upon it that must needs have disguised the taste when it came from the hand of Love himself. Not many years had to pass before Swift was "the observed of all observers," and could command his own company from among the proudest and noblest in the land at my Lord Oxford's table, having become an intellectual potentate in fact, with the pen in his hand for a sceptre, one that both felt his power and was not disposed at times, it must be allowed, to wield it over meekly. On the subject of Swift's passion for Stella, which here had its humble beginnings, and which has been the theme of so much curious speculation and critical animadversion, I cannot enter at length here. Doubtless he was much to blame in his conduct towards her-and as a man of the world he ought to have known it, and probably did-but my conviction is unshakable that there were extenuating circumstances in this singular history which the world does not and never can know. assuredly was not the heartless monster it has been the fashion to depict him, nor did Nature ever commit the anomaly-Pope's celebrated couplet notwithstanding of allying powers so stupendously grand to a base moral nature and a craven heart. Swift On the beautiful lawn before mentioned still stands the sun-dial beneath which Temple's heart lies buried in its silver urn, as he willed it-a freak of the statesman which, at any rate, demonstrates how much he was attached to the place; and it is little wonder. In front of the house is a gravel terrace of noble dimensions, in keeping with the former grandeur of the place; and at one end of this promenade is the vinery and green-house, and hard by, the large walled garden in which Temple so much delighted, and where he loved to spend his days. The walls are still covered with the fruit-trees he planted there, and the apricot he rendered famous, and which still retains the name of the place, is justly celebrated to this day. The Dutch canal, too, is still extant, with swans floating on its bosom, and stocked with fish; but the great beauty of the property resides certainly in the magnificent park from which the mansion takes its name. This park, which overbrows the valley in which the house is situated, is vast in its extent, and beyond everything fine. It is covered throughout the whole of its area with old stately trees, chiefly the beech and pine, over whose heads two hundred summers have flown, and with a rich carpet of heath, and gorse, and fern, endlessly varied and intermingled. In every direction by-paths of singular beauty strike off, leading the pedestrian or the rider between rows of young firs, that scent the morning air with the wild aromatic odours of the deep forests of America; and from the summit of the park, which slopes gently upwards towards Crooksbury Hill, the loftiest eminence in this part of the country, you look down over the rich grounds of Waverley Abbey, where are still extant, in a condition of wonderful preservation, the remains of one of the most interesting monasteries in England. Such is this park, and being such, I need hardly say that it is the delightful ramble-ground of the patients belonging to the establishment, who have its exclusive use. "Oh fortunati nimium," I thought with Virgil, "sua si bona nôrint:" most fortunate the invalids whose lucky fate it is to gather strength amid such scenes as these, drinking in health with every breeze that comes laden with the balm of this beautiful mountain solitude! The refrain of the wild song which Victor Hugo puts into the mouth of the love-crazed carabinier of Toledo kept ringing in my ears, through the power of some hidden association, during the whole of this delicious walk. "Le vent qui vient à travers la montagne me rendra fou, oui, me rendra fou." How keen the pleasure, and how exquisite the delight, which we are sometimes permitted to feel in the bare consciousness of animal existence! Hardly any enjoyment can equal it, let moralists frown as they may. Call it sensuous! I call it divine. And is it not well appointed that these poor worn-out tabernacles of ours, jaded and withered as they are with travel over the hot and dusty ways of conventional life, should at times assert their prerogative to the simple gratification of pleasurable being-animal being, if you will-should enter at times a formal protest against the crushing tyranny of mind? It is Plutarch, I think, who says that "should the body sue the mind before a court of judicature for damages, it would be found that the mind would prove to have been a ruinous tenant to its landlord.” And this in the mouth of a Greek! whose countrymen understood better than any other race, before or since, how much is due, even as a matter of economy, to the culture of the physical powers; and who gave evidence, in this matter of education, of an insight and wisdom which, like their supremacy in art, appear to have died with them. What shall be said of our theory and our practice on so important a subject in modern England? Why this-that the Englishman of to-day, in the middle ranks of life, is rapidly degenerating under the suicidal effects of the prevalent contempt of bodily health; that the hungry maw of gain, the insatiable "amor habendi," is eating into the vitals of our young men, who are strong men no longer, but the bald, and pale, and blear-eyed victims of the ledger and the threelegged stool! Having climbed the summit of Crooksbury, the extreme boundary of the park, and revelled in the beautiful prospect extending far away over the hills into Hampshire, I suppose we had to perform, in the first instance, the redoubted feat of the Duke of York; and passing over the springy heather and between walls of fern, shoulder-high, the next object of interest that presented itself on our homeward march was Swift's cottage, par excellence. This is a small, two-storied house, at the eastern extremity of the park, and bears Swift's name to this day. It is of the most unpretending character, bearing unmistakable signs of age and rough treatment, but a picturesque little abode withal. Over the walls and up to the verge of the moss-clad roof spring up the clematis and the Virginia creeper, serving to disguise the ravages of time and neglect; and there is still the look of English cleanliness and comfort about it; but, lo! "horresco referens," on the shutter the eternal signboard, "Ginger-beer for sale." Trade here again-trade everywhere;verily, an inveterate nation of shopkeepers we! Ginger-beer, especially in cholera-times, is not of my beverages; but the purchase of a bottle of that peppery elixir was an easy introduction, and procured me a hearty reception from the genius loci, in the shape of a decent old washerwoman, who might almost have seen the light in the days of the "good Queen Anne." She, too, had heard about Dean Swift, and knew, besides, how he was a "maker of books"-a respectable calling!