WE left London on the morning of the 14th, after a seven weeks’ sojourn, and, I must say it, one of perfect delight and satisfaction. Old Londoners could not remember a more charming “season;” the weather called forth rapturous comments, the city was full of attractions, the best and at their best, a most fortunate conjunction; and “all the world” seemed peopling its palaces, crowding its hotels, thronging its temples of art and pleasure, and pushing its way through the packed streets, to enjoy them. Believe me, it took a stout wrench to break away from all that. But as we said to our hostess in response to her amiable urgency to detain us yet longer, “Dear Madam, how shall we ‘see the world,’ unless we ‘move on’?”

A four hours’ railway ride brought us to York, where we “stopped over” till next afternoon to see the Minster, the walls and the ruins of St. Leonard’s Hospital and St. Mary’s Abbey, and the ancient city “in toto.” The sun shone for us in most lavish brilliancy, and we went after lunch to the Cathedral, spending an hour or more wandering “through it with the verger all to ourselves” (which we always account a peculiarly good piece of luck, as much interesting information is to be gained, when he can give you undivided attention).

We stood long before each of the great windows, too rapt in admiration, it must be confessed, to give due heed to the great budget of details our guide was so kindly pouring out for our benefit. The “Five Sisters” was the first that arrested us, consisting of five lancet-shaped lights, fifty-four feet high by thirty wide. It was presented by five maiden sisters, who worked the patterns first. They must have had a busy time of it, and I am glad I was not one of them, but am one who has had the privilege of enjoying their pious handiwork. Next the west and east windows, the first about the size of the “Five Sisters,” the latter said to be the largest in the world. As to the exquisite beauty of each, that is unutterable. We lingered and loitered in nave and choir and transept, till long after the sun had set, and then walked back to our hotel, a palace fit for any queen this world has ever throned; the views from its great French plate glass windows Victoria might be glad to claim. The next morning we attended choral service, and gave the entire forenoon to that splendid seat of Episcopal magnificence. From there we went to the ruins, both being in the same inclosure, a large tract laid out in beautiful walks and far-stretching expanses of lawn, with clumps of trees here and there, and beds and borders of flowers. I wish I had time to tell you how old these crumbling structures are, and the various fortunes to which they have been subjected. Suffice it that both are older than the time of the Conqueror, which surely would seem ancient enough.

In the afternoon we were most reluctant to “stick to our program,” and go on to Durham, but we did. We had a reminder of home on the way in an hour’s stop at Newcastle-on-Tyne—as coal begrimed as Pittsburgh. I was glad to leave it behind, and find fresh, clean air coming into my lungs as it vanished from my sight. We ran into Durham in good time for a climb to its Cathedral, “unequaled in situation on a high hill.” Again we had a verger all to ourselves, and he proved a fellow with some wit, with all his overwhelming “stock in trade” of cathedral knowledge in architecture.

I was so hoarse I could only croak, but too athirst for knowledge to let that hinder. So, as I said something to this effect, “Tell me about that—the book I have does not tell anything, though I got the best I could find”—with the most mischievous smile he burst out, “I think you got something worse, haven’t you?” We were fast friends from that moment till I bowed “good-bye” next day—crossing his willing hand with the inevitable silver shilling. You have read all about this cathedral; that it is a splendid example of Norman, early English, transitional, and perpendicular styles in its different parts; that St. Cuthbert is its patron saint, and his bones rest here; maybe, remember how his monks

That was long ago, and now even I “know the place.” I stood upon the flagstones that covered it! Bede is buried there, so I have to tell you that I leaned upon his tombstone and read the inscription:

and recalled the story of the monk’s worry over his hexameter, his lucky nap, and the opportune help of that convenient angel, who fixed it up “all right” while he slept the sleep of the righteous. I saw the carved image of the Dun Cow, from which it got its name. I am not so sure that legend is so familiar to you. It took hard work, innumerable questions, search and research, for me to get hold of it, quaint and simple as it is. In that seven years’ quest for a resting-place for the corpse, the monks had stopped with it at a place called Ward Law, from which they could not move it, it seeming fastened to the ground. This set them all praying to know where they should take it. The answer to their prayer was, “Dunholme” (Durham). As they were searching about in great perplexity, they heard a woman, who was looking for her stray cow, call to her neighbor, asking if she had seen it. The cry back was: “She is at Dunholme.” Behold! this quest was ended. And the cow is a beauty of the kind that makes one wish she could be driven home into his own pasture, to be “a possession forever.” She stands sleek and serene in her niche in the outer wall, and seems to follow you with a watchful gaze as you pluck buttercups and clover-blooms, lineal descendants, beyond a doubt, of those on which her prototype fed in the spacious close beneath her.

