FLAARDING.

The Maese presently brought us opposite to this small port, the metropolis of the herring fishers; rendered interesting by the patient industry and useful courage of its inhabitants. We landed at it, but saw only what was immediately open for observation. Like most of the Dutch towns, on the banks of rivers, it is protected from floods by standing at the distance of three or four hundred yards from the shore, and communicates with the stream only by a narrow, but deep canal. The best street is built upon the quays of this channel, on which the herring boats deposit their cargoes before the doors of the owners. We did not see more than fifty, a great number being then at sea. Except the business in this street, and the smell of herrings, which prevailed every where, there was nothing to shew that we were in a place supported solely by the industry of fishermen; no neglected houses, no cottages, no dirty streets, no inferiority, in point of neatness and brightness, to the other towns of Holland.

The inhabitants are remarkable for adhering to the dress, as well as the employments of their ancestors; so much so, that their clothing is mentioned in other towns as the representation of the antient national dress, common throughout all the provinces two centuries since; and it is certain, that their appearance is exactly such as is delineated in pictures of that date.

Some miles further, we entered the old Maese, a channel in several parts very narrow, and evidently preserved by art, but in others nobly expansive, and filled almost to the level of the luxuriant pastures and groves that border it. In one part, where the antient stream takes a circuitous course, a canal has been cut, that shortens the voyage, for light vessels, by several miles, and barks in one channel are sometimes visible from the other, their sails swelling over fields, in which, at a distance, no water is discernible. Neat and substantial farmhouses, with meadows flaming from them to the river, frequently occurred; and there were more appearances of the careful labours, peculiar to the Dutch, than in the great Maese itself, the banks being occasionally supported, like their dykes, by a compact basket-work of flags and faggots.

Passing many small villages, or hamlets, we came, at sun-set, to the large branch of the sea, which spreads from Williamstadt to Helvoetsluys, and from thence to the German ocean. The former fortress was faintly visible at a great distance over the water; and, while we were straining our sight towards it, there was proof enough of a nearness to the present theatre of war, the sounds of the siege of Sluys coming loudly and distinctly in the breeze. The characters of evening had fallen upon the scene in mild and deep solemnity; but the glories of nature were unfelt, while a dreadful estimation of the miseries, produced at each return of the sullen roar, pressed almost exclusively upon the mind; considerations, which were soon after prolonged by the melancholy view of several English transports, filled with wounded soldiers, whose blythe music, now at the firing of the evening gun, was rendered painful by its contrast to the truth of their conditions.

At Helvoetsluys, nothing was to be heard, but accounts, derived from many respectable officers, on their way to England, of the unexampled difficulties borne, cheerfully borne, by the British army, within the last three months, and deservedly mentioned, not as complaints, but as proofs of their firmness. There were, however, mingled with these, many reports as to the contrary conduct even of those continental troops, which still kept the field with us; of their tardiness, their irregularity, of the readiness with which they permitted the British to assume all the dangers of attacks, and of their little co-operation even in the means of general resistance. Brave Anglois! Brave Anglois! was the constant shout of these troops, when they had recourse to the British to regain the posts themselves had just lost, or to make some assault, which they had refused, or had attempted with ineffectual formality. They would then follow our troops, and, when an advantage was gained, seemed to think they had share enough of the victory, if they were at hand to continue the slaughter of the retreating, and to engross all the plunder of the dead.

We were as glad to escape from such considerations, as from the crowded inns of Helvoetsluys, now little more convenient than ships; and, the next morning, embarked on board the American vessel, then arrived from Rotterdam. A fair wind soon wafted us out of sight of the low coast of Holland; but we were afterwards becalmed, and carried by tides so far towards the Flemish shore as to have the firing before Sluys not only audible, but terribly loud. For part of three days, we remained within hearing of this noise; but did not, therefore, think ourselves very distant from the English coast, knowing that the fire, at the preceding siege of Nieuport, had been heard as far as the Downs; Nieuport, the wretched scene of so many massacres, and of distress, which, in Holland, had been forcibly described to us by eye-witnesses.

