| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII | HTML | PDF ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Hospital Sketches
Author: Peabody, Robert Swain
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Hospital Sketches" ***
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
HOSPITAL SKETCHES
1916
HOSPITAL SKETCHES
BY
ROBERT SWAIN PEABODY
BOSTON & NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
_The Riverside Press Cambridge_
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY ROBERT SWAIN PEABODY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published December 1916_
"_Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light;
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams._"
W. B. YEATS.
NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS are made to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for
permission to use a passage from Edith Wharton's _Fighting France_ and
to The Macmillan Company for the use of the poem "Aedh wishes for the
Cloths of Heaven," by W. B. Yeats.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ix
VIEW FROM THE HOSPITAL TERRACE 1
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
I. The Minster and the Meadows 3
II. The Church Yard 7
III. The Village 11
IV. The Hall 15
V. Trong's Almshouses 19
RANCONEZZO
VI. The Town and the Lake 23
VII. Piazza Garibaldi 27
VIII. Piazza Cavour 31
IX. North Door of the Duomo 35
X. Interior of the Duomo 39
XI. The Villa of the Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti 43
XII. Santa Prassede, the Cardinal's Church 47
XIII. The Cloisters of Sta Prassede 51
XIV. The Tomb of the Cardinal in Sta Prassede 55
ROCHER-ST.-POL
XV. The Town and the River Merle 59
XVI. La Grande Rue and La Place de la République 63
XVII. L'escalier de Jacob 67
XVIII. Le Parvis de Ste Frédigonde 71
XIX. Interior of the Church of Ste Frédigonde 75
XX. Sacristy Steps in the Church of Ste Frédigonde 79
XXI. The Château Beaumesnil 83
XXII. La Tour de la Dame Blanche 87
AEGINASSOS
XXIII. The Temple and the Forum 91
XXIV. The Temple and the Forum 95
INTRODUCTION
JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL,
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND,
_December, 1915._
ONE of my good friends, a stanch upholder of what to him is "The
Catholic Church," looks back to the thirteenth century as marking the
highest tide of Christian civilization. He longs for a restoration (but
under other rule) of that monastic life which then gave shelter to Art,
Science, Learning, and Religion. It does not appear that this longing is
coupled with any regret for the exceptionally happy domestic life with
which he personally has been blessed. Probably his hopes are that even
if he establishes, others will maintain, that monastic life and
discipline which, duly purified from Ultramontane tendencies, he thinks
would be so uplifting and beneficial to our times.
However that may be, if he is ever immured for many weeks in a great
hospital, he will be surprised to find how many are the similarities
between its life, its discipline and its atmosphere, and those of the
great monasteries. I mean those mediæval houses which spread from the
parent at Monte Cassino to Citeaux and Cluny and Vezelay and thence to
far-away parts of Europe, and which were even more abundant in England
where the ruins of the Yorkshire Abbeys still attest to their former
power. When the time is ripe for the change longed for by our friend he
will find that very slight additions to a modern hospital will give him
what he wants in great perfection.
Grateful though I am to them--deeply grateful--yet I know little of the
personal history of the founder of this great hospital which now
shelters me, or of that "Diamond Jim Brady" who built and endowed this
noble wing. Still, I feel sure that in many ways these benefactors to
their race made their gifts under much the same conditions as those
barons and nobles of old who, led by some deep feeling, devoted their
wealth to the saving, not only of their own souls, but of the souls and
bodies of their fellow men.
Moreover, if the benefactors who founded and endowed this hospital
resembled the men and women who made possible the powerful monasteries
of the Middle Ages, there is also a resemblance to be found between the
service that the monks rendered in their day to humanity and knowledge
and that devotion which to-day inspires the staff of a great modern
hospital. In this very building are housed and in constant attendance a
large number of doctors, surgeons and orderlies. Their quarters, though
in many ways like those in a modern club, are almost equally like the
cells of a great monastery. There probably is not one of the staff who
was not turned to his profession in some degree by the thought that it
would make him of service to mankind. In another wing live several
hundred nurses. The strength and health and happiness which appear in
the faces of these young women attest to the good effect for women as
well as for men of discipline and regular attention to duty. What a
shining example is theirs of faithful and altruistic service to
suffering humanity! Indeed a generous, helpful and encouraging spirit
pervades all the men and women who form the staff of the hospital.
Theirs is a single-minded and unwearying attention which no monks could
have excelled, nor could the monasteries ever have offered a wider
charity than that which makes white and colored, Hebrew and Gentile,
poor and rich all objects of the kindly help of a skilful and devoted
company.
I know that the kernel and very centre of the monastery was the lighted
altar in the chapel where daily the sacred mysteries were enacted. That
is what our friend will need to add to his perfected institution;--and
yet--and yet--I doubt if the atmosphere will be very different when that
is done. Although this place is world-famous as a centre of scientific
research and of applied science,--though, in general, religion here is
worked out in terms of service,--yet there are signs that the spirit has
recognition as well as the physical body. To-day, in the great entrance
rotunda stands a colossal and impressive statue of Christ, his hands
outstretched welcoming the weary and the heavy-laden. The several
hundred nurses have daily prayers together before they begin their
unselfish work. At the dawn of Christmas morning, the doctors, nurses
and orderlies make the halls resound with the carols suited to the day;
and we hear how one convalescent who was praising his doctor's power
over his ailments was surprised by the reply, "It was another power than
mine that did it!" Perhaps he meant that miraculous servant Radium;
perhaps he meant Nature herself; perhaps he meant something beyond
these. He did not explain.
This devotion with which the staff is consecrated to altruistic labor is
met by a spirit of buoyant gratitude from those on whom they minister.
Our ward is vibrant with it. Perhaps this is not true at the very first.
The patient arrives in misery. For a few days he is perhaps made even
more miserable. But during this time he is in seclusion and not visible
to his comrades. Soon he rallies. In bed or wheel chair he joins other
convalescents on the roof terrace. They compare notes over their
operations. They settle among themselves all those great pending
questions which have been engrossing the active outside world and,
looking forward to returning health and strength, a very joyous spirit
pervades the group. These not too inviting surroundings abound,
therefore, in a hearty thankfulness--a thankfulness abundant and
sincere, and not unlike what it would be if it were offered amid solemn
rites and with majestic music before the glowing altar of a monastery.
