Rides on Railways Part 29

"A score of fires From height and hill and cliff were seen; Each with warlike tidings fraught, Each from each the signal caught, Each after each they glanced to sight As stars arise upon the night."

The antiquities in the neighbourhood are numerous and interesting; and the prospects from the heights are extensive and picturesque. Ulleswater, Helvellyn, Skiddaw, Saddleback, some of the Yorks.h.i.+re hills, and Carlisle Cathedral can be distinctly seen on a clear day. BROUGHAM CASTLE is situated one mile and three-quarters from Penrith. It was one of the strongholds of the great Barons of the Borders in the feudal times. At present it is in a very decayed state, but still is majestic in its ruins. Its earliest owner was John de Veteripont, from whose family it pa.s.sed by marriage into the hands of the Cliffords and Tuftons successively, and it is now the property of Sir John Tufton. Tradition records, but on what authority we know not, that Sir Philip Sidney wrote part of his "Arcadia" at this baronial mansion.

Wordsworth's "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle" is one of his n.o.blest lyrical effusions. "The Countess's Pillar," a short distance beyond the castle, was erected in 1656 by Lady Anne Clifford, as "a memorial of her last parting at that place with her good and pious mother, Margaret, Countess Dowager of c.u.mberland, the 2nd of April, 1616, in memory whereof she has left the annuity of 4 pounds, to be distributed to the poor, within the parish of Brougham, every 2nd day of April for ever, upon a stone hereby. Laus Deo."

This was the Lady Anne Clifford of whom it was said by the facetious Dr.

Donne, that she could "discourse of all things, from predestination to slea silk." Her well-known answer, returned to a ministerial application as to the representation of Appleby, shows the spirit and decision of the woman:--"I have been bullied by an usurper (the Protector Cromwell), I have been neglected by a Court, but I'll not be dictated to by a subject--your man shan't stand!"

About two miles from Penrith is the curious antique relic called Arthur's Round Table, already referred to. It is a circular area above twenty yards in diameter, surrounded by a fosse and mound. Six miles north-east of Penrith are the ancient remains, Long Meg and her Daughters. DACRE CASTLE is situated five miles west-south-west of Penrith. BROUGHAM HALL, the seat of Henry, Lord Brougham and Vaux, stands on an eminence near the river Lowther, a short distance from the ruins of Brougham Castle. It has been termed, from its elevated position and the prospects it commands, "The Windsor of the north." The mansion and grounds are exceedingly beautiful, and will repay the tourist for his visit thereto. LOWTHER CASTLE, the residence of the Earl of Lonsdale, is in the same district, and is one of the most princely halls in the kingdom, erected in a park of 600 acres. Hackthorpe Hall, a farm- house, is contiguous, and was the birth-place of John, first Viscount Lonsdale. Shap (anciently Heppe), a long straggling village in the vicinity, and near which is a station on the Preston and Carlisle Railway, has derived some note from the elevated moors close by, known by the name of Shap Fells.

Shap Spa, in the midst of the moors, attracts crowds of visitors during the summer season. The spring is said to yield medicinal waters similar to those of Leamington.

Inns.--Greyhound, and King's Arms.

In closing this rapid sketch of the Lake District we may add, that the leading mountains in c.u.mberland and Westmoreland are thirty-five in number; the pa.s.ses, five; the lakes, eighteen; and the waterfalls, twelve.

"WANDERINGS AMONG THE LAKES," a companion volume to this, now in preparation, will form a useful ill.u.s.trated guide to their most remarkable features.

HOME.

Following that plan of contrasts which travellers generally find most agreeable, we should advise that tourists, taking their route southward, will avail themselves of the North Staffords.h.i.+re lines to visit two of the most beautiful mansions, if they were foreign we should say palaces, in England--Alton Towers, the seat of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Trentham Hall, the seat of the Duke of Sutherland, and conclude by investigating the Porcelain Manufactories, which, founded by Wedgwood, are carried on with excellent spirit and taste by a number of potters, among whom Alderman Copeland and Mr. Herbert Minton are pre-eminent.

Alton Towers stand near Cheadle, on the Churnet Valley Line; Trentham Hall not far from Stoke.

A day may be pleasantly spent in examining the elaborate gardens of Alton, which are a magnificent specimen of the artificial style of landscape gardening. Mr. Loudon gives a very elaborate description of them in his large work on the subject of gardens to great houses.

At Cheadle the Earl of Shrewsbury has erected at his own expense, Mr. Pugin being his architect, a small Roman Catholic Church, which is a magnificent specimen of that gentleman's taste in the "decorated" style. "Heraldic emblazonments, and religious emblems, painting and gilding, stained gla.s.s, and curiously-wrought metal work, imageries and inscriptions, rood loft and reredos, stone altar and sedilia, metal screenwork, encaustic paving, make up the gorgeous spectacle."

