THE worship of title and rank is one of the weak points of the English character. It is deeply rooted in us, and we cannot get over it. We carry it with us wherever we go. We really "love a lord," and make no shame in confessing to the weakness. If we get up a public meeting, we must have a lord in the chair, or if a royal duke, so much the better. Then we try to fill the platform about him with other lords and titled men; and thus many a "highly influential meeting" is got up. Like a certain Eastern people, we never allow our armies to move without placing one of our sacred animals in the van. To be patronized by a lord is a great stroke of good iuck, even for a greengrocer; but to sport the Royal arms over the door is the safe card for a fortune. Everybody is sure to patronize those whom nobility patronizes. An odour of aristocracy hangs about them, imparted by noble butlers and footmen; and "Jeames" generally manages to carry about with him a pretty extensive stock of the aristocratic afflatus. A title with us outweighs all other considerations. A man may be a wrencher of door-knockers, a town's vagabond, a plaything of jockeys and courtezans,-but if the word "lord" be tagged to his name, you will see what charity is at once extended to his errors, what a smile of indulgence greets him from the judgment-seat, and with what respectful consideration he is treated when he pays his fine and is bowed out of the police-office; while the ragged knave, who is next brought up for "justice"- -a fellow that has stolen a loaf of bread to satisfy his hunger is sent to the treadmill for six weeks, to meditate on the sacredness of aristocracy, and the powerlessness of poverty in England. It is really odd that we should be so squeamish, and so very indignant, in our Protestant zeal, about the worship of saints by Catholics, and ourselves be so willing to bow down to any man of our privileged classes who has got a handle to his name. Our worship of Peers is surely something far more reprehensible than the Catholic worship of saints. Our sacred class is worshipped because of their title; while the reverence of the Catholic is for the goodness, virtue, and beautiful sanctity of the departed. We cannot get up a scientific society in England without displaying our title-worship. No society ventures before the public until it has got a lord or a duke for a president. He may be a booby, but if he has a title he will do. The Royal Society has for its president generally a lord, sometimes a duke, occasionally a prince. To be in possession of a title-not to be a scientific man [PRICE 1d. is the qualification to fill the chair. And thus is Science prostituted to Rank; for rank is rarely, if ever, scientific. Of a hundred and twenty contributors of scientific papers to the society above-named, only one is a peer-"a sunbeam that has gone astray." If we found a college, it must have titled patrons, or visitors, to satisfy the popular requirements. Chancellors and Vice-Chancellors are selected from the aristocracy; it matters not who they are, or what their qualifications; provided they have a high-sounding title enough, they will stand the test. In the same way, if we found an association for the promotion of the Fine Arts,-be it music, painting, or sculpture, the president must be a man of title. Even the associations of literature stoop to the same weakness, and select chiefs from among the consecrated race. And yet the times are different from those in which literature only existed upon such patronage; and when men like Dr. Johnson had to kick their heels waiting in the halls of their most gracious patrons, among lacqueys, footmen, and dancing-masters. The young lord would be more than human, if he stood all this slavish adulation without injury. In infancy, he is worshipped by his nurse; then he is adulated by grooms, peasantry, and hangers-on of the family; then he is toadied by his tutor, and goes to college, where he finds his caste still held sacred, and hosts of aspiring youths trying to clamber up to distinction and wealth, by sticking to his skirts; then he goes out into the world at large, where he is delivered over to the general adulation of the entire public. Can we be surprised that the titled man should be arrogant amid all this prostrate adoration? Why should we expect more of him than of a Hindoo Brahmin, or any other member of a sacred caste? If we lay down before lords, what can we expect but that the lords will walk and ride over us? If we persist in throwing ourselves under their feet, we must expect to be trampled on now and then. And it is not their fault that this happens so much as it is our own. Let but a duke or a lord enter a town or a neighbourhood, and all eyes are at once staring, all mouths are agape. But if it be a prince!