LESSON LXII. WARWICK CASTLE. BY HENRY WARD BEECHER. Henry Ward Beecher, the most popular of American pulpit orators, was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1813, and graduated at Amherst College in 1834. He studied theology at Lane Seminary, near Cincinnati, and, in 1847, after having already presided over two different churches in Indiana, removed to Brooklyn, N. Y., and became pastor of the Plymouth Church. His literary works, with the exception of Norwood, a novel, published in 1866, are the result of his labors as a preacher and as a contributor to religious journals. He wrote for the New York Independent a series of articles which were published in a volume, entitled Star Papers. A regular report of his sermons is issued under the title of Notes from Plymouth Pulpit. Life Thoughts is a collection of passages taken from his extemporaneous discourses. His other works are Lectures to Young Men, Eyes and Ears, Freedom and War, two volumes of sermons, Yale Lectures on Preaching, first and second series, and Life of Christ. Mr. Beecher is still the pastor of Plymouth Church, and sustains his high position with undiminished power. The following, Warwick Castle, is from his Star Papers, revised and republished in 1873. ERE we come to Warwick! What bands of steel-clad knights have tramped these streets before us! Here is, doubtless, the old gate of the town renewed with modern stone. Ordering dinner at six o'clock, I start for the castle, without the remotest idea of what I shall see. Walking along a high park wall which forms one part of the town, I come to the gateway of approach. 2. A porter opens its huge leaf. Cut through a solid rock, the road, some twenty feet wide, winds for a long way in the most solemn beauty. The sides, in solid rock, vary from five to twenty feet in height-at least so it seemed to my imagination-the only faculty I allowed to conduct me. Winding in graceful curves, it at last brings you to the first view of the Castle, at a distance of some hundred rods before you. 3. It opens on a sight of grandeur. On either corner is a huge tower, apparently one hundred and fifty feet high; in the center is a square tower, called properly a gateway; a huge wall connects this central access with the two corner towers. I stood for a little, and let the vision pierce me through. Who can tell what he feels in such a place! Pri meval forests, the ocean, prairies, Niagara, I had seen, or felt. But never had I seen any pile around which were historic associations, blended not only with historic men and deeds, but savoring of my own childhood. 4. And now, too, am I to see and understand by inspection the things which Scott has made so familiar to all as mere words: moats, portcullises, battlements, keeps or mounds, arrow-slit windows, and watch-towers. I had never seen them, yet the moment I did behold, all was instantly plain; I knew the name and use, and seemed in a moment to have known them always. 5. I came up to the moat, now dry, and lined with beautiful shrubs and trees, crossed the bridge, and entered the outer gateway or arched door, through a solid square tower. The portcullis was drawn up, but I could see the projecting end. Another similar gateway further on, showed the care with which the defense was managed. This passed, a large court opened, surrounded on every side with towers, walls, and vast ranges of buildings. Here I beheld the pictures which I had seen on paper, magnified into gigantic realities. Drawings of many-faced, irregular, Gothic mansions, measuring an inch or two, with which my childhood was familiar, here stood before me measuring hundreds and hundreds of feet. It was the first sight of a real baronial castle! It was a historic dream breaking forth into a waking reality. 6. It is of very little use to tell you how large the court is, by feet and rods; or that Guy's tower is 128 feet high, while Cæsar's tower is 147. But it may touch your imagination, and wheel it suddenly backward with a long flight and wide vision, to say that Cæsar's tower has stood for eight hundred years, being coeval with the Norman Conquest! I stood upon the mute stones, and imagined the ring of the hammer upon them when the mason was laying them to their bed of ages. What were the thoughts, the fancies, the conversations of these rude fellows at that age of the world! 7. I was wafted backward and backward, until I stood on the foundations upon which old England herself was builded, when as yet there was none of her. There, far back of all literature, before the English tongue itself was formed, earlier than her jurisprudence, than all modern civilization, I stood, in imagination, and reversing my vision, looked down into a far future, to search for the men and deeds which had been, as if they were yet to be; thus making a prophecy of history, and changing memory into a dreamy foresight. 