So keenly, indeed were the horrors of this place conceived by those, who personally escaped from them, that of the emigrants, rescued by the intrepidity of our seamen, many suppressed all joy at their own deliverance by lamentations for the fate of their brethren. One gentleman was no sooner on board a ship, then exposed to the batteries on shore, than he climbed the shrouds and remained aloft, notwithstanding all entreaties, till a severe wound obliged him to descend. Another, who had been saved from the beach by a young sailor, was unable to swim so far as the ship; and the honest lad, having taken him upon his back, struggled hard amidst a shower of balls to save both their lives. At length, he, too, began to falter; and the weakness of his efforts, not his complaints, seemed to shew his companion, that one, or both of them, must perish: the latter nobly asked the lad, whether he could save his own life, if left to himself; and, receiving a reluctant reply, that probably he might do so, but that he would strive for both, the emigrant instantly plunged into the ocean and was seen no more. The glorious sailor reached his ship, just as he began again to sail, and was saved.

The calm continued during the day, and the sun set with uncommon grandeur among clouds of purple, red and gold, that mingling with the serene azure of the upper sky, composed a richness and harmony of colouring which we never saw surpassed. It was most interesting to watch the progress of evening and its effect on the waters; streaks of light scattered among the dark western clouds, after the sun had set, and gleaming in long reflection on the sea, while a grey obscurity was drawing over the east, as the vapours rose gradually from the ocean. The air was breathless; the tall sails of the vessel were without motion, and her course upon the deep scarcely perceptible; while, above, the planet Jupiter burned with steady dignity, and threw a tremulous line of light on the sea, whose surface flowed in smooth waveless expanse. Then, other planets appeared, and countless stars spangled the dark waters. Twilight now pervaded air and ocean, but the west was still luminous, where one solemn gleam of dusky red edged the horizon, from under heavy vapours.

It was now that we first discovered some symptoms of England; the lighthouse on the South-Foreland appeared like a dawning star above the margin of the sea.

The vessel made little progress during the night. With the earliest dawn of morning we were on deck, in the hope of seeing the English coast; but the mists veiled it from our view. A spectacle, however, the most grand in nature, repaid us for our disappointment, and we found the circumstances of a sun-rise at sea, yet more interesting than those of a sun-set. The moon, bright and nearly at her meridian, shed a strong lustre on the ocean, and gleamed between the sails upon the deck; but the dawn, beginning to glimmer, contended with her light, and, soon touching the waters with a cold grey tint, discovered them spreading all round to the vast horizon. Not a sound broke upon the silence, except the lulling one occasioned by the course of the vessel through the waves, and now and then the drowsy song of the pilot, as he leaned on the helm; his shadowy figure just discerned, and that of a sailor pacing near the head of the ship with crossed arms and a rolling step. The captain, wrapt in a sea-coat, lay asleep on the deck, wearied with the early watch. As the dawn strengthened, it discovered white sails stealing along the distance, and the flight of some sea-fowls, as they uttered their slender cry, and then, dropping upon the waves, sat floating on the surface. Meanwhile, the light tints in the east began to change, and the skirts of a line of clouds below to assume a hue of tawny red, which gradually became rich orange and purple. We could now perceive a long tract of the coast of France, like a dark streak of vapour hovering in the south, and were somewhat alarmed on finding ourselves within view of the French shore, while that of England was still invisible.

The moon-light faded fast from the waters, and soon the long beams of the sun shot their lines upwards through the clouds and into the clear blue sky above, and all the sea below glowed with fiery reflections, for a considerable time, before his disk appeared. At length he rose from the waves, looking from under clouds of purple and gold; and as he seemed to touch the water, a distant vessel passed over his disk, like a dark speck.