-there are no bounds to the excitement. Crowds flock to get sight of him, as if he were a being come from another world with a message of bliss; he is hustled and pressed by mobs of highly respectable people; the press has its argus eyes all concentrated on his movements, and an organized staff of reporters catch the accents which fall from his lips, and treasure them up in their printed columns, as if they were the very incarnation of all wisdom. Royalty is watched most scrupulously and carefully; how royalty looks, how it eats, how it dresses, how it walks, how it talks, is described with a minuteness of detail which, to royalty, cannot fail to be infinitely disgusting, Royalty can scarcely walk abroad without risk of being mobbed. The worship amounts to a persecution; and accordingly we do not wonder that after the idolatrous reception of about titles than gentlemen." But we have the same Her Majesty at Brighton, she should have retreated to the quieter scenes of Balmoral and Osborne House. It is indeed a matter of some surprise to us, that a body of gentlemen of education, refinement, and good-sense, such as reporters generally are,—should make themselves the instruments of gratifying the prying and prurient curiosity with which so large a body of the English public run after the details of such insignificant gossip and little talk, as ordinarily make up our royal and aristocratic intelligence. We have a host of book-makers always pressing themselves into the same service, and their productions lie on most tables, or are to be found on the shelves of most libraries. Our books of the Peerage are studied like prayer-books; there are some English travellers who go abroad with only "Murray's Handbook" and "Debrett." Our novels are not reckoned complete without an array of lords and ladies, who figure as the principal performers. taste prevalent among the working classes. They, too, love lords. At a late uproarious West Riding election meeting, at Wakefield, when no speaker could obtain a hearing, a lord stepped forward. Hooray!" shouted a working man, "let's hear my lord!" And sure enough, the rumour of a lord's appearance on the stage very shortly stilled the tumult, and he was heard to an end. Look at the lodges of working men, and you will find a "Most Noble Grand" in the chair, surrounded by a host of "Worthy Grands," ," "Past Grands," and other titled men, more numerous than we can mention. They decorate themselves in robes and cocked hats, and wield sceptres, tridents, swords, and such-like. They pride themselves in their "Regalia," and sometimes high prices are paid for the honour of wearing them. The Aristocratic, title-worshiping spirit of England is thus very deeply seated. It is the growth of centuries. Perhaps it dates from the Conquest, when the ruling lords and the ruled serfs divided the population. The ruling class has The deeds of kings, dukes, and lords, fill the pages become more mixed now; it does not disdain to enrich of our history-books; and one would suppose that such itself by frequent alliances with the daughters of wealthy a thing as a PEOPLE did not exist in past times. The tea-dealers or cotton-spinners: it thus combines the chronicles of our campaigns are got up as the biographies aristocracy of title and money in one ascendant caste. of dukes and lords; and lives of Lord This, That, and Still, it is the Norman Conquest that governs us: its inThe Other, are as plentiful in our libraries as are "the stitutions, though greatly enlarged and popularized, are leaves of Vallombrosa." If a lord dies, you see long me- still paramount; its landed laws, which all the rest of moirs of him forthwith appear in all the daily and weekly Europe has long ago thrown off, continue to be the laws prints; and his titles are described with a marvellous by which the land of England is held together in masses, accuracy and detail. If a lord is born, you have him in for the aristocratic class. As an old Saxon chronicle the births; if a lord is married, the ceremony is has itdescribed, the trousseau, the festivities, the looks of the noble bride and bridegroom, and an infinite detail of nothings are set down for the general perusal. If a lord or a lady is sick, you have daily bulletins issued, signed by three doctors, who, doubtless, look to this publicity as one efficient way of advertising their connection. If the lord or lady dies and is buried, you are then treated to a minute account of the funeral; the hearses and horses, the pall and its bearers, the mutes and mourners, the coffin and its inscription, the mausoleum and the vault. Then comes the public subscription for a monument. A lord has died, and he must still be worshipped in a stone. This title-worship pervades our entire society. It descends from the queen on the throne to the humblest grade. It is not nobility of character, great thoughts, or great deeds, that we care for or worship as a nation, only caste, class, rank, and title. Take any man from the ranks, and give him a handle to his name, and you immediately invest him with a new power, but that power resides not in himself; it is in the hearts of those who worship him. He is set above the canaille by a title, and the canaille worship the title. It is only the popular reception of the title that gives the title its value, and if the people ceased to worship it, no one would desire it. The real power of aristocracy is in the aristocratic spirit and sympathy which pervades the entire of society in England. In our hearts we worship aristocracy, and the wealth that surrounds it: we regard it as the acme of respectability, and the supreme