Chapter XI: Part 11

Deploring the grand error of Southey's life--for we bear no resentment to the dead--more especially as England has gone on advancing and liberalizing, spite of his slavish dogmas, and thus rendered his most zealous advocacy of narrow notions perfectly innoxious--we would ask, whether this peculiar change of his original opinions may not have had a peculiar effect on his poetry? Much and beautifully as he has written, yet, if I may be allowed the expression, he never seems to be at home in his poetry, any more than in the country which, with his new opinions, he adopted. We can read once, especially in our youth, his poems, even the longest--but it is rarely more than once. We are charmed, sometimes a little wearied, but we never wish to recur to them again. There are a few of his smaller poems, as the Penates, the Bee, Blenheim, and a few others, which are exceptions, with some exquisite passages, as that often quoted one on love in Kehama. But, on the whole, we are quite satisfied with one reading. There is a want, somehow, of _the spiritual_ in his writing. Beautiful fancy, and tender feeling, and sometimes deep devotion, there are; but still there lacks that spirit, that essence of the soul which makes Wordsworth and many of the poems of Lord Byron, a never satiating aliment and refreshment--a divine substance on which you live and grow, and by its influence seem to draw nearer to the world of mind and of eternity. Southey's poetry seems a beautiful manufacture; not a part of himself. He carries you in it, as in an enchanted cloud, to Arabia, India, or America; to the celestial Meru, to the dolorous depths of Padalon, or to the Domdaniel caves under the roots of the ocean; but he does not seem to entertain you at home; to take you down into himself. He does not seem to be at rest there, or to have there "his abiding city."

It is exactly the same as to the country in which he lived. He seemed to live there as a stranger and a sojourner. That he loved the lakes and mountains around, there can be no question; but has he linked his poetry with them? Has he, like Wordsworth, woven his verse into almost every crevice of every rock? Cast the spell of his enchantment upon every stream? Made the hills, the waters, the hamlets, and the people, part and parcel of his life and his fame? We seek in vain for any such amalgamation. With the exception of the cataract of Lodore, there is scarcely a line of his poetry which localizes itself in the fairy region where he lived forty years. When Wordsworth is gone, he will leave on the mountains, and in all the vales of Cumberland, an everlasting people of his creation. The Wanderer, and the Clergyman of the Excursion, Michael, and Matthew, and the Wagoner, and Peter Bell, Ruth, and many a picturesque vagrant will linger there forever. The Shepherd Lord will haunt his ancient hills and castles, and the White Doe will still cross Rylston fells. A thousand associations will start up in the mind of many a future generation, as they hear the names of Helvellyn, Blencathra, or Langdale Pikes. But when you seek for evidences of the poetic existence of Southey in Cumberland, you are carried at once to Greta-hall at Keswick, and there you remain. I suppose the phrenologists would say it was owing to his idiosyncrasy--that he had much imitativeness, but very little locality. It is most singular, that look over the contents of his voluminous poems, and you find them connected with almost every region of the world, and every quarter of these kingdoms, except with the neighborhood of his abode. He would seem like a man flying from the face of the world, and brushing out all traces of his retreat as he goes. In Spain, France, America, India, Arabia, Africa, the West Indies, in Ireland, Wales, England, and Scotland, you perceive his poetical habitations and resting-places; but not in Cumberland. He has commemorated Pultowa, Jerusalem, Alentejo, Oxford, Blenheim, Dreux, Moscow, the Rhine. He has epitaphs and inscriptions for numbers of places in England, Spain, and Portugal. In his Madoc, Wales; in his Roderick, Spain; in his Joan of Arc, France, find abundance of their localities celebrated. In his Pilgrimage to Waterloo, Flanders has its commemorations; but Cumberland--no! You would think it was some district not glorious with mountain, lake, and legend, but some fenny flat on which a poetic spirit could not dwell.

Almost the only clews that we get at are to be found in the Colloquies. Here we learn that the poet and his family did sometimes walk to Skiddaw Dod, Causey Pike, and Watenlath. At page 119 of vol. i., where these names occur, we find the poet proposing an excursion to Walla Crag, on the waters of the Derwentwater. "I, who perhaps would more willingly have sat at home, was yet in a mood to suffer violence, and making a sort of compromise between their exuberant activity and my own inclination for the chair and the fireside, fixed on Walla Crag." Beside this mention, you have in Colloquy XII., pages 59 to 69, an introduction to a long history of the Clifford family, in which you are introduced to Threlkeld farm and village. This peep into the mountains makes you wonder that Southey did not give you more of them; but no, that is all. It is evident that his heart was, as he hinted just above, "at home in the chair by the fireside." It was in his library that he really lived, and there is little question that when his children did get him out on the plea that it was necessary for his health, his mind was gone off with some Thalaba or Madoc or other, or with that other favorite hero of his, whose "walk," and whose exploits with old women, he has described with a gusto that might have fitly fixed on him the appellation he gave to Lord Byron--the head of the Satanic school.

