The evening sky, glowing red, threw out the bold outline
of the castle, and the quaint old edifices as they
seemed to look down on us silently from their rocky
heights, and the figure of Salisbury Crags marked
itself against the red sky like a couchant lion.
The time of our sojourn in Scotland had drawn towards
its close. Though feeble in health, this visit
to me has been full of enjoyment; full of lofty, but
sad memories; full of sympathies and inspirations.
I think there is no nobler land, and I pray God that
the old seed here sown in blood and tears may never
be rooted out of Scotland.
MY DEAR H.:—
It was a rainy, misty morning when I left my kind
retreat and friends in Edinburgh. Considerate
as every body had been about imposing on my time or
strength, still you may well believe that I was much
exhausted.
We left Edinburgh, therefore, with the determination
to plunge at once into some hidden and unknown spot,
where we might spend two or three days quietly by
ourselves; and remembering your Sunday at Stratford-on-Avon,
I proposed that we should go there. As Stratford,
however, is off the railroad line we determined to
accept the invitation, which was lying by us, from
our friend Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, and take
sanctuary with him. So we wrote on, intrusting
him with the secret, and charging him on no account
to let any one know of our arrival.
Well in the rail car, we went whirling along by Preston
Pans, where was fought the celebrated battle in which
Colonel Gardiner was killed; by Dunbar, where Cromwell
told his army to “trust in God and keep their
powder dry;” through Berwick-on-the-Tweed and
Newcastle-on-Tyne; by the old towers and gates of
York, with its splendid cathedral; getting a view
of Durham Cathedral in the distance.
The country between Berwick and Newcastle is one of
the greatest manufacturing districts of England, and
for smoke, smut, and gloom, Pittsburg and Wheeling
bear no comparison to it. The English sky, always
paler and cooler in its tints than ours, here seems
to be turned into a leaden canopy; tall chimneys belch
forth gloom and confusion; houses, factories, fences,
even trees and grass, look grim and sooty.
It is true that people with immense wealth can live
in such regions in cleanliness and elegance; but how
must it be with the poor? I know of no one circumstance
more unfavorable to moral purity than the necessity
of being physically dirty. Our nature is so intensely
symbolical, that where the outward sign of defilement
becomes habitual, the inner is too apt to correspond.
I am quite sure that before there can be a universal
millennium, trade must be pursued in such a way as
to enable the working classes to realize something
of beauty and purity in the circumstances of their
outward life.
I have heard there is a law before the British Parliament,
whose operation is designed to purify the air of England
by introducing chimneys which shall consume all the
sooty particles which now float about, obscuring the
air and carrying defilement with them. May that
day be hastened!
