Over the Ocean Part 9

A more modern drinking-cup is the ancient wooden bowl, which was presented by Archbishop Scrope--who was beheaded in the year 1405--to the Society of Cordwainers in 1398, and by them given to the church in 1808. This more sensible drinking-cup has silver legs and a silver rim, and not only is it well adapted for a jorum of punch, but the good archbishop made it worth while to drink from it, according to the ancient inscription upon it, in Old English characters, which reads,--

=Richarde arch beschope Scroope grant unto all tho that drinkis of this cope ILti days to pardon.=

Besides this, we had the pleasure of grasping the solid silver crosier, given by Queen Catharine, widow of King Charles II. to her confessor, a staff of weight and value, seven feet in length, elegantly wrought in appropriate designs. We were also shown the official rings found in the forgotten tombs of archbishops, in repairing the church pavement, bearing their dates of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The antique chair in which the Saxon kings were crowned is here--a relic older than the cathedral itself; and as "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,"

uncomfortable must have been the seat of him that wore it also, if my few minutes' experience between its great arms is worth anything; but, still, it was something to have sat in the very chair in which the b.l.o.o.d.y Richard III. had been crowned,--for both he and James I. were crowned in this chair,--thinking at the time, while I mentally execrated the crooked tyrant's memory, of the words Shakespeare put into his mouth:--

"Is the chair empty? Is the sword unswayed?

Is the king dead? the empire unpossessed?

What heir of York is there alive but we?

And who is England's king but great York's heir?"

Here we were shown an old Bible, presented by King Charles II., the old communion plate, which is five hundred years old, the old vestment chest, of carved oak, of the time of Edward III., with the legend of St.

George and the Dragon represented upon it, a Bible of 1671, presented by James I., and other interesting antiquities.

I concluded my visit to this glorious old minster by ascending the Central or Lantern Tower, as it is called, which rises to a height of two hundred and thirteen feet from the pavement, and from which I had a magnificent view of the city of York and the surrounding country.

Although forbearing an attempt to enter upon any detailed descriptions of numerous beautiful monuments in the cathedral, I cannot omit referring to the many modern memorials of British officers and soldiers who have perished in different parts of the world, fighting the battles of their sovereign. Here is one to six hundred officers and privates of the nineteenth regiment of foot, who fell in Russia, in 1854-5; another to three hundred officers and privates of the fifty-first, who fell at Burmah, in 1852-3; a monument to three hundred and seventy-three of the eighty-fourth, who perished during the mutiny and rebellion in India in 1857, '8 and '9; a memorial slab to six hundred officers and men of the thirty-third West York, or Wellington's Own, who lost their lives in the Russian campaign of 1854-6; a beautiful, elaborate monument to Colonel Moore and those of the Inniskillen Dragoons, who perished with him in a transport vessel at sea, &c.

There is not a church or cathedral, not in ruins, that the tourist visits in Great Britain, but that he reads the b.l.o.o.d.y catalogue of victims of England's glory recorded on mural tablets or costly monuments, a glory that seems built upon hecatombs of lives, showing that the very empire itself is held together by the cement of human blood,--blood, too, of the dearest and the bravest,--for I have read upon costly monuments, reared by t.i.tled parents, of n.o.ble young soldiers, of twenty-two and twenty years, and even younger, who have fallen "victims to Chinese treachery," "perished in a typhoon in the Indian Ocean," "been ma.s.sacred in India," "lost at sea," "killed in the Crimea." They have fallen upon the burning sands of India, amid the snows of Russia, or in the depths of savage forests, or sunk beneath the pitiless wave, in upholding the blood-red banner of that nation. This fearful record that one encounters upon every side is a terrible and b.l.o.o.d.y reckoning of the cost of the great nation's glory and power.

From the glories of York Minster, from the pleasant and dreamy walks on delightful spring days, upon its old walls, and beneath its antique gateways, its ruined cloisters of St. Leonard's, founded by Athelstane the Saxon, and the stately ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, with the old Norman arch and shattered walls, we will glance at an English city under a cloud, or, I might almost say, under a pall, for the great black banner that hangs over Sheffield is almost dark enough for one, and in that respect reminds us of our own Pittsburg, with the everlasting coal smoke permeating and penetrating everywhere and everything.

The streets of Sheffield have the usual grimy, smoky appearance of a manufacturing place, and, apart from the steel and cutlery works, there is but little of interest here. One cannot help observing, however, the more abject squalor and misery which appear in some of the poorer neighborhoods, than is ever seen in similar towns or cities in America.

