University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

In one of those sweet glens, half-pastoral,
half-sylvan, which may be found in hundreds
channelling the steep sides of the
moorland hills, and sending down the
tribute of their pure limestone springs to
the broad rivers which fertilize, no less
than they adorn, the lovely vales of Western
Yorkshire, there may be seen to this
day the ruins of an old dwelling-house,
sitnate on a spot so picturesque, so wild,
and yet so soft in its romantic features,
that they would well repay the traveller
for a brief halt, who but too often hurries
onward in search of more remote yet certainly
not greater beauties.

The gorge, within the mouth of which
the venerable pile is seated, opens into
the broader valley of Wharfdale from the
north-eastern side, enjoying the full light
and warmth of the southern sunshine, and
although very narrow at its origin, where
its crystal rivulet springs up from the lonely
well-head, fringed by a few low shrubs
of birch and alder, expands here at its
month into a pretty amphitheatre or basin
of a few acres' circuit.

A wild and feathery coppice of oak and
birch and hazel, with here and there a
mountain ash showing its bright red berries
through the rich foliage, clothes all
the lower part of the surrounding slopes;
while, far above, the seamed and shattered
faces of the grey slaty limestone rise up
like artificial walls, their summits crowned
with the fair purple heather, and every
nook and cranny in their sides crowded
with odorous wild flowers. Within the
circuits of these natural limits, sheltering
it from every wind of Heaven except the
gentle south, the turf lies smooth and
even, as if it were a cultured lawn; while
a few rare exotic shrubs, now all run out
of shape and bare and straggling, indicate
yet the time when it was a fair shrubbery,
tended by gentle hands, and visited by
young and lovely beings, now cold in
their untimely sepulchres.

The streamlet, which comes gushing
down the glen, with its clear copious
flow, boiling and murmuring about the
large grey boulders, which everywhere
obstruct its channel, making a thousand
mimic cataracts, and wakening ever a
wild mirthful music, sweeps here quite
close to the foot of the eastern cliff, the
feathery branches of the oakwood dipping
their foliage in its eddies; and then, just
as it issues forth into the open champaign,
wheels round in a half circle completely
isolating the little amphitheatre above
mentioned, except at one point, hard beneath
the opposite hill-face, where a small
winding horse-track, engrossing the whole
space between the streamlet and the limestone
rock, gives access to the lone demesne.

A small green hillock sloping down
gently to the southward fills the embracing
arms of the bright brook, around the
northern hase of which is scattered a little
grove of the most magnificent and noblest
syeamores that I have ever seen; but on
the other side, which yet retains its pristine
character of a smooth open lawn,
there are no obstacles to the view over
the wide valley, except three old guarled
thorn-bushes, uncommon from their size
and the dense luxuriance of their matted
greenery.

It was upon the summit of this little
knoll that the old homestead stood, whose
massive ruins of red freestone, all over-grown
with briers and tall rank grass and
dock leaves, deface the spot which they
adorned of old; and, when it was erect in
all its fair proportions, the scene which it
overlooked and its own natural attractions
rendered it one of the loveliest residences
in all the north of England.

The wide rich gentle valley, all meadow

land or pasture, without one brown
ploughed field to mar its velvet green, the
tall thick hawthorn hedges with their long
lines of hedgerow timber, oak, ash, and
elm, waking above the smooth enclosures;
the broad clear tranquil river flashing
out like a silver mirror through the
green foliage; the scattered farm-houses,
each nestled as it were among its sheltering
orchards; the village spire shooting
up from the clump of giant elms, which
overshadow the old grave-yard; the steep
long slope on the other side of the vale,
or strath as it would be called in Scotland,
all mapped out to the eye with its green
fences, and wide hanging woods; and far
beyond the rounded summits of the huge
moorland hills, ridge above ridge, purple,
and grand, and massive, but less and less
distinct, as they recede from the eye, and
melt away at last into the far blue distance—such
was the picture, which its
windows overlooked of old, and which
still laughs as gaily as of yore, in the glad
sunshine, around its mouldering walls
and lonely hearth-stone.

But if it is fair now, and lovely, what
was it, as it showed in the good old days
of King Charles, before the iron hand of
civil war had pressed so heavily on England?
The groves of sycamores stood
there, as they stand now in the prime and
luxuriance of their sylvan manhood; for
they are now waxing aged, and somewhat
grey and stag-horned; and the thorn
bushes sheltered as they do now, whole
choirs of thrushes and blackbirds; but all
the turf, beneath the scattered trees, and
on the sunny slope, was shorn, and rolled,
and watered, that it was smooth and even,
and far softer than the most costly carpet
that ever wooed the step of Persian
beauty.