But in these early days of seclusion the lonely patient has opportunity
for much thinking. Lying in bed in a room which, as a recent writer
described it, is richly decorated with a white ceiling, four white
walls, a door, a window and a floor, he has indeed time for thought and
for thought without distraction.
Surrounded as he is by the sick and the maimed, perhaps one of the first
subjects on which he is led to ponder is the mystery of Pain. What does
it all mean that a God otherwise beneficent should impose on the
creatures he has brought into the world illness and suffering? Even
Prince Siddartha wondered at it:
"Since if, all powerful, he leaves it so,
He is not good; and if not powerful,
He is not God?"
In better mood the patient may wonder whether his personal share of pain
is in any sense a penance or atonement for his own past sins. This is a
thought which is natural and acceptable perhaps to most minds. But the
Saints and Martyrs testifying to their faith went farther and not only
submitted to but gladly sought pain and suffering. Now pain and agony
well endured undoubtedly strengthen character. Have we not a vivid
example of this before us in the catastrophe of the European war; a war
which is saved from being wholly evil and dreadful because out of it has
come the spiritual regeneration of the allied nations who are engulfed
in it? Still it can hardly be expected that ordinary flesh and blood
should in this world, so full of love and beauty, invite and seek out
suffering and disaster even in order to bear them bravely. Enough for
most of us that if doomed to walk with them we
"Turn the necessity to glorious gain."
But all the same it must be a happy thing for a sufferer if he can hope
with the Martyrs that pain borne with fortitude may be offered as a
sacrifice and atonement.
In these dull and lonely moments also one inevitably asks whether it is
true that people exist who are stolid to pain? One may consecrate it
before it comes and after it goes, but to most of us feeble folk pain
when present occupies the whole limelight and leaves the rest of the
stage in darkness! The only inmate of the hospital who stirred my temper
was a patient who on making a rapid recovery from what he described as
a very severe operation said he had refused ether and did not mind pain.
I regained my equanimity when an orderly confided to me that the
operation had been slight!
In health one is apt to think that Love is the great motive power of
humanity. In illness and suffering Pain seems the great and pressing
problem. They often go hand in hand and perhaps it is true that without
them both life has not rendered its full wealth or its perfect
discipline. "The ennobling depths of pain" need also "the purifying fire
of love" to round out a perfect character.
"Incomprehensibly Love's will doth move
Through this blind world in ways we cannot see,
Death giving birth to life. So does deep sorrow
Give birth to rarer joy on some glad morrow."
These and many such questions can be as solemn, as perplexing and as
engrossing as any that exercised the inmates of the Monastery to which
we here find so much resemblance. As a contrast to such heart-searching
thoughts the patient can wonder at the properties of that radium by
which he may have been treated. How astonishing is it that this atom of
matter should constantly emit rays which search out and destroy evil
tissues and leave unharmed the good; and that they do this without any
perceptible diminution of energy! How contrary this is to all we have
hitherto known of the conservation of energy and of the impossibility
of obtaining perpetual motion or continued power! What is so contrary to
our preconceived ideas proves itself, however, by experience efficient
in an almost supernatural or miraculous manner. Perhaps fatigued by
these thoughts the patient can turn from them and closing his eyes begin
to count "The flock of sheep that leisurely pass by one after one" and
by happy chance submit himself to sleep.
The roof terrace has a wide view over the City of Baltimore, as well as
of the heavens which encompass it. We sit there in our wheel chairs or
lie tucked up in our rolling beds and talk flows freely. We watch the
flocks of pigeons making endless circles in the upper air; the black and
solemn buzzards hanging above us unmoved though the gale blow ever so
fiercely; the cloud shadows moving over the panorama; the haze of mist
and steam and smoke floating over the City; the ever-changing pageant of
fleeting clouds and blue sky and blazing sunsets. At one time--
"And when the wind from place to place
Doth the unmoored cloud galleons chase"--
we follow the white fleets as they sail away towards the south, ever
replaced by new armadas surging up and over the northern horizon. At
another time in range beyond range of snowy clouds, we see rise before
us the Delectable Mountains beyond which is the Land of Beulah where the
shining ones go to and fro as messengers to the Celestial City.
It is said that an eye unused to the telescope cannot see the canals on
the planet Mars, but that through the same instrument they are plainly
visible to an eye trained to such observation. Sometimes, when the
clouds have hung in white masses over the city, I have been eager to see
what was hidden by those luminous walls, but my untrained eyes could not
pierce them. Day after day, however, I became more familiar with them.
Others before now, without journeying like Columbus to prove the truth
of his visions, have, even by their own firesides, enjoyed Castles in
the Air and Châteaux and great possessions in Spain. In like manner as
the breeze moved the silver edges of the clouds, I had unexpectedly
through the rifts views of strange lands and fair cities which I had
never before seen or heard of. As they were indeed lovely, in all haste
I tried to make rapid notes of them to prove the truth of my strange
experience.
Far to the north over Homewood, a pile of mountainous clouds was rent
for a short space by the breeze, and disclosed a Minster in a meadow
land. Its name seemed to be Upthorpe-cum-Regis. Its tower rose before me
over the busy life of the town and looked down on the mansion of the
Squire and the house of the Dean. Close around the walls of the Minster,
indeed within sound of its prayers and anthems, were clustered the
graves of the dead,--the former generations who had made the life of the
town and who built the church and worshipped at its altar. It was a town
in which the characters described by Trollope or George Eliot or Jane
Austen would have felt themselves at home.
Again when a sunset was filling the western sky with "the incomparable
pomp of eve," a break in the clouds above the gilded towers of Cardinal
Gibbons's Cathedral disclosed an Italian town on a lovely lake shore.