8. When these stones were placed, it was yet to be two hundred years before Gower and Chaucer should be born. Indeed, since this mortar was wetted and cemented these. stones, the original people—the Normans, the Danes, the Saxons have been mixed together into one people. When this stone on which I lean took its place, there was not then a printed book in England. Printing was invented hundreds of years after these foundations went down. 9. When the rude workmen put their shoulders to these stones, the very English language lay unborn. The men that laughed and jested as they wrought, and had their pride of skill; the architect, and the lord for whose praise he fashioned these stones; the villagers that wondered as they looked upon the growing pile, why, they are no more now to men's memories than the grass they trod on, or the leaves they cast down in felling the oak. 10. Against these stones on which I lay my hand, have rung the sounds of battle. Yonder, on these very grounds, there raged, in sight of men that stand where I do, fiercest and deadliest conflicts. All this ground has been fed on blood. I walked across to Guy's tower, up its long stone stairway into some of its old soldiers' rooms. The pavements were worn, though of stone, with the heavy, grinding feet of men-at-arms. I heard them laugh between their cups, I saw them devouring their gross food, I heard them recite their feats, or tell the last news of some knightly outrage, or cruel oppression of the despised laborer. I stood by the windows out of which the archer sent his whistling arrows. I stood by the openings through which scalding water or molten lead was poured upon the heads of assailants, and heard the hoarse shriek of the wretched fellows from below as they got their shocking baptism. 11. I ascended to the roof of the tower, and looked over the wide glory of the scene, still haunted with the same imaginations of the olden time. How many thoughts had flown hence beside mine! Here, where warriors looked out, or ladies watched for their knights' return, how did I long to stand for one hour, really in their position and in their consciousness, who lived in those days, and then come back with the experience to my modern self! 12. Already the sun was drooping far down the west, and sending its golden glow sideways through the trees; and the glades in the park were gathering twilight as I turned to give a last look at these strange scenes. I walked slowly through the gateway, crossed the bridge over the moat, turned and looked back upon the old tower, whose tops reddened yet in the sun, though I was in deep shadow. Then, walking backward, looking still, till I came to the woods, I took my farewell of Warwick Castle. Warwick Castle (War' rick), the castle of the Earl of Warwick, who was one of the family of Newburgh, and whose title was given him by William the Conqueror. Chaucer (Geoffrey), sometimes called the father of English poetry, was born in London 1328; died 1400. Gower (John), an English poet, born about 1320, is supposed to be a native of Yorkshire. He died in 1402. Pōrt eŭl' lis, an assemblage of timbers joined to one another, and each pointed with iron, hung over the gateway of a fortified town or castle, to be let down to prevent the entrance of an cuemy. LESSON LXIII. MOTHER AND POET. BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. izabeth Barrett Browning, one of the most gifted of female poets, was born in England, in 1807. Her father was Mr. Barrett, an opulent merchant of London. She received a high education, and was well versed in the Greek and Latin languages. Among her first published works was The Battle of Marathon. In the succeeding interval of thirty years, from 1826 to 1856, she produced an Essay on Mind, and Other Poems, Prometheus Bound, a translation from the Greek of Eschylus, The Seraphim, and Other Poems, The Romaunt of the Page, The Drama of Lilo, Casa Guidi Windows, a poem which treats of the political condition of Italy, and Aurora Leigh, a novel in verse. The poetry of Mrs. Browning is certainly of the highest order, but is characterized by a shadowy luxuriance of fancy and expression which renders it sometimes difficult to understand, and her writings are therefore better appreciated by poets than by the masses of the people. She was the wife of the eminent poet, Robert Browning, and died at Florence in 1861. EAD! one of them shot by the sea in the east, DEAD And one of them shot in the west by the sea. 2. Yet I was a poetess only last year, And good at my art, for a woman, men said; But this woman, this, who is agonized here, The east sea, and the west sea, rhyme on in her head 3. What's art for a woman? To hold cn her knees Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat And 'broider the long clothes and neat little coat; 4. To teach them. It stings there; I made them, indeed, The tyrant turned out. 5. And when their eyes flashed-O, my beautiful eyes! then one weeps, then one --God! how the house feels! |