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BEATEN PATHS;

OR,

A WOMAN'S VACATION

BY

ELLA W. THOMPSON.

*' It is a strange thing that in sea voyages, where there Is nothing
to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries; but in land
travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part they
omit it, as if chance were fitter to be registered than observation.
Let diaries, therefore, be brought into use."

Bacon's Essays.

" But then, alas ! they've read an awful deal.

now shall we plan that all be fresh and new,

Important matter, yet attractive too ? "

Faust.

BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS.

NEW YORK:

LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM.

1874.

Entered, accordingr to Act of Confess, in the year 1874,

By lee and SHEPARD,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

BTEBEOTYPED AT THB
BOSTON BTEUEOTYTE FOXmDBT,

19 Spring Lane.

T4^

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATEl>

TO

MARY E. BLAIR

{-8t. Urtul*"),

WHOSE WISE FORETHOUGHT AND TENDER CARE

MADE THE JOURNEY HEREIN DESCRIBED

A TREASURE OF DELIGHT;

AND TO

THE FIVE OTHER PILGRIMS

FROM " THE ROSE-BUD GARDEN OF GIRLS,"

WHO FILLED IT WITH LAUGHTER

AND SONG.

ivi637777

Digitized by the Internet Archive'

in 2008 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/beateripathsorwomOOthomrich

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Chester 9

II. Scotland 22

III. Scotland 37

IV. From Edinburgh to London. • « • 63
V. A Walk in Westminster. • • • • 65

VI. London in Water Colors. . • . • 80

VII. Sunday in London 91

VIII. Belgium . . 104

' IX. Germany 123

X. The Rhine. . . .* . . . . 135

XL More Germany 148

XII. Switzerland. 162

XIII. Shore of Lake Leman 180

XIV. Geneva . 190

XV. Chamounix 206

XVL Paris 228

XVII. Paris 251

XVIII. Homeward Bound. . . . ' . . 267

7

BEATEN PATHS;

OR,

A WOMAN'S VACATION.

CHAPTER I.

CHESTER.

" Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage."

I WANT to say, to begin with, that the writer of this
book is one of " the few, the imraorial few," left of her
sex in America, who would rather have an India shawl
any day than the suffrage ; but in dark moments, when
both have seemed equally unattainable, it has occurred
to her that most women's lives are passed, so to speak,
in long, narrow galleries, built about with customs and
conventionalities more impervious than stone. Some-
times they contract to a hot little kitchen, and the
owner might as well be a Vestal Virgin, and done with
it, her whole life being spent in keeping up the fire ;
again, like Maud Muller's, these walls " stretch away
into stately halls." They may be more or less hung
with pictures or padded with books, but they are walls
all the same. Plenty of doors lead out of these gal-
leries, but only those marked "Church," "Visits," and
" Shopping," move easily on their hinges.

9

10 BEATEN PATHS, OR

Most of us, and especially those who have been
nourished on the east winds of Boston, cast longing
eyes at the door marked with the magical word
" Europe," and it has opened freely enough when
the husband said the "Open, sesame;*" it is only
of late years that women have made the amazing
discovery that they can say it themselves with like
success, but it is well to keep the hinges well oiled,
and the rubbish cleared away from the threshold.
When my turn came, I felt as if I had been taken into
a high mountain and been promised all the kingdoms
of the earth, and had at once accepted the offer.

I joined my European fortunes, for better or worse,
to six other anxious, but no longer aimless women ;
seven is a fortunate and famous number, and we felt
that what seven women could not do was not worth
doing. We cast behind us all thought of those other
seven, our prototypes in the uncomfortable times of the
Bible, who all laid hold upon one man, that he might take
away their reproach. We meant to have no reproaches,
nor men either.

The ice once broken, the thing was so easy we won-
dered we had not done it before. If you know how
to read and write, you can easily procure a passport,
steamer ticket, and letter of credit ; the hackraan knows
where the wharf is, if you don't, and once on bonrrl,
you have only to say your prayers, and eat four meals
a day, till you see land again. American women, how.
ever "lone and lorn," are always entreated softly by
their own countrymen ; if the latter have any amiabil-
ity about them, they invariably take it with them on
their travels. It is a trait peculiar to them among

A WOMAN'S VACATION H

Anglo-Saxons — one of the few things that did 7iot
come over in the " Mayflower ; " the Pilgrims must
have picked it np in the wilderness.

There are people who actually profess to enjoy a
steamer passage to Liverpool ; I always think how un-
happy they must have been before they left home.
The motion of a screw-steamer is like riding a gigantic
camel that has the heart disease, and you do not miss
a single throb.

There is nothing to do, and too many to do it with.
There are no colors so fast that salt water will not fade
them ; brunettes change least ; the sharp wind only
makes a brighter flame burn in their cheeks ; but it is
merciless to the fair, delicate faces, whose beauty de-
pends on the lighter shades of pink, blue, and yellow.

There are traditions handed down from voyage to
voyage, that men have fallen in love at sea. I never
saw it with my bodily eyes, nor knew any one who
had ; but they must have been much undermined in
sense, and just ready to take the disease before they
left home. Flirtation and shabbiness do not naturally
go hand in hand ; they are almost as hostile as common
sense and prettiness. Cleopatra herself would have
looked faded in her oldest gown, and without her ear-
rings; and Antony would have ceased to be her "man
of men " in a flannel shirt and an unkempt beard. In
the shapeless costumes of steamer life, one may gather
a faint notion of how this world will look when the
latest ideas of dress reformers are carried out. Men
have dressed sensibly for many years; but he must
be a perfect Adonis who is absolutely handsome in a
straight suit of black broadcloth. When women are

12 BEATEN PATHS, OR

reduced to the same level in black silk trousers and
loose blouses, then for the sake of beauty and bright-
ness lying at their last gasp, men must go back to the
gay fashions of the time when old Samuel Pepys took
the gold lace off his wife's wedding petticoat to trim
his new suit.

One cannot help perceiving at once that these long
days, homeless as orphans and briny as tears, die a
much easier death at men's hands than at ours. They
positively seem to wring a kind of salt comfort out of
this rough, scrambling, ungloved life at sea; the taste
for barbarism and old coats, latent in all of them, comes
to the surface. Women never can be really happy
in any condition where they lose their good looks.
There was a vast amount of laughter and gayety on
our steamer, but I am persuaded it was but an empty
show ; we were all actors and actresses, and our real,
unvarnished selves would have wandered up and down
the deck like the lost souls in the Hall of Eblis, hold-
ing our hands on our hearts, and speaking no word to
one another.

One must be very young and very joyful, or very
old and very weary, to really squeeze any juice of
delight out of that greenest of lemons, a steamer pas-
sage across the Atlantic.

I was not seasick — that was the woe of it! to
be seasick and to get over it, is a good thing for the
body, if not for the soul ; but to be ineffibly miser-
able, too dizzy to read or knit, or play any game, and
yet able to eat and sleep, so that no one puts faith
in you, is too tedious for endurance. I know nothing
to compare with it for boredom, unless it be your
honeymoon when you have married for money.

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 13

At the best, it is a sort of intermecliate state between
death and life, not unlike the Catholic purgatory, an
uneasy and nnfra grant place, in which to repent one's
sins and. make good resolutions; and the last day,
when the steamer plods by the Irish coast, is like the
resurrection in this, that people keep coming up whom
you had utterly forgotten ; and unliJce it, in that all are
happy and smile real smiles at each other, instead of
the mechanical grins of mid-ocean.

I know not whether the shores of the Mersey are
really picturesque, and studded with lovely villas, or
whether, intoxicated by the breath of the land, I should
have seen beauty in the sands of the Desert, and srrace
in the humps of its camels.

Liverpool is just the doorstep of England — we
only stand on it lon<x enouo^h to be let into "our
old home." If you take a dock and multiply it by
twenty miles, the answer is Liverpool ; but only half
an hour distant lies the moss-grown, ohl, Roman city
of Chester, where the sums were all done, and the
slate hung up, ages ago. There is a royal road for
travellers, and most Americans choose it ; they stop at
the kind of hotel which our countrymen have put to-
gether, out of equal parts of plate-glass and ice-water,
marble pavements and supercilious waiters. They
travel in first-class carriages, because they have heard
that the nobility do so, and scatter money about as
if they were slaves to it, and were anxious to get rid
of their tyrant. All their trophies are bracelets, and
laces, and silks that will stand alone. Their poor re-
lations who stay at home, suppose that the gates of
foreign countries are closed, except to such royal prog-

14 BEATEN PATHS, OR

resses. Armies of people, especially women, yearn
all their lives to look on the cathedrals and pictures
of Europe, and die without the sight, because some
snob has said that there is no comfort in going abroad,
unless one can spend a thousand dollars a month.

An Englishman never travels, it is said, without
taking all England with him, and Americans carry
nearly always a swelling desire that the greatness of
their country should be distinctly seen in their .single
selves ; they never can realize that England is a pocket
volume, and America an encyclopaedia. It is both pos-
sible and delightful to strike into other roads, in the
beginning, than the broad one, where the crowd is —
country roads bordered with green hedges, leading to
quaint old inns that have not changed their names
since Chaucer's time.

Even in these places they know how to take in
strangers, for Americans are fair prey everywhere in
Europe ; but you get at the old stories and customs of
the place, and lay up stores for winter evenings at
home — memories that will do duty when moth and
rust have corrupted bracelets and laces.

To travel over Europe, thinking always of bodily
comfort, is equivalent to taking rooms at the best hotel
in New York for the same length of time, eating and
drinking, and lounging for a steady business, and inci-
dentally reading guide-books.

I said all this with firm faith in its good sense, tlien^
as I say it now — " what is true anywhere is true every-
where ; " and yet it did not stand by me in the hour of
need. Chester hns two or three large and gorgeous
hotels, in which the American eagle can flap bis wings

A WOMAN'S VACATION', 15

as boldly as if he were at home ; but it is also rich in
those ancient inns, in which all the characters of Eng-
lish literature have taken their ease since the English
world besran.

"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn ?" said Fal-
staff; and he might have taken it, pressed down and run-
ning over, where we did, in the little caravansary called
** Blossom's." It was quaint, old-fashioned, and rani-
bling enough to go bodily into one of Dickens's novels,
without paring off* a single feature. All sorts of wind-
ing passagea led to corner cupboards and unexpected
bedrooms. It should have been called nothins: less
than the " Red Lion," or, better still, the "Great White
Horse," where Mr. Pickwick stopped when he made
" the most extraordinary mistake of his life," in get-
ting into the same bedroom with the lady in the yellow
curl-papers. Sam Weller sliook his head doubtfully
over it, but the same thing might happen at "Blossom's "
every night, with nobody to blame.

A buxom Welsh girl, in a white cap, answers your
bell, instead of a waiter unhappy in a white tie and a
swallow-tailed coat. The narrow hall gives a glimpse
of the kitchen, with great joints and shoulders of meat
hanging from the ceiling, as it did in the franklin's
house, in the Canterbury Tales, where, says Chaucer, —

** It rayned of meat and drinke."

Your meals are served smoking hot, in a bright,
queer little parlor up stairs, and within ten minutes of
your arrival your feeling is, that you have lived there
before in some previous state of existence, and have
only come back to your old haunts at last. Unfortu-

16 BEATEN PATHS, OR

nately "Blossom's" is cheap, so that few Americans will
ever be brought to believe in it. We thought ourselves
in English clover, till we met some steamer acquaint-
ances at the door of the " Grosvenor," a grand hotel,
built by the Marquis of Westminster, for the spoiling
of the Egyptians. It was one of the Croesus party who
stood on the stairs, and said, in the true Croesus tone,
which makes one's blood run backward on the instant, —

"Are you quite sure you are comfortable? 'Blos-
som's' is so very dingy and unprepossessing, on the
outside at least."

We were well fortified with all the reasons herein
mentioned for choosing an English inn, rather than a
transplanted American hotel ; but we must have been
more or less than Americans if this bit of deprecating
patronage had not found a chink in our armor.

We w^ere not strong-minded enough to bear the
thought of Mr. Croesus supposing that we chose " Blos-
som's " out of poverty, for are we not all taught from
our cradles that poverty is the unpardonable sin?
This sort of patronage pricks sharply at first, but one
learns to expect it in one's travelling countrymen as
surely as beggars in Ireland, or fleas in Italy. We soon
after filed into a second-class car, under fire of the Croesus
party, and when we had time to take stock of our feelings,
were surprised to find so few killed and wounded.

Another form of it is the absolute conviction of each
party of travellers, that they, and none other, have
made the perfect tour. If you have been through
Scotland without visiting the Trosachs, you have made
the grand mistake of your life ; or if you have studied
the Trosachs, and passed Glasgow by on the other side,

A WOMAN* S VACATIOJSr. 17

the result is the same ; it is one of those rare rules that
work both ways with perfect smoothness.

Chester is a "well of English undefiled;" the walls
built by the Romans, when its name was Castra
(camps), have been constantly kept up and restored,
and now clasp the waist of the city with a red stone
girdle, two miles round. They are from twelve to forty
feet high, crossing over the streets on archej;, and form
a broad, even* footpath, from which to gaze into all the
faces of Chester.

They were built first in A. D. 61, and a daughter of
Alfred the Great once mended some rents in them,
which must have wofuUy used up her pocket-money.
On one of the towers Charles I. stood, to watch the
defeat of one of his armies^ and I suppose that solemn,
haunting face of his grew even longer and peakeder
than Vandyke paints it. Tliese red walls are odd
and picturesque in their way ; but were Chester and her
walls to be set down bodily on American soil, a new
army of Irishmen and pickaxes would shortly encamp
round about her, and leave not one stone upon another.
The railroad has breached them, but in the olden time
there were only four gates, defended by certain great
lords and their followers.

The River Dee flows lazily by the city, as if loath to
leave it, the same Dee which flows sorrowfully through
that little song of Kingsley's : —

*' O Mary, call the cattle home,
Across the sands of Dee."

The river gives a good gift to Chester in the way of
salmon, and the cook at " Blossom's" folded each piece
in a bit of white paper, to keep the juice in while she
2

18 BEATEN PATHS, OR,

broiled it. It is odd to peck one's breakfast out of a
paper bundle, but in no other way can one reach all the
possibilities contained in salmon.

The houses in many old streets, called " The Rows,'*
thrust out the second story from ten to twenty feet^
and rest it on pillars, as if^ after some sudden shock
(perhaps the defeat of Charles I. under the walls), they
had proposed to go outside and see about it, and after
malving the first step had thought better of it, and
staid where they were.

The covered ways, thus secured, are excellent loafing
places in a rainy climate. On one of the oldest houses,
with figures of ancient saints bulging out of the front,
is the inscription, " God's providence is mine inherit-
ance." The population havp an easy, leisurely way of
taking life, as if they had all some sort of an inherit-
ance, and it would be all the same a hundred years
hence whether this generation bestirred itself or not.
Small boys in Chester, as in other parts of England,
wear tall beaver hats, sometimes with a band of crape
about them, which gives to the American eye an ab-
surd intimation that they have lost their first wives.

The cathedral of Chester is a good one to begin with,
since it is the oldest and plainest in England. It is
about to be restored in its own style, but new stones
will rather take away than add to the satisfying beauty
that now clothes its broken arches. The abbey at-
tached to it once embraced great tracts of fertile coun-
try and many good houses, which paid tithes of mint
and cumin to the fat abbots, till the time of Henry
VIII. Monks knew how to be comfortable, as well as
other sinful souls.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 19

" The friars of Fail
Gat never owre bard eggs or owre liard kale,
For tliey made their eggs thin wi' butter
And their kale thick wi' bread.
And the friars of Fail, they made good kale
, On Fridays, when they fasted.
They never wanted gear enough
As lang as their neighbors' lasted."

They served the Lord right cheerfully in CIi ester, eat-
ing salmon on fast days, till the bluff king fell in love
with Anne Boleyn, and trampled the Catholic Church
and her monks under his feet, in order to marry her.

When the monks were driven out of their soft places, •
and all the days were fast-days, they must have been
good Christians, indeed, if they did not couple "anath-
ema maranatha" with the woman's name who was at
the bottom of it. They must have borne with great
fortitude the news of her beheadino:.

The wood carvinsfs in the cathedral are more curious
than beautiful. It certainly does not assist devotion to
have one end of your pew guarded by an astonished
griffin, and the other by a cowled monk, or to look up
to a pulpit carved all over with such heads as usually
confine themselves to dreams and masquerades. It is
as if the old carvers had interpreted literally the com-
mand that the gospel was to be preached to every crea-
ture, dragons and all.

Two curious epitaphs caught my eyes in wandering
about the cloisters. One praised a certain Frederick
Philipse, citizen of the province of New York, a faith-
ful subject of the king, who fled to England in the
"late rebellion." As he died in 1783, it proved to be,
not the late unpleasantness, which we call "the rebel-

20 BEATEN PATHS, OR

lion," but that earlier scrimmage which success made
into a revolution.

There are many little phrases cut into the enduring
English stone, touching American affairs, which force
the traveller to set his thoughts back on the dial-plate
of time for a hundred years or more.

A "cheap stone" sets forth that Dean Arderne,
of the cathedral of Chester, " did give and bequeath
all his money to the church from which he drew it
(tho' he loved his family), wishing the clergy to con-
sider whether it were not a sort of sacrilege to divert
all their money from the church to relatives who were
not needy." It would tend to edification if they had
put up another "cheap stone," to tell what the rela-
tives thought about it, and whether it had ever con-
vinced any rich priest that blood is not thicker than
water, e'en though it be holy water.

Most of the monkish lands and treasures have fallen
to the share of the Marquis of Westminster, who
seems to have outgrown the curse that used to attach
to church lands in the hands of the laity.
.i He has a park and country seat called Eaton Hall,
near Chester, which is one of the show-houses of Eng-
land. We could see onlv the outside, as it was under-
going repairs at the rate of ten thousand pounds a
week. The park is only thirty-six miles round, and
has four churches within its limits. I did not hear
whether the marquis went to church four times a Sun-
day. The park is dotted with great oak trees, whose
thickness puts likelihood at once into that old story of
Charles H. being hid in an oak, unseen, while his pur-
suers took counsel beneath it. American oaks would

A WOMAN'S VACAT/02V. 21

keep no man a secret. Groups of deer feed all about
the park in all peace and calmness, securely fenced in
by the game laws. All Chester and its visitors diive
and walk freely in this estate, which is really a joint-
stock affair, and possibly pays better interest to a stran-
ger in a single visit, than to its owner in all his life.

The favorite vehicle on a Sunday afternoon seems to
be a sort of two-wheeled cart, with timber enough in
it to make half a dozen buggies, and two seats, back to
back. Any number of children, from three to six years
old, cling about the back seat, and nothing less than a
special Providence, or an Act of Parliament, keeps
them from flying off like sparks from a hot wheel.

Chester is the grand "meet" for the mighty hunters
of all the country side. A certain Lord Grosvenor,
brother of the marquis, is Nimrod himself; he hunts
every week-day, and looks at his horses on Sunday.

1 forgot to say, what cannot be said too often of Eng-
lish ways, that the first thing to do on landing is to
marry an umbrella, and never to separate from it on
any incompatibility whatever. Nature waters her
English plants whenever she happens to think of it,
without the least calculation as to when she did it last,
and they repay her bounty with an intense greenness
and thick luxuriance, as if every separate leaf had its
own polishing. Chester is in sight of the Welsh
mountains, and many of its inhabitants are buried un-
der Welsh epitaphs, without a vowel in them.

The commonest name on the street signs is "Wil-
liams," which has no root out of Wales. If the old
Welsh saying be true, that "the way of the Williamses
is always towards their duty," Chester must be a very
steady-going place.

22 BEATEN PATHS. OR

CHAPTER 11.

SCOTLAND.

"Up with the bonnie blue bonnet,
The dirk and feather and a' 1 "

IF one visits Scotland at all, it is well to do it early
in one's tour, before the mind is jaded, and the
pockets emptied, by the magnificent vanities of the
continent.

The journey is easily made in a day from Chester
to Edinburgh, passing the border at Gretna Green, the
famous place for runaway marriages.

This sleepy little village looks innocent enough now,
but it has had far more than its share of the tragedy
and comedy of the world. The old blacksmith, who
tied so many hard knots for distressed lovers, is long
since dead and gone where he will do no more of that
work, and the sweet old flavor of romance clinging
about a stolen marriage is well nigh gone too. The
world has grown so practical, that to marry for love,
and nothing else, is become simply ridiculous.

The English country strikes one like a well-ordered
room, swept and garnished, and everything put away.
There seems nothing for future babies to do, but to

A WOMAiV'S VACATION. 23

lean on their hoe-handles and admire the industry of
their forefathers, and all the laborers that we observed
in the fields had even now begun to do it, with one
accord.

The yellow broom plant {jylaiita genista^ tlie sign of
the Phintagenets) brightens all the fields. After pass-
ing the border, the country grows rougher; a New
Hampshire woman begins to feel herself at home, but
the foreiorn feelino: comes back when she sees the
moors and hill-sides darkening under vast purple
shadows, which prove to be heather.

Who first saw the resemblance of Edinburgh to
Athens was, doubtless, a good Scotchman ; but the
man who evolved, from his inner consciousness, its
likeness to Boston, must have been a Bostonian of the
most exalted patriotism, and. deserves a statue in the
State House yard.

Edinburgh is a city set on a hill, and is so entirely a
part of that hill, that it is difficult to believe that men's
hands had anything to do with the beginning of it;
the first impression of the "Castle" must be that it
grew out of the ground, and a naked troop of Picts
and Scots, seeking what they might devour, found it
and took possession.

One of the guide-books says that Edinburgh may be
"c?on6"in a day; that guide-book must have been
written by the man who thought he could have made
a better world than this in less than a week. Amer-
icans draw their character and strong points so largely
from the Scotch, that it behooves them to linger long
and lovingly on its soil. Princes Street is well named ;
the monuments of Scott and Burns keep guard at

24 BEATEN PATHS, OR

either end, and fine houses, fit for princes, line all the
way.

If God made the country, and man made the town,
they worked togetlier- in Edinburgh ; the great hills
clasp it like arms; the air in summer is "coldly-sunny,"
with a flavor of mountains in it, and early in the morn-
ing one is waked by the "sweet jargoning" of birds,
as if each one were telling his dreams.

The first sunset walk tends naturally to the Calton
Hill, the "Acropolis" of Edinburgh, dedicated to dead
Scotchmen ; the Parthenon, designed in imitation of
the Greek temple of that name, and in honor of those
who fell at Waterloo, began and ended with one row
of Corinthian pillars, " a monument of Scotland's pride
and poverty;" but an iron fence marks out the space
which was to have been enclosed by the temple. After
all, one may count himself fortunate if, in failure, he
can forever show to people what he had meant to do.

From the Calton Hill one gets the finest view of
" Auld Reekie," or the clouds of smoke hanging over
it, which christened it by that name.

In the valley under " Arthur's Seat" lies the old city,
and the palace of Holyrood, with its familiar towers,
which appear in the background of the best portrait
of Queen Mary. The old Scotch gentry might as well
have lived on ladders, for they built their houses four-
teen or fifteen stories in height. Yet, according to their
history, they were no nearer Heaven than their de-
scendants. The hio^hest of these old towers have been
taken down for safely, but nine and ten stories are still
common. The dark alleys between them are well
called " Closes."

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 25

Ev^y thing in Edinburgh reminds you of Sir Wal-
ter Scott. He is the petted son of his country, whose
will is still law, and that country might well be spelled
Scott-land since his death. The fine drive around
Arthur's Seat was built because it was his favorite
haunt; he pays tribute to it in the seventh chapter
of the Heart of Mid Lothian. The sun never set
60 beautifully to him as from the base of Salisbury
Crags.

Nichol Muschat's Cairn, the place of lonely horror
where Jeanie Deans met her sister's betrayer, has been
reached and surrounded by cottages and gardens. It
is just a pile of stones to mark the place of any deed
of violence. One of the worst of old Scotch curses
was, "May you have a caiin for your grave." To see
it in the midst of rural peaceful life, stiikes one gro-
tesquely, like locks of hair or any other souvenir of an
old love kept for show on a centre-table.

Jeanie Deans's cottage is still a comfortable house.
One looks for Dumbiedikes tumbling down the hill on
his stiff-necked pony, and for the moment one is oddly
conscious of living and walking iu a book instead of
this present busy life.

What one sees at Holyrood is more curious and
moth-eaten than beautiful. Mary Stewart was but
poorly lodged in her palace; any gentlewoman (»f these
latter days is better provided with space and light.
The narrow winding stairs in the towers of Holyrood
give a faint notion of the dark and tortuous ways of
her court. It must have been very close quarters in
the little supper room for Mary and her favorites, be-
fore two or three of her lords, led by Darnley, her

26 BEATEN PATHS, OR

husband, stole up the winding stairs and killed ♦Rizzio
while clinging to her robe. Mary's admirers protest
that Rizzio was not her lover, but had found grace in
her eyes, because he was a good Catholic and a better
fiddler. He was dragged across the chamber and the
hall of reception, and leCt all night in his blood at the
head of the staircase. When the deed was done,
Mary dried her eyes and said, "I will now study re-
venge ; " but she put up a partition, cutting oflf a third
of the hall to hide the spot on the floor.

It was odd that those of us who had long been famil-
iar with Queen Mary's sorrows saw distinctly the stain
of Rizzio's blood, while those who heard the story for
the first time could not see it at all.

It is but barren travelling over places that men liave
made famous, if one brings no m.emories to clothe
them withal ; but when the old story and the reality
come together, they fit like pieces of armor, joint to
joint.

Mary's mirror was scarce larger than her face, but
she needed no flattery that she did not find in the eyes
of her courtiers.

The portraits of Scottish kings are shown by the
dozen at Holyrood, kings in the dark ages, who not
only never had a portrait, but many of them never
existed at all, outside the brain of the Scottish chron-
icler. The kingdom fell into ill luck, and the Stewart
line at the same time, when Maijory Bruce married
her handsome subject, Robert Stewart. When the
news of Mary Stewart's birth was brought' to her
father in old Linlithgow Castle, after a great defeat of
his army, he turned his face to the wail and groaned,

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 27

"The kingdom came wkh a lass, and it will go with a
lass."

The chapel of Holyrood, roofless and crumbling, is
more lovely in its decay than it ever could have been
in its early days. The stone remains where Mary
knelt at her raaniage with Lord Darnley, whom she
called, at first sight, "the handsomest long man she had
ever seen."

It is one long climb from Holyrood to the Cistle,
which must have been intended by nature solely as a
nest for eagles. On the way, one walks over a square
stone in the pavement, which marks the place of the
old " Tolbooth," or prison of the city. It was called
the " Heart of Mid Lothian," and its massive door is
built into the wall of Abbotsford. The Castle has
never been taken except by treachery. A young man,
taught by love, had found a way to climb over the wall
to see the keeper's daughter (" of course there was a
woman in it"), and he showed the path to thirty
others, who surprised and took the Castle. It was the
custom of Scottish queens to retire to the Castle,
when expecting the birth of their children ; and here,
in a little room not eight feet across at the longest,
w\as born James VI. of Scotland and I. of England.
The chronicle of the time tells what happened next.

The young prince was ushered into the world be-
tween nine and ten in the morning. Darnley cnme
about two in the afternoon to see mother and child.
"My lord," said Mary, "God has given us a son."
Partially uncovering the infant's face, she added a pro-
test that it was his, and no other man's son. Then
turning to an English gentleman present, she said,

28 BEATEN PATHS, OR

"This is the son who, I hope, shall first unite Scotland
and England." He replied, "Why, madam, shall he
succeed before your majesty and his father?" "Alas!"
answered Mary. "His father has broken to me," allud-
ing to his joining the murderous conspiracy against
Rizzio. "Sweet madam," said Darnley, "is this the
promise that you made, that you would forget and for-
give all?" "I have forgiven all," said the queen, "but
will never forget. What if Fawdonside's (one of the
conspirators) pistol had shot? ^ (She had felt the cold
steel on her bosom.) What would have become of
the child and me both?" "Madam," said Darnley,
"these things are past." "Then," said the queen, "let
them go!" And so ended this singular conversation.

On the wall of this little room is a prayer that no
one had greater need to offer than the beautiful
queen : —

" Lord Jesu Christ that crounit was with Thornse,
Preserve the birth, quhais Badgie heir is borne,
And send his sonne successione to reign stille
Lord in this real me, if tliat it be thy will.
Als grant, O Lord, quhat ever of his proceed,
Be to thy Honer and Praise. Sobied."

I think there never was a woman from whom so
much " proceeded " that was not to the "Honer and
Praise " of God.

In the outer room is her portrait, painted in her
teens, about the time she became Dauphiness of
France, and before craft or misfortune had marred her
face. It satisfies one's ideal of the woman whose love-
liness melted even the heart of her executioner, so that
he wished to kiss her hand before he did his horrible

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 29

office. Her portraits vary in everything except the
arched eyebrows; but this one is said to be genuine.

Scott has drawn her picture in the Abbot with
the pencil of a lover. " That brow, so truly open and
regal — those eyebrows, so regularly graceful, which
yet were saved from the charge of regular insipidity
by the beautiful effect of the hazel eyes, w^hich they
overarched, and which seem to utter a thousand his-
tories— the nose with all its Grecian precision of out-
line— the mouth, so sweetly formed, as if designed to
speak nothing but what was delightful to hear — the
dimpled chin — the stately swan-like neck, form a
countenance the like of which we know not to have
existed in any other character."

The Scottish crown jewels are but a modest show of
gold and precious stones, but so dear to the Scottish
heart, that for many years after the union of the two
kingdoms they were hidden away, by the cunning of
women, sometimes in the cellar of a church, and oftener
in a double-bottomed bed, lest the English should car-
ry them off.

They lay for a hundred years in a dusty old oaken
chest in the Castle, where they were discovered by
Sir Walter Scott at last, and shown without fee, by his
advice. Lockhart tells, in his life, how^ his loyal soul
was stirred in its depths when the old regalia came
again to light. The sceptre was last used when James
united Scotland and England, and the English chan-
cellor laid it down with the scornful Scotch proverb,
"There's an end of an auld sang."

Scottish history is rich in brave women, as they were
rich in brave sons. It was a noble Countess of Buchan

30 BEATEN PATHS, OR

who claimed her husband's right, in his absence, to
crown Robert Bruce, for which high crime and mis-
demeanor she was hung up in an iron cage outside the
walls of Stirling Gastle ; but nothing of that kind ever
kills a woman. She lived to see Robert Bruce enjoy
his own again, in spite of lier enemies and his.

In the Royal Institution is Jenny Geddes's stool,
the identical one which she threw at the head of the
prelate in St. Giles's Cljurch, when he tried to read the
collect.

"(7oZ/c, said ye? The deil colic the wame [stomach]
of ye! Would ye read mass at my ear?" This was
the signal for the final uprising of the Scotch against
the Established church, which the English were trying
to force upon them.

Near the stool is the plain box of a pulpit from St.
Giles's Church, in which John Knox used to preach so
vigorously, that '-he was like to ding the pulpit ia
splinters, and ^qq out of it."

In the same room is the "Maiden," the Scottish
guillotine, in which a sharpened wedge-like stone,
attached to a cord, serves for an axe. This stone was
wet with the blood of Montrose, and of many solemn
" Covenanters."

Tiie " Covenant," which never could have existed out
of Scotland, was laid on a tombstone in Grey Friars
churchyard to be signed, and many used their own
blood for ink. It was a true sign of the blood shed
like water which was to follow.

The Edinburgh mob has always been a fierce one,
with a deadly grasp on its rights. One of the charac-
ters in the Heart of Mid Lothian expresses its feeling.

A WOMAN'S VACATION.' 31

"When we had a king and a chancellor and parlia-
ment, men of onr ain, we could e'en peeble them with
stanes, when they were na good bairns — but naebody's
naits can reach the length of Lunnon."

The hanging of Porteous in the Grassmarket by tlie
Edinburgh mob so enraged Queen Caroline of England,
when she heard of it, that she threatened to make Scot-
land a hunting-ground.

The famous Duke of Argyle, dear to Scottish hearts,
replied with a deep bow, that in that case he must take
leave of her majesty and go down into his own coun-
try, to get his hounds ready. It was the same Duke
of Argyle who befiiended Jeanie Deans.

No one has seen Edinburgh truly who does not drive
through the Canongate, the once aristocratic street of
the city, built up by the nobility, when the Stewarts
were in their glory. Everything was done there that
makes Scotland classic. It is now crowded with the
poorest of the poor, and full of ancient and fish-like
smells. To Scott, it was full of ghosts, and he chal-
lenged every one to stand and deliver his story.
Lockhart says that "no funeral hearse crept slower up
the Canongate than Scott's landau."

John Knox's house stands there still, full of gables
and diamond-paned windows. The inscriptiofi over
the door is, "Lufe-God-abafe-al-and-yi-nychbor-as-yi-
self." One thinks of him in his black cap, striding out
of that house, boiling with righteous wrath, to preach
against the " Monstrous Regimen of Women." Many
men, since his time, have wasted their breath in that
vain crusade, and to less puipose. When Queen Mary
sent for him, hoping to moderate his zeal against her

32 BEATEN PATHS, OR

by the sight of her charms, if he had the spirit of a
man in him, he " knocked so hard against the bejiutiful
queen's heart, that she often wept bitterly." He had
the spirit of God in him, over whicli her blandish-
ments had no power; but the "Monstrous Regimen of
Women " hath continued unto this present, and the
end of it is not yet.

A noble feature of Edinburgh is its ancient charity
schools, called hospitals. Chief of these is "Ileriot's,"
for the children of the city ; and so well has it been
mannged by the magistrates as trustees, that the fund
now supports a great number oT" free schools all over
the city, as well as the hospital itself

George Heriot was the famous goldsmith of James
I.'s time, whom Scott puts bodily into the Fortunes
of Nigel. James I. asked him what was the use of
laying up money when he had no heirs, and he replied
that he could never lack heirs while there were orphan
children in Edinburgh.

Another of these hospitals prcrvides generously, as
our guide expressed it, for "poor gentlemen's sons
through no fault of their own."

I suppose no man would ever be the son of a poor
gentleman through any fault of his own.

The*" National Gallery" is just large enough to give
pleasure without fatigue. It is enough of a good
thing; another picture would crowd it. The crown
of it is a portrait of Mrs. Grahame by Gainsborough,
pure and proud enough to have only the blue Douglas
blood in her veins. It proves that all women are not
born free and equal, if men are.

The quarrel and reconciliation of Oberon and Titania,

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 33

by Sir N'oel Paton, the Scotch painter, who cannot be
enticed away from Edinburgh by any bribe, are pic-
tures to hang themselves in every memory, as well as
two fair-haired girls, by Grcuze, intensely kissable, like
all faces of his painting. In a picture of Francesca da
Kimini and her lover, reading the book which tempted
them, is a kiss that makes one's cheek warm and thrill
for sympathy. The jealous husband creeping into the
background is a blemish, suggesting sin, when in the
picture and in the story there is, so far as it goes, noth-
ing but innocence.

Ary Schoeffer has painted the afterclap of this pic-
ture, as Dante saw these same lovers floating always
together through his Inferno, and Francesca tells liini
that —

**A sorrow's crown of sorrow is reraembering happier things."

A wise man said it, and perhaps it is true ; but it
seems to me it would be a greater sorrow yet never to
have had any happy'things to remember. An agony
is better than emptiness.

In this gallery is the only authentic portrait of
Burns, with the soft but brilliant black eyes, melting
and fiery at once, which distinguished his otherwise
ordinary face.

Burns is perhaps dearer to the Scottish heart than
even Scott, on the principle of mothei-s always loving
the wayward son best.

"That is Robert Burns, the poet," said the custodian
of the gallery to me ; " perhaps you have heard of him ?"

" It seems to me I have seen the name before," I
said. " Was he anything but a poet ? "
3

34 BEATEN PATHS, OR

" T should think that was enough for one man," he
replied, and left me with scorn in his eyes.

Can it be possible that most of the Americans whom
he meets in that gallery liave not heard of Robert
Burns? That was my painful inference.

In every place where a portrait can hang in Edin-
burgh you find the face of that James who joined
England and Scotland in an unwilling marriage, after
a long and stormy courtship. Nothing but royal blood
could possibly excuse the uncouth face and awkward
figure of this only son of a beautiful mother. His legs
were so weak that he could not stand at seven years
of age, and through life he was alwnys leaning on
men's shoulders. If he had not been a king, no shoul-
der would have consented to hold him up. The de-
scendant of warriors, he must needs pad himself with
a dress so thickly quilted as to be dagger proof, and he
trembled at a drawn sword. His mind was thoroughly
cultivated, but to so little purpose that Sully called
him the "wisest fool in Europe." The Stewarts were
great in love, in war, and in beauty, but the most un-
lucky race that ever reigned. Of them all, James I.
had good fortune, and nothing else.

To walk the streets of Edinburgh reading the signs,
is like turning over the pages of the Waverley novels.
Some great names have come wofully down in the
world, such as Robert Bruce, Plasterer, John Knox,
Baker, or James Stewart, Mercer. I praised the city
to one of the Stewarts, and he said, " Yes, a fine city,
with mighty little money in it. 'A penniless lass with
a long pedigree." "

No one should turn his back on the "Land o' Cakes"

V

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 35

^imont tasting the porridge and oat cake that make
the pvmcipal food of the country people. One must be
born toSihe cakes to like them. They taste and look
most like 1)he dry yeast cakes that we use at home for
sraising brea^ It comes naturally to the Scotch tongue
pbki'ildge in the plural, as "they are too
ill take a few porridge." Another Scotch
of mailnalade, which couM not be more
feu<l liad been stirred into it.
Johnson defined oatmeal as a kind of strain
horseXi^i fingtrhid and men in Scotland.
An old Scotch nqblei^an Kgreed to it, and asked where
one could find such horses or such men. Sydney
Smith said, many years Hgi, that it took a surgical
operation to get a joke intXa^ Scotchman's head; and
not until a recent anniversa^j^ of Scott's birth did it
occur to a Scotchman to say th^he must have meant
an English joke. If a wit tljro\vte down the gauntlet
to Scotland, he had better keep Lis portcullis down
and his drawbridge up f6reverntQ|^, for the enemy is
slow, but sure. A diet of '^oatmeal, through all the
ages, must sharpen both the\^ose and temper of a
nation. The Scotch would alvvays rather fight than
eat, and oatmeal is at the bottom of it.

** O, thus it was they loved them dear,
And sought how to requite 'em ;
And having no friends left hut they,
They did resolve to fight *em."

After reading Hawthorne's exhaustive description of
the Burns's country and relics, there is not much use
in going over the journey, except to say that you have

36 BEATEN PATHS, OR

been there, and as Chesterfield told his son, " you can
say that just as well without going."

The excursion to the Trosachs (bristled country)
may be made from Edinburgh and return in a day, but
it is too hasty for comfort. The shortest time con-
sistent with enjoyment is three days. The Trosachs
were almost an unknown country until Scott planted
his verses all over it.

If you have but a few days to give to Scotland,
Edinburgh deserves them all. If you want to get at
the heart of a country, you will find it most surely in
its capital city. Alexander Smith, the Scotch poet,
whose youth promised so much more than his matu-
rity performed, describes Edinburgh «a8 a lover his
mistress.

"It is a reposeful place, because it has done enough.
Its distinction has not to be created or kept up. It is
an education in itself. Its beauty refines one like being
in love. It is perennial, like a play of Shakspeare's :
* Nothing can stale its infinite variety.' London is the
stomach of the empire, Edinburgh its subtle and far-
darting brain. It is a Weimar without its Goethe, a
Boston without its nasal twang."

In our last Scotch twilight, which, in the month of
June, lasts until ten o'clock, we walk down Princes
Street and say " more last words " to Scott's monu-
ment, which looks as if the lovely fretted spire of
some Gothic church had been lifted off the roof and
placed over his statue.

If ever we find a year lying about loose, in our lives,
with no work laid out for it, we will spend it in Edin-
burgh, and educate ourselves up to oatmeal.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 87

CHAPTER III.

SCOTLAND.

"Up the craggy mountain,

And down the mossy glen,
We canna gang a milking
For Charlie and his men."

" Then view St. David's ruined pile,
And home returning, soothly swear
Was never scene so sad and fair."

AT the " George Inn," in Melrose, the landlady,
who must have been the sweetest of Scotch las-
sies in her youth, gives one such a welcome as in our
country we keep for relatives who are rich and child-
less. It may be set down in the bill, but it is worth
the money.

Abbotsford is three or four miles away, on a well-
travelled road. Every reader of Lockhart's Life of
Scott, in seven volumes, has helped to build this " ro-
mance in stone," at least with sympathy. One has al-
most seen Sir Walter, wlien one has seen the house
that he built out of his own head. Looking only at
the house, what a head it must have been! The place
has fallen at last to Mary Monica IIoj)e-Scott, a great-

38 BEATEN PATHS, OR

granddaughter of Scott, through that daughter Sophia,
who married Lockhart. And this is the end of that
fine Scott family which Sir Walter hoped to found,
with a yearning that was like a thirst for intensity ! —
a family that should " cock up its beaver" at Abbots-
ford forever and ever, in memory of him.

Miss Hope-Scott must be more Hope than Scott,
since she wishes to shut up the place, and keep it
wholly to herself. She is the unwilling keeper of the
sacred "Black Stone " in this Mecca of tourists, and
goes away in disgust to Edinburgh when the travelling
season begins.

Visitors are admitted through a back gate and nar-
row stairs, which belittle the approach to the house,
and give an unfortunate first impression of its beauty.

Mr. Hope-Scott added a wing for the use of his own
family, thus yielding up to Sir Walter's pilgrims all
the rooms in which he had lived and written.

The highest interest hangs about the plain little
stuc\y, with a gallery and a little staircase, down which
he used to steal from his bedroom, after he had " sim-
mered " his chapters in his head during the hours of
dawn.

It was this habit of severe morning labor which en-
abled him to keep up the Waverley mystery so many
years ; his visitors, whose name was legion, could not
believe that the man whom they saw nearly all day
and evening was the writer of two or three novels a
year.

An Oxford scholar even wrote a book to prove that
the "Great Unknown" was really Sir Walter Scott,
and no other. He also proved, 1 think, that Oxford

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 39

scholars have more time on theh* hands than they know
what to do with, then as now.

Sir Walter was bred to Scottish law, and wrote little
before he was thirty. In his office of sheriff he scoured
Scottish country thoroughly. These were the years in
which, as one of his old friends expressed it, " he was
niakin' himseP." He said of his profession what Slen-
der said of his intimacy with Mistress Anne Page:
"There was no great love between us at the beginning,
and it pleased Heaven to decrease it on further acquaint-
ance;" but it gave him the habit of steady application,
which is a power of itself in the world, whether genius
is tacked to it or not.

In this study, full of "small old volumes, dark with
tarnished gold," the best of the Waverley novels were
written ; and here the last clothes that he wore, and
his walking-sticks, are kept; a little tower-room leading
out of it contains only a bronze cast of his head, t;iken
after death — a two-storied brain-house, with a swell
front and deep-set windows.

The study opens into the show-library — not a work-
ing-room at all, but rich in carving, and statues, and
things curious as well as beautiful, in which its own-
er delighted.

A hollow table, glass-covered, holds the gold snuff-
boxes and jewelled daggers and miniatures, sent to
Scott by other famous people.