We were soon after cheered by the faintly seen coast of England, but at the same time discovered, nearer to us on the south-west, the high blue headlands of Calais; and, more eastward, the town, with its large church and the steeples of two others, seated on the edge of the sea. The woods, that fringe the summits of hills rising over it, were easily distinguished with glasses, as well as the national flag on the steeple of the great church. As we proceeded, Calais cliffs, at a considerable distance westward of the town, lost their aërial blue, and shewed an high front of chalky precipice, overtopped by dark downs. Beyond, far to the south-west, and at the foot of a bold promontory, that swelled above all the neighbouring heights, our glasses gave us the towers and ramparts of Boulogne, sloping upward from the shore, with its tall lighthouse on a low point running out into the sea; the whole appearing with considerable dignity and picturesque effect. The hills beyond were tamer, and sunk gradually away in the horizon. At length, the breeze wafting us more to the north, we discriminated the bolder features of the English coast, and, about noon, found ourselves nearly in the middle of the channel, having Picardy on our left and Kent on the right, its white cliffs aspiring with great majesty over the flood. The sweeping bay of Dover, with all its chalky heights, soon after opened. The town appeared low on the shore within, and the castle, with round and massy towers, crowned the vast rock, which, advancing into the sea, formed the eastern point of the crescent, while Shakespeare's cliff, bolder still and sublime as the eternal name it bears, was the western promontory of the bay. The height and grandeur of this cliff were particularly striking, when a ship was seen sailing at its base, diminished by comparison to an inch. From hence the cliffs towards Folkstone, though still broken and majestic, gradually decline. There are, perhaps, few prospects of sea and shore more animated and magnificent than this. The vast expanse of water, the character of the cliffs, that guard the coast, the ships of war and various merchantmen moored in the Downs, the lighter vessels skimming along the channel, and the now distant shore of France, with Calais glimmering faintly, and hinting of different modes of life and a new world, all these circumstances formed a scene of pre-eminent combination, and led to interesting reflection.

Our vessel was bound to Deal, and, leaving Dover and its cliffs on the south, we entered that noble bay, which the rich shores of Kent open for the sea. Gentle hills, swelling all round from the water, green with woods, or cultivation, and speckled with towns and villages, with now and then the towers of an old fortress, offered a landscape particularly cheering to eyes accustomed to the monotonous flatness of Dutch views. And we landed in England under impressions of delight more varied and strong than can be conceived, without referring to the joy of an escape from districts where there was scarcely an home for the natives, and to the love of our own country, greatly enhanced by all that had been seen of others.

Between Deal and London, after being first struck by the superior appearance and manners of the people to those of the countries we had been lately accustomed to, a contrast too obvious as well as too often remarked to be again insisted upon, but which made all the ordinary circumstances of the journey seem new and delightful, the difference between the landscapes of England and Germany occurred forcibly to notice. The large scale, in which every division of land appeared in Germany, the long corn grounds, the huge stretches of hills, the vast plains and the wide vallies could not but be beautifully opposed by the varieties and undulations of English surface, with gently swelling slopes, rich in verdure, thick enclosures, woods, bowery hop-grounds, sheltered mansions, announcing the wealth, and substantial farms, with neat villages, the comfort of the country. English landscape may be compared to cabinet pictures, delicately beautiful and highly finished; German scenery to paintings for a vestibule, of bold outline and often sublime, but coarse and to be viewed with advantage only from a distance.

Northward, beyond London, we may make one stop, after a country, not otherwise necessary to be noticed, to mention Hardwick, in Derbyshire, a seat of the Duke of Devonshire, once the residence of the Earl of Shrewsbury, to whom Elizabeth deputed the custody of the unfortunate Mary. It stands on an easy height, a few miles to the left of the road from Mansfield to Chesterfield, and is approached through shady lanes, which conceal the view of it, till you are on the confines of the park. Three towers of hoary grey then rise with great majesty among old woods, and their summits appear to be covered with the lightly shivered fragments of battlements, which, however, are soon discovered to be perfectly carved open work, in which the letters E. S. frequently occur under a coronet, the initials, and the memorials of the vanity, of Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, who built the present edifice. Its tall features, of a most picturesque tint, were finely disclosed between the luxuriant woods and over the lawns of the park, which, every now and then, let in a glimpse of the Derbyshire hills. The scenery reminded us of the exquisite descriptions of Harewood,

"The deep embowering shades, that veil Elfrida;"

and those of Hardwick once veiled a form as lovely as the ideal graces of the Poet, and conspired to a fate more tragical than that, which Harewood witnessed.

