You enter it by an arched passage cut through the living
rock, which brings you by a steep descent
To the narrow level of which I
have spoken, where you find yourself among graves set with flowers and
half concealed by shrubbery, while along the rocky sides of the hollow in
which you stand, you see tombs or blank arches for tombs which are yet to
be excavated. We found the thickets within and around this valley of the
dead, musical with innumerable birds, which build here undisturbed. Among
the monuments is one erected to Huskisson, a mausoleum with a glass door
through which you see his statue from the chisel of Gibson. On returning
by the passage through the rock, we found preparations making for a
funeral service in the chapel, which we entered. Four men came staggering
in under the weight of a huge coffin, accompanied by a clergyman of
imposing stature, white hair, and florid complexion. Four other coffins
were soon after brought in and placed in the church, attended by another
clergyman of less pre-possessing appearance, who, to my disappointment,
read the service. He did it in the most detestable manner, with much
grimace, and with the addition of a supernumerary syllable after almost
every word ending with a consonant. The clerk delivered the responses in
such a mumbling tone, and with so much of the Lancashire dialect, as to
be almost unintelligible. The other clergyman looked, I thought, as if,
like myself, he was sorry to hear the beautiful funeral service of his
church so profaned.
In a drive which we took into the country, we had occasion to admire the
much talked of verdure and ornamental cultivation of England. Green
hedges, rich fields of grass sprinkled with flowers, beautiful residences,
were on every side, and the wheels of our carriage rolled over the
smoothest roads in the world. The lawns before the houses are kept
smoothly shaven, and carefully leveled by the roller. At one of these
English houses, to which I was admitted by the hospitality of its opulent
owner, I admired the variety of shrubs in full flower, which here grow in
the open air, rhododendrons of various species, flushed with bloom,
azaleas of different hues, one of which I recognized as American, and
others of various families and names. In a neighboring field stood a plot
of rye-grass two feet in height, notwithstanding the season was yet so
early; and a part of it had been already mown for the food of cattle. Yet
the people here complain of their climate. "You must get thick shoes and
wrap yourself in flannel," said one of them to me. "The English climate
makes us subject to frequent and severe colds, and here in Lancashire you
have the worst climate of England, perpetually damp, with strong and
chilly winds."
It is true that I have found the climate miserably chilly since I landed,
but I am told the season is a late one.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 67 of 206
Words from 34263 to 34770
of 107287