To Keswick we must then betake ourselves as the sole haunt of Robert Southey. My visit there in the summer of 1845 was marked by a circumstance which may show how well the fame of Dr. Southey, the laureate of Church and State, and the bard who sung the triumphs of legitimacy on the occasion of the allied sovereigns coming to England in 1814, is spread among the nations which are the strictest maintainers of his favorite doctrines; a fettered press, a law church, and a government maintained by such statesmen as Castlereagh and Metternich. I was traveling at that time with four of the subjects of these allied sovereigns, whom our laureate had so highly lauded; a Russian, a Cossack, an Austrian, and a Bohemian; the Cossack no other than the nephew of the Hetman Platoff, and the Bohemian, Count Wratislaw, the present representative of that very ancient family of which the queen of our Richard II., "the good Queen Anne," who sent out Wickliffe's Bible to Huss, and was thus the mother of the Reformation on the Continent; and, singularly also, still closely connected with our royal family, his mother being sister to the Princess of Leiningen, wife to the half-brother of Queen Victoria. Austrian and Russian nobles are not famous for great reading, but every one of these were as familiar with Dr. Southey's name as most people the world over are with those of Scott and Byron. They not only went over the laureate's house with the greatest interest, but carried away sprigs of evergreen to preserve as memorials.

Southey's house, which lies at a little distance from the town of Keswick, on the way to Bassenthwaite water, is a plain stuccoed tenement, looking as you approach it almost like a chapel, from the apparent absence of chimneys. Standing upon the bridge over the Greta which crosses the high-road here, the view all round of the mountains, those which lie at the back of Southey's house, Skiddaw being the chief, and those which lie in front, girdling the lake of Derwentwater, is grand and complete. From this bridge the house lies at the distance of a croft, or of three or four hundred yards, on an agreeable swell. In front, that is, between you and the house, ascends toward it a set of homelike crofts, with their cut hedges and a few scattered trees. When Southey went there, and I suppose for twenty years after, these were occupied as a nursery ground, and injured the effect of the immediate environs of the house extremely. Nothing now can be more green and agreeable. On the brow of the hill, if it can be called so, stand two stuccoed houses; the one nearest to the town, and the largest, being Southey's. Both are well flanked by pleasant trees, and partly hidden by them, that of Southey being most so. The smaller house has the air of a good neighbor of lesser importance, who is proud of being a neighbor. It is at present occupied by a Miss Denton, daughter of the former vicar of Crosthwaite, the place just below on the Bassenthwaite road, and where Southey lies buried.

The situation of Southey's house, taking all into consideration, is exceeded by few in England. It is agreeably distant from the road and the little town, and stands in a fine, open valley, surrounded by hills of the noblest and most diversified character. From your stand on Greta bridge, looking over the house, your eye falls on the group of mountains behind it. The lofty hill of Latrig lifts its steep, green back with its larch plantations clothing one edge, and scattered in groups over the other. Stretching away to the left, rises the still loftier range and giant masses of Skiddaw, with its intervening dells and ravines, and summits often lost in their canopy of shadowy clouds. Between the feet of Skiddaw and Greta bridge, lie pleasant knolls and fields with scattered villas and cottages, and Crosthwaite Church. On your right hand is the town, and behind it green swelling fields again, and the more distant inclosing chain of hills.

If you then turn your back on the house, and view the scene which is presented from the house, you find yourself in the presence of the river, hurrying away toward the assemblage of beautifully varied mountains, which encompass magnificently the lake of Derwentwater.

The vicinity to the lake itself would make this spot as a residence most attractive. I think I like Derwentwater more than any other of the lakes. The mountains all round are so bold and so diversified in form. You see them showing themselves one behind another, many tending to the pyramidal form, and their hues as varied as their shapes. Some are of that peculiar tawny, or lion color, which is so singular in its effect in the Scotch mountains of the south; others so softly and smoothly green; others so black and desolate. Some are so beautifully wooded, others so bare. When you look onward to the end of the lake, the group of mountains and crags there, at the entrance of Borrowdale, is one of the most beautiful and pictorial things imaginable. If any artist would choose a scene for the entrance into fairy land, let him take that. When, again, you turn and look over the town, there soars aloft Skiddaw in his giant grandeur, with all his slopes, ridges, dints, ravines, and summits clear in the blue sky, or hung with the cloud-curtains of heaven, full of magnificent mystery. There is a perfect pyramid, broad and massy as those of Egypt, standing solemnly in one of its ascending vales, called Carrsledrum. Then, the beautifully wooded islands of Derwentwater, eight in number, and the fine masses of wood that stretch away between the feet of the hills and the lake, with here and there a villa lighting up the scene, make it perfect. In all the changes of weather, the changes of aspect must be full of new beauty; but, in bright and genial summer weather, how enchanting must it be! As it was at our visit, the deep-black, yet transparent shadow that lay on some of the huge piles of mountain, and the soft light that lay on others, were indescribably noble and poetical, and the strangers exclaimed continually,--"_Prächtig!_" "_Wunderschön!_" and "_Très beau!_"