Here is the furniture presented to him by George
IV., first snob in Europe, whom his loyal spirit must
needs reverence, because he was an anointed king. ,

In the drawing-room are portraits of that comfort-
able old lady, Sir Walter's mother, who does not ap-

40 BEATEN PATHS, OR

pear to have been the source of her son's genius, and
of his wife, a handsome, but dissatisfied-looking woman.
Lockhart says no more about her in the *^ Life " than
he can help saying ; but no one expects a very glowing
description, from any author, of his mother-in-law.
Some of the journals kept by her visitors call her " an
insignificant little French woman;" but the journal of
her husband, kept through many of his best years, shows
that he loved her heartily while she lived, and mourned
her sorrowfully when she died. A woman may be
said to have a successful career if she pleases her hus-
band all her life ; she would be more than mortal if
she satisfied his friends.

Scott fell in love, in his youth, with a lady of higher
rank than his own, like Quentin Durward and others
•of his heroes, but, unlike them, he was soon and bit-
terly disappointed. He took it bravely, as he took all
outrageous blows of fortune, and said of himself long
after, '' Broken-hearted for two years, my heart hand-
somely pieced again, but the crack will remain till my
dying day."

I think no woman deserved to be called " insignifi-
cant" who could " handsomely piece " a heart like his.
It was scornfully said, too, that she loved to be called
Lady Scott; but there are few women so strong-minded
that a title would not lay a flattering unction to their
souls.

The famous picture of Queen Mary's head, after exe-
cution, painted by one Cawood, hangs in the drawing-
room, and has a weird, sorrowful beauty about it, but
it is so toned down as to have nothing ghastly to the
eyes, like the head of John the Baptist, passed round

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 41

in platters, in so many pictures. The dining-room is
only shown to visitors when Miss Hope-Scott is away.
It is hung with family portraits; one of a lovely cousin,
called the "Flower of Yarrow," and another of Beardie
Scott, an ancestor, who wouhl never cut his beard
after Charles I. was beheaded. It was a queer old
fashion to wear long hair for mourning. Scott had his
bed moved into this room in bis last days, that he
might listen to the ripple of the beloved Tweed, which
flowed gently past the windows.

He had drank deep o/ riches, and honor, and wisdom,
but his last words to Lockhart were, " Be good, my
dear."

The walls of Abbotsford are lined inside and out
with quaint reminders of Scotch history and heroism —
the money-box of Queen Mary, which could never have
had much money in it, in the best of her fortunes;
the purse of Rob Roy, that had a pistol in the clasp ;
and many old suits of armor, which bear the dent of
good English blows, the sort that the Scotch were ever
fond of. A bust of Wordsworth refines the hall, which
would otherwise be all Scotch. It is told of Scotti
that when he visited that brother poet at Rydal Mount,
he was forced to slip away privately, at least once a day,
to some secluded inn, where he sustained bis inner man
with more substantial food than sufiiced for Words-
worth's necessities.

" He still went on refining,

When others thought of dining."

Among the other old iron in the hall at Abbotsford
is the " branks," a sort of iron bridle, with a gag,

42 BEATEN PATHS, OR

which used to be fitted to the heads of incorrigible
scolds, while they were led through the streets. A
chivalrous old gentleman, who had joined our party,
held up this rusty bit of old tyranny.

"Time changes all things," he said; "w^omen never
scold now."

"No," said his degenerate son; "they only have
viewsP

The guide huriied each party through the rooms at
railroad speed, rattling off the story of each faster
than a monk ever told his beads. Abbotsford saw
much good company in its short day; half England,
and all Scotland, came to visit the most noted man of
the age ; but it was never lighted, and its utmost beauty
brought out from top to bottom, except once, when a
ball was given to celebrate the marriage of the oldest
son. Even then, the battalion of misfortunes was
gathering, to break upon Sir Walter from every side,
and no man ever took arms more bravely in a sea of
troubles.

Carlyle says, with his savage truthfulness, which cuts
deeper than any lie, that "the works of Sir Walter
Scott amused the world, but did nothing to amend it."
He himself smiled at his own " big, bow-wow style,"
as he called it ; but he put into his life all the conscience
and sin)ple earnestness that were lacking in his books.
When the publishing firm of which he was a member
failed, he took all its debts, of more than half a mil-
lion of dollars, and in four years coined two thirds of it
out of his brain for the patient creditors, who had faith
in him. He fought one of the great battles of peace,
such as no man fought before or since, and deserved to

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 43

wear the title that Napoleon gave to Marshal Ney
after the Russian campaign, " the bravest of the brave."
He died in harness, dictating imaginary conversation
for new heroes, after his faithful brain had failed him.
He had the old-fashioned virtue of loyalty to church
and state, and could never be brought to believe that
all men are born free and equal ; but he did certainly
amend this world by living honestly and nobly in it all
his days. He is buried in Dryburgh Abbey, in St.
Mary's aisle, a ruin live or six miles irom Melrose, in a
direction opposite to Abbotsford. It is beautiful for
situation, with just roof enough left to cover the few
graves that have privilege there.

Sir Walter lies between his wife and his eldest son,
second and hist baronet of the name, that well beloved
son, six feet and four inches high, officer in a splendid
hussar regiment, who was to found a long line of hon-
orable Scotts, and on whose probable children Abbots-
ford was settled on his marriage.

These "probable children," like many others men-
tioned in aristocratic deeds and settlements, never ex-
isted, except on paper; and the only remaining son died
unmarried.

The childless wife of the elder son is still living, but
never comes to Abbotsford, having no claim upon it,
since she failed to provide an owner. The heathen
wives of India, when they lack children, prostrate
themselves before the idol of Life and Death, and be-
seech him continually, with flowers and baths of holy
water, to grant their desire. One tall image of Shiva,
near Calcutta, has been nearly washed away by the
devotion of women. I suppose their rich and titled

44 BEATEN PATHS, OR

sisters in Great Britain have often prayed like them,
with tears and groanings that could not be uttered, for
the " blessing of the poor." I cannot imagine a more
gnawing pain for a woman, both good and proud, than
to see an old title and a splendid inheritance pass to
some fjir-away cousin, because Heaven has denied her
children.

The bare walls of one or two rooms in old Dryburgh
remain standing, the chapel and refectory; and a great
rose window hung with ivy, more lovely in its last es-
tate than when it bloomed with stained glass, and cast
many-colored reflections in red, and yellow, and purple
on the shaven crowns of the monks.

The dungeon for restive brethren, who must some-
times have been bored to death with paternosters and
fasting, is shown, with the holes for forcing in their
hands. It is to be hoped that the ingenious brother
who contrived this mode of torture had a chance to
try it for himself before he left this sinful world. A
modern story hangs like another cobweb to the wall of
this dungeon. A young woman, who bore traces of
great beauty, inhabited it for several years, coming out
only at night in search of food. She had made a vow
never to look upon the sun, and was found dead in her
cell at last. No one knew whence she came, or what
had turned her head ; but the worthy souls who kept
her from starving thought that she had a disappoint-
ment. "Men have died, and worms have eaten them,
but not for love," said one who knew whereof he spoke ;
but he never meant it to apply to women.

They show you at Dryburgh a yew tree, seven hun-
dred years old, which must remember the monks when

A WOMAN'S VACATION, \ 45

they were seeing their better days ; it keeps their
secrets well, and if the guide had said it was seven thou-
sand years old, I know not how we could have dis-
puted him.

The village of Melrose clusters closely about its
own abbey, which would be absolutely perfect as a
ruin but for the remaining wall of a Presbyterian
church, which w\is built within it.

The old Catholic images of the Virgin and St. Brid-
get have just noses enough lefl to turn up at this dese-
cration. The stout heart of Robert Bruce is buried
there, and what there was lefl of the Black Douglas,
after all his raids, as well as the whole body of Michael
Scott, —

"A wizard of such dreaded fame,
That when in Salamanca's cave
Him listed his magic wand to wave.
The bells would ring in Notre Dame.*

In the Lay of the Last Minstrel, William of Delo-
raine is sent to open this same grave at midnight, and
to take away the magical book which had taught the
wizard all his tricks. Some old carvings, crumbling
fast into dust, are still called by Catholic names, and
remind us dimly of that pious King David of Scotland,
sometimes called St. David, who endowed Melrose, and
many other religious houses, so generously, that he was
called "a sore saint for the crown." Nothin": remains
of him but a broken head or two, high up on the
arches of the abbey. He had far better, for his fame,
have written psalms, like the king he was named for;
a poem outlasts many temples.

46 . BEATEN PATHS, OR

A graveyard surrounds the old walls, where Scott's
faithful old servants are buried; one of them — Tom
Purdy by name — did so outrage his patience, that he
made up his mind to send him away. *

"I am afraid, Tom, that we must part," said Sir
Walter, at last.

"Where is your honor thinking of going?" an-
swered Tom, with such utter trust, that his master re-
pented himself, and kept him twenty years.

The guide remarked that the graveyard contained
only modern graves, none earlier than 1620.

When we remembered that the Pilgrim Fathers first
set foot on Plymouth Rock, and Boston was a howling
wilderness in that year, we veiled our faces, and felt
that we Americans were indeed a modern people, hav-
ing no roots to speak of anywhere.

Next to Abbotsford in interest, and far beyond it in
beauty, because Nature took a contract ages ago to
beautify them, are the twin estates of Hawthornden
and Roslyn. The traveller, who divides a day between
them, hath great reward. If happily, poets were made,
not born, the family of Drummond would all have been
poets, by virtue of living, through a long pedigree, on
the romantic estate of Hawthornden. Only one was
born to it, however — Sir William Drummond, whose
soul was so steeped in loyalty, that he could not even
write of love, unless it were kingly love ; and when the
news of the murder of Charles I. was broken suddenly
to him, he died of the shock. His picturesque old
house, which seems as much at home in the landscape
as any tree in the park, is perched on a high rock, like
a bird's nest. Over against it is a glorious old syca-

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 47

more, a tree of trees, christened the " Four Sisters,"
which sheltered the poet when his friend Ben Jonson
walked all the way from London to visit him. Near
the house there are curious caves dug out of the solid
rock by men's hands, nobody knows when, in which
the Bruce kept himself in hiding for three or four years
at a time. It was a dear price to pay for being king,
at last, of the poor realm of Scotland. His hacked
and rusty old sword, four or five feet long, is still pre-
eerved in the cave. There were giants in those days I
The old entrance to the caves was over a well, so that
an unexpected visitor got a wet welcome.

The River Esk makes a deep and precipitous ravine
through the length of the estate. This was a famous
retreat for Covenanters when the red-coats were after
them ; and a projecting rock is shown where John
Knox used to stand, and stay their souls with strong
preaching.

The path to Roslyn lies through a posteni gate, up
and down both sides of the ravine, sometimes running
against a flight of rough 8tej)s, and again narrowing to
a foot in width, the water on one side, and a sheer wall
of rock, mossy and flower-flecked, on the other.

The flowers are the blue-bells of Scotland, not un-
Hke our hyacinth in shape, but of the color of summer
sky ; the ground is snowy in spots, with the blossom
of the wild onion onlv fair to see.

The Esk is but a tame little brook in June, yet in
some seasons it roars through its rocky prison to a very
diflerent tune. The path is slippery with springs, and
a spice of danger adds the last touch to its beauty.
The Esk dances into many of Scott's verses —

48 BEATEN PATHS, OR

** Sweet are the paths, O, passing sweet!
By Esk's fair stream that run.
O'er airy steep, through copsewood deep,
Impervious to the sun."

And when the young Lochinvar stole the fair Ellen
from her father's house —

" He swam the Esk River, where ford there was none.

* They have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar."

The path brings us at last to Roslyn Chapel, a feast
of Gothic carving. It was built in the fifteenth cen-
tury (ask the guide-book if I am not right), by an
ancient St. Clair (or Sinkler, as the Scotch call it), who
bet his head with the king that his dogs "Help"
and " Hold " would bring down a certain white deer
that had escaped the hunters many times. In the
moment of another escape, he vowed to God to build
a church for his glory ; and as he made this holy resolve,
the dogs sprang on the deer, so that Lord Roslyn saved
his head, and dainty Roslyn Chapel shows to this day
what a tremendous value he set upon it. Not many
heads are worth such a price! The old lords were
buried beneath it, in full suits of armor, as if even in
death they could not rest unless they were ready for
the fighu.

The "'Prentice's Pillar," "foliage-bound," differs from
all the others in being twined from base to top with a
thick but delicate wreath of leaves and flowers.
There is a tragical story clinging around it, like an-
other vine. The master-mason who built the chapel
could not understand this part of the plan sent to him
from Rome, and while he journeyed thither to study it,

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 49

with its author, one of his apprentices continued the
work ; and on the master's return he was so filled with
wrath and envy at sight of the exquisite pillar which
had baffled his own skill, that he killed the boy on the
spot.

Every square inch of the chapel is worthy of study,
and has its own history. Much of the dainty elabo-
ration seems wasted, but the masons and carvers
of the middle ages did their work with equal pains-
taking, whether men's eyes were ever to behold it or
not.

They carved lovely wreaths and crosses, and shut
them up, without a sigh, in dark cellars, or hid them
behind walls, because, according to their motto, "God
saw everything." How would they cross themselves
with holy horror at the stucco-work and sham architec-
ture of this century !

In one small cap to an archway in Roslyn Chapel
are people practising the seven cardinal virtues — feed-
ing the hungry, clothing the naked, cfcc, — with St. Petei*
and his keys at the end, to let them all into heaven.
On the reverse are examples of the seven deadly sins,
with Satan coming out of a crocodile's mouth to gob-
ble them up.

One would not notice this small stone treatise at all,
if the guide did not point it out in the sing-song drawl
invented by the father of all guides, for the torment
of travellers.

It was a tradition of Roslyn, that when one of the
family was about to die, the chapel appeared enveloped
in flames; and Scott has woven it into his ballad of
"JFair Rosabelle."
4

60 BEATEN PATHS, OR

Service is held in it every Sunday, though the owner
lives at Dysart House, thirty miles away. There are
velvet cushions for his using, and plain boards for the
"great unwashed."

The chapel is kept in repair by the shilling fee ex-
acted of every visitor; a perpetual shilling in the
glove is the only talisman that carries one safe through
the British empire. It levies a larger tax on our coun-
try now than it ever could if we had remained its
colony.

We ate a very small lunch for a very large price at
the Roslyn Hotel, and were then told by a vampire,
who had been permitted to take the shape of a man
and a brother, that the railway station was "just
round the corner." Now, the corner was half a mile
away, and after we had turned it, the station fled be-
fore us, as we devoured the way, for at least two miles
more.

We missed our train, of course, and nothing but
utter exhaustion prevented our instant return to the
hotel, and the putting to death of that unworthy Scots-
man, without benefit of clergy. We cherish the hope
that we may some time meet him in Boston, when we
will straightway beguile him into the purlieus of Dock
Square, swear to him that Niagara Falls are "just
round the corner," and there leave him, in serene
confidence that he will never find his way out in this
life.

Good society in Scotland is like that of England ; I
suppose there is but one pattern for it among Saxon
people ; but the inhabitants of the cottnges and the
crowd on the city street are no more of one blood

A WOMAN* S VACATION, 51

with the English than they were in the dayp of the
Border fights. The long, keen faces resemble the type
of New England; they are disposed to question, rather
than to affirm ; their minds are cast in the subiuno-
tive mood ; your coachman will say, " This is John
Knox's house ; you might have heard of it. Eh ? "

An intense curiosity leavens their nature; you may
wander all day in English streets, and no one will give
you a second look, scarcely a first one ; but in Scot-
land the women will drop their first-born, and leave
the porridge to burn, to run to their doors to look at a
stranger.

The Scotch love old customs, such as keeping
up the sanctuary for debtors about the precincts of
Holyrood (there is a certain stone in the Canon-
gate that marks the limit ; and if the fleeing debtor
passes that line, he is safe from the sheriff) ; but
they will suffer a slight change in their ways, if, after
a hundred or two years of consideration, the^^ per-
ceive that it will tend to their interest. Not eveh
this motive seems to reconcile the English to a new
wrinkle in the everlasting face of things.

The Scotch themselves would probably be' the last
to claim any affinity with Americans, though they have
ample chance to study them.

In the month of June four thousand travelling
Americans had already passed through Edinburgh — an
army which pays well for its own ravages.

Carriage hire is the one cheap thing in Scotland ;
an open carriage for four will take you up hill and
down for seventy-five cents an hour; but before the
next American invoice of four thousand souls shall

52 BEATEN PATHS, OR

reach them, they will doubtless have amended the
matter.

In the old days of Scotland, it was no disgrace,
and scarcely an inconvenience, to be poor; to them,
learning was most excellent, and students begged
their education from door to door, thinking no shame.

A WOMAIS'S VACATION, 53

CHAPTER IV.

FROM EDINBURGH TO LONDON".
"Every Englishman is an island." — Novalis.

EVERY village between Edinburgh and London
tempts one to leave the train, and make it a
study. The cottages of the English poor may be
damp, unwholesome, poverty-stricken holes, more fit
for the burrows of rabbits than for the homes of hu-
manity; but at a distance, their thatched roofs and gray
walls make a continual gallery of pictures. One looks
in vain for the pert white cottages with green blinds,
which, in America, defy the landscape, but insure health
and cleanliness to the inmates.

The village churches date back to the monkish times,
in many instances, and look down on all around them
w^ith such superior beauty, that the first impression is
of a devout community giving all their possessions to
make glorious their tabernacle, like the Jews in the
wilderness, content to live from hand to mouth if only
their God be well served.

We chose York for our half-way house for the sake
of its cathedral — an epic poem in stone, too cold and
perfect for love, but filling the measure of admiration

64 BEATEN PATHS, OR

to the brim. One would be more homesick for the
broken and homely arches of Chester, but Yorkshire-
men may boast forever of the loveliness of their min-
ster; human nature seems always to love best that
which is like itself, not too perfect.

It is easy to say that York Minster is five hundred
and twenty-four feet lortg, or that in the year 669 glass
was first put in the windows that birds might no longer
fly in and out, and defile the sanctuary — one may meas-
ure but not describe it. It traces its glorious propor-
tions on the memory like the images of a solemn and
stately dream, that would fall down and break in the
telling. There is an inscription somewhere on its walls
that expresses it : — .

" As is the rose the flower of flowers,
So of houses is this of ours." ^

Ruskin calls some parts of it "confectioners' Gothic;"
but one can only hope that Ruskin's case may be tried
in the next world, if not in this, by a jury of artists and
master-masons.

The music of the boy-choir is soul-satisfying, but all
the spoken part of the service might as well be the
rattling of dry bones, the sound is so completely
muddled by echoes. The great cathedrals are houses
for praise and prayer, not for preaching.

On our way out of church, one of the seven pil-
grims, who saunter through this book with me, was
suddenly transfixed under the central tower, possessed
with its beauty ; there she stood with head tipped
back, and her face lightened with the same look that
it will wear when she sees the pearly gates.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 55

Beauty is meat and drink to her, and she might be
standing tliere now but for a black-robed .verger (to
whom the central tower was an every-day affair), who
led her gently, but firmly, to the door, and shut her out
of her paradise.

There is still a well-preserved tomb to the little son
of Edward III. and Philippa, who gave five marks and
five nobles a year, forever, to purchase prayers for his
soul. They have ceased to pray for his soul, if they
ever did it, but the sura is still paid to the dean and
chapter. In England, a thousand years are as one
day.

The archbishop's palace is a little out of town, but
the deanery is beautiful enough for a prince.

An English clergyman holding a high office in a
cathedral, after inducting four sons into fat livings, is
said to have quoted the verse, "As for me and my
house, we will serve the Lord." Nothing in all Eng-
land so probed Hawthorne's vein of satire as the luxury
of its clergy. " Every cathedral-close in turn has seemed
to me the loveliest, cosieit, safest, least wind-shaken, and
most enjoyable shelter that ever the thrift and selfish-
ness of mortal man contrived for himself How de-
lisrhtful to combine all this with the service of the
temple ! "

A cultivated Englishman said to me of Our Old
Home, "I know that Hawthorne received constant
kindness and admiration in England; but if he had
been insulted and trampled on every day of his life by
Englishmen, he could not have written a bitterer book
about us."

The walls of York are broken and battered to the

66 BEATEN PATHS, OR

ground, in many places, more by war than time, but
what there is left of them is religiously preserved. In
the wars of the Roses, the head of a Duke of York,
with a paper crown on it, was fixed to one of the gates
that "York might overlook the town of York." Coney
street is the finest street of York, formerly " Conynge,"
the old Saxon word for Jcing^ meaning " the man who
can ; " the word and the meaning are equally corrupted
in these latter days, for the king is more often than not
the man who can't.

In a long, vagabond walk about the city, we stumbled
on the old church of St. Cuthbert, founded in 1066,
soon after the coming over of William the Conqueror.
The oaken doors are black as the nails that stud them,
and the pathway to the entrance is paved thick with
gravestones, as if the bodies beneath had not lost inter-
est in the church-goers that followed them.

The people of York, like other city people, have their
angles of temper and dialect well rubbed off, but the
country side of Yorkshire has a language almost unin-
telligible in London.

For looks, Robert Collyer says that the men of his
shire resemble him in square solidity of frame, and for
character, Charlotte Bronte has carved out a type in
her books, which is acknowledged to be perfect.

In her part of the shire, the barren moors make all
the landscape purple with heather ; and so poor is the
region about Haworth, where she lived, that it has
come to be a proverb in Yorkshire, when one knows
not which way to turn for poverty, " You must do as
they do in Haworth — do as you can." Poverty has
so hardened their hearts and sharpened their wits, that

A WOMAN* S VACATION. 57

no one can overreach them in a bargain ; and so tena-
cious are they of old grudges that they " will carry a
stone in their pockets seven years, then turn it, carry it
seven years more, and throw it at last."

We were in hot haste to reach London before " the
season " should be over. It comes to an end about the
first of July, with the closing of Parliament, and every
one who has a house* of his own, or an invitation from
a friend, goes into the country. According to fashion-
able novels, London is empty; but it is no more emp-
ty tlian a panful of milk- after the cream has been
skimmed off.

You can see the old churches, and palaces, and by-
ways at any time, —

" You never tread upon them but you set
Your foot upon some ancient history, —

but in driving up and down Rotten Row in Hyde Park,
you see the people who make history.

Thousands of carriages, plain or coroneted, move
slowly up and down the Row, from the gates to the
" Albert Memorial," one of the most tremendous tomb-
stones ever raised by a disconsolate widow to the dear
departed. At each corner of the foundation are co-
lossal groups representing Europe, Asia, Africa, and
America ; then four broad flights of steps close around
a marble pedestal, carved in very high relief, with fig-
ures of all the most famous men in literature and art.
Above them is the sitting statue of Prince Albert of
Saxe Cobourg, and over all is a pointed stone canopy
rising high in air, and glittering as pounds sterling

58 BEATEN PATHS, (9i?

could make it, with gilding and brilliant colors. It is
a barbaric feast to the eye; tlie only discrepancy about
it is Prince Albert himself; perched up above all the
nobility of talent, he has the effect of an anti-climax.
It is like one of the Pharaohs building a pyramid in
which to bury a sacred cow. If there were to be so
noble a monument to EngHsh wealth and pride, it
would seem that English history could afford a more
famous name to crown it than that of a handsome Ger-
man princeling, who had the luck to marry a queen, to
beget nine heirs to the throne, and to amuse himself
with literature and art, when the jealous commons left
him nothing else to do.

Authors need no princely patrons in these days; that
occupation is gone from rich people.

A hundred years hence, when an English child looks
at this " Memorial," and insists on knowing what Prince
Albert was famous for, the only answer can be, that he
won the love of the richest woman in England.

The carriages that crowd the Row between ^y^ and
seven in the afternoon are usually occupied by dowagers,
with now and then a pretty girl on the front seat ; but
most of the young people are on horseback, in the ring
fenced in for them. Every woman looks well in a rid-
ing habit if there is any prettiness possible to her ; but
the dowagers, the heavy artillery of English society,
are nearly always built as Hawthorne painted them
with his coarsest brush. "She has an awful ponder-
osity-of frame. . . . When she walks, her advance is
elephantine. When she sits down, it is on a gi'eat
round space of her Maker's footstool, where she looks
as if nothing could ever move her."

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 59

Light silks and rich laces, and what would be called
"opera bonnets" in America, are tlie rule for this after-
noon drive ; yet a thoroughly well-dressed woman in
the Park is rare as the phosnix among birds, for we
sought her with labor and pains. To American eyes,
everything is of last year's fashion ; the material is rich
and costly enough in itself, but the effect is as if not
one Englishwoman in a hundred had ever seen herself
from head to foot in a mirror.

Evidently taste and style, which mould a costume,
however varied, into an harmonious whole, are not to
be bought for English money. In such matters, pounds,
shillings, and pence are not legal tender. M. Taine, in
his visit to England, wondered and grew sad over this
lamentable English blindness to the fitness of things
in dress. One lady assured him that all her dresses
came direct from Paris, and his dreadful comment was,
that she must have selected them herself.

The women of the middle and lower classes, whom
one meets in shops and picture galleries, are so many
walking hat-racks on which different articles of dress
are loosely hung without any relation to each other or
to the season.

The fair-haired, broad-chested Englishman is much
handsomer than the same type appearing in women ;
what is large and noble in a man's form and face be-
comes coarse and repulsive in a woman.

Beautiful stuffs beconie corrupted in English wearing,
as fine names suffer a sort of "sea chance" in Ensrlish
speech ; this drive called Rotten Row was once the
"Route de Roi" (the king's way) ; Charing Cross was
the Cross of Chere Reine, the last halting-place of the

60 BEATEN PATHS, OR

funeral of Eleanor of Castile before her body reached
Westminster Abbey; Greenwich is Grinnidge; Har-
wich, Harritch ; Bohun, Boon ; Beauchamp, Beechara ;
and, woi-st of all, Cholmondely, Chumley. The Eng-
lishman never hurries except in pronouncing proper
names.

We christened the prettiest of the ladies moving
slowly past us by the names that Thackeray and Trol-
lope have made familiar; not one was noble enough
for Ethel Newcome, or coldly beautiful enough for
Lady Dumbello, but it was easy to identify Lady Glen-
cora Palliser, and Lily Dale looking up and down the
Park for the faithless Crosby.

When the plot was thickest, there was a sort of mur-
mur in the crowd, and policemen scattered the car-
riages right and left to make way for " the princess."
The liveries of the footmen were faced with scarlet;
otherwise there was nothing to distinguish the equipage
of royalty. The Princess of Wales and her sister,
wife of the Russian Czarovitch, occupied the carriage
alone. The princess sat very upright, looking right
and left with an unvarying smile. She has the same
fair and sweet expression which is familiar in all her
pictures, but she has faded terribly since she came to
England,

" Blissful bride of a blissful heir."

I fear it soon dawned upon her that these two " bliss-
fuls " were only a poetical license. She looks like a
woman trained in every hair and muscle to bear the
gaze of strangers, and " to smile, and smile," whether
her heart were light or heavy.

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 61

A woman may take some comfort in bein^ a princess,
because she can set the fashions, and become the mother
of kings ; but, on the other hand, she can seldom marry
her true-love, or have her own way in the training of
her children ; she can never prefer her friends to honor,
or give a hearty snub to her enemies, for fear of losing
her popularity. After all, I think, if women had their
choice of position in the world before they entered it,
the princess-ships would go a-begging. Alexandra wore
a suit of light-brown silk, embroidered with flowers of
a darker shade, and a small hat with a long, light-blue
feather. She was the best dressed woman in the Park,
but not so young or so pretty as her sister Dagmar,
who was then on a visit to England with her Russian
husband. These two lovely sisters, who grew up to-
gether in the modest little court of Denmark, will
come to high preferment on the thrones of England
and Russia. They may be

" Perfect women, nobly planned,"

but it was their prettiness that did it. Beauty is but
skin deep, and handsome is that handsome does, but
fair faces will sit on thrones while men have the
choosing.

It is a pretty custom to relieve the gloom of Lon-
don streets with a row of bright-colored tiles across the
windows filled with flowers in bloom; and flowers
always rush into blossom in English air, as if they loved
to do it and scorned to be coaxed.

Another lively feature is the continual emblazonment
of the queen's arms over the shop doors — "The lion

62 BEATEN PATHS, OR

and the unicorn fighting for the crown." Shopping in
London lets patience have its perfect work. Each
article is put away after inspection, and often tied up
in a bundle with a Gordian knot, before another is
shown. The idea seems to be that " time was made for
slaves," and free-born Britons have no need to save it.
"There's another day coming" should be the motto of
the English arms; "Dieu et mon droit" is obsolete.

One knows at once that an Enejlishman's house is
his castle, when he sees that the hall doors have no
handles on the outside. No one can enter without
giving a previous signal ; London neighbors cannot
"run in." When I first laid my hand on the spot
where the handle ought to be, in any Christian door,
and found only a^ blank, I stared at it as if it had
played me a trick of magic; but one soon finds out
that door-handles are not necessary to comfort, nor
door-plates either, which are found only on those
houses in which some business or profession is carried
on. It is just as easy, too, to pull a spike in the fence
as a regular bell-handle, when you have learned the
trick of it.

Perhaps July is the month when London may best
sit for its photograph; then, if ever, it wears the happy
expression. After months of rain comes the "clear
shining" that is so delicious in moist climates.

The dingy old markets turn poetical with moss-rose
buds and scarlet mountains of strawberries. The latter
are never sold in boxes, only fair on top and a snare
and delusion beneath, but they are scooped up by the
pound into paper bags, which never blush for their con-
tents. One makes two bites of a strawberry in Eng-

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 63

land; each one is big, cnsp, and self-contained. It is
the custom to serve them in their own hulls; and when
eaten, each one is held by its stem, and dipped sepa-
rately in sugar and cream, as it deserves. It is a lei-
surely, genial way of doing thera justice, only second
to picking thera off a hill-side. It makes one glad that
fingers were made before spoons.

A favorite resort for Americans in London is the
Langham Hotel, near to Regent Street and the best
beloved shops; there you will meet your best friend
and your mortal enemy, if anywhere; but the gathering
of our tribes is so great that one must almost coin one's
self into shillings to secure good attendance. There is
a legion of other places in London where Americans
can be at home for much less money, if it were not for
that harrowing dread, which doth most easily beset us,
of being thought poor.

Since everybody went to Europe last summer, it did
not surprise me that " the Professor " should be there
too. He had swept Irelstnd, and Scotland, and Eng-
land with a new broom. "But in all my going up and
down the earth," he said, " nothing surprises rae more
than the perpetual appearance of American ladies trav-
elling alone in all places of interest. From the heights
of old Londonderry to the vaults of St. Peter's, they
crop up everywhere, a rule unto themselves, self-pos-
sessed and regnant. If they have a vulnerable spot,
it is not in their heels, for no rough road turns them
back." I suspect that the Professor means to put that
sentence into a lecture when he goes home, and he
might have dwelt on it for an hour if I had not inter-
rupted him to ask, like Meg Dods, " What for no ? " I

64 BEATEN PATHS, OR

reminded him that there were times in every woman's
life when a long journey is almost her salvation ; if
she is devoured with gnawing cares, or, what is worse,
with pampered indolence, there is nothing more to be
desired for her than the sudden snapping of old fetters,
and the stirring up of unused brain-power.

"Of what, did you say?" asked the Professor at this
point.

To go to Europe with a husband or father, who will
take all the trouble and share all the pleasure, is some-
what like being carried about in an old-fasliioned sedan
chair on men's shoulders; but to go with a party of
lone women is to discover a new world. It involves
self-sacrifice, sudden smothering of old prejudices, hard
labor and harder patience ; but so does everything else
that is worth having.

The Professor smiled paternally at me, and said,
"Yes?" only yes, and nothing more. It was the
*^ Boston yes" with an interrogation mark after it.

Trust me, O beloved reader, the best of men and the
dearest of husbands are all Turks in their hearts!
They would hide their wives behind veils and lattices
if they could, while they make the "grand tour." It is
hard to get on with them, but think, for a moment, how
dreary it would be to get on without them. With all
their faults, we love them still 1

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 65

-CHAPTER V.

A WALK IN WESTMINSTER.

** The English are a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick
ingeniousness and piercing spirit ; acute to invent, subtle and
sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the
highest that human capacity can soar to." — Milton.

"John Bull has grown bulbous, long-bodied, short-legged,
heavy-witted, material, and, in a word, too intensely English.
In a few more centuries he will be the earthliest creature that
ever the earth saw." — Hawthorne.

THE guide-book quotes the saying of an old trav-
eller (perhaps the Wandeiing Jew), that if he
had but one day in London, he would ride up and down
its famous streets and parks, and stop once — at West-
minster Abbey. If I had ten days, which is the very
least that London should receive from the most merci-
less tourist, I would still go to the abbey, and the
Houses of Parliament, on the first day, lest the world
might come to an end before I could bless my eyes
with them.

The abbey is the only place where tombs and me-
morial tablets are cheei-ful company. The constant
inscription of famous and familiar names is like the
sudden meeting of friends long looked for. It is a live-

66 BEATEN PATHS, OR

]y imagination, indeed, which could build unto itself a
finer Westminster Abbey than the reality, and the first
feeling, when one stands on its worn floor, is a sort of
grateful surprise, like that of the Queen of Sheba,
when she came to see Solomon, and, with a sigh of
pleasure, confessed that " the half had not been told
her." The windows of the abbey are its crown of
glory ; they make good cheer in a solemn place. They
are said to do honor to certain kings and jjatriarchs,
part Hebrew and part English; but to my mind they
are a direct translation, into brilliant color, of certain
verses in the Prayer Book, — " the glorious company
of the Apostles — the goodly fellowship of the Proph-
ets — and the noble army of Martyrs," who are sup-
posed to praise God continually, and to pay some
attention to the strivings of mortals towards a holier
life.

Some of the epitaphs are peculiarly unfit for sacred
walls, like much of the wicked dust buried beneath
them. If the devotional feeling survives such a dog-
gerel couplet as that on the tomb of Gay, —

\
"Life is a jest, and all things show it.

Once I thought so, now I know it," —

it is gone long before the daily service is finished. The
careless, rattling way in which this is performed, is an
early and late reproach to the dean and chapter. In
the mouth of the man who read the Apostles' Greed,
it might as well have been the children's rhyme, —

** Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked," —

.-^^

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 67

for all that the closest attention could make of it with-
out the Prayer Book.

It is a shamefaced task to follow after Addison, and
Lamb, and Washington Irving, in talking about the
abbey, but that every one may find his own crumbs
falling from this table of the past. The reader of
Elia recognizes easily the tomb of his dear Duchess
of Newcastle, lying on higher pillows than those of
her husband. She came of a "good family," because
"all her sisters were virtuous and her brothers valiant."
It would go hard with some families if this test were
applied to their goodness, and that may be the reason
why every one who reads them, thinks them odd and
quaint, when nothing could be more simple and true.
She wrote manv books, but she had no issue. It is
odd to notice how invariably, in these epitaphs, those
women are most glorified who had the largest families.
Napoleon crystallized the opinion of forty centuries,
when he told Madame de Stael that "she was the
greatest woman, who had the most sons." In York
Minster, on a memorial tablet, one reads that a certain
Jane Hodson, wife of the chancellor of the cathedral,
gave birth to twenty-four children, and died in her
thirty-eighth year. "One, that was a woman, sir; but,
rest her soul, she's dead ! " Of course tombstones and
figurf s cannot lie, and it is devoutly to be hoped that
the resurrection will not come for a thousand years at
least, that Jane Hodson may have a long rest. Per-
haps they were all daughters — think of twenty-four
daughters in one house! — think of the eleven thou-
sand virgins of Cologne! and wonder not that Jane
Hodson died before she was forty I

68 BEATEN PATHS, OR

One thinks of the old fable of the fox taunting the
lioness with bringing forth only one whelp at a time,
and the lioness proudly replies, "One, but a lion!^'' It
seems to have been reserved for the nineteenth century
to discover the tremendous fact, that in children, as in
precious stones, quality rather than quantity is to be
desired.

An army of good women " sleep well, after life's fit*
ful fever," in the abbey. Of one, it is said that her
death made not only her husband, but '^virtue, worth,
and sweetness, widowers." I have no doubt they all
married again right speedily.

Of a certain Duchess of Buckingham, it is said "the
duke and she lived lovingly and decently together, she
patiently bearing the faults she could not remedy." It
was a sweet old fashion of women to endure and make
no sign — I fear it will have gone out altogether when
they get their rights.

Another was, "Blest with two babes, the thirde
brought her to this." "TViis" is .a fearfully and won-
derfully carved monument, Which " Cecile, her hus-
bande," built for her, "to prove his love did after death
abide." He chose a material which, abides much longer
than love.

One bereaved husband inscribed on his wife's tomb,
"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away —
blessed be the name of the Lord." He was thankful
for both boons, but he had the grace to put this equiv-
ocal compliment into Hebrew, which she probably
could not understand.

The name of Lady Russell, maid of honor to Eliza-
beth, is sounded in our ears to this day by the vergers,

A WOMAN'S VACATION', 69

who take us through the chapels, because she died of
the prick of a needle. It is sometimes as good a
ticket, for one's passage down to posterity, to die oddly ^
as to die heroically, and it is far less trouble.

These black-robed vergers, like all other foreign
guides to old churches, seem to have pickled them-
selves for years in poor brandy, perhaps as a remedy
against mould and damp. A blind person could easily
follow them by the sense of smell.

Every one pays tribute of a smile to a certain empty
place made ready for a woman, who scorned to occupy
it. A worshipful earl of James I.'s time built the usual
stone table, had his own effigy placed in the middle,
and that of his first wife on liis right side, as was her
due, leaving an equal space on his left for his second
love; but this lady would have the place of honor or
none, and had herself buried elsewhere.

The statue of Mrs. Siddons bears a strono: resem-
blance to the present reader and actress, Mrs. Scott-
Siddons. She stood on a tragic pedestal all her life,
as she does now in the abbey, and she could never
step down from it into common life. Sydney Smith
said she always stabbed the potatoes, and she once
quelled a riotous crowd by simply standing up in her
carriage and saying, ^'-I am Sarah Siddons P

It is almost an invariable custom on English tombs
to make the name of the survivors, who erected them,
quite as conspicuous as that of the occupant, thus in-
geniously blowing the trumpet of the living and of the
dead at the same time.

Henry VII.'s chapel is the apex of the abbey's
perfection, although some unfortunate was learned

70 BEATEN PATHS, OR

enough t
buildinsr.

enough to see that it did not match the rest of the

" Here's an acre, sown, indeed,
With the richest, royalest seed."

For many centuries no one outside of royal blood
could be buried there, but the plebeians crept in at
last, as they do into every kingly privilege. A king
has little remaining to him now that he can really call
his own but a title and a grave.

The stone carving of this chapel roof is delicate as
the ivory carving of a chessman, or, better still, the
lavish leafoge and flowering of a rose bush in June.
In one aisle is buried Mary, Queen of Scots, and in
the other her successful enemy, Queen Elizabeth. The
width of the chapel divides them in death, as the great
gulf between beauty and intellect divided them in life
— the woman who was beautiful and knew it, and the
woman who was not beautiful, but forced all the world
to call her so. The chronicle says that Queen Bess
questioned Melville sharply and closely whether Mary
Stuart w^ere taller than herself, and extorting' an affir-
mative answer, she replied, "Then your queen is too
tall, for I am just the proper height."

In this chapel is a round-cheeked baby lying in a
stone cradle, and well covered up from the church
damp.

The seats where the monks listened to the endless
services of the old religion were contrived, in case they
grew drowsy and lost themselves, to give way beneath
them, which must have been a lively warning to their
fellow-sufferers. They managed these things better in

A WOMAN'S VACATION 71

Catholic times than in these latter days. Near by is a
Bplendid tomb, built by the first Duke of Buckingham
and his wife, which quite fills up the family burial-room,
so that any other dead Buckinghams must be tucked
into corners.

The epitaph ought to have been, "After us, the
Deluge."

To English great men, Westminster Abbey is a sort
of posthumous reward of merit. I never heard of but
one who objected to sleep his last sleep within its
walls. Sir Godfrey Kneller, a famous painter of famous
faces, did not yearn for the abbey, " because they do
bury fools there," but later years proved to him that
they do bury fools everywhere.

The last great man buried there was Dickens, and
by his own request he has no monument. His admir-
ers must hope that the three-volumed epitaph, which
Mr. Foster is now writing about him, has the lying
quality of most epitaphs. As was said of another
biographer, it would make death more terrible to think
of having one's life written by such a friend. Dick-
ens's ghost should haunt his pillow and quote in his
ear, "I can take care of my enemies, but Heaven pre-
serve me from my friends!" The old effigies lie flat
on their backs, or lean comfortably on one elbow, but
in the more modern monuments, the statues are too
often balanced on one leg, or stand forever in some
pugnacious attitude, which tires and strains the eye
to look at. When marble and repose are divorced,
it wrongs the fitness of things; and when sculptors
learn that it is unnatural and repulsive to be always
straining one's muscles in marble, as well as in the

72 BEATEN PATHS, OR

flesh, there will be a new and glad sunrising in their
art.

The Chapter House of the monks, which long held
the House of Commons, is now only the depository of
curious writings, such as the certificate of the delivery
of the heart of Henry HI. to a certain abbess, to whom
he had promised it. I cannot imagine what a woman
should want with a man's heart after he was dead.
The Doomsday Book is there too, which, eight hundred
years ago, made the same heart-burning that an income
tax does now. The roof rises from a central pillar like
the graceful branches of a palm-tree, but its sublime
effect is lessened on looking into a glass case contain-
ing skeletons of rats and old rags, that were found in
very ancient parts of the cloister, and hence thought
worthy of preservation.

** Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away."

There would be some sense in keeping Caesar's clay
in a glass case, if one could identify the right hole, but
one must be born and bred in England, to get any
satisfaction out of sacredly preserving the skeleton of
the rat that made the hole.

We found our way with some trouble to the Jeru-
salem Chamber, which was full of the perfume of a
new cedar wainscoting. Whenever any great thing is
done in England, it is sure to have a root or two
springing out of this chamber. The elect doctors meet
there every fortnight to compare notes of a new trans-
lation of the Bible. When they have finished it, I
fear some people will have to be converted over again,

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 7^

the old texts will wear such different faces. Henry
IV. died there. It had been prophesied to him that he
should die in Jerusalem, and he had never ventured to
go to the Holy Land.

King Henry. — ** Does any name particular belong

Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?"
Warwick. — " 'Tis called Jerusalem, my noble lord."

I asked the porter of the abbey why this room was
called Jerusalem, and he said, "Because that was the
name of it." I have sought far and near for a better
reason, but have not found one. Near it is the dining-
room of the queen's scholars at Westminster School,
savory with the ghosts of departed dinners. The
tables, much hacked with school-boy knives, are made
of oak from the Spanish Armada.

I had reached the Jerusalem Chamber by a long de-
tour, through cloisters and ancient passages, fragrant
of cedar, but I left it by a little door opening directly
into the abbey itself. The longest way round was, in
this case, the shortest way home.

When Heinrich Heine went throug^h this home of
dead Englishmen, he gave a shilling to the verger, with
the remark, that he would have given him more if the
collection had been complete.

In the shadow of the abbey is the old parish church
of Westminster, where Cromwell was married, but I
don't know that any special interest attaches to the
fact. He mis^ht as well have been a bachelor all his
days, since his family proved too weak to hold the
kingdom that he bequeathed to them.

Just across the square, where one may, perhaps, meet

74 BEATEN PATHS, OR

a black gowned lawyer witK his gray wig put on awry,
are the Houses of Parliament. If the dress of English
lawyers was intended to inspire respect, it is effectually
banished by their careless way of wearing it.

There are few more ludicrous sights than a red head
in a gray wig that is too small for it.

The noblest entrance to the Houses of Parliament is
by the great hall, in which Charles I. and Warren
Hastings came to grief, and where, in the small court-
rooms leading out of it, smaller sinners are daily get-
ting their deserts.