The spirit shops, with their bold signs of different kinds of liquors, and the gin saloons, with their great painted casks reared on high behind the counter, at which women serve out the blue ruin, are visible explanations of the cause of no small portion of the misery.

I found the cutlery works that I visited conducted far differently than we manage such things in America, where the whole work would be carried on in one great factory, and from year to year improvements made in machinery, interior arrangements, &c.; but here the effort seems to be, on the part of the workmen, to resist every advance or improvement possible.

We visited the great show-rooms of Rogers & Sons, where specimens of every description of knives, razors, scissors, cork-screws, boot-hooks, &c., that they manufacture, were exhibited, a very museum of steel work; and a young salesman was detailed to answer the questions and show the same, including the celebrated many-bladed knife, which has one blade added for every year.

A visit to Joseph Elliot & Son's razor works revealed to us the manner in which many of the manufacturers carry on their business. We found the workmen not all together in one factory, but in different buildings. In one was where the first rough process of forging was performed; from thence, perhaps across a street, the blades received further touches from other workmen, and so on, till, when ready for grinding and polis.h.i.+ng, they were carried to the grinding and polis.h.i.+ng works, some distance off, and finally returned to a building near the warerooms, to be joined to the handles, after which they were papered and packed, immediately adjoining the warerooms proper, where sales were made and goods delivered.

I was surprised, in visiting the forges where the elastic metal was beat into graceful blades, to find them little dingy nooks and corners in a series of old rookeries of buildings, often badly lighted, cramped and inconvenient, and difficult of access. No American workmen would work in such a place; but in watching the progress of the work, we saw instances of the skill and thoroughness of British mechanics, who have devoted their life to one particular branch of manufacture--the precision of stroke in forging, the rapidity with which it was done, to say nothing of the reliability, which is one characteristic of English work.

In that country, where the ranks of every department of labor are so crowded, there seems to be an ambition as to who shall do the best work, who shall be he that turns out the most skilfully wrought article; and of course the incentive to this ambition is a permanent situation, and a workman whom the master will be the last to part with in dull times.

Then, again, in the battle for life, for absolute bread and b.u.t.ter, people are only too glad to make a sacrifice to learn a trade that will provide it. No boy can set up as a journeyman here after a couple of years' experience, as they do in America. There are no such bunglers in every department of mechanical work as in our country. To do journeyman's work and earn journeyman's pay, a man must have served a regular apprentices.h.i.+p, and have learned his business; and he has to pay his master for giving him the opportunity, and teaching him a trade, by which he can work and receive a journeyman's pay--which is right and proper. The compensation may be in the advantage the master gets from good work at a low figure in the last years of the apprentices.h.i.+p, or in some kinds of business in a stipulated sum of money paid to him. Yet in England he gets some return, instead of having his workman, as is generally the case in America, as soon as he ceases to spoil material and becomes of some value, desert him _sans ceremonie_.

The difficulty, in America, lies in the enormous demand for mechanical labor, so large that many are willing and obliged to receive inferior work or none at all, in the haste that all have to be rich, the boy to have journeyman's wages, the journeyman to be foreman, and foreman to be contractor and manager, and the abundant opportunity for them all to be so with the very smallest qualifications for the positions.

It is the thorough workmans.h.i.+p of many varieties of British goods that makes them so much superior to those of American manufacture; and we may talk in this country as much as we please about its being sn.o.bbish to prefer foreign to American manufactured goods, yet just as long as the American article is inferior in quality, durability, and finish to the foreign article, just so long will people of means and education purchase it. I believe in encouraging American manufactures to their fullest extent; but let American manufacturers, when they _are_ encouraged by protection or whatever means, prove by their products that they are deserving it, as it is gratifying to know that many of them have; and in this very article of steel, the great Pittsburg steel workers, such as Park Bros. & Co., Hussey, Wells, & Co., Anderson, Cook, & Co., and others in that city and Philadelphia, whose names do not now occur to me, have actually, in some departments of their business, beaten the British manufacturers in excellence and finish, proving that it can be done in America. When visiting the great iron works, forges, and factories in Pittsburg, I have frequently encountered, in the different departments, skilled workmen from Birmingham, Sheffield, and other English manufacturing towns, who, of course, were doing much better than at home, and whose thorough knowledge of their trade never failed to be the burden of the managers' commendation.