-not very much below that of a maker of boots-the words, in fact, are almost identical! The interior of this now humble tenement in no respect differs from others of its class; and the sole memorial of the leviathan whom its walls once sheltered is found in a verse from Horace, which he had inscribed on a wooden tablet above one of the doorways. It is this: Plerumque gratæ divitibus vices, Sollicitam explicuêre frontem.-Od. III. 29. Thus rendered by Francis: Where health-preserving plainness dwells, To frugal treats and humble cells, Such scenes have charmed the pangs of care, And smoothed the clouded forehead of despair. It would appear, from the existence of this cottage, that Swift had not received his "bed" as well as his "board" at Moor Park; that he acted, in truth, like a kind of literary journeyman, returning home in the evening after his day's work, like any other honest labourer. This surely was a singular arrangement. But Swift at the time was young, and, but for one attraction in his patron's mansion, was probably nothing loth when the hour came round that relieved him from his mechanical drudgery and sent him home, through a walk of unparalleled beauty, to that cottage where at least he was his own master and could commune with his own thoughts. Over that luxuriant walk, with its bountiful array of wood, and copse, and fern, not forgetting the gorse and its yellow flower, that made the old Linnæus bless God he had been spared to visit England, we must now make our hasty return to Moor Park, only pausing on the way to drink from the sparkling waters of St. Mary's Well. Like every other object which this place inherits, this subterranean spring has its own peculiar interest. So far back as the twelfth century it supplied Waverley Abbey with water, and received from the pious Cistercians the appellation of St. Mary's Well. But the popular name, and that by which it is almost universally known, is Mother Ludlam's Well. The spring issues from the foot of a hill, and in the bed of a natural grotto formed of the sandy rock of which that hill is composed. Here, as ever, tradition has it that the venerable witch, Mother Ludlam, held her sway, and with the magic efficacy of this water it was her wont and privilege to dispense health to all who sought her aid. It was a water of healing-a kind of Jordan to all the country round. Like many another popular superstition, however, this one of the healing properties of Ludlam's Well has a partial foundation in truth, for the fact is that this spring is of an extraordinary purity and must, therefore, be very salubrious. Professor Clark of Aberdeen, who analysed it some three years ago, pronounces it the purest springwater he had yet tried, having only half a degree of hardness, or, in other words, of mineral admixture. When it is considered that springs of four and four and a half degrees of hardness have attained so much celebrity for their purity as to make the fortune of watering-places where they are situated, and when it is also borne in mind that the ordinary distilled water of the chemists' shops is never under half a degree of hardness, it may be imagined how remarkable and how healthful this natural spring must be. To this spring, and to every nook about the grounds I have hastily sketched, it was my good fortune to make many a pilgrimage before I left Moor Park; for the reader has now to be informed that my intended visit of a day was unexpectedly prolonged to a month, during the whole of which period I enthusiastically underwent the rational process of cure which is practised in the establishment, that I grew daily more delighted with the treatment and with the place,—and that when the shortening hours and the close of the long vacation at length recalled me to my chambers and my work, I had the satisfaction of bringing to them, in a larger degree than I had possessed for many years, that greatest of mortal blessings," mens sana in corpore sano." For this consummation I have heartily to thank the water-cure and the enlightened physician who administers it at Moor Park. To both I shall ever remain deeply grateful; and if any reader would purchase health in a manner not only rational but truly luxurious, my parting exhortation to him fearlessly is this: "Go thou and do likewise, and the benediction of the good Mother Ludlam light upon thee as it did on me!" A VOICE FROM THE CROWD. BY MARY C. F. MONCK. I SAW a primrose tuft to-day, The chesnut-boughs are brown with buds, The dead leaves lying in the woods; The robin swells his crimson throat, The blackbird sings his happy note. I weary at the lengthened day I yearn to meet a vanished smile, This growing verdure aches my sense,- My boy! my fair and fearless one, No more in blessing on thy head? Dead in the glory of thy youth, Not thus! not thus!-or I might bear Famine for thee! my cherished one! I had one treasure in the world, Who know why Balaklava's shores Think ye the grave shall always keep The thousands that your acts have slain? Think ye the precious blood thus shed For ever silent shall remain ? He will bind up the broken hearts, And bid the mourners cease to weep; His will shall make the grave yield up The victims who have sunk to sleep. Tremble, ye proud, the day is near! The Righteous Judge hath suffered long, Yet shall He, in His own good time, Restore the Right-destroy the Wrong. |