within the wide reach of the American borders.
We were joined by the whole party before the sods were laid on the graves of the poor; but some time after the silver had been given for the consolations of religion. With melancholy reflections we mounted to the castle. A—— had been educated in opinions peculiarly favourable to England; but I saw, as we walked mournfully away from the spot, that one fact like this did more to remove the film from her eyes, than volumes of reading.
Carisbrooke has been too often described to need many words. Externally, it is a pile of high battlemented wall, completely buried in ivy, forming within a large area, that was once subdivided into courts, of which however, there are, at present, scarcely any remains. We found an old woman as warder, who occupied a room or two in a sort of cottage that had been made out of the ruins. The part of the edifice which had been the prison of Charles I. was a total ruin, resembling any ordinary house, without roof, floors, or chimneys. The aperture of the window through which he attempted to escape is still visible. It is in the outer wall, against which the principal apartments had been erected. The whole work stands on a high irregular ridge of a rocky hill, the keep being much the most elevated. We ascended to the sort of bastion which its summit forms, whence the view was charming. The whole vale, which contains Carisbrooke and Newport, with a multitude of cottages, villas, farm-houses and orchards, with meads, lawns and shrubberies, lay in full view, and we had distant glimpses of the water. The setting of this sweet picture, or the adjacent hills, was as naked and brown as the vale itself was crowded with objects and verdant. The Isle of Wight, as a whole, did not strike me as being either particularly fertile or particularly beautiful, while it contains certain spots that are eminently both. I have sailed entirely round it more than once, and, judging from the appearance of its coasts, and from what was visible in this little excursion, I should think that it had more than a usual amount of waste treeless land. The sea-views are fine, as a matter of course, and the air is pure and bracing. It is consequently much frequented in summer. It were better to call it the "watering-place," than to call it the "garden" of England.
We had come in quest of a house where the family might be left, for a few days, while I went up to London. But the whole party was anxious to put their feet in bona fide old England before they crossed the Channel, and the plan was changed to meet their wishes. We slept that night at Newport, therefore, and returned in the morning to Cowes, early enough to get on board a steam-boat for Southampton. This town lies several miles up an estuary that receives one or two small streams. There are a few dwellings on the banks of the latter, that are about the size and of the appearance of the better sort of country-houses on the Hudson, although more attention appears to have been generally paid to the grounds. There were two more of Henry the Eighth's forts; and we caught a glimpse of a fine ruined Gothic window in passing Netley Abbey.
We landed on the pier at Southampton about one, and found ourselves truly in England. "Boat, sir, boat?" "Coach, sir, coach?" "London, sir, London?"—"No; we have need of neither!"—"Thank'ee, sir—thank'ee, sir." These few words, in one sense, are an epitome of England. They rang in our ears for the first five minutes after landing. Pressing forward for a livelihood, a multitude of conveniences, a choice of amusements, and a trained, but a heartless and unmeaning civility. "No; I do not want a boat." "Thank'ee, sir." You are just as much "thank'ee" if you do not employ the man as if you did. You are thanked for condescending to give an order, for declining, for listening. It is plain to see that such thanks dwell only on the lips. And yet we so easily get to be sophisticated; words can be so readily made to supplant things; deference, however unmeaning, is usually so grateful, that one soon becomes accustomed to all this, and even begins to complain that he is not imposed on.
We turned into the first clean-looking inn that offered. It was called the Vine, and though a second-rate house, for Southampton even, we were sufficiently well served. Everything was neat, and the waiter, an old man with a powdered bead, was as methodical as a clock, and a most busy servitor to human wants. He told me he had been twenty-eight years doing exactly the same things daily, and in precisely the same place. Think of a man crying "Coming, sir," and setting table, for a whole life, within an area of forty feet square! Truly, this was not America.
The principal street in Southampton, though making a sweep, is a broad, clean avenue, that is lined with houses having, with very few exceptions, bow-windows, as far as an ancient gate, a part of the old defences of the town. Here the High-street is divided into "Above-bar" and "Below-bar". The former is much the most modern, and promises to be an exceedingly pretty place when a little more advanced. "Below-bar" is neat and agreeable too. The people appeared singularly well dressed, after New York. The women, though less fashionably attired than our own, taking the Paris modes for the criterion, were in beautiful English chintzes, spotlessly neat, and the men all looked as if they had been born with hat-brushes and clothes-brushes in their hands, and yet every one was in a sort of seashore costume. I saw many men whom my nautical instinct detected at once to be naval officers—some of whom must have been captains—in round-abouts; but it was quite impossible to criticise toilettes that were so faultlessly neat, and so perfectly well arranged.
We ordered dinner, and sallied forth in quest of lodgings. Southampton is said to be peculiar for "long passages, bow-windows, and old maids." I can vouch that it merits the two first distinctions. The season had scarcely commenced, and we had little difficulty in obtaining rooms, the bow-window and long passage included. These lodgings comprise one or more drawing-rooms, the requisite number of bed-rooms, and the use of the kitchen. The people of the house, ordinarily tradespeople, do the cooking and furnish the necessary attendance. We engaged an extra servant, and prepared to take possession that evening.
When we returned to the Vine, we found a visitor in this land of strangers. Mrs. R——, of New York, a relative and an old friend, had heard that Americans of our name were there, and she came doubting and hoping to the Vine. We found that the windows of our own drawing-room looked directly into those of hers. A few doors below us dwelt Mrs. L——, a still nearer relative; and a few days later, we had vis-à-vis, Mrs. M'A——, a sister of A——'s, on whom we all laid eyes for the first time in our lives! Such little incidents recall to mind the close consanguinity of the two nations; although for myself, I have always felt as a stranger in England. This has not been so much from the want of kindness and a community of opinion many subjects, as from a consciousness, that in the whole of that great nation, there is not a single individual with whom I could claim affinity. And yet, with a slight exception, we are purely of English extraction. Our father was the great-great-grandson of an Englishman. I once met with a man, (an Englishman,) who bore so strong a resemblance to him, in stature, form, walk, features and expression, that I actually took the trouble to ascertain his name. He even had our own. I had no means of tracing the matter any farther; but here was physical evidence to show the affinity between the two people. On the other hand, A—— comes of the Huguenots. She is purely American by every intermarriage, from the time of Louis the Fourteenth down, and yet she found cousins in England at every turn, and even a child of the same parents, who was as much of an Englishwoman as she herself was an American.
We drank to the happiness of America, at dinner. That day, fifty years, she declared herself a nation; that very day, and nearly at that hour, two of the co-labourers in the great work we celebrated, departed in company for the world of spirits!
A day or two was necessary to become familiarized to the novel objects around us, and my departure for London was postponed. We profited by the delay, to visit Netley Abbey, a ruin of some note, at no great distance from Southampton. The road was circuitous, and we passed several pretty country-houses, few of which exceeded in size or embellishments, shrubbery excepted, similar dwellings at home. There was one, however, of an architecture much more ancient than we had been accustomed to see, it being, by all appearance, of the time of Elizabeth or James. It had turrets and battlements, but was otherwise plain.
The abbey was a fine, without being a very imposing, ruin, standing in the midst of a field of English neatness, prettily relieved by woods. The window already mentioned formed the finest part.
