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Chapter Ten.
Doncaster – Brentley – Askern – Dinner on a Yorkshire Wold

“Was nought around save images of rest,
Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between,
And flowery beds, that slumberous influence kest,
From poppies breathed, and beds of pleasant green.”

It is the morning of the 4th July, and a bright and beautiful morning it is. The storm clouds that yesterday lowered all around us have cleared away and the sun shines in an Italian sky. We are encamped in a delightful little level meadow close to the worthy brewer and farmer to whom it belongs. How did we come here? Were we invited? No, reader, we invited ourselves.

Not quite liking the accommodation recommended to us by a villager, I called on Mr E – , and coyly – shall I say “coyly?” – stated my case. Though good Mr E – has a wife to please, and the gentle, kindly lady is an invalid, he granted me the desired permission, and when we were fairly on the lawn and…

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stunted than the giants we have left behind us. Mulberry-trees have now made their appearance, and splendid acacias, tasselled over with drooping blooms. But the maple or plane-trees are also a sight; they are now in seed, and the hanging bunches of pods are tinted with carmine and brown.

Large elder-bushes, like enormous white-rose trees, brighten the dark-green of the hedgerows; beds of yellow sweet-pea, beds and patches of the blue speedwell, the purple tapering stachys, solitary spikes of crimson foxglove, roses, and honeysuckle meet the eye wherever I look. In some places the sward is covered as with snow by the lavish-spreading fairy-bedstraw.

At the little cosy town of Askern, with its capital hotels and civilised-looking lodging-houses, on stopping to shop, we were surprised at being surrounded by hosts of white-haired cripples – well, say lame people, for every one had a staff or a crutch.

But I soon found out that Askern is a watering-place, a kind of a second-class Harrogate, and these people with the locks of snow had come to bathe and drink the waters; they are sulphureous. There is here a little lake, with a promenade and toy stalls. The lake has real water in it, though it looks somewhat green and greasy, and a real boat on it, and real oars to pull it. There are fish in the lake too. This is evident from the fact that a twenty-pound pike was lately landed. On being opened, his stomach was found to contain a roach and two copper coins of the reign of our present blessed Majesty the Queen. It is evident that this pike was laving up against a rainy day.

But Askern is really a good resort for the invalid. Things are cheap, too, and the place would soon flourish if there were abundance of visitors.

We have halted to dine in the centre of a Yorkshire wold. The road goes straight through the hedge-bound sward, and can be seen for miles either way.

A wold means a wood – a wild wood. I like the word, there is a fine romantic ring about it. This wold has been cleared, or partially so, of trees, and fields of waving grain extend on all sides of us. Very delightful is this wold on a sweet summer’s day like this, but one can easily imagine how dreary the scene must be in winter, with the road banked high with snowdrifts, and the wind sweeping over the flats and tearing through the leafless oaks.

The horses are enjoying the clover. Hurricane Bob and I are reclining among our rugs on the broad coupé. Foley is cooking a fowl and a sheep’s heart; the latter for Bob’s dinner. There are rock-looking clouds on the horizon, a thunderstorm is within a measurable distance.

How pretty those purple trailing vetches look! How sweet the song of yonder uprising lark! There is an odour of elder-flowers in the air. I hear a hen cackling at a distant farm. Probably the hen has laid an egg. Hurricane Bob is sound asleep. I think I shall read. Burns is by my elbow:

“Oh, Nature! a’ thy shows and forms
To feeling pensive hearts hae charms!
Whether the summer kindly warms
Wi’ life and light,
Or winter howls in gusty storms,
The lang dark night.”

How lovely those dog-roses are, though! They are everywhere to-day; roses in clusters, roses in garlands, wreaths and wind-tossed spray, white, crimson, or palest pink roses – roses —

“The dinner is all on the table, sir.”

“Aw – right.”

“The dinner is quite ready, sir.”

“To be sure, to be sure. Thank you, Foley.”

“Why, you have been sound asleep, sir.”

We are once more settled for the night and settled for the Sabbath, in a delightful clovery meadow near a fine old Yorkshire farm, round which blue-rock pigeons are flying in clouds.

A herd of fine shorthorn cows have arranged themselves in a row to look at us. A healthful, “caller” country lassie is milking one. Her name is Mary; I heard a ploughboy say “Mary” to her. Mary is singing low as she milks, and the sleek-sided cow is chewing her cud and meditating.

Yonder is a field of white peas all in bloom, and yonder a field of pale-green flax.