At this time the Tichborne trial drew a crowd every
day to see the " claimant " come out of court. He is
thie very picture of a butcher. He could not look
more like one, if he had been pre-ordained to that
trade from the beginning of the world. The only
thing going on in the hall during our visit was the
manual exercise of a troop of bare-legged Highland-
ers. There were hundreds of men in it, but such was
the immensity of the hall that they were in nobody's
way. The countless rooms and galleries of this vast
talking-place of the nation are almost too gay and
modern for English taste. It must be a satisfaction to
them to see that the stone, of which it is built, is
already beginning to crumble, as if ashamed of its
newness.

The way to the "Ladies' Gallery" in the House of
Commons is a straight and narrow path, and i^v^ there
be that travel it. By means of a powerful letter of in-
troduction, which did set us forth to be very remark-
able women indeed, we softened the heart of Mr.
Moran, the hard-working secretary of the American

A WOMAN'S VACATION' 75

legation, who, for fifteen years, has had the training
of our ministers to their court duties, and were ad-
mitted to the gallery between three and four in the
afternoon. The session often lasts all night, but there
is a tacit law, that no vexed questions shall be brouglit
on the floor after midnight. The Ladies' Gallery is
tucked under the very ceiling of the room, and closed
in with brass lattice-work, like that from which Turk-
ish beauties look down on their lords' pastimes without
being seen. It is evident enough that women were of
very small account in English politics when Parliament
was first established, while large,* open galleries sur-
round the hall for male visitors. The members of the
House wear their hats, except when speaking, which
may be a relic of the time when government work
was done out of doors, or it may be a delicate English
way of intimating that the Commons are lords of crea-
tion— whatever good reason they had at first, they
evidently wear their hats now because the room is so
crowded there is no other place to keep them.

The two generals of government and opposition,
Mr. Gladstone and Disraeli, remain uncovered all the
time. No one in the galleries may wear his hat, not
even the Prince ef Wales himself.

Some "sweet little cherub that sits up aloft" for the
guidance of forlorn women must have led us to choose
that day of all others.

When we first looked down through the lattice, a
tall man, in a coat of miraculous fit, was speaking in
a careful monotone, with every sentence rounded like a
ball. He seemed at a loss for an occupation for his
hands, and maltreated his pockets a good deal at first;

76 BEATEN PATHS, OR

but this restlessness soon passed away, while the quiet
of the room was intense. An upward turn of his head
showed the features of Disraeli. It was a long-ex-
pected speech on the abolishing of intermediate courts
of judicature in Scotland and Ireland. He paid many-
studied compliments to the government, and the only
restless listener was Mr. Gladstone (divided from him
by the width of a table), who fidgeted about his seat,
made notes on a bit of paper, and sometimes whispered
a word in the ear of his neighbor. Mr. Gladstone
replied to him, point by point, with a swift, clear utter-
ance, that was music to ears strained by listening to
Mr. Disraeli's thick voice and measured j^eriods. He
called his opponent's argument " an inverted pyramid
without any reason, he might say, with not a rag of
reason in it." He answered a slisjht slur on Scottish
brains by saying that he had always looked on Scot-
land as "an exporting country, having too many brains
through all time for her own market," which called forth
great applause from certain sandy-haired and sharp-
featured members, whom I took to be Scotchmen.

When these two lions had done roaring, and smaller
I ones began to free their minds, the decorous stillness
changed to perfect confusion ; the members began to
write letters and talk to their neighbors, while not a
few composed themselves to sleep. Mr. Disraeli, as he
listened, did so discharge his face of every particle of
expression, that he looked as if he heard only the lull-
ing sound of rain on the roof.

Times are grown into joint for him since, as a young
man making his maiden speech, he was forced by
coughs and hisses to sit down. He yielded then, say-

A WOMAN* S VACATION'. 77

ing calmly, " I will sit down now, but the time will
come when you shall hear me." Mr. Disraeli can com-
pel English attention, which, in itself, is a labor of
Hercules, and he can write "Lothair," but he can lever
make himself an Englishman. When he was taunted
with his Jewish descent, he retorted instantly, "When
your ancestors were squalid savages digging in the
earth for roots, mine were princes in the Temple." An
Englishman, in like case, would have put up his eye-
glass and stolidly glared down his enemy without a
word. He is said to have been deeply attached to that
ancient wife, who loved him like a mother, and this
was his first speech since her death.

The crowded House of Commons is perhaps as good
a place as any to look for the type of English gentle-
men. There is a certain family resemblance between
them, as there would be in the most heterogeneous
gathering of tribes after they have eaten and drunken
and slept together long enough, with the one exception
of Mr. Disraeli. I think no twin is possible for him.
"Nature made him, and then broke the mould."

Is it not Holmes who says that one test of a gentle-
man is not to say "haow"and not to eat with the
knife? In bank, and street, and shop, in England, T
constantly heard the flat sound given to words having
ou in them. Even in the House of Commons some
one said "paound" and "haouse." Since "haow" has
reappeared in this well of English undefiled, we may
perhaps soon teach our children to eat with their
knives. Gail Hamilton lays down the law that the
talisman of gentlemanhood lies in the finger-nails. An
old English court decided that he was a gentleman

78 BEATEN PATHS, OR

who kept a gig. But James Hannay settled it forever
for Englishmen, ''No one could be a gentleman unless
his ancestors wore chain-armor in the thirteenth cen-
tury." It behooves Americans to look for other tests.

A swell young Englishman with a cousin in the
baronetage, being suddenly challenged by one of our
party to stand and deliver his definition of a gentle-
man, replied that " he was one whose father and grand-
fiither had never worked for a living;" but he waa
routed horse and foot, with great slaughter, by the re-
joinder, that there were plenty of people in America
whose father and grandfather had never worked for a
living. In fact, the habit ran in the family, but they
were usually maintained in the poorhouses of their re-
Bpective parishes.

The House of Lords is an intensely stupid place to
a stranger. The bishops are so smothered in their
wigs and gowns, that they hem and ha, and have a very
apoplectic time of it, getting oat what they want to
say. In fact, it seems to be a fixed belief among Eng-
lish people that rapid talkers must of neces5>ity be
rather giddy-headed, and that what is dug out of the
mind with most difficulty must be of most value. Mr.
Gladstone, however, talks like a running brook with
sparkling ripples of wit. In the ante-room of the House
of Lords one reads the names under the hat pegs, D.
Somerset, E. Clanricarde, L. Powis, as if it were David,
£dward and Luke, instead of Duke, Earl and Lord.

We went gayly home in a hansom after our first dip
in EInglish politics, scorning to notice the pain in our
necks firom straining them up to that brass lattice for
two mortal hours. We were full of pity for the

A WOMAN* S VACATION, 79

•braTC hidj^ oar coaDtrywaman, who bearded Mr,
Moran in lus den that same afternoon, vrith noduog
bat her open coantenanee to reoomniend her, and de-
manded skc tidtets for the Ladies* Gallery. She waa
sent airajr empty-handed and sonowfol; but we are
nradi nuatakoi hi oar eoaotiTWoman, if Mr. Moran
Imm aeoi the hat of hen

80 BEATEN PATHS, OR

CHAPTER VI.

LONDON IN WATER-COLORS.

" On the Thames, Sir Roger de Coverley made several reflec-
tions on the greatness of the British nation, — as that one Eng-
lishman could beat three Frenchmen ; that the Thames was the
noblest river in Europe ; that London Bridge was a greater piece
of work than any of the seven wonders of the world, — with
many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the heart
of a true Englishman." — Addison.

HTTP to this time, I have been only skirting about
\J London, in what were once villages, at some dis-
tance from it ; but the neighboring monster grew and
grew till it swallowed them all up, and called them by
its own name. King James I., in his wisdom, thought
he could keep people in the country by imposing a fine
on those who moved to London ; but any woman could
have told him that he had only added one more fasci-
nation to city living. A man will die for a forbidden
thing, and more martyrs have gone to the stake for
the sake of their own way than for religion.

The real London is inside of Temple Bar — a dark,
huge, old archway, which once served to hold up the
heads of traitois, but has no use now except to ob-
struct the street. So tenacious was the old city of its

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 81

rights, that the king in his chariot could not pass this
Bar without pausing to receive permission from the
mayor.

In "the city," used now only by business and pov-
erty, all the great English joys and sorrows have come
to pass. A tall monument tells how it was burned up
by the "great fire," so rare a thing then that they
looked for no minor causes, but called it a "judgment
of God " on their sins ; the earthquake cracked their
china vases, and sent all the chief sinners out of town;
and in 1666 "the plague" left only the tenth person
alive. "The people die so," says Pepys, "that now it
seems they are fain to carry the dead to be buried by
daylight, the night not sufficing to do it in."

The dome of St. Paul's draws all feet towards it; it
is venerable enough on the outside, but within, it is as
cheap and modern as whitewash, and stucco, and gild-
ins: can make it. Dickens insisted that it was nobler
than St. Peter's at Rome, but he was the most bigoted
of Englishmen, and a truth that has been sifted through
English prejudice must be of very tough fibre if there
is anything left of it.

The strenojth of St. Paul's is not wasted on carvincj
or stained glass; the lower part is too light and the
dome too dark — only the distances are magnificent.
The eflfect is not of being in a church at all, but of
being out of doers in a cloudy day with no trees in
sight. Its real beauty is best seen from the whispering
gallery running round the dome, whence the overpower-
ing depth and height marry each other, and silence all
carping criticism : one's love of beauty is stilled in
one's respect for simple bigness. Nelson and Welling-
6

82 BEATEN PATHS, OR

ton are buried in state in the cellar, with candles burn-
ing before them as if they were altars ; plenty of other
quiet folks keep them company, and among them Sir
Christopher Wren, who desired no other monument
than St. Paul's itself, which he designed and built ; and
the unlucky Dr. Donne, who made an epigram on his
marriage, with more truth than poetry in it, —

** John Donne — Anne Donne — undone," —

and had to depend on the charity of friends all his life
for house-room in which to bring up his twelve children
" Children," says Loid Bacon, " raitigjite the remem-
brance of death." They must have made poor Dr.
Donne actually in love with it. His jioem of " The
Shipwreck " makes one's flesh creep.

Out of a white army of statues in the body of the
church, that of Dr. Samuel Johnson strikes one with
pity ; a man so wedded to a full-bottomed wig, and
voluminous garments, that he seemed to have been
born in them, is sculptured to stand half naked, through
all time, in St. Paul's. It is worse than his voluntary
penance of standing an hour in the market-place of
Uttoxeter, where he was born, for some disobedience
to his parents committed fifty years before.

It was a rather touching and romantic thing to do,
and to think of afterwards; but it reads like pure silli-
ness in a man, who spoke "Johnsonese," and drank
seventeen cups of tea at a sitting. Sculptors have a
terrible passion for nudity; they would have forbidden
poor Eve her fig-leaves; but to strip a man who wrote
a dictionary (the "Hippopotamus of Literature," as

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 83

Mrs. Jameson called him) of his clothes, is going too
far for decency.

Passing by the Mansion House where the lord
mayor exists, chiefly to give good dinners, we come,
after many windings among crooked streets, Jews, and
evil odors, to the Tower^ whose stones have been wet
with so much innocent blood, for little or no reason but
the will of the king. We have certainly improved on
those old days, in that no man can now behead another
without an uncommonly good reason for it. If kings
are going out of fashion, there are still some compen-
sations. All the lachrymals in the British Museum
would not hold the tears that have been shed within
these thick walls. The " Queen's Beef-eaters " lie in
wait, within the gates, in a fantastic uniform of many
colors, to take a shilling, and its owner, up stairs and
down stairs, and in the ladies' chamber, where Lady
Jane Grey wrote her name and her resignation on the
wall, with those of other unhappy prisoners. We
looked into the little room built in the wall, where Sir
Walter Raleigh slept, when he .whiled away his long
imprisonment with writing a History of the World.
I have seen worse rooms at summer watering-places,
but nowhere else. In the outer room is an effigy of
gaunt Queen Bess on horseback, in a velvet gown cov-
ered with eyes and ears ; if it was there in Raleigh's
time, he must have smiled bitterly to himself as he
remembered the day when he laid his cloak in the mud
that the maiden queen might not soil her shoe.

Great store of arms are arransred in the form of lilies
and passion-flowers, and heavy suits of mail show how
much stronger men and horses must have been in the

84 BEATEN PATHS, OR

old days, even to have carried them to the edge of
battle.

The sweetest old romance about the Tower is the
story of James I., of Scotland, the poet-prince, who
was kept there, as a hostage for his father's good faith,
by the English king. He fell in love with Joanna
Beaufort, a noble maiden whom he used to see from
his window walking in her garden. His love blossomed
into a poem that would read well if one had never
heard that a king wrote it. When he came unto his
own, he married the lady of his window-love. To be
a king and a happy husband was too much joy for one
man, and he was soon assassinated in his own palace,
in presence of his wife and Lady Catharine Douglass,
who kept out the conspirators by bolting the door
with her arm, and holding it there until they broke
the bone. His wife's arm would have been a little
more poetical instead of one of the Douglasses, "tender
and true" though they were. Some one has painted
a tender and true picture of the scene for one of the
galleries of the Houses of Parliament.

The crown jewels and gold dishes kept in the Tower
are so very splendid, that they are almost vulgar; an
old woman hurries one in and out of the room as if
she wanted to cry, " Thieves, thieves ! " instead of the
the names of the treasure.

The "Kohinoor " is about as brilliant as a clean glass
salt-cellar. I had longed to look in the face of this
queen of diamonds, and was consoled in my disappoint-
ment with the intimation that I had only seen a fac-
simile, the real stone being hidden in a safer place, so
that it might as well have remained in the bowels of

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 85

the earth. The water gate of the Tower opens no
more to criminals coming privately by the river, that
the popula-ce need not attempt a rescue ; few people go
to prison now whom the public do not condemn as
heartily as those in authority. The Thames is but a
muddy and insignificant stream, t6 have watered so
great space in English history and fiction. There are
few English books that do not, in some form, pay trib-
ute to it- I am inclined to say " amen " to Sir Roger
de Coverley's opinion of London Bridge ; it is one of
many gray old structures dotted over England, which
seem to have come into being with the ground they
stand on, to serve as patterns for men to build from.
Ghastly memories lurk under its arches; the opaque
water has often closed over

" One more unfortunate,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death; '*

but it bears on its surface an abundant and busy life,
that gives small thought to the sorrowful sights below
it. Plenty of gay little steamers, like the one we
boarded at the bridge, ply up and down the river all
day, carrying deck loads of passengers, for there is no
cabin accommodation. Londoners shed rain as easily
as a flock of ducks; if they always went in when it
rained, they would stai/ i?i most of their lives. We
pass over, without knowing it, that tremendous bore,
the Thames Tunnel, and gradually leave behind us the
dingy walls and disreputable suburbs, which most do
congregate on the banks of rivers in a city.

After a while the river begins to clear its charac-

86 BEATEN PATHS, OR

ter from the stains of man's imperfections, and the
peculiarly bright-green grass of this climate slopes
down on either bank to meet its caresses. Greenwich
must find favor in ail eyes approaching it from the
water.

The Hospital rears a noble front close upon the river,
and on a hill beyond rises the Observatory where lon-
gitude begms. An Englishman accompanied us whom
we looked upon as an excellent guide, till it came out,
as we landed, that this was also his first visit to Green-
wich. Knowing he could see it at any time, he had
never seen it at all; like the old farmer whom Lowell
found among the White Hills, who had always lived
w^ithin a mile of the "Old Man of the Mountain," and
had never cared to look towards it. We went first
into a grand entrance hall hung round with portraits
of naval heroes; the ceiling was one vast fresco on
some mythological subject, which I was content to be-
lieve a miracle of art, rather than to break my neck in
studying it. This hall opens into the "Painted Cham-
ber," having one whole side covered with an allegorical
picture of those Hanoverian despots, the Georges. The
painter, not content with his name in a corner, has intro-
duced a full length of himself, and is the finest-looking
man in the picture. Here are shown the coat find vest,
with a bullet hole through them, that Nelson wore
w^hen death found him at Trafalgar. Here, too, are
the relics oT Sir John Franklirrs expedition, found
among the Esquimaux — forks and spoons, coins, a
jack-knife, and a little book which must have looked
to the Esquimaux the most useless thing that ever was
made. Nelson is made a sort of demigod at Green-

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 87

wich by statues, busts, 'and portraits; but the stubborn
ugliness of his features has defied the skill of every
artist to soften them.

It must be a cross,- grievous to be borne by brethren
of the brush and chisel, that homely men so often insist
on being lieroes.

One small room is wholly devoted to Nelson pictures;
in one called his '^immortality,'' he is being carried to
the upper world by fat little cherubs, who seem actually
to puff over their work ; one of them carried a scroll
with the words, " England expects every man to do his
duty;" and the whole picture is a conglomerate mass
of angels and tritons tugging at one heavy man. One
IS sorry to find the name of Benjamin West in the
corner.

The chapel is rich in wood carving and marble pave-
ment, but the seats are only wooden benches; the old
men would never miss a fluted pillar or two, while
cushions would be a great luxury to them. It seems •
to me that in nearly all hospitals and asylums, and
other stow-away places for cast-off humanity, the archi-
tects provide so largely for the souls of the inmates
that there is very little left for their bodies ; whereas,
in reality, they are all body, and no soul worth men-
tioning.

The domestic part of this Hospital is in the old royal
palace of the Stuarts ; the great hall, once the ball-room
of Charles II., that merry and worthless king, —

** Who never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one," —

is now divided into bedrooms for the pensioners ; the

88 BEATEN PATHS, OR

doors were all open, displaying such little knick-knacks
as sailors love to collect.

There is nothing about the room to reraind one of
the time when virtue went clean' out of fashion under
the Stuarts. The walls must often have looked down
on the neglected queen, Catharine of Braganza, least
of all women in the eves of her husband, who forced
her to treat courteously the courtesans who had sup-
planted her. At the end of this great room is a statue
of the everlasting Nelson, and on the pedestal lay a
small, dirty bundle, which proved to be a pair of stock-
ings worn by him on some remarkable occasion.

If the shades of the departed ever revisit the earth,
the ghost of Nelson must wear a bitter sneer over the
hero-worship which could give a place of honor to his
stockings, and leave his beloved Lady Hamilton to die
of want !

From the hall we went dpwn to the old men's smok-
• ing-room, without which no sailor could be happy. A
long row of them were puffing away at their pipes, a
weather-beaten but chirruping old company.

Long tables and benches, scoured to snowy white-
ness, were ranged along an immense dining-room ; an
old negro, the only one we met among the pensioners,
did the honors of his kitchen with a pompons affability
never to be reached by a white man. His hair and
beard were snow-white, as if he had been standing
uncovered in a snow-storm.

The great tanks for tea and cocoa sent forth a goodly
savor, and a bowl was filled with tea for us to taste.
We found it very good. The allowance to one brew-
ing is three and a half pounds for four hundred men.

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 89

I know not if this is the same computation on a large
scale as that supj)Osed to have been established by the
first old maid: "Two tea-spoonfuls for each person and
one for the teapot."

Most of these veterans have lost a leg or an arm, or
bear other honorable scars from their country's service.
They must have served fourteen years in the navy, or
have been wounded in an action with the enemy, before
they can be admitted as pensioners. Many of them
have wives outside, and draw their rations to be shared
with them. It has long been a vexed question whether
women should be included in the hospital charity, but
nothing has been done about it, and it would seem to
be the first axiom in the study of womankind, that no
great number of them can live together in peace.

The quiet comfort of the Hospital seems to renew
the lease of life usually given to men. One lean and
withered old fellow hopped after us on his wooden leg,
through several roon\g, chirping out like a supe^rannu-
ated cricket, that "he was ninety-two, and his wife
eighty-eight, and they never missed their rations."
Everywhere, on doorsteps and lying on benches in
sunny spots, we came upon these battered old hulks,
safely moored at last ; an air of garrulous contentment
hung about them all, only one thought he did not have
* tobacco enough ; but who ever saw an old sailor who
could be satisfied in that particular?

The necessary order and discipline of so large an
establishment cannot oppress them, for they have been
used to it all their lives on shipboard. In the grounds
is a full-rigged ship of war, in which a school of boys,
children of the pensioners, is taught the rules of the
naval service.

90 BEATEN PATHS, OR

Late in the afternoon we took steam again for Lon-
don, full of admiration for this noble charity. The
English do a thing well if they do it at all, and one
cannot but cherisli a warmer feeling towards a nation
which holds out such kindly arms of protection to the
old age of its servants.

A WOMAJSrS VACATION. 91

CHAPTER YIT.

SUNDAY IN LONDON.

Hamlet, — *' Why was he sent into England? "

Clown, — ** Why? Because he was mad ; he shall recover his

wits there, or if he do not, 'tis no great matter, — there the men

are as mad as he/* — Shakspeare.

IF you haye but one Sunday in London, it is a diffi-
cult matter to cut it up to advantage. Ten years
ago, all strangers and sojourners in London went to see
and hear Mr. Spurgeon ; but he is no new thing under
the sun, and is said to live largely on the income of liis
reputation. People no longer pay a shilling for a seat
in his Tabernacle.

The gayest and most ritualistic church service is at
St. Andrew's, Welles Street, where the Protestantism
is so very "/u^A" as to be clean out of sight. In ut-
ter contrast is the straight-backed old church where
Whitefield preached, the mnn who was said to put so
much pathos into the word "Mesopotamia " as to bring
tears to the eves of his hearers.

John Wesley, who was so tremulously good, that he
could never be quite certain that he had been really con-
verted, preached there too, but the mantle of neither of
these prophets of Methodism has fallen on the present
shepherd. Across the way from this church is tlie bury-

92 BEATEN PATHS, OR

ing-groiind of Bunhill Fields, where Bunyan rests from
his " progress."

The Temple Church ought to have a fraction of your
Sunday. A bit of Norman architecture, the head-
quarters of the Knights Templars, whose religious vow
hound them to fight the enemies of the church, and
whose inclination made them find enemies wherever
there were revenge and plunder.

Their meek symbols of the cross and the lamb dot
the church all over, and their effigies, in armor, lie
dead enough in the porch. What a fall was there,
when they " decayed through pride," and these war-
like precincts were given over to lawyers, though it
may be they fight harder in a quiet way than the
Templars.

In a sunny nook beside the church "lyes Oliver
Goldsmith." His lack of common sense led him a
hard life in the body, but his sim|)licity and wisdom
may serve in the other world to make his spirit re-
spected. A gate, opening into a still, funereal square,
leads to the Temple Gardens, a sweet green spot in
the w^ide waste of London streets. The wars of the
Roses, when the English must needs fight each other,
having tired out their enemies, have a root in this gar-
den. When the lords were too loud in the Temple
hall, the garden was " more convenient."

Somerset » — '* Let him that is no coward «or no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn, with me.**

War^wick. — "I love no colors ; and without all color
Of base, insinuating flattery,
I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet."

A WOMAN" S VACATION. 93

Plantagenet, — *' Hath not thy rose a canker, Somerset? "
Somerset. — *' Hath not thy rose a thorn, Phmtagenet? "

Here Charles and Mary Lamb lived, and made puns
in upper chambers, and were visited by famous friends.
We found the Very fountain where John Westlock and
Ruth Pinch stood, when they looked in each other's
eyes and found love there ; one of the prettiest love
scenes ever put together by Dickens or another.

But if you want to be thrilled by the sweetest music
this side heaven, you will go to a service at the Found-
ling Hospital, and hear an anthem sung by four hun-
dred orphan children. Their orphanhood may not
affect the music, but it will affect your feelings, which
amounts to the same thing. If the pearly gates do not
open then, and show a gleam of the white-robed crowd
within, you must be hard-hearted indeed.

The hospital was founded by Captain Thomas Coram
for exposed and deserted children, of whom he had
been one. From the unaccountable perversity, com-
mon to all trustees, that no testator once' safe under
ground, should ever have his own way, the hospital has
been changed to a receptacle for illegitimate children
whose mothers are known^ whereas Captain Coram's
object was to provide for those little miserables, whose
mothers had deserted them because they did not wish
to be known. One misrht leave a fortune to charitable
purposes with a serene mind, if one were sure of com-
ing into the world about once in every fifty years to
look after it. The foundation is a very. rich one, but
no stranger can pass its door without dropping a bit
of silver (copper will not do) into the plate held there
for the purpose.

94 BEATEN PATHS, OR

When any modern Job is given over to the adver-
sary to be tempted, I have no doubt that the first step
is to get him elected as trustee of an orphan asylum.

The girls at the "Foundling" wear a picturesque
costume of brown stuff frocks, with white aprons, and
three-cornered handkerchiefs over the shoulders, and
a little Normandy cap with high crown, an exceed-
ingly becoming fashion, revived for girls in the year
of our Lord 1873.

Illegitimate children are, for obvious reasons, hand-
somer, as a rule, than the offspring of poor and lawful
parentage, and many of the boys and girls at the
Foundling are " not Angles, but angels."

Any mother might be proud to call them hers. The
children are trained to make the responses musically,
and if they cannot understand the sermon, they can rest
their eyes with looking at the lovely picture, by Ben-
jamin West, of " Christ blessing little children." The
effect is very pretty at one point in the service, when
they all bury their faces in their aprons for a moment ;
they look like a multitude of little widows. Dickens
came often to this church, and used it more than once
in buildincr his books.

After service we went through the crowded but
spotless bedrooms, and into the long dining-rooms,
where the children filed in, the little ones led by the
elders, to eat their Sunday dinner of cold beef and let-
tuce, cut up in little hills on the plates of the younger
fry. They made some little exchanges of provender
while the nurses looked another way.

One little girl, with great dreamy, blue eyes and gold-
en hair, a child made on purpose for a Sunday school

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 95

book, and sure to die young, was a picture to study.
She might have sat for a cherub, without altering a
hair. She ate with indifference, as the spiiitual sort
always do, until a neighbor laid violent hands on her
cup of water; then my cherub gave the hand a good
scratch, and made up a face at her enemy, that destroyed
my angelic theory in a breath. It seems to be a notion
born with us, that fair hair and blue eyes imply sweetness
in their owner ; an old-fashioned heroine was sure to be
a blonde, and the villain was dark, to a dead certainty.
My little orphan at the Foundling was a Tartar, but
people will be deluded by her all her life long. The
hospital is made a weekly show, but the children seem
to enjoy it as much as their visitors, and Captain Coram
would not have objected to anything that made them
happy.

In the old town of Middleboro', Mass., I liave seen a
Bible hoarded like miser's gold, which was given to
Margaret Hutchinson " by her friend, Thomas Coram,"
before the Revolution — a stout old Bible, once thrown
into the street when Governor Plutchinson's house was
sacked by a Boston mob, but doing good service yet,
like this other noble charity of the giver.

When we came out on the porch, the rain poured
down in torrents ; it could not have rained harder on
the day when Noah launched the ark, and the wicked
ones began to think he meant business after all.

The hospital stands far back from the street ; no cab
was to be had for love or money in the neighborhood,
and our feminine souls shrank from a long scout in
search of one.

For two mortal hours we stood helpless in that

96 BEATEN PATHS, OR

porch, reflecting on the equality of the sexes, while
husbands and fathers made distant sallies, bringing back
cab after cab to their waiting flocks. We prayed ear-
nestly to these cabmen to return for us, but tlieir fires
must have lived at Land's End or John o' Groat's
house, for " they went on their way, and we saw them
no more."

One weighty old Englishman had engaged a cab to
come back for him ; but when it arrived a quick-witted
and unscrupulous little widow, with a troop of chil-
dren all dressed in mourning, after the British fashion
(which would give a bereaved dog a black blanket),
hurried into it, and it was just starting when the old
gentleman brought up his rear guard of dowagers to
take it. The widow regarded him sadly, yet serenely,
as widows have a habit of doing, and nevei* budged ;
he grew so purple in the face, that he would have had
a fit on the spot, if the rain had not cooled him ofll

The cabman drove away like Jehu, son of Nimshi,
before he could recover his breath, and John Bull came
back to the porch with both fists doubled up, and saying
over and over, in a subdued roar, " If it had not been
for the children ; if it had not been for the children " —

But for them, the little widow would evidently not
have survived long enough to marry again.

" If we were only widows ! " sighed Juno, as we saw
her triumph. "If I ever come abroad again," said
Minerva, *'I will come with a friend and her husband.
A gentleman in the party is absolutely necessary to
comfort in travelling."

"Friend's husband!" said Juno, scornfully; "I will
come with a husband of my own, and neither borrow

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 97

nor lend." Juno had already made one dive into the
storm, after a cab, and was now a " very damp, moist,
unpleasant body," indeed. At last the rain held up,
— a most unlikely thing for English rain to do, — and
we waded home, sadder and wiser women.

Some time since, the Prince of Wales set the fashion
of going to "the Zoo" (which is short English for
Zoological Gardens) on a Sunday afternoon. You can
see the wild animals at any time ; but since the royal
visit, if you want to study men, women, and monkeys
at the same time, it is best done on Sunday afternoon.

Another favorite haunt of Cockneys on Sunday is
the palace of Hampton Court, which Wolsey built and
gave to Henry VIII., who had a habit of rolling a
greedy eye upon whatever his courtiers held most dear,
whether it were wives or liouses.

The approach through Bushy Park is as lovely as
ancient oaks and shadow-flecked grass, tame deer, and
mossy old fountains can make it. One might almost
envy Nebuchadnezzar his punishment, if he were to
suffer it in Bushy Park. The palace is more or less
inhabited in corners, by half-pay officers, aristocratic
widows who have seen better days, and other poverty-
stricken gentry, who have a little blue blood in their
veins, and some claim on the regard of the crown. I
wish the queen would let in another regiment of them,
and shut up a few of the endless galleries where one
asks for bread and gets only pictures, long before the
last room is reached. The majority of the pictures are
like Dean Swift's country house, —

'* Too bad for a blessing, too good for a curse ;
I wish from my soul it were better or worse.**

98 BEATEN PATHS, OR

One or two heads, by Titian, gleam out of darkness,
but the specimens of the old masters are but the sweep-
ings of their studios. The room where one lingers
longest is perhaps the one containing the portraits of
the beauties of Charles II.'s court, painted by Lely, and
Vandyke, and Kneller.

They were a graceless set, and they look as if they
gloried in the fact, and would not have it otherwise if
they could.

Nell Gwynne, who boasted herself "the Protestant
mistress " (as if those two words could ever live to-
gether ! ), looks unfit to sell oranges at a theatre door,
or to do any other honest business. The one exqui-
site face, a lily among passion-flowers, is the Countess
of Richmond, for whose charms Charles II. would have
divorced the childless Catharine, if Clarendon (who
"wished to secure the succession of his own daughter
to the throne) had not manoeuvred her into a marriage
with the old Duke of Richmond. She is grudgingly
acknowledged to have been good, when it was the all-
prevailing fashion to be bad.

One other portrait among ten thousand, keeps house
in my memoiy, a head of Madame de Pompadour, by
Greuze, who always painted women's heads, as if he
were in love with every one of them. If you cover
the lower part of her face, the rest is intellectual in the
highest degree ; but if you hide the upper part, it is
only voluptuous. She caught the king with her mouth
and chin, but she held him with her eyes and forehead.

When I look back on Hampton Court, it seems to
have been haunted chiefly by Queen Charlotte and her
fifteen children. One of them, the Duchess of Glouces-

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 99

ter, always accounted for the misfortunes of her family
by saying, " There were too many of us — too many
of us!"

They line. broad walls, the queen looking intoler-
ably self-satisfied; and the whole fifteen, if they were
" summed up and closed " in one, would not have had
grace enough to be worth painting.

The gardens of Hampton Court are the loveliest part
of it ; the giant grape vine, planted by Mary Stuart,
has thriven better than any other seed of her planting^
and tlie fragrant darkness of the Lady's Walk is
worthy of her tread.

The half-pay officers and the aristocratic widows are
in clover here ; they must have been well ofl^, indeed,
if they have seen better days than they find in this
palace. Five cartoons of Raphael, made familiar to us
by engravings, used to glorify Hampton Court, but
they have been removed to the museum at South Ken-
sington.

In that museum is everything in the way of gold, and
precious stones, and china, and wrought work, that it
ever entered a woman's heart to desire ; but the collec
tion is so inhuman in its vastness, that one tires of it at
last, and longs to balance it by a week in a wigwam,
WMth clam-shells for spoons.

The same feeling of satiety, the Apollyon of travel-
lers, clutches us before we^ have even glanced at all
the rooms of the National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square.
There are no pictures there, however, that one can feel
a comfortable contempt for. I only wish that some of
the hard, old virgins painted in the dark ages, whose
facial angles could be demonstrated like a pri)pojsitioii

100 BEATEN PATHS, OR

in Euclid, might be burnt, for the credit of the women-
kind who lived at that date.

Here an altar is set up for Turner, the one god of
English art, and Ruskin, his prophet. I longed to ad-
mire his pictures, but I could only admire Ruskin, that
he had eyes to see the beauty hidden from me. Now
and then he has a landscape, sunlit and restful as a
Claude, but for the most part he has gone color-mad.

In a picture called (I believe) " Rain, Wind, and
Speed," he must have rubbed together with his thumb
all the colors on his palette, and then copied the result
on canvas. After severe study, I thought he meant to
make a locomotive driving through a stormy night;
but very likely it was something altogether different.

We greet Hogarth's "Marriage a la Mode" as an
old friend ; but like all broad satire, there is small com-
fort in looking at it ; it leaves a bad taste in the
mouth.

There are one or two portraits by Gainsborough, who
either had the luck to paint very noble and pure-look-
ing women, or the genius to make them look so on can-
vas. f\ don't know which would be the greater boon,
to have beauty and suffer the fading of it, or to look
like common folks in the flesh, and receive an immor-
tality of loveliness in a portrait by Gainsborough.J

There is a group of baby angels by Sir Joshua Rey-
nolds, in whom every mother must trace a look of her
own treasures ; and out of a crowd of better and
famous pictures looks a wonderful woman's head, with
black eyes, and a crown of gold hair, by Paris Bor-
doni. It made me seize the catalogue ravenously, and
alter all it was only " An Italian Lady." If you iind a

A WOMAN 'S VACA TION. 101

head in any gallery that tells you some bewildering
story, the catalogue is sure to call it " Portrait of a
Lady," or " Head of a Gentleman." You knew that be-
fore, and straightway christen it for yourself. This
gold-haired splendor, whom I alone bowed down to,
should have had a dagger in her hand, and been called
^A Woman Undecewedr

There are clouds of angels, and great companies of
martyrs, each with a face of his own, no two alike, by
that rare artist, Fra Angelico, who never painted any-
thing until he had first seen it in a vision of prayer.

One or two pictures by Rubens, in violent contrast,
seem to have been painted in a vision of lust.

Your worn-out enthusiasm will revive again, as you
stand before a " Holy Family," by Mui illo. Joseph
looks good and reliable, as Joseph ought to look ; and
the child is maturely beautiful, a divine baby ; but the
Virgin herself is that sure triumph of art, in a woman's
face, which unites sense with beauty. Other virgins
have been pretty or pious, sometimes both, and some-
tii^es neither; but this one hns the mildness of the
dove and the wisdom of the serpent, a woman to be
admired by her own sex, which implies vastly more
than beauty. Take away all the accessories, leaving
her alone in the picture, and she would make a perfect
Puritan maiden, like Priscilla, as she sang the hun-
dredth psalm to the sound of her spinning-wheel.

Two pleasant lounging-places, for an empty forenoon
in London, are the British Museum and the Royal
Academy, though the immensity of the former is too
oppressive for comfort. The headless marbles are per-
haps the most satisfying part of it, because one can fit

102 BEATEN PATHS, OR

better heads to them in imagination, than the sculp-
tors did.

The young men and maidens who come to make
sketches from them, are not much overawed by their
grandeur; their behavior pLainly indicated that draw-
ing and flirtation are kindred arts.

We were a very serious party till the gold ornament
room enabled us to throw off the accumulated solem-
nity of these stony halls. Any householder in London
can give you a ticket to read in the great " Reading
Room," but it is so intolerably large and lofty, that the
atmosphere seems to press harder than fifteen pounds
to the square inch. One would not dare to ask for any
lighter book than Buckle's History of Civilization./ ,^:>

The Royal Academy is the yearly expression of
modern English art. The pictures are so gay-colored
and brisijht that it warms the cockles of one's heart to
look at them, after a long course of the "funeral baked
meats " of the middle ages in other galleries. This is
the prevalent feeling, for we saw one or two suburban
families who meant to make a day of it, and l^ad
brouglit their luncheon. They ate it with much relish,
as English people always eat, and then attacked the
pictures with renewed strength.

In the National Gallery there is scarcely a room in
which some St. Sebastian, stuck all over with arrows,
as if he were a pin-cushion, would not take away one's
appetite for vulgar food.
f^ To me the picture of the year was " Eve seeing a
Snake after leaving the Garden." Nobody else seemed
to care for it, but I suppose every picture, as well as
every woman, has one admirer. | She carries one fair

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 103

child on her shoulder, and the little black -browed Cniu
is killing: the snake. It seemed to me the artist must
have been a woman himself in some previous state of
existence, to have mingled with the beauty of her face
go much sorrow, deprecation, and loathing.

The strength of this exhibition lies in its portraits,
from royalty downward; and I understand that the
English nobility looks better ou canvas than any-
where else.

104 BEATEN PATHS, OR

CHAPTER VIIL

BELGIUM.

"There was a sound of revelry by night.
And Belgium's capital liad gathered there
Her beauty and her chivalry."

E Americans like to stay in England as we like
to visit our grandmother. Everything is ar-
ranged about her precisely as we saw it last, and will
be so to the end of her days. She is " set as the ever-
lasting hills;" but in the hurries and worries of Amer-
ican life it is good to think of one settled thing in the
world, an island where it is " always afternoon." She
is too old to change, even if she were not convinced
that the old ways are best. She builds her rail cars
like carriages, because they will be more private, and
half the people must ride backwards, whether it agrees
with them or not. She has never travelled in Amer-
ica, and has no idea that there is more privacy in sixty
people sitting with their backs to each other in one car,
than in four staring into the eyes of another four
through all her carriages. The animals in the ark
had no checks for their baggage, and it has never
occurred to her that any of their descendants would
need tliem.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 105

She calls all the new words, thnt we coin as easily
as we breathe, slangy and useless; there were words
enough before. She is certain that we all talk through
our noses, and when one of us writes a good book, or
becomes otherwise distinguished, she puts on her spec-
tacles and eyes us from head to foot, just as our grand-
mother would, saying in effect, " Bless me, how you
have grown ! "

She is tedious sometimes, but to leave her decorous
house for the dark ways of the Continent is like a
second farewell to home.

Travelling is comparatively easy where people speak
some sort of English (if not the best), but for women
taking their lives in their hands, the wolf is waiting
at every foreign corner. It is true you can always
disarm him with p, piece of money — if your money
holds out, there is no fear of wolves 6r anything else
in Europe.

There is no pleasant way of getting out of England,
and the manners, of travelling English indicate plainly
that Providence never intended them to leave their
island. It is just a choice of evils, and every one is
sure that he has chosen the worst.

Our way lay through Harwich, and thence by steamer
to Antwerp. The German Sea is always as uneasy as
if it had not half room enough to spread itself, and
sometimes it is rough and bearish, as the nation which
gives it its name ; but this route is not a favorite, and
there is alwa^'s half a chnnce to lie down in the little
cabin and to be as miserable as one likes: in the crowded )
boats between Dover and Calais there is no room even
to pile up agony. ]\

106 BEATEN PATHS, OR

I _ • _ ■

Our own sufferings were greatly mitigated (since

"we have always fortitude to bear -the misfortunes of

others ") by watching the rise and fall of rage in a

handsome young woman at being separated from her

husband and forced to lie on a mattress on the floor of

the cabin. Her diamond earrings and travelling: suit,

fearfully and wonderfully made, suggested a bride. ^

Angry passions are becoming to some pretty women

— they give brilliancy to the gray-eyed, neutral-tinted

sort- — but the face of this one clouded over, and

actually blackened like summer sky before a sudden

tempest.

The quiet, sensible-looking man who had evidently
taken her for better or worse, and was rapidly finding
it worse, put in a word of deprecation now and then
in vain, and finally listened in sileiice till the storm
was over.

I have no doubt they kissed and made up afterwards,
but, when they went off the boat, the husbnnd cast a
lingering and dubious look behind him, as if, perad ven-
ture, he had lost in the night some cherished illusion
of the sweetness of matrimony that he would never
find again. I fear we women shall never know how
many funerals of sweet old beliefs men go to in the
first year of their married life.

The steamer flounders through the w^hole night, and
arrives at Antwerp any time in the forenoon. There
is no hurry in this latitude; one day is as good as
another.

The examination by the custom-house officers, like
that in all foreign places, amounts to nothing. You
have only to open your possessions with alacrity, and

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 107

tliey will be more eagar than yourself to close them up
and have done with it. They cannot bore you half so
much as you apparently bore them.

At the Hotel de FEurope we rejoiced in stately halls
on the ground floor, but all was not gold that glittered.
Dante could not have contrived a worse place in his
Inferno for keeping people awake. A paved driveway
tunnelled the house, and ended in a court-yard, where
all the business of the liouse was carried on. There
all the bells ring, all the water is pumped out of the
bowels of the earth, and all the dishes are washed, far
into the small hours of the nisfht. Horses and carts
are drawn up at your bedroom door, as if there were a
cholera patient to be taken out under cover of dark-
ness. In the morning a great calm settled on that
court-yard, daylight brought "a poultice to heal the
blows of sound ;" but we shook the dust of Antwerp
off our feet, and fled into another city before the day
was over.

Women and dogs have apparently taken a contract
to do all the work in Antwerp, and it is hard to tell
which of them have the most hairorard faces. Of all
animals, hard labor seems to be least becoming to these
two; they were meant to exist more for ornament than
use, and when they are galled with harness, it outrages
a natural law.

The cathedral, the pride of Antwerp, is free to visit-
ors until noon, when the pictures are unveiled and
shown for a franc. This is one of the sharp and pious
tricks of the Catholic churches to make heretics pay
tithes to them. The great picture is Rubens's "De-
scent from the Cross," or rather Christ's '' Descent from

108 BEATEN PATHS, OR

the Cross," for the startling reality of the scene makes
one forget Rubens and his picture altogether.

* The small side-pieces attached to it, of Elisabeth
greeting Mary, and the Virgin presenting the young
child to Simeon, take away from the unity of the
centre. One picture should tell but one story.

This is almost the only picture by Rubens that does
not give me the impiession of being painted by the
pound. His Virgins and Sabine women are so intoler-
ably fat as to be a burden to themselves and everybody
else. Hidden behind a pillar there is a famous head
of Christ, painted on a block of marble by Leonardo
da Vinci. It is tlie face of a man, handsome, refined,
and sad, but scarcely divine — a sort of Unitarian
Clirist, beautiful enough for love and imitation, but
scarcely powerful enough to save.

The cathedral at Antwerp is a bright, cheerful place,
a church to take comfort in as well as to worship, not
cold and gray like the York Minster, and other Protes-
tant churches.

One could take one*'s knitting and gossip away an
afternoon under the bedizened fissure of the Virmn
and in the light of lier candles — she is only another
woman — without the least sense of disrespect to the
church ; and this is the chief reason, I think, why the
Roman Catholic fiiith holds the ignorant mind with
so tenacious a grasp. The churches are always open,'
with gay colors and processions to enliven them, and
BO weave religion into the dailv life that Protestantism
seems to offer in exchange only a dry abstraction, that
one can scarcely understand, much less believe in, till
he has learned to read and write. The women run in

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 109

with market baskets on their arms, kneel for a moment,
and mutter a prayer as fiimiliar to them as breathing,
while at the same time they take note of every stran-
ger that passes them. They offer the prayer as Hindoo
women offer a flower to their god, and think no more
about it. The one thinks it no more necessary to give
all her attention to her prayer, than the other to ana-
lyze her flower botanically. To such a woman it looks
like hard work to be a Piotestant, and make her own
prayers.

