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“This was thy home then, gentle Jane, This thy green solitude;—and here At evening, from thy gleaming pane, Thine eye oft watch’d the dappled deer, While the soft sun was in its wane, Browsing beneath the brooklet clear; The brook runs still, the sun sets now, The trees wave still; but where art thou?”

A rocky bank, with scattered sheep, are objects on which the mind loves to rest. Such is the back-ground of Bradgate ruin, the birth-place of the beautiful Jane Grey, the illustrious and ill-fated scion of the house of Suffolk, concerning whom it was related by one who had seen and loved her, that even in her eighteenth year she had the innocence of childhood, the beauty of youth, the solidity of middle, and the gravity of old age; the life of a saint, and yet the death of a malefactor. On that rocky bank she had often gazed, for though man passes from his inheritance, and noble dwellings crumble to the dust, nature changes not. Rude eminences extend further back, on which the wild rose and sweet-briar have long fixed themselves, with bramble-bushes, ferns, and fox-glove; they are skirted by low and romantic dingles, where sheep pasture, and butterflies sport from one flower to another. He who approaches the old ruin, from the little village of Cropston, can hardly picture to himself that time has done its work in laying low the ancient palace of the Greys. On the left, stands that noble group of chesnut-trees, under the shade of which little Jane used to play; on the right extends a slate coppice, intermingled with moss and flowers, in beautiful contrast with the deep shade of the old chesnuts, the roots of which are laved by the clear trout-stream, on which stood a corn-mill in Leland’s days;—“that faire and plentiful springe of water, brought by master Brok, as a man would judge, agayne the hille, thorough the lodge, and thereby it dryveth the mylee.” The mill came into decay when the mansion was deserted, and no one went thither for the grinding of his corn; some of the large stones fell into the stream, and interrupted for a short space the rapid flowing of the water, and among them grow the water-dock and bulrush, with large river-weeds and trailing plants. Again it hurries on, dancing from amid the roots and broken masses of huge stones, clear and sparkling, and fringed with ferns and flowers, the delight of Jane, when she used to watch beside it with Elmer, that “deare friend and schoolmaster, who taught her so gently and yet so pleasantly, that she thought the time as nothing, while she was with him.” This streamlet laves in its course the once hospitable mansion of the Greys, and passes from thence into the fertile meadows of Smithland. Beautiful too is the vale of Newtown, lonely yet romantic, the favourite resort of all who delight in the sylvan solitudes of nature—where, as legends tell, Jane used to walk—with its hill and tower in the distance, the nearest neighbours of Bradgate Palace, now, like that, all roofless and deserted. What a contrast, in its loneliness, to the busy tide of care, ever rolling on, in the ancestral halls, the towns and villages, that vary the mighty landscape, which extends before the elevated solitude, with its aged ruin! That ruin was dwelt in once, not by the owl and bat, its sole tenants now, but by living men and women, who held pleasant intercourse with the inhabitants of Bradgate Palace; with dwellers too, in places, the sites of which, grass has long grown over, or which the antiquary can hardly trace. Woods and fields and streamlets are seen from the same high hill; wide commons and quiet valleys, with dells and dingles; and above them extends the glorious dome of heaven, where light summer-clouds are speeding, and the bright sun looks down on the lovely scene beneath.

Back to my old ruin—for high hills, and far off scenes, are not the objects of my search. Back to my old ruin, which stands alone in its desolation, while all around is verdurous and joyful. Full shining on it, are the warm beams of a summer sun, and soft breezes shake the tufts of ferns and wallflowers that spring from out the crannies, the rents of ruin, which time has made in the old walls. Butterflies shut and open their gorgeous wings on the golden disk of that bright flower, which loves to fling its friendly mantle over fallen greatness, and now carpets with luxuriant vegetation the broken pavement, through the interstices of which its broad leaves rise up. Birds are singing on the trees, and bees come humming to gather pollen from the flowers of the noble chesnuts that droop in all their beauty and luxuriance over the old ruins. Those who have long ceased from among the living used to gaze on them, and gather their beautiful tufts of pyramidical white flowers with which to adorn the open spaces in the oriel window. They grew here far back as the reign of Edward, when the great park of Bradgate, with its circumference of seven miles, came into the possession of the Earl of Ferrars, for the chesnut is a tree of long duration, and the stately group is beginning to decline. Little now remains of the once princely mansion, the palace, large and fair and beautiful, as wrote the historian Fuller. The walls are low and roofless, broken and dismantled, and scarcely is it possible to point out the different apartments that once resounded with cheerful voices. All is still and lonely now; the tilt-yard is nearly perfect, but none are playing there; the garden-walls, with their broad terrace-walks, remain entire, but none are walking there; gray and yellow lichens, with tufts of moss, dot over the old stones, and so wild and high has grown the grass, that it looks as if no one had trodden there for ages. A noble pleasure-ground formerly extended round the mansion, and beyond it was the spacious park, where the duke and duchess, the parents of Lady Jane, with all the household, gentlemen and gentlewomen, used to hunt. Traces of walks and alleys, and broad spaces for exercise or pleasure are still visible, though generations have passed away since the members of the house of Groby sauntered among them, and the place has much the appearance of a wilderness; yet the aspect is not that of total wildness, of a spot where the hand of man has never been; indications everywhere present themselves, that where the nettle, and the dandelion, with its golden petals and sphere of down, reign undisturbed, the rose and lily once grew luxuriantly. The house too, how desolate and changed! The earls of Leicester, of Hinton, and of Ferrars presided here; then came Sir Edward Grey, Lord Ferrars of Groby, and then the Earl of Huntingdon. Here also resided the Marquis of Dorset, the son-in-law of him who wedded the Dowager Queen of France, Charles Brandon, “cloths of gold and freize,” as sung the courtly poet, when contrasting his own condition with that of the widowed queen.

