Zigzag Journeys in Europe Part 25

"The people said that Dunstan must have become a very holy man, or the devil would not appear to him _bodily_.

"The devil came to him one day, he said, as he was at work at his forge, and, putting his nose through the window of his cell, tempted him to lead a life of pleasure. He quickly drew his pincers from the fire, and seized his tormentor by the nose, which put him in such pain that he bellowed so l.u.s.tily as to shake the hills.

"The boy-king Edred, who filled the throne at this time, was in poor health, and suffered from a lingering illness for years. He felt the need of the counsel of a good man, and he said to himself,--

"'There is Dunstan, a man who has given up all selfish feelings and aspirations, a man whom even the devil cannot corrupt. I will bring him to court, and will make him my adviser.'

"Then pure-hearted Edred brought the foxy prelate to his court, and made him, of all things in the world, the royal treasurer; and he took such good care of the money entrusted to his keeping that he was speedily released from the responsibility. He seems to have been very easily tempted during his political career."

The next day the party was borne away from shady Oxford, where one would indeed like to tarry long in the midsummer days, to the old city of Bristol, famous in the Roman conquest of Britain. In the journey the gay poppy-fields and the picturesque cottage scenes, which give a charm to the English landscape, often flitted into and out of view, reminding the boys of George Howe's letter.

Glas...o...b..ry Abbey is indeed an interesting ruin. It stands apart from the popular lines of travel, and so it figures little in the narratives of those who make short tours abroad.

Think of the ruins of a church at least fourteen hundred years old! A church that Joseph of Arimathaea, who provided the tomb for Jesus, is reputed in the old monkish legends to have founded, and where St.

Patrick and St. Augustine probably did preach, and where in the Middle Ages the remains of good King Arthur were disenterred!

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. AUGUSTINE'S APPEAL TO ETHELBERT.]

Of the great church and its five chapels there yet remain parts of the broken wall, and the three large crypts where the early kings of England and founders of the English Church were buried. A little westward from the ruin stands the beautiful Chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathaea.

"I do not wonder," said Wyllys Wynn, "that the old English people liked to believe that their church sprang from the mission of so amiable a saint as St. Joseph."

"Christianity," said Master Lewis, "was really first established in Great Britain in 596 by St. Augustine and forty missionaries who came with St. Augustine from Rome to preach to the Anglo-Saxons. These missionaries were kindly received by King Ethelbert, whose wife was already a Christian. It is related that one of the Saxon priests, to see if indeed his G.o.ds would be angry, went forth on horse-back, and smote the images the people had been worshipping. To the astonishment of the Saxons no judgment followed. The king was baptized, and the missionaries baptized ten thousand converts in a single day in the river Swale. The Christian religion had been preached in Britain before, but not generally accepted."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SAXON PRIEST STRIKING THE IMAGES.]

"I like the a.s.sociation of St. Joseph's name with this old ruin so well," said Wyllys, "that I wish to see the staff that you say is believed to bloom at Christmas."

On the south side of Glas...o...b..ry is Weary-all Hill. It owes its name to a very poetic legend. It is said that St. Joseph and his companions, _all_ of them _weary_ in one of their missionary journeys, here sat down to rest, and the Saint planted his staff into the earth, and left it there. From it, we are told, springs the famous Glas...o...b..ry Thorn which blossoms every Christmas, and whose miraculous flowers were adored in the Middle Ages. Such a shrub still remains which blooms in midwinter, and perpetuates the memory of the pretty superst.i.tion.

CHAPTER XII.

LONDON.

London.--Westminster Abbey.--Westminster Hall and Parliament Houses.--The Tower.--Sir Henry Wyat and His Cat.--Madame Tussaud's Wax Works.--Tommy Accosts a Stranger.--Hampton Court Palace.--Stories of Charles I. and Cromwell.--The d.u.c.h.ess's Wonderful Pie.--The Boys' Day.--Tommy goes Punch and Judy Hunting.--Street Amus.e.m.e.nts.--Tommy's Misadventure.--George Howe's Cheap Tour.--Windsor Castle.--Story of Prince Albert and his Queen.--Antwerp.

The train, from its sinuous windings among old English landscapes and thickly populated towns, seemed at last to be gliding into a new world of vanishing houses and streets. It suddenly stopped under the gla.s.s roof of an immense station, where a regiment of porters in uniform were awaiting it, and where all outside seemed a world of cabmen.