It must be a great satisfaction for those pigeons to see those peas in bloom.

“Good-night, Mary.”

“Good-night, sir.”

Away marches Mary, singing, “Tra, la, lalla, la lah.”

What a sweet voice the little maiden has!

Chapter Eleven.
A Day in the Life of a Gentleman Gipsy

“He journeyed on like errant-knight the while,
While sweetly the summer sun did smile
On mountain moss and moor.”

It has occurred to me that a slightly more detailed account of the internal economy of our land-yacht, the Wanderer, might not prove devoid of interest to the reader, and I cannot give this in an easier way to myself, nor more completely, than by describing a day in the life of a gentleman gipsy.

It is the ninth of July, and early morning. The belfry-clock, which we can see from the meadow in which we have been lying all night, will presently chime out the quarter-past six. Foley is busy erecting the after-tent under which I have my bath every morning, as sure as sunrise. In a few minutes, ere ever I have finished my toilet, our coachman will be here for oats and beans for Corn-flower and Pea-blossom. No fear that John will neglect his horses, he is quite as kind to them as I myself am to Bob and Polly, and now that Pear-blossom’s fetlock is slightly strained, it is three times a day most carefully bandaged and rubbed with healing liniment.

The bed which is made every night on the sofa is not yet taken up, but as soon as I emerge from the back door and enter the tent my valet enters by the saloon front door, the bedclothes are carried outside, carefully shaken and folded, and finally stowed away under the lockers. The saloon is then brushed and dusted and the cloth laid for breakfast.

Bob sleeps on the driving apron in the corner of the saloon, Polly in her cage occupies another corner. The first thing I do every morning is to hang Polly under the balcony, and chain Bob on the coupé, wrapping him in his red blanket if the weather be chilly. He is there now; ominous warning growls are followed by fierce barking, for some one is nearing the caravan whose looks Bob does not like, or whose movements he deems suspicious. At every bark of the brave dog the van shakes and the lamp-glasses rattle.

I have finished shaving – water boiled by spirits-of-wine.

“The bath all ready? thank you, Foley.”

Do not imagine that I carry an immense tin-ware bath in the Wanderer. No, a gipsy’s bath is a very simple arrangement, but it is very delightful. This is the modus operandi. I have a great sponge and a bucket of cold water, newly drawn from the nearest well. This morning the water is actually ice-cold, but I am hungry before I have finished sponging, so benefit must result from so bracing an ablution.

Foley has laid the cloth. The kettle is boiling, the eggs and rashers are ready to put in the frying-pan, the Rippingille oil-stove is in a little tent made of mats under the caravan. There is nothing in the shape of cooking this stove will not perform.

Now Bob must have his early run, and while I am walking with him I call a bunch of the seedling grasses Polly loves so well, for I believe with Norman McLeod, D.D. “I think nothing of that man’s religion,” said that truly great and good man, “whose cat and dog are not the better for it.”

We have not a caravan cat, but Polly is an excellent substitute.

I return and once more fasten Bob on the coupé, but he now insists on having the front door open that he may watch me at breakfast, and get the tit-bits. How bright, and clean, and pleasant the saloon looks! There are garden flowers in the crystal boat, and a splendid bouquet of wild flowers and ferns that I culled in the woods yesterday morning stands in the bracket beneath one of the windows; crimson foxgloves there are, rare and beautiful ox-eye daisies, and a score of others of every colour and shade.

The sun is streaming in through the panes and shimmering on the red lamp-glasses; the table is laid to perfection, the tea is fragrant, the eggs and bacon done to a turn, and the bread as white as snow. The milk, too, is newly from that very cow who was playing the trombone so noisily last night in the meadow near me, and the butter all that could be desired. And yet some of these dainties are wondrous cheap up here in Yorks; for that butter we paid but eleven pence a pound, fourteen new-laid eggs we secured for a shilling, the bacon cost but sixpence, while three halfpence buys me a jugful of the richest of milk. Who would not be a gipsy?

But breakfast is soon discussed and everything cleared away, the spoons and dishes are washed beneath the tent, the hind tables having been let down to facilitate matters. In half an hour or less the pantry is as bright and tidy as eye could wish to see. The tent itself is taken down and stowed away, the ladder is shipped and secured, buckets and mats, and nosebags and chains, fastened beneath the caravan, then the steps are put up, and the after-door closed and locked. The horses are now put-to; I myself have one last walk round the Wanderer to see that everything is in its place and no drawer left unlocked, then away we rattle right gaily O!