A razor is beaten out into shape, ground, tempered, polished, and finished much more speedily than I imagined; and as an ill.u.s.tration of the cheapness at which one can be produced, very good ones are made by Rogers & Sons for six s.h.i.+llings a dozen, or sixpence each. This can be done because they are made by apprentices, whose wages are comparatively trifling. A very large number of these razors go to the United States.

Rogers' knives and razors of the finer descriptions generally command a slight advance over those of other manufacturers, although there are some here even in Sheffield whose work is equally good in every respect.

The Messrs. Elliot's razors are celebrated for their excellence both in England and this country. In visiting their works I was received by one of the partners, a man who owns his elegant country-house, and enjoys a handsome income, but who was in his great wareroom, with his workman's ap.r.o.n on--a badge which he seemed to wear as a matter of course, and in no way affecting his position; and I then remembered one American gentleman, who, after rising to affluence, was never too proud to wear his ap.r.o.n if he thought that part of his dress necessary about his business, and he a man we all remember _sans reproche_--the late Jonas Chickering, the great piano manufacturer of Boston.

At Needham Brothers' cutlery works we saw table knives beaten out of the rough steel with an astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity, pa.s.sed from man to man, till the black, shapeless lump was placed in my hand a trenchant blade, fit for service at the festive board. Both here and at Elliot & Sons' razor works we saw invoices of handsome cutlery in process of manufacture for the American market.

The grinders and polishers here receive the highest wages, on account of the unhealthy nature of the employment, which has frequently been described, the fine particles of steel affecting the lungs so that the grinders are said to be short-lived men, and their motto "a short life and a merry one," as I was informed; the "merry" part consisting of getting uproariously drunk between Sat.u.r.day night and Tuesday morning.

These grinders are also exceedingly jealous of apprentices, and I shrewdly suspect in some degree magnify the dangers of their calling, in order that their numbers may be kept as few, and wages as high, as possible.

A vast deal of ale is drank in Sheffield, as may well be imagined; and the great arched vaults which form the support to a bridge, or causeway, out from the railway station to the streets of the city, are filled with hundreds on hundreds of barrels of this popular English beverage. And in truth, to enjoy good ale, and get good ale, one must go to England for it; the butler on the stage who said, "They 'ave no good hale in Hamerica, because they ain't got the opps," spoke comparatively, no doubt; but at the little English inns, upon benches beneath the branches of a great tree, or in cleanly sanded little public-house parlors at the windows, looking out upon charming English landscapes, the frothing tankards are especially inviting and comforting to those using them; while, per contra, the foul, stale effluvia from the sloppy dens in this city, which were thronged when the men were off work, the bluff, bloated, and sodden appearance of ardent lovers of the ale of England, were evidence that its use might be abused, as well as that of more potent fluids.

There is comparatively little of historical interest in Sheffield to attract the attention of the tourist. There was an old castle erected there at an early period, and, at a place called Sheffield Manor-house, Mary, Queen of Scots, pa.s.sed over thirty years of her imprisonment; but the chief interest of the place is, of course, its cutlery manufactories, and its reputation for good knives dates back to the thirteenth century, when it was noted as the place where a kind of knife known as "Whittles" were made. The presence of iron ore, coal, and also the excellent water power near the city, make it a very advantageous place for such work. The great grinding works in the city, where the largest proportion of that work is done, are driven by steam power.

Besides cutlery in all its branches, Sheffield turns out plated goods, Britannia ware, bra.s.s work, b.u.t.tons, &c., in large quant.i.ties.

Leaving the smoke, hum, clatter, and dingy atmosphere of a great English manufacturing city, we took rail, and sped on till we reached Matlock-Bath. Here debarking, we took an open carriage for Edensor, a little village belonging to the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, and situated upon a portion of his magnificent estate, the finest estate of any n.o.bleman in England. And some idea of its extent may be gathered from the fact that its pleasure park contains two thousand acres. Our ride to this estate, known as Chatsworth, was another one of those enjoyable experiences of charming English scenery, over a pleasant drive of ten miles, till we entered upon the duke's estates, and drove across one corner, for a mile or more, to a pretty little road-side inn, where we were welcomed by a white-ap.r.o.ned landlord, landlady, and waiter, just such as are described by the novel writers, and people to whom the hurried, bustling, imperious manner of go-ahead Americans seems most extraordinary and surprising.