The doors of the princ.i.p.al entrance are painted red, and have gilt hinges fas.h.i.+oned in the shape of rampant lions spreading over nearly their entire surface.

In one of the canopied niches is a figure, representing the present Earl of Shrewsbury kneeling, with a model of the church in his hand as the founder, with his "patron," St. John the Baptist, standing behind him.

This Cheadle Church, in which Mr. Pugin has had full scope on a small scale for the indulgence of his gorgeous faith and fancies, reminds us that at Oscot College, within sight of the smoke of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, towns where the best locks, clasps, hasps, bolts, and hinges can be made; the doors and windows, in deference to Mr. Pugin's mediaeval predilections, are of the awkward clumsy construction with which our ancestors were obliged to be content for want of better. On the same principle the floors ought to have been strewed with rushes, the meat salt, the bread black rye, and ma.n.u.script should supersede print. But it is not so, there is no school in the kingdom where the youth are better fed, or made more comfortable than at Oscot.

TRENTHAM has a delicious situation on the Trent, which forms a lake in the park, inhabited by swans and monstrous pike. The Hall used to be one of the hideous brick erections of the time of pigtails and laced waistcoats,--the footman style of dress and architecture. But the genius of Barry (that great architect whom the people on the twopenny steamboats seem to appreciate more than some grumbling members of the House of Commons) has transformed, without destroying it, into a charming Italian Villa, with gardens, in which the Italian style has been happily adapted to our climate; for instance, round- headed laurels, grown for the purpose, taking the place of orange trees.

This Trentham Hall used to be one of the magical pictures of the coach road, of which the railway robbed us. For miles before reaching it, we used to look out for the wooded park, with its herds of mottled deer, and the great lake, where the sight of the swans always brought up that story of the big pike, choked like a boa, with a swan's neck. A story that seems to belong to every swan-haunted lake.

But what one railway took from us another has restored much improved. So we say to all friends, at either end of the lines, take advantage of an excursion, or express train, according to your means, and go and see what we cannot at this time describe, and what exceeds all description. For the hour, you may enjoy Trentham Hall as much as if it were your own, with all the Bridgwater Estates, Mines, Ca.n.a.ls, and Railways to boot. And that is the spirit in which to enjoy travelling. Admiration without envy, and pity without contempt.

From Trentham you may proceed through the Potteries. You will find there a church built, and we believe endowed, by a manufacturer, Mr. Herbert Minton.

And then you may have a choice of routes. But to London the most direct will be by Tamworth and Lichfield, on the Trent Valley line.

To those who look below the surface, who care to know something about the workman as well as the work, such a tour as we have traced could not fail to be of the deepest interest. It embraces the whole course of the emigration from low wages to higher that is constantly flowing in this country. New sources of employment daily arising in mines, in ports, in factories, demand labour; to supply that labour recruits are constantly marching from the country lane to the paved city.

The agricultural districts of Staffords.h.i.+re have a population of under two hundred souls per square mile. The pottery and iron districts of the same county of over seven hundred. These swarms of men are not had where they labour, they are immigrants. Take another instance, in Kent and Devons.h.i.+re, the wages of farm labourers are eight to nine s.h.i.+llings a-week. In North Ches.h.i.+re they are fifteen. The cost of living to the labourer in both places is about the same; fuel is cheap in Ches.h.i.+re. What makes the difference in the demand for labour in Ches.h.i.+re but the steam-engines?

Towns must be prepared to lodge decently, and educate carefully, children of rural immigrants, or woe betide us all. It is education that has saved the United States from the consequences of the tide of ignorant misery daily disembarking on the Atlantic sh.o.r.es.

Sometimes we hear fears for the condition of farmers under manufacturer landlords. Those who express these fears must have travelled with their ears shut. More than seventy per cent. of the great landowners in the great travelling counties are manufacturers, or merchants, or lawyers, by one or two descents. In Lancas.h.i.+re, Ches.h.i.+re, Yorks.h.i.+re, or Warwicks.h.i.+re, examine closely, and you will find it so. As a general rule, a rich p.a.w.nbroker retired will make a better landlord than a poor baronet. But in this country two generations will make one of the baronet's sons a successful shopkeeper, and the p.a.w.nbroker's a baronet, or even a peer.

"I tell you what, sir," said a talkative stud groom once, in charge of race horses for Russia, and travelling first cla.s.s, "I've been in Petersburg, in Vienna, and in Berlin, and I lived ten years with the Earl of ----. For all the points of blood our aristocracy will beat any of these foreign princes, counts, and dukes, either for figure or for going; but it won't do to look into their pedigree, for the crosses that would ruin a race of horses, are the making of the breed of English n.o.blemen."

