ose who had but this one day
for pleasure seemed determined to make the most of it. A wonderful
contrast with that gloomy day in London, where all places of amusement
were closed and nothing open to the people but the churches and drinking
saloons. The streets and houses in which Voltaire, La Fayette, Mme. de
Stael, Mme. Roland, Charlotte Corday, and other famous men and women
lived and died, were pointed out to us. We little thought, then, of all
the terrible scenes to be enacted in Paris, nor that France would emerge
from the dangers that beset her on every side into a sister republic. It
has been a wonderful achievement, with kings and Popes all plotting
against her experiment, that she has succeeded in putting kingcraft
under her feet and proclaimed liberty, equality, fraternity for her
people.

After a few weeks in France, we returned to London, traveling through
England, Ireland, and Scotland for several months. We visited the scenes
that Shakespeare, Burns, and Dickens had made classic. We spent a few
days at Huntingdon, the home of Oliver Cromwell, and visited the estate
where he passed his early married life. While there, one of his great
admirers read aloud to us a splendid article in one of the reviews,
written by Carlyle, giving "The Protector," as his friend said, his true
place in history. It was long the fashion of England's historians to
represent Cromwell as a fanatic and hypocrite, but his character was
vindicated by later writers. "Never," says Macaulay, "was a ruler so
conspicuously born for sovereignty. The cup which has intoxicated almost
all others sobered him."

We saw the picturesque ruins of Kenilworth Castle, the birthplace of
Shakespeare, the homes of Byron and Mary Chaworth, wandered through
Newstead Abbey, saw the monument to the faithful dog, and the large
dining room where Byron and his boon companions used to shoot at a mark.
It was a desolate region. We stopped a day or two at Ayr and drove out
to the birthplace of Burns. The old house that had sheltered him was
still there, but its walls now echoed to other voices, and the fields
where he had toiled were plowed by other hands. We saw the stream and
banks where he and Mary sat together, the old stone church where the
witches held their midnight revels, the two dogs, and the bridge of Ayr.
With Burns, as with Sappho, it was love that awoke his heart to song. A
bonny lass who worked with him in the harvest field inspired his first
attem