The Duke of Devons.h.i.+re's landed property is just such a one as an American should visit to realize the impressions he has received of a n.o.bleman's estate from English stories, novels, and dramatic representations. Here great reaches of beautiful greensward swept away as far as the eye could reach, with groups of magnificent oaks in the landscape view, and troops of deer bounding off in the distance. Down the slope, here and there, came the ploughman, homeward plodding his weary way, in almost the same costume that Westall has drawn him in his exquisite little vignette, in the Chiswick edition of Gray's poems.

There, in "the open," upon the close-cut turf, as we approached the village, was a party of English boys, playing the English game of cricket. Here, in a sheltered nook beneath two tall trees, nestled the cottage--the pretty English cottage of one of the duke's gamekeepers.

The garden was gay with many-colored flowers, three chubby children were rolling over each other on the gra.s.s, and a little brook wimpled on its course down towards groups of cl.u.s.tering alders, quarter of a mile away.

Farther on, we meet the gamekeeper himself, with his double-barrelled gun and game-pouch, and followed by two splendid pointers. There were hill and dale, river and lake, oaks and forest, wooded hills and rough rocks, grand old trees,--

"The brave old oak, That stands in his pride and majesty When a hundred years have flown,"

and upon an eminence, overlooking the whole, stands the palace of the duke, the whole front, of twelve or thirteen hundred feet, having a grand Italian flower garden, with its urns, vases, and statues in full view over the dwarf bal.u.s.trades that protect it; the beautiful Grecian architecture of the building, the statues, fountains, forest, stream, and slope, all so charmingly combined by both nature and art into a lovely landscape picture, as to seem almost like a scene from fairy land.

But here we are at Edensor, the little village owned by the duke, and in which he is finis.h.i.+ng a new church for his tenantry, a very handsome edifice, at a cost of nearly fifteen thousand pounds. This Edensor is one of the most beautiful little villages in England. Its houses are all built in Elizabethan, Swiss, and quaint styles of architecture, and looking, for all the world, like a clean little engraving from an ill.u.s.trated book.

I hardly know where to commence any attempt at description of this magnificent estate; but some idea may be had of its extent from the fact that the park is over nine miles in circ.u.mference, that the kitchen gardens and green-houses cover twenty acres, and that there are thirty green-houses, from fifty to seventy-five feet long; that, standing upon a hill-top, commanding a circuit view of twelve miles, I could see nothing but what this man owned, or was his estate. Through the great park, as we walked, magnificent pheasants, secure in their protection by the game laws upon this vast estate, hardly waddled out of our path. The troops of deer galloped within fifty paces of us, sleek cattle grazed upon the verdant slope, and every portion of the land showed evidence of careful attention from skilful hands.

We reached a bridge which spanned the little river,--a fine, ma.s.sive stone structure, built from a design by Michael Angelo,--and crossing it, wound our way up to the grand entrance, with its great gates of wrought and gilt iron. One of those well-got-up, full-fed, liveried individuals, whom Punch denominates flunkies, carried my card in, for permission to view the premises, which is readily accorded, the steward of the establishment sending a servant to act as guide.

Pa.s.sing through a broad court-yard, we enter the grand entrance-hall--a n.o.ble room some sixty or seventy feet in length, its lofty wall adorned with elegant frescoes, representing scenes from the life of Caesar, including his celebrated Pa.s.sing of the Rubicon, and his Death at the Senate House, &c. Pa.s.sing up a superb, grand staircase, rich with statues of heathen deities and elegantly-wrought columns, we went on to the state apartments of the house. The ceilings of these magnificent rooms are adorned with splendid pictures, among which are the Judgment of Paris, Phaeton in the Chariot of the Sun, Aurora, and other mythological subjects, while the rooms themselves, opening one out of the other, are each rich in works of vertu and art, and form a vista of beauty and wonder. Recollect, all these rooms were different, each furnished in the most perfect taste, each rich in rare and curious productions of art, ancient and modern, for which all countries, even Egypt and Turkey, had been ransacked.

The presents of kings and princes, and the purchases of the richest dukes for three generations, contributed to adorn the apartments of this superb palace. Not among the least wonderful works of art is some of the splendid wood-carving of Gibbon upon the walls--of game, flowers, and fruit, so exquisitely executed that the careless heap of grouse, snipe, or partridges look as though a light breeze would stir their very feathers--flowers that seem as if they would drop from the walls, and a game-bag at which I had to take a close look to see if it were really a creation of the carver's art.

