Within the citadel, a tower half ruined and ivy-clad, is life that has been growing up while the exterior bulwarks of the old feudal time crumbled to ruin.  George Fox, while a prisoner at York for obedience to the dictates of his conscience, planted here a walnut, and the tall tree that grew from it still “bears testimony” to his living presence on that spot.  The tree is old, but still bears nuts; one of them was taken away by my companions, and may perhaps be the parent of a tree somewhere in America, that shall shade those who inherit the spirit, if they do not attach importance to the etiquettes, of Quakerism.

In Sheffield I saw the sooty servitors tending their furnaces.  I saw them, also on Saturday night, after their work was done, going to receive its poor wages, looking pallid and dull, as if they had spent on tempering the steel that vital force that should have tempered themselves to manhood.

We saw, also, Chatsworth, with its park and mock wilderness, and immense conservatory, and really splendid fountains and wealth of marbles.  It is a fine expression of modern luxury and splendor, but did not interest me; I found little there of true beauty or grandeur.

Warwick Castle is a place entirely to my mind, a real representative of the English aristocracy in the day of its nobler life.  The grandeur of the pile itself, and its beauty of position, introduce you fitly to the noble company with which the genius of Vandyke has peopled its walls.  But a short time was allowed to look upon these nobles, warriors, statesmen, and ladies, who gaze upon us in turn with such a majesty of historic association, yet was I very well satisfied.  It is not difficult to see men through the eyes of Vandyke.  His way of viewing character seems superficial, though commanding; he sees the man in his action on the crowd, not in his hidden life; he does not, like some painters, amaze and engross us by his revelations as to the secret springs of conduct.  I know not by what hallucination I forebore to look at the picture I most desired to see,—­that of Lucy, Countess of Carlisle.  I was looking at something else, and when the fat, pompous butler announced her, I did not recognize her name from his mouth.  Afterward it flashed across me, that I had really been standing before her and forgotten to look.  But repentance was too late; I had passed the castle gate to return no more.

Pretty Leamington and Stratford are hackneyed ground.  Of the latter I only observed what, if I knew, I had forgotten, that the room where Shakespeare was born has been an object of devotion only for forty years.  England has learned much of her appreciation of Shakespeare from the Germans.  In the days of innocence, I fondly supposed that every one who could understand English, and was not a cannibal, adored Shakespeare and read him on Sundays always for an hour or more, and on week days a considerable portion of the time.  But I have lived to know some hundreds of persons in my native land, without finding ten who had any direct acquaintance with their greatest benefactor, and I dare say in England as large an experience would not end more honorably to its subjects.  So vast a treasure is left untouched, while men are complaining of being poor, because they have not toothpicks exactly to their mind.