In front of the great gates of the castle court, the ground, adorned by old oaks, suddenly sinks to a darkly shadowed glade, and the view opens over the vale of Scarsdale, bounded by the wild mountains of the Peak. Immediately to the left of the present residence, some ruined features of the antient one, enwreathed with the rich drapery of ivy, give an interest to the scene, which the later, but more historical structure heightens and prolongs. We followed, not without emotion, the walk, which Mary had so often trodden, to the folding doors of the great hall, whose lofty grandeur, aided by silence and seen under the influence of a lowering sky, suited the temper of the whole scene. The tall windows, which half subdue the light they admit, just allowed us to distinguish the large figures in the tapestry, above the oak wainscoting, and shewed a colonnade of oak supporting a gallery along the bottom of the hall, with a pair of gigantic elk's horns flourishing between the windows opposite to the entrance. The scene of Mary's arrival and her feelings upon entering this solemn shade came involuntarily to the mind; the noise of horses' feet and many voices from the court; her proud yet gentle and melancholy look, as, led by my Lord Keeper, she passed slowly up the hall; his somewhat obsequious, yet jealous and vigilant air, while, awed by her dignity and beauty, he remembers the terrors of his own Queen; the silence and anxiety of her maids, and the bustle of the surrounding attendants.

From the hall a stair-case ascends to the gallery of a small chapel, in which the chairs and cushions, used by Mary, still remain, and proceeds to the first story, where only one apartment bears memorials of her imprisonment, the bed, tapestry and chairs having been worked by herself. This tapestry is richly embossed with emblematic figures, each with its title worked above it, and, having been scrupulously preserved, is still entire and fresh.

Over the chimney of an adjoining dining-room, to which, as well as to other apartments on this floor, some modern furniture has been added, is this motto carved in oak:

"There is only this: To fear God and keep his Commandments."

So much less valuable was timber than workmanship, when this mansion was constructed, that, where the stair-cases are not of stone, they are formed of solid oaken steps, instead of planks; such is that from the second, or state story to the roof, whence, on clear days, York and Lincoln Cathedrals are said to be included in the extensive prospect. This second floor is that, which gives its chief interest to the edifice. Nearly all the apartments of it were allotted to Mary; some of them for state purposes; and the furniture is known by other proofs, than its appearance, to remain as she left it. The chief room, or that of audience, is of uncommon loftiness, and strikes by its grandeur, before the veneration and tenderness arise, which its antiquities, and the plainly told tale of the sufferings they witnessed, excite.

The walls, which are covered to a considerable height with tapestry, are painted above with historical groups. The chairs are of black velvet, nearly concealed by a raised needle-work of gold, silver and colours, that mingle with surprising richness, and remain in fresh preservation. The upper end of the room is distinguished by a lofty canopy of the same materials, and by steps which support two chairs; so that the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury probably enjoyed their own stateliness here, as well as assisted in the ceremonies practised before Mary. A carpeted table, in front of the canopy, was, perhaps, the desk of Commissioners, or Secretaries, who here recorded some of the proceedings concerning her; below which, the room breaks into a spacious recess, where a few articles of furniture are deposited, not originally placed in it; a bed of state, used by Mary, the curtains of gold tissue, but in so tattered a condition, that its original texture can scarcely be perceived. This and the chairs, which accompany it, are supposed to have been much earlier than Mary's time.