“Cloth of freize, be not too bold,

Though thou art matched with cloth of gold;

Cloth of gold, do not despise,

Though thou art matched with cloth of frieze.”

Tradition points through the dim vista of long ages to a broken tower, as the one where Lady Jane resided, and which bears her name. Beside it is a chapel, wherein are effigies of Lord Grey of Groby, and the Lady Grey, his wife. The chapel is carefully preserved, but all else are in ruins:—the tower, the great hall, the state apartment, the refectory, the tennis-court, nothing remains of them but lichen-tinted walls, or ruins black with smoke. Here then, amid lone ruins and green trees, beside the streamlet’s rush and the old grove of chesnuts, where the lavrock and the titlark, the goldfinch and the thrush are singing, with no companions but rejoicing birds and flowers, let me recall the mournful realities of bygone days.

“Here, in departed days, the gentle maid,

The lovely and the good, with infant glee,

Along the margin of the streamlet play’d,

Or gathered wild flowers ’neath each mossy tree;

And little recked what cares were her’s to be,

While listening to the skylark’s soaring lay,

Or merry grasshopper that carolled free,

In verdant haunts, throughout the livelong day,

That beauteous child, as blithe, as sorrowless as they.

“And here, where sighs the summer breeze among

These echoing halls, deserted now and bare,

Oft o’er some tome of ancient lore she hung—

No student ever since so wondrous fair!

Or lifted up her soul to God in prayer,

And pondered on his verse, of price untold,

Radiant with wisdom’s gems beyond compare,

Richer than richest mines of purest gold—

The star that guides our steps safe to the Saviour’s fold.

“To fancy’s wizard gaze, fleet o’er yon height,

Hunters and hounds tumultuous sweep along;

And many a lovely dame and youthful knight

Gaily commingle with the stalwarth throng

Of valiant nobles, famed in olden song;

But not amid them, as they rapid ride,

Is that meek damsel—trained by grievous wrong

Of haughty parents to abase her pride,

Ere yet her lot it was to be more sternly tried.

“Here from her casement, as she cast a look,

Oft might she mourn their reckless sport to scan;

And well rejoice to find, in classic book,

Solace—withdrawn from all that pleasure can

Impart to rude and riot-loving man:

Aye, and when at the banquet, revels ran

To loud extreme, she here was wont to haste,

And marvel at Creation’s mighty plan;

Or with old bards and sages pleasure taste,

Unknown to Folly’s crowd, whose days all run to waste.

“And thus it was—the child of solitude,

She grew apart, beneath that Father’s eye

Who careth for the wild-birds’ nestling brood,

And decks the flow’ret with its varied dye;

Nor, in His presence, had she cause to sigh

For the vain pageants of delusive mirth;

Trained to uplift her soul, in musing high,

From this dark vale of wretchedness and dearth,

Aloft, above the stars, where angels have their birth.

“Well had she need! a scaffold was the path

To that abode her soul had often sought;

Scarce crowned before the stormiest clouds of wrath

Rolled o’er her head, with scathing ruin fraught.

Alas, for human greatness! it is nought!

And nought she found it, save a deadly snare.

Enchantment, by the evil genii wrought,

Whose diadems conceal the brow of care;

Whose tissued robes display a lustre false, as fair.

“Beautiful martyr! widowed by the hand

That reft thee of thy life, ere yet ’twas thine;

Thy grave to find beneath a guilty land,

Thou hast no need of gilded niche or shrine!

Fond recollections round thy memory twine—

A sacred halo circles thy brief years;

’Tis thine, redeemed from sin and death, to shine

Eternally above this world of fears:

Where Christ himself, thy King, hath wiped away all tears.

“Farewell, thou mouldering relic of the past!

An hour unmeetly was not spent with thee:

Events as rapid as the autumn’s blast

Have hurried onward, since ’twas thine to see

The fairest flower of England pensively

Expand and blossom ’neath thy rugged shade;

And here thou stand’st, while circling seasons flee,

A monumental pile of that sweet maid,

Whom men of cruel hands within the charnel laid.”

The Author of the Visions of Solitude.