Boats with colored sails lined the Riva of Ranconezzo. Two piazzas
teeming with life surrounded the Duomo or Cathedral and from them there
were wide views over lake and mountain scenery. It appears that in the
long ago, the Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti was the benefactor of this
town, and there on the hillside, tree embowered, was his villa with its
little port for the lake boats. His tomb I also saw, not in the Duomo,
but in the Bramantesque Church of Santa Prassede, a building resembling
the many small churches in northern Italy due to the refined influence
of Bramante. In my dreaming I entered the church, and found that the
great Cardinal lies beneath a tomb carved by Mino da Fiesole on the
north side of Santa Prassede.
Then on a cool and crisp day when clouds were scudding through the sky,
between them there was revealed to me a French town that seemed to bear
the name of Rocher-St.-Pol. There was the river Merle winding its way
through meadow and woodland. A range of hills bounded the horizon and
from the plain rose the Rock. Not far away the ruined castle of "La Dame
Blanche" crowned a steep hill, and close to the town was the Château
Beaumesnil, beetling over the wooded hillside and bristling with conical
towers and burnished girouettes. The Grande Rue of Rocher-St.-Pol I saw
winding between gabled and half-timbered houses towards the church on
the summit, and finally a long flight of stairs called by the people
Jacob's ladder brings the pilgrim to the terrace in front of the church
door. The interior of Ste. Frédigonde showed me the same period of
French Gothic which marks the cathedrals of Notre Dame at Paris and
Rheims. Coming out from Jacob's ladder upon the Parvis, there was a wide
view over the meadows and the river. At the moment when the cathedral
door was disclosed to me, a procession of clergy bearing sacred relics
emerged from the church. It passed between the ranks of prophets and
martyrs whose effigies flank the portal, and vanished with its banners
and vestments down the long incline of Jacob's ladder towards the old
town.
And finally came a dismal day, at the end of which the west was lined
with long streaks of red, and, just before sunset, through a lengthened
break in the gray, I seemed to see an Island in the far Ægean. I think
it must have been somewhere between the Ægina that looks across the
waters to the Athenian Acropolis and the Assos which my friends in their
youth dug from its grave. Let us call it Æginassos. Its buildings as I
dimly saw them are in a remarkable condition of preservation. The white
temple stood out on a promontory over the sea, and brought back to
memory the temple-crowned headland at Sunium. Higher on the
mountain-side was the Forum with its terraces and long colonnades. Steep
and winding paths descended to the ancient port, and far across the
water rose the heights of the Isles of Greece.
Here are the records of what I was privileged to see from the roof
terrace of the Hospital. Made in bed or wheel chair and depending on the
passing imagination of an invalid, the sketches are of necessity crude.
Would that instead they were like the work of Claude or Turner, who were
the great experts at seeing visions in the clouds and in transferring
them to their paper! These drawings will, however, be a reminder that
idle hours can be passed happily even during a long captivity! Opposite
each drawing I have placed some quotations from various writers.
Although these do not describe with exactness the places which no eye
but mine has seen, yet they do picture others very like those which I
saw from the hospital terrace.
A day at last arrived when the patient was suddenly released. After
being the object of tender care for many weeks the outer world seemed
very large and very hustling. It was with a certain timidity and almost
with reluctance that facing it all he left the peaceful quiet of the
Johns Hopkins Hospital.
SKETCHES
AT
THE
JOHNS HOPKINS
HOSPITAL
[Illustration:
"So shall the drudge in dusty frock
Spy behind the city clock
Retinues of airy things
Troops of angels, starry wings,
His fathers shining in bright fables
His children fed at heavenly tables."
OCTOBER 1915]
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
THE RIVER
IT was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down
together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them;
they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would be always
like the holiday; they would always live together and be fond of each
other. And the mill with its booming--the great chestnut tree under
which they played at house--their own little river, the Ripple, where
the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing water-rats while
Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds which she forgot, and
dropped afterwards--above all, the great Floss, along which they
wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the
awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash
which had once wailed and groaned like a man--these things would always
be just the same to them. Tom thought people were at a disadvantage who
lived in any other spot of the globe; and Maggie when she read about
Christiana passing "the river over which there is no bridge," always saw
the Floss between the green pastures by the Great Ash.
GEORGE ELIOT.
[Illustration: I
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
_The Minster and the Meadows_]
THE MINSTER
STRONG as time, and as faith sublime,--clothed round with
shadows of hopes and fears,
Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion
of prayers and tears,--
Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing
and waning years.
Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season
that blooms and glows,
Wall and roof of it tempest proof, and equal even to suns
and snows,
Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as
a straight stem grows.
A. SWINBURNE.
ELEGY
NOW fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
* * * * *
Beneath these rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
* * * * *
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
GRAY.
THE CHURCHYARD
IT was a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the
cawing of the rooks who had built their nest among the branches of some
tall old trees, and were calling to one another, high up in the air.
First one sleek bird, hovering near his ragged house as it swung and
dangled in the wind, uttered his hoarse cry, quite by chance as it would
seem, and in a sober tone as though he were but talking to himself.
Another answered, and he called again, but louder than before; then
another spoke and then another; and each time the first, aggravated by
contradiction, insisted on his case more strongly. Other voices, silent
till now, struck in from boughs lower down and higher up and midway, and
to the right and left, and from the tree-tops; and others arriving
hastily from the grey church turrets and old belfry window, joined the
clamour which rose and fell, and swelled and dropped again, and still
went on; and all this noisy contention amidst a skimming to and fro, and
lighting on fresh branches, and frequent changes of place, which
satirized the old restlessness of those who lay so still beneath the
moss and turf below, and the useless strife in which they had worn away
their lives.
CHARLES DICKENS.
[Illustration: II
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
_The Church Yard_]
THE PARSON
AS I was walking with him last night, he asked me how I liked the good
man whom I have just now mentioned? and without staying for my answer
told me, that he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at
his own table; for which reason he desired a particular friend of his at
the university to find him out a clergyman rather of plain sense than
much learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and,
if possible, a man that understood a little of backgammon. "My friend,"
says Sir Roger, found me out this gentleman, who, besides the endowments
required of him, is, they tell me, a good scholar, though he does not
show it. I have given him the parsonage of the parish; and because I
know his value, have settled on him a good annuity for life. . . .
