The most utterly indescribable feature of Chester is the Rows, which every traveller has attempted to describe. At the height of several feet above some of the oldest streets, a walk runs through the front of the houses, which project over it. Back of the walk there are shops; on the outer side is a space of two or three yards, where the shopmen place their tables, and stands, and show-cases; overhead, just high enough for persons to stand erect, a ceiling. At frequent intervals little narrow passages go winding in among the houses, which all along are closely conjoined, and seem to have no access or exit, except through the shops, or into these narrow passages, where you can touch each side with your elbows, and the top with your hand. We penetrated into one or two of them, and they smelt anciently and disagreeably. At one of the doors stood a pale-looking, but cheerful and good-natured woman, who told us that she had come to that house when first married, twenty-one years before, and had lived there ever since; and that she felt as if she had been buried through the best years of her life. She allowed us to peep into her kitchen and parlor, — small, dingy, dismal, but yet not wholly destitute of a home look. She said that she had seen two or three coffins in a day, during cholera times, carried out of that narrow passage into which her door opened. These avenues put me in mind of those which run through ant-hills, or those which a mole makes underground. This fashion of Rows does not appear to be going out; and, for aught I can see, it may last hundreds of years longer. When a house becomes so old as to be untenantable, it is rebuilt, and the new one is fashioned like the old, so far as regards the walk running through its front. Many of the shops are very good, and even elegant, and these Rows are the favorite places of business in Chester. Indeed, they have many advantages, the passengers being sheltered from the rain, and there being within the shops that dimmer light by which tradesmen like to exhibit their wares.
A large proportion of the edifices in the Rows must be comparatively modern; but there are some very ancient ones, with oaken frames visible on the exterior. The Row, passing through these houses, is railed with oak, so old that it has turned black, and grown to be as hard as stone, which it might be mistaken for, if one did not see where names and initials have been cut into it with knives at some bygone period. Overhead, cross-beams project through the ceiling so low as almost to hit the head. On the front of one of these buildings was the inscription, “GOD’S PROVIDENCE IS MINE INHERITANCE,” said to have been put there by the occupant of the house two hundred years ago, when the plague spared this one house only in the whole city. Not improbably the inscription has operated as a safeguard to prevent the demolition of the house hitherto; but a shopman of an adjacent dwelling told us that it was soon to be taken down.
Here and there, about some of the streets through which the Rows do not run, we saw houses of very aged aspect, with steep, peaked gables. The front gable-end was supported on stone pillars, and the sidewalk passed beneath. Most of these old houses seemed to be taverns, — the Black Bear, the Green Dragon, and such names. We thought of dining at one of them, but, on inspection, they looked rather too dingy and close, and of questionable neatness. So we went to the Royal Hotel, where we probably fared just as badly at much more expense, and where there was a particularly gruff and crabbed old waiter, who, I suppose, thought himself free to display his surliness because we arrived at the hotel on foot. For my part, I love to see John Bull show himself. I must go again and again and again to Chester, for I suppose there is not a more curious place in the world.
Mr. Ticknor, who has been staying at Rock Park with us since Tuesday, has steamed away in the Canada this morning. His departure seems to make me feel more abroad, more dissevered from my native country, than before.
October 3d. — Saturday evening, at six, I went to dine with Mr. Aiken, a wealthy merchant here, to meet two of the sons of Burns. There was a party of ten or twelve, Mr. Aiken and his two daughters included. The two sons of Burns have both been in the Indian army, and have attained the ranks of Colonel and Major; one having spent thirty, and the other twenty-seven years in India. They are now old gentlemen of sixty and upwards, the elder with a gray head, the younger with a perfectly white one, — rather under than above the middle stature, and with a British roundness of figure, — plain, respectable, intelligent-looking persons, with quiet manners. I saw no resemblance in either of them to any portrait of their father. After the ladies left the table, I sat next to the Major, the younger of the two, and had a good deal of talk with him. He seemed a very kindly and social man, and was quite ready to speak about his father, nor was he at all reluctant to let it be seen how much he valued the glory of being descended from the poet. By and by, at Mr. Aiken’s instance, he sang one of Burns’s songs, — the one about “Annie” and the “rigs of barley.” He sings in a perfectly simple style, so that it is little more than a recitative, and yet the effect is very good as to humor, sense, and pathos. After rejoining the ladies, he sang another, “A posie for my ain dear May,” and likewise “A man’s a man for a’ that.” My admiration of his father, and partly, perhaps, my being an American, gained me some favor with him, and he promised to give me what he considered the best engraving of Burns, and some other remembrance of him. The Major is that son of Burns who spent an evening at Abbotsford with Sir Walter Scott, when, as Lockhart writes, “the children sang the ballads of their sires.” He spoke with vast indignation of a recent edition of his father’s works by Robert Chambers, in which the latter appears to have wronged the poet by some misstatements. — I liked them both and they liked me, and asked me to go and see there at Cheltenham, where they reside. We broke up at about midnight.
The members of this dinner-party were of the more liberal tone of thinking here in Liverpool. The Colonel and Major seemed to be of similar principles; and the eyes of the latter glowed, when he sang his father’s noble verse, “The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,” etc. It would have been too pitiable if Burns had left a son who could not feel the spirit of that verse.
October 8th. — Coning to my office, two or three mornings ago, I found Mrs. — — — , the mother of Mr. — — — , the insane young man of whom I had taken charge. She is a lady of fifty or thereabouts, and not very remarkable anyway, nor particularly ladylike. However, she was just come off a rapid journey, having travelled from Naples, with three small children, without taking rest, since my letter reached her. A son (this proved to be her new husband) of about twenty had come with her to the Consulate. She was, of course, infinitely grieved about the young man’s insanity, and had two or three bursts of tears while we talked the matter over. She said he was the hope of her life, — the best, purest, most innocent child that ever was, and wholly free from every kind of vice. But it appears that he had a previous attack of insanity, lasting three months, about three years ago.
After I had told her all I knew