CHAPTER VIII.

Abbotsford and the Leasowes-The one place naturally suggestive of the other-Shenstone-The Leasowes his most elaborate composition-The English squire and his mill -Hales Owen Abbey; interesting, the subject of one of Shenstone's larger poemsThe old anti-Popish feeling of England well exemplified by the fact-Its origin and history-Decline-Infidelity naturally favourable to the resuscitation and reproduction of Popery-The two naileresses-Cecilia and Delia-Skeleton description of the Leasowes-Poetic filling up-The spinster-The fountain.

I HAD come to Hales Owen to visit the Leasowes, the patrimony which poor Shenstone converted into an exquisite poem, written on the green face of nature, with groves and thickets, cascades and lakes, urns, temples, and hermitages, for the characters. In passing southwards, I had seen from the coach-top the woods of Abbotsford, with the turrets of the mansion-house peeping over; and the idea of the trim-kept desolation of the place suggested to me that of the paradise which the poet of Hales Owen had, like Sir Walter, ruined himself to produce, that it, too, might become a melancholy desert. Nor was the association which linked Abbotsford to the Leasowes by any means arbitrary: the one place may be regarded as having in some degree arisen out of the other. "It had been," says Sir Walter, in one of his prefaces, "an early wish of mine to connect myself with my mother earth, and prosecute those experiments by which a species of creative power is exercised over the face of nature. I can trace, even to childhood, a pleasure derived from Dodsley's account of Shenstone's Leasowes; and I envied the poet much more for the pleasure of accomplishing the objects detailed in his friend's sketch of his grounds, than for the possession of pipe, crook, flock, and Phillis to boot." Alas!

"Prudence sings to thoughtless bards in vain."

In contemplating the course of Shenstone, Sir Walter could see but the pleasures of the voyage, without taking note of the shipwreck in which it terminated; and so, in pursuing identically the same track, he struck on identically the same shoal.

I had been intimate from a very immature period with the writings of Shenstone. There are poets that require to be known early in life, if one would know them at all to advantage. They give real pleasure, but it is a pleasure which the mind outgrows; they belong to the "comfit and confectionary-plum" class; and Shenstone is decidedly one of the number. No mind ever outgrew the " Task," or the "Paradise Lost," or the dramas of Shakspere, or the poems of Burns; they please in early youth; like the nature which they embody and portray, they continue to please in age. But the Langhorns, Wartons, Kirke Whites, Shelleys, Keatses shall I venture to say it ?-Byrons, are flowers of the spring, and bear to the sobered eye, if one misses acquainting one's-self with them at the proper season, very much the aspect of those herbarium specimens of the botanist, which we may examine as matters of curiosity, but scarce contemplate —as we do the fresh uncropped flowers, with all their exquisite tints and delicious odours vital within them- -as the objects of an affectionate regard. Shenstone was one of the ten or twelve English poets whose works I had the happiness of possessing when a boy, and which, during some eight or ten years of my life-for books at the time formed luxuries of difficult procurement, and I had to make the most of those I had-I used to read over and over at the rate of about twice in the twelvemonth. And every time I read the poems, I was sure also to read Dodsley's appended description of the Leasowes. I could never form from it any idea of the place as a whole: the imagery seemed broken up into detached slips, like the imagery of a magic lantern; but then nothing could be finer than the insulated slips; and my mind was filled with gorgeous pictures, all fresh and bright, of "sloping groves," "tufted knolls," "wooded

valleys," "sequestered lakes," and "noisy rivulets"—of rich grassy lawns, and cascades that come bursting in foam from bosky hill-sides-of monumental urns, tablets, and temples-of hermitages and priories; and I had now come to see in what degree my conceptions, drawn from the description, corresponded with the original, if, indeed, the original still maintained the impress given it by the genius of Shenstone. His writings, like almost all poetic writings that do not please equally at sixteen and sixty, had stood their testing century but indifferently well. No one at least would now venture to speak of him as the "celebrated poet, whose divine elegies do honour to our nation, our language, and our species;" though such, sixty years ago, was the estimate of Burns, when engaged in writing his preface to an uncouth volume of poems first published at Kilmarnock, that promise to get over their century with much greater ease. On the "Leasowes"-by far the most elaborate of all the compositions of its author-the ingenious thinking of full twenty years had been condensed; and I was eager to ascertain whether it had not stood its testing century better under the skyey influences, than "Ophelia's Urn," or "the Song of Colin, a discerning Shepherd," under those corresponding influences of the literary heavens which freshen and preserve whatever has life in it, and wear down and dilapidate whatever is dead.

