The Virginians | Page 5

and Falkirk, and Culloden, where the cause of
honour and loyalty had fallen, it might be to rise no more:--before all
these points of their pilgrimage there was one which the young
Virginian brothers held even more sacred, and that was the home of
their family,--that old Castlewood in Hampshire, about which their
parents had talked so fondly. From Bristol to Bath, from Bath to
Salisbury, to Winchester, to Hexton, to Home; they knew the way, and
had mapped the journey many and many a time.
We must fancy our American traveller to be a handsome young fellow,
whose suit of sables only made him look the more interesting. The
plump landlady from her bar, surrounded by her china and punch-bowls,
and stout gilded bottles of strong waters, and glittering rows of silver

flagons, looked kindly after the young gentleman as he passed through
the inn-hall from his post-chaise, and the obsequious chamberlain
bowed him upstairs to the Rose or the Dolphin. The trim chambermaid
dropped her best curtsey for his fee, and Gumbo, in the inn-kitchen,
where the townsfolk drank their mug of ale by the great fire, bragged of
his young master's splendid house in Virginia, and of the immense
wealth to which he was heir. The postchaise whirled the traveller
through the most delightful home-scenery his eyes had ever lighted on.
If English landscape is pleasant to the American of the present day,
who must needs contrast the rich woods and glowing pastures, and
picturesque ancient villages of the old country with the rough aspect of
his own, how much pleasanter must Harry Warrington's course have
been, whose journeys had lain through swamps and forest solitudes
from one Virginian ordinary to another log-house at the end of the day's
route, and who now lighted suddenly upon the busy, happy, splendid
scene of English summer? And the highroad, a hundred years ago, was
not that grass-grown desert of the present time. It was alive with
constant travel and traffic: the country towns and inns swarmed with
life and gaiety. The ponderous waggon, with its bells and plodding
team; the light post-coach that achieved the journey from the White
Hart, Salisbury, to the Swan with Two Necks, London, in two days; the
strings of packhorses that had not yet left the road; my lord's gilt
postchaise-and-six, with the outriders galloping on ahead; the country
squire's great coach and heavy Flanders mares; the farmers trotting to
market, or the parson jolting to the cathedral town on Dumpling, his
wife behind on the pillion--all these crowding sights and brisk people
greeted the young traveller on his summer journey. Hodge, the farmer's
boy, took off his hat, and Polly, the milkmaid, bobbed a curtsey, as the
chaise whirled over the pleasant village-green, and the white-headed
children lifted their chubby faces and cheered. The church-spires
glistened with gold, the cottage-gables glared in sunshine, the great
elms murmured in summer, or cast purple shadows over the grass.
Young Warrington never had such a glorious day, or witnessed a scene
so delightful. To be nineteen years of age, with high health, high spirits,
and a full purse, to be making your first journey, and rolling through
the country in a postchaise at nine miles an hour--O happy youth!
almost it makes one young to think of him! But Harry was too eager to

give more than a passing glance at the Abbey at Bath, or gaze with
more than a moment's wonder at the mighty Minster at Salisbury. Until
he beheld Home it seemed to him he had no eyes for any other place.
At last the young gentleman's postchaise drew up at the rustic inn on
Castlewood Green, of which his grandsire had many a time talked to
him, and which bears as its ensign, swinging from an elm near the inn
porch, the Three Castles of the Esmond family. They had a sign, too,
over the gateway of Castlewood House, bearing the same cognisance.
This was the hatchment of Francis, Lord Castlewood, who now lay in
the chapel hard by, his son reigning in his stead.
Harry Warrington had often heard of Francis, Lord Castlewood. It was
for Frank's sake, and for his great love towards the boy, that Colonel
Esmond determined to forgo his claim to the English estates and rank
of his family, and retired to Virginia. The young man had led a wild
youth; he had fought with distinction under Marlborough; he had
married a foreign lady, and most lamentably adopted her religion. At
one time he had been a Jacobite (for loyalty to the sovereign was ever
hereditary in the Esmond family), but had received some slight or
injury from the Prince, which had caused him to rally to King George's
side. He had, on his second marriage, renounced the errors