Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2
General
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 2: Great Britain and Ireland, Part 2
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Description and travel
From Mainhill the highway descends slowly to the village of Ecclefechan,
the site of which is marked to the eye, a mile or more away, by the
spire of the church rising up against a background of Scotch firs, which
clothe a hill beyond. I soon enter the main street of the village, which
in Carlyle's youth had an open burn or creek flowing through the center
of it. This has been covered over by some enterprising citizen, and
instead of a loitering little burn, crossed by numerous bridges, the eye
is now greeted by a broad expanse of small cobble-stones. The cottages
are for the most part very humble, and rise from the outer edges of the
pavement, as if the latter had been turned up and shaped to make their
walls. The church is a handsome brown-stone structure, of recent date,
and is more in keeping with the fine fertile country about than with the
little village in its front. In the cemetery back of it, Carlyle lies
buried. As I approached, a girl sat by the roadside, near the gate,
combing her black locks and arranging her toilet; waiting, as it proved,
for her mother and brother, who lingered in the village. A couple of
boys were cutting nettles against the hedge; for the pigs, they said,
after the sting had been taken out of them by boiling. Across the street
from the cemetery the cows of the villagers were grazing.
I must have thought it would be as easy to distinguish Carlyle's grave
from the others as it was to distinguish the man while living, or his
fame when dead; for it never occurred to me to ask in what part of the
inclosure it was placed. Hence, when I found myself inside the gate,
which opens from the Annan road through a high stone wall, I followed
the most worn path toward a new and imposing-looking monument on the far
side of the cemetery; and the edge of my fine emotion was a good deal
dulled against the marble when I found it bore a strange name. I tried
others, and still others, but was disappointed. I found a long row of
Carlyles, but he whom I sought was not among them. My pilgrim enthusiasm
felt itself needlessly hindered and chilled. How many rebuffs could one
stand? Carlyle dead, then, was the same as Carlyle living; sure to take
you down a peg or two when you came to lay your homage at his feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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