with which we
have been familiar from childhood, and which, we suppose, in a kind of
indefinite way, we understand, which, after all, when we come on English
ground, start into a new significance: take, for instance, these lines
from L'Allegro:--

"Sometimes walking, not unseen,
By hedge-row elms on hillocks green.

* * * * *

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
While the landscape round it measures;
Russet lawns and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains, on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks and livers wide:
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees."

Now, these hedge-row elms. I had never even asked myself what they were
till I saw them; but you know, as I said in a former letter, the hedges
are not all of them carefully cut; in fact many of them are only
irregular rows of bushes, where, although the hawthorn is the staple
element, yet firs, and brambles, and many other interlopers put in their
claim, and they all grow up together in a kind of straggling unity; and
in the hedges trees are often set out, particularly elms, and have a
very pleasing effect.

Then, too, the trees have more of that rounding outline which is
expressed by the word "bosomed." But here we are, right under the walls
of Lancaster, and Mr. S. wakes me up by quoting, "Old John o' Gaunt,
time-honored Lancaster."

"Time-honored," said I; "it looks as fresh as if it had been built
yesterday: you do not mean to say that is the real old castle?"

"To be sure, it is the very old castle built in the reign of Edward
III., by John of Gaunt."

It stands on the summit of a hill, seated regally like a queen upon a
throne, and every part of it looks as fresh, and sharp, and clear, as if
it were the work of modern times. It is used now for a county jail. We
have but a moment to stop or admire--the merciless steam car drives on.
We have a little talk about the feudal times, and the old past days;
when again the cry goes up,--

"O, there's something! What's that?"

"O, that is Carlisle."

"Carlisle!" said I; "what, the Carlisle of Scott's ballad?"

"What ballad?"

"Why, don't you remember, in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, the song of
Albert Graeme, which has something about Carlisle's wall in every verse?

'It was an English, laydie bright
When sun shines fair on