Today we went to Haworth to visit the Bronte museum.  Yorkshire is so lovely and idyllic.  As much as I love America, we're such a young country; we can't match the old, stately quality that seems to exude throughout Britain.

I finally got to try scones and Yorkshire pudding today.  The scones were incredible.  The Yorkshire pudding was . . . interesting.  I think the British are great with tea and pastries; where they go wrong is with meat.  I had heard that British food was bland, but sometimes it seems like they don't know what spices are.  Which I find particularly puzzling, considering their past involvement with the Asian spice trade.  It's as if when India gained it's independence, it took all of the spices with it. 

Now that I've seen the Bronte Parsonage and heard the Brontes' story, I understand why their literature is so grim.  If only they could see Haworth now, perhaps they would see the world in a more optimistic light.  I find Branwell Bronte to be a particularly interesting figure.  Our tour guide told my group that when he went to pubs he would impress the patrons by writing simultaneously with both hands, one hand writing in Latin, and the other in Greek.  Clearly he was a very talented man, which makes his early demise all the more disappointing.  You'd be hard pressed these days to find someone so intelligent and well educated.  Sometimes I think the world has let itself go.  People in the past were so well-educated and well-read.  But nowadays I feel that most think the classics have nothing to offer them, so they don't read them (unless they have to for class, and even then half the time they just use cliffnotes).  They'd much rather sit around and watch trashy reality tv.  It's such a shame.  But I don't want to be that way.  I want to read the classics, I want to learn foreign languages, and I want to understand the world, as much as one can in a single lifetime.