Here our irregular imperfect guidance ceases. Perhaps, although deficient in minuteness of detail, this pot pourri of gossip, history, description, anecdote, suggestion, and opinion, may not only amuse the traveller by railway, but a.s.sist him in choosing routes leading to those scenes or those pursuits in which he feels an interest.

NOTES.

{67} The operation of this personal influence on the individual boys with whom he was brought into contact, was much a.s.sisted by the system which about this time began to prevail at public schools, of giving each boy a small room called "a study" of his own, in which he might keep his books, and where he could enjoy privacy. The writer, who was at a public school both when all the boys lived in one great school-room in which privacy was impossible and after the separate studies were introduced, would wish to record his earnest conviction of the advantage of the present plan of separate studies,--of the vital influence it has on the formation of character, no less than of habits of study in the young. He can well remember how every better impression or graver thought was effaced, often never to return, as the boy came out from the master's room or from reading a letter from home, and was again immersed in the crowd and confusion of the one common school-room of such a school as Winchester. He would here venture to suggest that the plan of separate sleeping-rooms, like those in the model lodging-houses, would present equal advantage with that of separate studies, and might be introduced at little expense in public schools. It has already been introduced in the Roman Catholic College at Oscot.

{71} He appeared, in religious feeling, to approach the Evangelical party at more points than any other; pungently describing them, nevertheless, when he said--"A good Christian, with a low understanding, a bad education, and ignorance of the world, becomes an Evangelical." He appears to have died before he came to the application of the rules of German criticism (in which he followed Niebuhr in history) to theological subjects. It is curious to speculate on what the result would have been in the mind of this ardent Anglo-Protestant and lover of truth.

{81} These letters, full of information and suggestion, are attributed to Charles Mackay, Esq., LL.D., the well-known poet and prose writer.

{113} We were happy to find, while these sheets were pa.s.sing through the press, that the Birmingham Corporation have introduced a Bill for absorbing the petty commissioners.h.i.+p of the suburbs, which, once distant villages, now form part of the borough; and that they seek for power to compel efficient drainage and ample supply of water. To do all this will be expensive, but not extravagant; nothing is so dear to a town as dirt, with its satellites, disease, drunkenness, and crime. We sincerely trust that the Corporation will succeed in obtaining such ample powers as will render thorough drainage compulsory, and cause clean water to be no longer a luxury. Some of the opposition call themselves Conservatives. In this instance it means of dirt, fees, and bills of costs.

{125a} 1 Eliz., c.15.

{125b} Edited by the Rev. Montgomery Maherne.

{126} "Touchinge an anvyle wch he did sett for a yere. The bargayne is witnessed by two persons, viz., John Wallis Clerke, minister of Porlocke, and John Bearde of Selworthye, who sayeth that about our Lady-day last past, R.

H. did sell to heire the said anvyle to the said Thomas Sulley at a rent of iii.s. iiii.d. for the yere."

{127} Showing that the manufactory of muskets had then commenced in England, contrary to Hutton's statement, see p.85 ante.

{130} The best way to Wednesbury is by an iron Ca.n.a.l Boat, drawn by horses, at ten miles an hour. The Inn is the Royal Oak, kept by a droll character.

The event of his life is having seen the Duke of Wellington driving over Westminster Bridge in a curricle. To obtain a good view, as the horses went slowly up the ascent, he caught hold of a trace and hopped backwards for twenty yards with his mouth open.

{138} See Cathrall's Wanderings in North Wales.

{144} See Heberts on Railroads, p.19.

{151} We may add that, in 1850, about 160,000 emigrants embarked from the port chiefly for the United States, employing 600 large vessels of 500,000 tons.

{159} The Earl of Derby has died while these sheets were pa.s.sing through the press.

{172} At the Great Exhibition of Industry of 1851, Mr. G. Wallis, at the suggestion of the Board of Trade, had the management and arrangement of the department of manufactures.

{193} Mr. Francis Fuller, whose plan of management on this estate affords a model for both English and Irish landowners, is the gentleman, who, after taking most active and vigorous means, in co-operation with Mr. Scott Russell and Mr. Henry Cole, for bringing before the public Prince Albert's plan of a Great Exhibition of Industry of All Nations, alone saved the whole scheme from being abandoned before it was made public, by finding contractors in Messrs. Mundays to advance the 100,000 pounds, and who did actually advance 21,000 pounds, without which the President of the Board of Trade refused to issue the Royal Commission, on which the whole success of the scheme rested.

Until the scheme was safely launched, Mr. Fuller, as a Member of the Executive Committee, devoted his time, and freely expended his money, for the purpose of supporting this great undertaking. When it was fairly launched the care of his important business, of which Middleton forms a very small part, occupied the greater part of his time, and hence his name has appeared less in conjunction with that splendid triumph of Industry than those of other gentlemen.

{209} A little boy undergoing the operation of being flogged, in the manner that Mother Hubbard performed the deed before sending the children to bed.