Upon the walls of all the rooms are suspended beautiful pictures by the great artists. Here, in one room, we found our old, familiar friend, Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time, the original painting by Landseer, and a magnificent picture it is. In another room was one of Holbein's portraits of Henry VIII., and we were shown also the rosary of this king, who was _married so numerously_, an elegant and elaborately-carved piece of work. In another apartment was a huge table of malachite,--a single magnificent slab of about eight feet long by four in width,--a clock of gold and malachite, presented to the duke by the Emperor Nicholas, worth a thousand guineas, a broad table of one single sheet of translucent spar.

In the state bedroom was the bed in which George II. died. Here also were the chairs and foot-stools that were used by George III. and his queen at their coronation; and in another room the two chairs in which William IV. and Queen Adelaide sat when they were crowned, and looking in their elaborate and florid decoration of gold and color precisely like the chairs placed upon the stage at the theatre for the mimic monarchs of dramatic representations. In fact, all the pomp, costume, and paraphernalia of royalty, so strikingly reminds an American of theatric display, that the only difference seems that the one is shown by a manager, and the other by a king.

Then there were numerous magnificent cabinets, ancient and modern, inlaid with elegant mosaic work, and on their shelves rested that rich, curious, and antique old china of every design, for which the wealthy were wont to pay such fabulous prices. Some was of exquisite beauty and elegant design; others, to my unpractised eye, would have suffered in comparison with our present kitchen delf. Elegant tapestries, cabinet paintings, beautifully-modelled furniture, met the eye at every turn; rare bronze busts and statues appropriately placed; the floors one sheet of polished oak, so exactly were they matched; and the grand entrance doors of each one of the long range of beautiful rooms being placed exactly opposite the other, give a vista of five hundred and sixty feet in length.

Then there was the great library, which is a superb room over a hundred feet long, with great columns from floor to ceiling, and a light gallery running around it. Opening out of it are an ante-library and cabinet library--perfect gems of rooms, rich in medallions, pictures by Landseer, &c., and, of course, each room containing a wealth of literature on the book-shelves in the Spanish mahogany alcoves. In fact, the rooms in this edifice realize one's idea of a n.o.bleman's palace, and the visitor sees that they contain all that unbounded wealth can purchase, and taste and art produce. I must not forget, in one of these apartments, a whole set of exquisite little filigree, silver toys, made for one of the duke's daughters, embracing a complete outfit for a baby-house, and including piano, chairs, carriage, &c., all beautifully wrought, elaborate specimens of workmans.h.i.+p, artistically made, but, of course, useless for service.

In one of the great galleries we were shown a magnificent collection of artistic wealth in the form of nearly a thousand original drawings--first rough sketches of the old masters, some of their masterpieces which adorn the great galleries of Europe, and are celebrated all over the world.

Only think of looking upon the _original designs_, the rough crayon, pencil, or chalk sketches made by Rubens, Salvator Rosa, Claude Lorraine, Raphael, t.i.tian, Correggio, Michael Angelo, Nicolas Poussin, Hogarth, and other great artists, of some of their most celebrated works, and these sketches bearing the autographic signatures of the painters! This grand collection of artistic wealth is all arrayed and cla.s.sified into Flemish, Venetian, Spanish, French, and Italian schools, &c., and the value in an artistic point of view is almost as inconceivable as the interest to a lover of art is indescribable. The tourist can only feel, as he is compelled to hurry through such treasures of art, that the brief time he has to devote to them is but little better than an aggravation.

An elegant private chapel, rich in sculpture, painting, and carving, affords opportunity for the master of this magnificent estate to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in a luxurious manner. Scenes from the life of the Saviour, from the pencils of great artists, adorn the walls--Verrio's Incredulity of Thomas; an altar-piece by Cibber, made of Derbys.h.i.+re spar and marble, with figures of Faith and Hope, and the wondrous wood carving of Gibbon, are among the treasures of this exquisite temple to the Most High.