At his first settling with me, I made him a present of all the good
sermons which have been printed in English, and only begged of him that
every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the pulpit. Accordingly
he has digested them into such a series, that they follow one another
naturally, and make a continued system of practical divinity.
As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the gentleman we were talking of
came up to us, and upon the Knight's asking him who preached to-morrow,
for it was Saturday night, told us, the bishop of St. Asaph in the
morning, and Dr. South in the afternoon. He then showed us his list of
preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a great deal of pleasure,
Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Saunderson, Dr. Barrow, Dr. Calamy, with
several living authors who have published discourses of practical
divinity.
ADDISON.
THE SWAN INN
LAST night I lay at the Swan Inn in Lathbury town. A sad night I had of
it! My chamber was warmed fair enough by a fire of sea coal. There was a
sweet smell of lavender in the sheets which a hot warming pan had also
made comfortable. All this promised well, but Polly had forgot to put my
silk night cap into my saddlebags! That vexed me sore! All night I felt
I was taking a rheum. Some clodhoppers roystering in the tap room
forbade sleep at first and as I am not wont to hear the quarters
stricken the Abbey bells roused me at frequent intervals and made me
swear roundly. About midnight the Royal Mail rolled over the bridge with
a noise fit to wake the Seven Sleepers! The hoof beats of its cattle
echoed on the stone walls of the houses like a salute by His Majesty's
Footguards! How I ached for my quiet chambers in the Temple. At length I
fell to sleep and so sound that when I waked the sun had long been
shining through my lattice. I was late in meeting the Squire and the
Vicar, and that too after making express this arduous ride. Indeed I was
vexed--and I showed it.
SWAIN'S _Old Salop._
THE Swan is a venerable and rambling building, stretching itself lazily
with outspread arms; one of those inns (long may they be preserved from
the rebuilders!) on which one stumbles up or down into every room, and
where eggs and bacon have an appropriateness that make them a more
desirable food than ambrosia. The little parlor is wainscotted with the
votive paintings--a village Diploma Gallery--of artists who have made
the Swan their home.
E. V. LUCAS.
[Illustration: III
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
_The Village_]
ONE almost expects to see a fine green moss all over an inhabitant of
Steyning. One day as I passed through the town I saw a man painting a
new sign over a shop, a proceeding that so aroused my curiosity that I
stood for a minute or two to look on. The painter filled in one letter,
gave a huge yawn, looked up and down two or three times as if he had
lost something, and finally descended from his perch and disappeared.
Five weeks later I passed that way again, and it is a fact that the same
man was at work on the same sign. Perhaps when the reader takes the walk
I am about to recommend to his attention--a walk which comprises some of
the finest scenery in Sussex--that sign will be finished, and the
accomplished artist will have begun another; but I doubt it. There is
plenty of time for everything in Steyning.
LOUIS JENNINGS.
THE OLD COUNTRY HOUSE
IF our old English folk could not get an arched roof, then they loved
to have it pointed, with polished timber beams on which the eye rested
as on looking upwards through a tree. Their rooms they liked of many
shapes, and not at right angles on the corners, nor all on the same
dead level of flooring. You had to go up a step into one, and down a
step into another, and along a winding passage into a third, so that
each part of the house had its individuality. To these houses life
fitted itself and grew to them; they were not mere walls, but became
part of existence. A man's house was not only his castle, a man's
house was himself. He could not tear himself away from his house, it
was like tearing up the shrieking mandrake by the root, almost death
itself. . . . Dark beams inlaid in the walls support the gables; the
slight curve of the great beam adds, I think, to the interest of the old
place, for it is a curve that has grown and was not premeditated; it has
grown like the bough of a tree, not from any set human design. This too
is the character of the house. It is not large, not overburdened with
gables, not ornamented, not what is called striking, in any way, but
simply an old English house, genuine and true. The warm sunlight falls
on the old red tiles, the dark beams look the darker for the glow of
light, the shapely cone of the hop-oust rises at the end; there are
swallows and flowers and ricks and horses, and so it is beautiful
because it is natural and honest. It is the simplicity that makes it so
touching, like the words of an old ballad . . . why even a tall
chanticleer makes a home look homely. I do like to see a tall proud
chanticleer strutting in the yard and barely giving way as I advance,
almost ready to do battle with a stranger like a mastiff.
JEFFRIES, _Buckhurst Park._
[Illustration: IV
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
_The Hall_]
THE BEDESMEN
THERE he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the
great Examination Day. . . . Yonder sit some threescore old gentlemen
pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms. You
hear them coughing feebly in the twilight,--the old reverend blackgowns.
. . . How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, here uttered again in
the place where in childhood we used to hear them! How beautiful, and
decorous the rite; how noble the ancient words of the supplications
which the priest utters, and to which generations of fresh children and
troops of bygone seniors have cried Amen! under those arches! The
service for Founder's Day is a special one; one of the psalms selected
being the thirty-seventh and we hear--
23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth
in his way--
24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord
upholdeth him with his hand.
25. I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.
W. M. THACKERAY.
HIRAM'S HOSPITAL
HIRAM'S HOSPITAL, as the retreat is called, is a picturesque building
enough, and shows the correct taste with which the ecclesiastical
architects of those days were imbued. It stands on the banks of the
little river, which flows nearly round the cathedral close, being on the
side furthest from the town. The London road crosses the river by a
pretty one-arched bridge, and looking from this bridge, the stranger
will see the windows of the old men's rooms, each pair of windows
separated by a small buttress. A broad gravel walk runs between the
building and the river, which is always trim and cared for; and at the
end of the walk, under the parapet of the approach to the bridge, is a
large and well-worn seat, on which, in mild weather three or four of
Hiram's bedesmen are sure to be seen seated. Beyond this row of
buttresses, and further from the bridge and also further from the water
which here suddenly bends, are the pretty oriel windows of Mr. Harding's
house, and his well mown lawn. The entrance to the hospital is from the
London road and is made through a ponderous gateway under a heavy stone
arch, unnecessary, one would suppose, at any time, for the protection of
twelve old men, but greatly conducive to the good appearance of Hiram's
charity. On passing through this portal, never closed to any one from
six A.M. till ten P.M., and never open afterwards, except on application
to a huge, intricately hung mediæval bell, the handle of which no
un-initiated intruder can possibly find, the six doors of the old men's
abodes are seen, and beyond them is a slight iron screen, through which
the more happy portion of the Barchester élite pass into the Elysium of
Mr. Harding's dwelling.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE, _The Warden._
[Illustration: V
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
_Trong's Almshouses_]
RANCONEZZO
SIRMIONE
ROW us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row!