When we ascend to the house, it is through a narrow sort of croft or a wide shrubbery, which you will. The carriage-road goes another way, and here you have only a single footpath, and on your right hand a grassy plot scattered with a few flower-beds, and trees and shrubs, which brings you, by a considerable ascent, to the front of the house, which is screened almost wholly from view by tall trees, among which some are fine maples and red beeches. Here, on the left hand, a little side gate leads to Miss Denton's house, and on the other stretches out the lawn, screened by hedges of laurel and other evergreens. Behind this little lawn, on the right hand of the house, lie one or two kitchen gardens, and passing through these, you come to a wood descending toward the river, which you again find here sweeping around the house. Down this wood or copse, which is half-orchard, and half of forest trees, you see traces of winding footpaths, but all now grown over with grass. The house is deserted; the spirits which animated the scene are fled, some one way, and some another; and there is already a wildness and a desolation about it. The Greta, rushing over its weir beneath this wood, moans in melancholy sympathy with the rest of the scene. You see that great pleasure has sometime been taken in this spot, in these gardens, in this shadowy and steeply descending wood; and the river that runs on beneath, and the melancholy feeling of the dreamlike nature and vanity of human things, its fame and happiness included, seizes irresistibly upon you. A little footpath which runs along the Greta side toward the town deepens this feeling. Through the trees, and behind the river, lie deep and grassy meadows with masses of woodland, having a very Cuyp or Paul Potter look; and, between the higher branches of the trees you see the huge green bulk of Skiddaw, soaring up with fine and almost startling effect. You may imagine Southey walking to and fro along the footpath under the trees, in the fields leading to the town, by another route, and thinking over his topics, while he took the air, and had in view a scene of mountain magnificence, of the effect of which the poet was fully conscious. "The height and extent of the surrounding objects seem to produce a correspondent expansion and elevation of mind, and the silence and solitude contribute to this emotion. You feel as if in another region, almost in another world."[4] Here, too, you may imagine Coleridge lying and dreaming under the trees of the wood within sound of the river. He was here, at one time, a great while.

[4] Colloquies, vol. ii. p. 61.

To return to the house, however. It is a capacious house enough, but not apparently very well built. The floors of the upper rooms shake under your tread; and I have heard, that when Southey had these rooms crowded and piled with books, there was a fear of their coming down. The house is one of those square houses of which you may count the rooms without going into them, but at each end is a circular projection, making each a snug sort of ladies' room. The room on the right hand as we entered, was said to be the sitting-room, and that on the left, the library, while the room over it was Southey's writing-room; and most of these rooms, as well as the entrance-hall, were all crowded with books. We were told that, after several days' sale at home, where some books as well as the furniture were sold, fourteen tuns of books and similar articles were sent off for sale in London.

If Southey has not told us much about his haunts in the mountains, he has, however, particularly described that where his heart lay--his library. To this he has given a whole chapter in his Colloquies; and in this volume we must, as a matter of course, give a few extracts, for it is almost the only haunt of Southey, of which he has left us any glimpse in his writings.

"I was in my library," he says, "making room upon the shelves for some books which had just arrived from New England, removing to a less conspicuous station others which were of less value, and in worn dress, when Sir Thomas entered.

"'You are employed,' said he, 'to your heart's content. Why, Montesinos, with these books, and the delight you take in their constant society, what have you to covet or desire more?'

"MONTESINOS.--'Nothing, ... except more books.'

"SIR THOMAS MORE.--'_Crescit, indulgens sibi, dirus hydrops._'

"MONTESINOS.--'Nay, nay, my ghostly monitor, this at least is no diseased desire! If I covet more, it is for the want I feel, and the use I should make of them. "Libraries," says my good old friend, George Dyer, a man as learned as he is benevolent, ... "libraries are the wardrobes of literature, whence men, properly informed, might bring forth something for ornament, much for curiosity, and more for use." These books of mine, as you well know, are not drawn up here for display, however much the pride of the eye may be gratified in beholding them; they are on actual service. Whenever they may be dispersed, there is not one among them that will ever be more comfortably lodged, or more highly prized by its possessor; and generations may pass away before some of them will again find a reader.... It is well that we do not moralize too much upon such subjects, ...

"For foresight is a melancholy gift,
Which bears the bald, and speeds the all-too swift."

But the dispersion of a library, whether in retrospect or anticipation, is to me always a melancholy thing.'

"SIR THOMAS MORE.--'How many such dispersions must have taken place to have made it possible that these books should be thus brought together here among the Cumberland mountains!'

"MONTESINOS.--'Many, indeed; and in many instances, most disastrous ones. Not a few of these volumes have been cast up from the wreck of the family or convent libraries, during the Revolution. Yonder Acta Sanctorum belonged to the Capuchins, at Ghent. This book of St. Bridget's Revelations, in which not only all the initial letters are illuminated, but every capital throughout the volume was colored, came from the Carmelite nunnery at Bruges. That copy of Alain Chartier, from the Jesuits' College at Louvain; that _Imago Primi Sæculi Societatis_, from their college at Ruremond. Here are books from Colbert's library; here others from the Lamoignon one. And here are two volumes of a work--Chronicles of the barefooted Franciscans in the Philippines, China, Japan, etc.--for which I am indebted to my friend Sir Robert Harry Inglis; a work, not more rare than valuable for its contents, divorced, unhappily, and it is to be feared forever, from the volume which should stand between these. They were printed in a convent at Manilla, and brought from thence when that city was taken by Sir William Draper. They have given me, perhaps, as many pleasurable hours, passed in acquiring information which I could not otherwise have obtained, as Sir William spent years of anxiety and vexation in vainly soliciting the reward of his conquest.'