Next we visit the Sculpture Gallery, in which are collected the choicest works of art in Chatsworth: the statues, busts, vases, and bronzes that we have pa.s.sed in niches, upon cabinets, on great marble staircases, and at various other points in the mansion, would in themselves have formed a wondrous collection; but here is the Sculpture Gallery proper, a lofty hall over one hundred feet in length, lighted from the top, and the light is managed so as to display to the best advantage the treasures of art here collected. I can only mention a few of the most striking which I jotted down in my note-book, and which will indicate the value of the collection: Discobulus, by Kessels; upon the panels of the pedestal, on which this statue is placed, are inlaid slabs of elegant Swedish porphyry, and a fine mosaic taken from Herculaneum; a colossal marble bust of Bonaparte, by Canova; Gott's Venus; two colossal lions (after Canova), cut in Carrara marble, one by Rinaldi and the other by Benaglia--they are beautifully finished, and the weight of the group is eight tons; bust of Edward Everett, by Powers; the Venus Genetrix of Thorwaldsen; five elegantly finished small columns from Constantinople, surmounted by Corinthian capitals cut in Rome, and crowned with vases and b.a.l.l.s, all of beautiful workmans.h.i.+p; a statue of Hebe, by Canova; a colossal group of Mars and Cupid, by Gibson; Cupid enclosing in his hands the b.u.t.terfly; an image of Psyche, the Grecian emblem of the soul, an exquisite piece of sculpture, by Finelli; a ba.s.s-relief of three sleeping Cupids, also most life-like in execution; Tadolini's Ganymede and Eagle; Bartolini's Bacchante with Tamborine; a superb vase and pedestal, presented by the Emperor of Russia; Venus wounded by treading on a rose, and Cupid extracting the thorn; Endymion sleeping with his dog watching, by Canova; Achilles wounded; Venus Filatrice, as it is called, a beautiful spinning girl, one of the most beautiful works in the gallery--the pedestal on which this figure stands is a fragment from Trajan's Forum; Petrarch's Laura, by Canova, &c. From the few that I have mentioned, the wealth of this collection may be imagined. In the centre of the room stands the gigantic Mecklenburg Vase, twenty feet in circ.u.mference, sculptured out of a single block of granite, resting on a pedestal of the same material, and inside the vase a serpent coiled in form of a figure eight, wrought from black marble.

I have given but a mere glance at the inside of this elegant palace: in pa.s.sing through the different grand apartments, the visitor, if he will step from time to time into the deep windows and look upon the scene without, will see how art has managed that the very landscape views shall have additional charm and beauty to the eye. One window commands a close-shaven green lawn over a hundred feet wide and five hundred long, as regular and clean as a sheet of green velvet, its extreme edge rich in a border of many-colored flowers; another shows a slope crossed with walks, and enlivened with vases and sparkling fountains; another, the natural landscape, with river and bridge, and the background of n.o.ble oak trees; a fourth shows a series of terraces rising one above the other for hundreds of feet, rich in flowering shrubs and plants, and descending the centre from the very summit, a great flight of stone steps, thirty feet in width, down which dashes a broad, thin sheet of water like a great web of silver in the suns.h.i.+ne, reflecting the marble statues at its margin, till it reaches the very verge of the broad gravel walk of the pleasure-grounds, as if to dash in torrents over it, when it disappears, as by magic, into the very earth, being conveyed away by a subterranean pa.s.sage to the river.

After walking about the enclosed gardens immediately around the palace, which are laid out in Italian style, with vases, statues, and fountains, reminding one strikingly of views upon theatrical act-drops on an extended scale, we came to several acres of ground, which appeared to have been left in a natural state; huge crags, abrupt cliffs with dripping waterfall falling over the edge into a silent, black tarn at its base, curious caverns, huge boulders thrown together as by some convulsion, and odd plants growing among them.

In and about romantic views, our winding path carried us until we were stopped by a huge boulder of rock that had tumbled down, apparently from a neighboring crag, directly upon the pathway. We were about to turn back to make a _detour_, as clambering over the obstacle was out of the question, when our guide solved the difficulty by pressing against the intruding ma.s.s of rock, which, to our surprise, yielding, swung to one side, leaving pa.s.sage for us to pa.s.s. It was artificially poised upon a pivot for this purpose. Then it was that we learned that the whole of this apparently natural scenery was in reality the work of art; the rocky crags, waterfall and tarn, romantic and tangled shrubbery, rustic nooks, odd caverns, and mossy cliffs, nay, even old uprooted tree, and the one that, with dead foliage, stripped limbs, that stood out in bold relief against the sky, were all artistically placed,--in fact the whole built and arranged for effect; and on knowing this, it seemed to be a series of natural models set for landscape painters to get bits of effect from.