So they row'd, and there we landed--"O venusta Sirmio!"
There to me thro' all the groves of olive in the summer glow,
There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
Came that "Ave atque Vale" of the Poet's hopeless woe,
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,
"Frater Ave atque Vale"--as we wandered to and fro
Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda lake below
Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive silvery Sirmio.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
[Illustration: VI
RANCONEZZO
_The Town and the Lake_]
THE ITALIAN LAKES
HE who loves immense space, cloud shadows sailing over purple slopes,
island gardens, distant glimpses of snow-capped mountains, breadth, air,
immensity, and flooding sunlight, will choose Maggiore. But scarcely has
he cast his vote for this, the Juno of the divine rivals, when he
remembers the triple lovelinesses of the Larian Aphrodite, disclosed in
all their placid grace from Villa Serbelloni;--the green blue of the
waters, clear as glass, opaque through depth; the _millefleurs_ roses
clambering into cypresses by Cadenabbia; the laburnums hanging their
yellow clusters from the clefts of Sasso Rancio; the oleander arcades of
Varenna; the wild white limestone crags of San Martino, which he has
climbed to feast his eyes with the perspective, magical, serene,
Leonardesquely perfect, of the distant gates of Adda. Then while this
modern Paris is yet doubting, perhaps a thought may cross his mind of
sterner solitary Lake Iseo--the Pallas of the three. She offers her own
attractions. The sublimity of Monte Adamello, dominating Lovere and all
the lowland like Hesiod's hill of Virtue reared aloft above the plain of
common life, has charms to tempt heroic lovers.
SYMONDS, _Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece._
PIAZZA GARIBALDI
THE painter may transfer its campanile, glittering like dragon's scales,
to his canvas. The lover of the picturesque will wander through its
aisle at mass-time, watching the sunlight play upon those upturned
Southern faces with their ardent eyes; and happy is he who sees young
men and maidens on Whit Sunday crowding round the chancel rails, to
catch the marigolds and gillyflowers scattered from baskets which the
priest has blessed.
SYMONDS, _Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece._
DOWN IN THE CITY
IS it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and
splash!
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foam-bows
flash
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle
and pash
Round the lady atop in the conch--fifty gazers do not abash,
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a
sort of a sash!
Ere opening your eyes in the city the blessed church-bells begin:
No sooner the bells leave off, than the diligence rattles in:
You get the picks of the news, and it costs you never a pin.
By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood,
draws teeth;
Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market beneath.
At the post-office such a scene-picture--the new play, piping hot!
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were
shot.
* * * * *
Noon strikes,--here sweeps the procession! Our lady borne smiling
and smart
With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her
heart!
_Bang, whang, whang_, goes the drum; _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife;
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!
ROBERT BROWNING.
[Illustration: VII
RANCONEZZO
_Piazza Garibaldi_]
PIAZZA CAVOUR
THE changes of scene upon this tiny square are so frequent as to remind
one of a theatre. Looking down from the inn-balcony, between the glazy
green pots gay with scarlet amaryllis-bloom, we are inclined to fancy
that the whole has been prepared for our amusement. In the morning the
cover for the macaroni-flour, after being washed, is spread out on the
bricks to dry. In the afternoon the fishermen bring their nets for the
same purpose. In the evening the city magnates promenade and whisper.
Dark-eyed women, with orange or crimson kerchiefs for headgear, cross
and re-cross, bearing baskets on their shoulders. Great lazy large
limbed fellows, girt with scarlet sashes and finished off with dark blue
night-caps (for a contrast to their saffron-colored shirts, white
breeches and sunburnt calves), slouch about or sleep face downwards on
the parapets.
SYMONDS, _Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece._
[Illustration: VIII
RANCONEZZO
_Piazza Cavour_]
A ROMANESQUE DOORWAY
* * * * *
HOW the hand of Time has mellowed the ruddy brick and the marble's
whiteness until ivory and rose blend and are in harmony with those
stained and faded frescoes which still remain in the panels of the upper
walls. Columns of veined marble stand in ranks on either side of the
entrance. They are mounted on the backs of stiff-maned lions. Fit
supporters are these for the arches of the Sanctuary as, at its very
door, with claw and tooth they tear to pieces the bestial forms of vice
and ignorance. Above rise the moulded archivolts, tier on tier, clothed
with vine and tendril and peopled with bird and beast. These may be
uncouth in form, but the rude hands that fashioned them learned their
lesson at the feet of Nature. What there is of convention in arrangement
or in pattern has flowed hither through the East from the original
fountains of Greece and Rome but now at last all moves in freedom and
without restraint. As in the short nights of the North sunrise follows
fast upon the setting of the sun, so here though we see in this work the
sunset of the Antique yet it is already aglow with light from the coming
dawn of Mediæval Art.