There is an old and young Antwerp. The high-
peaked Spanish houses date back to the time when the
grim Duke of Alva and his soldiers ravaged Belgium;
the gay, light houses and boulevards of the new town
mark the coming in of French fashions.

The Museum, a famous gallery of old pictures, is a
weary procession of saints, and martyrs, and virgins,
in greater or less agony. If you have tears, prepare
to shed them now !

Every thorn, and gaping wound, and drop of blood
must be plainly visible — these old artists lefl notliing
to the imagination. If they could have painted the
groans of the martyrs, they would have been happy.
In one picture John the Baptist's head is not only
offered to Herodias on a charger (we are used to that,
and don't mind it), but the. dripping neck, from which
it has just been severed, thrusts itself out of the pic-
ture into your face, to make material for bad dreams
forevermore.

A very good butcher was spoiled in many of these
old Flemish painters. Now and then a black-eyed girl
by Rembrandt, or a sweet St. Catharine disputing with

110 BEATEN PATHS, OR

the philosophers, breaks the sad monotony ; and there
is one, " Adoration of the Magi," in which a tall camel ^
overlooks the scene with a benevolent smile — it is the
one cheerful face of the gallery.

The deadly materialism of Catholic art is nowhere
so plain as in the freedom with which these old paint-
ers lifted the veil which, the Bible says, cannot be
lilted even by angels, and attempted to paint God him-
self. In a famous picture of the dead Christ, a vener-
able old man looks down on him from the clouds ; and
it gives the mind a certain wrench to realize that this
is meant to be the first person of the Trinity, whom no
man shall look upon and live.

Some of the heathen are more reverent, sitting for
days to meditate on the sacred name, and never daring
to utter it.

Among the other copyists, surrounding famous pic-
tures to repeat better men's work, is an armless man,
Mr. Felu, who does easily with his toes all that other
people do with their fingers. His manner is so natural
that 1 passed him again and again without noticing
Lis peculiarity. He holds his palette with the big
toe of one foot, and his brush with the other, and his
copies are not to be distinguished for nicety from the
oriojinals.

To go from the Museum to the small private gallery
"Nottebohra," at No. 3 Rue de Fagot, is like step-
ping from the chapel of a monastery in the middle
ages into the brightest salon of Paris. The pictures
are full of the home-like thoughts of to-day. You have
not the labor of setting your thoughts back like the
hands of a clock. Lovers of Ary Schoeffer may here

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. HI

bow down to his Faust and Margaret. There have
been many Margarets, bat this is the true one, more
sinned against than sinning. On Faust's chair leans
the conventional devil, with leering eyes and claws, a
creature who could never tempt any one to sin, charm
he never so wisely. If there be a personal devil, Jas
some people believe, I do not doubt he is the hand-
somest man in the world ; otherwise he would not be
fit for his work. "The devil is a gentleman," said
King Lear.

To paint him with a tail and claws, and a mean
countenance, is to show men more foolish in yielding
to him than they naturally are. Milton gives him a
terrible beauty, but artists nearly always give him a
face that sinners as well as saints would run away
from.

Schoeffer treats the " Four Ages of Man " in the
soft, delicate way peculiarly his own, two little chil-
dren playing together, a youth whispering in a maiden's
ear, a man and woman looking lovingly at the play of
the little ones, and a white-haired couple resting hand
in hand on the cottage bench after the journey of life.

He paints that other hackneyed subject, the "An-
nunciation," like no one else. All other pictures of the
Annunciation must needs have a hill-side, with a star
rising over it, and small bundles of clothes lying on
their faces, which are supposed to be shepherds; but
this picture is just a group of impassioned faces of
men and women really drinking in "glad tidings of
great joy."

In Antwerp we first ran against that curious fashion
of fastening looking-glasses outside of ipverj' window,

112 BEATEN PATHS, OR

that the lady sitting within can see the street panorama
without any trouble but that of raising her eyes. It
gives the passer-by an odd sensation to look into re-
flected faces in these glasses; it is a temptation to
wink or to smile at them, to make sure whether they
are reality or only pictures. I saw some very pretty
and smiling faces so framed outside of German win-
dows, prettier there than anywhere else.

They make a rare black silk in. An twerp, a silk that
will stand alone — a dress for a lifetime. In a thrifty
family it might go down to the third and fourth gener-
ation ; but who wants a dress to last forever?

The country between Antwerp and Brussels is so
flat that it must have been ironed out in the creation.
The fields are tilled almost entirely by women, whose
faces are as wooden as their shoes.

Brussels, the capital of Belgium, wears a clean and
finished look, deeply grateful to the eye; not a city
put gradually together by necessity and circumstance,
but each part fitting into the others as if calculation
and good taste had been invited to the birth, and not
called in when it is too late. All its beauties were
foreseen facts, not afterthoughts. The parks are in
the heart of the city, as parks ought to be. A city
with all its breathing-places outside of it is like a
human body with lungs that may be put off* and on
like a garment.

The names of its streets are so well selected as to
be an oddity — the Royal Street, the Street of Indus-
try, of Science, of Arts, and of Long Life. I could not
find out whether the last was the abode of all Bclglc
patriarchs or not.

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 113

The carved, lace-like front of the aged Hotel de Ville
looks down on the old city, where all the great deeds
of its history were done. In the square now used as
a market, crowded with women and vegetables, there
is a double statue of Counts Egmont and Horn, who
were executed on that spot, and the Duke of Alva
thrust liis ugly head out of an upper window above it
to see the thing. well done.

This Count Ei^mont was a Catholic noble, but he
joined the cause of the Protestants because he did not
approve of their being persecuted. He became their
ambassador with Count Horn to Philip II., and put
faith in the kind reception of the king. When AVil-
liam the Silent and his Protestants fled before the
Duke of Alva, Egmont could not be persuaded to run
away with them, though the phlegmatic William be-
souG^ht him with tears.

"Adieu, prince sans terre" (without land), said Eg-
mont when they parted. "Adieu, count sans tete"
(without a head), retorted William. And one of the
first events of the campaign was the execution of
Egmont and Horn ; whence sprang the old proverb
about Philip 11., that "the king's dagger is close be-
hind his smile." In Schiller's play Egmont is repre-
sented as an interesting bachelor, but he really had a
wife and nine children, a very respectable condition for
real life, but not so useful for poetry.

Behind the Hotel de Ville is a curious statue, called
"the Spitter," a Tiiton leaning out of a wall, with a
stream of water pouring from his mouth.

At the corner of St. Catharine and De TEtuve Streets
(a needle in a haystack would have been more easily

8

114 BEATEN PATHS, OR

found) is the " oldest citizen of Brussels," its palladium,
a little black statue of a boy, who is also a fountain.
It is called the "Manikin," and has eight suits of
clothes for holiday occasions. Louis XVL bestowed
on hira the order of St. Louis, and an old maid of
Brussels left him a legacy of a thousand florins.

Popular delight in him has invented more than one
legend of his stepping down from his. basin and going
to the aid of his friends.

There is one gallery of pictures in Brussels so unique
in character, that they w^ill stay in the memory when
better things have faded out. This is the Wiertz
Museum.

The great picture is the struggle for the body of
Patroclus. It don't matter who Patroclus was, except
that he looks very dead indeed ; but the point of the
picture is the awful strain of two sets of men, both
bound to conquer- or die in the attempt. It is like
looking on at a duel, when you sympathize with both
sides. There is passion enough in it for the whole
battle of Waterloo. This is almost the only picture
into which the artist has not infused as much oddity
and bitterness as genius. The oppression of earthly
authority is grandly shown in a giant grinding a
woman's shoulder between his teeth, and treading
helpless mortals under foot. Perhnps the most curious
idea is expressed in the "Man of the Future," an en-
larged and noble figure of a man, holding in his big
hand, and regarding with a pitying smile, the baubles
that have been most valued by mankind — coins, flags,
orders, gems, and fire-arms. Two angels look on with
him in sympathetic wonder.

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 115

ITear this is a figure of Napoleon in the flames of
hell, while his victims hold out broken limbs to him as
the trophies of his career. A bitter hatred of Napo-
leon and French despotism runs through the whole
gallery ; and yet the artist, against his will, has given to
Napoleon a face so sad and noble that the sympathy
of the beholder cleaves to him, and not to those who
suffered by him. Wiertz was a wonderful flesh paint-
er. Some of his nude "figures of women remind one
of Lady Mary Montague's conclusion when she saw
Turkish women in a bath.

" I was here convinced of the truth of a reflection
that I have often made, that if it were the fashion to
go naked, the face would be hardly observed, and
many noted beauties would have to abdicate their
thrones."

Every contrivance is resorted to, to keep up the illu-
sion of reality. One looks through a knot-hole in a
board-fence, into a charnel-house, where a woman, too
soon buried in cholera time, is just forcing up her
cofiin lid, and realizing the horror of her situation.
Through another hole is seen a mother, driven mad[
by starvation in Napoleon's campaigns, who is cutting
up her child to boil it in a kettle. The curve of the
little cheek, half covered in her apion, is the only soft-
ening touch in the terrible picture.

But not all these fantasies arc horrible. In a corner,
a painted girl smiles at you, through a crack in a
painted door, so naturally that you smile back to her
before you can realize that she is only a picture. In
another, more lovely than words can tell, a mother,
just arrived in heaven, recognizes the child that had
gone before.

116 BEATEN PATHS, OR

Wiertz was low-born and poor, and the iron early
entered his soul, to reappc^ar in his pictures, which are
full of scorn and bitterness towards all the world that
called itself superior to him. He is as vulgarly self-
conscious in his art, as Byron was in his poetry. He
was of that order of genius wliich, in literature, has
produced Frankenstein, and Vathek, Poe's stories, and
some of Hawthorne's novels — a select few, out of all
humanity, who are under a sort of opium influence
from their birth. They love the world no better than
the world loves them.

Sunday is the gayest day of the week in Brussels.
Between one and two o'clock, all the world goes to
promenade in the park; there are concerts all day, and
balls in the evening. On our Sunday, there was a
grand military and religious procession in honor of a
church festival. Hundreds of gorgeous banners were
carried through the streets, and troops of little girls in
white carried flowers and wreaths before the Virgin.
When the "Hpst" was carried by, under a canopy, by
a group of priests, all the women fell on their knees in
the dusty street as suddenly as if struck down by an
invisible hand. The men were mindful of the knees
of their trousers, and merely crossed themselves.

Nearly all the shops were open, and the parks were
thickly dotted with family groups, who have never
conceived of a devouter way to spend Sunday than to
say their prayers in chui'ch early in the morning, and
then to enjoy music, and dancing, and gossip in the
parks all the rest of the day, No one who sees them
can doubt that their ignorance is bliss. But this is the
right side of the tapestry ; the knots and roughnesses

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 117

are all behind it. The irreverence which makes Sun-
day a day of pleasure to the rich, makes it also only
another working day to the very poor. In a Saturday
evening walk about the city, one of us, oppressed by
the heat, bethought herself of a linen travelling dress,
ready made ; but not finding one, the shop-woman in-
sisted that she would have one made to order and
delivered at sunrise Monday morning ; but a Puritan
bringing-up outweighed the heat of the weather and
the convenience of this arrangement. " And besides,"
said Minerva, after her pious decision, "you know
nothing wears well that is sewed on Sunday."

Half a franc (ten cents) gives entrance to a brightly-
lighted garden, where one may sit at a little table and
sip ice-cream, listen to the music of the band, and take
cold, all at the same time, with delightful ease.

One of the most harrowing chapters of Villette has
this concert-garden for its scene. In that book, Char-
lotte Bronte dissects Brussels and its people as coldly
as an old physician does his work in the hospital. She
found handsome women there, models for Rubens.

" With one of those beauties," she says, " I once had
the honor, and rapture, to be perfectly acquainted.
The inert force of the deep-settled love she bore her-
self was wonderful. It could only be surpassed by her
proud impotency to care for any other living thing."
If Madame Beck be still living, she must have a ner-
vous feeling of sitting for her portrait to every pale-
faced, English governess that teaches in her school.

In the Place Royale is a noble statue of Godfrey de
Bouillon, with banner uplifted, the defender of the
holy sepulchre, who, when the other crusaders would

118 BEATEN PATHS, OR

have made liira king of Jerusalem, refused "to wear a
crown of gold where his Savior had worn a crown of
thorns." It looks down the Rue de la Madeleine, one
of the most fascinating streets in the world to women.
Money burns in your pocket the moment you enter it.
The shops are small, and their contents might sink
forty fathoms deep without taking away one jot or
tittle from the use or comfort of the world ; but beauty
would suffer a cruel loss. Every second window is
full of films and cobwebs into which lace-makers have
wrought many lifetimes. The woman who invented
lace (I am sure it was a woman) must have caught her
idea from frost-work on a window ; there is no other
pattern on earth to make point lace by. The alternate
windows are full of jewels (not jewelry, which is apt
to mean wrought gold), but jewels^ in which the value
and lustre of the stones quite subdue the setting, and
reduce it to its right place, the frame to the picture.
But there is no greater mistake than to suppose that
the prices corresj)ond with the size of the shops. The
first American lady who passed that way held up both
hands with astonishment, and said, " Haw cheap ! " and
the Bruxellois have been laboring ever since to abate
her astonishment.

The English say that Americans, with their lavish
ways, have spoiled "the Continent" for shopping.

Ten miles away from Brussels lies the Field of
Waterloo, "the grave of France," where all Europe
fought one man, and got the better of him at last by
accident.

In an open carriage, we drove through the Forest
of Soignios, that has stoo<l for ngos, nnd been bn?ught

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 119

ft

to the very perfection of a forest. Byron calls it the
Forest of Ardennes, where Roman legions were be-
wildered. It was in the forest of Arden, in As You
Like It, that the exiled duke found —

** tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

We went into such ecstasies over its shadowy beauty,
that our stolid old coachman asked us " if we had no
such forests in our own country ;" and we said, " O yes,
plenty," hoping thot the recording angel would drop a
tear on our patriotic answer and blot it out, when he
set it down to our account. The trees stand close
together like the serried ranks of an army, compact
and self-contained, till they reach the upper air, and
then breaking altogether into a lusty growth of dewy
greenness that makes a cool twilight at their feet.

** To sbarae the temples decked
By skill of earthly architect,
Nature herself, it seemed, would raise
A minster to her Maker's praise."

The village of Waterloo was Wellington's head-
quarter from the 17th to the 19th of June, 1815, the
days of the battle. Here the guides waylay you like
bandits. We took one whose father had fought on
the French side (I cannot swear that this is not a
peculiarity of all their fathers), and who described the
battle with French enthusiasm. At Waterloo, a woman
came out of the inn with a pail of water, squeezed a
wet sponge on the foreheads and washed the feet of
the horses.

120 BEATEN PATHS, OR

The latter looked much finer animals than the crowd
of men who stood about, holding up the door-posts,
while a woman did their work. On the way to the
"Field" they show you a pretentious monument,
erected by Lord Anglesea to a leg that he lost in
the battle. On his plan, one might fill up a grave-
yard, and yet keep one's head above ground. Such
men should have lachrymals to keep their tears in.
The great plains of Belgium seem made on purpose
for the manoeuvres of hostile armies, giving advantage
to neither side. The monument, in^the shape of a cir-
cular mound, one hundred and fifty feet high, is raise d
on the spot where the Prince of Orange was wounded.
It is surmounted by a lion, cast from the French can-
non taken by the allies ; but no one ever really sees
that lion, for it is too high up to be distinctly visible
from the plain, and too near when one has scaled the
mound. A wiry little Scotch-looking woman keeps
the " Museum Hotel," where a great treasure of skulls
and sword-blades is shown ; and she does so bewilder
and obfuscate the minds of her visitors with accounts
of her uncle's. Sergeant Cotton, behavior in the battle,
that I am not certain to this day whether it was Ser-
geant Cotton or the "Iron Duke" who said, "Up,
guards, and at them ! " The French army was so
g'orious in failure, that it lays balm to the national
heart to this day. When Napoleon would have fought
at the head of the " Old Guard," Marshal Soult turned
back his horse's head with the protest, " Sire, the
enemy have been fortunate enough already." All lov-
ers of Napoleon must deeply regret this little mistake
of Marshal Soult's. The great man should have died,

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 121

but never surrendered. The epic of his life would
then have been rounded with a true French period,
instead of six years of snarling decay on the rock of
St. Helena.

Many reasons have been given for the fall of Napo-
leon ; only this one is dear to me — "a poor thing, sir,
but mine own." He compassed a throne easily enough,
but had not eyes to see the power that is always
behind it. Through life he needlessly and wantonly
affronted the self-love of women. He found fault with
the dresses of the ladies of his court — an insult that
some women take more to heart than a slur on their
beauty or reputation. He drove away Madame de
Stael when she would have adored him, and so secured
an enemy always fighting under cover. He outraged
the whole sex by divorcing Josephine, and when he
married a princess of the house of Austria, counting
on her influence with her father, the simplest of women
could have told him that it was useless, when she had
a step-mother. And he suffered Maria Louisa to offend
that step-mother by outshining her in diamonds, and
other magnificence, when he held a review of royalty
at Dresden. His minister Talleyrand, whose career is
nearly as wonderful as his own, always heartily despised
women, but never overlooked their influence. At Se-
dan, six miles from Waterloo, was a French failure of
another color. There, the third Napoleon would have
been almost as deeply indebted ^s his uncle to a friend-
ly bullet in his back.

Byron has fought the battle over again in poetry in
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and Victor Hugo in prose
in Les Miserables. Victor Huoro was on the French

122 BEATEN PATHS, OR

•

Bide, the gallant, desperate side, and Byron wrote on
his own side, w^hich was neither French nor English.
Thackeray makes some " copy " out of it too, in his
Vanity Fair, when all the English people were fleeing
for their lives out of Brussels. *

In the Museum at South Kensington, near London,
there is a picture, by Sir Edwin Landseer, of a green,
flat bit of country, and in the foreground are two
figures on horseback. The tall, martial, old man with
high cheek-bones and Roman nose is the Duke of
Wellington, pointing out to the pretty woman with
him the spot where the "red rain" fell fastest, and the
motto on the frame is Southey's line, —

** But Hwas a famous victory."

The whole of Belgium has the serene and prosperous
air of that picture. It is peaceful as a great establish-
ment with a good housekeeper at its head; no mean
economies, and yet nothing wasted. Leopold L was a
housekeeper both good and wise. Had not his first
w^ife. Princess Charlotte of England, died, and made
room for Victoria on the throne of England, he might
have lounged his life away as Prince Consort, and
never developed his talent for reigning.

In 1848, when the ferment of French revolution
again stirred all Europe, he did a very rare and won-
derful thing. He put his kingship to vote among his
subjects, and was triumphantly elected to a "second
term."

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 123

CHAPTER IX.

GEBMANY.

** Thou knowest the story of lier ring,
How, when the court went back to Aix,
Fastrada died ; and how the king
Sat watching by her, night and day.
Till, into one of the blue lakes
That water that delicious land,
They cast the ring drawn from her hand;
And the great raoftarch sat serene
And sad beside the fated shore,
Nor left the land forevermore."

A MORNING train from Brussels to Cologne gave
US two or three afternoon hours in Aix-la-Cha-
pelle, or Aachen, as the Germans call it, where the Ger-
man emperors were crowned for ages. Charlemagne
loved it well even before " Fastrada died ; " and he
was buried there, sitting in a golden chair, clad in his
royal robes, and holding a sceptre in his hand.

The ancient chronicles make out Charlemagne to
have been a genial old fellow, a good friend to have in
any century. He dabbled in literature, compiling the
first French grammar, somewhat as Solomon built the
temple — for his fingei's were so stiff with holding the
sword that he could never learn to write, but signed

124 BEATEN PATHS, OR

his flecrees by dipping his sword hilt in ink and press-
ing it on the paper.

He had an uncommon love for his daughters, who
took advantage of it, as daughters always do. His
English secretary, Eberhard, had fallen in love with
one of them, named Emma, and made secret visits to
her bower, climbing in through the window. One
night, while the lovers held sweet converse, there was
a light fall of snow in the court-yard, and the footsteps
of Eberhard would be sure to be tracked from Emma's
window. Kings' daughters were broad-shouldered and
strong women in those days, and Emma carried her
lover on her shoulders, safe out of harm's way. Char-
lemagne was sitting at a window which overlooked this
little by-play, and it opened his fatherly heart into con-
sent to their marriage. Such stories, cropping out of
those warlike times, like the white "edelweiss" out of
sterile mountain tops, show that changes may come in
clothes and manners, but never to the hearts of young
men and maidens.

Once in seven years, they show to adoring crowds in
Aix-la-Chapelle the dress that the Virgin wore when
Christ was born, and the swaddling-bands of the infant.
These are among the best-attested relics of the Roman
Catholic church, having been given by the Patriarch
of Jerusalem to Charlemagne ; but if the Virgin was
the thrifty woman, in poor circumstances, that I take
her for, those clothes must have been cut up for the
younger children long before the patriarch was ever
heard of. They do not show them oftener for fear of
wearing them out. Many cures have been wrought by
merely touching this blessed trash, I suppose the

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 125

• elderly priests become so used to playing their parts in
these little Romish theatricals, that it is second nature ;
but the younger ones must suflfer torture from sup-
pressed laughter when they hold up these sacred rags
for the adoration of the crowd. It is said the Roman
augurs could not perform their rites in their own com-
pany, because they laughed in each other's faces ; and
nothing makes the Catholic mummeries respectable but
the vast numbers who believe in them. A small and
persecuted sect, who cherished such nonsense in its
midst, would be borne down and wiped out by the de-
rision of all the world.

Cologne comes from the Roman name "colonia;"
and if cleanliness be next to godliness, it is very far off
from both. The beauty of its cathedral gives credit
to the diabolical legend that hangs about it. It is said
the architect sold his soul to Satan for the plan of the
church ; but he took so much time in building it, that
his creditor waxed impatient, and claimed his due be-
fore the work was done ; so that the cathedral, begun
in 1248, has never been, and can never be finished. A
more practical reason is, that there has never been
money enough forthcoming for the purpose. " Church
work is slow — church work is slow," said Sir Roger
de Coverley.

It has been said that the cloisters are too low for the
nave, thus making a certain disproportion ; but I verily
believe there are people who would carp at the "golden
streets," because they were not paved with dianK)nds.

One could half believe that it came straight from
heaven as a free gifl to worshipping souls, if the smell
of candles, and the tawdry images of the Virgin dressed

126 BEATEN PATHS, OR

«
up with spangles, did not prove it a very human piece
of work after all. In the heart of it is a little jewelry
shop, otherwise the golden shrine of the "Three Kings,'*
or Magi, " Caspar, Melchior, and Baltasar," who came
to worship the infant Jesus, bringing frankincense and
myrrh.

The skeletons were brought from the East by the
Empress Helena, mother of Constantine. The skulls
are bound with diamonds, and the whole shrine is stud-
ded thick with glowing rubies, and sapphires, and all
manner of precious stones. It must forever touch the
feminine heart to see such glorious things wasted on a
box of bones (which may have belonged to three Arab
camel-drivers), when they might be wrought into brace-
lets and necklaces. The treasury is rich in jewelled
crosses, and gold vases, used in rare ecclesiastical pa-
geants. A little box studded with great pearls, which,
one can see with half an eye, were intended by nature
for ear-rings, holds a thorn of the true crown ; but the
choicest things in the collection are two links of the
chain that bound St. Peter at Jerusalem when the
angel released him out of prison. They do not tell
you (perhaps heretics are unworthy to hear it) whether
the angel or St. Peter himself preserved them as a
souvenir of his deliverance.

In a little chapel behind the high altar is a picture
of the adoration of the Magi, so old that no man can
guess at the name of the artist; but still so beaming
with genius, that his name ought to be a household
word. Goethe called it "the axis of the arts;" but I
hope my readers will know better than I do what he
meant by it.

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 127

Through many narrow streets, like a network of
sewers, with a new smell waiting for us at every cor-
ner, we sought the Church of St. Ursula, that luckless
Scottish princess, who, returning from her pilgrimage
to Rome, with a modest train of eleven thousand vir-
gins, was here set upon and slain by the heathen Huns.

The legend is that, while high mass was being cele-
brated by the Archbishop of Cologne, a white dove
flew down three times to one spot, and when the
ground was opened, the bones of a great multitude
were found, with inscriptions showing sufficiently to
devout minds that they were the remains of St. Ui'sula
and her train. These bones are now an*anged inside
the walls of her church, two feet deep, and may be
reverently peeped at through small gratings.

In stiff old pictures, St. Ursula and her betrothed
walk hand in hand along a river bank strewn with
heads and arms, cut off by the Huns, and they are
themselves skewered by two heathen swords; but
being together and true lovers, they don't seem to no-
tice such small inconveniences in the least ; let a picture
be ever so stiff and ill-painted, this bit of love and pa-
thos would condone it!

Sceptical Protestants dare to laugh at this sweet old
story, because some of the bones are those of men, and
others of animals; but the legend expressly says that
some of the train were soldiers; the word virgin has
no gender, and St. Paul made no distinction. Sir Gala-
had was a "maiden knight" —

** I never felt the kiss of love.
Nor maiden's hand in mine,
So keep I fair through faitli and prayer,
A i\.(jirt IicMit ii^ worl: :m(l ulil."

128 BEATEN PATHS, OR

Touching the bones of animals found with the others,
many of the elderly virgins may have had lap-dogs.
So pretty and sad a story ought not to be wiped out
of history for want of a trifle of probability.

In a little room, that one enters for a sixpence, the
bones are artistically arranged in all sorts of figures
and arabesques, and rows of skulls are set on shelves,
done up in red needle-work, as if every virgin of them
had died of the toothache. Here, too, is one of the
identical jars in which water was turned into wine, at
the marriage in Cana of Galilee. It is of alabaster,
much stained and battered, as anything or anybody
naturally would be, after being knocked about for
eighteen hundred years. There are some old boxes of
trinkets, beads, and the like, found with the bones, and
a tooth belonging to St. Apollonia. Being a hollow
one, she was well rid of it.

If I made any distant allusion to any of the seventy-
two smells which Coleridge counted in Cologne, in the
hearing of our guide, he always muttered something
about its being a Roman city, as if that august people
had left all these evil odors behind them, when they
declined and fell. Many sins have been laid to their
charge, but none so heinous as this. This guide pro-
fessed to speak English, but he very appropriately pro-
nounced it "anguish." It was anguish to hear him.
It is an instance of the law of compensation, and also
of the meeting of extremes, that in this tainted city is
to be found the true Farina cologne. There are about
forty shops, each one of which is the sole and only
place where it is sold. Johann Maria, himself, pro-
fessed to live at " No. 4 Inlichplatz ; " and so sinister

<4

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 129

was the droop in his left eye, as he surveyed our sevea
innocent'countenances, that we were fain to take what-
ever he gave us, asking no questions.

After a reeking forenoon in Cologne, it was like " the
shadow of a great rock in a weary land" to find our-
selves on a steamer on the Rhine, that "exulting and
abounding river," which Germans love so well that
they name it "Father Rhine." Tourists who think they
waste time if they are not always seeing something, usu-
ally make the journey by rail to Bonn, and take boat there,
as the scenery called "^?ie" does not begin till one has
passed that place ; but they make a great mistake.

An afternoon of plain sailing, with a cool wind blow-
ing in my face, gave my strained enthusiasm time to
rest after the glories of Cologne Cathedral. It was >i
eager as ever when we landed at the little village of ""
Koenigswinter, and challenged the first sentinel of the
enchanted garden of the Rhine, the " castled crag of

Drachenfels."

«

We took refuge from the white glare of heat in the
first hotel we could find ; but the place of places to S
spend the night, and see the sun rise, is at a little "^
bird's nest of an inn on the crag itself. The royal way
of ascent is by carriage ; but for an equal measure of ^
hard work and pure fun, there is nothing like a donkey- j J;
ride, and the total depravity of a donkey-boy. ^

The view from the Drachenfels (dragon-rock) is not c^
so rarely beautiftil as from others of the Rhine heights;
but to us' it was the first, and the first draught of delight
is always the sweetest. . The first child, to a mother, is
always the handsomest, and one's first love can never
be improved upon. •--'

9

130 BEATEN PATHS, OR

Travellers often go down the Rhine, beginning with
Its heights, and following it until it flattens into Dutch
placidity; but w^e began at the lowest step, and went
up the stairs of its beauty till our last look was in the
face of its perfection. It was old Plato's notion that,
when one was moved by loveliness, the wings of the
soul begin to swell; and yet the ancient owners of this
castle founded on a rock had no corner in their souls
that swelled for anything but plunder. The fields that
used to smoke under their ravages, now stretch away
in little right-angled patches of many-shaded green. It
has reminded some one of a patchwork bed-quilt ; but
to me it was like a vast mosaic of green stones, emerald,
and chrysoprase, and beryl, with now and then a sere
and yellow agate.

In pagan days a horrible dragon, breathing fire and
smoke, lived on the Drachenfels (one sees his cave,
coming up), to whose rapacity the people offered hu-
man victims. A young girl, whose beauty had made a
quarrel between two knights, was offered to the dragon
by way of settling the matter. As she was tied trem-
bling to a tree, and the dragon rushed at her, she held
up a crucifix, which so affrighted him, that, with a great
hissing, he plunged over the precipice, and so made an
end of himself.

This miracle made good Christians of all the heathen
in the neighborhood ; and whether the girl married one
or both of the knights the legend saith not. We man-
age these things better in the nineteenth century.

Two maidens are prone to quarrel over one knight,
who straightway marries another woman, who does not
love him, but wants a home, so that it is the man who
is given to the dragon after all.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 131

The Drachenfels is a spur of the Siebcngebirge, or
" Seven Mountains," which were the scene of the Nie-
belungenlied — the Iliad and Odyssey of Germany. It
is a vast mine of poetry only partially \vorked. / Wil-
liam Morris, in his Earthly Paradise, has sunk the
Latest shaft in it. The story of the '•Niebelungen," in
very short hand, is somewhat like this. Seigfried, the
hero, kills a dragon ; and, being bathed in its blood, is
rendered invulnerable except in one small spot on liis
back, where a leaf fell during the bath. He marries
Chrimhilde, fairest among women, and having gone
over, body and soul, to his wife's family, as most men
do who love their waives, he goes wuth Gunther, his
brother-in-law, to Iceland, to help him court a princess
called Brunehaut. This young woman is one of the
strong-minded women of that period, and will marry
no one who cannot overcome her in single combat.
She has slain many suitors, but Seigfried puts on his
magic cap, which makes him invisible, and gives him
the strength of twelve men ; with liis aid Gunther gets
the victory and marries the princess. But Bruneliaut
has not got over the love of fighting; and when she
has only her husband to deal with, easily binds him
with cords, and hangs him on a nail against the wall.

Gunther must have been greatly more or less than a
man and a descendant of Adam, if he did not make
haste to lay the blame of Brunehaut's first defeat on
Seigfried.

^y way of retaliation Brunehaut bribes an old war-
rior named Hagen, who is in Chrimhilde's confidence,
to find out from her where Seigfried is vulnerable.
On the plea of guarding him from all perils, Hagen per-

132 BEATEN PATHS, OR

suades Cbrimhilde to embroider a leaf on liis doublet
over the fatal spot. Then Hagen seizes his opportu-
nity, when Seigfried is stooping to drink at a spring,
and plunges a dagger through the leaf. Tlie widowed
Chrinihilde now gives her v^ays and nights to revenge^
and finally marries the king of the Huns on condition
of I lis assisting her in her great object. After years of
wailing, Gunther and Brunehaut (who has been some-
what "weeded of her folly"), Ilagen, and all her fol-
lowers, come to make Chrinihilde a friendly visit, and
the poem ends with a grand slaughter of all concerned.
The moral of all this seems to be (though it is not set
down in the book), that no ^vise man will ever let his
wife know where his weak spot is.

A little below the Drachenfels is the castle of Ro-
landseck and the island convent of Nonnenworth, held
together by the airy bridge of a little love story, sad as
it is sweet.

Roland fell in love w^ith the fair Hildegunde, but this
did not hinder his going to the wars. News came of
his death, and the maiden fled, in ber despair, to the
convent of Nonnenworth. The day after she had
taken the veil, Roland returned safe and well, and
afterwards wasted his life in watching the convent be-
low his tower, that hid his treasure.

" Gazing downward to the convent,
Hour on hour he passed,
Watching still his lady's lattice,
Till it oped at last."

One day be saw a funeral procession wind among
the trees of the island, and the sixth sense — that only

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 133

lovers have — told him that Hildeguncle was dead, and
his watching was soon over.

** There a corse they found him sitting
Once when day returned ;
Still liis pale aiui placid features
To the lattice turned."

This story demonstrates the superior comfort of the
Protestant way of living and thinking. If Hildegunde
had had no convent to flee to, in her despair she would
have wrung her hands and torn her liair in her lather's
house until Roland came home; and it' he had never
returned, the worst that would have befallen her woukl
have been to be an old maid, and bring up her nieces
and nephews. It was a sorrowful choice of evils those
Catholic maidens had, in the middle ages, to marry or
to go into a convent. It is not the least of the bless-
ings of Protestantism, that it opened another road for
women to travel in, if they prefer it.

As we sail past Oberwinter, the "Seven Mountains"
pose themselves for one long picture —

** A blending of all beauties, streams, and dells,
Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine."

The Rhine has set up an altar there on which to offer
his first fruits.

Farther up is the ruined castle of Hammerstein,
named from Charles Martel, the Hammer. Henry IV.
of Germany made a great fight against that most over-
beaiing of popes, Gregory VII. ; and when he brought
himself to ask forgiveness, he was kept waiting three
days, clothed in sackcloth, before he received it. This
was overdoing it, according to papal habit in all ages;

v_

134 BEATEN PATHS, OR

the war broke out again, and Henry took refuge and
long held out against bis enemies in this now roofless
castle of Haramerstein.

Andernach has a tall watcb-tower and a volcanic
foundation. The people live by their quarries, one of
which gives millstones; another, the water cement used
by the Dutch to give solidity to their dikes; and a
third, a stone for coffins, which absorbs the moisture of
the body. The Romans called these coffins " sarcoph-
agi," flesh-consumers.

Neuwied has a look of home with its clean white-
painted houses. The Moravian Brethren have settled
here in great numbers ; they live somewhat after the
fashion of Shakers in America, except (a great except)
that marriage is permitted, and, on withdrawal, two
years' frugal support is allowed; a member is never
received a second time ; under this rule, it is almost
unheard of in the history of the community that any
one should leave them.

They have a curious and fascinating custom of draw-
ing lots in any emergency, and trusting to Providence
for the event. 1 suppose it meets that yearning for
moral stimulant which other people satisfy with gam-
bling. Not far from Neuvvied is the monument to
Hoche, a young French general, who was thought to
show more promise than Napoleon himself. Byron
wrote for him the most perfect of epitaphs, —

** His mourners were two hosts — his friends and foes," —

unless that to Marceau, also buried on the Rhine shore,

may rival it, —

" He had kept
The whiteness of his soul, and thus men wept for him."

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 135

CHAPTER X.

THE RHINE.

•

** O, the pride of the German heart in this noble river ! By
Heavens, if I were a German, I would be proud of it, too ; and of
the clustering grapes that hang about its temples as it reels on-
ward through vineyards, in a triumphant march, like Bacchus,
crowned and drunken. " — Longfellow's Hyperion,

IT was on the Rhine steamer, after leaving Cologne,
that our St. Ursula fell among thieves, worse
heathen than their ancestors, who were satisfied
with taking life ; but these modern Huns would have
our money, too. They never knew when they had
been fairly paid ; and when St. Ursula would have en-
lightened them in plain English, and good French, and
scholarly German (I am not sure that she did not
try them with "small Latin and less Greek"), they
fell back on stupidity and Low Dutch ; and yet these
same men, when she ordered anything to eat, were
perfect polyglots of language. The story of the build-
ing of Babel is a mythical matter at home, but in Eu-
rope, where good English scolding is a waste of breath,
it seems an affair of yesterday when every man asked
his neighbor for a hammer or a nail, and found no one
to understand him.

136 BEATEN PATHS, OR

In Dr. Rimmer's picture of the master builder of the
Tower of Babel, which once sounded so outlandish,
the traveller in Germany descries a man and a brother.

German money is a conundrum that one may as well
give up, to begin with. Heine said it was a great help
to an education to be born to those nouns that make
their accusative in wm, and the same thing applies to
the groschen and kroitzers of his national money. In
one province a groschen is three cents, in another
more, and in another less ; that is, a groschen is not al-
ways a groschen, and great quantities of small coin are
just nickel buttons, with no inscription at all. It takes
the faith that will remove mountains to believe that
they have any value.

The buyer may say, " It is naught, it is naught," but
travellers must go by what the seller says, and the sell-
er is sure to cheat in giving change. The only remedy
is to spend as little as possible on German soil. The
careful phrases culled out of German grammars are of
very little use in withstanding or understanding the
villanous patois spoken by guides and porters.

Our second day on the Rhine landed us at Coblentz.
One does not need to be told that the name comes
from the Latin word "confluentia," the confluence of
the Rhine and the "blue Moselle." Every wind that
blows over it tells us that the Romans have been there
before us. There is no need of olfactory nerves in
these old walled towns. A little girl once said she
^'' heard a smell;" and you can Aear,- and taste^ and
almost 8ee those evil odors.

When Dr. Wayland laid down the law that you
could not imagine a smell, he meant those of Cologne

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 137

and Coblentz. The Queen of Prussia has a palace
there, and the "Queen's Gardens " make a fringe of
loveliness along the river bank. On the way, the
coachman shows you a stone sarcasm, in the shape of a
piHar, erected before the disastrous Russian campaign
of Napoleon, with an inscription in which French suc-
cess is taken for granted. When the Napoleonic tide
turned the wrong way in this very campaign, — for Fate
does not like being anticipated, — the Russian com-
mandant of Coblentz let the pillar stand, merely adding
to the inscription a " Seen and approved," with his
signature, as if he had vised a passport. Everybody
crosses the bridge of boats to visit Ehrenbreitstein,
" the broad stone of honor," the Gibraltar of Germany.
Nature and men have worked together to make it
the most tremendous scowl that the face of one coun-
try can wear towards another. It has seen worse days,
but never better ones than now. The French had pos-
session of it once,

** And laid those proud roofs bare to summer rain,
On which the iron shower had poured in vain."

The garrison can only be reduced by starvation, and
it once held out so long that cat flesh was twenty-five
cents a pound. The dungeons and other secrets of
the fortress used to open to a fee; but since the last
war nothing is shown for love or money, except the
view from the battlements. French eyes are now so
sharpened by wrath and shame, that they would al-
most penetrate a stone wall to find out a weak spot in
this rock of defence.

138 BEATEN PATHS, OR

The German soklicrs seem rather small men, but
well-built and miraculously drilled, with more intelli-
gent faces than one sees in the English army. A
little below Coblentz is Stolzenfels (proud rock). The
Coblentzers long offered it for sale for seventy thalers,
and finally made a present of it to the crown prince,
who restored it to its first estate. The great paint-
ing on the outside, visible from the steamer, chronicles
the visit of an English princess, who was entertained
there. One of its wings was long inhabited by a party
of alchemists, who sought for the philosopher's stone,
and the elixir of life, long after other people had given
them up for lost. After this, villages lie " thick as
leaves in Vallombrosa" along the edge of the river^
pleasant places to be buried in.

Every one has its castle and its legend of the lovely
maiden, whom somebody loved or did not love; the
end is sure to be tragic enough in either case. Long-
fellow has told the story of "The Brothers" Sternberg
and Liebenstein, in Hyperion. It sings itself in the
mind like an old ballad.

Rheinfels is the most imposing ruin on the river, but
not the most graceful or romantic. In 1692 a French
marshal promised it to Louis XIV. for a Christmas
present ; but this old French brag, like many later ones,
came to nothing.

Then comes the rock of the " Lorelei," four hundred
and forty-seven feet high, the old home of a siren, with
a star on her forehead and a harp in her hand, who
lured men to destruction in her whirlpool, and then
chanted their death-son ^.

The rock was said, in the old time, to echo fifteen

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 139

times ; bnt men are grown hard to lm*e, and the Lorelei
is tired of it: her rock now sends back but one echo.
It has been tunnelled, too, by the railroad ; even "Ma-
riana" would have found it hard work to be romantic
in the " moated grange," if a train of cars had passed
through the cellar of it. Hood says the echo is now,
"Take care of your pocket ; take care of your pocket."
Oberweisel, the Roman Vesalia, is said to be a pleas-
ant place to lose a day in, if one has them in plenty.
The' castle of Schoenberg crowns it, and in the river at
its feet are groups of rocks called the " Seven Sisters."
Some one has put the legend into lively verses, in this
wise : —

** The castle of Schoenberg was lofty and fair,
And seven countesses ruled there ;
Lovely, and noble, and wealthy, I trow;
Every sister had suitors enow.
Crowned duke and belted knight
Sighed at the feet of these ladies bright;
And they whispered hope to every one,
While they vowed in their hearts they would have none.

Gentles, list to the tale I tell ;
'Tis many a year since this befell ;
Women are altered now, I ween.
And never say what they do not mean.

At the castle of Schoenberg, 'twas merriment all ;
There was dancing in bower, and feasting in hall ;
They ran at the ring in the tilt-yard gay.
And the moments flew faster than thought away;
But not only moments, — the days fled too.
And they were but as when the first came to woo;
And spoke they of marriage or bliss deferred.
They were silenced by laughter and scornful word.

140 BEATEN PATHS, OR

Gentles, list to the tale I tell;
*Tis many a year since this befell ;
And ladies now so mildly reign,
They never sport with a lover's pain.

Knight looked upon knight with an evil eye ;
Each fancied a favored rival nigh;
And darker every day they frowned,
And sharper still the taunt went round,
Till swords were drawn, and lance in rest,
And the blood ran down from each noble breast;
While the sisters sat in their chairs of gold.
And smiled at the fall of their champions bold.

Gentles, list to the tale I tell ;
'Tis many a year since this befell ;
Times have changed, we must allow ^
Countesses are not so cruel now.

Morning dawned on Schoenberg's towers,

But the sisters were not in their wonted bowers ;

Their damsels sought them the castle o'er,

But upon earth they were seen no more.

Seven rocks are in the tide,

Oberweisel's walls beside,

Baring their cold brows to heaven :

They are called * The Sisters Seven.'

Gentles, list to the tale I tell ;
*Tis many a year since this befell ;
And ladies now may love deride.
And their suitors alone be petrified."

The Falz, a castle in the middle of the river, stands
like a sentinel with presented arms. It was built to
challenge and demand tribute of every boat that
passed it.

It was an old custom that the wives of the Counts

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 141

Palatine must pass some time in this castle, previous
to becoming mothers. The reason for this custom it
is difficult to fathom, unless there were not wars and
rumors of wars enough to keep up their spirits in their
mountain castles.

Near Bacharach is a rock that is only seen when
the river is very low. The peasants hold a high fes-
tival when it appears, for it is the unfailing signal of
a noble vintage on that year.

** At Bacharach, on tlie Rhine,
At Hochheim, on tlie Main,
And at Wurzberg, on the Stein,
Grow the three best kinds of wine."

We are now among the old robber castles, thirty^
ttco of which used to demand tribute of every passing
boat. A mercliant of those days must have been a
man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. On a lit-
tle green island that the steamer turns out for, stands
the "Mouse Tower." An inhuman bishop, named
Hatto, bought up all the wheat, in order to sell it
dear, and w^hen the people complained, he enticed
them into a barn, and burnt them up,

"I* faith, *tis an excellent bonfire," quoth he,
** And the country is greatly obliged to me,
For ridding it in these times forlorn,
Of rats that only consume the corn."