height of worldly station. It is the true "genteel," and that is what we all would be. We long for front seats. We will spend our lives, and give up our comfort and happiness to reach them. We are never done scrambling for precedence there. We are very aristocratic at heart. We cannot bear a person who is not respectable, or who is not genteel. Work is not genteel, and we hate it-associating it with foul hands. Our women are all intense aristocrats at heart. Look at a group of little girls with what awe and wonder they gaze after a gaily-dressed young lady, no older than themselves. Then, what longing after gentility have they not? How they linger over the fair lords in the sentimental novels. What beautiful titles; for, as Jeanie Deans sagaciously remarks, “Ladies are more particular : "The fole of Normandie Among us woneth yet, and schuleth ever mo. NEWSTEAD ABBEY. "Newstead! fast falling, once resplendent dome! Of warriors, monks, and games the cloister'd tomb, Than modern mansions in their pillar'd state: Scowling defiance on the blasts of fate." SUCH was the greeting of the youthful Byron, when in early boyhood he visited the halls of his fathers, and saw the "once resplendent dome" crumbling to decay and "fast falling" beneath the ravages of time and neglect! Such were the feelings of him, but for whose memory, Newstead, with all its rich treasures of antiquity, its beautiful abbey and grounds, and the monastic relics connected with it,-had long been doomed to comparative oblivion, or shared only that general interest which is attached to the monuments of a bygone age. What then must be the feelings of the pilgrim stranger, who now visits that hoary pile; and who, in addition to the historical and religious associations with which it is invested, views it chiefly as a spot sacred to genius, and hallowed by the remembrance of that immortal bard, who inherited its lands, and for a while dwelt beneath the canopy of its roof? None, indeed, but those who have visited Newstead, can form an adequate idea of the thrill of interest that runs through the mind when first it stands before their view. What a mixed feeling of pleasure and melancholyrapture and sadness-admiration and pity! The very moment you enter the park this feeling begins to operate. There is a sadness and solemnity in everything,-the dark forest with its gloomy fir trees rearing their tall summits to the sky, the wild shaggy waste that begirts it, with its naked, or bracken-crowned declivities sloping down to the road, -the broad lakes, surrounded with mournful trees, whose dark figures are shadowed in the waters, and crum present a sombre and melancholy aspect, -the rooks, "Haply thy sun emerging yet may shine Thee to irradiate with meridian ray; jump after him and drag him in safety to the shore. He Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed: The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood With their green faces fix'd upon the flood." After wandering through the new and more ornamented part of the gardens, which were not formerly in existence, and have only been added since Colonel Wildman became possessed of the abbey, we came at length to the "Devil's Wood" as it is called, a dark, gloomy, and mysterious looking grove, and rendered doubly terrifying by the appearance of two huge statues of the God Pan and his wife Pandora, erected on high pedestals in the centre of the grove. These were placed here by Lord Byron's great uncle, "the wicked Lord Byron" as he was termed by the rustic people, on account of his violent and fiendish temper, and his strange and whimsical eccentricities. This was one amongst his extraordinary whims, which, however gratifiying to himself, caused no small terror and conjecture amongst the simple-minded people by whom he was surrounded; and who could I must now, however, proceed to give a more succinct not for the life of them understand what could be account of my visit to this interesting place. A breezy the meaning of such grim, terrible-looking monsters. drive of some nine or ten miles from the town of Not- The statues received, however, the sinister appellation of tingham-in whose neighbourhood I had been spending a "Lord Byron's Devils," and the wood was called "Devil's few weeks-brought me and my companion to a neat, Wood." This grove was one of the favourite haunts of newly-built, roadside inn called the "Hut," which is the poet, and where he spent his last evening before close upon the grounds of Newstead, and about five miles leaving Newstead. There is also a tree standing on which from Mansfield. A pleasant walk of about a mile-he carved his name, coupled with that of his sister, and partly through a thick plantation of fir trees, and partly through a wild, uncultivated tract, the remains of "Merry Sherwood"-brought us suddenly, by the turn of an angle round the garden wall, in front of the venerable edifice, with its broad sheet of water stretched out before it. We gazed on it for some time before we could prevail on ourselves to quit the sight so fair" and view the other curiosities of the place. It is a quaint, curious, and motley piece of architecture, and well described by Lord Byron, as "An old, old, monastery once, and