“Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all,
And welcome merry Shrove-tide!”

On returning to my inn, I could not but reflect on the singular gift of my poet; to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind over the very face of nature; to give to things and places a charm and character not their own, and to turn this “working-day world” into a perfect fairy land.  He is indeed the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.  Under the wizard influence of Shakespeare I had been walking all day in complete delusion.  I had surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry, which tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow.  I had been surrounded with fancied beings; with mere airy nothings, conjured up by poetic power; yet which, to me, had all the charm of reality.  I had heard Jacques soliloquize beneath his oak; had beheld the fair Rosalind and her companion adventuring through the woodlands; and, above all, had been once more present in spirit with fat Jack Falstaff, and his contemporaries, from the august Justice Shallow down to the gentle Master Slender, and the sweet Anne Page.

Newstead abbey [Footnote:  From “English Note Books.”  By permission of, and by arrangement with, the publishers of Hawthorne’s works, Houghton, Mifflin Co.  Copyright, 1870-1898.]

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Our drive to Newstead lay through what was once a portion of Sherwood Forest, tho all of it, I believe, has now become private property, and is converted into fertile fields, except where the owners of estates have set out plantations....  The post-boy calls the distance ten miles from Nottingham.  He also averred that it was forbidden to drive visitors within the gates; so we left the fly at the inn, and set out to walk from the entrance to the house.  There is no porter’s lodge; and the grounds, in this outlying region, had not the appearance of being very primly kept, but were well wooded with evergreens, and much overgrown with ferns, serving for cover for hares, which scampered in and out of their hiding-places.  The road went winding gently along, and, at the distance of nearly a mile, brought us to a second gate, through which we likewise passed, and walked onward a good way farther, seeing much wood, but as yet nothing of the Abbey.

At last, through the trees, we caught a glimpse of its battlements, and saw, too, the gleam of water, and then appeared the Abbey’s venerable front.  It comprises the western wall of the church, which is all that remains of that fabric, a great, central window, entirely empty, without tracery or mullions; the ivy clambering up on the inside of the wall, and hanging over in front.  The front of the inhabited part of the house extends along on a line with this church wall, rather low, with battlements along its top, and all in good keeping with the ruinous remnant.