To-day the gate that leads to the meadow is narrow, it does not give us two inches to spare at each side. I have to walk backwards in front of the horses to guide the coachman in his exit. But John has a keen eye, and in a few moments we are in the road.

Nothing has been forgotten, and the landlord of the Stalled Ox gives us kindly good morning and wishes us bon voyage. More than one friendly hand is waved, too, and some hats are lifted, for the good people, having soon settled in their minds that we were neither in the Cheap-Jack line nor Salvation soldiers, have promoted me to the dignity of baronet. This is nothing new. Some scions of nobility are actually caravanning around somewhere, and I am often supposed to be one of them.

I travel incog, and do not care whom I am taken for, whether Cheap-Jack, noble earl, or political agent. I now let down the front seat, and Hurricane Bob withdraws to the quiet seclusion of the pantry, where he rests on cushions to fend him from the jolting.

Pea-blossom invariably nudges Corn-flower with her nose before starting. This is to make him straighten out and take the first pull at the caravan. He never refuses, and once it is in motion they both settle soberly down to their work.

Foley is on ahead with the tricycle – some hundred yards. This is a judicious and handy arrangement. We hardly know how we should have done without our smart and beautiful Ranelagh Club machine.

The day will be a warm one. It is now eight o’clock, the road is level and firm, and we hope to reach Darlington – sixteen miles – to-night.

The country is flat again, but the landscape is bounded by far-off blue hills.

The roses still accompany us in the hedgerows. There is even a greater wealth of them to-day than usual, while the sward at each side of our path still looks like a garden laid out in beds and patches of brightest colours.

There is nothing of very special interest to view in this long town of Northallerton, not in the streets at all events. Last night, though, we were visited by hundreds of well-dressed people; many of these were really beautiful girls, though here the beauty is of a different type from that you find far south. More of the Saxon probably, and a sprinkling of the auburn-haired Dane.

For weeks I have cared but little how the world wagged. With an apathy and listlessness born of bracing air and sunshine, I have troubled myself not at all about foreign wars or the fall of governments, but to-day I have invested in a Yorkshire Post. I arrange my rags on the coupé, and lying down, dreamily scan my paper as the horses go trotting along. I have plenty of work to do if I choose, bundles of proofs to correct from my publishers, but – I’ll do it by-and-bye. By-and-bye is a gipsy’s motto. There is no news in this day’s paper. What care I that Oko Jumbo has departed, or that there has been a royal visit to Leeds? Bah! I fold the thing up and pitch it to a cow-boy. Had it fallen in that cow-boy’s mouth it would hardly have filled it.

The road is silent and almost deserted, so we see but few people saving those who run to their garden gates, or peep from behind the geraniums in windows.

But it is most pleasant lolling here on such a glorious morning, and the veriest trifles that I notice in passing awaken a kind of drowsy interest in my mind.

In proof of this let me mention a few. A country boy playing with a collie puppy. Puppy nearly gets run over. Agony and anxiety of country boy. Red-tiled brick cottages peeping up through orchards. Red-tiled cottages everywhere, by hedgerows, by brook-sides, in meadows, on morsels of moorland. A sweep in full costume, brush and all, standing glaring from under a broad Scotch bonnet. A yellow-haired wee lassie standing in a doorway eating a slice of bread; she has not finished her toilet, for she wears but one stocking, the other shapely leg is bare. Great banks of elder-trees covered with snowy blossoms. A quiet and pretty farm-steading near the road, its garden ablaze with crimson valerian. Milch cows in the adjacent meadow, ankle-deep in yellow celandine and daisies. A flock of lambs in a field lying down under the shade of a great sycamore, the sycamore itself a sight worth seeing.

And now we are on the top of Lovesome Hill. What a charming name, by the way! Spread out before and beneath us is a large and fertile plain, fields and woodlands, as far as ever the eye can reach, all slumbering in the sweet summer sunshine. In the distance a train is speeding along, we can trace it by its trailing smoke. I had almost forgotten we lived in the days of railway trains. There is a redbrick village on the hilltop straight ahead of us.