now Still older mansion, of a rich and rare which is still legible and plain. It is an elm tree of peculiar form, having two trunks springing from the same root, and was selected by him, doubtless as being emblematical of himself and his sister. The words carved are "Byron, Sep., 1814," and underneath "Augusta M. L.," abbreviated for Augusta Mary Leigh, the name of his sister who married Colonel Leigh. The gardener who showed it us told us that a Greek had some time ago offered Colonel Wildman £500 for a square foot of the bark containing this small memento, but was refused, the Colonel assuring him he would not take £5,000. It is said the Greek wanted it for a Museum in Greece. Here also was the favourite resort of the monks, and in it is the At one end is a castellated tower, with battlements, "holy well," a small fount which contained the holy turrets, &c., and at the other the remains of an old cha-water. Pursuing our walk to the margin of the grove, pel, with its large lancet windows overgrown and festooned with ivy, and presenting a most beautiful and picturesque appearance. As the housekeeper and servants were engaged at dinner, we walked into the gardens and pleasure grounds, and amused ourselves until the housekeeper was at liberty to show us through the abbey. On entering these we found ourselves in a perfect fairy land,-an Eden of beauty and bliss. Never did I behold a scene so perfectly charming. The grey old abbey, mantled with moss and ivy and surrounded by solemn groves; the pleasure grounds in front, exquisitively laid out, and adorned with every ornament that taste and elegance can suggest; and in front of these, glittering like silver through the trees, the beautiful and transparent lake, with its boats and pinnaces lying at anchor on its surface, and gently heaving with the wave; its stately swans swimming majestically over it, and the water hen and wild duck anon whirring from its brink. There appears, indeed, to be no end to the water, and whichever way you turn, a broad sheet of it lies expanded before you. we came to a spacious terrace overlooking what had been part of the kitchen garden, with an oblong pool in front, "deep set like a mirror in green sloping banks of turf, and on whose glassy surface was reflected the dark mass of the neighbouring grove." This is said to have been the monk's fish or stew-pond, and some years ago there were fished out of it two large eagles of molten brass, one of which is now exhibited in the abbey, and the other in Southwell Minster. Secreted within the hollow of the pedestal supporting these sacred reliques, were found a number of parchment documents of the reign of Edward III. and Henry VIII., substantiating the right and title of the monks to the domains of Newstead. Not far from here at a short distance on the lawn stands an oak planted by Lord Byron when a boy, on his visit to the abbey, and thus mentioned by him in one of his poems : "Young Oak! when I planted thee deep in the ground, I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine; And thy dark waving branches would flourish around And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine. Byron dearly loved the water, and during his occasional Such, such was my hope, when, in infancy's years, sojourns at Newstead, spent a considerable portion of his On the land of my fathers I rear'd thee with pride; time upon it either in fishing, bathing, or sailing about in They are past, and I water thy stem with my tears,the boat with his favourite dog Boatswain. One of his Thy decay not the weeds that surround thee can hide." amusements was to throw himself out of the boat and worthy old gardener plucked us a handful of the appear to be drowning, when the dog would immediately foliage which we carried away with us as a pleasing The memento. In front of the terrace which runs along this side of the edifice is a small French flower-garden laid out in formal beds and parterres surrounded with stone balustrades. There are also two stone benches, with a vase between them, on one of which Byron is said to have written his touching poem called."The Dream." From this spot are plainly seen the "Hills of Annesley," which probably caused it to be selected as the poet's study. Annesley itself is about three miles distance from Newstead; and as the name of Mary Chaworth and her romantic connection with Lord Byron have rendered it a place of such peculiar interest, I shall perhaps be excused making a short digression in its favour, and giving a kind of episode of this touching love story. Washington Irving in his delightful little book entitled "Abbotsford and Newstead," to whose pages I am indebted for several of the particulars contained in this paper, gives the following graphic and interesting account of it: While Lord Byron was yet a boy, he beheld Mary Ann Chaworth; a beautiful girl and the sole heiress of Annesley. With the susceptibility to female charms which he evinced almost from childhood, he became immediately enamoured of her. According to one of his biographers it would appear that at first their attachment was mutual yet clandestine. "The father of Miss Chaworth was then living and may have retained somewhat of the family