"'About a score of the more out-of-the-way works in my possession, belonged to some unknown person, who seems carefully to have gleaned the bookstalls a little before and after the year 1790. He marked them with certain ciphers, always at the end of the volume. They are in various languages, and I never found his mark in any book that was not worth buying, or that I should not have bought without that indication to induce me. All were in ragged condition, and having been dispersed on the owner's death, probably as of no value, to the stalls they had returned; and there I found this portion of them, just before my old haunts as a book-hunter in the metropolis were disforested, to make room for improvements between Westminster and Oxford-road. I have endeavored, without success, to discover the name of their former possessor.' * * * *

"'Yonder Chronicle of King D. Manoel, by Damiam de Goes, and yonder General History of Spain, by Esteban de Garibay, are signed by their respective authors. The minds of these laborious and useful scholars are in their works; but you are brought into a more perfect relation with them when you see the page upon which you know that their eyes have rested, and the very characters which their hands have traced. This copy of Casaubon's Epistles was sent to me from Florence by Walter Landor. He had perused it carefully, and to that perusal we are indebted for one of the most pleasing of his Conversations. These letters had carried him in spirit to the age of their writer, and shown James I. to him in the light in which James was regarded by cotemporary scholars; and, under the impression thus produced, Landor has written of him in his happiest mood, calmly, philosophically, feelingly, and with no more favorable leaning than justice will always manifest when justice is in good-humor, and in charity with all men. The book came from the palace library at Milan ... how or when abstracted I know not; but this beautiful dialogue would never have been written had it remained there in its place upon the shelf, for the worms to finish the work which they had begun.' * * * *

"'Here is a book with which Lauderdale amused himself, when Cromwell kept him prisoner in Windsor Castle. He has recorded his state of mind during that imprisonment, by inscribing in it, with his name and dates of time, the Latin word _Durate_, and the Greek [Greek: Oisteou kai elpisteou]. The date is 22d Oct. 1657. The book is the _Pia Hilaria Angelini Gazæi_.... Here is a memorial of a different kind, inscribed in this "Rule of Penance of St. Francis," as it is ordered for religious women.... "I beseech my dear mother humbly to accept of this exposition of our holy rule, the better to conceive what your poor child ought to be who daly beges your blessing. Constantia Francisco." And here are the Apophthemata, collected by Conrad Lycosthenes, and published, after drastic expurgation by the Jesuits, as a commonplace book,--some Portuguese has entered a hearty vow, that he would never part with the book, nor lend it to any one. Very different was my poor old Lisbon acquaintance, the abbé, who, after the old humorous form, wrote in all his books, and he had a rare collection, _Ex libris Francisci Garnier, et amicorum_.'

"SIR THOMAS MORE.--'How peaceably they stand together.... Papists and Protestants side by side!'

"MONTESINOS.--'Their very dust reposes not more quietly in the cemetery. Ancient and modern, Jew and Gentile, Mohammedan and Crusader, French and English, Spaniards and Portuguese, Dutch and Brazilians, fighting their old battles silently now upon the shelf; Fernam Lopez and Pedro de Ayala; John de Laet and Barlæus, with the historians of Joam Ferandes Vieira; Fox's Martyrs, and the Three Conversations of Father Persons; Cranmer and Stephen Gardiner; Dominican and Franciscan; Jesuit and _Philosophe_, equally misnamed: Churchmen and Sectarians; Roundheads and Cavaliers!

"Here are God's conduits, grave divines; and here
Is nature's secretary, the philosopher;
And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie
The sinews of a city's mystic body;
Here gathering chroniclers; and by them stand
Giddy fantastic poets of each land."--_Donne._

Here I possess these gathered treasures of time, the harvest of so many generations, laid up in my garners; and when I go to the windows, there is the lake, and the circle of the mountains, and the illimitable sky.'"

* * * * *

This noble collection, of which their possessor might well be proud, which is said to have included by far the best collection of Spanish books in England, and the gathering of which together, through many researches, many inquiries, and many years, had, perhaps, given him almost as much pleasurable excitement as their perusal, is once more dispersed into thousands of hands. The house, indeed, at the time we visited it, was in the act of being repaired, fresh painted and papered, ready for a new tenant; and, of course, looked desolate enough. All the old paper had been torn off the walls, or scraped away; and workmen, with piles of rolls of new paper, and buckets of paste, were beginning their work of revival. The whole house, outside and inside, had an air of dilapidation, such as houses in the country are often allowed to fall into; but, no doubt, when all furnished and inhabited, would be comfortable and habitable enough.

But death had been there, and the appraiser and auctioneer, and a crowd of eager sale-attenders after them; and the history of the poet and the poet's family life was wound up and done there. A populous dwelling it must have been when Southey and his wife and children, and Mrs. Coleridge and her daughter, and perhaps other friends, were all housed in it. And an active and pleasant house it must have been when great works were going on in it, a Thalaba, a Madoc, an article for the Quarterly, and news from London were coming in, and letters were expected of great interest, and papers were sending off by post to printers and publishers, and correspondents. All that is now passed over as a dream; the whole busy hive is dispersed many ways, and the house and grounds are preparing to let at £55 a-year, just as if no genius had set a greater value on them than on any other premises around. It is when we see these changes that we really feel the vanity of human life. But the beauty of the life of genius is, that though the scene of domestic action and sojourn can become as empty as any other, the home of the poet's mind becomes thenceforth that of the whole heart and mind of his nation, and often far beyond that. The Cossack and the Bohemian--did they not also carry away from it to their far-off lands tokens of their veneration?

