Hermitage

“ This is a good idea; and may be of much avail in a garden. There is a hermitage in which is a good figure of a hermit in plaster, colored to the life, with a table and book before him, in the attitude of reading and contemplation. ”

“ So spectacularly do the peonies bloom that they always attract large crowds of visitors while they are in full flower, more than a thousand visitors having gone to the Hermitage garden in one day to witness the rare floral spectacle. ”

“ Speedily, for we are on a descending path, we come to an opening, and turn around to the left to seek the recollected hermitage, a little round, cross-surmounted mosshouse, where used to sit in state with girdle and sandals, the bearded hermit, holding the long-stringed numeral of his many prayers. ”

“ The solitary hermitage, which shelters a single hoary head, is more interesting to the feeling heart than the proudest display of barren pomp that neither rises over the tomb of departed worth nor affords any living mortal a comfortable habitation. ”

“ In my way to Killin, on the south-side of the loch, I went up to see the fall at the hermitage, of a burn, with rocky close banks covered with wood. The height of the fall, I was told, is 240 feet: it is a very fine fall; but, in my mind, not half so beautiful as those of Moness, though higher. The one is dressed; the other is in its lovely, enchanting, native undress: even the hand of man, in favouring the access to the head of Moness, is concealed. That to the fall, at the hermitage, is art throughout, except the rock in which the hermitage is scooped. ”

“ It was a strange whim of our ancestors to have a Hermitage in their grounds; and as real hermits were not to be procured, often an aged pensioner was made to take their place for the benefit of visitors—but nobody was of course deceived. ”

“ Or the humble hermitage founded by a few self-denying anchorites, whose only thought was to secure salvation by macerating the flesh and eluding temptation, would become possessed of the relics of some saint, whose wonder-working powers drew flocks of pious pilgrims and sufferers in search of relief. ”

“ The preservation of the Hermitage as one of America’s most cherished historic shrines is due to the vision and patriotic enthusiasm of the women composing the Ladies’ Hermitage Association, to whom all possible credit should be given for the work they have done. ”

“ Soon he has become equally necessary to the pilgrim, the traveller and to those who are round about him. As time goes on his cell and the little sanctuary where he and they have met for worship become hallowed by association, and, when he dies, a successor must be sought to carry on the tradition. The hermitage thus remains as a 124memorial of its founder long after his name has been forgotten. ”

“ Almost from the time it was built, the Hermitage held an attraction for visitors from all over the country; and since the death of General Jackson it has been a veritable Mecca. To enumerate all of its distinguished visitors would be to build up a bulky roster of the noted men of the past century; but mention may be made in passing of some of the more prominent people who have crossed the threshold of the Hermitage, either to be greeted by its famous master during his lifetime or to honor his memory since his old home has been established as a national shrine. ”

“ Then they resolved to visit the divers habitations of the hermits which lived in these mountains, and being come unto the seventh hermitage, they found a young man of an agreeable countenance and a goodly presence, whose long and well combed hair gave a reverent majesty unto his aspect. ”

“ There Lucilla, with the gardener's assistance, scooped a hollow place, a few feet square, and arranged a pretty little hermitage: dressing a doll like an old man, and painting a piece of glass to fix in the back of the hermitage, to look like the window of a chapel. She next sent and bought a few common tools, and thought, as Bernard was very fond of clipping and cutting, she could tempt him to work to help finish this hermitage. ”

“ Rachel Jackson Lawrence and Uncle Alfred, 56 both of whom were familiar with the arrangement of the furniture in the early days, every piece was put in its original and proper place. Today the Hermitage stands unique in being the country’s only national shrine which is fitted throughout with the original furnishings, which gives an authentic impression of the exact conditions under which its famous occupant lived his everyday life. ”

“ The Cemetery lies embosomed in a sunny opening of the rocks below the Hermitage, where nature and art combined—the former predominating so much by means of a noble amphitheatre of rocks—have given to the spot a quiet, pleasing interest. Outside the Cemetery, a winding path leads to the High Rocks, the road to which the inhabitants have recently improved. ”

“ Interspersed with all the conventional plants and shrubs are some of the native wild flowers that bloom in the fields and along the river banks near by; for when the Hermitage garden was first planted the florist’s art had not reached its present peak of perfection, and although the thoughtful General sent home flower seeds from Philadelphia and Washington, Rachel took pleasure in augmenting the garden’s finery by selections from the surrounding country. Visitors may still see in the beds there the nodding Jacob’s ladder, the columbine and other such homely blossoms. ”

“ In an illumination on folio 153 of the “History of Launcelot,” already quoted (British Mus., Add. 10,293) , is a picture of King Arthur taking [Pg 117] counsel with a hermit in his hermitage. The building in which they are seated has a nave and aisles, a rose-window in its gable, and a bell-turret, and seems intended to represent the chapel of the hermitage. Again, at folio 107 of the same MS. is a picture of a hermit talking to a man, with the title,—“Ensi y come une hermites prole en une chapele de son hermitage,”—“How a hermit conversed in the chapel of his hermitage.” ”

“ So a man was employed who was a combination carpenter and gardener and handy man, and for the next two years work was concentrated on improving the appearance of the place, especially in the garden. Then in 1895 a young farmer of the neighborhood, Mr. T. L. Baker, was engaged as caretaker, and he and his wife moved onto the premises and took charge. At this writing Mr. Baker is still the custodian, and the appearance of the Hermitage and grounds today is to a great extent a tribute to his faithful and efficient work. ”

“ Indeed, the real image of the blessed Virgin probably stood in a small niche, still visible, behind the alter; whereas the figure of a Bull’s Head, which is rudely carved at the Lady’s feet, the usual place for the Crest in old monuments, plainly proves her to have been a very different personage.—About the tomb are several other figures cut in the natural rock, like those before mentioned. What slight traditions are scattered through the country, concerning the origin and foundalion of the Hermitage, tomb, &c. ”