But out of the ashes of his victims came swarms
of rats, that chased him from one place to another, un-
til he fled to an island in the Rhine, and built the
Mouse Tower; but the rats swam over after him.

142 BEATEN PATHS, OR

** Down on his knees the bishop fell,
And faster and faster his beads did he tell,
As louder and louder, drawing near.
The saw of their teeth without he could hear.

And in at the windows, and inat the door,

And through the walls in thousands they pour,

And down through the ceiling, and up through the floor,

From the right and left, from behind and before.

From within and without, from above and below,

And all at once to the bishop they go.

They have whetted their teeth against the stones.
And now they pick the bishop's bones ;
They gnawed the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgment on him."

At Bin gen the river is supposed to have broken
the mountain chain that once bound it, as there are
signs that it was once a great lake, stretching even
to Basle. Poetry has made Bingen famous, with its
poor soldier dying in Algiers. It is one of the " oldest
inhabitants" of reading books. After Bingen, the vil-
lages grow rare, and the hills more steep, but the vine-
yards never cease. They date back to Charlemagne,
who found that the snow melted sooner on these hill-
sides than anywhere else. There is a legend that his
favorite vineyards were at Winkel, and that he visits
them once every year, and blesses them.

** And then from the home that he still loves so well,-
He returns to the tomb that's in Aix-la-Chapelle,
There to slumber in peace till the old year is over,
And the vineyards again woo him back like a lover.**

The huge basaltic rocks, that seem to have grudged
the passage of the river, have terraces built on their

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 143

steep sides, where only a lean goat would care to climb,
and sometimes holes are blasted into them, that will
hold just soil enough to nourish a vine. This soil is
carried up in baskets, chiefly on the backs of women;
and when a hard rain washes it down, the work has all
to be done over again. Woman's work is never done
anywhere. These Rhenish peasant women are strong,
straight-limbed beasts of burden, nothing more nor less.
Where all the men are trained to be soldiers, all the
women must perforce be slaves. Byron will have it,

that —

** Peasant girls, with deep-blue eyes,
And hands which offer early flowers,
Walk smiling o'er this paradise."

They have blue eyes, it is true, blue as turquoises ;
but they are tanned a red brown by the sun, and even
turquoises set in copper lose all their beauty. I have
never seen a German woman who would " shake the
saintship of an anchorite," or of any other man; but
travelling poets must be poetical, if truth is put to the
sword.

Bismarck is not a favorite with German women. In
the late war he made a burnt-offering of one hundred
and thirty thousand soldiers, and left desolate the same
number of widows and maidens. A man who takes
the responsibility of making old maids by the hun-
dred thousand, must be brave indeed. Our landlady
at Coblentz, a buxom little widow, whose husband was
killed at Sedan, said, with a long-drawn sigh, " Bis-
marck will die some time, please God ! "

The Johannesberg grapes are not gathered until dead
ripe, and those that fall on the ground are picked up

144 BEATEN PATHS, OR

with little wooden forks, made for the purpose. The
wine was not particularly famous until the Rothschilds
got possession of the vineyard, and with Jewish acute-
ness, sold only a limited quantity every year, while
they hired clever pens to write up its virtues.

Near Mayence we met one of those enormous rafts —
water-villages — made from the mountain timber, and
floated down to Holland. Boatmen and their families,
cattle and fowls, live on them, sometimes to the num-
ber of three or four hundred.

Mayence has a great cathedral, a favorite of fire, hav-
ing been burned and restored six times; but it is chiefly
famous as being the city where Gutenberg brought to
perfection the art that makes men immortal, and print-
ed his first Bible. He beggared himself, and led the
usual hard life of inventors; but after death it was
made up to him in statues.

I think it was here that, while one of his Bibles was
in type, a woman substituted the word "narr" (fool),
for "herr" (lord), in the verse about husband and
wife, which says, " And he shall be her lord," so that it
read, "and he shall be her fool." I wonder if the op-
pressed creature thought that the Bible's saying so
would make it so. The mistake was discovered in
time, and the woman came to German grief, which
must be more poignant than any other.

Mayence was the home of Frauenlob, a Minnesinger,
who spent his whole life in singing the praises of wo-
men, and when he died his body was borne to the
tomb by six lovely maidens. His motto was, " He who
possesses the love of a noble woman will hold all vice
iu scorn."

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 145

The Mastersingers flourished in Mayence, too — a
queer guild of "butchers and bakers, and candlestick-
makers," who put vei*ses together over their work, and
insisted on naming it poetry. They are to the Minne-
singers as cuckoos and owls to nightingales.

*' As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme.
And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anviFs
chime.'*

We left the Rhine at Mayence, though we caught a
glimpse of it afterwards in Basle. The Germans have
covered their beloved river with poetry, like a misty
veil, which adds to its beauty, like a bit of lace over
the face of a fair woman. Two English prose-poems
have been laid on its shrine, Longfellow's Hyperion,
and the Pilgrims of the Rhine, by Bulwer.

The first is like a bunch of sweet-smelling flowers,
dewy and fresh, as if the blessing of the morning were
still on them ; but the latter is like the same bunch,
imitated afler the best French method of makins: arti-
ficial flowers, lovely perhaps, but scentless and dry.

It is but an, hour's journey fronr Mayence to Frank-
fort, the old capital of the German empire.

The " Hotel do Bruxelle*' treats one perhaps as well
as one deserves; but the "Roman Emperor" hath a
more royal way with him.

All its old glories are but the setting to Dannecker's
"Ariadne on the Panther." One enters a small museum
of classical figures, evidently sculptured before the
fashion of clothes, or even ^g leaves, had ever been
heard of, a room to make eveiy man and woman look
10

146 BEATEN PATHS, OR

in each other's eyes, as Adam and Eve did when they
found themselves naked, and were ashamed.

It is not to be supposed that the traveller pene-
trates as far as Frankfort without being introduced to
whole armies of nude statues ; but the nakedness of
these figures was so aggressive, that they ought to have
been arrested by a policeman. The "Ariadne" is by
herself; in a little room with scarlet walls, which cast a
pink glow over her figure. She is naked, too, but she
is so clothed upon with loveliness, that one no more
thinks of noticing it than would the happy panther that
bears her. Ariadne's story is shadowed forth in her
face.

She was a king's daughter, who saved the Greek
Theseus from danger, because she loved him. He j)er-
suaded her to elope with him, and perhaps she loved
him better than the manly heart can bear, for he soon
wearied of her, and when she lay asleep one day on an
island, he deserted her. After great despair, she suf-
fered herself, like a sensible woman, to be comforted
by the god Bacchus (which does not mean that she
took to drink), and hence comes the panther, which
was an animal sacred to Bacchus.

The sculptor has wrought into her fjjce the expres-
sion of a woman scorned, and yet triumphant. She
has but one desire more on earth, and that is to meet
Theseus and cut him dead. The miniature Ariadnes,
in parian and plaster, that adorn American mantels,
are very decent copies of the panther, but the real Ari-
adne never leaves her rose-tinted home in Frankfort.

The hall of the Kaisers, lined with full-length por-
traits of all the German emperors who ever reigned,

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 147

was not a comfortable place to visit. One felt that one
ought to know something of ail those high colored Ot-
tos and Ludwigs, whom they married, or what famous
heads they had cut off; but they were all strangers.
Only the husband and father of Maria Theresa were
anything like old acquaintances. In the great street
of Frankfort, called " Zeil," every woman is on her
native heath. Her soul may have swelled and budded
on the Rhine, but amid the ravishing china and dainty
embroidery that line this street, she is herself again.
Frankfort is a sort of outpost of Berlin in worsted
work, and if she wants to buy a drab-colored Moses on
a sky-blue giound, or a shower of golden butterflies
just alight on a sofa-pillow, or any other bit of work
that is " red with the blood of murdered time," now is
her opportunity.

Frankfort was the birthplace of Goethe, the "many-
sided one," who taught that virtue was one of the fine
arts, which one might cultivate or not, as one had time
or talent. The man who wrote Elective Affinities
ought to have been stoned to death by his country-
women.

148 BEATEN PATHS, OR

CHAPTER XI.

MOEE GERMANY.

" At intervals the wind of the summer night passed through
the ruined castle and the trees, and they sent forth a sound as if
Nature were sighing in lier dreams ; and tlien all was still save
the sweet, passionate song of the nightingales, that nowhere sing
more sweetly than in the gardens of Heidelberg Castle." — Long-
fellow.

WE reached Heidelberg on the eve of the birth-
day of its aged university, and the town buzzed
with young people come to celebrate it, like a hive of
bees about to swarm.

The ruined castle, which broods over the town like
an anxious mother over her baby's crib, burst into a
blaze of red light at ten o'clock, which showed every
little scroll and leafy capital on its carved front. It
renewed its princely and brilliant youth, like a gray old
actress suddenly inspired by a memory of early triumph,
and then it sank into quick darkness and old age, and
all the people, gathered on the river in crowds to see
the glory of a moment, went home to drink to the
health of the university.

The castle loses nothing when one climbs to it by
daylight. The view from the battlements is a rest to

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 149

the weary, and the hill-side is threaded all over with
shady paths, ending in dark little nooks, where an army
of lovers might wander all night and never hear of
each other.

This palace of a castle was six centuries in building,
and for some years it was the home of Elizabeth, the
ill-fated Queen of Bohemia, who sacrificed everything
for the empty title of queen, and came to utter poverty
in her old age. She was grand-daughter of Mary
Queen of Scots, and, like most of the Stuarts, early
found herself on the wrong side of fate. The noble
ladies who were borne into this castle must have spent
their summer days on the esplanade, embroidering ban-
ners for brothers and lovers, and seeing every Sir Laun-
celot that rode up the river bank below them; if they
were crossed in love, they had only to leap off the bat-
tlements in the small hours of the night, with the cer-
tainty of having their names embalmed forever in
German song and story. With all these materials for
happiness, what could a woman ask more?

The walls of the castle are, in many places, twenty
feet thick: Time would have grown old and lost his
teeth before he could have gnawed them away, if he
had not been assisted by French gunpowder.

A guide is ready for you and your fee, and leads you
through a dusty labyrinth of old rooms and passages,
while you wish yourself under the trees of the hill-side;
he finishes with the "Great Tun," which held three hun-
dre<l thousand bottles of wine. The journey through
the castle is a snare and a delusion, and one can see
the Great Tun at any time with a common hogshead
and a magnifying glass.

150 BEATEN PATHS, OR

The famous university is a very insignificant- cluster
of buildings, as one looks down at it from the*' Phi-
losopher's Walk," a long avenue planted with vine-
yards, on the opposite side of the river ; at the foot of
it is an inn and a court-yard where the students fight
their duels, and mar the little beauty given them by
nature. Duelling began in the reign of Henry II. of
France, who asked his courtiers, impatiently, "Why
do you come to me for justice when you wear that at
your side with which you can do yourselves justice ? "
whereupon the first challenge w^as sent. Perhaps a
Heidelberg student will send the last. The wrongs of
all dogs in other German cities are here made up to a
few; many of the students lead about very handsome
ones, and it is said that after a drinking bout, the dogs
often lead their masters, being the nobler animal of
the two. The university was born in the fourteenth
century, and even in its babyhood had half a thousand
students, learning by heart versified rules of grammar,
and endless commentaries, darkening wisdom that was
dark enough in the beginning. "Truly, I do not won-
der," says Longfellow, "that the pupils of Erigena Sco-
tus put him to death with their penknives. They must
have been driven to the very verge of despair." There
is a large colony of young Americans at Heidelberg,
and it is a vexed question there, as everywhere else,
whether women shall be admitted to the benefits of
the university.

One young lady from Boston has just gone through
a course of ethics and philosophy, the only woman
among two hundred and fifty young men; her thirty
years and her high aim (she destines herself for the

A WOMAN'S VACATIOISr, 151

practice of law) brought her unscathed through the
ordeal.

Musicnl instruction is excellent and cheap, and good
board maybe found for ^VQ francs (a dollar) a day;
but it is a place full of soriows for a girl, who has no
friends to receive and make a backcjround for her.
She may come irom America, full of hope and courage,
with her heart set solely on a good musical education,
but the weight of German opinion will slowly and
surely bear down her good cheer. She has to breathe
air thick with suspicion, and in every German girl's
eyes, she reads the pharisaic rejoicing that they are not
as she is.

She may keep up her spirits for awhile with a liearty
scorn of their prudery, but in the end, if she cares for
society, she must yield to its limitations. One young
American girl got on very well by always wearing a
wedding ring, and behaving as if she had lost every
friend she had in the world.

A lonely girl cannot be happy without being im-
proper, at least in the eyes of female Ileidelbergera;
and I suppose men here, as at home, must think as
their wives do. Women have a silent legislation in
the realm of propriety none the less binding that it is
not found in statute-books.

In the slight glimpses that the traveller catches of
German family-life in the lower and middle classes,
w^hich is, of course, the majority, the wife is no better
than his dog, nor nearer than his horse, to her husband.
He comes home to eat and to sleep, speaking none but
necessary words to his wife, who hastens to fill him up
with his favorite dishes.

152 BEATEN PATHS, OR

To a guest or a boarder he may address a sentence
or two of courtesy, but never to his wife, and then he
hurries away (if a German ever hurries) to a beer-gar-
den to spend his evenings. He seems to suspect some-
thing effeminate in an American, who prefers to sit
down with his wife and children at home.

A German woman's motto seems to have been writ-
ten for her long ago by old Chaucer : —

** She saith not once * nay,' when he saith * yea ; *
* Do this,' saith he; * All ready, sir,' quoth she."

I say that this is the outward a})pearance of German
family-life; but no one can have studied womanly char-
acter anywhere without discovering that total submis-
sion would soon exterminate the sex. Famine and
pestilence would not be so sure. To have her own
way is to a woman the breath of life ; and it must be
confessed that German women do not look so miserable
as they ought. I doubt not they have found a way to
lead their husbands without letting them see the string;
and if one had time to study their back-stairs politics,
they might not be found to differ very widely from
those of America.

Two hours' travel through a fertile country and
home-like villages lies between Heidelberg, the place of
study, and Baden-Baden, the place of pleasure.

The whole air of Baden is full of rest and leisure, as
if no one who came there brought any shadow of work
or business with him. Once it was the scene of a
perpetual tragedy, in which men and women threw
away their money, and their happiness, openly and
without shame. Lookers-on held tlieir breath as they

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 153

would at the racinc: of bloorl-horses. Since the cjam-
bling-houses have been suppressed, Baden has lost its
morbid charm. It is as if Lord Byron, in the height
of his profligacy, had "experienced religion;" he
would still be noble, handsome, and poetic, but not
half so interesting:.

The Conversation-house and gardens are light as day
every evening, and elegantly-dressed crowds walk up
and down, looking at one another, and eating ices
under the trees, while the air palpitates to the music
of the Strauss waltzes. People only kill time in Baden
now, not their own souls. The place is lovely as ever,
a gem of price set in a circle still more precious in the
shape of environs ; but nothing in natural scenery can
be so fascinating to men and women as the exhibition
of their own passions.

A young Dutch lady travelling with us, for the first
time out of her own flat country, could not And words
strong enough, in her scanty English, to convince us of
its dcliciousness. "Heidelberg was good," she said,
with a final efl'ort; "I loved the hill and its castle; but
Baden, O, Baden, I said, I will never leave it!"

Next to Naples, Baden is most addicted to carved
coral. It is dear, as arc all beautiful things every-
where outside of heaven, but not so dear as in America.

From Baden we went round a corner to Strasbourg,
which has lately dropped out of French into German
hands; but like a slave sold late in life, it is too old to
change its character or habits. There is ait air of
solidity and time-worn custom about it, as if it ha'l
stood from the beginnins: of the world. Even the
Romans found it a goodly town, and added nothing

154 BEATEN PATHS, OR

but fortifications. The cathedral tower is so high and
light, it might be the only pinnacle left of the tower
built by the giants to scale heaven. In the first French
revolution, this great height was considered to insult
the principle of equality, and was only saved from
destruction by the Strasbourgers hastening to put the
red cap of liberty on it. That red cap, made of tin, is
now preserved in the city, a monument of French
idiocy.

The cathedral-front is dainty as a bit of point-lace;
it was brought to perfection by three generations of
Steinbachs, chief among whom is remembered Sabina
Von Steinbach, one of the few women who have ap-
prenticed themselves to the trade of architecture, which
Madame de Stael calls "frozen rriusic." In the intericrr,
one pillar, called the '-Pillar of the Angels," is espe-
cially hers, and one of a group of Apostles holds a
scroll with these words on it in Latin : —

"May the grace of God fall to thy share, Sabina,
Whose hands have formed my image out of this hard stone."

Some of the grace of man also fell to her share, for
when she went to the cathedral to see this group ar-
ranged, the archbishop came to meet her, and placed a
laurel wreath on her head.

There is in many of the sculptures and ornaments of
the Strasbourg Cathedral, a varying richness and deli-
cacy that I have not seen in any other; like the over-
flowing, of a pure woman's thoughts. The famous
clock in one corner draws a greater crowd than all the
carved memories of Sabina. It calculates almost every-
thing but the end of the world. Near the top is a ^g-

A WOMAN'S FA CAT/ON'. 155

ure of Time with a scythe: at the first quarter of the
hour, the figure of a child passes before him; at the
second, a youth ; at the thii'd, a man of middle age ; and
on the hour, a graybeard bowed with age. Above is a
figure of Christ, and at noon the twelve apostles walk
around him, each one turning and bowing as he passes.
These figures are all about a foot high ; and to close the
puppet-show, a cock of life-size crows hoarsely three
times. The clock calculates the times of ecclesiastical
festivals, many of which are movable. This part of the
machine is said to require a thousand wheels, and at the
begiiming of the new year they all turn round and
arrange themselves for a new start.

The town is rich in high-peaked houses of Spanish
memory, favorite haunts of the sacred bird, the stork,
which struts about the streets and makes nests on the
chimneys as if it were the real landlord of the town,
and the inhabitants mere tenants at will. They have
names, like children of the fiimily ; and it is looked on
as an unfailing sign of coming misfortune when the
storks desert a house where they have long lived, and
make a nest on another chimney. When Van Arte-
velde takes on him the dangerous headship of the
rebellious citizens of Ghent, Clara, his sister, dissuades
him with this potent argument : —

** Roger was esteemed
The wisest stork in Ghent, and flew away
But twice hefore ; — the first time in the night
Before my father took that office up
Which proved so fatal in the end, and then,
The second time, the night before he died."

156 BEATEN PATHS, OR

Strasbourg is the headquarters of that epicurean dish
"Pates de foie gras," made from the livers of geese that
are fattened in a hot place. Who would be a goose in
Strasbourg?

The women of Alsace, of which this old city is the
capital, wear for head-gear an enormous black ribbon
bow, which flares out from the back of the head like
wings. It is inexpressibly odd in its effect, yet not un-
graceful, if it make a dark background to a pretty face.

In front of the cathedral I think we met very nearly,
if not quite, its youngest, citizen — a choleric-looking
baby submerged, all but its head, in a padded and
ruffled calico bag. The nurse tried to convey to us its
age in broken French and crumbly German, and some
of us, who knew more of languages than of babies,
thought she said ''ten days;" but I am persuaded she
meant ten hours, and that it is one of the time-honored
customs of the city to show the cathedral to its babies,
or the babies to the cathedral, on the very first day of
their arrival in Strasbourg.

As we turned our faces towards Basle and the Alps,
we had frequent reason to hope that old father Oi igen's
doctrine is a true one, namely, that at the judgment
day all women are changed into men. There must be
a warm sympathy between the women of this region
and the other lower animals, where a woman and a
cow are sometimes harnessed tosjether to draw the
plough, and a donkey cannot drag his load up hill with-
out a woman to pull with him.

" 1 am a woman, woe is me !
Born to grief and irksome care."

A WOMAN'S FA CAT/ON'. 157

Later we saw a woman and a donkey drawing a cart
along a stony road, with a raan in the cart fast asleep ;
and when she passed a steep place with a pile of stones
at the bottom, her spirit had been so dulled by long
oppression that she passed it by, and never perceived
her opportunity to tip out her lord and master, and
pretend it was an accident. She was more stupid than
the donkey.

Near Brussels two women were spreading a load of
manure on a field, barefooted and bareheaded in the
blazing sun, —

** Women they.
Or what had been those gracious things."

"We never see such a thins: in America. Tt is a
happy place for women," we said to our stolid old
coachman, for want of any other foreign audience to
hear our little brag.

"And unhappy for men?" was his instant question,
as if one implied the other.

"I don't know; I never asked them," I said, with a
sudden doubt; but Juno scorned my uncertainty.

"You have no need to ask them; wherever women
are happy, men are in Paradise!" She said it in Eng-
lish, but that old coachman shrugged his shoulders all
the same. Later in the day we took up this stitch
where we had dropped it.

" It only looks barbarous to us because it is unfa-
miliar," said St. Ursula, who would find excuses for a
cannibal. "Perhaps these peasant women have a hap-
piness of their own, and would not change with us.
They have never known anything better, and don't

158 BEATEN PATHS, OR

mind it. I have seen refined and delicate women in
AiYierica drudging all day over a hot cooking-stove,
when it would have been better for their souls and
bodies to work in the fields with their husbands."

"I cannot think so," I said, rushing to take up St.
Ursula's gauntlet. "A woman's temple is in her home;
anything that takes her out of it makes that temple
desolate just so long as she stnys away. A house with-
out a mistress in it, is a body without a soul. When
she voluntarily leaves it to lecture, or to preach, or to
till the ground, or to do anything that lays bare her
sacred seclusion, and places her on the same level with
men, she stoops to do work lower than that which is
divinely appointed to her to do in her own sphere.
She may do it better than men ; but it is degradation,
nevertheless._ She sells her birthright for a mess of
pottage, that nourishes neither herself nor anybody
else. A refined and delicate woman hanging over a
cooking-stove does not move me to pity as would the
same w^oman (supposing that one refined and delicate
ever did such a thing) if she cut off her long hair, her
glory, dressed herself in two shades of light silk, with
train, and over-dress, and ruffles, and gold ornaments,
and round tires like the moon, and went up on a plat-
form to work herself into a white heat of indignation
because women are not permitted to vote. One may
boil and bake all day, and not be so hot and panting as
I have seen a famous woman-lecturer, after an hour's
vigorous scolding at the oppressive man of straw who
will not give women the suffrage. To the best of my
belief, women have voted from the beginning of the
world. Nothing good, bad, or indifferent ever hap-

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 159

pcnecl that they had not a hand in it. And of all the
sex, for an American woman to disturb herself about
her rights, is like an old lady searching for her spec-
tacles when they are on her nose all the time."

"I have no desire to lecture," said St. Ursula, "nor
to wear 'two shades of light silk;' but I still think that
an immense amount of womanly eloquence, and poetry,
and power has gone up the kitchen chimney in our
happy country."

" It may be so ; but it might have been equally wasted
on a platform. I knew a woman — 'we ne'er shall look
upon lier like again' — who did the drudging work of
a farmer's wife, in a low-roofed cottage, all her life, and
brought up ten children to be noble and worthy men
and women, always standing ready, and keeping their
powder dry, to serve their country when it needed
them. She lived to see three of her sons in Congress
at the same time ; to see them governors, and generals,
and ambassadors, healing foreign as well as home
wounds, and all of them rose up and called her blessed.

" She never had a more intimate friend than her fire-
place; she was forced to stick to it closer than a brother
for a score of years, in order to fill her children's mouths;
but when she could find no other moment in which to
keep up with the history of her country, she would
have one of the boys read to her, at the breakfast table,
the speeches made by Webster, and Clay, and Calhoun,
who were then in their glory.

"In her triumphant old age, she was like the mother
of kings. When she asked me if I liad read the last
speech of this son or that son, I felt that she was show-
ing me the crown jewels. She seldom stirred fifty feet

160 BEATEN PATHS, OR

from her kitchen, and yet she marie herself a power in
the earth. If she had lived in cities, and held a weekly
reception of the most gifted people in the land, or had
crowded all her heart and brain into a book of poems
or a novel, which should touch the soul of the whole
nation, she might have had more of the semblance of
fame, but not a tithe of its substance that came to her
as she sent forth one after another of her worthy
workers in her Lord's vineyard."

"You forget," said St. Ursula, "that neither kitchens
nor children enter into the lot of some women, to be
made glorious, if they are ever so willing and able.
You forget the old maids."

"Never! May my right hand forget its cunning
when I forget them. They are the bone and sinew,
the reserve guard of the country ; but I maintain that
no woman has a right to be an old maid."

" She may have no choice."

"I deny it. Every woman has the choice at least
once in her life. Take our own party, and try the
argumentum ad foeminam (if there is such a thing).
We are, at this present, ten women of all ages, from
seventeen to fifty, matrons and maidens; but might we
not all have married at some time in our lives, if we
would ? " A conscious smile mounted into twenty eyes
and a little flush of color brightened some cheeks, as
my foolish words brought up some sad, or sweet, or
triumphant memory out of the dead past.

"Of all women's rights, you would say," said St.
Ursula, " the only one really worth fighting for, is the
right to love and to be loved ? "

"And to refuse love," suggested Juno. "The poorest

A WOMAN'S VACATION. IGl

and forlornest of women have that right; not St. Paul
nor the legislature can take it from them. I suppose
it is this, with a generous allowance of beer and cab-
bage, which keeps the German women in such good
condition."

11

162 BEATEN PATHS, OR

CHAPTER XII.

SWITZERLAND.

"What pleasure lives in height —
In height and cold, the splendor of the hills?**

AT Basle, the hotel of "The Three Kings" swal-
lowed us bodily, and never thought of us again.
It is a caravanserai, very gorgeous in its appointments,
fit to entertnin "Caspar, Melchior, and Baltasar" theni-
Belves; but any visitor of lower rank than a king must
fight valiantly to secure any attention at all. It was
here, too, that we put our collective foot down on the
"candle fraud." At every continental hotel, each vis-
itor is charged for a whole candle, even if he stay but
one night, and does not light it at all. If four people
use one room, they pay for four candles, and the ser-
vant rushes ahead of you to light them all, with an
enthusiasm worthy of a better cause. Next day the
candles are ingeniously whittled down to represent
new ones to the next comer. At Basle we made a
mild protest against paying for seven candles, none of
which had been lighted, for fear of mosquitos.^

If the clerk had been born and bred in an American
hotel, he could not- have crushed us more superciliously
with his, "You had the chance to light them; you

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 163

must pay for that." We did pay for it (thoy are not
afraid of women's wrath in that country), and solemn-
ly rolled up our seven candles in the heart of our bag-
gage, and went forth from his house like a tallow-
chandler with six ilpprentices.

We did not find Basle wonderful in any way, except
that an evening on the balcony overhanging the Rhine
will probably remain in the memory, when many statues
and pictures have wiped each other out. The river is
swift, and careless, and relentless as Fate. Men have
put a "thus far, and no farther," to it with stone edges,
and thrown out a balcony here and there, from which
to watch it go by, and that is about all men can do
with their Fate.

It was here in the darkness that I heard a loud voice
say, "What do I care for these little spouting Swiss
waterfalls, when I have seen Niagara?" as who should
say, " Why do I care to look at any other woman,
when mine eyes have beheld Barnum's fat lady, who
weighs six hundred pounds?" More than one on the
balcony groaned inwardly, "O my country, may you
not be judged by your travelling children!"

On the way from Basle to Lucerne, the sweet breath
of the mountains begins to cool the air, and snow caps
appear in the distance, with the Jungfrau in the midst,
like a noble lady ministered to by her hand-maidens.

We pass the lake and battle-field of Sempach, where
the Swiss conquered their old enemies, the Austrians,
by the example of one hero.

The foe had adopted a new military tactic of fight-
ing in a square with pikes outward, and believed them-
selves impenetrable; but Arnold von Winckelreid, a

164 BEATEN PATHS, OR

man of immense strength, saw his opportunity as they
advanced, and calling out to his followers, " Country-
men, remember my wife and children," gathered liis
arms full of pikes into his own breast, and so broke
the square. The Swiss struck into the breach so made,
and routed the Austrians.

**This patriot's self-devoted deed

First tamed the lion's mood, \

And the four forest cantons freed
From thraldom by his blood."

Many poems have been built out of it, but no one
seems to know whether the "women-folks" of this
hero were properly remembered or not by his country-
men. I cannot imagine a more uncomfortable position
for a woman than to be the wife of a real working
hero or philanthropist. She is sure to be offered up as
a sacrifice on one altar or another.

Heroism used to be its own reward; but since the
age of scepticism has set in, and learning has been
stalking about Switzerland to prove that no such man
as William Tell ever existed, it is pretty certain that
Arnold von Winckelreid's days of f'lme are numbered.

A bright, green river, like a melted emerald, comes
rushing out of Lucerne to meet the traveller. This
river Reuss springs out of the green lake that lies lov-
ingly about the feet of Lucerne, and pillows on its
breast the mountain shadows.

The town is perfect for situation ; mountain and lake
can no farther go! It is like turning over an illus-
trated book, in which the pictures are far better than
the text, and even the railway station, with its carved

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 165

gables, serves for a frontispiece. There are plenty of
views in Switzerland more grand and solemn, but Lu-
cerne Las just enough beauty for human nature's daily
food. It keeps one cheerful without the wear and tear
of enthusiasm.

In its quaint old church is a famous organ, played in
the twilight of every day. It ended with a storm-
piece beginning in distant rumbling and pouring rain,
which made every one instinctively glance up at the
windows ; then came a mighty rushing wind and thun-
der, so sharp and rattling that the lightning seemed to
strike the seat in front of us ; there was water running
down the roofs and in the streets, and birds chirping
out of wet branches, and long blasts of the Alpine
horn, with half a dozen echoes more and more distant.
At last the rain grew lighter and softer, and the sun
came out with a great burst of shine, and the wholo
earth was glad of the rain. People turned pale and
red, and some young girls cried from excitement. It
was a great surprise to go outside and find dust blow-
ing in the streets, as if nothing had happened.

All around the church is a curious covered cemetery,
ornamented with pictures, and statues, and artificial
flowers. The lowest line on every tombstone was
"K. I. P.," which sounded better when we bethought
us to magnify it into "Reqiiiescat in Pace."

Every one goes to see the " Lion of Lucerne," carved
out of the stone face of an everlasting hill, in memory
of the Swiss guards who defended the Tuileries in the
first insanity of France. Louis XVI. and Marie An-
toitiette had fled to the Assembly for safety, and these
Swi^is guards died, man by man, to the number of Q.\Q

166 BEATEN PATHS, OR

hundred and sixty men and twenty-six officers at the
hands of the mob. The lion, designed by Thorwaldsen,
lies in a niche in the wall of rock, over a pool of still
water, and shaded darkly by trees. His face has more
nobility than that of most men, and he clasps in death
a shield bearing the lilies of France. Lucerne is a
walled town, with watch-towers, and has some queer
old painted bridges, which ought to be looked at in
the brightest part of the day.

In one of them is the '-Dance of Death," which
makes one scene in Longfellow's Golden Legend.

Elsie, — " What are these paintings on the Avails around us ? "
Prince Henry, — " The Dance of Death :

All that go to and fro must look upon it,

Mindful of what thcj shall be.

The grim musician

Leads all men through the mazes of that dance.

To different sounds in different measures moving;

Sometimes he plays a lute, sometimes a drum,

To tempt or terrify."

The ascent of Mount Rhigi, one of the easiest of all
the Swiss mountains, is made from Lucerne betw^eeu
eight in the morning and six at night ; but the liivorite
visit is for the night, for which a telegram must be
sent up in advance, on account of the rush of people.
There is no certainty, however, of seeing either sunset
or sunrise, and th^ journey is often made wholly in
cloudland. On a clear day, one counts a dozen lakes
from the summit, and the passion which most people
have to be taken into a high mountain, and shown all
the kingdoms of the earth, is gratified. The railway
is like all others, except for a broad central rail with

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 167

teetb, in which a cogged wheel under the engine turns.
The passenger car is always in fi'ont, and may be
stopped almost instantly. Timid people go up on
horseback, and the absolute cowards on foot.

Mount Pilatus is another favorite of aspiring souls
near Lucerne. It signifies "capped mountain;" and
wlien the cap of fog stays on through the morning,
it means fine weather. People use it for a barometer.

*' Overhead,
Shaking his cloudy tresses loose in air,
Rises Pilatus, with his windy pines."

There is a legend that Pontius Pilate was banished
to this mountain, and, driven by remorse, threw him-
self over one of its cliffs. It is uncertain whether he
suggested the name, or the name suggested him. The
Swiss mountains have been trimmed and made over
as much as possible ; but there is plenty of material
afforded in these days for new and tragical legends.

While we tarried at Lucerne, a young Englishman
went up Mount Pilatus to look for rare ferns and
Alpine flowers. Not coming back at night, his father
and mother took it for granted that he had gone on by-
boat to Interlachen, and when they arrived there, they
learned that his broken body had been found at the
foot of a precipice.

The fashion of offering up human sacrifices will
never die out while people ascend mountains just for
the sake of saying they have been there.

It is noticeable that the climbing passion is pecu-

;liar to long and lean persons having a hungry look

like Cassius. Plump, round, easy-going souls are con-

168 BEATEN PATHS, OR

tent to sit at the feet of Nature, without scalinsr her
heights.

The cream of all the day's journeys that may be
made from Lucerne is the sail on the lake to Fluelen
and " Tell's Chapel." It is said to be built on the spot
where Tell leaped ashore and shot Gessler. It was
consecrated only thirty years afler his death, in the
presence of more than a hundred people who had
known him in the body, which would seem a sufficient
answer to the doubts which have been thrown on the
existence of any such man as William Tell. Mr.
Baring-Gould, in a book called Myths of the Middle
Ages, has tried to undermine the truth of Tell's story,
on the strength of having found half a dozen similar
legends in the literature of Persia and Norway, Den-
mark and Iceland.

Tell did a most heroic thing ; but others have done
the same thing in a similar way; therefore no such per-
son as Tell ever existed, except in poetry. Women
are said to be incapable of a syllogism, and I rejoice
that no woman was guilty of this one. It seems to
me a thing to be desired that men should shoot apples
off their sons' heads in a noble cause through all the
ages, if heroism happens to take that form. The
authors, who try to blot out of history its most in-
spiring passages, are worse than the old image-breakers
who knocked off the noses of statues in the Catholic
churches. They thought they were doing God service ;
but Mr. Baring-Gould's book served neither God nor
man.

The Golden Age of any literature has been long
dead and buried before the age of criticism sets in.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 169

"Do you know who are the critics?^ says Mr. Dis-
raeli in Lothair. ''They are those who liave failed
in literature and art." Of all Mr. Disraeli's arrows,
— and he hath his quiver full of them, — perhaps not
one has a sharper point than this.

All the mountain-guardians of Lucerne had their
caps on, when we crossed the lake at seven in the
morning to Alpnach and took carriages for the Brunig
Pass. There is a flavor in mountain air, that goes to
one's head hke new wine.

" We were gay together.
And laughed at little jests. "

for an unsuspicious hour or two, rolling through the
most beautiful scenery in the world. Long tradition, if
not experience, might have taught us that it was too
sood to last. Too much comfort is not consistent with
this world's scheme of government. The old monks
might have known better than to wear hair shirts and
flaorellate themselves through the night hours. That
sort of thing will always be done for us in the course
of nature if we wait long enough. Happiness is not
found in nuggets ; it has to be dug out of life with labor
and pains. Our caravan of twelve carriages came to a
sudden stop without any visible cause, and an English-
man came to our door, announcing, in the unmoved way
common to his nation, that the mountain torrents had
washed away the road, and made it impassable for car-
riages for five or six miles. He had no doubt that such
a difficulty would be at once overcome in his country,
because every one would make an effort ; but "these peo-
ple" (the Swiss) never made efforts. Bags and valises

170 BBATEN PATHS, OR

might be carried over on men's slioulders, but trunks
must be left behind. Ah ! tlien and there were partings
to wring one's heart, for women can be divorced from
anything more easily than from their clothes. J

They retired into dark corners with their baggage,
bending over it long and lovingly, and coming back
with large bundles done up in newspapers and shawl-
straps. Some of our party had mourned for their /
trunks (which liad been left in London) as for the
flesh-pots of Egypt; but we were all converted into
carpet-baggers from this time forth. There was an
Italian duke in the party, with a train of servants
and a daughter lovely enough for another Juliet; but
mountain torrents are no respecters of persons.

The Englishwomen, in the company of fifty that
straggled over the mountain on that brilliant morning,
girded up their loins, and got over the ground as if
they had done the same thing every day of their lives ;
but "les Americaines" puffed, and panted, and turned
white, and did the last mile or two on their minds
rather than on their feet.

One old couple (English, of course), sixty-five and
seventy years old, led the van, and scorning to take the
diligences when they came to meet us, walked on ten
miles more to Brienz; and when we joined them on the
boat at that place, the old lady looked as fair and
unflushed as when she started. At home we should
put such a feat in the newspaper, and no one would
believe a word of it.

For two mortal hours, we weaker vessels struggled
over long stretches of loose stones, and yellow mud,
and rushing water, with no soul left in us to admire the

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 171

waterfalls that festooned the gray mountain walls like
white ribbons. To us, they were not bridal favors, but
so many taunts and jeers at our forlorn condition.
Some one remembeied a cheerful story of a young
man and his sister walking over a Swiss road, torn
up like this one, and the brother, turning his foot on
a loose stone, slipped and fell over the edge, going
down hundreds of feet in the current of the fall. An-
other added that this young man had all the money of
the family in his pocket, so that his sister was left pen-
niless. Still another had later news of the sister, whose
grief did so scatter her wits, that she threw herself
over the next precipice. Thus did we cheer our souls
with anecdote along the rugged way.

Two or three p(5ople came back in their tracks, and
reported that it was impossible to go on ; we must cer-
tainly turn back and spend Sunday at Lucerne. When
we declined their advice with thanks, and pushed on,
they wished us "bon voyage" with a mingling of sor-
row and contempt, which made us renew our strength
like eagles. One can do anything, upheld by a contrary J
mind.

At Lagnau we were fed and comforted with eight or
ten courses of Swiss cookery, and the American wrecks
were packed into other diligences for the last ten miles.
The Brunig Pass is full of beauty, pressed down and
running over; but our admiration was, for that day at
least, tempered with awe. The way winds and winds
like a spiral staircase, and comes out many times in- view
of the same waterfall. It creeps under an overhanging
rock which "baptizes by sprinkling" every one who
passed under it. This water comes from hidden springs,

172 BEATEN PATHS, OR

which must some time slice off this rock as with a
knife; and when it falls, the end of the world will come
for those who now live placidly at its feet in the valley.

A muddy stream rushes angrily through the ravine,
as if it resented the stone walls that keep it so narrow,
when it might flood a dozen villages as well as not.
The lake shore, when we take steamer again for Inter-
laken, is studded with villas and carved cottages, and
the Geissbach Fall makes a final plunge into the lake,
after all its amorous dalliance with the mountain-side.
The cottages all over Switzerland wear their roofs far
over the walls, like broad-brimmed hats; and under tliis
shelter it is common to write texts and bits of poetry
in large letters, that he who runs may read. On one
near Geissbach is the line, in German, "Dear friend,
love more and see clearer in every man a brother."

Interlaken lies between the lakes, as its name implies,
but it should be called a village of hotels. A circle of
steep wooded hills stands all around it, like sentinels,
not grimly, but as if it were a favorite prisoner. A
green river clasps it like an arm about its waist. Be-
tween two low mountains, the Jungfrau looks down on
the village like a maiden just risen from sleep, parting
her curtains to look over the hills and far away for her
lover. Interlaken is always crowded in the season;
but there is little to see there, except the people and
the Jungfrau.

All nations meet together in peace, as it will be in
the millennium, '-Jew and Gentile, bond and free," not
to mention dusky Creoles from the isles of the sea, and
bushy Russians, whose names are best pronounced by
a sneeze.

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 173

Its great charm lies in its restfulness. When the
grasshopper is a burden, the only reraedy is to sit down
in a still place and wait for hope and interest to spring
up again. Multitudes find this still place at Inter-
laken, and use it to repair damages in soul and body.

Large parties are happiest in foreign hotels, because
they need not die of silence; but solitary travellers
wander about like lost spirits on the' Stygian shore,
looking importunate, but speaking to no one.

American girls are pretty and plenty at Interlaken.
Their distinguishing mark in '73 lay in the tower of
braids which made each one a "turret-crowned Cybele."
It may be only patriotism which leads every American
to rejoice in the superior beauty of his countrywomen
abroad. Foreigners think so too, if a prolonged and
exhaustive scrutiny be any proof. Staring among for-
eign gentlemen is cultivated as a fine art. They look
at a pretty American girl as Adam must have looked
at Eve, when he woke from his long sleep and met her
eyes for the first time. The gaze is at first curious, as
of one who had never seen a woman before, and melts
at last into an intense satisfaction. A young girl who
has endured a season in a foreign hotel, going to table
d'hote every day, is safe to run any gantlet of eyes
that will ever be bent on her at home. The old
maxim, that " it takes two to make a stare," does not
hold good in Europe.

There is no class on foreign soil that corresponds to
American girls. At home they have their own way,
and it makes even the plain ones piquant and stylish,
full of gay talk and laughter. There is no other recipe
so certain to develop a woman's beauty. It is the

/

174 BEATEN PATHS, OR

young married women and mothers in America who
are subdued, reserved, and cumbered with much serv-
ing; but in Europe, the two positions are exactly
reversed. " If my lot were to be cast in this latitude,"
said Juno at last, " I should pray to be born married."
'A cultivated Frenchman, after long observation of New
York life, declared that he could not see why Amer-
ican girls should desire to marry, for they had under
their fathers' roof all that a French husband looks on
as material wherewith to secure a wife's love and hap-
piness, namely, jewels, freedom, and importance. He
hud not perceived that the love of change will out-
weigh all these. Even when there is no love worth
mentioning, an American girl goes into marriage to
seek her fortune with the same zest and interest with
which a young man seeks his in a new country.

A young Spanish architect, who had studied life and
books in Germany, France, and America, asked us if
there was any law in our country, as there is in Ger-
many, compelling a wife to go with her husband into a
new country, whether she wished to go or not. We
had never heard of such a law, or conceived the need
of one, because a wife would naturally desire to go
with her husband. " Certainement," said the Spaniard,
"'unless she liked some other man." "For married
women in America," we answered with scorn, " there
is no ' other man^ " He answered me only with a
shrug of his shoulders; and this is how foreigners
always have the last word. They seem to believe
that the price of a virtuous woman is so far above
rubies, that there are none in the market.

I cannot help thinking that the beauty of German

A WOA/AN'S VACATION. 175

girls is undermined by the perpetual drinking of beer
and the sour Rhenish wine. Yenus de Medici would
succumb to it at last, and grow fat and sallow. The
wife of old Richard Baxter said she did not find' him
so sour as she expected ; but nobody ever said that of
" vin ordinaire," which takes the place of our- beloved
ice-water. There are institutions in Germany called
" Wine-Cures," where the patients are fed entirely on
these sour wines. They must be salutary, since one
would hasten to get well or die, to escape the torture.
So many Americans have come, and seen, and been
conquered in Swiss hotels, that there has come to be a
certain home-likeness about them. Only the waxed
floors, and stone staircases, and perhaps a fuchsia stick-
ing up in the butter, make a little rim of strangeness
in the most familiar things. The waiting-maids wear
the picturesque costume of their nation in the hotels,
because travellers demand it of them ; but their Sun-
day gowns are made after French fashions. There
will never be anything prettier than the bright plaid
skirt and velvet jacket, looped with silver chains, and
opening on a snowy bodice ; but it will soon have dis-
appeared from the face of the earth. Swiss women
would rather look like other people than to be odd
and pretty. Many of them have a rich color in their
cheeks, like the sunny side of a -peach, which is going
out of fashion in other countries.