ROBERTS, _Italian Sketches._
[Illustration: IX
RANCONEZZO
_North Door of Duomo_]
LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL
FLORENCE is more noisy; indeed, I think it the noisiest town I was ever
in. What with the continual jangling of its bells, the rattle of
Austrian drums, and the street cries, _Ancora mi raccapriccio_. The
Italians are a vociferous people, and most so among them the
Florentines. Walking through a back street one day, I saw an old woman
higgling with a peripatetic dealer, who, at every interval afforded him
by the remarks of his veteran antagonist, would tip his head on one
side, and shout, with a kind of wondering enthusiasm, as if he could
hardly trust the evidence of his own senses to such loveliness, _O, che
bellezza! che belle-e-ezza!_ The two had been contending as obstinately
as the Greeks and Trojans over the body of Patroclus, and I was curious
to know what was the object of so much desire on the one side and
admiration on the other. It was a half dozen of weazeny baked pears,
beggarly remnant of the day's traffic. . . . It never struck me before
what a quiet people Americans are.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
WITHIN THE DUOMO
THE semi-dome of the eastern apse above the high altar is entirely
filled with a gigantic half-length figure of Christ. He raises His right
hand to bless and with His left holds an open book on which is written
in Greek and Latin, "I am the Light of the world." . . . Below him on a
smaller scale are ranged the archangels and the mother of the Lord, who
holds the child upon her knees. Thus Christ appears twice upon this
wall, once as the Omnipotent Wisdom, the Word by whom all things were
made, and once as God deigning to assume a shape of flesh and dwell with
men. The magnificent image of supreme Deity seems to fill with a single
influence and to dominate the whole building. The house with all its
glory is his. He dwells there like Pallas in her Parthenon or Zeus in
his Olympian temple. To left and right over every square inch of the
cathedral blaze mosaics, which portray the story of God's dealings with
the human race from the Creation downwards, together with those angelic
beings and saints who symbolize each in his own degree some special
virtue granted to mankind. The walls of the fane are therefore an open
book of history, theology and ethics for all men to read.
SYMONDS, _Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece._
[Illustration: X
RANCONEZZO
_Interior of the Duomo_]
FROM "A LEGEND OF BRITTANY"
DEEPER and deeper shudders shook the air,
As the huge bass kept gathering heavily,
Like thunder when it rouses in its lair,
And with its hoarse growl shakes the low-hung sky,
It grew up like a darkness everywhere,
Filling the vast cathedral;--suddenly
From the dense mass a boy's clear treble broke
Like lightning, and the full-toned choir awoke.
Through gorgeous windows shone the sun aslant,
Brimming the church with gold and purple mist.
Meet atmosphere to bosom that rich chant,
Where fifty voices in one strand did twist
Their varicolored tones and left no want
To the delighted soul, which sank abyssed
In the warm music cloud, while, far below,
The organ heaved its surges to and fro.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
THE VILLA
OUR villa . . .
. . . lies on the slope of the Alban hill;
Lifting its white face, sunny and still,
Out of the olives' pale gray green,
That, far away as the eye can go,
Stretch up behind it, row upon row.
There in the garden the cypresses, stirred
By the sifting winds, half musing talk,
And the cool, fresh, constant voice is heard
Of the fountain's spilling in every walk.
There stately the oleanders grow,
And one long gray wall is aglow
With golden oranges burning between
Their dark stiff leaves of sombre green.
And there are hedges all clipped and square,
As carven from blocks of malachite,
Where fountains keep spinning their threads of light
And statues whiten the shadow there.
And if the sun too fiercely shine,
And one would creep from its noonday glare,
There are galleries dark, where ilexes twine
Their branchy roofs above the head.
W. W. STORY.
[Illustration: XI
RANCONEZZO
_The Villa of the Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti_]
TRULY everything here has a dramatic character. The smallness and grace
of this little church gleaming with colour, its chapels and grottoes
like a spiritual vision, such as I have never found elsewhere in the
whole field of religious conception. It is an illustrated picture-book
of poetical legends, which are bloodless and painless, though fantastic,
like the lives of pious anchorites in the wilderness, and amid the birds
of the field. Here Religion treads on the borders of fairy-land, and
brings an indescribable atmosphere away from thence.
GREGOROVIUS.
BRAMANTE
FEW words record Bramante's great command,
As from some mountain silence set apart,
He blazed a trail along the way of art,
Upheld the torch and led his little band.
He spoke alone to those who understand,
Not cheapening words within the public mart,
Living withdrawn, a high and humble heart,
Creating loveliness for his loved land.
Though he dwelt cloistered in his northern home,
When he strode forth it was with unveiled face,
To rear a fabric that may crumble never.
They called him "Master" when he wrought in Rome
And with earth's greatest ones shall labor ever
The hand that gave to Lombardy her grace.
MARION MONKS CHASE.
[Illustration: XII
RANCONEZZO
_Santa Prassede, the Cardinal's Church_]
IL PENSEROSO
BUT let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale,
And love the high embowèd roof,
With antick pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced Quire below,
In service high and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstacies,
And bring all Heaven before mine eyes.
MILTON.
[Illustration: XIII
RANCONEZZO
_The Cloisters of Santa Prassede_]
THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB IN SANTA PRASSEDE
YET still my niche is not so cramped but thence
One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side
And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
And up into the aery dome, where live
The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk;
And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
And neath my tabernacle take my rest,
With those nine columns round me, two and two,
The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands;
Peach blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
As fresh poured red wine of a mighty pulse.
Old Gandolph with his paltry onion-stone
Put me where I may look at him! True peach,
Rosy and faultless: . . .
* * * * *
Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black
'T was ever antique-black I meant! How else
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?
The bas-relief in bronze you promised me,
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,
And Moses with the tables,--but I know
Ye mark me not!
ROBERT BROWNING.
[Illustration: XIV
RANCONEZZO
_The Tomb of Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti in Santa Prassede_]
ROCHER-ST.-POL
FRENCH TOWNS
IT is a drowsy little Burgundian town, very old and ripe, with crooked
streets, vistas always oblique, and steep moss-covered roofs. . . . I
carried away from Beaune the impression of something autumnal,--something
rusty yet kindly, like the taste of a sweet russet pear.
* * * * *
At Le Mans as at Bourges, my first business was with the cathedral, to
which I lost no time in directing my steps. . . . It stands on the edge
of the eminence of the town, which falls straight away on two sides of
it, and makes a striking mass, bristling behind, as you see it from
below, with rather small but singularly numerous flying buttresses. On
my way to it I happened to walk through the one street which contains a
few ancient and curious houses,--a very crooked and untidy lane, of
really mediæval aspect, honored with the denomination of the Grand Rue.
Here is the house of Queen Berengaria. . . . The structure in
question--very sketchable, if the sketcher could get far enough away
from it--is an elaborate little dusky façade, overhanging the street,
ornamented with panels of stone, which are covered with delicate
Renaissance sculpture. A fat old woman, standing in the door of a small
grocer's shop next to it,--a most gracious old woman, with a
bristling moustache and a charming manner,--told me what the house
was.