Before quitting Southey's house for his tomb, I can not resist referring to a little fact connected with his appointment to the laureateship. It is well known that the post was first offered to Walter Scott, who declined it, but recommended Southey, who was chosen. The letters on the whole transaction are given in Lockhart's Life of Scott (chap. xxvi.), and certainly present one of the most luxurious bits of human nature imaginable. Scott, who was then only plain Walter Scott; who was not made Sir Walter for seven years after; who had published the greater number of his popular poetical romances, but had not yet published Waverley; felt, however, quite terrified at the offer of the laureateship. He was quite agonized with shame at the prospect, and wrote off to the Duke of Buccleugh to ask his advice how he was to get decently out of the scrape without offending the prince regent. "I am," says Scott, "very much embarrassed by it. I am, on the one hand, very much afraid of giving offense, where no one would willingly offend, and perhaps losing the opportunity of smoothing the way to my youngsters through life; on the other hand the _offer is a ridiculous one_; somehow or other, they and I should be well quizzed," etc. * * * "I feel much disposed to shake myself free of it. I should make but a bad courtier, and an ode-maker is described by Pope as a man out of his way, or out of his senses."

Almost by return of post came the duke's answer. "As to the offer of his royal highness to appoint you laureate, I shall frankly say, that I should be mortified to see you hold a situation which, by the general concurrence of the world, is stamped ridiculous. There is no good reason why it should be so; but it is so. _Walter Scott, Poet Laureate_, ceases to be Walter Scott, of the Lay, Marmion, etc. Any future poem of yours would not come forth with the same probability of a successful reception. The poet laureate would stick to you and your productions like a piece of _court plaster_. * * * Only think of being chanted and recitatived by a parcel of hoarse and squeaking choristers, on a birthday, for the edification of the bishops, pages, maids of honor, and gentlemen-pensioners! Oh, horrible! thrice horrible!"

Scott replied, "I should certainly never have survived the recitative described by your grace; it is a part of the etiquet I was quite unprepared for, and should have sunk under it."

Such was the horror of Scott, and his great patron Buccleugh, at the very idea of this most ridiculous of offers, of _this piece of court plaster_, of this horrible, thrice horrible of all quizzes--Scott at once declined the _honor_; and though he said he should make a bad courtier, assuredly no courtier could have done it in better style, professing that the office was too distinguished for his merits; that he was by no means adequate to it. Now Scott, all this time, had but an income of £2,000 a-year, out of all his resources; we have these calculated and cast up on the very same page, opposite to his letter to Buccleugh; nay, he is in embarrassments, and in the very same letter requests the duke to be guaranty for £2,000 for him: and he thought the laureateship worth £300 or £400 a-year. These facts all testify to his thorough idea of the ignominy of the office. How rich, then, is the sequel! This ignominy, this burning shame of an office, this piece of adhesive _court plaster_, he goes at once and recommends to Southey! "Hang it," he says to himself, "it would never do for such a man as me; but, by the by, it will do very well for Southey!" Well, he writes at once to Southey--tells him that he has had this offer, but that he has declined it, because he has had already two pieces of preferment, and, moreover, "my dear Southey, I had you in my eye." He adds--and now let any one who thinks himself flattered on any particular occasion, remember this delicious bam--"I did not refuse it _from any foolish prejudice against the situation_--otherwise how durst I offer it to you, (ay, how, indeed!) my elder brother in the muse?--but from a sort of internal hope that they would give it to you, on whom it would be so much more worthily conferred. For I am not such an ass as not to know that you are my better in poetry, though I have had, probably but for a time, the tide of popularity in my favor. I have not time to add the thousand other reasons, but I only wished to tell you how the matter was, and to beg you to think before you reject the offer which, I flatter myself, will be made to you. If I had not been, like Dogberry, a fellow with two gowns already, _I should have jumped at it like a cock at a gooseberry_. Ever yours, most truly, WALTER SCOTT."

The whole is too rich to need a remark, except that Southey accepted it, and Scott wrote him a letter of warmest congratulation on getting this piece of _court plaster_ clapped on his back, and putting himself into a position to be "well quizzed;" but was quite confounded to learn that the honorarium for the "horrible! thrice horrible!" was not £400 a-year, but only £100 and a butt of wine. I wonder whether poor Southey lived to read Scott's life!

The present illustrious holder of this post accepted it with a dignity worthy of his character and fame, declining it till it was stripped of all its disgusting duties. The next step, it is to be hoped, will be to abolish an office equally derogatory to monarch and subject. No poet of reputation should feel himself in a position to pay mercenary praise; no monarch of this country need purchase praise; to a worthy occupier of the throne it will be freely accorded from the universal heart of the nation.

Crosthwaite Church, in whose grave-yard Robert Southey's remains lie, is about a quarter of a mile from the house, on the Bassenthwaite water-road. It is a very simple and lowly village church with a low square tower, but stands finely in the wide open valley, surrounded at a considerable distance, by the scenery I have described. I suppose it is nearly a mile from the foot of Skiddaw. From Southey's house the walks to it, and again from it along the winding lanes, and over the quiet fields toward Skiddaw, are particularly pleasant. Southey in his Colloquies speaks of the church and church-yard with much affection. He quotes the account of an old man who more than fifty years ago spoke of the oldest and finest yew-trees in the country standing in this church-yard, and of having seen all the boys of the school-house near, forty in number, perched at once on the boughs of one of them.