The people of the mountain villages are lank and
tall, with high cheek-bones and narrow foreheads, as if
they had stretched themselves with continual climbing.
They are set among their fine scenery like groups of
exclamation points.

176 BEATEN PATHS, OR

I forgot the sunset on the Jungfrau, when I said
there was nothing to see in Inteilaken. The "young
maiden" does not blush every night; she has to be
watched and waited for; but when the air is peculiarly
clear and dry, the snow-peaks turn rose-pink under the
last glance of the sinking sun, just as some pale faces
put on a mask of beauty with a sudden blush.

One evening we went on the lake with the crowd
to Geissbach, to see the fall illuminated with colored
lights, which is a good deal like painting the lily, and
gilding refined gold.

The walk is severe up the side of the mountain to a
point near the hotel, where the water takes a long
tumble down stairs, several flights of which are visible
at once. Airy little bridges are thrown over them, and
the most romantic walks wind about them.

Switzerland would be the loveliest place for lovers
if so many had not already found it out. You can
scarcely find a shady place in the whole country where
you will not interrupt some conscious couple in their
love-making. My window in the hotel commanded a
little rustic seat, otherwise hidden from view, and it
comforted my soul to count the young men and maid-
ens that found their way to it in the course of a long
summer day. It proved that love was not gone out
of fashion, as I have sometimes feared.

Hundreds of people had gathered on the Geissbach
terrace, just to see the water run green and red for one
little minute over the rocks. It was beautiful beyond
words while it lasted, and yet it was taking an im-
pertinent liberty with the real moon-lit romance of
the scene, and painfully suggested the "Black Crook,"

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 177

The long wailing and breathless attention of so many
idle people reminded me of a fashionable wedding,
brought to pass by montlis of hard labor, which, after
all, lasts about as long as this Geissbach show. When
the sudden light turned night into day on the crowded
terrace, an army of braided heads rose up from broad-
cloth shoulders as if pulled by one wire. Then there
was a great rush down the hill for places on the
steamer, and a solemn sort of sail for an hour in the
moonlight, shut in by black walls of rock. The in-
fluence was so depressing, that I kept making inward
responses, "Good Lord, deliver us, miserable sinneis !"
I think there must always be a certain grave and
sombre twist in the mind of one brought up among
mountains.

Next day we rode to the Grindelwald, a valley
frowned down by bald-headed and hoary mountains,
with two glaciers wedged forever between them in an
awful depth of green ice. They looked very near, as
if one could almost lay a hand on them ; and St.
"Ursula, whose ambition nothing can quench, walked
and walked for more than an hour straight towards
them, and they were just as fir oflf as ever.

A white stieam and a dark one, like a blonde and
brunette, two daughters of one mother, flow out of the
glacier, and tear through the valley as if they never
could get there in time. When we crossed the little
carved bridges that span them at frequent intervals,
the narrow current of chilly air always rising from the
water struck our faces like an ice-cold hand. This was
a breath from the frozen heart of the glacier.

Wherever there is a bit of greensward on the
12

ri

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178 BEATEN PATHS, OR

mountain -side, some times so high up as to be almost
out of sight, there are sure to be a shepherd's hut and
shelter for cattle. A bit of land will be cultivated
where it looks as if a man would have to be let down
by a cord in order to hoe it. Not a bad place to make
way with an enemy, but the worst in the world for
remorse.

The prettiest daughter of Switzerland in the shape
of a waterfall is the Staubbach (brook of dust), where
the desperate water throws itself off a cliff, and does
not touch bottom for so long that it is all fretted into
such a cloud of dust as rises around carriage wheels in
a dry day. Its gala-time is in the early morning, when
the new sunshine stripes it with rainbows. On the
way we pass through the valley of Lauterbrunnen
(nothing but springs). Longfellow calls it the " Val-
ley of Fountains-Only," where the rocks are piled up
so high that one looks twice to see the top. They are
in the shape of forts and castles, that look hand-made,
but by the hands of giants. We were caught in a
thunder-storm, in which not only the springs, but the
very fountain heads were broken up and poured upon
us. We heard the giants play at ninepins down the
gorges, as Rip Van Winkle did in the Kaatskills.
Sometimes a cloud of mist hid the bases, and great
masses of rock seemed to roll towards us, as if they
hung in mid-air.

It was a " fierce and fair delight " for the spirit, if
the flesh had not been w«ak. What \vith the light-
ning, and the floods, and the fast driving over break-
neck places, we never repented of so many sins in so
short a time in our lives.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 179

Some people get up an intimacy with mountains at
first sight ; but I can never overcome their awfulness.
The Swiss scenery is most lovely to me where the
Swiss people have lived and died bravely to defend it.

The great bald-headed mountains, with snow five
hundred feet deep about their peaks, hiding an occa-
sional skeleton, do no good to anybody. They are
just useless masses of raw material left over when the
world was made.

Some one watching through a glass a party of guides
and travellers creeping up the side of the Jungfrau,
like a company of ants, saw a small white cloud de-
tach itself from above and float lazily downward like a
handkerchief, settling on the black specks. The place
where they had been was all white, and the valley
knew them no more.

On the way home we saw a ruined tower, which is
said and sworn to have been the identical castle of
Bluebeard, where Fatima took the fiital key, and threw
daylight on the other wives, while Sister Anne kept
her post on the tower and looked for clouds of dust.

180 BEATEN PATHS, OR

CHAPTER XIII.

SHORE OP LAKE LEMAN,

** How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea,
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth !
And now again 'tis black, — and now, the glee
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain-mirth

As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth."

Byron.

ANEW thing under the sun carried us out of
Interlaken — rail-carriages made like those in
America, with seats on top and an awning overhead.
A cool and royal road through Swiss scenery, the
track skirts the lake so closely that we seem to have
faith enough to roll along the water itself. Then the
steamer waited for us on the Lake of Thnn, which
doubles the endless vineyards in its bosom, and is too
lar from the sharp and snowy " Horns " to be depressed
by them. The shore is studded with country-seats, so
rich in iflowers that whole hedges of them are crowded
over its edge, and trail along the water in indolent
wealth.

"Do you see that very picturesque young man who
has just come on board?" said Psyche to Juno.

" No ! Where ? " said Juno.

A WOMAN'S VACATION 181

" O, never mind ; I see he isn't mentioned iu the
guide-book."

At Thun we took cars again, and crept on at a snail's
pace — a habit of all the railroads in Switzerland, out of
deference to the fine views. It is taken for granted
that no one can possibly be in a hurry, and the train
nearly always forgets something and goes back for it
at every station. At Fribourg, a grand gymnastic fete
for all the Swiss cantons was just over, and the station
bloomed with the party-colored ribbons of the wrestlers.
The winner of the second prize — a wreath of painted
oak leaves — wore it on his uncovered head, and was
warmly congratulated by his friends. The young men,
as a rule, looked more healthy than handsome.

In the distance, the famous suspension bridge of Fri-
bourg looked like quivering braids of black hair thrown
across the r.ivine from rock to rock.

Berne is the Swissest of all Swiss towns; the best
part of it is built on a natural terrace far above the
roofs of the lower houses, so that it stands like a lady
on her balcony, looking down at the green river, so fir
below her feet, that it seems to stop its flow to look up
again at her.

They have rows of little booths down the middle of
the main streets, where women with snowy handker-
chiefs on their heads sell evervthino: to all other women.
The business looks more cheerful than profitable; but
having no rent to pay, it need not lie heavy on their
hearts.

Every fountain has a row of devotees in the busy
washerwomen ; and the oddest statue among many is
an ogre copied out of a fairy tale, having a baby's head

182 BEATEN PATHS, OR

and shoulders in his mouth, with the chubby legs hang-
ing out, and other fat morsels in the shape of children
stuck in his pockets and belt.

The sidewalks are arcaded, which give forth a faint
reminder of sweet old English Chester; it is a fashion,
however, which cannot fail to undermine the industry
of a town, making loafing-places for people that would
otherwise exert themselves to go in when it rained.

The houses of parliament are so much like all others
in second-rate countries, that it is hardly worth getting
out of one's carriage to visit them. In the Chamber
of Assembly every speech is translated into German,
French, ^nd Italian, which must have an exasperating
effect on the maker of the speech, but gives to other
folks an opportunity to study languages.

In the cathedral is a great organ, of which the Bernese

are almost as proud as the Bostonians of theirs: it

... • ^

plays the day to sleep every night in a twilight concert.

The cathedral, like all others which were once Catholic
and have seen the error of their ways, looks a little
bare and lonely for want of its pictures and images of
the Mother and Child. The charm of it lies now in
the old churchyard, converted into a garden, where
nurses and children play over the bones of their fore-
fathers.

Berne is the headquarters of Beardom. Everything
that can be done by man is imitated by bears in stone,
and wood, and metal. It is not difficult to imagine that
the population have a bearish turn to their noses.

The curious bear-dance, painted by Beard, which
looked odd and quaint in Boston, is a very good picture
of Berne. It is one long bear-dance, on every gate-post,

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 183

to the den \vhere several live bears are kept at the ex-
pense of the city ; they attract a constant crowd, that
feeds them with carrots and fruit. Baedeker, the apos-
tle of guide-books, says that an English officer once
fell into the den, and after a terrible fight with the
bears, was torn in pieces. It seems to me that when
the history of the world is summed up by the last man,
it will be found that whatever was not done by an Eng-
lish officer or an American woman, was not worth doing
at all. The irrepressible conflict will at last lie between
these two.

The best-conducted coachman that ever drove seven
women, put the whole of Berne into a two-hours' drive,
bears and all, and drew up just at noon in front of the
old clock on the watch-tower. On the stroke of twelve
a troop of tiny bears, dressed like men, on/oot and on
horseback, travel round old Time in the middle, and a
main in armor in the belfry beats the time on a bell;
the inevitable rooster on one side flaps his wings and
crows faintly three times.

No one can forget the ride from Berne to Lausanne,
because of the sudden and complete revelation of the
Lake of Geneva just after passing through a long tun-
nel. You go into it with no suspicion of anything
about to happen, and you shoot out of pitchy darkness
into the sweet light of heaven, and " clear, placid Le-
man " lies at your feet. It is one of Mother Nature's
surprises ; the ineflTable glory of the lake bursts on the
senses like glad news after a stretch of anxiety, or like
heaven after a wasting sickness. Lausanne has crept
well up the hill, and has a cleanly, reserved air, like
English people, with whom it has always been a favorite

184 BEATEN PATHS, OR

town. The houses keep one another at arm's length,
and there is no suspicion of the Roman fragrance in
its streets.

The Hotel Gibbon and its terrace look on the lake,
and just below it, in the garden, is the same summer-
house, or its successor, in which Gibbon wrote the last
sentences of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Em-
pire. He was sent to Switzerland in his youth to
complete his studies, and regain the Protestantism that
he had somehow lost, and there fell in love with Made-
moiselle Curchon ; but, his father threatening to disin-
herit him if he married her, he dutifully and selfishly
gave her up. She married M. Necker, minister of
Louis XVI., and became the mother of Madame de
Staiil. In these matronly days Gibbon met her again,
basked in \\^x bright society, and wondered, man-like,
that M. Necker was not in the least jealous.

If the portraits of Gibbon do him justice, no one
need wonder at M. Necker's tranquillity ; but there was
another reason equally apparent to the student of wo-
man-kind. I suppose one may have wit enough to fol-
low the Roman empire down hill, and yet not enough
to perceive that no husband of a fine woman has any
cause to fear an old suitor, who once preferred his in-
heritance to her lov^.

On the terrace at the Hotel Gibbon, two Spanish
ladies, with all the dark and glowing beauty of their
nation, sat through the twilight smoking fat little ciga-
rettes till they veiled themselves in a halo of smoke.
They had their rights in a way that American women
have forgotten to fight for ; and they got more comfort
out of it than Miss Anthony ever did in addressing a
convention.

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 185

The Hotel Gibbon has his portrait below, and in the
bedrooms a placard urgmg travellers to keep Sunday
piously, and to remember that they have special need
of divine care in their wanderings. Gibbon spent his
whole life

"Sapping a solemn creed with solemn 'sneer,'*

and saw no beauty in Christianity that any one should
desire it.

The port of Lausanne is Ouchy, where Byron wa§
once weather-bound, and wrote the Prisoner of Chil-
lon. The third canto of Childe Harold and Manfred
were also written on the shore of Lake Leman, " com-
posed," as he says, in a letter, " when I was half mad
between mountains, metaphysics, lakes, loves unquench-
able, thoughts unutterable, and the nightmare of my
own delinquencies ; " quite material enough for a vol->»
ume of poetry.

The castle of Chillon, a lion whose roar would never
have been heard out of Switzerland but for Byron's
poem, is much lovelier in pictures than in the solid
stone and mortar. Byron's prisoner was an imaginary
one, as he had not then studied the life of Bonnivard ;
he said afterwards that he would otherwise have digni-
fied the poem with patriotic allusions ; but sorrow and
captivity have dignity enough of their own. A little
bridge connects the castle with the main land, and it was
long the torture-house of the Duke of Savoy (ancestor
of Victor Emanuel) for Swiss prisoners. The dun-
geons are lighted only by slits in a wall twenty feet thick.
Bonnivard, a famous patriot among men who were all
patriots, was chained to a pillar five years, and his rest-

186 BEATEN PATHS, OR

less feet wore a visible welt in the stone, like a scar on
flesh.

** My very chains and I grew friends."

The poem speaks of " a little isle that smiled on him "
through the hole in the wall, but it was only by climb-
ing the pillar that he could see it at all. The "seven
pillars of Gothic mould'* are all there. Byron's poetry
is often as good as a guide-book.

The guide lights a match to show the rough stairway
down which prisoners were brought to exeeution, and
the beam to which they were hung. The air was thick
with memories of the many unhappy souls that had
dropped the body in that spot, and gone up "to appeal
from tyranny to God." Farther on is the hole to which
prisoners were led blindfold, and promised their liberty;
they went down three or four steps, and then came a
plunge of eighty-four feet into the waters of the lake.
They got their liberty forever; but let us hope that
when the Duke of Savoy serves out his term of punish-
ment hereafter, it may be well peppered with sarcasms.

One author, named Simond, says, " It grieves me to
contradict poets or sentimental travellers, but really the
dungeon of Chillon is not under water, and besides, is
absolutely a comfortable sort of dungeon enough, full
forty feet long and fifteen feet high, with several narrow
slits in the thick wall, above reach, but admitting air
and light, and even some rays of the sun !"

Where could this man Simond have been brought
up? Was he born in the cellar of a tenement-house
in New York, which might occasionally be under water?
and was his maturity spent in stone-cutting in state

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 187

prison ? No other experience could have given a com-
fortable air to Bonnivard's dungeon. The long-suffer-
ing Swiss took the castle at last, and in their joy they
freed all the prisoners, and placed over the door the
inscription,," Blessed be all who come in and go out."
Afterwards, when this island prison was found too
tempting a convenience for keeping some prisoners of
their own, they erased the inscription for the sake of
consistency.

The shore of the lake, on the way from Chillon to
Vevay, is dotted with villages that have long been the
adopted children of poetry.

** Clarens, sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep love,"

was the home of the " divine Julie," Rousseau's heroine
in his Nouvelle Heloise — the most voluptuous book
that it ever entered even a Frenchman's head to con-
ceive. It has been supposed that Rousseau chose
Clarens as the scene of his novel more for the beauty
of its name than anything else, as it is scarcely so beau-
tiful as its neighbors. " A pity 'tis, 'tis true," that poets
have their necessities as well as others.

Cleanliness is farther from godliness in Switzerland
than with us, since Thursday seems to be their wash-
ing day. On this particular Thursday, the lake shore
was lined for miles with snowy linen spread to dry in
the sun after having been washed in the lake. The
washerwomen anchor their great tubs just in the edge
of the lake ; then they put themselves in the tub and
the soiled clothes in the lake. The farther one goes
from home, the more one sees the commonest things
turned inside out, and begun at the other end. No

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188 BEATEN PATHS, OR

wonder that the first traveller who wrote of what he
saw was called the " father of lies."

Vevay is another half-way house for travellers, full
of hotels and pensions, like Interlaken ; it is a colony
of foreigners, with a rich sprinkling of Americans.
That treasure to his travelling countrymen, an Ameri-
can dentist, has been long settled there, and a little
experience with foreign artists in that profession gives
emphasis to the remark of a German to us — "The
Americans give strength to dentistry."

The Hotel Monnet, or " Three Crowns," was as de-
lightful as flowers, and gilding, and summer-time could
make it. In the airy dining-room, opening on the lake,
furnished with white and gold, we saw our travelling
dresses, which had sustained three months' ravages,
reflected in the eyes of our jewelled and furbelowed
countrywomen, and were ashamed. "The body is the
shell of the soul ; the apparell is the huske of that shell,
and the huske often tells you what the kernel is," says
old Quarles. It is a feeling worse than neuralgia, and
akin to seasickness, when hundreds of feminine eyes
are judging your soul by a dusty and weather-stained
alpaca "huske." The fitness of things demanded in such
a place that we should wear rainbow silks, and feed
only on nightingales' tongues and peacocks' brains.
One may travel comfortably with only a bag, and stay
one's soul with common sense for ninety-nine days out
of a hundred ; but on the hundredth, one is sure to go
to some Aladdin's palace, where even religious princi-
ple is not so sustaining as a well-made dress.

We arrived just after a wedding in church between
an American girl and a German baron, and the wed-

A WOMAN *S VACATION. 189

ding breakfast was going on with all the flutter that a
wedding creates in every country under the sun. I
cannot help thinking that if there is no raaiTying or
giving in marriage in the next world, what a stupid
place it will be for women ! Everybody had been to
the wedding, and bore testimony that the bride cried
till her nose was red ; the bride's mother cried too, and
the bridegroom's father cried hardest ^f all. As it is
said to be a pure love match, with no money on either
side, the old gentleman may have had the best reason
to cry.

It is a long sail from Yevay to Geneva ; the moun-
tains on one side hold their skirts far back from the
shore, and the lake lies a perpetual smile on Nature's
face, pure and grand near Lausanne, but only good-
natured till we approach Geneva, and Mont Blanc
heaves its ice-peaks into sight like a great white cloud
that has been anchored forever in one spot in the sky.

Lake Leman is just as lovely as Byron said it was;
he is always to be depended upon in the way of adjec-
tives ; but it is too perfect to be altogether interesting,
like people whose character is above criticism. Defects
in a landscape are like small faults in our friends, a sort
of milestones on which to measure our admiration.

Coppet, seen from the lake, was Madame do Stael's
refuge when Napoleon banished her from her beloved
France.* She amused herself well, however, by marry-
ing a young man for love in her middle age.

190 BEATEN PATHS, OR

CHAPTER XIV.

** The bent of civilization is to make good things cheap.*'

GENEVA is mistress of her lake. Its waters,
striped with many shades of blue, make another
sky beneath her feet ; at night the city lights on the
bridges, shining far down into the clear water, seem to
disclose hollow caves where water-nymphs and mer-
maids toss about the rings and bracelets which delight
the eyes of mortals in the daytime ; every shop win-
dow has a fringe of ladies hanging about it as if it held
their household gods.

One window of a plain little shop on the Grand Quai
would beguile the strongest-minded woman that ever
had a mission, or addressed a convention ; pearls, and
diamonds, ^nd emeralds lie about loosely, as if they
might be had for the asking, — a delusion speedily dissi-
pated when one does ask ; there are diamond ear-rings
that would be like carriage lamps on a woman's head
in the darkest night ; turquoises such as Shylodi would
not have parted with ''for a wilderness of monkeys;"
and rubies glowing with such a fiery radiance that one
could almost believe, with the ancients, that they could
feel impending misfortune and grow dull in sympa-
thy. In Sir Thomas More's Utopia, only children and

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 191

criminals were permitted to wear jewels, in order that
no one need, desire them ; but it seems to me that his
wisdom overreached itself, since many foolish souls
would have become criminals for the sake of obtaining
their hearts' delight.

It was an old superstition that the emerald, with cold
and clear green light, preserved chastity, and drove off
evil spiiits; it specially belongs to those born in June,
and changes color with the moods of its owner. An
old Persian writer says, " He who dreams of green
gems will become renowned, and find truth and
fidelity." The sudden fall of an emerald from its set-
ting portends great loss; a large emerald fell from the
English crown at the coronation of George III., and
when America seceded in his reign some old woman
remembered the emerald. Opals are like expressive
faces which never look twice alike, and, like some char-
acters, owe all their beauty to a defect in their organ-
ization ; it has been well called "a pearl with a soul in
it." The turquoise means self-sacrificing love, and
reconciles quarrelsome couples; which would seem to
recommend it as a betrothal ring. It draws approach-
ing trouble into itself, growing dull and apparently
worthless till the danger is past ; but this trait only
belongs to it when given, not when bought. The
topaz heightened wit, and strengthened the intellect
— fables pretty in themselves, and showing that pre-
cious stones have always exercised a weird influence
on the imaorination.

One may resolve to rise above the fascination of such
earthly dross and tinsel, just as one may resolve against
the toothache, or seasickness, or love, or any other of

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192 BEATEN PATHS, OR

the torments of this world ; and the resolve holds good
till one's time comes.

** For not to desire, or admire, if a man could learn it, were more
Than to walk all day, like a sultan of old, in a garden of spice."

Lord Byron lived at Geneva for a few weeks, and
complains bitterly that, though he lived a virtuous life,
he got no credit for it ; to him virtue was never its own
reward.

Calvin, the head saint of the Genevan calendar, lived
a virtuous life, and got too much credit for it ; when the
people drove out the Roman Catholic bishop, and bowed
their necks to Calvin's yoke, they fell out of the frying-
pan into the fire, or off of Scylla into Charybdis, ac-
cording as one is housewifely or classical. The bishop
occasionally made a bonfire of a heretic, but he gave
the survivors plenty of cakes and ale to make up for it.
Calvin burned heretics too, but without the cakes and
ale. His old chair, hard and straight-backed as his
doctrine, is still standing in the cathedral. He ruled
the city with a paternal (one might say with a step-
paternal) severity. He laid every Genevese soul on
his own Procrustean bed, and cut it off or stretched it
out till it came to his measure. His throne was his
pulpit, and his code of laws finally crystallized into
that spiky old creed, against which tender souls bruise
themselves to this day. As religious wars are always
the bloodiest, so religious rule is the most tyrannical.
Men are never so outrageously wicked as when they
think they have God's warrant for it.

Calvin was perpetually hurling inkstands at the devil,
but he resembled him in that he made Geneva thq

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 193

hottest place for sinners that the world has evCr seen.
He was not one of those who preach

** With about as much real edification
As if a great Bible, bound in lead,
Had fallen and struck them on the head ; '*

his words pierced between bone and marrow, and he
weeded the city, for his hfetime, of all unrighteous-
ness ; it sprang up again, of course, after his death, but
moraHty is. still the fashion in Geneva.

The Canton of Geneva is the smallest in Switz;erland,
— only fifteen miles broad, — and its arch-enemy, Vol-
taire, said, "When I shake my wig, I powder the whole
republic;" but it has always made a prodigious noise
in the world. Voltaire lived there like a prince, and
coined a new sarcasm every day for the scathing of
the pious city. He had a look of the eagle and the
monkey, sensitive, irritable, sarcastic, and yet benevo-
lent. Pope crystallized him in an epigram : —

** Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once we think thee Milton, death, and sin."

Rousseau was another thorn in Calvin's flesh ; he
sits placidly enough, a very mild-looking man,* on his
pedestal on the little island in the lake called by his
name, while Calvin was too lofly in his humility to per-
mit even a tombstone to bear his name.

It was given to Rousseau to put forward the pre-
posterous idea, for the first time, in a book called the
Social Contract, that there was a mutual obligation
constantly incurred between the aristocracy and the

194 BEATEN PATHS, OR

people ; with this fact established, it was easy to see
that the nobility of all Europe were teriibly in arrears.
Calvin burned the book for its infidelity, which hurt
nobody, while its politics sowed broadcast the red seeds
of the French Revolution.

It must have been a good thing for an author to have
an obnoxious book burned in the market-place ; for, of
course, the crowd who had not heard of it before, made
haste to read it at once. Rousseau wrote " Emile," a
famous treatise on education, in which he insists on
teaching by experience ; the child should be allowed to
find out that fiie is hurtful by burning himself, and that
glass will cut his flesh by driving his fist through the
window in a fit of temper. He does not go so far as
to say that he should find out the danger of a ju'ecipice
by throwing himself over it, though that would be the
natural inference. In these latter days, Mr. Herbert
Spencer and others have revamped this theory, and
made it look actually presentable, but it would gradu-
ally eliminate mother-love from the training of children.
V^oltaire said of it, " When I read your treatise, I desire
to creep on all-fours."

Rousseau knew best, perhaps, of all word-artists who
ever lived, how to paint every shade of love and senti-
ment, and yet dropped his own children into the basket
of the Foundling Hospital as soon as they were born.

The chief apostle of Geneva, just now, is Father
Hyacinthe, otherwise the Rev. Charles Loyson (Hya-
cinthe being his monkish name, assumed on taking the
vows). He preaches in a dingy old hall, formerly a
library, founded by Bonnivard, and used by Calvin ; it
is filled with hard beaches without backs, and a large

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 195

proportion of the audience is always American. It
was evident that many of them could not understand
his words, but if one had been born deaf, one could
still follow a dim meaning through the eloquence into
which he coins his fiery heart. He makes one " hear
with eyes." He wore a white robe embroidered with
silver, and a broad chasuble, white and crimson, with a
shining cross on it; he would be a distinguished-look-
ing man anywhere, but in white, and silver, and crim-
son, he is very noble indeed, having that two-storied
head of which Sir Walter Scott's was a type.

The mass was much shorter than in other Catholic
churches, and was performed with so much devotion
and earnestness that one saw only the service, and not
the priest, till the sermon began. The burden of it
was charity. He began with an urgent appeal in be-
half of some poor families who had been burned out in
Geneva the night before, and lost their all. "We have
prayed to God to give us charity; let us look to it that
we do not shut our heart's door in the face of the answer
to our i)rayer when it comes." Afterwards he urged
that all true religion was founded on charity in the
sense of love.

Tiie Protestant faith says, "Only believe," which is a
partial and sometimes dangerous truth, for it may end
in a mere sentimental tenderness that serves neither
God nor men; the Catholic church lelies on works
which may end in rites and superstitious observances ;
but the "Old Catholic" creed is founded on our Lord's
immediate teaching, embodied in this rule: "Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy strength,"
&c., "and thy neighbor as thyself." One could obey

196 BEATEN PATHS, OR

the first commanc! without the second, but one could
never arrive at the second without the first. There
are two doors into heaven, love and faith ; St. John
opens the first, and St. Paul the second. Father Hya-
cinthe preferred to go in by St. John's door.

lie has a dark, oval face, somewhat too overladen
with flesh, until he waxes earnest, and the hidden fire
of his deep-set black eyes flames out. It did so many
times, as he dwelt on his love for the mother church
that had nourished him in its bosom, and on the abuse
now poured out on him by his old brethren. One of
them had called liim, in a Catholic journal, " a misera-
ble foreign apostate."

"It is true," he said, "T am most miserable, not only
for my sins, as others are, but for my sufferings." It
must be a tremendous change to him from preaching
in the "Madeleine," in Paris, to the most sj^lendid con-
gregation in Europe, followed by adulation of the most
delicious kind, and now standing in the face of slander
to preach a doctrine despised by all his old friends, and
listened to chiefly by strangers and aliens out of curi-
osity. I suppose, however, there is a sweetness in vol-
untary martyrdom only known to those who try it, and
I hope the tender arms of his baby-son ward oflf many
evil strokes. Madame Loyson has a sweet, motherly
face, but is not handsome. She was a rich American
widow when Father Hyacinthe married her, but became
poor in the failure of Bowles Brothers, a stroke follow-
ing close upon his marriage, which made a sweet morsel
under the tongues of his enemies.

From this mo;lest "upper chamber" we went over
the hill to the Russian church, a square stone building

A WOMAN'S VACATION 197

surmounted by 1[iwe large balls, gilded and glittering in
the sun ;' -these balls signify the world, and on them
rests the crescent, with crosses rising triumphantly
above them, showing that the Christian religion has
overcome that of Mahomet. The interior is glorious
with pictures and precious stones. The audience
stands through the service, which is never long, as there
is no sermon. A single bench runs along the side for
strangers. Only one lady occasionally used a camp-
chair. She was dressed entirely in white, a long cash-
mere robe, and fleecy Shetland shawl, with a bonnet
and long veil of white crape; two great diamonds
hung from her ears like drops of dew ; her face was
fair and peaceful, and every few minutes she sank grace-
fully on her knees, and bent her forehead to the floor in
a great snowy heap. The Russians use black for mourn-
ing, as we do; but on the occasion of a birthday of the-
one whom they mourn, or for a wedding, they have this
lovely fashion of putting on pure white. No instru-
ment of music is permitted in the Greek church, and
the hymns were sung by four men. Two golden
screens, with paintings of the angel holding out a
branch of lilies to the Virgin, shut in the altar-room
and the priest from the gaze of the people ; but after a
time these doors were opened, and the priest came out
muttering prayers over and over, and swinging a cen-
ser. In the Greek churches, the service of the com-
munion is performed by the priest alone, out of sight,
and the bread and wine are only shown to the people.
He wore a gorgeous robe of blue and gold brocade, and
did his part with an impressive seriousness; but his
audience were at one moment striking their foreheads

198 BEATEN PATHS, OR

on the ground and crossing themselves, and at the next
shaking hands with one another and walking about
from friend to friend. The best-conducted person on
the premises was a baby about two years old, prema-
turely draped in jacket and trousers, who might have
been an example to us all in devout manners. At the
last, the [)riest brought out a cross, and all the men,
women, and children crowded about him to kiss it. It
seemed to bring the whole multitude, rich and poor,
refined and sordid, suddenly on a level; and against my
will, I felt a Protestant disgust.

The broad steps on which the priest stood were car-
peted with worsted-work, and on each side stood tall
banners of velvet and gold, studded with gems; the
service was in the Sclavonic language, nowhere spoken
at this time except in church, but all Russians learn it.
The air was heavy with incense, and the brilliant colors
reminded one of the temple that Solomon built after
God's own pattern — there was no lack of solemnity
and prostration, but, somehow, one kept wondering how
one got in without a ticket.

The priests of the Russian or Greek church cannot
be priests until they are married, nor can they have but
one wife; when she dies they become monks; hence
it follows, that the wives of Greek priests are nearly as
well treated as the wives of good Americans. A trav-
eller in Russia found a priest doing the family washing
to save his wife's bones. A similar rule, if it could be
introduced among the Protestant clergy, would prolong
the life of many a feeble w^oman who is now cumbered
with much serving. .It is founded on that text about
a bishop's having one wife ; but on the other hand, a

A WOMAN* S VACATION. 199

Russian priest, outside his church, has no position, nor
can exact any deference. Among the best families, his
place is " below the salt," as the fashion was in the old
English time when the parson and the lady's maid were
thought a good match. The peasants pay him no re-
spect, and his best protection is to carry the sacrament
on his person; he then becomes sacred, and even a
noble who should abuse him would be doomed to Si-
beria. Since Peter the Great humbled the patriarch
by taking church appointments into his own hands.,
Russian veneration has been spent on religion itself,
and not on its ministers, so that they can never split
on the rock of anybody's infallibility, as the old and
new Catholics have done lately.

The Russian ladies, in the little Genevan church, had
peculiarly intelligent faces, many of them of great deli-
cacy of profile. As I watched them, my thoughts went
back to that first Christian woman of their race in the
twelfth century, the Grand Duchess Olga, to whom they
owe their beautiful service. That famous old rajah,
who always asked, "Who is she?" when anything bad
happened, was right as far as he went; but the ques-
tion is equally pertinent when good things come about
strangely.

This Christian Olga could not convert her husband,
nor her son ; but the seed fell on good ground, at last,
in her grandson, Vladimir, who wearied of paganism,
and sent embassies to Mecca, Constantinople, and
Rome, to look into other folks' religions, and bring
home the best. The Greek form found favor in their
eyes from its magnificent ceremonies — the rude Rus-
sian visitors actually mistook some of the white-robed

200 BEATEN PATHS, OR

priests for angels, and were not undeceived by their
entertainers. Vladimir and all his subjects were
straightway baptized ; and so difficult was it to find
Christian names for such multitudes that whole squad-
rons received one name, thus creating a thousand Johns
and Peters in a moment. No woman coidd ask a nobler
monument through all time than a great Christian na-
tion, but other honors are constantly paid to her name ;
in the Russian royal family there is always a Grand
Duchess Olsja.

The " arrowy Rhone " throws itself, all dusty and
travel-stained from its mountain journey, into Lake
Leman, at Bouveret, and rushes out again at Geneva
as if it were tired to death of stillness and placidity,
but it comes out pure and clear as an Alpine crystal.
It is so terribly clear, so utterly transparent, that there
is no temptation to drown one's self, or anybody else,
in its waters; one can almost 'count the blades of grass
on the bottom of the lake.

Rows of women in the washing-sheds, which are built
into the middle of the stream, beat it all day with their
linen, and fret its headlong course a little ; one will be
wringing a blue blouse, and the next below her an em-
broidered handkerchief, but no drop of water stays long
enough to be used twice ; they have no need, either, to
blue their clothes ; nature has done that for them in
the sapphire color of the river. It never ceases its
hurry till it meets the Arve, and they join hands in a
loveless wedding, the blue stream and the muddy one
running side by side for a long distance, till at last the
whole soul of the Rhone is corrupted, the two rivers
become one, and that one is the dirty Arve.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 201

" Thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay,
As tlie husband is, the wife is : thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee
down."

The meeting of thesd two rivers is such an obvious
example of evil communication corrupting good man-
ners that the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot help
reading the lesson; and as a large proportion of way-
farers are clergymen, the Arve and the Rhone have
moistened many a dry sermon. Pitt made them flow
through one of his most famous speeches, comparing
them to a cabinet formed of good and bad ministers,
which finally became unanimously bad.

A few miles out of Geneva, one of the Barons Roths-
child has a country-seat w^hich must certainly be an im-
provement on the Garden of Eden, in its view of the
lake and the distant mountains. The Rothschild family
always make a good bargain even with Nature, so that
in this perfect place. Nature has contributed at least
half the perfection.

The hotels of Geneva are always crowded in the
season with Americans. They really come abroad to
see each other, and every second face in the street is
that of one's countrywoman. Every one of them buys
a watch, and pays any price that the shopman has the
face to ask; such reckless shopping would spoil the
most pious market that ever was trained by Calvin.

They have brought America with them to Geneva in
the shape of elevators and rocking-chairs. As the twi-
light fell softly on the lake, I saw a familiar shape among
the flowers and fountains of the hotel garden. I ap-

202 BEATEN PATHS, OR

proached it slowly, fearing an optical delusion, but it was
actually a rocking-chair, the first one I had seen for three
long months, and I settled softly into it as one clafeps an
old friend. A lady who made a long sea-voyage told me
that she could never (lecide which she missed most,
ice-water or society — in European travel, the great
dearth is ice-water and rocking-chairs.

After a day or two in a hotel full of Americans, we
sought and took possession of a " pension " on the lake,
kept by a French family, who spoke no English, and at
last felt ourselves abroad. It had the air of an old
French chateau, shut into large grounds by ample
gates, and its lawn bounded by a semicircle of orange
trees in green tubs. It was on this lawn that a fea&t
of fat things was spread for. the " Arbitrators," and all
other Americans then in Geneva, on the last fourth of
July before the dolorous failure of Bowles Brothers.
Juliet might have been at home on the little rustic bal-
cony, with a pane or two of stained glass, which gave
my uncarpeted and prosaic little room a most poetical
air. There is no French liabit so fascinating as that of
making common things pretty at small expense ; when
we have imported so many French fashions, 'tis a pity
we have left that out.

In our time there were in the house Spaniards, Rus-
sians, Greeks, Italians, Japanese, French, Swedes, and
Americans. Our gathering at table must have resem-
bled the-first meals of our ancestors after the confusion
of tongues, except that we could all speak more or less
French ; it was considerably less than more in the case
of the solitary Japanese, who could barely ask for coffee
and bread, and so keep himself from starvation. He

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 203

had the finest teeth in the world, and he would smile
and smile at us, out of his loneliness, with true Eastern
courtesy, but he never spoke. What a bottled-up state
a man's mind must be in whose communication is liter-
ally, as the apostle recommended, "Yea, yea," and
" Nay, nay 1 " I suppose fermentation would come
sooner to a woman.

Of all these foreigners, the most foreign was Mr. H.,
the head-centre of Spiritualism — for the others were
only alien in birth and language, while his career had
put him a little outside of all other humanity. One
cannot be in the same house with him for a day with-
out perceiving that he is a mere bundle of nerves, and
capable of going into a trance more easily than other
people go to sleep.

He calls himself a relative of the historian Hume,
since a pedigree of some sort is a usefid thing to have
in European courts ; he has a talent for mimicry, and a
memory so wonderful, that he might have made an
honorable fame with half the labor that he has spent
on notoriety. He was suffering from paralysis at this
time, induced, no doubt, by excess of nervous exertion;
and he had the hunted, uneasy look in his eyes of one
who is liable to be brought to bar at any moment, and
can never relax his watch upon his enemies. He was
banished from Rome, — an episode in his eventful life
of which he could not be more proud if he had been a
martyr for preaching the gospel, — and he found favor
in the eyes of the Russian emperor, who was glad tc»
hear any new thing under the sun ; and what was more
to Mr. H.'s purpose, paid him in great diamonds, as an
emperor should.

204 BEATEN PATHS, OR

Ho had a beautiful Russian wife, whom he had con-
verted to Spiritualism, like Mahomet, who took pains
to convince his w^ife Fatiraa of the divine origin of the
Koran before he tried anybody else. Mrs. H. was so
lich in jewels that she wore pearls to breakfast, and
might have dissolverl one or two in her wine, like Cleo-
patra, and never missed them. Her husband assured
us that she was as perfect as a woman could be, with-
out being an idiot.

He had with him two tall sons of a Russian baroness,
and they all kissed each other affectionately on parting
for the night. It is said that masculine appreciation
of women kissing one another is of the slightest; but
two mustaches twining together in a manly embrace,
is a sight, from which gods and women would turn
away their eyes !

One leaf in Mr. H.'s laurel wreath is his supposed
conversion of Mrs. Browning to Spiritualism. Her
husband embalmed him in a long satirical poem, under
the name of Mr. Sludge, which seems to me much like
pieserving flies in amber. Poets have a wasteful habit
of using the wine of their genius in which to pickle
their enemies, not seeing, in their blind anger, that they
bestow a gift of immortality that their happy victims
would never obtain of themselves.

A famous sinner, who had made his home in Genev^a
for many years, died there, during our stay, and was
buried in great state by a rejoicing city ; this was the
rich and wicked Duke of Brunswick, who took his
wickedness with him, and left his riches to Geneva.
They began to lay out their schools and hospitals be-
fore he was cold ; but there was one little worm-hole

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 205

in the fair apple of their content ; a lawsuit was one
item of their legacy.

It would have rejoiced the soul of Calvin, and curled
the lip of Voltaire, to liave read the newspaper com-
ments on this piece of luck; and how exultantly they
looked their gift-horse in the mouth, and praised the
wise generosity of the giver, wniie maintaining a dead
silence on all his other qualities !

206 BEATEN PATHS, OR

CHAPTER XV.

CHAMOtJNIX.

Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains ;

They crowned him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,

With a diadem of snow. — Byron.

MONT Blanc is as changeable as a woman, some-
times sharp and white, as if it never could
alter, then getting gray and hoary, as if old age had
suddenly fallen' on it like a blight, and again disappear-
ing altogether, so that for hours there is no Mont Blanc
at all, as far as Geneva is concerned.

Chamounix and its belt of hills are the real recep-
tion-rooms of the monarch. In a nearer approach one
pays back more or less of the enchantment that distance
lent the view, as one sometimes loses reverence for
famous people by becoming too intimate with them.
One may lift the snowy veil that makes Mont Blanc
the Madonna of mountains; but it is at the price of
much sub.stance, both of body and purse, and after all
there is no beauty like the unapproachable. A veiled
nun is romantic and stimulating to the imagination,
when in reality she may be of the roughest Hiberuiaa
clay, and marked with the small-pox.

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 207

A woman is never so lovely to her lover as in the
distance. When parents stood jealously between
daughters and their suitors, how stately and angelio
were all the heroines of novels and poetry, cold as ice-
peaks, and only melting to love seven times heated !
but since young women have stepped down from the
old pedestal, and banished father and mother to the
back parlor, the whole tone of fiction and society is,
" Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad."

So the royalty of Mont Blanc, when it was reserved
and inaccessible, could not be made glorious enough.
Coleridge bowed down to it like a divinity in his Hymn
to Chamouny, —

** Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven ; '*

but since it has been ascended by armies of lean trav-
ellers, and its deepest mystery photographed, everybody
speaks lightly of it, as of a next-door neighbor.

Thackeray comments on Swiss scenery as he would
speak of a dinner party of intelligent people who did
not wholly live to eat. "It is delightful to be in the
midst of Alpine scenes — the ideas get generous reflec-
tions from them. It is keeping good company. It is
keeping away mean thoughts."

Our journey from Geneva to Chamounix lay through
forty miles of rain, a steady <lown-pour, as if the moun-
tains and valleys were having one of those tri-monthly
washings, which put a German family under water for
a day or two. The road made safe by Napoleon is
said to have been wonderfully picturesque by birth-
right; but I -ask no one to take luy word for it. I was

208 BEATEN PATHS, OR

enclosed in a mass of twenty people, dripping about
the edges and damp in the middle. It was an open
carriage by nature, with a canvas awning over it, con-
trived solely with a view to dry scenery. The rear
was weighed down with a party of middle-class Eng-
lish, who sat and glowered at one another as only
English can, till they were stayed with food and com-
forted with wine at the little half-way house, and then
their heavy British wit began to roll around the car-
riage like thunder among mountains. Opposite to us
were a couple from Uruguay, with their little negro
servant, "God's image cut in ebony," the only one of
the company to whom rain and shine were equally a
satisfaction. Who ever saw a negro look worried?
One would almost consent to be black with that com-
pensation. On one side were Beauty and the Beast
('tis amazing how often they go on their travels), in
the shape, this time, of an "ancient mariner" and his
fair, soft little wife, who looked as if she had never
put her foot to the ground for delicacy. They had a
small but troublesome family, consisting of a Scotch
terrier, so minute that it was carried in a hand-basket
in its mistress's lap, and it seemed to me that their
journey was conducted chiefly for the education of the
terrier. If the curtains were lifted for a moment to
view a waterfall or a rocky defile, the cover of the
basket was lifted too, that the dog might have the
benefit. A child would have flourished like a green
bay tree on half the attention that was wasted on this
little beast !

Nothing is more amazing in human nature than the
devotion of middle-aged women to dogs —-women,

. A WOMAN'S VACATION. 209

who think themselves fortunate that they have had no
children. A dog is never anything but a dog, if you
keep him twenty years, whereas the comfort and joy
of a child increase at compound interest, and no two
years of its life are alike. On the other side was a
Spanish mystery, shaped like a man, who looked
strnight before him for forty miles, holding an un-
lighted cigarette between his lips, always at the same
angle. Na one saw him get out or in. To this day I
think he was a wax figure provided by the diligence
company to fill up an empty seat.

