vale of tears,
Vacant and desolate."

LETTER VII.

NEWCASTLE.--DESCENT INTO A COAL-MINE.--YORK WITH ITS MINSTER.--
SHEFFIELD.--CHATSWORTH.--WARWICK CASTLE.--LEAMINGTON AND
STRATFORD.--SHAKESPEARE.--BIRMINGHAM.--GEORGE DAWSON.--JAMES
MARTINEAU.--W.J. FOX.--W.H. CHARMING AND THEODORE PARKER.--LONDON
AND PARIS.

Paris, 1846.

We crossed the moorland in a heavy rain, and reached Newcastle late
at night. Next day we descended into a coal-mine; it was quite an odd
sensation to be taken off one's feet and dropped down into darkness
by the bucket. The stables under ground had a pleasant Gil-Blas air,
though the poor horses cannot like it much; generally they see the
light of day no more after they have once been let down into these
gloomy recesses, but pass their days in dragging cars along the rails
of the narrow passages, and their nights in eating hay and dreaming
of grass!! When we went down, we meant to go along the gallery to the
place where the miners were then at work, but found this was a walk
of a mile and a half, and, beside the weariness of picking one's steps
slowly along by the light of a tallow candle, too wet and dirty an
enterprise to be undertaken by way of amusement; so, after proceeding
half a mile or so, we begged to be restored to our accustomed level,
and reached it with minds slightly edified and face and hands much
blackened.

Passing thence we saw York with its Minster, that dream of beauty
realized. From, its roof I saw two rainbows, overarching that lovely
country. Through its aisles I heard grand music pealing. But how
sorrowfully bare is the interior of such a cathedral, despoiled of the
statues, the paintings, and the garlands that belong to the Catholic
religion! The eye aches for them. Such a church is ruined by
Protestantism; its admirable exterior seems that of a sepulchre; there
is no correspondent life within.

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 no