| | 1 | Author: | Irving
Washington
1783-1859 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The sketch book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | I was always fond of visiting new scenes,
and observing strange characters and manners.
Even when a mere child I began my travels,
and made many tours of discovery into foreign
parts and unknown regions of my native city,
to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the
emolument of the town-crier. As I grew into
boyhood, I extended the range of my observations.
My holiday afternoons were spent in
rambles about the surrounding country. I
made myself familiar with all its places famous
in history or fable. I knew every spot
where a murder or robbery had been committed,
or a ghost been seen. I visited the neighbouring
villages, and added greatly to my stock
of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs,
and conversing with their sages and great
men. I even journeyed one long summer's
day to the summit of the most distant hill,
from whence I stretched my eye over many a
mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to
find how vast a globe I inhabited. It is with feelings of deep regret that I have
noticed the literary animosity daily growing up
between England and America. Great curiosity
has been awakened of late with respect to
the United States, and the London press has
teemed with volumes of travels through the republic;
but they seem intended to diffuse error
rather than knowledge; and so successful have
they been, that, notwithstanding the constant
intercourse between the nations, there is none
concerning which the great mass of the British
people have less pure information, or more prejudices. On a soft sunny morning, in the month of
May, I made an excursion to Windsor, to visit
the castle. It is a proud old pile, stretching its
irregular walls and massive towers along the
brow of a lofty ridge, waving its royal banner
in the clouds, and looking down with a lordly
air upon the surrounding world. It is a place
that I love to visit, for it is full of storied and
poetical associations. On this morning, the
weather was of that soft vernal kind that calls
forth the latent romance of a man's temperament,
and makes him quote poetry, and dream
of beauty. In wandering through the magnificent
saloons and long echoing galleries of the
old castle, I felt myself most disposed to linger
in the chamber where hang the portraits of the
beauties that once flourished in the gay court of
Charles the Second. As I traversed the “large
green courts,” with sunshine beaming on the
gray walls, and glancing along the velvet turf,
I called to mind the tender, the gallant, but
hapless Surrey's account of his loiterings about
them in his stripling days, when enamoured of
the Lady Geraldine—
“With eyes cast up unto the maiden's tower,
With easie sighs, such as men draw in love.”
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