At the northwest comer of the church-yard, stands Southey's tomb. It is a plain altar-tomb of reddish freestone, covered with a slab of blue slate, with this inscription,--"Here lies the body of Robert Southey, LL.D. Poet Laureate; Born August 12, 1774. Died March 26, 1843. Also of Edith his wife, Born May 20, 1774; Died Nov. 16, 1837. I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord."

Close in front of the tomb lies the grave of Mrs. Southey; and behind, and close to the hedge, stands a stone bearing this inscription,--"The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. Sacred to the memory of Emma Southey, who departed in May 1809, aged 14 months. And of Herbert Southey, who departed April 17th, 1816, in the tenth year of his age. Also of George Fricker, their uncle, aged 26, 1814. Also, Isabel Southey, their sister, who departed on the 16th of July, 1826, aged 13 years. Also of Edith Southey, their mother, who departed May, 1837, aged 63. Requiescat in pace."

I recollected that there was something peculiar connected with the death of the son, Herbert. The old clerk said that his disorder could not be discovered till after his death, but that on opening him, a human hair was found fast round his heart!

I wished to see the pew where the Southeys used to sit, but I found the interior of the church, as well as of his house, undergoing the revolution of repair, or rather of renewal. It seemed as if people had only waited for Southey's death, to begin and clear off all traces of his existence here. The church is fine and capacious within, but all the old pews, all the old seats, pulpit, and every thing belonging to them, have been cleared away, and the whole replaced by fittings in the ancient style. There are nothing but open benches, with a single exception. The benches are of solid oak, with heavy, handsome carving, and have a very goodly and substantial look. The windows are also renewed with handsome painted glass, and the tables of the Decalogue, etc. placed behind the altar, are all painted in the old missal style. The church will be very handsome, at the same time that it is a sign of the times. Of course Southey's pew is gone. In the church is an ancient monument of the Radcliffes, ancestors to the Earl of Derwentwater; and two of the Brownrigs of Armathwaite, immediate maternal relations of my wife.

The close of Southey's life was melancholy. His mind gave way, probably from having been overtasked, and he sunk into a condition of utter imbecility. Shortly before this event he had married, as his second wife, his friend of many years' standing, Caroline Bowles, one of the sweetest and most genuine poetesses of the age. In her early widowhood she has the satisfaction of reflecting, that, as one of the tenderest nurses and most assiduous companions, she did all that mortal power could do to render his last gloomy stage on earth easy and comfortable. She wrote for him when he could no longer write, read to him for days, weeks, months, when he was not allowed to read himself, and watched over him with untiring affection when he was no longer sensible of the value and devotion of these services. What is to be deeply regretted is, that we believe her pecuniary sacrifices by this marriage were as serious as those demanded in the shape of anxiety, vigilance, and physical exertion, from a mind of the quickest feeling and a frame never strong; her own personal income being contingent on such a circumstance. Such a woman, who has adorned the literature of her country with some of its most exquisite contributions, and sacrificed every thing to render the last days of one of its finest writers as serene as possible, ought not to be left to wear away the remainder of her life in the _res augustæ domi_, stripped of those simple elegances and enjoyments to which, as a gentlewoman, she has always been accustomed. Even they who differ most in opinion from that writer, and most regret the direction which his mind took on many great questions, still admit most cheerfully the brilliant services rendered by him to the national literature and fame, and would desire that the wife of Robert Southey should enjoy that ease and consideration which his merits, independent of her own, ought to secure her.

JOANNA BAILLIE.

The powerful dramatic writer, the graceful and witty lyrist, and the sweet and gentle woman, who has for so many years, in her quiet retreat at Hampstead, let the world flow past her as if she had nothing to do with it, nor cared to be mentioned by it, was born in one of the most lovely and historical districts of Scotland. She was born in a Scottish manse, in the upper dale of the Clyde, which has, for its mild character and lavish production of fruit, been termed "Fruitland." As you pass along the streets of Scotch towns, you see on fruit-stalls in the summer, piles of plums, pears, and other fruits, labeled "Clydesdale Fruit." One of the finest specimens of the fruit of this luxuriant and genial dale, is Joanna Baillie, a name never pronounced by Scot or Briton of any part of the empire, but with the veneration due to the truest genius, and the affection which is the birthright of the truest specimens of womanhood. The sister of the late amiable and excellent Dr. Baillie, the friend of Walter Scott, the woman whose masculine muse every great poet has for nearly half-a-century delighted to honor, Joanna Baillie, wrote because she could not help pouring out the fullness of her heart and mind, and the natural consequence was fame; otherwise, whoever sees that quiet, amiable, and unassuming lady, easy and cheerful as when she played beneath the fruit-laden boughs of her native garden, sees that, though not scorning the fair reputation of well exercised intellect, she is at home in the bosom of home, and lets no restless desire for mere fame disturb the pure happiness of a serene life, and the honor and love of those nearest and dearest to her. Had the lambent flame of genius not burned in the breast of Joanna Baillie, that of a pure piety and a spirit made to estimate the blessings of life, and to enjoy all the other blessings of peace and social good which it brings, would have still burned brightly in her bosom, and made her just as happy though not as great.

