country,
and talked a good while. Some of the ivy that mantles this building has
a trunk as large as a man's body, and throws out numberless strong arms,
which, interweaving, embrace and interlace half-falling towers, and hold
them up in a living, growing mass of green.

The walls of one of the oldest towers are sixteen feet thick. The lake,
which Scott speaks of, is dried up and grown over with rushes. The
former moat presents only a grassy hollow. What was formerly a gate
house is still inhabited by the family who have the care of the
building. The land around the gate house is choicely and carefully laid
out, and has high, clipped hedges of a species of variegated holly.

Thus much of old castles and ivy. Farewell to Kenilworth.

LETTER XII.

MY DEAR H.:--

After leaving Kenilworth we drove to Coventry, where we took the cars
again. This whole ride from Stratford to Warwick, and on to Coventry,
answers more to my ideas of old England than any thing I have seen; it
is considered one of the most beautiful parts of the kingdom. It has
quaint old houses, and a certain air of rural, picturesque quiet, which
is very charming.

Coventry is old and queer, with narrow streets and curious houses, famed
for the ancient legend of Godiva, one of those beautiful myths that
grow, like the mistletoe, on the bare branches of history, and which, if
they never were true in the letter, have been a thousand times true in
the spirit.

The evening came on raw and chilly, so that we rejoiced to find
ourselves once more in the curtained parlor by the bright, sociable
fire.

As we were drinking tea Elihu Burritt came in. It was the first time I
had ever seen him, though I had heard a great deal of him from our
friends in Edinburgh. He is a man in middle life, tall and slender, with
fair complexion, blue eyes, an air of delicacy and refinement, and
manners of great gentleness. My ideas of the "Learned Blacksmith" had
been of something altogether more ponderous and peremptory. Elihu has
been, for some years, operating in England and on the continent in a
movement which many, in our half-Christianized times, regard with as
much incredulity as the grim, old, warlike barons did the suspicious
imbecilities of reading and writing. The sword now, as then, seems so
much more direct a way to terminate controversies, that many Christian
men, even, cannot conceive how the world is to get along without it.

Burritt's mode of operation