salutes and cheers.
After tossing about for six days without seeing a human
being, except those on our vessel, even this was a sensation.
Then an hour or two before sunset came the great sensation
of--land! At first, nothing but a shadow on the far horizon,
like the ghost of a ship; two or three widely scattered rocks
which were the promontories of Ireland, and sooner than we
expected we were steaming along low-lying purple hills."
The journey to Chester gives her "the first glimpse of mellow
England,"--a surprise which is yet no surprise, so well known and
familiar does it appear. Then Chester, with its quaint, picturesque
streets, "like the scene of a Walter Scott novel, the cathedral planted
in greenness, and the clear, gray river where a boatful of scarlet
dragoons goes gliding by." Everything is a picture for her special
benefit. She "drinks in, at every sense, the sights, sounds, and smells,
and the unimaginable beauty of it all." Then the bewilderment of London,
and a whirl of people, sights, and impressions. She was received with
great distinction by the Jews, and many of the leading men among them
warmly advocated her views. But it was not alone from her own people
that she met with exceptional consideration. She had the privilege
of seeing many of the most eminent personages of the day, all of whom
honored her with special and personal regard. There was, no doubt,
something that strongly attracted people to her at this time,--the force
of her intellect at once made itself felt, while at the same time the
unaltered simplicity and modesty of her character, and her readiness and
freshness of enthusiasm, kept her still almost like a child.
She makes a flying visit to Paris, where she happens to be on the 14th
of July, the anniversary of the storming of the Bastile, and of the
beginning of the republic; she drives to Versailles, "that gorgeous
shell of royalty, where the crowd who celebrate the birth of the
republic wander freely through the halls and avenues, and into the most
sacred rooms of the king.... There are ruins on every side in Paris,"
she says; "ruins of the Commune, or the Siege, or the Revolution; it is
terrible--it seems as if the city were seared with fire and blood."
Such was Paris to her then, and she hastens back to her beloved London,
starting from there on the tour through England that has been mapped
out for her. "A Day in Surrey with William Morris," publi
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