The birthplace of Joanna Baillie is the pretty manse of Bothwell, in the immediate neighborhood of Bothwell brig; and, therefore, as will at once be seen, in the center of ground where stirring deeds have been done, and where the author of Waverley has added the vivid coloring of romance to those deeds. Bothwell manse, from its elevated site, looks directly down upon the scene of the battle at Bothwell brig; upon the park of Hamilton, where the Covenanters were encamped; and upon Bothwellhaugh, the seat of Hamilton, who shot the regent Murray. This is no mean spot in an historical point of view, and it is richly endowed by nature. Near it also, a little farther down the river, stands Bothwell Castle, on _Bothwell bank_, on which the charm of poetry has been conferred with an almost needless prodigality, for it is so delightful in its own natural beauty.

The country as you proceed to Bothwell from Glasgow, from which it is distant about ten miles, though from the first rich and well cultivated, is not so agreeable, from the quantity of coal that is found along the roads into Glasgow, and which seems to have given a blackness to every thing. As you advance, however, it grows continually more elevated, open, airy, and pleasant. About a mile before you reach Bothwell, the tall, square church steeple of which, seen far before you, serves you for a guide, a pair of lodge gates on your right hand marks the entrance to the grounds of Bothwell Castle. By writing your name and address in a book kept by the gate-keeper, you are admitted, and can then pursue your way alone to the castle, and make your own survey without the nuisance of a guide. The castle lies about half-a-mile from the high-road. You first arrive at very beautifully kept pleasure grounds, in which stands a good modern mansion, the seat of the proprietor, Lord Douglas. Passing through these grounds, and close to the right of the house, you soon behold the ruins of the old castle. It is of a very red sandstone, extensive in its remains, and bearing evidence of having been much more extensive. Its tall red walls stand up amid fine trees and masses of ivy, and seem as if created by Time to beautify the modern scene with which they blend so well. The part remaining consists of a great oblong square, with two lofty and massy towers overlooking the river which lies to your left. There are also remains of an ample chapel. From the openings in the ruins, the river below, and its magnificent valley or glen, burst with startling effect upon you. The bank from the foot of the castle descends with considerable steepness to the river far below, but soft and green as possible; and beyond the dark and hurrying river, rise banks equally high, and as finely wooded and varied. Advancing beyond the castle you come again to the river, which sweeps round the ruins in a fine curve. Here every charm of scenery, the great river in its channel, its lofty and well wooded banks, the picturesque views of Blantyre Priory opposite, the slopes and swells of most luxurious green, and splendid lime-trees hanging their verdurous boughs to the ground, mingle the noble and the beautiful into an enchanting whole. A gravel walk leads you down past the front of the castle, and presents you with a new and still more impressive view of it. Here it stands aloft on the precipice above you, a most stately remnant of the old times; and nature has not stinted her labors in arraying it in tree, bush, and hanging-plant, so as to give it the grace of life in its slow decay, making it in perfect harmony with herself. Few scenes are more fascinating than this. Above you the towers of the castle, which once received as its victorious guest Edward I. of England; which again sheltered the English chiefs fleeing from the disastrous field of Bannockburn; which was the stronghold of Archibald the Grim, and the proud hall of the notorious Earl Bothwell. Below, slopes down in softest beauty the verdant bank, and the stately Clyde, dark and deep, flows on amid woods and rocks worthy of all their fame. The taste of the proprietor has seized on every circumstance to give a finish to a scene so lovely; and it is impossible not to exclaim, in the words of the celebrated old ballad--

"Oh, Bothwell bank, thou bloomest fair."

The village of Bothwell is, as I have said, a mile farther on the way toward Hamilton. The church and manse lie to the left hand as you enter it, and the latter is buried, as it were, in a perfect sea of fruit trees. You may pass through the church-yard to it, and then along a footpath between two high hedges, which leads you to the carriage-road from the village to its front. The house in which Miss Baillie was born, and where she lived till her fourth year, seems to stand on a sort of mount, on one side overlooking the valley of the Clyde, and on the other the church-yard and part of the village. The situation is at once airy and secluded. Between the manse and the church-yard lies the garden, full of fruit trees; and other gardens, or rather orchards, between that and the village, add to the mass of foliage, in which it is immersed. Between the church-yard and the manse garden commences a glen, which runs down, widening and deepening as it goes, on the side of the manse most distant from the village, to the great Clyde valley. This gives the house a picturesqueness of situation peculiarly attractive. It has its own little secluded glen, its sloping crofts, finely shaded with trees, and beyond again other masses of trees shrouding cottages and farms.

The church has been rebuilt within these few years, of the same red stone as Bothwell Castle; but the old chancel of the church still remains standing, in a state of ruin. The church-yard is extensive, scattered with old-fashioned tombs, and forming a famous playground for the children of the neighboring village school, who were out leaping in the deep damp soil, and galloping among its rank hemlocks and mallows to their hearts' content. Having, by the courtesy of the minister, Dr. Matthew Gardner, seen the manse, and had a stroll in the garden, I again wandered over the church-yard, watching the boys at their play, and reading the inscriptions on the tombs and headstones; one of which I copied in evidence of the state of parochial education in Scotland, where it has existed as a national institution, I believe ever since the days of Knox:--

"Erected by Margaret Scott, in memory of her husband, Robert
Stobo, Late Smith and Farrier o' Gowkthrapple, who died 7th of May
1834, in the 70th year of his age.

