the fiercest gale that ever blew, and, when such did occur, he hoped that he might be in the tower at the time.