That must be Smeaton. Smeaton? Yes, now I remember, and the lovely fertile plain yonder, that now looks so green and smiling, hides in its bosom the dust of an army. History tells us that ten thousand Scotchmen were there slain. I can fancy the terrible tulzie, I can people that plain even now in imagination with men in battle array; I see the banners wave, and hear the border slogan cry:

“And now at weapon-point they close,
Scarce can they hear or see their foes;
They close in clouds of smoke and dust,
With sword’s-sway and lance’s thrust;
    And such a yell was there,
Of sudden and portentous birth,
As if man fought upon the earth,
    And fiends in upper air.
Oh! life and death were in the shout,
    And triumph and despair.”

(The Battle of the Standard, fought in 1138, in which the Scottish army was routed, and the flower of the land left dead on the field.)

But here we are in Smeaton itself – grass or a garden at every cottage. This village would make a capital health resort. We stop to water the horses, and though it is hardly ten o’clock I feel hungry already.

Clear of the village, and on and on. A nice old lady in spectacles tending cows and knitting, singing low to herself as she does so. An awful-looking old man, in awful-looking goggles, breaking stones by the roadside. I address the awful-looking old man.

“Awful-looking old man,” I say, “did ever you hear of the Battle of the Standard?”

“Naa.”

“Did you never hear or read that a battle was fought near this spot?”

The awful-looking old man scratched his head.

“Coome ta think on’t noo, there was summut o’ th’ kind, but it’s soome years agone. There war more ’n a hoondred cocks. A regular main as ye might call it.”

I pass on and leave the old man muttering to himself. Pinewoods on our right mingling with the lighter green of the feathery larches. A thundercloud hanging over a town in the plains far away. A duck-pond completely surrounded by trailing roses. Ducks in the pond all head down, tails and yellow feet up. Road suddenly becomes a lovers’ lane, charmingly pretty, and robins are singing in the copses. We are just five miles from Darlington.

We stable our horses at a roadside inn and Foley cooks the dinner.

How very handy sheets of paper come in! Look at that snow-white tablecloth – that is paper; so is the temporary crumb-cloth, and eke my table-napkin; but in fifty other ways in a caravan paper is useful.

The dinner to-day is cold roast beef and floury new potatoes; add to this a delightful salad, and we have a menu a millionaire might not despise.

I write up my log while dinner is cooking, and after that meal has been discussed comes the hour for reading and siesta.

Now the horses are once more put-to, and we start again for Darlington. We pass through the charming village of Croft; it lies on the banks of the Tees, and is a spa of some kind, and well worthy of being a better-frequented resort for the health or pleasure seeker.

The treescapes, the wood and water peeps, are fine just before you reach Darlington. This town itself is one of the prettiest in England. Fully as big but infinitely more beautiful even than Reading.

Wherever we stop we are surrounded by people, so we make haste to shake the dust of civilisation from our carriage-wheels, and are happy when we once more breathe country air, and see neither perambulators nor boarding-school girls.

At the top of a hill some two miles out of town we come upon a cosy wee hotel – the Harrogate Hill Hotel.

“A’ve little convenience,” says the landlord, in his broad Durham brogue, “but A’ll clear anoother stall, and A’ll turn t’ould pony oot o’ his. A’ll mak’ room.”

And the Wanderer is steered up a narrow lane and safely landed in a tiny meadow, o’ergrown with rank green grass and docks and sheltered with fine elms and ashes. And here we lie to-night.

Supper will soon be ready. I shall have a ride on my tricycle; there is always something to see; then beds will be made, shutters put up. I will read and write, while Foley in his cabin will write up his road-log, and by eleven every one on board will be wrapped, we hope, in dreamless slumber.

This then is a true and faithful account of one day in the life of a gentleman gipsy. Quiet and uneventful, but very pleasant, almost idyllic.

Do you care for the picture, reader?

Chapter Twelve.
At Durham – The British Miner at Home – Gosforth – Among Northumbrian Banks – Across the Tweed

“March! march! Ettrick and Teviotdale,
Why, my lads, dinna ye march forward in order?
March! march! Eskdale and Liddesdale,
All the blue bonnets are over the border.
Many a banner spread flutters above your head;
Many a crest that is famous in story;
Mount and make ready then,
Sons of the mountain glen:
Fight for your Queen, and the old Scottish glory!”

July 11th.

A six-miles’ drive, through some of the most charming scenery in England, brought us into Durham. The city looks very imposing from the hilltop; its noble old castle, and grand yet solemn looking cathedral. Eight hundred years of age! What a terrible story they could tell could those grey old piles but speak! It would be a very sad one to listen to. Perhaps they do talk to each other at the midnight hour, when the city is hushed and still.