hostility; for we are told that the interviews of Lord Byron and the young lady were private, at a gate which opened from her father's grounds to those of Newstead. However, they were so young at the time, that these meetings could not have been regarded as of any importance, they were little more than children in years; but as Lord Byron says of himself, his feelings were beyond his years. "The passion thus early conceived was blown into a flame in the bosom of the poet during a six weeks' vacation which he passed with his mother at Nottingham, The father of Miss Chaworth was dead, and she resided with her mother at the old hall of Annesley. During Lord Byron's minority the estate of Newstead was let to Lord Grey de Ruthen; but its youthful lord was always a welcome guest at the abbey. He would pass days at a time there, and from thence make frequent visits to Annesley Hall. His visits were encouraged by Miss Chaworth's mother; she partook none of the family feud, and probably looked with complacency on an attachment that might heal old differences and unite two neighbouring estates. "The six weeks vacation passed as a dream amongst the beautiful bowers of Annesley. Byron as yet was scarcely 15 years of age; Mary Chaworth was two years older; but his heart was beyond his age, and his tenderness for her was deep and passionate. These early loves, like the first run of the uncrushed grape, are the sweetest and strongest gushings of the heart; and however they may be superseded by other attachments in after years, the memory will continually recur to them, and fondly dwell upon their recollections. "His love for Miss Chaworth, to use Lord Byron's own expression, was the romance of the most romantic period of his life'; and we can trace the effect of it through the whole course of his writings, coming up every now and then, like some lurking theme that runs through a complicated piece of music, and links it all in a pervading chain of melody. Whether this love was really responded to by the object is uncertain. Byron sometimes speaks as if he had met kindness in return; at other times he acknowledges that she never gave him reason to believe that she loved him. It is probable, however, that at first she experienced some flutterings of the heart. She was at a susceptible age, had as yet formed no other attachment; her lover, though boyish in years, was a man in intellect, a poet in imagination, and had a countenance of remarkable beauty. With the six weeks' vacation ended this brief romance. Byron returned to school deeply enamoured; but if he had really made any impression on Miss Chaworth's heart, it was too slight to stand the test of absence. She was at that age when a female soon changes from the girl to the woman, and leaves her boyish lovers far behind her. While Byron was pursuing his schoolboy studies, she was mingling with society, and met with a gentleman of the name of Musters, remarkable it is said for manly beauty. A story is told of her having first seen him from the top of Annesley Hall, as he dashed through the park with hound and horn, taking the lead of the whole field in a foxchase, and that she was struck by the spirit of his appearance and his admirable horsemanship. Under such favourable circumstances, he wooed and won her; and when Lord Byron next met her, he learnt to his dismay, that she was the affianced bride of another. With that pride of spirit which always distinguished him, he controlled his feelings and maintained a serene countenance, he even affected to speak calmly on the subject of her approaching nuptials. The next time I see you,' said he, 'I suppose you will be Mrs. Chaworth'-for she was to retain her family name,-her reply was, 'I hope so."" Thus ends this unhappy story,-unhappy for both,— causing the one to become a debauched and miserable exile; and the other-"the bright morning star of Annesley' '—to be prematurely eclipsed and to die a mcping idiot. I cannot, however, close this short narrative, without quoting the following lines, part of a piece which he addressed to Miss Chaworth on leaving England:"'Tis done-and shivering in the gale The bark unfurls her snowy sail; And whistling o'er the bending mast, Loud sings on high the freshening blast; And I must from this land be gone, Because I cannot love but one. "And I will cross the whitening foam, And I will seek a foreign home; Till I forget a false fair face, I ne'er shall find a resting place; Also, the touching lines which he wrote two years after, on his return from his famous pilgrimage, when he visited again and for the last time his "false fair" friend: "I've seen my bride another's bride, Have seen her seated by his side,-- Time had not made me love the less!" Poor Byron! whatever may have been his faults, he had a warm and true heart! and had he not been thus thwarted in his first love, might probably have shone as much in domestic virtue, as he has done, alas ! in vice and folly! But enough of this subject, we must resume our narrative. Proceeding forwards a short distance, we found ourselves in the centre of what had once been the Abbey Chapel. The only portion now remaining of this sacred edifice is the front, which I have before described, and