A short passage leads from the state apartment to her own chamber, a small room, overlooked from the passage by a window, which enabled her attendants to know, that she was contriving no means of escape through the others into the court. The bed and chairs of this room are of black velvet, embroidered by herself; the toilet of gold tissue; all more decayed than worn, and probably used only towards the conclusion of her imprisonment here, when she was removed from some better apartment, in which the antient bed, now in the state-room, had been placed. The date 1599 is once or twice inscribed in this chamber; for no reason, that could relate to Mary, who was removed hence in 1584, and fell, by the often-blooded hands of Elizabeth, in 1587.

These are the apartments, distinguished by having been the residence of so unhappy a personage. On the other side of the mansion, a grand gallery occupies the length of the whole front, which is 165 feet, and contains many portraits, now placed carelessly on chairs, or the floor; amongst them an head of Sir Thomas More, apparently very fine; heads of Henries the Fourth, Seventh and Eighth; a portrait of Lady Jane Gray, meek and fair, before a harpsichord, on which a psalm-book is opened; at the bottom of the gallery, Elizabeth, slyly proud and meanly violent; and, at the top, Mary, in black, taken a short time before her death, her countenance much faded, deeply marked by indignation and grief, and reduced as if to the spectre of herself, frowning with suspicion upon all who approached it; the black eyes looking out from their corners, thin lips, somewhat aquiline nose and beautiful chin.

What remains of the more antient building is a ruin, which, standing nearly on the brink of the glade, is a fine object from this. A few apartments, though approached with difficulty through the fragments of others, are still almost entire, and the dimensions of that called the Giant's Chamber are remarkable for the beauty of their proportion.

From Hardwick to within a few miles of Middleton, the beauty of the country declines, while the sublimity is not perfected; but, from the north-west brow of Brampton Moor, the vast hills of Derbyshire appear, in wild and ghastly succession. Middleton, hewn out of the grey rocks, that impend over it, and scarcely distinguishable from them, is worth notice for its very small and neat octagon church, built partly by brief and partly by a donation from the Duke of Devonshire. The valley, or rather chasm, at the entrance of which it stands, is called Middleton Dale, and runs, for two miles, between perpendicular walls of rock, which have more the appearance of having been torn asunder by some convulsive rent of the earth, than any we have elsewhere seen. The strata are horizontal, and the edges of each are often distinct and rounded; one of the characteristics of granite. Three grey rocks, resembling castles, project from these solid walls, and, now and then, a lime-kiln, round like a bastion, half involves in smoke a figure, who, standing on the summit, looks the Witch of the Dale, on an edge of her cauldron, watching the workings of incantation.

The chasm opened, at length, to a hill, whence wild moorish mountains were seen on all sides, some entirely covered with the dull purple of heath, others green, but without enclosures, except sometimes a stone wall, and the dark sides of others marked only by the blue smoke of weeds, driven in circles near the ground.

Towards sun-set, from a hill in Cheshire, we had a vast view over part of that county and nearly all Lancashire, a scene of fertile plains and gentle heights, till some broad and towering mountains, at an immense distance, were but uncertainly distinguished from the clouds. Soon after, the cheerful populousness of the rich towns and villages in Lancashire supplied objects for attention of a different character; Stockport first, crowded with buildings and people, as much so as some of the busiest quarters in London, with large blazing fires in every house, by the light of which women were frequently spinning, and manufacturers issuing from their workshops and filling the steep streets, which the chaise rolled down with; dangerous rapidity; then an almost continued street of villages to Manchester, some miles before which the road was busy with passengers and carriages, as well as bordered by handsome country houses; and, finally for this day, Manchester itself; a second London; enormous to those, who have not seen the first, almost tumultuous with business, and yet well proved to afford the necessary peacefulness to science, letters and taste. And not only for itself may Manchester be an object of admiration, but for the contrast of its useful profits to the wealth of a neighbouring place, immersed in the dreadful guilt of the Slave Trade, with the continuance of which to believe national prosperity compatible, is to hope, that the actions of nations pass unseen before the Almighty, or to suppose extenuation of crimes by increase of criminality, and that the eternal laws of right and truth, which smite the wickedness of individuals, are too weak to struggle with the accumulated and comprehensive guilt of a national participation in robbery, cruelty and murder.