"My sledge and hammer lies declined,
My bellows pipes have lost its wind;
My forge's extinct, my fires decayed,
And in the dust my vice is laid.
My coal is spent, my iron is gone,
My nails are drove, my work is Done."

What struck me as not less curious was the following handbill, posted on the jamb of the church door:--"Gooseberries for sale, by public roup. The gooseberries in the orchards of Bothwell manse, also at Captain Bogles Laroyet, and in, etc., etc. Sale to begin at Bothwell manse, at five o'clock, P.M. 10th of July." This was, certainly, characteristic of "Fruitland."

Though Miss Baillie only spent the first four years of her life at this sweet and secluded parsonage, it is the place which she has said she likes best to think of, of any in her native country. And this we may well imagine; it is just the place for a child's paradise, embosomed amid blossoming trees, with its garden lying like a little hidden yet sunny fairy land in the midst of them, with its flowers and its humming bees, that old church and half-wild church-yard alongside of it, and its hanging crofts, and little umbrageous valley.

To Bothwell brig you descend the excellent highway toward Hamilton, and coming at it in something less than a mile, are surprised to find what a rich and inviting scene it is. The brig, which you suppose, from being described as a narrow, steep, old-fashioned concern in the days of the Covenanters, to be something gray and quaint, reminding you of Claverhouse and the sturdy Gospelers, is, really, a very respectable, modern-looking affair. The gateway which used to stand in the center of it has been removed, the breadth has been increased, an additional arch or arches have been added at each end, and the whole looks as much like a decent, everyday, well-to-do, and toll-taking bridge as bridge well can do. There is a modern toll-bar at the Bothwell end of it. There is a good house or two, with their gardens descending to the river. The river flows on full and clear, between banks well cultivated and well covered with plantations. Beyond the bridge and river the country again ascends with an easy slope toward Hamilton, with extensive plantations, and park walls belonging to the domain of the Duke of Hamilton. You have scarcely ascended a quarter of a mile, when, on your left hand, a handsome gateway, bearing the ducal escutcheons, and with goodly lodges, opens a new carriage way into the park. Every thing has an air of the present time, of wealth, peace, and intellectual government, that make the days of the battle of Bothwell brig seem like a piece of the romance work of Scott, and not of real history.

Scott himself tells us in his Border Minstrelsy, in his notes to the old Ballad of Bothwell Brig, that "the whole appearance of the ground as given in the picture of the battle at Hamilton Palace, even including a few old houses, is the same as the scene now presents. The removal of the porch or gateway, upon the bridge, is the only perceptible difference." There must have been much change here since Scott visited the spot. The old houses have given way to new houses. The old bridge is metamorphosed into something that might pass for a newish bridge. The banks of the river, and the lands of the park beneath, are so planted and wooded, that the pioneers would have much to do before a battle could be fought. All trace of moorland has vanished, and modern inclosure and cultivation have taken possession of the scene. When we bring back by force of imagination the old view of the place, it is a far different one.

"Where Bothwell's bridge connects the margin steep,
And Clyde below runs silent, strong, and deep,
The hardy peasant, by oppression driven
To battle, deemed his cause the cause of Heaven.
Unskilled in arms, with useless courage stood,
While gentle Monmouth grieved to shed his blood;
But fierce Dundee, inflamed with deadly hate,
In vengeance for the great Montrose's fate,
Let loose the sword, and to the hero's shade
A barbarous hecatomb of victories paid."

_Wilson's Clyde._

When we picture to ourselves the Duke of Monmouth ordering his brave footguards under command of Lord Livingstone, to force the bridge, which was defended by Hackstone of Rathillet, and Claverhouse sitting on his white horse on the hillside near Bothwell, watching the progress of the fray, and ready to rush down with his cavalry and fall on the infatuated Covenanters who were quarreling among themselves on Hamilton haughs, we see a wild and correspondent landscape, rough as the Cameronian insurgents, and rude as their notions. The Bothwell brig of the present day has all the old aspect modernized out of it. Its smiling fields, and woods that speak of long peaceful times, and snug modern homes--oh! how far off are they from the grand old melancholy tone of the old ballad:--

"Now farewell father, and farewell mother,
And fare ye weel, my sisters three;
An' fare ye weel, my Earlstoun,
For thee again I'll never see!

"So they're away to Bothwell hill,
An' waly they rode bonily!
When the Duke of Monmouth saw them comin'
He went to view their company.

* * * *

"Then he set up the flag o' red,
A' set about wi' bonny blue;
'Since ye'll no cease, and be at peace,
See that ye stand by ither true.'

"They stelled their cannons on the height,
And showered their shot down in the howe;
An' beat our Scots' lads even down,
Thick they lay slain on every knowe.

* * * *

"Alang the brae, beyond the brig,
Mony brave man lies cauld and still;
But lang we'll mind, and sair we'll rue,
The bloody battle of Bothwell hill."