* * * * *
This admirable house, in the centre of the town, gabled, elaborately
timbered, and much restored, is a really imposing monument. The basement
is occupied by a linen-draper, who flourishes under the auspicious sign
of the Mère de Famille; and above her shop the tall front rises in five
overhanging stories. As the house occupies the angle of a little
_place_, the front is double, and carved and interlaced, has a high
picturesqueness. The Maison d'Adam is quite in the grand style, and I am
sorry to say I failed to learn what history attaches to its name.
* * * * *
I remember going around to the church, after I had left the good
sisters, and to a little quiet terrace, which stands in front of it,
ornamented with a few small trees and bordered with a wall, breast high,
over which you look down steep hillsides, off into the air, and all
about the neighboring country. I remember saying to myself that this
little terrace was one of those felicitous nooks which the tourist of
taste keeps in his mind as a picture.
HENRY JAMES, _A Little Tour in France._
[Illustration: XV
ROCHER-ST.-POL
_The Town and the River Merle_]
A COUNTRY TOWN
THEY wake you early in this hilly town. It was hardly light this morning
when up and down through all its highways went a vigorous drum beat.
Reluctantly peeking from the window to see the troops enter our square I
was disappointed to find that one regimental drummer, marching
unaccompanied and lonely, had done all this mischief. What useful
purpose did he serve? After a brief respite and repose the noise of
another commotion came in with the morning air; a murmur which grew and
became a chatter and at last a din! The next journey to the window
showed that the morning market was in full swing. Piles of fresh greens
and rich-colored vegetables were tended by gnarled old peasant women
sitting under widespread umbrellas of faded colors. But what a pleasant
air it was that came through the opened sash; a mountain air with just
that faint flavor of garlic tinging it which presages something
satisfying to be found later. Strengthened for a time by our coffee and
rolls we wandered through these winding streets. We saw the
weather-beaten, leaden flèche of the cathedral high on the hill, but for
the time were satisfied to study the many ancient houses which still
remain. Their fronts framed in dark oak with a filling of amber-colored
plaster topple over the public ways until they almost meet. Here and
there the oak beams are carved, and grinning man or snarling monster
regards you from corbel or boss. In places too there are bits of old
Gothic detail and one doorway of true Flamboyant work. There is the true
poetry of architecture! In England the Decorated Period gives you what
is handsome, the Perpendicular what is stately. In France the
cathedrals of Paris and of Rheims are splendidly serious and correct;
but if in Gothic work you seek imaginative, unrestrained, carelessly
free poetry it is to be found in the flowing lines and exuberant fancy
of the work of the Flamboyant period.
[Illustration: XVI
ROCHER-ST.-POL
_La Grande Rue and La Place de la République_]
We found much needed restoration in the hors-d'oeuvres, the omelette,
the cutlet, the salads and the cheese of déjeuner,--and then followed
coffee under the awning of the café. Here we looked out on the Grand
Place which had now become sleepy, all signs of the market and its
business having disappeared. On it front the Mairie, the Bureau des
Postes, the Hôtel du Lion d'Or and various centres of local commerce. We
watched our neighbors in the café; the colonel with clanking sword in
vigorous discussion with a local magnate; the retired bourgeois who
played a desultory game of billiards or a deeply thought out match at
dominoes. A quiet square it was now, and, in the shade of its plane
trees, comfortable and at peace with the world, we fell asleep and made
up for the wakefulness of our earlier hours.
ROBERTS, _Letters from France._
OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS
HIGH throned above th' encircling meadows fair
Our Lady of the Rocks holds queenly sway!
Bright kerchiefed peasants daily wend their way
With clattering sabots up the winding stair,
Pausing at each rude rock-hewn station, there
To bend the knee and many an Ave say.
Up, up they climb, their voices echoing gay
Till by the Virgin's shrine they kneel in prayer.
This is that "Jacob's Ladder" famed afar
To which the Kings of France made pilgrimage
Asking for favors both in Peace and War.
Well named!--for Heavenwards the way is tending,
And all these happy, pious folk presage
Angels of God ascending and descending.
H. L. P.
BUT, when so sad thou canst no sadder,
Cry, and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched between heaven and Charing Cross.
So in the night my soul, my daughter,
Cry, clinging heaven by the hems,
And lo! Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesaret but Thames.
FRANCIS THOMPSON.
[Illustration: XVII
ROCHER-ST.-POL
_L'escalier de Jacob_]
OFT have I seen at some cathedral door
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
So as I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.
How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
This crowd of statues, on whose folded sleeves
Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves
Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
What exultations trampling on despair,
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
What passionate outcry of the soul in pain
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediæval miracle of song!
H. W. LONGFELLOW.
[Illustration: XVIII
ROCHER-ST.-POL
_Le Parvis de Ste Frédigonde_]
THE CATHEDRAL
LOOKING up suddenly, I found mine eyes
Confronted with the minster's vast repose.
Silent and gray as forest-leaguered cliff
Left inland by the ocean's slow retreat.
* * * * *
It rose before me, patiently remote
From the great tides of life it breasted once,
Hearing the noise of men as in a dream
I stood before the triple northern port,
Where dedicated shapes of saints and kings,
Stern faces bleared with immemorial watch,
Looked down benignly grave and seemed to say,
_Ye come and go incessant; we remain
Safe in the hallowed quiets of the past;
Be reverent, ye who flit and are forgot,
Of faith so nobly realized as this._
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
CHARTRES
ALL day the sky had been banked with thunderclouds, but by the time we
reached Chartres, toward four o'clock, they had rolled away under the
horizon, and the town was so saturated with sunlight that to pass into
the cathedral was like entering the dense obscurity of a church in
Spain. At first all detail was imperceptible: we were in a hollow night.