The real martyr of the ride was a guide in a blue
blouse, who sat on the bottom of the carriage, swing-
ing his legs over the wheels, and soaking in rain all
day like a sponge. He sat at the feet of a passenger
with an aureole of flame-colored hair and beard about
his face, who, with the touch of cruelty, which seems
innate with that temperament, amused himself with
making minute streams of water run off his umbrella
down the neck of the luckless guide, who could not
escape, turn which way he would. It was the old
story of the boy and the frogs. We had nothing to
do but to study each other, and make laughter keep
out rheumatism.

*'I think," said the "ancient mariner," "that these
people from Uruguay have probably got rich keeping
a groggery, and having a married daughter in Europe,
came over to see what it was like." The people from
Uruguay were looking straight in his face when he
pronounced sentence on them, but they were none the
wiser. It is a perilous pleasure to abuse people to
their faces in another language, but not one to be
14

210 BEATEN PATHS, OR

practised with impunity. When the abused person an-
swers unexpectedly in the same language, then we are
ready to call on the rocks to fall down and cover us.
Mrs. Mariner dreaded this result, and tried to hush her
reckless husband; but all in vain. He was wholly de-
voted to her in tuckinfj her in from the rain and secur-
ing for her every possible morsel of comfort, at the
sacrifice of his own. He was ready to be her foot-
stool ; but he would not take her advice. She had the
semblance of power without the substance, "love and
cherishing" with "honor" left out.

I don't think that little word "honor" in the mar-
riage promise has ever had its due. There is a great
fuss made about the " obey ; " but if it were truly
wedded to " honor," they are a couple that would pull
well together forever and ever. It is sweet to be
physically beloved, to have cloaks laid down over
muddy places like a queen, and to be screened from
every wind of heaven like a first-born baby; but
sweeter far is it to be listened to and heeded, though
one must walk in rubber boots, and bear with a cold
shoulder now and then. " Strike, but hear me," is not
the worst motto in the world for a wife's flnsf.

The flapping curtains of our carriage parted between
whiles that we might. look at some mountain torrent
tumbling superfluously over the rocks, not seeing that
its occupation was gone, since all heaven was a water-
fall. Rarely we met a woman paddling through the
flooded fields —

*' Alone, unfriended, melancholy, slow."

It was always a woman — the men were all in-doors, as

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 211

became those superior beings. There is but one bit
of work in Switzerhind not performed by women ; they
are never guides — perhaps because there is money
to be made by it. They carry burdens bigger than
themselves up the ladder-like sides of their mountains,
but they do not lead travellers. In the mountain vil-
lages, hundreds of men live by whittling^ making every
mortal thing out of wood that that material will sub-
mit to. Whole villages also will be devoted to making
over and over one wheel or one spring of a watch,
which are carried to Geneva and fitted to other springs
and wheels that have travelled down from other moun-
tains — a watch bought there may have been thin-
spread all over Switzerland.

Until this wet ride my eyes had been mercifully
withheld from seeing the national curse — the goitre;
but when the diligence stopped for lunch, an old woman
came to the side with a terrible growth under her chin,
at least a foot long, as of a bunch of beets or carrots
dragged out of the ground with earth clinging to
them. A sight for a nightmare ; and yet the old crea-
ture looked as if she had a sort of pride in it, the
vegetable outgrowth of ages of filth and bad air.
Was there ever a curse so black that conceited hu-
manity would not wring a secret drop of comfort out
of it?

The next morning the Chamounix Valley was sweet
and fresh as a lusty baby after a bath, and we found
"a thing to do" right speedily — to cross the Mer de
Glace, the cast-off garments of Mont Blanc, which
have fallen between two lower heights, and lie frozen
there in hundreds of feet of gieen ice shining like
chrysoprase.

212 BEATEN PATHS, OR

We mounted our mules at the hotel door and rode,
single file, up the rocky stairs of' the Mon tan vert, a
wooded hill which serves as a footstool from which to
look in the face of Swiss royalty.

My mule had grown near-sighted in his old age, and
insisted on climbing the very edge of the precipice,
either to see his home in the valley better, or to be
certain where the edge was. With the exception of
this litlle weakness, he was all that one could desire in
an intimate friend among mules. With a stout pair
of eye-glasses he would have been perfect.

If one has any faith left in man, the idiosyncrasy of
the Swiss mule don't matter much, as a guide leads
each one by the bridle. These Swiss guides are a class
by themselves, a serious, woithy, wrinkled set of men,
fed upon danger from childhood, as it had been bread
and butter.

St. Ursula made long discourses with them in her
best French, — she would draw out a Hottentot's views
of politics and religion, — and these were her results.
The province of Savoy, in which Chamounix is situat-
ed, having passed from Italian to French rule within
a few years, these men did highly approve the change,
since taxes were lower. Furthermore, they preferred
to guide Americans rather than other travellers, be-
cause they were so lavish of their money. They had
been known to give as much as ^\Qi francs to a guide
for his dinner. I know not whether all their ideas and
opinions had roots in their pockets; but these two
were enough to make them men and brethren.

We were already blest in this Chamounix journey
with six feet of manly escort, brimful of true American

A WOMAN'S VACATION 213

kindness to his lonely countrywomen, which ought to
have been enough for us, since we had fought our own
battle so long. However, it never rains but it pours,
and just here we fell in with the " Fairy Prince."
According to Tennyson, he had broken the hedge,
waked the sleeping princess with a kiss, and earned
her "across the hills and flar away" with him ages ago;
but here he was again, as young as ever.

** He travels far from other skies —
His mantle glitters on the rocks —
A fairy prince with joyful eyes,
And lighter-footed than the fox."

He wore a suit of brown knickerbockers instead of
a glittering mantle, and he presented his card like other

people — of course it was only plain Mr. ; but

that was his disguise, as other princes of royal biith
call themselves mere count or baron on their travels.
He bestrode his mule as if it had been a "fiery, un-
tamed steed of the desert," and he ordered impossible
dinners on little shelves of the rock, which nevertheless
came to pass in due season as by magic. He had the
true fairy talent for making arrangements, so that his
companions seemed to slide down an inclined plane to
the desire of their hearts. It was a great blow to
some of us when he spoke of his wife — why did I at
once think of Mahomet's father, who was so handsome
that on his wedding day two thousand virgins made
an end of themselves in their despair? — for it proved
that he had already found the princess and made that
little journey "across the hills and far away," like his
ancestor.

214 BEATEN PATHS, OR

We broke the news gently to Juno, but —
**the subsequent proceedings interested her no more."

It is odd how instantly some women lose interest in
a man when they discover that he is married. It is
almost the sole exception to the rule that only the
unattainable is w^orth having. To me, there is a
troublesome uncertainty in the manner of a bachelor,
as if he never quite knew where his feet might carry
him ; but a married man can call his soul his own with
no sort of misgiving how anybody will take it. In our
case the princess was indeed far away — at least three
thousand miles — taking care of the heir to the throne,
and for two endless summer days her prince went
across the hills with us.

The blackness of desolation is a familiar phrase; but
looking down from the Montanvert on the ancient
ravages of the glacier, that "frozen hurricane," and its
two cold arms, the Arve and the Arveiron, reaching
out of the valley to cool the rest of the worid, one
begins to learn the meaning of the whiteness of desola-
tion. We leave our mules here for a season, those for-
tunate animals not being able to walk on ice, and after
scrambling down the rocky wall that was intended by
Nature to fence in her ice treasure from all human
meddling, we draw on knitted shoes and begin our
walk over fathomless ice under the midsummer sun.
Our feet touch the frigid zone and our head the torrid.
Steps are cut along a winding path, and there is no
danger if one could resist looking over the edge of the
yawning cracks, into which one drops a stone and hears
it rebound aojainst the oreen walls of ice long after it

A WOMAN'S VACATION 215

is out of sight. These crevasses have an uncomfort-
able habit of breaking out in a new spot sometimes;
but the ice groans and lieaves long enough beforehand
to warn people away from its neighborhood.

The glacier is more beautiful in a picture, because
Nature is not a good housekeeper, never wiping the
dust of ages off its face. It was evidently intended to
be looked at from a distance, and the black specks in
water-proof cloaks crawling over it all summer are an
impertinence to its grand loneliness. It ought to be
let severely alone. One seems to be looking on about
the evening of the third day of creation, when the
waters were gathered together in one place and the
dry land appeared ; but there were yet twenty-four
hours before "the grass and the herb yielding seed, and
the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind," had been
heard of. It may well be the place where all the waste
material left over, after that six days' work, was thrown
to get it out of the way, " the fret-work of an earth-
quake." It bears down small talk and travelling jokes
like a death in the house ; only those whose souls
habitually walk "on the heights" retain their cheer-
fulness without an effort.

• Crossing the ice is nothing ; it is but the first skirmish
of the battle. After such scrambling as makes one
take back some old strictures on the Bloomer costume,
one creeps, and jumps, and almost writhes along the
side of a perpendicular rock, like drunken flies on a
wall. There is nothing above us but rock and sky,
and nothing below but more rock added to the glacier
and destruction — the downward look is the most in-
teresting. An iron railing has been welded into the

216 BEATEN PATHS, OR

path. With one hand clutching this, and sticking
closer than a brother to my guide, I passed over the
Mauvais Pas, or "Bad Step." If there are worse steps,
I desire never to take them. It is not a bad type of
the return journey from "facilis descensus Averni." I
knoWnothing of the scenery along this perilous walk,
but I can tell the number of threads in my guide's
coat-collar, to which I nailed my dizzy eyes; but there
is no "bad step" in the world for some people. One
of us in a trailing skirt skimmed over this danger like
a young and fool-hardy chamois.

. Nothing demonstrates the superior strength of the
female body over that of man (however much it may
impugn her common sense) than to see a woman
wrapped in heavy and clinging skirts do easily what
men find difficult without that drawback. A woman
gives them several points in the matter of clothes, and
often wins after all. * Sir John Mandeville says he never
felt so devout as when he was passing through the
Dangerous Valley. It may not be difficult to be an
infidel on smooth ground, but on the "bad steps" of
this world, a stout belief in the " everlasting arms,"
and angels standing around, "lest thou trip thy foot
against a stone," is a handy thing to have about one. '
There was one flying leap from one little stone bracket
to another, after which, had I been a good Catholic, I
would have vowed a candle to the Virgin at least five
feet long.

Only the day before our visit, the Bad Step had its
latest tragedy, with a comic edge to it, as most trage-
dies have. In the pouring rain a party left the hotel
at Chamounix for the Mer de Glace, and coming up on

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 217

the other side, took the Bad Step first. The sweetest
of little old ladies, a mere dot of a woman, with her
doctor of divinity, were among them, and went on
over the slippery rock made doubly dangerous by the
rain, because once started there was no turning back.
She dragged the pounds on pounds of wet water-proof
cloth clinging about her feet to the little oasis, where
people rest and gird up their loins before crossing the
ice. Here she threw herself prone on the ground, and
was still as an ink blot. When the others started, her
husband tried to rouse her. " No," she said ; " you
may all go on. I want nothing. I will die here!"
It was the calmness of despair; women often threaten
in certain contingencies to '•'give up;'''* but the thing is
rare as snow in August. When it happens, the family
machine stops and desperate remedies are applied.
This w^oman did the thing without the threat, also a
rare thing in her sex; and was ever doctor of divinity
in such a plight before? He had lived with her forty
years, and she yet had power to surprise him. He had
seen her endure years of wasting sickness without los-
ing cheerfulness. He had seen her go down into the
Valley of the Shadow of Death and come back smiling
with a baby in her arms; but now at last she had
"given up." He offered to carry her down the rocks
and across the ice — he who had come abroad for Iiis
health ; but she answered him only, " Go with the rest.
I will die here!" like the refrain of a dirge. The
doctor must have scolded at this point, if he were not
more than mortal; but it did no good, and finally he
"wrapped the mantle of his thoughts about him, and sat
down in the rain to meditate a new chapter on the

218 BEATEN PATHS, OR

woman question. The other people went on, and the
two kept solitary watch on the Mer de Glace like two
gray-headed eagles in an eyrie. At ihe end of a silent
half liour, in which the doctor discovered what very
liard-working people those are who "only stand and
wait," she rose up, walked over the ice, mounted her
mule, and reg;)ined the hotel*. She had broken the
main-spring of hope, and it took Nature just half an
hour to mend it.

We found a little box of a restaurant at the end of
the Bad Step, clinging to the rock as if it had rolled
down the mountain side and lodged there. We would
not have scorned the "dinner of herbs;" but we had
the "stalled ox" and "contentment therewith." In a
bottle of enthusiasm, which went by another name in
the bill, we drank to those we loved, and again to
those who loved us. Some hasty people might think
they were one and the same ; but every discriminating
mind perceives that they are two very different drinks.

" Now they all sat or stood
To eat and to drink,
And every one said

What he happened to think," —

as they did at the wedding of Cock Robin and Jennie
Wren, and I know no surer test of the enjoyment of
any company.

Our last toast was, " Our enemies, may God forgive
them ! "

"For we never will," added the Fairy Prince; and
then we found our mules, and rattled our bones over
the stones back to the hotel. Juno ran a mule-race

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 219

with the prince, and her guide assured her that she
had "the habitude of a horse." All the rest of us
trailed far behhid them, looking as if our dolls were
stuifed with sawdust, and we did not care who knew
it. It had been a day of days, and it " died of its own
glory," transmuting Mont Blanc by sunset alchemy
into a solid mass of burnished gold. This is called
the "After-glow," and in a few minutes the mountain
fades again into a cold white cloud. This change is
like a sudden blinding gleam of delight which fades
out as if it had never been, when the twilight of com-
mon sense settles on it.

The region of Mont Blanc has a wonderfully biblical
effect — mountainous texts float uppermost in the mem-
ory. That splendid psalm in the prayer book which
calls on every created thing, "stars and wnnds, ice and
snow, mountains and hills, to praise the Lord and
magnify him forever," keeps chanting itself in every
mind that is familiar with it. Mont Blanc is a great
white hand on the guide-board of the sky, pointing to
the fact more easily forgotten than any other, "Be ye
sure that the Lord he is God ; it is he that hath made
us and not we ourselves." All the funerals in the
world could not put a sharper point upon it.

The Swiss are a pious and God-fearing race. Their
mountains continually do preach to them like Evan-
gelists, anr] they are converted in spite of themselves.

Anybody can make a flat country by filling in a
bay — Boston made miles of it, and thought no more
about it ; but among high mountains their Maker seems
to be still walking where Moses spoke with him. Mr.
Beecher says he never realized how much work it was

r^

220 BEATEN PATHS, OR

to put the world together until he tried to make a hill
four feet high.

In the early morning we were packed into springless
wagons drawn by mules for a drive of twenty-four
miles over the Tete Noire (Black Head) pass to Mar-
tigny. I saw the last of Chamounix in the shape of
my near-sighted mule. I bowed to him, but he took
no notice — Ae may have forgotten our short friend-
ship, but I never shall.

The breath of a Swiss morning is sweet and sharp
as the flavor of a pine-apple. It cheers and inebri-
ates too. The mountains are black and bleak beyond
telling; but they are not so unnecessarily high as
Mont Blanc and the other snow-peaks. A cheerful
little stream, white with foam, bathes their roots, and
now and then, high up on the side, nestles a broad-
brimmed village like a cluster of birds' nests on a tree-
top. Frisky waterfalls that have never been sobered
by the' drudgery of turning a mill-wheel plunge reck-
lessly down the mountain, and break into a shower of
emeralds and rubies in the rays of that great jeweller,
the sun. Some French savant calls mountains only
the wrinkles on the face of the old earth, and Parsees
say that they are the heads of the long pins that hold
the world down in its place. The road winds along
like a serpent, hedged in by a rickety fence (wherever
there is no danger)^ but it always gives way at the
steepest places, and rolls down into the valley, out of
deference to the view. In very sharp descents, one
mule is fastened behind the carriage, on the safe prin-
ciple that a mule will always pull backwards when he
gets a chance. The road seems to be built with a view

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 221

to all the travel setting one way, from Charaounix to
Martigny. One solitary wagon and a mule, very small
of its age, came the other way, and found out its
mistake. It turned out for us, and in the act went
backward down the hill-side, dragging the mule with
it. The descent was gi-assy, but steep, for about a hun-
dred feet, and ended in a rushing stream full of sharp
rocks. When I looked over the edge I expected to
see a mule in pieces ; but about half way down, a pro-
jecting stone had wedged itself into the wagon and
held it till it could be secured. The bewildered mule
was dragged up the bank, and set upon his feet, and
from the tip of his bruised nose to the end of his tail
he wore the exact expression of Sterne's famous don-
key, which seemed to say, "Don't beat me; but if you \
will you may ! " A mule is almost as hard to kill as a "^i
woman! The wagon had contained nothing but an /
elderly carpet-bag, and the hill-side was strewn with
combs, and brushes, and shirts. A few rods faither on,
and out of sight of the late catastrophe, we came upon
the owner, sitting on a stone in the broiling sun with
note-book in hand, and a tall hat on his head,' which
looked as foreign to the scene as anything could. Bret
Harte says that a stove-pipe hat on any one but a
clergyman or a gambler in the mountains of California
in the early days would have justified a blow. In this
man, one recognized the Yankee as distinctly as if the
American postage-stamp had been on his forehead, and
his hollow cheeks and well-preserved black suit seemed
to mark the minister from Cranberry Centre, whom a
lucky bronchitis had sent abroad for cure. I suppose
he thought he left his wagon to study the fine view,

222 BEATEN PATHS, OR

all unconscious that his guardian angel had put it
into his head in order to avoid the coming overturn.
American tourists can never feel quite at home in Al-
j)ine scenery, because they miss *' Plantation Bitters"
and "Mrs. Allen's Hair Restorer "in large letters on
every salient point, as they have them in their native
wilds. The "effete monarchies" manao:e these thinofs
better. As we approach the summit of the pass, the
plot thickens, and the gloomy mountains draw their
heads nearer together, like conspirators.

The Black Head is a stubborn mass of rock that
leans over the valley with a scowl. It has been tun-
nelled, since there is no getting around it; and we went
in at one ear in France and came out at the other in
Switzerland. In the long, down-hill jolt describing
an endless row of acute angles, we were in sight of
Martigny for miles; but the village seemed to flee be-
fore us. When we reached it we were still alive, but
in the condition of that army which would be ruined
by such another victory.

However, a night's sleep and the breath of the
mountains miraculously "knit up the ravelled sleeve
of care," and the better part of us were ready next
morning to mount into the region of eternal snow,
where the brethren of Mont St. Bernard slowly freeze
to death in the service of God and his poor.

Our mules trotted cheerfully over the splendid road
built by Napoleon, nodding their heads continually as
if in token of approval of such travelling. The Alpine
pictures, in their azure frame of sky, unrolling them-
selves one after another as we climb hio^her and higher,
are so many health-giving draughts to our weariness.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 223

The human figures in the landscape are its only draw-
back. In the filthy little village, where we stopped for
luncheon, there is everything to take away one's appe-
tite. The government seems to be administered by
pigs that do shamefully tyrannize over the other in-
habitants. We were forced to drive through a sty,
long drawn out. St. Peter is doubtless ashamed of his
namesake. The people were just lumps of animated
dirt, and yet they might be clean if they thought of
it; there is water enough always going to waste down
the side of the mountain. When we left St. Pierre
another mule joined company with us, a portentous
addition, of which we soon found the meaning. The
mountain g\ 3W so steep that the carriage-road shrunk
to a foot-path, and leaving the wagon behind, we
mounted the mules. As we climbed in single file the
rugged way with a sack of hay strapped on behind,
and our own modest traps hung on each side like the
saddle-bags of a doctor in the olden time, we looked
not unlike an old picture of the "Flight into Egypt."
There is a chilly flavor of snow in the air long before
we pass the first patches of it lying on the grass like
bits of white linen put out to dry.

When the Hospice comes into sight, after twelve
hours of climbing, the gaunt old dogs rush out at us
with a loud welcome, and a troop of beggars creep out
of their holes in the ground, for they are too filthy
ever to have had any other home. The dogs are
weather-beaten old heroes; but these beggars, who
cumber the earth by the charity of the brethren, are
so evidently below the level of brutes, that they ought
to break themselves of the habit of living.

224 BEATEN PATHS, OR

We go up the steps of a gray stone building, and
ring a bell, which brings a brother to the door. A
pale, handsome man is this monk, with vivacious black
eyes never tamed by conventual rule or everlasting
cold. He leads us up stairs, along a stone corridor
with many wooden doors, numbered and unpainted,
leading out of it, and leaves us in a little room with
three narrow beds in it, and as many small wash-hand
stands. The floor and walls are of unpainted wood ;
but the beds would rejoice the heart of the neatest
of Yankee housewives. They ar.e high-posters with
white canopies and valences, and for coverlet there is
a fat feather-bed cased in white. As we looked out of
the little window into the sky, a few flakes of snow
float lazily downward, and it is only the middle of
August. In the dining-room a welcome wood-fire
blazes in the wide ^rate, a piano stands open, and
our black-eyed host makes good cheer for us in French,
which, in its very sound, is more lively than English
ever can be. It was a fast-day of peculiar strictness
for the brethren, and we saw no others. The dinner
was served in this warm room, and we sat down with
half a dozen other travellers, who had come up from
the Italian side. There were also three or four mature-
looking Frenchwomen, who had an undefinable air of
being at home. It did not appear whether they had
retired to the Hospice to do penance for their sins, or
to comfort the lonely brethren with some semblance
of home life ; but there they were.

A fast-day dinner in a monastery is by no means the
meagre and starveling affair that one might suppose.
First came a mild sort of soup, with savory bits of

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 225

bread in it; then a course of codfish and potatoes, deli-
ciously cooked; then macaroni, with the Italian flavor;
then a pyramid of flaky rice rising out of a pond of
stewed prunes; and the dessert consisted of all man-
ner of dried fruit and nuts. Red wine flowed freely.
The brother pressed every dish on his guests with the
warmest hospitality, and when we left him for the
night, he urged us to come to mass in the morning at
five o'clock. How the cold did nip nnd pinch us in
that little wooden bedroom ! Not the northernmost
spare chamber in a country house at home, that had
not been slept in for a score of winters, could equal
the cruel chill, as with chattering teeth we crept be-
tween our two feather-beds. We felt ourselves sand-
wiched in the eternal snows, and the brethren would
have to send the dogs to our rescue before midnight.

It could be no worse; but it was scarcely better
when we crept out again in the small houra of the
morning and found our way to the chapel. A gor-
geous mass was going on, and whatever may be the
personal privations of the monks of St. Bernard^ they
certainly spare no splendor to the service of God.
The lace on the priests' robes is as deep as in any
cathedral in the land. The black-robed martyrs come
in slowly, prostrate themselves for a prayer or two,
and go out again. The ragamuffins, whom we saw
.first, come in too, and are very devout indeed ; but it
would seem that the dogs might understand the ser-
vice as well as they. ' Afterwards we munch the usual
French breakfast of a roll and a cup of coffee, and, still
shivering, we go out of doors to look up at the snowy
peaks that keep watch and ward over the Hospice.
15

226 BEATEN PATHS, OR

A wooden cross marks the dividing line from Italy,
and we rush with a sudden hot thrill in our veins to
set our feet on its classic ground.

" Italia, O Italia, thou that hast the fatal gift of beauty ! " -—

if we never see thee nearer, at least we have touched
the hem of thy garment!

Then the brother takes down a key from the outer
wall, and with a solemn countenance opens a myste-
rious door. It is the "Morgue," or home of the dead,
who have been found frozen on the mountain by the
dogs. The dry air withers and preserves them in the
same attitude in which they were found. In the dim,
vault-like room, shadowy forms lean against the wall,
with hollow eye-sockets turned towards the door, and
nearest to us is the body of a mother holding her baby
on her arm. She is wrapped in a sheet, for when she
was found she had stripped herself to keep the child
warm. Shq is just another verse of that sweet old
poem of mother-love that will keep on singing itself
while the world lasts, and cannot be surpassed in mel-
ody even by the angels. This roomful of the dead is
kept always the same, that any surviving friends who
may come in search of them can have the opportunity
to identify them. The thing has come to pass even
years after death. A haunting horror clings about this
silent company ; but it is so faint and dim in its effect,
that in five minutes after the door was shut I was
almost sure that it did not really exist, and I had only
dreamed it.

The courtesy of the black-eyed brother clung to us

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 227

to the last; but when we ventured to offer him money,
he shrank from it as if it would contaminate him, and
led us to the little box in the chapel. Here we meek-
ly dropped in our Napoleons, said the last words in
broken French, and turned the heads of our mules
towards Martigny and warm weather.

228 BEATEN PATHS, OR

CHAPTER XVI.

PARIS.

" There is only one Paris ; and out of Paris there is no sal-
vation for decent people." — ** The Baron," in Hyperion.

MOST people bridge the gulf between Geneva and
Paris by a night journey ; but it is an inhuman
way of doing penance for one's sins, and must have
been invented by the great enemy of mankind. The
surest recipe for making night hideous is to sit through
the weary hours, ironically called " small," staring in
the faces of four other unfortunates, distorted by the
glimmer of a shaking lamp overhead.

Crossing the Styx is nothing to it. We made the
journey luxuriously in two days, stopping a night in
Macon, noted as the birthplace of Lamartine, the
" literary Don Juan," whose books are to other litera-
ture like French kickshaws to solid beef and mutton.
Lamartine's career would have abundantly glorified a
short life; but he had the bad taste to live too long,
and to become a sort of poor relation to the French
government. His chateau in Macon has come down,
in its old age, to be used for wine cellars and a b6ard-
ing-school for girls. We literally drove into the pleas-
ant hotel at Macon in an omnibus, and pulled up in the

A WOMAN'S VACATION ^ 229

court-yard, which is the heart of a French house. All
its business converges to that centre. It is a French-
man's castle — he buys a bit of land and builds a house
all around it.

Here was first served up to us a flower of Gallic
cookery, so folded in mystery that we tasted and tasted,
and could not christen it. We had eaten strange
compounds before — unaccountable meat and nameless
vegetables smothered in witch-broth, "thick and slab."
Only to taste of them was a triumph of faith ; but this
dainty dish was a delicious riddle without an answer.
Halves of large tomatoes, with the contents scooped
out, served for baking dishes ; these were filled with
mystery, chopped fine and browned over. The beauty
of it was, that it never tasted twice alike. It was oys-
ters, chicken, sweet herbs, eggs, cheese, bread-crumbs,
pickles, sardines, lemons — "everything by turns, and
notliing long."

The French country, as we saw it, was flat and fer-
tile, commonplace and restful, after the extravagances
of Swiss scenery. Was it Talleyrand who said no one
would appreciate the comfort of marrying a "s^^^/)^cZ"
unless he had associated with intellectual women all
his days?

It is on this principle that the dull rows of poplar
trees that serve in the [)lace of fences find favor in our
eyes, though, looked at merely as a tree, it is a vege-
table failure. A Lombardy poplar is just a wood-cut
of an elderly sj)inster of the scrawny type, holding up
her skirts, and picking her way over the puddles in a
wet day — a tree nipped in the bud, reluctant to give
shade, like a character frozen by early neglect. If

230 BEATEN PATHS, OR

men harl invented trees, their first attempt must have
looked like a poplar.

On French railways travellers are treated like express
packages, "to be kept this side up with care;" but
nothing is left to their discretion. They are fastened
into pens till the train is ready, and any question about
the journey is received by an official with much the
same expression that must have come over Balaam's
face when his ass spoke to him.

On French soil, except in the matter of shopping,
one does not need more than half his wits — there is
such a surplus among the natives.

On the frontier our passports were demanded for Ihe
first time. The train was remorselessly emptied, even
to hand-bags and shawl-straps, and the w^hole herd
passed through a strait gate, under the eyes of four
men in cocked hats, to the baggage-room. The first
comers had their passports examined and compared
with their faces ; but custom-house officers are mortal,
after all, and having verified a score or two of "me-
dium " noses and chins, they relaxed their severity, and
passed without a word the shrinking rear-guard, who
had no passports at all. Three or four dingy trunks,
helonsjinor to a distracted little German milliner, w^ere
opened, and found to be nearly or quite empty; but not
Abiaham himself, when he tried to pass his beautiful
Sarah in a wooden chest through the Egyptian custom-
house, could have made more fuss about it. The moral
of travelling with empty coffers seemed to be that tak-
ing full trunks to Paris would be like carrying coals to
Newcastle. We had been travelling to this point
with a solid old German couple, and my last sight of

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 231

them makes the frontispiece to all my German memo-
ries: she carried four leather bags, and he carried — •
his cane.

"Tills is the patient, gentle, unprovoked,
And unprovoking, never-answering she."

The first impression of Paris, as one leaves the train
in the great depot, is thnt the whole city is held in the
hollow of a powerful hand, that would regulate even
its breathing. The cheerful and distracting bustle of
our home railway stations, where nobody has any rights
except hackmen, is replaced by an orderly stilhjess, de-
piK^ssing to a traveller who lias braced himself for a
hand-to-hand fight over his baggage, and is at least
sure of one who is glad to see liim. Every cabman is
seated on his vehicle, as in a funereal cortege. Not
one can stir until the chief of the omnibiises has had
the fiist chance. The baggage is handed out slowly
and carefully — you give your word of honor that it
contains neither tobacco nor spirits — a man in uni-
form makes a cross on it — and the omnibus driver,
selected by the chief, takes possession of it and its
owner. It is so painfully systematic, that one feels like
a convict going to prison. This effect is not lessened
on arriving at a hotel, when little blanks are handed in
by the police to be filled up with one's name, birth-
place, last stop I ling-place, and occupation. The last
item was a little difliicult to define: one of us was a
teacher ; all the rest were time-killers, and nothing more.

London is like a collection of towns, one over against
another — it may be studied and absorbed in pieces;
but Paris is one and indivisible, not to be learned in a

\

232 BEATEN PATHS, OR

lifetime. One can only describe little tags and edges
of it ; and that is why all the world conies, and comes
again, to look at the beauty of its sphinx-like face, and
make another guesa at its meaning. There must be
great poverty, and suffering, and crime in Paris; but
they do not flont on the surflice so brazenly as in Lon-
don. Louis Napoleon has made misery half ashamed
of itself in his broad, white streets, where Parisians
can no longer throw up a barricade of paving-stones
and fight out a campaign in a night. There is no old
dirt or dim relimous licrht anvwhere. The sidewalks
are often thirty feet wide, and one never sees a crowd
so dense as in the x\merican cities, where the sidewjflk
looks, afar off, like a moving hank of many-shaded and
bright-colored worsted.

The Bonaparte dynasty has wrought a great "'N"
into so many stony places, an\l hung it Avith such
delicate sculptures, that, for the sake of what goes
with it, even a Bourbon would hesitate to erase it.
The outrages of the Communists are like so many
gaping wounds in a fair body. The broken walls of
the Hotel de Ville will scarcely rise up before the
Parisian crater belches fire again. This was Lamar-
tine's battle-ground — for three days he stood on a
balcony of the Hotel de Ville, and threw down little
sops of oratory to appease the raging Cerberus of the
mob that filled the court-yard. When a savage cry
for his head reached him, he said h.e wished that every
one of them had his liead on their shoulders, which
moved the crowd to a grim mirth and dispersed it.
The hungriest French stomach can always be staid
with a bou mot.

A WOMAJV'S VACATION. 233

The Column Vendome, twined with Napoleon's vic-
tories, and crowned with his statue, broke into four
pieces when it fell. It is to be set up again, and the
cracks smoothed over, till another Commune lays it
low. Napoleon's son, who came so gorgeously into the
world, and went so lamely out of it, wrote in the
album of a French count about returning to Paris,
" Tell the Column Yendome that I die because I can
never see it!" The French lay all defects in their
present state at the door of the Commune, as islanders
in tiie tropics attribute everything that goes wrong to
the last hurricane.

On every public building is written up, in large let-
ters, the favorite cry of the mob, "Liberty, Equality,
and Fraternity," as if it were possible for either of
these three thins^s to be realized in France. This was
done in Louis Phillipe's time to ward off the desecrat-
ing fury of the mob. They should have written —

** A change — my kingdom for a change ! "

or, better still, the favorite maxim of Jonathan Wild,
"Never to do any more mischief than was necessary
to the effecting his purpose, for that mischief was too
2)recious to be thrown away."

Part of the brightness of Paris streets radiates from
the white ruffled caps of the women, who seem to have
most of the business of the city on their minds.

The French type of face is much more like the
American than any other — they look equally keen-
eyed, alert, and quick-witted. 1 constantly mistook
one for the other. Market women in white frilled caps

234 BEATEN PATHS, OR

look up witli the same set of features that one may see
on New England doorsteps in the twilight — sharp-cut
faces with early wrinkles, and not an ounce of flesh to
spare. It confirms the theory that Nature makes faces
by the dozen, in the same mould, and just scatters them
broadcast without distinction of nation. There is an-
other reason, however, for the pervading American
tinge in Paris streets. There is a permanent popula-
tion of twenty thousand Americans ; and in September
all those who have been summering in Europe come
back to Paris fur more last words, and to spend all the
dollars they have left. In this September, Paris gave
wet welcome lo her devotees. It rained every day
for three weeks, with a chilling wind worse than east,
which made furs comfortable, and brought a golden
crop to cabmen. Boston, in ils most abnndoned
month, was never guilty of such a "spell of weather."

Speaking of cabmen, their tariff is sternly fixed for
them by law; but they creep out of it by asking for a
morsel of drink-money, which you must pay or hear a
volley of "sacr-r-r-s" rolling after you like big stones.
After one of them had pulled his horse up from a fall,
he got down from his seat and kissed him on the nose —
a touching little attention to the animal's feelings, which
should be added to the regulations of the "Society for
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals."

The great stones on the bridges and edges of the
Seine are numbered in staring: fiu^ures. I could not
learn for what reason; but they must be convenient
for making appointments. Servant girls who live in
families where no followers are allowed, probably meet
them at such a number on the river bank.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 235

The shops are scarcely as brilliant as in the large
American cities; but they are dedicated poetically to
"spring-time," or to "a coquette," or to "thoughts,"
with a pansy for a trade-mark on their cards. One
shop, for selling only velvet cloaks, is dedicated to
"the Child Jesus." Americans are received in French
shops as to their mothers' arms. Nothing is too good
for them, and nothing can equal the price they are
expected to pay. After the lofty indifference of home
shopmen, the obsequiousness of French clerks seems
almost ironical. The perfumed essence of all Parisian
shopping is in the Palais Royal, where one finds the
luxuries of life in profusion, and cares no longer for its
necessnrics — real jewels, such as the Shah of Persia/
lately bought for himself^ and mock jewels, such as he^^
bought for his wives — precious boxes in silver, porce-
lain, and Russia leather, for holding things still more
precious — china, rare without being ugly, for it is only
in England that ugliness brings a high price. It was
once the palace of Louis XIII. , and ornaments, such as
now lie on satin in the shop windows, then shone on
the white bosoms of beautiful women.

Ninon de I'Enclos lived near it — the woman who
came nearest to discovering the elixir of youth since
Time forgot her — and she lived to fascinate three
generations of Frenchmen, father, son, and grandson,
in turn. It seems to me she must have besjun to fade
from the moment that her unconscious son made love
to her, and, when she broke the truth to him, fled into
the g.irden and killed himself.

Not far off lived Madame de Sevigne, whose love
letters to her daughter were so daintily affectionate, so

236 BEATEN PATHS, OR

whipped into the cream of worship, that one would
have thouo^ht mother-h)ve a new thinor under the sun.
These letters are full of history seen through feminine
and aristocratic prejudices, which do somewhat turn it
inside out; but it is the rare devotion of one woman
to another that " makes one love the very ink that
wrote them."

If the Evil One had a second Eve to tempt in these
latter days, he would no longer climb a tree and hold
out a paltry apple ; but he would gently lead her round
the Palais Royal, secure that if her principles had a
price they would find it there.

We drove one day through the "Rue Adam." "I
wonder," said Juno, "if there is a *Rue Eve.'" "No,"
said St. Ursula. " We all rue Eve bitterly enough,
without posting it on a street corner." The "Rue 4^°^*^
Se})tembre " suggests a bright idea to street namers,
as there are three hundred and sixty-five days in the
year to choose from.

French housekeeping is easy as breathing, compared
with the hard work we make of it. One gives a little
party, or the party makes itself, and the "entertain-
ment," as some people oddly call the supper, consists
of a bit of cake, and a cup of tea, and a glass of wine,
and everybody is satisfied. In America, the four quar-
ters of the globe must be ransacked to furnish forth
the feast. In the city a caterer takes possession of
one's house like a pillaging army; and in the country,
if a lady can give one large party a year, and live
through it, it is all that her friends expect of her. "I
could not endure the slavery of housekeeping in Bos-
ton," said a lady, who had revisited her old home after
nine years in Paris.

A WOMAN'S VACATION, - 237

It is no wonder tliat French matrons can talk well —
then* thoughts are not stretched on a gridiron worse
than St. Lawrence's. In the old English country-
houses, a passage-way often led from the family pew
in the chapel into the kitchen, so that the lady of the
manor, between her prayers, might see that the game
was roasted to a turn. How can an American house-
wife, with three or four Irish heathen in her kitchen,
sit with hands crossed on a satin lap and discourse
calmly of "predestination and foreknowledge abso-
lute," after tlie French fashion, in the last critical
lialf-hour before a dinner party? "The gravy alone
is enough to add twenty years to one's age, I do assure
you." American women do the thing every day, but
it fades and bleaches them before their time. No
French family makes its own bread ; the bakers do it
for them, and do it well. Tall narrow loaves, nearly a
yard long, stand about in corners like so many utnbrel-
las ; and you meet men going about with round loaves,
having a hole in the middle, strung the whole length
of their arms, and if any mother-earth cleave to the
bread from the coat-sleeve, so much the worse for the
eater thereof; it is apparently no concern of the buyer
or seller. The first meal of the day is a roll and a cup
of coffee taken in one's chamber, and the real break-
fast of .meat and eggs w^aits till noon. Americans
must always associate with French mornings a terrible
feehng of goneness. A very little food goes a great
way in a French dinner; but it is truly gluttonous in
clean plates. The interstices are expected to be filled
up with bread. It is always the same tune with varia-
tions. First a colored and flavored water called soup —

238 BEATEN PATHS, OR

this implies a great deal of bread; then "a portion"
of fish, then a dish of gravy with inscrutable contents,
then a lonely vegetable, like cauliflower or beans.
This habit of serving one insignificant weed (often it
is artichokes) with a flourish of clean plates, and noth-
ing for a background, was to me a perpetual anti-
climax— "in the name of the Prophet — tigs!" After
this sustaining morsel conie's the great gun of the din-
ner, slices of meat or fowl with lettuce. Afterwards
there is nothing worth mentioning. Compared with
our custom, the French dessert should be spelled with
one 5.

A bird of passage in Paris must see so many things
that there is no time left to study the people. One
cannot verify at a glance the tradition of grace and
exquisite manner which have been the birthright of
French women through all time. At this time there
was a comedy playing in a Paris theatre showing up
the free manners of American society, in one scene of
which a young lady at a party rushes up to a man
and kisses him at first sight; but there was in our
hotel a young couple that might have gone bodily on
to our stage as French caricatures, witliout altering a
thread about them. Monsieur X. had a hair-dresser
attend him daily, and his chief occupation was gently
manipulating his Hyacinthine locks with an exquisitely-
kept white hand, as one sees actresses express their
feelings and settle their wigs at the same time; but
Madame X.! she might have been set up in a milli-
ner's window for a wax figure, and no one would ever
have discovered the mistake. She was to her fellows-
boarders like a bird of paradise among brown wrens.

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 239

She Imd orange-colored hair (so intense in color that
pea-green or sky-blue would have been equally natural)
laid up on her bead in loose j)ufFs that looked as if
each one had been made separately, and stuck in its
right place. In shady nooks behind her ears, this
resplendent color changed to a dull brown, which was
doubtless its first estate.. She rouged her cheeks and
tinted her lips, pencilled her eyebrows, and darkened
the lids, made her veins blue with "azurene," and
whited the whole sepulchre with pearl-powder. If she
could have lived and died by gas-light, she would never
liave lost her beauty; but the garish and impertinent
morninir sun would show where one color left off and
another began.

After a toilet of four solid hours, she came to a little
soiree, robed in three or four shades of purple silk
relieved with white satin, and we held our breath to
look at her; but she would have been^very unsafe to
kiss. She danced laboriously, like most foreigners,
swinging her skirts high from the floor, and her part-
ner mopped his face, after it was over, as if he had
been in a hay-field in midsummer.

The Americans on the same floor danced so sub-
duedly to the same music, that they seemed to be doing
an entirely different thing. When a Frenchman dances
with a young girl, he is expected not to exchange a
word with her from the moment that he takes her from
her chaperon's side till he brings her back again.
Monsieur X. went away for a week's hunting, leaving
two thick books for his wife's reading, with the injunc-
tion not to leave her room unnecessarily. Her con-
jugal rendering of this command was to practise an

240 BEATEN PATHS, OR

affectionate little comedy with a handsome young jour-
naliist, who had frequented the house for some time
under cover of visiting a sick aunt — never was aunt
so tended before ! At this very time, Madame X. was
shocked and horrified by an American girl sitting on a
sofa with a young man whom she had known from
childhcod, and who brought news of her family. Mon-
sieur X. came Ijome a day before his time, as men all
over the world have an uncomfortable habit of doing,
and brought her iniquity to light. He sent for his
hair-dresser immediately; but I know not what was
her penance. One could not help wondering if these
two artificial people, being reduced to their lowest
terms, would recognize each other. The lady could
not have been more than twenty-two. Time, the
avenger, had scarcely laid a finger on her; but a
woman of seventy could not have labored harder to
hide his ravages. If such things are done in the green
tree, what will be done in the dry? But to know all
French women by these presents, is as unjust as to
judge all American women by those who lecture on
Woman's Rights. They have no beauty that one
should desire them; but Madame X. was a work of
art whose shades and perspective I was never tired of
studying.

The Paris houses are high and spacious. Everything
is on a grand scale, except the bowls and pitchers in
the bedrooms. These aie mere cups and saucers, com-
pared with English ones. Travelling Frenchmen are
always surprised at the profuse arrangements for bath-
ing among Anglo-Saxons. M. Taine wondered over
the waste of towels in English country-houses^ as a pig

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 241

might turn np its eyes at seeing a cat wash her face, or
a sober-minded hen contemn the frequent ablutions of
a duck. Living in Paris is not so preternaturally cheap
as one commonly supposes. One may hire a modest
flat of perhaps six small rooms for about sixty dollars
a month, and one may be barely comfortable in a hotel
for two dollars a day. French reception rooms have
their sofa^ often in the middle of the room, which
gives a cosy, talkative air to them even when empty.
The shining waxed floors are much cleaner than woollen
carpets; but the perpetual clicking of boot-heels and
the necessity of taking perpetual heed to one's steps,
as if every floor was a pond frozen over, condemn
them. The servants polish these floors with brushes
fastened to their feet.

The favorite night for French parties is Saturday,
that they may make Sunday a day of rest, according
to the commandment. A good Catholic sees no harm
in dancing in the sacred hours, and scorns the scruples
of over-strict Protestants, as David scorned the pru-
dishness of Michal, daughter of Saul, when she reproved
him for dancing before the ark. The races begin on
the first Sunday in September, and divide Catholics
and heretics like sheep from the goats. All the ])leas-
ures of life are crowded into a French Sunday. The
Fourth of July is a fast-day to it. The shops are
nearly all open, and if one is closed, the notice is put
up in large letters, as who should say, "I am more
righteous than my neighbors."