“ The hermit, however, probably, usually wore the habit of the order. The monastery often supplied the hermit with his food. In a picture in the MS. romance, before quoted (Add. 10,292, f. 98) , is a representation of a knight-errant on horseback, conversing by the way with a clerk, who is carrying bread and wine to a hermitage.
The woodcut with which we conclude, from the Harleian MS., 1,527, represents the characteristic costume of three orders of religious with whom we have been concerned—a bishop, an abbot, and a clerk. ”

“ The almost imperceptible shading-off of winter into spring is signaled by tufts of freshly springing grass on the sunny side of a grave-stone; the birds build betimes among the tree-branches of the cemetery. Your grave-maker is always a merry fellow, who cares no more for carved cross-bones than for the clay-pipes so artistically crossed in shop-windows. ”

“ Sometimes we meet with a curious little house built of stone or timber, erected along the great highways, near some bridge or ford, wherein a “holy hermit” once dwelt, and served his generation by directing travellers to the nearest monastery or rectory, and spent his days in seclusion and prayer. Such indeed is the traditional idea of the hermit’s life; but the real hermit of the Middle Ages did not always live a very lonely or ascetic life. ”

“ I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies.
8 Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest; it crieth out against me: therefore have I hated it.
9 Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her; come ye, assemble all the beasts of the field, come to devour.
10 Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. ”

“ In forming an estimate as to the probable antiquity of these interments, the time that must necessarily have elapsed between the abandonment of the cemetery and the springing up of the forest; the age of the trees now present and of others that have fallen and decayed; the advanced state of decay in which the human remains are found; the character of the pottery-ware; and lastly, the total absence of any evidences of communication with civilization, in the shape of glass beads or other trinkets, must all be taken into account ”

“ Here and there, among the earth-brown graves, stooping above them, are the earth-brown figures of the gardeners. Every grave is freshly raked, moulded between wooden frames to a flat, high surface where the flowers are to overflow, and above every raised daïs of earth the bleached wood of the cross spreads its arms, throwing a shadow soft and blue like a dove's feather, a shadow that curves over the mound and laps down its edge lightly as a benison. ”

“ One attribute the last dwelling-places all have in common. Around all are gardens, greater or smaller—now filled with shrubberies, now only affording room for a few tiny plants. Everywhere hang the chaplets, woven of yellow, white, and green—everywhere lie scattered flowers, recently strewn—now fresh, now withered. Another peculiarity is as frequently to be found by the side of the humbler grave as on the splendid monument. ”

“ By its air of reverend quiet, its redolence of dusty death, in the marshalled lines of its sleeping occupants, and in the labels that briefly name the dead author and his work, an ancient repository of books, such as a college library, suggests the, perhaps, hackneyed similitude of a great cemetery. Here and there, among the vast majority of the undistinguished dead, we detect names that are still familiar. Here and there are the monuments of men who have at least been the ancestors of a surviving family of scholars and scientists. ”

“ We shall expect, from these preliminary observations, to encounter various gradations of belief as we proceed to consider the evidence for continuity of custom respecting burial gifts. In order that the forest may not lose its importance by being considered in detail, tree by tree, let us keep to our proposed classification, and glance first at the practice of burying weapons and other useful objects with the dead. Though the custom was not a marked feature of the Long-Barrow Period, the original inspiration dates from that age at least. ”

“ Passing through an old cemetery, where obelisks of granite, without a word of inscription, have stood for nearly three hundred years; where old tombs have fallen to pieces in the lapse of time, and human bones protrude amid the decaying masonry; while, over all, the rich vegetation of the semi-tropical climate throws a kindly concealing veil of beauty, we come out into groves of exquisite fragrance. ”

“ The builder’s stones are graven—the footway is of pictured pebbles, miniatures, amulets, and seals, reflecting lineaments and traces of the history of entombed generations. Their inscriptions reveal to us the impress of ancient, mediæval, and modern art. ”

“ There is stone upon stone, tomb upon tomb, monument upon monument, and between them wherever you turn your eye, syringa-trees and bushes. From among broken rocks, from dark corners of tombs and sarcophagi, from the hollows of decayed stones, stems, sometimes winding like serpents, make their way out into space and spread into thick bushy crowns, which form a wealth of green and shady arcades of branches descending from above to the rotten tombstones, and to the damp clay of the ground which is overgrown by a monotonous sickly yellowish green. ”

“ The blossoms fall and die, and the paths by the hawthorn hedges are strewn with their bright corses. The blossoms droop and die: the little children die, and the green velvet of the cemetery is dotted with tiny grave-stones. ”

“ THE FIRST GRAVE.
[We are indebted for the following pathetic little poem to the circumstance of the first grave being formed in the churchyard of the new church at Brompton: the place was recently a garden, and some of the flowers yet show themselves among the graves, where this one tenant, the forerunner of its population, has taken up his last abode.]
A Single grave!—the only one
In this unbroken ground,
Where yet the garden leaf and flower
Are lingering around. ”

“ The relics, both of the cradle and the grave, bear their own record of the joys, cares, and sorrows of the nursery in vanished years, and bring near to every mother's heart the baby that was rocked in the one, and the grief which came when that little form was given to the solemn keeping of the other. ”

“ Each family has a particular portion of it, walled in like a garden, where the bones of their ancestors have remained undisturbed for many generations: for in these inclosures the graves are all distinct and separate, having each of them a stone placed upright, both at the head and feet, inscribed with the name of the person who lieth there interred, while the intermediate space is either planted with flowers, bordered round with stone, or paved all over with tiles. ”