Then, as the shadows gradually thinned and gathered themselves up into
pier and vault and ribbing, there burst out of them great sheets and
showers of color. Framed by such depths of darkness, and steeped in a
blaze of mid-summer sun, the familiar windows seemed singularly remote
and yet overpoweringly vivid. Now they widened into dark-shored pools
splashed with sunset, now glittered and menaced like the shields of
fighting angels. Some were cataracts of sapphires, others roses dropped
from a saint's tunic, others great carven platters strewn with heavenly
regalia, others the sails of galleons bound for the Purple Islands; and
in the western wall the scattered fires of the rose window hung like a
constellation in an African night. When one dropped one's eyes from
these ethereal harmonies, the dark masses of masonry below them, all
veiled and muffled in a mist pricked by a few altar lights, seemed to
symbolize the life on earth, with its shadows, its heavy distances and
its little islands of illusions. All that a great cathedral can be, all
the meanings it can express, all the tranquillizing power it can breathe
upon the soul, all the richness of detail it can fuse into a large
utterance of strength and beauty, the cathedral of Chartres gave us in
that perfect hour.
EDITH WHARTON, _Fighting France._
[Illustration: XIX
ROCHER-ST.-POL
_Interior of the Church of Ste Frédigonde_]
AT HIGH MASS
THOU Who hast made this world so wondrous fair;--
The pomp of clouds; the glory of the sea;
Music of water; songbirds' melody;
The organ of Thy thunder in the air;
Breath of the rose; and beauty everywhere--
Lord, take this stately service done to Thee,
The grave enactment of Thy Calvary
In jewelled pomp and splendor pictured there!
Lord, take the sounds and sights; the silk and gold;
The white and scarlet; take the reverent grace
Of ordered step; window and glowing wall--
Prophet and Prelate, holy men of old;
And teach us children of the Holy Place
Who love Thy Courts, to love Thee best of all.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON.
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE
ALL else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed away--all their
living interests, and aims, and achievements. We know not for what they
labored, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth,
authority, happiness--all have departed, though bought by many a bitter
sacrifice. But of them, and their life and their toil upon the earth,
one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those gray heaps of
deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers,
their honors, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration.
JOHN RUSKIN.
[Illustration: XX
ROCHER-ST.-POL
_Sacristy Steps in the Church of Ste Frédigonde_]
HUNTING THE STAG
WE spent yesterday in the Forêt de C----. As the Emperor had guests we
were not admitted at the Château, but we tramped for long through the
woods. The grassy roads run beneath the embowering beeches straight from
carrefour to carrefour. The gnarled and twisted trunks give to each tree
a personal character and make it a master-piece of Nature. Of a sudden
we came on the Imperial hunt winding in gay procession through the
forest to its rendezvous. Hunting horns in triple rings of brass
encircled the leading horsemen. From time to time we heard from them the
familiar strains which echo through the Latin Quarter at Mi-Carême. Then
followed in brilliant liveries a troop of lackeys, grooms, and other
servants, and the pack of staghounds held in leash but sniffing and
yelping. Next came the hunters themselves on high-bred mounts and in
court costumes of ancient design. Lastly there were barouches and
landaus carrying the ladies of the Court "en grande tenue." The sunlight
flickering through the beech branches enlivened this brilliant train as
it wound through the forest glades and disappeared down a green allée.
We had continued our walk for scarce a mile when, but a short distance
from us, a stag crossed our path--stood startled--with head erect,--and
then with confident leaps vanished in the forest just as the distant
hounds became aware of him and joined in a wild chorus. In a few moments
the pack came in a rush across our path. Up the different allées rode
the horsemen in haste--asking of us news of the stag. We on foot joined
in the pursuit,--but at last the forest swallowed one after the
other, stag, and hounds, and hunters, and the sound of dog and horn.
[Illustration: XXI
ROCHER-ST.-POL
_The Château Beaumesnil_]
On leaving the forest we passed the small Château. Its conical turret
roofs and lofty chimneys, and its flashing finials and girouettes make a
brave show above the forest trees. The terraces overlook wide meadow
lands through which the river winds until it is lost in the hazy
distance.
ROBERTS, _Letters from France._
CLOTILDE
IN Geraudun were brothers three,
They had one sister dear;
The cruel Baron her lord must be,
And the fellest and fiercest knight is he
In the country far or near.
He beat that lovely lady sore
With a staff of the apple green,
Till her blood flowed down on the castle floor,
And from head to foot the crimson gore
On her milk-white robe was seen.
* * * * *
Her robe was stained with the ruby tide
Once pure as the fleece so white;
And she hied her to the river-side
To wash in the waters bright.
While there she stood three knights so gay
Came riding bold and free.
"Ho! tell us young serving maiden, pray
Where yon castle's lady may be?"
"Alas! no serving maid am I,
But the lady of yonder castle high!"
"O sister, sister, truly tell
Who did this wrong to thee?"
"Dear brothers it was the husband fell
To whom you married me."
* * * * *
The brothers spurred their steeds in haste
And the castle soon they gained.
From chamber to chamber they swiftly passed
Nor paused till they reached the tower at last
Where the felon knight remained:
They drew their swords so sharp and bright
They thought on their sister sweet;
They struck together the felon knight,
And his head rolled at their feet!
_Translated by_ LOUIS S. COSTELLO.
[Illustration: XXII
ROCHER-ST.-POL
_La Tour de la Dame Blanche_]
AEGINASSOS
THE ISLES OF GREECE
THE isles of Greece! The isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,--
Where grew the arts of war and peace,--
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet
But all, except their sun, is set.
BYRON.
THE ODYSSEY
AS one that for a weary space has lain
Lull'd by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where the Ægean isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,
And only shadows of wan lovers pine,--
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again,--
So gladly from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours
They hear, like Ocean on a western beach,
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.
ANDREW LANG.
[Illustration: XXIII
AEGINASSOS
_The Temple and the Forum_]
ULYSSES
* * * * *
THERE lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the paths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
ALFRED TENNYSON.
[Illustration: XXIV
AEGINASSOS
_The Temple and the Forum_]
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Text uses both Aeginossis and Æginassos.
Page 25, "Leornardesquely" changed to "Leonardesquely" (Leonardesquely
perfect, of)
Page 65, "hors-oeuvres" changed to "hors d'oeuvres" (in the
hors-d'oeuvres)
Page 65, "d'éjeuner" changed to "déjeuner" (cheese of déjeuner)
Page 90, "Ææan" changed to "Ægean" (the Ægean isle)
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Hospital Sketches" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.