OCR Text |
Show 278 A DAY SPENT AT After crossing this bridge, you come into a. green court·yard, filled with cl1oicc plants and flowering sln·ubs, and carpeted with that thick, soft, velvet-like grass, wl>ich is to be fotmd nowhere else in so perfect n. state as in England. rrhe water is fed by a perpetual spring, whose cwTent is so sluggish as scarcely to be perceptible, but which yet Las the vitality of a running stream. It has a d:trk and glassy stillness of surface, only broken by the forms of the water plants, whose lea yes float thickly over it. The walls of the moat are green with ancient moss, and from the crevices springs an abundant flowering vine, whose delicate leaves and bright yellow flowers in some places entirely mantled the stones with their graceful drapery. 'l.'hc picture I have given you represents only one side of the moat. The other side is grown up with cbrk and thick shrubbery and ancient trees, rising anu embowering the whole place, aduing to the retired and singular effect of the whole. 'l'be place is a spcciwcn of a sort of thing w ltich does not cxi~t iu America. It is one of those significant landmarks PLAYFORD IIALL. 279 which unite the present with the past, for which we must return to the country of our origin. Playfonl llall i' a thing peculiarly Englisl1, and rrlwmas Clarkson, for wltose sake I visitetl it, was as pcculiar1y an Englishman,-n. specimen of the very best kind of English mind and character, as this is of characteristic English architecture. We Anglo·Saxou::; have won a hard name in the worlil. 'rhcrc arc undoubtculy bail things which arc true about us. r:l_1aking om· dcve1opmcnts as n. race, both in England and America, we may be justly called the Romans of the nineteenth century. We have been the race which bas conquered, subdued, and broken in pieces, other weaker races, with little regard either to justice or mercy. \Vith regard to benefits by us imparted to conquered nations, I think a better story, on the whole, can be made out for the Romans than for us. ·witness the treatment of the Chinese, of the tribes of India, and of our own .American Indians. But still there is an AngJo-!:iaxon blood, a vigorous sense of justice, as appears in our IIabcas Corpus, our jury trials, and other features of State organization, and, when this is tempered in individuals, with the |