It would take one a week, or even a fortnight, to see all the sights about Durham; he would hardly in that time, methinks, be tired of the walks around the town and by the banks of the winding Weir.

It is a rolling country, a hilly land around here. The people, by the way, call those hills banks. We had a hard day. John’s gloves were torn with the reins, for driving was no joke. I fear, however, the horses hardly enjoyed the scenery.

The streets in Durham are badly paved and dangerously steep. We did not dare to bring the Wanderer through, therefore, but made a sylvan détour and got on the north road again beyond.

If we reckoned upon encamping last night in a cosy meadow once more we were mistaken, we were glad to get standing room close to the road and behind a little public-house.

Miners going home from their work in the evening passed us in scores. I cannot say they look picturesque, but they are blithe and active, and would make capital soldiers. Their legs were bare from their knees downwards, their hats were skull-caps, and all visible flesh was as black almost as a nigger’s.

Many of these miners, washed and dressed, returned to this public-house, drank and gambled till eleven, then went outside and fought cruelly.

The long rows of grey-slab houses one passes on leaving Durham by road do not look inviting. For miles we passed through a mining district, a kind of black country – a country, however, that would be pleasant enough, with its rolling hills, its fine trees and wild hedgerows, were, it not for the dirt and squalor and poverty one sees signs of everywhere on the road. Every one and everything looks grey and grimy, and many of the children, but especially the women, have a woebegone, grief-stricken look that tells its own tale.

I greatly fear that intemperance is rampant enough in some of these villages, and the weaker members of the family have to suffer for it.

Here is an old wrinkled yellow woman sitting on a doorstep. She is smoking a short black clay, perhaps her only comfort in life. A rough-looking man, with a beard of one week’s growth, appears behind and rudely stirs her with his foot. She totters up and nearly falls as he brushes past unheeding.

Yonder are two tiny girls, also sitting on a doorstep – one about seven, the other little more than a baby. An inebriated man – can it be the father? – comes along the street and stops in front of them. He wants to get in.

“Git oot o’ t’way!” he shouts to the oldest.

His leg is half lifted as if to kick.

“And thou too,” – this to the baby.

One can easily imagine what sort of a home those poor children have. It cannot be a very happy one.

More pleasant to notice now a window brilliant with flowers, and a clean and tidy woman rubbing the panes.

On and on through beautiful scenery, with peeps at many a noble mansion in the distance. Only the landscape is disfigured by unsightly mine machinery, and the trees are all a-blur with the smoky haze that lies around them.

The country around the village of Birtley is also very pretty. A mile beyond from the hilltop the view is grand, and well worth all this tiring day’s drag to look upon.

Everywhere on the roadside are groups of miners out of work, lying on the grass asleep or talking.

The dust is trying to the nerves to-day; such a black dust it is, too.

We stop at Birtley. I trust I shall never stop there again.

“No, there is no stabling here;” thus spoke a slattern whom I addressed.

“Water t’ hosses. Dost think I’d give thee water? Go and look for t’ well.”

Some drunken miners crowded round.

“For two pins,” one said, “I’d kick the horses. Smartly I would.”

He thought better of it, however.

We pushed on in hopes of getting stabling and perhaps a little civility.

We pushed on right through Gateshead and Newcastle, and three miles farther to the pleasant village of Gosforth, before we found either.

Gosforth is a village of villas, and here we have found all the comfort a gipsy’s heart could desire.

We are encamped on a breezy common in sight of the Cheviot Hills, and here we will lie till Tuesday morning for the sake of our horses if not ourselves.

I shall never forget the kindly welcome I received here from the Spanish Consul.

July 14th. – Down tumbled the mercury yesterday morning, and down came the rain in torrents, the rattling, rushing noise it made on the roof of the Wanderer being every now and then drowned in the pealing of the thunder. But this morning the air is delightfully cool, the sky is bright, the atmosphere clear, and a gentle breeze is blowing.

Left Gosforth early. The country at first was somewhat flat, sparsely treed, well cultivated and clean.

The first village we passed through is called, I think, Three Mile Bridge. It is quite a mining place, far from wholesome, but the children looked healthy, a fact which is due, doubtless, to the bracing, pure air they breathe. All are bare-legged and shoeless, from the lad or lass of fifteen down to the month-old kicking baby.

Came to a splendid park and lodge-gates, the latter surmounted by two bulls couchant; I do not care to know to whom the domain belongs.