Parisians who shut up their shops on Sunday bear
the same relation to their fellow-sinners that we, who
go to church three times, besides Sunday school, do to
16

242 BEATEN PATHS, OR

those who believe in one sermon a dny and a drive in
the afternoon. An American minister went to call on
a French brother " of the cloth " on a Sunday evening,
and after talking about the state of the church, the
Frenchman proposed a season of prayer, to which the
other readily acceded; but in the midst of it he
jumf)ed up and excused himself, as he had forgotten
an appointment with a lady to go to the opera on that
evening.

Our Urst Sunday in Paris was a very pious one, if
going to church oiten be a proof of it. We went first
to Notre Dame, w^here all the French grandeur that
required a mixture of religion has been consummated.
My choice of all its pageants would have been the
coronation of Josephine — there was "richness;" and
yet Madame Junot tells us that Napoleon found time
to observe her black velvet dress and tell her it was
too sombre for the occasion. His own crimson robe,
studded with golden bees, is still kept among the
treasures of the church. Notre Dame lacks the dim,
shadowy beauty of the German cathedrals. It is so
light, and white, and cheerful, that nobody doubts for
a moment that it was built by men and Frenchmen.
There is no loneliness so complete as that of a heretic
in a Catholic church. The glory of its bigness biings
reverence, and the organ floats the thoughts upward
on great weaves of sound. One cannot follow the un-
familiar service, and one goes easily out of the body
into the region of day-dreams — the clear voice of a
child-chorister, rising like a flute above a whole orches-
tra, mingles with them — priests moving to and fro do
not disturb them; day-dreams in which old mistakes

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 213

right themselves, and lost friends come to life again —
the spell remains when the music ceases, but it vanishes
as we go down the aisle and see an old man holding
out to us a brush, precisely like the paste-brush used
by paperers. It is wet in holy water, and every Catho-
lic touches it with a gloved finger and makes the sign
of the cross. I think I never stumbled so suddenly
down the step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Notre Dame blossomed into a rare flower garden,
with walls carpeted with Gobelin tapestry, when the
young prince, Eugenie's son, was christened.

"It was not half so fine then as it will be when he
comes to his own again," muttered the guide. " When
will that be?" asked St. Ursula, as if the day were
already set; and the answer is the universal shrug of
the shoulders, which never could have been invented
in a free country. It needed an iron despotism to pro-
duce something which should mean more than speech,
and yet never be told again, and the French shrug is
the result ; the Bastile and the guillotine were its god-
fathers. Americans will never import it, because they
have no use for it.

In the red-hot time of the Commune, much vitriol
and kerosene were set apart for the destruction of
Notre Dame; but the saints preserved it. Perhaps St.
Denis, who is believed by the pious to have walked
through the streets of Paris with his head under his
arm, had an eye to it, or sweet St. Genevieve, who
began life as a little shepherdess on the hills, and grew
into such faith that she prayed away the heathen
Huns, who were coming to sack the city; but these
were lambs compared with the wolfish Communists.

244 BEATEN PATHS, OR

St. Genevieve takes care of Paris, and has her. hands
full; but the patron saint of all France is Clotilde,
wife of Clovis, wlio converted her husband and all his
subjects to Christianity tlirough great tribulation, and a
very bellicose kind of a Christian he was, after all.
When the touching story of the crucifixion was read
to him, he grasped his sword and cried out, "If I had
only been there with my brave Franks, I would have
killed all those wicked Jews ! " The French relitifion
must have a deal of killing in it, to make the nation
happy.

The church of the "Madeleine," where Father Hya-
cinthe preached before he was cast out, is built like a
Greek temple. The benutiful altar-piece of white mar-
ble, and the purity of the whole interior, scarcely fitted
the gaudy pomp of the high mass that was going on
when we entered. It was the feast of the Virgin, and
a group of women, veiled in white from head to foot,
made part of the procession that followed the "Host"
down the aisle. The priests about the altar kicked out
their scarlet trains, as I have seen rural brides do as
they posed themselves for marriage with their backs
to the company. The audience was exceedingly well
dressed, and we remained seated, like obstinate heretics
as we were, studying the latest style in bonnets, until
an old lady near us, who shook with palsy so that she
could scarcely hold her prayer-book, spoke to the sex-
ton about us; and after that we rose and fell with the
crowd. It was a bit of the old delusion that Catholics
) have bought the only road to heaven and fenced it in.
Every one of them would be a persecutor, if he could ;
even the palsy could not shake that spirit out of them ;

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 245

anfl yet the Catholic church is a motherly refuge to its
children, working hard to save them against their will,
comforting their souls with absolution, and putting a
stone on their heads that they may never grow to be
anything but children. " It would be one of the most
perfect engines ever put together," says Hawthorne,
"if it only had angels to run it."

From the Madeleine we strayed into the church of
St. Augustine, so bright and gay in its pictures that it
would serve for a lady's sitting-room. There a hand-
some young piiest was going through with the weary
ceremony of a christening with salt and oil, and all
that nonsense, which any right-minded baby will scorn
as it deserves. This one roared as if it had heretic
blood in its veins, and would not uphold the papacy
on any terms.

Afterwards, in a long vagabond walk, we came upon
the Pantheon, once a church, and then dedicated to
the great men of France after the nation had voted
God out of their councils. In the dome-pictures, the
artist has represented Glory, and Patriotism, and Death,
and other intimate friends of Napoleon, in the guise
of handsome and dishevelled women ; but he needed
to add no touch of beauty to the figure of Napoleon
in his youth that he did not already possess. By way
of mitigating the extreme grandeur of the interior, the
altar screen is made of painted and gilded paper, like
the side scene of a theatre. Then we wandered into
the old-fishioned gardens of the Luxembourg palace —
eighty-five acres of flowers, and fountains, and statues,
where whole families take their lunch and their sewing,
and spend Sunday out of doors. Of the men, some

246 BEATEN PATHS, OR

are playing ball, or cards, or drinking at little tables,
while the band plays by the hour. Many of the chil-
dren were handsome, with eyes that looked as if they
had been deepened about the edges with India ink.
It is the southern sun that tints them. They are rare-
ly seen among Anglo-Saxons. I never heard a French
child cry; but life cannot be all gardens to them.

The palace has been changed to a gallery of modern
French art. I don't think I ever could have realized
what an intolerable old hag Queen Elizabeth was, if I
had not seen De La Roche's picture of her death in
one of those three thousand rich dresses that made her
wardrobe. Rosa Bonheur's "Ploughing with Oxen"
was so rarely natural, that one could almost smell the
balmy breath of the soft-eyed brutes. Another was a
"Beggar Girl," with such real tears dropping down her
cheek, that, hung in a sitting-room, it would shortly
bring a whole family to green and yellow melancholy.
Why will people jDam^ tragedies when we can haidly
keep up with the real thing that is always going on ?
Another solemnity in oils i» Count Eberhard weeping
over his dead son. In the thirty years' war, when he
was pressing on to conquest, he saw his son suddenly
struck down, and the soldiers paused ; but he urged
them on, saying that duty came before grief. When
the battle was over, they found him weeping, as in the
picture. The father has a wonderfully noble face, and
the son is very dead indeed. In the hall of statuary
the air grows suddenly pure and cold, like marble.
Here is a young girl whispering her first secret into
the ear of a statue of Venus; another has just lifted a
smiling mask from her sad face; all young girls might

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 247

do that sooner or later in their lives. The everlasting
"Mother of the Gracchi" is here too, with her boys;
and the sculptor has given to one of them the head
of the young Augustus, which was quite unnecessary,
since a mother's pride does not depend on the quality
of her children ; they are always her jewels, though
paste to everybody else.

The Luxembourg has been the scene of many old
French attempts to invent a new sin. "Brave men
and fair women "played deep for money and honor
within its walls. They dug some of the first trenches
of the Revolution ; but the palace has taken to virtue
in its old age, and looks down peacefully enough on
crowds of nurses and children, who have taken the
place of gentlemen in powdered wigs and ladies in
long trains.

The Parisians pursue pleasure with an infinite zest^
but I doubt if they really clasp it, because pleasure is
never the garment of life, but only the fringe that trims
it, so narrow with some, so broad with others. To
seek pleasure only is like walking up to a bed of migno- ^
nette, with malice aforethought, to take in all the ^
perfume in one great sniff: it is always a disappoint- A^
ment ; but come upon it unawares, and a little breeze
brings one a great wave of fragrance, that makes the
senses reel in a sweet drunkenness.

Parisians live in a crowd all their days, and are
buried in a crowd at last. "Pere La Chaise" is a city
of the dead that needs a Louis Napoleon to widen its
narrow streets. Avenues of little shops full of cofiins
and funeral wreaths make guide-boards to it long be-
fore we see the gate. Each family has a little tomb,

248 BEATEN PATHS, OR

about six feet by eight, in the shape of a miniature
temple, which is more or less ornamented with statues
and artificial flowers. The coffins are let down through
the floor, one above another, the lowest one in time
giving way, so that it is never full. The French econ-
omize every inch of space, after death as well as before.
Many of these vaults are sold only for ten years —
quite time enough to forget anybody, according to
French ideas. Some are filled with wreaths of yellow
"immortelles," brought there on biithdays by friends.

We had been looking all day for lodgings in a French
family for the winter, and we gladly sat down to rest
on the step of a tomb, while St. Ursula went in search
of a guide. She was gone long enough to buy one for
life. " Do you suppose," said Juno, " that she can be
looking for apartments here? We want them very
^juiet, you know, and where the inhabitants would
speak no English." She appeared at last with a guide,
so small and withered, that she ought in conscience to
have got him at half price.

In the Jewish quarter we found the tomb of Ra-
chel, queen of the French stage, scribbled all over
with names of foreign visitors. No such bad taste
springs out of French soil. Perhaps Rachel's acting
has never been so well translated into words as in
Charlotte Bronte's Villette, under the name of " Vash-
ti." The Rothschilds have a tomb as plain as any
Israelite of them all. French epitaphs are often quaint
in their simplicity. "To a lady of a noble heart."
"Here lies the good mother of a family." "I think,"
said St. Ursula, "that I would rather be the mother
of a good family." Marshal IsTey has a little enclosure

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 249

in an iron fence by himself, as in our home burial-
places, and his only monument is a mound of scarlet
geraniums, as if his generous blood had colored them.
He was made of the fine clay set apart for heroes; but
he had "a strong temptation to do bravely ill," and he
yielded to it. In the Russian campaign, which Talley-
rand called "the beginning of the end," he would
charge a legion at the head of four men as readily
as if he had an army at his back. He promised to
bring Napoleon to the Bourbons in a cage, but at tha
last moment packed his old uniform to take with him,
and went over to his old friend at sight. The pride
or the shame of his family give him a nameless grave.

Moliere and La Fontaine lie side by side. The lat-
ter has a fox on his tomb, and the former should have
an old woman, since he kept one, while alive, to criticise
his poetry. La Fontaine's oddity would have made
him famous without his fables. He met a young man
in society with whom he was much pleased, and being
told that it was his son, he coolly replied, " I am glad
of it — I like him."

The story of Madame Lavalette is told in bas-relief
on her monument. She saved her husband's life by
changing clothes with him, and remaining in prison in
his ])lace. If there is a spot in P^re La Chaise which
may be called cheerful, it is the region set apart for
the poor. They lie close together under little wooden
crosses and a coverlet of wreaths ; but they have only
a three years' lease of even these close quarters. After-
wards their bones are mingled together in pits digged
for the purpose.

Abelard and Heloise lie side by side in stony and

250 BEATEN PATHS, OR

mildewed state under a canopy. They "gave all for
love, and thought the world well lost." There is noth-
ing like true love for embalming a story ; heroes and
martyrs have no such chance with posterity as your
faithful lover. Ileloise had beauty and intellect, a
strong mind and a weak heart, and between the two,
her teacher, Abelard, brought hdf to grief. They were
both forced into convents, one by her relatives, and the
other by contumely; but they loved to the last. In
Abelard's lonely convent by the sea, he fought with his
hunting and carousing monks, who retorted on him his
own sins, and would have poisoned him in the commu-
nion wine. From under his abbot's cowl, he groans to
a friend of his youth, "I have not yet triumphed over
that unhappy passion. In the midst of my retirement
I sigh, I weep, I pine, I speak the dear name Heloise,
and am pleased with the sound."

The peculiarity of this sad love story is, that the
great retribution fell on the man. No woman need be
utterly wretched, if she knows that her lover is faithful
unto death. She may keep her heart up under any
cross but another woman.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 251

CHAPTER XVII.

PARIS.

" The nooks and corners of great cities have a double popula-
tion of inhabitants and recollections."

IN "Dame Europa's School," the French boy, Louis,
had the finest playhouse of all, and the German
Fritz casts envious eyes upon it.

Paris, in these republican days, is like a grand prop-
erty in which the owner has just died, leaving no chil-
dren, and the estate is not yet settled ; every one is
waiting for the coming of the heir. The president's
proclamations have a deprecatory strain, as who should
say, " We will try to hold things together till some-
thing turns up."

A republic in France resembles Marie Antoinette
playing milkmaid ; the imperial tricks and manners will
crop out in spite of the disguise. The nation began in
barbarous magnificence, when its earliest kings were
waited upon at table, on their coronation feast, by their
nobles on horseback, and it can never break itself of
royal habits.

One of these is the manufacture of Gobelin tapes-
try, used only for French palaces, and for presents to
princes. It keeps right on, while Paris amuses itself

252 BEATEN PATHS, OR

with democracy, and will have some gay trappings
really for the heir when he comes.

It has arrived at such perfection, that its woollen
pictures are richer and softer than any painting in oils.

The carpets do not differ much from so-called velvet
ones, except that their pile is thicker. The workmen
sit in a row before the web, putting in loops wdth hun-
dreds of little shuttles, wound with different shades of
yarn ; the painted pattern unrolls above their heads as
they need it. As it is all done by hand, a carpet is
often the work of five or ten years.

Very common looking men do this work, but it is
only a talented artist who can deal with the tapestry ;
they sit behind their work as the Fates sit behind our
lives, and their pattern, painted in oils, is behind them.
In one of these yarn-pictures, a splendid woman pick-
ing oranges from a tree, was so life-like, that the rounded
arm looked as if one could pinch it. Their portraits are
absolutely perfect; and when one thinks that a few
stitches, with their wooden needles, too far to right or
left, w^ould spoil a whole face, it appears how entirely
the beauty of the work depends on the skill of the
artist, and not at all on the material. A single piece
has been valued at thirty thousand dollars, but it can
often be bought second, or forty-second, hand, more or
less old and faded. In the early days of its manufac-
ture, it was woven in little pieces and sewed together;
the noses and chins were often a miraculous fit.

On the way home, we wandered into the ancient
enclosure of the University of Sorbonne, whose doc-
tors used to take in all the old European tangles to be
straightened out. The respondents cume into court at

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 253

six in the morning, and remained until six at night,
without partaking of food : the arguments must have
waxed personal in tlie last hour or two. The divorce
of Henry YIII. from Catharine of Arragon, and his
marri nge with Anne Boleyn, were sat upon for many
days; the doctors disagreed, but the royal Mormon
soon settled it for himself. When they had nothing
else to do, they sharpened their wits on such whet-
stones as these; How many angels could dance on the
point of a fine needle? or, Can an angel go from one
point to another without passing over the intermediate
space ?

The heart of Paris is the Place de la Concorde —
it has had many names, and Place de la Discorde woidd
have suited it best of all. Once an equestrian statue
of Louis XV. adorned it, with figures of Justice, Pru-
dence, &c., at the base, which provoked the bon mot
that all the virtues were trampled under foot by Vice on
horseback. Afterwards the guillotine was set up on the
same spot, and three thousand inaocent heads rolled
on the ground, because the sins of the fathers had
come down to the third and fourth generation. The
French Revolution was nobly born ; it had for its ances-
tors the finest aspirations of human nature, and it made
itself respected till it meddled with women ; then all
the world turned against it.

Every male head in France might have been in dan-
ger, without much foreign outcry, if they had let the
mothers alone; but when they shot the white limbs of
the Princess Lamballe out of a gun, and gave a woman
her father's blood to drink, before they shed her own,
human nature got under arms.

254 BEATEN PATHS, OR

Looking at it from the royal point of view, and re-
flecting on the inconvenience of losing one's head in
the prime of life, the taking off of Louis XVI. and
Marie Antoinette appears the concentrated essence of
all brutality; but wlien one considers their loose ways
of wasting money on their pleasures, knowing that the
nation was bankrupt, and the people starving, it would
seem that cutting them into inch pieces, or roasting
them at a slow fire, would scarcely meet their deserts.
They were buried without a prayer; but when their
sorrowful daughter came back with the other Bourbons,
she was comforted by seeing an " Expiatory Chapel "
built over their bones, where mass is performed every
day, so that at last they have funeral enough to atone
for the temporary loss.

The guillotine has been replaced by an Egyptian
obelisk, brought from Luxor at an immense cost ; the
mate to it was given, by the Pacha of Egypt, to the
English government, but it still guards the tomb of
Rameses. The English have too many royal children
to portion off to afford obelisks.

Two generous fountains spout water all day on the
old blood-stains, and the statues of eight cities of
France keep guard about the square.

Strasbourg sits there still, though she has gone over
to Germany.

" I suppose that name will be crossed out," I said to
a Frenchman, as we passed it.

" No, madam, we shall take it again. Strasbourg has
only gone on a visit. Her home is in France."

Frenchmen will never forget how to fight while they
can go to mass on a Sunday noon in the Hotel des In

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 255

valides — Napoleon's hoQie for old soldiers. The service
is nearly all music — so grand and inspiriting that it
would make a war>horse paw the ground. The old sol-
diers, gray-liaired in honor and wounds, come stumping
in, and little drummer-boys take the place of choristers ;
tattered flags taken in battle hang from the roof, though
the original flngs taken in the first victories of Napo-
leon were needlessly burned by his brother Joseph,
when he heard of his flight from Waterloo. Beyond
the church, and under the gilded dome, lies the tomb
of Napoleon, — another expiatory chapel, this time for
English outrage. It may be that his spirit has rest on
the banks of the Seine, where his ashes may mingle
with that of his olcf lovei*s.

Of all men who ever lived, he was, perhaps, the most
beloved of his own sex. Leaning over his tomb, one
wishes, more than ever, that the battle of Waterloo
had gone the other way. If only Grouchy had come
up instead of Blucher! But there is no stumbling-
block like an if ; the world is more crowded with ifs
than with people. Pascal hit upon an odd one — " If
Cleopatra's nose had been half an inch shorter, it would
have changed the history of the world."

The dome of the Invalides was gilded "because,"
said Napoleon, '' the Parisians must have something to
look at."

In this paramount necessity of French happiness,
"something to look at," he never fniled them. It seems
to me that the secret of French fickleness and ferocity
lies in the simple fact, that they look for their pleasure
outside the walls of home. An Englishman may be a
perfect bear in his business, but the best part of him is

256 BEATEN PATHS, OR

sure to flower out at home; while a Freiichmnn wastes
no sweetness on the desert air of his own house. It is
a French fashion that never goes out of vogue, to be
devoted to one's chjjdren ; for their sake, the father and
mother will do anything but love each other, or permit
them to love where they will. It is the universal cus-
tom for parents in France to select husbands and wives
for their children with the proper amount of dowry.
It is part of their devotion not to see them make beg-
gars of themselves. Their marringes are not merce-
nary, but suitable. Madame de Sevigne had great
difficulty in "settling" that beloved daughter, for
whom no one was good enough. Her final choice was
a mature marquis, who had been tv^ice married already,
which certainly proved that other women had thought
him worth having. " He is a very good man," she
writes, " and very gentlemanly — ■ has wealth, rank,
holds a high office, and is much respected by the
world. What more is necessary ? "

Nothing, O, nothing, sweet Madame Sevigne, but a
grain of true love to leaven the whole lump.

Life is not worth having to a French girl till she is
married ; her love affiiirs begin then, which necessarily
introduce a vile and polluting influence into the light
literature of the nation, since the heroine must always
be a married woman, and the hero, not her husband.

"It is to be feared," said old Fuller, "that those who
marry where they do not love, will love where they do
not marrv." If men take the disease of love in the
natural way, and cure themselves by marrying their
choice, even if the marriage prove unhappy, the mem-
ory of it softens and chastens all their lives; but

A WOMAN'S VACATION'. 257

love turned inward on itself, becomes a fierce yearning
for some change in condition or estate, since one can-
not change wives.

I once heard a gnarled old sea captain, who had
sailed all the waters of the globe, and made up his
opinions of men and things on every shore, lay down
the law on this matter. His brothei', seventy years
old, and a bachelor, had asked his advice about marry-
ing a lady known to both. "If you like the gal, and
she's willin', take her, and say no more about it. It's
the only safe rule to go by in getting married." French
people Ibllow all rules except this one, and it makes
them " unstable as water."

The Communists burned part of the Tuileries, and
the remainder is used for offices in the business of th6
Btate; but they did not commit the unpardonable sin
— they spared the Louvre. Royalty and despotism
were as necessary to the existence of the Louvre as to
that of the Pyramids; and I would have cried, "Vive
le Roi " with the rest of them till it was finished.

The Louvre reminds me of Tasso's moon : " Every-
thing was there that is to be met with on earth, except
folly in the raw material, for that is never exported."
Its two great shrines are the Venus de Milo, and the
Immaculate Conception by Murillo. The Venus stands
alone and stately, with her broken arms, in a room by
herself It seems a glaring mistake to call her a Venus
at all ; it looks far more likely that she is the statue of
" Wingless Victory," which stood in one of the Athe-
nian temples, and was hidden in the island of Melos
for safety.

In the Vienna Exposition of 1873, some one has
17

258 BEATEN PATHS, OR

made a copy of her and finished it with arms — one
hand holds a raiiror, into which she is gazing. There
is no need to ask if a man did it; a woman would have
known better. If the inexperienced sculptor had ever
seen a lovely woman looking in her mirror, to see if her
hair is parted evenly, or if her looks have fallen off
since she looked last, he would never have created such
an anachronism. The face is wholly earnest, with not
a conscious or vain line in it. She may be handsome,
but it is no fault of hers. She is a woman to be listened
to, not looked at; a Minerva, rather than a Venus.
She might be the noble head of an ideal " Woman's
College," like Tennyson's "Princess." She has just
uttered some high-born thought; the thrill and glow of
it is yet in her eyes, and her expression is, "If this be
treason, make the most of it."

No picture can be placed in the Louvre until the
artist has been dead ten years — long enough to break
the influence of coteries, which, through personal preju-
dice, might pave the way to poor pictures, or shut out
good ones.

The Louvre is the paradise of cherubs — they can-
not be much more numerous in heaven. They are
never more daintily fashioned than in two old pictures
of the "Flight into Egypt," where they play with the
child Josus, feeding him with fruit and trimming him
with roses. In another, they are cooking a dinner for
a saint, w^ho is so rapt in devotion, that he takes no
heed to his earthly wants. They seem much at home
among the pots and pans.

Rubens has a gallery of his own in the Louvre, and
I would have made it a dark one ; he never paints a

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 259

woman to weigh less than two hundred pounds, forget-
ting that a fat woman is as unpicluresque as a bony
cherub. He is guilty of a heavy and naked procession
in honor of "Religion and Virtue," wliich might be
called the "Dance of Luxury and Vice," without an-
other stroke of the brush. He is unsurpassed in paint-
ing rear views of babies and cherubs, the only creatures
to whom curves of unlimited fat are becoming.

Murillo's pictures are always lovely while he deals
with virgins and saints; but when his genius stoops to
beggar-boys looking for fleas, — which one must admire
partly because Murillo painted it, and partly because
it is so natural, — it goes against the stomach of my
sense. Neither fleas nor beggai-boys should have any
encouragement to repeat themselves. I count it no
credit to those old Dutch artists, that they could paint
an old woman's wrinkles, or a brass kettle, well, when
those things have no right to be painted at all. Only
beautiful things should be made immortal; merely to
be natural is a thing to be avoided, since it is as often
disgusting as attractive.

Rembrandt's pictures have an odd fascination ; one
keeps looking at them as at faces with deep-set eyes.
Webster ought to have been painted by the ghost of
Rembrandt, and he would have looked through all
time, as he did in life, wiser than any man ever was.

Hazlitt quotes Milton's line of his style —

** He stroked the raven plume of darkness till it smiled."

It somehow fits the subject of his criticism, but it is an
unusually trying metaphor, if Milton did mix it. Wo-
men may smile at handsome sable plumes, but it re-
quires a strong imagination to see them smile back.

260 BEATEN PATHS, OR

We carried a catalogue as thick as a family Bible,
and mounted a sort of art-staircase, the pictures grow-
ing better and better until the crown room is reached ;
here is the "Tmmaeulnte Conception" — "a woman
clothied with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and
upon her head a crown of twelve stars." In the in-
numerable copies, the cherubs are done very well, but
no one catches the right look from the Virgin ; only the
original looks into heaven.

RaphaeFs "Beautiful Gardener" is fresh and brilliant
as when he laid the last soft touch on her drooping eye-
lids, and set her up to dry against the wall of his studio.
In the same room is the famous " Monna Lisa," wlio
turns the heads of all artists. She was the wife of a
Florentine noble, and Leonardo da Vinci worked on
this portrait four years, and then pronounced it unfin-
ished. In life she is said to have possessed an inde-
finjible chaim that drew men to her against their will ;
when their fancy was once tangled in the wonderful
cornel's of her mouth, they could never escape. But
the uneducated eye sees little comeliness; one learns
to admire iier by continual tasting, as one learfis to
like olives. The first look reminds one of an Indian
squaw; she is wholly free from ornament; she has no
weapons but her face and hands, and a certain assured
calmness, as of one who had fathomed this life, and
could afford to smile at it. Only men can tell why
they make a fuss over faces in which women see no
beauty, and many have tried to tell the secret of their
worship of the Monna*Lisa.

All the sweetest words in the language, stirred to a
froth with the spoon of artistic fancy, are yearly offered

^ A WOMAN'S VACATION. 261

upon her altar. "Whoever has seen the Monna Lisa
smile," says Grimm, " will be followed forever by that
smile as by Lear's fury, Hamlet's melancholy, and Mac-
beth's remorse."

A woman-artist had studied the Monna Lisa till she
had made a perfect copy about six inches square. She
only asked three hundred gold dollars for it. I hope
that the Monna Lisa, wherever her spirit w^anders,
knows that her copied head brings such a price three
hundred years after her death ; a woman must appre-
ciate that if she were ever so dead. It would be one
of the comforts not " scorned of devils."

The famous pictures have all a row of copyists before
them, like devotees before an altar; and some of them
spend their whole Jives in repeating one picture over
and over. It seems like dull music ; but, then, every-
body's music is dull except our own.

The Louvre inspires the fear that the world will get
too full of works of art, and some time, in the next
thousand years, there will be a bonfire of pictures and
statues, by general consent, to give room for new genius
to spread itself.

New and endless rooms spring up as by magic, and
give one at last that ache of the mind which is woi-se
than any bodily strain. When I could endure no more
it relieved me to look at a gigantic face in bas-relief,
which has its mouth stretched in a perpetual yawn. It
was a marble criticism that agreed with me.

The foirest Venus ceases to be fair when the eye is
clogged with innumerable Venuses. Aphrodite parting
her shell, and rising from the waves, must have been the
loveliest sight in the world ; but when she does it every
half hour, one wishes she had been drowned in the act.

262 BEATEN PATHS, OR

The crowd constantly passing through the galleries
is well sprinkled with white caps and blue blouses — it
is a free Art-school to them.

We inquired for the Museum of Sovereigns, contain-
ing relics of all the French kings; but the guide as-
sured us that it existed no longer. "France, being a
republic, does not wish to be reminded that she has
ever- had a king." We groaned over our disappoint-
ment, and the guide said, "Come next year," with the
inevitable shrug which means everything and nothing.
Only a silver statue of Napoleon, in a room studded
with golden bees, marks wh-ere his collection was
placed; the cradle of the King of Rome is hidden
under a dingy cloth. The rooms of the ancient kings
are covered with an oaken wainscoting, delicate as
hice; and the only furniture remaining are vases so
large that a couple of life-size babies serve for handles,
andvmight be drowned in them.

My last day in Paris was given to Versailles, a palace
of such gilded and painted perfection, that no creature
made of the dust of the earth could ever feel at home
in it.

It is the monument of Louis XIV., built by himself,
as some ostentatious souls cannot trust their relatives'
estimate of them, and buy their own tombstone. It is
a type of his life in its splendid halls and galleries, and
its little back passages and secret stairs. He called and
believed himself a "Grand Monarch;" but his friends
found him cruel, sneaking, and mean. He set the
fashion of worshipping himself, and conferred dishonor
as it had been high favor. He was specially cruel to
women ; but it must be confessed that, first and last,

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 263

they led him a hard life, as they do every man who
puts himself in their power. We can feel a respectable
emotion towards only two of them, the first and the
last — pity for Mademoiselle de Valliere and respect
for Madame de Mnintenon.

" She was ashamed of being a mistress — of being a
mother — of being a duchess," says Madame Sevigne
of the former; "never shall we see the like of her
again." She was not a perfect beauty by any means;
she halted in her walk, her mouth was too large, and she
was marked with the small-pox ; but she had a look so
tender and modest withal, that one could not help lov-
ing her at first sight. She was the queen, for whom
Versailles was made so splendid a throne. She alone
loved the king for himself^ but she was always ashamed
of it ; and when Bossuet came to tell her of the death
of her son, she cried out, *' Why must I mourn his
death, when I have never ceased to mourn for his
birth?"

The real queen of France looked on the gilded and
evil doings of her court, and her husband, with a seared
indifference. When she was told that the king had
taken a new mistress, she said that was the old one's
business — not hers.

Perhaps Madame de Maintenon was equally to be
pitied in that she had to bear with the querulous old
age of Louis ; he was the most unamusable of men,
and she had to provide him with conversation ; but he
could give her power, and that was all she lived for.
She had been so intimate with misery in her yoiith^
that she wore it as easily as an old garment.

Versailles heard all these feminine secrets, and keepa

264 BEATEN PATHS, OR

them still, written in invisible ink on its walls ; only
the student of French history makes them stare through
the gilding. The most important one was the private
marriage of Madame de Maintenon to the king, and her
wearing disappointment when no blandishments of hers
could induce him to acknowledge it publicly.

His confessor, Pere La Chaise, with her help, per-
suaded the king to revoke the edict of Nantes, which
let loose fire and sword on the best part of his subjects,
the Huguenots, who carried their sober industry into
other countries, like the Pilgrims of New England. It
is but poetic justice that the great cemetery of Paris,
the gathering-place of corpses, should be named for
this Jesuit father.

After the Revolution, when Napoleon came to look
at what was left of Vei*sailles, he regretted that the
mob had not wholly ruined it ; but he repaired it for a
national show, never living in it himself. In the great
Hall of Battles, he quite wipes out the obsolete glory
of Louis XIV., who won his victories by proxy.

It is a little surprise to American eyes to see the sur-
render of Yorktown reckoned among French successes,
and Washington playing second fiddle to Count Ro-
chambeau.

In this gallery I counted twenty-eight priests moving
about in the crowd, whispering into its ears the anti-
dote to the Napoleonic fever, inflamed by these pictures.
They were working in the interest of the Bourbons ;
but the Count Chambord, with his white flag, is a dull
old king to conjure with, compared with Napoleon wav-
ing the tri-color out of the canvas.

The town of Versailles seems to grovel at the feet

A WOMAN'S VACATION, 265

of the palace, as all France did at the feet of its builder.
The garden avenues and vistas are so contrived that
there seems to be nothing in the world but the palace
of Versailles. Even the chapel was so planned that
the king's seat looked down on the preacher's desk.
At the funeral of Louis XIY., Massillon proclaimed
"God is great, my brethren, a/z J God alone^ which,
in that place, had the effect of a piece of news.

The guard demanded our passports to enter the
chapel, but a franc answered the same purpose.

We were allowed to see the state cairiages, used at
coronations, on a forbidden day, because we were Amer-
icans ; it is as good as a season ticket all over France
to be an American.

We wandered about the lovely gardens of Marie
Antoinette's farm of the Little Trianon, and came una-
wares upon the dairy and thatched cottage where she
made believe to be happy in humble life ; but it was a
kind of fiirming which obliges the owner to do some
other business to 8U23i)ort it, wheiens Louis XVI. never
could do anything well except locksmithing. He was
the prince of hesitaters; and the bright, haughty Marie
Antoinette must have been teriiblv tried with him.
He had not even sense enough to fall in love with her
till they had been seven years married.

Napoleon established Maria Louisa, his second wife,
in the Little Trianon, an ill-omened place to Austrian
archduchesses ; she must sometimes have put a steady-
ing hand to her head, when she was reminded of the
fall of her aunt, who had lived there before her.

It is said that Maria Louisa cared for nothing but
horseback rx(M-cise and four nie.ils a d y ; e\\ \\ lu^r

266 BEATEN PATHS, OR

son did not interest her. How tedious must her
society have been to Napoleon, after the charming
Creole ways of Josephine ! They had the same dress-
makers, but Napoleon never ceased wondering why
Josephine had always made so much more elegant an
appearance. "Josephine had lost all her teeth," says
Madame Junot, " but she still had the loveliest smile in
the world."

Fair France would lose half its fairness to Americans
if the reign of Napoleon were crossed out of it. Ver-
sailles was too magnificent, even for him, and he gave
it to the nation with a grand air, as if they had not
owned it before.

These old palaces, too gorgeous for a liome, but not
for treasure-houses, are a lovely possession to have in a
country: it is like having an extravagant grandmother,
who ruins herself in diamonds ; her weakness may have
made great havoc in the family at the time, and nearly
brought the grandfather to think of divorce ; but when
the old folks are dead, the diamonds remain an unspeak-
able treasure and distinction to their descendants.

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 267

CHAPTER XVIII.

HOMEWARD BOUIS^D.

" O, thrice happy are they wlio plant cabbages ! Wlien they hare
one foot on the ground, the other is not far off." — Rabelais.

MY guardian angel must liave been "asleep, or
gone a journey," when she permitted me to
cross the English Channel, without a friend to groan
to, by way of Dieppe and Newhaven. Only two hours'
sail divides Dover and Calais; but the misery is so
concentrated that all who travel that way are certain,
as was Queen Mary of bloody memory, that Calais
will be found, after death, written on their hearts. I
had a vain conceit that the torture would be somewhat
diluted in a whole night's passage between Dieppe and
Newhaven ; but to err is human. In the former, one
dies but once ; in the latter, one does it over and over.
The little cabin might have been a box of sardines for
the close packing of its contents. The stewardess did
her best, and "an angel could no moie;" but it is the
stillness of despair, not content, that finally settles
down on us like a pall. Stranded among us is a baby,
two months old, very red in the face, and wild in the
eyes, but not otherwise aggressive. The wretched nurse

268 BEATEN PATHS, OR

hns just strength enough left to aim at its mouth a
long rubber tube with a bottle of milk at the other
end. The baby catches it by a miracle, and then we
all fall back into a sort of heaving silence.

"That child is drawing in nothing but air; it don't
get the milk at all," says my next neighbor, in a deep
whisper. "I've had eight, and brought them all up by
hand, and I hnow^

"Ah, well," I say, brutally, "it isn't our baby."

" No ; but it will be our torment when the child be-
gins to howl."

The mother of eight was right, and outraged nature
revenged itself in less than an hour.

"I told you so," said my neighbor; and the comfort
of having her prophecy come to pass sustained her
through the tempest that followed; but I was driven
on deck, where a crowed of hopeless men lay about
loosely, like bundles that were waiting to be claimed
by the owner. In the palace of the Luxembourg there
is a picture of Dante and Virgil crossing the Styx in a
boat, wdiich is surrounded by swarms of lost spirits. I
did not notice it much at the time ; but the agony of
those distorted faces came back to thicken the air as I
assisted at this orgy of seasickness. What a comfort
it is to hear even swearing in one's native language as
the boat rubs against English ground ! We are like a
train of ghosts as we file into the station. The baby
is pale, but composed, which convinces me that it is a
girl — a boy-baby, under such abuse and neglect, would
have committed suicide before morning.

As we roll along towards London in a softly-cush-
ioned cnr, an Englishmnn begins to "speer at" us in a

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 269

general wfiy about our president and his "third term ;"
but we have ceased to be Americans — we are only
human beings. General Grant may live and die at the
White House, and be buried under the piazza, for
aught we care. We even smile at him when he says,
"How much more stable and respectable your govern-
ment would be if you would remodel it into a limited
monarchy, like the English one, and invite one of our
peers — Lord 'Darby,' for instance — to rule over you!
He would never take the office, though ! "

"No, he never would," we repeat faintly, and the
Englishman gives us up.

It is good to look at the heavy, stolid English nav-
vies, as they lean on their pickaxes along the line of
railroad. They are soaked through and through with
beer, and the very stones must needs cry out at them
before they will see that their government does not
recoo^nize their risrht to be men and brethren with the
rest of their world. Thei/ are perfectly content to
have their thinking done for them; but the French
laborers are wiry and temperate, and give you slanting
glances out of eyes that seem sharpened to a point, as
if they might have a small store of vitriol at home, or
a polished dagger waiting for an occasion.

Then comes the swift journey from London to Liver-
pool through a long flower-garden, which makes one
wonder how so small a country could have made such
a prodigious noise in the world. We are again on the
doorstep of the old world, and the door will soon be
shut in our faces. In the last interview, as in the first,
it is the rule to buy an umbrella. " I cannot see," says
my landlady, "what your people can want of so many

270 BEATEN PATHS, OR

umbrellas. It never rains in your country without let-
ting you know a week beforehand."

The homeward passage across the Atlantic is a trifle
worse — a lower depth, a night without stars — than
the voyage out. It is then that faithful Memory
bestirs herself, and rakes up from forgotten hoards
every collision and fire at sea and bursted boiler that
has ever come within her range. When Mr. Jefferson
said, " How much have cost us the things that never
happened!" he must have had home voyages in his
mind. As I go down to my little inside room, secured
at the last moment, I fear to look in the face of the
strange woman who is to share it with me ; but I per-
ceive at once, in her deprecating air, that she is equally
afraid of me. "Which berth do you prefer?" I ask,
in my mildest tone. " Very well, I thank you," she
replies, and I do not pursue the subject; in fact, I
never pursue any subject with her, unless I desire to
communicate my views to the whole ship's company;
and I put it to the sympathizing reader who has fol-
lowed me thus far, w^hether, in a windowless room
with a deaf room-mate, I might not as well have been
a monk of La Trappe, who takes a vow of perpetual
silence, and sleeps in his coffin eyery night.

As I could have no "feast of reason or flow of soul "
in my own room, it followed that I took a deep interest
in my neighbors. On the other side of a thin partition
were two old men, who had more to say, and said it
oftener, than any two w omen that I ever knew. One
was a widower, and I devoutly wished the other had
been so too. Day and night his cry was, "If I could
only see my wife once more, I should be happy."

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 271

When remimJed that she was much better off where
she was, he would desperately declare that he did not
want her to be better off than himself, and I wondered
whether this was a universal masculine sentiment, or
something peculiar to him.

In the deadest part of a rough night I heard him
moaning over the profanity of the sailors, lest it should
bring us to shipwreck; but his room-mate comforted
him and me with the certainty that no ship ever was,
or will be, worked without hard swearing — nothing
else will straighten a wet rope.

These old men, with others of that ilk, kept the clos-
est accounts of the days and the distance; but no two
ever came out alike. The women were never so far
gone in boredom as to be beguiled into arithmetic.
They have a fatal habit of telling the contents of their
trunks, and boasting of their bargains, when they know
well that the passenger who sits muffled in his shawl
at their backs may be an officer of customs in disguise.
Going over, the air was full of hope and expectation;
coming back, it is heavy with retrospection, more or
less tinged with disappointment.

The only pnrty over whom contentment brooded like
a dove was a company of five mature maidens, who
had chosen single blessedness as the better part, and
were inclined to look down on those imperfectly consti-
tuted women, who cannot be happy without a husband
and children. They were more akin to the oak than
to the ivy. They had not been beautiful in their best
estate; but so serene, resolute, and self-poised were
they, that it seemed this world had no more to give
them. Their lives are full-orbed with culture and

272 BEATEN PATHS, OR

travel. How superior they are to a lonely young
mother, who had been sent abroad to recruit from her
family cares, and was now going home paler than when
she went away ! All Europe had been to her but a
line of post-offices, in which she might learn that the
baby had a double-tooth, or that scarlet fever was sus-
pected in the neighborhood of her treasures. She often
held an open book before her, but she never turned a
leaf; and any one curious in the matter might catch
a glimpse over her shoulder of a photograph of two
moon-ficed children, while the single sisters read inde-
fatigably in every language but their own. They were
as little moved by seasickness as by the other ills that
feminine flesh is heir to. One of them knitted for eleven
days on a bit of green wool through all weathers, and
as I watched this bilious piece of work grow long, I
seemed to see a time, far off, but approaching, when it
shall be a matter of course for this sort of women to
select and marry gentle, timorous, unsophisticated men,
and guide them safely through the perils of this world.
Longfellow speaks as one having authority when he

says,—

" It is the fate of a woman
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is

speechless,
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence ; '*

but in that day, when women have ceased to " wait,"
these verses, with a thousand other harpings on the
same string, will sound like the fancies of a distem-
pered brain. The old poets will have to be weeded of
their follies.

Only once did this pioneer band show the weakness

A WOMAN'S VACATION. 273

of their sex. Four of them were sitting at breakfast,
and the youngest and comeliest remained in her room.
My next door neighbor looked along the line atten-
tively. "Where's the pretti/ one of your party?" he
asked — and if looks could slay, he would never again y
have beheld the wife he yearned for.

The]/ lay unmoved in their beds when a great wave
poured down through the sky-lights into the state-
rooms, and set everybody's boots afloat like a fleet of
boats. Neither did they scream when the father of all
rats walked down the passage to see what had hap-
pened. It was a positive comfort to hear the shrill
voice of the old-fashioned sort of woman crying out
for her shoes. "O, we are all going to the bottom —
give me my shoes — I must have my shoes!" and the
grave voice of ker husband replying, "Isabella, recol-
lect yourself! . People who are going to the bottom
have no need of shoes." In the hereafter, when our
children go abroad and the watei*s overwhelm them, it
will be the woman, who will turn out to rescue the
floating shoes, and calmly advise her nervous husband
to recollect himself.

The long lane turns at last. There comes a white
morning when all our world goes on deck to see the
great steamer pull up at the wharf, like an animal
guided by reins. It is like that other resurrection at
Liverpool, save that a certain sense of responsibility
lengthens every woman's fice, a liaunting thought of •
pearl, and coral, and carved work, and shining silk,
which were things of beauty in the buying, and will
be joys forever in the wearing, unless the custom-house
18

274 BEATEN PATHS.

swallows them uj^, leaving only a great remorse in their
place.

At the last moment I go down once more into the
depths, and I hear my ancient neighbor say, as he puts
a fee into the hands of the steward, "Make a good use
of it, my boy; don't waste it;" and that is the last I
know of him for this world.

An inundation of friends pours over the side, and
the pale mother rapidly dissolves into tears of joy ; but
the ^\Q Vestals, who are pledged to tend forever the
sacred fire of literature, walk on shore as calmly as
they sailed the sea. They have brought home great
store of wisdom, which they will air at their clubs and
sift through magazines; but the mother, from all the
cathedrals and pictures of the old w^orld, has drawn
but two great convictions'that will never depart from
her. First, that Raphael must have known children
like hers, when he painted the two cherubs that lean
on their elbows out of heaven, in the Sistine Madonna;
and second, that when the Psalmist said, "Mark the
perfect man," he foresaw the American husband.

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