From Manchester to Lancaster the road leads through a pleasant and populous country, which rises gradually as it approaches the huge hills we had noticed in the distance from the brow of Cheshire, and whose attitudes now resembled those of the Rheingau as seen from Mentz. From some moors on this side of Lancaster the prospects open very extensively over a rich tract fading into blue ridges; while, on the left, long lines of distant sea appear, every now and then, over the dark woods of the shore, with vessels sailing as if on their summits. But the view from a hill descending to Lancaster is pre-eminent for grandeur, and comprehends an extent of sea and land, and a union of the sublime in both, which we have never seen equalled. In the green vale of the Lune below lies the town, spreading up the side of a round hill overtopped by the old towers of the castle and the church. Beyond, over a ridge of gentle heights, which bind the west side of the vale, the noble inlet of the sea, that flows upon the Ulverston and Lancaster sands, is seen at the feet of an amphitheatre formed by nearly all the mountains of the Lakes; an exhibition of alpine grandeur, both in form and colouring, which, with the extent of water below, compose a scenery perhaps faintly rivalling that of the Lake of Geneva. To the south and west, the Irish Channel finishes the view.

The antient town and castle of Lancaster have been so often and so well described, that little remains to be said of them. To the latter considerable additions are building in the Gothic style, which, when time shall have shaded the stone, will harmonize well wish the venerable towers and gatehouse of the old structure. From a turret rising over the leads of the castle, called John o' Gaunt's Chair, the prospect is still finer than from the terrace of the church-yard below. Overlooking the Lune and its green slopes, the eye ranges to the bay of the sea beyond, and to the Cumberland and Lancashire mountains. On an island near the extremity of the peninsula of Low Furness, the double point of Peel Castle starts up from the sea, but is so distant that it resembles a forked rock. This peninsula, which separates the bay of Ulverston from the Irish Channel, swells gradually into a pointed mountain called Blackcomb, thirty miles from Lancaster, the first in the amphitheatre, that binds the bay. Hence a range of lower, but more broken and forked summits, extends northward to the fells of High Furness, rolled behind each other, huge, towering and dark; then, higher still, Langdale Pikes, with a confusion of other fells, that crown the head of Windermere and retire towards Keswick, whose gigantic mountains, Helvellyn and Saddleback, are, however, sunk in distance below the horizon of the nearer ones. The top of Skiddaw may be discerned when the air is clear, but it is too far off to appear with dignity. From Windermere-Fells the heights soften towards the Vale of Lonsdale, on the east side of which Ingleborough, a mountain in Craven, rears his rugged front, the loftiest and most majestic in the scene. The nearer country, from this point of the landscape, is intersected with cultivated hills, between which the Lune winds its bright but shallow stream, falling over a weir and passing under a very handsome stone bridge at the entrance of the town, in its progress towards the sea. A ridge of rocky eminences shelters Lancaster on the east, whence they decline into the low and uninteresting country, that stretches to the Channel.

The appearance of the northern Fells is ever changing with the weather and shifting lights. Sometimes they resemble those evening clouds on the horizon, that catch the last gleams of the sun; at others, wrapt in dark mist, they are only faintly traced, and seem like stormy vapours rising from the sea. But in a bright day their appearance is beautiful; then, their grand outlines are distinctly drawn upon the sky, a vision of Alps; the rugged sides are faintly marked with light and shadow, with wood and rock, and here and there a cluster of white cottages, or farms and hamlets, gleam at their feet along the water's edge. Over the whole landscape is then drawn a softening azure, or sometimes a purple hue, exquisitely lovely, while the sea below reflects a brighter tint of blue.