We tarried atop that green hill and in those sacred precincts, till the fainter day that is far from twilight, though the sun is long gone, warned us of the late hour. Such an evening as we had in ancient Durham—“a dirty hole in general,” as a little Scotch boy wrote of it in 1820. And a little American woman verifies it to-day. First, a street concert by Highlanders in full national costume, with their screeching bagpipes. They ended and vanished. Then came trooping by a large body of the Salvation Army, with their leader, a woman, facing her forces and keeping time with a stick to their singing. She looked like a wild creature, and the spectacle was one more conducive to speculation than to admiration. As their frantic strains died away in the distance, a sweet, clear-ringing child voice burst forth. It soared up to us like a lark,

“Singing as it soars and soaring as it sings.”

We opened our windows and saw a young boy standing in the street alone and without any instrument, singing with an absorption that made him oblivious to his surroundings. He did not even notice the fall of the pennies for which he was singing, till a woman, who had stopped to hear him, gathered them up and put them into his hands.

We felt as if we were listening to an incipient Brignoli. He went too. At eleven o’clock, the daylight not yet merged in night, we fell asleep to harp music, played by a band of Gypsies in most picturesque garb. We hurried to the cathedral next morning for “choral service,” and heard some fine music, which attuned us to our loitering among its ancient memorials. After some hours inside we came out into the lovely day, and strolled off for a walk. From the crest of the hill on which the cathedral is built to the water’s edge its wooded sides are laid out in beautiful shady walks. There we wandered, keeping up a running fire of exclamations at the beautiful broken views, gathering now a wild flower, now a fern, or stretching up for a leaf from the masses of thick foliage on the trees overhead. How the hours shot by! Atop of the hill again, we found our way into a castle, in close neighborhood to the cathedral, a charming old piece of antiquity, with its stores of rare, old curious things. I could fill a quire of old-fashioned letter paper and not do half justice to it. So I shan’t say anything more about it, but shut both eyes and mouth and get away from Durham, already grown fascinating enough to make me wish I could live in the shadow of that ancient pile with its “gothic shade.”

Our route hither lay for the most part of the way along the coast of the German ocean. The white breakers burst right beneath us sometimes, sending their roar to our ears. Away off occasionally glimmered a dream-like sail, or a phantom stretch of smoke from some passing-out-of-our-world vessel. Near enough for a good view we saw,

very literally a “castle by the sea,” as it seemed as if washed by its waves. The country landward was prettily rolling and laid off in fields of grain and pasture. Great flocks of sheep speckled the latter. A Scotch lady got into our “compartment” when we were still some miles from “Dun Edin.” She was very companionable and pointed out all the features of note as they came in sight.

The sun as it went down was a great puzzle to us; it seemed to be setting in the east, and we could not get it to fit the points of the compass stowed away in our craniums. You see it did not set till nearer nine than eight o’clock, and that gave it time to get almost round to where it had started from! The Scotch welcome quite won our hearts. We had written and engaged rooms a week before, so knew we would be expected. The landlady and three daintily-arrayed maids were in the hall, and the former, Mrs. Campbell, stepped forward and took our hands, with the sweetest-voiced welcome! We felt at home at once. Just here I think I must give you a list of the people collected under her roof—tourists, here for a day or weeks, as may chance: an Episcopal High Church curate, from Wales; a Mrs. Smith and her daughter, from Australia; a Mr. Bruce, from the Cape of Good Hope (he was there when Stanley went there with the remnant of the host that made the trip with him “Across the Dark Continent”); a Mr. Masters and wife, from another part of South Africa, he an emigrant from Yorkshire and she a native born, but the daughter of an emigrant; a lady who resides in Oxford and is enthusiastic about it as a place of residence; two young ladies from the south of England; another two, sisters, from London; a Miss Gurley, a Scotch maiden lady, a great traveler and linguist, and altogether charming. She had been to the United States and Canada, three times. While in the United States, she was the guest of Bishop Potter. She belongs to Edinburgh, is living across the Firth, among the hills of Fife, not far from royal Falkland. Add us three Americans, and I think it could be called a mixed household, indeed,

L. G. C.

Edinburgh, July 4, 1882.