The Hall was a square building, not
very large, and of the old Elizabethan style,
with two irregular additions—wings as
they might be called—of the same architecture,
though of a later period; and its
deep-embayed oriel windows, with their
fantastic millions of carved freestone, its
tall quaint chimneys, and its low porch
with overhanging canopy and clustered
columns, rendered it singularly picturesque
and striking.

The little green within the gorge of the
upper glen, which is so wildly beautiful
in its present situation, left as it is to the
unaided hand of nature, was then a perfeet
paradise; for an exquisite taste had
superintended its conversion into a sort
of untrained garden—an ove, well used
to note effects, had marked its natural capabilities,
and adding artificial beauties,
had never trenched upon the character of
the spot by anything incongruous or
startling.

Rare plants, rich-flowering shrubs, and
scented herbs, were indeed scattered with
a lavish hand about its precincts, but were
so scattered that they seemed the genuine
production of the soil. The Spanish cistus
had been taught to carpet the wild
crags, in conjunction with the native
thyme and heather; the arbutus and laurestinus
had been brought from afar, to
vie with the mountain-ash and holly; the
clematis and the sweet scented vine blended
their tendrils with the rich English
honeysuckle and the luxuriant ivy; rare
lotuses might be seen floating, with their
azure-colored cups, and broad green
leaves, upon the glassy basins, into which
the mountain streamlet had been taught
to expand, among the white wild water-lilies,
and the bright yellow clusters of the
marsh marigolds; roses of every hue and
scent, from the dark crimson of Damascus
to the pale blush of soft Provence, grew
side by side with the wild wood-brier
and eglatine; and many a rustic seat of
mossy stone, or roots and unbarked
branches, invited the loitering visitor in
every shadowy angle.

There was no spot, in all the north of
England, whereon the winter frowned so
lightly as on those sheltered precincts—
there was no spot whereon spring smiled
so early, and with so bright an aspect—
wherein the summer so long lingered,
pouring her gorgeous flowers, rich with
her spicy breath, into the very lap of autumn.
It was indeed a sweet spot, and as
happy as it was sweet and beautiful;
before the curse of civil war was poured
upon the groaning land, with its dread
train of foul and fiendish ministers; and
yet it was not war, nor any of its direct
consequences, that turned that happy
home into a ruin and desolation.

It was not war—unless the struggles of
the human heart—the conflict of the fierce
and turbulent passions—the strife of principles,
of motives, of desires, within the
secret soul, may be called war—as indeed
they might, and that with no figurative
tongue; for they are the hottest, the most
devastating, the most fatal of all that bear
that ominous and cruel appellation.

Such was the aspect then of Ingleborough
Hall, at the period when it was perhaps
the most beautiful, and when, as is
but too often the case, its beauties were
on the very point of being brought to a
close for ever. The family which owned
the manor—for the possessions attached
to the old homestead were large, and the

authority arising from them extended
over a large part of Upper Wharfdale, was
one of those old English races, which,
though not noble, in the literal sense
of the word, are yet so ancient, and so indissolubly
connected with the soil, that
they may justly be comprised among the
aristocracy of the land. The name was
Saxon; and it was generally believed—
and probably with truth—that the date of
the name and of its connexion with that
estate, was at the least coeval with the
Conquest. To what circumstances it was
owing, that the Hawkwoods, for such was
the time-honored appellation of the race,
had retained possession of their fair
demesne, when all the land was allotted
ont to feudal barons and fat priests, can
never now be ascertained; nor does it indeed
signify; yet that it was to some
honorable cause, some service rendered,
or some high exploit, may be fairly presumed
from the fact, that the mitred potentate
of Bolton Abbey, who levied his
tythes fat and near, throughout those fertile
valleys, had no claim on the fruits of
Ingleborough. During the ages that had
passed since the advent of the Norman
William, the Hawkwoods had never
lacked male representatives to sustain
the dignity of their race; and gallantly
had they sustained it; for in full many a
lay and legend, aye! and in grave cold
history itself, the name of Hawkwood
might be found side by side with the more
sonorous appellations of the Norman fendatories,
the Ardens, and Manleverers,
and Vaspasouns, which fill the chronicles
of border warfare.

At the period of which I write, however,
the family had no male scion—the last
heir male, Ralph Hawkwood, had died
some years before, full of years and of domestic
honors—a zealous sportsman, a
loyal subject, a kind laudlord, a good
friend—his lot had fallen in quiet times,
and pleasant places; and he lived happily,
and died in the arms of his family, at
peace with all men. His wife, a calm,
placid dame, who had in her young days
been the beauty of the shire, survived
him; and spent her whole time as she devoted
her whole mind and spirit, in educating
the two daughters, joint heiresses
of the old manor-house, who were left by
their father's death, two bright-eyed fair
haired prattlers, dependent for protection
on the strong love, but frail support, of
their widowed mother.