whose grey and time-worn appearance gives a peculiar solemnity to the scene. A carpet of turf now covers the holy ground, where formerly the "saint adorers," were wont to bow the knee in worship. "Where now the grass exhales a murky dew, "Where now the bats their wavering wings extend Soon as the gloaming spreads her waning shade, Opposite to the chapel also stands the monument erected "Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd, Symmetrical but decked with carvings quaint- And here perhaps a monster, there a saint: The spring gushed thro' grim mouths of granite made, Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles, At one end of this gallery a huge stone coffin met our "Start not,-nor deem my spirit fled," and which were afterwards engraved on the silver. The cup was shown to us by the housekeeper, and with it the following somewhat strange and new story. Mind, I dont say, that we believed it,-neither do I ask you gentle reader to believe it, I merely tell you the tale, as it was told us, by the worthy woman's own lips. She assured us it was universally credited by the whole household. The story is this:-When Byron first drank out of this cup, it was at a party in the large drawing-room, some ladies were seated beside him, laughing, talking, and enjoying with him the festivity of the evening. Scarce, however, had he raised the fated goblet to his lips, when lo! at the doorway appeared,-black, terrific, and in being, apparently a monk. The ladies shrieked, fainted, "dusky garb❞ arrayed,—the headless trunk of a human and as many as could hurried out of the room. Byron, however, boldly faced the spectre and demanded of him his errand. The monk approached and accused him with bitter words of his sin and guilt, in thus removing from their resting place the bones of the pious dead, and appropriating to such vile uses the skull of a fellow mortal, who once thought and spoke, and quaffed the wine like himself. He concluded by foretelling him the place, day, hour, and all particulars of his death,-which, as the good lady assured us-all came to pass exactly as predicted. Thus ends this short but strange story. But this is but one in a hundred of the hobgoblin tales which are told of this ancient place, Byron himself believed or pretended to believe in many of them, and to one fabled visitant especially, he has given the most perfect sanction by his credence, and caused him to be recognised as a familiar inmate of the Abbey. This is the famous Goblin Friar, who was said to walk nightly through the halls and cloisters, and to have been seen by Byron himself on several important occasions,-always portending evil. One of these occasions was a short time previous to his unfortunate marriage with Miss Milbanke. How far this report is true, I am not prepared to say. His Lordship has, however, embodied the tradition in a ballad, in which he thus speaks of him :- "When an heir is born, he's heard to mourn, And when aught is to befall That ancient line, in the pale moonshine He walks from hall to hall. His form you may trace, but not his face, 'Tis shadow'd by his cowl; And his eyes may be seen from the folds between, And they seem of a parted soul." So much for ghosts and hobgoblins, we must now proceed on our tour of inspection through the Abbey. It will be impossible in the limits of this paper to give a minute account of all the interesting objects which here met our view. To do so would occupy the space of a volume, my only object being to narrate such particulars and such facts as stand associated with the genius loci. I will, therefore, merely name a few of the most interesting objects that attracted our attention. There was the bedroom which Lord Byron himself occupied when staying at Newstead,-with everything just as he left it,-furniture, bed, pictures, washing-stand, escritoire, and table. Nothing has been disturbed, and you might fancy it had only just been put to rights since his Lordship got out of bed a few hours ago. Then there were the rooms in which Charles II, the late Duke of Sussex, and Oliver Cromwell slept, the latter a very terrible looking apartment, and associated, as we are told, with some dark deeds of midnight blackness. If I remember right this also is termed the "haunted room," and has tales told of it that make one's hair stand on end at the mention. There are pictures hung on the walls in which some of these dreadful tragedies are depicted. We were also shown a private cabinet of Queen Elizabeth and another of Mary Queen of Scots, as well as a bed-quilt said to have been wrought by the latter during her residence at Hardwick Hall. Also, some fine specimens of the Gobelins tapestry, said to be the finest in England. Nor must I forget the large dining-room which is panelled all round with wood taken from one oak, with portraits of family worthies hung round it, and armour brought by Colonel Wildman from the field of Waterloo. The drawingroom, library, and state rooms are also all of them splendid in their way; but I must confess I have not much taste for this kind of display myself, and consequently must be excused giving a very graphic or minute description of them. After seeing all through the interior, wa |