A little after ten o'clock, a gentleman, who travelled in his own carriage, entered the inn-a frank, genial Englishman, who seemed to have a kind word for every one, and whom the innpeople addressed as the Squire. My Scotch tongue revealed my country; and a few questions on the part of the Squire, about Scotland and Scotch matters, fairly launched us into conversation. I had come to Hales Owen to see the Leasowes, I said: when a very young man, I used to dream about them full five hundred miles away, among the rocks and hills of the wild north; and I had now availed myself of my first opportunity of paying them a visit.

The Squire, as he in turn informed me, had taken the

inn in his way to rusticate for a few days at a small property of his in the immediate neighbourhood of the Leasowes; and if I but called on him on the morrow at his temporary dwelling— Squire Eyland's Mill-all the better if I came to breakfast-he would, he said, fairly enter me on the grounds, and introduce me, as we went, to the old ecclesiastical building which forms the subject of one of Shenstone's larger poems, "The Ruined Abbey." He knew all the localities-which one acquainted with but the old classic descriptions would now find it difficult to realize, for the place had fallen into a state of sad dilapidation-and often acted the part of cicerone to his friends. I had never met with, anything half so frank in Scotland from the class who travel in their own carriages; and, waiving but the breakfast, I was next morning at the Mill-a quiet, rustic dwelling, at the side. of a green lane-a little before ten. It lies at the bottom of a flat valley, with a small stream, lined by many a rich meadow, stealing between its fringes of willows and alders; and with the Leasowes on the one hand, and the Clent Hills, little more than an hour's walk away, on the other, it must form, in the season of green fields and clear skies, a delightful retreat.

The Squire led me through the valley adown the course of the stream for nearly a mile, and then holding to the right for nearly a quarter of a mile more, we came full upon the ruins of Hales Owen Abbey. The mace of the bluff Harry had fallen heavy upon the pile: it had proved, in after times, a convenient quarry for the neighbouring farm-houses, and the repair of roads and fences for miles around; and so it now consists of but a few picturesque fragments cut apart by wide gaps, in which we fail to trace even the foundations-fragments that rise insulated and tall-here wrapt up in ivy-there bristling with wallflower-over hay ricks, and antique farm offices, and moss-grown fruit trees, and all those nameless appurtenances which a Dutchman would delight to paint, of a long established barn-yard, farm-house, and orchard. I saw,

resting against one of the walls, the rudely-carved lid of a stone coffin, which exhibits in a lower corner a squat figure in the attitude of adoration; and along the opposite side and upper corner, an uncouth representation of the crucifixion, in which the figure on the cross seems that of a gaunt ill-proportioned skeleton. Covered over, however, with the lichens of ages, and garnished with a light border of ground ivy-a plant which greatly abounds amid the ruins-its antique misproportions seem quite truthful enough, and impress more than elegance. One tall gable, that of the chancel, which forms the loftiest part of the pile, still remains nearly entire; and its great window, once emblazoned with the arms of old Judge Lyttelton, but now stripped of stained glass and carved mullion, is richly festooned with ivy. A wooden pigeon-house has been stuck up in the opening, and half-a-dozen white pigeons were fluttering in the sunshine this morning, round the ivied gable-top. The dust of the old learned lawyer lies under the hay-ricks below, with that of nameless warriors and forgotten churchmen; and when the spade turns up the soil, fragments of human bones are found, thickly mingled with bits of painted tiles and stained glass.

It may be thought I am but wasting words in describing so broken a ruin, seeing I must have passed many finer ones undescribed; but it will, I trust, be taken into account that I had perused the "Ruined Abbey" at least twice every twelvemonth, from my twelfth to my twentieth year, and that I had now before me the original of the picture. The poem is not a particularly fine one. Shenstone's thinking required rhyme, just as Pope's weakly person needed stays, to keep it tolerably erect; and the "Ruined Abbey" is in blank verse. There is poetry, however, in some of the conceptions, such as that of the peasant, in the days of John, returning listless from his fields after the Pope had pronounced his dire anathema, and seeing in every dark overbellying cloud