n-tufted and
terraced lawns, which might have served Miss Bronte as the model for "La
Terrasse," the suburban home of the Brettons, and probably the temporary
abode of the Taylor sisters whom she visited here. From the cemetery are
beautiful vistas of farther lines of hills, of intervening valleys, of
farms and villas, and of the great city lying below. Miss Bronte has
well described this place: "Here, on pages of stone, of marble, and of
brass, are written names, dates, last tributes of pomp or love, in
English, French, German, and Latin." There are stone crosses all about,
and great thickets of roses and yew-trees,--"cypresses that stand
straight and mute, and willows that hang low and still;" and there are
"dim garlands of everlasting flowers."
Here "The Professor" found his long-sought sweetheart kneeling at a
new-made grave, under these overhanging trees. And here _we_ found the
shrine of poor Charlotte Bronte's many weary pilgrimages hither,--the
burial-place of her friend and schoolmate Martha Taylor, the Jessy Yorke
of "Shirley," the spot where, under "green sod and a gray marble
headstone, cold, coffined, solitary, Jessy sleeps below."
THEO. WOLFE.
COOKHAM DEAN.
For a long time "the Dean" had had a certain familiarity for us. We
heard it continually spoken of among our artist friends, and had even
come to recognize many of its picturesque features as we came across
them in our usual studio-haunts and in the exhibitions. We seemed to
know those green, billowy swells at sight, as well as the thatched and
tiled roofs and old-fashioned gardens, the swinging barred gates and
stagnant, goose-tormented pools,--even the coarse-limbed rustics in
weather-beaten "store-clothes," picturesque only in mellow fadedness.
We knew all this; yet, when we set eyes and feet upon Cookham Dean for
the first time, behold, the half had not been told us! We had directed
many a letter to Cookham Dean, and knew them to have been duly delivered
by a bucolic postman on a tricycle. But a hundred canvases, and almost
as many tongues, had failed to tell us of the sunny slopes and shadowy
glades, the sylvan lanes and ribbon-like roads, the old stone inn with
open porch and sign swinging from lofty post set across the way, as
Italian campanile stand away from their churches, all coming under the
name of "Cookham Dean," although that "Dean," properly speaking, is only
their geographical and artistic centre.
Long before we rea
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