I find it is best not to be told who lives in the beautiful mansions I am passing every day in my journey due north. I can people them all in imagination. A name might banish every morsel of romance from the finest castle that peeps through the greenery of trees in some glen, or stands boldly out in the sunshine of some steep hill or braeland.

By eleven o’clock we had done ten miles and entered Morpeth.

Now, O ye health-seekers or intending honeymoon enjoyers! why not go for a month to Morpeth? It lies on the banks of the winding Wansbeck, it is but four miles from the ocean; it is quaint, quiet, curious, hills everywhere, wood and water everywhere; it has the remains of a grand old castle on the hill top, and a gaol that looks like one. Accommodation? did you say. What a sublunary thought, but Morpeth has capital lodging-houses and good inns, so there!

We caught our first glimpse of the sea to-day away on our right.

We had hoped to stay at Felton, a romantic little village on the river. Partly in a deep dell it lies, partly on a hill; rocks and wooded knolls with shady walks by the streamlet-side make it well suited for a summer resort, but it is hardly known. Not to Londoners, certainly.

Stabling we could have here, but so hilly is the place that a flat meadow was looked for in vain. After spending a whole hour searching for accommodation I returned to the glen where I had left the Wanderer, and our poor tired horses had to go on again.

Hills, hills, hills, that seemed as if they never would end; hills that take the heart, and life, and spirit out of the horses and make my heart bleed for them. The beauty of the scenery cannot comfort me now, nor the glory of the wild flowers, nor the blue sea itself. We but lag along, hoping, praying, that a hostelry of some sort may soon heave in sight.

I am riding on in front, having often to dismount and push my cycle before me.

All at once on a hilltop, with a beautiful green valley stretching away and away towards the sea, I come upon the cosiest wee Northumbrian inn ever I wish to see. I signal back the joyful tidings to the weary Wanderer.

Yee, there is stabling, and hay, and straw, and everything that can be desired.

“Hurrah! Come on, Bob, I feel as happy now as a gipsy king.”

July 15th. – The drag began this morning in earnest. We were among the banks of Northumbria. (Bank – a stiff hill.) With a light carriage they are bad enough, but with a two-ton waggon, small in wheel and long ’twixt draughts, the labour, not to say danger, reaches a maximum. The country here is what a cockney would term a mountainous one, and in some parts of it even a Scotchman would feel inclined to agree with him. At one time we would be down at the bottom of some gloomy defile, where the road crossed over a Gothic bridge, and a wimpling stream went laughing over its rocky bed till lost to sight among overhanging trees.

Down in that defile we would eye with anxious hearts the terrible climb before us.

“Can we do it?” That is the question.

“We must try.” That is the answer.

The roller is fastened carefully behind a back wheel, and “Hip!” away we go, the horses tearing, tottering, scraping, almost falling.

And now we are up, and pause to look thankfully, fearfully back while the horses stand panting, the sweat running in streamlets over their hoofs.

The short banks are more easily rushed. It is a long steep hill that puts us in danger.

There is hardly probably a worse hill or a more dangerous hollow than that just past the castle gate of Alnwick.

It needed a stout heart to try the descent. Easy indeed that descent would have been had a horse fallen, for neither the brake, which I now had sole charge of, nor the skid, could have prevented the great van from launching downwards.

But the ascent was still more fraught with danger. It was like climbing a roof top. Could the horses do it this time?

Impossible. They stagger half way up, they stagger and claw the awful hill, and stop.

No, not stop, for see, the caravan has taken charge and is moving backwards, dragging the horses down.

The roller and a huge stone beneath the wheels prevented an ugly accident and the complete wreck of the Wanderer. Twelve sturdy Northumbrians went on behind and helped us up. The road ascends higher and higher after we pass Alnwick, until at last we find ourselves on the brow of a lofty hill. There is an eminence to the right covered with young firs; near it is a square tower of great strength, but only a ruin. The traveller who does not see the country from this knoll misses one of the grandest sights in England. From the lone Cheviot mountains on the left to the sea itself on the far-off right round and round it is all beautiful.

I had stayed long enough in Alnwick to see the town and “sights;” the latter is a hateful word, but I have no better ready.

I was greatly impressed by the massive grandeur of the noble old castle, the ancient home of the Percys. The figures of armed men on the ramparts, some holding immense stones above the head, as if about to hurl them on an assailant, others in mail jackets with hatchet and pike, are very telling. I could not help thinking as I passed through the gloomy gateways and barbican of the many prisoners whose feet had brushed these very stones in “the brave days of old.”