LONDON!--the world's great city, the nations' bazaar,--where humanity runs in no fixed channels, but ceaselessly ebbs and flows like the sea. Cabs, cabs! then a swift rattle through rattling vehicles, going in every direction, on, on, on! Names of places read in histories and story-books pa.s.s before the eye. The tides of travel everywhere seem to overflow; all is bewildering, confusing. What a map a man's mind must be to thread the innumerable streets of London!

The Cla.s.s stopped at a popular hotel in a fine part of the city, called the West End. It is pleasanter and more economical to take furnished lodgings in London, if one is to remain in the city for a week or more, but as Master Lewis was to allow the boys but a few days' visit, he took them to a hotel in a quarter where the best London life could be seen.

The London cabs meet the impatient stranger's wants at once, and the boys were soon rattling in them about the city, out of the quarter of stately houses into the gay streets of trade, which seemed to them indeed like a great world's fair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY.]

"This is Pall Mall [Pell Mell]," said Frank to Tommy, as their cab rounded a corner.

"It seems to be all _pell mell_ here," said Tommy. "Had the poet been to London when he wrote,--

"'Oh, then and there was hurrying to and fro'?

But this street has a more quiet look. What splendid houses!"

"Those," said Frank, "are the houses of the famous London Clubs."

The first visit that the boys made was to that time-honored pile of magnificence into which kings and queens for centuries have gone to be crowned and been carried to be buried,--Westminster Abbey.

The party entered at the western entrance, which commands an awesome, almost oppressive, view of the interior. In the softened light of the stained windows rose a forest of columns, rich with art and grandly gloomy with the a.s.sociations of antiquity. Far, far away it stretched to the chapel of Edward the Confessor, a name that led the mind through the faded pomps of the past almost a thousand years.

Monuments of kings and queens, benefactors and poets, beginning with old Edward the Confessor and coming down to the Stuarts; of Eleanor, who sucked the poison from her husband's wounds, and Philippa, who saved the heroes of Calais. Here b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and Mary, Queen of Scots, sleep in peace in the same chapel; and here the merry monarch, Charles II., lies among the kingly tombs without a slab to mark the place.

The new Houses of Parliament which stand between the Abbey and the Thames are the finest works of architecture that have been erected in England for centuries. They form a parallelogram nine hundred feet long and three hundred feet wide. The House of Lords and House of Commons occupy the centre of the building. Between these two halls of State rises a tower three hundred feet high. At each end of the building are lofty towers; the Victorian Tower, three hundred forty-six feet high, and a clock tower, in which the hours are struck on a bell called Big Ben, which weighs nine tons.

The entrance to the Houses of Parliament is through old Westminster Hall, ninety feet high and two hundred and ninety long, whose gothic roof of wood is the finest specimen of its kind in English art, and is regarded as one of the wonders of human achievement.

It was in this hall that Charles I. was tried for treason, and condemned; and it was here, at the trial, that the words of a mysterious lady smote Oliver Cromwell to the heart.

"The Prisoner at the bar has been brought here in the name of the People of England," said the solicitor.

"Not half the people!" exclaimed a mysterious voice in the gallery.

"Oliver Cromwell is a _traitor_!"

The a.s.sembly shuddered.

"Fire upon her!" said an officer.

They did not fire. It was Lady Fairfax.

Westminster Bridge, one thousand one hundred and sixty feet long, is near the clock tower, and here the Cla.s.s took its best view of the Parliament Houses.

The next day the Cla.s.s visited London Tower and the relics that recall the long list of tragedies of ambitious courts and kings.

"This," said the guide, as the Cla.s.s was taken into an apartment in the White Tower, an old prison whose walls are twelve feet thick, "is the beheading block that was used on Tower Hill. The Earl of Ess.e.x was beheaded on it: see the _dints_!"

An axe stood beside the block, which is kept on exhibition in one of the rooms in which Sir Walter Raleigh was confined.

"Where were the children of Edward murdered?" asked Frank Gray, after being shown the place of the execution of Anne Boleyn.

"In the b.l.o.o.d.y Tower," said the guide. "I am not hallowed to admit visitors into that."

"We are a cla.s.s in an American school. Could you not make some arrangement to admit us?" asked Wyllys.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRIAL OF CHARLES I.]